Gaming - Page 756

Sony telegraphs its next moves in recent earnings reports and interviews, sending signals that a PlayStation 5 reveal may not happen in 2019.

Sony is indeed working on its next-generation PlayStation 5 console. The system should be a powerhouse (key sources tell TweakTown it'll be powered by a discrete GPU) that leverages AMD's new Navi graphics architecture and Zen 2 CPU technology, and there's even evidence it'll support and play existing PS4 games. Devkits are out, and first-party teams are leveraging them to make their games. But when will the PS5 be out? When will it be revealed? No one knows for sure, but the Japanese titan hints a 2019 announcement isn't in the cards.

First let's look at SIE Worldwide Chairman Shawn Layden's recent comments about E3 2019, and why Sony is skipping the show. In an interview with CNET, Layden said Sony's June event will now be focused on celebrating gaming rather than "dropping the next bomb." The exec further said the company wouldn't really have anything new to show off by June, so they're skipping E3 in favor of a more centralized showcase that Sony has more control over.

Neill Blomkamp's surprise Anthem project is a short live-action film based around the IP, complete with his own visual style and themes.

Remember yesterday when we predicted Neill Blomkamp's mystery project was a short film? Turns out he's making just that, and it should do for Anthem what Halo: Landfall did for Halo. Today EA announced Anthem: Conviction, a prequel live-action short set decades before Anthem that chronicles the war between the Freelancers and the Dominion.

"I was really blown away by this incredible world BioWare created the very first time I saw Anthem," said the director. "Conviction sets the stage with a narrative that touches on Anthem's beautiful and immersive world, which is ripe for exploration by these powerful Javelins. A world where danger is lurking on every ledge and in each valley."

Team Cherry Games has announced that they will be getting into the Valentines Day's spirit by releasing their first paid DLC package for Hollow Knight.

Hollow Knight developers have teased the release of a new DLC for their hit indie title Hollow Knight. The developers will be releasing the DLC in celebration of Valentines Day and it will be titled 'Hornet'. Very little is known about the DLC for the moment, besides a few teases here and there from the developers.

According to their blog post, The Hornet update will come with the playable character Hornet and also a brand new enemy titled 'Steel Assassin Sharpe' which I have provided an image below. A short description for the DLC has also been provided; "Sharpe is a hunter from a distant land. He's tasked with eliminating Hornet and he's not come alone. Sharpe brings companions on his deadly quest. Who are they? And why are they pursuing Hornet? We'll leave you to guess at their full nature. Just know, Hornet's gonna be fighting for her life against this highly trained trio." The Hornet DLC will be releasing on February 14th, or better known as Valentines Day. Hollow Knight is available for the Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch.

'The Front Page of the Internet', or better known as Reddit has done quite well this investment round as Reddit.inc has said they are pleased to announced that they have managed to raise an additional $300 million in funding.

The funding comes from what is called a 'series D funding round' and sees China's Tencent adding a considerable amount of fortune to the $300 million, infact the Chinese conglomerate threw in $150 million. Other investments came from Sequoia, Fidelity, Tacit, and Snoop Dogg. While Reddit currently has $330+ million active users each month it only generates $0.30 per user per year. This is considerably lower than other massive platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Twitter managed to bring in over $3 billion in 2018 and finds there annual revenue per user to sit around the $9.48.

Tencent and other investors are looking to help Reddit better monetize its already large user-base, but many people have claimed that this is a massive conflict of interest for the Chinese conglomerate. Tencent own 40% of Epic Games who are the Fortnite developer, and they also wholly own Riot Games, League of Legends developer. Tencent has been reported to earn a staggering $900 million USD per quarter just from their gaming companies, giving them quite a considerable amount of pull in the gaming market. Tencent has also has very close ties with the Chinese government which could make some people anxious when they are investing into Reddit as there could be hidden motives we are not aware of.

Last week we heard about Ubisoft officially announcing a remastered edition of Assassin's Creed III, it's scheduled to release next month. To everyones surprise we did not see an announcement for a Nintendo Switch version, but according to Ubisoft's website there is one coming.

At the end of last month I reported on multiple European websites listing 'Assassin's Creed III Remastered' for the Nintendo Switch. Most of those listings dated that the Switch version of the game would release alongside the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The scheduled date for that release is March 29th, which coincides with the listing on Ubisofts own website.

The above image which was spotted by Twitter user @CrocOclock, showcases Assassin's Creed III Remastered for the PC, Xbox, PS4 and Switch. CrocOclock discovered this listing when logging into his Ubisoft Club account and visiting the Assassin's Creed III Remastered listing. It is unclear why Ubisoft would hold back from announcing the Switch version yet list it on their own website. Perhaps the company needs more time to bring it over to the Nintendo Switch, or maybe they are waiting for a possible Nintendo Direct that should be happening sometime in the not-so-distant future.

