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.
Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, you’ll find all of our coverage from our GamesBeat Summit event in Berkley, California earlier this week. But the rest of the gaming industry was busy itself. We saw the reveal of Darksiders 3, and the free-to-play shooter Paladins started its open beta on consoles.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: GamesBeat Summit conversations on the Metaverse, AR’s future, and Hollywood envy
- PC Gaming Weekly: Heroes of the Storm’s enters the reboot frontier
- Our favorite Star Wars games that no one else likes
- A possible AR future: Pokémon Go 10 and $500 glasses
- AR/VR Weekly: Mixed reality Plinko
- Chris Roberts: No pressure to make Star Citizen ‘absolutely perfect’
- GamesBeat Summit’s lightning round’s message: ‘You matter, your work matters’
- How the game industry tackles diversity and personal failure
- PlayStation interns turned the ‘Minority Report’ touch gloves into a reality
- The Philadelphia 76ers dish on what it’s like to own an esports team
- Gaming beat the Supreme Court — now it’s time to defend AR and VR
- How Watch Dogs 2 stayed ahead of current events
- How mixed reality is transforming the TV game show
- Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer wrestled over doing Advance Warfare 2 or WWII
- ‘Rogue One’ screenwriter breaks down gaming’s advantage over film
- Modern VR is ‘like the dog who catches a car but doesn’t know what to do with it’
- Epic’s Tim Sweeney: The tech for the metaverse is about 3 years away
- GamesBeat 2017: The Time Machine is coming October 5 and October 6
- Game Thinking wants to help product designers unlock their creativity
News
- Facebook shuts down its Oculus Story Studio team
- Prey’s PC port seems solid after its first patch
- The interesting numbers in Activision Blizzard earnings
- With $1 billion in revenue, Overwatch is Blizzard’s fastest-growing franchise
- Activision says Call of Duty: WWII trailer has 10 million views
- 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann has stepped down
- Cavaliers, Warriors, and 14 other NBA teams back 2K’s eLeague
- Gaming’s new hall of famers: Donkey Kong, Halo, Pokémon Red and Green, and Street Fighter II
- Nvidia leads $1.5 million investment in real-time stream processing startup Fastdata.io
- Minecraft, Mario, and FIFA dominate E3 buzz on Facebook
- McAfee launches a game for World Password Day
- DayZ is finally going into beta, but the survival battleground has shifted since 2014
- Paladins is now playable on PS4 and Xbox One
- Dots will launch its fourth game, Wilds, in late 2017
- Xsolla Capital to fund Unreal Engine 4 games in deal with Epic Games
- Half-Life, Portal co-writer Chet Faliszek left Valve a month ago
- THQ Nordic’s Darksiders III will debut in 2018
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds passes 2 million copies sold
- Microsoft wants to teach students to code with Minecraft
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC details: Trial of the Sword, Hard Mode, and more
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sells 459,000 copies in 1 day
- Twitch issues call for content for TwitchCon 2017 as livestreaming goes beyond games
Mobile and social
- NaturalMotion founder Torsten Reil is leaving Zynga
- Zynga CEO: ‘The most vibrant, largest, most social audiences on mobile are in messaging apps’
- Zynga reports one of its best revenue quarters in years as mobile growth takes off
- Zynga and People buddy up on Crosswords With Friends
- Rovio is no longer for the birds with Battle Bay boat-combat game
- Doctor Who game bot launches on Skype
- Side-Kick VR launches Now You See Me: Back to Macau on Samsung Gear VR
- Skillz hits $100 million revenue run-rate with mobile esports platform
- Blackstorm Labs adds AI chatbot to its EverWing Messenger game
- Zynga launches Words With Friends for Instant Games on Facebook Messenger
- Facebook rolls out Instant Games on Messenger to 1.2 billion people
- Japanese megahit Monster Strike is done in North America on August 1
- Hologrid: Monster Battle debuts on Samsung Gear VR
- Moonfrog taps FarmVille creator to build epic Baahubali mobile game
Review, previews, and interviews
- Playful takes on Minecraft with open-world sandbox game Creativerse
- Quake Champions isn’t Overwatch, but it borrows the right ideas
- Séance: The Unquiet is a spooky ghost story in virtual reality