GUEST: Over 60 years ago, in what is today southern Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into Earth’s orbit. The launch of Sputnik 1 provoked a panic in the United States that catalyzed a flurry of investment and research, which ultimately … | Continue reading
Gamers may not care about the finer points of gallium nitride (eGaN) chips as evangelized by power pioneer Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC). But they will care that those chips will enable a new generation of gaming laptops with much smaller power supplies than … | Continue reading
The Arc System Works fighting game studio and publisher Bandai Namco have a hit on their hands: Dragon Ball Fighterz just kamehameha-ed itself into the biggest fighting game launch ever in terms of digital sales, according to industry-tracking firm SuperData Research. Dragon Ball … | Continue reading
Intel and Aaeon made it easier for hardware companies to build a machine learning accelerator into their products with today’s launch of a new circuit board called the AI Core. That board contains a Movidius Myriad 2 Vision Processing Unit that speeds up execution of AI algorithm … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Todd Hollenshead, the former president and CEO of id Software, has joined Nerve Software as its business manager. He’ll be the top business guy alongside Nerve founder Brandon James, who will lead game development at the Dallas company. Hollenshead negotiated the $100 … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Cryptocurrencies are changing the world, but not without encountering some challenges. One major issue? Volatility. Today, Havven, a decentralised payment network and stablecoin, announced that it has secured $25 million in pledged funds and investments from BlockTower … | Continue reading
Though Sprint’s 5G cellular network won’t go online until “the first half of 2019,” the carrier today named the first six cities that will receive “5G-ready” network upgrades in 2018, enabling select phones to enjoy “5G-like capabilities” before the official 5G launch. This April … | Continue reading
FoxNext Games, the game division of 21st Century Fox Holdings, is spreading out its bets in games. And it is showing that with the announcement of Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR, the first virtual reality game from the new FoxNext VR Studio. The game will debut on April 3 on … | Continue reading
Coworking space provider Industrious has raised $80 million in a series C round of funding led by Riverwood Capital and Fifth Wall Ventures, with participation from Alrai, Outlook, Rabina Properties, Schechter Private Capital, and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. Founded out of Bro … | Continue reading
VB LIVE: When it’s used to curate, create, and deliver fresh content, artificial intelligence pushes your marketing content game to the next level. To learn more about how AI can take the educated guesswork out of content creation, make your pitch more persuasive, and magnify you … | Continue reading
REVIEW: Moss plunks you into a fairy-tale world. Instead of cutscenes, you flip through the gilded pages of a book as a kindly narrator unravels the story for you. You play as the Reader in this enchanting virtual reality game, a being who sits on the outside of the story but can … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: What is reality? As VR technology continues to advance, digital simulation games push the boundary between real and unreal, as the virtual world becomes indistinguishable from objective reality. Nonetheless, the simulations in which... | Continue reading
Mobile gaming is underappreciated as one of the most dynamic consumer-facing markets. It requires constant adaptation to the latest way consumers desire their media consumption. While console games are all built for dedicating blocks of time in your home, mobile developers must … | Continue reading
GUEST: The past few decades of computing and the internet have been limited to flat 2D screens on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. However, the rise of mixed reality means that society will soon move beyond the screen: where the user interface won’t be a flat piece of glass but … | Continue reading
Following two months of public lobbying by U.S. legislators and security agencies, Chinese networking giant Huawei today confronted espionage accusations, dismissing them as “not fair” and “only based on groundless suspicion” while touting successes in other countries. The South … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: The competition among mobile advertisers is heating up, and adtech companies are creating new kinds of ads to take advantage of it. One of the ideas being borrowed from desktop advertising is in-app header bidding, which is a way to get multiple ad networks to bid in r … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Electronic Arts is hiring for a general manager in its Shanghai office to create a new Plants vs. Zombies mobile game. The Redwood City, California-based game publisher posted an ad in China saying the PopCap Shanghai game studio is looking for a “game general manager” … | Continue reading
In one of his most high-profile appearances since the killing of net neutrality rules last year, the chief U.S. telecom policy regulator insisted the move was widely misunderstood would promote more internet freedom. Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, FCC chair … | Continue reading
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. FCC chairman Ajit Pai today announced that the commission is prepared to quickly make 5G-ready mid-frequency and high-frequency wireless spectrum available through auctions. The only hitch: Congressional action … | Continue reading
Developer Oasis Games announced today that the mobile action game Final Fantasy: Awakening is now available for iOS in the U.S. two weeks after its release on Android. That Android release of Final Fantasy: Awakening already has 137,000 downloads. The free-to-play game first came … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: OutboundWorks, Inc., quickly emerging as THE leader in automated sales development, announced today that it has officially acquired Hexa.ai. Terms of the deal included a combination of cash and stock and the entire Hexa.ai team... | Continue reading
VB LIVE: Involuntary churn significantly impacts subscription revenue, so it’s critical to address — and easier than ever. Machine learning can automatically reduce involuntary churn and boost monthly recurring revenue by an average of 9 percent. Want to know more? Join our lates … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Indonesia’s Go-Jek has raised a higher than targeted $1.5 billion in a fundraising round from a dozen investors including BlackRock and Google, sources said, as the ride-hailing firm builds its war chest to fight deep-pocketed rivals. Go-Jek had planned last year to r … | Continue reading
Blizzard Entertainment doesn’t follow anyone’s playbook. It writes its own. We’ve seen that with games like Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch. And this approach applies to esports as well as to game development. In January, Hearthstone crowned its 2017 champion, Chen “tom60229” We … | Continue reading
