Gaming News - Page 118

Diablo IV has helped Blizzard break $1 billion in quarterly revenues for the first time in its 32-year history, but how does the game's launch compare to its predecessor?

With $666 million revenue earned from game sales in just 5 days' time, Diablo IV is a fiery success. The sequel has done so well that it helped propel Blizzard to a new all-time revenue record that saw the segment making up the lion's share of ABK's quarterly earnings, which is something that doesn't happen very often.

The question remains, though: How did Diablo IV's launch compare to Diablo III's? To answer that, we have to look at Blizzard's past quarterly performance, and analysis shows that there is no easy clear-cut answer to this question.

At the behest of Microsoft, the Federal Trade Commission has paused its administrative lawsuit against the Microsoft-Activision merger...but this is temporary, and the agency could still continue its litigation in attempt to block the merger if it so chooses.

Following the FTC"s double loss in federal and appeals courts, Microsoft filed a motion to stay, or pause, the agency's planned administrative lawsuit against the merger. The FTC seeks to block the merger FTC by trying the case in its own internal courts before an administrative law judge. Microsoft is eager to get the merger passed, but it still has some time: Microsoft and Activision have agreed to extend the merger deadline to as late as October.

As a formality, secretary April Tabor, who had discretion to make this particular decision, has granted Microsoft's motion and has paused the Commission's administrative lawsuit against the merger.

Mobile gaming is huge for Activision Blizzard King, and revenues continue to grow across a trio of titles: Candy Crush, Call of Duty Mobile, and Diablo Immortal.

A bit ago, I delved into how mobile gaming has transformed Activision's video games business. In that coverage, I looked at the ways that Activision and Blizzard revenues have changed over time thanks to games like COD Mobile and Diablo Immortal. The data really speaks for itself--mobile gaming has significantly buffered these segments thanks to Activision's successful launches.

The company's latest Q2 2023 filing gives more opportunity to chart the effects that mobile has had on Activision's platform earnings split. The results are just as interesting. According to the filing, Activision Blizzard King has made over $900 million from mobile for four consecutive quarters over the last rolling 12-month period.

Sony is about to drop the price of the PS5 console in the US and Europe, or that's the latest chatter from the grapevine.

If this is true, the reasoning that springs to mind for some folks - and it's an obvious enough line of speculation - is that Sony wants to shift some more stock before the next incarnation of the PS5 turns up. And this long-rumored refreshed model is something a second piece of speculation has just popped up around.

The first rumor comes from billbil_kun on Twitter, and as you can see above, it's a slightly cryptic tweet, translating to 'watch out for a PS5 price drop in the US and UK/Germany [Europe] soon.'

BREAKING: Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro may release in 2024 with some heavy mid-gen hardware upgrades.

New reports from gaming insider Tom Henderson indicate that Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro console will be a hefty hardware upgrade over the existing PS5 model. Sources have told Henderson that the PS5 Pro may deliver a new performance mode capable of 8K gaming output, complete with more robust and optimized ray tracing effects.

The console is codenamed Project Trinity, and 4K gaming is likely to be main target for the PS5 Pro. We could see the console enable more consistent 4K 60FPS gaming experiences due to new advanced SoC tech. Reports say that Sony has been developing the PS5 Pro model since 2022 and that most studios will receive devkits by late 2023.

Call of Duty Mobile continues delivering powerhouse earnings with the game passing over $3 billion in spending since its launch in October 2019.

Call of Duty's mobile version has been incredibly successful for Activision's games segment. In its recent Q2 2023 earnings brief, Activision Blizzard King announced that COD Mobile has broken $3 billion in total worldwide consumer spending, doubling the previous $1.5 billion figure that Activision shared in February 2022.

"Call of Duty Mobile engagement and net bookings were stable year-over-year, with the team continuing to see a positive response to enhancements to the player experience and optimization of live operations. Lifetime worldwide consumer spending on Call of Duty Mobile since its October 2019 launch passed $3 billion in the second quarter."

Diablo IV's massive success helped Blizzard become the jewel in Activision's crown.

Activision Blizzard King just announced its Q2 2023 earnings, and the results are incredibly strong. Blizzard overperformed during the quarter thanks to the monumental sales revenue generated from Diablo IV. The demon-slaying ARPG helped Blizzard break $1 billion in quarterly earnings for the first time in the publisher's 32-year history.

During the second quarter, Blizzard made $1.049 billion in revenues, most of which was from the release of Diablo IV. The last figures pinpoint Diablo IV sales making $666 million in just 5 days across consoles and PC. This doesn't account for the remaining weeks of sales through the end of the month (Activision's Q2 period ends on June 30).

The first season of Diablo 4 is now live, and Blizzard has already removed one of the less well-received changes made in its unpopular preseason patch (v1.1.0).

Sadly, this doesn't involve letting up on the nerfs made to the sorcerer class, which have been the most complained about element of patch 1.1.

However, as Wccftech spotted, with the release of Season of the Malignant, Blizzard has performed a U-turn on a change whereby level requirements were implemented for tackling Capstone Dungeons to level up to World Tier III or IV.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 is legendary; it took one of the all-time great top-down action RPGs from the 16-bit Super Nintendo era (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) and successfully translated that into an interactive full 3D experience. An open-world game before that was even a term.

With the recent release of the critically acclaimed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (check out our in-depth review here), the Zelda franchise is as relevant as ever, delivering some of the most immersive gaming experiences in 2023 - and on aging hardware like the Nintendo Switch.

But what if The Legend of Zelda was given the ultra high-end visual fidelity treatment with something like Unreal Engine 5? That's exactly what The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Unreal Engine 5.2 from CryZENx presents. Albeit currently in limited form with the Deku Tree dungeon from the game's introduction fully playable.

Activision-Blizzard's mobile performance was one of the main reasons why Microsoft seeks to buy the publisher for $68.7 billion, and our analysis really underlines just how important on-the-go gaming has become for the publisher.

It's well known that ABK makes a lot of money from mobile. After all, the three-headed giant includes King, who is responsible for the ultra-lucrative Candy Crush. But what about the other segments? Traditionally, the company's segments each have their own strengths. King reigns on mobile, Activision dominates on consoles, and Blizzard leads the charge on PC. That's what makes the publisher such a powerhouse--it's able to effectively generate billions of dollars everywhere games are played and sold.

Throughout recent years, we've seen ABK break these traditions. In 2018, the publisher enacted its new four-part plan, an ambitious strategy that led to more mobile games as well as new cross-game innovations like Call of Duty Warzone. The company sought to expand the presence of its mighty billion-dollar IPs (ABK has eight of them) across all available platforms.