A new listing coming under the umbrella of Ubisoft has revealed that Watch Dogs 3 exists and is currently planned for next-gen consoles.

The news comes from Skullzi TV who found the listing last week after staying on top of new patents from Ubisoft. The listing says that a brand new trademark has been filled under the Watch Dogs IP which could suggest an entirely new spin for the franchise. The listing could also suggest that the coming Watch Dogs would be planned for next-gen consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and Next-Xbox X.

Some other information has surfaced that contributes to the existence of Watch Dogs 3. According to NerdMag, when asking the official Ubisoft "Sam" app about Watch Dogs 3 the following response is given; "Is there gonna be a Watch Dogs 3?" the app answers "Watch Dogs 3 is not finished yet, but from the last early build I tried it's very solid. The dev team works wonders! Can't wait for you to try it!" it is unclear when we will see an announcement for Watch Dogs 3, but I was to take a guess I'd say E3 this year would be our best bet.

Apex Legends has just passed another huge milestone with over 25 million registered players now enjoying the free-to-play battle royale game in its first week on the market.

Epic Games racked up over 10 million registered players in the first 72 hours of Apex Legends' release, with Respawn boss Vince Zampella saying the game had "well over" 2 million concurrent players over the weekend. The official Twitter account for Apex Legends tweeted out to some of the 'amazing creators' out there in Shroud, Dr Disrespect, and others that started the pre-hype, stream hype, and post-launch hype for the game.

Zampella wrote in a blog post celebrating the milestone: "Since we launched Apex Legends last week on Monday we've seen the creation of an Apex Legends community that is excited, thriving, and full of great feedback and ideas. Our goal is to build this game with you, our community, so keep giving us your feedback because we really are listening".

Crackdown 3 is one of the biggest releases of 2019 on the Xbox and now that more and more people are getting their mits on the game, including influencers and reviewers, we're finding out how bad the shape of the game is.

One of the largest problems is the watering down of the destruction in the game between the tease at E3 2015, which is now four years ago, versus the destruction that Crackdown 3 launches with. The destruction in Crackdown 3 is powered by Microsoft's cloud-based technology, and in 2015 it looked absolutely incredible. Finally, some true environmental destruction that betters what PC gamers enjoyed in the 90s with Red Faction.

Yeah well, just like the massive gimping that Ubisoft performed on Watch Dogs, yet another Microsoft Studios game looks to be a huge disappointment. I don't understand how Microsoft is okay with openly selling watered down games, especially when they're shown off as something that actually looks great for its time in 2015, to something that isn't just watered down with destruction but the graphics are pretty lackluster for a game that has been delayed so much, right into 2019.

Sony gives more visibility into its decision to skip E3 2019 as it plans to focus more on celebrating gaming rather than "dropping bombs."

By opting out of E3, the games-maker publicly says it wants to "experiment, innovate, and think differently about new ways to excite gamers." But looking between the lines sees Sony pushing for its own event where the PlayStation platform is front and center. This move isn't just about showcasing games or celebrating PlayStation culture, though, but a tactical business move that sets up Sony's entire year.

In a recent interview with CNET, Sony Interactive Entertainment Chairman Shawn Layden revealed the big motivator behind Sony's E3 2019 skip: setting up deals with retailers and partners earlier in the year. "Now we have an event in February called Destination PlayStation, where we bring all retailers and third-party partners to come hear the story for the year," Layden said in the interview. "They're making purchasing discussions in February. June, now, is just too late to have a Christmas holiday discussion with retailers."

Respawn's new 60-player battle royale shooter is expanding rapidly, and big plans for its future are underway.

Apex Legends is exploding right now. Not only did it amass 10 million players in 3 days, but game's strong engagement and influence helped EA stock bounce back from a recent nosedive. Thanks to its free-to-play accessibility, everyone's playing Apex Legends and EA and Respawn have outlined some ambitious plans to further capitalize on the BR game's success. Not only will the game expand with more characters, modes, maps and weapons, but it could cross-over to smartphones and even get its own esports league. There's even talk about launching it overseas to tap the $71.4 billion Asian market.

"There are going to be opportunities to take the game in different directions over time. Esports will almost certainly be part of that. Additional game modes, the impact of additional legends over time, great new content will have an impact," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in the company's recent Fiscal Q3'19 earnings call.

