According to the press release, Gameloft Live is a new version of the multiplayer service already in many Gameloft-published games and used by over seven million players. The new dedicated mobile app will allow users to create a 3D avatar and virtually connect with friends who also use the service to play games, chat, and see their accomplishments across the Gameloft gaming scene. The new hub will also incentivize players with gifts and avatar accessories, again similar to the console service.

It’s interesting to note that Gameloft is not the first games publisher to this space, as Ngmoco/DeNA launched Mobage this past summer, GREE acquired OpenFeint this past April, and Tapjoy connected with PapayaMobile to provide a similar social mobile service last November. Gameloft Live is entering an already crowded social mobile gaming space, hoping it has the winning combination of games, rewards, and user loyalty to come out on top.

Why are all these companies creating their own mobile social networks? In a sea of apps on both platforms (iOS has over 500,000 apps, the majority of them games), discovering games has become a serious issue. The App Store, Android Marketplace, and Amazon Appstore are the only viable markets for apps, but these are like small doors opening on a huge number of competing and sometimes look-alike apps, confusing savvy and newbie consumers alike. A mobile social network with its requisite avatars, social connections, and virtual rewards make it more likely that consumers will discover apps within that social network more often. Hence the current trend.

Gameloft is based in France and publishes and develops both original and franchised games on all major gaming platforms, including consoles and mobile devices. It is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN: FR0000079600, Bloomberg: GFT FP, Reuters: GLFT.PA).

According to VGW, apps with titles like Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump were among the removed apps. In addition, Temple Jump had actually seen a modest amount of success. What makes these apps subject to Apple intervention is anyone’s guess, as our Apple contact has not responded to inquiries. We can conjecture, however, that because these apps were more than merely inspired by a hit game app, but actually could be considered as infringing on the original app itself.

The Imangi Studios Team: Kiril, Natalia, Keith

Natalia Luckyanova, co-creator of Temple Run (the original hit game), told VentureBeat, “These clone/ripoff issues can be very complicated and often devolve into the ethics of cloning and inspiration in the game industry. Temple Jump, however, was a scam intended to trick customers into thinking the app is related to Temple Run. It had a similar icon, vague description, and a single screenshot that did not show any gameplay. And FYI, there was no gameplay. Clearly, they succeeded in their scam, because nearly all of the reviews were from users saying they thought this was a spinoff of Temple Run and felt they were tricked out of their money.”

She continued to say that the scam hurt her team, as well. “It was upsetting to us to see some people suggesting we had anything to do with this scam app. We work very hard to create polished products, and this was damaging our brand.”

Clone games like this rely on the popularity of the apps they are scamming, said Luckyanova. “Due to the popularity of Temple Run, which has had over 30 million downloads, this scam got to #1 Top Paid app two days after launch,” she said. “Having something like this sit at #1, with thousands of angry reviews and a whopping 1 star review average, clearly hurts the App Store customer experience. I’m sure Apple was also getting bombarded by refund requests. Pulling it off the store was clearly the right decision made in the interest of App Store users.”

Note the lack of worry over the potential financial impact of piracy in the above quote–many independent developers can see a significant hit from piracy and knockoffs. It’s good to see someone of Luckyanova’s status focusing more on the experience for fans here rather than that of a loss of revenue for the game.

With Apple paying out over four billion dollars to third party app developers, however, the financial revenue, not to mention the copyright issue, is most definitely a concern to Apple, as they may take a hit from any legal action on the part of third party app developers now or in the future. Perhaps this recent de-listing of these clone apps and games is their way of making sure that doesn’t happen, while also engendering some goodwill among app sellers.

Currently in the prototype stage, a student project commissioned by GM envisages using smart glass technology to help rear seat passengers, particularly children, have a richer experience on the road.

Inspired by psychological studies that indicate car passengers often feel disconnected from their environment, GM asked students from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel, to turn car windows into interactive displays. The students were given free reign to create applications, without concerns over whether they could be mass produced.

The range of games and apps created for this ‘Windows of Opportunity’ project included:

• Otto, an animated character projected over passing scenery that responds to real-time car performance, weather and landscape. With Otto, passengers can learn about their environment in fun, playful ways.
• Foofu, an app that allows passengers to create, explore and discover through finger drawing on window steam.
• Spindow, an app that provides its users a peek into other users’ windows around the globe in real time.
• Pond, an app that allows passengers to stream and share music with other cars on the road, downloads favorite tracks, and share messages with other passengers on the road.

In order to demonstrate these apps, the Israeli students produced a full-scale functional prototype of a rear passenger seat and side window. They used motion and optical sensor technology developed by EyeClick to turn standard window glass into a multi-touch and gesture sensitive surface.

GM says that while there are no immediate plans to put this technology into production vehicles, this is “one of many projects underway at GM that could reinvent the passenger experience in years to come.” GM says that if these interactive windows did make it into production, they would be likely to use electronically charged “smart glass” technology, which is capable of variable states of translucence and transparency, and can reflect projected images.

Below is a video showing the car window technology at work:

I’m delighted to confirm that VentureBeat has acquired Bitmob, the respected gaming news site known for its passionate community of users. Bitmob will be integrated with our GamesBeat channel.

The best part of the deal: Bitmob co-founder Dan “Shoe” Hsu, an industry veteran with significant street cred with gamers, will become the Editor-in-Chief of GamesBeat. He’ll join Dean Takahashi, our lead games writer, who has done an incredible job getting GamesBeat off the ground over the last couple of years.

Together, along with Sebastian Haley, who is GamesBeat’s review editor and will lead our video coverage, this is the perfect powerhouse trio to help GamesBeat become the bible of the games industry.

Shoe just posted about the merger.

The GamesBeat channel will expand significantly over the coming months, after Shoe starts with us Feb 1. This will include a “relaunch” of GamesBeat, which will essentially give GamesBeat its own identity separate from VentureBeat. It will also mean the integration of Bitmob’s community features. Most importantly, it will bolster GamesBeat’s mission to cover the most disruptive and interesting stories in the games industry — everything from the amazing saga around social gaming companies like Zynga and Crowdstar, to how giants like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are responding. GameBeat will also expand its reviews of top games that define the industry.

Dean Takahashi

To be clear, it was Dean who first approached me saying he wanted us to acquire Shoe and Bitmob, so that Shoe could run GamesBeat, while Dean focuses on writing. Shoe has a 16-year track record. He communicates well and has managed big teams, including at EGM, 1UP and Gamers.com. Dean has already attracted some promising new writers to GamesBeat, including Haley. It’s all a perfect fit. Though Shoe is justifiably “freaked out” at the thought of managing a veteran like Dean.

The merger continues the momentum we’re seeing at VentureBeat. Today we’re also announcing the hiring of Ben Popper, founding editor of Betabeat, the influential Silicon Alley blog from The New York Observer. He will be VentureBeat’s East Coast Editor. He’s done an excellent job covering the New York start-up and wider technology scene there and quickly caught our attention by the scoops he was getting about the New York scene. He’s got a “comer” reputation. We’re super excited about him joining us. Ben just blogged about the move here.

Benjamin Popper

Ben will join Devindra Hardawar and Sean Ludwig, our two other New York-based writers. Devindra becomes our national editor. While Ben will wake up early, and break East Coast news and focus on taking the New York scene by storm, Devindra will start shaping our national coverage for us early in the day. He’ll work closely with executive editor Dylan Tweney and senior editor Heather Kelly as they wake up on the West Coast, to guide coverage through the rest of the day.

VentureBeat plans to open an office in Manhattan next month. Ben will lead the local expansion there over the next two years. Expect more hires.

Previously, Ben has written about the culture and business of technology for The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, and Fast Company. Prior to Betabeat and the Observer, he was a blogger at CBS Interactive.

