VentureBeat

Check out the latest new speakers and new site for GamesBeat@GDC

We’re excited to unveil our latest speakers for GamesBeat@GDC, our executive game conference that takes place at the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday, March 10, at the Moscone convention center in San Francisco. We’ve created a Facebook group for the conference where you can chat with fellow attendees and see who’s attending. We welcome your suggestions on that page. And we’ve created our own GamesBeat 2010 dedicated web site. Look for more details to be...

Interview with Tim LeTourneau on 10 years of making The Sims

Game designer Will Wright has moved on to new things. But Tim LeTourneau has been with The Sims game development teams since before the first game launched a decade ago. Now he is the vice president and general manager of The Sims Studio at Electronic Arts. EA says that the video game franchise has now sold more than 125 million units across 60 countries. Like a machine, EA has produced 45 different versions of the...

With strong Darksiders launch, THQ shows January game sales are off to good start

THQ has struggled as a mid-tier company in the video game industry. But its third fiscal quarter earnings report today shows that there’s life in the middle of the pack.

The earnings report today shed light on a few trends of interest to everyone in video games. First, THQ is diversifying into digital content at a faster rate, much as other traditional game companies are doing. Second, while its sales in the fourth quarter were...

Announcing four new speakers at GamesBeat@GDC; Early bird pricing ends soon

We’re delighted to reveal more about our plans for the next GamesBeat conference, which is all about how social games and mobile are disrupting the technology industry.

We’re also announcing four new speakers. More on that in a sec.

Our theme is “Disruption 2.0,” because we see a second wave of innovation happening, now that Facebook, the iPhone and a range of companies like Zynga have surfed the first wave into leadership position. In fact,...

Tune identifier SoundHound announces new version with Pandora, tour dates

SoundHound, a music discovery app for iPhone, is announcing the release of version 3.1 today. The release includes updates that make the app respond more quickly on launch, as well as integration with Pandora and the addition of tour information.

SoundHound, like the better-known Shazam, is built around the core functionality of tune identification — holding up your iPhone to a radio and being told the name of the song and artist. You can also...

Sony launches MAG, a next-generation shooter game for the PS 3

Sony’s MAG is a very different kind of shooting game. When you step into the virtual battlefield of the persistent Shadow War in MAG, there are as many as 128 human-controlled enemy characters who will shoot you dead in a very short amount of time.

All told, 256 players can engage in first-person multiplayer-only combat in MAG, which launches today as an exclusive PlayStation 3 title. Sony’s Zipper Interactive game studio has been working on...

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...

Chegg founder’s stealthy Kakai may be building gesture-based consumer device

Kakai, an incredibly secretive Santa Clara, Calif., company (even though it has more than 40 employees already), has raised $50,000 of a targeted $100,000 round of options, warrants and securities, according to a filing with the SEC.

A past TechCrunch story on the company suggests that it is building a fancy new electronic reader, and an old job listing mentioned something about a Linux-based consumer electronics product. But even more clues can be stripped from...

Venture capitalists are bullish on the future of game funding

Game investing is still going strong, even though it did take a hit during the recession. We calculated that game companies raised $600.5 million in 2009, down 36 percent from the year before. But game-savvy venture capitalists are still bullish on games. We did a roundtable Q&A with some of the best-known investors, in conjunction with the launch of Interactive Age, a new magazine focused on the business of games. The magazine is edited by...

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...

Game startup launches BC Wars online game

Online games keep on appearing out of nowhere as the gold rush mentality continues to thrive in this part of the game industry. Today, GoldFire Studios announced today its BC Wars browser-based massively multiplayer online game.

The Oklahoma City,Okla.-based company is launching a beta test of the game today, targeting role-playing game fans from around the world who might have an interest in a prehistoric-themed game. It is certainly a different kind of game genre,...

EA’s Chip Lange on the future of gaming’s hottest sector: casual and social games

Chip Lange is vice president and general manager within the EA Play label at Electronic Arts. He’s in charge of a wide variety of properties including the company’s games based on Hasbro brands from Monopoly to Nerf. Created in 2007, the EA Play label also includes the Sims, Maxis, and casual games produced by EA. We caught up with Lange recently to talk about trends in video games.

VentureBeat: What’s the latest news from EA...

The most anticipated video games of 2010

It’s that time of year again, when people look ahead to the new year and salivate over tomorrow’s videogames. 2010 is shaping up to be a stellar year for hardcore gamers. And with so many games coming out, narrowing down the list to just 10 wasn’t an easy task. But we’ve eliminated games that haven’t officially been announced yet and focused on big games for each console, as well as the PC. We’ve also arranged...

Arkadium CEO plans to adapt to social gaming’s popularity

It’s a time of big change in the game industry, but Kenny Rosenblatt is used to it. In 2001, he co-founded Arkadium with his wife Jessica Rovello. The New York-based company originally started as a casual game site. But that wasn’t successful. Instead, Arkadium made money licensing its games to well-known brands. So it shifted into “advergaming,” where a game is embedded with ads and essentially becomes a promotional tool. Now the company has more...

Our favorite horribly wrong or amusing tech magazine covers

I have this habit that really annoys my wife. I store old stuff in plastic waterproof bins in my garage. I was cleaning out my collection of old papers and happened upon these precious old magazines. The covers and the accompanying stories show how astoundingly bad we, the media, can be at making bold predictions about the future.

I’ve shared some samples below of some of the worst predictions and otherwise amusing covers going back...

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...

The best original video games of 2009

Franchises. Sequels. Big summer movie games. Despite the glut of those familiar games that crowd retail shelves each year, gamers witnessed a respectable outpouring of original titles in 2009. Developers know that making a new intellectual property isn’t easy, and most publishers won’t take risks on them often. But creators, executives, and gamers all know the reward of making a successful original game is worth the most satisfying endeavor. After all, Call of Duty Modern...

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...

The best video games of 2009; Pick your favorite, too

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Sony PlayStation 3. Teen) Naughty Dog/Sony. I’m on the record as saying that this third-person shooter title is one of the best video games ever made. Uncharted 2 certainly could have been a tired sequel and a clone of Tomb Raider, but Naughty Dog got this one right. Just about everything is executed well. The story is compelling and sustains your interest over 26 chapters. Treasure hunter Nathan Drake has...

DiscoveryBeat videos: The masters explain how to get your app noticed

We’re pleased to present the videos of our DiscoveryBeat panel sessions that took place on Dec. 8.

They’re a good way to learn from some of the smartest minds about how to get your application noticed in an age of noise. With more than 100,000 apps on the iPhone and 500,000 apps on Facebook, it’s a huge challenge.

To succeed, it might seem you have to schmooze Apple executives at private barbecues to get featured...