Social Media Salvation Might Come In Cue

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On average, a person receives about a novel’s worth of new information every day or roughly 63,000 words. Sorting through all of this information from emails, tweets, Facebook updates and web pages can be daunting, so Greplin has made a new app called Cue that’s designed to filter through everything to find what you want.

Cue can connect to 26 different services, including the usual email and social-media sites. As for what you can do with it, if you’re meeting with a new client for instance, Cue will try to find the contact’s latest tweets and Facebook updates.

It’s designed to help organize information from scores of sources. “If we’d gone the Batman route, we liked Alfred,” says Walker. “He’s the guy behind the scenes, greasing the wheels, while Batman is kicking ass.”

Source: BusinessWeek.com

Nexon Free-To-Play Games Invade Steam

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Nexon has announced their intention to bring the free-to-play games Vindictus, Dungeon Fighter Online and Combat Arms to Steam. This follows an announcement by Valve that Nexon will publish Counter-Strike Online 2 in China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asian territories.

“Providing our games on Steam is about making it as easy as possible for players to access our games,” said Nexon America CEO Daniel Kim. “Valve has been a great global partner to Nexon for many years, and this agreement continues the marriage of Nexon’s immersive content with Valve’s strong distribution channel and large player community.”

2K Sports Wants Fans To ‘Uncover The Cover’

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2K Sports announced the launch of their “Uncover The Cover” Facebook application. This is designed to engage the 2K Sports online community and reveal some big clues about the cover of NBA 2K13, the next installment of the top-rated NBA video game franchise.

In order to reveal the final image for NBA 2K13 fans are encouraged to tweet using the hashtag #UncoverNBA2K. Fans can view the app’s progress in real-time on 2kgam.es/UncoverNBA2K.

Fans will be able to download the final version of the artwork once it is revealed.

Final Fantasy XI Tops In Series Profitability

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Square Enix has revealed that if all the play time for Final Fantasy XI is added up, it would equal 200,000 years. The venerable MMO will see a new expansion soon, and the company offered a reason why that was so, even after launching the successor in Final Fantasy XIV.

“Looking at profitability, it’s the top of all past FF games,” said Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada during his opening remarks at the Vana Fest 2012 event.

Source: Andriasang

Assassin’s Creed On Mobile Addressing A Consumer Need

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Ubisoft and Gree’s Assassin’s Creed: Utopia will not have the ability to unlock content in Assassin’s Creed III. The benefit of tying into the greater storyline is that the appeal of the fight between Assassins and Templars goes beyond people who play the games.

“There are no links between the games,” said Andreane Meunier. “But the narrative will lead into the ACIII narrative, since it’s a kind of pre-era to the Assassin’s Creed III era.”

“You’d be surprised to hear that some consumers of the Assassin’s Creed brand have never touched the HD game. We actually have a lot of people who are mostly into the narrative that have read the novels and things like that,” said Meunier. “We do feel like the product we’re offering actually answers a need that the community has expressed. Often we hear, ‘Oh, I’ve never played an Assassin’s Creed game, but I’ve seen my boyfriend/friend/brother play it, and I’m super-interested in the narrative but the gameplay is maybe not for me.’ We’ve done stuff on Facebook and people respond very well to it. People that are really into the narrative will really enjoy this game. It’s going to appeal to a broader audience than if it’s just the HD games.”

Source: Eurogamer

Roadhouse Interactive Acquires Embassy Interactive

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Roadhouse Interactive announced that it has acquired The Embassy Interactive. The Embassy Interactive was founded in 2008 and has developed several social games including UFC Undisputed Fight Nation for Facebook and Tangram Puzzle Pro for iPhone.

“The acquisition of Embassy is a strategic fit for us and a critical step in our growth,” said James Hursthouse, Roadhouse CEO. “Roadhouse continues to grow as an end-to-end solution provider for the development, production, and live game operations of Triple A online and social games. This acquisition opens a new chapter in the Roadhouse story, enabling us to move forward with an expanded slate of innovative projects in the future.”

The Embassy Interactive will become Roadhouse Game Studios and will focus on new product development for Facebook, smartphones and tablets, effective immediately. They will continue to work with third-party studios in addition to internal development.

“Roadhouse is a proven Triple A online games company, and we are excited about what we will be able to achieve together and to help accelerate Roadhouse’s business” said Gary Kanazawa, Embassy Interactive CEO. “Joining Roadhouse allows our talented team to focus exclusively on what they do best – create great interactive entertainment!”

Tarrnie Williams, Roadhouse Interactive President, will be acting studio head until further notice, Embassy Interactive founder Sebastiaan Reinarz will continue on as Creative Director at the new studio, while founder Ryan Donaldson will serve as an external design adviser for Roadhouse Interactive. Roadhouse Game Studios operate as a separate entity from Roadhouse Interactive.

Miiverse Won’t Connect With Facebook/Twitter

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Nintendo’s Miiverse will be directly connected into the Wii U’s system menu and games, allowing users to interact through heavily moderated text and video. However, it will not work with Facebook and Twitter, although it will eventually support 3DS, smartphones and PCs down the road.

“What we have discussed so far… I think it is the other way around, from any devices in the future you will be able to access the Miiverse, from mobile phone or laptop,” said Nintendo of Europe’s Laurent Fischer. “You can check what’s going on and even participate.”

Other devices and consoles already allow access to Facebook and Twitter, though Fischer said Nintendo’s policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices. “I have three devices permanently doing that already, what is our benefit to do so also ” he said.

“On the Wii U we do have additional reasons for connecting, we talked about things like the video chat system, nothing revolutionary but it’s going to be convenient, it’s going to be easy,” detailed Fischer. “And the Miiverse is the one actually that I believe has a very unique feature which is we put ourselves in the situation of making sure the people you can communicate with they are somehow already in a kind of community. The community will be the Wii U owners, who will have this common interest for video games and our expectation about that is it’s going to be a way to enhance the idea of sharing information on the video game.”

Not unlike other third-party networks built into games, Fischer hopes that Miiverse will grow naturally. “One thing that is very important to us is that somehow you could pick up information from people you trust, maybe on games that you wouldn’t consider naturally. Because Miiverse will show you what are the topics or the games played at the moment within the community. And then you may have one interesting comment that will trigger your curiosity and then maybe you will get more information on that game and then at the end what is important to make sure people have different game play experiences. So considering a game that you wouldn’t consider, it’s like enlarging your scope in terms of gaming, and that’s the key point for us,” he concluded.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz