The streaming market is a tough place to cut your teeth as a business. The options are plentiful and there's a definite fight over the quality of streams made available. But the one thing you probably didn't expect is that some of these businesses aren't just fighting with each other, but also grinding the market against video games... yes, video games.

This isn't hyperbole or someone trying to extrapolate some hidden meaning or message from an executive during an investor call for the quarterly earnings report. Nope, this comes directly from Netflix. Inside the company's shareholder report there's a section labeled as "Competition". It states that Netflix sees one particular game as a bigger threat its business than any other streaming competitor...

This comes after Netflix opened the section stating that it earns around 10% of all the television screen time across viewership in the United States. That's not an insignificant amount of market share for a streaming network that has no national coverage across terrestrial networks. The section also states that it reaches "less than that" from mobile screen time while competing against other mobile apps, services, and functionality on mobile handsets.

Netflix also honestly admits that it has less market percentage in other countries due to the "lower penetration" of its services within those regions, likely due to lack of infrastructure to help support the bandwidth and availability of the network.

But in the case of the U.S., network infrastructure isn't an issue so much as Fortnite is. It's a pretty obvious gut-wrenching blow to HBO from Netflix to say that a video game is providing more competition for the service than one of the most recognized premium cable channels available.

Keep in mind that HBO is no slouch in terms of providing noteworthy and mainstream content, such as Game of Thrones.

However, if Fortnite is giving Netflix a tougher time than Game of Thrones, it speaks volumes to how much penetration Epic Games has not just in terms of the gaming market, but in overall screen-time usage by the average American using any digital device with streaming or online capabilities. And keep in mind that if you have a system that can play Fortnite it can just as well run Netflix.

Epic Games is probably more than pleased with the fact that a completely mega-company like Netflix, which is well outside of the gaming market, credited some of its loss of viewership to the highly popular third-person shooter.

In fact, Netflix seemed more worried about Fortnite than some of its nearest competitors like Hulu, who it claimed was almost "non-existent in Canada". Ouch.

Netflix didn't resort to any euphemisms for its assessments of the competition, noting that YouTube's few minutes worth of downtime a few months back earned Netflix a huge spike in sign-ups. So it's not like Netflix spends the section gloating gaudily over its success while making it like no one else is a threat. The company was just honest in assessing that Fortnite, right now, is a much bigger threat for taking viewers away from its service than some other streaming services out there.

Epic Games is constantly in the news for the success that is Fortnite, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. This time, however, the company is making headlines for how much money the Battle Royale-themed free-to-play shooter managed to rack up throughout 2018.

According to Deadline, Epic Games managed to generate $2.4 billion in revenue throughout 2018. This comes from a market report published by Nielsen Media's SuperData, which saw Fortnite top out the chart of free-to-play games throughout the year, followed by Dungeon Fighter Online from Nexon, a long-running multiplayer hack-and-slash beat-'em-up that was a very distant second. Nexon's title may be popular, but it was nearly $1 billion behind Fortnite, topping out at $1.5 billion in revenue. Obviously, that's no laughing matter, and nothing to scoff at in terms of the money generated.

Riot Games and Tencent literally tied with Nexon, as League of Legends also generated $1.4 billion, while Niantic Labs' Pokemon Go came in fourth place at $1.3 billion. Neowiz Games' first-person shooter Crossfire also tied with Pokemon Go at $1.3 billion, along with Tencent's Honour of Kings, a multiplayer online battle arena game.

Aniplex's Fate/Grand Order was seventh on the list with $1.2 billion, followed by Activision and King's Candy Crush Saga at $1.1 billion, and Mixi's Monster Strike hitting $1 billion even. Tencent rounded out the list with Super Cell's Clash Royale at $900 million.

This basically showcases just how much the Battle Royale genre is worth when done right, and apparently, Epic Games has done right with Fortnite, easily surpassing some of the other MOBA and free-to-play games that previously dominated the industry.

The article notes that the battle passes that Epic sells for Fortnite has regularly seen U.S. players purchasing said packs. In fact, there's a 34% attachment rate to the battle passes from U.S. players.

It was also noted that free-to-play games, in general, accounted for 80% of all of the digital game revenue across every major gaming platform, including home consoles, PCs, and mobile devices.

Out of the $87 billion that the gaming industry generated in 2018, $17.9 billion of that was generated from PC gaming, and obviously Fortnite played a significant role in that.

Despite all the money generated from the cash shop and battle passes, Epic Games isn't entirely in the clear with the free-to-play, third-person, build-and-shoot Battle Royale game. The company is currently being sued by a number of individuals for the dances featured in the game.

There's really no telling which side of the legal coin Epic will come out on, but the lawsuits keep stacking up, which could end up hurting the company, in the long run, depending on how things turn out.

However, for the time being, Epic seems to be in a pretty good place and moving in the right direction as far as business growth is concerned. The company is also attempting to compete with Valve by opening up the Epic Games Store, which had a lot of help as a launching pad thanks to Fortnite being tied into the launcher for the store, which is similar to how Steam got its start with Half-Life 2. The major difference is that Fortnite has become a heck of a lot bigger in a much shorter amount of time than Half-Life 2.

After a bit of playful teasing last week, FoxNext Games, D3 Go! And Rival Games have officially announced Alien: Blackout, an upcoming mobile game set in the popular sci-fi universe. While this may not be the full-on console sequel to Alien: Isolation fans were hoping for, it certainly sounds like an ambitious mobile game that aims to capture the tension of being hunted by a xenomorph.

Word went out early this week that the next Alien game will be coming to mobile devices later this month. Slated to launch on the App Store and Google Play in January, Alien: Blackout will also arrive on the Amazon Appstore later this year.

In Blackout, players take on the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley from the Alien films. She was also the protagonist in Alien: Isolation so, just like her mom, it looks like Amanda has some terrible luck when it comes to crossing paths with murderous alien lifeforms. For you lore hounds in the audience, this latest tale takes place between the films Alien and Aliens.

As Amanda Ripley, players will find themselves trapped aboard the Weyland-Yutani space station, which is experiencing something of a bug problem. Of course, these cockroaches are nine feet tall with razor-sharp tails, claws and even a damn tongue made for straight-up killing folks.

Rather than constantly going toe-to-toe with the xenomorph herself, though, Amanda is using the station's various systems to guide her crew to safety. Of course, the unpredictability of said crew members and the creature that's stalking them will throw some extra wrinkles into the formula.

The game's controls will have you balancing the station's various systems while using the security features to guide your team away from harm. Since we are in a post-Telltale world, you can fully expect tough decisions to pop up that will have an impact on who lives and dies, as well as the game's ultimate outcome. A very brief teaser for the game has also gone live.

A couple of extra announcements were thrown into the mix at the end of the press release, including the fact that this is only the first of multiple projects set to continue the story of Amanda Ripley. Alien fans will be able to read, play and watch more adventures being created through multiple partnerships, though specifics of those projects have not yet been revealed. It sounds like we can expect a book or comic series, though, and maybe an animated movie or something along those lines. This is starting to sound a lot like what was done with the Dead Space universe, which used everything from prequel novels and comics to a couple of anime movies to keep telling its story.

Oh, and FoxNext Games' Cold Iron Studios is also working on an MMO shooter set in the Alien universe slated for PC, so there's something else to look forward to.

Fortnite is full of dances folks will likely recognize from pop culture and, as it turns out, some of the folks who created those dances aren't too happy about that fact and are seeking legal action. The most recent lawsuit has been filed by Alfonso Ribeiro, famously known as Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But just to throw another wrinkle into the situation, it's now being questioned whether Ribeiro himself was even the originator of what has become known as "The Carlton Dance."

According to a report from Polygon, Ribeiro is suing Fortnite's parent company, Epic, over inclusion of the "Fresh" emote. If you happened to pick up that emote, you likely noticed that it bears a striking resemblance to the goofy dance Carlton Banks used to perform on Fresh Prince. Like, super striking.

That's not exactly uncommon in Fortnite or many other games, where emotes resembling known dances have become a big part of the in-game community. The question is whether or not that's actually legal.

This isn't the first time Epic has been called out for including a famous dance, as rapper 2 Milly, also known as Terrance Ferguson, recently sued the company over his own dance, Milly Rock. In the case of Ribeiro's claim, it's noted that there's an additional concern about the process of taking these particular dances and then making money off of them by selling them as emotes. According to the claim, these actions by Epic are "exploiting African-American talent" when they appropriate these dances and movements.

While it's likely many other celebrities can claim Epic is appropriating their dance, the real murky issue is whether or not it is actually illegal. Unlike some other forms of entertainment, you can't simply break out a dance and claim it as your property. That's not an attempt to minimalize the situation, just a statement that ownership of dance moves has always been a tricky business. According to the initial report, you first need to copyright a dance before you can claim ownership of it, which is likely itself a rather complicated process. It's noted that Ribeiro is currently in the process of copyrighting his dance so, again, it's unclear if that fact will have an impact on his lawsuit.

Also unclear is whether or not Ribeiro's dance can even be called his own. In a recent clip revealed by TMZ, Ribeiro explains how he came up with the dance. In his own words, he "stole it" from Courteney Cox and Eddie Murphy. The former breaks out a similar dance in the Bruce Springsteen music video for "Dancing in the Dark," while the latter used a similar dance as his "white guy dance." Both are close to what has been called "The Carlton Dance," but neither is identical. Ribeiro explained that he took a little from each, put in a bit of his own stuff and, boom, he's got the dance. As his lawyers stated following the revelation of the clip, Ribeiro was not using the term "stolen" in the legal sense of the word. If all of this is a bit confusing, just be glad that you're not the judge who has to eventually make a determination on the matter.

If nothing else, at least this whole situation is bringing the use of these types of emotes into the limelight. They're in all sorts of games, usually because they're something the community will recognize and enjoy and, yes, pay a couple of bucks for. But that's where the dilemma lies. If someone is making money off of the dance, should the person who created it not receive compensation or, bare minimum, a say in whether or not their dance can be used? Whether or not 2 Milly and/or Ribeiro win their cases, it's possible they will at least lead to developers putting some additional consideration into what emotes are created for their game and whether or not they can (or should) be grabbed from pop culture so freely.

The newest member of the Pokemon family, Meltan, can be a bit tricky to catch out in the wild. Thankfully, a recent update to Pokemon Go should make the process a lot easier for frustrated trainers.

At present, there are only a couple of ways to earn a Meltan in Pokemon Go. The first method involves talking to Professor Willow and taking on a Special Research quest that will allow you to snag one of the mythical hex nut Pokemon. In order to find more of the critters, though, your best bet is to pick up a copy of Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu or Eevee for the Nintendo Switch.

If you're using this method, all you have to do it send a Gen One Pokemon from your Go account to your copy of Pokemon Let's Go. Do that and you'll earn yourself a Mystery Box in the mobile game. If you activate the Mystery Box, you'll earn a heightened chance of running into a Meltan in the wild.

The catch, though, is that you can only claim one Mystery Box in this manner per week and, up until now, the odds still weren't that great that you would actually run into a Meltan while out in the wild. According to the above tweet from the game's official Twitter feed, though, the Mystery Box now offers a boosted chance that you'll run into more Meltan while enjoying an afternoon stroll.

So why would you want to collect so many of the creatures? Because that's the only way to earn enough Meltan Candies to evolve a Meltan into a Melmetal. It takes 400 candies to activate the transformation, which means you'll need to collect quite a few critters to make it happen. And with the previous odds being so low and the Mystery Box only being available through exchanges once a week, that meant players would have to do a bunch of grinding to make their metallic Pokemon dreams come true.

Seriously, how are all of these types of events, across seemingly every game known to man, so poorly weighted in terms of odds? It seems like every time a promotional activity like this is launched, it's closely followed by a statement from the company acknowledging how unfair their original odds were because they maybe-sorta expected players to invest a ridiculous number of hours into their game.

So, yay, Pokemon Go fans will now have an easier time earning Meltan while out and about. This will probably cap off any big news surrounding the character for a while, as Meltan has enjoyed quite a bit of attention as of late. The critter was teased across several weeks through images and even some rather spiffy trailers as it was introduced just before Pokemon Let's Go launched. Now that it's out in the wild and less of a nightmare to catch, it's maybe time for the series to get fans excited for something new.

The Fortnite Winter Royale million-dollar tournament is up and running however, thanks to a couple of the game's most recent updates, players are super unhappy with how the competition is shaping up.

One of Fortnite's strongest selling points is the fact that the game is constantly changing. From new modes and in-game items to map alterations and more, every week brings something fresh and exciting to Epic's 100-player battle royale. As it turns out, that's not exactly a good thing when you're trying to run a massive tournament that's got a million bucks in prize money on the line, especially if those updates greatly unbalance the proceedings.

As we recently reported, Epic has been hosting various qualifying rounds for Fortnite, with players earning the highest scores being invited to join the closing rounds of the Winter Royale tournament. The issue players are coming up against are the recently implemented planes and, even more recently, the Infinity Blade.

I'll start with the slightly less game-ruining inclusion of planes. In a standard round of Fornite, the planes seem like fun twists on the standard gameplay. They allow players to get around the map more quickly, have front-mounted machine guns and can even transport teammates in squad-based modes. Since there aren't a lot of weapons available that can harm a plane at high altitude, tournament participants have learned that they can just hop into one of the vehicles and fly around the map in order to stay in the match longer. While they're goofing off in the clouds, the rest of the tournament participants are struggling for survival below. There's even footage over on Eurogamer of a group of planes circling the shrinking combat zone, with none of them actually firing at each other in a sort of unofficial truce in order to guarantee they all last until the closing moments of the round.

While that's certainly not in the spirit of Fortnite, you can't blame players for taking advantage of every opportunity presented to them when a million dollars are on the line. Still, it's an issue that probably should have been anticipated and is making for some super boring Esports competitions.

