Gaming
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Playkey raises $2.8M to fund its US expansion
Playkey, a game streaming service we saw earlier this year at Disrupt NY, has just closed an additional $2.8 million round of funding from Russia’s Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF). Created at the suggestion of Vladimir Putin in 2013, the IIDF has invested in 293 companies to-date with the objective to strengthen infrastructure for Russian businesses. However, the investment… Read More
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Finding Andy Cunningham
A few weeks ago I stopped at a garage sale in Brooklyn and found a stack of Nintendo Power magazines. Nintendo Power, for the non-80s kids, was a magazine produced by Nintendo from 1988 to 2012. It was full of tips and tricks and even had walkthroughs of popular games. If you had an NES it was required reading and, boy, did I read it. Opening the pages of Nintendo Power, almost three… Read More
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Game publisher GameMine inks a $20 million partnership with South Africa’s Vodacom
On the heels of a $20 million funding round last month, the new game publishing company GameMine has inked its first big deal with a global carrier. The company has partnered with the South Africa mobile carrier Vodacom Group to bring GameMine’s subscription-based mobile games to the South African market. Read More
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Twitch’s mobile app is adding live streaming, dark mode and more
Amazon-owned game-streaming site Twitch today announced a series of changes coming soon to its mobile application, the most notable of which is the ability for broadcasters to stream directly to their channel from the app itself. That doesn’t mean you can live stream gameplay as of yet, though. Read More
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Arms brings the punch to the Nintendo Switch
Arms, a flagship Nintendo Switch title from the same folks who brought us Splatoon, is a fighting game only Nintendo could release. The object of the game, as in many fighting games, is to knock down your opponent. How you do it, obviously, is the trick. In Arms your weapons are, well, your arms. There are 30 different arms for ten characters and the arms spring out and can twist towards enemies. Read More
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Hasbro launches a subscription service for games
Toy company Hasbro is belatedly entering the subscription service market with today’s launch of Hasbro Gaming Crate – a service that ships a themed box containing three board games to users every three months. The service, which costs $49.99 per crate, offers two options – one designed for adults in search of new party games, and another with games better suited for… Read More
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Samsung’s new top-end curved gaming monitors are sporting HDR, QLED and AMD FreeSync 2
Samsung is updating its curved gaming monitor lineup with a slew of new technologies. Coming in 27, 31.5 and 49-inch versions, they’re called the C27HG70, C32HG70 and C49HG90, respectively. They blend the best current monitor technologies, into a package that at first glance seems pretty ideal. All three monitors come equipped with HDR (high dynamic range) for increased light range… Read More
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Gigabyte’s AERO 15 gaming laptop comes close to displaying the correct colors
The Gigabyte AERO 15 seen here is your usual gaming laptop, but with a twist — a color-corrected screen. Are color-corrected displays a gimmick, or do they help the editors and creatives who hope their laptop screens are displaying colors accurately? Read More
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Twitch expands game sales to more streamers
In March, video game streaming site Twitch introduced a new way for its streamers to make money: by selling games directly to their fans. Initially, however, that feature was only available to Twitch’s Partners – that is, the site’s top-tier streamers with large audiences. Today, Twitch is adding game sales to its newly launched Twitch Affiliate program, as well. The… Read More
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Nintendo’s Switch Online service will cost $20 per year and launch in 2018
Important news for Switch owners, Nintendo has spoken up to confirm a number of details around the online service for its new console. Online is an essential component to gaming these days, and the Switch service will grant subscribers access to a library of classic games as well as unlocking the option to play with friends online, set up game appointments and chat. The second half of… Read More
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Facebook takes on Twitch with new live-streaming deal for esports
In addition to Facebook’s announcement of a new partnership with the MLB to live stream a number of regular season games, the social network this week also signed a deal with global esports company ESL to bring over 5,550 hours of esports events and other original content to Facebook, including 1,500 of original programming. The move will aid Facebook in challenging Amazon-owned Twitch… Read More
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Minecraft arrives on the Nintendo Switch
It didn’t make the cut as one of the many announcements to emerge from Microsoft’s Build 2017 event this week, but this morning the company unveiled that Minecraft – the game it acquired a few years ago for $2.5 billion – has now made its way to the Nintendo Switch. The new game will include the same features found in console versions, Microsoft says, including the… Read More
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Microsoft announces its own motion controllers for mixed reality
Microsoft doubled down on its commitment to what it called “mixed reality” today at its Build developer conference, revealing motion controllers that work closely with VR headsets from Acer. With a $399 bundle containing all you need coming later this year, it could be one of the more affordable ways out there to get into the VR game. Read More
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Nintendo and the limits of nostalgia
Can the world stand another Link adventure? Can it throw another blue shell? Hit the Rainbow Road for another lap? Catch ’em all again? If you’re a Nintendo exec I suspect you’re starting to think that the venerated company is now brushing against the limits of nostalgia and that something – something big – is about to give. Thankfully the company is poised to… Read More
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Gigabyte’s AERO15 gaming laptop colors me impressed with a color graded screen
Gigabyte is releasing a new gaming laptop this month, as part of a slowly growing list of gaming laptop manufacturers that care about color graded screens. Dubbed the AERO 15, it’s a VR-ready laptop with one of NVIDIA’s recent Pascal graphics chips, the GTX 1060 — so in practice it can carry its own weight. Read More
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Wavedash raises $6 million for its platform fighting game
Hearkening back to the old days of iconic Nintendo games like Super Smash Bros, Wavedash Games has raised $6 million for a vision of platform fighting games as the next big thing in social gaming. Taking platform fighter games beyond the game console, the Oakland, Calif.-based company is looking to popularize the genre and bring the one-on-one fighter concept to the same level as a title… Read More
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This neural network could make animations in games a little less awkward
The graphical fidelity of games these days is truly astounding, but one thing their creators struggle to portray is the variety and fluidity of human motion. An animation system powered by a neural network drawing from real motion-captured data may help make our avatars walk, run and jump a little more naturally. Read More
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A salute to Nintendo’s Genyo Takeda, retiring after 45 years of innovation in gaming
Few at Nintendo can say they saw the company’s start as a video game company, and fewer still have had as much influence as Genyo Takeda, co-creator of several of the company’s most memorable (and durable) innovations. He’s retiring today, and I just wanted to mark the occasion. Read More
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