Above: A Watch Dogs car chase.
Image Credit: Ubisoft
Welcome to another roundup of a week’s worth of GamesBeat stories. This time, we did a ton of previews and interviews covering just about every aspect of the upcoming open-world game, Watch Dogs, Mark Pincus gave up his operating role at Zynga, and we celebrated the Game Boy’s 25th birthday.
You’ll find all of that and much more below. Happy reading!
Mobile and social
The DeanBeat: What the game industry learned from Mark Pincus
Apple vs. Google: A world view on the mobile gaming war
Facebook’s desktop gaming revenue slips in the first quarter of 2014
YoVille lives: Zynga agrees to let developer Big Viking Games take over operations
Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 6: Alliances
Apps featured by Apple or Google get 6 times the downloads and 9 times the revenue — or nothing
Big Zynga shakeup leaves founder Mark Pincus out of day-to-day operations
Zynga beats expectations as its mobile business starts to pick up social’s slack
Silicon Valley heavyweights are helping underprivileged teens make iOS games
Hitman Go proves murder can still be fun as a turn-based puzzler
Flappy Bird 2048: Side by Side is the PB&J of games you play at the same time
AgeCheq hopes to save app developers and game companies from impending fed crackdown
Dead Underground turns London’s subway map into a zombie-strategy blast
Make it Candy Crush Saga time: King opens Japanese office to better serve the important market
Adenda lets games and apps display animations on your Android phone’s lock screen
Roam & Wander uses an iPad to bring a teddy bear to life
Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 5: Adventures in consumables
Brazilian gamers turn their attention — and spending — to free-to-play
Movie fans: Test your command of trivia with Exponential Entertainment’s HollywoodPlayer game
Above: Titanfall Expedition is a new map pack for the first-person shooter.
Image Credit: Respawn
News
Hulu brings Chromecast-like screen-casting to video game consoles
In first quarter, Microsoft ships 2M consoles — including 1.2M Xbox Ones
Humorous ad rules — a $500 trailer scores a million views for Leviathan: Warships
Remix: Titanfall’s upcoming War Games map is a digital mashup
Start building: The Minecraft Realms server service is online in North America
Developers are seriously tweaking Unreal Engine 4
Riding on virtual reality fever, Virtuix raises $3M round for Omni VR treadmill
Sony Online chief to game marketers: Ignore livestreaming at your own peril
How the PS4 and Xbox One transition has turned out great for GameStop so far
New tour helps British devs like Tomb Raider’s studio make the most of their new tax breaks
Xbox One to take on PS4 in its home country of Japan on Sept. 4
2K saves Borderlands and Civilization from the GameSpy apocalpyse
Nintendo embraces the idea of a ‘season pass’ for Mario Golf: World Tour
Why Blizzard says Heroes of the Storm is a ‘hero brawler’
Marketers have to adapt as half of all console game sales go digital
Heroes of the Storm is bound for China
Star Trek Online publisher to invest $100M in Chinese MMO publisher Shanda
Assassin’s Creed’s monstrous sales might explain why Ubisoft is open-world obsessed
The Last of Us artist Nate Wells departs Naughty Dog to join indie team
Sony Online chief turns directly to gamers on Reddit and Twitch to promote his zombie apocalypse game H1Z1
Who’s behind the wheel on development for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel? Everyone
Previews and interviews
Respawn chief Vince Zampella has to feed hungry gamers with Titanfall Expedition downloadable content (exclusive interview)
Even Hearthstone runs on Unity — and that’s why it’s already on iPad
Ubisoft creative director tells why Watch Dogs took so frigging long to make — and why hacking cities is so much more plausible now (interview)
Activision brings life to toys in Skylanders: Trap Team (preview)
Ubisoft writer finally gets to spill some secrets of Watch Dogs’ story (interview)
Don’t mess with my data in multiplayer Watch Dogs (hands-on preview)
Watch Dogs’ mobile app is a hoot as you chase down a fugitive across Chicago (hands-on preview)
Watch Dogs really lets you hack your way through a smart city (hands-on preview)
How Kickstarter game Hex Heroes is reimagining the real-time strategy genre for the Wii U (interview)
How Chillingo plans to find the next Flappy Bird (interview)
Above: Moving around the maps in Demon Gaze can be an engrossing challenge in and of itself.
Image Credit: NIS America
Reviews and impressions
Demon Gaze is an uncomfortable, fascinating slog (impressions)
How the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn stacks up to the PC, PS3 versions
Forget ripoff: Disney Magical World is better than Animal Crossing
NES Remix 2 is great for players who bring the right memories (review)
Pieces of flair
GamesBeat’s favorite Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft cards
Minecraft gets a complete re-creation of Denmark — yes, the entire country
Twitch dominates live online video streaming (infographic)
25 years of the Game Boy: A timeline of the systems, accessories, and games
Got $20K? You can get the arcade machine from ‘Wreck-It Ralph’
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!