Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Google’s Music Beta first look: it’s miserable – Google’s Music Beta is supposed to provide users with a way …
Blizzard’s flagship online game, World of Warcraft, shed around 600,000 players in the last quarter even though it released one of its most successful expansion packs yet. Blizzard chief executive Mike Morhaime said players blitzed through the content faster than …
It used to be that if a Western game showed up in China, it was pirated. But times have changed, and Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase.com have announced that StarCraft II is beginning a long-awaited open beta test in China on …
En Masse Entertainment is announcing today that its blockbuster-wannabe online game Tera will be launched by Atari this year in the North American market.
In one sense, that’s not a big deal as there were scores of massively multiplayer online …
Who’s responsible for Blizzard Entertainment’s string of money-minting video games? Meet Paul Sams, the chief operating officer of Blizzard, now a division of Activision Blizzard, the gaming powerhouse created from the $18 billion merger in 2007 of Activision and Vivendi …
Rift is one of the biggest bets in video game history. Trion Worlds has been building the fantasy role-playing online game world for almost five years and has raised more than $100 million to build the game and the dynamic …
With 12 million paying subscribers, World of WarCraft is the juggernaut of the massively multiplayer online game business. But Star Wars: The Old Republic is waiting in the wings to challenge WoW’s dominance of online gaming. After many years of …
Electronic Arts reported a bigger loss than a year ago, blaming a lack of video-game hits during the holiday season. But the Redwood City, Calif.-based company touted the growth of its digital online game business as a reason for optimism.…
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
VentureBeat’s top ten video games of the year (vote for your favorite) — Game publishers aren’t thrilled that video …
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is Blizzard Entertainment‘s most ambitious expansion pack for its wildly popular online role-playing game yet. Instead of focusing on adding additional content for high-level players, like it did in its previous expansion, Blizzard went back to …
The free-to-play model has all but taken over the online game industry. Next stop: everything else.
Free online games, which make money through upgrades and other digital bonuses which help speed play along, continues to grow in popularity. Nearly one …
Activision Blizzard must get tired of setting records all the time.
Call of Duty: Black Ops has shattered the previous record for launch-day game sales set by its predecessor Modern Warfare 2 and raked in $360 million for the largest …
It was only a matter of time before musical group Tenacious D took the stage at the closing ceremony of Blizzcon 2010. When they did, the crowd of around 20,000 attendees almost brought the roof of the Anaheim convention center …
Roughly 20,000 people attended World of Warcraft and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty creator Blizzard Entertainment’s Blizzcon 2010 convention in Anaheim, Calif. A good number of them pulled out all stops to dress up as their favorite Blizzard game characters.…
Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of games like Warcraft and Diablo, announced today that its newest expansion pack for the insanely popular World of Warcraft online game would be available for a preliminary download.
This is another of the first large-scale …
Turbine’s online role-playing game Lord of the Rings Online has doubled its revenue since it moved from a subscription model to a free-to-play model earlier last month, said the game’s executive producer, Kate Paiz. Paiz made the comment at GDC …
World of Warcraft is successfully holding defending its territory against the onslaught of free-to-play fantasy role-playing games. Blizzard Entertainment said today that WoW has more than 12 million paying subscribers, making it the biggest subscription online game by far.
World …
Following through on its pledge to launch two major games in a year, Blizzard Entertainment said it will release World of Warcraft: Cataclysm on Dec. 7. The game is a surefire hit because World of Warcraft remains the most popular …
AFK Interactive is one of 20 promising startups included in the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition, and is in the running for one of two coveted Tesla Awards.
AFK Interactive’s M4 platform (Massively Multi-user Mobile Monetization) is the holy grail for …
Mike Morhaime, the president of Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment division, said the coming release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was the company’s “most ambitious” in history.
Add to that the release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm, and the two …
