eBay is placing a big bet on the booming trading card industry. The company is set to buy TCGplayer — an online marketplace for trading card games — in a deal valued up to $295 million, it announced today. Launched in 2008, TCGplayer specializes in trading cards from popular franchises like Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Digimon and more. The site will operate independently after the acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023. eBay — which is currently the world’s largest card resale site — also noted that the deal will provide it with “strategic omnichannel capabilities like order fulfillment and cart optimization.”

The pandemic drove a surge of interest in collectible trading cards that has only recently started to slow down. Last year eBay sold a trading card every two seconds, noted The Athletic. The company has taken steps to make it easier for individuals to sell trading cards on its platform, such as adding image recognition to automate listings and authenticating trading cards worth $750 or more.

eBay has also ventured into another area of collectibles — NFTs. Earlier this year, the company launched its own NFT collection and bought digital art marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum.  

Following more than two years of controversy, the chief executive officer of Pegasus spyware creator NSO Group is stepping down. On Sunday, co-founder and outgoing CEO Shalev Hulio said he was handing over operations of the company to chief operating officer Yaron Shohat as part of a restructuring that will see it refocus on NATO-member countries. According to Bloomberg, NSO is also cutting its headcount. The firm reportedly plans to lay off about 100 employees before it appoints a permanent replacement for Hulio.

The restructuring comes as NSO Group continues to face scrutiny from both governments and other tech companies. In November 2021, the US Commerce Department added NSO to its Entity List, effectively banning American companies from doing business with the firm unless they obtain explicit permission to do so. That same month, Apple sued NSO to “hold it accountable” for enabling governments to spy on activists and journalists.

"The company’s products remain in high demand with governments and law enforcement agencies because of its cutting-edge technology and proven ability to assist these customers in fighting crime and terror," Shohat said. "NSO will ensure that the company's groundbreaking technologies are used for rightful and worthy purposes."

Apple may be planning to bring ads to more of its first-party apps. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company has conducted internal tests of a version of Maps that features search ads. Apple already employs similar advertisements within the App Store.

Developers can pay the company to get their software to show up at the top of the search results page when you input specific terms. Gurman suggests search ads in Maps would work in much the same way. For instance, a Japanese restaurant could pay Apple for their business to show up higher in local listings when people use search terms like “sushi.” Gurman believes Apple could implement similar ads in its Podcasts and Books apps. He says the company could begin offering an ad-supported tier through Apple TV+.

Gurman attributes the potential push to Todd Teresi, the vice president in charge of the company’s advertising division. Teresi recently began reporting directly to services chief Eddy Cue and has reportedly talked of greatly expanding his team’s impact. The division generates about $4 billion in annual revenue. Teresi’s ambition is to increase that number to the double digits. That would require a significant expansion of Apple’s current advertising efforts.

A wider advertising push would be an about-face for a company that has, at least externally, positioned itself as a champion of user privacy. With the release of iOS 14.5, Apple introduced a feature called App Tracking Transparency. The prompt allows you to prevent apps from logging your activity across other apps and websites. In 2022, it’s estimated the policy will cost Facebook parent company Meta approximately $13 billion in lost revenue. When Apple announced ATT at WWDC 2020, the company publicly said it designed the feature to protect user privacy. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal, which said the company pursued a revenue-sharing agreement with Facebook, suggests its motivations with ATT may have not been so altruistic.

It's been a brutal year for Peloton and the company is enacting more major changes in a bid to get back on track. On the consumer front, Peloton is reversing price cuts to two of its core pieces of fitness equipment. The Bike+ is going back up from $1,995 to $2,495 in the US.

The Tread, meanwhile, will be more expensive than before Peloton reduced prices in April to focus on subscription revenues. The Tread will go up by $800 in the US to $3,495. At the start of this year, the machine cost $2,895. The company is also increasing the prices of the products in Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia.

Lowering the prices in the first place “cheapened at least the perception of the brand,” CEO Barry McCarthy told Bloomberg. “So this is a return to historical positioning.” He added that, "I probably wouldn’t have messed with the prices at all if I had been confronted with different inventory states back when we lowered the pricing.” The company isn't changing the price of the original Bike or the Peloton Guide system for now.

Meanwhile, in its third publicly disclosed round of layoffs this year, Peloton is cutting another 784 jobs across its distribution and customer service teams. It will close 16 warehouses in North America and solely use third-party companies for deliveries and setting up equipment in people's homes. Shutting down in-house distribution and closing warehouses will lead to the loss of 532 jobs.

