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Zynga closes OMGPOP, the creators of Draw Something
Zynga announced yesterday that it was laying off about 18 percent of its work staff, or about 520 employees, which is bad news for any company. But it turns out that this set of folks includes most of the crew of OMGPOP, the company Zynga acquired for its uber-popular app Draw Something last year. It was only last March that Zynga picked up OMGPOP for $200 million after Draw Something became a big hit, and while the app did both grow and spawn a sequel under Zynga's oversight, OMGPOP's CEO Dan Porter left the company just a few months ago, and now most of the original staff is out of a job. Or at least on to the next one -- one former Zynga staffer says to TechCrunch that most of the team members "had new jobs lined up by the time they left the building anyway." It's true that the OMGPOP acquisition was extremely public, and while Draw Something was always popular, it wasn't hard to see that the audience lost a lot of engagement after that initial acquisition. I don't think this is the death knell for Zynga just yet -- the company has been cutting titles, but still has successful games running, and it's working on more to come. But this is definitely a wakeup call that the once huge social and mobile juggernaut needs to do things a bit differently in the future.
GungHo reports Puzzle and Dragons is earning $3.75 million a day
GungHo Entertainment is a game publisher based in Japan, and the company has just released some really wild financial numbers. According to the latest numbers, GungHo made US$118 million this past April alone, most of it from one game: Puzzle and Dragons, currently available on iOS. Puzzle and Dragons is pulling in so much money (from audiences in both Japan and around the world) that GungHo says it's making $3.75 million a day. In Japan alone, Puzzle and Dragons is claiming 13 million players -- which is over 10 percent of the population there. That is a phenomenal success story, and it gives GungHo a higher market cap than even the legendary game publisher Nintendo. As a result, the company's stock has skyrocketed, and it's even challenging current megapublisher Activision Blizzard for market cap. I liked Puzzle and Dragons, but I think this is a game more targeted at Japan and its vast audience of mid- to hardcore-level gamers. In addition to the addictive puzzle and pet-leveling gameplay, Puzzle and Dragons is also very well structured to keep in-app purchases high, which goes a long way towards explaining how this game has gotten so big so quickly. GungHo's definitely seen some success in North America, as the app has made a few appearances on the top grossing list. But as far as I know, the success in Japan has been much more incredible.
Songza 3.0 update available now
We mentioned Songza's iOS app last year around when it came out, and the music sharing service has just updated the app to version 3.0. The free app has been almost completely reimagined, and while it still offers plenty of tunes to listen to, the interface has been revamped -- it's much cleaner, flatter, and has some nice bits of plain color included. The "Concierge" service is still there and upgraded, so if you simply tell the app what you're doing, it'll try to get you some music to do that with. The company has also focused on ease-of-use, so for example, just holding down any Concierge station button will start up the music, no matter what, so you can get things rolling as quickly as possible. The new version also includes an updated "HQ Audio" system, so the tunes you're hearing can sound as good as possible. As before, Songza can be downloaded for free, and whether you missed it or have wandered away from the app in the past, the latest version adds enough new that it's definitely worth another look. Elias Roman, Songza's co-founder, also tells TUAW that the company has hit a few new milestones recently. The app has just seen its 6 millionth install from the App Store, and served over 560 million songs in just the last month. Songza claims 4.7 million monthly active users, and it says that in total those users spend over 65 million minutes playing tunes every day. That's a sizable user base for sure, and we'll have to see if this updated version makes Songza even more popular.
Nexon releases Dungeon Fighter Gunner for iPhone
Nexon has released a version of its extremely popular (in Asia, at least) Dungeon Fighter Online game on the iPhone, called Dungeon Fighter Gunner. You can download the title right now -- it's pretty standard fare, featuring lots of onscreen touch controls, and the same 2D beat-em-up style gameplay that makes the online title so popular overseas. But what's most important about this app isn't necessarily what it is, but what it represents. Dungeon Fighter Online is a huge franchise, boasting over 300 million registered users around the world. That's gigantic -- by comparison, World of Warcraft (definitely the largest MMORPG in the West) hosted about 12 million users at its peak. DFO is by far Nexon's biggest title, and while it has put a few apps onto the store already, this is the first app it's released that's been related to the DFO juggernaut. So we'll have to see how this one does. There are some huge brands out there in terms of online gaming, both in the East and West, that could benefit a lot from some tie-in titles on the App Store. If this game does well, or gains just a fraction of the audience it already has on the PC, we could be looking at the first in a series of big tie-in hits.
