Gaming - Page 393

Nintendo Switch is currently sold at a profit, but that margin is being lowered by the worldwide chip shortage.

Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa tells investors that ongoing semiconductor supply issues are slowly eating into Switch hardware profits. Supply and demand economics have raised prices of critical components, and the Switch in particular is becoming more expensive to manufacture, produce, and distribute.

In a recent Q3'22 Q&A session, Furukawa says profits made from Switch console unit production have been dipping gradually throughout the chip shortage. The CEO confirms Nintendo is prepared for the profit hit and will maintain its 23 million unit production forecast through FY22, but he also notes that next year's FY23 period could be impacted to an even greater degree.

Nintendo has no plans to support the metaverse, gaming's nascent and often-confusing new trend.

Despite properly being able to explain it, Ubisoft, EA, Bandai Namco and even Square Enix are gung-ho for the metaverse. Nintendo, who is typically shrewd, conservative, and studiously careful in its adoption of video game trends, isn't ready to help trailblaze the new NFT-laden digital frontier. Instead, Nintendo will bide its time as it has done so often in the past.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa was asked outright by an investor if Nintendo will support NFTs and the metaverse. There was no comment about NFTs (Nintendo stands to make a killing from its treasure trove of instantly-recognizable IPs at the cost of its wholesome brand image) but Furukawa did discuss the metaverse.

Nintendo is embracing more value-oriented subscription models in an effort to sell recurring services and cement players in digital ecosystems.

With its selection of retro classics and online play for $19.99/year, the base Nintendo Switch Online is already one of the most valuable subscriptions on the market. It's a cost-effective sub that allows Nintendo to lease its valuable legacy library to gamers who must perpetually buy-to-play over time. Now the games-maker is adding more value to its more expensive Switch Online expansion pass tier.

The $49.99 a year Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack tier was somewhat of a tough sell at launch. For a 150% price increase, the subscription included N64 games, Genesis games (yes, really), and the base Switch Online games and content. Nintendo is now adding value to the more expensive tier by leasing in-game content, too.

Take-Two expects this year to deliver its third consecutive year of earnings in excess of $3 billion.

FY23 will be another year of impressive for Take-Two Interactive. While exact forecasts haven't been outlined yet, the publisher is confident it will make $3 billion+ in net bookings driven by a number of new games including Grand Theft Auto V Expanded & Enhanced, NBA 2K23, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and Midnight Suns (although these games won't release in the FY23 timeline, which is from April 2022 - March 2023, a portion of these games' revenues will be deferred and carried over to the next fiscal year).

Thanks to these games and the ongoing earnings from services like GTA Online and Red Dead Online, Fiscal Year 2023 would mark Take-Two's third consecutive year of earning over $3 billion in net bookings, an operating metric that includes microtransactions, full game sales (digital and physical), and earnings from live service games sold during a specific period.

Take-Two Interactive made record earnings from microtransactions and DLC during Holiday 2021.

GTA parent company Take-Two Interactive recently reported a new five-year Q3 high for in-game spending. According to data provided by the publisher, Take-Two generated roughly $551 million in recurrent consumer spending, a metric that includes microtransactions as well as DLC and expansions.

These earnings represent a new five-year high for recurrent consumer spending in both net revenues ($551 million) and net bookings ($494 million). The numbers punctuate previous holiday records set in 2021 and show the long-lasting growth value in Take-Two's live service offerings.

Take-Two Interactive plans to release up to 62 games by March 2024, but some of these games could be delayed or even cancelled.

GTA publisher Take-Two has an absolutely massive release slate on the horizon. The company wants to release 62 games from now until FY2024, which ends on March 31, 2022. The slate, alongside the accretive Zynga purchase, is expected to supercharge annual earnings to the effect of $9 billion in combined revenues (14% CAGR). This fueled our prediction that GTA 6 could release by March 2024, and analysts seem to agree with our assessment.