Even worse, though, is the Infinity Blade, which went live just this week. There's only one Infinity Blade available on the map, and it grants the player who wields it an insane advantage including higher health, higher armor, health recharge for kills, the ability to leap into the air and do massive damage. The Infinity Blade can also slice through structures like butter, which is a huge leg up on the competition in the late stages of the match.

This is exactly the kind of goofy limited item Fortnite fans usually get a kick out of, but only when it's available as part of a special event like what was done with Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet earlier this year. The Infinity Blade is available in the standard mode, though, which means it's fair game for the Winter Royale tournament.

It's possible Epic will patch both the planes and the Infinity Blade out of standard modes in Fortnite for the remainder of the tournament, but then they'd probably have to scrap all of the competitions so far, as some players have already taken losses with these items in play.

Fortnite on mobile just got a heck of a lot better for some users, as certain iPhone models can now turn on 60FPS for the hugely popular battle royale shooter. If you've got one of the supported devices, get ready for some buttery smooth gaming on the go.

What's pretty humorous about this announcement is that it comes from Nick Chester on Twitter, who works in PR for Fortnite. Despite that fact, he notes that this pretty big announcement didn't even make it into the latest patch notes for the mobile version of Epic's runaway hit, so he did what everyone else does these days and just made the announcement via social media.

In short, if you're using an iPhone XS, XS-Max or XR, you can now head on over to the Fortnite video options and turn on an option for 60FPS. As Chester notes, that's an impressive technical achievement by the development team, even if it's only possible on absolutely top-of-the-line phones. As those specs become more commonplace, I figure everyone will eventually be enjoying 60FPS in their mobile games. That's assuming the developers want to put in the same kind of work Epic is clearly pouring into Fortnite.

I should probably note that, even if you aren't using one of the latest and most powerful iPhone models, Fortnite still runs insanely well on the mobile platform. It's one of those "how the hell are they even doing this" kind of situations, and now that feat is even more impressive with 60FPS on some phone models.

Digging into the conversation a bit, Chester explains to one commenter that the team at Epic is always looking to optimize the game's performance on more devices, so 60FPS on, say, an iPhone X might be possible in the future. Someone from the Android crowd chimed in asking about possible support for non-iPhone devices but, sadly, that question has not been addressed yet. Considering the fact Fortnite launched on Android devices after iPhone, it's likely that platform remains the secondary focus for non-critical updates such as 60FPS. Also, no word if the game can or will be boosted to 60FPS on the Nintendo Switch, so fingers crossed on those fronts, I guess.

As reported earlier this week, the Fortnite hype train doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The game's total registered player count has skyrocketed this past year and its concurrent player record is over 8 million players, which means a heck of a lot of people are playing Battle Royale at any given hour of the day. That's largely due to the insane amount of support Epic is pouring into the game, with constant patches, updates, special events, loot and the like.

Only a handful of games ever see this level of success, so I'm interested to see how Epic continues to respond to the success of Fortnite, and how long players will remain totally devoted to the game.

It hasn't been a rosy year in the world of video games. In fact, it's been rather difficult for some development studios given how harsh the financial times have been. This has become ever-so-present with the news that yet another sizable development outlet had to shut its doors recently.

Landon Nguyen, the mobile game director for Tekken and the senior vice president at Bandai Namco, announced via his official Twitter account that Bandai Namco Studios Vancouver was shutting down.

The British Columbia-based outfit was responsible for the aforementioned mobile version of Tekken, which came out back in 2017. The game managed to get downloaded by millions of gamers across both iOS and Android devices. The Vancouver outfit was also responsible for Tap My Katamari, which is another mobile spin-off based on Bandai Namco's popular Katamari Damacy series, and there were a couple of Pac-Man games that the studio made for mobile devices as well.

As you can tell, Bandai Namco Vancouver was responsible for mostly making mobile games. While this is usually the direction most big studios go in to chase down easy dollars, the mobile market hasn't been kind enough to keep Bandai's British Columbia offices open. This is basically to outline that just because a company is making mobile games, and just because millions of people are downloading those games, doesn't always mean that those games are turning big profits.

The mobile market is an extremely over-saturated marketplace where everyone is competing not just to get millions (or billions) of downloads, but to also land enough of the consumer market that are referred to as "whales". These are a small pool of dedicated consumers who spend big bucks on games. If you don't have enough whales for your free-to-play title or cash-shop driven app, then it begins to lose money and potential profits.

That doesn't mean things are any safer in the standard core market of gaming. We recently saw Telltale Games go bust after a deal fell through with Smilegate and AMC, which resulted in only two episodes for The Walking Dead: The Final Season being completed and released. Other games from the company have also been pulled from digital distribution outlets as the liquidation process continues.

In the case of Bandai Namco Vancouver, Nguyen confirmed that the mobile version of Tekken will still be available for download, and that there is a skeleton crew left on board to maintain the game, for now. However, Nguyen also states that any future updates are up in the air at this point.

Some studios reached out in support of staff looking to get hired, including Relic Entertainment, another Vancouver-based studio that has been responsible for classics like Homeworld, the World War II RTS series Company of Heroes, and the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War trilogy.

Nguyen, meanwhile, has shown a lot of positivity online and noted that many of the job opportunities would be passed on to the team for those looking for extra work. So it at least sounds as if various members of the team will definitely have a soft landing.

The world of mobile gaming is about to get a lot more magical, with Niantic and WB Games announcing the upcoming launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite with a new teaser trailer.

The first trailer for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite went live today, giving viewers an idea of the theme for the upcoming augmented reality mobile game. In the trailer, we see a Snitch zipping about before getting caught by a young woman who apparates out of nowhere and hits the flitting gold trinket with an immobulus spell. She then points her wand at a wall and creates a poster that warns "The Wizarding World is at risk of Exposure. We need your help." The entire trailer is made to look like the events are being recorded by a security camera.

Obviously, that doesn't tell us a heck of a lot about the gameplay, but it does a good job of setting the tone for the highly-anticipated mobile game. Players will be working in secret, trying to blend into normal society while working to keep the muggles from learning about the world of wizards.

A press release from Niantic and WB Games gives us a few more details, including the fact that the game is set to launch sometime in 2019. It's a bummer folks won't be able to sling spells at their friends through the holidays, but it's also preferable that the game have a smooth launch.

This is not the first Harry Potter mobile game, as Hogwarts Mystery arrived earlier this year. In that particular adventure, players take on the role of a student attending the school for witchcraft and wizardry, working their way through classes, homework and various other activities while working to unravel the game's narrative.

Wizards Unite, though, will be an augmented reality game, with the now highly experienced Niantic at the helm. That's the team behind Pokemon Go and the recently launched Ingress Prime, the original version of which actually provided the skeleton for the hugely popular Pokemon AR game. They've made something of a name for themselves by developing games that let players interact with the real world in interesting ways, so we hope to see Wizards Unite evolve into something special. We figure they've had to learn a hell of a lot just from evolving Pokemon Go in recent years, so the new Harry Potter game should benefit from those lessons.

The announcement notes that players will once again explore the real world with Wizards Unite, where they will work together to solve a global mystery and cast spells. Players will also run into popular characters from the Wizarding World from time to time, as well as plenty of fantastic beasts. Given Niantic's past experience, we wouldn't be surprised if capturing these magical creatures before they can run amok in muggle society will be a big component of the gameplay.

To stay in the loop and pick apart any and all details for the game so far, be sure to keep an eye on the official website.

Fortnite's sixth season is finally upon us, boasting a spooky theme full of mysterious map alterations, an evolving plot and a brand new Battle Pass full of skins, cosmetics and even pets. Get ready to stalk through Battle Royale as a werewolf and uncover loads of new secrets, as highlighted by Epic Games' latest trailer for "Darkness Rises."

Based on the timing of Season 6 and Epic's own teasers, folks suspected that the latest content drop for Fortnite would have a Halloween vibe. An image that leaked early seemed to hint at pets coming to the game, too, all of which has now been confirmed. Season 6 went live today and will remain active through Dec. 6. As always, you can pick up this season's Battle Pass for $9.99, which will give you a hand full of items out of the gate and additional tiers of loot to earn as you play through the season. Remember that these are all cosmetic, so no worries on anyone buying an extra edge in gameplay. Also, free players will have their own tier of rewards to work through, just not as robust as the Battle Pass members. And if you decide later in the season to pick up the pass, you'll automatically gain whatever items from the Battle Pass you would have earned were you a member the entire time.

The moment you pick up a battle pass this season, you'll earn access to the goth cowgirl skin, the Llama DJ skin, some experience boosts and a whole bunch of extra achievements to work through while playing standard matches of Battle Royale. As you earn experience, you'll earn all kinds of additional items including more experience boosts, in-game currency and the like. The big draw, though, are all of the cosmetics. These include seasonally themed wall sprays like, gliders, back bling and skydiving trails. At level 12 you'll unlock your first pet, a dog, a new in-game item that stays with you through the match and "reacts to certain situations." They're just for looks, though, so don't expect them to alert you to danger or anything like that.

I'm skipping over the less exciting items like spooky-themed wall sprays and wallpapers, but you can feel free to give all 100 tiers of rewards a gander at the official site. Once you hit level 23, you'll find the leaked skin of a costume that makes your avatar look like they're riding a llama across the map. A gecko pet is at level 29, with a blue dragon at 43 and a deadly Red Riding Hood at 47. Again, there's plenty of cool content through the remaining tiers, but that werewolf everyone is so jazzed about is held off until the top tier, 100.

On top of that, Epic promises the game world itself will continue to change, with a new spooky castle popping up and players being directed to bizarre occurrences happening in areas like the Wailing Woods. Oh, and there's a new haunted castle on the map, all somehow tied to that mysterious purple cube that appeared on the map last season.

Happy hunting!

Epic announced recently that Fortnite will not be available through the Google Play Store. If you're gaming on an Android device, you'll have to download the battle royale king directly from the publisher instead. That's an extra hoop to jump through, but we doubt it will have much of an impact on the game's success on yet another platform. Here's what Epic CEO Tim Sweeney had to say about the move:

The above quote comes from a report from The Verge, in which Tim Sweeney outlines the reasons for Fortnite being detached from Google Play on Android devices. As he states, the first reason for this somewhat unique model is maintaining a direct connection with customers, saying the developer/publisher wants to pursue this kind of relationship on as many platforms as possible.

That's a pretty shallow pool Sweeney is talking about. Fortnite is available on the PC, Mac, iOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch at this point. Unless we're mistaken, the PC is the only other platform where they are gunning for this "direct relationship," as Fortnite is made available from Epic rather than, say, Steam on the PC.

In case this news has you worried, it sounds like the process to get Fortnite on your Android phone won't actually be all that difficult. Instead of hopping on the Play store, searching for Fortnite and downloading it to your device, you'll instead head to the game's official website and download the client directly from Epic. They are probably banking on the popularity of the game and word of mouth to help folks figure out how to get Fortnite up and running on their Android phone.

The other reason, and likely the biggest, is financial. Google takes a 30 percent cut out of sales made through the Play store. Other platforms boast a similar model but, as Sweeney points out, those other platform holders also have a large investment in the business arrangement, including hardware manufacturing and distribution, as well as marketing deals for various games. Google does not have nearly the same financial stake in its online marketplace, which is why Sweeney said he feels 30 percent is too deep of a cut.

In case you're wondering why they aren't taking the same path on iOS, that's because Apple's phone is a one-store town. Apps are limited to the Apple Store and can't be downloaded from third party sources. Android, though, is more open and allows for apps to be obtained from outside Google Play. Most developers don't try to host their own games, though, because they don't have the name recognition of something like Fortnite. People will probably go wherever they have to go to get their hands on Fortnite, but Gem Buster Extreme 67 is likely only going to get attention and make some money if it is being sold on Android's biggest marketplace, Google Play.

If you've ever wanted to fight your way through the zombie apocalypse without having to worry about actual zombies, The Walking Dead: Our World might be just the ticket. Speaking of which, the augmented reality game for mobile is now available across iOS and Android markets. So grab your phone, take to the streets and get ready to look like a crazy person as you attempt to mow down undead hordes while strolling through the real world.

We first announced The Walking Dead: Our World a couple weeks back and, as of today, the Next Games and AMC collaboration is ready to roll on pretty much any modern mobile device. It's a free-to-play game, so there's no harm in downloading the app and seeing what the game has to offer. Or, you could just keep reading and we'll break down some of the finer points for you.

Based on the popular television series, The Walking Dead: Our World is an augmented reality game that encourages you to head out into the real world in order to fight zombies and accomplish missions. There's also a Couch Mode, which I'll get to in just a moment. For the standard game, it's actually quite similar to games like Pokemon Go. Our World is powered by Google Maps, so your in-game avatar should be walking around a virtual world that tracks nicely to the real one. Instead of coming across pocket-sized monsters to catch, though, you'll instead stumble upon hordes of zombies.

When you end up in a shootout, you can switch the game to AR mode, which uses your device's camera to make it look like the zombies are walking toward you in the real world. From there, you'll use the game's fighting mechanics to take care of business, or even call upon various characters from the show to join the fray and mow down some walkers for you.

On top of taking out infestations of zombies, players will be able to go on rescue missions and hunt down item caches. Our World also offers weekly missions, group activities to take part in with your friends and even the ability to send up flares to "take part in the best missions anywhere in the world."

If you're unable to hit the streets, this zombie slay-a-thon also offers Couch Mode, which will let players take on a selection of missions and activities without ever having to leave the house. That's a nice little touch that actually addresses one of the biggest omissions from similar AR games.

It'll be interesting to see if the world takes to The Walking Dead as ravenously as it has Pokemon in the coming months. It seems like a pretty ambitious endeavor, so we'll be following it closely to see how things shake out. If you've had an opportunity to start diving in yourself, feel free to leave your early impressions in the comments below.

Now that Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery players have had a chance to learn multiple offensive and defensive spells within the game, Jam City has decided to up the ante with the introduction of a Dueling Club. For a limited time, young witches and wizards will have an opportunity to test their magic-flinging skills against other players in the game's first ever multiplayer event.

