Monthly Archives: July 2009

EA gets into the cheap, fast game market on iPhone

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EA gets into the cheap, fast game market on iPhoneEA has seen the iPhone as a place to release $10 ports of its big-name properties, but a new EA studio will go in the other direction with inexpensive, high-concept titles. The first game? Yup, it involves zombies.

EA’s approach to iPhone gaming has been to recreate its most successful properties as high quality, high price games. The games created have been pretty great so far, but success on the iPhone often goes to cheaper, high-concept titles, and EA has decided to get in on that action as well: the publishing giant has created a small studio called 8lb Gorilla to create easy to learn, inexpensive games for the iPhone. Continue reading →

Video Game Tester

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Playing Game

Ever wanted to become a video game tester? I know I always wanted too when I was younger. The video game industry is booming and a lot of people want to get in on the action. It is estimated that the video game industry is now over a fifty-billion dollar business, and it is expected to keep rising.

So how does one start in the video game industry? Well, most start with video game testing jobs. A video game tester is a person that beta testes games and gets paid for it. Have you ever played a game and found a glitch? Well, it was supposed to be the beta testers job to find it, but obviously he messed up.

If you are pretty good at spotting these errors in the game than you should consider getting a job as a video game tester. Most gamers only dream of these types of jobs, but they jsut never go out and do anything aobut it. If you want something in this world you have to go out and get it.

So if you love playing video games and would like to make some money try applying to a few game tester companies and see how far it takes you…

Apple earnings up 12 percent for the third quarter

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AppleApple reported on Tuesday third-quarter earnings higher than analysts had expected, but provided its usual conservative guidance.

Revenue came in at $8.34 billion, resulting in earnings of $1.35 per share. That’s a 12 percent increase from a year ago, when Apple reported earnings of $7.46 billion and earnings per share of $1.19.

The numbers for the quarter were even better than what analysts had predicted: They were expecting $1.17 in earnings per share and revenues of $8.2 billion.

Apple also beat most analysts’ expectations of its unit sales in its core businesses for the quarter. The company sold 2.6 million Macs, up 4 percent from a year ago, and 5.2 million iPhones, a 626 percent leap from a year ago. And even though the company’s 10.2 million iPods sold during the quarter was better than expected, it’s also Apple’s first yearly drop in iPod sales, declining 7 percent.

The quarter ended June 27 is the best nonholiday quarter in terms of revenue and earnings for Apple–a bar that had been newly set during the previous quarter. Apple again guided conservatively for the fourth quarter of 2009, saying it expects revenue between $8.7 billion and $8.9 billion on earnings per share between $1.18 to $1.23.

Apple’s earnings equate to more good news for the tech sector: last week had Intel, Dell, and IDC’s survey of the PC market all pointing to signs of recovery. We’ll have more details and will see what Apple executives and analysts have to say on the earnings call at 2 p.m.

Apple shares were up 2.1 percent to $154.69 in after hours trading.