1）据serkantoto报道，日本顶级智能手机游戏《Puzzle & Dragons》用户于3月9日突破1000万（19天前已达900万用户），这一情况表明其用户增长趋势并未减缓。

估计该游戏每月销售额超过5000万美元，其开发商GungHo在大阪证券交易所市值已达50亿美元，超过DeNA、GREE等日本社交游戏巨头，以及麦当劳日本公司。

puzzle-dragons-gungho(from serkantoto)

2）据insidemobileapps报道，Glu Mobile日前宣布向英国市场发布与移动赌博服务公司Probability PLC联合制作的首款真钱博彩游戏。

glu mobile(from equities)

这款老虎机游戏取材于Glu旗下的《Samurai vs.Zombies Defense》，将登陆英国和意大利的iOS平台，并通过Probability英国合作伙伴Paddy Power、William Hill等公司发行游戏，Probability将扮演全方位的运营角色，承担真钱赌博游戏的所有监管责任。

Glu日前股价上涨16.94个百分点，每股售价2.83美元。

3）据mobile-ent报道，Compuware最近展开的全球调查结果显示，85%受访者更喜欢访问应用程序而非移动网站。

55%受访者称应用程序更为便捷，48%认为应用程序速度更快，40%称应用程序更易于查看。应用程序不但可用于购物、预订旅馆和旅行，还可以处理办公事务以及工作交流。

app_sphere(from buzz.blogger)

尽管如此，还是有62%受访者曾遭遇应用程序崩溃和错误现象，47%遇到开启缓慢的问题，还有40%遇到根本无法开启的应用。

4）据insidemobileapps报道，中国手机游戏开发商触控科技日前宣布旗下热作《捕鱼达人》目前在全球每月收益达628万美元，日活跃用户（DAU）超过1000万。

Fishing Joy(from mobygames.com)

5）Juniper Research最近报告预测，到2017年每四个平板电脑用户中就有一人通过这一设备支付费用。

报告指出2017年通过平板电脑使用网银服务的用户将近2亿，约占2017年全体移动网银用户的19%（2013年的这一比例仅有9%）。

tablet user(from koreaittimes.com)

预计到2017年全球移动网银用户将达10亿，在全球移动设备用户中占比15%，其中东亚和中国、北美、西欧移动网银用户普及率最高。

6）据gamasutra报道，任天堂设计师宫本茂在最近采访中表示，他并不会从IP/角色类型，而是玩家每时每刻的体验这一角度来制作游戏。

miyamoto(from wired.com)

他曾在2007年《时代》杂志的采访中表示，“我尽量不专注于制作新角色和新世界，而是创造新游戏体验，如果比起我们现有作品，一种新体验更适用于新角色类型或新世界，那么我们才会考虑围绕它制作新角色或新游戏世界。”

7）据gamasutra报道，最近有传闻称Zynga有可能被雅虎收购，这一消息出来后Zynga股价在周一飙升10%。

yahoo-zynga(from digitaltrends.com)

但观察者指出，Mark Pincus目前持有Zynga公司多数表决权，如果他不同意出售公司，那么即使雅虎出价再高也无法成交。Pincus有自己的公司未来发展愿景，并且似乎很看好博彩领域的前景，所以出售公司的可能性不大；Zynga董事会成员Bing Gordon也指出Zynga可能更愿意保持独立身份。（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）Puzzle & Dragons Passes 10 Million Downloads. Maker GungHo Now Worth US$5 Billion.

Dr. Serkan Toto

Japan’s top smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons has passed the 10-million user mark. The title hit the milestone on March 9, just 19 days after reaching 9 million players.

This is interesting because these numbers show that growth isn’t slowing down, as can be seen in this chart from Social Game Info:

Puzzle & Dragons is estimated to rack in well over US$50 million in sales – per month.

The game is so successful that the market cap of maker GungHo (listed at the Osaka Stock Exchange) passed that of companies like Mobage operator DeNA, GREE, or to use another example, McDonalds Japan: it now stands at US$5 billion.

If you need one piece of evidence of just how hit-driven Japan’s mobile gaming market has become, this is it.（source：serkantoto）

2）Glu Mobile launches first real-money gambling game

Scott Reyburn

Glu Mobile today announced the launch of the company’s first real-money gambling mobile game in the U.K. The game was made possible through the company’s partnership with mobile gambling service Probability PLC.

The title is a slots game featuring intellectual property from the mobile game developer and publisher Glu’s Samurai vs. Zombies Defense game. The game will be available for iOS in markets where Probability operates, U.K. and Italy. Probability will also distribute the game through its U.K. betting firm partners like Paddy Power, William Hill and Probability’s white label partners.

