You might pay extra to interact with your favorite streaming stars on Twitch, but would you click over to Amazon to buy products that those stars recommend? Amazon hopes that you will, and announced this week that broadcasters on Twitch will be able to earn up to 10% commission on items that they recommend to viewers. [More]
gaming
Walmart Cancels SNES Classic Preorders, Shrugs
By 7.26.17
If the popularity of the NES Classic was any indication, this year’s SNES Classic, a mini Super Nintendo with pre-loaded games, will be a hit product well into the holiday season. Yet customers who thought they had placed pre-orders at Walmart learned that the device they were expecting won’t be coming. Their preorders were canceled. [More]
One Major University Now Offering Scholarships For Gamers
By 4.5.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Are you a big-time gamer? Want to go to college, but worried about the high price of admission? The University of Utah might have a viable option for you: The school now offers scholarships for competitive video gaming. [More]
GameStop Closing At Least 150 Stores This Year Amid Falling Sales
By 3.24.17
Efforts by GameStop to drum up business — through the phenomenon that was Pokemon Go and diversifying its portfolio by acquiring more than 500 new AT&T dealer stores — were no match for consumers’ changing preference for digital downloads over physical copies. To that end, the struggling retailer will close at least 150 stores by the end of the year. [More]
Best Buy Swaps Intel Mini Stores For Alienware Displays
By 3.7.17
Best Buy offers customers a range of “experiences” through an array of mini-stores, including those from AT&T, Verizon, Oculus, Samsung, and Intel. Now, the company is revamping one of those concepts, swapping out dozens of Intel store-within-a-store showcases to feature products from Alienware instead. [More]
Nintendo Doesn’t Think Switch Devices With Dead Pixels Are Defective
By 3.6.17
If you spend $300 on a new gaming device, you’d hope that it wouldn’t come out of the box with dead pixels that will remain a constant visual annoyance for the lifespan of the device. You’d probably call such a product “defective,” but the folks at Nintendo would disagree.. [More]
Oculus Closing 200 Best Buy Demo Stations Over Slower Traffic
By 2.9.17
Facebook’s Oculus had been hoping to win wary customers over to the idea of virtual reality by setting up hundreds of pop-up demo stations inside Best Buy stores around the country. Turns out, folks may not be all that interested, so Oculus is shutting down about 40% of these in-store test drive locations. [More]
Nintendo To End Production Of Wii U “Soon”
By 11.10.16
Nintendo’s Wii U gaming console never caught on with the public in the same way some of the company’s earlier devices did, and now it looks like the end is nigh for the 4-year-old console.
[More]
Oculus Developing A Lower-End, Standalone Virtual Reality Device
By 10.7.16
If you’re one of those people who was perhaps interested in buying the Oculus Rift, only you don’t own a computer powerful enough to handle it, the Facebook-owned company says it’s got a new virtual reality product in the works that won’t require a Windows PC or even a mobile phone to use it. [More]
You Can Go Livestream 400 PlayStation 3 Games On Your PC Today
By 8.30.16
To people immersed in the world of video games, some things read as a given. You only play Halo titles on Xbox consoles. You only play Uncharted games on Sony hardware. PCs are yet another planet; there are worlds of exclusives that simply never meet. And yet today, it seems some streams will cross. [More]
Spotify Now Has A Portal Dedicated Solely To Video Game Music
By 8.12.16
There’s a lot more to the music in video games than that song from Tetris: whether it’s the tunes blasting straight from the game or the playlist you use to gear up for a marathon gaming session, music can make all the difference. Spotify has caught on to this, and has launched a new portal designed to put all that music in one spot. [More]
Microsoft Buying Its Own Game Streaming Service To Take On Twitch
By 8.12.16
Game streaming is big business. And like TV streaming before it, everyone with two wires to plug together wants a slice of that delicious viewer pie. (Ew.) Which explains why Microsoft is hopping in the pool with its own streaming service acquisition. [More]
Kids These Days Would Rather Play Video Games On Mobile Devices Than On PCs, Consoles
By 9.24.15
Are the days of fighting over the best video game controller over? Perhaps, says a new report: though consoles and computers used to be the most popular for gaming, smartphones and tablets now rule the roost among the younger set. [More]
Sony’s Virtual Reality Headset Is Called…. PlayStation VR
By 9.16.15
After spending more than year referring to its virtual reality headset with the over-the-top working title Project Morpheus, Sony finally revealed the true identity of its immersive accessory, and it’s a bit of a letdown: PlayStation VR. [More]
App Developer Settles Charges It Hijacked Consumers’ Phones To Mine Virtual Currency
By 6.29.15
Some reward programs aren’t really rewarding. In fact, some are downright harmful to consumers. That was apparently the case with an Ohio-based smartphone app developer that recently agreed to settle charges that it hijacked consumers’ phones through a seemingly innocuous gaming app. [More]
Don’t Expect To Play Your PS3 Games On A PS4 Anytime Soon
By 6.19.15
Owners of Sony’s PlayStation 4 hoping the company would follow in Microsoft’s footsteps and add backwards compatibility to allow PS3 games to be played on the newer console shouldn’t hold their breath, as executives for the electronics company say they have no immediate plans to implement the technology. [More]
Get Your Copies Of “Battilefield 4” And “Assassins’s Creed IV” At Kmart While They Last
By 3.6.14
It’s inevitable: whenever a post about Kmart appears online, wise guys pipe up to ask, “Kmart is still a thing?” Not anymore in some metropolitan areas. Reader Ryan, browsing a store in Las Vegas, thinks that he knows why this is. [More]
Sony Wants You Not To Need A PlayStation To Play Their PlayStation Games
By 1.7.14
The PlayStation 4 launched in November and so far has sold and performed well for Sony. One thing it doesn’t have, though, is backwards compatibility. The PS3 was out for seven years before that, and the PlayStation 2 before it sold over 150 million units worldwide. That’s a lot of old video games that don’t run on your shiny new system. [More]
