2018 is off to a good start for the gaming industry. Revenues in January were up 59 percent year-over-year and generated $1.096 billion, according to the industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. The big winner is Capcom’s Monster Hunter: World, which was the best-selling game for th … | Continue reading
More people bought Nintendo Switch consoles than Xbox One or PlayStation 4 systems in January in the U.S., but consumers spent more money on Sony’s system, according to industry-intelligence firm The NPD Group. Don’t worry about the Xbox One, though — it had its best January ever … | Continue reading
Star Fox came out for the Super Nintendo on February 21, 1993. Yup, the anthropomorphic animal space shooter turns 25 years old today. I remember getting Star Fox as an Easter present shortly after its release. I was only 6 at the time, but I knew the game was a big deal. Star Fo … | Continue reading
While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp. continues its ongoing fight against cheaters, it is still sneaking out some updates to its battle royal shooter. The studio is introducing a pair of new loot boxes filled with fresh cosmetic items, and it is testing a metho … | Continue reading
Although Apple’s video gaming track record has largely rewarded enthusiasm with disappointment, a new Apple TV trademark application discovered by Patently Apple indicates that the company is still interested in video games. Filed last week, the application covers the use of the … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Memora Health wants to automate patient discharges and follow-ups through its SMS-based virtual assistant so as to relieve care teams of certain administrative hassles. The Mountain View, California-based startup launched out of stealth today and will be graduating fro … | Continue reading
Lidwine Sauer is paid to be one of Ubisoft’s big thinkers. She’s the director of insights and trends for Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, a technology research division that absorbs all of the innovations happening in the world of technology that might some day be relevant to … | Continue reading
Twitch announced today that a new program will give Overwatch League viewers tokens that they can use to buy team-based character skins inside Blizzard Entertainment’s popular shooter. Overwatch League is Blizzard’s giant esports initiative, pitting city-based teams from around t … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Intello, the intelligent SaaS (software-as-a-service) optimization provider, today announced a $1.3M funding round and public launch of their platform. The round was led by Emerge with participation from BoxGroup, Blacktop,... | Continue reading
What do you do when your first startup is acquired by Google shortly after launch? Hang around at Google for a few years and then launch your next venture, of course. That’s exactly what Stackdriver founders Dan Belcher and Izzy Azeri did after they sold their cloud systems monit … | Continue reading
Expanding on its earlier plan to launch mobile 5G service in a dozen U.S. cities by the end of 2018, AT&T has named Atlanta, Dallas, and Waco as its first three picks for 5G internet access. Customers in parts of the Georgia and Texas cities “will be the very first to access this … | Continue reading
In Visual Out, you play as a software program navigating the guts of a dying computer. But it’s nothing like the sleek neon lines of certain sci-fi interpretations of cyberspace. Instead, indie developer MadameBerry created her environment from the building blocks of obsolete tec … | Continue reading
REVIEW: We have entered the age of wireless power, and PC peripheral engineers are among the first to use this technology for consumer products. Logitech’s new Powerplay Wireless Charging System is a mousepad that you plug into your computer that creates a magnetic field of elect … | Continue reading
Running a fully validating bitcoin node helps secure the Bitcoin network. You are verifying transactions and helping other nodes join the network. Although running a full node in the cloud centralizes Bitcoin, it's an easy option for those who don't have an "always on" computer a … | Continue reading
The founders of Sledgehammer Games — Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield — are resigning from their posts as co-presidents of the Call of Duty studio, and they are moving on to new roles within Activision. Condrey and Schofield started the studio in 2009 in San Mateo, California, … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Mobile developer Outplay Entertainment has rebranded for the first time since it was founded in 2010. The Scottish studio partnered with design agency JDO to update its aesthetics around the idea of “limitless fun.” Outplay cofounder and president Richard Hare says tha … | Continue reading
When Sequoia Capital partners Chris Olsen and Mark Kvamme left Silicon Valley to start their new venture capital firm in Columbus, Ohio, they bet their careers on the idea that the Midwest was one of the biggest overlooked investment opportunities. Today, there’s still no equival … | Continue reading
Criterion Games announced today that Burnout Paradise Remastered will release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 18. Burnout Paradise first came out in 2008 and was one of the first open-world racing games. It managed to sell 1 million copies that year and receive strong rev … | Continue reading
Even though tech giants like Intel and Apple release annual reports on diversity, very few tech companies are following suit. Dear Tech People dove into these murky waters to answer questions like “How many women work at Snap?” and “How many engineers at Docker are black?” The th … | Continue reading
Armed with super-fast 5G wireless hardware, cellular carriers have already targeted broadband cable providers — now they’re butting heads with satellite companies, as well. While Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been preparing to launch its first “Starlink” high-speed broadband satellites, … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by Booz Allen Hamilton Today’s mobility and immersive revolution is converging our digital and physical worlds, dramatically changing how we learn and interact with one another. It offers the possibility to help people work better, learn faster, and connect w … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: The tech world seems to be turning to blockchain and cryptocurrency to create economies where they didn’t exist before and fund projects in new and exciting ways. But what happens if you already have an economy? Today, Mom.life — a global social network and messaging a … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Kony, Inc., a leading low-code platform and industry apps provider for accelerating digital transformation, today announced it has been selected by Partners Federal Credit Union (FCU) as a strategic partner for its "Digital 2x"... | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Finnish gaming companies have a strong record of on mobile, and the latest example is Small Giant Games, which is announcing today that it has raised $41 million in funding. The Helsinki-based studio of Empires & Puzzles has seen its first game generate more than 10 mi … | Continue reading
