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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Microsoft cancels Fable Legends, we learn about the challenges of porting Final Fantasy IX to mobile, and Epic’s Tim Sweeney explains how to keep Windows an open platform.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: At 30, GDC is stronger than ever
- GamesBeat Summit to feature Owen Mahoney, leader of Asian free-to-play giant Nexon
- All 17 Super Mario Bros. games, ranked
- Epic’s Tim Sweeney: Here’s how to keep Windows an open platform
- How GamesBeat will be a part of GDC next week
- Wii U’s 2016 eShop music is fire
- 3DNES emulator turns your old 8-bit Nintendo games into 3D nightmares
- Beloved Super Nintendo hit Super Mario RPG turns 20 years old today
- E3’s organizer says that its show isn’t dead yet
- The Witness: What it means
News
- 2000’s Diablo II gets a new patch
- Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 nearly outsold Street Fighter V on PlayStation 4 (correction)
- Fire Emblem Fates sells 400K copies in the U.S. despite just 9 days on market
- February 2016 NPD: Far Cry, Fire Emblem, and Street Fighter fail to lift U.S. game spending
- PlayStation 4 outsold Xbox One in February
- Dark Souls III studio promises 60 frames per second on PC after holding past games back
- MaxPlay launches MaxCore technology to dramatically improve game and VR performance
- Robert Scoble leaving Rackspace for UploadVR to explore augmented and virtual reality
- VR treadmill maker Virtuix runs toward a mini-IPO
- Evolve wants to make it easier for you to join esports cash tournaments
- Nintendo: Zelda Wii U is ‘like going from Japanese food to Western-style food’
- Immersv enables virtual reality developers to advertise their games in other VR apps
- PlayStation VR boss was surprised by Oculus Rift’s $599 price
- Playfield launches new features for its PC game store that has nearly 100K members
- Fallout 4’s next update finally comes to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 this week
- Otoy breakthrough lets game developers run the best graphics software across platforms
- Twitter woos game makers by integrating its Fabric development suite into Unity
- Chief Xbox evangelist addresses compensation for recent Xbox Live troubles
- Doom’s closed beta test begins on March 31
- Immy grabs patent on how to do AR/VR glasses in a natural way
- Job Simulator developer has overcome one of virtual reality’s biggest marketing hurdles
- SuperData trims virtual reality revenue outlook for 2016 by 30%
- Out of the Park sim to determine best MLB team ever — with ESPN baseball guru in the bullpen
- Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak will be immortalized in a $350,000 wax figure
- Hearthstone becomes less intimidating with new tool to help you make decks
- League of Legends studio acquires Radiant, and Seth Killian’s fighting game is canceled (update)
- Matcherino lets esports fans create their own grudge matches with crowdfunded prizes
- The Division’s servers are down with intermittent ‘Sierra,’ ‘Romeo,’ and ‘Mike’ errors
- Minecraft fans are trying to guess the game’s next enemy
- Paradox Interactive plans to parlay successful strategy-games biz into an IPO
- Xbox Live down again for some as Microsoft confirms sign-in issues
- SEC charges Rhode Island and Wells Fargo Securities with fraud in 38 Studios collapse
- Valve returns to Portal’s beloved world with free virtual reality … something
- Some Nvidia users report Blue Screen of Death crashes following update for GeForce driver (update)
- Blizzard confirms Overwatch launches May 24 with a ‘head start period’ on May 3 for preorders
- AR/VR investments hit $1.1B in first two months of 2016, already beating last year’s total
- Microsoft cancels Fable Legends and proposes closing Lionhead Studios (update)
- Canada’s Execution Labs shuts game accelerator and moves upstream to larger investments
Mobile and social
- Chinese cloners copy Supercell’s Clash Royale hit in just a week
- Japanese mobile publisher Colopl’s U.S. branch plans to get into the VR game
- Wooga announces new studio Black Anvil Games to make hardcore mobile games
- UnnyWorld charges into the real-time strategy fray on mobile
- Challenging Hearthstone, EA unveils Plants vs. Zombies Heroes collectible card mobile game
- YouTube Gaming update hits iOS and Android as it expands to Canada, Australia, and more
- Nexon acquires DomiNations developer Big Huge Games
- Facebook’s Oculus adds new social games and video features to Samsung Gear VR
- Nexon Korea’s mobile-gaming boss wants to take on the world
- Gordon Ramsay brings cursing and insults to his celebrity chef mobile game
- With just 3 games, Supercell made $924M in profits on $2.3B in revenue in 2015
- Why engagement is the best measure of mobile monetization
- Do you smell what The Rock is matching? A WWE puzzle game
- Comprendi’s social-marketing tech makes player acquisition cheaper for Zynga and Kabam (update)
- Supercell hits 100M daily players with just four mobile games
- Kamcord finally offers a way for its mobile streams to make money
- The challenges of porting Final Fantasy IX to Android and iOS