1）据Techcrunch报道，谷歌最近聘请游戏行业元老Noah Falstein担任谷哥首席游戏设计师，但却并未透露具体原因。

Noah Falstein曾是LucasArts创始成员之一，早在80年代就发布过许多作品，并担任过迪士尼、梦工厂和微软顾问。有人推测Falstein有可能针对Google Glass或者Android应用市场开发内容。

noah-falstein(from knight.stanford)

2）据insidesocialgames报道，瑞典独立游戏开发商Mojang日前宣布《Minecraft-Pocket Edition》销量突破1000万。

minecraft pocket edition(from shacknews.com)

这款游戏移动版本发布于2011年底，售价6.99美元，不含IAP功能，连续数月位居高营收iOS和Android应用榜单前25名；它在去年圣诞节当天下载量就超过了28万次，在圣诞假期当周下载量为70万次，2012年总下载量为580万次。假设该游戏在2012年售价保持在6.99美元，那么Mojang去年创收超过了4100万美元（未扣除苹果30%抽成）。

AppData数据显示，这款游戏iOS版本目前位居iPhone和iPad付费应用榜单第4名，在iPad营收榜单位居第4名，在iPhone营收榜单位居第18名。在Android付费应用榜单排名第4，在Android营收榜单居于第24名。

3）据gamasutra报道，Facebook首席技术官David Ebersman日前宣布今年第一季度（截止3月31日），Facebook游戏支付服务收益增长12%.“支付及其他费用”（包括游戏支付服务）总收益达2.13亿美元。

game payment(from developers.facebook)

Ebersman指出，尽管第一季度Facebook平台最大的游戏开发商支付交易量收益下降了37%，但其他开发商的交易量却增长了近60%左右（游戏邦注：这里“最大的游戏开发商应该就是指Zynga，因为该公司最近财报指出其玩家数量有所下滑，利润也不容乐观）。

Facebook第一季度总收益增长38%，达到14.6亿美元，利润为2.19亿美元，增长7%左右；日活跃用户为6.65亿，增长26%；月活跃用户为11.1亿，增长23%；移动平台月活跃用户为7.51亿，增长54%。

4）Niko Partners最近报告预测，2013年中国网络PC游戏市场规模将达119亿美元（2012年为90亿美元）。

online gamers(from resonancechina)

该报告调查结果显示，中国网页游戏及射击游戏玩家数量甚为可观，18-24岁年轻男性玩家多热衷于射击游戏；腾讯仍是中国第一大PC网络游戏公司；中国游戏市场收益在未来5年内增长会有所减缓，但每年收益仍将增长20亿美元左右。

5）据insidemobileapps报道，苹果日前进入了500亿次应用下载量倒计时。该公司于今年1月初宣布App Store突破400亿次下载量（不包括重复下载及应用更新下载），其中2012年就创造了近200亿次下载量。

app store countdown(from cultofmac.com)

6）据insidesocialgames报道，Facebook最近公布5月份前25名Facebook热门游戏榜单显示，King仍然称雄MAU和DAU榜单。

Top-25-May-MAU(from AppData）

《Candy Crush Saga》虽然在4月份流失200多万MAU，但目前仍有4346万MAU，King还有其他3款游戏进入Facebook前25名热门游戏MAU榜单，分别是位居第四名的《Pet Rescue Saga》（2470万MAU），《Bubble Witch Saga》（1880万MAU），最新游戏《Farm Heroes Saga》与《Pool Live Tour》并列位居第13名。

但Zynga在该榜单仍占据最多席位，有9款游戏入围，但除了《Words With Friends》新增42万MAU（第11名，MAU总数为1420万），其余游戏在本月均出现用户流失现象；Zynga用户流失最严重的当属《CoasterVille》，流失750万MAU，位居第8名。

Top-25-May-DAU(from AppData)

在DAU榜单上，King游戏《Candy Crush Saga》（1490万DAU）同样超过了《FarmVille 2》（660万DAU），Zynga游戏《CoasterVille》（180万DAU）流失51万DAU，从原来的第5名下滑至第18名。（本文为游戏邦/gameboom.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）Google hires a chief game designer, but isn’t saying why

By Kris Ligman

Newsbrief: Industry veteran Noah Falstein will be joining Google’s ranks as its new Chief Game Designer, as reported by TechCrunch this morning. But the reasons behind the move remain a
little unclear.

