Star Wars: Battlefront II actress Janina Gavankar has a warning for both triple-A game studios and Hollywood: “Lean in or die off.” She took the stage at the GamesBeat Summit in Mill Valley, California, today for an impassioned speech about the genius and creativity of indie game … | Continue reading
If you’re a fan of a traditional sports team, you know that those franchises have no shortage of ways to get you to spend your money to express your fandom. You can buy tickets, merchandise such as jerseys and inflatable thumbs, and other kinds of licensed stuff, and all of that … | Continue reading
Brian Fargo is the founder of Interplay Entertainment, a studio known for role-playing games like Wasteland and The Bard’s Tale, and InXile Entertainment (Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera). Now his new company, Robot Cache, wants to use blockchain to change the way peop … | Continue reading
GUEST: It could be said that we humans have a strange, even somewhat strained, relationship with our technology. The emergence of any new game-changing tech often inspires both optimism and dread in equal measure. Even deep thought poster children like Plato fretted that a newfan … | Continue reading
Continuing a push towards renewable energy in its own buildings and those of suppliers, Apple announced today that its global facilities are now powered with 100 percent clean, renewable energy. While the company committed to 100 percent clean energy for its data centers in 2014, … | Continue reading
This was first reaction when I saw Walnut Sprite: “He looks like someone hit him upside the head.” That got a laugh from Ben Brode, the game director of Hearthstone, the biggest digital card game in the market. Granted, it’s not all that hard to get a chuckle from the affable Bro … | Continue reading
Blizzard Entertainment might have an Orc riding a wolf in the courtyard of its headquarters, but let’s face it — when we talk about some of the most powerful creatures in the Warcraft universe, dragons rear their toothy heads. And with the upcoming Witchwood expansion for Hearths … | Continue reading
Game creators, publishers, and other influential people from the industry are gathering in Mill Valley, California, for the GamesBeat Summit today. Over the next two days, dozens of speakers will take the stage to discuss their insights about finding success and failure in this b … | Continue reading
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is the latest public figure to bail on Facebook, following recent revelations about the social network’s data harvesting and monetizing practices. Although multiple and even verified accounts remain on Facebook in his name, Wozniak posted on his pers … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies said on Monday it has agreed to buy electric bicycle service Jump Bikes, allowing Uber to offer U.S. passengers an alternative to cars and further consolidating the crowded bike-sharing industry. Jump is a dockless electric bike … | Continue reading
Following last week’s news that Cliff Bleszinkski’s Boss Key Studios was stopping active development on the shooter LawBreakers, today the developer announced Radical Heights. It’s a free-to-play battle royale shooter with an ’80s-inspired design that is launching on Steam Early … | Continue reading
Best known for its standalone hand-tracking accessory, Leap Motion announced today that it’s bringing gesture controls into an inexpensive augmented reality headset, hoping to kickstart widespread interest in AR. The company claims that the headset will cost less than $100 to pro … | Continue reading
Blizzard Entertainment announced today that BlizzCon will return to the Anaheim Convention Center on November 2 and November 3. BlizzCon is a fan event that Blizzard uses as a platform to announce new content for its games, including Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, an … | Continue reading
While anyone who has spent time on Twitter knows it’s full of automated accounts, a report from the Pew Research Center sheds new light on the degree to which bots dominate the conversation on the social media platform. According to the Pew study, a whopping 66 percent of tweeted … | Continue reading
Confirming a late weekend leak from carrier Virgin Mobile, Apple today announced that it is releasing (Product) Red versions of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The new iPhones are its latest red-colored offerings developed to support Red, a foundation that has worked for years to … | Continue reading
(Reuters) – A trade group representing top technology companies on Monday told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that it opposes the Trump administration’s focus on tariffs to try to change China’s unfair trade practices. The Information Technology Industry Council said in a … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: During a pep talk at a Facebook community summit last summer, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached deep into his aspirational wellspring of utopian digital dreams to explain the lofty vision for his adolescent company. Zuckerberg was clinging to his desire to buy the world a vir … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — In Dubai’s decades-old Gold Souk, customers from around the world haggle over bangles and necklaces. Elsewhere in the emirate, the region’s top center for gold trade, bullion is playing a new role in financial engineering. A local start-up company founded last year, O … | Continue reading
GUEST: It’s no secret that the U.S. spends a lot on health care, around 18 percent of its GDP or $9,400 per capita, nearly double what other high-income countries such as Canada, UK, Germany, and Australia spend. But more spending doesn’t necessarily yield better results. In fact … | Continue reading
One of my favorite movies is A Knight’s Tale, a highly underrated story about a medieval peasant who cons his way to knighthood winning jousting competitions against the kingdom’s most prolific knights. It stars Heath Ledger, and it was my first real introduction to the actor whi … | Continue reading
Tencent, the biggest gaming company in the world, and educational games startup Age of Learning have teamed up to bring English learning apps to China. Tencent and Los Angeles-based Age of Learning will launch ABCmouse, an immersive English learning program for children in China. … | Continue reading
GUEST: General Stanley McChrystal was responsible for the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his book Team of Teams, he talks about the rude awakening he had when he saw how disadvantaged his centralized command was compared to the decentralized networks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq an … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: If there’s any common reason that ambitious VR games frequently wind up disappointing, restrictive budgets would be to blame. Limited money means fewer people work on a game, generally reducing the scope of the experience. And even though VR tends to demand triple-A-cal … | Continue reading
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR is amazing. It was already fantastic when it first released on PSVR last year, and now that it takes full advantage of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive’s more powerful hardware and improved controllers, this may very well be the definitive version of Be … | Continue reading
