Grand Theft Auto V is only a few months away. In September, we will get the chance to head to Los Santos for all the car-jacking fun we could ask for.

Today, developer Rockstar revealed that you don’t have to pay just $60 for Grand Theft Auto V. For $80, you can grab a Special Edition version of the game. For a whopping $150, you can get the Collector’s Edition.

For those 18-to-34 year-old gamers with disposable income, here is what comes in the Special Edition:

• Grand Theft Auto V game in collectible SteelBook case with exclusive art.
• Poster-sized blueprint map of Los Santos.
• In-game boost that will approve the regeneration time of the special-ability meter.
• Trials mode for the stunt plane.
• Bonus in-game outfits, tattoos, and more.
• Additional weapons including pistol, shotgun, and hammer.

The Collector’s Edition includes all of the above and the following:

• GTA V branded security-deposit bag and key.
• GTA V Los Santos branded ball cap
• Classic GTA characters in GTA Online
• Unique in-game vehicles and garage property

Both of these special releases will accompany the standard GTA V game on Sept. 17 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They are available for preorder now.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive Software expects to make around $1.8 billion in revenue over the next year. That’s a mammoth number that is around $600 million more than it made in its fiscal 2013.

The craziest thing about those figures is that Take-Two believes that Rockstar will account for around $1.1 billion of that total. Take-Two subsidiary 2K Games will account for 35 percent. The publisher is basing that guidance on the expected sales of seven new 2K titles and just one new Rockstar release.

That one Rockstar game? Grand Theft Auto V, of course.

Take-Two has a lot riding on that open-world crime title, so naturally it is planning a massive marketing push to help inform the world about the GTA V’s Sept. 17 release for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Speaking on a conference call with investors, Take-Two president Strauss Zelnick said the company is planning an innovative marketing campaign for the game. Take-Two is skipping out on the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in Los Angeles in early June so that it can instead hold its own promotional events for GTA V during the summer.

“I’m really proud of our marketing, ” said Zelnick. “Every time we release a major title we have to innovate. When we market something in an innovative way the industry takes notice, and we notice when our competitors do something innovative. Marketing continues to be an important part of what makes us so successful.”

Zelnick wouldn’t elaborate on what exactly would make these events innovative. He says we’ll all get to see as they unfold.

So far, we’ve got a bunch of good looks at GTA V thanks to developer Rockstar releasing some trailers a few weeks ago. It follows the story of three men as they fall into a criminal underworld.

Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most anticipated releases for the last half of 2013, but it will also have to compete, indirectly, with the hype for Microsoft’s and Sony’s new consoles. GTA V is not scheduled for either of those systems at this time.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Take-Two Interactive Software reported revenue of $1.222 billion for fiscal 2013. That’s a 48 percent increase compared to 2012.

The publisher also reported a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting practices) net income of $33.1 million, or 36 cents per diluted share. That’s up sharply from a net loss of $59.4 million in 2012.

For its fourth quarter, which ended March 31, Take-Two generated $303.1 million in revenue. That was also up big from $148.2 million in the same period from the prior year.

“The largest contributors to net revenue in fiscal fourth quarter 2013 were the release of BioShock Infinite and catalog sales led by Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and Sid Meier’s Civilization V,” reads Take-Two’s financial report. The company also noted continuing sales of NBA 2K13 and Borderlands 2 boosted revenue along with the release of Major League Baseball 2K13.

Those aforementioned catalog sales accounted for a quarter of the company’s revenue from January through March. The company also saw a 192 percent boost in digital sales year-over-year. Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and NBA 2K13 pushed digital sales to 27 percent of Take-Two’s total revenue.

“Take-Two delivered strong revenue growth and solid non-GAAP earnings for fiscal year 2013, driven by robust demand for our groundbreaking new releases, iconic catalog titles, and expanding portfolio of digitally delivered offerings,” Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “With BioShock Infinite, Borderlands 2, NBA 2K13 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown, our 2K label released four of the past year’s most critically acclaimed titles. Our commitment to delight consumers with the highest-quality interactive entertainment experiences enabled Take-Two to have an outstanding year, despite a challenging environment for many in our industry.”

Looking forward, the company is expecting net revenues of $1.75 to $1.85 billion in fiscal 2014. It also expects earnings per diluted share to jump to $2.05 to $2.30. That huge increase is likely due to most of the development costs for games like BioShock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V are in the past, and GTA V will hit on Sept. 17.

That open-world game alone could contribute around $600 million in revenue to Take-Two’s bottom line.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Earnings season is that special time when video game publishers reveal if they are actually making money. Starting today and continuing through next week, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two will all report their results for the last fiscal quarter.

We checked in with a few analysts to see what they are expecting from these three major publishers. Will first-person shooter BioShock Infinite push Take-Two Interactive over its expectations? Is the Call of Duty military first-person franchise still powering Activision’s growth? Will the Star Wars video game license have an immediate impact on EA’s outlook?

Let’s take a look.

Electronic Arts

Let’s start with Electronic Arts, which reports its earnings today after Wall Street’s closing bell.

The Madden publisher is still looking for a permanent chief executive officer since John Riccitiello stepped down from that position in late March. That hasn’t stopped EA from making big moves under the direction of executive chairman Larry Probst.

Under Probst, EA cut 1,000 jobs. It severely downsized its EA Mobile operations in Montreal. It also cut staff at Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel developer Visceral Montreal. The publisher secured the rights to the Star Wars franchise. Oh, and it also won the title of Worst Company in America from the Consumerist blog for the second year in a row.

EA also had a spate of game announcements that include two new Plants vs. Zombies titles, The Sims 4, and rumors that Respawn (former Call of Duty team) will show its shooter at Microsoft’s Xbox event later this month.

That’s a lot to fit into a single financial report.

“EA has already preannounced results ‘at or below the lower end’ of [expectations],” Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia wrote in a note to investors. “For EA, the key will be fiscal-year 2014 guidance, which is likely to be conservative given the company doesn’t have a permanent chief executive officer and new chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen appears to have a mindset of under-promise and over deliver.”

With the huge news that EA has secured the Star Wars license, however, investors may want to see a forward-looking guidance that factors in that gigantic property. That’s unlikely to happen.

“Star Wars won’t impact earnings next year,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pacther told GamesBeat. “It’s going to take a while to make a game.”

As for The Sims 4 and PopCap’s new games, those will factor into the guidance, but EA will have had them in the works for a long while.

EA seems like a company trying to reboot in order to offer a fresh start to whoever takes over as CEO. For that reason, expect an underwhelming guidance that will give the new chief executive the chance to overdeliver, just as Bhatia suggests.

Activision and Take-Two

Conflict and hardship makes for a good story, which is why EA is the big story. The other two publishers, Activision and Take-Two, are in much sturdier positions.

Activision still has Call of Duty generating huge numbers, although we’re curious to see if Black Ops II kept up with previous entries in the series.

Take-Two had critical and commercial success BioShock Infinite to push it through its last quarter.

“We believe Activision and Take-Two will likely exceed March quarter expectations,” Bhatia wrote.

Take-Two is flipping over to its fiscal 2014, so we will get a look at some annual guidance. In the past, the publisher expected Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V to bring in around $600 million before delaying it to September. Expect the publisher to roll out some major expectations for the next year.

Activision just announced a new Infinity Ward Call of Duty game that will anchor its holiday lineup. The publisher will also get help from a new Skylanders game that has its own line of physical, interactive toys, which retailers struggle to keep on the shelves.

Activision is also publishing the next game from Halo developer Bungie. The first-person shooter, titled Destiny, isn’t due out during calendar year 2013, which coincides with Activision’s fiscal year, so don’t expect that game to factor into any guidance.

Finally, any guidance through the spring quarter will likely tail downward for all three publishers. The release slate from April through July is devoid of many major releases. That’s due to the typical swing of the release schedule, but many developers are probably busy producing products for the upcoming next-gen consoles.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Michael. Franklin. Trevor. These are the three stars of Rockstar Games upcoming Grand Theft Auto V — and they get center stage in the latest trailer for the open-world crime game.

The trailer goes live at 11 a.m. Eastern. If it’s not working for you, try refreshing.

OK, that’s enough from me. Below are new trailers for Michael, Franklin, and Trevor:

Michael:

Trevor:

Franklin:

GTA V is the latest entry in Rockstar’s open-world mega-franchise. It is due out Sept. 17 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

It follows the aforementioned Michael, Franklin, and Trevor as they chase after money in the California-like Los Santos. Michael, a former bank robber, lives in Rockford Hills, which resembles the real-world Beverly Hills. His former crime partner, Trevor, lives in a drug-fueled psychosis in the desert. Franklin is a repo man from Vespucci Beach (think Venice Beach), who is only an acquaintance of the other two.

The three men’s paths cross as they are simultaneously drawn into the Los Santos’s world of crime.

Rockstar only confirmed the title for Sony and Microsoft’s current consoles. It hasn’t revealed any Wii U, PC, or next-gen version.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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For the followers of Epsilonism, the Earth is only 157 years old. They believe dinosaurs are a lie that people fall for because they are weak. And if you have a birthmark, you might be a descendant of Kraff, the famous “Emperor of the 4th Paradigm.”

The only things the religious cult asks for in return is an open mind and your wallet.

The clear-cut parody of the Church of Scientology is just another jab at pop culture in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V. The open-world crime game doesn’t come out until Sept. 7, so developer Rockstar Games has a few more months to drip feed cryptic teases, such as this PSA from the fictional Epsilon Program. The video displays the various goals and belief systems against a background of seaside cliffs, a lighthouse, and a small island, which look like possible locations for GTAV. The portrait of a new character dressed in a ceremonial robe is also shown.

Check out the three-minute teaser below:

This isn’t the first time that the Epsilon Program has been in a GTA title — you could’ve found out about it in missions or idle chatter from pedestrians and radio stations. Back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you can run into Epsilon believers who love to shout “Kifflom!” — the name of a deity Epsilonists worship that’s also used as a greeting — or hear an interview with its leader, Cris Formage, on West Coast Talk Radio. In Grand Theft Auto IV, you can hear another person talking about Kifflom on Public Liberty Radio. And if you place an order for GTAV on Rockstar’s Warehouse site, you can get a Kifflom shirt for free.

On its website, the developer invites readers to visit “one of [the Epsilon Program's] enlightenment centers.” Directions to those centers, and possibly more GTAV news, will arrive in a week.

(Thanks to Zak Islam for the tip.)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This sponsored post is produced by Dealzon.

For those of us who didn’t get Company of Heroes 2 beta access earlier this month, there’s always the option of forking over cold hard cash to get what you want. Green Man Gaming has the Steam-activated version plus beta access for $45 after coupon.

Beyond getting an early taste of the game prior to the June 25th release date, you’ll also get the usual digital bonuses like additional skin packs, mini campaigns, additional commanders, and extra added in-game abilities for the German and Soviet army.

If you’re absolutely certain you’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto V and don’t want to bother with preordering closer to the release date, Microsoft Store has an added incentive of 1600 Xbox Live points if you preorder now at retail price. It’s not too shabby of a deal, especially considering 1600 points is valued at $20.

Hot deals & recent releases

June 25: Company of Heroes 2 (PC Download) — $45 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Preorder and you’ll get access to the closed beta that went live April 3rd. Thankfully the title’s still being released despite THQ’s liquidation.
 

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (Xbox 360, PS3) — $42.99 at Groupon. Elsewhere $60. A pretty solid $17 drop for a 2 week old release. Offer is only good through Thursday, April 11th.
 

Sep. 17: Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360) — $59.99 at Microsoft with bonus Xbox LIVE 1600 Points. Elsewhere $60, no points. The 1600 Xbox LIVE points bonus is equivalent to $20. Unfortunately, no PS3 bonus offer spotted yet.
 

Summer 2013: Deadpool (Xbox 360, PS3) — $47.99 at NewEgg after coupon. Hey, it’s a Deadpool game – can’t go wrong with this, right? Right!? Ads are touting a summer release this year.
 

Apr. 26: Star Trek (PC Download) — $37.50 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. We’re not expecting much out of this Trek game, but maybe Trekkies will get lucky with this one.
 

June 14: The Last of Us (PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. If you’re not hyped up enough about this game yet, just head to YouTube and watch all the trailers again.
 

Aug. 20: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist (Xbox 360) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. First discount spotted so far on this August release. Although this deal is only applicable to the Xbox 360 version, the game will also release on PS3, PC, and Wii U.
 

PC download deals

Dark Messiah Might and Magic (PC Download) — $2.49 at GamersGate. For Thursday only, GamersGate has the lowest price seen thus far by $0.50. Elsewhere you’ll pay at least $7, or as high as the $19.99 list price.
 

360, PS3, and Wii U deals

Tomb Raider Survival/Collector’s Edition (Xbox 360, PS3) — $67.99 at GameStop after coupon. Goodies include a Lara Croft figurine, CD soundtrack, weapons pack DLC, double-sided island map/poster, and a 5×7 lithograph – all in a large tin case.
 

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (Xbox 360, PS3) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. The release date is still TBA 2013, but since preorder deals are harder to find on PS3 and Xbox 360 titles than on PC, the discount’s worth mentioning.
 

Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch (PS3) — $39.99 at Amazon. Still close to the full $60 price at most retailers, excluding those engaged in a price war with Amazon.
 

Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition (Wii U) — $19.99 at Best Buy. Good discount on a decent game on an already forgotten platform. /snark
 

Nintendo 3DS and PC DLCs

Naruto Powerful Shippuden (3DS) — $25.49 at GameStop after coupon. Next best is $30 at Amazon. Best discount yet on this March 5th release by $10. Amazon tried to price match GameStop at $30, but GameStop’s additional 15% off coupon code makes it a more compelling retailer choice.
 

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (3DS) — $19.99 at GameStop. There’s shipping of $3.49 unless your purchase is above $25.
 

Battlefield 3: End Game (PC DLC) — $11.99 at GameFly after coupon. Next best is $15 at Green Man Gaming. Don’t buy if you have already have the BF3 Premium package – this DLC is already included.
 

Dead Space 3: Awakened (PC DLC) — $4.99 at Amazon. New low by $3, with a next best price of $10 at Green Man Gaming.
 

Gaming Laptops

Toshiba Qosmio X875 Laptop — $1,169 at BuyDig.com after coupon. Specs: Quad Core i7-3630QM, 12GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 3GB GeForce GTX 670M, and 1080p Full HD display.
 

HP Envy dv7t-7300 Quad Edition Laptop — $774.99 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. Specs: Quad Core i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT 635M 2GB, and Blu-ray.
 

HP Envy dv6t Laptop — $674.99 at HP after coupon. $10 shipping. This is the “Quad Edition” with Ivy Bridge Core i7-3630QM and a mid-range GeForce GT 635M. It’s not the fastest GPU ever, but this is a sub-$700 laptop before tax and shipping.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 59371972 Laptop — $869 at Lenovo after coupon. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, 1080p Full HD, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 1TB HDD + 16GB mSSD.
 

Lenovo IdeaPad Y400 59371954 Laptop — $749 at Lenovo after coupon. Little brother to the 15-inch Y500. Specs: Core i7-3630QM, GeForce GT 750M 2GB, and 1TB HDD + 16GB mSSD.
 

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The best part of any Grand Theft Auto game is the radio. Driving around while flipping through the stations builds an amazing amount of atmosphere for Liberty City or San Andreas.

If you’ve ever wished you could quickly cue up the songs that blast from those radio stations on your computer or in your car, you’re in luck. Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games just put all the stations from each GTA game (since GTA III) on music-streaming service Spotify.

The link to Rockstar’s Spotify profile isn’t working right now, but you can still get to it by clicking here to open Grand Theft Auto IV’s “Electro-Choc” playlist. Then click on the “Rockstargames” name to open its entire library in the Spotify application.

From that menu you can subscribe to any playlist that you wish. Keep in mind that you’ll have to download Spotify, which is free, if you want to stream on your PC. If you want to stream the music on a mobile device, however, that costs a monthly fee.

Rockstar puts all the radio stations from all the GTA’s on Spotify. Fantastic stuff spoti.fi/110uT7b #Spotify

— John Davison (@jwhdavison) April 11, 2013

Sadly, only the music is on Spotify. That means you won’t hear any of the great DJ chatter featured in the games. Still, this should help in your pursuit to feel more like Tony Versetti … just don’t start running over pedestrians on the sidewalk.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Disney shuttered its LucasArts game studio, OMGPOP (Draw Something) chief executive Dan Porter leaves Zynga, and Trion Worlds launched massively multiplayer shooter Defiance.

You’ll also find previews for Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Thief, and Heavy Gear Assault as well as the March edition of Required Listening with an interview with BioShock Infinite composer Garry Schyman.

News

• Ghostlight’s worldwide Steam releases could help Japanese role-playing games
• The DeanBeat: Mobile monetization is the ‘biggest Achilles’ heel’ issue in the game industry

• Xbox games director doesn’t get why fans don’t like always-on consoles

• Salaries are up for game developers but women don’t make as much as men
• Zynga CEO volunteers to reduce his salary to $1
• Why wait for Google Glass? Epiphany Eyewear is here now (exclusive)
• Transistor takes the high road to revenge
• Zynga appoints venture capitalist John Doerr to its board
• Sen. Feinstein: Congress may ‘have to proceed’ with violent video game regulation
• Treyarch erupts with new Uprising content for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• BlizzCon 2013 tickets go on sale April 24 and April 27
• Live out your biker fantasies in the Ride to Hell trilogy this summer
• Second annual Unlock conference targets a small but elite game crowd
• Id Software’s fate reportedly uncertain with Rage 2 cancellation and Doom 4 delays
• Monaco begins stealing hearts on April 24
• LucasArts’ mixed legacy: A breeding ground for great games and designers that relied too much on Star Wars
• First free SimCity add-on content is an ad for Nissan Leaf
• Disney shutters publisher LucasArts
• Trion Worlds launches massively multiplayer shooter Defiance with a lot on the line
• Torment crowdfunding total surpasses Double Fine Adventure
• Rovio doubles its revenue in 2012 on strong game and consumer-product sales
• Utherverse launches latest take on a 3D Internet with WebWorlds.com
• Zynga’s first real-money games launch in the U.K. tomorrow
• CityVille lead steps in to reinvigorate sluggish Zynga acquisition OMGPOP
• Reloaded Games takes freemium APB back to pay-for-play with APB: Vendetta
• OMGPOP chief exec Dan Porter’s job goes pop
• Hackers breach The War Z personal-info databases; publisher shuts down servers
• Microsoft hammers away at April 5 Minecraft update
• Rockstar holds to traditions for Grand Theft Auto V box art
• Wikipad quick hands-on impressions: Functional but crappy
• Divekick’s developers want to bring bizarre two-button controller to market
• GDC drew more than 23,000 attendees to hear diverse perspectives on games
• Electronic Arts board agrees to $1M salary for executive chairman Larry Probst
• Torment: Tides of Numenera developer reveals first in-game screenshot

Mobile News

• Why it’s easier to get games discovered on Google Play than the App Store (exclusive)
• How GungHo Online Entertainment created Puzzle & Dragons, the surprise billion-dollar mobile game
• Huh? EA builds an app for sharing music and photos (exclusive)
• Tom Hall’s game development quest, from Doom to Diner Dash (exclusive)

Previews

• Lego Marvel Super Heroes might be the best Iron Man game ever made (preview)
• Thief takes major cues from Dishonored, the game inspired by Thief (preview)
• Heavy Gear Assault turns mech pilots into e-sports stars (preview)

Interviews

• NCAA Football 14: My fluffy two-minute interview with cover star Denard Robinson of Michigan
• DeNA’s first-person shooter The Drowning nears launch on the iPad (interview)

• Ted Price on how Insomniac Games’ Fuse isn’t going to be a bomb (interview)

• Unity’s David Helgason on why next-gen consoles are embracing indies (interview)
• Victor Kislyi storms into mobile with World of Tanks: Blitz (interview)
• Kate Edwards takes over the IGDA in a time of turmoil for games (interview)
• Jade Raymond’s growing empire at Ubisoft (interview)

Pieces of Flair

• Decorate your walls with these artistic console schematics (gallery)
• 13 awesome maps from classic video games (gallery)
• BioShock Infinite SPOILER: You’ve heard Songbird before (video)
• Required listening: SimCity, Tomb Raider, and BioShock Infinite composer Garry Schyman
• The microconsole battle royale: GameStick vs. Ouya (gallery)
• Modern games re-imagined as Atari 2600 cartridges (gallery)
• If Uncharted’s Nathan Drake had a dating site profile

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Grant Theft Auto and The Brady Bunch have always had one thing in common. GTA’s cover art has always had a bunch of people sectioned off in tic-tac-toe-like boxes — just like The Brady Bunch‘s famous title screen.

For Grand Theft Auto V, developer Rockstar Games is sticking with that tradition. The studio revealed the cover for the latest GTA, and it shows off the setting, the action, and the characters.

The latest entry in the studio’s open-world crime games, due out Sept. 7 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, features three playable characters. In the image below, you can see Trevor on the right holding the rifle. Michael is just below the title on the jet-ski, and Franklin is below him with the handgun.

The plot follows the three men as they get sucked back in to crime after attempting to retire in Rockstar’s Los Angeles-like Los Santos. Throughout the game they’ll kill pedestrians, fly helicopters, and rob banks … so, really, it’s just like The Brady Bunch.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat was at the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference, bringing you previews and interviews. Harmonix announced that it is working on three new games. And legendary developer Brenda Romero (formerly Brathwaite) quits the International Games Development Association after the organization threw a party with hired female dancers.

You’ll also find reviews for BioShock Infinite and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct as well as previews for the Ouya console, Dive Kick, Battlefield 4, Infinite Crisis, and Space Hulk.

Game Developer’s Conference 2013

• In a ‘love letter to gamers,’ Ouya launches its console at a crowded GDC event (video)
• Game designer Brenda Romero quits IGDA following party with hired female dancers
• Women bring down the house at GDC
• YetiZen explains hiring of gamer models, not dancers, for its GDC party
• California’s second lady: Games need to ‘think bigger’ about portrayals of women
• Free-to-play publishers & game developers throw down at GDC

News

• The DeanBeat: Will Battlefield 4 or Puzzle & Dragons reach $1B in revenues?
• Epic launches new content and a title update for Gears of War: Judgment
• Intel in talks to acquire gesture control firm Omek Interactive
• ‘Programmers loathe’ developing games for Android, says Geomeric founder
• Marketing, reviews, and mobile may all determine if your game is a hit or a flop
• Total War series gets a League of Legends-style spin-off
• Playdek nails down $3.8M in funding for more digital board games
• Lab Zero Games ends Skullgirls crowdfunding campaign with $830K
• GameStop: One-third of BioShock Infinite buyers also purchased a Season Pass
• GameStop profits up despite dipping revenues, expects a ‘challenging’ 2013
• 505 Games shoveling Terraria to PlayStation Vita this summer
• A winning wager? Experts see a $20B market for gambling in games
• The Rock Band played on: Harmonix working on 3 new games
• Japanese telecom buys majority stake in Puzzle & Dragons developer GungHo
• Surprise! The Phantom Pain is actually Metal Gear Solid V
• Nintendo demos improvements due in April Wii U update
• Tecmo Koei slices off a few new details about Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z
• EA has a lot riding on Battlefield 4, and it’s stepping up its investment in a big way
• In Africa, devs struggle to create modern games for 3K cultures
• EA sets the stage for Battlefield 4 launch
• Minecraft developer chipping away at April release for Scrolls beta
• Facebook tells developers how to win at games in 2013
• King.com saw its Facebook desktop player numbers blossom after Candy Crush Saga’s mobile launch
• Unity Technologies forms alliance to create better games on Facebook
• Plants vs. Zombies shuffles to Facebook; sequel due in summer
• Sony steps up for indies with funding for PlayStation games
• Kuato teaches kids to code via Hakitzu educational game
• It’s a final fantasy for Square Enix president after restructuring
• Square Enix restructures and sells four free-to-play titles to Sleepy Giant (exclusive)
• PlayStation 3′s Rain may be the next Journey
• EA squashes potential Origin exploit
• Zynga chief information officer takes top job at cloud-storage company
• How The Unfinished Swan moved from student project to PS3 downloadable game
• Game retailers better than movie theaters at enforcing age restrictions
• Zynga flexes its marketing muscle to support third-party partner games
• Facebook updates developers on local currency pricing
• Roku should worry: GameStick adding XBMC media support
• Turbine working with DC Comics on League of Legends-style game
• Epic Games’ alliance with Oculus VR means virtual reality gaming will be coming to you
• Kickstarter campaign begins for a spiritual successor to Ecco the Dolphin (exclusive)
• EA and Insomniac Games will launch Fuse on May 28

Mobile news

• Clash of Clans mobile gamemaker Supercell is raising more than $100M at an $800M valuation
• Casual-game developer Big Fish celebrates 10 years and 2 billion downloads
• App marketing costs fall back to Earth after holiday highs
• Candy Crush Saga developer reveals two new Facebook games
• Fish Out Of Water! is the next mobile addiction from Fruit Ninja’s developers
• The future of mobile graphics: Better, faster, cheaper, & way more 3D
• Fetch wants to help smartphone users find games that they love
• Prepare your panzer: Wargaming is taking World of Tanks mobile
• App Annie reveals massive success for GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons
• Verizon launches games portal using PlayPhone technology
• Joyride’s voice-activated mobile apps ‘turn cars into starships’
• Com2Us rides the Kakao mobile games wave and expands to the U.S.

Previews

• Ouya looks pretty but lacks killer games so far (preview)
• Space Hulk translates the board game to digital … with changes (preview)
• Infinite Crisis proves that superhuman brawls never get old (preview)
• Battlefield 4 goes for a human feel in the middle of its incredible carnage (preview)
• Divekick and Sportsfriends turn friends and strangers into rivals on the PlayStation 3 (preview)
• Everybody was kung-fu fighting: Age of Wushu comes to America (preview)

Reviews

• BioShock Infinite’s a fascinating ‘what if’ tale of American conservatism with a few flaws (review)
• The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct leaves you feeling empty (review)

Interviews

• Ahoy, transmedia! Warner Bros. sails into digital games (interview)
• Jade Raymond’s growing empire at Ubisoft (interview)
• David Ko sees mobile as critical for Zynga’s comeback in 2013 (interview)

Pieces of Flair

• 10 new Grand Theft Auto V screenshots (gallery)
• Battlefield 4: Check out the first screenshots
• BioShock Infinite guide: The best Vigors and Gear to make Columbia burn
• HarmoKnight: Finding the 5 ‘pinklefs’ and unlocking the secret world

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Gamers are all freaking out about the amazing BioShock Infinite, but publisher Take-Two Interactive has another big release due out in 2013: Grand Theft Auto V.

Building more hype, developer Rockstar sent us 10 new screenshots of its latest open-world crime game. GTAV should hit retail Sept. 17 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Check out the latest batch of screens from Grand Theft Auto V:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Films based on video games (and vice versa) usually suck, but using game characters to recreate posters of popular movies works surprisingly well.

Take the image above, for example. I swapped the T. rex from Jurassic Park’s poster with Bowser, and the palm trees at the bottom with Super Mario World’s Valley of Bowser overhead map. Yoshi was my original choice since he’s a dinosaur, but King Koopa looks far more menacing.

Below I added 10 more reimagined movie posters that should please cinephiles and gamers alike. Hover the cursor over the picture to launch the gallery.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I can, at any given moment, tell you how long before BioShock Infinite releases in months, hours, and minutes. I keep that figure in my head at all times.

No lie, people in the gaming industry get to see and play some of the coolest, most anticipated games long before anyone else does, but generally speaking, that really only applies to the games they’re working on. Unless their desk is in the same building as the development team — and sometimes not even then — they have to sit around and wait just like everybody else.

So we polled a few famous names in the game industry and asked what they were waiting for. Specifically, we asked this: Aside from any project you’re involved in, what game are you looking forward to the most in 2013 and why?

Edmund McMillen, Team Meat (Super Meat Boy, Mew-Genics)

I’m most looking forward to playing The Witness. I was part of beta testing early on and actually asked to no longer be a part because I really wanted to experience the game how it was meant to be played.

Andy Gavin, author (Untimed) and retired cofounder, Naughty Dog (Jak and Daxter)

The Last of Us. I’m not personally involved, but call me twisted — the idea of a teen girl in a postapocalyptic world is pretty cool. And I’m not just talking sticking a girl in there gratuitously; Naughty Dog can be counted on to write a good story and actually deal with the visceral/emotional experience.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

BioShock Infinite, no doubt. Anyone who picks anything else for 2013 is simply crazy — don’t listen to any of the nonsense coming out of their mouths, ever. The original BioShock is one of the best games of all time, and I can’t wait to be immersed in another imaginative, dreamy (or nightmarish) world by the same developers.

Randy Pitchford, CEO, Gearbox Software (Borderlands 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines)

In just a few days, Ni no Kuni comes out, and I can’t wait! [Hey, Randy, it's out! --Ed.]

Jenova Chen, cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey)

I’m mostly looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve seen some online in-game footage that really makes me fantasize about the things you can do in the game. I hope it delivers the fantasy.

Yoshinori Ono, producer, Capcom (Street Fighter IV)

I would have to go with Pikmin 3 for the Wii U! There hasn’t been a new release for this series in a while, so even if there aren’t many changes since the previous iteration, I am definitely looking forward to playing it. Nintendo must have some innovative ways to utilize the Wii U GamePad up their sleeves as well, so that is another thing I will be watching out for.

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The next installment in the long-running open-world Grand Theft Auto series debuts Sept. 17. Many analysts, gamers, and the executives at Take-Two expect the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft to launch not long after that date.

So did Take-Two delay Grand Theft Auto V to somehow correspond with the launch of the next PlayStation and Xbox?

Apparently not.

During a conference call to investors today, Take-Two chief executive officer Strauss Zelnick denied that the delay had anything to do with next-gen systems. This seems to eliminate the possibility that the GTA V will launch on both the current systems and the next PlayStation and Xbox, though the CEO stopped short of explicitly stating that. Instead, he suggested that the next Grand Theft Auto just needed some extra polish.

“The delay is required to deliver what people expect,” he said.

Zelnick also isn’t worried about the next-gen hype robbing any gamers away from Grand Theft Auto V.

“There is not one gamer who is going to sit out Grand Theft Auto V hoping that something down the road will be better,” Zelnick said during a conference call with investors today. “Grand Theft Auto V stands alone. It’s a unique IP. We’re all very excited about it. It will blow people away at a level people don’t anticipate.”

The executive was also pretty happy about the strategic benefits of the September date.

“As it happens, I think September is a great window,” said Zelnick. “It’s an open field right before the fall. That’s not the reason the title moved, but I think it’s a great window.”

As of right now, Grand Theft Auto V is the only major release currently set for a September release.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Reckon you can wait 8 months for Grand Theft Auto V? Developer Rockstar thinks so. We’re not so sure.

It’s pretty clear that no one’s playing GTA V before September, though, following news that the open-world game isn’t hitting its anticipated spring launch window.

But don’t just sit and watch the GTA V trailers endlessly while you wait for that pesky summer sun to come and go. Watch these eight fan-made alternatives instead, created using Minecraft, Lego bricks, Battlefield 3, old GTA games, and the real-life streets of Rio De Janeiro. Heck, one even showcases Super Mario’s bad-ass side.

And remind yourself that it’s only 200-odd days until GTA V’s Sept. 17 launch. Just long enough to listen to that gravelly voice-over another 264,000 times (or thereabouts).

Grand Theft Minecart

Minecraft players keep amazing gamers with their creations. The ridiculously popular open-world crafting game hosts this impressive take on GTA V’s first trailer.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 1

It’s wonderfully endearing to watch highly trained military personnel shuffling around masquerading as female passersby. This homage to Grand Theft Auto V’s first trailer must have been a blast to make.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 2

Trailer one was a tough act to follow. This one beats it hands down, with the masterful use of an EOD [bomb disposal] bot as a rottweiler just over a minute in. The tank train is a stroke of genius, too.

Lego Grand Theft Auto V

I hate to think how long it took to re-create the GTA V trailer in stop-motion, using only Lego bricks, in this entry for YouTube channel Machinima’s Interactive Film Festival. Probably not far off eight months.

Grand Theft Mario V

Nintendo’s iconic hero Mario reveals his darker side in this parody trailer by humor website Jest. It’s tough being a family man, Mario. Just ask Bowser.

GTA V Real-Life Edition: Rio de Janeiro

Much darker than the other videos featured here, this fan-made film really captures the dichotomous nature of life in Brazil’s capital city. Those are some mean streets.

GTA V vs GTA: San Andreas

Re-creating a 2012 trailer with a game engine from 2004 is a tough task. This trailer makes it look easy, though, with San Andreas-era Los Santos ably standing in for its modern-day likeness.

GTA V vs GTA IV

This piece of work really showcases the progress that Rockstar has made, in terms of visuals, in the time between Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V. It sure makes for an interesting comparison.

[Top image via Vareide/YouTube. Featured image via Ketegano15/YouTube.]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Bethesda finally announces The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim expansions for the PlayStation 3, Disney shuts down Epic Mickey developer Junction Point Studios, and Rock Star pushes the Grand Theft Auto V release date to Sept. 17.

