Blog Posts by Reuters

By Gerry Shih, Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the past twelve months, Zynga Inc has struggled with a contracting player base, a deflated stock price and waves of layoffs. Now it is coming to terms with downsized ambitions.

Zynga HQ (Credit: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)As Chief Executive Mark Pincus, 47, leads the online games developer he founded in 2007 through perhaps the most crucial year of his tenure, he is pushing to restore revenues by doubling down on "FarmVille," the franchise that took Facebook users by storm four years ago and launched Zynga to stardom.

Though some industry observers had declared farm simulation games a fad and predicted FarmVille2's early demise, the sequel to Zynga's best-known title has defied expectations at its San Francisco headquarters, Pincus said in an interview. FarmVille 2 has clung to its perch near the top of Facebook charts and the number of people who play the game each day still hovers near all-time highs of 8 million, even six months after launch.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (Credit: REUTERS/Tony Gentile)

By Malathi Nayak, Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the midst of the bitter national debate on gun violence, gun manufacturers and videogame makers are delicately navigating one of the more peculiar relationships in American business.

Violent "first-person shooter" games such as "Call of Duty" are the bread and butter of leading video game publishers, and authenticity all but requires that they feature brand-name weapons.

Defiance, the game (Credit: Trion Worlds)By Eric Kelsey, Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Science-fiction drama "Defiance" wants to go where no television series has gone before, weaving a show with an online video game to achieve the elusive goal of parlaying success on one entertainment platform to another.

The new series, which premieres on U.S. cable channel Syfy on April 15, tells the story of frontier town Defiance, formerly St. Louis, in the near future following a 30-year war between humans and seven alien races.

Syfy last week released a multi-player, plot-based video game, developed with Trion Worlds, that lets users build their own personas and explore the landscape of a reshaped Earth in the San Francisco area. The game is made for Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox360 and PC.

Spinning a film or TV series into a video game, or vice versa, is nothing new. But producers say "Defiance" is the first to weave both game and show together at the same time. The video game alone took some five years to create.

A 'hands free' urinal game (Credit: Reuters)By Joe McDonald, Reuters

(Reuters) - Play doesn't need to stop for sports fans taking a bathroom break at a Pennsylvania minor-league baseball stadium that has installed video games in men's room urinals.

The "hands-free" video game is played by directing oneself right or left in the urinals at the Lehigh Valley IronPigs' Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The game is aimed at increasing prostate health awareness.

The video screens challenge players to steer their way along a snowmobile course, while trying to hit cartoon penguins. They also display messages reminding men to make an appointment for a prostate exam, Schaeffer said.

Wii U (Credit: Nintendo)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd, the world's leading gaming company by machines sold, said it will post an operating loss for a second straight year as the sales of its Wii U, successor to the 100-million selling Wii, faltered.

The company caught investors off guard by predicting a loss of $220 million in the year to March 31, reversing a profit forecast for the same amount, putting its new guidance well short of a consensus estimate of 12.1 billion yen ($133.48 million) profit from 19 analysts.

(Credit: Getty Images)

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is considering lifting a decade-long ban on video game consoles, the official China Daily newspaper reported on Monday, sending shares of major hardware makers such as Sony Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd surging.

In November, Sony's PlayStation 3 received a quality certification from a Chinese safety standards body, prompting speculation that Beijing would lift the ban, which the government said was imposed in 2000 to safeguard children's mental and physical development.

By Malathi Nayak, Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When video game developer Brenda Brathwaite Romero started her career in the 1980s, she could count the number of female developers in the industry on one hand.

Erin McCarty (Credit: Stephen Lam/Reuters)Today, many "Women in Games" roundtables she attends are filled to capacity with new faces. The 46-year-old, sometimes referred to as the longest-serving woman in the video game arena, jokes that these days one can even encounter long lines for the ladies' room at the Game Developers Conference, one of the industry's largest gatherings.

"Over the years, greatly helped by the social and mobile boom, there have been many, many women coming into game development," Brathwaite Romero said.

With women comprising just over 1 in 10 in the video game workforce, the industry has a reputation for being among the most testosterone-fueled of the traditionally male-dominated technology sector. But thanks to the mobile revolution, industry executives say that's changing.

By Malathi Nayak, Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with "Petville" being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.

(Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith)Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.

The San Francisco-based company announced the "Petville" shutdown two weeks ago on its Facebook page. All the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.