Educational game company Tangible Play has generated around $2 million in pre-orders for Osmo, its educational game platform for iPad, according to Gamasutra. The accessory kit, which retails for around $49, is shipping to to preorder customers - including more than 2,000 schools. Tangible Play is a Silicon Valley startup founded by former Google, Disney and Ubisoft employees.

According to the latest sales data from App Annie, Glu Mobile was the top publisher worldwide in iOS game downloads and tenth by worldwide iOS game revenue. This was mostly due to its popular game starring reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

Kim Kardashian's Hollywood was the number one downloaded game in the world on iOS during the month of July, according to App Annie. It was followed by another Glu game - Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores.

2K Games' cards-meets-wresting mobile game, WWE SuperCard has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. That number represents downloads during the game's first week of release on both the iOS and Android versions of the game.

After some pressure from rights group Green America and an investigating of its own, Apple has agreed that it will take steps to stop allowing suppliers from using dangerous chemicals that can have long-term effects on the health and well-being of its workers.

Apple announced on August 13 that it has taken the first steps to protect the workers who make their products (iPhones, iPads) overseas by banning the use of benzene and n-hexane in the final assembly of its products.

Electronic Arts is shutting down Ultima Forever, the multiplayer role-playing game for iOS devices. EA made the announcement on the official Ultima Forever forums. The game was billed as a spiritual successor to Ultima IV, but being a mobile title EA added micro-transactions into the mix. The online services will shut down on August 29.

A new report from App Annie suggests that Google Play is winning the app downloads race in the second quarter of 2014, but also points out that iOS is the still the platform that is securing the most revenue.

According to App Annie figures, in the latest quarter Apple's App Store made 80 percent more revenue than Google Play, but Google Play saw 60 percent more downloads. A lot of Google's growth was driven by consumers in Brazil, Thailand and India who helped to drive a 45 percent rise in downloads over the previous quarter.

In January of this year Apple was the first company to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over Apple’s handling of in-app purchases. The company agreed to make it harder for children to purchase in-game content and apps without the express consent of parents or guardians, and Apple agreed to pay out $32.5 million to parents affected by its lax policy - and if the payouts were less than that amount the balance of the settlement would go to the FTC.

According to a study highlighted in The Guardian, 85 percent of the top 50 grossing apps on Apple and Android stores across the world are games. The data comes from Midia Research, and shows that 84.9 percent of the 700 apps covered by the study were games, with the next nearest category being social networking and only accounting for around 4.1 percent.

"The app economy is, for now at least, a games economy," the report concludes.

GamesIndustry International has an excellent article chronicling the plight of a female developer whose game was banned from Apple's App Store for depicting a sexual act. At first blush the game, HappyPlayTime, might sound like pornography, but it's more about education in a fun and entertaining way, according to its creator.

Apple has laid out the steps consumers need to take in order to get a refund for unapproved in-app purchases in iOS apps, Polygon reports. The refund process is part of the company's efforts to fulfill its part in a recent $32.5 million settlement of a federal complaint.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Google announced a new version of the Google Play Games Services that enables cross-platform multiplayer support for iOS and Android games. Play Games Services is a backend API for developers of Android, iOS, and even Web games that gives developers the ability to set up achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud saves using Google's cloud infrastructure and development APIs.

Shortly after Dong Nguyen pulled his popular game Flappy Bird from Google Play and Apple's App Store (because it was "too addictive," he claims), a torrent of clones hit both marketplaces hoping to fill the void and play off the game's unbelievable success.

Dong Nguyen, the 29-year-old Veitnamese indie creator of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird, said that he removed the game from both Google Play for Android and iTunes for iOS devices because he was deeply concerned that the game was too addictive. There has been plenty of speculation that Nguyen pulled the game because of legal threats from Nintendo (for using art similar to art found in the Super Mario Bros. series of games) or because he couldn't handle the pressure, but it turns out that - he claims at least - he had a lot of concerns about people playing his game too much.

Around 40 percent of consumers will watch video on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones by 2018, according to a new report from research firm ABI Research. This the firm says, is in spite of strong efforts to bring online video to new devices such as Google’s Chromecast and new video game consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

According to information from both iLounge and 9to5Mac, Apple will turn its Apple TV device into a gaming console of sorts later this year.

Apple revealed this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that App Store customers spent over $10 billion in 2013, with $1 billion of that total paid out in the month of December.

"We'd like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store," said Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue.

