A weekly newsletter of what I've seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Emotion recognition, new responsibilities, and a 1000 degrees…
😳 Must reads of the week
â—¼ Emotion recognition is China's new surveillance craze. Link
🗞 Tech News
â—¼ App Annie's 5 key trends for 2020 on mobile: streaming, Apple Arcade, 5G, Auto Battlers, and Progressive Web Apps. Link
◼ Instagram started hiding like counts globally – and some of the influencers aren't happy. Link
â—¼ New powers, new responsibilities. A global survey of journalism and artificial intelligence. Link
â—¼ TikTok has 200m users… just in India. Link
â—¼ Shopping App Downloads Reached Record 1.1 Billion Globally in Q3 2019. Link
🕹 Games
â—¼ A future competitor? Ex-Peak team raises $7.5 million for mobile puzzle games. Link
â—¼ “The AAA industry is geared towards ages 15-30 but there are still gamers who started playing as kids and are now in their 40s and 50s.” – Nick Yee from Quantic Foundry in a podcast interview. Link
â—¼ Tencent is trying to learn from Nintendo on how to be successful in the west. Good to know that they have the same problem with the West that we have with cracking Asia. Link
â—¼ Unity's “GameTune” is using machine learning for game optimization. Game changer or AI hype? Link
â—¼ Good news for us: Call of Duty players spend 86% more time in-game than in Fortnite Mobile. Link
â—¼ If Casino's work in the real world, so they do in games: GTA revenue jumps up +23% (!) after a casino update. Link
â—¼ Google's Stadia is getting close to launch:
- But with what and for whom? This is going to be a rocky start. Link
- “It works, but it doesn’t matter”. Link.
- It's also very data hungry. Link
â—¼ “The Mandalorian” production heavily uses Epic's Unreal Engine across the entire production flow. New ways of working. Link
â—¼ Bunch, a group video chat for games on mobile, has raised $3.85m from top games companies including Supercell, Tencent, and Riot Games. Link
â—¼ On-stage interview with Bobby Kotick from the CNBC Evolve conference. Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
â—¼ “Anti-Nemo” algorithm. Link
â—¼ Drone racing footage of abandoned coal factory. So cool. Who remembers Descent? Anyone up for a real-world match? Link
â—¼ Hot: a Californian company may have found a way to use mirrors and AI smarts to turn sunlight into a source of heat exceeding 1000 degrees. Link
â—¼ “Meth. We're on it.” Yes! Drugs, again! Link
I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and it's surely no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.