1）据venturebeat报道，《质量效应》创意总监Casey Hudson日前加入微软，将担任微软工作室创意总监，负责Xbox平台及HoloLens（微软的虚拟现实技术）的相关开发工作。

Casey Hudson(from 3dmgame.com)

虚拟现实是一个新的游戏发展趋势，索尼目前也在开发自己的相关项目Project Morpheus，Oculus和Valve的Steam VR也正向PC平台进军。但对于玩家来说，要让这一新技术得到推广的普及的方法就是出现一款完美结合该技术的热门游戏。Hudson的职责就是凭借过去制作游戏的经验，帮助HoloLens项目实现这一目标。

2）App Annie最新报告显示，2015年第一季度在美国、英国、德国、日本和韩国这五大主流市场中，社交和通信类应用的用户交互性表现最出色，YouTube则最耗数据流量。

在这几个市场中，通信和社交媒介应用在Android智能手机会话时长中占比超过50%，韩国和德国用户开启通信应用的频率高于其他三国。

社交与通讯类应用(from App Annie)

日本Android活跃智能手机用户每月平均游戏会话数约为美国的3倍，英国的7.5倍。西方和日韩市场之间的这一显著差异同样反映在用户玩游戏的时间上。2015 年第一季度，游戏是日本和韩国Android 智能手机用户投入时间第二大的类别（以每名 Android 智能手机用户的投入时间计），仅次于通讯类应用。

每活跃用户会话(from App Annie)

2015 年第一季度，日本 Android 智能手机用户每月玩手机游戏的平均时间是美国用户的4倍。相反，欧洲和美国Android智能手机用户将更多时间放在社交和媒体与视频类应用，而不是游戏上。

主要收入来自游戏(from App Annie)

2015年第一季度，日本和韩国iOS和Google Play应用商店中，90%以上的收入来自于游戏，而英国的应用商店收入约70%来自于游戏，美国为80%。

3）据gamasutra报道，Double Fine成员Greg Rice最近通过Twitter宣布工作室正与Frederator Studios联合制作基于《Costume Quest》游戏的动画片。

Costume Quest(from 19cr.com)

值得注意的是，该游戏之前的主创人员是前Pixar动画师Tasha Sounart（也是前Double Fine员工），她在Double Fine就职5年后于2012年重返Pixar。现在Frederator动画人员又将通过她的游戏寻找制作动画片的灵感，目前暂不可得知该动画片将何时上映。

4）据gamasutra报道，Konami Digital Entertainment首席执行官Hideki Hayawaka在最近采访中说明了公司从零售游戏领域转向数字/手机游戏开发的原因，他称移动领域将成为游戏平台的中心，我们必须根据用户对设备的使用趋势来制定游戏开发战略。

他称自己计划在公司向移动领域转型时，“清楚地区分管理与创意型的职位”，目前来看创意型职位范围十分广泛，甚至涵盖了公司的管理岗位，这也许有利于深入开发一个项目，但当截然不同的发展趋势交汇时，这样的角色也许就无法利用相关技能应对挑战。

他同时还指出，“移动优先”策略并不意味着公司今后只制作手机游戏，他们将结合使用移动平台，主机、街机和卡牌游戏扩大用户基础和游戏玩法。（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

1）Mass Effect creative director Casey Hudson joins Microsoft to work on HoloLens

Mike Minotti

Casey Hudson has gone from “mass” to “micro” as he prepares to help sell gamers on Microsoft’s holographic lens platform.

Hudson earned his reputation at developer BioWare, where he was the creative director for famous role-playing games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy until he left the company in 2014. Now, he’s working at Microsoft Studios as its creative director, a role that will have him working on the Xbox brand and the HoloLens, Microsoft’s virtual reality initiative.

“As creative director at Microsoft Studios, my primary focus will be the creative direction of HoloLens Experiences,” Hudson said in an interview on Xbox Wire, Microsoft’s official Xbox blog. “I am extremely passionate about the potential of this kind of technology, as anyone who’s talked with me over the last couple of years can attest. I feel that the work being done at Microsoft on mixed reality and holographic computing will have a tremendous impact on how all of us interact with technology in the coming years. It’s an honor to be able to join such an incredibly talented team, and to work on something that will fundamentally advance the role computers play in our daily lives.”

