|  |  |  | | | | | VentureBeat | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Social games maker Zynga may file to go public as early as Wednesday in order to raise up to $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The social game maker is expecting a valuation somewhere between $15 and $20 billion, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. That would put the company well ahead of massive game publisher Electronic Arts, which currently has a market cap of $7.5 billion. Activision-Blizzard, which typically caters to console and hardcore gamers, also only has a market cap of around $13.3 billion. Kara Swisher from The Wall Street Journal’s blog All Things D also reported that Zynga was about to file for an initial public offering at the end of May. Her sources said the filing could come as early as that week or the following week at the latest. Both deadlines came and went without incident. Zynga’s latest social game, Empires and Allies, eclipsed the number of people playing its first breakout hit Farmville in just 25 days. Zynga's latest game is gaining new users at a rate of a million a day and 8 million a week now, AppData shows. The company has become a Facebook distribution powerhouse like no other game company. That makes it a lot easier for Zynga to generate revenue, since a percentage of users usually pays for items in otherwise free games. The company has delivered hit after hit to Facebook, including games like FarmVille and CityVille.
Filed under: games         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The Federal Communications Commission has released its Fifteenth Report on wireless competition, and the big news is that there’s no big news.
That is, the FCC has still not released a formal finding as to whether there is, or is not, effective competition in the Mobile Wireless industry. This is a big deal, because lack of a finding does not help predict what the FCC will decide regarding the pending merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. The FCC launched an investigation of the merger along with the Department of Justice in April. The Report explains that “a merger can potentially form a stronger provider that restrains competitors from engaging in anticompetitive behavior” and goes on to say that “the more easily a consumer can switch service providers in response to a change in price or non-price factors, the more competitive pressure is put on mobile wireless service providers to improve their service in order to retain their customers.” The lack of competition findings in the Report, according to the FCC, is due to “the complexity of the various inter-related segments and services within the mobile wireless ecosystem.” The Report instead focuses on presenting “the best data available on competition throughout this sector of the economy and highlighting several key trends in the mobile wireless industry.” You probably didn’t have time to sit down and get intimate with the 308 page document today. That’s okay. We’re going to give you the highlights: Four Operators Have 90 Percent of Subscribers: The FCC determined that the four major U.S. wireless operators had 90 percent of U.S. subscribers (AT&T and Verizon taking a combined 62-percent). Total revenue generated by the wireless industry in 2009 was $154.7 billion. Voice Usage Takes a Dive: Confirming your tech-savvy suspicions, average monthly mobile voice usage per subscriber continued to decline in 2009, while text and multimedia messaging usage increased. Annual voice revenues declined for the first time in 2009, by approximately four-percent, from $118 billion to $113 billion. At the same time, data revenue increased 28-percent from $32 billion to $42 billion. Social Networking Drives Mobile Data Usage: Analysts believe that one of the major applications driving mobile data usage is social networking. According to comScore, social networking ranked as the fastest-growing mobile content category between April 2009 and April 2010, with the number of mobile consumers using an application to access a social networking website increasing 240 percent to 14.5 million users. The FCC Needs New Data Sources: The data source that the FCC has used for many years to estimate the number of mobile wireless subscribers is called Numbering Report/Utilization Forecast (NRUF). It tracks the number of phone numbers that have been assigned to mobile wireless devices. NRUF is becoming increasingly less useful in measuring the number of individual subscribers, since consumers are now more likely to use more than one mobile device – particularly non-voice devices like e-readers, tablets, and car navigation systems. Instead the FCC is relying on new data, including the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), which measures market concentration. Basically a score lower than 1,500 means a market is considered not-concentrated. A market with a score higher than 2,500 is highly concentrated. The Mobile Wireless industry had an HHI of 2,811 at the end of 2009 and 2,848 by mid-2010. Mobile Network Performance Needs Data: “The Commission has recognized the importance of accurate, up-to-date data on mobile network performance – to inform policy, to help consumers make better choices, and to spur competition,” explains the report (interesting acknowledgement of “competition” here). “The measurement and representation of the overall quality of a provider's network, however, present a number of challenges. For instance, there is neither a single definition of network quality nor a definitive method to measure it.” The FCC notes that while network providers use consumer surveys, network drive tests, fixed probes, internal network level assessments, and the use of crowd-sourcing applications to gather data on the actual network performance, “ the public data they provide are limited in scope and are not yet robust enough to provide detailed and standardized results.” Perhaps there’s a startup out there that can help the FCC measure network performance? You can read the full annual report via WSJ.com.
