2017 has been quiet a year for VR entertainment as Oculus, HTC and Sony continue to push their respective headsets as gaming devices first and everything else second. That said, everything else has had a pretty good year too; VR has started to prove its worth as a tool for positi … | Continue reading
Here’s how hectic the world of virtual reality has been in 2017: while writing up this list of the biggest stories to break this year, I could have sworn Palmer Luckey had parted ways with Oculus more than 12 months ago. There’s been so much to keep up with that even some of the … | Continue reading
GUEST: As we enter 2018, it’s clear the expectations of intelligent assistance providers and enterprise practitioners are more in balance than ever before. It’s also clear that the number of “known knowns” is growing rapidly. Here are five examples of how and why we will learn mo … | Continue reading
Everything is becoming smart, so why not our rings as well? Titanium Falcon recently unveiled its smart ring, the Talon, which can sense motion and be used to control a variety of devices in the home, from games to virtual reality experiences. San Jose, California-based Titanium … | Continue reading
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump called on the U.S. Postal Service on Friday to charge “much more” to ship packages for Amazon, picking another fight with an online retail giant he has criticized in the past. “Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions … | Continue reading
GUEST: Treating AI like it’s a person has its benefits. When IBM named its AI “Watson,” the company hoped people would see it as warm and approachable, a “humble genius” even. According to Ann Rubin, vice president of branded content and global creative at IBM, in a conversation … | Continue reading
OPINION: For Apple-focused writers, no subject is as thankless as a “what should Apple do” article. Why should any mere journalist presume to offer guidance to a company that has weathered decades of second-guessing, only to emerge at the very top of the heap? Some of Apple’s mor … | Continue reading
GUEST: Building a startup in Silicon Valley has its advantages: close proximity to investors, availability of talent, and an appetite for — and history of — innovation. However, not every successful startup begins in Silicon Valley. It can be expensive to sustain company growth t … | Continue reading
OPINION: Countless tech startups break out in a given year. The majority fail. Of the ones that don’t, some are boring, some are copycats, and some are worth mentioning, but not necessarily highlighting. Just one startup stood out to me in 2017: Eve-Tech. To be clear, Eve-Tech wa … | Continue reading
I’ve been pretty religious about playing Call of Duty multiplayer every year. But with Call of Duty: WWII, I managed to hit the highest level of 55 in the game yesterday. That is the earliest I’ve hit Prestige, as the top level is known, that I can remember. That means I went thr … | Continue reading
Amazon’s Alexa is leading the AI assistant pack. Echo devices are dominating smart speaker sales, and that was before Amazon brought the devices to more than 80 nations around the world. To defend its crown, Amazon moved fast this year to outpace competitors like Google Assistant … | Continue reading
The ritual has arrived again. It’s time for me to make wildly inaccurate predictions about the future of games. This is always embarrassing for me, but I’m hoping that one of these years it will sharpen my thinking. I’ve written more than 15,000 stories for VentureBeat over nearl … | Continue reading
Back in 2010, Patrick and John Collison cofounded Stripe, which quickly gained a following thanks to how easily it let developers integrate a payment system with a few lines of code, something that financial tech giants like PayPal lacked at the time. More than seven years later, … | Continue reading
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, next year the IPO dam could finally bust wide open. And while we’ve probably written that line in some form for the last several years, this time it might really be true. Maybe. A quick review: In 2017, there were 37 tech IPOs in the … | Continue reading
This has been such a spectacular year for games, and that affected me in an unintuitive way. As I was putting together this list, I wasn’t sure if I would have 10 games to fill it out with. Now, to be clear, I’ve liked way more than 10 games this year, but I just wasn’t […] | Continue reading
GUEST: Monetizing VR content continues to be a tricky challenge for creators and publishers alike. There’s just hardly any rules of thumb to follow as the industry busies itself with building up a track record of trial and error, and while the addressable market of geared-up user … | Continue reading
Fun fact: Four of our 10 most popular stories this year are about Electronic Arts’s Star Wars: Battlefront II situation (aka “CrateGate”) even though it just happened last month. As part of our GamesBeat Rewind year-end event, we’re taking a look back at our top stories from this … | Continue reading
As big names in Silicon Valley go, Tony Fadell is right up there among the biggest. Credited with creating the iPod for Apple, working on the iPhone, and founding smart home pioneer Nest, Fadell has a resume that’s hard to beat. But here’s the thing: He no longer lives in Silicon … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: BINANCE, the world's fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange, which was recently ranked the top exchange in the world by 24 hour volume, has partnered with Asia's premier high-end live video platform Uplive, to bring Uplive's over... | Continue reading
Happy Holidays! Given that it’s a slow news week, I’m going to take this week’s newsletter to highlight some of my favorite stories we’ve published in the Heartland Tech section this year, in addition to some of the best stories we published this week. This story on 5 U.S. cities … | Continue reading
2017 saw the release of a lot of great games, but the year wasn’t just about the biggest and newest. It was a huge year for retro gaming. We got collections of classics, exciting announcements, and another fantastic, nostalgic machine from Nintendo. And even some of the best new … | Continue reading
Apple’s board rewarded CEO Tim Cook with a sizable increase in compensation for the company’s fiscal year 2017 which saw the company return to growth after a rough 2016. Cook’s total pay package was valued at $12,825,066 for the 12 months ending September 30, 2017, according to t … | Continue reading
Twice a year, the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley flocks to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to listen to 100 or so startups deliver carefully curated pitches at the widely popular Y Combinator (YC) Demo Days. To select the batches, the accelerator program reviews … | Continue reading
FEATURE: When it comes to the number of great games released, this has been one of the best years ever. I had the easiest time of my professional writing career coming up with 10 games worthy of my list (even if it took a bit more time figuring out which ones wouldn’t make the cu … | Continue reading
