1）斯洛文尼亚开发商Outfit7宣布其最新手机应用《Talking Tom Cat 2》在iOS平台露面仅一天就突破100万次下载量。该公司首席执行官Andrej Nabergoj表示，该应用自5月27日发布以来，目前已实现258万次下载量（游戏邦注：不包括Android版本的下载数据，该公司在Android平台也推出了14款应用，其中有两者创造了1500万次以上的下载量）。

Talking Tom Cat 2(from ipadown.com)

Outfit7不久前刚宣布其应用下载量突破1亿次，并以每月2000万次的速度持续增长，该公司每推出一款新应用都会在其他产品中进行交叉推广。《Talking Tom》这款免费应用通过0.99美元升级包的内置付费功能进行创收，该公司有意将旗下的Tom猫等角色打造成堪比米老鼠和海绵宝宝的知名品牌，并将在旧金山扩招人员开发实体玩具等周边产品，并将这些角色推向书籍和电影等传统媒体。

2）英国游戏发行商Chillingo最近发行了一款由俄罗斯开发商RebBall Studios推出的iOS游戏《Red Ball 3》，该物理游戏售价1.99美元，目前在iPad付费应用榜单上位于第39名。玩家在游戏中的任务是以各种复杂而有创意的方式从地图的一端跳到另一端，直至达到插有小旗的终点，每一个关卡都有一些特定的障碍物，现在共含有20个短小的关卡。

Red Ball(from smokinapps.com)

3）美国开发商Tap Tap Tap推出的新款iPhone益智游戏《The Heist》在上周发布头两天就突破10万次下载量，取代《愤怒的小鸟》称冠苹果App Store的付费和综合应用榜单。该公司之前的另一款iPhone应用是Camera+，该产品提供的手机照相功能比苹果原版摄像应用更胜一筹。

The Heist(from techmayhem.com)

4）法国游戏发行商Gameloft宣布旗下最新手机MMORPG游戏《Order & Chaos Online》发布仅20天就创造了100万美元收益。这款iPhone和iPad游戏售价是6.99美元，每月订阅费用仅99美分，另外还支持玩家花钱购买虚拟货币以加速游戏进程。该公司还表示将在6月份推出其首次更新版本，添加更多新任务，特定语言聊天渠道等功能。

Order-and-Chaos-Online(from twittertrendtopics.com)

5）据尼尔森最新报告显示，Android虽然仍是美国智能手机市场冠军，但其市场份额的增速已开始趋缓。该调查指出Android今年1月份和4月份的市场份额均为36%，在3月份则是37%。之前的NPD报告也显示，Android智能手机销量在这两年中首次出现了下滑现象，并将这一原因归结于威瑞森iPhone在1月份的销量冲击了Android市场。

nielsen-smartphone share(from intomobile.com)

该报告表明iPhone在1月至4月份的市场份额并无多大变化 ，基本保持在26%左右，而RIM智能手机的市场份额下滑速度似乎也开始放缓，整个智能手机市场陷入了一个停滞发展阶段。尼尔森预测随着苹果与更多运营商的合作，iPhone还将持续影响Android的智能手机市场份额。

尼尔森还指出Android用户比iOS用户消耗更多数据流量（游戏邦注：该调查分析了今年第一季度6.5万份美国手机话费帐单），前者每月消耗585MB流量，而iPhone则是492MB流量。

6）Epic Games宣布免费版Unreal Engine 3开发工具自2009年11月发布以来的安装量已超过80万次。该公司原先规定开发者可免费使用该开发工具，但如果将其用于商业用途，并且实现5000美元收益时，就需要向Epic Games公司支付超过5000美元那一部分25%的收益，但在今年初又将付费门槛上调至5万美元。

unreal-engine-3(from pocketgamer.co.uk)

据该公司发言人Mark Rein所称，商业用途开发者需注意，假如他们使用该工具创建了一款游戏，就得首先支付99美元的使用费；假设该游戏零售价是4.99美元，销量是1.5万份，总收益就是7.485万，扣除数字商店征收的30%抽成，该游戏收益就是5.2395万。那么Epic就会从这2395美元的部分中抽成25%，也即598.75美元，如果再加上99美元的授权使用费，Epic总共向游戏征收697.75美元，相当于游戏总收益的1%。

这款开发工具可用于创建掌机、PC、iOS、Android平台的游戏，但目前不可用于开发基于网页浏览器的内容。不过有人认为，在其竞争对手Unity用户已超过50万的情况下，Epic也有可能在酝酿更具战略性的下一步。