Filed under: Business and Technology, mobile, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Today a group of deaf and hard of hearing activists are using Change.org, a platform for social change, to persuade Netflix, an internet subscription service for movies and TV shows, to provide better access to subtitles for its online streaming content.
“Since I started relying on captioning, I've learned how few entertainment options exist for the deaf and hard-of-hearing," says Sebastian St. Troy, a consumer-rights activist in Texas who launched the Change.org campaign. St. Troy, who is hard-of-hearing as a result of a non-cancerous brain tumor, interviewed over Google Chat.* "Netflix has been promising captioning for years, but hasn’t really followed through." St. Troy’s campaign started two months ahead of a lawsuit filed by The National Association of the Deaf on June 17, 2011. Change.org is now helping him get the word out. In the lawsuit, Netflix is accused of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by not providing the deaf with equal access to its “watch instantly” digital video. Activists are hoping Netflix will come around without having to go to court. Those activists are making posts on Netflix's social media sites in a social media “bombing” campaign. According to the group, Netflix currently only provides captions on a small portion of its online “Watch Instantly” titles. Although it’s possible to see a list of all of the subtitled content on the site, users cannot search within that content. “In order to see what there is with subtitles you have to go to the Subtitles link hidden at the bottom of Netflix’s website and then click through 58 pages of content,” St. Troy explains. “You can see why having a search option, as simple as ‘with subtitles’ could save people time, not to mention frustration. I’ve spent hours every week just to find content to watch, which has now led to my canceling my subscription after Netflix changed their website.” “Technology such as Captivision and other digital tech products are now allowing captioning in movie theaters, so this is why I started the petition,” says St. Troy. “There is no reasonable explanation as to why Netflix doesn’t have subtitles on all of their content.” Activists hope to rally thousands from the nation's 35 million deaf and hard of hearing to the cause. We put in a request for comment from Netflix this morning and have not yet heard back. We’ll update if and when they do. *We ask St. Troy how this interview would have happened 10 years ago: ”We would have had to have used TTY, which now has many forms,” St. Troy says with a LOL. “I now use an IP Relay service via my computer and AIM for phone conversations.
Filed under: media         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Sony is locking forum topics and banning players who are trying to promote a petition to keep one of its online game, Star Wars Galaxies, from shutting down on December 15, according to reports from players.
Several Star Wars Galaxies players have contacted VentureBeat and said that the company has locked several forum topics regarding a petition that has gathered more than 2,100 signatures to keep the game running. Sony has said players can only post those topics with permission, but the company has not given out permission to do so after dozens of requests, according to the players. The company has since quietly locked and moved several topics in the game’s official forums and hasn’t made an official statement on the petition yet. Sony was also uncharacteristically quiet when hackers broke into the company’s online gaming network, the PlayStation Network (PSN), and forced the company to bring the service offline for nearly a month. The only time Sony spoke up was when it laid indirect blame for the attack on hacktivist group Anonymous — which typically rallies a group of loosely connected hackers under moral or political banners to take down large companies. Thousands of players and supporters started a petition to keep the game from going offline come December 15. The petition asks Sony to convert the game to a free-to-play game that is maintained through the sale of virtual goods. The petition also asks Sony to consolidate players onto a smaller number of servers and facilitate character transfer to reduce operational costs in order to keep the game running. It has spread like wildfire amongst the Star Wars Galaxies community and is already beginning to take over the game’s official Facebook page. Sony also altered its Station All Access pass to include Star Wars Galaxies, along with a subscription to almost all of its other online games like Everquest II. The new package costs around $20 a month, but the move has even further frustrated some Star Wars Galaxies players. “Dear Subscribers, We’ve decided to kill your kitten,” one frustrated Star Wars Galaxies fan, Matt Barksdale said on the Facebook page. “But Can we interest you in a Puppy, A Gerbil, a Parrot, And a Llama, all for one low subscription price?” Other online games have had a lot of success converting from a subscription-based model to a free-to-play model. Revenue from Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online doubled and its player base increased by 400 percent when the game went free to play in October. Revenue for the company's first experiment in going free-to-play, Dungeons and Dragons Online, jumped by about 500 percent after the shift. I argued that the death of Star Wars Galaxies was basically a tragedy because it came at the hands of the game's own publisher rather than the popularity of another game. World of Warcraft, currently the top online role-playing game, played a role in reducing the game's total subscribers. But Sony's updates were what inevitably killed it and drove away players. Star Wars Galaxies, which once boasted a unique progression system, trading and crafting features, was basically converted to a watered down version of World of Warcraft through a number of updates. VentureBeat has contacted Sony Online Entertainment officials for comment.