Theories abound that Falstein may be coming on to develop for the Android market or for Google Glass, which poses unique design opportunities. Whatever the reasons, Falstein brings with him a considerable portfolio. As one of the founding members of LucasArts, Falstein has a long list of shipped titles stretching back to 1980, and has consulted for Disney, Dreamworks and
Microsoft.

When reached for comment, a Google representative confirmed Falstein’s hiring but declined to discuss specifics. We have also reached out to Falstein directly and will update as more
information becomes available. （source：gamasutra）

2）Minecraft – Pocket Edition surpasses 10 million sales mark

Scott Reyburn

Swedish independent game developer Mojang today announced that Minecraft – Pocket Edition surpassed the 10 million sales mark as of yesterday.

“We are very thankful to all the support that we have gotten and people playing and talking about our game,” says Daniel Kaplan, business developer at Mojang, in a blog post today.

Minecraft – Pocket Edition is the mobile version of the sandbox indie title that first launched in 2009. The premium-priced mobile game app. which is priced at $6.99 and features no in-app purchases, has remained in the top 25 on the top grossing iOS and Android apps charts for months, despite competing against the slew of free-to-play games like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of

Clans that take up a majority of the top spots on the charts.

Pocket Edition released in late 2011 and is currently available for iOS and Android, and has remained at the same price point since launch.

At the beginning of 2013, Mojang released download figures for its sandbox building game on PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade and mobile. Downloads for Minecraft – Pocket Edition exceeded 280,000 on Christmas Day alone, 700,000 during Christmas week and 5.8 million in all of 2012. Assuming the title sold at $6.99 at all times in 2012, Mojang generated more than $41 million in gross revenue (before the app stores standard 30 percent cut).

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Minecraft – Pocket Edition for iOS is the No. 4 ranked app on both the iPhone and iPad top paid apps charts, and ranked No. 4 on the top
grossing iPad apps chart and No. 18 on the top grossing iPhone apps chart. For Android, Pocket Edition landed at the No. 4 spot on the top paid Android apps chart and the No. 24 position on
the top grossing Android apps chart.（source：insidesocialgames）

3）Facebook reported its best quarter for games, ever

By Kris Graft

Facebook’s game business seems to be getting along just fine, despite the fact that social game giant Zynga has decreased its reliance on the social network.

Actually, Facebook’s getting along better than fine. The company on Thursday recorded the highest quarterly revenues ever from social game payments.

CFO David Ebersman said in an earnings call that game payments revenue was up 12 percent for the quarter ended March 31. (He did say that a 6 percent increase reflects the best apples-to-
apples comparison due to a change in revenue recognition timing.)

Total revenue from “payments and other fees” — which includes game payments — was $213 million. Ebersman added, “We’re pleased that Q1 represented our largest three months quarter of
games revenue to date despite a 37 percent drop in year over year payments volume from our largest developer, as our other developers increased their payments volumes by almost 60 percent and we saw a record number of people playing games on Facebook.”

Of course, that “largest developer” would be Zynga, which over the past year has been making moves to decrease its dependence on Facebook. Zynga recently reported a drop in players and a
small profit for its most recent financial quarter.

Facebook’s continued strength in the game sector lines up with what the company recently told us — that a significant portion of Facebook’s developers recorded record revenues last year.

The company told us earlier this year it paid out $2 billion to game developers in 2012 and over 100 developers on Facebook generated over $1 million each.

Facebook’s announcement of a record quarter for games comes just after Electronic Arts pulled some of its most popular games from the social network, including The Sims Social, Pet Society
and SimCity Social. Meanwhile, Zynga recently canned The Ville, Empires & Allies and Dream Zoo.

The quarterly numbersOverall quarterly company revenue was up 38 percent to $1.46 billion. Profits were up 7 percent to $219 million.

Daily active users: 665 million on average for March, up 26 percent

Monthly active users: 1.11 billion, up 23 percent

Mobile MAUs: 751 million, up 54 percent（source：gamasutra）

4）Shooter games boost Chinese online game market, as MMORPGs give way

By Kris Ligman

Even as mobile devices take hold and MMORPGs give way to new genres, there’s still an opportunity to build a business around online games in China, according to a new report.

Market research group Niko Partners announced today that it is forecasting China’s online PC games market will reach $11.9 billion in 2013, up from $9 billion in 2012. The forecast comes at
the end of an intensive study conducted through player surveys, usage data, and top-selling titles.

Although the PC market has experienced a sharp drop in demand for social and casual games (which have moved to mobile), Niko Partners have observed a “surge” in interest for web games and shooters.

