As part of the recent UK budget, the government confirmed that it is pressing ahead with its somewhat controversial Digital Services Tax. As reported by the Financial times, the UK plans to raise £500m a year by applying the tax primarily to large US tech companies. It is being seen as a means to secure money in relation to allegations that many large tech outfits are not paying enough tax in the areas in which they operate, instead using low tax [...]

PlayStation is skipping on attending E3 this year, just a few months before it plans to launch the PS5. A decade or so ago, that would have seemed like a very peculiar move. E3 has long been the place to announce and launch the biggest games and gaming platforms. It is famed as a media frenzy, where the world’s press amass to collect and share all the key gaming news. Indeed, it was the very first E3 in 1995 that saw one [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: EA hints at return to Steam; Sony examining sale of PlayStation Vue; and Ubisoft share price plummets following profit warning. EA hints at return to Steam EA has hinted that the company’s titles will be returning to Steam, ending an eight year period of exclusivity on the Origin storefront. The firms appear to have reached a compromise, whereby titles will be available to purchase on Steam but will [...]

TheGamingEconomy Daily Digest brings you the trending business stories in gaming. In today’s edition: Tencent integrates live-streaming e-commerce functions in WeChat, Scopely expands into APAC, and PlayStation 4 sells thirty million units in the US. Tencent integrates live-streaming e-commerce functions in WeChat Chinese internet giant Tencent has integrated live streaming functions into its WeChat platform, which has been designed to facilitate e-commerce capabilities, according Weixin (translation provided by KrASIA). The functions on the platform, which has 1.1 billion monthly active users will [...]

BITKRAFT Esports Ventures has spearheaded a USD$5m (£4.1m) Series A funding round in competitive hyper-casual platform Ready. By any technical definition, Ready is an esports offering. At its most fundamental, it lets players do battle in multiplayer games for cash prizes. It’s key differentiation from conventional esports models comes from its hyper-casual leaning. Esports are typically the preserve of the most hardcore, devoted player demographics there are. Professional esports players have strict training regimes, coaches and even sports psychologists to optimise their [...]

As one of the dominant social platforms for teenage and young adult users, Snapchat is an obvious home for hyper casual instant games. That’s something the platform’s team are keenly aware of, it would seem, as a number of games have recently become available for Snapchat, each playable directly within the messaging service. Yesterday, for example, the internal Snapchat games division Snap Games released its seventh titlefor the platform, Bitmoji Tennis. The launch coincided neatly with Wimbledon, and continues the platform’s Bitmoji [...]

TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony write letter to Trump against game console tariff; Industry is only “paying lip service” to gaming addiction – UK technology inquiry chair; and Treyarch under fire for crunch culture. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony write letter to Trump against game console tariff Plans from US president Donald Trump to impose a 25% tariff on goods, including video game consoles, has drawn criticism from Microsoft, Nintendo and [...]

With this year’s huge E3 gaming conference hardly underway, Microsoft has revealed that its follow up to the Xbox One console, announcing that the machine is due to launch in 2020. Code-named Project Scarlett, the coming console promises to be ‘four times’ as powerful as Microsoft’s current-generation Xbox One. Console ‘power’, of course, is too complicated to exist on a linear spectrum where all games machines are comparable using a single metric. But thanks in-part to a custom processor, built by Microsoft [...]

The Boston-based development studio Disruptor Beam has made a move into game tech, revealing that it is releasing a new platform for mobile game development and live ops. Known for its work on Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and in particular Star Trek mobile games, Disruptor Beam is now making its Disruptor Engine available to third parties. The new platform is essentially a commercialised version of its internal game technology, which has been used to build and maintain titles like [...]

As the Game Developers Conference 2019 nears its end, the news continues to flow. The most interesting story related to the show in this roundup doesn’t come from the GDC floor itself, though. Instead, it’s from within a reported internal Microsoft email. Specifically, in an email handed to tech site Thurrott (thanks GamesIndustry.biz), Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, apparently contacted colleagues to assure them that the reveal of Google’s game-streaming platform Stadia validated Microsoft’s efforts in the same space. The Google [...]