Filed under: games         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A California program that gives hybrid and pure-electric car buyers a rebate between $1,500 and $5,000 has run out of funding for the remainder of the fiscal year ending June 30.
The state of California allocated $7 million to electric car buyers that qualified for rebates last year. But the popularity of the federally-mandated Cash for Clunkers program sent car buyers out in droves. Combined with high gas prices, early adopters were eager to go out and buy an electric car or a hybrid-electric car instead of a car powered by an internal combustion engine. The next year’s budget allocates between $12 million and $17 million for an electric-car-buyer rebate program. But the budget has still not been approved and the state cannot begin spending money on the program until it is approved. Electric cars are much more expensive than cars powered by an internal combustion engine. The Nissan Leaf, one of the cheapest electric cars on the market, is still quite expensive at around $33,000 before rebates for purchasing an electric car. It’s supposed to have a relatively low price tag (by EV standards) and it’s labeled by Kelly Blue Book as the first electric car for the masses. The Nissan Leaf qualifies for a $1,500 rebate. Electric car buyers can also apply for a federal tax credit that can bring the price down by up to $7,500. With the state-funded rebate program, it brings the cheapest electric car down to a semi-reasonable price somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 — around the cost of a mid-to-upper-range car powered by an internal combustion engine. Hybrids have more reasonable price tags. Toyota’s newest hybrid car, the Prius c, should attract more mainstream car buyers with a low-hanging price tag compared to the current year’s Prius. That car costs $23,520. Most electric car buyers are more concerned about how long it takes to charge the car and how far it is able to drive than the actual price of the electric car, according to a report by Accenture. Pure plug-in electric cars are typically limited in how far they will go on a charge, and they can take a long time to recharge. But that report was based on a survey that included tax credits and rebates for purchasing an electric car.
Filed under: green         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Microsoft’s online office suite, Office 365, finally hit the streets today. But it is about five or six years too late to the cloud-based office software game and won’t provide much benefit to smaller and mid-sized companies, according to a number of executives of large enterprise software providers.
Microsoft has the edge in familiarity because some of the largest companies in the world, like those on the Fortune 500 list, use Microsoft’s office software. But that strategy is geared toward the companies that are already huge and entrenched in the Fortune 500 list. Microsoft isn’t focusing on smaller companies that might move on to become part of the next wave of Fortune 500 companies. “You have to aim down-market when you develop new software,” said Salesforce chief marketing officer Kendall Collins. “Only the smaller companies have the agility to employ new software, and larger enterprises all want to pick up the software that’s popular with smaller companies.” Larger companies are more likely to adopt software that has been around for a long time like Microsoft’s Office, Collins said. It’s easier to get a huge company with 20,000 employees to spend $10 million on an Office productivity suite rather than experiment on newer pieces of enterprise software like online collaboration software Yammer, he said. “Microsoft has relied on a CIOs that can spend a $100 million IT budget without thinking,” Collins said. “The Internet has changed distribution and individuals just buy software that makes sense to them.” But most startups and smaller enterprises employ a host of smaller enterprise software providers, like Box.net and Yammer, rather than a single productivity suite like Office. Those services are designed with the end-user experience in mind and are much more user-friendly, adopting lessons learned from social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter. Services like Box.net and Yammer are also typically much cheaper than deploying large office suites like Office 365 and offer their users many more options. Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Salesforce.com markets its products toward the entire spectrum of enterprises, Collins said. But when the company is designing new elements for its software, such as its newest piece of online collaboration software called Chatter, it develops it with smaller enterprises in mind, he said. That’s because many smaller enterprises today are employing workers just out of college that will move on to become the next wave of office workers, he said. “There’s a lot of people coming out of college and universities and they walk into companies, and it’s like a computer science museum of crap they need to work with,” Collins said. “They’ll say, this is just not the way that I work with people, and they’ll feel lost.” The new software isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of the next generation of office workers, said Scott Weiss, an investor with storied venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz that focuses on enterprise software. Office 365 will mostly feature incremental improvements, but it won’t have any kind of breakthrough service like Google Apps brought to market when it was first released, he said. And that isn’t because Microsoft is late to the cloud game — it’s because massive suites like Office just aren’t sustainable any more, he said. “If Office was awesome and perfect, the fact that it’s delivered in a browser wouldn’t even matter,” said VMWare chief technology officer Steve Herrod. “The fact is that office suites like this have just run out of gas.” Office 365 should be relatively successful because Microsoft has a huge reseller network that it has to plow through before it’s able to bring a new product to the market. That’s a large part of the reason why Microsoft has been so successful in selling new versions of its Office software — because there’s a large food chain that benefits from re-selling and integrating applications with Microsoft’s Office software, Herrod said. That’s also the reason why it took Microsoft more than five years to finally release a cloud-based office suite. The whole suite has to serve as an anchor that funds the rest of the company rather than an innovative new class of software, said cloud storage provider Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie. If there’s anything good to come out of Microsoft’s cloud announcement, it’s that the whole notion of cloud computing will become more widely accepted, Levie said. Cloud computing has only been widely accepted by enterprises and tech-savvy individuals, and hasn’t yet hit mainstream audiences, he said. Microsoft’s announcement today — coupled with Apple’s iCloud announcement — should make the technology more visible to typical consumers and other businesses that haven’t employed cloud computing technology. “Microsoft and Apple out there using the cloud term is just making the market bigger,” Collins said. “And it’s making the market bigger for something that Microsoft isn’t good at. And the second that Apple used the word iCloud, that was seminal moment in the industry.” “Everyone in the consumer world that hasn’t yet use this cloud term — your girlfriend, your kids, your grandmother — but that term is now out there in a totally different world and it’s forcing people to rejigger how they think about stuff.”
