Dragon Front Is Like VR Magic: The Gathering

 Tower above your army of monsters, lean across the battlefield and make your opponent’s face explode. That’s Dragon Front, a virtual reality card game coming to Oculus Rift. While many VR games see you flailing your arms or head about, or swinging swords and shooting bows and arrows, Dragon Front is decidedly more chill. That’s not to say it’s boring. In fact,… Read More

Color Switch Falls To The No. 2 Games Slot (But Is Still As Addictive As Ever)

 Did you hear about that crazy-popular game that sat in the No. 1 Games spot on iTunes for more than a month and a half? I’ll give you a hint, it has color in the title. Color Switch is a tap-based obstacle game that adds an additional level of difficulty because you are constantly changing colors. The game offers three modes: race, challenge and continuous play. And if you are feeling… Read More

Forge Looks To Make It Easy To Save Short Clips In Gaming Sessions

 Jared Kim might not be the best gamer — but he still wants to be able to share highlights from his sessions, and save them to remember them in the future. So much so that he decided to take a second crack at the premise with Forge, a new service entering beta today that helps gamers find short clips of the action and share them on different networks. Read More

Farmville Co-Creator Mark Skaggs Joins Indian Mobile Gaming Startup Moonfrog Labs

 The distance between Zynga’s offices in the United States and a gaming startup in Bengaluru might seem far, but it was a straightforward road for Mark Skaggs, who is best known as the co-creator of FarmVille. Five months after leaving Zynga, Skaggs is taking on a new role as a director at Moonfrog Labs, where he will develop new smartphone games for Indian players. Read More

Razer Raises At A $1.5B Valuation, With $75M From China’s Digital Grid For Immersive Gaming

 Razer, the gaming technology company based out of Southern California, has raised another round of funding, a Series C that values it at $1.5 billion, TechCrunch has learned. The backing comes in part from China, specifically the Digital Grid subsidiary of IT company Hangzhou Liaison Interactive. Yesterday, Hangzhou published a statement (a link first published by Reuters) confirming… Read More

Activision Blizzard Closes Its $5.9B Acquisition Of King, Makers Of Candy Crush

 Activision Blizzard today announced that it has closed its acquisition of King Digital for $5.9 billion, a deal that it says makes it the largest game network in the world with more than 500 million users. King is the publisher of the popular Candy Crush series of social and mobile games, while Activision Blizzard’s best known titles include World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. This… Read More

HTC-Valve’s Vive VR Headset Will Cost $799, Bundled With Two Controllers

 HTC has just dropped the most salient detail for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the virtual reality experience it’s been cooking up with Valve for the past year: the price. The forthcoming Vive headset will cost $799, the two companies confirmed today. So $200 more expensive than the rival Oculus Rift headset. Read More

Google Decouples Play Games From Google+, Lets Gamers Choose Their Own Names And Avatars

 Until today, you needed a Google+ account to use Google Play Games, Google’s online gaming service for bringing online multiplayer gaming, video recordings and social features like profiles and leaderboards to Android games. Today, Google is launching an update to Play Games, however, that removes this requirement. All you need to sign up now is a regular Google account and instead of… Read More

You Can Now Play Pong On Your Apple Watch

 The Apple Watch is good for many things – quickly answering texts and incoming calls, receiving important notifications, navigating your way through city streets, and more. But it hasn’t been seen as much of a gaming platform, for obvious reasons. However, there’s now a new game that might actually be fun to play on the device’s small screen thanks to its simple nature… Read More

A Day After Launch, “Exploding Kittens” Tops The App Store

 “Exploding Kittens,” the hugely successful Kickstarter-funded card game from ex-Microsofties Elan Lee and Shane Small along with The Oatmeal’s creator Matthew Inman, has now been translated into a mobile game. And that game is now exploding onto the App Store, too, having scored the #1 Paid App slot only a day after launching. The game, as you may recall, became one… Read More

Oculus VR Brings A New Reality To The Gaming Industry

 After walking the floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, many gaming industry participants saw the virtual reality (VR) writing on the wall for the first time — and in a very realistic way. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gaming has arrived, or gotten extremely close, with the official ship date for the Oculus Rift VR viewer set for March 28 and… Read More

Why Cloud Gaming Will Popularize Virtual Reality

 The virtual reality hype is real. It is undeniable that virtual reality is in popular demand among early adopters and hardcore gamers. Facebook’s Oculus Rift is sold out until June because, despite an initial public outcry against its price, many are willing to pay $599 to be one of the first to own the headset. Read More

Survios’ First-Person Shooter Shows How Addictive VR Will Be

 I want to play again. My arms are sore from shooting a virtual bow-and-arrow and slashing robots with a lightsaber. My heart is racing from dodging drone missiles and defending my teammate. And my mind is spinning from the possibilities. I want to play again. And I won’t be the only one. The game is called Raw Data by virtual reality startup Survios. It’s perhaps the most… Read More

Microsoft To Launch “Minecraft Education Edition” For Classrooms This Summer, Following Acquisition Of Learning Game

 Microsoft is further expanding on its investment in Minecraft, bought in 2014 for $2.5 billion, by acquiring a learning game called MinecraftEdu for an undisclosed sum. The game, produced by a company called Teacher Gaming LLC, allows teachers to use Minecraft in the classroom, and includes a library of lessons and activities used to teach subjects including STEM, history, language, and art. Read More

There Is Real Fraud In The Underground Market For In-Game Virtual Goods

 The recent announcement from Activision Blizzard to acquire King Digital Entertainment, maker of the hit game Candy Crush, for a staggering $5.9 billion is an acknowledgement of the promising (and profitable) future of mobile games. The global gaming market is projected to reach $91.5 billion in 2015. While PC and console games are still mainstream, mobile is the fastest growing segment… Read More

Glu Mobile To Invest Up To $7.5 Million In QuizUp, With Option To Acquire

 QuizUp, the Icelandic company that put trivia in an app, has announced that it is receiving up to $7.5 million in funding from Glu Mobile, with an option to call to acquire. This comes in the wake of a partnership forged between NBC and QuizUp, announced in October, with the network looking to turn QuizUp content into a proper TV show played both in studio and at home through the app. The… Read More

Twitch’s Users Watch More Video In A Month, On Average, Than Typical YouTube Users Do

 Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game streaming site, has been growing in popularity as more of today’s younger users look to online video instead of traditional television for entertainment. Today, the company released figures that paint of picture of its user base and how deeply they engage with Twitch’s content. Though the company didn’t disclose how many users it has… Read More

HTC Vive Pre-Orders Will Open On February 29

 The HTC-Valve partnership, which uncloaked last spring to reveal the pair working on a virtual reality experience called Vive, continues to push towards a consumer release — with their VR headset slated to ship in April 2016. Read More

Snoop Dogg Would Like Bill Gates To “Fix His S*&t”

 When something happens like, I don’t know, Xbox Live going down, what do you do? A lot of us run to Twitter to complain about it. Not because our complaints will be heard, but because hot damn sometimes it just feels good. Read More

PewDiePie Now Has His Own YouTube Network Within Maker Studios

 PewDiePie is launching his own multi-channel network called Revelmode. You may remember that PewDiePie was part of Maker Studios, Disney’s successful MCN. PewDiePie isn’t really parting ways with Disney as PewDiePie is working with Maker Studios for this new MCN. Revelmode is an imprint of Maker Studios with Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie in charge. Read More

Snoop Dogg On Why He’s Investing in GameOn

 A new sports conversation app called GameOn has secured an investment from Snoop Dogg, TechCrunch has learned. The rapper has added onto the seed round, which also included former NFL players Joe Montana and Lawyer Milloy. Snoop told TechCrunch that he’s investing in the app because he “loves sports” and he thinks it’s a good way to chat about the games. “Fans… Read More

A First Look At Mobile Gamers In Iran

 Here’s a fresh profile of the Iranian mobile games scene that’ll provide some useful insights to developers and publishers interested in this otherwise foggy market. We gathered the data via a survey we ran between January 2-10, 2016, sampling 837 mobile gamers on our channel on LINE, the popular messaging app in Iran. Read More

AWS Announces New Set Of Integrated Services Aimed At Game Developers

 AWS made several announcements today aimed squarely at moving the game developer community to its cloud platform. First of all, there’s Amazon Lumberyard, a 3D gaming development engine the company is offering for free with no costs for seat licenses, subscription costs or revenue sharing. For now, it works with console and PC games, but the plan is to offer virtual reality (VR)… Read More

From Nokia’s Snake Game To Supercell, Finland’s Gaming Industry Is Serious Business

 In September last year, Finland’s finance minister Alexander Stubb dubbed the country as the new sick man of Europe and while the country’s economy is fledgling and signs point to continued lackluster growth, the country’s startups – and especially its vibrant gaming scene – are flourishing, despite the uncertainty. According to a report from 2015, 179 game… Read More

Activision Confirms Major League Gaming Acquisition, No Plans To Shutter Business

 Some consolidation in the world of gaming and specifically e-sports. Today Activision Blizzard confirmed that it has acquired Major League Gaming, a specialist in live gaming events as it vies to become the “ESPN of e-sports.” The news follows reports over the weekend that Activision would be buying MLG for $46 million and shuttering the business. In the event, Activision is… Read More