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Google to settle YouTube child privacy violations for up to $200 million
Google will allegedly pay between $150 and $200 million to end the FTC investigation into whether YouTube violated a children's privacy law, Politico reported this afternoon. The FTC reportedly voted along party lines (3-2) to approve the settlement, which will now be reviewed by the Justice Department.
Flagship 'Dota 2' tournament sets cash prize record
Dota 2's flagship tournament, The International 2016, is now the most lucrative eSports competition in history with a record-breaking $18.6 million prize pot. The total purse of last year's tournament was under $18.5 million, and under $11 million in 2014. The prize pool will continue to grow for another two weeks as it's funded by fans buying Battle Passes, Dota 2's new in-game digital program that will last until August 13th.
Elite: Dangerous server goes haywire, creates instant billionaires [Updated]
The Elite: Dangerous server has had a relatively smooth launch since it released just over two weeks ago, but all that changed last night when the server went absolutely haywire. A suspected transaction server failure caused a whole slew of bizarre bugs for those playing the game last night, from benign errors like players getting disconnected to catastrophic failures like deleting a ship's entire cargo, rolling back ship upgrades, and deleting credits. The worst problems involved players having ghost cargo that could be sold over and over again, allowing them to rack up millions of credits in minutes. Though the problems were reported promptly, the server wasn't rebooted until its usual maintenance period over six hours later. In a feat of remarkably bad timing, the server problems happened on a national holiday in the UK, and so the developers at Frontier were taking time off to celebrate the new year. There has been no official announcement on the problems yet, and players are speculating on the damage that would be caused or reversed if Frontier performed a server rollback. Reports from the Elite forum suggest that developers may not be back to work until as late as January 5th, at which point it's unlikely that developers will roll the server back. The damage from last night's errors continues to cause problems today. One player was left shipless and unable to log in when the server reversed a ship purchase transaction, and another's ship teleported back across the galaxy and is being held hostage at a station with no shipyard. Dozens of players have reported broken cargo holds or missing cargo and credits, and one player logged in this morning to find 5 billion credits sitting in his wallet. These events have naturally prompted a resurgence of complaints about Elite's always-online gameplay, as players have found themselves unable to play without problem even in solo mode. We have reached out to Frontier for comment.
Terraria tops 1.3 million mobile downloads
Terraria, Re-Logic's 2D sandbox adventure game, surpassed a combined 1.3 million full-game downloads on iOS and Android. The game first arrived on iOS in August 2013 and on Android in September. Additionally, publisher 505 Games announced that Terraria recently achieved one million downloads in total across Xbox 360, PS3 and PS Vita, the latter of which arrived in December. Andrew Spinks, the creator of Terraria, first divulged plans for the game's sequel in October, but was careful to note that it wasn't in development at the time. Spinks later said he'd like to code Terraria 2 in a more portable language so he can bring the game to multiple platforms closer to its PC launch, though Nintendo's 3DS is likely not in the cards for the sequel. [Image: Re-Logic]
Xbox One crosses million sold mark in under 24 hours, 'biggest launch in Xbox history'
Microsoft's Xbox One launch has seen some bumps in the road but the company has announced it's already sold more than a million consoles worldwide. Last week, Sony announced the PS4 sold more than one million units in the US and Canada in less than a day, but at this point, Microsoft has not made any such regional distinctions. Still, the "biggest launch in Xbox history" is well under way and already outpacing its predecessor's initial numbers -- day one download and all -- so let us know if you're one of the 1 million strong with a Day One Achievement on your record, or if you're looking elsewhere for gaming this holiday season.
Raspberry Pi celebrates a million boards made in the UK
The Raspberry Pi foundation has just announced its one-millionth board manufactured in the UK at Sony's Pencoed facility and said that 1.75 million total boards have been built so far. Production initially started in Asia in order to keep costs down and supplies up, but shifted to the UK in September last year thanks to Sony's "lean manufacturing techniques." The Pi group lauded Sony for the quality of the boards, and said the millionth unit will be kept in a gold-plated case at "Pi Towers" in Cambridge. Despite the success, Raspberry's Eben Upton told the BBC that many Pi boards given to kids end up "stuck in a drawer" and that the foundation is now focused on education, particularly for teachers. We're firmly behind that idea, especially if it results in more tech like this.
EE hits one million 4G customers four months ahead of goal
EE said it wanted to have a million 4G customers by the end of the year, but it won't have to wait nearly that long. The UK carrier just topped that mark four months ahead of its stated deadline while its competitors are just getting off the starting blocks. O2 and Vodafone both fired up their respective LTE networks less than two weeks ago, while Three's won't launch until December. Despite having been the only game in town until recently, EE claims the UK's adoption of 4G has been one of the world's fastest so far. It seems like there's a lot more technofreaks out there than Vodafone imagined.
WhatsApp says it has 250 million users
Mobile messaging app WhatsApp has hit a huge total of 250 million users, the company has told the Wall Street Journal. A couple of million users these days is no big deal, considering how big the smartphone audience has become, but 250 million users is significant. In fact, it's on par with Twitter or LinkedIn, and nearly the size of Skype. WhatsApp is one of a series of apps that allow users to send text messages back and forth to any device for free. Essentially, it's a "text-over-IP" type of service. That may not sound all that interesting (and again, there are a number of apps that do this, going all the way back to AOL's own Instant Messenger), but sending messages without paying an individual charge is obviously very appealing to a large audience, and WhatsApp has put a lot of those people together on its network. WhatsApp is also notable for charging a US$0.99 premium cost right up front, without any other in-app purchases or hidden fees. With a simple-to-understand, easy-to-use and one-time-pay messaging service, maybe it's easy to see just why WhatsApp is so popular. [via Mashable]
River City Ransom sequel announced, crowdfunding to begin this summer
Indie development house Combit Studios has announced that it will be partnering with River City Ransom EX developer Million to create "an official, worldwide follow-up to River City Ransom." The game will be available for Windows in August of 2014, according to Combit's official blog.Further information will be released at a later date, leading up to an eventual crowd-funding drive scheduled for sometime this summer. In the meantime, an official placeholder website will gladly add your email address to its mailing list.Combit Studios' project appears to be completely unrelated to that other official sequel to River City Ransom that was announced back in 2011. Developed by Miracle Kidz and originally slated to launch on WiiWare sometime last year, River City Ransom 2 was shelved in favor of original projects.
Sina Weibo passes 500 million user mark, how's your site coming along?
Remember those halcyon days last November when Sina Weibo passed more than 400 million users? Well, a mere three months later, and the microblogging site can now boast that it's got 503 million compulsive over-sharers. To put that figure into perspective, were "Chinese Twitter" to be its own country, it would be the third most populous nation on Earth. While it should be celebrating such figures, there's a few signs of trouble on the horizon, as local rival Tencent's WeChat hit 300 million users last month -- not to mention some disgruntled former users inviting people to switch to Twitter.
Nexus 7 sales clocking in at close to a million per month
While it was pretty clear that ASUS' Google-partnered Nexus 7 contributed heavily to the Taiwanese maker's healthy Q3 results, there was no official confirmation on its exact sales figures so far. ASUS CFO David Chang has now come clean and told the WSJ that the 7-incher is close to touching the one million per month mark, just about double the rate of sales at its launch. While this number is a fraction of the iPad's sales (14 million in the last quarter alone), it could well go up due to the recent price drop and the addition of new 32GB models to the portfolio. On the flip side, the Nexus 7 is sure to face heat from close rivals, the Kindle Fire HD and the 7.9-inch Apple iPad mini, while the mega-spec Nexus 10 will also entice some buyers away from ASUS' reach.
Sprint marks 1 million LTE devices sold
LTE handsets? Sprint's got 'em. And while the carrier's network deployment may be, well, a bit lacking at present, plenty of Now Network subscribers have been happy to pick up devices boasting the speedy technology. Speaking at a conference in New York, CEO Dan Hesse noted that Sprint has moved some one million LTE devices -- a number that's likely to keep growing, as the carrier continues to roll out coverage.
Temple Run breaks 100 million downloads
There's big news from Imangi Software, the husband-and-wife team behind the breakout iOS hit Temple Run. The game has picked up 100 million downloads in within a year on the App Store. The team has a lot to show for it, like a long time on the Top Free apps chart, plenty of microtransactions (surely), and even that Disney-branded spinoff for Brave. It's well deserved, as Temple Run is a great, fun game. And it's getting better still. The latest update brings high-res Retina Display graphics to the iPad. There's also a new powerup that will revive you at the end of a run, and the ability to turn off powerups whenever you want. All that comes with a few more bugfixes, so the game is running smoother than ever. Temple Run is a phenomenal success, and it's east to see why. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Richard Garriott's Portalarium secures $7 million funding for iOS social RPG
Richard "Lord British" Garriott is in the middle of a new gaming venture called Portalarium (it's working on a social game for Facebook and iOS called Ultimate Collection: Garage Sale), and he's just been able to convince a round of venture capitalists to support his projects, to the tune of roughly $7 million.The money will also be used to build a social RPG tentatively titled "New Britannia," which may have ties to the Ultima tradition, as well as new school features like asychronous gameplay and social profiles.Portalarium was announced to be one of the launch companies in Zynga's upcoming partner program, so Garriott and crew are definitely laying the foundations to launch some large and well-supported titles. Ultimate Collection is supposed to be available to play sometime later on this year.
Hulu Plus cracks one million paying subscribers, but what's next?