Interview confirms World of Darkness dev team, predicts DUST 514 sales
When CCP Games laid off 20% of its worldwide staff back in October of last year, the World of Darkness dev team bore the brunt of the cuts while DUST 514 continued on course for its launch later this year. In an interview over at TenTonHammer today, CCP's new Chief Marketing Officer, David Reid, joined CEO Hilmar Petursson to discuss the development of both games. Hilmar reveals that a team of 60 developers are currently working on WoD, and that DUST 514 will be playable at this year's EVE Online fanfest event in March. Despite acknowledging that the entire PlayStation Network comprises a total of 60 million users, Reid asserts that DUST will bring "tens of millions of people that play shooters on PSN into the New Eden universe," going on to make the bold statement that "EVE could be the biggest game in the world at the end of 2012" as a result. Reid also claims that "EVE Online is the only game in the West that has shown consecutive growth year after year," a statement that's sure to upset RuneScape developer Jagex and others. The statement also comes with a slightly bitter note as this year EVE may have lost its record of continual subscription growth during the summer drama.
World of Tanks enlists millions worldwide
Like its iconic vehicles, World of Tanks is proving to be an unstoppable beast rolling over everything in its path. And if numbers are any indication, there's no sign of this newly released game slowing down. Today, Wargaming.net announced that World of Tanks has crossed the line of two million registrations for its Russian server. The European and North American servers add another million to the roster as well. The game is proving to be a smash hit in Russia, which recently awarded it Best Game of GDC Russia 2011. CEO Victor Kislyi says that this well exceeds any predictions the company had for the game's growth: "At the very beginning of development for World of Tanks, we were assuming that the maximum number would be around 600,000 players worldwide. Now, we have two million registrations in Russia alone, not to mention the Western audience and its immense growth. With the tremendous number we've reached in Russia as well as the dynamics of community growth in Europe and North America, we are looking forward to the many more milestones to come."
Samsung sells 9.3 million Galaxy S devices, within reaching distance of its lofty goal
10 million freaking smartphones. Who thought, when Samsung put that number forward as its 2010 Galaxy S sales goal two months ago, that it was actually going to happen? Well, with just over a week left in the calendar year, the Korean giant has racked up 9.3 million sales of its Android superphone globally and actually expects to sneak past the mythical 10 million mark just before the champagne glasses start clinking. The Galaxy S has also scored a win in its home market of South Korea, where its two million units sold so far leads the 1.8 million iPhones sold since the series debuted in November 2009. Hearty congratulations are due to the crew in Seoul, such success doesn't happen by chance, but let's keep working on those Froyo (and Gingerbread!) software updates as well, eh chaps? Update: This article has been updated to reflect Chosunibo's claim that 1.8 million iPhone series devices were sold -- not just iPhone 4 handsets.
Angry Birds nets 50 million downloads, still not enough for a three-star rating
And yet the pigs go marching on. Rovio's Angry Birds is just over a year old now, and in that time it's racked up 50 million in downloads, with 10 million of those from Android. An impressive number in its own right, and that puts it in a very elite group of gaming franchises that counts Bejeweled (50m) and Legend of Zelda (59m) among its members. (Membership includes fancy jackets and fezzes.) Our guess is that includes the iOS "Lite" version, which does downplay the milestone, but with new versions coming to PC, Mac, and the big three game consoles still on stores shelves -- as well as a sequel -- we doubt that asterisk will matter for long. Watch your ever-propagating back, Tetris. [Image Credit: Penney Design via Gizmodo]
New Kindle sells 'millions,' bests all 2009 Kindle sales
Amazon has left us with no choice: making sales conclusions based on a single additional letter. The company, notoriously vague on Kindle sales, has announced that "in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we've already sold millions of our all-new Kindles." In other words, at least two million, and more for Kindle overall if you consider DX (still on sale) and the recent lightning deal blowout of the Kindle 2. Amazon's Department of Creative Statistics also noted that this elusive sales figure is greater than all its Kindle sales in 2009. How many is that, you ask? No idea -- we know "millions" were sold between 2007 and 2009, but parsing it out further would only unravel a mystery Encyclopedia Brown has been spending pages and pages to solve -- and still has a ways to go.
