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  1. You’ll be paying extra for ad-free Prime Video come January

    Amazon confirmed today in an email to Prime members that it will begin showing ads alongside its streaming Prime Video content starting January 29, 2024. The price will remain the same, but subscribers who don't wish to see any ads will have to pay...

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  2. EA cracks down on modders selling their custom Sims 4 content

    Last month, EA published an update formalizing its policy that mods for The Sims 4 "cannot be sold, licensed, or rented for a fee." But the publisher tells Ars that there is still one important exception that should ensure many Sims modders can...

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  3. HP wins huge fraud case against Autonomy founder and CEO Mike Lynch

    After years of wrangling, HP has won its civil fraud case against Autonomy founder and chief executive Mike Lynch. The ruling, the biggest civil fraud trial in UK history, came just hours before the UK home secretary approved Lynch’s extradition to...

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  4. Ars online IT roundtable: What’s the future of the data center?

    Join Sean Gallagher, Dell's Ivan Nekrasov, and me today, January 21, at 3:15pm Eastern!

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  5. Apple earnings show strong iPad and Mac sales can’t make up for the iPhone

    Apple announced its fourth-quarter earnings today after the bell, and it was something of a strange quarter because, unlike some previous years (including last year), this quarter's numbers did not include an iPhone launch. The iPhone 12's various...

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  6. Now on-demand: Ars’ online IT roundtable on navigating 2020 schadenfreude

    Replay our October 15 chat on, “Finding certainty in IT when the world is uncertain.”

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  7. IBM to split into two companies by end of 2021

    As-yet unnamed “NewCo” will handle IBM’s “managed infrastructure services.”

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  8. TikTok CEO quits as company reportedly plans sale to Microsoft, Walmart

    TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, who only began the job on June 1, is heading right back out the door again as the company plans a sale under pressure from the White House.

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  9. Major investment firm to prioritize sustainability, back off coal

    When it comes to taking action on climate change, the world has entered a very strange place. Scientific results continue to indicate that the consensus on our role in driving climate change has every reason to be accepted. Several years of the...

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  10. Console makers seek to avoid 25% price bump driven by Trump’s trade war

    With the long-running trade war between the United States and China continuing to escalate, the Trump administration is now threatening to institute a 25% tariff on an additional $300 billion in goods from the country, a move that would cover almost...

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  11. Google Stadia will support “a variety of business models”

    But the streaming gaming revolution "is not going to happen overnight."

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  12. Microsoft posts a record $29.1 billion Q1. Same old, same old

    Microsoft has posted the results of the first quarter of its 2019 financial year, which runs up until September 30, 2018. Revenue was $29.1 billion, up 19 percent year on year, to set a new record for the company's first quarter. Operating income...

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  1. Tesla posts bigger-than-expected loss, bigger-than-expected revenue [Updated]

    Company expects to be cash flow positive in the next two quarters.

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  2. Despite backlash, loot boxes could be essential to gaming’s future

    With all the controversy, scrutiny, and international regulation randomized video game loot boxes are facing these days, you might think the practice of charging players for a chance at unknown in-game items might be set for a precipitous decline....

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  3. Keep playing, keep paying: Ubisoft seeks games with “longterm engagement”

    For a long time, Ubisoft was known for cranking out annual or near-annual releases in popular franchises like Assassin's Creed, Just Dance, Far Cry, the Tom Clancy games, and more. Now, though, the company is signaling it is in the middle of a major...

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  4. StarCraft II goes free-to-play seven years after launch

    If you've been zealously guarding your money since 2010, waiting for the day StarCraft II would finally be cheap enough to try out, you're in luck. At Blizzcon over the weekend, Blizzard announced the game would be transitioning to a free-to-play...

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  5. For console games, downloads are approaching a tipping point

    On the PC, games distributed on discs in physical boxes have been a practical market rounding error for years now. Destiny 2's sales distribution highlights how the console game market may finally (and inexorably) be heading toward that point as...

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  6. Winamp’s woes: How the greatest MP3 player undid itself

    MP3s are so natural to the Internet now that it’s almost hard to imagine a time before high-quality compressed music. But there was such a time—and even after "MP3" entered the mainstream, organizing, ripping, and playing back one's music...

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  7. We’ve been missing a big part of game industry’s digital revolution

    NPD “restatement” shows consistent spending growth as digital sales dominate.

