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 Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Gears of War: Judgment as well as a preview for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
News:
- The DeanBeat: Previewing the madness at next week’s GDC
- In battle for talent, Warner Bros. opens digital game studio in San Francisco
- Nvidia’s Jeff Herbst says ‘we get it’ and ‘we’re here to help’ startups with visual computing
- OpenKit launches its closed beta for open-source social-mobile platform
- Raptr integrates Twitch streaming into its PC desktop app
- Blizzard unveils its new game: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
- First screens from Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster
- Blizzard reports StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm sold 1.1M units in first two days
- AMD launches new midrange Radeon graphics chips for budget gamers
- Tencent paid $330M for 40% of Epic Games
- After great success on mobile, Kabam launches new Hobbit game on the web
- Zynga will no longer require Facebook sign-in on Zynga.com
- Study claims over 100 million Americans prefer free-to-play games
- Report: ‘Digital omnivore’ population grew 160 percent last year
- Relic moving original Company of Heroes servers to Steamworks
- Fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss could write for Torment — that scares creative lead Colin McComb
- Valve opens Early Games portal on Steam
- Major League Gaming had a massive, engaged audience for its first event of 2013
- Why Pixar staffers decided to start their own gaming company on the side
- OnLive’s new chairman has ‘buyer’s elation’ as he announces engineering leader
- The crowd’s not enough: Carmageddon: Reincarnation raises $3.5M in private funding
- W3i rebrands as NativeX and launches native advertising
- When free makes money: How the MMO Tera gains subscribers by dropping subscriptions
- Playnomics uses deep analytics to help game publishers pitch ads to the right players (exclusive)
- Logitech launches eight new gaming peripherals under G brand name
- Otoy’s cloud rendering tools to be used in indie games and the Fantastic Four movie
- EA up for Consumerist’s Worst Company in America (again)
- John Riccitiello’s legacy: EA survives, but its hit points are dangerously low
- Bastion studio announces follow-up game: Transistor
- Nvidia extends its chip roadmap through 2015, with 100X faster processing
- Research team claims EA’s Origin has security flaw that exposes millions of users
- Crossing the ‘uncanny valley’: Nvidia’s Faceworks renders realistic human faces
- Sega claims to improve Aliens: Colonial Marines’ visuals on PC with 3.8GB update
- EA shares down between 8% and 9% in early trading
- BioShock Infinite’s combat teaser reveals the violent action you can expect in Columbia
- Internet publishing platform for gamers raises $2M in latest funding round
- Kamcord announces trial with Zynga to record video in Scramble with Friends
- John Riccitiello steps down as EA CEO
- Current Pixar employees band together to form game studio
- Here’s the first commercial for BioShock Infinite
- EA says SimCity sells a 1.1M copies in series’ biggest launch ever despite server issues
- Mayday, mayday: Polytron dates Fez for Steam
- Electronic Arts lists the games SimCity owners can choose as a gift
- Gaming lobby Video Game Voters Network surpasses 500K members
- Chumba World bounces back from Kickstarter suspension with $2.6M in investor funding (exclusive)
- Gamer hacks The Legend of Zelda to star Zelda instead of Link (video)
- FriendsLearn wrapping up its Kickstarter for food-fight game with push into India
- Kizzang will give away $7.7M in a free March Madness sweepstakes bracket game
- Fuseboxx 2.0 provides developers with a one-stop solution to gaining and retaining users
- Maxis: ‘Yes’ — we could ‘have built a subset offline mode’ in SimCity
- Valve and Capcom announce Resident Evil 6 and Left 4 Dead 2 crossover content
- 4tiitoo’s Nuia EyeCharm uses Microsoft’s Kinect to do eye-tracking for $60
Mobile News:
- OpenKit launches its closed beta for open-source social-mobile platform
- Agawi launches platform to make PC games work on Android devices
- Kiip relaunches $100K Build Fund to recruit more developers into its mobile-rewards network
- Endgame: Syria back on iOS App Store: Has new name, no real places
- PlayHaven on fired sex-joke developer: It wasn’t just one issue
- Warhammer 40K smartphone game coming from MechWarrior: Tactics developer
- Breaking: Adria Richards fired by SendGrid for calling out developers on Twitter
- Apple drops ‘uncomfortable’ Sweatshop HD game from App Store
- MediaSpike expands effort to place product ads inside social and mobile games
- Tapjoy starts fund to invest in Australian developers
- After a year in development and $1M spent, Big Fish Games launches Fetch mobile game (exclusive)
- Playhaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter
- Hack attack: Microsoft confirms bigwigs’ Xbox Live accounts compromised
- Nonstop Games raises $2.9M to target iOS and Android with core titles
- App Annie launches Amazon Appstore analytics: Amazon is all about fun, Google is all about utilities
- Digital Capital invests $5M in Dream Weddings game apps (exclusive)
- Ukraine’s Room 8 launches Cyto to break into Western mobile-game markets
- National Geographic’s Animal Jam reaches 10 million players — iOS spin-off in the works
Reviews:
- Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon rebels against portability (review)
- Heart of the Swarm brings lack of imagination to a well-designed StarCraft II (review)
- Gears of War: Judgment takes a step toward the small-time (Review)
Previews:
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Pieces of Flair: