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November 18th, 2020, 22:14 Posted By: wraggster
Whenever new consoles are announced, it's all too easy to get swept up in the excitement for the higher-end games that push cutting-edge hardware to their limits, delivering visuals and experiences not possible with previous machines.
But it's important to consider the implications for smaller independent developers, whose role in the success of PlayStation and Xbox has changed over the past two generations.
During the Xbox 360 generation, Microsoft was heralded as the champion for indies with its Xbox Live Arcade, enabling developers to sell shorter and cheaper experiences directly to consumers in a way that retail -- the then-dominant distribution channel -- never allowed for such titles. As Microsoft's attention waned, Sony and its Strategic Content team picked up the baton, bringing acclaimed indie titles such as Hotline Miami to PS3 and Vita, and giving them pride of place as PS4 approached.
Over the course of the past generation, this has again shifted back toward Microsoft with its ID@Xbox initiative, although indies continued to fare well on both PS4 and Xbox One as digital distribution has matured. And with Microsoft pushing the number of indie titles available through Xbox Game Pass, plus the handful that launched on day one for Xbox Series X|S last week, the company seems keen to be seen as the champion for indies -- at least for the time being.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...benefit-indies
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November 16th, 2020, 17:22 Posted By: wraggster
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the best-selling UK boxed game in one of the biggest release weeks in video games history.
It did remarkably well, so well that it kept Call of Duty from making No.1 during its debut week for the first time in 13 years.
It's a surprise result, even with the Ubisoft viking game being on sale for a few days longer than Call of Duty (it was released on November 10th, while Call of Duty arrived November 13th). However, it is a very different games market this year due to COVID-19, with the majority of AAA Xbox and PlayStation game sales taking place digitally. As a result, we cannot say if Assassin's Creed was the biggest selling game of the week, only that it was the biggest selling boxed game.
In fact, a statement from Activision Blizzard's EMEAA MD Anna Malmhake said that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War "set a new record as the highest first day digital sales worldwide in franchise history". We will see how the game performed digitally in the UK later in the week, but expect good numbers.
In terms of physical sales, Assassin's Creed Valhalla had a massive week, with launch sales more than double that of its predecessor -- Assassin's Creed Odyssey. 42% of the game's sales came on PS4, and 18% came on PS5, despite the latter machine not coming out in the UK until next week. The rest of the sales (40%) came with the Xbox version. The game was marketed alongside the new games consoles released this week, the Xbox Series X and S. However, Ubisoft sold just one 'Xbox' SKU to cover all platforms -- including Xbox One -- which means it's impossible to know exactly which Xbox platform the game was bought for.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War fared less well as a boxed release, with launch sales down more than 64% compared with last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. We'll know the full picture of the game's performance once the digital sales are in, but it's also worth noting the impact of Call of Duty: Warzone -- the hugely successful free-to-play game released in March this year.
39% of Call of Duty's sales came on PS4, 34% was for the Xbox One version, 17% for the PS5 SKU and 9% for the Xbox Series-only version.
Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty and the launch of two Xbox consoles would have made for a massive release week on their own, but Sony also made available its PS5 games to customers this week (ahead of next week's launch), and those games also performed strongly in the charts.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...k-boxed-charts
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November 16th, 2020, 17:21 Posted By: wraggster
A studio by the University of Oxford has shown that there is a "small positive relation" between the amount of time people spend playing video games and their mental well-being.
The study was based on a survey of over 6,500 players, of which over 3,000 agree to share telemetry data based on their play time.
The project centred around players' experiences with Electronic Arts and Nintendo, and was based in part on data drawn directly from the two games companies -- something the researchers note is a rarity in such studies.
Participants' play time in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville over two-week periods in August and September. The vast majority of responses came from Animal Crossing, representing over 6,000 survey responses and 2,700 data sets.
Nintendo shared data on number of play sessions and their length, while EA shared this as well as deeper data on Plants vs Zombies, such as players' kill to death ratio, how much damage they dealt, and which game modes their played.
All data was anonymous, containing no personally identifiable information. The data was matched to surveys conducted after each session, where players would agree or disagree with statements such as "I felt competent at PvZ" or "I experienced a lot of freedom in Animal Crossing."
