Gaming News - Page 127

It's no surprise that Starfield will have mod support, but now we're hearing Todd Howard share his thoughts about Starfield mods.

Bethesda's new game Starfield is a perfect fit for mods. The space sim has a massive array of 1,000 planets, and most of these will be devoid of life. To faithful Bethesda RPG players, this sounds like a blank canvas for mods to unleash boundless creativity. Only 100 of Starfield's vanilla worlds will have life on them, but that will certainly change with mods.

There's few things more enjoyable than playing a Bethesda RPG on PC at launch. You get to see the game evolve in real-time thanks to the skills and imagination of the gaming community and we could see some very interesting things roll out with Starfield mods. Let's just hope the Creation Club is at least optimized enough not to break script extenders with new game updates this time (Bethesda has had a history of "breaking" Fallout and Skyrim mods with game updates, forcing modders to re-adjust their "script extenders" to ensure specific game-changing mods are supported in the new update).

You've heard about Games-as-a-Service...well get ready for Games-as-a-Platform.

Ubisoft has an interesting plan to sell an Assassin's Creed product that will serve as a hub for new games in the series. It's called Assassin's Creed Infinity, and it could end up being a new entry in the video games industry's new nascent Games-as-a-Platform (GaaP) concept. Halo Infinite was the first example of this--343 Industries said that future Halo games would no longer be numbered--but so far the plan has somewhat fizzled. Then EA CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned the Games-as-a-Platform concept in the company's Fiscal Year 2023 earnings call.

But it could be Ubisoft who executes on this idea first, and the company is currently working on what appears Infinity's content pipeline. Ubisoft has referred to the game as the "Infinity Hub," and we could conceptualize it as a full-game client or storefront that's contained in a specific piece of software. Imagine going to the store and buying a disc, but instead of just one game, you're also buying an access point to other games as well as DLC and in-game purchases.

New infographs from an Xbox presentation at Brazil's BIG Festival reveal Xbox console sales figures for both Gen 8 and Gen 9 cycles.

At the Big Festival 2023 event, Leonardo Barros Barreto. Director of Partner Production Management at Xbox delivered a presentation entitled Xbox - Opportunities for Developers ranging from ID@Xbox to Game Pass. In this presentation, Barreto showed a slide deck with interesting figures on Xbox hardware sales across last-gen and the current Xbox Series generation. This presentation was not livestreamed as part of the BIG Festival videos.

According to the figures, the Xbox Series X/S have sold a combined 21 million units. No specificity regarding timing was given--we don't know if that's current numbers, or if it's as of a certain date, and we don't know whether or not this is shipments, installed base, or sell-through figures. Despite the ambiguity around the number, it does still give us an idea of how well the new-gen Xbox duo are performing.

Data revealed in the FTC v Microsoft federal case gives a closer look at Nintendo's dominant lead in the console publishing segment.

Most gamers already know just how big Nintendo is. Microsoft really drove this point home in key witness testimony in the federal case with the intent to undermine the FTC's high-performance relevant market, which omitted Nintendo from the picture. Not only does the Switch have substitution effects with PlayStation and Xbox, but the device is the best-selling console across both Gen 8 and Gen 9 systems.

Testimony from economist Dr. Liz Bailey outlines just how big Nintendo is compared to PlayStation, Xbox, and other third-party publishers in the console gaming market. According to data provided by her in the courtroom, and relayed by mLex reporter Michael Achton, Nintendo has a $3.8 billion lead over Sony's publishing revenues, and a significant $3.8 billion lead over Xbox.

According to economist Dr. Bailey, Nintendo is indeed a competitor in the console market, and her findings poke holes in the FTC's narrowed high-performance market definition.

Economist Dr. Bailey represented defendants Microsoft and Activision in the ongoing FTC v Microsoft federal case. She was examined as a witness, and her testimony poked holes in the Commission's narrow high-performance console market definition, which excluded Nintendo from the Big 3.

