Mobile Gaming Stocks: Will Cheap Games Hurt the Video Game Industry? - Business Insider

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If you're a child of the 1980s, then there's a good chance that Nintendo's inaugural video game console topped your Christmas or Hannukah wishlist when the first-generation system debuted. Back then, saving the pixelated princess was the easy part--the real challenge was just getting the game to load, involving shaking, blowing on and sometimes even smacking the temperamental cartridge around.

Hard to believe that today, game play is as easy as simply turning on your phone.  

Mobile gaming is on the rise, and revolutionizing the gaming industry--according to a recent study by Nielsen, the average iPhone user spends about 15 hours a month playing games on their smartphones.

Android users clocked in slightly above the overall average smartphone user, at 9.3 hours compared with 7.8 hours over a 30-day period. 64% of downloaders have loaded a new game onto their phone within the last 30 days, making games the most popular, and lucrative, category of smartphone applications.

Need more proof? Social and mobile gaming giant Zynga just filed a $1 billion IPO.

So what does all this mean for console gaming systems? If you ask Peter Vesterbacka, creator of the popular Angry Birds game for mobile phones, their days are numbered.

Quoted at SXSW declaring "consoles are dying," Vesterbacka sees the future of gaming in mobile and social mediums, while traditional companies charging $40 or $50 for a game are heading toward extinction.

But Nintendo president Satoru Iwata makes a compelling counterargument: “Consider this: the number of games available on the big app sites is in the tens of thousands. Game development is drowning. Yes, these games are far less expensive to create, but what revenue will they generate?”

Does the rise of the cheap mobile game signal weaker sales for video game companies that produce more expensive "premium" games for consoles? You be the judge--here's a list of companies with exposure to the trend.

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List sorted alphabetically.

1. Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI): Market cap of 13.81B. It is engaged in online, personal computer (PC), console, handheld, and mobile game publisher. Activision offers games that operate on the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (Sony) PlayStation 3 (PS3), Nintendo Co. Ltd. (Nintendo) Wii (Wii), and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) Xbox 360 (Xbox 360) console systems; Nintendo Dual Screen (NDS) and Nintendo DSi (DSi) handheld devices; the PC; the Apple iPhone (iPhone), the Apple iPad (iPad) and other mobile devices. Its mobile games include "Tony Hawk: Proving Ground" and "Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile".

2. Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS): Market cap of 8.3B. It develops, markets, publishes and distributes game software and content that can be played by consumers on a variety of video game machines and electronic devices (platforms), including video game consoles; personal computers; mobile phones, such as the Apple iPhone, Google Android compatible phones, and feature phones; tablets and electronic readers, such as the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle; and the Internet, including on social networking sites, such as Facebook; and Handheld game players, such as the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Nintendo DS and 3DS. Its mobile games include JAMDAT Bowling, SimCity Societies, Skate, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, Dead Space, Transformers Dark of the Moon, Draw Jump, Medal of Honor, MADDEN NFL, and Bejeweled.

3. Glu Mobile, Inc. (GLUU): Market cap of 300.06M. It is engaged in designing, marketing and selling games for mobile phones. It has developed and published a portfolio of casual and traditional games designed to appeal to a cross section of the subscribers served by its wireless carriers and other distributors, as well as to users of smartphones who purchase its games through direct-to-consumer digital storefronts. Its games include Call of Duty, Deer Hunter, Diner Dash, Guitar Hero 5, Family Feud, Family Guy, The Price Is Right, Transformers, Wedding Dash, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, World Series of Poker, Zuma, Beat It!, Bonsai Blast, Brain Genius, Glyder, Stranded and Super K.O. Boxing.

4. Konami Corp. (KNM): Market cap of 3.48B. It develops, publishes, markets and distributes video game software products globally for stationary consoles, for portable consoles, as well as for use on personal computers and mobile devices. Its mobile games (for the iPhone) include Frogger, Silent Hill: The Escape, Dance Dance Revolution S, and Metal Gear Solid Touch.

5. Rovi Corporation (ROVI): Market cap of 6.62B. It provides advertising, marketing, and other solutions for electronic content developers, including mobile game developers. Its offerings include interactive program guides (IPGs), IPG advertising, embedded licensing technologies (such as recommendations and search capability), media recognition technologies and licensing of its extensive database of descriptive information about television, movie, music, books, and game content, and content protection technologies and services.

6. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO): Market cap of 1.33B. It is a global publisher, developer and distributor of interactive entertainment software, hardware and accessories. Its publishing business consists of Rockstar Games, 2K Games, 2K Sports and 2K Play publishing labels. The Company develops, markets and publishes software titles for gaming and entertainment hardware platforms and has also begun to develop and publish titles for the iPhone and iPod touch. Its mobile apps include Civilization Revolution and Duke Nukem Forever Soundboard.

Interactive Chart: Press Play to see how analyst ratings have changed for all the stocks mentioned above. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.

