Gaming - Page 370

GameStop's new NFT marketplace will go live by the end of July, the company today announced.

In a bid to embrace the digital age, ailing retailer GameStop has decided to open an NFT marketplace that will allow consumers to buy and sell digital assets. To facilitate its new platform, GameStop has developed the GME Wallet that promises to "securely store crypto and NFTs". Right now the app is only available as a browser Chrome extension, but an iPhone app is on the way.

"Use GameStop's Wallet to store, send and receive cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Connect to the upcoming NFT marketplace right from your web browser or mobile device," the wallet's description reads. The NFT marketplace will use Layer 2 for quicker transactions and other benefits.

Modern-day Marvel and Spider-Man games could've been very, very different.

Back in 2014, Marvel was at a crossroads. The company wanted to make more big-budget video games to complement its growing cinematic universe. They bought back Activision's rights to Spider-Man and wanted to license the IP out to other big players, namely Microsoft or Sony.

In fact, Marvel reached out directly to Microsoft and offered specific licensing rights to key franchises and IPs. The Xbox giant turned Marvel down and opted to focus on its own growing stable of first-party games, which then included projects like The Master Chief Collection, Forza games, Sunset Overdrive, Fable, Quantum Break, ReCore, and Gears titles.

TikTok is reportedly planning to add video games to its mega-popular social media app, sources tell Reuters.

App giant Bytedance is currently experimenting with adding video games onto TikTok. Testing is underway in Vietnam that allows users to play games within the app itself. Web-based browser games are currently offered on the app; these HTML games are widely popular in Asia regions, especially for publishers like Square Enix and SEGA.

Speculation is that this would significantly boost TikTok's advertisement revenues, which are on track to hit $11 billion, as well as royalties from any third-party games that may be offered on the app. TikTok is among the most-used apps on the planet and currently has over 1 billion monthly active users. The app's ad tech platform--a robust service that has generated billions every year--should attract major interest from game-makers.

Take-Two Interactive has now officially merged with Zynga to create one of the most formidable powerhouses in gaming.

Gaming's second-largest mega-merger is complete. Following a $12.7 billion share buyout, Take-Two and Zynga have combined into one significant gaming powerhouse.

With Zynga, Take-Two has acquired one of its missing pieces. Zynga's mobile expertise and ad tech platform will deliver incredible synergies to Take-Two's business, including more robust mobile titles and free-to-play integration into key IPs.

FromSoftware's Elden Ring captured the attention of almost every gamer for a short period of time, and one of those gamers seems to have been Elon Musk.

Widely renowned as one of, if not the best, FromSoftware title released to date, as well as one of the best open-world games ever released, Elden Ring swept the gaming industry, winning awards and earning extremely high praise by reviewers around the world. Steam ratings have put Elden Ring at "Very Positive", and review websites such as IGN and GameSpot giving it a solid 10/10.

Elden Ring undoubtedly has a long list of praises from many gamers around the world, but now FromSoftware and Bandi Namco can add SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to the list of individuals who enjoyed the title. Musk recently took to Twitter to write, "Elden Ring, experienced in its entirety, is the most beautiful art I have ever seen". Even the world's richest man has seemingly picked up a copy of Elden Ring and finished it. The real question is, how long will it be before Musk decides that Elden Ring should be payable inside a Tesla?

The new Alan Wake remastered re-release has yet to break even or make a profit, Remedy Entertainment has announced.

Epic Games has lost money from its investment into new Alan Wake remastered. According to Remedy's latest earnings report, Epic's undisclosed funding of the Alan Wake remaster has been a loss.

"We had no royalty revenue from Alan Wake Remastered during the first quarter as Epic Games Publishing has yet to recoup its development and marketing expenses for the game," Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said in an earnings blog post.

Shareholders at Take-Two Interactive and Zynga have approved all proposals and conditions of the $12.7 billion mega-merger, and the deal is expected to close tomorrow, May 23, 2022.

