U.K. retailer GAME has collapsed and that has led rivals to try and fill the void. ShopTo initially offered to let new customers to register and send in their GAME Reward Card for a discount that they have since withdrew, but Tesco has highlighted the fact that they’re now top in the U.K. and Blockbuster is noted that recent key releases aren’t coming to GAME at all.
Dennis Ryan, EVP of worldwide publishing at PopCap Games, said that his company was considering going public in 2011. However, the board decided to talk to some publishers they had talked with in the past, and that was a turning point for the company.
“We didn’t know how that was going to turn out, but then John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA, he made it really clear what their strategy was in terms of digital,” said Ryan. “His clarity of vision in terms of where EA was going is a key, if not the key reason that we’re here in this room today.”
“Second was his vision of the importance of digital and connected franchise, game franchises, across digital platforms. And managing players and serving players the content they need and want based on understanding who those players are and what they played and he’s very much committed to that,” he continued. “And you can see, in terms of the recent earnings calls they had, in terms of growth of digital and how big that is, it’s pretty significant.”
One of the key reasons that they liked where Riccitiello was going was his respect for the value of PopCap’s IP. “Their commitment to quality and respect of IP together with their vision for digital and connected gaming across platforms. That’s the reason why we signed with EA. And of all the companies that we spoke to they were the ones that were most aligned on those dimensions,” said Ryan. “There’s plenty of great developers and studios out there that would speak about the desire to do that as passionately as PopCap, and have not done it, and it’s only just because of the practical realities that they face. So are we better than them or are we luckier than them Kind of a combination.”
“One of the reasons we combined with EA besides the cultural fit and strategy fit is that there are opportunities where we thought we could expand our operation more quickly being part of EA,” said Ryan. “Examples of that would be we had been in mobile for a long time, but EA is the best publisher on mobile games historically. If our mission at PopCap was to entertain the world with games, to do that you have to participate on all different platforms and EA seemed like a good fit for that.”
Source: GI.biz
DeNA recently announced an alliance with Disney Japan to bring the company’s high profile franchises to the Mobage social gaming platform. They will also seek to to bring things such as Disney movies and television programs to mobile phones.
The three games announced initially as part of this deal are Disney Party, Disney Fantasy Quest and Marvel Card Battle Game. Disney Party and Disney Fantasy Quest have now launched, while Marvel Card Battle Game is set to begin in the summer.
Source: Andriasang.com
Coque Design may have recently worked on some design illustrations for the next PlayStation. Titled “Illustrations & Sketches for new PlayStation Orbis features” the illustrations show users interacting with a PlayStation Eye accessory and one using what appears to be a smartphone to control music related to the system.
Source: Kotaku
Flurry indicates that Amazon users generate 89 percent of what an average iTunes AppStore mobile user does, compared to just 23 percent for Google Play. This shows the difficultly that Google has in monetizing its mobile platform, despite over 300 million of the devices sold worldwide.
Source: Blog.Flurry.com
While OMGPOP’s Draw Something has added 14.6 million daily active users to Zynga’s total, roughly a 25 percent increase, developer Shay Pierce has declined to move over to Zynga, and an article he wrote on the reasons why drew a nasty response from his former boss.
“The one OMGPOP employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one on the whole team,” tweeted CEO Dan Porter. “Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance!”
After wide condemnation of what he said, he responded, “What I meant to say was… I want to celebrate the people who worked on the game. Who have stuck together. They are everything. Thank you. I’m sorry for what I said on Twitter last night. No excuses.”
Source: Twitter.com
A survey by Walker Communications for Bonnier’s Parenting Group found that even among young children, nearly half are spending at least a few minutes a day using a smartphone, while nearly one-fifth are using one for up to an hour a day. While both boys and girls were found to play games, boys were three times more likely to play video games daily.
Source: AdWeek
