Gaming - Page 482

Activision kicks off its 2021 year with record earnings across the board due to strong performance of Call of Duty (Warzone, Black Ops Cold War), Candy Crush, and World of Warcraft.

Activision's Q1 2021 has delivered record results across a number of metrics. Q1 2021 was the best first quarter in the last 10 years when measuring net revenues ($2.275 billion), operating profit ($795 million), and profit ($619 million). In fact, Q1 2021 had the best operating profit of any other quarter in the last 10 years. The period had the third-best revenues of any quarter, and the second-best profits when compared to other quarters.

The company notes this substantial growth is due to Call of Duty monetization (up 60% YoY) and full game sales, and Activision also earned $1.343 billion from mictotransactions, representing 65% of its total net bookings.

Xbox's Phil Spencer is still holding out hope that its game streaming service could show up on competing platforms, new emails from the Epic vs Apple trial show.

Xbox's business is built off services, monetization, and widespread access. It's only logical that Microsoft wants Game Pass and its Project xCloud game streaming on every platform imaginable, including competing consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Sony's PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Game Pass and xCloud already connect Xbox consoles, Windows 10 PCs, and mobile phones in a billion-dollar ecosystem, and Microsoft wants more.

In a 2020 email conversation with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney spotted by The Verge, Xbox's division head Phil Spencer says he has "hasn't given up" on launching xCloud game streaming on other platforms.

Activision's recent Q1 earnings show a substantial spike in in-game player spending thanks to Warzone, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, World of Warcraft, and continued Candy Crush earnings.

Activision's Q1 microtransactions earnings are on fire. The company earned a monumental $1.343 billion in microtransaction and subscription revenue in Q1 2021, a record high for any other Q1 period and the second-best quarter for mTX earnings in Activision history.

The company's Q1 beat out any other holiday period in history, too. This says a lot: Activision releases its mainline Call of Duty games in Q4 every year complete with microtransaction gateways in these games. mTX has markedly increased throughout 2020, hitting an all-time high after Warzone launched in Q2 2020. It's worth noting that CoD microtransaction spending usually bleeds over into Q1 due to the November launches, but microtransactions are never from Call of Duty alone. This year, Activision-Blizzard had strong performance from Candy Crush and World of Warcraft, too.

Future Deep Silver games like Dead Island 2 and Saints Row V may be timed exclusive to the Epic Games Store, internal documents from 2019 reveal.

New documents revealed in publicly available court exhibits reveal more about Epic's future timed exclusivity deals. According to one document which was created in late 2019, Dead Island 2 and Saints Row have been earmarked as Epic Games Store exclusives. Which Saints Row wasn't specified, but it's possible Saints Row V will be EGS exclusive in favor of the 88-12 revenue split.

This aligns with my predictions made in 2019 based on comments from Koch Media's CEO. Based on previous trends, these games should be timed exclusive and not kept off of Steam like Ubisoft's newer titles.

Sony and Nike have teamed again to make a pair of PlayStation-themed sneakers, inspired by the next-gen PlayStation 5 sneakers we have the new PG5 sneakers.

The new PG5 sneakers are inspired by Sony's design aesthetics oozed into the PlayStation 5, with the sneakers made for NBA and Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George. Nike have made 4 other pairs of PlayStation-inspired shoes, with the PG5 being the 5th edition in the line so far.

Nike and Sony had to work around the restrictions put in place because of all of the changes that COVID-19 has forced onto the world, with the teams at both companies not being able to meet in-person and having to do most of the design and collaboration for the PG5 sneakers online through Zoom, and other digital video means.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has never looked better than this, with Rockstar Games' phenomenally successful game powered by NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090, the new photorealistic raytracing Reshade preset, and the super-beyond-enthusiast 8K resolution. Check it out:

The game is of course running on the PC on ultra max settings with the new photorealistic Reshade preset, which tweaks and improves the colors, shadows, sharpness, and tone mapping of the game. Red Dead Redemption 2 is gorgeous in stock form, but this just adds and very welcomed graphical bells and whistles.

Red Dead Redemption 2 with the raytracing Reshade preset and raytracing looks incredible, and makes me want to re-visit the game in 8K given that I've just come in off benchmarking Call of Duty: Warzone at 8K (7680 x 4320) on the GeForce RTX 3090 thanks to its new update that added support for NVIDIA's magic DLSS 2.0 technology. But man-oh-man does RDR2 look incredible with the raytracing Reshade mod at 8K.

