Xbox Live’s Virtual Game Room Launches – A while back, Microsoft announced more social improvements for its Xbox Live platform with the plan for a virtual Game Room. It went live this week, offering people the chance to play retro games from 1970s and 1980s arcades. This includes classic titles from Atari, Konami, and even Intellivision. Of course, like their brick and mortar counterparts, the arcade machines require some coin to play, $0.50, though if users wish to keep the game, they can buy it for $3 to $5. Users are also be able to build their own custom arcade, and issue friend challenges complete with avatar-taunting customization.

App Store Allows App Gifting – Spotted a few days ago by Rana Sobhany, the popular concept of gifting music on iTunes has now, finally, been brought to the App Store. Users can now, in addition to adding apps to a wish list or telling friends about them, actually click an option called “Gift This App.” Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to do this from the iPhone or iPod Touch… yet.

Ukash Expands in South America - Thursday, the pay-by-voucher service known as Ukash expanded its global borders — into Bolivia. This brings the total number of countries, in which Ukash is available in, to 30. Now, customers within Bolivia will be able to purchase Ukash vouchers, valued at $20, $50, and $100, from Deligiro terminals in the cities of La Paz, Santa Cruz, Sucre, and Cochabamba.

[via Virtual Goods News]

Verizon Enters into Virtual Goods Payments – Earlier this week, mobile carrier Verizon Wireless partnered with the online payments firm, Danal, to become yet another cellular provider to offer a mobile payment service. Aimed specifically at virtual goods transactions, customers of Verizon will now be able to purchase digital goods from participating websites and have the cost added on to their monthly bill. However, the maximum purchase will be limited to $25.

Early Numbers iPad Apps – Though the iPad isn’t available to the public yet, mobile analytics company, Flurry is already releasing some interesting statistics on the current apps testing for Apple’s new device. Evidently, the type of application seeing the most testing is games, at a whopping 44%. Second to that comes books, at 14%, followed by social networking at 7%.

[image via Bloomberg Business Week]

Leaked iPad Apps – PadGadget.com made another interesting find about the device. Apparently, when using Apple’s web interface for iTunes, it is possible to find a boatload of Apple-approved iPad applications that are marked as “HD,” and in some cases, “XL.” Currently, such games include the following:

• Ammoin HD
• Azkend HD
• Flight Control HD
• Grind HD
• HD Recovery
• Labyrinth 2 HD
• NBA Hotshot HD
• Numba HD
• Plants vs. Zombie HD
• Sparkle HD
• Worms HD

Of course, it isn’t actually possible to download any of these applications, and their visibility will likely be removed very soon; if they haven’t been already.

Web Programs Saterize Social Games - Facebook Game Idea Generator and Progress Wars honor the popularity of social games through ridicule. While the former app randomly generates generic, yet amusing, social titles such as Vampire Plant or Pirate City, the latter is much more in-depth, poking fun at the basic social RPG concept of clicking the “Do Mission” button and watching your level number increase. In the epic journey that is Progress Wars, players have the ultimate task of clicking “Perform Mission” and complete daring tasks such as killing silk traders, growing people, or stealing Chinese merchant ships as their level progression bar grows.

PlaySpan Partners with Heatwave Interactive – Last week we touched on the hip-hop social game, Platinum Life from Heatwave Interactive. This week, the developer and payment service provider, PlaySpan have teamed up to integrate the latter company’s payment services into the growing social game. In the title, players will rise from a musical nobody to a platinum hip-hop star, and will encounter artists such as Ludacris, Omarion, DJ Holiday, and more. It is these celebrity appearances and likenesses that have garnered the most publicity for the title.

Valve Announces Virtual Goods Transactions – Popular mainstream game developer and publisher, Valve announced this week that Steam will be getting some new toys in the form of micropayment support. Now, users will be able to make in-game purchases via whatever billing method is used for Steam account (usually through credit cards). Unfortunately, none of the games on Steam contain virtual goods, yet, but the service will still be usable for the buying of downloadable content and full games.

World of Warcraft Used to Protest Chinese Game Censorship – While it is not unusual for popular games to have fan made movies made using their in-game resources (dubbed machinima), a recent video called “War of Internet Addition” has come about that is both entertaining and a bit political. Using visuals and avatars from World of Warcraft, the 64 minute video almost directly represents the ever increasing Chinese restrictions of the web in a very satirical fashion.

The Chinese version can be found at Youku’s Buzz blog. English subtitles can be found in seven parts on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

MyTown Hits 1 Million Users – Though it was one of the most recent of the location-based titles to appear on the iPhone, the social title, Booyah‘s MyTown has passed 1 million registered users before competing location games Foursquare and Gowalla. Playing the game means checking in at real world locals, but while Foursquare and Gowalla encourage check-ins with achievements and badges, MyTown focuses on a more Monopoly-like approach, allowing people to actually “buy” locations” and earn money based on who checks in there.

