Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 video game console won over gamers at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week when the company announced a price and its stance on used games. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about the system.

Thankfully, a new video from Sony shows a bit more about how the console will work in everyday use. The PS4′s new interface is front and center, and it looks rather slick. Once you log in, you see a feed a social updates that is reminiscent of Facebook or Google+. The feed contains status updates, messages, notifications about new games, videos, and more.

The clip also shows how users can share game videos with each other. You just record a small snippet of gameplay and send to your friends. This can be especially helpful in figuring out how to beat a boss or overcome some obstacle.

One other cool thing in the new video is how games can be installed. The sci-fi military shooter Killzone: Shadow Fall lets you choose to download the multiplayer mode of the game or the single-player mode first. And you can download new titles while continuing to play other games on your system.

Check out the video above for more.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

If I can paraphrase a popular Alicia Keys song, this woman is on fire. Marissa Mayer is clearly moving Yahoo back into the center of the Silicon Valley tech conversation.

Days after finalizing a $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition, and coming hot on the heels of a massive image-buffing retrofit of the photo-sharing community Flickr, Yahoo has bought yet another company.

Finally, after years of virtual irrelevance at the search/media company, Mayer has Yahoo doing huge and interesting things again.

PlayerScale, a cross-platform game infrastructure startup that provides tools for games played by 150 million users on platforms such as iOS and Android, announced the acquisition on its site today. And — unlike recent Yahoo acquisitions like Astrid – CEO Jesper Jensen said the company would continue to operate as it has, supporting over 2,600 developers and 4,000 games.

In fact, he added, PlayerScale is adding 400,000 users a day.

“With Yahoo’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before,” Jensen said.

Source: Sean Ludwig

Marissa Mayer

That would be a major change from recent Yahoo acquisitions such as Stamped, OnTheAir, Snip.it, Alike, Summly, Jybe, and Astrid, all of which have been shuttered or put on notice. But it makes sense, given PlayerScale’s volume of business and growth rates.

And the move seems to make sense given Yahoo has now signaled a move into casual gaming on iOS, Android, Facebook, the web, and even Xbox.

PlayerScale’s platform helps game developers with pretty much everything they need to make their game platform work, except the game itself. It includes payments, chat, analytics, virtual currencies, distributed caching, authentication, social sign-on, leaderboards, localization, and more.

Here’s CEO Jesper Jensen’s announcement in full:

Today is a great day — both in our journey with PlayerScale and for users of our Player.IO product. We are happy to announce the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform: we have been acquired by Yahoo!. And don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Our platform will continue to support the same great games that you love playing today … and in fact, it will only get better from here!

Our goal has always been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today’s biggest successes. In working with the folks at Yahoo!, it has become clear that we share this passion.

We have spent the past four years growing a three-person startup into a product that powers games played by over 150 million people worldwide and we are adding over 400,000 new users every day. In the last four months alone, we have increased our daily user growth rate by almost sixty percent. With Yahoo!’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before. We will continue to support our existing product and deliver new services to help you grow and manage your success in cross-platform gaming — whether it’s casual, social or mobile.

Today marks a milestone for PlayerScale and I want to sincerely thank the team, our developers and millions of users for the adventure so far and can promise there will be more to come.

- Jesper Jensen

Image credit: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

BURLINGAME, CA.: Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus just announced that the gaming giant is launching a learning accelerator for gaming startups.

Pincus took to the stage this afternoon at the NewSchools Venture Summit, a major ed-tech conference. He revealed that Zynga will offer startups “innovating around games and the classroom” access to office space, game designers and product managers.

The accelerator has already lined up several companies to participate, including Kidaptive, LocoMotiveLabs, and Motion Math. Social learning startup Edmodo will also be joining as a charter partner.

“Everybody at Zynga is passionate about having a positive world impact,” said Pincus. “We want to help these companies leave the nest.”

Together with the NewSchools Venture Fund, Zynga will offer funding to the five or six startups in the inaugural class. To support this initiative, Zynga.org has provided $1 million in funding for the accelerator’s first year.

“We’re proud to partner with Zynga.org on this project, which brings together the world’s leader in social gaming, the top K-12 education impact investor and an initial cohort of all-star entrepreneurs,” said Ted Mitchell, CEO, NewSchools, in a statement. “Together, we are excited to push the boundaries of how students learn through educational games.”

At the conference, Pincus drew a comparison between the new program and Y Combinator, the elite technology accelerator program for startups.

SAN FRANCISCO — Serious gamers did not shy away from confronting serious issues at third day of the Game Developers Conference — including gambling.

A panel on the hotly debated issue of gambling in games was packed. The big questions for the experts: Is gambling the next big growth opportunity? And if so, how should it be regulated?

Panelists: Roxanne Christ, Latham & Watkins; Wim Stocks, Virgin Gaming; Paul Thelen, Big Fish; and Michael Pachter, Equity Research.

“I think there will be a lot of learning this year,” said Big Fish Games CEO Paul Thelen.

Thelen is keeping a close eye on states like California with laws on the books to regulate online gambling. It’s a revenue opportunity for Big Fish, the  largest producer of casual games.

In future, Thelen revealed that he plans to partner with casinos to tap into the “massive addressable market” for bringing money into skill-based gaming tournaments.

The company has already joined up with Betable, a U.K.-based company that lets players add real money to games. Big Fish is avoiding lawsuits by taking advantage of new technology that verifies the identities of each player.

Still, it’s a highly contentious topic, and most of the panelists said they prefer to err on the side of caution. For instance, Virgin Games’ Wim Stocks remarked that his company is reluctant to offer any kind of prize or reward to players under 18.

In the face of regulation, Latham and Watkins lawyer Roxanne E. Christ predicts an explosion of mergers and acquisitions and deals. In particular, casinos will be looking to acquire and partner with social gaming startups.

“Casino’s know how to do business in a regulated environment,” she said. “But gaming companies are bringing great content.”

Another big issue on the panelists’ minds is user privacy. Should companies make money by selling personal data about players? Christ said the Federal Trade Commission is increasingly concerning itself with data security and online games. But we’re nowhere near solving this problem.

The first game companies to introduce gambling will be “pioneers,” according to Thelen. For now, the risk is extremely high.

However, he speculated that the market opportunity will be worth close to $20 billion in the next few years in the United States alone. ”Imagine you’re in Wisconsin and there are barriers to gambling — just open your iPhone or Android and jump online,” he 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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SAN FRANCISCO – At GDC today, execs from an African game studio talked about the 55 countries, 3,000 cultures, and myriad languages that make up their “target demographic.”

Leti Games’ CEO Eyram Tawia and CTO Wesley Kirinya spoke as part of GDC’s localization summit. As with game technologies around the world, vast improvements have been made since the early 2000s.

Today, web games from Africa’s west coast are becoming a bigger deal, and mobile games are becoming huge around the continent, Kirinya said.

Source: Jolie O'Dell/VentureBeat

Leti Games executives CEO Eyram Tawia and CTO Wesley Kirinya speak about African games and the cultural diaspora at GDC 2013.

Hundreds of millions of Africans have no Internet connections at all, the team revealed. But the connections that do exists come in the form of web-connected feature phones and, to a lesser but growing extent, smartphones. “Android is huge,” said Tawia, “so most developers try to learn Java.

Moreover, these mobile devices, which so often serve as a person’s only connection to the web and games, are a huge economic force. In Africa, mobile payments are a $61 billion market (compare that to $30.5 billion in in Europe and North America combined).

“People do not have credit cards; mobile is the preferred way to do payments, from shopping to paying bills,” Kirinya said.

Internet bandwidth is also picking up speed in the continent, he said.

Still, the continent claims only around 10 notable gaming studios, including Ubisoft (Morocco), Luma Arcade, Afroes (Kenya, South Africa), and Kola Studios. Kirinya said more studios are being founded in recent years and months, even in sub-Saharan Africa.

These studios, Kinyara said, focus on developing games for the countries in Africa. But to create titles for such a diverse diaspora is a challenge.

“We look at the blocks in the continent,” he said, starting with the obvious first roadblock of language. Colonization means that a handful of European languages were adopted around the continent in the 1700s and 1800s. So building a game in English and French first makes sense, moving into Swahili later, and leaving many other African languages as a long tail to tackle in the long run.

Numbers are generally lower in Africa; the Leti team said that one of the top games in the continent has 6.850 downloads with 20,000 games played every day.

“It’s hard to get Africans to play, because they can’t access the app stores,” Kirinya continued, noting that distribution channels are improving. Partnerships with mobile carriers are likely a more profitable route for local game studios, he said. Other opportunities include paid custom development, which can yield around $5,000 per platform for a mobile game.

Tawia talked a bit about game verticals and genres that are popular in the continent. Many games, he said, are serious in nature, revolving around civic education or career development. Casual and puzzle games are also popular, but games are universally simple.

“First-person shooters, action-packed bloody games are yet to come, “ he said.

Game devs, he noted, are overwhelmingly male, with only one woman to every hundred male attendees at a local game development conference.