Hatch Entertainment wants to create a cloud-based games-on-demand service for mobile gamers, and it is announcing a big partnership today to make it happen with Qualcomm. Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies will collaborate with Hatch on delivering next-generation cloud-based gaming … | Continue reading
Google announced last month that it was bringing Android Pay and Google Wallet together under the new Google Pay brand. Today, the big rollout begins, with the new Google Pay-branded app now available through Google Play. If you already have the Android Pay app installed, it appe … | Continue reading
Nobody really enjoys taking notes, but it is one of those unavoidable facets of life for many people in business and academia. During phone calls, specifically, it can be hard to focus on listening to what’s being said while ensuring you accurately jot down what people are saying … | Continue reading
Not all researchers agree that artificial intelligence is as an important of a development as electricity or fire, or that hundreds of millions of jobs will be automated in the next decade. But, it is clear that an increasing array of skills will soon be completed by machines. An … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Jolted by the global investment craze over bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, U.S. lawmakers are moving to consider new rules that could impose stricter federal oversight on the emerging asset class, several top lawmakers told Reuters. Bipartisan momentum is growing … | Continue reading
REVIEW: Zoink’s Fe is a gorgeous reverie, awash in beautiful colors and accompanied by a soundtrack of soulful strings. You play as a small animal, fox-like in movement and appearance, who’s on a journey to save the forest from strange menacing creatures called the Silent Ones. I … | Continue reading
REVIEW: You don’t have to settle for some shoddy toy wheel when it comes to driving games. The simulation experience you want is attainable in the Logitech G920 Driving Force racing wheel (and the PlayStation equivalent G29) for $400. It works with the PC or Xbox One, and it prov … | Continue reading
GUEST: Data is a human invention. Humans define the phenomenon they want to measure, design systems to collect data about it, clean and pre-process it before analysis, and finally, choose how to interpret the results. Even with the same dataset, two people can form vastly differe … | Continue reading
Apple today released software updates to all of its platforms to address the Indian character crash bug discovered last week. The fix is included in iOS 11.2.6, macOS 10.13.3 Supplemental Update, tvOS 11.2.6, and watchOS 4.2.3. As expected, the potentially serious nature of the b … | Continue reading
Polyarc is ready to put its virtual reality storybook to print. The studio originally intended to release its adorable VR adventure game Moss during the holidays last year, but pushed the launch date back. It’s now debuting on February 27 as a PlayStation VR exclusive. The studio … | Continue reading
Twitter’s unexpected discontinuation of its free eponymous Mac client late last Friday hasn’t gone over well with Mac users, even though it rated an abysmal 1.7 out of five stars before it disappeared from the Mac App Store. Amidst concerns that Twitter’s other long-neglected Mac … | Continue reading
Twitch is launching its new Indie Amplifier program to signal boost indie games on its livestreaming platform. Twitch Prime members will be able to pick an indie game and get it for free. The platform has also partnered with the broadcasting company N3rdfusion to host a talk show … | Continue reading
Nintendo had spectacular growth in 2017, with revenues growing 172 percent to $9.2 billion from a year earlier. That’s good enough to push the Japanese publisher and hardware maker into the top 10 gaming companies by software revenues after a three-year absence from the list, acc … | Continue reading
Hashtag creator Chris Messina today launched Molly, a service that allows people to ask questions about you and glean information from your various social media profiles. Molly skims your posts on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Medium to learn about you and formulate natu … | Continue reading
We wrote about Vicenç Martí back in 2012 when he won the Who’s Got Game competition at our GamesBeat 2012 conference. He was running Akamon, a company that made social casino games for Latin America and Southern Europe. He sold his company two years ago and then merged it with an … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — China’s tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, worth a combined $1 trillion, are on a retail investment binge, forcing merchants to choose sides amid a battle for shoppers’ digital wallets. Since the start of last year, the two companies have between … | Continue reading
GUEST: If you’re searching for an industry that’s defined by innovation and technological progression, look no further than health care. The health care industry is the poster child for the application of new technology. Despite heavy regulations and high barriers to entry, it co … | Continue reading
When I arrive at the upscale Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles, I only know the broad background of Dreamscape Immersive. It is a startup funded partly by Steven Spielberg and partly by AMC, with plans to open up VR centers in theaters and other locations around the worl … | Continue reading
GUEST: If 2017 was the year of Bitcoin, 2018 will be the year of the smart contract. Smart contracts — the self-executing coded contracts running on blockchain networks — enable decentralized apps (dApps) and the brand new economic models we are see emerging on blockchains. While … | Continue reading
GUEST: When designing or localizing your mobile game for international release, it is critical to examine whether or not it’s a good fit for what people in local markets want to play on their mobile devices. As we’ve seen with megahits like Japan’s Monster Strike, what achieves o … | Continue reading
GUEST: Journalists have used a lot of ink, both real and digital, to discuss the potential of AI to eliminate jobs. Autonomous vehicles, machines that read X-rays and search for new drugs, and algorithm-driven bots that respond to customer service inquiries are all manifestations … | Continue reading
PREVIEW: Microsoft is bringing back of the Age of Empires series, and it is starting with an updated version of the original game for $20 on February 20. This celebrates the 20th anniversary of the real-time strategy hit, and it also should prepare fans for the upcoming Age of Em … | Continue reading
Ubisoft is taking the wraps off of its Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege expansion, dubbed Operation Chimera. That could very well get the game’s 25 million fans re-engaged with the 5-versus-5 tactical shooter multiplayer game. I got a good look at Operation Chimera this week at a p … | Continue reading
As someone that grew up playing MMOs like EverQuest, Minions of Mirth (an obscure indie one), Runescape, Guild Wars, and more, a high-quality VR MMO is one of my ultimate dream games. Anime like .hack//sign and Sword Art Online have done their part to instill the excitement aroun … | Continue reading