Gaming News - Page 147

Sony's PC gaming initiative is growing exponentially, but also missed internal targets by $50 million and has yet to become a significant contributor to overall revenues.

A new business briefing from Sony Interactive Entertainment gives a better perspective of its PC gaming presence. The company has released new figures of its PC games business that illustrates growth in the sector, but also shows just how relatively small PC gaming currently is for Sony.

According to the data, Sony made $250 million from PC gaming in FY22, which is $50 million below expectations. This figure allows us to weigh PC gaming revenues against Other segment earnings to see a proportional share of this new platform.

Sony's acquisition of Bungie seems to be paying off big time, and has dramatically increased PlayStation's presence in PC gaming.

Sony's strategic $3.7 billion buyout of Bungie looks to be one of the company's most beneficial games acquisitions since the purchase of Insomniac Games in 2019. Not only has Sony conscribed Bungie to help vet its first-party live service titles with a "rigorous review process," which has unfortunately led to the delay and possible cancellation of some titles, but the Bungie buyout allows Sony to instantly recognize Destiny 2's hefty revenues on PC.

As a result, Sony Interactive Entertainment is now recognized as one of the top video games publishers "on a popular PC game store." In a recent business briefing, PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst had some interesting things to say about the company's new PC expansion.

Hype for Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 is off the charts and could end up being Sony's best-selling first-party game of 2023.

Sony's latest PlayStation Showcase event had mixed reception, with a portion of gamers being confused by the new first-party PlayStation live service games and others having a muted response to the overall tone of the show itself. But there's one thing that everyone seems to agree on: The new Spider-Man 2 game is an instant fan-favorite.

Sony saved the official gameplay reveal of Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 for the end of the show for good reason, and it really felt like the ace up their sleeve. Gamers had high and lofty expectations for the PlayStation showcase that were mostly too good to be true, as is usually the case for these summer-timed events, but the new Spider-Man 2 footage was met with near-unanimous praise.

Ubisoft has lowered the price of its next Assassin's Creed game below the current $70 MSRP for new titles.

Assassin's Creed Mirage will cost $50 on all platforms, well below the current $70 price tag for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S games. Ubisoft is also continuing its cross-gen free upgrades with Mirage, and the $50 version is cross-gen. That means it will include both a last-gen copy of the game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One alongside entitlements to download a current-gen upgrade for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

This is welcome news for consumers who feel pressure from the new $70 baseline price for new games. Based on our findings, a portion of gamers feel that $70 too much money for AAA titles, and Sony sales data suggests that consumers are indeed buying less games, possibly due to higher costs.

Following years of controversy, Konami is back in the public eye for all the right reasons. The publisher has made a big comeback with revivals of its classic franchises, and now Metal Gear Solid is making a triumphant return.

The rumors were right: Konami is officially remaking Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The new game is actually called Metal Gear Solid Delta, and here's how Konami explains the name change: "The Delta symbol (Δ) was chosen because its meaning fits the concept of the remake project. Delta means "change" or "difference" without changing structure."

The remake is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam, and promises to revivify the 2004 classic with immensely upgraded visuals and features while preserving the key story beats, mechanics, and voice talent. That means David Hayter should be coming back to reprise Snake.

Microsoft has filed an appeal with the Competition Appeals Tribunal that argues why the CMA's merger block decision should be overturned, but some of these points aren't very strong or compelling.

Note: This is an opinion piece that builds an argument based on market trends and video games industry data.

In a new appeal filing, Microsoft legal counsel has listed five key reasons why the CMA was wrong to prohibit its $68.7 billion merger with Activision Blizzard King. The UK's Competition Appeals Tribunal, who oversees appeals in competition cases, has published an application summary that outlines Microsoft's appeals arguments. While a portion of these could be sound, including assertions that the CMA made "fundamental errors" in determining Microsoft's cloud gaming market share, some of the arguments just don't have much weight behind them.

Microsoft has filed an appeal asking UK appeal courts to overturn the Competition and Markets Authority's decision to block the Microsoft-Activision merger.

As promised, Microsoft has recently filed an appeal with the Competition Appeals Tribunal in an attempt to thwart the CMA's merger block. Microsoft's legal counsel has listed five reasons why the block was unjustified, but one that may carry the most weight is that the CMA "made fundamental errors in its assessment" of Xbox's current place in the cloud gaming segment. The CMA had found that Xbox's xCloud game streaming had 60% of cloud gaming MAUs in 2022, a number that has been contested.

Microsoft lists other grounds to challenge the decision, including the fact that the CMA "failed to take proper account" of its 10-year licensing deals with cloud game service competitors like NVIDIA's GeForce Now and Boosteroid, both of which will receive free access to Activision-Blizzard games if the merger goes through. It's also worth mentioning that these deals pose no real threat to Microsoft due to the business models associated with GeForce Now and Boosteroid, and the deals are probably something that the company had always planned to do.

The Pokemon Company has updated sales figures for the famous Pocket Monsters franchise, and the numbers are eye-opening to say the least.

Newly updated figures show the Pokemon series is fast approaching 500 million shipments and sales. From the first game in 1996 to the present day, Pokemon has now shipped over 480 million games worldwide across all platforms in the last 27 years. The update shows that the Pokemon series is up 40 million copies over last year, with March 2022's cumulative total at 440 million franchise shipments.

Data indicates that Pokemon is the third best-selling video game series of all time behind Tetris (495 million) and Mario (over 776 million). The rise in sales was driven by the incredible over-performance of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet on Nintendo Switch, which has sold 22.1 million copies from November 2022 - March 2023, alongside catalog sales of previous games.

Sony's new PlayStation handheld will reportedly have about 3-4 hours of battery life on a full charge.

PlayStation is getting a new handheld, but it won't be a Vita successor or a Switch competitor. It doesn't even stream games via the cloud similar to the Logitech G Cloud. The new PlayStation device, codenamed Project Q, exclusively supports Remote Play functionality over Wi-Fi and is basically two halves of a DualSense controller split between an 8-inch HD screen.

Sony Interactive Entertainment's Jim Ryan confirmed Project Q would play games in HD quality and it appears the device is capable of playing PlayStation 5 games at 1080p 60FPS handheld gaming via Remote Play over Wi-Fi. There's just two things we don't know for sure: Battery life and price. Sources have told Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson that Project Q's battery life is around 3-4 hours, which is in line with the Nintendo Switch.

Naughty Dog has officially delayed its Last of Us live service multiplayer game following reports of downsizing at the project's development team.

Sony revealed three first-party live service games at its recent PlayStation showcase, but Naughty Dog's anticipated Last of Us multiplayer game was noticeably missing. Now we know why: The game simply isn't ready. Today Naughty Dog has announced that the TLOU live service title has been delayed, and also re-confirmed that a new singleplayer game is in development in parallel with the multiplayer project.

The delay comes after downsizing occurred at the team handling the Last of Us live game. Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the live team has been scaled back following an evaluation of the game. Schreier notes that the project has currently been in development for at least four years now.