Break out your smartphones, students, because it's time for your first test in the world of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. Jam City and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that today marks the grand opening of Dueling Club, a chance for players to square off against each other in the ultimate competition of spells and hexes.

Whether you're casting the disarming charm of Expelliarmus or the forceful push of Flipendo, everything you've learned within Hogwarts Mystery will come in handy for the next several days. Dueling Club is a limited event, which will run through July 15. Not to worry, though, as the developer has made it clear that additional events and the return of Dueling Club is on the horizon. While it's possible they're treating competitive play as a limited event in order to test more permanent mechanics, it's equally possible they will continue to treat these kinds of activities as special occasions in order to keep players coming back for more. Hey, it's worked out swimmingly for Pokemon Go, so why not?

The dueling mechanics in this event will be the same as they are within the standard game, with the key difference being that you'll be testing your magical skills against another player instead of an AI-controlled combatant. When the event goes live today, everyone will receive three tickets to take part in the special dueling event. As a heads up, you need to be using Facebook Connect to actually join the competition.

If that's the case, you can hop into the Dueling Club and wait to be matched with an eager opponent. Whoever loses will simply have to fork over one of their tickets. Whoever wins gets to keep their ticket and will also earn in-game items for every victory. In other words, if you have a really bad run, your first experience in Dueling Club could be over as quickly as three matches. Prove to be a dueling all-star, though, and you could be competing for the entirety of the event. While the announcement did not state this will be the case, we wouldn't be surprised if additional tickets can be won as an in-game reward throughout the event. But again, that's just a prediction on our part and we're certainly no Sybill Trelawney.

For additional details, feel free to drop by the game's official website.

Mobile gamers have been treated to a number of new games and apps themed around J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World. While there are titles available for properties based on popular movies like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it's the Harry Potter universe that really draws in the fans and creates all sorts of excitement and thrills within the Wizarding World community. In fact, the latest update for the widely popular mobile title Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery adds a much-requested feature to own a Hedwig, and I'm sure gamers will be duly excited once they get their hands on it.

According to a recent press release from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Jam City, the update for Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery adds pets to the game. This means that you can finally get your hands on a Hedwig and have yourself a marvelous time.

There's more than just the Hedwig available in the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. There are other pets as well, including the Owl, Rat, Cat, Toad, Mrs. Norris, Fang, and more. The selectable pets will accompany your character throughout their adventures. The game allows you to rack up four pets at any single time, but you can only have one pet set as a friend at a time, similar to the Pokemon games.

The update is available for those with the game installed on their iOS or Android devices, which you can acquire for free from Google Play or the iTunes App Store.

The game was also updated with all new stories from Year 4. This includes additional content based around the Nifflers, the Bowtruckles, and the Hippogriffs. You'll also be able to interact with the centaurs and giant spiders in a brand new location added to the game in the form of the Forbidden Forest.

Accompanying these new features are brand new customization items as well, including the ability to purchase new clothes for your character. In a future update, Jam City plans on adding a Dueling Club mode where players will be able to challenge one another and win exclusive prizes and rewards for doing so.

The game allows you to create your very own wizard and attend Hogwarts. You're able to investigate some of the ancient mysteries surrounding the Harry Potter unvierse, as well as upgrade your character with new magic.

Similar to Rockstar Games' Bully, you'll be able to attend class and learn magic spells, as well as brew potions. You can unlock additional characters and upgrades by completing mysteries and exploring Hogwarts.

Along the way you'll be able to make friends with the NPCs, go on quests with fellow students, as well as build up your reputation and respect levels among your peers as you travel through Hogwarts Mystery, discovering new mysteries, unlocking new spells, and advancing your created character.

You'll also now be able to indulge in building up your budding relationship with your new pet thanks to the new update in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery.

If you're into collecting milk caps, bottle caps, and POGs... well, you're probably mildly excited at the possibility of doing so without having to physically keep and horde them somewhere. Soon you'll be able to go virtual hunting for all different types of POGs thanks to a brand new augmented reality mobile game set to come out based on the milk caps.

The original POGs were popular back during the early 1990s, garnering a strong following from young kids who liked collecting the bottle caps. The POG Federation decided to bring back the pastime as a mobile game called POGs AR. The "AR" stands for augmented reality.

Compton Technology is designing the game, which will be based around the same rules as the original board game from back in the 1990s. What's more is that POGs AR is also part of an IndieGoGo campaign, where they're attempting to gather funds to help the mobile title for its eventual release this September, for iOS and Android devices.

The core gameplay will center around player-vs-player interactions, with the goal being to slam opponents into submission and capture the collection. You'll be able to collect and trade POGs with other players, just like a real-life, physical trading card game or bottle cap collection. What's more is that this won't be limited to just your immediate vicinity, you'll also be able to trade and swap POGs with players from all over the world.

There are also plans to host regional and international tournaments, where players can earn slammer upgrades and unlock new content, not unlike how Nintendo has it set up with Pokemon tournaments for both the trading card games and for the handheld games on portable devices like the Nintendo 3DS.

So, you're probably asking, what exactly makes POGs AR an augmented reality game? Well, in a promotional video that was released, there's an explanation and video footage on how it works and what it does.

As you can see, you'll use your smartphone's camera to scan the actual physical POG bottle cap and add it to your in-game collection. This is a pretty nifty way of being able to build up your deck and expand your collection even if you don't regularly battle other players or participate in tournaments.

It's a little bit like combining Pokemon Go with Nintendo's Amiibo sets, which can also be used to scan in content from real life figurines and turn it into in-game items.

Given the burgeoning growth of AR games in the mobile market at the moment, I suppose now would be a pretty good time to jump into the fray with POGs AR. If all goes well with the crowdfunding campaign you can expect to see the app become available for Android and iOS devices this September.

One of the game series that managed to find itself with a rather sizable audience is Square Enix's Go games, based on popular franchises like Tomb Raider and Hitman. However, it appears as if those games are coming to an end, as the landscape of mobile gaming is shifting once more.

In an interview with PC Games Insider (via Polygon) Square Enix Montreal studio head, Patrick Naud, explained that the Square Enix Go games will be brought to an end and shut down. Naud told the outlet...

As pointed out by Polygon, after the success of Lara Croft Go, along with Hitman Go and Deus Ex Go, the series has stopped. The last outing was back in 2016, more than two years ago. But as mentioned by Naud, the landscape of mobile gaming has changed, and that premium-priced goods are no longer quite as in vogue as free-to-play games.

Square Enix's mobile offerings come with fixed price tags, where gamers buy them once to own them. This has also been the kind of model that Nintendo adopted for many of its mobile entries because the company said that it didn't want to diminish its brands by making lots of cash-shop oriented games that are free-to-play and buffered with lots of microtransactions. Nintendo felt that style of game could devalue its brands.

Square Enix is taking a different approach to the matter. The company sees the mobile market as a lucrative venture, but wants to focus on games that speak to the mobile audience. Hence, the Go series has proven to be a business venture not worth the price of entry, but the company will continue to consider and explore different mobile options for the portable market.

The Go series originally got off to a strong start back in 2014 with Hitman Go, which was an isometric diorama puzzle game, where players would need to navigate through the diorama to complete the hits. Square then followed it up with Lara Croft Go, which was another isometric puzzle game, working very similar to Hitman Go, only that you solved puzzles and attempted to overcome the enemy obstacles along the way. The game was also ported to the PC and PS4.

Deus Ex Go was also worked in a similar manner to the other two games, but it didn't quite receive the praise or media attention as outings like Lara Croft Go. The tepid response in addition to more popular free-to-play mobile games flooding the market made Square Enix think that the approach to mobile games needs to change, hence the culling of the Go series.

There doesn't appear to be any obvious replacement just yet, but Square still plans on supporting mobile outings with a variety of games, we'll just have to wait to find out what the company has in store.

If teachers were worried about Fortnite distracting their students due to its arrival on iOS, we've got some bad news for next semester. Epic has announced that the Android version of the game will be ready to roll out soon, meaning anyone with a decently modern phone will now be able to get in on the action.

While "summer" isn't all that specific, that's the window Epic has given for the Android launch of its insanely popular Battle Royale mode in Fortnite. Still, that means Android users should have a maximum of about three months left to wait, with this fresh crop of gamers expected to be invited to the party in plenty of time to ring in the new school year.

Obviously, we don't encourage any students to play games while they should be paying attention in class, we're just saying it will be an option.

Fortnite hit iOS in a limited capacity early this year, with fans invited to sign up for a beta test just as 2018 was kicking off. Shortly after that, the game went live for all iOS fans in April, but there was still no word on when the Android crowd would be brought in on the fun. According to a recent update from Epic, that time is nearly upon us.

It will be interesting to see if the mobile numbers shift similar to those on other platforms. PUBG was the king of the hill for the longest time, with Fortnite Battle Royale taking the crown as 2017 gave way to 2018. On the mobile front, though, PUBG has been available on both iOS and Android for months, giving it time to establish a fan base on an Android market where the competition is lagging behind. It'll be interesting to see if Fortnite on Android turns out to be a massive draw.

The thing about Fortnite's mobile version is that it is totally linked to other versions of the game. No matter where you're playing the game, you're all in one big pool of potential players. That obviously puts mobile players at a bit of a disadvantage, but that version of the game still serves as a quick fix if you're nowhere near your console or PC.

Along with the summer Android launch, Epic has announced several other revisions that will be soon added to the mobile version of Fortnite. Perhaps the biggest news is a customizable HUD. The one in the game is decent enough, but fans have been begging for the ability to put buttons where they would feel most comfortable on the screen. According to the update, that's going to happen soon.

Voice chat is also coming to the mobile version of the game, and Epic is working on making the game's install size and update experience less of a burden for mobile devices. Finally, they're also looking to include a battery saver mode that will grant better performance if you're willing to take a hit in the graphics.

Between the books and the movies, the Harry Potter franchise is insanely popular. The new mobile game hopes to follow in those footsteps by making a story that takes significant queues from what came before. Specifically, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery plans to tell a story that, like the books or movies, evolves over time, starting out as a more lighthearted adventure, but eventually maturing into something deeper. I spoke with Hogwarts Mystery writer Matt London this week, who explained how the game will become more sophisticated as it progresses. According to London...

One of the things that made the Harry Potter books so popular is the way that they, along with a large segment of the audience reading them, grew up over the time of their publication. The movies that followed did the same, as we saw the actors who were cast as children become young adults over the course of eight films. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is designed to be a story that takes place over a seven-year period, just as the Harry Potterbooks did, and the plan is for the game to mature over time in the same way the books and movies did.

I've only scratched the surface of the game's story, but the elements of a deeper story are certainly there. While your character's immediate concerns while starting at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are simple things like doing well in class and dealing with a bully, there's also mention of a sibling of your character who had previously gone to Hogwarts, but their time there had been somewhat controversial.

What might be even more interesting then a deeper story might be the introduction of more sophisticated mechanics as the game progresses. Early on, the gameplay is made up fairly basic tapping and swiping that anybody who has played a free-to-play mobile game is quite familiar with. Any change in the game's story that tries to make the player get more invested would only be aided by an evolution in mechanics. It's difficult to guess how those mechanics could change, a smartphone only has so many ways to input commands, but whatever they have in mind sounds interesting. If nothing else, the fact that the game wants to change up the gameplay is a welcome desire.

It will be interesting to see Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery change over time into a more complex story, which would itself be a unique thing for a mobile game. Clearly, the writing team expects to be telling this story for some time to come. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is available now.

Blizzard is known for having made some of the best games in the industry and for having top notch talent working for the company. Well, Blizzard just lost one of its best in the form of Heathstone game director, Ben Brode.

Over on the official Battle.net forums, Ben Brode made a post indicating that after a 15-year stint at Blizzard, it's time for him to move on. In fact, he mentions that he's spent nearly 10 years working on Hearthstone alone. His next project involves opening up a brand new studio with a small group of developers. The team will be working on a brand new game but they don't mention exactly what the game will be or when it's coming, but don't expect to hear more about it until another two or three years from now after things get settled and the game moves out of the prototype phase.

The post indicates that he was originally 20-years-old when he first started working at Blizzard Entertainment. Brode's first job was as a game tester. Over the years Brode managed to put in the work, move up the ranks and eventually managed to become a game director over Hearthstone.

Brode joined the Hearthstone team back in 2008. Since then, he's worked not only with the team but also with the community, taking a dive into the game's subreddit in order to learn more about what the community is saying about the game.

Hearthstone originally launched in 2014, six years after the initial development began, which sort of gives you an idea of just how long some games can take in the developmental phase.

When the game did finally release it turned out to be a smash hit. At one point in time, the CCG was making millions of dollars each month. The hook for the game is that it is free-to-play, so there's no price of entry just to start playing the game,

The gameplay revolves around building up a deck and battling against opponents who have built up their own custom deck. Much like Yu-Gi-Oh!, or other card games out there, the objective is to whittle down the life of your opponent by using attack cards. You can also utilize defensive measures to protect yourself against various opponent strategies.

The game picked up its biggest audience thanks to live-streaming on Twitch and YouTube. A number of high-profile content creators helped to really push the game into many CCG circles, while the attachment to the Warcraft brand helped filter in some gamers who may not have originally been interested in a collectible card game.

Given how much money Hearthstone brought in and how popular the game has been, I'm sure that Ben Brode has built up a rather sizable nest egg since the game's official launch in 2014. Even a small percentage over the last four years of a game that was bringing in $30 million a year, would likely be enough to start up a small company and work on a budget-priced indie title at some point in the future.

Well, that was fast. According to a recent announcement, the barely-out-the-door Puzzle Fighter mobile game will be shutting down in the coming months.

About five months back, Capcom launched a mobile version of its popular gem-busting series, Puzzle Fighter. In the game, players take on the persona of various characters from Capcom games and then compete in brick-breaking puzzle showdowns in the hopes of outlasting your opponent. Creating specific chains with your character of choice has the effect of triggering a special move, hopefully flooding the opponent's screen with more gems than they can handle.

