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每日观察:关注iPhone和Android用户每月数据流量(6.11)

发布时间:2012-06-11 10:51:11 Tags:,,,

1)据inside social games报道,由Alex St.John(前WildTangent和Hi5创始人)不久前刚成立的社交网站Magi.com近日宣布关闭项目(游戏邦注:该公司成立仅6个月,其网站服务上线仅3个月)。

Magi.com(from jobs.github.com)

Magi.com(from jobs.github.com)

Alex St.John曾表示该平台有望在短期内获得可观的用户基础,但却无法筹集足够的资金实现其规划。他声称Magi.com有一个比Hi5更明显的优势,因为它一开始就是个“纯游戏网站”,而非实名社交网站。

Magi.com拥有20-30名成员,据Alex St.John所称该网站已向整个开发团队提供解雇费等补偿,其管理层正设法为这些失业人员另谋出路。

2)据《澳大利亚人》报道,苹果已同意就“误导澳洲用户认为新iPad采用了4G技术”一事,向澳大利亚竞争和消费者委员会(ACCC)支付225万美元以了结这一诉讼问题。

ACCC曾在3月份起诉苹果“误导”用户相信新iPad可支持4G技术,但实际上该设备并不能与澳大利亚的4G网络兼容。苹果曾表示消费者如果不满意可以退货,但现在却转向采用支付数百万美元的策略以结案,但这一解决方式尚未得到澳大利亚法官的最终批准。

ipad-wifi-issues-connecting-problem(from artswhore.com)

ipad-wifi-issues-connecting-problem(from artswhore.com)

据称苹果在英国市场也遇到了同个问题,为回应英国、澳大利亚等市场的质疑,苹果将新iPad原来的“Wi-Fi + 4G”宣传字眼改成了“Wi-Fi + Cellular”。

3)GREE International最近推出一个“推广网站”向英语国家用户推介自己的手机社交游戏平台。但观察者称这个网站设计比较怪异,其主页像是印刷手册的封面,其中内容也不例外,只显示了一些即将发布的游戏logo而非截图。该网站视频发布数天就已收获25.5万次浏览量(其中多数来自广告)。

4)据gamasutra报道,Epic Games在最近的E3大会上展出了虚幻引擎4(以下简称UE4)。从演示内容来看,该引擎的粒子效果十分出众,甚至在一个空间中可显示100万以上的粒子,其光滑镜面反射等效果也相当惊人。

UE4_Elemental_GPU_particles_fire(from gamasutra)

UE4_Elemental_GPU_particles_fire(from gamasutra)

UE4_Elemental_deferred_decals(from gamasutra)

UE4_Elemental_deferred_decals(from gamasutra)

对游戏开发者来说,UE4的优势还在于能够优化开发流程,例如开发者可以迅速在工具和引擎的沉浸模式中切换,从而显著节省迭代时间。UE4的用户界面也更为灵活,拥有可停靠的模块,添加了视觉脚本编辑器Kismet 2,支持非程序员将决定游戏物体行为的代码转变为交互性流程图来创建交互场景。

5)据insidesocialgames报道,任天堂计划为即将面世的Wii U掌机设备推出一个社交内容网站,该网站名称为Miiverse,将支持用户视频聊天,分享图片及其他各种内容。

6)《Fashion Girl》开发商Verge Games最近向Facebook发布新款游戏《Grumpy Goats》,该游戏采用了《愤怒的小鸟》式的射击元素,要球玩家将从大炮中发射山羊以消灭屏幕上的绵羊。

7)爱立信最近报告显示,在全球3G网络中,苹果iPhone数据流量占据最多比重,这一数据可能将对新兴的LTE运营商造成影响,因为后者致力于说服用户转向4G技术。

total mobile phone traffic volume(from Ericsson)

total mobile phone traffic volume(from Ericsson)

该报告采用了来自美国、欧洲和亚洲的GSM运营商数据样本,结果发现iPhone用户占比仅超过20%,但却占据了45%的3G/HSPA流量,而Android用户的这一比例则是15%,占据30%的3G网络流量。

爱立信发现,iPhone和Android用户平均每月数据耗量都是350 MB左右。但Android用户的最高数据耗量每月可达1400 MB,而iPhone用户的最高耗量则是每月1200 MB;与此同时,在一些相同网络中Android手机用户每月平均数据耗量仅50 MB,而一般iPhone用户每月耗量从不低于200 MB。

average monthly traffic volume per subscription(from Ericsson)

average monthly traffic volume per subscription(from Ericsson)

报告指出,如果苹果今年推出的新一代iPhone还是没有采用LTE技术,Android与iOS在3G流量上的差距势必日趋明显,高端的Android用户将转向LTE网络,而iPhone用户却仍只能停留在不甚高效的3G时代。(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)Alex St. John’s new social game network closes after three months

by Eric Caoili

Newsbrief: Magi.com, the social game network founded by former WildTangent and Hi5 head Alex St. John, has shut down just six months after the company opened and three months after the service launched its beta.

St. John said the platform was able to develop a promising userbase during its short time in operation, but the California-based startup was unable to raise enough money to keep it going, according to a report from Inside Social Games.

The outspoken executive previously headed social game network Hi5 for two years before Tagged purchased the company’s assets — but not its staff — last December. He argued that Magi.com had an advantage over Hi5, as the service was built as a “pure game site” from the beginning, instead of a real identity social network.

Magi.com employed around 20 to 30 people, and St. John claims that the entire development team received both severance pay and paid time off, as management attempts to find new positions for the laid off workers.(source:gamasutra

2)Apple will pay $2.25M to settle misleading 4G iPad claims in Australia

Sean Ludwig

Apple has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle a legal complaint accusing the company of misleading Australian consumers about whether the new iPad included “4G” data abilities, according to The Australian.

In late March, we heard the Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission intended to sue Apple for “misleading” claims when it comes to the latest iPad offering 4G, because the device is not compatible with Australian 4G networks. Apple said that it would give people their money back if they felt misled about the 4G labeling. But now it appears it will pony up a few million bucks to be completely done with the matter with a court settlement.

The settlement in Australia has not received final approval from a judge, but if it is approved, Apple will be done with the issue in that country.

Apple also took heat in the U.K. over the iPad’s 4G branding. In response to the U.K., Australia, and other countries, Apple changed the branding to “Wi-Fi + Cellular” instead of “Wi-Fi + 4G.”(source:venturebeat

3)Come Play GREE: GREE International Launches Special Promotion Site [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

GREE International just launched a “promotion site” (I don’t know what else to call it) to promote their service to an English-speaking audience.

Not only is the design weird (the homepage looks like the cover of a printed brochure), the content is, too: the company basically just explains what GREE is using 3 slides, shows a few logos of the games that will be rolled out soon (no screenshots), and posts a video I embedded below.

To be fair, I am sure the site will be improved soon, but GREE International already tweeted out the URL, making it “official”.

The uphill battle to establish the brand in the US has begun.

The Come Play GREE video has racked up 255,000 views in a few days, which is pretty decent (even though a lot of the views seem to come from ads)(source:serkantoto

4)Epic showcases Unreal Engine 4′s dynamic lighting, fast iteration capabilities

by Kris Graft

As the game industry’s biggest players showed off their upcoming games for the current console cycle this week, Gears of War developer Epic Games was looking to the future, showing Unreal Engine 4 to select media outlets — including Gamasutra — during E3.

UE4 is Cary, NC-based Epic’s key to the next-generation of video game graphics. If the widespread adaptation of this generation’s UE3 is any indication, this new engine will serve as the foundation for many games across many platforms, from Epic as well as external engine licensees.

Epic senior technical artist Alan Willard spent much of the time during his presentation exhibiting the engine’s full realtime dynamic global illumination capabilities. The engine supports fully emissive surfaces, with objects able to change the kind of light they can emit.

Particle effects during the demo were impressive. [See a UE4 developer walkthrough on GameTrailers' Youtube channel.] Thanks to support for GPU particles, UE4 displayed in one room over 1 million particles, each being affected by an emissive sphere controlled by Willard.

Willard showed another room that exhibited how particles were affected by light. When the room was darkened, you could see large particles. Turn on a flashlight, and it reveals countless smaller, reflective pieces of virtual dust.

