If we’ve learned one thing this week, it’s that U.S. trademark laws are pretty lame. I mean, I wanted to call this week’s roundup the “GamesBeat weekly saga,” but I was afraid that the Candy Crush Saga guys would come after us.
We also got a potential hint of what Nintendo’s next console might be like this week via the Fusion rumors, and we also had our first real look at the upcoming Middle-earth action game, Shadow of Mordor. You can find all that and much more in our week’s worth of coverage below.
Pieces of flair
- The DeanBeat: Indie game studios will ensure that Seattle has a long future in games
- The frustration and progress of women in video games, as viewed by The Sims 4’s Lyndsay Pearson
- Wil Wheaton on International TableTop Day and why gaming matters so much (video)
- 20 tips for indie game developers using social media
- Done with last-gen? Here are 5 games you probably missed
- How XSplit is making gameplay broadcasting easier with its latest product
- See what four experts have to say about the top gaming trends of 2014
News
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- Share your punches with the world: Ultra Street Fighter 4 includes YouTube integration
- Video Game High School crowdfunding gets off to a good start
- Linden Lab loses its star CEO Rod Humble
- KerbalEdu helps children reach the stars
- Microsoft has sent nearly 4 million Xbox Ones to retailers
- Minecraft Avengers add-on available now for Xbox 360 Edition
- ‘Late Night’ host Jimmy Fallon cracks wise about Nintendo’s losses
- With Felicia Day and Freddie Wong, game awards show finally gets hosts who won’t make fun of gaming all night long
- Pokémon Bank launches in Asia — hopefully for good this time
- Star Wars: Attack Squadrons enters closed testing phase
- The Banner Saga developer responds to Candy Crush Saga studio’s attempt to block its trademark
- Analyst: Dota 2 made around $80 million in microtransaction revenues in 2013
- DayZ creator defends Steam Early Access games
- Dead Rising 3 is a hit for Xbox One — Microsoft ships 1 million copies
- AMD CEO’s 2014 outlook: PC market weaker, gaming stronger, and ARM server chips coming
- That’s a lot of armor: 1.1M people played World of Tanks on a Russian server at the same time
- Blizzard’s Hearthstone card game opens to the public
- Analyst: Brazil, Russia, India, and China as well as Steam will help PC gaming top $24 billion by 2017
- Updated: Nintendo’s next console and portable reportedly called Nintendo Fusion
Above: Candy Crush Saga is a hugely popular puzzle game.
Mobile and social
- Slot machine giant IGT confirms two founders of its DoubleDown division have left two years after $500M deal (exclusive)
- Player-acquisition costs rise on mobile even as revenues-per-gamer holds steady
- Candy Crush Saga publisher allegedly contracted a developer to explicitly copy another studio’s game in 2009
- Sony Pictures Television enters the game with a free role-playing adventure for mobile
- Indie studio Czarcade launches its self-published Clobbr on iOS
- RiderState lets you conquer the world with your bike
- Grow Mobile grows 300% in six months as its app marketing platform takes off
- The PGA and the Golf Channel form a threesome with stat-tracking startup Game Golf
- Startup Tingly Games fuses greeting cards and casual games
- Quark Games and Tilting Point to publish multiple mobile games together
- The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth studio doubled its revenues in 2013
- Apportable’s SpriteBuilder lets developers run their iOS games on Android
- Amazon is making itself more and more indispensable to mobile game developers
- Three flawed, expensive controllers help you get a grip on iOS games (update)
Above: Time to capture some territory in Insurgency.
Reviews
- Community reviews spotlight: Ryse, Final Fantasy XIV, Gone Home, and Peggle 2
- Might and Magic X: Legacy resurrects a classic RPG franchise but only conjures frustration and boredom
- Insurgency remedies Call of Duty’s and Battlefield’s Hollywood take on competitive warfare (review)
Previews
- Strider is my next obsessive nightmare (preview)
- Warner Bros. shows deep preview of combat in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
- A deep dive into the making of the eye-popping Star Swarm demo (interview)
