Nintendo Coming to Mobile

Amidst recent rumors and speculation, Nintendo has finally announced that it’s coming to smartphones. Nintendo and DeNA Co., a fellow Japanese game company, will be working together to bring some of video gaming’s most iconic characters to consumers’ mobile devices starting this Fall.

As part of the deal, Nintendo now owns 10% of DeNA, while DeNA owns 1.24% of Nintendo. The announcement has been a huge surprise, because in recent years Nintendo has campaigned heavily against mobile gaming and refused to license its characters, fearing it would devalue the importance of the company.

Since the mobile gaming market is expected to surpass console sales by $4B later this year, it seems like a logical and smart move for Nintendo. Also part of the announcement was Nintendo’s next console, codenamed NX. Nintendo is keeping details about the NX under tight surveillance, but we should hear more about it in the coming months.

With this year’s Game Developers Conference now in full swing, it’s time to take a look at what has happened so far and what’s in store for the rest of the week.

What is the Game Developers Conference? GDC is an annual conference where game developers and video game industry professionals converge in San Francisco every March, for a week full of sessions from key industry leaders, video game announcements, game development tool announcements and more.

The Global Social Value Benchmark Report 2015 

Ninja Metrics at GDC 2015

Mobile to Overtake Consoles

Mobile gaming has exploded in the past few years, with large thanks to countries like China and Korea adopting the platform. Meanwhile, console sales have been somewhat rocky as the PS4 and Xbox One are still relatively new.

It also doesn’t help that consoles largely focus on AAA titles, which have seen huge budget cuts in the past few years with the increasing competition of indie games.

The gaming landscape is changing so quickly, that a new report by research firm Newzoo has predicted that mobile game sales will overtake console game sales this year. Mobile games are expected to generate over $30 billion in sales by the end of 2015, nearly $4 billion more than console games.

For more insight on the report, take a look at this article on PocketGamer.

The Importance of Day 1 F2P Players

F2P MMO’s are great games to measure data from, because of their large global user base and transactions. A new study by SuperData Research has taken a look at player retention in F2P MMO’s, and the results are interesting.

Taking Advantage of an Opportunity in Mobile Games Advertising

It’s been recently estimated that over $500B in U.S. retail sales is directly influenced by mobile content, and by 2016, mobile’s influence on in-store sales is expected to jump from 20% to 50%. This creates a huge opportunity for video game developers that need in-game advertising for revenue. Here are a few things you can do:

Indie Pitfalls to Avoid

Being an indie developer is not easy, since many indie studios are a one or two-man operation, usually funded straight out of pocket. Adding on a part or full time job to the side can make things even more difficult. How can an indie developer avoid pitfalls and come out on top?

Nick Hatter used to be your average indie game developer who started making games for fun at a young age, but is now a full time developer and entrepreneur, known for creating a startup called giftgaming. Along the way, Nick has learned many things you should and shouldn’t do as a game developer - and he recently put together a top 10 guide of pitfalls you should avoid.

You can read the guide here on GamaSutra, as Nick covers everything from funding, to management to customer feedback.

Cross-Platform Development

We’ve come a long way in the last decade or so with the evolution of gaming platforms starting with home consoles, the boom of PC gaming, the rise of handhelds like the Nintendo DS, and finally mobile gaming on iOS and Android devices.

Mobile Game Use on the Rise

A new study by market research company NPD has revealed how much time each person spent playing mobile games daily, in 2014. Surprisingly, that number has increased by 57% since 2012. The answer? The average person spends just over two hours a day playing mobile games.

This news is great for F2P game developers, since longer play sessions can increase the likelihood of spending. “Continued mobile growth will stem from existing customers paying more to play, especially in the free-to-play portion of the market,” said Liam Callahan, the NPD's industry analyst.

Check out NPD’s full findings here, for more insight.

How to Promote your Game on Social Media

For many indie game developers, the whole game promotion process can be a one-man band. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tools to help you schedule your social media content (such as Buffer) and engage with your Facebook and Twitter fans all in one place (i.e. HootSuite), which help ease the whole process a bit.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 HoloLens

Virtual reality has become one of the hottest tech topics over the past few years, with companies like Oculus giving video games a fresh of breath air and Sony joining the competition with Project Morpheus.

But another form of alternate reality technology is called “Augmented Reality” - popularized by projects like Google Glass - which combine both the real world with the virtual world. This Wednesday, Microsoft announced their foray into augmented reality at the Windows 10 briefing, with the HoloLens augmented reality headset.

The HoloLens is designed to be a see-through pair of goggles, similar to Google Glass but less subtle looking (although not as bulky as the Oculus). The lenses feature holographic capabilities that overlay images on top of the real world, and the goggles themselves include voice and motion sensors to let users interact virtually.

Best Gaming Tech from CES 2015

Last week’s CES 2015 was the biggest ever - attracting more than 3,500 exhibitors and 200,000+ attendees. The show had everything from curved HDTVs, to the latest wearables, to drones and quadcopters.

The gaming industry also had a big presence at the event - from brand new startups to juggernauts like Oculus and Sony making headlines. Here are a few gaming highlights from CES 2015:

• Well-known gaming accessory company Razer made its virtual reality debut with a head-mounted platform called the OSVR - aimed at being affordable ($199) and open sourcel.
• The Motix wants to replace your mouse with finger pointing. A motion-tracking sensor is placed behind your keyboard, and a tactile-feedback strip attaches right below your spacebar (for mouse buttons), so that your hands never have to leave the keyboard. Games that make use of shortcuts might be a great fit for this (like real time strategy).
• Sony announced a Google Glass competitor, called the Sony SmartEyeglass Attach. The difference is that Sony’s product can be clipped on to any pair of glasses via a single optical display. Is the future of casual virtual reality gaming near?

Minecraft Beats Several Guinness Records

Mobile and Social Gaming Industry Highlights in 2014

2014 was a huge year for the mobile and social gaming industry. According to App Annie, iOS games revenue increased by 70% year over year, and Android games revenue increased by 60% during the same period. Total mobile games revenue is expected to reach $25B by the end of 2014, surpassing console gaming which has suffered a 28% revenue decline over the last year.

What about social gaming? Looking at Facebook games, Gamasutra found that on average, 365 million users played Facebook games daily in 2014 - which is 5% higher than the year before.

Global expansion played a huge part in the growth of mobile/social games during 2014, as many of the major game publishers made an effort to localize their games in countries such as China, Japan and India. In just the first six months of 2014, China had over 330 million mobile gaming players!

What were the top mobile and social game genres of 2014? Based on the 4 major gaming platforms, a study found that Match 3 and slot-type games came out on top, while farm and building simulators followed close behind.

As 2014 is winding down, it’s finally time to take a look at some of the most important video game happenings from throughout the year. This year we had everything from the Oculus acquisition to the highly controversial #GamerGate topic. Below are the top 4 trends that shook the video game industry in 2014:

Facebook buys Oculus

Back in April, social media giant Facebook announced that it would be acquiring Oculus VR, makers of the famous Oculus Rift headset for $2 billion. This came as a huge shock to the gaming community: why would a social media company buy a virtual reality company? Facebook’s answer, from CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, was along the lines of “we want to revolutionize how people in the real world interact with the virtual world”.