The engine that powers Battlefield and Need for Speed is coming to “all major mobile platforms” in the form of Frostbite Go, according to Electronic Arts’ (EA) Frostbite website.

The announcement is an indicator of EA’s increasing commitment to mobile platforms, so expect more of its games on your iPhone and Android devices. The Frostbite engine also means improved graphics and performance for mobile devices, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog. This may also be a benefit to developers familiar with the Frostbite workflow. Rather than adapt to a new engine, the teams can work within an environment they are familiar with.

The announcement doesn’t make it clear if Frostbite Go will come to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. GamesBeat has reached out to EA for specifics on what “major” mobile platforms entails as well as any word on possible launch games.

Electronic Arts does not license the engine, so all Frostbite games come from its internal developers.

EA isn’t the only developer pushing for console-grade graphics and engines on mobile. Back in March, we learned that Epic Games is adapting its Unreal Engine 4 for portable devices.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Today, Wooga revealed for the first time in its four-year history that it turned a profit. Revenues are split evenly between mobile and web games.

The Berlin-based developer is a private company, so it wouldn’t go into further detail about its financial situation. Chief executive Jens Begemann (pictured above) added that “we don’t want to be chased” by quarterly results. It’s investing the money back into the company to “innovate” in new genres and grow its audience.

“I’m focused on our 20-20 vision to make games available to [people who] play games every day,” he said.

Wooga targets devices with more than 1 billion users. When Begemann and his cofounders started in 2009, that platform was the PC. More specifically, it chose Facebook — since then, Wooga has become the third-largest social gaming company on the site. The company shifted its focus to mobile when smartphones crossed the 1 billion mark. And in just two years, Begemann believes that tablets will also join the club.

But the company isn’t waiting around, as some of its games are already available on the iPad. In March, it will release a version of the popular gem-matching game Diamond Dash to Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Wooga currently has 50 million active monthly players across all of its platforms and products.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Those gifted with new mobile devices this holiday season have a world of fun awaiting their fingertips — maybe too much fun. Thousands of games have been made available over the years, especially since iOS and Android have increased in popularity, making the selection process frustrating for those navigating Google Play, the App Store, or the Amazon App Store for the first time. Well, consider this list of the best mobile games your saving grace. We’ve compiled a source for mobile gaming based on user friendliness, accessibility, and more importantly, fun factor. Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, Galaxy device, or Kindle Fire, these games are waiting for your attention. Think of this list as a beginner’s guide to gaming on your mobile device.

Plants vs. Zombies

Developer: PopCap Games
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Plants vs. Zombies still stands as one of the more addictive games I’ve played. Ever. The object of PvZ is to protect your home from a hoard of zombies that hungrily make their way across your yard. All that stands in their way are plants curiously armed for your war against the living dead.

Specifically, the plants are equipped with a variety of weapons, such as projectile peas. Other plants eat zombies while cherry bombs blow them to deader than dead bits. The more plants you create, the better your chance at survival. You must position your plants strategically, or the game will end rather quickly.

Cut the Rope

Developer: Chillingo Ltd.
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Cut the Rope is disgustingly cute. How so? A piece of candy hangs on a rope over an adorable little monster, and the player must swipe to break the candy free and drop it into the creature’s mouth. His smile is priceless. He’s a happy, goofy-looking little beast named Om Nom.

Cut the Rope’s puzzles are mostly based on physics and timing. For instance, the candy may be hanging from two or three ropes. The order in which you cut them becomes a strategic decision, and timing a cut perfectly so that the treat lands in Om Nom’s mouth can prove tricky. Some of the tougher parts incorporate elements such as hungry spiders that also want the treat, forcing the player to act quickly while still trying to carefully plan moves. More often than not, you’ll retry a level in the hope of feeding the little guy a candy so you don’t have to see his pouty face. It’s heartbreaking, and you can’t help but feel overwhelmed with guilt every time you fail.

Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II

Developer: Chair Entertainment
Platform: Apple App Store

Infinity Blade is the first iOS game developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, and it looks beautiful. It’s truly a showcase of what can be accomplished visually on a mobile device with the right resources, and it’s not far from what current consoles are capable of.

