Welcome to the weekly GamesBeat Roundup. Is that the smell of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in the air?
But the news didn’t take a breather the industry prepared for one of the most important trade shows of the year. This week, we learned how digital gaming alone made almost a billion dollars last month, took a deep dive into the new ways of beating up your foes in Street Fighter V, and watched the endgame begin for “The People’s Console.”
And for everyone going to E3 next week — safe travels!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: E3 will bring us reboots, ‘toys to death,’ and VR madness
- The E3 event schedule: Watch the Oculus, Bethesda, and other livestreams right here
- Up close with the Oculus Rift VR headset and the Oculus Touch motion controller (photo gallery)
- The Oculus-Microsoft alliance is just a stopgap, not a powershift
- Watch us play the ultra-rare Nintendo World Championship 1990 cartridge
- Getting my butt kicked in EA’s Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity expansion (hands-on video)
- Nintendo just doesn’t rehash its classics — it still creates new magic
- What to expect from E3 2015
- Facebook highlights the rising power of Europe’s game industry
- How Israel became a social gaming hub
News
- As European Games begin, this offbeat sports game highlights political prisoners in Azerbaijan
- Dying Light, Mortal Kombat, The Witcher push Warner Bros. atop the publisher standings
- Steam digital store and community is down as its gigantic summer sale begins
- Microsoft: Xbox One sales up 81% year-over-year in May
- May 2015 NPD: PlayStation 4 tops console sales as The Witcher III has strong debut
- PlayStation 4 outsells Xbox One in May, according to NPD data
- Everything Oculus VR announced at its pre-E3 Rift event today
- Playmation bands together with toys-to-life games to suck more money out of you
- Windows 10 can stream Xbox One games to Oculus Rift VR
- Steam’s community is down
- Oculus Touch is the wireless input system for virtual reality
- Oculus VR invests $10M for virtual reality indie games
- Oculus shows off its first virtual reality games
- Oculus Rift virtual reality headset comes bundled with an Xbox One controller
- Oculus reveals the final design of its Rift virtual reality headset
- Digital gaming generated $979M last month in the U.S.
- Nintendo 3DS passes big U.S. milestone: 15 million systems sold
- 3 out of 4 smartphones and tablets used for gaming are Android
- With $4.2M raised, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is Kickstarter’s most funded video game
- Angry Birds Fight! brings player vs. player combat to the popular franchise
- Want a Logitech G PlayStation 4, Xbox One force-feedback racing wheel? It’s going to cost ya
- World of Warcraft players will once again take flight — flying is coming back
- Jeff Vogel, Avernum, and Spiderweb return to iOS
- Razer is in talks to acquire Android microconsole maker Ouya
- Look out, Line: Facebook Messenger gets its first game
- New Oculus branding ditches the creepy eye for something more … abstract
- The $100 headset uses controversial electric shocks to make you a better gamer
- Machinima launches mobile app to empower video creators
- Xbox One Wireless controller adapter for Windows 10 goes on sale this fall for $25
- Apple launches Metal for the Mac, claims games run 10 times faster
- That adorable Om Nom from Cut the Rope gets his own movie
- E3 stretches in new directions: mobile games, VR, and 5,000 fan attendees
- Ninja Metrics is raising a $5M round for analytics on social gamers and video watchers
Previews and interview
- Behind the haunting inspiration for What Remains of Edith Finch
- 2K’s Battleborn is multiplayer combat in a drugged-out sci-fi world
- My hands-on preview of dying a lot in Battlefield Hardline: Criminal Activity
- Battlefield Hardline’s 1st expansion has Tommy guns, 4 merciless maps, and crazy action (interview)
- What I think of Street Fighter V’s characters
- What I think of Street Fighter V’s new techniques and systems
- How Adam Orth turned a career disaster into a moment of inspiration with Adr1ft (interview)
- Epic worked 4 years on game-jam-inspired Fortnite (interview)
- In Fortnite, you’ll be chopping wood while the zombies are tearing you apart
Reviews