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Microsoft HoloLens is now certified protective eyewear
Microsoft first launched HoloLens in 2015 as a gaming-centric consumer product, but so far, very few folks have so much as picked up a Minecraft block with the $3,000 device. Microsoft isn't complaining, though. HoloLens has been a big success with businesses, allowing designers to visualize digital changes on real-life objects and helping employees do complex tasks or high-tech sales demos. In fact, it's been so popular with companies that Microsoft is now expanding sales to 29 new European markets, taking the total up to 39 nations.
Global smartphone sales up by 6.6 percent in 2016
While smartphone sales have slowed in recent years as most markets become saturated, the industry is still managing to post positive figures. Market research firm GfK has released a report today showing phone sales increased 6.6% from 2015 thanks to strong growth in China and incremental improvements elsewhere, which they estimate will add up to 1.4 billion units sold in 2016.
EVE Evolved: Making ISK from the Crius release
EVE Online's economy has been studied over the years for its resemblance to the real world, and it is often cited as an example of a hyper-capitalist society with no laws or regulation. But underneath the emergent interplay of supply and demand that has fueled everything from freighter businesses to virtual investment banks, EVE is ultimately a game. The biggest influence on the markets by far has always been CCP Games and the changes it deploys in expansions, which shake the universe up and force players to adapt to new circumstances. There's always money to be made from major gameplay changes, and accurately predicting how an expansion will impact on the market can put you on the head of a short-lived but very lucrative gold rush. Though EVE's updates now come in the form of ten smaller releases per year, the upcoming Crius release scheduled for July 22nd has practically a whole expansion's worth of changes to industry and research. That gives you just over two weeks to prepare for the change, train any skills you might need, and figure out how to cash in on EVE's industrial revolution. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I run down some tips for how to prepare for the upcoming industry revamp in Crius and make some ISK.
EVE Evolved: Mining is broken, but it can be fixed
Mining has a reputation for being the most boring activity in EVE Online, but it's always filled a niche role as a low-effort way to make ISK and play with friends casually. When there's no PvP going on and you can't give your full attention to smashing NPCs in missions or anomalies, mining fills that downtime with something more lucrative and social than spinning your ship in a station. The problem is that mining has slowly become obsolete over the years; alternative mineral sources now supply much of the market's needs, and the risk of flying a defenseless barge just isn't worth the mediocre payout. It's currently more efficient for an individual to buy minerals with ISK made via some other form of PvE, such as level 4 missions or incursions. And on the macroscopic level, such huge quantities of minerals hit the market from alternative sources such as reprocessing loot that the economy could potentially function with no miners at all. CCP has tried to make mining more appealing over the years with buffs and new ships, and the devs recently announced plans to nerf mineral compression as part of a campaign to make mining worthwhile, but I think it'll take a lot more than ISK to get people mining again. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how mining and reprocessing are at odds and suggest some ideas for new mining features that could revitalise this long forgotten profession.
The Mog Log: Understanding Final Fantasy XIV's markets
There are lots of ways to make money in Final Fantasy XIV, but the fastest way to increase your riches comes from smart use of the market boards. (Yes, you're not creating new money to enter the system; there are a lot of ways to do that, too. Go do some leves.) This is why I'm baffled at how many people understand the principle but don't understand how to sell things on the markets. Some of this probably comes from the fact that the system is never explained in great depth, but it doesn't help that the system isn't set up to work like many auction systems in other MMOs. So while some of you already grasp this and are enjoying the singular fun of being locked into a pricing war with three other people, others aren't sure how to get their Fleece to sell. Let's talk about some market truths you might not have realized.