Outside organizations such as Meltwater and the British Council help to foster and fund entrepreneurship and creatives in the continent. Still, creative talent for graphics and writing remains scarce, Tawia said, and developer resources are limited. As a result, studios often end up training less-qualified people in their own networks rather than cherry-picking a new hire from a pool of highly qualified candidates.

Still, the Leti execs are hopeful for the future of African gaming and developers. They see games as a way to retell local legends and stories, casting them in an attractive, modern light and bringing a new excitement and pride to African mobile users. Imagine a pharaoh as a Marvel-style superhero, for example, or the traditional figure Ananse as a Spandex-clad African version of Spider-Man; Leti did.

Image credit: Leti Games

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Quarters are useful for making pay phone calls, buying a Reese’s Mini-Cup in a corner store, and for doing laundry. Kwarter is useful for sports brands and broadcasters that want to engage their viewers on mobile.

Kwarter closed its first round of funding, sealing the deal with $4 million. The platform offers tools for building customized mobile apps that create a more interactive relationship with the audience. Features include TV check-ins, discussion forums, complementary content, rewards, social gaming, social TV analytics, and ad-serving. Partners focus on the content and design, while Kwarter takes care of the technical side.

The first prototype app, FanCake, rolled out in 2011. FanCake is a live social game that rewards sports fans with tickets, gift cards, gear, and more for checking-in to a game and participating in challenges. Following that success, it launched that Social Dugout and Bud Light Sports Fan apps that are specifically designed for engaging professional baseball and football fans.

It is common for people to have their tablets or smartphones on hand while watching TV, and those trying to promote content on TV are interested in engaging the viewers on as many screens as possible.

“We’re interested in the problems facing television brands and broadcasters,” said cofounder and CEO Carlos Diaz. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that the future of TV advertising and broadcast lies in this multiscreen experience—but the question is what experience makes sense. That answer depends a lot on the TV content and TV brand you’re talking about. Our platform is designed to be highly flexible, so that companies can create, publish, and manage interactive TV experiences that engage audiences for any type of programming.”

I generally try to avoid sports fans at all costs, being naturally indisposed to dislike contrasting color combinations, stale beer, and irrational yelling. That said, I have witnessed the significant amount of (inexplicable) emotion that sports enthusiasts feel when the ball arrives in its intended destination, and understand that business opportunities abound in this hotbed of excitement. Plus, game-day parties usually involve cheese.

The company has gained the most traction from clients in the sporting arena, but plans to use this $4 million to enter other types of programming. T-Venture led this investment, with participation from Kinetic Ventures. It brings Kwarter’s total capital raised to $5 million. Kwarter is based on San Francisco, and competes with PrePlay, GetGlue, Viggle, and Zeebox.

2012 was a great year for gaming. Many of the best-selling games of the year provided plenty of high-octane experiences and unforgettable moments.

This year saw the release of blockbusters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Fay Cry 3, and Mass Effect 3, while it also gave birth to quirky gems such as Journey, Fez, and FTL: Faster Than Light.

Check back with us soon for GamesBeat’s picks for the best games of the year. But in the meantime, check out the video above for a two-minute retrospective on some of the biggest gaming moments of 2012.

YouTube user Malcolm Klock, who put the video together, describes it as such:

2012 has been another amazing year for gaming, with blockbuster AAA titles and innovative indie games galore. Developers this year tested the boundaries of the medium. This is a salute to their work and all the terrific interactive experiences we had in 2012.

These are by no means the only great games from 2012, but they are great. Your favorite game isn’t missing because I don’t think it’s great, more likely it just didn’t edit together well with the rest or had to go to keep it under 2 minutes. I also tried to give some screen time to overachieving indies that deserve the attention, rather than trying to cram in every major release.

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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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YouTube announced this morning that its app is now available on the Nintendo Wii U. This is obviously a big deal for Nintendo, which is trying to own the living room entertainment experience, as the app is not just available for free download — it’s featured right on the Wii U’s main menu.

Users can use the soft keyboard on the Wii U’s GamePad, which also doubles as a remote control for your standard TV content, to search for videos:

Videos will play on your big-screen TV in full high-definition at up to 1080P resolution, and while the video plays on your TV, the video details, description, and author data display on the GamePad. Naturally, since you’re signed in to your Google account, you’ll also have access to your channels, favorites, and history.

Whether this will help Nintendo in its attempt to make the Wii U the center of the living room entertainment experience is hard to say, but it is at least a statement that the company is here to play. With standard TV, online video, video conferencing, gaming, and more, the statement is getting bigger and bigger.

But the competition is fierce and has been there for a while.

Good luck!

photo credit: wiiu-spiele.com via photopin cc

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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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According to a new poll by Nielsen, kids just want iDevices … and a Wii U. Half want an iPad, and roughly a third of all kids also want an iPod Touch, iPad Mini, or an iPhone under the tree. Almost 40 percent also want a new Nintendo Wii U, and 31 percent want a Kinect for the Xbox 360 they got last year.

Source: Nielsen

Toys kids 6-12 want most

Of course, some kids still absolutely need an Xbox 360 or a Sony PlayStation 3: almost a quarter of all kids want one of the major console games this winter. And another 29 percent want a non-Apple tablet to waste Christmas break on.

Older kids, however, have somewhat different tastes. Or they’ve learned to control their burning desire for new techie toys to a degree.

Electronics still top the list, but for kids aged 13 and older, only 21 percent want an iPad, with a computer coming in at second place with 19 percent of the vote. A non-Apple tablet is proportionately much more in demand with teens: 18 percent want an Android or other type of tablet – just three percent fewer those who want an iPad.

Microsoft Surface, alas, languishes in the hearts and minds of  just 3 percent of teens — although six percent of kids age 6-12 want Microsoft’s new tablet.

Source: Nielsen

What teens want most …

The question now is whether what kids want will translate into the products parents buy.

Somehow — speaking as a parent — it usually does.

photo credit: ze_bear via photopin cc

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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 newly released fourth-generation iPad from Apple has just surpassed Sony’s eight-month-old PlayStation Vita game handheld in graphical performance, based on an analysis of the iPad’s performance from Anand Shimpi of AnandTech and available knowledge of the Vita.

The new iPad uses the new A6X processor, which includes a new graphics processing unit (GPU) that is twice as powerful as the third-generation iPad. As we noted in our review of the PlayStation Vita, the Vita has a nearly identical GPU to the third-generation iPad. The only differences are the clock speed and design architecture (to fit the Vita’s processor). This latest iPad — which is a tablet, not a dedicated game console — has a more powerful GPU than the PlayStation Vita.

Despite the nearly identical GPUs, we previously wrote that the Vita is more powerful than the third-generation iPad for two major reasons:

1. The Vita only has to populate graphics onto a 960 pixel by 540 pixel resolution display, compared to the iPad’s much larger 2048 pixel by 1536 pixel resolution display.
2. The Vita’s central processing unit (CPU), as explained by developers, is a quad-core processor with a clock speed that starts at 800 megahertz but can reach up to 2 gigahertz, compared to the iPad’s 1 gigahertz dual-core processor.

Even with a more efficient CPU architecture, more RAM, and arguably better software, the third-generation iPad couldn’t offer better performance than the Vita with the same GPU.

But with the latest version of the PowerVR GPU (the SGX 554MP4), the new fourth-generation iPad has significantly more graphical throughput than the Vita and 3rd generation iPad. This enables the newer GPU to (theoretically) process twice as much data as the older model, which is why Apple claims twice the performance over the previous iPad released in March. That speed boost, combined with the faster 1.4-gigahertz dual-core processor and a higher-clocked GPU (200 megahertz for the Vita vs. a maximum of 300 megahertz for the iPad), is enough to firmly set the fourth-generation iPad ahead of the Vita in gaming performance.

In graphics-based benchmarks, Shimpi recorded that the fourth-generation iPad performs up to twice as fast as the third-generation iPad. The most important test, scored below, shows a 99 percent increase in frames per second on the new iPad. With twice the RAM, twice the graphics processing speed, and a faster dual-core processor, these numbers suggest that the iPad’s increase in performance surpasses the Vita’s graphical capabilities.

But there’s a catch: The iPad may provide gaming performance that is definitively better than the Vita’s thanks to all of these factors, but it still has to render six times the number of pixels as the Vita. In effect, the new iPad may still lag behind the Vita in some circumstances. Most new iPad games are, however, designed for the iPad 2′s lower resolution 1024 pixel by 768 pixel display, which is only 30% larger than the Vita display. At these lower resolutions, the new iPad should be the clear winner.

However, when it comes to raw computing power, the Vita is no longer the most powerful portable graphics device. The fourth-generation iPad now takes that role thanks to the newer-generation PowerVR GPU.

Should Sony be worried? Not because of performance. As a dedicated game console, the Vita is still has built-in physical controls — an extremely important feature for gamers — while the iPad does not. Sony’s biggest concerns right now for the Vita are poor sales and a limited game selection.

Photo credit: Chipworks

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

As anyone who reads Dilbert or who has picked up one of cartoonist Scott Adams’s books knows, Adams is something of an eccentric genius.

