EA and Tencent to take The Sims Social game to China
Electronic Arts and Chinese social network Tencent are taking EA’s The Sims Social game to China.
Beijing-based Tencent, which has hundreds of millions of users, will publish the game on the Tencent Open Platform under the Chinese name Mo Ni Shi Guang. EA’s Playfish studio in Beijing is developing the title, which was a big hit last fall on Facebook. The move helps EA keep pace with rival social game maker Zynga, which has taken … Continue Reading
Activision Blizzard earnings: World of Warcraft resists the assault from EA’s Star Wars
Activision Blizzard has beaten earnings expectations for its third fiscal quarter, which ended Dec. 31, and its major cash cow is still holding up. World of Warcraft didn’t suffer after Electronic Arts launched its massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic. World of Warcraft ended the year with 10.2 million paying subscribers, down only slightly from 10.3 million in the previous quarter.
Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, said in an analyst … Continue Reading
Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t hurting World of Warcraft as much as you may think
To what extent has Electronic Arts’ Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) been keeping users away from Activision Blizzard’s cash cow World of Warcraft (WoW)? Surprisingly little, according to traffic reports from leading independent community websites for both online games.
The high-risk, high-reward market of subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has become more competitive since Electronic Arts bet the farm on SWTOR, which took six years to develop and allegedly cost about $200 … Continue Reading
Tips and tricks: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Index
1. Tips & Tricks (<–you are here)
2. Skill Guide: A – D
3. Skill Guide: L – S
4. Review
Welcome to GamesBeat’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning game guide. Here you’ll find a bunch of tips and tricks I discovered during my time with the game, as well as a guide to the different skills you can choose from. If you have any questions or additions, please add them in the comments below.… Continue Reading
Battlefield 3 voice chat is finally fixed on Playstation 3 – 104 days after launch
The fix for broken voice communications on the Playstation 3 version of Battlefield 3 has finally arrived today. Developer DICE has taken a staggering 104 days to get the voice chat working properly, and it is a welcome, if somewhat overdue, development for the multi-million selling game.
Battlefield 3 launched in Oct 2011, and voice chat for most PS3 users has been consistently choppy and unusable, until now. With over 4 million PS3 copies of … Continue Reading
Curt Schilling anxiously awaits his “opening day for games” (interview)
Tuesday is “opening day” for Curt Schilling. The former Boston Red Sox pitcher who won three World Series championships is about to launch his first video game. His game development studio 38 Studios and publisher Electronic Arts are launching the fantasy role-playing game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Years in the making, the title is an adopted one. Schilling created 38 Studios and hired novelist R. A. Salvatore and Spawn artist Todd McFarlane to create a … Continue Reading
The DeanBeat: Billionaire Mark Pincus breaks out of quiet period (exclusive interview)
Mark Pincus is the newest billionaire in Silicon Valley, thanks to the December initial public offering of Zynga, the social game giant he founded in 2007.
For much of last year, Zynga was in a quiet period leading up to its IPO and Pincus had to wear a muzzle. During that time, Zynga haters came out of the woodwork in poorly disguised attempts to derail the IPO.
But the company managed to go public at … Continue Reading
EA releases new stats on Star Wars: The Old Republic online game — 20B enemies slain
Electronic Arts issued new data about the launch of the six-week-old massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic.
As previously noted, EA said it has sold more than 2 million copies since Dec. 20 and has more than 1.7 million active subscribers. If each active player paid $60 and has signed up for at least one month of subscription service for a fee of $15 a month, then the game has probably generated … Continue Reading
With a solid launch of Star Wars online game, EA investors can breathe a sigh of relief
Electronic Arts saw better-than-expected sales of Star Wars: The Old Republic and Battlefield 3 in the third fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, according to the company’s comments in its analyst conference call today.
After initially driving the stock down, EA’s performance has now driven the stock up 4 percent to $19.20 a share in after-hours trading.
“I think the stock goes up tomorrow,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
The Old Republic sold … Continue Reading
Electronic Arts beats quarterly estimates but offers pessimistic guidance
Electronic Arts reported today that its sales and earnings beat analysts’ estimates for the third fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, but the company offered surprisingly pessimistic guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter ending March 31.