UPDATE 2: Activision confirms Rambo is coming to Warzone on May 20.

UPDATE: New info suggests Rambo and Terminator are coming to Warzone, a move that should kick off a wealth of crossovers. This could be what Activision is referring to in the article below.

Activision has big plans for Warzone's continued development and teases exciting new things on the horizon.

Activision has significantly upwardly revised its 2021 earnings target by $150 million due to high confidence in continued Call of Duty growth, Blizzard game releases, and King content.

Based on recent earnings reports, Activision now expects to make a new all-time revenue high of $8.37 billion throughout 2021. Activision previously estimated $8.22 billion in revenues, and this marks a $150 million increase. 2021 is expected to beat 2020's record revenues by a staggering $284 million.

Activision says this uptick is driven primarily by Warzone engagement and monetization, Call of Duty premium game sales, and new Blizzard releases like Diablo 2 Resurrected. This year's mainline Call of Duty game, the World War II-based Vanguard from Sledgehammer Games, will be the third major game to integrate directly into Warzone since the F2P game's launch.

Call of Duty Vanguard (COD 2021) will leverage the power of next-gen PS5, Series X hardware, Activision confirms.

This year's Call of Duty will shine bright on next-gen consoles. Activision confirms that Sledgehammer has built the WWII-based Call of Duty Vanguard game specifically with next-gen consoles in mind, and may achieve ray-tracing, 120FPS, and 4K resolution similar to Black Ops Cold War.

Activision confirms Vanguard is:

Documents from the ongoing Epic vs Apple trial confirm Walmart's plans to make a cloud-powered game streaming service.

Walmart plans to follow Amazon into the game streaming market. Walmart's own game streaming service, codenamed Project Storm, was outlined in a recent exhibit in the Epic vs Apple antitrust court case. The document is publicly available on a district court data repository.

Walmart's plan is ambitious. The pitch says Project Storm would allow gamers to stream or download titles directly to their platform of choice. The company wants to stream games to any device, and the presentation shows GTA V beaming directly to TVs, PC,s tablets, phones, and even Apple Watches.

After 17 years with CD Projekt RED, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has left the studio to avoid further "bad blood."

A while back, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz was accused of aggressive behavior by other developers at CD Projekt. Tomaszkiewicz was high on CD Projekt's totem pole having served as game director on Witcher 3 and its two expansions, then moving to design director on Cyberpunk 2077. In February 2019, Tomaszkiewicz was promoted to vice president of game development at the company.

The developer was said to have used his position to "mob", or intimidate/bully other workers. Although CD Projekt's investigations ultimately saw him as innocent, Tomaszkiewicz has stepped down from the studio. He was expected to lead the charge on CD Projekt's next Witcher game which is should begin development as early as 2022.

Sony and Discord make a deal after buyout discussions with Microsoft fizzle out.

Sony today announced it has bought a small minority stake in Discord and that more chat features are coming to the PlayStation Network. Sony's goal is to meld Discord into its billion-dollar PlayStation Network ecosystem and allow gamers to communicate, play, and chat with one another in a seamless cross-platform environment.

"Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network. Our goal is to bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year, allowing friends, groups, and communities to hang out, have fun, and communicate more easily while playing games together," Sony says.

Microsoft's technical wizards have worked their magic and now 97 Xbox games support FPS Boost on Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Freed by the shackles of outdated CPU, GPU, and limited RAM, a bunch of Xbox console games can finally hit 60FPS on the new Series X/S duo. Microsoft has worked closely with developers to add FPS Boost to a multitude of new Xbox games on top of the native enhancements that next-gen consoles already offer. The result is last-gen games shooting up to 60FPS and even up to 120FPS on Series X. The Series S can even hit 120Hz in games like Hollow Knight.

Back in March, FPS Boost only applied to a handful of games. Today 97 games support the feature. Microsoft is careful to say that FPS Boost can lower resolution in some games in order to hit the frame rate target, so it won't be ticked on automatically. FPS Boost lowers res in games like Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Far Cry 5, Wasteland 3, and Titanfall 2. These games will automatically have FPS Boost turned off, and you have to manually turn the feature on via Xbox console settings.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is still many years away but that doesn't stop the hype engines from being fired up every now and again... with a "well-known movie scooper" known as ViewerAnon teasing GTA 6 news.

