“How to build a better chatbot” plus 29 more VentureBeat

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• How to build a better chatbot
• First WhiteHouse.gov petition calls on Trump to release tax returns
• Vampires? Meh. Focus Home Interactive’s next role-playing game turns you into a werewolf
• Real Estate Game Works Expands Simulation for Continuing Education
• As AI advances, 4 potential risks emerge
• Minecraft Realms gets new maps with class-based brawling and a music light show
• ProBeat: Google is buying Fabric, but Twitter is still up for grabs
• Track Trump monitors the president’s policy changes for the first 100 days
• GamesBeat weekly roundup: We try Nintendo’s Switch, and game sales are up in 2016
• Nintendo Switch projected to easily outsell the Wii U
• Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney to receive lifetime achievement award at GDC
• Trump is President. What’s Silicon Valley going to do about it?
• The DeanBeat: 10 predictions for games in 2017
• Oculus’ ‘Dear Angelica’ VR film debuts at Sundance Film Festival
• Talking Tom maker Outfit7 confirms it has been sold to United Luck Consortium for $1 billion
• How to watch Donald Trump’s inauguration online (drinks sold separately)
• Samsung will reportedly blame Galaxy Note7 fires on poorly made batteries
• ‘Beauty in a box’ subscription startup Birchbox to open brick-and-mortar store in Paris
• Mail.ru Group acquires Warface publishing rights for North America and Europe
• U.S. regulators say driver in fatal Tesla crash had 7 seconds to react
• Obama’s parting gift to foreign entrepreneurs: A new way to stay in the U.S.
• Apple’s Beats1 lineup is still one big experiment
• Tehran will host its first regional Middle East game conference
• BotBeat Weekly: This week’s top bot stories
• Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with ebooks, automatic recycle bin emptying, power slider
• U.S. gaming industry earned $30.4 billion in 2016, up from 2015
• PitchBook: 2016 saw more private equity tech investments than in past 15 years
• 2016 NPD: Call of Duty No. 1, Battlefield No. 2 on 2016’s list of best-selling games
• Twitter testing new layout for Moments
• December 2016 NPD: Final Fantasy XV shows it has a new recipe for franchise’s sales

How to build a better chatbot Posted: 20 Jan 2017 02:10 PM PST GUEST: The rise of chatbot technologies has not been the stunning success many people anticipated. The technology is now ubiquitous, but chatbots are more famous for their failures than successes. For instance, Microsoft’s Tay faced a wave of media scorn after the internet trained it to become a misogynistic racist in the span of a day. Less snarky criticisms have been leveled at Google’s Allo. Experts have called the tech giant out for failing to equip Allo with end-to-end encryption, thereby exposing chat conversations to third parties. Even on the most basic levels, chatbots have found ways to underperform. The Starbucks pumpkin spice latte chatbot was supposed to seamlessly handle basic queries through Facebook Messenger about the coffee chain’s popular drink. Instead, it talked users in circles and failed to answer basic questions about its namesake beverage. Consumers were less than impressed. Despite some slight missteps, creations such as Siri, Cortana, and Alexa have given us a glimpse of what it’s like to communicate directly with machines. And for the most part, these exchanges have been pretty cool. The chatbot craze is poised to reach new levels — at least once we work out a few bugs. Benefits of a good chatbot Quite a few problems stem from companies presenting chatbots as autonomous AI-powered agents. In addition to being largely untrue, many people found this concept somewhat disconcerting. As Starbucks saw with its PSL bot, chatbots fail when they pretend to be smart and then deliver a ho-hum experience. A recent consumer survey revealed that half of consumers expect businesses to be available 24/7. These same consumers prefer to connect with companies through messaging systems rather than via phone or email. Chatbots are uniquely positioned to provide the sort of anytime, automatic information consumers demand. Businesses have even more to gain from chatbots. Any service organization would love a chance to improve customer service while lowering costs. Chatbots offer an ideal solution, though they should be used to focus on narrow tasks rather than try to solve every problem at once. The capabilities of chatbots are directly in line with the needs of consumers and business owners alike. We simply need to get through some growing pains. Building a better bot You already know you don't want to create a bot that’s insecure, ineffective, or racist. So that’s a good start. But you probably still have a lot of questions about how to quickly and effectively integrate chatbots into your current operations. Here are three pointers to help you capitalize on the chatbot craze: Bring chatbots to the people People don’t want to go out of their way to use chatbots; they would rather have the technology integrate seamlessly into the experiences they’re already having. Imagine you’re chatting with a buddy about a movie you’re planning to see together. Your friendly neighborhood chatbot might pop up and ask whether you’d like it to buy some tickets for a showing that evening. Pay attention to the channels your customers use, and send your chatbots out to meet them. For example, Taco Bell created a chatbot that allows customers to place orders through the messaging tool Slack. Company officials recognized that quite a few Slack users are young professionals, which closely aligns with the restaurant chain’s target audience. Give chatbots a brain Chatbots have the potential to automate tasks that eat up quite a bit of time, money, and labor. I recently met with a lead developer at the Canadian Blood Services Group who told me the company pays $5 to $10 for each blood donation appointment it schedules. A chatbot could do this same thing — probably a lot more efficiently — for mere pennies. Look at your own business and determine tasks you might be able to automate. These duties should be narrow and focused to ensure you don’t overextend your new bots. The employees who have been juggling these tasks will be liberated to tackle more complex duties, though they will occasionally have to step in when bots have issues. Bid adieu to the app Chatbots are able to offer more functionality than apps while allowing companies to avoid a lot of red tape.  Rather than attempt to tweak its app during Fashion Week, Tommy Hilfiger built a chatbot to help customers purchase new fashions as soon as models stepped off the runway. An app update would have required developer resources and a lengthy wait through the approval process before users could download the update. The chatbot refresh was instantaneous. If you haven’t already started to experiment with chatbots, your customers will soon expect you to embrace artificial intelligence. Focus on developing useful chatbots for the platforms your customers frequent, and begin to shift resources from app development to chatbot creation. Above all else, learn from the mistakes of your predecessors to ensure your chatbots accommodate rather than infuriate.

First WhiteHouse.gov petition calls on Trump to release tax returns Posted: 20 Jan 2017 02:09 PM PST With the United States transitioning from one president to another, a lot of changes happened today immediately after Donald Trump was sworn into office. Whitehouse.gov completely changed, and now features some of the new president’s plans for energy and jobs. The White House Facebook page is eerily empty, and @POTUS on Twitter — first used by the Obama administration — was handed over to the new administration. Also changing is the White House We the People petition website. All petitions created during the Obama administration are now gone. The first new petitions are beginning to roll in, and they call on President Trump to release his tax returns and divest in his business interests. A petition that asks Trump to “Immediately release Donald Trump’s full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance” was the first to appear shortly after President Trump was sworn into office. In its first hours online the petition has received nearly 7,600 signatures. The We the People website was created during the Obama administration. Any petition that receives 100,000 signatures in 30 days must receive an official response from the White House, according to the website.

Vampires? Meh. Focus Home Interactive’s next role-playing game turns you into a werewolf Posted: 20 Jan 2017 01:05 PM PST Focus Home Interactive is cornering the market on dark role-playing games from Europe. Today, the publisher announced a deal with White Wolf Publishing for Werewolf: The Apocalypse for PC and consoles. The Cyanide studio (makers of Styx: Master of Shadows, Blood Bowl, and the upcoming Call of Cthulhu RPG) will develop the adaptation of the pen-and-paper game. Focus Home is known for RPGs and strategy games, and Werewolf is a good fit for its product portfolio. Werewolf is part of White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” universe, which also consists of Vampire: The Masquerade (its 2004 PC adaptation is a cult-classic) and Mage: Ascension. The setting is a twist on modern times, where the supernatural lurks in a world torn by corruption, the divide between the rich and the poor, and devious men and women. You play as a werewolf (a Garou, which comes from the French Loup-garou), and you fight against civilization and “supernatural corruption.” "The World of Darkness has always attracted creatives with a strong passion for telling dark and immersive stories. So to work closely with the great talent at Focus Home and Cyanide exploring the savage Werewolves of this universe is an absolutely fantastic experience for us at White Wolf, and we are more than excited to see this great and highly relevant IP realized in a video game", said Tobias Sjögren, chief executive officer of White Wolf.

