Headline RePLAY – 2.7.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: North American PS Vita owners will miss out on the UMD Passport program, the Kinect Star Wars Bundle has a release date and Mass Effect: Infiltrator for the iOS is announced!

Possibly a deal-breaker for many PSP-owners planning on transitioning to the PS Vita, Sony has told Kotaku there won’t be a North American equivalent of the UMD Passport program, which would’ve allowed PS Vita owners to transfer their PSP games over.

Sony announced the program back in November, which Japanese PSP owners could opt to register their games onto PSN accounts, pay a small fee and re-download the games on the PS Vita. No alternatives were provided at this time.

Déjà vu. Reminds me of the situation with the PSPgo two years ago, which almost guaranteed the handheld’s doom.

Sony has yet to provide an explanation for the exclusion.

*Source: Kotaku

Overhauled for 2012 in the form of a Xbox 360 and controller, R2-D2 and C-3PO will finally be in the hands of Star Wars fans and gamers alike in the Kinect Star Wars Bundle, which is slated for release on April 3^rd.

Price is set at $449 for the 320GB system and it comes with the droid-themed console and controller, a white Kinect sensor and a copy of Star Wars Kinect Adventures.

*Source: Engadget

In what could be the first mobile tie-in to Mass Effect 3, BioWare announced Mass Effect: Infiltrator was coming to the iOS.

The title was announced at a press event in New York today, where it was described as a “fully featured iOS third-party shooter” with “stunning graphics and authentic weapons and powers from the Mass Effect series.”

It isn’t a Mass Effect title without story, and BioWare doesn’t disappoint here: the narrative will involve freeing prisoners from a hostile Cerberus base and collecting evidence of the organization’s crimes.

Players will “receive rewards” for gathering evidence and increase Galactic Readiness. “Every completed rescue and intelligence discovery in Infiltrator will increase a players’ Galactic Readiness rating directly through the ‘Galaxy at War’ system in Mass Effect 3,” said EA.

As icing on the cake, actions taken in Infiltrator can affect the Mass Effect 3 storyline and weapons unlocked in the mobile title can be used in Mass Effect 3 too.

*Source: Kotaku

Headline RePLAY – 1.31.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Nintendo hints at paid DLC for Super Mario Land 3D and iOS marketing is expensive. 

Nintendo has never charged DLC for their games, but President Satoru Iwata has hinted at an investor Q&A last week that may be changing— starting with Super Mario Land 3D and Mario Kart 7.

Iwata explained to investors that software, such as Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, can produce “substantial profit” for years. 

However, in order to optimize “public attention” to the games, extend longevity, and increase revenue, Iwata proposed paid DLC content.

“Having said that, what if we could provide add-on content through the network? As I referred to before, for example, this is the idea of supplying new stages to Super Mario users who want to play the game more but have completed the game and lost interest in the existing stages,” said Iwata.

“This will not only give us new profits but will lengthen the life of a product, in that it will never be out of fashion and can keep attracting public attention as long as many people play it,” concluded Iwata.

Nintendo announced the “Nintendo Network” last week, a new digital platform not unlike PSN and Xbox Live that allows Wii and 3DS users to communicate with each other and access digital content.

*Source: Nintendo via Eurogamer

Nobody really thinks of the advertising costs behind iOS apps, but marketing firm Fiksu does, and they found that the average cost of marketing per loyal user in the U.S. reached an all-time high last year. 

In the report, Fiksu defines a “loyal user” of an app as users who open the app three times or more.  By this standard, the firm calculated that the average cost of marketing per loyal user reached $1.81 in December 2011. 

It’s a $0.38 increase, up from the $1.43 per loyal user index of November 2011. And considering how many users that subscribe to the top 10 apps, the cost to developers per user can reach exponential heights. 

According to Fiksu, the cost hike is attributed to the “extreme marketing” in the Christmas holiday season. The idea was to push games up the store rankings before the top lists were locked for four days during the Christmas period to maximize coverage.  

When you add in the fact that Fiksu also reported that the average number of iOS app downloads also reached an all-time high in December, the marketing blitz makes sense considering it amounted to a whopping 6.04 downloads during December alone.

*Source: Gamasutra