Games

Is Nintendo About To Be Dethroned?

It looks like Nintendo may finally be pulled of its perch as the No.1 videogame console company in the world. It announced April-to-Septembe…

Cellufun Secures $1 Million In Financing

New York-based Cellufun, which makes free games that integrate chatting and other social features, has secured about $1 million in bridge fi…

Game Downloads: Beyond The Hype

Digital distribution has turned the music and print-media industries on their heads, and by most accounts, the video-game industry is next.…

GameFly Deploys First Game-Rental Kiosks

*Blockbuster* encroached on GameFly’s game rental business with its rental-by-mail trial about a month ago, and now GameFly has responded by…

The Rise Of 'Swap Sites' For Gamers

Game publishers have long complained about retailers like GameStop that sell used games, because they don’t get a cut of the resale revenues…

Webdunia Launches Local Language Games

I just noticed that Webdunia, the local language portal from the Naidunia group of publications, has launched games. The games site is curre…

Next Week: @ Game Developers Conference

The Game Developers Conference starts Monday in San Francisco with two days focused exclusively on mobile. On Monday, Michel Guillemot, Game…

Id Forms Mobile Division

Id, the creators of Doom and Quake, have launched a new division — id Mobile. Id has already released a couple of successful mobile games,…

Gameloft Hides Easter Egg In Heroes Game

As a tempter to fans of TV show Heroes Gameloft (EPA: GFT) has hidden an easter egg in the mobile game it developed for Universal. The spoil…

Oasys Leaves Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Well, Oasys said it could leave Chapter 11 bankruptcy as early as October, and it has. It filed for bankruptcy in July, and sold all its equ…

Multi-platform Gamer PopCap Buys Retro64

Casual gaming developer PopCap Games has acquired Retro64, a site that provides downloads of old-style arcade games. Retro64, which is headq…

Czech Gamer Geewa Secures $2 Million Funding

Czech casual gamer Geewa has received $2 million in funding from Polish investment company MCI Management, AC Euro reports. Three-year-old G…

Games Media Buys Media Firm WiredLabs

Games Media Properties, the organizer of video game competitions including the World Series of Video Games, has bought out game online medi…

Glu Overview; Blackberry Deal With BPlay

Forbes has a piece on Glu, focusing on its financial prospects and place in the market. It’s a good overview of the company aimed at investo…

Digital Chocolate Signs Pre-Load Deal With LG

Digital Chocolate has scored a deal to pre-load its games onto mobile phones made by LG Electronics. Games from Digital Chocolate will be pr…

Top Stories From Last Week

The top story last week was ESPN International’s acquisition of Cricinfo – and both companies were rather cagey about future plans. I was su…

Mobile2Win Ties Up With Saregama India

Mobile gaming’s Bollywood fixation continues: Mobile2Win has created a Java based game for Saregama India, for the mobie ‘Chain Kulii Ki Mai…

Jump Games To Launch Pay-Per-Play In Europe

Reliance ADA Group company Jump Games will be launching Jump Arcade, a pay-per-play mobile based gaming portal in Europe. The solution, powe…

EA Begins Reorg; Creates Casual Games Group

The world’s largest gaming company EA has started its reorg, the first public move by its new CEO John Riccitiello: it has appointed Kathy V…

Sony To Enter Mobile Games Market In Europe

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) is reportedly planning to move into mobile games and has hired former THQ Wireless executive Balbi…

ABP Group Launches Mobile Games Site

You’re reading it here first: The Anand Bazar Patrika Group (ABP) has launched a mobile games portal Mjoy4free. The site has around 500 free…

Mobile Game Tunes Need Some Oomph

The restricted size of mobile games files and the relatively poor audio quality on handsets means that the sound of mobile games has been ne…

Studio 18 ties up with Virgin Comics

Studio18, which will be a part of TV18’s joint venture with Viacom, has inked a deal with Virgin Comics for graphic novels, movies and games…

Sid Meier Games Go Mobile

Take Two Interactive has signed a deal to put Sid Meier games mobile: That includes the titles Civilisation IV, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates!…

3D Mobile Games — A Discussion Of Its Worth

PocketGamer has a good article on 3D mobile games, the benefits and deficiencies of the technology. The article talks with Glu’s Chris White…

Rediff Launches Gaming Site in Beta

Rediff has launched Rediff Games in beta, reports Startup Dunia. As per the site, Rediff Games features free arcade games, puzzles and strat…

Blizzard Planning Move Into Mobile

Games company Blizzard, which dominated the MMORPG segment when it launched World of Warcraft, is planning a move into the mobile space. The…

DChoc Cafe — More On Hawkin’s Plans

Digital Chocolate has released an official announcement about founder Trip Hawkin’s vision for Mobile Games 2.0, which broke yesterday. The…

Hawkins Mobile Games Cafe Modelled On Starbucks

Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins has hinted at the companies plans to launch a new mobile games brand, Café, which will let players socia…

AGA League Gaming Competition Begins

After a bit of a lull over the last two months, gaming competitions have resumed. The ASUS Gamers Association (AGA) League 2007 began this w…

How Big A Problem Is Piracy In Games?

Piracy is considered the bane of digital content by many content producers and distributors, but not all content is created equal — for exa…

The Mobile Game-Makers Niche

Despite being around for 10 years, the mobile game industry is small enough and new enough that there are few people directly qualified to w…

FICCI Frames Day 1 Roundup: Trends

Some news of industry trends being discussed at FICCI Frames:
The Financial Express quotes Timmy S Kandhari, Executive Director for PwC: “.…

EA Spins Off Music Label Artwerk

Electronic Arts, the biggest video gaming company, has spun off its music label efforts with Canadian label Nettwerk One Music into a new co…

Xbox Live To Be Launched This Year

Tech 2.0 has an interview with Mohit Anand, Country Manager India for Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division, who says that MS plans to…

RIM Using Content To Take Blackberry Consumer

The NYT has a story on Gameloft announcing today that it will make games for RIM’s Blackberry device (“mobile game maker develops games for…

Mobile Game Interviews — Gameloft And T-Mobile

There’s been a few good interviews with mobile game execs lately… IGN has spoken to Julien Fournials, Gameloft’s VP of Production, about h…

Frengo Launches Social Games With Boost

Frengo has launched its game service, which uses SMS or MMS for trivia-style games around celebrities and pop culture, as well as games to p…

Virgin Comics Signs Up Sachin Tendulkar

Virgin Comics has signed up cricketer Sachin Tendulkar for a comic book character called ‘Sachin the Master Blaster’, on whom games and an a…

Nintendo’s Wii To Have Community

Games for Nintendo’s Wii will soon have community features such as friend rosters, advanced matchmaking capabilities and rankings. The techn…

Summing Up GDC Mobile

Modojo has a piece summing up the GDC Mobile games conference, bemoaning a lack of creativity and imagination and summing up the major speec…

Game Licensors Should Aim For Sequels — Gosen

IPlay CEO David Gosen gave a speech on “Publishing and Marketing Blockbuster Content on Mobile” at GDC this week, which I couldn’t get to, b…

Nokia Signs Up Publishers For N-Gage

Nokia’s is developing N-Gage as a mobile gaming platform, and to that end, they have signed up game publishers. With the increase in easily…

Mobile Games More Than Time Fillers — Trip

Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins opened the Game Developers Conference 2007 with his GDC Mobile keynote… from media reports it was vinta…

Gamevil And WDIG Interview On Mobile Games

Modojo has a good interview with Kyu Lee (President of Gamevil USA) and Stan Liu (Vice President, Product Development at Walt Disney Interne…

Mobile Gaming Under Price Pressure

VAS revenues from games falling, as per this article in Business Standard. Prices of games may be halved from Rs.50 to Rs.25, options such a…

Zapakgirls Launched; Kids Site In The Works

– Reliance ADA Group company Zapak’s gaming portal for women, Zapak Girls has gone live. For now, the site is in beta, and most of the games…

Games2Win Promotes Professional Gaming Team

Games2Win has signed up a team of professional gamers from India who will compete in key gaming tournaments in India and abroad. The team is…

Some Valentines Day Initiatives

Something of an aside: a bunch of initiatives around Valentines Day…
– Gaming Hungama has a couple of games up: ‘Love is in the Air’ and ‘…

Electronic Arts Buys Karaoke Site SingShot

EA has made amongst its smallest acquisitions: it has bought a very young online karaoke site called SingShot, in an attempt to add social n…

Jump Games In Overdrive

The Economic Times has several updates on Jump Games in this story.
Gaming’s Bollywood and Celebrity fixation continues: Jump Games will be…

Mobile Key To Future Gaming — Iplay

Mobile game developer I-play’s CEO David Gosen has said that mobile games are the key to the future of the gaming industry, reports GamesInd…

Jump Games Launches Game Based On Fido Dido

Joanna Ferrone, the creator of the animated character Fido Dido was in India for the launch of a 2D game based on Fido Dido, created by Reli…

Nazara Launches Sachin Zone

Nazara Technologies, which has rights for mobile content related to cricketers Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and MS Dhoni, has launched…

Zapak Plans A Gaming Site For Girls

Zapak, Reliance ADA Group’s gaming site, plans to launch a site specifically for women gamers called Zapak Girls, with around 25 games exclu…

Gameloft Signs Deal With US Army

Gameloft has signed on to make the mobile version of America’s Army, a game made in partnership with the US Army for the latter to promote i…

AP and Nintendo Launch Wii News Channel

An interesting though not-a-game-changing deal: Nintendo has signed a deal with the AP to create a special news channel on the Wii Remote. D…

Kuju Exits Mobile Game Market

Game developer Kuju Entertainment has sold its mobile division and is moving out of mobile gaming, reports MobileIndustry.biz. COO Ian Baver…

And You Thought This Wasn't A Game?

People at Zapak have been having fun at everyone’s expense, it seems. They created an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) at idiedhere.com, as a bl…

Mobile Content Roundup: Warlords, TV Shows

–Here’s some low-hanging fruit I’ve been waiting for someone to pick for years…popular strategy game Warlords is finally coming to mobile…

In-Fusio Sues Microsoft Over Halo Mobile

[By James Pearce] Mobile gaming firm In-Fusio is suing Microsoft, claiming the software giant is deliberately thwarting its efforts to creat…

D2C Games Gets $1.5 Million Funding

D2C Games, an online and mobile casual gaming startup, has received $1.5 million in first round funding. The round in the San Mateo, CA-base…

Namco To Offer Free Game Trials On Sprint

Namco is offering free trials of its mobile games on Sprint, based on the idea that a significant portion of gamers want to trial a few game…

Gameloft Launches Online Store

Gameloft has launched an online store where people can buy games and then sideload them to their handsets. The service works via an applicat…

Major League Gaming Gets $25 Million Funding

So reports PEHub…Major League Gaming, a professional video-game league based in NYC, has raised a big $25 million round from Oak Investmen…

Do Mobile Games Need Age Rankings?

