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When Google originally announced Stadia, its cloud gaming service, the company also announced a first-party game studio. Stadia Games and Entertainment was supposed to release exclusive titles for the new platform. And yet, Google has changed its mind and is now shutting down its internal game studios.
“Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games,” Google Stadia VP and GM Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post.
That’s right, the company has yet to release a single game under the Stadia brand but it’s already over. This is an odd move as Google has made some significant investments in the space. It originally created a studio in Montreal Canada and acquired Typhoon Studios. It then opened another studio in Los Angeles.
Jade Raymond was leading Google’s first-party studios. She has been working in the video game industry for more than 15 years. In particular, she was a producer for Ubisoft in Montreal working on the first Assassin’s Creed games. She also worked for Electronic Arts on an unreleased single-player Star Wars video game.
Today’s news also means that Raymond is leaving Google. Other Google employees working for Stadia Games and Entertainment will move on to new roles.
Going forward, Stadia will focus on third-party games. The company says that Cyberpunk 2077 has been quite popular on the cloud gaming platform for instance. It lets you launch the game on a server in a data center near you and stream the video feed to your device.
Many readers will likely think that Google might shut down Stadia soon as the company has shut down many, many services in the past. The company tries to be reassuring.
“We’re committed to the future of cloud gaming, and will continue to do our part to drive this industry forward. Our goal remains focused on creating the best possible platform for gamers and technology for our partners, bringing these experiences to life for people everywhere,” Harrison writes.
But do you believe him?
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/google-shuts-down-its-internal-stadia-game-studios/
Otonomo, the cloud-based software startup that help companies capture and monetize connected car data, is headed to the public market. The Israeli-based startup said Monday it has agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Software Acquisition Group Inc. II with a valuation of $1.4 billion.
Otonomo is joining a growing pool of automotive startups that have sidestepped the traditional IPO path in favor of merging with a SPAC, or blank check company. Arrival, Canoo, Lordstown Motors, Luminar, ChargePoint, The Lion Electric and Proterra are just some of the transportation-related companies that have announced or closed their SPAC mergers in the past several months.
The capital provided by public markets has become too tempting for companies that either have capitally intensive projects — like attempting to become a vehicle manufacturer — or for those that are hoping to speed up their growth. Otonomo falls in the latter camp.
Otonomo said it raised $172.5 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from investors that included Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, BNP Paribas Asset Management Energy Transition Fund and Senvest Management LLC, with support from strategic investors Dell Technologies Capital, and Hearst Ventures. Current Otonomo shareholders will own a majority of the combined company at closing. Otonomo will have more than $307 million in cash proceeds once the companies combine.
Otonomo said it plans to use cash proceeds from the transaction to fund growth and accelerate its entry into new markets and use cases.
Otonomo launched in 2015 with a cloud-based software platform that can capture and anonymize vehicle data, which can then be used to create apps to provide services such as electric vehicle management, mapping, subscription-based services, parking, usage-based insurance, traffic management, media and emergency services. The company’s platform is used by 16 vehicle manufacturers, fleets and more than 100 service providers, according to Otonomo.
The company has landed a dozens of customers on its pitch that it can help companies monetize all the date running through their connected vehicles. Otonomo says it securely collects the data, where its then modified so companies can use it to develop apps and services for fleets, smart cities and individual customers. The platform also enables GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulation-compliant solutions using both personal and aggregate data.
Otonomo’s growth can be measured — at least in one way — by examining the number of data points that run through the platform. A year ago, the company said its platform was taking in 2.6 billion data points a day from more than 20 million vehicles through partnerships with automakers, fleets and farm and construction manufacturers. Today, the company said the platform ingests more than 4 billion data points per day from over 40 million global connected vehicles.
The merger is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. Ben Volkow continuing to serve as CEO of Otonomo, which will trade on the NASDAQ exchange.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/data-automotive-startup-otonomo-to-go-public-via-spac/
Every sport has its practice drills and exercises to help players hone skills between games. Why would esports be any different?
Gwoop, a startup out of Minnesota, wants to be the place where gamers go to train between matches. They’re building up a collection of free browser-based training tools meant to help you measure and improve vital stats like reaction time, mouse control, and aim, and see how your stats compare to the best.
Some of the training games currently up and running:
- Reaction Training: Wait for it…. click! As soon as the screen changes from grey to orange, you click the mouse button. The lower your reaction time (measured in milliseconds), the better. Harder levels throw in more colors to fake you out and give you a bit of pause.
- Visual Speed: Target boxes spawn one-at-a-time all around a 2D plane. Click one, and another appears. The more boxes you click before time runs out, the higher your score.
