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A Telling Gesture: Qualcomm Acquires Assets Of Digital Ultrasound Company, EPOS, To “Differentiate” Next-Gen Snapdragon Chips
Mobile games dominate the charts when it comes to top grossing apps , but that popularity also breeds a lot of competition. Tylted , the games publisher recently rebranded from Cellufun , wants to tap into that opportunity with GameDrop, a new kind of distribution network that taps into existing ad platforms to provide in-app gaming overlays, with Pandora one of the first app publishers signed on to work with it. GameDrop works like this: Tylted integrates its HTML5-based ad server with an app publisher’s existing ad server. In places where there is inventory that is going spare, Tylted inserts promotions for games from GameDrop’s network. Tylted says that those ads, in turn, are the games effectively embedded in the other apps. To play them, users don’t leave the existing app or download anything: they click on them to expand in an overlay “on top” of that app. It looks like this:
Tylted is also testing the format with other content: it also ran a smaller trial in Pandora’s app with Beintoo, a rewards/loyalty platform, which served out deals to gamers when they reached milestones playing games through GameDrop. Those had a conversion rate of 4%. Tylted — which publishes social games, digital board games, brain games and casino-themed games and has 10 million monthly unique visitors across them — says that it has applied for patents to cover this technology, which it says can work on any platform, and on any device. But for now, GameDrop only works on native, not web, apps. To see if and how this would work before releasing it for other games publishers, Tylted trialled the service on its own content in October: it ran a campaign for its Cubugs game across Pandora’s iOS and Android apps. Across 45 million impressions, Cubugs picked up an additional 800,000 registrations and 10 million minutes of playtime. Lon Otremba, CEO of Tylted, says that the trial was successful enough to get Pandora to sign on as a partner for GameDrop’s commercial launch. He says that several other large-scale publishers have also signed on, although their names are not yet being made public. As for games developers, there Game Drop is launching with 8 of them, in addition to those Tylted publishes itself. That number, Otremba says, is likely to be up to 20 by the end of this year. Otremba believes that GameDrop not only gives gaming companies a more direct way of delivering games to users, but it gives app publishers a way of selling more ad space. “It’s painful to see all the ad inventory that goes to waste on mobile,” he says. “Tylted’s GameDrop puts this unused inventory to work.”
Tylted is now “aggressively” expanding GameDrop by building more partnerships not just with publishers and game developers, but also advertisers. Indeed, the latter category could become one of the most lucrative, given the investments that brands have made in mobile games to drive more awareness of their products ( Coca Cola being just one). Nevertheless, given that users often click on mobile ads accidentally — the screens are small, our fingers are big — an expanding game might seem a little too invasive for some. Otremba adds that this is easily avoided, either by trying not to click on the ad, in which case it remains a small banner, or by closing it if you do open it accidentally. 0


Tylted Launches GameDrop, A New Kind Of In-App, Ad-Based Network For Mobile Games

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In 1987, Ronald Reagan was president, and the arcade game Punch-Out!! made its debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System with Mike Tyson’s name tacked on . A quarter-century later, Barack Obama is president, and people are still playing Punch-Out! !, or something close to it. When I play it, however, it’s on my iPhone. And instead of losing badly to Tyson, I’m losing badly to, um, Barack Obama. The doppelgänger game in question is camPAIN 2012 , officially out in the wild today by way of mobile games company Tylted . And while the game mechanics are more than a little familiar, everything else about camPAIN’s arrival is a lot more interesting. Superficially, of course, the replacement of Little Mac & Co. with caricatures of Obama and Mitt Romney is a fun gimmick that will doubtless do wonders for the quality of political discourse online. And, naturally, Tylted is counting on social media users to flock to the game as an act of political one-upsmanship over their friends. But beyond all that, CEO Lon Otremba is pushing the idea that camPAIN 2012 represents a big step forward for HTML5. And he’s (mostly) right. CamPAIN 2012 on a Nexus 7
CamPAIN is far from perfect, but as a longtime player of similarly casual games, I’m impressed more by the idea than the example. Despite owning more than 20 game apps (and having tried dozens more that I’ve since deleted), I still frequently find myself drawn to “classic” in-browser diversions like Slime Volleyball . Why? They’re familiar. There is a Slime Volleyball clone game for iOS, but the physics are different (read: worse), and the “feel” just isn’t the same. HTML5 promises, among other things, a chance to bridge that gap. CamPAIN 2012 is essentially the same game on all browsers, both desktop and mobile, although some devices get bonus features like haptic feedback (as in, your phone may vibrate when you get hit). And this, Otremba says, is also good for game developers and publishers like Tylted:
“HTML5 is going to be the dominant force in mobile over the next 12 to 24 months. The enormous incentive that developers have to generate one code base for any device is too great to ignore.”
So, rather than scrambling to port a game over from iOS to Android to Windows Phone to God-knows-what-else, a game dev could theoretically make one game in HTML5 and proceed to make fixes and updates in only one place. But Otremba’s theory falters a bit when you consider the economics of those competing operating systems. The transition to and mass adoption of HTML5, replacing (shock! ) HTML4, is still ongoing, 15 years after its predecessor debuted. As the new standard for the whole Web, it has to move slowly and cautiously. Google and Apple don’t. One could easily drive higher OS adoption rates by giving developers resources or cool capabilities the other guy doesn’t have, and if that happens, the smart devs will rush to jump on the novelty. Nevertheless, Otremba is optimistic that gaming on the mobile Web “will be superior” to gaming on mobile apps. “I’m not saying apps are going away,” he says. “But as a real approach to how people play on multiple devices, the mobile Web is a huge thing, and will just be getting bigger and bigger.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to getting my butt kicked by the president.


