The original games first released in Japan in 1996 and later released as “Pokemon Red” and “Pokemon Blue” in North America, Europe and Australia, became a cultural phenomenon. As well as several games, the Pokemon franchise includes toys, a trading card game, a long-running television series and several films. The games required players to capture, train and fight monsters, with a main objective of collecting all 151 unique Pokemon. The continued relevance and popularity of the brand was visible

Last year, Amazon and Google both cut the price of some of their cloud products, with Microsoft following suit this year. The three are locked in a battle in the cloud space with Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud division, leading the way. Analysts said, however, that compared to Microsoft and Amazon, Google’s software applications aren’t as wide-ranging, and it’s an area the company should focus on. But Google is continuing to pick up momentum and has so far invested $30 billion in the cloud

That move would allow Amazon Prime Video subscribers to easily watch TV shows and movies from the service using Apple TV. For the past few years, Amazon subscribers have only been able to watch their shows on Apple TV using Apple’s comparatively cumbersome Airplay system, which involves connecting another Apple product, like an iPhone, to an Apple TV using a wifi connection. Amazon, for instance, stopped selling Apple TV boxes on its online store in the fall of 2015. And while an Amazon video ap

Warren Buffett, the world’s second richest man, told CNBC that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest , is “the most remarkable business person of our age.” “I can’t think of another example like it,” said the chairman and CEO Berkshire Hathaway, who is never shy about his praise of Bezos. As of Friday morning, Buffett’s net worth was $75.6 billion according to the billionaires list at Forbes. 1 on the Forbes list, with a net worth of $86 billion.) Last week following a surge in Am

Microsoft is holding an event this month, the company announced tonight, at which it says it will “show the world what’s next.” The event will take place in Shanghai on May 23rd, but Microsoft didn’t specify either the precise location of the event or exactly what it will be showing. Panos Panay — Microsoft’s vice president of devices and the creator of the Surface — tweeted the announcement alongside the hashtag “#Surface.” The tag, and Panay’s planned attendance in Shanghai, could mean that Mi

Now Twitch is thinking that same audience may want to watch and talk about something a little more polished, like traditional TV. Twitch wants to stream original programming, according to COO Kevin Lin, but with a catch: It wants to stream TV shows that are actually written and produced along the way with input from Twitch’s viewers. Twitch lets users comment on videos as they happen, and Lin wants to use those comments to steer the programming. Amazon is spending a lot of money to both create o

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s reported $186 million payout after the company’s sale to Verizon is on the “egregious side,” former Yahoo President Sue Decker told CNBC on Friday. In an interview on “Squawk Box,” Decker explained that she does not know the ins and outs of the Yahoo-Verizon merger deal and when Mayer’s pay package was negotiated. “Given what happened in the performance of the company, it seems on the egregious side,” Decker said. Verizon and Yahoo are closing in on their $4.4 billion m

The FBI also has protected the identity of the vendor it paid to do the work. California’s Feinstein cited the amount while questioning FBI Director James Comey at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Wednesday. “I was so struck when San Bernardino happened and you made overtures to allow that device to be opened, and then the FBI had to spend $900,000 to hack it open,” Feinstein said. The AP and other news organizations last year filed a public records lawsuit to learn how much the FB

Oil prices plunged below $44 a barrel overnight in a matter of minutes, putting the market on edge as futures tested yet another key technical level. Traders blamed forced margin calls and computer trading for the so-called flash crash but were not quite sure what caused the drop. A close below $44 a barrel could trigger technical targets in the neighborhood of $40.50 a barrel, Kloza said. John Kilduff, founding partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital, said the overnight plunge looks like for

The negatives:The US stock market is now selling for close to a record high valuation. Brilliant hedge fund managers like David Einhorn are ringing the alarm bells over the worship of growth stocks without earnings. There is plenty of good news, but securities prices are currently reflecting a lot of it (all of it?). In less than 10 years the investor class mindset has gone from “Buy and Hold is Dead” to “Buy and Hold is the only answer.” There are times when it pays to be more heavily invested

