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miller60 writes "World of Warcraft has had extended downtime in the past 24 hours, apparently due to problems with a content patch installation. Blizzard's first MMORPG had recurrent downtime problems in January. The performance problems haven't slowed the frantic growth for WoW, which now has more than 1.5 million subscribers (which, as the article notes, works out to at least $26,000 an hour in assumed revenue)."

miller60 writes "Here's a news item that puts some hard data on the domain typo millionaires post from a couple weeks back. Marchex Inc. just paid $164 million to buy Name Development Ltd., an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It's not a stock swap, either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads."

miller60 writes ""Touching is good" is the suggestive theme of the launch campaign for the Nintendo DS handheld, which appears designed to help Nintendo go beyond its kid-friendly image and appeal to older gamers. It's also advertising in Maxim with a campaign titled "How To Score." The company says the campaign represents a "different, bolder approach for Nintendo.""

miller60 writes ""Touching is good" is the suggestive theme of the launch campaign for the Nintendo DS handheld, which appears designed to help Nintendo go beyond its kid-friendly image and appeal to older gamers. It's also advertising in Maxim with a campaign titled "How To Score." The company says the campaign represents a "different, bolder approach for Nintendo.""

miller60 writes "At least one Adware company has purchased a game developer, hoping to use game downloads to install advertising software on gamers' computers. 180solutions, which recently received $40 million in venture capital funding, says its purchase of Full Armor Studios is the "first of many gaming relationships the company will forge over the coming months.""

miller60 writes "At least one Adware company has purchased a game developer, hoping to use game downloads to install advertising software on gamers' computers. 180solutions, which recently received $40 million in venture capital funding, says its purchase of Full Armor Studios is the "first of many gaming relationships the company will forge over the coming months.""

Many thanks to GameJournalism.com for the heads up on two white papers put out last month by the Women in Gaming Special Interest Group. The two papers (both excellent reads) are Chicks with Joysticks: An exploration of women in Gaming, and Why are there so few Women in Games? In a related topic, TerraNova has a piece on the Women 's Game Conference and MMOGs.

Early in September, some of the luminaries of the mobile gaming and mmog industries got together for the Austin Game Conference, an event organized by the Austin Game Initiative. Running concurrently with the Game Conference was the Women's Game Conference, a get-together focused on women in gaming. Over the past two weeks there have been a number of good reflections and observations put forth on the experience of both conferences. Show Director Chris Sherman sat down for an interview with Gamespot. Gamedevnet has a wrap-up of the whole event, as does the Guardian. TerraNova has observations on The BigWorld Middlewear suite, and a mmog specific wrap-up. For those interested in wireless, IBM has an article about mobile gaming. There are discussions of the Women's Gaming Conference as well, from MemoryCard's parting thoughts and the Guardian's one day overview.

miller60 writes "At GameJournalism.com we look at Games for Health 2004, a conference which will explore the use of interactive games in treating patients and training doctors. One presentation discusses "Glucoboy," a Gameboy based diabetes monitoring solution, while another looks at the use of video games in improving surgical outcomes. The event is organized by the Serious Games Initiative, among others."

miller60 writes "At GameJournalism.com we look at Games for Health 2004, a conference which will explore the use of interactive games in treating patients and training doctors. One presentation discusses "Glucoboy," a Gameboy based diabetes monitoring solution, while another looks at the use of video games in improving surgical outcomes. The event is organized by the Serious Games Initiative, among others."