Become a member of GB MAX to gain exclusive access to the industry and to the most influential global B2B leadership community in the business of gaming, entertainment, and tech. Join now and also get a VIP ticket to GamesBeat Next (Nov 2-3, SF).
This time, the anticipated open-world blockbuster Watch Dogs finally came out for new and older consoles. We got the first details about a new Battlefield game, and we also explored the complete history of Nintendo’s Mario Kart series.
You’ll find all of that and more below. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinions
- The DeanBeat: Why I’m happy to see Watch Dogs stand alone among the big games of 2014
- Let’s kick off the Who’s Got Game Innovation Showdown 2014
- Sonic’s lamest and most forgotten sidekicks and rivals
- GamesBeat giveaway: Do a little digging for a chance to win Watch Dogs for Xbox One or PS4
- The complete history of Mario Kart
- Steam reviews Watch Dogs: Uplay rage, dog puns, and snap judgments
- Set phasers to brick: 5 franchises Lego needs to turn into games
- Has game investing turned into a gold mine or risky bubble speculation?
- Two of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’s designers share their favorite cards
- The biggest surprises in E3 history
- From pixels to polygons: 2D characters get three-dimensional
News
- Alan Wake developer’s next game, Quantum Break, won’t hit Xbox One this year
- Electronic Arts shuts down Mythic Entertainment studio
- Sony revamps PlayStation Plus subscription to give away two games per month for PS4, PS3, and Vita
- Call of Duty: Ghosts Invasion map pack feels like modern combat injected into other adventure games
- You can play Super Smash Bros. on Wii U with GameCube controllers
- Screenshot sharing is on Microsoft’s Xbox One to-do list
- Music-game developer Harmonix lays off 37 and replaces CEO
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare heads to PlayStation consoles this summer
- PS4 and Xbox One gamers help Watch Dogs set new 24-hour sales mark for Ubisoft
- PlayStation 4 is a movie star: Watch Sony’s E3 conference at your local theater
- Jack Tretton has his first new gig after launching the PS4 and leaving Sony
- Ryse creator Crytek releases CryEngine ‘game engine as a service’ on Steam (exclusive)
- Are the Steam Machines delayed until 2015? All signs say so
- Uplay is not available: Watch Dogs players swamp Ubisoft’s servers
- Next Battlefield pits SWAT versus thieves
- Journey’s studio raises $7M from Chinese venture firm
- SteamOS and Linux getting port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- RapidFire acquires tech from IGA Worldwide, a sign of change in the in-game ad market
- Nintendo announces YouTube affiliate program to capture ad revenue from fan-made videos
- Check out Minecraft’s Halo mashup in action for Xbox 360
- Gingee launches a cross-platform 2D engine that simplifies life for game developers
- Warner Bros. swings for the moon with Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
- Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs aims to revive hardcore video games with the highest of expectations
- Eye-tracking is one of Sony’s unnoticed cool game-technology demos
- Engineers build D-Day relics that you can view in virtual reality with Oculus Rift
- Sony bringing PlayStation to China
Mobile and social
- Kabam and Lionsgate team up to create The Hunger Games mobile game
- Mobile app developers get whipsawed by rising marketing costs in April
- Another developer suffers from Apple’s ‘curation’ of games
- Blippar launches a platform for augmented reality games on Google Glass (exclusive)
- Nervous about Putin? Mobile game publisher Game Insight leaves Russia for Lithuania
- Hit mobile word game Ruzzle gets a TV game show and a new adventure
- A golden opportunity? Cie Games takes Racing Rivals to Android
- Nix Hydra raises $5M to make games for young women (exclusive)
- Monster Legacy developer Outplay closes $5M funding round
- Angry Birds leads to Star Wars, Star Wars leads to toys, toys leads to 30M scans
- NativeX plans to make the ads in free-to-play mobile games work better for everyone
- The former Angry Birds team seeks to strike gold again with Monsu, its new mobile game
- Skillz shows us the money with cash prize multiplayer tournaments on iOS
- Nexon partners with Austrian game developer Socialspiel Entertainment to firm up its Western mobile efforts
- Puzzle & Dragons passes 4 million downloads in North America
- MotorStorm creator reveals new cookery, games, and lifestyle products
- Messaging-app company Kakao merges with web-portal Daum in $3B deal
Previews and interviews
- WildStar loads a bunch of craziness into almost everything you can do in an MMO (preview)
- ‘Gamer Girls’ creator finally speaks: His magazine isn’t about objectifying women (exclusive interview)
- Bethesda brings out buckets of blood with Battlecry, its new online team action combat game (hands-on preview)
- Astral projection, friendly ghosts, and other reasons why Whispering Willows isn’t your average horror game
- The Evil Within tries to entertain you by making you feel like barfing (hands-on preview)
- Get ready for thermite guns and seamless cinematics in The Order: 1886 (hands-on demo)
- How PSP vets aim to make The Order: 1886 into Sony’s next great franchise (interview)
- You can build your own fantasy in Sony’s Landmark online world (interview)
- If you make noise in Sony’s H1Z1, the zombies will come running after you (interview)
Reviews