Warner Bros.’s digital video site Machinima rebranded this week as it makes a bigger push to expand beyond its YouTube roots to all the new platforms where gamers celebrate their culture. Since Warner Bros. bought Machinima in 2016, the division has shifted away from its traditio … | Continue reading
A little over two years ago, before Facebook Messenger or iMessage opened to third-party bots, and before the arrival of Google Assistant, conversational AI champion Chris Messina helped coin the term “conversational commerce.” Messina, who is perhaps best known as the creator of … | Continue reading
GUEST: Millions of kids around the world play Minecraft, and it didn’t take long for adults to notice something: It has educational value. With Microsoft’s MinecraftEdu leading the way, more schools are using Minecraft in classrooms, having their kids experiment with science and … | Continue reading
Google, ARM, and Amazon were all in the news this week for their work on custom chips for AI applications. Here's why we're only going to see more of them in the future. | Continue reading
Brazil’s Independent Games (BIG) Festival is now taking submissions for its sixth annual event. It celebrates indie games from Latin America and abroad, and this year will be held in both São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro from June 23 and July 1. Developers have until April 13 to subm … | Continue reading
Nippon Marathon has entered Early Access on Steam, and the full game will be coming out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC later this year. Nippon Marathon has one to four players racing through Japan in ridiculous outfits as they dodge Shiba Inu dogs, bicycles, and othe … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: As Apple’s HomePod has been out for a week, most of the news, reviews, and early problems have already been discussed ad nauseum. But you might have missed two unusual articles from Yahoo’s David Pogue, whose real world HomePod listening test last Saturday created enoug … | Continue reading
When I started the downhill biking sim Descenders earlier this week, I didn’t understand its structure. But after spending a solid hour with it last night, I realized that it borrows its progression from the roguelike platformer Spelunky. That’s a lot different than I was expecti … | Continue reading
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is already a hit, having sold over 300,000 copies just on Steam. The open-world historical role-playing game came out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on February 13. But Warhorse Studios’ game is experiencing performance issues on all platforms. YouTu … | Continue reading
The Walt Disney Company may own the most valuable film properties on the planet. But investors seem to think Netflix could still be in a position to challenge the House of the Mouse and become this century’s leading entertainment media company. Whoever comes out on top, it seems … | Continue reading
VentureBeat is on the hunt for a passionate and consultative Account Executive to help sell big, custom campaigns and integrated marketing solutions to leading business and technology brands. This is about driving VentureBeat’s online, custom, and events business — already at th … | Continue reading
Reeling from highly public accusations of espionage levied by U.S. intelligence officials, Chinese mobile hardware manufacturer ZTE is expanding its sales efforts in Japan, where it is using low-cost 5G cellular equipment to woo potential customers. The Nikkei Asian Review report … | Continue reading
Siemens has formed a consortium of giant companies to form a community of trust to build greater cyber security. The major industrial and tech allies in the consortium include Airbus, Allianz, Daimler Group, IBM, MSC, NXP, SGS, and Deutsche Telekom. Those companies believe that c … | Continue reading
(Reuters) Walmart is in talks to purchase a stake of more than 40 percent in Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart, a direct challenge to Amazon.com in Asia’s third-largest economy, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. In what would be one of its biggest overseas deals … | Continue reading
GUEST: It’s been an exciting decade for video and still-photography cameras, but if we were to sum 2017 up as anything, it would be the year that virtual reality (VR) cameras became accessible to a much broader “prosumer” and consumer market. Previously, fliming footage in full 3 … | Continue reading
(Reuters) –The White House on Thursday blamed Russia for the devastating ‘NotPetya’ cyberattack last year, joining the British government in condemning Moscow for unleashing a virus that crippled parts of Ukraine’s infrastructure and damaged computers in countries across the glob … | Continue reading
Ubisoft may have put words to the unspoken strategies of many triple-A publishers when it said during an investors call this week that it would focus on live-service games and plan on fewer releases. We’re seeing this with every major publisher (such as Activision-Blizzard, EA, a … | Continue reading
REVIEW: Crossing Souls is an action role-playing game that’s in love with the ’80s. It’s strewn with references to The Goonies and Back to the Future, and its cutscenes and soundtrack do an excellent job at surfing the nostalgia wave. Indie developer Fourattic raised funds for th … | Continue reading
A lot of young professionals dream of leaving their hometowns after graduating high school or college in search of broader career opportunities or new lifestyles. It seems like an inevitable thing. However, it’s also a problem for states like Iowa that are losing valuable tech ta … | Continue reading
I like silly physics games, and based on the sales of Human: Fall Flat, I’m not alone. That deliberately awkward platformer from developer No Brake Games has surpassed 2 million copies sold across PC and console platforms. It has players controlling a stumbling gelatinous human-l … | Continue reading
Starting April 1, 2018, Apple will require all new iPhone and universal apps to natively support the iPhone X Super Retina display, as well as requiring new iOS apps to be built with iOS 11 SDK or later, and new Apple Watch apps to be built with the watchOS 4 SDK or later. Develo … | Continue reading
GUEST: Music is a universal language that can bring people together from all over the world. As emerging technologies help us communicate better, artificial intelligence is beginning to overtake our hearts, minds, and even ears. AI is opening up a world that users can automate, p … | Continue reading
Oracle will acquire Zenedge, which offers a web application firewall and DDoS protection. | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Roostify, a leading digital lending platform provider, today announced the completion of a $25 million Series B round of financing. The round included new investments from Cota Capital, Point72 Ventures, and Santander Innoventures,... | Continue reading