The company will also use third-parties to augment its customer support team, which will be slashed roughly in half with the loss of 252 positions. Those job cuts are on top of around 570 employees Peloton laid off in Taiwan last month as it transitions away from in-house manufacturing. In February, Peloton culled around 2,800 jobs and brought in McCarthy as the new CEO. However, the company still plans to hire in certain areas, such as software development.

On top of all of that, Peloton plans to start closing its retail showrooms next year. It remains to be seen how many will be closed, though it operates 86 in the US and Canada. The company will require office-based workers to return to its offices as of November.

McCarthy told employees in a memo (which was provided to Bloomberg) that changes were necessary to help make the company cash-flow positive once more. “We have to make our revenues stop shrinking and start growing again,” he wrote. “Cash is oxygen. Oxygen is life.”

Peloton posted a huge loss of $757.1 million for the first three months of 2022 due to a decline in revenue and soaring operating costs. It saw a major boom in business soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it believed that demand would continue after the planet opened back up and it built too many units of its fitness gear before slowing down production earlier this year. 

We'll soon have a clearer picture of the current state of the business. Peloton will post its earnings results for the April-June quarter (Q4 of its fiscal year) on August 25th.

Netflix’s entry into the gaming market is off to a slow start. According to an analysis performed by Apptopia on behalf of CNBC, the streaming giant’s games have been downloaded a total of 23.3 million times and average about 1.7 million daily users. Put another way, less than one percent of Netflix’s 221 million customers are taking advantage of the games included in their subscriptions.

Netflix did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. In the past, the company indicated it did not expect its gaming division to be profitable immediately. “We’re going to be experimental and try a bunch of things,” Netflix COO Greg Peters told investors during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings calls last year.

Still, the question that’s probably on everyone’s mind is how long Netflix is willing to wait to see if it made the right bet, especially after it lost nearly one million subscribers during its most recent quarter. Other lofty bets — like the company's in-house fan blog, Tudum — were the subject of cutbacks after only a few months of spending.

The company has shared precious few details on how much it has spent expanding its portfolio beyond TV shows and movies, but most signs point to a significant investment. Earlier this year, the company paid $72 million to acquire Next Games, the studio behind Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales. More recently, it secured exclusive mobile rights to beloved indie titles like Spiritfarer and Into The Breach. The company is unlikely to make similar investments in the future if its current ones don’t pan out.

Luxury EV startup Lucid Motors changed its yearly production target again, lowering it to an expected output of between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles, the company announced today. That’s only a fraction of the 20,000 cars that Lucid initially promised to deliver in 2022. The Tesla competitor has only produced 1,405 vehicles so far this year, giving it a mere four months to build thousands of new cars.

Supply chain woes and a shortage of parts and raw materials are to blame for the slow output, the company claims. In a call with investors, the California-based company’s CEO Peter Rawlinson said it is planning a number of structural changes to amp up production. "Our revised production guidance reflects the extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges we encountered," said Rawlinson. "We've identified the primary bottlenecks, and we are taking appropriate measures – bringing our logistics operations in-house, adding key hires to the executive team, and restructuring our logistics and manufacturing organization."

On top of ongoing production struggles, this May the company was forced to recall all of its 2022 Air EVs due to wiring issues — a total of over 1,000 cars. Such challenges haven't appeared to impact demand for the luxury vehicles. So far, there have been 37,000 reservations for Lucid Motor’s all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air, the company disclosed in the call. On top of that, Lucid plans to sell over 100,000 cars to the government of Saudi Arabia — which poured over $1 billion into the company and owns a 62 percent stake.

Nintendo's Switch sales fell significantly last quarter, dropping to 3.43 million units compared to 4.45 million during the same period last year, according to its earnings report. Software sales also fell to 41.4 million units compared to 45.3 million year over year. All that that resulted in an operating profit of 101.6 billion yen ($763 million), down from last year and short of what was expected. 

The company chalked up the Switch sales issue to a parts shortage, the same thing that bedeviled Sony during the same quarter. "Hardware production was impacted by factors such as the global shortage of semiconductor components, resulting in a decrease of hardware shipments," the company said. It noted that the OLED model made up a large chunk of Switch sales with 1.52 million units sold, and the lower margins on that model dragged profit down a bit.

While game sales also dropped, Nintendo managed to boost the overall percentage of first-party games sold. In fact, it was the second best first quarter for first-party game sell-through since the Switch launched — second only to Q1 2021, which was fueled by Animal Crossing: New Horizons. All told, however, Nintendo would have to call the quarter a success considering that game buyers spent 13 percent less this year compared to 2021, according to Bloomberg. 

