Gaming - Page 309

SEGA and Capcom are among the last video game publishers not to increase the price of their games to $70, but how long will they hold out?

We've discovered that the new $70 price tag for AAA games seems to be affecting overall game sales, especially on the PlayStation platform. Sony recorded fewer games sold but higher revenues during its FY22 yearly period, which indicates that gamers are buying less games but spending more money on the titles they do buy. Our consumer survey also indicates that most people feel $70 is too much to pay for a new game and that the price increase has affected purchasing decisions in an unsure macro-economic environment.

The question remains: Do publishers set a $70 price for games and accept potentially lower sales for the possibility of higher revenues? Some game-makers like Capcom have indicated they won't raise the price of their games to $70 in an effort to eventually sell 100 million copies a year. So what about SEGA--will they follow the industry and move to $70 games?

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was "very surprised" when the CMA chose to block the Microsoft-Activision merger, and delivers a cryptic response as to whether or not Microsoft will sell ABK games in the UK on a post-merger basis.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shares interesting comments on the Microsoft-Activision merger.

The CMA has blocked the merger on grounds of anti-competitive effects in the cloud gaming segment--so what happens if Britain's Competition Appeals Tribunal chooses not to overturn the CMA's decision, and the merger remains blocked in the UK? Will Microsoft choose not to sell Activision Blizzard King products and games in the UK? Nadella gives a neutral response:

World of Warcraft Classic is getting a hardcore server, meaning that when you play, if your character dies, that's it - they are permanently dead.

While there are already mods out there to let you experience this take on WoW, official support is a different kettle of fish.

However, the reveal wasn't such a big surprise seeing as the existence of a hardcore mode had previously been leaked (see the above tweet).

Steam has kicked off a new idea for game trials, starting with the Dead Space remake from EA.

This allows would-be purchasers to jump into the game and play for 90 minutes, no strings attached.

There are no restrictions on how far you can go in the game and the content you can see, just that time limit of an hour and a half. (Cue some speed-running antics).

The new ASUS ROG Ally might be positioned as a more powerful competitor to Valve's Steam Deck, but being a native Windows 11 device does mean that it features native support for the Xbox app.

A Game Pass subscription immediately offers owners access to a huge library of games, including first-party titles from Xbox Game Studios like Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves, and popular third-party and indies to boot.

From Microsoft's perspective, looking at the ROG Ally as a portable PC gaming handheld makes it as close to being a console as it is a desktop gaming rig. And with that, Roanne Soanes, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Software, brought up a specific Xbox console feature that could be making its way to Windows - Quick Resume.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager comments on the Microsoft-Activision merger approval, says the remedies that Microsoft offered were able to solve a problem in a pro-competitive way.

Today the European Commission (EC) announced that it had cleared and approved the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger under specific conditions. Microsoft's proposed 10-year remedy, or promised adjustment that aims to satisfy concerns of anti-competitive effects from the merger, was enough for the EC. Microsoft has committed to making all existing and future Activision-Blizzard games available on "any cloud streaming service, on any device," including multi-game subscriptions.

In a recent interview with CNBC, the Commission's EVP Margrethe Vestager had some interesting things to say about the merger and the games market:

The European Commission has officially approved the Microsoft-Activision merger under specific conditions, and now the CMA weighs in with their own response.

The Microsoft-Activision merger has been cleared in as many as 10 jurisdictions, and today's greenlight from the European Commission carries significant weight. Not all regulators agree that the merger is pro-competition, with the FTC in the U.S. and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK choosing to block the merger.

The differences between the European Commission and CMA are particularly interesting given the UK was once part of the EU, and now the CMA has also issued its own statement on the European Commission's merger approval. The CMA essentially believes the approval will allow Microsoft to control a key part of the cloud segment's growth via the sheer power of Activision-Blizzard titles.

The European Commission has approved the Microsoft-Activision merger under specific conditions, and the agreement seems like great news for gamers and cloud gaming providers.

In order to get the Activision merger cleared in Europe, Microsoft has made substantial wide-sweeping promises that could help catalyze the un-profitable cloud gaming segment. Microsoft has made commitments to bring all current and future Activision-Blizzard games that are available on PC and consoles to cloud game streaming services if the merger closes.

This essentially means that every Activision-Blizzard game sold on consoles and PC will also be streamable via cloud gaming services like NVIDIA GeForce, Boosteroid, and of course Xbox Game Pass Ultimate's xCloud platform.

The European Commission has approved the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Today regulators at the European Commission have decided to clear and approve the Microsoft-Activision merger, with the EC saying that the deal "represents a significant improvement for cloud gaminga s compared to the current situation."

Regulators require Microsoft to uphold its specific 10-year remedies, which offer a free license to all consumers in the European Economic Area to stream all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games across any cloud game streaming service of their choice.

Fallout, the post-apocalyptic role-playing series, is one of the most popular gaming franchises under the Bethesda and Xbox stable. Although we don't have confirmation on when the next game is set to arrive, there's a high-profile television series for Prime Video coming in the not-too-distant future.

Looking at the past, though, Fallout began in 1997 as an isometric single-player RPG for PC from Interplay. Before that, Fallout co-creator Tim Cain started working on the game in 1994 as a spiritual successor to a 1988 game called Wasteland. Fallout's history dates back to the rise of complex and iconic PC RPGs from the 1990s, where it found immediate critical acclaim.

Today, Tim Cain drops little nuggets of RPG lore gold on YouTube, covering his storied and celebrated career. The latest covers the original concept behind Fallout's mysterious Vaults - underground facilities and shelters created by the Vault-Tec Corporation that often hide some dark and unsettling truth.

The new ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld is right around the corner, with the higher-powered Ryzen Z1 Extreme model set to debut on June 13 with a price point of USD 699. We know it can handle playing modern titles across Steam, the Xbox app, and more, but what about emulation?

The ROG Ally's Z1 Extreme CPU is an 8-core (16-thread) processor, boasting 8.6 Teraflops of GPU performance via integrated RDNA 3 graphics. The lower-tier Ryzen Z1 (non Extreme) model features a 6-core (12-thread) chip and 2.8 Teraflops of GPU performance. This model is set to debut later, sometime in July at this stage, with a price point of USD 599.

With prices that put the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld in the same category as the larger-storage-spec Steam Deck variants, we've also seen the ROG Ally get into the hands of several reviewers - including those that specialize in retro gaming.

Nintendo and Sony have both updated their hardware sales figures, so we decided to take a closer look at how these two gaming titans compare in console and handheld sales.

The Nintendo Switch just passed 125 million shipments, and Sony's PlayStation 5 has now reached 38.4 million shipments worldwide. This pushes both platform-holder's respective hardware sales up a smidgen over last quarter, but it's still interesting to put the numbers up against each other. We would include Xbox hardware sales, however that data is spotty, and we're instead relying on information provided by Sony and Nintendo.

There's some big context points that we need to go over beforehand. First, Nintendo hardware pre-dates PlayStation by 11 years. And second, this data is in sell-in, or shipments made to retailers, and does not reflect the full sell-through figures that represent the actual units sold to consumers.

Unlike its competitors at PlayStation and Xbox, Nintendo has made most of its software revenues from first-party games.

Surprising no one, earnings reports clearly show that people buy Nintendo hardware to play Nintendo games. What is surprising, however, is just how much money that the company makes from first-party games versus third-party titles.

According to data published by the Japanese games firm and analyzed by TweakTown, Nintendo has made over $34.5 billion from software in the past 7 years since the Switch's release. Revenues from first-party games represent 81% of Nintendo's total software revenues, or $27.9 billion of the total. On the other hand, third-party game revenues were 19% or about $6.6 billion across the Switch's current lifespan.

The Switch's new sales milestone has pushed total Nintendo hardware shipments to 836.65 million, and we take a closer look at the breakdown between console and handheld numbers.

Every quarter, Nintendo and the rest of the games industry updates and refreshes key performance metrics. One of the most interesting bits of info concerns hardware and software sales, especially when comparing new systems that benefit from advancements like digital delivery and subscriptions against historical legacy platforms.

On this note, we see the Nintendo Switch has quickly become the star of Nintendo's core games business. It helps that the Switch family encompasses 3 devices, but more than that, the Switch is an evolution of all of Nintendo's past consoles and handhelds. So how does the Switch stack up against other platforms insofar as hardware sales, and how much has it affected total HW sell-in?

It's official: The Nintendo Switch has now sold over 1 billion games, and the Switch now accounts for over 18% of all software that Nintendo has ever sold on its platforms.

