The growth of mobile spending is meteoric, equaling $1.5 billion in the U.S. alone, and $5.6 billion worldwide; by 2014, worldwide revenue from mobile gaming is expected at $11.4 billion. At the same time revenue from purchased apps is expected to slide from 92.5 percent in 2010 to 12.5 percent in 2014.
Source: mixpanel.com
Konami has announced that they are teaming up with the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) School Walk for Diabetes. They will include DanceDanceRevolution tournaments which will be hosted at select cities participating in the School Walk program and the ADA logo will be added to DanceDanceRevolution II console boxes.
“Konami recognizes the unsettling trends in children and diabetes, so we have made concerted effort to help promote physical activity through DanceDanceRevolution,” said Shinji Hirano, President of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. “Meanwhile, The American Diabetes Association has done an incredible job in educating the public on the importance of healthy lifestyles, so we hope bringing DanceDanceRevolution into such an ambitious campaign will help us achieve our goal of getting kids off the couch and engaging in an active lifestyle.”
“Cutting the risk factors of type 2 diabetes begins with making some important lifestyle changes. Keeping active is a critical part of staying healthy and DanceDanceRevolution has been an inspirational craze across the country that has had a positive impact in the fight against childhood obesity,” said Mary Baumann, Director of Youth Markets for the American Diabetes Association, Houston,Texas. “We are excited to work with Konami to bring the popularity of the DanceDanceRevolution video game to the ADA’s School Walk for Diabetes campaign.”
Call of Duty Elite has been suffering under the crush of new users, though features like title, emblem and Double XP for all members are available now. However, the service is still prone to intermittent failures and Beachhead Studios is well aware of the matter.
“Here are two updates on issues you’ve brought to our attention. We are working on a solution for gamers currently being inconvenienced by age restrictions in different countries,” says the site. “We are in the process of implementing this change and we’ll update you on our progress shortly. Also, while many people are curious and excited to use Call of Duty Elite’s mobile applications, we plan to release the iOS and Android apps when we’re confident the service will be able to handle the extra traffic they will generate – so stay tuned.”
“If you have activated your premium membership, but haven’t yet received your Founders’ entitlements mentioned above in-game, please log into elite.callofduty.com,” the site added. “If you see this green skull icon next to your gamer ID, that means your Founder status is activated, and your benefits should appear in-game within a matter of hours. If you’re still having difficulties, please visit Activision Customer Support.”
Source: callofduty.com/elite
Gareth Davis, head of gaming at Facebook, indicates that Facebook increasingly features more games for hardcore gamers. In fact, he indicates that there is now a niche for every Facebook gamer.
“We have so many users now on Facebook that we can have really big niches. 100 million user niches. We see the emergence now of companies on Facebook who are building what they’d call a core game. Games targeted at people who played PC games back in the day, strategy games,” said Davis. “They’re at the quality level now of those PC games. We think that area has really emerged in the last 18 months.”
“I think we’ve really seen the game developers understand that it’s not one-size-fits-all, it’s about different kinds of game for different audiences,” he added. “So we’re seeing this broadening now of the kinds of games and audiences and you can be very successful, creating different types of games and you can make a lot of money doing it. We’re seeing a real maturing of the eco-system as people figure out the right opportunities and go after them.”
Developers like Kabam and A Bit Lucky are currently serving the hardcore crowd on Facebook, leading to new markets being served. “I think as we’ve been tuning this the games industry on Facebook has been very successful,” said Davis. “It’s continued to be able to gain mass markets of users, tens of millions of users. They’ve worked out how to engage their users – the engagements levels have been way up over the last couple of years. And monetization. They’ve really figured out how to provide the right things to the right people so that they’re willing to pay for it.”
Despite this, Facebook is not looking to make games of its own. “We’re not going to build games because games are really hard to build and our expertise is in building the platform,” noted Davis. “So we are 100 per cent focused on building the best possible platform to enable developers to build social experiences everywhere, particularly mobile, today.”
Source: GI.biz
The Humble Voxatron Bundle recently closed after two weeks on sale. $902,448 was raised for indie developers and charities, with the bundle including Voxatron, Chocolate Castle, Jasper’s Journeys, Zen Puzzle Garden and Gish, with Blocks That Matter and The Binding Of Isaac available to those who paid above the average amount.
172,263 copies of the bundle were sold in total, at an average price of $5.24; Linux users paid an average of $8.54, with Mac users paying $6.66 and Windows users paying $4.70. Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson was the single biggest contributor, paying $2000.
Source: humblebundle.com
The Xbox turned ten years old today, and Microsoft is celebrating with an avatar item. Called the ‘Xbox Anniversary Prop’ it involves a green party box full of confetti and fireworks that explode as your avatar dances.
The item is free, but it will only be available until Saturday. To check the item out, go to marketplace.xbox.com.
Nintendo has announced a new partnership with Penny Arcade for the creation of a special comic strip. Much like similar collaborations that Penny Arcade has done in the past with companies like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, they will combine the characters and themes of the game in their own artistic style.
“I was 14 when I first played The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past,” said Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik. “That was 20 years ago, and today I am introducing my son to The Legend of Zelda. The opportunity to work with Nintendo to create a Zelda comic is not only an incredible honor, but quite literally a childhood dream come true.”
Source: zelda.com/skywardsword/comic
Kobo has announced the Kobo Touch, which will be an ad supported tablet retailing for $99.99. It will begin shipping in two to three weeks and will be available in the U.S. and in the color black.
“Kobo Touch with Offers presents you with sponsored screens and valuable offers when your device is powered off or in sleep mode, and in other discreet places that are always outside of the reading experience, like on the bottom of your home screen,” noted Kobo. “Kobo Touch with Offers is currently available to customers in the United States in black only. Other than that, Kobo Touch with Offers offers the same reading experience as the popular Kobo Touch eReader.”
Source: Kobo.com
Dark Souls is out now and is being played by hundreds of thousands of gamers who are so eager to die. Come see some of the different classes and varied enemies in this critical and commercial hit.
The internet is filled with many funny and irreverent hings, thought few things are more funny and irreverent than memes. Many of the most popular memes have been codified into this silly little song from the Gag Quartet.