Tomorrow Take-Two Interactive will grow more than it ever has before. The company will merge with mobile F2P titan Zynga in gaming's second-largest acquisition in history. The $12.7 billion deal will further open up Take-Two's traditionally console-focused business into the billion-dollar powerhouse market of mobile gaming while creating cross run-rate synergies of hundreds of millions, saving both companies considerable spending each year.

Zynga is also expected to help bring more of Take-Two Interactive's franchises to other platforms, possibly including full mobile or free-to-play ports or standalone titles. Zynga's expertise with cross-play may also open up new doors for games like GTA Online, which could benefit tremendously from cross-platform play.

Fortnite users will soon be able to create the same caliber of content that Epic Games offers.

Epic plans to release the Fortnite Unreal Editor sometime in 2022. This new toolset will allow gamers to create and release the same kind of in-game content that Epic offers.

"Later this year, we're going to release the Unreal Editor for Fortnite--the full capabilities that you've seen opened up--so that anybody can build very high-quality game content and code and deploy it into Fortnite without having to do a deal with us. It's open to everybody," Tim Sweeney said in a recent interview with Fast Company.

Nintendo's billion-dollar growth will be hindered by the ongoing supply chain crisis as forecasts show a second straight year of earnings declines.

Nintendo expects earnings and sales drops in Fiscal Year 2023 due to semiconductor shortages and lower game sales, but Research & Development spending is at 102 billion yen (nearly $800 million), the highest R&D spending since 2002. This indicates that Nintendo is funding the development of the next-gen Switch model alongside new games.

It's also likely that Nintendo is elongating production of its new Switch model to weather the earnings drop impact and preparing for a big upward spring when the system launches. The 4K-ready Switch could be delayed past its expected FY24 release timeline and push the Switch into a sixth year.

Nintendo's Fiscal Year 2022 results are in, and despite a post-pandemic dip the numbers are quite good.

Nintendo's FY22 period delivered strong results while facing an ongoing hardware shortage. The video game giant didn't achieve Fiscal Year 2021's all-time record highs in FY22, but it did beat all other non-historic fiscal year periods since the NES days back in 1983.

According to data provided by Nintendo and compiled and converted by us, the company delivered the following revenue KPIs in Fiscal 22:

Over 11,000 physical video games have been released for Nintendo platforms across the last 39 years.

Nintendo has updated its historical game sales figures and the results are pretty interesting. According to the data, there have been 11,235 packaged video games released for Nintendo handhelds and consoles from the NES to the Switch. These numbers include games released across all worldwide regions, but do not include digital versions of games (the Switch eShop, for example, lists over 4,000 titles).

Below we have a breakdown of the titles released versus software sales. The DS reigns supreme in both metrics with over 2,100 games released and 948.76 million games sold. The Switch is in second place with 1,417 titles released in its five-year lifespan, but in third place in sales with 822.18 million software sales as of FY22.

Nintendo's video game sales hit an all-time yearly high as Switch console shipments drop.

Nintendo's Fiscal Year 2022 period delivered a surprise software surge that pushed yearly game sales to a new record high. According to data provided by Nintendo and compiled by us, the company sold 235.07 million games throughout the FY22 period, making it the top year for game purchases.

These results are on the heels of FY21's breakthrough performance of $16 billion in net sales, with a heavy emphasis on hardware and software sales. FY22 benefitted from more software, but flagged behind in hardware revenues.

The Switch will become Nintendo's #1 software sales platform by 2023, company data suggests.

According to data provided by Nintendo and compiled by us, the Switch family of consoles will soon become the company's top platform in game sales and beat out all other previous handhelds and consoles.

Data trends show that the Switch should beat game sales of the Wii (920.81 million) and the DS (948.76 million) by the end of Fiscal Year 2023 (March 31, 2023). The Switch has currently sold 822.18 million games across its five-year lifespan, and software sales trends show the platform has sold an average of 211 million games over the past three years,

From the early days of the NES to the modern Switch, Nintendo has sold billions of games across its mighty lineage of hardware.

Nintendo has sold nearly 5.4 billion video games across all of its handheld and console platforms, new data reveals. According to our calculations, the Nintendo Switch is currently the #3 platform in software sales with 822.18 million units sold to date. The Wii is in second place with a mighty 920.81 million, and the DS conquers with 948.76 million.

These numbers actually put Nintendo in second place. Although Nintendo has been on the market for many years before Sony, the PlayStation platform has sold an estimated 5.71 billion games. Sony has a 300 million+ lead over Nintendo.

Nintendo has sold over 822 million games since the Switch launched in 2017, and the majority of those were from the handheld-console hybrid.

In just 5 years' time, the Switch has revolutionized Nintendo's business. The company was teetering on the brink of ruin following the Wii U's massive flop, but the Switch sparked incredible year-over-year growth and eventually led to the highest operating profits and ordinary profits in Nintendo history.

A significant portion of this turnaround success is owed to the Nintendo Switch's vast library of games. First-party game sales and revenues reign over third-party--Nintendo is the only platform-holder to make more from first-party than third-party--and software has steadily grown year-over-year thanks to the Switch's strong lineup and growing eShop presence.

Nintendo's first-party giants continue to dominate the platforms best-seller charts.

Nintendo's recent full-year performance shows strong consistent earnings across both hardware and software sales. The company sold more games in FY22 than the record-breaking FY21 period, driven by continued momentum in key first-party hits.

Charting Nintendo's top 10 best-selling Switch games shows little deviation in games placement. The overall selection is the same as it was last quarter--Mario Kart 8 still leads the race and now has 45 million+ copies sold, followed up by surprise mega-hit Animal Crossing New Horizons, which is now at 38.6 million sales.

Surprise! Hideo Kojima is making a sequel to his successful, critically-acclaimed new IP Death Stranding.

Death Stranding 2 is apparently happening. Neither Kojima Productions nor Sony Interactive Entertainment have made a formal announcement, but actor Norman Reedus has once again spilled the beans.

In a recent interview with men's style site Leo Edit, Reedus said: "We just started the second one."

HITMAN 3 will receive new ray tracing abilities as well as AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS technologies in its upcoming v3.110 patch that drops on May 24.

The developer tweeted: "Ray Tracing and Adaptive Supersampling arrives for our PC players with patch 3.110 on May 24. Ray Tracing brings higher quality reflections and shadows to the World of Assassination through HITMAN 3".

We can expect ray traced reflections and shadows on the PC, as well as AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 1.0 and NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) that will improve performance when ray tracing is enabled. The developer recommends using FSR or DLSS when enabling RT, too.

Call of Duty: Warzone had a huge update with its recent Operation Monarch event reveal, where King Kong and Godzilla kind of duke it out in Warzone.

It has been a mostly forgettable event, there's something a bit more fun here -- players have discovered you can easily farm some rather baller additional XP by attacking the testicles of King Kong -- yes, that's right: blow up Kong's balls and get XP.

They're not exactly his balls per se, as you can't see his gigantic house-sized balls dangling around in the game as Kong isn't anatomically correct, but if you attack the region where his balls are, you're going to get some additional XP. Call of Duty: Warzone's Operation Monarch event went live on May 11, and wraps up on May 25.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has generated nearly $7.5 billion in revenues since GTA V's launch in 2013, Take-Two's latest financials have confirmed.

Despite having not released a new mainline game in 9 years, Rockstar's powerhouse GTA series recently hit 375 million copies sold to date. GTA V makes the bulk of single-game sales with 165 million sales, comprising 44% of the entire franchise's sales.

Based on Take-Two Interactive's historical earnings reports, the GTA franchise has made $7.487 billion since GTA V's launch in 2013. Total franchise revenues are even higher because this figure does not include the multitude of other mainline games including GTA 1-4, Vice City, and San Andreas.