He knows technology, having been a computer programmer, and he knows business, as an economics major and a successful business owner. He’s also a candidate for President of the United States of America, believe it or not.

(I did say eccentric genius.)

So when he skewers a tech company, he skewers a tech company. Here’s today’s strip — it shouldn’t take you long to figure out who this one is targeting:

Source: Dilbert.com

Dilbert for November 6

Microsoft, of course, has recently redone both its corporate logo and its iconic Windows logo. And, surprise, surprise, Microsoft has just released a new tablet computer.

Adams raises two questions: Is no-one buying Microsoft’s Surface tablets? And is Microsoft on a long slide toward irrelevance?

First, on Surface sales …

Microsoft certainly thinks it’s going to sell a decent number of tablets, since the company is putting its money where its mouth is and building three million units this year. Three million may not sound like a lot in a tablet market that already has 100 million iPads, but Apple only sold three million in its first quarter of sales, and that was in a market with very little competition.

Surface tablets have drawn some reasonable crowds, with some even getting as giddy as new iDevice owners, and reports of solid if not spectacular sales. And yes, Oprah has endorsed Surface, calling it a “wowser.” With some positive and some negative reviews — OK, more negative than positive — at least people are talking about it.

Realistically, we don’t know what Surface sales will be until Microsoft announces some more details. But it seems likely that the company is going to have decent sales at least, and further iterations of the product — that is, after all, a Redmond specialty — will improve.

So no, it’s not true that no one will buy it.

Second, on the future of Microsoft

In the long term, every company dies. That’s life .. . or business, rather.

And Microsoft will never again be the one dominant force in the market that it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. The market has moved beyond that, and there are too many players in at too many levels. It’s not all about operating systems anymore, and it’s not a binary model: PC vs Mac, or rather, Microsoft vs. everyone else.

But irrelevant?

That’s a big stretch. And I get that a cartoonist is looking for a metaphorical truth, not a literal truth. But it’s hard for a company with a $250 billion market cap to be irrelevant. Especially when that company still holds dominant positions in desktop operating system, home gaming systems, and office productivity software, not to mention its large array of enterprise products.

Microsoft may very well have some pointy-haired bosses. Most companies do. But Steve Ballmer, you may have noticed, is bald.

photo credit: Ol.v!er [H2vPk] via photopin cc

Tonight, Game Closure‘s 27-year-old chief executive took the stage at StartX’s demo day to inspire fellow entrepreneurs with the company’s founding story.

A year ago, almost every investor in Silicon Valley rejected the social gaming startup. ”We were cold emailing investors,” the young CEO and StartX graduate, Michael Carter, told the audience. Carter launched Game Closure on that very stage and vowed to take on  Zynga with a new brand of “social and frictionless games.”

In the past year the company has turned down acquisition offers from both Facebook and Zynga. It has grown its engineering team three-fold. The company made the promise that its growth would rival Zynga’s, which would have seemed incredulous a year ago. But as the gaming giant’s stock continues to plummet, Game Closure has received applications from more than 5,000 gamers, and the daily user data that its partner games produce has grown 1,000-fold.

If you’re not familiar, Game Closure’s Javascript game software development kit lets publishers distribute video games across multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and web browsers.

“We have gained 21-fold against Zynga in just one year,” Carter told the entrepreneurs who had just demoed their startup ideas to a packed house of press and investors.

Game Closure also succeeding in raising $12 million from Highland Capital, Greylock Partners, Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital, General Catalyst Partners, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, and Joi Ito. More than one of these investors had flatly rejected Carter less than a year ago, he said. In the early days, StartX leveraged its connections to secure Carter and his cofounders a meeting.

To add insult to injury, the startup hired Laurent Desegur, former chief technology officer of Zynga Mobile, as its new vice president of mobile engineering.

Unlike rival programs like Y Combinator, StartX is a Stanford-affiliated accelerator that doesn’t take any equity. We’ve been covering the group’s recent batch of startups, and the recent injection of $800,000 in grant funding. Alice Brooks, founder of Maykah, the toys for girls company, presented on stage tonight alongside Carter. WifiSLAM, the indoor location startup, is also a StartX graduate. 

This morning, Atari announced that for the 40th anniversary of the game company it would release eight classic titles, completely remade to support touch controls, for browsers.

Microsoft provided Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8 as the framework and helped build the games from scratch specifically for HTML5 (the new lingua franca of the web) and for touch controls. That is to say, the eight Atari games now available through the Atari Arcade for anyone in the world to play are fully compatible with tablets and multitouch gestures. But you’ll have to wait until Windows 8 (Oct. 26) and IE 10 are released before you can play them as they are intended.

The innovation is in the HTML5 programming, according to Microsoft General Manager of Internet Explorer Ryan Gavin. He walked me through the eight games, which includes the following:

• Missile Command
• Pong (with online multiplayer)
• Lunar Lander
• Combat
• Centipede
• Asteroids
• Yars’ Revenge
• Super Breakout

Each title, built from the ground up and with enhanced controls to support both a keyboard and/or mouse as well as multitouch, are best suited for IE 10, the upcoming browser shipping with Windows 8. The reasoning is simple: Only IE 10 supports multitouch gestures in the browser. It’s safe to say that competing browsers like Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, and perhaps even Apple’s Safari will quickly follow suit with multitouch on the same level, but the interesting thing is that these games work on any browser right now. At least, any browser that supports HTML5.

I got to play the games on a Windows 8 development tablet, and the touch controls are surprisingly good. So much so that the entire experience feels like a native application more than a browser game. According to Gavin, while some of the games cache and don’t require a persistent Internet connection, others do, and those are more reliant on network stability. You can play Pong once it finishes loading and it feels like a native app no matter how good your internet is. Lunar Lander, however, updates frequently and with weaker connections can stutter. In my playtest it did, but was still fully playable. Later on, I tested all of the games on Google Chrome on a MacBook Air over Verizon LTE, and they worked flawlessly. In the video on the right, you can see some gameplay on a tablet.

The updates to the titles, and to HTML5 and IE 10, are pretty ambitious. Multiplayer games can be created on the fly between browsers only through Web Sockets, which connects two or more browsers for direct communication over the internet. This means games like Pong will work online between two players with nothing more than your browser, though only IE 10 supports the function currently. The relative smoothness and ease-of-use of Atari Arcade, on both IE 10 and even Safari for iOS, works really well. Chrome on Android 4.0, however, does not; at least not yet.

Atari has also built the games to recognize the hardware of the device — be it a laptop, tablet, or smartphone — and determine how much of the game can be compiled on the computer instead of through the server’s hosting the game. These games, and future apps running the same way, will automatically adjust their appearance, features, and speed based on the type of hardware users log in from. This essentially means that eventually it won’t matter what sort of computer you log in from, so long as it isn’t too old the software will adapt to you, not the other way around.

I’ve tested Atari Arcade on iOS, Android, and on a handful of desktop browsers, with mixed results. IE 10 is the only one that works perfectly (no surprise there) and is also the only browser that plays the games ad-free. Chrome can run all of the games without a problem on desktops, but not on Android. Android can’t get through the ads, which are ironically Flash-based. Chrome and Safari both work with the Atari Arcade on iOS, though the iPhone’s display is too small to show a full game. As of this writing, I don’t have an iPad to test with.

Atari has also helped build a developer SDK for anyone to make their own “old school” games in the same fashion as the currently available eight titles. The SDK will allow developers to both create their own browser games that support multitouch gestures as well as upload them to Atari to join the list of available titles. Atari and Microsoft have put out a short video discussing all of the work they’ve done, and the history behind it, which you can watch here.

On the back-end, Grant Skinner, of gskinner.com, has also built several developer tools such as Zoe, which convert Flash games to HTML5; reducing the file sizes dramatically for improved network performance (as much as 5X, according to Microsoft), and several Javascript enhancements for templates and effects.

Atari Arcade is available now, so go try it out for yourself and let us know how it works for you, especially on tablets and smartphones. You can read more about how Atari and Microsoft worked on it at the Microsoft Blog.

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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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Facebook announced today that over 150 million people are using its App Center. The social network also grabbed 30 million more gamers in the last year, bringing its gaming community to 235 million.

Facebook officially rolled the App Center out to all of its users in early July. Initially it launched with 600 apps, available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. You can access the App Center from both the Facebook website as well as its iOS and Android apps. Facebook doesn’t support downloading from the store; it simply acts as a listing for apps that are sold on entities such as Google Play and third-party marketplaces.

The App Center has room to grow. Facebook has 955 million users, meaning only 15 percent of its community is taking advantage of the App Center, and only 24 percent are playing games on its platform. The social network says those who download from the App Center are 35 percent more likely to return to the app the next day, and are 17 percent more likely to return to the app within the week.

The center is also attracting 2.4 times the downloads that the “original dashboard” where games and apps were marketed.

This is part 2 of our interview with Wikipad’s James Bower and Fraser Townley, the company’s CEO and president of sales. Click here to read part 1.

GamesBeat: Getting back to partnerships, are you working with OnLive as well as Gaikai/Sony?

