1）据gamezebo报道，澳大利亚开发商Halfbrick日前理布将发行时尚音乐管理游戏《Band Stars》。该游戏最初由Six Foot Kid开发，Halfbrick负责发行，原先是一款绑定Google+ Games服务的简单Flash游戏，但在2013年6月Google+ Games关闭服务时彻底下线，本次再度由Halfbrick将其推向移动平台。

该游戏已经于8月份在澳大利亚试发布，目前已经登陆加拿大App Store。

Band Star(from 18touch.com)

2）据pocketgamer报道，微软日前宣布Windows Phone应用日常交易量（包括下载量和IAP交易量）已达900万次，该平台还将原来向开发者支付收益的时长从120天缩减至30天，并推出了App Studio测试版本，以便经验不足的开发者根据“丰富的定制模版”制作应用。

marketplace_logo(from 1800pocketpc.com)

3）据serkantoto报道，位于东京的日本手机游戏开发商Colopl自2012年12月IPO之后，其市值已达24亿美元；该公司身价已超过社交游戏巨头GREE（目前市值为18亿美元），仅略次于DeNA（市值为30亿美元）。

colopl(from techinasia.com)

4）据mobile-ent报道，Fiksu战略及商业开发副总裁Steve Bagdasarian最近表示看好Twitter发展潜力，认为Twitter是一个沉睡的巨人，预计该平台将在2014年第二季度创造重大影响，并在移动广告领域挑战Facebook（Facebook目前已占据30-50%的移动广告市场份额）。

twitter(from pingwest.com)

5）据gamasutra报道，Valve Software创始人Gabe Newell在最近的LinuxCon大会上表示，Valve仍在积极探索Linux游戏的发展潜力。

他称现在告诉人们Linux和开源平台是游戏的未来，这种说法听起来也许有点滑稽，但他们将在下周公布更多信息，让大家知道Valve将如何把Linux引进用户的起居室。

Gabe-Newell(from beefjack.com)

Newell曾经批评微软Windows 8是一个日趋封闭的系统，该平台将成为扼制创新的灾难，并表示Valve希望开放自己的数字分销平台Steam，以便移除游戏发行的障碍。该公司于今年向Linux推出了Steam服务，并致力于研发针对Linux的解调器，以便简化开发过程。（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）Halfbrick’s Band Stars is headed to mobile

By Joe Jasko

After a bit of a rocky start, Halfbrick’s Band Stars is getting ready to rock out loud once again, as the cult music management game is packing up its dusty gear and setting off on a tour of your mobile screen soon.

Band Stars was initially developed by Six Foot Kid and published by Fruit Ninja success story Halfbrick, where it appeared as a simple Flash game as part of Google+ Games before disappearing from the gaming world completely when the online games service was shut down in June of 2013. Well now it looks like both companies are returning to the oft-forgotten game in attempts to give it new life on the mobile platform.

We reviewed the original web-based version of Band Stars last summer, and found it to be one of the rare instances where that Halfbrick name didn’t sit alongside the utmost quality in casual gaming. The original Band Stars was buggy, lacked the depth of any great music management game, and just all-around wasn’t a very fun time. So here’s to hoping that Halfbrick was able to work out all the kinks this time around for the mobile release, and that we can all get to pumping out some much smoother jams soon!

The mobile version of Band Stars already saw a soft-launch in Australia back in August, and now the Canadian version is next on the list with its own App Store release today. We’ll be sure to let you know when Halfbrick’s Band Stars will be playable in your country as soon as we hear those guitar solos ring!（source：gamezebo）

2）App happy: Windows Phone hits 9 million app downloads and in-app purchases a day

by Keith Andrew

In an effort to amass developer support, Microsoft has revealed app transactions – either app downloads or in-app purchases – have hit a rate of 9 million a day on Windows Phone.

The declaration, made in a blog post trumpeting the platform’s recent performance, claims “increased market share around the world” and a range of new apps on the Windows Phone Store are combining to push user activity.

Dev friendly

The news comes as part of an attempt by Microsoft to make the Windows Phone Store more developer friendly.

Combined with news the firm is speeding up payments to developers from carriers – down from an average delay of 120 days to 30 days – Microsoft has also launched App Studio beta.

The tool, seen below, allows less-experienced developers to make apps based on a “rich set of customisable templates.”（source：pocketgamer）

3）Colopl: Market Cap Of The Mobile Game Maker You Never Heard Of Reaches US$2.4 Billion, Exceeds That Of GREE

by Dr. Serkan Toto

Tokyo-based Colopl (3668) may be a nobody outside Japan, but over here, the company has evolved into a US$2.4 billion mobile gaming powerhouse after going IPO in December 2012.

US$2.4 billion in market cap is a not only a very handsome number for an almost entirely domestic company: it also means that Colopl’s market cap is now higher than that of social gaming behemoth GREE (3632), which is currently listed in Tokyo with US$1.8 billion. (DeNA (2432) currently stands at US$3 billion.)

How is it possible that a company that offers almost no games outside Japan can reach such a market capitalization?（source：serkantoto）

4）Fiksu: Twitter set to dominate mobile advertising in 2014

by Tim Green

App marketing specialist reckons real-time location and intent data will take Twitter to the top.

In the last week, Twitter made two huge announcements. It confirmed plans for an IPO and bought mobile ad exchange MoPub.

These moves made clear its intention: It’s going for revenue – and mobile advertising will deliver it.

Fiksu, a fast growing specialist in helping app makers place ads and analyse app performance, believes Twitter will succeed.

Steve Bagdasarian, VP of strategy and biz dev at Fiksu, Inc told ME there are two key factors Twitter has at its disposal – real time location and intent.

He said: “Twitter is a sleeping giant. Its ability to feed real time data back to advertisers about where users are and what’s on their minds at any one time – that’s going to be very very powerful. I see Twitter making a huge impact in 2Q 2014.”

Bagdasarian suspects Twitter will start to challenge Facebook in the mobile ad space next year.

That will be a dramatic moment, given the profound impact the latter has had on the sector in the last 18 months.

Indeed, Fiksu estimates Facebook now controls between 30 to 50 per cent of all mobile advertising largely because of its superior targeting capabilities.（source：mobile-ent）

5）Valve still sees Linux as the key to PC game success

By Kris Graft

Valve Software founder Gabe Newell has been relatively quiet lately about the future of Linux games and his company’s mysterious PC console solution Steam Box. But at LinuxCon today, he reminded people about the prospects of PC games in the living room, and that Valve is still actively examining the potential of the format.

It feels a little bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming,” Newell said in an Ars Technica report. “It’s sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope.”

“Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room,” he said, suggesting there is some kind of development on the horizon.

Valve’s interest in open-source Linux jibes with Newell’s rhetoric about the importance of open platforms. He’s previously derided Microsoft’s Windows 8 as a “catastrophe,” saying that increasingly-closed systems would be the death knell for innovation and overall good business.

He’s also made clear that Valve wants to open up its massive digital distribution platform Steam, in order to remove the bottleneck of greenlighting games.

Earlier this year, Valve released Steam for Linux, signaling the company’s active interest in the operating system. Valve is also working on debuggers for Linux in order to make the development process less of a headache.

Newell’s statements about the PC market sound much like he and Valve are building a sort of lifeboat with Linux.

“I think we’ll see either significant restructuring or market exits by top five PC [OEMs]. It’s looking pretty grim,” Newell said at LinuxCon. “Systems which are innovation-friendly and embrace openness are going to have a greater competitive advantage to closed or tightly regulated systems.”（source：gamasutra）