"We want to make the Graham Norton of video games," says Kirsty Rigden, the chief executive of Brighton-based FuturLab, which makes PowerWash Simulator. Aspiring to emulate a talkshow host who has a reputation for being affable rather than for setting pulses racing is perhaps an unusual ambition for a gaming studio.
Leonid Radvinsky's death leaves a void in the leadership of OnlyFans, a platform that has transformed the adult content landscape. His secretive management style and the controversies surrounding the site have raised questions about its future direction and stability.
Following the acquisition, the Cinemersive Labs team will join SIE's Visual Computing Group (VCG) and contribute to our broader efforts in advancing state of the art visual computing within games. This includes applying machine learning to enhance gameplay visuals, improve rendering techniques, and unlock new levels of visual fidelity for players.
Imagination, the ability that allows us to mentally represent things that are not directly perceived by our senses, is on the decline. It's one of the effects that new technologies have had on our minds, and public discourse appears to have all but forgotten it as a key cognitive resource.
I got to the first town, and was walking around greeting everyone, noticed the village cat. Upon trying to pet him, I picked him up and was able to walk around the village with him in my arms, while petting him and completing my tasks. This game is great, highly recommend.
Meta sent an email blast to Horizon Worlds users today stating that the social VR world will officially end on its Quest VR headsets; starting March 31, Horizon Worlds will no longer be in the Quest store. Some Horizon-specific perks, including Meta Credits, avatars, and some digital clothes and in-world purchases, will also be removed.
We believe we can respect each other as creators and make games together. And I think with Hyung-Tae, we can even enjoy the hard parts.... Seeing my own vision and ideals come into focus like this, and finding someone whose direction aligns so closely is something I've rarely experienced before in my career.
Petit Planet is the studio's take on Animal Crossing, though with a few interesting ideas of its own. The game's most recent test took place all the way back in November, but its next big test isn't far off.
ML-based frame generation tech is coming to PlayStation platforms, allowing the console to use AI to imagine new frames between the ones it's rendering, creating smoother perceived image quality while typically introducing some amount of lag.
In 2021, Facebook became Meta and the company claimed its focus would be to " life." It launched Horizon Worlds, a VR metaverse that people could explore and create worlds in. It looked bad and wasn't great, but it was supposedly the future. Five years later, Meta's metaverse is ditching VR and spinning Worlds into a Roblox clone after burning $70+ billion on virtual and augmented reality.
According to Digi Capital augmented and virtual reality are about to explode as VCs and corporates get in on the act. Facebook's multi-billion dollar acquisition of Oculus got everyone's attention early last year, but it's only really in the last 12 months that investments have accelerated, with more than $1bn pouring into the sector. Meanwhile Mashable reports Nokia's virtual reality camera is now available for pre-order for a cool $60,000.
The last five years have seen a tremendous resurgence of role-playing games, from the turn-based masterpieces of Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to the action-packed Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. And staggeringly, it looks like that trend is set to continue well into 2026. While there's undoubtedly a handful of games we don't know about, even what we do have looks like it's going to make this another banner year for RPGs.
Github user FlyingMeta has released a (mostly) stable and working PC port of Animal Crossing on the GameCube that will let anyone with an original copy of the game or the OG Animal Crossing ROM play the full game at a higher resolution, with mod support and the ability to use either a keyboard or a controller.
At a moment when the internet feels like a constant stream of bad news alerts, many people online have found a surprisingly gentle escape: Pokémon Pokopia. Even if you're not a gamer, it's hard to miss. I don't own a Nintendo Switch - let alone the new $500 Switch 2 - and yet cute clips from Pokopia keep appearing on my feeds anyway.
Project Genie, which is currently only available for Google's AI Ultra subscribers, uses AI to build virtual worlds. That sounds interesting, if not necessarily revolutionary. Videogame developers already model and build virtual worlds all the time. Project Genie's simple concept, though, belies the tech's potential impact. The new system, and the Genie 3 model behind it, have the potential to forever change how videogames are built and played.
This past summer, Google DeepMind debuted Genie 3. It's what's known as a world world, an AI system capable of generating images and reacting as the user moves through the environment the software is simulating. At the time, DeepMind positioned Genie 3 as a tool for training AI agents. Now, it's making the model available to people outside of Google to try with Project Genie.
One of the big highlights of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 3.0 update is the new Slumber Islands feature. This feature lets you fully customize additional islands, providing you with more freedom to design than your standard home island. You can also enjoy customizing Slumber Islands with friends. In this guide, we'll explain how to access Slumber Islands and how to use this new sandbox-style feature.
