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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup!
It was another busy week for us, with our GamesBeat Summit going on in San Francisco. We also celebrated Star Wars Day by showcasing some of the series best (and now cheapest) games. Elsewhere, Dishonored 2 got a release date, and Megan Fox became the face of a mobile game.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Everybody is an underdog. What you do about it is what matters
- Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney still opposes Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform
- Why Marvel’s games are about more than fan service
- Unity chief John Riccitiello: It’s ‘not enough’ to want to be a game startup CEO
- How filmmakers are inventing the language of VR
- Rami Ismail: Vlambeer’s indie hits come to PlayStation 4 first because they love working with Sony
- 4 Star Wars games that cost less than $4 for May the 4th
- Twitter users reveal Star Wars’ most popular characters on May the 4th
- Tim Sweeney: How the Universal Windows Platform is like Facebook and a boiling frog
- Why the Red Ring of Death didn’t kill the Xbox 360
- GamesBeat Summit 2016 is all about the underdogs
- The game industry must learn that uncompensated crunch isn’t normal
- Everything you want to know about GamesBeat Summit 2016
- Will fans go for a new ‘sci-fi’ Call of Duty that is more like Halo?
- Donald Trump’s Second Life fans are vulgar and sad, but they taught me something
- What the tech industry can learn from online game companies
- Hearthstone 101: How beginners tackle Standard and Whispers of the Old Gods
News
- Heroes of the Storm overhauls competitive rankings, adds two new Warcraft characters
- Windows 10 hit 300 million devices 6 months faster than Windows 7
- Destiny passes 30 million registered players
- Hearthstone’s quarterly revenue was up 20 percent leading up to the new expansion
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III drives strong sales for Activision Blizzard
- Activision Blizzard beats Wall Street Q1 earnings expectations
- Dark Souls III was YouTube’s most popular game in April
- Star Trek Online’s next expansion takes players back to the original series
- Bethesda releases bloody Doom trailer before May 13 launch
- The Legend of Zelda, Space Invaders, and Sonic highlight World Video Game Hall of Fame’s 2016 inductees
- Titanfall developer Respawn is working on a Star Wars game
- Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ May 4 trailer shows off new adventures outside the film
- Online gaming in China will be worth $20.4 billion by 2020
- Star Wars classic Shadows of the Empire is on sale at GOG in time for May 4
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s first victory: 6M bot messages on Facebook
- USC Games builds a Bridge between students and professional developers
- Dishonored 2 gets a November 11 release date
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III announced with a rain of corpses
- Turtle Beach partners with esports team OpTic Gaming for new headset
- French government announces plans to legalize and regulate esports industry
- Oculus to frustrated preorder customers: Go get a Rift at Best Buy this weekend
- New computer science center will honor the memory of a lost Oculus cofounder
- Infinity Ward developers reveal their design decisions for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
- ‘Totoro’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ show how Studio Ghibli films amaze us in VR
- Nvidia and Samsung settle patent lawsuit over graphics chips
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered targets nostalgic fans
- Mighty No. 9 gets release date and promises of no more delays
- War goes to space: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare launches November 4
- Ratchet and Clank’s movie was a sheep at the box office
- Activision posts video unveiling Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
- Updated: Activision starts a countdown for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare revelation on Monday
- More teasers for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare appear on livestreams
- About 40% of gamers will buy a VR headset in the next year
Mobile and social
- DeNA reveals its Pokémon-like Monster Builder mobile game
- Star Wars: Commander gets a new competitive multiplayer mode
- Samsung extends ‘Made for Samsung’ program to game developers
- Zynga grows on mobile as Apple, not Facebook, becomes its biggest platform partner
- Nexon chief Owen Mahoney thinks art is the solution to mobile gaming’s rising marketing costs
- Take that, Kate Upton, as Megan Fox becomes the face of Plarium’s Stormfall
- Western mobile gaming will grow to $30B, predicts Ngmoco founder Neil Young
- Nielsen is now tracking mobile games in an effort to expand in a streaming TV world
- Plants vs. Zombies blooms into its 7th birthday by bringing back a flamethrowing pumpkin
- China’s $7.1B mobile gaming market is tougher than ever for its small developers
- South Korea’s InnoSpark unveils Trendy Town real-time social simulation game
- Europe’s mobile attribution and analytics firm Adjust adds four new offices in two months
- Cost of acquiring mobile users was down in March as people download fewer apps
- Zynga’s Spin It Rich! Slots features Superman, Godzilla, and more
Previews, reviews, and interviews