Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch announced this morning that it will now sell games directly on its platform – a not entirely surprising expansion for the service where developers are already taking advantage of the site’s social community to get the word out about their games, and engage fans. Games will go on sale this spring, […]
Having free games with Xbox Live Gold was one thing, but Microsoft wants to go one step further. The company is launching a new service called the Xbox Game Pass. It’s a library of more than 100 games that you can download and play for a monthly subscription of $9.99. The feature isn’t live yet, […]
VR’s quest to become the next dominant computing platform has hit a few bumps in the road lately. There’s no way around the fact that VR headset sales have been sluggish. I recently talked about how I saw VR’s “trough of disillusionment” coming in 2017. Increasing adoption will require compelling VR experiences, which is why […]
Now and again in the hype period for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game’s creators compared it to the original NES classic. I chalked this up to the usual pre-release silliness; how could a brand-new game be anything like something released in 1986? It turns out I’d underestimated both Nintendo’s candor […]
Nintendo’s long-awaited Switch console has arrived, alongside the even more long-awaited New Zelda. The Switch combines the convenience of a handheld with the power of a home console — or at least, that’s the pitch. And while the two roles make considerable compromises in order to accommodate one another, the result may be said to […]
The Game Developers Conference kicked off in downtown San Francisco yesterday, and consolidation is a central theme for this year’s attendees. Late last week, we talked with Kevin Chou, co-founder and CEO of the gaming company Kabam, about his own both stressful and euphoric experience in running a gaming startup for roughly a decade before selling most of its assets […]
Michael Sayman was just 17 when Facebook hired him, but he’d already built 5 apps. Now 7 years after his first launch, the Facebook product manager has just released Show and Tell, which turns selfies and visual communication into a game. You’re given an emotion to act out, you send the video to friends and […]
You can add the cult classic Super Smash Bros Melee to the list of games soon to be dominated by AIs. Research at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has produced a computer player superior to the drones you can already fight in the game. It’s good enough that it held its own against […]
Horizon Zero Dawn appeared unique from the start – a PlayStation 4 exclusive, a novel setting, with an all-new franchise, combining survival game elements with cover shooter mechanics and real-time strategy play, all while you hunt mechanized dinosaurs in a lush, natural setting. A game with that kind of apparent quirk could go one of […]
AMD is launching three new Ryzen 7 processors on March 2 the will attempt to take the crown for fastest PC processors in the world from rival Intel. AMD’s new processors are all 8-core affairs, which the company says will best similarly specced rivals from Intel’s Core i line at similar price points ($330, $400 and $500 […]