1）据Serkantoto报道，日本社交网站领域在过去2年中变化巨大，聊天应用LINE（于2011年夏季上线）在日本用户已超过4000万；在此期间，日本最大的实名社交网络Mixi用户规模却已退居Facebook之后，后者在日本月活跃用户已达1900万。

Facebook于2008年5月在日本上线，2011年9月在日本MAU达500万，2012年3月日本MAU达1000万，2013年2月达1900万。

facebook-japan(from inside.com)

2）据gamezebo报道，Rovio日前宣布将于3月16和17日推出《愤怒的小鸟：托恩》这部动画片，该片主要以小猪试图偷走鸟蛋为线索，每集短片仅有数分钟，将通过《愤怒的小鸟》游戏独家发布。

Angry-Birds-Toons(from redmondpie)

Rovio表示计划每年推出52集动画片，并于2016年推出《愤怒的小鸟》电影。

3）据venturebeat报道，鉴于2011年许多家长起诉苹果IAP设置不当，导致许多儿童无度消费一事，苹果最近推出解决方案，将给予这些家长价值5美元的iTunes积分作为补偿，针对那些声称信用卡被子女消费超过30美元的用户，苹果则将提供退款服务选项。

itunes-store-app-refund(from mindventurepictures)

但需注意的是，这项退款政策最早也要明年才会生效；苹果已表示将向2300万以上的iTunes用户发送这份通知。

4）据Techcrunch报道，EA高管、Playfish联合创始人Kristian Segerstrale日前宣布离职，EA首席运营官Peter Moore将接替其职务。

Kristian Segerstrale(from blogcdn)

Segerstrale是在Playfish被EA收购时加入该公司，负责带领EA进军“游戏即服务”领域，Playfish另外两名联合创始人Halleux和Sami Lababidi则已在2011年离开公司。

5）据games.com报道，前Epic Games成员、《战争机器》开发者Cliff Blezinski在最近采访中表示，当前游戏行业正处于自80年代电子游戏产业崩溃以来的最“混乱”时期，他将等待其发展局势更为明朗时再重新加入这一行业。

Cliff Blezinski(from mediagen.fr)

在他看来，行业的主要问题在于所有的主流主机游戏开发商都使用封闭平台，他认为“任天堂可能将成为一个仅有在软件上取得进步的公司，而索尼和微软则将面临重大打击；与此同时，iPad游戏将日益盛行，PC正在经历一场复兴，人们将体验更多数字下载游戏。”

他指出PC在过去几年的一个重要优势就在于，支持快速下载补丁、DLC和可更新内容。当代主机只能为拥有大笔预算的开发商提供便利，而小型开发商却难以修复漏洞，更新游戏；他认为主机还应该向PC游戏看齐，添加模组功能。

6）据pocketgamer报道，微软日前宣布Windows Phone Store目前应用数量已达13万，其中有1.5万是针对Windows Phone 8（发布于2012年10月底）的产品。

该应用商店下载量增长75%，付费应用收益也增长91%；平均每名Windows Phone用户共下载55款应用。

windows phone store（from pocketgamer)

IDC数据曾指出，Windows Phone在许多国家已占据10%的市场份额（游戏邦注：Kantar Worldpanel最近报告也显示Windows Phone在英美已超越黑莓，成为排名第三的智能手机平台）。

7）Pocketgamer最近发布的信息图表指出，Windows Phone Store应用数量发展速度超过Android平台。但在总体应用数量上，Windows Phone Store仍远逊于iOS和Android（2012年第四季度iOS和Android应用数量均已超过70万）。

Android前10名热门付费和免费游戏榜单中，有50%游戏也出现在Windows Phone平台，在iOS付费和免费游戏榜单的这一比例则是30%。

值得注意的是，大型发行商在Windows Phone平台主要采用付费模式，例如《割绳子》、《愤怒的小鸟》和《水果忍者》在该平台就仅推出付费版本。

windows phone store(from pocketgamer)

（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）Facebook Hits 19 Million MAU In Japan

by Dr. Serkan Toto

Japan’ social networking space has surely changed a lot in the last 2 years.

There can be no doubt that chat app LINE (released in the summer of 2011) is the undisputed king in this area in Japan, boasting over 40 million domestic users.

At the same time, Japan’s once biggest real-identity social network Mixi has been going sideways as far as user growth is concerned. In September last year, I mentioned that Mixi lost the pole position to Facebook Japan for the first time.

And the situation is actually much clearer now: the site now boasts a total of 19 million monthly active users, as reported by Facebook Japan country growth manager Taro Kodama himself during Social Media Week in Tokyo.

Here is a timeline of Facebook’s growth in Japan so far:

May 2008

Facebook launches in Japanese (link).

September 2011

Facebook reports 5 million Japanese MAU (link).

March 2012

Facebook hits 10 million Japanese MAU (link).

September 2012

Facebook outpaces Mixi with 15 million MAU (link).

February 2013

Facebook counts 19 million users.（source：serkantoto）

2）Angry Birds Toons is set to debut on March 16 and 17

By Nadia Oxford

Hallelujah, it’s rainin’ birds. Earlier today, Rovio announced that its long-awaited Angry Birds Toons will sail into our lives on March 16 and 17. Rovio plans to release 52 episodes per year, and the basic premise around most of the shorts appears to revolve around (sit down for this one) the Pigs’ attempts to steal the Birds’ eggs.

The show will forego speech in favor of expressive motions and over-the-top antics. The Pigs lust after the birds’ eggs, the Birds try and stop them, and everybody gets into plenty of shenanigans in-between. But will the Birds and Pigs ever embrace and come to a mutual understanding? Let’s hope not.

Angry Birds Toons is not Saturday morning fare: Each episode clocks in at a few minutes, and will be distributed exclusively through the Angry Birds mobile app. That said, if you want to pour yourself a big bowl of Mr. T cereal while you watch, we totally support your decision.

Angry Birds Toons should be a good warm-up for the Angry Birds movie, which is coming in 2016.（source：gamezebo）

3）Apple will give parents iTunes credits, refunds over in-app purchases lawsuit

Ricardo Bilton

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about kids it’s that having them is a bad idea. Worse, though, is letting them anywhere near your iPad.

Plenty of parents  learned that the hard way after their young ones racked up absurd charges on their credit cards because of in-app purchases in games like Tap Fish. These games, while presumably free, made it exceedingly easy for kids to spend hundreds of dollars on virtual goods.

The problem was so pervasive that a group of parents sued Apple over it in 2011. Two years later, Apple has reached a settlement, which will give affected parents $5 iTunes credits for their troubles. For claims of amounts over $30, Apple will also offer the option of cash refunds.

The one big drawback? Apple won’t dispense the payments until next year at the earliest, as GigaOM reports, which should temper some of the initial enthusiasm greeting the settlement.

Timeline concerns aside, the big question is how much the settlement is going to cost Apple. Though the final amount will depend on how many people end up filing claims, Apple says it plans to send a notice of the settlement to over 23 million iTunes account holders.（source：venturebeat）

4）EA’s Digital EVP, Playfish Co-Founder Kristian Segerstrale Departs

Kim-Mai Cutler

Kristian Segerstrale, the EA executive who was in charge of leading the company into a games-as-a-service era, has just left the company. CEO John Riccitiello just announced it in an internal memo and said that EA COO Peter Moore is taking on his responsibilities.

Segerstrale came into EA through its $400 million acquisition of Playfish, a social games developer that he co-founded with a high school friend Sebastien de Halleux.

That deal was a watershed moment for the social gaming industry and an acknowledgment that virtual goods and currencies could represent a significant new revenue model for the industry.

Disney quickly followed on with a $750 million deal to buy Facebook games developer Playdom. Although Zynga has had a rocky year following its debut as a public company, most of the largest and highest-grossing developers on iOS and Android employ a free-to-play model that includes purchases of virtual currencies and goods.

Segerstrale was leading the charge on moving EA into this world where games are not sold as $50 or 60 dollar products off shelves, but instead are services that people subscribe to or pay for through virtual goods and currencies.

Internally, it’s not a terribly surprising move. His co-founders Halleux and Sami Lababidi left in early 2011, while Segerstale chose to take on the challenge of moving an older, more bureaucratic gaming company with a market cap of more than $5 billion into a world where games are free-to-play. Riccitiello says that Segerstrale is going back into the world of startups, but we don’t have more details on his next move at this time.（source：techcrunch）

5）Cliff Blezinski claims games industry in turmoil

by MegaGames

Former top man at Epic Games and brainchild of Gears or War, Cliff Blezinski, has spoken out in an interview about the current state of the industry that he pseudo-retired from. According to him, it’s in “turmoil,” the worst since the 1980s video game crash and that ultimately, he’ll wait until the dust has settled before rejoining it.

The main problem he says, lies in the fact that all the main console makers use closed platforms. “I think Nintendo could possibly be faced with the situation of becoming a company that only makes software moving forward. I think Sony and Microsoft are about to come to major blows. But at the same time, people love playing games on their iPad. The PC is going through a wonderful renaissance right now. I think we’re ready to do digital download games all the time.”

One of the big advantages of the PC over the past few years, has been with the frequency of which patches, DLC and updates are released. Current-gen consoles have huge lead in times for developers that want to fix a bug or flaw, as well as large monetary costs – meaning smaller developers rarely if ever update their games. This needs to be fixed in the future Blezinski says.

“When Gears of War 2 launched and we found out that our netcode wasn’t working right, it took us three months to get an update out,” Bleszinski said. “By that time, the majority of users had moved on to the next game or had traded it in… All that red tape needs to be stripped away in order to create an ecosystem to allow for a product like Minecraft to actually happen on a console.”

He also wants to see mods added as a feature for consoles, something that has been a staple of PC gaming for years.

We know a fair bit about Sony’s next generation PlayStation 4 and what it’ll offer, but with regards to this sort of red tape, it’s unclear. Do you guys think it’ll become easier to update and mod games on the next-gen of consoles, or will it continue with the closed system we have today?（source：games）

6）Windows Phone: 130,000 apps and counting

by Keith Andrew

On the back of what Microsoft claims was a quadrupling of Windows Phone sales in the fourth quarter of 2012, app submissions to the platform have also been similarly boosted.

The giant has revealed that Windows Phone Store now plays host to a total of 130,000 apps, with 15,000 having been specifically re-tooled for Windows Phone 8, which launched at the end of October.

The increased number of apps available – and, indeed, volume of consumers sampling them – means downloads themselves are also on the up, increasing by 75 percent in all, with paid app revenue jumping by 91 percent.

Numbers game

On average, Microsoft claims each Windows Phone user downloads a total of 55 apps each.

“By now, you are familiar with our strategy of fostering an ecosystem around Windows Phone: an ecosystem characterised by quality, scale and developer opportunity,” details Microsoft’s Todd Brix on the firm’s Windows Phone blog.

“This strategy is taking root at an accelerated pace with partners and developers reporting real and sustained growth following the launch of Windows Phone 8.”

Brix claims IDC figures suggest Windows Phone now boasts a market share of 10 percent in many major territories – a significant rise on the less than one percent hand Microsoft held on to during the handover from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7.

Indeed, Kantar Worldpanel recently reported that Windows Phone has slipped past BlackBerry to take third spot in both the US and UK.（source：pocketgamer）

7）Infographic: The rise and rise of the Windows Phone Store

by Mike Cook

As you may have already seen on these pages, 2013 is shaping up to be the year when Microsoft’s move on the smartphone market will either deliver the goods, or be found wanting.

Interesting, however, is the momentum Windows Phone’s app store has being able to amass, despite not having the largest userbase to call on.

From launch to the present day, the marketplace has enjoyed a rate of growth that may surprise some of its detractors.

Our latest infographic, then, takes a closer look at the Windows Phone Store, and just what it has to offer for developers that throw their lot in with Microsoft in 2013.（source：pocketgamer）