Electronic Arts is calling it quits with FIFA after nearly 30 years of using the soccer governing body's name in the titles of its games. FIFA 23 will be the last EA game with that branding when it arrives later this year. Starting in 2023, the annual soccer games will use the moniker "EA Sports FC" instead. More info about the first title in the revamped series will be revealed in July 2023.

Other than the rebranding, the EA Sports FC games may not be vastly different from what fans are used to in the long run. EA still holds licenses for more than 300 soccer partners and has exclusive agreements with the likes of the Premier League, MLS, La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A.

You can expect next year's title to still have more than 19,000 players, 700+ teams, north of 100 stadiums and 30 leagues. Features such as career mode, Ultimate Team and VOLTA Football will still be present too. It's unclear, however, what the move will mean for the inclusion of FIFA-operated competitions such as the World Cup and Women’s World Cup in future titles.

In the meantime, EA Sports and Racing executive vice-president Cam Weber said his team and FIFA "are excited to deliver the greatest, most expansive EA Sports FIFA ever later this fall." He said there will be more teams, players, competitions, leagues and game modes than in any previous games. These updates will not only be present in FIFA 23, but also in FIFA Mobile, FIFA Online 4 and esports.

“We’re thankful for our many years of great partnership with FIFA," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a statement. "The future of global football is very bright, and fandom around the world has never been stronger. We have an incredible opportunity to put EA Sports FC at the heart of the sport, and to bring even more innovative and authentic experiences to the growing football audience.”

The end of the partnership isn't too surprising. FIFA expressed concern last fall about one entity (i.e. EA) having too much of the soccer gaming pie. It was talking with developers and other parties about how to "widen" the scope of its gaming and esports offerings. EA, on the other hand, said soon after the launch of FIFA 22 that it was "reviewing our naming rights agreement with FIFA" ahead of a possible rebranding. It filed a trademark application for "EA Sports FC" around the same time.

There are, of course, financial considerations at play. The New York Times reported in October that FIFA makes around $150 million per year through its licensing agreement with EA. In negotiations with the publisher, FIFA is said to have asked for a payment of over $1 billion for each World Cup cycle of four years. The two sides were also reportedly at odds over the scope of the partnership as well, including aspects like exclusivity.

Although Netflix had long said its service wouldn't include ads, it revealed last month that it will actually roll out a cheaper, ad-supported plan. Co-CEO Reed Hastings said on an earnings call that plans for that tier would be firmed up "over the next year or two." However, it seems the company is looking to offer the option even sooner. It reportedly suggested in an internal memo that an ad-supported version of the streaming service will emerge later this year.

Executives told staff in the note that they want to introduce an ad-supported plan in the last three months of 2022, according to The New York Times. What's more, the note suggested the tier will be introduced around the same time as an extra fee for subscribers who share their passwords with people living at different addresses.

In the memo, Netflix is said to have noted that, outside of Apple TV+, every major streaming platform offers a lower-cost, ad-supported plan. Those include Hulu, HBO Max and Peacock. The company reportedly said that some of its competitors have still been able to “maintain strong brands" while showing commercials.

Meanwhile, Netflix recently said that more than 222 million households are paid subscribers. However, it claimed more than 100 million households are watching Netflix on someone else's account without paying for access. On the earnings call, chief operating officer Greg Peters said that while the company is “not trying to shut down that sharing," it is "going to ask you to pay a bit more to be able to share.” Netflix started testing an extra fee for account sharers in Peru, Chile and Costa Rica in March.

After years of impressive growth, Netflix suddenly has a big issue when it comes to subscriber numbers, which fell for the first time last quarter. It lost 200,000 members (largely due to shutting down its service in Russia) and it thinks it may lose as many as another two million this quarter. With its stock nosediving by over 50 percent in the last month, the company is hoping an ad-supported tier and extra charges for password sharing will help increase revenue.