Justin Davis at Modojo has put forward an argument that mobile games need an age rating system — or at least, mobile games are now technica…

Enforcement Issues And Piracy

Some Anti-Piracy facts from a report in the Hindu Business Line:
– More than 600 pirated sites have been shut in India in the last seven yea…

Realtime Worlds Gets $31 Million Funding

Realtime Worlds, a Scottish online and console game developer, has received $31 million in funding, from New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Th…

GDC Boss Predicts More Growth For Mobile Games

MobileIndustryBiz has the mobile excerpts of an interview with Game Developers Conference boss Jamil Moledina, who said that games still “pl…

The Mobile Developers Manifesto

Demetri Detsaridis, Creative Director of Massively Mobile (a company recently started by ex-Gameloft and Activision vets) has written an opi…

Gaming Firms CCP and White Wolf Merge

This is generating a lot of discussion among gaming fans online: Icelandic publisher CCP Games, maker of the online role-playing game EVE On…

Atom Entertainment SVP On Shockwave Minis

Gamasutra (and Modojo) has scored an interview with Atom Entertainment’s Games senior vice president Dave Williams about the launch of Shock…

Namco Ramps Up European Operations

Mobile Entertainment is reporting that Namco is increasing its mobile efforts in Europe, creating a separate entity called Namco Bandai Netw…

Content Based On The Lakme Fashion Week

We’d written earlier on Sify webcasting the Lakme India Fashion week live. More developments:
– In a case of art imitating life, Games2Win h…

Content Deals in Video & Games

Thumbplay distributing Sony content on mobile: “Thumbplay subscribers now have direct access to content from SPHE’s entire mobile content ca…

Major League Gaming Buys GameBattles.com

Major League Gaming, a professional video-game league, has bought out online console tournament site GameBattles.com…GameBattles.com’s 700…

I-play’s David Gosen On Mobile Games

In this interview David Gosen, CEO of I-play, claims the mobile games industry is about casual games rather than mobile versions of console…

Namco’s Retro Game Tournament

Namco and Motorola will run a mobile retro gaming tournament, “with attendees of the DigitalLife entertainment and technology show battling…

NDS Group Buys Game Design Company

NDS Group, majority-owned by News Corp., has bought ITE, a Danish game design, development and publishing company. NDS sells access software…

OMA Consortium To Develop Game Specs

The Open Mobile Alliance will lead a consortium of companies seeking to create open specifications for mobile gaming, to facilitate the deve…

Microsoft Launches Xbox360 In India

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was launched in India on 23rd September. The Economic Times reports that the Xbox will be endorsed by Bollywood star Ak…

Online Serial Gaming Firm Trion Gets Funding

Trion World Network, an online gaming firm founded by a former EA exec, has received funding from is Doll Capital Management and Trinity Ven…

Sify To Conduct National Gaming Tournament

Sify has announced a gaming tournament that will be played across 202 Sify Gamedromes in 60 cities, starting September 22nd. Counter Strike…

World CyberGames In India

A month ago, I had wondered why Indiagames hadn’t sponsored the World Gamemaster Tournament. Now I know why: The Times of India (Bangalore)…

Capcom’s US Mobile Effort

This interview with Midori Yuasa, executive VP and general manager at Capcom, about the company’s US mobile game efforts was put up last wee…

I-play Moves Into Video Clips

I-play has teamed up with Universal Studios to create a mobile channel called Mobile Moments. It will offer short video clips of “memorable…

@MES: The Games Go On, And On

This is the last MES panel, as I desperately try and catch up with CTIA…some of the themes that came out of the gaming panel at the end (w…

Gaming Competition ‘Kode5’ In Hyderabad

KODE5 in association with Jasubhai Digital Media and SKOAR! Magazine have announced that their final regional finals will take place in Indi…

Glu Mobile On Coming Second

Glu Mobile CEO Greg Ballard has answered some questions on the company’s acquisition of iFone and Glu’s position as the second-largest mobil…

Microsoft To Live Anywhere Later

Microsoft has announced a bunch of new games and accessories for its gaming platform Xbox 360 and its Windows PC system, but nothing yet on…

Online Gaming Firm iWin Gets $5 Milion

iWin, an SF-based online casual gaming company that offers puzzle, card and game-show online games, has raised $5 million in a third round o…

Excite Japan Goes Global With Ozura Mobile

Excite Japan has signed up Ozura Mobile to distribute Excite’s mobile games “through its partners in the UK, Australia, China, India, Singap…

Using The Crack Cocaine Model For Mobile Games

Kiloo executive Karl Woods has advocated the the use of “free demos, sample levels or even ad-funded free games” in order to attract the vas…

World Gamemaster Tournament In India

The World Gamemaster Tournament (WGT) begins in India tomorrow, on the 18th of August at Bangalore. A series of qualifying rounds will be he…

New Brands In Mobile Games

Glu Mobile has partnered with Garry Kasparov to produce Kasparov Chess, “which will be available on wireless carriers worldwide beginning in…

Namco Part 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Branded

Here’s part two of QuicklyBored’s interview with Jason Ford, late of Sprint…he’s joined by Scott Rubin, Namco’s VP of Marketing. They bot…

“Desperate”, “Lost” Going Mobile

There’s so many jokes that could be made about “desperate” and “lost” in terms of mobile games, but I won’t…
ABC Entertainment and Touchs…

Namco Open To More Distribution Partners

Last month Namco signed a deal with G-Mode to distribute the latter’s games in the US. G-Mode recognized that Namco already had strong relat…

Riding The Boom In Mobile Games

Here’s a topical piece on Super Happy Fun Fun, a mobile games company in Austin, Texas that “has yet to score a major hit”.
“It isn’t an ea…

Ten Tips for Mobile Magic

Chris James from PocketGamer has an article in BusinessWeek giving his Top Ten Hints for creating a really good mobile game. The hints are p…

Activision’s Games Deal With InfoSpace

This is new and was disclosed in InfoSpace’s Q2 earnings call today: it has signed a deal with Activision to develop some its its console ga…

The Office Branded Games Suite

NBC has teamed up with Indiagames to launch a mobile game based on NBC’s popular show The Office. It’s described as a suite of games (six fo…

EA On Mobile Game Quality

This is part two of an interview with Travis Boatman, EA’s executive producer of mobile studios by way of Jamdat. Some quotes:
“If you’re ju…

EA On Mobile Distribution

Travis Boatman, EA’s executive producer of mobile studios by way of Jamdat, has given an interview about mobile games and the problems facin…

Digital Chocolate’s 11% Figure

Last week I linked to a post saying that Trip Hawkins had said Digital Chocolate has 11% marketshare…Trip has clarified that figure for us…

Mobile Game Conference – Day 1 Impressions

To get an idea of what people in the mobile games industry are talking about, a short post over at Quickly Bored. Communication and Social N…

Trip At The Mobile Games Conference

Trip Hawkins from Digital Chocolate had the 2nd day one keynote at the mobile games conference. If you’re familiar with Trip’s ideas this wi…

The Power Of Celebrity

I don’t know how many of you were aware of Paris Hilton’s blunder at E3 in promoting a mobile game branded with her name — she not only arr…

Namco Partners With G-Mode For US Distribution

Namco has formed a strategic partnership with Japanese game publisher G-Mode to distribute the latters mobile games (“a vast line-up of puzz…

TV/Mobile Tie-In Receives Bell Fund Grant

SpaceWorks Entertainment has grabbed some funding from BellFund, which funds “the creation of excellent Canadian digital media, promoting pa…

Jim Merrick To Head Mobliss

Mobile media and marketing company Mobliss has announced a new president and CEO — Jim Merrick, formerly of Nintendo. At Nintendo Merrick h…

Square Enix On The Tough US Mobile Game Market

Kosei Ito, head of Square-Enix’s mobile division, has said that the US is a much tougher market than Japan for a number of reasons, includin…

Tiny Games For A Giant Market

BusinessWeek has a piece on mobile games…”Games industry researchers forecast that with nearly 2 billion phones capable of playing games b…

Pros and Cons of Mobile Game Development

In some ways mobile games epitomise mobile content — the pros and cons are the same, but more exaggerated. Device fragmentation is a proble…

Mobile Content On Xbox 360

Mobile content companies don’t have to restrict themselves to mobile phones…Fun Little Movies has just signed a deal with Microsoft to be…

Tribune Media Moves Into Mobile Arena

Tribune Media Services (a subsidiary of Tribune) has announced plans to launch a white label mobile content service aimed at newspapers and…

Carmark Backs Mobile Platform, Slams Crap Games

John Carmack — who became a legend in the game world in his work on first person shooters — has defended the mobile phone as a platform fo…

Digital Chocolate Gets A Write-Up In NYT

Digital Chocolate has got a write-up in the New York Times… Trip Hawkins says all the stuff he normally does about the importance of makin…

Ice Cream Empire — Mobile Edutainment Game

This is interesting…Milan’s Bocconi University has partnered with Impressionware and Italian developer Tim to make a mobile game intended…

Make Your Own Mobile Game

This is an interesting idea…Pocket Pal allows you to create your own mobile game in a mix’n’match fashion online before you download it to…

Mobile Games At E3

CTIA is really the big place for mobile games, but a few are unveiled at E3 — and there are some good ones in the works. For example, do yo…

THQ CEO Brian Farrell On Mobile Game Quality

“The thing about wireless [gaming] now is we’re going into this new market with all sorts of weird things going on, so we’re going to keep s…

Sennari PrizePlay Games Pass 200K Played

Sennari has announced that its PrizePlay series of games has been played over 200,000 times in the UK in the first 3 months. I’m not sure wh…

BlingGames Launched

Lagardere — the company behind Blingtones — has launched a mobile games site, BlingGames.com. The idea is to sell games that are targeted…

Has EA Passed It’s Peak?