“China’s PC online games market has grown from $10 million in 2001 to more than $9 billion as of the end of 2012,” says Niko managing partner Lisa Hanson. “Some industry observers say that
because MMORPGs have given way to other genres the market is done. That is definitely not true.”

Some key takeaways from Niko’s report on the Chinese PC online games market:

•Young men aged 18-24 are flocking to shooters in droves, with the ancillary effect of bolstering the domestic internet cafe market.

•Tencent continues to dominate the Chinese PC online games market, including non-RPG MMOs.

•Revenue growth is projected to slow over the next five years, but is nevertheless expected to expand by $2 billion annually, making the slow down irrelevant.（source：gamasutra）

5）Apple counts down to 50B app downloads milestone

Scott Reyburn

In today’s weekly App Store refresh, which Apple does every Thursday, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company added a countdown to 50 billion app downloads.

Apple did a similar countdown in February 2012 when the App Store was reaching the 25 billion mark for downloads. To celebrate the 50 billion downloads achievement, Apple will be awarding a $10,000 App Store gift card to the user who downloads the 50 billionth app, and the following 50 users who download an app will receive a $500 App Store gift card.

In early January, Apple announced that its App Store exceeded the 40 billion downloads mark (excluding re-downloads and app updates), with approximately 20 billion downloads occurring in 2012. December 2012, in particular, was a record-breaking month in terms of app downloads, where the company saw more than two billion apps downloaded during the month.（source：
insidemobileapps）

6）The Top 25 Facebook games of May 2013

Emanuel Maiberg

It’s time to look at the Top 25 Facebook games for May 2013.

Since Facebook started reporting its app metrics using ranks in January 2013, Inside Social Games reported on the top 25 Facebook games using AppData’s estimated monthly active users

(MAU_E) and estimated daily active users (DAU_E). MAU_E and DAU_E are estimated MAU and DAU values based on current performance data from Facebook and our six-year-old database of historical Facebook application metrics. By analyzing trends in our database of almost 400 million measurements of how MAU and DAU function and move over time, our data scientists have been able to develop algorithms for estimating MAU and DAU values for Facebook applications.

Both of May’s lists saw King, which has more than 63 million DAU across its social and mobile games, continue to hold the top spots, though Zynga is still close behind and with more titles in the top 25 lists overall.

Taking a look at game rankings based on MAU, which is the best measure of a title’s overall reach on the social network, King’s Candy Crush Saga is still on top despite losing a little more than 2 million MAU in April. King has three other titles in the top 25 Facebook Games by MAU. Its gem-matching game Pet Rescue Saga came in at the No. 4 spot with an estimated 24.7 million MAU after a gain of 1.8 million MAU. Its bubble-popping puzzler Bubble Witch Saga continued to grow by 773,324 for a total of 18.8 million MAU. King’s latest title Farm Heroes Saga made an impressive debut, tied at the No. 13 spot with Pool Live Tour with 12 million MAU since the game was released in early April.

Meanwhile,  Zynga titles still occupy the largest portion of the list, taking up 9 spots. However, all of Zynga’s games lost users this month, except for Words With Friends which gained 420,689 MAU, landing it in the No. 11 spot with a total of 14.2 million MAU. Zynga’s biggest loser, which was the biggest loser on the list overall, was CoasterVille, which lost 7.5 million MAU but still came in at the No. 8 spot.

Pretty Simple’s Criminal Case also saw a big gain in MAU, adding 7 million users and moved to the No. 1o spot from last month’s No. 22 spot. Another big gainer this week is Social Point’s Dragon City, coming in at the No. 5 spot with a gain of 3.6 million MAU for a total of 23.3 million MAU.

Now it’s time to turn to DAU, which is the best representative of a game’s core audience. Here too King’s Candy Crush Saga pulled ahead of Zynga’s FarmVille 2, with an estimated 14.9 million DAU and 6.6 million DAU, respectively. Zynga’s CoasterVille, which debuted on the Top 25 list at the No. 5 position, holding the position for a few months, saw a sizable loss of 512,853 estimated DAU, dropping it to the No. 18 spot with 1.8 million DAU.

The most significant gainer on the list goes once again to Pretty Simple’s Criminal Case, which added 1.2 million DAU. We recently talked to Pretty Simple about its formula for success of
simply allowing a talented team to produce quality content, an approach which has clearly paid off.（source：insidesocialgames）