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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! Activision-Blizzard sent shockwaves through the gaming industry this week when it bought King for $5.9 billion. We also covered the quarterly earnings for tons of gaming companies.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: The top 25 public game companies have changed drastically in five years
- Watch us play Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Watch extended footage of canceled Star Wars: First Assault, the would-be precursor to Battlefront 3
- WWE lets fans enjoy SummerSlam in virtual reality
- How to watch Twitch and Hitbox streams on your new Apple TV
- Activision’s $5.9B King deal will rewrite the gaming landscape
- Fostering creativity in yourself and in your team
- Don’t be afraid to fail now in order to succeed later at making virtual reality games
- Nexon wins over Western developers by pitching gaming as an art form
News
- World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion coming September 21
- Blizzard’s Overwatch is coming to consoles and PC spring 2016
- Deadly Premonition creator Swery is taking a health-related break from game development
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III has a funny mini game Easter egg
- 2K delays release date for its MOBA shooter Battleborn
- Nvidia beats Wall Street’s Q3 expectations with strong graphics chip sales
- Take-Two bags $364.9M in revenue to beat Wall Street expectations in fiscal Q2
- Aeria Games opens new office in San Francisco as it seeks to break into U.S. market
- Destiny’s premium Silver currency a top seller on PlayStation Network despite player concerns
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 gets February 26 release date
- Zuckerberg: Early Oculus Rift sales will be small, just like Palm smartphones
- Hearthstone designer says Blizzard is working on adding more deck slots
- Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’s 1st week sales lower than Unity’s — but 2nd week sales were higher
- Ubisoft’s first half of 2015 sales down 57 percent due to no major releases
- Halo 5: Guardians sales top $400M in first week
- Activision’s stock price hits all-time high, closes up 7.5% after King deal
- Activision’s $1.04B revenues surged past expectations last quarter
- Activision rolls out new Guitar Hero Live content starting today
- Street Fighter V beta audio may have exposed the 7 unannounced characters
- After King deal, Activision now makes more revenue from games than Microsoft, Sony, or EA
- Epic Games teases its latest project: Paragon
- Star Wars: Battlefront teaser has Rebels blasting Star Destroyer from ‘The Force Awakens’
- Tera gets new Brawler class in December update
- World of Warcraft monthly subscribers fall slightly to 5.5M — and Blizzard will no longer report player numbers
- Konami apologizes for Pro Evolution Soccer 2016’s incomplete roster updates
- World of Tanks developer Wargaming helps Twitch rival Hitbox with $4M funding round
- Games are riding high in Apple TV App Store as Top Charts reveal early trends (update)
- Activision buys Candy Crush Saga publisher King for $5.9B
- The App Store is burying some Apple TV apps — and developers are fuming
- Windows 10 adoption passes 25% on Steam
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III is getting modding and map-making tools on PC
- Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, and EA show that the multiplatform strategy — console, PC, and mobile — is golden in 2015
- Warner Bros. offers full refund on still-broken Batman: Arkham Knight PC until end of year
- AMD says Radeon Software Crimson will be your PC’s graphics operating system
Mobile and social
- Progress is the ingenious iOS puzzler you’ll want to watch your friends play
- Glu Mobile beats earnings targets, predicts weak Q4, and hires former Kabam exec to run studios
- Mark Pincus insists Zynga doesn’t need an Activision-like sugardaddy to make a comeback
- China, Japan, and South Korea lead massive $14B mobile gaming business in Asia
- StormBorn mixes Clash of Clans with Hearthstone in a new mobile card game
- Uber teams with CodeFights to create UberBot, a game to test coding skills of potential hires
- Superheroes get schooled, go on dates, and uncover mysteries in Marvel Avengers Academy
- Nazara signs deal to publish ZeptoLab’s Cut the Rope mobile game in India
- Candy Crush Saga publisher King keeps losing players — but this didn’t deter Activision
- King beats Wall Street estimates for Q3 earnings, but revenues weaken
- Side-Kick Games announces 7 publishing partners and 10 VR mobile games
- Why King’s disruptive CEO is happy with his new traditional-gaming overlord
- Sega Mobile’s new vice president of product sees ‘me, too’ clones as mistakes in mobile gaming
- Zynga beats Wall Street’s Q3 expectations — but also delays two major games
- iOS 9 is now on 66% of Apple’s mobile devices
- Marvel Puzzle Quest gets fired up with Jean Grey’s Phoenix
- Why Saudi Arabia’s dolphins and whales matter to the gaming industry
Previews and interviews
- For Shop Heroes, Apple featuring it on the App Store was a double-edged sword
- Star Wars: Battlefront’s speederbikes look dangerous and thrilling
Reviews and impressions
- 5 awesome things about the Call of Duty: Black Ops III single-player campaign
- The big zombie Easter egg in Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a nightmare
- Yo-Kai Watch’s combat is a slog that keeps it from being the next Pokémon
- Knights of Pen and Paper 2 is a cute but ultimately dull role-playing adventure
- New Apple TV beats Roku at its own game
- Warhammer: End Times — Vermintide is a fun, uneven evolution of Left 4 Dead
- Need for Speed reboot offers fun, even if its always-online is just crass commercialism