AppFund offers VC money for iPad apps
A group of investors has teamed up to form AppFund, a company solely focused on raising money for and incubating apps for the iPad. You'll remember the somewhat similar iFund, which even got a mention in an Apple keynote a while back, and eventually offered up millions of dollars to emerging iPhone app companies like ngmoco and others. AppFund is trying to do the same thing, though they're starting out a bit smaller, promising $5000 to $500,000 to folks with interesting iPad ideas and the means to get them up and running. They're soliciting ideas right now, so if you saw the iPad on stage and came up with a brilliant way to use it, you can send them a report and see if they bite. You'll probably need a solid business plan and/or a prototype as well, since they probably won't give you $500,000 to develop an iPad whoopie cushion that you can sneak onto a chair and make someone sit on. Or will they? Excuse me, I have go to compose an email...
Evernote's CEO: 5k new users a day, but retention is a problem
Mashable's Ben Parr sat down at CES with Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, which is not only a TUAW favorite, but acts as your "external brain," saving little clips and bits of information both collectible from and accessible by any device you happen to have with you. We love the app, and while it isn't a Mac exclusive, there are both Mac and iPhone versions, and apparently they're doing very well. Libin tells us in the video that not only are they picking up five thousand users a day (!), but over half of their two million users are using the iPhone app [iTunes link]. As Libin says, the app is "very good" -- it's easy to use (and free), the iPhone's camera makes picking up even real-life scraps of information super easy, and Evernote is designed to share information back to your Mac. Libin says that "most" of the iPhone users do access their information back on other PCs. Libin also talks about power users of the service -- there's one in the system that has over 80,000 notes, though due to privacy, Libin doesn't share what they're keeping in there. And apparently one issue they're dealing with is retention, even for people who have used the service. I can identify with that -- while Evernote is a great service, it's tough to remember that you can use it to remember things, and for that reason I think that even with two million users, it's still very underrated. Libin sounds like he's on top of things, though -- he promises that they're always working on not only helping users figure out how to use the service, but also in polishing it and making it even easier and simpler.
Guardian talks to Chinese goldsellers and UK buyers
UK paper The Guardian has a look at what life is like at a Chinese goldselling company. It's interesting, but we've basically seen it before -- the small room of young people working almost 24/7 to make and deliver gold in-game, the concerns about worker livelihood and the supposedly large amounts of money going through these businesses (there's one figure quoted of £700m, which is about $980 million, but that's an estimate -- no one really knows how much these companies are making).But what's really interesting about this piece is that it seems to treat goldselling as more of an "opportunity" than anything else. The people running the companies are making money, the employees are getting a roof over their head and a steady paycheck, and even the guy making the film talks about how governments should start taking a cut of this industry. Nowhere is it actually mentioned that Blizzard considers these companies to be against the terms of service, or that many times the gold obtained by these companies isn't earned through simple grinding, but by hacking, keylogging, and exploiting. Even if (emphasis on the if) these companies are making millions of dollars a year, they're stealing accounts and cheating in-game to do it.Rowenna Davis also did interviews with both the gold farmer and a player in the UK buying money from him (bannz0red?), but again, there's no insight at all from the player whose account was hacked and bank was looted, or the player who is able to earn as much gold as they need and have a life outside the game (there are plenty of those to go around). Would have been nice to see the issue from players who aren't actually breaking the game's terms of service.Thanks, Bryn!
