According to Sony's reconstruction plan, there is no room for their optical disc drive business for the next year. Unconfirmed sources said that Sony Optiarc Inc., the Sony Subsidiary that makes CD and DVD drives used in PCs, will have to terminate all operations by March 2013. This move should be one of Sony's attempts to cut a few money-losing divisions. The bigger part of 400 employees in Japan and other countries will be let go through early retirement program as it was stated in Asahi Shimbun paper today.
The latest IRS tax filling for 2010 shows that the MPAA's revenue has been falling for a few years and it continues to do so. Over the last 3 years their anti-piracy budget has been reduced from $92.8 million to $49.6 million. This is a result of major Hollywood studios lowering MPAA funding. Membership dues precipitated from $84.7 million to $41.5 million, making it more than 50% decline in the same period.
The Biggest annual DotA 2 tournament has begun and it is hosted by Valve at the Benaroy Hall in Seattle. 16 teams are invited to tournament and top the 8 receive prize money. Last year the Ukrainian Natus Vincere (Na'Vi) won first place and $1 million dollars in prize money. EHOME (China) came in second and walked away with $250,000, while Scythe Gaming (Singapore) placed third and won $150,000. This year the prize pool is the same ($1.6 million), and last year’s champions are here to defend the title. The main contenders for the title from Natus Vincere will be DK, who are called the “Galacticos” for making huge transfers, Complexity gaming who won The Defense 2 (6,000€ tournament), and mTw who won Dreamhack in the summer of 2012.
Last night the verdict was handed down from the jury in the Samsung V Apple and in a staggering leap of logic the 9 person jury found for that Samsung was guilty of willful infringement on the majority of patents that Apple presented, but that Apple had not infringed at all on the Samsung patents. Then they found that Samsung was not-guilty of Anti-Trust behavior for those attempting to enforce those same patents. Although our initial reaction was shock, after reading the details of the verdict and taking into account how the trial was handled by Judge Lucy Koh we were actually not surprised.
If you ask MMO players which MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) is the best you will always have 2 groups, one of World of Warcraft (WoW) fans and one of Guild Wars (GW) fans. Of course there is a lot of subjectivity like in every other battle of two sides, but based on the experience of some friends that played both WoW and GW here are some of the facts. Guild Wars has much faster gameplay, for example when you want to go from one town to another you just go to map and click on town you want to go to, and bam, you are there. Also there is a lot of praise for Guild Wars PvP, which is made very tactical and extremely well organized, balanced and also rewarding. You can imagine GW as and MMO Diablo in some sort because it's very action packed, there are lots of fast fights, with a nice and clear interface.
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