A study conducted by MTV Networks has concluded that casual gamers offer advertisers a huge and attentive audience.
You will however notice that this study is ony 60 people, but it does back up other studies done in the past.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Partnership : Habbo, Seventeen Magazine in Online Fling [feedly]
Teen-targeted virtual world Habbo and young girl-focused Seventeen magazine announced a partnership today that will see the two heavyweight brands promote each other in their respective beats. The agreement, a short-term deal slated to run for three months (and one...
Analyst: Online Games Now $11B Of $44B Worldwide Game Market [feedly]
Analyst: Online Games Now $11B Of $44B Worldwide Game Market
Analyst Colin Sebastian is estimating that online game revenue has now reached $11 billion as part of a $44 billion worldwide video game market, with 2009 as the "year the pace of change accelerated."
With titles such as World Of Warcraft now bringing around $1 billion in revenue yearly to Activision Blizzard, it's easy to see why one of Sebastian's takeaways from E3, in a new analyst note, was: "Internet moving from sideshow to part of the main event."
The Lazard Capital Markets analyst particularly commented of this shift:
"With roughly one billion Internet users worldwide, the gravitational pull of the Internet is driving publishers to integrate online content and services more explicitly within and on top of traditional games.
As consumers have already demonstrated a willingness to pay to access interactive entertainment, we believe that video games are an important part of the migration of content "into the cloud."
In fact, video games account for the largest portion of paid online content, well ahead of other forms of content, such as movies/video and newsprint.
We estimate that online video games will generate more than $11 billion in revenues this year, up from $3 billion in 2005, and account for roughly 25% of industry game sales worldwide. In this respect, we continue to believe that the Internet is emerging as an important growth driver and content platform, weaving together communication, information, commerce and entertainment.
In addition, 2009 may be remembered as the year in which the pace of change in media consumption accelerated, while 2010 and 2011 may bring improved monetization and mass market adoption of web-based applications and digital content, in particularinteractive entertainment."
Elsewhere in his E3 analysis, financial analyst Sebastian also looks at what increased Internet-based operation could mean for the major publicly traded video game companies, explaining:
"For video game publishers, the Internet platform not only provides room for additional revenue streams and higher ARPU, but also greater operating leverage and economies of scale.
On one hand, the Internet offers enormous efficiency, evening the playing field in content production and distribution, and offering unlimited shelf space.
[A pictured comparison of profit margins between] U.S. and Chinese game companies [with online-only Chinese firms at much higher profit margins] partially illustrates the difference in margin profile of online, packaged goods and hybrid models.
Over time, we believe that better "Internet economics" should provide software publishers with higher growth multiples."
6 Steps to Building a Better iPhone App [feedly]
Brian LeRoux is Nitobi's Software Architect, and is involved in shepherding the PhoneGap open source project. You can read his blog, or find him on Twitter.
Thanks to increasingly powerful devices and cheaper data plans, the mobile app space is growing faster every year. Apple has been at the forefront of that growth with the iPhone, by both partnering with telecom companies to provide near-unlimited web access, and redefining application distribution with the App Store, which created a new industry and market for smartphone applications.
The App Store has created a gold rush for developers, and there are now over 50,000 applications for sale, making it harder to get a newly released app noticed by users. It has become especially necessary for developers to reduce development time and put their product on the market as quickly as possible.
Here's a list of steps which should be considered when getting into the iPhone app game:
Step 1: Narrow your focus
A mobile application has precious little screen real estate, so be sure to focus on reducing screen clutter. Your application should be as simple as possible without sacrificing usability and completeness. If it has to do multiple tasks to achieve its goal, then these should be performed one at a time.
Step 2: Build a better user experience
All software depends on a great user experience to succeed. You can maximize your chances of success by experimenting with different approaches to your user interface. Quickly discard what doesn't work and build on what does work.
The design process can be as simple as drawing on a whiteboard, but if you are pitching ideas to your colleagues or clients, using a mockup tool will give your designs more polish. For the Mac, the OmniGraffle diagramming software has iPhone stencils, or for Photoshop design firm teehan+lax has created an iPhone GUI PSD file. However, for web applications, the easiest solution may be to create the mockup in HTML.
Whether you decide to paper prototype or take the 37signals approach of skipping the mockup step completely, you need to respect your audience and their goals. You've decided on a focus for the application in Step 1 and now it's time to make sure that your app is not just useful but usable. If you're unclear on the definition of usable, Apple has done a lot of this thinking for you with their Safari Dev Center (which requires the free Apple Developer Connection membership to access).
