1）独立开发商Ampulum最近调查结果发现，好友口头传播、应用商店搜索及推荐功能是最有影响力的应用曝光渠道，而游戏内置广告位居游戏评论、论坛和谷歌搜索之后，成为最无效的应用曝光途径（游戏邦注：该调查样本是127名来自社交网站、游戏论坛和行业邮件列表的活跃手机游戏玩家，调查时间是6月份中的三个星期）。

best-discovery-sites(from ampulum)

fraction-from-ads(from ampulum)

70%受访者声称难以通过游戏内置广告发现自己喜欢的游戏；在针对游戏评论网站和论坛的调查中，20%受访者称Touch Arcade是最有价值的应用发现来源，另外Kotaku、Android Central和Pocket Gamer也同样是支持率较高的网站。Android Central在Android游戏玩家中的影响力与Touch Arcade在所有受访者中的声誉不相上下。

discovery-methods-by-gender(from ampulum)

从性别来看，女性比男性更易从游戏内置广告中发现自己喜欢的手机游戏，但其比例仍低于其他曝光途径。这类用户更依赖好友口头推荐，但比男性更少通过游戏评论网站和论坛找到游戏。

discovery-methods-by-os(from ampulum)

Android用户比苹果用户更易通过应用商店检索功能找到所需游戏，但较少依赖应用商店推荐及口头传播渠道（这一点印证了Google Play应用检索体验优于iTunes应用商店的说法）。Android游戏玩家也比苹果用户更易通过论坛检索游戏，及使用常规的谷歌搜索引擎发现游戏。比起Android用户，苹果用户更为依赖口头传播，其比例达66%。

discovery-methods-by-age(from ampulum)

从年龄来看，用户发现应用的渠道与其年龄并无直接关联，不过通过论坛找到应用的群体多为年轻用户；20-29岁群体通过论坛找到所需游戏的情况比其他途径多3倍。

2）Kantar Worldpanel ComTech最新报告显示，在截止6月10日的过去12周中，Android在英国、德国、法国、意大利、西班牙、澳大利亚和美国所有智能手机销量首次占据半数以上市场份额。

Android在澳大利亚智能手同销量中占比56.9%，在西班牙的这一比例则高达84.1%。

android_use_table(from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech)

报告认为Android平台的普遍性及相对平价的移动设备，是促使用户大量流向该平台的主要动力。

3）据games.com报道，之前报道的《Tiny Wings 2》并非作为《Tiny Wings》续集版本的全新应用，而是后者的免费更新版本。玩家下载这个2.0版本后就可以得到一个全新游戏模式Flight School，这个模式提供基于关卡的体验，而非原先那种“无尽奔跑”式的玩法。

Flight School(from games)

每个关卡都含有一个让小鸟飞过的孤岛，玩家需利用山脉和峡谷获得重势以跃过小岛，要警惕路途中的水池并一路搜集可实现蹦床效果的花朵。每个关卡都会让玩家与由电脑控制的其他小鸟（兄弟姐妹）竞赛，目标是在最后阶段到达母鸟身边。系统将根据玩家所用时长提供分值和奖励。目前该版本共有15个新关卡，未来还将推出更多关卡。

4）亚马逊日前针对Kindle Fire平板电脑推出社交游戏服务GameCircle（游戏邦注：它实际上是亚马逊版本的Game Center），支持开发者在游戏中添加该平台的成就管理和积分排行榜系统，允许用户将游戏进程存储到云系统中，以便在另一部Kindle Fire设备中继续体验游戏。

Game-Circle(from insidemobileapps)

据彭博社报道，谷歌也正在开发针对Google Play平台的Game Center服务，该服务也将支持积分排行榜、成就管理和好友系统。

5）据insidemobileapps报道，迪士尼互动日前推出《Tap Tap Revenge》系列新版游戏《Tap Tap Revenge Tour》（售价0.99美元的iOS通用版本），该版本界面比之前版本更为出色，但移除了在线游戏室、战斗模式和游戏虚拟形象系统等元素。

Tap Tap Revenge Tour(from insidemobileapps)

新版本游戏特色是基于旋律的玩法，以及简单的职业模式，并植入一个出售付费音乐包的商店，此外还提供了300多首免费歌曲。据迪士尼移动高级副总裁兼总经理Bart Decrem所称，该游戏在App Store上架头100天还将每天推出一首免费播放歌曲。

该游戏推出有限的社交功能Tour Walls，支持玩家以解琐内容装饰该墙，并在Facebook与好友分享其中截图。

6）据IGN报道，Rovio日前以Xbox 360 DVD、PS3蓝光、3DS卡盘形式推出《愤怒的小鸟三部曲》（游戏邦注：包括《愤怒的小鸟》、《愤怒的小鸟节日版》、《愤怒的小鸟：里约》），据Rovio游戏执行副总裁Petri Järvilehto所称，这个游戏版本针对高清电视屏幕而开发，还添加了新娱乐内容。

Angry Birds HD(from games)

7）据venturebeat报道，谷歌移动销售策略主管Jason Spero表示，平板电脑有可能催生比桌面广告更具创意和创新性的数字广告。

他表示谷歌调查发现，用户在平板电脑上更易进行具有目的性的活动，最为典型的就是网购。他举例称音乐技术公司Sweetwater就是一个因平板电脑广告而成功的典型，Sweetwater平板电脑广告转化率比其桌面广告高1.3倍。

tron-advert-ipad(from tabtimes.com)

他还提到，用户有60%的平板电脑搜索行为采用的是横屏模式，而以横屏模式通过手机搜索内容的这一比例仅为15%。（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）Mobile Game Discovery – It’s Not Just Ads

by steve

This is part 1 of a series analyzing the results of Ampulum’s mobile gamer survey. Check back next week for more info on gameplay habits and monetization.

Ampulum is a new entrant to the mobile gaming industry, and like many of you, we wanted to know how to best reach our target audience. It’s no good creating an awesome game if nobody ever hears about it, so effective user acquisition techniques are critical for success. But what UA methods are best? Are expensive advertising networks like AdMob really the only viable solution? How much do app store searches or game review press stories contribute to game discovery? Do UA trends differ between Apple and Android, or by age, gender, or some other trait?

Where should a new developer concentrate its efforts?

To find out, we ran an online survey for three weeks during June 2012. Respondents were recruited from social networks, gamer forums, and industry mailing lists, and we received 181 responses from people telling us about their mobile gaming habits. Of these, 127 were frequent mobile gamers, and formed the basis of our survey.

What we found surprised us. When asked what sources had led to the discovery of their favorite mobile games, players told us that friends’ word of mouth recommendations and app store searches and features still reign supreme. Game reviews, discussion forums, and even plain old Google web search all ranked ahead of discovery via in-game ads within another mobile game.

This was self-reported data, so perhaps it’s not surprising if people underestimated how much they’re influenced by ads. The size of the gap vs. other discovery methods is hard to ignore, however. When asked directly what fraction of their favorite mobile games were discovered that way, 70% of respondents denied discovering any of their favorites via in-game ads.

Among alternate discovery methods in the Other category, Facebook and Twitter were the most often mentioned. While these could also fall under Word of Mouth, it’s important to recognize that “word of mouth” encompasses much more than just chatting around the water cooler.

Within the Game Review Site and Discussion Forum categories, respondents answered a free-form question “Which gaming review sites or discussion forums are best for discovering new mobile games?” Touch Arcade was by far the most often mentioned source, cited by 20% of the survey’s participants. That’s impressive, considering this was a free-form response question with no pre-defined answer choices. Kotaku, Android Central, and Pocket Gamer were also popular. Android Central performed especially well considering it’s only relevant to about half our survey group. Its influence among Android Gamers is similar to Touch Arcade’s for the full group.

Having examined overall mobile game discovery methods, our next step was to dissect the responses using demographic data. Discovery methods differed noticeably across segments of the sample group. For advertisers, women were the bright spot. The women in our survey were significantly more likely than men to cite in-game ads among the methods by which they had discovered their favorite mobile games, though ads still trailed other methods by a wide margin. Women also relied even more heavily on word of mouth, while making far less use of game review sites and discussion forums as compared to men.

Breaking down the data by mobile OS, we also saw significant differences in discovery methods between Apple and Android gamers. Android users had more success finding what they were looking for by searching the app store, while relying less on app store featured items and word of mouth. This matches our subjective judgment that the current version of Google Play provides a better app search experience than iTunes. Android gamers were also more likely than those with an Apple device to discover games via discussion forums, and by using regular Google search. Apple users were 66% more likely to rely on word of mouth than their Android counterparts.