You’ll also find reviews for Antichamber, Omerta: City of Gangsters, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Skulls of the Shogun as well as previews for Tearaway, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Serious Sam Double D XXL.

News:

• The DeanBeat: Does it make sense for game developers to publish on the doomed BlackBerry?
• Former chief game designer Brian Reynolds: On Zynga, games, and the future
• Bethesda announces dates for PlayStation 3 Skyrim expansions
• Ubisoft creative director discusses hooking fans again with Splinter Cell: Blacklist (video)
• Sony invites the world to see the future of PlayStation on Feb. 20
• Drone pilots stationed in Afghanistan talk video games in a Reddit AMA
• Splinter Cell’s creative director has the best Minecraft story ever
• Chartboost invites international developers to experience Silicon Valley
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Fire Emblem, Puddle, and The Cave
• Brain-training service Lumosity hits 35M users and is now adding 100K users a day
• Grand Theft Auto V release date delayed to Sept. 17
• Nintendo president: No price cut for Wii U
• EA’s top executives paint the game industry’s grim picture — and how new consoles will change it
• EA’s CEO makes a passionate response on game violence controversy question
• Dishonorable discharge? EA removing Medal of Honor from release rotation
• Electronic Arts delays Insomniac’s Fuse beyond April
• Origin has 39 million users (and 4 other surprising numbers about EA)
• U.S. senator: ‘I think video games [are] a bigger problem than guns’ — and other out-of-touch old dudes
• EA narrowly beats expectations for holiday game sales
• Anti-censorship group: Massachusetts removing games from rest stops is ‘constitutionally problematic’
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist has side missions and may ship without a main menu
• Black Ops II’s in-game live-streaming feature adds support for Twitch
• FanDuel raises $11M for daily fantasy sports contests
• Nintendo reports a thin third-fiscal-quarter profit and sells 3M Wii U consoles in first season
• Zynga’s chief game designer, Brian Reynolds, resigns
• Sony harnesses the power of the Internet to promote Planetside 2
• Aksys Games to release HD version of Muramasa: The Demon Blade for PlayStation Vita
• EA DICE is porting Frostbite engine to Mac (Update)
• League of Legends Season 3: Taking the ‘e’ out of e-sports
• Disney closes Epic Mickey developer Junction Point Studios (updated with comments from Warren Spector)
• Crytek picks up some former Darksiders developers for a new Austin-based studio
• Experience earned in Gears of War: Judgment demo carries over to final game
• DICE Summit to open with J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell

Mobile News:

• Open-source social-mobile games platform OpenKit goes into closed-beta test
• Temple Run 2 hits 50 million downloads in 2 weeks
• Memorabilia company Steiner Sports partners with SportsPicker to gamify its marketing
• PlayPhone signs up more developers for its mobile social gaming network
• Layoffs at Disney-owned studios could signal increased focus on mobile and social
• Mobile game monetization startup PlayHaven’s new COO: ‘There is life after Google’
• Google Play revenue growing 10X faster than Apple’s iOS app store
• Google Play and Apple app store sales increasingly dominated by Japan, Korea, and China
• Epic Games finally releases Epic Citadel on Android

Interviews:

• How Ubisoft’s designers transformed Sam Fisher into a ‘panther’ and a leader in Splinter Cell: Blacklist (interview)
• The Final Fantasy franchise’s future hinges on Lightning Returns (interview)
• Why developer teamPixel is making a bid for the Homeworld series (interview)
• Gearbox CEO: ‘Invoking the legacy’ for Aliens: Colonial Marines
• From the ashes of THQ: Left 4 Dead developer ‘super excited’ to work with 2K Games (exclusive interview)
• Life after Epic: Getting to know Cliff Bleszinski (exclusive interview, part three: his opinions on shooters)
• Former KingsIsle VP and creative director Todd Coleman on what’s next for him (exclusive interview)

Previews:

• Tearaway is a digital love letter to physical paper (hands-on preview)
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist lets you play like a ghost, a gunman, or a panther (preview)
• Injustice: Gods Among Us is not a reskinned Mortal Kombat (hands-on preview)
• Serious Sam Double D XXL’s multiplayer is like insane sour cream on crazy-ass nachos (hands-on preview)

Reviews:

• Calling all game developers: You need to play and learn from Antichamber (review)
• Omerta: City of Gangsters brings an authentic yet rough mobster experience (review)
• Fire Emblem: Awakening is one of the deepest and best 3DS games (review)
• Skulls of the Shogun is a balanced turn-based tactics game with clever writing (review)

Community Spotlight:

• Cubicle culture and the potential of indie games to tell stories differently
• Developer responsibility: What’s missing from video game violence
• Should Wii U owners demand more GamePad-friendly ports?
• The extremes people go to when hunting down Achievement points

Pieces of Flair:

• Required listening: Ni no Kuni, Anarchy Reigns, and an interview with Aliens: Colonial Marines composer Kevin Riepl
• Evoland shows how action-adventure games have matured, without the boring history lesson
• Dude blasts through Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 in about 4 minutes
• Surgeon Simulator 2013 shows the frightening real-world discrepancy between knowledge and experience
• This is what a 2,800-strong space battle in Eve Online looks like (gallery)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Developer RockStar games just announced that it is pushing back the release of Grand Theft Auto V to Sept. 17. This is a four-month delay from the previously scheduled window of spring 2013.

This update comes from RockStar’s blog:

Dear all
Today, we have an official release date to share with you: Grand Theft Auto V will arrive in stores on September 17, 2013.

We know this is about four months later than originally planned and we know that this short delay will come as a disappointment to many of you, but, trust us, it will be worth the extra time. GTAV is a massively ambitious and complex game and it simply needs a little more polish to be of the standard we and, more importantly, you require.

To all Grand Theft Auto fans, please accept our apologies for the delay, and our promise that the entire team here is working very hard to make the game all it can be. We are doing all we can to help ensure it will meet if not exceed your expectations come September – we thank you for your support and patience.

Yours,
The GTA Team

Take Two originally scheduled to release the open-world crime game in March, but the publisher announced a delay to “spring 2013″ in an October call to investors. That caused Take Two to reduce its revenue outlook for the fiscal year.

Now, GTA V won’t make the spring. It will barely make summer. The felony-named title is scheduled to hit retailers only five days before the start of autumn.

Grand Theft Auto V is set in a fictional take on Los Angeles called Los Santos. It follows three playable protagonists who are together drawn to the criminal underworld.

This is the continuation of the fictional universe that RockStar established in Grand Theft Auto IV.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Throw your Lego Star Wars games into the trash. How can they possible satisfy us now that we’ve seen what Grand Theft Auto looks like when re-created with real Lego?

If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, then be sure to check out the video below. In it a film group called Thefourmonkeys rereated the first Grand Theft Auto V trailer shot-for-shot with Lego. The process is also known as brickfilm or brickfilming. Check it out:

So, how did they do this? And who are Thefourmonkeys?

Well, Thefourmonkeys isn’t an experimental video-production club at some university. It’s a family of four who love to make movies with the toy building blocks. It’s a dad, a mom, and two kids. They don’t provide their names, mostly for privacy reasons. The dad does all the stop-motion while the mom writes the scripts and directs. Both parents occasionally lend their voices to the movies along with their son, 14, and their daughter, 6.

On its website, Thefourmonkeys explains some of the equipment and software it uses to make the films:

We are currently using a MacBook Pro for all aspects of brickfilming. We use Dragonframe stop-motion software with a Canon EOS T2i camera. We edit and add special effects and audio with Final Cut Pro on a MacBook laptop.

The family then does all of the posing of the characters and objects in the Lego world themselves. For this Grand Theft Auto V video, they shot 15 different frames of animation for every second. That means they did around 1,400 different shots for this film alone.

Thefourmonkeys submitted this film as a contender in the Machima Interactive Film Festival. This event invites all kinds of filmmakers to submit their game-inspired creations and then viewers can vote on their favorite. The Lego GTA V short is competing in the action/drama category.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Just how far has Rockstar’s RAGE engine come since 2008′s Grand Theft Auto IV? Someone took the time to re-create the recently released second trailer for Grand Theft Auto V using its predecessor’s engine. The differences are immediately noticeable.

Both original videos are below, or you can view them side-by-side here.

Grand Theft Auto V:

Grand Theft Auto IV version:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat prepares for the Wii U launch Sunday with all the guides and reviews you’ll ever need, Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes on sale and gets reviewed, and Xbox Live turns 10.

You’ll also find reviews for When Vikings Attack, Angry Birds Star Wars, and a Threeview of Halo 4.

News:

• Sony’s PlayStation 3 hits 70M sold, good enough for third place
• YouTube rolls out new Wii app just in time for the Wii U launch
• Second Quest raises $70K to reimagine Zelda and games through art
• Gogamingo’s startup idea: Compete in tournaments, win real stuff
• Console-quality gaming without the console: OnLive is live in some LG TVs
• Valve cofounder Gabe Newell going to be a hall of famer
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Epic Mickey, Myst, and Hotel Transylvania
• Over 1 million players completed Halo 4′s campaign in the first five days
• Badgeville simplifies gamification for developers
• Rumble Entertainment seeks triple-A quality with Nightmare Guardians tablet game
• After a decade of service, Xbox Live usage hits an all-time high
• ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane signs on as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell film
• Major League Gaming: Serving 11.7 million viewers in 2012
• ChangYou new free-to-play portal targets midcore and hardcore gamers
• New Grand Theft Auto V trailer balances comedy, drama, and skydiving out of jeeps (video)
• THQ says it is in talks about extending its credit line with bank
• Zynga juggles leadership team as CFO departs for Facebook
• Star Citizen Kickstarter reveals early piloting gameplay
• Sony launches ‘augmented reality’ title Wonderbook: Book of Spells from Harry Potter author
• No second chances: Treyarch will ban anyone caught hacking Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Here’s what a $99.99 box of Tomb Raider stuff looks like
• PlayStation Plus launches on PS Vita next week
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s unlikely cameo: Former CIA chief David Petraeus
• Halo 4 sold a record-breaking $220M in its first 24 hours
• BioWare Montreal using the Battlefield 3 engine for the next Mass Effect
• Notch: Minecraft PC sales just passed 8 million

Mobile news:

• Glu Mobile lays off employees at two offices, closes a third
• Zynga brings its match-three gem game to mobile
• Mobile developer Intellijoy partners with YogiPlay to improve its educational apps (exclusive)
• Mobile game startup Pocket Gems appoints No. 2 exec as CEO
• After 400 million downloads, Storm8 releases new puzzle game to continue customer engagement
• Kixeye: Zynga is ‘desperate’ to get hands on its secrets
• New Kiip expands beyond mobile game rewards to other apps and platforms
• PlayHaven rounds up $8 million to finance international expansion
• Tapjoy runs into new drama over its app download incentives
• Time to get a bit fit: Fitbit One activity tracker now shipping
• Mobile-and-social app analytics firm Swrve raises $6.25M (exclusive)

Wii U:

• 10 things you don’t know about the Nintendo Wii U
• Wii U players could get an unfair advantage in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer
• Wii U shortage will be severe during holidays, but new console may not outsell Wii in long run
• GamesBeat’s Wii U roundup: Everything you ever wanted to know
• Here is the Wii U menu music (and more)
• Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt gives us the latest on the Wii U launch (interview)

Reviews:

• Donuts and penguins are weapons of war When Vikings Attack (review)
• Nintendo Land: Where the amusement sometimes ends (review)
• New Super Mario Bros. U is far from new (review)
• What’s in the Box?! Call of Duty: Black Ops II Care Package edition (review)
• Breaking down the four different games in Call of Duty: Black Ops II (review)
• Threeview: Halo 4 reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• Angry Birds Star Wars plays off of both franchise’s strengths (review)

Pieces of flair:

• New Skyrim: Dragonborn screens reveal expansion’s inner Morrowind (gallery)
• If Halo’s Master Chief had a dating site profile
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II debuts at midnight openings around the world (photo gallery)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer unlock guide
• All-new screenshots for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• 2D game characters break into the real world

After last week’s massive info dump about the next Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games has finally released the second trailer (below). The first trailer, which debuted over a year ago, was light on plot details but heavy on showcasing the (usually) beautiful reimagining of Los Santos from Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas, GTA’s version of Los Angeles.

Since then we’ve learned that Grand Theft Auto V features three playable main characters (pictured above), a franchise first, but reading about it and seeing this band of not-so-merry men in action are two very different things. It’s nice to see that Rockstar seems to be maintaining a very nice balance of drama, comedy, and some of the most Hollywood-esque action sequences ever seen in a game.

Grand Theft Auto V is set for a spring 2013 release date.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Via a Game Informer magazine cover story, Rockstar has finally revealed the first concrete details on Grand Theft Auto V, which will be one of the biggest (and last) blockbuster games of this entire console generation. Grand Theft Auto IV has sold over 25 million copies globally since its 2008 release, and financial expectations for GTA V are so high that its delay into fiscal 2014 (spring 2013) caused publisher Take Two to readjust its earnings goal by hundreds of millions of dollars.

While no one doubts Grand Theft Auto V will sell phenomenally well, some of today’s reveal, and especially certain comments from Rockstar Games vice president of creative Dan Houser, have us slightly concerned. After all, if 2012 has proven anything, it’s that giants can and will eventually fall.

Threeway

The biggest change to the Grand Theft Auto formula is the implementation of three playable protagonists. Multiple main characters are nothing new to video games, though it is rare, given the difficulty for most developers to even build a convincing and worthwhile story for a single hero. However, Rockstar’s going one step further and allowing players to switch control between each character on the fly. You can be living large in one character’s mansion in the city of Los Santos one moment and then zoom out to a Google Earth-style overmap and come crashing down to possess another character several miles away.

This swap mechanic will also factor into story missions. It’s ballsy and risky, but if executed properly, the idea is that you’ll spend less time doing mundane (but normally necessary) activities such as ladder-climbing and more time focusing on action sequences.

Meet the ‘heroes’

Michael, the star of the first trailer, is a highly successful but retired bank robber. He currently resides in a mansion in the Los Santos equivalent of Beverly Hills, but his personal life has got him wanting back in the game. He has a hate-hate relationship with his wife, who spends most of her time burning through his money on shopping sprees, and his teenage son and daughter provide plenty of conflict as well.

Trevor (pictured above, left) is a war veteran/drug addict who lives out in the desert amid meth heads and bikers. He seems like what Lynch from Kane & Lynch would be if IO Interactive had reasonably competent writers. And Franklin (center), is a 20-something hustler working as a repoman. The chop shop missions were always some of my favorite in past games, so hopefully Rockstar can make it fresh and exciting again through Franklin’s story.

“Diversity” must mean something different to Rockstar

The word “diversity” is thrown around a lot in the GTA V cover story, but looking at the three main characters, I can’t help but feel like we’re just circling familiar territory. There three characters this time around, and not one of them is female? Or Asian? Or Hispanic?

No matter how interesting these characters end up being, the playable roster seems like a missed opportunity to really shake the GTA formula up.

Los Santos, again

Although Rockstar has tried to replicate Los Angeles many times before, including in LA Noire, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and the Los Santos region of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it felt it still needed to do a “proper” version of L.A. Rockstar claims Los Santos is larger than the worlds of Red Dead Redemption, San Andreas, and GTA IV combined and will include a wide array of environments, including city, desert, and hints of underwater excursions.

To get around, players will have access to plenty of cars and trucks, BMX bikes, mountain bikes, road bikes, dirt bikes, ATVs, Jet Skis, and helicopters. Planes are also included, which you gain early access because of Trevor, who was a pilot in the military.

Side activities

Rockstar is promising improved side activities, including yoga, triathalons, jet skiing, base-jumping, tennis, and a complete golf course. “What we learned on the best aspects of GTA IV and Red Dead was that it’s better to have one really good design team [?] than five half-assed one that aren’t that fun.”

Most side activities will be available to all three main characters, but Rockstar says it “wants one or two key minigame activities per character to really help the characters get separated from each other.”

In worlds as large as this, it’s important to build not only entertaining optional content but also something rewarding as well. Assassin’s Creed III had lots of “stuff” to do, but none of it ultimately mattered in relation to the rest of the game. I’m not sure any one open-world game has nailed down its optional content perfectly, including past Rockstar games, and Grand Theft Auto V has a lot of space to fill.

Customize your look, not your gut

In San Andreas, players could feed and exercise CJ to change him physically and impact his stats and abilities. In GTA V, this is no longer possible, and each of three main characters has skillsets all their own.

This omission doesn’t seem to be a decision made for a better game, but rather because implementing it was too “hard” for Rockstar. “The main thing is at a technical level,” says Houser, “to get the changing scale of the character — to get them bigger and smaller — is hard, and in San Andreas the standard definition graphics were more forgiving.”