Redwood City, Calif.-based EA is one of the biggest independent video game publishers, with business that range from hardcore shooter games like Battlefield 3 to casual titles like The Sims Social on Facebook. Its results are a bellwether for the … Continue Reading
How shame and anger aided the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic
Bioware‘s Emmanuel Lusinchi’s seven “lessons learned while designing an AAA” massively multiplayer online (MMO) game included an explanation of fan irrationality, the social benefits of dog ownership and unconventional tips for the hiring process (“If the interview process doesn’t feel cruel, you are probably doing it wrong”).
Speaking at the Vancouver Game Design Expo, the Associate Lead Designer of Star Wars: The Old Republic summarized his experiences from six years of development on Electronic Arts’ … Continue Reading
Virgin Gaming hits 1M registered users and $7M in prizes awarded (exclusive)
Virgin Gaming, the online tournament gaming division of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, is announcing today that it has snagged more than a million registered users for its prize-based online gaming tournaments.
Virgin has awarded more than $7 million in cash prizes. Four million game challenges have been issued and players are spending an average of 72 minutes per visit to VirginGaming.com as they play hardcore console games such as Electronic Arts Madden NFL 12 or … Continue Reading
BioWare spills more details on Mass Effect 3
Spoiler alert: Some new story details.
Mass Effect 3 is easily one of the most-anticipated games of the year. And fans are eating up new details about the game as they wait for the March 6 debut. Ever one to milk the attention, Electronic Arts and BioWare are spilling out the details about the game to generate more enthusiasm.
We previewed the hands-on game play of Mass Effect 3 with the Kinect voice commands last … Continue Reading
HeroEngine is the unsung platform behind Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the most ambitious undertakings in video game history. When the game launched in December, it was the fruition of six years of work by as many as 800 developers and an investment of an estimated $200 million. One of the secrets behind the successful development of the game was the HeroEngine, a development platform for building online games that was created by Maryland-based Idea Fabrik.
The goal … Continue Reading
EA spent ‘only’ $200M to make Star Wars: The Old Republic?
A debate is breaking out about exactly how much it cost to build Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is easily the most ambitious video game project in recent years.
Three days after analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co speculated that the “total all-in investment” in Star Wars: The Old Republic “is probably approaching half a billion dollars”, a story in the LA Times blog Hero Complex put a sticker price of “nearly $200 … Continue Reading
Battlefield 3 voice chat fix for PS3 is confirmed – patch coming soon
Playstation 3 gamers can breath a sigh of relief today, as Electronic Arts’ DICE officially confirmed that a patch to fix long running Battlefield 3 voice chat problems is incoming.
PS3 users have been reporting issues with the voice chat functionality in Battlefield 3 since the Beta rolled out, back in September 2011. The full game saw the same problems occurring, but despite developer DICE saying that looking at the issue was a top priority, … Continue Reading
Angry bakers have fingers burned as Baking Life Facebook game gets the chop
PopCap Games has angered virtual bakers on Facebook by deciding to shut the doors to its Baking Life app on Jan 31. Despite many users having spent real money buying virtual ‘Zip Cash’ to use in the game, PopCap says any remaining currency is non-transferable and non-refundable.
Baking Life currently attracts 730,000 monthly average users, and PopCap, which is owned by Electronic Arts, says that just isn’t enough. “The Baking Life player numbers have dropped … Continue Reading
How BioWare saw a chance to differentiate Mass Effect 3 with Kinect (interview)
Aaryn Flynn has a lot riding on Mass Effect 3, the sci-fi shooter and role-playing game that debuts on March 6. Flynn is general manager of game developer BioWare‘s studios in Edmonton and Montreal in Canada, and his teams have been in charge of one of the biggest games of 2012.
If it’s a hit, Electronic Arts, the parent company of BioWare, will reap the benefits with sales of millions of copies at a time … Continue Reading
Use voice commands to play better in Mass Effect 3 (video)
Mass Effect 3 is one of the hot new video games coming this spring from BioWare, whose previous two installments have sold millions of copies. For the third time around, there’s always a risk that it could be boring. But BioWare’s team found a way to innovate using the voice commands in Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360.
The game debuts March 6 and be one of the major releases of the year. … Continue Reading
Which anti-SOPA game companies are fighting back, and how
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) have definitely gotten the Internet’s attention, but not in the good Elmo orders Taco Bell sort of way. This is more like Rebecca Black announcing she’s obtained the license to the entire library of The Beatles music.
The two bills have lovers of all things Internet immensely concerned, with many people claiming that if either one passes, the current everyday freedoms we enjoy, including … Continue Reading