You walk through a castle fighting monsters using simple left, right, and swipe gestures to dodge, block, or attack your enemy. These controls work well with touch screens because they don’t rely on precision finger movements. Instead, the player must focus on timing and pattern recognition to win. It’s Punch-Out!! with shields, swords, ogres, and knights.

Angry Birds series

Developer: Rovio
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

I admit that every time a new Angry Birds game hits the download market, I pretend I’m too cool to be interested. How many times can Rovio reskin the same game? Then I pick it up, and I’m hooked. Angry Birds is arguably the most popular mobile game around right now, and for good reason. It’s no wonder the developers keep releasing sequels and making Angry Birds available on every thinkable platform because even when you want to hate it, you have to admit it’s fun.

The object of the birds’ anger are evil green pigs that have stolen their eggs. The player’s job is to slingshot the birds into said pigs’ fortresses, rendering them dead and bacon. You have a limited number of birds per level, and you must find clever ways to efficiently eliminate all the pigs before advancing. The puzzles are physics-based, so players have to calculate distance and trajectory to win. You’ll often find that what was supposed to be a few minutes of playtime can become an hour or more of slaughtering hogs and cursing at the touch screen.

Draw Something

Developer: Omgpop
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Draw Something was one of the first mobile games to bring a social element to the general public thanks to its Facebook integration. In fact, the social network is very likely the reason Draw Something became so huge. It’s easy to sign up for because most of us have a Facebook account. It’s also very accessible to nongamer types since drawing is a basic skill, which eliminates the need to learn complicated control schemes or rules to enjoy the game.

One player is given a word and must do his best to represent it in a drawing by using his device’s touch screen. Then, he sends it to the other person, who must guess the word based on his (usually horrible) illustration. You can be playing against several friends at once, and it’s not unusual to have 10 or more games going at any given time. Keep in mind that it may be hours or even days before a friend gets back to you with a reply. The only downside to any of these social games is that you are forced to rely on others if you want to play. Once the initial popularity dwindles, it’s a little harder to find opponents.

Rayman Jungle Run

Developer: Ubisoft
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Ubisoft is one of those top-tier gaming companies that wasn’t afraid even early on to invest in development and publishing for mobile platforms. Rayman Jungle Run was picked by Apple as its best game of 2012. Luckily, Rayman is multiplatform, so Android users don’t have to sit this one out.

Rayman Jungle Run is what’s called an autorun game. The character — in this case, Rayman — continuously runs through the levels. The movement is out of your control. It’s the player’s job to jump, glide,, or attack at the right moment. This genre has grown in popularity on mobile devices because it brings elements of traditional run and jump games (often called platformers) yet keeps gameplay simple enough so that users aren’t annoyed by sloppy touch-screen controls.

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Sailor Ben isn’t your ordinary kind of teddy bear. If his thick, scowling unibrow and the heart tattooed on his chest don’t tip you off, the bandaged stump where his right leg once was certainly will. Oh, and he also has a bit of a drinking problem (don’t worry, it’s just root beer).

The teddy bear amputee is just one of the colorful Super Critters you’ll play as in Atari’s Super Bunny Breakout, the latest iteration of the developer’s Breakout series of games that started with the original arcade release in 1976. Published by Zynga as part of the Zynga Partners for Mobile program, Super Bunny Breakout retains the same basic concept of smashing things with a ball but blends it with characters and a storyline that wouldn’t look out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s “coming soon” for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch for $0.99 and hitting Android devices at a later date.

You start off as Rodney the bunny, who (as the teaser trailer reveals) frees himself from his cage and goes on a crusade to rescue the countless other animals in the E.A.T. (Evil Animal Testing) Labs. At first, he will serve as your “ball,” and in true brick-breaking tradition, you’ll have to ricochet him off of walls and the moving platform you control to smash all the objects in a level. Peppered throughout the stages are helpless animals still trapped in their cages. If you want to earn the top score (represented by three stars) and receive a large payout of coins, you’ll have to save them all.

