Amazon

Amazon has practically won the e-commerce race and much of that isn't simply because of the convenience of online shopping. Its subscription-based Prime membership is a major factor in its success, providing exclusive perks that even go beyond the act of buying things. Amazon's biggest rival isn't taking the threat sitting down, of course, and Walmart may soon launch its own Walmart+ loyalty program within just a few weeks.

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Amazon Prime Video has finally added a feature that has already been available on a number of competing platforms: user profiles. With these, multiple people in the same household can separate their viewing habits, preventing someone from having their personalized recommendations messed up when another person views their own favorite shows. The profiles are only rolling out on certain devices to start with.

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When Nintendo launched the NES Classic Edition, it kicked off a retro console craze among game publishers. One of the best retro consoles to come out of this craze was the Sega Genesis Mini, which like the NES Classic and SNES Classic, served up a great library of games backed by solid emulation. The challenge, of course, is that at $80, the Sega Genesis Mini isn't exactly cheap, but if that was your main sticking point with the retro console, you might want to head over to Amazon.

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Microsoft has long been trying to populate its app store, pushing every development framework, from UPWs to PWAs, to entice developers to jump in. There have been, however, some movement going in the opposite direction, with developers and brands exiting the Microsoft Store instead. That store just got one big addition to its list of apps but while the Amazon Prime Video app does offer some convenience, it curiously comes with an undisclosed limitation as well.

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Amazon Studios and Bethesda have announced a new collaboration that will result in an original TV series based on the Fallout games. An official teaser for the upcoming show has been released, with Bethesda stating that it has spent the past decade looking for the best way to bring the games to television. Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, and Kilter Films will work with Amazon Studios on the project.

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Amazon has made the surprising decision to walk its new Crucible PC game back into closed beta, restricting it to the gamers who already have access to the title. It's no secret that Crucible had a rocky start, prompting the company to lay out a new roadmap earlier this month. That roadmap won't be changing, however, the game will be in closed beta until further notice.

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Amazon acquired a company called Zoox to "help bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality." It's important right this minute to be extra clear, here, that Amazon did NOT just acquire the video conferencing brand Zoom - that's a different company altogether. Amazon acquired Zoox, a California-based company "working to design autonomous ride-hailing vehicles from the ground up."

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It isn't exactly a secret that Amazon has a problem with counterfeit products, and while the company has been successful in stopping some counterfeit items from ever being listed, it's forming a new task force for the times those products make it onto Amazon's store anyway. Officially called the Counterfeit Crimes Unit, this new task force seems less concerned with preventing counterfeit items from being listed and more with bringing those counterfeiters to justice.

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There has been a surge in the use of video streaming services, putting the video-on-demand market in the spotlight again. But while it has long had its own VoD platform, Amazon Prime Video's name still lagged behind Netflix and even behind the Disney+ upstart. Now it seems that the e-commerce giant is coming up with a new strategy to get the upper hand, one that ironically bets on one of the most traditional forms of video consumption around, linear TV.

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It seems that this is the year for sunsetting products that no longer make sense in today's world or, more importantly, don't make the company any money. One of Amazon's oddest products, right next to its fashion-sensing Echo Look, fits the bill on both accounts. Part barcode scanner and part Alexa microphone, the Amazon Dash Wand was envisioned to revolutionize the way you order supplies, especially in the kitchen. Starting July, however, it will practically become some pointless device that might not even be useful as a paperweight.

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The Sony PlayStation 5 (PS5, if you prefer) had a bit of a leaky listing problem today on Amazon France. There, it would appear that the Sony PS5 was listed as a pre-release product with a release date of November 20, 2020, and prices at approximately 400 and 500 Euro. Price structure precedent suggests that the release prices in the USA would, then, be around $400 USD for the Digital Edition PS5 and $500 for the standard PlayStation 5.

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With the COVID-19 pandemic came a new need to stay socially distant from other people. Self-isolating certainly helps in that regard, but Amazon kept its doors open during the pandemic, meaning its employees couldn't isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Instead, Amazon developed an AI that allowed employees to see if they were practicing social distancing at-a-glance.

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