1）据pocketgamer报道，游道易日前宣布其用户已突破1亿大关，其中主要得益于俄罗斯工作室Zeptolab游戏《割绳子》中文版的成就，该游戏在中国市场发布头10天就收获了200万次的iOS下载量，预计Android版本发布后，这款游戏将在2月底前实现另外2000万次下载量。

yodo users(from pocketgamer)

2）据venturebeat报道，Valve日前透露公司在2013年已向为《军团要塞2》射击者以及Dota 2多人在线战斗者创造虚拟商品的个人用户支付了1020万美元。

为Valve游戏创造道具的用户仅有661人，所以这些用户在2013年通过在Steam出售自己所创造道具的平均收益为1.5万美元。Valve将这些道具25%的销售额支付给创造者，这意味着Valve在2013年出售的用户创造内容超过了4000万美元。

hats(from steamcommunity.com)

《军团要塞2》以及Dota 2均是免费下载的游戏，Valve出售游戏道具，并允许玩家社区使用易于使用的软件工具制作并出售道具。《军团要塞2》中最著名的道具是让角色更具个性化的帽子；Dota 2用户也同样创造了可令角色看起来与众不同的装饰性道具和服装。

3）据彭博社报道，任天堂总裁岩田聪在最近新闻发布会上表示，他们正在考虑新的运营结构，鉴于智能设备市场扩展，他们自然也会研究如何用智能设备扩大游戏玩家业务。这并不只是简单地将《马里奥》投放到智能手机上。

《华尔街日报》称岩田聪承认自己“误解了市场”，没有成功引导任天堂转型，他承认人们打发时间和生活方式都已经发生变化，如果任天堂仍在脚踏原地，就有可能被淘汰。

Satoru-Iwata(from obamapacman.com)

4）据日经新闻报道，任天堂日前预计在本财年（截止2014年3月31日）净亏损将达2.4亿美元，颠覆了之前将实现5.3亿美元净利润的预测。这一消息传出后，任天堂在美国股市受挫，股价下跌超过18%，每股售价降至14.7美元。

该公司总裁岩田聪于2002年接管任天堂，领导公司引进Wii系统，并收获庞大的用户，实现巨大利润。在2007年，由于Wii取得前所未有的成功，任天堂股价也一度飙升至76.87美元的历史纪录。

在2012年，任天堂试图以Wii U再创辉煌，但该系统却没有吸引Wii所吸引的用户，更糟糕的是，Wii U也未能吸引到许多加转向微软和索尼等更强大系统的传统游戏玩家。

5）据gamasutra报道，挪威中学教师Tobias Staaby最近因与学生一起在学校玩Telltale的《行尸走肉》而走红。

the_walking_dead(from officialplaystationmagazine)

Staaby将游戏结合到自己的宗教研究课程中，激发学生讨论道德与伦理选择的问题。Staaby向挪威媒体表示，《行尸走肉》呈现了一些学生想不到的道德困境，这有助于扩大他们的回答范围。

需要指出的是，《行尸走肉》并非首款被课程所采用的电子游戏，《Kerbal Space Program》以及《Minecraft》等沙盒游戏在数年前就已经被作为教学工具。（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）Cut the Rope 2 pushes Yodo1 past 100 million users in China

by Matt Suckley

Having made its name aiding the advance of western studios in China, Yodo1 has announced it has passed the 100 million user milestone, thanks in part to a Zeptolab classic.

“We crossed the 100 million milestone last weekend thanks in great part to the recent launch of Cut the Rope 2 (Chinese edition) co-developed with our friends at Zeptolab,” detailed CEO Henry Fong.

“That game attracted about 2 million downloads in its first ten days on the China market, just from iOS alone,” he continues.

Big numbers

Fong went on to say that an Android release, plus targeted promotion, is expected to generate “another 20 million downloads before the end of February.”

Yodo1′s growth hasn’t come out of the blue, with western studios increasingly looking to unsaturated Asian markets for expansion, though launching in regions such as China isn’t without hurdles aplenty.

Aside from language and cultural differences, Fong estimates that – unlike the west, where Apple’s App Store and Google Play dominate – there are “over 50 Android app stores” in China lined up to promote Cut the Rope 2.（source：pocketgamer）

2）Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 item creators get $10.2 million payout from Valve in 2013

Jeffrey Grubb

The virtual hat business makes millions of dollars every year.

Valve revealed that it paid out $10.2 million to individuals who create virtual goods for its Team Fortress 2 shooter and its Dota 2 multiplayer online battler in 2013 (via PC Games N).

During its Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle, which ended yesterday, Valve held a talk for fellow developers about how it is shifting to games that enable players to create value for one another.

Only 661 users are creating items for Valve games, so the average community content producer earned $15,000 from the items they sold on Steam in 2013. Valve gives 25 percent of the sales of items to its creator, which means the publisher sold more than $40 million in user-created goods in 2013.

