In Other News...October 23

[DoctorFinger]

- Zynga has announced a round of pretty severe layoffs, with all 100+ people at their Austin studio receiving pink slips, with similar cullings taking place at their Boston and Chicago studios resulting in a loss of about 5% of their global workforce. The Ville and a dozen other titles will be shutting down. Oh, and the announcement was made just as Apple was beginning their iPad Mini press conference, in what appears to be a desperate hope that the news would go unnoticed. The bloom is clearly off the rose for the former social games juggernaut.

- 2K Games has announced Borderlands Legends, a mobile spin-off of the loot shooter for iOS. Legends has the original vault hunters in an isometric shooter with - what else - tons of loot to acquire. The iPhone version will cost $5 and the iPad $7 when it launches on Halloween.

- Sony's Singstar is going free to play on the PS3. You'll be able to download the client and plug in any old mic - from USB to Bluetooth to the PSEye - and belt out your favorites. Of course you'll have to buy the songs: either a la carte from the PSN or by picking up Singstar discs.

- Team Meat has announced their next game: Mewgenics a mix of kitties and genes that creators McMullen and call Refenes call "by far the strangest project [we've] ever worked on. No details other than the name were announced. But don't worry, Team Meat is still working on the next Super Meat Boy title too. This is a side project that came out of nowhere that they simply had to work on.

[MagGnome]

Making SingStar free to play sounds like a good idea to me. Is the game still popular in Europe?

[Spigot]

Mew-Genics has my attention. If Team Meat are calling a game weird, then I HAVE to see it.

[BLeeP]

And just think: this time last year, Zynga was valued at something to the tune of 7 billion dollars, if I remember correctly.

Nothing gold can stay, Pony Boy.

[BLeeP]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

Gee whiz, people don't play mobile/social games as much as everyone is lead to believe? Wish someone could have called that.

Wasn't it EA that was trying to buy Rovio out for one billion dollars? Rovio shot them down and I can't think of very many moves that are more boneheaded than that.

[muddi900]

Rovio are still making money. Shitty free-to-play games are the highest grossing on apps in both App store and the Play Store, some of them taking in $400k per day. PER DAY!

[Hawkzombie]

Never under-estimate the power of micro-transactions.

[Chris_D]

Pretty cool idea with Singstar. Wonder if I can find the mics in a bargain bin somewhere and piss of the neighbours.

[Pale Ale]

Originally Posted by Hawkzombie

Never under-estimate the power of micro-transactions.

I think they can be overestimated, hence why zynga is over the barrel.

[Kielaran]

Angry Birds could easily be worth more than 1B$. They are everywhere. There are plushies, clothes, a board game, not to mention the game itself. I bet they are pulling in cash hand over fist.

[danhoo]

Originally Posted by BLeeP

Wasn't it EA that was trying to buy Rovio out for one billion dollars? Rovio shot them down and I can't think of very many moves that are more boneheaded than that.

Not gaming related, but another boneheaded move: Google supposedly offered GroupOn 5 billion (yes, billion, although probably mostly in stock), and they thought about it for 3 days and then turned them down.

[J Arcane]

Originally Posted by Kielaran

Angry Birds could easily be worth more than 1B$. They are everywhere. There are plushies, clothes, a board game, not to mention the game itself. I bet they are pulling in cash hand over fist.

Their revenue was 75 million Euros.

1 billion is rather pushing it.

[pronounconnoun]

I'm excited about Borderlands Legends. It has been a while since I have been excited about an ios game.

[Ink Asylum]

Angry Birds has become the Mario of mobile gaming. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you did a poll of the general public and discovered that more people recognized Angry Birds characters than Mario.

[MagGnome]

Angry Birds definitely seems more pervasive than Mario these days, that's for sure.

[Gorvi]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

Angry Birds has become the Mario of mobile gaming. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you did a poll of the general public and discovered that more people recognized Angry Birds characters than Mario.

I wouldn't go that far, but Angry Birds is pretty pervasive at this point.

[muddi900]

Which is great and all, but Bad Piggies, while the top selling app, is not even in the top 15 highest grossing apps. At least it was a success, unlike Amazing Alex.

[BLeeP]

Amazing Alex had the benefit of being a reskin of someone else's game, though. Which is probably part of the reason why it didn't take off.

[muddi900]

Angry Birds was just Crash the Castle with cutesy characters.

[Widgetcraft]

The difference between Mario and Angry Birds is that one has staying power, and the other is a flash-in-the-pan fad. Despite seeing those damn Angry Birds everywhere, I have yet to see anyone actually playing the new one they released. I'm around hundreds of people with smart phones and tablets every day for long periods of time, and they don't seem to play that shit. I still see people playing Pokemon on their DS and 3DSes (how the fuck do you pluralize this) every day.