Habbo Signs In 200 Million

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Sulake has announced that Habbo Hotel recently reached 200 million registrations from 50 countries. Over 13 million unique visitors visit Habbo Hotel each month, spending a total of 45 million hours in the virtual world, with 42.5 million playing the game at least once in 2010.

“It’s been a wonderful journey to see Habbo Hotel grow during the past 10 years from a small Finland-based virtual community to a service reaching millions of users every month worldwide,” says Sulake CEO Timo Soininen. “Celebrating 200 million registrations is truly a milestone for us. The fast, continuous development of Habbo Hotel has enabled us to make quick changes and create new features according to our users’ needs. We are excited to reveal many fresh and exciting features and improvements in 2011.”

iPhone 4 Sells Out During Verizon Pre-Orders

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Verizon has set a record for launch-day sales in just two hours with the iPhone 4 pre-orders. Additionally, the company reports that it has sold out of its entire allotment of pre-orders.

“This was an exciting day,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer for Verizon Wireless. “In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history. And, when you consider these initial orders were placed between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., it is an incredible success story. It is gratifying to know that our customers responded so enthusiastically to this exclusive offer designed to reward them for their loyalty.”

Source: DigitalTrends.com

Dark Souls Not Demon’s Souls 2, Says Developer

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Demon’s Souls is an oppressively hard action RPG set in a dark Western-style fantasy universe, while Dark Souls looks like an oppressively hard action RPG set in a dark Western-style fantasy universe from the exact same developer. Despite all of the similarities, both obvious and sublime, director Hidetaka Miyazaki claims Dark Souls is a not a sequel to Demon’s Souls.

“What we we want to clear up is this is actually not a sequel to Demon’s Souls – we’re treating this as a brand new game created by the same director and producer,” said Miyazaki. “Again it is created by the same director and producer, so the base concept and themes are very similar. However, the story itself as well as a lot of the game features have been recreated so that we can present this as a brand new title.”

Source: CVG

3D TV Market Expected At $100 Billion By 2014

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Research and Markets has released a report that they expect the 3D TV market size to grow to more than $100 billion by the end of 2014. In particular, the North American 3D TV market is expected to surpass $35 billion by 2015.

“The 3D TV market is still in its infancy,” said the report, “and certain things need to happen to lead to further adoption. New 3D TV channels, programming and films are important, as is making sure these devices come down in price; there’s also an issue of technology standardization that needs to be resolved between passive and active 3D.”

Valentine’s Day Comes For Pac-Man

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Namco Bandai has announced that they are brining Ms. Pac-Man to the iPad just before Valentine’s Day. No price was given, but given that the iPhone version costs $4.99, it will likely be similar.

Additionally, the iOS version of Pac-Man will be receiving an update just in time for Valentine’s Day. The pellet chomper will be able to navigate in a red maze in a Valentine’s Day themed virtual cabinet.

Microsoft: Downloadable F2P ‘Evolution Of The Business’

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The retail PC gaming industry has been ravaged by piracy in the past several years, leading to wholesale changes by PC publishers going online. Microsoft has followed suit with this, releasing Age of Empires Online as a free-to-play title supported by micro-transactions.

“Of course we’re concerned about hackers and their ability to thwart our transaction model, but producing a downloadable game and a free-to-play one in particular really helps to prevent that,” said Microsoft Games Studios general manager Dave Luehmann. “It’s just the evolution of the business. Console retail space has been strong and valuable for publishers, developers and retailers for a long time.”

“In the console world, piracy is a little better understood and managed. Whereas on an open platform, you need to have a different kind of business model that s more resilient to piracy, he added. In Eastern countries, transaction-based online games have demonstrably been more secure against piracy, and I think it makes sense for us in the West to catch up to this.”

“While there are advantages to the online market, there are disadvantages too. The online marketplace gives you more possibilities of having longer legs and a stronger business. However, the launch of your game becomes less of an event,” noted Luehmann. “It’s hard to have a big get-together and launch party for a download game like the ones we had for titles like Age of Empires 3. It s a different sequence of events the launch isn’t one big event, it s something that grows over a longer period of time.”

“As you get out in the market and establish yourself, it can be more of an event when you introduce new content. We’ve certainly seen WoW have great success with that, although that’s partly because retail is still an important part of their business model,” he continued. “I think that s the challenge with these sorts of game. You have to slowly build that word of mouth, it doesn t come in a flash, it s a persistent ongoing marketing campaign.”

Source: MCV

NGP Called ‘Dream’ By Developer

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Sony recently revealed a lot of launch facts about the NGP. One of the British developers reported that Sony is looking to make games available on PSN the same day they release on Flash memory.

“NGP is a developer’s dream Sony is finally doing the things developers have been crying out for for years,” said the source, adding, “the Wipeout HD PS3 engine running on PS3 with no changes to the art platform. That means full resolution, full 60 frames per second. It looks exactly the same as it does on PS3 all the shader effects are in there.”

However, for a PS3/NGP release, SCE wants there to be some difference or connectivity between the two. Still, the development environment is described as roughly the same, though with some advantages.

“Sony has made it completely developer-centric this time,” the source added. “[The development kit] is really simple to plug in and use. It opens direct in Windows Explorer and you can see all systems on a network so you could, for example, update the firmware of multiple NGPs at once. A PS3 dev station can take three hours to set-up. This looks like it will take under 20 minutes. It just makes everything easier they’ve really thought about it this time”.

Source: Eurogamer