Puzzle Fighter has never been a huge franchise, which is why mobile actually seemed like a safe place for the cult classic to thrive. That has apparently not been the case. According to a recent announcement on the Capcom blog, the publisher will soon pull the plug on the game for good.

Thankfully, this isn't one of those "in about a week" closure situations. Instead, Capcom is taking a few months to go all-out with the game, giving away all kinds of content and adding fan-favorite modes on a constant loop until the final closure. That date is set for July 31, with the game still available in the App Store until July 1. You'll only be able to spend money on the game through April 23, though, if you really feel like throwing Capcom a few extra bucks before they abandon the game less than a year after launch.

The stated reason for this closure is that Studio Vancouver is aiming to focus their full attention on their main series, Dead Rising. Given the fact that the community's biggest complaint seems to be a lack of customer support and content, it's hard to imagine Puzzle Fighter was taking up that much time from that many people. It seems more likely that the game simply wasn't making enough revenue to warrant continued development.

It seems like this was not a decision long in the making, as there's actually still additional characters and levels planned for the game. As an added apology on top of the 10,000 in-game gem currency all players will be receiving, upcoming characters Dr. Wily, Regina and Ada Wong will be dropped into the game soon free of charge for all players, as well as the pair of stages that were planned as premium content. Also, the game's soundtrack is now available to listen to at no cost on SoundCloud and the Classic Mode limited event will be open throughout the remainder of the game's run.

We can't blame a studio for cutting their losses, especially if they have other projects on their plate. If nothing else, maybe this news can go in the "good" column for Dead Rising fans, as it will now apparently receive the full attention of Studio Vancouver.

Niantic Labs is planning on celebrating one of the most hated holidays of the year: April Fool's Day. A lot of trickery and fake news pops out on this day, but Niantic is taking the opportunity to do something special and fun for the Pokemon Go audience.

Over on the official Niantic Labs website, the company announced that there's an all-new graphics engine at work to help give gamers the opportunity to experience a brand new visual aesthetics for the game. What does the graphics engine do? It adds the ability to play Pokemon Go with retro 8-bit graphics.

There's a brief demonstration of the new graphics on display with the header image displaying Pikachu, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur in their 8-bit forms, reminiscent of when Nintendo and the Pokemon Company first introduced the pocket-monster capture series to audiences back in 1996.

Technically the game doesn't look entirely like its old Game Boy counterpart. The sprite work for the combat sequences were actually quite well done in the original Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red. In fact, it was the high-quality art on such a low-end device like the Game Boy that allowed the video game series to flourish so well, especially when combined with the fact that the television show was absolutely blossoming in popularity at the time.

The graphics update for April Fool's Day has accompanied another recent update, which adds all-new quests to the game. These aren't typical fetch quests or item acquisition quests, they literally see players traveling around, completing various tasks and working toward an end goal set up by the NPCs.

One of the newer quests involves capturing the original Mew. As some of you might remember, there was also an event to acquire a Mewtwo. The event took place in Yokohama, Japan, allowing gamers to get their hands on the Legendary and very rare Pokemon.

The newest quest line is a rather complex series of tasks from Professor Willow, with the first step requiring capturing 10 Pokemon and spinning five PokeStop signs. You'll also have to transfer five Pokemon.

That's just the first step in the quest line of Pokemon Go, which has eight parts. The quest line is something that fans of the mobile game have been requesting since 2016. So it's two years late, but hopefully not too late.

While you partake in the new questing system and attempt to get your hands on your very own Mew Pokemon, you can also check out the game's 8-bit graphics as part of the April Fool's Day event. I'm sure a lot of gamers will enjoy the throwback to the classic Pokemon titles on Nintendo's older systems.

Pokemon Go came out originally in 2016 for iOS and Android devices and it has garnered a strong following of gamers ever since. Niantic Labs have been regularly updating the game with new content and Pokemon, including those from Generation 2 and Generation 3. The latest update added in the aforementioned questing system, which should help keep gamers coming back for more.

Pokemon Go fans who missed out on Lugia, as well as those who simply want to add another legendary Pokemon to their collection, will want to log on and hit the streets in the coming weeks. Niantic has announced that the fan-favorite Lugia has returned to the game for a limited time.

The insanely popular mobile game, Pokemon Go, is still going strong nearly two years after it first hit Android and iOS. Sure, there have been a couple of controversies along the way involving botched events and players who maybe weren't making great decisions, but the community keeps coming back to the game thanks to regularly occurring promotions and a rotating roster of legendary Pokemon.

And as of this weekend, Lugia has made its triumphant return to Pokemon Go, which is sure to excite fans new and old alike. Based on an update from Gamespot, Lugia will be up for grabs until April 2, which means you've only got a couple of weeks to train up and challenge him with friends in battle.

Just like all of the other legendary critters in Pokemon Go, you'll only be able to snag Lugia as a Raid boss in gyms spread throughout the game. Apparently, this latest version of Lugia will boast a new Sky Attack move but, again, it sounds like players will have to experience it for themselves if they want to find out what it does.

Obviously, you aren't expected to take down Lugia on your own. Players will get to team up on the brute as a team and, once defeated, everyone will have a chance to make a capture. If the odds are in your favor, you could be walking away with a Lugia of your own. Otherwise, you'll want to keep your eye out for additional Raid opportunities. For those who had trouble catching Lugia in Pokemon Go the last time around, the developer has stated that a capture should be a bit easier in the coming weeks.

As an added note from Niantic, the game's next Community Day is right around the corner, taking place on March 25. These events only take place in a brief window, this time running from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT. During these events, players can keep their eye out for a specific Pokemon who will sport an exclusive move, making them more rare, and potentially useful, than their standard counterparts. Bulbasaur has been announced at the upcoming featured Pokemon, though no word yet on what will be his exclusive move.

Pokemon Go may not pull down the number of players it did at launch, but it sounds like the game is still plenty active nearly two years later. Combine that with Niantic's upcoming Harry Potter game, and we figure the developer is going to be very, very busy heading into the future.

Admit it; you'd abandon whatever you're doing this very instant if an owl from Hogwarts arrived. While the chances of that actually happening are slim, we now have the next best thing thanks to Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, an upcoming mobile game that lets you join the wizarding world of the boy who lived. And, poof, here's a fresh trailer for you.

Harry Potter is getting a lot of attention on mobile these days. A game set within the wizarding universe is the focus of the next altered reality offering from the team behind Pokemon Go, and then there's this adventure game from Jam City, letting players explore a story set before the popular book series.

In Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, players will create their own character before receiving their invitation to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. As you can see in the trailer, the game looks to offer the whole experience, from being sorted into a house to learning new spells and making friends around campus.

Hogwarts Mystery is now open for pre-registration on Google Play, so fans who want to start playing as soon as it becomes available might want to consider signing up. The game is coming to us courtesy of a partnership between Jam City and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, with Portkey Games publishing the title sometime this spring. While there doesn't appear to be a pre-registration available in the App Store, Hogwarts Mystery will launch on iOS, too.

According to a press release from Jam City, Hogwarts Mystery will include narrative adventure elements, as well as RPG element. The new trailer gives a pretty solid feel for the game. It looks like your free time will be spent chatting up friends and teachers, as well as getting up to some mild mischief around Hogwarts. You'll also use swipe-based controls to learn and execute spells, which we assume will play into other areas of the game. As an example, maybe you need to learn to levitate something in order to progress a puzzle somewhere else in the game. As far as RPG elements go, we wouldn't be surprised if that includes things like friendship levels with other characters in the game, as well as stats for your various skills.

Hogwarts Mystery will have something in common with adventure games made popular by Telltale in recent years, namely that your choices in the game will influence your character's story arc at Hogwarts. The game boasts an "encounter system" that will have an impact on your various quests, so maybe think before you act, yeah?

Sadly, no release date yet, but we figure spring is just around the corner and this recent trailer makes the game look like it's nearly ready to roll. Get your wands ready.

If you've ever dreamed of being an up-and-coming wizard attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you'll soon get the chance to do exactly that. Jam City today released the first trailer for the upcoming mobile game, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, which you'll be able to play later this year.

If you want to be in the know the moment Hogwarts Mystery goes live, you'll probably want to pre-register for the game by visiting the official website. Just drop in your email address, hit "submit" and you'll be added to the official list. The game is noted as an official part of the Harry Potter universe, and it'll be playable on both Android and iOS.

We're pretty surprised that it's taken this long for a game to be set in the HP universe that lets the player explore their own tale. Noteworthy characters from the beloved book and movie series will make an appearance, including a cast of teachers fans will immediately recognize.

The idea here is that the player finally receives their owl from Hogwarts and gets ready to head off to their first year at the school. Hogwarts Mystery is considered a roleplaying game, though it looks like much of it will play out like a visual novel. That's not a bad thing, just an observation we figured would be worth noting in case any of our readers were expecting a match-three gem-breaker or, like, a battle game where you collect and upgrade monsters. Also, this shouldn't be confused with the Harry Potter game coming from Niantic, which will use augmented reality in a way similar to their other huge mobile hit, Pokemon Go.

In Hogwarts Mystery, you'll create your own character, attend classes, learn various magical skills and form your own friendships and rivalries around school. Along the way, you'll make decisions that have an impact on your character's story.

The game is being developed under the banner of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's Portkey Games, which is specifically focused on games taking place in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. In other words, we wouldn't be surprised to see even more games pop up somewhere down the line, as the property continues to be popular thanks to a stellar stage play and the ongoing Fantastic Beasts film franchise.

While the launch date is currently set for a spring window, folks attending the upcoming "A Celebration of Harry Potter" at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, from Jan. 26-28 will have an opportunity to go hands-on with the game. Attendees can also expect a couple of panels tied to the game, swag and the like.

And for you lore hounds in the audience, the game is actually set before Harry Potter turns up at Hogwarts. Both Nymphadora Tonks and Bill Weasley are students during this time-frame, so we imagine they'll play a part in the narrative.

One of the big selling points of Pokemon Go is that it has specialty Pokemon that you can acquire only under certain conditions. This has forced a lot of players to have to go out of their way in order to find those Pokemon or meet those conditions to acquire them. Well, Niantic is changing things around by introducing new rotations for regional Pokemon.

According to Gamespot, the introduction of the Generation 3 Pokemon from the Gameboy Advance era of Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire into Pokemon Go late last year has undergone a minor tweak. Niantic Labs has decided to add rotations to rare regional Pokemon in the game, so now if you don't live in a certain region you'll still be able to get your hands on certain Pokemon.

Some of the Pokemon now available outside of their original designated regions include Zangoose and Seviper. Generation 3 Pokemon that were previously exclusive to specific regions. Zangoose was restricted to North and South America, while Seviper was only located in Europe and Asia. Now it's possible to pick up either Pokemon from the opposite regions, with Seviper now being located in North and South America, while Zangoose is now available for a time in Europe and Asia.

As noted in the article, Niantic has been mum about whether or not these changes are limited time swaps or if these will be permanent changes.

Many gamers have been taking note that some of these rare Pokemon seem to be popping up in different places in Pokemon Go compared to where they used to be located, such as Relicanth, which was previously only located in Fiji and New Zealand. Later on, gamers began to discover that Relicanth popped up in New Caledonia and Vanuatu and other Pacific Islands.

The Gamespot article notes that some people suspect that the swaps began as part of the new year update, and that we could likely see other rare Pokemon swapping locations as well in the near future. Some believe that the swapping was implemented during the Christmas event that took place as some of the additional Generation 3 Pokemon began rolling out, which included the Legendary Pokemon, Groudon.

Groudon will continue to be made available for gamers leading up to January 15th. Gamers in all regions will be able to capture the Legendary Pokemon by hitting up their Gyms in Pokemon Go and joining the raiding parties where multiple players will be required to take down the Legendary boss monster.

A lot of players may have missed out on the regional swaps initially because Niantic has been adding a lot of new content to the game lately, including some new Gen 3 Pokemon such as Milotic, Sharpedo, and Wailord. The developers also added all new AR systems to the game, for enhanced immersion during the augmented reality battle sequences, along with an all new weather system that changes what types of Pokemon you encounter.

Now players will also have the opportunity to capture some Pokemon that were previously just out of region's reach in Pokemon Go, but there's no telling how long it will last.

Niantic Labs' Pokemon Go takes the standard Pokemon formula that we've come to expect from the Pokemon Company and Game Freak, and then expand upon it in a way that includes real-life traveling. Well, due to that real-life component, one region-specific Pokemon may be even harder to catch than we thought, since it's only available in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

According to a post on the Silph Road sub-Reddit, by user tkcom from Bangkok, Thailand, users have discovered how to capture Relicanth, a rare Pokemon that only appears in certain locations. Relicanth originally was reported to have only popped up in Fiji and New Zealand, but now it has been confirmed to pop up in New Caledonia and Vanuatu, a couple other Pacific Islands.

The confirmation came in from various users who had been hunting for Relicanth from around the world, including one user who tipped off the sub that they managed to capture a Relicanth in Vanuatu on December 26th, 2017. This was followed by another user from Vanuatu who confirmed a capture on December 28th, 2017.

So according to the post, many believe that Relicanths are migrating or located along a longitudinal path from New Zealand throughout the Pacific Islands. Many believe that the Pokemon has a permanent place within those regions, and are still awaiting more info on if they're available in Tonga, Samoa, or French Polynesia.

The thread is very fascinating, with a lot of information about the regional Pokemon catches, noting that if Relicanth stays in the New Zealand and Pacific Islands region, then it's only available to just under six million Pokemon Go users. Alternative, the thread explains that rare regional Pokemon like Kangaskhan are only available in places like Australia and Papua New Guinea, then it's only available to just over 30 million gamers.

