Welcome to another roundup of a week’s worth of GamesBeat stories. This time, we did a ton of previews and interviews covering just about every aspect of the upcoming open-world game, Watch Dogs, Mark Pincus gave up his operating role at Zynga, and we celebrated the Game Boy’s 25th birthday.
You’ll find all of that and much more below. Happy reading!
Mobile and social
- The DeanBeat: What the game industry learned from Mark Pincus
- Apple vs. Google: A world view on the mobile gaming war
- Facebook’s desktop gaming revenue slips in the first quarter of 2014
- YoVille lives: Zynga agrees to let developer Big Viking Games take over operations
- Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 6: Alliances
- Apps featured by Apple or Google get 6 times the downloads and 9 times the revenue — or nothing
- Big Zynga shakeup leaves founder Mark Pincus out of day-to-day operations
- Zynga beats expectations as its mobile business starts to pick up social’s slack
- Silicon Valley heavyweights are helping underprivileged teens make iOS games
- Hitman Go proves murder can still be fun as a turn-based puzzler
- Flappy Bird 2048: Side by Side is the PB&J of games you play at the same time
- AgeCheq hopes to save app developers and game companies from impending fed crackdown
- Dead Underground turns London’s subway map into a zombie-strategy blast
- Make it Candy Crush Saga time: King opens Japanese office to better serve the important market
- Adenda lets games and apps display animations on your Android phone’s lock screen
- Roam & Wander uses an iPad to bring a teddy bear to life
- Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 5: Adventures in consumables
- Brazilian gamers turn their attention — and spending — to free-to-play
- Movie fans: Test your command of trivia with Exponential Entertainment’s HollywoodPlayer game
Above: Titanfall Expedition is a new map pack for the first-person shooter.
Image Credit: Respawn
News
- Hulu brings Chromecast-like screen-casting to video game consoles
- In first quarter, Microsoft ships 2M consoles — including 1.2M Xbox Ones
- Humorous ad rules — a $500 trailer scores a million views for Leviathan: Warships
- Remix: Titanfall’s upcoming War Games map is a digital mashup
- Start building: The Minecraft Realms server service is online in North America
- Developers are seriously tweaking Unreal Engine 4
- Riding on virtual reality fever, Virtuix raises $3M round for Omni VR treadmill
- Sony Online chief to game marketers: Ignore livestreaming at your own peril
- How the PS4 and Xbox One transition has turned out great for GameStop so far
- New tour helps British devs like Tomb Raider’s studio make the most of their new tax breaks
- Xbox One to take on PS4 in its home country of Japan on Sept. 4
- 2K saves Borderlands and Civilization from the GameSpy apocalpyse
- Nintendo embraces the idea of a ‘season pass’ for Mario Golf: World Tour
- Why Blizzard says Heroes of the Storm is a ‘hero brawler’
- Marketers have to adapt as half of all console game sales go digital
- Heroes of the Storm is bound for China
- Star Trek Online publisher to invest $100M in Chinese MMO publisher Shanda
- Assassin’s Creed’s monstrous sales might explain why Ubisoft is open-world obsessed
- The Last of Us artist Nate Wells departs Naughty Dog to join indie team
- Sony Online chief turns directly to gamers on Reddit and Twitch to promote his zombie apocalypse game H1Z1
- Who’s behind the wheel on development for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel? Everyone
Previews and interviews
- Respawn chief Vince Zampella has to feed hungry gamers with Titanfall Expedition downloadable content (exclusive interview)
- Even Hearthstone runs on Unity — and that’s why it’s already on iPad
- Ubisoft creative director tells why Watch Dogs took so frigging long to make — and why hacking cities is so much more plausible now (interview)
- Activision brings life to toys in Skylanders: Trap Team (preview)
- Ubisoft writer finally gets to spill some secrets of Watch Dogs’ story (interview)
- Don’t mess with my data in multiplayer Watch Dogs (hands-on preview)
- Watch Dogs’ mobile app is a hoot as you chase down a fugitive across Chicago (hands-on preview)
- Watch Dogs really lets you hack your way through a smart city (hands-on preview)
- How Kickstarter game Hex Heroes is reimagining the real-time strategy genre for the Wii U (interview)
- How Chillingo plans to find the next Flappy Bird (interview)
Above: Moving around the maps in Demon Gaze can be an engrossing challenge in and of itself.
Reviews and impressions
- Demon Gaze is an uncomfortable, fascinating slog (impressions)
- How the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn stacks up to the PC, PS3 versions
- Forget ripoff: Disney Magical World is better than Animal Crossing
- NES Remix 2 is great for players who bring the right memories (review)
Pieces of flair
- GamesBeat’s favorite Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft cards
- Minecraft gets a complete re-creation of Denmark — yes, the entire country
- Twitch dominates live online video streaming (infographic)
- 25 years of the Game Boy: A timeline of the systems, accessories, and games
- Got $20K? You can get the arcade machine from ‘Wreck-It Ralph’