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Google Acquires SageTV, Set To Bolster Google TV, Android With DVR? - ReelSEO Online Video News

Let’s face it, while those of you with Google TV love it, it’s not the most popular platform and certainly isn’t living up to Google’s own expectations. So it should be no surprise when they make this kind of move. Google has acquired a new company, and the company in question is SageTV. Their product is home theater software (previously available for $40 or so). The downside of the acquisition is that consumers can no longer get the SageTV software (I’ll give you some other options at the bottom on this article).

While the company stated that they accepted the Google offer because they share a vision of open technology, they almost ironically, pulled down their store and just about everything else once they signed the deal. I guess it’s not open anymore.

Here’s some info on the no-longer-available SageTV software I dug up today:

Watch online video on your TV with integrated Google Video support. SageTV Media Extender lets you connect all your TVs to Google Video.

SageTV Media Extender DVD playback lets you play all your hard disk based DVDs with DVD menus and 5.1 audio. Now see thumbnails for all your TV show recordings. Powerful file conversion and compression – SageTV can convert any of your files to almost any format you need:

Pushbutton conversion to video iPod, portable video player or cell phone formatsSave space by converting your TV recordings to higher compression video formatsConvert your HDTV recordings to MPEG4 with surround sound to save space

SageTV supports more formats than ever before including:

WMA, AAC (iTunes), FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis music files now supported for playback with full tag parsingMOV (Quicktime), 3GP, MP4, H.264 Playback

New DVB support with EPG data direct from broadcaster. Now see EPG data from ATSC broadcasts for DTV subchannels.

Enhanced EPG Data for US/Canadian customers includes Series Information and TV Editorials.

New Music, Photo and Video library support:

Rotate and flip photos with full qualityView music by GenreFind your favorite musc of the 80s, 70s and moreVideo and DVD library with more detailed media informationAspect ratio correction available for all media types

I also found out they had a hardware media extender called the SageTV HD Theater 300

Enjoy online video, music, photos and your DVD/BluRay library all over your home in Full HD for only $149.95 each. You can also watch live or recorded HDTV from your PC or Mac with SageTV Media Center software. Our fastest HD Theater ever!

Now with HDMI 1.3 and support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD/MA. All your favorite online video from YouTube, Google Video and major TV networks on your TV at the press of a button on your remote control!

Easy to setup, just connect your SageTV HD Theater to your TV, setup your wired or optional wireless network connection and you are ready to go. (Wireless adapter sold separately)

Enjoy your home video library, music and photosMovie Trailers, music videos, TV shows and more on demand onlineEasy to setup, connect your TV, home network and goNo fan, no noiseWith optional SageTV Media Center software for PC or Mac and an HD TV tuner you can watch and pause live HDTV and record a whole season of shows

SageTV’s main bailiwick (so I hear) is in fact DVR, so that sure sounds like what Google would like to add into the next version of Android and Google TV doesn’t it? Then those set-top boxes you’ve got might be able to get a firmware update which allows recording of shows to an external USB device. That could mean instant bonus for pre-existing Google TV users.

It could also mean an all-in-one solution for Google Android users who have got tablets and smartphones. If SageTV is rolled into the next version of Android, then a server/client setup is no stretch of the imagination at all. That would mean instant streaming server for all your home-based entertainment straight to your portable Android devices.

If you’re in the market for a SageTV-like product, there are a ton of options already available (here’s that part where I tell you where else to go). My father, TechnoDad, really digs My Movies while I’m currently testing out Remote Potato. I’ve also got Orb installed which works quite well when compared to Remote Potato which has some issues. For a while there we were both testing TVersity but in the end it just wasn’t what we were looking for.

This is not meant to be any kind of exhaustive list, just some places to start looking round. Feel free to drop your favorite in comments.

I have to be honest with you, I’ve never heard of SageTV until today. Though, I imagine there are plenty of pissed off people right about now. I mean from a developer community standpoint, you help SageTV build up an app full of customizations and extras along with a community that uses the tool, and then they shut it all down and sell it off to Google. That could certainly be frustrating, especially if development on the application goes totally in-house at Google and is no longer available to the public. All that time and effort, and any code you might have submitted in good faith, suddenly falls into corporate hands and disappears? Yeah, I’d be sort of pissed off as well.

Then again, Google might not do that at all. The closing of SageTV’s site (aside from forums) could simply be to enable a swift and clean changeover of control. After all, SageTV shouldn’t need to focus on their own web development anymore since they’ve got the resources of Google at their disposal.

For Google it’s definitely win-win. They probably got a good deal and got a key piece of software that they need if they want to continue expanding the multimedia streaming capabilities of Google TV and Android.

Here’s a video from YouTube showing the features of the latest version 7 of SageTV. Too bad we can’t see it in the ‘flesh’ anymore.

If development does turn into Google Android only, I hope that Google releases SageTV version 7 to the public. That’s the minimum good faith gesture they could do on their part and then any further development of the software could be ‘theirs.’

