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“Xbox One X launch leads Microsoft’s gaming division to 8% growth” plus 29 more VentureBeat

“Xbox One X launch leads Microsoft’s gaming division to 8% growth” plus 29 more VentureBeat

Xbox One X launch leads Microsoft’s gaming division to 8% growth

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 01:30 PM PST

The Xbox One X has helped to grow Microsoft gaming business. The Xbox division generated $3.9 billion in revenues during the company’s Q2 of fiscal 2018. That’s up 8 percent, and Microsoft gave the credit to its new, more powerful console.

“Gaming revenue grew 8 percent driven by Xbox hardware revenue growth from the Xbox One X launch,” reads Microsoft’s report.

Microsoft debuted the Xbox One in November 2013, and it refreshed the console line in November with a version that is now more capable of running 4K content for modern televisions. Even with the Xbox One X rolling out for $500, the system does not have the same profit margins as the older model — especially when you consider marketing costs.

“Gross margin percentage decreased driven by Gaming as a result of the Xbox One X launch,” reads Microsoft’s report.

Xbox software also continues to grow. The company did not have many huge exclusives during its Q2, but the platform as a whole continues to generate income.

“Xbox software services revenue grew 4 percent from continued momentum in digital distribution, partially offset by prior year first-party triple-A title launches,” reads the report. “Xbox Live monthly active user grew 7 percent to 59 million with continued growth across Xbox One, Windows 10, and mobile platforms.”

But Q2 was definitely about hardware for Microsoft. The Xbox One X led to 14-percent growth in gaming-hardware revenue compared to the same time last year.

The Xbox platform still has plenty of momentum for Microsoft to build on, and now it has new hardware fueling future growth. The company is looking to shift into a more services-based model when it comes to gaming, which includes Xbox Live and its Netflix-like $10-per-month Game Pass program. But this quarterly report confirms that the console and blockbuster game sales will continue to serve as the heart of that business for Microsoft.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Microsoft reports $28.9 billion in Q2 2018 revenue: Azure up 98%, Surface up 1%, and Windows up 4%

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 01:06 PM PST

Microsoft today reported earnings for its second fiscal quarter of 2018, including revenue of $28.9 billion, net income of $7.5 billion, and earnings per share of $0.96 (compared to revenue of $26.1 billion, net income of $6.5 billion, and earnings per share of $0.83 in Q2 2017). All three of the company’s operating groups saw growth. The quarter’s results also included a net charge of $13.8 billion due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Analysts had expected Microsoft to earn $28.39 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $0.86. In short, the company beat expectations. The company’s stock was up 2.45 percent in regular trading, but down about 1 percent in after-hours trading. Microsoft said it returned $5.0 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends during the quarter.

“This quarter’s results speak to the differentiated value we are delivering to customers across our productivity solutions and as the hybrid cloud provider of choice,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. “Our investments in IoT, data, and AI services across cloud and the edge position us to further accelerate growth.”

Last quarter, Microsoft’s cloud annualized run rate passed $20 billion, ahead of schedule. Nadella’s plan to turn Microsoft into a cloud company is working.

Here are the highlights across the company’s three operating groups:

  • Productivity and Business Processes: Up 25 percent to $9.0 billion. Office commercial revenue grew 10 percent, Office consumer revenue was up 12 percent, and Dynamics revenue increased 10 percent. Office 365 subscribers hit 29.2 million. LinkedIn contributed revenue of $1.3 billion.
  • Intelligent Cloud: Up 15 percent to $7.8 billion. Server products and cloud services revenue grew 18 percent while Enterprise Services revenue increased 5 percent. But the big number as always was Azure revenue, which grew 98 percent.
  • More Personal Computing: Up 2 percent at $12.2 billion. Windows OEM revenue was up 4 percent while Windows commercial revenue increased 4 percent. Search acquisition advertising revenue minus traffic acquisition costs jumped 15 percent. Surface revenue increased by 1 percent, and gaming revenue was up 8 percent (driven largely by the Xbox One X).

The fact Surface revenue is flat is surprising. The Surface Laptop helped the company in the previous quarter, but it looks like the Surface Book 2 didn’t make much of a dent. That said, the current quarter will give us a full three months of sales, so we’ll be able to make a better call in Q3 2018.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

3 modest predictions for transportation technology in 2018

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 12:10 PM PST

GUEST:

You practically have to predict the future to successfully build or make investments in startups. As a founder of Clearcover, a car insurance technology startup, and in my prior role as a venture capitalist at American Family Insurance, I’ve spent a lot of time making predictions about the future of transportation, mostly as it relates to technology and insurance.

There’s just one problem: Forecasters, myself included, almost always get predictions wrong.

You see, an accurate prediction requires two things. The first is knowing the potential outcomes you can predict, and the second is knowing the probability that any specific outcome will occur. Most forecasters focus on the second item at the expense of the first. In other words, we spend too much time predicting the likelihood of things we already know, and not enough time exploring possibilities we haven’t yet considered.

So, while it’s fun to make flashy, specific predictions for the new year, my 2018 predictions focus on things that are intentionally broad. That means you aren’t likely to find these predictions to be true or false at the end of the year. Rather, they should foster discussion around what might be true or false (or some of both), so we can all learn a little more about what’s possible.

Prediction 1: We’re nearing the top of the transportation hype cycle

Autonomous vehicles (AVs), the end of car ownership, and new forms of transportation (like Hyperloop or Uber’s drone fleet) are buzzy topics. But, while the long-term impact of these advances is inevitable, the transition period will be messy — and many predictions overlook that messiness. In other words, we should temper optimism with pragmatism.

My team believes adoption rates are a function of three factors: technology, regulation, and behavioral impact. And while technology will likely progress faster than most people think — it almost always does — regulation will contribute to the messy part of adoption, at least at first. For example, despite the recent legislative support of AVs, bureaucratic slowdowns have begun, and we’ll start to see even more as the debate around new modes of transportation becomes more politically charged. (We’ll touch on behavioral impact in the next prediction.)

The sheer amount of positive technology-related commentary is also likely skewing projections of adoption rates (see: availability heuristic). To play devil’s advocate, here’s a potentially surprising fact for people predicting the rapid demise of the current transportation paradigm: Personal car ownership rates are rising. This means even with amazing growth from services like Uber and Lyft — companies that have earned a prominent role in the transportation economy — a growing number of Americans still want to own a car. And while this trend won’t last forever, it may slow a major transition in the use of shared vehicles.

Prediction 2: We’ll discover new pockets of resistance and new use cases

Autonomous vehicles will make roads safer. That reason alone supports widespread adoption. However, the relationship between intelligent, autonomous vehicles and humans will be exceedingly complex, and resistance will come from a variety of places. That said, new or niche use cases will likely emerge to battle this resistance.

Some resistance may be systemic. For example, many people factor cost barriers into their AV adoption rate predictions, but most are looking at incremental price increases due to adding autonomous functionality to vehicles. And yes, that cost is high, but it’s also coming down. However, fewer people are looking at other economic considerations, like the size of the purchase decision (cost relative to income). As you can see in this chart, while technology adoption rates have accelerated significantly over time, few recent innovations have represented as large a portion of household income as a car (other than the “V1” car). This friction in turning over an asset like a car is also reflected in ownership trends — today, consumers are holding onto their cars for longer than ever.

We may also be underestimating natural behavioral responses to AVs. For instance, there’s still much to learn about whether AV-powered car services/fleets — despite economic benefits — will influence ownership preferences. Given people’s relationship with cars, we probably won’t face entirely rational economic decision-making when it comes to trading in driveable vehicles for good. However, new use cases, like improved mobility for the elderly or disabled, can change these behavioral arguments dramatically. Put another way, things like freedom to drive and ancillary ownership benefits have little influence when they didn’t exist to begin with.

Prediction 3: Insurance will follow the car

Innovation in insurance (yes, it exists) will follow the transportation evolution. The largest five P&C insurers sell over $100 billion in car insurance every year, so you know they’ll be paying attention to how changes in risk affect their strategies.

Insurance companies, large and small, will be monitoring the growing likelihood of “black swan” events. Excluding catastrophe modelings, historically, car insurance pricing considers accidents to be (mostly) independent events, meaning that the cause of an accident in Reno isn’t connected to an accident in Boston. However, in a world of networked vehicles, this assumption changes. When a single hacking incident might cause hundreds or thousands of losses simultaneously, new ways of measuring and transferring risk will be required.

Another area to watch is the relationship between computers (AV) and human drivers. While lots of people are thinking about insuring AVs and/or humans separately, my team believes it’s more important to develop protection for trips where driving responsibility is dynamically exchanged between the person and the car. We call this a Complex Adaptive Responsibility model — since each entity learns independently, understanding the whole system requires more than simply looking at its individual parts.

Insurance companies that thrive won’t necessarily be the companies that start the earliest — there’s still too much uncertainty on what the future holds. Instead, the winners will be the companies that can adapt their organizations most quickly to capitalize on new realities as they become clear.

2018 holds promise, potential, and more predictions

While no one really knows what the year ahead will bring, it is certain to be exciting. Every small experiment will get us a little closer to the next reality, and I’m excited for the experimentation to continue. If you have thoughts on what I missed, where I was right or where I am dead wrong, please join the conversation.

Kyle Nakatsuji is CEO of Clearcover, a car insurance company.

Boomba Cat spins the Roomba kitty meme into a competitive multiplayer game

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 11:55 AM PST

This past weekend, thousands of people gathered all over the world to develop games in the span of 48 hours during the annual Global Game Jam. It’s an event where people drink a lot of coffee, cry while debugging, and come out on the other side with weird, wonderful little projects. Boomba Cat is one of these — a multiplayer competition to see which Roomba reigns supreme and earns the right to have a cute kitty sitting on top of it. It’s available for PC and can be downloaded from the Global Game Jam website, and the developers are working on releasing a full version.

Four players can play Boomba Cat at once, and each controls a colorful robot in an arena that floats in space. The countdown starts with a minute and 40 seconds on the clock, and the goal is to knock other robots off and fill up a white meter by avoiding damage. Whoever fills up their meter gets a reward — a cat dropping onto their Roomba from the sky with a startled yowl.

While the cat is riding around on their robot, the player continuously earns points. And other players, of course, try to knock them off the platform and earn the cat for themselves. Whoever has the most points wins. It’s delightful, and I had a stupid amount of fun when I played the demo at the Los Angeles Global Game Jam site at the University of Southern California.

Boomba Cat is an effort from 11 people, most of whom met for the first time at the Global Game Jam. Each year, participants are given a theme as a springboard for their games. This year’s was “transmission,” which can mean anything the game jam participants want it to mean. Some folks created games around viruses or picking up radio signals, for instance. Boomba Cat’s team member Ben Mears says that their project gradually evolved from a Marco Polo-type competitive multiplayer game featuring player avatars that looked like hockey pucks. In the initial idea, one player would be blindfolded and have to find the other players on the map based on audio cues and controller vibrations. However, they decided that the gameplay wasn’t engaging enough.

