The combined game industry grew 3% to $120.1 billion in 2019, according to market researcher SuperData in its year-end report. And Epic’s Fortnite battle royale shooter accounted for $1.8 billion of that amount.
The Nielsen-owned SuperData said the industry is moving into a phase of slower growth, with 4% growth expected to take games to $124.8 billion in 2020. The data includes mobile, PC, and…
Nintendo Switch Lite 3 months later
January 3, 2020
Since Nintendo launched the Switch Lite on September 20, I have transitioned to using it as one of my primary gaming devices. And while I immediately fell in love with the dedicated handheld, I’ve had some concerns about durability. I take the Switch Lite with me…
Smoke app brings the Steam store to your Apple Watch
December 31, 2019
If you can’t bear to be away from Steam for a moment least you miss one of its famously great sales, then Smoke, a new app for the Apple Watch, has you covered.
Smoke advertises that it “brings parts of Steam” to the Apple Watch. The hardware is…
'The Witcher 3' is now more popular on Steam than it was at launch
December 30, 2019
You’d think that a single player game over four years old would be long past its prime, but don’t tell that to CD Projekt Red. The studio’s community lead Marcin Momot has revealed that the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt broke its record for the most number of concurrent players, with nearly 94,000 people playing on December 29th. Polygon noted that the number has…
Valve revealed Steam’s Best of 2019 lists, including the top-selling VR games of the year. The section is split into platinum, gold, silver and bronze subdivisions, along with a section purely for the best VR releases of 2019.
The platinum category features the top VR…
2016 indie hit 'Hyper Light Drifter' is free in the Epic Games Store
December 28, 2019
The Epic Holiday Sale is still going, and today’s daily free game is Hyper Light Drifter. The top-down action RPG was crowdfunded a few years ago before it was eventually released in 2016, and now you can try it out yourself for zero dollars. Hyper Light…
In 2020, we’re getting both the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox. And with that next-generation of hardware on the horizon, we’re looking forward with anticipation. What do we want from yet another round of consoles? We talk about that on this special episode of the GamesBeat Decides podcast. Join us, won’t you?
We also talk about some of the games we’re looking forward to in 2019. And then…
Corinna Kopf is the latest top streamer to jump to Facebook Gaming
December 27, 2019
Facebook still isn’t done snapping up big-name Twitch streamers. Corinna Kopf, who’s also known for her YouTube presence, is switching to Facebook Gaming for livestreams. Her first stream on the service will take place December 30th at 7PM Eastern. She…
Ubisoft uses AI to teach a car to drive itself in a racing game
December 27, 2019
Reinforcement learning, an AI training technique that employs rewards to drive software policies toward goals, has been applied successfully to domains from industrial robotics to drug discovery. But while firms including OpenAI and Alphabet’s DeepMind have investigated…
How Twitch started to lose its grip on video game streaming
December 26, 2019
For the longest time, Twitch was the undisputed champ of video game live streaming. The Amazon-owned platform has the highest number of ‘broadcasters’ and, more importantly, viewers watching, chatting and donating in real-time. For most full-time streamers, switching to any other platform felt like economic suicide.
Then, on August 1st, the most popular and recognizable gamer in the…