- Keyboard speed: Straightforward keyboard key-finding practice, because any time spent looking at your keyboard is time not spent dodging shots.
- Mouse control: If you can’t get your mouse to go where you want it, you can’t aim. Gwoop’s mouse control exercise has you drag a ball through a curved track; the more tracks you complete, the higher your score.
- FPS Training Arena: Strafe around a 3D arena (pictured up top), scanning for randomly generated targets and clicking them as they appear. Bonus points for hitting the dead center of a target.
All of the tools are linked back to an analytics dashboard, allowing you to gauge your performance metrics over time. Each skill gets its own leaderboard so you can see, for example, how your average reaction time compares to others worldwide and amongst your friends.
Even in its 3D exercises, Gwoop’s graphics are pretty simple — and that’s intentional. They want it to work for as many players as possible. They’ve got no reason to try to look like a AAA title; the more graphically intense a game is, the more powerful your computer would have to be to run it smoothly. Co-founder Gavin Lee tells me that their goal is to keep it so that “all you need is a computer and the Internet. It doesn’t matter if your device is 10 years old.” Even its 2D exercises have switches you can flip to further simplify the graphics and improve performance.
It’s the same reason they’ve built everything to work in the browser: not requiring any downloads means more people can train, with the added benefit for the Gwoop team of not having to worry about maintaining separate Mac/PC clients.
While the existing exercises might seem focused around improving first-person shooter skills, Lee tells me that they’re aiming to be “genre-agnostic” and are planning expansions tailored to other kinds of games. He mentions a “MOBA Arena” in the works meant to help polish skills required for games like League of Legends or DOTA, and another exercise-in-progress that’s “very Rocket League centric.” Their training tools seem mostly focused on keyboard/mouse users right now, but they’re working on more functionality for players who prefer controllers.
Gwoop is entirely free to players —so how will they make money? Lee tells me they’ve got two different strategies there: they’ll sell additional advanced analytics tools to teams, and, once they’ve got enough players clicking around, hopefully be able to serve as a platform for esports recruiters. Lee says players should be able to opt-in to having their data shared with potential sponsors and esports teams, with Gwoop getting paid to connect the dots. “All these division one schools have these platforms where you can upload football films and get recruited,” says Lee “we want to become that platform [for esports].”
Why the name “Gwoop”? Is it a bit of super cool gaming lingo, or some sort of acronym? Nope! It was just a quick, memorable domain Lee had been holding onto for decades. “I wish I had a better story for you,” he says, “but I bought the domain in 2002 just because I wanted a five letter domain that you could pronounce and was available.” It’s okay, Gavin: most people don’t care why Google is called Google, after all.
The team’s timing is pretty good here. With most people being stuck at home, more people are getting into gaming than ever before. Battle Royale games like Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends are blowing up… but it’s hard to get better in a game where you spend the first ten minutes looting only to get shredded in 10 seconds when a skilled team rotates through. While many titles have dedicated training areas or firing ranges to practice in, they’re usually meant more for quick pre-game warmups and don’t do things like help you track metrics and improvements over time.
The Minneapolis-based team is currently comprised of its three cofounders. It’s self-funded to date, but I’m told a seed round is underway.
Gwoop is currently in semi-closed Beta and generally requires an invite to signup, but Lee tells me that the code #TC2021# should let our readers past the signup gate.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/gwoop-academy-wants-to-help-you-get-better-at-video-games/
Following its $16 million Series B last fall, event discovery network IRL is launching a new website that adds more social features around events, including profiles, chats and the ability to join group events, among other things. With the changes, users will also be able to receive personalized event recommendations, participate in group events, as well as talk about events with their friends, across both web and mobile. The combined efforts make IRL.com feel less like an online event search engine and more like a real social network.
The startup, which had previously focused on real-world events, could have easily imploded last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which effectively shut down the in-person events industry overnight. But it instead quickly pivoted its event discovery app to include virtual events. In April, IRL adapted to the government lockdowns and restrictions on in-person gatherings by indexing online events, like livestreamed concerts, esports events, Zoom parties and more.
The changes, in a way, made IRL more accessible because it became a tool that anyone could use — not only those with the time and money to travel and attend real-world events.
Image Credits: IRL
In fitting with those changes, the company also last year redesigned its mobile app to make it easier for users to find new events to attend remotely.
It organized events into categories like gaming, music, tv, wellness, sports, podcasts, lifestyle and more — including those sourced from partners like TikTok, Meetup, Twitch, Spotify, SoundCloud, HBO, Ticketmaster, Eventbrite and others. (We’re also seeing Apple TV+ shows on the site, but IRL can’t officially confirm if Apple is a partner. We’re told IRL does have permission to display these events, however.)
