GamesBeat weekly roundup: Apple mulls buying Kinect sensor provider, The Last of Us rules June game sales

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, Animal Crossing, The Last of Us, and Minecraft dominate the June NPD sales numbers, Apple considers buying the developer of the first-gen Kinect gesture sensors, and Deep Silver Volition launches a faux government site for Saints Row IV.

You’ll also find a review for Breach & Clear as well as a preview for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

News:

• The DeanBeat: What will be the last generation’s last hurrah?
• Analyst thinks Grand Theft Auto V and next-gen could save 2013 software sales
• Valve releases Dota 2 on Linux and Mac
• Southpark co-creator Trey Parker says ‘F*** that!’ to DLC
• Meet Robot Loves Kitty, the studio that created video games in a tree house
• EA Sports has nonexclusive college football license for 3 years
• Capcom reboots Strider franchise for Xbox One and PlayStation 4
• Ubisoft CEO: ‘We need to release open worlds on a regular basis’
• First big Bitcoin acquisition: gambling site SatoshiDice bought for $11.5M
• Raptr and Twitch partner to offer one-click game livestreaming on PC
• Ubisoft ‘bullish’ on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sales
• Rising Star Games brings cult favorite Deadly Premonition to Steam Greenlight
• EA Sports will have real teams in next year’s college football game
• Trion Worlds’ End of Nations rebooted as battle arena game
• How Kinect automatically loads player settings in Killer Instinct for Xbox One
• Beloved gangster Johnny Gat returns from the dead for Saints Row IV
• Nexon invests in Brian Reynolds’ SecretNewCo game startup
• Bitstrips bootstraps social comics on Facebook to 10M users and 50M unique cartoons
• Lego Star Wars studio making game based on — what else? — the upcoming Lego movie
• Capcom announces Ultra Street Fighter IV with 5 new characters

Mobile news:

• Zynga partners with SessionM to launch in-game real-world rewards (exclusive)
• Papaya Mobile makes its AppFlood cross-promotion network transparent to developers
• Hardcore or bust: New wave of mobile strategy games target the core gamer
• Mobile platforms dominate as game investments grow in second quarter
• Monetization startup Appnext expands its social game discovery network to mobile
• Military-tactics game Breach & Clear hits iPad this week
• ICS Mobile readies its ProjectX platform for app discovery
• Atari pioneer and Pong creator launches Kickstarter for mobile game

Above: Saints Row IV government site.

Image Credit: Future US/Deep Silver

Weird news:

• The Entertainment Software Association outspends the NRA on lobbying politicians
• Saints Row IV developers launch faux U.S. government site
• American McGee pulls plug on OZombie Kickstarter campaign
• Activision launches Skylanders-branded Monopoly board game
• Xbox One chief product officer admits big mistakes in messaging

Retro returns:

• Capcom reboots Strider franchise for Xbox One and PlayStation 4
• Developer remakes Super Mario Bros. for Atari 2600

Funding and quarterly earnings:

• Animal Crossing: New Leaf sells 505K copies in June
• June 2013 NPD: The Last of Us, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft take top spots
• AMD chief touts video game chips as big diversification opportunity
• Game and content purchasing up 20 percent on Xbox Live in Microsoft’s Q4
• Xbox 360 sales slow for Microsoft in Q4
• Ubisoft slightly beats expectations with $99M first quarter
• Ouya launches fund to match Kickstarter game crowdfundings
• U.S. digital game revenue drops 1% from last year to $841M in June
• U.K.’s Frontier Developments rises 21% in first day on London’s AIM stock market
• Police Quest creator is back with spiritual successor Precinct (and it’s on Kickstarter, too)
• Kabam shareholders raise $38.5M in secondary offering at $700 million valuation

Acquisitions incorporated:

• First big Bitcoin acquisition: gambling site SatoshiDice bought for $11.5M
• Report: Apple considering $300M purchase of first-gen Microsoft Kinect gesture-sensor provider

Nintendo:

• It’s about to get easier to find 3DS StreetPass partners
• Nintendo Direct trailer roundup: Earthbound, The Wonderful 101, Mario & Luigi, and more
• New Nintendo Direct covers Earthbound’s Wii U release and more (updated)
• Pokémon Rumble U brings Skylanders-style toys to Wii U in August (gallery)

Bad news:

• NCAA will not renew contract with EA sports due to ‘costs of litigation’
• Court approves THQ liquidation; publisher officially dead
• Konami acknowledges 35,000 users accounts hacked

Reviews:

• Breach & Clear is ambitious, strategic, and shallow (review)

Previews:

• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified plays great and looks even better, but is that enough? (hands-on preview)

Interviews:

• A chat with Nick Pope, XCOM’s real-life UFO investigator (interview)
• Ocean Quigley steps out of Will Wright’s shadow 

Pieces of flair: 

• Going indie: Why 5 devs left their day jobs for creative independence (part one)
• Former Nexon America chief joins inspiring industrial design firm Daylight (exclusive)
• At 1-year anniversary, Korea’s Kakao mobile game platform hits 30M users and 400M game downloads