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Over the past two or three days, the web has exploded with iPad 3 rumors. From leaked screens and back plates to Wall Street Journal articles, we now have a decent list of features for the next-gen tablet that seems pretty reliable. Some of the highlights include: 2048×1536 Retina display Apple A6 processor Faster GPU Better cameras Larger…
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Depending on your familiarity, it might come as a surprise that fantasy sports is a huge business. In fact, according to the Fantasy Sports Ad Network, its total market impact is upwards of $4.5 billion. Oh yes, we love our sports. For the uninitiated, fantasy sports pretty much just consists of people (“owners”) building teams based on actual players in their sport of choice. They then pit their fantasy teams against those of their friends (or other owners), winning or losing based on the statistics produced by the actual players in competition. (As one commenter said, it’s like Dungeons and Dragons, for jocks.)
Yes, fantasy sports are much beloved not only by regular ole sports fans, but by data and numbers geeks, who eagerly ply sports with every known statistical algorithm or formula to get the best teams. Fantasy football happens to be the most popular among fantasy sports enthusiasts, but there’s a fantasy league for just about every sport imaginable.
As a data-driven pursuit, a multitude of sites have popped up over the years that aggregate the latest sports news, statistics, and everything in between to help owners get a leg up on their teams, many even apply algorithmic projections (like numberFire, which launched at TC Disrupt) to the reams of data. Yahoo Sports and CBS SportsLine were among the first big companies to launch fantasy web properties in the ’90s. Now everyone and their mother are getting in on the online fantasy sports action, led by ESPN, NBC’s Rotoworld, Fox, MLB.com, NFL.com, Bloomberg Sports, etc.
Fantasy sports, just like everything else, have also been making the transition to mobile, with news aggregating apps turning to fantasy sports (a la Taptu, Evri, and more).
But few of the big media properties have gotten with the times and opened their data-rich platforms to indie developers and data hounds. Today, it looks like CBS Sports is leading the way, as it is officially opening up its fantasy sports service to third party developers, companies, and startups looking to create apps for their products and services.
Considering there’s a thriving ecosystem of fantasy sports news, media, analysis, and data crunching sites out there, this allows them to build products that can live on CBSSports.com, exposing them to a host of new fans and revenue generating opportunities. CBS is allowing for both free and paid apps, though it will be taking 30 percent share of paid app sales.
Yahoo, once arguably the leader (and pioneer) of online fantasy sports, also offers its own access through its APIs, but they only allow use off-platform and on a non-commercial basis, meaning you can’t sell apps. CBS Sports, on the other hand, is hoping that by exposing fantasy sports enthusiasts (of which it estimates there are nearly 30 million — just in the U.S.) to a host of co-produced products and services and integrating them into their own products, it can make for a better overall user experience.
Six companies (Advanced Sports Media, Bloomberg Sports, Rotowire, StatSheet, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and Ziguana) have signed on as partners and will have free and premium apps available when “CBSSports.com App Central” — the app store — launches on January 31st.
When App Central goes live, CBS Sports told TechCrunch, it will feature a rotating carousel at the top of the page that features different categories of apps, like “Staff’s Picks”, “Most Popular”, “Most Recent”, etc., following in the footsteps of other web app stores. The carousel will showcase up to eight apps in each tab, which are automatically/programmatically updated. It will also include App Lists, which will display apps by recently, and future iterations will include categorized filtering and search functionality.
In preparation for the launch, CBS has already launched a “Fantasy Platform Development Center” to let developers learn how their products and services can work on the platform, including access to its set of APIs (which open up most of the data available on CBSSports.com Fantasy Games), and the tools needed to build customized fantasy apps. Developers can check it out here.
It’s great to see CBS Sports following the lead of major tech companies, opening up their platform and data to third party developers, which is really a win-win for everyone involved. Surely, it will only be a matter of time before other big media properties follow suit, as fantasy sports (along with scores and stats) are the primary driver of traffic for most online sports properties.
It’s a lesson to all companies — I mean, even EMI, a record label, is getting in on it — bring in the developers, and let the fun begin.
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A man serving a prison sentence in Wales was recently discovered to be in possession of a Final Fantasy weapon arsenal made entirely out of matchsticks. You know, because that’s what you do in prison: make things out of matchsticks (plus hide things in you B-U-T-T!).
The Governor of the prison, Steve Cross, told The Sun, “Their realism presented a genuine threat to the safety of staff, visitors and other prisoners”. Meanwhile, a “source” told the tabloid, “It must have taken months. The knives were lethal.”
Steve Cross and his staff are obviously not big JRPG fans, then, because nobody realised one was a Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII, or that another–which featured “a fully revolving barrel”–is Squall’s gunblade from Final Fantasy VIII.
What do you mean,”the knives were lethal”? What the hell did he use to glue all those matchsticks together, razor blades?! Also, who was slipping him all the matches and what did he have to give them in return? Growing up my dad always told me if I ever go to prison I want to try to marry the guy with the most cigarettes. True story.
Prisoner Builds Swords. Final Fantasy Swords. [kotaku]
Thanks to Katrina, which I admittedly read as Kitana at first and was all, “oh shit, girl, from Mortal Kombat?!” View full post on Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome
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While they’ve pumped out over 30 iOS apps to date, Square-Enix is now looking to revive a few of their classic titles on an Android phone (hopefully) near you. While Nintendo has officially disavowed the notion of making smartphone games, their long-time software associate seems to have no compunction in churning them out.
According to Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Square-Enix is hard at work preparing a selection of RPGs for a 2012 launch in the Android Market. Among them is Chrono Trigger (my personal favorite), the 1995 time-bending fan-favorite that first debuted on the SNES. Also on the list is Dragon Quest: Monsters, a popular Enix creation that pretty much hinges on making those iconic blue blobs fight each other, and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, the SNES Final Fantasy game that no one really played. Square-Enix will release the games through their own Square-Enix Gaming Portal, but hopefully they see a stateside (re?)release soon.
These games will be a welcome addition to Square-Enix’s current Android line-up, which currently consists of two apps. I think Square-Enix, unlike Nintendo, has the right idea here: while it seems like Nintendo President Iwata thinks that smartphone gaming will sully Nintendo’s history, Square-Enix is using different platforms to reignite existing fanbases and test out some interesting new IPs.
Square-Enix jumped headfirst into alternative gaming platforms years ago, with games like Song Summoner making an appearance on non-touch iPods of all places. It was a novel idea, and the end result was a refreshing gimmick on top of a classic Square-esque turn-based strategy game. Nintendo needs to realize that smartphone platforms aren’t where classic franchises go to die. It can be a place where new games and IPs can test the waters, and old ones can find a new audience.
[via Recombu]
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