We just can’t wait until both of them get started. While Shoe officially starts Feb 1, he’ll be working hard to get ready for the transition in the meantime. We’ll plan to syndicate the best of Bitmob’s content in the meantime, so readers can track all of the best stuff on GamesBeat beginning today.

Ben Popper starts Monday.

Keas, a social game that promotes health and wellness within companies, received $6.5 million in funding on Tuesday. The second fundraising round was led by Atlas Venture and Ignition Partners.

Keas was developed by former Google Health leader Adam Bosworth to promote corporate wellness. It combines game play and socialization to motivate employees to adopt healthy lifestyles. Employees form teams and work together to complete three fitness and health goals each week. Goals range from taking the stairs and doing specific exercises to avoiding junk food and choosing nutritious lunches. Keas relies on peer accountability and rewards to keep people motivated: Employees keep each other in check to complete goals and they get prizes for their hard work.

“There are very basic, universal actions we can all take to turn things around: eat our vegetables, eat less, exercise more, and relieve stress,”  Bosworth said in a press release. “The real problem is motivation, and that’s where Keas comes in. It’s Facebook meets Farmville: social, playful and an experience that employees can actually have fun with. That’s the secret sauce, and that’s why it works.”

Keas looks a lot like Facebook and acts like it, too. For instance, employees can post status updates, and they can comment on and “like” fellow employees’ statuses.

With this series B funding, Keas plans to grow the business, increase distribution and build up its sales and marketing departments. More than 60,000 employees from companies such as Pfizer and Salesforce have used Keas already, and the company want to keep those numbers growing.

Keas was founded in 2008 by Adam Bosworth and George Kassabgi and has raised $16.5 million in funding to date. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. and has around 30 employees.

When the service debuted on Nov. 8 it had a number of issues that made it tough for users to connect. Now, the company says it has stabilized the service and can deliver all of its major features to both paid and free users.

“We are where we should have been at launch,” said Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision in an interview today. “It should be an enjoyable holiday weekend for people.”

Call of Duty Elite hit more than a million paid subscribers in its first six days, Activision Blizzard said. It now has more than 4 million paid and free gamers registered. That was part of the problem, as demand for the service overwhelmed the company’s server infrastructure. Gamers were still able to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, but the service for Elite wasn’t good.

Suarez said that the company has slowly been adding more users and more features to the service. On Friday night, the Elite TV section of the service will debut the first episode of Friday Night Fights, featuring an Army vs. Navy game competition. That is the last big remaining piece of the service to debut.

Meanwhile, Suarez said that Activision will have announcements of downloadable content coming soon. Users who pay a subscription fee of $50 a year are entitled to DLC for free. Normally, they would have to pay for content such as new multiplayer maps.

As we noted yesterday, the subscription numbers suggest Activision Blizzard is marching on its way to getting gamers to pay for Call of Duty on a year-round basis, deepening their engagement beyond a few weeks after a game launch.

Call of Duty Elite has the benefit of riding on the coattails of the most popular video game in history. Modern Warfare 3 sold more than $775 million worth in its first five days of sales, making it bigger than last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops debut.

Last week, Suarez told us in an interview that the company had been able to restore enough service to guarantee service for those gamers who have signed up for the paid service. But at least half of those who are using the free version of the service weren’t able to log in, so they were still seeing error messages when they attempt to get in. The Elite web site as of yesterday finally shows that the service is fully operational.

So far, 80,000 Elite clans have been created and that should probably pass 100,000 shortly. The service has had more than 3 million daily logins. During the past week, Activision started offering competitions for gamers. Suarez said the Beachhead Studios team continues to chase small bugs such as making sure that users get their entitlements for Founders status.

Suarez said the mobile app for Elite will be available next week.

“Every week, we have progressively improved,” Suarez said. “Everything is now up and running.”

1. Fight Night Champion: Champion Mode – EA Sports – $4.99 (PS3)

This is an interesting move from EA Sports, which has just released the Champion story mode, sliced off from the full retail game as a downloadable product. Featuring a good few hours of solid boxing game play, and a Rocky-style story of redemption and success, presented like a movie, this game represents great value for the money. If you like the story mode, you can also upgrade by purchasing the online and legacy components of the game separately. It is novel to see a publisher taking this approach and I am sure it is something we will see more of in the future.

2. Mini Squadron – Grip Digital – $1.99 (PS3/PSP)

Offering great value for money, at under two dollars, Mini Squadron features eight worlds of dog-fighting action, with a variety of weapons and enemies, and over 50 planes to unlock along the way. It’s a great game to play in short bursts, either lounging on the couch, or on the daily commute. Despite also appearing on the Android and iOS platforms, to my mind Mini Squadron works best on the PS3 and PSP, with the accuracy provided by playing with a real analog stick.

3. Mercury HG – Ignition Entertainment – $4.99 (PS3)

This is a slick and stylish puzzle game, that will bring back memories of Marble Madness, for gamers of a certain age. Presented beautifully, and with very intuitive controls, you must move a blob of mercury through increasingly difficult mazes, simply by using the left analog stick. The high-definition visuals and great soundtrack lend Mercury HG a very polished feel. As an added bonus, you can also choose to listen to your own music files whilst playing the game.

4. DC Universe Online – Sony Online Entertainment – free (PS3)

For those gamers who don’t want to spend a single cent on a game, DC Universe Online may well be the title for you. Initially released on a pay-to play basis, this massive multiplayer online superhero game is now completely free to download and play, on the Playstation Network. Create your own superhero or villain, and play alongside other gamers from around the world. There are some benefits to be had by choosing to pay a fee, but for casual users, the non-subscription features should provide more than enough fun. Just make sure you have some room on your hard drive, as the game takes up 18GB of space!

5. A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks – Frima Studio – $1.99 (PS3/PSP)

The numbers for this one are telling. A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks has been downloaded more than 150,000 times from the PSN Store. With a humorous presentation style, and some very challenging old school shooting action, A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks certainly lives up to its title. This game is also available on the iOS and Android platforms, but shines brightest here, with the precision of an analogue stick giving this version the edge over its mobile equivalents.

People just can’t seem to get enough Angry Birds (or they just really hate those egg-thieving pigs).

Game maker Rovio announced today that its flagship bird-flinging series has surpassed half a billion downloads across all of its platforms, which at this point includes pretty much every mobile platform, connected TVs, and more, making it one of the most downloaded games ever made.

The company says its players have spent over 200,000 years with the game, with 300 million minutes of playtime daily. (Now I’m wondering if there’s a link between the rise of Angry Birds and the global recession — who needs productivity?) The company says that over 400 billion birds have been launched (brave souls), 266 billion levels have been played, and over 44 billion stars have been collected.

As is often the case with hit game franchises, Angry Birds has also made a big splash with merchandise. Rovio says that over 10 million Angry Birds toys have been sold globally (and parents, they make perfect stocking stuffers, just prepare to be pelted).

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week, VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi writes a column on videogames called The DeanBeat, while executive editor Dylan Tweney is writing a technology and business column called Dylan’s Desk. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website. This week, senior editor Devindra Hardawar is taking over for a flu-ridden Dean.

Remakes of older games are becoming increasingly more common, and for gamers who missed out on a particular title the first time around, or just want to relive the experience, they’ve become delicious treats to keep busy with between big-budget game releases.

I also watch plenty of movies, and let’s just say Hollywood remakes typically don’t elicit the same sort of excitement from moviegoers (especially fans of the original films), nor are they generally well-liked by critics. (Yes, there are exceptions — this summer’s Fright Night remake was admittedly awesome and well-received.)

It’s clear to me that there’s something video game remakes are doing right that movie remakes are missing out on. Let’s take a look at a few of the differences.

Game remakes give consumers something they want

Most of the titles currently in my gaming queue are remakes of games that I’ve already played, and loved, years ago. On my iPhone, there’s Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (a port of the PSP version, which itself was a port of the original PlayStation game) just a swipe away; on my PlayStation 3, I’m replaying both Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, available now as a high-definition collection; and on my Xbox 360 there are too many to name (Guardian Heroes, Beyond Good and Evil, and more).

