Curt Schilling’s video game finally gets on base
Curt Schilling, the former pitcher and two-time World Series champ is more nervous about his new video game than he ever was about baseball.
He told a New York crowd at an event put on by Electronic Arts on Tuesday that he slept like a baby before World Series games in 2007 — but didn’t catch a wink on Monday night ahead of the release of his company’s first video game.
Schilling’s personal fortune is on the line with “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” a fantasy-action game that hit stores Tuesday. Schilling told Reuters last July he had invested between $30 million to $35 million of his own money into the 400-person company he founded that made the game.
“‘This is opening day of career 2.0,” he told the crowd . And it’s an opening day that’s seven years in the making–Schilling founded the company called 38 Studios (after his jersey number) in 2006.
Schilling has been a video fanboy for years. Peter Moore, EA’s chief operating officer said he first spoke with him in 2005. Schilling called Moore, who then worked at Microsoft, to see if he could get his hands on an advance copy of the Xbox 360.
Moore, who said he turned down phone calls from Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson that same day, took Schilling’s because he was a big Red Sox fan.
“We spoke one hour about massive multiplayer games. I tried to talk him out of it,” Moore said, of Schilling’s idea to bankroll a video game.
Zynga’s Pincus fights back against copycat accusations
Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, isn’t pleased with reports that Zynga is ripping off games from small developers so he is doing something about it–wielding his pen to write passionate manifestos to employees invoking Silicon Valley greats like Apple.
After a game developer accused Zynga of copying a game called “Tiny Tower”, Pincus sent a 60-line memo to employees to make sure his flock knows Zynga has done nothing wrong, (the memo was leaked to the blog VentureBeat and later obtained by Reuters).
“Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways.”
And just like tech heavyweights did not reinvent the wheel, neither does Zynga need to with its simple but addicting games.
“We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market … Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends, none of these games were the first to market in their category but we made them the most fun and social,” he said.
Pincus also shows reverence to video game history involving games where players build towers-”it’s important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower.”
His arguments are perfectly valid. It is just amusing that he is getting so worked up about claims his company is stealing ideas from a game called ”Tiny Tower,” and then later defending the authenticity of Zynga’s new Bingo game to VentureBeat.
Tech wrap: D.Telekom may be forced to play with Sprint
Deutsche Telekom may be forced into a tie-up of its sub-scale U.S. wireless unit with Sprint Nextel after a $39 billion deal with AT&T collapsed.
AT&T said on Monday it had dropped its bid for T-Mobile USA, bowing to fierce regulatory opposition and leaving both companies scrambling for alternatives.
The collapse of AT&T’s deal to buy D.Telekom’s U.S. wireless unit may be welcome news for network equipment makers, as money earmarked for the merger will be freed up for investments.
Research In Motion’s woes continued as sales in the United States fell for a fifth straight quarter in Q3 even as the BlackBerry maker’s overall revenue jumped by $1 billion from a year earlier, a regulatory filing released on Tuesday showed.
Financial advisers in the U.S. are seeing fewer benefits from their use of social media, a survey by Aite Group showed on Tuesday.
“Social media has been over-hyped and the benefits just aren’t there for a lot of advisers,” said Aite senior analyst Ron Shevlin in an interview.
Electronic Arts invested more money and firepower into “Star Wars: The Old Republic” than it has on any game in its 30-year history. Starting today, the company will find out if the bet pays off.
Is Zynga’s lead slipping on Facebook?
Electronic Arts, the second-largest video game company in the U.S., is stealing market share away from Zynga, the top dog in social games on Facebook, according to a new report on gaming behavior.
The report, released on Wednesday, is based on data that tracks the game play of more than 10 million users of Raptr, a website that automatically tracks its users’ video game activity on Facebook, consoles and PCs.
“EA has stolen 10 to 25 percent playtime from Zynga’s top games,” the report said.
Since the launch of Sims Social, EA’s Facebook game that has more than 66 million monthly active users, Zynga games such as FarmVille, CityVille and Empires & Allies have all lost players, the report shows.
To be sure, Zynga still dwarfs EA’s users on Facebook by more than 2-1 according to the website AppData.
The report comes a day after Zynga unleashed a barrage of games upon its rivals and gave a sneak peek of a mysterious new platform called “Project Z” that could reduce its reliance on Facebook.
One of the key finding is that EA succeeded in bringing players of the Sims franchise to its Facebook game “but more impressively they were able to capture market share from Zynga.” EA can also tap games from PopCap, the company it bought over the summer, such as Plant vs. Zombies and Bejeweled 3 to start releasing more games on Facebook, it said.
