HP Drops WebOS, Gets Autonomy

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Hewlett-Packard Co. recently announced their intention to buy Autonomy Corp. for $10.3 billion. This will give the company more leverage outside of PC sales by increasing their ability to offer cloud services.

“Their focus is on being more of a software and services company and not dependent on the hardware businesses,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc. “The hardware business has become a difficult business. In many ways it’s a commodity-driven business. This is a major strategic shift for HP.”

Simultaneously, Hewlett-Packard also said it’s considering spinning off its PC division, which has seen decreasing margins in recent years. The company also announced that it will discontinue products that run WebOS software, not even a half year after the company was going to put the software on every HP PC.

“This is clearly a financial decision on their part to abandon a business that wasn’t generating nearly enough margins,” said Mark Margevicius, a Gartner Inc. analyst. “It’s the boat anchor that’s keeping things at bay.”

“For HP it’s an intriguing volte face,” said Tim Daniels, a strategist at Olivetree Securities Ltd. in London. “Autonomy is a leader in unstructured data — so that’s data that isn’t in the form of spreadsheets or word documents.”

Source: Bloomberg

Xbox Live Gets To 35 Million Members

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Xbox Live marketing manager for EMEA Robin Burrowes confirmed that the addition of nine new countries to Xbox Live means that the service has added five million users. In addition, he noted that more money is being made with the sale of digital content than for subscribers.

“Our audience growth is up to 35 million people globally across those 35 countries on Xbox Live itself,” said Burrowes.

Source: Joystiq

APB Reloaded Signs On [a]list games

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[a]list games announced today that they have signed up with GamersFirst to launch a global campaign for APB Reloaded. The free-to-play game attracted 700,000 players in less than three months of beta testing and this new campaign will seek to broaden the audience even further.

“We have an APB for those already playing in the fictional city of San Paro – get ready for a population spike,” said Steve Fowler, GM of [a]list games.  “We recognize APB Reloaded as one of the best values for players in the free-to-play category.   We think most players will realize this isn’t your average free game the moment they enter the game world and start customizing their character.  We’re thrilled to join GamersFirst in an effort to incent more people, including those accustomed to console-quality games, to give it a try.”

“Every day more players are discovering the amazing experience of ‘APB Reloaded’,” said Rahul Sandil, Senior Vice President of Marketing at GamersFirst. “It’s a one-of-a-kind game, designed at inception to push boundaries by blending the player-versus-player excitement of online shooters with the hugely popular open-world action genre.  By partnering with [a]list games and getting access to their marketing expertise and resources, we’re now poised to take the world by storm and make APB Reloaded the first true next generation Free2Play mega-blockbuster.”

Zynga Hit With Patent Suit From Agincourt

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Zynga is dealing with a patent infringement lawsuit from Agincourt Gaming for unspecified damages. This isn’t coming at the best of times, with Zynga preparing to file an iPO for an estimated $1 billion.

The lawsuit contends that all of Zynga’s major titles violate Agincourt’s patents, including Farmville, CityVille, FrontierVille, Zynga Poker, Empires & Allies, Mafia Wars, and Vampire Wars.

“Agincourt’s patents cover the most lucrative aspects of online social gaming,” said Bill Carmody, a senior partner at Susman Godfrey LLP, Agincourt’s lead counsel. “including those comprising the bulk of Zynga’s revenues—as they contain the crucial ‘link’ that allows for global, interactive prize redemption over the Internet.”

Zynga has had to deal with a number of trademark, copyright, patent, and IP issues in the past. Gene Quinn, president of IP Watchdog, calls Zynga’s patent portfolio “weak” adding that after the IPO, “Zynga will inevitably be the target of patent infringement litigation moving forward.”

Source: Inc.

EA Labels President Looks At Old Franchises

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Electronic Arts has a long history and many of its best know IP are laying fallow right now. EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is aware of the following some of these classic franchises have, and is actively looking to revisit them.

