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Epic Poker Working To Drive Game More Into Mainstream US

Epic Poker started their poker league earlier this year, and now they are spearheading an effort to drive poker into mainstream America in the coming years. On Wednesday, Epic Poker announced a partnership with the USA Today.

US Moves to Exclude Online Poker Sites Operating Before Bill

K.C. Carmichael — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:46:15 +0000

One of the provisions attached during markup of the Frank online poker regulation bill requires operators receiving licensing to be free from violations of previous gaming law, including the UIGEA.

Bachus Confuses Internet Cafes With Online Gambling

Ed Bradley — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:36:24 +0000

The leading voice against regulated online gambling cited curious cases as reason to oppose Barney Frank's bill.

First Casino In Maine Expected To Open In March

Hollywood Casino Bangor received its formal approval this week for a gaming license in Main. The casino is expected to open in March, making Maine the latest Northeastern state to enter the market.

Fertitta Becomes Latest Gaming Company To File For Online License

The Fertitta family has become synonymous with casino gambling in the US, and on Thursday, Fertitta Interactive LLC showed that they intent on being part of the online poker revolution.

Nevada Casino Revenue Rises In November, Gaming Stocks Rise

Revenue At Nevada casinos rose in November by over seven percent, leading to an increase in confidence from investors that the gaming industry is rebounding from the recession.

Table Games Move to Forefront of Delaware Gambling Expansion

Julie Wong — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:38:22 +0000

With single game sports betting ruled out, Delaware officials are frantically searching for new gambling that may fill the revenue hole in the state budget.

Forfeited Online Casino Money Offered by US to Kaplan Customers

A.J. Maldonado — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:47:30 +0000

A required US government post gives ex-players at BetOnSports a chance to claim the millions forfeited by the online casino's founder.

News: University of Colorado gets $1.5m grant for educational games research

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:50:00 +0000

The University of Colorado at Boulder has been granted a $1.5 million research bursary to develop educational games designed to engage students in computer sciences.

The money comes from the National Science Foundation and will fund an evolution of the iDreams program - which uses game programming to encourage students to produce models of STEM (Science, technology, engineering and maths) based phenomena.

That program eventually included 100 teaching staff and over 8000 pupils, spreading to Alaska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming after being founded in Colorado.

Wingmen: World War out now

Costas Stephanides — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:31:55 +0000

Aliens have invaded earth, and Wingmen Corp. is there to defend it. . . and makes lots of money in the process.

Digitimes: Tablet Sales Take a Dive

Arjan Olsder — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:56:38 +0000

It seems the rush for tablets is cooling down a little as tablet sales are expected to drop a massive 30% in the first quarter of 2012. Digitimes calculated the dip in sales based on the number of...

iphone app store statistics

jamescoops — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:08:52 +0000

Anyone who needs to write a presentation or report on anything to do with mobile, iphone or app stores needs to get research and statistics on the app store to help back up their arguments. For example, you might want to know the number of apps in the app store by category. Also developers, publishers and marketers also need to get their heads around the data to help shape services and so on. So here's a list of sources of iphone app store statistics plus some key highlights from a recent presentation on the subject:

Sources of iphone appstore stats

Pinchmedia - release data on apps generated by their mobile analytics product such as this presentation

Distimo - offer a premium appstore analytics service, but also release some data for free

Flurry - similar to pinch media - release data from their analytics product on their blog

148apps.biz - have a great section on "app store metrics" with data by category and type of app, prices, no of apps etc

Mobclix - lots of nice graphs and lists of top apps by type

Appsfire - the social app sharing tool has some good stuff on their blog

Admob Metrics - mainly covers iphone browsing but sometimes some useful app-based data - they run a big iphone ad exchange and probably the largest iphone ad network so have good data

Comscore - have been releasing a lot of good top 10 information on the app store since they acquired m:metrics - check their blog for releases

Finally the big iphone app aggregators such as appshopper and apptism are also a useful source of data, especially on number of apps submitted and so on

Also worth checking out is this presentation from Stuart Dredge - have pasted in the key appstore data highlights below:

Appstore key facts and figures

Addressable base of 50 million
100k apps available
More than 2bn downloads so far
iPhone games market worth $2.8bn by 2014
Avg user has spent $80 on 65 apps
Avg user downloads 10/18 apps a month
90% browse and download on the device
30-day retention rate for games – 72%
But 90-day retention rate is 16%

Appstore top 100 games analysis

Own-IP is popular – 58% of Top 100 Paid chart
Pricing pressure – Avg price in Top 100 is $2.89
But avg price in Top 10 is $2.09 (and $1.21 without Rock Band)
45 games cost $0.99
Rapid churn – 59% of Top 100 released since August
Level playing field – 47% indie, 38% publishers
EA has 13 titles in Top 100, Gameloft has 12
Glu, DChoc, Tapulous have 3 apiece

Hope this is useful - let me know in the comments if you find any other sources of data.

Macau Poised to Break Revenue Record

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:25:00 +0000

Macau is poised to kick off 2012 on the same winning streak it enjoyed in 2011, with analysts predicting that January gambling revenue totals will eclipse the record set last October.

The Chinese New Year holiday is expected to give a big boost to Macau's revenues for January, with VIP operators and gambling junket providers (who largely cater to high stakes baccarat players from mainland China) already experiencing surging business in early 2012.

Union Gaming Group principal Grant Govertsen has pointed to increased occupancy rates at hotels and casino raising their maximum and minimum table stakes and stated that: "Assuming hold is within the normal range, it should translate into record gross gaming revenue. We have walked most of the major casino floors on each of the past several nights, both on the Macau Peninsula and Cotai Strip, and have seen crowds grow significantly."

Macau's current record for monthly gamblign revenue was $3.4 billion which was set in October 2011. While many associate Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world, Macau passed the Vegas Strip in 2006 as far as total gambling revenue taken in and is poised to eclipse the entire state of Nevada in the near future.

The appetite of Asian gamblers shows no signs of being sated, with casinos in both Singapore and Macau showing double digit growth in 2011 with more of the same projected for 2012 and 2013.

Rumbles from the Chinese government about possibly slowing the growth of gambling in Macau via making credit harder to come by have spooked investors in the stocks of casino groups operating in Macau but to date has had no impact on the steady stream of gamblers visiting the former Portugese colony.

Several US casinos also stand to profit from booming business in Macau, with Las Vegas Sands, MGM International, and Wynn Resorts all operating casino properties in Macau.

New iPhone & Android Bingo Coming Soon from LadyLucks

admin — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:32:50 +0000

We are excited to announce that LadyLucks will be launching a new iPhone, Android & Touch compatible mobile bingo game this month. This is big news for bingo fans! The current LadyLucks Bingo game was launched before iPhone Bingo was conceivable and before Android itself even existed! So the upcoming launch of Ladylucks iPhone & [...]