Gaming - Page 456

The PlayStation 4 is highly unlikely to ever beat the PS2's mighty hardware sales reign, but it's already beating the legacy titan's software sales.

Sony's latest financial report confirms PS4 sales are drying up quickly. In Q1 FY2021, the PS4 shipped 500,000 units, marking the first quarter that the console sold-in less than 1 million. Right now total PS4 shipments sit at 116.7 million, as compared to the PlayStation 2's mighty 155 million sales. The PS5 is already overlapping the PS4 at a rapid rate as the PS4 enters market saturation. It would take a miracle for the PS4 to beat the PS2's sales.

The PS2 isn't completely dominating, though. The PS4 is actually beating the PS2 quite handily in game sales.

The PlayStation 4 has shipped less than 1 million units for the first time in Sony's Q1 FY21 as the console reaches peak saturation.

Sony today announced Q1 FY2021 earnings and updated sales figures for PlayStation hardware. The results send a clear picture: The PS4 is on its way out, and fast. Sony shipped roughly 500,000 PS4s in Q1 as compared to 2.3 million PS5s.

The PlayStation 4 has now shipped 116.7 million units to date as per Sony's refreshed figures. On the next-gen front, Sony shipped 10.1 million PS5s to date, and recently reached 10 million console sales to make the PS5 the fastest-selling console in Sony's history (note: sell-in is shipments sent to retailers, and sold-through represents actual confirmed sales to consumers).

Activision-Blizzard reports the highest Q2 revenues, operating income, and net profit in the last ten years as it faces down scathing abuse and discrimination allegations.

While Blizzard is embroiled in a heated storm of controversy that's led to worker strikes and walk outs, the company broke records with its recent quarterly performance. Q2 2021 had the highest net revenue, operating income, and net income out of any other second quarter period in the last 10 years.

During calendar Q2'21, Activision-Blizzard made $876 million in profit on $2.296 billion in revenues, Income after operating expenses was $959 million, the best for a Q2 period in a decade. The results were driven by strong Call of Duty earnings from Warzone, Black Ops and CoD mobile, significant spikes in King earnings with a record-breaking $635 million in revenues, and continued purchases and recurring subscriptions from World of Warcraft.

aActivision hypes of Call of Duty Vanguard's content offering and promises a big rollout of post-launch content.

Unlike Battlefield 2042, this year's Call of Duty will have a fully-fledged campaign. Sledgehammer's new WWII shooter continues the standard CoD trifecta of a campaign, multiplayer, and co-op modes. While official details are like (the game hasn't even been announced yet), Activision execs promise Vanguard will be a "robust" game.

"Content-wise, it's a really robust game at launch across all the modes, and the good news for us right now is we've gotten farther ahead on our live ops planning for supporting the community post-launch, and the community should also expect that support to be very very significant. We've learned a lot over the last couple of years and that's all in our plan going forward," said Activision president Rob Kostich.

Three separate law firms have filed lawsuits against Activision-Blizzard alleging securities fraud.

Law firms the Schall Law Firm, Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC, and Rosen Law are all filing suits on behalf of Activision-Blizzard shareholders that allege the company of securities fraud. These new securities fraud allegations are separate from the harassment and discrimination suit the company is currently facing.

The lawsuits allege that Activision-Blizzard misled investors by not properly disclosing the harassment charges the company is currently facing. The ongoing controversy has had a material impact on shareholders, with Activision-Blizzard stock falling to its lowest point in the last 6 months.

Blizzard President J. Allen Brack leaves the company amid significant workplace controversy.

Right now Blizzard is caught in a storm of misconduct allegations that stretch back for decades. Multiple reports accuse Blizzard of a "frat boy culture" where women employees are subject to discrimination, sexual misconduct, and harassment. Blizzard workers are sharing their stories en masse, and employees have responded with walk out strikes and collective demands for change. Company stock has dropped to $79.61 per share, its lowest point in the past six months.

Although Blizzard harassment was quietly happening behind the scenes, many key executives have left the company over recent years, including co-founder Mike Morhaime in 2019. Shortly after Morhaime left, J. Allen Brack, a seasoned Blizzard veteran, took over as president.

NBA 2K and Grand Theft Auto-maker Take-Two Interactive jumpstarts its Q1 FY2022 period with strong earnings from some of its biggest franchises.

Although Take-Two's Q1'22 net revenues slid 2.1% to $813 million, the Grand Theft Auto franchise just made its second-highest quarterly earnings in history.

