Gaming - Page 455

Interestingly enough, PUBG shares something in common with DC Comics: A new name change.

Krafton has officially changed PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to PUBG: Battlegrounds. Gaming's most notorious battle royale is now called PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds: Battlegrounds. As PC Gamer points out, this quite similar to the name change of nerdom's most popular comic series from DC to DC Comics, which literally means Detective Comics Comics.

Interestingly enough this name switch happened in late June. The earliest mention of PUBG: Battlegrounds is on June 30, where the parent company directly referred to the game with this new moniker. The previous press releases still have the old PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds name. The game's listings on Steam, PlayStation Store, and the Microsoft Store have all been changed.

2K and Visual Concepts promise to redeem themselves after WWE 2K20's widely-criticized launch.

WWE 2K22 aims to redefine the franchise with next-gen optimizations, high-end motion captures, and new graphics and lighting tech. Most importantly, Visual Concepts should squash a lot of the bugs that plagued WWE 2K20. These issues and the coronavirus pandemic interrupting development led to the cancellation of WWE 2K21. Remember that Visual Concepts also makes Take-Two's billion-dollar NBA 2K sports games.

Take-Two has made some lofty claims about the new WWE game. "During fiscal 2022, WWE 2K22 will mark the rebirth of our popular wrestling series. We are very excited about the team's fresh approach to the franchise, including an array of enhancements and new features," Take-Two Interactive President Karl Slatoff said in a recent Q1'22 earnings call.

Take-Two Interactive plans to reveal a brand new IP that will release by March 2022.

GTA parent company Take-Two expects to release a whopping 62 games by 2024 (and one of them could be Grand Theft Auto 6). 21 of these games will launch this year including a handful of new titles.

One of these new games will be revealed this month. "In addition, later this month 2K will unveil details of another exciting new franchise planned for launch during this fiscal year," Take-Two Interactive President Karl Slatoff said in the Q1'22 earnings call.

Nintendo kicks off its new FY2022 year with earnings slides across the board, with hardware, software, revenue, operating income and total profits all down nearly double percentage points.

Nintendo's Q1'22 missed analyst expectations but still held traction from last year's record highs. Nintendo earnings are slightly moderating as markets adjust to post-pandemic spending, but Q1 earnings remain stable despite FY21's huge gains. All the main metrics are down, likely due to constricted semiconductor stock which has made Nintendo Switch hardware difficult to find.

Hardware sales are tremendously important for Nintendo: Not only does it sell every Switch console at a profit, but the system is a gateway to software sales, which are the main drivers for the company's business.

The amount of hours that I pumped into Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 was crazy, they were such fun games -- especially if you had 3 more friends to play it with. Well, Back 4 Blood is nearly here -- and it's kinda here right now if you pre-ordered and can access the open beta.

There are plenty of keys being handed out all over the internet as well, with the Back 4 Blood open beta cranking along between August 9 and August 12, and then there's a full open beta of the game that will run from August 12 to August 16.

I'm seeing lots of positive feedback on Back 4 Blood so far, which is great -- and I'm looking forward to putting some time in over the next few days to play it, and see how the NVIDIA DLSS tech keeps those frames up as close to and above 120FPS when running at 4K with max graphics settings.

Apex Legends is close to making $2 billion in just 2 years' time, making it one of EA's most successful franchises.

Respawn's battle royale sensation has supercharged EA's business so much that the publisher now sees it as a blockbuster game, putting it alongside Battlefield 2042. EA's yearly live service net bookings have grown 39% since Apex Legends released in FY19, and reached a record high of $4.5 billion last year.

Apex is raking in serious cash. The BR broke $1 billion in lifetime earnings last year, and even made $600 million in FY21 alone. Now the free-to-play game is close to hitting $2 billion.

Who has the best console sales of all time? That'd be Nintendo, who has shipped over 800.7 million handhelds and consoles since reviving the global games market in 1983.

Back in the 80s and 90s, the console wars defined an entire generation of consumer products. The classic SEGA vs Nintendo battle evolved once Sony jumped into the ring in 1994, and the PlayStation brand (along with bad decisions on SEGA's part) eventually pushed the Blue Blur's parent out of the console market altogether.