James Bower: We’re in discussions with OnLive as well. One of the key things of Wikipad is that we’re approaching this as a very open platform. We’re willing to work with a lot of various players. The most important thing for us is that our customers have content and that there are various ways for them to get content. There’s the traditional way through Google Market. And then there’s the streaming games, like Gaikai, which was just bought by Sony, and OnLive. We’re in discussions with what our relationship is moving forward.

We also have other forms of content that are interesting, forming on the horizon, that I can’t share yet. We’re not concerned that there won’t be enough content on the Wikipad to get started, and it’ll only get better over time.

GamesBeat: What is Wikipad’s funding? Is the company self-funded?

Bower: The core founders have funded all of the capital to date–

GamesBeat: And the core founders are yourself….

Bower: Myself, Matthew Joynes, and one other founder that we’ll be announcing shortly. We haven’t discussed him as a founder because of who he is, but that will be coming out shortly. It’s a higher-profile person. A lot of the financing of the business is through banking relationships for the purchase orders we have, and things like that.

GameBeat: You previously worked at Master Image. What was your position there?

Bower: President/COO.

GamesBeat: And when was the company acquired?

Bower: Master Image was acquired from Korea and moved to California in November 2009.

GamesBeat: Do you think you’ll have to look for outside funding, perhaps getting closer to the product release?

Bower: I think it’s a question of how fast we want to grow. As of today, they’re fine. So to answer your question, yes, we’re open to look at that and how it can accelerate the business, but it’s not something we’re overly concerned about doing in the short term because of where we’ve come with doing it ourselves.

GamesBeat: Why go with Tegra T30 instead of the more powerful T33, like in the ASUS Transformer Prime Infinity TF700T?

Bower: One of our goals was to ensure that the Wikipad was both lightweight and thin as possible. The T30s is Nvidia’s smallest, high-powered, component CPU. The T33 is a larger component requiring a larger PCB and would have added addition thickness and, in turn, additional weight to the Wikipad. An additional benefit to the T30s is that it draws less power from the battery. This results in the benefit of longer battery life for gamers using the Wikipad compared to the T33, which draws more power from the battery.

GamesBeat: From my own research, it seems like Wikipad is a secretive company. The company has put out so little information. Is this intentional?

Bower: We really had the intent to come out with the stereoscopic version of the Wikipad. And we made the announcements at CES. With some of the decisions we’ve made to make a better tablet, faster platform, that gamers will take very seriously, some of that strategy had to shift a little bit. We’re being very cognizant and careful about what we announce and when we announce it. We don’t want to mismanage the expectations of our future customers. As you’ve seen, there are a lot of people who are excited with what’s coming, with the potential of Wikipad, of what it means. And we want to be very careful and cautious on what we say, and we want to deliver on what we say.

But you’re going to see a shift in the chatter coming from us, and we’re going to amplify things considerably, going into the launch of the company. It’s just us being cautious.

GamesBeat: Are there any game partnerships, like with developers or publishers, that Wikipad has to release titles specific to the Wikipad?

Bower: We’re working with some of the [graphics] engine guys, like Unity and a couple of other guys that build the engines for other guys. We’re in some discussions for unique game designs for the Wikipad, but there’s nothing to the point where we can make an announcement. We’re going to see a lot of content coming from a lot of directions.

GamesBeat: What can you say about the manufacturing of the Wikipad?

Bower: We’re working with the top two manufacturing plants in the world, that have embraced us as a newer company and have taken us on.

GamesBeat: Can you announce who they are?

Bower: Not yet. But we can sleep at night knowing that the guys who sleep at night are the guys who are manufacturing it for us are manufacturing some of the best brand names in the market.

GamesBeat: Several products similar to the Wikipad have been showed over the last year. The Wii U uses a tablet controller but targets a home audience. Razer’s Project Fiona concept device is a laptop-in-a-tablet with a built-in controller running Windows 8. How would you differentiate Wikipad from these?

Bower: It’s challenging to come back with a very poignant answer to that, because one’s a concept and the other people have only just started to see and play with. The unique factor that we have is that we’re really a bridge between a historically mobile console and the invention of the tablet. We do everything as good or better than other tablets on the market, and very easily you can transform the Wikipad into a very efficient, easy-to-use video game device that’s very comfortable.

How we’re different is that we’re not just about gaming. The focus of the company is gaming; that’s who we are, and that’s our pedigree. But when this comes to market, people are going to realize that, wow, I might as well just buy the Wikipad to do all of this plus have fun with games and have a control mechanism that I have on my console.

GamesBeat: Apple holds 68 percent of tablet marketshare with the iPad. Amazon’s Kindle is the next best, and it’s not even close. Android isn’t even close, even though it’s riding smooth at 50 percent of smartphone marketshare. Is that a concern?

Bower: Not really. Apple’s done such a fantastic job with their products, and we all love them. What we’re coming to the market with is a different concept; it’s not just a tablet — it’s a mobile gaming platform that can do all of the functions that you can with a tablet with all of the advantages you have for gaming. So we’re competing right down the middle with what a tablet is, with what people expect out of a tablet, and with what people expect out of a mini console device.

And it’s a space that isn’t populated by very many, or anybody, because we’re really the first ones to market on this. And the other aspect of this is if we’re as successful with this as we believe we’re going to be, from the indications from retailers, from the orders we already have, we don’t have to dominate a market to do really well, because we’re new, we’re relatively small, and we’re innovative, we’re agile. We have a roadmap for the next 24 months. We don’t have to make 2, 3, 10, 20 percent of the market to do really well. One percent of the market is tremendous success. But I think we’re going to do better than that.

GamesBeat: Do you also see the Wikipad competing with portable game consoles, or does it hit the middle ground so users can have a tablet, a game console, all in one device?

Bower: That’s what I would say. What we’re proposing to the market is a bridge between the two. We’re saying if you get this, you can still do all of the things you love to do with a tablet, and you’re also going to have access to all of the great content that’s historically only been able to get through a console-only device.

GamesBeat: What do you think about newer game technologies like Microsoft’s Smartglass? Or the large number of upcoming Android game controllers? And the recently announced Kickstarter success home Android-based game console Ouya?

Bower: What’s coming from Microsoft is great. We’ve seen some of the prototypes of Windows 8 and RT, and it’s great. The interesting thing about the future of that platform is going to be the access of some PC content. There’s not much I’m going to talk about in relation to our company at this point, as it relates to Microsoft’s platform, but it is something that we’re looking into. It’s something that we’re open to, not to replacing the current platform we have now, but maybe as an additional product. But it’s exciting. I think Microsoft has finally got a hit with this new OS. And behind the scenes, retailers and manufacturers behind the scenes, are really excited.

GamesBeat: And that’s notwithstanding Valve chief Gabe Newell’s recent remarks about how Windows 8 is just awful?

Bower: Everyone’s going to have their own opinion. I think Android has done a fantastic job on getting out there. If you look at the global numbers, Android has outpaced everything. You then talked a little bit about…?

GamesBeat: Android game controllers?

Bower: You know, for me…I can only speak for myself because our product isn’t on the market yet. If you’re dealing with a mobile product, if there’s separation between the screen and the your person, then it’s an unengaged experience. I think in order to have the experience, on a device that is personal, that you’re willing to put your credit card into, the game experience on controllers has to be directly connected because you’re expecting it to be totally personal. I would rather use this [holding an Xbox controller] than this on a tablet that I have to prop up and play. That’s all I can say. The market will determine who’s the winner at the end.

And since I mentioned Ouya, we’re really excited about Ouya. Them talking about and launching on Kickstarter, and the results that they have, is a really interesting and solid sign for us. The games that are going to play on that are going to work on the Wikipad, and the games that will work on Wikipad will work on the Ouya. The more content that is prepared for them is going to help us, and the more content prepared for us is going to help them. It’s a very interesting concept that they have.

What I think it’s really going to come down to is how can these devices, and how can our partners like google and others, begin to fix the piracy issues? Because the big game developers, the Epic’s of the world, the Crytek’s, they won’t invest the tremendous amount of money they spend to create these great games for consoles until the piracy issues are fixed. Because it’s a lot more difficult to pirate something for a Playstation or an Xbox. It’s just a lot more work. And the discussions that we’ve had with them is yes, the concept is great, but fix the piracy so that our investment of $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, $80 million in marketing and development cost isn’t going to go to a waste and everyone is going to steal it. Fix that problem and we’ll develop everything for this platform.

GamesBeat: But you’re not concerned at this point about piracy….

Bower: Not for us. But I think as far as the experience on these devices, the game publishers need to know that their investment in these high-quality products is protected, and then we’ll see more of that content come about. We’re very involved with the dynamics behind the scenes with our partners like Nvidia and Google and others about how we can help…we’re people’s art that they create is protected, and respected, and paid for. So that there’s enough money so they can develop their next games.

GamesBeat: Have you been in contact with Ouya, maybe for a partnership?

Bower: We love what they’re doing, I’m sure we’re going to have a conversation at some point, but there’s nothing in the works right now. There isn’t anything worth talking about, or even speculating about.

GamesBeat: What about, since we already spoke about potentially going outside of the company for funding, using Kickstarter since Ouya was so successful. Is that something that you’re considering?

