GamesBeat weekly roundup: Ubisoft holds off Vivendi, and changes for Hearthstone

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, teams and figures from the NBA get involved in the esports market, No Man’s Sky loses players, and Ubisoft has high hopes for Nintendo’s NX.

Pieces of flair and opinion

• The DeanBeat: Westworld finds the frontier between the real and the virtual, between humans and A.I.
• How Hearthstone’s new card nerfs will change the game
• Call of Duty’s art shows the soul behind the megafranchise
• The NBA is esports’ greatest ally

Above: No Man’s Sky may expire a few years before the heat death of the universe.

Image Credit: Jeffrey Grubb/GamesBeat

News

• No Man’s Sky helps digital gaming generate $6.1 billion in August
• Amazon unveils three livestream-friendly PC games at TwitchCon
• Minecraft VR demos hit Microsoft’s stores
• Zynga hires former EA executive as its chief financial officer
• Ubisoft sheds more details on its victory over Vivendi at annual meeting
• Ubisoft CEO: NX will put Nintendo ‘back in the race’
• Epic Games dishes out $50,000 in Unreal developer grants
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered gets an explosive launch trailer
• Fig’s non-accredited game-investment platform is now SEC-approved
• Titanfall 2’s cinematic trailer examines the aspirations of a lowly grunt
• Ubisoft claims win over Vivendi’s hostile takeover in board election
• No Man’s Sky’s marketing under fire at U.K.’s truth-in-advertising watchdog
• New Hearthstone changes will weaken some of the game’s strongest cards
• InXile is making Wasteland 3 and crowdfunding it on Fig
• XSplit integrates custom overlays into its livestreams with two major acquisitions
• Third NBA owner in a week buys a stake in esports team
• PlayStation Experience heads to Anaheim in December
• Battlefield 1’s incredible cinematic trailer borrows ‘The Spielberg Face’
• Chip designers are sidestepping Moore’s Law slowdown with specialized processors
• Udacity launches VR Developer nanodegree in partnership with Google, HTC, and Upload
• Grand Theft Auto Online’s Biker gangs roar into town October 4
• NBA jams into esports: Warriors’ Guber, Wizards’ Leonsis, and Magic Johnson buy Team Liquid
• Razer’s DeathAdder gaming mouse gets an Elite upgrade
• Beyond Good & Evil 2 might be back from the dead
• Cloud gaming firm LiquidSky raises $4 million from Samsung and tech leader Scott McNealy
• Blizzard and NetEase renew their lucrative online gaming partnership in China
• Castlevania turns 30 as the grave begins to swallow the classic series
• Firewatch Hollywood adaptation takes indie hit from consoles to movies screens
• The original Pikmin is coming to Wii U’s eShop
• Overcharge adds Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube integration to Twitch’s esports livestreams
• Yikes! No Man’s Sky drops below 1,000 simultaneous players on Steam
• Philadelphia 76ers is first among NBA, NFL, and MLB franchises to own an esports team
• The epic Gilgamesh is the Sumerian leader in Civilization VI

Above: Rogue One is now invading Star Wars: Commander.

Image Credit: Disney

Mobile and social

• Star Wars: Commander mobile game gets Rogue One content
• Pokémon Go made $470 million in 82 days as it moves from fad to steady success
• Pantomime launches Creatures AR app with shared augmented reality
• This chart shows why Pokémon Go’s server collapse was inevitable
• Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is now out on Amazon devices
• Warner Bros. launches Extra Slot Stars mobile game with Mario Lopez
• Pokémon Go searches on Google down tenfold from July peak
• As Pokémon Go subsides, MZ takes the top two spots in the U.S. app stores
• Thunder Fleet is Chinese mobile game studio Kingnet’s first foray into the West
• RuneScape creator Jagex is now part of a new Chinese games company
• Israeli game pioneer Tacticsoft raises $1 million for hardcore mobile games
• Candy Crush Saga adds 2,000th level to celebrate 1,000,000,000,000 games played
• Ubisoft acquires Ketchapp, a mobile studio criticized for cloning puzzle game Threes
• Square Enix’s Flame x Blaze is a mobile MOBA that will take on Vainglory
• NBA Live on mobile gets new graphics and user-interface for 2016-2017 season
• Jetpack Joyride will blast its way into casinos
• Why mobile game maker Roadhouse Interactive ran out of cash
• Zynga hires a game veteran as its chief marketing officer

Previews, reviews, and interviews

• Dishonored 2 hands-on: Infiltrating the Clockwork Mansion
• Neverwinter’s Sea of Moving Ice swaps your Rod of Rulership for a fishing rod
• Skylanders Imaginators hands-on: Creating your own characters is a breeze
• Dragon Front hands-on: Bringing the card-driven fun of Magic and Hearthstone into VR