1）Rovio日前宣布《愤怒的小鸟》系列下载量已突破10亿次，据其发布的庆祝视频显示，公司将发行的下一款游戏是Snappy Touch和Mystery Coconut推出的物理益智游戏《凯西的精巧设计》（Casey’s Contraptions）。

casy's contraptions(from appjidi.com)

不过Rovio并没有收购Snappy Touch或者Mystery Coconut工作室，前者成员Noel Llopis表示，他仍是独立开发者，目前正在创建下一款游戏的原型。《凯西的精巧设计》于去年发布于iPad平台，它与《愤怒的小鸟》和《Tiny Wings》一样使用开源物理引擎Box2D开发，这次将通过与Rovio合作重新设计一个新的手机版本。

2）手机社交游戏发行商Storm8日前宣布旗下游戏下载量已超过3亿次，覆盖了1亿部独立设备。据其首席执行官Perry Tam所述，这1亿部独立设备相当于五分之一的iOS和Android活跃用户。

storm8 games(from storm8)

据Techcrunch报道所称，Storm8在2011年曾有10款游戏跻身iOS营收榜单前100名，该公司计划在今年底将旧金山湾区工作室规模扩大至240人。

3）据Inside Facebook报道，Facebook将效仿苹果App Store，在未来数周发布一个自己的应用商店App Center，主要提供针对网页及手机版本Facebook平台的应用程序。

App Center(from insidefacebook)

该服务将根据产品类型及用户评价帮助用户筛选应用，用户可通过Facebook.com、手机网页平台及Facebook iOS和Android应用访问该服务，用户可输入应用名称搜索指定产品，也可以通过“高营收应用”、“推荐应用”、“最近流行”以及显示好友所体验应用的模块选择产品。

开发者要向该平台发布产品需向Facebook提交应用审核，而Facebook将根据用户反馈和粘性等一系列指标来决定是否通过应用审核。

4）谷歌近日推出Google+应用的更新版本，重新设计了新字体、放大了资料照片，并将+1按钮移到了用户界面顶端的固定位置。

ios 5--Google+(from insidemobileapps)

值得注意的是，这个新版本目前仅限于iOS平台，Android版本需再过数周才会出炉。

5）手机游戏公司Pocket Gems日前发布其首款专门针对Android平台的手机游戏《Tap Dragon Park》（游戏邦注：该公司之前一直是苹果App Store顶级游戏开发商）。

tap-dragon-park(from venturebeat)

该游戏日前已登陆Google Play，支持玩家在游戏中训练恐龙使其保护村庄免受恶魔攻击。

Pocket Gems成立于2009年，目前人员规模达110人左右，游戏下载量达6000万次，已获得红杉资本的500万美元投资。

6）id Software及其母公司Bethesda Softworks日前宣布向浏览器及手机平台推出《德军司令部3D》20周年纪念版。

德军司令部3D(from venturebeat)

这款免费网页游戏重现了1992年部世的经典第一人称射击游戏玩法，同时还支持iPhone、iPad和iPod Touch用户限时免费体验《德军司令部3D》付费版本。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）After a billion Angry Birds downloads, Rovio’s follow-up may be Casey’s Contraptions

by Mike Rose

Rovio has announced that its Angry Birds franchise has seen over 1 billion downloads, and also teased a new release for Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut’s physics-based puzzler Casey’s Contraptions.

Though the Finnish company has made a number of moves to expand recently, such as opening a studio in Sweden and acquiring Shattered Horizon developer Futuremark, it hasn’t purchased Snappy Touch or Mystery Coconut.

Snappy Touch’s Noel Llopis tells Gamasutra, “I’m still very much an independent developer, and I’ve been working on prototypes for my next game full time for the last few months.”

Llopis and Mystery Coconut’s Miguel Angel Friginal released Casey’s Contraptions, a Rube Goldberg-style puzzler for iPad, to critical acclaim last year. Like Angry Birds (and other popular titles like Crayon Physics and Tiny Wings), it’s built on the open-source Box2D physics engine.

In a trailer announcing its latest Angry Birds milestone, Rovio hinted that it’s working on a new Casey’s Contraptions title, with a redesigned version of the game’s titular character, for mobile devices. Llopis and Friginal previously said they were working on an iOS version of Casey’s Contraptions, but they’ve yet to release one.

Gamasutra published a postmortem for the original Casey’s Contraptions game, which shared what went right and wrong during the iPad title’s development, last June. （source:gamasutra）

2）Storm8 hits 300 million downloads, 100 million unique devices

by James Nouch

Social gaming publisher Storm8 has announced its library of titles has been downloaded more than 300 million times, reaching more than 100 million unique devices.

CEO Perry Tam reasons that those 100 million unique devices equates to 1 in 5 active iOS and Android users.

Big bucks

This isn’t the first indication of Storm8′s (which also includes the TeamLava female-focused games) success, though.

TechCrunch reports that the studio was responsible for 10 of the top 100 grossing iOS apps during 2011.

And this news follows Storm8′s $700,000 payday, which was generated in one month after the introduction of in-app purchases to the Amazon Appstore.

Now, the developer is hiring, and Tam hopes to double the Bay Area studio’s headcount to 240 by the end of the year.（source:pocketgamer）

3）Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model

AJ Glasser

Facebook is replacing the current Apps and Games Dashboard with a new App Center feature that sorts Facebook apps by category and user ratings.

Detailed on Facebook’s developer blog, App Center will be viewable from Facebook.com, mobile web and Facebook’s iOS and Android apps when it rolls out over the next few weeks. Clicking on an app from within App Center directs a user to that app’s native platform, where the user can install the app. The new feature also introduces app detail pages, which is where users will land when typing an app name into Facebook’s search function. Apps are also filtered into additional categories for “top grossing,” “recommended” and “trending,” as well as module that displays friends’ apps.

In order for an app to appear in App Center, developers must follow a set of submission guidelines and wait for review from Facebook. The company says it will use a variety of signals — including user feedback and engagement within apps — to determine whether or not an app will be listed in App Center. Details about how to submit an app to be listed are available here.

As we can see in the screenshot below, star ratings figure prominently into App Center’s categorization. Facebook has been playing with the ratings system a great deal in the last three months, introducing new modules to solicit more ratings from users. A new app ratings metric is being added to Insights so that developers can track user ratings over time.

This is a reversal of the social network’s position on app discovery a year ago, when Facebook relied on algorithmic discovery of new apps. By creating a centralized app hub, Facebook hopes to drive more growth to higher-quality apps — and to new categories of app that are currently difficult to find. The social network will also likely drive more mobile app installs.

Facebook is also announcing a new paid apps model, though it still expects the bulk of transactions to be driven by in-app purchases. Interested developers are being asked to contact Facebook directly for more details.（source:insidefacebook）

4）Google+ mobile app revamped on iOS, Android update “coming soon”

Kathleen De Vere

Google has updated of its official Google+ app to more closely mirror the look and feel of the newly redesigned Google+ web site.

According to a post on the official Google blog, many of the new Google+ design elements are now reflected in the design of the mobile app. Cosmetic changes include new fonts, larger profile pictures and a full-bleed display for photos. Google has also updated the way the app displays conversation flows in a user’s stream, added optical cues to draw attention to more recent posts and moved the +1 button to a set position at the top of the user interface.

Ironically, the new version of the Google+ mobile app is available now on iOS, but the Android version is described as “coming in a few weeks.”

The company redesigned its Google+ social networking service in April to add drag and drop navigation, full bleed photos and videos and update the way conversations and discussions were grouped into user’s activity streams.（source:insidemobileapps）

5）Pocket Gems releases its first exclusive Android game

Dean Takahashi

Pocket Gems, one of the top developers of games for the Apple iTunes App Store, is releasing its first game developed from the ground-up exclusively for Android.

Tap Dragon Park debuts today in the Google Play store. In the game, you train dragons to protect villages from evil trolls. You use the elements to fight the trolls and expand you kingdom.

San Francisco-based Pocket Gems has become a leader on iOS since it was founded in 2009. The company now has more than 110 employees and has had 60 million downloads for games such as Tap Zoo.

Dragons are popular in mobile games now, and Tap Dragon Park will compete against successful titles such as DragonVale from Backflip Studios. Pocket Gems has raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital.（source:venturebeat）

6）Bethesda and id release 20th anniversary edition of Wolfenstein 3D as web/mobile game

Dean Takahashi

id Software and its new owner Bethesda Softworks are announcing today a new 20th anniversary edition of Wolfenstein 3D, playable as a web-based browser game and a mobile game.

The free-to-play browser game is a classic version of the pioneering first-person shooter game that debuted in 1992. It was a precursor to the shooting experience of 1993′s Doom and it helped launch the biggest genre in video games. At the time, Wolfenstein’s 320 x 200, 256-color VGA 3D graphics were stunning. Today, what once took a high-end PC to run can now be run inside a web browser. Wolfenstein had enemies that could be seen from different angles.

Bethesda also released a video featuring John Carmack, technical director of id Software, sharing his insights into the creation and the development of Wolfenstein 3D while playing the game. Check out the video below. Brings back memories, doesn’t it? Wolfenstein 3D Classic Premium is also free for a limited time on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.（source:venturebeat）