Even still, Take-Two's slate isn't set in stone. In fact one of the games included in the release has already been cancelled--Volt, a game from Mafia dev Hangar 13, was cancelled with a $53 million write-off.

Horizon Forbidden West is now pre-loading PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4 right now, and now we know how much SSD storage space you'll need on the PS5 to install it.

According to PlayStation Game Size, the PS5 version of Horizon Forbidden West weighs in at close to 100GB for gamers in Europe, coming in at 97GB. US gamers will have a download size of 86.5GB, while gamers in Japan will be enjoying the smallest download for Horizon Forbidden West clocking in at 82.7GB.

Why is the EU version of Horizon Forbidden West so big? Language packs. There are many languages throughout the EU, hence the download size is between 15GB bigger (from the JP version) or 10.5GB bigger (than the US version) of the game.

Neither Take-Two Interactive nor Rockstar Games has announced how much the next-gen GTA V version will cost.

A while back we predicted GTA V would cost $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The guess was based on statements made by Take-Two Interactive's Strauss Zelnick on the new frontline pricing model, which sees publishers justifying the cost hike by delivering "extraordinary value" and experiences. GTA V E&E has new optimizations including a 4K mode, up to 60FPS, and raytracing--do those make a compelling value proposition?

In a recent Q3 earnings call, Take-Two Interactive had this to say about GTA V's pricing on Gen 9 systems: "So the next-gen version of GTA V are not, in fact, available for purchase yet, but they will be. And in terms of pricing, we haven't discussed any pricing models around those new releases," Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said.

Here are the top-selling first-party PlayStation games on PS4, PS5, and now PC.

Sony's first-party games are big blockbuster system-sellers with dramatic storylines, explosive action, and an emphasis on singleplayer. Games like The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War have all defined an entire generation of console gaming. But how much have each of them sold?

Based on data provided by Sony in public earnings documents and reports, and figures from analysts, we've compiled a list of all the current known first-party PlayStation game sales. Do note that some of these sales figures are very outdated and reflect numbers that have remained static in Sony's quarterly and annual filings.

Horizon Zero Dawn is now one of Sony's best-selling PlayStation games of all time.

Sony's move to PC is paying off. Horizon Zero Dawn, one of the initial first-party PlayStation exclusives to cross over to PC, has now sold in a combined 20 million units across PS4 and PC. The news indicates a substantial spike in overall purchases and that the PC market is avid to consume games previously only available on PlayStation.

Back in 2019, Sony had announced HZD was at 10 million units. That's more than double the number of sales in 3 years' time, which is no small feat for an older evergreen game. The steep discounts, sales, and new PC release all helped to supercharge those numbers.

The rumors and reports were true: Modern Warfare II is officially coming in 2022.

Today Activision officially confirmed this year's Call of Duty game is Modern Warfare II, and that a new Warzone iteration is coming alongside the mainline game.

Not a lot of exact details weren't given, but the new version of Warzone was built from the ground up alongside Modern Warfare II. The new Warzone was made on Infinity Ward's new next-gen engine (which utilizations cutting-edge technology and optimizations including high-end AI, graphics, and physics simulations).

Sony's PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in the United States in January 2022. The reason? The PS5 was more available than the Switch or Xbox Series X/S.

Today the NPD Group announced January 2022's games earnings to interesting results. Total video game spending was down 2% to $4,68 billion, but hardware spending was up a mighty 22% to $390 million. Last month actually had the highest hardware dollar spending since 2009.

The PS5 was the most popular system in January, out-selling competitors in both revenues and unit sales. The Xbox Series X was in second place, followed by the Nintendo Switch.

SEGA's latest Q3'22 financials show that its massive F2P games are mostly popular in Japan while other worldwide regions buy up full games.

SEGA makes quite a bit of revenue from F2P games like Phantasy Star Online 2 and its Hatsune Mike titles. Predictably enough, most of these earnings come from Japan as other regional worldwide markets like North America, Europe, and Asia predominately spend on full game sales.

