Gaming - Page 325

The video games industry boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic as more consumers bought games and interactive entertainment during lockdown periods, but those record highs have cooled due to inflation.

Driven by pandemic spending sprees, the global video games market hit new all-time highs in 2021...but it didn't stay there. Data created by IDG and presented by Take-Two Interactive indicates that the global interactive software market delivered $216 billion in 2021 (excluding hardware), and then dipped to $204 billion in 2022, representing about a -5.5% year-over-year decrease.

Throughout 2022 and 2023, we've seen entertainment companies tighten their belts against the economic shifts that have occurred due to rising inflation costs. Consumers in particular are choosing to spend more money on necessities than on things like entertainment, which has led to a reduction in overall game sales on Sony's PlayStation platform, and the trends have prompted multiple CEOs to comment that consumers are choosing to buy blockbuster titles instead of riskier unknown games.

Ubisoft's untitled Star Wars game will release in the next 12 months, sources have told Kotaku's Ethan Gach.

In 2021, Ubisoft announced that its Massive Entertainment studio was developing a new Star Wars game. The Division 2 developer promised the Star Wars project would be an open-world title with story-driven beats that was developed in the studio's proprietary Snowdrop Engine.

It's been quite some time since Ubisoft has updated fans on the Star Wars game, but new reports indicate the project could be a part of Ubisoft's Fiscal Year 2024 slate. That means the Star Wars game could release from now until March 2024. In its recent report, Ubisoft did say that "another large game" would be a part of its FY24 timeline.

Alan Wake 2 has been in development for the better part of a decade, and now with the help with Epic Games, the sequel is coming out in 2023. Thanks to an accidental spoiler, we also know when the survival horror game will come out.

In a recent interview with podcast Monsters, Madness, and Magic, Alan Wake actor Matthew Porretta has inadvertently announced the release window for Remedy's new sequel. According to Porretta, Alan Wake 2 is due out sometime in October 2023, putting it firmly within spooky season.

"I've been working on [Alan Wake 2]...that's supposed to come out in October. We're in the middle of working on it now. In fact, I was just in Finland the last week--that's where the company is from, Remedy. They are amazing people," Porretta said in the interview.

Sony Corp. has made plans to explore a spin off its Financial Services segment to raise more capital for strategic investments in entertainment and image sensors.

In its 2023 Corporate Strategy Meeting report, Sony outlined tentative plans to spin off its financial unit through an initial public offering (IPO). The goal with this IPO is to raise more working capital that can be used to invest in Sony's largest businesses, including entertainment (which generated over 50% of total Sony Corp. FY22 earnings) and its lucrative I&SS image sensors group.

"In order to expand our growth over the medium to longer term, we will need the ability to invest in image sensors and the entertainment business at a completely new level," Sony Corp. President Hiroki Totoki said in a recent press meeting in Japan, the Financial Times reports.

Rockstar Games is 'seeking perfection' while developing Grand Theft Auto 6, parent company CEO Strauss Zelnick says.

Rockstar is known far and wide for creating some of the most incredibly detailed worlds in gaming. From Grand Theft Auto V's in 2013 to Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, Rockstar has re-defined what's possible for open-world third-person action-adventure games. Now the devs are aiming to set a new bar with Grand Theft Auto 6.

In a recent interview with The Aarthi and Sriram Show, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick delivered brief comments about Rockstar Games' process while developing new Grand Theft Auto games, including GTA VI.

Square Enix approached multiple companies regarding Final Fantasy XVI development and licensing deals, and ultimately chose to make the game exclusive to PS5 because Sony made the best offer.

PlayStation is known for pretty much dominating Xbox in terms of JRPGs, and there's multiple reasons for this. For one, Sony is a domestic Japanese games/technology company, two, PlayStation has a much larger installed based worldwide and in Japan than Xbox, and three, Sony is apparently willing to invest in game projects via licensing and royalty fees as well as giving third-party developers closer access to console technology.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Final Fantasy XVI game producer Yoshi-P discussed the process that Square Enix's Creative Business Unit III goes through in order to make these deals.

Having trouble exploring Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? Build this quick and easy flying machine to dramatically change your gameplay experience.

Tears of the Kingdom offers tons of potential for creative and unique construction, whether it be elaborate flying machines, crazy AT-ST-style Chicken Walkers, cruel torture devices to punish Koroks, or orbital death laser arrays.

The best vehicle in the game dispels with all of these complications and keeps things incredibly simple. Anyone can make the best vehicle, and in this article we'll show you how.

