Gaming - Page 409

Apex Legends Mobile testing is opening up to wider APAC and Latin America regions, but not in North America or Europe.

EA is ramping up for the planned 2022 release of Apex Legends Mobile. The F2P game isn't out yet and is still in testing phases, with a new playable build rolling out to 10 countries and regions: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Colombia.

Gamers will need an iOS device with at least 2GB of RAM or an Android device with 3GB of RAM. EA re-confirms Apex Legends Mobile will have its own progression system and unlockables that are separate from the console/PC battle royale. There's no cross-play--Apex Mobile is its own self-contained experience, similar to Call of Duty Mobile.

Reports indicate Activision will not release a new Call of Duty game for 2023. This could impact the games industry as a whole, and possibly lead to lower earnings from PlayStation, Xbox, and even Steam.

Call of Duty is one of the most important franchises in the games industry. Every year, a new Call of Duty is released that helps Sony, Microsoft, Valve, and of course Activision make millions of dollars in revenue. Annualized Call of Duty games have been a dependable, constant source of Q3 holiday revenues for decades now. There's a noticeable earnings spike that accompanies every year's Call of Duty release.

For example, 2020 was Call of Duty's best year with over $3 billion earned. The franchise was firing on all cylinders with a mainline game release and two F2P modes generating recurring revenues. Black Ops Cold War sold 5.7 million copies at launch and was the best-selling game of 2020, made over $670 million in six weeks, and was also the #2 best-selling game in 2021.

Call of Duty will skip 2023 and no mainline game will be released next, sources have told Bloomberg. However, Treyarch could release a new zombies mode in 2023 to fill in the hole.

Call of Duty is one of the most important franchises in the industry. Every year, a new Call of Duty game releases that makes Sony, Microsoft, Valve, and of course Activision-Blizzard, hundreds of millions of dollars. That won't happen in 2023. Activision is slowing down its annual breakneck pace, and for the first time in decades, we won't have a new Call of Duty game next year.

Instead of a new game, Activision will lean on Modern Warfare II, two versions of Warzone, and Call of Duty mobile throughout 2023. This year's plans include the release of Modern Warfare II and a next-gen version of Warzone that runs separate to and in parallel with 2020's Warzone. New reports from Ralph's Valve, a Twitter user who has leaked various CoD info, indicate a zombies mode could be set for 2023.

Activision looks to be delaying Call of Duty 2023 according to the latest rumors from industry insider Tom Henderson, who was pretty damn rock solid with his insider info on Battlefield 2042 and many other games in the last 18 months.

In a new tweet, Henderson tweeted: "Activision is set to delay next year's Call of Duty title. This will be the first title in nearly two decades where the franchise won't have a yearly CoD. It looks like a lot is riding on Modern Warfare II".

Now that Henderson opened up the "Call of Duty 2023 has been delayed" floodgates, everyone else is reporting in with their own industry sources saying they've heard similar reports. If the news is true, it will have been the first time there hasn't been a new Call of Duty "mainline game" in nearly 20 years -- 2004 was the last time.

With the help of LEGO, 2K Sports is about to get even bigger.

2K has signed a deal to license the LEGO brand for a new wave of casual, kid-friendly sports games. Sources tell Video Game Chronicle that Sumo Digital, the developers behind Crackdown 3, Team Sonic Racing, Little Big Planet 3, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure, are working on the first game in the series. It's believed to be a soccer game slated for 2023.

Another racing-based LEGO game is coming from Visual Concepts, who are responsible for the NBA 2K and WWE2K games.

Sony is securing day one releases on PlayStation Now, which may signal big things to come.

Sony has taken a move out of the Xbox Game Pass playbook in a bid to boost PS Now. The games titan is now brokering deals to release third-party games day one on PlayStation Now. Sony could be trying to add more value to PS Now in preparation for PlayStation Spartacus, the new ambitious games subscription service that combines PS Now and PS Plus together.

The first game to release day one on PS Now is Shadow Warrior 3. This is an interesting choice because Flying Wild Hog is owned by The Embracer Group, one of the biggest companies on the market, and nestled under Koch Media. This deal may extend to other Embracer or Koch Media games including Saints Row V and maybe even Dead Island 2.

Bethesda is shutting down its proprietary PC launcher and will move all games and content over to Steam.