Filed under: mobile         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has been loudly railing against AT&T’s $38 billion purchase of T-Mobile since the deal was announced. Now we have a closer look at Hesse’s concerted effort to kill the deal, thanks to a Bloomberg report.
The CEO has taken to planning against the merger in a secure White Room, which only he has access to. His “nukes” — or tactics to shoot down the merger — are marked down in red, blue and green ink on the dry erase boards that line three walls of the room. If this sounds like a war room, you’re likely not far off. Sprint’s very future depends on squashing the T-Mobile merger. That fact seems to have become abundantly clear to Hesse over the last few months. “Clearly, purely, we want to win and block the merger," Hesse told Bloomberg at the company's headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas. "This one poses real risks." The big problem, according to Hesse, is that the merger will give AT&T and Verizon a stranglehold on the cellular market in America. "The industry just won't be as innovative and as dynamic as it has been," he said. "It'll gum up the works when everything has to go through these two big tollbooths, one that's called AT&T and one that's called Verizon." If the AT&T and T-Mobile merger meets regulatory approval, Sprint will have a hard time competing against the combined company and Verizon when it comes to pricing and snagging killer phones. AT&T, of course, argues that the merger will benefit consumers since it will be able to provide better service. Others like Microsoft, Facebook and VC firms have also written letters to the FCC supporting the merger. Hesse has spent considerable effort over the last few months to keep the merger from going through, according to the Bloomberg report: “He tripled the amount of time he's spending on government affairs, testifying before Congress and making regular trips to Washington. Sprint is organizing industry opposition and filed a 377-page dissent with the Federal Communications Commission. The company even tapped its own engineers to show AT&T how to get more capacity from its wireless network so it wouldn't need to buy T-Mobile.” Additionally, Hesse is trying to get technology CEOs and stage regulators on his side, as well as some secret tactics he has yet to reveal. The company is being outspent by AT&T in Washington by more than 12-to-1, so Hesse needs regulator support to pick up the slack. Sprint’s political action committee contributed just $257,500 on federal candidates in 2009 and 2010, AT&T on the other hand contributed $3.26 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Sprint is already in trouble, and clearly the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will only make things worse. The carrier has some 50 million contract customers, about half the numbers AT&T and Verizon have individually. It’s also been losing contract customers consistently in 14 of the last 15 quarters. The company hasn’t seen a profit since the third quarter of 2007. Should the merger go through, Sprint likely won’t last very long on its own. At that point, it could potentially get snapped up by Verizon, although that raises even greater regulatory concerns. Perhaps federal regulators will take that possible future into account when it’s weighing the AT&T/T-Mobile deal — but there’s little chance of that happening. Right now, it seems more likely that the T-Mobile purchase will be approved. By this time next year, Sprint will likely be facing some tough questions about its future.
Filed under: Business and Technology, mobile, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  AOL said today it has partnered with digital music startup Slacker Radio to launch a new subscription-based music service later this summer.
