This week, Bloomberg sparked a number of headlines with reports that iPad mini demand was failing based on supplier Pegatron’s earnings numbers as revealed at an investor conference. Those claims were later refuted by Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng, who argued that Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan had misquoted him to reach his conclusion about iPad mini numbers.

The problem here is one that comes up repeatedly for Apple watchers, namely that of trying to divine from scattered sources what the future holds for the iPhone maker. Reports of slowdowns, layoffs or weak fiscal results from any number of supplier companies, including Pegatron, Foxconn and Sharp have bloggers feverishly pounding keys, predicting dire straits for Apple to come. The problem is, these have never been a very strong indicator of what’s actually going on with Cupertino and its products, and for good reason.

As Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-DeWitt learned from Cheng via email, Pegatron has a wide customer base and never breaks out how each of those are affecting its bottom line or its quarterly financial outlook. Pegatron has its fingers in all kinds of pies, including home video game consoles and e-readers, both of which are currently suffering badly in terms of consumer sales.

Here’s a look back at some equally dire reports from recent memory that also turned out not to have any relation whatsoever to anything Apple was doing, performance-wise.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, gaming console and software company OUYA announced that they have closed a $15 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, and with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Ocean Partners. This marks one of the largest institutional investments to go to a project that had its humble beginnings on Kickstarter.

OUYA is a company that launched back in 2012 on Kickstarter under the guiding hands of Julie Uhrman, a video game industry veteran who believes that gaming should be affordable and enjoyable for everyone. She and the team developed a $99 Android gaming console, which hooks into the TV and comes with automatic access to free-to-try games. It launched on the crowdfunding site to much fanfare, scoring $8.6 million in funding, which ends up being around 9x more than OUYA asked.

Along with the $15 million round, which brings OUYA’s total amount of funding to $23.5 million, the company will also be bringing KPCB General Partner Bing Gordon on to the board of directors. Gordon brings with him years of experience from Electronic Arts.

Here’s what he had to say about the funding:

OUYA’s open source platform creates a new world of opportunity for established and emerging independent game creators and gamers alike. There are some types of games that can only be experienced on a TV, and OUYA is squarely focused on bringing back the living room gaming experience. OUYA will allow game developers to unleash their most creative ideas and satisfy gamers craving a new kind of experience.

The OUYA hardware has proven its spot in the market with the successful Kickstarter project, followed by an institutional investment led by a firm such as KPCB. “The message is clear: people want OUYA,” said Uhrman.

But the same story rings true for software, as the company has seen over 12,000 developers sign up for the platform to build games and monetize them in any way they’d like. This is up from 8,000 developer signups in March.

And if that weren’t enough, OUYA has been picked up by major retailers like GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon, with availability originally intended to begin June 4. OUYA is pushing that back to June 25, however, announcing the delay today as a result of a desire to be able to meet initial demand.

Clearly, the affordable gaming console speaks to people. But is it enough to make OUYA profitable? In an interview with TechCrunch, Uhrman explained that OUYA essentially breaks even on the hardware from the $99 gaming console, and that all games will be free-to-try. Curious if that was sustainable, we asked Uhrman if free-to-try would always be the case with OUYA games.

“Free to try is a core tenet of OUYA,” said Uhrman. “We wanted a gaming experience for the television that’s inexpensive to get into. Developers monetize however they’d like to, which is why we have games with unlockable demos inside a fully paid version, or micro-transactions, and even a donation based game. I’m looking forward to the first episodic, subscription-based game,” she said.

According to Uhrman, the latest round from KPCB and friends will go toward further supporting game developers and development, bringing in exclusive and unique OUYA content, and meeting the demand seen from all parts of the world, including Japan, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While Facebook is building out a bolder role in mobile in the form of Facebook Home, it looks like it is also continuing to make acquisitions that will help bolster that strategy overall. We have learned that in the lead-up to the launch last week, the social network appears to have quietly picked up Osmeta, a Mountain View-based mobile software startup. Osmeta had yet to launch a commercial product, and it is not completely clear at this point if this is an acqui-hire or a technology deal as well.

We have reached out to Facebook for a comment and will update this post if we hear back. In the meantime, this is what we’ve been able to piece together:

– Osmeta has been around since August 2011. It was co-founded by Google/IBM alum Amit Singh, and IBM alum Mark Smith, and it had 17 employees — all engineers. It’s “about” page describes a team of “world-renowned hackers and highly accomplished researchers capable of herculean software engineering.” In addition to Google and IBM Research, other past employers included Yahoo Research, VMware and Facebook.

– A number of employees who had listed Osmeta as a place of employment are now indicating that they work at Facebook on their LinkedIn profiles. One of them specifically notes that he moved to Facebook after it acquired Osmeta in March 2013.

– The company had yet to publicly launch a product, but what it was working on is/was in the mobile space, and appears to be something that works across multiple devices — evidenced by a picture on its site of 25 pieces of hardware running on different platforms. It’s not clear if Osmeta’s technology has also gone over with Osmeta’s employees.

– The stealth product is was/is likely in the area of software:

“Between us, over the years, we have done pretty much ‘everything’ in terms of software creation, including several first-in-the-world type of magical things,” the site notes. “(Examples: Android, Chrome for Android, Chrome OS, Google Crawling, AdWords, ZooKeeper, BookKeeper, Pig (Hadoop), OSGi, Linux kernel control groups, network and other device drivers, cognitive computing, massive storage systems, unusual file systems, various types of virtualization, video game console emulation, and many, many others.)”

– Amarjit Gill, CEO of enterprise storage company Maginatics and himself a very successful entrepreneur (selling companies to Google, Apple and Broadcom), is one of Osmeta’s angel investors and a board member. Another VC mentioned on Osmeta’s site is Brian Long, a general partner at Atlantic Bridge Ventures. It’s not clear if he also backs the company.

– What does Osmeta mean? We have a guess from Amit Kumar, CEO of e-commerce app platform Lexity, who knows Amit Singh from studying together in Delhi, and appears to be the first person to have spotted the Osmeta/Facebook link. He goes back to Singh’s expertise in virtualization. “‘Osmeta’ – a reference to ‘meta operating system’ — potentially a virtualization technology that allows you to run the same ‘core functionality’ on top of any (potentially mobile) hardware?”

Kumar also puts forward the idea that Osmeta was more than an acqui-hire: “What if Facebook decided that, strategically, they need Facebook Home to transcend every mobile device – not just Android,” he writes. “Perhaps what Osmeta has built so far lets them spread Facebook Home across this fragmented device ecosystem, quickly, in a scalable fashion, and achieve a consistent, Facebook-centered experience, across all devices?”

“All devices” might be an overstatement, particularly considering that Facebook Home on iOS is a non-starter for now. But Android alone offers a range of devices that you could see Osmeta helping Facebook to span.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Pour one out for the Gold Guy tonight, my fellow gamers. A sage pillar of the industry has fallen.

Just 154 days after acquiring LucasArts as part of their larger, $4B acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney has dissolved the classic video game development company.

Beginning today, Disney will continue to license out the LucasArts properties (namely Star Wars), but has ceased the development of all internal projects. Some projects (such as the incredible looking Star Wars 1313) may find new homes with other development houses, but their status is currently up in the air.

While the move was not unforeseen (the company’s last few games haven’t been very successful, and rumors of projects being shuttered have trickled in since the acquisition), that doesn’t make today’s news any less disheartening. A part of my childhood — a part of an entire generation of gamer’s collective childhood, really — goes down with LucasArts.

To the 150 people reportedly laid off today, and to everyone who had a part in the LucasArts legacy, we thank you.

Thank you for bringing us into the world of Guybrush Threepwood and Monkey Island.

Thank you for Maniac Mansion and Day Of The Tentacle, two games which helped to prove that video games could be funny, and somehow remain funny to this very day.

Thank you for Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. While we may never get the sequels that we’ve been collectively clamoring for for well over a decade, these games helped to introduce the gaming world to project lead Tim Schafer and opened the doors for his company, Double Fine Productions (the folks behind Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and one of the biggest Kickstarters of all time)

Thank you for The Dig, a game that got me through a particularly terrible flu in the third grade and re-sparked my then waning interest in computers.

Thank you for bringing Sam and Max into the digital world. Though they live on at Telltale Games (which, like Double Fine, is a team founded by LucasArts alum), LucasArts was the first company to see Sam and Max’s potential as more than just a lil’ indie comic book.

Thank you for Star Wars: Battlefront (co-developed with Pandemic Studios, also since shuttered), The Force Unleashed, the X-Wing series, for your part in Knights Of The Old Republic, and for countless other memories.

LucasArts had its hits and it had its misses, but their legacy extends beyond any one game, brand, or series. Their games defined genres, and much of the talent they nurtured throughout the 90s has gone on to define the entire industry.

So long, LucasArts, and thanks for all the SCUMM.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

[Editor's Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.]

It seems like every time we make purchases online or in a store, we’re collecting some sort of points or rewards. For the most part, those points go unused, mostly because the companies who give them out don’t do a great job of explaining what you can actually do with them.

You know the drill, you purchase a video game and you get some GameStop points that you can use after you purchase three more games, or something along those lines. Inevitably, you forget to use them when the time comes or you refuse to sign up to get their card.

