Join the Leaders Making Gaming’s Next Big Deals. GamesBeat NEXT brings 500+ executives, CEOs, founders, and investors to San Francisco, November 2–3, to shape the future of gaming, entertainment, and AI. Connect with industry leaders, forge strategic partnerships, and close deals that move business forward. Be in the room. Get your ticket.
Happy Friday, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, beloved gaming brand Sierra returns from the dead, we celebrate the Sega Genesis’s 25th anniversary, and the PlayStation 4 continues to dominate the console race.
You’ll find all of that and more below. Happy reading, and enjoy your weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: The best video games are becoming part of something larger
- Elite 30 years later: Comparing screenshots from 1984 and 2014
- Sega Genesis’s 25th anniversary: The 5 games that defined the legendary console
- How Acquire re-created Japan’s Akihabara district in Akiba’s Trip
- Wolfenstein: The New Order’s cruel and unusual makers break down their process (postmortem)
- How Ellie’s transformation in The Last of Us speaks to adolescence
- Here are the games that each U.S. state is illegally downloading the most
- The unique, oddly sexualized culture of China’s game industry in pictures (photo gallery)
- Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas guide — how to beat the Construct Quarter
- Virtual reality will become even more amazing with these upcoming technologies (video)
- The history of King’s Quest
- Everything you need to know about Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer
- Real-life Watch Dogs: Hacking the city cameras that spy on you
- Draenor to-do list: A World of Warcraft guide on what to finish before the expansion
- Retro developers call out the games that kicked their asses (part 1)
- Retro developers call out the games that kicked their asses (part 2)
News
- Xbox and PlayStation Twitch channels compromised, archived content temporarily removed
- July 2014 NPD: PS4 was No. 1 once again
- Mario Kart 8 drives past 1 million copies sold in the U.S.
- You can pay more to play less of Assassin’s Creed: Unity
- Warlords of Draenor wants you back in the World of Warcraft on Nov. 13
- This month’s Gunvolt is the next best thing to a new Mega Man game on 3DS
- Sony will (kind of) let you share your PS4 library
- Once a D&D studio, Obsidian secures license to make digital Pathfinder games
- The only banned Super Smash Bros. character returns to the Wii U and 3DS versions
- Metal Gear Solid V stealths its way on to Steam
- The Last Guardian probably won’t show up at Tokyo Game Show, either
- ‘The Walking Dead’ co-op game from PayDay 2 studio in the works
- Xbox doesn’t have a monopoly on Rise of the Tomb Raider forever
- Reggae-themed game is Kickstarted in a week after a month-long failure
- Open-world driving game The Crew is getting a PS4 and Xbox One beta, and you can sign up now
- EA BioWare unveils its new fantasy game, Shadow Realms
- EA shows off live customization for The Sims 4 and releases Sim character creator
- EA shows off live Dragon Age: Inquisition gameplay at Gamescom
- Curse of Naxxramas’s penultimate episode is live worldwide
- Xbox One will soon stream video to phones and tablets
- Microsoft tosses out nice surprises for Xbox fans at Gamescom
- Every trailer from Gamescom: Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Halo 5, Metal Gear Solid V, and more
- PS4’s Share Play enables your friends to play along with you even if they don’t own the game
- PlayStation 4 sales reach 10M worldwide
- Zombie sensation Day Z comes to PlayStation 4
- Microsoft’s battle plan to take on PS4 this holiday? Multiple Xbox One bundles
- Die, triangles! Storied studio Sierra is back with new King’s Quest and Geometry Wars
- Depression Quest gets a quiet, but timely, release on Steam
- Rise of the Tomb Raider is an Xbox One exclusive for 2015
- Another free-to-play game targets consoles: PC MOBA Smite is coming to Xbox One
- Xbox One indie developers getting Unity Pro license for free
- GameStop’s simplified game trade-in pricing starts in August
- EA Access is now live for everyone on Xbox One
- Night Trap is back: Original producers revive controversial full-motion video game via Kickstarter
- The Last of Us writer on Ellie’s story: There’s more to tell
Mobile and social
- Former Cornhusker QB Taylor Martinez turned to development and is prepping his next game
- Hearthstone meets pro wrestling: WWE releases SuperCard for mobile
- Happitech measures your heart rate to help control its Skip a Beat mobile game
- The mastermind behind Kim Kardashian’s insanely popular app explains how the hit game was created
- Candy Crush Saga publisher King getting pummeled by market after weak Q2
- Consolidation wave grows as Dutch mobile game marketer iQU buys HoneyTracks analytics startup
- Tencent supporting Razer’s Nabu smartband to provide in-game rewards for real-world actions
- Former Rovio executives found startup that will use mobile to grow entertainment brands
- Nvidia unveils blazing-fast 64-bit Project Denver processor for Android devices
- Mobile advertisers: CPI campaigns represent a tradeoff between risk and volume
- Premium-priced mobile puzzler Monument Valley started making a profit a week after its iOS debut
- Mobile Internet investment explosion: $47B in M&A plus $14B in investments
Previews and interviews
- Sega Genesis genius Tom Kalinske on its 25 year legacy: Battling Nintendo, launching Sonic, and birthing the ‘street date’
- Broforce creator on teaming up with ‘The Expendables 3′ cast and favoring chaos over balance (interview)
- Tactile Entertainment wants to join Supercell, Rovio, and King as a Nordic mobile-gaming wonder (interview)
- Bubble guns, rainbow pegasi, purple teddy bears … Toy Soldiers: War Chest unleashes the toy box
- Bloodborne delivers death and despair (hands-on preview)
- Sony’s Until Dawn shows that interactive horror movie games don’t have to suck
- Why Alien: Isolation will kick your ass — and why this will just piss you off, not scare you (hands-on preview)
- Papaya Mobile’s Appflood helps Chinese game makers succeed outside their homeland (interview)
- The latest Skylanders wants you to view your tablet as a first-class game machine
- Zynga chief Don Mattrick steers the struggling social game publisher into a mobile future (interview)
- WWE 2K15 has a cool (but awkward) single-player mode
Reviews