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The next Call of Duty game is apparently returning to the Cold War-era intrigue of 2010′s Call of Duty: Black Ops. GameBlog reports that the French site of retail giant Amazon posted (and then pulled) a product page for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
Activision had already said it would have another installment in the Call of Duty series on shelves this year, but the publisher has not confirmed its era or setting. Previous Call of Duty games have thrown players into World War II, the Cold War, and current-day antiterrorism efforts around the world.
While Activision didn’t confirm the existence of Black Ops 2 directly, GameBlog followed up its story with a report that Activision France contacted the site to demand the news be pulled. GameBlog said it refused to do so, and Activision subsequently disinvited the site from a preview event for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and canceled advertising campaigns it had planned to run on the site.
The original Black Ops set a bevy of sales records, becoming the best-selling game of all time on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in the US and Europe and racking up $1 billion in revenues in less than two months on sale. Last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has a ways to go to match Black Ops’ overall sales, but it came out of the gates considerably more quickly, hitting the $1 billion mark in just 16 days.
As of press time, an Activision representative had not responded to GameSpot’s request for comment. For more on Call of Duty: Black Ops, check out GameSpot’s review.
Chuck Rock of National Championship Gaming confirmed through an interview Monday that Cliff Bleszinski (aka Cliffy B) will be in attendance at Pax East this coming April. Cliff Bleszinski did say that this was the first time he had confirmed to the media that he would be attending.
Molleindustria’s critical protest game Phone Story was designed to achieve two ends: to raise consumer awareness of the conditions under which smartphones like the iPhone are produced, and to help serve as a fundraising tool.
The game, originally released for iPhone last September, traces the life of a modern mobile handheld device. It starts with coltan mining in the Congo, carries through to production in a Chinese factory, and wraps up with marketing and planned obsolescence. As we reported last year, Apple pulled the title from its App Store almost immediately after launch. Phone Storyhas since been made available to play on the web.
In a recent update statement, Molleindustria has announced where the money from Phone Story is now going. Although they were unable to generate as many sales as they had hoped, they have earned approximately $6000 to date and plan to donate it to a former Foxconn employee who sustained significant injuries after a suicide attempt. They write:
Despite the positive reviews and the wide media coverage, the amount of money we were able to collect from sales and artist fees (the art organizations who exhibited the game) was humbling, a little more than $6000 – see details below.
Then we came across the tragic story of Tian Yu, a girl who suffered from serious injuries after trying to commit suicide by jumping from the Foxconn’s factory complex where she was working in 2010. She was 17 years old at the time.
We thought: $6000 won’t do that much to an organization but they could be significant for an individual who used to earn about $130 a month. So we made Tian Yu the recipient of our first donation.
Tian Yu suffered significant permanent spine and hip injuries as a result of her four-story fall and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Meanwhile, worker conditions at Foxconn’s Chinese plants remain an active concern as we continue into 2012.
Phone Story Revenues Donated To Former Foxconn Worker Who Attempted Suicide[Official page]
By: Julianne Pepitone
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — At long last, the Holy Grail of Internet IPOs is here. Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.
In 2011, Facebook earned $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. As of December 31, Facebook had 845 million daily active users.
The company crossed the line into profitability in 2009, five years after it launched in founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. Facebook earned $229 million that year on sales of $777 million, and has remained profitable ever since.
The vast majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising: a combination of search and display ads.
Facebook’s other revenue stream is its payment system for purchases within apps and games: Facebook Credits. Facebook keeps 30% of the revenue from those payments, and passes the remaining 70% on to the app developer.
That model has paid off: Revenue from Zynga, which makes FarmVille and other games played on Facebook, represented 12% of Facebook’s total revenue in 2011.
Another choice tidbit: In 2011, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg raked in a $500,000 base salary. But he requested — and will receive — only $1 per year in salary starting January 1, 2013.
It’s not yet known on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, through it said it plans to use the ticker symbol “FB.”
Facebook will likely re-file its paperwork several times over the coming months. Those updates will add more details and could even restate some of the financial information detailed in Wednesday’s filing.
How much Facebook is worth: In this initial paperwork, companies don’t declare how many shares they’re going to sell, or how much those shares will cost. Those details will be added in an updated filing shortly before trading begins.
Without that share price information, Facebook’s valuation is still speculative.
Facebook has its own guesses, though. The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of December 31 determined it to be worth $29.73 a share.
Trading won’t begin for several months, as Facebook now has to field questions from regulators and court investors for its stock sale.