Real Estate Game Works Expands Simulation for Continuing Education Posted: 20 Jan 2017 12:41 PM PST PRESS RELEASE: Seattle-area startup expands the fun, interactive online simulation for real estate agents seeking to renew their licenses in Oregon SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 20, 2017– The Oregon Association of Realtors has just committed to offering the next generation of CE products, developed by Real Estate Game Works (REGW), for real estate agents in the state of Oregon. Real Estate Game Works, a Seattle-area startup, has developed an entertaining online simulation for real estate agents to meet their continuing education requirements. The software employs a concept called “gamification” to convert dry subject matter into a powerful 21st Century learning experience. “Our simulation will revolutionize the way real estate agents renew their licenses,” says CEO Jed Etters. “Say farewell to countless hours of sitting in a classroom or taking mind-numbing multiple-choice tests.” The simulation allows players to hone their skills by replicating a “day in the life” of a real estate agent. Players will find clients, negotiate prices, buy and sell homes, and engage in marketing. As a reward for good work, players can upgrade their office from a shabby basement to a downtown suite. The “clients” that players meet in the simulation, such as the Drill Sergeant and Geeky Professor (and many others), will keep them entertained in ways that traditional continuing education cannot. “For the first time, continuing education will be fun. Real estate agents will be eager to play this,” Etters states. Contained within the simulation are learning modules on topics of interest to real estate agents. These modules, combined with the simulation itself, provide the 30 hours of continuing education required by regulators in Oregon state. Crucially, the product is currently endorsed by the Oregon and Washington Association of Realtors. Players can access the game on desktop computers, laptops, and tablets such as the iPad. “We work on issuing top-of-the-line programs and products for our Brokers. Real Estate Game Works has proven itself as a revolutionary tool with interactive learning. We are proud to be the sole provider of gamified real estate continuing education in Oregon.” Jake Conley Education & Communications Coordinator The Oregon Association of Realtors follows the Washington Association of Realtors, which launched the next-generation, simulation-based CE products developed by Real Estate Game Works in September. REGW is expanding their offering to additional states in the near future. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170120005578/en/ Real Estate Game Works Scarlett Scott, 425-332-6447 ext.3 scarletts@realestategameworks.com

As AI advances, 4 potential risks emerge Posted: 20 Jan 2017 12:10 PM PST GUEST: Imagine a marketing executive, late at night, flipping through a slide deck from a company that promises to use artificial intelligence to automate many of her lead generation and lead scoring processes, optimize her advertising spend, and increase her marketing spend ROI by fifty percent. What could go wrong, she wonders? What could go wrong, indeed. As someone whose own company uses AI to make marketers’ lives easy, I’ll be the first to admit that the promises of AI are often overhyped. While the benefits are great, the sales pitch often leaves out the risks. Even though you may have figured out where best to apply AI to your marketing tech stack, there are still risks that can affect your chances of a successful deployment. Instead of worrying about them or brushing them under the carpet, I think it's best to face those risks head on, so you can deal with them directly. They fall into four main categories. AI risk #1: Fear of job loss This is probably the most understandable, but it’s also the easiest to address. People are often afraid of AI because they worry that it will make them redundant, replacing their unique skillsets with machine brains. While that may be true for certain types of jobs, I think the actual risk is much lower than people’s fears would suggest. AI simply isn’t advanced enough to replace human marketing experts across the board. If anything, it is a tool that will augment those humans’ capabilities, once they learn how to use it effectively. That said, you may still need to assuage people’s fears in order to get their buy-in to AI powered technologies. AI risk #2: Misaligned incentives Technology evangelists sometimes wade into organizations with wide-eyed ideas of how their products can change everything for everyone. But with AI, as with many enterprise technologies, that enthusiasm often runs into a brick wall — specifically, the walls dividing one department from another. It turns out that whoever owns a chunk of data in an organization often has very little reason to share it with other stakeholders. Whether it’s over privacy concerns, departmental policies, personality conflicts, or simple process misalignments, such barriers can often stop an ambitious AI project dead. For this reason, the two types of companies that have so far been most successful in deploying AI have been either startups (which are too small and too young to have ossified siloes) and tech giants like Google and Facebook (whose entire lifeblood is based on utilizing data). Companies in between those two extremes, which include almost every organization on the planet, have a bigger struggle. Marketers who want to use AI effectively need to be aware of departmental and regulatory issues that can affect them. All the players in the data value chain need to be aligned. AI risk #3: Unpredictability This is perhaps the largest risk inherent within AI. All AI projects are unpredictable because they are solving an unknown problem. Unlike with traditional software development, there’s no standard engineering methodology that can lead from step 1 to step 2 to a predictable outcome. In this way, applying AI to marketing data problems is a lot like pure science. We don’t know if a particular dataset will solve a particular problem. It’s impossible to predict all the results of a science experiment — and the hard problems in AI truly are science experiments. This is a new way of thinking about software development, and it’s going to be a challenge for anyone in marketing or IT who doesn’t already have experience with AI. AI risk #4: Talent This brings me to the final risk: getting sufficient talent onto your team. Unfortunately, there’s a massive skills gap in AI right now. The majority of talent out there doesn’t have experience dealing with real industry data at scale. The pool of true experts is very small — and there are 16,000 open jobs for data scientists at last count. That means it can be exceedingly difficult to find the professionals you need to implement and execute your AI-driven marketing programs. Add these risks up, and you can see why many AI experiments to date have gone wrong. For instance, McKinsey did a study recently analyzing the use of real-time analytics for decision-making in an oil and gas drilling operation. One company studied by the consultants had made a tremendous investment in instrumenting their offshore drilling rigs, collecting a massive amount of data via RFID tags and embedded sensors. Unfortunately, of the data they were collecting, only 40 percent of it made it back to an onshore datacenter. Only 1 percent actually made it into a database, less than 1 percent got deployed to products accessible to end users, and 0 percent — zero! — wound up being used by people to make decisions. Unfortunately, you may find the same resistance. There can be strong cultural pushback against using AI. Many people are mistrustful of decisions made by machines (and rightfully so, until the machine algorithms have had a chance to prove themselves). The challenge for marketing execs implementing AI is to make sure that all the necessary stakeholders have bought in. Ensure that people get training, that they have realistic expectations about the possible outcomes, and that their incentives are properly aligned. Do that, and you can start to realize some of the benefits of this amazing revolution in marketing technology.

Minecraft Realms gets new maps with class-based brawling and a music light show Posted: 20 Jan 2017 11:25 AM PST Minecraft isn’t all building houses and digging holes. Mojang has announced new content out today for Minecraft Realms, a subscription service for the block-building game on PC that costs $7 a month. It allows players to create their own private servers, but it also gives them access to minigames and maps. It also gives Mojang a new revenue stream for a hit that has already sold more 100 million copies on PC, home gaming consoles, and mobile. The new maps include the Big Giant Lightshow, a 20 minute musical experience synced up with the game world that Mojang is introducing as the first in a new “experiences” category. These aren’t minigames — they’re more like music shows or roller coasters that you can enjoy inside Minecraft. If you want something a bit more traditional, you can also play the Battle of the Gods minigame, a new class-based brawler. “Play as one of many gods, each with their own special powers,” Mojang details. “Blast people into the air, launch a ranged fireball attack, but whatever you do, make sure that you keep your eyes on the prize: grabbing the three relics and returning them to your home biome. Battle of Gods also features a single-player mode, based on the multiplayer, so that you can get to know the terrain and practice with the map's innovative ability system.” You can learn about the other new maps, including one that lets you play a board game inside Minecraft, on Mojang’s site.

ProBeat: Google is buying Fabric, but Twitter is still up for grabs Posted: 20 Jan 2017 10:30 AM PST Covering tech is wonderful. Often we get a breaking story that nobody saw coming. Last year, rumor after rumor suggested Twitter was going to be acquired, with one of the likely suitors being Google. Then, one by one, all the deals apparently fell through, and 2016 ended with Twitter grudgingly trudging on. Now, not even three weeks into 2017, Google is acquiring Twitter’s mobile developer platform Fabric. Google gets to boost its developer offerings with another cheap acquisition, while Twitter presumably gets a slight revenue bump and looks leaner for another auction attempt. How did we get here? To be frank, we may never know. Twitter being up for sale last year is still technically rumor and speculation, though multiple sources reported the social network was desperately considering all its options. It’s almost as if during the courting process, something about Twitter seriously turned Google off (and supposedly everyone else). But Google got to peek at Twitter’s books. While the numbers didn’t quite add up for all of Twitter, they did for a part of it. But this story is likely far from over. Twitter has failed time and time again to please users, developers, and stockholders. Meanwhile, the calls for Google to buy Twitter have been steadily grown louder. And there’s plenty of good reason for it. Google has included tweets in its search results since May 2015. This is one of those partnerships that benefits everyone. The two are perfect complements. Twitter still hasn’t figured out how to be a successful business. Google still hasn’t figured out how to be a successful social network. Google is constantly under pressure to get you information as quickly as possible, and while Twitter has a growth problem, the social network’s immediacy means its role in breaking news can’t be matched. There are only two groups that could monetize Twitter very effectively: Google’s ad team, and Facebook. Google may have considered the Twitter purchase simply so none of its major rivals get the social network. Facebook already owns Instagram, and even Microsoft has LinkedIn. Google has Google+. Alternatively, instead of Google buying Twitter, its parent firm Alphabet could do it. Even though Google encompasses all of Alphabet’s internet properties, that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Alphabet consists of various subsidiaries, including Calico, CapitalG, DeepMind, GV, Google, Google Fiber, Nest Labs, Jigsaw, Sidewalk Labs, Verily, Waymo, and X. Many of these don’t have much business sense. Twitter would fit right in. If Twitter were to be given access to Alphabet’s deep pockets for a few years, the social network just might figure out how to grow again. It’s a long shot, but just imagine what the company could do if it didn’t have to constantly worry about pleasing investors and could instead focus on users (developers are a lost cause at this point). And anyway, Alphabet is missing a T. ProBeat is a column in which Emil Protalinski rants about whatever crosses him that week. His main concern is having enough content to maintain a regular schedule. Then again, a deranged puppet just became president of the United States.

Track Trump monitors the president’s policy changes for the first 100 days Posted: 20 Jan 2017 10:18 AM PST Donald Trump is officially the 45th U.S. president, and there are millions of Americans eager to see him fulfill the promises that he made during the campaign. But with all the blustering activity taking place in Washington D.C. and in politics, it can be difficult to monitor. Y Combinator president Sam Altman and his team have developed Track Trump, a website designed to track the fulfillment of concrete promises Trump has made and whether he delivers in the first 100 days of his presidency. Altman, along with cofounders Alec Baum, Gregory Koberger, and Peter Federman, launched Track Trump with a nonpartisan aim of helping the public better understand the president’s thinking. “We believe it is important that citizens have the ability to understand and follow in real-time policy changes that will impact their lives,” the team explained on their site. There are three goals for the site. First, it separates policy changes from “rhetoric and political theater,” which means that the site won’t cover tweets or public statements — just actual action taken. Additionally, Altman believes a dashboard view provides a more accurate and concise way to track and show what changes have been implemented. Lastly, the team hopes to hold the Trump administration accountable for promises made. Track Trump looks at eight categories, including immigration, trade, energy and climate, federal government, economic policy, education, health care, and safety. The tracker for each category item will either appear gray for no action, yellow for steps taken, or green where policy changes have been implemented. However, if the policy fails to be implemented or it changes in an official capacity, Track Trump will denote it as red. Because it’s not using tweets or public statements, the site will include links to the primary source materials while also providing daily summary updates for the next 100 days. Altman said that his team started out with a focus on what Trump said in his “Contract with the American Voter” before the election — “those were clear promises that were unlikely to be misinterpreted.” However, other issues may be tracked in the future. This is the latest political application that Altman has pursued outside of his official role at Y Combinator. Prior to the election, he launched a nonprofit called VotePlz to encourage young people to get registered to vote, even holding a sweepstakes to gamify the process.

