Categories: games

Before Zynga, Pincus Thrived as Investor

Posted by: Rachael King on December 12

By Douglas MacMillan As Mark Pincus enters the final days of Zynga's road show, he's aiming to sell investors on the prospects for the social-gaming startup, set to raise $1...

Nintendo: No Wii Successor Anytime Soon

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 13

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime says don't count on Nintendo introducing an update to its hit Wii videogame console, or new system, in the coming months. Sony and Microsoft...

Zynga CEO: Playfish Helps EA 'Catch Up'

Posted by: Douglas Macmillan on November 10

Mark Pincus has become the poster boy for the booming business of social online games. His company, Zynga, brings in more than $100 million in annual revenues, and owns the...

Nintendo Beats Latest Patent Infringement Lawsuit

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on June 11

Thanks to its huge success with the Wii, Nintendo has become a favorite target for companies looking to collect revenue off patents they say the Japanese company has used illegally...

Nintendo Courts Developers

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on March 25

You'll have to forgive game developers if they feel a little bittersweet about Nintendo's runaway success with its Wii game console and DS heldheld. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's message at...

Games in the Cloud?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on February 24

One of the biggest downsides to playing most games is their lack of portability. Generally, you have to sit in front of the same screen on which you launched the...

Second Life's First Millionaire

Posted by: Rob Hof on November 26

Anshe Chung, the virtual land baroness that I highlighted in my cover story earlier this year, My Virtual Life, has apparently become the first millionaire in Second Life. That's...

Real Threat to Virtual Goods in Second Life

Posted by: Rob Hof on November 15

The many people who make real money by selling virtual clothing, houses, and much more on the online virtual world Second Life aren't real happy right now. A program...

Going for the Casual Gamer

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on November 03

Speaking of games, I wonder if we're sometimes spending too much time obsessing on the console market and overlooking the growing sophistication of casual games? Big Fish games just launched...

Showdown for PS3, Wii and 360 Nears?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on November 03

I gotta say, having just gotten my hands on a Sony PlayStation 3 test machine, I got all a-tingle. I knew it didn't deliver the full functionality of a consumer...

1 Million Virtual Residents

Posted by: Rob Hof on October 18

The online virtual world Second Life just hit 1 million residents. That's up from just 170,000 in late April, when my story about Second Life ran in BusinessWeek. As...

Share a Game, Win Some Cash

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on September 06

Casual games site Big Fish Games wants to, well, be the big fish of the sector and has come up with an interesting plan to overtake rival Real Arcade. Jumping...

Got Sisu?

Posted by: Rob Hof on September 05

The social gaming site Bunchball just got venture funding, so it's hiring--as long as you have sisu. I had to follow the company's link to the Wikipedia entry to figure...

Amazon.com May Get a Second Life

Posted by: Rob Hof on June 23

When I wrote a cover story recently about Second Life and other virtual worlds, I immediately wondered why any retailer, say Amazon.com, wouldn't want to set up in-world, so...

On the Other Hand, Are Online Games Rotting Our Kids' Brains?

Posted by: Rob Hof on June 22

As I mentioned in my recent story about virtual worlds, I've never been a gamer. The main reason is that I could immediately see how addictive Myst, World of Warcraft...

The Role of Fun in Online Success

Posted by: Rob Hof on June 22

The success of World of Warcraft and other online role-playing games has a lot of online businesses salivating about the possibilities of embedding game dynamics into their services. The idea...

Virtual World, Real ATMs

Posted by: Rob Hof on May 02

The one thing about my recent story, "Virtual World, Real Money," that still mystifies a lot of people is the idea that virtual money inside an online game can be...

My Ol' Virtual '53 Chevy

Posted by: Rob Hof on April 24

At the end of my cover story, Virtual World, Real Money, my avatar "Rob Cranes" had run into a "residents association" in this part of the online virtual world Second...

My Second Life

Posted by: Rob Hof on April 20

I ran across the online virtual world Second Life at least a year and a half ago, when I heard that Omidyar Network, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife...

Trip Hawkins vs EA

Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 30

Electronic games industry pioneer Trip Hawkins is still stewing over comments made last week by Mitch Lasky, senior vice-presidnet of EA Mobile. Previously, Lasky was CEO of Jamdat, the mobile...

Nokia to Up the Ante on Mobile Games

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 21

On March 20, Nokia announced its premium game platform, an approach that I think could change mobile gaming as we know it and deal a blow to rivals like Sony.

Sega's Ambitious Plans

Posted by: Olga Kharif on November 15

Sega of America's president and COO Simon Jeffery believes his company might finally start seeing the pay-off of its strategic moves in the last several years this holiday season. Could be. Sega's timing is perfect.

Nothing Virtual About 100 Grand

Posted by: Rob Hof on November 11

Some guy just spent $100,000 to buy a virtual space station in the online game Project Entropia. I know buying land and other stuff in virtual worlds like Second...