Electronic Arts is in some trouble with its Star Wars fan base.
"Star Wars Battlefront 2," officially comes out on Friday, but many players are already upset over the expensive in-game transactions necessary to unlock certain characters. Tamoor Hussain, editor at GameSpot and Russell Holly, managing editor of VRHeads.com joined Cheddar to discuss the concept of paying extra within a game.
Hussain says that it used to take a significant number of hours to gain points in order to unlock certain characters, which upset players. So, companies began to add the option to buy the power to unlock them. But people are still upset. He says it could impact sales this week, but many people won't be looking into the issue too deeply.
Holly says in-game transactions are a tremendous business for Electronic Arts, which just bought Respawn Entertainment for over $400 million.
To ease some of the pressure, EA said that it will reducing the amount of resources it'll take to access key players in the upcoming game.
"They kind of changed the discoursed around the game," Hussain said, adding that this move will sway public opinion positively.
Cheddar spoke to Twitter's head of global operations and emerging businesses Yannis Dosios after the social media platform shared strong earnings with the number of monetizable daily active users going up.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
The Department of Justice has required that Sprint divest its prepaid division to Dish in a move worth about $1.4 billion. Sprint and T-Mobile must also make 200,000 cell sites available to that provider as well.
Digital health company Livongo had a successful public debut Thursday on the Nasdaq. It's the latest in a wave of digital health companies entering the public markets. Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst, joins Cheddar to discuss.
Shares of CannTrust surged 15 percent on Friday after the Canadian cannabis company announced it terminated CEO Peter Aceto in the midst of regulatory drama that has plundered the company's stock value. Jefferies' analyst Ryan Tomkins predicted the management shuffle in a Wednesday note, which called management's positions "untenable."
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, July 26, 2019.
E-commerce giant Amazon reported earnings per share of $5.22 on revenue of $63.4 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected EPS of $5.57 on revenue of $62.48 billion.
Smart glass, which comes with its own IP address, is being installed in office buildings around the country. Rao Mulpuri, CEO of View, which makes smart glass, joined Cheddar to discuss how his company’s windows can actually improve worker productivity.
Amid ongoing resistance from employees about Microsoft’s contracts with the U.S. military, CEO Satya Nadella issued a broad defense this week of the company’s work with the U.S government and said America’s democratic process serves as a key check on the deployment of new technology.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, July 25, 2019.
