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Irrational Games’ sudden and confusing exit from triple-A development was the most shocking story of the week, but GamesBeat had plenty of other news, previews, reviews, and more to offer.
For instance, Rock Band developer Harmonix announced that it’s making a music-based shooter, we reviewed the new Donkey Kong Country game, and the PlayStation 4 sold more than 5.3 million units worldwide. You can find all of that and more in this week’s roundup.
Mobile and social
- The DeanBeat: What Facebook’s $16B acquisition of WhatsApp says about the rise of Asian games
- Mobile game maker Pocket Gems expands to interactive stories with Episode
- Chasing the world’s hottest game market, Kabam opens office in South Korea
- Mobile-gaming social network Weeby.co turns to Kik to launch its first game
- LiveGamer expands its digital storefronts into Latin America
- How King built one of the strongest businesses in gaming — and what we learned from its IPO filing
- New company wants to wrap up all your gaming social media in one place
- How mobile developers are using games to help the victims of cyberbullying
- Worldwide spending on mobile game apps tripled in 2013 to $16B
- Minecraft: Pocket Edition is about to get bigger — and wolfier
- Developer-advocacy group says Candy Crush Saga maker’s trademark actions are ‘overreaching’ and ‘predatory’
- King: 93M daily Candy Crush Saga players, 500M installs, and $568M profit in 2013 (infographic)
- Candy Crush Saga maker King files for an IPO
- InAppFuel’s minigames can boost a mobile game’s virtual goods purchases
- Kochava launches new version of its mobile ad measurement platform
- Google Play store overtakes iOS in Germany and Spain
Game news
- Xbox One Media Remote makes life easier for you … and Microsoft
- Indie heist hit Monaco reaches 500K in sales — but only 36K on Xbox 360
- Call of Duty: Ghosts patch fixes stability errors and introduces new features
- Phoenix Online Studios creates new indie label with four story-based games under development
- Leak shows World of Warcraft players might be able to buy a Level 90 character for … $60
- First the living room, now the movie theater: Valve releasing Dota 2 documentary
- TowerFall: Ascension hitting PlayStation 4 on March 11
- Xbox One black-screen bug: Most-recent update causing video issues
- AMD teams up with Raptr to reward loyal gamers
- Final Fantasy XIV beta available to download on PS4 now — playable on Saturday
- BioShock developer Irrational Games ‘winding down’ — founder Ken Levine starting new studio
- Titanfall and e-sports: Developer Respawn explains its position on competitive gaming
- Game developers favor the PC, smartphones, and PlayStation 4 over Xbox One
- Sony sells 5.3M PlayStation 4s worldwide since launch
- Activision and Hasbro reveal Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark
- Harmonix experiments with a ‘musical first-person shooter’ with Chroma
Previews and interviews
- Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare characters outclass the originals (preview)
- PS4 horror game Daylight puts Twitch viewers in control of its scares
- Infamous: Second Son’s cast dishes on playing superheroes and goofing off in spandex suits (interview)
- 99 Levels to Hell is Spelunky meets Bubble Bobble in a total bloodbath
- How the makers of Tearaway tapped their creativity to make a world built from paper (interview)
- The Order: 1886′s steampunk setting will change how you play third-person shooters
- Know your developer: Resogun creator Housemarque
- Peter Molyneux believes ripping people off with free-to-play games won’t last (interview)
- How Naughty Dog brought us back to the world of The Last of Us (interview)
Reviews
- Weapon Shop de Omasse turns blacksmithing into an amateur comedy routine (review)
- Horrible presentation and boring gameplay sink One Piece: Romance Dawn out of the dock (review)
- The new Strider makes me want to relive the craziness of the old one (review)
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze isn’t the game the Wii U needs right now (review)
Pieces of flair
- GamesBeat Community: The ‘Year of Luigi’ is almost done. Who’s next?
- The memes, music, and religions of the Twitch Plays Pokémon experiment
- Freddie Wong wants his Video Game High School webseries to go out with a bang
- A Link Between Worlds offers a glimpse of the future of The Legend of Zelda
- 5 reasons to worry about MLB 14: The Show
- 5 useful, strange, and hidden Titanfall tidbits
- Where are they now? An update on 10 of gaming’s biggest Kickstarters
- Retrospective: 25 crazy years of Strider Hiryu