Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak. Here’s our ethics statement.

stories by Dean Takahashi

Accel’s Jim Breyer to step down from Facebook board

Facebook has been good for Breyer, who made more than $100 million from his investment.

Gree searches for the billion-dollar game from its swanky S.F. headquarters (interview)

With 450 people at its U.S. headquarters, Japan's Gree is chasing after the giant mobile game.

Dysonics launches Kickstarter to fund its first wireless motion sensor for headphones

Rondo Motion changes your audio experience, allowing you to sense the direction that sounds are coming from.

The DeanBeat: King overtakes Zynga as the largest social gaming company

After 10 years, King has become the biggest in terms of daily active users for social games.

Take a tour of the ‘monsterfied’ Pixar campus (photo gallery)

Our photo gallery has photos of the filmmakers, scenes from the movie, and shots of the Pixar campus.

Aiming for better profits, Zynga cuts even deeper into once-beloved games (interview)

In wake of a second breakeven quarter, Zynga's No. 2 describes the social-gaming giant's latest strategy.

Zynga to shut four more weak games, including The Ville

Zynga also killed two unreleased games, but it is on the verge of launching Draw Something 2.

Zynga hits earnings targets and stays profitable in Q1

Still, shareholders are spooked. Zynga's stock is trading down, perhaps because metrics and outlook are weak.

How Pixar created the ultrarealistic animated film, The Blue Umbrella (interview)

This animated film has photorealistic shading, lighting, and compositing. That means the animated rain looks like real rain, and so does everything else.

How Pixar made Monsters University, its latest technological marvel

Pixar gave a rare look inside the making of Monsters University in visit to the company's campus in Emeryville, Calif.

Bringing characters to life with Pixar’s animator magic (interview)

Even with computers, it still takes weeks to create a few seconds of animation. Monsters are harder to animate than you'd expect.

Creating a creature with 5.5M pieces of animated hair in Pixar’s Monsters University (interview)

Monster's University is a technological marvel that took a room full of computers years to fully animate. A single frame took 29 hours to render.

An indie developer’s strategy to sell games: insult fans and raise prices

Phil Fish calls his critics "ingrates," and then it goes downhill from there.

Nintendo reports a small profit for fiscal year, but Wii U sales slow to a crawl

After two full quarters of sales, the Wii U's worldwide installed base is only 3.45 million units.

AMD launches a screaming-fast graphics card with 8.6B transistors

AMD will bundle eight high-end games with its 7990 graphics card for $999.

Sony launches new digital binoculars that record what you see

Now you can capture cool scenery on video with a 25X-zoom binoculars.

HexBright is a hackable, open-source flashlight that will blind your foes (and friends if you point it at them)

Christian Carlberg raised money for the HexBright on Kickstarter and is now shipping it.