Peloton has posted a heavy quarterly loss for the first quarter, indicating that it has a lot of work to do in order to correct course. The company made a net loss of $757.1 million in the first three months of the year (Q3 of Peloton's 2022 fiscal year). Not only was that a worse result than expected, it's a massive decrease from the $8.6 million loss it posted for the same period in 2021.

Revenue dropped from $1.262 billion a year ago to $964 million. Operating expenses, meanwhile, grew by 101 percent year-over year to $920 million. Peloton says those represented 95.4 percent of total revenue for the quarter, compared with 36.3 percent a year earlier.

One of the company's biggest challenges has been handling its stockpile of connected fitness equipment in the wake of a sales decline as more people return to office life. "We have too much [inventory] for the current run rate of the business, and that inventory has consumed an enormous amount of cash, more than we expected, which has caused us to rethink our capital structure," CEO Barry McCarthy, who took on the job in February, wrote in a letter to shareholders. "We believe the inventory will sell eventually, so this is primarily a cash flow timing issue, not a structural issue."

Around the time McCarthy was appointed, Peloton announced it would cut 2,800 jobs, or around 20 percent of the corporate workforce. Rumors swirled in February that the company was an acquisition target for several suitors, with the likes of Amazon and Nike said to be interested.

Although it won't be easy for the company to get back on track, Peloton at least has a plan to turn things around. It aims to return to positive free cash flow in its 2023 fiscal year.

Last month, it announced an upcoming increase to subscriptions along with price cuts for many of its connected fitness machines. There are several reasons why Peloton is banking more heavily on subscriptions. For one, subscription revenues rose by 55 percent year-over-year to $369.9 million. The company now has 7 million members, and McCarthy has a long-term goal of reaching 100 million. "Our users are highly engaged, and our subscriber churn rate is less than 1 percent, which is the best I’ve seen," McCarthy, a former Netflix and Spotify executive, said.

McCarthy said the pricing changes could help the company deliver "roughly $40 million of incremental revenue monthly." The increased cost of the All-Access plan doesn't kick in until June 1st, but McCarthy says there's only been a small increase in user attrition and the move will generate an extra $14 million in revenue each month if that level of churn holds.

Cutting prices on some hardware models has led to a 69 percent increase in daily unit sales too. So far, that move has increased revenue by $25 million per month. The company also plans to keep testing a program that will combine an All-Access subscription plan with rentals of its equipment.

McCarthy noted that Peloton is revamping its workforce as it shifts from a hardware- to a software-focused company. The recent job cuts factor into the company's plan to increase annual run-rate savings to at least $800 million by its 2024 fiscal year. It also signed a binding commitment letter to borrow $750 million in five-year term debt from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Meanwhile, Peloton says more than half a million users have tried Lanebreak, its first gamified workout, on Bike and Bike+. The company expects to lean "more into gaming content in response to the success of Lanebreak."

Weeks after its workers won a union election for the first time, Amazon fired two of the employees who were involved in organization efforts. It's the first time Amazon has forced out workers involved in the union drive since the election win on April 1, according to Motherboard, though it's not whether the company took these actions in retaliation.

Mat Cusick, a warehouse worker and communications lead for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), was on COVID-19 leave to care for a loved one when he received notice of his firing on May 3rd, he told the outlet. The reason Amazon gave was that it let go Cusick for “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment.”

Fellow organizer Tristan Dutchin said he was fired four days later for failing to meet productivity targets. "I believe it was retaliatory," Dutchin, who has been a vocal union advocate in the press, told Motherboard.

Amazon has fired workers on both sides of labor organizing drives at JFK8. In March 2020, the company terminated the employment of Chris Smalls, who led a protest over Amazon's alleged failure to protect workers from COVID-19. Smalls is now the president of ALU. In April, the company was ordered to reinstate a JFK8 worker who it fired after a protest two years earlier.

Last week, Amazon let go six senior managers who were said to have been involved in the company's anti-union efforts at JFK8. Amazon said it pushed them out as part of “management changes." Some believed they were fired as a result of the union's election win.