EA has hit a flat spot, with revenue growth coming to a halt this year and — according to this commentary — probably next year as well.
“…

The Colour Of Magic Nearly Here

Moving as slowly as Great A’tuin the first mobile game based on the Discworld series is apparently almost here. Blue Sphere Games originally…

Artificial Life Updates V-Girl

Artificial Life has updated its award-winning game V-Girl, to be released in the third quarter of this year. Virtual Girlfriend 3.0 has been…

JavArt’s Angelo Rocca

This interview with Angelo Rocca, business development manager at JavArt (a small Italian mobile games developer) covers the experience of a…

Some Interesting Mobile Game Announcements

Miami Vice has made it to the mobile phone, with Player X landing the deal with Universal Studios to create the mobile game based on the upc…

Upstart CEO Talks Mobile Brain Gaming

A couple of days ago I linked to a BBC post on Brain Games, which are mobile games designed to boost your IQ. Barry O’Neill, CEO of the Dubl…

Be A Beta Pirate

MDisney (a mobile publisher for — you guessed it — Disney) has announced it is offering the Pirates of the Caribbean Multiplayer mobile ga…

Waste Time With The Office

Indiagames is launching The Office Games at the Games and Mobile Forum in New York City today. The mobile game is based on the US-version of…

Brain Games Aim To Boost Your IQ

There’s a wave of games out of Asia that are intended to increase your IQ. They don’t so much teach you stuff as exercise your brain. The bi…

Jason Spero, Digital Chocolate

Who’d of thought Digital Chocolate was more than just Trip? Jason Spero is Digital Chocolate’s VP of marketing, so he his answers are pretty…

VUG Mobile President Paul Maglione

Modojo has an interview with Vivendi Universal Games Mobile president Paul Maglione, who said that even though the unit only launched last m…

PacMan Tournament At E3

Namco Networks has announced a plan for a mobile PacMan tournament at upcoming games conference E3: “Daily qualifying rounds, of which there…

Paris Hilton In a Mobile Game

Yes, she will on your moble phones…Mobile games publisher Gameloft has signed a long term licensing agreement with Paris Hilton Entertainm…

A Brief Look At Real Mobile Games

I was lent a Nokia 6600 with RealArcade games preloaded to give the service a look. The games are collected in a folder in the main menu –…

U.S. Playing Catch-Up To Aussie Ringtone Market

Gotta love parochialism…the US behind just about everybody in terms of the ringtone market. Australia is closer to Europe in terms of prem…

Mobile Gaming Via TV

Modojo: I tried out the Airplay service at the Mobile Focus event at CTIA — it’s pretty good. A simple user interface allows you predict wh…

@ CTIA: Michael Marchetti, VP & COO EA Mobile

[by James Pearce] I spoke to Michael Marchetti, the vice president and COO of EA Mobile, at CTIA. He reckons that the big problem with the g…

What InfoSpace Is Up To These Days…

This was a full page cover ad in the latest issue of a trade magazine..I found it amusing, to say the least:

On a related note, read this p…

@ CTIA: Capcom’s Need For Brand Recognition

I met with Capcom USA which is a big games company that just launched a mobile games division in the US…they admitted they were playing ca…

Mobile Entertainment/Gaming Awards Winners

At CTIA, CNET’s Annual Mobile Entertainment Awards, known as the Mobies, were awarded at CTIA yesterday…the archived webcast of the rather…

@ CTIA: Real Networks Mobile Game Strategy

I had a quick chat with Derrick Morten, the general Manager of RealArcade, the mobile games division of Real Networks. Real launched the ser…

@ MES: Get In The Game II — Advergaming

This was part of the Get In The Game panel (with Alan Duggan from Nephin Games, Harry Kargman from Kargo, Tammy Robinson from Verizon Wirele…

@ MES: Get In The Game

This was the last panel for me today…it included Alan Duggan from Nephin Games, Harry Kargman from Kargo, Tammy Robinson from Verizon Wire…

@CTIA: Games News

Some of the mobile games news coming out of CTIA…
Namco has announced that since the launch of its Pool Pro Online game less than a year a…

@ MES: Lasky On Mobile Games

I’m at the Mobile Entertainment Summit (MES) hosted by iHollywood (finally recovering from a terrible flight). Anyway, the first speaker was…

EA-Jamdat Effect: Glu Buys Rival iFone

So Glu itself doesn’t get sold out…it bulks up instead. After rumors that mobile game publisher Glu had been shopping itself around (and t…

THQ’s Push in Online Casual Games

Console gaming publisher THQ plans to enter the casual video games market, competing with EA., RealNetworks, and Yahoo, among others, an ana…

Noticed Jamdat’s Site Lately?

It’s EA Mobile now, if you go to Jamdat.com it will redirect to EA-Mobile.com…I’m assuming they would kill the Jamdat brand completely by…

Audio Interview: Room For The Little Guy

At Contenido Movil I interviewed Matt Gillis, VP of business development for Cosmic Games, just after his panel with Suzanne Caporicci from…

Mobile Games For The Hard Core Crowd

Your World Games has developed a long-term RPG mobile game called The Shroud. The company is targeting the hard-core gamer market who find t…

“Mission” Movie Game Going Mobile First

Gameloft has scored the exclusive rights to develop a game based on the movie Mission: Impossible 3, so it’s only going to be a mobile game…

Interview: Gameloft’s Michel Guillemot

Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot has given an interview on the differences between the European and US markets. He puts the slow uptake of mobi…

Mobile Game Mosh: An Overnight Success

This is cool…the Mobile Game Mosh is a competition held recently at the New York’s Parsons The New School for Design. The competition had…

Cellphone Games: Small Size, Big Money

An interesting interview with Jonathan Kromrey, technical producer at I-play, about developing mobile games… there’s the usual things abou…

I-play Appoints David Gosen As CEO

It’s official…David Gosen has been retitled from Acting CEO to CEO of I-play. Gosen originally joined I-play in 2004 after leaving Nintend…

Kayak And Synergix Rebrand As Blaze

Now that Kayak Interactive and Synergix Interactive have consolidated and bought Chasma Interactive the now-united company is rebranding as…

Games Developers Should Stop Making Excuses

The president of a start-up studio Ready at Dawn has derided PSP developers for making excuses for putting out bad games. Sure, he’s talking…

Behind the Scenes on 24: The Mobile Game

Jonathan Kromrey from I-play has spoken about the development of the mobile game based on 24, announced earlier this month. Kromrey was a pr…

24 Mini-games Debut On Mobiles

I-play has made a mobile game based on the TV series 24. Imaginatively dubbed 24 The Mobile Game it’s actually a series of mini-games throug…

Vivendi Launches Mobile Games Unit

Vivendi Universal Games has launched a new division, Vivendi Universal Games Mobile. It’s headed by Paul Maglione, fresh from a senior vp of…

Asterix And The Vikings

In-Fusio has scored the rights to make a mobile game based on the latest (eigth) Asterixmovie, an animation of Asterix and the Vikings due o…

Relax To Win

What a neat idea…perfect for lazy people. Relax To Win uses a bio-sensor worn on the fingers to measure your level of stress…this is tra…

Mobimon — Training Characters On Mobiles

Two weeks ago I bemoaned the fact that no-one was integrating mobile gaming into other forms of gaming, merely doing mobile versions of game…

Namco Launches Time Crisis 3D

Namco has launched a mobile version of its popular title Time Crisis in 3D. It’s a big title but the interesting thing for me was the gamepl…

Artificial Life Goes Direct To Consumer

Artificial Life — developer of Virtual Girlfriend, V-Disco and an upcoming MMRPG — will launch a portal in March aimed at consumers. “The…

Interview: Gameloft’s Eric Albert

Gameloft entered the North American mobile games market in 2004 and quickly became one of the top companies in the market — with a lot of h…

Capcom Reveals Mobile Division

Capcom has announced some new details of its mobile games plans, with a planned Los Angeles-based Mobile and Interactive Division headed by…

Gorillaz Are Game For Mobile

RealNetworks has signed a deal with cult band Gorillaz to create a game based on the band.
“Capturing the irreverent nature and irresistibl…

Glu: Brands Not Enough For Mobile Games

Jill Braff, Glu Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and North American GM, claims that carriers are now looking for qualit…

Mobile Gaming Getting Big

Mobile gaming is getting big, with subsequent consequences and repercussions. One is that it is a lot harder to get onto the carrier decks -…

Kick Real On Your Mobile

Siemens has developed an “augmented reality (AR) football game for mobile phones” in preparation for the World Cup (Go Aussies).
“Kick Real…

Player X To Distribute Codemaster Games

UK game publisher Codemasters has appointed mobile content publisher and distributor Player X as its exclusive global distribution partner f…

Guardian Launches Soduku League

Every few months someone else launches a Soduku mobile game — Guardian Unlimited in the UK has taken the next logical step and launched a S…

Mobile TV Outracing 3-D — ATI

Graphic chip maker ATI has reported that demand for mobile TV and video is outpacing demand for 3D games. “We have been pushing 3-D for hand…

UK Mobile Game Download Market

M:Metrics has announced some “preliminary results from its research at the Mobile Games Forum”.
“The UK has a market of 1.7 million consume…

Power Players in Mobile Gaming

NPD Group has a bulletin about mobile games, specifically what companies which wish to be successful should do. One interesting item of note…

More Dilbert On Mobile

Namco has signed a deal with United Media to create and distribute mobile content based on Dilbert. “Dilbert’s trials and tribulations as a…

Mobile+Pet

File this under “cutsie”…Silicon Seeds and the Studio Devilish Games are announcing the launch of My Mobile+Pet, a virtual pet game with s…

Jamaican Bobsled On Mobiles

Glu Mobile has announced plans to launch Jamaican Bobsled in time for the 2006 Winter Olympics, based on the 1988 efforts of the Jamaican Bo…

EA Mobile Inks Deal With Amp’d

Amp’d is doing the staggered release thing again…today announcing mobile games from EA. “FIFA 06, Madden NFL 06, NBA Live 06, Need for Spe…

John Carmack On Mobile Development

John Carmack, the id guy who is responsibile for Doom RPG, has given some thoughts on mobile game development…
“I have been harping on abo…

Restructuring At THQ Wireless; Tim Walsh Out

THQ’s wireless division, THQ Wireless, has undergone some major restructuring, MocoNews.net has learned. Tim Walsh, the president of THQ Wir…

N-Gage Launches New Tournament

The N-Gage Arena Anytime Anywhere Tournament is a multi-user tournament that requires people to be ready to play the matches anytime, anywhe…

Mobile Games Pay Off For Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s mobile subsidiary, Gameloft, has reportedly sold almost as many games as its parent company — although the prices are a lot lower…

Xbox 360 Reaches Out To Mobiles

Microsoft is in the process of integrating MSN Messaging into its Xbox Live platform, and part of it is the ability to send/recieve alerts o…

Juice & Fye Launch Mobile Site

Juice Wireless and US retail chain fye have launched a mobile store — Mobilefye. The site will sell mobile games, ringtones and songtones f…

Ragnarok MMORPG Ties PC And Mobile

Korean-developed massively multiplayer title Ragnarok is to be made accessible on mobile phone handsets (which is known as “transmedial acce…

