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.
We hope you had a good week, or at least one that was better than Nintendo’s. We covered that hardware giant’s severely lowered profit projections, and we also had plenty of news from software developer Valve’s Steam Dev Days event.
You can find all that and more from our week’s worth of coverage below:
Technology
- The DeanBeat: The gaming innovations at CES that go way beyond the consoles
- Oculus VR’s Brendan Iribe on the latest virtual reality prototype (interview)
- AMD launches Kaveri processors, aimed at starting a computing revolution
- Intel bets that perceptual computing will save the PC (interview)
- Nvidia’s Tony Tamasi on designing the mobile monster chip Tegra K1 (interview)
News
- Nintendo stock plummets, but president Satoru Iwata says he won’t resign
- Nintendo slashes forecast from a profit to a big loss
- Pokémon X and Y sales cross 3 million as 3DS outsells all other gaming systems in 2013
- Cheaters in Grand Theft Auto Online face a threat greater than cops: the banhammer
- Video game retail sales slipped in 2013 as gamers prepped for new consoles
- December 2013 NPD: While both supply constrained, Xbox One outsells PlayStation 4
- Titanfall ‘Alpha’ test: Respawn invites select Battlefield 4 players to try its futuristic shooter
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare gets slight delay
- Former 1UP Show team reveals TV-style gaming-documentary series on Kickstarter
- Twitch reveals it had 900K unique broadcasters and other interesting facts about its 2013
- Ouya cofounder departs the gaming startup
- Unity game development engine now supports Vita — brings total to 13 platforms
- Major League Baseball is making its own game based on the classic R.B.I. Baseball franchise
- The Wolf Among Us Episode 2 finally gets release window after 3-month delay
- GameStop’s stock is getting hammered after the retailer lowered its Q4 guidance
- E-sports association Major League Gaming streams its way to operating profitability
- GameStop racked up $3.15 billion in holiday sales
- E-sports tournament-management startup Battlefy raises $1.3M in seed funding
- Because zombies: DayZ’s standalone version tops 1 million in sales in 4 weeks
- Call of Duty: Ghosts Onslaught promises classic horror and destructive glee on Jan. 28
- Latest Battlefield 4 PC update repairs many issues — including fixing busted version of game in Asia
- The master of zinger quotes, EA spokesman Jeff Brown skis off to GoPro
- New Chinese console regulations coming soon — won’t permit ‘things that are hostile to China’
- SimCity is getting an offline mode even though that didn’t fit with the developer’s original vision
Valve and Steam
- Steam Dev Days: Greenlight gets death sentence, third-party Steam controllers, and 75 million users
- Steam Controllers support 16 simultaneous connections for multiplayer gaming
- Valve would let Electronic Arts put the Origin store on SteamOS and Steam Machines
- Ubisoft hops on Steam’s Early Access bandwagon with Ghost Recon Online
- Valve releases SteamVR beta just before its Dev Days conference
Mobile and social
- Apple’s shelling out $32.5 million to parents burned by their kids’ in-app spending sprees
- Ex-Bungie developer’s Industrial Toys unveils its Midnight Star shooter game and digital comic for iOS
- China’s CrossFire shooter is bigger than League of Legends and World of Tanks
- NativeX guarantees game developers at least 30% increase in ad revenue — or will pay $30,000 in cash
- Agawi’s AppGlimpse will stream ‘playable ads’ to mobile gamers
- Offensive Combat studio closes a year after launching its shooter on Facebook and mobile
- Mobile social game publisher Kabam beefs up with new hires
- Rovio’s Jami Laes on keeping Angry Birds in the entertainment vortex (interview)
- Mobile gaming could drive entire video game industry to $100B in revenue by 2017
- Updated: Zynga to finally shut down one of its oldest games, YoVille
Previews
- Your wardrobe is your arsenal in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- Check out the first 20 minutes of The Banner Saga
- Square Enix and Silicon Studio are making StreetPasses matter in Bravely Default
- Bravely Default wants to make customization mean something in Japanese RPGs
- Petros Media’s FlipSquare is a deceptively simple puzzle game
Pieces of flair