Bringing you information on nearly everything!

Survey finds initial iPad demand to be greater than initial iPhone demand originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AllThingsD  | Email this | Comments

Casual game-maker Popcap Games (famous for Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled) commissioned Information Services Group to perform a survey of people who play social games online. It found that the average social gamer is a 43-year-old woman, despite long-standing social stereotypes about people who play games.

Note that “social games” are web-based games like Mafia Wars and FarmVille that you play on social networks like Facebook, not Xbox 360 action games like Gears of War or Halo — young males still dominate that branch of the gaming hobby.

The survey found that 55% of social gamers are female and 45% are male. Females are more avid gamers, too; 38% of females said they play multiple times a day, but just 29% males said the same. Women are more likely to play with people they know (68% vs. 56% for males), and men are more likely to play with strangers (41% vs. 33%) than women are.

There were more insights in the survey beyond gender. Facebook is the most popular destination for online games, with 83% of respondents saying they have played games there. Twenty-eight percent have purchased in-game currency with real-world money. The average gamer has played six social games, and more than 50% of gamers started playing a game because a friend recommended it or because they saw a friend playing it in a news feed or other social stream.

One hundred million people are playing these games and about $1 billion in revenue is expected this year. It’s no wonder folks like Flickr’s Stewart Butterfield are diving into the market.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: facebook, games, myspace, online games, popcap games, survey, video games

Never mind keeping track of how many gold medals Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Monaco rack up during the Winter Olympics; the real nerds are watching to see exactly how many tweets are being pushed out per minute from a smattering of cities around the world. CASA’s Tweet-O-Meter has been running on a webpage for awhile now, but frankly, the novelty tends to wear quickly. These, however, are far more tempting to the retinas. What you’re looking at above are a few analog Tweet-O-Meters, which do exactly what you think they do: showcase the amount of tweets that are leaving New York, London and Paris at any given time by moving a needle within a conventional gauge. Head on past the break for a video, and be sure to express your reaction on your favorite up-and-coming social networking site.

[Thanks, Dr. Andrew]

Continue reading Analog Tweet-O-Meter shows city-specific Twitter activity the old fashioned way

Analog Tweet-O-Meter shows city-specific Twitter activity the old fashioned way originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  CASA, Digital Urban  | Email this | Comments

We learned back in November that Windows 7 was having a much (much!) better first few days in retail than Vista did when it launched, but now that the system has had a full quarter and change to make an impression, it looks as if that growth isn’t slowing down. According to new figures from Net Application, Win7 is achieving a higher level of market penetration in a faster amount of time than Vista did; after a month, Vista was stuck at 0.93 percent, while Win7 nailed the 4 percent mark. After two months, Win7 jumped to 5.71 percent, while Vista was barely over 2 percent after the same amount of time. ‘Course, the newest version of Windows had a holiday season to help it out right from the get-go, but there’s still no denying that people are flocking to the system even now. What’s most interesting, however, is that the overall market share of Windows 7 alone has now surpassed all OS X versions that are being tracked (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6), so put that in your pipe and smoke it. Smoke it long and hard.

Windows 7 way hotter than Vista off the line, now more popular than all OS X versions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Ars Technica  | Email this | Comments

It’s hard to put too much credence in a survey. Not only is it easy to fake (although this one sounds fairly legit and has popped up elsewhere), but the questions posed could be purely theoretical. That caveat aside, there’s a bunch of very interesting stuff in this list of features we just got from someone who claims to have done a survey for Sony about its plans to charge for “premium” PlayStation Network content. The actual subscription costs flung around ranged from $20 to $60 a year, or alternatively $6 to $9 a month, and while some features might sound familiar to Xbox Live members, there’s plenty of innovative stuff here that we wouldn’t mind seeing pop up on either platform, including:

• Customer Service Priority Access
• Exclusive Experiences with Sony Brands
• Extended Console Warranty 3 Years
• Access to Beta Games
• Early Access to All Store Content
• Member Demo Sharing of Full Game
• Cross-game Voice Chat Access
• Full Title Trial – 1st Hour Is Free
• Token Wagering
• User-to-user Challenges
• Free Access to PSOne Classics, PSP Minis, and PS3/PSP Themes
• Discounts on Store Content
• Member Only In-game Content
• Trophy Alerts
• Cloud Storage Space for Games
• Online Music Service
• Online Music Video Service
• Automatic Downloads and Updates
• Loyalty Program Rewards
• Facebook Connectivity
• Catch-up TV
• Netflix Access Without Disc

What a mouthful! There are definitions of all these after the break, and while the survey seems to imply that not all of these would be available in whatever paid service Sony launches, we could imagine quite a few PS3 users (ourselves, for instance) shelling out cash for some of the perks listed — as long as they can swallow their Xbox Live Gold-deriding pride.

[Thanks, Christopher]

Continue reading Possible PSN premium services detailed in leaked survey?

Possible PSN premium services detailed in leaked survey? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

There are plenty of ways to measure smartphone marketshare. IDC measures units shipped from manufacturers whereas Gartner measures units sold to consumers. Then there’s comScore, the research firm that conducts monthly surveys in the US to measure the total number of devices (and thus operating systems) currently in use. Its latest data is summarized above for the three-month period ending in October. See those yellow lines? If our kindergarten skills haven’t failed us, then this data shows iPhone usage surpassing the once mighty Windows Mobile OS for the very first time. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Google’s Android OS is set to accelerate significantly by the time the February 2010 data rolls in as is WebOS just as soon as Palm can bring its fledgling OS to Verizon’s subscriber base. What’s most troubling to Redmond about this report though, is where we found it: on FierceDeveloper, a site for mobile software developers who will presumably use the data to help determine which platforms deserve their focus. Oh Windows Mobile 7, where are you?

ComScore: iPhone overtakes Windows Mobile use for the first time in US originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  FierceDeveloper  | Email this | Comments