GamesBeat weekly roundup: We try Nintendo’s Switch, and game sales are up in 2016 Posted: 20 Jan 2017 09:50 AM PST Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo reveals new Fire Emblem games, the PlayStation 4 wins December, and we look at the upcoming strategy game Halo Wars 2. Enjoy, and have a great weekend! Pieces of flair and opinion The DeanBeat: 10 predictions for games in 2017 Did Nintendo's Switch reveal set the new console up for success? GamesBeat decides Here's a closer look at Nintendo Switch's game cards Hearthstone's Jade Golem mechanic used to be a lot different Hearthstone's Hunter class was was once in a different Mean Streets gang Above: Patches the Pirate from Hearthstone. Image Credit: YouTube News Epic Games' Tim Sweeney to receive lifetime achievement award at GDC Nintendo Switch projected to easily outsell the Wii U Talking Tom maker Outfit7 confirms it has been sold to United Luck Consortium for $1 billion Tehran will host its first regional Middle East game conference U.S. gaming industry earned $30.4 billion in 2016, up from 2015 2016 NPD: Call of Duty No. 1, Battlefield No. 2 on 2016's list of best-selling games December 2016 NPD: Final Fantasy XV shows it has a new recipe for franchise's sales ModDrop hopes to reignite interest in the Torchlight games through mods Silicon Studio adapts Graphine's texture software for console, PC, and VR development Ubisoft hires an Oscar winner for The Division movie: Traffic's Stephen Gaghan XCOM 2's Long War 2 fan mod is now available for PC Fig raises $7.8 million to expand game crowdfunding platform DigiLens raises $22 million to make 'eyeglass-thin' augmented reality displays HTC launches $10 million VR fund to promote the planet's sustainability Nintendo reveals new Fire Emblem games for Switch, 3DS, and mobile EA Play goes to Hollywood as the publisher further distances itself from E3 Resident Evil 7 gets Play Anywhere support for Xbox One and PC Exploration-based puzzle game Solo seeks funding on Fig Genvid releases interactive streaming for esports broadcasts Former Techland COO starts a new game studio in Poland PAX South will host NGE's Overwatch Winter Premiere Live Finals MIT launches Play Labs to help AR, VR, and AI startups get off the ground MMOne unveils commercial version of insane giant simulator arm for wild VR rides GAConf event to tackle how to make games more accessible to everyone Nintendo's next Direct presentation focuses on Fire Emblem LGBTQ-friendly dating game Kitty Powers' Matchmaker is coming to PS4 and Xbox One Survios to launch Raw Data game in virtual reality arcades Patches is Hearthstone's most-played card since Mean Streets of Gadgetzan released Valve boss Gabe Newell will hold Reddit AMA this week ZeniMax doubles-down in statement against Oculus VR as trial begins (update) 505 Games unveils original Steam game Quarantine Above: Super Mario Run’s price is most likely annoying people who don’t spend my on mobile games anyway. Image Credit: Nintendo Mobile and social Super Mario Run drops from U.S. top 50 grossing iOS apps (update) Tapjoy: Mobile games are more engaging and fun than social networks Clash of Clans maker Supercell hacked; 1 million forum accounts compromised Pokémon Go fights poverty with 17 PokéStops at the World Economic Forum Sensor Tower: Q4 game revenues grew 70%, downloads up 33% Halo Wars 2 inspires a social media strategy game on Twitter Decluttr: Pokémon Go makes $2,412.19 in a minute Pokémon Go generated revenues of $950 million in 2016 App Annie: Worldwide app downloads grew 15% and revenue soared 40% in 2016 Angry Birds maker Rovio opens new game studio in London Previews, reviews, and interviews How Creative Assembly tried to make Halo Wars 2 more accessible on Xbox One Halo Wars 2 shows how The Creative Assembly is adapting its PC chops for consoles Blitz mode turns Halo Wars 2 into a furious multiplayer fray Halo Wars 2's 2-vs.-2 mode speeds up real-time strategy multiplayer for consoles Nintendo Switch hands-on: Intriguing tech comes with some concerns How Digital Extremes built Warframe into a free-to-play sci-fi juggernaut Hypersuit promises to let you fly through virtual reality The State of Hearthstone: How Mean Streets of Gadgetzan changed everything — and where it goes next

Nintendo Switch projected to easily outsell the Wii U Posted: 20 Jan 2017 09:15 AM PST Nintendo looks to be avoiding having another console flop. Market research and consulting firm DFC forecasts that Nintendo’s upcoming Switch system will reach 40 million consoles sold by 2020. That’s almost three times what its predecessor, the Wii U, sold in its first three years. Lifetime sales for the Wii U, which came out in 2012, sit at a paltry 13.36 million. If DFC’s forcecast plays out, Nintendo will have a hit on its hands. The Nintendo Switch is home console that turns into a portable device, allowing gamers to play on the go or on the TV. It comes out on March 3 for $300. That 40 million number would still lag behind this generation’s most popular console, the PlayStation 4, which hit 50 million consoles sold shortly after three years on the market. But it would put the Switch ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox One, which sold 26 million machines in its first three years. After the disappointing Wii U, being 2nd place would be a big win for Nitnendo. "The Switch is a compelling piece of hardware that could potentially reach a much larger addressable market," said DFC analyst David Cole in a press release sent to GamesBeat. "However, given the limited software and Nintendo's poor recent track record of introducing new products we have tempered our forecasts to be conservative." So DFC expects the Switch to be a hit, if not an astronomical one. It seems unlikely it outperforms the Wii, which had lifetime sales of over 101 million.

Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney to receive lifetime achievement award at GDC Posted: 20 Jan 2017 09:00 AM PST As CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney has been a graphics wizard and a leader of the game industry since the 1990s. And he hasn’t been afraid to rattle the cages of the powers that be, as evidenced by his clash with Microsoft over the openness of Windows during the past year. Above: Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, will receive the lifetime achievement award at GDC 2017. Image Credit: Epic Games For his work, he will be honored with one of the industry’s highest honors: the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards on March 1. The award is an accolade awarded by Sweeney’s peers in the game development business. Sweeney started Epic Games (then known as Epic MegaGames) as a shareware publisher in 1991, and he also published ZZT, a simple shooter title that enabled user-created worlds. But his lasting impact came with the creation of Unreal in 1998 and the release of the Unreal Engine in the same year. The Unreal Engine has been used by thousands of game developers to create games with outstanding 3D graphics. Unreal Engine is the backbone graphics engine that has become an indispensable tool for creating high-end video games, and Sweeney was the main architect of the first-generation engine. Sweeney is a shy, geeky leader. But he has tangled with Microsoft over the future of Windows and whether the operating system vendor was trying to close off the historically open PC platform in order to pursue an Apple-like path to greater profits. When I asked him last May about why he went public with his dispute with Microsoft, he replied, “I spent 18 months emailing, meeting, and badgering Microsoft about this behind the scenes. There are a lot of great people at Microsoft who share the idea that Windows should be open, but there are also some bean-counters here and there.” Sweeney has also done his best to be a seer. At the VRX virtual reality show in December, he gave a speech about how to build the Metaverse, the virtual world envisioned by Neal Stephenson in the novel Snow Crash in 1992. That novel's vision of a pervasive cyberspace where we live, work, and play has inspired many a startup including Second Life maker Linden Lab and Stephenson's current employer, augmented reality glasses maker Magic Leap. Sweeney’s recipe for building the Metaverse was practical, and it also spelled out the need for it to be open, and not owned by one company. Sweeney also worked to make the Unreal Engine extensible via UnrealScript, a spiritual successor to his object-oriented scripting language for ZZT. This simple way for non-coders to get complex creations made easily led to extensive and creative player modding of games – one of the earliest blossoming of user-generated content. The engine has gone through four major revisions, and it has enabled Epic’s own titles such as Gears of War, Paragon and Fortnite, as well as notable independently created games such as Rocket League, Abzû, Astroneer and ARK: Survival Evolved. The engine is now being adapted by non-game development teams across the automotive, aviation, architecture, VR/AR, complex data visualization and film sectors. Sweeney joins the roster of previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipients which includes Todd Howard, Shigeru Miyamoto, Warren Spector, John Carmack, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima, Sid Meier, Ken Kutaragi, Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Peter Molyneux, among others. Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement award are chosen by the Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notable game industry leaders such as Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Doug Lombardi (Valve), Angie Smets (Guerrilla Games), Amir Rao (Supergiant Games) and Jade Raymond (Electronic Arts). In 2012, Sweeney also won the lifetime achievement award at another peer group, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