The free version of the new service will be based on Slacker’s current service. Like Slacker, the service will enable users to create tailored radio stations, save favorite songs and stations, read album reviews, access artist biographies, review station histories, and skip up to six songs per hour, per station. AOL’s premium music service will also be based on Slacker, which offers two paid subscription models: a “Radio Plus” service, which gives users unlimited song skips and cuts the ads for $3.99 per month and “Slacker Premium”, which gives users the ability to play any song in Slacker's music library whenever they want for $9.99 per month. AOL previously had a paid music subscription service that it sold in 2007 to Napster. However, the partnership with Slacker is less about a premium option and more about building out the company’s advertising options. Under the terms of the partnership, Slacker will handle all advertising within the free AOL music service as well as ads for its own service. AOL meanwhile will focus on promotional advertising packages from other portions of its company. Initially, AOL plans to launch the service with an iPhone app, with iPad and Android apps to follow. AOL’s current radio app, AOL Radio, draws about 3 million unique monthly listeners that consume 30 million hours of music, according to AOL Music chief Jeff Bronikowski in a press release. via All Things Digital
Filed under: Business and Technology, media, mobile, News, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The reactions to Google’s new service, “What do you love?” are going to be mixed. That’s probably why the site wdyl.com was rolled out quietly, in the night, with no more fanfare than an anonymous ”tip” going to techcrunch.com.
wdyl.com essentially takes a search request and turns it into a comic book-looking page of relevant results. You get the results after entering a term and then clicking on an adorable heart-shaped button.* The search results are then shown across Google’s products. You see Picasa, Sketchup, Translate, Voice, Books, Trends, and YouTube results… all on one page. Some are calling it a “cute gimmick,” while others are seeing it as a showcase of what Google is capable of. Well, since I love myself, I entered my name, clicked the heart and, voila! There’s my Picasa pictures. Neat. I can also setup Alerts about myself (I swear I haven’t done it yet.). I’m disappointed by the lack of Regina Sinsky Products available (zero). My popularity on Trends is simply depressing. Then it gets a bit eery. There’s the embracing video of me as a 1st grader saying I want to work at the San Diego zoo. The page offers viewers a chance to “Explore Regina Sinsky in 3D” with SketchUp and the ability to “Scour the earth for Regina Sinsky” with Earth. Yikes! The bottom line is Google already knows what you love and they love to show it. What do you think about it? * Will someone on Etsy please make me a necklace featuring this button?
Filed under: VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Microsoft caught up with the present today with the launch of Office 365, a suite of its well-known Office software tailored for the cloud.
Office 365 is an online-based service that shares similarities to Google Apps and Zoho, and it lets people collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and e-mail using a combination of subscription desktop software and web apps. Microsoft’s popular applications like Word, Excel, Exchange, and PowerPoint will now be able to be licensed month-to-month with an online version. Pricing starts at $6 per user per month for small businesses. The cost for medium to enterprise-size businesses ranges from $10 to $27 per user per month. This is considerably more than competitor Google Apps, which is $5 per user per month no matter how big the company. A lot of the cloud-based tools available in Office 365 were previously available under the less-friendly name Business Productivity Online Suite. 365 improves on those tools by updating Exchange Online and SharePoint Online to include the features of the 2010 desktop version whereas BPOS had its software bits based on the 2007 versions. The online services that 365 specifically offers are Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Office Web Apps. The set of Web Apps are slightly slimmed down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that are accessible through a web browser. Google’s similar Google Apps suite of cloud-based programs offers online e-mail, documents, spreadsheets, and more. Yesterday, Google Apps Product Manager Shan Sinha made the case on a company blog that Apps was a better overall product. Sinha’s main issues with 365 were that it wasn’t built for teams, it costs more, it only focuses on Windows-based platforms, and it has too much dependence on desktop software rather than being 100 percent in the cloud. Each suite of apps has its own strengths. Google has an edge on price and the ability to work on all platforms, but Microsoft has the edge on familiarity and deep features like Excel formulas and macros. It will be fascinating to see what sort of adoption rate we see in the next year between the two services as more businesses invest in cloud-based systems and software. Are you interested in checking out Office 365? Would you consider moving from Google Apps to try 365?
Filed under: VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Myspace’s parent company News Corp. is in the final stages of selling the under performing social network for $20 million to $30 million, reports All Things Digital.
News Corp. is apparently in a rush to complete an acquisition deal by Thursday — its fiscal year-end. The media giant probably doesn’t want MySpace to blemish its 2012 financial records, especially given the lack luster revenue predictions. Backing up earlier information, the report indicates that significant cuts in staff and operating costs will be made to Myspace depending on who the buyer is. News Corp. might also retain a small minority stake in the company, according to the report. Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital are at the top of the list of companies that could acquire Myspace. Both companies will focus Myspace on music, sources told All Things Digital. However, its unclear if prior music licenses will transfer with the sale. An investment group that includes Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson, another separate investment group that includes Myspace co-founder Chris DeWolfe and Criterion Capital Partners have also been rumored as showing interest in purchasing the company, according to the report.
Filed under: Business and Technology, deals, News, social, Social Media, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Take-Two Interactive’s BioShock Infinite has been selected as the best game of the E3 video game trade show by the Game Critics Awards.
Dozens of game critics, including me from VentureBeat, voted on the top games of E3. Since BioShock Infinite won four major awards, that’s a pretty good indicator that Take-Two has a major hit on its hands for 2012, when BioShock Infinite is expected to launch.
The game is an original title developed by Ken Levine (pictured) and Irrational Games, a division of Take-Two’s 2K Games label. The game uses some of the same fighting style introduced in the action adventure game BioShock of 2007, but the tale takes place in a far different setting — the floating city of Columbia — and is set in an alternate American history around the turn of the century. It’s an imaginative title that captured a lot of attention from E3 attendees and game critics. It was also my vote for the best of show. I’ve included the full list of winners below. Bethesda Softworks won two awards for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; Electronic Arts won two awards for Battlefield 3, and Sony won two awards for Sound Shapes for the upcoming PS Vita handheld. This year’s group of critics included both mainstream press and game-specific publications, from USA Today to Kotaku. 
Best of Show
BioShock Infinite
(Irrational Games/2K Games for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Original Game
BioShock Infinite
(Irrational Games/2K Games for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Console Game
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
(Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda for PS3, Xbox 360) Best Handheld Game
Sound Shapes
(Queasy Games/SCEA for PSVita) Best PC Game
BioShock Infinite
(Irrational Games/2K Games for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Hardware
PlayStation Vita
(Sony Computer Entertainment) Best Action Game
Battlefield 3
(DICE/EA Games for PC) Best Action/Adventure Game
BioShock Infinite
(Irrational Games/2K Games for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Role Playing Game
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
(Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda for PS3, Xbox 360) Best Fighting Game
Street Fighter X Tekken
(Capcom/Capcom for PS3, Xbox 360, PSVita) Best Racing Game
Forza 4
(Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft Studios for Xbox 360) Best Sports Game
FIFA Soccer 12
(EA Canada/EA Sports for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Strategy Game
From Dust
(Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Social/Casual Game
Sound Shapes
(Queasy Games/SCEA for PSVita) Best Motion Simulation Game
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
(Nintendo EAD/Nintendo for Wii) Best Online Multiplayer
Battlefield 3
(DICE/EA Games for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Best Downloadable Game
Bastion
(Supergiant Games/WB Games for PC, Xbox 360)
Filed under: games         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  T-Mobile announced the latest addition to its Android smartphone lineup last night, the MyTouch 4G Slide. The phone sports a slide-out hardware keyboard, as expected, but it also features a surprisingly capable camera, as well as some photo tools that will help you make good use of it.
While T-Mobile subscribers will surely appreciate having another keyboard phone option, in addition to the G2 and revamped Sidekick, it’s the Slide’s camera capabilities that will win it some fans. The Slide appears to be one of the few Android smartphones that can go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 4′s capable shooter, and perhaps even take on Nokia’s obsessively constructed smartphone cameras. The MyTouch 4G Slide features a 3.7-inch screen and a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor, which puts it in the same league of most new Android smartphones. Since it’s manufactured by HTC, the phone also comes equipped with HTC Sense 3.0 — the company’s latest Android beautification software. The phone will come equipped with Android 2.3. That’s all well and good, but the Slide really shines when it comes to its camera hardware. T-Mobile says the phone sports a backside illuminated sensor (like the iPhone 4) with a wide aperture lens, both of which will make it ideal for shooting pictures in low-light. The company also promises zero shutter lag, thanks to “innovative software” that will allow the phone to take a picture the instant you hit the shutter. The Slide will also be able to record high-definition video up to 1080p. Software photography niceties include SweepShot, which will let you easily take panaromic pictures by sweeping the phone across a scene; ClearShot HDR, a simple way to take high dynamic range photos (also something the iPhone 4 sports); and BurstShot, which will allow you to take a quick burst of photos. The MyTouch 4G Slide will be available in black and khaki colors, and will be available sometime in July. T-Mobile hasn’t revealed any pricing yet, but expect it to be around $200 with a two-year contract. 