According to data provided by SEGA, the company's F2P sector is incredibly healthy and typically comprises anywhere from 30% to sometimes 50% of its quarterly video games revenues. While its F2P offerings are immensely concentrated on the Japanese market, the company made $129 million from free-to-play in Q3, showing SEGA is mostly dominant in one specific region.

Introducing Nintendo Switch Sports, a new iteration of the Wii Sports series.

Yesterday Nintendo made a megaton announcement: Wii Sports is coming back with revamped controls for the Nintendo Switch. Wii Sports was the best-selling Nintendo game of all time with over 85 million units sold and that powerful engagement is coming to the new Switch generation (albeit many years late...this should've definitely been a launch pack-in game).

Nintendo Switch Sports comes with six games, all of which feature JoyCon motion control support in various ways. Gamers can strap the JoyCon to their leg to track kicking motions in Soccer, for example. There's four new games plus the classic bowling and tennis from the Wii era.

No Man's Sky is coming to Nintendo Switch...and Hello Games still doesn't believe it was possible.

Yesterday's Nintendo Direct was absolutely bursting with news, and one of the biggest games on the market is coming to the small Switch handheld. No Man's Sky, one of gaming's biggest comeback stories, is launching over to the Switch in Summer 2022. Releasing on the Switch will give Hello Games a nice sales boost--the platform has sold over 100 million units to date.

According to Hello Games, the Switch version has been in development for several years and it was a tough process. The studio said getting No Man's Sky to run on the lower-end Tegra X1 hardware was a "moonshot."

UPDATE: Infinity Ward teases a reveal tomorrow:

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II could be revealed tomorrow alongside the rumored Warzone 2, rumors indicate.

It looks like Activision is gearing up for a big Call of Duty reveal tomorrow. Multiple sources including Tom Henderson have said an embargo on Warzone 2 lifts tomorrow.

YouTube made more money from ads in 2021 than Sony did from PlayStation games.

Alphabet recently reported its Q4 earnings, and one of the most surprising figures was YouTube ad revenue. According to data provided by Google, the popular video platform has generated $28.84 billion in total ad revenue through 2021. That's more than the $24.51 billion that Sony made from PlayStation gaming in 2021.

YouTube ad revenue was up nearly 50% year-over-year, driven by record engagement and viewership.

YouTube may soon let creators create, mint, and drop officially-branded NFTs in a new possible monetization program.

YouTube has a grand vision for the web3 metaverse. It's a new realm that merge advertising, immersion, and blockchain in a cohesive ecosystem that's monetized across all segments. That also includes new ways for creator revenue streams--and subsequently, company revenue streams.

In a recent blog post, YouTube says it is exploring the idea of opening a new NFT marketplace where YouTubers can sell their own digital content including limited-edition videos, art, and more. The vision is in early phases and no store has been established yet.

YouTube could help shape the metaverse, interactive entertainment's latest buzzworthy trend.

YouTube today announced that it is committed to the metaverse. The world's leading video-on-demand platform wants to inject a new level of immersion into YouTube entertainment. Exact plans are unknown, but YouTube says it will start its metaverse plans with video games.

"We're thinking big about how to make viewing more immersive. The first area in which you can expect to see an impact is gaming, where we'll work to bring more interactions to games and make them feel more alive. It's still early days, but we're excited to see how we can turn these virtual worlds into a reality for viewers," YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan said in a blog post.

Singleplayer is still very important to Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive. So what does that mean for GTA 6?

The last we heard is that GTA 6 could launch with a more compact singleplayer story mode that expands over time with online updates. After years of billion-dollar earnings with GTA Online, Rockstar has started to lean into singleplayer content with GTA Online's new The Contract expansion which features story content with original GTA V characters and can be played solo. Is this the beginning of a new hybridized setup for Grand Theft Auto 6?

We don't know for sure, but Take-Two Interactive still believes in singleplayer. That's surprising considering Take-Two earned over $551 million from in-game spending in the holiday quarter--microtransactions have been very good to the publisher.