United Gamer Online (UGO)

by Mike Smith
Think you need expensive MBAs to rise to the top of one of the world's biggest businesses? Don't tell Starbucks CIO Stephen Gillett.
Gillett does actually have an MBA (from San Francisco State, as it happens), but according to a report in Forbes, one expert credits Gillett's time as a guild leader in leading massively-multiplayer online game World of Warcraft for his "meteoric rise."

According to Gillett's former boss John Hagel III, speaking at a leadership conference, successful guild leaders need "a high degree of influence...you have to be able to influence and persuade people--not order them to do things. Ordering people in most of these guilds doesn't get you far."

Aside from their leadership skills, Warcraft enthusiasts, Hagel told Forbes, "conduct extensive after-action reviews of their performances as well as that of the leader." They'll also "customize their own game interfaces to offer statistics and rate performance in areas they consider critical to their strategy" -- all key skills for any management professional, as our friendly office MBA tells us.

How strongly does Gillett believe in the ties between Warcraft and business? Strong enough to warrant a blog dedicated to the subject, run by the CIO himself. And it doesn't take long to see how running a guild and running a business are, in some ways, one and the same.

"What makes a community successful, makes a guild successful," Gillett writes. "If a guildie [sic] loyalty resides in any one individual in the guild, then you have future stress fractures waiting to happen. The goal is to have the loyalty reside with the guild and not specifically to any one person in it." Amen to that.

So there you have it, kids: next time your parents say you're playing too many games, tell them you're not blowing off your homework, you're honing your management skills. Good luck with that.

Posted June 24, 2010 1:20pm by Kristen Nicole
The iPhone 4 has arrived! After a morning of waiting, pacing and coffee-drinking, we finally get to test some highly anticipated games that shine on the iPhone 4. Apple’s newest device features a gyroscope for more movement control, as well as a new retina display for high-resolution graphics.

Here are some great games released or newly updated for the iPhone 4.
Retina Pleasure

FarmVille is making a big splash with its iPhone game, after initially becoming a global sensation on Facebook. On the iPhone 4, the $4.99 game from Zynga feels a little more interactive, with improved touch-screen control. The big selling point here is the high-resolution display, which actually does a good job of drawing you into the game.

Enigmo 2 also released a version for the iPhone 4, with its beautiful graphics made a little crisper. The $2.99 game takes you through several puzzle levels, each with their own set of challenges for manipulating time and space to save water streams and laser beams in containers. There’s no gyroscope action on this game, but that’s a good thing.
The Tiger Woods PGA Tour game from EA has iPhone support, but little in the way of multi-axis support. The game’s graphics and play still pack a punch, looking pretty sleek on the iPhone 4. At $2.99 I’ll be fighting to keep this well-designed game away from my HTC-using boyfriend.

Flight Control from Firemint was already a great graphic game for the small screen, but improvements on the iPhone 4 make everything a little cooler. The crazy gameplay for the 99-cent app seem pretty slick on the new device.
Gyroscope & action

Real Racing is another Firemint game that received an iPhone 4 update today, with a bit of gyroscope thrown in for good measure. The $4.99 game may be one of the better ways to try out the iPhone 4’s multi-axis support. Already maxing out the phone’s accelerometer, the added range of motion makes for some pretty bumpy gameplay.
For a point-and-shoot game, Eliminate: GunRange may be more your style. Get dizzyingly familiar with the new axis controls as you focus in on your target before blowing them away. All from the shooter’s perspective, this 99-cent game has done well for its first dedicated iPhone release.

While Zen Bound 2 doesn't have a new update yet for the iPhone 4, it sure looks great on the new device. You can imagine the level of wrist action involved in solving the complex, 3D puzzles with added gyroscope support for the $7.99 game. Equally as impressive are the beautiful graphics on the new display, making it a perfect fit for the iPhone 4.

June 25, 2010
Posted in Musings at 10:09 am by zhaewry

Beyond Micheal J Fox’s charming good looks, the Back to the future movies were built around the idea that its as easy to mess things up as make them better. Mark Kingdon’s been sent packing and Phillip Rosedale has returned with the title of Interim CEO, Is this good? Bad? Indifferent? I expect it will be a mixed bag.

Second life is at a crossroads. Growth has stalled, several initiatives havestalled, and 1/3 of the lab staff got handed walking papers. Growing beyond a niche is hard, and several Virtual Worlds and their associated companies have gone bust in the past year. SecondLife has the advantage of basic profitability, and a user base which, has enthusiasm for the environment, when the lab isn’t busy making their lives difficult.

Phillip has remarkable strengths. He has vision, he is charismatic, and he is wicked smart. Above all, he is passionate. . Phillip is also, in part impractical, a dreamer, easily distracted, and undisciplined. These are, in many ways two sides of the same coin. Creativity and Vision are not enemies of disciplined slogging, but they are rarely close friends either. Whether Phillip sorts things out depends a lot on how he parses the basic problems of SecondLife, and how he attacks them.

So.. given this, here are some thoughts on what he should do.
Six things to do:

1. Start by listening to your customers, and listening hard. Feel free to call them residents, but keep in mind they pay your bills.
2. Play to your personal strengths, and bring in people who complement them, and bolster your weaknesses
3. When you look at things like Avatars United, Second Life Enterprise, and other projects which haven’t prospered, look at not the simple fact that they failed, but WHY.
4. While you are getting the core business sorted out, get someone good asking hard questions about how to monetize things which aren’t land. The Lab has resources it doesn’t monetize, and figuring out how to leverage them is vital.
5. Keep firmly in mind that Linden Lab is 200 employees and no longer a startup. If Second Life is to avoid being a niche player, it will have to grow again, and the management team needs to reflect this reality.
6. You have a huge “technical debt” Start paying it down. Yes, its painful, but it prevents Second Life from scaling and evolving. Cleaning up code and architecture isn’t glamorous, but it unblocks progress.

In Detail:
Listening

Listening is hard, but vital. If you pay attention (LISTEN) to only one thing, start here.

Listen to what users have been saying for months. Fix search. Fix Group IM, Raise the Group Limit, Do Windlight estate settings, figure out how to allow megaprims in appropriate settings. Listen to your customers about viewer 2.x and tell them you’re supporting 1.23 while you sort it out.

Don’t run off to “fix” things without listening to the residents. When you think you know how to fix something, describe the fix, and then, listen again, to what people say. Run Serious Betas, and let people play with things early and often, and when they complain, again, Listen. Don’t run a two week beta, fix three bugs and say “We listened.” Start early, share code often and actually allow tester input to influence the end result.

When you listen, actually respond to feedback. Yes, it may take a little longer to complete the process, but Viewer 2.0, and Search have shown very clearly, how badly things go when you build a lot of code and don’t listen to the community as you build them.

Work on saying yes to your customers, not no. The lab has spent a lot of the past two years telling its customers no. Yes is a better answer. This may mean telling lawyers, technical people and maybe even Phillip Linden to figure out how to make yes possible. Second Life needs some yeses.

Look at what people do to make things happen in second life, and then listen to them about how to make it better. A lot of your customers have figured out how to run big events using voice, web streams, chat bridges and other tools. Listen to them about how they do these events, and why, and then talk to them about how Linden Lab can make this easier. Then go back to them when you think you have answers, and listen when they give you feedback.
Play to your strengths and understand your weaknesses

Operations needs a solid hand, make sure you keep one there. The grid has become massively more stable in the past two years, backslide on that, and everything else is at risk. Take your time when piloting and deploying code. The steady drone of pilot roll, rollback, pilot roll, rollback sends a bad, unnecessary message about diligence in testing.

Put in place a full up CTO. Someone with a solid track record in building distributed systems, and understands scale. Listen to them, and give them enough authority to put some focus on solving the long term technology issues which get in the way of growing out the grid and single region concurrency. Tell them you know there is a deep technical debt in the current code base and support them in paying some of it down.