Trump is President. What’s Silicon Valley going to do about it? Posted: 20 Jan 2017 08:53 AM PST ANALYSIS: On a drizzly Friday afternoon in Washington — Today. This very afternoon. — Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. The Trump era officially begins. In Silicon Valley, Election Night shock has worn off. After meeting Trump’s victory with mouth-agape disbelief, the tech industry, at odds with Trump over just about everything, is formulating a response. What the industry does now, and all the stuff it doesn’t do, will tell us a lot about the next four years. For now, tech workers are at the center of the action. Protests began in Palo Alto earlier this week, targeting Peter Thiel, Trump’s Valley confidant, and Palantir, the secretive data mining company Thiel cofounded. The group leading the event, the Tech Workers Coalition, asserts that Palantir and Thiel “shouldn’t profit from a Muslim database and mass deportations.” Across the U.S., employees from Google, Adobe, Slack, Kickstarter, Instacart, and more have independently organized groups to attend the Women’s March, a massive effort to protest the “rhetoric of the past election cycle,” on Saturday. The Washington March counts Girls Who Code and iFundWomen as partners. One startup, Skedaddle, is busing 11,000 people to Washington for the event. Another, Flex, is hosting a roundtable for women’s health startups that night in San Francisco. To an extent, public pressure and petitions have forced some companies to talk publicly about the issues raised by Trump’s divisive campaign. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and even Palantir say they will not help the government create Trump’s proposed Muslim database. These companies have said far less about Trump’s campaign promise to deport up to 3 million immigrants. As for the Women’s March — major tech companies won’t talk about it on the record (we’ve reached out to 30 for comment, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook). Most companies are determined to sit on their hands, even though it’s likely Trump will introduce policies that rattle their bottom lines or clash with their principles. This may be particularly true of Facebook, which requires employees to separate all political activity “from work and never represent that such activities are being conducted on behalf of Facebook.” There are exceptions among industry leaders, like Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, and Thiel. The first two are on Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum and will “meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda,” the Trump-Pence Transition Team wrote in December. And perhaps this trio will shape Trump’s vague tech policy agenda. If they do, we’ll know it when we see it. The rest of the Valley powerhouses (Zuckerberg, Page, Cook, Bezos, and so on) won’t stay quiet for long. They can’t. As Trump’s promises become policy — perhaps the kind Silicon Valley has feared all along: eliminating visa programs, dismantling Net Neutrality, expanding surveillance measures, orchestrating mass deportations, developing a Muslim database, on and on — industry leaders will be forced to speak up. The very nature of Trump’s plans, combined with Silicon Valley’s breed of liberalism, is bound to thrust the most politically neutral companies into partisan debates. But just as Trump proved to be a divisive and polarizing figure in the general populace, his policies may lead to fissures and factions within the industry. CEOs may be forced to choose between what’s best for their shareholders and our national values. An increasingly mainstream tech industry is bound to clash with President Trump — it’s already happening on the ground floor. And the ramifications extend right to the heart of Trump’s base, where the tech industry is racing to automate the many jobs Trump pledged to create.

The DeanBeat: 10 predictions for games in 2017 Posted: 20 Jan 2017 08:01 AM PST Every year I make wildly inaccurate predictions about the future of games, and that time has come again. I go through this exercise not only to suffer great embarrassment, but but also to sharpen my thinking by looking back over the years in an attempt to find the future. I have written more than 13,000 stories for VentureBeat over the past nine years, and many of those are about games. I’ve heard so many predictions, and it’s easy to make fun of them. I figure it is only fair to go out on a limb myself with my own augmented reality view of the future. It's also a good way to look at the past year and get a dose of reality for what I thought I hoped would happen in the $91 billion industry. My scorecard for 2015 predictions Above: The Vive and Oculus Rift systems. Before last year, I predicted that virtual reality would take off, but not as fast as the hype would suggest. This was an easy one, as no nascent industry could live up to such expectations. VR generated $2.7 billion, a respectable number but far less than originally expected. I also said that VR and AR would command the lion’s share of new investments in gaming. I don’t have full numbers yet, but it rings true. I said that esports viewership would be on a path to rival the Super Bowl. I lack the numbers on this one as well, but I was vague enough to be at least partially accurate. I thought Sony would widen its lead in consoles, and it certainly did as the PlayStation 4 crossed 50 million units, the Xbox One came in second at 25.5 million units sold to date, and Nintendo trailed behind with the Wii U at 13 million units. I said that game companies would explore the possibilities of augmented reality, but wouldn’t cash on it yet. Boy, was I wrong. Pokémon Go cashed in big time with $950 million in revenues in 2016. I was right that Nintendo would show its cards for its turnaround strategy, and it did so with the announcement of the Nintendo Switch. I predicted hardcore gaming would gain ground mobile devices. To some degree, that was true, with hardcore (me thinks) titles like Clash Royale doing well, and big revenues for titles like Monster Strike, Madden NFL Football, and other hardcore mobile titles. I said consolidation would continue as foreign companies and media conglomerates acquired more game publishers. That was true, as Tencent bought Supercell at a $10 billion valuation. I predicted markets such as India and Brazil would become more interesting. That was true, but they haven’t set the world on fire yet. And I predicted the traditional media would lose ground to new ways of reaching consumers. There’s no argument on that one, as influencers like PewDiePie on YouTube crossed 50 million users. For the usual fun and embarrassment, here are my predictions for 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012. Please vote for your favorite prediction in the poll at the bottom. Predictions for 2016 1. Red Dead Redemption 2 will be a smashing success. Above: It’s real. Image Credit: Rockstar Games Few companies are betting as big as Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar Games label. They disappear for five years and come up with Grand Theft Auto V, which became one of the best-selling games of all time. Rockstar has trained us to only expect the best, and they delivered that with the original Red Dead Redemption, which had memorable characters like John Marston and chronicled the death of the American frontier. Rockstar takes a long time to deliver, but the quality never wavers. Seven years later, Red Dead Redemption 2 is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2017. This is a pretty safe prediction. The game will dominate sales for whatever month it is released and probably a lot longer than that. Competitors would be well advised to steer clear of its launch date. 2. Nintendo Switch will outsell the Wii U but fall short of the Wii Above: 1-2 Switch is a social dueling game for the Nintendo Switch. Image Credit: Nintendo Nintendo has a good design for the Switch, targeting people who want to use the same console at home and on the run. The system also has a smart controller design that will inspire new types of social and exercise games. This hybrid home console and portable idea is one whose time has come, and no one else has executed it well yet. This console will do better than the Wii U, which sold 13 million units. But it will fall far short of the 100 million units sold for the previous generation Wii. The Wii was a rare confluence of a novel technology that was priced low and appealed to the masses. The Switch will likely cannibalize sales of the 3DS handheld, but it isn’t such a spectacular breakthrough that everyone is going to buy it. The device is underpowered, and it isn’t likely to beat the performance of the aging PlayStation 4. The line-up looks thin so far, and hardcore fans may hold back because of that. 3. Virtual reality will struggle to gain traction Above: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich shows off Project Alloy. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi Analysts are busy shaving back on their optimistic estimates for AR and VR. Tim Merel of tech advisor Digi-Capital announced last week that AR and VR could hit $108 billion by 2021. But his previous prediction was that the combined industries would hit $120 billion by 2020, and before that, he predicted it would be $150 billion by 2020. We don’t mean to pick on Tim, but it’s clear there’s a trough of disillusionment for VR, which has done respectable numbers on mobile but still lacks traction on the PC, where the price of entry is still too high. The good news is that AR and VR technologies are moving fast, and tetherless VR systems (which have no wires or no need to connect to a PC) are under way at Intel, Facebook, and many other companies. The companies will continue to use Moore’s Law gains and other engineering innovations to make smaller, thinner, and less expensive headsets. And that will pay off, but probably not in 2017. It will be a better year in 2017 than 2016, but not good enough to justify the hype and optimism. The fundamental problem is that I haven’t seen the killer app (like Pokémon Go was for AR) in VR. 4. Apple will enter the AR/VR fray Above: Apple chief executive Tim Cook. Image Credit: Apple Apple is never the first to the party. But when it enters a market, it blesses it. That happened with the iPhone, and Apple tried to make that happen with the Apple Watch. The company has sat out the VR party, allowing Samsung’s Gear VR to take the early lead and learn from mistakes. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has expressed a lot of belief in augmented reality. The components for doing it right are coming down in cost, but even bulky 6-ounce headsets from Osterhaut Design Group cost $1,800. Apple will likely move into the market with a technology rich solution, but even it may have hard time early on. Whatever it does, it can’t afford rivals like Samsung and Google to get the edge in mobile VR and AR. I guess this more of a hope than a prediction, as something needs to give this market a kick in the pants. 5. The U.S. will continue to lose jobs to overseas game companies Above: AR/VR game jobs are up 400% since 2014. Image Credit: Indeed Indeed.com came up with a sobering report: U.S. game developer job postings have dropped 65 percent since 2014. That’s a sign that the U.S. job base for games could be on a downhill slope, as mobile games level the playing field and other regions produce more new jobs. Regions such as China and Europe have claimed their stakes in games, and Canada’s company-friendly subsidies have sucked a lot of jobs to the north. But there’s hope. If the aforementioned boom in VR/AR investment and overall sales materializes, the U.S. should see more than its unfair share of VR/AR jobs. On top of that, many of the game-related jobs in the U.S. are being created at platform companies, which are still mostly based in the U.S. If you consider the game-related jobs at Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, and many others, then we don’t have to sweat as much. And for sure, Donald Trump will drop the hammer on anyone who dares to move a lot of U.S. jobs overseas. 1 2 View All Continue Reading ...