Nasdaq stops all trading due to systems issue, plans to reopen in a limited capacity soon (update: back online)
Well, this is rather peculiar. The Nasdaq stock market -- the entire Nasdaq, which lists major tech firms such as Apple and Facebook -- has temporarily suspended all trading due to a technical issue. The exchange sent an alert to traders at 12:14PM ET today announcing that it was halting all trading "until further notice," according to a New York Times report. Reuters is reporting that Nasdaq will reopen trading soon, but with a 5-minute quote period. The market will not be canceling open orders, however, so firms that don't want their orders processed once everything's up and running should cancel their orders manually now. It's not entirely clear what caused the issue, or how and when it will be resolved, but you better believe it's causing some commotion on Wall Street, and could impact traders for days and months to come. Update (2:28PM ET): CNBC and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Nasdaq will resume limited trading beginning at 2:45PM ET. Update (2:32PM ET): CNBC is now reporting that trading will resume with just two securities at 2:45PM ET. Full trading will begin at 3:10PM ET. Update (3:28PM ET): It appears that trading has resumed as of 3:25PM ET. Update (5:47PM ET): One final tweet here from CNBC. Nasdaq is claiming that today's issues were resolved within 30 minutes. The remaining 2.5 hours were used to coordinate the re-opening. Update (6:29PM ET): Nasdaq has issued an official statement following today's market close. In part, it reads: "NASDAQ OMX will work with other exchanges that are members of the SIP to investigate the issues of today, and we will support any necessary steps to enhance the platform."
THQ considering Linux and other platforms after Humble Bundle success
After the THQ bundle recently brought in over $5 million (split between THQ, charity donations, and "tips" to the bundle's organizers), the company's president Jason Rubin admits that he's looking at possible markets differently lately. Rubin's Twitter account says he "got the Linux message loud and clear" from the bundle, and he later told Polygon that "the message I took away from a large number of tweets and comments around the THQ Humble Bundle sale is that there are vibrant communities of gamers using other operating systems besides the dominant ones, and a company like THQ should not overlook them."In other words, there's opportunity for THQ in selling computer games outside of the standard Windows ecosystem. Rubin has no plans yet, but he says the analysis has started, and the company is "committed to look at anything that makes sense" in terms of releasing titles on platforms other than simply Windows. In the past, THQ has released Mac versions of its Company of Heroes series through a third-party publisher, but it sounds like Rubin is considering a more widespread solution for cross-platform releases after this feedback. He says THQ should have more to announce soon.
Valve partners with Nexon to bring Dota 2 to Japan and Korea
Online game publisher Nexon has announced that it's teaming up with Valve to bring the free-to-play Dota 2 to the Japanese and Korean markets. Dota 2 is of course based on a Warcraft 3 mod named Defense of the Ancients, and the multiplayer online battle arena style of gameplay, inspired by real-time strategy games, will likely appeal very much to those overseas markets. Valve's Gabe Newell says, according to the press release, that "partnering with Nexon will allow us to deliver Dota 2 to a massive audience of Asian gamers via a premium service."Dota 2's competitor League of Legends has already been enormously popular in Korea, with a South Korean team nabbing the world title at the last championships. So Valve is likely expecting a lot from Nexon, in terms of delivering the game to these new markets. Dota 2 is currently in closed beta and heading toward a free-to-play launch soon.
iPhone 5 supply runs short in India
The iPhone 5 officially launched in India last Friday, and just a day later, stores were selling out of their stock. Don't get too excited. Indian sources note only about 15,000 phones were made available for that market, so a sellout isn't too surprising. There were about 100,000 phones made available to India in the first month. An additional 200,000 are expected to arrive by the end of December. Those numbers aren't huge (I'd guess that several North American stores will sell as many in the same time period), but the point here is that demand is high around the world. The iPhone 5 isn't cheap in India. In addition to service and shipment fees, India's currency also plays a factor. The low-end 16 GB iPhone sells for 45,500 rupees, or about US$833 (as of this writing). When you combine those prices with the fact that these phones did sell out, there's a really big indicator of why Apple is so interested to get sales rolling overseas, and why it expects places like India and China both to be such big markets in the future.
Isis mobile payment system primed for September launch, supported devices revealed
You've known it was coming, but Isis has been so quiet on the mobile payments front in the past few months that you might've forgotten the score. Now, the joint venture backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon has announced that it'll debut its system in Austin and Salt Lake City next month. At least part of the delay is attributed to its shift in strategy, when Isis shelved its plans to process payments through the carriers themselves and instead work with MasterCard and Visa. Isis representatives have declined to elaborate on future expansion plans. Coinciding with the recent update that enabled Isis support for T-Mobile's Galaxy S II, MasterCard has come clean with a list of devices that'll receive similar treatment. Specifically, those in the US can expect the Droid Incredible 4G LTE, One X, Amaze 4G, Galaxy S III to gain Isis support. Naturally, the possibility remains open for other devices as well, and if you'd like to see the complete list of candidates, make sure to check out the PDF below.
