Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 116

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."

Foxconn is doubling down on its US plans with the company extending past its Wisconsin-based display factory plant, with news of a US-based headquarters in Milwaukee, just 30 miles away from its upcoming factory.

The company plans to buy a 77-storey building from Northwestern Mutual where up to 500 people wi-ll work there. Foxconn's new HQ will also feature an innovation hub that will work with startups to create apps for their new display tech.

Wisconsin has been at the center of some major tech movement lately, with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee starting up a new co-op program that sees engineering students flying over to Taiwan to study at the Chung Yuan Christian University.

THQ Nordic, the developers behind Biomutant, Darksiders and many more titles have released their 2018 quarterly earnings report. It appears that the company has almost made more sales in just the 3 months of 2018 than they did in the entire of 2017.

THQ Nordic recently decided to acquire Koch Media, the parent company of developer Deep Silver who made Saints Row and Dead Island. This acquisition has payed off quite well for THQ Nordic, as the company recently released its 2018 quarterly earnings and it appears that the company has $25.9 million USD in profits from revenues of $78.9 million.

This massive increase measures to a 439% increase in profits and a 673% increase more revenue when compared to the exact same quarter of last year. Back in 2017, from January through to December 31st THQ Nordic only made $31.3 million USD from $58.3 million in revenue. This means that THQ Nordic has almost made all of their 2017 earnings in just the first quarter of this year.

Red Barrel, the developers behind the critically acclaimed horror series Outlast have spoken out about the titles sales as well as the companys revenue from the series.

The first Outlast came to Steam at a price point of just $19.99, while the title only cost the developers $1.4 million CAD to build and distribute. The second Outlast was a bit more pricey, costing $7 million CAD to build and was set a price point of $29.99.

According to an interview with Red Barrel CEO, Philippe Morin combining both of these titles unit sales has brought the total of the series to a massive 15 million units sold. This has resulted in the developer making $45 million CAD after expenses have been taken out. Here is what Morin had to say about the developer moving onto new IP's "We're prototyping, and the way I want to approach this is to get a prototype that we're really happy about, and then figure out the best way to get it done. Are we going to need the same kind of budget? Can it be lower? Right now, I don't know."

Cliff Bleszinski, the creator behind the very popular Gears of War series has taken to Twitter to announce that his studio Boss Key Production is now officially closed, effective immediately.

Boss Key Productions was the developers behind the failure of a title LawBreakers, CliffyB addresses that "LawBreakers was a great game that unfortunately failed to gain traction" as the title was squashed throughout the raw popularity of the Battle Royale genre. In hopes of stringing something together CliffyB says that him and his team "scrambled to do our take on the huge battle royale genre with Radical Heights, which was well received. However, it was too little, too late."

Its good to see a developer coming out and admitting that one of their titles was a desperate attempt to keep their studio afloat, here is what CliffyB finished up on saying. "To those of you who have supported myself and the studio these last four years, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please note, that the servers for Radical Heights will remain up for the near future."