Gaming - Page 312

Gaming's top publishers reveal how much money they spend to develop and market AAA games, and the results are eye-opening to say the least.

As part of their investigations on the Microsoft-Activision merger, and the video games market at large, regulators like the UK's Competition and Markets Authority are publishing an incredible amount of interesting information regarding the world's largest entertainment industry. The latest finding reveals the astronomically high budgets of AAA games while underlining the rationale behind the unpopular decision to hike game price MSRP to $69.99 across new-gen titles.

According to Pages 309 and 310 in the CMA's final report decision on the Activision merger, some publishers are paying as much as $1.2 billion in combined development and marketing costs for an entire franchise.

Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios was not directly involved with Redfall's development, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Redfall, Microsoft's debut $70 first-party Xbox game, just released and has caused lots of bad press for the games division, with Microsoft receiving a large portion of the blame for Redfall's myriad of issues. The reality is that ZeniMax, not Xbox or Microsoft, led Redfall's decision-making process.

A new investigation from Windows Central indicates that ZeniMax still essentially operates as its own unit and that Redfall was in development long before Microsoft purchased ZeniMax--which includes Bethesda, id Softworks, Arkane, and others--for $7.5 billion back in 2020. This hands-off approach is common within mega-corporations in the games industry; Tencent, the largest video games company in the world, typically lets its studios continue day-to-day operations without interfering with specific titles, roadmaps, etc, as is the case with Riot Games and Grinding Gear Games. Sony is also taking a similar approach with Bungie, who it acquired in 2022 for $3.7 billion.

Capcom expects big things from Street Fighter 6, and hopes the game will become the best-selling title in its beloved franchise.

Street Fighter is synonymous with Capcom, and remains the company's third best-selling IP of all time behind Resident Evil (135 million) and Monster Hunter (90 million). Street Fighter 6 looks to be one of the most explosive games in the franchise yet and fan reception to the promos and recent playable game trial have been very strong. All signs are pointing to the next Street Fighter being a smash hit.

Capcom management certainly hopes this to be the case. In a recent interview with Famitsu, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto says that internal SF6 sales projections are as high as 10 million units, which would outpace all previous games in the series. Right now, Street Fighter V is the top-seller with 7 million unit sales.

Sony's PC gaming initiative is paying off big time, with its appropriate PlayStation games segment generating a record-breaking $2.5 billion in FY22 on the backs of five major PlayStation 5 titles.

PlayStation generated nearly $27 billion revenue in FY22, a new all-time high for console gaming's top platform-holder. This success was driven by multiple PlayStation segments delivering record-breaking revenues, including hardware ($8.3 billion), full game software sales ($6.4 billion), and the segment that includes Sony's PC gaming revenues.

According to Sony's latest earnings report, PlayStation made a considerable $2.51 billion from its Other segment, representing an increase of $842 million from last year. Sony had previously said that it expects to make $300 million from PC games in FY22, and its unknown how much of these total revenues are from PC games.

On the heels of Redfall's controversial release, Microsoft reminds us that the Xbox Direct is the big one we've been waiting for.

Just a bit ago, Microsoft released its debut $70 first-party game with Redfall. Things didn't go well and the game is being grilled by reviewers and players. Redfall's launch woes have reinforced the age-old belief that Xbox is on the brink of ruin due to its lack of hit games (one look at Xbox's financials tells a different story).

In an effort to seemingly curb these talks and reaffirm fans, Microsoft reminds everyone that the Xbox Games Showcase in June is "the day gamers have been waiting for," strongly indicating the June 11 stream could be the big blowout show that redeems the brand's image. Microsoft today confirmed that the Xbox Games Showcase will kick off on June 11 at 1PM EST on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the biggest game releases for 2023, with the Nintendo Switch exclusive set to launch globally on May 12. As a direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the hype is huge for this one - and that excitement has filtered into the emulation and hacking space.

It's no secret that Breath of the Wild was hacked and quickly became playable on PC after its 2017 debut, where in a few short years, we've seen several videos of the game running in 4K and even 8K with custom ray-tracing mods. With physical copies of the game being sold in some markets, the question of whether or not The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be hacked or emulated when it launches has been answered. With a resounding, 'Oh, it'll be online before then.'

Although the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx has been shown running the game on PC with a frame rate of somewhere between 20 to 30 fps, the platform maintains a strict anti-piracy stance (alongside fellow Switch emulator Yuzu), so any sort of official support or performance tweaks won't arrive until after the game debuts.

The PlayStation 5 is still behind the PlayStation 4 in launch-aligned sales, but that will change by March 2024.

Sony's PlayStation 5 is on a hot streak. The console helped Sony generate record-breaking hardware revenues of $8.3 billion and the system also significantly contributed to a new all-time high of $27 billion for PlayStation revenues. Sony isn't done yet, and plans to ship 25 million consoles throughout Fiscal Year 2023 (April 2023 - March 2024), representing the largest production and shipment cycle in PlayStation history.