 We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. We’re also accepting entries for our mobile startup competition at the show. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Activision Blizzard continues to milk its major video game hit of the year with the launch of a new map pack today for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
The Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation map pack debuted today on Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service for the Xbox 360. The launch of the map pack is a pretty big event, considering the original game generated more than $1 billion in sales and has become the best-selling video game of all time since its launch in November. Activision Blizzard says that its Call of Duty map packs — sold for 1200 Microsoft points, or $15 each — are the best-selling add-on content on Xbox Live. They’re basically a license to print money and can keep a game alive for much longer than the typical sales cycle. The map pack has four new multiplayer maps and a new Zombie-shooting level where players can shoot each other or blast apart zombies all day long. The company previously released its First Strike map pack in February and its Escalation map pack in May. That’s a faster pace than the release of map packs for the previous year’s game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Annihilation should keep players busy as they await the next major game installment in the combat game series. On Nov. 8, Activision Blizzard will release Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. That release will include the launch of Call of Duty Elite, a social network for the game series with options for premium subscriptions. The map pack includes: – “Hangar 18,” located in the highly classified military base of Area 51, where gamers will fight through experimental weapons labs, the SR-71 test hangar and a mysterious autopsy room.
– “Drive-In,” where players experience close-quarters combat through a 1960′s American Drive-In theater, complete with a snack shack and a classic arcade.
– “Silo,” where-in gamers can infiltrate a massive secret Soviet nuclear missile site under construction within a multi-level battleground.
– “Hazard,” located on the cliff sides of Cuba, gamers can explore a coastal golf course fit for a Dictator, where stocked clubhouses and
manicured fairways meet snipers hidden in sand traps.
– “Shangri-La,” the all-new Zombies experience, transports players into a mythical paradise overrun with the undead. Players will come face-to-face with new species of zombies and navigate through a labyrinth of underground caverns, all set within a legendary shrine lost in an exotic jungle.
Filed under: games         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Today we're revealing the sixth set of speakers for our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference. Our newest slate of speakers will be part of a panel on the free-to-play mobile gaming market. They include Jeferson Valadares, general manager of games at Flurry; Gabe Leydon, chief executive of Addmired; Lou Fasulo, chief operating officer of Z2Live, and Dave Casteluovo, CEO of Bolt Creative.
Free-to-play and in-app purchase business models on mobile have changed the gaming landscape – thanks to a new segment of mass market casual gamers, proliferation of connected devices and revolution in digital distribution. In this new world, monetization now depends on engagement, retention and driving micro-transaction purchases. This panel, “Making succesfull free-to-play and in-app purchase driven mobile games,” addresses the challenges and opportunities head on from the point of view of the studio, and is made up of successful free-to-play and in-app purchase mobile game studio leaders, who have learned from trial-and-error, constant measurement and relentless iteration. The panel discussion is led by Jeferson Valadares, a veteran studio exec who has held various senior production roles at Playfish, EA Mobile and Digital Chocolate. The GamesBeat 2011 conference takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.  Jeferson Valadares is the general manager of games at Flurry. He has more than 10 years of experience in leading mobile and Facebook game studios. He has built critically acclaimed original games as well as titles for brands such as EA Sports, FIFA, Harry Potter, Need for Speed and Hasbro. At EA, he was the first creative director for EA Mobile and was studio director at Playfish for both Facebook and mobile games. Prior to EA, he ran Digital Chocolate’s largest studio, based in Finland, and was responsible for hits including Tower Bloxx, Crazy Penguin Catapult and Rollercoaster Rush.
 Gabriel Leydon is co-founder and chief executive of Addmired, a mobile social gaming company that created top-grossing hits such as iMob Online, Original Gangstaz, and Global War. Before Addmired, Leydon spent seven years in the coin-operated arcade business working at Atari, Tsunami Visual, and Global VR.
 Lou Fasulo runs day-to-day operations at Z2Live and oversees two hit franchises: TradeNations and MetalStorm. He previously led the publishing team at New York-based Sonic Boom Games. He was also vice president of distribution at Vivendi Games Mobile and helped launch the hit game Surviving High School. He also held positins at AT&T Mobility, Earthlink, and GroovePort.
 Dave Castelnuovo is a veteran flash games developer, entreprenuer and consultant. He is the CEO of Bolt Creative, creator of the enormously popular mobile game Pocket God. Castelnuovo founded Bolt Creative in 2001 and helped lead the charge onto the iPhone in 2008 and 2009. He has worked at a variety of game publishers, including Electronic Arts.