"The line-up of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014."

According to IBM's newly released "Digital Analytics Benchmark Report," purchases made from iOS devices accounted for about 23 percent of the online shopping done on Christmas Day in the U.S. The report tracked millions of transactions from approximately 800 U.S. retail websites. Around 4.6 percent of purchases were made on Android devices.

Rockstar Consortium (partly owned by Apple and Microsoft), a patent-holding company formed from the bankrupt Canadian telecom company Nortel, sued Google and manufacturers of Android phones over patents almost two months ago. Earlier this week Google punched back at the company, filing a counter-suit seeking to invalidate Rockstar's patents. That's a normal step for a defendant in a patent lawsuit, but Google didn't file its counter-claim in the East Texas court where Rockstar sued them. Instead it filed in Northern California.

While tablets seem to be popular with very young children, some pediatricians and other health experts are expressing concerns that these devices may be interfering with early childhood development and may even lead to some children developing attention problems. Of course, the research on all of this is still mostly incomplete because the iPad and other popular devices have not been out long enough to determine what the long-term effects of usage among children really are.

Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga are the top iPhone and iPad apps of 2013, according to Apple's annual year-end report on its free and paid apps for its iOS devices.

On both the free iPhone and iPad charts, Candy Crush Saga was the king of the hill, while paid apps on both platforms were ruled by Mojang's pocket edition of Minecraft.

Both games beat out some pretty powerful competition including YouTube, Google Maps, Skype, and even Instagram.

The full list can be found below:

Top 10 Free iPhone Apps

Atlanta-based indie game developer Secret Library can't seem to catch a break from Apple. It submitted its retro 8-bit iOS game Hot Mess to the App store and had it rejected because it contained animated naked people kissing. In Hot Mess players step into the shoes of a firefighting robot who goes haywire and mistakes the burning passion of romance as the flames that burns down houses. He thinks couples kissing is dangerous and therefore tries to hose them down to avoid fires...

While more people are downloading apps via Google Play for Android devices of various shapes and sizes, Apps on the Apple App Store are making more money, according to the new App Annie's third quarter 2013 report.

AllThingsD is reporting that Apple will reveal a new version of the iPad at the end of this month. At an event on Oct. 29, Apple will reveal the new iPad and make some other product announcements, according to the report.

In a highly competitive promotion against Apple's favorite tablet, Microsoft has decided to give consumers willing to turn in that old iPad a couple of hundred bucks in their store - presumably to spend on their Surface tablet... The promotion, which runs until October 27, allows people to trade in their "gently used" iPad 2, 3, or 4 tablets to receive a minimum of a $200 gift card to the Microsoft Store.

When the smart phone revolution began five years ago, the National Security Agency began looking for ways to crack the myriad of devices that were hitting the market including iPhones, Android devices, and Black Berry devices. Black Berry devices were the most popular among politicians and business people at the time.

PopCap's latest entry in the popular Plants v. Zombies series on iOS is very popular. According to the company, the free-to-play Plants vs. Zombies sequel has been downloaded nearly 25 million times since its launch on August 25. PopCap claims that this represents more than the total lifetime downloads for the original Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, being that this game is free-to-play and the original costs $20, you can kind of see why this one might be more widely enjoyed (people like free stuff).

Candy Crush developer King.com has filed a lawsuit against mobile developer 6Waves, alleging that the company has "blatantly" infringed on two of its games, Pet Rescue Saga and Farm Heroes Saga. The lawsuit, which was in the U.S. district court in San Francisco today, claims that 6Waves copied the color scheme, puzzle design, and UI elements for its games Treasure Epic and Farm Epic.

The ESRB has updated its video games rating search app in an effort to improve the information parents have access to when making decisions about the appropriateness of a purchase for their children. The ESRB recently expanded its rating system to offer more details on "interactive elements" associated with digital games and apps, such as the sharing of personal information, sharing location-based data with others, or the ability for users to interact, communicate, or share media like photos or videos.

Quick and Dirty Tips has released a new game for the iPad that promises to help users improve their grammar. The game is called Grammar Pop, and it is the brainchild of Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl podcast host and New York Times best-selling author. Fogarty helped develop and test the game using the Game Salad authoring tool.

Vlambeer's ridiculously popular iOS game, Ridiculous Fishing, is edging towards $1 million in sales, developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman revealed today during a panel at the 2013 Game Developers Conference Europe.

"We're so close," Ismail told Polygon. "We're almost at $1 million."