Month: February 2016

I won't be watching Super Bowl 50 this coming weekend. But if I were, I'd want to be watching it in augmented reality.

Microsoft's concept video, above, shows what that might look like. The first generation HoloLens developer units shown in the video, though, are perhaps a little bulkier and heavier than will be acceptable for a mass market mainstream AR headset. Nonetheless, the ideas shown within the video all feel within reach—and they all look rather compelling. Sports, with their abundant facts and figures, multiple camera angles, and action replays, make for a great showcase for high-tech products: there's so many snazzy visualizations, 3D reconstructions, pictures, and statistics to draw on. The concept video shows this in a stylish and accessible way.

Of course, it'll be some years before all this is really possible. Microsoft plans to have HoloLens development kits out this quarter for $3,000 each; mainstream units at mainstream prices are clearly still some way off. This kind of experience also needs a ton of software to be written, and it needs clever integration with TV broadcasters. The augmentations all need to be synchronized with and react to the broadcast images, which sounds like a great opportunity for things to go wrong. But while this technology doesn't look like something we can get today, we could get it within a few years.

Jonathan Blow reports staggering first-week sales for his epic new game The Witness. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

As app and game sellers have transitioned into a post-Big Box retailer's world, where download-only shops like the App Store, Steam, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live reign supreme, they've had to contend with a race to the pricing bottom. The storefronts may be selling billions in software, but while they've made new room for upstart developers, they've also created expectations for flash sales, free-to-play offers, and subscription-fueled game giveaways.

Famed indie game maker Jonathan Blow made a substantial profit by selling his 2008 breakout Braid for $15, but his long-awaited follow-up, The Witness, launched at a much higher price last week: $40. On Tuesday, Blow took to his official blog to announce that a higher price point had done nothing to dampen its launch's sales, confirming over $5 million in first-week revenue.

"This is a good chunk more revenue in one week than Braid made in its entire first year," Blow wrote in the announcement, and he added other sales clarifications, including the fact that high launch sales haven't quite covered the costs of development. (During a Witness launch-day Twitch Q&A, Blow estimated a total development cost of $6 million. "Why isn't this [game] $15?" he told viewers. "This game is giant. It's got tons of stuff in it.")

Mayer is banking on MaVeNS. (credit: Yahoo)

On Tuesday afternoon, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer said that the company would be exploring "strategic alternatives” for its Web businesses, including a 15 percent cut in staffing, the closure of five global offices, and potentially divesting "non-strategic assets of value."

The announcement happened before Yahoo’s fourth quarter financial call in which the company reported $4.968 billion in revenue for 2015, an 8 percent year-over-year increase from 2014's revenue. Revenue for Q4 2015 was $1.27 billion. Still, the company reported a hit with a one-time $4.5 billion "goodwill impairment charge" in this final quarter, likely a write down from expensive acquisitions.

The company said that it was in need of simplification measures, saying that "a smaller product portfolio emphasizing Yahoo's core strengths will yield better focus, execution, and ultimately clearer value to shareholders, advertisers, and users." In a press release, Yahoo called out Games and Smart TV as verticals that would be shut down in 2016. In addition, the company said that it would engage in "cost saving efforts" to reduce the number of employees to 9,000 and the number of contractors to 1,000 by the end of 2016. Yahoo also said it would close offices in Dubai, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Milan within the next three months.

(credit: bruce_fulton)

The people who burst from bed as the sun rises to cheerily tackle their to-do list—while others sluggishly rouse and fumble with coffee makers—may have a few DNA tweaks in common.

Scanning the genetic blueprints of more than 89,000 people, researchers found that those who self-identify as “morning people” tended to have genetic variations in 15 specific spots in their genome compared with people who prefer to sleep in. Seven of those varied regions were in the DNA-neighborhoods of genes involved in circadian rhythms, aka daily physiological cycles, the authors reported in Nature Communications. For the remaining eight locations, researchers were a little foggy on a possible link to sleeping schedules and will need to do further research.

Though previous studies have hinted at a genetic basis for the difference between early birds and night owls, the new study offers the biggest genetic analysis to-date that backs up the DNA-based explanation. The genetic information was harvested from customers of 23andMe, a personal genetics company that offers direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing.

You see, because Blizzard is "killing" off cards when it doesn't need to. Eh? Oh, forget it...

One of the nice things about purely digital collectible card games like Hearthstone is that cards never have to go out of print. Sure, different cards are rarer than others by design—some significantly so. But unlike cardboard collectible cards—which are costly and logistically difficult to produce at scale indefinitely—there's no technical reason Blizzard can't keep producing digital copies of the entire set of Hearthstone cards for purchase by new players just getting into the game.

That state of affairs is set to change soon. With the introduction of a set of new formats today, Blizzard isn't only shaking up how Hearthstone is played but also how it's sold. The changes highlight how a form of time-limited scarcity is becoming more common even in the functionally limitless store shelves of online games.

New Formats?

The details of Hearthstone's new Standard format are laid out in great detail over on the Battle.net blog, but in short, Blizzard is splitting the game into two separate modes. The "Wild" format will let players use all existing Hearthstone cards as normal, while "Standard" play will let players only use cards from sets released in the last year or two. Players are free to play either or both formats, but Standard will be the only format sanctioned in Blizzard-sponsored tournaments, which should have a strong effect on the competitive scene.

How many more Amazon Books locations should we expect in the future? According to a mall development company's CEO, up to 400. (credit: Amazon)

A Tuesday earnings call from a mall operator included its CEO's analysis on the kinds of brick-and-mortar stores the company expected to see in the marketplace, and it included a staggering guess for one upstart brick-and-mortar retailer: up to 400 Amazon Books locations.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the earnings call, during which General Growth Properties, Inc. CEO Sandeep Mathrani made the estimate while fielding a question about his properties' foot traffic in an online-shopping world. Mathrani pointed out high return rates at physical stores for online-ordered products, which he estimated at 38 percent, and that fed into his follow-up estimate: "You go to Amazon opening brick-and-mortar book stores, and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores." (Currently, Amazon only operates a single shop at Seattle's University Village shopping center.)

He added that "the last mile is all important" in terms of engaging with customers, noting that other major online retailers like Bonobos, Birchbox, and Warby Parker have plans for their own brick-and-mortar expansions throughout the United States. "It’s a very interesting evolution, because the cost of the last mile is that important," Mathrani said to investors. "The mall business, if you appreciate that it's more focused on fashion, is very different than a staple business where you’re buying commodity. In the mall business, the impact of eCommerce is a lot less—it’s actually your friend, not your enemy."

Mega-City One is the land of opportunity. (credit: Lionsgate)

Imagine a high-density city, and you probably think of something like Mega-City One, full of pollution, poverty, and huge, ugly housing projects. But the reality, according to new research in urban studies, is that high-density city plans offer residents more economic opportunities. Especially for people who want to give their children better lives, high-density cities are the most likely to deliver on the American Dream.

Measuring sprawl and economic mobility

Upward mobility is on the decline in the US. Once billed as a land of opportunity for the poor and hardworking, the country now offers little hope to people born in poverty. Writing in the latest issue of Landscape and Urban Planning, the researchers note that the "chance of upward mobility for Americans is just half that of the citizens of Denmark and many other European countries." A study from the Brookings Institution found that "39 percent of children born to parents in the top fifth of the income distribution will remain in the top fifth for life, while 42 percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth income distribution will stay in that bottom fifth."

But some parts of the country are better off than others. As the researchers explain: