Gaming News - Page 59

Larian believes Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a great fit for subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass is a great fit for some games, but others...not so much. The subscription has its purpose for both developers and Microsoft, including buffering Xbox service value, offering massive discoverability to games, and of course the potentially high upfront payouts and even bonuses if gamers play a bunch of hours.

There's also downsides. Game Pass "cannibalizes" game sales, meaning that games offered on the service can potentially sell fewer copies because they're being included as part of the subscription. The market dynamics of Xbox Game Pass have been discussed--although not expressly documented in data form--by Microsoft both publicly and in sworn testimony during the FTC v Microsoft trial in June.

Banning cheaters and players who circumvent the rules and don't play well is as old as the first games that went online. However, Valve's new method of dealing with smurf accounts (players running multiple accounts) might take the cake for the funniest to date.

As part of Dota 2's holiday-themed Festivus 2023 Update, it informed players that "if you're on the Naughty List, we've got great news for everybody else and bad news for you because this year is gonna be a bloodbath." Valve adds that smurfing and other negative behavior in Dota 2 makes matches worse, adding that those on the Naughty List will "choke on their richly-deserved coal-flavored just desserts."

Bold words, with the result being 'Naughty List' players opening what they thought was a Frostivus 2023 only to find a digital Highly Toxic Lump of Coal - alongside a message informing them that their account(s) were permanently banned.

New reports make a shocking suggestion: Sony has prohibited consumers from selling their physical PlayStation games to stores, digital e-commerce sites, and other people. This isn't the case.

Sony's overseas Software Usage Terms are once again under the crosshair for alarming language around game resales. The gaming sphere has picked up on a specific passage in Sony's software EU terms that seemingly forbids consumers from selling their purchased PlayStation titles. This isn't the first time this particular passage has kicked off a controversy, and the actual terms haven't changed in the past 9 years.

The reality is that the Software Usage Terms were controversial even before the PS4 launched. Eurogamer reported on this very subject two days before the PS4 released in 2013, which prompted Sony's Shuhei Yoshida to clarify that yes, users could indeed sell and share their PS4 games.

Netflix's gaming ambitions have taken over both Google Play and the App Store, with free Netflix games topping the charts on both stores.

Two years ago, Netflix announced it would start adding games to its subscription. Netflix now has 86 games available to download and play on mobile, and the streamer has even conquered both the Google Play and App Store digital marketplaces with its latest release. With the help of Rockstar Games' mega-popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, of course.

In a surprising move, Netflix teamed up with Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games to launch the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition mobile port on the service. Actually, launch is a bit of a misnomer; Netflix subscribers can download a special version of the GTA games on both mobile stores. These versions are separate from the base games in the newly-released GTA mobile trilogy, which are sold at $19.99 a piece.

Newzoo's 2023 games market report illustrates just how important North America is for the interactive entertainment industry.

A bit ago, Sony raised the price of its PlayStation 5 console in basically all worldwide regions except for the U.S. There's a good reason for that: North America, including the U.S., is among the top-spending geographies on the planet.

Analyst firm Newzoo recently published its video games industry market report for 2023, and the data is particularly interesting given the current economic climate. Gaming is set to make $184 billion revenues in 2023, excluding games hardware and betting segments. Elsewhere in the report, Newzoo compares the amount of gamers per region, and cross-referencing this data with regional spending delivers eye-opening results.

Microsoft wants to expand its Xbox gaming business to all global regions, but the company faces an uphill battle in countries like Japan.

Microsoft aspires to reach games industry leadership by 2030, with an implied $32 billion of revenue generated from its widening ecosystem of products and services. To get there, Xbox needs to expand. The recent Activision Blizzard King acquisition will accelerate these plans with an enviable content war chest worth many billions of dollars, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.

Xbox's strategy goes well beyond first-party content, and to achieve its goals, Microsoft needs to build its business in certain markets like Asia, including both Japan and China. Progress is well underway--Xbox has made deals with Square Enix to bring more games to the platform, starting with Final Fantasy XIV in 2024. To streamline this expansion process in Japan, Microsoft recently hired former PlayStation business director Mena Sato Kato to help spark partnerships and relationships between Xbox and Japanese publishers.

Elden Ring's anticipated DLC expansion could launch in February 2024, and FromSoftware may be working on a second expansion set for 2025, new marketing materials indicate.

New accidental leaks at retailer Data Blitz give updates on Elden Ring's new story content. The site erroneously updated marketing materials for a special edition Elden Ring-themed Thrustmaster controller that's specifically designed to make the action RPG more player friendly. The Thrustmaster eSwap X2 Pro Xbox controller touts swappable joysticks, mechanical buttons with better actuation, and extra programmable buttons.

The document makes it pretty clear that the public wasn't meant to see the info--it wasn't necessarily a product page, but more of a guide for retailers to use for their shop descriptions. The leaked materials mention that the controller will "sync" with the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion's launch, and the eSwap X2 Pro would release during Elden Ring's anniversary, which is listed as February 2024.

3D Realms is the latest video game studio to get hit with layoffs as a result of Embracer Group's aggressive cost-cutting plan.

Despite making an estimated $184 billion throughout the year, 2023 has been a terrible year for some of the people who make games. The games industry has suffered over 7,000 layoffs across all disciplines as more publishers, developers, and parent companies aim to reduce spending budgets. Higher costs are eroding year-over-year profit numbers and margins, and now billion-dollar publishers and smaller-scale devs alike are pulling the layoff lever.

Decentralized, entrepreneur-funded Embracer Group has been hit particularly hard by layoffs. The company laid off 904 workers as of September 2023, of which 700+ were game devs, and Embracer said more layoffs were likely. Now that's happened: Layoffs have come for Danish games publisher 3D Realms, who released the original Duke Nukem on PC.

Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke confirms the game dev was given full creative control over Baldur's Gate 3, including free reign on which era the game takes place in.

Baldur's Gate 3 is known for its incredibly vast player freedom. Gamers can choose a multitude of outcomes throughout the RPG, whether it be something integral like character creation/skills/classes or the myriad ways you can win in battle. Whatever the parameter is, you can bet that Larian lets you fiddle and experiment with it.

It turns out that the Belgian RPG masters were given similar freedoms. In a recent awards acceptance letter penned by Swen Vincke, the founder says that Larian was given "carte blanche" (a Latin term that essentially means blank check, in this case denoting full artistic liberty) on how they wanted to use the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Vincke further comments about the disastrous layoffs that saw Hasbro eliminating 1,100 employees, many of which were at its Wizards of the Coast division.

Microsoft plans to release a next-gen Xbox console by 2026, new unverified rumors and reports claim.

Accidental document leaks from the FTC v Microsoft trial put a next-gen Xbox release in November 2028, however new rumors say that a new Xbox console is coming in 2026. This is a substantially reduced window and would cut the current Gen9 Xbox family to about 6 years, two of which were mostly constrained by chip shortages. It's worth mentioning that this document was published in May 2022 and a lot has likely changed since then.

The trial leaks also show that Microsoft was mulling over a potential mid-cycle Xbox Series X refresh set to launch sometime in late October of 2024. This console was codenamed "Brooklin" and would be a cylindrical, digital-only Series X. The documents also say that the mid-gen consoles (Ellewood, which is the 1TB Xbox Series S, and Brooklin, the aforementioned Series X refresh) have been funded.