EA inviting Sim City Social refugees to Plants vs. Zombies Adventures – Last month we reported that game developer and publisher Electronic Arts announced that on June 14 it will retire three of its Facebook games: Sim City Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society. Today we’ve learned that EA is inviting Sim City Social players to play the beta for the highly anticipated Plants vs. Zombies Adventures Facebook game via emails. The game will launch publicly on May 20.

DreamWorks, PikPok and Verizon promote Turbo with mobile game and $1M in rewards – DreamWorks Animation announced it is promoting its upcoming film Turbo with a mobile game by developer PikPok, which will feature a contest with $1 million in total cash prizes. The Turbo Racing League mobile game is available on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android handsets and tablets, and Windows Phone 8, but players on Verizon, which is presenting the $1 million Shell-Out contest, will have access to unique content. You can read about the contest rules in detail here.

Former New York Times digital and mobile products manager joins EA’s Board of Directors – Game developer and publisher Electronic Arts has appointed Denise F. Warren to its Board of Directors. Warren is executive vice president of the digital products and services group and former chief advertising officer at The New York Times Company. The announcement comes on the heels of EA’s Q4 2013 earnings report which revealed the company earned $104 million in revenue from mobile, and its increasing focus on mobile and digital products.

Elephant Mouse launches Star Trek Rivals – Mobile game developer Elephant Mouse announced the launch of a free-to-play card battle game based on the recently released Star Trek Into Darkness feature film. The game will feature more than 100 cards for players to collect, representing characters, starships and technoolgies that appear in the film. The game is avilable to download for free from the iTunes App Store.

Sonic The Hedgehog debuts on Android – Game developer and publisher Sega announced that the 16-bit Genesis classic Sonic The Hedgehog has launched on Android. The game, which was already available on iOS, is now available to download from the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

Kabam to implement Google+ Sign-In – Social game developer Kabam announced that it will be the first games company to implement Google+ Sign-In. The new integration will provide users with a simple and secure sign-in process on Kabam.com and the ability to engage users with interactive posts, which allow players to share content and prompt friends to take specific actions in their games.

Corona Labs announces Dilbert Game Jam — Venture-backed mobile software company Corona Labs has teamed up with the creator of the Dilbert comic strip Venture-backed mobile software company for a mobile game development contest. Developers are invited to create a winning a game with the Corona SDK and Dilbert artwork. The winner will have the opportunity to publish the the game to major app stores. Additional prizes include yearlong subscriptions to Corona SDK Pro, iTunes gift cards and more. The contest runs from May 14 through July 12 with winners to be announced on July 19. You can read more about the Dilbert Game Jam here.

Google announces game services — During Google’s sixth annual I/O keynote in San Francisco Google’s vice president of Android product management Hugo Barra announced the launch of Google’s equivalent to iOS’ Game Center, Google Play game services. The new feature allows developers to add cloud sync to any game, so users can save their data like player progression and game state across any Android device. Additionally, Google Play game services adds leaderboards and achievements support as well as a new multiplayer feature. Also, game services isn’t limited to Android apps, the service can be integrated into an iOS or web app, allowing cross-platform play.

The London-based game studio behind Candy Crush Saga today announced that it’s launching Pet Rescue Saga on iOS and Android early this summer, while also revealing that it has more than 70 million daily active users (DAU) across all platforms — mobile, Facebook and web.

Pet Rescue Saga, which first launched on Facebook in October 2012, joins Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga as the third mobile title from the U.K. company. Pet Rescue Saga is a match-3 puzzler in the same vein as the mega popular Candy Crush Saga. The title will launch with more than 72 levels, providing cross-platform gameplay across mobile and Facebook, meaning a user’s game state including their leaderboards, scores and progress remain synchronized. Cross-platform play has been a feature that has shown to be very successful for King’s mobile games so far. Pet Rescue Saga for mobile was developed by King’s Malmo studio.

King’s 70 DAU is significant because it topped Zynga’s 52 million DAU, which it announced during its latest earnings call. When comparing the companies, King is a private company with 450 employees, while on the other hand, Zynga is a public company with a much larger workforce. (more…)

Mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy today announced a partnership with South Korea’s largest social mobile platform Kakao, which will allow developers on the Kakao Games platform to monetize with Tapjoy’s advertising and monetization tools.

The Kakao Games platform allows users to play with KakaoTalk users, share game scores, and compete on leaderboards in real-time. Games on the platform now gross more than $40 million per month, the company revealed in a statment.

In March, Tapjoy revealed that approximately 100 million unique viewers who come through its network per month are international, which equates to about 75 percent of its overall unique viewers per month coming from outside the U.S.

The partnership provides Tapjoy the opportunity to deliver premium content within titles on the Kakao Games platform.