EA’s Buyout Of Jamdat: Our Coverage

Really, why go anywhere else…we’ve done the hard work for you, on our sister site MocoNews.net:
— EA-JMDT: Data On Deck Placement Etc
–…

Big Fish Games Gets $5 Million Funding

Big Fish Games, an online casual gaming company based in Seattle, has received $5 million in venture funding.
The money, which was provided…

Nintendo Customisation

This is of note mainly because of the size and history of Nintendo… it’s making ringtones and wallpapers from its most popular games avail…

Game Show Classics Make The Mobile Jump

Popular TV gameshows including The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Blockbusters, Sale Of The Century and Strike It Lucky are being ported to mo…

Movie-Based Mobile Games Catching On In India

When there are at least 600 movies produced a year in Bollywood, then it has to engender a digital revolution too. This one is on mobile.
S…

Airborne Mobilizes NHL

Airborne Entertainment and National Hockey League Interactive Cyber Enterprises (NHL ICE) have signed a three-year deal for NHL-based mobile…

Tim Harrison, Vodafone – Part Three

In the third part of his interview with Mobile Industry Tim Harrison (head of games at Vodafone) talks about Vodafone’s position on quality…

Old Things On New Media

Roobarb & Custard (a 70s cartoon show, pictured right) is moving to mobile following a successful relaunch on Roobarb & Custard Too on Five’…

Nokia Puts N-Gage Plans On Hold

(via Sharkjumping) Not that this is a surprise, considering non-n-gagement of N-Gage: Nokia is holding off on mobile gaming for a few years…

Can Microsoft Score in Mobile Gaming?

Microsoft has an ambitious mobile game agenda, focussed around integrating mobile games with Xbox and MSN Games. Suggestions range from play…

Mobile Games: Swimsuit Models & Orcs

Marc Ecko’s Getting Up by Atari & Glu won the Best Wireless Game (viewers choice) award at the Spike TV Video Game Awards…
I-play is launc…

Love A Lemming — iFone Does

iFone saw a great success with the Lemmings mobile game, based on the old computer game that so many people loved. Following the current tre…

Mobile Game ‘Communities’ Emerge

Multiplayer mobile games may become a $1 billion market in the next three years, according to this article…
“The idea is to extend “mobile…

Virtual Penguins Multiplayer Game

Artificial Life has announced plans to release a new game in December — Virtual Penguins. The massive multi-user 3G game will see players t…

Virgin Mobile Expands Game Offering

Virgin Mobile USA has launched Players Club from Motricity, which will allow Virgin users to “take on gamers from other US carriers while ta…

Capcom Plans Mobile Move

Capcom Entertainment is planning to release its games on mobile phones… Games mentioned as preparing for mobilization are Ghosts and Gobli…

GameTrust Gets $9 Million Funding

GameTrust, the NYC-based online casual games network, has closed “an oversubscribed” $9 million second round financing. The round was led by…

BBC Launches Mobile Game

BBC has produced its first mobile phone video game…based on the hit spy drama Spooks, the game was launched last week. Players can downloa…

EA Moves Into Music, Ringtones

Electronic Arts, the biggest video game company, is moving into music…it is teaming up with Canadian music label Nettwerk Entertainment to…

New Mobile Game Ideas

Picturephoning has a post about an interesting game…Shoot Me If You Can is billed as an urban game inspired by first-person shooters… pl…

Nokia Gloomy About N-Gage

“I am not happy. I said we needed to sell six million in three years, and we sold one-third of that. We need to make some changes,” said Ans…

I-play CEO Steps Down

Brian Greasley has stepped down as CEO of i-Play with David Gosen, currently Chief Operating Officer, has been appointed acting Chief Execut…

@Austin Game Conference – Mobile Keynote

Carlo Longino is at the Austin Game Conference…the keynote was by Jason Ford, the general manager of games and entertainment for Sprint Ne…

Uclick Gets Branded Game

The sudoku craze is still going strong and uclick has joined in with another mobile sudoku game. However, it’s an interesting move for uclic…

3UK Launches Pay-per-life Game

3UK has put up a couple of multi-player mobile games from Synergenix which allow people to buy lives and join multiplayer games. “Each multi…

Sector Insight: Mobile Phone Content

This article is a comprehensive summary of the mobile market in the UK and Europe…some interesting quotes:
“The International Federation o…

Frontier Scores Creature Comforts License

Frontier Developments has signed a deal with Aardman Studios to acquire the worldwide rights to publish games based on the hit TV show Creat…

Sims For Xmas

Electronic Arts has announced that The Sims 2 will be available on mobiles in December, as the last part of its plan to put the game on all…

Kayak Lands Sony Pictures Game Deal

Kayak Interactive has landed a world-wide multi-year contract with Sony Pictures Digital to make mobile games based on select Sony Pictures…

Crazy Frog Racer Website Goes Live

Well, it’s here…The Annoying Thing (aka Crazy Frog) has become a console game due for release this November…the website is CrazyFrogGame…

Zingy Distributes Paramount Content

Zingy has signed a deal with Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products (NVCP) to distribute content from Paramount Pictures…”Zingy will be gr…

IFone And Terraplay Team Up

iFone has licensed some mobile gaming technology from Terraplay…”The technology offered consists of a powerful lobby and community server…

New Mobile Gaming Platform — EGE

In-Fusio has announced the launch of its new Entertainment and Gaming Extensions (EGE) platform. It seems to be middleware that offers custo…

Namco Works For Peanuts

Namco America has signed a deal with United Media to make mobile games based on the legendary Peanuts characters.
“In his first appearance…

GameTap To Launch Monday

Tuner’s ambitious online gaming service GameTap will launch coming Monday…for a $14.95 a month subscription, you can download the GameTap…

Mobile Games Go Social

There’s a couple of games announced recently that are more role-playing than FPS, and which are likely to lend themselves to becoming multip…

Competition For Videogame Development

MovilGamers.com and Stratos-ad.com has announced the “First Competition for Videogame Development for Mobile Phones”. The competition, open…

Will The Revolution Be Televised?

Mobile pundits have been screamingly misread which mobile content trends will be successful…so is the fact they’re backing mobile TV so st…

Mobile Games Taking Off

Textually has picked up on a WSJ story on mobile games, with some interesting figures. The number of mobile phones which can download games…

Namco Forms Mobile Subsidiary

A few months after announcing its intentions to sell off a mobile subsidiary Namco has announced plans to form a mobile game subsidiary. Wel…

Jamdat’s Shares: Why?

A few people have e-mailed me this week asking if I knew anything on Jamdat…the shares have been depressed for the last two week, for not…

IFone To Carry Sega Games

IFone has signed a deal to distribute eight Sega game titles for download onto mobile phones…The titles listed include Sonic The Hedgehog,…

N-Gage Academy To Download & Share Games

Nokia has launched an online campaign, N-Gage Academy, to “teach mobile phone users how to download and share games”. People with the right…

EA & Vodafone Team Up

Electronic Arts — the largest electronic games company in the world — has signed a deal to put its mobile games on the Vodafone Live porta…

@CTIA: The New Mobile Games

I got the chance to play with several games at CTIA which until now I’ve only read about. I was impressed with the advances in technology re…

Kaufman Bros: Impressions Of CTIA

Investment banking firm Kaufman Bros went to CTIA, and thought the atmosphere was “somber” and “cautiously enthusiastic”. They sent a short…

EA Mobile — The Baby Gorilla

Lincoln Wallen, CTO of EA’s Mobile division, said that as mobile games get more complex — not just because of better handsets but also beca…

3 Launces Civilisation On Mobile

At last! This is one of the games I’ve been waiting to be put on mobile ever since the devices got color screens…it’s low-hanging fruit th…

Player X Gets $7 Million Funding

London-based mobile gaming publisher Player X has received $7 million in a first round of venture funding. The investors include venture cap…

@ CTIA — Yes, Trip Hawkins Gets It

Carlo has a good post up on a keynote from Trip Hawkins (from Digital Chocolate) about mobile games…Rafat has posted the audio to that key…

Konami Europe Enters Mobile Market

“Software publisher Konami Europe has announced the creation of a dedicated mobile phone games division, with plans to bring key console con…

@ CTIA: The Games We Play

The panel on mobile games at CTIA was a fairly heated affair…the panelists were Jason Ford, General Manager, Games Sprint Nextel; Michael…

Halo Goes Mobile

The biggest game announcement out of CTIA is that In-Fusio has won the rights to publish mobile applications based on “Halo”, the amazingly…

@ CTIA: THQ Wireless’s Jeff Nuzzi

Had a quick chat with Jeff Nuzzi, Global Director of Marketing at THQ Wireless, where he explained the big picture vision for THQ in mobile.…

Case Study: Connected Mobile Gaming

We believe that mobile interconnected gaming is one of the biggest opportunities in the history of mankind — Bill Barhydt, CEO Sennari
What…

Ziff Davis Acquires GameTab

Tech publishing company Ziff Davis has acquired GameTab, a small site which aggregates news and review scores, reports Gamasutra. The acquis…

Mobile Gaming Conference India: Our Coverage

Our journalist in Delhi, S Karat, is doing a bang-up job covering the first ever Indian mobile gaming confrence being held now in Delhi, Ind…

Challenges To The Growth Of Gaming In India

Our sister-site ContentSutra is covering the Mobile Gaming Conference in New Delhi. Vishal Gondal of Indiagames outlines what he sees as th…

Interview With Enda Carey, iFone

Enda Carey, Marketing Director of iFone, gives a good interview here which outlines some aspects of the mobile game industry. One interestin…

Mobile Games — Simplicity Vs High Tech

I think the current debate over what type of games to put on mobiles — gee-whiz console-like games or simple puzzle games — miss the fact…

Wallace & Gromit Mobile Game

Player X and Frontier Developments to launch the mobile game for forthcoming movie, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Tony Pe…

How Will Mobile Gaming Be Successful?