Amazon has challenged the election result in court. It has yet to recognize the ALU. Engadget has contacted Amazon for comment.

Lincoln College says it will close this week in the wake of a ransomware attack that took months to resolve. While the impact of COVID-19 severely impacted activities such as recruitment and fundraising, the cyberattack seems to have been the tipping point for the Illinois institution.

The college has informed the Illinois Department of Higher Education and Higher Learning Commission that it will permanently close as of May 13th. As NBC News notes, it's the first US college or university to shut down in part because of a ransomware attack.

Lincoln says it had "record-breaking student enrollment" in fall 2019. However, the pandemic caused a sizable fall in enrollment with some students opting to defer college or take a leave of absence. The college — one of only a few rural schools to qualify as a predominantly Black institution under the Department of Education — said those affected its financial standing.

Last December, Lincoln was hit by a cyberattack, which "thwarted admissions activities and hindered access to all institutional data, creating an unclear picture of fall 2022 enrollment. All systems required for recruitment, retention and fundraising efforts were inoperable," the college said in a statement posted on its homepage. "Fortunately, no personal identifying information was exposed. Once fully restored in March 2022, the projections displayed significant enrollment shortfalls, requiring a transformational donation or partnership to sustain Lincoln College beyond the current semester."

Barring a last-minute respite, the one-two punch of the pandemic and a cyberattack have brought an end to a 157-year-old institution. Lincoln says it will help students who aren't graduating this semester transfer to another college.

Over the last few years, ransomware hackers have attacked other educational facilities, as well as hospitals, game studios, Sinclair Broadcast Group and many other companies and institutions.

Electronic Arts is stepping back into Middle-earth. The publisher has announced a free-to-play mobile game called The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth. The RPG is the first EA mobile title based on J.R.R. Tolkien's works. EA Capital Games is developing the game. The studio was behind another successful collectible mobile RPG in 2015's Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.

Heroes of Middle-earth will include characters from both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, along with collection systems, turn-based combat and "immersive storytelling." EA said in a press release that players will experience "iconic stories from the world of Tolkien and take up the fight against the great evils of Middle-earth." Unsurprisingly, given that this is a free-to-play mobile title, there will be microtransactions.

“We are incredibly excited to partner with The Saul Zaentz Company and Middle-earth Enterprises on the next generation of mobile role-playing games,” said EA's vice-president of mobile RPG Malachi Boyle said. “The team is filled with fans of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and each day they bring their tremendous passion and talents together to deliver an authentic experience for players. The combination of high-fidelity graphics, cinematic animations, and stylized art immerses players in the fantasy of Middle-earth where they’ll go head-to-head with their favorite characters.”

This will be EA's first LOTR title since 2009's The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, as Polygon notes. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, NetEase and Glu Mobile (which EA bought last year) are among the other publishers who have released mobile LOTR games.

EA expects to start limited regional beta tests of The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth this summer.

It's not the only major LOTR project scheduled to debut this year. Daedalic's action-adventure title The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is supposed to arrive in 2022. And then, of course, there's the small matter of Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series, which will premiere on September 2nd.

As promised (or threatened, depending on your perspective), NFTs are coming to Instagram imminently. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the app will this week start testing a way for users to display non-fungible tokens on their profiles.

"We're starting building for NFTs, not just in our metaverse and Reality Labs work, but also across our family of apps." Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook. "We're starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs."

A similar feature is coming to Facebook in the near future, and Meta is considering enabling NFTs in its other apps, such as Messenger and WhatsApp. Also in the works is a way for people to display 3D NFTs in Instagram Stories using augmented reality. Zuckerberg says this feature would be built on Spark AR and would allow users to "place digital art in physical spaces."

Rumors swirled over the weekend suggesting that Instagram would start testing non-fungible tokens in the app this week. CoinDesk reported that Meta would allow integrations with NFTs from the Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Flow blockchains. 

It's not entirely clear as yet how NFTs will be displayed on Instagram and Facebook. Engadget has contacted Meta for more details.

