Gaming - Page 418

Based on historical quarterly data, Blizzard doesn't actually need to make new video games to make tons of money.

Blizzard puts live services above all other things. Before Diablo II Resurrected, the company hadn't released a mainline premium video game since 2016's Overwatch. That's four years since a new product that can be sold on a shelf in stores. Sure there's been three big World of Warcraft expansions (Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands) that have sparked revenues, which are important. But these aren't technically new games--just updates to existing ones.

The reality is Blizzard can coast quite a while on digital monetization and live services. Despite not releasing a new mainline video game product--a new game that can be sold on shelves--in the last six calendar years from 2015 - 2020, the company's revenue never fell below $298 million. (Note: Although Vicarious Visions is now part of Blizzard, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 was recorded in the Activision segment, not Blizzard's).

The Grand Theft Auto franchise just broke Q2 records with over $247 million earned during the quarter.

Take-Two Interactive just published its 10-Q report detailing info on GTA sales. Based on historical data, we can extrapolate the figures and compile them in a graph. The results are pretty interesting.

Based on our findings, the Grand Theft Auto franchise made about $247.423 million in Q2 Fiscal Year 22. This is a record-breaking Q2 that delivered the best earnings since GTA V's release. To date, Grand Theft Auto V has propelled franchise earnings to $6.925 billion since launch in September 2013.

Netflix's expansion into video games starts today with five mobile games available free for all subscribers.

Netflix has kicked off its new gaming plans by releasing a handful of games on smartphones and tablets. The games are currently only available for free for Netflix subscribers on Androida, however they're not found in the Netflix app at the time of writing--users must download them individually from the Play Store.

Two of them are more immersive games set in the Stranger Things universe and the other three are casual mobile titles. This selection emphasizes Netflix's smaller-scale entry into gaming. The company eventually plans to ramp up its games selection to all devices including set-top boxes, web browsers, and consoles.

Square Enix says it will no longer push its game studios to work on projects that don't fit their wheelhouses or strengths--like Crystal Dynamics working on Avengers.

Square Enix's live service plans have been hit-or-miss. With the exception of Final Fantasy XIV, the company hasn't had tremendous success with engagement monetization on consoles and PC. The company acknowledges its shortcomings and promises to change its plans.

In a recent annual report, Square Enix President Yousuke Matsuda tells investors that the company is currently rethinking its games-as-a-service strategy. The shift comes after Crystal Dynamics' online-driven Avengers live game delivered disappointing results.

Activision just reported its best Q3 in the last 10 years, but its critical holiday quarter may not shatter any records.

Activision-Blizzard shares are down by 14% despite its explosive Q3 period where it reported 10-year highs for revenue, operating income, and net income. The culprit involves the company's ongoing lawsuits and investigations regarding sexual harassment and its weaker Q4 forecast.

The company expects to make $2.02 billion in Q4 2021 on the backs of Call of Duty: Vanguard and a mighty deferral. That's 16% lower than last year's $2,4 billion generated from higher-than-expected sales and monetization during COVID-19 lockdowns and the release of both Black Ops Cold War and the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion in Q4'20.

Like Ubisoft, EA is also embracing NFTs and play-to-earn as the future of the games industry.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned NFTs three times during EA's recent Q2 earnings call. Wilson is very optimistic about NFTs and the possibility in adding a new level of collectibles in games like FIFA, Madden, and NHL, possibly as a new monetization opportunity with its billion-dollar Ultimate Team service.

Here's everything Wilson said about NFTs courtesy of a recent transcript:

Battlefield Portal from the start has sounded like something exciting that would be delivered alongside Battlefield 2042, but now that EA DICE has detailed a little more about it... maybe Battlefield Portal will outshine Battlefield 2042.

In a new post on its website, EA details Battlefield Portal by introducing it as their "love letter to Battlefield fans that allows you to define the experience you'll have in Battlefield 2042. Alongside classic content from Battlefield 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 1942, you're able to create new ways to play, whether that's recreating classic experiences on reimagined maps, or combining the world of 2042 with our past".

