Blizzard Entertainment and Facebook are teaming up to give players more ways to connect with friends and give streamers a new way to show their goods, according to a Blizzard press release. Starting in July, Facebook Login and Facebook’s Live API will be integrated into all Blizzard games, including World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Diablo III, Starcraft II, and recent megahit Overwatch. Players will be able to sign up for and log into the games via their Facebook accounts, adding new social options that use the social media platform for sharing, viewing, and direct discussion of content.
With Live API, players will be able to livestream their Blizzard gaming sessions right onto their Facebook timelines. Friends can subscribe and receive notifications when new streams have gone up.
“Blizzard games are best when played with friends, so it’s important to us to provide our players with features and services that make it easy and fun to share their experiences with each other,” said Gio Hunt, executive vice president of corporate operations at Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re working closely with Facebook on this integration for Overwatch, as well as our other games, and we look forward to sharing further details on our plans as development progresses.”
Since two of the largest names in social networking and gaming have joined forces, Blizzard has been hosting livestreams on Facebook. The first series featured Heroes of the Dorm sessions, collegiate tournaments involving the team brawler Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard also recently livestreamed an Overwatch launch event.
“Blizzard has a passionate community of players, and an incredible track record for launching innovative and high-quality gaming experiences,” said Facebook’s global games partnerships director, Leo Olebe. “Our collaboration on Overwatch demonstrates Facebook’s commitment to partnering with AAA game companies, while further empowering Blizzard gamers to connect and share the content they’re most passionate about with the friends they play with around the world.”
To prepare for the launch of Overwatch, Facebook and Blizzard collaborated on a social media marketing blitz using Facebook and Instagram. This includes Carousel ads, Canvas, and Instagram Marquee. You can’t beat the targeting capabilities of these social platforms, and the collaboration has helped Blizzard showcase the game to an audience that included Facebook’s 1.65 billion users and Instagram’s 400 million. Over 650 million Facebook users play games while connected to the network across web, mobile, and console every month.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.