Welcome to another weekly roundup of GamesBeat’s stories. This time, Facebook shocked everyone by acquiring Oculus VR, a mother (mine, to be exact) reviewed one of the hardest games of the modern age, and Candy Crush Saga developer King went public and kinda flopped.
You’ll find all of that and much more below. Happy reading, and enjoy your weekend!
Pieces of flair
- The DeanBeat: The questions to ask about the current state of games
- The No. 1 ‘reason to be’ at the Game Developers Conference 2014: Diversity
- Sony Online Entertainment makes the rules, and the players make the games
- What one studio says the media, gamers, and developers get wrong about Steam’s Early Access
- Video games inside of e-books: An idea that’s already here
- My mom reviews Dark Souls II
- Ken Levine leaving behind linear narratives and ‘going back to the drawing board’
- Adam Orth: Internet toxicity’s effect on the game industry is ‘very real and very dangerous’
News
- Streaming-service CEO says GameStop is wrong — consumers want cloud gaming
- Uncharted 4′s game director leaves Naughty Dog for League of Legends’ Riot Games
- GameStop closes its game-streaming division — will focus on PlayStation Now
- Who needs Good Old Games? GameStop’s new business is rare physical games
- GameStop’s stock price drops as strong Xbox One, PlayStation 4 sales don’t help it hit earnings expectations
- Motorstorm creator starts Starship game studio in the UK
- Xbox One’s reputation scoring system takes effect this month
- Twitch, MLG.TV e-sports rival Azubu secures $34.5M in latest funding round
- Xbox One killer app Titanfall’s new game modes will be free
- Titanfall’s ‘no servers found’ issue affecting players — Microsoft is working on a fix
- Gaming Live is a new broadcasting alternative to Twitch coming later this year
- $3K for 5K gaming? Nvidia shows off GeForce GTX Titan Z graphics card
- The dynasty ends: Electronic Arts will not three-peat as the ‘Worst Company in America’
- League of Legends helps e-sports association double online audience for key European event
- Low-fi flying game Luftrauser is making profit after just 72 hours
- Twitch Plays Game Designer: Tiny Brains developer invites streaming community to work on next game
- 5.5 million people watched Valve’s Dota 2 documentary over the weekend
- The Gauntlet reboot is tailor-made for consoles … but it’s only on PCs
- Major League Gaming’s Xbox 360 app starts streaming MLG.TV shows and competitions today
- Record-breaking GDC drew more than 24,000 game developers to San Francisco
- Oops: Sucker Punch may have revealed the preloading of PS4 games in April
- Wargaming will overhaul World of Tanks’ graphics in 2014
- Microsoft’s game studio chief Phil Spencer defends the Xbox One launch strategy
Mobile and social
- Gree launches its ridiculous fighting game Flop Fu, born from its G-Labs experiment
- Gamblit Gaming raises $12M to create new kinds of real-money gambling games
- Nvidia Shield priced slashed across retailers, best deal at Newegg
- Mobile app monetization: Freemium is king, but in-app ads are growing fast
- Zynga and its players donate $1M to support safe water nonprofit
- MediaBrix says in-game mobile-reward ads get over 90 percent engagement rates
- Disneynature Explore app encourages kids to play in the outdoors
- Winter is coming … to the iPad — Game of Thrones: Ascent now available for Apple’s tablets
- How Candy Crush Saga gave its parent company the worst IPO of the year
- King CEO shakes off sour Candy Crush Saga investors
- Atari and FlowPlay team up to offer social casino games
- Candy Crush Saga publisher’s share price quickly falls 11% in its market debut
- Mobile in-app ad revenues will surpass PC online display advertising by 2017
- Portal is about to become more portable
- Maker of Candy Crush Saga to raise $500M on the stock market tomorrow, will be worth $7.6B
- Angry Birds maker signs up with Orchestrate, the database that wants to rule them all (exclusive)
- Nvidia says Tegra Erista mobile chip coming in 2015
- Analysts and game company CEOs eagerly await King’s initial public offering
- Ubisoft’s Evel Knievel leap to mobile: Trials Frontier hits iOS in April
- Crytek and DeNA partner to launch mobile action game The Collectables
Virtual Reality
- Watch Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart play drums with Oculus Rift — and see how his brain reacts
- Founder of Facebook’s new virtual-reality company: Sony’s Project Morpheus is ‘a good thing for VR’
- The superfast rise of Oculus VR: How it went from startup to $2B acquisition in 21 months (interview)
- The Oculus-Facebook deal could marry tech, social, and gaming once and for all
- Zuckerberg paints a surprising future for Oculus VR: ‘The most social platform ever’
- Facebook is buying Oculus for $2B to ‘get ready for the platform of tomorrow’
- Facebook acquires Oculus VR for $2 billion
Previews and interviews
- Batman: Arkham Knight — designing a proper Gotham City (and what’s with the Batmobile?) (interview)
- Kongregate: Quietly making a lot of noise in mobile and on the Web (interview)
- Nintendo’s Wii U could become the next big home for indie console developers (interview)
- How Scopely is building a hit factory, one mobile game at a time (interview)
- Discover the state of mobile gaming in a fireside chat with SGN’s Chris DeWolfe (interview)
- Rumble Entertainment reveals its Ballistic first-person shooter web game (hands-on preview)
- Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman keeps her aim on democratizing gaming (interview)
- Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi plans to conquer mobile with World of Tanks Blitz (interview)
- Nexon’s Owen Mahoney sees salvation through original hardcore games, not Flappy Bird copycats (interview)
- Know your developer: Oddworld’s Just Add Water
- Wooga’s Jens Begemann on making the transition from social to mobile games (interview)
Reviews