Both Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 are free to download and play. Valve makes items for the games, but it also empowers its community to do the same with easy-to-use software tools. What kind of items? Well, Team Fortress 2 is famous for its hats that players can put on their characters to give them some more personality. In Dota 2, community members also create and sell cosmetic costumes and items that characters can wear to look different.（source：venturebeat）

3）’It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone’

By Alex Wawro

“We are thinking about a new business structure…Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone.”

- Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, speaking about the company’s plans for the future during a press conference, as reported by Bloomberg.

President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata held a press conference today in Osaka, Japan to address news that Nintendo has been forced to revise its previously optimistic forecast for the fiscal year to project significant losses, rather than profits.

Bloomberg reporters were in attendance and published a story suggesting that Iwata is continuing to speak openly about the need for Nintendo to embrace the booming mobile market.

“We cannot continue a business without winning,” said Iwata. “We must take a skeptical approach whether we can still simply make game players, offer them in the same way as in the past for 20,000 yen or 30,000 yen, and sell titles for a couple of thousand yen each.”

A report from The Wall Street Journal claims that Iwata admitted to “misreading the market” and failing to guide Nintendo towards change that would surprise and satisfy its customers.

“The way people use their time, their lifestyles, who they are have changed,” said Iwata. “If we stay in one place, we will become outdated.”

Sales of the Wii U, Wii and 3DS were far less than Nintendo expected, though the NPD reports more 3DS units were sold in the U.S. in December 2013 than any other console.（source：gamasutra）

4）Nintendo stock plummets, but president Satoru Iwata says he won’t resign

Jeffrey Grubb

Nintendo‘s Wii U is failing, but the company’s president said he won’t step down.

Early this morning, Nintendo reported that it is revising its annual forecast. The company now expects a net loss of $240 million. That’s counter to the publisher’s previous estimates that predicted it would bring in a net profit of $530 million. Despite these gloomy figures, Iwata insisted he will continue as president of the storied gaming company, according to Japanese news site Nikkei.

Nintendo’s shares, which traders exchange over the counter in the U.S., are getting slammed this morning. The stock price is down more than 18 percent to $14.70.

Why the huge reversal in fortune? Well, because the Wii U, the followup to the extraordinarily popular Wii, isn’t selling.

For its full fiscal year, which will end March 31, the company predicts it will sell only 2.8 million Wii U home consoles. That’s down from its previous estimate of 9 million. This failure to sell its latest system also greatly diminished software sales.

“In the year-end sales season, which constitutes the highest proportion of the annual sales volume, software sales with a relatively high margin were significantly lower than our original forecasts mainly due to the fact that hardware sales did not reach their expected level,” reads a Nintendo statement.

Nintendo expected to sell 38 million units of Wii U software for its fiscal year, but it now is only predicting that it will sell 19 million.

The 3DS, Nintendo’s popular handheld, is something of a bright spot. It was the best-selling gaming system for all of 2013 in the U.S., according to industry-intelligence firm The NPD Group. Even after accomplishing that impressive feat, Nintendo revised down its estimates for 3DS hardware and software sales.

Nintendo now expects to sell 13.5 million 3DS systems for fiscal year 2014, where it previously expected to sell 18 million. In terms of software, Nintendo revised that number down from 80 million units to 66 million.

Iwata took over Nintendo in 2002. He oversaw the company as it introduced the Wii system, which found a huge audience and led the company to massive profits. In 2007, following the Wii’s unprecedented success, Nintendo’s shares hit an all-time high of $76.87.

The chief executive was the architect of the Wii’s “Blue Ocean” strategy, which was the idea that Nintendo could make more money by targeting the wider audience of people that don’t consider themselves gamers. That worked largely due to the Wii’s intuitive motion controls and its pack-in Wii Sports game.

In 2012, Nintendo tried to re-create its success with the Wii U. The system came with a touchscreen controller, but it failed to excite the same “Blue Ocean” audience that the Wii attracted. Perhaps even more problematic for Nintendo, the Wii U is also failing to bring in many traditional gamers who are moving on to the more powerful systems from Microsoft and Sony.（source：venturebeat）

5）Norwegian school using The Walking Dead to teach ethics

By Alex Wawro

Norwegian teacher Tobias Staaby is getting a fair bit of good press today for playing Telltale’s The Walking Dead with his students at Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary School in Bergen, Norway.

Staaby incorporates the game into his religious studies curriculum to help spur discussion about morality and ethical choices.

“The Walking Dead presents some dilemmas [the students] would not have thought of otherwise,” Staaby told a reporter from Norwegian media outlet NRK. “That makes their answers to a greater extent their own.”

You can watch the full report from NRK in the video above, though it’s probably wise to enable subtitles if you don’t speak Norwegian.

Though The Walking Dead is likely the grisliest game ever used in a classroom, is hardly the first — sandbox games like Kerbal Space Program and Minecraft have been used as teaching tools for years. （source：gamasutra）