 | Thursday, March 11, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Instant gratification seems to be the big trend in games. First Otoy, then OnLive, and now another game startup, InstantAction, are all talking about how to deliver high-end games almost instantly to players.
But InstantAction’s announcement today is far different, and perhaps more down to earth, than the other companies that are trying to offer games on demand. Today, the company is announcing that LucasArts will use InstantAction’s technology to distribute its classic game remake, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. [...]
Read more | Thursday, March 11, 2010
Source: GigaOM | Category: Media
Digg, the San Francisco-based social media company, is dropping MySQL and instead betting its future on Cassandra, an open-source data store. It’s just the latest sign of the growing popularity of the software, which was developed (and open sourced) by Facebook to search through its inbox.
Read more | Thursday, March 11, 2010
Source: Mobile Marketer | Category: Mobile
Because mobile is growing exponentially and advertisers can no longer afford to ignore this medium, ABI Research practice director Neil Strother introduced “Mobile Marketing Strategies.”img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/homepage-news/~4/PpjWt5Ez78A" height="1" width="1"/
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Online legal tool platform Legal River launched Attorney River today to connect attorneys to other attorneys. Attorneys can use the service to post requests for other attorneys. Once a lawyer posts a request, for example for outsourcing work or looking for a specialist in a different state, Attorney River alerts all lawyers with matching profiles and allows them to respond through the service.
Attorneys can register and post issues to the site for free, but to respond to a post, attorneys must buy points, with one point required per response and each point costing $10. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: GigaOM | Category: Media
Faced with declining revenues and increasingly dismal prospects, some mainstream media outlets are adopting questionable tactics, specifically dead-end web pages stuffed with outbound links and pay-per-click ads. A liberally funded LA startup is only too quick to help them. The story starts with San Francisco-based sex [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: eMarketer | Category: Metrics
Glossy pages and aspirational copy draw high-value customers
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: eMarketer | Category: Metrics
User numbers stagnate despite new platforms for play
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Sony Computer Entertainment America today officially entered a new phase in the lifespan of the PlayStation 3 console by touting the PlayStation Move, a wireless motion controlled device that rivals Nintendo’s Wiimote and Microsoft’s Upcoming Project Natal.
Introduced at E3 2009 with the working title the PlayStation Wand, the PlayStation Move resembles a light-weight microphone with a colored crown. The PS3 manufacturer, which revealed the device at the Concourse Exhibition Center in downtown San Francisco, Ca. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Sony today officially entered a new phase in the lifespan of the PlayStation 3 console by touting the PlayStation Move, a wireless motion-controlled device that rivals Nintendo’s Wiimote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal.
Introduced at E3 2009 with the working title the PlayStation Wand, the PlayStation Move resembles a light-weight microphone with a colored crown. The PS3 manufacturer, which revealed the device at the Concourse Exhibition Center in downtown San Francisco, Ca., says it provides intuitive and accurate 1:1 response, and showed nine playable games that utilized the Move in a variety of ways ranging from the military shooter SOCOM 4 to sports, fighting, fantasy, party, and painting games. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
M-Via, a young mobile phone payment service that lets you send or receive money on any type of phone, outside of the country — even if you and your recipients don’t have bank accounts — has raised $5 million in debt financing, according to a filing with the SEC.
Systems like m-Via’s are becoming increasingly important in the developing world, particularly in Africa and Latin America, where most people’s primary screens, and connections to the internet, are their phones. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Turiya Media, which helps game publishers mine and analyze user data, was just selected as the top startup in the Who’s Got Game Competition at our GamesBeat@GDC event in San Francisco.
The company says its Leafnode product uses advanced predictive algorithms to track hours of logged time by individual players and create individual behavioral profiles. It focuses on three areas of the game user lifecycle — acquisition, retention, and monetization. All this data helps publishers retain and make money from their players. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Hopefully, this doesn’t herald the end of the ChatRoulette party.
