Above: Heavenly Sword's Nariko, played by Anna Torv
Image Credit: Blockade
Happy Eleventh of July! Before you celebrate with leftover explosives, why don’t you catch up on a week’s worth of GamesBeat’s news and stories?
Below, you’ll read about Cliff Bleszinski’s explanation for coming out of early retirement, what happens when PR takes a wrong turn, and Ubisoft’s sales of 8 million copies of Watch Dogs.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair
- The DeanBeat: When Games are too fricking hard — it’s a joy
- Guns, goats, and bomb scares: When video game PR goes bad
- Chasing League of Legends: Here's every upcoming MOBA we could think of
- Mega Man, Castlevania, and Mario: Digging through Shovel Knight's retro inspirations
- Robots can play Angry Birds, too — and help kids with disabilities
Above: Watch Dogs is a big hit.
Image Credit: Nintendo
News
- Sony is considering a Steam-like Early Access program to let you try games in development
- Games for LGBT audience are finally hitting the market
- Want another Tony Hawk or Guitar Hero game? Neversoft won't be making them
- Sony games chief says PS4 doing 'OK' in home market of Japan
- Flaregames to publish the next Fieldrunners game from Subatomic (and let's hope it's not too hard)
- The Sims 4 bosses talk about 'Playing with Life' at GamesBeat 2014
- Decent Capital's Jonathan Qiu talks gaming and investing in American companies
- Trion Worlds and XL Games bring a sandbox MMO to the West with a prestigious pedigree: It's from Lineage's creator
- Remember that old PS3 game Heavenly Sword? It's got a Blu-ray movie now
- Raptr: League of Legends and Dota 2 take up 25 percent of PC gamers' play time
- Microsoft CEO reaffirms commitment to Xbox — on page 4 of a 6-page memo
- Global growth for social casino games slows to 8.6% in Q2 as big companies dominate
- Watch Dogs' 8M copies sold pushes Ubisoft to record Q1
- Nintendo continues courting hardcore Super Smash Bros. fans with a tournament at San Diego Comic-Con
- What the heck? Japan's mobile-game company Gree invests in a … hotel booking startup
- Curse raises $16M in wake of launch of Skype-like gamer voice service
- Cliff Bleszinski met with Zynga and traditional publishers — here's why he's partnering with Nexon
- Microsoft Flight Simulator returns — and one is coming to Steam
- Microsoft: Reports that it's abandoning retail Xbox Ones as dev kits are 'inaccurate'
- The original Alien cast reunites for Isolation — but only if you preorder
- Beyond Twitch Plays Pokémon: New crowd-play Dick Starr Conquers Mars appears
- China helps Guild Wars 2′s sales almost double in just 2 months
- Five things that drove $12.5B in game company acquisitions in the past year
- Report: Samsung and Oculus will launch co-developed 'Gear VR' headset at IFA 2014
- WiMi5 unveils platform so developers can easily make and publish HTML5 web games
- Game of Code: Checkio gamifies and crowdsources the task of programming
- Oculus VR acquires game-networking engine RakNet — and makes it open-source
- Toyze makes custom 3D-printed figures from mobile games—like Cut The Rope's Om Nom (exclusive)
Above: Kent Wakeford of Kabam and Malathi Nayak of Reuters.
Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat
Mobile and social
- Big Fish Games adds Luxury Slots to its mobile social-casino game
- Android vs. iOS: Revenue gap 'appears to be closing,' claims Racing Rivals developer
- Mario, Master Chief, and … Kim Kardashian: Reality TV star's game is a huge hit
- Hearthstone is sliding down iPad's top-grossing charts — expansion as well as iPhone, Android versions will help
- Smartphones are making console-only gamers rarer despite PS4 and Xbox One
- mNectar raises $7M for mobile ads that let you play a game before downloading it
- Kabam COO says mobile game companies have to get serious about Asia
- EA Mobile is launching global user-acquisition campaigns on Twitter
- Brain+ startup aims to outwit rival Lumosity with scientific brain-training games
Previews and interviews
- BioWare finally harmonizes real-time and tactical combat in Dragon Age: Inquisition (preview)
- The Escapists is bringing the prison break genre back to life — on a shoestring budget
Reviews
GamesBeat 2014 — VentureBeat's sixth annual event on disruption in the video game market — is coming up on Sept 15-16 in San Francisco. Purchase one of the first 50 tickets and save $400! 
