Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup. This week, we reviewed anticipated games like Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Minecraft: Story Mode, we talked to Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale, and Dean Takahashi experienced Israel’s gaming scene.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Two decades of work and $1B in sales put Israel’s game industry on the global map
- ‘Gamergate was a wake-up call’ to issues of diversity in the game industry
- My daughter took on Dash and Dot, the kid-friendly robots that teach programming
- How Lionsgate is trying to break the movie-game curse
- Watch us unbox the Xbox One Elite Controller
- Elite rugby players try brain-training games to help boost onfield performance
- Watch the new Super Mario Bros. speedrun world record and despair, mortal
- 10 Kingdom tips to help kings and queens found — and grow — their realm
- Destiny’s story, one year later: The good, the bad, and the Dinklage
- How one Israeli investor overcomes fears and continues to invest in games
- For Brianna Wu, VR offers a chance to broaden gaming and escape Internet hate
- In Scotland, video games could be worth more than oil
- The branding game: It’s about savvy partnerships and communication, not ‘brand slaps’
- Watch the inexplicable Indianapolis Colts fake punt re-created in Tecmo Super Bowl
- Forget Lady Gaga: Just Dance fans in Italy and India get down to their own tunes
- Game Insight’s Anatoly Ropotov explains how to build sustainable free-to-play mobile games
- Oculus VR’s Jason Rubin says designing VR titles is the toughest learning curve in games
- How Arkadium survived when the Russians took over Crimea
- Why Nintendo NX having a 2016 release date makes sense
News
- Xbox Live grows to 39M active gamers — but Xbox hardware sales down 17% from a year ago
- Vivendi buys bigger stake in Ubisoft and Gameloft
- Activision Blizzard creates new esports division on the eve of BlizzCon’s championships
- FIFA, Metal Gear Solid V score in the top 5 of September’s digital download revenue rankings
- ‘Paranormal Activity’ gets HTC Vive virtual reality demo at a few AMC Theaters
- YouTube Red gives Game Theorists star MatPat a science-meets-video games show
- ‘Scare PewDiePie’ is YouTube Red’s exclusive reality show
- Fabric Labs announces Twitter integration tools for Unity game developers
- Angry Birds studio Rovio cuts 213 jobs as it refocuses its efforts on fewer initiatives
- Chinese giant Tencent leads Series A funding in free-to-play developer Artillery
- 5th Cell reveals its Fig crowdfunding campaign game — Anchors in the Drift
- Warner Bros. promotes David Haddad to president of games business
- R.I.P., Grim Patron: Blizzard pushes out Hearthstone’s Warsong Commander nerf
- Ubisoft joins the Open Gaming Alliance because it says ‘PC gamers are important’
- Microsoft partners with DJ Skee’s Dash Radio for an all-Halo music station
- PlayStation 4 outsold Xbox One once again in September
- September 2015 NPD: NBA, NFL games have big month as hardware sputters
- September was the PlayStation Store’s highest-grossing month ever
- Super Mario Maker sells 500K copies in U.S. and gives Wii U a boost
- Daily fantasy esports site Vulcun ceases operations in Nevada as a ‘precaution’
- Microsoft uses Minecraft to market Halo 5: Guardians
- 13 predictions for the future of the $3.4B social casino games market
- Syfy cancels Defiance TV show, but the game will live on
- Xbox One’s wireless-controller dongle will work with Steam Link (correction)
Mobile and social
- Lucky’s Tale developer Playful raises $25M to fund its virtual reality development
- IDG Ventures-backed vets of Funzio and Crime City launch their first game at new studios
- Curious World gives young kids a safe mobile library of games, videos, and ebooks
- Mobile social casino game players are twice as likely to spend money as web players
Previews and interviews
- Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale shares the secrets of playing with history
- Netrunner is becoming a role-playing game — and the story comes from 80 Days’ writer
- Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst brings the sounds of the future
Reviews and impressions
- Dragon Quest Heroes gives the legendary series a fresh action perspective
- The Xbox One Elite Controller is the best controller I’ve ever used
- Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate nails zip lines, not the story — and finally gets women right
- Minecraft: Story Mode understands that the blocky world is worth exploring deeper
- The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is better as a co-op affair than a solo act
- Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 5 cements the series as Telltale’s best
- Sword Coast Legends impressions: This isn’t last generation’s D&D