The new IRL website is meant to better mirror the recently redesigned mobile experience.
As users join IRL.com for the first time, they can pick event categories they’re interested in and find their friends who are already using the service.
Also like the mobile app, you can now click across filters at the top of the website to drill down into events by category — like gaming, music, TV, sports, wellness, lifestyle, podcasts and others. And you can filter to see events taking place this weekend or view IRL’s own suggestions of “Top Picks.”
The site directs users to create their own group events with friends through the new built-in chat feature, which had previously only been available on mobile.
“Because everybody’s at home, there’s a big demand for a web messenger,” notes IRL founder and CEO Abraham Shafi.
Image Credits: IRL
He explains that the startup’s focus around messaging as the basis for a group is what allows IRL to differentiate itself from other groups-focused products. Facebook Groups, for example, are built around the idea of discussion boards, he says. But IRL is instead building its social network around messaging.
“There’s no group chatting app that also allows you to add events,” Shafi says. “We’re seeing that become really valuable for any groups that have upcoming and scheduled activities. It could be a TV show that you really like. Or it could be your friends playing Among Us or playing video games. [On IRL], you can imagine, literally, any type of group — like a book club that meets weekly and has weekly events coming up,” he says.
In addition, students who sign up with an .edu email address can now find on-campus events and groups that are available only to those who attend the same school. These aren’t typically indexed publicly and won’t appear on the IRL homepage.
Image Credits: IRL
The startup’s focus on group messaging has helped the app grow, despite the pandemic.
The company now reports over 10 million monthly active users, and its group messaging feature has been growing at around 30% month over month since August. Today, there are over 30 million chats sent on IRL per day, with over a billion chats that have been sent to date, Shafi says.
In time, IRL plans to expand the site to include more local events as well as deepen its relationship with partners.
For example, the IRL TikTok account has been the first to reach over a million followers. But currently, all the events TikTok posts to the site are hand-curated. IRL says it’s working on a deeper integration that will help pull in more TikTok content, including top trends.
The company also expects to attract more influencers with the website launch, like those who want to build a name for themselves as a “cool curator” of a specific type of event — such as the Sneakerheads account, for instance, which tracks sneaker drops.
Image Credits: IRL
As users participate on the website and app by following events, adding friends, and joining chats, IRL will be able to make better recommendations as to what sort of events they might like to try next.
And as the world recovers from COVID, allowing in-person events once again, the company believes usage will jump.
“When in-person returns — because that’s inevitable — we’ll be supporting that, for sure,” says Shafi, adding that he expects IRL to then “explode.”
“We’re not going to take virtual away. Virtual will always be there … quite honestly, it will probably always be a hybrid,” he says. “This pandemic has allowed us to focus on something that will actually help us grow once we can support both the real and the remote.”
“Me and the team are very grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to build something deeply meaningful in these times — even though at the outset, it would have seemed like we were screwed,” Shafi adds.
Initially, IRL tested the web app’s revamp only with its existing users. But the relaunch of the site now makes the changes accessible to all.
A week after introducing Time to Walk, Apple has released another software update aimed at expanding its Fitness+ footprint. With today’s arrival the developer seed of watchOS 7.4 and iOS 14.5, the company is adding a new feature that will make it possible to stream workouts to an AirPlay enabled TV – with some caveats.
Users can stream audio and video the company’s subscription-based fitness app to AirPlay 2-enabled sets. That’s a nice addition for those without an Apple TV and users looking to bring the service on the road with them via compatible hotel TVs (when people start staying in hotels again).
The biggest difference here is that metrics won’t be displayed on screen. That means you lose things like your rings, calories burned, etc. They’ll have to rely on the connected Apple Watch and iPhone or iPad for that information. Not the end of the world, but they’re an important part of the Fitness+ experience. Apple no doubt wants to continue to incentivize its own hardware ecosystem, while working to grow the exercise app.
Fitness+ arrived at the right time for the company, as Covid-19 has caused many of us to let our gym memberships lapse, in favor of at home workouts. There’s a question of sustainability of home workouts in general, with the roll out of numerous vaccines.
Maintaining and continuing to grow these applications will require flexibility. When I spoke to Apple about Fitness+ last week, the company noted that it envisions people bringing the app with them on the go. That could mean doing a Fitness+ workout on the iPad at their gym or finding a way to back the experience in a bag and use it during their travels.
The feature is currently available as part of the developer seeds of the new watchOS and iOS versions, and should be available to consumers when the final versions go live.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/apple-fitness-is-adding-airplay-casting/
