Tag Archives: Investment & Company Information

The UK passes its version of the EU’s Digital Markets Act

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The UK has passed a bill that's the country's version of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Legislators fast-tracked the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill before parliament dissolves on May 30 ahead of a general election in July.

The overarching aim of the DMCC, which is set to become law once it receives Royal Assent, is to “regulate and increase competition in digital markets.” It will come into force later this year.

The bill is broadly similar to the DMA, which led to the EU designating several large tech companies' services and products as "gatekeepers" and imposing stricter rules on them. The DMCC grants the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a division of the Competition and Markets Authority, the authority to label companies with “substantial and entrenched market power” and “a position of strategic significance” as having Strategic Market Status (SMS).

Among other things, SMS companies will have to adhere to codes of conduct as determined by the DMU. Those will be based on the foundations of fair trading, openness and trust and transparency. The DMU has a broad canvas for defining the conduct requirements for each business. If a company breaches its code of conduct, it faces a fine of up to 10 percent of its global revenue.

There have been suggestions that the likes of Meta and Google may be forced to pay UK news publishers for using their work in the likes of Google News (and perhaps even for AI products). Others have suggested that Apple may be required to allow sideloading and third-party app stores on iOS, as in the EU. Companies may also be prohibited from prioritizing their own products and services in search results. However, the specific requirements for each SMS haven't been detailed yet. 

The DMCC also has implications for things like subscriptions, junk fees, fake reviews, ticket resales, mergers, antitrust and consumer protection. For the first time, the CMA will have the power to impose a hefty fine if it determines a company has violated a consumer law — and it won't have to go through courts to do so. 

There's already been at least one tangible consequence of the DMCC. Epic Games has pledged to bring its store and Fortnite to iOS in the UK in the latter half of 2025. The publisher previously said it would bring the Epic Games Store to mobile devices in the EU later this year after the DMA came into force.

Update 5/24 4:20PM ET: Added details about Epic Games' plan to bring its store and Fortnite to iOS in the UK.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-uk-passes-its-version-of-the-eus-digital-markets-act-175642166.html?src=rss

Nintendo snaps up a studio known for its Switch ports

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Nintendo is buying (PDF) Florida-based studio Shiver Entertainment from the Embracer Group, which is splitting up its rather messy gaming empire and is letting go of certain assets. Shiver was founded in 2012 and is mostly known for working with publishers and developers to port games to the Switch, including couple of Scribblenauts titles and Hogwarts Legacy. Nintendo will acquire the "boutique-sized studio" in full, making it a fully owned subsidiary that will continue working on Switch ports and developing software for multiple platforms. 

The Japanese gaming company isn't known for gobbling up small studios and developers. In its announcement of the deal, it said it's aiming "to secure high-level resources for porting and developing software titles" with this purchase. By buying Shiver, Nintendo is also showing that it's committed to the Switch platform, which will remain its primary business for years to come. 

As Nintendo Life notes, Nintendo may have decided to purchase Shiver to acquire its talent, as well. The studio's CEO, John Schappert, is an industry veteran who used to oversee Xbox Live, the Xbox platform software and Microsoft Game Studios. He also served as Chief Operating Officer at EA and at Zynga. Nintendo didn't say how much it's paying for the studio, but it doesn't sound like the purchase will make any considerable impact on its finances. "The Acquisition will have only a minor effect on Nintendo’s results for this fiscal year," the company wrote in its announcement. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nintendo-snaps-up-a-studio-known-for-its-switch-ports-100003358.html?src=rss

OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company

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Ilya Sutskever has announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he's leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He's confident that OpenAI "will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial" under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati, he continued. In his own post about Sutskever's departure, Altman called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation" and credited him for his work with the company. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's previous Director of Research who headed the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has taken Sutskever's role as Chief Scientist. 

While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company's biggest scandal last year. In November, OpenAI's board of directors suddenly fired Altman and company President Greg Brockman. "[T]he board no longer has confidence in [Altman's] ability to continue leading OpenAI," the ChatGPT-maker announced back then. Sutskever, who was a board member, was involved in their dismissal and was the one who asked both Altman and Brockman to separate meetings where they were informed that they were being fired. According to reports that came out at the time, Altman and Sutskever had been butting heads when it came to how quickly OpenAI was developing and commercializing its generative AI technology. 