A company called KULA Causes wants to point those points, rewards and frequent flyer miles to good use — for charity. KULA converts those points into actual currency, spreading goodwill all over the world.

According to the research firm Colloquy, at least $16B worth of reward points and miled went unredeemed in 2011 alone. KULA has built a service to turn those unused rewards into cash contributions for over 2.5M causes around the world. By working with brands on building this three-way bridge between companies, causes and consumers, KULA is making a real difference in over 80 countries all over the world. Since there are so many causes in KULA’s database, it’s easy to find a few that you really care about, and then you’re motivated to put your unclaimed rewards to good use.

KULA calls the process “democratized transactional giving,” which the company hopes will build goodwill between companies and consumers, even if the reward points that someone has collected aren’t used by them for in-store purchases. The company was founded in 2010 and has raised $1.6M to date.

It’s up to the companies to integrate KULA into their reward offerings, but it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

The company also has a great blog called “The Currency Of Giving” that is worth a read. The mixing of companies focusing on both profitability and non-profit programs is an important one, as consumers do care more about companies that do social good.

Would you give your points and rewards away for charity?

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When my friends found out that I was going to interview Irrational Games‘ Ken Levine, who led the development of the acclaimed video game BioShock, as well as its just-released sequel BioShock Infinite, everyone said I had to ask him about the Seasteading Institute, a group that has been jokingly referred to as “BioShock for real.”

The institute was co-founded and funded by famed entrepreneur investor, and libertarian Peter Thiel, and it’s looking to build communities at sea that are independent of any government. To gamers of a certain mindset, that seems pretty reminiscent of Rapture, the libertarian undersea community featured in BioShock. So I asked Levine what he thinks of the idea, and he said:

What I was trying to do with BioShock was to say, ‘Okay, well, [in Atlas Shrugged] that’s a utopia where Ayn Rand, who made the philosophy, made all the rules, and all the characters were under her control. What if things weren’t under everybody’s control?’ And I think that’s the problem with utopias — we bring ourselves to it, you know? We think we’re leaving our problems behind but – I don’t mean this in a cynical way – we are the problem. Like whatever social problems that occur come out of us. It’s not like they fall out of the sky. I think people think they’re going to go to a utopian society, and I think it’s not really possible.

(To be fair to the Seasteading Institute, the organization says it’s not just for libertarians, and it even published a blog post about how the idea is different from Rapture.)

We also talked about the setting of BioShock Infinite, which takes place at the turn of the 20th century. Levine said he was attracted to the period because it was a time of enormous technological change, with the introduction of electricity, cars, airplanes, radios, phonographs, and more, all within a few decades: “We’ve really only had one piece of technology in our lifetime which has been that substantial, which is the Internet. They had 10 Internets, effectively, in terms of things that just changed their world completely.”

Not that the new game takes place in a realistic historical setting. Instead, it’s set in a floating city of the sort that people imagined they would live in, and one that’s dominated by religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and racism. Those can be pretty sensitive topics, even today, and while Levine said he’s mostly trying to tell a good story, he also has to follow that story wherever it leads:

If you start getting scared of what story you’re telling, it’s going to show. You have to be kind of stupidly fearless, I think, to do this stuff, because otherwise you’re goign to try to please people. And that’s not what we’re in the business of doing. Which is weird, because we’re in the video game business — we want to please people so that they’re going to have an entertaining experience, but we’re not trying to make people super-comfortable with everything. We want to challenge people, and we want to challenge ourselves, too.

Lastly, I asked Levine about whether he’s interested in making the move from consoles to mobile or tablet gaming. He said he certainly plays those games, and he’s open to the idea, but he hasn’t figured out his next project yet.

“I think that whatever I wanted to do, I would make sure it’s something that embraces the platform that it’s on, rather than fights the platform it’s on,” he said. In other words, he doesn’t want to take a console game and try to squeeze it onto an iPad.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

ImageBrief, a request-based stock photo marketplace that aims to give Getty a run for its money, has raised a $700,000 round from Square Peg’s Paul Bassat and Justin Liberman as well as other Australian investors. The company, originally based down under, has thus far raised $2.2 million.

Imagebrief uses a real-language search and request system to find or commission photos. Users can request pictures (“A goat riding a motorcycle” or “a woman dressed in traditional Ewok battle gear”) and photographers can respond with photos they believe match the request. Photographers can also take and submit new photos if they don’t have anything in their library.

Most photography sites current offer basic keyword searches which are problematic. For example, one user may label something as a “video game system” when photo buyers are actually looking for an NES.

