The Nintendo-DeNA partnership may be old news by this stage, but its ripples are going to be felt in the industry for a long while to come - especially while we're still in the dark as to what comes next.
As such, there was still plenty of Nintendo chatter on the site this week.
We covered the booming share prices of both firms in the aftermath of the partnership, as well as having our Mavens speculate on the monetisation of a Nintendo-made mobile game.
Also around the site, we spoke to Rami Ismail about the "exploitative" state of F2P, quizzed Kumobius about the making of Bean Dreams, and highlighted the best job opportunities in the industry.
Industry voices
- We spoke to Melbourne-based indie studio Kumobius about the making of Bean Dreams.
- We spoke to Alistair Aitcheson, developer of Tap Happy Sabotage and winner of last year's Big Indie Pitch, about the importance of pitching.
- We presented our 7 top tips for talking about your game on camera.
- Aman Ghei from Nordeus, a firm best known for football management sim Top Eleven, told us about the company's new London studio - the focus of which may not even be sports games.
- Oren Todoros, mobile PR specialist at Plarium, shared his top tips for getting great PR on your game.
- We spoke to AdColony's Thorbjorn Warin ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects Bangalore, and he shared his belief in a bright future for the Indian mobile game market.
- Our series of guest columns from Pixelberry Studios continued with a piece on adding education to High School Story.
Discovery, user acquisition, retention, and monetisation
- We asked our Monetizer Mavens the big question: will Nintendo's F2P naivety hold it back in the mobile world, or will its design smarts shine through?
- Our Indie Mavens couldn't escape from Nintendo questioning, either. We asked them in what form would they prefer to see Nintendo's mobile games released - free-to-play or premium?
- The latest game put under the scrutiny of the IAP Inspector was World Zombination.
- Vlambeer's Rami Ismail told us why he stands against the current "exploitative" implementation of F2P.
- We updated out Soft Launch feature, championing the best and brightest mobile games still undergoing teaks and tests.
- Disney revealed that Tsum Tsum has generated $300 million in revenue - a lion's share of which is attributed to a partnership with the LINE mobile messaging service.
- App Annie reported a strong month for Super Casual games in February, with ZigZag and Crossy Road dominating iOS and Google Play respectively.
- Supercell's revenue for 2014 was revealed to be $1.7 billion - a threefold increase from the firm's 2013 financials.
- Karlijn Vogel-Meijer, social media manager at Dutch airline KLM, discussed why the firm took the decision to begin publishing mobile games.
- We spoke to Dan Griffiths, one half of indie duo Monster and Monster, about how UI and soft sell are key to F2P retailing.
- DeltaDNA ran down 10 reasons that developers struggle to cling on to their players.
- Free-to-play is officially a legal concern, expecially with some of the high-profile cases of late. Games lawyer Jas Purewal gave us the lowdown on keeping things legit at PG Connects London 2015.
Tools & platforms
- GetSocial 3.0, the latest iteration of the social platform for mobile games, released with MMX Racing and Ruzzle Adventure as early clients.
- Razer and Leap Motion will be working together on a version of the OSVR headset which features out of the box hand-tracking.
Funding, deals, acquisitions and personnel
- One week after the partnership between Nintendo and DeNA was made official, the stock market value of both firms skyrocketed - Nintendo up 32 percent and DeNA up 49.
- Minecraft, King, and Rovio execs have stepped up to join Tommy Palm on his new games accelerator Stugan.
- Scopely and Kung Fu Factory forged a multi-year partnership.
- Ex-Disney veterans set up a new mobile games publisher called Zig Zag Zoom, which aims to incentivise play by translating in-game minutes into currency fo real-life charitable causes.
Jobs
- Our Jobs Board round-up highlighted the most exciting job opportunities in the industry right now, with ZeptoLab, Next Games, Rovio Stars and more looking to hire.
- Framed developer Loveshack is looking to hire a gameplay programmer for its Melbourne office.
Events
- Peter Molyneux, Ian Livingstone, and Steve Wozniak will be keynoting the inaugural Apps World Germany event this April.
- YeahMobi launched its App Developer Boost Program, aiming to help indie and mid-tier devs expand their business.
- PG Connects Bangalore's Acquire and Monetise track will feature representatives from Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Fiksu.
- Speakers from SEGA, King, Blizzard, and Bigpoint will be taking the stage at Game QA and Localisation Forum 2015.