California — and GamesBeat Next — here I come! | Kaser Focus

Serious question here: With all of the games that came out in October (seriously, it felt like we had at least a dozen major games releases), was it actually possible for anyone to have played all of them? That’s a question that can easily apply to the whole year, as well — could anyone actually play all (or even most) of the amazing games that came out this year? I mean, the obvious answer is no, unless they’re paid to, but that’s my point. With so many games that came out this year, even a gamer that is excited for and would like to play all of them will have to prioritize certain titles over others, as a form of triage. The reason that’s important is because I fear that some great or even good games haven’t received the fair shake that they should have this year.

Tarisland will hold its second closed beta starting on November 15th. The team has a new dev video with a behind the scenes interview with insight into the inspirations behind the game, memorable experiences, and love for the MMORPG genre.

Women make up just between 24% and 30% of the video game industry’s workforce, depending on the research source. However, year after year, from players to developers, female representation has been growing throughout games at all levels of experience.

Microsoft has announced the next batch of Xbox Game Pass games being added to the service starting today.

Getting an email asking if I want a copy of “the Apex Legends cookbook” was one of the most WTF moments of my year thus far, but once I knew it existed, I had to have it. Before I left for GamesBeat Next, I was perusing and casually testing some of the recipes in the book, and let me tell you: The Apex Legends cookbook is a goldmine of comedy, if not of particularly inventive recipes. Some of the food feels artificially tied to specific characters — Octane has a couple of recipes in the book (both good, too), and I’ll remind you the character is canonically a thrill-seeking drug addict. I want nothing to do with whatever he puts in his body.

We had 31 sessions and 96 speakers at our GamesBeat Next event this week in San Francisco. We had 555 people come out for the day-and-half-long event. Thank you for doing that, as we had just 29 people signed up four weeks ago. I’m so happy we have such a supportive community.

The overarching theme of this year’s GamesBeat Next conference is “Playing the Edge” — in other words, the technologies, innovations and initiatives sitting at the edge of the gaming industry that have potential to become industry game-changers. User-generated content is one of the areas with the most promise, says Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer at GamesBeat. He spoke with Nicola Sebastiani, chief content officer at The Sandbox, during a special preview session for the conference, about how developers can power brands and creators with immersive experiences and tools.

Soon after Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been completed, Xbox leadership visited the headquarters of Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, California, to address the staff for the first time.

Xbox management paid a visit to Blizzard’s offices in Irvine California this week.

Xbox’s leadership team visited Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California today for the first time since Microsoft completed its acquisition of the Diablo developer.

This is Dean Takahashi’s opening speech for the GamesBeat Next 2023 event, taking place today in San Francisco.

Salt and Sacrifice, the follow-up to Ska Studios' enormously enjoyable 2D Soulslike Salt and Sanctuary, is making the jump to Switch and Steam (following a period of Epic Games Store exclusivity) on 7th November.