Zuckerberg has also spoken of his ambitions for NFTs in Meta's take on the metaverse. “I would hope that you know, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse, you know, can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places,” he said at SXSW in March.

It's been 11 months since Microsoft confirmed it's making a dedicated game-streaming device and a smart TV app for the Xbox ecosystem. The company hasn't announced many more details about either since then, but a new report suggests they could arrive in the coming months.

The streaming device, which can be plugged into a TV or monitor, will have either a stick or a puck design, according to GamesBeat. In other words, it'll look like an Amazon Fire Stick or a Chromecast. It's believed that you'll not only be able to stream games from Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the device, but also use it to watch movies and TV shows.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is said to be working with Samsung on an Xbox app for that company's TVs. Some of Samsung's 2022 models support game streaming services like Google Stadia and NVIDIA GeForce Now. It wouldn't be surprising at all to see an Xbox Cloud Gaming app on those TVs too.

Both the TV app and streaming device are expected to arrive within the next 12 months. They form part of Microsoft's Xbox Everywhere strategy. The name is self-explanatory — the company wants to reach gamers wherever they are, even if they don't have an Xbox console or a capable gaming PC.

The project took another step forward this week with the addition of Fortnite to Xbox Cloud Gaming this week. That offers people a way to stream the all-conquering battle royale on smartphones (yes, even iPhones), tablets and PC.

What makes this different from other streaming games from Xbox is that it's free. You don't need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to stream Fortnite — just a Microsoft account. Microsoft says it's interested in offering more free-to-play titles via the cloud, so perhaps the likes of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone and the multiplayer side of Halo Infinite will be available at some point.

We might not have to wait much longer to hear about the next steps for the Xbox Everywhere initiative. A big Xbox and Bethesda showcase will take place on June 12th, and there could be more than game announcements and trailers in store.

Spotify's experimental Stations app is soon to be no more. The company says it will shut down the app on May 16th. It took a leaf out of the Pandora playbook with Stations, as the app and web player offered a way to listen to curated playlists in a radio-style format. Stations debuted in Australia in 2018 and arrived in the US the following year. The app has now been removed from the App Store and Google Play Store.

The company says it often conducts tests to "create better listening experiences" for users. Our "Spotify Stations Beta was one of those tests," Spotify told TechCrunch. "We will be sunsetting the current feature, but users will be able to easily transfer their favorite stations and enjoy a similar radio experience directly within the Spotify app.”

If you're a Stations user, you'll be able to move the stations you want to keep over to the Spotify app. You'll find them in your library in a folder called Spotify Stations. 

Those who enjoyed the app and its streamlined design may be disappointed by the move. However, the company noted that the radio feature in the main app offers a similar feature — it can create an ad-hoc station based on any artist, song, album or playlist.

Google is putting together a team to build backend services for blockchain developers. The company is hoping to make Google Cloud Platform the primary destination for those who want to run Web3 apps.

“We’re not trying to be part of that cryptocurrency wave directly,” Google Cloud vice president Amit Zavery told CNBC. “We’re providing technologies for companies to use and take advantage of the distributed nature of Web3 in their current businesses and enterprises.”

Zavery told staff in an email (which was viewed by CNBC) that the Web3 market is "already demonstrating tremendous potential with many customers asking us to increase our support for Web3 and crypto related technologies."

This isn't quite Google's first foray into this space. In January, it announced a Digital Assets Team and said it would look into ways of allowing Google Cloud customers to make and receive crypto payments. On an earnings call the following month, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the Cloud unit was exploring support for blockchain projects.

The new team will comprise employees who have been involved in Web3 projects either at Google or on their own time, according to Zavery. He said Google may create a system that will enable other companies to make it easy for people to look into blockchain data. Google's tools will be compatible with other platforms like Amazon Web Services, Zavery said.

There's an element of incongruity here. A core aim of the Web3 movement is making the web decentralized and shifting power away from major companies like Google, Amazon and Meta. Still, Web3 developers need to host their apps and services somewhere, and Google wants to be their first choice.