CREATIVE: The Week’s Top Trailers Have Arrived

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PlayStation Now – Debut Trailer

Sony has finally laid down their subscription plan for PlayStation Now, a giant library of PS3 titles ripe and ready for unlimited streaming. For either $20/month or $45 every three, you can enjoy more than 100 titles that have graced the PS4’s older brother.

This pricing announcement comes on the heels of EA partnering exclusively with Xbox for EA Access, a subscription-based library of digitally streaming Electronic Arts titles. Currently this service costs only $5 per month, but the collection is much smaller than PlayStation Now’s.

Forza Horizon 2 – G-Shock Car Pack Trailer

Forget the cars, let’s take a moment to appreciate how darn good this game looks. Whatever gameplay issues exist aside, Forza Horizon 2 promises us two things: there will be a ton of authentic cars, and the landscapes of the French Riviera and beyond will take your breath away.

Okay, back to the cars. With an eclectic mix of classic and new, road and all-terrain, there’s a vehicle for everyone in this $4.99 expansion. I’m having dreams about tearing that Subaru BRAT through some amber waves of grain. Fantastic, wonderful dreams. When an car website calls your game “the closest you’ll get to living your car fantasy”, you’re doing something right.

Dying Light – New Year’s Resolutions Trailer

New year’s resolutions go a bit differently in the infected city of Harran. Instead of trying to get in shape or getting in better touch with old friends, the characters of Dying Light are more concerned with petty things like “not being eaten alive” and “escaping that hell hole of a zombie town”.

Produced here at Ayzenberg, this video comes as part of a series of clips lovingly named “Dying Highlights”: a social video campaign showing off the many features of Dying Light in user friendly, easy to digest video form. Gosh, this game looks bloody awesome.

SpongeBob HeroPants – Debut Trailer

Bonus trailer, because this is too good/weird to not show off. Spongebob and friends come to 3DS, Vita, and Xbox 360. Most random combination ever You’ve obviously never watched Spongebob before.  

Instagram Is The Fastest-Growing Social Network, But Pinterest Isn’t Far Behind

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The Pew Internet Research Project has just released its survey findings conducted in September of 2014 about the proliferation and popularity of major social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.

Facebook has held firm at its spot as the most-used social network, but for the past year, has had stagnant user growth. That doesn’t mean that social networks have reached their peak, however. In the meantime, every other social network has made big gains in wrangling new users into their midst. The fastest-growing social networks Instagram with Pinterest breathing down its neck by just one percentage point.

Facebook user engagement has been growing even though its userbase has not. According to Pew, 70 percent of Facebook users visit and engage on the site daily, and a high 45 percent actually use it several times a day. Instagram engagement rates are close Facebook’s for being a relatively new platform. Nearly half of Instagram users engage daily.

Pinterest, although growing memberships quickly has a lower daily usage than its counterparts. The platform sees 17 percent of its userbase daily and continues to appeal less for men (13 percent) than women (42 percent).

Should Facebook Be Worried About Its Core App?

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Facebook’s lofty push to introduce Messenger as a standalone app seems like an unqualified success at first glance, as ComScore‘s mobile app data report for November 2014 shows Messenger with a staggering 69 percent reach amongst all American smartphone users.

The news is clear: People love Facebook‘s messaging service. That love, however, appears to come at the expense of the Facebook core app’s market share.

A Pew Research Center report released today shows Facebook in first place amongst all social networks in the United States, but with significantly slowed growth relative to years past. Meanwhile, 52 percent of online adults use two or more social networks, up from 42 percent a year earlier, allowing competitors like LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter to grow at their expense.

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram appears to be doing well to blunt public perception that the social giant has lost its “cool” factor with younger consumers, as Instagram is still extremely popular with young adults; 49 percent of all 18-29 year old Internet users say they use it at least once a day.

The migration away from Facebook’s core app likely stems in large part from their decision to require smartphone users to download Messenger if they wanted to continue using chat, a move that compelled many to abandon the core app entirely even as they embraced Messenger as a standalone app.
The challenge for Facebook now, it would seem, is whether they can compel Americans to have the same sort of enduring relationship with Messenger that Japanese audiences have with Line or Chinese consumers have with Tencent’s QQ. If they are successful, Facebook — Messenger and all — might become a bigger hit with users and engagement-enamored marketers than ever before.