Gavin Newsom Claims Social Gaming Companies Will Help Economy – San Fransisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom says, in a report from ABC, that the city is on its way to recovery, with the creation of more jobs and better economic conditions coming from a more diversified collection of industries — especially social gaming. In fact, Newsom specifically mentions social gaming companies with offices in San Francisco, including Zynga, Playdom, and Playfish.

City of Eternals Sees Strong Starting Metrics – Ohai‘s Facebook empowered MMO, City of Eternals looked impressive from the start, but initial metrics are showing just how many are agreeing with that assessment. Within the first 30 days, players that spend money on virtual goods have spent an average of $16.50, and that, of all players, an average of 65 minutes is spent, a day, playing the blood-sucking title with the 10,000 most active playing for 87 minutes.

Although the company hasn’t released overall user traffic numbers, it says 1% of active users play for seven hours a day (note that the game logs you off after 20 minutes of inactivity) and 42% play for multiple sessions a day. 60% of active users returning to play within seven days. Furthermore, of all these users, 60% are male and 40% female with 70% of the games most active members being women.

[via VentureBeat]

Bejeweled Turns 10 – PopCap‘s ever popular casual game, Bejeweled has sold over 50 million units, making it one of the top selling video games of all time. In fact, the company states that a copy is sold ever 4.3 seconds. In order to celebrate, PopCap will be hosting its first-ever community-wide competition for it’s one minute, Facebook version, Bejeweled Bitz. The contest is called “Show Your Bejeweled Love” and will feature a myriad of promotional activities and, more importantly, rewards for the best Bejeweled Blitz players. The contest and details will launch next month at Bejeweled.com.

Apple Getting Nicer? - Anyone following or dealing with the Apple submission process for apps, knows how unhappy a great many developers became with the company last year. However, that was 2009 and in the new decade, it looks like Apple is trying to make amends with new and improved services for its application developers. Not only did submissions become faster earlier this year, but the company is now issuing surveys asking a myriad of questions in the hopes of improving their services before the next big boom for the Apple’s mobile platforms comes again (iPad anyone?).

[via TechCrunch]

Mochi Media Partners with USA Network- Earlier in the week, Mochi Media announced its new partnership with USA Networks. Along with the announcement came a week of Valentine’s Day promotions as a celebratory event. Obviously, this team up also means USA’s Character Arcade will integrate all of Mochi’s titles, and to that end, players that play the featured game, Mochi’s “Twin Shots 2: Good and Evil” will be registered to win a Wii Starter Bundle or $25 Best Buy gift cards. The winners will be announced Sunday at 11:59 pm.

Apple Patents a 3D Virtual Apple Store – In other Apple news, the company recently made a big win as it was approved the patent for a 3D virtual store. The concept is to create the more personalized and living feel of shopping at a brick and mortar location, but still have all the benefits that come from everyday online shopping (searches, always open, etc.). The store would be a virtual world with icons representing time of day and color schemes/decor representing the seasons indoors. Curiously, the patent also covers details such as outdoor lighting and settings to reflect time and seasons as well.

[image via Patently Apple]

Electronic Arts Says Digital Business Will Reach $750 Million in Revenue – Earlier this week, Electronic Arts proclaimed that the gaming giant’s digital business was “growing” and is “profitable.” It projected its digital business to reach around $750 million in revenue by next year; a substantial growth over the $575 million this year. Executives say that this is currently the most profitable portion of the company, and they do not expect much growth in regards to their traditional games (i.e. console box sales). Beyond its own online games, it is one of the top mobile developers, holding seven of the top iPhone apps), and big on Facebook via the acquisition of Playfish last fall (granting two top 10 Facebook games). Expect more to come online games to come from the company soon, like Madden Football for Facebook.

Mixpanel Raises Funding – Analytics company Mixpanel is active on and off Facebook, with clients including Kiva, HotorNot, Slide and UserVoice. It has now raised $500,000 in angel funding from PayPal cofounder and Slide founder Max Levchin and Bebo cofounder Michael Birch. For more on the company, check out the recent Inside Facebook guest post on social gaming metrics from cofounder Suhail Doshi.

“ScamVille” Lawsuit Dropped Against Facebook: Rebecca Swift has withdrawn her potential class-action lawsuit against the social network, although she has not yet dropped her charges against Zynga. Both were in court over scams that ran on offer walls in social games. More on MediaPost.

God of War III Rages into 7-Eleven: The latest game to make use of virtual goods is the heavily anticipated console (PlayStation 3) title, God of War III. Though the game doesn’t release until mid-March, marketing in the form of Slurpee cups will be starting on February 1st. Each cup will grant the consumer a special code that will allow them to download various content such at behind-the-scenes videos, animated Kratos themes, and special armor usable within the game.