The results showed that participants who played for longer were more likely to express positive feelings about both the game and their mental well-being in generation.
"Contrary to many fears that excessive game time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between gameplay and well-being," the study reads.
It later adds: "Overall, our findings suggest that regulating video games, on the basis of time, might not bring the benefits many might expect, though the correlational nature of the data limits that conclusion."
The limitation in this case is that players can overestimated their play time by as much as two hours when surveyed, causing a mismatch with the telemetry data taken.
The study also notes there might be a self-selection effect, in that people who feel good might be more inclined to play games.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-mental-health
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November 14th, 2020, 09:25 Posted By: wraggster
In the month before the new console generation, games hardware and accessories spending nonetheless saw new records set in the US.
Total games spending for October reached $3.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year, according to The NPD Group. This was largely driven by growth in the aforementioned hardware and accessories, as well as mobile and subscription services.
Hardware specifically saw 41% year-over-year growth to $259 million thanks to Nintendo Switch sales, which not only were the second-best October unit sales for a console in the US, they also set a new dollar sales record for the month, surpassing the previous record set by the Wii in 2008.
(This is because while the Wii still holds the unit sales record, it cost $50 less than the Switch, thus bringing in less revenue despite selling around 70,000 units more in the same month).
Accessories spending set an October record overall, up 23% year-over-year to $148 million, with gamepad spending alone also achieving a new record for the month.
And in software, overall sales reached $3.43 billion, up 12% year-over-year, with FIFA 21 topping the charts in its launch month as the first time a FIFA franchise release reached No.1 in the US.
Watch Dogs: Legion debuted at No.3 under Madden NFL 21, despite only launching three days before the end of tracking for the month. It was followed by NHL 21 at No.4, which saw the highest launch month sales for an NHL game since NHL 16 in 2015.
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit debuted at No.5 and was the best-selling game on Nintendo platforms. Overall, nine of the top 20 games for the month were
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November 11th, 2020, 20:10 Posted By: wraggster
Last month was a big month for console digital revenue, as multiple new major releases shuffled the top earners on the platform.
According to SuperData's monthly report, digital games brought in a total of $10.7 billion in revenue for September, up 14% year-over-year.
This was driven by increases across all platforms: mobile was up 9%, PC by 8%, and console by 40% thanks to releases such as NBA 2K21, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, Marvel's Avengers, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars -- which incidentally were the top four earners (in order) on consoles.
NBA 2K21 sold a total of 1.9 million digital units and was the top-earning title overall for the month across all platforms, with sales up 19% over NBA 2K20's launch last year.
At No.2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 sold 2.8 million digital units.
Avengers sold 2.2 million units last month, marking the second-biggest digital launch for a Square Enix title, behind Final Fantasy 7: Remake and roughly matching launch month digital sales from Marvel's Spider-Man.
And Super Mario 3D All-Stars sold 1.8 million digital units, marking the biggest digital launch for a Mario title on Switch -- meaning it surpassed Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Maker 2, and Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...f-big-releases
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November 11th, 2020, 19:50 Posted By: wraggster
2020 is already a record year for gaming investments, with $5.2 billion in investment in Q3 bringing the year's total to $9.9 billion with one quarter to go.
According to DDM's Games Investment Review, this breaks the previous record set in 2017, when investment reached nearly $8 billion.
Q3 investment alone was higher than investment for the entire first half of the year, and the total number of deals that took place during the first three quarters of the year is up 50% YOY from the same period last year.
In total, Q3 saw over 110 investments that reached $5.2 billion total, led by investments in esports and mobile. Other categories tracked, in order of total investment, were Tech/Other, Console/PC, and AR/VR.
Investment in Q3 was primarily driven by IPOs, which totaled $2.1 billion and accounted for 41% of the total investment.
In total, there were four IPOs in Q3, bringing the total for the year to six IPOs. The largest was Unity's $1.3 billion IPO, but Corsair, Kakao Games, and Archosaur Games/Zulong Entertainment also participated.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...mes-investment
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November 11th, 2020, 19:32 Posted By: wraggster
Amazon has devised a potential solution to toxic players spoiling multiplayer games for others -- by making them only play against each other.
A new patent filing, spotted by Protocol, details Amazon Technologies' proposal for a system that allows "behaviour-aware player selection for multiplayer electronic games."
