Mars Probe Debuts will.i.am Song

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will.i.am recently had a solar-system first event when he broadcast his new single from Mars. Reaching for the Stars was broadcast from the Curiosity rover as part of the NASA educational event for students at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

“Members of the team that successfully landed the rover on Mars earlier this month will explain to students the mission and the technology behind the song’s interplanetary transmission,” said an announcement by NASA. “will.i.am’s i.am.angel Foundation, in partnership with Discovery Education of Silver Spring, Maryland., a provider of digital resources to kindergarten through grade 12 classrooms, will announce a new science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics initiative featuring NASA assets such as the Mars Curiosity Rover.”

Source: Christian Science Monitor

 

Social Success Of Gree And Mobage Examined

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DFC Intelligence recently filed a report from Enterbrain titled “The Secret of Gree & Mobage’s Success – How to succeed with in-App Purchase in the Mobile SNS Market.” In it, they detail the profiles of Japan’s major social network companies, many of which are enacting trends that are likely to influence the North American and European markets in the years to come.

The social game market in Japan is expected to increase from 211.7 billion yen (about $2.6 billion) in 2011 to a forecasted 270 billion yen (about $3.4 billion) in 2012. The majority of this revenue comes from free-to-play titles; using Japanese social mobile networks, Gree and Mobage attract more premium users than social networks like Facebook.

Get the full report at dfcint.com. {link no longer active}

EA says ‘Transition Is Our Friend’

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Social gaming is going through a transition right now and mobile appears to be on the rise. President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau understands this trend, saying that EA will be prepared for this change and will be equally ready for the new consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

“My sense is that mobile is pulling a lot of gamers off social and mobile is booming right now. Whether its tablets or smartphones – Android and iOS are clearly the two leaders there. We’re a big player there we’re number one in terms of market share,” said Gibeau. “We’re pivoting hard toward mobile because it is the fastest-growing segment of the interactive games business right now and it’s certainly probably pulling most of the activity off social, and that’s why you see the flattening in social right now – and frankly where the problem is that Zynga’s encountering.”

‘”Transition is our friend’ is the saying we have at EA, because it gives you a chance to reset everything. And we’ve done enough transitions in this business that we know what we’re doing, and we’re going to go after this one in a big way,” he added. “It’s a time where you see new companies emerge as leaders, and traditional companies fall away.”

Source: Bloomberg

Guild Wars 2 Coming To China

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ArenaNet has announced a deal with KongZhong Corporation to bring Guild Wars 2 to mainland China, one of the biggest licensing transactions for a Western game in the Chinese marketplace to date. ArenaNet has the option to buy up to 40 million of KongZhong Corporation’s ordinary shares after the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2 as part of the agreement.

“We admire the dedication and passion of the Guild Wars 2 development team and believe this is reflected in Guild Wars 2 being highly anticipated around the world, including by China gamers,” said KongZhong CEO Wang Lei lei. “I believe Chinese game players will be impressed by Guild Wars 2 unique gameplay which will bring truly epic, cooperative gameplay back to the MMORPG genre.”

“We designed Guild Wars 2 to not only redefine the MMO category, but to appeal to a global audience,” added ArenaNet co-founder and president Mike O’Brien.

Oculus CEO Talks Marketing A VR Headset

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Oculus is one of the most ambitious projects for gaming, hoping to make a VR headset a feasible reality for most consumers. However, there’s a marketing problem in that the true functionality of the headset can’t be shown without owning the device, but Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe believes there are other ways to market the Oculus Rift.

“We’re going to do a lot of good press and marketing; we’re certainly going to have to ramp up,” said Iribe. “It’s hard but you have to get in front of the right people with the demo. So when we get in front of press with the demo, and they get to try the prototype, and we go and we visit those select game developers, as soon as you put this thing on your head and look around you get the potential of where this can go. You want to get involved, and you want to help, and hopefully write something positive about it.”

“Part of the Kickstarter is to start that kind of viral marketing,” he added. “When we ship 10,000 developer kits in December there’ll be an awful lot of people at a lot of different game studios and a lot of different developers that start talking about Oculus. For us, marketing is more a matter of getting all the developers to support it. As they start to promote that the game is compatible with Oculus it will drive a lot of interest.”

Source: GamesIndustry International

Looper – The 8-Bit Game

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Looper is a futuristic sci-fi noir film where a mob killer is tasked with killing his future self, which has been sent back 30 years in the future. With this knowledge, watch this amusing 8-bit rendering of the movie made while Deepak Chetty was waiting for other renders to go through.

Facebook Ads: Four Reasons Why They Flop

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Post IPO Facebook has put a lot of focus on its advertisements since that is one of the few ways the site makes money. Still, there’s a lot of open skepticism over whether Facebook ads really work or not.

Facebook ad failure generally stems from one of four primary components: ad type, ad creative, ad targeting, and performance goals. Find out more at iMediaConnection.

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