Bower: Frankly speaking, we’ve considered that from the beginning. We decided not to because of the significant adoption that has been relayed to us from retailers around the world. Would Kickstarter have helped us or hurt us? We want to see the retailers make money with us. Right now we’re really focusing on the retailer relationships that we already have in place.

GamesBeat: When will the Wikipad ship?

Bower: We’re looking to release later this year.

GamesBeat: And that’s just in the U.S.?

Bower: For now, yes. We’re also actively looking at the European and Asian markets.

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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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There are tablets, and then there’s a gaming tablet. The Wikipad, an Android handheld that promised to be the first mobile device with a gamepad built specifically for the device, is set to launch later this year. Venturebeat recently sat down to talk with CEO James Bower and President of Sales Fraser Townley in a local design office in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Here’s an edited version of our interview. For details on the Wikipad’s specifications, see our report from late last month.

Venturebeat: What is Wikipad, and what is the history of the company?

James Bower: Last year we (Bower, Matt Joynes, and one more founder) started thinking about what type of consumer device could make a difference. What’s something that we could do that would really get good market acceptance as well as being a game changer?

We all started getting smartphones and tablets and we’re playing games and whatnot, and it just doesn’t quite have that experience as when you’re playing with a controller. The touch experience is okay, but it doesn’t quite get you there. So we thought what can we do to take the concepts of tablets and create a much better gaming experience.

VB: When did the company get started?

JB: We officially formed the company in September. But as a team, we’ve been thinking through concepts, I would say, since back in the spring of 2011.

VB: What was the team doing back then if it wasn’t a company?

JB: Matt [Joynes], who is the chairman of the company, previously bought and sold companies. He and I partnered up on this, and he was twiddling with some of the business planning of creating a consumer device. I was involved with the restructuring of a company called Master Image, which was acquired and restructured and moved to California. That company created stereoscopic 3D for cinema and screens for tablets and smartphones.

The market dabbled in [3D in mobile devices] for a little bit. We saw LG come out with its 3D version (the LG Optimus 3D) of a phone, and the Nintendo 3DS, but there hasn’t been a tremendous market push to adopt this from a tablet and smartphone perspective. In some cases, from my standpoint frustratingly so, anyone who loves stereo sees this as a huge potential market that hasn’t really been opened yet. We see this in the television market; most TVs support stereoscopic in some form, and we see a lot of the market shifting to that.

The fact is, there’s a lot of 3D content that is still coming out. What’s different when it comes to a personal device, when you don’t have the challenges of putting glasses on that becomes a socially inhibiting event — you know, you’re not going to sit with friends and put glasses on in your house. It’s a little bit awkward. When you remove that barrier and enable stereoscopic 3D, it starts to change.

VB: So the original idea was to have the Wikipad be a stereoscopic tablet, and as time went on the 3D got pushed out?

JB: Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s the nature of how fast we can get to market with the price points that we need to get with the market research we’ve done, you know, for the first version [of the Wikipad]. [3D] is in our DNA, if you will, and in our future plans.

VB: Why the name “Wikipad? What exactly does that mean?

JB: ‘Wiki’ actually means fast [in Hawaiian], and so we were thinking about what are we going to create here? We’re going to create a tablet that’s really fast, that’s really edgy for the gaming community, and ‘wiki’ is such a representative name of what we want to be, which is a fast pad. And it’s catchy. Sometimes there’s an educational tone associated with it, and if we come out with a tablet that people may think has educational benefits as well, we start to hit a brand that’s accepted across a lot of mediums.

VB: If I’m not mistaken, you’re currently partnered with NVIDIA, as well as Gaikai. Does that mean Sony as well now, since they purchased Gaikai?

JB: Gaikai has been a great relationship for us, but we’re under NDA with Gaikai and Sony. That’s about all I can say right now, but we know what’s going on and we’re still close to the situation, and the transaction is just in the completion stage as we speak. Stay tuned.

VB: What about Sony Mobile Certification, where Playstation titles can play on some Android devices, mostly from Sony and now some select HTC smartphones?

JB: Sorry, I can’t comment.

VB: Fair enough. So you’re working with NVIDIA as well. Why go with Tegra?

JB: For a number of reasons — a few secret ones that I can’t talk about, and a few that I can. When it comes to a brand of processor that is close to the hearts of gamers, NVIDIA has been there a long time. They have a very good, integral brand; they have a very good relationship to content, and content is key for us, as it relates to our product. So there are a lot of advantages to Tegra as it relates to gameplay. They’ve been working on a lot of things behind the scenes that they haven’t talked about regarding gameplay. They also were one of the front-runners in the development of stereoscopic 3D support, integrating their 3D vision capabilities into the Tegra processor as well. So it became much more of a turnkey easy solution for our future as we look at stereoscopic 3D.

VB: So you’ll be working with them for 3D support?

JB: Yes.

Pages: 1 2

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The most successful crowdfunded project ever continues to gain steam and announce partnerships.

The creators of Ouya, the Android-based gaming console that has now raised almost $7 million on Kickstarter, announced today that open-source media player and digital entertainment hub XBMC will be integrated into the platform. In addition, the creators of Ouya are working with TuneIn to bring Internet radio — 70,000 stations worth — to the new console platform.

In a blog post on the organization’s Kickstarter page, Ouya calls the addition of the XBMC’s media center “a match made in open-source heaven.”

According to the XBMC announcement, this is not just a quick paste-on addition but a cooperative effort: ”XBMC will be working with Ouya to ensure that XBMC works well on the Ouya platform.”

Almost $7 million raised so far …

The announcements come just days after Ouya announced iHeartRadio was bringing over 1,000 U.S.-based radio stations to Ouya, and that the newest home entertainment center was partnering with music-video platform VEVO to add high-def music videos.

In other words, Ouya is shaping up, on the surface at least, to be a viable competitor in a mature marketplace that includes smart TVs, Xbox, PlayStation, and AppleTV: media hubs and content access points bringing everything that the Internet offers to the biggest screen in your house.

(See interviews with Ouya’s designer, Yves Behar, on stage at GamesBeat, as well as one-on-one with our own Kat Bailey.)

Ouya started with games — and recently brought streaming games platform OnLive to the platform —  but the vision always included more.

“It’s a new kind of game console for the TV that embraces the openness of mobile and Internet platforms,” Julie Uhrman, the founder and chief executive of the company, said just as the project was getting started on Kickstarter.

That statement is proving true now, as Ouya is building a strong stable of partnerships and services to deliver a full-featured media experience.

Once question: Will the end result feel simple, clean, and integrated…or will the conglomeration of different services and interfaces feel artificial and pasted together?

Only time will tell.

Tune-in interface on Android

If you’re twin brothers Keith and Ken Hanson, you build your own app as a sort of iPhone-enabled cheat sheet. Then you jump back into the competition and destroy your opponents.

“At first we sucked horribly,” Keith Hanson told me a month ago when we talked about their League of Legends app, Pentakill. “While we were playing, we felt so lost…so we wanted to have a reference guide in our hand.”

Source: Pentakill

Checking up on a character’s skillz

Keith — the engineer of the pair — coded an app in his spare time. Meanwhile Ken, the creative one, invested some time and energy towards designing the look and feel of the app. Then they gave it to 3500 beta testers.

The result, released just recently on the iTunes app store, allows League of Legends players to quickly check up on the strengths and skills of one of those 100+ champion characters.

In addition, the Hansons told me, Pentakill helps League of Legends players keep track of hundreds of spells for teleporting, powering up, healing, and more. It also keeps statistics on the many items players encounter in the game, such as Atma’s Impaler, each of which has its own strengths and abilities.

Gamers can also check hundreds of skins, so they can see what their player will look like before purchasing a particular skin.

But the story behind the twins is almost as interesting as the app they created.

“Because we were identical twins, we needed to differentiate ourselves,” Ken told me.

That partly explains why Keith went deep into math and engineering, and Ken moved in, some would say, the opposite direction towards design and art. Ken moved to San Francisco and interviewed for Apple while Keith remained home in Shreveport, freelancing.

While growing up, the Hansons did not actually swap girlfriends — or at least are not admitting it — but they did pull the old twin switcheroo on a teacher. Unfortunately, that backfired when the teacher ended up crying, and the twins never tried it again.

Source: Twin Engine Labs

Pentakill’s main screen

When the opportunity came to work together to create Twin Engine Labs, Ken, who had sworn he would never move back, moved back. According to Ken, “We finally decided that we weren’t two guys who were so alike that we’d fight like cats and dogs.”

Starting a few years ago with $15,000 of their own money and a couple of desks in a coworking space, the twins now employ a team of seven, plus contractors, working on app development projects for clients such as Cisco Networks and Cabot Cheese.

But Pentakill is the company’s first product launch…and it was a labor of love.

Both Ken and Keith are gamers, and League of Legends is their favorite game. Building an app to give back to the community was a no-brainer for Keith…especially if it help him win.

“We’re building the features because we need them for the game,” Ken said.

And those 3500 beta testers? They must have helped Twin Engine do something right: With 46 ratings already in the iTunes store, early reviews average 4.5 stars.

