Re-live 1993 With Think...

A Wiimote turned on its side makes for a perfectly serviceable controller when plowing through retro games from the Wii Shop Channel, and the Classic Controller isn’t bad either, but I wouldn’t call either of them an ideal solution. On the other hand, ThinkGeek’s new Super Famicom controller for the Wii manages to come pretty damned close, especially if you’re a gamer who spends your time steeped in the past. Thankfully, unlike the controller this thing was modeled on, there’s no need to plug it directly into the Wii. Instead, the $20 add-on plugs into the bottom of a Wiimote so it’s simple enough lean back in a beanbag across the room and blow through some Actraiser . It probably goes without saying that not everyone will appreciate this thing’s sheer lack of ergonomics, but remember — the original Super Famicom/Nintendo controller was crafted back in the early 90s, and still manages to put its boxy predecessor to shame. Nevertheless, you had best look elsewhere if you’re looking to play some more recent games, as using a D-Pad to control movement in three dimensions rarely ends well. My only regret? That ThinkGeek doesn’t have a version emblazoned with the purple and lavender hues of the Super Nintendo. Now that Nintendo fanatics have another bit of hardware to add to their collections, maybe ThinkGeek will finally get around to building that NES-esque Bluetooth mobile gaming controller they promised us earlier this year.

American Express Uses Z...

Zynga and American Express are back together again in a new deal that will give prepaid card carriers ways to earn extra Farm Cash. American Express, which has long been known for catering to high-end consumers, is moving downmarket. They’ve got a new platform called Serve , which is kind of a catchall service that supports many payment methods from traditional plastic cards with magnetic stripes to NFC to QR codes to basic online payments. The partnership with Zynga is meant to onboard new Amex customers and could give the credit card company the so-called FarmVille demographic. “Zynga has a very large customer base,” said David Messenger, American Express’ executive vice president of enterprise growth. “This partnership isn’t for existing credit and charge card customers. It’s about trying to appeal to a new segment. These customers may be Millennials. They may be somewhat underserved in terms of banking. They may only use debit, cash and check.” FarmVille players will be able to plant an American Express-branded tree in their farms. If they plant the virtual tree, they’ll be nudged to register for a prepaid card and American Express’ Serve program. Then after that, they can add money to their Serve account and activate the card. The first five purchases of $25 or more with the card will earn users extra Farm Cash. Other rewards will probably be added later on and the program will probably eventually include more games too. Zynga’s chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp says whatever revenues the American Express deal brings will fall in under advertising. He didn’t say how much revenue the Amex deal might represent. About 8.7 percent of Zynga’s $321 million in revenue last quarter came from advertising. The rest came from virtual goods. “This deal highlights how we can bring brands to life,” he said. “We’re blurring the lines between real world and virtual world.” This isn’t the first time the two companies have worked together. Two years ago, Amex allowed Zynga players to earn exclusive virtual goods through their rewards program like purple cows, manx cats and virtual outdoor fountains. 

Major Steal: King.com P...

