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According to research firm NPD, the top selling video game of 2014 was 'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare,' the latest in the blockbuster franchise.

NPD collected sales numbers from only physical copies sold of console, portable and PC games. Excluding digital sales, which are certainly above $1 billion at this time, total industry sales reached $13.1 billion for the year, up just 1 percent year-over-year.

The full list of games, in order (most of which are unsurprising):

After three years of major declines for the industry, 2014 saw PC shipments finally stabilize somewhat with growth from most of the major OEMs.

Overall, sales slipped 2.1 percent year-over-year after years of double digit losses and total annual shipments were down to 308.6 million units.

"The strength from market leaders, as well as improvement in Asia/Pacific and the consumer market more generally, are positive signs for the PC market," said Loren Loverde, IDC Vice President, Worldwide PC Tracker. "Growth of Chrome, Bing, all-in-ones, ultraslim, convertibles, and touch systems similarly make PCs more compelling and competitive. Nevertheless, some of the gains are relatively small, and weakening drivers like Bing promotions and end of XP support transitions, cast a shadow of doubt on the strength of the market going into 2015."

Apple saw the biggest growth year-over-year, at 15.7 percent. The company sold almost 20 million Macs in 2014, good for 6.4 percent share. Lenovo stayed in first place with 59.23 million computers shipped (19.2 percent share) followed by HP at 56.85 million (18.4 percent share) and Dell with 41.66 million shipped (13.5 percent share). Acer was the lone 'Big 5' to see a decline YoY, down 1.6 percent to 24.1 million PCs shipped and 7.8 percent share.

Mojang (now owned by Microsoft) has confirmed that their hit 'Minecraft: Pocket Edition" game has now reached 30 million units sold.

The company last announced 20 million units sold back in April, and just released the game for Windows Phone last month, which may have led to a spike in sales.

In addition, Mojang announced that player will be able to change their in-game names.

Mojang posted an infographic, as well, showing just how big 30 million really is.

According to new reports, HTC's upcoming flagship phone, the M9, will be unveiled in March alongside a new smartwatch from the Taiwanese company.

The new smartphone will look similar to the critically acclaimed M8, but will see spec upgrades everywhere else. The phone will allegedly have an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor, Dolby 5.1 audio technology built-in, a 20MP camera and an HTC UltraPixel camera up front.

As expected, HTC will update their user interface skin to Sense 7, with a plethora of new features and specialized software.

If accurate, the smartwatch will also be built around Under Armour's new fitness service.

We will know more at the Mobile World Congress event starting on March 2nd.

Amazon Studios has announced today that they will begin producing and acquiring original films that will be released in theaters and then released for streaming via Amazon Prime within 60 days of release.

The Amazon Original Movies "will focus on unique stories, voices, and characters from top and up-and-coming creators."

"We look forward to expanding our production efforts into feature films. Our goal is to create close to twelve movies a year with production starting later this year," said Roy Price, Vice President, Amazon Studios. "Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique, and exclusive films soon after a movie's theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience."

Amazon has been moving into more original content, keeping in line with the industry trend started by market leader Netflix. Their most recent original show, 'Transparent,' was recently nominated for a Golden Globe award.

"Audiences already recognize that Amazon has raised the bar with productions in the episodic realm, tackling bold material in unique ways and collaborating with top talent, both established and emerging. To help carry the torch into the feature film world for such an innovative company is a tremendous opportunity and responsibility," said Ted Hope, the new Head of Production for Amazon Original Movies. "Amazon Original Movies will be synonymous with films that amaze, excite, and move our fans, wherever customers watch. I am incredibly thrilled to be part of this."

According to new reports, Google is close to investing in Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX.

Google, in their investment, would value the company at over $10 billion, and the company's expected investment is said to be ten figures.

Why does Google want to invest in SpaceX? The Information's Jessica Lessin says: "The purpose of a deal, which is still in the works, is to support the development of SpaceX satellites that could beam low-cost Internet around the globe to billions who don't have it."

Musk recently announced a grand plan to have the Internet in space, all the way to Mars. Said Musk: "It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well. I think this needs to be done, and I don't see anyone else doing it."

Source:
BI via Information

Sharp has unveiled two new interesting phones for the Japanese market, including a flip phone.

The company showed off their Aquos Mini series, with the now standard tiny bezels and powerful specs. The small-ish smartphone has a 4.5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801 processor and a 13MP camera. Sharp says their new IGZO display tech helps return over 48 hours of battery life from the 2120 mAh battery.

Second, the company brought back 2005 and released a new flip phone: the Aquos K.

The Aquos K has an Android-like operating system, a full browser, apps and has a 13MP camera with 1080p video.

Samsung had a rough year in 2014 in China, losing significant smartphone share in the nation to rivals like Apple and Xiaomi.

In January of last year, the company had a massive 20 percent share in the market which has dropped to 13.7 percent, a full 30 percent drop year-over-year.

While Samsung remains on top, Xiaomi and Apple took share as did smaller rivals like Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad and Meizu.

Many of the Chinese-based OEMs have priced Samsung out, especially Xiaomi which sells their flagship devices for 30-50 percent under Samsung's devices.

Police in Beijing have confirmed the arrest of three men that allegedly tunneled into a warehouse to steal 240 iPhone 6 units that were valued at $230,000.