“We also started to focus on making the player interactions with each other really fun,” said Mears in an email to GamesBeat. “Then someone on the team pointed out that the hockey puck characters looked like those popular vacuum cleaner robots, adding a cat to ride on the bots was the next logical step and then we had our final game concept, then we actually found a reference GIF of two animated cats on a robot vacuum.”

By day, Mears is the games community manager at SideFX, the company that developed the 3D animation software Houdini. During the game jam, he took on the roles of 2D graphic artist, sound effects engineer, and producer. Many of the folks involved tackled various tasks, and some people took it upon themselves to learn new tools like the game engine Unity and Houdini.

“Here’s a quick rundown of what our team members worked on for the most part: Paul did art and programming, Alex did music, Ken did art, Drake did art and producing, Ruben did sound effects, Sara did voice acting — mostly cat noises — Christopher did music, Matt did programming, Shrek did art, Martin did art, and Wyatt did programming and producing,” said Mears. “Teamwork!”

This year was Mears’s fifth Global Game Jam, though he’s participated in other events such as Indie Speed Run and MolyJam before. Some of the other team members had participated in Ludum Dare, Nordic Game Jam, and Philly Game Jam — and for others, this was their first time. Mears says that it’s always challenging to develop a game in such a short amount of time, but it’s an exciting undertaking.

“Also, in literally the last hour of the game jam, we ran into a major issue with getting a final build of our game created, but our coders tackled the challenge head-on and figured out a solution just before the submission deadline — two minutes before the deadline to be exact,” said Mears. “If you participate in a game jam you will learn something new, guaranteed.”

Boomba Cat got a nod at the Global Game Jam’s closing ceremony at USC, winning the Excellence in Gameplay award alongside another title created at that location. Based on how people responded to the game — and winning accolades doesn’t hurt — Mears says the team is going to try to polish the prototype and release a full version of the game.

“After showing Boomba Cat at the USC GGJ showcase and seeing how much fun all the players had, as well as winning an ‘Excellence in Gameplay’ award, we are thinking that we should probably keep working on the game a bit more and release it as soon as we’re able to,” said Mears. “Of course, this is a challenge because everyone on the team has jobs, families, other responsibilities, etc. but the good news is that we were able to finish most of the game during the game jam. Now it’s just a matter of fixing bugs, adding more content, and making minor changes to improve the game overall.”

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

GoPro’s spectacular implosion reveals brutal reality facing tech hardware startups

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 11:25 AM PST

While the recent earnings warning from GoPro was seen as a disaster, it’s quite possible that the situation for this briefly high-flying camera company is even worse than it appears. But GoPro’s fate is also an indicator of a larger problem that’s sweeping across independent hardware startups.

Just since GoPro took its pratfall in early January, there has been a steady drip of grim announcements from consumer electronics hardware startups: Sphero fired 45 employees following weak holiday sales of its smartphone-controlled gizmos; Tile laid off 30 employees citing the need to “recalibrate” its business; and Fitbit confirmed it was finally euthanizing the Pebble smartwatch brand this summer after buying it for chump change last year.

Speaking of Fitbit, back in November the company reported it lost $113 million in the previous quarter, almost nine months after it laid off about 100 employees. But at least they are still in business. The same can’t be said for Jawbone, Njoy, Electric Objects, Lily Robotics, sleep-tracker Hello, and tablet startup Fuhu.

And, of course, Juicero.

Each has its own tale of misery and woe. But at their heart, they reveal the same fundamental issue: Building an independent hardware startup is next to impossible in an age where hardware sales are still dominated by giant tech companies.

A decade ago, that wouldn’t have been such a startling idea. Hardware required big investment upfront, capital expenditure to create manufacturing capacity, logistics for distribution, marketing muscle to get products onto shelves, and a strong brand.

Then came along what I, and many others, began to refer to as a new “Golden Age of Hardware Startups.”

Entrepreneurship had opened up in the late 1990s to a far greater range of founders thanks to the internet, and then tumbling storage costs, broadband, and the cloud accelerated that trend. This led to web services, and then apps. The kind of stuff a couple of kids and their dog could build in a dorm room after a long weekend of hacking.

But eventually these trends intersected with hardware. The smartphone era meant more objects could be connected cheaply with most of the computing being done on the phone. Kickstarter offered a fast way to raise money. 3D printing allowed for rapid prototyping. Outsourced manufacturing operations became available for rent. Ecommerce meant no need to go begging at bricks-and-mortars. Suddenly, hardware didn’t seem so far out of reach.

That explosion can be tracked by the arc of CES, the famous Las Vegas-based gadget show.

The last time I went was in 2014, when I wrote that year: “CES set a new record with 3,200 exhibitors across more than 2 million square feet of exhibit space — or enough to fit about 35 football fields. That’s up from 3,000 exhibitors and 1.92 million square feet last year. Eureka Park, which is the traditional start-up corner of CES, hosted 200 companies this year, up 40% from last year.”

And now?

In 2017, CES reported 4,000 exhibiting companies, and exhibition space of more than 2.6 million square feet — 600 companies in Eureka Park alone. Final numbers are not yet in for 2018, but CES had said it expected 800 startups in Eureka Park and 2.75 million square feet of space.

And so the number of gadgets exploded. It was a phenomenon that was always going to be unsustainable. There simply wasn’t going to be enough interest, enough consumers, enough need, for the vast majority of this stuff.

Yet surely some would break through?

Indeed, some have. Unfortunately, these hardware startups are named “Amazon” and “Google” and “Facebook.” And they are sucking up most of the oxygen when it comes to hardware sales these days. They have the deep pockets and the long-term outlook to invest in research, take their time, and not get completely torpedoed if one product sputters, or rises and falls.

The same can’t be said for these smaller, independent companies. GoPro is a pretty good indicator of why.

The company’s sports cams were a sensation with a strong brand identity. The problem with such devices is that eventually prices drop as cheaper knockoffs enter the market. A company like Apple has defied this dynamic for years by continuing to spend huge sums on new features and designs, and expanding its ecosystem of products. But you can do that when you’re the world’s most valuable company and have a license to print money.

GoPro tried to do something similar, but almost every initiative failed. Drones? GoPro tried to make one, but it was heavily delayed before being released, and then recalled in 2016. That led to its second round of layoffs that year. And it eventually decided to exit the drone business.

Its GoPro Hero5 camera, a version that is both waterproof and responsive to voice commands, hasn’t turned things around either. It initially rolled out this and other new versions of the Hero5 and Hero 6 at steep prices, before being forced to cut them dramatically in the face of consumer indifference.

And then there’s content. GoPro users produce insane amounts of content, which presents a couple of interesting opportunities for GoPro. The first is helping users manage, store, and edit that mountain of video. But its software solutions haven’t done much to translate that into revenue.

The company also tried to leverage content that was getting huge traffic on its YouTube channel by creating its own content platform.

GoPro hired Tony Bates, the former Microsoft executive and head of Skype, in 2014 to be president. Part of his mission was to oversee the development of this content platform, which would hopefully generate ad revenue as well as fuel marketing and interest in GoPro hardware. Alas, no. Bates left quietly in late 2016 amid broader layoffs.

This was all bad, and yet somehow, it’s gotten worse.

At the beginning of January, GoPro pre-announced fourth quarter revenue of $340 million, a gigantic miss from the $470 million guidance it had given two months previously. And the company said it would cut its workforce from 1,254 to 1,000, down almost one-third from its peak of 1,500 employees in 2015. GoPro is scheduled to officially report earnings February 1.

That’s already got legal eagles sniffing around for possible class action lawsuits. And it forced the company to deny rumors that it was for sale, even though many analysts believe a sale is probably the best option at this point.

But its stock has been hammered. After going public in June 2014, its stock peaked that September at around $93.70 per share. Today, it’s trading at around $5.50 per share.

It’s hard to imagine GoPro pulling out of this downward spiral, as resources and staff shrink, smartphone cameras become more powerful, and prices of knockoffs continue to drop. There is no room to maneuver.

But what about all those thousands of other hardware startups? While controversial at the time, the decision by Oculus VR founders to sell to Facebook looks prescient now. Could an independent Oculus has survived the softer-than-expected reception to VR hardware? Tucked inside money-machine Facebook, however, it doesn’t really matter.

For other hardware startups, though, it seems the choices are limited. Either remain small, almost novelty size. Or, if you score a hit, rather than scaling quickly, just find a willing buyer and exit ASAP.

This reality hasn’t seemed to dim the enthusiasm of hardware startup founders, as evidenced by CES. Starting seems to be the easy part — maybe too easy. Yet sadly for those poor souls, hardware has created a strange reality where failing is bad, but succeeding a bit is almost worse. Because it’s just going to make the inevitable crash that much more painful.

It Lurks Below mixes David Brevik’s Diablo with Terraria’s sandbox

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 10:38 AM PST

Diablo creator David Brevik is finally ready to show off what he’s been working on for two years at his indie studio Graybeard Games. It Lurks Below is a sandbox game that takes its cue from Re-Logic’s Terraria in both gameplay and style. Two hundred players will have access to its closed beta from Friday to Monday evening, and Brevik plans to livestream himself playing the game at various times this weekend on his Twitch channel.

Garybead hasn’t released much about It Lurks Below. It mashes up gameplay from Terraria alongside Diablo mechanics. Screenshots feature a retro pixel art aesthetic with characters wielding guns, defending homesteads, and fighting monsters in gold-studded mines.

Brevik created the iconic action role-playing game Diablo at his studio, Condor, which eventually became a part of Blizzard Entertainment and adopted the name Blizzard North. The game was hugely successful when it launched in 1996, selling over 2.5 million copies and popularizing the real-time action RPG genre. It eventually spawned two sequels — Diablo II and Diablo III, which has sold over 30 million copies in its lifetime.

Since Brevik’s early days at Blizzard North, he’s founded and joined other companies including Gazillion Entertainment. He went independent in January 2016 and founded Graybeard. His story seems to follow the trend of triple-A talent taking the plunge into indie games. Graybeard is a solo effort, and Brevik says that it’s challenging but rewarding.

"It's humbling going from large teams making content based on huge properties like Marvel to a one-man team with a brand new idea no one has heard of yet — but I'm loving every minute of the process,” said Brevik in a statement. “It's all very exciting … and a little bit scary, too. I've always been a huge proponent of community involvement in game creation, and I heartily welcome all feedback from players and Twitch-stream viewers — anything that can make It Lurks Below the best it can possibly be.”

Terraria released in 2011 for PC, though it has rolled out to iOS, Android, and a plethora of other consoles since then. It’s sold over 20 million copies and inspired other games besides It Lurks Below, such as Chucklefish’s sci-fi sandbox title Starbound.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Google Cloud gets custom access controls

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 10:28 AM PST

Google launched a new cloud security feature today that allows its cloud customers to set up custom access policies for different user accounts, only allowing access to particular aspects of specific services.

For example, one account could be set up to only view cloud storage buckets, plus list the database tables in Google’s BigQuery service. That may not seem like much, but it’s important for only giving accounts access that they need, which can help reduce risk in a security breach. Google previously offered a large set of prebuilt security roles for different situations, but this new feature lets companies create their own.

This new feature helps developers create service accounts in Google’s cloud that give automated software agents the ability to access multiple services while still retaining few privileges to access or modify what they shouldn’t be able to.

Above: A Google animation shows how its custom access roles work.

Image Credit: Google

It’s also important for compliance purposes — regulations may require people inside a company to be able to audit particular pieces of information but not modify content, or to prevent someone’s access to that information depending on their role.

Google Cloud is focused on making its offerings appeal more to enterprise customers, in a move to compete with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and other players in the market. These sorts of finer-grained security controls, while not the flashiest announcements in the world, help solve requirements that enterprise IT leaders need to have fulfilled.

To help customers get started, Google published a list of supported access permissions for its cloud services, as well as a set of best practices for getting started with custom roles. These capabilities are available free of charge, though they’re not of much use without other paid services running inside Google Cloud.

Skyrocketing digital fan engagement at Super Bowl LII will bring a windfall of analytics  

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 10:25 AM PST

SPONSORED:

Presented by Extreme Networks

It's been decided: on Sunday, February 4, we'll witness the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles battle it out at Super Bowl LII. Under the dome of the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, an estimated 70K hyper-engaged fans, media, and dignitaries will be watching, snapping, and posting throughout the course of the game.

Underpinning that engagement: secure, connected Wi-Fi, which isn't just a nice-to-have any more, but essential. It’s not just a part of the fan experience but a wellspring of actionable, in-depth customer intelligence. With the amount of data passing over the network increasing exponentially, digital marketing teams are being handed the ball, and a clear field for their engagement strategies and tools.

The NFL case study

Currently 22 NFL stadiums are leveraging the ExtremeAnalytics tool from Extreme Networks, the League's Official Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Analytics Solutions Provider, including Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium, Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, New England’s Gillette Stadium, and Buffalo’s New Era Field.

It all started when organizers realized that there was a correlation between television ratings and in-stadium attendance.

"When the television audience sees too few people in the crowd, they subconsciously believe it's not as interesting an event," explains Norman Rice, chief marketing, development and product operations officer for Extreme Networks. "So the NFL's original goal was to improve attendance by improving the fan experience. That meant enabling connectivity and engagement — whether that's sharing social, consuming from outside, sharing just in general, or consuming content from within the venue."

As a result, in-stadium wireless usage has increased from one terabyte to 4 times that on game day year over year. From 2015 to 2017, the average number of unique users rose from 20,574 to 28,001, with peak concurrent user count shooting up from 14,836 to 18,650.

And as fan engagement soars, attendance rates are corresponding, Rice added.

But that initial focus on increasing attendance led to something arguably more valuable: unexpected insights gleaned through hundreds of thousands of usage data points.

Fan experience + advertising advances

As in-stadium Wi-Fi data ramped up, marketing and experience teams gained the ability to understand which applications are running on their networks, who is using them, and what the response time is for each application. The location of users and their mobile activities can be mapped in context to other identity-specific information about the mobile user — including demographic information, brand affinities, social network information, buying behaviors and more, allowing tailored customer profiles to be updated on the fly and personalized experiences delivered seamlessly.

“With this engagement, you can work with each fan, each person, and make sure that it all connects your brand to that particular person, and to what you can give them to make them more loyal, make them stickier, or reward them for being a fan.” Rice explains.

And as usage grew, the club gained a whole lot of invaluable analytics, uncovering some surprises along the way, especially as more and more stadiums came on board.

For instance, the demographic at Super Bowls typically skews towards an older male audience. So when asked which social network would be most popular at the Super Bowl, many might default to Facebook as their answer. But at last year’s Super Bowl, other social apps like Snapchat ruled the day. With ExtremeAnalytics, not only can NFL sponsors discover the people who are actually attending these events, they sometimes uncover unexpected platforms to reach and connect with end users in the venue.

Advertisers can identify touch points like these via consumers' profiles, what they’re doing during the event, and in what cycles, via time stamps on the data. That allows them to optimize ad placement — for instance, in the case of last year’s Super Bowl, choosing Snapchat during the fourth quarter, perhaps. And by pinpointing each ad to a specific set within a specific geography, that ad can be highly targeted, delivering the right information at the right time, right when those users will be most receptive.

On a very technical or tactical level, Rice says, you can highlight or amplify certain services that you want to make available to a fan in the venue, he says. For example, using a push alert in the mobile venue app for autographed memorabilia.

With one-step engagement enabled, you can prioritize that ordering and outreach service, and the content delivered to the person, over any other content that's available in that venue – for instance, amplifying the offer by giving it higher priority to those on a particular channel, rather than somebody who's watching something on YouTube.

“Giving the Game Day app priority seems trivial or easy, but it actually creates both a completely different user experience and gives the advertiser an unprecedented advantage by capturing that fan’s attention naturally and powerfully,” Rice says.

Super Bowl LI and the 2018 NFL season

Last year, Super Bowl LI made Wi-Fi history by being one of the most connected and engaged sporting events to-date. The game leveraged both Extreme's Wi-Fi infrastructure and Wi-Fi analytics solution, and the company reports that a record-breaking 11.8 TB of total data was transferred, up from 10.12 TB at last year's Super Bowl — a tremendous amount of data for a single event.

Super Bowl LI broke another Super Bowl Wi-Fi record, with over 27K concurrent users on Wi-Fi at peak — 41 percent more than Super Bowl 50. In total, over 35K fans were on the network throughout the game.

What were they doing? Social networking, and a lot of it. 1.7TB of the total data was transferred from social networking engagements, a 55 percent increase in comparison to Super Bowl 50.

“In the '17-18 NFL season, we saw video usage through the roof — people were basically real-time filming the game and sharing it externally through social,” Rice adds.

The case for a Wi-Fi strategy

The NFL Clubs and Stadiums have made significant investments in their fan-facing Wi-Fi. Now that they can measure the operational and business metrics, they can watch trends across games and stadiums to establish benchmarks, create digital strategies that are smart and data-driven, and deliver more powerful and personalized fan experiences.

That means ensuring that both the Wi-Fi platform is providing a seamless, quality experience in-stadium as well as in-depth analytics to measure that satisfaction and continue to fine-tune.

It results in data that's relevant across every department — from social, digital, and marketing, to sales and business development stakeholders — unlocking a spectrum of actionable opportunities across the stadium and throughout social platforms and the web. Which means Wi-Fi in an event space is so much more than engaging with fans during the game. Actionable data gathered in-stadium means you're always engaging and connecting with fans, even when the next game is days away.

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Greymatter: Why traditional growth strategies fail (podcast)

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 10:03 AM PST

GUEST:

Are B2C companies starting to see a decline in viral growth responsiveness? That's what Greylock's growth advisor Casey Winters and head of rider growth at Uber Andrew Chen believe. Andrew coined the term “The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs” to describe how every ad channel and every marketing platform eventually sees a decay in responsiveness. Due to increased consolidation and competition, viral growth is now much harder to achieve.

In this episode of Greymatter, Casey and Andrew riff on why consumer growth is getting harder and more expensive, and what viable opportunities companies can leverage in their own growth strategies. Both Andrew and Casey have a deep background in growth. Andrew advises and invests in tech startups including Barkbox, Dropbox, and Tinder, and for the past decade, he’s written extensively on mobile, metrics, and growth. Before heading growth at Pinterest, Casey ran marketing for Grubhub.

Casey and Andrew share actionable growth strategies for startups, current trends in paid acquisition, and why they are excited for the rise of enterprise viral growth. Below are some key takeaways from the podcast. For even more growth advice, be sure to check out Andrew’s blog and Casey’s blog.

The future of viral growth

Until recently, consumer companies focused on virality to increase users; however, viral growth of consumer applications is on the decline. Because of this, many consumer companies are switching to models that monetize earlier in their lifecycle so they can use paid referrals.

Content loops have also emerged as a replacement to viral growth as the smartphone becomes not just a content consumption device, but the best content creation device that has ever existed. The content is easy to share to social networks and search engines and offers a great way to introduce others to an app. Mobile athletic tracker Strava has leveraged this idea of consuming data on the phone and publishing it to Facebook.

However, be hesitant about making search engines your primary growth strategy early on because the lead time to compete is taking longer and longer for most popular searches.

For B2B, virality is still a viable strategy. Traditionally, enterprises hired sales teams to market their product but are now using a bottom-up growth strategy. They can apply growth techniques originally used by consumer companies to organically integrate their product within teams. As these companies become more deeply integrated into the workplace, we will see an opportunity for startups to grow on top of these embedded platforms.

Leveraging new growth opportunities

Understanding where your audience lives is key to introducing your product. In the early years of a startup, look for channels that are smaller and/or earlier in the life cycle. These channels are more likely to be proprietary so you aren’t competing with every Facebook or Google advertiser.

However, there is a risk and reward element. Newer paid channels including Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit have fewer advertisers, but they lack the targeting options of Google and Facebook.

The goal of an entrepreneur or startup is to initially win in these niche channels, test your product, and prove you are able to retain users. It’s about finding product market fit and getting initial traffic; then you can start exploring the larger opportunities to accelerate growth.

Trends in paid acquisition

Paid acquisition is best used as an accelerant to organic growth strategy, rather than the main driver. Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are hyper-competitive, so unless your company has an advantage, such as deep engineering expertise like Wish or a strategic business advantage like Booking.com, it’s easy for competition to respond.

Moreover, paid acquisition is no longer just a marketing channel to get more users. As part of a company’s strategy early on, traffic buying is more about testing your product than trying to scale it. Experimenting with different ads and exposing consumers to varied landing pages allow companies to learn from the results and build a more viable product. Deep integrations within platforms like Facebook and AdWords provide product insight.

As paid becomes one of the primary channels that companies need to scale to win, it will become core to the DNA of the company. Lessons learned from paid acquisition allow product, engineering, design, and marketing teams to become highly integrated and to better their product cohesively.

PyeongChang will host first major 5G video demonstrations for Olympics viewers

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 09:29 AM PST

This year’s Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea will host the first large-scale public demonstrations of 5G video streaming technologies, broadcasting industry group IBC reports today, as well as the world’s first major 8K HDR video production. While the next-generation wireless and video standards have been tested in research labs across the world, their use at the Olympics will be their live public debut for a global audience.

