1）日本社交平台GREE日前宣布在中国成立北京工作室，该工作室开业初期将有10名成员入驻，将与其当地合作伙伴腾讯和九城加强联系。

Gree-logo(from toucharcade.com)

2）法国发行商Gameloft日前在基于PC端的日本社交游戏平台Yahoo Mobage发布了热门第一人称射击游戏《N.O.V.A. Elite》（游戏邦注：该游戏已推iOS和Facebook版本）。但有观察者称Gameloft之前在日本市场投放的农场模拟游戏《Ecofarm》表现不济，而日本玩家也并不像世界其他用户一样喜欢玩射击游戏，所以Gameloft这款出色的游戏能否受到欢迎仍然有待观望。

Yahoo!Mobage(from serkantoto)

3）谷歌首席执行官Larry Page在日前电话会议中公布了旗下产品的相关数据:

google-plus(from 36kr.com)

Google+用户已达1000万；

Google+用户每天在该平台上分享的内容超过10亿次；

Chrome用户已达1.6亿；

Android移动设备每日激活量达55万部；

用户每天使用23亿次的+1按钮；

谷歌总营收达90.3亿美元，比去年上升32%；

谷歌旗下网站营收达62.3亿美元。

谷歌当前项目可划分为三大类：一是搜索和广告，这是谷歌主要营收来源；二是使用率最高的产品Chrome和YouTube；三是Google+、Commerce和Local这种新产品。Larry Page称新产品目前还不具有盈利性，但它们可以为谷歌的未来发展铺路。

4）据pocketgamer报道，EA以6.5亿美元现金、1亿美元股票，外加5000万美元作为保证未来四年员工留存率的费用，以及5.5亿美元的额外对价收购了PopCap，这笔收购的代价就是EA向摩根史坦利、UBS和摩根大通借贷5.5亿美元以凑足支付PopCap的款项。为了偿还这笔借贷，EA将出售5.5亿美元的可转换债券。

EA-PopCap(from 2dayblog.com)

5）据gamezebo报道，Zynga日前再次聘请一名EA资深游戏开发元老Mark Turmell加盟团队。Turmell曾参与开发《NBA Jam》和《NFL Blitz》等体育游戏项目，是EA Tiburon的前高级创意总监，在此之前曾在Midway任职。

6）日本在线游戏协会（The Japan Online Game Association）最近发布了该国2010年的在线游戏收益，指出去年日本在线游戏市场总营收为1329亿日元（约合16.8亿美元），比2009年增长3%。其中包装类游戏软件销售额达294亿日元（约合3.72亿美元），在线游戏营收则是1035亿日元（约合13.1亿美元）。

该报告首次单独统计社交游戏市场规模，并指出2010年日本社交游戏总营收为2355亿日元（约合29.8亿美元）。

7）据BBC报道，约旦人Suleiman Bakhit日前推出一款社交游戏《Happy Oasis》，旨在抵制伊斯兰极端主义思想，以使阿拉伯儿童免受极端分子思想的荼毒。

Bakhit此前在美国明尼苏达大学时曾因9.11事件而受到四名美国人攻击，于是他决心通过漫画教育阿拉伯孩子不要误入歧途，后来又转向了Facebook，他称希望通过自己的行为让世人了解，阿拉伯人并不都是恐怖分子，印刷媒介正在走向消亡，但每天都有3000万阿拉伯用户访问Facebook，所以他打打算通过社交游戏来传递这些信息。

Happy Oasis(from games)

8）国际广告平台SponsorPay最近推出可提高社交游戏用户粘性和盈利的新产品BrandEngage，支持发行商在Facebook等社交网站的游戏或应用中植入CPE（按粘性付费）的广告项目，例如视频、广告游戏或品牌内容，让非付费用户与游戏中的广告内容进行互动，从而赢取虚拟道具。

9）百代唱片（EMI）最近与音乐社交游戏开发商MXP4签约合作，向后者用户提供Lily Allen、Gorillaz、David Guetta等艺人的音乐内容，用户可免费播放这些艺人的60秒剪辑音乐，也可以用Facebook Credits购买完整的歌曲。

Bopler Games on Facebook will feature tracks from EMI artists(from guardian)

MXP4将把百代唱片提供的这些音乐添加至Bopler Games这款聚合型游戏应用中，该应用目前处于测试阶段，每周都将添加新音乐，预计到8月份用户将可体验其中的12款游戏，并通过其中的挑战和锦标赛等社交功能与好友进行互动。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）GREE Beijing: GREE Opens Office In China

by Dr. Serkan Toto

GREE continues to go global: after announcing plans for offices in London, Singapore and Beijing back in March, the company today said it has established GREE Beijing, Inc.

In China’s capital, GREE is close to local partner Tencent (the QQ operator) and to Shanghai-based and NASDAQ-listed gaming company The9, with which GREE announced a partnership in April.

GREE’s Beijing office will initially be staffed with 10 people.（source:serkantoto）

2）Gameloft Releases N.O.V.A. Elite On Yahoo Mobage

by Dr. Serkan Toto

While I still think Gameloft has wasted money by releasing farming simulation Ecofarm in Japan (there are dozens of games like this in Japan’s social gaming market already), the company yesterday launched a far more promising title over here: N.O.V.A. Elite, a super-popular FPS already launched on iOS and Facebook, is now available on Yahoo Mobage.

Yahoo Mobage is a PC-based social gaming platform (the biggest of its kind in Japan), jointly operated by Yahoo Japan and Mobage operator DeNA. It currently has over four million users.

While it’s true that Japanese players aren’t into shooting games as much as their counterparts in other places of the world, Gameloft’s title does stand out of the crowd as a very solid FPS: Yahoo Mobage users who are interested in the genre are sure to jump on it.（source:serkantoto）

3）Google Plus Users Top 10 Million; 1 Billion Items Shared Each Day

By Abraham Hyatt

Google announced its second quarter earnings today and the numbers are a significant reversal from the slight dip the company saw in Q1. Google’s gross revenue was $9.03 billion, more than what investors had projected.

CEO Larry Page kicked off the earnings conference call and described not only the financial data but some other notable figures as well: the number of Google Plus users, how much they’re sharing, how widely Chrome has been adopted and the current activation rate for Android devices.

10 million Google Plus users

1 billion items a day are being shared on Google Plus

160 million Chrome users

550,000 Android devices are being activated a day, with 160 million overall users

+1 Button is being served 2.3 billion times a day

$9.03 billion in gross revenue, up 32% from last year

$6.23 billion in revenue from Google-owned sites

Page broke Google’s projects into three different categories: search and advertising, which are the core drivers of the company’s revenue stream; high-usage products like Chrome and YouTube; and new products like Google Plus, Commerce and Local.

Those emerging products aren’t monitized, he said, but they can generate “huge new business” for Google over time. He stressed that the company has experience monitizing successful products on a long-term basis. But that growth is also dependent on high customer usage, a point he acknowledged as he talked about Google’s future health. （source:readwriteweb）

4）After the exuberance comes the loan: EA’s selling $550 million stock options to pay for PopCap

by Jon Jordan

Having announced it’s going to splash the cash for PopCap, EA now has to finance a deal that will cost it $650 million in cash, $100 million in shares, plus another $50 million over four years for staff retention.

And, there’s a potential $550 million in earnout if PopCap profits go through the roof too.

Paper for cash

In the short term, EA has taken a $550 million loan from the likes of Morgan Stanley, UBS and Morgan Chase so it could fund the cash part of the PopCap deal.

To pay them back however, it’s announced it’s going to offer $550 million of convertible stock options.

They will be sold in a private placement to finance companies, and convert into EA stock on 15 July 2016, also yielding interest payments on January 15 and July 15 annually, starting 2012.

To reduce potential dilution of current shareholders, EA will also have to sort out convertible note hedge and warrant transactions. It’s all highly complex, but you can read all about in the press release.（source: pocketgamer）

5）EA Sports creative director heads to Zynga

By Andrew Webster

Zynga has added another talented game developer to its growing roster, this time in the form Mark Turmell, one of the creative forces behind sports series like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz.

The news comes via Kotaku, though we don’t know yet what Turmell will be working on at Zynga. He left a position as senior creative director at EA Tiburon, a studio focused largely on developing EA Sports games. Prior to that Turmell worked at Midway, where he helped develop several arcade-style sports series, including NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and NBA Ballers.

Zynga has hired a number of notable game developers in the past, including strategy game designers Brian Reynolds and Bruce Shelley. However, sports games are one area the developer has yet to put much focus on, which could be the reason behind the new hire.（source:gamezebo）

6）Japan Saw Slight Online Gaming Growth In 2010

by Mike Rose

The Japan Online Game Association has revealed that revenue from online gaming in Japan increased ever so slightly in 2010 compared to the year before.

As reported by Andriasang, the Japanese online games market saw ¥132.9 billion ($1.68 billion) of revenue in total in 2010.

This figure was up 3 percent compared to the previous year, and included ¥29.4 billion ($372 million) for package software sales, and ¥103.5 billion ($1.31 billion) for online game operation.

JOGA also tracked social games for the first time in 2010, which it reports separately from online gaming.

The company found that social games took ¥235.5 billion ($2.98 billion) in total revenue during 2010.（source:gamasutra）

7）Arab Facebook game Happy Oasis hopes to end Islamic extremism

by Joe Osborne

Now, that’s a social game for social good. Happy Oasis, created by Jordan native Suleiman Bakhit, looks to nip Islamic extremism in the bud, the BBC reports. Bakhit made the game, which launched this week to 59 thousand players, in hopes of providing a role model for Arab children who might otherwise be persuaded by extremist views.

While studying at the University of Minnesota in the U.S, Bakhit was attacked by four men shortly after the 9/11 tragedy because he was an Arab, the BBC reports. Bakhit, instead of turning to bitterness, decided to educate Arab kids back home in Jordan through positive comic books, and later Facebook games like Happy Oasis.

His comic books–like one about a female Arab secret agent that dispatches extremists–sold 300 thousand copies alone, prompting Bakhit to the web where 30 million Arabs use Facebook every day. Now, Bakhit looks to take the comic books (and we hope the Facebook game) to Pakistan, where issues of extremism are growing.

“I realized that you fight extremism by starting with the young. The message was simple–’We are not all terrorists’,” he told the BBC. “Print media is dying but there are 30 million Arabs on Facebook so I thought about making social games with the same message,” Bakhit said.（source:games）

8）Social Games Monetization: SponsorPay Launches BrandEngage

By Sebastian SujkaShare

International advertising platform SponsorPay has announced their latest product, BrandEngage, to boost user engagement and monetization in social games. BrandEngage enables publishers to integrate CPE (cost-per-engagement) campaigns such as videos, advergames or branded content in any game or app on Facebook and other social networks. “Social games have become a new mass entertainment channel reaching hundreds of millions of users globally. BrandEngage combines the trends of integrated advertising and interactive ad units with online and social games leading to deeper brand engagement for advertisers and, consequently, higher monetization for publishers,” said Janis Zech, Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder at SponsorPay.

For the overwhelming majority of free-to-play social, online and mobile games publishers, revenues come from a 1 to 5 percent of users who pay for virtual goods. SponsorPay’s BrandEngage monetizes the remainder of players by letting them earn virtual items through bespoke in-game brand interaction. These ‘top of the funnel’ users are introduced to earning virtual goods through frictionless offers such as watching videos or playing advergames. “BrandEngage not only boosts engagement in our community but also monetizes players who are reluctant to participate in regular offers. Within a few days of integration, we have already seen excellent conversion effects with users actively seeking out videos in our online world,” said Sebastian Funke, CEO and co-founder at publisher Smeet, a 3D social game.

Brand engagement campaigns have seen a massive 98% increase globally as online video advertising spending continues to grow to a forecasted one-third of display ad spending by 2014. Game developers can employ BrandEngage as an unlocking tool for access to higher levels and virtual goods or to showcase special promotions. Campaigns are driven using SponsorPay’s demographic and geographic targeting algorithms to ensure the most relevant content for users worldwide. This content can be presented in a variety of ways including overlays as well as in-game integration techniques.（source:socialgamesobserver）

9）EMI inks Facebook social games licensing deal with MXP4

EMI has become the first major label to sign a partnership to sell music within a social game on Facebook using the social network’s Facebook Credits virtual currency.

The major label has agreed a deal with social games publisher MXP4 to make a range of tracks from artists including Lily Allen, Gorillaz, the Jackson 5 and David Guetta available within MXP4′s Bopler Games collection on Facebook.

Fans will be able to play a selection of rhythm games for free with 60-second clips of the songs, but will have to pay using Facebook Credits for access to the full songs. MXP4 struck separate deals with EMI’s recorded music and publishing divisions.

“Games are a high-growth digital business, so we are always on the lookout for ways to license our music or have our artists involved in that area,” says Cosmo Lush, EMI’s vice president of digital business development.

“We are talking to lots of different potential partners across the games business, but MXP4 were very forward-looking and keen to move quickly to get some of our music licensed and get going.”

“This is the first time a music label and publisher have signed such a deal using the freemium business model,” says Albin Serviant, MXP4′s chief executive. “We expect more signatures from other publishers and labels by the end of August for the commercial launch of Bopler Games.”

The games are currently in beta, with new EMI tracks being added every week. By August, there will be 12 games to play, with social features including challenges and tournaments wrapped around them.（source:guardian）