Peanut Labs Announces 11 More Publisher Partners: Peanut Labs Media, provider of monetization services via surveys, offers, and direct payments, announced this week 11 new social publisher partners. The list includes Aeria Games, Backstage Technologies, Blue Frog Gaming, Challenge Online Games, Inc., CyberStep, Gamepot USA, Inc., Large Animal LLC, Ray Flame Entertainment, Inc., SmallWorlds, Vogster Entertainment, and Zeevex. Each new partner will have access to the myriad of monetization methods Peanut Labs offers as well as making use of the turnkey platform’s sales logistics, customer support, currency conversions, optimizations, and inquiry resolutions.

Adobe Plans for iPad: Currently, one of the biggest concerns with Apple’s new iPad is that it imposes restriction that currently disallow users to access Flash-based content on the web. Frankly, this is a big issue considering that Flash content makes up most of the internet nowadays. However, Adobe’s Flash blog states that they and about 50 other partners in “the Open Screen Project are working to enable developers and content publishers to deliever on any device. ” Hopefully, this means we’ll be able to use Flash on the iPad sooner rather than later. [image via The Flash Blog]

Microsoft Downplays Virtual Currency: Despite the social movement for Microsoft, Wednesday played host to the announcement that the company would be downplaying the role of its Xbox Live virtual currency, Microsoft Points. Apparently, a number of users have been complaining about the Point pricing system, calling it “misleading.” To mitigate the issue, Microsoft will be displaying the real world currency (based on location) in tandem with the virtual currency price.

Gowalla Grants User-Generated Content: One of the key features of the location-based iPhone application, Gowalla is the prospect of trips. In a nutshell, players would have to visit various locals in order to complete a “trip” and would earn corresponding digital “pins” as a reward. However, most of these required users to go out of their way. In light of that realization, Gowalla announced a new feature that would allow it’s players to create their own trips using locations they regularly visit. Should the trip prove popular, Gowalla will promote it based on “the quality and relevancy of the trip, [and] the number of people who have completed the trip.” Afterwards, participants will be given their own custom, in-game pin artwork as a reward.

Motally Brings Mobile Analytics to iPad: Third party developers aren’t wasting any time with Apple’s new iPad. Just Thursday, mobile analytics firm, Motally announced that it will be bringing its services to the iPad. Already, it’s platform allows publishers to collect data and create analytic reports on the usage of their applications on the iPhone, but with the expanded service will now also be able to access said data through the iPad. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg as Mottally has stated that intends to support the iPad SDK once available.

Loopt to Spin Location-Based Apps in a New Way: A new location-based iPhone app called LooptCard from Loopt may be coming soon. Using the same type of technology as apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, this title is adding one more step to the check-in process with real world, vendor deals. Yes, these will be location based deals, but more than that Loopt is looking to get vendors to incorporate their game-like ideas of only offering deals as rewards for doing certain tasks or checking in at certain times of day. In addition to these new ideas, LooptCard is also planning, according to TechCrunch, to make direct use of Facebook’s social graph. [image via TechCrunch]

C64 for iPhone Emulator Gets a Little Social: For all those classic game lovers, the Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone is getting a little bit more social through the use of OpenFeint. Games will be receiving social features such as global leaderboards and/or achievements. Updated games within the emulator include Jupiter Lander, Lemans, Artic Shipwreck, Uridium, Nebulus, and Paradroid.

EA Considers Building or Buying Facebook Sports Apps: “We are learning an awful lot about a very different type of game experience than we are used to doing,” head of EA Sports Peter Moore tells Reuters. “You’re seeing a focus in our M&A activity being on companies that will enhance our digital strategy.”

Gaikai Raises $5 Million – Another startup, online gaming company Gaikai, has also raised funding. $5 million, to be exact; also according to an SEC filing. Headed up by former Acclaim chief creative officer, David Perry, the company has made no comment regarding the funding. All the same, VentureBeat has previously reported that Gaikai is “planning to create a service that can deliver games on demand without the need to install or run software on a computer or game machine.” Instead, games will be cloud-streaming.

Video Games May Save the World – Despite the common complaints about violence in video games, Time Magazine looks to some of the more positive elements of this growing medium. According to the article, the past decade has had many pivotal success with games educating the masses of real world issues with titles such as Darfus Is Dying from MTV in 2006. The goal was to help refugees find water, and it had reached over 700,000 players in one month, leading thousands more to email and petition government officials about the pressing issues. Along with games such as Food Force, Half the Sky, and the myriad of recent Zynga charity benefits in games, hundreds of thousands of people are being educated and moved with games which Alan Gershenfeld, former vice president of Activision, describes as “powerful tools.” Certainly, it is an article best read in full here.

