Welcome to our latest GamesBeat roundup. We’ve got a lot of news packed into this one, from EA’s purchase of Respawn to Nexon’s acquisition of Pixelberry. Enjoy!
Pieces of flair and opinion
- The DeanBeat: What gamers should grasp about big games and big studios
- Call of Duty: WWII — Playing a badass female leader in the French Resistance
- 5 excellent Xbox One X enhanced games
- Call of Duty: WWII should have cut its clumsy racism plot
- The future of esports marketing
- Respawn Entertainment: From Call of Duty refugees to owned by EA
- The IndieBeat: Desert Child storms Kickstarter with hover bikes and ramen
- tinyBuild’s odyssey from indie developer to compassionate publisher
- What’s in store for World of Warcraft? GamesBeat Decides
- 4K gaming or data caps: Something’s gotta give
- Esports startup tips from a veteran CEO
- Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime opens BlizzCon with a message of inclusivity
Above: Titanfall 2.
Image Credit: EA
News
- Heroes of the Storm dev on the quest to keep the MOBA strong with new heroes and changes
- Microsoft VR Headsets get a Steam preview on November 15
- PSVR will be $ 100 off for Target’s Black Friday sale
- Xbox One X can load games up to twice as quickly as the older models
- Teslagrad’s hand-drawn puzzle world arrives on Switch December 7
- MVPindex will measure the leaders in esports social media
- Nexon keeps thriving on games that are decades old
- Colorful musical platformer Wandersong is coming to the Nintendo Switch in 2018
- Battle Chef Brigade combines competitive cooking and dungeon crawling
- Unity hires Insomniac Games Triple-A vets to boost its engine performance
- Electronic Arts to acquire Respawn Entertainment for as much as $ 455 million
- Nvidia steps up its transition to an AI company
- Star Wars: Battlefront II will force you to choose sides
- Bluehole’s Steampunk MMO has a Western publisher in Kakao Games
- Little Nightmares’ new DLC focuses on Nomes and puzzles, not monsters and scares
- AMD’s former graphics chief joins Intel as chief architect
- Warner Bros. Interactive conjures up Portkey Games to oversee Harry Potter license
- The Invisible Hours turns Nikola Tesla’s murder into a VR whodunit
- Niantic is making a Harry Potter AR game as its follow-up to Pokemon Go
- Call of Duty: WWII’s launch brings in $ 500 million, doubling Infinite Warfare
- Star Wars licensing is everywhere — the tree, the rock, even Nvidia GPUs
- Path Out uses real-life commentary to tell a tale of escaping Syria
- NBA 2K microtransaction and DLC spending jumped 57% from 2016
- Grand Theft Auto V sales climb past 85 million, climbing by 5 million since May
- IO Interactive says the ‘next Hitman’ is still coming
- Telltale Games cuts staff by about 25 percent
- Switch happens: Ubisoft’s bottom line feasts on Nintendo’s new console
- Assassin’s Creed Origins doubles Syndicate’s first 10 days of sales
- Rainbow Six Siege quietly captures 25 million players
- Mojiworks raises $ 2.77 million for messenger games
- Grand Theft Auto Online gets a taste of WWII with Dogfights and new plane
- Xbox One X will have 70 4K enhanced games a week after launch
- Chrono.gg taps into influencer marketing to highlight indie and double-A games
- Death Coming is reaping indie souls on Steam Early Access
- Fortnite reaches 20 million players with help of its battle royal mode
- Southeast Asia’s PC online and mobile game revenue hits $ 2.2 billion in 2017
- Blizzard reveals details of the upcoming Overwatch League season
- Hearthstone’s Dungeon Runs are a more compelling solo experience
- Overwatch’s Blizzard-themed skins are not part of a limited-time event
- Hanzo and Alexstrasza join Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm
- StarCraft 2 is going free-to-play on November 14
- Pokemon Go creator Niantic acquires social mechanics startup Evertoon
Mobile and social
- Nexon acquires High School Story developer Pixelberry Studios
- Discord’s newest tool enables players to jump directly into a friend’s game
- Design Home reaches 30 million downloads and $ 71.5 million in revenues in first year
- Afterpulse respawns on the App Store with a new publisher
- Words With Friends 2 launches with new social features like co-op play
- How Zynga plans to grow through acquisitions, new games, and live ops
- Zynga pays $ 100 million for Peak Games’ casual card game studio
- How the Out of the Park Baseball team plans to expand with live services
- World of Warcraft’s new expansion is Battle for Azeroth
- Perfect World shuts down Torchlight studio, cuts jobs at Gigantic’s developer
- Blizzard is bringing back the vanilla World of Warcraft
- Overwatch gets Blizzard theme-park map and new healer Moira
- Hearthstone’s next expansion spoofs D&D with Kobolds & Catacombs
Above: Star Wars: Battlefront II villains can team up in Heroes vs. Villains multiplayer.
Image Credit: Electronic Arts/GamesBeat
Previews, reviews, and interviews
- Cat Quest review — pawsitively delightful though not purrfect
- Farming Simulator: Nintendo Switch Edition — fertilize and harvest on the go
- Why Titanfall studio Respawn sold to EA
- Zynga CEO: How the company is staying on the comeback trail
- Nvidia CEO: Gaming will be huge, but so will AI and data center businesses
- Kevin Chou transitions from mobile game leader to Overwatch esports team owner
- Doom for Nintendo Switch works better in handheld mode than docked
- L.A. Noire — Rockstar’s classic detective game moves to the Nintendo Switch and VR
- Star Wars: Battlefront II — multiplayer tips and … Ewoks
- Ayo: A Rain Tale is about surviving drought in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Star Wars: Battlefront II — How DICE took multiplayer far beyond original game
- Star Wars: Battlefront II’s Starfighter Assault recaptures feel of LucasArt’s classic sims
- Star Wars: Battlefront II multiplayer — Heroes vs Villains features icons in action
- Star Wars: Battlefront II — Arcade mode is a safe place where you can casually play and learn
- Star Wars: Battlefront II — Galactic Assault introduces massive battles on multiple planets
- Hearthstone: Kobolds & Catacombs devs on the challenge of following up Un’Goro and Death Knights
- League of War: VR Arena is arcadey take on strategy games for PSVR
- Call of Duty: WWII borrows from Activision hits Destiny and Overwatch
- Call of Duty: WWII limits some social features in wake of rocky launch
- VR developers pivot to location-based entertainment
- Overwatch lead Jeff Kaplan on Moira, Mercy’s troubles, and fixing toxicity
- Call of Duty: WWII — Sledgehammer’s best tips for getting good at multiplayer
- Call of Duty: WWII — Sledgehammer’s 3-year journey to bring Call of Duty back
- Call of Duty: WWII — How Sledgehammer put a serious twist on Nazi Zombies
