Posts Tagged ‘GamesBeat’
Flurry formally launches AppCircle to cross-sell mobile apps
Flurry said today it is formally launching its AppCircle network for cross-selling mobile apps.
Flurry operates a mobile analytics, money-making and promotion service for mobile developers. It reaches 65 million monthly mobile users and is used in 45,000 apps. AppCircle is a platform that developers can use to cross-sell their apps to all of Flurry’s users.
Flurry announced the private beta version of AppCircle in November as a natural extension of its analytics business to address the problem of discovery. With more than 243,000 apps on the App Store, it has become terribly difficult for developers to get noticed, especially if an app is not in the top 100 charts.
With AppCircle, creates a market for promoters, or developers who want to get more users, and developers who want to make more money from their apps. It analyzes a user’s iPhone apps and figures out what their tastes are. Then it recommends other Flurry-based apps to users based on their tastes. More than 450 companies have promoted and made money from apps with AppCircle. Flurry says that, because it knows what apps users like, it can do much better recommendations than other promotions.
“Flurry’s approach to solving discovery speaks directly to a pain point raised by many of our clients looking to launch iPhone applications,” said Paul Gelb, Razorfish national manager, emerging media. “And because of its targeting technology, AppCircle helps companies acquire users that they’ll likely retain longer.”
AppCircle is built on top of Flurry Analytics, which is used by 45,000 apps on the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and mobile Java platforms. Here’s how Flurry describes how AppCircle works below:
Application developers can use AppCircle as publishers, promoters or both. As publishers, developers integrate Flurry into their applications, enabling Flurry to serve targeted application recommendations to their consumers. Publishers earn 60% of the price promoters pay for each app download. As promoters, application developers create campaigns and set bids on how much they are willing to pay for a new user. Flurry’s recommendation engine will match relevant promoter apps to display in publisher apps, and then use bidding to rank the order in which impressions are shown.
Integrating Flurry AppCircle is flexible for publishers. The service allows several integration options including adding links to menu pages, settings pages or serving banner impressions. Publishers can also use their own virtual currency to incentivize downloads. Promoters can set up, fund and run campaigns within minutes.
Application developers who act as both publishers and promoters get the best of both worlds: revenue and downloads. Additionally, developers who join as both promoters and publishers receive a 25% credit for every dollar they earn as a publisher that is reinvested into promoting their applications, accelerating adoption and revenue generation.
AppCircle is publicly available for App Store applications and is self-service. Support for Android applications is planned for the first week of August 2010. Flurry analytics customers are encouraged to contact their account managers for help getting started with AppCircle.
Companies: Flurry
MobileBeat: Will Android beat iPhone in mobile gaming?
While Android’s user base is expected to surpass the iPhone’s, many passionate gamers would tell you that the gaming experience on the iPhone is far better than on Android – primarily because of the buttonless form factor of iPhone, but also because of the superior iPhone graphics. But a panel on mobile gaming at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference today said that’s not the case.
The panel participants all vehemently supported Android over iPhone, although largely because of developer support and the openness of Android’s platform rather than quality. However they also acknowledged several problems with Android, such as payment options, app discovery in the Android marketplace, and fewer categories in mobile gaming. They said they expect these issues to be resolved in the near future.
Si Shen, CEO of Beijing-based mobile game company Papaya Mobile, who was on the panel, said she sees tremendous momentum behind Android in Asia. Even in Japan, which is more “iPhone friendly”, NTT Docomo, the biggest mobile operator in Japan, has declared support for Android. Almost every carrier and OEM in Asia except Nokia is working on Android, she said.
The panelists downplayed the fragmentation problem, which many analysts cite as perhaps the biggest problem with Android. There are third-party platforms emerging to help developers port their applications to different Android devices, and the problem seems more similar to what developers face with slight differences in the way browsers read HTML rather than to the painful porting problems they faced with J2ME, for example.
On top of this, there are indications that Google is taking gaming seriously, as evidenced by its recent hiring of an advocate for game developers. Considering that gaming is one of the largest categories in iPhone applications, Apple should take the threat seriously. With the momentum behind Android and the soon-to-launch Windows Phone with XBox Live capability, things will get even more interesting.
People: Si Shen
Mobile virtual goods generated $168M in revenue in past year
Americans spent about $168 million on mobile virtual goods in the past year, according to a report from Frank N. Magid Associates and Aurora Feint.