MySpace to Host devJam Event – A few weeks ago, MySpace announced the MySpace Developer Challenge. Well, now the social network is hosting the devJam event in San Francisco on January 14th in order to offer a place where developers can not only meet their development team but get started on their submissions. With multiple coding sessions for each of the contest’s categories and updates on all new MySpace APIs, the general hope is to help developers have Challenge-ready submissions by the end of the day. Further details and RSVP links can be found here.

World of Warcraft China Punishment Coming Soon?  - According to a report from Pacific Epoch, the massively multiplayer online RPG, World of Warcraft is going to have a more settled fate. The game has been had trouble with the country’s competing regulators, China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) and Ministry of Culture (MoC) — however the game license-holder in China, Netease, has been operating it since September. The regulators have reached a “consensus over whether NetEase [Chinese operator of World of Warcraft] is operating… in contravention of regulations, and plan to announce punishment in mid-January.” Hopefully, for the estimated 5 or so million Chinese players, “punishment” will not mean more downtime.

YoVille Widget Factory Returns – September of last year played host to Zynga’s removal of, what was called, the “Widget Factory” from its social, virtual world, YoVille. In its place came the new Sweets Factory, but as a primary source of virtual income in the game, the loss of the Widget Factory led to a long and arduous protest from some of the player base. 53,000 protesters joined the virtual cause, eventually coaxing Zynga into bringing back the Widget Factory for the holidays. However, whether or not it is back permanently is yet to be determined.

Quepasa Parnters with Moblyng – Latin social network Quepasa.com announced a partnership yesterday with developer and cross-platform games publisher Moblyng. Through the partnership, Moblyng will make use of Quepassa’s implementation of the OpenSocial framework to make a myriad of its games available for the site’s users as well as through mobile phones. Thus far, eight games have been agreed upon for use including m:Poker Live, m:Vampire, m:Mafia, m:Racing, m:Zombies, Dungeon Quest, WordRacer, and Narcotraficante.

Xbox Live to get Virtual World Game Room - This week, Microsoft announced that it would be further socializing its Xbox Live and Games For Windows Live services with a virtual Game Room. Comparable to Sony’s PlayStation Home (though you cannot walk around yourself), the game room will allow users to interact with each other using their Live avatars in a classic arcade setting. The games will be a range of classic game titles such as Centipede, Sea Battle, and Asteroids. However, the key difference from Home is that this new launch will not feature the sale of virtual goods, but the arcade machines themselves for roughly 240-400 Microsoft Points ($3-$5). Furthermore, for a one-time fee, 40 Microsoft Points can be spent to to play a machine they do not yet own.

The new features were also previewed at the CES as well, which displayed multiple rooms; each of which were customized in different themes (via Kotaku). Moreover, Xbox Live offers two-player score challenges and local, live multiplayer. The service is expected to launch with 30 or so games later this year, and will be expanded significantly over time with an expected 5-7 games per week.

TOPPS Launches Virtual Card App on Facebook – UpperDeck isn’t the only card company making use of the web anymore as TOPPS has launched a new Facebook app called Wacky digibles that allows uses to buy virtual goods called “digibles” and send them to their friends. Currently there are 15 different goods that each sell for about $1 and are intended to be comical references to current popular media.

OpenFeint 2.4 Launches – Just today, Aurora Feint launched the 2.4 version of its social, OpenFeint platform. The new version comes with overall leaderboards, geo-location leaderboards, achievements, cloud storage for saved games, instant messaging, in-app forums, and more. Facebook Connect is also integrated allowing for photo imports and status updates. Other features include Twitter, social challenges, push notifications, cross-promotion, and social game recommendations.

Mystery Developer, DNA Games, Raises $2 Million – A developer by the name of DNA Games has been so under the radar that it doesn’t even have an official website yet. Nonetheless, paidContent.org reports that, via an SEC filing, the company has raised $2 million in funding with another million sometime back in early December. Unfortunately, all that is known beyond this is that DNA Games was founded by three former executives from Bazaar Advertising by the names of Jonathan Lee, Shaun Haase, and Timothy Stevens.

Buy a Meowmodon and Help Kids – Online game Wizard101 is feeling the giving spirit this Christmas season. Players who purchase the new Meowmodon mount will be indirectly donating the full price, $15, of the virtual item to two charities; the Austin Children’s Shelter and Child’s Play. Wizard101 developer KingsIsle will not be keeping any of the revenue from the Meowmodon sales, and is making the item available until January 5th of 2010.

Smule Raises $8 Million – Smule, creator of popular, musical iPhone titles such as Ocarina, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, and I am T-Pain announced this week the raising of $8 million in a third round of funding. The investment comes from Shasta Ventures as well as existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Granite Ventures. This brings the total funding to $13.7 million and keeps the company on track to meet its goal of $3 million in sales for 2009.

