August 2011
1 post
New accessory game accessory for iPad →
May 2010
1 post
Americans spend $25.3B each year on video games →
American consumers spend more than $25.3 billion a year on video games, both new and used, according to a report released today by market researcher Newzoo.
That number includes how…
November 2009
1 post
You-Be-The-Terrorist Videogame Sales Reach $600... →
In one week, Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has raked in more cash than any form of entertainment for sale.
Any form!
Read the rest of this story »
See…
September 2009
5 posts
10 Best iPhone Apps For Sports Fans →
As football season kicks off and baseball season wraps up, now’s a good time to check out some of the great new sports apps for the iPhone and other mobile devices.
From real-time…
Interview: Playfish COO de Halleux On How Facebook... →
Not much differentiates one hot new social gaming startup from another. Sure they have different games—and maybe even slightly different business models—but for the most part, they make their money…
Google FastFlip Is A Gigantic Step Backwards →
Essentially what Google’s new FastFlip provides is a means to quickly browse though mini-screenshots of the participating publishers’s sites — mostly magazine publishers along with NYTimes,…
Monopoly City Streets: Google Launching Online... →
This could be very addictive: Google is teaming up with board game maker Hasbro to launch a Google Maps version of Monopoly. Monopoly City Streets, which launches Wednesday, allows…
New blog post: China's Shanda plans $800 mln... →
New blog post: China’s Shanda plans $800 mln US IPO for games unit (Reuters via Yahoo! Philippines News) http://bit.ly/ieD2T
August 2009
1 post
Piper Jaffray Says US Virtual Goods Market Totals... →
Though already a multi-billion dollar market in Asia, virtual goods are just beginning to grow as a primary game monetization model in the United States. But what’s the market size today?…
July 2009
4 posts
How To Get Brand Advertisers To Spend More On The... →
Gian M. Fulgoni is Executive Chairman and Co-founder of comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) Inc. Previously, he was President and CEO of Information Resources, Inc. It’s high time our industry provide large…
Forecast: Brands Will Spend More On Ads In... →
One of the issues with some in-game ad forecasts has been that they lump spending across PCs, consoles and online games, which, according to some, skews the growth and makes the market look…
Mark Cuban: Succeed By Free, Die By Free →
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and cofounder of HDNet, offers running commentary on Blog Maverick. This post, which follows an earlier look at Free versus Freely Distributed, is…
Too Busy To Read Tweets? Try Twitter For Busy... →
Spending too much time reading friends’ Tweets? Only got 5 mins and you’d need an hour to get through em all?
No worries: you can now speed-read your way through your Tweet reading with …
June 2009
12 posts
Pleo is back and we want to give you one →
Pleo is back, thanks to electronics and entertainment leader Senario, and we want to give you one.
The $349 artificial dinosaur hit the news this April when Ugobe, its creator, filed for…
19 Twitter Desktop Apps Compared →
Twitter has become an integral part of our social media lives, marketing strategies, and business objectives. We have multiple accounts, hundreds of followers to watch, Twitter trends to…
How Apple can improve the iPhone as a game... →
Apple has come a long way with games on the iPhone. There are 12,403 games among the 59,073 apps, according to Mobclix. The iPhone 3.0 software and the iPhone 3G S have a lot of cool…
Pincus: iPhone Not Easy to Monetize, Needs Better... →
As the iPhone platform grows, leading social game developer Zynga has made a number of its popular Facebook and MySpace titles available for the Apple device. These include Live Poker…
Casual Connect Seattle update →
Next month, from July 21st to 23rd, Seattle will play host city to the yearly Casual Connect conference, which brings together a number of key speakers to discuss the future of the industry.
Casual gaming offers advertisers 'more... →
A study conducted by MTV Networks has concluded that casual gamers offer advertisers a huge and attentive audience.
Need To Reach Casual Gamers? MTV Says 15-Second... →
The debate over how much in-game ad spending will rise or fall this year continues, but it’s clear that people—and the advertisers trying to reach them—continue to flock to casual games. And…
Otoy joins the fray of companies offering video... →
When OnLive came out of hiding in March and declared it could let gamers play fast-action games over the network — a futuristic service dubbed video games on demand — a lot of critics…
Could social gaming run afoul of gambling laws?... →
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat: Could social gaming run afoul of gambling laws? — A variety of social network gaming applications are making lots of money from virtual goods. …
Verizon: How FiOS Gets Viewers Engaged →
I’m at the Parks Associates Connections Conference today, which is jam-packed with newteevee-related panels and speakers. Joseph Ambeault, Verizon’s director of product development and management…
The Top 25 Facebook Games Right Now →
Don’t look now, but:
Facebook is launching a payments platform.
Zynga is going to crack $100 million selling virtual goods this year.
Playdom hired 23 people in the last month.
The social…
Swap Your SIM Card to Avoid Overseas Roaming... →
If you’ve ever made a cellphone call while overseas, or read anything about “international roaming,” you know it’s a pound of flesh for each precious minute. CNET explains in depth how to swap…
May 2009
10 posts
The universal currency wars are coming →
We’ve seen much speculation in the past month about Facebook’s impending virtual currency tests. Its initial forays will be, by all accounts, relatively simple and small. But it’s the…
Sony’s Free Realms game signs up a million users... →
Sony Online Entertainment said today it has registered more than a million users in 17 days for its kid-focused Free Realms massively multiplayer online game.
