GamesBeat weekly roundup: Blizzard turns 25, and Assassin’s Creed takes a break

Blizzard has a strong stable of characters.

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Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, the PlayStation 4 beat the Xbox One again, Amazon reveals a new game engine, and we learn a bit about Destiny’s future.

Happy reading, and have a great weekend!

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Pieces of flair and opinion

• The DeanBeat: Farewell to #GamerGate

• The real world imitates the virtual with Fallout 4 ramen

• Mario Kart meets Star Wars, and it’s fantastic

• How Blizzard stayed laser-focused on quality games for 25 years

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Quantum Break in action.

Above: Quantum Break in action.

Image Credit: Microsoft

News

• January 2016 NPD: Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto top sales chart with few new releases

• PlayStation 4 outsold Xbox One at U.S. retailers in January

• Call of Duty saw double-digit growth in 2015, now has more players than ever before

• Destiny sequel launches in 2017 after ‘large new expansion’ drops this year

• Despite strong Call of Duty growth, Activision Blizzard fails to beat expectations in holiday quarter

• An Xbox One player is worth more to Ubisoft than a PlayStation 4 owner

• Twitch has more than half a million people watching live video at any one time

• Ubisoft earnings comes up short thanks to Assassin’s Creed

• No Assassin’s Creed in 2016 as Ubisoft admits the series is slowing down

• Quantum Break is Microsoft’s latest weapon in linking Xbox One and Windows 10

• Tera publisher’s new project is a real-time strategy game ‘for the rest of us’

• The eyes have it: Eyefluence may have the answer to navigating AR/VR

• Call of Duty and Dreamworks vets jump on the VR bandwagon

• Every Oculus Rift owner will get a Unity Pro trial to help them (and Palmer Luckey) make more money

• Sony: ’36 million PlayStation 4 owners’ are ready for PlayStation VR

• Unity demonstrates new way to develop games inside virtual reality

• Unity game-making tool gets native support for Google’s 5M Cardboard virtual reality devices

• Unity Technologies and Valve team up to make VR development easier

• Watch Unity’s virtual and augmented reality Vision Summit right here

• Pantomime lets VR headset and smartphone users share a virtual space

• Frozen Synapse 2 announced for this year

• Nintendo makes big promises about profits for its mysterious NX and smartphone business

• Why Nintendo thinks electric toothbrushes are a key to its future

• BioWare writer David Gaider joins Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition studio as creative director

• The Division open beta gets official release date — comes early to Xbox One

• GameTrailers shuts game video hub after 13 years

• Firewatch is a digital release — but it’s got one of the coolest physical bonuses of any game yet

• Watch Blizzard reflect on its 25th anniversary and thank its fans

• Pokémon’s $5M Super Bowl ad ranks among Sunday’s big winners

• Machine Zone spends $5M on Mobile Strike Super Bowl 50 commercial with Schwarzenegger

• Titanfall 2 will feature a single-player campaign and possible TV spin-off show

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Transformers: Earth Wars is a free-to-play mobile game from Space Ape.

Above: Transformers: Earth Wars is a free-to-play mobile game from Space Ape.

Image Credit: Space Ape

Mobile and social

• Betcade shows off the look of its Android app store for real-money gambling

• Chartboost acquires Roostr to connect mobile games with YouTube influencers

• Total War Battles: Kingdom takes epic war strategy franchise to free-to-play mobile

• Chukong spins SDKBOX services as a separate company [update]

• China’s Locojoy partners with Taptica to drive downloads of new game

• Watch an iOS game get ported to Windows 10 in under 5 minutes

• FanDuel shuts down Florida game studio and lays off 55

• Zynga pins hopes on ad revenue potential and high-end Dawn of Titans strategy game

• Zynga beats Q4 financial estimates and announces 10 games for 2016

• Transformers: Earth Wars requires Hasbro, Backflip, and Space Ape to come together like Devastator

• Mobile games hit $34.8B in 2015, taking 85% of all app revenues

• Sweden’s Stugan game accelerator gets its first mobile game launch

• Rez and Lumines developer’s iOS puzzle-RPG is coming West

• The best Final Fantasy hits mobile before Steam (hint: It’s IX)

• Star Wars: Commander is a big hit in China with 1M users in four days

• Amazon takes on Unity, Unreal, Stingray, and more with Lumberyard, a free cross-platform game engine

• Oculus VR guru John Carmack leads crucial position-tracking development for mobile VR

• Turkey’s Gram Games scores a second hit with 1M downloads of Merged!

• Supercell announces ‪Clash Royale will launch globally in March

• Apple’s gaming censorship continues: The Binding of Isaac blocked from App Store

• Google reportedly plans to release a Cardboard successor like Samsung’s Gear VR this year

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Previews, interviews, and reviews

• Hearthstone designers discuss Standard, Wild’s relevancy, and putting off new classes

• Hitman reboot takes ‘assassination tourism’ to new heights (hands-on)

• Studio chief wants players to show their assassination creativity in Hitman

• Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime on the last 25 years of games — and the next 25

• Firewatch knows that you don’t really want the truth to its mystery

• Unravel is cute and touching — and it’ll drive you mad, too