On this week’s episode of How Games Make Money, ID@Xbox director Chris Charla joins host Jeff Grubb to talk about publishing indie games. ID@Xbox is Microsoft’s dedicated indie-developer program. And Charla has helped to oversee it since it replaced Xbox Live Arcade in the early days of Xbox One. Now, he is talking about how his team plans to continue helping developers as Microsoft…
Google today announced that Chrome for Android’s context menu will show “Fast page” labels for webpages deemed to have good performance. The label will be determined using Google’s Web Vitals, an initiative the company announced in May to provide web developers and…
Samsung’s $500 Galaxy A51 5G is coming to AT&T, too
August 18, 2020
Samsung’s $500 Galaxy A51 5G will arrive on AT&T on August 21st, joining T-Mobile (which got the device on August 7th) and Verizon (which got a mmWave-equipped A51 5G UW variant on August 13th).
As the name may imply, the A51 5G is the 5G version of the standard $399…
Epic says Apple threatens ‘catastrophic’ response in two weeks if Fortnite doesn’t comply with rules
August 18, 2020
Epic says that Apple has threatened to cut off its access to all iOS and Mac developer tools as retaliation for sneaking a new payment option into Fortnite last week — a stunt that ended in the app being banned from the App Store and Epic filing a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming it places illegal restrictions on the distribution of iOS apps.
Apple will terminate Epic’s…
Nintendo will show 20 minutes of indie Switch games tomorrow
August 17, 2020
Although it’s been almost a year since the last full-blown Nintendo Direct, the company has run a number of smaller digital presentations since then. The latest is another Indie World Showcase, which Nintendo will stream at noon ET on Tuesday.
It’ll include about 20…
If you want to purchase a phone with an under-display front camera right now, you’re out of luck. While several companies have tested the feature, none have yet to ship one to consumers. But that should change soon, as ZTE aims to become the first company to mass-produce…
Ahead of the Hot Chips conference this week, photonics chip startup Lightmatter revealed the first technical details about its upcoming test chip. Unlike conventional processors and graphics cards, the test chip uses light to send signals, promising orders of magnitude higher performance and efficiency.
The technology underpinning the test chip — photonic integrated circuits — stems from a…
Google today announced Chrome for Android’s context menu will show “Fast page” labels for webpages deemed to have good performance. The label will be determined using Google’s Web Vitals, an initiative the company announced in May to provide web developers and…
The Trump administration is further tightening restrictions on Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei, making it more difficult for the company to get chips for its devices. And a temporary general license that offered a reprieve for Huawei customers has now expired and won’t…
This article is part of a VB special issue. Read the full series: Automation and jobs in the new normal.
In early spring 2020, Smithfield, Tyson, and other industrial food suppliers warned that upwards of millions of pounds of meat could disappear from the U.S. supply chain as a result of the coronavirus. Although it now appears these fears were overblown or possibly a ploy to bolster exports…