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每日观察:关注Vivendi或出售动视股份等消息(7.13)

发布时间:2012-07-13 12:41:36 Tags:,,

1)初创公司Non-Stop Games(运营业务包括网页应用及游戏)联合创始人Henric Suuronen(前Wooga工作室主管)日前表示,尽管许多开发者认为HTML5最大特点在于跨平台优势,但他认为HTML5的吸引力在于它的即时访问性。

对Non-Stop Games团队而言,HTML5的关键在于支持玩家通过直接而简单的URLs访问游戏,在Facebook、Twitter和Pinterest上分享链接,无需安装应用及等待漫长的加载时间。

Suuronen在Wooga成为Facebook第三大社交游戏开发商之后离开公司,并与Juha Paananen(曾在诺基亚任职)联合创办Non-Stop,二者分别担任这家新公司的总裁及首席执行官。

Dollar Isle(from dailylivingtoday.blogspot.com)

Dollar Isle(from dailylivingtoday.blogspot.com)

该公司首作是城建游戏《Dollar Isle》,支持iOS玩家在移动设备上的Twitter应用中点击链接玩游戏;其第二款游戏《Paint Stars》类似于《Draw Somehting》,但提供了比后者更齐全的绘画工具。

2)腾讯波士顿公司及Stomp Games日前宣布将于今年秋季向Facebook推出一款全3D科幻角色扮演游戏《Robot Rising》。

Robot Rising(from zam.com)

Robot Rising(from zam.com)

该游戏背景设置于以机器人为战争工具的未来世界,支持玩家在其中建设自己的基础,招募大量机器人军队与其他玩家进行实时对战。

3)据gamasutra报道,继宣布向Kindle Fire推出GameCircle服务之后,亚马逊日前又发布新工具Game Connect,支持开发者将自己的免费增值游戏与亚马逊商店绑定。

amazon-game-connect(from m.engadget.com)

amazon-game-connect(from m.engadget.com)

开发者可通过Game Connect平台让用户选择将游戏同步到亚马逊网站,使用自己的亚马逊帐号购买游戏中的内容。

但用户不需要在每次购买内容时都重新输入相关信息,Game Connect会自动在用户名下添加新的交易记录。

目前该服务主要支持《World of Tanks》、《Super Monday Night Combat》、《Pandora Saga》等MMO游戏,未来还面向更多游戏开放服务。

4)据路透社报道,法国传媒巨头Vivendi近正与一些电子游戏(及大众传媒)公司商谈出售其掌握的60%动视股份事宜。

Vivendi-Bankers-Hawking-Activision-Sale(from spong.com)

Vivendi-Bankers-Hawking-Activision-Sale(from spong.com)

虽然Vivendi至今未公开宣布这一消息,但路透社报道称该公司有可能以100亿美元转让动视股份,如果没有买家愿意出这个高价,那么Vivendi就会等到游戏股票反弹时再进行出售。有人猜测微软、腾讯和时代华纳等行业巨头或许是这笔交易的潜在买主。(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)Instant-access games that live everywhere — the real pull of HTML5?

by Christian Nutt

Most developers are attracted to HTML5 because of its portability across platforms, but for startup Non-Stop Games, co-founded by former Wooga head of studio Henric Suuronen, it’s because “HTML5 is the glue that brings the internet together.”

When you hear most developers talk about the advantages of HTML5, they trumpet the fact that it’s a standard that lives across multiple platforms. That’s not why Non-Stop Games is interested in it.

“Other companies are talking about cross-platform; we’re talking about instant accessibility,” says co-founder Henric Suuronen.

For Non-Stop Games, the key to HTML5 is that games can be accessed by direct, simple URLs. “What this means is that you can share this link wherever. Is it on Facebook status, Twitter, Pinterest? … there is no installation, there is short loading, there is no App Store page,” says Suuronen.

Suuronen, who was German Facebook developer Wooga’s head of studio, co-founded Non-Stop with Juha Paananen, who worked at Nokia during its salad days as the world’s biggest and most successful handset provider. The two serve as president and CEO, respectively.

Suuronen left Wooga after it climbed to number three Facebook developer under his watch (it’s currently number four, in the wake of EA’s acquisition of PopCap.) His new startup, which is about to make the move to a new San Francisco HQ, is focused on trying to break down the walls between games and the web, and web apps and games.

You can even play the company’s first title, city-builder Dollar Isle, from within the Twitter app on iOS devices when you click on a link from a tweet.

“This has proven to be a really good viral source for us,” says Suuronen. “And that’s, for us, the biggest benefit of HTML5.”

The top city on Dollar Isle’s ranking has had 32,000 unique visitors. “This is obviously not possible on Facebook, because it’s just your friends,” says Suuronen. Moreover, he says that this traffic, while incentivized by Non-Stop, is more organic than Facebook virality. Players are “spreading the game, not spamming the game,” he says.

“I think it’s a lot friendlier way than what you’ve seen on Facebook,” says Suuronen.

“In the end, not so many of your friends play the same games you do,” says Paananen. Non-Stop’s hope is that “you can find new friends, and then take those friends to new games.”