The rest of the thread talks about different regional Pokemon and which countries should have what. Some argued that some Pokemon should be regional and that each segment of a continent needs its own exclusive, while others argued against regional exclusives, claiming that exclusives just make it hard for people who don't travel to... catch 'em all.

Some of the Pokemon in Pokemon Go do migrate around, though. The thread notes that some of the exclusives that used to be in Japan are no longer exclusive to Japan, and some of the others are also available under specific conditions or certain time frames.

However, for people who are absolutely obsessed with capturing all of the Pokemon in Pokemon Go, you'll have to make the long journey over to the Oceania territory in order to get your hands on a Relicanth. You could always convince your significant other to visit the Pacific Islands and then start plotting out how you're going to break away long enough to capture yourself a Relicanth. Alternatively, you could spoof your location, but Niantic Labs very much against the spirit of cheating in the game. But given the fact that some Pokemon do migrate, maybe if you sit tight long enough the Pokemon will make its way to your neck of the woods.

The Game Awards aired last night and, along with a whole bunch of new trailers, announcements, and commercials for eBay, they handed out a nice collection of awards including the coveted Game of the Year trophy. We've got the rundown on all of the evening's winners.

If you missed The Game Awards last night and don't feel like catching up on the three-hour presentation, we've got everything you need to know about which games brought home some hardware.

Game of the Year: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Best Game Direction: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Best Narrative: What Remains of Edith Finch

Best Art Direction: Cuphead

Best Music: NieR: Automata

Best Audio Design: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Best Performance: Melina Juergens, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Games for Impact: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Best Ongoing Game: Overwatch

Best Independent Game: Cuphead

Best Mobile Game: Monument Valley 2

Best Handheld Game: Metroid: Samus Returns

Best VR/AR Game: Resident Evil 7

Best Action Game: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Best Action/Adventure Game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Best Roleplaying Game: Persona 5

Best Fighting Game: Injustice 2

Best Family Game: Super Mario Odyssey

Best Strategy Game: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Best Sports/Racing Game: Forza Motorsport 7

Most Anticipate Game: The Last of Us Part II

Trending Gamer: Guy "Dr. Disrespect" Beahm

Best eSports Game: Overwatch

Best eSports Player: Lee "Faker" Sang-\_hyeok_

Best eSports Team: Cloud 9

Student Game Award: Level Squared

Best Debut Indie Game: Cuphead

Chinese Fan Game Award: jx3 HD

On the whole, I think this was probably the best year for The Game Awards yet. There were only a couple of cringe-worthy moments and the folks who received awards on stage were given plenty of time to say their thanks. There was still a lot of advertising, but that's understandable given the fact that somebody needs to bankroll this whole ordeal. Still, I would have liked to see more presentations made live and fewer lists of winners kind of thrown out between trailers.

Speaking of the fringe benefits of watching, there were plenty of extra niceties thrown into this year's show including fantastic musical performances, some great industry recognitions and trailers for games like Bayonetta 3, Death Stranding and whatever the hell From Software showed off for 6.5 seconds that sure looked a lot like Bloodborne but could have been anything.

And say what you will about the show itself, they usually include a solid collection of categories with deserving entries. I mean, we got to see Hellblade, Cuphead and NieR: Automata win awards alongside the likes of Overwatch, Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, so it included a little something for everyone. I still think Horizon was criminally snubbed, but that's the way these things go sometimes.

So what did you think of the show, folks? What about the winners? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Nintendo has a collection of new content added to Fire Emblem Heroes for mobile devices, along with a bevy of events set to take place throughout December and through the holiday season to round out the year and usher in 2018.

Go Nintendo is reporting that new summoner focuses will be made available for Enduring Love, Block B, which includes Sigurd, Katarina, Catria and Dorcas, which is available from today up until December 12th.

Also, the Summoning Focus will be available for Enduring Love, Black A, for Tharja, Rhajat, Faye, and Priscilla from now up until December 12th.

Fire Emblem Heroes is one of Nintendo's mobile offerings that came out earlier in the year. Much like every other Nintendo mobile title, the game's servers were bogged down with activity during the early part of the launch. After the servers finally stabilized, the game was able to receive plenty of new updates, content, and fixes.

Over on Perfectly Nintendo, there's a complete list of the events set to roll out for the game as well throughout December, including the Summoning Focus called "Children of Fate", which is due to start on December 4th for Soleil, Shiro, and Siegbert. The Focus for those characters will be available up until December 18th.

Just after that, you can expect the Enduring Love Voting Gauntlet to take place on December 6th through December 12th, along with a Grand Hero Battle that is available right now that offers players a three-star version of the character you clear the event with on the Hard difficulty. If you manage to defeat the event on Lunatic you'll receive a four-star version of the character, and on Infernal you'll get both a four-star version of the character and some Hero Feathers. The Grand Hero Battle will wrap up on December 14th.

For players looking for something new to experience, there is a brand new map that will be available from December 12th in Fire Emblem Heroes to play on up until January 1st.

Another Bound Hero Battle will be available featuring Amelia and Tana, but they will only be available from December 14th up until December 23rd.

From December 19th to December 26th the elements will be water and earth, and from December 26th to January 2nd the elements will be water and wind.

The game came out back on February 2nd, 2017 and managed to capture the hearts and minds of gamers who enjoy gaming on the go with their smartphones.

The title, as mentioned, has been highly popular and managed to get quite a few gamers hooked on Fire Emblem unlike any game in the series' past. If you're still putting in time with the mobile title you can proceed to take part in the events going on right now, which will last up until the start of the new year in 2018.

The good part is that the game is free-to-play, so you don't have to worry about putting any money into the game in order to get any play time out of it.

It was recently announced that Tencent and Bluehole Studios partnered up together for a release of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in China. Well, Tencent's gaming arm isn't done with the Battle Royale-style survival genre, and two more games will be released in China as well.

Polygon is reporting that Tencent and PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Bluehole, have joined up with Chinese development outfit Timi Studios to work on two offshoots of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The first game is called Army Attack and is a naval-rendition of the survival genre, focusing on taking the fight to the waters while also using aerial vehicles such as helicopters to take out opponents. It sounds like a mix between World of Warships and the naval maps from Battlefield 4.

Speaking of Battlefield...the second game is more traditional, and is actually called Battlefield. The game is a traditional Battle Royale style survival game where the winner of the round is the last man or woman standing. This second title is being developed by Lightspeed and Quantum Studio.

The promos for the game reveal that it's just like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, where players will start off by parachuting out of a plane, landing on the ground and then attempting to survive against other players. The promo material released so far is just a collection of cinematics and we haven't actually seen what the in-game graphics and content will look like.

If you were hoping to get in on the action for both titles, you'll be facing two hurdles: the first is that both titles are only available for mobile devices. So you would need a decent smartphone to play the games. So even if you have a decent gaming rig you'll still need a decent smartphone as well. While that hurdle probably won't be much of an issue for most gamers, the second hurdle most certainly will be an issue because you'll also have to know how to navigate Mandarin. The games will only be released in China.

So technically, Chinese gamers will have three different types of survival games coming to mobile devices, with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds being localized, along with the Army Attack naval game, and the Battlefield ground-based Battle Royale title coming as well.

Originally the Chinese government wasn't entirely keen on allowing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the country due to the game possibly not adhering to the country's socialist values. However, after the initial reluctance expressed by the Ministry of Culture, the controversy died down when Tencent Games stepped in and announced that it would be publishing the game in mainland China.

Bluehole Studios' third-person survival game has already become a huge hit around the world, selling more than 21 million copies since launching into Early Access on Steam back in March. The game will also be extending its market presence by arriving on the Xbox One this month as well in the Game Preview program.

With the title making its way to home consoles, Chinese smartphones, and international audiences, don't be surprised if it eventually arrives on the PlayStation 4 at some point in the near future. For now, you'll only be able to play the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds spin-offs on smartphones.

It seems like a lot of games launch these days with expectations not being met and some ensuing server problems causing plenty of hiccups and halts for the fun times. Well, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for mobile devices was no exception, and Nintendo decided to offer some form of compensation for the server problems that gamers have been encountering. Free in-game currency.

Eurogamer is reporting on the server notice that Nintendo sent out to gamers, which informed them that shortly after the game launched the host servers experience extremely high traffic on November 21st, 2017, and the issues have been persisting ever since. The good part is that some people can still play the game, but the bad part is that it's an intermittent issue that can pop up and attack at any time while you're playing the game.

Nintendo has decided to compensate gamers who have been experiencing these server issues by giving out 20 free Leaf Tickets, which are used as cash shop currency in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

Take note, though, you'll only have a limited amount of time to cash in on the free offer of Leaf Tickets. The bundle of tickets will be available as a gift package in-game that will be delivered to affected players' mailboxes. Nintendo has been sending out the gifts to player mailboxes starting November 23rd, 2017 and the gifting will end on December 23rd, 2017.

If you're unable to retrieve the free Leaf Ticket gift, the notice suggests closing out the app and then restarting it in order to retrieve the gift.

Once the gift is in your possession you can then proceed to use the Leaf Tickets as you see fit.

One of the things that really hampered the experience for gamers was that there are daily bonuses and requirements for Animal Crossing that requires players to log into the game every day in order to benefit from daily rewards. With the server issues preventing gamers from properly logging in, it meant that plenty of gamers missed out on the rewards, creating lots of frustration.

Some gamers wondered why Nintendo didn't just increase the server capacity for the game's launch? Well, it's tough to tell exactly what's required for some game launches, and in the case of Animal Crossing, I think there was a vast underestimation on how many people would actually be interested in playing the game on their mobile devices.

It's important to keep in mind that Animal Crossing is definitely lower on the rung of brands that Nintendo owns, so the company probably figured to only maintain server load for a moderate amount of users. Then again, Nintendo's other properties also had the same problem, including Fire Emblem: Heroes and Niantic Labs' take on Pokemon Go. It seems to be a common trend for Nintendo to underestimate how popular its brands and products really are. To the company's credit, it did scale the servers properly for some of the Nintendo Switch's early 2017 launches, including ARMS and Splatoon 2.

If you were looking for something to keep you occupied during holiday travels this week, Nintendo has come to the rescue with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. As an added bonus, it's actually available on mobile platforms a day earlier than expected. As in, right now.

Earlier this fall, Nintendo finally held a Direct video presentation highlighting their latest mobile offering, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. While Australia got their hands on the game instantly to serve as a test market, Nintendo announced the rest of the world would finally be able to build their own campsite sometime in late November. Last week, the Big N confirmed that Pocket Camp would be arriving just in time for the holidays, launching on Android and iOS tomorrow, Nov. 22. Then, out of nowhere, the game actually appeared today, Nov. 21.

We figure Nintendo wanted to allow everyone plenty of time to get the game downloaded and started before actually hitting the road to grandma's house, or wherever the winds may take you this Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, that's a very U.S.-centric way of looking at the launch timing, but that's the best I can come up with for why they'd just flip the switch on the game 24 hours early.

While we don't blame you for rushing out and downloading the game instantly, remember that this is going to be a very popular mobile game and Nintendo is still kind of new to this, so servers are likely to be an issue. According to Engadget, some folks are already reporting difficulty playing the game because servers are overwhelmed. Hopefully, things will be settled before crazy Uncle Gary wants to come over and talk about politics or world events while waiting on the turkey to bake.

This is Nintendo's fourth mobile title following the lackluster Miitomo and the much better Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. Mario Run is a for-pay game that, despite its huge success, hasn't made enough money to please Nintendo. Fire Emblem, though, offers microtransactions that have made it much more lucrative. We figure that's why Animal Crossing, and probably every other Nintendo mobile game moving forward, will follow that same model. We've heard that Pocket Camp needed some tweaking in the reward loop/time commitment department during early play, so hopefully, that's been worked out by now. Otherwise, we saw Nintendo react quickly to adjust Fire Emblem for mobile and that worked out swimmingly, so we assume the same will be done for Animal Crossing.

Again, we have no issues with microtransactions when they're implemented well, especially if the game is free-to-play to begin with. What, did you think I would talk about this kind of stuff without bringing up Battlefront II one more time?

If you were hoping that the Animal Crossing mobile game would be a streamlined drip-feed of the core series' most addictive goodness, you're in luck! Nintendo has finally revealed Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and it looks like they've managed to cram a lot of the series' best stuff into a mobile-sized package.

While last night's 14-minute Nintendo Direct gives a more thorough walkthrough of what players can expect out of the mobile Animal Crossing game, the "Digest" above does a solid job of delivering all of the basics in a fraction of the time. That description also works well for the games themselves. If you want the full-on Animal Crossing experience, New Leaf is ready to roll right now on the 3DS. If, however, you want a slimmed-down version that offers many of the core game's key features in a much smaller package, it looks like Pocket Camp is going to deliver. Thankfully, we'll only have to wait until "late November" to actually check it out.

We still need to get our hands on the game before making any sort of assessment, but everything certainly seems to be in order with Pocket Camp. It actually follows the same model of other mobile games released by Nintendo up until now. If you boil the Mario games down to their basics, they're all about running and jumping. So, we got Super Mario Run. While it's lacking the more intricate relationship features, bigger maps and evolving battle conditions, Fire Emblem Heroes also does a solid job of boiling a Nintendo game down to its basics.

As for Animal Crossing on mobile, you'll still be repaying loans, decorating plenty of spaces, collecting resources and performing odd jobs for your anthropomorphic neighbors. Rather than fuss over an entire town, you're now in charge of a pretty sizable campsite. You'll get to decorate that site and build amenities for your visitors, as well as decorate a couple of small rooms in your own RV.

You're not limited to just exploring the campsite, though. You'll get to check out a wooded area to collect fruit, a beach to fish and snag seashells, etc. Along the way, you'll try to gather specific items to fill requests, earning you additional in-game currency to continue expanding and decorating.

You'll also find plenty of shops to visit, allowing you to purchase outfits for your avatar, special furniture, decorations for your RV and various upgrades.