“We are pleased to expand our mobile portfolio to include real-money gambling,” says Niccolo de Masi, Chief Executive Officer of Glu Mobile, in a statement. “We anticipate that real-money gambling will continue to gain momentum globally and believe that with this offering, Glu is well positioned to capitalize to the extent that additional markets adjust regulations. We plan to leverage Probability’s extensive partner network to further extend Glu’s successful original IP to new demographics.”

The partnership between Glu Mobile and Probability is structured in such a way that Probability provides a comprehensive operational role, accepting all real-money gambling regulatory responsibilities.

Glu’s stock closed today up 16.94 percent to $2.83 a share, following the announcement for the real-money gambling title’s release. Glu’s Q4 2012 earnings showed that the company’s revenues were up 1 percent quarter-over-quarter to $18.5 million, and up 24 percent year-over-year.（source：insidemobileapps）

3）85 per cent of consumers prefer mobile apps over mobile websites

by Zen Terrelonge

Convenience and speed are top two factors.

Tech performance firm Compuware conducted a global study of consumer mobile expectations and experiences to find that 85 per cent of respondents prefer apps to mobile websites.

55 per cent say apps are more convenient, 48 per cent say they’re faster, and 40 per cent say they’re easier to browse. Apps aren’t just being used for personal tasks like shopping, booking hotels and travel either, with users saying they simplify office tasks and colleague-based communications.

Despite the apps being more popular, 62 per cent have experienced crashes and errors, 47 per cent cite slow launch times, and 40 per cent have tried an app that wouldn’t even launch.

Stephen Pierzchala, technology strategist, Compuware APM Center of Excellence, said: “With consumers expecting greater experiences with mobile apps now more than ever, fulfilling those expectations doesn’t just happen — it takes a conscious effort throughout every stage of the design and development process to get it right.

“Performance is a crucial contributor to providing a dependable mobile app user experience, so performance should be considered a key driver in the design process. Mobile applications need to focus on a core utility, and they need to be fast and reliable in order to be valuable.”（source：mobile-ent）

4）CocoaChina’s Fishing Joy generating more than $6M a month worldwide

Scott Reyburn

Chinese mobile game developer and platform maker CocoaChina today revealed that its flagship franchise Fishing Joy is now generating $6.28 million per month in revenue worldwide, with more than 10 million daily active users (DAU), doubling its monthly revenue in two months.

CocoaChina attributes the game’s success to continued optimization and the rapid growth of the Chinese smartphone user base. The company also increased the game’s reach by reducing the game’s package size, making it more attractive to users with limited bandwidth and data plans.（source：insidemobileapps）

5）25 per cent of tablet users to pay bills via their device by 2017

by Daniel Gumble

Growing acceptance of ‘push’ mobile banking to drive tablet transactions.

With tablet adoption and user acceptance of ‘push’ mobile banking on the rise, it is thought that by 2017, one in four tablet users will be paying bills via their device, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The report suggests that these factors will drive users of transactional tablet banking services to almost 200 million in 2017; representing around 19 per cent of total mobile banking customers in 2017, as opposed to nine per cent in 2013.

It is also noted in the report that the adoption of bill presentment and payment (MBPP) transactional banking by tablet users will be higher than mobile handset users, particularly in developed areas where there is a higher adoption rate of tablet devices.

Juniper found that there will be a significant migration of purchasing and transaction activity from laptops and desktops to tablet devices as tablet adoption continues to grow.

“With online payments accounting for a significant proportion of all bill payments, especially in developed markets, BPP (Bill Presentment and Payment) transactions will indeed migrate from the desktop towards tablet devices. Consumers often prefer managing bill payment and transactions via tablet devices compared to smartphones”, said report author Nitin Bhas.

Elsewhere, the study revealed that mobile banking users will top one billion in 2017, accounting for 15 per cent of global mobile handset users, while the developed markets of East Asia and China, North America and Western Europe will boast the highest penetration of banking users in 2017.（source：mobile-ent）

6）A Miyamoto design pillar: Forget characters, focus on experiences

By Frank Cifaldi

“We approach it not from, ‘What is the next character?’ But really, ‘What is there within this structure of video games… from which we can create new play structures?’”
-Nintendo’s irreplaceable Shigeru Miyamoto once again explains in a recent interview that he doesn’t think of games in terms of IPs or characters, but in terms of how a player is feeling second-to-second.

I’ve been working on a side project these last few weeks that involves reading every interview with Miyamoto I can get my hands on, going back 25 years or so, and a recurring theme through all those years is just how little emphasis the man who is more often than not referred to as “the creator of Mario and Donkey Kong” puts on his characters.

“I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences,” he told Time in 2007. “If a new experience is better suited to a new type of character or world than one of our existing franchises, then we might create a new character or world around it.”

And this, it seems, has always been true of his design philosophy. When Toshihiko Nakago, president of Nintendo’s longtime programming contractor SRD, recently dug up the earliest design specs for what eventually became 1986′s The Legend of Zelda, he found them in a binder called “Adventure Mario.”

Miyamoto didn’t start Zelda by coming up with an elf-like character and the princess he was trying to rescue, he started with the game itself, calling on his go-to “everyman” character to act in the starring role until he solidified how the game felt and then, by necessity, he designed a character that better suited it.（source：gamasutra）

7）Does a Zynga-Yahoo! merger make sense?

By Chris Morris

Zynga shares soared Monday, after an analyst’s report mentioned the social game maker was a possible candidate for a takeover — by Yahoo!, of all companies.

Wunderlich Securities’ Blake Harper got the ball rolling, noting that while Yahoo! has been reported to be sniffing around Yelp and OpenTable, Zynga (along with Tumblr and FourSquare) would be a good match as well.

On the surface, it sounds like an odd couple — and the immediate reaction of many people in the game industry is to shrug it off. But Zynga’s shares popped 10 percent on the news — and they’re moving higher again today.

So that raises the question: Does a pairing of these two seemingly opposite companies make sense?

Yes. And no.

Yahoo! is a company that’s looking to boost traffic and hone its focus. CEO Marissa Mayer also has a tech background that might make Zynga attractive to her. Web-based gaming is still a strong category that has notable earnings potential — especially for a portal like Yahoo!.

Yahoo! already has a games channel, but it’s certainly interested in boosting the earnings potential of that page. And so far, it has no real game presence in the mobile space — an area Mayer has indicated she wants to see Yahoo! boost its presence. (Full disclosure: I was Managing Editor of Yahoo! Finance for a year and currently freelance for Yahoo! Games — but I have no direct knowledge of corporate strategy. Heck, I don’t even get the free lunches that staffers do.)

Zynga, of course, has a notable profile both in mobile and Web-based games.

Takeover target

And make no mistake, Zynga certainly has all the signs of a takeover target. Its shares, despite recent rebounds, are still low — but it’s actually one of the year’s best performing stocks (climbing roughly 50 percent year to date). Most of its stock price is accounted for in its cash holdings, as well — meaning the company is actually worth much more when you add in real estate, etc.

But there are a number of hurdles that stand in the way of an offer by Yahoo!

First, there’s the gambling. Zynga is in the midst of repositioning itself as a different sort of gaming company — in an area that Yahoo! has no interest in exploring. Family-friendly is the motto of the company. That’s why you almost never see stories about sex, drugs or alcohol on the premiere real estate of the site’s front page.

Also, Zynga’s star in game industry circles has dimmed notably. Buying the company would be a turnaround project — and Yahoo! has plenty of those of its own to handle these days. Zynga’s video game presence isn’t ascending these days. And when you add in the talent drain the company is experiencing, that’s going to be a tough tide to turn.

Mayer can’t afford the distraction from the core problems of Yahoo! right now. Investors would riot — and she would risk finding herself in the same scrap heap as Jerry Yang, Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz.

Ultimately, though, it really doesn’t come down to Yahoo!. And it certainly doesn’t matter what Zynga investors want. The key component, as it is with everything Zynga, is Mark Pincus.

Making a believer out of Pincus

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Yahoo! really, really wanted Zynga — and offered an attractive price per share. Investors would likely cheer. But if Pincus didn’t feel like selling, the deal wouldn’t happen — no matter how generous the offer.

Pincus, remember, holds 70 times more voting power than all of the common stock on the market — so the performance of the stock has little to no impact on him. (He’s also the landlord for the company’s office, pocketing $28,000 per month in rent — last we heard.)

Pincus has always followed his own vision for the company — and he seems committed to the gambling future now. And with Nevada and New Jersey lining up to legalize online gambling, things seem to be falling into place with that.

Unless Mayer has some unknown strategy up her sleeve that can not only appease her own shareholders, but make a believer out of Pincus, don’t expect this deal to happen anytime soon.

Investors now seem skeptical of a company sale. Zynga stock retreated 4 percent Tuesday as investors had more time to digest the analysis, and in the wake of comments from Zynga board member Bing Gordon, who said Zynga may want to stay independent.（source：gamasutra）