Gaming News - Page 126

In a big win for the Xbox games division, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has denied the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction.

Judge Corley today published a redacted 53-page opinion document that denied the FTC's preliminary injunction request. This effectively means that Microsoft may commence its $68.7 billion merger with Activision and close the deal even during the FTC's pending administrative case.

Judge Corley writes:

BioWare loses another long-time employee that helped define its landmark RPGs.

Days ago, Jay Watamaniuk announced that he's leaving BioWare after more than 21 years of writing stories and content for some of BioWare's biggest games.

"Alas, my 21 year journey with BioWare has come to an end. I wanted to thank the exceptional team of writers who taught me the business of creation with empathy, patience and humour. Whatever the future holds, my work will be forever shaped by their lessons. It was a privilege," Watamaniuk said on Twitter.

EA today announced it has opened up a new studio called Cliffhanger Games to work on an all-original Black Panther game.

Electronic Arts is ramping up its studios to deliver the trio of new Marvel games that it promised back in October 2022. The latest reveal is a big-budget AAA Black Panther game that will be led by the newly-revealed Cliffhanger Games, which is run by ex-Monolith Productions general manager Kevin Stephens. At WB Games, Stephens served as Monolith's GM for 9 years before moving over to Cliffhanger, and according to Stephens' LinkedIn, Cliffhanger has been established for over 2 years.

The new Black Panther game will be a third-person singleplayer adventure with an all-original storyline and an emphasis on details. Past reports indicate that Black Panther is targeting a 2025 release.

FTC v Microsoft court documents highlight just how successful Call of Duty is on PlayStation.

In badly-redacted court documents that were uploaded to the FTC v Microsoft public docket, Sony revealed key information about Call of Duty's performance on its industry-leading platform. According to the document, Call of Duty Modern Warfare II sold 4.4 million copies in its first week on PlayStation, beating out the previous record-holder FIFA 23, which had sold 3.8 million copies.

A quick bit of math shows that, at minimum, PlayStation made up around 30% of Call of Duty Modern Warfare II's record $1 billion in sell-through. We're not sure if the 4.4 million sales figure for digital-only purchases on the PlayStation Store or if it also includes sales from retailers.

Final Fantasy XVI's success has pushed total franchise sales past 180 million worldwide.

The Final Fantasy franchise broke 180 million sales shortly after Final Fantasy XVI's release. The latest entry in the RPG series managed to sell 3 million copies in combined digital sales and physical shipments in its first week, which is noteworthy given the game is a PS5 exclusive. It remains to be seen if Final Fantasy XVI will live up to Square Enix's sales expectations, and we've outlined the reasons why it is tough to compare Final Fantasy XVI's sales to its predecessor, Final Fantasy XV.

The previous update pinpointed Final Fantasy franchise sales at 173 million. That was as of March 2022, so in little over a year, the franchise has sold 7 million copies--nearly half of which were made in the first week of Final Fantasy XVI's launch.

Sure, DLSS support might not be coming to Starfield - at least based on rumors that the AMD partnership excludes competing upscaling techniques like DLSS and Intel XeSS - many other releases are getting NVIDIA DLSS on day one.

Launching this week with DLSS 2 Super Resolution support is Jagged Alliance 3 and Testament: The Order of High Human, with the highly anticipated sequel Remnant II set to get the AI-powered upscaling technology later this month. As part of its weekly DLSS state of things, NVIDIA also made note that the current Steam Summer Sale ending this week has several DLSS-powered titles on sale, including the likes of Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Horizon 5, Cyberpunk 2077, and more.

As for the new DLSS-powered titles, let's take a look at them, starting with Testament: The Order of High Human. This is a new action-adventure game with touches of RPG and Metroidvania elements from indie studio Fairyship Games set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world with some impressive visuals. If this one is not on your radar, the good news is that there is a playable demo (that features DLSS) you can check out on Steam.

To give a better idea of how gaming's three platform holders compare with one another, we've compiled a quick head-to-head showdown between PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox.

Over the last few months, gamers have been treated to a much more transparent look at the video games industry. From the $200 million budgets of top-performing PlayStation games to actual concrete info on Xbox console shipments, we're able to use valuable info gleaned from recent events in conjunction with official company earnings to give a better idea of how effectively gaming's Big 3 competes.

Using Nintendo's recent annual report, I put together a quick comparison of the video games industry's Big 3 triumvirate hierarchy to clearly illustrate the revenue position of PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. Since Microsoft operates on a non-traditional fiscal year, which begins in July and ends in June, I've aligned Xbox revenues to match the April 2022 - March 2023 fiscal timelines of both Sony and Nintendo.

Nintendo's latest annual report sheds light on its performance metrics for the Fiscal Year 2023 period.

While Nintendo's FY23 period delivered lower results than a year prior, the company is still far from being in the red. The Japanese video game giant's operational performance for FY23 was still quite noteworthy and demonstrates its consistently strong presence in the Big 3 hierarchy (PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo).

During the fiscal year, Nintendo managed to generate $12.042 billion in net sales revenues, most of which was from the Nintendo Switch platform. On a breakout basis, Nintendo made $11.347 billion from the Switch, which includes hardware, content, and services, $268 million from the others category, which includes sales of amiibo and "platforms other than Nintendo Switch", $383 million from mobile gaming and IP-related income which includes smartphone games and royalties, and $42 million from playing cards.

The combination of new Xbox hardware allocation, a subscription price hike, and the release of Starfield could help the Xbox games division deliver record-breaking Q1 earnings.

Microsoft could be setting Xbox up for a big Q1 that leads into a strong Q2 holiday period. The company is using all of the tactics at its disposal to help boost revenues--and profits--across is three main business segments: Software, services, and hardware.

On the software front, Xbox raised the price of its first-party Xbox Series X/S games to $69.99, with Redfall being the debut game to get this hike. Starfield will be the next game priced at $69.99.

DnD fans rejoice: Baldur's Gate III will keep you busy for a long, long time.

It's been two decades since the last mainline Baldur's Gate game, and Larian is making up for the lost time with Baldur's Gate III. The developers are creating one of the largest epic fantasy games ever made in terms of scope, cinematics, dynamism, and sheer volume of things to do. The game is so big that a rushed playthrough will take 80 hours...and it can be much longer if you engage more in the world.

"People ask...how much variety is there in a playthrough of Baldur's Gate III. How long is it, how many different ways can it go.