More people in the world will play video games this year than ever before, but the amount of money spent on gaming will decline, according to a new report from leading research firm Newzoo.
Why it matters: After video games boomed during the first two years of the pandemic, Newzoo calls this the first drop in revenue since it began tracking the industry more than a decade ago.
In the week since Election Day, cybersecurity lobbyists in Washington are anticipating their jobs will mostly stay the same — even if Republicans take control of the House of Representatives.
Why it matters: Since cyberattacks aren’t going anywhere, lawmakers and lobbyists are optimistic they can push through rules on software security, critical infrastructure security oversight and federal IT spending, even in a closely split Congress.
Qualcomm will unveil its latest high-end smartphone chip Tuesday, as it — along with the rest of the industry — grapples with a rapid about-face in the semiconductor market, from unprecedented shortage to incipient glut of both devices and key components.
Why it matters: Every player in the chip industry has to deliver the latest and greatest to avoid losing share to rivals. At the same, the makers of phones and PCs now have weeks worth of inventory of existing products, as the economic slowdown pinches consumers.
Dozens of Congressional candidates — most of them Democrats — received campaign contributions or indirect financial support from Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto tycoon whose company collapsed last week.
The big picture: It's unclear where Bankman-Fried's money came from. Forensic accountants and bankruptcy courts are on the case, but it could take months to untangle FTX's web of comingled funds.
Alibaba's Singles Day, or 11.11 shopping festival, has plateaued.
Driving the news: The fabricated e-commerce holiday saw sales that were "in line with last year’s [gross merchandise value] performance despite macro challenges and Covid-related impact," the company reported on Friday.
God of War games are known for epic combat and blockbuster set pieces, but the series’ newest release demonstrates its innovations in how a video game can tell its story.
Why it matters: Technological approaches can lead to fundamental innovations in storytelling, even in a game where players are busy swinging an axe through Norse mythology.
Google will pay $392 million to 40 states to settle an investigation by 40 state attorneys general into whether the company misled users about location tracking, the state attorneys general announced Monday.
Flashback: The states' investigation into Google and location tracking kicked off in 2018 after an Associated Press story reported on Google recording user movement even when users had certain settings turned off.
Amazon is set to lay off around 10,000 employees, according to multiple reports Monday, which would mark the company's biggest round of job cuts ever — though a small fraction of its headcount.
Why it matters: November has been a brutal month for tech layoffs, as the industry adjust to a world of rising rates, falling demand and a hangover from over-hiring during the boom.
Amazon's core business of selling stuff has been slowing this year, as folks are spending less time at home, Axios's Hope King reported last month. It has already said it expects the holiday season to be weaker than expected.
Axios has reached out to Amazon to confirm the reports. The New York Times first reported the job cuts.
Zoom out: Including today's announcement, there have been more than 30,000 employees cut from the sector just in November — blowing away the numbers in April and March 2020.
"November has been the worst month so far in 2022," said Roger Lee, who runs the site Layoffs.fyi, and has been tracking tech firings since the start of the pandemic.
Other companies cutting staff this month that the site has tracked: Meta (11,000), Twitter (3,700), Salesforce (1,000), Stripe (1,000), Lyft (700), Redfin (850), Opendoor (550) and Zendesk (350).
While each company is facing its own set of challenges, they’re all nipping business units that are either no longer needed in full force during a downturn (such as in human resources) or aren’t performing (Amazon Care and Scout, for example).
Thought bubble via Hope King: This year marked Andy Jassy’s first at Amazon’s helm — and the company is likely to proceed more cautiously when it comes to growth than it did during Jeff Bezos's time.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Voluntary audits are suddenly in vogue again, with crypto exchanges trying to prove their stability with a trust exercise meant to stem a raft of outflows.
Driving the news: Operators of crypto marketplaces are pledging to soon produce proof-of-reserve (PoR) reports, showing publicly what coins they hold on balance, with some promising more regular, third-party audited reports going forward.
"Sam, if I said I need a million dollars to cure world hunger, could you get it in an hour?"
That's a question I asked Sam Bankman-Fried last October, after having read that the "billionaire" FTX founder had relatively little cash in his personal bank account.
His reply, after a pause: "I could. What I would be doing is I would basically be withdrawing it from companies. So, you know, you could dividend it out from FTX."
Some building owners, mainly in New York City, are clamping down on electric bicycles after a recent spate of damaging and deadly battery fires.
Why it matters: E-bikes are surging in popularity, but the benefits they bring — lower emissions, easy transportation — are threatened by the growing toll of injuries and deaths from blazes sparked by their lithium-ion batteries.
Tech's tumultuous past week has brought the grand visions and moonshot dreams of many of its celebrity leaders back down to earth.
Driving the news: The implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX brought an overnight end to its young founder's "maximize wealth, give it all away" life plan based on "effective altruism" thinking.
On Friday, Twitter suspended signups for the revamped subscription service it launched earlier last week, after a wave of customers used the plan's verified-checkmark feature for fraudulent pranks.
Driving the news: The company made no announcement of the change — it no longer has a comms team — but Elon Musk replied to a Twitter user's question on Saturday that signups would resume "probably end of next week."
Elon Musk said Monday he has "too much work on my plate, that's for sure."
The big picture: The Twitter owner made the comments in a virtual Q&A at the B20 Summit, a business conference held in parallel with the G20 summit in Bali, days after his newly acquired company laid off half its staff and as it culls vast ranks of contract staff, per Axios' Ina Fried.