WoW generates half of Acti-Blizz earnings
The folks over at CVG picked up an interesting note on our Activision-Blizzard overlords' 2008 fiscals. According to Arvind Bhatia, World of Warcraft probably generated 30 cents out of each 60 cents per share of earnings. Put another way, that's about $400 million for shares at the end of the fiscal year ending this past December. Now, this is kind of the best guess of Mr. Bhatia, who works under the firm Sterne Agee. (And they certainly have a reputation that says we could probably believe them.) But even without Sterne Agee's reputation, a little back-of-the-envelope math shows that his analysis probably bears fruit. We already know that WoW has 11.5 million subscribers. At $15 dollars a pop per month, you're already looking at $172 million each month. But we know that a lot of folks have discount plans, and the charge isn't the same across the globe. I can easily believe a $400 million yearly earning from subscriptions, and am actually surprised it's not higher. Of course, Bhatia has recently lowered some of his other estimates for ATVI, and warns that the consensus estimates predicting $5.2 billion in revenue are probably too high. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, this does say that World of Warcraft is doing just fine. We can feel free to threaten to quit over the latest nerf, the lights're going to stay on while we're out the door.
$345 million invested in virtual worlds so far this year
"There's gold in them thar online worlds!" That, at least, is the diagnosis of the guys over at TechCrunch Virtual Worlds Management (they're actually the ones who did the research for second quarter) -- they tallied up all the money given to virtual world developers this year, and ended up at a whopping $345 million. That is a lot of investment dollars sunk into worlds that don't exist -- about the gross domestic product of Western Africa's Guinea-Bissau. Which, come to think of it, doesn't sound quite as impressive as we'd hoped, but still, venture capitalists clearly think this online thing might have staying power.Turbine was one of the big winners so far this year -- their $40 million investment will give the Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online developer lots of leeway in their "business strategy shift." But 9You, as previously reported on this very site, was the biggest cash-in so far this year -- $100 million was passed out to them to work on its product called GTown.Of course, investment only means so much, and there are only so many hours in the day people can spent in virtual environments. Some of this money is being thrown away. But we're only halfway through 2008, and deals are being brokered left and right -- it's a virtual world boom!
World of Warcraft hits 9.3 million subscribers
Like a burning crusade marching across the planet, World of Warcraft continues to expand with a population of 9.3 million subscribers. In late July, Blizzard announced that WoW reached the 9 million subscriber mark. All this player retention is fantastic for the game, but World of Warcraft is still an anomaly in the commercial MMORPG genre. If Lord of the Rings Online is in the number two spot like Turbine claims, they have yet to announce even hitting one million subscribers (they cover it smoothly by saying they have four million characters). Although, in all fairness, LotRO hasn't expanded into Asia yet -- that's where the real MMO money is. Blizzard's parent company Vivendi continues to reap the financial rewards of WoW's success as their sales continue to rise. With such massive retention rates on an MMO, we can only imagine what happens when Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion for WoW, releases sometime next year. [Via Massively]
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.
Pachter poses Manhunt 2 costing Take-Two millions
Industry fortune teller, Wedbush-Morgan's Michael Pachter, says Manhunt 2's freedom of expression will cost publisher Take-Two millions -- good thing Take-Two may have gotten that GTA IV advance money! Pachter believes the game would have generated $25 million in revenues this quarter, along with another $15 million in reorders. He sees three options for Take-Two at this point: Ship the game the way it is. Edit the game, bringing it in line with UK morals and the ESRB's M rating criteria. Cancel the game. Pachter believes canceling isn't a reasonable outcome. The other two options leave Take-Two with either lower sales because of the AO rating and the banning, or increased development costs due to the edit. Pachter guesses that either option costs the company half their potential revenue. He also goes on to say that this incident hurts the longevity of the franchise, which is funny for those who feel Manhunt 2 came out of left field anyway. Take-Two can probably cut their marketing budget by half, look at all this yummy free advertising. We already know FOX News has a story locked and loaded for public consumption closer to the Manhunt 2's July release.
Halo 2 hits 5 million player mark
Bungie announced that they've reached their 5 millionth player to experience Halo 2 online. The number refers to unique Live accounts that have played the title. That doesn't mean people stuck with it or that each of those tags belonged to different people. Bungie reached the milestone on the 2.5 year anniversary of the game's launch. The real test of Halo's power will be this fall when we see how well Halo 3 moves Xbox 360 consoles.
