Gaming in San Francisco. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Four years after its original announcement, developer MidBoss has revealed the sequel to 2064: Read Only Memories, titled Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER, will finally launch for PS5 on 16th May 2024. It will cost £12.79 / $14.99 and releases predominantly as a digital title on the PS Store, though a physical version is available for pre-order at Serenity Forge. While a PS4 version had been confirmed previously, it's mentioned nowhere in today's press assets, so it's likely been cancelled.

GDC 2024 is in full swing, and it looks like Inworld AI will be one of the hottest exhibitors at San Francisco's convention of game makers.

Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry publisher Ubisoft has unveiled ‘NEO NPCs’ at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has discussed the company's strategy of experimenting with generative AI, as detailed in today's announcement of NEO NPCs — a new prototype project from Ubisoft designed to let video game characters respond with custom responses to players' speech input.

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Convai, the conversational AI NPC platform for games previously featured in NVIDIA's Kairos demo showcased at CES 2024, just shared a slew of announcements for GDC 2024.

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It's GDC week over in San Francisco at the moment, and such a high concentration of video game developers in one place can only mean one thing: The Maw has turned its ever-dribbling gaze to America's west coast, and is preparing to bask in all the fresh learnings being shared about how last year's best video games were made and created. Edwin is one the ground there for us, so we wish him well in his news gathering and interview appointments. Back home, the news cycle still continues apace, with lots of great releases big and small coming up over the next seven days. Here's what we've got our eyes on.

Reddit said Friday that the Federal Trade Commission has opened an inquiry into the social media platform's sale, licensing or sharing of its users' posts and other content to outside organizations for use in training artificial intelligence models.

Star Wars Outlaws will apparently be the "most detailed Star Wars experience you've ever seen," at least according to Nvidia.

Detective Dotson, a mystery-adventure game for PC by Ahmedabad-based independent game studio Masala Games, was announced on Monday. A demo of the game has been added to Steam and is now available to play. Its full version will be released later this year. The 2D platformer game, which is set in modern India, is influenced by Bollywood and Indian TV shows like CID, as per the publishers. Masala Games has previously released Word Mess, a word game, for iOS and iPadOS.

Goblin Stone, the debut title from Orc Chop Games, has two stories behind it. The narrative of the game itself is of innocent goblins turning the tables on the adventurers that so frequently invade their home, inverting a typical fantasy trope.

As video game adaptations continue to ramp up, it looks like Watch Dogs will be one of the next titles to get the treatment.

With Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV series right around the corner, it’s time to delve back into the post-apocalyptic world of the game to get us in the mood.

Google Maps, a navigation juggernaut, has continually evolved its platform with advanced features since its inception. However, one basic yet crucial aspect was missing – directing users to the precise entrances of buildings or locations. Acknowledging this gap, Google is now incorporating a feature to address this common navigational challenge.

OpenAI shot back at accusations from Elon Musk that the ChatGPT maker betrayed its founding goals of benefiting humanity and chose to pursue profits, vowing to get his lawsuit thrown out.

The Amazon Games team is headed once again to Game Developers Conference in San Francisco from March 18-22! We’re counting down the days until we can discuss the latest trends shaping the future of our industry, to catch up with old friends and to make new ones.

Stranger Things icon and video game lover Finn Wolfhard shared his rather shocking and surprising idea for a potential movie based on a classic arcade game recently, with the game in question being Crazy Taxi. Wolfhard is currently wrapping up production on the fifth and final season of Netflix's hit series Stranger Things, but he still has time to pitch some truly wacky ideas for movies.

In a surprising development, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has initiated legal proceedings against OpenAI, the organization he played a pivotal role in establishing back in 2015 along with big investments from Microsoft. Musk's lawsuit is rooted in claims that OpenAI's emphasis on profitability has steered it away from its original mission of fostering artificial intelligence technology for the greater good of humanity.

As any fan of classic merge games will know, two things combined are always better than one.

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker's founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits.

Call it an epic troll by Elon Musk if you want, but the billionaire's lawsuit against OpenAI puts a refreshing spotlight on the endless humanitarian posturing by AI businesses.