Oculus’ ‘Dear Angelica’ VR film debuts at Sundance Film Festival Posted: 20 Jan 2017 08:00 AM PST VR films are getting serious and artistic. That’s what we’ll discover with the launch of Dear Angelica, a new virtual reality film from Oculus Story Studio, the VR film division of Facebook’s Oculus. Dear Angelica premieres today at the Sundance Film Festival, and it will be available for Rift on the Oculus Store later today. Dear Angelica tells the story of a mother (Angelica) and her daughter, with the vocal talent of Geena Davis and Mae Whitman. A story of grief and loss, Dear Angelica plays out in a series of painted memories — a visually stunning technique made possible by a new tool called Quill. The artistic style is meant to increase our empathy for Angelica's daughter as we're fluidly pulled through her imagination to experience her adventures and poignant recollections. This effect is heightened by art director Wesley Allsbrook, who painted every scene entirely by hand. The first animated experience created entirely in VR, Dear Angelica marks the beginning of VR's adoption as a medium for both creation and consumption, Oculus said. Quill, available for free, lets you create art with your hands through the Oculus Touch controllers. This makes makes it possible for artists and filmmakers to work entirely in VR to bring a narrative to life more quickly than with traditional means. The scenes construct themselves around you as individual strokes are rendered in real time for an interactive viewing experience unlike anything you've ever seen. As you watch Dear Angelica unfold, you can pause and explore, giving you a vantage point all your own, Oculus said. Oculus hopes that Dear Angelica will lead to an alternative, more accessible way to tell visual stories. The Oculus Story Studio won an Emmy last year for the VR animated short Henry.

Talking Tom maker Outfit7 confirms it has been sold to United Luck Consortium for $1 billion Posted: 20 Jan 2017 07:36 AM PST United Luck Consortium has purchased Outfit7, the maker of the wildly popular Talking Tom mobile app, for $1 billion. The buyer is not actually the previously rumored acquirer, Chinese chemical firm Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment Culture. Rather, Outfit7 Investments Ltd. (Outfit7) said in a press release that its shareholders have sold 100 percent of the company to a consortium of investors from Asia, represented by United Luck Group Holdings Limited under the leadership of Ou Yaping. Outfit7 is based in Cyprus, with operations in Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and China. It has more than 5.6 billion app downloads of their Talking Tom and Friends franchise worldwide. Talking Tom debuted in 2010, becoming a hit as kids and adults alike learned how to prompt the funny character to say amusing things about their friends or make farting noises. The franchise has also amassed over 10.3 billion video views of its various branded content online. This deal comes right on the back of one of “Outfit7's best launches to date: My Talking Hank, which launched on January 12 and features a new take on Outfit7's signature tamagotchi-style mechanic.” Goldman Sachs International served as exclusive financial advisor and Taylor Wessing LLP as legal advisor to Outfit7 and its shareholders. Outfit7 was founded in 2009. It is based in Cyprus, with development team in Slovenia. It has about 200 employees.

How to watch Donald Trump’s inauguration online (drinks sold separately) Posted: 20 Jan 2017 06:57 AM PST Tune in at 11:30 a.m. Eastern today to watch Donald Trump become the 45th president of the United States. In fact, the President-Elect’s inauguration events kicked off yesterday and will stretch into the weekend. And there’s no shortage of ways to watch the swearing-in ceremony this morning, but if you’re looking to stream it over the internet — or in VR — here’s a quick guide. In VR For reality escapists, USA Today and Nikon are streaming the inauguration and the parade following in 360 degrees. You can find the stream on USA Today’s YouTube channel using any headset that works with the video service, including Google Cardboard and DayDream. You can also watch the 360-degree video on your laptop or mobile device, if you don’t mind clicking or swiping to look around. The White House You can watch the White House’s own stream below. On Twitter Trump’s favorite social network will be streaming the event live. https://t.co/5AFwQmbOYi — Harrison Weber ✏️ (@HarrisonWeber) January 20, 2017 Facebook Via ABC News NBC NBC has a free stream. As do Reuters, CBS News, and C-Span, along with plenty of others.

Samsung will reportedly blame Galaxy Note7 fires on poorly made batteries Posted: 20 Jan 2017 05:08 AM PST A Samsung investigation into reports of Galaxy Note 7 phones catching fire or overheating has found that some batteries were irregularly sized and that others had manufacturing irregularities, The Wall Street Journal reports. The South Korean firm recalled all 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 phones last year after repeated complaints. The recall is likely to cost Samsung at least $5 billion and has already affected the company’s brand. Samsung’s report on the recall, set to be published on Monday, will conclude that the phone’s irregularly sized battery didn’t fit correctly into the Note 7, causing the smartphones to overheat. Unspecified manufacturing issues in replacement phones are also to be blamed for the recall, the Journal reports. Samsung’s internal Note 7 investigation team worked with a number of outside firms, hiring UL LLC and Exponent Inc to examine the batteries, while TUV Rheinland, a German firm, investigated supply chain issues. The report comes as the firm finds itself embroiled in a corruption scandal in South Korea. Jay Y. Lee, Samsung’s heir apparent, is facing allegations linking him to the country’s widening influence peddling scandal, involving impeached President Park Geun-hye. Lee has denied any wrongdoing. This story originally appeared on Fortune.com. Copyright 2017

‘Beauty in a box’ subscription startup Birchbox to open brick-and-mortar store in Paris Posted: 20 Jan 2017 02:43 AM PST “Beauty in a box” startup Birchbox, an online subscription service for grooming products, has announced plans to open a brick-and-mortar store in Paris later this year. Founded out of New York in 2010, Birchbox is one of a number of "things in a box" subscription services that dispatch a hand-picked selection of goods to members each month. In Birchbox's case, it specializes in beauty products for men and women, and it now claims one million subscribers across the U.S., U.K., Spain, France, Ireland, and Belgium. The company has raised more than $80 million in VC funding to date, including $60 million in April 2014 and a $15 million round a few months back. Birchbox opened its first physical retail store in New York back in 2014, and — in line with a number of other prominent entrants to the brick-and-mortar world from the digital realm — is looking to double down on its presence in the offline world. Above: Birchbox: Manhattan store Ecommerce giant Amazon has been slowly shaking off its online roots and increasingly embracing the physical world. Back in 2015, it opened its first real physical bookstore at University Village in Seattle, and it has continued to open staffed pickup points at universities across the U.S. It also has a flagship store in the works for New York this year. And, back in December, Amazon announced a new technology-infused grocery store in Seattle, one with no staff and no checkouts. Birchbox’s new store will open in the French capital this coming spring at 17 Rue Montmartre, in the busy shopping district Les Halles, and it follows a number of temporary pop-up stores that have opened in Paris in recent months. The Birchbox Paris store will emulate the basic concept of the Manhattan store, but the company says it will make some tweaks for the French market. Customers will be able to create their own box of products, consisting of sample-sized goods, or buy full-sized versions. There will also be a team of beauty specialists on hand to provide guidance — something that’s hard to replicate online.

Mail.ru Group acquires Warface publishing rights for North America and Europe Posted: 19 Jan 2017 10:42 PM PST Starting next month My.com, the international branch of Mail.Ru Group, will take over publishing and operations in North America and Europe for Warface, an online multiplayer video game developed by Crytek. Crytek, which released the game in 2013, will now focus on the development aspect, bringing more content and updates to Warface. Crytek and My.com say that they have developed a plan for a smooth transition of operation of players' accounts. "Characters will be saved, as well as all items, rewards, achievements, and currency balance," their press release says. Events and cross regional cyber sport activities have also been planned in the concerned regions. Warface is a fast-paced first-person shooter featuring cooperative and competitive action, stacks of game modes and a wealth of weapons for players to get their hands on. Gamers can choose to play as Riflemen, Medics, Snipers or Engineers as they work together and attempt to uproot the Blackwood military faction in Co-op play, or choose their side and lock horns with fellow players in versus battles. A Frankfurt, Germany based videogame developer, publisher and technology provider, Crytek is known for its 3D game development platform CRYENGINER and its award-winning titles Far Cry, the Crysis series, Ryse: Son of Rome, Warface, and The Climb. Recently, the company shut down some of its studios across the world after experiencing financial difficulties, as reported by VentureBeat. A leading player on the Russian games scene, Mail.Ru Group has been operating Warface in Russia and neighboring countries for four years, making this game one of the leading online shooters with more than 40 million registered players. This post first appeared on East-West Digital News.

U.S. regulators say driver in fatal Tesla crash had 7 seconds to react Posted: 19 Jan 2017 08:37 PM PST U.S. auto safety regulators said on Thursday they found no evidence of defects in a Tesla Motors car involved in the death of a man whose Model S collided with a truck while he was using its Autopilot system. The case has been closely watched as automakers race to automate more driving tasks without exposing themselves to increased liability risks. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, on his Twitter account, praised the decision by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which did not order a recall and put the responsibility for the accident primarily on the driver, former Navy SEAL Joshua Brown. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters on Thursday that drivers have a duty to take seriously their obligation to maintain control of a vehicle. He said automakers also must explain the limits of semi-autonomous systems. In the case of Tesla’s Autopilot, one limitation was that the system could not detect a truck trailer that crossed the road in front of the victim’s Tesla. “The (auto) industry is going to have to be clear about what the technology does and what it is does not do, and communicate it clearly,” Foxx said. Jack Landskroner, a lawyer for Brown’s family, said they plan to evaluate all the information from government agencies investigating the crash “before making any decisions or taking any position on these matters.” U.S. Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview on Thursday “it is important regulators allow the flexibility and freedom to innovate, but also prevent technology that is not quite ready for prime time to get on the road.” Confusion over who is in control Legal experts said the agency’s decision does not mean automakers would escape liability claims in cases where driver assistance systems fail to prevent a crash. "If it is known that drivers are misusing and being confused by your self-driving system, then that in and of itself can be a safety-related defect," product liability lawyer Jason Stephens said. The crash occurred near Williston, Florida, last May. Brown was operating his Model S in Autopilot mode just before he collided with a truck and was killed. The first fatality in a Tesla vehicle operating in Autopilot mode, the incident raised questions about the safety of systems that can perform driving tasks for long stretches with little or no human intervention, but which cannot completely replace human drivers. NHTSA said in a report that Brown did not apply the brakes and his last action was to set the cruise control at 74 miles per hour (119 kph), less than two minutes before the crash. The agency said Brown “should have been able to take some action before the crash, like braking, steering or attempting to avoid the vehicle. He took none of those actions.” The agency said the truck should have been visible to Brown for at least seven seconds before impact. Brown “took no braking, steering or other actions to avoid the collision,” the report said. NHTSA also said in the report that drivers could be confused about whether the system or the driver is in control of the vehicle at certain times. NHTSA issued numerous subpoenas and requests for information to Tesla, and also sought information from Tesla supplier Mobileye. The agency asked Tesla to describe how it monitored misuse of the system and steps it took before introducing the technology to prevent misuse, but nearly all of Tesla’s answers were redacted by the agency. Tesla said “the safety of our customers comes first, and we appreciate the thoroughness of NHTSA's report and its conclusion.” Musk, in a tweet, called the report “very positive.” He also cited NHTSA’s analysis of Tesla data which suggested vehicle crash rates fell by 40 percent after the installation of its Autosteer lane-keeping function. Tesla in September unveiled improvements to Autopilot, adding new limits on hands-off driving and other features that its chief executive officer said likely would have prevented a fatality. The agency also said its decision to close the investigation was not based on the software improvements announced in September. In October, Musk said all new Tesla models will come with an $8,000 package for technology that allows the car to drive itself. By the end of 2017 a Tesla should be able to drive in full autonomous mode from Los Angeles to New York “without the need for a single touch” on the wheel, Musk said. Rival automakers have said they expect to be able to field autonomous driving capability by around 2020. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is also probing the crash. NHTSA said there have been no reported incidents in the United States involving a Tesla in autopilot mode that resulted in fatalities or injuries since a Pennsylvania crash in July injured two people. (By David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Erica Teichert in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Matthew Lewis)

Obama’s parting gift to foreign entrepreneurs: A new way to stay in the U.S. Posted: 19 Jan 2017 08:32 PM PST GUEST: Back in 2014, when it was clear that Congress was not going to pass bipartisan immigration reform, President Obama vowed to take whatever steps he could, short of legislation, to advance his immigration agenda, including making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to work in the U.S. On Tuesday, he made good on that promise: The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final regulation that expands the use of the government's "parole" authority to authorize an immigration benefit for foreign entrepreneurs who can demonstrate they will provide a significant public benefit to the United States as a result of economic growth and/or job creation. This new immigration program, called the International Entrepreneur Rule, is scheduled to go into effect on July 16, 2017. This expansion of the government's parole authority is a welcome development for foreign entrepreneurs, who have been frustrated by the lack of options available through the existing U.S. visa categories, which generally are not oriented to companies in startup mode. To qualify, an applicant must be an entrepreneur who owns at least 10 percent of a startup venture (formed within the prior five years), is well positioned to advance the business, and can prove that the venture has substantial potential for rapid growth and job creation. They can prove this by demonstrating any one of the following: 1. receipt of investments of capital totaling at least $250,000 from U.S. investors (such as venture capital firms, angel investors, or startup accelerators) with a history of substantial investment in successful startup entities 2. awards or grants of at least $100,000 from federal, state, or local government entities with expertise in economic development, research and development, or job creation 3. other reliable evidence that s/he would provide a significant public benefit to the U.S. The initial grant of parole will be 30 months, and parole beneficiaries will be able to apply for an additional 30-month renewal. Parole cannot be accomplished without making a physical entry into the United States. Accordingly, if someone in the U.S. on a visa applies for and receives approval of a parole application, s/he must exit the U.S. and re-enter with parole in order to assume this new status. International entrepreneurs outside the U.S. may also apply, but as a practical matter, it may be difficult for them to meet the required criteria if they have not yet worked for a startup entity in the U.S. or if they have not worked lawfully for a startup entity. In contrast to the very strict minimum wage requirements associated with the H-1B temporary work visa, there is no required wage obligation for the parole beneficiary, but to maintain parolee status the parole beneficiary must maintain a household income that is greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty line for his or her household size as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In order to maintain parole status, parole beneficiaries will be required to update USCIS regarding any material changes. The parolee’s spouse and dependent children (under 21) are entitled to apply for parole status and, if it is granted, to remain in the U.S. for the same period of time as the principal parole beneficiary. Upon arrival in the U.S. on parole status, the spouse of the approved entrepreneur may apply for employment authorization. The threshold investment and revenue amounts will be automatically adjusted every three years by the Consumer Price Index and the required amounts will be posted on the USCIS website. As with any regulation, the incoming administration could take steps to rescind it. Hopefully, though, this rule will remain in place. The meager and strict U.S. immigration options for foreign entrepreneurs already drive a lot of talent to other countries that have more enlightened immigration options for entrepreneurs whose startups are driving growth and employment, not to mention solving important, real-world problems. While a legislative solution for a proper startup work visa or green card pathway would be preferable, this creative approach by the Obama administration to helping foreign entrepreneurs is a most welcome development. Susan Cohen is founder and Chair of the Immigration Practice at the law firm Mintz Levin. She contributed to the U.S .Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) regulations implementing the Immigration Act of 1990, the Department of Labor regulations implementing changes to the H-1B visa category, and the Department of Labor PERM labor certification regulations issued in 2004. She also helped draft the legislation which resulted in the Massachusetts Global Entrepreneur in Residence (GEIR) program. She has won awards for her political asylum work from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, and the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Apple’s Beats1 lineup is still one big experiment Posted: 19 Jan 2017 07:36 PM PST Apple today announced the coming of another show for Beats1 radio, which is one of the key pieces — albeit the free part — of its Apple Music streaming service. The latest Beats1 star is Marc Kinchen, whom the Guardian once dubbed “the house remix king.” Kinchen will host the “MK” show once every two weeks, with the first episode broadcasting tomorrow at 3 p.m. Pacific. “I’ll be diving into some old school house and techno, new music, remixes, and upcoming collabs,” Kinchen told Billboard. “I will also have some of my favorite producers and friends as guests on each show, from the legends to the up and comers.” Beats1 anchor Zane Lowe announced the news on his show today, after hyping it up on Twitter. But neither Lowe nor Apple made noise about the people who have been quietly shown the door at Beats1. Charli XCX, Deadmau5, Ellie Goulding, Fatboy Slim, Haim, Martin Garrix, Mary J. Blige, Skrillex, and St. Vincent have all been unceremoniously escorted out in recent months. Fans of these artists and the genres they promote may feel disappointed as Apple discontinues shows. But Apple is presumably just looking to see what sticks — nothing personal, surely — in order to surpass Spotify and stay way ahead of Pandora, which recently unveiled its streaming service. That leaves organizations formerly affiliated with Beats1 free to talk more openly about competitors. For instance, Skrillex’s record label OWSLA lately has been directing people to its releases on Spotify. The current Beats1 lineup features Andy C, Diplo, Drake, Dr. Dre, Elton John, Mike D, Pharrell, and Q-Tip, among others. Which is impressive, certainly. But with people coming and going at Apple Music, just as they do at its parent company, it’s probably best not to get attached. The stable of anchors has been consistent, with Lowe, Julie Adenuga, and Ebro Darden going live day after day. Overall, though, turnover seems to be the theme. A nicer way to describe it is “experimentation.” “I’ve learned the art of the pivot, learning quickly what doesn't work,” Apple Music’s head of content, Larry Jackson, told Complex this week. The app’s redesign reflects that, and its rotating talent roster does, too. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tehran will host its first regional Middle East game conference Posted: 19 Jan 2017 07:04 PM PST The Middle East is awakening to the opportunities in the $91 billion game industry. Iran will host its first business-to-business video game industry event, the Tehran Game Convention. The conference hopes to target about 2,000 attendees to gather for deal making and networking. The event will be a chance for international companies to make deals in the Iranian and larger Middle East and North Africa markets. Game Connection Europe & America will help stage the event. The Iranian gaming market is now opening its doors to the outside world (even as the nation faces sanctions), and games represent one of the opportunities, as Iran is already one of the largest game markets in the region. Mehrdad Ashtiani, project manager of Tehran Game Convention, said in an email that the effort to create the conference started about a year ago when the Iran Computer and Video Games Foundation wanted an event to bridge the international game community with the Iranian and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) game companies. “We have partnered up with Game Connection to co-organize the event and make it a flagship event in the Middle East,” Ashtiani said. He said there are more than 2,500 people and 150 game development companies that are active in Iran. The average size of each company is around 8 people to 12 people, and the bigger ones have up to 30 employees. “Removing the sanctions on Iran in the previous year has enabled the game industry of Iran to better interact with international community,” Ashtiani said. “This is the first time that such event is occurring and we hope to make it a permanent bridge to grow our emerging game industry as well as MENA.” Iranian games that have gotten notice overseas include Shadow Blade, Shadow Blade Reload, Rooster Wars, and Children of Morta. Ashtiani said roughly 80 percent of Iran’s games are for mobile and about 20 percent are on the PC.

BotBeat Weekly: This week’s top bot stories Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:12 PM PST VentureBeat’s Bots Channel tracks the most important news and analysis from the exploding field of bots and messaging. Each week, we select the top stories and present them in our free weekly newsletter, BotBeat. We include news stories by VentureBeat staff, guest articles from leading figures in the bots community, and a good number of posts from a wide variety of other outlets. You can subscribe to our BotBeat newsletter to receive this information in your inbox every Thursday. Here’s this week’s newsletter: Job loss caused by technology and automation was an important topic during the recent U.S. presidential election, and one that is generating a bit of heat at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. While business leaders wrestle with social and economic costs versus increased productivity, whatever salve they come up with will do little for customer service and call center workers, among others, who might be replaced by chatbots and artificial intelligence. However, it was AI, specifically, and the jobs it might replace that won people’s attention at Davos. During a panel discussion, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed the topic without offering specifics. “It’s not like we actually have economic growth today. So we actually need technological breakthrough, we need AI,” Nadella said, praising the potential for GDP growth and explaining that laid-off workers would need retraining. Rometty, however, acknowledged the worries of workers who fear AI. “There’s so much fear about jobs,” she said. “But most of us will be working with these systems.” She argued that waves of new technologies create waves of new jobs. Alone, such talk means little and does nothing to assuage the fears of vulnerable workers. However, it does suggest at least an awareness of the disconnect between those who look at technology and see utopia, and those who see a threat to their existence. I suppose it will have to do as a first step. As always, please send news tips to Khari Johnson and guest post submissions to John Brandon. Be sure to visit our Bots Channel for comprehensive news on bots, AI, and messaging. Thanks for reading, — Blaise Zerega Editor in Chief P.S. Please enjoy this video of IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussing artificial intelligence at Davos.   From the Bots Channel Why 2017 is the year of data-driven AI There was much ado about artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in 2016. It was warranted. Major developments and offerings came out of Microsoft (Cognitive Services), Google (TensorFlow), Amazon (Rekognition, Polly, Lex), IBM (Watson), Salesforce (Einstein), and many more. AI and machine learning (ML) are the hammers that turn just about every business' data problem into a […] Read the full story   Google Assistant actions can now talk about religion, eldercare, and city services A new batch of third-party Google Assistant actions are now available to chat with on a Google Home. New ways to speak with Google's AI assistant focus on eldercare, prayer, and city services. One new action points you toward bus times in Singapore, another toward pool times in Seattle, and another garbage pick-up times in […] Read the full story   Bots will replace people before they replace apps The bot land grab is officially under way and everyone is rushing to recreate successful app ideas in chat interfaces. Somehow the old pitch by analogy — we're "AirBnB for pets" — has found a way to be even less original. Now any aspiring entrepreneur need only take the name of a successful app and […] Read the full story   Why IoT needs AI At one of my recent talks in New York about AI in the supply chain, one of the key questions that came up was "Are you talking about robots?" You see, AI has been romanticized into this abstract term that conjures images of walking robots doing your household chores while you just sit back and […] Read the full story   In a 'man vs. machine' poker contest, the machine is winning A very interesting contest is taking place at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, where four of the world's best poker players are playing against a machine. And as of now anyway, the machine is winning. In this case the machine, named Libratus, is using artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed at nearby Carnegie Mellon University, a […] Read the full story   Betaworks launches Voicecamp startup accelerator around AI assistants and Alexa skills Early-stage startup investor Betaworks announced today that it plans to launch a startup accelerator this spring for the makers of artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana. Early-stage companies working on a prototype or beta version of an Alexa skill or Google Assistant action are invited to apply. Betaworks was an investor […] Read the full story   7 bot trends to watch in 2017 It's been less than a year since the Messenger Platform launched, and we've seen amazing results in a short amount of time. Throughout 2016, developers built engaging experiences while my team focused on building the best platform we could for them. As we observed what and how they were building, we continued to iterate and […] Read the full story Beyond VB How 5 brands have approached their Messenger chatbots Facebook Messenger has been luring brands and developers to its platform to create bots for just about everything from acting as a concierge to doling out advice. But there is a lot of variation in something as straightforward as a question-and-answer format. Brands have taken different approaches when it comes to chatbots. (via Digiday) Read the full story London startup launches chatbot to help renters exercise their rights London-based startup RentersUnion has created what it's hoping will be a socially useful chatbot, pitching their web-based bot as a robot replacement for (expensive) housing lawyers. The intended user is anyone not on the London property ladder, and thus at the mercy of landlords, tenancy agreements and (apparently ever-inflating) rents. (via Techcrunch) Read the full story What's the big journalism trend for 2017? Fear (oh, and voice news bots) The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's annual predictions report, released Wednesday, starts out a little bleak and doesn't exactly let up: In 2017, "key developments will center on fears about how changing technology is affecting the quality of information and the state of our democracy." (via Neiman Foundation) Read the full story Microsoft's Nadella Warns Against 'Hubris' Amid AI Growth Microsoft Corp. and its competitors should eschew artificial intelligence systems that replace people instead of maximizing their time, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in an interview Monday. (via Bloomberg) Read the full story Subscribe to BotBeat Weekly  and receive this newsletter every Thursday

Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with ebooks, automatic recycle bin emptying, power slider Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:11 PM PST Microsoft today started rolling out a new Windows 10 preview build for PCs and mobile devices for people participating in the fast ring of the Windows Insider Program. Build 15014 follows build 15007. As rumors indicated earlier this week, Microsoft is now bringing ebook purchasing to the operating system, specifically through the Windows Store, and only for people in the U.S. From there, users can find a new collection of “Books” in the Edge browser. In this preview, you’ll see a table of contents and a seek bar at the bottom of Edge when viewing ebooks from the library. You can drop bookmarks in, and read ebooks offline. And the Cortana virtual assistant has a role, to play, too. “You can search for words or phrases and ask Cortana to define specific words and view embedded video and audio content,” Dona Sarkar, a software engineer in Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group, wrote in a blog post. There are ways to widen text spacing, change the font, make the typeface bigger and smaller, and switch the theme. Microsoft will add more ebooks to the Store over time, Sarkar wrote. This build also has a feature for making the most of your PC’s local storage, one that’s similar to the Optimized Storage feature that showed up for Mac users in macOS Sierra. If you go to Settings > System > Storage you can enable the option, as it’s off by default. When disk space is getting low, Sarkar wrote, the new option can be configured to delete “unused temporary files and items that have been in your recycle bin for 30 days.” With this build, Microsoft is beginning to experiment with a slider for power consumption in the taskbar’s power flyout. It will only show up on certain PCs, and it won’t actually do anything — it’s just being added so Microsoft can get some early feedback on the design of the feature. “Some of our Windows PC OEM partners have asked for the ability to give people a number of options for how to ‘tune’ their PC for different scenarios. A person playing a game, for example, might be willing to have a few less FPS when on a long flight if it gets them more battery life — whereas the same person playing the same game, when near a power supply, may want top-end CPU performance to eek out every ounce of performance they can get,” Sarkar wrote. There are some cosmetic changes in this build, too. The Cortana search box now has a lighter shade, and notifications in Cortana and the action center will have larger text. You can now choose a custom accent color, not just one of the 48 that the Settings > Personalization > Colors section offers. Wi-Fi Sense and Paid Wi-Fi Services have been brought together into the “Wi-Fi services” part of Settings. The Snipping Tool app now has mode options available through a new Mode button, instead of next to the New button. The standard-issue Mail app, meanwhile, might be pinned to your taskbar with this build. Microsoft has made the transition for lowering blue light “a bit smoother,” Sarkar wrote. As usual, this build comes with plenty of bug fixes on PC. For one, the Explorer won’t crash anymore when desktop shortcuts include a percent (%) sign, or when projecting onto a second display. And copying with Control + C in Command Prompt will work again. Miracast will work again. Closing the lid of your laptop will no longer result in a blue green screen of death (BSOD/GSOD). Hitting “skip this step” when Microsoft prompts you to create a Microsoft account when starting Windows 10 for the first time will no longer send you back to the “Who owns this PC?” page. The Action Center won’t appear blank anymore, as it has in some recent builds for Insiders. Refreshing a PDF in Edge won’t show you a blank page anymore. Changes you make to display brightness through Settings > System > Display will stick now after you close out of Settings. Custom layouts of icons on the desktop won’t go away after you reboot. Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps won’t crash anymore if they’re running on devices with more than 150 percent dots per inch (DPI). And uploading from Windows 8.1 to some of the recent Windows 10 fast ring builds will no longer rid your machine of apps that you’ve gotten through the Store. That said, there are also known issues in this PC build, which is normal. Interestingly enough, one affects the process of downloading this build — it might seem like it’s not actually downloading through Settings > Update & security > Windows Update, even if it actually is. Sarkar advised people to be patient. (A forum post has more detail.) Various issues relating to the Spectrum.exe program — like a loss of audio and unusually high disk I/O — might pop up. If that happens, Sarkar recommended that people delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Spectrum\PersistedSpatialAnchors and then reboot their PCs. (A forum post has more information on this.) Audio might not work and you may see an error message “Device in use.” Sarkar suggested restarting Windows 10’s audio service. Microsoft knows that Windows may say that “some Settings are managed by your organization” even if that’s not true. (I saw that bug in build 15007.) You might crash the Windows Desktop Window Manager (DWM) and run into display issues if you connect an Xbox controller to your PC while running this build. Netflix might crash at launch, and if it does, then you should try opening it again. Or Netflix will crash when you start watching a movie. Tencent apps and Dota 2 might not work properly. Quicken 2016 might not, either. If you do run into issues with that app in particular, open Registry Editor (Start > type in regedit > right-click on it and select Run as administrator) and change the version from 4.7.XXXXX to 4.6.XXXXX for the following two registry keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Client and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full. Some Win32 games will (still) minimize and can't be brought up again when you click on certain things. And certain pages won’t come up in Edge (the error message will say “We can’t reach this page”), in which case, Sarkar suggested you try opening the pages in the browser’s InPrivate mode. And Cortana is still having issues quickly indexing newly installed apps, so you should wait five minutes after installing before saying something like “Hey Cortana, play Drake on Spotify.” (See Sarkar’s blog post for even more known issues and bug fixes.) If you want to try this new build for PC or mobile, but you're not a Windows Insider, you can sign up here.

