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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we give our impressions of the Overwatch beta, and Sony announces some new games in Paris. We also have a list of Halloween games that even wimps can enjoy.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Seattle event marks the accelerated growth of virtual reality and augmented reality
- GamesBeat giveaway: Halo 5: Guardians Limited Edition Xbox One Bundle
- Halloween games for wimps like me
- Making realistic female characters, one motion-captured body at a time
- Here’s how you can get Halo 5: Guardians running in local split-screen on 1 TV
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft championship preview: an unstable meta, an uncertain favorite
- Swingy controller keeps kids moving while playing video games — with their feet
- A step-by-step guide to creating a monstrous MyCareer wrestler in WWE 2K16
- It’s a new ice age — for game-industry deals
- Heroes of the Storm preview: Feels naive for any team to beat Na’Vi
- Xbox One Elite Controller tips: Getting the most from shooters, racers, and action games
- A step-by-step guide to creating a monstrous MyCareer player in NBA 2K16
- How Israel’s $1B game business thrives in a cutthroat global industry
- VCs favor putting their money into esports and virtual reality
News
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pains ships 5 million copies in its first month
- EA CEO sees strong momentum heading into holidays for Star Wars Battlefront
- EA Sports games saw big year-over-year growth in 2015
- Target will really sell Fallout 4’s Nuka-Cola Quantum
- Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst now has a May release date after delay
- EA reports earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations
- Harmonix launches Beat Sports today alongside Apple TV
- PlayStation 4 sales continue to track ahead of PlayStation 2 with 29.3M sold
- Twitch Creative livestreaming finds new audiences for artists and musicians
- Paradox Interactive buys ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ publisher White Wolf from CCP
- Nintendo’s new online service is called Nintendo Account
- Nintendo says it has more ‘unannounced’ games to help Wii U and 3DS this holiday
- Second Life pioneer Philip Rosedale shows off virtual toy room in High Fidelity
- This high-tech circus act just scored $6.5 million in funding from Intel and Techstars
- Rocket League keeps the free updates coming to keep its bustling community happy
- FabZat’s Phygitoys SDK tries to make smart toy manufacturing and development a little easier
- Virtual reality enterprise software startup Envelop VR raises $4M
- Esports is already worth $748M, but it’ll reach $1.9B by 2018
- Vectrex Regeneration developer creating an exclusive soccer game for Apple TV
- Nintendo is still (slowly) making a profit
- Facebook engineers’ next hack: a Super Mario Maker level
- Mario helps Nintendo’s hardware sell better quarter-over-quarter
- Xbox One Elite Controllers sold out: Microsoft plans to replenish stock ‘for the holidays’
- Quantic Dream unveils Detroit: Become Human for the PlayStation 4
- Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End multiplayer open beta hits in December
- Gran Turismo: Sport is coming to PlayStation 4 with a beta early next year
- No Man’s Sky gets June 2016 release date
- Sony shows off new game Boundless for 2016
- Street Fighter V gets February release date; Dhalsim joins the battle
- Super Mario Maker is getting mid-level checkpoints in a November update
- Bandai Namco opens division in India — a potential $3B games market
- Internet gambling startups get a new event
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has an answer to one Human Revolution criticism up its sleeve
- Sony to encourage Australian game development students to publish on PlayStation Network
- New Xbox One Experience gets November 12 release date
- Mojang’s Cobalt gets delayed just days before release to February 2016
Mobile and social
- Mobile user acquisition costs climb and download volumes drop in September
- Talisman: Digital Edition gets The City expansion today on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android
- Helsinki’s Futureplay Games attacks Hay Day with Farm Away mobile game
- Pew: 68% of U.S. adults now own a smartphone, 45% have a tablet
- Titanfall games coming to mobile thanks to partnership between Nexon and Respawn
- Nintendo’s first mobile game is Miitomo, a smartphone take on Tomodachi
- Nintendo delays the launch of Miitomo, its first smartphone game
- Google brings gameplay recording to Android with update to the Play Games app
- Blue Crystal Labs unveils skill-based slot machine games for mobile
- Sick of Facebook Candy Crush invites? Mark Zuckerberg says they’re working on it
- Tilting Point will launch and operate Klang Game’s mobile racer ReRunners
- NetEase sees promise in Finnish developer Reforged Studios’ ‘West Coast-style startup’
- Even in Siberia, you can make a game with 30M downloads in today’s global game market
- Reforged Studios’ $2.5M from NetEase is second Asian investment in Finland this week (update)
- Finnish studio Koukoi Games bags $1M seed funding from Frontier Singapore partners
Reviews and impressions
- Overwatch first impressions, Part 2: all the defense heroes, all the tanks
- Razer’s Chroma Workshop is all about finding the craziest lighting schemes for your PC gear
- Overwatch first impressions: all the maps, all the support, & all the offense
- The Legend of Legacy is a double-edged sword of innovation and underdeveloped ideas
- Life Is Strange: Episode 5 will break your heart (and brain)
- Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition offers tremendous additions but also some annoyances for console players
- Kingdom is a little too simple for what it wants to be
- Guitar Hero Live is the new standard for rhythm games
- Kangaroo is an amazing $99 Windows 10 portable PC
- Updated: Halo 5: Guardians takes Master Chief and his pursuer down a very strange path