That’s what being one of the leading developers in the industry is all about, right? Taking the easy way out and excluding popular features that previous games did years ago. In all seriousness, part of why Grand Theft Auto IV felt underwhelming to me is because its predecessor dwarfed it in terms of content. It took the franchise several steps back instead of moving it forward, and if advancing technology is going to cause developers to remove as much (or more) as they add, that’s kind of a big problem.

Building a better bank-buster

The uniting factor between all three main characters is money. More specifically, bank heists, which GTA V focuses on more than any other entry in the series. The movie Heat has influenced plenty of missions in open-world crime games, and Rockstar intends to include multiple this time around.

“People are in love with doing the bank jobs, particularly when they feel like they have prepped the bank jobs,” says Houser. “We’ve never felt we’ve done a great job with a bank job, so we decided, ‘Let’s properly invest the story and the mission design for some of the missions into making some of these built out series of heists.’”

Don’t expect pitch-perfect photorealism

One of the more interesting tidbits of the feature is Rockstar’s intentional approach to near-photorealism. “I think photorealism is a bit of a boring goal, actually. It’s not really a goal at all, more an inevitable technical achievement. Pushing Grand Theft Auto a bit toward photorealism has suited its grittier approach, but it’s vitally important to give the world and the characters in it their own personality. It’s just more fun, more interesting, and — to me at least — a lot more appealing.”

Grand Theft Auto V is being developed on Rockstar’s proprietary RAGE engine, which has been used to power games as far back as 2006’s Rockstar Table Tennis.

Oppa Molyneux style

This reveal feature has me concerned in a few places where Houser says he felt previous games didn’t quite execute on something very well. Houser describes all the improvements being made to the gameplay and reflects on the downsides of previous games, calling the cars in GTA IV “big and boatlike.” Likewise, Houser’s comments about never creating a great bank heist mission leads me to ask why they didn’t work to get it right the first time around? What aspect of GTA V will Houser be lamenting when it’s time to promote the next Red Dead game?

Too soon to tell

As I said at the opening of this article, Rockstar has given us a lot to excited about, but GTA V also some warning signs that don’t even require much reading between the lines. Despite GTA’s nearing spring 2013 release window, there seems to be an awful lot that even the developers don’t know about the game yet. This includes non-vital elements such as the melee combat, the final quality of which Houser says depends on “the resources we allocate to it.” That’s not a very firm commitment. But it also extends to the side missions and core character switching mechanic too.

Likewise, Rockstar’s fairly pristine track record has notably wavered a bit recently. Any game it releases demands a massive amount of hype on par with anything from Blizzard, and the sales certainly follow, but the actual quality of Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV certainly left some, such as myself, wanting. If something as highly anticipated as Diablo III can be a massive letdown, then certainly Grand Theft Auto V and the people who published L.A. Noire are not infallible.

All that said, I’m still looking forward to the second trailer, which Rockstar will be releasing on November 14.

Game Informer via Gaming Everything

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This week, Valve claims the Linux operating system is more viable than Windows 8, Disney buys Star Wars studio Lucasfilm as well as LucasArts, and hurricane Sandy delays Take-Two Interactive’s earning call.

You’ll also find reviews for Halo 4, Pid, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, Assassin’s Creed III,  WWE 13, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

News:

• Halo 4, Xbox, and American Express partnership: kill Covenant nasties to earn cold, hard cash
• The DeanBeat: Halo 4 is the romance of Master Chief and Cortana, disguised as a combat game
• Startup accelerator Tandem Capital rolls its new capital into mobile technology and games
• Twitch embeds livestreaming in Sony Online Entertainment’s Planetside 2
• Flurry’s knowledge is power as it raises a whopping $25M for mobile app analytics
• Wii U’s browser is better equipped for HTML5 than Internet Explorer 10 on PC
• Now streaming for Windows 8: 1,000 games from Agawi’s GameZen
• Preorder Crysis 3 and return to the beginning with a free download of Crysis
• Here come the brands: Wizard of Oz game launches on Facebook
• Mystery narrative and new features headline CityVille 2′s launch
• Minecraft-like first-person shooter heads to Steam in December
• Israel’s Plarium debuts graphically rich hardcore Stormfall game on Facebook (exclusive)
• Mountain Dew-branded Halo 4 game makes a weird sort of sense
• Valve prepping next batch of Greenlight-approved games in November
• Disney’s recent history suggests it might not be ‘business as usual’ at LucasArts for long
• Grand Theft Auto V delay blows a $600 million hole in Take-Two’s outlook for 2013
• Imbibe a Nos Energy Drink to unlock Assassin’s Creed III multiplayer character
• Disney buys LucasArts alongside Lucasfilm (updated)
• Gaming’s ‘Nite to Unite’ raises over $800,000 for children’s charities and scholarships
• Publisher Valve says Linux is more viable for games than Windows 8
• Browser-based steampunk: City of Steam enters closed beta in November
• Hawken publisher Meteor Entertainment raises $18M as big launch draws near
• Developers are mostly thrilled with the chance to make money with Windows 8 games

Mobile news:

• Boom! EA brings its Madden football franchise to iOS & Facebook
• Developer support builds for Ngmoco’s mobile social gaming network
• Amazon Game Studios launches its first mobile game: Air Patriots
• Joining the insane social sports-betting crowd, Bunker Mode debuts its High Limit Sports app (exclusive)
• Wooga expands into mobile with its Bubble Island arcade shooter game
• Leap Motion hires former Apple director to lead its marketing team
• Gameloft doesn’t hesitate to support Windows Phone 8 with 12 optimized games
• Activision preps two more Skylanders mobile games for this year
• Developers wary about investing in Windows Phone 8 games

Earnings:

• Sony’s game division revenues fall nearly 16 percent in Q2 2012
• Hurricane Sandy forces publisher Take-Two Interactive to postpone earnings report

Reviews:

• Halo 4 is the next chapter, not the next evolution (review)
• Pid turns childlike magic into planet-sized punishment (review)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s bearded badasses can’t defeat mediocrity (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: The revolution will be gripping but glitchy (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation can’t match the quality of its console brethren (review)
• WWE ’13 gives fans plenty of nostalgic Attitude (review)

Previews:

• Nintendo Land will make you hate your friends and family (hands-on preview)

Interviews:

• 343 Industries’ Josh Holmes on Halo 4′s love story, weaponry, and new enemies (interview)
• Better graphics and physics gave designers more freedom for Halo 4 (interview)
• Treyarch’s Mark Lamia promises that Call of Duty: Black Ops II will push gaming’s boundaries (exclusive interview)
• How to find the secret website in Shadowgate’s Kickstarter video and more (interview)
• David Vonderhaar’s expert advice on how to get ahead in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer (exclusive interview)

Pieces of flair:

• You don’t have to play horror games to pee your pants in fear
• You can play Tetris on this pumpkin
• From celluloid to pixels: Movie personalities crash video games

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive had a strong quarter on the back of its first-person action game Borderlands 2, but the company reduced its outlook for fiscal year 2013 (which ends March 31, 2013) due Grand Theft Auto V slipping into fiscal year 2014.

Take-Two produced $288 million in second quarter revenues which is up 169 percent from the same period fiscal year 2012. It reported a GAAP net loss of $12.4 million, which is also better than last year when the publisher reported a loss of $47.3 million.

“Take-Two’s second quarter revenue and earnings exceeded our outlook, driven by the breakout success of 2K’s Borderlands 2 and robust demand for our catalog and digitally delivered offerings,” said Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two’s chief executive officer. “Our business continues to fire on all cylinders, led by terrific early results from 2K’s NBA 2K13, and the outlook for our upcoming releases such as BioShock Infinite is stronger than ever. As a result, we continue to expect to deliver revenue growth and Non-GAAP profits in fiscal year 2013. Moreover, with Grand Theft Auto V slated for spring 2013, we are poised to generate substantial revenue and earnings growth in fiscal year 2014.”

The publisher revised its fiscal year 2013 earnings down to $1.1 to $1.2 billion down from $1.7 to $1.8 billion. This is clearly the result of moving Grand Theft Auto V into spring 2013. That pushes the potential blockbuster into the corporation’s next fiscal year.

Take-Two’s strongest gains in its second quarter came from Borderlands 2, which sold 5 million units, and catalog sales of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. Previously released games like those accounted for 28 percent of net revenues. It hopes to continue to capitalize on its strong back catalog with its Rockstar Games Collection: Edition 1 bundle which comprises Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition.