But the labor force participation rate dropped slightly to 62.9 percent. And weak labor force participation undermines triumphalist announcements that we are at full employment. We are well below the employment figure we would have if the labor force participation rate were at more historical levels. There are no simple policy fixes for declining labor force participation, which is concentrated among less educated males. Formerly, he was vice president at Citigroup, and, before that, vice presid

The economy added 211,000 positions in April, reducing the jobless rate to its lowest level in 10 years. The unemployment rate among 25- to 34-year-olds, which had lagged the improvement in the overall rate, fell to 4.4 percent in April, the same level as the U.S economy’s as a whole. The cohort’s jobless rate peaked at 10.7 percent in October 2009, seven-tenths of a point higher than the overall peak. A measure of unemployment that includes people working part time involuntarily fell to 8.6 per

Billionaire Warren Buffett told CNBC he’s unfazed by the weak economic growth recorded in the first quarter, saying his view of the recovering U.S. economy remains the same. “I’m a broken record on this subject but since the fall of 2009, literally, it’s been about 2 percent a year,” Buffett said from Omaha, Nebraska, in an interview that aired Friday on “Squawk Box.” “Autos are falling off a little now, but housing is good, and most of our businesses are doing a little better.” Buffett said he

Low rates also have investors looking for higher yield, and single-family rental homes are an attractive option. “We are seeing more investors and new investors,” said Steve Hovland, director of research at HomeUnion, a real estate investment marketplace. Commercial real estate is overheated. Like all real estate, investment returns are variable and local. Markets that command the highest rents do not always offer the highest rental returns.

If you have a child in high school — or one even younger — it’s a good time to check your college planning strategies. It’s a big month for college prep: Seniors passed the Decision Day deadline for making a final college enrollment choice, and high schoolers are taking their advanced-placement exams in the hopes of scoring some money-saving college credit.

Pisani: FANG stocks are now 50% of the market cap Wednesday, 3 May 2017 | 3:57 PM ET | 00:41This has been a bad year to be on the wrong side of the tech giant trade. The results have not been good: Each of the FANG companies has turned in stellar positive returns this year. “With both short interest and losses growing every month, short sellers are realizing that FANG’s bite might be worse than their bark.” Here’s a snapshot of just how bad the short-FANG trade has been this year:In terms of tot

“A stock price represents risk-adjusted future cash flows.” In April, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said Tesla’s high valuation was “either one of the greatest Ponzi schemes of all time or it’s gonna work out.” It’s difficult to compare valuation ratios between industries, but there are no other growth stocks in Tesla’s market that are truly comparable. “The enthusiasm for Tesla and other bubble basket stocks is reminiscent of the March 2000 dot-com bubble,” Einhorn said. Correction: Tesla’s stock

YouTube lost 5 percent of its U.S. and Canadian top ad clients during the month of April after reports that some ads were running next to inappropriate content, according to ad analytics platform MediaRadar. (The number of advertisers on YouTube increased the first three months of the year, according to MediaRadar.) “Securing ad space in advance is not a promise to run ads no matter what,” MediaRadar CEO Todd Krizelman said. Brands that pulled advertising seem to be coming back as well. YouTube

Derek Sall, 31, still remembers the first time he realized he was in debt — and the spike of motivation he felt to pay it off. It caught the young couple completely off guard. “I think that happens to so many people: It’s six months after you graduate, you’re not thinking about it,” Sall explains to CNBC. Between his wife’s $12,000 in student loans, his own $6,000 worth of loans, and some outstanding credit card payments, the couple carried about $20,000 worth of debt between them. They began ag

The standard way of thinking goes something like this: Right out of college, young professionals should be set on a clearly-defined career path. But that career model is wrong, and even potentially damaging, according to former Google career coach Jenny Blake, who has personally helped more than 1,000 people advance in their careers. “Take the pressure off yourself to have the perfect job or even career path in your 20s,” Blake tells CNBC. Blake, who co-founded Google’s mentorship program, says