I played Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for many, many hours on a Nintendo DS back in the day, and I think I paid $30 for it. It was well worth it. Now a spiritual sequel is coming to iOS, will likely be free to play, and I doubt I’ll play it for more than 15 [...]
“Super Monster Bros by Adventure Time Pocket Free”
Clearly this ugly, IAP-riddled Pokemon & Mario hybrid is targeted at kids. Not sure how it was approved.
Comcast is going to own NBCUniversal
This news is a bit old, but the cable & media industries have been on my (annoyed) mind recently. Brian Roberts, Comcast’s CEO (emphasis mine): Our decision to acquire GE’s ownership is driven by our sense of optimism for the future prospects of NBCUniversal and our desire to capture future value that we hope to [...]
Time Warner Cable says most people don’t want gigabit internet speeds
This is a major facepalm. In the face of 600-700Mbps Google Fiber-provided internet speeds, TWC’s Irene Esteves decides to say: We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want… We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers.” Oh, and [...]
Free-to-play: Not a gold mine for everyone
Neil Young and Bob Stevenson left Ngmoco: the mobile gaming company they co-founded back in the early days of the App Store. Remember Rolando? Jared Nelson, Touch Arcade: Starting in early 2010, ngmoco churned out one freemium title after the next, each typically very similar to each other just with different themes. Despite being scoffed at by [...]
Wellesley High School English teacher David McCullough’s 2012 Commencement Address. Great, and brutally honest. Two small pieces (6:43): In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality, we have of lately, Americans, to our [...]
I recently installed AutoDesk Inventor for a class I’m taking. This stuff is what appeared at the end of my Windows 8 Start Screen. In older versions of Windows these kinds of legacy programs dumped this random stuff into a folder hidden somewhere in the Start Menu, and few people really noticed or cared. In Windows 8 [...]
Good piece by Andrew Webster of The Verge that summarizes the current paid vs free (with in-app purchases) debate. Nathan Vella, co-founder of Capy Games (of Sword & Sworcery fame): I think that the idea of making a game based on a monetization strategy is… it’s a bit sketchy. It’s understandable from a business standpoint but it [...]
Bravo’s Interpretation of Silicon Valley
“Tech is so much more than just engineering.” “Yeah, it’s an ecosystem.” Oh No. “People have been intimidated because this package generally doesn’t come with a brain” Oh Crap No.
“Welcome to the Dick Costolo Show”
A good profile of Twitter’s CEO by Nick Bilton in The New York Times. Really paints a picture of what he’s like, where he comes from, and Twitter’s culture. “It’s really difficult to change a company’s culture, but I did this by making sure I stayed late,” he says. “I’d go home, have dinner with my kids [...]
Something has been bugging me for the past few months, and it seems like every one or two weeks a new piece of news pops up that makes me think about it even more. I wrote a long post back in March titled “Thinking About the Entertainment Distribution Channel of the Future” in which I [...]
Wired, in a piece showcasing Doug Menuez‘s photo collection of a young Silicon Valley: For Menuez, so much of the current tech scene is preoccupied with profit, whereas the digital world he documented, at least at the beginning, was less interested in making tons of money and more interested in fundamentally changing the world. “Back then [...]
Zynga is planning on gambling its way out of financial trouble
I’m not surprised about any of this.
Operation BearLove Good, Cancer Bad was a success
Matthew Inman hilariously executes the plan he laid out a month ago.
“Carriers are the biggest threat to innovation”
Nilay Patel writing for The Verge: Five years ago, the iPhone revolutionized the mobile business and kicked off a seismic shift in the technology industry that continues today. But the massive success of Apple’s phone has overshadowed the grim reality of an American wireless marketplace that has become increasingly hostile to innovation — a market [...]
Touch Arcade: Once upon a time, it was a rare and special thing when Firemint put a game on sale. That isn’t the case anymore. The Aussie studio’s new corporate overlords at EA often lump its properties into its own massive sales, which seems to be why we’re seeing some dramatic price slashery this afternoon.
Jessica Conditt, Joystiq: EA was voted the “absolute worst company in America” in The Consumerist’s 2012 poll, defeating Bank of America with 64 percent of the vote. EA and Bank of America fought through four bracket rounds against companies such as Sony, Apple, Walmart, PayPal, Comcast, GameStop and others from a wide range of industries [...]
Apple’s “1944″ & “Bluebusters”
Which are worse: unrealistic “visions of the future”-type videos or silly Ghostbusters and WWII short films?
Zynga: “Send a WORD to your MOTHER!”
Thanks Zynga, but NO! Happy Mother’s Day.
Samsung, I’m sorry, but you don’t tell people that your phone “follows your every move”, “keeps track of loved ones” and “waits till you’re asleep”. You just don’t. I don’t care if it’s designed for humans; if it’s going to stalk me & my family and watch me as I fall asleep I’m not putting [...]
Getting an error message like this one would drive me nuts.
… Makes sense, I guess.
Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances Beta
I’m going to try to reserve judgement until it’s released. I’m going to try really hard. … Free to play.
Brian Berrett of Gizmodo on Facebook’s recent IPO: Facebook being a public company has potentially huge repercussions. Private companies have the luxury of running themselves however they want. They can focus on long-term strategy instead of short-term gain. Public companies, though, have to march in front of their shareholders every three months and explain how [...]
Christmas Sale: Every EA iOS game is now $.99 or Free!
From TouchArcade: From now, and presumably until shortly after New Years Day, all of the publisher’s gargantuan premium catalogue is an agreeable $.99. That means games like Madden 12, Trenches II, and many others have been reduced up to 90-percent off the original asking price. Whoa, right? Yeah, Whoa! This same sale happened last year around this time, too. [...]
This is a webcolumn by Andy Braren at the intersection of technology, design, and completely random fun stuff.