Hello and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo finally adopts PayPal support, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ first tournament was a success, and the World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) organization is under fire for how it’s separating an esports tournament based on gender.
Oh, and don’t forget to check out our Madden NLF 18 guide for the franchise mode if you plan to pick up this year’s football game!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Strategic zoom for the game industry
- PC Gaming Weekly: The RPG sales surge
- AR/VR Weekly: Making people’s lives better
- Discord’s screen-sharing feature makes it irreplaceable
- Madden NFL 18: A step-by-step guide for creating a monstrous franchise player
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds esports broadcasts need to copy golf
- Where did all the Xbox One exclusives go? GamesBeat Decides

News
- Overwatch’s Mercy is getting massive changes and losing her mass resurrection
- Marvel Heroes Omega event celebrates Netflix’s new Defenders series
- WESG under fire for different rules and lower prize pool for women’s Hearthstone tourney
- Thomas Was Alone developer announces ‘The Gamedev Business Handbook’
- Closers is a South Korean MMO blend of Final Fight & Sailor Moon, and En Masse is bringing it West
- Eleague series shows the NBA taking a more personal interest in esports
- Call of Duty: WII beta test gets new recruits: Xfinity internet customers
- Gamescom PUBG Invitational winners get a golden frying pan trophy
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ rough first tournament had 140,000 simultaneous viewers
- Overwatch’s new short is a-Mei-zing
- Blizzard gives Hearthstone the silly animated short it deserves
- Twitch follows Bob Ross and Power Rangers with Lucha Libre wrestling
- Hellboy, Raiden, and Black Manta are coming to Injustice 2
- Ethereum leads AMD and Nvidia GPUs to a historic quarter
- Quake Champions enters Early Access on PC
- Nintendo adopts PayPal for the first time and brings it to Switch
- Grand Theft Auto Online rolls out the machine gun-wielding Ocelot Ardent car
- Call of Duty: WWII shows off its rocky Gibraltar multiplayer map
- Alienware launches new Area 51 gamer desktop with Intel’s fastest chip
- Age of Empires gets a sequel from Company of Heroes studio Relic
- The Sims 4 rains cats and dogs on November 10
- Overwatch is taking players to Junkertown for its next map
- Final Fantasy XV brings its successful blend of swords, sorcery, and camping to PCs in 2018
- Intel targets 8th Gen Core laptop processors at video editors and VR fans
- Watch all the Xbox One X and Xbox One premiere trailers from Gamescom
- Microsoft unveils Xbox One X limited edition and Xbox One S bundles
Mobile and social
- Megacool launches GIF-sharing platform for mobile game discovery
- Hatch opens beta test for Android cloud gaming service in Finland

Previews, reviews, and interviews
- Call of Duty: WWII closed beta gameplay — watch us play the throwback shooter
- Cuphead hands-on: My 26 minutes of shame with an old-time cartoon game
- Cat Sorter VR transforms your HTC Vive into a chaotic feline assembly line
- Monster Hunter: World hands-on — Capcom’s gamble looks good so far
- SNES Classic hands-on: No surprises, but still a good machine
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins hands-on — unraveling a betrayal in ancient Egypt
- Little Red Lie is an emotional gut punch about paralyzing fear and insecurity
- Far Cry 5 hands-on: Taking Falls End with your dog Boomer
- Elgato’s Cam Link is webcam overkill, but I like it
- Yakuza Kiwami review — sometimes gangsters just wanna race toy cars
- John Smedley interview: Amazon wants games with ‘ridiculous computation’
- The Crew 2 hands-on: Flying, boating, and driving through NYC