Latest Technology Content

Just a couple of days ago, Golden Joystick Awards were held and Nintendo representative fighter took home the crown prize.

You might be confused by the fact that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has won a 2019 award when it was released back in December of 2018. Well, that's because the release of Smash Ultimate fell short of the cut of time for the Golden Joystick Awards of 2018, which is why it was run in 2019 awards.

Even though it might be a year out from its release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate still managed to scoop a really nice award up. According to Golden Joystick's official Twitter account, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate won the Nintendo Game of the Year award for 2019. This isn't the first time Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has got some decent awards, at the Japan Game Awards it got awarded the 'Grand Award', more on that here.

Back in September, Nintendo finally stepped into the mobile with an extremely strong IP, Mario Kart Tour.

Players started their engines on the 25th of September, and in just one day the app got 20 million downloads. Now some new statistics have been released by Sensor Tower who has revealed that just in September the app was downloaded 86.2 million times. Following the September release, Mario Kart Tour slowed down a bit in October, but still managed to pull in a further 40.3 million unique installs.

In comparison to Mario Kart Tour, Activision's Call of Duty: Mobile pulled in 148 million downloads in October. How much revenue was made off these installs? Mario Kart Tour managed to rake in $32 million in October, while Call of Duty: Mobile pulled ahead with $54 million. Mario Kart Tour currently doesn't have multiplayer support so these numbers are sure to increase once Nintendo updates the game with that.

Adult Swim has released a new preview of the second episode to come to Rick and Morty Season 4, showing more of why you shouldn't develop an app with Glootie.

This episode, which is titled "The Old Man In The Seat" is a reference to Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man And The Sea". If you are familiar with "The Old Man And The Sea" story, you would know that it's about an old man and his pursuit of catching a giant fish so he can finally rest.

It seems that Jerry is the 'old man' and developing an app with Glootie is his 'giant fish' to financial gain and notoriety. Little does Jerry know, and to Rick's full knowledge, developing an app with Glootie is how his species takes over planets. The app, which seems to be some form of alien-Tinder rip off called "Lovefinderrz" launches, and Jerry and Morty end up on the mother-ship to turn the server off.

When you are traveling, whether it is throughout and the airport, to a hotel room or everything else in-between, battery becomes a problem you have to overcome. The convenience public USB charging should be all good, right? Wrong.

According to a new warning issued out by LA County District Attorney's Office, travelers should avoid using public USB charging stations in airports, hotels and other locations as devices connected to these chargers could result in the device being hacked. The scam is called "juice jacking" and its when criminals place malware onto the charging station and its cables and the leave the cable there for an unsuspecting traveler to come by and juice up their phone.

While the charging is occurring for the traveler, the malware might "lock the device or export data and

passwords directly to the scammer." With the risk of having personal information scammed away from your device, the battery % you would have gained charging doesn't seem worth the cost. How do you overcome this new issue? Easy. Invest in reasonable portable chargers with a considerable amount of milliamp hours. Anker is a great brand, as well as Cygnet. A link to a great one can be found here.

Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service is getting so good that I'm starting to feel bad for subscribing.

Game Pass is the best value in gaming right now: For $10 a month, you get access to over 100+ games across the entire Xbox spectrum, from the original Xbox all the way to Xbox One. Microsoft has invested tremendously with partners to bring some of the biggest games over to the all-you-can-play service, and now Square Enix is jumping into the fray with their beloved Final Fantasy series.

At the XO19 event in London, England, Square Enix confirmed that multiple big Final Fantasy games will be on Game Pass in 2020. The following games are coming to Game Pass on both consoles and PC:

• FINAL FANTASY VII
• FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered
• FINAL FANTASY IX
• FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster
• FINAL FANTASY XII THE ZODIAC AGE
• FINAL FANTASY XIII
• FINAL FANTASY XIII-2
• LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII
• FINAL FANTASY XV

The Switch has now sold over 41 million systems worldwide on the backs of a big quarterly surge.

Nintendo sold 6.93 million Switch consoles in the six-month period ended September 30, 2019, with 2.13 million systems sold in Q1'19 and 4.8 million sold in Q2'19. This brings total lifetime Switch sales to 41.67 to date, including the 2017 base model, the new Switch Lite handheld-only system, and the new Switch revision with improved battery life.

Total hardware sales made up 53.2% of Nintendo's total gaming platform sales, or roughly 214.961 billion yen ($1.99 billion). Nintendo attributes this staggering 125% jump in quarter-over-quarter numbers to strong software sales including first party games like Super Mario Maker 2 and Link's Awakening.

343i has two weeks to fix some pretty big issues with Halo: Reach on PC, and if they can't, the game might not hit promised high-end performance targets.

Right now Halo: Reach on PC is locked at 60FPS for its beta testing flights. But it could stay that way when Reach launches in December, possibly even for an undetermined time after release. In a recent forum update, 343i's Tyler Davis says the team's work will carry over long after Reach's release with "more improvements beyond launch."

He also said the team still isn't happy about Reach's frame rates:

"In the current flight, we were able to further test our experimental implementation and the feature does not meet our quality expectations. From our learnings we're currently investigating and working on fundamental improvements. When we have a solution that meets our quality bar we will first flight it with the community before releasing it more broadly."

Nintendo platform holders are mostly buying first-party games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Maker 2, and Link's Awakening over third party games.

Surprising absolutely no one, consumers buy Nintendo hardware specifically to play Nintendo games. The company's recent 2H'19 financials highlighted the continuing trend, showing that Nintendo's first-party games made up 75% of total software sales during the six-month period. Nintendo managed to sell roughly 58.54 million Switch software units in 2H'19, of which 43.90 million were first-party titles.

Nearly all of Nintendo's major first-party games have made it big on the Switch, especially newer titles. Super Mario Maker 2 has sold 3.39 million units so far, and others like Link's Awakening moved 3.13 million and Fire Emblem: Three Houses moved 2.29 million copies.

Nintendo is making big strides towards digital-based revenues, propelled by game sales, services, and add-on content.

Nintendo's recent financials show a huge surge in digital earnings. The company made 71.6 billion yen ($663.45 million) from digital in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2019, up a tremendous 83% year-over-year. Nintendo attributes this big jump in digital revenue to strong Switch Online subscriptions, massive add-on sales like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's fighter pass, and more direct consumer spending on digitally-delivered games.

Interestingly enough, the digital still isn't the preferred method consumers actually use to buy games. Retail box sales still hold the lion's share of Switch game sales. Only 36.2% of Nintendo's total 58.54 million software sales in 2H'19 were from digital--the rest were from physical sales.

Microsoft's Project xCloud might've just killed Stadia before it even released.

Google's new Stadia game streaming service is kind of a confusing mess right now. Google doesn't really know what it's doing. Stadia requires a $10 monthly sub at launch, forces users to buy their own games separately, is missing lots of key features like save state sharing at launch, and needs a mobile app to change basic settings. You'll also have to buy a Chromecast Ultra to play on your TV, and PC gaming is limited to 1080p 60FPS. It has a lot of hooks and gamers are dubious.

Microsoft's competing service is totally different. Project xCloud basically does everything Stadia does, but it'll include a pool of games for a set monthly fee, complete with total Xbox account integration. But it's the newly announced features that've basically just snuffed Stadia out before Google's service had a chance to compete.