Agawi Reveals ‘True Cloud’ Platform

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Agawi has announced that it will be demonstrating its True Cloud reference platform at this week’s Cloud Gaming Europe conference on February 21 and 22 in London. The cloud gaming firm has worked with Nvidia, Blue Box, Peer 1, and XO Communications to make cloud gaming accessible for content publishers.

“The previous iterations of cloud gaming have relied on piecemeal efforts and proprietary designs,” said Agawi co-founder Rajat Gupta. “And in today’s infinite-device landscape, developers that don’t create numerous versions of their games have been struggling to get maximum distribution and reach. Agawi True Cloud requires only one version of a game to ever be written in the cloud, and we can make it accessible on any post-PC era device-meaning that one game can reach an exponentially larger audience on tablets, phablets, TVs and next generation game devices like Project Shield.”

“By incorporating Grid servers, Agawi’s True Cloud is realizing the dream of gaming on any device, anywhere,” said Phil Eisler, general manager of Nvidia Grid cloud gaming at Nvidia. “The 12 GPUs found inside Grid K340 servers are designed to enable the smooth, seamless interactive experience of a high-performance gaming PC on mobile devices and unlock the cloud as the universal vehicle for fast and economical gaming.”

Hack It Your Way

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Yesterday hackers ran amok on Burger King’s Twitter feed, rebranding the profile as rival McDonald’s. Hackers managed to change the account name, banner, and logo to make it look like the feed was an official one from McDonalds now bashing its rival, including repeated allegations of drug use by Burger King employees.

 

The social stream hijacking lasted for hours before Burger King PR rep Bryson Thorton managed to work with Twitter to have the feed shut down.

Thorton issued this statement: “We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings.”

While the feed is down, screen grabs of tweets from the hacked account continue to circulate.

Burger King’s competitors took to social media to sympathize.

Wendy’s social media rep, Amy Rose Brown, tweeted, “My real life nightmare is playing out” on Burger King’s twitter feed.

McDonald’s also gave their condolences while cleaning their hands of the affair, stating “We empathize with out @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”

Amidst the fiasco, some pointed out that the hacking might actually be positive for the Burger King brand. New York Magazine reported that despite Burger King’s Twitter being locked during the hacking, followers jumped by nearly 20,000 to 105,000. Since the account has been revived, that number has continued to climb to 112,174 followers.

Afterwards Burger King tweeted, “Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!”

Burger King’s Thorton later issued a formal apology {link no longer active} for the hack, saying, “Earlier today, our official BK Twitter Account was compromised by unauthorized users. Upon learning of this incident, our social media teams immediately began working with Twitter security administrators to suspend the compromised account until we could re-establish our brand’s official Twitter page. We apologize to our loyal fans and followers, whom might have received unauthorized tweets from our account. We are pleased to announce that the account is now active again.”

While not confirmed, the affair may be related to a report that cyber attackers hacked into Twitter on February 1 and, as acknowledged by Twitter, stole user names and passwords for 250,000 users.

 

Exclusive: Marketing Award Jury Announced

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The jury has been announced for the upcoming Game Connection Marketing Awards sponsored by [a]list.  The lineup of judges represents a cross-section of the industry, bringing together senior folks from publishers, first-party, game press, indie development and digital games.

As one of the judges, Richard Iggo has been more accustomed to receiving awards this year than helping dish them out.  Iggo heads marketing on Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, a multiple award winner that took home game of the year at Spike VGA and downloadable game of the year at the DICE awards. Other members of the jury are no stranger to awards.  The judging process shields all members from voting on any submissions from their own organizations.

“Videogame marketers are behind the most effective and innovative campaigns in the entertainment industry, often driven to incredible feats of creative ingenuity by unparalleled competition,” said Iggo after joining the jury. “These awards recognize the talent behind the campaigns we see that continually drive our craft to new heights.”

Stephanie Johnson has been heading marketing on hugely popular franchises for Warner Bros., including Harry Potter and LEGO Batman.  On being selected, Johnson said, “Recognizing the first-class campaigns that the game industry creates is something that I not only look forward to supporting as a judge, but just viewing as a gaming enthusiast.”

Microsoft’s Taylor Smith channeled his passion for Xbox, giving this statement on his selection to the jury: “It takes a gamer and a marketer to pull the cheevos out of the games themselves, and pull them into the marketing.”

Game Connection is accepting submissions now through February 22.  There is no fee to enter or accept trophies, meaning game publishers and developers of all stripes have an opportunity for marketing “cheevos” (a.k.a. achievements) without having to put up hundreds of dollars.

The Game Connection Marketing Awards 2013 jury is made up of the following members:

Carlson Choi, VP Marketing, Namco Bandai

Colin Cupp, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Mochi Media

Richard Iggo, Senior Director of Marketing, Telltale Games

Stephanie Johnson, Director of Marketing, Warner Bros.

