Mojang has confirmed that Minecraft Pocket Edition has been bought 5 million times. This goes along with the recently announced amount of 4.5 million on the Xbox 360.
The original version of Minecraft is known to have sold over 8 million copies. This puts total lifetime sales of the franchise at over 17.5 million.
Source: Twitter.com
Machinima has laid off 23 employees from its programming and production departments, including editorial manager Billy Shibley and director of gaming programming Justin Fassino. While this is a blow to the editorial department, the YouTube channel will continue to have editorial content and is still hiring in the sales, marketing and product departments.
“This is growing pains. Machinima has grown a lot in a short amount of time. We had to look at the business, look at where we’re focusing,” said Machinima editor-in-chief Rob Smith. “It has hit the editorial group, but we are still doing editorial coverage in a slightly different way.”
Source: Joystiq.com
The creators of the Raspberry Pi pocket computer have launched an online store with IndieCity. The store will allow creators to sell their games and apps using a secure payment system, with free content available and supportable with a ‘tip jar’.
“With the Raspberry Pi finally having a dedicated software store, it’s going to bring together the already-thriving Pi community in a way that’s simply not been possible before,” commented Eben Upton, co-founder of The Raspberry Pi Foundation.”By combining the expertise of our partners IndieCity and Velocix, we’ll be able to provide all Pi users easy access to a wide variety of content and we’re hugely grateful to both organizations for helping us to make this possible.”
To find out more, visit Store.RaspberryPi.com. {link no longer active}
Grand Theft Auto V looks to outdo all previous incarnations of the franchise, having the setting of San Andreas be many times larger than Liberty City in GTA IV. With Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 10th Anniversary Edition just released on smartphones, Rockstar’s Leslie Benzies indicates that the iconic city might be revisited in a future GTA game… and might just be the tip of the iceberg.
“It is always a possibility. There are a few references to the city in our current-gen GTAs so it is part of that HD universe, and it is certainly somewhere we would love to revisit. However Vice City, perhaps more than any other GTA game, was as much about the era as the setting. Miami in the 1980’s is so iconic it would feel strange to revisit the city in a different time period,” said Benzies. “Of course at some point we would like to have one big world containing all our cities and let the player fly between them and revisit their favorite areas, and in that context reimagining Vice City would be very interesting.”
Source: DigitalTrends.com
Apple has reported that the iPhone 5 sold 2 million units in its first three days on sale in China. The company plans on launching iPhone 5 in 50 more countries this month, including Brazil and Russia.
“Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. “China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products.”
Games dominated the App Store during 2012, making up both seven of the top 10 highest-grossing iPad apps and all of the top 10 highest-grossing iPhone apps, led by Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North and Backflip Studios’ DragonVale respectively. On the paid downloads charts, games represented eight of the top 10 iPhone apps and seven of the top 10 iPad apps, with Rovio’s Angry Birds Space the top paid download on both platforms.
Source: Inside Mobile Apps
Electronic Arts has announced that it is rolling its Play4Free brand into Origin as Origin Free To Play. Games like Need for Speed World, Battlefield Heroes, and Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances will be redirected from Play4Free.com to www.origin.com/free.
“Why change to Origin Free To Play?” writes Sean Decker, Vice President of Play4Free. “The main reason is convenience for players— Origin now becomes your single destination for paid downloadable PC games and free-to-play games alike. Sign on to Origin to play the latest and greatest expansion pack in the Battlefield franchise, or jump into a Need for Speed World race. That’s the beauty of integrating on Origin — all your gaming content in one place, and the choice is yours what and where you want to play today.”
“What changes for our players?” he added. “Other than a new destination URL, nothing about the games has changed — these are still the premium quality games that are free to download and play, where you control when you want to pay and how much. More games will be introduced here over time as well, and we’re excited to tell you more about those in the future. You don’t even have to worry about creating a new account or changing passwords; just keep playing all your favorite free-to-play games using the same Origin ID you’ve been signing in with previously for all your other PC games on Origin.”
Source: EA.com
NCsoft Corporation has announced that it will sell shares in North American subsidiary NC Interactive for over 78 billion KRW ($73 million) on December 24, 2012. They will use these funds to establish a new corporation in North America on the same date that will handle the company’s business in the U.S. and Europe.
“As part of NCsoft’s ongoing efforts to become a stronger global company, we are making adjustments to ensure that our western teams and games are more independent and more agile,” said NCsoft in a statement. “These efforts have no effect on NCsoft, ArenaNet or Carbine employees, nor will they have any effect on current titles or those in development.”
Source: Polygon
Tim Schafer indicated that Double Fine is unlikely to return to the world of $40 million, AAA titles like Brutal Legend and he’s not sure that there will be a place for them on consoles because of it. The company has done well by smaller titles like Stacking, Iron Brigade and Middle Manager of Justice and because of costs for things like certification, patches and TCRs, they’re less feasible on consoles.
“Our fear was that next generation was going to be only big AAA games. It was only going to be a place for Call of Duty and Halo,” said Schafer. “But we’ve talked to [the console manufacturers], and told people what things would be hard for teams our size with regards to consoles.”
“We’d still like to be active in that space, we care about consoles, but unless they open things up a lot more like what we have on Steam… if they opened things up more it would be a more friendly place from our perspective,” he added. “We’ve talked to them about this stuff, and you know, they hear us. They’re big companies and they can’t make changes overnight, but I think they’re taking all of that stuff into consideration. We’ll have to see what happens.”
Source: Polygon
Google has announced that it has released Google Maps on iPhone. The app has quickly ascended to the top of the Apple App Store.
“The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience. It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views,” said Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps for Mobile. “The search box at the top is a good place to start—perhaps by entering the name of a new and interesting restaurant. An expandable info sheet at the bottom shows the address, opening hours, ratings and reviews, images, directions and other information.”
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=KEz1sSKCpIc
Google indicates they are constantly improving Google Maps with info on more than 80 million businesses and points of interest. There’s voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation, live traffic conditions and information for more than one million public transit stops.“The world around us is constantly changing and, thanks to feedback from you, we make tens of thousands of daily updates to keep Google Maps accurate and comprehensive. Here’s a helpful hint for the new app: if you see something off, simply shake your phone to send us feedback,” said Graf. “To complete the Google Maps ecosystem, we’re also releasing the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple URL scheme to help developers use Google Maps when building their beautiful and innovative apps.”“Visit the App Store today and download the new Google Maps app. We believe this delightful new experience is a great starting point—and we’ll continue to improve Google Maps for you, every day,” Graf concluded.Source: Googleblog.com