7）法国发行商Gameloft推出的游戏《Modern Combat:Domination》目前跻身苹果Mac App Store前五名畅销游戏榜单，在美国和澳大利亚位列第一，在法国、日本和瑞士居于亚军，在英国列位第四名。《Modern Combat:Domination》是一款创新的第一人称射击游戏，其玩法主要侧重于策略和组队元素，目前在Mac App Store售价是12.99美元。

Modern Combat:Domination(from game-insider.com)

8）移动应用推广服务公司Tapjoy日前称苹果限制安装奖励广告模式，实际上是在损害手机游戏开发商的利益。据Tapjoy所称，公司首席执行官Mihir Shah之前与苹果协商，试图通过自我妥协，防止出现开发商利用其服务跻身App Store排行榜前25名的情况，但苹果拒绝了这一提议。Tapjoy调查了496名采用其服务的iOS开发商，结果显示一半以上的开发商因为这项苹果新政而遭遇玩家的不满和抱怨。

因为苹果新政策而导致游戏访问量下降的开发商比访问量增加者多8倍以上，游戏收益下滑与收益增加的开发商比例是15：1。三分之二接受调查的公司声称其20%的收益来自安装奖励模式，甚至还有许多公司自称安装奖励模式创造了公司60%以上的收益。

9）Wunderlich Securities分析师Matthew Robison日前公开表示，他们预测RIM在未来两年内仍无法恢复元气，难以重新角逐主流智能手机市场，RIM在未来仍将主要走中高端的商务路线，问题在于那些对BlackBerry Messenger(BBM)青睐有加的年轻用户，在长大成人时是否仍将对黑莓手机忠贞不渝。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Outfit7′s Talking Tom Cat 2 Saw More Than 1 Million Downloads in a Single Day

By Kim-Mai Cutler

Outfit7, the Slovenian developer that’s aiming to become a toy company on the order of Mattel or Hasbro through talking character mobile apps, said its latest release Talking Tom Cat 2 did more than 1 million downloads in a single day this week.

On Sunday, the company surpassed 1 million downloads globally on iOS, while yesterday came in just under that at around three-quarters of a million downloads, the company’s chief executive Andrej Nabergoj tells us. In total, the app’s been downloaded 2.58 million times since its launch four days ago on May 27. These figures exclude Android, where the company also has a big presence with 14 titles, two of which have seen north of 15 million installs.

It helps that the company has already acquired a base of users after passing a cumulative 100 million downloads a month ago and is growing at roughly 20 million downloads a month. So when the company launches a new title, it does heavy cross-promotion through its existing suite of talking character apps.

“Talking Tom has become a big brand that people know,” Nabergoj said. “The quality of this app is much better than anything we’ve done before and I think people were curious to see what it was like.”

The app monetizes through an in-app purchase of a $0.99 upgrade pack for Talking Tom, which gives him and a pesky neighbor dog Ben extra behaviors and gets rid of ads. Outfit7, in general, has paid and free apps. Talking Tom is free in this case, because it’s a character the company wants to blow out and make into widely-known IP.

Nabergoj has told in the past that he sees mobile devices and tablets as the next great platform to build characters that are universally beloved by families and children on the order of Mickey Mouse or SpongeBob SquarePants. The company has been working on recruiting a team of people in the San Francisco Bay Area to help break its characters into other mediums such as physical toys,books or movies.（source:insidemobileapps）  

2）Chillingo Goes Platforming with New App Red Ball 3 on iOS

By Christopher Mack

While there are a lot of platforming games on iOS, most of them are automated side-scrollers (like Chop Chop Runner) where all jumps are done with a single tap. Chillingo, however, has recently released a new platformer, developed by Russian outfit RedBall Studio, that is a little more traditional called Red Ball 3 for both the iPhone and iPad devices. In fact, this $1.99 is ranked at #39 on the top paid iPad apps list as well.

In the game, players must jump in complicated and creative ways to get from one end of the map to the other. Each level hosts obstacles that ought to be familiar to fans of the platforming genre(such as pressing a button to temporarily lower a bridge). However, the physics-oriented nature of Red Ball 3 gives players a few good curveballs. In fact, since the game follows physics so closely, it makes many jumps as well as basic movement incorrigibly obnoxious.

So the player avatar of “Red Ball” is in love with another pig-tailed female ball, and “Black Ball” is jealous. In a classic Mario fashion, Black Ball kidnaps the hero’s girlfriend and its off to save the day by traveling through yet another dangerous terrain on iOS.

