Technology

Video game company EA is slowly switching its business model to recurring subscriptions. The company just launched Origin Access Premier for $15 per month or $100 per year. This subscription is only available on PC.

This isn&t EAfirst subscription. The company first launched EA Access on the Xbox One. For $5 per month or $30 per year, you can download a play old EA games as part of your subscription.

EA Access doesn&t include the most recent games. But you can play the latest Fifa, Madden and Battlefield games a few months after their initial releases. Usually, EA Access games don&t include any DLC or extra content.

In addition to full games, EA Access lets you try new EA games for 10 hours. You also get 10 percent off on EA digital purchases.

In 2016, EA launched a similar service on PC for the same price. In addition to a collection of EA games, the company partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and other game companies. You can find indie hits, such as The Witness, Oxenfree and Trine 2.

And now, EA is launching a more expensive subscription tier. With Origin Access Premier, you get new EA titles a few days before launch day. For instance, you&ll be able to download and play Madden NFL 19, Fifa 19, Battlefield V and Anthem when they launch in the coming months.

Subscribers won&t have to pay for DLCs, or at least not as many. Games included in the subscription are deluxe editions (Fifa Ultimate Edition, Battlefield V Deluxe, etc.).

In order to convince people to subscribe right away, EA is adding deluxe editions of Battlefront II, Fifa 18, Unravel Two, Fe or The Sims 4 right away.

Other companies have launched subscription services, such as Microsoft with the Xbox Game Pass and SonyPlayStation Now. This is an interesting shift as game companies are getting ready for cloud computing.

While many people still buy games on DVDs and play on gaming consoles, the industry is slowly going to switch to cloud gaming. You will launch a game on a server in a data center near you and stream the video feed to the device in front of you.

It doesn&t make as much sense to own a game if you don&t even run it on your console in your living room. By creating recurring subscriptions and putting together gaming libraries, companies can increase recurring revenue.tt

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Nintendo released its latest earnings report today and the headline is that the company has now sold nearly 20 million Switch consoles. The actual number is 19.67 million as of the end of June, so add July sales and the 20 million milestone is likely to have already been hit. Either way, it has easily surpassed its predecessor, the much-maligned Wii U.

Overall, the business recorded a 30.5 billion JPY ($275 million) operating profit, up 88 percent year-on-year, as revenue grew 9 percent to reach 168 billion JPY, or $1.5 billion.

The Japanese firm sold 1.88 million Switches in the most recent quarter, which is actually down from 1.97 million one year ago, although this quarter tends to be a slow one ahead of the holiday season. That slip was made up for on the software side assales of Switch games jumped from 8.1 million last year to 17.96 million in the most recent quarter.

Nintendo has a bunch of new titles incoming — includingSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate and two Pokémon titles — while its Nintendo Switch Online service is due to launch in September so thereplenty more to come. That said, Nintendo has some work to do if it is to hit its target of 20 million Switch sales during the current financial year.

Elsewhere, Nintendo said it sold 1.26 million of the NES Classic Edition when it was relaunched in June, while it sold 1.39 million Labo kits for the Switch.

The companies mobile gaming business continues to do well, grossing nine billion JPY, $81 million, in the quarter. Thatlikely to spike when the company introduces Mario Kart Tour (huzzah!) and new title Dragalia Lost for mobile before March 2019. Although Nintendo suggested that the pipeline for new mobile games will slow once these two new arrivals are released.

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Chaucer wrote that &time and tide wait for no man.& With apologies to the &father& of English literature, we say that time and money wait for no entrepreneur. The deadline for saving big money on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2018, which takes place on November 29-30, comes to an abrupt halt on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST— in just 48 hours.

Right now, early-bird pricing tiers start at €595 including VAT. Thata sweet deal because, depending on the tier you choose, early-bird pricing can save you up to €700. When time runs out, you pay more money. Don&t get sucked out with the tide. Buy your passes today.

Disrupt Berlin 2018 offers two program- and value-packed days for startup founders, investors, marketers, tech-heads, designers and innovators. We&re busy lining up an incredible group of speakers — including founders, VCs, tech titans and rising stars — who will step onto the Disrupt stage and hold forth on the most pressing and interesting tech and investment issues of the day. Here are just a few exciting examples from our lineup:

  • Anne Boden, the founder and CEO of Starling Bank
  • The four partners from VC firm Accel — Philippe Botteri, Sonali De Rycker, Luciana Lixandru and Harry Nelis
  • Aline Sara, founder of NaTakallam

We&re still accepting speaker nominations. If you have a fantastic candidate, by all means,send us your recommendation.

What incredible early-stage startup pitch competition helped launch more than 750 companies that have gone on to collectively raise $8 billion and produce 100 exits Yeah, OK so itan easy answer. Startup Battlefield — with $50,000 cash and the chance for massive global media and investment exposure — is one of the most exciting elements of every Disrupt. Don&t just come and watch. Sign up to compete!

Our Disrupt Berlin exhibition hall — Startup Alley — always features hundreds of the best early-stage startups, and this year is no exception. Exhibiting in the Alley is a magnificent way to place your startup in front of media outlets, investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers. Itprime networking territory.

