TiesMorskate.nl

Great article about the US stock market specifically targeted on video games. Even the Zynga IPO, which I feel is strongly over-valued and over anticipated, is discussed.

The company [Zynga red.] was hoping to ride a wave of positive sentiment led by LinkedIn and Pandora after those companies picked up multi-billion dollar valuations when they went public.

But game stocks were down at least 1 percent across the board. Saints Row developer THQ Interactive was the worst performer after falling nearly 6 percent, while publishing supergiant Electronic Arts fell by about one percent. Those companies revolve around delivering cinematic triple-A titles like Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Those games still carry large price tags, which would give social and online gaming companies the edge.

Read the full article here.

According to MMO-Champion’s post Blizzard has just registered a new name to be used in the online gaming sphere. This name is Mists of Pandaria and is supposedly the upcoming expansion of the world’s most succesful MMO World of Warcraft. The reason it is believed its for WoW and not for their project that’s codenamed Titan is because the Panda’s already play a part in the Warcraft world. This youtube vid is proof:

In the forums, speculation is already underway, general opinion is that this expansion will see the addition of two new playable races and will expand the level cap to 90. I’m curious to see how long Blizzard can keep its users entertained. And I’m very curious to see what project Titan is. Any ideas?

As I already mentioned in an earlier post, Viacom planned to sell Harmonix, they finally managed to do so by selling to investment firm Columbus Nova, effectively making Harmonix an independent developer. The developer is well-known for its Rock Band franchise which it developed together with MTV (another Viacom property). Reason for the sale is the poor performance of the music genre, which still is estimated at 400 million dollar.

Gameindustry.biz provides a nice quote from Harmonix concerning their past 4 years as a part of Viacom:

“Viacom and MTV Networks have been an amazing home for us over the past four years. It’s where we launched both Rock Band and Dance Central, worked with The Beatles, Green Day, AC/DC, The Who and thousands of other artists. We want to take a moment to thank everyone in that organisation who helped make these awesome games possible.”

With only unannounced projects and some DLC for Rock Band it is hard to say whether the chances for Harmonix look bright, but a company that basically single-handedly grew the music genre to great hights (they developed Guitar Hero for Activision) should not be questioned if they can make a proper game.

The $65 million reported loss of last year is quite possibly the result of over-investment in the Beatles property, of which the rights only are reported to have cost Viacom 50 million. Viacom furthermore adding that they lack scale and expertise to properly work the console game business. No price has been called, so maybe that will come up in the future, it probably won’t be near the 175 million dollars Viacom paid for the developer.

Just to keep you guys posted on one of the hottest social gaming properties of the moment: Cityville reaches 22 million monthly active users and is only spreading faster! 11 days in, 11,5 million people login on a daily basis, and it is probably because of the cross-promotion with sister Farmville, where even your top neighbor invites you to join CityVille! As I was saying before, target for CityVille is to regain Zynga’s lost market share in terms of total amount of users and since they recaptured the 200 million flag it succeeded for now. I’ll keep an eye out for more changes and will write a post about gamification very soon!

Last week I mentioned the Wii Sales going down, now, in an interview with the Financial Times, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada is saying he expects a new Nintendo console in 2011. This console will be more like the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 in terms of functionality and might just have a new controller as well. The new Sony and Microsoft controllers will only have a relatively small impact on sales figures due to them being an extension to the gaming functionality of the consoles. (more…)

Where I wrote that Activision Blizzard will pass by console, Turbine is looking to do the exact opposite! Craig Alexander, Turbine´s vice president of product developmment states that the MMO´s revolutionized the PC as  a gaming platform and it is going to do the same for consoles. (more…)

I already wrote about Activision Blizzard and their new upcoming MMO, but they have even more ideas to share. How about a future without consoles? They do acknowledge the fact that consoles are a big part of the business, but services like OnLive make a console-less future very possible! (more…)