ICO Partners

Blizzard has recently sent cease and desist letters to the developers of iPhone apps using data from the Armory (of which the text can be found here), not so long after the announcement of the new add-on policy, which forbids add-on developers from monetizing their add-ons, and from obfuscating their code (preventing any sustainable competitive advantage for any of them. Except  established companies with leverage to negotiate.) Together, these moves seem to sum up to a clear policy : preventing anyone from doing money by providing services around World of Warcraft. (more…)

The week-end saw the video from a World of Warcraft client on iPhone get featured on a series of website. Whether or not the video is a fake and the whole story a hoax is actually irrelevant as this is more the concept that we actually want to discuss (it should be noted that they still have an accessible website but, with a quick Linkedin research, most of the management team  seems to have moved on other projects).

You can go see the demo video at Kotaku as the Youtube versions are getting removed as they pop up.

But the basic principle is an app acting like a 3D client for WOW that would run on your iPhone. And the question that actually gets asked is who on earth would like anything like that? (more…)

GDC is now only a few weeks away, and we are busy planning meetings and giving some final touches to the lecture.

As a reminder, we will be speaking at GDC, during the Worlds in Motion Summit. The session is on the 23rd of March, at 4.15pm, in the North Hall (room 132).

We actually wanted to share here a teaser of the many topics that the session is going delve into. A lot of the focus is on explaining Europe and the market of online games in Europe and how it is different from the North American market. (more…)

• Flying Labs opens a casual MMO division (”family-oriented”)
• Games Convention Leipzig is cancelled, but Games Convention Online will take place there from 31/07 to 2/08, dedicated to online games and especially browser games.
• Internet in 2008 in numbers.
• Study from Pew Research shows 35% of all US internet adults have a social network profile. For 18/24 years old it’s 75%. 50% of the US adult socnet users have a profile on MySpace, 22% on Facebook.
• SOE partners with PopCap for casual games on the PSN.
• WOW to have accounted for 50% of Activision Blizzard’s earnings last fiscal year according to analyst.
• Console manufacturers impacted by recession.