Onling Gaming Tidbits for March 17th, 2009

A few of the latest online gaming related stories in the news:

• iPhone Games Get DLC, Microtransactions, More Multiplayer – EA’s The Sims 3 and ngmoco’s Touch Pets will be among the first iPhone games to use it.
• Exit Games launches new multiplayer engine – Available on PC, Mac, browser, iPhone and Android devices, Photon is claimed to be the ‘market’s fastest multiplayer engine’. Whatever that actually means. Fast multiplayer?
• Capcom on RE5 DLC complaints: offering more is not cheating – Ars Technica – The publisher justifies their decision to charge $5 for their versus multiplayer mode.
• OnNet To Allow Players To Earn Microtransaction Currency In-Game In Manga Fighter – If you can get players to stuck around for a while first, you can try and extract real money later.
• Players use Third Party Applications to Unlock Achievements & get In-Game Items in TF2 – Valve thwarted the attempts and PlayNoEvil speculates on what happened.
• ARPU vs ARPPU – Raph Koster on the distinction between average revenue per used and paying user.
• Virtual Goods at SXSW: Hi5 Launching Currency API, OutSpark Reports $50 ARPU -

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