Digital sales were up 108 percent compared to fiscal 2012. Downloadable versions of Borderlands 2 and Max Payne 3 as well as the Grand Theft Auto and Civilization franchises composed 20 percent of Take-Two’s quarterly revenues. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is headed to Android and iOS devices soon. A spinoff of the Borderlands franchise called Borderlands Legends just hit Apple’s iOS yesterday.

Other highlights of Take-Two’s quarter included the 2K Sports release NBA 2K13 which sold 49 percent more units than the franchise’s previous best seller, NBA 2K11.

Take-Two provided no solid performance numbers for strategy action game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but Take-Two claimed that it is a ”commercial success with strong digital sales.” Two new downloadable add-ons are due out for the game before the end of the year with more scheduled for calendar 2013.

Take-Two also pointed at its success in working with social and mobile developers in Asian markets. NBA 2K All Stars from developer Gree attracted more than 300,000 users in less than two months according to the company’s internal estimates. It also plans to release a massively multiplayer online version of Civilization developed by South Korean studio XLGames.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Rockstar games today announced that it’s scheduled Grand Theft Auto V for worldwide release this spring. Preorders begin on Nov. 5. News of the spring release leaked yesterday, but this confirms it.

Rockstar North is developing Grand Theft Auto V, and this is important because it’s the studio that created the series. It claims that GTA V will be the biggest and most ambitious GTA game to date.

Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser said via press release, “Grand Theft Auto V builds on everything we’ve learned about open-world game design. We can’t wait to share it with fans.”

This announcement comes shortly after news that Hurricane Sandy forced publisher Take-Two Interactive to postpone their quarterly earnings report. Perhaps this will appease some of the guys in suits. If anything, gamers will be happy that GTA V finally has a release-date window.

Come spring 2013, Grand Theft Auto V will be available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (no word on the PC version). The release had no mention of a Wii U version, in case anyone was wondering.

[Via Rockstar Games]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The effects of the gigantic storm that devastated many areas in the Northeast is rippling through the game industry. Take-Two Interactive originally planned on reporting its fiscal earnings for second quarter of fiscal 2013 this afternoon, but the video-game publisher is postponing this announcement and related events due to Hurricane Sandy.

This natural disaster is a legitimate tragedy. Many people are still in danger or without power because of the storm. Our first thoughts are with the people in harm’s way and the people trying to save them. But other news is happening in our trivial corner of the world, and we have to cover it.

If anything, Take-Two cancelling its earnings report indicates just how wide-reaching the effects of Sandy are. Corporations almost never delay a scheduled investors event like this.

Take-Two is the parent publisher of developers like Grand Theft Auto studio Rockstar Games and Borderlands 2 studio Gearbox Software.

The New York Stock Exchange is closed today for the second day in a row. This is the first time since 1888 that the NYSE shut its doors on consecutive days for a weather-related event. On that occasion, a blizzard left 40-feet high snowbanks in the streets of Manhattan. The NYSE should reopen on Wednesday.

Take-Two Interactive plans to reschedule its earnings report but provided no suggested date.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s now six months until spring 2013 and the end of publisher Take-Two Interactive’s fiscal year. Yet we still don’t have a release date for the company’s highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V, and that’s causing some analysts to doubt the open-world action game can make its predicted first-quarter 2013 release.

“We see increasing risk to the presumed March release window,” Baird Equity Research software analyst Colin Sebastian told GamesBeat. “I believe the retail and distribution channels need time to prepare for a launch of this magnitude.”

The last time we spoke with analysts about Grand Theft Auto, they were confident that the game would hit before the end of March due to the pressure the company was under from the predictions it made for the financial year.

“The company’s guidance [for the year] calls for over $1 billion in revenue contribution from [subsidiary] Rockstar Games,” Wedbush Morgan software analyst Michael Pacther told GamesBeat in an email interview. “Max Payne 3 did around $150 million, catalog sales will be another $150 million, and digital sales maybe produce another $50 million. They will miss [$1 billion] by a mile if GTA doesn’t come out.”

Pachter is pointing out that, between Max Payne 3 and Rockstar’s other sales, it is still $650 million short of what Take-Two predicted the developer would make before the end of March. That’s a huge hole that will be difficult to revise with investors.

“To be honest, they could be launching the game next month and have some perverse strategy that they don’t need to let anyone know until the last minute,” Pachter said. “They were supposedly done with voice over work a year ago, so it might be coming out soon.”

Or it could be coming later in 2013.

The point is that a lack of a solid date is causing uncertainty. Barring some surprise-attack strategy as Pachter mentioned, the longer this uncertainty persists, the more unlikely a pre-April release seems.

“In the past, the lack of a date might not have been remarkable, but now it’s meaningful,” Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. analyst Robert Kay told GamesBeat. “Meaningful, but not definitive.”

Sebastian believes that if the crime-simulating Rockstar game does slip into the next fiscal year it could cause a significant dip in the Take-Two stock, but it should bounce back when the studio finally does announce the title. ”Rockstar prioritizes quality over release timing,” Sebastian said.

We know that’s true, and as nice as it would be for Take-Two if it nailed its financials, its more important for the company to protect the value of the Grand Theft Auto property. An unfinished release could do long-term damage to the publisher’s outlook.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Rockstar Games has been in a sharing mood this week. The company has released another handful of new screenshots for the immensely anticipated Grand Theft Auto V, which essentially went dark after an unexpected trailer reveal last November.

The latest screens show off a set of “Leisure” activities such as parachuting, tennis, and motocross, as well as a set of “Transport” options, including an exotic sports car and a fighter jet. Given the dated feel of graphics from unreleased triple-A titles this year (Assassin’s Creed III, for example, who insist the hardware has been maxed), Grand Theft Auto V almost looks to good to believe.

Rockstar has given no release date at this time, and very few details, even regarding plot and the main character, are known. Analysts have predicted the game could release as early as this holiday season, but it’s more likely coming out by March of next year.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Zynga is in hot water after allegations of insider trading, Diablo III players top 10 million, and a Konami employee won an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

You’ll also find game reviews for Deadlight and the Dark Knight Rises.

Game news:

The DeanBeat: How fast will the shift to huge growth for mobile games happen?

Papo & Yo and 10 other games that feature graffiti

As Sanctuary beckons, Diablo III players top 10M

Konami employee wins Olympic gold medal in gymnastics

Saban Brands buys Zombie Farm iOS gamemaker The Playforge

New online game from Schell lets fans contribute story lines, artwork, music, and more

Twin Engine Labs launches Pentakill app to not suck at League of Legends

Working on generations of game consoles: a developer’s perspective

Bing Rewards earns you Microsoft Points, but not when you use it on an Xbox 360

Why you’re likely to be playing Grand Theft Auto V by March

For Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, success is measured in DeLoreans and geeked-out fans

Spy vs Spy game creator tells the story of a rerelease nearly 30 years in the making

Oculus launches Kickstarter campaign for virtual reality gaming headset

Leaked pictures of the next Xbox’s developmental kit, codenamed Durango

Nintendo’s Japanese servers struggle to keep up with New Super Mario Bros. 2 digital sales

MMO news:

World of Warcraft loses over one million subscribers in second quarter

Tracking Star Wars: The Old Republic’s declining subscribers

How to engage 200M users: The secrets of MMO storytelling success (exclusive)

With subscribers below 1M, Star Wars: The Old Republic will go free-to-play this fall

Dragons, dinosaurs, and Transformers: RuneScape’s CEO on the future of free to play

Lawsuits:

Nintendo wins Wii patent lawsuit

Zynga stuck in real-life BadNewsVille: more lawsuits, COO demoted

First Zynga insider trading lawsuit filed

SeeYouInCourtVille: law firms investigating Zynga for possible insider trading

End of the quarter news:

As blockbusters keep selling, Activision Blizzard beats Wall Street’s expectations

Sony slashes Vita sales forecast after slow Q1 sales

Despite Star Wars slowdown, analysts aren’t in despair over EA’s performance

EA hits on earnings but misses on revenue target for June quarter

EA hires new CFO as it prepares to announce earnings

Previews:

Pokémon Black and White 2 looks to the past for inspiration (preview)

The Nintendo 3DS XL is the bigger, wiser brother of the 3DS (hands-on impressions)

Reviews:

Deadlight sets a poetic survival-horror tone but stumbles with melodramatic writing (review)

The Dark Knight Rises fails to soar above the mediocrity of licensed games (review)

Interviews: 

Death Rally paves a developer’s path into brave new world of games (interview)

Gamers at Work reveals the risks and emotional complications in entrepreneurship (interview)

Papaya Mobile’s new ad-exchange program could lure new developers to the platform (interview)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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