Nintendo’s management sees games for health

Perrin Kaplan spent years as the head of communications and marketing for Nintendo of America, and saw the launch of the Wii before retiring. Speaking at Casual Connect in Seattle on Thursday, she gave some insights into how and why fitness and health became a natural extension of videogames. She recalls talking to Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese company’s chief executive and creative director, respectively

More million-sellers for Xbox Live

Xbox Live Arcade has come a long way since Geometry Wars. According to Scott Austin, the director of marketplace games for the Microsoft service, arcade experiences are getting higher and higher quality to remain competitive. “Some of these titles are competing with retail for share-of-wallet.” He also said that since the announcement of Uno as the first million-seller, a number of other titles have followed, including Castle Crashers and Battlefield 1943

Hi5 raises $14 million, Prez tells Facebook to bring it on

You may be familiar with Hi5 , unless you live in Thailand or South America, but the social network continues to bring in the bucks — 14 million in this latest round — to put toward its strategy of moving from a plain Jane network to one that embraces social gaming, including a built-in e-commerce system and the promise of free promotion to developers who upload their games to the network. “This round of financing will fund our continued project development, investment in our commerce platform and gaming partnerships,” says a Hi5 source. The network is working furiously to compete with market leader Facebook, and Hi5 President and CTO Alex St.

Facebook game unlocks content in Xbox 360 Crackdown 2 demo

At first glance, open-world Xbox 360 action title Crackdown 2 might not seem to have much in common with Facebook’s casual color-matching/target shooting game Chuck’s Ducks 2. But the new Facebook game is actually a promotional effort by Microsoft Game Studios that can be used to unlock content in the Xbox 360 game. Chuck’s Ducks 2 players that link their Xbox Live accounts to their Facebook profile can unlock a new difficulty level in the Crackdown 2 demo that hit Xbox Live earlier this week.

Gears of War creator admits FarmVille ‘did something right’

Filed under: Farmville The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles is wrap, and one of the games conspicuously absent from the three-day event was one of the largest in the world — FarmVille . Even at the big-budget press conferences for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, there was ne’er a peep about the farming game, and it’s not clear whether video game companies don’t see Facebook games as competition or they just don’t know what to make of the simple farming simulation with over 60 million monthly players

Is Microsoft the unrecognized king of virtual items sales?

When most people think of virtual items sales, they probably think of social games and massively multiplayer games, primarily on the on the PC But a recent nugget from a Microsoft COO Dennis Durkin at this week’s E3 conference has revealed that another source of virtual item sales might be much larger than generally accepted: Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

Microsoft Kinect: What does it mean for social games?

The more traditional video games world has been growing progressively more social in recent years. The Nintendo Wii has turned gaming from a solitary activity to a family affair and Microsoft’s Xbox Live has allowed gamers to connect with fellow joystick jockeys in ways that haven’t been possible before. Now Microsoft goes even more social with its new gaming device — Kinect.

Getting Ahead with the Mob Wars Calculator

Looking to get ahead in Mob Wars ? There are several tips and tools available to help you advance more quickly.

Former Microsoft executive becomes Playdom’s new CTO

Playdom have just nabbed themselves a brand new Chief Technology Officer — David Sobeski, former Microsoft and Yahoo! executive. Before starting at Playdom, Sobeski held the position of Senior Vice President at Yahoo!. Prior to that, Sobeski was a General Manager at Microsoft, working on user experience on Windows Vista and mobility on Exchange server

Report: CrowdStar backing away from Microsoft buyout talks

Remember back in February when we first heard word that Microsoft had expressed interest in buying social gaming giant Crowdstar ? Perhaps you’ve spent the past couple of months wondering what, if anything, ever happened with that. Or perhaps you spent those months focused on other things

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