Facebook Gaikai App Launches In Beta

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Gaikai has launched the beta trial of its Facebook app. Users of the social network are now able to try out demos of titles that include Saints Row – The Third, Dead Rising 2 – Off the Record, Magicka, and The Witcher 2 – Assassins of Kings.

“People don’t want to leave Facebook to play games – Zynga’s phenomenal success is proof of that,” said Gaikai CEO David Perry. “Cloud Gaming means that the game doesn’t need to be downloaded and run on your computer, it literally means the game runs out on the internet, in the cloud, with the experience being streamed to the players.”

“Most video game publishers are now seeking to grow their digital customer base and unlike movie and music services like Netflix and Spotify, Gaikai gives the game publishers relationships with the customers,” added Perry. “The power of Facebook is not only in the vast size of the connected audience, but also in the quality of the social ties and interactions that occur within the network. The Facebook social graph fuels our mantra ‘Try it for free’, ‘Share it if you like it’, ‘Buy it if you love it’.”

Valve Wonders How Consoles Will Adapt To Free-to-Play

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The dynamics of the way that retail relates to gaming is changing all of the time. For Valve marketing VP Doug Lombardi, he wonders how the next generation of consoles will adapt to changes in the market.

“You know, the erosion [of brick and mortar retail] – and I would describe it as an erosion – was something that I think we all got a little numb to, and the GAME one was a bit startling to me,” said Lombardi. “Is it too soon I don’t know. I can remember after we launched Half-Life 2 and we fixed the situation with Steam and whatnot, GAME said, ‘how long do you think it’s going to take us before Steam is really a big deal ‘ And I sort of laughed at them and said, ‘oh jeez, it’s going to be at least five to ten years.’”

“And here we are less than ten years from then, and it’s a pretty big deal. It’s a big percentage of a lot of people’s sales over here, and it’s becoming a bigger deal over there,” he added. “I think the big event that’s going to happen is: when are we going to see the next generation of consoles, and how are they going to play into some of the new dynamics such as free-to-play ”

Source: PC Gamer UK

London Olympics — Brands Like Ralph Lauren, Prada Get Involved

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Some designs for the 2012 London Olympics have come out, with Adidas supplying the clothing for countries like the U.K. and Australia. High fashion designers are on board like never before, however, with Prada designing uniforms for Italy’s sailing teams while the official Italian Olympic team will be outfitted in Giorgio Armani’s EA7 sporting gear and Americans will wear Ralph Lauren clothing.

The decisions have not come without controversy, with the press taking shots at some of the designs. What do you think about the Olympic apparel?

Source: BrandChannel.com

Geo-Social App timeRAZOR Will Never Have You Miss Out

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A new app called timeRAZOR managed to stir up attention at the South by Southwest Interactive festival. This geo-social app is designed to help users never-miss-out and be the final solution to browsing, locating, and attending events for users on a nationwide platform.

The Distillery, timeRAZOR’s event selection engine, aggregates over 300,000 events daily, geo-tags them, then customizes the data by user preference. The three main features of timeRAZOR are smartEVENT, travelTIME and easySHARE, which help show what is happening in any event at any point in time, monitors traffic conditions and informs the users when an appointment or event is coming up, and lets users share discoveries via email, SMS, Facebook and Twitter.

Right now, timeRAZOR developers are working on an algorithm for events that connects to user’s personal calendars and zip codes, and personalizes itself based upon previous activities. “For people using the app, the promise of timeRAZOR is to help them not only manage their work-life balance, but to feel the joy of discovering fun experiences that they might have otherwise missed out on,” said Linda Abraham, timeRAZOR Advisory Board Member and co-founder/CMO of comScore.

“We want timeRAZOR to help people feel less time-stressed and more satisfied by the way they live, without the anxiety around trying to stay on top of everything,” said CEO and Co-founder Jeff White. “Imagine attending a business conference — or, even better, planning a vacation — and having the best events and experiences appear right at your fingertips. That’s the joy of discovery through timeRAZOR.”

Firefall — Earth Impact

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The Arclight was a ship with faster-than-light capabilities, but a critical failure on launch sets up the events in Firefall. Here, we see the final moments of the doomed voyage, hearing the voices of the key personnel in space on the ground.

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Be A Hero And Make Your Mark

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The promotional site {link no longer active} for Diablo III is now live and lets fans seek evil and expose the shadowy horrors of our world, and share and earn rewards. Designed around the star that has fallen near the town of Tristram and the heroes who seek out its meaning, the site enables fans to interact with various features to move the progress bar forward and unlock new content. Produced by the Ayzenberg Group, each week a new class-specific activity will unlock allowing fans to earn five exclusive in-game banner sigils to display Diablo III characters across their social graph.

The five playable character classes in Diablo III, the barbarian, witch doctor, monk, wizard, and demon hunter all believe the falling star to be a sign of great importance, and are each heading to the small town to investigate. Every week of the promotion, we’ll ask you to take on the role of one of these classes and, in turn, you’ll be granted a unique sigil that can be used to customize your banner in Diablo III.

The banner is a customizable flag that shows off your achievements and progression when playing Diablo III. The sigil is the icon that can be placed on the field of the banner flag, and the five sigils that can be unlocked through this promotion are completely exclusive and unique. Mark of Valor includes the ability to play with a fully functional version of the banner customization tool, similar to the one available in Diablo III.

Throughout the promotion, each class section of the website will progressively get unlocked every week and stay unlocked. In-game class sigils, on the other hand, have limited availability and do not stay unlocked. The week that a class unlocks, only that class’ sigil will become available via Mark of Valor, until the next class section unlocks and its respective sigil takes its place. If you missed a week, don’t worry, there will be another chance to earn your favorite class sigil later in the promotion, but please note that sigils are only available for a limited time. May 18 will be the last day that you can earn an in-game sigil.

After selecting a background image and customizing a banner using Mark of Valor {link no longer active}, you will have the option to submit your creation to the “Hero of the Day” contest for a chance at being recognized for having the most epic representation of that week’s class. Each day, Monday through Friday, one of the eligible Mark of Valor  {link no longer active} photos will be chosen by us. If your piece is selected, you’ll win a signed SteelSeries Diablo III QcK cloth mouse pad and be recognized as Hero of the Day. Hero of the Day contest submissions will close on May 10.

Advance the progress bar and unlock content by participating in the Art Contest and the Mark of Valor photo customization activity, as well as by sharing unlocks and player-submitted art and photos within the site by clicking on the “Like” or “Share” buttons.

Unity Sees 1 Million Registered Developers

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Unity Technologies has announced that their Unity engine and tools now have over 1 million registered developers and over 6 million total downloads, up from 250,000 registered developers at the end of 2010. The Unity Web Player has also reached 125 million installs, with an estimated install on 5 million new computers each month.

“When we released Unity 1.0 back in 2005, we didn’t even dream numbers like that, but simply started by trying to be a great tool for the few hundred customers who adopted Unity,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “That goal remains the same, as we now use our incredible momentum to improve our products and extend our reach. We are only just getting started!”

The monthly active developer base has also grown to nearly 300,000, or 30 percent of all developers who ever registered with Unity, who put in a total of 2.5 million hours of creative work in the last month. According to statistics recorded by Evans Data in their Developer Population and Demographic Study 2011 v. 2, this means nearly 2 percent of the over 16 million active worldwide software developers (of any kind) are currently using Unity to develop their projects.