On January 14th Gas Powered Games launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new action role playing game called Wildman — and just a few days later the studio was hit with "substantial" layoffs. In what's described as "the wackiest video update you're ever going to see," Gas Powered's founder...
"We're betting the company on it." Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games
Last summer designer Andrew Kim's vision for "The Next Microsoft" got a lot of traction online — including on The Verge — for its aggressively minimal rebranding of the company across platforms. The next month Microsoft unveiled its actual new...
Intel has worked on Stephen Hawking's speech technology for over a decade; the scientist, stricken by motor neuron disease, currently selects letters one by one by twitching his cheek in time to a continually scrolling cursor. But with his condition deteriorating, Hawking can only achieve about a word a minute this way, and recently contacted Intel co-founder Gordon Moore to see if the company...
When the late Steve Jobs acquired a new company, he didn't mess around. That's according to Aubrey Johnson, a former lead designer on the Bill Nguyen-led app Color, who has detailed how Jobs ended up acquiring another Nguyen enterprise, music streaming service Lala, back in 2009. Despite some struggles, Lala had a huge selling point: for most songs, it ranked at the top of Google's search results. This lead to interest from both Nokia and Google, but their offers apparently weren't near enough. Enter Apple. As Johnson recounts it, Nguyen contacted Apple and managed to arrange a meeting with Jobs, Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, and other executives — the conversation didn't last long:
Steve led the conversation while eating a beet salad: "I'm going to give you a number, Bill, and if you like it, let's do it and just be done with this whole...
"I'm going to give you a number, Bill, and if you like it, let's do it." Steve Jobs
CES is not a games show, as Sony CEO Kaz Hirai pointed out to us in our interview with him last week. That's his reason for the dearth of PlayStation news at CES this year — the PS3 and Vita were hardly even mentioned at Sony's press conference. And of course, Microsoft didn't come at all, so we weren't treated to any Xbox hype at the annual Steve Ballmer keynote (which was replaced with a m...
Consumer electronics can play games, too
HBO has confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks will reunite to produce a third miniseries set during World War II. The pair, who previously collaborated on the acclaimed Band of Brothers and The Pacific, will reportedly use Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air as their source material, though the series is currently untitled. Miller's book is a narrative...
By now it's widely known that Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that will air tonight and tomorrow. Armstrong's confession is notable in part because no athlete has fought charges of doping as hard as he has, from public denials to libel suits as well as informal intimidation of teammates, rivals, co-conspirators, and outsiders. But although the two-part interview, spanning two and a half hours, is advertised as having no restrictions, it's unlikely that Winfrey and Armstrong will spend much time explaining the science and technology behind sports...
In what's becoming an annual tradition, YouTube has partnered with the Sundance Film Festival to offer a small selection of short films through its Screening Room channel. This year you'll be able to watch a dozen short movies that will be making their debuts at Sundance; they've been selected from the 64 shorts to be screened at the festival starting this weekend. It's not a huge selection, and you won't be able to see Ashton Kutcher's portrayal of Steve Jobs, but there's quite a range of free movies to enjoy — covering everything from the horrors of catnip to, of course, the undead. And when you're finished watching these, YouTube says...
Today, Electronic Arts announced that it is currently developing SimCityEDU, an online educational game based on the latest reboot of the company's popular SimCity franchise. Created in a partnership with GlassLabs, SimCityEDU is intended to be a learning tool for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the game's curriculum will conform with US Common Core Standards. According to EA, teachers will be able to design and share...
Lesson 1: firestations need roads
Yesterday's decision by the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all US-based Boeing 787s — the crown jewel in Boeing's commercial aviation product portfolio — is unquestionably an alarming one: it halts the most advanced airliner ever designed from carrying passengers until Boeing can...
French telecom Orange says that it reached a "balance of forces" with Google, successfully requiring it to pay to send traffic over Orange's network. Earlier this week, CEO Stephane Richard told BFM Business TV that Google compensated it for the massive amount of traffic it sent over the network...
When I reviewed the X1 Carbon, Lenovo's flagship ThinkPad laptop, I found few faults. It's an eye-catching computer that combines everything good about ThinkPads – great keyboard, sturdy design, solid performance — with a fit and finish I...
Today, Kim Dotcom launched his new file storage service Mega on the one-year anniversary of Megaupload's takedown. The cloud storage service is currently under heavy load, with thousands of user registrations per minute and 100,000 registered users within the site's first hour,...
Senator and Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) has written to Attorney General Eric Holder about the case against activist Aaron Swartz, suggesting that the Department of Justice was attempting to "make an example" of him. In an open letter, Cornyn said the case raised several questions about how...
Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we'll bring you important articles from the previous weeks' original reports, features and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again.
“I think most people feel that if you can find a way to beat the casino, more power to you,” says Arnold Synder, his eyes, those telltale features, hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses. “This place set up the rules, they provide the...
Aaron Swartz died a week ago. A public memorial service in New York City will be held later today. You may have read much about Swartz's life in the interim, including his work at a young age on Reddit and the RSS specification, his political activism, and the overzealous prosecution that may...
Opera is reportedly preparing a new browser to help it compete on tablets — and it's turning to the WebKit rendering engine to do it. Pocket-lint...
Last December a report from the Open Technology Institute accused internet service providers of using the threat of network congestion to justify data caps when their real motive was profit — and...
The US installed a record number of wind farms in 2012, totaling 13.2 gigawatts of capacity, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The surge in production is attributed to two...
Instagram's controversy-ridden new terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy go into effect today, but without the language that set off a frenzy of hysteria among users and the media last month....
Last month New York paper The Journal News garnered some serious attention by publishing a Google map that revealed the names and addresses of pistol and revolver permit holders in Westchester and...
Nike's FuelBand and Nike+ running accessories are already among the most popular fitness trackers on the market, but the company is keenly aware...
Nilay "lost" his voice at CES. Or maybe he just found a new, deeper, some may even say sexier voice — a voice that could lead to a long and successful career as a critically acclaimed voice-over artist. Either way you look at it, we've got quite a Vergecast in store for you, featuring a look back at CES and an overview of the news of the week, including the latest from Facebook and Twitter's...
Lasers, you know? It's like every time you turn around, they're beaming your priceless cultural artifacts to the moon. Then as soon as you get them to stop, they're taking naked pictures of you and showing everyone at the TSA. What's next? Lasers that kick the girl next to you in class and then...