The men dug a 20-inch hole through a building wall of a Chinese logistics firm where one of the men used to work. That suspect, who officials only called "Chang," used to work for the company as a driver and had intimate knowledge of the site.

After selling the phones, the men allegedly spent the money on cars, gambling and physical gold.

Apple helped provide serial numbers for the devices, and police were able to find and arrest the suspects through tracking the phones.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is planning a massive play to get U.S. retailer awareness in China, and access to hundreds of millions of Chinese middle class consumers.

Alibaba will use their Alipay electronic payments system to handle Chinese sales, payments and even shipping for big U.S. retailers including Neiman Marcus, Macy's and Saks and Shoprunner, the online mall that allows for free two-day shipping for paying subscribers.

Additionally, Alibaba will prepare a massive marketing campaign to raise awareness about their global business-to-business wholesale platform, Alibaba.com.

Most Western and especially U.S. companies have struggled in China, and current U.S.-to-China, cross-border consumer sales are just $15 billion annually. Analyst estimates see that figure growing closer to $300 billion in the next half-decade. So far, very few companies have seen success in China, with the most notable being Apple.

"It's not a big thing right now, but within the next 12 to 18 months what you'll see more of is bringing 300 million Chinese consumers to retailers in the U.S.," Alibaba Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai said last year.

The new effort is important because it will not require retailers to have a physical presence in China and Alipay could mute the difficulties of foreign exchange. The new program would be called ePass, which includes a "customs pre-approval process, a sort of "fast lane" that shaves days off delivery." As anyone who has bought from China in the past knows, shipping times can vary widely.

Turkey has once again threatened to shut down access to Twitter and Facebook in the nation unless the social media giants block the accounts of a newspaper that recently leaked documents relating to a military police investigation on Turkish Intelligence Agency trucks.

The threats came after a Turkish court ruled that coverage of the investigation was to be banned. The court ruled that the publication of the documents and any other information threatened national security and would interfere with the ongoing investigation.

Newspapers, opposition politicians and users on social media widely speculated that the trucks, which were headed to Syria, were carrying weapons for extremists. Turkish officials claim the trucks were delivering aid to Turkmen minority in Syria. The leaked documents show that military police confirmed the trucks were carrying guns and explosives. The documents also claimed the weapons were headed directly to terrorist extremists including Al Qaeda.

The leftwing BirGun newspaper used the ban as a laughing point and continues to post the documents and other tweets arguing that everyone should know the truth. Twitter has complied with Turkish officials and taken many down.

Chinese OEM OnePlus is making their One smartphone available to all on January 20th, no invite necessary (for a couple of hours).

When the device first launched, you had to acquire an invite from the company or from another user who already purchased one to be able to purchase the powerful smartphone. Because invites were relatively hard to come by, even by those in the tech and media communities, supply of the phone never ran out and the company still managed to sell over 500,000 units.

More recently, OnePlus has been offering the smartphone without invite for extremely quick "flash sales" every month or so, with supply selling out quickly when they do.

Now, on January 20th, it appears the OnePlus One will be available to all, and potentially with more stock than a standard flash sale, for two hours.

If you wanted the smartphone, this seems the best time to try to get it. Check the site here: OnePlus One

Motorola has teamed up with Dodo to create premium leather bands for the Moto 360 smart watch.

While you have always been able to purchase any band you want to replace the default bands of the watch, Motorola seems to be making it easier for consumers to get the leather band they want directly through the company web store.

The line of Pergamena leather bands are available for $59.99 in blue, green, red, and tan.

Motorola already offers black, gray, and cognac bands for $29.99.

Adobe has made their powerful photo editing software Lightroom available for Android mobile users.

Says the company: "Lightroom mobile extends your existing workflows beyond the desktop, allowing you to utilize your Android phone to review and edit your images and have the changes sync back to your Lightroom catalog at home. Once you've told Lightroom a collection of pictures should be sent to Lightroom mobile, the process is handled automatically and the pictures will become available on your Android phone once it is connected to the internet. Any changes you make in Lightroom mobile will be automatically synced and updated back to the Lightroom catalog on your desktop."

There are some decent specs required to run the app including at least a quad Core CPU with 1.7 GHZ ARMv7 architecture, 8GB of internal storage, 1GB RAM and at least Android Jellybean although KitKat and Lollipop are preferred.

You can check all the features here: Lightroom Mobile

According to new reports, Google could be preparing to acquire the mobile payments company Softcard (formerly known as Isis) to boost their current offerings in the space.

Isis was started in 2010 by T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon to be the standard in mobile payments, but the venture never gained any traction. The project was renamed Softcard after terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the Syrian extremist group calling itself Isis.

Google is said to be buying the project for $100 million, which would be a huge loss for the companies that started it, each of which has spent at least that much. Google would not comment except to say "We don't have a comment, background, deep background, off the record steer, nod, wink or any other verbal or non-verbal response to these sorts of rumors."

Softcard is available for Android and Windows Phone devices, and the group says that over 200,000 merchants in the U.S. can accept the NFC payments just like they do with Apple Pay. The big problem is that no consumers use it.

As is almost always the case, Google could be making a play for patents, of which Softcard has 120 related to mobile payments.