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Apple struck a blow against video game clones today by removing several offending apps from one rather prolific independent developer.

Among the removed games are apps such as Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump, each of which (as you might guess from their titles) had more than a little in common with with major titles such as Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, and Temple Run, respectively.

Obviously the problem is from more than one

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Xgaming X-Arcade: Relive the Arcade Experience at home with your own personal arcade machine. Relive thousands of your favorite classics WITH NO QUARTERS NEEDED. Home Arcade Joystick or Arcade Machines available.

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Aspyr Media on Thursday announced the release of RAGE: Campaign Edition, a Mac version of the game released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows late in 2011. The game costs $39.99 and is available through the Mac App Store and other download services, including Aspyr’s own GameAgent.com.

]]> http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/02/id-softwares-rage-game-comes-to-the-mac/feed/ 0 http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/01/bungie-net-to-end-halo-services-in-march/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:06:09 +0000 Peter Cohen http://www.loopinsight.com/?p=19532 Continued

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Sony has named Kaz Hirai as the successor to Howard Stringer’s roles as both president and CEO, effective April 1, 2012.

Stringer, who has lead the company in the joint role for seven years, will take up the position of chairman of the board, whilst current chairman Yotaro Kobayashi will retire.

Hirai oversees Sony’s PlayStation operations. He’s been the most public face of Sony for gamers for a number of years

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Dark Legends will draw players into “the secret societies of vampires to challenge the hordes of undead, werewolves, demons and humans that hunt them.” The game features a combat system

Nintendo Co Ltd posted a sharp drop in quarterly profit and forecast a bigger-than-expected full-year loss, its first at an operating level, as it battles a strong yen and its games devices lose ground to gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone.

Nintendo profit dropped for the October-December quarter, showing fewer people than expected bought Nintendo’s game systems. The company’s 3DS handheld system hasn’t sold nearly as well as it expected, and it’s going to

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Blizzard is such a juggernaut in the game world that it’s created its own

Market research firm IHS iSuppli is projecting that in-app purchases will account for 64% of total app market revenue by 2015, up from 39% in 2011. These percentages reflect the total from both iOS and Android smartphones. In-app purchases already represent 45% of iOS app revenue and 31% of the highest-earning Android apps.

I often take iSuppli figures with a grain of salt, but there’s no question that iPhone and other smartphone

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Virtual Programming, maker of Mac versions of commercial games like Supreme Commander 2 and X3: Terran Conflict, is on the prowl for beta testers. If you have what you think it takes, you can get in touch with them.

You won’t get paid, but you do get free games – the ones you test, plus you earn credit at their Deliver2Mac online download service, which you can use to get more

Taito has announced the release of Rayforce, the classic arcade game shooter, now available for the iPhone and iPod touch. It costs $11.99.

Rayforce firs appeared in coin-op arcades in 1993 and spawned two sequels. It’s a fast and frantic top-down scrolling shooter in which you try to save humanity from a murderous artificial intelligence, flying high above the ground in your “X-Lay” fighter.

The game features

In a roundtable with reporters at CES, Sony’s Kaz Hirai responded to a question about recent comments attributed to gaming division head Andrew House by stating that “Andy is absolutely right in that we are not making any announcements at E3.”

Sony has long held to a “10 year life cycle” philosophy for its home game consoles, which would push out the end of the PlayStation 3′s life to around 2016 (it was introduced in Japan late in 2006). Typically there’s

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Infinity Blade developer Chair, owned by Epic, has made over $30 million from the franchise in just one year since the original game’s launch on iOS.

Infinity Blade II, which runs only on the new iPhone 4s and the iPad 2 thanks to their A5 graphics chips, has made over $5 million in just one month since its 1 December launch.

A stunning success story which reinforces the idea that there’s a lot of money for AAA game makers to net on the App

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TransGaming has announced that it has acquired the Interactive TV & Connected TV division of Oberon Media for $7 million in stocks and cash. This will grant the company additional revenue via distribution agreements with a number of leading Smart TV manufacturers in North America and the Indo-Pacific region, giving TransGaming reach to over 50 million households in addition to over 100 new game titles.

TransGaming is best known to Mac users as a

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The important thing, though, is that I found the MacBook Pro with both Mac OS X and Windows 7 installed felt like a more complete computing solution than anything I’d ever had before.

And it made for great gaming.

Chad Sapieha discovered that the Mac is very versatile once configured with Boot Camp and capable of switching between Mac OS X and Windows, and it sounds like he’s really gotten the best of both worlds.
Some gamers continue to turn

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I’m all in favor of developers drawing upon old games for inspiration, improving them and turning them into entirely new ideas. And I like fan-made homages when they expand significantly on the original and–this is important–are not sold for commercial gain (Vector Tanks cost $1, and Extreme cost $2). But in this case, the makers of Vector Tanks simply copied Battlezone’s look, feel and core play mechanics, and added a few frills. That’s a soulless approach

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]]> http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/04/in-defense-of-atari/feed/ 1 http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/03/atari-pressures-apple-ios-game-developer-copycats/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:17:38 +0000 Peter Cohen http://www.loopinsight.com/?p=18147 Continued

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]]> Gamesindustry.biz:

Atari has reportedly been applying legal pressure to developers which it believes are infringing on its intellectual property rights, despite the developers affected claiming that attempts had been made on their part to reach an agreement.

Black Powder Games, developer of one of the games Atari asked Apple to remove from the App Store, cites a “special relationship” between Atari and Apple as why Apple has been so quick to remove titles that Atari

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