Join the Leaders Making Gaming’s Next Big Deals. GamesBeat NEXT brings 500+ executives, CEOs, founders, and investors to San Francisco, November 2–3, to shape the future of gaming, entertainment, and AI. Connect with industry leaders, forge strategic partnerships, and close deals that move business forward. Be in the room. Get your ticket.
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