Moreover, the company’s games will feature one-way following, like Twitter, so it’s less intrusive. If you like someone’s Dollar Isle city, you can send them a message and tell them so, and you can even gather resources from their city. But you don’t need to form a bi-directional friendship if you don’t want to.

While Dollar Isle (pictured) looks a bit primitive compared to the latest and greatest Flash Facebook apps, Suuronen is confident the company is on the right track for casual users.

The company’s second game, Paint Stars, is admittedly based on Zynga and OMGPOP’s Draw Something — mixed with Instagram.

“We thought Draw Something was very cool, but it lacked something — if I do a picture I want to share it. You had to take a screenshot. The other thing was that there was no community,” says Suuronen.

In Paint Stars, players are given more robust drawing tools than with Draw Something, and their paintings then become puzzles for other players to solve at any time. Artists can post galleries of their work, which become game menus for those who want to guess, and simple showcases for those who don’t.

You might find the game by “looking for cool pictures on Pinterest — and then, hey, there’s a nice drawing done in Paint Stars,” says Suuronen. And then, when you click on the link, “You get directly into the game,” says Paananen.

“HTML5 is the glue that brings the internet together; you can exist in multiple places,” Paananen says. “When you really do games that live out of that logic, I think you can do pretty exciting stuff.”

But why would someone who had “an amazing ride” with Wooga, walk away from that success, and the Facebook platform?

“People are using Facebook now on mobile platforms, and you don’t play Flash games on mobile platforms,” says Suuronen.

“Facebook is a really good platform for the companies who are really strong in there,” says Paananen, “but I think there’s a wider web outside of Facebook, and you shouldn’t limit yourself.” (source:gamasutra

2)Robot Rising, or ‘the next evolution in games on Facebook,’ hits this fall

by Joe Osborne

Stop us if you’ve heard that one before. Tencent Boston (the Chinese gaming company’s U.S. division) and Stomp Games have announced Robot Rising, a full 3D, sci-fi role-playing game (RPG) headed for Facebook this fall. The duo dub their social RPG as ‘the next evolution in games on Facebook,” and they just might be right … at least visually speaking: This game looks gorgeous.

Robot Rising is set in–what else?–a futuristic world in which robots are tools at war with which you’re expecting to cause as much fiery destruction as possible. (The story doesn’t really matter, does it?) In the RPG, players create a home base and amass a robot army with which to do battle with in real time with other players.

In short, Robot Rising looks and sounds like Kixeye or Kabam’s lot of strategy games meets isometric action RPGs in the same vein as Diablo. And judging from the trailer below, it’ll look dam good doing it. Interested players can sign up for the Robot Rising closed beta test right here.(source:games

3)Amazon gets into free to play games with new virtual transaction service

by Tom Curtis

Amazon has been quite aggressive about pushing new services for game developers this week. Just yesterday, the company revealed its “GameCircle” features for Kindle Fire, and now it has unveiled Game Connect, a new set of tools that will enable developers to link their free to play games to Amazon’s marketplace.

With the Game Connect platform, developers can give users the option to sync their game to Amazon’s website, and use their existing Amazon account to purchase in-game content.

Rather than issue content codes for each new purchase, Amazon says Game Connect will automatically add any new purchases to a user’s game. For instance, if a customer buys virtual currency via Amazon, those funds will automatically go into the game account he or she has synced with the site.

So far, the service primarily supports free to play games and MMOs including World of Tanks, Super Monday Night Combat, and Pandora Saga, with more titles coming as the service evolves. A few of these games are already offering Amazon-exclusive items to entice players to use the service.

Like yesterday’s Kindle Fire announcement, Game Connect marks yet another service Amazon plans to use to further expand its hold on the digital game market. Amazon first began offering digital games in 2010, and the service has only grown more robust since its launch.

For more information on how developers can use the Game Connect service, visit Amazon’s official webite. (source:gamasutra

4)Activision on the block: Assessing the potential buyers

by Chris Morris

Vivendi might be getting more serious about offloading Activision-Blizzard.

Reuters reports the French conglomerate has been in talks with a number of video game (and mass media) companies about a potential sale of the industry’s top seller.

That makes for a good headline – and I have no doubt about Reuters’ report, but as the industry works itself into a frenzy trying to guess whether Microsoft, Time Warner, or Tencent will be the new home of Call of Duty and Diablo, too many people are failing to scratch the surface.

It’s entirely possible those companies – and private equity firms like KKR, Providence and Blackstone – are kicking the tires and peeking at the books. Any company in its right mind would do so, if only to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the industry’s largest third-party publisher. But to assume that talks mean a sale is imminent is a mistake.

There is, of course, the fact that Vivendi has yet to officially announce that its 60 percent ownership stake in Activision is, in fact, for sale. Reuters reports the company is hoping to pocket somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion for the division – and if it finds there’s little interest in paying that much, it could hold off on a sale until gaming stocks start to rebound (which almost certainly won’t happen until the next generation is underway) or explore other options.

Putting that aside, though, there are plenty of culture issues that could come into play with all of the companies mentioned that could scuttle the sale. Let’s run ‘em down. (source:gamasutra


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