Adobe Announces Flash Player 11 With Focus On 3D Gaming

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Adobe's Flash has a bit of an uncertain future on mobile devices. Ever since Apple snubbed it with the iPhone, what was once a mainstay of the PC-based web experience is seeing new technologies like HTML5 arrive to muscle-in on its turf. In order to stay relevant, Adobe needs to keep content providers churning out Flash; one of the ways it can keep developers focused is through the introduction of stand-out features, and that's what it hopes to achieve with the release of Flash Player 11, announced today for an October release.

Flash Player 11 will be arriving on Android systems and the BlackBerry PlayBook; obviously, iOS is out for now, but the platform will still get some new Adobe content thanks to the release of AIR 3.

The big push for Flash Player 11 is gaming, and an effort to produce console-quality 3D and 2D titles. While that sounds particularly stressful for smartphone hardware, Adobe claims FP11 could actually offer performance improvements over previous releases, with a supposed 1000-fold increase in rendering performance, thanks to hardware acceleration. Sounds good, but we'll believe it when we see it.

Beyond gaming, FP11 brings Adobe Flash Access to mobile devices, letting them view DRM-protected premium video content. The first Flash Player releases will start coming out next month; there's no precise information just yet on when it will be available for all platforms.

Source: Adobe
Via: Engadget

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Microsoft’s big gaming gamble is finally paying off

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Despite their commercial appeal, gaming consoles have not historically been big moneymakers for the tech industry’s biggest firms. Sony’s PlayStation business was famously unprofitable for years, as was Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division anchored by the Xbox. But if the past several months is any lasting indication, the gaming market’s tide may finally have turned for good.

Microsoft reported Thursday that its entertainment and devices division (EDD) revenue grew 45 percent during fiscal 2011, with profits from the division surging 114 percent. And the growth is apparently speeding up: During the company’s fourth quarter which ended June 30, EDD revenues were 30 percent higher than they had been during the same quarter last year.

Microsoft’s EDD division covers the Xbox 360 entertainment platform (which includes Kinect for xBox 360), Internet protocol television software Mediaroom, and the Windows Phone. In the recent quarter, the EDD’s revenue increase was mostly attributable to sales growth in the xBox 360 platform business, the company said.

The Xbox division was cited as a significant contributing factor to Microsoft’s overall growth over the past year, the company said in a press release accompanying its earnings announcement. That in itself signifies quite a turnaround from the gaming console’s notoriously loss-making history.

Microsoft is not the only tech giant to see its gaming console division come out of the red recently. In May, Sony announced that it had finally started making money from its PlayStation business after years of financial losses. If the latest performance numbers can last for the longer term, gaming consoles may actually prove that the old axiom “patience is a virtue” can even be applied to today’s fast-paced tech world.

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Freemium titles generate two-thirds of App Store gaming revenues

The rise of freemium or free-to-play apps has been dramatic over the last year, becoming the dominant revenue model for the top gaming titles in Apple’s App Store. Mobile analytics and advertising company Flurry said in June, free-to-play games, which monetize through in-app purchases, now account for 65 percent of revenue among the top 100 games in the App Store, while paid downloads account for 35 percent of revenue.

That’s a big reversal from January, when paid download revenue brought in 61 percent of revenue for the top 100 games. But it shows how developers have embraced the freemium model, and at least for the top publishers, they’re finding it more lucrative than charging for downloads. As I wrote about last October, one-third of the top 100 grossing apps were freemium, and by the end of 2010, Distimo reported 49 percent of the revenue on iPhone apps came from in-app purchases in both free and paid apps.

Mobile games are following in the footsteps of social games, becoming games as a service that continues to be updated over time. The free-to-play model ensures a lot of users can try out a game for free, greatly expanding the number of potential users. But it comes down to extracting money from just a small fraction of them, selling them on virtual items, currency and goods that enhance the game play.

Flurry said only 0.5  to 6 percent of gamers actually spend money in free games, depending on the quality of the game and its mechanics. That’s a small percentage, but it works for game developers who can build engaging titles that keep people coming back.

That’s been the secret to companies like Pocket Gems and Playforge, which I’ve written about before. They focus on holding on to users for long periods of time through updates and features, which can pay off as they get users to eventually open up their wallets. As I noted earlier, the industry needs to value engagement more rather than pursue pure download numbers, because developers can’t monetize users who abandon a game after a couple of weeks.

This isn’t to say free-to-play is the only way to make money. Paid downloads are still an important revenue source and won’t go away. I, for one, still like to pay for quality titles. And mobile advertising, while still just emerging, can also bring in dollars for big titles. But the money in the mobile gaming market is clearly tilting toward freemium. Gartner estimates mobile gaming will be the fastest-growing gaming segment, accounting for 20 percent of the expected $112 billion in overall gaming revenue by 2015, fueled in part by the shift to free-to-play games.

Developers need to figure out if this makes sense for their apps and how they can implement it well, because it’s not enough to just adopt this model. A lot of tinkering and tuning is necessary to make it really pay off. But when you get it right, it seems the dollars are increasingly there.

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