EVE Evolved: Four things MMOs can learn from EVE
New MMOs are released every year, and we often see them repeating the same mistakes as previous games or releasing without tried-and-tested mechanics. It just seems like common sense to learn from the years of mistakes and successes of other companies and previous titles, but it isn't always clear how to apply game mechanics or lessons from dissimilar types of game. EVE Online is as dissimilar from the typical MMO as you can get, but there are lessons to be learned from its turbulent nine-year history that can be applied to all MMO development. EVE has helped prove that you can start small and grow rather than raking in huge launch sales and then fading away. The past year has also shown conclusively that iteration on existing features can trump big expansions. EVE's market system and single-shard server have both been commended countless times over the game's nine-year history, and yet in all that time, few games have tried to replicate those features. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at four lessons learned from EVE Online that could easily be applied to other MMOs.
Bringing a Chinese shooter to the west with Mercenary Ops
Mercenary Ops is something of a rarity. While there are quite a few Western-developed games being published in Asia by Chinese and Korean companies, there aren't a lot of Chinese-developed online titles being published by Western companies.Developed in China by Yingpei Games, which used to be called Epic Games China, the shooter is being distributed by the San Francisco-based outfit Kalends, a group of developers who've decided to try their hand at publishing on their own.As for the game itself, Kalends has announced that Mercenary Ops will be released as a free-to-play, microtransaction-based title – a business plan that has deep roots in China, but is only just breaking ground stateside.%Gallery-149855%
Microsoft cuts pre-Mango holdouts, Zune desktop software off from WP7 app purchases
Microsoft's Windows Phone team is making a few changes to how users are able to acquire apps on their devices but luckily, they probably won't affect most of you. Starting today, users can no longer get apps from the Zune desktop software (the app store will remain for the Zune HD, as shown above), so they'll need to browse via the website or directly on their phones, which Microsoft says the majority of users were already doing. The other change is that in the next few weeks, any users who have not upgraded their handsets to Windows Phone 7.5 Mango will no longer be able to download, update or review apps. Since the update is available for all Windows Phones (Android, we're mostly talking about you) this shouldn't be too much of a problem, and any laggards will regain their access after upgrading. On a final note, the developer blog mentions the software needed for hardware partners to create phones for Bahrain, Israel, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, UAE and Vietnam and that there will be more news on these storefronts "in the weeks ahead." With these moves, the squad has culled any reason to open a heavy memory hungry desktop program just to install some new apps from a PC (iTunes, we're completely talking about you) and devs can write off supporting users still running on old platforms guilt-free. All that in one day? We bet they didn't even have to use their AK -- those old zune:// links however, will be missed.
Apple reportedly readying iTunes Match for Japan
Japanese Mac site Macotakara notes that the Japanese version of iTunes has been updated with a "Purchased" tab via iTunes in the Cloud, which also suggests that Apple is about to launch an official version of iTunes Match in Japan. iCloud has been up and running in Japan for some time, but only for sharing books and information across apps. iTunes in the Cloud will allow Apple's Japanese users to access purchased songs from the iTunes Store on any of their devices, and iTunes Match will allow users to "match" their music to iTunes Store for additional functionality. iTunes in the Cloud has reportedly already gone live in Japan, and it seems like Apple is on the brink of releasing iTunes Match in Japan. That could possibly mean that other new international markets aren't far behind.
European Court: It's free trade for a reason, dummy
Primer: The EU is many nations with a single market, if wine is cheaper in France, a German can simply purchase it there. It's why Apple was censured back in 2007 for territorial iTunes stores that stopped people from shopping around. Anything sold in Europe on a per-country basis hangs within a grey area of free trade. That includes what many call "The Greatest Show on Earth" -- The FA Premier League. Sky, the Premier League's media partner in Europe charges £480 ($740) a month for pub and bar owners to screen their matches in their establishments. That's what prompted cash-strapped publican Karen Murphy to buy a decoder box and card from Greece's Nova company for only £118 ($180) a month. Following a legal challenge that has lasted nearly 7 years, the European Court of Justice has ruled that whilst it's legal (or at least, not illegal) to own a foreign decoder in your own home, it is illegal for pubs and other public spaces to use them on copyright grounds. This means that many home users could snap up cheaper European services and erode the value of Sky's £1bn ($1.5bn) Premier League deal, which would make the greatest show on earth just a little less great.
