Archive for March, 2009

Industry changing moment: The Path released

March 23, 2009

Last Friday marked the international release of Tale of Tales‘ The Path – a game where the player guides one of six girls (at varying stages of growing up) through a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. It’s a date for the history books because The Path is the world’s first truly commercial and [...]

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Posted in: Opinion

Tagged with: casual games, digital distribution, games, games industry, guest post

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Ad-funded or paid-for? An iPhone case study

March 23, 2009

Making money from iPhone apps is hard, but ad-funded is better than paid-for. That’s the conclusion of Bo Wang from iPhone developer Team iBokan, writing on TechCrunch. The post is a case study of Galaxy Impact, a classic brick-breaker game that was released in October 2008. At first it was distributed for free, then the [...]

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Posted in: Sales

Tagged with: iphone, statistics

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Online game gets banking license

March 21, 2009

Surely a sign of things to come – the BBC has reported that Swedish-based MMO, Entropia Universe, has been granted an official banking license. The license means that it can offer full banking services to customers including interest earning accounts and getting salaries paid directly into their in-game account (in Project Entropia Dollars). Gamers deposits [...]

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Posted in: Finance

Tagged with: ecommerce, guest post, mmo, online games, virtual economies, virtual worlds

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Games outsell all other media: Resident Evil 5 tops the lot, even Bono

March 20, 2009

According to MCV, Resident Evil 5 has done the business. Statistics from Verdict Research show that it outsold every item on the single charts (including digital sales) as well as the latest album from U2. It also grossed more than “the UK’s top five cinema movies combined.” Yet another vindication that the games industry is [...]

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Posted in: Sales

Tagged with: bono, film, games industry, music, resident evil 5, statistics

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A VC analyses what makes a good return

March 20, 2009

Fred Wilson offers an interesting analysis at his blog about what makes a good return for a VC. He starts by saying: Lawrence Aragon at PE Hub used the news that Cisco paid $590mm (in stock) for Pure Digital the maker of the super popular Flip Cam to ask this question: it sounds like a [...]

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Posted in: Finance

Tagged with: investment, venture capital

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What do Apple’s recent announcements mean for the games industry?

March 18, 2009

Over at PocketGamer.biz, Tim Harrison (formerly Games guy at Vodafone, then Mobile guy at EA Europe), sets out what the recent announcements from Apple mean for the games industry. And his view: it’s big. Properly, game-changing huge. The things he likes:

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Posted in: Opinion

Tagged with: apple, iphone, tim harrison

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Steam offers in-game transactions for downloadable content

March 18, 2009

Steam continues to make massive strides in bringing high-quality downloadable content to the masses. Their latest innovation is the the “arrival of in-game downloadable content”. Purchased through the in-game browser, it allows users to purchase additional content from within the game, rather than having to make a separate visit to the Steam store.

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Posted in: Sales

Tagged with: digital distribution, downloadable content, ecommerce, internet, microtransactions, starred, steam, valve

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