The impetus behind game remakes is generally to open titles up to new audiences, while also including plenty of goodies to appease existing fans. With movie remakes, on the other hand, the goal generally seems to be getting enough butts into seats to make the project profitable. Not all film remakes fail (I’m a big fan of John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, The Fly, and plenty others), but they’re rarely impressive.

Of course, this may be an unfair comparison. Movie remakes are entirely new productions that often rehash the plot of an earlier film, while we’re seeing game remakes now that range from simple ports, to high-definition upgrades, to full-scale reproductions (see the upcoming Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary). Still, it’s worth comparing how these two industries approach the notion of remaking past titles.

Game remakes are cheaper than new titles

One of the most compelling things about game remakes is that they’re just so darn cheap. The Shadow of the Colossus and Ico collection costs just $39.99, while typical PS3 titles are $59.99. For titles distributed digitally, the savings are even greater, with most selling for between $10 and $15. Occasionally digital titles creep towards $20, but they’re still a bargain compared to new game prices.

It’s hard to fault Hollywood for charging full price for remakes, but as a discerning consumer, I definitely feel annoyed when it costs the same to watch “yet another horror remake” as something truly original. For titles that get re-released into theaters, something that’s happening more for IMAX titles due to the limited amount of screens available, it seems even more egregious to charge full price. (Recently, AMC theaters experimented with bringing back a few blockbuster titles like Star Trek to IMAX screens for just $7, a model that I hope is replicated in the future.)

Soon we’ll see 3D film re-released in theaters (James Cameron is working on Titanic 3D, and 3D versions of all the Star Wars films are in the works as well), and you can bet they’ll be priced the same as new 3D films.

Game remakes typically don’t repackage old ideas as something new

Perhaps what’s so refreshing about game remakes is that they aren’t trying to be something they’re not. When you’re getting an HD port of Ico, you know exactly what you’re in for — it’s not just another game pretending to be Ico. Film remakes, which usually involve new directors, actors, and often even a different setting, have a harder time recapturing the magic of the original source material.

Ultimately, this may not be a lesson that Hollywood can repeat. It’s far easier to port and polish a game for a new console, than it is to produce a new film based on a previously used idea.

And to be clear, it’s not as if I’m against all remakes. One of the films I’m most looking forward to this year is David Fincher’s version of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, an adaptation of the popular novel that was already made into a successful Swedish film. But at the same time, I’ve seen enough useless remakes in my time to be wary.

Perhaps at some point, Hollywood can learn something from the way the gaming world treats classic titles.

Coinstar’s RedBox kiosks, located in grocery stores and other retail spots, offer inexpensive movie and video game rentals. The dollar-a-day pricing is part of its appeal, but Coinstar announced plans to raise prices on DVD rentals to $1.20 per day.

The company also plans to launch an online subscription streaming service to compete with rival Netflix. The timing is key, as rival Netflix continues to lick its wounds, having shed 800,000 customers in the last quarter alone.

Coinstar’s earnings per share have been between $3.15 and $3.5 per share on revenue of $1.81 to $1.84 for the year. In after-hours trading the shares dropped 11 percent to $47, on investor fears that the price increase would hurt future sales, according to the Wall Street Journal.

I got a chance to chat with Bill Jackson, creative director of CastleVille, to find out just how much work went into the game.

VB: Can you give me a sense of the scale? How big is this game compared to, say, CityVille?

BJ: There are three things we focus on with CastleVille. It’s the fourth installment in the Ville franchise, so we’re building upon the shoulders of giants. There are elements we each bring to the franchise, and we wanted them to sit there nicely with our own elements. We wanted to focus on exploration. We wanted to bring Story and narrative to the next level. That’s part of the push on production values in the game, because we need the characters to be engaging and rich and we spent a lot of time bringing them to life.

We first focused on taking social to a new level, the way we want to do that is not by forgetting the lessons from old games but improving on areas and providing new twists. something as simple as the reputation system, we’ve had that in a few Ville games, but in our game it also serves as a way to unlock rewards and it permeates the entire design.

VB: How big is the team that worked on CastleVille?

BJ: We aren’t disclosing how big Zynga Dallas is or the size of the CastleVille team. We start with a really small concept team, completely develop in that small team, and as we progress and create a much larger game, we add more people to the team.

VB: CastleVille certainly looks much better than other Zynga games, but will I be able to run it on a weaker computer?

BJ: One of the things we really focus on, and we say this a lot, is everyone should be able to play the game. When we test these games, particularly CastleVille which is beautiful, we test it on a wide variety of computers to make sure it’s stable. Not a lot of people notice or keep track of that.

VB: Can you tell me a little bit about the art direction behind the game?

BJ: We’re inspired by a lot of places, there’s a lot of traditional animation we’re inspired by in this game. DreamWorks has done Shrek — that was an inspiration for us. Part of it is also evolution of an art style that our art directors have been working on their entire lives. It’s progressing and progressing, we do different things, we’ve worked on some really serious stuff, but if you look you can see a progression toward this art style that’s really beautiful and we’re really proud of it.

VB: How long do you expect people to play CastleVille each day?

BJ: We talk a lot about the fifteen minute window where people have time for us, and it’s all about as much time as you have. There’s a corollary too, if you want to spend as much time with the game, we make sure that’s possible. It’s relaly up to the player. When we’re talking around the design table, we really care that it’s on your time, you can play it on your coffee break and it feels like a meal — not just a snack.

VB: Is the game any more complex than, say, CityVille? Or are you guys trying to keep it simple?

BJ: We work very hard to make sure the game is accessible, it comes back to the everyone comment. It’s accessible, building your castle is fun and rewarding. Building walls in this game is fantastic and fun and we want to make sure you can build it however you want. You can build hedge mazes or anything crazy like that, we just make sure it’s super simple and super accessible.

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi]

The new multiplayer mode drops you into a game with three other players. The Mass Effect series has traditionally been a single-player experience and the game has relied on compelling storytelling and creating a cinematic experience to draw gamers in. It’s a formula that’s worked exceptionally well so far, with the original Mass Effect game earning a score of 91 out of 100 across 74 reviews and its sequel earning a score of 96 out of 100 across 98 reviews.

Mass Effect puts players in control of Commander Shepherd as he tries to fend off an ancient alien race called the Reapers. In the final installment of the trilogy, the Reapers have taken control of earth and Shepherd has to rally the forces of the galaxy to take back the planet and destroy the reapers. It’s an over-the-shoulder shooting game that features role-playing game elements, such as earning experience for completing objectives and becoming more powerful over time with better skills.

When entering the game, you can choose your race (among others, there are the massive Krogan and the powerful, psychic Asari races) and class, like a Sentinel or a Soldier, each of which has different abilities. You then face off against waves of enemies while trying to defend strategic locations across the galaxy.

Successfully completing those missions contributes to Shepherd’s “war assets” in the main story line — the more assets you have means you get a better and more complete ending. BioWare added multiplayer to the game to make use of its new team in Montreal and to give players an alternative way to build up their war assets in the game, Mass Effect series executive producer Casey Hudson said. Players can still get the best ending by playing through the game in a single-player campaign, but now they have an alternative way to build up their war assets.

“This is really the best place to start playing the Mass Effect series, this is the beginning, middle and end of the whole galactic war,” he said. “You’ll be able to take control of characters you have never been able to play before — you’ll have access to all the different classes and many of the races.”

Hudson said it made the most sense to add multiplayer to this title, which tells the story of an all-out galactic war at a huge scale.

Mass Effect 3 will come out March 6 next year.

The NPD Group reported today that the population of kids ages 2-17 grew just 1.54 percent since 2009. But the population of gamers in that age group has grown 12.68 percent.

This growth means that gaming is now a nearly ubiquitous activity for children in the United States. About 91 percent of kids, or 64 million children, play games, up 9 percentage points from 2009.

The fastest-growing age group is kids ages 2-5, up 17 percentage points compared to 2009. Other fast-growing segments are girls and teens ages 15 to 17. Anita Frazier, analyst at NPD, said that kids account for 44 percent of software sales at retail stores so far this year.

Gaming on mobile devices has experienced the biggest growth in the kids category, up from 8 percent to 38 percent. Gaming on traditional portable handheld gaming devices like the Nintendo DS has grown more modestly, from 38 percent to 45 percent. The change is due to the popularity of tablets, iOS devices and Android smartphones.

But despite the growth in mobile apps gaming, kids and their parents spent more than five times as much on retail games across devices than they did on mobile gaming apps for smartphones and other app-capable devices.

The survey was conducted from Aug. 1 to Aug. 15 this year and was completed by 4,136 kids ages 2 to 17.

Sony

Developers can create games using C#, a programming language, that will work on any PlayStation-certified device and the PlayStation Vita. This comes after Sony announced it would begin releasing PlayStation games on devices running Google’s mobile operating system Android. Sony already has a PlayStation-branded phone, the Xperia Play, which runs Android.

Developers can only distribute games to the Xperia Play and the company’s tablets, the Sony P and Sony S, as of the launch today. But Sony is working to port those games to other devices in time for the launch of the PlayStation Vita, which will land in Japan in December this year, and in North America sometime in 2012.

The PlayStation Vita is Sony’s next big bet on handheld gaming. While it will still feature blockbuster titles that cost more than typical iPhone games, Sony is making sure the device will also have cheaper bite-size games like those popularized by the iOS and Android devices.

The device features two analog sticks, a 5-inch OLED touchpad screen, a touchpad on the device, six-axis motion sensing technology and front- and rear-facing cameras. It will come in both a wi-fi enabled and a 3G-enabled model. The 3G version of its device will be available on AT&T.

Nintendo investors and fans have been eagerly awaiting encouraging news on the console, which has struggled to make a significant splash since its debut in March, 2011. The console has only sold 830,000 units in the U.S., and the company needs to gin up demand by adding great games. Demand for the console has already somewhat improved since Nintendo dropped the device’s price from $250 to $170.

Two of Nintendo’s biggest North American game launches this year will be Super Mario 3D Land on Nov. 13 and Mario Kart 7 on Dec. 4. Games announced for 2012 include Mario Tennis, Paper Mario, Luigi’s Mansion, Animal Crossing and Kid Icarus: Uprising, a title that was originally supposed to launch in 2011.

The company gave a release date for the hotly anticipated, free downloadable game The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. It will be available for the DSi, DSi XL and 3DS, and can be downloaded from the DSiWare or eShop store fronts between Sept. 28 and Feb. 20, 2012.

Nintendo also announced a new 3DS peripheral that will add a second circle pad — dubbed the 3DS Expansion Slide Pad — which will launch in Japan on Dec. 10. There’s no word on a release for North American gamers yet.

Investors did not seem impressed by the announcement, as U.S.-based shares for the company dropped more than 4 percent on Tuesday.

The Youweb-incubated company has already found success streaming Flash-based Facebook games to the iPad, nabbing its app over 500,000 users so far. The app remains the only way that iPad users can play Flash-based games, since Apple doesn’t support Flash on iOS.

Support for Google+ games is included in version 4.1 of the iSwifter app, available for free on the iTunes Store today.

While Google+’s user base is nowhere near Facebook’s 750 million, the fledgling social network, currently in invite-only beta testing, is expected to explode when Google opens it up to the public. iSwifter is positioning itself well for that eventuality. Its app already supports all Flash-based Google+ games, including Dragons of Atlantis and Zombie Lane.

iSwifter’s technology runs Flash-based content via its cloud infrastructure and streams it to the iPad. By doing so, all of the heavy lifting for playing Flash content is done on its servers, and the company gets around the lack of Flash support on iOS. The iOS web browser SkyFire takes a similar approach to playing Flash-based videos, but it doesn’t yet support complex Flash applications like games and costs $4.99.

iSwifter founder Rajat Gupta tells VentureBeat that it’s “fairly easy” to add Google+ games to the app. “The iSwifter platform’s “instant-on” streaming capability makes it pretty quick and easy to add new games,” he said.

Gupta tells us he thinks there’s a good market for Google+ games. “We’ve seen time and again that until there’s competition in the marketplace, value to users is not maximized,” he said. “While Facebook is an excellent gaming platform, there hasn’t been any viable alternative available to users. Google+ is now is an alternative. Adoption rates have been decent. However, in either case, the games are not available on the iPad [without iSwifter].”

The video trailer on the new Adventure World fan page says “you can explore exotic lands, solve ancient puzzles, and bring your friends along for a ride.” Zynga hasn’t described the game in more detail yet, but it appears to be a expansion into a new genre for the company, which is the leading maker of Facebook games.

The continuous roll-out of new games is important for Zynga, which has filed to go public in an initial public offering (IPO) at a potentially high valuation of $10 billion to $20 billion. Zynga, which has more than 275 million monthly active users, has been launching games more frequently this year. It released Empires & Allies in June, and that game now has 42 million monthly active users. By introducing fresh games on a regular cycle, Zynga can produce more consistent revenue growth over time and diversify its revenues beyond its top few games.

The New York Post reported yesterday that Zynga was planning to postpone its IPO, possibly from September to November, 2011. We suspect it’s true that Zynga will not go public at a time when the markets are volatile, as they’ve been in the past few weeks. Zynga filed to go public in June.

Gameloft is announcing on Monday that it plans to create a game studio in New Orleans with as many as 150 people. The French mobile game publisher is taking advantage of the generous incentives from the state of Louisiana, which is making a concerted effort to compete for jobs of the future.

Samir El Agili, general manager for the U.S. and Latin America at Gameloft, told game web site Joystiq, that the company could hire as many as 150 people in the studio over the next decade, thanks to the rapid expansion of the handheld and downloadable games market. The studio will work on a diverse range of content, including downloadable games, mobile, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Facebook and future consoles.

Louisiana has joined other states that are also wooing game companies. Among those offering incentives are Texas and Canadian regions such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. About 20 states offers some form of economic incentive to game developers.  Louisiana has also scored Electronic Arts, which is creating a North American game testing center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

With high unemployment, it makes a lot of sense for states to try to kickstart a specialty industry with state help. But the incentives are costly, and sometimes the efforts don’t work. But if the seeds take root and the local companies become successful, they can become self-sustaining job engines, as new companies spin off from the old ones. That’s the theory, anyway, and its backed up by a McKinsey & Co. study commissioned by the state governor’s office. (The building at right is the one that Gameloft will move into).

Louisiana offers a 25 percent tax credit for tech companies and a 35 percent payroll tax credit. If one of the game developers makes $100,000 a year, then Louisiana pays the game company $35,000. Gov. Bobby Jindal is expected to make an announcement about the deal on Monday.

The King of Code contest is sponsored by Windows Phone and is open to developers on any mobile platform.

Game developer P.J. Snavely got his start at age 9 hacking into published games on his Commodore 64. Today, he has 15 games of his own under his belt, including a No. 1 title in the iPhone Kids category.

After graduating with a degree in computer engineering from the University of South Carolina, Snavely cut his teeth at Stormfront Studios working on high-profile console franchises like Tony La Russa Baseball and Andretti Racing. After that he took his sports game skills to Acclaim Games (acquired by Playdom), where he worked on the top-selling All-Star Baseball series, and Sony, where he broke new ground developing an NBA series for PlayStation Portable.

Now he’s immersing himself in mobile, with a dozen iPhone creations already in the field, and a Windows Phone application in preproduction.