It's almost the official end of summer and just as CEO Jason Kilar forecasted back in July, Hulu has signed up more than 1,000,000 paying Plus subscribers. He made the announcement at a Goldman Sachs investor conference while also mentioning plans to invest $375 million in content this year, even as the questions of who will buy Hulu (if its owners actually follow through with a sale) and Kilar's own fate as its head continue to hang in the air. Hitting the projected numbers, rolling out service internationally and popping up at the f8 Facebook event are all signs Hulu is still making plans for its future, even if we don't know yet where that future will be.
Arc System Works planning new Kunio game for 3DS
Arc System Works and developer Million, a group of former Technos employees, have resurrected the Kunio series (which we know best from River City Ransom) in recent years with DS-based games like Super Dodge Ball Brawlers, River City Soccer Hooligans, and River City Sports Challenge. Now, the pair appear to be returning to the origin of the series, with a 3DS game called Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Hot Blooded Tough Guy Kunio-kun). That same title was used for the first game in the series, the absolutely terrible brawler we know as Renegade. We're hoping Arc is using that title to refer to the overarching series, and not actually returning to the wooden Renegade gameplay style. Or maybe making the same kind of game ... except not awful. [Image: Hardcore Gaming 101]
Toyota sells one million Prii in US alone
Thank you Toyota, for teaching us the plural of Prius, because somehow, "Toyota sells one million Priuples" just doesn't jive. That's right, the Japanese automaker announced Wednesday that it has officially sold its one millionth Prius on American soil. It's reportedly also reached a couple of other sales milestones in the last six months, with worldwide Prius sales reaching two million in October and overall Toyota hybrid sales exceeding three million in March. Now that's a whole lot of Prii. Full PR after the break.
Analysts: Apple may have sold between 5-9 million iPads in Q2
The week after the iPad 2 went on sale, I kept expecting Apple to issue a press release announcing that it had sold a million iPad 2s within X number of days (Apple sold about 2 million of the first version in the first 60 days). However, the first week passed and now, more than two weeks later, Apple has yet to announce any iPad 2 sales. This leads me to believe that Apple won't be announcing any iPad 2 numbers until its next financial conference call later in April. Of course, lack of hard numbers from Apple doesn't keep analysts from guesstimating just how many iPads were sold in total during Apple's fiscal Q2. Philip Elmer-DeWitt at the Apple 2.0 blog has put together a nice list of analyst estimates. The lowest estimate is 5 million iPads. The highest estimate is a whopping 8.8 million iPads. The average of all estimates is 6.26 million. Those numbers include the 14 days of US iPad 2 sales in Apple's Q2 and two days of international sales. We'll have to wait until Apple's Q2 earnings call later in April to find out exact numbers, but some of the higher ones don't seem too outrageous considering the the long lines and high demand that still exist for those wanting iPad 2s.
AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has 'momentum'
Hey, this interim CEO thing doesn't seem to be too hard at all. Thomas Seifert, the temporary solution to the problem created by Dirk Meyer's departure from AMD's top spot, has had a pretty comfy ride reporting the company's latest quarterly results. The pecuniary numbers themselves ($1.65b revenue, $375m net income) were tame and unexciting, but Seifert got to make a pair of juicy milestone announcements. Firstly, on the mobile and ever-so-efficient front, he noted that 1.3 million Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have been shipped to partners since AMD started deliveries in November, and secondly, in terms of discrete graphics chips, he disclosed that the Radeon HD 5000 and HD 6000 series DirectX 11 GPUs have surpassed the 35 million units shipped mark. To give you some perspective on what that means, sales of Nintendo's bestselling Wii console are hovering somewhere around the same figure. So yes, AMD, your wagon has momentum, but shouldn't it have a driver too?
World of Tanks closed beta registrations hit the one million mark
It can often be difficult to judge how much anticipation is building for an upcoming title. For MMOs, a fairly good milestone for comparison is the number of registrations entered for the closed beta phase. If its closed beta registrations are anything to go by, there's a great deal of interesting building in Wargaming.net's upcoming MMO World of Tanks. The first round of WoT's closed beta ended in August and at peak saw over 4,000 concurrent players. Last month, we discovered that the second round of closed beta testing saw a peak concurrent user total of over 53,000. Much of the dramatic increase can be attributed to release of the Russian closed beta test, as Russian players have taken a massive interest in the title. One month ago, Wargaming.net reported the total number of active players to be 150,000 for the US/European closed beta and 350,000 in the Russian beta. These players came from a total of 700,000 registered beta accounts, half a million of which were from Russia and 200,000 of which originated in the US and Europe. Within the last month, the number of registrations has now skyrocketed past the one million mark, proving that there's significant interest in the game. On reaching this milestone figure, Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net, took the opportunity to thank players for their interest. "We would like to thank all the WoT fans for their support." he told us. "Wargaming.net will continue to work hard on adding new content to the game regularly to guarantee that our community gets maximum fun from playing World of Tanks". To celebrate the milestone, Wargaming.net has released a series of screenshots from its closed beta tests. %Gallery-96260%