The game uses the…
@ EconSM: CBS: Making Money From Mobile Apps →
We’ve heard about indie developers making millions of dollars in revenue from mobile and social media apps, but what about a giant like CBS? CBSi has an app for TV.com, not to mention music…
Report: Freemium To Generate $14 Billion By 2014 →
The freemium model—which involves giving away applications and charging users for add-ons and special features (like for EA’s Battlefield Heroes)—will bring in $14 billion for the mobile…
Economy Has Swallowed 6,300 Gaming Jobs Since... →
The gaming industry has shed 6,300 jobs in North America, or about 12 percent of the sector, since June 2008 according to Gamasutra. The stats come from the 2008 Game Developer Census; to…
Video games are the devil, Christian soft pop... →
The year: 1984. The scene: a young man’s computer desk. Don’t touch that floppy! Don’t — it’s the devil!
This fantastic music video by DeGarmo and Key (from the age when music, and…
Facebook Games To Make $500M this year →
It may pale in comparison to the the North American console business, which racked up $21.3 billion in 2008. But if VentureBeat’s calculations are correct, it proves there is a lot of money to be…
Facebook platform developers could see $500M in... →
A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with…
Social Gamer Wonderhill Gets $7 Million First... →
Yes, another social gaming startup is getting funding. S.F.-based WonderHill has picked up $7 million from Charles River Ventures and Shasta Ventures. It raised $750,000 in seed funding…
Who would have guessed? Minesweeper “most... →
So what game would you consider to be the most played ever? Solitaire? Castle Wolfenstein? Maybe Everquest or Quake? Well, guess again. The oldest (and most frequently installed) game ever is…
April 2009
22 posts
Social Gaming Scores in the Recession (Sarah... →
Sarah Lacy / Business Week: Social Gaming Scores in the Recession — Zynga, the company behind Texas Hold ‘Em on Facebook, and other game makers are attracting millions of users. …
Game and virtual world fundings reach $935 million... →
This is a second update to our game and virtual worlds funding list. Here we’re adding new data from Jussi Laakkonen’s blog. Previously, we had updated to include data from Virtual World…
New blog post: IPod Touch Yahoo Games Ad - HD |... →
New blog post: IPod Touch Yahoo Games Ad - HD | Best video http://www.verzoletto.org/?p=3161
Will the game industry slow, or is it just getting... →
I’m giving a speech today in Berlin, Germany at the Quo Vadis game conference. I was asked to talk about the state of the game industry and the prospects for game startups. Here’s an…
Texas Hold’Em for iPhone - Cheats, Tips, &... →
The game of the day comes from Apple themselves with their popular iPhone card game: Texas Hold’Em. Costing around $5 in the app store, this poker game is well worth the money as it not only…
Aurora Feint signs up developers for its iPhone... →
A gaggle of indie iPhone game developers have rallied around Aurora Feint’s social game platform, dubbed OpenFeint, and they’re excited about how it can be used to cross promote games to…
Bill O'Reilly and Co. Investigate the Nintendo... →
In 1988, a young Bill O’Reilly and his Inside Edition team tried to answer the question: “What the hey is this ‘Mario Brothers’ craze sweeping the nation?” They failed, of course….
Super Mario Chess coming soon, defies traditional... →
Apparently Super Mario Chess Collector’s Edition is the first Nintendo-authorized chess set in existence. It’ll be shipping sometime this month and you can pre-order it for $39.99 if…
Set Up a Computer for Kids with Qimo [Kids] →
Looking for a simple way for a young child to use your computer without messing everything up? Qimo is a lightweight, kid-focused Ubuntu distribution you can install or boot from a CD or thumb…
Set Up a Computer for Kids with Qimo [Kids] →
Looking for a simple way for a young child to use your computer without messing everything up? Qimo is a lightweight, kid-focused Ubuntu distribution you can install or boot from a CD or thumb…
Roundup: hi5 Restructures Around Games Portal... →
Last week, major global social network hi5 reportedly laid off about half of its 100 person staff after a potential large funding round fell through at the last moment. From the sound of…
Shockwave and Zylom Sales and Pogo Token Giveaway →
Hot on the heels of its spring sale, Shockwave is offering a new set of games for as low as $4.95. Over at Zylom, PopCap games are on sale for $9.95 until the end of April for American and …
Chinese Online Game Market Exceeded $2.8 Billion... →
Pearl Research saw a nearly two-thirds increase in the online gaming business in China during last year, with that number expected to nearly double by 2012.
Shockwave and Zylom Sales and Pogo Token Giveaway →
Hot on the heels of its spring sale, Shockwave is offering a new set of games for as low as $4.95. Over at Zylom, PopCap games are on sale for $9.95 until the end of April for American and …
Nielsen on the 'State of the Video Gamer' →
Gaming does appear to be recession resistant, and it is increasingly expanding to new demographics and platforms.