Game Veteran Mark Long Discusses The Uno Noteband

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Mark Long founded independent game developer Zombie Studios 21 years ago, after spending years developing early virtual reality technology. Long spent a few years heading up Meteor Entertainment, which launched the free to play Mech game, Hawken. He recently left the game development industry to work on a new wearable device, the Uno Noteband, which was designed to push communication from a smartphone or tablet to your wrist using new Spritz technology. The Indigogo campaign raised over $100,000, doubling its initial goal. The $129 wearable will launch this spring. He talks about the gaming applications for this new device, which makes its debut at CES 2015, in this exclusive interview.

Mark LongMark Long

How did you get involved in this Uno Noteband project?

This started when a friend of mine invested in this Spritz technology, which is a new reading compression technology, and he asked if there was a use for gaming. I told him it’d be much better on a wearable device, so we started designing and engineering it. We’re a lot farther along than most projects. We’ll have the first factory samples available to show at the Indiegogo booth at CES.

What’s the concept behind the Uno Noteband?

It’s a simple proposition, displaying text messages that normally would be on a locked phone on your wrist. We get so many notifications pushed to us. I’ve tried virtually every wearable I can get my hands on and the Razer Nabu is closest to us. You have to have the fitness tracking built in. That’s basic today. And a watch. And we’re focusing on pushing the notifications.

What gaming applications are there for this device?

We looked into the three major networks — Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam — to see how open they were. We were surprised to see all the first and third party apps you could use to log into those accounts. If you have any of those, you can log in with credentials and we’ll push those invites to your wrist. So friends inside a game can communicate to you on your wrist.

What do you feel makes this product unique?

It’ll evolve over time, but it’s unique to be in the game world, but not in the game. We allow you to stay connected with your gaming friends even when you’re nowhere near your PC or console. The second innovation is cross-platform communication across ecosystems. You can send messages via the Unoband app and then go from PlayStation to Xbox to Steam. We’re linking these ecosystems so you can communicate across gaming networks.

Where do you see your device living in the crowded wearable marketplace?

We’re in between a smartband and a smartwatch. We can’t compete with Apple and Samsung on a feature basis; they’ll always be able to do a better job than we could. Our Spritz technology reminds me of those mentats fromDune, where it shoots all that info into your brain with light. This technology is really cool and it’s easy to read all your messages.

How has crowdfunding opened up new opportunities for tech startups?

I was skeptical of crowdfunding because it was an all or nothing proposition. It has the potential to kill your ambition with the project if it doesn’t find an audience. We didn’t really need the financing to finish the project. But crowdfunding has become a little social network of people who find and support devices like this. Twenty-five percent of our backers don’t even buy the band. They just wanted to back our project. These hardware tastemakers — the smart cool guy in the office — back between 50 to 100 projects a year. They’re the nucleus of influencers that will tell other consumers about the project. This comes from the free-to-play space, where game developers rely on the community to support the game financially.

What did you learn from running Meteor Entertainment and releasing Hawken?

The free to play market is tough. It’s an industry that’s evolving very rapidly. I was surprised that Hawken didn’t find the audience we thought it would. It continues to do well on Steam. In the category of first-person shooters, it’s a hyper competitive space. Even the idea that it’s free doesn’t matter. It has to be superior in every regard. You have to deliver a better game than Call of Duty to get any interest.

What’s the latest with your old company, Zombie Studios?

We just completed a management buyout of Zombie, where the lead designers have taken over the studio after 21 years. When we first launched the company it was created for virtual reality. We called it Zombie Virtual Reality Entertainment. This was back when the first head-mounted displays were released like the one for the Atari Jaguar. But virtual reality didn’t take off. The technology was way behind the consumer promise. We were using camcorder viewfinders blown up to 180 degrees and at that time there was no DirectX or Renderware, so you had to custom code your own 3D engine. Today, Oculus has delivered everything you ever dreamed of with a ski goggle comfortable display, beautiful audio and low latency visuals. VR will finally have its day with developers making games you want to play. I’m also seeing a lot of VR movies and shorts being created, which is interesting.

What’s it like for you working back in the technology field again after so many years designing games?

It’s endlessly simulating. Hardware is a million tiny details that all have to be exactly right. It’s not like software, where that you can ship it and patch it afterward. You pay attention to things you never considered. Working in China with this project and watching this huge revolution happen there and seeing how skilled their engineers are and how hyper competitive it is; has been interesting. We’re also on the cutting edge of mobile app development. In some ways it’s like the early PC gaming years where there was Apple and the PC worlds, where there were different versions of PCs in Japan. Android is much like that.

How are you going to market the Uno Noteband?

We’re going direct to consumers. All of our ads and marketing is through social media, where you can hyper target to the consumer you want. I’ve been impressed with Facebook advertising and how targeted it is, where we can find a subset of gamers who own a fitness tracker.

