Happy Friday, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, beloved gaming brand Sierra returns from the dead, we celebrate the Sega Genesis’s 25th anniversary, and the PlayStation 4 continues to dominate the console race.
You’ll find all of that and more below. Happy reading, and enjoy your weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: The best video games are becoming part of something larger
- Elite 30 years later: Comparing screenshots from 1984 and 2014
- Sega Genesis’s 25th anniversary: The 5 games that defined the legendary console
- How Acquire re-created Japan’s Akihabara district in Akiba’s Trip
- Wolfenstein: The New Order’s cruel and unusual makers break down their process (postmortem)
- How Ellie’s transformation in The Last of Us speaks to adolescence
- Here are the games that each U.S. state is illegally downloading the most
- The unique, oddly sexualized culture of China’s game industry in pictures (photo gallery)
- Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas guide — how to beat the Construct Quarter
- Virtual reality will become even more amazing with these upcoming technologies (video)
- The history of King’s Quest
- Everything you need to know about Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer
- Real-life Watch Dogs: Hacking the city cameras that spy on you
- Draenor to-do list: A World of Warcraft guide on what to finish before the expansion
- Retro developers call out the games that kicked their asses (part 1)
- Retro developers call out the games that kicked their asses (part 2)
News
- Xbox and PlayStation Twitch channels compromised, archived content temporarily removed
- July 2014 NPD: PS4 was No. 1 once again
- Mario Kart 8 drives past 1 million copies sold in the U.S.
- You can pay more to play less of Assassin’s Creed: Unity
- Warlords of Draenor wants you back in the World of Warcraft on Nov. 13
- This month’s Gunvolt is the next best thing to a new Mega Man game on 3DS
- Sony will (kind of) let you share your PS4 library
- Once a D&D studio, Obsidian secures license to make digital Pathfinder games
- The only banned Super Smash Bros. character returns to the Wii U and 3DS versions
- Metal Gear Solid V stealths its way on to Steam
- The Last Guardian probably won’t show up at Tokyo Game Show, either
- ‘The Walking Dead’ co-op game from PayDay 2 studio in the works
- Xbox doesn’t have a monopoly on Rise of the Tomb Raider forever
- Reggae-themed game is Kickstarted in a week after a month-long failure
- Open-world driving game The Crew is getting a PS4 and Xbox One beta, and you can sign up now
- EA BioWare unveils its new fantasy game, Shadow Realms
- EA shows off live customization for The Sims 4 and releases Sim character creator
- EA shows off live Dragon Age: Inquisition gameplay at Gamescom
- Curse of Naxxramas’s penultimate episode is live worldwide
- Xbox One will soon stream video to phones and tablets
- Microsoft tosses out nice surprises for Xbox fans at Gamescom
- Every trailer from Gamescom: Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Halo 5, Metal Gear Solid V, and more
- PS4’s Share Play enables your friends to play along with you even if they don’t own the game
- PlayStation 4 sales reach 10M worldwide
- Zombie sensation Day Z comes to PlayStation 4
- Microsoft’s battle plan to take on PS4 this holiday? Multiple Xbox One bundles
- Die, triangles! Storied studio Sierra is back with new King’s Quest and Geometry Wars
- Depression Quest gets a quiet, but timely, release on Steam
- Rise of the Tomb Raider is an Xbox One exclusive for 2015
- Another free-to-play game targets consoles: PC MOBA Smite is coming to Xbox One
- Xbox One indie developers getting Unity Pro license for free
- GameStop’s simplified game trade-in pricing starts in August
- EA Access is now live for everyone on Xbox One
- Night Trap is back: Original producers revive controversial full-motion video game via Kickstarter
- The Last of Us writer on Ellie’s story: There’s more to tell
Mobile and social
- Former Cornhusker QB Taylor Martinez turned to development and is prepping his next game
- Hearthstone meets pro wrestling: WWE releases SuperCard for mobile
- Happitech measures your heart rate to help control its Skip a Beat mobile game
- The mastermind behind Kim Kardashian’s insanely popular app explains how the hit game was created
- Candy Crush Saga publisher King getting pummeled by market after weak Q2
- Consolidation wave grows as Dutch mobile game marketer iQU buys HoneyTracks analytics startup
- Tencent supporting Razer’s Nabu smartband to provide in-game rewards for real-world actions
- Former Rovio executives found startup that will use mobile to grow entertainment brands
- Nvidia unveils blazing-fast 64-bit Project Denver processor for Android devices
- Mobile advertisers: CPI campaigns represent a tradeoff between risk and volume
- Premium-priced mobile puzzler Monument Valley started making a profit a week after its iOS debut
- Mobile Internet investment explosion: $47B in M&A plus $14B in investments
Previews and interviews
- Sega Genesis genius Tom Kalinske on its 25 year legacy: Battling Nintendo, launching Sonic, and birthing the ‘street date’
- Broforce creator on teaming up with ‘The Expendables 3′ cast and favoring chaos over balance (interview)
- Tactile Entertainment wants to join Supercell, Rovio, and King as a Nordic mobile-gaming wonder (interview)
- Bubble guns, rainbow pegasi, purple teddy bears … Toy Soldiers: War Chest unleashes the toy box
- Bloodborne delivers death and despair (hands-on preview)
- Sony’s Until Dawn shows that interactive horror movie games don’t have to suck
- Why Alien: Isolation will kick your ass — and why this will just piss you off, not scare you (hands-on preview)
- Papaya Mobile’s Appflood helps Chinese game makers succeed outside their homeland (interview)
- The latest Skylanders wants you to view your tablet as a first-class game machine
- Zynga chief Don Mattrick steers the struggling social game publisher into a mobile future (interview)
- WWE 2K15 has a cool (but awkward) single-player mode
Reviews