game

We might get to see winter come and go on the continent of Westeros, after all. Despite all appearances on Sunday's season premiere of the HBO hit "Game of Thrones," things are just beginning to heat up beyond The Wall, as well as in Winterfell, King's Landing, and the rest of the world created by George R.R. Martin in his series of novels and adapted for TV by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Just two days after the premiere of season three of the TV version, Entertainment Weekly reports that HBO has ordered a fourth season of "Game of Thrones," which drew 4.4 million viewers on Sunday (not including the million pirated downloads). With those kind of numbers on a subscription channel like HBO, the reaction to the network's decision to renew the series has resulted in one of the largest collective utterances of "well, duh" ever heard.… Read more

"Game of Thrones," the wildly popular fantasy drama on HBO, has set an all-time record via BitTorrent, according to data collected by Torrent Freak.

The site, which tracks the world of BitTorrent and piracy, was tracking uploads and downloads of the first episode of the latest season of "Game of Thrones." It found that just a few hours after the first torrent was shared on the site, 163,088 people were sharing just one torrent. The so-called "swarm" of people sharing the torrent outpaced the previous titleholder, "Heroes," which had 144,663 … Read more

Humanity lost a little more ground to machines last weekend, in case you're counting down the days to when Skynet takes charge of the planet.

A computer defeated a professional Japanese chess (shogi) player for the first time in a public match, Kyodo News tells us grimly.

A program called Ponanza, developed by Issei Yamamoto, took down 30-year-old Shinichi Sato on Saturday in the Shogi Master Versus Machine Match.

Sato was doing well until he made mistakes midway through the game. … Read more

A video game that uses audio cues and computer-generated building layouts has proven to be better at improving a blind person's spatial awareness of that place than does actually walking them through it, according to new research out of Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

The findings could have implications for how visually impaired people -- and possibly those without impairments -- best learn to navigate unknown territory.

"It is a tool to build a map of a place you have never been to before," Lotfi Merabet, the neuroscientist whose team developed the software used in the study (which appears in the Journal of Visualized Experiments), told Reuters. "The video game not only allows you to build a map in your mind, it allows you to interact with it mentally in a way that you wouldn't be able to if you were taught explicitly by walking through it."… Read more

I feel like I'm on bundle overload these days, what with some new software or game collection cropping up on an almost weekly basis.

That said, when I see a good one, I gotta share. And if you're an Android user, this is definitely a good one.

For the next week or so, the Humble Mobile Bundle offers six surprisingly good Android games for whatever price you want to pay. Well, sort of.

It works like this: There are six apps on the table. Four can be had for any amount: a penny, a dollar, whatever. If you … Read more

Apple is once again rumored to be planning a game controller.

Citing developer sources, Pocket Gamer says Apple has been floating the idea of a physical controller to developers at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which wraps up today. The publication adds that such a device would be unveiled at a press event next month.

Pocket Gamer's report says Apple actually has a space reserved at the show for meeting with developers, but that it's using a false name to fly under the radar.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the report, citing company policy.… Read more

The annual Game Developers Conference, which attracts tens of thousands from the gaming industry, had all of the usual players this year: Nintendo, Sony, EA, Activision, etc. But they weren't the only players in town this week at GDC.

There was plenty of buzz about Ouya, the new $99, Android-based gaming console that broke Kickstarter records like Adrian Peterson breaks tackles.

Now, before the serious gamers out there savage me, let me be clear: The Ouya isn't going to be displacing the role of traditional consoles like the PlayStation or the Wii (although the Wii U has gone nowhere). … Read more

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Friday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far.… Read more

GameStop reported its earnings yesterday, but perhaps the biggest news came from its earnings call, in which it said that demand for the PlayStation 4 is already showing signs of strength.

According to GameStop President Tony Bartel, "nearly 900,000 members have already signed up for the PlayStation 4 First to Know List." That list provides all of the latest details on the PlayStation 4 to customers and is usually a strong indicator of the number of people who might preorder the device when it goes on sale in the fourth quarter.

Bartel went on to tell investors … Read more