I am actually astounded it took this long for Riot to make this change, particularly when you consider the kind of data it had available. Granted, these stats were probably taken after the launch of Season One, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon to see players below level 30 matched with those above prior to the Season One launch either.

As Pendragon stated in a post last night, the change was made because players below level 30 tend to leave 4.2 percent of games, versus the 1.1 percent of games from level 30 players. The really interesting stat, though, is that sub-30 players have a staggering 35.2 percent win rate, while those over 30 are seeing an average 52 percent win rate.

Again, I’m shocked it took this long, and the data serves as a pretty embarrassing statement toward Riot’s foresight on this. You should start to see the change today.

I have often bemoaned LoL’s lack of comprehensive statistics. As it currently stands, you can only get detailed stats on your top 3 champions and your last 10 games, and neither are really that comprehensive. You still don’t get to see your teammates’ performance, for instance, or a numerical value for your K/D spread beyond the actual spread. You can get yourself some of the stats with a calculator, but having it all in hand would be mighty nice.

I found a post on the forums two days ago about lolbase.net, a site dedicated to providing comprehensive stats for players based on the info buried in the log files for each game. Players upload their log files to the site, which then parses them and keeps track of individual stats for every player. It’s not perfect by any means – it can’t record games either you or someone else doesn’t upload – but it’s the best solution I’ve seen so far. It was also a bit surprising to log in and find myself with almost 80 recorded matches when I haven’t done a thing.

The more I look around the site the more I hope Riot just buys them. It would be so nice to have a robust, web-based stat system to browse outside the game’s often slow and clunky interface. Until then, I’m going to start uploading some log files to get myself a nice stat list going.

Just look at the green slice on that pie chart. That’s exactly where Sony wishes the PSP was. Instead, it’s Apple. Yes, Apple. I never thought I would see the day that a computer manufacturer was stealing mobile market share from Nintendo but here we are. In just 21 months Apple has managed to snag 19% of the mobile market by revenue.

It’s a pretty impressive stat, considering the lower price of software for the iPhone OS. Can you imagine the number of transactions involved? The really bad news in this story is for Sony, whose revenues are down almost 50% from last year. The PSP Go was obviously not a hit – not that anyone expected it to be – and there hasn’t been much in the way of software to encourage any newcomers to the platform.

As far as total revenue goes, the iPhone OS is now 5% of the total market share, including consoles. If that’s not something for Apple to be happy about, I don’t know what it would take.

Source: Flurry

Activision’s fiscal report for 2009 contained some seriously juicy news. First, there’s the scandal at Infinity Ward. Second, there’s this. The report included statistics regarding the company’s revenue sources, revealing that a large majority, like 68%, come from just three franchises: World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Guitar Hero. The report also noted that WoW accounts for a whopping 98% of Blizzard’s revenue.

The obvious concern is for one of those franchises to flop. One bad Call of Duty and suddenly Activision doesn’t look so stable. As the company puts things, “Due to this dependence on a limited number of franchises, the failure to achieve anticipated results by one or more products based on these franchises may significantly harm our business and financial results.” I would say so, fellas.

We already know that rhythm games are on the decline and WoW hasn’t grown in more than a year. No wonder Blizzard’s trying to push Starcraft 2 out the door by mid-year.

Source: Kotaku

Online games make lots of money. You know this. Everyone knows this. It’s why everyone and their mother has made an MMO in the last three years and attempts to advertise them with lots and lots of boobs. A new study by Strategy Analytics has confirmed that widely held belief. It was actually a study of the industry as a whole that showed growth everywhere, but specifically that online gaming would generate more than $20 billion in new revenue over the next three years.

Strategy Analytics says that online gaming is set to grow in revenue by 18.7% year over year, creating a $24.8 billion sector of the market that accounts for 38% of total gaming revenue. In short: it’s gonna be huge. It’s not just online games blowing up, though. SA also predicts a $64.9 billion industry by 2013, compared with the meager $46.5 billion that was 2009.

I hope the students out there are paying attention. These are the kinds of numbers that just might legitimize video games as a career in the eyes of your parents.

Source: Edge Online