Step 3: Choose your approach
The development framework you choose will determine the speed and ease of creating the application, as well as what iPhone features are accessible from your application. You have three options: web technology, Objective-C or a combination of the two.
Build in the browser: The easiest option for creating an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android application is to build it in the browser using web development languages like HTML and JavaScript. Web developers already familiar with HTML and JavaScript can build iPhone applications that run in the browser, without having to learn Objective-C, the native iPhone app development language. On the whole, browser-built apps are easier to build and distribute. They're portable and accessible from multiple devices, which helps them spread. Further, browser-built apps update instantly, generally load faster, are easier to read and update and offer more flexibility for future feature updates. Popular browser-built iPhone apps include mobile versions of Gmail and Facebook.
Create a native app: Native applications built in Objective-C make full use of all the iPhone features: GPS, accelerometer, local storage, camera, and more. This approach works especially well for robust applications, like 3D games. If your goal is to sell a complex, full-featured application, building a native application is your best bet.
Take the hybrid approach: If you're not ready to take the plunge and learn Objective-C, there's another option that combines the browser-built approach with the benefits of native development. Hybrid development tools, like the open source PhoneGap or RhoMobile frameworks, provide a set of tools and libraries that enable web developers to build iPhone applications with HTML and JavaScript, but also provide access to many of the native iPhone features. The obvious benefit here is that there's no need to learn yet another programming language. You can build apps using the technologies you already know.
Step 4: Use the right tools for the job
To build native iPhone apps you need to have a Mac OS X computer and obtain an Apple Developer Connection membership (which is free, but to submit to the App Store there's a $99 fee) in order to download the latest version of Xcode and the iPhone SDK.
If you're taking the web application or hybrid development route, then WebKit is a great resource. jQTouch and XUI are JavaScript frameworks for WebKit specifically designed for creating iPhone interfaces. You can also use Dashcode (bundled with the iPhone SDK), which has iPhone app templates.
No matter which approach you've chosen for product development, you must be able to test your application on real iPhones (and iPod Touches), because the iPhone emulator in Apple's iPhone SDK doesn't exactly mimic the hardware's performance.
Step 5: Test first, test again, test some more. Also: test
While it is always important to thoroughly test software before releasing it to the public, the App Store's format has made the need for bug-free code a make or break situation. Users who have downloaded your iPhone app can rate it using Apple's 5-star rating system and write reviews. Your application's average rating and review count will appear alongside the title and developer name in searches and the app's listing, and the reviews are accessible from your application's page in the store.
A major bug will inevitably result in a number of poor reviews and ratings from current users, which will discourage some new users even after the bug has been fixed. In addition, the App Store has a thorough submission system and submitting a bug fix often takes several days to be processed and get your application updated, further exacerbating any problems.
It is better to spend extra time testing your application than to publish it early and risk saddling it with a bad reputation from the start.
Step 6: Real artists ship: submitting to the App Store
How long does it take to get an app into the iTunes App Store? While we've seen some estimates of up to 20 days to have your app approved, we've had apps accepted in as few as five. The app review process is notoriously fastidious. Readers will recall, for example, how the Eucalyptus ebook reader was initially rejected because phone users could use it to read the Kama Sutra.
Both Niall Kennedy and Adeem Basraa have written great reports and instructions about the submission process to the App Store.
Reviews: Android, Facebook, Gmail
Tags: developer, iphone, iphone app, iphone application, Lists
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
TECHNOLOGY : All the 3rd Generation iPhone rumours in one handy image [feedly]
All the 3rd Generation iPhone rumours in one handy image
With less than a week until Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, rumours about the third generation iPhone are kicking into overdrive. This image compiles them all into one handy graphic, with a colour code for just how likely each rumour is.
More details and sources of the rumours can be found over at The Green Room.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Virtual Economics: Q&A with Gambit Co-founder Noah Kagan
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I wanted to share this great Q&A from inside facebook guys:
As we continue our in depth look at leaders the Facebook Platform payments ecosystem, today we turn our attention to Gambit, a new virtual currency monetization and payment service for social apps and games that went public for the first time here on Inside Facebook back in March.
We recently spoke with Gambit co-founder Noah Kagan (formerly of Facebook) about the opportunities he sees inside Facebook apps and games, and the approach Gambit is taking to help developers monetize.
