HTC Invests in Beats Electronics

AUG. 11, 2011 • The Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC Corp is buying a 51% controlling share in U.S. specialty headphone designer Beats Electronics for $309 million. Beats markets enhanced headphones that reproduce a fuller spectrum of audio, and was launched by music producer Jimmy Iovine, and rap artist Dr. Dre. The move is seen as a way to enhance HTC’s products against competition from Apple and Samsung. .....

Zynga’s Paying Customers

AUG. 11, 2011 • In a regulatory disclosure, Zynga reported that only 5% of its 232 million average monthly active users purchase virtual items. Zynga reported revenue of $242.8 million for the quarter ending March 31. For the period, Zynga said its top games accounted for 63% of revenue. The company filed July 1 for an initial public offering of up to $1 billion. Impact: At first glance many .....

Interview: En Masse Still High On Subscriptions

AUG. 11, 2011 • MMOs are changing. There’s the wide adoption of the virtual item, free-to-play (F2P) model, of course. Embracing F2P for MMOs can attract an audience that may not have tried the same game if a retail box purchase and a monthly subscription were necessary. Yet lowering the barriers to playing MMOs is not a substitute for originality. The traditional, Dungeons & Dragons ruleset-based fantasy experience that predominates in these online games .....

Razer Opens Taipei Design Center

AUG. 6, 2011 • Gaming peripheral company Razer opened its third product design center in Taipei. The first two centers were established in San Francisco and Singapore. The Taipei team will support other design centers at first, but will take on other responsibilities as staff is increased from 20 to 100 employees during the next year. Impact: While China gets most of the attention during discu.....

PlayStation Vita Price Worries

AUG. 4, 2011 • Some financial analysts in Japan have reversed their early endorsements of the ¥24,980 launch price for the PlayStation Vita ($249 in the U.S.) after the recent Nintendo 3DS price cut. “The environment for portable game players has become much more difficult because of smartphones,” Koki Shiraishi, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc., told the Bloomberg News service. Shiraishi estimates shipments of the PS Vita will be about half of th.....

North Koreans Hack Games

AUG. 4, 2011 • The International Crime Investigation Unit of the Seoul Police revealed the results of an investigation that linked North Korean nationals operating from China to hacking schemes that exploited South Korean online game servers to accumulate virtual assets that could be converted into cash. The young computer hackers, graduates of elite North Korean science universities, were said to have generated 6.4 billion won ($6 million) in hard currency in .....

EA Sports Season Ticket

AUG. 2, 2011 • Starting with Madden NFL 12, Electronic Arts is making available the EA Sports Season Ticket for $24.99 a year.  The biggest attraction is that it provides PSN and Xbox Live users the opportunity to play upcoming EA Sports titles three days prior to the offici.....

End of content

End of content