His current iPhone apps fall into family-friendly genres like puzzle games and time management helpers. His two favorite projects include Solution Zero, a unique take on Sudoku, and Kidz Kitchen, a kid-friendly memory game that saw a substantial number of downloads.

Kidz Kitchen Screen Shot

“I started out on the iPhone because I was very interested in dealing with a standardized platform like I’d been used to working with on the console side,” Snavely told VentureBeat. “I wanted my initial mobile development to be less about compatability and more about design.”

Now that he’s established himself in the space, he’s looking forward to branching out to Windows Phone. So far, he says he hasn’t encountered any development or compatibility issues and expects his first WP platform app to “be a genre-smasher.”

“This current development takes the best elements of seveal platforms — mobile, social and console — to make a uniquely addicting experience,” Snavely said. “It builds on the most interestign pieces of those platforms: user generated content, geolocation gameplay and the viral mechanics of social gameplay.”

Working on the PlayStation portable provided Snavely with the perfect segué to get more involved in mobile, which is where he believes “the future growth of the [gaming] industry is going.” He loved developing for PSP, he says, but felt restricted.

“The beauty of mobile is the fact that you’re constantly carrying your gaming platform with you,” he said. “The idea of the so-called ‘hardcore gamer’ is falling by the wayside. Games that are good enough and interesting enough are turning everyone into gamers.”

While he thinks that consoles will still be a major pillar of the gaming industry, Snavely said that he expects mobile to grow explosively, especially given Microsoft’s projected growth in the sector.

For now, he is bootstrapping his development efforts, pushing his own products and helping out on others’ games to generate revenue. But he’s definitely on the lookout for funding, confident that with even minimal backing he’d be able to build a vibrant social mobile business.

“As a 15-year game industry veteran, I know what it takes to make a game fun and successful,” Snavely said. “Throw in my love of the social and mobile spaces and I think what I’m putting together will continue to evolve user experiences and gameplay for both of those sectors.”

Every week, with the sponsorship of Windows Phone, VentureBeat is crowning the very best mobile developers as “King of Code.” We’re looking for innovative developers who are really pushing the envelope in the mobile space, regardless of the platforms they’re developing on. Enter here for a chance to win a profile on VentureBeat.com, a $1,000 AMEX Gift Card, an Xbox & Kinect Package, and/or a Windows Phone 7 device.

Entitled “O Brave New World,” the documentary includes footage from the company’s elusive co-founder, Jason Jones, as well as former Bungie chief Alex Seropian, and other key team members. The tale is worth watching as it shows what can happen with a couple of game developers who dream big and eventually generate a multibillion-dollar business.

Bungie scored big when it created Halo for the original Microsoft Xbox game console that debuted in 2001. The title combined great graphics, controller-based first-person action, pulse-pounding music and an engaging story with the memorable characters Master Chief and Cortana. It was so popular that it made the Xbox into a success and eventually sold more than 40 million units. The game series kept Bungie occupied for the better part of the last decade. Now Bungie is moving on to its new game series in a sci-fi universe in a publishing agreement with Activision Blizzard.

“This [documentary] is about what it means to build games at Bungie, in the past and the future,” Bungie community manager Eric Osborne told VentureBeat. “You’ll see how everything changed, from their hair styles onward. We talk to a lot of people about their successes and their trials.”

The story started out with two college-age boys who locked themselves in a basement with a Mac computer and emerged with a game called Gnop. They then moved on to Pathways, Myth, Marathon, Oni and finally Halo. This year, Microsoft’s 343 Industries has taken over the Halo franchise and plans to launch Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, a remake of the original Halo in high-definition. And next year, it will launch Halo 4.

Here’s a link to the video on YouTube, or you can click on the O Brave New World link above.

Sony is still keen on picking up first-party developers for its console business. While the company has a host of first-party titles that are developed internally, it is still a hardware business at heart with the PlayStation 3 and the upcoming handheld PlayStation Vita game console. Having a slew of first-party titles is important for selling consoles — a strategy Nintendo has proved is very effective.

“Sony’s main business is consoles, they have to do first-party development,” ThinkEquity research analyst Atul Bagga told VentureBeat. “Having first-party games gives them an advantage over other platform owners.”

Sucker Punch is the 16th game development studio Sony has purchased to develop first-party titles for hits gaming consoles.

The inFamous series is one of the PlayStation 3′s most popular franchises. The company’s first inFamous title holds a score of 85 out of 100 across 98 reviews on review aggregating site Metacritic. Its first sequel released this year, inFamous 2, has a score of 83 out of 100 across 84 reviews.

Gamers take control of Cole MacGrath, a courier caught in the midst of a giant explosion in the first game. That explosion grants him superpowers and control over electricity. Players can decide whether Cole will save the city from gangs trying to take over after the explosion or take control of it using his own superpowers. Cole can explore any part of the city and gains new powers over time, and players can decide whether they want to be a jerk and kill random people or try to be helpful.

Sony competitor Nintendo likewise develops games like fighting game Smash Brothers and platformer Super Mario Galaxy as a way to encourage gamers to go out and buy the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 3DS.

Sony acquired Naughty Dog, the developer behind Sony’s most popular Uncharted series, back in 2001, and those games are billed as one of the console’s main selling points.

The games industry is shifting to a market that takes advantage of online features for games, Bagga said. That not only includes the likes of free-to-play games like Zynga’s FarmVille, but also streaming game services like OnLive and Gaikai. Neither of those streaming game services requires the owner to buy a powerful console because all the heavy lifting is done on remote servers, which stream the video to a remote computer.

Sony would have extra advantage over other streaming companies if it has a host of first-party titles, should Sony decided to move in that direction, Bagga said.

“It would have made more sense to invest in a next-generation platform, which is online or free to play,” he said. “If they were to work on an OnLive platform, they will have a ton of content if they continue picking up first-party titles.”

The “Pub Fund” will give Sony the money to seek out talented developers and fund the development of their games, which will appear exclusively on the company’s online gaming network, the PlayStation Network (PSN).

The group responsible for handling Pub Fund investments will behave more like a venture capital firm than a typical development outreach group, said Brandon Stander, director of marketing for Sony’s PSN.

“We see the Pub Fund relationship as kind of a venture capital arm investing in really good enterprising developers with clear visions and the ability to deliver great gaming experiences with a difference, with an edge,” Stander said.

The fund has already injected money into four developers for games that will be exclusive to the PSN. One, a 3D puzzle game maker, was an award winner at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Stander said.

Sony has to compete with other online distribution services for independent game developers like the Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Steam, Valve’s game distribution service on computers.

The Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network regularly vie for original content. For example, Microsoft was able to secure Shadow Complex — a high-profile downloadable title by the Gears of War developers — as an exclusive for the Xbox Live Arcade. Likewise, Sony has been able to snatch games like Flower and Journey, both artistically beautiful and innovative games, from the Xbox Live Arcade.

There are 948 games now available in the PlayStation Network store, as well as 4,000 pieces of add-on content for games. Sony experienced a black eye recently when hackers broke into the network and stole sensitive information about more than 100 million PSN and Station.com users.

Perlman is talking about a new wireless transmission technology called Dido that has so far been under wraps. It’s a different approach to current wireless technology that has “unlimited capacity,” Perlman said.

“If everyone here decided to watch HD video on a tablet, that would overwhelm any network,” Perlman said. “But with this technology, each of you would have the full bandwidth of being in that wireless cell; you would not interfere with each other at all.”

A lot of scientists and professionals said the technology is impossible, Perlman said. The technology sidesteps Shannon’s Law — a law in physics that determines the upper bound of data that can go through a wireless channel — according to skeptics, Perlman said. But the new technology will be able to transmit at a speed that is 300 times the limits determined by Shannon’s Law.

