Google at GDC 2017: All the announcements, features and games

Read all about the games coming to Daydream VR, Play Store games available for pre-registration, and game-making tools available for mobile game developers.

This week is going to be a good one for Android users. You’re not only getting a preview of some of the new flagship smartphones coming out this year, but Google’s making some gaming-related announcements, too. To kick off its developer day at GDC 2017, the company’s launched a bevy of new features, including Firebase development tools for game developers and a new Play Store suggestion algorithm. Google is also opening up pre-registration for some upcoming games and it teased two new titles coming soon to Daydream VR.

Firebase for Unity and C++

Firebase, the app development and analytics tool that Google announced at its developers conference last spring, is now available for Unity and C++ developers. The suite offers features like cloud messaging for targeted notifications, crash reporting, and remote config, which helps developers test apps at scale and will come especially handy when testing graphic intensive games. If you want to know more, you can check the official Firebase page for games.

Better discovery in the Play Store

Google’s new limited-time sale UI

Ever feel flustered when you can’t find something worth downloading in the Play Store? Google’s hoping to help ease that conundrum with a variety of tweaks to the algorithm that populates its app marketplace. The Play Store has been tuned so that it now prefers to showcase games and apps that have had longer user engagement rather than a massive number of downloads. It’s also way for Google to reward those developers who keep their users coming back for more.

Next up, Play Store developers now have access to a new feature that helps with running price promotions. It lets people know if your app is on sale so that there’s no misconception about how much the app really costs.

Lastly, the Play Store will soon feature editorial pages that highlight new game titles and franchises of note. The idea is to help introduce you to worthy new games through personal discovery, rather than have you rely on an algorithm. “It’s like when you go into a retail store and there are different departments,” explained Jamil Moledina, Games Strategic Lead for Google Play, in a telephone call prior to Google’s keynote at GDC. “Hand-curating gives the taste-making aspect to the Play Store.” These pages are expected to go live this spring.

New titles coming to Daydream VR

There will be two new Daydream VR titles from two prominent indie games publishing houses coming soon to the Play Store. They include Virtual Rabbids by Ubisoft and Beartopia by Spryfox — the same team behind the eternally popular match-three game, Triple Town. Both come with the promise of engaging content, particularly Beartopia, which is about a family of bears emigrating to a new town.

“It’s important to us that the experiences really bring you back repeatedly.”

“I think a lot of VR was introduced with a lot of novelty duration to it,” said Moledina, when asked if the upcoming Daydream VR titles would pass the engagement test. “This is something we’re working very hard to move away from. Part of our portfolio approach is to find games that have broad acceptability, broad appeal, and high engagement. VR needs to be a part of the engagement story, as well, because otherwise it just becomes something that collects dust in the closet.”

He added, “It’s important to us that the experiences really bring you back repeatedly to see what’s going on.”

In the non-VR realm, you will soon be able to pre-register for three new high fidelity games from Google Play, including Transformers: Forged to Fight, Battle Breakers, and Injustice 2. You can pre-order either of these three titles here.

For more on Google’s Developer Day at GDC 2017, you can visit the official landing page to peep in on the keynote or read up on the sessions.

Here’s why Huawei is launching the P10 in Canada but not the U.S.

The Huawei P10 and P10 Plus are coming to Canada, but not the U.S. Here’s why.

When Huawei announced the P10 and P10 Plus at Mobile World Congress this week, we assumed, like many other members of the tech press in Barcelona, that the launch would be focused on Europe. And it was — for a while. But now we know that in addition to Europe and the UK, Huawei plans to bring its new flagships to Canada in the coming weeks.

Specifically, the P10 will be launched on Rogers, Bell, Fido and Videotron, while the larger and better-equipped P10 Plus will be a Rogers exclusive. Prices and availability aren’t yet available, but based on the phones’ European prices of €649 and €749 respectively, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them broach $700 and $800 or higher.

So why are the phones launching on Canadian carriers but still shut out of the U.S.? In an interview with MobileSyrup, the company’s vice-president of corporate affairs, Scott Bradley, said that Huawei had been pushing for a move into Canada’s high-end market for several years — it’s sold mid-range devices for a while, including the recent Nova series — after finding tremendous success with the Nexus 6P.

He said that the Nexus 6P was incredibly popular at Canadian carriers, and improved Huawei’s brand recognition amongst regular Canadians. The Chinese company also invests a lot of money into research and development within the country, so there is a positive brand sentiment overall.