Gamescom 2011: CCP talks DUST 514 microtransactions
Joystiq caught up with CCP at Gamescom, and the Icelandic dev house responsible for EVE Online and its first-person shooter spin-off called DUST 514 dropped a few hints as to how the microtransaction business model will function in the latter game. DUST, which is launching exclusively on the Playstation 3 in 2012, will carry an initial $20 digital download fee, after which the user will receive access to the game as well as approximately $20 worth of virtual currency. "You're basically getting that bundle of cash that you're using to start the game, and from there if you choose to play for free and just grind, you're welcome to do that," a CCP rep said. CCP also said it expects many gamers to avoid DUST'S shooter gameplay altogether and focus on playing the market, as many capsuleers do in EVE Online. Head to Joystiq for the full report.
Isis adds Visa, MasterCard, American Express to mobile payment lineup
Isis hasn't shown us much more than a logo and a black and white rendering of its NFC-powered mobile payment system, but the outfit proved today that it has all of its ducks -- or, rather, major credit card companies -- in a row. According to the group -- a collaboration between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon -- Isis will launch with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express on board. Back in May, we reported that the credit card alternative was shaking up its initial, Discover-only platform to let the competition in. Since then, the Goog's swept in with Google Wallet (backed by Sprint), which also counts MasterCard as a partner. Google's already got a head start, with Wallet trials underway in New York and San Francisco, but the internet giant might just need the lead, considering the list of heavy hitters Isis has lined up for its 2012 debut.
Isis mobile payments coming to Austin in 2012
Certain to "Keep Austin Weird," Isis has selected the home of SXSW as its second market for a mobile payment tryout. The joint-venture backed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless (with help from MasterCard and Visa), will work with local merchants and the Chamber of Commerce to deliver what it calls a "comprehensive mobile experience" by mid-2012. Isis' latest metropolitan recruit joins Salt Lake City in this experiment that will compete with Google Wallet (which is endorsed by Sprint). Quick advice to Austinites: when out-of-towners begin gawking at you for getting "free" lattes and concert tickets by waving your phone about, be sure to explain the wonders of NFC -- it'd be a shame for them to attempt the same -- only to be taken into custody by the Austin PD. Jump the break for the PR.
Isis NFC payment system gets its first market in Salt Lake City, Utah, launches in 2012
Like 3D on high-end HDTVs, NFC-based payment systems seem set to invade our mobile lives whether we like them or not. Isis, a collaborative venture between AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and a bunch of banking big timers, has today announced the first market for its rollout of a contactless payment scheme, and it's none other than Salt Lake City, Utah. That'll surely raise eyebrows in locales that may consider themselves more tech-savvy, but we reckon starting off with a city of a smaller scale might be good for getting this "mobile wallet" system off the ground. And then there's the added benefit of Isis snagging a deal to enable compatibility with the entire Utah Transit Authority footprint. If all plans are executed properly, that should mean that by summer 2012 the good people of SLC will be able to NFC their way around town with just their smartphone in hand, while also swiping it through checkouts like some form of highly advanced techno-humans.
Kotick: App Store and Facebook games not a 'big opportunity' for Activision
"We don't view the App Store as a really big opportunity for dedicated games," Activision boss Bobby Kotick told the Global Media Summit in New York earlier this week. Much of the game industry is extremely interested in the growing mobile and social game markets, but according to Kotick, Activision believes it can reach a wider customer base by focusing on its most popular franchises and platforms. "The place where you have the opportunities for growth," he said, "is within the communities of franchises we control." But while Activision holds off on the mobile and social markets in favor of pushing traditional franchises, competitor EA is laying all kinds of groundwork there. Opportunity, it seems, doesn't look the same to everyone.