GUEST: The market for AI is so overhyped, virtually anybody looking for a fast buck can re-package an old abacus and sell it as a “machine learning” platform. Misinformed people buy the idea and the mounting frustration makes it extremely difficult for legitimate AI companies to … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Hackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections”, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday. “The attack apparently affected … | Continue reading
If you own a VR headset of any kind, you should check out Google’s amazing Spotlight Stories. These animations, developed by a range of studios and artists, explore the power of the platform through short stories that often warm the heart. Now, their work is being celebrated in a … | Continue reading
With the opioid crisis gripping the nation, Ohio is leading the charge finding a solution with a surprising tool – technology. The Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge is seeking to help by using “a three-phase, prize-based competition to find technology-based solutions that address … | Continue reading
GUEST: The IRS has its eye on cryptocurrency investments. If you traded or sold any kind of cryptocurrency last year, here’s what you need to know before tax day. In 2014, the IRS issued one notice — IRS Notice 2014-21, 2014-16 IRB 938 — about cryptocurrency (let’s call it “the 2 … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: I feel genuinely bad for CNet’s Dan Ackerman. Earlier this week, he wrote a sad breakup note to VR, explaining that his huge investment (including day one purchases of Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sony PSVR headsets, plus optional accessories) hadn’t produced enough enjoy … | Continue reading
Wipeout finally came to PSVR last week, and the results were pretty outstanding. Simply put, it’s one of if not the best PSVR games out there, offering exhilarating racing across three game’s worth of content. Amazingly, though, the VR support was pulled off by just five people. … | Continue reading
This week, we learned that thousands of Google employees are upset about the company’s involvement in Project Maven, a U.S. Department of Defense initiative that has tapped Google to help drones with drone footage analysis. News of Google’s participation in the program and concer … | Continue reading
Weather Factory’s Cultist Simulator has a straightforward name, but the game itself isn’t so easily defined. It’s interactive fiction that trades in digital cards. It’s filled with intricate text describing otherworldly events, but players are urged to make quick decisions by tic … | Continue reading
When companies talk about moving to the cloud, they’re usually bringing their workloads from an on-premises datacenter to a public cloud environment, not switching clouds. But GitLab, a startup that provides developer tools, announced this week that it’s abandoning Microsoft Azur … | Continue reading
GUEST: It’s hard to remember the days when artificial intelligence seemed like an intangible, futuristic concept. Today, AI is everywhere. This has been decades in the making, however, and the past 90 years have seen both renaissances and winters for the field of study. At presen … | Continue reading
We’re going to have 82 speakers at our GamesBeat Summit 2018 event. It’s going to be the place to catch up on the important ideas on the future of games. The event will take place at the secluded The Seminary at Strawberry in Mill Valley, California, north of the Golden Gate Brid … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Friday endorsed U.S. legislation to regulate political ads across the internet, a concession to lawmakers days before he is scheduled to testify in two U.S. congressional hearings. Zuckerberg also said Facebook would begin r … | Continue reading
OPINION: I really wanted to like Windows 10’s Mail app. I always thought Outlook was overkill for me, so when Windows 10 was in development, I closely tracked how its mail client was coming along. It turns out that Windows Mail is unusable, and instead of improving it, Microsoft … | Continue reading
After allegations of sexual harassment, the nonprofit GaymerX and indie studio MidBoss are shuffling their leadership roles. Katie Kaitchuck will head up GaymerX as its executive director, and Cade Peterson will join MidBoss as its CEO. In a statement, Kaitchuck said that GaymerX … | Continue reading
Facebook users will soon get the ability to “unsend” messages, hours after learning that Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives have secretly used such a feature. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook had apparently given executives the ability to set a “retention period … | Continue reading
Ubisoft announced today that it will open a new studio in Winnipeg. Ubisoft Winnipeg will create 100 new jobs for the industry over the next five years, and it’s the third new studio that the French publisher has announced in the last two months. Ubisoft has studios in 30 countri … | Continue reading
It’s a good time for us to get inspired about games. I was delighted to see Ernest Cline’s vision for Ready Player One to come to fruition in a blockbuster Steve Spielberg film as it debuted last week. But it only made me more anxious about when the world of the Oasis, which is t … | Continue reading
REVIEW: The first thing to know about me is that I’m not a gadget guy. Yeah, I write about new product announcements from time to time, but I’m not one of those savants who can cite the latest specs on a phone and how they compare to the slightly different version that was releas … | Continue reading
VB EVENT: GamesBeat Summit 2018 is around the corner on April 9 & 10 in Mill Valley, CA — and we couldn’t have this event without covering the esports explosion. Our latest speakers are Peter Levin and Yvette Martinez-Rea, who will talk about how esports is evolving into the hott … | Continue reading
SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics tipped a surprise record first-quarter profit on Friday but market reaction was muted due to growing concerns that the semiconductor boom that has driven the South Korean tech giant’s earnings is about to end. Samsung shares fell after the an … | Continue reading
Funcom’s open-world survival game Conan Exiles will leave Early Access with an improved combat system, new biomes and dungeons, and a new system called The Purge that will keep players on their toes. It’s slated for a full release on May 8 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. At … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would take a serious look at policies to address what he says are the unfair business advantages of online retailer Amazon.com. Speaking to reporters while traveling back to Washington from West Virginia on Air Force One … | Continue reading
Epic Games’s Fortnite: Battle Royale has earned over $15 million from in-app purchases in its first month, according to market researcher Sensor Tower. The free-to-play game has been downloaded over 11 million times worldwide, and it’s now ranked No. 1 in the Apple App Store. Aft … | Continue reading