About the Author - Christophor Rick
Christophor Rick is a freelance writer specializing in technology, new media and consumer electronics. He is the CEO at Gamers Daily News (http://www.gamersdailynews.com) and his past work has included press releases, copy-writing, travel writing and journalism. Feel free to contact Christophor here. - View All Posts By Christophor Rick

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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Announces Happy Feet two - video game - PR Newswire (press release)

BURBANK, California, June 1, 2011/PRNewswire / - Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Announces Happy feet two - video games, film Happy feet two of Warner Bros. Pictures in association with Village Roadshow Productions to animation a adventure musical 3D and games for the whole family inspired by the whimsical Antarctic of the coming world. The game will be available for the Xbox 360 ® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation ® 3 computer entertainment system, Wii ™, Nintendo DS 3 ™ portable system and the Nintendo DS ™ system in the fall of 2011.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110601/NY11886-a)
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110601/NY11886LOGO-b)

"In Happy feet - the video game, kids love will not only play their own, they will have even more fun game coast to coast in collaboration with friends and family members, or participate in cutting of penguin dance and sliding belly races, said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment." All the system of dance new, based on the game controller uses the rhythm of the player to improve the competition of dancers, and the gameplay allows to interact with their favorite characters in the film kids. »

In the game, new dangers threaten the penguin nation, and it's going to take everyone working - and dance - together to save them from extinction.  Players use dance moves to recruit the penguins with unique capabilities to advance adventure, stun opponents and enemies, as well as manipulate the environment around them to solve cooperative puzzles.

For the ultimate experience, players can dance their Antarctica adventure in 3D.  The game will be available in full 3D for Nintendo 3DS.  In the Xbox 360 and Playstation versions, the game is made specifically for stereoscopic 3D TV sets the possibility to disable the 3D at any time.  Wii and Nintendo DS versions features traditional 2D.

Any in-game music is composed and performed by Ozomatli, group popular, based in Los Angeles, whose music is a combination of hip-hop, salsa, Dancehall Reggae, cumbia, samba, funk, merengue, ragga Jamaican, Indian Raga influences.  They were joined by Robert Carranza, a Grammy Award nomination mixer/engineer.  The optimistic note, including a song with Lil' P - Nut, a rapper years eight also featured in the film, will appeal to children and parents alike.

Happy feet two - The Videogame is developed for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii by KMM Games and Nintendo 3 DS, and Nintendo DS by WayForward Technologies.

Words of Warner Bros. interactive entertainment.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, is a Publisher in the world the Prime Minister, the developer, the licensor and distributor of entertainment content for the interactive space across all current and future platforms including console, portable game and both internal PC and games of third party titles.

On Happy Feet two

Written and directed by George Miller, Happy two feet brings the public to the beautiful landscape of the Antarctic, reunion with the most famous Penguin of the world, Mumble (Elijah Wood), the love of his life, Gloria (Alecia Moore {Rose}) and their old friends Ramon Lovelace (Robin Williams).  Mumble and Gloria now have a their own son, Erik, who is struggling to find its own special talents in the world of the Emperor Penguin.  But new dangers threaten the penguin nation, and it will take all those who work - and dance - set to save.  This distribution also includes Brad Pitt, Hank Azaria and Matt Damon.

On Kennedy Miller Mitchell games Pty Ltd ("KMM Games")

KMM Games is a division of Kennedy Miller Mitchell Pty Ltd, the studio responsible for cinema of the Mad Max trilogy, Happy Feet and Babe to name a few.  KMM and his animation studio arms Dr. D Studios, currently in production of the suite of the film citizen Happy Feet Academy Award and the fourth film in the Mad Max franchise. Our games division is new, but growing.

On WayForward

WayForward is a developer of software for independent entertainment based in the County of Los Angeles, California. In its 21 year history, WayForward has established a partnership with major publishers to bring more than 100 commercial products to achieve critical and commercial success of the market.

Subject of Ozomatli

In their entirety as a group of 16 years, celebrated Los Angeles culture-Mashers Ozomatli have passed hometown hero to be appointed U.S. State Department cultural ambassadors.  Their music - a well-known Latino-urbains-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, dancehall and cumbia, samba and funk, merengue and comparsa, East of the R & B and New Orleans second line, Jamaican ragga and Indian raga - followed since long a key mantra: it will take you around the world in you taking around L.A.

Two HAPPY FEET: the video game software © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment. Developed by KMMG. "playstation" and the "PS" family logo are registered trademarks and "ps3" and the PlayStation Network logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. KINECT, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and the Xbox logos are registered trademarks of the Group of companies Microsoft and are used under license by Microsoft. Nintendo properties are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2006 Nintendo. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

HAPPY feet two and all the characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc..

LOGO of the games WB, WB shield: ™ & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc..

(s11)

SOURCE Warner Bros. interactive entertainment.

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