In contrast, Huawei doesn’t sell any phones through U.S. carrier channels, and only recently introduced its first high-end devices in the Honor 8 and Mate 9. One impediment to getting those devices into the market was Enhanced 911 certification, which is required by both the FCC and Canada’s regulator, the CRTC. It took until mid-2016 for Huawei’s homegrown Kirin chips to be certified for E911, which is why Huawei kept its high-end phones out of the U.S. for so long.

Unfortunately, despite the Mate 9 selling well through unlocked channels, disappointing sales of the Honor 8 likely precluded Huawei from pushing forward with a go-to-market strategy for the P10 series, despite its significant improvements. Without carrier support, a mid-sized phone in the $650-700 range would easily be overshadowed by the Samsung Galaxy or LG G flagship of the day, and Huawei currently feels more comfortable competing in the less crowded phablet space — one where the Mate 9 fits nicely, especially in the absence of a Galaxy Note.

What’s nice about the P10 and P10 Plus launching in Canada is that they will be optimized for North American carriers, making importing the devices a more tantalizing prospect than the equivalent Asian or European SKU, which wouldn’t have the right bands.

Would you import a P10 or P10 Plus into the U.S. from Canada? Let us know in the comments!

Huawei Mate 9

• Huawei Mate 9 review
• Huawei Mate 9 specs
• Where to buy the Mate 9 in the U.S.
• Porsche Design Mate 9 unboxing
• All Huawei Mate 9 news
• Join the discussion in the forums

Jet.com
Amazon

FCC chairman says his agency won’t review AT&T’s Time Warner purchase

Last month, AT&T revealed how it might structure its deal to acquire Time Warner without having to go through FCC review. The communications giant noted that it “anticipated that Time Warner will not need to transfer any of its FCC licenses … after the closing of the transaction.” That means that the FCC wouldn’t need to review the transaction, and today FCC commissioner Ajit Pai confirmed that his agency would indeed not likely look at AT&T’s purchase.

“That is the regulatory hook for FCC review,” Pai said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “My understanding is that the deal won’t be presented to the commission.” The WSJ notes that this would leave the Justice Department as the only governmental agency reviewing the potential deal. Time Warner has said that it has “dozens” of FCC licenses, but the company believes those won’t need to be transferred to AT&T as part of the merger, thus keeping the FCC out of the deal.

When reached for comment, an FCC spokesperson said the agency had no additional information to share beyond confirming Pai’s comments to the WSJ.

The fact that the FCC likely won’t review the transaction doesn’t mean that the merger will necessarily go through — there’s a lot of opposition to it from consumer advocacy groups, and President Donald Trump has said he opposes the deal on multiple occasions. The president hasn’t commented on it since taking office, however. As AT&T’s failed purchase of T-Mobile showed us, there’s a lot that can go wrong in these mega-mergers, but AT&T still expects the deal to close this year.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Oppo’s new 5x dual-camera uses periscope technology to offer lossless zoom

Oppo teased a new smartphone technology in an official media invite for its press conference at Mobile World Congress. The invite referenced something called ‘5x’, which we now know refers to a 5x dual-camera zoom.

• Mobile World Congress 2017: Nokia, LG, Samsung, Huawei, Sony, smartphones and more

Oppo hasn’t said when the new technology will come to market, but it will no doubt feature in the company’s newest flagship, whenever that may be.

The new technology will let you zoom in on subjects and landscapes further than any other smartphone can offer, including the iPhone 7 Plus with its 2x zoom. And to make sure your pictures don’t suffer from motion blur when zoomed in, Oppo has managed to implement a clever optical image stabilisation technology.

Chief among the tech that’s made it possible for Oppo to produce such a camera is a design inspired by periscopes. While the structure inside the camera module isn’t quite the same as periscopes used in tanks for example, it takes the telephoto lens and moves it by 90 degrees, so rather than face outwards, it instead faces a prism.

The prism takes light that enters the camera and send its to the lens when you want to zoom in on a subject. The other lens in the Oppo’s dual-camera setup is a more standard wide angle lens.

The camera can only physically provide 3x optical zoom, but Oppo’s own processing technology is able to provide digital zoom to bring it up to 5x zoom overall. Considering the module is built the way it is, you may be surprised to find out it’s only 5.7mm thick, some 10 per cent slimmer than a typical 2x optical zoom lens on other smartphones.

As mentioned earlier, Oppo has implemented optical image stabilisation to the telephoto lens, rather than the wide angle, a practice commonly used by other manufacturers. Oppo says the lens itself and the prism that directs light are able to detect any minute vibrations and compensate for them in real time.