See more of the app here:

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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 games sphere is an incredibly competitive space. There are over 660,000 games in the app store. Many of these apps are free, and those that charge a fee often struggle to gain traction. Successfully monetizing mobile games is an issue that everyone in the industry faces.

Just hours after major mobile players Tapjoy and Kontangent announced a partnership, their leaders, Mihir Shah and Josh Williams, came together to impart insider insight on what creates a lucrative game. Both emphasized the changing scope of the gaming industry and the importance of focusing on the player and applying analytical data to product development.

This GamesBeat 2012 session, “Overcoming Hurdles in Monetization Distribution and Discovery,” also included ICS Mobile CEO Joe Bayan, Playhaven CEO Andy Yang, and Mark Friedler (pictured right), managing partner of Worlds & Games and moderator.

“The days of getting lucky, only thinking about gameplay and worrying about monetization later, are gone,” said Williams. “The sophistication of the market has increased, and it is a lot more competitive now. Developers have to be more scientific and rigorous about the way they design, acquire users, promote, and operate.”

As the market grows more saturated, companies must continue to innovate across the board, adapting to new technology, introducing more advanced marketing methods, and making the most of analytical tools.

“A lot of people are basing monetization on hopes and dreams, hoping to make top 25, when it should be map- and science-based,” Yang said. ” You have to understand traffic sources, the bio of the users, and the user base.

While leveraging “big data” and applying business strategy can lead to success, creating an appealing, easy to use, and creative product is equally as important.

“I am a firm believer in strong user experience and strong user engagement,” Shah said. “Games and apps that bring joy to consumers will generate significant economics over time. When I think of our partnership and things we are doing, there will be a laser-beam focus on what a user wants and what are they getting out of it.”

However, small, independent developers without a publisher or significant investment can struggle to keep up in a world of gaming giants, no matter how great their product is.

“I am much more pessimistic,” Bayen said.  “The app store market is becoming more and more difficult for developers. They need serious funding and good partnerships, like Gree and Tapjoy. They need to team up with experts, because with 660,000 apps, you might as well go to Vegas and gamble.”

The chances of striking it big may be slim, particularly with major content players dominating the field, but that does not mean it is impossible. Room is still there for upstart companies and the elusive X-factor.

“There are countless examples of apps with great social viral features,” said Shah, giving hope to aspiring game startups everywhere. “The takeaway is in cases when we see independent developers doing well, they have a maniacal focus on user behavior early on, not monetization. If you can’t outbid Zynga, you gotta do it another way, with constant iteration and partnerships.”

There is, of course, no exact formula for success, nor is there a simple, clear-cut formula for monetization or distribution. The good news is that in this evolving industry, there is plenty of room for creativity, and you never know when an unknown will hit it the jackpot. It all goes back to a classic piece of American wisdom: The customer is always right.

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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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After opening unconventionally with a poem — actually not too bad, see below for full text — he, Dean Takahashi from GamesBeat, and Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s president for Xbox and Xbox Live, held a fireside chat about the past, present, and future of gaming.

Here are all the best bits:

Gordon on the golden age of gaming:

“We are in the golden age of gaming, but we may not be the golden age of gaming business. When I started in the gaming industry, our customers were mostly males, mostly teens, and when boys got their driver’s license, they mostly stopped. I thought in my wildest dreams maybe half of all people might be gamers eventually.

“But now we’re at almost three quarters of the population. And that includes women and older adults.”

Gordon on the second-best invention ever:

“I think games are the second-best human invention for creating meaning. The first is religion, for how many people it kills and how much money it raises.

Source: John Koetsier

Don Mattrick (left) and Bing Gordon at MobileBeat 2012 in San Francisco

Mattrick on gaming platforms:

“I’ve spent 30 years in the gaming space and developed for probably 150 different device platforms. I was probably wrong on 149 of them, but today there are 2.8 billion gaming devices of all kinds across the world, and that’s expected to double in five years.”

Mattrick on Xbox growth:

“In the past five years, Xbox went from number three to number one [in the home video-game console race], and we took Xbox Live from nothing to north of 40 million users.

“With Smart Glass we’ll add a very simple idea: context and intelligence and sharing between different devices.”

(Mattrick also mentioned that the new version of Halo, which is currently under development, will work with Microsoft’s new Surface via Project Glass, and I confirmed this with him after the talk.)

Gordon on the future of Xbox:

“Microsoft has to try to make Xbox live the real crossover service for all gamers. Nobody’s done a game network as well as Xbox…in fact, iTunes and Xbox are two of the biggest successes in the consumer Internet.

“Xbox needs to be a platform like Office or Windows.”

Gordon on Apple, Google, and Microsoft: 

Google owns eyeballs. Apple owns ears and fingertips. With Xbox, Microsoft has a shot at owning the living room.”

And Bing’s poem…focused on Dean Takahashi, the lead writer for GamesBeat.

Takahashi Sauce

Games, after three decades, have become the darlings of new media,
But Dean, you still have no listing in Wikipedia!
I started to Google your blog, but autocomplete
In its infinite wisdom, called your column “Game Eat.”

You realized paper journalism was going cold turkey,
And so you ditched the Red Herring and the San Jose Mercury.
You sat at the launch of Xbox, which was notably lame,
Turned to me, and said, “Do you think Bill Gates will ever play games?”

You authored the definitive book on Xbox,
With infinite insider quotes that connected the dots.
Who could have predicted that only one decade later
The only founders still there would be the Microsoft cafeteria waiter.

Speaking of Seamus, I see he’s speaking here, and he’s metro,
No wonder he’s going back to triple-A games with talent that’s retro.
It took a Canadian, Don Mattrick, to make Xbox Live fantastic.
Who would have predicted that the obsolete aspect of gaming would be plastic?

You blogged, Dean, that this is the “crossover” era,
But frankly, crossover sounds more like a new kind of bra.
But even though some of your memes and headlines may fail,
It’s great for the gaming business that you are our Pauline Kael.

Dean, you may be Anonymous on Wikipedia, but your invisible hand
Has the power to add nobility to gaming, and fluff up some brands.
Of course the folks at Microsoft are now a bit nervous
That you might prefer shooters on Vita to Surface.

You write for the anxious, the overinvested, the bored,
Proving, that in games, the pen can still be mightier than the sword.
You report from the front lines of new gaming trends,
Proving that technology transition is the gamemaker’s friend.
So when you take time to write that next book on Gaikai or Surface or Siri,
We hope the HuffPo of video games, Gamesbeat, will never come to an end!

- Bing
July 2012

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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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We got a sneak peek at Mind of Man, a popularity game for iPhone and iPad that uncovers how your friends and enemies really perceive you. The game, released this month, is the brainchild of indie gaming studio 2PaperDolls, which specializes in creating game experiences to blur the lines between reality and fiction.

The game is about revealing the dark side of your digital persona. By analyzing your text and behavior on Twitter, including your flaws and antisocial tendencies, the game creates a unique avatar known as a “MindPrint.” This avatar is then pitted against your friends and favorite celebrities.

What’s cool about it? Mind of Man uses sentiment analysis to determine whether you have a celebrity twin or an archnemesis and reveals how much social media influence you really have. Andrea Ravenet, community manager, said the experience is like holding up a mirror to see how you appear in the Twitterverse.

“We’re having fun — a lot of fun–  lifting the mask of persona,” said Ravenet. She added that Mind of Man is less of a game, and more of a utility to reveal how the crowd perceives a voice on Twitter.

Be warned: This is not for the fainthearted. The creators say on the website that its core technology “peers into your soul and sees how blackened, or saintly, it really is.” Ugh, creepy.

In an Orwellian twist, the game consistently reminds you that you must fulfill your duty to the Mind of Man (MOM). You’ll notice that the promotional image depicts a shadowy puppet master and strings. According to Ravenet, this was intended as a social satire to remind you of the all-powerful entity that can slowly unveil aspects of your online persona. Not sure I buy it.

Is it just me, or does this game seem like the creation of an obnoxious teenage girl on a power trip?

The site responds to perceived criticism by claiming that judgement “strengthens the collective mind” and a little “vote-sourced pyscholinguistic artificial intelligence never hurt anybody.” Given the prevalence of cyberbullying in recent years, I don’t agree that learning to judge each other better is a positive lesson for gamers.

So why should we play the game? The creators claim that your MindPrint will net you discounts and prizes from retailers. “Players earn both virtual and real-world rewards for judging each other,” said 2PaperDollars’ Louis Ravenet in a release.

Mind of Man will be available for free and through premium subscription on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, but it does not have a release date yet for Android.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

We’re waiting with bated breath for Microsoft’s big announcement this afternoon from Milk Studios in Los Angeles, and some newly leaked specifications only add to that anticipation.

A new document touts some technical specs for a tablet device called Xbox Surface, an interesting name that conjures up two of Microsoft’s coolest gadgets and one of its greatest commercial successes.

The Xbox hardly needs an introduction, but Surface is the name of a lesser-known Microsoft product, a huge touchscreen table (not a tablet, but an actual piece of interactive furniture) for multi-user applications, mostly in commercial settings.

