Bozek is the executive producer and game director of the popular karaoke video game series for the past six years. And is one of many key appointments by the old-school company, seeing it as a significant step in expanding Atari’s online game capability.

“Paulina is one of the industry’s most respected creative leaders with an outstanding track-record of commercial and creative success and I’m delighted that she will bring her unique vision, consumer insight and proven ability for creating amazing entertainment experiences to Atari.”

She believes that there’s a huge opportunities for gaming platforms now that gaming platforms has become more connected. She believes in Atari’s vision can’t wait to realize this with their upcoming products and services.

Image courtesy of PS3Italia.it

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Meet the New Atari Mass Market Games Head

The company intents to release more casual titles for the DS and Wii in the next quarter.

Image courtesy of Ubisoft

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Ubisoft Casual Games Q1 Sales Jump

As spotted at the nice E3 photos gallery at Wired.com, hardcore gamers who are looking for playing experience like that of the successful Mario or Zelda francishes, they will be much, much disappointed since there’s nothing from Nintendo for them.  Although they did mention that their team in Japan is brewing up new titles for these two franchises, it just wasn’t elaborated on.

Although the event was held on the grand Kodak theatre, anyone who would have accidentally stepped in the site would know that its no Academy Awards night due to the dress code, or at least the lack of it.

Nintendo execs were called on stage to showcase upcoming titles like Wii Sports Resort, which features a lot of sports mini-games, slated for release on 2009.

At the end of the conference, 3 Nintendo employees and Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated Wii Music, simulating playing instruments on the tune of the Super Mario Theme.

Images taken from Nintendo.com and Wired.com respectively

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Nintendo Backs Up Casual Gaming, Ignores Hardcore

1. Get good titles in your roster.
2. Build a flexible, easy to update and scalable.
3. Promote your site.
4. Keep up with the times, be updated with the industry.
5. Advertise.

Oh, and one more solicited advise from me, you might want to check out for those site widgets (add-ons) that offer game centered ads just like the one I previously wrote about here for additional income.

Image taken from InformativePost.com

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Online Gaming Business 101

The cutbacks were done to accommodate their change strategy of being a propagator of pop-up ads to the distribution of casual games.

Zango, which was formerly known as 180solutions, was notorious for installing the irritating ad wares without users’ consent and made uninstalling difficult to implement. They paid a $3M fine after settlements in 2006 for it. Sacre bleu!

Since then, the company tried to broaden their horizon after some $40M in funding by making notable acquisitions and the venture into casual gaming as a channel for ads.

Image lifted from Zango.com

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Losing Jobs for Casual Games

According to a survey done in the U.S., one of five players of casual games are disabled, whether it be a mental, physical or development disability. Information Solutions Group, who did the survey for Pop Cap, said that out of 13,296 respondents, 2,728 claims to have some form of disability. That’s more the declared 15.1% disabled according to U.S. Census data.

Apparently, people forget the fact that they have disabilities when they’re playing. This keeps their mind off their shortcomings that may have caused mental depression in others, says Dr. Carl Arinoldo, a NY psychiatrist.

I guess its because gaming happens to level the playing field, regardless of what demographic you come from.

Hurray for casual gaming!

Image taken from Pop Cap Games

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More Studies from Pop Cap

Kathy Vrabeck, President of Casual Games down at EA said that reviews are important to core gamers and this doesn’t necessarily apply to casual gamers. What more, she, herself doesn’t really care much about reviews.

She did mention about her own way of measuring up games, unlike those who still uses the same metrics for core gaming. A game is good if they’d willingly hang up on their friend to play it. According to Vrabeck, that’s probably the truer measure for their target demographic.

Heehee, talk about a different way of reviewing games.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Casual Way of Reviewing Casual Games

PopCap recently published a press release showing that banning internet personal use can actually cost around $7.5 billion in business money. Gasp! It also states that casual gaming in the workplace has a positive effect on the work environment.

How do you say?

Well for starters, browsing the internet is one way of breaking work monotony and cutting off that priviledge causes employees to feel resentful about their workplaces. Plus, ten minutes of playing games helps relieves stress and can actually help the mind focus at the task at hand. Sounds good to me.

I just hope this isn’t a ploy for people to play more PopCap games. If it is, just point your browsers to www.popcapbreak.com for a quickie.

Maybe we should all show this to our bosses, don’t you agree?

Oh, wait…. I do work for a gaming company, and heck, they let us play during office hours. Ain’t that just cool?

Post from: EveryJoe

Games Improve Productivity

This article from MCV UK stated that 74% of paying casual gamers are, gasp, women! (Hmm, then why am I not surprised?) And that’s according to the Casual Games Association.  Game Factory’s European marketing manager, Lucinda Digweed also believes that the “male-dominated core gaming is already saturated” that’s why they’re giving more importance in catering to the other types of gamers.

Image taken from Game Factory

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Another Advise for the Industry

Image taken from BigFishGames.com

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99 Cents for a Game??