Virtual goods are used in free-to-play apps. Those apps are free for consumers to play, but they have to pay real money to buy virtual goods such as a weapon in a shooting game. The market has taken off on Facebook, fueling the growth of such companies as Zynga. But on the iPhone and other smartphones, the market is in a nascent state. Still, the report shows that virtual goods are picking up steam on mobile.
The report estimated that over 70 million Americans now own smartphones, which have internet access and computer-like screens. That’s about 23 percent of the U.S. population. Of the smartphone owners, 45 percent play mobile games and 16 percent of those spend an average of $41 per year on in-game virtual goods.
“The market for virtual goods has already exploded in web-based games like Zynga’s Farmville, and we’re just now starting to see this trend in the mobile space,” said Steve Lin, vice president of operations of Aurora Feint, which makes a social game platform for the iPhone. “In just the last few months we’ve seen amazing interest from our game developers in building mobile social games with virtual goods. Our internal numbers reflect the study in that free-to-play models will be the dominant pricing structure in the future.”
About 55 percent of smartphone gamers are interested in buying virtual goods. Most smartphone gamers are male and are between 18 and 34. They download an average of 14 games per year. Of these games, the gamers paid money for four of them and got the rest for free. The gamers rely on word of mouth for suggestions.
Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Register now. Tickets are going quickly. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.
Companies: Aurora Feint, Magid Associates
Zynga’s social gaming phenomenon, FarmVille, coming to iPhones
Zynga is the biggest success story to come out of the new wave of social game companies, bu it has been curiously absent from one of the hottest new game platforms — the iPhone. That’s changing today with chief executive Mark Pincus‘ announcement that Zynga is releasing FarmVille for iPhone.
FarmVille is Zynga’s biggest hit, with Pincus reporting that it has more than 70 million monthly active users. The main platform until now has been Facebook, but Pincus said, “With FarmVille on the iPhone, you can farm anytime, anywhere.”
The San Francisco company has released iPhone games before, but none appeared to take off the way Zynga’s products did on Facebook. So this marks Zynga’s return to the platform, and in a big way with its flagship game. It comes as the company is allying with SoftBank for expansion in Japan, and as it eyes an initial public offering. If the new game takes off, it should make Zynga less dependent on Facebook.
One question is whether virtual goods purchases on FarmVille for iPhone will be as lucrative as they have been on Facebook. Pincus said players will be able to buy items that are unique to the iPhone, such as a snow leopard. The game will also take advantage of the iPhone’s push notification feature, so players get alerts when their crops are dying.
Zynga plans to release FarmVille on the iPhone later this month.
[image via Gdgt]
Companies: Apple, Softbank, Zynga
People: Mark Pincus
Is Microsoft’s one-time star J Allard leaving the company?
J Allard was the design brains behind almost everything cool that came out of Redmond in recent years, from the Xbox to the Zune. Now there’s a report that he may be resigning from the company because one of his favorite new projects, a tablet computer called Courier, got axed.
Allard is the chief experience officer and chief technology officer at the Entertainment & Devices group inside Microsoft. He has responsibility for the design of many strategic new Microsoft products. His goals range from taking on Sony in video games (where Microsoft has done well) to beating Apple (where Microsoft’s Zune has failed miserably).
If it is true, then it shows that things could be drastically changing at Microsoft as it struggles to move into new markets that go beyond the cash cow of the Windows operating system. If Allard is truly out, then it could mean that many of the things that Microsoft is trying just aren’t working. The alternate explanation, of course, is that Allard is just one person and his departure isn’t that significant.
Still, Allard is known as one of the “Baby Bills” at the company and his picture has graced covers of magazines such as Businessweek. He represents a younger, technically savvy generation of leadership at Microsoft. Allard has worked on an impressive array of projects besides Courier, including Zune, Xbox 360, Xbox, and Microsoft’s push into the Internet. You could call him Microsoft’s chief innovator, as well as its head copycat, as he was always chasing one of Microsoft’s major rivals.
Allard became famous for penning a memo in 1994 entitled, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet.” It raised the alarm bells about competition from web browsing pioneer Netscape and got Microsoft founder Bill Gates to get serious about the Internet. Microsoft poured resources into the Internet and managed to come out on top of on trends such as web-connected software and web browsers.