Both Altman and Brockman were reinstated just five days after they were fired, and the original board was disbanded and replaced with a new one. Shortly before that happened, Sutskever posted on X that he "deeply regre[tted his] participation in the board's actions" and that he will do everything he can "to reunite the company." He then stepped down from his role as a board member, and while he remained Chief Scientist, The New York Times says he never really returned to work. 

Sutskever shared that he's moving on to a new project that's "very personally meaningful" to him, though he has yet to share details about it. As for OpenAI, it recently unveiled GPT-4o, which it claims can recognize emotion and can process and generate output in text, audio and images.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-co-founder-and-chief-scientist-ilya-sutskever-is-leaving-the-company-054650964.html?src=rss

OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company

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Ilya Sutskever has announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he's leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He's confident that OpenAI "will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial" under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati, he continued. In his own post about Sutskever's departure, Altman called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation" and credited him for his work with the company. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's previous Director of Research who headed the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has taken Sutskever's role as Chief Scientist. 

While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company's biggest scandal last year. In November, OpenAI's board of directors suddenly fired Altman and company President Greg Brockman. "[T]he board no longer has confidence in [Altman's] ability to continue leading OpenAI," the ChatGPT-maker announced back then. Sutskever, who was a board member, was involved in their dismissal and was the one who asked both Altman and Brockman to separate meetings where they were informed that they were being fired. According to reports that came out at the time, Altman and Sutskever had been butting heads when it came to how quickly OpenAI was developing and commercializing its generative AI technology. 

Both Altman and Brockman were reinstated just five days after they were fired, and the original board was disbanded and replaced with a new one. Shortly before that happened, Sutskever posted on X that he "deeply regre[tted his] participation in the board's actions" and that he will do everything he can "to reunite the company." He then stepped down from his role as a board member, and while he remained Chief Scientist, The New York Times says he never really returned to work. 

Sutskever shared that he's moving on to a new project that's "very personally meaningful" to him, though he has yet to share details about it. As for OpenAI, it recently unveiled GPT-4o, which it claims can recognize emotion and can process and generate output in text, audio and images.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-co-founder-and-chief-scientist-ilya-sutskever-is-leaving-the-company-054650964.html?src=rss

Sony PlayStation will soon have two CEOs

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Sony Interactive Entertainment (SEI) has announced a new leadership structure that puts two people in charge of different parts of its business. Hideaki Nishino, who is currently serving as the SVP for the Platform Experience Group, will become the CEO of SIE's Platform Business Group starting on June 1. On the same day, Hermen Hulst will take on the role of CEO for SIE's Studio Business Group after serving as SVP and Head of PlayStation Studios. 

The two executives are stepping into their roles after Jim Ryan decided to leave his seat as SEI's CEO in March. When he announced his departure, he said he was finding it "increasingly difficult" to juggle his home life in the UK and his job that's located in the US. Ryan helped establish the company's presence in Europe and oversaw the launch of the PlayStation 5 in the midst of the pandemic. Both Nishino and Hulst will report to interim CEO Hiroki Totoki, who will take a step back and continue his role as Chairman of SIE as as well as President, COO and CFO of Sony Group Corporation. 

Nishino currently leads the team that develops all the experiences and tech for PlayStation services and products. He'll continue being responsible for those, but he will also oversee the company's work with third-party publishers and developers. Nishino will be in charge of SIE's commercial operations, including sales and marketing for all PlayStation hardware, services and peripherals, as well. Meanwhile, Hulst has been heading efforts for content development across PlayStation consoles and PCs. He's also in charge of the development of video game adaptations for movies and TV, such as The Last of Us. In the future, he will be "responsible for the development, publishing, and business operations of SIE's first-party content."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sony-playstation-will-soon-have-two-ceos-090041004.html?src=rss

Microsoft’s web-based mobile game store opens in July

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In a couple of months, you'll be able to get Microsoft's mobile games from its own store. Xbox President Sarah Bond has revealed at the Bloomberg Technology Summit that the company is launching a web-based store where you can download its mobile games and get add-ons or in-app purchases at a discount. Bond said the company has decided to launch a browser-based store instead of an app to make it "accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what" so that you don't get "locked to a single ecosystem."

