Last year Blizzard made what I felt was a huge mistake in scrapping the Battle.net brand, which gamers have associated with properties like StarCraft and Diablo for decades. The company has now reversed that decision, in what can only be a humble acknowledgment of my wisdom in these matters. “The technology was never going away, […]
Microsoft is about to share the last details on the Xbox One X with a press conference ahead of the Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. You can watch it live right here at 12 PM on the West Coast, 3 PM on the East Coast, 8 PM in the U.K., 9 PM in Germany. The company […]
In an announcement about a set of new discovery tools, Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch also unveiled that it recently acquired Palo Alto-based video indexing platform ClipMine. The startup’s technology is now being put to use to translate visual information in videos – like objects, text, logos and scenes – into metadata that can […]
Want those snazzy neon green and pink Switch controllers you’ve been coveting? In the U.S. and Canada, you’ll have to head to Walmart to pick up the Splatoon 2 Switch console bundle – at least initially. The bundle, announced today by Nintendo, will include Neon Pink and Neon Green right and left Switch controllers, as […]
Another sign that e-sports are turning into a big business: Nielsen is launching a new division focused providing research and consulting to the industry. The measurement firm already has a unit focused on gaming — in fact, Nicole Pike, Nielsen’s vice president of gaming, said Nielsen Esports was created in response to growing interest from the […]
As the lines blur between esports and traditional sports, Mobalytics wants to become your personal trainer. Today, the LA-based startup, which took home the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield cup last year, is launching an open beta of its gamer performance tool. The analytics/coaching startup is centered around what it calls the “GPI,” or Gamer Performance […]
Author note: Abel Owen is Ingrid’s nine-year-old son. These are mostly his words; Ingrid just helped type them a little faster. I use computers and the Internet all the time and really like them. They are an important part of modern life. And it’s pretty cool to know how they work. So when my mom […]
Rovio, the Finnish company behind Angry Birds, is planning to go public “as early as next month,” Bloomberg reports. Citing sources, Bloomberg reports the IPO could value Rovio at $2 billion and that the company could raise about $400 million from a local market listing. Though, it seems that a final decision has yet to […]
Last night, OpenAI’s Dota 2 bot beat the world’s most celebrated professional players in one-on-one battles, showing just how advanced these machine learning systems are getting. The bot beat Danil “Dendi” Ishutin rather easily at The International, one of the biggest eSports events in the world, and remains undefeated against the world’s top Dota 2 […]
Esports is becoming a true spectator sport, but will the average Joe one day care about competitive League of Legends or Overwatch or Counter-Strike the way they care about watching football on Sundays? A number of factors are at play for esports to garner the same level of popularity as mainstream sports like football, baseball, […]