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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we covered Sony’s PlayStation Experience event in Las Vegas, Pokémon is off to another strong start, and we talked to the studio that enhanced Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale.
Happy reading, and have a good weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: A tale of two celebrity mobile gaming ads
- Street Fighter V makes its bid for the fighting-game community
- 5 of Hearthstone: Goblins vs. Gnomes’ worst new cards
- Someone turned a pinball machine into a piano and played ‘Guile’s Theme’ from Street Fighter II on it
- Scenes from the PlayStation Experience 2014 (gallery)
- Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Assassin’s Creed: Unity fans
- Forget second screen experiences — it’s time for third screen
- 5 of Hearthstone: Goblins vs. Gnomes’ most promising new cards
- The big PlayStation Experience games worth getting hyped for
- Zelda Wii U is more of a throwback to the original game than you think
News
- Call of Duty and Destiny are the top two best-selling console games of 2014
- Havok celebrates 15 years of cool interactive physics effects in games
- Scalpers turn 20th anniversary edition PS4 charity launch into a money grab
- Nintendo sells 1.5M copies of new Pokémon games in first 10 days in U.S.
- U.S. console and game sales weaken in November
- Sony’s PlayStation 4 game console arrives in China on Jan. 11 (updated with analysis)
- Ubisoft supports PlayStation 4’s debut in China with two launch games
- Joseph Olin takes executive director job at the Video Game Bar Association
- Is this a new Golden Age of gaming? It’s too soon to judge, says Resogun dev
- Hacker group Lizard Squad claims to have taken EA’s servers down
- Digital game sales hit $1.1B in November as PC DLC sales double on Black Friday
- Girlstart is inspiring underprivileged girls into STEM with the help of FlowPlay
- Virtuix rides virtual reality popularity to $2.7M in additional funding
- Updated: Twitch acquires e-sports advertising agency GoodGame
- Twitch update lets you find the best livestreaming players on Xbox One
- Destiny players without Dark Below lose old bonuses
- Chairman Larry Probst steps down as an active employee at Electronic Arts
- AMD’s new Catalyst software enables better game visuals on your display
- Oculus launches Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition for virtual reality developers
- Hearthstone expansion Goblins vs. Gnomes is out now
- Electronic Arts is the publisher of the first game from Hazelight, new studio from Brothers creators
- MediaSpike creates cool in-game native ads for virtual reality
- China gets its own Borderlands in 2015
- Destiny characters and progress will carry over to Destiny 2
- PlayStation Network down intermittently — cyberattackers take credit
- Ralph Baer, the father of video games, has died at 92
- Check out Sony’s PlayStation hardware history from the PS Experience
- PlayStation Experience trailer roundup: Street Fighter V, Uncharted, and more
- The Batmobile takes on an attack helicopter in Batman: Arkham Knight
- Final Fantasy VII comes to PlayStation 4 in the spring
- Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition coming to PlayStation
- Capcom promises cross-platform PlayStation 4-PC play in Street Fighter V
- EA is giving away Need For Speed, Mirror’s Edge, and Plants vs. Zombies for PlayStation’s 20th anniversary
- Shovel Knight coming to Sony systems with Kratos
- The Game Awards trailer roundup: Zelda Wii U, No Man’s Sky, Metal Gear Online
Mobile and social
- Snail Games unveils matching Android gamer smartphone and console for CES
- SuperAwesome launches an advertising platform that it says can safely target kids
- Qualcomm to invest $40M in four Chinese companies
- Forget Target: Apple is still the biggest company censoring games
- Candy Crush Saga finally hits Windows Phone
- Kabam launches Marvel: Contest of Champions after making millions with The Hobbit
- Monsu developer Boomlagoon is growing and working on a new game
- Xoo launches Watcha Doin’? app to gamify social networking
- Storm8 launches Monopoly Bingo! mobile game in deal with Hasbro
- Puzzle & Dragons developer leads a $15M investment round for mobile gameplay video startup Kamcord
- Russia’s Crazy Panda hits 110M users for its social poker games and other titles
- Minecraft: Pocket Edition out now for Windows phones
- Finnish mobile developer PlayRaven completes $4.1 million equity-investment round
- Kabam gives most of its Web games to RockYou
- Angry Birds celebrates 5 years as franchise tries to regain momentum
- Time makes all things possible — including a Transformers mobile strategy game
- SkyMobi is scouting the West for mobile games to take to China
- China’s KTplay mobile social network drives 60M game downloads in 4 months
- Facebook’s best games of 2014 include Cookie Jam, Cower Defense, Bubble Witch 2 Saga, and more
- U.K. politician caught playing Candy Crush Saga on the job
- Clash of Clans dominates the U.S. iOS and Google Play markets for 90% of 2014
- Apple’s best of 2014 includes Threes, indies, XCOM, and Hitman
Previews and interviews
- Meet the guy who filmed an interactive zombie film with an iPhone (interview)
- How a tiny studio enhanced Icewind Dale and other classic D&D games (interview, part 1)
- What’s next after Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale for D&D classics house Beamdog (interview, part 2)
- Stealing hearts: Creator of Kingdom Hearts reflects on 12 years of crossover hits
Reviews
- Elegy for a Dead World offers inspiration for writing but isn’t really a game (review)
- Final episode of ‘Halo: Nightfall’ delivers its best acting … and worst effects
- Vainglory keeps you tapping your mobile screen like a maniac (review)
- For the best Lara Croft experience, just add friends (review)
- The Talos Principle asks you to solve puzzles, ponder humanity (review)