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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Rockstar delayed Red Dead Redemption 2, and we went hands-on with Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Prey is a game where the developers decided to torture gamers
- PC Gaming Weekly: How modding may play into Take-Two’s strong earnings
- Ranking the best of ParadoxCon
- 2017 Unreal E3 Awards: Epic and GamesBeat call for entries
- How Unity convinced investors it’s worth $2.6 billion
- Why Far Cry 5’s Mountain West extremism enables Ubisoft to criticize America
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tips from a grand champion (I won once)
- AR/VR Weekly: Can Transformers spark China’s AR/VR interest?
- Overwatch had one of the best first years ever
- How 1APP wants to disrupt the app stores with infinite distribution
- Why alternative app stores and emerging markets are good for developers
- What should you expect from Sony PlayStation at E3? GamesBeat Decides
- Overwatch’s first anniversary event has great content with no real theme
- Overwatch: Ranking its first year of seasonal events
- Why LawBreakers is heading to PC and PS4 instead of Xbox One or Switch
- Meet Rowan Kaiser, GamesBeat’s PC Gaming guest post editor
- Meet Stephanie Chan, GamesBeat’s new general assignment reporter
- How mixed reality could transform game shows of the future
- Fig CEO Justin Bailey offers the cure for ‘sequelitis’
News
- Nintendo Switch and Pokémon bolster GameStop’s first quarter
- Stugan brings in 15 teams for its 2017 game accelerator class
- Epic Games dishes out another $275,000 in Unreal Engine 4 grants
- Superdata: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made $34 million in April
- SuperData: Digital gaming hit $7.7 billion in April
- Worldpay demos system for making payments inside virtual reality worlds
- Microsoft relaunches Beam as Mixer, and it has a new feature to compete with Twitch
- Zenway acquires Heroes of the Storm esports team DeadlyKittens
- Netflix uses its real NES app to reveal ‘Castlevania’ trailer
- SteamWorld Dig 2 wants you to help write the game’s text
- Xbox Game Pass launches for Gold members, hits June 1 for everyone else
- Rising Star and Bitmap Bureau team up again for an indie game: Ninja Shodown
- Double Fine to release Broken Age as a physical PS4 game on June 9
- Card game Gwent enters open beta phase — it’s essentially launching
- Apple’s App Store is creating twice as many million-dollar publishers as Google Play
- Game engine maker Unity raises $400 million in private equity from Silver Lake
- Grand Theft Auto Online cushions the blow of Red Dead’s delay
- Civ VI was a large contributor to Take-Two’s net revenue growth
- Take-Two teases mystery game in 2018 from one of ‘2K’s biggest franchises’
- Supercell acquires 62% of London’s Space Ape Games for $55.8 million
- Transformers roll out into VR in China
- Grand Theft Auto V’s sales now soar past 80 million
- Overwatch’s anniversary event is now live
- GameMaker Studio 2 gets an education edition
- Rockstar pushes Red Dead Redemption 2 to spring 2018
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds bug: Your gun isn’t aiming where you think it is
- Overwatch’s esports is getting a minor league
- Rainbow Six Siege documentary reveals the tactical shooter’s esports scene
- Far Cry 5 will be set in Montana
- LawBreakers is coming to PlayStation 4 as well as PC for $30 this year
- Rovio’s Angry Birds movie sequel is coming September 20, 2019, marking 10 years since game first launched
- Elgato’s Stream Deck is powerful enough to replace expensive broadcasting tools
- MindMaze offers VR treatment for stroke victims in the U.S.
- Dawn of Titans heads to China as Zynga partners with NetEase
Mobile and social
- AppsFlyer helps mobile advertisers beat back ad fraud via machine learning
- Magikarp Jump gives Pokémon’s fishy weakling his own mobile game
- Seriously takes the Angry Birds path with Best Fiends animated cartoon
- Jam City’s Cookie Jam hits 100 million downloads as Cookie Jam Blast debuts
- Top Gear mobile game dev Motorious Entertainment raises $894,000
- Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is ‘on the right path’ in mobile gaming
- Embrace.io raises $2.5 million to tell developers how their apps perform
- Guardian Kingdoms aims more for Age of Empires or StarCraft than Clash of Clans
- Clash of Clans’ Builder Base update is its biggest new content dump of 2017
- Hasbro and Backflip settle with Peak on My Little Pony copycat suit
- Study shows live mobile sports apps are lagging behind real-time sports TV broadcasts
- The future of mobile game monetization
Reviews, previews, and interviews
- The dread, the separatism, and the coming collapse of America that inspired Far Cry 5
- Far Cry 5 focuses on a terrifyingly realistic armed cult
- MXGP3 and MotoGP 17 raise the bar on realistic racing simulations
- Call of Duty shows off more of its new take on World War II
- How TT Games is leveling up the open world of Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2
- Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is massive open world with chaotic fighting
- How Hidden Path designed real-time strategy game Brass Tactics for VR
- Ready At Dawn leader hopes multiplayer VR game Echo Arena will be an esport
- Lone Echo’s VR multiplayer Echo Arena is like playing Ultimate Frisbee in zero gravity
- Real-time strategy game Brass Tactics places you in the middle of a VR battlefield
- How Shadow of War will test your skill in breaking fortresses
- Shadow of War: Hands-on assault of an Orc fortress in Mordor