KakaoTalk currently has more than 90 million users around the globe, more than 30 million users visiting the platform every day and is South Korea’s practically ubiquitous mobile messaging app. SundayToz was the first developer to get its match-3 puzzler Anipang on KakaoTalk’s game platform. At GDC 2013, SundayToz founder and CEO Kevin Lee told us he spoke with the founder of Kakao, and proposed the idea to turn the messenger app into a game platform, which led to the launch of Anipang for Kakao. Today, Anipang is generating around $500,000 in revenue a day.

Recently, KakaoTalk also demonstrated growth outside of its native South Korea by surpassing the 10 million download mark in Japan on March 24.

Gameloft yesterday released its earnings for Q1 2013. The French mobile game developer achieved sales of €54.2 million ($70.1 million), up 21 percent over the same quarter a year ago.

Smartphone and tablet revenues increased by 71 percent year-over-year, representing 60 percent of total group sales compared with 43 percent in Q1 2012.

Gameloft attributes its fast growth to the success of the free-to-play model. The company adds that more than 67 percent of its smartphone sales came from in-app purchases and ad revenues in Q1. In terms of which games performed well in the quarter, Gameloft says older titles from as far back as 2011 and 2012 like Dungeon Hunter 4: Zero Hour, World at Arms, My Little Pony, Ice Age Village, Order & Chaos Online, Gangstar Rio: City of Saints and Asphalt 7: Heat, have largely contributed to the company’s strong performance in the first quarter.

Gameloft hopes three recently released titles in the past few weeks including Dungeon Hunter 4, Iron Man 3 and Order & Chaos Duels, help grow sales in future quarters. Gameloft claims Iron Man 3 was the most downloaded game worldwide on the iOS after it was launched. Future releases include Gangstar Vegas, Despicable Me and Uno & Friends.

Gameloft didn’t provide an earnings forecast for Q2 2013. Gameloft’s share price closed today at €5.29 ($6.84), up 0.95 percent.

Finnish mobile game developer and creator of Angry Birds Rovio Entertainment announced the launch of its third-party mobile game publishing initiative, Rovio Stars.

Icerbreaker: A Viking Voyage by developer Nitrome will be the first game published under the Rovio Stars Program, followed by Spanish developer 5 Ants’ stealth puzzle game, Tiny Thief.

Many mobile game developers like Pocket Gems, Zynga, and Kabam have launched their own third-party publishing programs recently, and we’ve heard rumors Rovio would launch a similar program for a while. In January, PocketGamer.biz all but confirmed the program’s existance when it reported that 5 Ants had been signed with Rovio but at the time we weren’t certian that this was not a talent acquisition.

“Rovio Entertainment has positioned itself as one of the powerhouses of mobile entertainment, so moving into publishing is a logical step for us at this point”, Rovio’s executive vice president of games Jami Laes said in a statment. “We want to help our fans find quality entertainment among the more than 100,000 games available in app stores. That’s where Rovio Stars comes in.”

Games that leverage Rovio’s Angry Birds brand are immensely successful, with titles showing up at the top of our weekly charts regularly, but the developer’s more recent titles based on new IP have struggled. Amazing Alex, Rovio’s first new IP after Angry Birds, is currently the No. 258 top paid app in the games genre according to traffic tracking service AppData. The Croods, based on the DreamWorks animated motion picture, is currently the No. 247 top grossing app in the games genre.

Rovio said that Icerbreaker: A Viking Voyage is “coming soon” to iOS. Check back in with Inside Social Games for our full review.

Mobile-social gaming giant GREE today reported 37.9 billion yen ($370.9 million) in revenue and 10.8 billion yen ($105.7 million) in operating profit for the third quarter of 2013, a quarter-over-quarter decline of both sales and profits. Sales fell 4 percent and profits 24 percent. Year-over-year, revenues are down 18 percent from 46.2 billion yen ($452.1 million) in Q3 2012 and operating profit dipped by 56 percent from 24.5 billion yen ($239.7 million).

The Japanese company, which was established in 2004, also posted an “extraordinary” loss of 4.03 billion yen (39.4 million) on one-time write-off of assets related to some titles. The loss was part of GREE’s plans to shift growth strategy to “selection” and “concentration”, where it will streamline its portfolio of core titles. Card battle titles from Pokelabo, the Japanese game studio GREE acquired in October 2012, are performing well for GREE. Three of the top 25 grossing iOS apps in Japan include Guardian Battle of Glory at No. 7, Sword of Phantasia at No. 10 and Clan Battle of Fate at No. 25. GREE also plans to share its successful Android lessons with Pokelabo, while Pokelabo plans to do the same for GREE with iOS lessons. (more…)

Social games developer and publisher Zynga today announced the release of its seventh game under the “With Friends” brand, an endless runner titled Running With Friends. The game should be available to download for free from the Apple App Store starting tonight and tomorrow morning.

Set in a cartoon-style re-imagining of Pamplona, Spain, the game puts players into the town’s famous Running of the Bulls Festival. Gameplay is very similar to Temple Run, Vector, Subway Surfers, and other games in the endless runner genre. It’s particular similar to the latter in that the device is oriented vertically, with the camera behind the character, allowing the player to swipe and tap in order to dodge obstacles across three lanes.

While it may be similar to other endless runners, Running With Friends is also adding several new features to the formula to keep it fresh. The social element of games has always been Zynga’s primary concern and Running With Friends is no different, allowing users to do as the title suggests and play with their friends asynchronously. The level for each round of the game is randomly generated, but players who compete with friends will compete over the same randomly generated level. The player who gets the highest score by running farther and collecting more stars, wins.

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Dragons and Titans goes into open beta – Zynga partner Wyrmbyte today announced that its MOBA game Dragons and Titans has gone into open beta. You can read about our hands-on demo with the game from GDC 2013, or jump right into the game on Facebook.

Car Town to feature Fast & Furious 6 content — Game developer Cie Games announced that it has partnered with Universal Pictures to add promotional content to its popular Facebook game Car Town. You can read our review of the game here. The partnership between Cie Games and Universal will combine virtual and real-world efforts, including in-game film integration with missions inspired by the movie.

Playstudios launches Mirage — Free-to-play casino game developer Playstudios today announced it’s adding new content inspired by Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage Hotel & Casino to myVegas. myVegas, which reached three million installs since launch, is a combination of a resource management sim and gambling title with slots and card games, as well as regular mini-games.

Phyken Media launches Wizard Ops Tactics – Independent game developer Phyken Media announced that it has released Wizard Ops Tactics for iOS and Android devices. Players take on the role of a Wizard Commander as they build a Wizard Army of Ice, Fire, Earth and Air Wizards which can be combined in 140,000 unique ways. The game is free to download from Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

Zynga adds The Country Fair to FarmVille 2 –  The County Fair will add new content to players at level 20 and above in Zynga’s FarmVille 2. The new weekly event will have players displaying their prized crops and competing with friends. Zynga said on its blog that the The County Fair is a complex feature and that will be slowly rolled out over the coming months.

Facebook recaps stats about its games ecosystem from GDC 2013 – In a blog post Monday, Facebook’s director of games Sean Ryan recapped some stats about its games ecosystem that were revealed during the 2013 Game Developers Conference. Ryan says more than 250 million users are playing games on Facebook each month, and 82 percent of the top 100 grossing U.S. mobile games and 75 percent of the top 100 grossing U.S. Android mobile games are integrated with Facebook. In 2012, Facebook paid out more than to $2 billion to game developers and saw total payers increase 24 percent year-over-year from March 2012 to March 2013.

GREE updates NFL Shuffle with new ‘Talents’ feature – Mobile-social gaming giant GREE updated its card-based game NFL Shuffle with a new feature called ‘Talents’ that is aimed at increasing the game’s competitiveness. Users can now utilize an NFL players Talent, a game-changing boost, to increase a card’s scoring potential. Talents come in the form of gameplay enhancements such as additional swaps, and shuffles, offense and defense team bonuses, and Silver and Gold Football Bonuses.

Zynga today revealed its newest core game title, Solstice Arena, a multiplayer online battle arena game for mobile devices from the A Bit Lucky team.

A Bit Lucky is the developer behind games like Lucky Train and Lucky Space, which were shut down on Facebook in September 2012 while the studio continued to work on Solstice Arena. When Zynga acquired the studio, also in September 2012, A Bit Lucky’s employees became a part of Zynga San Francisco and continued to work on Solstice Arena, though little was known about the game at the time.

Today we finally learned that Solstice Arena is a MOBA game, a genre that originated with the popular mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) for Blizzard’s PC and Mac strategy game Warcraft 3.

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The social gaming giant’s nonprofit organization Zynga.org and venture philanthropy firm NewSchools Venture Fund will create an “ed tech” accelerator focused on enhancing the quality and reach of learning games and apps designed to improve education outcomes.

Zynga and NewSchool selected ed tech companies Kidaptive, LocoMotiveLabs, and Motion Math for the program, which will officially start this summer. Edmodo, the world’s largest social learning platform for education, will also join the accelerator as a charter partner. Zynga will provide the companies with work space at its San Francisco headquarters and encourage Zynga employees to volunteer their expertise in game design, testing, analytics, product marketing and distribution. Zynga.org has also agreed to commit $1 million in funding for the accelerator’s first year.

Some of Zynga.org’s previous initiatives allowed players to donate to charitable organizations like Toys for Tots and FATEM by purchasing special in-game items. To date, Zynga.org raised more than $13 million for its non-profit partners.

NewSchools Venture Fund, which is focused on improving public education for low-income children, has invested in many for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Its portfolio of more than 100 organizations includes technology-focused solutions like Engrade, eSpark and GreatSchools.