If Sony is able to achieve this goal, then the PlayStation 5 will overtake the PlayStation 4 for the first time ever. Sony had shipped a strong 19 million PS5s throughout last fiscal year, driving total PS5 unit shipments to 38.4 million. The current figures are still shy of the PS4's shipments across an aligned 10-quarter period (PS4 had 40.2 million vs the PS5's 48.4 million).

Microsoft may have cancelled the popular $1 Game Pass trial promo, but a new deal has taken its place.

Microsoft today announced a new Game Pass refer a friend program that allows current Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC subscribers to share a 14-day free trial with up to 5 friends.

The trials are limited to PC Game Pass, so you won't be able to try the console version of Game Pass for free, and it's likely that Microsoft is trying to boost engagement, in-game spending, and games subscription adoption on Windows platforms. Microsoft management had recently announced that Game Pass and other subscriptions had generated nearly $1 billion from Jan - March 2023.

Xbox's debut $70 first-party game is here...and the game's reception is going as badly as it possibly could.

Redfall, one of the three main first-party Xbox games planned for 2023 behind the highly-anticipated Starfield and a new Forza entry, was released yesterday. Sadly, the game really didn't have much of a chance because it launched right into a controversy spawned from its 30FPS performance at launch.

Reviews gave players an idea of what to expect from Arkane Austin's middling live shooter, with many publications criticizing many of its core aspects including RPG content, badly-optimized multiplayer, unncessary loot grinding, and outrageously bad enemy interactions. Some YouTube reviewers even went so far as to say Redfall was one of the worst games of 2023. "Redfall has so many bugs that for more than two hours, we thought that the one of the bugs was a feature," ACG said.

Nintendo has been ordered by the FTC's chief administrative law judge to testify in the ongoing Microsoft-Activision merger lawsuit.

FTC Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell has denied Nintendo of America's motion to quash a subpoena for testimony, and ruled that Nintendo executive Steve Singer must testify before the FTC's Complaint Counsel in the agency's lawsuit against the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Steve Singer serves as Nintendo of America's vice president of publisher and developer relations, and had directly negotiated the terms of the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal with Microsoft and Activision on the behalf of Nintendo.

PS5 Pro devkits are expected to be in the hands of first-party Sony Interactive Entertainment development studios like Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch, and others in a few months, sources have told Insider Gaming.

According to a new report from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, Sony is ramping up the production of PS5 Pro devkits to introduce developers to the new hardware. The final retail PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to launch in 2024, and Sony is arming its teams with the upgraded consoles in an effort to push their first-party games beyond the current capabilities of the PS5, however PS5 Pro specifications and performance targets for upgraded games remains unclear.

Sources have told Henderson that first-party developers will get the PS5 Pro devkits many months before third-party devs, the latter of whom are expected to receive the units by the end of 2023.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's PC launch has been rocky, with performance issues impacting the player experience. Yesterday we reported that EA and developer Respawn were aware of the problems. An apology of sorts was posted to social media, outlining that the team was working on updates.

The good news is that the PC version has received a patch fixing several issues while also improving performance for playing the game with ray-tracing disabled. The update confirms that the general crashing and other bug fixes will make their way to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game tomorrow, with the team "hard at work on patches that will further improve performance and fix bugs across all platforms."

Having a patch like this arrive within a week of the game's release (and a substantial day one patch) does paint the picture of another major AAA PC release being sent out the door before it was ready. Many deep dives into the game on PC point to it being one of the worst ports of 2023 - which is not great.

PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst reveals what gamers can expect from Sony's new ambitious live service games initiative.

In a bid to capture more of the billion-dollar service games market driven by Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Genshin Impact, Sony plans to release 12 live games by 2025. This initiative will start accelerating this fiscal year with the release of 6 live titles across PS5 and possibly PC too, likely including the new Last of Us online game from Naughty Dog. Sony has made three major strategic studio acquisitions to help manifest its plan, including Bungie, who Sony purchased for over $3 billion, as well as Haven Studios and the most recent acquisition of Firewalk Studios.

So what kinds of live service titles will Sony deliver? PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hults tells GamesIndustry.biz that the service games will include a wide spectrum of genres and overall scopes, indicating we shouldn't expect all of the games to be huge, ever-expanding experiences like Destiny. One thing is being emphasized above all else, though: Preserving the high quality bar that PlayStation's first-party games are known for.

Sony has revised its capital allocation for strategic investments, acquisitions, and share buybacks and freed up more cash for its PlayStation games division and other segments.

Sony just reported its best-ever year for PlayStation, with the games division generating a record-breaking $27 billion in FY22. This landmark success was driven by stellar PS5 console sales and strong growth in its PC-driven gaming segment. In a bid to keep this momentum going, Sony has decided to increase its capital expenditure in part for PlayStation gaming as it gears up for a record 25 million PS5 console production and shipment cycle, as well as major new first-party games across live services and dedicated console gaming.