The specs popped up today on website shifted2u; we’re contacting our sources at Microsoft now to ask whether the specs are legit.

So far, what we’re seeing from this document is a 7-inch tablet with a 1280 x 720, multi-touch LED display. The gaming tablet will support up to four wireless game controllers and headsets and will have Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities. The Xbox Surface will also feature “a custom IBM engine for scale-out workloads,” according to the document.

Here’s the document in its entirety (click to see a slightly larger version):

So far, we’re taking this news with a generous grain of salt. Milk Studios, the chosen location for today’s announcement, has more to do with fashion, film, culture, music, and media than video games; so far, clues about today’s release don’t necessarily point in this direction. But we’re not completely discounting these specs, either; given Microsoft’s blockbuster successes in the gaming arena and its focus on tablet software, this combination makes sense.

Stay tuned for more official details on Microsoft’s big announcement at 3:30 pm Pacific.

Image courtesy of Nomad Soul, Shutterstock

Just as anyone can create a new article on Wikipedia, anyone can create a new community in Wikia. The founder sets the rules for that site and elects the moderators who help to govern it. There are now over 300,000 wikis generating around 50 million unique visitors a month. Six hundred new sites are created each day. So when talking about Wikia, we mean the universe of articles, reviews, walkthroughs, and videos dedicated to gaming which are collected under a central hub.

Wikia’s claim as the biggest gaming site in the world, however, isn’t cut and dry. IGN.com is far larger than Wikia.com, and IGN is only available in one language, while Wikia is global. IGN also has a big audience away from its web site, with tens of million of visitors to its Youtube page and Xbox Live content. It’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison between the two companies.

Wikia CEO Craig Palmer stopped by the VentureBeat office during a recent visit to New York to talk about what the company is doing to try and capitalize on its massive traffic and growth. “We’re not a forum or a place for Q&A. These are communities creating lasting content, like a traditional media company but without the hierarchy.”

Wikia has received $14 million in financing from Bessemer, First Round, Amazon and a list of big names angels like Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, and Mitch Kapor. Palmer believes that it’s well positioned to thrive in an age when social media seems to be dominating the conversation.

“On Facebook and Twitter, there is so much content, it gets lost in the stream. Our users are also creators of these sites, so they are deeply engaged,” Palmer said. The average member of the gaming Wikia, for example, spends 30 minutes a day on one of the company’s sites.

To manage its two largest and fastest growing properties, gaming and entertainment, Wikia hired the former heads of IGN’s gaming and movie sites, Hilary Goldstein and Eric Moro. While Wikia says it has been profitable since 2005, it is looking to capture more high-end brand dollars by creating a more refined editorial product. Goldstein and Moro will manage hub pages that collect the best in gaming and entertainment from around Wikia.

“We’re turning up the dial in terms of our strategic relationships and aiming to provide our community with more exclusive and pre-release material. Hilary and Eric can really help us to craft those partnerships,” Palmer told us.

Image via Flickr user Sendoa Portuondo

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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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One of the most persistent problems with gaming on smartphones and tablets is the lack of physical controls. This has created an opportunity for developers to create unique game experiences, but more traditional-styled games that have found commercial and critical success, like EA’s Dead Space and Gameloft’s N.O.V.A. 2, mimic the control style found on traditional gamepads. Touch controls are good enough to play, but are still a far cry from the feel of a physical controller.

The SteelSeries Ion Bluetooth controller, revealed at CES, is the first product I’ve found that offers the gamepad experience without the bulk of a full-size controller. SteelSeries, a videogame hardware manufacturer that produces gaming keyboards, mice and headphones, developed the unique controller with an exceptional 20-hour rechargeable battery. What makes the Ion unique is its long battery life, incredibly small size, and its overall design and feel.

While SteelSeries did not have a working unit, I did have hands-on time with a model that the company stated was an accurate representation of the weight and final build of the controller. The Ion is roughly as tall and wide as a business card and about an inch thick. As you can see in the image below, the back is textured to mold to the hand, with space for fingers to rest properly. It feels very solid, and SteelSeries representatives tentatively said this is because the battery will be the majority of the weight and will fill most of the controller.

Like the Sony PS Vita, which recently released in Japan, the two thumbsticks are very low and very tight. They have a short field of movement but are very sturdy. The inspiration for the thumbsticks actually came from the PSP, according to SteelSeries. The D-Pad is similar to the original Nintendo Famicom controller, while the four face buttons are very close together. The buttons have deeply ingrained markings, so users will be able to tell which buttons they are pressing by touch alone. There are two bumpers and two additional buttons, which on larger controllers are typically the start and select/back buttons.

As games become more intensive and tablets and phones more powerful, better methods of control will be required to get the most out of these games. A controller that can easily slip in and out of the pocket, is comfortable to use, and has a long battery life, is an excellent solution, so long as game developers support it. For the Ion to work with mobile games, game developers must program commands for it instead of the touchscreen. A software development kit (SDK) isn’t available yet, though SteelSeries has worked with several developers and says that programming for the Ion requires little additional work.

Game controllers have been unsuccessful for smartphone and tablet use to date, either because they too big, or are built directly into bulky phone cases. The small size and long battery life are key differentiators for the Ion. SteelSeries’ history of creating high-end gaming and audio equipment can certainly bolster buyer confidence, although the Ion is the company’s first traditional-style gamepad.

The Ion is far from revolutionary, but it is a product that smartphone and tablet gamers have been requesting for years from manufacturers. The niche market interested in such a device is steadily growing, as both smartphone and tablet gaming becomes more prominent. Users may also be interested in the Ion as a portable controller to use with laptops or computers.

SteelSeries expects to release the Ion in Q2 or early Q3 2012. It hasn’t announced a price point for the controller yet.

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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 games below are not only of a high standard, they are also among the most ambitious, unique, and creative titles to hit the shelves in 2011.

Rayman Origins
Developer: Ubisoft Montpelliar
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360
Release Date: Nov 25th, 2011

Potentially, the return of Rayman held some significant problems. The likes of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon struggled when converting their classic PlayStation 1 formula to the current generation. While Crash remains a shadow of his former self, only recently has Spyro managed to leave a lasting impression with the release of Skylanders. For Ubisoft, the arrival of Rayman Origins needed to ensure the series was still relevant in 2011, and more importantly, the developers had to acknowledge that gimmicky, copycat gameplay would leave one of their most recognized assets in the lurch.

Fortunately for us, Ubisoft had their heads screwed on properly. Rayman Origins is the most vibrant, energetic, and inexplicably fun game of the year. The side-scrolling set-up may seem outdated in a year of Hollywood blockbusters, but this actually plays to its strengths. Ubisoft do the simple things right, combining accessible gameplay with a chirpy soundtrack and all-round superb production values, creating an absolute monster of a hit. Have a partner that doesn’t like gaming? Stick on some co-op and we dare them not to love it.

Shadows of the Damned
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: June 24th, 2011

From the creative minds of Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil 4), and Goichi Suda (killer7), Shadows of the Damned was never going to do things by the book. Taking on the role of Garcia Hotspur, it’s your job to travel through Hell in order to save love interest Paula. Luckily, Mr Hotspur just so happens to be a demon-hunter who’s eclectic range of weaponry lends itself to a debauchery of death.

Seems like a generic retelling of The Divine Comedy, right? Wrong. Garcia’s sidekick is not only an insanely crude and loveable skull, it’s also his only weapon. Johnson is arguably one of the best characters in gaming history, and much of the title’s tasteless humour stems from him. Of course, it also helps that Shadows of the Damned utilises some intelligent gameplay devices, centered around light and darkness. Garcia can only perform certain tasks in each state, meaning he must shoot goats heads in order to switch between the two. If you’re not following at this point, it’s probably not worth mentioning any ghouls that lurk within the shadows you so willingly create.

Flaunting a handful of ludicrous set-pieces, continually humorous one-liners and enough self-awareness to deem the oddness acceptable, Shadows of the Damned is a smartly-produced romp through the Underworld that should be experienced by all. If this was a list of the most unique games of the year, there’s little doubt it would comfortably sit atop the throne.

Child of Eden
Developer: Q? Entertainment Inc.
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Release Date: June 14th, 2011 and Sep 23rd, 2011 respectively

Many journalists compare playing Child of Eden to being on drugs, but that would be doing it a major disservice. For one, the lack of sales means you can now pick this one up for less than $10, a stern reminder that creativity doesn’t guarantee success. With Tetsuya Mizuguchi at the helm, this title should be seen as the spiritual successor to Rez, another high-energy, inexplicably colourful and trippy jaunt through a world that intends to batter the senses in any way possible.