Nintendo's hand-held console has been rumored to be acquiring the classic purple dragon Spyro. Now, a new big retailer has listed the Switch version of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and also revealed a release date.

Back in April, we saw a listing for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy on the Nintendo Switch listed by Amazon Mexico. The Amazon leak was soon followed by a leak on from the official Nintendo UK Store who also listed the Trilogy under the title "Spyro The Dragon Remastered". Now, a new listing has surfaced and its from a much larger and what could be seen as a more reliable retailer, GameStop.

GameStop has listed the Spyro Reignited Trilogy on the German website and reveals the supposed release date for game, August 16th. Even though GameSpot may be a large game retailer, the listed date should not be taken as 100% guaranteed. As there has been no word of a Nintendo Switch release for the Reignited Trilogy from either publisher Activision or the titles developer, Toys For Bob. When more information is announced regarding a Switch port, I will be sure to update you.

It may have already been expected of Cyberpunk 2077, but it is always good to get an official confirmation from the developers. Cyberpunk 2077 won't be exclusive to the Epic Store, and this makes sense given they have their own storefront Gog.com.

Epic Games has certainly ruffled the feathers of developers and publishers that are deciding what platform to release their games on. With an 88% return to on all revenue sales for titles on the Epic Games Store, many studio's are having quite a hard time deciding whether they should skip Steam's 30% cut and join Epic. Deep Silver recently took that leap of faith with their title Metro Exodus and that caused quite a lot of division within their community, some players now even refuse to play the title due to how the decision was handled.

With that all in mind, we don't have to worry about Cyberpunk 2077's developer quickly changing platforms without any warning, as CD Projekt Red have confirmed through their Twitter account for Cyberpunk that title will not be going exclusive to the Epic Store. In the above artistic Tweet found on the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account page, a fan pleaded "Please please please don't make this game an epic store exclusive." The account simply replied to the fan "Yeaaaaaaaaah.... Pass on that."

Fortnite is making a forking lot of cash (who else loves The Good Place) for Epic Games, and especially so on iOS where according to Sensor Tower's new data that has the game pulling in over $500 million in revenue in just 326 days.

This beats the previous records of Clash Royale which took 389 days and Honor of Kings that took 405 days to reach $500 million in revenue. Apple is making a huge chunk of this, with the company taking a large 30% of the cut while Epic Games bypassed the Play Store and pulled in all of the profit on its own that when combined with the iOS revenue sees Epic with around $450 million.

US gamers accounted for 64% of the spending on iPhone and other iOS-based devices with $320 million total. Now that Apex Legends is here, Fortnite might see some competition in iOS revenue, so it'll be interesting to see how many days Apex Legends takes to reach $500 million and with its massive hype whether it'll be less than 300 days or not to break the record here with Fortnite.

Hideo Kojima is still hard at work on PlayStation exclusive 'Death Stranding' and while we've had a reveal trailer and more nuggets dropped on it, we still don't know where we stand in the world, and with the characters of the game.

Well, now someone outside of the Kojima Productions has now played the game and was blown away with Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who just so happens to be the director of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid movie, saying that the "world is next-level immaculate. It's like freebasing pure Kojima & Shinkawa. Remember when FURY ROAD blew you away but also made you (in the best-most-thankful way) ask "wtf" how does this miracle exist? YOU. ARE. NOT. READY!"

If there was a game that will have me buy a PlayStation 5 at launch it would be Death Stranding, especially given that Kojima is free of his shackles and can make anything he wants. It seems he has crafted one of the most hyped games of all time, that shouldn't be too much further away. I'm hoping Sony shows it off during their PlayStation 5 unveil event just after E3 2019. Please, please happen.

Konami is a curious company. Over the past few years the games-maker suffered a PR nightmare that's damaged its reputation in the West. But in its home country of Japan, Konami is still doing quite well for itself and just reported moderate earnings growth.

Konami's new nine-months earnings report shows Konami is far from out of the game. But despite its potential issues, Konami is still earning good money due to its vast multi-faceted business structure. In the nine-month period from April to December 2018, Konami earned 192.6 billion yen (about $1.75 billion in current JPY to USD conversions) in total net revenues across Digital Entertainment, Amusement, Gaming & Systems, and Sports segments. This represents a nice 7.8% year-over-year increase.

Konami's Digital Entertainment sector, which includes full game sales, mobile game, and card game earnings, earned 105.8 billion yen (about $963.4 million in current conversions), up a substantial 18% year-over-year. Total video game profits sit at 32.286 billion yen, or about $294 million in current conversions.