The technology took 10 years to develop, Perlman said. He self-funded the project because the company could not find investors for the technology. There is a working version of the technology in Palo Alto, Calif., he said. It uses radio waves that can permeate different types of materials like walls or copper.

“Dido is really interesting in that it’s sub-millisecond latency,” Perlman said. “DSL is typically 15-25 millisecond latency, and 3G is around 150 millisecond latency. We’ll be able to do wireless much faster.”

The film resolution used in theaters is called 4k resolution — 4,096 pixels by around 2,000 pixels tall. Dido is designed to carry that kind of resolution at 240 frames per second at sub-millisecond latency, Perlman said. The technology is designed for OnLive, an online service that runs games on remote cloud servers and streams them over the Internet.

OnLive can run triple-A titles like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood — which typically require very powerful game consoles — on computers and tablets that don’t have a lot of processing power. With Dido, any device will be able to run games at maximum resolution and speed without experiencing any kind of slowdown, Perlman said.

The company also unveiled a web browser that uses the same technology at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year. That web browser is wired into a 10-gigabit Internet connection that downloads the content and then streams it as an interactive “video” to devices, which takes less time. The whole experience usually ends up being much faster than typical web browsing, which can take upwards of a minute to fully download the contents of a website. OnLive can download that same content in a matter of seconds and stream it over the Internet at about the same quality and speed as a YouTube video.

“All the heavy lifting has been done — now comes the fun part of figuring out how to use it well,” he said.

Game hardware and software developers should now focus on finding new ways to engage gamers, Weisman said. That can include new ways to control games — such as controlling games with motion and physical actions — or new types of gaming devices, like kids’ toys that also fit into video games. Weisman made the comments at the GamesBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday.

Weisman is the second experienced game executive to make dark-sounding pronouncements about the state of the game industry today. Earlier, Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins said we are living in a “dark age” of video game development.

One example of a game fitting into Weisman’s scheme is Skylanders, a video game from Activision-Blizzard. That game stores game information on a toy that connects to a Nintendo Wii or an Xbox 360 video game console. When players want to change the character they play as in the video game, they connect a different toy to the game. Then, kids can play with those toys outside of the video game — just like other normal toys.

Weisman has a long history in the game industry. He started making toys and games in 1980, when he founded FASA, which made the Shadowrun and BattleTech toy and game franchises. He founded Virtual World Entertainment, a virtual reality franchise, in 1987 and sold the company to Disney in 1992. He started a video game version of FASA, FASA Interactive, in 1995 and sold it to Microsoft in 1999.

“I’ve spent half my career building games that don’t require technology and the other half designing game platforms that require multiple billions of dollars to develop,” Weisman said. “At the end of the day, the brain doesn’t care about the format.”

Weisman’s last company, Smith & Tinker, was able to raise $29 million in venture capital because its founders — Joe Lawandus and Weisman — are heavyweights in the game and entertainment industries. That company focused on hybrid games that fit in with toys.

Games were the most popular apps used on smartphones in the past 30 days, with 64 percent of smartphone owners downloading them. Weather apps were the second most popular apps, downloaded at 60 percent, with social networking apps like Facebook coming in at third, with 56 percent of all smartphone owners downloading them.

iPhone owners played games more often and longer than Android owners. Players racked up 14.7 hours of play time on iPhone games each month, while Android owners only played games for 9.3 hours each month, according to the report. Windows Phone 7 owners, despite the device being closely tied to Microsoft’s online gaming network, Xbox Live, played games for only 4.7 hours a month.

Nearly all smartphone owners who played games were willing to pay for the apps, according to the Nielsen report. That’s compared to only 76 percent of smartphone owners who were willing to pay for a news app.

Smartphone games are designed to be played in small, bite-sized chunks that only last for a few minutes. For example, the typical level in a PopCap game like Peggle or Plants vs. Zombies takes anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 minutes to complete. That’s compared to typical video game titles on home consoles, where the average play session can last upwards of an hour. Massive online games like EVE Online can have play sessions that last upwards of 3 hours.

That’s the sweet spot for creating a level of satisfaction for gamers when they play an online game, Gordon said. For example, the amount of gold a player earns in online game World of Warcraft should sell for around $3 on secondary or black markets. In games like FarmVille, players should generate $3′s worth of gifts or coins per hour.

Similar to achieving something in real life, gamers want to generate some kind of real value out of the game — even if the game is just meant to pass the time. Players are much more likely to continue playing a game if there’s an illusion they’re creating value, Gordon said.

The lines between games and the real world are blurring now that the world is becoming “gamified.” Many games give players rewards for just about anything, and apps like Foursquare have jumped on the trend by rewarding players for doing everyday things in the real world — like visiting a gym or announcing they are watching a TV show.

The latest generation of gamers that actively use apps like Foursquare demand more value out of the games they are playing. In a game like World of Warcraft, gamers want to wear the best armor or have the fastest mounts as a way to signify that they are “winning” the game. Games have to make sure they deliver rewards at just the right pace that makes the experience of getting a powerful item rewarding, but not too easy — amounting to around $3 an hour, he said.

Social games like FarmVille and Empires & Allies, both developed by social gaming company Zynga, are credited for starting the “gamification” craze by giving players a reason to constantly return to the game for incremental rewards. Zynga has since become a Facebook distribution powerhouse like no other game company. That makes it a lot easier for Zynga to generate revenue, since a percentage of users usually pays for items in otherwise free games. The company has delivered hit after hit to Facebook, including FarmVille and CityVille.

Zynga’s latest social game, Empires & Allies, is another hit for the company. It attracted more players than Farmville, the company’s first breakout hit, in just 25 days. Empires & Allies is gaining new users at a rate of a million a day and 8 million a week now, according to AppData.

Gordon is sitting pretty himself as the backer of Kleiner’s investments in mobile gaming firm Ngmoco, which was bought by DeNA for $403 million. Kleiner also invested in Zynga, which might file for an initial public offering in the not-too-distant future at a valuation between $10 billion and $20 billion, according to a number of reports. The company is looking to raise up to $2 billion, according to the reports.

That means the game will use the “freemium” model, which is usually designed to tease players with a free game and then encourage them to buy more powerful items. Team Fortress 2 is the first high-profile console and PC first-person shooter (FPS) game to go free-to-play. Players will be able to buy “hats” for their characters, along with other cosmetic items and new guns. But Valve was quick to indicate that free players would not be at a huge disadvantage to players that pay for virtual goods.

“All game modes, classes, and maps are available. Nearly every weapon is available through achievements, drops, or crafting,” the company said in the announcement.

Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer FPS game that lets players team up in huge capture-the-flag and king-of-the-hill style matches. Players can choose from one of several classes that all fulfill certain roles, like the speedy scout who is good for carrying intel (the game’s version of a flag) or the medic, who can heal and supercharge friendly players. It’s one of Valve’s unusual stunts to try to pick up additional gamers, even though the game is already incredibly popular.

The game is one of only a few on the market right now that thrives on team-based gameplay rather than single-person heroics. Most multiplayer FPS games include team-based deathmatch games — where the team with the largest number of kills wins — but don’t encourage a lot of teamwork in pick-up and casual matches. In Team Fortress 2, teamwork is essential — even for casual gamers who just want to play a quick match during a lunch hour.

It’s also an unusual FPS game because of the artistic direction. Instead of ultra-realistic graphics like those seen in the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises, the game looks like a cartoon brought to life. Characters have exaggerated features, such as the heavy and his massive minigun and huge muscles. They all have personality quirks too — for example, the sniper is built off a Crocodile Dundee-style Australian hunter.

But despite its quirks, Team Fortress 2 is critically acclaimed and was a large factor in the success of the Orange Box, a collection of five games that Valve released in 2007. The collection included Half Life 2, along with its sequels Episode 1 and Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and the smash hit Portal. The Orange Box is currently the highest rated PC game of all time on review aggregating site Metacritic.