On the 5G front, the International Olympic Committee has worked with Intel and Korea Telecom to create 5G wireless infrastructure at select Winter Games venues. Thanks to real-time 5G video links to bobsled cameras, viewers at home will be able to experience Olympic bobsledding from “an extraordinary bullet’s eye view” at the front of any sled picked by TV producers. According to Olympic video producers, the multiple “real-time links are only possible with the low latency (almost zero delay) of 5G,” proving that 5G has game-changing applications in gathering video from events, as well as distributing it to viewers.

Other 5G demonstrations will be viewable only in special zones using demo 5G viewing devices. Intel will offer “time-sliced views of skaters in motion,” letting viewers switch between different angles of figure skating performances at any given moment, as well as “Omni-View,” a multi-view, real-time presentation of every cross country skiing competitor. The company will also offer a 5G connected car experience in Seoul, demonstrating in-car videoconferencing powered by high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G networking.

IBC also reports that the Winter Games will host “the largest ever live 8K UHD production,” featuring high dynamic range (HDR), “a world first on this scale.” 8K is the successor to 4K television, offering four times as much detail; HDR expands color and brightness ranges to include stronger and more subtle tones of white, colors, and black. While both formats were introduced nearly simultaneously, their incredible bandwidth demands required a gradual transition from the prior top video standard, 1080p.

As 8K HDR TVs are not yet commercially available, OBS is working with Japan’s NHK television network to capture 90 hours of 8K content including figure skating, ski jumping, and snowboarding that will be displayed on special screens. Some screens will be set up at PyeongChang’s International Broadcast Center for viewing during the Olympics, while others will be used for private viewing in Japan. NHK is expected to roll out satellite 8K video feeds in 2020.

American viewers won’t be totally left out of the ultra-high-definition experience. Though most of the games will be shot in 1080i, NBC will have access to a downconverted 4K HDR version of the 8K footage for display in the United States.

GDC rescinds Atari founder Nolan Bushnell’s Pioneer Award after #MeToo protests

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 09:04 AM PST

The Game Developers Conference has rescinded its Pioneer Award to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. The former Atari executive has admitted to sexually inappropriate behavior in multiple interviews throughout the years. His stories usually come in the form of “wild” anecdotes about office environments in the 1970s, where the objectification of women colleagues wasn’t viewed as harassment by the male-led power structures of companies and other organizations.

The event’s advisory committee plans to instead use this year’s award as a representation of the voices of women who left the industry in response to sexual misconduct.

Here is the GDC’s statement, which it posted to Twitter:

“The Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which votes on the Special Awards winners for each show, has made the decision not to give out a Pioneer Award for this year’s event following additional feedback from the community. They believe their picks should reflect the values of today’s game industry and will dedicate this year’s award to honor the pioneering and unheard voices of the past.”

Bushnell posted a response to Twitter:

Bushnell isn’t shy about his history of bringing his sexual behavior into the office. An Atari exec remembers Bushnell wearing an “I love to fuck” T-shirt to the office. And Bushnell admitted to Playboy magazine that his team of developers would codename game projects after women in the office that they found attractive. Pong, Atari’s first hit, had the code name “Darlene” after a “stacked” employee, according to Bushnell.

"It was post–flower revolution, women's liberation, no AIDS yet, and lots of company romances,” Bushnell told Playboy.

According to Steven L. Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games, the Atari CEO hired men that agreed with his idea of office politics, and that led to Atari “board meetings [that] seemed more like fraternity parties than business meetings.”

In the wake of the #MeToo movement that seeks to raise an awareness of how men mistreat, harass, and abuse women at work and in other settings, these public stories have lost whatever luster they may once have had. And the result is that the industry, at least for now, will not honor someone like Bushnell.

No woman has ever won GDC’s Pioneer Award, which goes to people who build a breakthrough that changed gaming. Women like designer Brenda Romero and industry critic Anita Sarkeesian have won GDC’s Ambassador Award for advancing the gaming medium through advocacy.

Bushnell is still active in gaming. His latest efforts include working on an advisory board for gaming cryptocurrency company called Robot Cache.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Epics.gg raises $2 million for esports digital trading cards

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 09:00 AM PST

Epics.gg has raised $2 million in a seed round for its digital trading card platform for esports. It enables users to buy, sell, and collect digital trading cards based on esports athletes, much like collectible cards in traditional sports.

Bitkraft Esports Ventures led the investment, with participation from Jon Goldman's GC Tracker Fund, Everblue Management, Hersh Interactive Group, Imagination Capital, Courtside Ventures, and angel investors. Esports investments are hot, and the market is expected to grow to $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion by 2020, according to research firm Newzoo.

The Epics cards include rich media (like the GIF below), stats, in-game items, and digital signatures. You can see one of the cards below.

Above: Epics relic knife is an example of the kind of cards you can get.

Image Credit: Epics

The Santa Monica, California-based Epics.gg has founders from Xfire, LoLking.net, Esportsify, and Skinz.gg. Epics.gg wants to provide more than cards of esports players and online influencers — it also wants to create an integrated marketplace and trading system enabling users to buy, sell, and build collections.

“Relics are unique Epics cards that combine in-game items from games like Counter-Strike that have actually been used by esports legends in major competitions,” said Gavin Weeks, cofounder of Epics.gg, in an email. “We provide a process and software to certify that these items were indeed used by the player specified and the event in which they were used. If users find these cards in an Epics pack, they also receive the in-game item and can use it when they play the game. This is the first time that any fan can own a one of a kind piece of esports history.”

Epics.gg deals in certified digital memorabilia, such as in-game skins (like a uniform in a game) used by their favorite players in major esports events. Previously, there was no way to certify or prove that a skin was used by a specific esports star or influencer, limiting the collectible aspect of this valuable market. Now users can purchase a skin tied to a card, certified by Epics, and can use it in a game.

While the esports market is nascent, the collectibles market is close to $400 billion worldwide, with the sports collectibles market accounting for most of this. Epics.gg targets the overlap in both markets.

"We combined our favorite childhood hobby with modern technology for the ultimate user experience,” said Epics.gg cofounder Mark Donovan in a statement. "We're incredibly excited to enable fans and collectors to own a piece of esports history, including skins from Counter-Strike."

Jens Hilgers, Bitkraft Esports Ventures founding partner, said in a statement trading cards are a missing piece of the esports market. Goldman said his investment in Epics.gg showed his fund’s commitment to investing in companies that cater to the esports generation.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Goat Simulator studio Coffee Stain gets majority share in Gone North Games

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 08:34 AM PST

Goat Simulator developer Coffee Stain announced today that it has acquired a majority share in studio Gone North Games, which will now be called Coffee Stain North.

Gone North Games has made expansions for Goat Simulator, including GoatZ, a parody of zombie games. Goat Simulator first launched for PC in 2014, and the comedic title eventually came out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS, and Android. It has sold over 2.5 million copies.

"We discovered Gone North Games when they pitched us on their first game, A Story About My Uncle, and we saw a lot of potential in their team already back then," said Anton Westbergh, the chief executive officer of Coffee Stain, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. "The game ended up being our first foray into games publishing, and a successful one at that! Since then the talent behind Gone North has played a major part in carrying the Goat Simulator brand into the future through their seemingly endless creativity and vision. We welcome them into the Coffee Stain group with great excitement to soon be able to share more on their upcoming project"

A Story About My Uncle is a first-person platforming adventure game. It came out for PC in 2014.

Coffee Stain is based in Skövde, Sweden, while Coffee Stain North is located in Stockholm, Sweden.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Cisco Talos warns about malicious cryptocurrency mining attacks

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 08:00 AM PST

Malicious hackers are infecting unsuspecting users’ computers with code that commandeers the devices for cryptocurrency mining. Cisco Talos, a threat intelligence group owned by networking giant Cisco, issued a report today that documents how victims’ computers are being hijacked to enrich the attackers through cryptocurrency mining, which takes a lot of computing power.

Cisco Talos has observed botnets consisting of millions of infected systems, which could in theory be leveraged to generate more than $100 million per year. And as long as users are clueless, that would turn into recurring revenue for the cryptocurrency thieves.

The report shows how quickly the threats from hackers are evolving. A couple of years ago, hackers used the anonymity of Bitcoin to launch ransomware attacks that couldn’t be easily traced. Now that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have exploded in value, they’re switching tactics again to make money from the exponential growth.

“Over the past several months, Talos has observed a marked increase in the volume of cryptocurrency mining software being maliciously delivered to victims,” the report said.

Above: Cryptocurrency

Image Credit: zoommachine / Shutterstock

In the new offensive, the attackers are no longer penalizing victims for opening an attachment or running a malicious script by taking systems hostage and demanding a ransom. Now attackers are actively leveraging the resources of infected systems for cryptocurrency mining. Cryptocurrency has a value that can be unlocked through mining, or solving large mathematical calculations to discover keys that unlock an additional unit of the currency. Users can employ pools of high-powered computers to mine for the currency.

In these cases, the better the performance and computing power of the targeted system, the better for the attacker from a revenue-generation perspective, the report said. Internet of things (IoT) devices — which make everyday objects smart and connected — aren’t directly monitored by users. But they’re useful for attackers to hijack precisely because they have processing power that users don’t monitor.

The power of each IoT device is weak, but the number of exposed devices that are vulnerable can add up to a lot of collective processing power, and the cyber criminals are trying to marshal those resources.

Cisco Talos estimates that an average system would generate about 28 cents of Monero, an untraceable cryptocurrency, each day. If you had to buy a $3,000 computer to do that mining, it would be a long time before you paid off the investment. Electricity costs are also not trivial. But a hacker who has enlisted 2,000 victims through a phishing scheme could get essentially steal the computing time of the users to solve about 125 hashes per second per machine. Those 2,000 victims’ computers could generate $568 per day, or $204,400 per year.

The attackers can proceed with minimal effort, following the initial infection. More importantly, with little chance of being detected, this revenue stream can continue for a long time. Add to this the fact that cryptocurrency values are going up at an exponential rate, and you can see how the scheme pays off. Monero itself saw a 3,000 percent increase in the past 12 months, from $13 in January 2017 to $300 now. Bitcoin’s value was halved in the past month, but it is still valued at $10,945, compared to $930 at the beginning of 2017.

The main problem is that users may not notice the theft of computing time. If someone stole your credit card number, you would notice the unauthorized purchases piling up.

Above: Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency

Image Credit: Paul Sawers / VentureBeat

“Attackers are not stealing anything more than computing power from their victims, and the mining software isn't technically malware. So, theoretically, the victims could remain part of the adversary's botnet for as long as the attacker chooses,” the report said.

While ransomware exploded due to anonymous collection techniques, only a small percentage of infected users actually paid the ransoms demanded by attackers, the report said. And cybersecurity software has gotten better at detecting and blocking the attacks. Bitcoin mining has been going on since 2009, but it is getting progressively harder, requiring more hardware to yield currency rewards.

“Currently, the most valuable currency to mine with standard systems is Monero (XMR), and adversaries have done their research,” the report said. “In addition, Monero is extremely privacy-conscious, and as governments have started to scrutinize Bitcoin more closely, Monero and other coins with heavy emphasis on privacy may become a safe haven for threat actors.”