Paul Maglione from I-play gave the company’s perspective on mobile gaming and how it will take off in the future. “What we’ve done different…

‘Second Life’ Web TV Network Planned

This is kinda interesting, and excellent analysis: Linden Lab, developers of popular virtual role-playing game “Second Life”, plan to launch…

Real World “Capture The Flag”

Here’s something interesting…
“We are developing a new multiplayer pervasive game, called The Drop, designed to be compelling to play and…

Developing Mobile Games Without Global Appeal

Petteri Vainikka from Rovio Mobile has suggested that trying to develope mobile games with global appeal is a losing proposition, for the mo…

3G Games — Interview With Oscar Clark

Oscar Clark is the Games Products Manager at 3UK, and here he talks about his experience in the mobile games industry…he mentions the succ…

Building Mobile Gaming Communities

Andy Riedel from InfoSpace Mobile has penned a piece about mobile game communities and how to build them. He makes the obvious point that ca…

Nintendo Mobile – First Details

Nintendo Mobile has launched with sound and graphics from the Super Mario series for a subscription of

Mobile Gaming Mustn’t Be Ignored

Sony’s VP of studios Phil Harrison spoke on mobile gaming at the Game Developers’ Conference in London, and predicted that the will yield “h…

Mobile Games Get Cheaper

Werd Interactive has released some games for mobile phones…the games are simple but of the addictive type that seem to do so well. What ma…

GDC Europe: Yahoo Games Gone Mobile

Gamasutra’s doing some great coverage of the ongoing GDC Europe conference, especially the mobile gaming part of it. This one is a report on…

Sensible Games To Be Released On Mobiles

Mobile games publisher Telcogames and video games publisher Codemasters today announced a deal to bring a number of classic games titles to…

IGN Acquisitions & IPO: Some Numbers

IGN, the gaming media company, which has filed for an IPO, has filed an amended S-1…and some numbers on its acquisitions (these numbers we…

Uphill Struggle For Mobile Gaming

Mobile games aren’t taking off (at least, not as fast as people in the industry would like) because not enough is being done to promote them…

Mobile Celeb Calandar

The interesting thing about this piece is diversification…Sandager Small Games mostly sells Java games but is looking to “expand the range…

The Next Game Hero Will Be Mobile

At least, the next game hero that becomes an icon (ala Lara Croft, Mario or Sonic Hedgehog) is more likely to come from a mobile game than a…

Lego’s Mobile Extensions

Kiloo, the Danish games developer, has won the rights to create mobile products based on the Lego brand. It has signed a global deal (exclud…

IGN’s Valution Hitches

IGN, the online gaming lifestyle media company which last month filed for an IPO, has also been the speculation of a buyout target by, who e…

Online Gaming Firms NDL and Emergent Merge

Two online gaming infrastructure providers have merged: NDL, the makers of Gamebryo 3D graphics tools and engine, and Emergent Game Technolo…

Artificial Life Plans MMRPG

Artificial Life — of V-Girl and V-Disco fame — is apparently planning a massively multiplayer role-playing game for mobiles. The Java game…

BlingTones Presents Crunk Golf

BlingTones — best known for the wireless record label it launched last year — has entered the mobile game business (at least, this is the…

EA’s Q2 Mobile Revenues

EA, which released its Q2 earnings late last month, recently filed its 10-Q quarterly report with SEC, and has some figures on its mobile ga…

China Mobilizes Game Republic

This is an interesting piece of news for small games developers…UK mobile game developer Creative North has “applauded the considerable in…

Some Mobile Games News From This Week

Spanish mobile games developer m-Solution has released a game based on the running of the bulls at Pamplona, which sounds cool…I don’t kno…

Panlogic Enters Mobile Games Arena

“Digital marketing consultancy Panlogic has launched its first mobile game, designed to coincide with the Ashes cricket series between Engla…

Russian Game Developer Gets Venture Funding

Russian game developer Buka Entertainment, based in Moscow, has recived venture funding from investment company Finam and EBRD North-West an…

Jamdat Games in Radio Shack

Radio Shack, which just booted out Verizon and has signed up Cingular and Sprint for in-store mobile services sale, will also sell Jamdat’s…

In-Fusio’s Lonely Ride

In-Fusio is a giant of the mobile games sector and can boast a heritage going back further than any of its rivals. But its journey has been…

What’s Holding Back Mobile Gaming?

i-Play has released the results of a survey into the barriers for people downloading mobile games onto their handsets. The survey — carried…

Square Enix’s Mobile Plans

An interview with the head of gaming company Square Enix’s mobile division, Kosei Ito. The division has quickly ramped up from its modest be…

Interview: Fox Mobile And iPlay On 24 Licence

GamesIndustry.biz has run an interview about the recent deal between iPlay and Fox Mobile concerning a ’24’ mobile game. The players were ve…

SNAP: Nokia’s Solution To Multiplayer Crisis

“The mobile industry is currently facing a huge problem. There are… what? Something in the area of 12 multiplayer technologies out there?…

PixelPlay Launches Cross-Platform Gaming

PixelPlay, the NYC-based gaming tech company, has launched a cross-platform gaming service that enables set-top and mobile phone users to go…

Mobile Game Subscription Service

July Systems has launched what it claims is the UK’s first-ever mobile games subscription service ‘PlayOn!’ on the popular mobile portal Mob…

Vodafone Introduces Mobies

Vodafone and Player X have teamed to offer ‘mobies’, billed as “a cross between a mobile game, a tamagotchi and a screensaver”. Earlier this…

24 Game Set For Mobiles

I-Play has scored the license rights to a mobile game based on the hit TV show 24. “Under an exclusive two-year deal, I-Play has licensed th…

Artificial Life Releases V-Girl Version 2.0

Artificial Life has released Version 2.0 of the award winning game V-Girl…the new version has “many new interactive and innovative feature…

Mobile Games Impact The Casual Games Conference

The first Casual Games Conference had a lot to say about mobile games, with a panel consisting of Jason Ford from Sprint, Mike Yuen from Qua…

Casual Gaming Gets Serious

Bunch of interest around casual gaming these days: casual games are web-based or downloadable (or even mobile) games which have a small size…

EA’s John Batter Talks Mobile Strategy

John Batter, EA VP and Mobile General Manager, plays hide-and-seek, when asked about EA’s interest in buying Jamdat or Superscape. Yes, they…

Sprint Also To Sell EA Games

This is for the sake of completeness…in addition to Verizon offering mobile games developed by Electronic Arts third-placed telco Sprint w…

EA’s Buyout Ambitions & Jamdat: Take 2 & 3

Well, the rumor continues: there have been some rumblings in the industry that EA is looking to buy Jamdat. This follows EA’s rumored intere…

The Colour Of Mobile Magic

The first mobile game based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels is due for an October release in the UK. Based on ‘The Colour of Magic’ th…

Magic: The Gathering On Mobiles

Proteus has landed a deal with Wizards of the Coast to put content based on the famous card game “Magic: The Gathering” on mobile phones. “P…

The Schism: Two Orthodoxies In Mobile Gaming?

The hypothesis put forward in this article is that there are two distinct paths mobile game companies can take. The first is to go after the…

Bringing Mom And Dad To Mobile Gaming

As Yahoo moves into the mobile space, it will be using the same strategy it did online — use casual gaming to capture the large female and…

Mobile Cannonball Run

LivingMobile is launching a mobile racing game based on CannonballRun Europe…a rally based on an interesting ‘race’ from the early 1970’s…

Etch A Sketch Poised For Mobile Makeover

Ah, retro is back…Etch-a-Sketch — the game which involved turning knobs to draw on a screen — has been ported to mobiles. You use the ar…

Quake Rocks Mobile Gaming

Another legendary PC game has made it to the mobile world…an agreement between id Software and publisher Pulse Interactive will see Quake…

Viacom's Nick Arcade Adds Paid Games

Nickelodeon is launching a revamped version of its arcade for the younger set, according to the Hollywood Reporter — showcasing 60 or so pr…

Tamagotchi's Triumphant Return

Tamagotchi, the game that spawned the portable sim pet craze that has made its way onto mobile phones in various ways will make the switch t…

Touchlink Announces Partnership With eFUSION

British mobile content developer Touchlink Mobile has announced a partnership with eFUSION, the South Korean-based Master Content Provider…

PWC's Outlook on Wireless Content

PricewaterhouseCoopers has come out with its annual report on the state of the media and entertainment industry and outlook for the next fiv…

Glu Mobile on its Rebranding Process

Glu Mobile, the new name for the merged entity of mobile gaming players Sorrent and Macrospace, gives detailed reasoning for the name change…

Motion Recognition Games Take Off

SK Telecom has announced the launch of three games which are controlled by moving the handset rather than using the keypad…the handsets (L…

@ MEM: iPod Game Rumors

Well. technically I’m back in LA, but some left over coverage from the MEM conference earlier this week in London: I heard about a rumor tha…

Snake Creator Recognized

Taneli Armanto created “the world’s most popular game”, Snake. “Most popular” = “on the most handsets” (350 million mobile phones), but I th…

Game Merges Real And Virtual Reality

This game takes a fairly standard concept but improves it by linking it to images from the mobile phone…”Shoot at flying targets through t…

China Online Game Clean-up Extended

China will continue to crack down on online games with “inappropriate content” — namely “pornography, sex, gambling, violence and other unh…

Mobile Games On Multimedia Memory Card

Telcogames has launched a Symbian games pack on a Multimedia Memory Card (MMC) that will be sold through the retail stores of The Carphone W…

V-Disco Website Launched

Artificial Life has launched the website for its upcoming product V-Disco, which will let people choose an avatar and visit a virtual disco…

IGN Buys AskMen.com

IGN, the online gaming media company, has bought out AskMen.com, a male lifestyle portal. The financial terms were not diclosed.
AskMen.com…

Verizon Wireless Releases Top-Selling Games

Verizon Wireless has released lists of its top-selling content in various categories on its Get It Now service. If you skip the guff and go…

SmartVideo Moves Into Games

SmartVideo, which seems to continually announce new additions to its mobile video channel, has come out with something new. It’s partnered w…

Crazy Frog Outsells Coldplay Single

This is crazy, but kind of unfair in comparison: the Crazy Frog ringtone, about which we’re written in detail here before, appears to be jum…

Ampd Details Mobile Game Plans — Channels

Amp’d, the MVNO aimed at young people into extreme sports, has announced its gaming plans…the details are in the article, the most…

N-Gage Games Move To Smartphones

Nokia has announced at E3 that it will make its N-Gage playable on its smartphones, which is good news for developers who can now create one…

Alltel Releases 3D Mobile Games

“Alltel is putting its bet on 3D mobile gaming. The carrier announced Extreme Air Snowboarding, Slam Basketball, and Trophy Whitetail Huntin…

Doom Predicted For Mobile Phones

Jamdat has signed a deal with id Software to publish “Doom RPG” for mobiles in conjunction with the release of the upcoming Doom movie…”DO…

Mobile Games Stake A Claim At E3

Nobody should be surprised that mobile games are making a big splash at E3, so we’ll cut right to the chase. Game journo Keith Stuart has co…

The Times Puts Sudoku On Mobiles

Sudoku is the game found in many newspapers which involves filling in an unfinished grid of numbers…it’s the sort of simple game which doe…

