An annotated list to everything written on Niantic to accompany our EC-1 In just a few years, Niantic has evolved from internal side project into an independent industry trailblazer. Having reached tremendous scale in such a short period of time, Niantic acts as a poignant crash course for founders and company builders. As our EC-1 […]
Anne Friedman Contributor Anne Friedman is of counsel at DLA Piper where she focuses her practice on structuring and negotiating large scale sourcing and technology transactions. Andrew Deutsch Contributor Andrew Deutsch is a partner at DLA Piper concentrating on intellectual property litigation and advice, including copyright, trademark, defamation and other First Amendment concerns, trade secret, […]
Kids gaming platform Roblox, most recently valued at over $2.5 billion, has reached a new milestone of 90 million monthly active users, the company said on Sunday. That’s up from the 70 million monthly actives it claimed at its last funding round — a $150 million Series F announced last fall. The sizable increase in […]
The HBO sci-fi blockbuster Westworld has been an inspiring look into what humanlike robots can do for us in the meatspace. While current technologies are not quite advanced enough to make Westworld a reality, startups are attempting to replicate the sort of human-robot interaction it presents in virtual space. Rct studio, which just graduated from […]
Nintendo’s Labo VR kit may just be a little cardboard experiment, but Nintendo is taking a chance on throwing its most beloved titles into the headset. Today, the company announced they will be adding support to play two of the Switch’s flagship titles. Though “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” seems to just be […]
Seemingly the sole government body policing tech platforms, the ol’ European Union, is now taking aim at desktop gaming’s biggest storefront, Steam, and its creator Valve. The commission sent a “Statements of Objections” to Valve and five other video game publishers, raising a fuss over the companies’ habits of “geo-blocking” purchases, i.e. prohibiting users from […]
Snap is unlocking a new revenue stream while giving you something to do between chats and Stories. Today Snapchat debuts its Snap Games platform that lets you play real-time, multiplayer games while texting and talking with your friends. The platform is based on Snap’s secret late-2017 acquisition of PrettyGreat, an Australian game studio with talent […]
Apple wants to tilt the balance from ad-laden freemium gaming titles toward all-access ad-free gaming experiences that can be downloaded across platforms on iOS, macOS and tvOS. At the company’s services event this morning, they announced Apple Arcade, their new premium subscription service for gaming across their hardware products. “We want to make gaming even […]
Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief, Matthew Panzarino, offered his analysis on the major announcements that came out of Apple’s keynote event this past Monday. Behind a series of new subscription and media products, Apple […]
Drake’s latest collaboration isn’t with Kanye or Kendrick, it’s with Marissa Mayer. The rap superstar has joined a bevy of Silicon Valley investors, including Strauss Zelnick, Comcast, Macro Ventures, Canaan, RRE, Courtside and Marissa Mayer, to fund Players’ Lounge, an esports startup looking to pit gamers against each other in their favorite titles with some […]