The hijacking of a pool of computers is similar to launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks where 100,000 machines flooding a target with bogus traffic becomes much more effective than a single system under the attacker's control sending bogus traffic, the report said.

Pool-based mining is coordinated through the use of “Worker IDs.” These IDs are what tie an individual system to a larger pool and ensure any coin mined by the pool that is associated with a particular Worker ID is delivered to the correct user. These Worker IDs have allowed Cisco Talos to determine the size and scale of some of the malicious operations, as well as giving an idea of the amount of revenue adversaries are generating.

Above: Monero and Bitcoin tokens

Image Credit: Wit Olszewski / Shutterstock

To hide their tracks, attackers can limit their usage of a CPU to prevent users from noticing. They can also use the computer when it goes into sleep mode and isn’t being used by its real owner. Cisco Talos has witnessed both Chinese and Russian criminal groups discussing the use of crypto mining, with the first observed Chinese actors talking about mining botnets in November 2016.

“From a Russian underground perspective, there has been significant movement related to mining in the last six months,” the report said. “There have been numerous discussions and several offerings on top-tier Russian hacking forums. The discussions have been split, with the majority of the discussion around the sale of access to mining bots, as well as bot developers looking to buy access to compromised hosts for the intended purpose of leveraging them for crypto mining.”

One of the things the groups liked about this system was that it doesn’t require command and control attention. It’s a hands-off infection that generates consistent revenue until it is removed.

The attackers infect machines in a variety of ways, including email spam campaigns, exploit kits, and directly via exploitation. When users open emailed attachments such as Word documents, they inadvertently download a malicious macro or compressed executable that initiates the mining infection.

Cisco Talos found a large number of enterprise users running miners on their systems for personal gain, most likely without the support of their employers. As a result, each enterprise has to figure out how to deal with miners, and whether they should be judged as malware.

“Cryptocurrency miner payloads could be among some of the easiest money makers available for attackers,” the report said. “This is not to try to encourage the attackers, of course, but the reality is that this approach is very effective at generating long-term passive revenue for attackers.”

Above: Bitcoin

Image Credit: Mmaxer / Shutterstock

The report concluded, “The number of ways adversaries are delivering miners to end users is staggering. It is reminiscent of the explosion of ransomware we saw several years ago. This is indicative of a major shift in the types of payloads adversaries are trying to deliver. It helps show that the effectiveness of ransomware as a payload is limited. It will always be effective to ransom specific organizations or to use in targeted attacks, but as a payload to compromise random victims its reach definitely has limits. At some point, the pool of potential victims becomes too small to generate the revenue expected.”

By contrast, the report noted that “crypto miners may well be the new payload of choice for adversaries. It has been and will always be about money, and crypto mining is an effective way to generate revenue. It’s not going to generate large sums of money for each individual system, but when you group together hundreds or thousands of systems it can be extremely profitable. It’s also a more covert threat than ransomware. A user is far less likely to know a malicious miner is installed on the system other than some occasional slowdown. This increases the time a system is infected and generating revenue.”

The Cisco Talos post was written by Nick Biasini, Edmund Brumaghin, Warren Mercer, and Josh Reynolds, with contributions from Azim Khodijbaev and David Liebenberg.

Ex-Apple designers unveil Caffeine social broadcasting platform for games

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 08:00 AM PST

Two former Apple designers are unveiling Caffeine, a new social broadcasting platform for games, entertainment, and other artistic content.

The platform is social, real-time, personal, and requires no third-party software or plug-ins. It comes from Ben Keighran, the former product design lead for Apple TV, and Sam Roberts, the former Apple senior user experience designer. The company has raised $46 million in two rounds of funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, also called Caffeine, aimed to create a simple and safe experience for life broadcasting. The Caffeine platform is in pre-release at caffeine.tv and on the Caffeine.tv iOS app.

Above: Caffeine will have an easy-to-use interface for social broadcasting.

Image Credit: Caffeine

Keighran is also a former co-founder of Chomp, a search startup that was acquired by Apple in 2012. Keighran and Roberts hired former Valve and Oculus game leader Anna Sweet to head Caffeine's business, content, and strategy efforts. Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz and John Lilly from Greylock Partners are on the board.

"We do something different when it comes to live broadcasting. We are not the first livestreaming platrform,” said Caffeine CEO Keighran in an interview with GamesBeat. “We are doing our own broadcasting tools. We are going after those on Twitch. We are going after the 800 million people who are not on it already. ”

He added, “You can publish directly to Twitter and Facebook, where people already have large audiences. And everything that happens on Caffeine happens in real time. We have our own data center and technology."

Above: Caffeine lets you chat and broadcast while playing games.

Image Credit: Caffeine

Caffeine will enable broadcasters to record with a single click, without the need for additional software. The app lets you broadcast games on a PC using software. You can also broadcast via a webcam from a Mac or PC web browser, or you can use the Caffeine iOS app. You don’t have to concern yourself with details such as bitrates, stream keys, IP addresses, or other time-consuming details.

Beyond watching games, you can also watch movies or TV shows with other people. I did so in a brief demo of the Caffeine platform.

“Caffeine is masterfully designed to enable creators in all fields to connect with their audiences in the best way possible,” said Horowitz in a statement. “I am extremely excited to be working on this new future with Ben and team.”

Keighran said the PC game streaming app provides in-game overlays, which create a single-screen experience for interacting with audiences.

“Because video is in real time, all the interactions are natural and as though you are in the same room,” he said. “We created built-in tools that allow broadcasters to instantly share their show on Facebook and Twitter, which allows broadcasters to quickly reach existing audiences with new content and build their Caffeine community even faster.”

Above: Caffeine has an iOS app for social broadcasting.

Image Credit: Caffeine

Users can find content because of the people they follow in their social circles, and they can come together to experience that content. That means there are no endless feeds of meaningless comments, Keighran said.

Personal conversations with friends and creators are given preference, enabling more meaningful social engagements while disposing of toxic chatter, the company said. And because the proprietary infrastructure delivers content and conversations with virtually no latency, the interactions happen in real time, he said.

The whole point is to enable more personal, meaningful, and stronger relationships between broadcasters and followers. A monetization system will debut on the platform in early 2018. The team has been working on the tech since the spring of 2016, and it has more than 20 people. Building the real-time broadcasting tools required a lot of investment, Keighran said.

"We are very focused on the casual people, or the 798 million gamers who don’t stream already,” Keighran said.

The team has been testing the tech for about nine months now. The mobile experience is pretty similar to the PC experience, where you see a feed. You can broadcast over the phone as well. The tech uses WebRTC technology for real-time communications.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Tinyclues Momentum Continues with Record Revenue and Customer Growth

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 07:26 AM PST

PRESS RELEASE:

PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 31, 2018–

Tinyclues, the leading AI-first marketing campaign intelligence solution used by leading retail, e-commerce, fashion, and travel & hospitality companies, had a strong growth of over 100% in 2017 and launched its North American operations.

New York, London & Paris: January 31, 2018. Tinyclues, provider of the leading AI-first marketing campaign intelligence solution, today announced that it reached new heights in 2017. Company growth surpassed 100% as more major brands trust its solution to increase revenue from marketing campaigns and improve customer experience including Air France, Andre, Arcadia, Agnes B, Cdiscount, ClubMed US, Chevignon, Charles Tyrwhitt, Corsair and Nature & Decouvertes. The solution now powers marketing campaigns for more than 80 enterprise companies.

“2017 is another record growth year; we are excited as it validates our vision of AI-first marketing solutions redefining the way B2C marketers are interacting with their customers” said David Bessis, founder and CEO of Tinyclues. “Our campaign intelligence solution brings a new Deep Artificial Intelligence layer on top of marketing campaigns, enabling marketers to seamlessly find the future buyers for each and every campaign. More than an analytical approach, it’s a unique business-led approach and we are proud that on average our customers measured a 49% increase in their campaign revenues”.

As well as revenue growth and new customer wins, Tinyclues believes that 2017 has been an exciting year marking numerous achievements:

  • Launch of operations in North America – In November 2017, Tinyclues opened an office in New York City to drive growth in the United States and Canada; the solution has been unveiled to North American retailers at NRF Retail’s Big Show in January of this year.
  • Analyst recognition – In October 2017, Tinyclues was identified as a Vendor to Watch in Gartner’s 2017 “Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Analytics” report.
  • Product innovation – In March 2017, Tinyclues Action was launched, bringing intuitive campaign planning optimization in an AI-first solution. New channels like push notifications and Facebook Custom Audiences were added as omnichannel campaign demand and adoption grew among customers.
  • Product adoption – Now used in 10 different countries by hundreds of marketers, Tinyclues’ Deep AI technology optimized more than 35,000 campaigns across 6 channels.
  • High levels of customer satisfaction – End of 2017, Tinyclues had a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65, a world-class NPS rating, proving the ease of use of their solution and the very significant impact on revenue.

According to Gartner’s report Multichannel Marketing Effectiveness Survey 2017, “Marketing leaders’ multichannel maturity is advancing, but they still have unfinished business when translating customer-centric strategies into bottom-line business results.” The survey highlights that: “Nearly 40 percent say reaching audiences at the right moments using advanced techniques continues to be their top multichannel marketing challenge.”

Tinyclues believes that this reflects its mission statement to empower marketers to drive sustainable engagement with their customers and generate additional revenue, without damaging customer equity. The company also feels that it bolsters their aggressive objectives for 2018, including rapid growth across EMEA and North America, support for a wider range of use-cases to deliver more value to customers and continued innovation within the product with more automation and prescriptive features to solidify Tinyclues’ place as the leading AI-first solution for marketing campaign intelligence.

Source: Gartner, “Multichannel Marketing Effectiveness Survey 2017: Marketers Are on a Mission to Advance Multichannel Marketing Results,” Noah Elkin, Adam Sarner, 17 November 2017.

Source: Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Analytics,” Martin Kihn, Christi Eubanks, Lizzy Foo Kune, 4 October 2017.

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Tinyclues
Tinyclues is the leading AI-first Marketing Campaign Intelligence solution enabling companies to generate additional revenue through intelligent campaign targeting and planning. Tinyclues’ solution uses Deep Artificial Intelligence to identify future buyers for any promoted item, even in the absence of recent intent. Companies like Brandalley, Cdiscount, Club Med, Corsair, Fnac, Lacoste, La Redoute, Manor, Rue du Commerce, Vente-privee, Sarenza, Vestiaire Collective, Voyages-sncf.com and more are using Tinyclues to optimize and orchestrate more than 600 million messages per month across channels such as email, mobile push notifications, direct mail, call centers or Facebook to generate quantified and sustainable additional revenue.

For more information, visit http://www.tinyclues.com
Twitter: @tinyclues

Tinyclues
Caroline Tailleferd
Tel: +33 6 11 64 87 37
E-mail: caroline.tailleferd@tinyclues.com

Lyft opens its first European hub to develop autonomous car tech

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 07:04 AM PST

Lyft, Uber’s main U.S. rival, has announced its first official expansion into Europe with the opening of an office in Munich, Germany.

The move doesn’t signal an imminent launch of Lyft’s core ride-hailing service across the Atlantic, however. The company said that the hub’s main focus will be self-driving vehicles, with a “talented group of new colleagues” working on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for level 5 autonomous cars — or vehicles with full driverless autonomy.

This team will “build the layer of software that helps our self-driving cars know precisely where they are and what's around them,” the company said in a blog post.

Why Munich?

Munich may seem a random location, but digging into the company’s recent history reveals why it may have chosen the southern German city for its first foray into Europe.

Way back in 2016, General Motors plowed $500 million into Lyft as part of a $1 billion investment, while also revealing plans to build self-driving cars. Last summer, Lyft announced its own self-driving car division before unveiling further plans with Ford to get autonomous vehicles onto roads by 2021.

So it’s clear Lyft has been ramping up its partnerships to keep apace with rivals such as Uber in the autonomous vehicle space. Earlier this month at CES, Lyft and self-driving car tech startup Aptiv launched a passenger pickup service in Las Vegas that involves eight BMW 5-Series vehicles. And BMW is headquartered in Munich, where it announced a new autonomous driving development center last year.

It’s not entirely clear whether this is why Lyft chose Munich for its European self-driving car hub, but Munich certainly offers close proximity to a major automotive company that is known to be investing heavily in self-driving cars and which only a few weeks ago displayed a close alliance with Lyft in Las Vegas. Munich is also a major university city, which would make it easier to recruit talent.

Lyft has now raised more than $4 billion in funding, including a $1 billion round a few months ago led by Alphabet's CapitalG. And Lyft announced its first international expansion in November, starting with Toronto, Canada. Lyft also met with London transport officials last year, so a broader global rollout of its core service is likely a case of sooner rather than later.

For now, however, Lyft’s first official presence outside of North America is all about building cars that can drive themselves.

Apple manufacturer Wistron reportedly plans budget iPhone factory in India

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 06:52 AM PST

Apple contract manufacturer Wistron is planning a new iPhone production facility in Bengaluru, India, according to Reuters, and will likely begin assembling inexpensive iPhone 6s models there for Indian customers. The iPhone 6s would potentially replace the iPhone 6 — which Apple has been selling in India despite discontinuing it in other countries — and might supplant the iPhone SE, which Wistron has been producing in India since last year.

Despite its status as the second-largest smartphone market in the world, India has presented major challenges for Apple, due to high price sensitivity and regulations impacting foreign products. Apple’s already high iPhone pricing has been increased by significant Indian taxes, and laws have impeded the company’s attempts to establish an official retail presence in the country. The iPhone SE was spared recent tax increases due to its domestic manufacturing.

Over the last year, Apple has lobbied the Indian government in an effort to increase its less than 3 percent market share in the country, asking for regulatory changes that would let it open retail stores and expand domestic manufacturing. To that end, India relaxed a rule limiting foreign investment earlier this month, and Wistron recently won approval to import Chinese machines that could assist with iPhone production.

It’s unclear how a locally made iPhone 6s will impact the iPhone lineup in India. The iPhone 6s and iPhone SE share the same Apple A9 processor, and apart from chassis and screen size differences, they are substantially similar devices, making the 6s a potential replacement for the SE. On the other hand, the SE might be upgraded. Rumors of a redesigned “iPhone SE 2” were partially shot down this week by reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who suggests that Apple will at most improve the iPhone SE’s processor and lower the price to retain its appeal to budget customers.

Update at 10:09 a.m. Pacific: Despite its modest overall Indian market share, Apple leads the country’s premium smartphone sector. The Economic Times reported today that Apple’s iPhone X helped it to command a 46.9% share of India’s growing premium smartphone business in the last calendar quarter of 2017 — more than 20% higher than number two-ranked OnePlus, and up nearly 9% year over year. However, premium smartphones account for only 4% of the Indian market.

Golem Gates fuses real-time strategy and collectible card game

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 06:00 AM PST

Laser Guided Games and Hollow Earth are launching the first episode of Golem Gates, a hybrid game that combines real-time strategy combat and collectible card battlers like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering.

The release on Steam is the first part of a single-player campaign, which they’ll publish later. The teams at Laser Guided Games include industry veterans from Epic Games, while Hollow Earth was responsible for character design in the Marvel films Spider-Man Homecoming, Iron Man, and the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War. It’s $20 in Steam Early Access, and it should come out as a full release in March.

Golem Gates is a dark fantasy RTS and CCG, and the first episode, dubbed Book I, is available today as a free update on Steam. It has 100 collectible cards (known as Glyphs) for combat units, buildings, traps, buffs, debuffs, and techs.

Above: Golem Gates is a mystery in five episodes.

Image Credit: Laser Guided Games/Hollow Earth

The story begins with a mysterious voice, calling from the darkness. The Harbinger is an outcast in this forsaken world, and its goal is to find the monolithic Golem Gates, which aid the enemy, and destroy them to be redeemed. The episode teaches the player to wield the power of The Harbinger to manipulate and command nanites from The Ash. Over the course of five episodes, you’ll follow this mystery about the golem’s long-lost creators.

"We're thrilled to introduce players to the The Harbinger, the protagonist of the game, and the Golem Gates themselves, the ominous giant structures that protect the enemy," said Hollow Earth head Josh Nizzi, in a statement. "We can't wait for players to dive deeper into the dark and dangerous world of Golem Gates."

Through Steam Early Access, players can take their decks online in various competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes and experience the beginnings of Golem Gate's story ahead of launch. Today's update also adds a new Trials Mode for a series of diverse challenges.

Above: Golem Gates fuses RTS and CCG gameplay.

Image Credit: Laser Guided Games/Hollow Earth

"With the introduction of the Golem Gates single-player campaign, players can now further immerse themselves in its arcane setting," said Laser Guided Games’ Matt Oelfke, founder and lead developer, in a statement. "Our Early Access players enjoying Golem Gates' multiplayer side couldn't get enough of the world we created, so we've expanded our scope to deliver even more single-player content than originally planned. Book I is just the beginning, and we can't wait to hear what fans think."

Golem Gates is a collaborative project developed by Laser Guided Games and Hollow Earth. The Laser Guided Games team has worked on titles such as Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, while Hollow Earth focuses on art design and story development. Hollow Earth’s Nizzi was also involved in games such as Red Faction and MechAssault 2.

Laser Guided Games is self-funded and it has four employees.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Japan’s Line turns to SoftBank and cryptocurrency to make its messaging app a one-stop shop

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 05:10 AM PST

Japanese mobile messaging company Line has offered up a major hint as to how it plans to make its messaging app a one-stop shop for just about any digital transaction.

First up, Line has offloaded a majority stake in its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) subsidiary to SoftBank. The deal will see SoftBank procure 51 percent of Line Mobile, with Line retaining the remaining 49 percent.

A subsidiary of South Korea's biggest web operator, Naver Corp, Line offers a WhatsApp-style messaging app that now claims 220 million users, the majority of whom are based in just a handful of Asian markets — including Japan. The company has also branched into numerous other verticals, including games, apps, mobile payments, carpooling, smart speakers, and, indeed, mobile networks.

Line, which embarked on a dual IPO in Tokyo and New York nearly two years back, revealed plans to become an MVNO in early 2016 before launching to the public later that year via a licensing partnership with NTT DoCoMo.

Fast-forward 16 months, and it’s clear Line needs a closer strategic alliance with one of the big three mobile network operators in Japan, one of which is SoftBank. Full details of the partnership are still to be decided through “mutual consultations,” but it should, of course, mean that Line will switch from NTT DoCoMo to SoftBank’s network. Additionally, the new partners plan to pool their collective strengths to become a “one-stop location” for just about everything. In effect, SoftBank will leverage Line’s scale and reach as a messaging company, while Line will be able to access SoftBank’s promotional and financial might to push its products and services to millions more across the region.

This is what Line refers to as its “smart portal strategy,” which it hopes will transform the Line messaging app into a conduit that “seamlessly connects people to information and services, as well as to companies and brands,” according to a statement.

“I am fully confident that Line Mobile will become one of the major mobile telecommunication services demanded by users in the future through its three proposed values of ‘simple’, ‘free’, and ‘value’,” said Line Mobile president Ayano Kado. “Through this partnership between Line — which brought to light a new form of communication in the smartphone generation — and SoftBank — the first carrier in Japan to carry the iPhone and drive the smartphone market — we will bring together our mutual strengths and strive to further improve users’ experiences with Line Mobile.”

Money talks

The company also announced a new subsidiary called Line Financial Corporation, which will serve as a complementary business to its existing mobile payments company, Line Pay, which launched in 2014. Line said that its Line Pay service, which works through the Line messaging app, processed ¥450 billion ($4.1 billion) last year, with 40 million registered users.

The new Line Financial business unit was established on January 10 of this year with around ¥5 billion ($46 million) in capital. It will essentially help create a new avenue for transacting all manner of financial products, including loans and insurance, through the Line messaging app. More interestingly, Line said it also plans to serve as a cryptocurrency exchange. The company said it has started the process of registering as a virtual currency exchange with the Financial Services Agency but gave no indication as to when this will likely bear fruit.

These plans all feed into the broader societal push toward a cashless and — increasingly — a wallet-less society. With that in mind, Line wants your phone to be the only item you need to buy anything you want.

Hacktag’s colorful take on co-op stealth sneaks out of Early Access on February 14

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 05:00 AM PST

Piece of Cake Studios tested its debut game, Hacktag, on Steam Early Access last June. It’s a stealth co-op title about infiltrating big corporations and stealing their data, and it enters its full release state February 14 for PC.

Unlike other stealth games, which favor more military tactics or espionage, Piece of Cake opted for a colorful aesthetic, featuring friendly anthropomorphic animals and bright colors. Two players split up the roles of field agent and hacker, and both have to work together to crack codes, solve puzzles, and sneak past security to steal data. Online and local multiplayer are available, and a story mode takes players through three different corporations that parody real-world companies like Google. It focuses on puzzles, but players can also choose what to do with the data they obtain — whether they want to be a whistleblower or mercenary.

Hacktag has asymmetrical play, though both the field agent and hacker roles have analogous challenges. Where the field agent has to avoid patrolling guards, for instance, the hacker has to avoid getting caught in a firewall. Piece of Cake’s cofounder Bérenger Dupré says that the studio also wanted each player to have a unique story experience as well, even if they’re playing together.

“As the game is two-player co-op, each player will follow his own story and that’s why he or she will have unique NPCs,” said Dupré in an email to GamesBeat. “For instance, a player may have to do a mission from his dad, while for another player it will be from his ex-boss, etc. As it is a multiplayer game we wanted to have several stories to ensure that players that play randomly together wouldn’t have experienced exactly the same story, so they each feel more unique as a character. ”

Though the core gameplay is co-op, the studio has added a single-player mode because of player feedback.

“Thanks to the feedback from our Early Access community, we have completely changed the interface and the reward and progression system,” said Dupré. “But the biggest new additions are new mission types and the solo mode where one player switches back and forth to handle both the Agent and Hacker roles. We had been playing with the idea of a solo mode for a long time, but it probably wouldn’t have been possible if we had not decided to enter Early Access.”

Piece of Cake also intends to continue updating the game after release. The study has created a system that will enable them to update the game with seasonal content. And though the initial release is only for PC, Dupré says the studio’s got its eyes on consoles as well — specifically, the Nintendo Switch, which would be a good fit for the multiplayer gameplay. However, at this time, Hacktag doesn’t have any definite plans for console release.

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.

Google Flights now predicts delays and shows how bad ‘basic economy’ fares really are

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 03:04 AM PST

Google has announced two new features for its flight-booking search service.

Using historical flight status data, Google Flights will now try to predict when flights will be delayed, and it will also now tell you what amenities are not included in basic economy fares.

Down to basics

Delta Airlines, if you remember, helped kickstart the “basic economy” airfare back in 2012, offering a sort of rock-bottom tier below the traditional economy class. While this idea has been criticized as a cynical way to increase regular economy fares, American Airlines and United Airlines followed suit by also offering “last class” tickets.

One of the problems with the fare, however, is that it is not always clear at the outset what services and amenities you’re missing out on with the budget ticket — perhaps you have to pay extra for luggage, or you may not have access to overhead bin space.

Now Google Flights will show you upfront what isn’t included in the fare — across Delta, American Airlines, and United Airlines.

Above: Basic Economy: What it’s really like

Sorry for the delay…

Elsewhere, Google Flights will not only tell you when a flight delay has been announced, it will also show the reasons for the delay. More interestingly, it will also now try to predict whether a flight is likely to be delayed.

Above: Google Flights: Delayed

To do so, Google Flights will combine historical data with machine learning smarts to tell you when a delay may occur. Google said that it only flags potential delays when it’s around 80 percent confident in its predictions.

Google Flights launched in 2011, shortly after the company acquired Cambridge-based flight data startup ITA Software for $700 million. Google Flights has helped travelers decide when to buy tickets by estimating when prices are likely to rise, similar to startups such as Hopper, and this latest update is an extension of those smarts.

However, delay predictions seem to be more a proclamation of “look how clever we are” than something that’s actually useful. Nobody should base their travel decisions on a predicted delay, so really it’s not clear what purpose this feature serves beyond perhaps setting your expectations and saving you from a nasty surprise.

OurCrowd has raised $650 million for 145 startups and will top $1 billion in 2018

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 03:00 AM PST

Israel punches well above its weight on the world stage when it comes to tech startups. As I detailed back in October 2017, the DNA of the region lends itself to success.

Today, at its Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem, OurCrowd has revealed the extent of its effect on Israeli startups with the announcement that the organization has raised $650 million for 145 startup companies and 12 funds since its inception in 2013.

“We’re trying to change the brand of equity crowdfunding,” founder and CEO Jon Medved told me in an interview from the event. “This is not like Kickstarter or any other typical crowdfunding process. We are investing over and over again. People ask us if we’re really going to follow our bets like normal venture people, and we say a resounding ‘yes.’ We don’t have a fixed fund that limits us.”

Unlike Kickstarter or Indiegogo, where you invest in a project in return for that project, gifts, merchandise, and other benefits, OurCrowd allows investors to take a stake in the company they’re backing. While there is nothing new about equity crowdfunding, OurCrowd only allows accredited investors to take part.

The company forecasts that it will exceed $1 billion in managed assets during 2018.

“We’re proud of the fact that we’ve got to this $650 million mark, but that’s nothing,” Medved said. “We’ve been doubling the business every year, and if that continues for the next few years, we’ll be in excellent shape. We have 550 different VCs coming to our conference from 250 funds — we’re working closely with the VC community to bring in new money and open up a new asset class.”

What’s in the DNA of an OurCrowd-funded startup? And what does it take to be accepted into the program, and gain access to crowdfunding?

“A great story,” Medved said. “It could be an outstanding business, but if it is completely unintelligible to a crowd, we’ll probably have to pass. It’s a shame, but that’s the nature of the beast. You’ll see probably a higher percentage of social impact investments because of that, but it comes down to the story. By the way, that’s great investment advice, in general.”

The equity crowdfunding platform now has over 25,000 registered investors from 112 countries. It has offices in 10 countries, having opened in three new locations in 2017 —  London, Hong Kong, and Madrid. Notable investments in 2017 include Airobotics (autonomous drones for industry), BrainQ (AI for treating neuro-disorders), Arbe Robotics (vehicular radar systems), and Dreamed (artificial pancreas).

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Samsung’s smartphone sales drop in Q4 puts pressure on upcoming Galaxy S9 and S9+

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 02:21 AM PST

For a company that’s seen a fair bit of turmoil over the last couple of years, Samsung reported relatively strong earnings today, largely thanks to its surging chip business. Fortunately for Samsung, that strength overcame a mobile handset business that remains in transition.

With less than a month to go before Samsung unveils its new flagship phones, the earnings numbers are a reminder of just how much Samsung’s mobile business has riding on sales of the new Galaxy S9 and S9+, which are not expected to be radically different from last year’s S8 and S8+.

In the company’s Q4 earnings release today, Samsung Electronics reported record results for the third straight quarter. Given a disastrous recall of exploding Galaxy Notes in 2016 and a scandal that saw Samsung’s leader sentenced to five years in jail last year, that’s somewhat remarkable. Samsung said its profits were up 42 percent from the previous year, and revenue rose 23.7 percent.

However, while Samsung did not provide specific numbers, the company noted that “total smartphone shipments decreased, due to the lineup optimization of low-end models, while shipments of flagship products, such as the Galaxy Note 8, increased from the previous quarter.”

In other words, Samsung has traditionally been focused on market share, selling a wide range of smartphones. But it’s been winnowing that lineup, particularly after a couple of rough years that saw it blown out of markets like China by tough local competition.

Instead it is (once again) trying to follow Apple’s lead and focus more on premium phones with features that set them apart. Thus, increased sales of the flagship S8 are good news, even if it’s not enough to offset the overall drop in lower-end smartphones.

But if Samsung wants to lean harder on its flagship phones, the upcoming announcement of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ takes on greater significance.

In spite of leaks suggesting the S9 and S9+ will be fairly close to their predecessors, Samsung is optimistic that the new phones will boost earnings.

“In the first quarter, the company expects the mobile business to improve its earnings, led by an increase in sales of flagship products with the launch of Galaxy S9,” the company said in its earnings report.

And it emphasized that going forward, “Samsung will continue its efforts to differentiate its smartphones by adopting  cutting-edge technologies, such as foldable OLED displays.”

Samsung also said that demand for smartphones is expected to rise this year “thanks to growing replacement demand for premium smartphones.”

The company certainly has its fans. We’ll soon see if that loyalty will be enough to move the new Galaxy phones in sufficient numbers to boost Samsung’s current smartphone strategy.

Asana raises $75 million from Al Gore’s fund, others to grow its task-management app globally

Posted: 31 Jan 2018 01:58 AM PST

Productivity-focused task-management startup Asana has announced a fresh $75 million round of funding led by Generation Investment Management (GIM), the London-based investment firm cofounded by Al Gore. Existing investors 8VC, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Sam Altman, and Asana’s very own Dustin Moskovitz also participated in the round.

By way of a quick recap, Asana was created by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, a software engineer who played a key role in developing early Google products such as Gmail chat and helped create the "Like" button when he joined Facebook as engineering lead in 2007. The duo left Facebook in 2008 to kickstart Asana — though the product didn’t launch to the public until 2012 — and Asana went on to secure some notable investors, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen.

The idea behind Asana actually began while Moskovitz and Rosenstein were at Facebook, where they wanted to improve Facebook employees' productivity — they felt that they were spending too much time on "work about work," such as task-planning. According to Rosenstein, he felt this represented a "Facebook-sized opportunity all on its own.”

Above: Asana launched in German last year

Asana claims 30,000 clients globally, including Uber, Airbnb, Google, Spotify, Tesla, Dropbox, Samsung, NASA, Snap, and — yes — Facebook. Until fairly recently, Asana hadn’t really pushed its business outside the U.S., though it did set up a small team in Dublin, Ireland a couple of years ago to further its European ambitions. In an interview with VentureBeat back in November, Asana said that around 40 percent of its revenue and 45 percent of its paying customers are now outside the U.S., and it has expanded its interface beyond English into French and German, with plans for Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese later this year.

The San Francisco-based company has now raised around $163 million in funding, and with its latest cash injection Asana said it plans to turbocharge its international expansion and push further into the enterprise.

The company added that it’s now valued at $900 million, putting it just short of the much-coveted “unicorn” status.

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Nintendo revenues grow 175% as Switch crosses 14.86 million consoles sold

Posted: 30 Jan 2018 11:44 PM PST

Nintendo reported some astonishing growth numbers on the strength of its Switch hybrid mobile-home console, which sold 14.86 million units during 2017.

The Japanese company reported nine-month profit of $1.26 billion on revenues of $7.88 billion for the period ended December 31, compared with net income of $947 million on revenues of $2.86 billion for the nine months ended December 31, 2016. During the nine months ended December 31, 2017, Nintendo sold 12.1 million Switch consoles, bringing the lifetime total to 14.86 million. That means that in 10 months, the Switch has sold more units than the entire lifetime of the previous console, the Nintendo Wii U.

Nintendo has also sold 47 million games to date for the Switch, which went on sale in March 2017.

Kyoto-based Nintendo also lifted its forecasts for both revenues and profits for the full fiscal year, which ends on March 31. The top-selling games on the Switch include Super Mario Odyssey, which sold 9.07 million copies to date. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 7.3 million, Splatoon 2 sold 4.91 million, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold 6.7 million, Arms sold 1.6 million, and Xenoblade Chronices 2 sold 1.06 million.

For the Nintendo 3DS, Pokemon Ultra Sun/Pokemon Ultra Moon sold 7.17 million copies to date. Mario Kart 7 sold 16.7 million copies, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 sold 12.43 million. The Nintendo 3DS sold 5.86 million devices in the nine months ended December 31, down 9 percent from a year earlier.

In current trading, Nintendo’s stock is valued at $49 billion, more than double its value a year ago.

South Korea uncovers almost $600 million in illegal cryptocurrency trade

Posted: 30 Jan 2018 10:48 PM PST

(Reuters) — South Korea has uncovered illegal cryptocurrency foreign exchange trading worth nearly $600 million, a sign authorities are tightening the regulatory screws on the digital asset that many global policymakers consider to be opaque and risky.

