VentureBeat

Point, click: a review of gesture control technologies

The first big hit in gesture control technology was the mouse. If you’re too young to have any pre-digital memories, this might seem like an odd claim. My three-year-old is no more mystified by mice and touchpads than she is by building blocks. Once upon a time, though, we needed lessons in how the motion of a peripheral device rolling around on the table related to the motion of something on the screen called...

VanEdge Capital close to raising $100M to invest in games, with EA as a partner

Paul Lee is close to closing on a $100 million fund for his new venture firm, VanEdge Capital. And one of his possible limited partners is his old company, Electronic Arts.

Lee, the former head of worldwide studios at EA, confirmed in an interview that his fund is in the process of closing a round, but hasn’t yet finalized everything. If the deal closes, his firm will be the only venture firm focused solely on...

VentureBeat and GDC announce GamesBeat@GDC conference

VentureBeat and the Game Developers Conference are pleased to announce the GamesBeat@GDC conference on March 10.

GamesBeat, the conference for leading executives in the game industry, will take place at the upcoming GDC 2010, which runs from March 9 to March 13. This year’s GamesBeat@GDC will feature a fireside chat with John Schappert, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts and a 17-year veteran of the video game industry (pictured below). EA made a big splash...

The most addictive iPhone games of 2009

There are more than 22,000 games on the iPhone. So it’s a quixotic task to try to figure out the best of the year. But with some recommendations from readers, we’ve taken a look at some of the most compelling. So here are the most addictive games we found. We did this list last year, and I think you’ll agree that many of these new games are leaps and bounds better than last year’s...

Game startups raised $600.5 million in 2009, down 36 percent

Game startups continued to score big investments in 2009, but the amount of money raised in the year fell considerably compared to 2008.

Our analysis shows that 97 game startups raised $600.5 million in 2009, down 36 percent from a year ago. Last year we tallied 112 companies that raised more than $936.8 million, not counting fundings with undisclosed amounts.

This year was looking pretty weak until Zynga scored $180 million in a deal with...

Thanks for coming to DiscoveryBeat; the best is yet to come

Entrepreneurs, developers, and others gathered in San Francisco yesterday for DiscoveryBeat 2009, VentureBeat’s sold-out event on how applications can stand out in “an age of noise.”

It’s considered easier to get struck by lightning these days than to get someone to notice your application on the iPhone, now that there are some 100,000 apps on the App Store.

The afternoon was packed with panels and presentations from both the big players and the up-and-comers...

Last chance to sign up for DiscoveryBeat

DiscoveryBeat is approaching on Tuesday and we’re nearly sold out. The event is about solving one of the toughest problems in the social/mobile/gaming ecosystem: How do you get apps noticed amid a lot of noise?

We’ve got room for 200 people and there are just a few seats left. You can still get tickets via this link.  The conference is at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco, from 2:30 pm to 7:30 pm,...

Final speakers for DiscoveryBeat: RockYou’s Lisa Marino, IGN’s Roy Bahat

We’re excited to announce our final set of speakers for DiscoveryBeat, VentureBeat’s event exploring how to get apps noticed in an age of noise. The event takes place Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco. We’ve got a maximum capacity of 200, and we expect the event will be sold out.

Lisa Marino, vice president of sales at RockYou, will join the panel entitled “Discovery 3.0: Bringing in the...

Comcast / NBC merger’s critics aren’t convincing

Comcast, America’s largest cable TV operator and Internet provider, agreed earlier today to take majority ownership of NBC Universal away from super-conglomerate GE, the biggest company in the world.

The Wall Street Journal calls the sale “a complex deal” valued at $30 billion and then some. (How complex? As part of the agreement to sell NBC Universal, GE agreed to buy a stake in NBC Univeral now owned by Vivendi. I suggest you read the...

New DiscoveryBeat speakers: Zynga, Flurry, YouWeb, GetJar and more

We’re excited to announce new speakers and program content for DiscoveryBeat, VentureBeat’s event exploring how to get apps noticed in an age of noise. The event takes place Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco. We’ve got a maximum capacity of 200 and we expect the event will be sold out. Our newest speakers will be discussing app discovery, analytics, and monetization. Here they are:

Bill Mooney, vice president and...

