Monthly Archives: August 2011

Music biz runs for cloud cover

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Just eight years after the music industry experienced one of the most radical shifts in its history, it’s finding itself on the verge of yet another revolution.

The launch of iTunes in April 2003 certainly didn’t introduce digital downloads to consumers (Napster and countless other illegal download sites were thriving at the time), but it legitimized the distribution method and made it profitable for artists and labels. Now Apple — and a host of other companies — are hoping customers are willing to walk away entirely from physically owning the music in their collection in favor of the cloud.

Read more at Daily Variety

Study: Video games reduce U.S. crime rate

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Video games have been blamed for a lot of bad things, but new research from a trio of institutions indicates that crime isn’t one of them.

Research from the Centre for European Economic Research (also known as ZEW), Baylor University and the University of Texas at Arlington showed games reduce the number of criminal incidents by keeping potential assailants, thieves and other ne’er-do-wells occupied.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

App Review: Taco Master

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There are plenty of restaurant simulator games on the market — forcing you to quickly prepare orders with an ever-widening batch of ingredients. Taco Master, unfortunately, does nothing to move the genre forward. The game, in fact, is a treadmill of making orders (using ingredients that don’t look too appetizing and sound even less so when you slop them onto a tortilla), with short breaks between levels. The fun is supposed to be in the tension that comes with getting orders right and completed before customers leave, but it’s ultimately kind of boring. There are worse games in the App Store for a dollar, but there are much, much better ones, too.

Read more at Common Sense Media

Time Warner giving Slingboxes to select customers

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Time Warner Cable is offering free Slingboxes to subscribers – if they’re willing to pony up for the company’s more expensive Internet service.

The cable/Internet giant plans to offer a complete rebate on the device, which allows people to access their home television (and DVR) from anywhere, to people who subscribe to its Wideband Internet – a service that costs $100 per month.

Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog

App Review: SpongeBob Frozen Face Off

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SpongeBob Frozen Face Off has a bit of dual personality disorder. It can’t decide if it’s a game or a book. It succeds more as the later. The story, taken from a new episode of the show, is certainly funny. And the voice acting is fantastic (due to the use of the same actor who voices Plankton on TV). It’s even nice to have an alternate ending, depending on how successful you are in finding jellybeans in the story. But ultimately, the app falls a bit short — leaving you with the feeling you’ve just watched an overly long introductory sequence and wondering exactly what you had paid for.

Read more at Common Sense Media

Romance is still alive: Portal 2 proposal wows web

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A video game isn’t usually considered a particularly romantic form of expression.

But when Gary Hudston’s girlfriend Stephy celebrated her 21stbirthday this week, he relied on a game to help express his feelings — and what resulted is one of the best video game marriage proposals of all time.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Sifteo cubes hope to build into holiday hit

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If video games and traditional toys were to have a secret love child, it might look a lot like the Sifteo cube.

Introduced as a prototype at a TED conference in 2009, the gadget/toys are a fusion of classic building blocks and cutting-edge tech. And while it’s a bit early to label the Sifteo this year’s frenzy-inducing hot holiday toy, don’t be surprised if it ends up on a lot of gamer wish lists.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Google Music, Amazon get good legal news

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Amazon and Google caused a stir when they launched their cloud music storage initiatives. Rather than following the path Apple eventually would, both companies decided to bypass securing permissions from the record labels, causing quite a tempest in a teapot in the process.

Now it seems the pair have the courts on their side.

Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog

Opinion: The Revolving Door At Atari Approaches Terminal Velocity

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Can the latest round of executive hires turn Atari around with a focus on the fast-moving social gaming and digital space? Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris looks at execs who’ve come and gone — and he’s skeptical.

With all due respect to the incoming executives at Atari, I really can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would take a high-ranking job with that particular publisher.

Sure, it’s a company that has proven almost Rasputin-like in its will to live, but it has also spent the last four years floundering – desperately searching for a viable business plan and hiring a slew of notable industry executives, only to see them racing for the exit in short order.

Read more at Gamasutra