It certainly sounds like an intriguing proposition, we’re now just looking forward to the first phone to use it arrive on the scene.

Let’s play ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’

This is the strangest death I’ve suffered in Horizon Zero Dawn. I can handle taking a laser beam to the face from a gigantic metal bobcat or being knocked to the ground by an overzealous robot velociraptor, but this? What a way to go.

Horizon Zero Dawn hits the PlayStation 4 on Tuesday, February 28th, bringing a shiny new mainstream franchise to Sony’s platform. It comes from Guerrilla Games, the creators of the Killzone series, and it’s set in a gorgeous kind of post-apocalyptic world. Aloy, the game’s star, is an outcast of the Nora tribe, a matriarchal society that lives in a time after our own technologically advanced civilization has rotted away. The landscape is littered with the remnants of skyscrapers, rusted computer terminals and corpses, while metal dinosaur-like creatures roam the valleys.

Horizon is a powerful and captivating game overall, and today we’re presenting a 15-minute slice that takes place about a third of the way through Aloy’s journey (captured in 1080p on a standard PS4, rather than the PS4 Pro). Get a sense of the lush environments and the dangers that Aloy faces as she attempts to discover who she really is and what happened to the advanced world all those years ago.

This is by no means a comprehensive overview of the myriad skills, weapons and crafting available to Aloy, but it does include one of the more surprising kill shots I’ve experienced in the game. If anything, please enjoy my ridiculous death.

Watch Sony’s Xperia MWC press event in under 5 minutes

Sony invited us to their MWC booth to run down a few announcements in the span of about 30 minutes. Since you might not have a half hour to dedicate to catching the full video, so we’ve distilled down the most important details to a five-minute recap. Get all the info you need on the Xperia XZ Premium, Xperia Touch and Xperia Ear Open-style Concept, and save the bulk of your lunch break for playing Super Mario Run.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Facebook’s new video app launches on Samsung smart TVs

Facebook recently confirmed that rumors of a video streaming app were real, and now owners of Samsung’s 2017 QLED 4K TVs can download it. As the company said on Valentine’s Day, it’s focused strictly on video content and isn’t just a big-screen version of Facebook. You’ll get to see videos shared by friends or folks you follow, along with top live videos from around the world and algorithmic suggestions based on your interests.

Facebook officially revealed the app at the Code Media conference a couple of weeks ago. It said it would launch apps for Amazon’s Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast and other platforms, but Samsung is the first to grab it. To access it, you log into Samsung’s Smart Hub, download the application and do a one-time Facebook login. From there, you can choose from recommended content or search out what you want.

YouTube has had streaming apps on most platforms for as long as most of us can remember, so the new app launch is a pretty big deal for Facebook. Twitter also recently launched its own video apps for Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV and Xbox One.

Facebook recently unveiled mid-roll ads to better monetize videos, and to the consternation of many users, starting auto-playing them with sound (you can disable that, luckily). Video use on Facebook has grown exponentially over the last year or two, but the company recently revealed that it had exaggerated its viewing numbers. The company is busy trying to cut content deals with major networks and publishers, and recently announced that it’ll play up to one Major League Baseball game per week.

Via: Venture Beat

Source: Samsung

On Facebook, love reactions triumph over hate

Ever since Facebook introduced reactions a year ago, there’s been a lingering question: which reactions rule? At last, we know… although you can probably guess the answer. Facebook tells Select All that “love” dominated the 300 billion reactions from the past year — more than half of them were hearts. That’s not completely surprising (how many people do you know who use it for just about everything positive?), but it’s good news for those worried that “angry” and “sad” might have prevailed in a mostly lousy 2016.

Also, you might be surprised at where reactions ruled. Facebook says that Mexico, Chile and Suriname were the top countries for reaction use, while the US actually came in eighth place. The only truly predictable element was timing, with Christmas accounting for the largest number of reactions in a single day. One thing’s for sure: reactions are popular enough that they aren’t about to go away any time soon.

Source: Select All

The charity that wants video game karts in every hospital

In many ways, Jonathan Watson is like other 11-year-olds. He does his homework, dreams of becoming a doctor and plays video games when he can. Depending on the day, his favorite is either Minecraft or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Unlike most kids his age, though, Jonathan is at the hospital every three weeks for blood transfusions — a procedure that can take up to six hours at a time. When I visited him at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he wasn’t slaying dragons or building a pixelated fortress; he was replaying the opening levels of Rayman Legends on a kart that had just been wheeled in. The kart was donated by a local Eagle Scout who raised funds through the Gamers Outreach Foundation (GO), a nationwide charity that puts medical-grade gaming equipment in hospitals around the country.