Microsoft is starting to deliver on its 10-year licensing deals that it made with cloud gaming competitors, with Xbox PC games arriving on Boosteroid soon.

A bit ago, Microsoft announced it was starting to bring its Xbox PC games over to NVIDIA's GeForce Now service. Today, the company is starting to do the same by offering similar titles on Boosteroid, a competing cloud game streaming platform headquartered in Ukraine. Both subscriptions are getting access to a handful of games starting with Gears 5, one of the most technologically-advanced Xbox titles that leverage the full power of the Xbox Series X system.

Boosteroid subscribers will get access to four Xbox PC titles including Gears 5, Deathloop, Grounded, and Pentiment starting June 1, offering a mix of premium experiences with stylish indies and an online-driven multiplayer title.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan talks about Sony's plans to release more first-party games onto PC.

PC gaming has become increasingly more important for Sony's PlayStation brand, with the company generating $2.5 billion in its Other segment revenues thanks in part to PC game sales on Steam and the Epic Games Store. In a recent interview with Japanese games magazine Famitsu, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan reiterates the company's plans to continue releasing its PlayStation 5 games onto PC in a staggered cadence.

In the interview, Ryan says that "more is better" when it comes to PC gaming's affect on the overall market, especially in Japan.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson discusses how the current inflation market is affecting consumer purchasing habits on video games.

EA's been in the games business for 41 years, so the company has seen various contractions and inflations of the global economy. With basic cost of living on the rise, now is one of those moments in time when consumers are becoming more selective on the entertainment purchases they make. These trends have led to a shift towards major blockbuster AAA game brands, which are reinforced by the higher $70 price tag for new titles.

In a recent Fiscal Year 2023 earnings call with investors, EA CEO Andrew Wilson lends more insight on how the current economic landscape is affecting overall game purchases. Wilson essentially says gamers are more likely to spend on titles in big franchises rather than take risks on smaller, more unknown games.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick comments on the new $70 price point for current-gen games in today's inflation-driven macroeconomic environment.

Our findings indicate that the new $70 price of games has led to a reduction in unit sales. The current inflation market has forced consumers to more carefully weigh spending on nice-to-have entertainment products like video games as they struggle to make ends meet. As a result, gaming's top platform-holder (Sony) has sold less titles but generated record revenues on the games sold, indicating that consumers are responding to the new $70 price for games by buying fewer titles but spending more on the games they buy.

We've seen publishers like SEGA, Capcom, and Nintendo talk about the new $70 price point during this tough market, with Capcom indicating it may not raise prices, SEGA saying that it's not yet sure on the price hike, and Nintendo confirming that $70 wouldn't be the base price for its new games. But what about other games companies like Take-Two Interactive, who publishes breakout hits like Grand Theft Auto?

Overwatch game director Aaron Keller gives more insight into the decision to cancel parts of Overwatch 2's PVE mode, and how the original team's ambition blinded their present day responsibilities.

Blizzard recently decided to cancel Overwatch 2's anticipated Hero Mode, which would have been a significant part of the game's promised PVE content. The move was extremely controversial and has caused mountains of bad press and heated responses from fans.

Now in a recent blog post, Blizzard's Aaron Keller talks more about what happened with Overwatch 2's phase shift. According to Keller, the Overwatch team had always considered itself an MMO team from the onset. This makes sense considering the original hero shooter released in 2016 was a kind of phoenix resurrection of a cancelled MMO-FPS hybrid called Project Titan.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold-in more than 53 million copies, and Take-Two Interactive management says they are pleased with the game's continued strong sales performance.

Rockstar's tragic outlaw sim Red Dead Redemption 2 has broken new sales milestones with 53 million shipments worldwide. The company's latest FY23 report confirms RDR2 managed to sell 3 million copies in the fourth quarter period from Jan - March 2023. This pushed total Red Dead franchise sales past 75 million, and Arthur Morgan's gunslinger adventure makes up 70% of total series sales.

In a Q4 earnings call, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said that Red Dead Redemption 2 helped the company deliver earnings beyond its projections, with Red Dead Online also seeing a nice increase in new players.

New updated figures from Take-Two Interactive indicate that GTA trilogy remaster sales are slowing down.

Take-Two Interactive just published its Fiscal Year 2023 earnings report that outlines total sales of major franchises like Grand Theft Auto. The numbers show that the GTA series has now sold-in 400 million copies worldwide, up 5 million units from last quarter. GTA V is also up about 5 million shipments from Q3 as well, and this indicates that the controversial GTA remaster trilogy may have sold less than 1 million copies.

