Pokémon GO announced yesterday that it will permanently keep an in-game feature that made the game easier to play while social distancing. Introduced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the feature doubled the interaction radius around key augmented reality landmarks that are essential to gameplay. Though Niantic — parent company to Pokémon GO — […]
Tabletop gaming is in the middle of a historic boom, despite recent restrictions imposed on in-person gatherings by COVID. The tools adopted by game masters and casual players to play remotely are powerful, but not always the easiest to use or adopt. Role hopes to change that with a super-accessible video platform focused on the […]
During today’s Pokémon Presents livestream, The Pokémon Company announced that Pokémon Unite will become available for iOS and Android on September 22. The strategic battle game came out for Nintendo Switch in late July, but its arrival on mobile devices will expand the game’s potential user base. For users already playing on Nintendo Switch, fear […]
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. The question for the tech news cycle in China these days has become: Who is Beijing’s next target? Regulatory clampdowns are common in China’s tech industry […]
With most popular online video games, there’s a huge gap between being a good player and a great one. A casual player might be able to hold their own against other casual players, only for a random pro to wander by and chew through everyone like they’re somehow playing with a different set of rules. […]
A 10-step guide by the creators of memoryOS Alex Ruzh is the CEO and co-founder of memoryOS, an edtech startup developing AI-powered gamified software teaching people how to remember anything. Here at memoryOS, we have a saying we repeat often: “Most of the Kickstarter happens before the actual Kickstarter.” Preparation is the key. But even […]
The gamification of payments is not a new concept. A number of companies are attempting to combine gamification and payments in creative ways. And today, one such company, Play2Pay, has raised $13 million in a Series A round of funding. The Miami-based startup has a straightforward mission. It wants to give consumers a way to […]
A new challenger has emerged in the gaming hardware category. Game distribution giant Valve today announced the launch of Steam Deck, a $399 gaming portable designed to take PC games on the go. The handheld (which has echoes of several portable gaming rigs of years past) features a seven-inch screen and runs on a quad-core […]
At its Game Developer Summit, Google today announced a new feature for Android game developers that will speed up by almost 2x the time from starting a download in the Google Play store to the game launching — at least on Android 12 devices. The name of the new feature, “play as you download,” pretty […]
Those who’ve followed Nintendo with any sort of frequency over the years know the gaming giant has a tendency to be extremely protective with its IP. Ultimately, it’s probably for the best that the market wasn’t flooded with cheap Mario knickknacks the way it easily could have been. In recent years, however, the company has […]