Gaming News - Page 5

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch believes $70 is too much to charge for a game, but his studio is nonetheless selling Space Marine 2 for $70 on all platforms.

At the start of Gen9 in November 2020, publishers like Take-Two Interactive, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Sony were among the first to charge $70 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of games. This trend has continued well into 2024 and shows no signs of stopping, especially now that publishers are laying off workers en masse in an attempt to stem bleeding budgets and shrinking profit margins. The $70 game was an attempt to offset high production costs (some games like Spider-Man 2 cost $200 million to make).

But not everyone agrees with the new software MSRP. Consumers have pushed back against the pricing--in 2023, we surveyed over 25,000 gamers on the subject of $70 software and most agree that it's too much. Some industry figures like Saber Interactive's Matthew Karch have even spoken out against the price tag, saying that it's just unsustainable.

Microsoft's fragmented but synergistic approach to software and services is helping introduce new business models to the $200 billion interactive entertainment industry.

Xbox is making big disruptive power plays in the world of online gaming. Microsoft is no stranger to disruption, having shaken up the games market with its Xbox Game Pass subscription, the first dedicated multi-game subscription to define an emerging "Netflix of gaming" business model. Game Pass was only the beginning, and along the way it has helped iterate on multiple new gaming trends.

You might be familiar with Games-as-a-Service (GaaS), terminology that publishers use to refer to an online game with microtransactions and a cadence of updates. On top of GaaS, I think I've spotted two new business concepts: Games-as-a-Platform (GaaP) and Franchise-as-a-Service (FaaS).

Xbox Game Pass will grow nearly 500% across the next 10 years, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicts.

Analysts often ponder their orbs in private, but rarely do we see ambitious forecasts given to everyday consumers by key industry figures. Michael Pachter is one such figure, and he's gained fame through his very public predictions. Pachter's latest estimate is nonetheless eye-opening: According to the analyst, Xbox Game Pass will break 200 million subscribers by the year 2034.

"In the next 10 years, I think it'll go to 200 million. I'll make that bet with anybody. I promise I'll pay. It will be 200 million in the next 10 years--they are that committed to it," Pachter said in the latest episode of his question-and-answer talk show, Pachter Factor, on SIFTD Games.

First game prices jumped to $70, now game subscriptions are next in line for a price hike.

The games industry is currently going through a universal cost adjustment, and like any publicly-traded companies, video games firms are passing those higher prices down to consumers. Years after the Gen9 console generation introduced the new $70 MSRP for software, we're now seeing game subscriptions hiking up monthly price tags as the services mature (and as the companies aim for more profit).

Over the last few years, we've seen both PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass increase in price across most subscription plans (except for the PC Game Pass tier). Ubisoft splintered its subscription, and Electronic Arts just raised prices of its EA Play Pro sub to a similar monthly price point. All of these services are nose-to-nose with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which offers access to hundreds of games for $16.99 a month.

Apple makes a pre-emptive change in its App Store policies in an effort to head off negative effects from the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation.

The EU's new DMA is changing the face of the digital world as we know it. European lawmakers have used the new act to crack open Apple's ill-favored App Store policies and force some pretty big changes. The biggest shake-up is that Apple must now allow app developers to sell their apps and content on independent third-party stores on iOS, a move that allows developers to circumvent Apple's 30% commission fee.

As part of Apple's DMA-sparked changes, retro game emulators will now be unbanned on the App Store and users are free to download and use them.

Microsoft is 'full speed ahead' on its next-gen Xbox hardware, which is said to be the most technologically-advanced console ever made.

Microsoft has officially made some big decisions around the next Xbox console. FTC vs MSFT court leaks from 2023 showed that Microsoft was thinking about using ARM CPUs and potentially hybrid compute solutions (side note: new Windows Surface tablets are using ARM).

There's also mention of the new Gen10 Xbox potentially having an NPU, or a Neural Processing Unit, which is a dedicated chip used expressly for AI. The idea is that the NPU could handle specific AI-oriented tasks and free up the CPU and GPU for more important tasks like rendering and processing assets.

Microsoft isn't giving up on consoles any time soon.

Xbox's new president Sarah Bond has set up a new team to oversee what is arguably the most important thing for Xbox consoles: Backwards compatibility. The news comes by way of Windows Central's Jez Corden, who was told that the new division would focus on software compatibility between console generations.

The idea is to continue to carry forward the Xbox legacy across multiple hardware generations, where the software can be re-sold/re-packaged to consumers as standalone game sales or within subscriptions. Microsoft's commitment in this space has led to 4 generations of Xbox games being playable on the Series X/S generation, and Gen10 Xboxes could bump that up to that 5 generations of support. Also, let's not forget Microsoft wants to create a Universal Store that sells games and content across all consumer endpoints, including everything from mobile phones to PCs and consoles.

New reports may give clues on what's next for Destiny.

It sounds like a numbered Destiny sequel may be back on the table. New reports say that Bungie was (or may currently be) working on Destiny 3, which was being crafted under the codename Payback. The info comes by way of a mysterious Redditor whose prophetic words proved to be eerily accurate--they predicted Destiny 2's Prism subclass feature a month before it was revealed.

With this proven win under their belt, everyone is now taking the user seriously and looking into what else is being said about Destiny. According to the source of the leaks, Destiny 3 would essentially remove all barriers to character classes. Abilities and powers would no longer be exclusively available to certain classes--at least that's how it was described.

It's Thursday, which means it time for NVIDIA's update on what's going on with GeForce Now, and the hot news - radioactive news, even - is that a pair of Fallout games have been brought into the streaming fold.

They are Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 to be precise. Fallout 4 is a classic action RPG from the best part of a decade ago, but it's getting a next-gen update later in April (two weeks today, in fact). That'll add a bunch of goodies including ultra-widescreen monitor support on PC, and much more besides.

Fallout 76 is, of course, the later online multiplayer take on the franchise which wasn't very well-received back at the time of launch, but has improved considerably since, and actually gets some pretty favorable feedback these days.

Fallout 4's anticipated next-gen update is coming April 25, bringing some welcome optimizations across all platforms.

Fallout is back in a big way. The first season of the Fallout TV show is now streaming on Amazon Prime, and Bethesda just announced more details about Fallout 4's upgrade patch. The nearly-10-year-old post-apocalyptic nuclear war survival sim is getting a boost to 60FPS on consoles alongside some adjustments on PC.

On April 25, Bethesda will release the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S updates for Fallout 4. The console updates bring an FPS priority Performance Mode that can hit up to 60 frames-per-second. Quality Mode will apparently upscale graphics and put more emphasis on visuals. Fallout 4 is also getting tweaked on PC with new "stability improvements and fixes" alongside ultra widescreen support.