Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 114

A recent patent from Nintendo has revealed that the company has plans for making a Game Boy-like casing for touchscreen devices, most likely smart-phones.

From the images we can see that the current plans for the Game Boy casing are buttons placed on top of the devices touchscreen. These buttons will correspond to the screen below the buttons and input the desired key presses through a conductive sheet with nubs beneath the buttons. The nubs will act as if the user is pressing the screen with their finger thus giving seamless control for the user.

It should also be noted that Nintendo were very specific to say that this Game Boy casing is not just going to be used for smart-phones. According to the patent, the casing "may be attached to other electronic equipment such as a tablet terminal that does not have a telephone function." This means that Nintendo could have plans for bringing the Game Boy casing to tablets and maybe even the Nintendo Switch as well. The patent was official filed on March 16, 2018. As soon as there is further information regarding the case I will be sure to update you.

Sensor Tower has broken down the statistics regarding the recent release of Nintendo Switch Online, from the results we can see that Nintendo Switch Online has caused a 76% spike in downloads for the Nintendo Switch Online app, when compared to the previous week.

From the Sensor Tower results, the release of Nintendo Switch Online on September 18th caused the total figure of Nintendo Switch Online app users to be raised to about quarter of the total Nintendo Switch users. With there being around 20 million total Nintendo Switch users, this means that there are now currently 5 million Nintendo Switch Online app users, 33 and 30 percent of those 5 million users are from Japan and the United States. Platform wise, 60 percent was obtained from Google Play and the following 40 percent was sourced from the App Store.

Looking towards the weekly rise in downloads, the week before the launch of Nintendo Switch Online there was only 70,000 downloads of the app worldwide. After the release of Nintendo Switch Online there was a 123,000 new downloads, this means that there was a 76 percent increase when compared to the previous week. If you would like to view the full breakdown on the Sensor Tower website, visit it here.

Qualcomm is NOT happy right now, claiming that Apple has sold its wireless technology over the last few years so that it could unshackle itself from requiring any use of Qualcomm as a company. But the claims get worse: Apple has allegedly stolen Qualcomm IP and handed it to Intel to help super-power their seriously bad 4G/5G modem technology.

Given that Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones per year, the requirement of paying Qualcomm for any modem IP in every single iPhone, this move - if proven, would mean Apple doesn't want to pay anything to Qualcomm and will instead steal everything and hand it to their competition. Intel's entire modem business has been disappointing over the years, while Qualcomm makes leaps and bounds with its various IP, especially the upcoming 5G tech.

Apple has previously stated that Qualcomm was abusing its position as the market leader with smartphone modems, as they didn't like the large fees it had to pay the San Diego-based giant. Qualcomm made some of these claims in 2017 but wasn't as harsh as they are now, which it seems with more information on-hand. Qualcomm is now saying that Apple knowingly, and continually shared its modem secrets with Intel, which is a game changer.

SMITE developers Hi-Rez Studios have decided to create three brand new development teams to take care of each of the respective games, introducing Titan Forge Games, Heroic Leap Games and Evil Mojo Games.

Hi-Rez Studios has decided to split its development teams into three separate studios, each of the studios will control the development of each of Hi-Rez Studios' IP's. The first studio is called Titan Forge Games and will be taking control of the eSports success SMITE. The second is Evil Mojo Games and will be taking the helm of the 2018 hero shooter Paladins. The last is Heroic Leap Games and that team will operate Realm Royale, the new battle royale title on Steam.

Each of the first party studios will be overseen by Chris Larson who is now the general manager, his current goal is to establish each of the respective teams and make sure they "fulfil their maximum potential and stay hyper focused on serving their individual player communities," said Larson. According to the press release, Larson has said that "We view game operation as a marathon, not a sprint. Our games are built to provide near constant updates over many years. By giving each major game its own dedicated studio and identity, we empower them to control their own destiny and focus exclusively on their player communities, while still having access to our leading shared publishing services." For more information regarding Hi-Rez Studios, visit their official website here.

Last week we saw Sony announce a brand new limited edition PS4 console to celebrate shipping 500 million units across the entire PlayStation family. A monumental achievement for the Japanese games-maker but now lets look at what Nintendo can celebrate.

At the end of June this year Nintendo released their updated sales numbers for each of their products, according to the numbers when calculated together we get a total of 300.54 million units. This total is counting the following console unit sales in millions:

What is most interesting though is that Sony counted their handheld console sales (PSP/PS Vita) within the 500 million total, this means to be completely fair we would also have to count Nintendo's handheld sales. This is where Nintendo comes in really strong, Game Boy - 118.69, Game Boy Advance - 81.51, DS - 154.02 and 3DS - 72.89. When adding up all of those sales it brings us to a total of 427.11 million units, combining that with the above 300.54 million units we have a grand total of 727.65 million units. Clearly from these numbers Nintendo absolutely obliterates Sony when counting all hardware sales, I wonder if we will get a special 'Limited Edition' Nintendo Switch to celebrate?

AMD has posted better-than-expected Q2 2018 sales and earnings that have pushed AMD stock up 14% in 24 hours, and over 20% in 48 hours.

The company posted $1.76 billion in revenue for the three-month period, compared to $1.15 billion in the same quarter of 2017. AMD posted a net income of $116 million, which when compared to the $42 million loss of the same time last year, is a great result.

AMD Q2 2018 highlights:

On Sunday morning there was one Palo Alto couple that woke up to something I think most people can safely say has never happened to them; a burglar breaks into your house and gets asked to use your Wi-Fi network, while standing in your bedroom. Yeah, I didn't think so.

This happened to a 60-something couple in California with the man jumping out of bed and towards the burglar, pushing down down the hallway and outside of their front door. As soon as the masked intruder was out the door the man called the police, and the person seeking access to their Wi-Fi network was arrested and identified as a 17-year-old minor.

The young man was arrested for burglary which is a felony, and because he was prowling he's been hit with a misdemeanor and not only that, he provided police with false information. The police said that he lied about his identity when they first caught him, right after he got into the 60-something couples house by "cutting a screen covering an open window in the side yard".

The world thinks Facebook is invincible, with over 1 billion daily active users, billions of images and videos uploaded every month... it is ingrained in our very social fabric. Facebook is the largest social media company in the world, with Twitter the second-largest behind what Mark Zuckerberg created.

Well even with all of its control, power, and data it has on everyone the social networking giant saw its shares dip 19% in a single day which saw $120 billion eradicated from its market value, with Facebook now holding the record for the largest one-day drop in the history of the US stock market. Facebook shares dropped as much as 23% in after-hours trading, which is when Facebook reported its second quarter earnings.

Facebook saw slower daily active user growth that grew by only 22 million, which is pretty bad considering the last time Facebook saw these numbers was all the way back in 2011. More so, Facebook CFO said that revenue growth would "decline by single-digit percentages" for the rest of 2018. Doom and gloom for Facebook, it seems. But where have these problems come from?

In a story that is beyond sad, PayPal issued a letter to a woman who had died of cancer to tell her that her death was a breach of their rules, and that the company would look at legal action against her.

PayPal has since said that the letter was "insensitive", apologised to her husband, and is now working out how it was sent. Lindsay Durdle died on May 31 at just 37 years old, after an 18-month battle with breast cancer that had eventually spread to her lungs and brain.

After receiving the heartless letter, her husband contacted the BBC about the story. PayPal was informed of Lindsay's death three weeks ago now, sending the company copies of her death certificate, her will, and his ID. PayPal then sent him a letter in return that was headlined with "Important: You should read this notice carefully".

Epic Games is taking legal action against one of their former Fortnite testers, after inside information regarding the title was leaked out onto a Subreddit forum.

Thomas Hannah, a former Fortnite tester has been accused of leaking information of the in-game Fortnite event for the fourth season. Hannah provided this information to an unnamed third party, it was then posted to a subreddit which has now been taken down. Epic Games filed the lawsuit against Hannah on May 7th, since then Hannah has also filled a defense asking for Epic Games' claims to be dismissed by the court. He says that the information that was shared was throughout a private conversation without knowledge of the other persons motives, here is what he had to say "[I was] pumped with a series of questions and guesses regarding where the meteor would hit."

Hannah has said that he is aware that he has broken the non disclosure agreement that was signed with Epic Games, and also that the information that was given was without consent from the company. Epic is demanding damages and legal fees under the state and federal trade secrets laws, as the company has said that Epic "has suffered and is continuing to suffer irreparable injury."