Gaming - Page 413

Rockstar's new re-release proves that nostalgia leads to heavy sales--especially in one of the most powerful franchises of all time.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy- The Definitive Edition has sold about 10 million copies to date. The data inadvertently comes from new Take-Two figures that say the GTA franchise has sold 370 million.

GTA V is currently at 160 million, and our previous figures show GTA had sold 360 million copies as of last quarter. So that leaves about 10 million for the remaster collection considering there aren't any other retail copies of GTA currently in mass circulation. That's a respectable 30% of GTA V's staggering 32.5 million copies sold at launch.

Grand Theft Auto V has now officially out-sold major franchises like Assassin's Creed.

Today Take-Two Interactive confirmed GTA V is still a sales monster. The mega-hit sensation has sold 160 million copies since releasing in 2013. That's more copies than the entire franchise sales of Resident Evil (123 million) and Assassin's Creed (155 million).

"Since its launch in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V has remained within the top five best-selling titles of each calendar year across the Americas including the U.S. and over 50 major worldwide territories," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said.

Sony's latest Q3 earnings show that digital absolutely dominates physical game sales.

Like Microsoft with Game Pass, PlayStation also thrives on its bustling digital ecosystem of products, services, and engagement. Sony's PlayStation division generated $4 billion from video games in Q3'21, but the overwhelming majority of this revenue was from digital channels.

In fact, 94% of all games revenue was from digital. Sony's Games & Network Services segment made $4.012 billion from games in Q3'21. The overwhelming majority of that, $3.755 billion, was from digital software and add-ons. Physical made just $257 million in sales revenues.

PlayStation Plus subscribers hit a record 48 million in holiday 2021, but most PlayStation gamers aren't subscribed to the service.

Sony's latest financials show the substantial growth of PS Plus and may give a taste on what's to come with PlayStation Spartacus. The service achieved 48 million paying subscribers as of Q3'21, a new all-time high for PS Plus, but most users are still non-subscribers and still enjoy access in games like Fortnite, Warzone, and Rocket League.

Using numbers provided by Sony, we've charted some of the major trends with PlayStation Plus over the last few years. We've been able to calculate the number of subscribers vs non-subscribers by subtracting PS Plus numbers from total MAUs. Then we compared PS Plus subscriber percentages to total MAUs to get a better idea of the overall percentage and quantity of subscribers versus users.

Sony's PlayStation platform makes more money from microtransactions than it does from full games.

Like most modern day games companies, Sony generates far more revenues from live services, microtransactions, and DLC than it does from actual video game sales. Based on data provided by Sony and charted by us, the company has consistently delivered more revenue from add-on content than it does from physical and digital game sales combined.

In the holiday 2021 period, Sony generated $2.18 billion from add-on content, which is typically from heavy-hitting third-party games like GTA Online (which helped GTA V make over $6.4 billion to date), Fortnite (which has made Sony $6 billion as of 2020), Apex Legends (will make $2 billion in two years), and Call of Duty Warzone (helped push 2020's COD revenues to a record $3 billion).

Candy Crush developer King has consistently made more revenues than Blizzard over the last 3 years.

Activision's latest financials give key insight on its three business segments: Activision, Blizzard, and King. Over the years the revenue pecking order has roughly matched up with its ABK namesake. Activision typically makes the most revenues thanks to annualized Call of Duty games, deferrals, and strong monetization, followed by Blizzard with its live games, and King usually ends up third place with its mighty F2P empire.

However Blizzard's presence has slowly fallen year-over-year. Now Candy Crush-maker King is overtaking Blizzard in terms of revenues. In fact, King has made more yearly revenues than Blizzard for the 3 consecutive years across 2019, 2020, and 2021.

From the NES to the Switch, Nintendo has sold over 5 billion games in the last 39 years.

Nintendo is one of the most powerful forces in the entertainment industry. Its booming games hardware business has delivered over $200 billion in revenues since the NES released in 1983. Other figure are just as surprising: Nintendo has shipped over 814 million devices in the last 39 years (it sold over sold 533 million handhelds alone).

Software is where the real numbers lie. Nintendo has sold an incredible 5.318 billion games to date across all of its reported hardware lines. That includes all systems from the original NES to the DS and the newer Switch.

Activision-Blizzard made more money from microtransactions in 2021 than it ever has before.

2021 was Activision-Blizzard's best year ever. The company delivered all-time highs in net revenues ($8.804 billion), operating income ($3.62 billion), and a whopping $2.7 billion in net income. Last year also delivered a bounty in microtransaction cash.

The company generated a staggering $5.1 billion from in-game purchases across its live service titles, which includes DLC, World of Warcraft subscriptions, and of course lootboxes and cosmetics. These purchases made up 61% of Activision-Blizzard's total $8.354 billion net bookings.

2021 was the best year ever for Activision-Blizzard with record-breaking net revenues, income, and in-game net bookings.

Activision-Blizzard's games business is remarkably resilient. Despite ongoing controversy from sexual harassment lawsuits, the major delay of big games like Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, not releasing very may games, and a drop in Call of Duty game sales, Activision just reported its best year ever.

2021 full of milestone, mostly thanks to online-driven live services, digital content, and a hefty $950 million deferral + distribution deal stream. Activision-Blizzard hit new high points in 2021 across pretty much every trackable earnings metric.

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.