Tech
Animal Crossing's Nook Miles Tickets have become a bizarre trading currency – Eurogamer.net
Something I suspect Nintendo never imagined when developing Animal Crossing: New Horizons was that Nook Miles Tickets – the coupons which can be used to visit mysterious deserted islands – would become a form of virtual currency. In the Animal Crossing trading community, large numbers of Nook Miles Tickets (abbreviated to NMT) are currently changing hands, and the whole thing feels rather weird. And, as ever, we’re at the point where people are selling them in bulk for real money.
NMT, for those who need a briefing, can be bought in-game with Nook Miles: points which are earned by completing various tasks such as planting flowers, fishing, or chopping trees. Once you’ve completed most of the game’s major milestones, you can still earn them from Nook Miles Plus – a rolling list of challenges, which places some limits on the rate at which you can earn them. These Nook Miles can then be spent on a limited selection of items and recipes, along with tickets to visit mystery islands. But given it takes a while to properly “clear” a Nook Miles island, and the rewards for doing so are often quite low, why are NMT suddenly in such high demand?
There are a couple of explanations here, but it seems the main factor driving demand is villagers. On Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms, the Animal Crossing community has developed a number of favourite villagers – such as dapper cat Raymond or wannabe popstar Audie – and everyone wants them on their island. There’s a slang term for this: dreamies, short for dream villagers, and some sites have even created tier listings to rank their popularity. And price.
NMT are essentially lottery tickets to find new villagers on desert islands, and as such, it’s possible to burn through a whole bunch of them when looking for your desired character (particularly considering there are over 400 villagers in New Horizons). On the other end of this, there’s also a lot of people willing to splash NMT on their favourite villager without the painful process of searching dozens of islands. See where this is going?
Finally got Raymond after 255+ NMT! :’) from r/AnimalCrossing
On Discord servers, it’s easy to spot this NMT-villager trading cycle in action, with less popular villagers being sold for between 20-40 NMT, and community favourites like Raymond fetching prices of over 800 NMT. Raymond, specifically, seems to have become some sort of Animal Crossing status symbol as the number one desired villager. Some traders have even developed offer systems whereby players can either bid NMT for a villager, or buy them outright for a steep NMT price.
Although villager trading forms the core of the NMT economy, the coupons are now being used as currency to buy items on trading sites such as Nookazon, or as I discovered, as an entry fee to sell turnips for a high price. Last Saturday, in my desperation to sell my stocks of turnips before they spoiled the next day, I hit up the trading site Turnip Exchange, where players can open up their islands to the public to sell their turnips. While some kind-hearted folk open up their islands for free (or non-compulsory “tips”), many ask for an entry fee of either Bells, rare items or NMT, ranging from 2 to 20 NMT per trip. It was a similar scene inside the Animal Crossing trading Discords, and as it was the last possible chance to sell turnips, traders were definitely feeling opportunistic – with some asking for as many as 30 NMT for a visit. I opted for selling my turnips for a lower price at a friend’s place.
NMT entry fees are also being charged for another form of trading called item cataloguing (or touch trading). This is the process by which the seller drops a rare item on the floor, the buyer picks it up, and then returns the item to the seller. They can then use their Nook Stop machine back at their own island to order the item. So, to be clear, you don’t actually acquire the item – you just unlock the option to buy it.
There’s a practical element to using NMT as currency, as the game’s actual in-game currency is difficult to move in large amounts. Once a player’s wallet has 99.99k Bells, they stack as 99k each in the player inventory – which can fill up surprisingly fast if you’re wanting to transfer as much as 8m for a villager. NMT, meanwhile, stack 10 at a time – but their perceived value is much higher than a 99k Bell stack, meaning you don’t need to carry as many between islands for trades (with 40 inventory slots and the wallet, you can carry about 4.06m Bells at a time). Bells are also fairly easy to produce thanks to the in-game Stalk Market mechanic, meaning their trading value is reduced. If you’ve ever seen photos of Germans wheeling barrels of Marks around to buy bread during the hyperinflation crisis of the 1920s, it’s a similar situation with Bells. But with less severe consequences.
