By Kevin Dent

I started to play Triple Town as of last weekend; I had a blast and even more so when I see that they were actively supporting it with frequent updates. Then I started to hear some rumblings in the industry about how another game basically ripped it off.

Since then, we have seen Spry Fox issue proceedings against Lolapps. Most of us have read about it and shook our heads; I want to take the rhetoric out of it. I wanted to just look at the basic facts.

Those who use jailbroken iPhones and enjoy pirating software are in for a rude awakening as Apple uses the DMCA to take out a frequently used service - Apptrackr. According to Apptrackr developer "Dissident," Apple has sent what he calls "huge takedown notices" to cut off access to pirated apps found through the software. Apptrackr has decided to move the physical location of its servers outside the United States to get around Apple's legal maneuvers and is also employing a form of redirection to avoid "direct" links to infringing content.

According to new data released by app analytics firm Flurry, 1.2 billion applications were downloaded for Android and iOS devices between December 25 and December 31. Earlier in the week the group predicted that in that same period it expected new Android and iOS device activations to be right around 6.8 million. Now they are saying that the number is probably closer to 20 million.

Mojang business developer Daniel Kaplan recently told Gamasutra that he did not know what version 1.0 of the mobile versions of Minecraft - Minecraft Pocket Edition for Sony's Xperia Play and iOS - would look like.

"Oh, wow, I really don’t know, said Kaplan. "I can't answer that."

An interesting report on ShackNews reveals that some PC modifications created for Grand Theft Auto III will actually work with the recently released Android and iOS versions of the game. While the process of getting them to work is a bit cumbersome and might be complicated for some users, the results can lead to importing new cars, textures, songs, and more into the game.

Amazon said today that Kindle has been selling more than a million units a week, and that Kindle Fire is the biggest product launch in the company's history. Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said that Kindle Fire "is the most successful product" Amazon's ever launched and that it's been Amazon's best-selling product for 11 straight weeks. He didn't give details.

On Tuesday Microsoft revealed an app store for Windows 8 apps. Some of the features being touted by Microsoft's Antoine Leblond at the time included an app discovery system inside and outside of the online marketplace, built-in app trials, support for x86 and ARM-based hardware, and a flexible business model. What he didn't talk too much about were the store's new terms of service. A section of it informs users that the company reserves the right to remotely "kill" or "remove" access to apps for security or legal reasons.

The ESRB and CTIA have finally revealed details on the voluntary rating system for mobile apps that was revealed last week. The ratings system currently has the support of six major mobile service and hardware providers including AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless. Apple and Google did not throw their support behind the new ratings system because they already have their own process and system in place - and it has been refined to their satisfaction.

The Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB) has teamed up with trade group Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association to create a standardized rating system for mobile applications and games. The ESRB says that the new ratings system will be "based on age-appropriateness of their content and context," according to Gamasutra. An official announcement on the new ratings system will take place next Tuesday in Washington, DC.

Ford is sponsoring what it calls the "largest Words with Friends" game ever to promote its all-new Ford Escape. The public gaming event will take place tomorrow at 11:00pm - Wednesday at 12:00am at Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave or on the company's Facebook page via a livestream.

Zipline Games CEO Todd Hooper isn't buying into all the hype of HTML5 being a great platform for mobile game development. In a lengthy interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Hooper said that excitement about HTML5 is being created by forces outside of the games industry, giving a false impression of its importance to developers.

French mobile publisher Gameloft acknowledged on Thursday that a security breach forced it to temporarily take down one of its web sites. Reports began surfacing on the company's forums earlier this week, suggesting that the GameloftLive.com Web site had been experiencing problems and that some accounts had been compromised. After a poster suggested that users stay away from the site and that Gameloft fix the problem, the web site was taken down.

Android piracy rates for Appy Entertainment’s Facefighter game app were 2,330 percent higher than on the iOS version of its game, according to studio exec Steven Sargent. The Appy exec said the developer also had problems with the compatibility of smartphones, with the first customer complaint coming within hours of FaceFighter’s release.