Most analysts estimate Facebook’s valuation will fall somewhere between $85 billion to $100 billion. But the value of Web companies can be extremely volatile.
A recent example: Zynga. The FarmVille maker’s IPO filing reported that it valued its shares in August 2011 at $17.20 each, which gave the company a valuation of $14 billion. But when Zynga went public in December, shares sold for just $10 — valuing the company at $7 billion.
Several other Internet companies made their public debuts in 2011, but the end of the year proved to be a turbulent time for the sector. Shares of Groupon, Pandora, Zillow, LinkedIn and Angie’s List all suffered steep double-digit losses for November, though most clawed back at least a bit in December or January.
Copyright CNN 2012
By: Julianne Pepitone
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — At long last, the Holy Grail of Internet IPOs is here. Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.
In 2011, Facebook earned $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. As of December 31, Facebook had 845 million daily active users.
The company crossed the line into profitability in 2009, five years after it launched in founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. Facebook earned $229 million that year on sales of $777 million, and has remained profitable ever since.
The vast majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising: a combination of search and display ads.
Facebook’s other revenue stream is its payment system for purchases within apps and games: Facebook Credits. Facebook keeps 30% of the revenue from those payments, and passes the remaining 70% on to the app developer.
That model has paid off: Revenue from Zynga, which makes FarmVille and other games played on Facebook, represented 12% of Facebook’s total revenue in 2011.
Another choice tidbit: In 2011, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg raked in a $500,000 base salary. But he requested — and will receive — only $1 per year in salary starting January 1, 2013.
It’s not yet known on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, through it said it plans to use the ticker symbol “FB.”
Facebook will likely re-file its paperwork several times over the coming months. Those updates will add more details and could even restate some of the financial information detailed in Wednesday’s filing.
How much Facebook is worth: In this initial paperwork, companies don’t declare how many shares they’re going to sell, or how much those shares will cost. Those details will be added in an updated filing shortly before trading begins.
Without that share price information, Facebook’s valuation is still speculative.
Facebook has its own guesses, though. The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of December 31 determined it to be worth $29.73 a share.
Trading won’t begin for several months, as Facebook now has to field questions from regulators and court investors for its stock sale.
Most analysts estimate Facebook’s valuation will fall somewhere between $85 billion to $100 billion. But the value of Web companies can be extremely volatile.
A recent example: Zynga. The FarmVille maker’s IPO filing reported that it valued its shares in August 2011 at $17.20 each, which gave the company a valuation of $14 billion. But when Zynga went public in December, shares sold for just $10 — valuing the company at $7 billion.
Several other Internet companies made their public debuts in 2011, but the end of the year proved to be a turbulent time for the sector. Shares of Groupon, Pandora, Zillow, LinkedIn and Angie’s List all suffered steep double-digit losses for November, though most clawed back at least a bit in December or January.
Copyright CNN 2012
There is so much speculation as to what the capabilities will be for the next Xbox. But one thing for sure, it will not be called the Xbox 720. That being said, lets first go over what the next Xbox specs should be, and then let us all debate on some names for our new precious system.
The next Xbox will be a windows based system, 64 bit processing, 4 to 8 gb of RAM, a hard drive of at least 500 gb to 1 tb, a Bluray player, built in wifi, HDMI port out, a smaller controller, a web browser, DVR capabilities, Bluetooth for our phones, and a graphics card equal or better than the Radeon 6670, which will give us true 1080p! When you start adding all these things up, the price for the next Xbox would be around $599 for the cheaper model, and likely $799 for the everything model. At these prices Microsoft will likely lose around $200-$300 per console sold in the beginning. All this stuff simply means that our gaming experience will be absolutely amazing compared to what we have now….but not immediately from every developer. These increased specs equal triple the man hours to make a game. So unfortunately, our game prices will be going up as well.
Now for the name issue for the next Xbox. Realistically, there is no way that Microsoft would ever name the next Xbox the “Xbox 720″. It simply doesn’t make sense. So what will it be? The “Xbox Life”, “Xbox Sizzle”, ”Xbox R2″? Perhaps you could name the next Xbox. Comment below and give it your best name.
other next Xbox stories:
http://www.theintelblog.com/2012/01/24/xbox-720-will-be-six-times-as-powerful-as-current-gen/
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/xbox-720-every-rumour-about-the-new-xbox-937167
http://www.t3.com/features/xbox-720-rumours-how-will-the-new-xbox-look