With that much stimulation, my eyes and memory fail me sometimes, but after 16 or so years covering E3, my sensors wake up and trigger my capacity for pattern recognition.

Over four days, we got a chance to see the games that most people won’t encounter until a year or so from now, and I got a sense of the trends that will shape the coming year in video games.

1. The video game industry is protected by super plexiglass bubble shield. Just when it seems like something is going to kill the video game industry — like the great recession of 2008-2009 — something always saves it. Like Master Chief (pictured top) in the Halo series, the industry seems like it can make itself immune during E3 to all of the disruption that is happening around it.

The traditional console video game is threatened from all directions: Zynga’s Facebook games are eating at the audience. Apple’s iPhones and iPads are stealing customers. Free-to-play online games are killing subscription games. And Android smartphones are dispensing with the need to buy new handheld game players. And Apple tried to steal the show’s thunder by scheduling its Worldwide Developer Conference at the same time.

But this year there was a kind of “What, Me Worry?” attitude about all of that. The big video game publishers showed off their big budget games that were like summer blockbuster movies. And they were awesome enough to make us all believe, at least during the show itself, that nothing could eat away at the revenues of the big games.

The game publishers came up with one potential blockbuster after another: BioShock Infinite, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and many others. With such games, it’s no wonder that the social and mobile game companies don’t come to the show. There’s no way they can compete against the black hole that sucks in all the attention of gamers when these blockbuster games debut. Call of Duty alone will likely generate a billion dollars in revenue.

This makes me think that the video game industry is one of those beings from our imagination that is both thriving and dying at the same time. One part of the industry has been devastated by free games. But the other part is vibrant with life. As long as the game industry keeps driving forward, it should be able to survive. This doesn’t mean that the disruptors have failed. They’re just creeping along unnoticed for now. One example: Bigpoint, Germany’s maker of free-to-play online games, has more than 190 million registered users. Those gamers probably aren’t playing as many $60 console games anymore. But the big giants of consoles haven’t been stung yet.

2. Hardcore games are learning lessons from social gaming. The big game publishers are not standing still, like dinosaurs struck by the ice age. Each one of them has learned lessons from the social gaming upstarts and is adapting.

Activision Blizzard was very quiet on the social front until it announced Call of Duty Elite, a social network for hardcore Call of Duty gamers. This network is manna from heaven for hardcore game fans who want to know all of their stats about their multiplayer games in real-time so they can figure out how to get the drop on their rivals. This social network will like take the engagement of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 to the next level, making it almost impervious to assault by rivals.

While Activision Blizzard will charge a premium fee for Call of Duty Elite, rival EA will make its Battlefield 3 social network and multiplayer play available for free. The improvement in engagement should more than offset the costs of creating the social network, from EA’s point of view. Meanwhile, there were plenty of other examples of how the big game companies are learning from the startups. Ubisoft is preparing a high-end free-to-play game, Ghost Recon Online, while THQ is launching its Facebook virtual world, Margaritaville. On the company-wide level, EA’s Origin digital distribution network will also have social discovery features that will get fans of one game to try out another. Many game publishers are launching Facebook and mobile versions of their core games.

Yves Guillemot, chief executive of Ubisoft, (pictured right) said at a press dinner that Ubisoft’s future games will have the ability to play with friends via asynchronous modes. That is, Ubisoft games will have features such as sending a challenge to a friend to beat your high score and the friend can try to best your challenge at a time of the friend’s own choosing. In short console games are incorporating the lessons of social.

3. The long cycle is saving video game publishers. The previous console cycle lasted as little as four years, with the Xbox debuting in the fall of 2001 and the Xbox 360 debuting in 2005. The current cycle will last at least six years — at least for Nintendo, and perhaps longer for the other consoles.

That is saving video game publishers in a big way. It allows them to reap the lessons of their earlier games and publish new sequels on game engines that have already been amortized. This allows the companies to generate a lot of revenue from three games on a single generation of technology — such as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception on the PlayStation 3 — without having to totally reinvent their game engines every time. Ubisoft has done this with Assassin’s Creed, Microsoft and Epic have done it with Gears of War, and Activision Blizzard has done it with Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

I say that these big games on long-lasting platforms saved the game industry because they got hit with a tsunami during the financial crisis of 2008. They were also hit by the disruptive forces of free social and mobile games, as mentioned above, and by a Cambrian explosion in online gaming. The result of that tsunami might have been a lot of takeover and consolidation. Tencent, which has a $50 billion market valuation in China, might have picked up one of the major Western game publishers for a song. That could still happen, but the fact that it didn’t shows that the video game industry is making it through a time of disruption much better than the film or music industries have with the onset of the digital online era.

The only thing the industry has to be wary about is that some companies, such as OnLive, are perfectly happy to see the current consoles sit back in relax while they try to disrupt the business and get rid of consoles altogether.

4. Version 3 games can be the best and biggest yet. As we mentioned above, games like Uncharted 3 can reflect the collective learning of games that came before them. The audiences for these games, such as Assassin’s Creed, continues to grow thanks to increasing awareness and the spreading of fan enthusiasm. The number of consoles sold is also giving the game publishers a huge installed base into which they can sell their games. That’s why it makes sense for game publishers such as Electronic Arts to cut back on the number of titles they publish and double down their investments on the ones that have had the most success.

This doesn’t mean that investments in new original games are a bad idea. It just raises the bar for what those original games have to achieve. On the positive side, publishers may be more willing to invest in new intellectual properties even if the first game only breaks even. That’s because they know the game’s sequel (unlike a movie) can often do better than the original. EA saw that happen with DeadSpace, which was a mild hit for EA. DeadSpace 2, on the other hand, sold twice as much as the original.

5. The Wii U could make game economics better. Eric Hirshberg, president of Activision Publishing, said in an interview it looks like it will be possible to make first-person shooter games and other graphically demanding games on the new Nintendo console. It’s not clear exactly how that’s going to happen just yet. But Nintendo will benefit if a wider range of games are published on its upcoming game console.

On top of that, game publishers can benefit if they can make a game and publish it to four platforms — the Wii U, PC, PS 3, and Xbox 360 — rather than just three. The Wii was such an anomaly with its standard definition visuals that many of the publishers skipped making games for it. That hurt Nintendo, but it also meant the publishers didn’t make as much money as they could have.

Now the publishers can include the Wii and a whole new set of customers when they make their newest games. At least they can until Microsoft and Sony come up with brand new consoles themselves.

6. The debate over graphics continues. In games like Battlefield 3, having better graphics than the other games out there matters a whole lot for the acceptance of the game. First-person shooter fans are extremely demanding when it comes to eye candy. But in role-playing games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, which looked pretty weak graphically, other things matter more. For instance, users want the ability to do all of the social gaming functions — like going on raids with large groups of players — as they can in World of Warcraft. Even if the Old Republic doesn’t have stellar graphics, it might be a big success.

The debate over graphics quality became sharper as Nintendo announced its Wii U. The chips inside the device include a multicore IBM chip and an Advanced Micro Devices Radeon graphics chip. These 45-nanometer chips use current generation technology, or the equivalent of the technology used in high-end PCs today. (Engadget thinks it knows how good the specifications are, but Nintendo isn’t confirming anything). By 2012, this level of graphics might not be good enough.

Nintendo hasn’t said whether its graphics are going to be better than the PS 3′s or the Xbox 360s. It only says it can do 1080p high-definition graphics, which will make the Wii U much more competitive on graphics than the Wii. But it will be a short leap for Sony and Microsoft to make it they want to launch new consoles and leave Nintendo behind in the dust.

Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, acknowledged that the Wii didn’t have the best graphics last time, but he noted that, 86 million units later, Nintendo’s choice to spend money on the motion-sensing system was a wise choice. Nintendo went with a minimalist hardware design again this time. Indeed, its Wii U tablet controllers don’t have memory or processors. That will keep Nintendo’s costs low so that it can charge a lower price for its machine. But it’s risky, considering rivals can create more powerful machines.

