Archive for April, 2009

1. Latest rumour: Zynga making $100 million in revenue

   April 30, 2009

   Earlier in the month, the rumour was that Zynga was making $50 million in revenue. This week, BusinessWeek reports Zynga’s revenues are nearer $100 million. All of these figures are from “people close to the company” so should be taking with a pinch of salt, but however you look at it, there is real money [...]

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   Posted in: Sales

   Tagged with: browser games, casual games, sgn, statistics, zynga

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2. Empire collapses, all staff made redundant

   April 27, 2009

   Empire Interactive has gone into administration, following abortive attempts by KPMG to find a buyer. The company, owned by Silverstar, is best known for the Flatout series of games. Added to the Job Loss Tracker. UPDATE: GamaSutra reports a Silverstar spokesperson denying the report. The Silverstar employee denied that the entirety of Empire’s staff would [...]

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   Posted in: Game Over Zone

   Tagged with: closures, empire interactive, job loss tracker, layoffs, redundancies

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3. Zeno Clash: Do Indie Games Get An Easy Deal?

   April 25, 2009

   I’ve been playing Zeno Clash recently. It’s a visceral first person brawler with a skew-whiff aesthetic, and the debut from small Chilean team Ace. It’s been cleaning up at review… and I can’t help but wonder why. Zeno Clash – despite its outlandish looks and unfamiliar take on genre – just isn’t a great game [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: games, games industry, guest post, reviews

   18 Comments

4. 1/3 of smartphone users have never downloaded an App – the figure for iPhone is close to zero

   April 24, 2009

   I just can’t leave the iPhone alone. TechCrunch has some interesting smartphone data points: 27% of smartphone users have never downloaded an app (iPhone owners: 3%) 71% of smartphone users have downloaded fewer than 5 apps (iPhone owners: 18%) After my earlier analysis showing that the average number of apps downloaded by an iPhone user [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis

   Tagged with: apple, iphone, starred, statistics

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5. More Apple statistics

   April 24, 2009

   My most recent iPhone post crunched some numbers to show that the iPhone is still only a small part of the mobile gaming market, and that perhaps some of the hype is overblown. Others disagreed. Tim Harrison argued that the influence of the iPhone goes far beyond the raw numbers, and its real contribution is [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis

   Tagged with: apple, iphone, ipod touch, starred, statistics

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6. Pirate Bay judge is member of two copyright advocacy organisations

   April 23, 2009

   The Pirate Bay trial was always going to rumble on for ever, but many people hoped that it would, at least, start creating a clearer understanding of where the law draws the line on copyright protection versus torrent-led downloading. Fat chance. The latest allegations are that judge Tomas Norström is a member of two copyright [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: controversy, copyright, internet, piracy, pirate bay, torrents

   1 Comment

7. Nokia generates 3x as much revenue in China as in the US

   April 23, 2009

   Writing in the Financial Times today, John Gapper talks about way global brands are increasing rising in the East rather than in the West. He cites some particularly startling numbers for Nokia: "revenues last year of €5.9bn ($7.7bn, £5.2bn) in China, €3.7bn in India, €2bn in Indonesia and only €1.9bn in the US". He adds [...]

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: china, nokia, regions

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