Google Wildfire Spreads Awareness Of Facebook Fan Impact

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Wildfire, acquired by Google recently, looked at 10,000 Facebook campaigns during the past nine months, from sweepstakes and contests to trivia and quizzes. They discovered that for every 10 brand advocates who join a social campaign on Facebook, 13 new friends engage with the campaign.

Find out more information like this at Media Post.

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Angry Birds Selling $400 Million Worth Of Toys In 2012

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Commonwealth Toy & Novelty announced that they expect to sell $400 million worth of Angry Birds merchandise this year. They note that they will double the number of Angry Birds products offered this year and that it has also doubled its staff since signing a licensing agreement with Rovio in 2010.

“Plush was basically a dead category for the last few years,” said Commonwealth Toy & Novelty executive vice president, Lisa Shamus. “It is the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen in licensing and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”

The popularity of Angry Birds toy goes against the trend in plush toy sales, which fell by 21 percent in the U.S.  Commonwealth now receives dozens of licensing offers from app developers each month.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Battlestar Galactica Online Achieves Success With Allegorithmic

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Bigpoint and Allegorithmic have announced that Battlestar Galactica Online is the most successful game built using the Unity 3D platform to incorporate Allegorithmic Substance technology, with over 10 million registered players and 25,000 new registrations every day. The combination of Unity and Allegorithmic helps the game run in an optimized fashion, no matter what set up the player might have on their computer.

“Bigpoint is constantly striving to push the boundaries of browser game development and we’re very pleased with the benefits BSGO has gained with the addition of Allegorithmic’s sophisticated technology,” said Matt Norton, Studio Director, Bigpoint Inc. “Substance enables us to produce high-quality art without creating sizing issues. Since we can easily scale assets down from megabytes to kilobytes, we can use higher-res textures all while still minimizing download times for players in the game.”

“Working with Bigpoint and the talented BSGO development team has been incredibly rewarding,” said Alexis Khouri, VP Strategy & Sales, Allegorithmic. “BSGO is one of the most impressive browser-based titles ever launched, and we are both excited and proud to know that Substance technology adds to this game’s power.”

Find out more about Substance Designer 3 at allegorithmic.com/products/substance-designer-3 {link no longer active} and play Battlestar Galactica Online for free on any browser at battlestar-galactica.bigpoint.com.

Xbox Windows Game Branding Coming To Windows 8

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It has been known for a while now that there will be more integration between Windows 8 and Xbox. Now, we’re beginning to see how much as Minesweeper, Solitaire Collection, and Microsoft Mahjong are all coming in under a Xbox Windows branding.

This new Xbox Windows branding seems to stand apart from Microsoft’s previous Games for Windows Live service. This branding apparently covers titles offered through the Windows Store.

Wargaming.net Conquers BigWorld

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Wargaming.net has acquired middleware company BigWorld. The $45 million deal will see 25 BigWorld employees join the hundreds working at Wargaming.net, and help to lower development costs for the World of Tanks publisher.

“This very crucial for us, as we want to control the technology provider we are using, now we can integrate them to make internal development more efficient,” said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. “BigWorld has a licensing business of its own, and we will continue to support its customers. We will be in a position in the future, if everything goes right, to offer the combined BigWorld and Wargaming technology to anyone who wants to do an MMO.”

Find out more about Wargaming.net’s plans in this exclusive interview.

Source: GamesBeat

Star Trek: Infinite Space Collapses

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Gameforge has announced that Star Trek: Infinite Space has been canceled. The project has been in trouble since at least last November, where 100 employees were let go from Gameforge and they started looking for a co-publishing founder.

“Since Autumn 2011 we made many efforts to find a publishing and marketing partner for Star Trek: Infinite Space,” said Gameforge in a statement. “Unfortunately, our efforts were not successful. So we have decided with a heavy heart to finally abandon the project Star Trek: Infinite Space. The discontinuation is very regrettable. Unfortunately it happens from time to time that a good concept for a game cannot be implemented as originally planned.”

While the browser-based free-to-play game will not release, the free-to-play title Star Trek Online lives on from Cryptic and Perfect World Entertainment.

Social Future Laid Out By Crytek

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Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has expanded his company out from just making AAA titles to the recent free-to-play title Warface. Yerli sees that as a reflection of a shift in the industry towards “social” trends.

“I think one of the key words for the next generation gaming will be ‘social’. My perspective of next generation gaming is that playing with friends, and playing on multiple devices and having complimentary experiences with them, will be a big part of the process,” said Yerli. “I think, generally, people are playing shorter cycles in games, and session-based games are going to be key. I think, ultimately, the word ‘online’ will be extended to embrace ‘social’ as well.”

Yerli also noted that Warface is part of his company’s efforts to make free-to-play titles more like AAA experiences, saying, “In the past, free-to-play has been perceived as cheap games with low production values. For us, it has always been about an opportunity to transform and change the industry status quo, and we want to develop the most user friendly business model and make no compromise on the quality either.”

“So, with Warface, we’ll launch what we call a AAA for free experience, which is high quality gaming for free. And we think that the learning curve to achieve that as a games service, having something that doesn’t compromise on quality but is free to play, has been quite a steep one,” he added. “Also, at the same time, as I mentioned before, there’s a social aspect of it – so it not only has to be quality and free-to-play, but social as well.”

Speaking of the future, Yerli sees huge potential in what cloud gaming will do soon. “I think true cloud gaming with a complete streaming experience will become possible once we have tripled our available bandwidths at home. By that I mean, if you can get a solid 20-40MB connection then you’re going to get a real connection of 3MB,” he explained. “That is not available yet in the U.S. or the majority of Europe, so I think it’s going to take another 3-4 years.”

“So maybe in around 2014-2016 I believe cloud gaming can become ‘true’, but it will always be under pressure from local-based client games, since all the computation power on the client side also increases,” he concluded.

Source: VG247