Of course, this wouldn't be a mobile game if there wasn't some sort of for-pay hook. In Pocket Camp, you'll be able to buy special tickets with real-world money. Those tickets can be used to improve/speed up play, but they don't appear to be too intrusive. Again, we'll have to wait until we get the game in our hands to decide.

For now, though, things seem to be coming along nicely.

One of the games we haven't heard much about from Nintendo is the mobile title Miitomo. The title kind of slithered out onto the market and then faded away from the news feeds for a while. Well, Nintendo is putting the game back into the spotlight thanks to the fact that it's been updated with new items that are now available in the shop.

The Japanese Nintendo news site is reporting that Nintendo has recently updated Miitomo with some brand new shop items you can purchase to outfit your Mii with.

The update features a series of new clothing and accessory items for your Mii as part of the Miitomo Shop offerings, including a Plaited Alice Band Bob Wig, which will cost you 2,680 coins if you decide to purchase it for your character. There's an all-new Denim Shirt Dress that will cost you 2,280 coins, Open-Sided Pumps for only 800 coins, and a Plaited Alice Band Bob Outfit for a rather costly 5,660 coins.

You can either purchase each of the items separately and outfit your character with these different parts by mixing and matching them with other clothes already available in your wardrobe, or you can buy the whole set and give your character a themed look based on the newly released items for the Miis.

The customization is very similar to playing dress up in games like The Sims, the only major difference here is that Miitomo is specifically themed for people who play games on mobile devices and like being able to modify and customize their characters.

Both Sony and Microsoft have dabbled in these features. Previously, Sony had the PlayStation Home, which allowed gamers to customize their characters and then go into an online lobby and then play games or just socialize. Things didn't quite work out for PlayStation Home as Sony had hoped and the company ended up canning the service. Microsoft fared slightly better with the Xbox Live Avatars, which are still going strong to this very day. Gamers can currently customize and outfit their avatars in a number of different ways, and even use those avatars in a few games. Microsoft hasn't done much with the avatars beyond that, though.

The Miitomo concept is Nintendo's evolution of the Miiverse social service, which was announced for shutdown this past summer. Players would take their Mii's into the online social hub and communicate or interact with other players. Nintendo didn't let it go to waste, though, the company ended up launching Miitomo last year for mobile devices and then later launched Miitopia for the Nintendo 3DS in late 2016. Both apps are sort of spiritual successors to the Miiverse social interaction concept.

While Nintendo's Miitomo obviously hasn't been able to catch fire and explode in popularity like Pokemon Go has for iOS and Android devices, Nintendo is still dedicated to producing new content for the title and giving mobile fans something to look forward to when it comes to dressing up the characters and showing off your fashion sense. You can grab the new clothes right now from the Miitomo cash shop.

The most recent episode of Telltale's Batman: The Enemy Within made its way onto home consoles and PC, and it features a brief scene involving the death of a character that many found offensive. Well, Telltale decided to respond to the controversy about an image of a victim in the game looking like the late Russian diplomat Andrei Karlov, and so the company opted to clear everything up.

The second episode features an image of the diplomat who was killed in the gallery by a gunman. In a response to Gamasutra, Telltale's PR representative stated that the company will be removing the images across all platforms...

According to the article, the image appears as Bruce is using the Batcomputer to go over surveillance from a bank robbery. In the aftermath of the robbery, there are some dead victims on the ground, one of which resembles Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov, who was assassinated by a Turkish police officer last year.

The image in Batman: The Enemy Within sparked controversy within some communities, as people were outraged and offended that Telltale would include an image resembling a similar depiction of that of Karlov after he had been shot.

Telltale's response was prompt enough to show that it cares about the community's feedback and how its games are perceived.

The scene itself is nestled in near the beginning of the second episode of Batman: The Enemy Within, after Batman has a rather unfortunate tangle with the super-brute, Bane.

For most people who aren't really paying any mind, it's an easy to miss since it's part of a series of newspaper clippings centered around some of the crimes committed by Harley, Mr. Freeze, and Bane.

It took gamers just a day to find the image and compare it to the one that widely circulated over Karlov's assassination. It first popped up across some Twitter threads, where gamers compared the two images. Eventually, media began asking Telltale Games about the incident.

As noted in the article, this isn't the first time that video games have utilized assets from other properties and been called out for it. Naughty Dog managed to catch some fire when Uncharted used an asset from Assassin's Creed IV in an in-game painting, causing a bit of laughter and joviality to be had. However, in this case, there weren't many people laughing about the image that Telltale used in Batman: The Enemy Within.

Nevertheless, it appears as if the image will be removed rather quickly and so Telltale should be able to avoid any future controversies regarding this particular scenario. I'm sure the studio's quality assurance teams will be combing over every asset from now in fine detail to avoid any future mishaps.

Batman: The Enemy Within's latest episode is available right now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Telltale will also be releasing the next episode for Guardians of the Galaxy soon.

A ton of new content is set to arrive in Super Mario Run for mobile devices. Nintendo's first major Super Mario title for iOS and Android smartphones will receive all new stages, a new character, new abilities and a few other goodies come September 29th.

IGN is reporting that Princess Daisy will be joining the game and will be able to utilize a special double-jump ability that isn't available to Mario. Daisy will be joined by an all-new world for players to run and jump through, along with a brand new mode.

Playing as Daisy isn't just handed out for free. Like many other Nintendo properties, players will actually have to earn their way to playing as Daisy in Super Mario Run. This is accomplished by completing the new Remix 10 mode, where players must conquer 10 different sections from various Super Mario Run levels. It's a bit like a speedrunner's challenge insofar that players must complete each segment in rapid succession in order to collect the medals, finish the stages and unlock Daisy.

The mode will also afford players the ability to unlock additional items in which to customize and deck out your Mushroom Kingdom with, so for those of you who are still playing Nintendo's platforming game for mobile devices, the added interior decorations might be an incentive to dive back into the game.

Once you unlock Daisy, you can then use her in the Toad Rally in order to reach some of the coins that were out of Mario's reach. This gives you an extra incentive to play some of the older stages over again and attempt to find some of the secrets you may have missed.

You'll also be able to play Daisy in the brand new world, which adds nine new levels to the game, which include some new enemies to face off against, and some additional coins to collect. In order to unlock the new world you will have to conquer Worlds 1 through 6 first.

This update follows up on a previous spring update that added in some additional content based around Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, which came out in April for the Nintendo Switch.

For gamers who have yet to purchase the full version of Super Mario Run, Nintendo is also planning on discounting the full purchase of the game the week of the update release at the end of September.

Some investors weren't very fond of Nintendo's approach to making mobile games due to the fact that the company hasn't been milking the apps for all they're worth with microtransactions. Shareholders felt that Super Mario Run could have made a lot more money by individually selling levels or power-ups to force people to pay for items from the cash shop. Nintendo, however, felt that relying on "whales" for a free-to-play game would diminish the Super Mario brand, and the company has made it known that it will stand steadfast in protecting the value of its brands, which is why so few of the company's top games are even made available on mobile devices.

You can look for the next major update to drop for Super Mario Run come September 29th.

I know what you're thinking: Wouldn't Pokemon Go be even better if the Pokemon were zombies and you got to shoot them? Apparently, AMC and Next Games agree, as they've recently revealed an AR game set in the world of The Walking Dead.

The game is called The Walking Dead: Our World, and the focus will be on letting players hunt down walkers in the real world using the power of their smartphone. The above trailer is big on atmosphere and action, but we're not sure if what we're seeing is anything like what gameplay will be. Those are some pretty detailed shootouts for a smartphone, after all, but maybe Next Games will be able to deliver on the concept.

Details for this Walking Dead game are scarce, but we at least know that it's "coming soon" to both the iOS and Android marketplaces. Also, as is shown off in the trailer, you'll be able to fight walkers "in the streets, in the park, on your sofa." However, we still don't know if this is going to be a location-based adventure or if you'll be able to play it in the real world, no matter where you happen to be standing. The final little detail, which is also revealed in the trailer, is that heroes from The Walking Dead TV show will pop in to lend a hand from time to time, including Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and others.

Obviously, a lot of folks are comparing this game to Pokemon Go, the only altered reality game to find major success so far. We imagine a lot of folks will take advantage of the Star Wars app's upcoming AR experience, but that's little more than a cool movie playing out while you stare at the Grand Canyon through your phone. If you want AR gameplay, Pokemon is pretty much the only way to go.

That is, of course, until this new Walking Dead game drops. The footage makes it look like walkers will be peppered throughout the real world. The players also found useful resources through the game world, such as firearms and grenades. It appears you can run over to the items in the real world and pick up the virtual gear.

It also looks like combat is done in first-person but, again, we don't know if that was supposed to demonstrate actual gameplay or be more conceptual, like, "this is what it feels like to play our game."

Obviously, we're looking forward to learning more about the game. Is it more of a zombie shooting gallery you can play for fun wherever you go, or will there be "mission zones" tied to real world locations? Will there be anything to do outside of shooting walkers? Will there be detailed stats to compare with friends? For now, all we can do is speculate.

If you haven't played through Final Fantasy XV yet because you simply haven't had time to sit down and dig into the epic RPG on consoles, Square Enix may have come up with a solution. It's called Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition, and it apparently lets you play through the entire game while on the go. Also, it's damn cute.

This is easily one of the most ambitious mobile projects we've heard of to date. According to Square Enix, this Pocket Edition of Final Fantasy XV is a condensed version of the game's campaign that replaces the graphics with cute little chibi characters but, otherwise, will take you through all of the key beats.

Heading to iOS and Android this fall, FFXVPE will focus on the "main story" from the original game, which we assume means that most of the side quests and extra activities have been trimmed out. Even focusing on the central narrative, we figure this has to be a pretty insane undertaking to work through on mobile. Based on the launch trailer, the game is still fully voiced, boasts semi-open world exploration, active battles, boss fights, the camping/cooking functionality and more.

Square Enix is also promising casual touch controls that have been optimized for the mobile platform, which means anyone and everyone should be able to pick up this version of Final Fantasy XV and dive in without feeling overwhelmed. That's actually a pretty good idea, since we imagine plenty of folks simply skipped over this one because the idea of taking on an epic JRPG can be pretty daunting. Break it into bite-sized pieces that you can play on your phone, though, and we imagine Square Enix will be winning over some new fans here.

As for the structure, the game will be told over the course of 10 chapters, though no word yet on how long each chapter will take players to complete. Even if they are only an hour each, we're still talking about a 10-hour mobile game. That's pretty impressive.

When the first chapter of this mobile FFXV launches, it'll be available free of charge. The remaining nine chapters will come at a cost, though the publisher has not yet revealed what that cost might be. We're curious how much real estate this game will take up on phones, too. We assume there will be an option to simply keep the chapter you're currently playing on the device with the save file transferring over, but that hasn't been confirmed. Otherwise, we imagine it's going to be a bit of a beast.

Based on the comments, some folks are excited to play FFXV in this new way and others seem to wish Square Enix would focus their efforts on finishing/fixing the console game. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Legendary Pokemon have become a thing in Pokemon Go, and a lot of gamers have been desperate to get their hands one of these ultra rare pocket monsters. Well, one of those elite, rare Pokemon has surfaced as part of an international event, and gamers can now catch a Mewtwo for their very own collection in the popular mobile RPG.

Polygon is reporting that Mewtwo is currently available in Pokemon Go, but it's not an easy catch and you have to meet some very specific conditions in order to get your hands on one.

For instance, first and foremost you will need to complete a Raid Battle. This will require you to go out and team with other players and successfully defeat a Raid Boss in Pokemon Go. It's not the easiest of tasks, but players with some decent training should be able to handle it without any problems.

If you have already completed a Raid Battle, the next part is kind of tricky: you will need to be invited to partake in a Pokemon Go Stadium event.

According to Polygon, Niantic revealed that the Stadium event is invite-only, and will go out to those who took part in a Raid Battle at the Gym where the Mewtwo fight will take place.

In this particular case, the event was held at the Yokohama Stadium in Japan. Players had to travel to the event, where a limited number of Pokemon trainers showed up to fight Mewtwo. Other events to capture a Mewtwo will be held at various Gyms around the world, so don't worry about missing out on the one that took place in Yokohama. One of the things that everyone pointed out is that the event mirrored the big showcase that was featured at the end of the first official trailer for Pokemon Go a couple of years ago.

For those of you who don't remember, the trailer for the game rounded out with everyone at Time Square in New York City, all of them fighting against Mewtwo in hopes of capturing the Legendary Pokemon. Well, Niantic Labs made that event come true at the Yokohama Stadium.

What's more is that everyone who showed up was guaranteed a 100% capture rate if they worked together and successfully defeated Mewtwo.

For those of you who missed out on the event and were unable to attend live and in person in Japan on August 14th. YouTuber Trainer Tips, a popular YouTuber covering Pokemon Go, did a 14-minute video about the event and actually walked gamers through the process of taking down a Mewtwo.

Trainer Tips' Nick Oyzon mentions that Gyarados is a good foil for Mewtwo. He also mentions that Tyranitar could be decent as well but Mewtwo's Focus Blast is extremely powerful, and not many Pokemon can withstand the blast head on.

According to the video, the first ever Mewtwo was captured by a little kid with a backpack. After defeating Mewtwo you'll get 10,000xp, six Mewtwo candies, and the actual Mewtwo. The event went a heck of a lot better than Niantic's Chicago event that's for sure.

You'll have to keep your eyes peeled for more Pokemon Go events if you want to get your hands on the Mewtwo, so keep your eyes peeled on the advanced notifications for events popping up at a Gym near you.

Niantic Labs' Pokemon Go is further bringing the elements of the virtual world into the real world. This recently took shape in the form of certain stores handing out real life Pokemon badges. That's right, you can earn a real life Pokemon badge by playing Pokemon Go.

