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Keywords Raises £100m Acquisition Fund; Ubisoft Sues Apple & Google – TheGamingEconomy

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TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the prevalent business stories in gaming. In today’s news: Keywords raises £100m acquisition fund; Ubisoft sues Apple and Google; and Tencent to establish North American AAA studio.

Keywords raises £100m acquisition fund

Keywords Studios has raised approximately £100m through the issuance of 6.9 million new ordinary shares at a placing price of £14.50, with the financing to be used to support the acquisition of video game service companies struggling as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Any purchases by the Dublin-based firm will purportedly be in line with its current acquisition strategy of targeting multiple geographies, service sectors, and company scale. The raise follows Keywords amassing a similar £100m war-chest last year, which led to the acquisitions of Ichi, Kantan, Syllabes, Sunny Side Up, Get Social, Wizcorp, Descriptive Video Works, and TV+SYNCHRON Berlin GmbH.

The announcement proposing the raise reads, “Despite the background of the gaming industry’s general resilience to COVID-19 and structural growth drivers, the Group is expecting to see some stress in predominantly smaller service providers, which are typically single location and service with fewer clients and less able to weather the disruption. A third party survey of 300 professionals from Game Developers, Game Publishers and Service Providers conducted in late March 2020 revealed that 29% of Service Provides fear a risk of insolvency if the COVID-19 crisis were to continue for six months. This is likely to result in an increased number of acquisition opportunities for Keywords Studios, with some targets now more inclined to re-engage previously stale exploratory conversations.”

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At the time of writing, Keywords Studios PLC (LON: KWS) share price is up 6.15% at £15.87.

Ubisoft sues Apple and Google

Ubisoft Google Apple

Developer-publisher Ubisoft has filed a lawsuit against Apple and Google in the US Federal Court in Los Angeles, alleging that the two companies have failed to remove an unauthorised copy of its Rainbow Six Siege (R6S) title from their respective Google Play and Apple App online stores. As initially reported by Bloomberg, the lawsuit alleges that Arena F2 (AF2), a mobile FPS title developed by Alibaba-owned Ejoy.com which was released last month, is a “near carbon copy” of R6S, copying various assets including its user interface. Ubisoft has reportedly notified Google and Apple of the alleged copyright infringement, with both refusing to remove AF2 from their storefronts at the time of writing.

The lawsuit reads, “R6S is among the most popular competitive multiplayer games in the world, and is among Ubisoft’s most valuable intellectual properties. Virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen, and everything in between. Ubisoft’s competitors are constantly looking for ways to piggyback on R6S’s popularity and to capture the attention, and money, of R6S players.”

Tencent to establish North American AAA studio

Tencent

Tencent Holdings Limited will be establishing a new AAA-focused studio in the North American region, marking the latest in a series of moves to consolidate its market position in Western markets. The studio will be led by former Halo 4 Design Director Scott Warner, who will be leaving his position as Game Director at Ubisoft. While Tencent announced last week that its online game revenue had climbed by 31% during the first quarter of 2020 alone, the majority of its international growth has been powered by acquisitions and strategic investments, rather than through the establishment of its own development houses. While the exact location of the studio has yet to be confirmed, Warner has suggested on Twitter that Seattle and Los Angeles are leading contenders.

In further news from Tencent, Kojima Productions co-founder Ken-Ichiro Imaizumi, who left the Japanese studio in November last year, has reportedly joined the the former’s European division. Though his exact responsibilities are as-yet unclear, Tencent Europe primarily focuses on identifying new investment opportunities across the EMEA region, along with promoting the expansion of its WeChat social messaging, e-commerce, and gaming, platform.

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Apple announces Worldwide Developers Conference dates, in-person event – CityNews Toronto

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Apple has announced their annual developers conference will take place June 10 through June 14.

The big summer event will be live-streamed, but some select developers have been invited to attend in-person events at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California, on June 10.

The company typically showcases their latest software and product updates — including the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AppleTV and Vision Pro headset — during a keynote address on the first day.

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Contributing to a drop in Apple’s stock price this year is concern it lags behind Microsoft and Google in the push to develop products powered by artificial intelligence technology. While Apple tends to keep its product development close to the vest, CEO Tim Cook signaled at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in February that it has been making big investments in generative AI and plans to disclose more later this year.