Players are presented with 20 relatively short levels with the goal being to reach a flag at the end. Using basic tap controls, players can only move and jump, so most of the entertainment value is derived from the level layouts themselves. Standard platforming dangers are present such as pitfalls and spikes, but rather than dealing with a set number of lives, players simply earn a score based on their performance; losing points every time they die or manually reset to a checkpoint.（source:insidemobileapps）  

3）Apple confirms iOS 5 and … Analyst claims consumers will ‘churn … The Heist steals to the top of theApp Store with 100k downloads

by Stuart Dredge
 
And that was in just two days.

It’s too early to start talking about The Heist dethroning Angry Birds, but Tap Tap Tap’s new iPhone puzzle game has knocked Rovio’s feathery franchise off the top of the App Store charts for now.

The game sold 100,000 downloads in its first two days last week to top both the Top Paid and Top Grossing charts on Apple’s store.

It follows Tap Tap Tap’s previous success with Camera+, another iPhone app that aims to do a better job at mobile photography than Apple’s native camera application.

The large user base for that app likely helped The Heist’s overnight succcess, but once at the top of the charts, it has clearly been attracting downloads from casual users browsing Apple’s rankings.（source:mobile-ent）  

4）In 20 days Order & Chaos Online generated $1 million in revenue   iPhoneiPad
 
By Jim Squires

When it was first released earlier this month, Order & Chaos Online took the iOS world by surprise in the best way possible – just check out our five-star review to see what I mean. Now Gameloft has unveiled a pretty hefty figure to show their success hasn’t just been critical, but commercial too. The game has generated $1 million in revenue in only 20 days.

“We knew that this first real MMORPG experience for iPhone and iPad would meet the quality standards our customers want,” said Gonzague de Vallois, senior vice-president of Publishing for Gameloft. “We are pleased to know that our customers have embraced our innovative business model.”

Indeed, it’s a business model that’s hard not to embrace from a consumer standpoint. With a $6.99 purchase point and a monthly fee of only 99 cents, Order & Chaos Online is a huge bargain when compared to the PC MMO’s that it’s emulating (most notably World of Warcraft, with their $14.99 monthly fee). Add in the chance to purchase gold in-app for those too impatient to earn it the old-fashioned way, and you’ve got a clear recipe for mobile MMO success.

In addition to the million dollar announcement, Gameloft has also announced a release window for the game’s first free update. Players can expect new quests, language specific chat channels, and server migration before the end of June.（source:gamezebo）  

5）Nielsen: Android’s smartphone lead has slowed down

Devindra Hardawar

Android continues to dominate US smartphone market share (no surprise there), but the platform’s skyrocketing growth may be beginning to slow down, according to the latest report by research company Nielsen.

Nielsen’s data shows that Android’s market share remained the same for the period between February and April (36 percent) as it did for the month of March (37 percent). That’s certainly not a wide span of time Nielsen is comparing, but the data does agree with NPD’s April report, which noted a dip in Android’s sales for the first time in two years.

NPD attributed Android’s dip to the release of the Verizon iPhone in February, which may also have had a negative effect on Android sales. But Nielsen’s data doesn’t show much of a change for the iPhone’s overall market share between February and April, where it stayed at 26 percent. Even RIM’s fall in market share has seemed to slow down, so perhaps Nielsen is just noting a particularly stagnant period for the smartphone market.

Even without causing a major rise for Apple, the Verizon iPhone’s release could have negatively impacted Android in other ways. Some Verizon users, for example, could be holding out for the iPhone 5 later this year instead of picking up an Android device. Previously, Verizon subscribers who wanted a smartphone could only choose between Android and BlackBerry devices.

As the iPhone makes its way to other carriers (we already know that Apple is testing the iPhone on T-Mobile), it will continue to put pressure on Android sales.

Nielsen’s data also shows that Android users are more data hungry than their iOS counterparts, confirming earlier reports. After analyzing 65,000 cellphone bills in the US for the first quarter, the company found that Android users consumed around 585 megabytes of a data per month, compared to 492 MB of data for iPhone users.（source:venturebeat）  

6） Rein: Free Unreal Engine 3 Dev Kit Surpasses 800K Install Base

by Frank Cifaldi
 
The free version of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 development kit (UDK) has been installed by over 800,000 game developers since its November 2009 launch.

That’s according to Epic spokesman Mark Rein, who spoke to Gamasutra following his presentation at the Go Go Games Conference in the UK earlier this month. According to Rein, that figure represents the number of unique installations the company has seen since its launch a year and a half ago.

UDK is free to use, but operates on a revenue share model if employed for commercial products: when it was first launched, the terms saw Epic receiving twenty-five percent of a game’s revenue after its first $5K was made. That threshold was raised to $50K earlier this year.

As part of his presentation at the British conference, Rein provided a sample of the terms a commercial developer might see.

In the example, a developer creates a game using UDK, and pays the upfront $99 fee to make it a commercial product. The developer goes on to sell 15,000 copies of the game at $4.99 each, for a total of $74,850. The hypothetical digital store takes a 30 percent cut, which puts revenues at $52,395.

As the initial $50K is royalty-free under UDK’s current terms, Epic takes 25 percent of the remaining $2,395, or $598.75. Adding in the initial $99 licensing fee, Epic has collected $697.75 in this scenario, or 1 percent of the game’s total retail sales.

UDK is available for consoles, PCs, iOS devices, and eventually, Android. It is not currently available for web browsers, but with Unity surpassing 500K users itself, it seems like a logical next step for the company — though Rein wouldn’t provide a comment for us.

In 2010, 65 percent of 3D game SKUs used Unreal according to Epic, citing a report from Acacia Research. （source:gamasutra）  

7）Gameloft’s Modern Combat: Domination tops Mac App Store in U.S., Australia
 
By Erin Bell

Modern Combat: Domination, one Gameloft’s biggest franchises, has placed in the top 5 best-selling games on the Mac App Store. The game hit the charts during the weekend of its release, claiming the number one spot in the United States and Australia; number two in France, Japan and Switzerland; and number four in the United Kingdom.

“In addition to our lineup of games available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, we want to offer a range of rich, quality games for the Mac App Store,” said Gonzague de Vallois, Senior Vice President of Publishing at Gameloft. “Early feedback from players is very positive, and we will continue to expand our offering on this high-performance platform.”

Modern Combat: Domination for Mac is an innovative next-gen console caliber FPS. With gameplay focusing on strategy and teamwork, Modern Combat: Domination is a fun and realistic multiplayer shooter that offers constant challenges to its players.

Modern Combat: Domination is available on the Mac App Store for $12.99.（source:gamezebo）  

8）Tapjoy says Apple’s ban on promos is killing mobile game profits

Dean Takahashi

Tapjoy said tonight that Apple’s ban a popular kind of promotion on the iPhone is hurting mobile game developers.

Tapjoy and Apple held talks on the ban in the past few weeks, but Apple’s hard-and-fast ban on “pay per install” incentive promotions remains in place. Apple was concerned that game developers were paying Tapjoy to rocket their games to the top 25 ranks of the App Store, unfairly gaming the system and hurting the quality of the game rankings.

But Tapjoy said such incentivized promotions are common and that their use has enabled game developers to create a predictable and stable business on a platform that has a lot of competition.

Mihir Shah, chief executive of Tapjoy, met with Apple to try to convince the company to allow a limited amount of pay-per-install promotions, with a cap that prevented developers from buying their way into the top 25. But Apple disallowed even that kind of compromise, according to Tapjoy.

The result could be disastrous for Apple’s game developer ecosystem, since pay-per-install has become a big part of the business. Glu Mobile, a publicly traded company, highlighted the ban’s financial impact in a statement last week.

Tapjoy surveyed 496 iOS (iPhone, iPad etc.) developers that have used its mobile app distribution service. Almost half of those have reported an increase in user complaints about the inability to earn in-game currency by installing other apps. A quarter of the respondents said they are receiving “way too many” user complaints about the problem.

The number of developers who saw their game usage decrease after the Apple policy change is eight times higher than the number who saw game usage increase. And the ratio was 15 to 1 for those who saw revenues decline versus those who saw a revenue increase. At least two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that 20 percent or more of their revenues came from the model. Many said that pay-per-install generated 60 percent or more of their revenue.（source:venturebeat）

9）Analyst claims consumers will ‘churn off’ BlackBerry

by Stuart Dredge

But thinks RIM has a bright future with its core business customers.

Research In Motion has managed to sell BlackBerry handsets to millions of consumers in the last couple of years, widening its customer base beyond its traditional business users.

However, Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Robison has publicly rubbished RIM’s chances of hanging onto its consumers in the next two years, predicting that they will ‘churn off’ BlackBerry and onto other handsets.

“We no longer anticipate Research in Motion recovering to participate in the mainstream of smartphone industry growth,” he writes, according to All Things Digital.

“Our long-term forecast anticipates a role supplying business-oriented devices, both mid-range and high end, as well as cloud-based services via the BlackBerry Network. We expect the consumer mix gained over the past two years to churn off, and that earnings will decline after 2013 and eventually grow again on demand that is largely associated with business users.”

The big question for RIM is whether the younger consumers who have flocked to its devices for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will retain the BlackBerry habit as they grow older.（source:mobile-ent）