If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.
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You’ll also find reviews for Lego City: Undercover, MLB 13: The Show, and SimCity as well as previews for Guacamelee and Payday 2.
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News
- The DeanBeat: It’s the community, stupid. Again.
- Fight aliens as the President of the United States in Saints Row 4 this August
- New Zealand’s Path of Exile online game scores 2M players in two months
- February NPD: Dead Space 3 takes top spot — Crysis 3 can’t outpace Call of Duty
- Action video games improve your ability to search through complex visual scenes
- Assassin’s Creed creative director officially returns to Ubisoft after stint with THQ
- Disney delays Infinity interactive-toy game to August
- Sega teams up with Huddle so game developers can, uh, huddle on cross-Atlantic projects
- Modder reveals SimCity works offline
- Arkadium raises $5M for multiplatform casual games, leading with Windows 8 (exclusive)
- StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm guide: Abilities, mutations, and evolutions
- Twitch hits 28M viewers a month as livestreaming games hits its stride
- It’s happening: Nintendo using Skylander-like toys in its next Pokémon game
- Bethesda opens webstore to sell $300 Skyrim statue and other franchise merchandise
- Widening its net, Kabam launches third-party publishing business
- Minecraft Realms: Mojang ventures into services with world rental aimed at families
- Pixowl aims to extend its indie success with Greedy Grub
- Xi3 tries to dispel wrong assumptions about whether its Piston is Valve’s ‘Steam Box’
- Are Kickstarter crowdfundings slowing down? Uh huh
- Check the status of SimCity’s servers anytime on the web
- Nintendo held ‘deep discussions’ before allowing Mario to punch people in Smash Bros.
- Smarts before brain farts: Sony modifies ‘Bros Before Hos’ trophy in God of War: Ascension
- Mashup artist 2 Mello magically combines Jay-Z and Chrono Trigger in full 12-track album
- World of Tanks sets new Guinness world record
- How ‘The Industry’ digital gaming magazine plans to float above the noise
- Activision adding microtransactions to Call of Duty: Black Ops II with Personalization Packs
- Fanhood launches March Madness as lines blur for fantasy sports and gambling
- The Princeton Review ranks the best schools for game design
- Blizzard launches StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm at midnight openings
- Veteran adventure game designer Ron Gilbert leaves Double Fine Productions
- No need to install StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm if you already have Wings of Liberty
- Electronic Arts’ umpteen millionth SimCity update
- Old meets new as Angry Birds debuts on arcade machines
- Raptr’s rewards improve Rift’s daily users by 470%
- Howard Stringer retires after overseeing rocky period for Sony and PlayStation
- Star Wars: First Assault is reportedly a first-person predecessor to Battlefront III
- Zynga exec: Debate over clones is a ‘distraction’ — everyone copies
- EA says SimCity core server problems are ‘almost behind us’
- What to do when kids spend $1,000 on iTunes and other mucky legal issues
- EA improves SimCity online access with 40 times better server response times
- Admitting it was ‘dumb,’ EA adds SimCity servers and offers players a free game
- MLG, Twitch, and Blizzard execs talk the business, growth, and popularity of e-sports
Mobile News
- 3DS’s Fire Emblem: Awakening sells 180K in February — more than a third of that through eShop
- Rise of the Triad reboot developer bringing Duke Nukem II to iOS
- Pikachu 3DS XL coming to the U.S. on March 24
- Nintendo hit with $30M judgment in patent case on 3DS screen
- Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition dev: You choose what Android device you want it on
- Pocket Gems clears 100M game downloads and 150 employees (exclusive)
Reviews
- Lego City: Undercover is Grand Theft Auto for kids (review)
- Threeview: SimCity reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
- MLB 13 The Show is an entertaining rerun (review)
Previews
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- Guacamelee! is a gorgeous brawler that proudly shows its roots (preview)
- Payday 2 turns a dumb crook into a smooth criminal (preview)
Interviews
- New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler & Comixology explain SXSW panels (exclusive)
- Richard Garriott tells how Lord British and Ultima were born (video)
Pieces of Flair
- What it means to be a ‘whale’ — and why social gamers are just gamers
- Inside Bungie: A walk through a top-secret headquarters where Halo gave way to Destiny (photo gallery)
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