Then Microsoft emerged in 2001 and kicked off the current three-way competition we see today between Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. It's been that way ever since. So how much hardware has each console-maker sold?

Nintendo just reported its Q1 earnings for FY22 and total software is down by 17.7% compared to record-breaking pandemic surges, but overall Switch game sales are still growing.

Nintendo's latest sales figures reiterate that gamers buy Nintendo products to primarily play first party games, with over 70% of total game sales revenue coming from wholly-owned titles. Case in point: The entire Switch top 10 best-selling games chart is made up of releases developed by Nintendo.

The top 10 chart saw some interesting fluctuations from Q4 FY21 to Q1 FY22. The fitness game Ring Fit Adventure actually pushed New Super Mario Bros. U off the top 10 list, and Super Mario Party saw a healthy spike of 930,000 sales to beat out Let's Go Pokemon Evee and Pikachu. Otherwise the list positioning has remained the same.

By the end of 2022, the Switch should become Nintendo's second best-selling games hardware of all time.

Nintendo currently forecasts the Switch will beat the Wii by March 2022, but it should also dethrone the Game Boy as well. The company expects to ship 25.05 million Switch consoles in FY22, down more than 11% from last year's record highs. Nintendo has already sold 4.42 million Switch consoles in Q1'22, leaving 21.08 million Switch shipments left on the table for the rest of the year.

A quick bit of math (21.08 million + the Switch's current 89.04 million shipments) shows Nintendo expects total Switch shipments to reach 110.12 million units by March 31, 2022, which would beat the Wii by over 8 million. In fact, current trends show the Switch can easily beat the Game Boy by 2023 (or perhaps even in 2022).

Nintendo today announced that its Switch handheld-console family has shipped over 89 million units worldwide, solidifying it as the company's fourth top hardware system of all time.

As of Q1 FY2022, the Switch has shipped 89.04 million units since it launched in early 2017, and has sold-through a whopping 85 million systems in that time. This ratio means Nintendo has sold 95% of the Switch consoles it has shipped to retailers. The console remains Nintendo's fourth best-selling hardware behind the Wii (101.63), Game Boy (118.69 million), and DS (154.02 million).

Nintendo shipped 4.42 million Switch consoles in Q1'22, down 11.5% year-over-year from FY21, where it sold a record all-time quarterly high of 5.68 million units. Analysts note that constricted chip supply has led to lower shipments and availability of Switch hardware. The company earned 47.9% of its revenues from hardware in Q1, or roughly $1.31 billion.

Embracer Group has made eight new acquisitions including Duke Nukem developer 3D Realms.

3D Realms just found a new home in one of gaming's most celebrated retro publishers. Embracer Group went on another buyout spree and purchased eight new studios:

"The Transactions improve the group's capabilities within mobile publishing and development, indie development, VR development as well as story driven, retro shooter and other development for PC/consoles," reads a press release.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone are about to enjoy Season 5 kicking off, with both Activision and Treyarch teasing new Operators, and more. Check out the Season 5 official cinematic trailer:

It's funny... the main character is a female hacker that seems very cool from the trailer, but Activision can't get the freaking hackers out of Warzone. So the new character is a hacker, in a game filled with hackers that ruin half the rounds that I (and millions of others) play. Nice.

Season 5 should end up being the last season in the Black Ops Cold War cycle, as Call of Duty: Vanguard should take in from there. We should expect lots of new goodies in the Warzone Season 5 battle pass, map changes, and more.

EA DICE will be kicking off the Battlefield 2042 technical playtest next week, with a "strict NDA" that will stop playtesters from sharing any gameplay videos or details about the game... but we now know the PC system requirements for the technical playtest.

The Battlefield 2042 technical playtest requires at a minimum: 8GB of RAM, Windows 10, and an AMD FX-8350 or Intel Core i5-6600K processor. GPU-wise you need an AMD Radeon RX 560 or GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card with 4GB of VRAM and above.