PlayStation Home Hits 10 Million – Having heard little in the past few months from Sony, regarding its virtual world PlayStation Home, it finally stated, yesterday, that it now has 10 million registered users. In tandem with the announcement the console developer also revealed a new virtual space within the world called “Sodium One” from European developer Ousto.  Within the space, players will find more social outlets, becoming bartenders, serving virtual drinks, playing mini games, buying new virtual goods, and oh… wreck havoc in some very sexy vehicles of destruction.

Crispy Gamer Media Acquires GamerDNA – The gaming social network, GamerDNA was purchased just this Thursday by the games news site Crispy Gamer Media for an undisclosed amount of money. Competitor to similar companies such as Raptr, GamerDNA connected gamers across multiple platforms such as Xbox Live, Xfire, and Steam. Since its launch in 2008, the social network has raised $3 million, but now Crispy Gamer is looking to take GamerDNA to a new level.

Square Enix Begins Selling Virtual Currency – Japanese RPG developer, Square Enix- known best for its Final Fantasy series – is the latest mainstream games companys to make use of virtual currency. Users will now be able to purchase the currency known as “Crysta” in amounts of 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, and 10,000 yen with one yen equaling one Crysta. The virtual currency will then be usable for online community games, the Square Enix MMO, Fantasy Earth Zero, and the Square Enix e-store. Unfortunately, the new currency is only available in Japan.

[via Siliconera]

The iPhone App Economy is Bigger than Expected – According to information presented by mobile advertising company AdMob, the Apple iPhone’s app economy is much bigger than we thought. Presently, there are around $200 million worth of apps sold in the AppStore each month, thus equating to around $2.4 billion a year. Tthese claims are further reinforced by Apple, who states around 1.5 billion applications have been downloaded thus far. You can check out the full breakdown here.

AdNectar Uses Virtual Goods to Promote Privacy Filters – Privacy filters are screens for laptops and mobile devices when they are being used in highly populated areas. In order to promote 3M’s Privacy Filters, social advertising network AdNector is launching a number of branded virtual goods. Entitled “TMI” (too much information), the goods will feature images of people in… compromising… situations and can be sent as gifts from the Facebook application TMI Moment.

Sometrics Launches the Shop & Earn Shopping Feed – For all those Christmas shoppers out there, social analytics and advertisement targeting company, Sometrics has revealed the Shop & Earn Shopping Feed to help users earn a little something extra during their gift buying frenzies. Whenever an online purchase is made at certain retailers, the purchaser will earn virtual currency for a participating online game. Consider it like frequent flyer miles, but for computers, and on the Internet, and with pixels. Users need only click through the Shopping Feed to reach the participating retailers, make a purchase, and voila they get free virtual currency.

Live Gamer Launches Free Realms Real Money Marketplace – Known for its virtual goods transaction commerce solutions, Live Gamer has recently announced the launch of Live Gamer Exchange (LGX) for Sony Online Entertainment’s MMO, Free Realms. The new system will offer players a simple means to buy and sell game items with one another. All transactions will be authenticated through Live Gamer themselves, thereby reducing the threat of user fraud.

SponsorPay Monetizes Users Across Over 20 Countries – Established in April of this year, German company SponsorPay GmbH has provided advertising-based payments to the online gaming world. Today, the Berilin-based company states that it is now available in over 20 countries such as Chile, Canada, Brasil, and Turkey; each of which have their own localized interface, parters, and languages.

Jivebug Tracks Your Friends – As creepy as it sounds, a new Facebook app by the name of Jivebug has the limited ability to track your Facebook friends’ real life locations. Through the app, you can install the tool onto your cell phone and it will tell you, by their first name, when one of your Facebook friends is near as well as let you chat, via text message, with anyone else you happen to find (close by) who has installed the app. The tool also has a little bit of a dating feature built into it as well, giving users an subtle beep whenever a single user is near.

Answer Our Inside Social Games Weekly Trivia Question, Win a Free USB Drive from Surfpin — Tell us the correct answer to the following question before anyone else, and mobile payment company Surfpin will award you an 8GB Surfpin-branded USB drive in the shape of a credit card. The question, drawn from an article we published this week, is as follows: What is the first Facebook game, that we know, to exclusively use Facebook credits? Send the answer to eric (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com.

