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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Konami continues being mean to Hideo Kojima, a 5-year-old tries virtual reality, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens begins to invade the mobile space.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Our first glimpse of gaming in 2016
- I never want to play Fallout 4 again
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft — The League of Explorers guide: How to beat The Ruined City
- Virtual reality may be a little too real for a 5-year-old
- Fallout 4 shows Bethesda remains the master of side-quests
- Everything you need to know about the Fallout universe
News
- Rocket League on Xbox One won’t allow cross-platform matchmaking
- Microsoft claims Black Friday week sales for Xbox One broke records
- Hideo Kojima was not allowed to come to The Game Awards by Konami lawyers
- Rocket League is coming to Xbox One
- Chair Entertainment remasters Shadow Complex for PC, Xbox One and PS4
- Rock Band is coming to Oculus Rift
- Psychonauts 2 announced at The Game Awards
- Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn shown at The Game Awards
- Telltale is making a Batman game
- Bethesda is opening up the Doom online test to more players — register now
- Nintendo’s new boss says NX console won’t be a new version of Wii or Wii U
- Hearthstone’s third League of Explorers adventure wing is now live
- Creative Assembly shows off beautiful campaign gameplay for Total War: Warhammer
- Baobab Studios aims to tell animated stories in VR, with $6M in funding
- Star Wars: Battlefront isn’t underperforming, says EA’s Peter Moore
- This PlayStation 4 and Xbox One tool tells you the install size of every game
- Splatoon tournament has Nintendo’s employees splatting each other for dominance
- Blizzard delays this week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl
- Microsoft makes upgrading to Windows 10 ‘a smoother experience’
- Harmonix’s Kickstarter-backed Amplitude drums up January 5 release date
- Warner Bros. is dropping free Batman games into eligible Steam accounts
- Epic partners with SoarTech to make Unreal Engine a tool for governments & militaries
- About 20% of game console owners buy TV shows or movies once a month
- Minecraft gets cellphone coverage thanks to Verizon — check out these blocky video calls
- Koei Tecmo ‘explains’ decision to not bring Dead or Alive Extreme 3 to the West
- Planet Jakku from ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is live in Battlefront if you preordered
- New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game coming from Bayonetta creator Platinum Games
- Windows 10 hits 9% market share, El Capitan takes first among OS X versions
- Investors believe in augmented and virtual reality — and they’re betting big money on it
- Black Ops III and PlayStation won Black Friday, marketing study finds
- Oculus VR will have a ‘special announcement’ at ‘The Game Awards’
- Microsoft still struggling to keep up with demand for Xbox One Elite controller
- Mario Kart 8 gets an esports show on Disney XD
- Cards Against Humanity made $70,000 on Black Friday by selling nothing
Mobile and social
- Here’s what it costs to crack the top 25 mobile apps around the world
- You can now watch Twitch on your Android TV
- DomiNations’ World War update delivers 1-on-1 alliance battles
- CrowdStar’s Covet Fashion taps actress Emma Roberts to engage fashion fans
- BlueStacks hits a billion apps used per month and launches new mobile platform
- The Force Awakens comes to Star Wars: Commander
- Social game publisher RockYou confirms layoffs of 10% of U.S. staff
- To promote ‘The Force Awakens,’ the Star Wars app embraces virtual reality
- Diving into the Samsung app store: bowling, robots, and chickens
- Animoca Brands raises $3.4M to fuel growth for branded mobile games
- Israel’s Planet of the Apps churns out zany games one after another
- This mobile game studio wants Israel to embrace creativity, not just tech and monetization
- Mino Games’ Mino Monsters 2 generates $1.7 million in its first month
- Diving into the Samsung app store: Sonic’s mobile retirement home, and a Doodle God who never doodles
Previews and interviews
- In Far Cry Primal, wild animals are both your enemies and your BFFs
- Sega, Atari vet leads Germany’s Gameforge’s surge into the North America
- Watch us play Fast Racing Neo — the Wii U’s spiritual successor to F-Zero
- Here’s what playing Halo 5 on HoloLens looks like
- Overwatch’s team gives a behind-the-scenes look at Blizzard’s first new series since 1998
- A Very Special Holiday Interview with (fake) Devolver Digital CFO Fork Parker
Reviews and impressions
- Pokémon Picross is two great flavors that taste only OK together
- Watch us play Star Wars: Battlefront’s Battle of Jakku
- Disney Playmation takes the best parts of video games and turns them into active play
- Xenoblade Chronicles X impressions: Size matters
- Just Cause 3 impressions: Bugs mar what could be a tremendous Grand Theft Auto-at-war game