In an effort to simplify the console market, the FTC enlisted economist Professor Lee to help identify potential foreclosure risks in a relevant market. This marked was known as the high-performance relevant console market, which removed Nintendo and PCs as competitors against PlayStation and Xbox consoles. This allowed the FTC to isolate their focus on PlayStation vs Xbox with the rationale that these platforms compete more closely with one another than they do with Nintendo, and while that's true on the surface, Dr. Bailey's testimony quickly undermined this assessment.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick regrets not releasing more games onto the Nintendo Switch, says that his decision not to support the Switch was a mistake.

The Nintendo Switch is currently the best-selling console on the market with over 125 million shipments worldwide. Suffice it to say, the Switch is one of the best places you can release a game apart from the revenue-leading PlayStation. That's a big reason why Activision CEO Bobby Kotick thinks it was a bad judgement call to discount Nintendo's transformative handheld-console hybrid.

In the recent FTC v Microsoft federal case, Kotick gave testimony where he confirmed Activision looked at bringing Call of Duty onto the Switch before Nintendo launched its console in 2017. Kotick says that not releasing Call of Duty on the Switch was "bad judgement." This indicates that Activision did, at first, intend to bring Call of Duty on the Switch at launch, but Kotick decided against it once he saw the prototype. Kotick didn't think the Switch was going to be successful.

In the closing arguments of the FTC v Microsoft federal preliminary injunction case, Federal Trade Commission lawyer James Weingarten summarizes the ways in which the Microsoft-Activision merger could harm consumers.

The FTC believes the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger would harm competition in the video games market across multiple dimensions, including the high-performance console market and the subscription & cloud gaming market.

Throughout the case, we've heard testimony from key witnesses that reveal the various methods, strategies, and scenarios employed by the Xbox games business to gain a competitive edge across all dimensions of the gaming market, and how Xbox plans to use Activision to further its plans to eventually deliver over $32 billion in revenues and become the market leader by 2030.

Starfield made quite the splash in the Xbox 2023 showcase with its graphics and overall presentation, and Todd Howard says a lot of that was because of the new-and-improved Creation Engine 2.

Bethesda Game Studios has been working on the major Creation Engine 2 overhaul for quite some time. Starfield has been in development for 8 years, and during that time, the studio has been iterating on its existing Creation Engine to upgrade it for the new Xbox Series X/S console generation. While most of Starfield's development has been in-house, Microsoft's ATG (Advanced Technology Group) has been assisting Bethesda Game Studios since early 2022, helping with things like console optimization to ensure Starfield looks and runs great on both the Series S and Series X consoles.

In a recent interview with Kinda Funny Gamescast, Todd Howard shared his thoughts on the enhanced games engine and discussed things like volumetric fog and the new global illumination system.

Activision's CEO is a big believer in native mobile gaming, and thinks that phones will eventually be able to play high-end PlayStation 5 quality games.

Over the past two years, Activision's revenues have become mobile-centric. In 2021 and 2022, Activision Blizzard King made most of its revenues from the mobile segment thanks to big successes like Diablo Immortal, Call of Duty Mobile, and of course King's Candy Crush. This push towards mobile will continue with this year's release of Warzone Mobile in the fall.

It shouldn't be much surprise then that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is praising mobile tech. In Day 4 of the recent FTC v Microsoft federal court hearing, Kotick was asked specifically about the merits of native mobile gaming versus streaming, especially in the relation of bringing Activision games like Call of Duty to streaming services.

Activision's executive management stands to receive hefty payouts of millions of dollars if the Microsoft-Activision merger goes through, but Activision CEO Bobby Kotick's company stock portfolio could be worth in excess of $400 million.

In order to secure Activision Blizzard King to fund its mobile gaming and Game Pass ambitions, Microsoft has made an offer to buy 100% of Activision stock at a $95 per share premium. This adds up to a $68.7 billion deal, the largest-ever for Microsoft and the biggest acquisition in video games history (over five times the value of Take-Two's $12.7 billion Zynga buyout).

If Microsoft acquires ABK at $95 per share, there are a number of high-profile Activision executives that will receive big payouts. The company's largest executive shareholder is CEO Bobby Kotick, who currently owns 4,296,550 shares as per 2023's notice of annual meeting of shareholders.