Breaking away from tradition

Sometimes these levels contain other Super Critters, such as Sailor Ben, and after you free them, they permanently join Rodney as part of your roster. Each of them come with their own backstory and reason for being at the labs — illustrated with funny storyboard cutscenes — as well as special powers that you can activate by double-tapping the screen while they’re in the air. Rodney swirls around to punch everything in sight, Sailor Ben shoots a cannon ball, Pickles the cactus unleashes its pointy spines, and the cute Marshmallow Twins super-size themselves for extra damage. You can only use these attacks when your rainbow-colored energy bar is at full capacity; once empty, it’ll just regenerate over time.

Mechanically, one of the biggest changes to the Breakout formula is the fact that you can move the platform up and down (to a certain height) in addition to the usual horizontal motion. This allows you to fling the ball as hard as you want as it drops back down, and levels can quickly resemble a hectic game of pinball as you try to catch the fast-moving critters bouncing off at every angle.

Source: Wikipedia

The Atari 2600 version of Breakout

Instead of losing lives when the ball drops to the bottom of the screen, you lose health points (the green bar in the gallery below). If your critters’ health reaches zero, you’ll immediately fail the level; you can choose to wait for their health to slowly refill over time, or you can buy things to feed them with. This is all done in the Tree, a place where you can check on the status of your animals, browse the in-game shop, and spend the coins you collected from completing the stages. Cheaper food will heal a lower amount of health points than the more expensive options, and you’ll need a total of 1,000 points to refill the bar completely.

You can also buy a variety of power-ups, like the Anti-Gravity ability that helps keep the ball in the air, as well as furniture to decorate the Tree. If earning coins is too slow for you, you can purchase optional coin packs that start from $0.99.

Keeping things fresh

Super Bunny Breakout will have 48 levels at launch — with plans to add more via updates and in-app purchases — organized into different sections like Lab 1 and Lab 2, each with its own distinct themes. Some of the levels I played operated like a factory, with conveyor belts transporting caged animals across the screen, while others contained beakers and pots filled with chemicals that slowed my platform’s movement with viscous goo. Even if you manage to never drop the ball, the environmental dangers can strip away your health if you don’t avoid them in time.

A few levels act as bonus missions and tweak the Breakout gameplay in different ways. The one I saw played like a billiards table, where you had to knock the colored rings into the designated “pockets.” You can’t lose health while playing them, and they’re useful for trying to collect any extra coins.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The graphical gulf between console and mobile games continues to close in, especially now that Gameloft is ready to reveal its first mobile title running on Unreal Engine 3, Wild Blood.

Coming soon for both iOS and Android devices, Wild Blood is a third-person action game much in the vein of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War franchise. Except instead of destroying the pantheon of Greek mythology, you must save the denizens of King Arthur’s kingdom from a horde of demons. And part of the reason why hellspawn are roaming around Albion is because of you: You play as Lancelot, who’s affair with Queen Guinevere made King Arthur mad for vengeance, causing him to partner with the evil sorceress Morgana to exact his vengeance on you.

Moral of the story: Next time, maybe you should think twice before sleeping with your king’s wife.

As one of the knights of the fabled Round Table, Lancelot naturally comes with a bevy of weapons and special abilities. Though you’ll start out with just one giant sword, your arsenal increases as you earn experience points; in the demo (shown on an iPad 3), a leveled up Lancelot dual-wields a pair of magical axes and shoots enemies from afar with his bow.

Combat leans toward a simple combo system that feels very responsive and smooth as Lancelot dodges and rolles his way through a large group (around a dozen or so) of demons. In a matter of seconds, these creatures became nothing more than a fine bloody mist.

Featuring a lengthy single-player campaign and a player-versus-player arena, Gameloft clearly wants its first Unreal Engine game to epic.

Epic Game’s Unreal Engine 3 — usually known for its impressive level of graphic fidelity on consoles and PCs – has seen widespread adoption among many developers since its debut for mobile devices in 2010. The incredible success of Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade, the first iOS game to run on UE3, contributed to the engine’s popularity.