Get someone who is good at communications. Listen to them. Linden’s PR has been painfully bad and needs to get a lot better. Speak to your residents honestly, speak to them often and work to make that communication a two way street. A brown bag where people vent, but have little or no impact on behavior is not communication. When you hold in world events as part of communications, do a better job. The community has worked out how to hold large events with streams both in world and on the web. Linden should learn from best practices and not just “turn on voice and pray.”

Get someone who understands user experience and let them work closely with the resident community and figure out how to move beyond the current viewer 2 mess. Giving first time users a cleaner, simpler experience is important, but not at the cost of neutering the client in daily use. Defaulting some settings to permit a simple experience for new users, while allowing experienced users to personalize the experience is the way forward here.

Put someone in charge of the challenge of connecting users to exciting experiences on the grid. Make sure they understand why people thrive in SecondLife and how to make those experiences more accessible. Events and shared experiences are the hear of SecondLife. New users should have quick and easy ways of finding new experiences. SecondLife is not a game, but look at using game like rewards to get users to explore the grid, explore shopping, explore events. Add some low key rewards for people when they spend their first 100 lindens, when they attend their first event, when they make friends.
Learn from the failures

Look not just at what projects failed, but why they failed. A core appeal of second life is immersion were projects like Avaline and Avatars United helping, or hurting immersion. A core asset of Second Life is the rich content cloud and rich creator community. Did Second Enterprise tap into the asset cloud, or cut off enterprise users from convenient access to the content and economy on the main grid? A core value of any growing environment is the network effect of connecting users to users. Did Second Life enterprise have any ways of connecting enterprise users to the greater community, or did it hide them away from the core experience.

Retrenching to focus on the core experience is fine, but failing to understand why various project failed will prevent similar projects from going forward successfully in the future.

Second Life is an immersive, creative experience. Linden Lab needs to look at projects which enhance the core strengths of the experience, and recognize the unique nature of a virtual world. Turning the lab’s back on the rest of the web, and on customers beyond the current user base is just as much a recipe for failure as ignoring the current users.
Monetizing beyond land (and business models)

Linden lab has several core assets. The grid itself, and the actual regions are the heart of the service. Revenue form land is both the Lab’s most secure revenue source and biggest challenge. At the end of the day, land rental is value added server space rental and servers get cheaper every year, and margins get thinner every year. Second Life has important assets beyond the grid which are not monetized.

The content cloud, and access to the economy of second life is a huge potential source of revenue. Second Life has some of the richest most innovative content in the internet. Competitors to second life are emerging, and will continue to emerge. Helping make Second Life an internet wide hub of content creation and selling is a huge opportunity. This requires getting beyond the current model of a single monolithic grid and into spaces where Linden Lab is a hub not just for land but other services.

Identity and users are another important asset the lab has consistently ignored. Look at how to allow users to take thier digital selves beyond the current SecondLife grid and how the lab can be a hub for identity in other spaces. Don’t couple these opportunities with requiring people to expose a real life identity. Second Life is as much about coming *to* the virtual world as it is dragging the real world into the virtual spaces, but by the same token, people’s virtual identities are deeply important to them, and they want to “be who they are” in many parts of the web, not just the current grid.

Make “premium” membership meaningful, and make “free” membership less valuable. Free, ready access to the grid is important, but, there is no reason to not put significant limits on what you get for free which encourage people to become premium. Free accounts are important, because they let people quickly enter and explore the world, but look at limiting them so that people are encouraged to become premium memberships. Separate out avatar name from account, and allow people to have alts share premium status. Be careful about privacy when looking at these choices, but recognize how and why people create identities within the grid, and work to provide a model which both helps users do what they want to do, and gives the lab better insight into what customers are doing, and how provide them with real value.

As time goes on, Linden is going to face an every more diverse ecosystem of competitors in its niche. The lab needs to position second life to be part of a growing ecosystem, and to profit from the success of the whole ecosystem, not just the current user base. Sorting out how to monetize all of Linden’s opportunities, not just land sales is a vital part of thriving in a larger web of virtual spaces.
The lab is not a startup

You said it yourself this week. You have been working on parts of Second Life for a decade. Even after laying off 100 people, Linden Lab is larger than most startups. The lab needs to be more focused, and more agile. This does not mean the lab can shoot from the hip. SecondLie Scribe used a wonderful phrase in this panel discussion “Manager of managers.” Its a description of something that is very much not what startups are about, but is what bigger companies need. Look forward for how the lab needs to function in its next decade, not back. Take the title of “interim CEO” seriously, and find people who can focus on running the company well, so you can focus on Vision and Strategy, and listening to your users.

Most companies don’t get second chances to grow beyond their initial success. Linden Lab may not either. Second Chances are rare. The lab has a passionate but nervous user base. This is a double edged sword. Passionate advocates can be your best source of ideas, inspiration and new users. Passionate advocates thwarted and made bitter can be your loudest critics and take their ideas and passion and go elsewhere with them. Second Life needs to execute less like a startup and more like a nimble successful company. There are people who have watched what Linden Lab did well, and what Linden Lab did poorly. Unlike the field 10 years ago, there is a lot of technology, there is a large community of developers, users and potential competitors who will be looking to see if they can succeed where Linden Lab has not.

Second Life does not have the excuse of immaturity, or the luxury of obscurity. Customer Service, development, and user outreach need to be professional and serious. If Linden Lab does not learn from its mistakes and move forward decisively others will, and the challenges to Second Life will grow.
Paying the lab’s technical debt

This is a painfully technical point, but not a trivial one. Technical Debt is very real and does huge damage to companies and projects which ignore it. Linden Lab has a decade of technical debt. Some of it has been paid down. The changes which have made going from Havok 4 to Havok 7 far less challenging than the move to Havok 4 are a good example. On the whole tho, the phrase “We can’t do that, our code isn’t in a position to do that” is a phrase heard far too often in Linden Lab.

Technical debt has gotten in the way of scaling regions, adding caching to regions, offloading work form regions and breaking the grid into more manageable chunks. Technical debt gets in the way of supporting new business opportunities for the lab, and slows every type of development. Part of moving beyond a startup mentality is paying down technical debt on a regular basis.

Linden Lab needs to make understanding its technical debt, and planning to pay it down a part of the technical culture. This is part of moving beyond being a startup and becoming a company that can execute efficiently. Someone at the lab needs to be an advocate for investments which will improve long term scale, long term flexibility and long term stability. The lab needs to position itself to adapt to changes in the world such as mobile devices, and cloud computing. Technical debt gets in the way of business and technical flexibility. Arcane, rigid code leads to arcane, hard to fix, change and use systems. Users don’t want to know why its so hard for the lab to permit “undelete” of objects, or rollback of a parcel’s state, they want the grid to what they want, in ways which delight them. Paying down technical debt is a vital part of delighting users.
In closing

Second Life is at a very real crossroads. Linden Lab needs to take serious steps to sort out very real challenger. M was chosen by Phillip, and the board at Linden Lab to lead Second Life beyond where it was in 2007. Bringing back a founder to a startup is fraught with peril. There were reasons Phillip and the board wanted to bring in a new team, and those reasons haven’t gone away because the team they brought in failed to produce the desired results.

Linden Lab is fortunate to have cash, to have a fairly sustainable business model in the short term. The lab needs to fix serious problems and fix them soon. Second Chances in business are rare, and third chances vanishingly so. Linden Lab needs to figure out how to listen to its customers, make a product they want to keep using and figure out how to grow again.

Second Life still has huge potential, but the longer growth stalls and alternatives mature, the harder the road ahead will become. Linden Lab needs to focus on delighting its current customers and positioning itself to grow beyond the current user base. This is a huge challenge. Phillip Rosedale has met a huge challange in getting Second Life to where it is today. I believe that Phillip and Linden Lab can meet the current challenges, but only by being smart, disciplined and willing to Listen and Learn.

June 02, 2010
San Francisco-based Curse Inc. quietly raised $6 million for its Curse.com MMO news and add-on portal late last year. The round is lead by new investors Venture Technologies and SoftTech VC along with returning investor AGF Private Equity. In all, the company has raised $11.8 million in funding counting its initial angel round. Curse.com users can download add-ons that modify the features and GUI of their favorite freemium and subscription MMOs at the site, as well as reading news and participating in forums.

The basic Curse.com service is free, but power users can pay for a $30 annual subscription that grants perks like faster download times and the ability to update multiple mods at once. The site has over 34,000 paid subscribers and shares revenue with mod developers. The site draws roughly 7.4 million unique users monthly. Curse's last round of funding was raised in July 2007, when the company raised its $5 million first round following its initially $800,000 angel round. According to founder Hubert Thieblot, Curse earned $3 million in revenue in 2009 and is profitable.

Thursday, June 24, 2010
©2010 Bloomberg News

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Linden Lab's virtual world called Second Life was seen as the Web's next big thing following its 2003 debut.

Investors including Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos and EBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar poured millions of dollars into the project, where 3-D avatars sunbathe on virtual islands and operate virtual companies. Businessweek featured Second Life on a 2006 cover, and Reuters opened a virtual bureau. Coca-Cola Co. held a virtual contest.

Philip Rosedale, who founded San Francisco-based Linden Lab, said Second Life has yet to reach its potential. He was named interim CEO today, replacing Mark Kingdon, who stepped down. In 2008, Rosedale predicted that virtual worlds will become "bigger in total usage than the Web itself."

Fast-forward two years. While 1,400 real-life companies still use it, Coca-Cola hasn't returned since 2007. Reuters shuttered its bureau last year. Longtime backer International Business Machines Corp. is exploring competing services, such as unity3D, now that Linden Lab has refocused on consumers, says Francoise Legoues, a vice president at IBM, where more than 10,000 employees use Second Life for meetings.

The virtual world's once explosive growth has slowed. About 1.38 million residents currently log into the virtual world on a given day, little changed from a year ago, according to independent surveyor GridSurvey.com.

In a "strategic restructuring" this month, Linden fired 30 percent of its staff. Over the past few months, executives including Chief Product Officer Tom Hale and Lead Evangelist John Lester have departed.

'Less Better'

"The overall trend for Second Life is stagnation," said Philippe Kerremans, who helps virtual shops track visitors on the site.

Rosedale, 41, seeks to change that. "I want these metrics to improve significantly," he said today in an interview, referring to the hours users spend in the virtual world and to the addition of new users.

He plans to enhance a user's experience in Second Life, so that it takes minutes instead of hours for new users to get up to speed. That will mean changes to everything from servers to the software tool participants use to navigate the virtual world, he said.

"We want to simplify the core consumer experience, Rosedale said. "We are going to do less better."

The strategy may mean that Second Life will become accessible through a Web browser rather than a software download later than previously expected.

"We don't think it's a game-changer in the next year," Rosedale said. "More tactical changes to the product can get us to impressive levels of growth."

Slower Growth

Second Life's economy is still expanding, though at a slower pace. User-to-user transactions rose 30 percent year- over-year to $160 million in the first quarter. That's down from 65 percent growth a year ago. Closely held Linden doesn't disclose its sales or whether it's profitable.

Like popular games "FarmVille" and "Mafia Wars," Second Life may also appear through Facebook Inc., Kingdon said last week.

Rosedale says he'll continue working on his other start-up, LoveMachine, which is developing several projects including artificial intelligence and virtual replacement of world currencies.

"My first priority right now is helping Second Life," he said.

--Editors: Lisa Wolfson, Stephen West.

by Mike Smith
Ah, the licensed video game, home to many of the worst assaults the games industry has perpetrated on its consumers. Typically, licensed games are terrible, and Transformers-licensed games have historically been doubly so. But this game, unlike other recent robots-in-disguise releases, War for Cybertron isn't tied to a specific movie or other product. Instead, its well-regarded developer, High Moon, was given free rein to recreate the authentic Transformers experience.

And they succeeded, according to Joystiq's Justin McElroy. War for Cybertron is "a crystal clear, easy-to-follow example of how to do a licensed game," he said, heaping praise on the powerful feel of its iconic robot stars and calling it the best use of the Transformers license "since Beast Wars went off the air more than a decade ago.

As Transformers fans will know, that's no small accolade. But there's more. IGN awarded it a whopping 9/10, saying it "impresses with an excellent single-player campaign with full co-op support, the included Horde-alike Escalation mode, and surprisingly deep and inventive online multiplayer component...a dark horse contender for best way to spend your time online this summer."

Destructoid's Jim Sterling also liked it, describing the game as "the most robust, lovingly developed and authentic Transformers experience you could hope to get on a home console." If you've played the competition, you'll know that isn't exactly a high bar to clear, but worry not -- Sterling dishes out a healthy 8/10. It's pretty clear: Transformers fans are going to be delighted with War for Cybertron.

by Mike Smith
Motion controllers? Child's play. High-powered consoles? Waste of money. If bold startup OnLive has anything to do with it, the future of gaming is up in the clouds.
Not literally, of course. OnLive promises to relieve your computer of the onerous task of actually running one of its selection of triple-A games -- instead, it runs on one of OnLive's massive servers, away in the "cloud" of the Internet. Your inputs are sent to the server; it sends back a high-definition streaming video feed of your gameplay, relieving the need for any fancy gaming hardware. All you need is a machine that can display a high-def streaming video, which these days is pretty much anything.

Sounds like pie in the sky, and since its announcement last year, OnLive has been treated with considerable skepticism by the gaming community. Many commentators dismissed it as a technological impossibility, a pipe-dream that'd never see daylight.

But it turned out to be neither. Last week the service launched, and OnLive is now in the hands of subscribers dotting the lower 48 states.

Its launch line-up includes about 20 games, around half of which are what you might call "top-tier" full-price releases: Assassin's Creed II, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Splinter Cell: Conviction. More are coming. OnLive has agreements in place with every major publisher except Activision-Blizzard, so it's going to be competitive, in terms of new releases, with download services like Steam.

But buying games on OnLive is way slicker. There's no downloading: you just hit the "purchase" button, enter your password for confirmation, and after a brief loading pause, you're in the game. It's a buying experience that's head and shoulders above everything else out there. OnLive is also ahead of the game in its social features -- you can record and share short clips of your game, for example, and check up on the activities of your friends in a way that'll be familiar to Xbox Live subscribers.

Chief among the predictions of OnLive's critics is that its games will be ruined by the unavoidable time delay between you making a move, the server processing it, and your screen displaying the results. And yes, there's a slight, but entirely perceptible, lag between you making a move and seeing it reflected on the screen.

If you're a hardcore shooter player, this will be enough to put you off completely. If you're not so tuned-in, you may not even notice. We found it significantly less bothersome when using an Xbox 360 controller than with a mouse. Set it next to a dedicated gaming PC and there's no comparison, even with identical graphics. Which, thanks to OnLive's somewhat washed-out, low-detail look, they're unfortunately not.

ut then again, OnLive will run adequately on machines that modern games wouldn't even touch. And to some extent your experience will vary based on your connection type, your distance from OnLive's server warehouses, the number of other people using your Internet connection, and probably the phase of the moon or something. But as long as you meet its modest minimum hardware requirements, it'll work pretty much the same as on a whizz-bang supercomputer.

Unless, that is, you have a wireless network. OnLive flat-out refuses to run unless you have a wired ethernet hookup, so if you're dreaming of slouching on the couch playing games on your laptop, resign yourself to running an extra cord. Depending on your home setup, that could be a dealkiller.

