Welcome to another roundup of every GamesBeat story we published this week! We looked at how games turned a man into a real-like Tony Stark, helped MLB 15: The Show players create future Hall of Famers, and discovered that Final Fantasy’s latest mobile endeavor is off to a good start.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: In games, rebooting a big dream isn’t easy
- A step-by-step guide to building an all-star player in MLB 15: The Show
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Blackrock Mountain guide — how to beat Molten Core
- These signs say Nintendo is giving up on the Wii U
- Instagram, Snapchat, and the new age of game marketing
- How games helped make Elon Musk the real-life Tony Stark
- Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Hotline Miami 2 fans
- How to survive the tortures of Etrian Mystery Dungeon (guide)
News
- AlphaDraft — gaming’s DraftKings — is hosting its own $12.5k League of Legends tournament
- Virtual worlds, come on down! The Future Group wants to put you into interactive game shows
- A speedrun of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt takes 25 hours
- Valiant Hearts director launches new studio after 14 years with Ubisoft
- MLG.tv’s e-sports audience is growing — up 253 percent so far in 2015
- Xbox Live is down on Xbox 360 (update: not anymore)
- It’s playoff time: Download NHL 15 at no extra charge with EA Access
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’s second Blackrock Mountain wing, Molten Core, is live
- Activision teases new Call of Duty game with with bizarre video (update)
- Vulcun raises $12M for fantasy e-sports tournament startup
- NCSoft invests $5M into Vancouver game developer This Game Studio
- Warner Bros. unveils Lego Dimensions, a Skylanders-style toy-game mashup
- Comparison video shows off Mario Kart 8’s new super-fast 200cc mode
- Nintendo releases Code Name: STEAM update with fan-demanded fast-forwarding
- Crimean gamers blocked from World of Warcraft, Steam due to U.S. sanctions
- Square Enix confirms Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and releases first trailer
- ESL’s Katowice event was another massive success
- World of Warcraft’s game time token’s auction house value already plummets nearly 25 percent
- Microsoft brings over-the-air live TV to Xbox One in the U.S. and Canada
- Video game soundtracks rank alongside classics from Beethoven and Mozart, according to radio poll
- Virtual reality app store Wear VR secures $1.5M in funding
- Update: Square Enix appears poised to unveil Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (leak)
- With ‘Furious 7′ car pack for Forza Horizon 2, Microsoft shows it can step on the licensing pedal
- The Witcher 3 developer: ‘Don’t buy’ the expansions for our unreleased game ‘if you have any doubts’
- The next Pokémon: Nintendo to publish $1B juggernaut Yo-kai Watch in the West next year
- At 8.5 million units sold, Tomb Raider’s 2013 reboot is the franchise’s top seller
- Cities: Skylines gets SimCopter-like features thanks to modders
- World of Warcraft’s $20 game time-buying token comes out tomorrow
- Nearly 25 years later, companies like Sony still emulate Nintendo’s landmark settlement with the FTC
- Microsoft slashes one-year of Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music Pass, and Skype Unlimited to $149
- Square Enix uses game-streaming platform Twitch to announce its newest game
- Today’s Xbox One update improves party chat and Achievements notifications
Mobile and social
- Me Girl developer raises $1M to expand its girl-gaming lineup
- Final Fantasy: Record Keeper already surpasses 1M downloads
- Zynga’s head of game studios quietly left before CEO change from Mattrick to Pincus
- In mobile games, 60% of revenues come from 0.23% of players
- Yahtzee With Buddies brings the popular family dice game to mobile — and to Apple Watch
- 130M downloads on, Angry Birds Go now lets you play against friends on the same Wi-Fi network
- Don Mattrick gets about $15M for leaving Zynga
- Mattrick out, Pincus in at Zynga: Share price falls 10%
- Why CEO Don Mattrick is done at Zynga
- Zynga replaces CEO Don Mattrick with a familiar face — founder Mark Pincus
- How Math Blaster’s floppy disk fundamentals fit on Facebook
- Glispa tries to rope in better-quality users through app advertising
- Kabam will take Marvel: Contest of Champions mobile game to China
- Why Nintendo’s mobile gambit will exceed your expectations
- MLB.com At Bat out-grosses Candy Crush Saga … for one day
- Fantasy Life 2 dumps 3DS for booming mobile and focuses on town-building
- India’s Reliance Games is wasting no time expanding worldwide
- We can’t get enough Minions, and EA Mobile will give us more
- Rovio awarded $4.3M over fake Angry Birds toys
- Mobile games are eating console games’ lunch in national TV ads
- South Korea’s Gamevil takes mobile game Dragon Blaze to global audience
- PacketZoom launches app download speed-up service, announces backers
- Augmented and virtual reality to grow to $150B by 2020, forecaster says
- Mission: Pic turns mobile photography into a game
- VC Bing Gordon reflects on marketing games, hacking growth, and investing in social
Reviews and previews