King.com , the European-casual-gaming-company-that-could, is cementing its ascendance on the Facebook platform by poaching one of the key producers responsible for EA’s Sims Social and opening a new game development studio in London. The company just hired Catharina Mallet away from EA to lead the new studio, which should have 40 people by year-end (with her departure first being noted by Business Insider last week). King.com, which started in Sweden and hasn’t taken outside funding since raising $43 million seven years ago , is one of two European gaming companies that have made a serious run on the Facebook platform in the last year. While Zynga has seen its revenue growth slow and other longtime Facebook developers like Crowdstar and Funzio have mostly moved onto mobile games, both King.com and Germany’s Wooga have both climbed up the developer leaderboards. King.com has beat out EA and more recently, Wooga, for the #2 spot among game developers in terms of daily active users on Facebook , according to AppData. The number of game sessions has also blown up by tenfold to 3 billion per month, from 300 million a year ago. The company has a long, long history. It’s almost a decade old and started out building casual games for a destination site at King.com (naturally). That made for a decent business that’s been profitable for seven years. But King.com got turbo-charged when it started building Facebook games too. The company’s long history of building for an independent destination site has given it a few competitive advantages. Launching games outside of Facebook ensures that only the very best and most viral games make it onto the platform. “Because we see which games fail outside of Facebook, what we have managed to do is have a hit-proof business on Facebook,” said chief executive officer Riccardo Zacconi . It’s worth noting that Zynga and many other developers like Kixeye are ironically going in the opposite direction by pouring resources into standalone destination sites. The business now has several legs to stand on. It has a destination site for casual games, Facebook games and then mobile titles. Like Zynga, it makes money through virtual currency sales and advertising. But it also has a third revenue model. The company also recently signed a deal with AOL to provide skilled tournament games. Those are games where players have to pay a very small entry cost (like less than $1) and compete with others. This deal is financially material to King.com, although the company won’t say how much the partnership will bring in. All this said, King.com is starting to feel the competitive heat on Facebook. Zynga recently launched Bubble Safari , which looks a lot like Bubble Witch Saga, King.com’s top game on Facebook. “We have the leading bubble shooter on Facebook. While there are a fair number of copycats popping up, we’re pleased with the continued audience engagement that we get with Bubble Witch Saga,” said chief marketing officer Alex Dale . “We think that will improve further when we launch the game on mobile.” Zacconi adds that King.com’s model is more capital efficient than Zynga’s. “For one of their games, they might need 80 people,” he said. “But Bubble Witch Saga had a team of eight. To launch a new game on the web, we need two people.” He also says that the company hasn’t been feeling the effects that other game developers have as Facebook clamped down on viral channels, notifications and requests for games. He says King.com’s K-factor or viral coefficient is roughly 0.8. “For every user we get, we get almost another one for free,” Zacconi said. Keep in mind though, that number is still way down from the heights of 2008 and 2009, when apps ran wild on the Facebook platform. Other social gaming companies, which still have the institutional memory of that era, have had a harder time coping with the Facebook platform’s new realities. When Mallet comes on-board, she’ll be spearheading the development of casual games. Zacconi stresses that King.com is not going into resource management or sim games. Mallet was of the top producers behind Sims Social and she came to EA through the up to $400 million acquisition of social gaming company Playfish. Over the last year, EA’s social gaming push has faced several management changes. After Zynga poached John Schappert to be chief operating officer, Barry Cottle followed him over to spearhead mergers and acquisitions . That made room for Playfish co-founder Kristian Segerstrale to move up in the ranks and become EA’s executive vice president of digital. Another key Playfish executive, John Earner, recently left to be an entrepreneur in residence at Accel Partners .

GameStop To Sell SIM Ca...

GameStop is hurting. Same store sales fell 5%-11% and revenue was down 17% to $2 billion. Profit fell to $72.5 million. Arguably, those are still huge numbers and presumably a new console refresh should push the company out of the doldrums. But what the company has just launched – a new MVNO called GameStop Mobile – is almost inexplicable. GameStop Mobile is, in short, an unlimited data and voice offering for $55 a month (down to $20 a month for pay-as-you-go plans.) GameStop is just selling SIM cards and service and is running on AT&T’s network with some notable dead spots. The stores actually do take trade-in electronics so, potentially, the company could begin selling unlocked GSM phones to customers who come in for games. Because of the intended audience – kids and the adults who bring them as well as a few die-hards who aren’t yet into PC gaming – it makes some sense for this service to exist. The synergy also opens AT&T to new markets and, more important, places GameStop right at the nexus of mobile and gaming – a place it absolutely needs to be once future consoles stop accepting optical media. However, with revenue down and hard-core gamers moving to services like Origin and Steam, there is little impetus for folks to trek out to the local GameStop for titles. Here’s hoping this latest attempt at monetizing the audience works as well as their midnight launches of Diablo III.

“In the Studio,” CRV’s ...

Editor’s Note:  TechCrunch  columnist  Semil Shah  currently works at  Votizen  and is based in Palo Alto. You can follow him on Twitter  @semil “In the Studio” hosts a Silicon Valley technology veteran this week, someone who has been around tech since 1977, in venture since 1995, an early investor in Twitter, Yammer, and Millennial Media, a former executive in the gaming console industry, and while in college, took an interest in economics where his thesis advisor just happened to be Nobel Laureate Franco Modigliani . It’s become fashionable for certain breeds of celebrity tech pundits to sound the alarm bell for their audiences about the impending bubble we are in, or have been in, or will be in. It all reminds me of one of Gordon Gecko’s lines in Wall Street II, “like a rooster taking credit for the dawn.” Economic bubbles come and go, they are natural cycles that humans have lived through for centuries. A more interesting question to ask is: What phase are we in relative to the current economic cycle? This is exactly what George Zachary of Charles River Ventures dissects in this fascinating conversation. With the Facebook IPO tomorrow, Zachary carefully walks us through a previous Valley bubble, explaining its formation, its growth, and the factors that led it to burst. We let the camera roll a bit longer on this one because it turned out Zachary has studied the history of economic bubbles and shared deeper insights into current market dynamics that have implications for the early-stage technology community. In this video, he almosts delivers a point-by-point lecture on the similarities and differences between the atmosphere around Netscape’s IPO versus the period we are in today. Zachary also spends time discussing what the rest of 2012 could look like for venture capital firms and early-stage founders who go into this market to raise funds. I’d recommend this video for any investor or entrepreneur investing in the consumer web and mobile spaces, a chance to hear a thoughtful opinion from someone who has a unique point of view on the current climate.