Gaming News - Page 331

From the NES to the Switch, Nintendo has sold over 5 billion games in the last 39 years.

Nintendo is one of the most powerful forces in the entertainment industry. Its booming games hardware business has delivered over $200 billion in revenues since the NES released in 1983. Other figure are just as surprising: Nintendo has shipped over 814 million devices in the last 39 years (it sold over sold 533 million handhelds alone).

Software is where the real numbers lie. Nintendo has sold an incredible 5.318 billion games to date across all of its reported hardware lines. That includes all systems from the original NES to the DS and the newer Switch.

Activision-Blizzard made more money from microtransactions in 2021 than it ever has before.

2021 was Activision-Blizzard's best year ever. The company delivered all-time highs in net revenues ($8.804 billion), operating income ($3.62 billion), and a whopping $2.7 billion in net income. Last year also delivered a bounty in microtransaction cash.

The company generated a staggering $5.1 billion from in-game purchases across its live service titles, which includes DLC, World of Warcraft subscriptions, and of course lootboxes and cosmetics. These purchases made up 61% of Activision-Blizzard's total $8.354 billion net bookings.

2021 was the best year ever for Activision-Blizzard with record-breaking net revenues, income, and in-game net bookings.

Activision-Blizzard's games business is remarkably resilient. Despite ongoing controversy from sexual harassment lawsuits, the major delay of big games like Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, not releasing very may games, and a drop in Call of Duty game sales, Activision just reported its best year ever.

2021 full of milestone, mostly thanks to online-driven live services, digital content, and a hefty $950 million deferral + distribution deal stream. Activision-Blizzard hit new high points in 2021 across pretty much every trackable earnings metric.

Call of Duty Mobile has made a hefty $1.5 billion in total lifetime earnings since it released in October 2019.

Activision's meager Q4 earnings brief confirms two big things: Call of Duty's premium sales are down, but the franchise's F2P earnings have doubled on mobile. The games-maker says Call of Duty Mobile generated $1 billion in revenue through 2021, up more than 200% from the estimated $480 million earned from 2019-2020.

The F2P game is a safe harbor for the publisher (and soon Microsoft too). With its separate revenue stream and progression system, Call of Duty Mobile anchors the franchise and helps Activision weather any sales misses from its mainline games.

Call of Duty Vanguard sold fewer copies than Black Ops Cold War, but we don't know the exact scope of COD 2021's shortcomings.

Activision recently confirmed that Vanguard didn't meet or exceed Black Ops Cold War's sales...but that's what management expected.

Activision's latest Q4 report delivered paltry bits of information on specific topics like Call of Duty earnings and sales. The upcoming buyout from Microsoft has changed how Activision delivers information; it went from a flood to a drip-feed with very little metrics.

Grand Theft Auto V is releasing on consoles for the third time on March 15, complete with high-end optimizations and features.

Rockstar just delivered updates on GTA V E&E and confirmed a few new details for the next-gen version, including:

There's still no word on how much GTA V E&E will cost. We predicted the game could cost $69.99, which is the new MSRP of PS5 games. Take-Two Interactive was one of the first to adopt the new price with NBA 2K21 years ago.

The Steam Deck is a gargantuan among smaller pocket-friendly handhelds.

Valve's new Steam Deck is big. Just how big? It's a heckin' chonker, to borrow a phrase from the parlance of our times. New size comparison pictures from gaming YouTuber Cary Golomb shows the Steam Deck's overall thickness--it's even wider than Nintendo's monstrous Virtua Boy.

The Deck is bigger than any other handheld ever made...and rightly so, because it's basically a PC that you can hold in your hands. Valve's new hybrid system packs a seriously powerful custom AMD SoC with an RDNA 2.0 GPU and Zen 2 CPU that's powerful enough to play most games at decent performance targets, but the core SteamOS fabric ensures smooth compatibility too.

Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6 is in development and says progress has been made for quite some time.

Today Rockstar announced what we already knew for a long time: Grand Theft Auto VI is happening. The studio didn't actually reveal GTA 6, nor did it show a teaser trailer or any kind of artwork. Rockstar did give a brief morsel to feed ravenous GTA fans though.

The studio says GTA 6's development is "well underway," which reiterates previous reports that the game has been in production for years. Our own predictions (which were later backed up by analysts) say GTA 6 will release by 2024 and help Take-Two's earnings surge to a record $9 billion.

Naughty Dog could be working as many as three new games for Sony's PlayStation brand, and one of them is definitely a live service game.

Sony is evolving, and it's now embracing live service games in a way it traditionally hasn't before. The modern PlayStation brand is mostly known for must-have cinematic-style singleplayer games with high production values, but following its $3.6 billion acquisition proposal for Bungie, Sony wants to jump head-first into the live service market. After all, that's where the money is.

That could mean Sony's biggest brands are focusing more on live services. We know that Firesprite is working on a Twisted Metal game for Sony, which could be free-to-play with online elements. There's also Haven Studios who is making an online game, and Deviation Games is also working on a new IP that could have live services.

The Switch broke 100 million shipments in 2021 and helped push handheld sales past 553 million.

While compiling Nintendo's latest hardware numbers I noticed something interesting: The games-maker sells a lot more handhelds than consoles. Actually that's a no-brainer. The DS is the best-selling handheld of all time and remains Nintendo's top system. What is surprising, though, is how many handhelds total that Nintendo has sold.

Based on numbers provided by Nintendo, the company has sold 533.7 million handhelds. That includes the entire 33-year span of games systems from the original Game Boy to the current Switch. Total consoles are lower at 384.41 million, and runs even farther back to the NES days. That's a split of 65% handhelds and 35% consoles.