It’s currently quite difficult to pin down the exact value of NMT, as traders often decide an item or villager’s value on a whim, meaning the exchange rate is constantly in flux. A recent thread on The Bell Tree trading forum currently estimates one NMT as being equivalent to 200k Bells, although some are still buying for 250k. On Nookazon, NMT are currently being listed for around 100k-200k Bells per ticket. So even at their current lowest price, an inventory full of NMT would equate to 40m Bells, ten times the amount an inventory full of Bells would get you – something that’s pretty useful for traders.
If you try to sell a NMT at Nook’s Cranny, however, you’ll only get 10k from Timmy and Tommy. They must be making a fortune selling these onto the market.
And aside from all this, there’s also just the classic currency belief system at play: once people decided NMT had value, people started collecting and trading them for other items – and things escalated to the point we’re at today. Some have speculated that duping is being used to produce hundreds of tickets, but a more likely explanation is people have simply traded their way into acquiring stacks of NMT in order to buy their dream villagers and items, thus producing those ridiculous prices. Will we see further NMT inflation? With so many moving parts to the Animal Crossing trading economy, it’s hard to say.
Of course, if you want to skip the entire in-game grind with real money, it seems that’s now an option. Sensing demand for NMT, dozens of listings have appeared on eBay offering both Bells and Nook Miles tickets for real-world cash, and people seem to be buying them. I guess the tickets could be useful for item trading, but honestly, it’s probably easier just to buy an amiibo if you want a specific villager. Unless you want Raymond, which will set you back £35 for a trade, apparently.
The whole trading economy seems to be getting steadily greedier, and it feels like the community has somehow managed to build its own microtransaction system where there was none: with NMT as a premium currency, and a loot box at the core in the form of Nook Miles Islands. And while villager trading was certainly present in previous games such as New Leaf, the addition of NMT – along with a lot of probably bored people sat inside during lockdown – appears to have pushed trading to new heights. Aside from trading for real-world money, it seems fairly harmless, if a little disturbing given the entire thing is built around trading villagers… and somewhat exploitative of people’s desire to have their favourite character. With this new-found knowledge of Audie’s worth, I hope I won’t start looking at her differently.
Tech
Venerable Video App Plex Emerges As FAST Favorite – Forbes
With cord cutters and streamers becoming more selective about where they invest their subscription dollars and the costs of premium services like Netflix
NFLX
rising, FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) services that offer thick bundles of niche channels and vintage content are on the rise with consumers. One of the more interesting contenders is Plex, a privately-held company that started in the late aughts as an app to help video enthusiasts organize and share their home libraries. Plex expanded into the FAST space in 2018, and today announced it has surpassed a thousand channels (1112, in fact, including a just-announced NFL Channel) in its free-to-stream lineup, making it one of the largest inventories in the market.
The rising popularity of the FAST model, which also appeals to advertisers looking to combine the sizzle of a 30-second spot with the data targeting of an online platform, has drawn a lot of players into the space, each with its own spin on a service that can appear very similar to viewers. After all, how many channels of British murder mysteries, 2000s-era prestige shows and Hallmark tearjerkers can providers squeeze through a fiberoptic cable before viewers cease to care exactly where it’s coming from?
The companies that emerge on top need to deliver a unique and special experience for consumers, combined with a strong value proposition for advertisers. Each big player comes with its own advantages: Roku’s OTT experience, Tubi’s origins as an ad-tech platform, Samsung and LG’s ownership of the TV interface, Amazon
AMZN
Prime’s connection to consumers, and so on. Plex’s edge, according to the company’s executives, is its community.
“We began as a personal media management software,” said Plex CEO Keith Valory, who joined the company in 2012 at the invitation of co-founder and current chief product officer Scott Olechowski. “Eventually, we thought that the more interesting problem to solve over time is media chaos. People shouldn’t have to go to 20 different apps to get the content they want.”
