Microsoft announced that “Halo 5: Guardians” has generated more than $400 million worldwide, making it the biggest launch in the franchise’s history and the fastest-selling exclusive Xbox One release. “The newly released sci-fi shooter pulled in more than $400 million worldwide between game and hardware-bundled sales,” reports Variety, noting that the new release “also brought the lifetime earning for the series, which spans all the way back to ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ for the original Xbox in Nov. 2001, to over $5 billion.” In its first week of availability, “Halo 5” was Xbox One’s most-played game, racking up more than 21 million hours of game play.

Amazon, considered by many to be responsible for the demise of some brick-and-mortar bookstores, has opened its first physical storefront. Amazon Books plans to use online customer reviews and digital data to help plan inventory decisions and provide titles that will match the prices of books available via Amazon.com. “To those bookstore owners and authors who blame Amazon for the demise of the neighborhood bookstore, though, the move is an ironic twist considering the company’s history as chief instigator of the digitization of reading and book selling,” suggests Re/code.

The Motion Picture Association of America announced yesterday that courts in Canada and New Zealand ordered Popcorntime.io and BitTorrent site YTS.to to be shut down in October. Film companies have contended that the two websites served as a clearinghouse for illegal online movie sharing. After days of tech media outlets reporting problems with the two offending sites, court documents were unsealed that disclosed the shutdown. According to the MPAA, “YTS has a library of about 4,500 film titles in violation of copyright laws,” notes The New York Times. ComScore figures showed Popcorntime.io had 1.5 million unique visitors in July and YTS had 3.4 million visitors in August.

Dish’s streaming service Sling TV is now available for Google Chromecast users. The live TV service’s entry-level package offers an array of cable channels, including ESPN, TBS, HGTV, TNT and more. “While Chromecast today supports dozen of apps, including Netflix, Hulu, Google Play Movies, HBO Now, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, and many more, Sling TV provides a way to watch live and on-demand television for the reduced price of $20 per month,” explains TechCrunch. Sling TV also offers add-on packages for an additional $5 per month and HBO for $15 a month. Google says support is also underway for Showtime, NBA and MLB apps.

King Digital is best known for its popular browser game “Candy Crush” and its mobile version “Candy Crush Saga.” The company, which went public in March 2014 at $22.50 a share, is being acquired by game giant Activision Blizzard, for $18 a share. While the game continues to generate profit for King, the developer has yet to launch another of the same magnitude. However, while “Candy Crush” generated $493 million during the last three months of 2013, it still earned $206 million in the last three months ending in June 2015. “The thing about creating a megahit game in the iPhone/Android era is that there’s no flywheel effect,” suggests Re/code. “A megahit gives you resources to market other games, which is nice. But no one has been able to prove that making one megahit lets you make other megahits.”

Samsung has unveiled its anticipated 18.4-inch Android tablet, Galaxy View, billed as “the largest Android mobile device on the market.” According to Samsung, the new tablet — which features a “large touchscreen display, video-optimized user interface and long-lasting battery life” — is designed for watching movies and TV shows around the home. The View “has a 1920×1080 resolution display, stereo speakers, a 1.6GHz octa-core processor, and up to eight hours of video playback time,” reports The Verge. The tablet also includes a 2-way stand, 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, and an LTE NanoSIM slot.

According to Technicolor brand management exec Pam Kunick-Cohen, the company is gearing up to reintroduce the RCA brand (which Technicolor owns and licenses) to a new generation of consumers this month. Speaking at a recent industry event in Brooklyn, she emphasized the need to reach out to millennials with the message that “the RCA brand represents quality, innovation and value.” A website relaunch will join a major social media push and a national online media buy featuring the new tagline, ‘RCA: Made For Moments.’ TWICE reports: “The plan calls for a live event to be held sometime during November at California’s Glendale Galleria, which will feature RCA-branded products from around Black Friday to Christmas.”

Chinese company OnePlus — quickly building a reputation for affordable but solid handsets — is readying the November release of its $249 5-inch OnePlus X, “its cheapest and most beautiful smartphone yet,” suggests Mashable. The new phone will feature a metal frame, 1080p AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. “The 13-megapixel rear-facing camera has an f/2.2 aperture and shoots 1080p video and has a slow motion mode that shoots at 720p and 120fps. The 8-megapixel front-facing camera has an f/2.4 aperture,” notes Mashable, adding that it’s really the slick design and the price that will be the major selling points.