The Nintendo Switch just entered its 7th year on the market and the handheld-console ecosystem is still breaking new barriers. The Switch recently broke the 125 million shipments milestone and has also now sold a total of 1036.15 (or 1.036 billion) million games. The Switch family, which includes the base Switch from 2017, the Switch Lite introduced in 2019, and the premium Switch OLED in 2021, is currently #1 in total Nintendo software sales and #2 in hardware sales, just behind the classic DS.

Taking a closer look at software sales and we can highlight some interesting trends. To date, Nintendo has sold 5.592 billion games across all of its console and handheld systems, and the Switch makes up about 18.5% of these total sales.

From launch to present, Nintendo has generated over $69 billion from its Switch family of products.

The Switch has had a remarkable 7-year run, and the hardware is only just now starting to slow down. The Switch handheld-console ecosystem just broke the 125 million shipment milestone, and has now sold more software than any other platform in Nintendo history. It could also beat the Nintendo DS by 2025.

Based on data provided by Nintendo and collected by us, the Switch family of hardware has made about $69.043 billion for Nintendo in the last 7 years on the market (March 2017 - March 2023). The company has made over $74 billion in total net sales since the Switch's launch, with the remaining $5 billion being generated from other platforms and segments, including the 3DS handheld.

Popular belief is that Sony led to the creation to a market designation that removed Nintendo from the Big 3. Is that the case? We investigate further in an attempt to discover answers.

The Federal Trade Commission turned heads when it created the High-Performance Console Market in an effort to narrow its focus to PlayStation vs Xbox in the Microsoft-Activision merger antitrust case. This is a common practice for regulators, who often recognize what are called "relevant markets," or areas of competition that could be affected by a merger. In so doing, the FTC effectively removes Nintendo, one of the most powerful forces in gaming history, from the equation altogether.

The FTC has determined three areas where the Microsoft-Activision merger could cause anti-competitive effects: Consoles, multi-game subscriptions, and cloud gaming subscription services. "The Proposed Acquisition is reasonably likely to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in the Relevant Markets for High-Performance Consoles, MultiGame Content Library Subscription Services, and Cloud Gaming Subscription Services," the FTC wrote in its December-filed Complaint.

FTC Chain Lina Khan denies allegations of potential collusion between the FTC and overseas agencies, and directly responds to comments from former SEC chair and NEC director.

The FTC's decision to sue to block the Microsoft-Activision merger has been met with widespread scrutiny. The FTC was the first to take legal action against the merger, and UK regulators at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also chose to block the merger in late April. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who stands to gain about $185 million in share value if the merger goes through, went so far as to say the CMA has been "used as a tool by the FTC," and that the British agency has been "co-opted by FTC ideology."

Other officials have expressed similar sentiments, with former SEC chair Jay Clayton and NEC director Gary Cohn outlining their thoughts in a New York Times op-ed piece entitled The Microsoft-Activision Mess is a Blow to American Sovereignty. In this op-ed, both Clayton and Cohn say that the FTC seems to be 'outsourcing U.S. regulatory policy to Europe:

Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid just entered its 7th year on the market, but that hasn't stopped the platform from shipping over 125 million units.

The Nintendo Switch is understandably cooling down as it enters Year 7, however total cumulative worldwide shipments have broken 125.62 million as of March 30, 2023. The Switch could very well become Nintendo's best-selling hardware ecosystem of all time and dethrone the DS. How likely is that to happen, though?

Before we celebrate the Switch's milestone, we need to take a closer look at the system's overall shipment trends. FY23 shipments were actually down a considerable 5 million units year-over-year to 17.97 million. Nintendo also missed its shipment target by over 1 million units for the year. Nintendo says Switch production has been affected by the shortage of semiconductors in the first half of FY23.

Nintendo will not release new next-gen hardware until April 2024 at the earliest, sources tell Nikkei Asia, however that point was made starkly clear in Nintendo's latest financials.

Nintendo has no plans to launch a new Switch model in 2023 or early 2024. While sources have re-affirmed this point to Japanese publication Nikkei Asia, saying that "a [new] product launch won't happen before next spring at the earliest," only glance at Nintendo's financials tells us everything we need to know.

First let's take a look at Nintendo's forecasts. The company saw a steep $3 billion+ decline in net sales revenue, driven by decreased hardware and software sales. Switch shipments also declined by 5 million units, and while shipments do not equal sell-through, Nintendo has confirmed sell-through also declined, leading to a drop of $1.7 billion hardware earnings.