Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we play 12 virtual reality games on the HTC Vive headset, one of the upcoming competitors to Oculus VR’s Rift tech, and we examine the up-and-downs of game industry investments in 2015.
We also offer you plenty of help with The Witness, the crushingly difficult puzzle game from celebrated indie designer Jonathan Blow.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Above: Ryan Green comforts his son Joel in That Dragon, Cancer.
Pieces of flair and opinion
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The DeanBeat: That Dragon, Cancer shows the emotional power of video games
The Witness: How to solve every puzzle (guide-in-progress)
What Apple’s latest VR hire means for this growing market
Why Japan no longer matters to PlayStation as Sony heads West
Street Fighter V round 2: Yoshinori Ono, Matt Dahlgren take on monetization
Street Fighter V’s Yoshinori Ono has more energy than a Ryu fireball
Watch the Pokémon Super Bowl commercial right here
News
Above: GamesBeat 2015 helped determine who is winning the game of thrones.
GamesBeat 2016 is moving to L.A. on Aug. 1-3. And we’re kicking it off with a new VR day
The Witness is getting pirated big time — creator Jonathan Blow warns it’ll impact future projects
Let’s watch the Taipei Game Show
Sony sells 1M PlayStation 4 Star Wars: Battlefront bundles to retailers
EA reveals new Battlefield and Titanfall games are coming in the next year (update)
Electronic Arts’ share price plummets 7% as it offers conservative outlook for 2016
Star Wars: Battlefront surpasses 13M copies sold-in as fans can’t repel hype of that magnitude
Star Wars: Battlefront helps EA beat Wall Street’s quarterly expectations
Xbox Live now has 48M active players
Warframe’s new Nezha class highlights Ring of Fire update on PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Indiepocalpyse slays another: Starward Rogue studio cutting jobs due to low sales
Sorry, Cowherd: Heroes of the Storm returns to ESPN2 with $500K prize pool
GOG is getting into ‘early access’ and doing it differently than Steam
Bungie president Harold Ryan steps down after 15 years at the Destiny studio
How some are getting into The Division beta without preordering
World Golf Tour has a new owner as Topgolf brings its ‘driving ranges on steroids’ online
Roblox launches on Xbox One with 15 player-created games — watch us play them
EA pulls its booth out of E3 and focuses instead on fan event
Xbox Live Games With Gold for February 2016: Gears of War 2 and more
Google’s AI beats a professional Go player, an industry first
Nerf herding: Star Wars: Battlefront gets some necessary tweaks
Games investments took a big dip in 2015, but esports and VR are coming on strong
Gambitious resurfaces with profitable titles and a new way to invest in games
FaceIt esports community raises $15 million to go global
League of Legends, Clash of Clans, and CrossFire drive digital games to $61.3B in 2015
Sony combines network entertainment and PlayStation into a single business unit
Starbreeze plans a virtual reality arcade in L.A.
Esports market to grow 43% to $463M in 2016 and reach $1.1B by 2019
Game-software revenues to grow from $90B in 2016 to $115B by 2020
USC’s game-design graduate program now has more women than men
Mobile and social
Above: Not all mobile games can sell as well as Minecraft: Pocket Edition.
Upsight pushes further into mobile game monetization with Fuse Powered acquisition
Finland’s Next Games raises $10M to fuel The Walking Dead mobile title and more
User acquisition costs hit all-time highs in December
Plays.tv launches Chrome extension to make capturing and sharing Twitch clips super easy
Big Viking Games acquires Gallop Labs to mashup casual games with data-driven science
Atari launches Pridefest mobile game in a first for LGBTQ community
Ex-Sony Online chief John Smedley cancels Kickstarter campaign for Hero’s Song role-playing game
Discord raises $20M for voice comm app for multiplayer mobile games
Games still dominated the iOS app store in Q4
Helpshift’s automated customer support tools reach more than 1.3B devices
Minecraft: Pocket Edition gets a beta update — here’s what new and different
Reviews, previews, and interviews
The Witness makes me question why I play hard games
Vive VR headset test: We try a dozen games — and one makes us sick
Exploding Kittens doesn’t have enough bang as a mobile game yet
Google changes Android permissions to make game sign-ups easier
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam’s two flavors jell into a sloppy sandwich
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