1）据Techcrunch报道，Facebook首席执行官Mark Zuckerberg日前承认Facebook的移动战略过于依赖HTML5，这是他们移动战略的最大失误。他同时也指出，Facebook新款iOS原生应用表现更为出色，自该应用更新以来，用户在其中投入时间翻倍增长。

Html5(from deondesigns.ca)

2）据《纽约时报》报道，Valve总裁Gabe Newell最近表示，Valve有可能再过两三年与员工合同期满的时候再出售公司。据知情者透露，EA可有可能成为Valve的买主，Valve目前的身价超过10亿美元。Wedbush Securities分析师Michael Pachter认为Valve现在的估值在25亿美元左右。

Gabe-Newell(from gamerant.com)

3）据games.com报道，EA Labels主管Frank Gibeau最近表示，EA所有游戏（包括在线应用及数字服务）都能支持全年一天24小时的在线服务，EA已经不再围绕单人体验而开发游戏。

EA-logo（from games)

观察者称此举意味着EA、动视暴雪等大型游戏发行商制作单人游戏的时代已经远去，EA已进入具有连接性、跨平台和社交游戏体验的新阶段。

4）据serkantoto报道，GREE日前宣布将推出首款“官方”相扑社交游戏《Oozumou Card Kessen》。

该游戏由GREE内部开发，计划于11月份发布于功能性手机和智能手机平台上的GREE。这是日本相扑协会首次授权社交游戏公司开发的产品，玩家在游戏中将可训练自己的相扑手，并与其他GREE玩家过招，其中还植入了现实相扑明星等相关元素。

gree-social-game-sumo(from serkantoto)

5）据insidesocialgames报道，A Bit Lucky首席执行官Frederic Descamps日前表示，他们已关闭在Facebook平台上的列车模拟游戏《Lucky Train》和科幻题材游戏《Lucky Space》，并将把重心转向《Solstice Arena》这款多平台游戏。

虽然该公司网站仍在宣传这两款游戏，并在首页邀请玩家体验游戏，但如果点击链接就会显示错误信息，在Facebook平台已无法再搜索到这两者的身影。而这两者的Facebook页面现在充满大量玩家的留言和评论，不少人为这两款游戏关闭而惋惜。甚至有玩家在网络上发起请愿活动，要求游戏重新上线。

Lucky Train–DAU（from AppData)

Lucky Space–DAU(from AppData)

据AppData数据，《Lucky Train》于2010年6月登陆Facebook，最高峰时的DAU为33.5万。但后来其流量逐步下滑，在2011年10月份时的DAU约4万，目前在1万左右波动。《Lucky Space》的DAU更不理想，已从上个月的1000降至600左右。（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）Mark Zuckerberg: Our Biggest Mistake Was Betting Too Much On HTML5

Drew Olanoff

Today, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook’s mobile strategy relied too much on HTML5, rather than native applications.

Not only was this a big mistake with mobile, but Zuckerberg says that its biggest mistake period was the focus on HTML5. This is the first time that the Facebook CEO has openly admitted this, but things are looking good for the new iOS native app. According to Zuckerberg, people are consuming twice as many feed stories since the update to the new iOS app, which is great.

The first half year has been a little bit slow on product, but for the next six months I expect a lot of really cool stuff.

This “really cool stuff” will probably have monetization in mind, as it’s very clear that mobile is the path to ad revenue for the company.

It’s extremely difficult for a company to nose-dive into an adoption of a particular set of tools and then quickly change course. I suspect that this is exactly what happened with Facebook and things are at least looking up.

Last year, Facebook’s CTO at the time, Bret Taylor, discussed the future of mobile, which at the time very much included HTML5. Here’s a snippet from that piece, where Taylor discusses the platform:

Does that mean an evolution away from Flash? After all, Flash dominates the market for the types of HTML5 games that Facebook is talking about. “Well it’s hard,” Taylor said about Flash specifically. When I laughed and noted he was giving the diplomatic answer, he assured me that it is something they think about a lot. “We want to be ahead of the curve and fill in the gaps when possible,” is how he ended up putting it.

And this stance on HTML5 is vital for Facebook because Taylor really does see mobile as the future — but as it stands right now, that’s a bit of a problem. “The popularity of mobile devices will change,” he said implying that the dominant devices today might not be so dominant in the future. And if that’s the case, why should Facebook dump resources into them? Wouldn’t it be easier if they just focused on HTML5 — something which will work on an increasing number of devices going forward? Of course.

As Taylor noted, mobile devices have indeed changed dramatically, and a company like Apple is going to make sure that big companies are writing native apps to fully utilize the resources of the device.（source:techcrunch）

2）Newell: Valve would ‘disintegrate’ before selling out

By Mike Rose

“It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate.’”

- Valve boss Gabe Newell explains that it’s more likely Valve would “disintegrate,” employees departing, before he would sell it to another company.

Not that Newell hasn’t had opportunities to sell the company, reports the New York Times. According to “two people with knowledge of the discussion,” Electronic Arts was previously interested in acquiring Valve, which was valued for over $1 billion.

That figure most likely wouldn’t cut it nowadays, however — Wedbush Securities’ analyst Michael Pachter believes that Valve is worth around $2.5 billion today.

