The Morning After: Will EA be the next gaming giant to sell itself?

Electronic Arts is actively courting buyers — or another company willing to merge with it, according to insider news site, Puck. The video game company reportedly held talks with several potential buyers or partners, including major players Disney, Apple and Amazon.

EA remains a company of its own for now, but Puck said it’s more proactive in its quest to find a sale since Microsoft announced it’s snapping up Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. In short, it shows that some companies are willing to throw around enough money to buy a gaming giant like EA.

The company, arguably best known for its legion of sports games, recently parted ways with FIFA for its soccer/football series. It’ll be called EA Sports FC going forward. No, it is not catchy.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The camera brand has already worked with Sharp and Huawei.

Xiaomi finally confirmed its “long-term strategic cooperation” with Leica, and that they’ve been co-developing a flagship smartphone for launch in July 2022. Teaming up with camera companies has been done several times over – especially by Chinese phone manufacturers trying to stand out from the crowd. In 2020, Vivo joined forces with Zeiss, while Oppo and OnePlus started releasing handsets jointly developed with Hasselblad, including the Find X5 series and the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Harder to stand out when everyone is doing the same thing, though.

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Why?

Amazon beamed the first episode of sci-fi series Night Sky out of Earth’s atmosphere. It’s calling it “the first-ever intergalactic premiere for a TV series.”

Prime Video’s press release said the transmission won’t be caught by broadcast satellites and sent back to terra firma, as is usually the case. “Theoretically, this makes the broadcast available to anyone open to receiving satellite signals 384,000 kilometers away from Earth and beyond — the equivalent distance from Earth to the Moon.”

Theoretically.

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The last episode will be longer than some movies.

Netflix is trying to build up hype for Stranger Things season four in a not-so-subtle way: sharing the first eight minutes of the introductory episode. It’s heavy on the flashback, but there should be enough to hook intrigued parties.

Watch here.

Some users could get a 20-fold speed increase.

The FCC wants to boost rural broadband internet speeds through proposed changes to the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program. It wants to crank up download and upload speeds to 100/20 Mbps in areas served by carriers that receive A-CAM support. The current baseline is 25/3 Mbps.

Last week, the Biden administration launched a $45 billion project to bring all Americans online by 2030.

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