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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Grand Theft Auto V keeps making money, we reviewed the anticipated The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, and World of Warcraft’s Leeroy Jenkins video turned 10 years old.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: Has the next generation of mobile games arrived?
- Let’s all watch that YouTube video that Konami tried — and failed — to ban
- IGDA’s Kate Edwards confronts Gamergate and diversity in gaming head-on
- Rock Band developer helps fan give a GameStop employee his comeuppance
- Unity’s John Riccitiello is bored with Clash of Clans clones — but not platform wars and virtual reality
- Gaming’s veterans tell how to break into the business (part 2)
- Portable games should take back some of the spotlight from mobile
- 10 YEARRRSSSS LATERRRRR: Iconic World of Warcraft hero Leeroy Jenkins makes us feel old
- Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is still gaming’s showman at 72
- Gaming’s veterans tell how to break into the business
News
- Diablo III celebrates 3rd anniversary with cows and their secret level
- Epic Games hands out another $18K Unreal Dev Grant — total is almost $500K so far
- Ready for Divinity: Original Sin couch co-op? Enhanced edition coming for PS4, Xbox One, and PC
- Outlook keeps looking up for Nintendo as Wii U and 3DS sales improve
- April 2015 NPD: Xbox One outsells PS4; Mortal Kombat X tops software chart
- Xbox One outsold PlayStation 4 in April, according to research firm NPD
- How the Wizarding World of Harry Potter convinced Nintendo to work with Universal
- World of Warcraft’s 3M subscriber drop is not a problem, one analyst says
- While Valve backtracks, Space Engineers developer sets up $100K fund for modders
- Grand Theft Auto V leads April’s $1.1B digital games market in the U.S.
- Nintendo: NX is not a simple replacement for Wii U or 3DS
- Silver Mario Amiibo coming on May 29
- Beware the dark: H1Z1 players switch off when night falls on the zombie apocalypse
- Roller Coaster Tycoon World is still in development — but it’s under a new studio
- Blizzard’s Battle.net is down and causing problems for Hearthstone, World of Warcraft players
- Japanese role-playing game studio Imageepoch has gone bankrupt — but its latest game is still coming out
- After Sony spinout, H1Z1 developer Daybreak Game Company is free to publish on new platforms
- Ratchet & Clank animated movie gets its Hollywood cast
- Fewer venture capitalists are betting on game companies
- Nintendo is bringing back its World Championships for E3
- Dragon Quest VIII is coming to 3DS (at least in Japan)
- The ‘new CCP’ in Iceland is making a browser strategy game with 1.5M hexagons
- Day-one patch will fix The Witcher 3’s framerate issues on PlayStation 4
- Microsoft stokes Killer Instinct engagement with $100K for tournaments
- Ubisoft: ‘Digital distribution was the main driver’ of our fiscal 2015 growth
- Prey developer Human Head Studios joins Shinra Technologies’ cloud gaming accelerator program
- Eve Online exhibit to become a permanent fixture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art
- Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate goes to London and ditches multiplayer
- Ubisoft’s revenues up despite concerns about Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs
- Ubisoft plans for The Division to hit in early 2016
- Sega Dreamcast classic Grandia II is getting a remastered version on Steam
- Blizzard’s gifting two free Hearthstone card packs to its European players
- Final Fantasy maker Square Enix ekes out a profit for the fiscal year
- Castlevania creator kickstarts Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (and bursts into bats in crazy pitch)
- Sega readies 46 free-to-play digital and one big console game before March 2016
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt passes 1 million preorders
- Xbox One’s May update improves party chat and voice messages
- Sega disappointed with Alien: Isolation and Sonic Boom sales
- Nintendo ‘optimistic’ about making the NX region-free
Mobile and social
- King chief Riccardo Zacconi dishes on his strategy for going beyond Candy Crush Saga
- King is launching new games and expanding to new territories this year
- King hits a new record with 550M active players, but fewer spenders still makes it look weak
- Candy Crush Saga maker King reports strong Q1 with $569M in adjusted revenue and 61 cents-a-share profit
- Space Ape’s Rival Kingdoms hits 1M mobile downloads in less than a week
- Square Enix takes another top franchise to mobile with Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ
- King is planning to bring its games to Windows 10, starting with Candy Crush Saga
- Nintendo won’t obsess over mobile trends to avoid ‘imitating’ other games
- Skillz enables developers to add livestreaming to their mobile games
- Directive Games raises $3.5M for new mobile game studio
- Fuel Powered adds competitive multiplayer to mobile games
- Asia’s Nexon sees Q1 game revenues rise 9% and profit grow 15%
- Tencent widens its position as the world’s largest game company
- Mobile studio Pocket Gems gets a minority investment from Tencent to move into China
- Gree shuts down its Vancouver studio & refocuses on its biggest brands
- Monster Strike makes $3.8 million daily — and could be Japan’s second billion-dollar mobile game
- Adenda launches apps and games on your smartphone’s lock screen
- Millennial Media announces 100% viewability guarantee for in-app mobile ads
- London’s Playhubs game startup accelerator goes free-to-play
- New mobile-game publishing platform is a ‘simple’ alternative for free-to-play developers
Previews and interviews
- World of Warcraft lead designer on why 7M players stuck around — and why 3M left
- Galactic Civilizations III reminds 4X strategy fans what it truly means to go beyond Earth
Reviews
- Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains is a giant disaster
- Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition is much more than a mobile game port
- Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker’s additions make this 3DS port a delightful grind
- Color Guardians’ dizzying amount of challenges are a blessing and a curse
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a bleakly human play at the heart of a dark fantasy