Our previous announced speakers include David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong; Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners; Chris Bergstresser, executive vice president of online gaming portal Miniclip; Neil Young, founder and CEO of Ngmoco; Andrej Nabergoj, founder and chief executive of Outfit7; Jason Citron, founder and chief executive of OpenFeint; Steve Perlman, chief executive of games-on-demand firm OnLive; Bart Decrem, head of mobile games at Disney and former chief executive of Tapulous; Trip Hawkins, chief executive of Digital Chocolate; Peter Relan, chairman of YouWeb and chief executive of CrowdStar; Si Shen, chief executive of PapayaMobile; David Ko, senior vice president for mobile at Zynga; our keynote speaker, longtime game entrepreneur and founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell; Tim Chang, partner at Norwest Venture Partners; Daniel Terry, co-founder of mobile game maker Pocket Gems; and Bing Gordon, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and former chief creative officer at Electronic Arts; Jennifer Lu, director of business development at TinyCo; Sana Choudary, CEO of game startup accelerator YetiZen; and Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital. Each year, GamesBeat follows a big trend. In 2009, we focused on how All The World's a Game, with the explosion of games onto a global stage. Last year, GamesBeat@GDC focused on Disruption 2.0. This year, our theme is Mobile Games Level Up, and it focuses on the busy intersection of games and mobile technology. We'll focus on everything from smartphone games to tablets and handhelds. Console games dominated the news in the past, but the center of attention is rapidly shifting toward mobile as more and more users play games on the run. While there are hundreds of millions of gamers on Facebook, analysts believe the number could be much higher for mobile games. Our speakers are right at this intersection of gaming and mobility. GamesBeat 2011 targets an audience of CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and other key figures in the game business. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements.  We'll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us atsponsors@venturebeat.com. To pitch a startup at the Who's Got Game contest at GamesBeat 2011, click here.
Filed under: games         
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Editor’s note: Jeanne M. Sullivan is General Partner at StarVest Partners. She submitted this story to VentureBeat.) I've met thousands of CEOs – good ones, bad ones, short ones, tall ones, new ones and seasoned ones.  I feel strongly that the CEO, despite the accomplishments made by other members of the team, is the key person who most often correlates to the success of the company. The VP of sales might argue that he or she brings in the revenue. The CTO might take credit for building the product. And the VP of marketing could say they’re responsible for putting it all together and bringing it to market. But it's the leader at the top that’s the key driver behind how well a company will ultimately perform. So, what makes a great CEO? It comes down to a few things: A great CEO leads. They lead the team by creating a strong culture among the troops and continually fueling a vibrant "esprit de corps." They put together the financing. I have observed that they do not just point the way – they say, "Follow me up the mountain, and I will show you the way." The great ones are both cheerleaders and task masters, only most never use those terms to describe their function. The leading CEO makes employees want to work with the same mad fervor to help achieve the company's goals. A great CEO is clear. They define and communicate the strategy and create buy-in for this strategy along the way among the team members. The greatness shows because they know they have already gotten the troops together to help build the strategy or the go-to-market plan, and they provide employees with many chances to weigh in with their views. Employees are not left wondering about the strategy because they can repeat the strategy. It might even be laminated and hanging on the office walls. A great CEO gets their hands dirty. They will help create a go-to-market distribution plan and will drive revenue and results. They are with employees in the field closing the big sale or figuring out why the company lost one. They are right there, balancing the priorities and inspiring their team to help win the next opportunity. They are calling their Rolodex for a partnership or connection. They are quick to sort out mistakes in a "blameless autopsy" so that success may be achieved the next time. A great CEO is strategic. They know what to do and how to do it. Here is the magic ingredient: He or she is able to look right, look left and look out over time to see the moves and countermoves of the competition and react accordingly. They are quick to call an ad hoc meeting or an offsite if it requires a group brainstorm. They understand their team intimately, both gathering and relying upon their troops' input.  A great CEO knows when they aren't a great CEO. They know what they're good at – and when it isn't being a CEO. They're willing to seek others more able than themselves to take the helm. They might reposition themselves as the Chairman or Chief Strategy Officer or Chief Revenue Officer and can realize that maybe it is time to lead a larger organization, or smaller. If a company is in its early days and seeking financing, as an investor I often ask myself: "Is this the long-term CEO for the company? Can this person take the company public or create an exit?" If the answer is "no," this can often lead the investor to say "no" to the investment. A sense of humor, maniacal focus on the goal and critical self-awareness are critical ingredients for success.
Filed under: EC Media, Entrepreneur Corner, Financing, Management, Product Development, VentureBeat         
 | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
沒有留言:
張貼留言