ViewerAnon said that Grand Theft Auto 6 will not be coming out for a few years yet, with Rockstar Games having an internal release set for late 2023 but I'm sure we're looking at that being pushed back because of various reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked havoc on virtually every inch of the planet, and next-gen consoles are here so Rockstar will want to take full advantage of them.

It can't be another Grand Theft Auto release if it's not going to blow gamers away, and I'm sure that GTA 6 is going to be something truly special. GTA V wasn't enough of a leap for me, I want to feel that same GTA 2 > GTA 3 leap with GTA V > GTA 6.

If you were lucky enough to nab one of Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 consoles you will be happy enough enjoying whatever games you've been playing with it -- as well as PS5 exclusives -- but one of those games will not be STALKER 2... at least not for the first 3 months of its release.

During a recent interview with STALKER 2 developer GSC GameWorld, which said that there are no plans for STALKER 2 on any other platform other than Xbox and PC "for now". We might get a PS5 release of STALKER 2, but it won't be happening for many months after its initial release.

The news is coming from a court filing over the on-going Epic v Apple case, where Microsoft has some exclusivity deals for some games and one of those is STALKER 2. The documents reveal that the plan for now at least, is that STALKER 2 is due to be an exclusive to Xbox Series X/S consoles and the PC with a release scheduled for Q4 2021 (October-December).

Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson is a busy man between leaking out what should be EA's biggest game of 2021, and sketching his life away drawing out snippets from EA DICE's upcoming teaser trailer for Battlefield.

Henderson started out with a GIF of him today, sketching away -- replied to someone else asking if there were more drawings on the way -- and more specifically "some soldier sketches". Henderson replied saying "I got you" and then dumped down two sketches he had been working on. The first of which is above, but then the talented (and very quick) folks at All Things Gaming replied with this magic:

How good is that!

Capcom has significantly restricted Resident Evil Village's play time on consoles and PC...but Steam gamers have figured out a work around.

The RE Village demo will lock you out after one hour of play regardless of which area you play--the castle or the village, either way it's only 1 hour. PC gamers can break the demo's restriction, however, by using Steam Achievement Manager and deleting a few files.

According to the Steam community, the method is pretty simple.

Elden Ring could be subject to more delays, FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa Corp warns in its latest earnings report.

Kadokawa Corp's latest FY2021 earnings give some clues on what's on the horizon. Kadokawa owns Japanese game developer FromSoftware, the team behind Dark Souls, Sekiro, and the hotly anticipated Elden Ring. In a presentation to investors, the group indicates Elden Ring may not release by March 2022 as part of its FY2022 period. This isn't a big surprise, however, considering the silence surrounding the title.

Kadokawa's game segment earnings are projected to slide by as much as 15% in FY2022, and operating profit could drop as much as 52%. This clearly illustrates the absence of a heavy-hitting release from one of the industry's most renowned studios. It's also interesting to note that gaming isn't a huge part of Kadokawa's business; gaming accounted for 14 billion yen in FY2021, representing 7% of yearly earnings.

BioWare's new Mass Effect trilogy remaster is getting a 4K facelift, but it also comes a moderately-sized day one patch.

Day one patches are pretty common these days. Some games need them in order to run and take up obnoxious amounts of space. Others, like the Mass Effect Legendary Edition's day one patch, are decently sized. According to Orbis Patches, a website that tracks patch updates for PS4 games, the Mass Effect trilogy will have an 11.8GB day one patch on PlayStation.

The changelog reveals the patch will improve overall performance/stability and make visual adjustments to ambient occlusion, lighting, and other small tweaks. The day one patch on PC and Xbox platforms might be bigger or smaller.

UPDATE: Microsoft reiterates that it has no plans to adjust the Xbox console revenue split, and the store will remain at 70-30 for now.

Microsoft will apparently make history and become the first console platform to offer a 88-12 revenue split in favor of developers.

New documents say Microsoft will reduce the revenue split of both its PC and Xbox console storefronts from 70-30 down to 88-12. Developers and publishers would effectively get to keep 88% of revenues versus the 70% from previous years. The news comes days after Microsoft announced it would only charge PC developers 12% of all sales on the Windows Microsoft Store. Epic Games was the first to offer such a revenue split back in 2018.