U.S. gaming industry earned $30.4 billion in 2016, up from 2015 Posted: 19 Jan 2017 05:15 PM PST 2016 was a year of growth for the U.S. gaming industry. According to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the U.S. video games industry earned $30.4 billion in 2016. That is up from $30.2 billion in 2015. "Growth in entertainment software consumer spend was seen across the mobile, PC, virtual reality, subscription, portable, and digital console segments," said Mat Piscatella, industry analyst at The NPD Group, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. "Consumers have more options to purchase and enjoy entertainment software than ever before, while developers have more and easier ways of delivering that content. No matter the delivery platform, entertainment software has never been more engaging, diverse or accessible." 2016 saw the introduction of virtual reality to a wider audience with the releases of the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR headsets. It also introduced the idea of upgraded console hardware with the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One S. Meanwhile, the Pokémon franchise had a historic year, with Pokémon Go becoming a momentous hit on mobile and Pokémon Sun and Moon beating franchise records on the 3DS. Blockbuster games continue to sell well, with familiar franchises having big hits with titles like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield I, NBA 2K17, and Madden NFL 2017. New franchises, like Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division and Blizzard’s Overwatch, also managed to do well and crack the year’s list of best-selling games. Video game software revenue, which includes physical games, mobile games, downloadable content, subscriptions, and other revenue streams, was also up. It hit $24.5 billion in 2016, higher than 2015’s $23.2 billion.

PitchBook: 2016 saw more private equity tech investments than in past 15 years Posted: 19 Jan 2017 05:02 PM PST The technology sector received more investments from private equity firms in 2016 than it did at any time in the past 15 years, according to a report released today by PitchBook. Driven by gloomy IPO conditions and a swirl of available capital, a staggering 567 deals worth $159.8 billion were completed last year. The logic: If PE firms were willing to inject sizable amounts of cash in venture-backed companies, then entrepreneurs didn’t see the need to exit in order to achieve liquidity. The report states that $60 billion of the $159.8 billion invested in tech can be attributed to the Dell/EMC take-private deal that closed in September. But it adds that even excluding that transaction, PE investment in the IT sector grew by 10.8 percent. Despite tech’s strong showing, overall PE activity was much weaker. Deals were down from 4,131 in 2015 to 3,538 in 2016, and their value fell from $737 billion to $649 billion for the same period. The report attributes the decline to an expensive market and a lack of quality acquisition targets. Above: U.S. PE activity Image Credit: PitchBook report Exits also slowed. There were 1,097 PE-backed exits in 2016, totaling $316 billion, compared to 1,338 exits worth $406 billion in 2015. There were just 32 PE-backed IPOs in the U.S. last year, which according to the report is the fewest since 2009. Also, with the stock market’s poor performance, many companies that planned IPOs for 2016 simply postponed them. Above: U.S. PE-backed exit activity Image Credit: PitchBook report Looking ahead to 2017, Richard A. Martin, Jr., a senior director of Merrill Corporation, suggests a return to normalcy: “PE firms will still be looking to either execute a rapid sale of their best positioned portfolio companies while valuations remain high or further optimize their portfolios by offloading businesses with which they've done as much as they could to more specialist PE managers.” After the froth of 2015, business as usual would be a welcome change.

2016 NPD: Call of Duty No. 1, Battlefield No. 2 on 2016’s list of best-selling games Posted: 19 Jan 2017 04:55 PM PST 2016 is over. Here are the games that made the most of the year. The NPD Group has released its list of the 10 best-selling games of 2016. And, yes, shooters and sports titles continue to dominate the industry. The list includes physical sales and some digital (for PC games it includes Steam, but not other digial stores like Origin). Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Battlefield 1 Tom Clancy’s The Division NBA 2K17 Madden NFL 17 Grand Theft Auto V Overwatch Call of Duty: Black Ops III FIFA 17 Final Fantasy XV Once again, Call of Duty is at the top of the list. The shooter franchise has dominated the industry since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out in 2007. In fact, Call of Duty shows up twice on this list, with last year’s Black Ops III ranking at No. 8. Electronic Art’s big shooter of the year, Battlefield 1, wasn’t far behind at No. 2. This year’s entry took a risk by using a World War I setting, which is a rarity for gaming. But it seems like fans were ready for a change in time and scenery. Tom Clancy’s The Division came out early in the year in March and ranked at No. 3. Ubisoft did a good job promoting the open-world, online game with impressive demos at shows like the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Sports games continue to do well, with NBA 2K, Madden, and FIFA all appearing. This year, however, NBA 2K17 managed to perform better than Madden NFL 17. Last year, Madden was at the No. 2 spot, only behind Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Grand Theft Auto V is still charting. Rockstar’s open-world game came out back in 2013, but the developer has supported its online component with a steady stream of content. Overwatch shows up at No. 7, although it probably performed better than this list indicates. The NPD does not track sales through Battle.net, Blizzard’s PC games platform. It’s likely that a lot of PC players purchased the game digitally from Battle.net. Lastly, Final Fantasy XV makes an impressive showing at No. 10 despite only coming out late in November. It was the second-best selling game in December, after only Call of Duty.

Twitter testing new layout for Moments Posted: 19 Jan 2017 04:42 PM PST Twitter is currently testing at least one new layout for its Moments product, showcasing related tweets in a timeline-like format instead of its de facto flipbook-style. Because it’s a test, it’s not guaranteed to actually become available to the masses. Above: Twitter is testing out a new timeline-like layout for Moments. Image Credit: Ken Yeung/VentureBeat A company spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that a test was indeed taking place, saying that it was limited to a small group of people. It seems the test is limited to Twitter’s mobile app for now. Twitter Moments launched in 2015 and became part of the company’s efforts to market itself. While at first it was limited to curated publishers such as BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Getty Images, NASA, The New York Times, Vogue, and Major League Baseball, it gradually opened up to more celebrities and influencers until every user had access. When viewed, individual Moments appeared in a gallery-like format where you swiped to read associated tweets. Now, some users are noticing that instead of swiping through Moments, all of the curated tweets appear in a chronological timeline, not too dissimilar from what you’d find on the main Twitter feed. Since it’s a test, there’s no telling when it will be more widely available and whether it will supplement the current layouts that exist within Moments or replace them. Of course, there may be some who question whether this was the best use of the company’s resources, especially as Twitter is continually searching for itself. Updating the way Moments appear wasn’t exactly on the list of things that CEO Jack Dorsey highlighted as things he’d consider fixing this year. In fact, eliminating harassment and enabling tweet editing were the two most requested features from users. The updated Moments design certainly fits in with the rest of the Twitter app, and also looks cleaner, which could go some way in helping users better understand the service, which has been one of Dorsey’s strategies since taking over as CEO in 2015.

December 2016 NPD: Final Fantasy XV shows it has a new recipe for franchise’s sales Posted: 19 Jan 2017 04:20 PM PST It was a good month for Final Fantasy and Pokémon, but video game sales continue to see overall declines. The video game industry generated $2.8 billion in revenues in the United States in December, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. That is down 15 percent from the same period last year, despite new versions of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One S, appearing on the market. All four aspects of the industry that The NPD Group covers — hardware, console software, PC software, and accessories — were down. December 2016 results NPD's data tracks game sales at physical retailers and some online stores in the U.S. These sales figures include data from the Xbox Game Store, the PlayStation Game Store, and Steam, but only certain publishers share their results with the NPD (you won't find Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net store, for starters). This makes these numbers a snapshot of a larger industry that is far more dynamic. Hardware December 2016: $994.9M million (down 20 percent) December 2015: $1.24 billion Console software December 2016: $1.19 billion (down 12 percent) December 2015: $1.35 billion PC software December 2016: $45.8 million (down 13 percent) December 2015: $52.9 million Accessories December 2016: $547.6 million (down 15 percent) December 2015: $640.7 million Software Here is the top 10 for the month of December. It includes physical sales as well as some digital sales. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Final Fantasy XV Battlefield 1 Madden NFL 17 NBA 2K17 Watch Dogs 2 Grand Theft Auto V Pokémon Sun* FIFA 17 Pokémon Moon* *No digital sales counted for this game. “Final Fantasy XV was the second best-selling title for December 2016, and was the top-selling title on the PS4,” NPD analyst Sam Naji explained in a statement. “Final Fantasy XV experienced the best console launch month in the history of the franchise (since tracking began in 1995) selling 19 percent more new physical units than Final Fantasy XIII in its launch month and 54 percent more in total dollar revenue including digital full game sales.” NPD noted that Pokémon Sun and Moon combined sales are the best for the franchise since 2007’s Diamond and Pearl, while a Call of Duty game was in the top spot for ninth year in a row. Otherwise, you see a lot of usual holiday suspects: Call of Duty, Battlefield, Madden, NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto V, and FIFA. These franchises have become reliable money-makers for their publishers. Ubisoft’s open-world hacking game, Watch Dogs 2, also appeared on the list in the No. 6 spot following its release on November 15. Hardware The PlayStation 4 was the top-selling console of the month, with the PlayStation 4 Slim System 500GB Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Bundle performing the best. However, the Xbox One saw a 10 percent increase in the number of consoles sold over the same period last year. Sales of Nintendo’s nostalgic NES Classic Edition were up 14 percent compared to November, its debut month that saw it move 196,000 consoles. Meanwhile, Pokémon helped the aging 3DS portable grow its sales by 2 percent from December 2015. “Unfortunately, the release of the Xbox One S and the PlayStation 4 Pro did not generate dollar spending growth,” Naji said. “Although the combined ARP for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 systems decreased by 15 percent, consumers bought 7 percent fewer units.”

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