Rupert Loman, Founder, Eurogamer

Tim Pivnicny, VP Sales and Marketing, ATLUS Games

Alexandre Scriabine, Acquisition Manager, EA

Taylor Smith, Senior Director, Xbox Global Marketing Communications, Microsoft

Source: Game Connection Marketing Awards

Exclusive: Top Players In Mobile For January

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Newzoo and Distimo have released monthly mobile game data for January 2013, listing top worldwide games and publishers for iOS App Store and Google Play.  Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, provides insight for this month’s rankings.

“Looking at the top ten iOS publishers, January saw Supercell move into the top spot and push EA into the number two position. Both of Supercell’s games, Clash Of Clans and HayDay, are now in the top three.”

“King.com’s Candy Crush Saga jumped up to second place.  Following its success on Facebook, the game is now the best grossing casual mobile game in the world. It has helped King.com climb to number three in the iOS publisher ranks after debuting on the list just last month at number eight.”

“A second casual games publisher is also making an impressive run up the iOS charts with Big Fish Casino, a casino game suite with virtual slots, poker, blackjack and other games.  The game jumped four places since last month to number twelve.  It pushed its publisher Big Fish Games to number seven, just below Zynga.”

Source: Newzoo and Distimo. Rankings based on gross sales.

Source: Newzoo and Distimo. Rankings based on gross sales.

“On the Google Play Store side, Asian companies continue to dominate,” said Warman. “The top five publishers in the store are made up solely of Asian game makers.  GungHo Online Entertainment moved up from the number two spot to claim the top position, pushing Mobage (DeNA) to the third spot. The Puzzle & Dragons publisher has a total of three games in the top 200 games list.  Naver takes the second spot on Google Play. King.com’s hit Candy Crush debuts on the Google Play top ten at number seven, the only game to break the top ten in both stores.”

“Only four publishers are featured in both the iOS as well as the PlayStore ranking – Zynga, King.com, Naver and GungHo Online Entertainment. Across platforms, the number one publisher has three or less games in the top 200 and owns the best performing game.”

Source: Newzoo and Distimo. Rankings based on gross sales.

Source: Newzoo and Distimo. Rankings based on gross sales.

For their rankings, Newzoo and Distimo sample data from 44 territories for iOS App Store and 17 territories for Google Play. The top monthly players in mobile will continue next month.

Sources:

 

Pin It To Win It For Lara Croft

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Lara Croft will soon find herself shipwrecked on a mysterious island with only her wits, courage and whatever supplies she can salvage.

Head over to Pinterest to pin pics of supplies that will help Lara survive to create your own Tomb Raider Survival Board and win great prizes, including a copy of the new Tomb Raider game for Xbox 360!

 

 

 

 

PS4 Reportedly Will Launch Cheaper Than PS3

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Reports are that the next PlayStation will retail for around 300 British Pounds (roughly $460). This comes from industry sources and “leaked internal documents”.

The PS3 launched at a hefty 425 British Pounds ($499/$599 in the U.S) and it would seem likely that Sony would want to avoid sticker shock this time around. While Sony is no doubt planning for a particular price point for the next PlayStation, they are not likely to reveal the price at the upcoming press event.

Source: Times

Rock Band DLC Ending April 2013

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Harmonix has announced that April 2 will be the last weekly DLC release for Rock Band. The company had kept a consistent release schedule for 275 consecutive weeks, releasing over 4,000 songs for the Rock Band Platform

“While there is no content currently scheduled beyond April 2nd, we still have DLC releases lined up for the next few weeks, including the remaining tracks from Rock Band Blitz, several Pro Guitar upgrades, and a handful of artists who have not yet appeared in Rock Band.” said Harmonix in a blog post. “We’re incredibly proud of the DLC milestones we’ve set, especially producing the largest music library of any game available, and we wouldn’t have been able to release as much outstanding content without the support of our amazing community. As thanks to the community, we’re going to continue the ongoing DLC sale of 50% off over 1,100 songs so fans can continue to build their personal libraries from our back catalog.”

“We hope that you’ll all agree that this has been a tremendous run, and you should know it’s a ride that we at Harmonix have been thrilled to be a part of. We’re going to continue to support the forums and RockBand.com and hope to still see you rocking out online, in photos of Rock Band parties shared on Twitter and Facebook, or here on the forums. Whether you waited in line for a midnight release of Rock Band over 5 years ago, or you just joined the party with Rock Band Blitz… whether you’ve downloaded every single song we’ve ever released, or you’ve just played on disc songs until your neighbors moved away… whether you’re a metal shredder, or a bubblegum pop singer… thank you for being a part of our band,” concluded Harmonix.

Source: RockBand.com