Outspark Lights Flint Publishing Platform

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Outspark has announced that they are launching a new service called Flint. This new publishing platform for third-party MMOs and browser-based games will help MMO developers with distribution, audience growth, analytics, marketing and monetization, the first being Aeria Games’ Lord Of Ages.

“We’ve spent almost five years carefully creating the modules and building the tools that have come together as Flint, and will enable MMO developers and publishers around the world to use our platform, said Outspark CEO Susan Chloe in a statement. With our recent move into publishing third-party titles, web-based MMOs and our growing reach through distribution partnerships, we intend to make Flint the best platform for online game distribution and operation.”

Battlefield 3 May Not Be On Steam

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Electronic Arts has submitted a list of the digital retailers for Battlefield 3, and one listing is conspicuous in its absence: Steam. While EA’s Origin service is listed, along with Direct2Drive and GamersGate, Valve’s download service is not.

“When a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services – it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us, describes EA Support, hinting at the problem. At present, this is the case with only one download service. While EA offers its entire portfolio to this site, they have elected to not post many of our games. We hope to find a mutually agreeable solution to this issue soon.”

Source: Joystiq

Apes Walk Like Men In Viral Videos

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As part of the viral promotional efforts for Rise of the Planet of the Apes there have been a few different scientific videos of apes doing human things. Check out the clips below.

Postal III: All Its Guilty Glory

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Few game series are more shameless than Postal, and developer Running With Scissors is cranking that up for the third game. This trailer isn’t really friendly for work or anywhere you might be embarrassed in watching it.

 

NCAA Football 2012 Launches Live On Ustream

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Today from 12 PM until 6 PM EST on Ustream, fans of NCAA Football can check in and join in with a live streaming launch party for NCAA Football 2012. Over 6 hours of gameplay will be streamed and the entire game will be reviewed with members of the development team. Fans will have the opportunity to win exclusive prizes including a custom Mark Ingram New Era cap; a NCAA Football signed by Mark Ingram, Nick Fairley, Jake Locker, and DeMarco Murray; and FREE copies of NCAA Football 12 to be delivered on launch day. Fans can watch and chat on Facebook as well. Also this week, ‘The Making of NCAA Football 12,’ a four-part series on the development of NCAA Football 12 will air on ESPNU. Each episode is a behind-the-scenes look into how EA Sports races to finish its perennial college football powerhouse. Episode 1 premieres on ESPNU July 14 at 7 PM EST.

Free-To-Play Dominates App Store Revenue, Says Study

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According to a study by Flurry, free-to-play games generated 65 percent of the revenue generated by games in the App Store in June 2011. In January 2011, F2P games had only a 39 percent share of the revenue.

“When you make your game free and add in-app purchases, two powerful things can happen: first, more people will likely try your game since you’ve made the ante zero,” explains Flurry’s Jeferson Valadares. “And second, you will likely take more total money, since different players can now spend different amounts depending on their engagement and preferences. It’s not unheard of for individual players to spend into the tens of thousands in a game they like.”

Data suggests that the amount of paying players for a game varies from 1/2 percent to 6 percent. “Although this means that more than 90 percent of players will not spend a single penny,” noted Valadares. “It also means that players who love your game spend much more than the $0.99 you were considering charging for the app.”

Source: blog.flurry.com

Digital Consumer Shift May Favor Branding

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The rise of the digital market means that consumers have more power than they ever had before. Consumers can easily compare prices, find coupons or discounts, net a free shipping offer, or some other bonus

But this is no longer relegated only to online commerce, writes Gian Fulgoni. Consumers have also become accustomed to using the Internet to root out the best price for any product before they buy in a retail store. And, the rapid emergence of smartphones which are now being activated at the rate of nearly 1 million per week has made these pricing tools mobile, giving consumers the ability to use them in brick-and-mortar locations in addition to online. As one retailer recently proclaimed to me ‘I never thought I’d be competing with Amazon in my own stores!’.

This trend forces retailers to compete with offerings online. The opportunity in this for advertisers is potentially large, as marketing becomes a way to counterweight these advantages for online retailers.

Advertising’s role in this new world becomes not just a demand driver but also a counterbalancing force to price as the main determinant of consumer choice, writes Fulgoni. Ad spending trends certainly support this conclusion: TV ad sales rose 9 percent in the first quarter of this year, while the IAB just reported a 23 percent growth in online advertising. Tellingly, in 2010, display advertising grew faster than search — for the first time since the IAB began reporting its data — driven by a 35 percent increase in spending on video ads.

This brand focus could help lead to focus on ad creative. Controlling a brand’s behavior over several different levels could become a key component across different media channels.

In an age of consumer pricing power, we need to remember that advertising plays a key role in building consumer demand and creating the willingness for consumers to buy a more expensive ‘premium brand’ rather than a lower priced alternative, or a generic, or private label brand. In fact, research conducted by comScore ARS has shown that TV creative is responsible for 52 percent of the changes over time in a brand’s market share, four times greater than the impact of other elements of the media plan, notes Fulgoni. That said, it’s vital that marketers make sure that their creative is doing its intended persuasive job by testing it. I wrote about this in a blog post entitled ‘Four times zero is still zero,’ pointing out that even dramatically increased spending behind poor creative will not move the needle. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s been proven time and again that great creative helps build great brands . and great brands don’t have to join pricing’s race to the bottom. Today, especially, that’s a vital point for marketers to remember.

Source: AdAge.com

Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe Edition Coming To Origin

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Electronics Arts has revealed the details to the Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe Edition. Retailing for $79.99, it will be available exclusively from EA’s Origin download market.

The N7 Digital Deluxe Edition features an art book, comic with unique cover and and a lithograph similar to many other limited-edition releases, save for the fact that all these items are digital. In game content will include the N7 Arsenal Pack, a Robotic Dog companion, an alternative outfit pack for the squad, an N7 hoodie for Commander Sheppard, a digital soundtrack and a collection of forum and social badges, avatars, and perks to advertise your N7 status.

Source: store.origin.com

Sony’s Yoshida Talks Correcting PSP Mistakes In PS Vita

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The PSP certainly had its fans, but even Sony admits it did not live up to its complete potential, especially in the West. President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida thinks they have the solution with the PS Vita, though.

“What we didn’t do right with the PSP was where we started when we began the development of PlayStation Vita,” said Yoshida. “We were very happy with having something very close to the PS2 experience in a portable format with the PSP, but we didn’t do a good enough job creating the proper interface to really play games with graphics in 3D. The lack of a right analog stick, for example. That’s something we wanted to attack with the PS Vita because we wanted to enhance the portable core gaming experience and we have to do it right. The other thing was that after a couple of years with the PSP people get used to looking at pretty pictures and especially after the launch of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the expectations for graphics moves on. Just having great graphics on a pretty screen wouldn’t have been enough. That’s why we spent so much time innovating with user interface devices like the touch pad or camera and motion sensors.”

However, he promises the games won’t cost a ridiculous amount to produce. Michael Denny has said that development costs of a Vita game is closer to a PSP game, said Yoshida. I wouldn’t say it’s the same costs as a PS3 game but when you compare to what our teams spent on Blu-ray based PS3 games it’s much, much less. Part of that is that because the screen is smaller and the media is much smaller in terms of a card, so developers have to be smarter to create the asset. On PlayStation 3 teams almost have no limits in terms of assets on Blu-ray with 60GB, games like L.A. Noire or Killzone 3 are huge games. Creating assets costs money. Because of the hardware limitation in terms of the size of the games, it pushes teams to be smarter and more economical in terms of creating assets, but still being able to provide a proper game experience. So that helps to reduce the development costs of Vita games.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz