1）游戏发行商EA日前宣布收购独立手游戏开发商Bight Games（主要针对苹果iOS平台开发免费游戏），但并未公布具体成交金额。

Bight Games代表作品是《Trade Nations》，该游戏经常位列App Store前50应用营收榜单。该公司位于加拿大爱德华王子岛，其开发团队也将加入EA加拿大游戏团队。

2）据Fusible报道，尽管Zynga收购了Newtoy及其开发的《Words With Friends》等系列游戏，并打算注册“With Friends”商标以保护这一品牌，但另一家公司inXile Entertainment首席执行官Brian Fargo也正在注册12个含有“With Friends”字眼的不同游戏商标，并于8月9日通过的一家名为Roxy Friday,LLC的公司向美国专利商标局提交了注册申请。

据称Fargo本人就是Roxy Friday的一名高管，后者的iPhone游戏《Platform Racing》发行商就是inXile Entertainment。该公司此次准备注册的游戏商标包括：

·Farkle With Friends

·Gin Rummy With Friends

·Canasta With Friends

·Yacht With Friends

·Mahjong With Friends

·Cribbage With Friends

·Backgammon With Friends

·Dominos With Friends

·Pinochle With Friends

·Solitaire With Friends

·Sudoku With Friends

·Crosswords With Friends

3）俄罗斯开发商ZeptoLab在日前的媒体采访中表示，将向Android平台发布《Cut the Rope: Experiments》这款共有75个关卡的继集版游戏，但并未透露该游戏在Android平台的定价标准或具体发布日期。

4）据TechCrunch报道，芬兰开发商Rovio日前宣布推出小鸟主题中秋月饼，但这些月饼目前仅限于中秋节期间在中国地区的“愤怒的小鸟”实体门店出售，每对月饼的售价为38港币（约合4.9美元）。

5）据venturebeat报道，由Funzio开发的社交游戏《Crime City》登陆iOS平台仅5天，就实现了100万次下载量，目前已跻身苹果App Store应用营收榜单前10名。

该公司首席运营官Anil Dharni表示，3D风格的动画效果以及有趣的玩法是这个游戏版本获得成功的原因之一。《Crime City》在发布iOS版本之前，已在Facebook虏获550万MAU，进军App Store时就获得了该应用商店的推荐。该公司之前也在广告网络上推广这款游戏，并使游戏收获大量好评，但并没有采用Tapjoy这类奖励刺激下载服务。

6）Harmonix公司（游戏邦注：代表作包括《摇滚乐队》和《Dance Central》）联合创始人及首席执行官Alex Rigopulos日前表示，公司的神秘项目《VidRhythm》实际上是一款iOS游戏。该公司曾在2007年针对iPod开发了《Phase》，并在2009年与EA蒙特利尔工作室合作推出iOS游戏《摇滚乐队》，本次推出的《VidRhythm》是其首款完全自主开发的iOS游戏。

他表示该项目由一个小团队开发，他看好智能手机游戏领域的发展前景，但并不透露关于该项目的更多细节。

7）Facebook游戏开发商OMGPOP日前宣布公司于7月20日发布的iOS游戏《Puppy World》已超过100万次下载量。据该公司首席执行官Dan Porter所称，该游戏的一大特色在于与其Facebook游戏之间的交叉推广。这款iOS游戏有20%的下载量来自Facebook及其公司网站的交叉推广渠道，还有20%来自付费广告；这款游戏每天创造收益为2万美元。

《Puppy World》支持玩家通过Facebook分享游戏成就，推动游戏的病毒式传播（游戏邦注：据insidesocialgames报道，Facebook发言人最近表示，虽然Facebook禁止该平台的Canvas应用接入“任何其他社交网站”，但开发商可以将Facebook游戏与其iOS、Android版本相绑定）。

8）Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project最新调查报告表明，83%美国人口是手机用户，其中智能手机用户占35%（游戏邦注：调查时间为2011年4月26日至5月22日，共有2277名18岁以上成人受访者）。

95%年龄介于18至29岁的用户经常使用手机短信功能，91%用手机拍照，64%通过手机上网，58%用手机播放音乐，而30至49岁的群体使用这些手机功能的用户比例则略为下降；在50岁以上的用户群体中，仅有58%使用短信功能，26%使用手机上网。调查称拥有大学文凭的用户最喜欢使用非语音应用，而非白种人的拉美用户、非籍美国用户使用这些功能的比例也高于白人手机用户。

调查还发现，51%受访者常使用手机“迅速获取所需内容”，约40%用户常通过手机解决紧急情况，27%受访者称自己几乎不能没有手机。

在智能手机用户中，有79%受访者称自己使用手机快速获取所需信息，有72%会在无聊时使用手机解闷，有36%智能手机用户无法忍受低网络速度，仅有22%表示用手机阅读信息很不便（游戏邦注：这主要是受到屏幕大小的限制）。有69%的智能手机用户曾下载过应用程序，而非智能手机用户的同一比例仅占4%。玩过一款手机游戏的智能手机用户比例为64%，而非智能手机用户的同一比例仅占14%。

在18至29岁的智能手机用户中，经常玩游戏的受访者占76%，通过手机访问社交网络者也同样为76%；在30至49岁的智能手机群体中，游戏用户比例为67%，访问社交网络者占61%；50岁以上群体的游戏玩家比例为41%，访问社交网络用户占32%。

10）独立应用商店GetJar最近针对300名开发者的调查发现，51.2%受访者正在开发Android应用，还有58%表示自未来6个月有此打算。有80%受访者正在开发iPhone应用，有55.6%受访者表示未来半年有此计划。

20.5%的开发者正在制作Android平板电脑应用，有47%打算在半年内开发此类应用。Windows Phone平台的开发商支持率为9%，但有24%受访者打算半年内开发这种应用。今后6个月内有意开发Symbian和黑莓应用的开发者比例分别仅占7%和15%。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请注明：游戏邦）

1）EA acquires mobile game developer Bight Games

Dean Takahashi

Electronic Arts attempted to bolster its mobile and casual game business today by acquiring Bight Games, a maker of indie mobile games.

Bight has a solid track record in “freemium” games (where the app is free and users pay real money for virtual goods) on Apple’s iOS platform (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch games). In a blog post, EA Interactive chief Barry Cottle says, “The freemium game model in mobile is here to stay and it’s growing fast.”

EA didn’t disclose the purchase price, which means that the deal is a relatively small one. By contrast, EA paid at least $750 million for PopCap Games last month in order to become more competitive in the social, mobile and casual games markets.

Consumers are flocking to the in-app-purchases business model now that they are more comfortable with the idea of trying out a game for free and paying for goods only if they really like the game.

One of the Bight Games’ biggest hits is Trade Nations, a perennial top 50 grossing app in the iOS App Store. The company recently moved the title to Facebook.

Bight Games is based in Charlottesville, Prince Edward Island in Canada. Its team will join EA’s growing base of game developers in Canada. The deal will close later this month.（source:venturebeat）

2）12 new “With Friends” trademark applications filed, but not by Zynga

Jim Squires

Combining asynchronous multiplayer with classic gaming formulas is quickly becoming big business, and Zynga knows it. That’s why they acquired Newtoy, the developer behind such hits as Words With Friends, Chess With Friends, and Hanging With Friends. In fact, Zynga thinks it could be such big business that they’re trying to trademark the term “With Friends” to protect their branding. And it looks like they’re doing so with good reason – Fusible.com is reporting that inXile Entertainment’s CEO Brian Fargo may be trying to trademark 12 different “With Friends” games of his own.

12 different trademark applications were filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office on August 9th by a company called Roxy Friday, LLC. Fusible reports that Brian Fargo is an active officer with Roxy Friday, and that included in their previous applications was a game called Platform Racing – an iPhone title that was released by – you guessed it – inXile Entertainment.

So what titles are Roxy Friday, LLC trying to trademark?

Farkle With Friends

Gin Rummy With Friends

Canasta With Friends

Yacht With Friends

Mahjong With Friends

Cribbage With Friends

Backgammon With Friends

Dominos With Friends

Pinochle With Friends

Solitaire With Friends

Sudoku With Friends Crosswords With Friends（source:gamezebo）

3）ZeptoLab’s cute Om Nom-filled puzzler Cut the Rope: Experiments coming to Android

by Anthony Usher

ZeptoLab has confirmed in an interview with IGN, that Android owners will be getting a second helping of the lovable candy-eating Om Nom.

Recently released for Apple’s range of iOS devices, Cut the Rope: Experiments sees you attempting to feed Om Nom by dropping Candy into his gaping mouth, all the while avoiding spikes, spiders, and other obstacles.

New game mechanics such as rope-shooters and suction cups make your task a little easier. Too easy, some would say.

Feed the hunger

Cut the Rope: Experiments currently features 75 levels, with more expected in future updates.

New boxes of levels will also still be added to the original offering.

ZeptoLab is yet to reveal a release date or a price for the Android release, but it’s safe to assume that it’ll cost the same as the original. （source:pocketgamer）

4）Angry Birds Now Available In Creamy And Not-So-Deadly Moon Pie Form

Matt Burns

Yep. Angry Birds are officially in the public consciousness. It’s part of the world’s culture now. Nothing proves that more than these official Angry Birds moon pies. There’s simply no escaping the onslaught of flying birds — even though the game is tired and played-out.

The likely tasty pies are part of Rovio’s new merchandise announced for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. The gaming company also unveiled a Chinese-themed update to Angry Birds Seasons a few weeks back. But who cares about an app, right? Moon pies are the bigger story.

These treats sell in pairs for $38 HKD (around $4.90) and seem to come in a fun tote bag! What a deal! Unfortunately they seem to be sold only at a Angry Birds/Rovio store in China. They might even be only available during the festival. I’m just concerned that these moon pies, since they’re, you know, moon pies, won’t be effective pig killers.（source:techcrunch）

5）How Funzio’s Crime City shot to the top of the App Store

Dean Takahashi

When a game shoots to the top of the Top Grossing list in Apple’s App Store, that’s probably a sign that it’s a good game. But it also shows that the company did something right in getting the game discovered.

That’s the case with Funzio’s Crime City, which has been downloaded more than 1 million times in the past five days onto iOS (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) devices. The game is currently in the top ten grossing apps list, one of the most coveted spots on the App Store.

The game’s popularity may be due to the fact that it has great 3D-like animation that look nice on the iPhone or that it’s fun to play. But Funzio chief operating officer Anil Dharni said in an interview that a combination of factors lifted this game into visibility above tens of thousands of competing games.

Crime City already had some name recognition when it launched in the App Store last week — the same title has more than 5.5 million monthly active users on Facebook. And it got off to a great start when it was chosen by Apple as a featured cool new app. San Francisco-based Funzio also advertised the game on ad networks, and the game received some great reviews. The company also arranged direct promotional deals with other mobile indie game developers. But it did not use “incentivized installs,” as Apple has banned the practice created by companies such as Tapjoy.（source:venturebeat）

6）Harmonix: VidRhythm Studio’s First In-House iOS Release

by Kris Graft

Harmonix co-founder and CEO Alex Rigopulos told Gamasutra in a recent interview that the studio’s secretive VidRhythm project is in fact an iOS release — and that’s just one of several new projects going on at the Cambridge, MA-based Rock Band and Dance Central developer.

While Harmonix developed 2007′s Phase for iPod, and is credited as co-developer with EA Montreal on 2009′s Rock Band for iOS, VidRhythm is the first completely internally-developed iOS title to come out of the studio, Rigopulos said.

“It will actually be our first iOS release as a studio, coming out relatively soon,” he revealed in a phone interview. “I can’t say anything yet about what it is, but in parallel with all these huge console game productions we have underway, we’re commencing our first iOS development project.”

“The VidRhythm project has a tiny team that’s doing our very first project in this space,” he added. Word of the title first emerged in July, when eagle-eyed webgoers discovered a Harmonix trademark for “VidRhythm.” The studio soon confirmed that it was in fact a project in development.

Rigopulos wasn’t ready to go on the record about VidRhythm details, but he said the title represents a growing focus at the studio on smartphone gaming. [UPDATE: Gamasutra also understands that the title is more along the lines of an app than a full-blown game.]

“We think there are a lot of creative opportunities [with smartphones] that we haven’t really been able to focus on yet. So we’re looking forward to doing more in that space,” he said.（source:gamasutra）

7）OMGPOP Unleashes Cross-Promotion Power With Puppy World on iOS

By Christopher Mack

Facebook game developer OMGPOP, known best for Cupcake World, debuts on iOS this summer with Puppy World. According to the developer, the game has been downloaded over one million times since its July 20th launch.

A distinguishing feature of Puppy World is its cross-promotion activity with OMGPOP’s Facebook applications. CEO Dan Porter tells TechCrunch that 20 percent of the game’s 1 million downloads are from cross promotions driven both by Facebook and by the developer’s website, while another 20 percent comes from paid ads. Players are also able to share in-game accomplishments via Facebook, further promoting viral growth. It is not immediately clear if the existing Puppy World cross-promotions on Facebook are now in violation of Facebook’s updated Platform Policies that forbid social games from linking off to competing social platforms.

As far as monetization goes, the game leverages in-app purchases for two types of currency — Bones and the more valuable Gems. Both can be bought in different quantities ranging in price from $0.99 to $99.99 with the former used to purchase premium virtual goods or to expedite the maturation of new puppies. Porter says that the game is making around $20,000 a day.（source:insidemobileapps）

8）A Third of People Completely Lost Without Their Smartphones, Survey Says

By Dan Rowinski

Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project did a survey on how American’s interact with their cellphones in their day-to-day life. Pew says that nearly 83% of the U.S. population owns cellphones, 35% of which are smartphones (as of May 2011) and that the most popular ways to use the device are for text messaging and taking pictures. The study shows how cellphone usage (especially smartphones) is changing the dynamic of how people interact with the world around them. Think back five or 10 years – how has the way you interact with media, knowledge and people changed because of the cellphone in your pocket?

The Pew study shows that 95% of people 18-29 years old send or receive text messages, 91% take a picture, 64% access the Internet and 58% play music on their cellphones. Those numbers drop, though not precipitously, for the 30-49 demographic. The real drop comes in the 50+ range, where only 58% of people send text messages and 26% access the Internet. Pew said that people with college degrees are more likely to engage in every non-voice application the survey measured. Non-white Latinos and African-Americans have very high usage rates compared to white cellphone owners.

It is always interesting to see the information Pew uncovers with their surveys. For instance, 51% of cellphone owners (across age demographics) used their devices to “get information they needed right away.” About 40% of cellphone users were in an emergency situation where their cellphone was of great assistance while 27% experienced a situation in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone on hand.

We are curious as to the experience of our readers with some of the Pew categories. We imagine that the average ReadWriteWeb reader is tech-savvy and most would have partaken in most of the activities the Pew survey studied. We would also think that more than 35% of our readership owns smartphones. Yet, sometimes it is easy to forget that cellphone usage is still a relatively new phenomenon in human culture and that the populace as a whole is just now starting to reach an inflection point where cell usage is distinctly changing the people interact with their lives.

Pew broke down the survey from all cellphone owners to just smartphone owners. Of smartphone owners, 79% say that they used their phones to quickly access information they needed and 72% used the device to entertain themselves while bored. Smartphone owners are somewhat frustrated with slow download speeds (36%) though only 22% said that they have had trouble reading something on the phone (presumably because of screen size).

Of those activities smartphone owners partake, it is interesting to see how they break down by age demographic.

The Pew survey results are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 26 to May 22, 2011 of 2,277 adults aged 18 years or older. The survey was of English and Spanish speaking people over land line (1,522) and cellular (755) devices. The survey can say with 95% confidence that the sampling error is plus or minus.（source:readwriteweb）

10）Android ambitions high among GetJar’s mobile developer network

by Stuart Dredge

Sees growing interest in Windows Phone, but low hopes for Symbian and BlackBerry.

A survey of 300 developers by GetJar has found that 51.2% are making Android apps today, but 58% saying they will be doing it six months from now. By contrast, it finds 80% making iPhone apps today, but 55.6% saying they’ll still be doing it in six months’ time.

The caveat? While GetJar provides links to iPhone apps in its store, the nature of Apple’s platform means it can’t distribute the actual apps. A survey of 300 developers on its network may thus be weighted more towards other platforms.

Even so, the survey – conducted in partnership with Inmobi, Urban Airship, Device Anywhere and SV Android Meet-up – is interesting for what it reveals about the non-iOS platforms’ interest for developers.

20.5% of surveyed developers are making Android tablet apps now, but 47% say they’ll be doing so in six months’ time. Windows Phone also appears to be growing in momentum, with 9% supporting it today, but 24% planning to in six months – Nokia’s launch of its first WinPho handsets may be a factor there.

It’s less good news for Symbian and BlackBerry, with just 7% and 15% of surveyed developers respectively saying they plan to support these platforms in the next six months.（source:mobile-ent）