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The 2014 International CES in Las Vegas gave us plenty of news to cover this week, especially the unveiling of Valve’s living room-friendly Steam Machines and Sony’s game-streaming service, PlayStation Now. We also found out that the PlayStation 4 is outselling the Xbox One, and someone else is going to try to make an Alien game that hopefully won’t suck.
You can find all that and more from our week’s worth of coverage below:
International CES
- The DeanBeat: Does Valve know what it’s doing with Steam Machines?
- Razer leads out-of-shape gamers to fitness bands (video)
- CEO Gabe Newell explains why Valve created Steam Machines
- The brawl of the big game screens: Nvidia vs AMD
- Sony announces Gaikai-powered PlayStation Now game-streaming service for PS4, Bravia TVs, and more
- Intel throws its support behind Valve’s Steam Machines
- Sony announces Oculus Rift virtual reality headset competitor
- Dell’s Alienware to launch a Steam Machine in close partnership with Valve
- Valve unveils 13 partners for its Steam Machine alternative to Windows gaming
- Intel shows off gesture-control games on the PC
- Avegant Glyph virtual retinal display is like shining an 80-inch TV image on your eyeballs
- Nvidia promises cool graphics and controls for your car with its Tegra K1 chip
- Nvidia announces Tegra K1, a super mobile chip with 192 cores
- Nvidia shows off PC to TV gamestreaming
News
- PlayStation Now game-streaming service requires DualShock controller on mobile
- The Last of Us, Tearaway lead the way for the 14th annual Game Developers Choice Awards nominees
- Nintendo picks up patent portfolio from defunct ‘exergaming’ company IA Labs
- Call of Duty Championship coming in March with $1 million on the line
- Former Call of Duty developer’s studio nearly robbed
- 3DS hackers say ‘no thanks’ to region locking
- E-sports association Major League Gaming welcomes back StarCraft II
- Nintendo’s stock price jumps on the possibility that China may permit gaming consoles
- DayZ’s standalone beta is still a ways off — studio reveals tentative development timeline
- Pokémon X and Y are now the official versions of the Pokémon Championship Series
- Titanfall has 12-player limit for multiplayer matches
- 1 in 5 Twitch broadcasters stream from PS4
- Doom co-creator John Carmack is making software at Oculus Rift
- China drops old ban on gaming systems — but new regulation could still prevent console sales
- PlayStation 4 sales top 4.2 million — leaving Xbox One around 1 million consoles behind
- Left 4 Dead developer reveals Evolve — a 4-on-1 asymmetrical shooter
- 2K Sports is ending its Major League Baseball gaming series
- Atheer Labs is in the midst of $6.1M funding round for its augmented-reality Google Glass competitor
- Microsoft sells more than 3 million Xbox Ones in 2013
Mobile and social
- Why Adult Swim Games’ Castle Doombad is $3 on iOS rather than free-to-play
- Bee Cave Games hits jackpot with $1.9M in additional seed funding for its social casino games biz
- Tencent faces a new threat to its mobile-gaming biz: Alibaba, the Amazon of China
- Low-cost mobile 3D graphics will get much better with latest Imagination Technology’s latest designs
- Now you can make in-game purchases in Farmville 2 (and other Zynga games) with Bitcoin
Previews
- Developers hope to ‘stir a hunger for god’s word’ with bible game
- Alien: Isolation is a survival-horror game from Sega’s Total War developer
Pieces of flair