Battlefield Portal's new trailer gives us a next-gen glimpse of classic maps like Battle of the Bulge, El Alamein, Arica Harbor, Valparaiso, Noshahr Canals, and Caspian Border -- and at launch, you'll be able to enjoy any of these classics with the weapons, gadgets, and classes that you love. But in the future... well, Battlefield Portal is going to be oh-so-much more.

343i is injecting a ton of old-school nostalgia into Master Chief Collection to celebrate 20 years of Halo and Xbox.

Today 343i announced its big plans for 20 years of Halo, which actually takes us all the way back to Macworld 1999 with the first old-school Master Chief skin. The developers are rolling out a bunch of new content skins that chronicle two decades of evolved combat.

First up we have the Orion skin, which was the first armor featured in the Macworld presentation back in 1999. Chief looked a lot different here and it's awesome we can actually use this skin...but only in Halo 2 multiplayer. Other skins include hilarious additions like an OG Xbox "The Beast" that can be attached to your back, or the oversized Duke controller for shoulder pauldrons (I still contend this is the best Xbox controller ever made).

Take-Two Interactive expects to release 62 games in the next 3 years. Hangar 13's new game, Volt, won't be one of them.

Hangar 13's new game Volt has been cancelled after four years of troubled development, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. The game started development in 2017 and would've been an online-driven superhero game with sci-fi elements, but was canned due to numerous reboot failures, issues with game engine tech, and communication problems due to COVID-19 disruptions. Volt was part of 2K Games' pre-E3 2021 leak.

Interestingly enough it appears Volt's cancellation isn't being reflected in Take-Two's latest roadmap, however the game represents the $53 million write-off the company took in its financial report.

Red Dead Redemption 2 reaches a new sales milestone of nearly 40 million copies sold to date.

Today Take-Two Interactive confirmed that Red Dead Redemption 2 has sold 39 million units worldwide across digital and physical channels on consoles and PC.

The sequel now makes up 63% of total Red Dead franchise revenues with the original Red Dead Redemption making up 37% (23 million copies). This mix could skew as reports say a RDR1 remaster is currently in development at Rockstar.

Battlefield will remain a premium experience on consoles and PC for multiple years, EA today confirmed.

EA says that free-to-play makes sense for Battlefield, but the company currently has no plans to roll out a F2P Warzone-like experience for the franchise any time soon. The Battlefield mobile game will come first, and then possibly F2P later on.

During EA's Q2'22 earnings call, company CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed that a F2P Battlefield component isn't a core focus right now. The new $69.99 Battlefield 2042 premium release is the core framework for the entire future of the franchise with its massive 128-player multiplayer chaos. In short, Battlefield 2042 is the reboot for the IPs premium presence, and the new free-to-play mobile game will address the smartphone market. After that, a F2P Warzone-like competitor could happen...but not for a while.

Grand Theft Auto V is still a sales monster seven years after its release.

GTA V has now sold-in (shipped) a combined 155 million units physically and digitally, Take-Two Interactive today announced. The numbers span two generations of consoles and will expand even more once the GTA V E&E remaster launches on Gen 9 systems. This represents a +5 million increase over the figures reported in Q1'22, and this quarter is the fourth quarter in a row the game has tacked on 5 million units sales.

To date, Grand Theft Auto V has helped generate over $6.4 billion in franchise earnings. The full game and the heavily-monetized GTA Online have significantly contributed to Take-Two's quarterly earnings since launch and continually drive up recurrent consumer spending (in-game microtransaction purchases), digital revenues and sales, and overall net revenue impact through game sales.

Amid four separate lawsuits and investigations, heavy media scrutiny, accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment, and multiple high-profile executives and team leaders leaving, Activision has reported a record Q3 that breaks 10-year highs.

Activision-Blizzard just enjoyed an explosive Q3 (they aren't, however, enjoying the explosive controversy stemming from workplace misconduct). The company's net revenues, operating profit, and net income all set record highs for a Q3 period. In short, this recent quarter was Activision's best Q3 in the last 10 years.

The billion-dollar games-maker has generated a whopping $2.070 billion in net revenues driven by Warzone, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and huge sales from Diablo II Resurrected, which turned out to deliver the best first-week sales of any remaster in Activision-Blizzard's history. Q3 2021 also was the 5th highest quarterly period for net revenues in the last 10 years. Predictably, Activision-Blizzard made 90% of its revenues from digital.