Inside Facebook: When did you realize the business opportunity in providing payment services to online gaming communities?
Noah Kagan: We've been building applications for the past year and a half. Through that process, we developed our own payment tools. We wanted more transparency, analytics, and customization. These values maximized profit for our own games, and we found that we were doing better than our competitors. To see if it was a fluke, we let other game developers experiment with our payment tools. The results were consistent, and so we closed down our games and focused on providing payment solutions to online gaming communities.
Gambit is a payment solution for online games, and our services vary based on what clients need. We help clients find the best way to implement a virtual economy, structure price points, and use analytics to maximize ARPU.
What geographic markets is Gambit in?
We focus on the U.S., U.K., Australia, and most of Western Europe. We are the leader in these countries for monetization and competitive in South American and Southeast Asia. We are powering the #1 app on MySpace, #1 app on Facebook, and many other small and large properties. The U.S. is five years behind in virtual monetization, but a lot of consumers are willing to pay for virtual goods. I don't spend much on anything, but I care for game consoles. The market is only going to grow: the question is, how do you make it easy for people to pay?
Discuss the value chain of your business model: Who are the key players, and how is value created for each one?
From the developer's standpoint, the tradeoff is between focusing your time and energy on game development or monetization, which includes aspects such as customer support, fraud, callbacks, tech, API, etc. Developers can spend a small percentage of their budgets on PayPal, or a little bit more on us and take advantage of more services. It's a cost benefit analysis. Gambit provides developers with a buffet of payment options that empower them to make decisions based on statistics that show how much revenue they get from advertisers. We value transparency. Other providers give you numbers, but with no certainty.
Users get phone and email support with us – no one else does this. Then there are advertisers that are making offers, as well as payment companies. Our advertising relationships are pretty well developed.
In terms of competition in the payment space, how would you distinguish your products?
We've innovated with our behavioral ad targeting, complete payments customization, fraud reduction technology, and our transparent analytics. Our business is built on what developers want and how to make more money for them: if they want certain metrics, we will make them available if possible. Because we come from a developer background, we know how our clients feel, whereas other companies are coming from a sales and marketing perspective. We emphasize results and performance, and how to build better products and code.
Across the board, all developers have problems with customer support that they are not aware of. This is a huge challenge long-term that most people discount. The common problems are that users aren't getting their credits or didn't complete all the requirements, and technical problems. We have a full time staff, direct phone support and provide a CRM solution for our clients to see what their users are saying.
What's your reaction to Facebook's virtual currency test?
Competition breeds innovation. Facebook has a lot of inherent value to bring, but how will they provide value specifically to game developers? I'm curious what additional value Facebook can produce that we can't.
How is your company doing from a financial perspective?
Gambit has been profitable since December. We've raised some funding in 2007. Since we have not fund-raised large amounts like our competitors, and we do not have unrealistic growth expectations from a venture capital firm - so that's an advantage.
What kinds of developers are most attracted to your products, and what kinds of virtual goods have been most successful for them?
We are serving over 20 million users across our hundreds of clients a month. Social networking applications, online communities, RPG and flash-based MMO games do very well with us.
Where is the virtual goods economy headed in the future?
There will be an increase in online virtual goods spending in the Western world. Regarding online offers, they need to be more relevant and user friendly: for example, a girl who likes frozen yogurt can signup for free frozen yogurt and get credits at the same time. Right now, some users have a bad experience with offers. We will move toward using more social information – age, gender, geography, and a few other factors in improving offer relevancy. In general, the payment solution that will win is one that helps converts users to paying customers as easy as possible.
Thanks, Noah. Anything else you'd like to share with our readers?
We'd love to chat with anyone interested in optimizing or growing their online economy. Check out more on our blog.
Business: Playdom Accelerates Hiring
Playdom, a company staking its future on the fast-developing area of social gaming, is on a hiring binge, and its looking for a CEO. Today, the Mountain View, CA-based company announced two key hires -- and an evolution to its internal organization. First, the company says...
Business: Infogrames Is Now Atari
Atari? Strong brand name. Infogrames? Um, yeah. No wonder Infogrames want to switch its corporate identity to the company Nolan Bushnell founded and made famous.
"The Board agreed to change Infogrames Entertainment's name to Atari," the company announced today. "This decision will enable us to make the best use of the Atari brand, capitalizing on worldwide strong name recognition and affinity, which are keys drivers to implement the Company's online, product and licensing strategies."
In March 2008, France's Infogrames bought out and took over Atari Inc.
