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.

 

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

Heyzap Raises $4.3 Million

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Heyzap has announced that it has raised $4.3 million from Union Square Ventures and Qualcomm. The funds will be used for talent acquisition for the mobile social gaming platform.

“Our leaderboards, achievements and ads SDKs are taking off and we want to fuel the growth there,” said Heyzap co-founder Jude Gomila.

Source: The Next Web

Curse Launches Gamepedia

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Curse has announced that it is launching Gamepedia.com, an alternative to Wikia and its Wikipedia that will focus solely on video game wikis. The company will have exclusive content deals with certain companies, starting with Gazillion and Marvel, which will provide exclusive content to gamers through the official Marvel Heroes Wiki.

“Curse has a vast array of news and community sites surrounding specific games that feed Gamepedia wikis with passionate hardcore gamers who provide the most up to date accurate information,” said Hubert Thieblot, CEO & Founder of Curse. “The synergy between our properties provides a competitive advantage that can’t be matched by other wiki providers and results in the best game wiki content attracting exclusive partnerships.”

Pawel Dembowski, a veteran of Wikia, is heading up the Curse Gamepedia initiative. He wants gamers to know that the focus is solely on game content.

“Wikia used to focus more on games, but today it’s more focused on finding new audiences and developing the social aspects of the wikis,” said Dembowski. “Gamepedia is about video games and video games only.”

“Rather than adding stuff like achievements and badges and all the stuff that Wikia is currently doing, Gamepedia is focusing on gaming content,” said Dembowski. “The actual content at Wikia is limited to less than half of the page because the rest is taken up by gamification. People come to Wikis to look up info or to learn more about the world of the game, not to get badges and stuff like that.”

The various GamePedia wikis will be able to customize their looks more than Wikia, which has strict guidelines of appearance. Certain wikis like the official Minecraft Wiki will retain their separate domains, but they’ll be connected to Gamepedia.

“Part of this initiative is leveraging our good relationship with developers and publishers, which allows us to get exclusive content from them pre-release,” said Dembowski. “Wikia is not really a gaming community company. They don’t really do much directly with the publishers or developers. We’re going to encourage our existing communities to help create content.”

“The fact that we are also gamers and fans means our Gamepedia team is very much dedicated to helping the gamers and the communities to build the databases of the games,” he added. “Wikis are primarily built by fans, but we are also dedicated to building them with them and helping them whenever necessary. We have a clean and simple layout that’s customizable. We have less ads than Wikia, which uses pop-ups or Flash-based ads. We do have ads, but they are definitely less disruptive ads.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz