Check out all of our GamesBeat Rewind 2015 end of the year coverage here.
Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This week, Smash Bros. gets more new characters, we discussed how Amiibo manage to succeed and fail at the same time, and we talked about the best Star Wars games ever.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2015
Some hackers just won’t go away — to the annoyance of big tech companies
Watch the GamesBeat 2015 Game of the Year panel live tomorrow
6 classic Star Wars games to help you celebrate ‘The Force Awakens’
Hearthstone gets huge in 2015 — and it’ll only get bigger in 2016
10 great mobile games to play with your kids this holiday
2015’s biggest gaming trends: Nintendo embraces online, open worlds take over, and more
Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Fallout 4 fans
Nintendo’s Amiibo succeed and fail at the same time
Awaken the hype with 2015’s best Star Wars games
The best Hearthstone decks for your new Reno, Brann, and Sir Finley cards
How Heroes of the Storm’s esports scene is surging into 2016
BlackFlag: Win money playing League of Legends
Tips on how old-timers and noobs can win in Call of Duty: Black Ops III multiplayer
Teacher turns class into a video game — and now every student is passing
Above: She’s too cool.
Image Credit: Nintendo
News
New Kingdom Hearts III and II.8 trailers coming tomorrow
Xbox Live down for some gamers on Xbox One and Xbox 360
Minecraft’s Wii U release caused Nintendo’s eShop to experience an intermittent outage
Watch Star Citizen director Chris Roberts troubleshoot his PC for 5 minutes
XboxDVR site makes it easier to get your Xbox One recordings on YouTube
Super Mario Maker update introduces Koopa Clown Car(?), world records(!), and more
Xbox One gets backward compatibility with Doritos Crash Course — and some other junk
Steam Controller update lets you carry your custom configurations to any PC
UploadVR raises $1.25M in funding from China’s Shanda Group
League of Legends studio is now completely owned by China’s Tencent
Japanese megapublisher Colopl announces $50M fund for virtual reality gaming
Incredible Minecraft mod brings its redstone gadgets into the real world
Halo 5 developer finally releases Forge mode as part of Cartographers Gift update
CastAR will return $1M in Kickstarter money and postpone augmented reality glasses shipments
Dying Light: The Following’s map is twice the size of the original game
Virtuix delivers its first motion platform to Kickstarter supporters — way ahead of VR products
It’s official: Kojima Productions is working with Sony
We live in a world where Nintendo is making Cloud and Bayonetta Amiibo figures
Cloud joins Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS today
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, 3DS gets Bayonetta
Fire Emblem Fates’ Corrin joins Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS
Heroes of the Storm’s spotty matchmaking gets a fix
Half of Americans play games, but 10% identify themselves as ‘gamers’
Ronda Rousey in World of Warcraft? Nope — meet Rhonda Cox
Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima formally leaves Konami after nearly three decades
Blizzard adjusts when Hearthstone gets new Tavern Brawls to fix server troubles
6 years on, Noby Noby Boy’s bizarre stretching quest is finally over
Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter remaster launches Thursday
Is your PlayStation 4 randomly ejecting discs? Here’s a few fixes
MechWarrior Online celebrates Steam launch with $100K esports championship
Gorgeous puzzle-platformer Unravel gets February release date
Star Citizen crowdfunding passes $100M mark with over 1M backers
U.K. startup Ndreams raises $3M for ‘year one’ VR games
From VentureBeat
Customers don’t just get irritated when you screw up cross-channel personalization. They jump ship. Find out how to save your bacon on this free research-based webinar with Insight’s Andrew Jones.
Mobile and social
Five Nights at Freddy’s has a tie-in novel, and it’s getting (mostly) good reviews
Frogmind’s Badland 2 is the side-scrolling sequel to a 30M download hit
F2P ad monetization: what works — and what turns players totally off (webinar)
The mobile Star Wars card game you forgot about gets Force Awakens cards
Tapjoy’s newest feature makes setting digital currency sales in apps and games easy
Spellgun launches big budget Clash of Gods mobile game as China moves to the West
DICE, King, and Rovio vets form new studio to develop for the midcore market
Google’s top tech searches in 2015: iPhone 6s, Samsung Galaxy S6, and Apple Watch
Glu wants Katy Perry Pop mobile game to melt your popsicle
New Chrome experiment turns your phone into a Star Wars lightsaber
Cut The Rope 2 gets more in-app spenders by using Gondola’s dynamic pricing
Glispa launches audience platform to turn mobile data into revenue
Guns Up! brings the casual nature of Clash of Clans to the console — with lag. Lots of lag
Betcade launches early access for Android gambling apps
Machine Zone launches new commercial with Ah-nold for Mobile Strike game
SuperAwesome and Poke aim to target online U.S. family gamers with kid-safe ads
Above: With Dreams, it would take very little effort to paint all this grass purple.
Image Credit: Media Molecule
Previews and interviews
SuperMonkeyFun wants to be the pioneer of VR games in India
This virtual reality bike could kill the boredom of exercise
How the creators of Monument Valley built their first VR game
Media Molecule’s Dreams encourages incredible levels of user creativity
How Pokémon Go will benefit from Niantic’s lessons from Ingress on location-based game design
Crytek’s The Climb lets you scale cliffs in virtual reality that you won’t attempt in real life
Watch us play Minecraft: Wii U Edition
Reviews and impressions
Devilian’s short dungeons aren’t enough to make up for its boring loot cycle
Nexon’s Ghost in the Shell embodies everything good about 2007’s Shadowrun shooter
Fast Racing Neo is a more cerebral take on pioneers like Wipeout and F-Zero