Monday, 10 April 2017

Google’s AlphaGo AI to take on world’s top Go player in May

 After Google-owned DeepMind’s virtual Go champion AlphaGo took on and defeated one of the top-ranked human players in the world, it looks like Google wants to build some bridges, explore the AI-human interaction dynamic – and see if AlphaGo can take on the very best human Go player in the entire world. Google is partnering with the China Go Association and the Chinese Government… Read More

Minecraft is getting a Marketplace where creators can monetize their creations

 Minecraft is getting an update this spring that will add a number of new features, but the most dramatic might be the Minecraft Marketplace, a storefront where users can buy and sell in-game creations for real money. The Marketplace will offer maps, texture packs, skins, min-games and more, all curated by the Minecraft team. The launch catalog will feature selections from a handful of… Read More

Of course a venture capitalist was no match for CMU’s updated poker-playing AI

 Libratus, Carnegie Mellon’s poker-playing AI, is damn good. It easily routed four of the world’s best poker players back in January over 120,000 hands of No-Limit Texas Hold-um. So it comes as no surprise that a team of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and engineers playing against Lengpudashi, Libratus’ bigger, badder brother, would face a similar fate. Read More

Sunday, 9 April 2017

The Xbox One Scorpio is a six-teraflop gaming beast

 Microsoft couldn’t wait until E3 in June to unveil the Scorpio, so the company shared some details with Digital Foundry and we now know all of Project Scorpio’s tech specs. As expected, it’s going to be by far the most powerful gaming console out there. The console GPU will be able to process six trillion floating point operations per second, or six teraflops for short. Read More

Tuesday, 4 April 2017

Disney just launched the new mobile-only version of Club Penguin

 Club Penguin Island, the mobile-only replacement for the original Club Penguin (which shut down last night) has launched. Started in 2005, Club Penguin was one of the first successful virtual worlds for children and, as they grew up, teens and adults. At its peak the platform had 200M users, and a few months ago was still seeing upwards of 5M visitors to the Club Penguin website each month.… Read More

Stealthy gaming company Wonder is ready to tease its new mystery hardware

 Wonder, the incredibly stealthy new gaming company, has quietly created a signup page for information and perks related to its plans for global domination of the gaming market from its Los Angeles headquarters. The company is calling its new campaign the “Alpha Program”, and folks that are interested can get updates on Wonder’s product, provide feedback, and get perks and… Read More

A look back on the golden age of Atari gaming

 This excerpt is from Jamie Lendino’s Breakout: How Atari 8-Bit Computers Defined a Generation, an amazing book that details with an obsessive’s eye the rise and fall of Atari 8-bit computers. In this chapter, he looks through a few of his favorite Atari games and brings the memories flooding back of long weekends spent twirling joysticks in the rising dawn of computer gaming. Read More