Tesla eyes Downey, Calif. for Model S assembly plant

Tesla Motors may have finally picked a site for its new Model S Assembly plant — an announcement that has been awaited with bated breath by California politicians and those in the advanced vehicle industry for months. While the company has yet to confirm the selection, the city of Downey, Calif., likes its chances — its mayor has gone as far as to say the deal is 99.9 percent done.

Today, the issue is under...

The top 10 video games of the holiday season

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Sony PlayStation 3. Mature) Naughty Dog/Sony. This game could have been a tired sequel in the tired action adventure category, as with ethical treasure hunter Nathan Drake returning and two women contending to be his main sidekick. But Naughty Dog raised the bar with great cinematics, outstanding 3-D art that fully exploited the power of the PlayStation 3, and combat scenes that were executed well. You feel like you’re taking...

Backflip proves indie iPhone developers can create multiple hits — and make money

Backflip Studios has managed to defy the odds on the iPhone by coming up with games that have become big hits over and over.

The Boulder, Colo.-based game studio has just six employees and has been around only seven months, but it has already made more than $1.75 million — by selling game applications in multiple forms, serving ads in them, as well as offering virtual goods. The success shows that with the right games...

New speakers, sponsors for DiscoveryBeat; today is last day for early-bird discount

We’ve got some great momentum for VentureBeat’s upcoming DiscoveryBeat event, which will attack the problem of how to get attention for an app in the midst of a lot of noise.

One of our newest speakers is Randy Breen, chief operating officer at Social Gaming Network, where he oversees game development, business development, strategy and executive management. He has worked in the game industry since 1986 at companies such as Electronic Arts, LucasArts and Emotiv...

Announcing new DiscoveryBeat speakers: Smule, Playdom and Moderati

We’re pleased to announce a trio of new speakers for our DiscoveryBeat event on how to get your apps noticed. Our newest speakers at the Dec. 8 event include Ge Wang, the co-founder, chief technology officer, and chief creative officer at iPhone app developer Smule. We’re delighted because Smule has popularized apps such as the whimsical Ocarina music app that lets you blow into an iPhone and produce sound as if it were a real...

Video game publisher EA announces decent earnings but will lay off 1,500

Electronic Arts said today it would lay off 1,500 employees as it focuses more tightly on its best-selling video games and digital media businesses. The company also posted slightly better-than-expected revenues for its second fiscal quarter, but the big video game publisher fell slightly short on earnings.

Redwood City, Calif.-based EA also announced that the layoffs would result in cost savings of $100 million and one-time charges of $130 – $150 million. It did so...

Announcing DiscoveryBeat: The event about how to get your app noticed

VentureBeat is throwing a new mini-conference and networking event, DiscoveryBeat.

DiscoveryBeat addresses one of the biggest conundrums for Silicon Valley’s most dynamic startups and developers: How to get your social game or mobile application noticed in an age of noise?

It will be held in the afternoon of Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco, a hip location with an ocean view.

We’ll discuss the “secret recipe” for getting discovered...

iTunes turned the music market on its head. Could iTunes TV do the same for TV?

Rumors surfaced this week that Apple is in the process of putting together a $30-a-month iTunes TV offering. This rumored iTunes TV is supposedly something altogether different from the currently available Apple TV.

Apple TV is a piece of hardware that makes it easy to watch media (video, audio, pictures) on your regular TV. iTunes TV, on the other hand, would be a software offering that would allow consumers to watch “channels” on a...

5 O’Clock Roundup: Droid reviews, Apple’s secret TV plan, Sprint’s dubious netbook deal

Intuit completes buyout of Mint.com – Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer will suck it up and shift from CEO to vice president and general manager of Intuit’s personal finance group, which also includes Quicken products.

Yes, Disney’s new film is a hand-drawn musical – “I’ve never understood why the studios were saying people don’t want to see hand-drawn animation. What people don’t want to watch is a bad movie,” Pixar co-founder John Lasseter told the Wall...

Epix to launch premium movie channel this weekend (get free passes here)

Epix is launching its premium movie channel this weekend in a bid to go toe-to-toe with HBO. As we noted in an earlier story, the company hopes to outdo HBO with better shows as well as a modern digital viewing experience enabled by the Internet.

Epix is a joint venture of Viacom, Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and MGM. The channel will premiere on Verizon’s FiOS TV service, a pay-TV service that’s delivered over Verizon’s super-fast fiber...