Some of that was aided by the launch of three key games, the company pointed out, particularly Nintendo Switch Sports which arrived on April 29th. Mario Strikers: Battles League launched on June 10th, while Fire Emblem Warriors arrived on June 24th. "More than 100 million users played Nintendo Switch in the latest 12-month period," the company added. 

Nintendo is hoping that upcoming games will help out next quarter. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 just launched, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass: Wave 2 arrives on August 4th, Splatoon 3 will be released on September 9th and you'll see Kirby's Dream Buffet sometime this summer. The company is also launching an OLED Switch Splatoon 3 Edition on August 26th. 

For the second time this year, Robinhood is cutting its headcount. On Tuesday, the company announced it would lay off 23 percent of its workforce. According to CEO Vlad Tenev, the cuts will affect every part of Robinhood’s business but will primarily target the company’s “operations, marketing and program management functions.”

Tenev blamed a deteriorating macro environment for the decision, pointing to record inflation and the cryptocurrency crash as the primary drivers of the company’s recent woes. Additionally, he acknowledged the company overhired last year on the assumption retail investors would continue trading stocks and crypto assets at the rate they had during the early stages of the pandemic. Prior to April when Robinhood laid off nine percent of its workforce, the company had a headcount of approximately 3,800. “As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me,” he said.

On Tuesday, Robinhood also announced its Q2 results one day ahead of schedule. The company reported a net loss of $295 million after revenue fell by 44 percent year-on-year to $318 million. 

In his letter to employees, Tenev said Robinhood would transition to an organizational model where general managers would oversee broad parts of the company’s business. “This change will flatten hierarchies, reduce cross-functional dependencies, and remove redundant roles and positions,” he claimed. Tenev added that Robinhood would notify affected employees via Slack and email. They can stay with the company until October 1st, 2022.

It's the end of an era at the company formerly known as Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg has officially stepped down as Chief Operating Officer on August 1st, as revealed by a SEC filing noticed by TechCrunch. In the filing, Meta said Javier Olivan is now the company's COO and that Sandberg will only remain an employe until September 30th. After that and going forward, Sandberg will serve as a member of Meta's Board and will receive compensation as a non-employee director. 

Sandberg first announced that she was leaving her role as COO of Meta after 14 years in early June. Mark Zuckerberg revealed at the time that Olivan will take on the COO role, but that his responsibilities will be different from Sandberg's. Olivan will have a "more traditional COO role where [he] will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous," the company CEO said. 

As The Wall Street Journal noted in a piece about Sandberg back in June, she joined Facebook in 2008 and led the business side of the company, allowing Zuckerberg to focus on engineering work. In more recent years, she became the face of the social network when it comes to leading public response to controversies, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Before Sandberg announced her departure, The Journal reported that the Meta COO used company resources to help kill negative reporting about Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who she was dating at the time. In mid-June, the publication also reported that Meta’s lawyers are investigating Sandberg's use of the company's resources and employees for her foundation and to promote her book Option B. 

Sandberg is leaving the company just as it has started preparing for "serious times." In a meeting with employees, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta is experiencing "one of the worst downturns [it has seen] in recent history." As a result, Meta had to slash its target number for new engineers this year. In addition, company leadership reportedly told managers to identify poor performers and to "move to exit" them if they can't get back on track. 

Microsoft is taking an interesting approach to secure regulatory approval for its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In a recent filing spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, the company told New Zealand’s Commerce Commission the troubled publisher produces no “must have” games. Yes, you read that right.

“There is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that give rise to a foreclosure concern,” the company says in the document. Put another way, Microsoft believes owning the rights to best-selling Activision Blizzard franchises like Call of Duty won’t prevent rivals like Sony from competing against it.

At first glance, that would seem to be a nonsensical argument to make about a company Microsoft plans to spend $68.7 billion to acquire. All the same, it’s a claim the tech giant is making in response to its rivals. In a filing with Brazilian regulators, Sony called Call of Duty “an essential game” and an AAA title “that has no rival.” It argues the franchise is so popular that it influences the consoles people buy. Sony is likely speaking from experience. In 2015, the company announced an agreement with Activision that saw some Call of Duty content arrive on PlayStation consoles first.

Downplaying the importance of Call of Duty is just one of the ways Microsoft has tried to placate regulators. In February, the company pledged it would continue to make the franchise available on PlayStation consoles beyond the end of any agreements Sony and Activision had in place before the acquisition was announced. More recently, the company announced a labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America, which has been organizing video game workers across the industry.