Happy Friday! And, of course, that means it’s time for another weekly collection of GamesBeat stories. This time, the anticipated open-world blockbuster Watch Dogs finally came out for new and older consoles. We got the first details about a new Battlefield game, and we also explored the complete history of Nintendo’s Mario Kart series.
You’ll find all of that and more below. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
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- The DeanBeat: Why I’m happy to see Watch Dogs stand alone among the big games of 2014
- Let’s kick off the Who’s Got Game Innovation Showdown 2014
- Sonic’s lamest and most forgotten sidekicks and rivals
- GamesBeat giveaway: Do a little digging for a chance to win Watch Dogs for Xbox One or PS4
- The complete history of Mario Kart
- Steam reviews Watch Dogs: Uplay rage, dog puns, and snap judgments
- Set phasers to brick: 5 franchises Lego needs to turn into games
- Has game investing turned into a gold mine or risky bubble speculation?
- Two of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’s designers share their favorite cards
- The biggest surprises in E3 history
- From pixels to polygons: 2D characters get three-dimensional
Above: Battlefield: Hardline is real, and EA will give us the details at E3.
Image Credit: Electronic Arts
News
- Alan Wake developer’s next game, Quantum Break, won’t hit Xbox One this year
- Electronic Arts shuts down Mythic Entertainment studio
- Sony revamps PlayStation Plus subscription to give away two games per month for PS4, PS3, and Vita
- Call of Duty: Ghosts Invasion map pack feels like modern combat injected into other adventure games
- You can play Super Smash Bros. on Wii U with GameCube controllers
- Screenshot sharing is on Microsoft’s Xbox One to-do list
- Music-game developer Harmonix lays off 37 and replaces CEO
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare heads to PlayStation consoles this summer
- PS4 and Xbox One gamers help Watch Dogs set new 24-hour sales mark for Ubisoft
- PlayStation 4 is a movie star: Watch Sony’s E3 conference at your local theater
- Jack Tretton has his first new gig after launching the PS4 and leaving Sony
- Ryse creator Crytek releases CryEngine ‘game engine as a service’ on Steam (exclusive)
- Are the Steam Machines delayed until 2015? All signs say so
- Uplay is not available: Watch Dogs players swamp Ubisoft’s servers
- Next Battlefield pits SWAT versus thieves
- Journey’s studio raises $7M from Chinese venture firm
- SteamOS and Linux getting port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- RapidFire acquires tech from IGA Worldwide, a sign of change in the in-game ad market
- Nintendo announces YouTube affiliate program to capture ad revenue from fan-made videos
- Check out Minecraft’s Halo mashup in action for Xbox 360
- Gingee launches a cross-platform 2D engine that simplifies life for game developers
- Warner Bros. swings for the moon with Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
- Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs aims to revive hardcore video games with the highest of expectations
- Eye-tracking is one of Sony’s unnoticed cool game-technology demos
- Engineers build D-Day relics that you can view in virtual reality with Oculus Rift
- Sony bringing PlayStation to China
Mobile and social
- Kabam and Lionsgate team up to create The Hunger Games mobile game
- Mobile app developers get whipsawed by rising marketing costs in April
- Another developer suffers from Apple’s ‘curation’ of games
- Blippar launches a platform for augmented reality games on Google Glass (exclusive)
- Nervous about Putin? Mobile game publisher Game Insight leaves Russia for Lithuania
- Hit mobile word game Ruzzle gets a TV game show and a new adventure
- A golden opportunity? Cie Games takes Racing Rivals to Android
- Nix Hydra raises $5M to make games for young women (exclusive)
- Monster Legacy developer Outplay closes $5M funding round
- Angry Birds leads to Star Wars, Star Wars leads to toys, toys leads to 30M scans
- NativeX plans to make the ads in free-to-play mobile games work better for everyone
- The former Angry Birds team seeks to strike gold again with Monsu, its new mobile game
- Skillz shows us the money with cash prize multiplayer tournaments on iOS
- Nexon partners with Austrian game developer Socialspiel Entertainment to firm up its Western mobile efforts
- Puzzle & Dragons passes 4 million downloads in North America
- MotorStorm creator reveals new cookery, games, and lifestyle products
- Messaging-app company Kakao merges with web-portal Daum in $3B deal
Above: Battlecry is a bloody, pretty mess.
Image Credit: Bethesda
Previews and interviews
- WildStar loads a bunch of craziness into almost everything you can do in an MMO (preview)
- ‘Gamer Girls’ creator finally speaks: His magazine isn’t about objectifying women (exclusive interview)
- Bethesda brings out buckets of blood with Battlecry, its new online team action combat game (hands-on preview)
- Astral projection, friendly ghosts, and other reasons why Whispering Willows isn’t your average horror game
- The Evil Within tries to entertain you by making you feel like barfing (hands-on preview)
- Get ready for thermite guns and seamless cinematics in The Order: 1886 (hands-on demo)
- How PSP vets aim to make The Order: 1886 into Sony’s next great franchise (interview)
- You can build your own fantasy in Sony’s Landmark online world (interview)
- If you make noise in Sony’s H1Z1, the zombies will come running after you (interview)
Reviews