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Yahoo buys social gaming software company PlayerScale

Mike Suszek — Sat, 25 May 2013 16:30:00 EST

While Yahoo was in the news recently for its acquisition of Tumblr, it was also busy buying up another company this week: PlayerScale. PlayerScale's CEO Jesper Jensen announced the company's acquisition on its official site.

Founded in 2011, PlayerScale creates software that aids developers in scaling their games across social, mobile and casual platforms, including XBLA, Facebook, the iOS App Store and Google Play market. Its service has over 150 million users across 4,000 titles, according to the company's site. Hard numbers on how much Yahoo spent to pick up PlayerScale, as well as Yahoo's plans for social gaming going forward have yet to be revealed.

Yahoo buys social gaming software company PlayerScale originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 25 May 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IndieCade at E3: Sizing up Scale

Mike Schramm — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:45:00 EST

I also ran around the IndieCade tour at E3, and while our own Jess Conditt took a lot of creepy pleasure in the grim philosophical horror title A Mother's Inferno, my tastes ran more simple and colorful: The best game I saw in that section of E3 this year was called Scale.

Scale, developed by Steve Swink (who teaches interactive design in Phoenix, but might be better known as Kyle Pulver's roommate?) is similar to Portal, which is a quality ascribed to a lot of great indie games these days. That's not surprising, given that Portal was also an indie student project, before it got processed through Valve's chaotic engine of creativity. Scale is similar to Portal in that it too has a gun that doesn't kill, but is instead used to manipulate a colorfully-rendered 3D world.

Portal, it could be said, played around with the functions of space, creating portals to bypass and bend it. Scale, on the other hand, is all about that stuff in between space. Namely: mass.

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IndieCade at E3: Sizing up Scale originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Take a tour with us through IndieCade at E3

Jessica Conditt — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 09:30:00 EST

We're not very good at lying, so when we say "A Mother's Inferno was an absolutely terrifying indie game," we mean we played it alone, at night, on a big-screen TV, and we just about peed our pants no less than seven times. Seriously, we haven't slept soundly in weeks.

Not all of the games at IndieCade's E3 exhibition were psychedelic horror fests; some of them were eccentric, rich platformers, such as Arcen Games' A Valley Without Wind. And a few were downright happy, such as Steve Swink's Scale.

Check out a few of our stand-out IndieCade titles in a guided tour right up there.

Take a tour with us through IndieCade at E3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 08 Jun 2012 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meet Ana, the Xbox 360 hardware scaler

Ross Miller — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:25:00 EST

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360

How did Microsoft dodge the scaling issue that has plagued Sony since its launch? Maybe it was the timing -- an HD console in a Standard Def world -- or perhaps it was Ana, the affectionate title for Xbox 360's hardware scaler.

Whereas the PlayStation 3 downscales to meet resolution, Ana upscales Xbox 360 titles to 1080p to impressive results, according to Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera. Speaking with Microsoft's Scott Henson, Kuchera learns that Ana was designed at the same time as Xenos, the console's GPU. Though the addition of a PS3 hardware scaler is possible in the future, Xbox Group Product Marketing Manager Aaron Greenberg opines that it would be difficult for Sony to fix the issue with software, leaving first-generation PS3 owners in the cold.

However, the truth is, as Kuchera notes, differences between the two console's graphics are minimal to nonexistent. "By [the time PS3 has second-generation titles] we'll have Halo 3," Henson said. "We'll be on the third-generation games. We hope to always be a little bit ahead." When will Sony pull ahead of the Xbox 360, graphically, and to what extent is Ana Microsoft's secret weapon in keeping up?

See Also:
The second Xbox 360 (with HDMI): introducing "Zephyr"

[Thanks, Theo1130; image inspiration]

Meet Ana, the Xbox 360 hardware scaler originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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