Chinese Game Industry At $9.7 billion In 2012

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According to the China Game Industry Report 2012, the Chinese game industry saw income of 60.28 billion yuan ($9.7 billion), a year-on-year increase of 35.1 percent. This is led by China’s online game market, which saw sales of 56.96 billion yuan ($9.1 billion) and accounted for 94.5 percent of total revenue, while the mobile gaming market sales were 3.24 billion yuan ($520 million), accounting for 5.4 percent.

In addition, the report also predicts that by 2017, China’s game market revenue will increase to 135.22 billion yuan ($21.7 billion). This would reflect year-on-year growth of 12.4 percent from 2013 to 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.3 percent.

Source: Techweb

Fez Coming To New Platforms In 2013

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Phil Fish, head of Polytron Corporation, has confirmed that he is planning a couple more games. Beyond that, he’s also revealed that the book has not closed on his acclaimed indie title Fez.

“Fez will finally be ported to other platforms,” revealed Fish. “Yes, I’ve heard you, dozens of people emailing me everyday telling me how much of an idiot i am for not porting Fez to everything. We also have some exciting plans for the soundtrack, and something about a U.S. branch”

Source: PolytronCorporation.com

Child’s Play Raises Over $5 Million In 2012

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Child’s Play raised over $5 million in 2012, which is a record for the charity designed to help give children access to consoles and games in over 70 hospitals worldwide. Money was raised by various gaming marathons, sponsored events, individual donors and the sale of Humble Bundles.

“The term ‘record-setting’ doesn’t do our final total justice, nor does incredible, amazing, generous, or overwhelming,” said Child’s Play in a statement. “In 2012, Child’s Play Charity raised $5,085,761 for children across the globe. We also want to call out the Humble Bundle team, as being involved with them has been a, well, humbling experience. The support that stems from these bundles makes a profound impact on the work we do.”

DmC – CG Trailer

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Early reviews of DmC have been positive, and fans and curious gamers are eagerly awaiting the game’s mid-January release. One things for sure: it has a lot of panache.

Dead Space 3 – The Story So Far

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This video provides some good context for how an engineer got caught in up in a battle with the Necromorph plague. Be warned that many nitty-gritty details of the games are laid out, so if you want to play Dead Space 1 and 2 yourself, there’s spoilers ahead.

Lumosity — Work Out Your Brain

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Lumos Labs has worked out a series of online tools for training your brain that they say will make people more mentally fit. Like with other such software in the past, it’s effectiveness is subject to debate, but the drawing of squiggly lines overlaying video is neat.

 

Tweet Better With SoundTracking

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While Twitter users may not be able to share Instagram photos anymore, SoundTracking lets them integrate visual and audio media directly into their tweets. With SoundTracking, select a song to tweet, and a picture of the band will display as the song plays.

Tweets can be expanded on the web and at the bottom of the tweet it might read ‘view summary’ or ‘view photo’ enabling the user to view media without leaving Twitter.com.

SoundTracking is moving to own this space (sometimes referred to as a photo card) by creating a visual way to share music on Twitter. The Instagram-like interface creates an environment so users feel comfortable sharing music experiences in a way that is appealing to their followers.

 

The Walking Dead Hits 8.5 Million Episodes Sold

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Telltale CEO Dan Connors indicates that The Walking Dead has sold more than 8.5 million episodes. iOS sales only comprised 25 percent of the total, but it has grown the most compared to previous titles and was more reactive to interest in the TV show.

“It was the culmination of the product, the game of the year awards, the retail push, and it still has a ton of head room in it,” he said. “Apple has featured us a bunch of times for each of the episodes, and it’s in Apple’s Hall of Fame.”

“What we’ve done is have this online buzz going from April to November, and then have this finale to top it off and have that be the biggest event that propels it into the mass market,” Connors added. “It allowed us to capture all that early adopter audience but also gives us the momentum to build a product that can reach out to the mass. Instead of paying a bunch of money to drive a bunch of installs, we have all this momentum and recognition that comes from all the work we’ve done over the five months leading up to the Christmas launch. Then the finale happens, and bam, it’s picked up by a much wider spread.”

Google, Apple, Samsung Continue Smartphone Dominance

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According to a report by ComScore, Google’s Android saw a 1.1 percent increase over the previous quarter, giving it a with a 53.7 percent slice of the smartphone market. Apple did well by the iPhone 5, seeing its share increase .7 percent to 35 percent; Microsoft’s saw its share drop .6 percent, demonstrating a lack of impact from Windows Phone 8.

There was a similar level of consolidation among OEMs, with Samsung posting 26.9 percent of the market (up 1.2 percentage points), while Apple ranked second with 18.5 percent market share (up 1.4 percentage points). Meanwhile, LG, Motorola and HTC all saw their share decrease to 17.5 percent , 10.4 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively.

“In November, 75.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device (up 0.3 percentage points),” reported ComScore. “Downloaded applications were used by 54.2 percent of subscribers (up 0.8 percentage points), while browsers were used by 52.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 0.9 percentage points to 39.2 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 33.7 percent of the mobile audience, while 28.7 percent listened to music on their phones (up 0.4 percentage points).”

Samsung benefits from having a diverse range of products it offers, while Apple generally limits itself to one new iPhone model a year. ComScore conducted the study by asking more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers about their phones.

Source: ComScore.com

Google Settles Case With FTC

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced that it is concluded its 19-month investigation into Google’s practices. The regulators said they found no evidence to claims that Google unfairly favors its own services in search results.

At the same time, Google agreed to license certain patents to rivals Apple, RIM and others. Google has also promised to exclude snippets copied from other websites in its summaries of key information – the company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law.

Source: USAToday.com