Gameloft is one of the more prolific publishers of mobile and tablet games. Previous marquee titles from this year includes The Dark Knight Rises, a visually impressive but flawed video game adaptation of the Christopher Nolan film. In early 2011, the company revealed that its first UE3 game would be a first-person shooter known as March of Heroes; however, this was later cancelled.

When Gameloft reported its second quarter earnings in July, the mobile company showed signs of positive growth, expecting to close out 2012 with sales totaling over $240 million.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Bionic Panda Games has raised seed financing to develop mobile games for Google’s Android operating system, the company announced today. Not surprisingly, Google Ventures is one of the backers.

San Francisco-based Bionic Panda got its start in 2010 and has so far had one hit with Aqua Pets (pictured above), which has been downloaded more than 3 million times and is a top-100 grossing application on the Android Market.

That strong performance allowed it to raise the round (it was raised last year and is being announced for the first time today) from Google Ventures, SoftTech VC (where Hudson is a partner), Norwest Venture Partners, 500 Startups, and angels Craig Sherman and Kal Vepuri. That’s a pretty strong group of investors, but Bionic Panda’s founders, game veterans Charles Hudson and Mike Jimenez, have a good pedigree.

Hudson ran a number of well-known industry conferences such as the Social Gaming Summit, and he and Jimenez previously worked together at Serious Business, maker of Friends for Sale. Zynga acquired that company for an undisclosed price in February 2010. And Hudson sold his events business to Mediabistro.

Hudson, a venture partner at SoftTech VC, is the CEO. He also previously worked at Google, Gaia Online, IronPort Systems and In-Q-Tel. Jimenez is the chief technology officer and previously worked at Cybersource and BitTorrent.

“There’s a huge opportunity here,” said Hudson in an interview. “We are seeing a ton of enthusiasm on the investing side for most things mobile. We are seeing a seismic shift where the apps, the networks, and devices are all good enough for real entertainment. It has taken off much faster than many predicted.”

Hudson said the company has a couple of projects in the works. Aqua Pets is a free-to-play Android game. Users download it for free but then pay real money for virtual items such as fish food.

“There are tremendous opportunities to build mobile game franchises on the Android platform,” said Joe Kraus, a partner at Google Ventures. “Bionic Panda is an early leader on the Android platform, and we are excited to work with their team as they pursue their passion for developing the next generation of casual mobile social games.”

Bionic Panda has about 12 employees, but it plans to get bigger.

” A lot of companies will build a big business on the back of mobile gaming,” Hudson said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Also known as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the ESRB, along with the CTIA Wireless Trade Association, is attempting to invade and evaluate the world of Android, iOS and Windows Phone mobile games. The groups would like to have all mobile gaming applications rated based on whether or not their content and context are appropriate for various age groups.

For mobile games, ESRB wants developers to submit a survey form for each game, giving thorough details about the kinds of content it contains. The ESRB will then use that information to deliver a rating, which the developer can appeal if she or he feels it is inaccurate or unfair. The game will have the same rating on all app markets and operating systems.

While Microsoft is planning to play along with the new system for its still nascent Windows Phone platform of devices and apps, Google and Apple have showed no inclination to do so.

Although Google and Apple seem resistant to this level of oversight from an external organization, they do police the apps on their own markets. It’s unlikely that such legacy systems would be overturned without some serious external pressure.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into Android Market’s rating system, which now works well globally,” a Google spokesperson told DigitalTrends.

“While we support other systems, we think it’s best for Android users and developers to stick with Android’s existing ratings.”

Apple’s iTunes App Store also has a ratings system of its own as well as age-appropriateness indicators.

ESRB is a bit of a Johhny-come-lately to the mobile games world; its homestead is in console gaming. For games for the Xbox and Playstation, for example, the ESRB has devised a six-tiered rating system ranging from games appropriate for even the youngest children to games only appropriate for adults due to factors such as intense violence or graphic sexuality.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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