The “GO Kart” Jonathan was using included everything needed to play video games: a modest Samsung television, an Xbox 360 (though any console will fit) and a pair of gamepads. The kit itself is hardly revolutionary, but anyone who’s schlepped their gear to a LAN party can appreciate the simplicity of this rolling, self-contained setup. At Mott and 19 other hospitals around the country, they’re the most popular “toy” available. And when you’re a kid with a medical condition like Watson’s, it’s easy to see why.

He has a rare disease called pyruvate kinase deficiency. Essentially, his red blood cells can’t produce the right molecules fast enough and die at a rapid rate. He’s been coming to the infusion center at the University of Michigan’s Mott hospital for four years. If doctors can’t find a cure for the disease, Watson will require these transfusions for the rest of his life.

If you think about it, then, restarting a game every time there’s an IV in your arm is hard to complain about.

“It’s okay, because then I can get good at the beginning levels,” he told me. I was sitting to his left in a baseball-themed playroom called the Dugout, where floor-to-ceiling cubbies are filled with colorful toys. There’s a glass display case with Brandon Inge’s autographed Detroit Tigers jersey and Louisville Slugger. A quote is displayed above the shrine: “Sometimes in life we have to sit in the dugout, wait, watch, get stronger and learn. We get benched for a while, but it’s to make us stronger in our life and faith.” This space would be idyllic if it weren’t for the lingering smell of rubbing alcohol.

The scent didn’t seem to bother Jonathan, though. His mom said he loves coming here. And besides, he was mostly focused on Rayman. This is precisely the scene GO founder Zach Wigal imagined when he started the foundation.

Jonathan Watson playing one of his favorite games during a blood transfusion.

Timothy J. Seppala, Engadget

Back when Wigal was 17, all he wanted to do was host a Halo 2 tournament at Saline High School. After he and some friends canvassed parking lots of nearby schools with fliers, around 300 people registered for the event. Because so many people were due to attend, his dad suggested contacting the police to see if they had someone who could help staff it.

The officer Wigal’s dad spoke with called the school’s superintendent and shut the event down. After someone posted the Saline newspaper’s report to Digg, the story went viral. Wigal was inundated with random messages on Facebook and Myspace. From Washington State, Halo 2 developer Bungie’s former in-house composer, Marty O’Donnell, wrote a letter to The Saline Post’s editor praising Zach’s efforts and offered to cover losses resulting from the tournament’s cancellation.

“Who are these people protecting the moral high ground?” O’Donnell admonished.

This, combined with the outpouring of online support, led Wigal to organize a charity Halo 2 LAN party and tournament.

“Let’s donate the money to a charity cause and we’ll be able to show the police officer all the good things that can happen when [gamers] come together for an event,” Wigal recalled.

Around 400 people attended the first Gamers for Giving event, in 2008. The Gamers Outreach Foundation’s debut fundraising event was held at Eastern Michigan University’s small student activities building. After expenses, the foundation donated $4,000 to a local chapter of the Autism Society of America.

Four hundred people attended the Gamers Outreach Foundation’s first Gamers for Giving fundraising event, in 2008. At the 2016 event, 600 connected to the LAN alone, while 1,500 attended over the weekend.

There’s been an event every year since, but things have changed somewhat. For starters, last year’s Gamers for Giving tournament took place in the 9,500-seat Convocation Center at EMU. Some 600 people were connected to the LAN to play games, and around 1,500 onlookers filtered through over two days.

With a bigger venue, though, came a bigger goal. In 2016, Wigal hoped to raise $100,000 in a weekend to fund the foundation’s next big push: in-house fabrication of the pricey GO Karts. Until last year, GO retrofitted existing hospital carts with gaming equipment. Custom fabrication would make production cheaper over time — the cost never changed on the previous carts — and allow GO to expand its reach and reinvest in itself. In hindsight, any worries Wigal had about hitting that goal were unfounded: The foundation surpassed its goal by nearly $73,000.

The first generation of Karts was successful in other ways, too. For starters, they showed how video games can serve a therapeutic purpose in hospitals. In particular, they make hospital stays less lonely, and may even help patients and their families briefly forget why they’re in an intensive care unit.

Marianna Wechter, a child life specialist at Mott Children’s Hospital, cleans a GO Kart before Jonathan Watson uses it.