VB EVENT: We’re delighted to announce that we’re in full-throttle planning mode for Transform, our event focused on bleeding edge innovation for executives from the wider marketing and product development ecosystem. It will be held on June 25-26 in San Francisco. This event was p … | Continue reading
Online music service Pandora has revealed that its on-demand music streaming service is now available on the web. Pandora Premium was first announced in late 2016, and after a short invite-only period it was made available to everyone in the U.S. from April last year. Unlike its … | Continue reading
Sending a specific Indian character in a text message can crash an iOS device’s Messages app and potentially require the device to be restored from a backup, Italy’s Mobile World reports. The bug follows last month’s device-freezing ChaiOS issue, which Apple rushed to patch in iO … | Continue reading
VB LIVE: High-touch, multichannel engagement is within every brand’s reach, but it requires putting AI in the driver’s seat. Want to learn what’s truth, what’s fiction — and most importantly, how to even start applying AI powered marketing for notable returns? Don’t miss this VB … | Continue reading
CommonSense Robotics, a robotics startup that’s aiming to help online retailers offer on-demand deliveries, has raised $20 million in a series A round of funding led by Playground Global, with participation from existing investors including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and … | Continue reading
Gree VR Capital, a venture investment division of Japan’s mobile game publisher Gree, has completed its first fund for virtual reality investments and is rebranding so that it can invest in the broader augmented reality and mixed reality sectors. Gree invested $18.3 million into … | Continue reading
Microsoft today released two new Windows 10 previews for PCs. This is a rare occurrence for the Windows Insider program, though builds are sometimes released in quick succession. The first build is part of the RS4 branch, which represents the next Windows 10 update the company ha … | Continue reading
You’ve probably never heard of 40 Winks before. It’s an unremarkable 3D platformer that came out for the PlayStation in 1999. It’s also about to become a new game for the Nintendo 64. In fact, 40 Winks will be the console’s first new title since Nintendo discontinued the system i … | Continue reading
Rare wants your help testing out the weakness of its upcoming pirate simulator Sea of Thieves. The studio has informed GamesBeat that it is launching another round of beta tests this weekend in order to see exactly how many scurvy curs (players) its servers can handle for the alw … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: Even if you’re a daily smartphone user, you might not have heard that the big carriers are launching next-generation “5G” cellular networks this year, or that the last two months have been packed with “5G” and “4.5G” news. I cover these topics for VentureBeat, and as we … | Continue reading
In Roguemance, love is a procedurally generated battlefield. The romance-themed roguelike (though you can turn off permadeath) places equal emphasis on the creatures you fight as well as the bonds you form with your party members. It’s indie developer Lucas Molina’s latest game, … | Continue reading
GUEST: In honor of Valentine’s Day, the team at Dashbot took a closer look at how men and women show their love for Facebook Messenger bots. Our team processes more than three billion messages a month; we used January’s data for our analysis. Here’s a holiday-themed look at how u … | Continue reading
Monster Prom channels cheeky high school fun in a multiplayer choose-your-own adventure about finding a date to the yearly dance. Barcelona-based indie studio Beautiful Glitch has teamed up with publisher Those Awesome Guys to release its debut title April 27 for PC. Up to four p … | Continue reading
Microsoft announced today that it’s ditching many of its massive giveaways of cloud credits in exchange for helping startups sell their products through the company’s sales team, in partnership with accelerators and venture capitalists around the globe. It’s all part of the Micro … | Continue reading
Facebook today announced that Android smartphones and tablets can now download Messenger Kids in the Google Play Store. The app for chat and video calls first launched in December 2017 for kids ages 6 to 12 to connect with parents and other parent-approved contacts. Messenger Kid … | Continue reading
Niantic revealed today plans for 48 real-world events that will take place in 2018 and 2019 for its augmented reality mobile game Ingress. Before Pokémon Go launched in 2016, Niantic’s big game was Ingress. It has players travel the real world in order to play and progress, ideas … | Continue reading
If tepid reviews for Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker weren’t bad enough, the company has a new issue to deal with: furniture damage. Two publications have found that the HomePod can leave persistent white rings on wooden furniture, a problem apparently traceable to chemical int … | Continue reading
Supercell announced that it earned a profit of $810 million on revenues of $2.029 billion in 2017. That’s an enviable financial accomplishment for a company that didn’t release a game globally in 2017 — and has only released four games in its seven-year life. Helsinki-based Super … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Tinyclues, provider of a leading AI-first marketing campaign intelligence solution, today announced the appointment of Katy Bennett as sales director, UK and Ireland. Bennett's primary role will be to lead and strengthen the regional... | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: JCM Power Corporation (JCM Power) announced today that FMO – the Dutch development bank – has committed to invest up to US$25 million in JCM Power. JCM Power is a Canadian-based renewable energy independent power producer... | Continue reading
Singular has created its second annual index of the best return-on-investment (ROI) for mobile ads, and it has a few surprises. Snapchat showed up in a big way on the index, as marketers increased their mobile ad spending on the social network and got solid results. Twitter also … | Continue reading
Pinterest has announced a slew of new tools designed to help users organize their pins and boards. First up, a new archiving option lets you file a board away for posterity without having to delete it. This particular feature serves a number of purposes — for example, you may wis … | Continue reading
Steve Case-led venture capital firm Revolution continues to advance its Rise of the Rest seed fund, announcing nine of the fund’s first investments and adding more big names as investors, including prominent entrepreneurs Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman. The moves come just tw … | Continue reading
As planned, Google Chrome will start blocking ads on February 15. The company today shared more details on how this feature will work when it’s turned on tomorrow. Google last year joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group that offers specific standards for how the industry sh … | Continue reading