According to Take-Two filings, Grand Theft Auto earned about $274 million in the current Q1, beating out the previous high watermark set last year when GTA V was free on the Epic Games Store. These results are second only to the $1.4 billion revenues earned during GTA V's launch in Q3'14.

Take-Two Interactive kicks off its Q1 FY2022 fiscal year with $711 million in earnings and consistent growth across key franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Borderlands, and NBA 2K.

As part of its earnings brief to investors, Take-Two updated its sales figures for top game series. Grand Theft Auto tops the charts with a whopping 350 million copies shipped, of which GTA V makes up 42%, or 150 million.

The annualized NBA 2K sports franchise takes second place with a huge 112 million copies shipped to date, with NBA 2K21 comprising nearly 10% of total sales, or 11 million units.

The hype train for Battlefield 2042 has died down considerably, and while we might only be less than 3 months away from the release of what should arguably be the biggest first-person shooter of the year, rumor has it Battlefield 2042 development could be "having issues".

This is coming directly from Battlefield 2042 leaker Tom Henderson, who now writes for DualShockers, nothing that we have only seen "Six seconds of gunplay is what Battlefield fans have seen so far with Battlefield 2042 and although I would have personally expected to see more trailers with gameplay soon, it's hard to not be concerned.

If you were waiting to see more Battlefield 2042 gameplay once the Technical Play Test kicks off later this month, you'll be disappointed... Henderson says that the Battlefield 2042 Technical Play Test users are under a "strict NDA". Anyone included in the test is unable to talk about the game, or show any gameplay footage.

Halo Infinite is well-optimized on Xbox consoles, and new metrics from VG Tech reveal how well the generations handle 343i's new shooter.

Halo Infinite plays amazingly well on both PC (I was able to hit 80FPS+ at 1440p with a RTX 2080 Super with Ultra preset) on Xbox Series X/S consoles, the latter of which has two frame rate priority modes: 60Hz or 120Hz. Infinite demands speed, though, and playing at 60FPS doesn't really do the game justice. There's some trade offs if you want to target 120FPS, though--The Series X's Zen 2 and RDNA 2-powered SoC is strong, but it can't hit native 4K 120FPS. Resolution drops are necessary to achieve higher frames.

New frame rate tests from VG Tech show Halo Infinite X targets at 1440p native resolution (upscaled to 4K) with an average 110FPS on the Xbox Series X. The Series S also fares well but has a much lower max native res of 900p, which is then upscaled to 1080p when in 120FPS mode. Infinite ran at a range of 104 - 118 FPS at 900p in the 120FPS mode.

Grand Theft Auto V has now shipped 150 million units worldwide, Take-Two Interactive today confirmed.

There's few games that will consistently sell millions of copies every quarter, but Grand Theft Auto V is one of them. The nearly 8-year old GTA V has now sold-in (shipped) 150 million copies worldwide since its launch in September 2013, making it one of the best-selling games of all time. GTA V currently makes up 42% of total franchise sales.

A quick bit of math shows GTA V managed to sell 5 million units from March - June 2021, kicking off Take-Two's Q1 period with a second consecutive first quarter sales gain of 5 million copies. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has generated $6.4 billion since GTA V's launch in 2013 and continues delivering high earnings for Take-Two's sales and recurrent consumer sales (microtransactions).

GTA V was free on the Epic Games Store in May 2020, which helped push total-year franchise revenues to their second highest point of all time.

Take-Two's Epic Games Store freebie paid off big time. Yesterday I put together a graph that charted total Grand Theft Auto franchise revenues from GTA V's launch to present on both a yearly and quarterly basis. There's a huge revenue spike in Q1'21 corresponding with GTA V's free release on the Epic Games Store during May 2020.

This isn't a coincidence. The free launch helped GTA hit $262 million in the quarter, which is the second highest quarterly earnings since the incredible $1.49 billion earned at launch in Q3'14.

The next Halo Infinite beta test should feature PVP right from the start, 343i says.

Halo Infinite's technical preview is now offline, but it we could get another chance to play before launch. 343i says it wants to hold another huge Halo Infinite flight before the game releases this holiday season. According to Halo community manager Brian Jarrard, the devs hope to do another beta centered around PVP and "other aspects of the multiplayer experience."

That last bit is pretty interesting. Could Firefight be making a comeback? Most likely it's just testing out stuff like customizations, maps, equipment, modes etc. Maybe even some 32-player big team battle action But we can hold out hope can't we?

Arena of Valor developer Netmarble buys one of the most lucrative mobile devs in the business.

