Gaming

Microsoft on Tuesday announced its acquisition of MinecraftEDU, one of the building blocks for its upcoming Minecraft: Education Edition. MinecraftEDU, developed by Teacher Gaming, launched in 2011 as a version of Minecraft enhanced for the classroom. Microsoft has used the lessons learned from Mine...

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich keynoted a marathon opening address earlier this week at CES, where he demonstrated a wide variety of new technologies and laid out the company's vision for where the industry is headed. There is a rapidly growing role for technology that is at once transformative, unprecede...

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey on Wednesday said the company did a poor job of communicating the price of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset. However, similarly priced products, such as TVs and smartphones, cost less to manufacture than the Rift VR headset, he said. A bare-bones Oculus...

A room-sensing camera planted on the front of the Vive Pre was the reason the release of Valve and HTC's virtual reality headset was delayed, the companies revealed Tuesday at CES 2016. The Vive VR headset was supposed to beat Oculus VR and Sony to the punch, coming out in the last quarter of last y...

Racking in more than 200 times its original asking price, the crowdfunded space simulator Star Citizen earlier this week reached a landmark 100 million in backer dollars. At the same time, developer Cloud Imperium released version 2.0 of the game's Alpha build. Alpha 2.0 is billed as the biggest Sta...

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said last week that Psychonauts will get a sequel -- if fans prove they want it badly enough. Appearing at the Game Awards in Los Angeles, he kicked off Double Fine's Fig campaign for Psychonauts 2, urging fans to pitch in $3.3 million toward development of the new ti...

Square Enix last week offered some tidbits about its upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake, which likely will be episodic in nature with the emphasis on action toned down. The company revealed the first gameplay footage of the remake at the PlayStation Experience 2015 event in San Francisco. The game, w...

Mojang on Monday announced that Minecraft finally is headed for the Wii U, with touchdown scheduled for Dec. 17. The lack of Minecraft availability long has been a legitimate reason to skip the Wii U in favor of another console. Although Minecraft is just the type of family-forward experience Ninten...

Vintage Video Games Reloaded

The movie and music industries over the past three decades have reaped profits from their vaults. Technological advances in hardware provided new revenue streams for old media. The electronic entertainment industry largely has failed to reap the same rewards, even as it continually has released new ...

Nvidia this week revealed a refreshed Shield Tablet K1 and indicated that it isn't done updating the gaming slate. One of the biggest parts of the refresh is a cut of $100 off the price of the 16-GB tablet. The original Shield Tablet was available in a $299 16-GB version and a $399 32-GB variant. Th...

Microsoft on Monday announced that its Mojang unit's Minecraft will star in Code.org's third annual Hour of Code event in December. A 2-D tutorial version of Minecraft will introduce players ages 6 and older to simple coding, encouraging them to mine and craft by using visual programming, Microsoft ...

Microsoft on Thursday began rolling out the New Xbox One Experience, delivering backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games and updating the user interface to a Windows 10 foundation. Support for legacy Xbox games is the headliner, but the roughly 1.15-GB update includes new social elements baked into...

Valve this week rolled out the hardware phase of its road map from bedrooms and basements to living rooms and lounge areas with its long-awaited video game controller, PC link box and Steam boxes. Valve's road map to the living room began with Big Picture mode in 2011, continued with in-home streami...

Microsoft on Monday announced that 104 catalog titles for the Xbox 360 will be fully compatible and playable on its "new" Xbox One video game system, which hit store shelves two years ago. The list of Xbox One backward-compatible games includes notable hits such as the complete Gears of Wars catalog...

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