Gaming News - Page 122

EA's Apex Legends franchise is one of the most popular shooters on the market today, but Call of Duty still takes the cake.

Having spawned from the critically acclaimed Titanfall franchise, Apex Legends turned heads and broke into the battle royale genre when it launched in 2019. Since then, Apex made over $2 billion in revenues and had amassed more than 100 million players as of 2021. The latest stats from Electronic Arts highlight even more key figures for the franchise and how it stacks against the competition.

According to EA's Q1'24 earnings call transcript, Apex Legends has about 18 million monthly active users (MAUs). This is a pretty respectable number, but it pales in comparison to some of today's most popular games. Call of Duty, for example, takes up the bulk of Activision's segment MAUs, which were 92 million as of June 30.

Nintendo starts out its new Fiscal Year 2024 period with record-breaking results driven by strong first-party game sales, respectable Switch shipments, and a surge in royalties from the Super Mario Bros movie.

Nintendo's latest Q1 FY24 earnings are quite impressive for a number of reasons. One reason is that even though the Switch is now entering its 7th year on the market, Nintendo managed to ship 3.91 million Switch consoles and generate $1.2 billion from hardware sales.

Another reason is the astronomically high amount of copies that Zelda Tears of the Kingdom managed to sell, capping out at an incredible 18.51 million units. That's a lot of software, especially given the new Zelda sold for $69.99 on Switch. The game was such a big hit that it actually helped drive Switch sales as well.

Retailers are discounting Sony's PlayStation 5 console and accessories to lower-than-ever price points, possibly to make room for a new revised PS5 model.

Reports indicate that Sony will launch a new disc-less PlayStation 5 model in 2023, and it may reduce the base MSRP of all new model PS5 consoles. There are currently two PS5 models on the market: the digital-only, or existing disc-less PS5 for $399, and the disc-based PS5 for $499.

Now retailers are shaving off $50 from the PS5's MSRP in the United States, bringing disc PS5s down to $449. This new price can be found practically everywhere including Best Buy, Target, GameStop, Sam's Club, and even Sony's own PlayStation Direct storefront. In some cases, the reductions are more dramatic, with the NAVY Exchange selling the system for just $429.

36 years ago, Konami changed the interactive entertainment world by introducing one of the most important stealth games of all time.

Despite not having released a new mainline game since 2015's MGSV, Konami's Metal Gear Solid series has managed to consistently sell millions of copies a year. The franchise has now broken 60 million copies as a result of continued sales, likely due to the often-heavy discounts across digital storefronts as well as the game's multi-decade cultural influence.

Konami delivered this new sales milestone in its latest website update. Every quarter, the publisher refreshes sales data for its top franchises and as Q1 FY24, Metal Gear Solid had sold 60 million units worldwide. Using the Internet Archive, I was able to chart the historical Metal Gear Solid franchise revenues from Q3 FY19 (August 2019) through June 30, 2023.

The Nintendo Switch handheld-console hybrid has now surpassed 129 million shipments worldwide as it enters its 7th year on the market.

Nintendo just reported strong Q1 results driven by a significant uptick in licensing revenue from the Super Mario Bros. movie, a record-breaking $1.75 billion from software, and consistent hardware shipments throughout the period.

In Q1 FY24, which ran from April - June 2023, Nintendo shipped 3.91 million Switch consoles and pushed the system's total worldwide cumulative sell-in to 129.53 million. This period starts the Switch's 8th year on the market, and despite its prolonged lifespan, Nintendo is still meeting apparently strong demand by sending out the Switch's third-largest Q1 shipment since the console launched in March 2017.

Baldur's Gate 3 has arrived - as you surely won't have failed to notice - and the RPG has already racked up a record on Steam.

It was always clear Steam was going to take quite a hammering from keen role-players when the game went live, especially given its download size of 122GB, and that did indeed turn out to be the case (remember, there was no option to preload it).

As PC Gamer spotted, the Steam stats page shows that Baldur's Gate 3 hit a total bandwidth usage of 146Tbps (terabits per second) at its peak. That's a whole lot of data flying around, and it's nearly three times the peak load that Cyberpunk 2077 put on Steam's servers.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a smash hit on PC and has achieved astronomically high player counts on its launch day.

After six years of development and multiple delays, it's finally here. Larian's epic D&D RPG, which continues the grand fantasy Baldur's Gate saga, released today to massive fanfare and applause. Baldur's Gate 3 is doing so well on Steam that it has risen to the second most-played game for the day, surpassing DOTA 2 and second only to the mighty Counter-Strike GO.

At the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 had over 472,000 players on Steam, clearly indicating early launch success for the cRPG. The game is currently sitting at a 89% positivity rating, and hit an all-time peak of 472,136 players in its first 24 hours of launch. Not bad for a release day.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms the new publisher's new FC24 game will feature 19,000 fully-licensed players.

Following its break with FIFA, EA decided to make its own football label with the FC brand. The first game in the series, FC24, aims to recreate the billion-dollar vivacity that the FIFA games are known for, and to do that, the publisher acquired rights to add a similar amount of footballers as FIFA 23:

"With these recent announcements, alongside our ongoing network of partnerships, the game will showcase 19,000 fully-licensed footballers, 700 squads, 30 leagues, and the biggest competitions," Wilson said during the EA Q1 2024 earnings call.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson affirms the publisher is working on its biggest-ever pipeline of video games, live services, and content.

EA's latest Q1 FY24 earnings call offered more insight into the company's future plans. Following the digital surge during COVID-19, EA has leaned more strongly into online-based experiences that churn out billions of dollars in microtransactions. The publisher is now adhering to creating Games-as-a-Platform, a new-ish concept that attaches multiple biz models around a specific title.

The idea is to treat EA's biggest franchises as an ecosystem of products, services, and experiences. EA still plans to release singleplayer-only games with strong storytelling--Jedi Fallen Order's success helped change how EA sees these games--and the new Dragon Age was given as an example.

It was thought that a max difficulty playthrough of the game Hades, with no mods or cheesing, was impossible to pull off - but an intrepid YouTuber has proved that isn't the case.

As you can see in the above video, Jade managed to beat Hades at Heat 64 (max difficulty), unmodded and unseeded, in a straight playthrough that took 30 minutes.

Hades, a rogue-like hack and slash dungeon crawler, is regarded as a masterpiece by many gamers, but when you notch up that difficulty, it becomes incredibly, incredibly hard.