In another sign of the emerging power of mobile, Google says it plans to fold its Chrome PC operating system into its Android mobile OS. People familiar with the matter indicate that Google engineers have been working to combine the operating systems for about two years. While the new OS would likely not be available until 2017, the company expects to show an early version next year. Android now powers more than one billion smartphones and other devices. “Google’s new version of Android will also run PCs, giving users access to Google’s Play store, which offers more than one million apps,” explains The Wall Street Journal. “Google wants to get its software and moneymaking services such as Search and YouTube on as many devices as possible.”

Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, announced last week that the company is scheduled to launch the ‘New Xbox One Experience’ on November 12. The Xbox One’s user interface has remained largely the same since its debut two years ago, but the new Windows 10-inspired interface “promises a more controller-friendly experience,” reports Digital Trends, featuring Windows tiles and “a task bar on the left-hand side, making menus and settings easier to find.” While the new UI will offer backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games, the anticipated integration of virtual assistant Cortana has been delayed until next year.

Amazon is shuttering its Amazon Register credit card reader service for small and medium-size businesses, which debuted a little more than one year ago. “Aimed at mom-and-pop merchants, the $10 plastic device plugged into a smartphone or tablet and, with an app, processed credit card swipes from customers,” reports The New York Times. Amazon Register was similar to Square and PayPal, but failed to gain traction with merchants. Amazon plans to discontinue the service by February. The news follows Amazon’s announcement that it will also stop offering daily deals through its Local service by the end of 2015.

Apple launched a limited in-store promotion on Friday that offers a $50 discount on the Apple Watch or Apple Watch Sport with the purchase of any new iPhone. Currently only offered at participating Apple Stores in California and Massachusetts, the surprise promotion is not available online and does not include the Apple Watch Edition and Apple Watch Hermès models. “Apple confirmed that the promotion runs from October 30 through November 15… The deal does not require purchasing AppleCare+ or other accessories and add-ons,” reports Mac Rumors. “The offer is only valid when the qualifying iPhone and Apple Watch are purchased together on one transaction.”

To cap off the SMPTE 2015 Technical Conference & Exhibition, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers held its annual awards ceremony and dinner last night at Loews Hollywood Hotel. Laurence Thorpe, pioneer in film and television imaging (RCA, Sony, Canon) and Irwin W. Young, innovator in post-production technology (DuArt Film Laboratories) received the Society’s highest award, Honorary Membership. Annie Chang (Disney) received the Workflow Systems Medal for her efforts with DVD authoring and the Interoperable Master Format. James A. Lindner received the Archival Technology Medal Award, Birney Dayton the David Sarnoff Medal Award, and Stan Moote the Digital Processing Medal Award. For the complete list of honorees and 15 new Fellows, visit the SMPTE press release.

The Television Academy presented its latest round of Emmy Engineering Awards at a ceremony Wednesday evening hosted by Josh Brener of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” During the event, held at Loews Hollywood Hotel, ASC president Richard Crudo presented the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award to Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown. The Philo T. Farnsworth Award was presented to Grass Valley, and Engineering Emmys were presented to Mark Franken for EdiCue workflow software; Greg Croft, Chris King and Michael Sechrest for SpeedTree software; and Alan Bovik, Hamid Sheikh, Eero Simoncelli and Zhou Wang for the Structural Similarity (SSIM) algorithm.

While the cable industry is challenged by streaming services and cord cutters, Bloomberg reports that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications “all exceeded analysts’ expectations for their third-quarter video businesses, countering a trend of precipitous decline in traditional pay-TV and reclaiming market share from some telecom carriers and satellite-TV providers.” Cable companies are responding to cord cutters by “offering cheaper bundles of cable, Internet and digital phone service, and Comcast is accelerating its roll-out of a new technology that allows subscribers to watch and store shows and movies on multiple devices.” According to Evercore ISI analysts, skinny bundles “played some part in the quarter’s success.”