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Hello, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we check out Star Wars: Battlefront II’s solo campaign, Lego Dimensions runs out of bricks, and Overwatch passes 35 million players.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: What Visceral’s closing means for video games
- PC Gaming Weekly: a divine solution
- How I accidentally became a video game writer during the mobile boom
- AR/VR Weekly: the view from Oculus Connect 4
- Microsoft’s Play Anywhere cloud saves helped me beat Cuphead
- Single-player is the vestigial limb of publishers that had to adapt or die
- Former Xbox leader Ed Fries quizzes Feargal Mac on Atari’s new console
- Are loot boxes ruining Star Wars, Hearthstone, and … everything? GamesBeat Decides
- Hardware isn’t enough — content is key to mainstream VR adoption
- Conjuring Divinity: Original Sin 2 on my smartphone is why I love PC gaming
- IndieCade 2017: going behind the scenes
News
- Star Control classics hit Steam as Stardock launches reboot’s preorders
- AdHawk’s tiny sensors could enable much smaller VR headsets and AR glasses
- Nintendo Switch outsells Sony and Microsoft heading into the holiday season
- Lego Dimensions hits the (brick) wall
- Tencent opens signups for Arena of Valor on Nintendo Switch and mobile
- Moonlighter is opening up shop and slaying monsters on Nintendo Switch
- ModMic Business brings a beloved gamer tool to a professional audience
- Tempo Storm’s latest esports sponsor is Red Bull
- Hearthstone is celebrating Halloween with a new Arena mode and free card packs
- EA reboots Uncharted creator’s new Star Wars game, closes Visceral Studios
- Razer updates its Blade Stealth ultrabook and Core external GPU dock
- SpatialOS’s cloud-based dev platform launches an open beta for Unreal Engine integration
- Redbox starts offering Switch game rentals
- Torch 3D raises $3.5 million for AR and VR prototyping platform
- CD Projekt Red addresses Cyberpunk 2077 and employee morale
- Xbox One fall update offers more personalization for gamers
- Battlefield 1 tackles amphibious ops with December’s Turning Tides expansion
- Overwatch now has 35 million players for Blizzard’s online team shooter
- RumbleMonkey expands beta to let Hearthstone gamers compete for real money
Mobile and social
- Facebook starts letting developers monetize Instant Games on Messenger
- Pokémon Go is celebrating Halloween with its first Gen 3 additions
- Game of Thrones: Conquest launches on Android and iOS
- Steel Media opens submissions for its first mobile games competition
- Office Space: Idle Profits mobile game opens a PC branch
- Pocket Gems launches Atlas expansion for War Dragons
- Playrix scores another big match-3 mobile game hit with Homescapes
Review, previews, and interviews
- Razer’s Basilisk gaming mouse successfully hones in on first-person shooters
- Emotional Fugitive Detector turns your face into a game controller
- Star Wars: Battlefront II — director Mark Thompson digs into the Imperial single-player campaign
- Star Wars: Battlefront II hands-on — the Imperial single-player campaign shows the ‘Gray Side’
- Boyfriend Dungeon is like Tinder for swords
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War postmortem — Monolith’s Michael de Plater explains it all
- The Evil Within 2 review — a survival horror game without enough horror
- A Mortician’s Tale dissects the stigma of death
- South Park: The Fractured but Whole review — better combat saves the day
- Bury me, my Love stays true to the experiences of Syrian refugees
- Game boss interview: Oculus’s Jason Rubin expects a triple-A VR game from Titanfall maker