Is Pokémon Legends: Arceus a mainline Pokémon game? Game Freak and the Pokémon community need to decide whether it’s a glorified spin-off that tests new ideas or the next step for the series’ future, radically different from how older Pokémon games are structured and played.
The Winter Games may be a muted affair due to diplomatic protests, COVID restrictions and unfortunate timing. However, brands are less engaged and are trying to make sure they don't alienate the world's largest consumer market. The biggest issue marketers are contending with is China's human rights record.
Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are the top three companies in Fortune's annual ranking of corporate reputation. This is Apple's 15th straight year in the No.1 spot, a fitting coronation for the world's most valuable company. As a global pandemic limped into its third year, Pfizer, codeveloper of one of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines, vaulted all the way to No.4.
Spotify released its quarterly earnings during a fraught time for the company as its star podcaster Joe Rogan spurred multiple musicians to pull their discographies from the platform over his show’s spreading of misinformation, prompting CEO Daniel Ek to reframe the discussion as one of free speech and make Spotify a platform that can help all audio creators make a living.
Meta posted its fourth quarter earnings, sharing financials that disappointed Wall Street enough to send its stock into a nose dive, plunging 20% as it surfaced the novel fact that Facebook is no longer attracting new users. Facebook’s monthly active users remained flat from the third quarter of 2021 to the fourth at 2.9 billion.
Sunroom is a creator platform that throws out the stuff that makes mainstream social media apps such a hostile place for women, taking the premium monetization model of something like OnlyFans and blending it with a social feed, run through a generously Gen Z design filter. The app was co-founded by Lucy Mort, former design director at Hinge, and Michelle Battersby, previously a marketing director at Bumble.
British lawmakers want big tech companies to reimburse victims of online scams. The move is part of efforts to combat a growing epidemic of online fraud in Britain. There is not sufficient regulation governing social media and other websites, lawmakers say.
Shares in Alphabet soared nearly 9 per cent late on Tuesday, lifting its value back to almost $2tn. The Google parent also announced a rare 20-for-1 stock split, only the second time it has split its shares since going public in 2004. Alphabet finished the year with a 32 per cent jump in fourth-quarter revenue to $75.3bn.
Tesla is recalling 54,000 cars equipped with its Full Self-Driving software to disable a feature that in certain conditions lets the vehicles roll slowly through intersections without stopping. The move comes after the automaker was criticized on social media for enabling “rolling stops” in violation of traffic regulations, covering only Teslas that have been equipped with software that the company calls Full self-driving.
Android Auto’s next major redesign has been leaked, and it looks like Google has been taking some notes from Apple CarPlay. The redesign, codenamed “Coolwalk,” could come with several practical changes, including eliminating the status bar, which contains your phone’” battery life, cell reception, and time and placing it in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
WatchOS 8.4.1 is being rolled out to some Apple Watch users today. The update seems to be exclusive to Apple Watch Series 4 and later. Apple has also been running tests with watchOS. 8.5 beta along with iOS 15.4 beta. The watchOS8.4 build number is 19S546, while the watchOS 8-4.2 build number was 19S550.
Facebook is rolling out updated 3D avatars to Facebook, Messenger and Instagram to help establish the metaverse. The new design lets you bring the same avatar across Meta's platforms, including VR, and the avatars themselves promise to be truer to your style with more faces, skin tones and expressions.