Amazon Offering Cheap Shipping For Pre-Orders

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Amazon continued its push towards attracting hardcore gamers by announcing that they were cutting down on shipping prices for certain pre-ordered games. Now, gamers pay just $.99, as opposed to $5.99 for shipping (those that use Amazon Prime have it ship for free).

This deal applies to games such as Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Fallout: New Vegas and LittleBigPlanet 2. With the addition to the $10 to $20 in credit on Amazon the site gives out with new purchases, they’re fighting hard against the retail chains of the world.

Google Instant Launches

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Google has unveiled its latest search feature called Google Instant. This new search service is being lauded as the future of search, with going beyond asked for features like spell correction and the ability to “star” a search result.

“Can we optimize search even more Can we make it even faster said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience. During the last few months we had a key insight which we call Google Instant.

This means that users will see search results appear as they type them. “It’s search at the speed of thought,” Mayer said.

Source: PC Mag

Social Network Users Increasingly Playing Social Games

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According to Lightspeed Research, 58 percent of social network users claim to have played a social game, with 68 percent having done so in the last year. Also, 17 percent claimed that they were ‘addicted’ to a social game.

“Social games are becoming a key aspect in people’s lives, with almost one in five people feeling they are addicted, said Lightspeed Europe MD Ralph Risk. “At the same time they are opening up the gaming market to new groups of people, making it a great opportunity for brands to communicate with players through providing an engaging experience and useful and relevant rewards.”

Source: GI.biz

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Donwloaded Over 300k Times

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Capcom announced today that Dead Rising 2: Case Zero has been downloaded 328,290 times. The Xbox Live exclusive title was available for $5.

This success could heard in a new era of paid demos on consoles. While Dead Rising 2: Case Zero has content original from the full game, it gives a good sampling of the basic gameplay for Dead Rising 2 and will encourage purchases while it generates revenue at the same time.

AppTV Seeks To Disrupt Gaming Industry

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Some people think that gaming in the very near future will be defined by cloud computing, where services will be available across multiple devices. Appy Entertainment intended to be on the forefront of this brave new gaming landscape.

Our team has deep roots in the console industry, having built High Moon Studios (now an Activision-Blizzard studio), writes Chris Ulm CEO Appy Entertainment, Inc. We’ve developed on console systems from the Atari 2600 (yes, really) and we’ve built everything from character based adventure games like Abe s Oddysee, to fighting games like Ready2Rumble boxing, multi-player first person shooters like Darkwatch and third person action games such as The Bourne Conspiracy. We ‘get’ console games, and with 4.5 million downloads across our three apps, FaceFighter, Zombie Pizza and Tune Runner, we know a bit about the App Store as well.

He notes that not only are the PS3 and Xbox 360 competing for control of the living room, soon Google TV and Apple TV will be transferring their mobile OS programs to television as well. They will continue to expand and try to take their momentum from the mobile sphere and transfer it to a television set up.

App TV will become the dominant disruptive gaming force because it will be convenient, cheap and integrated choice, allowing both internet access as well as subsidized native and cloud gaming in a TV centric environment, writes Ulm. App based gaming will be cheaper and ‘good enough’ for the majority of people and it will be the operating system which sits on top of existing console and cable boxes, so non-enthusiast consumers will not feel that they have to choose. But when the next wave of consoles comes to market, many of them may be less inclined to buy an expensive specialty box with costly purpose-built titles when they are drowning in low cost cloud based and native alternatives.

To find out more, read his full article at Gaming Business Review.

Success For ‘Fate Of Carmine’ Campaign

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Microsoft and Epic Games recently announced success with their Fate of Carmine campaign. The up or down vote over whether the next Carmine character in Gears of War 3 would die has raised $150,000 in donations since July.

Players could vote by buying Xbox Live shirts for their avatars or real-life shirts for themselves reading Carmine Must Die or Save Carmine for a few Microsoft points and $20 respectively. While the votes have been totaled, people will have to wait until Gears of War 3 releases to find out the results.