The preliminary program for our Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit is announced. Join us in San Francisco on June 26th for panels, discussions, and networking with leaders in the mobile games space. Early registration pricing is $299 and effective through today, April 18th.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
One of the big questions that social game designers have is whether adding a brand to a game will improve its fate on Facebook. In 2008, it seemed obvious that including a cool brand would help a game go viral, but since then the top games have in fact been new brands developed by Zynga. In the meantime, a few branded games have been released, including EA’s Sims Social which has done tremendously, as well as a few Ubisoft titles.
Well, add one more to the Ubisoft lineup, as House MD: Critical Cases for Facebook has arrived.
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Pinterest Co-Founder, Paul Sciarra, Leaves for Andreessen Horowitz (Paul Sciarra /Pinterest Blog)
I’ve accepted a role as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. I hope that eventually leads me back to doing what I’ve done for the past three and a half years — namely, building cool things with awesome people with unexpected results. Startup Grind Paul takes a significant amount of time in his post to clarify his role in building the company, perhaps to make sure it’s clear in the history books what he actually did to make Pinterest the huge success it is today. TechCrunch Andreessen Horowitz is one of the leaders among VCs building out the services that they offer to young companies beyond funding. The EIC role will see Sciarra potentially help Andreessen evaluate future investments, offer advice and assistance to its portfolio companies and perhaps even aid Andreessen Horowitz to be more disruptive in its own ventures. SocialTimes Co-founder Ben Silbermann recently gave an interview for a lengthy feature in Fortune magazine. He also sat down for a Q&A with investor and entrepreneur Chris Dixon at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX. Silbermann has been the sole window to the inner workings of a company that hasn’t done much self-promotion outside the Facebook Timeline. Read more
There are no allegiances in gaming anymore. There was a time when developing games for the Nintendo Entertainment System meant that you were strongly pressured not to make games for other consoles. For me, I was on the Nintendo ship until they lost Square and Final Fantasy VII was produced for the Sony Playstation. Well, these days platform creators like Nintendo and Sony have new competition in the form of Zynga and OnLive, and Zynga just recently announced that Konami, one of the largest console game makers in the world, will be producing games for their new Zynga.com platform.
A new social network that promises to combine high-quality console level games to easy, social matchmaking is gaining buzz around the web. The service is called GFace, and they’ve just recently opened up to a closed beta. We take a look at some of GFace’s features below.
We started off the holiday season in the U.S. with one of more social of holidays yesterday – Thanksgiving. If you’re looking for one more social outlet, there’s a new free game that seems to have impressed the people providing customer ratings in the iTunes App Store. The free iPhone game Lil’ Birds by Villain lets you find, feed, pet and breed virtual games.
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Users can purchase or register for an app or games once, enjoy it on their Kindle Fire and other Android-based devices. Plus, all apps and games are backed up in the Amazon Cloud for re-download anytime.
Data source: Flurry.
Flurry, an analytics company that focuses on the mobile world, published their data of portable game software revenue marketshare from 2009 to 2011 (using projections to estimate November and December revenue). In it, the compare game revenues for the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and the combined revenue for Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad). Based on this, Flurry asks:
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Fans of Monster Galaxy, the popular Facebook and mobile game from Gaia Interactive, are in for a treat. Gaia Interactive has partnered with Radar Pictures to bring Monster Galaxy to the big screen.
Long time video game enthusiasts might appreciate the ability to play retro games on current mobile devices. If you count yourself amongst the enthusiast crowd and have a device running Android, you will be happy to know that Atari’s Greatest Hits is now available in the Android Market after being available for iOS since April.
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