Join independent journalists and industry decision-makers at GamesBeat NEXT, returning to San Francisco November 2–3. The event brings together 500 executives, founders, investors and tech leaders shaping the $200 billion interactive economy for candid discussions on gaming, entertainment, technology and AI, plus executive networking and opportunities to build partnerships and close major deals.
Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we got to go inside Valve, PewDiePie causes controversy, and we went hands-on with Halo Wars 2.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: The esports scene keeps gaining momentum
- Hearthstone’s big changes soothe players worries while padding Blizzard’s wallet
- Nexon’s Owen Mahoney will tell how to craft a culture of inspiration at GamesBeat Summit
- Overwatch with a GoldenEye 64 skin looks crazy fun
- How Valve is taking a Nintendo-like approach to virtual reality
- Is E3 2017 opening to the public a good idea? GamesBeat Decides
- How to play Nintendo 3DS games on an Xbox One
- Where in the world are the game jobs?
- PewDiePie’s anti-Semitic jokes show the peril of backing unpredictable influencers
- Vivid Helix launches Semispheres 2D puzzle game on PS4 and Steam
- Inside the home of top-ranked Dota 2 esports team Evil Geniuses
News
- Ark: Survival Evolved hits 1 million copies sold on PS4; 7 million on all platforms
- NPD: Nintendo’s NES Classic was January’s third best-selling console
- January 2017 NPD: Resident Evil 7 offsets slumping hardware sales
- Check out Nintendo Switch’s interface in this leaked video
- Electronic Arts now offers annual membership to Origin Access for $30
- Crash Bandicoot remaster trilogy launches in June with a jorts problem
- Hearthstone’s Year of the Mammoth: Classic cards going to Wild, and no more Adventures
- 49ers, NBA’s Jeremy Lin part of $15 million Series A for Plays.tv and its game-recording service
- Former Marvel CEO Peter Cuneo named chairman of VR startup Uncorporeal
- Game trade group ESA takes a shot at Trump’s ‘reckless’ immigration policy
- Grand Theft Auto luminary Leslie ‘The Benz’ Benzies drives investment in Krotos audio tech
- YouPorn’s Team YP esports squad is back — and hitting Overwatch
- Unreal Engine gets native Nintendo Switch support
- Twitch viewers watched 292 billion minutes of livestreams in 2016
- Ex-Sony Online chief John Smedley starts Amazon game studio after Kickstarter failure
- Let It Die slashes its way past 2 million downloads on PlayStation 4
- Everest VR now represents the most epic mountain climb on Oculus Rift
- Apocalypse Now game Kickstarter canceled as fundraising shifts to website
- Hearthstone targets fast metagame by weakening Shaman and pirate decks
- The U.S. game industry has 2,457 companies supporting 220,000 jobs
- Newzoo: Esports will generate $696 million in revenues in 2017
- Humble Bundle hits goal to help ACLU, Doctors without Borders in less than 1 day
- Gabe Newell admits ‘childish’ Valve employees egg on Half-Life 3 rumors
- Magic Leap said to be ‘doing 1,000 things badly’ after raising $1.4 billion
- 8i raises $27 million round for augmented reality holograms
- Valve won’t manually curate Steam because it dominates PC gaming
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league Esports Championship Series announces third season
- Modop partners with talent agency to expand esports sponsorships
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gets its own Game Developers Conference panel
- Razer updates 14-inch gamer laptop with new Intel CPU, faster memory
- Valve: Wireless high-end VR is a solved problem
- Valve boss Gabe Newell still thinks you should pay for game mods
Mobile and social
- Storm8 lays off about 130 from its social mobile gaming studio
- Futurefly’s EatMessage app turns your face into a game controller
- Former Wooga developers launch mobile game studio in Berlin
- Supercell’s Clash Royale reaps $1 billion in its first year
- HTC is working on a new kind of mobile VR headset
- Clash Royale, Clash of Clans push Supercell to $2.3 billion in 2016 revenue
- Plarium makes match-3 mobile game with Fox’s Rio animated characters
- Pokémon Go gets 80 Gen 2 monsters from Gold and Silver in massive update
- AppsFlyer says retaining users is still a challenge for app marketers
- How Hatch aims to transform the way you play mobile games
Previews, reviews, and interviews
- Hands-on with Halo Wars 2’s grueling Lights Out mission
- Hands-on with the Halo Wars 2 single-player campaign on Xbox One