Welcome to another GamesBeat roundup! This time, we played the retro and excellent Sonic Mania, Dota 2 and Call of Duty crowned esports champions, and role-playing game sales are seeing a big surge.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: 3 Pakistani brothers ensure mobile game chat isn’t lost in translation
- PC Gaming Weekly: the magic of the $398 million survival game market
- AR/VR Weekly: CCP Games has found one solution to the VR drought
- PewDiePie happily made Nazi jokes until he saw real Nazis
- Will games ever take on white supremacy? GamesBeat Decides
- The PlayerUnknown’s Battleground meta can’t handle vaulting
- The best moments from our PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Family Dinner night
- Hellblade’s bizarre ending will make you question what’s real
- Capcom’s Mega Man Legacy Collections should have embraced these bizarre gems
- Indie devs are looking for love and money at comic cons
News
- Wargaming will stream 1,000 hours of World of Tanks gameplay on Facebook Live
- Call of Duty had 3 games in the top 20 in July, but Tom Clancy is 2017’s biggest franchise
- Rollin’ in gil: RPG sales are up 50% from 2016
- Nintendo Switch outsold PlayStation 4 and Xbox One last month
- July 2017 NPD: Splatoon 2 paints a pretty picture for Nintendo
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is gobbling up Overwatch’s audience
- Twitch is making it easier to find the best Hearthstone and Overwatch streams
- Shenmue III is the latest Kickstarter game to get a publisher
- DMarket launches ICO, plans blockchain marketplace for in-game items
- Kabam vet leads Deca Games’ charge into live operations for old games
- Quake Champions hits Early Access for $30 on August 22
- Nielsen dives into esports market research
- The First Tree explores family bonds and beautiful forests on its September 14 PC launch
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’s scariest moments
- Crackdown 3 delay means Microsoft has just one big new game this holiday
- Sony teams up with Streamline Studios to support games development in China
- Elgato Gaming adds Xsplit support to its Stream Deck command center
- Cedar Point’s next thrill ride debuts in Planet Coaster
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds updates are going to slow down
- Tespa and Blizzard serve up $1 million for college esports scholarships
- Total War: Warhammer II brings in the slippery Skaven as 4th race
- Empyre: Lords of the Sea Gates sets sail on its Neo-Victorian water world on October 4
- Gambitious rebrands as Good Shepherd to invest in the indie game revival
- King of the Kill keeps the H1Z1 in its divorce with Just Survive
- Intel makes diversity gains, but real progress is hard
- CCP unveils non-VR version of Eve: Valkyrie
- Bungie and Nvidia release Destiny 2 beta trailer running at 4K and 60 frames per second
- Beyond KDA: Mobalytics launches open beta for League of Legends analysis
- GTA creator shows off new cloud gaming engine with a VR sci-fi demo
- Intel confirms Ice Lake Core CPUs with ’10nm+ process’ to followup its 8th-gen chips
- Songbringer sings an indie sci-fi RPG tune on Xbox and PC on September 1
- Blizzard brings back Battle.net branding
- Optic Gaming wins the top prize in $1.5 million Call of Duty World League final
- Call of Duty World League finalists shoot for $1.5 million
- Team Liquid wins Dota 2 Championships, takes home $10.8 million
Mobile and social
- Game Insight offers something new for Guns of Boom fans: Watching in AR
- Immersv raises $10.5 million for VR ads and mobile 360-degree video
- GameCredits takes on Apple and Google with its blockchain-based app store
- Pocket Gems’ Episode brings back Clueless as an interactive mobile game
- The Angry Birds Movie profits help Rovio double revenue as IPO rumors grow
- Facebook and Supercell partner on Clash of Clans AR experience
- Critical Ops hits 25 million downloads as mobile shooter preps for esports and Asia
Previews, reviews, and interviews
- Blue Reflection doesn’t reflect well on the JRPG scene
- Vava’s Moov 14 gaming earbuds pound your noggin with thumping bass
- Total War: Warhammer II hands-on: The Skaven rats are dangerous vermin
- Total War: Warhammer II’s rat race is pretty fierce
- Uncharted: The Lost Legacy review — for good and bad, it’s not Nathan Drake
- Nightmarchers explores the lore of Hawaii in a postapocalyptic hellscape
- The Void CEO: Star Wars can make VR accessible
- Matterfall review — a hectic and challenging take on side-scroller shooting
- Peter Molyneux’s long trail back to PC games
- Sonic Mania review — Sonic’s best game in over two decades