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It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another GamesBeat weekly roundup. This time, we got an early glimpse of future blockbusters Far Cry 4 and Halo 5, Microsoft announced a cheaper, Kinect-less Xbox One bundle, and Flappy Bird’s coming back with multiplayer.
You’ll find all of that and more below. Happy reading, and have a good weekend!
Opinions and pieces of flair
- The DeanBeat: Will Neuro Games become the next revolution of the game business?
- How Nintendo can fix the Wii U right now
- The $400 Xbox One: Why removing Kinect is a bad move for Microsoft
- The 7 most controversial and overpowered cards in Hearthstone
- Who cares about the PlayStation 4-Xbox One war. Livestreaming matters more than consoles now
- Master all of MLB 14: The Show’s game modes with this comprehensive guide
- 5 popular games with notoriously unnecessary stealth scenes
- Gaming art for your new Twitter header: The ’10s
- Gaming art for your new Twitter header: The ’00s
News
- In Halo 5: Guardians, Master Chief tackles his biggest enemy yet: A midlife crisis
- April 2014 NPD: PlayStation 4 outsells Xbox One again
- Xbox One’s getting a new sports network aimed at low-attention-span gamers
- We’ve already played 10 million games of MLB 14: The Show on PlayStation 4
- Raptr: PC gamers are playing way more Counter-Strike, Battlefield 4, and Team Fortress 2 than Titanfall
- Ubisoft sells 11 million copies of Assassin’s Creed IV — and looks to release franchises ‘more regularly’
- Far Cry 4 hits consoles and PC in November
- League of Legends parent company Tencent makes $1 billion in profit last quarter
- Sony’s deadweight divisions drag down PlayStation 4
- Eutechnyx’s overhaul of free-to-play Auto Club Revolution adds VR support for Oculus Rift
- Titanfall expansion is coming Thursday
- 34M hardcore gamers play an average of 22 hours a week — but Nintendo isn’t ‘core’ enough to count
- Grand Theft Auto publisher nearly doubles its revenue year-over-year
- Grand Theft Auto V hits 33M units sold, or almost $2B in retail sales
- Microsoft on the new Xbox One vs. PS4 battlefield: Same price but ‘we have the better games’
- Why Microsoft changed the 360 subscription model for Xbox One’s free-games program
- Tracy Fullerton becomes director of USC’s game program
- $399 Xbox One without a Kinect is Microsoft’s strategy to combat PlayStation 4
- Microsoft may finally remove Xbox Live Gold requirement for Netflix, Hulu
- A third Titanfall update will accompany the release of the Expedition expansion
- EA to soon end online support for Battlefield 1942, Crysis 2, and 48 other games
- Microsoft tests Xbox One update that patches Game DVR and party-chat features
- With EA stock at a 6-year high, several company execs unload their shares
- Be Your Own Hero conference will celebrate women entrepreneurs (exclusive)
- Square Enix’s fiscal 2015 outlook for physical game sales is its lowest in 5 years
- PlayStation 4 leaders to look at the next 100 years of games
Mobile and social
- Puzzle and Dragons makes more per player than the next 9 mobile games combined
- Now you can use PayPal to buy apps on Google Play
- Mobile app developers will bear brunt of FTC crackdown
- Thomas Was Alone out now for iPad — and its creator thinks indies still belong on iOS
- Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 8: Card store overhaul redux
- Game-distribution platform (and messaging app) Kakao has driven 500 million downloads on iOS and Android
- Like a phoenix, Flappy Bird will rise again — this time with multiplayer
- People would give up sex for mobile games
- Tapjoy boasts that its mobile video ads attract high-spending players
- Mighty Cast hopes to stir up mobile apps and games for its wearable NEX Band
- Half-Life 2 comes to Nvidia’s Shield portable game machine
Previews and interviews
- Black Gold Online brings a ‘Red Dead Titanfall’ vibe to online fantasy games (preview)
- Humanity takes to the stars in Civilization: Beyond Earth (interview)
Reviews