Timothy J. Seppala/Engadget

“It’s really therapeutic, in that [patients] get absorbed in the game and it takes them away from some of the scary things that could potentially arise in this type of environment,” said Marianna Wechter, a child life specialist at Mott’s infusion clinic.

One patient at Mott (his name wasn’t disclosed, so we’ll call him Paul) used to suffer through an extended ordeal every time the dressings on his arm needed to be changed. It took multiple staffers to hold him so the bandages could be removed, the wound cleaned and fresh dressings applied. Eventually, J.J. Bouchard, who helps oversee the GO Kart program at Mott, learned that Paul loved playing the Lego video games. One day, while he was playing with Paul, a nurse came in to apply new bandages. Soon enough, the procedure got to the point where Paul was only able to play one-handed. Bouchard controlled the action buttons while Paul directed his on-screen avatar. There was a problem, though: The smell of something made Paul “freak out,” Bouchard said.

To remedy that, Bouchard used his free hand to pinch Paul’s nose and block out the smell. With that, the staffers changed the dressings without issue, and for 18 months, this treatment became routine. The Karts help, sure, but having trained medical professionals on hand is still important. Almost overnight, what used to take seven nurses an hour took two people 20 minutes.

“That was when I was able to convince my staff that this is a powerful tool and can really help people — save the hospital tons of money and save this kid a lot of PTSD,” Bouchard said.

Saving time and money is part of the Karts’ core design. They roll right up to a patient’s bed. Their height can be adjusted, their TV angled toward the patient for easier viewing.

Bouchard said the Karts are “indestructible.” Every time a kid is done playing, someone from the hospital has to disinfect the kit with rubbing alcohol or bleach. Those harsh chemicals have destroyed previous gaming setups, but the first Kart Wigal donated to Mott six years ago is still in use today.

A Gamers for Giving 2016 attendee takes a GO Kart for a spin.

The Kart was originally intended as a one-off, but once other hospitals started seeing its potential, they contacted Wigal to request units of their own. Each of the first-gen Karts cost $4,000, and that was before shipping or the cost of consoles and TVs. That high price explains why, despite demand, the Karts are in only 19 children’s hospitals and one veterans’ facility.

Debbie Kruse, director of patient support services at Seattle Children’s Hospital, told me that if her facility had 10 Karts rather than one, she’d find places for all of them. “I know that once one [patient] has it, as soon as they’re done with it, it’ll be snatched up by the next person,” she said. “It’s constantly in use.”

Thanks to help from Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg and the very nature of how Gamers Outreach fundraising works, her hospital’s luck would soon change.

Gaming charities like Extra Life and Child’s Play have made it simple enough that anyone can start fundraising for their respective organizations. GO’s platform builds on that; all it takes to start is setting up a fundraising campaign on GO’s website. But the difference is that you aren’t collecting pledges for a 24-hour gaming marathon and then sending the cash off to abstractly help “heal kids” (part of Extra Life’s tagline). Instead, you’re funding something tangible: a GO Kart.

What’s more, raising money is only the first part of GO’s hands-on process. Once your fundraising campaign is complete, an order is made for a Kart, and when it’s ready, you can help deliver it to your hospital of choice. That’s partly why YouTube’s 29-year-old director of global gaming partnerships, Ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt, threw his weight behind the foundation. Prior to YouTube, he was a professional Call of Duty player and commentator. He’s also a member of GO’s board. Before all of that, he was a kid with Crohn’s disease living in Ohio.

Around 2001, at age 14, Wyatt was hospitalized following a surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. During his month-long recovery, he commandeered a makeshift cart outfitted with an aging Super NES. At the time, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t playing on a PlayStation 2 or an Xbox, because it was a way for him to feel like he was home. “It could’ve been a regular Nintendo and I could’ve been playing the first Mario for all I cared at that point,” he said.

One Sunday afternoon a few years ago, Wyatt streamed himself playing Call of Duty for his ample social media audience (currently over 454,000 across Instagram and Twitter) and asked for donations to build a GO Kart. Within hours, he had enough money to put one in Cleveland Clinic’s pediatric wing, where the doctor who took care of teenage Wyatt still worked. “it was a cool experience,” he recalled. “I said, ‘We’ve gotta do this [Kart donations] for everybody.’”

Wigal’s connections to the gaming industry have helped make that happen. He met Greenberg, Xbox’s head of marketing, years ago. Last year, Wigal took him on a tour of Seattle Children’s Hospital to show him the effect its lone GO Kart had on patients.

