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Venture capital and online games @ Virtual Worlds Forum
Last week we managed to catch the Venture Capital panel at the Virtual Worlds Forum, an event set inside a nightclub situated within a rather eerie warehouse district behind Kings Cross train station. Plenty of black leather sofas with bloggers and attendees basked in purple lights, a glitter ball, and three bars provide an odd backdrop for discussions about monetizing the latest WoW wannabe. The overall atmosphere of this panel was very businesslike -- £995 a head means most attendees were on their respective company's ticket -- so if you want to continue believing that video games are solely a creative medium designed to further society through creation of fun, look away now.If you're interested in this subject, make sure to check out ex-Joystiq editor Vlad Cole's newly relaunched blog on video game venture capital. Now keep reading.
Bethesda MMO studio sees substantial investment
An Elder Scrolls MMO may be closer to conception than we were previously aware, as Gamasutra reports that Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media has gotten a massive buff in cash from Providence Equity Partners to, and here we quote, "Fund future growth, ramp up publishing and development, facilitate acquisitions, and finance MMOGs." This comes on the heels of the formation of ZeniMax Online Studios, an MMOG studio formed by estranged Mythic Entertainment founder Matt Firor in Hunt Valley, MD. While our knee-jerk reaction is to assume they'll be working on an Elder Scrolls MMOG, just given the success of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, it's also worth remembering that Bethesda owns the rights to the Fallout franchise. We normally wouldn't stoop to this kind of scandalous rumor-mongering, but the announcement specifically mentions "MMOGs" in the plural. Assuming Elder Scrolls is numero uno, what else besides Fallout could they bring to the MMO genre? We know Interplay technically owns the rights to a Fallout MMO, but Bethesda just got quite a bit richer... More corporate back-patting after the jump.
MTV spending $500 million on games in next two years
MTV intends to spend over the next two years $500 million dollars in the video game industry. OK, seriously, maybe seeing the full line of digits will have more impact: $500,000,000. Eight zeros, a half billion dollars. This is big news and goes way beyond anything having to do with MTV's potential mega-hit Rock Band."We're putting well over $500 million behind building our games business across all of the brands in our portfolio ... I'd like to see more game applications on some of our current big brands across the music group," MTV chairman Judy McGrath said. It's still not absolutely clear if this money includes the $100 million already announced for MTV Network's Nickelodeon. This continues MTV's march across the industry having already acquired major properties like GameTrailers and Harmonix. No announcements yet where this money is going, but it's going to be very interesting to see MTV flex its financial muscle in the industry.
AMD sinks $7.5 million into Transmeta
Shortly after months of bickering with Intel, Transmeta finally took its ungraceful bow out of the CPU business, but apparently AMD sees something within the company worth investing in. Yesterday, AMD announced that it would be investing $7.5 million in Transmeta in exchange for Transmeta preferred stock, a move that was eloquently dubbed "a strategic investment in the future of Transmeta." Les Crudele, president and CEO of Transmeta, was quoted as saying that his firm looked forward to "continuing its collaboration with AMD on technology initiatives in the future," and AMD returned the lip service favor by boasting about how vital Transmeta was in bringing its AMD64 technology to market. Aw, how touching.[Via CNET]
Emotive's Push Ringer overrides ringtones; pranksters overjoyed
Forget personalized ringtones and ringbacks, the next tween obsession has arrived in the form of Push Ringer, which "enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone -- allowing the caller, not the called person -- to set the tone." We're assuming you're either elated or sighing mightily after reading that, but there's 7.7 million reasons why you wish you would've implemented it first. A group of deep-pocketed investors have sunk $7.7 million into Emotive Communications' flagship idea, which temporarily overrides the phone's preset ringer, and moreover, allows the recipient of the surprise sound-byte to "instantly buy a copy" if they so desire. Notably, this very service has already taken the VoIP world over, as Skype users are probably more familiar with the RingJacker concept. Now, who's down for inventing the Push Ringer Reverser to send a "you got punk'd" clip back at the egotistical sender?[Via The Raw Feed]