In its recent FY22 earnings report, Sony confirmed that it has reduced its capital allocation for strategic investment from 2 trillion yen (about $14.6 billion) to a total of 1.8 trillion yen ($13.04 billion). Thanks to previous comments from Sony Corp. President Hiroki Totoki, we can calculate how much of this budget that Sony has left to spend on new company acquisitions, strategic investments, and share buybacks.

PlayStation delivers record-breaking earnings in Fiscal Year 2022, generating nearly $27 billion in total revenues for the period.

Sony has announced triumphant results for FY22 and has set new all-time highs for multiple segments. PlayStation generated eye-opening revenues of $26.9 billion throughout FY22, driven predominantly by PlayStation 5 console sales, which had shipped a strong 19 million units in FY22 and led to 38.4 million total cumulative PS5 sales by March 2023.

Sony made an astronomical $8.297 billion from hardware during the period and console sales revenues made up 31% of total earnings during the year, beating out every other segment including digital software sales as well as add-on content.

Google has been named as the second major company that opposes the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Sony isn't the only one to push back against the proposed $68.7 billion merger between Activision and Microsoft. Multiple companies have told the CMA that the merger could "seriously harm competition." Google, a company that currently doesn't make games but manages to generate billions of dollars in royalties from F2P mobile games on the Play Store, has been identified as one of the principal antagonists of the video games industry's largest-ever deal.

Google was directly mentioned in page 337 of the CMA's final decision report, which reads: "Further, Microsoft submitted that the 'two key complainants' against the deal (SIE and Google) have many reasons to preserve the status quo or undermine the Merger in order to extract higher profits to the detriment of game developers and gamers."

There are two options that do not make viable business sense in regards to Activision-Blizzard's operations: Making Call of Duty and a number of other games exclusive to Xbox platforms either on a post-merger or status quo basis, and pulling its games from the United Kingdom.

UK regulators at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently determined the Microsoft-Activision merger should be blocked and prohibited on the grounds of anti-competitive effects in the cloud and multi-game subscription business segments. Both Microsoft and Activision have vowed to fight the decision and appeal to the Competition Tribunal for a hopeful turnaround.

The decision has caused lots of friction between Activision and the UK. An Activision spokesperson went so far as to tell the BBC that the UK is "closed for business," and that the billion-dollar games publisher would "reassess our growth plans for the UK." There's been talks of Activision even pulling its operations out of the United Kingdom due to the decision, however this would be incredibly detrimental to its games business both on a current and post-merger basis.

It hasn't been a great year for AAA game launches on PC, with several high-profile releases plagued with performance issues, glitches, and a general feeling that they have been pushed out the door weeks or months before they were ready.

We're still getting substantial performance patches and fixes for Sony's The Last of Us Part I, a title we thought would be a slam-dunk easy-win for PlayStation games coming to PC. There are more examples, including Hogwarts Legacy and Forspoken, but last week's debut of the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor hit home the idea that gaming on PC in 2023 hasn't been pretty.

Most reviews covered the game's console versions, with the Metacritic score for the PlayStation version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor currently sitting at a respectable 86. However, even there, the significant issues revolve around inconsistent performance, with frame rates dipping regularly. On PC, though, it's a different story. The Metacritic score sits at a notably lower 78 (it's worth noting that these reviews also include "all platforms" coverage), with the Steam community reviews currently sitting at "Mixed" due to immersion-breaking performance issues.

There's a lot of interest in the upcoming ASUS ROG Ally PC gaming handheld for a good reason; it's set to offer a Windows 11-based alternative to Valve's Steam Deck and takes advantage of AMD's new Ryzen Z1 Series processors. These new CPUs have been designed for the growing PC gaming handheld market, as detailed by AMD in a formal announcement.

The specs for the ASUS ROG Ally point to a powerful gaming handheld that can deliver high frame-rate 1080p gaming performance. Many expect the launch price to be higher than Valve's based on the handheld's capabilities. The Steam Deck is a capable gaming handheld, but its appeal also comes with affordable price tags - USD 399 for the base mode, going up to USD 649 for the 512GB SSD variant.

Following on from word that top-spec ASUS ROG Ally could launch with a USD 699 price tag - with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processing, 16GB LPDDR5 memory, and 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD - comes word that a lower specced USD 599 ASUS ROG Ally is also on the way.

Gamers largely disapprove of the new $70 price tag for AAA games on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and now Nintendo platforms, however prices are unlikely to drop any time soon.

A bit ago, we published a report that found that consumers are buying less games but spending more on the titles that they do buy. This has led to a reduction in game units sold, but an increase in revenues generated from software. This also reflects the fundamental principle of supply vs demand economics: consumers buy fewer products when prices are increased.

Curious on how the price increase is affecting purchasing decisions, I decided to run a quick poll to see what consumers and gamers were willing to pay for AAA titles. Results of a Twitter survey with over 25,000 respondents from across the globe shows that the vast majority of respondents feel that $70 is too much for new video games, especially given the current economic climate that is forcing consumers to prioritize spending on necessities instead of entertainment.