King Digital is best known for its popular browser game “Candy Crush” and its mobile version “Candy Crush Saga.” The company, which went public in March 2014 at $22.50 a share, is being acquired by game giant Activision Blizzard, for $18 a share. While the game continues to generate profit for King, the developer has yet to launch another of the same magnitude. However, while “Candy Crush” generated $493 million during the last three months of 2013, it still earned $206 million in the last three months ending in June 2015. “The thing about creating a megahit game in the iPhone/Android era is that there’s no flywheel effect,” suggests Re/code. “A megahit gives you resources to market other games, which is nice. But no one has been able to prove that making one megahit lets you make other megahits.”

Samsung has unveiled its anticipated 18.4-inch Android tablet, Galaxy View, billed as “the largest Android mobile device on the market.” According to Samsung, the new tablet — which features a “large touchscreen display, video-optimized user interface and long-lasting battery life” — is designed for watching movies and TV shows around the home. The View “has a 1920×1080 resolution display, stereo speakers, a 1.6GHz octa-core processor, and up to eight hours of video playback time,” reports The Verge. The tablet also includes a 2-way stand, 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, and an LTE NanoSIM slot.

According to Technicolor brand management exec Pam Kunick-Cohen, the company is gearing up to reintroduce the RCA brand (which Technicolor owns and licenses) to a new generation of consumers this month. Speaking at a recent industry event in Brooklyn, she emphasized the need to reach out to millennials with the message that “the RCA brand represents quality, innovation and value.” A website relaunch will join a major social media push and a national online media buy featuring the new tagline, ‘RCA: Made For Moments.’ TWICE reports: “The plan calls for a live event to be held sometime during November at California’s Glendale Galleria, which will feature RCA-branded products from around Black Friday to Christmas.”

Chinese company OnePlus — quickly building a reputation for affordable but solid handsets — is readying the November release of its $249 5-inch OnePlus X, “its cheapest and most beautiful smartphone yet,” suggests Mashable. The new phone will feature a metal frame, 1080p AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. “The 13-megapixel rear-facing camera has an f/2.2 aperture and shoots 1080p video and has a slow motion mode that shoots at 720p and 120fps. The 8-megapixel front-facing camera has an f/2.4 aperture,” notes Mashable, adding that it’s really the slick design and the price that will be the major selling points.

An all-star panel of futurists and inventors featuring John Underkoffler, CEO & chief scientist, Oblong Industries; Philip Rosedale, CEO of High Fidelity and founder of virtual world “Second Life;” Berkeley academic Jack McCauley, founder & president of McCauley Labs and a co-founder and chief engineer of Oculus; and Richard Marks, director of PlayStation Magic Lab looked above and beyond the introduction of VR to articulate an array of visions and technical challenges yet to be mastered. The panel took place at Digital Hollywood and was moderated by ETC project manager Philip Lelyveld. Continue reading Digital Hollywood Panel Discusses Interfaces and Future of VR

BeBop Technology has built a virtualized editing platform that uses IBM Cloud to offer a secure, cloud-based film and video editing service. The platform intends to facilitate greater speed and efficiency of media production while reducing costs. Software developer Teradici provides cloud media management with its Pervasive Computing Platform tech that enables secure virtual workspaces. Rather than moving content files between locations, which can result in errors and piracy risks, Teradici’s solution transmits only the pixels, securely on IBM Cloud. Continue reading BeBop Launches New Virtualized Editing Platform on IBM Cloud

In another sign of the emerging power of mobile, Google says it plans to fold its Chrome PC operating system into its Android mobile OS. People familiar with the matter indicate that Google engineers have been working to combine the operating systems for about two years. While the new OS would likely not be available until 2017, the company expects to show an early version next year. Android now powers more than one billion smartphones and other devices. “Google’s new version of Android will also run PCs, giving users access to Google’s Play store, which offers more than one million apps,” explains The Wall Street Journal. “Google wants to get its software and moneymaking services such as Search and YouTube on as many devices as possible.”

Nintendo is building its new online network, Nintendo Account, with Japanese mobile gaming publisher DeNA. Nintendo Account will allow gamers to login to games via consoles, PCs, smartphones and tablets. Nintendo recently announced that its first foray into mobile games would be “Miitomo,” a new take on the popular “Tomodachi Life” series that will emphasize microtransactions, player-to-player communications and dressing up players’ Mii avatars. The company is also replacing its defunct Club Nintendo with the My Nintendo loyalty system. Continue reading Nintendo is Shifting Gears with New Moves into Mobile Gaming

Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, announced last week that the company is scheduled to launch the ‘New Xbox One Experience’ on November 12. The Xbox One’s user interface has remained largely the same since its debut two years ago, but the new Windows 10-inspired interface “promises a more controller-friendly experience,” reports Digital Trends, featuring Windows tiles and “a task bar on the left-hand side, making menus and settings easier to find.” While the new UI will offer backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games, the anticipated integration of virtual assistant Cortana has been delayed until next year.

Amazon is shuttering its Amazon Register credit card reader service for small and medium-size businesses, which debuted a little more than one year ago. “Aimed at mom-and-pop merchants, the $10 plastic device plugged into a smartphone or tablet and, with an app, processed credit card swipes from customers,” reports The New York Times. Amazon Register was similar to Square and PayPal, but failed to gain traction with merchants. Amazon plans to discontinue the service by February. The news follows Amazon’s announcement that it will also stop offering daily deals through its Local service by the end of 2015.

Apple launched a limited in-store promotion on Friday that offers a $50 discount on the Apple Watch or Apple Watch Sport with the purchase of any new iPhone. Currently only offered at participating Apple Stores in California and Massachusetts, the surprise promotion is not available online and does not include the Apple Watch Edition and Apple Watch Hermès models. “Apple confirmed that the promotion runs from October 30 through November 15… The deal does not require purchasing AppleCare+ or other accessories and add-ons,” reports Mac Rumors. “The offer is only valid when the qualifying iPhone and Apple Watch are purchased together on one transaction.”

To cap off the SMPTE 2015 Technical Conference & Exhibition, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers held its annual awards ceremony and dinner last night at Loews Hollywood Hotel. Laurence Thorpe, pioneer in film and television imaging (RCA, Sony, Canon) and Irwin W. Young, innovator in post-production technology (DuArt Film Laboratories) received the Society’s highest award, Honorary Membership. Annie Chang (Disney) received the Workflow Systems Medal for her efforts with DVD authoring and the Interoperable Master Format. James A. Lindner received the Archival Technology Medal Award, Birney Dayton the David Sarnoff Medal Award, and Stan Moote the Digital Processing Medal Award. For the complete list of honorees and 15 new Fellows, visit the SMPTE press release.

The Television Academy presented its latest round of Emmy Engineering Awards at a ceremony Wednesday evening hosted by Josh Brener of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” During the event, held at Loews Hollywood Hotel, ASC president Richard Crudo presented the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award to Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown. The Philo T. Farnsworth Award was presented to Grass Valley, and Engineering Emmys were presented to Mark Franken for EdiCue workflow software; Greg Croft, Chris King and Michael Sechrest for SpeedTree software; and Alan Bovik, Hamid Sheikh, Eero Simoncelli and Zhou Wang for the Structural Similarity (SSIM) algorithm.

Cable networks tend to schedule advertising with a “more is more” approach. But the added revenue comes at a cost to marketers and viewers. Marketers worry that the resulting “ad clutter” obscures their message. Meanwhile, the proliferation of commercial-free, OTT content has shortened the average viewer’s commercial tolerance, especially among the ever-valuable millennial demographic. In a move that truTV sees as a way for advertisers to “rise above the noise,” the cable and satellite channel is planning to cut down ad time and increase each slot’s value. Continue reading TruTV Cuts Ad Time, Hopes to Increase Value for Advertisers

While the cable industry is challenged by streaming services and cord cutters, Bloomberg reports that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications “all exceeded analysts’ expectations for their third-quarter video businesses, countering a trend of precipitous decline in traditional pay-TV and reclaiming market share from some telecom carriers and satellite-TV providers.” Cable companies are responding to cord cutters by “offering cheaper bundles of cable, Internet and digital phone service, and Comcast is accelerating its roll-out of a new technology that allows subscribers to watch and store shows and movies on multiple devices.” According to Evercore ISI analysts, skinny bundles “played some part in the quarter’s success.”