Casual News – Sept. 18, 2009

Shockwave drops the price of most of its download games to $6.99; RealGames introduces the Federation of Studios for mobile developers; and Gamasutra profiles the most popular gamer on Facebook (she has more than 4,500 friends!) These headlines and more below.

News

• Shockwave drops the price of download games to $6.99
• RealGames introduces Federation of Studios for mobile developers
• PopCap launches Zuma’s Revenge! for PC and Mac
• Merscom launches Empire Builder: Ancient Egypt
• Yahoo! signs strategic partnership with Matchmove Games
• Austin GDC GamerDNA CEO calls casual-hardcore division "destructive"
• Free-to-play games account for over half of digital purchases
• Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment launches Scribblenauts for Nintendo DS
• Austin game startup sets loose Weblings
• MySpace executive Oberfest to lead ngmoco’s social web expansion
• Vivox comes to Facebook
• eGames announces fiscal year 2009 financial results
• USA Network ramps up casual game efforts; forges partnerships with NeoEdge, Bunchball and Bigpoint
• TV network taps game startups to launch social game portal
• G5 Entertainment brings Yumsters 2 to iPhone
• Shanda Games IPO goes online for $788 million

Features

• Fowl Play: The evolution of Farm Frenzy
• Casual games: Power to the people
• The Dracula Files, Developers Diary #6
• The most popular gamer on Facebook
• The phone beckons – got game?
• GDC Austin: PlayFirst on bringing established brands to iPhone
• GDC Austin: Ninjabee’s Fox gets practically indie
• GDC Austin: Free Realms and the attention span challenge
• GDC Austin: Lost Garden’s Cook on why premium Flash games rock
• GDC Austin: Newtoy on becoming the Nintendo of the iPhone
• Platogo lets you create online games and share them with friends
• Microsoft launches Zune, clarifies what’s up with apps, raps iPod
• TC50: iMo turns the iPhone into a joystick for your PC games

Erin Bell