Whether you&re a founder or an investor, you want to be as efficient about that networking as possible in your two days at Disrupt. CrunchMatch, our free, business match-making service, simplifies networking and saves you time. Last year, CrunchMatch generated a total of 888 meetings — and 97 percent of participants said they&d use the service again.

Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on November 29-30, and your chance to buy early-bird passes — and save up to €700 in the process — ends on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 pm. CEST. Don&t make us quote Chaucer again. Buy your tickets now.

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A Dixons Carphonedata breach that was disclosed earlier this summerwas worse than initially reported. The company is now saying that personal data of 10 million customers could also have been accessed when its systems were hacked.

The European electronics and telecoms retailer believes its systems were accessed by unknown and unauthorized person/s in 2017, although it only disclosed the breach in June, after discovering it during a review of its security systems.

Last month it said 5.9M payment cards and 1.2M customer records had been accessed. But with its investigation into the breach &nearing completion&, it now saysapproximately 10M records containing personal data (but no financial information) may have been accessed last year — in addition to the 5.9M compromised payment cards it disclosed last month.

&While there is now evidence that some of this data may have left our systems, these records do not contain payment card or bank account details and there is no evidence that any fraud has resulted. We are continuing to keep the relevant authorities updated,& the company said in a statement.

In terms of what personal data the 10M records contained, a Dixons Carphone spokeswoman told us: &This continues to relate to personal data, and the types of data that may have been accessed are, for example, name, address or email address.&

The company says ittaking the precaution of contacting all its customers — to apologize and advise them of &protective steps to minimize the risk of fraud&.

It adds it has no evidence that the unauthorized access is continuing, having taken steps to secure its systems when the breach was discovered last month, saying: &We continue to make improvements and investments at pace to our security environment through enhanced controls, monitoring and testing.&

Commenting in a statement, Dixons Carphone CEO, Alex Baldock, added: &Since our data security review uncovered last yearbreach, we&ve been working around the clock to put it right. Thatincluded closing off the unauthorised access, adding new security measures and launching an immediate investigation, which has allowed us to build a fuller understanding of the incident that we&re updating on today.

&Again, we&re disappointed in having fallen short here, and very sorry for any distress we&ve caused our customers. I want to assure them that we remain fully committed to making their personal data safe with us.&

Back in 2015, Carphone Warehouse, a mobile division of Dixons Carphone, also suffered a hack which affected around 3M people. And in January the company wasfined £400k by the ICO as a consequence of that earlier breach.

Since then new European Union regulations (GDPR) have come into force which greatly raise the maximum penalties which regulators can impose for serious data breaches.

Last month, following Dixondisclosure of the latest breach, the UKdata watchdog, the ICO, told us it was liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Financial Conduct Authority and other relevant agencies to ascertain the details and impact on customers.

Of the 5.9M payment cards which Dixons disclosed last month as having been compromised, it said the vast majority had been protected by chip and PIN technology. But around 105,000 lacked the security tech so Dixons said at the time could therefore have been compromised.

Itthe additional 1.2M records containingnon-financial personal data — such as name, address or email address — that have been revised upwards now, to ~10M records, which constitutes almost half the Groupcustomer base in the UK and Ireland.

The spokeswoman told us the Group has approximately 22M customers in the region.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/ncsc-advice-dixons-carphone-plc-customers

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Civil, the blockchain-based journalism organization, is casting its eye to Asia after it set up a $1 million fund thataimed at seeding 100 new media projects across the continent over the next three years. The organization has teamed up withSplice, a Singapore-based media startup which will manage the fund, according to an announcement.

Therebeen a lot of attention lavished on Civil for its promise to make media work more efficiently using blockchain technology and its upcoming crypto token,CVL.The organization has raised $5 million in financing from ConsenSys, the blockchain corporation led by Ethereum co-creator Joe Lubin, and its ICO takes place next monthwith the goal of raising around $32 million to launchits network and actively onboard new media companies worldwide.

But the company is waiting around.Civil has already actively jumped into the media space —providing financial backing to the newly-formed The Colorado Sun — but the scope of the project in Asia is different in trying to kickstart a wave of new media organizations by giving them money to get off the ground.

Alan Soon, co-founder and CEO of Splice, told TechCrunch that it hasn&t been decided whether the financing will be in the form of grants or equity-based investments. Despite that, he said deals will be &pre-seed, micro-investments to help entrepreneurs take their ideas to prototype stage.&

Soon said that all kinds of media are in play, ranging from the more obvious suspects such as publishers, reporting websites and podcasts to behind-the-scenes tech like automation, bots and adtech.

Notably, though, he clarified that the beneficiaries of the fund will be under no obligation to adopt Civilprotocol, the technology that will be funded by the upcoming ICO. Splice itself, however, has committed to doing so which will mean it gains access to the networkcontent, licensing opportunities and more.

&I&m with Civil because I really believe in their values,& Soon added. &They want to do the right thing for this space.&

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What is a smart meter Everything you need to know about the energy-saving devices
To help you work out if a smart meter is the best option for you, we&ve put together a guide to the devices - including what they are, how you can get one, and how they work
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