Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we look at the quirky Dangerous Golf, Donald Trump goes under the knife in Surgeon Simulator, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End artists talk about the PlayStation 4’s blockbuster’s incredible landscapes.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Blizzard has a big hit again with Overwatch
- Immortals chairman and esports investor Clinton Foy will join us at GamesBeat 2016
- GamesBeat hits the road for mobile gaming events in New York and Seattle
- 36% of Americans over the age of 50 play video games
- Surgeon Simulator update takes you deep inside Donald Trump
- How Uncharted 4’s artists created their amazing landscapes
- Fallout 4’s official mod portal drew 50 times more traffic on Xbox One than on PC
- Overwatch: Watch us open 50 loot boxes
- Activision Blizzard’s Mike Sepso will speak on esports going mainstream at GamesBeat 2016
- Skylanders embraces user-generated content with Skylanders Imaginators
- It’s OK to get mad with Overwatch players for ruining your game — but don’t be an ass
- The origins and secrets of the Super Mario Galaxy games
- How Just Cause 3 added goofy mechs to a silly, explosive game
- The rise and fall of Nintendo’s Miitomo: Massive downloads don’t mean success
News
- Neverwinter’s getting D&D’s new Storm King Thunder’s giant storyline — and on PS4, too
- Former EA and Oculus exec David Demartini passes away
- Overwatch hits 7 million players in its first week
- Gameloft CEO reportedly stepping down after Vivendi takeover
- Dying Light studio Techland turns success into a game publishing business
- Loot Crate digs up $18.5 million for its swag delivery service
- Nintendo’s E3 streaming plan is more than just Zelda for Wii U
- The Sims 4 ditches gender restrictions
- Minecraft surpasses 100M copies sold as it continues conquering the world
- Ready At Dawn unveils zany De-formers arena combat game for GameStop’s GameTrust label
- Windows 10 adoption passes Windows 7 on Steam
- Triseum gets $1.4 million to make educational games on art and calculus
- Street Fighter V’s North American championships kick off November 4
- The Immortals esports team acquires Tempo Storm’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad
- GOG’s new Connect features gives you copies of games you own on Steam
- Forget the NX — Nintendo gets into the shoe game with Vans
- Brandnew IO launches influencer marketing platform
- Microsoft working with Dell, HP, HTC, Intel to bring Windows Holographic beyond HoloLens
- AMD launches new mobile processors for powerful entertainment laptops
- Fallout 4’s first console mods now live on Xbox One
- AMD’s $200 Radeon RX 480 video card gets gamers ‘VR ready’
- Nearly 60% of mobile gamers watch an ad or take a survey 10 times a week
- PlayStation Plus gives subscribers NBA 2K16 and Gone Home in June
- Microsoft bans corporations from using Minecraft as a marketing tool
- Fable gets a second chance as a digital card game on Kickstarter
- Atari will enter IoT market with new connected devices in partnership with Sigfox
- Unity adds new tiers to help wider variety of rookie developers
- Intel launches 10-core Broadwell-e processor for gaming and VR
- How Wargaming’s historians helped bring World of Warships to life
- Microsoft Games pioneer Ed Fries spends 3 months fixing Gotcha, the first color arcade game
- Nvidia: Our software is about building a ‘platform’
- Berlin’s Aeria Games specializes in taking Asian games to the West
- Nielsen: Games account for 10% of gamers’ leisure time
Mobile and social
- Dragon Islands is a role-playing game you can play entirely in Telegram
- Why you shouldn’t give up on a mobile game after a weak launch
- Transformers: Earth Wars rolls out on mobile as Backflip releases its second Hasbro game
- Tenjin raises $2.5 million to figure out the ROI for mobile marketing campaigns
- Zynga doubles down on its social casino game talent
- How Kabam self-published its Marvel mobile game in China — and hit No. 1
- IMVU’s social avatar powers Kim Kardashian West’s new Kimoji app
- ZapWorks takes mobile AR and VR creation to the masses
- Mnectar gathers momentum for ‘playable ads’
- Usens raises $20 million for mobile AR and VR hand-and-head tracking
- Nearly 60% of mobile gamers watch an ad or take a survey 10 times a week
- Playtech taps Funtactix’s Hollywood know-how for its casual games biz
Previews, reviews and interviews