Online Games

While everyone in the game industry was following the latest news from GDC last week, I happened to notice an MMO milestone happening on Facebook: a casual virtual world called YoVille passed 5 million monthly active users. Launched in May of last year, YoVille’s user growth rate… Read More »

When it comes to gaming, the most popular platform isn’t the Nintendo Wii, but Flash, the interactive browser plugin that now boasts 99 percent market penetration on nearly a billion PCs. (Flash game advertising network Mochi Media currently counts 100 million players across its system… Read More »

Will Nintendo be able to sustain its dominance in the rapidly changing handheld game console market? That’s the main question I was looking to get answered when I attended today’s Game Developers Conference keynote from Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. And while Iwata announced a roster… Read More »

Traditional game publishing is no different than newspaper publishing, Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures said at a panel discussion held at the GamesBeat conference today in San Francisco. They are broken from a content standpoint, and they are broken from a distribution standpoint. It is the… Read More »

Today everyone who follows the gaming industry is talking about OnLive, an upcoming service incubated by Rearden, the venture company of Web TV Founder Steve Perlman. The system, which streams high-end video games to pretty much any PC, Mac, or TV with a broadband… Read More »

Vivox, best known for providing voice communication support for online games and virtual worlds like Eve Online, Second Life and Sony Online Entertainment titles, is set to announce on Wednesday the Vivox Voice Toolbar, which will expand its services across multiple games and platforms. The Natick,… Read More »

Last year, a small Mac game developer called Pangea Software ported one of its titles to Apple’s iPhone. Pangea’s Brian Greenstone didn’t expect to make much from the iPhone version of its arcade-style game Enigmo; he expected that the company might sell 10,000-20,000 units over its… Read More »

For Virtual Startups, There Are VC Funds Aplenty

If there is an economic crisis, then it isn’t impacting any of the startups making virtual goods, online games or virtual worlds. In just the last month alone, three companies have raised mega-millions from venture capitalists. Greystripe, a games-related advertising network, raised another… Read More »

MMORPG Network Aeria Partners With Offerpal

Offerpal Media, a startup that links virtual currency to real-world marketing deals, scored $15 million in venture funding last month. CEO Anu Shukla hinted to me then that we’d see partnership news soon, and as promised, Aeria Games is announcing today that it’s linking… Read More »

Quake Live May Spark Gaming Industry Shake-up

Earlier today, I found myself sitting at the tail end of a 55,452-person queue for Quake Live, the latest entry in a long line of first-person shooters from id Software, the Mesquite, Texas-based developer best known for PC game franchises Doom and Wolfenstein. Quake Live is… Read More »

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