But those are the minimum PC requirements, the recommended PC requirements are higher: 16GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7-4790 processor. GPU-wise, EA DICE recommends an AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT or GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM and above.

Activision's Q2 earnings outperformed expectations on the back of consistent player spending.

Activision just reported its best Q2 in the last ten years, with net revenues ($2.296 billion), operating income ($959 million), and net income ($876 million) all setting new decade highs. Player spending on in-game content was a major driver for earnings and Activision's Q2 continues riding the wave of spending surge driven by last year's pandemic.

In Q2 2021, Activision-Blizzard made $1.319 billion from in-game spending on DLC, add-ons, subscriptions, and microtransactions across key games like Candy Crush, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. In-game net bookings accounted for 68% of total net bookings ($1.9 billion). King made the lion's share of mTX revenues with an all-time record high of $635 million segment revenues, and King also had 255 million MAUs as compared to Activision's 127 million MAUs.

Sony confirms that it will ship 12.5 million more PlayStation 5 consoles from now until March 2022.

PS5 stock is about to increase through 2021 and beyond. Today during its Q1 FY21 earnings call, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki confirms the company has secured enough semiconductor chips to meet its 14.8 million PS5 shipment target for the full year. Sony has shipped 2.3 million PS5s in Q1, leaving 12.5 million PS5 shipments for the rest of the year.

"The shortage of semiconductors have impacts in various areas and through various measures we have been taking some actions. For PS5, the console sales target for this year has been set and we have secured the number of chips necessary to achieve that. Regarding supply of semiconductors, we're not concerned," Totoki said.

EA confirms Battlefield is now a service instead of singular release, and that new games could come biannually.

EA now sees the Battlefield franchise as a service. Publisher CEO Andrew Wilson confirms that Battlefield 2042's online-only framework is the foundation of the future of the series, and that new Battlefield games could release every 2 years.

"That is our orientation," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said when asked about new Battlefield games releasing every 2 years.

Jedi Fallen Order 2 will be among EA's new Star Wars games, the publisher today confirmed.

In its Q1 FY2022 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed the publisher will continue making games in the Jedi Fallen Order franchise. In the call, Wilson attributes Q2's high net revenues to strong sales in Mass Effect Legendary Edition and also mentioned Jedi Fallen Order, which has successfully re-engaged users with a next-gen release.

"We will continue to invest in both of these franchises to grow our IP," Wilson said, referring to both Jedi Fallen Order and Mass Effect.

The PS5 only has 667GB of usable space, but owners will soon be able to expand internal storage with the same high-end SSDs used in PCs. But which one should you buy?

New data from The Verge reveals that gamers don't necessarily need to pick the most expensive SSD with crazy read/write speeds. Sony's official recommendations call for a PCIe 4.0 SSD that achieves at least 5.5GB/sec speeds, but testing shows that even slower drives like the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite 1TB M.2 2280 SSD can work well in the system without many load speed discrepancies.

Meanwhile, OEMs have revealed official PlayStation 5 compatible SSDs like the Seagate FireCuda 530, which commands a 7.3GB/sec read speed matched with a premium $239 price for 1TB models. PS5 architect Mark Cerny also recommends the WD_BLACK SN850 2TB SSD which is as much as a PlayStation 5 console itself.

Activision-Blizzard has upwardly revised its total-year 2021 earnings forecast and now expects to earn a record-breaking $8.5 billion.

While a storm of controversy hangs over Activision, the company's earnings performance is doing better than ever. Activision-Blizzard's Q2 2021 results outperformed across every metric, raking in the best net revenues ($2.296 billion), operating income ($959 million), and net income ($876 million) in a second quarter period in the last 10 years. EPS also beat expectations with $1.12 per share.

Activision has now boosted its original full-year earnings predictions based on these results and now targets a whopping $8.515 billion for CY 2021, up $145 million from the previous forecast.

Activision-Blizzard is now facing two separate types of class-action lawsuits: One for sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, and another for securities fraud as a result of the ongoing controversy.

A total of five U.S.-based law firms are investigating Activision-Blizzard for securities fraud, and three of them have already filed lawsuits.

The firms include: