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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we reviewed the PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn, Overwatch nabs another Game of the Year award, and the Miami Heat get into esports.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Should you bring up Trump’s travel ban politics at a video game award event?
- Nintendo Switch’s alleged battery problems are an exaggeration
- In Halo, Bonnie Ross and 343 ‘inherited an amazing world’
- 5 Nintendo Switch problems that could hurt the hybrid console
- What’s it like owning a Nintendo Switch? GamesBeat Decides
- Here’s what Nintendo Switch looks like in a large man’s pockets
- How Overwatch became Blizzard’s most hopeful and accessible world
- Should Teddy Roosevelt be in Horizon Zero Dawn? GamesBeat Decides
- DICE Awards turn 20: How gaming’s Academy Awards have grown
- Valve cares about PC gamers, but struggles to show it
- Gabe Newell shares how Hollywood types have trouble adjusting to Valve
- The Legend of Zelda escape room struggles to adapt the classic game
News
- SuperData: VR Hardware will earn $3.6 billion in 2017
- DICE Awards: Blizzard’s Overwatch takes Game of the Year
- Bethesda’s Todd Howard inducted into game academy’s Hall of Fame
- Smithsonian will help preserve America’s video game history
- Zappar raises $3.75 million for AR and VR creation tools
- Qualcomm launches virtual reality display accelerator program
- Germany’s Flaregames to invest $21 million in game incubator
- Pokémon’s 2017 World Championships will take place in Anaheim this Summer
- Eve Online is crowdsourcing the search for real planets beyond the Solar System
- March 2017 Xbox Live Games With Gold: Evolve, Borderlands 2, and more
- The Elder Scrolls Online gives us our first look at the return of the weird land of Morrowind
- AMD will launch its Intel-busting Ryzen PC chips next week
- Hearthstone’s 7.1 update will revamp Arena’s card-offering rates — and hamstring Flamestrike
- Blueprint Reality’s MixCast tool lets you broadcast from virtual reality
- Immersion reveals TouchSense Force for better touch feedback in games
- Google launches Tilt Brush for Oculus Rift with Touch controller support
- Miami Heat deepens NBA’s dive into esports with acquisition of Vainglory team
- Civilization VI is getting modding tools and Steam Workshop support
- Paradox sells over 500,000 copies of WWII grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV
Mobile and social
- Netmarble completes acquisition of Kabam’s Marvel Contest of Champions studio
- Skylanders is getting a mobile RPG
- Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius receives big update after passing 20 million downloads
- Chartboost launches playable ads to boost mobile game publisher revenues
- Vainglory partners with MadGlory to help app developers share the MOBA’s stats and data
- InnoGames acquires Wooga’s strategy game Warlords
- Minecraft gets updated for Windows phones — yes, really
- Startup Huuuge Games finds way to grow huge in social casino games
- Heal’s on-demand doctors have made 16,000 patient house calls
- Maple Media raises $30 million to found a new mobile gaming empire
- Sensor Tower: U.S. iPhone owners spent an average of $27 on mobile games last year
- Arkadium doubles down on its web games with quiz app
- Pokémon Go gets a surge in spending after introducing Gen 2 creatures
Previews, reviews, and interviews
- How Breath of the Wild is like the NES Zelda and unlike Twilight Princess
- Dungeons & Dragons’ first VR app is a fantasy version of chess (update)
- Mass Effect: Andromeda has big gameplay changes, an epic story, and a new galaxy
- Horizon: Zero Dawn joins Uncharted and God of War as an iconic Sony franchise
- Loook uses HoloLens augmented reality to visualize 3D landscapes
- Double Fine dives into VR with Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin
- What Ubisoft learned from its first virtual reality games