Alongside being one of the most visually stunning games of the year, Child of Eden is also the best use of Kinect to date. Many titles for Microsoft’s sensor don’t bother with the wielding of two-hands, or employ it simply because they can. In Mizuguchi’s mind, this kind of control is central to how the game should work. One hand attacks while the other defends in a scheme that feels entirely natural throughout. The latter levels offer a stern test of your skills, and there’s certainly plenty of room to go back and experience each memorable stage more than once. This really is an absolute steal for Kinect owners.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
Developer: Vicious Cycle
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: July 15th, 2011

You have to admire the Earth Defense Force series. Released amidst a wave of big-budgeted behemoths, it could have come and gone without making a splash. What it lacks in funds, it more than makes up with playability. Vitally, the game manages to outline itself within a congested market. Sure, the graphics won’t blow your mind, and the production values aren’t of a particularly high standard, but this doesn’t matter. Insect Armageddon offers fun in abundance, never deviating from the human desire to destroy everything in their path. Big spiders, giant robots, big giant spider robots, there’s a plethora of oversized beasties to eliminate with friends.

Most importantly for EDF, the series seems to have reached cult status. Ever watched a low-budget film and enjoyed it more than a cinema release? That’s exactly what Namco were aiming for, and boy, did they succeed.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Developer: UTV Ignition
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Sep 9th , 2011

There aren’t many games that replicate stories from ancient Jewish texts, and El Shaddai underlines why. Despite being a brilliantly inventive and stylish action-adventure title, most casual players wouldn’t even know it exists. This is a huge shame, as Enoch’s quest to return fallen angels to heaven offers some absolutely stunning design. Travelling through the levels of a so-called ‘tower’, many areas are jaw-droppingly beautiful. Just like Shadows of the Damned, the intricacies of light and dark are called into action, becoming more than one of the game’s central themes. Here, Enoch must rid the weapon he is carrying of darkness for it to be most effective, as he acrobatically splatters the enemy’s armour across the screen.

El Shaddai’s biggest weakness is repetitiveness, but there’s enough genius to combat any frustration this might provide. This one has to be experienced to be believed, though even after playing, you may not understand what the developers were getting at in terms of narrative.

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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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Multiple sources within the magazine confirmed that GamePro employees, including executives, received phone calls first-thing this morning with the dreaded news. GamePro’s U.S. website, which has been online for 13 years, will be incorporated into a gaming channel at sister site PCWorld on December 5. The majority of GamePro staff will be laid off.

“Basically, the entire [Gamepro US] portfolio is being shuttered,” a source at the magazine told VentureBeat.

The few remaining GamePro Media employees, including current president Marci Yamaguchi Hughes, will move to GamePro Custom Solutions, reports IndustryGamers. There they will create custom content for vendors and events.

The news comes after GamePro’s website saw its highest traffic ever last week (page views were double the normal amount, our source said), and after the company released its first quarterly magazine earlier this month (monthly print issues were too costly to keep up).

Even though moving to a quarterly publication schedule wasn’t a good sign for GamePro, employees were still proud of the final product, which was larger and featured higher-quality paper than the monthly issues.

The shutdown is a case of “creative success not falling in line with business success,” our source said. GamePro’s international operations, which include magazines in Spain, France, and Germany, will continue to operate. Though I can’t imagine that employees working at those locations are confident of their job security.

IDG will retain ownership of the GamePro brand, which means that it could eventually revive U.S. operations (don’t hold your breath for a new print magazine though). According to our source, it’s still unclear what’s going to happen to GamePro’s legacy content, some of which is “very valuable.”

GamePro was perhaps the first gaming magazine I began reading as a child, and it definitely helped to foster my unhealthy addiction to gaming. While the magazines quality wavered over time, I thought it was headed in a fine new direction with the recent website revamp and slick print design. It’s a shame we’ll never get to see GamePro reclaim its former glory.

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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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Customers will be asked to pay $6.99 per month in order to access dozens of games, such as Mahjong Towers and Mystery Case Files, through the Big Fish app, which will initially require Wi-Fi access to operate. If it works, it could be a new source of ongoing revenue on a platform where it hasn’t been easy to make money in the past.

Traditionally the iPad subscription service, which was introduced in February this year, has been used more for magazines and newspapers. This is the first time that Apple has approved such an “all you can eat” service for games. Paul Thelen (pictured), founder of Big Fish Games, revealed that gaining approval for the service did not come easily: “It took longer than usual to be approved. They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.”

At launch, the service will be available for $4.99 per month, which will increase to $6.99 early next year, when more titles have been added. There will also be a free version of the service, which will limit playing time to 30 minutes per day, and will be supported by advertising. The service competes in a way with iSwifter, which is charging a flat fee of $4.99 for access to its app that allows users to play Adobe Flash-based games on an iPad. iSwifter tried a subscription fee, but found users weren’t quite ready for it.

The iPad service may just be the start of the Big Fish subscription initiative, as the company has designed its application so that it can be easily modified to work on Android tablets and smartphones, as well as internet connected televisions. According to Thelen, an Android version of the app should be ready by the first quarter of 2012.

Big Fish Games was founded in 2002 and is now one of the leading developers and publishers of casual games. The company distributes more than two million games per day worldwide, and last year generated $140 million in sales revenue. Thelen revealed that most of its sales are from downloads to a PC or mobile device, with about 75 percent of customers being women over the age of 30.

The company is currently in a position to pursue a public offering, according to Thelen: “We’re at scale, have great momentum and remain in a position to pursue a public offering or any number of alternatives if the markets allow”. It will be interesting to see whether this subscription service will prove to be successful, and helps the company to meet that goal. If it does prove to be a hit, then other publishers in the mobile gaming market will no doubt start looking to develop similar models of their own.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Gaming startup PlayJam has raised a new $5 million round of funding to bring games to smart TVs and set-top boxes, the company announced Tuesday.

PlayJam is known for producing games on internet-connected TV platforms from Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic. The company says it’s seen over 6 billion game downloads on those platforms alone.

However, with the increase in devices that give televisions web connectivity — like Blu-ray players, game consoles and set-top boxes — PlayJam has the opportunity to start producing games that are independent of any one distribution platform, especially now that it has money in the bank.

The Smart TV gaming market is just getting started, but PlayJam is poised to become the market leader. The company said half of  customers that download and play free games eventually buy a premium game. Also, its consumers spend an average of 23 minutes per session. (I’m guessing that session is the time it takes someone to start and then stop playing a game without any pauses or breaks.)

The new round, PlayJam’s first, includes participation by GameStop Digital Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Endeavour Ventures, London Venture Partners and others. Founded in 1999, the London-based startup has over 550 games in its library to date.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Investment firm DCM, which launched its $100 million A-Fund for Android startups back in April, today announced its first round of investments with seven promising startups.

The A-Fund is the first dedicated entirely to Android, and it competes directly with Kleiner Perkins’ $200 million iFund for iOS startups. DCM said it chose to focus on the Android platform primarily because of its massive growth. (Google said last week it has activated a total of 190 million Android devices, with 600,000 new activations daily.)

Given its global presence, DCM is eyeing startups from all over the world for the A-Fund. It’s also stage-agnostic, so the startups the A-Fund is investing in are all over the map in terms of their maturity. The fund’s investors include Japanese mobile social gaming network GREE, Japanese mobile carrier KDDI, and Chinese Internet company Tencent.

Here are the first round of A-Fund investments:

Appia: Formerly known as PocketGear, the company relaunched earlier this year as Appia and helps carriers create mobile app stores of their own. It now processes over one million app downloads per day for its partners, including mobile operators, handset companies, and more.

Billing Revolution: A mobile payments company that offers single-click mobile payments.

PapayaMobile: The top Android mobile social gaming network in the US and China. It has over 30 million users, and developers have integrated its engine into more than 350 games.

Happy Elements: A social game maker that has taken the non-English Facebook market by storm. It has 2.5 million daily active users, the most popular game on the Kaixin001 network in China, and the second and third most popular games on Japan’s Mixi service.

Kanbox: A leading cloud storage and sharing service in China.

Loki Studios: Pioneering location and environment-aware smartphone games, Loki has launched the Pokemon-esque game Geomon.

Kakao Corp: Creator of cross-platform mobile messaging app KakaoTalk, which has over 25 million users globally.

Blizzard Entertainment is known for taking its time before releasing a game. So far, the strategy has worked — while some of its games face delays, it has yet to deliver a game that has not been a smash hit. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is expected to generate around $350 million and World of Warcraft has more than 11 million subscribers paying $15 each month to play the game. Diablo 3 was originally slated for a late 2011 release, but Morhaime said on the company’s most recent earnings call that the company wouldn’t commit to that release date.

“We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before it’s ready,” Morhaime said. “While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too.”

Diablo 2, the last game in the series, was immensely popular when it came out more than a decade ago in 2000. Blizzard Entertainment only released one expansion pack for the game, but it came to define a lot of tropes that now commonly appear in online games — such as reliance on loot-seeking behavior and frictionless communication between friends and players. Diablo’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.

Today’s announcement could put Diablo 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Electronic Arts’ Hail Mary pass in the online gaming space, in a similar release window. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a subscription-based online role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe that is more like World of Warcraft than Diablo 3. But it might have to compete with Diablo 3 because it’s still a free-to-play online game that has an equally large fan base.

Blizzard Entertainment started the beta for the game, which takes place in the first level of the game, on Tuesday. Morhaime said the company would expand the beta and issue additional beta keys after it decided to delay the release of the game.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

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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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