Virtual reality is the new trend in gaming. Sony is working on its own headset, Project Morpheus, and Oculus and Valve’s Steam VR are coming to PCs. However, with gamers, the best way to get them on board with new technology is with a killer game that shows it off. As a former game director, that is likely Hudson’s role with Microsoft and HoloLens. Unlike other virtual reality projects, HoloLens projects holographic displays over real environments. Hudson could make a sci-fi game out of your living room. Remember how characters in Mass Effect had holographic displays that shaped themselves to characters’ arms? You could see something similar on your own body when you look at it through HoloLens.

However, HoloLens and the other mentioned virtual reality device don’t have release dates yet. We might hear more about them at next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.（source：venturebeat）

2）Social and messaging apps dominate smartphone usage

Anne Freier

A new report by analyst firm App Annie sheds light on the way users interact with apps and finds that social and messaging apps are at the forefront. Having analysed trends across the UK, US, Germany, Japan and South Korea, YouTube led the way in data usage. With the addition of mobile video play, Facebook followed second. Communication and social media apps account for over 50% of Android smartphone sessions. In South Korea and Germany, users are launching messaging apps more than others. The US is an exception where social media dominated ahead of messaging apps.Communication and Social apps see strongest app session engagement

Facebook was the top app per session user in the US and ranked second in the UK and Germany, where WhatsApp leads. Japan and South Korea also favoured one-to-one communication, hinting at the growing trend of privacy online. Despite shifts in pattern from the way consumers traditionally used the internet on desktops, the Chrome browser still saw much engagement.

Messaging apps were generally favoured by users

The study also found that gaming was more popular in Asia than any of the other countries. Here, user sessions were an average three times higher than in the US. Games generate 90% of Apple and Android App Store in Japan and South Korea, in comparison to 70% in the UK and 80% in the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly give the comfort of larger screen sizes, AppAnnie found that Android game session length was 25% longer on tablets compared to smartphones.

Whilst most of the data provided focussed on Android, the research highlighted that messaging apps generated more active user sessions per month compared to game or music applications.（source：businessofapps）

3）Made for TV: Double Fine’s Costume Quest gets its own cartoon

By Alex Wawro

Double Fine’s Greg Rice took to Twitter today to confirm that the San Francisco indie studio is working with Frederator Studios to produce a cartoon based on Double Fine’s Costume Quest games.

This seems to be another move on Double Fine’s part to expand and diversify its business beyond game development — last year the studio began testing the waters of game publishing, though it later had to lay off some folks after losing an unannounced project.

It’s especially interesting to see Costume Quest become fodder for an animated cartoon, because the original game was imagined and championed by Pixar animator (and former Double Fine employee) Tasha Sounart.

“When I was a kid, I was always drawing, but I always loved video games,” Sounart (formerly known as Tasha Harris) told Gamasutra in 2010, shortly after shipping Costume Quest as project lead. “So I would draw out some ideas for games, and I remember drawing these little pixelated kids trick or treating.”

Sounart returned to Pixar in 2012 after spending over five years at Double Fine, and now the Frederator animators are looking to her game for inspiration as they draw cartoon versions of little kids trick or treating. It’s yet unclear how the Costume Quest cartoon will be distributed.（source：gamasutra）

4）The future of Konami is ‘mobile first’, says company chief

By Alex Wawro

“From now on, mobile will be at the heart of game platforms, and that we need a business strategy which creates games in accordance with observations of consumer usage trends.”
- Konami Digital Entertainment chief Hideki Hayawaka outlines why his company is shifting focus from retail to digital/mobile game development.

The folks at Konami have weathered some significant public outcry after recently falling out with Metal Gear frontman Hideo Kojima and scrapping the Silent Hills project he was working on with film director Guillermo del Toro, delisting its remarkable P.T. demo from PSN in the process. Kojima was also taken off Konami’s list of executive officers earlier this year.

In an interview with Japanese outlet Nikkei Trendy that was translated by Games Industry this week, Konami Digital Entertainment CEO Hideki Hayawaka (pictured) explains that he’s planning to “clearly divide management and creative roles” as he transitions the company to focus on mobile.

“Up until now, creative roles have been very broad, covering even the management of the organisation,” said Hayawaka. “I think that really focusing deeply on one project is a strong approach, but if an entirely different trend emerges then you’re left unable to leverage those skills or cope with it.”

The Konami exec also noted that the company is trying to move from selling physical products to “intangible things” like digital games, in-game content and mobile games.

“For our company, ‘mobile first’ doesn’t mean just doing mobile,” said Hayawaka. “Rather, it means that we will combine the use of mobile, the platform which is closest to our customers, with consoles, arcade games and card games, construct a portfolio, expand the styles of play and our customer base.”（source：gamasutra）