What makes you think you can compete in a space where there are so many wearables?

Wearables aren’t like a mobile phone, where you have to have one and it’s tied to your subscriptions service. Wearables are like watches. People own tons of watches for different reasons and different outfits. Our aspiration is to be the Swatch of wearables: inexpensive and stylish and we just do one thing really well. It’s very clear to me after 24 hours if a wearable is something I like or not. I care about notification. Until you try this and you’re at dinner with colleagues and your phone is vibrating and you can read a text message in less than 2 seconds, you don’t see how this changes your life. You become less distracted by your phone and remain more engaged with the people around you.

CES 2015: Surprise, Millennials Are Not Tied to Any One Screen

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By: Sahil Patel

Only 55 percent of millennials use TVs as their primary source for watching video, according to a new study from NATPE and the Consumer Electronics Association, which was conducted by E-Poll Market Research and released at CES in Las Vegas.

The goal of the study was to document how people are discovering, finding, and watching TV content as more and more streaming-capable devices launch in the marketplace, and more and more users adopt them into their daily lives.

See the findings in the news NATPE/CEA study…

This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

Rumble: What Next-Gen Mobile Games Should Be

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The road ahead for mobile games is getting steeper, and the days of easy money are over — but there’s still great rewards ahead for those who can craft the right game, and find the best way to market. Greg Richardson, CEO of Rumble Entertainment, has successfully brought his company from social to mobile games in a market where many companies are only developing for mobile. The company’s multi-platform strategy is paying off, as Richardson described in part 1 of this interview.

Richardson continues to look ahead at where mobile games are headed, and shares some of his thoughts with the [a]listdaily on what it will take to be successful in mobile games for 2015 and beyond.

Greg Richardson

People want to be able to play with their friends no matter what device they have, but that’s not easy to accomplish, is it?

I don’t want to underplay something that is also important. As a game designer, when you’re creating entertainment, you do have to take into consideration the devices strengths and weaknesses, and you have to take into consideration the use case. When people are playing games on mobile often they don’t have a lot of time, the screen is smaller, and the input is going to be different than if you had a game controller. You can’t use that as a throwaway to say therefore it’s impossible. Because it’s not.

If you think about what we’ve done with KingsRoad, it’s a PC game that’s very much driven by the mouse and the keyboard, and a really good experience as evidenced by a million Facebook likes and the really high ratings we have there from players. But when we transferred it to the mobile world, we changed the UI and the UX, but we also changed some things — like we added auto-attack. I can get distracted if I’m on my phone and playing. The ease of clicking your mouse button is different than poking a finger at a screen. So you have to design in that difference in the use case, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a shared game experience.

People will get different things out of a game, and they like to focus on the parts they like — isn’t that something you have to consider as you design a game like KingsRoad?

At the end of the day, it comes down to what does the end user really want to consume, and how much can we learn about their gameplaying habits from what they’ve been playing historically on mobile devices, versus what we think is possible. Think about the underlying drivers here. I’ve got an iPhone 6, and I literally laugh out loud every time I pick up my wife’s iPhone 5 because I can’t believe she can work on a screen that small. No one is ever going back to that small of a screen. The second thing is the graphical horsepower of those things. The new iPad 2 Airs are basically the equivalent of a PlayStation 4 in terms of CPU and GPU. You’ve got WiFi bandwidth going up, you’ve got 4G and 5G on the horizon, and the ability to download and play bigger games and games that are synchronous multiplayer and require a good connection, it’s all being enabled. It’s now up to us as content creators to imagine what it is the players really want to experience. Not based on what they consumed off of small screen mobile devices that were woefully underpowered compared with what we have today, but actually deliver something that’s really incredible.

We hope KingsRoad is viewed as that, as this true full-blown ARPG, and we hope people look at Vainglory like that, and that starts the snowball running downhill towards richer and deeper and more delicious content.

I think mobile has been more difficult in part because of the rapid development of mobile technology. With consoles, you knew you’d have years to learn how to make the best games possible on a piece of hardware that didn’t change. With mobile, there’s more powerful hardware every year, and it’s not clear when that’s going to stop. It’s great that there’s more horsepower, but designers are still exploring what can be done with mobile hardware even from a year or two ago, aren’t they?

You’re spot on. If you were able to get into the consciousness of mobile game developers and publishers back in 2013, the huge, overwhelming focus of their attention was around monetization. If you took that same snapshot in 2014, they started to shift to retention. Now, as we shift to 2015, it’s going to be long-term retention and engagement. We want to get people to play games for years, and we want to get people to play a lot. That’s the sign that we’ve made something that people can’t stop playing and they want to make a part of their life. That’s going to change everything.