As the video games industry violently contracts to ensure shareholder satisfaction at the cost of making thousands upon thousands of people unemployed, Skylanders studio Toys For Bob have announced they're splitting from Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to go independent. Good for them, but maybe too late for some. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that it seemed Activision Blizzard were closing Toys For Bob's California headquarters and laying off 86 people. Still, the new independent Toys For Bob say they're working on something new and "exploring a possible partnership" with Microsoft.

A new rumor has emerged that Embracer is close to selling Gearbox Software.

The developer of Limbo and Inside has revealed two new pieces of art for its long-gestating third game.

According to the official scheduling, Microsoft is getting ready to show off its first-party resolution upscaler at this year’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. Though this is more of an industry event rather than a conference for the consumer, the presence of DirectSR is quite exciting.

Artificial intelligence will become an important part of Reddit Inc.'s business, the company said Thursday in its long-awaited filing for an initial public offering — tapping into a revenue stream that could be both lucrative and controversial. 

Hardware is difficult, to paraphrase a famous adage. First-generation products from new startups are notoriously so, regardless of how much money and excitement you’ve managed to drum up. Given all that, it’s likely few are too surprised that Humane’s upcoming Ai Pin has been pushed back a bit, from March to “mid-April,” per a new video from the Bay Area startup’s Head of Media, Sam Sheffer.

Gearbox Publishing has announced Gigantic: Rampage Edition — a premium re-release of the once free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game which closed its doors in 2018.

World of Goo 2 is set to debut as a Nintendo Switch console exclusive on May 23. Its release date and Switch console exclusivity have both been revealed during the latest Nintendo Direct, which also featured new gameplay footage from the sequel to one of the highest-rated Wii games ever made.

When Backerkit’s crowdfunding platform formally launched in mid-2023, the company quickly made strides in the tabletop space, primarily by courting disaffected Kickstarter users. Now co-founder and CEO Maxwell Salzberg tells Polygon that his company already has twice the number of tabletop campaigns committed to the platform in 2024 as it did for all of last year — which isn’t bad for what he calls a “bootstrapped” company. The goal for 2024? Keep the crowdfunding ball rolling while also managing its expansive pledge-management services.

Gearbox Publishing and developer abstraction has announced Gigantic: Rampage Edition, a “premium and definitive release” of the original multiplayer online battle arena shooter Gigantic from Motiga. It will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on April 9 for $19.99.

Sam Altman's goal of raising about $7 trillion to make artificial-intelligence chips tells a story beyond his borderline-insane ambitions. First, the infrastructure needed to build AI has become exorbitantly expensive. Second, most of that value is still — still! — held by a handful of large technology companies — and the oligopoly is only going to get worse.

After a staggering 12-year run on Kickstarter, board game publisher CMON will take its crowdfunding and pre-order business exclusively to Gamefound. The founder of the Polish crowdfunding platform, Marcin Świerkot, told Polygon he was unable to disclose the terms of the agreement. What is certain, however, is that this maneuver marks a massive change in the relationship between Kickstarter, long the leader in the crowdfunding space, and one of its biggest competitors.

The series is one of the biggest video game hits to come out of the early 2010s zombie boom in the market, leading to several spin-off games and eventually the 2023 title Although none of the games ever quite garnered critical acclaim, most generally met a positive reception thanks to fun gameplay and the use of an effective Old Hollywood B-movie tone. managed the largest launch in franchise history across Xbox, PlayStation, and the Epic Games Store, and it's moving to Steam on April 22, 2024, to expand those sales even further.

GamesIndustry.biz and the Games Industry Gathering are teaming up on a party to be held in San Francisco during GDC next month.

Ubisoft’s recent investor meeting revealed unannounced information about the arrival of XDefiant. The shooter is slated to release sometime during the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ranges from January to March 2024. As a result, the new shooter could be available sooner than most may have anticipated.

The CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Tuesday that the dangers that keep him awake at night regarding artificial intelligence are the “very subtle societal misalignments” that could make the systems wreak havoc.

 Six years ago, automakers and tech companies thought they were on the cusp of putting thousands of self-driving robotaxis on the street to carry passengers without a human driver.

