Apple Unleashes A Lion

Apple has revealed the details for its latest OS X 10.7 Lion update, and it will incorporate many features of the iPad. This includes Launchpad functionality similar to the iPad home screen and Mission Control that will combine elements of Expose, Dashboard, Spaces and full-screen apps.

Apps will also be able to auto-save and auto-resume and operate in full-screen mode. The Mac App store will launch within 90 days for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, while 10.7 will launch in Summer 2011.

GameStop Launches iOS Game

GameStop has announced that it has launched its first independent game. Called Buck and the Coin of Destiny, the mobile title will be available for iOS devices for $.99.

The side-scrolling game will see Buck the Bunny jumping through forests, caverns and fleets of pirate ships to get the Coin of Destiny. Through the end of October, GameStop will donate 10 percent of each mobile game purchase to animal rescue and rehabilitation efforts, up to $5,000.

To find out more, visit www.gamestop.com/buck {link no longer active}

LinkedIn Gets Chinese Competitor In Ushi

While LinkedIn has managed to carve out a good niche as a professional social network in the West, Ushi (which means outstanding professional in Mandarin) wants to do the same for China. The site’s invitation-only private beta started in March 2010 and has grown to over 60,000 members, using just user invites.

Roughly 70 percent of Ushi’s users are active every month and 80 percent of visitors are located in mainland China. While the Shanghai-based service is much smaller than LinkedIn’s 80 million users, it recently secured $1.5 million in investment and can be used in both English and Chinese. Ushi also allows users to microblog, like on Twitter and users pay money to send messages outside of their network.

“We plan to test various revenue streams to find out what really resonates well with our users,” said Ushi founder Dominic Penaloza. “We see huge opportunities in e-commerce and recruiting/jobs. Business magazines have already dubbed us China’s Linkedin, and that s a convenient short description, but we are planning some exciting innovations that we believe make Ushi not a so-called clone but instead something even better.”

Source: VentureBeat

Feature: The Evolution Of Guild Wars

The gaming industry has changed quite a bit since Guild Wars first released in 2005. Back then, the primary way that people thought of online games was subscription based MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest and it is against those games that Guild Wars competed. In 2010, however, free-to-play games have risen and now compete for time with all games, including Guild Wars. We spoke with Chris Lye, global brand director at ArenaNet, about how changes in the industry have affected Guild Wars and will affect Guild Wars 2.

[a]list: How did ArenaNet initially anticipate that running without a subscription fee was optimal for an MMO?

Chris Lye: I think it comes down to the original three founders and their vision. They had aspirations and they were good network developers – they worked on creating [Blizzard’s] Battle.Net. They wanted to make [Guild Wars] efficient so it would reduce the overhead for net maintenance. Games are about innovation, and if you’re not innovating in both development and business style, you’re dead in the water. They looked at WoW and said, “You can’t compete in that realm, so we’re going to sell a box product that people can play as long as they want.”

If you look at the [list of top] fantasy online games, Guild Wars is on there because there’s no subscription fee. The results speak for themselves, with several million players and now everyone is trickling into free-to-play. As people get savvier, F2P makes sense where players pay for what they want. The way we see it is it keeps us honest, getting direct feedback and having to compete with several games.

[a]list: Trying to compete with World of Warcraft directly seems to be a zero-sum gain.

Chris Lye: You do not succeed by competing with what [Blizzard] does; that’s what we originally thought and still think.

[a]list: Guild Wars games are a unique combination of online content and retail sales. How is that accounted for in marketing the game?

Chris Lye: It’s not a unique marketing challenge but you cannot treat your distribution and retail as separate. If it’s done well, it’s like a good piece of music – the two are interwoven and never separated. They don’t exist in a vacuum from each other.

There’s a calculator for people who have achievements to find out what rewards they get in game [for them]. This has driven a lot of people to use the currency [to help get the achievements] and that has driven 30 percent of our online transactions. If people separate that, you’re doing it the wrong way.

[a]list: When Guild Wars initially released, it was competing against subscription MMOs, but now I guess your main thing is being better than F2P titles…

Chris Lye: That’s really not that hard, to be honest! We don’t refer to [Guild Wars] as F2P – there’s a stigma that comes along with it that we want to avoid.

[a]list: What lessons have you learned in marketing Guild Wars and its expansions that you are applying to Guild Wars 2?

Chris Lye: It’s already [affecting what we are doing]. The original marketing team, they took a tack where they tried to position Guild Wars as a solution to all things that were in MMOs at the time, like waiting for boss queues and competing for [monster] spawns.

So busy talking about what you aren’t, you’re not talking about what you are – it’s action oriented fantasy story; that’s our focus so we’re definitely changing things this time around. The original game was positioned strongly as a PvP (Player vs. Player) game. The reality of it is… the majority of players play it as a PvE (Player vs. Environment) game, and we want to reinforce that if people love a PvE game they’ll like the PvE in Guild Wars.

Guild Wars 2 should look amazing.

[a]list: Will there be micro-payments in Guild Wars 2 right off the bat?

