Xbox chief Phil Spencer gets a promotion and a seat at Microsoft's exec table Xbox chief Phil Spencer has been promoted to a new role as Microsoft's executive vice president of gaming, and will have a seat at the table of Microsoft's senior leadership team.

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1 Unity debuts open-source beta of a new machine learning AI toolkit The folks at Unity Technologies have released a new machine learning toolkit in open beta that's designed to let Unity devs incorporate AI agents capable of teaching themselves new tricks.

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  Nintendo investors seem pumped about Tencent bringing its MOBA to Switch Nintendo's stock hit a 9-year high today, and analysts believe it's because investors are betting the company will push deeper into China now that it's made a deal to bring a Tencent MOBA to Switch.

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8 Steam considers preventing review bombs, adds graphs instead "In the end, we decided not to change the ways that players can review games, and instead focused on how potential purchasers can explore the review data," writes Valve's Alden Kroll in a blog post.

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  Video: 6 ways of leveraging AI to help build content for your game At GDC 2017, six experienced game makers from across the industry take the stage together to present six practical ways to implement AI-driven procedural content generation in games.

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  Oculus Rift SDK introduces suite of VR audio tools Oculus has introduced a handful of new features to its Rift SDK that all seek to give game developers the ability to create immersive VR experiences through quality, spatialized audio.

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  Get a job: Sanzaru Games is hiring a VFX Artist Sanzaru Games is looking for a talented VFX artist to craft visually stunning and immersive worlds as a member of its Foster City, CA-based development team.

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  YouTube Gaming ups community-building tools with paid 'sponsorships' The online video giant has announced that it is bringing a handful of new features to YouTube Gaming in an effort to up engagement between creators and viewers.

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4 Don't Miss: How Final Fantasy IX and other Final Fantasy games influence modern devs “Final Fantasy was the first game that really made you feel something for characters, and feel that the game world meant something," says Andrew Allanson, whose YIIK was inspired by the franchise.

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  Mail.ru invests $959k in mobile game dev Panzerdog The Finnish-Russian mobile game developer is the first dev to partner with Mail.ru through its recently established $100M games investment program.

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  Apple rolls out iOS 11, ending support for 32-bit apps The next big iOS update has been released, bringing with it both good and bad news for mobile game developers.

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  The GDC 2018 Mobile Summit seeks your great talk submissions! Heads up: organizers are still accepting pitches for Summit sessions at Game Developers Conference 2018, which is coming back to the Moscone Center in San Francisco March 19-23, 2018!

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10 Blog: Exploring the mysterious world of DIY indie marketing I took the more difficult route of being a one-man dev/marketer for my fox adventure game, and it went better than I thought. Here's what I learned.

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  Follow Gamasutra's VRDC 2017 coverage right here! VRDC Fall 2017 is happening this week! Gamasutra will be there to cover a wide variety of talks, panels, and demos during the show, which is happening this Thursday and Friday, September 21-22.

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  Blog: How playing games can advance science This post explains why many of the games people play today could help advance science, and introduces some topics I would love to discuss with game designers and developers.

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  Toys 'R' Us files for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada Retail giant Toys 'R' Us has voluntarily filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada in an attempt to restructure its debt and secure its future.

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Automaton nets $10M to create survival game using Improbable tech Automaton, a fledgling developer based in Cambridge, has secured $10 million in funding to create an online survival game that lets up to 1000 players fight for supremacy.

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  Blog: How I created two games with a stranger from Reddit Interested in making a new artist contact and in making a few small-scope games; I reached out to the /r/INAT subreddit with an open request for a collaboration.

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  Blog: Finding the fun in advanced UX prototyping Here's how we rapidly prototyped and play tested a high fidelity match-3 game from scratch, and all without writing a single line of code.

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  Game Design Deep Dive: Mixing VR and non-VR in Lola and the Giant "VR, especially mobile VR, can be an isolating experience. We decided to try and create some way that the adventure could be enjoyed by both the player using the VR device and by everyone else in the room."

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2 Mind the gap: Fortnite error briefly allowed cross-platform PS4/XB1 play This is kind of a big deal because to date, no major game has allowed for cross-platform PS4/XB1 play; an Epic rep told Polygon that this was due to a "configuration issue" that has since been fixed.

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1 Tracing the path an Israeli folk song took to end up in Japanese video games The folks at PRI dig into an old mystery: how did the old Israeli folk song "Mayim, Mayim" make its way into Japanese pop culture -- and from there, into Japanese video games like Sexy Parodius?

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  Video: Designing competitive game AI the Killer Instinct way At GDC 2016, two of the key devs behind fighting game Killer Instinct's intriguing Shadow system share knowledge and offer tips on addressing common problems with AI in competitive games.

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  The iPhone X's 'notch' is powered by the same tech as the Kinect The tech that let a generation of players fill their living rooms with virtual lava is powering the FaceID feature on the iPhone X.

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  Get a job: Insomniac Games is hiring an experienced UI Artist Insomniac Games is looking for a Mid to Sr. UI Artist to develop art content and motion graphics for its upcoming Spider-Man game in Burbank, CA.

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