Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we hosted developers and industry experts at our GamesBeat Summit, and we have a ton of stories about everything they told us. Also, Nintendo is rebounding, and we got a deep look at the Zelda symphony.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
GamesBeat Summit
- The DeanBeat: Learning from the smartest people in the room
- How PlayStation learned to speak to its customers between the PS3 and PS4
- Gree’s Andrew Sheppard: ‘The notion of “customer” has changed’ in the international age
- Peter Phillips promises Marvel won’t ‘brand slap’ … for the most part
- Jamil Moledina gives us a glimpse into the Google Play of 2020
- Unity chief John Riccitiello on clash of big ideas: ‘Sony f***ing nailed it, and they deserve the victory’
- Gamergate’s positive effect: We’re now talking about diversity
- Why Kabam is shifting to the deep end of mobile games with big budgets
- Lionsgate’s Peter Levin on how the game industry often botches a ‘straight-forward idea’
- Why Samsung is entering the mobile app store war
- Nolan Bushnell on augmented reality and how self-driving cars will kill the Teamsters
- Mobile, augmented reality games set to become dominant market forces by 2018
- Android games will make more money than iOS games by 2018 thanks to China
Pieces of flair and opinion
- 5 Nintendo rides we want to see at Universal theme parks
- How to turn The Legend of Zelda into a symphony
- All of the Star Wars mobile games you can play on your phone right now
- A short tour of the semi-secret projects inside Valve’s headquarters (photo gallery)
News
- Resident Evil: Revelations 2 ships 1.1 million copies
- Destiny fans raise over $400,000 to help with Nepal earthquake relief
- Nintendo has shipped 10.5M Amiibos worldwide — and most of those went to North America
- Only 2 of the top 200 highest-grossing e-sports stars are women
- Nintendo says Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. DLC will come this year to keep fans engaged
- Nvidia sees PC sales slowing ahead of Windows 10 launch
- Nvidia beats earnings targets, but revenue is slightly short
- Steam is down: Valve’s store and community acting up for PC gamers
- Logitech and Razer dominate the PC gaming mouse market — and e-sports fuels growth
- Otoy makes photorealistic live-action virtual reality happen with its new capture tech
- Epic Games’ former president Mike Capps joins Unity as an internal adviser
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 confirmed for console release this year — with online play
- 3 classic Star Trek games appear on GOG in their digital premieres
- Minecraft celebrates three years on console with free skins for Xbox One and Xbox 360
- Nintendo partners with Universal for theme-park attractions
- Wii U sales up for Nintendo while 3DS slowed in its fourth year
- Nintendo posts a full-year profit as handhelds lift overall sales
- PlayStation Plus members received over $1,300 in games in the past year
- Activision’s digital revenues set a new company record in the first quarter
- Advanced Warfare, DLC keep Call of Duty sales rolling along
- Activision’s Q1 results beats expectations thanks to Hearthstone and Destiny
- World of Warcraft’s subscribers shrink to 7.1 million
- E-sports makes $612M from its 134M viewers worldwide, SuperData finds
- Watch The Witcher 3 running on PlayStation 4 for the first time
- Rage of Demons brings renowned D&D hero Drizzt Do’Urden to Sword Coast Legends and Neverwinter
- Oculus Rift virtual reality headset won’t ship to consumers until early 2016
- After decades of efforts, Myst TV live-action show to debut on Hulu
- Hearthstone’s 30M players is great, but its revenues are even more impressive
- EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront expectations: up to 10M copies sold
- EA’s Q4 beats Wall Street expectations with $896M in revenue — stock price surges
- PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U sales to surpass 200M consoles by 2019
- Star Wars is the big addition to Disney Infinity 3.0
- PlayStation 4 overtakes PS2 as the U.K.’s fastest-selling Sony console
- Lost Planet 3 developer Spark Unlimited shuts down
- Valve writer: ‘When it comes to VR, we don’t know anything’
- Nintendo: We ‘are already making plans to bring back’ out-of-stock Amiibo
- 3D Realms releasing 27 classic games on Steam tomorrow
- Xbox U.K. celebrates May 4 with these cool Star Wars controller concepts
Mobile and social
- How The Sims creator Will Wright’s new app enables you to share your stories
- 5 lessons from the Vainglory mobile MOBA game launch
- Nintendo CEO’s strategy for mobile, console, and quality-of-life is all about ‘individuality’
- Space Ape Games aims for older hardcore fans with Rival Kingdoms mobile strategy app
- Heroes of Newerth lives under the ownership of Southeast Asian chat-app company Garena
- RockYou acquires PlayHaven as it moves deeper into mobile ad networks
- Zynga beats estimates with $183M in revenues — but it’s cutting 364 jobs
- Cut the Rope maker ZeptoLab grabs 10M downloads for King of Thieves (updated)
- JoyBits extends its puzzle game series with Doodle Tanks
- App Annie buys Mobidia to combine app download and app usage analytics in 60 countries
- EA’s digital and mobile revenues set new records — $2.2B total for fiscal 2015
- Peak works with neuroscience experts to make your brain sweat
- Vainglory enters the world of e-sports with the help of ESL
- Mobile video advertising up 5X in a single year in Opera Mediaworks ‘state of the ad’ report
- Zynga goes hardcore with Empires & Allies on mobile
- Mobile gaming will be a $45B market by 2018, leaving console gaming way behind
Reviews and previews
- Project Cars is a beautiful racing sim with A.I. that drives like a teen with a learner’s permit
- Starfighter, Inc. takes ‘Babylon 5′-style space combat and adds corporate skullduggery
- I Am Bread fails to rise to the level of its much funnier siblings
- My kids took on Kano, the tiny single-board computer that teaches coding