Technology

Blizzard — the company behind massive game titles like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone — is getting new leadership.

After 27 years, Blizzard President Mike Morhaime is stepping down from the company he co-founded back in 1991 (back when it was known as Silicon and Synapse.)

J. Allen Brack, previously Senior Vice President and Executive Producer on WoW, will now lead the company. Brack has been with Blizzard since 2006.

In a letter about the transition, Brack also mentions that Blizzard co-founder (and the original lead designer of WoW) Allen Adham will be joining the companyexecutive team to &oversee development of several new games.& Adham left Blizzard in 2004 shortly before WoW went live, which he later called his &biggest mistake.&

Morhaime doesn&t say much about his reason for departure, besides that he&decided ittime for someone else to lead Blizzard Entertainment.& He&ll stay on with the company as a strategic advisor.

Kia is finally sharing more details about its upcoming all-electric crossover — the 2019 Kia e-Niro — that made its debut in Korea earlier this year. The upshot: itgot some range.

The production version of the all-electric crossover, which Kia is showing off at the Paris Motor Show this week, has a range of about 301 miles (for those who opt for the bigger battery pack) on the European WLTP combined testing cycle. The estimated EPA-range has yet to be released, but expect it to be lower, at somewhere around 250-ish miles in the U.S.

That 301 miles of range is one of the longer ranges in the world of EVs and itpossible thanks to a 64 kilowatt-hour battery pack, regenerative braking and a feature that gives the driver suggestions on when to coast or brake to further optimize the system. The e-Niro with the 64 kWh battery pack is combined with a 150kW electric motor that produces 201 horsepower and 291 pound-feet of torque.

The vehicle comes standard with a smaller 39.2 kWh battery, which has a 100 kW electric motor and offers a driving range of up to 193 miles on a single charge under the WLTP cycle.

The all-electric crossover is based on the Niro hybrid and plug-in models. Kia has sold more than 200,000 of these hybrid and plug-in Niro vehicles worldwide since it was introduced in 2016.

The e-Niro is headed to Europe first. The company says the e-Niro will go on sale in select European markets at the end of the year. KiaU.S. website indicates the vehicle will also come to the states by the end of the year. However, we have yet to hear specifics on U.S. sales or whether the European rollout might push that date into 2019.

The e-Niro looks a lot like its gas-based counterpart and offers some of the same features, including the option to add a driver assistance system withadaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning and lane-keep assist.

However, there are a few differences. The grille on the e-Niro has anintegrated charging port and the front bumper has been changed to help improve the aerodynamics, and, by extension, the range of the vehicle. The vehicle also has redesigned air intakes.

The inside is a bit different too, as thereno need for a traditional gear stick and gear linkage in a vehicle with anall-electric powertrain. Nor is there a need for a transmission tunnel, allowing engineers to create a larger storage area at the base of the central console.Kia replaced the transmission with a new &shift-by-wire& rotator dial drive selector.

The dialsits on a panel that extends out from the base of the central armrest. Drivers will also find on the panel buttons for theelectronic parking brake, heated and ventilated seats, heated steering wheel, drive mode selector, parking sensors and the Nirobraking &Auto Hold& function.

The vehicle is equipped with a7-inch touchscreen at the center of the dashboard that includes a few electric vehicle-specific features, such as the ability to find nearby charging stations and monitor charge levels. Owners will be ableto set a departure time for their next journey, enabling the car to heat itself to a set temperature before the driver departs. Therealso a charge management function designed to extend the life of the battery.

Nintendo is nearing its 130th birthday, and the company is once again in the midst of major changes as it embraces mobile platforms and online services. But Nintendo of Americapresident Reggie Fils-Aime says that should come as no surprise: &We reinvent ourselves every five or 10 years. We have to. Itin our DNA.&

In an interview at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Fils-Aime talked, in his immaculately Nintendo-promotional manner, about the companyups and downs over the last decade and what it took to get the Switch out the door.

&We focus on giving consumers experiences that they haven&t even thought of,& he explained. Anyone who has followed Nintendo for a few years certainly wouldn&t disagree — remember the vitality sensor &By going down this path you create doubters. And we&ll be the first to admit that there will always be stumbles along the way.&

&The Wii had sold a hundred million units globally; the Wii U did not have that same level of success,& he admitted. Thatsomething of an understatement; the Wii U is widely considered something of a boondoggle, interesting but confusing and hugely outgunned by the competition when it came to what was valued by the rapidly growing mainstream gaming world.

&But in the words of one of our presidents — this is [Hiroshi] Yamauchi — when you&re doing well, don&t be excited by that high-flying performance, and when you&re doing poorly, don&t be sad. Always have an even keel,& he said. Not exactly catchy, but it is good business advice. The focus should be on the horizon.

And thatwhere it was, despite the painfully low sales numbers and lack of third-party support. As he tells it, they just plowed ahead with new lessons under their belt.

&If we had not had the Wii U, we would not have the Switch,& he said seriously. &What we heard from customers was that the proposition of a tablet on which they could experience gameplay, coupled with the ability to play games on the TV, is really compelling. Users were telling us, ‘I want to play with this tablet, but when I get 30 feet away from the TV, it disconnects.& The one point gamers all hate is the point where they have to put the controller down. So it was an important step for us to be able to deliver on this proposition.&

&When I first saw the embodiment of that system,& he recalled, &the hairs on the back of my neck raised up.& It was the same feeling, he said, that he had with the Wii Remote and the DS — both featuring technologies that people were highly skeptical of at first but proved versatile and compelling.

Touchscreens weren&t common when the DS came out, and motion controls weren&t common when the Wii came out, he noted. Both have since become mainstream — not entirely due to Nintendosuccess with them, of course, but it would be disingenuous to say that had nothing to do with it.

But while the company can rightly be said to be taking risks in some ways, in other ways it is uniquely stuck in the past. Its most successful franchises are well past a quarter of a century old.

As Fils-Aime sees it, however, this is exactly how it should be. Mario and Link are characters the way Mickey Mouse or even someone like Robin Hood are characters. New franchises like Splatoon can be established and cared for, but the traditional ones (though no one mentioned Metroid, predictably and unfortunately) should be recycled and brought to new platforms and generations.

Nowadays that includes mobile games, where Nintendo has been taking tentative steps in recent years.

Nintendolatest has been criticized for its unvarnished quest for players& money.

&We see our mobile initiatives as a way to bring our intellectual properties and our gameplay experiences to a larger population than the tens or hundred million consumers that own a dedicated gaming system,& he said. &With Super Mario Run, we literally have hundreds of millions of consumers experiencing Mario, consumers in places where we don&t even distribute our gaming systems. Then maybe they buy that Super Mario t-shirt, they may eat that Super Mario cereal, they may buy a Nintendo Switch.& (Presumably imported.)

Here Fils-Aimecomments rang a bit hollow, however. Nintendomobile strategy has leaned hard on the &gacha& style game that massively incentivizes in-app purchases of virtual currencies and grinding levels to unlock new characters randomly in loot box style. This seems so far from Nintendocore mission of entertainment and so close to the current industry method of cash extraction that ithard to believe itwhat the company really wanted to create.

It does, as Fils-Aime said was the goal, allow them to be &effective& on platforms and marketplaces they don&t themselves own, and it does drive their &overall business agenda.& But it seems as though the company is still trying to figure out how to truly bring its games to mobile. Perhaps the upcoming Mario Kart game will be a better option, but it could very easily go the other way, as well.