A mashup called ChatRouletteMap pins screenshots of the site’s users to a map. Now this doesn’t collect every single one of ChatRoulette’s users. It looks like a person built a program that has connected with more than two thousand ChatRoulette players and used their IP addresses (which are revealed on the service) to identify where they were and then took a screenshot.
ChatRoulette is an explosively popular anonymous video chat service created by a 17-year-old student in Moscow named Andrey Ternovskiy. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
A year ago, we published an exposé on Oak Investment Partners, which has become one of largest venture-capital firms by attracting large sums from investors despite a mediocre track record. Of particular concern was the continued support of the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB), which manages public money. Neither Oak nor the WSIB were willing to comment at the time, but insiders suggested it was a case of smug relationships in the investment community.
Well, it turns out Oak is raising money again, and once again Washington State has committed money to the new fund, but a representative of the board also says it has decided to end all funding of venture capital going forward. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
One thing was crystal clear during today’s mobile games panel at GamesBeat@GDC: Mobile is the next frontier of rabid competition in the game industry. The big battle between PCs and Macs is fading into the background, replaced by a new (even more hostile) face-off between Android and the iPhone OS.
This transition, expedited by the launch of the iPad on Apple’s iPhone OS, has massive implications for mobile game developers. The panelists, hailing from popular game makers like Ngmoco and Tapulous, as well as mobile ad network Admob and the Android team at Google, agreed that this storm is brewing, but it shouldn’t necessarily change developers’ goals. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
You might assume that a successful game in one country could go on to be successful in others around the world. But culture plays a major role in how well a game is or isn’t received — a role that manifests itself in radically different ways, ranging from payment platforms to graphic designs.
A panel of international game developers and analysts addressed this issue today at GamesBeat@GDC. Initially, several of them commented that there are many commonalities between cultures in the gaming world — almost everyone around the world is becoming more engaged with social games, virtual economies and web-interfaces, for example. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Sibblingz aims to make social gaming seamless across multiple platforms, including the iPhone, Facebook, and the web. The company is competing as a finalist today in the startup competition at our GamesBeat@GDC event in San Francisco.
In our previous coverage of Sibblingz, we mentioned that the company has created a platform that allows game developers to create social games that can be played “anytime, anywhere, on a number of platforms.” The idea is that you can start playing a game on your iPhone while commuting, and then continue playing via Facebook, or the web, elsewhere. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
For any gamer who has ever wanted to create complex 3D gaming environments of their own — like those first seen in the classic Nintendo 64 title Mario 64 — Atmosphir is for you.
Developed by Minor Studios, Atmosphir is a game platform that allows PC and Mac users to create their own 3D adventure games, share them online, and play games created by others. It’s like a more refined and modern version of early game-creation platforms like RPG Maker, except it’s simple enough for anyone to use, and is built with social gaming in mind. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
A startup called Desura is getting ready to challenge online game distribution systems like Valve’s fast-growing Steam. The company plans to launch its platform in two months, but today it’s competing as a finalist in the startup competition at our GamesBeat@GDC event in San Francisco.
While on-stage, Desura will announce that after two years of development, it’s starting to look for venture funding, as well as a chief executive to build the company.
So why would developers and gamers choose Desura? It will include important-but-not-unique features like developer tools, in-game community, and auto-patching. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Looking to stake a claim in the online gaming market, Turiya Media today announced the launch of its Leafnode product, which helps game publishers better retain and monetize their customers through mining and analyzing behavioral data. The company is also competing as a finalist today in the startup competition our GamesBeat@GDC conference in San Francisco.
Turiya Media notes that online gamers spend a lot of time interacting with games, but publishers have limited access and visibility into what motivates their customers and how best to monetize them. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
BeanJar is a new game awards company that launched in the last week, and competing today as a finalist in the startup competition at our GamesBeat@GDC conference in San Francisco.
The company’s goal is to create a rewards system for video games, giving real prizes to players for their accomplishments in a game.
The system works a lot like tickets at an arcade, but in this case, they’re called “Beans.” You get a certain number of beans for doing specific things in a game. Players store those beans, and eventually cash them out for coupons to buy real-life goods. [...]
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