The country's customs service said in a statement on Wednesday that about 637.5 billion won ($596.02 million) worth of foreign exchange crimes were detected.

"Customs service have been closely looking at illegal foreign exchange trading using cryptocurrency as part of the government's task force," it said, underscoring stepped-up efforts by Seoul to crack down on illegal trade in the digital asset.

Illegal foreign currency trading of 472.3 billion formed the bulk of the cryptocurrency crimes, Customs said, but gave no details on what action authorities were taking against the rule breaches.

South Korea has adopted a tough stance on regulating cryptocurrency trading as many locals, including students and housewives, jumped into a frenzied market despite warnings from policy makers around the world of a bubble.

Effective from Jan. 30, authorities will allow only real-name bank accounts to be used for cryptocurrency trading designed to stop virtual coins from being used for money laundering and other crimes.

Among other breaches, Customs said there were also cases where investors in Japan sent their yen worth 53.7 billion won to their partners in South Korea for illegal currency trade.

It said authorities will continue to monitor for any violations of foreign exchange rules or of money laundering activities.

Seoul previously said that it is considering shutting down local cryptocurrency exchanges, which threw the market into turmoil and hammered bitcoin prices. Officials later clarified that an outright ban is only one of the steps being considered, and a final decision was yet to be made.

Bitcoin stood at $9,800.00 as of 0502 GMT on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange. The heightened regulatory scrutiny around the world, however, has seen bitcoin dive about 31 percent so far this month, on track for its biggest monthly decline since December 2013.

Cryptocurrencies got another jolt last week after Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck said hackers stole over $500 million in one of the world's biggest cyber heists.

Soraa’s violet LEDs can help you sleep better with healthy lights

Posted: 30 Jan 2018 05:00 PM PST

If you’re not getting enough sleep, you can blame it on those blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that are replacing incandescent light bulbs everywhere. But Soraa is out to protect your eyes and your sleep cycle with violet LEDs that also give you the full spectrum of colors. The company is announcing its better light bulbs today.

Fremont, California-based Soraa has been making high-end LED bulbs for five years, but today the company is launching two consumer bulbs, dubbed Soraa Radiant and Soraa Healthy. They’re the byproduct of years of research by Shuji Nakamura, father of the modern LED light and founder of Soraa.

Above: Soraa Healthy lights could help you sleep better.

Image Credit: Soraa

In the past couple of decades, blue LEDs have been slowly taking over, as their costs have fallen below those of incandescent bulbs, and they save on energy costs. But they also have a downside. Blue LEDs cannot reproduce the entire color spectrum, so they aren’t as good at illuminating vibrant colors. On top of that, blue LEDs can inhibit the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that enables you to fall asleep more easily. By doing that, blue LEDs can cause you to lose sleep.

Nakamura was the inventor of the blue LEDs used for lighting in the 1990s, and in 2014 he won the Nobel Prize for physics. In 2008, he started Soraa to finish the work he had started. In 2012, the company started shipping its first violet LEDs, which were expensive back then and so were used in high-end applications such as lighting for museums, hotels, galleries, historical buildings, and luxury retailers.

Now Soraa has been able to bring down the costs. The Soraa Radiant bulbs will sell for $13.95 each, while the Soraa Healthy bulbs will sell for $18.95. That’s more than a blue LED, which costs $10 for a half-dozen bulbs. But it’s also healthier, said T.J. Grewal, chief product officer at Soraa, in an interview with VentureBeat.

Above: Soraa Radiant lights can produce reds better.

Image Credit: Soraa

“Blue LEDs have replaced incandescents and saved energy,” Grewal said. “But the downside is the light isn’t giving you the full color spectrum. And it inhibits your sleep. Our lights reinforce your sleep cycle.”

Soraa Radiant is a full-spectrum bulb that will give you “museum-quality light in your home,” Grewal said. The bulb reproduces sunlight as closely as possible, which means red colors will look more vibrant and skin tones more attractive. The white light from a violet LED is also more pure, and shades of white light become more visible.

Colors produced with standard blue LEDs, by contrast, have gaps, because phosphorus filters put on the blue LEDs can’t really simulate sunlight’s effects. Standard LEDs have an R9 value below 10 percent and an RW of zero (those are lighting quality terms). Soraa Radiant LED bulbs create light with an R9 value of 95 percent and RW value of 100 percent.

Carli Lloyd, captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, said in an interview that she has always been diligent about her sleep and shared that she needs about nine hours of sleep.

“I need that to be sharp on the field and quicker than my opponents,” Lloyd said. “The thought is to put the Soraa light in your bedroom. I’m in the process of getting a new home with my husband. We are researching bulbs, and this is the best company to be affiliated with.”

Above: Soraa has done research into lighting technology.

Image Credit: Soraa

Meanwhile, Soraa Healthy LED bulbs have zero blue light. The invisible blue light in sunlight is like a wake-up call in the morning. It triggers your body to wake up. At night, when there is no light, your body produces melatonin, preparing you for sleep. The natural hormone regulates your sleep and wake cycles. When blue light disappears and melatonin levels rise, we become sleepy.

But standard LED bulbs pump invisible blue light into you at night, inhibiting the melatonin and making you stay up longer. Falling asleep is more difficult because your body still thinks it’s daytime. Soraa Healthy LED bulbs produce a soft white light, and they don’t inhibit melatonin production.

Above: Soraa’s bulbs range in price from $13.95 to $18.95.

Image Credit: Soraa

Soraa manufactures its own bulbs with proprietary LEDs. They are fully dimmable, and they don’t produce any buzzing noise. In addition, Soraa light does not produce the stroboscopic effect that has been shown to cause headaches, eyestrain, and fatigue, Grewal said. The bulbs are available on Soraa‘s site and on Amazon.

“Your lights shouldn’t do you harm,” Grewal said. “It’s hard to have a good sleep regimen without the right lighting.”

Amazon HQ2 finalists should refuse tax breaks, say nearly 100 economists, professors

Posted: 30 Jan 2018 04:58 PM PST

In the weeks since Amazon announced the 20 cities still in contention to land its second headquarters (HQ2), many of the finalists are scrambling to gain an edge over their competitors. But some prominent economists, academics, and former government officials are asking cities to think twice before they offer the ecommerce giant too good of a deal.

On Tuesday afternoon, a petition began circulating on Change.org asking “elected officials and community leaders of Amazon HQ2 finalist cities” to collectively agree that they will not offer Amazon any tax incentives to land HQ2.The petition’s 93 original signees include Robert Reich, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton; urban studies expert Richard Florida, who coined the term “creative class;” and Jason Furman and Alan Krueger, both former chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. As of this evening, the petition had over 300 signatures. A number of professors from Harvard University, MIT, and other top schools also signed on.

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The petition states that while the signees support Amazon’s decision to build a second headquarters, “incentives do not alter business location decisions as much as is often claimed and are less important than more fundamental location factors. Worse, they divert funds that could be put to better use underwriting public services such as schools, housing programs, job training, and transportation, which are more effective ways to spur economic development.”

While the petition didn’t criticize any cities by name, it did call out “at least four jurisdictions [that] have proposed multi-billion-dollar incentive packages.” That list includes Newark, which — along with the state of New Jersey — offered Amazon at least $7 billion in tax incentives. If the Newark package is any indication, the incentive package offered to Amazon will likely be one of the largest, if not the largest, ever offered to a U.S. company.

In its original RFP for HQ2, Amazon said that “incentives offered by the state/province and local communities to offset initial capital outlay and ongoing operational costs will be significant factors in the decision-making process” — so it’s unlikely that cities will collectively agree to take incentives off the table. But the petition will likely put more pressure on finalist cities to reveal what they offered Amazon.

"Unilateral disarmament has never worked … we want to see incentives that benefit the greater community,” Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in reaction to the petition.

VentureBeat reached out to Amazon for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.

Your Royal Gayness gives kingdom management a modern happily-ever-after twist

Posted: 30 Jan 2018 04:45 PM PST

Lizard Hazard Games‘s Your Royal Gayness is a cheeky parody of fairy tales. You help Prince Amir manage his kingdom, avoid marriage, and seek the man of his dreams. It’s the Finnish indie studio’s debut, and after a successful Kickstarter campaign in early 2017, Your Royal Gayness is now out on PC.

Romance is one aspect of this indie, but much of Your Royal Gayness is about listening to citizens’ concerns and managing resources. In the audience phase, Amir fields requests and hears about problems that have sprouted up around the land. Then he must command his advisers on how he wants to solve these problems and decide on what laws he’d like to pass.

“We definitely took inspiration for the laws in the game from real world,” said Lizard Hazard CEO and lead developer Salli Loikkanen in an email to GamesBeat. “For example, in Finland homosexuality was a criminal offense until 1971; it was removed from the list of illnesses in 1981, and in 2017 gay marriage was legalized. The laws in Your Royal Gayness are inspired by that same progression. There are other things as well — for example, the player has the option to raise taxes, and if they do, the happiness of the people goes down. However, if the player sets social laws, it’ll cost money but the happiness gain is greater than the money lost.”

Loikkanen says she’s wanted to develop a game about fairy tales for a while. Most fairy tales are filled with traditional gender roles, which are ripe for parody. However, though Your Royal Gayness takes a humorous approach, the topics it addresses are serious. For instance, Amir can push to legalize gay marriage — something that’s meaningful to many people who may live in places where it still hasn’t been legalized. To make sure Lizard Hazard was balancing the parody aspects along with striking the right tone, it hired a sensitivity reader to make sure the jokes and stories were as inclusive as possible.

A potential pitfall is the women in Your Royal Gayness. Amir is constantly battling off suitors, women who are trying to marry him against his will and are essentially his “enemies.” Loikkanen says the team tried to avoid villainizing the women by trying to include diverse characters in the game.

“We stood up to the challenges by including lots of minor female characters — Amir’s mom, the Queen is calm, distinguished and intelligent, the High Priestess is confident and sassy, Olivia the noblewoman is very shy and delicate and Drakemaster Magda is a hardened warrior and a mother of two,” said Loikkanen. “We also gave the various princesses different body types, skin colours and outfits. Their appearances and personality traits are randomized, so the selection of possible princesses is pretty big.”

More games have popped up recently that address LGBTQIA issues or feature queer characters, such as Fullbright’s Gone Home, Game Grumps’s Dream Daddy, and Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup. Many of these titles tend to be heavily narrative-driven or visual novels, which Your Royal Gayness diverges from with its management simulation approach. Loikkanen says representation in games is important, particularly for folks who may not have local support.

“We don’t have a lot of games that explore those issues,” said Loikkanen. “I think the more stories we create with LGBT+ characters, the more normalized it becomes. And it should be normal to be gay. Personally, I live in a very accepting environment, but not every LGBT+ person is so lucky.”

The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®'s Game Dev program.
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