Or, if you'd prefer, the top five stories currently dominating our readers' attention.
Each week, we'll be counting down the biggest news from the previous seven days, giving just a glimpse of the industry's big issues, from five to one.
The Charticle: Gameloft, Blitz Brigade and the trouble with gating F2P shooters
It seems all of the big boys now entertain soft launches.
The markets they may choose to roll out their games in initially may change Canada and New Zealand no longer the only testbeds but the aims are the same: Does the game work? Does it monetise? How do audiences react to it?
For Gameloft's Blitz Brigade, however, it appears to be a way of working out just how to gate an F2P game.
"Gating players' access to a game with a resource is something many developers are now doing, with NaturalMotion's fuel restriction for CSR Racing perhaps the most successful deployment to-date," detailed editor-at-large Jon Jordan.
"But back to Blitz Brigade. This change suggests the game may remain in soft launch mode for some time to come while Gameloft investigates other ways to monetise. After all, the customer is always right."
PlayStation 4 or PlayStation Bore? The Mobile Game Mavens debate
Until Microsoft next Xbox and, possibly, the next Apple TV is revealed, it's hard to put Sony's PS4 reveal in any sort of context.
Our mobile experts better known as the Mobile Gaming Mavens had a go, however, with smartphones and tablets only warranting the briefest of mentions in Sony's big press splash.
Indeed, some of our Mavens were left wondering whether Sony has lost the ability to innovate in any meaningful way altogether.
"Wait, here comes the PlayStation 4! But what capabilities does the PlayStation 4 come with?" asked Big Head Mode's Scott Foe.
"Um...well there's a touchpad on the controller and you can share stuff and...try games out...well...um...better graphics.
"There are no capabilities there to pry Microsoft out of the minds of console gamers. So, the question becomes, 'What capabilities would pry Microsoft out of the minds of console gamers?'
"Free-to-play games dictated by policy would be a good start, though, I suspect we will see at least some free-to-play games on Microsoft's next console."
Drag Racing dev: We expected players to abandon us for CSR Racing...but they didn't
Before CSR Racing, there was Drag Racing a series that, across Android and iOS, has amassed an impressive 100 million users.
Not too shabby, eh? But in our exclusive interview with Vladimir Funtikov CEO of Drag Racing developer Creative Mobile he admitted the developer was a touch worried its audience would abandon it when NaturalMotion's chart topper came out.
"CSR Racing is extremely good at monetising its audience, but aggressive monetisation and lack of really challenging or hardcore elements have an obvious impact on user loyalty," offered Funtikov.
"[We] even opened a subforum on our Drag Racing forum dedicated to CSR, but there has been very little interest and only a handful of threads."
To the top with Temple Run: Imangi Studios, a studio profile
How do you go from a couple of unknown, relatively inexperience coders to a team responsible for the fastest growing title in mobile history?
Our exclusive look at the rise of Imangi Studios the developer behind, amongst others, Temple Run tracked the developer's rise, right up to the forthcoming launch of the firm's latest tie-in, a Temple Run title based around Oz: The Great and Powerful, due to launch this month.
"This whole time it was climbing on the downloads side, on the free charts, it was also climbing in the top grossing charts," said Imangi's Keith Shepherd.
"We hit the number one in both charts right around the same time in January of 2012. And what we had witnessed was that essentially the game had gone viral. We weren't advertising it, we weren't paying for any marketing. People just latched onto it."
The Real Racing 3 debate
Even before EA's free-to-play 'experiment' Real Racing 3 hit digital stands in the US and UK, it was making headlines. A soft launch meant that any journalist worth his or her salt had experience play long ago.
And so, two takes on Real Racing 3 amassed hits aplenty on PocketGamer.biz last week.
First up, 148Apps.com's founder and regular PocketGamer.biz contributor Jeff Scott's calculations that, for gamers looking to spend their way through the game, they may have to cough up more than $500 to complete it.
Also proving popular, however, was fellow 148Apps.com man Carter Dotson's claim that, in terms of 'traditional' games making the leap to F2P, Real Racing 3's success or failure could have a huge impact on the rest of the industry.
"If Real Racing 3 can't succeed under a free-to-play model, then those who wish to make conventional games should consider their business model very carefully: paid apps are a risk as it is, and trying free-to-play could be an even bigger one," offered Dotson.
"But if Real Racing 3 is a runaway success? Then it may be time to embrace free-to-play for those developers that are trying to make a living. Developing a game from the ground up with free-to-play in mind will become a matter of course."
