GigaOM

Here’s a small sign of larger changes in the game industry: I got word today from Rockstar Games that April’s Grand Theft Auto 4, the latest installment in their huge (if controversial) thugs-in-the-sandbox franchise, will launch with a “Social Club” (open April 15), a site where gamers can track their game scores and achievements against [...]

The National Health Service is the UK’s state-funded health-care system, and with 1.3 million staffers, the fifth largest employee in the world. And thanks to a chance meeting at a Texas bar at last week’s SXSW, I discovered they’re about to get avatars for their internal resource network. As such, they’re probably the [...]

How serious is Sony about online worlds? For the longest time, execs at their Tokyo HQ kept an arms-length distance from the San Diego-based Sony Online Entertainment, purveyor of Everquest I/II, the recently released Pirates of the Burning Sea, and other PC-centric MMOs and online games. Over the last decade, anytime I’d write [...]

Last summer we wondered where the games for the iPhone were. Now we know they’re coming, in a big way.
Apple last week showed off the details of its SDK, with VP Scott Forstall promoting it as “a great platform to develop games on.” Just as crucial, publishing giant Electronic Arts said they’d be [...]

Fueled by the purchase of Club Penguin and other success stories, the market for virtual worlds designed for children/teens keeps booming. Om just passed me word that Trinity Ventures is investing in Fluid Entertainment, a Mill Valley, Calif.-based developer now working on a “green kids world” with ecological themes. (Alert to Katie!) For [...]

Speaking for the Open Handset Alliance, of which Google is the most prominent benefactor/promoter, Morrill highlighted his talk — “Android: Connecting Your Life to the Web” — at the ETech conference in San Diego this afternoon with an Android emulator running from his laptop.
Using a mock-up app called Google Grapes, Morrill fetched the prices [...]