Gaming News - Page 135

Microsoft apparently has no plans to immediately raise the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription service if the merger with Activision is approved, even with the significant added value of day-and-date Call of Duty games.

In the past, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has indicated that Microsoft could eventually raise the price of the Xbox Game Pass subscription in an effort to keep up with rising games industry costs. Right now Xbox Game Pass has two tiers: The base tier that costs $10 a month on either console or PC, and then Ultimate for $15 a month, which offers bonuses like EA titles, access to both console and PC, and cloud streaming. So what happens if the Activision merger closes, and a bulk of Activision-Blizzard games arrive on the service?

According to a new court filing, it appears that Microsoft could keep the price of Xbox Game Pass at its current rates on a post-merger basis. This is surprising given the significant added value that big games like Call of Duty and even Diablo IV will add to the service, however the strategy could work in Microsoft's favor and help surge Game Pass signups. This provision is also a means of protection, as regulators and courts may disapprove of an immediate price jump following the merger's closure.

Microsoft has no intention of disruptive Activision Blizzard King's creative operations if the two companies are allowed to merge.

Microsoft's service-first model will disrupt Activision's core business, but to what extent remains unknown. Game Pass subscriptions have been proven to cannibalize and/or reduce sales of premium games. This effect is the exact reason Activision has kept its games off of value-oriented multi-game subscription services like Game Pass--the publisher very strongly relies on full game sales in its annualized Call of Duty franchise, a series that has amassed over 425 million copies and generated over $31 billion in revenues to date. Diablo IV's recent success also underlines this disruption; the game managed to make $666 million in just five days based on game sales alone, a feat that may not have been possible if the game was release on Xbox Game Pass on a day one basis.

While the Microsoft-Activision merger will undoubtedly disrupt Activision's core business model in terms of game sales, Microsoft does not want to shake up the publisher's creative process (unfortunately, this could happen regardless due to the subscription-based business model, which could lead to a change in how games are made, alongside layoffs that are typical after consolidation).

Yoshi-P regrettably announced that Final Fantasy XVI will have a day one patch on PlayStation 5, but the game is still playable fully offline.

Square Enix originally wanted to release Final Fantasy XVI as a complete game that didn't need a day one patch. Now the devs at Creative Business Unit III have announced the game will actually have a day one update that addresses very specific bugs, but this update won't be required to play the base game.

Anyone who owns a disc version can still play Final Fantasy XVI fully offline, as well as gamers who already have FF16 installed onto their PS5. The update is not mandatory in order to start playing the game. The update will be 300MB in size and will release on June 20th, just 2 days before the game's final release.

A Diablo IV player has taken to Reddit to share the total amount of XP required to reach max level 100, revealing that half of that total XP would make the player level 85.

Blizzard Entertainment seems to have taken a page out of Jagex's book when it comes to calculating the total amount of XP required to reach a maximum level. RuneScape is notorious for having long grinds of a specific skill or multiple skills, and for a player to commit to reaching the maximum level in a specific skill, the player must be prepared to spend tens or, more typically, hundreds of hours of grinding.

In OldSchool RuneScape, for a player to hit the maximum level in a skill, they must reach level 99, or earn 13,034,431 XP. For a player to hit level 92 in a skill, they must earn 6,517,253 XP, meaning level 92 is technically halfway to level 99. Diablo IV is similar, with Reddit user Aganod44 pointing out that at level 85, a player will have around 243.5 million total XP, and the maximum level requires 487 million XP.

Ubisoft's new Avatar game may deliver one of the most captivating storylines of the year.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has an interesting aim. The game wants to meld first-person Far Cry-like action combat and free-roaming exploration while threading an interesting storyline through the experience. The result could be a compelling interactive journey into one of the most colorful worlds of modern entertainment.

Based on what we know about Frontiers of Pandora, the game will take on classic archetypes and motifs like the traditional Hero's Journey adventure that was first posited by Joseph Campbell. The game will have a distinct fantasy mythos undercurrent that carries the entire storyline; in Frontiers of Pandora, you play as a Na'vi that was specifically trained by humans to kill other Na'vi. Eventually you break away from the RDA and have to discover yourself, your culture, and to truly understand what it means to be Na'vi.

Streaming platform Kick wants to make its mark in the billion-dollar ad market, and has poached one of the biggest names in streaming.

xQc has signed an incredibly lucrative two-year agreement with Kick, a new fledgling streaming platform launched in 2022. The non-exclusive deal is worth nearly $70 million, with incentives that could raise the deal's worth to $100 million. xQc's agent Ryan Morrison tells New York Times reporter Kellen Browning that the deal is bigger than those signed by pro athletes.

"This is more than most professional athletes and megastars. This is one of the highest deals in entertainment, period."

Microsoft legal counsel suggests that the company could abandon the $68.7 billion merger with Activision if federal courts grants the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction.

The fate of the Microsoft-Activision merger may hang in the balance of a decision from Northern California's federal courts. In a recent court filing, Microsoft and Activision lawyers indicate that the acquisition could be terminated if Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley issues a preliminary injunction at the FTC's behest.

The U.S. antitrust Commission wants to stop the merger, and has challenged the deal in its own internal administrative courts instead of in federal court. This is by design: The FTC can effectively kill the merger through years-long process where the Commissioners, not the Administrative Law Judge who oversees the case, have the final say on merger approval. The FTC has been creative in its tactics. In the most recent motion, Microsoft lawyers say that the FTC opted for an 8-month schedule for the admin case rather than a shorter 5-month proceeding, which set the first hearing on August 2, well past the merger's July 18 expiration date.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is still hesitant to disrupt its virtuous cycle business model and follow Microsoft's lead.

Sony has a great thing going right now. The company sells millions of games and makes lots of profit from PlayStation 5 hardware and accessories. While Sony's newer multi-game PlayStation Plus subscription model takes direct inspiration from Xbox Game Pass, the company isn't ready to disrupt its own business and put services and engagement at the forefront of its gaming empire.

Services like PlayStation Plus are additive for Sony. The reverse is true for Xbox, and Game Pass is at the heart of Microsoft's gaming business. This is reflected through the dramatic decision to release first-party Xbox games day-one on Game Pass, a move that lowers the potential full game sales opportunities for these titles. Sony, on the other hand, isn't ready to forgo game sales just yet, and for good reason: Its AAA titles have sold tens of millions of copies.

Three of Twitch's top executives sit down to answer questions about the new Partner Plus program.

Today, Twitch introduced its Partner Plus program. The initiative allows streamers to keep 70% of net revenue generated from subscriptions, provided they meet certain criteria.

These qualifications include:

Gen 8 is finished, and Microsoft is now focusing on the Xbox Series X/S console duo.

Following expanded efforts to preserve backwards compatibility across four generations of consoles, the advent of Smart Delivery, and a 3-year cross-gen transition period, Microsoft is now moving on from the Xbox One generation. The billion-dollar tech giant is now solely focusing its new games for the Gen 9 Xbox Series X and Series S consoles introduced in 2020.

In a recent interview with Axio's Stephen Totilo (via Axios Gaming's newsletter, sign up here), Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty confirms that the company's 23 internal studios are no longer making new games for the Xbox One.