Xbox Suits Up for the Holidays – Microsoft has laid out its holiday plans for Xbox Live, and they include a myriad of deals, including new avatar items. The specials are starting out with new holiday and tokidoki outfits for sale in the Avatar Marketplace, with some special Disney Classic items coming on Christmas Eve. Furthermore, December 18th will kick off twelve days of special holiday deals in which Microsoft will host one-day sales for Xbox Live Marketplace items including games, movies, add-ons, and themes. [image via Gaming Angels]

MOL Global Buys Friendster – While rumors about some sort of sale have been out there for awhile, Friendster has now officially been acquired by MOL Global, a division of online payments company MOL AccessPortal Berhad. The purchase price has not yet been disclosed but MOL is looking to combine its services with the existing Friendster platform to create a content distribution and e-commerce platform for the Asian market. Currently, MOL holds a network of 500,000 payment channels across 75 Asian countries, while Friendster has over 75 million users of the same demographic.

Gowalla Raises $8.4 Million – Location based mobile game/app, Gowalla looks to be doing well as it has just raised $8.4 million in a Series B round led by Greylock Partners. Other investors include Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Veynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis, and Chris Sacca. This brings the investment total for Austin-based company, Alamofire, to $10 million.

PlaySpan Releases VGMarket Digital Goods Study – PlaySpan and VGMarket recently completed its virtual goods study on user buying habits. The study surveyed 2,425 random individuals that made use of either the PlaySpan Marketplace, Spare Change, and/or the Ultimate Game Card. In a nutshell, the study noted that 80% of users make virtual goods purchases for themselves to use in game, with the other 20% gifting them. Furthermore, roughly 66% bought virtual goods once per month while 25% did so once a week. Of everyone, however, 7% made daily purchases and 12%, yearly.

Another curiosity was that most users will not purchases virtual goods from third parties. 42% refused to do so out of fear of getting their account closed while another 42% were afraid of scams. 9% just didn’t know they could.

The full report can be found here.

Sony Offers Players Virtual Goods Rewards – Sony Online Entertainment has launched Facebook pages Twitter accounts for its three big MMORPGs, Everquest (FB, Twitter), Everquest II (FB, Twitter), and Free Realms (FB, Twitter). In order to get players involved in these new pages, they have created the program, ConecDING, that will reward users with virtual goods when the social media pages reach a certain number of fans or followers.

There will be three milestones of 5000, 10,000, and 25,000. At each one, players of each game will be eligible to receive 250 in Sony’s virtual currency, Station Cash (SC), 250 SC and a virtual good worth10,000 SC, and 500 SC and an item worth 25,000 SC respectively. For Free Realms, the goods will be a House Frog and Small Dance Floor; for Everquest they will be The Tome of Friends and The Magic Lute; and for Everquest II it will be The Cloak of Pie and an unannounced item.

Virtual Currency Used to Fight Health Care Reform? – This past week a health insurance group called Get Health Reform Right was apparently sponsoring ad offers that were actually paying social games players in virtual currency to send letters to Congress that opposed the health care reform.

The Business Insider describes the act as “virtual astroturfing,” with astroturfing being the act of orchestrating a campaign yet disguising it as spontaneous public opinion.

YouWeb Invests into Social Gaming – YouWeb, founded by Oracle Internet executive Peter Relan, announced Friday that it is going to begin heavy investment into social gaming in 2010. The focus will be to jump start an entire “ecosystem” centered around its social gaming companies of CrowdStar, Aurora Feint/OpenFeint, and Sibblingz. All ready the “ecosystem” has many entreprenurial startups involved, but by the looks of things, they intend to concentrate the “efforts of entrepreneurs around the real opportunities using its perspective gained” from the aforementioned big three.

YouWeb also plans to host a Social Gaming Eco-System Summit at some point in the near future. It is here that it will clarify and outline these “plans” and “opportunities” for its companies.

Tonchidot Gets $4 Million for Augmented Reality Virtual Goods – Augmented reality, the combination of real world objects with virtual ones, is a growing space in the mobile field, but a Japanese startup by the name of Tonchidot is taking a new perspective on the matter. The company just landed $4 million in funding from DMC and ITOCHU Technology Ventures for a very diferent monetization concept. Based on early demonstrations, the technology could allow brick and mortar locations to sell virtual goods using the “Sekai Camera System.”

Mochi Media Surveys Flash Game Developers About Monetization – Among other results, 20% of developers said they make more than $1,000 a month on games. More here.

Answer Our Inside Social Games Weekly Trivia Question, Win a Free USB Drive from Surfpin – Tell us the correct answer to the following question before anyone else, and mobile payment company Surfpin will award you an 8GB Surfpin-branded USB drive in the shape of a credit card. The question, drawn from an article we published this week, is as follows: What type of game mechanic is being favored by a large game developer these days, to the exclusion of still-popular titles? Send the answer to eric (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com.

Xbox 360 Avatars Get Pets – As Microsoft continues its quest to enhance Xbox Live’s social capabilities, it has added some snuggly new pets to the Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace. Launched just Thursday, users will be able to spend 240 Microsoft Points on a myriad of pets including three dogs (large dog, pug, and dog in a bag), three cats (cat, siamese, and long haired), birds, snakes, fish, guinea pigs, monkeys, and last but not least, a pony.

