Watch the first reveal of Preacher’s story in Medal of Honor Warfighter‘s story campaign as Preacher has to deal with personal loss. He and his fellow teammates are sent out to hunt down the global threat and take the fight to the enemy.
Tom Hanks’ ‘Electric City’ {link no longer active} is an animated sci-fi video series 90-minute, 20-episode series airing on Yahoo. Airing over three nights, “Electric City” is being touted as a “first-of-its-kind, 360-degree online interaction of digital, social, mobile and gaming media.” In the series, the world has ended and the Electric City stands as a symbol of peace and security in the rubble. But underneath the veneer of order there are secrets, back-alley dealings, daring chases and murder. Each episode is just a few minutes long; the first 10 will premiere the first night, and the remaining episodes will be released over the next two nights.
An interactive map on the official destination will reveal different locations in “Electric City.”
On iTunes {link no longer active}, “Electric City The Revolt” can be downloaded for .99 cents. In Electric City The Revolt — you play a rebel character Frank Deetleman, who plays a key role in the uprising against Wire Central. You have to lead the revolt in your mission to fight for freedom. Freedom from the dictates of Wire Central, freedom of will, and freedom to breathe in a free city! Also available for Android {link no longer active} for free!
The iTunes, App Store and Google Play have over 600,000 apps each and Apple in particular says they have paid out more than $5.5 billion to developers since the launch of the App Store. With high adoption of iOS and Android devices and easy access for developers, its a great environment on both platforms.
“In particular, iOS and Android have made it possible for independent developers and mobile app start-ups to thrive,” writes Flurry’s Peter Farago. “As industries mature, however, we expect established players and brands to invade from other platforms, depressing opportunities for many early entrants. Along with this, we expect to see market revenue concentrate among fewer larger players. For this report, with these typical patterns in mind, Flurry modeled worldwide mobile app revenue, revenue sources and revenue concentration among top-ranked mobile apps on iOS and Android. For this report, we used data from over 200,000 mobile applications in the Flurry Analytics data set. Let’s start with market growth.”
In 2012, Flurry forecasts that mobile revenue will grow by 60 percent over the previous year, reaching $8.7 billion and advertising is the fastest expanding revenue category with growth forecasted at more than 100 percent, from $980 million in 2011 to $2 billion in 2012 for 23 percent of 2012 total revenue. Likewise, premium and in-app purchase revenue is increasing at a rate of 50 percent, from $4.5 billion in 2011 to $6.7 billion in 2012.
“Next, we look at the concentration of revenue among top ranked apps from 2010 to 2012. Please note that for this analysis, we focus on premium and in-app revenue only, excluding ad revenue,” noted Farago. “Comparing these two years shows how dramatically the distribution of revenue is shifting across the long tail. Starting on the left, in 2010, the green part of the column shows that 28 percent of revenue was generated by the Top 25 ranked titles on iOS and Android. In 2012, we estimate that the Top 25 will drop to commanding about half of total revenue, or 15 percent. Likewise, comparing the gray sections of each column, the rest of the Top 100 apps will drop from earning 27 percent of revenue in 2010 to 17 percent of revenue in 2012. Conversely, revenue generated by the long tail significantly grows from 2010 to 2012. Comparing the blue sections, any apps ranked beyond the top 100, we observe that long tail revenue explodes from earning under half of all premium and in-app purchase revenue in 2010 to over two-thirds in 2012.”
For the top 100 positions across the iTunes App Store and Google Play, relatively speaking, ranking number 50 generates more relative revenue in 2012 versus 2010. It also shows that lower level developers are doing better now than two years ago.
“With the app economy booming, companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are under tremendous pressure from investors to seize the opportunity presented by this new platform. However, with software delivered in the form of downloadable applications, unguaranteed network connectivity, different consumer behavior and control exerted by platform providers such as Apple and Google, the mobile app landscape creates different, meaningful challenges for companies attempting to enter the app space from other platforms. Combined with a marketplace that reduces the power of brand recognition (e.g., apps are free for consumers to try risk free), market wealth unexpectedly continues to shift to the long tail, funding continued R&D, advertising budgets and other activities that increase their competitive strength. The age of middle-class app developer has arrived. In this economy not only are the rich getting richer, but so too are the poor, and gaining on the rich,” concludes Farago.
Source: Blog.Flurry.com
Electronic Arts has announced that Battlefield Premium has 1.3 million people paying for the service. Signing up is a $50 one-time fee, implying that over $60 million has been raised on the service, adding to the $1.3 billion haul from digital sales in the past 12 months for EA.
EA’s Origin service has surpassed 21 million registered users, up from 9.3 million in February. The digital download service now has partnerships with 57 independent developers as well.
Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter has been hired by 2K Sports to be executive producer of NBA 2K13. The rapper and Nets minority owner has personally selected the game’s 24-song soundtrack, and has been working with 2K designers on the overall look and feel of the game’s presentation.
“He’s a huge gamer and a huge fan of the series. He knew so much about it that he was even weighing in on certain aspects of gameplay, which was a huge surprise to us. He loves this franchise and you can tell just talking to him that he knows it very well and plays it very well. And that was a big deal to us. We wanted someone who was as engaged with the franchise as they were with the sport,” said Jason Argent, vice president of marketing for 2K Sports. “This is obviously a big, big announcement for 2K Sports, but this is just the first announcement for NBA 2K13. Everything from the feature set to the gameplay has taken another giant, incredible leap forward.”
“This has been a unique opportunity to collaborate with 2K Sports and be a part of one of the best sports video games in history,” said Carter. “NBA 2K13 will be the next evolution in sports and basketball culture, and I’m ready to usher in the new era of the franchise.”
Sample some of the game’s soundtrack at Facebook.com.
John Carmack has launched a Kickstarter for Oculus Rift, his new VR goggles. Designed to be an immersive experience for games, the project has shot past the $250,000 goal and now has well over half a million in one day.
“Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever,” reads the description. “With an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking, the Rift provides a truly immersive experience that allows you to step inside your favorite game and explore new worlds like never before.”
“The Rift is developed by a team of industry veterans passionate about changing the way people experience video games forever,” it added. “We’ve tackled projects of similar scope: we’ve designed and manufactured consumer hardware; we’ve built well-adopted software development kits for the game industry; and now we’re excited to build a product that can so radically change the way people play their favorite video games.”
Source: Kickstarter.com
Zynga has seen its stock price drop below $3 after the company reported disappointing earnings in its recent quarterly report. It resulted in the firm stripping COO John Schappert of his responsibility for games. Zynga transferred oversight of games jointly to Chief Mobile Officer David Ko and Executive Vice President Steve Chiang, something Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter is practically livid about.
“Pulling a game guy out of the primary responsibility for managing the game effort, and putting a non-game guy, which is Pincus, in charge, I think that’s idiotic,” said Pachter to Bloomberg. “The newer games are doing really quite well and it’s really that the growth of the new stuff isn’t offsetting the decline in the old stuff. So I’m not sure how that’s Schappert’s responsibility or fault, and I think this is probably ultimately going to be a strategic error that bites them in the butt.”
Source: Business Insider
Frank N. Magid Associates reports that iPad ownership has decreased among smartphone owners from 72 percent last year to 50 percent now. The Amazon Kindle Fire has made up that marketshare difference, increasing from a market share of zero to 22 percent.
“We expect to see the iPad as the leader, but with the Surface, Kindle Fire, and Nexus as three solid competitors with significant market share,” said Magid executive director of mobile strategy Tom Godfrey. “What is interesting now is that many people, including a lot of publishers, think the tablet market is just the iPad, but these figures show people need to consider other platforms as well.”
Magid expects the number of tablet owners to soon double from 51 million to 106 million users.
Facial animation has increased greatly during this generation of consoles (see Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and L.A. Noire as examples) but it’s still not one-to-one realistic. 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann thinks that for the gaming industry to truly reach the next level of mainstream appeal, we’ll need photorealism.
“Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country… it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies,” said Hartmann. “Until games are photorealistic, it’ll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.”
“To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console,” he added.
Source: GamesIndustry International
Reports are that Microsoft is looking to open a new games studio in London. It is believed that the new studio will focus on free-to-play and online casual experiences for the Xbox platform.
“EMEA is a key market for us and we continue to cultivate the best talent and focus on growing our business, with this role focused on the continued expansion of our Microsoft Studios business in the region,” commented Microsoft.
Microsoft is looking for senior staff that are familiar with online, mobile and cloud services. The team’s mission includes “developing successful new products and services for current and future consumers”.
Source: MCV
