Like many forms of entertainment, mobile games generally oughtn't be imitated in real life. Flinging birds at pigs, for example, is sure to anger the folks at PETA (and yes, probably the birds too). Likewise, jumping out of a five-story building with an umbrella to imitate a parachuting mobile game isn't a great idea. But that's exactly what one Shanghai boy did yesterday. The Hongqiao-area boy -- whose name and age were not disclosed -- miraculously was totally unhurt. This is not because parachuting with an umbrella is effective; rather, he ...
Tag Archives: Games
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![Coffee Chat: Social Gaming Startups in Southeast Asia, the DeNA Perspective [LIVEBLOG]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/11-250x250.jpg)
![iOS Download Stats for China Show the Importance of App Localization [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/themes/penn2/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2011/11/iOS-apps-localization-header.jpg&w=250&h=250&zc=1&q=90)
Feb 2 2012
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Coffee Chat: Social Gaming Startups in Southeast Asia, the DeNA Perspective [LIVEBLOG]
This post is a part of our coverage of Startups in Asia (Singapore), Penn Olson’s first tech conference. Our full coverage of the event can be found here, for our RSS feed, click here. Summary Tetsuya Mori (pictured above on the left), managing director at DeNA Asia (and ex-VC at Mitsubishi UFJ Capital) joins us to give us his insights on the social gaming market in Southeast Asia. He's based here in Singapore, not his native Japan, leading his company's outreach across the continent. Liveblog #13:55: And after some closing quips, the coffee chat is over. Thank ...
Jan 30 2012
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Diablo 3 Chinese Logo Revealed
Blizzard games are big business in China. Warcraft 3 is huge, World of Warcraft is enormous. And now that it's almost here, Chinese gamers are getting hyped up for Diablo 3, too. Most recently, eager gamers uncovered the logo above -- assumed to the the official Chinese logo for Diablo 3 -- in a patch update to the ongoing beta for the game. There's not much in the logo that's surprising. In point of fact it looks pretty much exactly like the official English logo. But it's evidence that Blizzard ...
Jan 17 2012
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Chinese Military-Developed Game “Glorious Mission” Being Used For Military Training?
When it was first announced, China's Glorious Mission drew immediate comparisons to the U.S. Military's America's Army, and with good reason. America's Army, a free online first-person shooter, had become a powerful recruiting tool and a respected game in its own right by the time China's Glorious Mission was announced. But it now appears Glorious Mission will be charting some new ground, as the game is apparently being used for official military training. According to a CCTV report from yesterday, the game is being used to train soldiers and officers, and ...
Jan 11 2012
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A Decade Later, Sony Playstation 2 Still Selling Well
Sony's (NYSE:SNE) Playstation 2 game console was launched in 2000. It went on to become the best-selling game console of all time. But all of man's works turn to ash, and in the console's main sales regions it has long since been eclipsed in popularity by next-generation consoles including Sony's own Playstation 3. But even now, as rumors begin to swirl Sony may be planning to unveil the Playstation 4, the Playstation 2 is still selling well. How well? 500,000 units sold in November and December of 2011. If your response ...
Jan 10 2012
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MiniGames: A Review of Sina Weibo’s Beast War
In a bid to monetize its user-friendly but financially dragging giant, Sina recently imbued its Weibo microblogging platform with its own currency — the weibi — and games. But are these games actually any good? I dove into a few of them to find out. This is the seventh in a series of reviews of Sina Weibo games. Now that is what I'm talking about! The image above is the first thing that greets you when you fire up 魔兽战争, a Sina Weibo game whose title I'll be loosely translating as Beast War because ...
Jan 5 2012
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The Chinese Internet Takes an Arrow in the Knee
"Then I took an arrow in the knee," might just have been the Western internet's last big meme of 2011, emerging just after the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and quickly catching on until it was suddenly absolutely everywhere. For those not in the know, the joke comes from the aforementioned Skyrim, an expansive single-player RPG in which it seems every guard you meet in every city tells you the same sad story: "I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the ...
Jan 4 2012
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MiniGames: A Review of Sina Weibo’s Little Amusement Park
In a bid to monetize its user-friendly but financially dragging giant, Sina recently imbued its Weibo microblogging platform with its own currency — the weibi — and games. But are these games actually any good? I dove into a few of them to find out. This is the fifth in a series of reviews of Sina Weibo games. Little Amusement Park is the worst amusement park simulator ever. Perhaps I should explain. Basically, this game follows the same basic path of games like WeiCity and Ha Ha Market, where you create a small community ...
Dec 5 2011
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Insights from Spil Games on Mobile and Gaming in Asia
Thanks to Serkan Toto (@serkantoto on Twitter) for pointing out this talk from Spil Games entitled The State of HTML5 Games in Asia. Of course this will be of interest for game developers with their sights set on Asia, but I thought there were a few key factoids in here worth sharing about the mobile market in general. Spil doesn’t mention sources for their numbers, but given that these metrics are critical for their own business, I’m inclined to trust them. Perhaps most notable are the statistics given for mobile and ...
Dec 1 2011
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New Weibo Games Stats Reveal How Sina Cracked Social Gaming
New stats reveal the astonishing and meteoric rise of Sina's (NASDAQ:SINA) Weibo service from a simple, Twitter-like microblogging platform, to being a Facebook-rivaling online gaming powerhouse. Since Sina Weibo launched its gaming portal in July of this year - along with a virtual currency called the weibi - it now claims to have nearly 10 percent of its total amount of users (now up to 250 million) as active social gamers. So, in the four months since the inception of Weibo games, here are some eye-watering figures from Sina: Weibo Games active ...
Nov 29 2011
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Games Back in South Korea’s Android Market
When the South Korean government announced that all games would need to be approved by the games rating board before being sold in the country, both Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) removed the games sections from their online markets (iTunes and Android Market, respectively) rather than face the prospect of trying to get every single game app approved. Now, that regulation has been changed, and the apps are coming back! Well, the Android ones are anyway. According to the Android Developers Blog the games section is already back up on the ...
Nov 25 2011
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iOS Download Stats for China Show the Importance of App Localization [INFOGRAPHIC]
The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology. New statistics showing the popularity of various free and paid iOS apps in China show the great importance of localization. And now that China is the second-biggest downloader of free - or freemium - iPhone and iPad apps, it’s even more critical to a game’s success that it comes with Chinese language translations throughout the app and download page. These stats from AppAnnie also highlight a strong desire in Asia for apps that have a ...
![Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_5437-80x80.jpg)
Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]
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