Valory says Plex had grown a fanbase of hardcore videophiles who use the product to keep track of extensive media libraries. These enthusiasts pushed the company to develop rich capabilities around content management, discovery, recommendations, reviews and shareability, which turn out to be important differentiators when viewers are faced with thousands of choices.
Valory says he and Olechowski began building the framework for the AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) strategy in 2017, doing business development deals with studios and building relationships. They launched the service in 2019, just in time to benefit from the COVID streaming boom. “We launched our FAST channels and continued to accelerate the business,” he said. Over time, Plex has added live content, sports and hyperlocal channels to the service, which is available in over 180 countries worldwide, offered through the familiar Plex interface.
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According to Gavin Bridge, VP of Media Research for CPG Global and a FAST-focused analyst who tracks the number of FAST channels in the United States via his monthly FASTMaster report, there were more than 1,963 FAST channels in the U.S. alone as of March 2024. Currently, Plex accounts for 847 of them, and it’s growing every day.
Building click-appeal for viewers is one part of the FAST equation, but the other critical component is serving that audience up to advertisers in the narrowest, most targeted slices possible. Every FAST platform has its own proprietary algorithms for targeting and programmatic placement of the right spots to the right viewers, based on what it knows about its audience’s behavior and proclivities. Sponsors need to weigh that when deciding how to allocate their media dollars.
Valory says Plex’s edge comes from its data. “We’re very open about and transparent about sharing data with both our content partners and our advertising partners within privacy limits,” he said. “But we also have a different, more affluent set of users because they’re coming in to manage a number of their subscriptions and whatnot. We can identify them in aggregate [preserving privacy] and essentially create high-end profiles of what users are watching across every device, every country and every service.”
Because of its unique heritage, Plex has data that no one else has, relating to user behavior behind the firewall in consuming their owned video content. Valory says that many users opt in to sharing this data to improve recommendations and relevance. “We have an opportunity to help advertisers target those users on other platforms like TikTok or Facebook,” Valory said.
The company has also invested in its ad delivery capabilities. “We’re making sure we’ve optimized our ability to stay in the programmatic market, to the point that our programmatic auctions are vastly outperforming our direct sales,” said Todd Hay, VP of Revenue and Engagement for Plex. “The next step was to enrich what that inventory looks like. Advertisers like having that visibility for brand safety.”
Hay says the company uses its detailed data about viewer behavior to help micro-target in-stream trailers, native advertising, sponsored hubs, and opportunities to insert content into a viewer’s watch list with a one-click popup. He says this helps brands target consumers by their affinities: for example, correlating cruise ads to food programming because of the high correlation between those viewers and that product.
The frequency, duration and interruptive nature of these spots – even if they are highly targeted and relevant – has irritated some users, including many in the hardcore Plex fan community, who look askance at the company’s shift in focus away from their beloved media app and toward the streaming market. Many have asked for a premium ad-free paid tier, but that is precluded by FAST content distribution and licensing agreements, according to the company.
Valory acknowledges the concerns of the community. “We love our superfans and their needs are very important,” he said. “I think many of them understand that, realistically, for us to grow and thrive, we can’t just be a personal media server running at home. But at the same time, the largest development team in the company still services the personal media product even though it is not the largest revenue business, and we’re only able to do that because of all the other things we’re doing.
“People will say oh, that’s just the CEO giving a political answer, but I assure you, we talk about this all the time internally, and some of the biggest superfans and loudest users of the product are the people who work here.”
Valory said that Plex, which currently does not disclose financial information, generates roughly 20 percent of its revenues from member subscriptions, which unlock premium capabilities of its media platform, compared to 80 percent from the ad business.
Moving forward, Valory says the company sees opportunities in bundling paid subscription models, using Plex’s detailed knowledge of user tastes and behavior. “Some services are paying insane amounts on user acquisition,” said Valery. “I think our better opportunity is to help other subscriptions bundle and create discounts for end users. We don’t need to take a dime of that; we will make our money on advertising and helping people get the content they want.”