According to Go Nintendo, if you're level 30 or higher, head to a Sprint store and show the staff your achievement and they may hand you a level 30 Trainer Badge. The article notes that it's unsure if this applies to all Sprint stores. It could be limited to a select few within a specific region. The article is also unsure if you have to be a Sprint customer to take advantage of this real life unlockable achievement either, but it would be pretty cool if it was simply something anyone could achieve who reached level 30 in Pokemon Go.

According to a thread over on the Pokemon Go sub-Reddit, some users noted that it wasn't required to be a Sprint customer in order to get a free level 30 badge. Some users did inform the rest of the community that the badge hand-outs are a bit hit and miss. Some stores supposedly had signs out but did not have the badges on hand at the time (or maybe it was all out?) while other stores didn't have signs out nor did the stores have the badges.

The level 30 badge comes in a small Sprint promo card with the Pokemon Go logo and an advertisement to join Sprint and make use of the unlimited plan. As you know, the game is a global phenomenon and a lot of gamers on the sub-Reddit actually come from all over the world, so they were asking if it was possible to get the badges from other stores, possiblely in Europe and Asia?

The achievement isn't the easiest thing to obtain given that it takes a lot of time and effort to reach level 30 in Niantic's mobile RPG.

Some people, however, have been playing the game all year long and have managed to reach level 30, so it's not too hard to get the badge achievement if you have the time. Others who just started playing the mobile Pokemon game will probably have to put in plenty of time and capture plenty of Pokemon before being able to walk into a Sprint store to get the level 30 badge.

Pokemon Go came out just last year and it's already become a massive money maker for Niantic Labs, The Pokemon Company, and Nintendo. The trio have managed to make a very lucrative income from the mobile title, including seeing some mind-share spreading from the mobile game into the handheld genre on the Nintendo 3DS systems, such as Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon, both of which saw record sales out of the gate thanks in due part to some of the new features added to the series, along with the hype that had been generated from Pokemon Go throughout 2016.

If you want to get your hands on your very own level 30 badge, be sure to call or visit your local Sprint store to see if they have one available for those of you who have reached level 30 in Pokemon Go.

Niantic Labs may have caused a bit of a ruckus with the whole Pokemon Go Fest that went up in proverbial flames due to the servers not being able to accommodate all the players who wanted to participate, but don't worry, it's all made up for with the fact that a new Legendary Pokemon has entered into the wild.

Gamespot is reporting that Team Valor's mascot, Moltres, is now out in the wild for a limited time in Pokemon Go, and gamers can capture a Moltres right now!

There's a limit on where you can acquire this particular Legendary Pokemon, though: it will only appear during Raid Battles. This means that you'll have to team up with some friends (or a few trustworthy strangers) and battle it out against the fire-type in order to secure the Legendary Pokemon for yourself.

Niantic Labs offering up the Moltres won't be for any long period of time, though. The rare Pokemon will only be available up until August 7th. After that it will disappear for a while, just like Lugia and Articuno, two previous Legendary Pokemon that were made available for a limited time in Pokemon Go.

The article further reports that Zapdos will be next on the list, and will only be available for a limited time as well, and you'll only between August 7th and August 14th to get your hands on the super rare, Legendary Pokemon.

Niantic will also be introducing additional Legendaries throughout the rest of the year, but the dates haven't been cemented in stone just yet.

Niantic had a bit of a problem that it ran into legally with the last Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago back in July. The company promised a rocking good time, with the ability to capture a Legendary Pokemon, but the servers were overloaded during the event, and some people ended up suing Niantic for the travel costs they lost and for not getting delivered what was promised. Niantic did, however, offer all of those who participated in the event a free Legendary and $100 worth of free cash shop cash. Not everyone was pleased with that, though, and so the company is still stuck in some form of litigation.

The legal hold-up also caused a lot of people to miss out on some summer-time fun due to the fact that European fests for the game were postponed in the wake of the legal trouble Niantic is facing off against.

The Japanese fest is still on for August, and there will be additional events set to take place in the fall as well.

Pokemon Go never really had the easiest time of it on the market due to one thing or another, but Niantic, the Pokemon Company, and Nintendo have been making money hand over fist with the title.

Surely some goodwill will likely be restored now that gamers can get their hands on a Moltres by joining a Raid Battle. As mentioned, you'll want to work fast because the Legendary won't be around for long, and will go the way of the dodo come August 7th.

Ubisoft is set to release a brand new Assassin's Creed game ahead of the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Origins. The upcoming title is called Assassin's Creed: Rebellion and Ubisoft's trailer for the game, and it's filled with adorably cute Assassins.

The trailer was posted up over on the Ubisoft YouTube channel. It's a short 35-second piece featuring the Spanish Assassin, Aguilar, along with Ezio and Chinese Assassin Shao Jun.

The trailer doesn't show much gameplay but we do find out it's set to arrive on the iOS for Apple devices and on Android phones and tablets.

Some other footage that surfaced of the game showcased Aguilar in action during a mission set in 15th century Spain.

One thing that absolutely stands out with the game is the soundtrack. Even from the brief demonstrations the music is just gorgeous. There's a lot of soft nods to what Jesper Kyd accomplished with the original trilogy of games, Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed II, and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. This is in no way to take away from what Lorne Balfe accomplished with the unforgettable and thematic soundtrack that helped shape Connor's adventures in Assassin's Creed III.

The actual gameplay in Assassin's Creed: Rebellion is a mix of platforming and turn-based combat. Players will be able to sneak up on unsuspecting foes and take them down stealthily, or face them head on and engage in back-and-forth, turn-based sword clashing.

The game still retains its serious story and nature, but it's all encapsulated within a chibi-like design for the characters where there's a lot of cutesy looking Assassins and guards.

Much like the other mainline games, it's still possible to utilize the environment to your advantage, such as hiding in haystacks or using platforms to get the drop on foes. The game further dives into the stories surrounding the characters that were introduced in other games.

Aguilar, who was played by Michael Fassbender in the live-action motion picture, is accompanied in his journey by Maria. As the missions press on you'll be able to unlock new Assassins to play, including Tariq and Luis.

The mix and match of Assassins set within this cutesy playground of death is a definite step in a different direction for the series, even if it's somewhat of a tweak of the side-scrolling platforming gameplay featured in the trilogy of budget-priced games Ubisoft released a while back for home consoles and PC.

The newest game is being compared a lot to Fallout Shelter due to the way players will have to strategically address situations in segmented blocks, but it's really a lot closer to Ronin than it is Bethesda's mobile strategy game.

You can look to get your hands on Assassin's Creed: Rebellion soon for iOS and Android devices.

The new Avatar movies on the horizon from James Cameron are obviously going to be huge. Well, with nearly every super-big, tentpole blockbuster, there's usually some sort of video game tie-in. In the case of Avatar, Fox decided to go the mobile route this time around.

Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment have teamed up to acquire Aftershock, a mobile developer studio who previously had ties to Kabam.

Aftershock will be in charge of creating the mobile-strategy game based around the world of James Cameron's Avatar. No details on the game were revealed, but it seems likely that the game will be similar to other kingdom management games like Clash of Clans.

For those of you not in the know, Kabam was once a huge player in the mobile gaming space, having acquired a number of other mobile studio upstarts and established a strong presence in the mobile and casual gaming space with hits across Facebook and smartphones. A few of the big titles Kabam had published to its name included Fast & Furious 6: The Game, Star Wars: Uprising, The Hunger Games: Panem Rising, and Marvel: Contest of Champions.

It sounds like this deal could be the start of something big, as Aftershock will be positioned under FoxNext Games, an interactive entertainment spin-off from the 20th Century Fox brand. What's interesting here is that Fox had a previous video game branch focused on developing and publishing games called Fox Interactive. The outlet was responsible for a lot of different games over the years, including the popular first-person shooter series, Aliens vs Predator. The movie studio arm ended up shutting down Fox Interactive back in 2006.

For the upcoming mobile Avatar game, FoxNext and Aftershock will be taking things slowly. According to the Hollywood Reporter article, FoxNext president Salil Mehta mentioned that the studio will be monitoring the success (or failure) of Aftershock's new title, and will decide from there if more games will be made.

According to Mehta, there's just a tinge of apprehension about Fox deep-diving back into the brand for video games, despite the fact that the world of Pandora seems to be hugely popular and there's no shortage of interest in the brand. In fact, back in May, it was announced that Pandora: The World of Avatar would be opening at Disney World, and by the end of May, the themed attraction had garnered so much attention from park visitors that there were waiting lines stretching for up to 400 minutes, as reported by Blasting News. So there's definitely no shortage of interest from fans in Cameron's Avatar.

Then again, Fox may be reluctant to go all-in after the last attempt to tackle the gaming industry based on the world of Pandora. Back in 2009 Fox had acquired the services of Ubisoft to work on a third-person shooter based on the Avatar movie. It was a typical movie tie-in game that came and went that most people forgot about, despite the fact that Ubisoft even went the extra mile to acquire the services of the legendary Sigourney Weaver to reprise her role from the film.

No release date has been set for the upcoming Avatar mobile strategy game, but it's said to arrive before the upcoming sequel movies hit theaters.

Rumors are running rampant about some of the projects that Blizzard Entertainment is working on. One of the projects is rumored to be a mobile game that may be based around the Warcraft property. So how did rumors come to the conclusion that Blizzard is working on a Warcraft mobile game?

Well, according to a job listing over on Blizzard's hiring page that a Neogaf user spotted. The job listing seeks a special effects artist who has some knowledge and know-how when it comes to colors, combat effects, user interfaces, and timing when it comes to putting together animations, particles, textures, alphas, and layers for use in a mobile game.

Specifically, they're looking for artists who know their way around the Unity 3D game engine and are skilled in working within the confines and resource budgets afforded to the design scope of mobile devices, both new and old. Essentially they want someone who can make high-quality assets for newer phones and tablets but can also scale their work to look good even on lower-end devices.

The most telling part of the job listing is that they want artists who have a "passion" and understanding of creating effects and imagery that are "synonymous" with their Warcraft intellectual property.

Now keep in mind that this does not mean that the new game will specifically be a Warcraft game, but it very well could be a spin-off game or something set within the universe perhaps. Heroes of the Storm for instance isn't a Warcraft game but it definitely utilizes aesthetics similar to the Warcraft IP due to some characters and maps in the game are from the Warcraft property.

Most of the comments in the NeoGaf thread point to the possibility of Blizzard working on a game similar to the likes of Clash of Clans or Clash Royale. It would definitely make sense for Blizzard to dabble in that area of mobile gaming since it's a highly profitable sector of the market right now and it's a sector that Blizzard hasn't sought to conquer. With Activision having acquired King Entertainment -- the makers of the highly popular Candy Crush series -- it's entirely possible that Activision may have some tie-in to the way Blizzard's upcoming mobile title is distributed to fit in line with King's other properties.

A game based on Warcraft would definitely be possible in the mobile space, though. It would also make a ton of sense given that the original Warcraft trilogy started as a real-time strategy series before World of Warcraft came about and everyone got addicted to the MMORPG experience. Bringing the series back to its roots with a strategy, kingdom management motif would make a ton of sense.

Of course, we could only really know what the gameplay is like if we knew what they required from the lead gameplay designer, given that it would reveal what sort of hooks and loops they're going for.

In the meantime, we'll have to sit back and wait to see what comes out of this news, assuming the game they're hiring for doesn't get canned. But gamers could be in for a treat with a new mobile Warcraft game.

Minecraft is finally going to offer a way for players to receive compensation for the time and effort they put into crafting legendary creations. Get ready to discover the Minecraft Marketplace.

While Minecraft is available on just about every platform known to man at this point, the Marketplace will soon be launching exclusively for the Pocket (mobile) version of the game, as well as Windows 10. According to the announcement, the team is currently working with all of the other platforms to see if the Marketplace is something they have an interest in implementing.

The Minecraft Marketplace is exactly what it sounds like; a place where players can purchase community-made, as well as Microsoft made, content and then have it available in their own game. The ability to freely trade content will remain but, according to the announcement, this new feature is being implemented so that folks who make a living off of Minecraft have a fresh avenue to keep doing what they're doing.

To be clear, not everybody will be able to sell their creations across Minecraft. You'll need to have an established business and the developers will be hand-picking content they think will fit nicely on the storefront. Anyone can submit their projects for consideration if they meet the criteria, but there will definitely be an approval process.

To get things rolling, the Minecraft team has called upon popular community creators to offer the first batch of premium, homemade textures, creations, adventure maps, minigames and more. Since these items will have an actual price tag attached, we imagine they're going to be of a really high quality. As a player, you can purchase Minecraft Coins with real-world money and then pick up whichever piece of content you like. Once you do, it's available to you across all participating platforms.

We're big fans of this idea, as not many games allow players to actually enjoy a slice of the profits for their creations. While 30 percent of the purchase price will go to the Marketplace, the majority of the remainder will go to the creator, according to the announcement. Obviously, that makes creating even more impressive offerings a bigger draw, as popularity will likely drive additional sales. In other words, once again, we expect these premium pieces of content to be pretty spectacular.

What's extra cool is that it opens things up for big-time Minecraft creators who maybe aren't too fond of trying to do a YouTube series. Maybe you're just really, really good at creating adventures within Minecraft, but don't like sitting in front of a camera. Now there's a way for you to get compensated for your time and effort, too.

It'll be interesting to see how the Marketplace pans out for Minecraft and, if successful, whether or not other developers will try to implement a similar system in their own games.

Activision purchased King back in 2015 for $5.9 billion, and they're not letting the opportunity go to waste to utilize King's mobile branding power to help further bolster their own line-up of properties. This includes getting King, the maker of Candy Crush games, to make a Call of Duty mobile game.

Polygon is reporting that Activision has contracted King to start prototyping work on a mobile Call of Duty game. King has begun hiring for the project, including seeking out a user interface designer, art director and a level designer. None of those positions really tell us what type of game this upcoming Call of Duty game is going to be, but most people suspect that the title will be a match-3 style puzzle game.

