Join independent journalists and industry decision-makers at GamesBeat NEXT, returning to San Francisco November 2–3. The event brings together 500 executives, founders, investors and tech leaders shaping the $200 billion interactive economy for candid discussions on gaming, entertainment, technology and AI, plus executive networking and opportunities to build partnerships and close major deals.
Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Zynga makes money thanks to CSR Racing 2, Nintendo finally tells us when we can preorder an SNES Classic Edition (kind of), and more Persona games are on the way.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Casual Connect’s mood reflects the highs and lows of gaming
- PC Gaming Weekly: Survival evolved
- Who’s on gaming’s Mount Rushmore? GamesBeat Decides
- AR/VR Weekly: RIP, Altspace
- Why Hearthstone boss Ben Brode makes videos from his house
- Hearthstone’s Archbishop Benedictus is Blizzard’s craziest card ever
- This World of Warcraft fan concept hints at what MMOs could look like in VR
News
- Gamers Gift VR nonprofit is raising money on Twitch to help the sick and elderly
- Crash Bandicoot and StarCraft Remastered reboots could boost Activision Blizzard’s results this year
- Activision Blizzard: More Overwatch League teams are coming this year
- Overwatch and Hearthstone help Blizzard hit a record 46 million active monthly players
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III’s Zombie Chronicles shuffles new players to a 2-year-old game
- PUBG’s hotpants are selling like hot cakes on Steam
- Star Wars VR attraction coming to Disneyland and Walt Disney World in 2017
- Minecraft’s community marketplace is now selling dungeons and more from 4 top creators
- For Honor’s third season brings new heroes and maps
- SuperData: Game industry will crest $104 billion in 2017
- With 8.5 million sales, NBA 2K17 is more dominant than the Warriors
- Grand Theft Online just had its best money-making quarter ever
- Nintendo Switch gets Minecraft: Story Mode’s first season on August 22
- Persona Q2 and more Persona dancing games are on the way
- LawBreakers rewards Twitch Prime members with in-game goodies
- Nintendo: SNES Classic Edition preorders begin this month
- Nintendo Switch wins more support from Capcom with Resident Evil: Revelations collection
- Greycroft’s Jon Goldman raises $15.6 million fund for VR, AR, esports, and games
- Heroic Labs launches open-source backend game servers to help small studios with online services
- Merge Cube augmented reality toy debuts at Walmart
- SteelSeries unveils Sensei and Rival mice for esports players
- Ark: Survival Evolved finally leaves Early Access on August 29 — life finds a way
- Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar gets publishing help from Travian Games
- Linden Lab launches open beta for social VR platform Sansar
- Minecraft cross-platform beta arrives on Windows and Android
- AMD updates Radeon Pro drivers for Vega GPUs with 8K display support
- AMD unveils high-end Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and Vega GPUs
Mobile and social
- King’s player numbers are down, but they’re spending more in Candy Crush and other games
- Accidental Queens builds on A Normal Lost Phone’s 100,000 sales success with a successor
- Social casino game king GSN rolls dice on a new CEO: Mark Feldman
- Helpshift’s customer service game is strong, nabs a third of mobile’s top-grossing titles
- Why Zynga’s smiling on Dawn of Titans after killing Mafia Wars
- Zynga’s mobile revenue zooms up 31% in Q2 thanks to CSR Racing 2
- Zynga picks Unity Technologies to provide ads across its games
- Twitter’s new developer tool for Unity makes it easier to tweet inside a game
- Nexon’s Battlejack adds an RPG twist to blackjack
- Agora.io takes on Discord with mobile in-game voice chat
- Vungle helps developers get users on Amazon Fire tablets
- Branch Messenger helps hourly workers swap shifts on mobile
- Design Home helps Glu Mobile transform its financial outlook
- Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle spirit bombs app stores with 200 million downloads
- AdColony: Scheduled events beat user-generated content in mobile-app engagement
- Pokémon Go Fest fallout continues as frustrated fans sue Niantic Labs
Reviews, previews, and interviews