7. Gamers will get to move and touch more. Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system doesn’t always work that great, but it’s getting better and game makers are finding more uses for it. With Star Wars Kinect, Microsoft is graduating from casual games and moving on to hardcore games. One of the coolest new uses for Kinect was with Mass Effect 3, which allowed the player to shout voice commands at companions rather than press a bunch of buttons to get the companions into the right position.

Sony also showed that its Move controller could come in handy with the NBA 2K12 game where you can control the action in the game with both button-mashing and by pointing the controller at a spot on the screen. Nintendo brought the magic of touch that Apple pioneered on the iPhone and iPad to the console with the Wii U tablet controller, and the PS Vita brought touch to the handheld with both a rear touchscreen and a front touchscreen.

The right approach seems to be to create a combination of a traditional game controller and a motion or voice-sensing system. That’s how these new user interfaces will become useful in the hardcore games.

8. Franchise reboots are fashionable. The fantastic-looking reboot of Tomb Raider shows what can be done to revive a dead video game franchise when you double-down on the investment in game quality. Electronic Arts tried this with mild success (millions sold, but didn’t beat Call of Duty) on Medal of Honor, while Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment also had some success with Mortal Kombat.

In addition to Tomb Raider, the show also had other examples of reboots with Sonic Generations and Deus Ex Human Revolution. In all of the reboots, there’s a common thread. The game developers have to invest heavily in creating the best worlds, most interesting characters, and fun game play. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But these projects always have a built-in fan base.

9. The video game industry just can’t keep secrets — In the age of the internet, you can’t keep secrets. Microsoft managed to leak out everything that it was going to announce, accidentally, when its own web site spilled the beans. By the time the company had its press conference, everyone knew about Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4. It’s always nice when a company, in Steve Jobs-like fashion, saves “one last thing” as a surprise. But Microsoft didn’t even have that because of the Halo 4 leak.

Sony showed off its PS Vita handheld to the press ahead of time, leaving only the price of $249 as its big revelation. And Nintendo’s big Wii U announcement was preempted by a leak about a month before the show. Hackers are also making sure they can steal as many secrets as they can.

The trade-off is always like this. Game console makers have to tell third-party developers how to make games for their new upcoming consoles. But once they do so, the leaks spread like wildfire. For companies, that means you have to operate on the assumption that everything you do will eventually become public.

10. Cross-platform is cool. Big companies have talked about marrying their platforms for a long time. But now it’s happening in clever ways. Sony’s Ruin game for the PS Vita, the upcoming Sony handheld, can run across platforms. You can save a game on the PS Vita and then wirelessly synchronize it with your PlayStation 3. Then you can pick the game up with the PS 3 in the same spot. It’s also interesting you can play some Android games (via the PlayStation suite) on the PS Vita.

It was also interesting to see CCP Games marry its galaxy-wide strategy game Eve Online with a first-person shooter game called Dust 514. Microsoft is also marrying its Xbox Live service with its Windows Phone 7 operating system, and it is starting to experiment with using Windows Phone 7 smartphones as controllers for the Xbox 360.

11. Helicopters are evil. Last year, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves had a helicopter as a villain in a big way. It was always coming down to shoot at you while you were armed with little more than a machine gun. After many annoying appearances, you could eventually swat it away with rocket launchers. A lot of games repeated the evil helicopter theme, including Need for Speed The Run, where a police helicopter chases you both when you’re on foot and when you’re in a car. The bad guy helicopters are plentiful in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and in Far Cry 3.

There’s something about being pursued by a giant flying thing with an unfair advantage. I’m joking around here of course. But it’s kind of ironic that a mechanical monstrosity is the enemy, now that we’ve run out of villains. The Cold War is over. The North Koreans have been done (in THQ’s Homefront game). Osama bin Laden is dead. Aliens have been overdone. Where are we going to get our new enemies?

Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital in London, said that the interesting trends emerging this year show that acquisitions of massively multiplayer online game companies are accelerating. Like it or not, bubble or not, video games appear to be moving faster into a golden age of funding and hype. Merel is one of the speakers at our upcoming GamesBeat conference in San Francisco on July 12-13.

One of the big transactions this year was the $350 million private equity investment in Germany’s Bigpoint, a maker of free-to-play online games with more than 190 million users. That deal valued Bigpoint, which makes titles such as Battlestar Galactica Online (pictured above), at more than $600 million.

Another major deal involved China’s Changyou, which bought a majority stake in Shenzhen 7Road Technology, another Chinese maker of online games, for more than $100 million. And China’s Perfect World bought Cryptic Studios from Atari for $49.8 million.

Merel said that social game investments are also increasing in volume and scale. He noted that Kabam has raised $115 million in two rounds since February. Germany’s Wooga, a Facebook game company, raised $24 million. CrowdStar raised $23 million and Funzio raised $20 million. On the acquisition side, Gree bought OpenFeint for $104 million. PapayaMobile raised $18 million and TinyCo raised $18 million. Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, raised $42 million.

The leading acquirers are the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean companies. Merel said that his current deal flow leads him to expect these trends to continue through the second half of 2011.

“We remain very bullish on online and mobile games growth and investment,” he said. “Now is a fantastic time. We are seeing significant appetite from Chinese, Japanese and South Korean games companies to acquire and invest in strong Western online and mobile games companies, but as our Chinese operating partner often reminds us building the right relationships remains critical.”

Merel said he believes there will be a “groundswell of games IPO activity” poised to come to the market in the next 12 to 18 months. He said he is bearish on the long-term outlook for the console game market, despite recent and anticipated hardware launches.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To enter the Who’s Got Game? contest for the best game startup, click here.

Senate security confirmed the break-in and added that the hackers did not get behind the firewall at the personal information of any Senators, the Guardian reported.

Game sites and networks for game magazine The Escapist and games like Minecraft, League of Legends and EVE Online have all been hit by DDoS attacks. LulzSec is claiming responsibility for the attacks. When VentureBeat tried to access The Escapist and several Minecraft servers, both were unavailable. The group also claimed that it was able to take the login servers for League of Legends, a popular online game, offline. The group is calling today Titanic Takeover Tuesday, which just seem like rogue hacking attacks on a number of video-game-related sites.

“We’re eying up the next target… laying off Minecraft, so go play that. Preparing a cannon attack on our main artillery shells!” the group said on its Twitter account.

LulzSec has an increasing resemblance to Anonymous, a loose collective of hackers that originally came from image board 4chan. For instance, Anonymous regularly takes up political causes, and the attack on Senate.gov is one of several politically-motivated attacks the LulzSec team has executed, suggesting a connection. Also, Anonymous members typically use the term “lulz” to describe the amusement they get out of hacks like these. However, LulzSec has been quick to state that it is not a part of Anonymous.

The group previously broke into Sony’s Sony Pictures site and invited readers to “plunder those 3.5 million music coupons while they can.” It also said it was targeting Sony in retaliation for how it handled the downtime of its PlayStation Network after it was forced to bring down the service and beef up security after an attack by an as-yet unidentified hacker group. It seems like LulzSec’s modus operandi involves breaking into insecure networks for the sake of exposing security flaws or in retaliation for political causes.

Members of the LulzSec group were able to break into the PBS site several days ago and post a fake story that said rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. It was the third high-profile hacking attack on a private network in a little more than a month. It was also able to break into the private network of Bethesda Softworks, the game developer behind several popular games like Brink and Fallout 3.

Bethesda Softworks confirmed that a hacker group was able to break into the network and possibly compromise information about the site’s members. The company didn’t indicate whether the hacker group was able to steal information about the site’s members, but said that user names, email addresses and passwords might have been compromised. The group said it did not steal any information from Bethesda Softworks.