It really goes back to the article you wrote. You’re going to see creativity expand, you’re going to see people look at core games and deeper, richer games, you’re going to see people look at PC and console game influence in terms of the types of products that will be brought forward. It really will change everything. The amount of capital that’s going to be required to build these games is going to go way up, the focus on what happens after launch is going to be much more important that what you do before you launch, because you expect these games to live for years so you better be thinking about that, in terms of events and content and where the games goes. It better be designed to be very extensible. It really is a revolution.

I’m often reminded about conversations I had going back four or five years ago about free-to-play and the West, when Facebook was the dominant ecosystem. At the time I was an investor, looking at the market, and everybody said “It’s over for free-to-play. It’s Zynga, it’s Wooga, it’s Playdom, it’s Playfsh. These are the big guys, no one’s going to crack this. These guys have all the leverage in the world. They’re the big new guns in town.” Then you fast-forward to the beginning of this year, and everyone’s saying “It’s over on mobile, it’s King, it’s Supercell, it’s GungHo, Machine Zone. Nobody has a chance, these guys are entrenched.” It’s as if they see these things as the fixed, mature businesses even though they’re barely out of their diapers.

It is daunting when you look at the size of some of these companies, and their audience, and the amount of money they can throw at TV commercials and they like. It just means that your game has to be amazing enough to gather an audience, and you have to be patient enough to build both the game and the audience.

You have it right. There is no doubt that the barrier to entry and the talent that you have to have, the vision that you have to have for creating tremendously compelling games, the patience and the capital is a much higher bar to disrupt the current leaders than it was a few years back. But at the same time, all these guys are very vulnerable because they’ve made so much money and they have so much success building games and running a business playbook that isn’t relevant going forward. When you consider the power of these mobile devices, breakthrough new features like synchronous multiplayer and cross-platform, and where the depth and the richness of the games is an order of magnitude greater than the games that brought them their initial success, that makes them vulnerable. That’s why you’re going to see a next generation of leaders in this business, and that’s what Rumble’s all about.

See the rest of this interview with Greg Richardson here.

Razer Dominates CES With New Tech

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Razer is no stranger to accumulating a strong, loyal audience of gamers, between its release of devoted computers, laptops and accessories that really dial in to the gamer/broadcaster experience. For this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, however, it’s really gone all out, with the introduction of three new projects that will no doubt help it push forward into 2015.

First off, the company has introduced the Forge TV, an Android-based microconsole that connects to a television and provides players the opportunity to play their mobile games on a viable, affordable new platform (it’s due to sell for $99, or $149 with the controller). However, the real key component here is the Cortex: Stream technology, which will enable players to stream their PC gaming sessions as well, capable of working with supplementary Razer peripherals. The device will launch this spring.

Next up, the Open Source Virtual Reality platform will make it much easier for developers and gamers to access their favorite programs, using a certifiable platform that supports a number of game engines, including Unreal Engine 4. The device will launch sometime this spring, for the very affordable price of $199, and should no doubt be a key entrant in the forthcoming virtual reality battle – especially with its support of supplementary VR devices (like the Oculus Rift) and platforms like Windows, Linux and Android.

Finally, the Nabu X provides the company with its less expensive entry into the wearable tech market, with a smart-band that delivers notifications from smartphones and tracks fitness data through a number of light-up indicators and a small OLED private message screen. The device will launch at $49.99 later this spring, although key Insiders on the company’s forums can pick it up for as cheap as $19.99 much sooner.

Min-Liang Tan, the chief executive of Razer, had a chance to speak with VentureBeat about the forthcoming devices, which he feels will provide the company with a huge push through 2015. His full interview with the site is below, and features some of the new tech in action.

Valve Announces New ‘DOTA 2’ Tournament

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Last year’s International DOTA 2 tournament, which was hosted by Valve when it took place in Seattle last year, was a triumphant success for both the company and its fans, as players battled for four days before Chinese team Newbee was awarded the top prize of $5 million – the highest ever given in an eSports-related tournament.

Now, it looks like Valve is ready to do it all over again. Polygon has reported the official dates for the next International DOTA 2 tournament, which will take place once again in Seattle from August 3rd through the 8th – an expansion of six days over the original tournament’s four.

Once more, 16 teams will take part in sessions surrounding the MMO-based DOTA 2, with a chance to win big money and prizes. Team invitations are expected to be sent “shortly after” May 1st, according to the company.

Although venue details and a prize pool weren’t mentioned as of yet, the high popularity of the original event could see an even bigger amount of money offered as the grand prize to the best DOTA 2 team. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the top honors granting something along the lines of $7 million – or perhaps even more.