The Bethesda.net PC launcher is being retired in May 2022. Starting in April, gamers will migrate their games ownership over to Steam. Most modern games will have automatic save transfers but some, like Elden Scrolls III Morrowind, will require manual save transfers. Oddly enough, Wolfenstein Youngblood's progress is "currently unable to transfer." All Bethesda.net wallet currencies--Fallout 76 Atoms, ESO drakes, and any money associated with your account--will transfer over too.

Bethesda makes it clear only the launcher is shutting down in May, and gamers will still have ownership access to all of their full games after that period. They just won't be able to launch them from Bethesda.net software. The actual Bethesda.net account services aren't being closed, and you'll still need to make and sign into a Beth.net account to play specific games.

Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has ordered more HD2D remakes of SNES games. Could a Chrono Trigger remaster be on the way?

Square Enix loves to re-release classic games on practically every platform known to man, and the new HD2D art style offers a unique opportunity resurrect retro games with new, enhanced graphics. The HD2D wave started with Octopath Traveler, then, Square Enix upgraded its original Final Fantasy games. Now the engine could overhaul other old-school SNES games including the beloved RPG Chrono Trigger.

"The president ordered us to make more use of HD-2D, so we decided to think about remakes of past titles," producer Tomoya Asano said in a recent Square Enix stream (in Japanese).

Guardians of the Galaxy is the second big Marvel game that missed Square Enix's expectations.

Square Enix may have overestimated the Marvel brand. First the publisher said that its ambitious Avengers live game delivered disappointing results, and now its the singleplayer-only Guardians of the Galaxy game missed its original targets. Deep discounts throughout the holiday period where the game sold for about $25 helped stabilize sales revenues, Square Enix says.

"Despite strong reviews, the game's sales on launch undershot our initial expectations. However, sales initiatives that we kicked off in November 2021 and continued into the new year have resulted in sales growth, and we intend to work to continue to expand sales to make up for the title's slow start,"Square Enix chief accounting officer Atsushi Matsuda said.

Square Enix plans to support Final Fantasy XIV for 10 more years and confirms a bunch of new content, features, and upgrades coming to the best-selling MMORPG.

Final Fantasy XIV is a big part of Square Enix's games division earnings; MMORPGs accounted for $419 million, or 23% of total 9-month games revenues. It definitely makes sense that the publisher keeps Final Fantasy XIV going for as long as possible, and that's exactly what they plan to do.

In a four-hour content stream, game producer Yoshi-P recently confirmed the 10-year support plan while outlining key features that are both coming soon and in deep development. One of the biggest new updates is a graphical overhaul that will add a new level of fidelity to in-game areas, NPCs, and player characters.

Sony has "vastly overpaid" with its $3 billion buyout of Bungie, analyst Michael Pachter says.

Sony's decision to buy Bungie was a knee-jerk reaction to its competitors making power plays. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard and Take-Two's $12.7 billion merger with Zynga prompted Sony to make a "me too" purchase of Bungie--and that the buyout was significantly overpriced.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Pachter outlines his value-oriented rationale. It all comes down to share price and revenues generated by each company. Pachter estimates that Bungie makes $200 million in revenue a year, and Sony essentially paid $4 million per developer (Bungie has over 900 developers).

With a new Fallout game more than 5 years away, Fallout 76 isn't going anywhere. Bethesda has revealed the new content coming to Fallout 76 to carry the game through 2022.

Fallout 76's 2022 roadmap will introduce one of the most ambitious new content drops to date. Later in the year during the Fall season, Bethesda plans to roll out Fallout 76's first-ever expedition to The Pitt, a region previously explored in Fallout 3's original DLC. Expeditions, which are basically bite-sized instances outside of the main Appalachia zone, were originally announced in April 2021 and have been a long time coming to Fallout 76 and original D.C. assets have been in the source files for quite some time.

The main 2022 roadmap cadence looks like this: Every quarter (3 months) gamers will get a new season alongside special themed content, which can include public events, rewards, missions, etc.

Darkstalkers is making a comeback with the new Capcom Fighting Collection arcade re-release.

Capcom is packing in some of their most obscure fighting games into one package. The Capcom Fighting Collection features five Darkstalkers games alongside the first console and PC release of Red Earth. Content-wise, this looks to be a must-have for fighting game enthusiasts. The game "leverages the rich library of content that the company has built up in the fighting game genre over its history," the developer said.

Capcom is going all-out with the Fighting Collection with great bonus features like save states, training modes, and supports rollback netcode for online multiplayer with ranked, casual, and lobby-based matches. All of the games included in the collection have these features and support online play.

