Royal Caribbean Cruises is turning its fleet of 37 cruise ships into high-tech playgrounds where technology is designed to help you enjoy your vacation. The company is showing off its concepts for the future at an event in New York on Wednesday evening. It’s all part of the evolu … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by Intel The roaming Intel Buzz workshop, the one-of-a-kind gaming event for indie developers, is coming to Los Angeles, California, at the new Technicolor Experience Center on November 9th. (It’s also being live streamed; see below.) Tickets are just $10 fo … | Continue reading
Nikola Tesla is dead, and his murderer is somewhere in the house. But finding them isn’t going to be straightforward. In The Invisible Hours, a virtual reality mystery game, you’ll observe seven characters, eavesdrop on their conversations, and glean their secrets to unravel what … | Continue reading
Co-hosts Mike Minotti and Jeffrey Grubb reunite now that our reviews editor has returned from BlizzCon. We spend a portion of this week’s GamesBeat Decides podcast going over Mike’s time spent with Blizzard games and becoming best friends with important people at that company (li … | Continue reading
GUEST: Platforms like Twitter and Facebook were created with the intention of bringing people together, and since their beginnings, they’ve facilitated connections that would otherwise be impossible. But the promise of these open communication platforms has become more complicate … | Continue reading
Hearthstone is going on a treasure hunt in its next expansion, Kobolds & Catacombs, which is launching for the digital card game next month on PC and mobile. This will be Hearthstone’s third expansion of the year, and the last set Blizzard will add to the game before starting a n … | Continue reading
Blockchain technologies are slowly seeping into every conceivable market. And if one Russian company succeeds, the health care industry will be the next to be feel the impact of this new technology. Robomed Network, a Moscow-based startup founded by health care entrepreneur Phili … | Continue reading
Google Chrome is going to war against low-quality ads and autoplaying content with sound next year. Now the team is adding a new target to its list: unwanted redirects. Google today shared that 1 out of every 5 feedback reports from Chrome users on desktop mention encountering so … | Continue reading
Microsoft is debuting a new feature for Office 365 subscribers today that’s designed to help job hunters construct sublime resumes. The new Resume Assistant is baked directly into Microsoft Word and serves up examples derived from LinkedIn public profiles. You can search by role … | Continue reading
Niantic is working on a Harry Potter AR mobile game, as Techcrunch reported. It will be co-developed by Warner Bros. Interactive and its new subsidiary Portkey Games. The game will launch in 2018. Niantic’s Pokémon Go is a giant hit for Android and iOS. It has generated 752 milli … | Continue reading
Star Wars: Battlefront II debuts on November 17 as one of the biggest video games of the year. One of its hallmarks are bigger and better multiplayer modes compared to the original (multiplayer-only) Star Wars: Battlefront from 2015. Electronic Arts’ DICE, Criterion, and Motive s … | Continue reading
Activision announced today that Call of Duty: WWII generated over $500 million in worldwide sales in its first three days of release (or “opening weekend,” as the publisher puts it). This first-person shooter came out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 3. This openin … | Continue reading
When Star Wars: Battlefront II debuts on November 17, a lot of people are going to go straight to multiplayer. And I’ll bet that one of the most popular multiplayer modes will be Starfighter Assault, where you can enjoy the fantasy of being a Star Wars pilot. Electronic Arts’ DIC … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by TransferWise A few years ago, two friends moved country. However, they realized they were each losing thousands of dollars to their banks. They set out to fix that problem. The business they built now saves hundreds of millions of dollars for people all ar … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Nimble today launched Nimble Contact, an easy-to-use contact relationship manager for individuals and teams. It simplifies relationship management by unifying company contacts from Microsoft Office 365, G Suite, Gmail and iCloud; social... | Continue reading
HBO has teamed up with Emmy-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and PodOp to create an interactive storytelling app, dubbed Mosaic. The Mosaic mobile app is a free download on iOS, and an Android app is coming later. Soderbergh and Hollywood veterans Casey Silver and Ed Solomon h … | Continue reading