Blue Sphere Games Has Cool Brands

Blue Sphere Games “will release its plans for 2005 at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles”, which isn’t incredibly interesting…

Ringtone Freebies Integrated In New Mobile Game

Rap group G-Unit has signed up with Zingy to produce some mobile games…which sort of cements the music genre’s status as the king of cross…

Boonty Launches Web-2-Mobile Games Store

Boonty, which is in the online downloadable games business, has launched a mobile games store with over 1,000 titles to choose from.
“The B…

Double DRM Dilemma For Mobile Industry

The complaints by the GSMA over the digital rights management licensing conditions set out by MPEG LA are “a tactical necessity, aimed at he…

Fathammer Scores Sth Korean 3D Games Deal

Fathammer has signed a deal to provide 10 3D games for SK Telecom’s new game phones. Perhaps more importantly the contract also includes Fat…

Warhammer 40K Goes Mobile With Space Hulk

Games Workshop has signed a deal with THQ Wireless to release a mobile game based on “Space Hulk”, part of the Warhammer 40K universe. “Spac…

G-Unit In Game With Zingy

G-Unit, the urban brand founded by hip-hop artist 50 Cent, expanded its relationship with mobile media company Zingy to create an unusual se…

Coming Soon to a Tiny Screen Near You

Forbes Magazine has run a very good 4-page story on mobile content…covering pretty much everything including the fact that some people are…

Turbine Raises $30 Million

Turbine, a Westwood, Mass.-based multiplayer online game publisher, has raised $30 million in second round of funding, accoridng to PE Week…

Prizes For Top Mobile Game Scores

July Systems has signed a deal to launch its Play2Win interactive mobile game service on the portal MobileGaming.com, run by MobileStreams.…

Mobile Games Poised For Take-off

Greg Ballard, the boss of mobile games firm Sorrent/Macrospace and former head of games firm Capcom US, has predicted that “2005/6 were goin…

Engadget Interviews Bill Gates

Engadget scored an interview with Bill Gates and used the opportunity to question where Microsoft is going in the console and mobile device…

Yahoo Unveils Mobile-to-PC Games

This is the fruit of its recent acquisition of Stadeon…it has announced Yahoo Poker, a game it will unveil at E3 which lets mobile phone u…

Dreaming Of Mobile Gaming

Something that has the potential to be big in mobile content are massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Of course it can…

Try-Before-You-Buy Mobile Games

July Systems and Deep Visions have teamed up to offer “a try-before-you-buy mobile games service” on the mobile portal Firstfun.TV. The site…

VCast Adds Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm

Verizon has scored an exclusive to offer Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm exclusively on its VCast service. Jungle Storm puts the play…

Portable Games Lead Video Sales Increase

The NPD Group has released stats of the first quarter sale of video games in the US, and found that portable games are leading the charge wi…

PlayFon Takes I-play’s Mobile Games To Russia

“PlayFon, Russia’s leading provider of wireless entertainment, today announced that it has signed a deal with I-play, the mobile games compa…

‘Simple Games’ Rule Mobile Charts

“The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association compiled mobile game data for the first time from 2004…It produces the offi…

InfoSpace Launches Pub Pinball

InfoSpace has teamed up with Morpheme Wireless to release another game in its “Pub Series”. “Pub Pinball challenges players to test their sk…

War Erupts Over Mobile TV

“The Finns and Koreans are at war over mobile TV…Both sides have been showcasing competing technologies at the MIPTV-Milia digital content…

Mobile Games Makers Have Got It Wrong

So says Trip Hawkins, founder of games behemoth Electronic Arts. He’s started Digital Chocolate (motto: seize the minute) and is concentrati…

I-play Gets Into The Emotion

I-play (formerly Digital Bridges) has signed a deal with Spanish Telefonica to offer its suite of mobile games directly from Telefonica’s em…

Innovate For Mobile Games To Stand Strong

Mobile gaming has been compared to the early years of PC gaming…”It is reminiscent of the early 90s, when PC gaming was about to break. Fo…

Vindigo Enters US Mobile Game Market

Vindigo has announced it will get into mobile gaming, probably as a response to mobile games becoming a strong contender for most sought-aft…

PACMAN – 25 And Still Chomping Strong

Pacman has hit 25 years this year, and owner Namco is celebrating the franchise being “2004’s best-selling mobile game on several of the wor…

Play It Accuses I-play Of Mimicking Its Brand

The mobile game company formerly known as Digital Bridges is being threatened with legal action after changing its name to I-play. Games pub…

Lib Dems Target Mobile Users

In an inspired (or desperate) attempt to reach an apathetic public and get them to consider a political issue the Liberal Democrats in the U…

Living Wallpaper

Following in the footsteps of virtual pets and Vivienne, the virtual girlfriend, Jamster is offering a watered down version – living wallpap…

Free Mobile Game Promotion

Clickgamer is giving away a free Windows Mobile Pocket PC game — “High Noon Drifter – Dead Man’s Gulch” — to celebrate/promote the redesig…

Happy Tree Friends Get Mobile

For those of you unfamiliar with Happy Tree Friends it’s a series of short cartoons of friendly little furry creatures doing unspeakably gra…

Towards A Methodology Of Mobile Game Design

“Prhaps the most promising sign for innovative mobile gaming to come out of the Games Developers Conference was an emerging methodology of m…

Artificial Life Wins Another Award

Artificial Life’s V-Girl has won another award. The award was issued for the professional category at the 3rd Hong Kong Digital Entertainmen…

3 Launches Multiplayer Gaming

3 will launch multiplayer games on its mobile network in April. Initial real-time games will include No Refuge, a tank battle war game from…

GDC Mobile 2005: Maturation Before Innovation

Here’s a good overview of the mobile games segment of the Games Developer Conference. Definitely worth the read if you’re interested in mobi…

In Case You Missed It…

Here’s a few snippets of mobile content news that came out this week that may have passed you by…

Bango Provides On-Bill Payment In USA:…

Game Startups Should Go Mobile

Games for the next generation of consoles will cost between $10-$25 million to make, so new studios are suggested to “make games for mobile…

DRM Flash Cards For Mobiles

The Register pointed to a press release from SanDisk about an announcement at CTIA on DRM enabled Flash Cards. “This will allow mobile netwo…

Gamespot Announces Mobie Winners

Gamespot announced the winners for The Second Annual Wireless Gaming Awards, also known as The Mobies, at the CTIA WIRELESS 2005 conference…

Zone4Play Enters Broadcast Market

Zone4Play has bought out its partner NetFun to become the sole owner of MixTV, getting all of MixTV’s patented broadcast TV technology. “The…

Electronics Arts Goes Mobile

Electronic Arts has announced the launch of EA Mobile, which will release “between 15-20 cell-phone games this year, mainly popular titles l…

Mobiles Just For Voice?

A study by M:Metrics found that only 58% of users of mobile phones in the United States used the handset for non-voice functions between Nov…

Licensing Brands For Mobiles

Mobile developers are scrambling to license the rights to popular brands for the mobile space – at least, the big ones are. “It’s become a h…

Mobile Gaming Held Hostage

Mobile games are being held back by several factors, according to this article, including a “lack of easy integration between game publisher…

Mobile Gaming Is The Future

Bad news for hardcore gamers – at the Games Developer Conference 2005 firms are focussed on “the casual gamer, connected via the ubiquitous…

World Tour of Mobile Games

A couple of gaming guys have gone on a “world tour of mobile games” for a presentation last monday at the Games Developer Conference. There’…

V-Girl Photo Album

News.com has seven images of Vivienne – the virtual girlfriend developed by Artificial Life – and other areas of her life such as her workpl…

World Cyber Games Mobile Competition

Indiagames has landed a deal to license the World Cyber Games Competition for mobile phones for three years. “Indiagames will be actively wo…

Some cool content…

Crazy Frog turns into a real prince: That’s right – when future generations look back at the beginning of the 21st century they will find th…

Interview with Jill Braff of Sorrent

Paul Palumbo has interviewed Jill Braff, VP of marketing for Sorrent, about the mobile game industry. The 25 minute talk covers a wide range…

More comics hit mobiles as games and stuff…

My favorite trickster John Constantine has hit mobile phones in a game from Warner Bros Online. Unsurprisingly the game is based not on the…

Cell-Phone Gaming Catches On

Based on Jamdat’s fourth quarter results announced recently the mobile game industry is looking healthy. “Jamdat’s performance was especiall…

South Park Goes Mobile

THQ Wireless is taking South Park to Europe, launching games, video clips, ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers and MMS. Along with South Pa…

Let the Mobile Games Begin

An audio panel on the business opportunity in mobile gaming…Are 3D games just around the corner? What does this mean for the classic games…

Rewards for Mobile Game Referrals

Refer-X has launched a service where people can get rewarded for recommending content (games, at the moment) to their friends. “We only know…

InfoSpace Forms Games Unit

InfoSpace, which has bought out three mobile gaming related companies in the last year or so (mostly in Europe), has formed a gaming divisio…

Sony Ericsson Set to Unveil Walkman Phones

So here’s how you miss stories: Jay Samit told me about this in September last year, in passing, and of course, I should have connected the…

Cell phones get surround sound

CNet has a good article on 3D sound, which is only in Japan at the moment (I’m pretty sure), and the technology used by Sonaptic called psyc…

Mobile gaming gets its skates on

The Register is running a report by Screen Digest about mobile games and why they are taking off. As mobile penetration approaches saturatio…

Community features boosts downloads

A Finnish TV show about the gaming lifestyle called Tilt.tv sells mobile java games for 5-7 euros. Nothing particularly interesting there, b…

Ring up Triple Play

Billing solutions company CSG has a few things to say about the Asian mobile content market, and specifically its place in it. “While CSG se…

From celluloid to cellular

By all accounts Indians are going crazy over mobile phones, and mobile phone content. Actress Madhuri Dixit now has her own avatar, and mobi…

Napster ponders film and game services

“The Financial Times reported on Monday that Chris Gorog, Napster chairman and chief executive, said the firm may apply its online music mod…

European Mobile Gaming Champion Wanted

Samsung is promoting mobile gaming with a competition aimed at gamers. After downloading “Babe Rally” from the Samsung Fan Club players can…

Mobileffects

BVRP Software has joined the rush to open online mobile content stores, opening Mobileffects.com. The site sells people points to redeem for…

Toons Go Mobile

This article uses the recent deals between mobile content publishers and owners of cartoons and comic characters to explain how the mobile c…

IN-FUSIO Announces O2 Partnership

IN-FUSIO, a leading mobile games publisher and game service provider, today announced that it has joined O2 to deliver its range of critical…