GUEST: As we enter a new year, it’s important to take a look at emerging marketing technologies and understand how they might fit into your annual goals for content planning. Voice is certainly one of the technologies content strategists and site owners should keep an eye on for … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: The two questions I get asked most frequently when I tell people that I report on tech startups across Middle America are: Which startups outside of Silicon Valley are getting the most traction? And which cities are home to the most interesting tech activity? I find tha … | Continue reading
REVIEW: Until I tried the Google Home Max, I had never met a smart speaker that brought a smile to my face just by turning up its volume. I was awash in the thumping bass from Zedd’s “Clarity,” and it felt like my apartment’s living room was in the middle of a nightclub. The mass … | Continue reading
Writing in games is strange. It’s bigger and more complicated than writing for a film, a novel, or a song. Games can convey a plot with characters, but they can also tell stories through their worlds or through the objects left inside of those spaces. For the Best Writing awards … | Continue reading
Virtual reality developers have to be creative to survive the VR desert, where sales haven’t kept up with expectations. So Vander Caballero, founder of Minority Media and creator of the VR game Time Machine VR, has adopted a new strategy to get through the tough times. Montreal-b … | Continue reading
FEATURE: One of the great debates of 2017 is the “death of the single-player game,” a conversation that flared up when EA cancelled Visceral’s untitled Star Wars action-adventure and shut down the studio, seemingly because its executives didn’t see how it could make as much money … | Continue reading
Another day? Well, we’ve got another GamesBeat Decides game of the year podcast. For part 3, we’re digging into the following categories: Standout Moment Best Writing Best Ongoing Game Listen to the audio version right here: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, or Stit … | Continue reading
Nobody in tech can stir up their fan base with a single tweet like Elon Musk. The co-founder of Tesla and Space X and the Boring Company did it again this week when he announced vague plans for Tesla to make a pickup truck after the Model Y. I promise that we will make a […] | Continue reading
The Internet Archive has received a $1 million donation from the Pineapple Fund, a philanthropic fund set up by an anonymous Bitcoin millionaire. The Bitcoin benefactor announced the Pineapple Fund earlier this month, committing the equivalent of $86 million in Bitcoin to a range … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: As cryptocurrencies continue to gain traction around the world, the launch of BeeChat marks the advent of the first blockchain based digital currency and cryptocurrency messenger platform in the world. This press release features multimedia.... | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Bitcoin rose 15 percent on Tuesday, recouping about half of the losses it sustained last week, its worst since 2013, as investors who had missed out on earlier rallies bought the world’s biggest and best-known digital currency. While bitcoin investors and analysts bel … | Continue reading
You would think that making new Star Wars games in the era of annual film releases from Disney is a can’t-lose scenario, but you weren’t counting on publisher Electronic Arts. But while your Star Wars: Battlefront II release didn’t go as planned, EA, you won’t come away from 2017 … | Continue reading
Amazon doesn’t disclose Echo sales numbers, but a key external metric suggests that the company’s smart speakers are having a great 2017 holiday season. On Christmas Day, Amazon’s Alexa app took the #1 spots on both the U.S. Google Play and iPhone App Stores’ free app charts, ref … | Continue reading
FEATURE: 2017 was a remarkable year for video games, with a seemingly endless tide of inspired work coming out from the big money publishers and one-dev studios alike. Around every corner, a new idea: old-school arcade brawler mixed with classic cooking competition in Battle Chef … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by Intel Jason Morris isn’t wasting any time. While he’s currently focused on finishing Primordian, his second virtual reality game, he already has plans for his company’s next 10 VR titles. Juggling multiple projects comes naturally to the founder and sole e … | Continue reading
If you got a Google Home Mini, Google Home, or Google Home Max recently, congrats. With Google’s AI-powered assistant inside these and other speakers, you can ask questions about virtually anything, set reminders, get info about your commute to work, go shopping, and control devi … | Continue reading
For all the turbulent developments in the tech world this year, the impact of SoftBank’s massive investment fund may loom largest over the startup world for years to come. Back in May, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son announced that the fund has closed on $93 billion of its planned $10 … | Continue reading
BEIJING (By Cate Cadell, Reuters) – Shares in several of Apple Inc’s Asian suppliers fell for a second straight day on Tuesday, hurt by a report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily and some analysts saying that iPhone X demand could come in below expectations in the first quarter. Apple … | Continue reading
Our GamesBeat Rewind 2017 podcast week continues. Today, we have two categories for you: Best Game Company and Freshest Gaming Universe. It’s a heated conversation, but one I think you’ll enjoy! Listen to the audio version right here: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Musi … | Continue reading
A remarkable 2017 for Bitcoin turned into stomach-churning terror for investors just before the holiday weekend when the cryptocurrency had its worst week of trading in four years. While exact values can vary by exchanges, the value of Bitcoin has exploded from around $1,000 at t … | Continue reading
FEATURE: A number of major deals went down in acquisition town this year, from Amazon’s $13.7 billion Whole Foods acquisition to Intel’s $15.3 billion deal to acquire Mobileye. And — as with 2016 and previous years — the big U.S. tech companies headed to Europe in search of techn … | Continue reading
OPINION: My parents have not heard of Alexa or Google Assistant, and probably have no idea Cortana exists on their Windows 10 computers. They may have approved of their son studying Computer Science, but they’re not particularly tech-savvy themselves. My father hates the burden o … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Israel’s markets regulator will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, he said on Monday. Shmuel Hauser, the chairman of the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), told the Calcalist b … | Continue reading
Nintendo’s online store for downloadable video games appears to be a casualty of the Switch’s popularity this holiday season. The company announced on Twitter that it’s working on a fix for people who are encountering errors when trying to access the eShop to purchase and downloa … | Continue reading