According to a new report called "Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing US Digital Media Consumption Habits," Apple's iPad held 97.2 percent of all tablet internet traffic in the US in August 2011.

The third largest wireless carrier in the United States is betting on the iPhone 5 in a big way. Sprint Nextel Corp. will pay Apple a whopping $20 billion dollars to give its customers access to iPhone 5, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company's top executive told Sprint's board that he expects to lose money on the deal until sometime in 2014.

According to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics' Tablet and Touchscreen Strategies service, Amazon will sell 15 million Kindle Fire tablet devices by 2013. The forecast was published this week in "Amazon's Fire Reignites Entry-Level Tablet Market," and comes to this conclusion under assumption that Amazon will add two additional Fire models between now and 2013. It also assumes that Amazon will make the device available to Western Europe, Japan and other developed markets during 2012.

Young men love Angry Birds and they are willing to lay out the cash to get the full experience - according to a new survey from Ask Your Target Market, a "do-it-yourself" online market research firm. According to the results, men between the age of 18 and 24 are most likely to pay for the full version of Angry Birds. Age aside, men are 35 percent more likely to pay for the game after downloading the free version and 76 percent more likely to buy the game than a female over the age of 25.

The Android Market has reached 6 billion app downloads, according to a report from analytics firm research2guidance. The number of downloads is on par with the number of Android-based devices sold this year, with NPD Group putting the Android market share at 52 percent of all phones sold in America in the last quarter.

Last week at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas there were some unfamiliar faces wandering around the event: teens and children. For the first time since it was founded 18 years ago, DefCon has opened its doors to young people ages 8 to 16. Parents who regularly attend the event were delighted about the news. All of the young attendees had to be accompanied by an adult, and some of the most difficult competitions were geared toward the young participants. Those competitions included lock-picking and finding the weak points in popular software and computer hardware.

Even China can't escape the allure of the Angry Birds franchise. Rovio Entertainment announced the opening of corporate and marketing operations in China. The goal of this move is to bring a tailored Angry Birds game to China. China is currently the second largest market for Angry Birds and represents what Rovio calls an "immense potential for continued growth." Rovio Entertainment expects 100 million Angry Birds downloads in China by the end of 2011.

id Software's John Carmack predicts that mobile phones and portable devices such as tablets will one day overshadow consoles. For the time being, most mobile gaming experiences are diversions, says Carmack, but when games mature into deeper experiences on mobile platforms it could spell bad news for the traditional home console as we know it.

"That's one of the things that we do discuss internally a lot and it's amazing to think that when we started Rage, iOS didn't exist. There was no iPhone. All of that has happened just in the space of one project development timeline," Carmack told IndustryGamers in a recent interview. "And that's a little scary when you think about it, because major landscape change could be happening underneath our feet as we work on these large scale projects. And we're going to be doing everything we can to constrain our projects more to not take so long."

VentureBeat has released the fifth set of speakers for its third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, which includes Neil Young, founder and CEO of Ngmoco; Andrej Naborgoj, CEO of Outfit 7, the maker of Talking Friends; and Jason Citron, chief executive of OpenFeint, which was recently acquired by Gree. GamesBeat 2011 conference takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

If you ask the average consumer they will tell you that getting something for free is never a bad thing. But if you ask Nintendo president Satoru Iwata he'll tell you that free games are destroying the industry. Speaking to Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD, Iwata said that the free-to-play business model devalues software.

"Nintendo is a company which is trying to maintain the overall value of video games," Satoru Iwata told the Wall Street Journal. "We have no intention to provide a property to any other platforms, or making them available in a mode that does not require consumers to pay at all. If we were simply going to say OK, the only the way we could sell more products is by decreasing the price, then there wouldn't be a bright future and the entire industry will fold."

New research from Newzoo and Distimo confirm what most knew already: games represent the largest single app-category on Apple App Stores, and account for half of the downloads of both free and paid Apps. According to the research more than five million games a day were downloaded in the US and six European territories combined during March 2011. Around 63 million iOS gamers in seven countries downloaded an average of 2.5 games per month.