2005 International Consumer Electronics Show

The big news at the moment is the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) being held in Las Vegas from Thursday 6th to Sunday 9th…

Zoo Tycoon 2 Mobile Launches

Zoo Tycoon 2 has made the leap from PC to mobile. Aside from the normal game play, there’s another game mode: Zoo Tycoon Mobile Photo. This…

Vodafone showcases 3G games

I missed this earlier, but Vodafone has asked Digital Chocolate to create 3D games in a bid to showcase its 3G technology. I think many of…

National Lottery promos mobile games

Camelot has selected TradeDoubler to provide an affiliate marketing program to drive online registrations for the new ‘Play by Text’ lottery…

Girl Power Goes Mobile with Dwango

Dwango Wireless has formed a partnership with Flow today their partnership with Flow CmM, to launch Minifizz in North America. Minifizz app…

Mforma makes Marvel-ous deal

Mforma – a company whose business plan centers on gathering brand licenses to distribute (and sometimes develop) mobile content – has signed…

Jewel Quest Turns Mobile

Digital Bridges has reached a global agreement with iWin, the San Francisco-based online games publisher, to bring the online adventure puzz…

New partnership for multiplayer 3G games

The Mobile Media Company AS today announced a partnership with Australian-based Viva la Mobile to provide 3G multiplayer games to mobile car…

Zorro goes wireless

The original latin superhero now has a mobile game, The Blade of Zorro. The game will be distributed by GlobalFun in selected markets in Eur…

Pacman Pinball on mobile phones

Namco has released Pacman Pinball on mobiles, featuring Pacman, Ms Pacman and even Baby Pacman. While Pacman is a game almost universally re…

Artificial Life wins best mobile game award

Artificial Life has announced it won the first prize of the mobile games section of the Mobile Applications Award 2004 issued by Ericsson fo…

Square Enix Strong on Online, Mobile Content

Games company Square Enix has seen strong gains in its sales, and the differences between its online and mobile divisions are interesting. O…

Billboard to be video screen for mobile games?

MTV is about to light up a 25 foot high, 40 foot wide billboard on Times Square in New York, which will broadcast music videos and other MTV…

Mobile Gaming: Latest Wireless Cash Cow

An interesting article on mobile gaming, which, to the surprise of carriers, has surpassed ringtones in revenue according to this piece. The…

Advergames

I thought it was going to happen, and it has: product placement in games has evolved into creating games solely to push products. It makes s…

Gaming’s Next Frontier: The Cellphone

Fortune magazine has a piece on Jamdat, a mobile games company, outlining why the industry is a good one to be in. The recently-public compa…

Exclusive Audio: Robert Tercek, CSO, Mforma

An extended audio interview with Robert Tercek, chief strategy office of Mforma, the mobile gaming company that has made a lot of acquisiti…

3D sound for mobiles

Japans NTT DoCoMo has found providers for games for its latest handset series – 901i – which offers “3D Sound”. According to the press relea…

The Next Big Thing in China Wireless?

Despite an apparent lack of market for Java, KJava, Symbian, and BREW games the Chinese mobile industry is convulsing with companies develop…

Audio: The Future of Mobile Entertainment

Now that I have a more robust server (just opened an account with Verio) I can offer audio for download, something I have been wanting to d…

Nokia bows to cellcos in midrange

This analysis proposes that Nokia is ceding the mid-range mobile market to concentrate on the high-end market. I don’t think it makes its ca…

Location-based mobile phone games

In-duce has a list of location-based mobile games, which is useful for those people who have heard of the concept but never found one they c…

Mobile games machine revving up

Although mobile games have traditionally sold a lot less than ringtones and wallpapers, many companies believe they will soon take off in a…

Seamus Blackley on Mobile Gaming

Well, he’s not necessarily happy with the creative and technological aspects of it, yet…I spoke to Blackley–now an agent with Creative Ar…

NBA and Bullwinkle go wireless

The National Basketball Association have announced a package of wireless video games and sports news programs in a partnership with Nokia an…

Disney goes mobile

Mark Handler, executive vice president and managing director of Walt Disney Internet Group International has outlined the company’s strategy…

Remote Game Downloads For Cell Phones

Video game retailer Electronics Boutique will offer wireless downloads for cell phones at some stores this holiday season…Owners of some a…

Linden Lab Raises $8 Million

Linden Lab, creator of the online 3D digital world, Second Life, has closed a financing round of $8 million, led by Benchmark Capital and wi…

Digital Chocolate’s Google Ad Campaign

Digital Chocolate, the mobile gaming startup founded by Trip Hawkins, founder of EA, is doing some smart marketing…it has bought up Google…

IM Opens a Window to a World of Games

(reg. req.): An interesting story about an inventor who has developed a game engine that piggybacks on instant messaging…programmer Jules…

Ziff Davis Restuctures Game Group

Ziff Davis Media has restructured its videogame group…Dale Strang has been named to the new position of CEO of the Ziff Davis Media Game G…

Virgin Mobile announces new gaming suite

Virgin Mobile USA has unveiled a new suite of more than 20 downloadable games designed to exploit the carrier’s new high-speed network.
Mobi…

THQ Wireless to add SpongeBob mobile games

Game-maker THQ Wireless, which already offers SpongeBob SquarePants Darts for handsets, announced it is developing two new games based on Ni…

1999 All Over Again?

“So is Jamdat Mobile worthy of such attention? Does the mobile gaming market really hold that much potential for investors? From this Fool’s…

Bonbons for Cell Phones

Trip Hawkins on his new venture: “Typically, when a new medium comes along, established companies are interested in preserving the status qu…

Wireless Gaming Is Getting Serious

Gamemaker Jamdat Mobile is launching its IPO into an environment that suddenly heating up. More could follow…
If Jamdat pulls it off, it w…

Cable Industry Gaming for Dollars

Cable industry is betting on gaming as a broadband boost…Armed with high-speed pipes and a gaming-friendly PacketCable Multimedia (PCMM) a…

Industry Moves: Russ Klein Join Mforma

Mobile gaming company Mforma has named Russell Klein as its executive VP of corporate development. Klein was previously entrepreneur-in-resi…

Last Chocolatey Story Link

No kidding…serious, Trip, shut up and get down to work…this is my last link to a story on his company, for this year…unless it gets bo…

The Future of 3D Mobile Gaming

When’s it coming? How much will it cost? And, fundamentally, is 3D gaming on cell phones even worth the effort of developers?

Mobile Extrapolation

A recent suvery by mobile gaming company Sorrent: the survey’s most surprising revelation was how many mobile gamers are active in playing a…

Chicks and Joysticks

A new white paper on the woman’s gaming market, released by ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association). Examining…

Can Online Rescue Star Trek?

Is Star Trek ready for a gaming comeback? Perpetual Entertainment, a developer, publisher and operator of networked multi-player games, has…

Business Case — Sumea Racing Fever Game

(PDF File ) Another case study from the Nokia developer forums…this time on Sumea, a Finnish game development company recently bought out…

Jamdat, Nickelodeon Team On Wireless Games

Jamdat Mobile has reached an agreement with children’s programming provider Nickelodeon to create mobile phone games based on Dora the Explo…

EA To Boost Mobile-Phone Games

Now we’re talking: Gaming giant Electronic Arts will boost production of video games for mobile phones over the next nine months, bringing t…

Nokia Ships One Million N-Gage Game Decks

Nokia shipped its one millionth game deck globally since the sales of the N-Gage platform started eleven months ago…it says it has signed…

Amazon.com To Start Selling Wireless Games

Looks like Amazon.com will start selling wireless games, along with other online and video games. Right now, it seems like a low-key retail-…

Curitel reveals an innovative game phone

(via Textually) This is pretty funky: Pantech&Curitel’s PH-S3500 phone’s prominent keypad is specially devised to let gamers enjoy 3D games…

Kayak Appoints New CEO

Kayak Interactive, the mobile gaming player (see the story beelow), has appointed a new CEO: Keith McCurdy, former Electronic Arts VP for On…

Kevin Bradshaw’s Latest Ping

Kevin Bradshaw, the founder of UK mobile gaming company Digital Bridges, is on the roll again…he took on the new position at US mobile gam…

Mforma to play games with CBS

Wireless entertainment company Mforma has announced several new sports-related products, including deals with CBS SportsLine.com and such sp…

Atari spreading its games to mobiles

The veteran computer games company, Atari has been strategically assembling a network of licensees to deliver its vast catalogue of retro ga…

Digital Chocolate Intros First Games

After simmering in the planning stages, Digital Chocolate is ready to sweeten the mobile gaming pot with the introduction of its first two g…

Top Mobile Content Downloads

According to Handango…The July report includes a list of the ten best-selling applications and ringtones by operating system.
Download the…

Online game site Worldwinner buys e-bridge

After posting its first two cash-flow-positive months in June and July, Newton, MA-based Worldwinner Inc., an online gaming company, will ac…

Battle Of Online Game Rentals

Much like the online DVD rental market (Blockbuster launched its online DVD rental service today), the online game rental market in U.S. is…

Game Trust Closes $1.5 Million Financing

Game Trust, a New York City-based online casual gaming company has closed a $1.5 million in first round of financing and appointed Scott Coh…

Xbox Live Service Reaches 1 Million Users

Xbox Live, the online service that allows players of Microsoft’s Xbox video game machine to compete against each other over the Internet, re…

SkillJam Sold For $8 Million

Intermix Media, formerly know as eUniverse, has announced the sale of SkillJam, its online, pay-to-play gaming division, to CES Software, a…

ISPs: Got Game?

Partnership opportunities abound for smart ISPs and console game makers, but few deals are done…Rather than actively seeking partnerships…

Squeezing Revenue From Older Games

From online distribution, of course…Atari, Comcast, RCN, Bell Canada, and Yahoo, among others have launched games on demand services. And…

Speakeasy Buys Game Server Rental Company

Seattle-based broadband provider Speakeasy has purchased Dallas-based GameDaemons, a game server rental company, and NetFire, a GameDaemons…

GameSpy Sees Room to Play

(reg. req.): Once the narrow province of hard-core gamers, sites such as GameSpy (now merged with IGN) are growing in prominence as more and…

Hot Players in Online Gaming

Revenues are expected to triple by 2007, and companies such as Yahoo, RealNetworks, and CNET are coming on strong…(with acquisitions)
On Y…

Taking A Chance on Skills

Forbidden to offer online games of chance, American companies turn to games of skill, and find a market.
Also, WSJ has a story today on how…

RCN Launches Games Portal

More and more broadband ISPs are using games as the big driver…RCN has launched its game portal, RCN interACTION Games, which offers unlim…

Online game sales surpass $1 billion in U.S.