NVIDIA's big reveal of the GeForce RTX family of graphics cards happened close to 6 months ago now, and while Battlefield V was shown off in all its ray tracing glory there hasn't been any updates on a DLSS update until now.

DICE has detailed the upcoming February 12 update for Battlefield V, which will fix a bunch of issues, improve the quality of the game in more ways than one, balances and improves vehicles, and more. We even have added 4-player cooperative play with Combined Arms hitting Battlefield V in the new update. But the news here is definitely the addition of DLSS.

NVIDIA's new Deep Learning Super Sampling technology, or DLSS, will finally reach Battlefield V with the new update. DICE explains: "This update includes further optimizations to DXR ray tracing performance and introduces NVIDIA DLSS to Battlefield V, which uses deep learning to improve game performance while maintaining visual quality".

EA made a chart to explain who gets access to Anthem's demos, trials, and the full game. This trend isn't anything new, and it's probably not going to change any time soon.

EA's confusing and awkward Anthem chart went viral a bit ago, but it's actually not new information. We knew about the paygated demos and trials way back in September of last year. These kinds of staggered releases aren't anything new to the industry. EA did the same thing with Battlefield V (a move that actually backfired), and both Ubisoft and Microsoft do it with uPlay and Xbox Game Pass. So why do it at all then?

The short answer is EA is trying to add more value to its new $15 a month Origin Access Premiere subscription. The service sees all of EA's biggest new games roll out onto the on-demand subscription for no additional charge, similar to how all first-party Xbox games now also come to Game Pass upon release. But that's not enough. EA locks exclusive early access to its biggest games to Origin Access Premiere members, which of course adds another tier to its EA Play First trials available to cheaper EA Access/Origin Access subscription.

In many ways Microsoft is the most fascinating platform-holder on the market today. The company has achieved a tremendous 180 from the disastrous Xbox One 2013 days, creating an interconnected service empire that puts players, games, and recurring revenues at the heart of everything it does. It's here where Microsoft's true strengths lie, and these newly built muscles will lift its first-party slate in a unique way.

Microsoft doesn't play by the rules any more. The company re-defined its playbook to compete on a different level, one that sees Xbox shifting from a console to a service that bridges home consoles, Windows 10 PCs, and even mobiles. Connected via Xbox LIVE, gamers can now interact, play, and spend on all devices. The richly intertwined Xbox service webwork is arranged so that every part compliments one another: Mixer streaming organically feeds into game sales by sparking interest, Game Pass directly leads to full game sales on the Xbox Store as users buy the games they want to keep, and subscriptions propel more playtime with new free content and multiplayer-driven engagement. But there's one part of the pie that Microsoft has been missing: strong first-party games.

This is about to change, too. Microsoft bought up many stellar studios like Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and Playground Games to buffer its first-party slate. The games-maker is growing intensely and investing strongly into new IPs and games development in an effort to deliver stronger and more diverse first-party content. But rather than rely solely on full game sales digitally and in-store, Microsoft's first-party games are neatly folded into is successful subscriptions and provide a dual opportunity for revenues.

Strong sales and monetized engagement pushes Microsoft's gaming earnings up to $4 billion during the holiday quarter.

Holiday shopping sprees typically spike any games maker's earnings. These periods are big opportunities for mass sales and adoption, and Microsoft saw an influx of new users into its unique cross-platform ecosystem during the holidays. The tech titan earned $4.232 billion from gaming during its Fiscal Q2'19 quarter (October - December 2018), representing a healthy 8% year-over-year rise.

These earnings were primarily driven by software like full game sales both in-store and on Xbox LIVE, as well as tremendous growth in online subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass and Xbox LIVE Gold. Microsoft recorded a big 31% jump in software and service revenues, but of course it didn't reveal specifics on the actual numbers. The software growth was primarily driven by a single third-party game (likely Red Dead Redemption 2, which has sold 23 million copies), Microsoft's Amy Hood notes, showing first-party games are still in the backseat on Xbox platforms.

Xbox LIVE active users have jumped past 60 million thanks to strong holiday sales, subscriptions, and engagement strategies, Microsoft confirms in its latest Q2'19 earnings report.

Xbox LIVE adoption has been relatively flat throughout the last few quarters, but subscribers and active users have spiked thanks to a successful holiday season. Microsoft saw 64 million monthly active users on Xbox LIVE in the three-month FYQ3'19 quarter, up about 8.5% year-over-year and nearly 13% quarter-over-quarter. It's worth noting that Xbox LIVE bridges multiple devices and these numbers reflect platforms like Xbox consoles, Windows 10 PCs, and mobiles. This is all according to plan as Xbox LIVE now serves as the connective tissue between various hardware platforms.

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