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Good news: I think I'm finally cured of my terrible sickness! All it took was me giving my girlfriend a remote that controls these electrodes on my chest. She presses the red button anytime I make a Charlie Sheen reference to inject me with 15,000 volts. I'm totally winni– OW!
News Blips:
Software sales across all devices reach $33 billion in 2010. Retail still dominates people's wallets, but iOS has a stunning lead in the sheer number of games downloaded. When combined, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, DS, PSP, and PS2 only account for 20 percent of all unit sales. Apple's iOS digital downloads make up for a huge portion of the remaining 80 percent with 1.9 billion units. Of course, thanks to the cheap prices of iPhone games, the revenue for all iOS game sales totaled $749 million, which doesn't quite measure up to the PS3's $7.3 billion. Confusing numbers are confusing. The bottom line is people are buying a ton of games, and traditional publishers should be paying attention to Apple. [GamePro]
Backers have fully funded the 2 Player Production Minecraft documentary. I like crowd-sourced funding because it feels like the crowd and me are into the same things. I love Minecraft and want to watch a documentary about it, but the guys at 2 Player Productions needed about $150,000 to fund it. The group turned to Kickstarter (a crowd-funding website) and got fans to provide over $165,000. If you want to pitch in, you have until Saturday to donate. High-level donors receive some pretty cool Minecraft-themed gifts. I think I'll break open my cute pixelated piggy bank and help out myself.
Adult Swim's latest game takes players into the mind of a warped Cardboard Box Assembler. Over the past few years, AdultSwim.com has added numerous titles to its addicting lineup of Flash games. The latest one is Cardboard Box Assembler — a puzzle platformer that asks players to navigate the outside of a cube in order to find the exit. It has already caused me to procrastinate on these blips something fierce, so I suggest you only play it when you have something important you want to put off until later. Check it out here.
Zynga claims that Xbox Live does not have the social reach to host a game like Farmville. "The thing that seems to make social gaming and networking magical is the fact that all my friends are potentially there and they might see the things that I'm posting or doing or expressing," said Zynga's chief game designer, Brian Reynolds. "[Xbox Live's] too small a demographic … 20 or maybe even 30 percent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100 percent of them have Facebook and effectively 100 percent of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90 percent have a smartphone." The Xbox Live demographic is also different in that it isn't my mom. Oh well, XBLA gamers will have to find some way to survive with games like Stacking, Shadow Complex, and Costume Quest.
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