Posts Tagged news

News: Gameforge acquires majority stake in Frogster

German online publisher Gameforge has acquired a 60 per cent stake in Frogster Interactive Pictures, the company behind the successful Runes of Magic MMO, paying €25 (£20.71) a share – a valuation which places the total value of Frogster at €64 million (£53 million approximately). The management of Berlin-based Frogster retains a 15 per cent share of stock, whilst 25 per cent remains in free-float on the market

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News: Vietnam’s partial ban for online gaming

The Vietnamese government has placed heavy restrictions on the playing and availability of online games, in response to public and media concern about their effects on the nation’s youth. The Ministry of Information and Communication has banned the advertisement of MMOs, and demanded that ISPs turn off internet access to game shops and cafes after hours

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News: Zynga Japan founded

FarmVille developer Zynga’s latest move towards expansion is the founding of a new Japanese studio. Zynga Japan is a joint endeavour between the San Francisco-based studio and Japanese media and communications firm Softbank. Softbank last month invested $147 million in Zynga, and following the completion of this backing the two firms have formed a more active partnership in Tokyo – Zynga’s first move into the Japanese market

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News: UK retailer Chipsworld goes into liquidation

UK retailer Chipsworld has gone into liquidation, with the closure of 12 stores and loss of 29 jobs. However, franchise stores – of which there are 13 – and the Chipsworld website are not affected by the liquidation and continue to trade as normal.

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News: BioWare: 10 million sales is a hit

BioWare’s Greg Zeschuk has said that 10 million sales constitutes a hit in the console market. Speaking to Videogamer, the co-founder of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio said that the team hopes its big MMO release for Electronic Arts, Star Wars: The Old Republic, reaches that figure. “We need to sell 10 million units,” he said.

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News: Financial troubles mount at Playlogic

Fairytale Fights publisher Playlogic recorded further losses for the first three months of the year, the latest in a trend that has seen the company haemorrhaging money. In filings submitted to the SEC last month, the publisher revealed it made a net loss of $2.2 million for the period January to March 2010, and admitted that it is also defaulting on weekly loan repayments of €25,000, which it has been obliged to pay since April.

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News: Sony to swing to ¥10-30 billion profit

Sony is to post an operating profit of between 10 and 30 billion yen for the first quarter of its 2010 financial year. That’s according to Japanese business paper Nikkei, translated by Andriasang which suggests that the PlayStation business and mobile sectors were both profitable for the company, along with strong sales of SLR cameras and LCD televisions in Japan and in foreign markets. For the same periods last year Sony recorded an operating loss of ¥25.7 billion, with the PlayStation department accounting for a loss of ¥39.7 billion due to a decline in profitability of the games and Vaio businesses

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News: Sony to swing to ¥10-30 billion profit

Sony is to post an operating profit of between 10 and 30 billion yen for the first quarter of its 2010 financial year. That’s according to Japanese business paper Nikkei, translated by Andriasang which suggests that the PlayStation business and mobile sectors were both profitable for the company, along with strong sales of SLR cameras and LCD televisions in Japan and in foreign markets. For the same periods last year Sony recorded an operating loss of ¥25.7 billion, with the PlayStation department accounting for a loss of ¥39.7 billion due to a decline in profitability of the games and Vaio businesses

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News: StarCraft II US pre-orders reach 684,000

Pre-orders for Blizzard’s long-awaited PC sequel StarCraft 2 stand at 684,000 in the US alone, according to VGchartz. The site predicts that this figure will rise to 750,000 by the time Tuesday’s release date rolls around. VGchartz also reports that pre-orders for the upcoming Halo: Reach are currently 100,000 below those attained by last year’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

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News: Games biz tax breaks for North Carolina

North Carolina has passed into law a new digital media bill, granting games firms a 15 per cent tax credit for all employees in the state. The state’s governor Bev Perdue signed off the bill at the headquarters of Epic Games, which has been based there since its shareware origins in the early 1990s. The studio is one of 14 developers and publishers in the state – who, combined, contributed $73.4 million to North Carolina’s economy in 2006.

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