Gaming News - Page 322

YouTube could help shape the metaverse, interactive entertainment's latest buzzworthy trend.

YouTube today announced that it is committed to the metaverse. The world's leading video-on-demand platform wants to inject a new level of immersion into YouTube entertainment. Exact plans are unknown, but YouTube says it will start its metaverse plans with video games.

"We're thinking big about how to make viewing more immersive. The first area in which you can expect to see an impact is gaming, where we'll work to bring more interactions to games and make them feel more alive. It's still early days, but we're excited to see how we can turn these virtual worlds into a reality for viewers," YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan said in a blog post.

Singleplayer is still very important to Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive. So what does that mean for GTA 6?

The last we heard is that GTA 6 could launch with a more compact singleplayer story mode that expands over time with online updates. After years of billion-dollar earnings with GTA Online, Rockstar has started to lean into singleplayer content with GTA Online's new The Contract expansion which features story content with original GTA V characters and can be played solo. Is this the beginning of a new hybridized setup for Grand Theft Auto 6?

We don't know for sure, but Take-Two Interactive still believes in singleplayer. That's surprising considering Take-Two earned over $551 million from in-game spending in the holiday quarter--microtransactions have been very good to the publisher.

The next Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope than Origins, Odyssey, and especially Valhalla.

Ubisoft is planning a new standalone Assassin's Creed game for 2022 or 2023 that will star Basim, sources tell Bloomberg. The game will be more compact with greater emphasis on stealth and a diminished focus on exploration.

The new game, codenamed Rift, was originally set to be an expansion to Assassin's Creed Valhalla and soon ballooned into a full game. Valhalla has already expanded with two years' worth of content to carry the franchise into 2022 with the new more recent Dawn of Ragnarok expansion.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has now made over $7 billion since GTA V's release in 2013.

According to data provided by Take-Two filings, the GTA series has generated a whopping $7.3 billion since Grand Theft Auto V's initial release ($7.299 billion, to be more exact). GTA V's megaton launch in 2013 actually accounts for nearly 20% of these revenues--the game made $1.49 billion in sales in one quarter.

The holiday 2021 period spiked franchise revenues to their highest quarterly peak since GTA V's release. During Q3'22, GTA pulled in $310 million driven by three major things: GTA Online, the new GTA trilogy remaster, and continued GTA V sales. The series has managed to set two earnings records in FY22.

Zynga has started incubating blockchain games, sources tell Axios.

With more than $23 billion NFT trades in 2021, mobile titan Zynga wants in on the craze. The game developer is currently ironing out early details of new blockchain-based games with play-to-earn features. Zynga hasn't outlined exact plans, but the general idea is that gamers will be able to play, earn, and own digital assets that can then be re-sold on a marketplace for cryptocurrency.

NFTs have proven to be a wildly speculative market for major game publishers. Square Enix and SEGA have expressed interest. Konami and Ubisoft have both launched their own NFT line but the assets made less than $200,000 overall, which is a drop in the bucket to both companies who make mega millions from microtransactions.

Call of Duty and other Activision franchises will not be Xbox exclusive, Microsoft today announced.

Microsoft just dropped a megaton bomb on exclusivity and re-affirmed our predictions: Call of Duty and other major Activision games will still release on PlayStation consoles after the Activision-Blizzard buyout closes.

"Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision. And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love."

A new update for Dying Light 2 has been released onto the PC version of the game, with patch 1.04 now live for PC gamers -- but Xbox Series X gamers are in for a treat when the new patch arrives on their consoles.

Dying Light 2 developer Techland has already pushed out multiple hotfixes for the game, but now there's a big patch on the way for all platforms. The PC version of the game gets multiple improvements, with "DLSS improvements" for GeForce gamers.

But the Xbox Series X version of Dying Light 2 will be getting some lovin' with a new 60+ FPS Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) mode, exclusive to XSX and not the Xbox Series S console. Not the PlayStation 5 at this point.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise just hit its second-highest quarterly revenues since GTA V's launch in 2013, once again proving the power of the series.

Grand Theft Auto is still as big as ever. In holiday 2021, the GTA series hit 370 million copies sold to date. Rockstar also generated more revenue from Grand Theft Auto products and services since GTA V's gargantuan launch in 2013 (which made $1.49 billion).

During Q3'22, the Grand Theft Auto franchise made $310.13 million in total revenues. This was driven by a number of things including sales of two mainline games, strong GTA Online microtransaction purchases, and big player counts in all three games.

Sony's latest financial reports reveal how many PlayStation and PC gamers are buying first-party games.

With high production values, dramatic storylines, and blockbuster action, Sony's first-party games have traditionally been marketed as system-sellers. The reality is that while first-party games do sell respectable volume every year, most PlayStation gamers are buying third-party titles on the platform.

Based from numbers provided by Sony, we've compiled a list of first-party game sales from FY2018 through the current Q3'2021 period. The results are surprising; First-party game sales have capped out at 27% of total software sales and dropped as low as 10% through lull periods.

Sony is going all-in on live games and plans to release 10 new live service games by 2026. Here's what it needs to do in order to maximize revenues.

Sony is no stranger to the live games business. Although PlayStation focuses mainly on singleplayer blockbuster games, Sony's games division makes most of its money through live games--and most of these games it doesn't even own. Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone, and Rocket League have generated billions for Sony over the years (Fortnite alone has made Sony $6 billion, as per court documents from the Epic vs Apple trial).

Now Sony wants to break into the live games business. Luckily it has had years to learn from the best in the business. If Sony wants to make serious live games cash it needs to follow a few simple rules.