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.
Instagram is ramping up its anti-bullying efforts with two new features that it hopes will protect users from hurtful and abusive content, the company announced this week.
The modern-day space race just took a major step toward maturity, with Sir Richard Branson's announcement that Virgin Galactic will go public. When it lists later this year, Virgin will become the first publicly traded space-tourism company.
The market for hemp-derived CBD is expected to hit $5.1 billion in 2019 and $23.7 billion by 2023, according to new research from CBD and cannabis-focused market research firm, Brightfield Group. Despite bullish projections from researchers, enthusiasm from the industry, and curiosity from consumers, however, legislation at the federal and local levels isn’t keeping pace.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Temple University reported using gene therapy to eradicate HIV in mice. Now the team is considering how to turn that into a life-saving cure for humans.
The South Korean company reports that profits are likely down more than half of what they were at the same time last year.
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.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, July 5, 2019.
Companies like Nordsense, Ecube, and Bigbelly wager that public bins can serve as highly-efficient, environmentally-friendly, networked devices for our future smart cities, producing data on trash that has never before been available.
Tesla delivered 95,200 vehicles in the second quarter ー nearly double what it delivered in the second quarter of 2018. The production beat was a sliver of good news in an otherwise bad first half of the year for the company.
'Stranger Things' is everywhere as more brands are jumping on the supernatural trend. Coca-Cola, Tide, and Baskin-Robbins are just a few to team up with Netflix. The streaming service has avoided advertising for years, but are they ready to cash in on the opportunity? Cheddar senior reporter Michelle Castillo breaks it all down.
