Microsoft is playing catch up when it comes to console sales. But it looks like the company doesn’t want to give up on dedicated gaming consoles. According to multiple reports, Microsoft is about to announce a new, slimmer Xbox One around E3 in June, and a more powerful Xbox One next year. In April 2016, […]
Live streaming platform and gamer community Twitch is today launching a new feature that it hopes will help spread its content further afield. The company has now debuted Clips, a feature that lets website viewers quickly and easily clip a 30-second portion video from others’ live streams. These clips automatically include links back to the […]
Microsoft just dropped the price of its gaming console. The Xbox One now costs $299 in the U.S. with a 500GB hard drive, or €299 in Europe. For $319, you get a 1TB hard drive. And bundles also get a $50 price cut. Interestingly, this news comes right before E3. Microsoft is set to announce […]
Imagine that you are lead strategist for the Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump campaign (take your pick). Your job is to maximize voter turnout in November. You hypothesize that more people would vote if doing so were fun. If your campaign could turn rallies and voting into a game, you’d drive more people to the […]
A San Francisco startup whose technology can turn any video game into a tournament played for cash prizes, Skillz, has a new Chief Product Officer, ex-Electronic Arts’ mobile vice president Bill Mooney. Skillz quietly brought Mooney on in February this year. Earlier, at EA Mobile, he managed teams that were responsible for games in the Simpsons […]
I’m writing this from a slightly saddened perspective, revisiting my favorite SNES RPGs and realizing something: I’ve been spoiled by modern UX design. The sentiment is pretty universal. Hugon on the Quarter to Three forum writes: “When I think ‘console RPG’ I think pages of fairly inscrutable character info and bad navigation. You cry tears of […]
The Omen X by HP VR PC is nothing if not compelling. The company showed off a picture of the concept earlier today and let slip a smattering of details around the backpack PC but not much else. No press release, no product page. It was a fairly usual announcement for HP. The hardware company’s VP […]
Minecraft, a game that skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of popularity among all ages because of its open-ended gameplay, infinite worlds, and limitless possibilities for creation and collaboration, is getting an official deathmatch mode. Is this it? Is this Minecraft’s shark jump (or pig jump, or squid jump) moment? Oh, of course not. But it is […]
Niantic Labs, the game maker that was spun out of Google last year following Google’s move to Alphabet, announced today that its new title Pokémon GO is launching into beta in the U.S. Those early adopters who signed up to become “field testers” earlier in May are now receiving their invites to the game, in order to offer […]
Funky physics and controls make mobile games fun. You tap against gravity in Flappy Bird, fling on a trajectory in Angry Birds and press to maintain momentum in Tiny Wings. So when two of Facebook’s top designers left to build their own apps, they wanted to bring a new gesture to gaming… and let worms, […]