3-D virtual world applications for enterprise use will grow into an industry earning $8 billion to $10 billion in annual revenue by 2014, according to a new report from GigaOM Pro (subscription required). Today, virtual worlds are primarily associated with role-playing games and avatar-based chat,… Read More »
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Wagner James Au
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Riot Games has raised $8 million from Tencent and returning investors Benchmark and FirstMark Capital, said the Culver City, Calif.-based publisher, which develops free-to-play, digitally distributed games with a microtransaction/virtual goods revenue stream. Such a model has worked extremely well in Asia,… Read More »
Video streaming service PlayOn from Media Mall Technologies recently added support for the Wii, which owners of Nintendo’s phenomenally popular video game console can use to watch Hulu, CNN and other selected channels online. It’s about time: The Wii excels at games,… Read More »
Smith & Tinker, a Bellevue, Wash.-based game company, today announced it’s raised $29 million from Alsop Louie Partners, DCM, Foundry Group, Leo Capital Holdings, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The money will primarily fund Nanovor, an ambitious kids’ game that will extend across… Read More »
Flipnote Studio for the Nintendo DSi is a free, downloadable app which just became available in the North American market, and if you like doodling even a bit, you’ll want to check it out. The software turns the DS stylus and touchscreen into a… Read More »
Hollywood Player, a site that cleverly merges two popular online activities — casual social gaming and movie trivia — went into public beta today. The brainchild of Dave Long and Bill Kuper, who created the bestselling, DVD-driven board game Scene It?, the startup repackages… Read More »
Roughly 12 percent of Americans, or more than one in 10, have bought a virtual item at some point in the last 12 months, according to a new study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan.… Read More »
More Must Reads
Play Sushi, a gaming portal, has attracted 3 million visitors less than three months after launching, reports site owner Future Ads, yet another example of the explosive growth taking place in the free online gaming space. Sites offering free games clocked 87 million U.S.… Read More »
When the Rock Band Network — essentially an App Store for musicians who want to upload and sell Rock Band-playable versions of their songs — opens for business later this year, it has the potential to transform the music industry by giving musicians large and… Read More »
Mochi Media is adding a virtual currency/microtransaction system to its network of online Flash games today. Players can use Mochi Coins to buy in-game upgrades for 16 titles from its game developer partners. Want a “tactical chain saw” in SAS Zombie Assault II>? (And… Read More »
Social games attract tens of millions of players on Facebook and other networks, but compared with traditional PC and console-based games, they make a lot less money, a challenge impeding the genre’s growth. While millions of “hardcore” gamers willingly pay $60 per title and $15 in… Read More »
Investors poured $237 million into virtual world-related startups and payment systems last quarter alone, according to a report released today by industry trade show producer Engage Digital, signaling venture capitalists’ continued enthusiasm in the market. (Nearly $600 million in funding went into this… Read More »
Google’s Chrome OS has added a very interesting wrinkle to the future of online gaming. As we reported back in May, Google reportedly plans to fully integrate O3D, the company’s rich 3D graphics plug-in, into the Chrome browser by the end of this year.… Read More »
To promote the latest installment of Illegal Danish, their popular World of Warcraft machinima series, D.W. Hackleman and his brother Clint came up with a clever conceit: They fully recreated the trailer of the hotly anticipated game Starcraft II with elements of Warcraft. Now instead… Read More »
WoWPals is a new location-based service for World of Warcraft players who want to connect with other WoW fans, be they from halfway around the globe or right down the street. A spinoff of Israel-based company GamersFlux, the service extracts data from the
The Social Gaming Summit kicked off in San Francisco today, bringing together developers, investors and bigwigs from social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Below are four of my favorite takeaways gleaned from the first few sessions: Facebook Social Games Migrating Off Facebook In the opening talk,… Read More »
To help promote next week’s summer movie behemoth Tranformers 2, Paramount recently launched a web site using augmented reality, in which real-world data is merged to a virtual overlay. That’s a fancy way of saying the site uses your web camera to… Read More »
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