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February 16th, 2021, 23:49 Posted By: wraggster
The man in line to take over Amazon later this year still believes the company can make a hit video game, despite several failed attempts.
Bloomberg has shared details of an email from Andy Jassy to Amazon staff, expressing support for the internal games development team and further committing to its efforts.
Jassy is currently head of Amazon's cloud computing division, but it was announced yesterday that he will take over as CEO of Amazon when founder Jeff Bezos steps down in the third quarter of this year.
His email followed in the wake of a Bloomberg report about the troubles experiences by Amazon Game Studios, a division that reportedly costs the internet giant nearly $500 million per year to operate.
The studio has made three attempts to launch a hit video game.
Fantasy sports game Breakaway was abandoned before it reach beta testing, hero-based shooter Crucible was shut down just five months after launch, and MMORPG New World was delayed out of 2020 and is due to launch this spring.
The company has reportedly also experienced issues with its proprietary game engine Lumberyard.
Undeterred, Jassy wrote: "Some businesses take off in the first year, and others take many years. Though we haven't consistently succeeded yet in AGS, I believe we will if we hang in there."
Next CEO believes Amazon can succeed in games "if we hang in there" | GamesIndustry.biz
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February 16th, 2021, 23:41 Posted By: wraggster
Another week, another triumph for Nintendo in the UK boxed charts.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is No.1 once again, for the fourth time this year, despite a 13% drop in sales. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe stays at No.2 for the second consecutive week, with a 1% slip in sales.
It was very nearly a Nintendo top three, but Ring Fit Adventure missed out on third spot by just 52 units. The fitness game's sales rose 34% week-on-week, but couldn't quite topple Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which held on despite an 8% sales drop.
The only significant new boxed game to come out this year (so far) is Hitman 3, and that game is now down at No.17 with a 54% slide in sales week-on-week.
Animal Crossing continues to dominate UK retail | UK Boxed Charts | GamesIndustry.biz
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February 16th, 2021, 23:40 Posted By: wraggster
The remake of 2003's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has been pushed back once again.
The release has been pushed to "a later date" without clarifying what that might mean. Ubisoft announced the decision on Twitter, saying the delay will enable its teams to "deliver a remake that feels fresh while remaining faithful to the original."
"Since announcing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake in September, we saw an outpouring of feedback from you on his beloved franchise," Ubisoft added. "It is your passion and support that is driving our development teams to make the best game possible."
Ubisoft's Prince of Persia remake postponed indefinitely | GamesIndustry.biz
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February 16th, 2021, 23:38 Posted By: wraggster
211.9 million games were sold across UK & Ireland, mainland Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2020, according to sales tracker GSD.
GSD tracks games sold in boxes across multiple territories, and also counts digital download sales from most major games publishers (see the bottom of this article for full details).
We have already done a specific analysis of the UK market, so for this analysis we will focus on all European markets where GSD tracks both boxed games and digital games, excluding the UK. These will include Benelux, France, GSA (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), Iberia, Nordics and Poland.
For these markets, 123.7 million games were sold, which is a 19% jump over 2019. 58.7 million of those games were downloaded, which is a rise of 47% over the year before. Despite lockdown restrictions causing High Street stores to close, 65 million boxed games were sold across the various markets, which is a rise of 0.8%.
In order to get a more accurate reading of the market share between boxed and digital, we have to remove countries that do not count both boxed and digital sales. We also have to subtract companies like Nintendo, Bethesda and CD Projekt, who do not share digital numbers with GSD. After doing that, we can see that 59% of games sold by tracked publishers were downloaded, with the remainder coming via physical sales. In 2019, less than 48% of sales were digital.
Digital downloads jumped 47% across Europe in 2020 | European Annual Report | GamesIndustry.biz
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February 16th, 2021, 23:04 Posted By: wraggster
Ubisoft's biggest lineup of new releases has produced its biggest quarter ever. The publisher today reported its financial results for the holiday quarter, prompting CEO Yves Guillemot to call it "the strongest quarter in Ubisoft history by far."
