Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! We’re still catching up from last week’s E3 in Los Angeles with tons of interviews, previews, and other coverage (including our non-awards). Elsewhere, Batman: Arkham Knight had a rough launch on PC, and Square Enix loses a chairman.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
E3 2015
- The DeanBeat: E3 signaled a bright future for gaming
- Rare Replay celebrates the historic studio’s past — and future
- Eve: Valkyrie is the Star Wars VR game I’ve always wanted
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: Best consensual groping on the show floor
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: Oops, it did it again — the cursed Uncharted 4 stage demo
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: The Best dumb reasons to get excited about Super Mario Maker
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: Worst Star Fox game I think I’m still going to buy
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: Best VR introduction I could have hoped for
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: Best Mega Man game that isn’t a Mega Man game
- GamesBeat’s E3 non-awards: The Last Guardian looks so last generation
- Animal Crossing director on how Amiibo influenced new games
- Firaxis and 2K show off XCOM 2 gameplay
- E3 2015: The GamesBeat staff’s Games of the Show awards
- Oculus chief explains the secret to fun VR games and how to make them just right (interview)
- Unravel showed me something I don’t remember ever seeing before in a video game
- Xbox One won E3, according to Amazon U.K. and social-network data
- The best (and dumbest) jokes, memes, and GIFs from E3 2015
- Why Star Wars: Battlefront is one of our most anticipated games from E3 2015
- Xenoblade Chronicles X’s director on building an RPG for multiple audiences
- Heroes of the Storm devs on the MOBA’s future, new heroes, and Overwatch
- Blizzard will wrap up 17 years of storytelling in StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void
- Total War: Warhammer will deliver giant battles with thousands of soldiers
- Hands-on with Call of Duty: Black Ops III’s new specialists: Prophet and Nomad
- How No Man’s Sky creator is using clever tech to build a truly indie game universe
- Our nutty and cool images from a week at E3 (photo gallery)
Pieces of flair and opinion
- Making educational games is tough, especially if you want to make money
- Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Witcher 3 fans
News
- Splatoon’s Splatfest event kicks off July 4 in North America
- Matterport raises $30M for virtual reality real estate tours and more
- Warner Bros. suspends PC sales of Batman: Arkham Knight, retail stores pulling it from shelves
- Dying Light studio responds to Destiny, Red Bull partnership with a beverage promo of its own
- Forza-themed Xbox One sports a 1TB hard drive and racing sounds
- One in ten Wii U owners already bought Splatoon
- Super League Gaming lets kids play Minecraft in movie theaters
- Apple granted patent for Beats-style gaming headset
- Vatican City gamers are playing a ton of Natural Selection and an RPG with busty girls
- Help DARPA improve national security with this flash game
- Turkey’s Gram Games bet everything on the success of puzzle game 1010!
- Crosscut Ventures raises $75M fund for early-stage tech and gaming startups in LA
- Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada steps down as chairman
- Xbox Live is down for many on Xbox One and 360
- Batman: Arkham Knight studio acknowledges PC issues as fans blast the Bat with negative reviews
- F-Zero for Wii U was nearly a thing, but Burnout Paradise developer turned it down
- YouTube Gaming’s first head-to-head battle with Twitch gets it 8M views in 12 hours
- Sony announces a lighter, more energy-efficient PlayStation 4
Mobile and social
- Kate Upton is expensive. Sources say Machine Zone is trying to raise $500M for Game of War: Fire Age
- Apple’s contempt for games: Civil War apps are latest casualties of the company’s double standard
- Mobile MOBA Vainglory gets a date for its official release
- Fallout Shelter is the No. 1 downloaded game in 48 countries
- RPG classic Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation comes to mobile
- Big Huge Games unveils industrial age expansion for DomiNations
- Shiver Entertainment unveils Beasts vs. Bots real-time strategy mobile game
- Mobile developer Innospark earns $6.5M in Series B Funding
- Uh oh: Mobile user acquisition fraud almost doubled in 2015
- Southeast Asia mobile game revenues to hit $7B by 2019
- iWin acquires PC casual game site JenKat Games
- China’s Ourgame acquires World Poker Tour for $35 million
- Use your brainz: Nonprofit GlassLab creates an educator’s version of Plants vs. Zombies 2
- Soomla raises $5.5M to help game developers catch ‘whales’
- CEO of Puzzle & Dragons studio Gung Ho prefers console games to mobile
- Leaving mobile behind: The indie developers heading back to PC
- EA Mobile believes that brands are only half of the answer in mobile games