I agree with most of Zyngas moves..I can’t wait to play Karma Kingdom on my Ipad.
The Hoff wants a video game of his own
David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff wants to stay “hip and current with the kids,” so he’s doing it the way he knows best–by getting beat up in cheerleader outfits and chicken suits in an ad campaign.
The Hoff is Electronic Arts’s latest pitchman in online videos for “Burnout Crash,” a racing video game on Xbox Live with the motion controller, Kinect, but he’s not stopping there: He wants a game of his own, he told Reuters in an interview this week.
“I’ve wanted to develop my own game so this was a way of seeing if this works and maybe we can take this one step further with using the same concept as ‘Burnout Crash,’ and maybe do something with the Hoff,” he said.
Hasselhoff said he’s in talks with EA about developing some kind of game or app. EA could not immediately be reached for comment.
Hasselhoff has promoted games before but declined to comment on how much money he has made from the video game industry.
The 59-year-old former Baywatch star said he signed on with EA after the company sent him the game and it reminded him of driving stunts he’d help create on his hit show from the 1980s, Knight Rider.
“I saw the game and said, this is what Knight Rider is about,” Hasselhoff said.
The moment the Hoff announced he was going into the gaming Biz. Watch the ending part where Chobot makes him realize he has to get into the gaming biz lol!
EA: We love Wii U
Back in June, everyone was talking about the Wii U, Nintendo’s first video game console with high-definition graphics unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Since then, no one’s heard much more about Wii U, which has a tablet screen for a controller and can be used in conjunction with Wii remotes. Nintendo must be hunkering down to put the finishing touches on it before it hits stores sometime next year.
But Peter Moore, the video game industry veteran who was promoted to be Electronic Arts’ chief operating officer in August, told Reuters this week that everything appears to be on track with the Wii U, at least from his perspective working for a publisher making games for it.
“There are no indications that there’s anything that feels like it’s off target,” Moore said. Nintendo’s stock has taken a beating in recent months and its share price is approaching its low for the year.
Moore said he will be visiting Nintendo’s hometown of Kyoto next week to check on how the console is shaping up.
“From our perspective right now, specs are a big deal,” he said, adding that during his trip, he will looking to find out more about the gadget’s graphic and computer processing units, its price and when it might be shipped.
Moore, who has experience launching consoles from his days at Microsoft, says Nintendo was smart to incorporate a tablet into the console with the Wii U.
Zynga herding its users like sheep from game to game: data
Social games company Zynga is adept at converting its current players to its new games, just as smoothly as some of the top video game franchises like Call of Duty, according to a new 21-page report by the game tracking service and social network Raptr.
The report takes into account more than 3 million Zynga players who use Raptr’s game tracking applications.
“If Zynga were to release a new game tomorrow, our data reveals that 90 percent of users of that new game will come from an old game,” said Dennis Fong, Raptr’s co-founder.
While 90 percent is such a high conversation rate any company might strive to that target, it also means that Zynga could cannibalize its users if it doesn’t find new players.
“A 90 percent average means that only 10 percent of its users are new,” Fong said. “Zynga has its pool of players, which is admittedly very large and they are basically just herding them around from game to game. Where is their growth going to come from? That’s a big question mark.”
The report is full of nuggets that could give potential investors in Zynga’s IPO a better picture of how people are playing social games. It shows that Zynga players play up to 8 sessions a day and that those sessions are 5 minutes long. Gamers are playing hardcore games on consoles and PCs like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft for longer periods of time, but for fewer sessions.
Tech wrap: Google targets Apple with Motorola buy
Setting its sights on rival Apple, Google announced its biggest deal ever, a $12.5 billion cash acquisition of mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility.
Google’s biggest foray into hardware comes weeks after a failed attempt to buy patents from bankrupt Nortel, and gives it an intellectual property library in wireless telephony to wage war on Apple and Microsoft.
However, analysts agreed that that buy was more about the patents and less about the hardware.
The news sent shock waves throughout the tech sector on Monday. Shares of InterDigital plunged 23 percent on the news, while Nokia shares jumped over 10 percent.
In earlier news, video games publisher Electronic Arts is upbeat about Christmas holiday sales as it expects to release top titles and prepares its most high profile launch ever: “Star Wars: The Old Republic”.
Also China’s Huawei Technologies, the world’s No.2 network equipment maker, posted an 11 percent rise in its first-half sales as it closes in on market leader Ericsson.
