Let’s get ready to turkeeeeeeyyyyy! Okay, maybe that’s a bit too excitement for gathering around the table with loved ones and carving up some unlucky bird, but it’s Thanksgiving Eve and the anticipation of a huge meal on Thursday coupled with the contact high of Black Friday sales must have us buzzing. And hey, there’s actually other stuff going on today that doesn’t relate to Turkey Day, so here’s all the news for Wednesday, November 23, 2011.
Bloomberg is reporting that Seattle-based Big Fish Games has apparently been granted permission to offer a new subscription-based game title in the iOS App Store, which gives buyers access to “dozens of titles” for only $6.99 per month. The move is unusual for apps, which have been allowed to offer one at a time in-app purchases for some time, while subscriptions have only recently rolled out to magazine and newspaper apps. Although Apple has yet to comment on (or even officially announce) the deal, the developer is clearly excited about the possibilities for what it dubs “Play Instantly: The first cloud gaming service for mobile devices.” The Play Instantly app is expected to arrive in the App Store today as a free download.
Jeffries analyst Peter Misek appears to be jumping the shark in a new AllThingsD report today claiming “TV manufacturers have begun a scrambling search to identify what iTV will be and do.” iTV, you may recall, was the original name of Apple TV, and many believe it will be the name of Apple’s television when it arrives as early as next year. Misek claims the TV manufacturers “hope to avoid the fate of other industries and manufacturers who were caught flat-footed by Apple.” Cue the laugh track...
In the mood to rent a good Disney flick this holiday weekend? Google sure hopes so, now that the search giant has inked a deal with the Mouse House to bring its content to YouTube. According to AppleInsider, Disney’s titles range from free ad-supported titles like the comedy Step Brothers all the way up to recent releases such as Bad Teacher and Attack the Block for $3.99 each, with plenty of 99-cent titles also mixed in. After renting, viewers have 30 days to watch, but once the title is started, you’ll have to finish up within 24 or 48 hours (depending on the title). Surprisingly, YouTube offers a little better deal on some Disney titles such as Cars 2, which is $3.99 in HD compared to $4.99 for the same thing on iTunes. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs became the single largest Disney shareholder after the sale of Pixar, and Disney content has frequently pioneered many of Apple’s media efforts over the years.
Steve Jobs once tried to lure The Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin into writing a Pixar movie for him. That never came to pass, but if Sony has anything to say about it, Sorkin may wind up working posthumously with the former Apple CEO. According to E! Online, the studio has approached The West Wing creator about writing the biopic of Jobs’ life, which is based on the recent biography by Walter Isaacson. “It’s something I’m strongly considering,” Sorkin revealed to the website. “Right now I’m just in the thinking-about-it stages. It’s a really big movie and it’s going to be a great movie no matter who writes it.”
Streaming music service Spotify has good reason to be thankful this year with the announcement that 2.5 million subscribers are now paying up each month. “So we’d like to say a big thank you to all our subscribers, new and old,” the blog post reads. The text also teases “some exciting developments in the works,” which likely points to the company’s November 30 press event in New York. That’s only a week away, so we won’t have to wait too much longer...
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
JimGrimes
November 24, 2011 at 7:40am
According to Bloomberg:
Big Fish's pleasure at launching the first game subscription app for iOS has been replaced by pain and confusion, as Apple's pulled the rug from underneath them.Having been available on the App Store since November 18th, Big Fish's founder was none the wiser as to why Apple had pulled a U-turn on them and ripped the app out of the App Store.