Capcom has built Street Fighter 6 specifically for competitive esports gaming.

Street Fighter 6 was announced at the Capcom Cup 2021 with tons of fanfare. The new fighter is built on the higher-end RE Engine, and the in-engine teaser clip shows some serious next-gen effects including higher-end reflections (Ryu's feet are particularly shiny this time around), ultra high-def textures, and superb lighting on two character models, Ryu and Luke.

Capcom has confirmed Street Fighter 6 was made to tap Japan's growing esports market, which remains one of Capcom's core focuses.

The Big Four of crypto gaming pull in less than 500,000 monthly active users, data from New World Notes suggests.

The crypto gaming market may be potentially lucrative, but it seems to be far from the bustling, multi-million user ecosystem that's hinted at in reports. In all actuality the digital NFT-based games landscape is still mostly speculative, with the Big Four--The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium Space--attracting less than 500,000 monthly active users. Strong MAUs and concurrent users are the biggest indicator of a online live game's success. In this case (and all other cases), higher numbers mean more people are active in the space.

According to figures collected by New World Notes' Wagner James Au, the Big Four aren't as popular as you'd expect.

Warzone's anti-cheat team has implemented a hilarious just desserts punishment for cheaters.

Cheating is a big problem in online games like Warzone (and even Halo). Activision's newly established anti-cheat team, Team Ricochet, wants to make an example of cheaters by demoralizing ne'er-do-wells by essentially turning cheats on for their opponents.

The punishment enables a "Damage Shield" which effectively a player invulnerable to a cheater's attacks (IDDQD anyone?). If the anti-cheat system detects a cheater, it will automatically turn on the shield for other players for the remainder of the match. The cheater can't kill anyone else--they can only be killed in a hunter-and-prey role reversal.

The Embracer Group has made a whopping 71 acquisitions, mergers, and buyouts from 2016 - 2021...and it has plans for more M&A in the future.

Embracer Group isn't just a name, but an ethos that's represented in the company's massive array of buyouts. It seems like every few months Embracer buys someone new, and major recent acquisitions include Dark Horse Comics, Asmodee, Gearbox Software, 4A Games--the list goes on and on.

In a recent earnings report, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors says these acquisitions will continue. The company has made 71 acquisitions since 2016 and plans to secure up to 8 billion SEK (roughly $851 million) for more M&A. However, Wingefors says the buyouts will be more selective as the availability of content, gaming's most valuable commodity, starts to shrink due to competing buyouts.

The top 10 Switch games sales list grows exponentially during Nintendo's historical Q3 period.

Nintendo's Q3'22 period (holiday 2021) delivered record software sales, and a good portion of these games were first-party titles. Nintendo sold 85.41 million Switch games during the quarter, a new all-time high, and made $2.72 billion from software in the period. The top 10 most popular Switch games sold 29.77 million units during the quarter, making up 35% of total quarterly software sales.

The largest contributor to this huge first-party sales spike was Pokemon Shining Pearl and Brilliant Diamond. The duo sold 13.97 million copies during a single month across the Q3'22 period (the Pokemon games launched in late November, a month before the December 31 cutoff date).

Nintendo's Q3 FY22 performance nearly matches last year's record-setting holiday period.

Nintendo recently announced its Q3 earnings for the Holiday 2021 timeframe, and the results are stellar. Nintendo set new milestones for profit and software sales, and overall net sales nearly matched 2020 pandemic highs. In this article we'll be using USD conversions based on Nintendo's historical forex rates provided in its documents and investor briefs. All values given are rounded.

First let's take a look at net sales, which were roughly $6.047 billion (695.946 billion yen). Overall net sales delivered strong results and represent the second highest point in Nintendo history, driven by the full conjunction of Nintendo's entire operating business: games hardware, software, digital services and subscriptions, mobile games, and playing cards/accessories.

Gearbox's mighty Borderlands franchise has sold 74 million units to date, making it one of the best-selling shooters on the market.

Embracer's latest financials give updates on key game sales, including Borderlands, which is now one of the 271 IPs the company owns.

Borderlands 3 has sold-in an impressive 15 million copies in two years, taking advantage of various sales, discounts, and re-releases to incentivize purchases. The franchise now sits at 74 million sales total, making it Take-Two Interactive's third best-selling franchise--and by extension one of Embracer's top-sellers.