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Disney’s Victory Royale: Company Stock Surges after $1.5 Billion Investment in Epic Games

The Story: On Wednesday, the Walt Disney Company announced a $1.5 billion investment to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games.

The collaboration will yield an entirely new universe in the gaming space.

Pending regulatory approvals, the partnership aims to deliver an unparalleled gaming experience, integrating the iconic worlds of Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Avatar, and Marvel with the hundreds of millions of active Fortnite players.

Disney says the partnership will give users not only the chance to play in this reimagined virtual world, but to “watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories” from its most popular franchises.

Powered by Unreal Engine, this new virtual experience shares a striking resemblance to the “metaverse” concept that came into and then quickly out of popularity in the tech world a few years ago. According to Disney, “Players, gamers and fans will be able to create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love.”

Wednesday’s announcement of this new partnership saw Disney’s stock have its best day in over three years as it rose nearly 13% in less than 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday.

While the investment was well-received by fans of Disney, the deal didn’t garner the same big win for Epic Games. The company’s valuation, which now sits at $22.5 billion, took a sharp 29% cut from its high point of $31.5 billion back in 2022.

But the partnership may be just what Fortnite needs. Positioning itself as a frontrunner in creating the first mainstream metaverse project could see Epic Games quickly reclaim its spot as the world’s leading video game developer.

Apple Vision Pro: Why Tech YouTubers Love It and Social Media Commenters Hate It

The Story: The highly-anticipated Apple Vision Pro headset is available to the public—you’ve certainly already seen the videos and photos online of people wearing them out at restaurants, on the New York City subway, or walking across a busy street. Maybe you’ve even had the chance to try one yourself.

And while the comment sections on these social media posts are full of critics of the new Apple product, most reviews from tech enthusiasts who have actually used the headset have been positive.

The sleek Vision Pro offers cutting-edge features like high-resolution displays and spatial audio, aiming to redefine the AR and VR experience. And those who have used it are praising the Vision Pro for how well it accomplishes this goal.

Trusted YouTube tech reviewer Marques Brownlee has released multiple videos about the headset over the last few weeks; he said he was pleasantly surprised by the product’s quality and one-of-a-kind experience. To open his video titled “Apple Vision Pro Review: Tomorrow's Ideas... Today's Tech!”, Brownlee says, “I actually love this thing. I love this thing. Not because it’s flawless or anything, it is far from flawless, but because it’s actually interesting.”

Brownlee names immersiveness, eye-tracking and hand control, passthrough, and spatial audio as his favorite features unique to the Vision Pro.

But his review doesn’t shy away from identifying where Apple can improve its first new product launch since the Apple Watch in 2015. Brownlee states that while “there are parts of this thing that are absolutely amazing, unparalleled, best-I’ve-ever-seen,” he admits that a big part of what makes the tech interesting is, “because it’s actually new, and there are downfalls and flaws and tradeoffs” that come with the Vision Pro.

Weight and comfort, app selection, battery life, and price are the most noticeable downsides of the device, according to Brownlee.

Although early sales numbers have not yet been released since the product’s launch, it’s reported that around 200,000 Vision Pros were sold during the pre-order window between January 19th and February 2nd, indicating a higher public demand for the expensive headset than some had initially predicted.

Despite the not-so-affordable price tag of $3500, the limited content ecosystem, and its small user base, Apple’s Vision Pro, reinforced by the company’s reputation for quality innovation, had a promising first week of fanfare.

So why does every comment section on a social media post about the Vision Pro only make fun of Apple’s newest offering? In almost every instance, it’s the price. And Reddit users aren’t the only ones who scoff at the $3500 sum for one headset—venture capitalists do too.

Expert Take: Richard Dulude, co-founder and general partner at Underscore VC, says, “I think it’s certainly too high of a price point. It’s pretty inaccessible for broadly everybody, including myself. I didn’t buy one myself.”

Dulude isn’t only skeptical of the price, however. He doesn’t believe it’s worth the time or money for game and app developers to create content specific to Apple’s device. Dulude thinks it will take 100 million headsets sold in the market, a number he doubts will be reached, before the Vision Pro ecosystem will be ripe for great content.

Because of this doubt, Dulude says:

He does however add that there’s a big “yet” to that statement. Dulude says, “Yet, I think it will be the catalytic moment that (maybe it’s not this generation but a future generation of the same product with a better price point and more content) creates a big shift or wave in the market that will move [the market] in the right direction.”

Dulude thinks the release of the Apple Vision Pro will eventually disrupt the market enough to be likened to the drop of the iPhone in 2007. But he claims that will take years.

“Play forward the clock enough time, I think you’ll see [Apple Vision Pro] as a success, but in the short-term, 2024, this is going to look like a total flop, and they are going to get a lot of negative news about it,” states Dulude.

Can the United States and China Reach a Consensus on AI Safety?

The Story: Last year at the APEC summit in San Francisco, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to establish a bilateral channel for AI consultation. However, that channel getting any use faces a significant challenge: the U.S. and China hold divergent views on AI. This discrepancy could grow or shrink as both nations vie for supremacy in AI across various sectors, raising the stakes for them to reach consensus on AI safety.

While China and the US have so far shared very little communication about their approaches to AI guardrails, those talks may be coming soon. There are reports that Biden and Xi Jinping are considering engaging in a telephone discussion this spring.

If that conversation does happen, the expected talking points will focus on managing the risks of AI, including its role in facilitating cyberattacks and the development of advanced bioweapons.

Expert Take: Derek Xiao, investor at Menlo Ventures, is in favor of cooperation between the US and China to establish some basic guardrails for AI: “Fundamentally, I feel like it benefits everyone to have cooperation over alignment with what safe, effective, trustworthy AI looks like.”

Xiao believes the US and China agree on some basic safety principles, and he recommends starting with this common ground. The starting place is, “pre-deployment testing of generative AI systems and funding research for better evaluations and interpretability.” Xiao believes these are the “first things we should tackle,” and says he is “hopeful” the two nations will reach cooperation in the near future.

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