[UPDATE: We've updated the headline and the EA acquisition reference to better reflect the original NYT article.] （source:gamasutra）

3）Social Space: EA jumps the bridge into social, but will the lot follow?
by Joe Osborne

In a promotion for the ongoing Cloud Gaming USA Conference Exhibition in San Francisco, EA Labels head Frank Gibeau (pictured below) made an interesting point: “I have not greenlit one game to be developed as a single player experience. Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365.”

Given the publisher’s intense mobile and social focus–as well as its bullishness on cross-platform gaming–this shouldn’t be surprising. Look at hit EA franchises like FIFA, Battlefield and Mass Effect: They all have overlaying social services, multiplayer components or interconnected versions available on other platforms like mobile or Facebook. But let’s take a quick look at what many die-hard franchise fans consider to be the main offender: Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect, a single-player role-playing game, was enhanced with cross-platform play and a multiplayer component just in time for the grand finale to the epic trilogy. It’s likely that more than a few players (myself included) experienced nerd rage when they discovered that, in order to see a special clip during the story’s ending cinematic, they had to play a few sessions of multiplayer.

Regardless of how you feel about this intersection of single and multiplayer content, step back and take a look at the circumstances. Mass Effect was probably one of the many reasons EA acquired Bioware in 2007. It was hard to ignore the potential of this story-centric RPG/shooter hybrid: A lucrative franchise with a sprawling universe in which it, fictionally and fiscally, made sense to expand.

After reading mumblings on Twitter and speaking with industry friends, many seem to think that “EA has gone off its rocker.” I disagree. Take a look at the games EA has released over the past two years. They all either already belong to a franchise or have franchise potential. Frankly, the same goes for most major publishers, but what makes EA different (at the moment) is that it wants to invest in its franchises in any way (and everywhere) possible.

This move is indicative of where every traditional publisher will (or should) be headed in the next few years, and you can thank social and mobile games for that. So, it’s probably time to give up on looking for intimate, contained single-player experiences from EA. (And that will pretty much go for any major traditional publisher in due time.)

The game of making games has changed. Refined digital distribution methods like Steam’s Greenlight, the app stores, Kickstarter, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and the eShop have become neon-lit signs reading “Get Indie Games Here.” Inversely, the logos of company’s like EA and Activision Blizzard (and, in part, Microsoft and Sony) are now beacons for blockbusters that fans can interact with whenever and however they please.

Oddly enough, it’s the concept that fed a scrappy start-up until it grew into the next (albeit stumbling) giant in gaming that will fuel the old guard of publishers into the next generation. EA indeed jumped off a bridge into connected, cross-platform and social gaming, but if I were a major publisher risking millions on each release, I just might follow it down.（source:games）

4）GREE Gets First “Official” Sumo Social Game [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

GREE just announced it has secured the rights to create the first “official” sumo social game, Oozumou Card Kessen (Professional Sumo Card Battle).

The company is developing the title in-house and plans to release it on GREE for feature phones and smartphones in November (pre-registration started today).

Oozumou Card Kessen is licensed by the Japan Sumo Association, a first for a social game. As the name suggests, GREE decided to play it safe and went for the card battle genre.

In the game, users can build their own sumo stable, train wrestlers and have them fight wrestlers from other GREE players. Needless to say, Oozumou Card Kessen features real-life sumo stars.（source:serkantoto）

5）Update: Lucky Train and Lucky Space disappear from Facebook

Mike Thompson

Update: A Bit Lucky CEO Frederic Descamps tells us, ”We are indeed closing our FB games to focus exclusively on Solstice Arena and the promise of real time transplatform multiplayer games.” The original article is below.

A Bit Lucky’s railroad sim Lucky Train and its sci-fi title Lucky Space have both vanished from Facebook and user comments imply the games have been shut down.

Even though A Bit Lucky’s website prominently advertises Lucky Train and Lucky Space and invites users to play them on its front page,  clicking on the links results in an error message and the games no longer appears as a result when conducting a Facebook search. Meanwhile, both games’ app pages on Facebook are currently peppered with dozens of comments from players bemoaning the game’s shutdown.

It’s not clear if A Bit Lucky or Facebook is responsible for the games’ takedown. Investigating the forums on Facebook shows Lucky Train users were given some advanced notice about the game being taken offline, but commenters are blaming Facebook and A Bit Lucky equally. Players put together an online petition to keep the game online, but it looks like this endeavor wasn’t successful since it closed yesterday and the game’s nowhere to be found.

We’ve reached out to A Bit Lucky about the disappearances, and will update the story if we hear back. When we last heard from the developer, development was underway for a multiplatform game called Solstice Arena, though nothing new has been announced since June.

Our traffic-tracking service AppData shows Lucky Train debuted on Facebook in June 2010, peaking that November with 335,000 daily active users. Since then, the game’s traffic steadily dropped until it leveled out at 40,000 DAU in October 2011. Subsequent occasional user fall-off has the game currently sitting at the 10,000 DAU mark. Lucky Space contains even smaller numbers: Over the past month, it’s dropped from 1,000 DAU to 600.（source:insidesocialgames）