ImageBrief was founded in Australia in 2011 but moved its commercial headquarters to New York towards the end of last year. The Company announced that in this most recent investment round, just over $700,000 had been raised from some of Australia’s most highly regarded internet entrepreneurs and investors including Square Peg’s Paul Bassat and Justin Liberman (who were already backers of the Company), Adrian MacKenzie and Anthony Klok. Total investment capital raised to date is now over $2.2 million.

The company launched in February 2013 and offered a Pinterest-like experience that many stock photo services are missing. Users can also follow photographers they like. The company has already sourced photos to Conde Nast, DDB, and BBDO.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google has put together a fitting tribute for what would have been sci-fi writer and humorist Douglas Adams’ 61st birthday.

The interactive Google Doodle features an assortment of fun references from Adams’ novel Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy including the Arthur’s towel, moody old Marvin, and a nice cuppa. It’s also cute to note that Google’s interpretation of the The Guide looks a lot like a Kindle – then again, that probably isn’t much of a coincidence.

The late Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, England, where by all accounts he was gifted with an amazing talent for words from infancy. He is best known for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its subsequent sequels, as well as his work writing for several Infocom titles that include the video game version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide and Bureaucracy. Adams also famously scripted an episode of Doctor Who that was never completed or aired, which is almost as great of a farce as Stanley Kubrick’s scraped Napoleon epic. Adams died of an heart attack May 11, 2001 at the age of 49. He is remembered primarily as one of the finest – and funniest – sci-fi writers of his age.

Now if only Google could just tell us the real meaning of the universe… oh wait.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As it turns out, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell gets awfully chatty when he attends award ceremonies. His appearance at the (generally awful) Spike TV Video Game Awards got him ruminating about the future of living room PCs, and ahead of today’s BAFTA Games Awards he confirmed to the BBC that Valve is working on Steam Box prototypes that will be released to testers “in the next three to four months”.

The BBC’s report is a rather brief one, but Newell was awfully candid. Beyond offering a rough timeframe for actual user testing, he also noted that the team working on the hardware was struggling with keeping the amount of heat and noise the console generated in check. It’s a common problem among the current slew of consoles, especially as gamers’ demands for pure pixel-pushing performance continue to grow — turning on the original Xbox 360 wasn’t unlike firing up a jet engine, and the fat PlayStation 3 had a tendency to make its surroundings just a bit toastier.

As always, Newell had nothing to say about what kind of hardware will be part of the Steam Box, but did allude once again to the prospect of adding a more personal dimension to how we play games. The Verge reported earlier this year that Valve was exploring ways to enhance the gaming experience by keeping tabs not only on a user’s direct inputs, but their biometric responses as well. Newell briefly revisited that notion again, this time noting that the company has yet to decide whether it will actually attempt to collect that sort of data using the controller — Valve is currently assessing multiple controller concepts, which appears to be one of the project’s major sticking points for the time being.

Nebulous though it may be, it could be that sort of deeply personal angle that ultimately sets Valve’s console apart from the likes of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft — players who have already spent years vying for control of our living rooms. Newell’s vision is of a reactive gaming experience, one that grows and changes depending on what players are going through at that moment. He uses the physiological effects that horror games like Left 4 Dead can produce as an example:

“You need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is – what their heart rate is, things like that – in order to offer them a new experience each time they play.”

It’s far too early to tell whether or not Valve’s approach to living room gaming will pan out, but one thing seems clear — Valve is building up the Steam Box to be a gamer’s game console, and players like Sony and Nintendo would do well to stay on their toes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

What if you could actually grasp the sword you pick up in a video game, or if surgeons could feel their robots hit bone? That’s the promise of the Tactilous glove, which won this weekend’s Upverter + Y Combinator Hardware Hackathon. Watch as we demo the Frankenstein-meets-Nintendo contraption that lets you touch objects in virtual reality.

Duct tape, twine, and a whole lot of hot glue. That’s how Jack Minardi and his team forged the Tactilous in just eight hours. Minardi, a Python researcher for Enthought by day, said he gravitated to hardware hacking because “I could tell a computer exactly what to do, but I wanted to be able to tell the world what to do.”

Other teams built gadgets to burn images into toast and more, but Minardi’s squad won an iPad, some Pebble watches, and access to some of Silicon Valley’s top investors. The teammates won’t be quitting their jobs just yet. However, their code is on GitHub, and they’re looking for companies to help them build a second prototype using pneumatic artificial muscles. One day the device could rehabilitate stroke victims.

Strapping this thing on was surreal. As it pulled my fingers back to simulate the resistance of holding a hard object, I had a sudden urge to go on a robotic rampage. Watch up top as the servos fire and actuators tense to let me feel something that doesn’t exist.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch