New Arizona Sunshine: Rampage Experience Coming To Nomadic VR Arcades

Article | April 11, 2020

Ever since the adoption of VR gaming to the gaming market, it sure has seen upheavals—disruption by significant players in the industry like PSVR, Rift, and the Vive. PSVR has been the best-selling VR headset ever since its launch, selling over 5 million units on December 31st, 2020. While these numbers portray PSVR as successful, its hardware is lacking behind, and still, no sign of upgrades has been hinted by Sony. Speaking of which, a lot of gamers have long been waiting for a hardware upgrade or a hardware sequel—PSVR 2—from Sony, but very little or nothing has been said on this matter.

MEDIA AND BROADCASTING

Article | June 22, 2021

The appointment of Lina Khan on June 15th to chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is poised to be a transformational one in the history of the world wide web. Khan came to prominence with an article in the Yale Law Journal, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, which identified the paradox of hegemonic tech service providers which bypass the US’ strict competition laws by offering lower prices to the end consumer. Under US antitrust law, the driving indicator of market monopolies are higher prices for the consumer – under this strict definition, none of the tech majors which dominate the digital economy are monopolistic. Indeed, some such as Alphabet and Facebook do not even directly charge the end user for their services. So, while both Google and Facebook dominate the global digital ad market, making an antitrust case against them under the current 20thcentury era regulatory framework is nigh on impossible. However, the absence of meaningful competitive challengers to these two incumbents in search and social advertising over the previous 15 years, despite the lucrative high margin business opportunities, implies that the competitive market is not performing according to classical economic theory. Khan has built a subsequent career on trying to square this circle, and now the Biden Administration has empowered her as the key instigator of the sweeping regulatory update required for a digital-first century.

VIRTUALIZATION

Article | May 17, 2021

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 | April 17, 2020

As part of the deal, both the firms will work together to enhance the network capacities of each other while also supporting the expansion plans significantly. It will diversify the Microgaming’s product offerings such as slots, virtual sports, table games, etc. and will give a boost to the outreach plans of Inspired’s content. Inspired will offer 20 of its most innovative and widely played online slot games through Microgaming’s interface. The games offered will include Anubis Wild Megaways™, Prison Escape™, and Stacked Fire 7s™ along with the infusion of virtual and table games in the near future.