Layoffs have been reported at Toys for Bob, the developer behind Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time and the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy. They form part of the ongoing consolidation efforts necessitated by parent company Activision's acquisition by Microsoft, resulting in 1900 roles being made redundant. Some 86 workers have been let go, and the studio's office shuttered. Contrary to some earlier confusion, that's the physical address; Toys for Bob will remain active, and most remaining employees will now work remotely.

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After years of wildly incorrect predictions,Madden 24 has snapped its Super Bowl losing streak. This year’s official simulation of Super Bowl LVIII was nearly right on the money, correctly predicting a narrow win for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl, Mattel revealed it would be releasing Barbies, Little People sets, and UNO cards themed after whoever won the Big Game. Not just that, but the toymakers showcased images of all products, for both teams, and opened pre-orders even though only the winning team's items would ever see the light of day. Now the Super Bowl is over, Mattel's Kansas City Chiefs collection will become a reality, and pre-orders for the San Francisco 49ers products have been canceled.

A Minecraft player has spent 100 hours recreating the Allegiant Stadium in celebration of Super Bowl 58. Super Bowl 58 is set to take place on February 11, but this Minecraft fan has taken multiple play sessions to create the arena that it takes place in.

Popular streamer Dr. Disrespect became part of the first team in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0's Season 2 to achieve a nuke win, immediately uninstalling the game after the accomplishment. Since his streaming debut in the early 2010s, Dr. Disrespect has become one of the internet's most prolific gaming personalities, boasting millions of subscribers on his YouTube channel and regularly streaming FPS games. The beloved streamer has even branched out into other ventures, including writing a book and starting his own video game studio in Midnight Society. Now, the streamer has achieved a major Warzone milestone.

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The NFL’s biggest game of the season takes place Sunday, Feb. 11 at 6:30 p.m. EST in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s the Super Bowl, which in 2024 is between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.

Activision Blizzard's Crash Bandicoot and Spyro studio Toys for Bob lose 86 employees as a result of layoffs.

Nintendo will reveal the successor to its popular Switch handheld, the Switch 2, in March 2024, if rumors are to be believed. The Japanese gaming giant's partners are already making moves in connection to the upcoming reveal, according to insider sources.

While a recent report shows a second year of declining tabletop revenues at Kickstarter, consumer appetite for crowdfunded tabletop games may actually be increasing. Data shared with Polygon shows that Poland-based upstart Gamefound had a record year in 2023, with revenues from crowdfunding soaring by nearly 98% to $56 million last year. Taken alongside Kickstarter’s own haul of a reported $226.2 million, that could make 2023 the biggest year ever for tabletop crowdfunding.

Microsoft Corp.'s plans to cut 1,900 jobs from its video game division contradict statements the company made to a US  court that it would operate the newly acquired Activision Blizzard Inc. independently, the US Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.

Samsung is planning to unveil its fastest and next-gen GDDR7 memory modules next month with up to 37 Gbps speeds for next-gen GPUs.

2024 has already proven to be a difficult year for layoffs. A handful of companies have been making job cuts in recent weeks, bringing uncertainty for workers across industries.

Blizzard has announced an exclusive, multi-year partnership with esports company ESL FACEIT Group for Overwatch 2 esports events. Previously, professional Overwatch esports events were held as part of the now-defunct Overwatch League.

The usual suspects were out in force in the Game Developers Choice Awards 2024 nominees, with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur's Gate 3 leading the way with seven nominees apiece. But there were also some big surprises in the Game of the Year category, with Alan Wake 2 missing out in favor of Dave the Diver and Dredge.

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a challenge by Apple to a lower court's decision requiring changes to certain rules in its lucrative App Store, as the justices shunned the lengthy legal battle between the iPhone maker and Epic Games, maker of the popular video game Fortnite.

The nominations for the 24th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) have been announced, and two of the biggest games this year are up for the most awards. There are some smaller contenders in the mix. 

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has outlined a plan to prevent its AI tools from being used to spread election misinformation as voters in more than 50 countries prepare to cast their ballots in national elections this year. The safeguards spelled out by the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup in a blog post this week include a mix of preexisting policies and newer initiatives to prevent the misuse of its wildly popular generative AI tools. They can create novel text and images in seconds but also be weaponized to concoct misleading messages or convincing fake photographs.

