Gaming - Page 395

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.

As we predicted, the Switch family has beaten the Wii's lifetime shipments. It is now the third best-selling Nintendo hardware of all time, and it could beat the Game Boy this year.

Nintendo announced the Switch has amassed 103.54 million shipments since launch. This milestone is a monumental achievement that shows just how powerful and long-winded the Switch generation currently is--and has the potential to be.

Interesting figures from Nintendo's Q3'22:

The Switch is now Nintendo's third best-selling video games system of all time.

The Nintendo Switch family of consoles has now shipped 103.54 million units to date, solidifying it as one of the most successful systems on the market (compare that to the PS4 and PS5's combined 134.4 million).

On a quarter-by-quarter basis, Nintendo shipped 10.67 million consoles in Q3'22 (coincides with holiday 2021 period), down 7.8% from last year's record highs. The Switch has sold-in (shipped) a total of 18.92 million units in FY22, which ends March 2022. This fiscal year is the second best year for Switch shipments but is not expected to beat FY21's monumental performance of 28.84 million consoles shipped.

Sony's PlayStation 5 console has now shipped 17.3 million units worldwide, a sum that would likely be much higher if supply shortages hadn't eaten into production. So how does that fit in with other PlayStation hardware?

All things considered, Sony's PS5 is off to a good start. The PS5 still hasn't matched the PS4's launch performance (PS4 hit 20.2 million shipments in first 13 months), but the PS5 has at least beaten the PS Vita's shipments. It has a long way to go before it cracks into the other ranks though.

The PlayStation pecking order is dominated by the PlayStation 2, which has sold over 155 million units in its lifetime. The PS4 is second in line with its newly established 117.1 million shipments (raised only slightly by diminishing units).

Sony currently has about $10 billion left to spend on future acquisitions, buyouts, and share buybacks.

Back in May 2021, Sony outlined its spending budget for its fourth mid-year plan which stretches from FY21 - FY23 (March 2024). The company's board of directors authorized a 2 trillion yen budget (roughly $17.4 billion) for strategic investments, acquisitions and buyouts, and share repurchases.

Sony has now revealed it has spent 850 billion yen (roughly $7.4 billion) of its allocated budget, leaving about $10 billion left for further purchases. Sony's current bill includes the substantial $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie, as well as billions in share buybacks.

Sony's current- and next-gen console duo have sold nearly 2 billion games combined, new figures reveal.

Although console shipments (and sales) are dropping, software is rising exponentially with over $3 billion earned from digital games and add-ons in Q3. Sony also provided updated figures on PS4 and PS5 combined software sales...and the numbers are quite surprising.

According to our findings, the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles have sold 1.817 billion games as of December 31, 2021. This data is based on the 1.181 billion software sales figure Sony provided in Q3'19 added to the sum of FY20's full-year software sales and FY21 Q1-3 data.

Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie includes a hefty incentive program for the Destiny-maker's workers.

In its recent Q3'21 earnings report, Sony confirmed it plans to spend a sizable portion of its Bungie buyout offer on retention. Sony says it is prepared to pay 1/3rd of its $3.6 billion buyout proposal, or roughly $1.2 billion, on a long-term incentive plan that will reward Bungie employees who stay with the company.

Sony will pay the remainder $2.4 billion for a direct buyout of Bungie's private shares. The bonus is aimed at keeping Bungie's current staff intact after the acquisition.

Sony's latest Q3'21 earnings report delivers updated PS4 and PS5 shipment numbers...and they're not incredibly impressive.

The worldwide semiconductor shortage is taking a big bite out of consumer hardware sales. Sony's video games consoles are being hit particularly hard by the scarcity, leading to constrained supply of its PlayStation 4 and newer PlayStation 5 consoles.

Choked supply lines have dropped overall sales of the PS5, which has not met the PS4's shipments during the same period. The PS5 has now shipped 17.3 million units worldwide in its first 13 months, as compared to the PS4's 20.2 million units sold during the same period (a 2.5 million difference).

Delay season strikes again: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the new game from Batman Arkham series developer Rocksteady, has been pushed back to 2023.

Warner Bros. Games, a subsidiary of WarnerMedia, has delayed one of its most anticipated games to next year. Sources tell Bloomberg that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been moved from its expected 2022 launch to an undetermined release in 2023.

Just days ago WarnerMedia CEO Justin Kilar said the company would deliver "full slate of highly anticipated games" in 2022, and re-iterated original launch windows for Gotham Knights and the new Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy. We noted Suicide Squad's absence, and we also noted that any one of the 2022 games could be delayed.

Sony's once-mighty PlayStation 4 console has petered out considerably as the company delivers the lowest shipment figures for the second quarter running.

Sony just published megaton results for Q3'21, raking in $7.1 billion in revenues (second highest quarter in PlayStation history) and $817 million in operating profit (the best Q3 in history), all driven by strong software and hardware sales.

Sony also set a not-so-impressive record in the period by shipping less PlayStation 4 consoles than any other holiday period in the platform's history. The games-maker only shipped 200,000 PS4s during Holiday 2021. This is the second quarter in a row that Sony shipped this particular low PS4 volume.

EA recently spent more than $3 billion to acquire Glu Mobile and Codemasters, but it's not done with acquisitions just yet.

The interactive games industry is currently in a content feeding frenzy. Buyouts and acquisitions are running rampant, with acquisitions hitting $85 billion in January 2022 alone between Activision-Blizzard (acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion), Zynga (acquired by Take-Two for $12.7 billion), and Bungie (acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion). Gaming's biggest companies are getting snapped up left and right.

Electronic Arts is one such company that could either be a builder or consolidator. The publisher is currently open to new acquisitions and will be "looking at everything," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen says.

EA has confirmed its new Skate 4 game will support user-generated content.

EA says its new Skate project will "launch soon," and that UGC, or user-generated content, will be at the very center of the new game. It's likely the title will have a park editor similar to Skate 3 that allows gamers to create and share their own unique and custom skate parks online.

The full quote from Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson can be found below, transcribed from the Q3'22 earnings call:

EA confirms it will continue bringing its core games to EA Play, and the subscription service may one day serve non-gaming content too.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson teases that EA Play could get content that goes "beyond gaming."

Wilson doesn't elaborate, but it's possible EA could use its subscription service to deliver transmedia content such as TV shows and even smaller films based on wholly-owned franchises like Apex Legends or Battlefield.

EA plans to release as many as 4 new projects in FY23, which aligns with previous comments made by the publisher.

EA confirms it has 3-4 new unannounced projects that it will release in the Fiscal Year 2023 period (April 2022 - March 2023).

"There are 3-4 more games coming in FY23 that we haven't announced yet. We are trying to grow our portfolio year-over-year with new titles, new IP, new expansion,"