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  8. Spreadsheets have ruled Earth for too long—business must embrace the cloud

    The one certainty in business software and services is that there will always be more acronyms. At the moment, though, there's more to the sector than just another jargon explosion: we're moving towards a new way of looking at IT, one that applies...

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  9. Microsoft cloud annualized run rate hits $13bn in strong first quarter

    Microsoft posted revenue of $20.5 billion in the first quarter of its 2017 financial year, a negligible rise on the same quarter last year. Operating income was $5.2 billion, down 8 percent year on year, net income was $4.7 billion, down 4 percent,...

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  10. After game industry failure, Curt Schilling agrees to pay back Rhode Island

    The long, winding saga of baseball star Curt Schilling's massive business failure in the video game industry may finally be reaching its end. As The Associated Press reports, Schilling and other former executives at 38 Studios have agreed to pay $2.5...

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  11. Digital game sales data just got a little less opaque

    Longtime readers may recall that we used to pay close attention to the monthly drops of US game and console sales information provided by the industry analysts at the NPD Group. We've stopped covering those reports as closely in recent years for a...

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  12. In an effort to find more players, Evolve is now free

    After struggling for over a year to make Evolve work as a traditional, paid title, the developers at Turtle Rock are making a radical shift to a free-to-play model with Evolve: Stage 2. The game is entering beta today on the PC and possibly coming to...

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  1. Nintendo is running low on time to show NX to the public

    Usually, when a new game console is nine months away from launch, the console maker has already softened the ground for the upcoming debut with trade show announcements, hints at exclusive games, and at least some public discussion of its technical...

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  2. HTC separates successful VR sales from struggling smartphone side

    The SteamVR-powered Vive headset is the most exciting thing that struggling handset maker HTC has had going for its brand in years. HTC seems to realize this at some level because it's now separating its virtual reality business into a wholly owned...

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  3. What does Clash of Clans maker’s $10 billion sale say about the future of gaming?

    We've been hearing for years how mobile gaming has been growing at nearly inconceivable rates and will soon become the dominant force in the gaming business. Today's $10 billion (£7 billion) purchase of Clash of Clans maker Supercell by Chinese...

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  4. Cyber attacks hit two thirds of UK firms in 2015, says government

    Two thirds of UK firms have detected security breaches on their systems over the past year, according to the latest government figures.

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  5. Rock Band 4 can’t save a struggling Mad Catz

    Things are looking mighty grim for long-lived gaming accessory maker Mad Catz this week, the company perhaps best known for making those cheap off-brand controllers you forced your younger sibling to use. Despite seeing significant sales from a...

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  6. Don’t look now, but the PC is the world’s biggest gaming platform

    If you follow the business side of the game industry at all, you're probably sick of hearing how mobile gaming is a fast-growing business juggernaut destined to overtake all other forms of digital entertainment (in strict dollars-and-cents terms). It...

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  7. Unionized video game voice actors overwhelmingly approve strike vote

    Members of the SAG-AFTRA union have overwhelmingly approved a measure authorizing an "interactive media" strike that could have wide-ranging impact on the availability of professional voice talent for video game projects. The union announced today...

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  8. EA exec says complaints about “on-disc DLC” are “nonsense”

    Every few months, it seems, certain gamers get up in arms when it's discovered that a brand new game disc contains content that is to be sold in the future as "downloadable content." In a new interview, EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore said...

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  9. Microsoft has a new mission statement, and it’s basically the same as its old one

    Satya Nadella says that the company has "tough choices" ahead of it.

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  10. Developers, Drake, Pharrell, a bird, and some journalists hang out at WWDC

    SAN FRANCISCO—This year's World Wide Developer's Conference was a bit more subdued than last year's. In 2014, Apple filled the floors of the Moscone Center with an assortment of vintage and luxury cars, it launched its new Swift programming...

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  11. Gabe Newell addresses controversy over paid Steam mods

    When Valve introduced the ability for developers to offer paid mods through Steam last week (with Skyrim as the guinea pig), the fan reaction was swift and overwhelmingly negative. After receiving 3,500 messages about the change over the course of a...

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  12. New WoW item will allow players to trade gold for game time

    Blizzard will soon allow World of Warcraft players to trade purchased game time for in-game gold, and vice versa, effectively putting an official, floating real-world value on the in-game currency.

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