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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed. This week, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One, the company’s next-gen console and one-stop living room entertainment device, Ex-EA chief John Riccitiello urges console makers to consider consumer wants before shipping products, and Yahoo continues its acquisition madness by picking up the game company PlayScale. You’ll also find a review of Resident Evil: Revelations as well as previews for Batman: Arkham Origins, Dying Light, and Civilization V’s Brave New World. Xbox One The DeanBeat: Microsoft and Sony should escape binary thinking GamesBeat’s complete coverage for Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement Microsoft making $1B bet on Xbox One games, says bigwig Phil Harrison Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: A battle for next-gen supremacy Microsoft shows behind-the-scenes design of its Xbox One game controller Xbox One: Microsoft’s boldest attempt to unify its services is a game console News DmC: Devil May Cry developer working on beat-em-up for iOS and Android Craziest special edition ever? $190K Grid 2 bundle comes with … a car PSA: Xbox Live was not hacked today Super Stardust HD developer working on spiritual successor for PlayStation 4 This is what a $150 Grand Theft Auto V: Collector’s Edition looks like Nintendo issues another patch for Wii U Skullgirls getting arcade port in Japan U.S. version of Animal Crossing: New Leaf has Twitter and Tumblr support Ex-EA chief John Riccitiello pushes console makers to get four things right in this generation Call in sick: Plants vs. Zombies Adventures is out now Nintendo promises to ‘discuss’ new Smash Bros., 3D Mario, and Mario Kart before E3 Defiance developer cuts staff; MMO Rift unaffected EA appoints New York Times digital-product expert to its board Amazon taking Madden NFL 25: Annivesary Edition preorders — bundled with NFL Sunday Ticket Mobile news Hooked Media turns in an entirely new take on app recommendation — one that Apple can’t kill Zynga unleashes Gauntlet-like Battlestone on iOS G.I. Joe: Battleground looks to capture the cartoon in a modern mobile game DeNA developing Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War for mobile based on ‘D&D Next’ Top Eleven developer trumpets the social soccer game’s impressive growth Jawfish launches real-time multiplayer game tournaments on mobile devices Happy Cloud announces $4.25M funding round and new chief executive WildTangent launches mobile games on Asus tablets DeNA to publish Peter Molyneux’s Godus mobile game Acquisitions incorporated Marissa Mayer and Yahoo are on fire, acquiring gaming company PlayerScale Tech news Who needs an Xbox One? Nvidia shows off new speedy graphics card Big Fish Games takes its cloud-gaming service to all four major screens HP launches a 20-inch all-in-one that doubles as a tabletop computer Trailer hoedown Destiny looks like Star Wars, Halo, and World of Warcraft in its newest trailer Previews Warner’s Dying Light will make you a zombie hunter by day, a terrified victim by night (preview) Batman: Arkham Origins hits the repeat button hard (preview) Civilization V’s Brave New World expansion feels like a culture club (hands-on preview) Reviews Resident Evil: Revelations is classic, slightly buggy, fun (review) Interviews Activision’s Eric Hirshberg bets that 40M Call of Duty fans will follow him to Xbox One (interview) Dying Light developer explains how to roam an open world full of hungry zombies (interview) How Activision plans to beat Disney with the marketing of Skylanders: Swap Force (interview) Batman: Arkham Origins’ senior producer on how — and when — to move the needle (interview) How Smooth McGroove quit his day job to record a capella versions of classic gaming tunes (interview) Pieces of flair Beating down a fighting-game master with Divekick’s two-button gameplay Ceiling K

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Foursquare and Gnip have entered into a partnership to fork over your checkin data to developers and big brands. Gnip will get access to Foursquare’s full firehose — every checkin, everywhere, everyone, and in real time. Of course, the companies tell us all the data will be totally anonymized. And we have no reason not to believe that’s the case. After all, from a business point of view, it’s very expensive and not too profitable to spy on inidividuals; it may be vastly profitable to be able to predict crowd behavior, define mass trends, and measure what kinds of location-based offers have historically performed well. “Location is one of the most interesting ways to view data and no one understands the power of location like Foursquare,” writes Gnip product manager Steve Perella on the company blog. “With more than 35 million registered users, nearly 4 billion total check-ins, and over 75 million API calls a day, Foursquare is the location layer for the Internet, helping to connect people with places around the world.” Realtime firehose access will give Gnip data about every checkin that happens on Foursquare. Gnip, which bundles and re-sells the data (mostly to big brands), will get the checkin information only (time, date, location); no user data (username, name) will be provided. So, for example, Red Lobster could use Gnip’s Foursquare firehose to find out how many checkins happen at Red Lobster locations in San Francisco during Lobsterfest, but they couldn’t see who exactly was checking in. (This is so sadly hypothetical, if only because there are no Red Lobster locations in San Francisco. We oughta have a petition. Those biscuits, man.) Foursquare data scientist Blake Shaw said in a statement, “We are capturing this amazing signal about what millions of people are doing in the real world at every moment of the day in cities all around the globe. We have seen that when we aggregate checkin patterns across many individuals, we can measure features of cities at a higher resolution than was ever possible before. I think this data can act almost like a microscope for cities.” Image credit: jswaby/Flickr Filed under: Dev, Social Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013? on the form. .blurb-cat-dev hr { margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }

It’s Friday: your big moment to waste time on the Internet! But this week, you can do so for a good cause: SCIENCE! The Calbug, a project from the Berkeley, Calif.-based Essig Museum of Entomology needs volunteers to type out insect and spider specimen records. Most of the records are for California-dwelling bugs, and each one takes about three minutes to type. Plus, you get to look at really cool insect pics while you work. And you just might discover a new species while you’re at it. Examples: The project currently has thousands of images, labels, and ledgers from the Essig Museum’s collections as well as from individual biologists who maintain the collections. Notes for each image give details on where and when a species was found and can provide clues for important snippets of entomological history. “We need you to help us transcribe that data and make it available for further use in biodiversity and conservation research,” said Essig reps on the project’s homepage. “Along the way, you will be possibly be finding species that have never been observed anywhere else!” (It’s true; more insects remain unrecorded than any other kind of animal.) Image credit: Jolie O’Dell/Flickr Filed under: Science

When you start at 100 percent, there’s nowhere to go but down. Even so, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s approval rating among Apple employees is still very, very high. Apple’s been through some tough spots historically. And while anyone who remembers the “beleaguered” days of the late 90′s and early 2000′s can’t think that the company is in too much trouble right now, with the stock losing hundreds of billions of dollars and Google’s Android taking massive mobile market share, there’s definitely a sense that Apple’s best days might be in the rear-view mirror. But Cook has maintained 90-plus-percent approval ratings internally, according to Glassdoor: That’s just a shade below Steve Jobs’ lifetime rating of 97 percent. In addition, Apple employees are still pretty happy to be working at the iconic Cupertino company. Employee satisfaction, which reached a peak 80 percent in the middle of 2012 when Apple’s stock soared to over $700, has only dropped slightly to 78 percent. Which doesn’t mean that working at Apple is easy. Or, that working for Tim Cook is easy. Cook looks for early hours, according to one Apple manager in Cupertino, who said he was “a CEO who demands work before 6 AM every day, and ‘accountability without control.’” And another Apple employee, an engineer, complained about work/life balance at Apple … or rather, the lack thereof. “No work life balance is to be expected while working at Apple. Weekly management reviews and expectations from management is that you are reachable after work hours.” The upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference will be an interesting test for Cook, and Apple. After basically telling the world not to expect any new products before fall, an iOS7 reveal will likely be the big news at the developer-focused show … and well as, possibly, announcements about developments in Apple core services like music and media. Those announcements have to be good enough to reassure the Apple faithful within and without the company that Apple is still the leader in mobile operating systems and ecosystems, and can still amaze and delight its customers. And its team members. Image credit: Dean Takahashi Filed under: Business, Enterprise, OffBeat