When dissected by age, the responses didn’t reveal many new insights, and it appears that game discovery methods are largely unrelated to the gamer’s age. One of the few clear results is that discussion forums are a young person’s venue, with those age 20-29 more than 3x more likely to report forums among the ways they discovered their favorite mobile games.

And there you have it! If you’re a new developer with a quality game that you hope will become someone’s favorite, but don’t have a multi-million dollar budget for in-game ad spending, take heart. Your target audience is more likely to discover your game through other less expensive channels anyway. So polish that icon until it shines and hone your description text to perfection, to ensure your game stands out in app store search results. Leverage social media, forums, and any other tool you can find to get your existing players talking about the game with their friends. Cultivate relationships with the gaming press, and do everything in your power to make sure your game is reviewed well. Once you’ve optimized all those channels, then you can start to ramp up in-game ad spending to drive further growth.（source:ampulum）

2）Android bags half of smartphone sales across Europe, Australia and US

by Mike Shaw

Market share is as high as 84 per cent in Spain.

Android has, for the first time, taken at least half of all smartphone sales across Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and the US.

The sales were recorded over the last 12 weeks that ended June 10.

In Australia, 56.9 per cent of smartphone sales were of Android devices, while in Spain, that figure was a huge 84.1 per cent.

The data published by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech says that the figures are largely driven by first-time smartphone buyers flocking to Android because of the platform’s accessibility and relative affordability of devices.

Dominic Sunnebo, consumer insight director, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said: “We are seeing much of the Android sales growth being driven by consumers trading up from feature phones to smartphones. Android handsets currently offer an easier platform to enable these consumers to upgrade, as many first time smartphone consumers state ‘price of handset’ and ‘multimedia capabilities’ as their main reason for choosing an Android device.

“Our data shows that Android has a higher share of those consumers spending under £50 on buying their handset across the vast majority of countries we cover.”（source:mobile-ent）

3）Tiny Wings 2 launches as a free update with Flight School

by Brandy Shaul

Last week, we learned that Tiny Wings 2 would soon take fight on iPhone and iPad, allowing us to once again help a tiny bird achieve its goal of flight. What we didn’t realize at the time was that Tiny Wings 2 wouldn’t be a completely new app, but would rather launch as a free update within the original Tiny Wings app. If you still have Tiny Wings on your favorite iOS device, you can now download the “Version 2.0″ update, giving you a brand new gameplay mode and the chance to fly as new birds!

This new mode is called Flight School, and it’s a level-based experience, rather than an “endless runner.” That is, each level contains a single island to “fly” over, using hills and valleys to gain momentum by tucking your wings in at just the right moment. There are new water pools to slow you down and flowers that can be used as trampolines to gain extra height.

Each of these Flight School levels sees you racing against other computer-controlled birds (your siblings) and ends when you reach your mother bird at the end of the stage. You’ll receive a score based on your time and will be given a colored fish as a reward, but can also repeat levels if you wish to improve your time. There are 15 of these new levels in all, with the potential for more to be released in the future.（source:games）

4）Amazon unveils Game Center-like GameCircle, adds leaderboards, achievement and cloud sync to Kindle Fire games

Kathleen De Vere

Amazon is bolstering the Kindle Fire’s gaming features, announcing today its GameCircle APIs have come out of beta, allowing all Kindle Fire developers to add social features and cloud saves to their titles.

Similar to Apple’s Game Center service, Amazon’s GameCircle API give developers the ability to add achievements and global leaderboards with percentile rankings to their games.

GameCircle also supports cloud syncing, a feature that allows players to resume a game if they switch from one Kindle Fire device to another, and keep their progress and achievements even if they delete an app. Unlike Apple’s Game Center service, it seems Kindle Fire users can’t yet “friend” other users through the GameCircle service. We’ve reached out to Amazon for further clarification.

Today’s announcement confirms the rumors Bloomberg reported last month, alleging social features would be coming to the Kindle Fire imminently. Although Amazon’s move leaves Google Play developers as the only group without access to a platform-wide social gaming layer, Google is heavily rumored to be working on its own Game Center-like service. According to Business Insider’s report, Google’s version would also support leaderboards, achievements and a friend system.（source:insidemobileapps）

5）Disney rebooting Tap Tap Revenge for mobile devices with Tap Tap Revenge Tour

Mike Thompson

It’s been over a year and a half since Tap Tap Revenge received a new title on Apple’s App Store — the last being Tap Tap Revenge 4 in November 2010 — but Disney Interactive is now returning to the series with Tap Tap Revenge Tour.

Tap Tap Revenge Tour’s user experience is a much simpler affair than its predecessors. “We got rid of a lot crap and clutter,” Disney Mobile SVP and GM Bart Decrem tells us. Doing a side-by-side comparison of Tap Tap Revenge 2 and Tap Tap Revenge Tour shows the latter’s interface is much more streamlined than before. Decrem also tells us that features like online gaming rooms, battle modes and the in-game avatar system from earlier games have all been removed.

The new game features the rhythm-based gameplay that made the series popular, as well as a simple career mode. There will also be a store with premium song packs in place, as well as a rotating selection of over 300 free songs. Decrem tells us Disney is planning to release a free playable song a day for the first 100 days Tap Tap Revenge Tour is on the App Store. Decrem says a majority of the songs in the game will be based on content from Radio Disney’s line up (Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me, Maybe” is the first free download), but he also says a wide array of content from indie and adult-oriented musicians will be playable.（source:insidemobileapps）

6）’Ultimate collector’s edition’ of Angry Birds flocks to consoles soon

by Joe Osborne

It’s called Angry Birds Trilogy, and IGN reports that it crams the first three games in Rovio’s record-setting franchise–Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio–into one Xbox 360 DVD, one PS3 Blu-ray or one 3DS cartridge. According to Rovio executive VP of Games Petri Järvilehto, this version of the games was “built from the ground up” for HDTVs (and we imagine the 3DS).

“You can think of the game as the ultimate collector’s edition,” Järvilehto told IGN. “There are new cinematics, extras and other entertaining content. In addition all of the existing material has been uprezzed and re-treated for the high-resolution and big screen.”

It appears that Activision is somehow in on the massive project–most likely as a publisher, although no release date has been announced for Angry Birds Trilogy. What we do know is that the game will feature support for Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller for Xbox 360, Sony’s Move motion controller for PS3 and StreetPass, the social feature within Nintendo’s 3DS. Oh, and it’ll look damn good doing it.

“The backgrounds have been animated, we’ve added lighting modes, reactive backgrounds, the list goes on and on,” Järvilehto told IGN. “We believe that there are a lot of people on the consoles who appreciate a great casual game play experience. This is a game that resonates across a wide audience on many platforms.” The takeover will soon be complete.（source:games）

7）Google’s Jason Spero: Tablets will lead to more innovative and valuable ads

Devindra Hardawar

For advertisers, tablets may beget some of the most creative and innovative digital ads, which could also be more valuable than comparable desktop ads, according to Google’s head of mobile sales and strategy Jason Spero.

“From a creativity standpoint and an innovation standpoints, tablets will be where the greatest creative happens,” Spero said.

Speaking at our MobileBeat 2012 conference in San Francisco today, Spero said that tablets are leading to entirely new search behaviors for consumers and that they’re also beginning to look like the to-do lists for consumers. Google’s research has found that consumers are more purpose-driven on tablets, and, not surprisingly, they’re zeroing in on shopping.

Spero was excited about the potential for ads that can look more like content on tablets, which will make them more valuable to consumers and advertisers alike. Speaking like a true ad geek (and modern Mad Man), he gushed about the potential for entirely new advertising techniques on tablets.

He mentioned Sweetwater, a music technology company, as one example of companies seeing success with tablet ads. Sweetwater’s tablet ads are seeing 1.3 times the conversation rate as its desktop ads.

Google also offered advertisers the capability to buy ads during the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. prime TV hours, with the assumption that consumers would be using tablets as secondary screens while watching their favorite shows. Spero said that advertisers have been “very happy” with it — so much so that they wouldn’t allow Google to do case studies on their success. (That’s a sign that prime time tablet ads may be so good that these advertisers don’t want others to catch on.)

In terms of other differences with tablets, Spero mentioned that 60 percent of tablet searches occur in landscape mode (Google still isn’t sure what that means), compared to only 15 percent of mobile searches. Additionally, search queries on tablets are slightly shorter (perhaps due to the difficulty of using tablet keyboards).（source:venturebeat）