Netmarble today announced it has acquired SpinX, a mobile developer behind social casino hits like Lotsa Slots, Cash Frenzy and Jackpot World. Netmarble paid $2.19 billion for the share buyout, which is almost as much as the company made in the entire FY2020 yearly period; Netmarble made 2.84 trillion KRW in 2020, which is roughly $2.287 billion.

SpinX on the other hand generated $432 million from its casino games throughout last year.

Grand Theft Auto V is a sales juggernaut that has not only amassed 150 million shipments to date, accounting for 1/3rd of total GTA franchise sales, but the game has helped generate over $6.4 billion since its release.

In preparation for Take-Two's Q1'22 earnings call tomorrow, I decided to chart GTA franchise revenues on a quarter-by-quarter and year-by-year basis. The results were just as eye-opening as the huge GTA V game sales graphs I put together.

According to numbers provided by Take-Two Interactive, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made $6.468 billion in revenues as of Fiscal Year 2021 (bear in mind this is total GTA revenues, not just GTA V, but most of if is from GTA V).

Halo Infinite's technical preview is frenetic, chaotic, and exhilarating, but it can also overload your senses at times. Here's some tips to help you along the way.

Halo Infinite's first beta test is just that: the multiplayer puts you up against AI bots to test out your skills. The bots are no slouches, though, and will take you out unless you learn some basic skills--namely headshotting with the pistol. This isn't always easy, especially with all the on-screen effects 343i has thrown in. Luckily you can switch them off.

Tip 1: Turn off rumble. The single biggest tip I have for Halo Infinite's technical preview is to turn off rumble. There's nothing more jarring and disrupting than having the controller shake every time you're hit. The bots are really good with the AR, so expect this to happen often. To get clean, proper headshots you need a steady hand and a steady reticle. That's not going to happen if your controller is vibrating every two seconds.

Sony has fried a unique Dualsense controller giveaway from Down Under.

To celebrate 50 years of burgers and fries, Macca's--what Australians call McDonald's--planned to give away 50 McDualsense controllers in a Stream Week event. These were custom PlayStation 5 controllers stylized with a Big Mac on one side and crispy French fries on the other. In other words it was a product placement advertisement that constantly reminded you of the not-so-healthy fast food chain.

There's just one problem: Macca's didn't get Sony's permission for this promotion. A billion-dollar food chain using a separate product to essentially advertise itself without authorization is grounds for repercussions, so Macca's has cancelled the Dualsense giveaway.

Mark Cerny says he plans to use a WD_BLACK SN850 SSD in his PlayStation 5 to expand storage.

The PS5's SSD expansion bay will soon be unlocked to finally let gamers add more high-end storage to their consoles. After a new firmware update drops, PS5 owners can slot in a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD into their console that's up to 4TB big. But what drives do you buy? Sony has yet to put together an official list of compatible SSDs just yet, but they have given some guidelines: It needs to be at least 5GB/sec, it has to be a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive, and it needs to have a heat sink. These don't come cheap.

Case in point: Mark Cerny is inadvertently recommending the WD_BLACK SN850 2TB SSD, which comes with a heat sink and can hit incredible speeds of up to 7GB/sec. It's also pretty expensive at $500, which is literally the same price as a disc-based PlayStation 5.

Halo Infinite's technical preview has racked up hundreds of thousands of players and gamers are avidly slaughtering as many bots as possible.

Halo Infinite testers have killed over 7.2 million bots in the last 48 hours, 343i recently confirmed. Killing as many bots as possible across a myriad of maps and with different weapons gives the devs tons of data. The technical test has evolved over time, too. The AI bots started off at Marine difficulty, which is basically medium, and now they've moved on to ODST, which is equivalent to hard mode. Soon they'll be on Spartan mode which is basically Legendary difficulty for AI.

This is the first mainline Halo game to feature bots and the game is all the better for it. Playing against bots is enthralling, chaotic, and plain fun. The AI isn't a slouch and they're not completely inept. Even on ODST they'll give you a run for your money and test your mettle. I personally can't wait to see how many Spartan bots get annihilated...or maybe the reverse?

PSA: Dataminers are posting up Halo Infinite story spoilers on public forums like 4Chan and even Reddit.

Halo Infinite's technical preview is an absolutely fantastic slice of FPS chaos. The developers at 343i are stoked with the responses, and gamers are having a blast all around the world. There's just one issue with the preview: The source files actually contain story spoilers and campaign info we weren't meant to discover.

Data miners have unearthed a treasure trove of spoiler content that outlines many key events of the campaign, so be sure to keep an eye out. 343i warns anyone who posts up this content to YouTube or other social media channels will likely be hit with a DMCA--especially if the content includes assets like voice snippets.