Microsoft will only host its own games to start with, which means it will feature a lot of titles from Activision Blizzard. If you'll recall, it snapped up the gaming developer and publisher in a $70 billion deal that closed last year. You'll most likely find Candy Crush Saga, which has apparently generated $20 billion in revenue since it launched in 2012, and Call of Duty's mobile games in the first batch of titles available for download. Bond said that Minecraft may also be one of the first games you can get. 

An Xbox spokesperson told Bloomberg that this is "just the first step in [the company's] journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming." Microsoft plans to open the app store to third-party publishers in the future, though it didn't share a timeline for that goal. 

The company first announced its intention to launch a gaming store for Android and iOS devices last year shortly before rules under the EU's Digital Markets Act became applicable. To comply with DMA rules, Apple and Google have to allow third-party app stores to be accessible on their platforms and to offer alternative billing systems for purchases. They're also compelled to allow app sideloading, which will be a massive change for Apple, a company known for its "walled garden" approach to business. 

Operators of third-party app stores will get to avoid some of the fees Google and Apple charge, but they'd still have to pay the companies for bypassing their mobile platforms' official stores. Both tech giants have already outlined how they're changing things up to comply with the DMA regulations. The companies' rivals found the changes they're making insufficient, however, prompting the European Commission to start investigating their compliance plans. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-web-based-mobile-game-store-opens-in-july-090044359.html?src=rss

Nintendo to announce Switch successor before March 2025

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Nintendo will unveil a successor to the Switch sometime "within this fiscal year" ending March 2025, president Shuntaro Furukawa wrote in a post on X. That differs slightly from reports that the next-gen console would be announced this year, as it could also be revealed early in 2025. 

The company added that it will not release any details on the Switch 2 (or whatever it'll be called) at its upcoming Nintendo Direct event in June, so we won't hear anything until at least the second half of 2024.  

"It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015," Furukawa wrote. "We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation."

Nintendo also dropped its earnings report that contained both good and bad news. The company had already boosted its Switch sales forecast for the last fiscal year to 15.5 million units, but it bested that figure with 15.7 million units sold for the full year ending March 2024. While down compared to the previous year (17.97 million units), it helped Nintendo grow sales and operating profit by 4.4 and 4.9 percent, respectively, year over year.

Things won't be so rosy in fiscal 2025, though, as the company projects that Switch sales will drop to 13.5 million units for the year ending in March 2025. That will result in a 19.3 percent and 24.4 percent drop in net sales and operating profit, respectively. 

Nintendo has done a good job maintaining Switch sales, considering that the console went on sale over seven years ago. That was helped in large part last year by games including bestsellers The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.  

Now that Nintendo has given a timeframe for the launch of the new console, however, interest in buying the current Switch is bound to wane. The company no doubt hopes that several upcoming titles, including Paper Mario (May 23) and Luigi's Mansion 2 (June 27), will help juice sales. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nintendo-to-announce-switch-successor-before-march-2025-091457457.html?src=rss

Peloton’s pandemic-era fairy tale is officially over

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The pandemic sucked. Four years ago we were all stuck at home, and would continue being stuck at home for months on end. With all of us trapped in our houses, some products experienced a serious COVID-19 bump. Grocery delivery services absolutely blew up, as did Zoom and the perfectly-timed Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The same goes for Peloton and its line of exercise equipment. People were buying bikes and treadmills in droves, ballooning the company’s market cap from $6 billion to $50 billion. However, what goes up must come down, and Peloton’s market cap shrank to $10 billion by 2022 and now it rests at around $1 billion. The company’s pandemic-era success story has officially ended, and now it's focused on cutting costs. So that means layoffs. Peloton is laying off 15 percent of its workforce, according to TechCrunch, which amounts to 400 people.

Aside from those massive cuts, the company is continuing to shut down brick-and-mortar showrooms. Barry McCarthy, the CEO, president and board director, is also stepping down after two years in the job. He was previously CFO at both Spotify and Netflix. Peloton says it's currently in the process of finding a successor, with current chairperson, Karen Boone, and director, Chris Bruzzo, to serve as interim CEOs.