Valve hasn’t provided ticket details as of yet, but the International is likely to be broadcast online again for those who want to watch the action. The company has already provided the release date “so that you’re able to start making room in your schedules.”

One interesting fact with the International 2015 is that it will coincide with another popular game event, the Gamescom convention, which takes place in Cologne, Germany around the same time this year. The original International tournament, also hosted by Valve, originally took place at this venue back in 2011. (Obviously, it’s a much, much bigger deal now.)

There’s no question that this year’s International will once again push the growing activity of eSports to a whole new level, just as 2014’s tournament did.

‘Puzzle & Dragons’ Adds Mario For 3DS Version

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For several months now, GungHo Online Entertainment’s Puzzle & Dragons has been a worldwide mobile hit, drawing in millions of players and a booming revenue for the company. However, its latest move will see the series expand outside of the mobile front, moving to a whole new platform – and with a unique partner in tow.

Nintendo will team up with the mobile publisher to bring Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition to its newer 3DS game system on April 29th in Japan, for the price of around $33 (4,000 yen), according to VentureBeat. This mega-partnership should be a financial boon for both companies, with Puzzle & Dragons gaining new attention on a different platform, while at the same time featuring the highly popular Mario and company in a new setting.

GungHo has released a previous version of Puzzle & Dragons for the platform, titled Puzzle & Dragons Z, but obviously the Super Mario edition is a much bigger deal, featuring the famous plumber and a few of his friends and foes, who take part in each of the match-3 battles. As you can see in the video below, which was unveiled last night during GungHo’s most recent presentation in Japan, there are plenty of familiar characters to go around.

Right now, the game is only slated for a Japan release, and there’s no word on a release in other markets yet. However, with the Electronic Entertainment Expo around the corner – and Nintendo’s penchant for making announcements through online Direct presentations – it’s likely to be made official in just a few weeks’ time, probably around the same time that the new Nintendo 3DS model gets a release date in the USA and other parts of the world.

And given Puzzle‘s success in the U.S. market – it’s doing fairly well in its own right on our shores – it’s not likely that Nintendo would dismiss the idea of releasing it worldwide. Considering Mario’s popularity with previous crossovers – like his appearance in EA Sports’ NBA Street Vol. 3 and SSX On Tour – it’s bound to happen.

 

Creative Assembly Declares ‘Total War’

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A few weeks back, we reported the news that Creative Assembly was expanding its Total War franchise to include a new real-time strategy twist, in a new product titled Total War: Arena. It’s a unique move for the company, and one that’s likely to increase its audience with both a free-to-play approach and multiplayer support for up to ten would-be gladiators.

In an interview with VentureBeat, creative director Mike Simpson provided a few more details about the expansion, and also talked a bit about its latest expansion of the series, Total War: Attila, which should also be making the rounds this year.

When it comes to development, Simpson explained, “We have five teams. The original core team is working on the main game, Attila, at the moment, and it’s still the same size as it was, or just slightly larger than on the previous project. So it’s not like we’re diluting the main team in order to do more projects. The main team will always be focused on single-player historical strategy games. All of these offshoots, though, we’ll try different things. Some will work well, some not so well, and we’ll just keep going.”

Regarding longevity, on the same level as Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, Simpson noted, “One of the unusual things about the original Shogun is that it sold more copies in its second three years than in its first three years. The rest of the brand has grown and people would go back to pick up a copy of Shogun. These games last a very long time. People play them for four, five, six years after release. Out of that 850,000 player base that we have every month, some will be playing Empire, Napoleon and so on.

“As we keep going, one that that we’ll end up doing is supporting games for much longer than we have in the past. It’s not like it was five or 10 years ago where you release a game and once it’s out the door that’s it. One of the five teams is now dedicated to ongoing support for previous products.”

Moving over to Attila, Simpson stated, “The idea is that playing the Romans is an epic difficulty in that game. In the real world, of course, they failed, or the Western Romans failed. The Eastern Romans succeeded and lasted another thousand years. It’s doable, but it’s difficult.”

The team is certainly large enough across both projects to keep the studio busy for some time. “In the whole studio, there’s more than 300 of us now,” said Simpson. “100 or so are the console team who just finished Alien: Isolation. We’ve always had two separate halves of the studio. There’s always been a console action game side. In fact, they were there first. When I joined there were six people doing sports games for EA. Total War is about 170 people now.”

No doubt both Arena and Attila will make big waves for the company when they’re published by Sega for PC later in the year.

The full interview can be found here.