Sony new motion controller is on the “Move”Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Sony’s new motion controller is on the “Move”Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
M-Via lets you transfer money overseas from any phone — at a low costWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Turiya Media wins Who’s Got Game startup competitionWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Now you can find the creeps with ChatRouletteMapWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Washington State ends relationship with Oak Investment PartnersWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Mobile game makers: Windows vs. OS X is over, Android vs. iPhone has just begunWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Taking games global: Cultural differences can make or break youWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Sibblingz to unite social gaming across iPhone, Facebook, and the webWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Atmosphir to allow gamers to create their own 3D platform gamesWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Desura readies ‘community-driven’ game distribution platformWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
Turiya Media targets game publishers with behavioral data miningWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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 |
BeanJar brings real-world rewards for video game winnersWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: 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. [...] Read more |
Rob Glaser Defines the Superphone and Predicts the Mobile FutureWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Future media will be consumed on the go, said Rob Glaser, former CEO of RealNetworks, in a speech today. He also forecast that by 2013 the install base of smart and superphones will exceed the install base of PCs. Read more |
Twitter turns location on for its website, but not for searchWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Twitter now lets people see maps of where geotagged tweets were sent from on its website. (They briefly showed this feature yesterday, but it quickly disappeared. It’s now turned on permanently.) The company launched a location application programming interface last November that let users attach their location to tweets, and startups like Seemic and Tweetdeck were quick to build features around the new data. But it’s taken more than three months for Twitter itself show geotagged tweets on its web site. [...] Read more |
Twitter turns on maps feature for its website, but not for searchWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Twitter now lets people see maps of where geotagged tweets were sent from on its website. (They briefly showed this feature yesterday. It’s now turned on permanently.) The story began last year, when the company enthusiastically launched a location API that let users attach their location to tweets. “Everyone should do this!” co-founder Biz Stone told VentureBeat in an interview. Startups like Seemic and Tweetdeck were quick to build features around the new data. But it’s taken months for Twitter to finally show geotagged tweets on its own web site. [...] Read more |
Civilization V often makes peace a better optionWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Following the success of Firaxis’ 2007 Civilization IV, the PC-centric developer showed a real-time gameplay demo of this fall’s Civilization V, today at the Game Developers’ Conference. Civilization is deemed by many fans and critics as the ultimate game in the long-running strategy series, so the question many pundits have for Firaxis is why create another? According to Firaxis’ producer Dennis Shirk, the team wants to introduce new mechanics to the game, explore hexagonal tiles (instead of square-based tiles used in the last game), provide more choice and flexibility to the overall gameplay, and explore different peaceful means of negotiating and conversing with opponent civilizations in the game. [...] Read more |
Social game makers: Our job is harder than you thinkWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Social game makers took the stage this afternoon at our GamesBeat@GDC event in San Francisco, where much of the discussion revolved around how building social games differs from people’s preconceptions. John Vechey, co-founder of Bejewled maker Popcap Games, said building social games is not “the easy path to riches” that some believe. Every aspect of these games requires a lot of thought. And if you’ve got a hit on your hand, it’s a challenge just to keep up with the user base, not to mention adding new technology at the same time. [...] Read more |
Google and Facebook Sued Over Mobile Sign-up PatentWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media A little-known white-label mobile social network company is suing Google and Facebook for patent infringement. Wireless Ink, maker of Winksite, says it owns the intellectual property for enabling users to join social networks from their mobile phones through a patent awarded in October 2009. Read more |
Google, Facebook Sued Over Mobile Sign-up PatentWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media A little-known white-label mobile social network company is suing Google and Facebook for patent infringement. Wireless Ink, maker of Winksite, says it owns the intellectual property for enabling users to join social networks from their mobile phones through a patent awarded in October 2009. Read more |