In-game purchases in free and paid games amounted to more than 40 percent of total money spent. Newzoo expects in-game purchases to surpass upfront payments for games in the second half of 2011.

A new report claims that around 99.7 percent of phones using Google's mobile operating system contain a security hole that can enable hackers to send unencrypted personal data. Mobile devices using the Android operating systems have a weakness that could allow hackers to gain "full access" to private information such as calendar, contact information, and "private web albums,” according to a research group from Germany's University of Ulm. The security hole could also give hackers the ability to view, modify or delete contacts, calendar events, and private pictures. Thankfully, the security flaw only affects individual phones.

A new game from indie developer Happy Monster Games launches today for Android called "TrickyLeaks." As the title suggests, TrickyLeaks puts Julian Assange and Wikileaks in the roles of antagonists in an all-new puzzle game where you play one of eight evil mega-corporations with plenty of secrets to hide from the world.

The goal of the game is to get all of your secrets back through your pipes before all your dirty laundry is revealed to the world. Throughout the course of the game, you get to play as parodies of real companies like the creator of Mineshaft (Minecraft), Bank of Omerica (Bank of America) and NASO (NASA). You'll even get to see real (fake) secrets leaked from these companies if you fail. The game also features Julian Assange on a bulldozer.. Weird.

The game should be available on the Android App Store now. For more information, check out www.happymonstergames.com.

Fight, fight, fight. Apple has filed a lawsuit against Samsung claiming the technology used in its Galaxy tablet and smartphones is copied from Apple's iPhone and iPad technology. The company is also alleging that Samsung has infringed on the "style" and user interface of the iPhone and iPad. The Galaxy Tab, Galaxy S and Nexus S were specifically named.

"Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple's technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products," the lawsuit said.

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told the BBC: "This kind of blatant copying is wrong."

Samsung said that its products are the result of research and development carried out by the company.

Apple and Google have stolen 8 percent of the overall video game market, according to analysis by Flurry, an analytics and recommendation service for mobile apps. The analysis is based on publicly available data as well as its own data. Apple and Google now have about 34 percent of the market revenue as well, says the research firm.

A year ago, Flurry claimed that iOS devices garnered about 5 percent of the U.S. video game market from 2008 to 2009. Now with three iOS devices and millions of Android OS devices on the market, it is easy to see why these mobile devices grew as much as 8 percent in the 2009 to 2010 period.

"The magnitude of disruption is increasing, in particular within the portable gaming category," said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry.

Indeed. Everyone's lunch is being eaten by mobile devices and software applications sold in various App Stores.

Google claims that over three billion apps have been installed on devices running its Android mobile operating system. Google made the announcement yesterday afternoon during a conference call with investors. The search giant also revealed that Android app downloads during the first three months of 2011 were up 50 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of last year.

Google added that 350,000 Android devices are activated worldwide every single day. Google said that it was performing well in the US, Japan, Korea, and Europe - but did not supply further details.

Google did not detail how many of the three billion apps were paid apps or free. While Google is certainly making progress with Android and its apps, it has a long way to go before it catches up with iOS device apps: Apple claimed ten billion app downloads in January.

Source: Edge

A new survey says that the number one use of tablets is gaming. Not reading e-books, going on Facebook and Twitter or watching movies. Games and gaming. According to a new survey conducted by Google's AdMob subsidiary, 84 percent of tablet owners (like iPad) use the device to play games. Around 78 percent say they use it for "searching for information" and 74 percent for checking and sending emails.

The data comes from a new Google survey which polled 1400 tablet owners. The survey puts "reading the news" as the fourth most common activity at 61 percent, followed by social networking (56 percent), music and videos (51 percent), e-books (46 percent), shopping (42 percent), and other (19 percent). The full report showed that 43 percent spent more time on their tablet than with their desktop or laptop PC. A third of respondents also said that they spent more time on their tablets than watching television.