In 1996, a 2.5-minute short sandwiched between a bunch of other shorts premiered in an episode of The Simpsons. No one thought much of it at the time, but over the last couple decades, “Chalmers vs. Skinner” — rebranded to “Steamed Hams” — would go on to become one of the most iconic Simpsons moments.
A new oral history of the short published on Mel Magazine by Brian VanHooker dives…
Amazon today announced the launch of AWS Contact Center Intelligence (CCI) solutions, a combination of services that enables customers to integrate contact centers with AI through partners in the AWS Partner Network. Amazon says that CCI, which has solutions for things like…
Researchers at Duke Kunshan University, Wuhan University, Lenovo, and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou claim to have developed an AI system that detects whether a person is wearing a mask from the sound of their muffled speech. They say that in experiments, it achieves…
If you ever wondered how we’ll populate the metaverse, look no further than Hour One, an Israeli startup that is making replicas of people with AI avatars. These avatars can be a near-perfect visual likeness of you and speak with words fed to them by marketers who want to sell you something. An avatar can speak on your behalf in a digital broadcast when you’re at home watching TV.
Such…
EA’s subscription service is coming to Steam very soon. Today, the publisher announced that the recently renamed EA Play will launch on Steam on August 31st. This marks the fourth platform on which the service will be available, following the PS4, Xbox One, and EA’s own…
How Nexon is expanding its PC online games to mobile
August 19, 2020
Nexon is a lucky online-only video game company with five major franchises that have generated billions of dollars in revenues over the years. That’s the payback from being the first company to launch a free-to-play online game — the Kingdom of the Wilds, released on the…
Nintendo livestreamed one of its Indie World Showcase presentations to Twitch and YouTube this morning. This comes as fans continue to harbor anxiety about the future of the Nintendo Switch’s lineup. So far, the publisher has only revealed Pikmin 3 Deluxe for the fall, and that game is due out October 30. But while Nintendo should have more to announce soon — like the 3D Mario remasters —…
Torchlight III is coming to Switch
August 19, 2020
Nintendo announced today during its Indie World Showcase stream that Torchlight III is coming to Switch later this year.
Torchlight III has been in early access on PC since June. The action role-playing game started life as Torchlight Frontiers, an MMO. It then morphed into…
One of the more popular indie survival games on PC and consoles is finally coming to Switch. Subnautica is launching on Nintendo’s hybrid home/handheld system in 2021. Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment is also planning to launch the sequel, Subnautica: Below Zero, on…
Epic Games took on Apple and Google in a very public way last week to protest what it believes are monopolistic app store policies. But Epic was prepared for the fight in part because it knows how to make a spectacle, having already pulled off massive in-game events like the appearance of a giant rolling cube and a volcano eruption. The studio applied tactics it has perfected to hype those events…
