Partnerships

Cloud gaming company Gaikai chose GDC Online as the stage to announce that Colorado-based Level 3 Communications will be providing its online infrastructure. More >

Sony Ericsson has announced a partnership with Square Enix that will see 2010 console download Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light released for Xperia Play in November, with more of the publisher's titles to follow in the months to come. More >

The Angry Birds developer is reportedly continuing its expansion into other walks of life by entering talks with Starbucks with a view to putting leaderboard displays into its coffee shops. More >

It's been a while since Atlus has said much about its plans for the Persona series, but with Team Persona's work on Catherine complete things are becoming a little clearer. Persona 4 is to be remade for PlayStation Vita under the name Persona 4 The Golden, with extra features including a new character and more voice acting, and "basic preparations" for development of Persona 5 have been completed. Most surprising is the announcement of Persona 4 The Ultimate, a 2D fighting game set two months after Persona 4 and developed by Guilty Gear and BlazBlue studio Arc System Works. The game, which will feature characters from Personas 3 and 4, will hit arcades next spring, with Xbox 360 and PS3 versions to follow in the summer.

Zynga has partnered with Epay to take its virtual currency cards to 18 new markets: the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia.

The joint venture, named BDNA Inc, is to focus on smartphone games, and will be 75 per cent funded by Namco Bandai, with DeNa footing the bill for the remaining 25 per cent. Shin Unozawa, CEO of Namco Bandai Games, will also be CEO of BDNA, with senior executives from both sides sitting on the board of directors. BDNA will officially open its doors on October 1.

The studio behind the enormously popular Minecraft is putting its high profile to good use, announcing that it is to publish Swedish developer Oxeye Game Studio's Cobalt. The developer describes it as "more of a team effort than the usual developer/publisher combo," with Notch's team to help with marketing, publicity and distribution.

The Capcom legend has worked with Idea Factory before, lending his likeness to its subsidiary Compile Heart for Neptune MkII. As you'll see from the below screenshots, it was a rather leftfield project, and so is his apparent collaboration with Idea Factory on its new PSP love sim, Bakudan Handan. Revealed in the latest Famitsu and translated by Andriasang, the game is set in a theme park which has been taken over by someone in a bear suit and who is threatening to blow it up. Inafune's name is mentioned twice: as designer of the theme park, which is based on videogames; and as the protagonist's uncle, who pops up throughout the game to impart sage wisdom. Andriasang is unsure whether either of those will be the real Keiji Inafune; either way we're offering pretty long odds on Bakudan Handan getting localised for the west.

Nintendo has announced a deal with The Cloud that will see it offer UK 3DS owners free access to some 5,000 WiFi hotspots. The BSkyB subsidiary has access points in restaurants including Eat and Pizza Express, other leisure facilities and major UK cities. Nintendo UK marketing director Dawn Paine told T3: "Nintendo 3DS continues to evolve and add new features all the time. The Cloud partnership represents another exciting step that will continue to expand its appeal and encourage owners to take their systems with them wherever they go."

Market research company the NPD Group is to collaborate with analyst firm EEDAR to develop “a total market tracking service” for the North America videogame industry, including physical and digital transactions across consoles, mobile and other online platforms. The move will result in the integration of NPD’s point-of-sale data into EEDAR’s GamePulse information service. NPD games president David McQuillan said: “The growth of the digital channel within the games industry presents numerous challenges and opportunities that we believe are best addressed for our clients through a formalised, collaborative effort between the NPD Group and EEDAR. We expect that this synergy of resources and vision will result in greater transparency into the total games market including digital forms of distribution as well as the established physical format.”

This collaboration between Suda51's Grasshopper Manufacture and Hungarian developer Digital Reality was first announced almost a year ago. The teaser trailer doesn't show any gameplay footage - it was described last August as mixing "traditional side-scrolling gameplay with unique time manipulation mechanics." We'll soon know more: the game is set for release on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network before the year is out.

The publisher's social subsidiary, Beeline Interactive, has announced a partnership with Peanuts that will see Beeline release social games featuring Snoopy and friends around the world. Capcom says it will use the licence to build on its success in the social space with Smurfs Village, the controversial freemium iOS game which, together with Capcom's Lil' Pirates and Zombie Café, has been downloaded more than 20 million times. In a statement, Beeline said the deal would "lead to even faster growth on a global scale in the steadily expanding market for social games."

There can be no bigger potential market for Zynga's enormously popular social games than China. While the firm has had a Chinese presence since the acquisition last year of XPD Media, creation of an office in Beijing and launch of a localised version of Zynga Texas Poker, it is to expand its operations significantly through a partnership with Chinese internet firm Tencent. Zynga is to launch a localised version of CityVille, dubbed Zynga City, with culturally tailored items, events and gameplay mechanics. The deal gives Zynga access to Tencent's 400 million active users, and reduces its reliance on Facebook: Zynga City will be released through Tencent's Pengyou social network, and will launch on other Tencent platforms in the coming months.

UK-based developer Double Eleven has signed an agreement which will see it develop games exclusively for Sony platforms. Formed by ex-Rockstar Leeds lead engineers last year, the studio is currently developing LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation Vita and was recently revealed to be the architect behind the technology driving the portable platformer. “Double Eleven are one of the most exciting developers to emerge onto the development scene in recent years, their technical expertise makes them a great fit for LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita and we’ve very pleased with the progress the team have made on this hugely anticipated title,” said Michael Denny, senior VP of SCE Worldwide Studios Europe. Double Eleven CEO Lee Hutchinson added: “For us to become strong partners with Sony at such a crucial stage in our own development underlines the unswerving commitment we have made to the quality of our production. It is a testament to the hard work of all the exceptional team here at Double Eleven and we're delighted that this agreement will help our company grow and flourish, working on prestigious titles, on leading-edge platforms.”

German online game publisher and portal Bigpoint has announced a new partnership with online web game company Spil Games. The deal will see Bigpoint release a number of its titles via Spil's casual gaming platform, which boasts 130 million players, starting with ZooMumba and the end of July. Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz said: "Spil's community of like-minded gamers is unique in the market, and we will also benefit from Spil's global reach, localized prices around the world and easy handling of the API." While Spil Games CEO Peter Driessen added: "Our two companies will fit together perfectly. I have long admired Bigpoint's innovative work in the world of browser games, and I am very pleased to welcome such a large player to Spil Games' growing social gaming platforms."

Developer CCP has announced a strategic partnership with Nexon, which is to localise Eve Online's client and services for Japan by the autumn. CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson said: "Japanese players have always been an essential part of the Eve Online community. Having considered Nexon's excellent reputation as Asia's leading game developer and publisher, they were the obvious choice in who the best possible partner would be to help us make the game more accessible to our growing fanbase in Japan."