One of the biggest names in gaming suffers a rare monetization slip, but it's reinvesting strongly into more engagement-driven business models.

Activision-Blizzard may be hitting a monetization ceiling in its biggest games. Every quarter, the company makes hundreds of millions from Games-as-a-Service style tactics like microtransactions, DLC, and subscriptions. These revenues typically pull in a huge portion of digital earnings. But this latest quarter showed a rare drop both in total live earnings and the proportion of game sales to service-generated revenue.

The company's Q1 2019 earnings weren't particularly impressive. Total revenues, digital revenues, operating income and even net income were all down from last year. Given Activision-Blizzard's emphasis on live gaming, dgital is the most interesting of these dips. Digital comprised 76% of total net revenues, or $1.38 billion, down roughly 4.6% from 2018's first quarter. Digital includes microtransactions, subscriptions, DLC, and digital game purchases. The company says it pulled in $800 million from in-game purchases like skins and lootboxes, which means for the first time in a long time live service earnings were down. Microtransactions only made 58% of digital revenues this quarter, compared to the 68% split in Q1'18.

Borderlands 3 has all the major pillars of a service game: near-infinite replayability via a huge RPG-and-item grind, co-op online multiplayer, and a sprawling story arc that spreads across multiple locales. Gearbox is going all out on that last front and claims the sequel's campaign will last well over 30 hours.

Gearbox has been working on Borderlands 3 for a long time now, and has one major goal for the sequel: to go bigger, better, and farther than ever before. That includes 1 billion guns, new baddies, fresh characters with new skills and build opportunities, offworld exploration across multiple planets, and a substantial campaign mode. All of this new content will be pretty expansive and makes for a rather long-winded storyline.

According to the devs, Borderlands 3 will last 30 hours if you rush through the quests and missions. For comparison's sake, Borderlands 2's campaign took around 32 hours to beat if you took your time. "If you beeline it through, and I mean beelining it through, it might take you 30 hours to complete the main story," Borderlands 3 creative director Paul Sage told PC Gamer.

Infinity Ward's new Call of Duty game could get revealed later this month, with a big showcase planned for E3 2019.

Activision typically announces a new Call of Duty game every May or so, and this year should be no different. Company COO Coddy Johnson confirmed Infinity Ward's next Call of Duty shooter would be revealed during Activision's second quarter (from April - June).

"We continue to feel incredibly good about this year's game coming from Infinity Ward. The game's going to be revealed later this quarter. I think it's going to be really clear then why we're really so excited about the release," Johnson said in Activision's Q1'19 earnings call.

Blizzard is ramping up development on a bunch of new projects, and some of them could be ready for a reveal at Blizzcon 2019.

Blizzard is working on more new games than it ever has before, and some of them include Diablo IV, a possible Overwatch sequel, new IPs alongside mobile games. Diablo IV has already been rebooted once, and sources say it'll resemble Diablo II with a darker thematic scope. But it might be a long ways away and no one's sure when it'll get revealed. Now in a recent earnings call, Blizzard President J. Allen Brack says Blizzard is incredibly eager to show off these new games and teases some big plans for this year's annual Blizzcon event.

"I've said consistently that the Blizzard pipeline is larger and richer than ever before. It includes PC and console releases," Brack said in the call.

Every game in the Master Chief Collection PC's version could have a unified progression system with armor unlocks.

In a recent Halo Waypoint Update, 343 Industries confirmed a new progression system is coming to Halo: Master Chief Collection on PC and consoles. This new feature may employ Halo Reach-level Spartan customization, armor unlocks, level-ups and specific in-game rewards across all of the six Halo games.

The idea is to engage the online community with weekly/daily challenges, an expansive armory system with tons of options, and a linear ranking system with feats and accomplishments tracking.

Activision-Blizzard is ramping up to make new games and services, and will recruit more developers to fill in this robust pipeline.

Right now Blizzard is working on more new projects than it ever has. After not releasing a new product for years, the studio plans to release a fusillade of new games and content throughout the next year or so. This expansive roadmap includes Diablo IV, possibly a new IP, and mobile ports followed up by expanded updates for existing titles. To bring this new robust pipeline to fruition, the billion-dollar Activision-Blizzard duo are increasing development headcount by 20%.

A few months ago the company fired 800 non-game developers in a big restructuring move. The new business plan sees the publisher focusing strongly on existing, wholly-owned IPs (meaning more sequels are on the way) along with monetization and services.

Apex Legends was home to over 50 million people at one point so it shouldn't come as a surprise when you hear about the ban hammer being used, but developer Respawn has been busier than most developers are banning 770,000 cheaters in total.

Respawn is talking with gamers about what is going on behind the game itself, with Respawn executive producer Drew McCoy penning a recent blog post that talked about cheaters in Apex Legends. He said: "We can't share details on what we're doing so as to not give a head's up to the cheat makers. But what we can say is that we're attacking this from every angle: from improvements in detecting cheaters, to bolstering resources and tools, to improving processes and other sneaky things to combat sellers and cheaters".

Respawn is now showing some of these "high-level stats" on the progress into smoothing things out in Apex Legends when it comes to cheaters. This includes:

Rockstar is hard at work on the next-gen Grand Theft Auto 6 and while we don't know much about it we do know the developer "has some ideas" about the game and recently there was the mega-hot rumor that Sony paid "big money" be a timed exclusive to the next-gen PlayStation 5 console.

But now there is a new rumor from a purported leak on Pastebin that says that the next-gen GTA 6 will be absolutely huge and will feature "multiple big cities which players can travel across". The game will reportedly see you play a "kind of drug lord" that will start off as a small time player in Liberty City, but you'll work your way up through the ranks and become the drug lord.

The leak says that Rockstar is waiting to see how next-gen console sales go because GTA 6 won't work on the PS4 because of "memory restrictions", a strange part of this leak because Rockstar would be absolutely foolish not to release teh next-generation Grand Theft Auto 6 on previous-gen consoles (as well as the next-gen consoles).

Corsair has just launched the latest member of its Carbide Series family of cases in the new Carbide 175R RGB that acts as a new entry-level mid-tower chassis that will cost just $60.

The new case has a super-slick clean line design that packs RGB cooling in the front for a bit of style, and an edge-to-edge tempered glass side panel. Not bad considering it costs $60.

There's huge room for high-end water cooling with support for multiple radiators at up to 360mm, as well as the Carbide 175R able to house a huge 6 x 120mm or 4 x 140mm cooling fans inside.

Billion-dollar franchise Call of Duty has amassed more than 300 million copies sold worldwide, Activision confirms.

Call of Duty is one of the most popular and lucrative entertainment forces on the planet. Now in a recent earnings call, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick revealed the series has pushed over 300 million sales across its 15 year lifespan.

"Call of Duty recently passed its 15th anniversary and is one of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time with cumulative sales exceeding 300 million games," Kotick said.