Other features of UE4 include glossy specular reflection, full-shadowed and -lit subsurface-scattering, a fully-deferred renderer, per-pixel lens flare, full eye adaptation (simulating when you walk from a dark room to a bright outdoors) and other improvements.

For game developers, Epic has taken steps in UE4 to streamline the development process. Halfway through his technical presentation, Willard showed that he had been inside the editor the whole time, demonstrating that developers can instantly switch between tools and the engine’s immersive mode, which should substantially reduce iteration time.

The user interface is more flexible in UE4 as well, with dockable modules. As revealed last month, it implements the visual scripting editor Kismet 2, allowing even non-programmers to build interactive scenes by converting code that determines in-game objects’ behaviors into interactive flowcharts with pull-down menus.(source:gamasutra

5)Nintendo planning social network for Wii U — Nintendo has a new social and content network planned for its upcoming Wii U console. The network is called Miiverse and will allow users to video chat, as well as share pictures and other unspecified content.(source:insidesocialgames)   http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/06/08/social-game-news-roundup-nintendos-working-on-a-wii-u-social-network-will-wrights-new-studio-goes-on-legal-hiatus-and-zyngas-mobile-payout-may-be-smaller-than-hoped/

6)Grumpy Goats gallops onto Facebook [Launch] — Fashion Girl developer Verge Games’s new Facebook title Grumpy Goats is now live on Facebook. The game is an Angry Birds-styled physics shooter where players fire goats out of a cannon to eliminate sheep on the screen.(source:insidesocialgames

7)Is the iPhone overcrowding the world’s 3G networks?

By Kevin Fitchard

Regardless of which platform is winning today’s smartphone race, the installed base of active iPhones remains huge, and according to a new report from mobile infrastructure maker Ericsson, those iOS devices are having an outsized impact on the world’s 3G networks.

Traffic originating from the iPhone is nearing 50 percent of all data traversing carriers’ HSPA networks. Those numbers could have a chilling effect on emerging LTE operators, who are trying to migrate to 4G but are finding themselves contending with the iPhone’s enormous 3G demands.

For its Traffic and Market Report, Ericsson sampled data from GSM carriers in the Americas, Europe and Asia, discovering that, on average, the iPhone accounts for a little more than 20 percent of their total subscribers but a whopping 45 percent of their total 3G/HSPA traffic. In comparison, Android penetration level among those same operators is around 15 percent, while those devices account for about 30 percent of their 3G traffic loads.

The differences between Android and iPhone users

Ericsson found that, on average, the iPhone and Android ran neck and neck when it comes to average consumption per subscriber: around 350 MB per month. But there was huge variation in those usage levels between different carriers, especially on Android. At the high end or Ericsson’s measurements, Android users consume 1400 MB a month, compared to 1200 MB for the iPhone, while on some networks Android phone usage averaged just a mere 50 MB a month. Network monthly averages for the iPhone never drop much lower than 200 MB.

The overall variation can be explained by carriers’ widely differing pricing policies. For instance T-Mobile USA not only offers up fairly liberal data buckets in its data tiers, but it allows customers to use mobile hotspot capabilities at no extra charge, driving up monthly consumption. Ericsson explained the even bigger variation among Google OS phones, however, by the fact that Android devices run the entire gamut of the market, while Apple targets the mid-to-high end. So in networks where Android plays second fiddle to the iPhone – which for a long while was the case at AT&T – Android devices often gravitate toward the low end, while Apple devices wind up in the hands of power users.

That helps explain how the iPhone can have such an enormous impact on operators 3G networks. Not only are iPhones a plurality of all devices on the network, they’re often winding up in the hands of carriers’ most aggressive data users.

Ericsson’s data only takes HSPA networks into account. CDMA operators like Sprint and Verizon only recently landed the iPhone, so they have spent the last several years loading up their 3G networks with Android devices. Android also is the only smartphone OS besides Windows Phone supported on an LTE network. Compared to 3G, the LTE phone installed base is miniscule, but it’s growing rapidly.

If Apple doesn’t include LTE in this year’s iPhone, then the gap between Android and iOS on 3G traffic levels may only grow bigger. Android power users will start migrating to new LTE networks, while iPhone users will remain on much more inefficient 3G networks.(source:gigaom


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