ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K Powers Immersive Live Streaming At Oculus Connect 5

Article | June 13, 2020

The virtual reality market has been hailed as the "next big thing" for decades, but VR has repeatedly disappointed consumers with mediocre hardware products and software experiences. But in recent years, a wave of refined devices narrowed the gap between consumer expectations and reality. The VR market's future has yet to be written, but investors who believe in this budding market should consider buying these four tech stocks. Sony's PlayStation VR is the best-selling VR headset in the world with over 5 million shipments since its launch in October 2016. That only represents a sliver of Sony's installed base of 110 million PS4s, but that foothold has encouraged developers to produce more stand-alone VR games and add-on experiences for PS4 games.

VIRTUALIZATION

Article | June 13, 2020

Ubisoft announced last week that it is adding specific focus on free-to-play, alongside its AAA catalogue. In doing so, it is following a route that has been very successful for Activision with its Warzone strategy. Free-to-play games which draw audiences via big franchise names and monetise via in-game spending are going to be increasingly common among AAA publishers. The focus on in-game spending and particularly on the cosmetic, rather than the progress-related, parts will be the key revenue component. As games become less finite and more perpetual (consumer goal is less about ‘finishing them’ and more and ‘playing/spending time in them’), the opportunity to monetise needs that stem from this perpetual engagement (e.g. socialising or expression) starts to outweigh the mere monetisation of access to a packaged product. Simultaneously, free-to-play games also act as a powerful marketing driver for AAA releases as they come out, as well as streamability and word of mouth for the franchise.

Article | June 13, 2020

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, movie theaters shuttered, Hollywood delayed some of its biggest films indefinitely, numerous productions across movies and TV halted, and virtually every major pop culture event planned for the next couple months either shut down or picked a new date. One might imagine that videogames would be the least affected branch of the entertainment world. Self-isolating in front of the TV screen does pair well with quarantines. While the industry remains one of the few not completely stunted during these uncertain times, the coronavirus has indeed affected players, developers, and studios, both for better and worse.

Article | June 13, 2020

Sometimes the statistics around how many people are streaming music – and how many are paying for it – can lead to confusion and misinterpretation. Recently, for example, we’ve seen one story suggesting that Amazon was “on course to overtake Apple Music” based on comparing an Amazon figure from January 2020 with one from Apple that hadn’t been updated since June 2019. Another story claimed that “Pandora has overtaken Apple for second spot” in subscriber rankings, which mistakenly compared the former’s number of active listeners (most of whom don’t pay) to the latter’s paid subscriber count.