Boxing Game Brings HTML5 to the Center Ring and Punch-Out!! to Campaign 2012

The latest hires in the tech and media industry&#8230;
Tylted: Social and casual games company Tylted has made several additions to its management team: Steven Van Blarcom as EVP, Stellah De Ville as creative director, David Waldman in the strategic business development role, Wonny Lee as director of marketing, and Christian Montoya as producer. The new hires are part of a major expansion that includes the opening of a new corporate headquarters in Manhattan&#8217;s Silicon Alley.
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Industry Moves: Tylted; XING AG; Future Publishing; mDialog; Telegraph

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Google’s Chrome OS Will Soon Look More Like Windows Than A Browser
Facebook is banking a lot on the future of HTML5 and the idea of people going web-first instead of native-apps for their mobile content fixes, and today mobile gaming company Cellufun taking one step in its strategy to position itself as a key player in that space, too: it’s announcing that it is rebranding itself as Tylted . Tylted — a name chosen from 30,000 entries in a competition run by Cellufun (the unnamed winner got $10,000) — says that strategy also includes the launch of a new ad platform, the expansion of its virtual good business, and — as you might expect from a social gaming company doing a lot of work in HTML — plans to do a whole lot more on Facebook’s mobile platform this calendar year. The company today also launched a new game to kick off that virtual goods/advertising push: CuBug, it says, is a “Tetris-style” tile matching game where captured bugs “hatch into virtual features like wall papers that can be gifted to other players in rainbow colors.” As for advertising, Tylted gives brands the option of integrating in different parts of the game from chat rooms, to score comparisons, customized virtual goods and so on. Founded back in 2005 way before our smartphone world was changed by the iPhone, Tylted today attracts some 10 million monthly unique users, with half a billion monthly page views covering 33 different casual and social games, with the most popular of these currently Pocket Beanie Babies, Mobile Wars and Vampires Rising. The big task ahead is to make sure that it changes with the times: can it remain attractive to a base of consumers that are wowed by brands like Angry Birds and Draw Something? This, says CEO Lon Otremba, was part of the logic for rebranding: “When we wanted to take the company to the next level, and we thought people might think ‘Cellufun’ looked backward.”
Tylted’s revenues are currently split 50 from advertising and 50 percent from virtual goods — both areas that the company want to grow in future. And for what it’s worth, Otremba has a background that seems to lend itself well to the tasks ahead for Tylted: among his past roles, he was EVP for AOL’s interactive marketing group, where he led the strategy and operations for AOL’s advertising and e-commerce business. And he also has background in helping legacy companies turn themselves around: another past role was as CEO of Muzak, where he took the company best known for cheesy instrumental versions of well-known songs, and helped it pivot into one of the world’s largest providers of commercial music services and custom music programming. In virtual goods, Otremba says these need to be appealing to a “wider base of users.” That speaks to a problem other gaming companies have also found, with Kongregate noting last month that in its high-ARPU games, typically two percent of users account for 40 percent of all in-game revenue, and 90 percent of revenues come from users who spend more than $100 in games. For Tylted, that will mean focusing on virtual goods that it has seen already gain traction with more than just hardcore gamers: these areas include anonymous personal avatars, in-game chat, and the ability to share virtual currency with other users. Otremba also says the company is looking to sell more virtual items, the kinds of things a “more casual user might buy without taking away from the interest in virtual currency for more avid users.”
On Facebook, Otremba admits that for now the company has not “done much yet” but that it is “substantially increasing our involvement with Facebook” this calendar year. “Facebook’s overall strategy of embracing the mobile web is absolutely in line with us,” he says. That move may be about the launch of new games and “new ideas that could be more appropriate” to the social network, he says. Advertising, he says, is an “explosive” area that has been relatively untouched so far by his company. It is in the process of building up a new ad sales force, including hiring some of his ex-colleagues from AOL. He says that Tylted’s unique selling point for Madison Avenue is that it has the scale that “would matter” to them. “To establish a direct relationship with those companies is a huge opportunity,” he says. While companies like Zynga and Rovio already offer advertising alongside their games,  what is perhaps notable here is that Tylted may be willing to go much further than bigger players in bending its own branding in favor of that of advertisers. One of those areas where you can see advertisers potentially calling the shots more is in the area of apps. That’s an area that so far Tylted has steered away from — something Otremba notes as an advantage: “We have been somewhat immune from the discovery problem that has presented itself to app developers,” he says. “Our site is one of the busiest on the mobile web and is a destination in its own right.”
But he also says: “I don’t rule anything out on apps. I’m happy to say that we are looking. We are very opportunistic, and certain partners have asked us to do something different from what we’ve traditionally done.”
Tylted has had just under $8 million of backing to date and was profitable last year, but to accelerate growth the company has gone back into the red. “We could be immensely profitable right now if we chose not to invest in the future,” says Otremba. That may take the company into looking for more funding towards the end of this year. 0

HMTL5 Mobile Gaming Site Cellufun Is Now Tylted, Eyes Up "Substantialâ€ Facebook Play, Virtual Goods, Ads

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Tyleted, formerly Cellufun, is a mobile community which allows people to socialize, play games, and buy virtual goods. Per the company, Tylted partners with global brands and media companies such as AOL and Gannet to deliver branded entertainment and custom-designed mobile marketing solutions.

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