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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo showed off lots of games in a new Nintendo Direct, we reviewed the new mobile Final Fantasy, and a guest writer looked at the positive influence of LGBT characters in video games.
Enjoy, and have a happy weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Why games still need all of the technology that Moore’s Law can deliver
- Someone is re-creating San Francisco in Cities: Skylines
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Blackrock Mountain guide — how to beat Blackrock Depths
- At $25M a month, DeNA ‘lowballing’ its expectations with Nintendo partnership
- The positive influence of LGBT video game characters
- This guy just completed Bloodborne in less than 37 minutes
- The next multibillion dollar tech trend from Asia: E-sports
News
- GameStop.com went down because you’re all mad for Amiibos
- OnLive will shut down its cloud gaming services and sell assets to Sony
- Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences offers scholarships to help students make games
- PlayStation Network is down for some on PlayStation 4 (update)
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’s Blackrock Mountain is out now
- RuneScape developer Jagex gets a new chief executive officer
- Microsoft stops producing Kinect for Windows v2 sensor, will focus on Kinect for Xbox One and Windows apps
- Quantum Break delayed to 2016 to ease Xbox One’s crowded holiday
- Move over, silicon. Gallium nitride chips are taking over
- Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin framerate issues on Xbox One result in ‘sluggish combat’
- Nintendo Direct trailer roundup: Mario Kart, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and Mewtwo in Smash
- Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer lets you decorate interiors without the chores — and with Amiibo cards
- Atlus-made Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei mashup is coming to North America, still in development
- Japanese hit franchise ‘Attack on Titan’ gets its first game release in the West
- This new ‘wooly’ Yoshi Amiibo is so soft and cute
- DS and Nintendo 64 games coming to Wii U Virtual Console
- Mario Maker comes out in September
- Nintendo details Mewtwo and next update for Super Smash Bros.
- Club Nintendo servers struggle as the final Elite Status gifts go live
- Playism aims to make indie games as popular in Japan as they are in the West
- Otoy aims to enable developers to create cool VR imagery
- New Twitch mobile update adds a neverending video player
- MotorStorm dune buggies race to Driveclub as free DLC
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare owners on Xbox One are once again having issues downloading content
- Dying Light’s physics will get wacky for 24 hours on April Fools’ Day
- Google Maps meets Pac-Man: Munch up power pellets in your neighborhood
- Bandai Namco opens up Pac-Man and other classic arcade IPs to Japanese developers
- Ubisoft unveils Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles downloadable trilogy
- Kamcord reaches 40M videos shared as it continues expanding into Asia
- Raptr launches Plays.tv gameplay video sharing and raises $14M
- Game over: Fan’s Super Mario 64 HD for browsers taken down after legal threat from Nintendo
- League of Legends, Dota 2 will lead PC gaming’s fastest-growing sector to $500M this year in North America
- Japanese indie event BitSummit partners with Indie Megabooth
- The Witcher 3 producer says he’d rather play it on a PC at minimum settings than on Xbox One
- Sony’s old CD-ROM-based gaming magazine returns as a bi-weekly video show
- Mortal Kombat X gets an ESL Pro League; preseason starts April 19
- Germany’s Bigpoint partners with Tencent to take Drakensang Online to China
- ‘Star Wars: Rebels’ gets its own digital pinball table
- Sony’s Spotify-powered music-streaming service lands on PlayStation today, no paid subscription required
- Microsoft announces Halo 5 coming Oct. 27 in live-action TV commercial
- Denial eSports wins the Call of Duty Championships
Mobile and social
- Pollen lets game developers access their cash from app store sales
- Mobile MOBA Vainglory gets a spectator mode, its first step toward e-sports play
- South Korean mobile giant Nexon will acquire Boolean Games, makers of the Dark Avenger series
- DomiNations assaults Clash of Clans with a Civilization-like mobile strategy game
- Gondola helps game developers set dynamic prices for virtual goods
- Star Wars: Commander will have a big presence at the Celebration event for the sci-fi franchise
- Mnectar teams up with Branch Metrics to make mobile gaming ads better
- App Annie launches internal research team, hires top IDC analyst
- Angry Birds in the park? Aireal’s augmented-reality tech for businesses could make it ‘real’
- Clash of Clans maker Supercell tests a new game: Smash Land
- SuperAwesome partners with Bee7 for a kid-safe, legal mobile games ad network
- GSN’s acquisition of Idle Gaming shows the state of social casino games
- Tapstream unifies deep links and deferred deep links, connecting mobile web and mobile apps
- App downloads are slightly down from January — but user acquisition is way up from last year
- Immersion wants to add rumble to your mobile games without killing your battery
- DeNA reinforces its brand success with Marvel Mighty Heroes for mobile
- The future of mobile game-player acquisition: Play before you download
- WWE 2K is coming to mobile, but who cares — Hogan called me ‘brother’!
- How to know if your mobile game is on its way to $1M in revenues
- Derby Games offers real-money gambling app for horse racing fans on iOS (updated)
- Bica Studios secures VC funding in a major boost to Portugal’s growing game industry
- Goodgame Studios quietly becomes one of Germany’s biggest game companies
Previews and interviews
- Axiom Verge’s fantastically dark world encourages obsessive exploration
- How Facebook aims to keep game developers on its platforms (interview)
Reviews