Gaming News - Page 74

Sony shipped a record-breaking 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its latest Q2 period while also delivering hardware sales revenues to match.

PlayStation 5 sales are on the rise as Sony attempts to meet its ambitious 25 million PS5 shipment target. Current data shows that Sony shipped 4.9 million PS5s in Q2, a new modern console shipment record for a non-holiday quarter. Despite these results, Sony still has to ship over 16 million PS5s in order to hit the goal line.

The new PS5 shipment record is accompanied by strong hardware revenues. In the Q2'23 period, hardware made up the lion's share of total Games & Network Services (G&NS) segment revenues. PlayStation 5 console hardware comprised 30% of total gaming division revenues, or about $1.991 billion when converted in the provided yen-to-USD exchange rates.

Sony's PlayStation 5 console nears 50 million shipments, but still hasn't overtaken the PS4 just yet.

Sony recent reported its Q2 results for the Fiscal Year 2023 period, updating investors and consumers on the current state of the business. Gaming is going strong for Sony in terms of overall earnings, with the company generating a record-breaking $6.7 billion in second-quarter revenues. A significant portion of this was made from PlayStation 5 hardware.

According to the results, Sony's Games & Network Services division sold-in 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the Q2 period (July - September 2023), a new record for second-quarter console shipments. On a launch-aligned basis, the PS4 is still beating the PS5, with 47.6 million PlayStation 4 consoles shipped in the first 12 quarters compared to the 46.6 million PlayStation 5 consoles shipped in the same period.

Starfield's beta patch that was recently brought out introducing DLSS support (among many other things) has just had some useful fixes and improvements applied.

The changes were outlined by Bethesda in release notes for the new version 1.8.84 update.

As mentioned, DLSS 3 just went live for the game, but there were some issues, notably around blurring and ghosting. (Problems are to be expected in beta testing, of course).

With the release of Starfield a few months ago and the team at Bethesda Game Studios shifting its focus to The Elder Scrolls VI, you wouldn't be alone in thinking that waiting a decade for the next mainline Fallout is going to be painful. However, with the mod-friendly Bethesda engine used to create 2015's Fallout 4, there's some good news.

Projects like Fallout: London are incredible because they look like an official Fallout 4 expansion or New Vegas-style spin-off. Developed by Team FOLON, an indie team that has been working on the ambitious mod for a few years now, Fallout: London shifts the focus to post-apocalyptic London, England, and in a new video shared by the development team, we get a good look at the game's many factions.

With factions inspired by Camelot and Arthurian legend, the punk scene, aristocracy, and 20th-century British military, it's a very different Fallout than we're used to seeing but one that still feels true to the franchise.

NVIDIA has released a new GeForce driver bringing in some important improvements for a couple of big-name games, plus a bunch of useful fixes, too.

Version 546.17 of NVIDIA's Game Ready Driver provides better results for DLSS 3 in new games that carry the frame generation tech, and that includes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Starfield.

Other games getting DLSS 3 this week are Desynced and Remnant 2 - The Awakened King, as NVIDIA announced on X (formerly Twitter).

There are several annual awards for games, but The Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley, is probably the biggest. A celebration, concert, and showcase event where announcements are made (it could be the venue where we get to see Grand Theft Auto VI for the first time), this year's The Game Awards 2023 is set to take place and broadcast live on Thursday, December 7, 2023, at 4:30 pm PT.

The big award for what many view as the Oscars for games is the annual Game of the Year Award, which this year includes six games going head-to-head for the statue: Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

As far as nominations go, Alan Wake 2 from Remedy and Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios lead the pack with a massive eight nominations each across 31 categories. The fact that Alan Wake 2 has only been out for a few weeks makes its appearance in multiple categories slightly surprising.

Sony wants to ship an ambitious 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year, and it still has nearly 17 more consoles to ship in order to hit the target. Based on what Sony management has said to investors, this sales plan hinges on the new PS5 Slim console revision.

The new PlayStation 5 slim revision is more important than consumers think, at least for Sony. The updated consoles make significantly changes to weight, size, and overall form factor, while transforming all base PS5 models into digital-first editions through the sale of an optional disc drive. All of these things are calculated moves on Sony's part, and the PS5 Slim was mainly created to maximize the PlayStation 5's overall profitability.

The Slim's weight reductions translate to lower freight shipment costs, whether exporting directly from Japan's console manufacturing plants like the one Kisarazu, or exporting from other worldwide facilities. Right now the yen is in a depreciated state, meaning Sony could make lots more revenue from console exports as USD and Euros currently yield higher yen values.

The latest update for Starfield - and note it's a beta release - helps to seriously boost the frame rates you'll get on an NVIDIA GPU, thankfully.

The game has, of course, been a source of controversy due it being optimized for AMD graphics cards, and not supporting DLSS out of the gate - fortunately the mentioned patch does add DLSS support (and that includes frame generation or DLSS 3).

What's also eye-opening is that optimization elsewhere has raised the performance level of NVIDIA graphics cards in general with this new patch.

Sony is still selling its current PlayStation 5 console family at a profit, but total financial gains from console sales have 'deteriorated' over time. Why is that? Sony management explains.

Sony's latest Q2 financials delivered impressive results, with the period delivering a record-breaking $6.6 billion in revenues. Console sales were a significant part of these earnings; Sony shipped a strong 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in Q2'23. This led to hardware generating about 30% of quarterly revenues, or nearly $2 billion.

Despite these revenues, though, Sony's total operating income for the period was mostly flat quarter-over-quarter at $339 million--a far cry from the coronavirus boom years of 2020 and 2021. There's multiple causes for this operating income drop, including amortized payments towards the $3.6 billion Bungie acquisition (and other buyouts). Another big reason lies in the current value of Japan's domestic yen currency.

Total Grand Theft Auto franchise revenues have broken $8.7 billion since GTA V's release a decade ago, Take-Two Interactive's financial reports have confirmed.

GTA V is something of a marvel. There are few games that get even close to shipping nearly 200 million copies in their lifetime, let alone within 10 years. Minecraft's incredible 300 million figure comes to mind, as do sales of whole franchises like Call of Duty, which had sold over 425 million copies since MW2's release in 2022. But here we are, and Grand Theft Auto V has now sold-in (shipped) 190 million copies across three console generations.

In addition to strong hundred-million-dollar revenues generated every quarter from GTA Online, those game shipments add up fast. According to Take-Two's financials, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made over $8.74 billion in net revenues since GTA V's launch in September 2013. Records indicate that Grand Theft Auto made up about 15% of Take-Two's total Q2'24 net revenues, or about $236 million. This is a significant year-over-year increase of 55%, likely driven by GTA V's inclusion as a temporary free playable game as part of Xbox Game Pass.