Yotpo has closed $51 million in funding for its platform to help businesses improve their user engagement through fan contributions, such as user-generated videos. The startup has raised a fourth round of funding to finance its marketing platform that makes it easy for companies … | Continue reading
Heroes vs. Villains is the ultimate Star Wars fantasy. In this multiplayer mode for Star Wars: Battlefront II, you can be a hero or villain. This is one of the reasons why Battlefront II is probably going to be one of the biggest video games of the year, as it takes that fantasy … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Kony, Inc., the leading enterprise mobility and digital applications company, today announced it is expanding its global partner ecosystem with financial technology solutions featured in the Kony Digital Banking Marketplace. The... | Continue reading
Human resources (HR) software services company Zenefits has appointed a new chief financial officer (CFO) eight months after the previous CFO stepped down. Shaun Wiley joins Zenefits after having served as CFO at Torrent Technologies and CoreHR between 2013 and 2017. Before that, … | Continue reading
After raising a nearly $500 million round from high-profile investors in May, Chicago ad startup Outcome Health and its two founders are now being sued by investors who allege that the company presented them with “fraudulent and false information.” Founded in 2006 by Rishi Shah a … | Continue reading
The word of the day is “sequel” — as in Zynga launched Words with Friends 2 today to follow up its hit puzzle game Words with Friends, which became a part of its portfolio when it acquired developer Newtoy in 2011. The original came out in 2009 and has more than 250 million downl … | Continue reading
Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel today launched a free video feature. The app has gained a new “question of the day” section that asks users to reveal something about themselves. For each question, Coffee Meets Bagel users have to create a video up to eight seconds long. You can dow … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Qubole, which provides software to automate and simplify data analytics, announced today that it has raised $25 million in a round co-led by Singtel Innov8 and Harmony Partners. Existing investors Charles River Ventures (CRV), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Ventu … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — China’s Tencent now holds a 12 percent stake in Snapchat operator Snap, Snap said on Wednesday, turning over a 20 percent slide in the U.S. company’s share price after badly received third quarter results. Snap’s announcement of the stake taken by Tencent, one of Chin … | Continue reading
In Electronic Arts’ first edition of Star Wars: Battlefront, players got to enjoy a massive Battle of Hoth where the Rebels had to stop the Imperial Walkers from destroying their base. The developers of Star Wars: Battlefront II — which debuts on November 17 — took that idea and … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Uber has struck a deal with NASA to develop software for managing “flying taxi” routes in the air along the lines of ride-hailing services it has pioneered on the ground, the company said on Wednesday. And in this case, it’s working hard to stay on regulators’ good si … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: One keeps thinking things can’t get worse for Snap during its first year as a public company. Unfortunately, that’s about the only expectation Snap has managed to exceed since its spring IPO. In fact, Snap continues to defy expectations by botching each earnings report … | Continue reading
Amazon has announced that its smart Echo speakers and voice-activated Alexa digital assistant are now available in Japan by invitation. The ecommerce giant recently revealed that Alexa and the Echo would be coming to Japan this year, after it was rolled out in India last month. C … | Continue reading
Navya, a French company known for its self-driving shuttles, has taken the next step in autonomous vehicles by introducing a self-driving cab. At a splashy even in Paris, the company rolled out the Autonum Cab, a Level 4 autonomous vehicle designed without any interior features t … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Alphabet’s Waymo will launch a ride-hailing service with no human behind the steering wheel and has been testing the fully self-driving cars on public roads in Arizona, Chief Executive John Krafcik said on Tuesday. The test without a human in the driver’s seat is a fi … | Continue reading
Despite weak infrastructure and poor power supply, Nigeria stands out as one of Africa’s top tech hubs — something that was confirmed last year when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited the capital, Lagos. But to boost innovation even further, the country desperately needs a well … | Continue reading
