Below are supposed scans from the store Smyths. If these images are indeed true, Nintendo could be releasing a "Mario & Luigi Premium Pack." The Wii U would come bundled with New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U. According to the Ad, the bundle will release sometime in November.
After months of beta testing and an official announcement last month, Facebook still hasn’t made its offers product available to pages unless they are major advertisers.
Offers are a new free story type that allows page owners to post coupons that users can collect from News Feed or ad units. Currently, pages do not have access to the feature unless they are working with the social network as a premium advertiser. The company likely wants to discover and resolve any issues with the creation and redemption of offers before pushing the feature live to all pages, but some page owners interpret the delay as another example of Facebook favoring large brands over small businesses.
Facebook tells us offers will, in fact, be available to pages of all sizes soon.
“We are slowly rolling offers out over the course of the coming weeks, but eventually, any business with a page will be able to run an offer,” a company spokesperson says.
Judging from past Facebook statements, “coming weeks” could mean several months from now, so businesses should not count on running offer campaigns in the next quarter unless they work directly with a Facebook account manager.
Perhaps the social network is taking its time to release offers to avoid the fate of its other deals services. The company launched check-in deals in November 2010, but these never quite took off among merchants. Finding the dashboard to create them was difficult, Facebook had to approve each deal and there were few ways for users to discover deals. A spokesperson told us in February that Facebook would discontinue check-in deals in favor of the new offers functionality. The social network also tried offering prepaid deals à la Groupon, but it scrapped the idea after a few months.
The new offers have a lot of potential since they begin as page posts. Page owners will be able to create them with little trouble and they’ll get distribution among a page’s existing fan base. Claiming offers is simple — one click sends a coupon to a user’s email account — and results in prominent News Feed stories that increase awareness of the promotion. Businesses can also buy Sponsored Stories to support the offer.
Facebook could tweak the design and functionality of offers when it releases the feature widely, but here is the anticipated flow for creating an offer based on the site’s help center.
The page publisher (seen below) will get a new “Offer” icon: 
Clicking the icon will bring up a dialog to describe the offer in 100 characters and set an expiry date.
Then, page owners can upload a small photo for the offer and describe the terms and conditions. After that, the offer can be published to the page.
Adobe announced Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2 versions today along with a set of premium APIs for PC and mobile games. The software giant is also collaborating with Unity to create a unified workflow that can deliver Unity games via Flash.
The premium APIs are a combination of the GPU accelerated Stage3D APIs Adobe first announced with Flash Player 11 last fall and fast memory op codes. On mobile via Adobe AIR, developers can use the APIs for free — but on Flash Player 11, the software company takes a 9 percent cut of revenues after the first $50,000. These terms go into effect August 1, 2012, giving developers between now and then to determine if the APIs are suitable for their games. Adobe acknowledges that the majority of gaming content currently created in Flash probably won’t need to use the premium features. Developers do not have to pay royalties on each of the APIs if used alone or on software rendering of Stage3D with or without the op codes.
The Unity collaboration is born of Unity’s own efforts to tap into the Flash audience without players needing to download a plugin. In September of last year, Unity announced that it would support Flash in future versions — which is what prompted Adobe to reach out and work with the company to create a unified workflow that better serves developers. The Unity 3.5 Flash export functionality is currently in preview mode, but beyond that release, Adobe says it’s also working on integrating future Adobe gaming services into Unity. At some point, we may see Adobe partner with other engine creators on similar projects — in October last year, we saw Epic Games’ Unreal Engine running Unreal Tournament on Flash.
Both moves seem like solid ones for Adobe. By introducing APIs as a service, rather than giving them away with a one-time purchases of its authoring software, the company can take a slice of the virtual goods revenues social and mobile game developers enjoy. At the same time, Adobe is also building bridges to console video game developers, providing a way for non-Flash developers to tap into Flash’s broad reach on PCs in the social and casual games space. The Unity collaboration reinforces the approach, and Adobe tells us it’s working with a number of 3rd party frameworks to help developers to reach 2D or 3D content markets.
Interestingly, Adobe is pushing a monetization angle in Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2. By creating a unified platform for desktop and mobile, it hopes to reduce fragmentation in those markets. Adobe also plans to offer analytics and revenue optimization features as part of its game services in the near future — not unlike what we see from Kontagent or Flurry.
While Unity isn’t that common in social games, it definitely has traction in mobile games. CEO and co-founder David Helgason told Inside Mobile Apps earlier this month that mobile developers account for over half of the company’s total business. On Facebook, the healthiest Unity game we’ve seen so far is CMUNE’s UberStrike, which requires a plugin.
You can find out more about the premium APIs and the Unity collaboration on the just-launched Adobe gaming blog.
Facebook announced today that premium ads will be displayed on a new “logout experience” page, immediately after Facebook users log out of Facebook using their desktop web browser. This is part of a significant overhaul of its premium advertising options available to advertisers working directly with the company.
Previously, when users logged out of Facebook, they were redirected to the logged-out home page that prompts users to either login or register a new account. Now the page can feature a very large and prominent ad, which logically replaces the signup portion of the page that is not relevant to users who already have Facebook accounts. We have a photo of the logout page below from today’s keynote presentation, but are awaiting more images from Facebook to confirm the exact appearance of the new page:
Though many Facebook users stay logged in for long periods, this potentially represents monetization of hundreds of millions of monthly pageviews that previously display advertising. The addition of premium ads to the logout page will help Facebook generate enough impressions to reach the 75 percent of fans that it guarantees through its Reach Generator solution for Premium advertisers, also announced today.
Any premium page post ad is eligible to be shown on the logout screen. This includes videos, photos, offers, events and questions. A user does not have to be connected to a page in order to see this type of ad.
Stay tuned for more coverage of today’s fMC event, and see our liveblog of the keynote presentation.
