With Diablo IV set to arrive later this year, 2023 will be a big year for action RPGs. But there's more to look forward to beyond this year. On Thursday, Moon Beast Productions – an indie studio founded by Phil Shenk and Peter Hu, two former Blizzard North developers – announced the hiring of Diablo series co-creator Erich Schaefer. In an interview with GamesBeat, the studio said Schaefer will serve as lead creator director on a new action RPG. Details on the project are sparse, but what Moon Beast shared with Schaefer was reportedly enough to convince him to come out of retirement.

Habytat, a social metaverse platform powered by DatChat, announced today that it is launching pets for users, powered by proprietary AI. These animals -- dogs and cats alike -- will bond with their users as the AI responds to and learns from the user's actions. At the moment, users can vote on which animal breeds will be part of the initial launch in spring 2023. These pets will grow from puppy or kitten life stages to adulthood. To grow, pets must receive food and attention daily.

I talked to her about the significance of the role in The Peripheral, where she plays a trans person in the future. The show is based on a novel by William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace, and it was produced by Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. It's a complicated story that moves around in time and explores whether the digital world is real or not. And the show is different from the book, as it uses Gibson's story as a jumping off point for ideas about our future. And that gives Billings some interesting leeway to play Lowbeer as a trans person in the show.

Join gaming executives to discuss emerging parts of the industry this October at GamesBeat Summit Next. Beth Goss was recently appointed as the CEO of kid game company Outright Games. To do that, the former chief brand officer at 20th Century Fox had to relocate her family from the U.S. to London. That tells you the nature of the opportunity. And now she is running a kids' video game publisher behind the likes of Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol and Star Trek titles. Goss has held positions with some of the biggest entertainment companies in the world including Universal Pictures and Cartoon Network. Goss wants to transform the family-operated publisher into a global player in the video games market, which has traditionally operated exclusively in games for young children. Goss is applying lessons and industry practices from her traditional entertainment background into gaming.

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Today, the internet is a mostly 2D platform that we consume through a screen. It is a command-line prompt for the reality we live in. Instagram posts, Tiktoks, text messages, emails and voice memos are all digital artifacts things people create and receive in the physical world.

Join gaming executives to discuss emerging parts of the industry this October at GamesBeat Summit Next. Regression Games has raised $4.2 million to bring the power of AI to gaming and esports competitions. But Aaron Vontell comes from a rare breed of technical experts in a fresh area of gaming. The Philadelphia startup is the brainchild Vontell, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped create Battlecode, an AI gaming competition for students. Battlecode was a big inspiration for the new company.

Join gaming executives to discuss emerging parts of the industry this October at GamesBeat Summit Next. Voicemod is releasing its proprietary, world-first voice conversion product powered by artificial intelligence. This technology is powering a whole collection of voices within the Voicemod voice changer software. The Spanish-based company sees the AI-driven voices as a giant leap in innovation in speech-to-speech voice transformation capabilities. Voicemod is a piece of audio software that offers voice modulation, custom sound effects and soundboards.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a conference call with analysts that regulators would not budge in their opposition to Nvidia's proposed $80 billion acquisition of Arm. "We gave it our best shot, but the headwinds were too strong and we could not get regulators to approve our deal," Huang said. As a result, the company terminated its efforts to buy Arm. Arm's CEO Simon Segars resigned and SoftBank said Arm would attempt an initial public offering instead in the coming year. Huang made the comments in a conference call with analysts after the earnings for the fourth quarter ended January 30 were announced.

Metaphysic, the company behind the Tom Cruise deepfakes, has raised $7.5 million. The London-based company develops artificial intelligence for hyperreal virtual experiences in the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. The company raised the money from Section 32, 8VC, TO Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and Logan Paul. The funding will help expand Metaphysic's work on synthetic content creation tools for emergent metaverse worlds that are being built by Facebook and other networks. In addition to developing technology to scale hyperreal experiences in the metaverse, Metaphysic is aiming its synthetic media to connect influencers and their audiences in novel ways -- including via deepfake videos -- that are hyperrealistic, ethically created and uniquely compelling.

A new GamesBeat event is around the corner! Learn more about what comes next. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has been talking about the metaverse for years. It doesn't have a lot to do with the company's revenues, which are generated by AI and graphics chips sales and reached $6.51 billion in the most recent quarter. But Huang likes to inspire his engineers with the notion that their AI advances and graphics innovations will one day bring us the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.