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This week we have Giants coming for the Designer Space and Cloud Gaming Renaissance.
Analytics, Digital, Design In Action
Giants In Designer Space
Microsoft announces Canva competitor with new 'Designer' app powered by AI. Microsoft Designer looks a lot like the Canva design app. (Canva even has been testing a text-to-image creation capability which is similar to one of Designer's key features.) Microsoft is touting Designer, Create and Image Creator as key elements of a family of Microsoft Creator tools.
Microsoft has been trying for years to find ways to hammer home the message that its Surface PCs and Windows operating system are built with creators in mind. This obsession in no small part is because Apple is one of the main targets of the Surface and Windows teams.
Meanwhile, the competition for SMB users and Designers are also heating up elsewhere as Adobe has acquired Figma.
Adobe says it will keep Figma going rather than eliminate a rival to Adobe AD, but Figma users are concerned for two main reasons: price and bloat. Many liked Figma's independence and see Adobe as a monopolistic behemoth that's going to want to charge them more money. Figma currently has a free starter plan and a professional plan that starts at $12 per month per editor – significantly less than an Adobe Creative Cloud single-app subscription. However, Figma insists that there are "currently" no plans to change its pricing and that access will remain free for those in education.
We’ll likely see some more big developments in the SMB and Designer space. More and more competitives, from social media to now enterprise software companies, are trying to sell more into these market segments under the Creator Economy movement.
Cloud Gaming Renaissance
Microsoft is looking to build an Xbox mobile gaming store with Activision and King content. “The transaction will improve Microsoft’s ability to create a next-generation game store that operates across a range of devices, including mobile, as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard’s content. Building on Activision Blizzard’s existing communities of gamers, Xbox will seek to scale the Xbox Store to mobile, attracting gamers to a new Xbox Mobile Platform,” Microsoft wrote in its filings.
Games are some of the most popular downloads on mobile and drive in-app purchases on app stores. As Microsoft says:
The transaction gives Microsoft a meaningful presence in mobile gaming. Mobile gaming revenues from the King division and titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile, as well as ancillary revenue, represented more than half of Activision Blizzard’s ... revenues in the first half of 2022. Mobile customers account for around three-quarters of its MAU. Microsoft currently has no meaningful presence in mobile gaming and the Transaction will bring much needed expertise in mobile game development, marketing and advertising. Activision Blizzard will be able to contribute its learnings from developing and publishing mobile games to Xbox gaming studios.
Meanwhile, at TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu dropped two bits of news about the streaming giant’s foray into games. Verdu said that Netflix is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering.” The company will also open a new gaming studio in Southern California.
Microsoft and Netflix’s stances are a contrast to Google’s, who’s earmarked to shutdown Stadia, their Cloud Gaming offering, this January 2023. In any case, Cloud Gaming is one of the most important end-games for the industry and no one’s cracked it yet.
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