Tech wrap: ITC joins Apple-Samsung spat
The International Trade Commission agreed to investigate Apple’s complaint that mobile phones and tablets made by rival Samsung violate its technology intellectual property. The intensifying patent dispute threatens to strain a lucrative supply relationship: Apple in 2010 was Samsung’s second-largest customer, accounting for $5.7 billion of sales tied mainly to semiconductors, according to the Asian consumer electronics company’s annual report.
Google faces a total of nine antitrust complaints which EU regulators are now investigating, two sources said. Up to now, The European Commission has only confirmed four cases against Google. The increased number of complaints underscores Google’s dominant position but does not necessarily mean bad news for the company, said Simon Holmes, head of EU and competition law at law firm SJ Berwin.
“Google’s strong position means there are lots of interests involved. But there is nothing wrong per se in having a strong position,” he said.
Broadband speeds on average are within 80 percent of what major Internet service providers advertise, a big improvement from two years ago, according to an FCC study. I suggest that the study, while attempting to arm consumers with a comparison tool in order to make more informed choices, masks regional disparities in broadband speeds that were brought to light last week.
For an extra $25 per year, fans of Electronic Arts sports titles will be able to download video games three days before they hit stores, a move that should boost EA’s digital sales. EA’s new program called “Season Ticket” will let consumers get access to five sports games–its soccer, golf, hockey, pro-football and college football titles. Users will be able to download the games over the Internet on Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony Corp PlayStation systems three days before they are out in stores.
Russia’s interior minister called for limits on the Internet to prevent a slide in traditional cultural values among young people, raising fears of controls over the vibrant Russian-language Web. Rashid Nurgaliyev, who did not indicate which sites he felt should be curbed, said that Russia’s youth needed looking after to prevent young people from being corrupted by “lopsided” ideas, especially in music, that may undermine traditional values.
Tech wrap: Now in your Twitter stream – ads
Your Twitter stream could be about to get even more cluttered. Twitter announced in a blog post on Thursday that it will now be placing ads from certain brands and companies directly into the message timelines of users who follow those organizations on the microblogging service. The company said it is testing out the new program with a select group of partners – including Dell, Starbucks and HBO among others – for a few weeks before rolling it out to a wider stable of clients. The new initiative is an expansion of the company’s so-called “Promoted Tweets” program, in which ads show up in search results on the Twitter.com website.
What does the new program mean for users? AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka has this take: “”Depends. Marketers will only be able to deliver the ads — which will use the “Promoted Tweet” format the company rolled out more than a year ago — to users who already follow them on the service. And they’ll only appear on Twitter’s main Twitter.com site. So, if you don’t follow any brands/marketers/companies on Twitter, you won’t see the ads. And if you’re checking Twitter on your iPhone, or via clients like TweetDeck, you won’t see them there, either.”
EA received a thumbs up from antitrust regulators for its deal to buy social gaming startup PopCap Games. EA struck the deal, which is estimated to be worth up to $1.3 billion, to step up its competition with Zynga, the social gaming company behind Facebook games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
What company is top dog in the U.S. consumer smartphone market? Well, that really depends on what you’re basing the comparison on. Look at mobile operating systems and you’ll see that Google’s Android operating system (OS) claims the biggest share of the market with 39 percent, according to June data from Nielsen. Apple’s iOS ranks second with 28 percent and RIM’s BlackBerry comes in third with 20 percent. When it comes to manufacturing smartphones, though, Apple comes out the clear frontrunner because the company is the sole manufacturer of devices that run its iOS. HTC is another leading manufacturer. Its Android phones account for 14 percent of the market and its Windows Mobile/WP7 make up 6 percent of the market.
Still annoyed that you can’t watch Flash-based videos on your Apple iPhone? Well, complain no more. Skyfire, a private-equity backed video tech firm, has unveiled an app that lets iPhone users do just that. The application, VideoQ, lets users send links to videos from their browser and watch them in the app. The startup is also hoping to expand the app into a full-fledged video entertainment portal.
More hints that Amazon’s forthcoming tablet computer could be a heavy hitter when it comes to digital content – the company just announced yet another video streaming deal. Under the new agreement, Amazon will license about 1,000 Universal Pictures movies from NBCUniversal. Amazon signed a similar deal with CBS Corp last week that added about 2,000 videos to its TV and movie streaming offering. The new agreement lifts the total to more than 9,000 this summer, the Internet retailer said.
Reuters correspondent Lynnley Browning dug a little deeper into Microsoft’s recent quarterly results to find out how the company managed to get its tax bill so low. The answer: partly, it was due to a one-time refund to the IRS for a previous overpayment. But, after a little number crunching, the core reason became clear to Browning: the company has been increasingly channeling its earnings from sales to customers across the world through low-tax havens such as Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore.