Online gaming on video game consoles gathered momentum in 2003, with U.S. retail sales of online games exceeding $1 billion, according to NP…

Butterfly.net Gets $10 Million

Butterfly.net, an online gaming infrastructure provider, has received $10 million in venture funding. The money, which came from a funding g…

Xbox To Go Online in Asia

Microsoft will unveil its Xbox online gaming service in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore this April, a year and a half after its U.S. debut..…

Online Games Make Serious Money

Multiplayer game worlds such as EverQuest and The Sims Online look set to generate more than $1bn for the first time in 2004. According to a…

Ziff Davis Launches Gaming Industry News

Ziff Davis has finally launched Gaming Industry News, a monthly newsletter and a weekly e-mail..the newsletter, costing $995 for an annual s…

HBO and RealNetworks Launch Downloadable Game

HBO has launched “FATE: the Carnivale Game,” a downloadable Tarot card game inspired by the hit HBO series “Carnivale.” HBO’s first licensed…

CNET Enters Games Downloads Business

CNET Networks, which has also announced the acquisition of MP3.com, has entered the game downloading sector..its popular game info. site Gam…

eUniverse CEO LEaves; New Board Appointments

Brad Greenspan has stepped down as CEO, though still a member of the board. Brett Brewer, President, will be interim head as company evaluat…

Online Game Envisions New Virtual worlds

There, a new online computer game, which its creators say is more social and creative than other games of its kind, is expected to get its c…

IGN Entertainment Acquires TeamXbox Website

IGN Entertainment has bought out TeamXbox.com, one of the big Xbox-only sites.
TeamXbox averages over a half million unique visitors per mo…

Ziff Davis Game Group Launches 1UP.com

Ziff Davis Media has luanched a new online destination for video and PC gamers, 1UP.com. 1UP will have a full-time staff of 25 under editor…

For-Fee Downloads to Spur Game Growth

The market for downloadable games is poised to take off, with revenue from purchases of downloadable games projected to jump from $52.7 mill…

Gamer.tv Launches Premium Version

Online and TV gaming info. company Gamer.tv has launched a premium version…”Gamer.tv Plus! offers members early access to online video pre…

The Biggest Game in Town

Peter Lewis goes ga-ga over the gaming market…of course, he still calls it the “videogames “market, rather than the more apt “games” marke…

Consoles Vie for Online Players

Despite Sony’s huge installed base, Microsoft seems to be edging ahead in the early rounds of the struggle for online gamers’ hearts and min…

Online Games That Redefine Risk

In the world of pay-to-play Internet gaming, cash winnings are a big draw. They are also a source of controversy… “groups concerned about…

The Biggest Threat to Online Games

As online gaming continues to experience a growth boom both on consoles and on the PC, the biggest obstacle to its growth may well come down…

Softbank to Launch Japan Online Game Portal

Japanese Internet services group Softbank will launch an online game portal later this month, betting that a market which is hugely popular…

The Un-Doom Boom

More and more people are playing simpler, quieter types of electronic games on the Web, cellphones and hand-helds…

Not the Only Game Boy in Town

Look out Nintendo. A startup called TapWave is reinventing the Palm Pilot as a gaming platform.
Also read, “Tapwave Readies Gamer’s PDA”.

Pay for Web games?!

Electronic Arts is mulling subscription fees for its online Web games and Madden football. It’s a pretty bold plan ? and one that could conc…

IGN Goes Private

IGN Entertainment is going private and will be acquired for $12 a share, a 50 percent premium to Friday’s closing price of $8. A new corpora…

Managing Communities in Online Gaming

An interesting interview with Cindy Bowens, the Community Manager of Sigil Games Online, a new online multiplayer game community.

IGN Buys Gaming News Site

IGN Entertainment has bought VE3D, a popular site on gaming news from its former owners BA Ventures.

Fantasy Games ‘Not For Geeks’

According to a new survey, an online gamer just as likely to be a well-paid professional – male or female – aged in their 40s, and not just…

Game Market Watch: The Big Boys Play To Win

“While the Xbox console and the Xbox Live broadband game service are still Microsoft’s prize gaming initiatives, Kim admits that there has b…

Gaming Future Has Room to Grow

“Online parlor games may be consistent money makers in their own right, but MMP games are the cash cows of tomorrow’s online game world and…

Big Game, Big Revenue

Analysts are urging companies not to look past the gaming market for huge revenue potential, and In-Stat/MDR estimates hundreds of millions…

Win Bill Gates’ Money

Online media company eUniverse announced that Microsoft property MSN had signed up its SkillJam.com unit to add play-for-cash games to MSN’s…

NCSoft Sees Growth in S.Korea

NCSoft Sees Growth in S.Korea Online Gaming: In a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Tack Jin Kim, chief executi…

Learnings From The Serious Business

Learnings From The Serious Business of Online Gaming: The gaming industry has done several things right: developing a loyal customer base, f…

EA’s Follies in the Online

EA’s Follies in the Online World: A detailed analysis of Electronic Art’s forays online and how it hasn’t worked out as they hoped it would:…

EA Consolidates EA.com Into Core:

EA Consolidates EA.com Into Core: Game software maker Electronic Arts plans to consolidate online business EA.com into its company’s core op…

Your Next Customer Is Virtual.

Your Next Customer Is Virtual. But His Money Is Real: There Inc. invites you to sell your wares in the most realistic and commercially sophi…

European Phantasy Star Online Pricing:

European Phantasy Star Online Pricing: Infogrames has confirmed the monthly subscription costs for the European version of Phantasy Star Onl…

NCSoft’s Record Revenues for 2002:

NCSoft’s Record Revenues for 2002: NCsoft, the Korean online gaming company, has recorded revenues of $123.3 million, its highest. Net profi…

Fine Print in Electronic Arts’

Fine Print in Electronic Arts’ Results: “To even suggest the Sims Online could fail is a far cry from the way it has been heralded

‘Sims Online’ Off to Slow

‘Sims Online’ Off to Slow Start: Initial sales of “The Sims Online” have been less than expected, executives from publisher Electronic Arts…

Online Games Very Popular Across

Online Games Very Popular Across Asia: Online games are becoming the rage across Asia as Internet usage grows, with Web gamers outnumbering…

Online Games Very Popular Across

Online Games Very Popular Across Asia: Online games are becoming the rage across Asia as Internet usage grows, with Web gamers outnumbering…

There, Here, Everywhere (Word file):

There, Here, Everywhere (Word file): There, the incredibly hyped developer of an immersive 3D online gaming environments (simultaneous launc…

Online Game Hopes to Convert

Online Game Hopes to Convert Virtual Cash Into Real Revenue: An analysis by WSJ of whether people will pay to play role-playing games like “…

Former Terra Lycos President Appointed

Former Terra Lycos President Appointed Head of Online Gaming Firm: Former Fidelity Investments and Terra Lycos executive Stephen Killeen has…

EA’s Sims Online Debuts: Electronic

EA’s Sims Online Debuts: Electronic Arts’ Sims Online — the next-generation soap opera for female couch potatoes — is being touted as the…

Will “Sims Online” Alter Gaming

Will “Sims Online” Alter Gaming World?: “‘I think it’s a good test to see if online gaming can stretch past the hard-core fantasy gamers onl…

The Video-Game Wars Explode Online:

The Video-Game Wars Explode Online: Its Microsoft’s deep pockets and Xbox’ built-in capabilities vs. Sony’s and Nintendo’s add-ons. The priz…

The Biggest Franchise of Them

The Biggest Franchise of Them All?: The Sims Online will convert the best-selling PC game into a subscription business. If it works, it coul…

Online Gaming to Spur Standardization?:

Online Gaming to Spur Standardization?: A broad shift to online gaming in the $9.4 billion video game industry — widely forecast now that t…

Video Games Make Big Leap

Video Games Make Big Leap to Small Phone Screens: A report on the wireless gaming market. “The games themselves cost anywhere from $2 to $15…

Oversimulated Suburbia At Sims: David

Oversimulated Suburbia At Sims: David Brooks’ fascinating description of the surprising hit, the video/computer game Sims, and the cultural…

NCSoft’s Lineage Enters China: NCSoft,

NCSoft’s Lineage Enters China: NCSoft, the South Korea-based biggest developer of online games, has partnered with SINA to bring “Lineage” i…

AtomShockwave Launches Paid Video Game

AtomShockwave Launches Paid Video Game Service: AtomShockwave has launched a new subscription video game service on its Shockwave.com websit…

Online Game Economies Get Real:

Online Game Economies Get Real: There’s more to the virtual reality in massive multiplayer online games than digital otherworlds that look r…

IGN Launches Online Game Arcade:

IGN Launches Online Game Arcade: IGN Entertainment (Nasdaq:IGNX), formerly Snowball.com, has launched “IGN Play”, an online game arcade whic…

For Big Game Maker, Online

For Big Game Maker, Online Play Is a Big Gamble: A profile of Electronic Arts, the biggest video-game maker in the business–potentially wea…

Fantasy Football Players Cry Foul

Fantasy Football Players Cry Foul on Fee: Sandbox.com, the last of the major free fantasy football sites, has instituted an 11th-hour plan t…

Will Declining Birth Rates in

Will Declining Birth Rates in Japan Affect Online Gaming Revenues: An interesting point in this story on Japanese game software maker Square…

Korea’s National Pastime: Game With

Korea’s National Pastime: Game With Elves: South Korea’s NCSoft runs the biggest online multi-player game in the world. On any given day, “L…

Altnet Tops 2 Million: Altnet

Altnet Tops 2 Million: Altnet P2P network, which is distributed along with the popular KaZaa file-swapping software, has clocked more than 2…

Credit Cards May Default on

Credit Cards May Default on Gaming: E-gaming companies (that is, Internet gambling casinos etc., NOT network gaming) could see their growth…

Slaying The Dragons to Profit

Korea is the biggest online gaming country in the world, and a small upstart NC Interactive is planning to make a run at it, against giants…

IGN Raises $2 Million:

IGN Raises $2 Million: IGN Entertainment (Nasdaq: IGNX), which till recently was called Snowball.com, has raised $2 million in a private pl…

Netgame Factory Raises $1.6 Million:

Netgame Factory Raises $1.6 Million: This Sweden-based startup develops lotteries and games for cell phones. From the release: “Today

Broadband and Gaming

An interview with John Riccitiello, president and chief operating officer of Electronic Arts, the $1.7 billion game publisher, on how broadb…

Making Gamers Pay: This is

Making Gamers Pay: This is a complex conundrum–the fact that online gaming has become hugely popular makes it very difficult for gaming com…