Timothy J. Seppala/Engadget

Returning the favor, Greenberg showed him around the Microsoft campus and introduced him to as many people as he could, even barging into Xbox chief Phil Spencer’s office without an appointment so Wigal could tell his story. “Phil was probably on the phone, but I didn’t care,” Greenberg told me. “[Wigal] is doing great work, so I raised my hand and said I’m gonna be his hype man.”

In 2016, GO received a gift through Microsoft’s corporate giving campaign. One philanthropic event involved a pie-throwing contest. Employees bought tickets, exchanged them for tinfoil pans full of whipped cream and hurled them at management. Greenberg was a willing target. In one day, Microsoft employees raised $5,000 for the foundation. For an idea of how many pies he caught with his face, Greenberg told me the next day he still smelled like Cool Whip and even had some lodged in his ears.

He didn’t stop at taking pies to the face. Using the GO fundraising platform, he recruited others to help fill Seattle Children’s Hospital’s need for an additional nine Karts. Using his position in the gaming industry, Greenberg reached out to people like Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, Electronic Arts exec Peter Moore and HoloLens creative director Kudo Tsunoda to donate and help spread the word online. Even electronic musician Steve Aoki got in on the action.

“We play our games, and we love gaming as an art form,” Greenberg said, “but to be able to tie it back to something where [games] mean even more to kids in hospitals? I don’t know how to describe the feeling I get.”

Greenberg paid for two Karts out of pocket, and tasked the gaming community to raise the additional funds for the remaining seven. With high-profile streamers helping out, Greenberg’s fundraising campaign brought in $12,599. Streaming app Infiniscene, a 2016 Gamers for Giving sponsor, matched those donations, pushing the total past $25,000. Greenberg said this success overshadowed all the work he’d done for Microsoft in 2016 — including launching Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4.

“It was the most important thing I focused on this holiday,” he said.

Expanding into more facilities is Wigal’s ultimate goal. More visibility thanks to celebrity endorsements will ultimately advance that mission, but it isn’t the point. However, Wigal expressed deep gratitude for the work people like Greenberg have done for GO.

“I see it as a pathway for growth,” he said. “But not the pathway.” The real method for expansion is empowering gamers to fundraise, getting the word out about the foundation and combining those with in-house fabrication. As of this writing, there are more than 50 fundraising campaigns listed on the GO website at various stages of completion. But all the fundraising campaigns in the world won’t do much good if GO can’t supply the Karts to hospitals.

Last year, Gamers for Giving raised $172,495, and the first round of custom Karts have begun shipping from a Texas manufacturing facility. The new Karts cost $3,500 versus $4,000 for the first gen. With time and manufacturing advances, the price could go down even further. This month, Gamers Outreach will deliver 31 karts in one shot — almost as many as it has since 2010.

You could almost look at the past nine years as being a small beta test for the foundation. Now, with the custom Karts and the inroads Wigal continues to make with the gaming industry, he seems ready to launch GO on a larger scale.

Gamers for Giving 2017 is just around the corner, too, returning to EMU’s Convocation Center April 1st and 2nd. Rather than focus on raising money to start the manufacturing process this year, funds will go toward building Karts themselves. If the community is as enthusiastic as it was in 2016, that could mean an awful lot more Karts in more places, fulfilling Wigal’s dream to help more. There’s also the chance to move beyond domestic children’s hospitals and into general care and veterans’ facilities or international hospitals.

“My thought is that, wherever there are gamers, Gamers Outreach Foundation should be,” he said.

Amazon’s next video original is a smash British TV series

Netflix isn’t the only streaming service that can snap up a popular British TV show. Amazon has revealed that season two of Fortitude, Sky’s well-received Arctic thriller, will be one of its original series. It’ll be available on BBC Two in the UK, but you’ll need to head to Prime Video to watch in the US. The story revolves around its namesake community, where parasites and pathogens run rampant — suffice it to say that a sheriff’s disappearance and a dead body are just the start of the town’s troubles. Dennis Quaid and Game of Thrones’ Richard Dormer are the most recognizable stars.

Amazon hasn’t offered a launch date, but does say Fortitude’s new season will be available later in 2017. That gap will give you an opportunity to catch up, though, as the first season is already on Prime Video. It’s hard to say if American audiences will be as receptive to this as they have been to Netflix’s Black Mirror, but Fortitude is considered Sky’s most successful original series to date — the odds are in its favor.

Source: Amazon