And speaking of dealkillers, let's talk price. Thanks to a deal with AT&T, the OnLive service is free for the first year for the first batch of subscribers, but make no mistake: this ain't going to last. Once you run through that year, count on paying $4.95 per month for access, provided nothing changes. You'll also have to pay for the games.

If you're scratching your head at the prospect of paying both a subscription fee for the service and full sticker price for the games, you're not the only one. Stop paying the sub fee, and your games -- the games you've paid for and own -- are no longer accessible. That's a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

Fortunately, that's not the only option. OnLive also offers rentals for certain games, with prices in the $5-10 area for 3-5 day loan periods. That's a much better deal. PC game rentals are a rare sight, and if you're anticipating a heavy weekend's gaming, it's a great option for non-console gamers.

There's one other OnLive feature that's unavailable anywhere else: it runs on the Mac, meaning that nearly all its games can be enjoyed by oft-neglected Mac gamers. If you're one of the millions who made the switch to Apple and you miss the world of PC games, OnLive's going to be of particular interest.

Future plans for the service are impressive, too. It's been demoed running on the iPhone and iPad, and later this year it'll be getting a dirt-cheap "Microconsole" -- a set-top box that can stream games straight to your TV. Exclusive games are in the works, the company's founder told us, and with a whole server farm at their disposal they could be able to perform at levels home PCs just can't match.

But is it really a feasible way to play games? OnLive is packed with more caveats than a cellphone contract: it depends on your connection, it's pricey, its future is uncertain, the graphics aren't as good, and there's that perceptible control lag. As a technology demo, it's spectacular; as a product, it's unproven. If you're curious -- or you're keen to play the latest PC games and don't want to buy an expensive new computer -- take it for a test drive. But it's not going to change the world just yet.

June21,2010

MagiQuest Goes Online With Virtual World


The MagiQuest live-action role-playing game is expanding online with a new virtual world called MagiQuest Online: The Portal Adventure Series. The initial content released for the virtual world will be called Chapter One: The Clan Courtyard And Twisted Woods Realms. The virtual world will share the live version's emphasis on puzzle solving and will be developed in cooperation with Cyan Worlds, developer of the Myst video games.

MagiQuest Online will tie in directly with the storyline and content of the live MagiQuest role-plays. The story calls for players to take the role of powerful wizards called Magi and protect portals that connect the virtual world of MagiQuest to the real one. If the online players fail, then they're teased with the notion of dragons and monsters invading the real world. The live-action MagiQuest centers will also include storylines about protecting the portals from monsters.

When players start a MagiQuest Online game, they will have the option of logging in with the account they use in the MagiQuest Live games. This will allow players to start in the virtual world with all of the powers, treasure, and experience they've gained at the live-action centers. Players can acquire more powers and items by playing MagiQuest Online, then transfer these winnings to their next live-action adventure at a MagiQuest center.

Players who complete the Chapter One content in the MagiQuest virtual world will gain access to an exclusive quest the next time they visit the MagiQuest live-action centers. Likewise, players can meet friends made during MagiQuest live-action games in the online virtual world, or vice versa. The first chapter of the MagiQuest virtual world will cost $9.99. It can be purchased at MagiQuest live-action role-playing centers and online at MagiQuest.com

by Ben Silverman
Wii 2? Xbox 720? PS4? Sorry folks -- we're not getting brand new versions of the current crop of consoles any time soon. But while the next game revolution might be a few years off, the console war is about to heat up again as the big three release competing new tech in the months ahead.

How's it stacking up? We're glad you asked. Fresh off our firsthand experiences with the big three's upcoming new devices at the E3 2010 convention, here's a quick look at what to expect from the hardware soon to be tempting you on store shelves.


Microsoft Kinect
Release Date: November 4

Price: Unannounced

The motion-sensing machine formerly known as Project Natal enjoyed a massive presence at E3 2010. In addition to a number of Microsoft's own games, several third-party publishers unveiled Kinect titles due out later this year.

Pros:

The good news is that Kinect mostly works as advertised. Simply standing in front of the camera triggers a quick calibration period, and from there, it's hands-free controller bliss. Whether you're striking yoga poses, driving a car with an imaginary wheel or busting out sweet dance moves, the system is up to the task. Coolest of all? Navigating menus with a flick of the wrist and controlling movie playback with your voice alone. "Xbox, pause!" Awesome.

Cons:

Despite the impressive technology under its hood, Kinetic doesn't always flawlessly copy your movement. We noticed a slight lag while playing several Kinect titles, just enough to temporarily suspend the sense of immersion. It's no dealbreaker, but we're hoping Microsoft spend the next few months ironing out the lag kinks.

Then there's the pricing issue. It's a bit unusual for a company to announce a firm release date for a new piece of hardware while withholding its price, but that's exactly how Microsoft played its hand at E3. Rumors of a $150 price tag could push this out of the comfort zone of its target family demographic. And while that demographic will undoubtedly be pleased with Kinetic's casual game lineup, the more hardcore gamers -- also the ones more willing to plunk down money on fancy new tech -- might be a little miffed at the lack of variety.

Top games:

Dance Central

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved

Kinectimals

Child of Eden


Playstation Move
Release date: September 19

Price: $49.99 - $99.99

Though plenty was already known about Sony's motion-sensing system, E3 2010 provided a venue for thousands to get their hands on the hardware and loads of games. Providing notably better accuracy than the Nintendo Wii remote, the Move hopes to lure in gamers growing tired of the Wii's limited technical capabilities.

Pros:

Give credit where credit is due: the Move is indeed far better at following your motions than the Wii remote. The tracking is tight and responsive, closer to the 1:1 dream consumers initially expected from Nintendo. Combined with the Playstation Eye camera, this allows for some unique applications like Eyepet, which places a cuddly virtual creature in the middle of the living room and turns your controller into a variety of pet rearing tools.

But Sony also went out of its way to show Move support in more robust titles, such as upcoming firefight SOCOM 4, light gun game Time Crisis: Razing Storm, golf king Tiger Woods 11 and recent adventure hit Heavy Rain. We're not sure Move will make traditional games better, but we're certainly glad Sony's giving it a shot.

Cons:

Yes, it's more accurate. Yes, it's more colorful. And yes, the camera opens up new possibilities. But no matter how hard Sony tried to make Move out to be a game changer at E3, we couldn't waggle away the feeling that they're just chasing Nintendo rather than blazing their own path. Until we see a Move game that truly pops off the screen, this feels more like a "could have" accessory than a "must-have" purchase.

Speaking of which, Sony's smoke and mirror act regarding the pricing isn’t helping. You can buy the motion-sensing wand for $49.99, but that's only useful if you already happen to own the Playstation Eye camera. If not, you'll need one of those, too ($39.99). Then there's the "navigator" (think Wii nunchuck), which costs an extra $29.99. Alternately, you can buy a bundle that includes one wand, the Playstation Eye and Sports Champions for $99.99. Confusing? You betcha, and that's not the word you want associated with the launch of your new hardware.

Top games:

Sorcery

SOCOM 4

Eyepet

Sports Champions



Nintendo 3DS

Release Date: Early 2011

Price: Unannounced

Nintendo turned E3 2010 into a coming out party for its ambitious 3DS portable, and what a party it was. The 3D-enabled handheld wowed showgoers with its amazing visuals, stealing the thunder from Microsoft and Sony's motion-sensing devices.

Pros:

All the 3D, none of the glasses! Or cost, really. While Sony showed off visually stunning but financially troubling games requiring 3D televisions and special specs, Nintendo blew everyone away with a flick of a switch. We tinkered with a few games and films during our brief hands on time with the prototype unit at E3, and suffice to say, the 3D effect works like a charm.

The system is more than just 3D, however. It's got all the features of the DSi -- Wifi, touch screen, clamshell design -- but throws in a few nice new ones, including an analog stick, a wider top screen running at 800 x 240 resolution, a front facing camera and cool dual outside cameras to allow for 3D picture taking.

Cons:

How many DS machines is too many DS machines? While the 3DS is designed from the ground up to play new 3D titles, it also plays the entire DS library. Of course, you might have just bought a DSi XL. Or a standard DSi. Or a DS Lite. Demand for new handhelds isn’t as great as demand for a new, HD-enabled Wii, yet this is where Nintendo has chosen to focus its attention.

We're also curious as to how, exactly, Nintendo plans on distributing 3D movies. Sony had loads of problems convincing consumers to buy UMD-based flicks for the PSP, and we'd expect the same pushback from 3DS owners if they're asked to purchase movies on cartridge. Presumably they'll just add movies to the DSiWare digital store, but until we learn more about the 3DS' storage capabilities, consider us skeptical.

Top games:

Kid Icarus Uprising

Pilotwings

Star Fox

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater

By Renay San Miguel
TechNewsWorld
06/16/10 1:52 PM PT

Sony's pushing hard for 3-D gaming on the PlayStation 3, but before anyone can enjoy in-your-face video games at home, they'll have to spend big on a 3-D television. It's a long-haul strategy, a course that Sony will have to remain on for years in order to start reaping benefits. In a way, it's reminiscent of the launch of the PlayStation 3 itself.
The auditorium darkens, the audience members put on their 3-D glasses, and a screen fills up with point-of-view images of sci-fi warfare -- futuristic soldiers leaping from one military platform to another in special weaponized jetpacks, raining death and destruction.

A scene from a potential sequel to James Cameron's "Avatar?" No, just another attempt to take that blockbuster film's success and translate it into another medium -- this time video games. The sequence from the forthcoming "Killzone 3" game was used to highlight Sony's (NYSE: SNE) 3-D strategy for its PlayStation 3 console during the company's Tuesday keynote presentation at the E3 conference in Los Angeles.

Indeed, Sony Computer Executive CEO Kaz Hirai told the crowd that 2010 would be looked upon as the year that his company was able to bring a compelling "Avatar"-style 3-D experience to the gaming industry. However, the question remains: Will consumers have the real-world bucks to spend on a suite of products that has to include a US$3,000-6,000 3-D-capable television? Will those same consumers have the patience for wearing stereoscopic glasses, also required for the full experience?

3-D is Sony's biggest bet and one of the more surprising (and audience-pleasing) aspects of its E3 keynote. The company also announced pricing and availability for its motion-control PlayStation Move system: $50 starting Sept. 19 in North America. A Navigation controller adds $30 to the cost, but consumers are being offered two bundles -- $100 for a Playstation Eye camera (vital to the Move platform), the Move wand, Navigation controller and a sports-themed game. $400 bucks gets you all that and a PS3.
Enough 3-D Content?
"Killzone 3" won't be coming out until early 2011, but Hirai announced the names of a few 3-D titles that will be available in time for this year's holiday shopping Planning for the next peak season? Ensure your website is fast, secure and available 24/7. Click here to learn how. season. There is some consolation on the hardware side: Fans won't have to buy any special peripherals for their existing PS3 units -- a software upgrade will make all existing PlayStation 3s ready for 3-D gaming.

Sony's 3D strategy reminds Michael Goodman, senior director of research and analytics for Mercury Media, of the first time the public was shown the PlayStation 3 itself half a decade ago. "It was a $600 unit that did everything but sit up and chew gum," Goodman told TechNewsWorld. "The problem was, they designed it for 2010 and launched it in 2006. Given the marketplace and penetration of HDTVs and broadband and over-the-box content, the PS3 is a wonderful product for this time. But in 2005, it was way ahead of the game."

Clearly 3-D gaming is a long-term play dependent on whether 3-D-ready TVs can come down enough in price. "Having that 3-D gaming perspective may help drive sales of 3-D TVs, but the reality is it's going to be quite some time, maybe five years, before there's any kind of installed base that makes it worthwhile. Sony thinks big -- you have to give them credit for that. But 3-D gaming is not about holiday 2010. It's about securing a place in the future."
3-D Gaming for the Industry

Perhaps "Killzone 3" can be the killer-app 3-D game, the "Halo" type of product that helps drive adoption of hardware, much as Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) futuristic first-person shooter did for the original Xbox.

"They're trying to create some solid examples of high-quality games that really illustrate the technology's potential," Scott Steinberg, CEO of video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global told TechNewsWorld. "They're creating what they hope are killer apps that allow players to experience what they think is compelling about 3-D."

However, without a "triple-A blockbuster" title to push people into consumer electronics stores, the current cost of 3-D gaming remains one of the higher obstacles for enthusiasts. Both Steinberg and Goodman used the "chicken-and-egg" metaphor to illustrate the concerns analysts have with 3-D and the gaming world. "There's not a massive range of compelling gaming content at this point. Manufacturers are hoping to drive sales of TV sets but they don't have the financial incentive to produce large investments in blockbuster-quality games, because there's not a potentially large enough audience to buy them," Steinberg said. "And you have shoppers who are saying, without content, why should we make the upgrade, especially when times are tight?"

Nintendo, Steinberg added, stands poised to reap better, immediate benefits of the 3-D craze in entertainment with its Nintendo 3DS, also introduced Tuesday in Los Angeles. The upgrade to the company's bestselling line of handheld gaming devices doesn't need glasses or a wallet-shredding 3-D TV to enjoy. It also doesn't put you in the driver's seat of a 22nd-century military jetpack, but "it's very portable, and while you're not going to have the same level of graphic fidelity or advancement, it may very well be the more compelling of the choices out there," he said.

by Ben Silverman
Never say never, gamers.

On Tuesday, Activision unveiled GoldenEye 007, a re-imagined take on a Nintendo 64 classic that many consider to be among the greatest first-person shooter games ever created. And like its forbear, the new version will be a Nintendo exclusive when it arrives this holiday for the Wii console.

The reveal took place during Nintendo's E3 2010 press conference, just hours before the official start of the game industry's annual mega-convention in Los Angeles. While Nintendo certainly made waves with its other announcements, the coming of a new GoldenEye rivals them all.

Perhaps the most notable tweak is a casting change. Current Bond Daniel Craig will replace traditional GoldenEye lead Pierce Brosnan as the star of the show, and while that might not sit well with GoldenEye purists, the game itself looks to stay true to form.

With an emphasis on multiplayer (the real hallmark of GoldenEye), the new effort boasts 40 different characters, 5 maps, 3 basic modes and 16 modifiers that will purportedly let gamers create over 500 different kinds of multiplayer games. It will also be playable online with up to 8 players and include some sort of experience system rewarding online play. The game will support multiple control schemes as well, including the somewhat underused Wii Zapper.

Released in 1997 for the N64, the original GoldenEye was a bona fide smash. It enjoys a startling 96 rating on Metacritic and has sold over eight million copies, making it far and away the best-selling Bond game ever.

Excited for the reboot? Share some of your GoldenEye memories in the comments.

by Chris Morris, CNBC.com
There’s a fox in the henhouse at E3 this year.

As Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo promote their upcoming hardware innovations and try to extend the life cycle of this generation of consoles, a burgeoning company called OnLive sits on the show floor of the video game industry’s trade show, sending out the message that dedicated game machines could be a thing of the past.
The idea behind OnLive is simple: Games are stored and played on its centralized servers (the "cloud," in tech parlance) and pushed to users via a broadband connection. When you press a button on your controller at home, that action is transmitted virtually instantaneously to the game and reflected on screen.

On the surface, it sounds like a just another delivery method—but what makes OnLive and other upcoming cloud-based gaming services interesting is their ability to transform almost any screen into a high end gaming system.

Core PC gamers spend thousands of dollars to put together systems loaded with RAM and bleeding edge graphics cards to get the most out of their games. But with cloud gaming, a $300 netbook or low-end desktop will be able to play games just as effectively, with optimized graphical and other gameplay settings – since all the processing is done remotely. OnLive will soon launch a peripheral for television sets as well, letting you play in your living room.

The iPhone and iPad are next logical steps—and while the company hasn’t announced any formal intention to support Apple’s products, it has shown demos of the service up and running on them, indicating plans are in the works.

“Cloud computing promises to have a marked effect on the gaming industry,” says Scott Steinberg, head of the video game consulting firm TechSavvy and founder of Game Industry TV. “It offers new ways for gamers to access and consume games over a variety of devices and you don’t have to own expensive hardware to play those games.”

OnLive isn’t the only company exploring this space. Gaming industry veteran Dave Perry is working on a similar platform, called Gaikai. And privately held Otoy is working on a software solution that would accomplish the same goal.

What makes OnLive stand out is its founder—Steve Perlman—who previous led development on the technology behind QuickTime and founded WebTV. The company also has several high profile investors, including AT&T Media Holdings and Warner Bros.

Those are noteworthy backers, as both are tied directly to cable providers. (AT&T owns U-verse and Warner’s parent company owns Time Warner Cable.) And many think the real strength of OnLive—or any cloud-based gaming company—will be when and if it aligns with a television content provider, dramatically expanding its customer base.

“How people are being served games is changing,” says Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets. “Anything that can incrementally get people to stay with an established cable or satellite service and keep paying a monthly fee would be embraced.”

The service isn’t without its hurdles, though. OnLive, which launches June 17, is untested in the open world. Still uncertain is whether games will be as responsive with subscribers as they are in controlled media demos. Many also wonder if they’ll be able to fully enjoy the service’s benefits with a typical broadband connection—or if they’ll need to pay more for faster service from their provider. And the monthly $14.95 service fee (which doesn’t include the price of games) could be offsetting to some as well.

In essence, games are becoming more accessible—but the price of admission might be too high for some. That means initially, the chief subscribers for cloud gaming are likely to be core gamers – who already have plenty of gaming options.

The potential, though, continues to turn heads. And while OnLive isn’t yet positioned to penetrate the mainstream market, independent publishers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft are getting on board early, hoping to reach new customers in non-traditional ways.

“{OnLive’s success] depends on what content is available,” says Sebastian. “If the tech hurdles are surpassed, the convenience factor is there. So it’s all a matter of making sure you’ve got the right games.”

Demo Available Now!: "NCAA Football 11"

by Gordon Cameron
The Cataclysm is coming.

In their ongoing quest to keep "World of Warcraft" fresh, the game-crafting geniuses at Blizzard Entertainment will soon be presenting the third retail expansion for their mega-successful online game.

Players who purchase the expansion will be able to create new characters from two new playable races: Goblins, a diminutive, green-skinned race of mercantile swindlers, and Worgen, humans who have been infected by a lycanthropy-like disease and are doomed to live as feral, wolflike hybrids. In addition, the game’s maximum level cap will be increased from 80 to 85, further raising the power of the game's players, and the number of spells and special abilities available to them. New high-level zones and dungeons are being added, including the airy, cloud-ringed Skywall, and the long-hidden Mount Hyjal.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though. Whereas previous expansions have focused on adding new geographical zones, Blizzard’s designers have decided this time to completely overhaul the original gameworld, which has remained largely unchanged since Warcraft’s debut in 2004. Thousands of new quests are being added, and the landscape itself has been altered – justified in story terms as the result of a rampage by the mighty dragon Deathwing. For example, the once-tranquil savannah known as “The Barrens” has been sundered by a massive lava-filled chasm, and the formerly dry-as-a-bone desert of Thousand Needles is now largely submerged underwater.

The expansion is designed both to attract new subscribers and keep current Warcrafters happy, according to Blizzard designer Tom Chilton. “People that have played the game in the past [that] stopped playing because they did everything there was to do, might feel more interested to come back and play the game once again, because … they get to go through these significantly new zones, this redesigned [level] 1-60 experience,” Chilton says.

A key priority is to bring the design of the original game up to the standards achieved in the first two expansions, “The Burning Crusade” and “Wrath of the Lich King.” “You can only go through the content so many times before it starts to feel a little bit stale,” Chilton notes. “We felt like it would be really nice to finally redo a lot of that... When you compare the more recent stuff to the older stuff, there’s a pretty big difference in quality. We want to try to equalize that quality a little bit better.”

On a technical level, graphics will also get a moderate facelift, with greatly improved water and atmospheric effects. “Changing out the graphics for [a massively multiplayer online game] is a lot like changing out the engines of an airplane while it’s flying,” Chilton laughs. “But we’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what we can do to incrementally evolve it over time without causing problems.”

An official release date for “Cataclysm” has not yet been announced, but speculation is that it will hit stores sometime this fall. More information will be forthcoming at Blizzcon, Blizzard’s annual convention, in July.

by Franklin Paul, Reuters
Japan's Nintendo Co Ltd on Tuesday took the wraps off a new version of its DS handheld device that can play games and show movies in 3D without glasses, in an effort to revitalize demand.
The device, introduced at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, comes with two screens -- one a touch screen -- and three built-in cameras that enable the machine to snap digital photos in 3D.

The company did not say when sales would begin, or give a retail price. It had previously suggested such a device would go on sale by March 2011.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime sought to refute the perception that sales of the Wii console are softening, and that the Wii -- which pioneered motion-sensing gaming via an all-purpose controller -- has lost its luster as rival platforms gain momentum.
Calling these notions "false perceptions," Fils-Aime said more software was sold for the Wii in 43 months on the market than on any other platform over the same time.

The introduction comes one month after Nintendo forecast a second straight year of smaller profits as sales of its Wii console slow.

Nintendo rode strong demand for the Wii and DS handheld game player to three straight years of record profits through March 2009, but growth slowed last year after Sony and Microsoft cut console prices and beefed up their software offerings.

Growing competition from Apple Inc's iPhone, other smartphones and social networks are also starting to pose a threat to Nintendo's DS portable player, analysts say.

by Chris Morris
June 14 5:45 P.M.

Not too many years ago, Electronic Arts was a company that was avoiding the first-person shooter genre. These days, it’s counting heavily on it.

The company showed a lineup that was bullet-heavy at its 2010 E3 press conference, highlighting shooters that will likely cheer action fans and court controversy from game violence opponents. And as if to underscore their commitment to the genre, EA is launching a new customer loyalty program, dubbed “Gun Club,” tailored to appeal to action fans.

The program, which is live now at gunclub.ea.com, will give members early access to betas and demos as well as codes to unlock weapons in games. Members who join now and pre-order “Medal of Honor” will be able to begin playing the multiplayer beta of that game on June 17 – four days before the rest of the world.

Here’s a rundown on some of the action titles EA showcased at its event.


“Medal of Honor” – Multiplayer was the focus of this year’s demo of the long-awaited reboot of this seminal action franchise. DICE, the team behind the top-selling “Battlefield: Bad Company 2” is working on that side of the game, while another team focuses on the single-player campaign. EA demonstrated a live 24 person match during the press conference, which went surprisingly smoothly considering the unfinished nature of the game. The multiplayer beta launches on June 24, and the game will be out on Oct. 12.

“Bulletstorm” – With completely over-the-top violence, and language that would make a sailor blush, this new shooter from Epic Games and People Can Fly is pure carnal fun. Excessive it might be, but it could still be a cathartic release for gamers seeking stress relief. It’s due Feb. 22, 2011.


“Crysis 2” – This futuristic shooter is set in New York City, and authentically recreates the town using a proprietary, advanced graphics engine. Developer Crytek showed an exhilarating firefight set in Grand Central Station, but its depiction of the collapse of the MetLife building under enemy fire could court controversy from outside of the industry, as it will bring unwelcome 9/11 memories to mind in many viewers. The game will ship (in 3D) for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this holiday season.

“Dead Space 2” – Isaac Clarke will battle more necromorphs in this sequel to futuristic horror-shooter Dead Space, which earned critical acclaim in 2008. The game’s as scary as fans might hope – with developers showing off a scene set in a cathedral complete with feral, hairless baby creatures doing their best to chomp a bite out of Isaac. The game’s set to release on Jan. 25, 2011.

While shooters were the main focus of today's press conference, EA also revealed some substantial changes and new features for previously announced games – and may have found a way to re-energize one of its oldest franchises.

“Madden NFL 11” is undergoing a fairly substantial change after two years of lower than expected sales. Hoping to make the game more accessible to players, EA is cutting game times by half and reworking the way gamers call plays. The company is also introducing three-on-three cooperative gaming online. It’s a risky gamble -- while it could succeed in luring new players, an oversimplification of the brand could alienate its devoted followers, who regularly take the day off of work when it’s released each fall.

EA Sports's other big bet this year – “MMA” – introduces a new gameplay mode dubbed “EA Sports Live Broadcast,” which will let stream live in-game fights, complete with live, human commentators, and prizes. Players will create their own fighters, then can record themselves smack-talking the opposition, before sharing their clips online. The game launches Oct. 19 – and EA is certainly hoping it outperforms rival THQ’s “UFC” game, which was a massive sales disappointment earlier this year.

The “Need for Speed” series, which has been on the verge of becoming an afterthought, will get a much-needed boost as developer Criterion Software, makers of the widely loved “Burnout” series of racing games have taken over stewardship of the series. “Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit” will launch Nov. 16, and lets players play as either a racer or police officer, using a new matchmaking system to learn when friends beat their best scores or achievements.

Finally, fans of “The Sims” will see “The Sims 3” come to consoles this fall – and those hoping to learn a bit more about the still undated massively multiplayer online game “Star Wars: The Old Republic” were likely a bit disappointed. Aside from the announcement of player vs. player action (which had long been assumed) and that every player would get their own in-game ship, Bioware let another CGI trailer for the game do the talking.

By ROY FURCHGOTT
Published: June 13, 2010
Best Buy is giving away a cellphone application intended to get audiences to use their phones during movies.

The free app, Best Buy Movie Mode, is being released in connection with Universal Pictures for the July 9 release of “Despicable Me,” an animated 3-D movie in which an aspiring supervillain named Gru inherits three little girls.

The marquee feature of the app is called the Minionator, which translates the gibberish of Gru’s little yellow henchmen called Minions. In theaters, the Minionator will work only during the closing credits, but when watching a Blu-ray disc, users can translate lines throughout the movie.

The app, being a movie promotion, tells people where “Despicable Me” is playing and also where Best Buy stores can be found. It will available for iPhones and Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones.

Best Buy Movie Mode would seem an anathema to film lovers who think that talking and texting already interfere with the theater experience. “It is disturbing to have people doing things that take people out of the movie,” said Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theater Owners. Many theaters warn patrons to turn off their phones.

Movie Mode tries to appease those who dislike distractions. The app automatically turns off a phone’s ringer and dims the screen to discourage texting. It does not disable the phone. It will still vibrate, so if the baby sitter calls with an emergency, parents can respond.

Mr. Corcoran predicted that people would not mind phones glowing if they were warned that a showing would feature Movie Mode. “If it is part of the advertising; you know what you are getting into ahead of time,” he said. Mr. Corcoran said he expected there would also have to be some special “No Movie Mode” showings.

Some movie houses already use a technology called MuVChat to let people text comments that are shown on the screen during a film.

Best Buy declined to say how the app might be used aside from “Despicable Me.” “We are not discussing that right now,” said Chris Homeister, general manger of home entertainment group at Best Buy. He said that the app would not become obsolete. “We believe this app has tremendous life after ‘Despicable Me,’ ” said Mr. Homeister.

Oliver Chiang is a contributor in the Silicon Valley bureau of Forbes.


In the Forbes article "The Next FarmVille" on Thursday, we take a look at the biggest online games worldwide among massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like "World of Warcraft," virtual worlds and social games, ranking them by total revenue in 2009.

The figures we arrived at were based on estimates by video game research firm DFC Intelligence, and public information from companies' filings.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft" continued its unmatched success, raking in more than $1 billion in revenue last year. But what is interesting is who dominated the rest of the list -- virtually all titles from China and Korea.

Games like NetEase's "Fantasy Westward Journey" and Perfect World's "Perfect World" raked in hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Even more impressive -- online games from China and Korea are free-to-play, and make money primarily through sales of virtual goods, rather than subscription fees like "Warcraft." With revenues like the Chinese and Korean game companies are seeing, it's no wonder Western game companies have been taking notes.

For instance, publisher Turbine made the flagging and subscription-based "Dungeons & Dragons Online" into a free-to-play game last September, and reported in Februrary that its revenues had increased by 500% as a result.

And where was that hit crops-and-cows Facebook game on the list? "FarmVille" from Zynga came in just after the top 10 with its $50 million in 2009 revenue. That's actually pretty impressive, considering that it was launched midway through 2009 in June. And if rumored growth figures are to be believed, Zynga itself isn't doing too badly, with a revenue run-rate this year of around $600 million, according to Business Insider.

Here is the top 10 by 2009 revenue. For the entire list, see "The Biggest Hits In Online Gaming":

1. "World Of Warcraft" by Blizzard Entertainment (U.S.): $1 billion
2. "Fantasy Westward Journey" by NetEase (China): $400 million
3. "Perfect World" by Perfect World (China): $300 million
4. "Lineage I" and "II" by NCsoft (South Korea): $270 million
5. "Tian Long Ba Bu" by Changyou (China): $250 million
6. "Aion" by NCsoft (South Korea): $230 million
7. "MapleStory" by Nexon Corporation (South Korea): $200 million
8. "ZT Online" by Giant Interactive (China): $190 million
9. "The World Of Legend" / "Legends Of Mir" by Shanda Interactive Entertainment (China): $150 million
10. "Final Fantasy XI" by Square Enix (Japan): $117 million

By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang, Ap Entertainment Writer – Sun Jun 13, 10:59 am ET

LOS ANGELES – There might be something for everyone at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Once a boisterous bastion for geeky gamers, the gaming industry's annual convention has in recent years morphed into a more modest showcase of the latest in hardware and games from publishers and developers who now want to reach consumers of all kinds — not just guys. This year's E3 is likely to mimic last year's shift to a cautiously glitzy affair.

Nearly 250 exhibitors, including publishing giants Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, plan to hype their latest games and gizmos. The Entertainment Software Association expects 45,000 attendees this week, which would be 4,000 more folks than last year. That's still shy of the massive crowd of 70,000 who flocked to the Los Angeles Convention Center back in 2005.

"I think there will be a couple of surprises and a couple of expected things," said Greg Zeschuk, co-founder at Electronic Arts' BioWare. "Obviously, the thing that Sony and Microsoft are going for is to broaden their reach with consumers. It'll be interesting to get hands on and see what kind of products they'll have that use the motion controls."

Microsoft and Sony unveiled their respective motion-control doodads at last year's E3 and will focus their attention at this year's show on games that use the camera-based systems. Nintendo, who launched motion control into the mainstream in 2006 with the Wii, will meanwhile flaunt their pulse-detecting Wii Vitality Sensor and the 3DS, a 3-D handheld device.

In anticipation of the expo, which kicks off Sunday, Sony lunged into 3-D gaming last week by releasing three downloadable 3-D games for the PlayStation 3. The publisher plans to demonstrate 3-D versions of bigger games at E3, such as "Killzone 3" and "Gran Turismo 5." Other game makers will also exhibit 3-D titles that require a 3-D TV or computer.

Besides motion control and 3-D gaming, many attendees will no doubt be buzzing about what effect mobile and cheap-to-produce-and-play online games, such as "FarmVille" and "Mafia Wars," will have on the industry, though such titles won't have a major presence at the convention. Developers of bigger games are now paying attention to the popular little guys.

"I see it as quite an interesting challenge," said Jamie Jackson, creative director at Activision's FreeStyleGames. "It feels to me it's the start of a new type of gaming. It feels like it's going to be here to stay. It doesn't feel like it's going to go away. It almost reminds me of when handheld blew up again, and we started seeing the DS and the PSP."

Jackson will be showing off "DJ Hero II" at E3. The music game boasts new modes and songs featuring Lady Gaga and Rihanna. In a sign that the genre isn't played out, game makers will add the adventurous "Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock," hip-hop rap-along "Def Jam Rapstar" and "Rock Band 3," which introduces a piano controller, to the E3 mix.

E3 will also include celebrity appearances and absurdly lavish soirees. "The O.C." actress Rachel Bilson is hosting THQ's "Homefront" pool party while "Saturday Night Live" cast member Kenan Thompson is throwing EA's "Bulletstorm" bash. "Deadliest Catch" captain Sig Hansen and "Man vs. Wild" explorer Bear Grylls will descend on the Crave Games booth.

More importantly, the convention will serve as an opportunity for people in the gaming industry to see what their peers have been working on. Josh Olin, community manager for "Call of Duty: Black Ops" developer Treyarch, is looking forward to experiencing "Gears of War III," the third installment of Epic Games' bloody third-person shooter series.

"I'm a big 'Gears of War' fan," said Olin. "They have always told a great story, and they have a great narrative. Personally, I'm a single-player guy. I really live for good action stories. With 'Black Ops,' of course, we're telling a pretty good story this time, so that makes me happy, but 'Gears of War III' is another big one I'm looking for at E3."

Other new installments slated to be on display include intergalactic first-person prequel "Halo: Reach," expansive role-playing sequel "Fable III" and cyborg blaster "Deus Ex: Human Revolution." Among the anticipated franchise follow-ups are survival space thriller "Dead Space 2," futuristic shooter "Crysis 2" and behemoth zombie slasher "Dead Rising 2."

There will probably be surprises of new sequels, too. Games rumored to be making their debut at E3 include a next-generation edition of the James Bond first-person shooter "GoldenEye 007," a new "Legend of Zelda" title for the Wii and possible third chapters of the alternate history first-person saga "Resistance" and action-adventure series "Uncharted."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://www.e3expo.com/

by Ben Silverman
And you thought those piano lessons were a waste of time.


USA Today was lucky enough to score a backstage pass to meet Rock Band 3, and they've come back with loads of juicy details, not the least of which is confirmation of a new instrument: a keyboard.

The new peripheral will work just like the other Rock Band instruments, tasking players with matching colored keys flowing down a virtual note highway. It isn’t just another plastic toy, however. Boasting 25 keys, it plays just like a legit keyboard, and can even be used outside the game, thanks to full MIDI functionality.

Emphasizing the game's more realistic approach is the newly unveiled Pro mode. Playing keyboards in this mode requires the use of all 25 keys; at its highest difficulty setting, it will closely match the actual keyboard parts, potentially turning gamers into real players.

That mode will be extended to the other instruments as well. For guitarists, realistic musical notation will replace the familiar colored notes, guiding players up and down the fretboard of two brand new guitar controllers. One is a full-sized Fender Squier Stratocaster -- six strings and all -- that, says Harmonix PR head John Drake "can tell where your fingers are based on technology in the neck and the bridge of the guitar. No buttons."

June 11, 2010


Disney Interactive is continuing to exploit its children's virtual world properties for console and portable video games. This week saw Disney announce Club Penguin Game Day! for Nintendo Wii to tie in with Club Penguin and Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue for Nintendo DS to tie in with Pixie Hollow. Game Day! will be Club Penguin's first home console title and will focus on multi-player mini-games.

The connectivity element of Game Day! will allow players to synchronize their games directly with their Club Penguin online accounts. This will allow the Club Penguin virtual world to track when players unlock new achievements or make other progress in Game Day!. Players will also be able to earn virtual currency for Club Penguin by playing mini-games included in the Wii disc.

For Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, players will be able to create a fairy avatar using a library of over 260 customization pieces and then transfer it directly to the Pixie Hollow virtual world. Players will also be able to create avatars in Pixie Hollow and then transfer them to the DS game for use. DS players will be able to send postcards to Pixie Hollow players or transfer items between their two accounts.

The DS game's plot concerns fairies leaving Pixie Hollow to stay in an area called Fairy Camp. Once there, the fairies are tasked with beginning springtime in the English Countryside, using a variety of different skills. The DS game will also tie in with an upcoming Tinker Bell DTV film about Tinker Bell living for a brief time in the human world with a girl called LIzzy.

Posted By Preeti Aroon Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - 6:00 PM
Quiz question for the week:

Which country spends the most time on social-networking websites?

a) Italy b) Japan c) United States

A, Italy. Italian users of social-networking sites spent an average 6 hours, 28 minutes, on activities such as twittering and "friending" people in February of this year, according to media-information firm Nielsen. American social networkers were similarly addicted, with 6 hours, 3 minutes, that month, while the Japanese, at 2 hours, 37 minutes, appear to spend their time on other activities (I suspect they're on sites not included in Nielsen's analysis). Overall, social networking is more and more of a time-suck. In the 10 countries analyzed by Nielsen, average social-networking time reached 5 hours, 28 minutes, in February 2010, up more than 2 hours from February 2009.

(It would have been nice if Nielsen had provided information for more than 10 countries, but that's the best I can get you at this point.)


Another interesting tidbit: The average Facebook user logged on 19 times in February and spent 5 minutes, 52 minutes, total on the site.

by Mike Smith
Social gaming had been one of the biggest growth areas in video games, but the category has recently fallen on hard times. Numerous top Facebook games have taken a steep dive in popularity over the last few months.

It's not just the everyday ebb and flow of users between games, either. According to numbers from Inside Social Games, 23 of the 25 biggest Facebook games lost monthly average users in June, some by as much as 20%.
For many games, it's the second month of decline, and although many are gaining ground in daily average users -- indicating the players that remain are increasingly engaged with their games -- the news is sure to have furrowed brows in social game development boardrooms around the world.

Industry observers point to Facebook itself for the declining numbers, specifically to a change the company made in March around social game notifications. Players are no longer hit with constant updates on every tiny happening in these games, a move Facebook described at the time as an effort to make interactions "more streamlined, clear, and less spammy for users."

Most games quickly switched to email notifications, but not all their players have necessarily switched with them. The changes are bound to have reduced the visibility of Facebook games to many players.

But don't expect the games to be going away. At this week's unveiling of Apple's newest iPhone, Zynga -- which owns several of the affected games -- took the wraps off its latest version of Farmville, which will run on the iPhone. Like many news and IM iPhone programs, Farmville will use the phone's push notification system to keep iPhone farmers updated on their farm's development.
Zynga's also rolling out its newest game, Wild West-themed Frontierville, this week. Designed by Brian Reynolds, who gamers will remember for his work on strategy classics like Civilization II, it's been dubbed "Oregon Trail meets Little House on the Prairie meets FarmVille." It's Reynolds' first social game, and a deliberate attempt to reach a more diverse audience than existing social games have achieved. He's hoping as many as five million Facebookers will try the game this week alone.

The surprise decline has largely spared the abundance of smaller Facebook games, many of which continue to post significant gains in daily users. Notable climbers include Zynga's Mafia Wars -- one of the original breakout social networking hits -- and new titles like EA Sports' FIFA Superstars, released to coincide with the coming World Cup.