However, it is expanding international reach, announcing a more “targeted and efficient” marketing strategy overseas. Peloton hopes all of these steps combined will reduce annual expenses by $200 million by the end of its fiscal year 2025.

All of this comes after the company reported some really bad Q3 2024 revenue and loss numbers, with a 21 percent decline in paid subscriptions compared to 2023. Unfortunately, Q2 wasn’t much better. Not that the stock market really means anything, just look at Tesla or that bizarre Trump stock, but Peloton’s shares have gone from $156 in 2021 to, uh, less than $3 today.

These aren’t just “people going outside again” numbers, as the company has experienced its share of controversies that have nothing to do with the pandemic. The Tread+ treadmill was recalled after being linked to 90 injuries and the death of a child. Peloton also recalled over 2 million bikes over a safety issue. It's been a bad few years. 

All of this doesn’t mean that Peloton can’t turn things around, as it's a fairly iconic brand in the space. It sure has some work to do, however, to reverse this decline.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pelotons-pandemic-era-fairy-tale-is-officially-over-153619110.html?src=rss

Getir is getting out of everywhere but Turkey

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Getir is hightailing it out of everywhere but Turkey. On Monday, the “instant delivery” startup said it would exit the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands to serve its Turkish home market exclusively. TechCrunch notes the closures are likely to wipe out 6,000 jobs at the company.

Getir's business model, distinct from traditional shopping services like Instacart (which has problems of its own), involves establishing micro-fulfillment centers in urban areas that carry groceries and household essentials. This often lets them fulfill orders within minutes — hence the “instant delivery” moniker. Once valued at $12 billion, the startup experienced a surge in growth during the pandemic as investors bet on COVID-era consumer shopping habits enduring after lockdowns. So much for that.

“This decision will allow Getir to focus its financial resources on Turkey,” the company told TechCrunch in a statement. The startup said the markets it’s exiting made up about seven percent of its revenues.

Even as it slashes jobs and hits the undo button on its global expansion, Getir has secured funding to focus on Turkey. Mubadala (Abu Dhabi’s state-owned investment firm) and G Squared are reportedly among those financing the Turkish-only pivot.

Getir says its US subsidiary, FreshDirect, which it bought late last year, will continue to operate. But the company suggested to Reuters it was open to offers for its existing assets in the markets it’s leaving.

The startup was founded in 2015 and exploded in popularity in Turkey. From 2017 to 2023, it raised over $2.3 billion from investors as it sought global corporate conquest, scooping up smaller competitors along the way. TechCrunch says that, in early 2023, Getir had 32,000 employees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/getir-is-getting-out-of-everywhere-but-turkey-164225714.html?src=rss

Getir is getting out of everywhere but Turkey

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Getir is hightailing it out of everywhere but Turkey. On Monday, the “instant delivery” startup said it would exit the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands to serve its Turkish home market exclusively. TechCrunch notes the closures are likely to wipe out 6,000 jobs at the company.

Getir's business model, distinct from traditional shopping services like Instacart (which has problems of its own), involves establishing micro-fulfillment centers in urban areas that carry groceries and household essentials. This often lets them fulfill orders within minutes — hence the “instant delivery” moniker. Once valued at $12 billion, the startup experienced a surge in growth during the pandemic as investors bet on COVID-era consumer shopping habits enduring after lockdowns. So much for that.

“This decision will allow Getir to focus its financial resources on Turkey,” the company told TechCrunch in a statement. The startup said the markets it’s exiting made up about seven percent of its revenues.

Even as it slashes jobs and hits the undo button on its global expansion, Getir has secured funding to focus on Turkey. Mubadala (Abu Dhabi’s state-owned investment firm) and G Squared are reportedly among those financing the Turkish-only pivot.

Getir says its US subsidiary, FreshDirect, which it bought late last year, will continue to operate. But the company suggested to Reuters it was open to offers for its existing assets in the markets it’s leaving.

The startup was founded in 2015 and exploded in popularity in Turkey. From 2017 to 2023, it raised over $2.3 billion from investors as it sought global corporate conquest, scooping up smaller competitors along the way. TechCrunch says that, in early 2023, Getir had 32,000 employees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/getir-is-getting-out-of-everywhere-but-turkey-164225714.html?src=rss