Mindy Candy, the U.K. company behind the hugely successful Moshi Monsters adoptable pet monsters kids game, is branching out into animation. Today it’s announced plans to make a series of 52×11 minute episodes based on the most popular characters from its Moshi world platform which is aimed at boys and girls aged 6-12. The cartoons will [...]
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Just about eight weeks ago or so, I was on a call with Zynga’s COO David Ko following the company’s first quarter earnings report. Zynga was trying to manage expectations for the coming two quarters by saying it had paused its game slate to re-evaluate every upcoming title on the table. I can’t remember the [...]
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While that other big tech press event soldiers on, Microsoft just recently wound down its E3 media briefing with a long-awaited bit of news: the Xbox One will launch sometime this November, and gamers in the U.S. will have to shell out $ 499 to get their hands on one. Don’t live in the U.S.? [...]
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Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a veteran game designer, creator of leading game design blog What Games Are and creative director of Jawfish Games. You can follow him on Twitter here. I was not particularly surprised. I’m talking about this week’s Zynga, OMGPOP and Tapjoy news, but not in a haughty-told-you-so sort of way. I’m wondering whether they are [...]
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Dekko, a San Francisco-based startup that just closed extra funding to build a platform for augmented reality apps, just brought its first title to market with a racing game that has players drive virtual cars across tabletops. OK, so augmented reality, which overlays virtual items or information over the real world through a phone or [...]
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BlueStacks is hoping to take the clear early consumer interest in a home gaming console built with mobile technologies and make that into big business, and today it’s announcing what could become a huge advantage for its GamePop console over other similar offerings. GamePop will support iPhone and iPad apps at launch, in addition to [...]
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Payments company Adyen has published the first of a new quarterly index intended to track the evolving landscape of mobile commerce. One notable increase flagged up by the data is the increasing popularity of tablets as a commerce device. The inaugural Adyen Global Mobile Payments Index is based on 10 months of transactions conducted on its platform. To give [...]
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Playhaven, a startup that helps mobile game developers monetize their player bases, acquired a small three-person startup called Staq.io to beef up their analytics offerings. The company, which had came out of the TechStars incubator program, had built an analytics product that helps game developers understand how to retain and monetize engaged players. “We quickly [...]
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If you grew up in the 80s you might recall Big Track: a programmable kids robo-truck that could be made to perform a handful of actions, like moving a set number of units in a certain direction, firing a faux laser or tipping out the contents of its dumper truck at a pre-set destination (assuming your [...]
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Update: Zynga has confirmed the layoffs via press release, as well as the numbers (520 layoffs or 18 percent of the workforce) reported by AllThingsD. The company says this was result in $ 70 million to $ 80 million in annualized pre-tax savings. Despite those savings, its guidance for its second quarter earnings is a [...]
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