There is very little doubt that Equifax’s negligent security practices were a major contributing factor in the massive breach of 145.5-million Americans’ most sensitive information. In the wake of the breach, EFF has spent a lot of time thinking through how to ensure that such a … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Since June 2017, the number of Ethereum smart contracts has quadrupled from 500,000 to over 2 million. For cryptocurrencies and blockchain change-makers, it seems like a good thing. That is, until there's a hack. And... | Continue reading
Nvidia is giving PC gamers the chance to power their rigs with the Force, and (as usual with such product tie-ins) you can choose the light side or the dark side. Two new Collector’s Edition versions of the GeForce Titan Xp GPU is launching this month for $1,200. These capable vi … | Continue reading
Snap Inc. reported today it saw $207 million in Q3 2017 revenue, and that the company lost nearly $40 million due primarily to excess Spectacles inventory. Last month, Snap said 150,000 pairs of Spectacles had been sold, an amount CEO Evan Spiegel described as exceeding his expec … | Continue reading
After a longer wait than usual, Apple today finally released the first official numbers for iOS 11. The various figures and estimates released by marketing and research firms are no longer relevant, as we now know for certain that iOS 11 has passed the 50 percent mark in less tha … | Continue reading
GUEST: In the decade-plus I’ve been working with motion capture, it’s been amazing to see how it has become an essential part of game development. In the past, a motion capture shoot that involved two to three actors piling on top of each other required a lot of time and effort t … | Continue reading
GUEST: “Rogue Bots! Panic! Robots will take over the world! Bots talking in a secret language!” These were just a few of the panicked reactions that spread across the internet when two Facebook chatbots began speaking to each other seemingly in their own language earlier this yea … | Continue reading
When NBA 2K18 launched in September, it had more ways than ever for players to spend money inside the game. That business model is working, with spending on microtransactions, downloadable content, and season passes jumping 57 percent year-over-year for the NBA 2K series. Publish … | Continue reading
Grand Theft Auto V came out in 2013, and it is still selling millions of copies. Take-Two revealed today as part of its financials for the second quarter that total sales for the open-world game are now at over 85 million. Grand Theft Auto V originally released for PlayStation 3 … | Continue reading
Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau wants to make sure that the company’s strong performance for the third quarter that ended September 30 isn’t a fluke. The social mobile game publisher reported net income for the second quarter in a row — the first time it has done so since going public in … | Continue reading
Zynga has acquired the mobile card game studio of Turkey’s Peak Games for $100 million in cash. The move is one of the biggest acquisitions Zynga has made under Frank Gibeau, who became CEO in March 2016. It’s also a big validation for Peak Games’ strategy of focusing on casual c … | Continue reading
Salesforce Research unveiled a new technique today that’s supposed to speed up machine translation using AI by doing away with one of the historical limitations of those systems. Instead of translating word by word, the system will now generate whole sentences at once. The approa … | Continue reading
IO Interactive is launching the GOTY Edition of its 2016 Hitman action adventure today, and the independent studio is using this as an opportunity to update fans on the state of franchise. IO left Square Enix this past summer after the publisher announced plans to sell the studio … | Continue reading
GUEST: AI investments are expected to surge 300 percent in 2017 compared to 2016, yet most of these businesses will fail to get it right. My team recently partnered with Fortune Knowledge Group to survey 300 senior executives about their AI strategies and found that only a quarte … | Continue reading
Telltale Games has let go of 90 staff members, about 25 percent of its total workforce, as GamesIndustry.biz first reported. The game publisher and studio is famous for its episodic, story-focused games based on hit franchises like The Walking Dead, Batman, and Guardians of the G … | Continue reading
VB LIVE: Ad fraud isn’t becoming more prevalent — the fraudsters are just getting slicker. Staying ahead of the fraudster’s learning curve is the key, and collaboration is the crucial element. Join EA’s network strategy lead for mobile acquisition and engagement and others in thi … | Continue reading