Tencent is now the proud owner of Clash of Clans thanks to their most recent acquisition. The Chinese publisher continues to establish its dominance in the mobile space. Over in Korean, a female Overwatch pro-player gets accused of cheating because she’s “unbelievably” good. In other news, we’ll be crying over our empty wallets as Valve launches off its annual Steam Summer Sale. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of June 20
This week in TPoI, we covered several important industry news stories outside of E3, including Gawker’s bankruptcy, Overwatch’s first major tournament, and Michael Bay’s journey into VR gaming. Additionally, if you’d like to hear about some of the top announcements at E3 this year, please check out our roundup on the TriplePoint blog, here. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of June 13
Happy E3 Everybody!
I wanted to share recaps for all of the press conferences to occur so far to keep you up to date on the top happenings at the annual event. Please find these recaps below.
Tomorrow, I will be posting a recap of Nintendo’s events.
Enjoy!
For this week’s TPoI: Overwatch is still king, Microsoft and Mojang shut down advertisers, and Michel Guillemot plans his resignation from Gameloft. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of May 30
Calling all agents: Overwatch has finally launched this week — and we’re not the only ones excited about it! The game has been getting rave reviews and the hype train shows no signs of stopping. In other news, Tencent could soon be the proud owner of Clash of Clans, and the company behind Rolling Stone will be adding a new site devoted to gamers.
In this week’s TPoI: fans rise up against The Washington Post’s negative review of Uncharted 4, Google I/O brings some big announcements including a new VR platform, and the World Esports Association is created. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of May 16
Fans of Disney Infinity received some bad news this week as the media company announced the shut-down of its games division. Newzoo reports a boom in eSports awareness and the growth of the industry, but Capcom’s focus on eSports seems to have harmed the sales of its latest Street Fighter launch. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of May 9
Breaking a record is usually an admirable feat and often desired outcome, but Activision might not be too happy with its latest record. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s newest trailer just became the most disliked gaming video on YouTube. On a more positive note though, Oculus is shipping off a few Rifts into stores and YouTube just announced cable bundles for streaming. So that evens it out, right? Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of May 1
Big steps are being taken in the games industry as the market expands into film and sports. Blizzard celebrates the launch of Whispers of the Old Gods with impressive player numbers, Valve and Lionsgate partner up, and ESL starts its own channel for eSports fanatics. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal is getting ready to add some Pandas and Dragons into their line-up. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of April 25
This week in TPOI, Nostalrius, a private legacy server for WoW, shut down to the dismay of its many players. Rust also stirred up a bit of controversy by randomly assigning genders and races to players, but still managed to keep up its outstanding sales numbers. Oh and ESPN has also started investing in drone racing.
Goodbye, Nostalrius
World of Warcraft’s largest private server, Nostalrius, closed on Sunday night after receiving a cease-and-desist order from Blizzard earlier that week. According to Blizzard, private servers violate the company’s terms of use. The popular server, run solely by enthusiastic volunteers, was known for their support of a vanilla version of WoW and boasted over 150,000 active accounts. The forced closure drew a significant amount of backlash from the community and many felt that Blizzard should have supported the nonprofit fan project despite the illegal nature of the server, reports BBC. According to Polygon, in the days leading up to the closure, many players paid tribute to Nostalrius through a pilgrimage march from Orgrimmar to Thunder Bluff, while other fans posted footage of the crowds that gathered for the server’s final moments.
Rust Throws Gender and Race into the Mix
Rust, a multiplayer survival game still in Steam Early Access,has found itself in a strange intersection between controversy and impressive success. The game recently introduced an update that randomly assigned players a race and gender (mixing up the completely white, male character population it had earlier). The change has received both extreme criticism and praise from the community. Developer Garry Newman posted an interesting article on the feedback received after the update in The Guardian. Despite all this, Rust has reported hit 3.5 million in game sales, reports GamesIndustry, heralded as “a paragon of the creative potential of Early Access”.
ESPN Gets Their Drone Racing On
Drone racing is getting serious. ESPN has recently signed a broadcast deal with the International Drone Racing Association. Drone racing features fast-flying drones that navigate through preset courses, while racers don head-mounted displays that show them the view from the drone’s front camera. The network will stream the 2016 Drone Racing Championships on ESPN3, with an hour-long special on ESPN2 and potential other channels. Tech Crunch notes that drone racing may someday get its own vertical, much like ESPN’s efforts with eSports like DotA 2 and League of Legends
Oculus starts off the week with the highly anticipated Rift launch, Blizzard listens to its fans and pulls a controversial pose from Overwatch, and Twitch takes a gamble on mobile-MOBA Vainglory — all in this week’s TPOI! Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of March 28
In this week’s news, Apple held its keynote event, Japanese business press spread rumors about the end of the Wii U’s line and Microsoft tries to launch a social AI which goes horribly wrong. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of March 21
The games industry is a tumultuous one. Competition is fierce and studios have to keep up with the times or find themselves left in the dust. This week, Fable Legends was deemed unworthy by Microsoft Studios and was canceled, Riot Games looked to expand their portfolio by acquiring Radiant Entertainment, and the new launch of The Division breaks Ubisoft’s sales records. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of March 7
The Dota 2 Shanghai Major is taking place this week, but not without a few bumps and drama. With Valve’s public firing of 2GD and laggy streams, the tournament has definitely managed to turn a few heads…In more positive news, two gaming companies have made Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For list and Yahoo opens up its own eSports vertical. 
Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of February 29
In this week’s TPoI: the DICE Summit hands out awards, including their Game of the Year, Kabam refocuses its company and cuts back on staffing, and Elite Daily covers eSports’ role in gender equality. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of February 22