The CEO of Fortnite-maker Epic Games said Tuesday the company's court battle to open up Apple's iPhone to alternative app stores was lost after theteThe high court announced it would not hear appeals by either Apple or Epic in the long-running case, effectively putting an end to the legal saga.

Today, the organizers of the Game Developers Conference have announced the nominations for the GDC Awards 2024. To the surprise of nobody, Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 and Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have dominated them, achieving seven nominations each.

The nominees for the 24th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) have been revealed.

Microsoft overtook Apple as the most profitable company at the end of last Friday's trading session in the US.

Artificial intelligence lab OpenAI published a blog post Monday seeking to address fears that its technology will meddle with elections, as more than a third of the globe prepares to head to the polls this year. The use of AI to interfere with election integrity has been a concern since the Microsoft-backed company released two products: ChatGPT, which can mimic human writing convincingly, and DALL-E, whose technology can be used to create "deepfakes," or realistic-looking images that are fabricated. Those worried include OpenAI's own CEO Sam Altman, who testified in Congress in May that he was "nervous" about generative AI's ability to compromise election integrity through "one-on-one interactive disinformation."

Searching for information has become instant and effortless — just go to your nearest device, ask Siri or click a few keys. But are we better informed than we were before Google became a verb?  A new paper published in Nature hints that we're not. When researchers exposed volunteers to a mix of fake and real news stories, they found people became more prone to being fooled by fake stories after being asked to do an internet search. 

A Red Dead Redemption 2fan found something very interesting in their childhood home. It’s an old photo that might look familiar to anyone who has played Red Dead Redemption 2.

 A fake photo of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral across Twitter on Monday, and stocks dipped. The incident confirmed what many have said for months: Misinformation is on course to be supercharged as new AI tools for concocting photos get easier to use. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may have gone through a huge crisis after being fired and re-appointed within days, but he is not letting any grass grow under his feet as far as his personal life is concerned. Social media is all agog about Altman marrying his partner Oliver Mulherin today. While no official word has come from any source so far, a few photographs are going viral on X/Twitter indicating the deed is done. These photos were reportedly shared by Mulhorin, but that is not confirmed. In fact, there is still no official confirmation about the marriage at all except what is going viral on the web.

A barrage of high-profile lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products that wouldn't be so eloquent had they not ingested huge troves of copyrighted human works.

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, announced a slate of new video shows, including a partnership with former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Lemon will host a 30-minute show on X called “The Don Lemon Show,” airing three times a week “exclusively first” on the platform.

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 CES 2024 kicks off in Las Vegas this week. The multi-day trade event put on by the Consumer Technology Association is set to feature swaths of the latest advances and gadgets across personal tech, transportation, health care, sustainability and more — with burgeoning uses of artificial intelligence almost everywhere you look.

Unity has announced it intends to lay off approximately 1,800 employees, or around 25% of its workforce.

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It’s a new year, but we’re still thinking about the amazing games we played last year. This week, we’re highlighting some of your favorite captures from 2023 in Share of the Year: 

Exciting news for Classroom of the Elite fans! You can catch the exclusive streaming of the episode on Crunchyroll. The series delves into the life of Kiyotaka Ayanokouji, a student enrolled in First Year Class D at Koudo Ikusei Senior High School.

Solo Leveling Season 1 introduces Otaku’s to the world of Shun Mizushino, who is hailed as the world’s weakest hunter.

Dotted around the internet are a multitude of silly images of Donald Trump. Here he is as a superhero, there he is as a cartoon warrior, and here he is playing basketball with a young Michael Jordan. The glossy look gives away these are AI-generated, but there's no denying the underlying message: Trump holds on to a kind of online cultural power and is still weirdly beloved. 

2023 in Review: Another year, another endless news cycle driven by the world's top corporate executives, with moments ranging from cringe-worthy to downright bizarre. While some CEOs seemed to relish the spotlight, Elon Musk chief among them, others were inadvertently thrust into social media's harsh glare. Elon Musk, Sam Altman to Marc Benioff, here are some of the most high-profile management misadventures: