EA Sports announced that FIFA 13 set a launch record for sales in North America. EA estimates FIFA 13 sold 353,000 copies on the Xbox 360 and PS3, a 42 percent increase over FIFA 12’s day-one total.
The company also said that the $6.99 FIFA 13 app posted the best launch-day iOS performance in the company’s history, up 62 percent year-over-year. The soccer game also launched on PS Vita, 3DS, Wii, PC, PS2, and PSP, with a Wii U version set to launch November 18.
IDG World Expo announced that it has acquired the Game Marketing Summit from PromaxBDA. IDG World Expo has assumed all responsibilities for the event previously known as MI6, but PromaxBDA will continue to assist with the Games Marketing Summit’s awards process.
“There is no company more appropriate, capable and supportive of the global gaming industry than IDG World Expo and the entire community is excited to see them take this event to the next level,” said PromaxBDA CEO and president Jonathan Block-Verk.
Dates for the next show have yet to be announced, but the one-day event will take place in San Francisco in Spring 2013.
Free-to-play as a business model has intriguing possibilities on both mobile, PC and consoles in the future. Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Alain Martinez said during a recent conference call that the company believes free-to-play will affect the future of all games.
“Free-to-play is a very flexible business model,” said Stephanie Perotti, Ubisoft’s worldwide director of online. “The player has the capability to spend more than in a traditional model.”
“Ubisoft says there’s a wider audience available for free-to-play. The company notes that The Settlers 7 launched at retail in five different languages and 28 countries, while The Settlers Online is accessible anywhere in the world, and the development team localized it for nine languages with more to come.
“The Settlers Online is set to make more money in four years than the Settlers brand did on PC over nine years,” Perotti said.
Free-to-play requires a new set of skills, including marketing and micro-monetization that’s very different when compared to traditional retail releases.”We can control everything from the pricing to marketing as if we were an online store,” Perotti said.
On the issue of free-to-play for consoles Martinez seemed more focused on DLC, saying, “There will be free-to-play on consoles. But in the future, with games like Sleeping Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model. The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games’ profitability.”
Free-to-play generated 20 million Euros last year, and is expected to more than double to 50 ““ 60 million Euros this fiscal year.
Source: VentureBeat
Twin Galaxies recently announced that they are celebrating their 40th anniversary. The oldest known video game championship was conducted on the Stanford Campus, October 19, 1972.
Guinness recognizes Twin Galaxies as the official scorekeeper and contest adjudicator for the worldwide video game industry for 30 years. They’ve created a Video Game Trading Card Set to document the history of the worldwide video game industry, honoring the industry icons, the video game personalities, the contest winners and the benchmark events and milestones.
The remaining assets of 38 Studios are being sold off between October 16 – 23, including “high-end computers, servers, graphic design and animation equipment, office equipment, office furniture, audio recording equipment, motion-capture suit, flat panel plasma and LCD TVS and so much more.” Microsoft, for its part, is making sure that Xbox 360 development kits are not part of the sale.
“Xbox 360 Development Kits (XDK) are the property of Microsoft and are only licensed to authorized studios and may not be assigned or sold to any third party without the written consent of Microsoft,” said a Microsoft rep. “We will be contacting the appropriate parties involved in the auction of 38 Studios’ assets to remove the XDK units from the auction listing and to secure the return of the consoles to Microsoft.”
Source: Polygon
The Tales from Dunwall animated series continues with “The Hand that Feeds” and “In the Mind of Madness”. Find out more about the mysterious supernatural abilities granted by The Outsider and meet Piero, a key figure in the city of Dunwall who also plays a pivotal role in Corvo’s story.
Many developers have a wariness for Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 and they might finally have some solid justification. Markus “Notch” Persson says he’s not interested in submitting Minecraft for Windows 8 certification.
“Got an email from Microsoft, wanting to help ‘certify’ Minecraft for Win 8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the PC as an open platform,” Persson wrote. “I’d rather have Minecraft not run on Win 8 at all than to play along. Maybe we can convince a few people not to switch to Win 8 that way…”
Source: Twitter
Minecraft is a method used to make many things, but this is one of the best yet. Perhaps the most impressive part is that everything was made in-game without mods.
This video is a musical introduction to the new and refined user experience for MySpace. Justin Timberlake is featured prominently in the video, which isn’t too surprising since he’s one of the site’s owners now.
A new ARG for Hunted, a new Cinemax drama revolving around the ominous-sounding Byzantium Security International utilizes elements from the fictional company’s name and image baiting the Occupy movement. Out-of-home ads were placed on and around Wall Street, and banners on WallStreetJournal.com really rubbed that in.
They direct people to a game at ByzantiumTests.com, a five-part job application that’s appropriately byzantine. Developed in part with a cognitive psychologist, the tests combine Facebook integration, emotion recognition technology, logic and spatial puzzles, personality tests and subliminal commands. A magician from The Magic Circle, a London-based magician society, helped further trick out the site.
For outreach, writers and bloggers were sent a wooden puzzle, in the shape of the Byzantium Security logo, that was a challenge to unlock — with a flash drive inside containing media materials.