Zynga Teams Up with The Hidden Agenda Project – Social games developer Zynga has teamed up with The Hidden Agenda Project to take the lead and aid in the “first broad game development contest designed to improve education for those who face challenges learning in traditional school environments.” The winner will be a single college or graduate school team and will receive a $25,000 prize. As it seems, this non-profit contest will be annual.

GMG Entertainment Launches ON!DVD Online Powerpak – Though it’s a mouthful, prepaid card publisher GMG Entertainment is launching the ON!DVD Online Powerpak, allowing users to purchase collections of freemium online games at brick and mortar locations (namely DVD stores). The product will cost $2.99, and while that defeats part of the purpose of a “free” game, the idea is to mitigate the rather long download times required to play in the first place.

The general idea is to coax these new users into buying GMG prepaid cards for Powerpak games. Thus far, partners include Cronous, Cross Fire, Dragon Sky, Dragonica Online, Perfect World International, Metin 2, War Rock, and World Golf Tour. The product was slated for a national “sneak preview” this past week at Target department stores, but will launch in full in early 2010.

BillMyParents Partners with Offerpal to… Bill Parents – BillMyParents is a kid friendly transaction service that allows them to shop online. When it is time to make a purchase, a confirmation email or SMS text message is sent to whichever parent has opted for participation, complete with notes from their children, in order to finish the transaction. Having had success with companies such as Amazon, RockYou, Outspark, and Habbo, the partnership with Offerpal Media is intended to now bring the concept into the teen and tween fold. While the details have not been hashed out yet, Offerpal will be adding BillMyParents as one of its direct payment options (along with Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, etc.), allowing users to pay for virtual currencies via traditional methods or through ad offers.

Outer Empires Expands to Outer Reaches – Metaphorically speaking, of course, but the Facebook, web, and iPhone space-based massively multiplayer online game known as Outer Empires is expanding. What made the title stand out was that users could play this EVE-like MMO from any of the three aforementioned platforms. However, according to Pocket Gamer, the game will be also expanding to the Android and, later, the XBLA platforms as well.

Zong Benifits from Black Friday – It looks like mobile payments company Zong saw a good deal of sales on Black Friday. According to what the company tells us, it saw a 27% increase in total spending on virtual goods that day (more than the so-called “Cyber Monday”). The categories of interest are virtual gifts, social gaming virtual goods, and MMO virtual goods which saw a 15%, 29%, and 24% increase respectively.

Friendster Gets Big Changes – As one of the oldest social networks, Friendster has seen a lot over the years, but this Friday played host to some major changes to the site. In addition to basic redesign, many new sections have been added including a “Friendster Wallet” for storing the virtual currency “Friendster Coins,” the “Friendster Gift Shop” for virtual gifting. and, of course, a games section. Furthermore, according to Reuters, the social network will be sold to an Asian buyer by the end of December for at least $100 million. Among the short-listed bidders is Chinese internet business Tencent.

Xbox Live Gets More Virtual Goods – Activision‘s Transformers 2 game has some new virtual goods on Xbox Live. For 240 Microsoft Points, users can purchase the Transformer heads of Megatron, Optimus Prime, or Bumblebee, and for 80 they can sport one of three Transformer t-shirts.

Also available for Xbox Live avatars is a little reward from SquareEnix to those that participated in the “Register – Tweet – Win” Final Fantasy XIII event. It’s a free, baby chocobo!  Of course, if you didn’t participate, you can go to the FFXIII splash page and register to receive a code for one later this year.

Sometrics Improves ijji.com Revenue – Hardcore games portal ijji.com has worked with offer solutions company Sometrics to increase its offer-based revenue. As with many game portals in recent time, ijji allows users to earn virtual currency (G Coins) via offers. Now, with Sometrics, such offers are simplified by sending users directly to targeted offers as soon as they click “Get Free G Coin.” Currently, the new offer solutions have earned a 15% increase in offer completion and a 30% increase in revenue.

Star Fever Agency Launches – Social MMO, Star Fever Agency, has launched and developer, Sarbakan, will be giving away “15 million [worth of] Star Fever Agency Dollars, Privilege Points, Limited Edition and Unique items.” The event will last three weeks and be open to the 15,000 players who pre-registered for the game. Furthermore, players can invite up to two friends to also take part in the special.

Florida State University Studies Virtual Goods – According to Virtual Goods News, a Florida State University, College of Business doctoral student did a virtual goods study with the help of First Planet Company, developers of Planet Calypso. According to the company, it was meant to take a look at virtual goods buying habits and took place last weekend. The company states that the study “will help to determine if a player’s experience with a product in a virtual world influences their intention to purchase a product and how that experience can affect a brand.”

