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.
This time, we reviewed Grim Fandango Remastered, 3DS sales pass 50 million, and one of writers picked up poop at an airport.
Ours is a noble profession.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Picking up poop and bonding at events that celebrate gaming
- Oculus Super Bowl party could be the future of social sports broadcasting
- 5 Hearthstone cards that desperately need some help
- Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell fans
- Windows 10 preview: PC gaming works great, but the Xbox App is full of dead ends
- ‘Mythbusters’ goes to hell to take on Doom
- Grim Fandango came out at the wrong time — now it’s ready for success
- ISIS and gaming: 5 students want to teach about surviving under the militants’ heel
News
- Innovative Bot Colony game pulled — cost $3 million to make but only sold $10,000
- Sega will shut down its once legendary San Francisco office
- Industrial Toys launches its Midnight Rises digital graphic novel
- Battlefield: Hardline open beta starts next week
- Alibaba invests $10M in struggling Ouya amid rumors the Chinese megacorp is making its own console
- Lego’s making Jurassic Park and Avengers games
- Nintendo updates Super Smash Bros. for Wii U with 15 more 8-player stages
- Xbox Live down for many on Xbox One
- Frogmind unveils Badland: Game of the Year Edition for consoles and PC
- Hats equal money: 1,500 Steam community creators have earned more than $57M making items
- EA stock price surges as Wall Street falls in love with its PS4, Xbox One sales and more
- Spotify is coming to PlayStation soon, as Sony pulls the plug on its own music-streaming service
- Dragon’s Dogma Online will be three times bigger than Dragon’s Dogma
- Nintendo nets profit again as it surpasses 50M 3DSes shipped
- SimCity BuildIt, FIFA, and EA Access lead Electronic Arts to record digital revenues
- EA was No. 1 publisher on Xbox One, PS4 in 2014 as Dragon Age: Inquisition sets record for BioWare
- Sony suggests fix for Grim Fandango download problems — but it’s not helping everyone
- Xbox One Call of Duty: Advance Warfare players encounter problems with the Havoc expansion
- Why London’s game industry is so strong — and it still needs a startup accelerator
- Here’s how to get the latest Xbox One controller update
- The most controversial card in Hearthstone is getting a ‘balance change’
- World of Warcraft’s next patch adds selfies
- Dragon’s Dogma Online revealed — free-to-play on PS4, PS3, and PC in Japan
- Minecraft is building blocky stacks of cash for Microsoft
- Microsoft shipped — but didn’t sell — 6.6M Xboxes during its fiscal Q2
- Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian’s next videos examine masculinity and strong women in games
- $250,000 prize fund for latest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive e-sports tournament
- Shinra starts ‘supercomputer cloud gaming’ test in Japan with Final Fantasy VII
Mobile and social
- Frank Gibeau explains how EA Mobile generated almost $500M in revenue in 2014
- Knight Foundation ponies up $3M for projects that ‘leverage libraries as a platform’
- Mobile-advertising data company Fiksu introduces new products to help marketers
- Marvel: Contest of Champions developer Kabam’s $400M in revenue for 2014 is another record year
- The Sandbox adds Robert Kirkman’s Invincible superheroes
- Live-Bet sports app lets you bet on the next play in a football game
- AppLift unveils DataLift to automate user acquisition
- Disney Infinity Toy Box 2.0 mobile app debuts on iOS
- 2K launches Evolve: Hunters Quest companion app
- Gameloft’s full-year mobile gaming revenue hits $256M
- Ucool to launch Super Bowl ad for Heroes Charge mobile game
- I Am Bread will make your yeasty dreams come true on iOS
- Google Play’s download dominance over Apple grew in 2014
- Fingerprint acquires kids’ mobile game companies Scribble Press and Cognitive Kid
- Loyalty rewards company Lootsie raises $3.5M in seed funding
- You’re spending more time playing mobile games than ever before
- What the hell is a midcore? The 11 terms every mobile gamer & developer need to know
- App downloads soared in December — but so did marketing costs
- Mobile game maker Animoca Brands finally goes public in Australia
Previews and interviews
- Civilization IV’s lead designer wants you to financially ruin your enemies
- The Witcher 3’s open world is an open invitation
- Even the smallest choices matter in Life is Strange (preview)
- Wooga chief says mobile gaming is separating into winners and losers (interview)
- Star Wars: Battle Pod arcade game drops players in front of a dome for full immersion
Reviews