Chris Lye: Yes, and there’s already things like extra storage, costumes, pet unlocks packs, PvP packs in Guild Wars, so there’s a fair amount of stuff in the stores right now.

[a]list: Well, how do you think you’ll enhance the micro-transactions for Guild Wars 2?

Chris Lye: There’s a bunch of categories when it comes to micro-transactions, and we haven’t finalized all of our plans. We do know that stuff that we’ve done in Guild Wars is primarily cosmetic and convenience oriented and we get feedback on the value and quality [of our virtual items] and we’re going to use it for Guild Wars 2. We don’t want to go into micro-transactions cold for Guild Wars 2 and we recognize it is an important thing for the fan-base. Some will be available from day one, though.

[a]list: Would ArenaNet ever consider making the original Guild Wars free to download and supported by micro-transactions?

Chris Lye: We haven’t considered what the business model for what Guild Wars will be after Guild Wars 2 launches, so as for what the model will be, we don’t know. We don’t know what the player patterns will be; many think people will split time between the two games.

[a]list: That’s the nice part about not having a subscription fee – it’s easier to come back to games and there’s no pressure in maintaining a subscription.

Chris Lye: Right, you don’t have to worry about the double jeopardy of MMOs! Once the person has lost interest, it’s hard to win them back.

I think that the subscription fee is viable, but it is not inclusive. You’ll have a dominant company and it locks out all the similar games and that adds to the stagnation of the genre. I’ve heard about game ideas that were really intriguing and could have done well, if it wasn’t subscription fee. But no, they were locked into that because that was the publishing method people knew at the time.

[a]list: How will your experience in the online space affect how Guild Wars 2 is marketed when it releases?

Chris Lye: I can say broadly about the marketing, and you’ve seen it already, that it will be in the social media. I’ve always believed that communities have a big effect; they can support original content and taking your message far and wide. We wish we could give all our ardent fans a megaphone.

[a]list: So a large part of this is, and you’ll have to excuse the poitical metaphor, to “rally the base?”

Chris Lye: Definitely rally the base. We’re going up against people who love to outspend each other, but at the end of the day, it’s about the gameplay. You can outspend each other with your fancy pre-rendered cinematics, but these people are smart – they want to see gameplay and we’re going to show them the game.

[a]list: To conclude, how is marketing Guild Wars different in different parts of the world, like Europe and East Asia?

Chris Lye: When it comes to Europe, the main thing is you never launch in the Summer, because all your key markets are on vacations, so that’s one of the harsh realities in Europe. Our German customers are among the most loyal in the world – in Germany, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft are close in popularity. They’re rabid, we love going to Gamecom; they have a very active community they love to cos-play.

In terms of Asia, we’ haven’t made huge inroads. The original design was not conducive for traditional MMO players over there. We’re looking to do better in Guild Wars 2.

[a]list:  Chris, thanks.

Microsoft Exec Compares 3D Gaming Efforts To ‘Science Experiment’

While Sony and Nintendo have jumped in head first into the 3D gaming trend, Microsoft has taken a notably more reserved tack. Phil Spencer, corporate vice president for Microsoft Game Studios, likens the 3D gaming efforts to “a science experiment,” bagging on Sony’s hardware business in the process.

“As an entertainment company, we’re trying to do things that millions of people can go enjoy today, and for better or for worse, people just don’t really have TVs in their house right now that are going to do 3D in a way that’s going to work,” said Spencer. “As a corporate mandate, I don’t need to sell you a new TV. That’s not part of my business model. Other companies maybe have that part of their business model. I don’t.”

“A bunch of people sitting around the living room wearing $150 glasses — I’m just not sure that’s kind of mainstream today,” he added. “Trying to get a bunch of people playing together in a room where not everybody sees the same thing … is kind of a weird disconnect to me.”

Source: CNN

LOLapps Launching Romero’s Ravenwood Fair

While John Romero is probably best remembered for the work he did on the creation of the Doom and Quake series, he’s actually been bouncing around in a variety gaming development jobs for the past several years. Witness his first Facebook game Ravenwood Fair, which is debuting for game publisher LOLapps.

LOLapps is looking to break through into the group of the biggest social game publishers, a list that includes Zynga, CrowdStar, EA-Playfish and Disney-Playdom. They consider bringing on talent like Romero important to establishing their place in the social gaming sphere and will likely bring him on full time if the game succeeds.

Romero thinks that the quality in Facebook games is turning, pointing to industry veteran Brian Reynolds’ recent FrontierVille. “I knew when the game developers moved into social games it would get more gamed up,” he said.

Source: VentureBeat

RIM Responds To Jobs Criticism

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently bagged on the idea of RIM catching up to iPhone sales and the idea that seven-inch tablets could work. In response, Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM, issued a statement.

“For those of us who live outside of Apple s distortion field, we know that 7″ tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience,” said Balsillie. “We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash.”

“We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple,” he continued. “And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders.”

“As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story,” concluded Balsillie.

Source: Blogs.Blackberry.com