The shakeout of premium SVOD services is just getting underway, and the FAST/AVOD market, with its range of players and distinct value propositions, makes it a difficult environment for advertisers, investors and consumers to place their bets. But whatever the future of streaming holds, Plex is betting that the best strategy is to build out from the center
.
Tech
New Realme Narzo 70 series phone coming soon, teasers promise faster charging, lag-free performance – gizmochina
Realme recently launched the Narzo 70 Pro 5G smartphone in India, featuring an appealing design and the Dimensity 7050 chip. The brand has teased the release of a new Narzo phone through its X handle, suggesting it could be another addition to the Narzo 70 series.
New Narzo 70 series phone teased
The above teaser reveals that the upcoming Narzo phone will provide a lag-free experience. The other teaser suggests that the device will arrive with fast charging support. It states that a few minutes of charging will allow it to run for a couple of hours.
The Narzo 70 Pro packs a 5,000mAh battery with 67W fast charging. It is unclear whether the upcoming phone will offer faster charging capabilities than the Narzo 70 Pro. It is advisable to wait for further teasers to confirm the phone’s moniker.
To recall, the Realme Narzo 70 Pro 5G features a 6.7-inch FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 2000nits. Powered by the Dimensity 7050 chip, it comes with LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 3.1 storage for smooth performance. It packs a 5000mAh battery and 67W fast charging support.
On the front, the device features a 16-megapixel selfie camera. Its back panel has a 50-megapixel Sony IMX890 primary camera with OIS support, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. The phone runs on Realme UI 5-based Android 14.
The Narzo 70 Pro offers other features, such as an IP54-rated chassis, an in-display fingerprint scanner, rainwater smart touch technology, dual speakers, a 3D VC cooling system, and 8GB virtual RAM.
In terms of pricing, the 8GB+128GB variant of the Narzo 70 Pro retails at Rs 17,999 (~$215). On the other hand, the 8GB+256GB variant costs Rs 21,999 (~$265). It comes in Glass Green and Glass Gold shades.
RELATED:
Tech
iPhone 15 Pro Desperado Mafia model launched at over ₹6.5 lakh- All details about this luxury iPhone from Caviar – HT Tech
Would you like to buy an exclusive iPhone 15 Pro which costs more than Rs.6.5 lakhs? Well, a Dubai-based luxury brand named Caviar launched the high-end version of the iPhone 15 Pro which is inspired by popular mafia movies. The new iPhone 15 Pro model comes under “Desperado Mafia” which has three unique designs which may grab your attention but the price point may shock many buyers. Know more about this exclusive iPhone 15 Pro collection.
iPhone 15 Pro Desperado Mafia collection
The Desperado Mafia comes with three custom iPhone 15 Pro designs which include Godfather, Revenge, and Capone. All the variants are based on mafia movies and feature black titanium, gold accents, quotes and symbols to make it look attractive.
Also read: iPhone 15 vs Samsung Galaxy S24
Not sure which
mobile to buy?
The Godfather model of iPhone 15 Pro features a quote from the film which says, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” Caviar said it is “Designed for lovers of gangster movies and masculinity, “Godfather” emphasises your manliness and taste.”
The Revenge variant is inspired by the famous Netflix series “Peaky Blinders.” This model features a skull cleaved by a blade which represents struggle and strength. Lastly, the Capone model is inspired by “The Untouchables” and features a quote saying “Never stop fighting until the fight is done.” This quote highlights the “symbol of courage, urging you to overcome challenges and never give up.”
Also read: Apple to make the iPhone 16 Pro models ‘colourful’ using tech from iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Pro Desperado Mafia collection price
The 128GB iPhone 15 Pro under the Desperado Mafia collection starts at $8060 for the “Capone” model. Whereas, the iPhone 15 Pro Max Revenege will be priced at $10270 for the 1TB storage variant.
Additionally, caviar is also offering exclusive packaging for the Desperado Mafia collection of iPhone 15 Pro. On the outside of the box, you’ll see the company logo and name in gold. Once you open the box, you’ll see “Caviar Royal Gift” written inside with the new iPhone 15 Pro.
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