“We do have a couple of old franchises that we’re looking at right now… re-imagining them and bringing them back,” said Gibeau. “We’ve got 25 years of good IPs and I’ve worked on a few of them in my career like Road Rash and the Strike series. So I have a strong affinity for a lot of the things we’ve done in the past. We kind of have a rule which is you’ve got to have a really good reason to bring something back – What can you do to it that makes it fresh and brings something new to the equation of the franchise ”

“Like basically what we did with Medal of Honor when we brought it back; we looked at going after more modern themes… the war that’s happening now as opposed to a historical war. That was the reason we brought Medal of Honor back,” he added. “But when we look at Road Rash, the Strike series or some of these other franchises we really challenge ourselves. We can’t just put them on new tech with the same gameplay from ten years ago, we’ve got to have something new. That’s the typical challenge that we have.”

Source: CVG {link no longer active}

Activision Against Posturing Comments With EA

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Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello recently made comments how he wants the Call of Duty series to “rot from the core” and that wasn’t the only attack made on rival Activision. For his part, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg doesn’t think this sort of posturing is good for the industry.

“Competition is of course a good thing. It keeps us all on our toes and ultimately makes the games better. It’s healthy. But it’s one thing to want your game to succeed and another thing to actively, publicly say you want other games to fail,” he said. “Recently a competitor of ours was quoted as saying that he wants to see Call of Duty ‘rot from the core’. I’ve been asked countless times to respond to this comment and I’ve generally chosen not to. My job is to help our incredibly talented, passionate teams to make the best games they can, not to throw insults around at others. But I actually feel this kind of rhetoric is bad for our industry. Can you imagine the head of Dreamworks animation coming out with a new movie and going to the press and saying that he wants Toy Story to ‘rot from the core.’ It’s kind of hard to imagine, right ”

“As someone who runs one of the biggest publishers in this business I can tell you that I want as many games as possible to succeed, whether we created them or not, because I want this industry to keep growing and bringing in new people.” Hirshberg explained. “I believe that as many great games as this industry can make, that’s how many people will buy. I say that not only as the CEO of Activision but also as a gamer. This isn’t politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn’t have to lose. This is an entertainment industry, it’s an innovation industry and, at best, it’s an art form. But we’re still a young art form. If we were the movie industry the movies wouldn’t even be talking yet. We all still have a lot to prove in our position in the pop cultural landscape. We still need to stand the test of time. We need to show we can withstand the kind of disruptive change and new competition that we’re facing now. The only way to do that is to continue to make great games. We shouldn’t be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie. If we as an industry act like there’s a finite number of games in the world, then there will be.”

Source: Eurogamer

Frogster Veteran Launches Free-To-Play Publisher

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Andreas Weidenhaupt has launched a new free-to-play publisher called Infernum. The company will look to license and publish MMOs in 2012 in Europe and the Americas.

“The market for high-quality MMO games that are free-to-play is growing dynamically and we intend to become a major player in the space,” said Weidenhaupt. “We’ve already begun assembling a top-notch team and are looking to fully utilize our resources by bringing some great games to the western world in 2012.”

Online Payments In Europe Expected To Be $3.1 Billion By 2014

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Online payments company Skrill recently estimated that the the virtual goods market in Europe will be equivalent to 1.9 billion British pounds or $3.1 billion by 2014. Germany is expected to lead the way in Europe with $229 million in purchases, followed by Great Britain with $153 million and France with $149 million.

“As this study shows, as we move towards 2014 in-game purchases will rise sharply,” offered Martin Ott, co-CEO of Skrill. “Despite the economic crisis the virtual goods market offers enormous potential for game providers. Especially for those who want to exploit it using virtual objects or clever game subscriptions.”

 

Mass Effect 3 FemShep Vote Round 2

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The first round of voting for the Female Sheppard to be featured on the Collector’s Edition of Mass Effect 3 concluded, but now there’s a twist: people can vote on the hair color. While the face initially had blonde hair, that option is actually in fourth place right now, behind brown and black though the red head is currently running away with the competition.

Source: Facebook {link no longer active}