Next week, one of the most popular video game franchises of the past decade will return with its latest entry, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It’s fair to say that the buzz has died down slightly from the record-breaking days of Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2, but Activision has a great deal of faith in Sledgehammer Games, the recently minted developer which has yet to release a full game.
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On Wednesday night, Anita Sarkeesian, creator of feminist video game critique “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” stopped by The Colbert Report to discuss the Gamergate movement. Gamergate started out as a revolt aimed at alleged poor ethics in video game journalism, but then devolved into a misogynistic movement that harassed prominent women in the video game industry.
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The Apple Pay vs. MCX’s CurrentC war has been one of the highlights of the week, with MCX having to defend its position against Apple Pay and in favor of its own smartphones payments solution that will launch next year and will be available via its CurrentC app. MCX members, including Walmart, Best Buy, Target, CVS, Gap and many others must exclusively support CurrentC in stores, reports revealed, suggesting that a fine is involved if this contract requirement is broken. MCX sort-of denied the fines, saying there are no fines for anyone wishing to leave the MCX group. And it looks like at least one retailer wants to put this claim to the test by supporting both CurrentC and Apple Pay.
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There has been a heated debate regarding frame rate in video games for quite some time, but it came to a head with the release of the PS4 and Xbox One. When it became clear that 1080p 60FPS wasn’t going to be possible for every current-gen game, gamers were disappointed, but now developers have one more incentive to crank up the visuals on their upcoming releases. This week, YouTube implemented a new feature which allows 60 frame per second video uploads.
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If you were worried that Motorola changing hands after its recent $2.9 billion acquisition by Lenovo would affect its products in any meaningful way: don’t be. Motorola has managed to avoid much of the bloatware and the unwanted features that have pervaded phones from other vendors, and it’s going to stay that way. That’s the message Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh wanted to convey in a recent blog post on the Motorola blog.
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The new Fiksu numbers highlight just how infernal life for app vendors has become. The price of acquiring a loyal app user has doubled from early 2012 to current level of more than $2 per user. This is a disaster for many app vendors because the lifetime value of an app user is typically less than $2, and in many cases less than a dollar. Getting consumers to download your app is becoming more difficult with each passing month and the room for smaller app vendors keeps shrinking.
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The BlackBerry Passport is so big and rugged that it’s quickly garnering a reputation as the Chuck Norris of smartphones — in other words, we expect that when it’s subjected to a drop test, we’re more worried about what will happen to the parking lot asphalt than the actual phone.
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Every month, Sony announces a new slate of free games for PlayStation Plus subscribers. The announcement typically comes a few days before they’re made available on the PlayStation Store, but list for November leaked at least a few hours ahead of schedule when Sony accidentally published a video featuring all six games. Sony is sure to have an official post up soon, but until then, here is the Instant Game Collection for November.
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As much as George R.R. Martin appreciates what HBO has done for his stories, he still thinks its portrayal of the scenery in the Game of Thrones series is wrong, or at the very least not what he personally envisioned. That’s why he spoke at 92Y in Manhattan on Sunday about his new book The World of Ice & Fire that chronicles the history of Westeros and what everything should look like.
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Against odds, Nintendo turned a profit in the September quarter. It turns out that Mario Kart 8 was successful enough to give the Wii U home console enough of a sales bump to help Nintendo to eke out a $86 million profit during the autumn period. Nintendo also repeated its vow to achieve profitability for the full fiscal year and after its autumn surprise, this suddenly seems achievable.
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