The initial winner of Mobile World Congress looks like a blast from the past, Twitch will sell video games and SoftBank is in talks to make a huge investment in WeWork. Oh, and we can now call Suicide Squad an Oscar-winner. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for February 27, 2017. 1. Why Nokia's feature phone nostalgia stole the thunder from this year's flagships Mobile World Congress kicked off this weekend with some big announcements, but HMD's Nokia 3310 — a feature phone whose main selling point is its ability to play Snake — seems to be getting the most attention. TechCrunch's Brian Heater says, "That feels like as bold an indictment of the mobile industry as any." In other words, Brian argues that consumers are getting tired of the battle between handset makers, fought on incremental improvements like display resolution. This has created an environment where a gimmicky throwback can feel like a breath of fresh air. (And hey, the 3310 does look pretty cool.) 2. Twitch will sell video games on its site starting this spring Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch announced that it will now sell games directly on its platform. The move makes sense, since developers are already taking advantage of the site's social community to get the word out about their games and engage fans. Publishers who have already signed up include Ubisoft, Telltale Games, Digital Extremes, Hi-Rez Studios, tinyBuild, Paradox Interactive, Trion Worlds and Vlambeer. 3. Amazon's 'Manchester by the Sea' and 'The Salesman' take home three Oscars No, this isn't the Oscar moment that everyone's talking about, but it's pretty significant in its own way: Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman, both distributed by Amazon Studios, won a collective three Academy Awards last night. Netflix got an Oscar, too. 4. SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $4 billion in WeWork CNBC is reporting that SoftBank is preparing to make a $2 billion investment in WeWork, with an additional $1 billion to follow. The deal would value the coworking company at $20 billion. TechCrunch has confirmed this information with our own source, though they noted SoftBank was also in discussions to invest in previous rounds — rounds that SoftBank ultimately didn't join. 5. This is probably the Samsung Galaxy S8 Samsung is set to announce the Galaxy S8 smartphone in late March, but the two videos and a couple of images appear to show working units. The S8 looks pretty similar to its predecessor, minus the physical and capacitive buttons found on the S7. 6. YouTube is coming to Comcast's Xfinity X1 set-top box Google and Comcast announced a new deal this morning that will see the YouTube application installed on Comcast's Xfinity X1 set-top boxes nationwide later this year. The integration will allow X1 users to launch the app by saying "YouTube" into the X1 voice remote, then search the entire YouTube library by voice or other interface. |
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