Then he worked on an extension of the web strategy, dubbed Project 42, which was also canceled. He took a sabbatical, as he has evidently done now, and returned to the company to head the design of the original Microsoft Xbox. He took on an even greater role as the mastermind of the Xbox 360, which launched in 2005 and topped Sony from the leadership position in video game consoles. (Of course, the Xbox 360 is a distant second behind a resurgent Nintendo, which launched the Wii.)
After the Xbox 360 shipped in 2005, Allard moved up to try to help Microsoft regain lost ground against Apple, whose iPod shredded Microsoft’s strategy in music players. Allard headed Microsoft’s Zune project. He was also reportedly in charge of Courier, an electronic book reader and tablet computer. But Microsoft acknowledged that it killed that project, and that’s why the reports this week suggest that Allard is finally calling it a day. ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley says he is unlikely to return from his current sabbatical. Microsoft declined to comment.
Companies: microsoft
People: J Allard
Sibblingz rolls out social-game platform with Crowdstar
Sibblingz launched a social game platform today that lets publishers release games that players can enjoy on multiple game devices. One of the first game publishers to use the platform is Crowdstar, a hot Facebook game maker that is also a sister company to Sibblingz.
If developers use Burlingame, Calif.-based Sibblingz social game engine, they can create games that can be quickly published to social networks, mobile devices such as iPhones and Android phones. Moreover, game players can communicate with friends across platforms and play across the platforms.
This kind of cross-platform game development is common in the console space. But it is complicated to do and sometimes doesn’t work that well. Sibblingz is carrying that practice into social games, where playing with friends is paramount. Sibblingz believes its platform is important because it lets friends find and play each other regardless of the platform they are using.
Besides Crowdstar, game developer Sixits is also using the Sibblingz platform. Crowdstar has already used Sibblingz to develop Happy Island, which has 12 million monthly active users on Facebook.
Peter Relan, chairman of both Sibblingz and Crowdstar, said that the Sibblingz game engine lets a developer create a game for, say, Apple’s iPad. That game can connect to the same back-end server data that is used by the Facebook version of the game. Hence, Sibblingz can connect players across platforms, while preserving the ability to make unique games that take advantage of a device’s unique features.
Relan said he believes that Sibblingz’s platform will also save developers millions in game-development costs and improve their ability to launch games quickly and reach the broadest possible audience. Sibblingz estimates that cross-platform games can be launched within three months of an initial game launch. Sibblingz also lets companies monetize games that are available for free to gamers. That’s because it has a built-in virtual currency and virtual goods system, where players pay real money to buy extra virtual goods such as better weapons in a game.
Ben Savage, chief executive of Sibblingz, started work at the YouWeb incubator in 2007 and spun out as a separate company in May 2008. The company raised an angel round of funding and now has seven employees. The company completed its first version of Sibblingz at the end of last year and implemented it in Happy Island. Revenues from that deal have made Sibblingz profitable, Savage said. Typically, the company gets a split of revenue generated by a game that uses Sibblingz’s game engine.
Savage said the platform works on social games that are asynchronous, where one player moves at a time, rather than real-time shooting games with simultaneous play. There are rivals such as RealNetworks, Big Fish Games, Moblyng, Heyzap, Hi5 and others out there. But Savage said he believes that Facebook is the hot platform now and everyone wants to target it first, followed by the iPhone and then Android. The company has not yet added other social networks, in part because it relies upon Facebook Connect to get friend data.
The company has four clients, including two unannounced customers.
Here’s a video embedded below:
Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Early-bird pricing is available until May 15. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.
Ngmoco acquires iPhone game developer Stumptown
Ngmoco announced today that they’ve acquired fellow iPhone developer Stumptown Game Machine, which developed Touch Pets Dogs exclusively for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch in collaboration with Ngmoco in November 2009. The game immediately topped the free app charts on the App Store upon release and has been downloaded more than five million times.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but Stumptown Game Machine will retain its own name, brand and base of operations in Portland, Oregon. See Industry Gamers for more. Ngmoco — funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Norwest Venture Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Maples Investments — has acquired a number of iPhone game developers in its bid to become the top maker of mobile games on Apple platforms.
Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Early-bird pricing is available until May 15. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.
Companies: Ngmoco