NEWS: Free Realms Reaches 2 Million Players
It seems that sony are having more success with this than Cartoon networks Fusion Fall, more on this soon.
Sony Online Entertainment's family-friendly PC MMO Free Realms is now up to two million unique registrants, the company announced today.
75 percent of these are under the age of 17, and 46 percent are younger than 13, SOE says, adding that nearly a third of players are female. The company it plans to celebrate the milestone by awarding all its users with a special bundle of in-game items.
The game, which is free-to-play but has optional microtransaction and subscription elements, lets users play, socialize and battle, and interact on a social networking site alongside the game.
It ties into a trading card game playable both with physical cards and inside the game via digital codes. SOE says the virtual cards are "sales leaders" inside the game's digital store.
"In less than a month, Free Realms has captivated a core player base of tween and teen gamers, while also strongly resonating with MMO gamers," says SOE president John Smedley. "We wanted to create a game to play with our families and are excited to have hit the mark with our intended audience."
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Rockstar Co-Founders Confirm New Social Gaming Studio [feedly]
It wasn't going to be long before the big guns sat up and gave social networks some serious attention. The good thing is the crap that is on Facebook is going to have to get better. I can only say this is a good thing as Facebook has opened up gaming to a new type of player, but now they have got an appetite for gaming they will want better quality.
Two of Rockstar Games' co-founders, along with a former facial animation exec and longtime entertainment industry vet, have formally announced New York City-based 4mm Games, a privately-funded web-based game developer.
The announcement of 4mm finally confirms rumors that have circulated the web for nearly two years.
Jamie King and Gary Foreman, co-founders of Grand Theft Auto house Rockstar Games, will act as president of 4mm and CTO, respectively. At Rockstar, King was VP of product development, and Foreman was CTO.
King left Rockstar in 2006, according to his LinkedIn business networking profile. While 4mm games is just emerging today, he founded the company in January 2006. Rumors of 4mm's existence originally surfaced on the blog of former Rockstar designer Jurie Horneman.
King's LinkedIn profile describes 4mm as a "web-based service provider of digital entertainment across a digital distribution delivery platform." He said the company intends on targeting "multiple age demographics."
The studio's website adds that it is creating "online worlds that will define social gaming."
Leading 4mm as CEO is Nicholas Perrett, former general manager with facial animation company Image Metrics. Serving as EVP is Paul Coyne, former VP for NBC and SVP for Warner Music Group.
A statement from 4mm said that it has already secured a "significant title-based investment" through a strategic partnership with CEA Autumn Games. 4mm said it has "ambitious goals" to create "high profile properties." The company is keeping the exact amount of funding under wraps.
4mm plans on making more announcements about its projects in the weeks to come.
AT&T First Android Phone HTC Lancaster Leaked [feedly]
AT&T First Android Phone HTC Lancaster Leaked>
Engadget apparently hit upon the motherload of AT&T powerpoints: Slides detailing the Palm Eos, a new HP iPaq and probably most thrilling, HTC Lancaster (aka the Android phone we've been waiting for).
I've always wondered what Android would be like on a Touch Pro, that's basically Lancaster. There is the dreary little note that "Initial Lab Entry dates were based on Google Mobile Services (GMS) UI, AT&T standard UI has been requested, which puts schedule in question" meaning AT&T could muck it up with their own UI, and take longer putting out the phone in the process. Its target date is Aug. 3, and it'll be AT&T-exclusive for six months it looks like. Update: Oops, didn't notice at first the screen resolution is a bit too squee for our tastes (240x320). Bummer.
The Palm Eos slide basically just confirms everything from before: emaciated WebOS phone with 4GB storage and AT&T all over it.
Update: Oh look, a whole bunch of BlackBerrys are now confirmed for AT&T too—Onyx, Gemini, Magnum and a 3G Pearl.
AT&T's fall lineup is looking pretty unassailable at this point: With iPhone 3, a WebOS phone, and a solid Android piece, all of their bases are covered, with the exception of a touchscreen BlackBerry, but um, who really wants one of those now? Good thing AT&T's network blows, since the other carriers have their work cut out for them. [Engadget]
Thursday, May 21, 2009
NEWS: London Studio celebrates five years of SingStar [feedly]
Wake up people........if you do it right you can build a brand that is sustainable......
London Studio celebrates five years of SingStar
London Studio celebrates five years of SingStar
And Sony studio prepares for another five years with user-generated content hint 
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