Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, a woman gets on the cover of FIFA, we celebrate Metal Gear 2’s 25th birthday, and Rocket League takes everyone by surprise.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Batman: Arkham Knight will liven up your slow summer
- Our latest slate of speakers for GamesBeat 2015
- The Summer Games Done Quick speedruns we don’t want to miss
- How to play Heroes of the Storm’s Skeleton King Leoric (video)
- Diablo & beyond: State of the action-role-playing game
- How YouTube and Twitch are changing the way developers should approach their media strategy
- Watch us play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for its 25th anniversary
- E3, triple-A, virtual reality — and the real holder of the Throne of Games
- Let’s forget our Kojima blues and celebrate Metal Gear 2’s 25th anniversary
News
- Street Fighter V beta goes offline for extended maintenance
- MOBA Smite passes 10 million total players
- Around 75% of Splatoon players use the gyroscope control method
- London Venture Partners invests in developer Klang Games, vets of Eve Online
- Nintendo and Facebook team up to promote Super Mario Maker
- Outpost Games bags $6.2M to help games shine in the Twitch era
- The madness approaches: ChinaJoy trade show will draw 250K gamers to Shanghai
- Episodic adventure game Life is Strange passes 1 million sales
- Nolan Bushnell talks educational games, the future of jobs, and Five Nights at Freddy’s
- Party Hard, the award-winning game about mass killing, gets an August release date
- Street Fighter V beta doesn’t support PlayStation 3 fighting sticks, Capcom confirms
- Daybreak Game Company’s John Smedley steps down as chief executive officer
- Super Smash Bros. pros at Evo ‘loved’ Hyperkin’s new GameCube-style Wii U controller
- The Grand Tournament is Hearthstone’s next expansion with more than 130 new cards
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’s multiplayer beta hits Xbox One, PC a week later than PS4
- Former Ubisoft narrative director joins studio Certain Affinity as it goes triple-A
- Twitch is ditching Flash for HTML5, just like YouTube
- Gears of War Ultimate Edition will hit Windows after Xbox One
- GameFly and Samsung bring PES 2015 to Brazil via game streaming
- The Force is strong with this R2-D2-themed PlayStation 4 gaming laptop
- Lead producer on making friends and war in Rising Tide expansion for Civilization: Beyond Earth
- Nintendo beats patent troll in 3DS technology case
- Microsoft sold 1.4M Xbox systems last quarter
- Xbox boss says keyboard-and-mouse support isn’t ‘far away’
- Facebook opens registration for Oculus Connect 2 event in September
- Rockstar patches Grand Theft Auto V to fix framerate bug
- Fractured Space developer Edge Case Games secures $1.3 million in funding
- Project Cars’ Wii U version is officially cancelled
- Rocket League’s breakout success is a surprise for Psyonix
- Itagaki’s Devil’s Third shooter game to debut on Wii U in Q4
- Gamers lost their minds for the Evo fighting-game tournament on Twitter
- FIFA 16 cover has U.S. women’s national team star Alex Morgan side-by-side with Messi
- Microsoft’s new Xbox One Madden bundle also includes EA Access and a 1TB hard drive
- Seth Killian is destroying fighting-game traditions with Rising Thunder
- Rocket League has a cheating problem, but Psyonix is trying to fix it
Mobile and social
- Xbox co-creator moves Dave & Buster’s from restaurant arcades to mobile games
- NetEase puts up $500K to fund mobile game developers
- Mathematical! Adventure Time is the latest property to get Puzzle Quest treatment
- Cooking Fever simmers past 50 million downloads
- Kamcord launches full mobile-game livestreaming
- Tune confirms acquisition of mobile marketing automation vendor Artisan Mobile, says still open to all
- Creators of Talking Tom app unveil multiplayer bubble shooter Mars Pop
- Fallout Shelter was the No. 4 most downloaded iOS game in June
- Mobile Success Landscape: 250 companies, $25B investment, and 15 billion-dollar startups
- South Korea’s Netmarble sinks $130M into SGN, ‘fastest-growing major mobile studio in U.S.’
- How to get Hearthstone’s new rare card back without spending $500 on a Samsung Galaxy phone
- So long, Ashley Madison; hello, Tinder: VB App Engagement Index July 2015
- Free Me is a card game based on that time you posted an Instagram with your fly down
- DDM’s Jeff Hilbert shows how to take Western mobile games over the Great Wall
- Japan’s Gree lays off 30% of Western staff [update]
- SuperAwesome raises $7M for kid-safe advertising platform
- RockYou acquires MavenHut’s solitaire games as it bets on social casino games
- Super Evil Megacorp positions Vainglory to become a real mobile gaming esport
- Microsoft launches Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 for ‘any developer working on any kind of application’
- RockYou acquires MavenHut’s solitaire games as it bets on social casino games
- Fresh from $275M funding round, fantasy sports firm FanDuel acquires app development firm Kotikan
- srael’s IronSource reportedly in talks to merge with mobile monetization firm Supersonic
- Galxyz founder discusses how educational games can help with global teacher shortages
Previews, reviews, and interviews
- Galak-Z turns the cheesiness of Star Blazers and Battlestar Galactica into a roguelike
- Surviving the watery dangers of Civilization: Beyond Earth — Rising Tide (hands-on)
- Game of Thrones’ excellent Episode 5: A Nest of Vipers makes you risk everything
- Seth Killian discusses Rising Thunder’s fighter heresy, online focus, and MOBA inspiration
- Tembo the Badass Elephant has the best idea for a mascot in a long time