Ameba Pigg Coming to Facebook – A popular Japanese virtual world by the name of Ameba Pigg, developed by Cyberagent, is working its way to the United States according to Asiajin. The platform? Facebook. The company states that an English-language and Americanized rendition of the title will be available next spring. Such changes include more American-style avatar clothing, and new virtual areas such as Central Park.

Digital Zhu Zhu Pets – A popular toy line called Zhu Zhu Pets is taking a first step into casual games and quasi-virtual worlds. Creator Cepia is turning to toy industry veterans Marc Rosenberg and Bill Goodman, as well as game maker TiltnTwist to make their first iPhone rendition of the popular toy. The game will allow users, based on statements posted by Playthings.com, ”roll around Zhu Zhu-Ville with [their] favorite Zhu Zhu Pets, Mr. Squiggles and his Adventure Ball.”

FarmVille.com Offers Exclusive Gifts – Looks like Zynga is pushing users to utilize FarmVille.com by offering seven different giftable items exclusively for users of the site. The gifts are an orange, purple, or white flag, a log bench, a ladder and bucket, a barrel of grapes, and a wooden log. Luckily, users that prefer Facebook will still be able to receive the gifts, just not send them.

Playata Launches Facebook Databases – German company Playata is looking to make things easier for the FarmVille playerbase with a new database called FarmBook.  The new Facebook application features tables of in-game items that can be sorted by criteria such as time, experience, profitability, and so on. The app will also offer users close-up shots of the items as well as animation and sound previews.

As expected, November 17th is indeed the day that Xbox Live goes social with its latest big update. The popular online console service now has integration into leading social sites Facebook and Twitter.

Currently, the integration for Facebook is not the complete version, so you won’t be playing any FarmVille on your high definition television. However, the Live rendition does incorporate all of your major Facebook site features. From your TV, you can view pictures (which was a personal favorite), see updates, and post to your feed. Granted, it is a bit obnoxious to type with a controller, and not a keyboard, but it is still pretty cool from what we’ve played around with so far.

Another interesting feature is that you can see all of your Facebook friends who are on Xbox Live and all of your Xbox Live friends who are on Facebook (once they have installed it on their console). Of course, this doesn’t mean that your normal Facebook friends list is forsaken. On the contrary, you can see all of them and view all their updates, news feeds, and pictures right from your couch. It’s nothing different, really, from what you can do on the web… except the whole 1080i thing.

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Last week, Peter Molyneux, creator of the record breaking and award winning Fable franchise made the announcement at the BAFTA’s (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Annual Video Games Lecture in London that Lionhead Studios, along with Microsoft Corporation, is indeed developing a new installment to the series: Fable III. The latest installation of the single-player fantasy game series is scheduled for release during the 2010 holiday season, but beyond the overall buzz of the game itself, Molyneux also said that the game would feature the sale of virtual goods.

Already we have seen a number of mainstream console developers adopt the virtual goods transaction model (Electronic Arts and Atari especially), but the adoption of this revenue method will make Fable III one of the very few Xbox 360 games to utilize this method, and also one of the largest. To get a sense for the significance of the move, consider how large the franchise actually is. During its first week, the original Fable grossed a whopping $18.7 million in the United States (over 375,000 copies were sold), and Fable II conjured up around 800,000 box sales in the US within its first two weeks (1.5 sales million worldwide).

In the previous Fable titles (Fable II) players could purchase additional content (i.e. Knothole Island), but according to Molyneux, Fable III will take the idea one step further. The third installment will feature an in-game shop where virtual items will be made available. The primary example given was a sword with a tiny cost of £1, or $1.63. However,, according to That Video Game Blog, that purchasable content may also include new game areas as well as game walkthroughs and guides (similar to those seen on GameFAQs).

Of all of this, however, the most significant element to look at is the game design itself and how well it will play into this new revenue model. The Fable series is known best for its deep player immersion. Users could enter this world and live out the life of a fantasy-style hero with every decision they made affecting the environment around them. If a player looked evil or frightening with their clothing, the non-player characters would react to it, and the same applied conversely. Human players could court women, buy houses, build up physical prowess and a myriad of other things. Now, players will be offered a kingdom to rule that will likely contain all these options and then some.

How is this pertinent? Consider that social users buy clothing and items for an avatar just to make it look better and express themselves. Also, consider freemium MMOs and how much money players spend on virtual swords and items to progress in the game. Fable III looks to be combining these two elements. This begs the question of whether or not other Xbox Live users will be able to see a friend’s Fable III avatar, as the series has always been single player. At this point, we do not know. With this game, players will have a character that personifies them visually, but social as well in how the game world perceives them. Furthermore, they will gain the benefits of buying better weapons. With every action affecting their world… with every purchase affecting their digital self… the possible fiscal reward for the franchise is likely very big.