For the third fiscal quarter (the three months ended December 31), Ubisoft reported net bookings of just over €1 billion ($1.21 billion), up 120% year-over-year thanks to a packed slate featuring the cross-generation debuts of Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and Just Dance 2021.
Last year's third quarter was headlined by the release of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and Just Dance 2020.
Valhalla was said to be the biggest launch in franchise history, not in unit sales -- that still belongs to Assassin's Creed 3 with 12 million sold in its first few months -- but in terms of overall bookings and engagement. Just Dance also enjoyed a strong quarter, with Just Dance 2021 becoming the series' best-selling entry in six years, while even back-catalog sales in the franchise saw "a more than 200% surge."
In a post-earnings call, Guillemot said he was "very happy" with the launch of the "family-oriented" Immortals and said it would have long legs. For Watch Dogs: Legion, Ubisoft was pleased with the reception from players and critics and saw an increase in engagement compared to Watch Dogs 2, but did not comment on how it actually sold.
The raft of new releases likely shifted the company's digital-physical mix, as 59% of net bookings in the quarter were digital, compared to 77% in the same stretch of 2019.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla leads Ubisoft's biggest quarter ever | GamesIndustry.biz
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February 16th, 2021, 22:21 Posted By: wraggster
Americans spent more on games to start 2021 than in any previous January, according to the industry tracking NPD Group.
NPD today reported that US consumers combined to spend $4.71 billion on games last month, up 42% year-over-year.
Hardware had the largest relative gains, up 144% year-over-year to $319 million thanks to the launch of new consoles and the continued strength of the Nintendo Switch.
The Switch was the best-selling console in terms of systems sold last month, but the pricier PlayStation 5 took the top spot when looking at the dollar sales total.
The Switch's unit sales were the highest seen in January since the Wii in 2010, while the PS5's dollar total was the largest since the Wii in 2009.
Spending on game content across console, mobile, PC, cloud, and subscription services was up 36% to $4.17 billion.
The full game sales charts saw little movement, with no new releases cracking the top 20 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War retaining the top spot for the third straight month.
Despite only launching in November, Black Ops Cold War is already the 20th best-selling game in terms of lifetime dollar sales since the NPD began tracking the numbers in 1995.
US game spending up 42% in January, says NPD | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 25th, 2021, 22:28 Posted By: wraggster
This week New York Magazine featured a new article by journalist David Wallace-Wells about the state of the fight against global warming.
He warns that "Already, the planet is warmer, at just 1.2 degrees, than it has ever been..." But there's also some good news:Just a half-decade ago, it was widely believed that a "business as usual" emissions path would bring the planet four or five degrees of warming — enough to make large parts of Earth effectively uninhabitable. Now, thanks to the rapid death of coal, the revolution in the price of renewable energy, and a global climate politics forged by a generational awakening, the expectation is for about three degrees. Recent pledges could bring us closer to two. All of these projections sketch a hazardous and unequal future, and all are clouded with uncertainties — about the climate system, about technology, about the dexterity and intensity of human response, about how inequitably the most punishing impacts will be distributed. Yet if each half-degree of warming marks an entirely different level of suffering, we appear to have shaved a few of them off our likeliest end stage in not much time at all.
The next half-degrees will be harder to shave off, and the most crucial increment — getting from two degrees to 1.5 — perhaps impossible, dashing the dream of avoiding what was long described as "catastrophic" change. But for a climate alarmist like me, seeing clearly the state of the planet's future now requires a conspicuous kind of double vision, in which a guarded optimism seems perhaps as reasonable as panic. Given how long we've waited to move, what counts now as a best-case outcome remains grim. It also appears, miraculously, within reach....
The price of solar energy has fallen ninefold over the past decade, as has the price of lithium batteries, critical to the growth of electric cars. The costs of utility-scale batteries, which could solve the "intermittency" (i.e., cloudy day) problem of renewables and help power whole cities in relatively short order, have fallen 70 percent since just 2015. Wind power is 40 percent cheaper than it was a decade ago, with offshore wind experiencing an even steeper decline. Overall, renewable energy is less expensive than dirty energy almost everywhere on the planet, and in many places it is simply cheaper to build new renewable capacity than to continue running the old fossil-fuel infrastructure. Oil demand and carbon emissions may both have peaked this year. Eighty percent of coal plants planned in Asia's developing countries have been shelved... [I]n the fall, the U.K. pledged to ban nonelectrics by 2030 — a once-unthinkable law coming both too slow and much more quickly than seemed possible not very long ago. Similar plans are now in place in 16 other countries, plus Massachusetts and California. Canada recently raised its tax on carbon sixfold. Italy cut its power-sector emissions 65 percent between 2012 and 2019, and Denmark is now aiming to reduce its overall emissions 70 percent by 2030...
[F]or all their momentum, renewables still only make up 10 percent of global electricity production. But alarmists have to take the good news where they find it....
The author also spoke to Pulitzer Prize-winner environmentalist author Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book Under a White Sky:In her book, Kolbert sketches a spectrum of interventions, from electrifying rivers to using CRISPR to save endangered species to solar geoengineering, often called "solar-radiation management," by which aerosol particles are suspended in the stratosphere to deflect some sunlight back into outer space and artificially cool the planet. "There is a slippery slope here, you know?" she says. "And where does that end?
"But there are not a lot of great choices. We're not returning to a preindustrial climate — not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime."
https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/0...global-warming
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January 25th, 2021, 22:21 Posted By: wraggster
Video games projects raised $23 million on Kickstarter in 2020, the highest total since 2015 and a 35% increase year-on-year.
Interestingly, the number of crowdfunding campaigns for video games published on the platform was lower than in 2019 though, with a total of 1,331 compared to 1,403 the year before, according to the 2020 retrospective put together by Ico Partners.
Out of those 1331 projects, 408 met their goals and were funded, the highest number since 2014. The majority of the projects had a funding target of under $50,000 (see graph below), and only six raised over $500,000.
Among these were Kindred Fates, Sea of Stars, and My Time at Sandrock. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes raised over $3 million, making it the most successful video games campaign of the year, followed by The Wonderful 101: Remastered and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which both raised over $2 million.
Games projects raised $23m on Kickstarter in 2020 | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 24th, 2021, 22:44 Posted By: wraggster
Hitman 3 has taken No.1 in the UK boxed charts, with launch sales up 17% over its predecessor.
Developed and owned by IO Interactive, Hitman 3's boxed release was handled by Square Enix, the company that previously owned the franchise before letting it go. The last game, 2018's Hitman 2, was published by Warner Bros.
The PS5 version of the game was by far the dominant edition, accounting for 49% of sales. The Xbox version accounted for 27%, while the PS4 version made up 25%. Of course, this is just physical games, the majority of Hitman 3's sales will have taken place in the digital download space.
Hitman's chart-topping debut means that Animal Crossing: New Horizons drops to No.2, although only 800 games separates the two titles. Animal Crossing's sales dropped 8% week-on-week.
Hitman 3 surpasses its predecessor to claim No.1 | UK Boxed Charts | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 21st, 2021, 22:44 Posted By: wraggster
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, taking office at a moment of profound economic, health and political crises with a promise to seek unity after a tumultuous four years that tore at the fabric of American society. New York Times:With his hand on a five-inch-thick Bible that has been in his family for 128 years, Mr. Biden recited the 35-word oath of office swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" in a ceremony administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., completing the process at 11:49 a.m., 11 minutes before the authority of the presidency formally changes hands.
The ritual transfer of power came shortly after Kamala Devi Harris was sworn in as vice president by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, her hand on a Bible that once belonged to Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights icon and Supreme Court justice. Ms. Harris's ascension made her the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States and the first Black American and first person of South Asian descent to hold the nation's second highest office. The ceremony on a chilly, breezy day with a smattering of snowflakes brought to a close the stormy and divisive four-year presidency of Donald J. Trump. In characteristic fashion, Mr. Trump once again defied tradition by leaving Washington hours before the swearing in of his successor rather than face the reality of his own election defeat, although Mike Pence, his vice president, did attend.President Biden's speech:This is America's day. This is democracy's day. Few people in our nation's history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we're in now. To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/0...46th-president
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January 21st, 2021, 22:27 Posted By: wraggster
Twitch has not only extended its ban on Donald Trump's channel indefinitely, it is also revising its policies following the attack on the US Capitol.
The streaming site confirmed the permanent ban in a statement to IGN, going on to say that the events have prompted a reconsideration of its stance against hateful conduct, harassment and incitement of violence.
Trump's channel was suspended earlier this month after a mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol, leading to the deaths of four people.
"The President's statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public," the statement reads.
"Twitch has clear rules that prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, or incitement of violence on our service, and we consider off-service events when making enforcement decisions.
"However, the events of the past weeks have highlighted a gap with respect to rhetoric that encourages violence, regardless of whether or not it was directly streamed on Twitch. We will be updating our policies as a result of our consideration of this situation."
Twitch permanently bans Trump, will update policy after Capitol siege | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 21st, 2021, 22:23 Posted By: wraggster
FIFA 21 was the best-selling physical game across the vast majority of Europe, according to a new report from GfK Entertainment.
The evaluation is based on physical games sales across Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
According to the report, FIFA 21 was the biggest selling game of last year in 16 of the 19 countries surveyed, including the UK, Spain, Germany and Italy.
The only exceptions were: Russia, where The Last of Us: Part 2 reigned supreme; Finland, where Minecraft took the top spot; and France, where Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the biggest hit.
FIFA 21 continues the series' success, after FIFA dominated European retail in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Of more interest was Nintendo's performance, which held both the second and third best-selling games in Europe last year -- Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, respectively.
Animal Crossing's success is perhaps no surprise given how well it has performed since launching in March 2020. The game reached the top three in almost half of the countries featured.
However, despite being released as far back as April 2017, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continues to be a huge seller at retail, taking a top three position in seven regions.
It wasn't the only long-running title in the upper echelons of GfK's ranking
FIFA 21 was Europe's best-selling boxed game in 2020 | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 18th, 2021, 23:30 Posted By: wraggster
As Bethesda works on an Indiana Jones game, Ubisoft, too, is currently developing a game based on another Disney franchise. The team behind Ubisoft’s The Division series is working on a Star Wars game, a notable change of hands from EA, who has handled the IP exclusively since 2012. Wired exclusively reports Massive Entertainment has entered a contract with Lucasfilm Games, and while little information was given on the project, it is very early on in development, and is set to be an open world game.
Ubisoft is reportedly working on an open world Star Wars game | GBAtemp.net - The Independent Video Game Community
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January 18th, 2021, 22:59 Posted By: wraggster
In an interview with StarWars.com, VP of Lucasfilm Games' Douglas Reilly clarified that EA will also continue to work on Star Wars titles going forward, with several projects currently in the works.
"We're really proud of the games we have created with EA," he said. "We will continue working with them and our relationship has never been stronger. While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment, we've got a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA."
Lucasfilm and Ubisoft partner on Star Wars game | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 18th, 2021, 22:51 Posted By: wraggster
Sales of video games in Australia surged 35% during the pandemic year.
15.8 million boxed and digital video games were sold in the market during 2020. That is according to GSD, which tracks boxed game sales plus digital game sales from most major games publishers (Nintendo and Bethesda are the notable absentees, see the bottom fo the article for the full list of participating companies).
Unlike other markets, the dominant sector was the boxed games business, which accounted for 8.5 million games sold. That is actually a rise of 15% over the year before. However, the download market is accelerating faster, with 7.3 million games sold via Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and Nintendo Eshop, which is a rise of 68% over 2019.
Of course, the comparisons are not like-for-like, with a few publishers -- particularly Nintendo -- currently not supporting the digital charts project. Therefore, to get a better understanding of the digital transition, we need to discount those companies from the data. By doing this, we can see that 58% of sales from tracked games publishers came via download stores, which is a significant changed from 2019, when the majority of games (55%) were sold in boxes.
Nintendo and GTA 5 come top in big year for Australia game sales | Australia Annual Report | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 18th, 2021, 22:46 Posted By: wraggster
US games sales gained new heights in 2020, with total spending reaching $56.9 billion. That's a 27% increase year-on-year, according to tracking firm NPD's latest report.
Software represented the vast majority (86%) of this figure, with game content spending reaching $48.9 billion in 2020. That included physical and digital games, DLC, and subscription across console, cloud, mobile, portable, PC and VR platforms. Software sales were up 26% compared to 2019.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the best-selling game of 2020, followed by another CoD title, Modern Warfare. It's the 12th year in a row that the Call of Duty franchise is at the top of the annual US charts -- a record. Animal Crossing: New Horizons made it to No.3 for 2020.
"In 2020, [Animal Crossing: New Horizons] achieved the highest physical dollar sales for a Nintendo-published game in a calendar year since Wii Fit Plus in 2010," said NPD's VG industry analyst, Mat Piscatella.
2020 sees record US games spending at $56.9bn | US Annual Report | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 18th, 2021, 22:40 Posted By: wraggster
Animal Crossing: New Horizons secures its third consecutive No.1 in the UK boxed charts.
The Nintendo Switch exclusive secures its place at the summit despite a 24% drop in sale week-on-week. It's yet another week where Switch dominated the boxed games business in the UK, with Mario Kart 8: Deluxe at No.2 (sales down 23%), Super Mario 3D All Stars at No.8 (sales down 3%), New Super Mario Bros U at No.9 (sales down 15%), and Ring Fit Adventure at No.10 (down 37%). There are 10 Switch games in the Top 20 best-selling games.
Ubisoft's Just Dance 2021 holds No.3 despite a 29% sales drop. This week 87% of the game's sales were on Nintendo Switch.
Switch is proving to be the savior for UK boxed retailers. For the first two weeks of 2021, game sales are up 27.4% compared with the same period last year, and this is almost entirely down to games for Nintendo Switch (overall, Switch game sales are up 120% year-to-date). PlayStation game sales are also up slightly if we combine PS4 and PS5 game sales together.
Nintendo continues to prop up UK games retail | UK Boxed Charts | GamesIndustry.biz
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January 11th, 2021, 18:10 Posted By: wraggster
The first week in January is a notoriously quiet one for boxed video game sales. It's rare we will see a release of any kind during this window, and of course most gamers will still be busy with their Christmas presents.
Yet the isn't any normal start to the year, with the UK heading into another full lockdown to try and curb the spread of coronavirus. This may explain why over 260,000 boxed games were sold in the UK last week, which is a third more than what was achieved during the same week this time last year.
The main driver of the growth was Nintendo Switch, with games for the console dominating the boxed charts last week. In fact, Switch game sales are up over 123% compared with the same week in 2020. Animal Crossing: New Horizons holds onto the top spot, despite sales dropping 47% (it's worth noting that sales drops during the first week of the year are entirely normal), followed by Mario Kart 8: Deluxe at No.2 (sales down 43%). At No.3 it is Just Dance 2021, which rises two places despite a 24% sales slide. Just Dance 2021 is available across all platforms, of course, yet almost 90% of the game's sales so far have been on Nintendo Switch (physical sales only, digital sales are not included).
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...k-boxed-charts
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