King became famous for their Candy Crush Saga titles, making millions off the microtransactions and a simple enough concept that they eventually became a powerhouse in the mobile gaming arena. Over the course of the years, the series has racked in billions for King,

The allure of the Candy Crush series has waned over the years, though. While a lot of analysts and shareholders continue to hope that major publishers dive into the microtransaction-laden arena of mobile gaming, it hasn't exactly established long lasting brands that maintain their growth over the years. Activision, however, is hoping to re-establish their own dominance in the field by using King's Candy Crush formula for Call of Duty. However, whether they hope to do so through a match-3 design or something more traditional to the home console experience remains to be seen.

King hasn't had a lot of experience with games outside of the match-3 design. The majority of their games center around casual puzzle designs, and even their games that aren't match-3 puzzle games, like Shuffle Cats or Pyramid Solitaire Saga, they still fit within the casual gaming genre.

As most people know, Call of Duty is highly popular in circles where people really enjoy online multiplayer games and games with blockbuster Hollywood storytelling. So it's going to be a real challenge to have King make a game that appeals to the traditional Call of Duty player that isn't a first-person shooter, assuming that's what King is working on.

In the mobile space, Activision has been willing to experiment with the Call of Duty franchise, tapping developers like Faceroll Games to design a real-time strategy title in the form of the 2014 outing Call of Duty: Heroes. The free-to-play title managed to rack up millions of downloads but didn't seem to leave much a dent on the mobile market. Call of Duty: Heroes seemed to be better received than the more traditional outing for mobile devices called Call of Duty: Strike Team. The game was made by Blast Furnace and didn't seem to win over the casual mobile crowd nor the traditional hardcore console gaming audience after it launched in 2013 for iOS and Android devices. It was a first-person shooter, but not big or bad enough to prove to be a breakout hit for Activision.

They seem to be refining the strategy this time around with their newest Call of Duty for mobile devices. Whether or not a match-3 type game could prove to be successful is still up in the air, but Activision has typically had the mobile titles released close to the release of the mainline Call of Duty titles, so don't be surprised if King's new game drops at some point in October or November later this year.

There's an interesting new bit of insight into Nintendo's model for mobile games. A lot of investors and shareholders have been egging Nintendo on to adopt the free-to-play model for their mobile games, but they've reluctant to do so. So will Nintendo mobile games go free-to-play in the future? Well, probably not. Why? Brand integrity. Let's back up and explain how Nintendo came to this decision.

According to the Nikkei, Nintendo's Super Mario Run was off to a hot start when it launched for the iOS but then tapered off quickly. The profits weren't quite as strong for the game as investors had hoped, and even Nintendo's new president Tatsumi Kimishima commented that the game didn't meet their expectations.

The big hold-up with Super Mario Run's potential profit margin breakthrough was due to the fact that the game was not free-to-play. You could download a trial and if you liked it you could spend $10 to unlock the full game, paying only once to get your hands on the entire experience. This meant that there was no way to make residuals off whales and no way to maintain revenue perpetuity from returning gamers.

Typically, most free-to-play games keep gamers hooked by having them return to the cash shop for microtransactions. This usually includes buying new health potions, mana potions or unlocking new gear or outfits or accessories for characters.

In fact, Nintendo used the free-to-play model for Fire Emblem Heroes, where gamers could spend real money to unlock random heroes in the game. This is a method that proved to be quite the financial success for Nintendo and lit up the eyes of investors hoping to see more games like this on mobile devices. The title managed to curb stomp Super Mario Run in terms of short-term gains and revenue.

Nintendo, however, are steadfast in avoiding that model. According to the Nikkei report, a Nintendo senior official revealed to them that Fire Emblem Heroes was actually an "outlier". The free-to-play mobile game that got off to a hot start and has continued to prove to be successful for Nintendo is not the business model they're attempting to pursue.

According to Nintendo, they prefer the Super Mario Run buy-once-to-own model instead.

One of the things that Nintendo prides itself on is ensuring that their games equate to quality. They were the ones who literally saved the gaming industry after the crash back in 1983, utilizing the Nintendo Seal of Quality as an assurance to consumers that the product was designed and made to be of a certain quality and that it was not a cheap or poorly made product.

Nintendo has maintained this stance for many of their first-party titles throughout the years, and they want to continue to maintain this philosophy even while they make mobile games.

Essentially, they see free-to-play games as something that degenerates the integrity of a brand when it's overexposed or over-saturated. They've opted to use free-to-play models sparingly in order to retain brand integrity for characters and franchises like Super Mario, Super Metroid, Kirby, and Donkey Kong. Nintendo made it known to Nikkei that mobile gaming isn't there for them to replace their traditional consoles and portable devices, but rather as a buffer to reach a wider audience to bring them toward Nintendo's own proprietary hardware, like the newly launched Nintendo Switch. It's a smart a move even though it's costing them a bit of profit in the short term.

Companion apps are all the rage these days. Many AAA titles feature a companion app for mobile devices whether it's to handle tertiary in-game tasks or perform some other task. In the case of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the companion app actually works in synch with the game's multiplayer.

Over on the Apex HQ website, they reveal that the Mass Effect: Andromeda app is called the Apex HQ. It allows gamers to modify their character's loadout ahead of dropping into a match, as well as modifying and setting up the strike teams, and receiving info and stats on the multiplayer portion of BioWare's newest sci-fi epic.

You can easily make use of the app by downloading it from the iTunes App Store or the Google Play store. Once you log into the app you'll have to attach it to your EA Account that you're using for Mass Effect: Andromeda. On home consoles, this would be the EA Account that you use to access their online multiplayer, whereas on PC this would be your EA Origin account.

Once you log into the app you'll have instant access to multiplayer stats, character progression, and other information. If you haven't played the multiplayer portion of the game then nothing will show up.

You can see each of the characters you have on your profile and which classes you've unlocked. Through the main menu, you can also alter your character's skill stats by applying points to their various specifications. You can also change around the weapons they'll take out into the field, as mentioned at the top of the article.

The app can also be used to make and arrange for Strike Teams to be sent out on missions for you. This is probably one of the most useful features of the Apex HQ app. The Strike Teams in Mass Effect: Andromeda are squads that you can send out to complete multiplayer missions for you, in case you want to reap the rewards and benefits from multiplayer but without actually playing the multiplayer.

You can use the app to recruit team members for the Strike Team and equip them with the gear you feel best suits their abilities. This level of customization will allow players to determine the success that the team has out on the battlefield.

This essentially means you can use the app to reap rewards and benefits in Mass Effect: Andromeda even while you're not actually playing the game.

The also allows you to view your progress and prestige in the game and what you've accomplished so far in the title.

The app doesn't seem to be absolutely essential for progressing in Mass Effect: Andromeda but it'll likely be useful for people who may be short on time when it comes to actually playing the multiplayer but want to reap the rewards through using Strike Teams while they're on the go.

The Apex HQ app for Mass Effect: Andromeda is available right now for Androids and iPhones. You can expect the game itself to launch for home consoles and PC starting March 21st.

We're still finding out interesting, unexpected things about the Nintendo Switch despite the fact that the console is set to launch in just a few days. For instance, did you know that some games won't be playable in TV mode?

The Switch is about as Nintendo as a console can get. It doesn't really adhere to industry norms in most areas, including how it will be handling gameplay for upcoming titles. For instance, Gamespot is reporting that upcoming rhythm game Voez will not be playable on your television, meaning the only way to enjoy the game will be with the Switch screen in hand.

To be fair, this makes perfect sense for this particular game, and we imagine that will be the case with any titles that are restricted in this fashion. In other words, don't expect Mario Kart 8 or Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to be limited to portable play. But if a game is played solely with touch screen controls, as is the case with Voez, then it makes sense that you won't be able to play it with a standard controller in hand.

For those of you who recognize the name Voez, that's likely because it's already available on mobile platforms. The game is built around touch controls, so it wouldn't really make sense for the developer to try and come up with more traditional control options when the Nintendo Switch works perfectly fine as a touch-based machine, so long as you're playing it undocked.

Unfortunately, Voez isn't actually set to launch here in the States just yet. It's set to be a launch title alongside the Switch in Japan on March 3 but, for the time being, that's the only region where it is expected to be playable on Nintendo's new machine.

But that doesn't mean that Voez, or perhaps another touch-based mobile game, won't eventually grace our eShop. Nintendo has gone on record as saying that they want to keep their own mobile games separate from their other platforms. In other words, they aren't currently planning on launching titles like Super Mario Run or Fire Emblem Heroes on the Switch, but that doesn't mean other mobile developers don't have Switch-focused plans of their own.

The first game to jump to mind is Puzzle and Dragons. Nintendo already did a team-up with that particular game series on the 3DS, so there's brand recognition even for folks who have never played the free-to-play mobile version. We could definitely see the standard Puzzle and Dragons game launching for the Switch, alongside other popular mobile games like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush Saga.

As with all things related to the Switch, we'll just have to wait and see. But if Voez is getting in on the action, we have a hard time believing no other developers plan on following suit.

Blizzard cycles in and cycles out cards for Hearthstone regularly. New cards and characters can drastically alter the way the game plays, and they actually attempt to work hard to keep the game as balanced as possible, hence why they're retiring certain cards.

According to Kotaku, it's been confirmed by Blizzard that neutral class cards including Azure Drake, Sylvanas Windrunner, Ragnaros the Firelord, the Blackrock Mountain, Grand Tournament and League of Explorers expansion sets will all be removed from ranked play and retired to the wild set. According to the article, players will still be able to compete using either the standard set or the wild set, but only the standard set in Hearthstone will apply to ranked play. So any competitive players will have to get in their time now with the sets that are being retired if they want to continue to stay competitive.

Blizzard has plans on retiring the aforementioned sets this upcoming spring. You can still dive back into the sets in standard play where wild sets can be traded into your deck, but Hearthstone's ranked play will get a complete overhaul, and by complete overhaul, I'm talking three sets of card decks containing 130 cards each.

According to the post over on Battle.net, Blizzard explains that the three sets of card decks will roll out over the course of all of 2017 as opposed to releasing story-oriented expansions like they did in 2016. The first 130 card set will be available this spring, the second set will be available in the latter part of the second quarter of 2017, and the last card set will be available at the tail end of 2017. All three decks will contain 130 cards.

To compensate players -- especially competitive players who want to get up to scratch and into the ranked ladders as quickly as possible -- Blizzard will be handing out free dust to Hearthstone players for every card in their deck that will be retired to the wild set. So even if you have the rare Golden Ragnaros card, you will still be rewarded with 3200 dust. If you have multiple rare or legendary cards in your set that will be retired, you will receive dust for the equivalency of those cards' worth. The best part about it? You won't lose your cards. You'll be able to keep your cards... except you just won't be able to use them any longer in ranked matches.

While some competitive players might be fuming at this news because they built up the perfect deck collection, this is Blizzard's way to keep the competitive eSports scene both fair and exciting in Hearthstone. That's not to mention that this also opens up great opportunities for newcomers and eSports freshmen.

A lot of times some games have skill levels in the competitive scene elevated so high due to all the adjustments, readjustments and incessant studying by the top level players that they know the game inside and out and it makes it hard for a lot of new people to get in and get good enough to be a viable threat. Blizzard's tactic of purging lots of cards from the decks and setting them to the wild while being in large swathes of new cards means all Hearthstone players will have to make adjustments equally, and do so at three points throughout 2017, giving a lot of players equal footing to get good and climb the pool ladders to the top.

And don't worry, Blizzard will be fostering smaller tournament organizers using the wild card sets to keep the older, retired sets in play for those who still have fond memories of their old Hearthstone decks.

One of the most popular mobile games to come out back in 2015 will finally make its way onto Windows 10 and Microsoft's Xbox One. Many of you probably already know exactly what game this is, but in case you forgot, Microsoft wanted to send out word to inform gamers about the re-release of the popular strategy title.

Over on the Xbox Wire site, Microsoft announced that Fallout Shelter will be made available for Windows 10 and Xbox One users starting next week, on Tuesday, February 7 .

Fallout Shelter will not just release on Windows 10 and Xbox One but it will also be available as a Play Anywhere title, one of the few third-party games made available through Microsoft's service that allows gamers to play games as a cross-buy between PC and Xbox One. So if you don't have access to your PC because it's defragging and you're forced to play on your Xbox One, you can boot up Fallout Shelter without having to pay extra to play the game. Alternatively, if your Xbox One is updating or someone is watching television and you can't play it, you can boot up Fallout Shelter on your PC.

The Play Anywhere feature allows for cross-platform compatibility, so that you can save your progress on the Xbox One and continue playing on your Windows 10 PC, or the achievements you unlock on PC will carry over to your Xbox Live profile when you play on the home console.

Bethesda even worked with Microsoft so that Fallout Shelter works full and well with the Xbox One controller.

The release of the game on Windows 10 and Xbox One comes after Fallout Shelter launched on PC back in summer of 2016 through the Bethesda Launcher. It was a port of the mobile version of the game, which launched a year before that for iOS and Android devices.

The game sees players in charge of running a fallout shelter following a nuclear holocaust. The objective is to expand the shelter, keep everyone fed, regrow the human population by hooking up vault survivors like a bad dating game show, and developing new recipes and equipment to ease the life of the vault dwellers and expand the headcount.

Fallout Shelter was extremely popular when it first launched, garnering tons of praise and playability and managing to shoot up the app charts due to its accessibility and giving gamers a completely different take on the Fallout franchise. Usually the games are either isometric, turn-based RPGs or first or third-person action-RPGs, like Fallout 3 or Fallout 4. The Fallout Shelter app switched things up by making it a time management simulator with a lot of strategy tossed in.

Players will have to send units out into the wasteland to recover items, develop defensive mechanisms to protect the vault dwellers from mutants and zombies, and craft new items and customization features to complete quests and venture further out into the wasteland to scavenge rare goods from desolated buildings and other dangerous vaults.

You'll be able to pick up a digital copy of Fallout Shelter for Xbox One or Windows 10 from the Xbox Store or the Windows Store starting February 7.