GamesBeat weekly roundup: Blizzard turns 25, and Assassin’s Creed takes a break

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, the PlayStation 4 beat the Xbox One again, Amazon reveals a new game engine, and we learn a bit about Destiny’s future.

Happy reading, and have a great weekend!

Pieces of flair and opinion

• The DeanBeat: Farewell to #GamerGate
• The real world imitates the virtual with Fallout 4 ramen
• Mario Kart meets Star Wars, and it’s fantastic
• How Blizzard stayed laser-focused on quality games for 25 years

Above: Quantum Break in action.

Image Credit: Microsoft

News

• January 2016 NPD: Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto top sales chart with few new releases
• PlayStation 4 outsold Xbox One at U.S. retailers in January
• Call of Duty saw double-digit growth in 2015, now has more players than ever before
• Destiny sequel launches in 2017 after ‘large new expansion’ drops this year
• Despite strong Call of Duty growth, Activision Blizzard fails to beat expectations in holiday quarter
• An Xbox One player is worth more to Ubisoft than a PlayStation 4 owner
• Twitch has more than half a million people watching live video at any one time
• Ubisoft earnings comes up short thanks to Assassin’s Creed
• No Assassin’s Creed in 2016 as Ubisoft admits the series is slowing down
• Quantum Break is Microsoft’s latest weapon in linking Xbox One and Windows 10
• Tera publisher’s new project is a real-time strategy game ‘for the rest of us’
• The eyes have it: Eyefluence may have the answer to navigating AR/VR
• Call of Duty and Dreamworks vets jump on the VR bandwagon
• Every Oculus Rift owner will get a Unity Pro trial to help them (and Palmer Luckey) make more money
• Sony: ’36 million PlayStation 4 owners’ are ready for PlayStation VR
• Unity demonstrates new way to develop games inside virtual reality
• Unity game-making tool gets native support for Google’s 5M Cardboard virtual reality devices
• Unity Technologies and Valve team up to make VR development easier
• Watch Unity’s virtual and augmented reality Vision Summit right here
• Pantomime lets VR headset and smartphone users share a virtual space
• Frozen Synapse 2 announced for this year
• Nintendo makes big promises about profits for its mysterious NX and smartphone business
• Why Nintendo thinks electric toothbrushes are a key to its future
• BioWare writer David Gaider joins Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition studio as creative director
• The Division open beta gets official release date — comes early to Xbox One
• GameTrailers shuts game video hub after 13 years
• Firewatch is a digital release — but it’s got one of the coolest physical bonuses of any game yet
• Watch Blizzard reflect on its 25th anniversary and thank its fans
• Pokémon’s $5M Super Bowl ad ranks among Sunday’s big winners
• Machine Zone spends $5M on Mobile Strike Super Bowl 50 commercial with Schwarzenegger
• Titanfall 2 will feature a single-player campaign and possible TV spin-off show

Above: Transformers: Earth Wars is a free-to-play mobile game from Space Ape.

Image Credit: Space Ape

Mobile and social

• Betcade shows off the look of its Android app store for real-money gambling
• Chartboost acquires Roostr to connect mobile games with YouTube influencers
• Total War Battles: Kingdom takes epic war strategy franchise to free-to-play mobile
• Chukong spins SDKBOX services as a separate company [update]
• China’s Locojoy partners with Taptica to drive downloads of new game
• Watch an iOS game get ported to Windows 10 in under 5 minutes
• FanDuel shuts down Florida game studio and lays off 55
• Zynga pins hopes on ad revenue potential and high-end Dawn of Titans strategy game
• Zynga beats Q4 financial estimates and announces 10 games for 2016
• Transformers: Earth Wars requires Hasbro, Backflip, and Space Ape to come together like Devastator
• Mobile games hit $34.8B in 2015, taking 85% of all app revenues
• Sweden’s Stugan game accelerator gets its first mobile game launch
• Rez and Lumines developer’s iOS puzzle-RPG is coming West
• The best Final Fantasy hits mobile before Steam (hint: It’s IX)
• Star Wars: Commander is a big hit in China with 1M users in four days
• Amazon takes on Unity, Unreal, Stingray, and more with Lumberyard, a free cross-platform game engine
• Oculus VR guru John Carmack leads crucial position-tracking development for mobile VR
• Turkey’s Gram Games scores a second hit with 1M downloads of Merged!
• Supercell announces ‪Clash Royale will launch globally in March
• Apple’s gaming censorship continues: The Binding of Isaac blocked from App Store
• Google reportedly plans to release a Cardboard successor like Samsung’s Gear VR this year

Previews, interviews, and reviews

• Hearthstone designers discuss Standard, Wild’s relevancy, and putting off new classes
• Hitman reboot takes ‘assassination tourism’ to new heights (hands-on)
• Studio chief wants players to show their assassination creativity in Hitman
• Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime on the last 25 years of games — and the next 25
• Firewatch knows that you don’t really want the truth to its mystery
• Unravel is cute and touching — and it’ll drive you mad, too