TriplePoints of Interest – Week of May 25

Clearly, the big news of this week came out of Google I/O, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t fun (indie) game sales happening that might catch your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, here is this week’s TriplePoints of Interest!

What intelligence does Android M have for us? (Cue spy music)

Google I/O shook up Silicon Valley this week! The Verge presented a roundup of the top news emerging from the conference. The first was “Android M,” successor of Lollipop, that will streamline apps more including faster map uploads in areas of low connectivity as well as Chrome integration into all apps. More details were given on Android Wear smartwatches and Android Pay. The keynote also touched on VR, including a new iPhone-compatible Google Cardboard.

Fun weekend activity: the Humble Nindie Bundle

Nintendo announced its first Humble Bundle, the “Humble Nindie Bundle” aimed at highlighting indies from the eShop. According to Polygon, this is the first in a series of initiatives from Nintendo to support indie games. Included in the bundle are games like Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship edition and Woah Dave!

Higher security needed for truck full of games

Europe’s largest video game retailer, GAME UK, announced to consumers that pre-ordered Splatoon that its entire shipment of the game’s special edition, which includes the Squid Inkling amiibo, was stolen. According to IGN, no further details on the circumstances were provided other than that consumers will instead receive the game’s standard edition at a discounted price along with an Inkling Boy or Inkling Girl amiibo to make up for the losses.

This news is reminiscent of a similar incident where a truck containing 6,000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was hijacked in France in 2011.

More insight on how to improve the reputation of F2P

GamesIndustry International reported from the fourth annual Digital Dragons Conference in Kraków, Poland where a well-attended talk was given about the future of free-to-play and how to fight its bad reputation. Video game development veterans discussed the challenges the business model faces including stigma from the press, how PR must combat it, and how game designers can do better to model game mechanics to make the wait time between content availability more enjoyable. They concluded that F2P is overall a flexible system and can be tactfully tailored to suit each game and each audience.

Photo from Tech News Daily