The week-long conference will have opportunities for developers to connect with Apple designers and engineers to gain insight into new tools, frameworks and features, according to the company’s announcement.

The Associated Press

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iPhone 16 Rumors Point to Action Button and New, Vertical Camera Layout – CNET

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The upcoming iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are still months away from their expected launch this fall, but a new set of images published online may give us a better sense of their potential features. Among the revelations, the iPhone 16 may include an action button, similar to the one on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro, and it may have redesigned cameras in a vertical stack.

AppleInsider published a series of photos it says show dummy 3D prints of the upcoming iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro from an unnamed leaker. Aside from the action button and reworked cameras on the iPhone 16, AppleInsider also said its source found the iPhone 16 Pro to be “slightly larger” than its predecessor. Analysts had earlier said they expect the Pro model screens will grow somewhat.

Read more: iPhone 16: All the Major Rumors on Apple’s Next iPhone

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The new details suggest that a series of expected hardware updates are likely for this year’s new iPhones. Apple typically announces new iPhones around September, and the company tends to offer incremental upgrades to each new phone, introducing, over the period of several years, better cameras, screens and battery life, features that end up seeming like major upgrades when people get around to buying a new phone

Last year, Apple added a new titanium frame, action button and USB-C charging to its iPhone 15 Pro, which starts at $999. For its entry-level iPhone, Apple followed its well-worn strategy of trickling pro features down to the mainstream, adding the iPhone 14 Pro’s well-received Dynamic Island to the $799 iPhone 15, along with USB-C charging.

AppleInsider didn’t indicate whether its leaker had divined a reason for the iPhone 16’s shifted camera placements, but the two lenses will now reportedly be stacked one on top of the other, instead of diagonally. Apple has previously said it uses stacked lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro for spatial video capture, a key new technology the company highlighted as part of its $3,499 Apple Vision Pro headset, released in February.

Though AppleInsider’s leaks appear to confirm many previous rumors, not all renders and 3D prints are accurate, something the rumor blog notes itself in its report. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the veracity of the leaks.

Watch this: What Google Gemini AI on the iPhone Could Look Like

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I Took 600+ Photos With the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Look at My Favorites

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Leaked iPhone 16 dummy units hint at larger sizes and new buttons

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The iPhone 15 Pro Max, with a 6.7-inch screen
(Image credit: Future)

We’re already counting down to the arrival of the iPhone 16 series – most probably sometime in September – and a leak showing dummy units of the upcoming phones has revealed a few of the changes we can expect to see later this year.

These dummy units are usually based on supply chain information, and have various business uses – like helping case manufacturers get their wares ready for new phones before they’re launched, for example. In this case, the images were posted to Chinese social network Weibo, as spotted by MacRumors.

Perhaps the most interesting reveal from these blocks of plastic and metal is that they show the previously rumored increase in size for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max displays – up to 6.3 inches (from 6.1 inches) and 6.9 inches (from 6.7 inches) respectively.

That’s not a huge jump of course, but it does mean more screen space for apps and media. The bezels are apparently shrinking down to accommodate the larger screens, which means the increase in the physical size of these handsets is only a slight one.

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On the button

iPhone 16 dummy units leak

The next iPhones might look a bit like this, but less blue (Image credit: Weibo)

Further reveals from this leak match up with what we’ve heard before: that all four models are going to get the Action button that replaced the Ring/Silent switch on the 2023 Pro models, as well as a brand-new Capture button for getting more creative with photos.

Also of note is the redesigned rear camera module that we think is coming to the back of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. The new vertical, pill-shaped look has been leaked already, but this is more evidence that it’s on the way – taking us back to a design that’s more reminiscent of the iPhone 12, which came out in 2020.

As always with such rumors, be somewhat cautious about reading too much into the look of these dummy units. That said, as more and more similar leaks pile up, it becomes more likely that they’re based on accurate information.

The next big Apple date for your calendar is WWDC 2024 – its Worldwide Developers Conference starts on June 10, at which time we should hear much more about what’s coming this year with iOS 18 and Apple’s other software platforms.

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Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

Leaked iPhone 16 dummy units hint at larger sizes and new buttons

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