Hulu Off Auction Block

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Despite heavy rumors that Hulu was for sale, that is now being denied by the site’s ownership. News Corporation, Providence Equity Partners and The Walt Disney Company, the owners of the service released a statement saying they will not look to sell.

“Since Hulu holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners, we have terminated the sale process and look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success,” the three companies said. “Our focus now rests solely on ensuring that our efforts as owners contribute in a meaningful way to the exciting future that lies ahead for Hulu.”

When it was announced that the site would be sold in June, there’s been much speculation on who would be looking to buy the site for what money. The outlets who have been interested range from digital and regular TV realms, including Amazon, Yahoo!, Google and Dish Network.

However, despite initial interest in the service, Hulu’s backers have been experimenting with models like putting some content behind a pay wall. As News Corp.’s president, COO and deputy chairman Chase Carey said, “Does it make sense to pursue that path or does it make sense for us to stay in an ownership position and continue to have it driven by content owners ”

Source: AdWeek

PSN October ’11 Attack Unrelated To April ’11 Attack

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According to Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley, it is unlikely that the new set of cyber attacks on their servers used the data stolen in an April attack. That’s because the testing of a large amount of sign-in IDs and passwords resulted in a 0.1 percent success rate for the attackers.

“It’s just simple math,” Smedley said. “There was such a small percentage of successes. They were attacking with a large number. Because of that, the math tells us it wasn’t [Sony’s information].”

“We’ve said publicly when we were compromised before that the information is out there and could have been used. That was obviously the first thing we looked at,” he added. “Then we did the mathematical analysis and said, ‘Obviously that’s not what happened.’ I’m not going to say it’s impossible [the info came from Sony]. We just think that’s not the most likely case.”

Source: CVG {link no longer active}

Lady Gaga Gets Injunction Against Moshi Monsters

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Moshi Monsters has announced that they will not release The Moshi Dance single on iTunes because of an objection by Lady Gaga. The pop star’s lawyers banned the song over claims that kids might not be able to tell the two characters apart.

“This court ruling is a huge disappointment. It’s pretty obvious that kids will be able to tell the difference between the two characters. The shame is that millions of kids fell in love with Lady Goo Goo’s debut single on YouTube and now won’t be able to enjoy her musical exploits. It was all done in the name of fun and we would have thought that Lady Gaga could have seen the humor behind this parody.”

Google+ Criticized By Google Engineer

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Google+ is easily the most competitive social network available right now against Facebook. However, staff software engineer Steve Yegge argues that they’ve made strategic errors with Google+ even while he praised the company’s internal culture.

“Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful,” said Yegge. “Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville.”

“Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: ‘Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us,’” he added. “Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.”

Yegge was also critical of the company’s decision to make Google+ more open after the fact, saying it will be “ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. Ask anyone who worked on platformising MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformising Amazon… I’m not saying it’s too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late.”

Source: plus.google.com

Uncharted 3 Goes Gold, Gets Starhawk Beta Code

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Sony announced that Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception has gone gold for the game’s November 1 release. Along with the news that all copies of the game will include four behind-the-scenes videos detailing the development and production of Uncharted 3, another bonus was announced.

“And as an added bonus, all retail copies of Uncharted 3 will include a voucher code for early access to the upcoming Starhawk Public Beta {link no longer active}, which will be coming in early 2012,” said Eric Monacelli, Community Strategist at Naughty Dog. “Just like Uncharted 3, Starhawk promises to provide an incredible multiplayer experience that only PS3 can deliver. Here’s a glimpse of what the voucher insert looks like, and you can keep tabs on StarhawkTheGame.com for more details.”

Source: blog.us.playstation.com

Wii Goes Blue, U.S. Gets Slim Version

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Nintendo has announced that they will be launching a new slim Wii model for the U.S. The black Wii will come with matching controllers New Super Mario Bros. Wii and a Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack CD and release on October 23 for $149.99.

Additionally, the U.K. will see two Wii Fit Plus bundles, the first includes a black Wii console, a copy of Wii Fit Plus and a black Wii Balance Board, along with another bundle that has no Wii. There will also be a Wii Family Edition bundle that includes the slim Wii with Wii Sports and Wii Party.

Finally, Europe will see a new blue Wii model. This bundle will include Mario & Sonic at London 2012 Olympic Games along with a matching blue Wii Remote Plus.

 

Apple Will Have Game Changing Living-Room System, Says Valve’s Newell

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Valve’s Gabe Newell said recently that he believes that home consoles will be outdated by new hardware from Apple. What exactly it will look like, however, he has no idea.

“I suspect Apple will launch a living-room product that redefines people’s expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,” said Newell.

Newell also expressed worried that closed platforms will become more prevalent because of Apple and Xbox Live. “I’m worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going,” he shared. “There’s going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say, ‘I’m tired of competing with Google, I’m tired of competing with Facebook, I’ll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don’t like from my world.'”

Source: The Seattle Times

BlackBerry 2011 Outage Affects Millions

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BlackBerry has reported issues with their clients in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India. Unfortunately, glitches in the browsing capabilities, the BlackBerry Messenger and email have spread to North America.

“Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested,” said the company {link no longer active}. “ As a result, a large backlog of data was generated, and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.”

Thousands of unhappy RIM customers have posted messages on the BlackBerry Facebook page {page no longer active} to complain. While some customers are venting, others are posting very real threats of switching over to Apple, which just announced the release of its own iMessage app to directly compete with BBM.

Reports are that this is the worst BlackBerry service disruption in two years. It comes from the issue of the centralized BlackBerry servers used around the world; while this makes it easier to encrypt data for security purposes, if a server goes down, it can knock out regions of the world and affect millions of customers.

Source: AdWeek

Sims Social Players Mimic Habits Of Zynga Players

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Raptr released a report on The Sims Social saying that the PopCap purchase gave the company more direct access to casual players 59 percent to 75 percent of which already play social games as well. Additionally, it was found that The Sims Social players have an average of eight sessions per day, five minutes per session, similar to the Zynga games from which most are believed to be drawn.

“EA is a rising force in the social games industry,” said Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr. “Data from the previous Raptr Report outlined the strength of Zynga’s position in the social gaming space, but EA is poised to capture significant market share if it can capitalize on the popularity of The Sims Social. With this report we examine the basis of The Sims Social’s success and the potential significance of EA acquisitions of Playfish and PopCap to the company’s future social strategy.”

Source: blog.raptr.com