Gaming - Page 412

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.

The next Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope than Origins, Odyssey, and especially Valhalla.

Ubisoft is planning a new standalone Assassin's Creed game for 2022 or 2023 that will star Basim, sources tell Bloomberg. The game will be more compact with greater emphasis on stealth and a diminished focus on exploration.

The new game, codenamed Rift, was originally set to be an expansion to Assassin's Creed Valhalla and soon ballooned into a full game. Valhalla has already expanded with two years' worth of content to carry the franchise into 2022 with the new more recent Dawn of Ragnarok expansion.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has now made over $7 billion since GTA V's release in 2013.

According to data provided by Take-Two filings, the GTA series has generated a whopping $7.3 billion since Grand Theft Auto V's initial release ($7.299 billion, to be more exact). GTA V's megaton launch in 2013 actually accounts for nearly 20% of these revenues--the game made $1.49 billion in sales in one quarter.

The holiday 2021 period spiked franchise revenues to their highest quarterly peak since GTA V's release. During Q3'22, GTA pulled in $310 million driven by three major things: GTA Online, the new GTA trilogy remaster, and continued GTA V sales. The series has managed to set two earnings records in FY22.

Zynga has started incubating blockchain games, sources tell Axios.

With more than $23 billion NFT trades in 2021, mobile titan Zynga wants in on the craze. The game developer is currently ironing out early details of new blockchain-based games with play-to-earn features. Zynga hasn't outlined exact plans, but the general idea is that gamers will be able to play, earn, and own digital assets that can then be re-sold on a marketplace for cryptocurrency.

NFTs have proven to be a wildly speculative market for major game publishers. Square Enix and SEGA have expressed interest. Konami and Ubisoft have both launched their own NFT line but the assets made less than $200,000 overall, which is a drop in the bucket to both companies who make mega millions from microtransactions.

Call of Duty and other Activision franchises will not be Xbox exclusive, Microsoft today announced.

Microsoft just dropped a megaton bomb on exclusivity and re-affirmed our predictions: Call of Duty and other major Activision games will still release on PlayStation consoles after the Activision-Blizzard buyout closes.

"Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision. And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love."

A new update for Dying Light 2 has been released onto the PC version of the game, with patch 1.04 now live for PC gamers -- but Xbox Series X gamers are in for a treat when the new patch arrives on their consoles.

Dying Light 2 developer Techland has already pushed out multiple hotfixes for the game, but now there's a big patch on the way for all platforms. The PC version of the game gets multiple improvements, with "DLSS improvements" for GeForce gamers.

But the Xbox Series X version of Dying Light 2 will be getting some lovin' with a new 60+ FPS Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) mode, exclusive to XSX and not the Xbox Series S console. Not the PlayStation 5 at this point.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise just hit its second-highest quarterly revenues since GTA V's launch in 2013, once again proving the power of the series.

Grand Theft Auto is still as big as ever. In holiday 2021, the GTA series hit 370 million copies sold to date. Rockstar also generated more revenue from Grand Theft Auto products and services since GTA V's gargantuan launch in 2013 (which made $1.49 billion).

During Q3'22, the Grand Theft Auto franchise made $310.13 million in total revenues. This was driven by a number of things including sales of two mainline games, strong GTA Online microtransaction purchases, and big player counts in all three games.

Sony's latest financial reports reveal how many PlayStation and PC gamers are buying first-party games.

With high production values, dramatic storylines, and blockbuster action, Sony's first-party games have traditionally been marketed as system-sellers. The reality is that while first-party games do sell respectable volume every year, most PlayStation gamers are buying third-party titles on the platform.

Based from numbers provided by Sony, we've compiled a list of first-party game sales from FY2018 through the current Q3'2021 period. The results are surprising; First-party game sales have capped out at 27% of total software sales and dropped as low as 10% through lull periods.

Sony is going all-in on live games and plans to release 10 new live service games by 2026. Here's what it needs to do in order to maximize revenues.

Sony is no stranger to the live games business. Although PlayStation focuses mainly on singleplayer blockbuster games, Sony's games division makes most of its money through live games--and most of these games it doesn't even own. Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone, and Rocket League have generated billions for Sony over the years (Fortnite alone has made Sony $6 billion, as per court documents from the Epic vs Apple trial).

Now Sony wants to break into the live games business. Luckily it has had years to learn from the best in the business. If Sony wants to make serious live games cash it needs to follow a few simple rules.

Nintendo announces a new Nintendo Direct showcase for tomorrow, February 9, 2022 at 5PM EST.

A new Direct was surprise revealed today with the game-maker's usual cryptic messaging.

"Tune in for a Nintendo Direct livestream featuring roughly 40 minutes of information mainly focused on Nintendo Switch games launching in the first half of 2022," the announcement reads.

Intellivision has raised at least $43 million for the production of its new Amico console, our findings indicate.

Yesterday, Intellivision opened a new funding round on Start Engine, an investment startup site. Intellivision is currently selling up to $5 million in SAFEs (simple agreement for future equity) directly to consumers for $0.72 per share with a $500 minimum investment. Investors aren't actually buying a product--they're buying actual stake in the company itself. The company plans to sell 13,888 securities and has raised $30,512 at the time of writing.

The Start Engine campaign's Form C filing also confirms Intellivision's financials. The company currently has $8.52 million in net assets, $7.19 million in long-term debt, $1.5 million in short-term debt, and has reported a loss of $3.2 million.

The Red Dead Redemption franchise has now sold-in more than 65 million copies worldwide.

Take-Two recently gave updates on Red Dead Redemption's sales numbers that shows consistent quarter-over-quarter growth. Franchise sales have now surpassed 65 million, with RDR2 at 42 million units and the original RDR hitting about 23 million copies.

Although Red Dead Redemption 2 pales in comparison to GTA V, the dramatic western has sold roughly 1-2 million copies per quarter since release. Q3'21 saw the biggest jump in sales with 3 million and Take-Two attributes the spike to holiday sales and price markdowns.