Activision today confirmed that its core mobile development teams are all collaborating on a new Call of Duty project.

Following the massive success of Call of Duty Mobile, Activision is further expanding the franchise into the huge market. Company president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre confirmed that all of the Activision-branded mobile teams are coming together to work on an unannounced project in the Call of Duty universe.

"We recently acquired Digital Legends in Barcelona. They join our mobile development roster which now includes our new internal team, Solid State, as well as the mobile teams at Beenox and Shanghai, who are all coming together on an unannounced project in the Call of Duty universe that's very exciting," Alegre said.

Former Xbox executive Mike Ybarra now the captain of Blizzard Entertainment as it weathers a storm of lawsuits and accusations.

Today Jen Oneal, former boss of Vicarious Visions, announced she is leaving the company at the end of 2021. Mike Ybarra will now take over and lead Blizzard: "Mike Ybarra will take on Jen's leadership responsibility,"Activision said in its earnings call.

Ybarra and Oneal took the reins of Blizzard when ex-president J. Allen Brack left the company just a few months ago in August 2021.

Diablo IV, which never had a release date to begin with, and Overwatch 2 have both been delayed past their original internal launch periods.

Today Activision-Blizzard announced thunderous Q3 results amid a zero-tolerance policy to fire employees who harass others. Nestled in the earnings presentation was a few game delays, namely from Blizzard, a segment that's being affected most from a "frat-boy culture" that has kicked off multiple sexual harassment lawsuits.

The team announces that Overwatch and Diablo IV have been delayed...despite either one of them actually having release dates. "While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV than originally envisaged."

Dedicated modders are bringing the immortal Blood Gulch into Halo 3.

Halo modders are having a field day with the Master Chief Collection's new modding tools. We've seen awesome AI wars, sequences that break the enemy limit, and now Blood Gulch is making a triumphant combat in Halo 3.

Arguably the best CTF ever made, Blood Gulch has provided countless hours of chaos in the early LAN days of Halo CE. Now thanks to a community of modders including ex-Installation 01 lead TheChunkierBean, wwm0nkey, and Amit Bisember, Blood Gulch is being ported into Halo 3.

Xbox gaming will soon be integrated in the metaverse in some way, but not for a long time.

The metaverse is happening. First Facebook changed itself to Meta and is using Oculus VR as a portal to the new platform. Now Microsoft is jumping in and it's bringing Xbox into the new frontier. Today Microsoft announced plans to integrate its productivity software with Mesh, a platform that allows users to meet up with one another virtually with avatar representations. Mesh is now available for Teams, which allows users to show an avatar of themselves in video chats. Users can also project holographic images of themselves to others for a more realistic presence.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company's metaverse plans will bring 2D games like Halo, Minecraft, and Flight Sim into the 3D world.

Valve and AMD will reveal tons of more info about the Steam Deck's APU and capabilities during a special November 12 stream.

Today Valve announced a Steamworks Virtual Conference dedicated entirely to the Steam Deck handheld-PC hybrid. The event starts on November 12 at 10am PST / 1pm EST and covers a myriad of topics like deep dives on the Steam Deck's custom AMD processor, game support, and much more.

The Steam Deck utilizes a custom SoC built on AMD's new Van Gogh line of low-power Ryzen APUs, which is the first APU that uses the RDNA 2 architecture. The Steam Deck's SoC features a 4-core, 8-thread Van Gogh APU with Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2.0 GPU that's more powerful than the AYA Neo Vega handheld.

Nintendo will reportedly miss its Switch hardware production target as worldwide markets continue to squeeze limited chip supply.

Sources close to production lines tell Nikkei Asia that only 24 million Switch consoles will be manufactured for Nintendo. The company had originally planed to produce at least 30 million units and this new revision sees a significant -20% reduction in supply. If accurate, this also means Nintendo will miss its internal Switch shipment target of 25.5 million for Fiscal Year 22.

The reduction is caused by a component shortage that's affecting production, manufacturing, and shipments of electronics ranging from video game consoles to graphics cards and phone processors. Microsoft and Sony have warned consumers that their respective consoles will also be limited through 2021 and 2022.