Gaming News - Page 1

PlayStation 5 shipments have broken 32 million as Sony reports an incredible quarter for hardware sales.

Sony's console sales blitz is paying off big time. The company planned to ship up to 20 million PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year, the bulk of which were pushed during the critical Q3 FY22 holiday period. The results speak for themselves.

PlayStation 5 console availability propelled Sony's games business to new heights. The company delivered record PlayStation revenues of $8.8 billion, and hardware represented about 35% of total revenues. Sony shipped a whopping 7.1 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the Holiday 2022 period and pushed total PS5 digital and disc-based system shipments to 32.1 million. The PS5 has finally surpassed PS4 shipments during a Q3 period.

Sony asserts its dominance on the video games market with the best-ever quarter in PlayStation history.

PlayStation delivered record-breaking results in Holiday 2022. During the Q3 FY22 period, Sony made nearly $8.8 billion from its PlayStation gaming ecosystem. These stellar results show the entire PlayStation platform firing on all cylinders and include full game sales, subscriptions/services, and hardware, which make a significant portion of quarterly earnings. Sony's fusillade of PS5s during the holiday quarter helped skyrocket console earnings past $3 billion.

Holiday 2022 was a history-making quarter for PlayStation. Sony's gaming segment made revenues of $8.797 billion, a new all-time high. Total Games & Network Services revenues were up 23% year-over-year, representing an increase of $1.6 billion over last year.

Gaming's Big 3 will not attend E3 2023, sources have told IGN.

When I first started off writing about games many years ago, the Electronics Entertainment Expo was a kind of pipe dream for me. E3 was kind of a mecca for the industry. It was a part of the big endgame quest for a games journalist. Nowadays the show is not even a shadow of what it once was--the sun has set on E3.

Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft--collectively known as the Big 3--had always been the anchors for E3. They were the tentpoles that held the whole thing together as developers everywhere showed how their products run on the Big 3 systems. Now the triad of gaming have pretty much abandoned E3 for good.

Sony is shutting down the excellent PlayStation Plus Collection on May 9, 2023.

The PlayStation Plus Collection was one of the best surprises of the PlayStation 5's launch. The program is an added PlayStation Plus subscription bonus that gives PS5 owners access to a library of recommended PS4 games. Sony essentially gave all new PS5 buyers a head start with a pre-sorted games collection. It was also the best way to bridge the PS4 and PS5 generations.

The PS Plus Collection is coming to an end on May 9, but PlayStation Plus subscribers can still claim the games currently offered at any point up until then and keep them forever. Years ago, I said the PS Plus Collection was a golden ticket for subscriber retention, and Sony could use some other ways to spark PS Plus retention especially as subscribers fell by nearly 2 million last quarter.

EA has cancelled a new Titanfall singleplayer game in an effort to reduce spending and keep profits stable.

Following a $235 million reduction in holiday net bookings, Electronic Arts is tightening its belt so it can navigate the current volatile market with a more lean frame. The publisher announced that a new cost reduction plan was instituted during the holiday quarter that is expected to reduce spending by up to $140 million in the second half of the year.

EA management was vague on exact details of its new plan, but it didn't take long to realize where the savings would come from. The publisher is slashing its production spending to help stabilize revenues against costs. EA has cancelled three games altogether, including two mobile games like Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile. EA is also apparently shutting down the Industrial Toys studio that worked on the Battlefield mobile game. EA executives say that both Apex and Battlefield Mobile will be rebooted.

EA has taken "disciplined" cost-saving measures to help keep the company more slim during the volatile economic market.

The games industry is starting to reveal its holiday 2022 earnings reports, and it appears gaming's downward trend will continue. Like a few video game companies (and likely many more to come), EA has reported lower year-over-year earnings for the 2022 holiday period. There's a few reasons for this: one is that 2021 was a good year for gaming, and two, consumers are spending less on games content, titles, and services.

EA is responding to market contractions by reducing operational costs. This has led to game reboots and cancellations, and layoffs. during yesterday's earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson assured investors that the company had a plan to counter falling revenues and rising costs, but did not talk about employee layoffs.

Cyberpunk 2077 was prominently showcased during NVIDIA's big GeForce RTX 40 Series reveal last year. The visually stunning game was shown taking advantage of cutting-edge DLSS 3 rendering alongside the reveal of an RT Overdrive mode that will push the already intensive real-time ray-tracing in the game even further.

Exclusive to GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs (RTX 4090, RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti), DLSS 3 is a combination of DLSS Super Resolution, NVIDIA Reflex, and Frame Generation. The latter needs the new GeForce GPUs because it is an intensive AI process involving specific hardware that can generate new frames to boost performance. As per the video posted by NVIDIA above, we're talking about the sort of leap that has made DLSS 3 one of the most talked about bits of PC gaming tech in the past year.

EA teases new Apex Legends content, modes, and expansion onto other platforms.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson displayed surprising candor in a recent earnings call. During EA's Q3 FY23 conference call, Wilson discussed a few key points about the Apex brand and where it's going. The megaton free-to-play shooter helped define battle passes and the current FPS market, innovating on both monetization and gameplay. As a result, Apex managed to make over $2 billion in lifetime revenues.

This level of investment should continue. EA isn't about to abandon the Apex series any time soon. Wilson says that Apex is a 10-year franchise that's rife with possibilities including new games, gameplay modes, and inter-connected services.

Jedi Survivor has been delayed a few weeks and will now release in April on all platforms.

Respawn has been given clearance to delay Jedi Survivor to April 28 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, Electronic Arts today announced. The publisher is incredibly bullish on Jedi Survivor's success and EA CEO Andrew Wilson believes the game will add significant value to the Star Wars brand.

Jedi Survivor's dev team will use the extra few weeks to make the interstellar adventure game shine brighter while also squashing bugs, glitches, and issues. Respawn confirms that Jedi Survivor has been 100% completed insofar as content and the final stage will be optimizations and adding an extra layer of fine tuning to the experience.

Microsoft may be forced to permanently delist nearly 50 classic Xbox 360 games from the digital Xbox marketplace.

Microsoft has warned gamers that a significant number of Xbox 360 titles may soon be removed from its online storefront. The list of games was published on the Xbox support site and can be found in a drop-down menu that varies on region.

The list of affected games in the United States includes some very high-profile Xbox 360 games. Affected titles include the original Dark Souls, Mass Effect 2, Skate 2, Star Wars KOTOR 2, The Witcher 2, four Assassin's Creed games, Blue Dragon, and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and Ghosts. There's also some Xbox LIVE Arcade games that may be delisted too including Daytona USA and Jet Set Radio.