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NES Classic Available Again At Best Buy Today
Moto G6 Play Available From Amazon For $189
Free Google Home Smart Speaker For Everyone? That's How Google Will Beat Amazon, Analyst Says

NES Classic Available Again At Best Buy Today

Posted: 29 Jun 2018 06:19 AM PDT

If you're still looking to get your hands on an NES Classic Edition, you'll have a few opportunities to pick one up this week. In addition to GameStop, electronics retailer Best Buy has announced it is receiving a restock of the plug-and-play consoles this Friday, June 29, but you'll need to act fast if you're hoping to snag one.

On its official blog, Best Buy confirmed that it will have a new stock of NES Classic systems both in-store and on its website. As before, the console will cost $60. Best Buy hasn't revealed how many units it will have in stock, but it notes that the system will be available in limited quantities and will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you're planning to head to a brick-and-mortar location before it opens and a line has already formed, Best Buy says it will sell the NES Classic using the same ticketing process it employs on Black Friday. Regardless of whether you buy the system in-store or online, consoles will be limited to one per customer.

As previously mentioned, GameStop will also have a new stock of NES Classic systems on June 29. Like Best Buy, the console will be available both at GameStop's physical stores and online, as well as at its subsidiary, ThinkGeek. However, supplies will be limited, and GameStop warns it is expecting the same level of demand for the restock as for the initial run of the NES and SNES Classic.

The NES Classic first released back in November 2016, but due to supply constraints, the console was exceedingly difficult to find in stores following its launch. After the release of Nintendo's follow-up plug-and-play system, the SNES Classic, the company announced that it would release a new stock of the NES Classic systems in Summer 2018.

The NES Classic comes pre-loaded with 30 iconic titles, including Super Mario Bros. 3, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Castlevania. "The NES Classic is an affordable solution for playing NES games, and the fact that it outperforms existing Virtual Console efforts from a technical standpoint makes it the most attractive option to boot," we wrote in our NES Classic review.

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Moto G6 Play Available From Amazon For $189

Posted: 29 Jun 2018 07:32 AM PDT

Amazon’s newest addition to its Prime Exclusive lineup of smartphones is finally available. That’s the Moto G6 Play. This smartphone is typically priced at $199, but Amazon is dropping the price by $10 for its Amazon Prime members. This smartphone does not have lockscreen ads like Amazon Prime Exclusive smartphones used to have. Instead, it has a few Amazon apps pre-installed, which are apps that most people are going to install anyways. If not, you can still uninstall them when you get the phone and still save $10. Of course, you can opt to get the regular unlocked model from Amazon as well, but it’ll cost you the full price of $199.

The Moto G6 Play is Motorola’s lower-end model in the Moto G6 lineup, as is told by the price of this smartphone. It does sport a 5.7-inch 18:9 aspect ratio display, but this time its HD+ instead of full HD+, so you’re looking at a a 1440×720 resolution display here. Which still isn’t bad, but it is definitely lower than most other smartphones out there. It is powered by the Snapdragon 430 chipset, has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. There is also a micro SD card slot available for expanding storage, should you need a bit more storage on your smartphone. This is all powered by a 4000mAh capacity battery that should keep the Moto G6 Play running all day long and then some.

Motorola’s Moto G6 Play is designed for those that need a smartphone that can last all day, but not for those that are heavy users and play a lot of games on their smartphone. This phone doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as other smartphones like the Galaxy S9 or LG G7 ThinQ, but it will get the job done. It is compatible with all four US carriers as well. That includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. So that you can just put your SIM in the phone and you’re good to go.

Buy the Moto G6 Play

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Free Google Home Smart Speaker For Everyone? That's How Google Will Beat Amazon, Analyst Says

Posted: 29 Jun 2018 06:53 AM PDT

Google has fallen behind Amazon in the emerging smart speaker space. To catch up, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak suggested that Google should give all U.S. households a free Google Home Mini, which is being sold for $49 each. ( Google Store )

Google should give every household in the United States a free Google Home Mini if it wants to beat Amazon in the emerging smart speaker industry, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak.

Google will spend a lot of money with such a plan, but according to Nowak, the payoff will be worth it. Whether Google will heed the analyst's advice, however, remains to be seen.

Free Google Home Mini For Everyone

In a note to investors, Nowak wrote that Alphabet should give a free Google Home Mini smart speaker to all households in the United States, because Google is losing ground to Amazon in terms of retail search queries.

The Google Home Mini currently comes with a $49 price tag, so the plan will cost Google about $3.3 billion. The massive figure, however, was described by Nowak as a "small price to pay," as Alphabet will earn about five times that amount in the next five years through the profits generated from retail search results.

"The growth of voice shopping combined with Amazon's expected install base advantage could threaten long term growth in Alphabet's high-monetizing retail search category," Nowak wrote. He estimated that Amazon will have a 62 percent share in the smart speaker market in the United States by the end of 2018, compared to 33 percent for Google, and that over 70 percent of households in the country will have a voice search-enabled smart speaker by 2022.

Free Google Home Mini smart speakers will allow Google to catch up with Amazon by serving as avenues for more search revenue and voice shopping opportunities. With an increasing number of online purchase made through voice, the $3.3 billion initial cost of giving away Google Home Mini devices may pounce on an even more lucrative opportunity for Google.

Google Home Vs Amazon Echo

Google has been hard at work in improving its Google Home line of devices, with new features such as continued conversation to no longer require users to say "hey" or "ok" every time and the recent addition of the Spanish language. There are also rumors that Google will soon launch a Google Home with screen.

Despite these improvements, it remains to be seen whether Google will be able to take over Amazon's dominance in the smart speaker space. The Google Home vs Amazon Echo debate rages on, and free Google Home Mini speakers for everyone might soon become an even more feasible plan for Google as the market expands.

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