That's not to say the trilogy has delivered lackluster sales by any means. According to our figures, the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition collection has sold-in at least 19 million copies since launching in November 2021, and could have sold as many as 21 million units across digital and physical channels.

10 years after release and multiple re-releases, Grand Theft Auto V is still selling strong.

In its Fiscal Year 2023 report, Take-Two Interactive recently updated total Grand Theft Auto franchise worldwide shipments. As of March 2023, the GTA series has shipped 400 million copies, and Grand Theft Auto V has sold-in 45% of total shipments. This puts GTA V sell-in figures at 180 million.

It certainly helps that Grand Theft Auto V is the longest-running single game in the franchise, with releases across multiple console generations (Xbox 360/PS3, Xbox One/PS4, Xbox Series X/S and PS5) alongside PC releases on multiple storefronts like Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Rockstar launcher.

Mortal Kombat 1 could be the biggest MK game yet.

Just a bit ago, NetherRealm and WB Games announced Mortal Kombat 1, a new soft reboot that basically resets everything we know about the franchise. MK1 promises to deliver "reimagined versions of iconic characters as they've never been seen before," as well as "unexpected twists on classic rivalries and original backstories."

Now in a recent Mortal Kombat 1 live stream, NetherRealm's Ed Boon revealed some interesting new details about the game. Boon didn't showcase any of MK1's modes, like the Kameo mode, but he did say that the team spent more time on Mortal Kombat 1 than any other game in the franchise.

The People's Republic of China is the latest regulator to have approved the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Chinese regulators at the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) have cleared and approved the $68.7 billion combination of Microsoft and Activision. The report comes from private analysis firm Dealreporter (via Seeking Alpha), a group who had previously indicated the merger had received support from Tencent, the largest video games company in the world.

Microsoft has confirmed the news with a statement:

Agency CEO Sarah Cardell says that the Competition and Markets Authority's independent panel group analyzed multiple versions of Microsoft's proposed Cloud Remedy, but none of them convinced the group that a significant lessening of competition would not occur.

At a recent hearing with the UK's Business and Trade Committee, the CEO of the Competition and Markets Authority Sarah Cardell outlined more specific details as to why regulators decided to block the Microsoft-Activision merger.

According to Cardell, Microsoft created multiple remedy proposals in the effort of addressing key concerns in the cloud gaming market. These remedies include 10-year licensing deals to offer both Xbox and Activision games to competing cloud streaming service providers like NVIDIA's GeForce Now. While Microsoft's remedy was enough to win over the European Commission, who approved the Microsoft-Activision merger, the concessions did not persuade the CMA.

Competition and Markets Authority CEO Sarah Cardell refutes claims that the UK agency is somehow colluding with overseas regulators like the FTC in the United States as it relates to the Microsoft-Activision merger.

UK merger control agency CMA chose to block the $68.7 billion merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King on the grounds of anti-competitive effects arising in the cloud gaming segment. The FTC has also chosen to sue to attempt to block the merger from happening on similar grounds, adding in potential harmful effects on the multi-game subscription and console market. While the European Commission also identified these concerns, the EC cleared and approved the merger because Microsoft's expansive cloud remedies satisfied anti-competitive worries.

Following both the FTC's and the CMA's decisions to block the merger on similar grounds, there have been reports that both agencies had affected and influenced their individual decisions. The FTC has refuted these claims on multiple occasions, with FTC Chair Lina Khan refuting claims that the FTC "outsourced policy" to overseas regulators, and FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar denying claims from Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick that the FTC and CMA had met specifically so that the FTC could convince the CMA to block the deal.

In a press release for Mortal Kombat 1's official announcement, NetherReal and WB Games confirm that the legendary ultra-violent fighting franchise has surpassed 80 million sales worldwide.

Today NetherRealm revealed Mortal Kombat 1, a soft reboot that promises a new beginning for the decades' long series. Nestled in the press materials was confirmation of total sales for the beloved brutal brawler: "Mortal Kombat videogame franchise that has sold more than 80 million units since its debut over 30 years ago."

So how does Mortal Kombat stack up against the top fighting game competitors? The enthusiast fighting scene is typically dominated by three big names: Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and Street Fighter, but Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series is actually the second best-selling fighting franchise of all time. While we don't have perfect figures or updated sales data for each franchise, including older ones like Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, it does look like Mortal Kombat is on the top spot.