One of the things I like best about Rainbow Six: Siege is that it’s OK to learn on the job. The tactical hero shooter is extremely popular, so you’re often partnered with newer people who are also learning. And figuring out how to use a new character — or operator — is part of th … | Continue reading
Games Workshop is continuing to work with its partners to make Warhammer 40,000 video games, and that includes the newly announced Mechanicus that puts players in control of the technology-worshiping Adeptus Mechanicus army. Publisher Kasedo Games and developer Bulwark Studios ar … | Continue reading
GUEST: In the early 1980s, Irving Grousbeck and his colleagues at Stanford Business School launched a revolution in the way that entrepreneurs and investors fund, manage, and grow mature businesses. Their creation — the search fund — changed the way many investors thought about e … | Continue reading
At Mobile World Congress 2018 today, Samsung announced the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+, successors to the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, respectively. After months of leaks, Samsung’s ninth-generation phones are now official. Preorders begin March 2, and the devices will begin shippi … | Continue reading
As part of a recent push to increase rural broadband access in the U.S., Microsoft announced today that it will partner with Michigan-based Packerland Broadband. The goal is toprovide internet access to 82,000 people living in rural regions of northern Wisconsin and the upper pen … | Continue reading
GUEST: While some VC firms have embraced ICOs (USV, Sequoia, DJF, and Seedcamp are some prime examples), the broader VC community has shown signs of fear and resentment towards ICOs. I have been following blockchain and distributed ledger technologies since 2013. The rise of cryp … | Continue reading
Glu Mobile moved into a brand new headquarters in San Francisco recently, with much of its staff together under one roof in a move that is meant to reflect its unified creative culture. The publisher of mobile games such as Design Home and Covet Fashion is now focused on rapid pr … | Continue reading
GUEST: Just how profitable is it to mine Ethereum? To properly answer this question, let’s start at the beginning: Let’s construct a hypothetical mining rig, plug in some reasonable of numbers, and come up with a pragmatic analysis of how much you can earn through Ethereum mining … | Continue reading
Blizzard Entertainment scored big with the debut of its Overwatch League. The official esports league for Overwatch players drew more than 10 million viewers in its debut week in January. Blizzard (a division of Activision Blizzard) continues to invest heavily in the esports mark … | Continue reading
Huawei today announced upgrades to its laptop and tablet lineup today at a press conference held a day before the start of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Chinese company showed off the new Huawei MateBook X Pro laptop and the MediaPad M5 to press and analysts gathered at … | Continue reading
OPINION: Apex Construct’s release this week once again brought about a recurring topic in its reviews: PlayStation VR’s limited tracking and Move controllers restrict what is an otherwise great experience. The 180-degree tracking makes traversing an entire virtual world much more … | Continue reading
2018 is shaping up to be a big year for VR arcades and attractions, and a new player in the space is looking to find success with an approach that focuses on fun gameplay and multiplayer. Cyprus-based Neurogaming is a joint endeavor made up of Wargaming — the publisher behind Wor … | Continue reading
GUEST: This week investors held a collective freakout over the fact that Walmart’s online sales grew at just 23 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017, down from 50 percent the previous quarter. They tanked Walmart’s stock by 10 percent, its biggest one-day decline in several de … | Continue reading
GUEST: If 2017 was a dream for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, 2018 has been a swift return to reality. The value of Bitcoin, which increased over 1,000 percent last year, has decreased by close to 30 percent so far this year, and many other coins have followed suit. The crypto marke … | Continue reading
The fairy tale of Cuphead and its developer Studio MDHR continued this week as the debut game from a debut studio won three major awards at the prestigious DICE Awards in Las Vegas. Maja Moldenhauer humbly said on stage during a talk that she didn’t know what she could teach vete … | Continue reading
If I’m not playing a game that I’m supposed to write about then chances are I’m either playing something for fun, talking about games with friends, or thinking about games while I do other things. This goes for both VR and non-VR. Point being: gaming is a huge part of my life. As … | Continue reading
Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs with a small but important change to Windows Update. This build is from the RS4 branch, which represents the next Windows 10 update the company has yet to announce (but is likely to ship soon). There is no new build from t … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Self-driving cars that back up their computerized system with a remote human operator instead of a fallback driver at the wheel could be tested on California roads as early as April, the state department of motor vehicles said. Relying on a remote human operator – who … | Continue reading
GUEST: I’ve always been fascinated by a game’s ability to replicate real-world systems. Social interactions, weather systems, and even nuanced economies are re-created digitally with almost alarming accuracy. This has always been a part of a game’s appeal: the opportunity to safe … | Continue reading
Nintendo updated Super Mario Odyssey with new, free content yesterday. This introduced the Balloon World online mode that enables players to have fun with an asynchronous hide-and-seek mode. Players can either hide a balloon and earn coins as other players take turns failing to r … | Continue reading
Somewhere: The Vault Papers teases the possibility of an immense conspiracy unfolding — but the only way you can find out more is through texting. French developer Norseman Interactive has teamed up with publisher Playdius on its debut messaging-based narrative mobile game. It la … | Continue reading
Dropbox filed for an initial public offering today with the aim to raise $500 million for its cloud-based file storage and collaboration service. It had secretly filed to go public in early January. The San Francisco-based company brought in $1.1 billion in revenue last year, wit … | Continue reading
Minecraft players downloaded 239,062 add-ons from the Minecraft Marketplace in January. The marketplace is available in the unified version of Minecraft on Windows 10 and mobile, and it features products made by both The Minecraft Team and community developers. Players can earn t … | Continue reading
OPINION: Google yesterday announced that the rich communication services (RCS) messaging experience on Android is now open to businesses. Nobody is using RCS yet, but businesses are already being encouraged to get on board. This is a big mistake. First, some background. The defau … | Continue reading