The filing was originally made in December 2017 but seems to have been approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office last month.
The patent filing notes that traditional matchmaking systems often focus on grouping players based on skill level, but suggests there are other considerations to take into account.
"While players may enjoy competing with others of a similar skill level, such systems naively assume that skill is the primary or only factor to players' enjoyment," it reads.
"Contrary to this assumption, players' enjoyment may depend heavily based on behaviours of other users with which they are paired, such as the proclivity of other players to use profanity or engage in other undesirable behaviours.
"Players who engage in such behaviours may be labelled as 'toxic' by other players. One mechanism for dealing with such players is to isolate all 'toxic' players into a separate player pool, such that one toxic player is paired only with other toxic players."
The filing acknowledges that it is difficult to come up with a clear definition of 'toxic,' and that classifying players as only 'toxic' or 'non-toxic' ignores other important differences in player preferences.
For example, some players may be comfortable with bad language but consider quitting prematurely as 'toxic,' while others may be comfortable with opponents quitting but view the profanity as 'toxic.'
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ogether-online
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November 11th, 2020, 17:27 Posted By: wraggster
Watch Dogs: Legion was the most downloaded game in the UK last week, knocking FIFA 21 down to No.2.
The Ubisoft open world game sold comfortably more digitally than it did physically. Earlier in the week, we revealed Watch Dogs: Legion couldn't topple FIFA 21 in terms of physical unit sales, yet if we combine the two the game narrowly overtook FIFA to claim the top spot overall.
Also new in the charts this week is Supermassive Games' latest in The Dark Pictures series - Little Hope. The game reached No.4, and was significantly bigger as a download than it was a physical release. In the GfK boxed charts, the game debuted at No.9.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...digital-charts
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November 11th, 2020, 17:23 Posted By: wraggster
2020 has been a difficult year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has been especially true for smaller charities, such as Everyone Can.
Formerly known as the Aidis Trust, Everyone Can is a national charity that helps disabled people through the use of assistive technology. The charity offers services across the UK, such as one-on-one assessments, which help disabled individuals "control their home environment, communicate, and live their lives with as much ease and independence as possible."
"We help disabled people to break down barriers through training and assistive technology," says Nikki Jones, fundraising officer for Everyone Can. "Things like communicating -- some disabled people can't do that. They don't have the luxury of being able to talk, turning on the lights in their house, using a PC, using a mobile phone... Anything that their disability holds them back from, we look at ways that technology can help them."
Although Everyone Can has been around since 1975 -- its first assessment was for a typewriter -- over the last two years it has started putting more of an emphasis on assisting disabled gamers, after recognizing a growing demand for the service. According to the Family Resources Survey 2018/2019, there are 14.1 million disabled people living in the UK -- that's more than one in five. Many of these individuals would like to play video games, but often lack the equipment or adaptive technology to do so. This is where Everyone Can step in.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-to-play-games
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November 11th, 2020, 17:17 Posted By: wraggster
FIFA 21 was unsurprisingly the biggest game across Europe, Middle East, parts of Asia and Africa during October, according to the latest GSD charts.
The football game was comfortably the biggest selling title of the month. Digital and physical FIFA sales are down about 9.4% for the first four weeks compared with last year's FIFA 20, however, it's worth noting that this is a console transition year, with an updated version of the game set for December.
No.2 belonged to another EA game in the form of Star Wars: Squadrons, which narrowly beat out Activision's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, which had to settle for third spot.
Despite launching right at the end of the month, the fourth biggest selling game of October across the regions was Watch Dogs: Legion from Ubisoft.
The next highest charting new game is Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit at No.18. The Nintendo Switch game was only available in a box as it requires a remote control kart to play. Meanwhile, the new Dark Pictures game, Little Hope, just misses out on the Top 20 at No.22. The game was released right at the end of the month in time for Halloween.
September's No.1 game, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, drops down to No.7. Meanwhile, Company of Heroes 2 re-enters the charts at No.8. The strategy game was part of a Sega promotion during October to celebrate the publisher's 60th anniversary.
In terms of games hardware, just under 750,000 games consoles were sold across the EMEAA region. That is a drop on the 795,000 consoles sold during October 2019, although that's due to a significant drop in performance for PS4 and Xbox One - which is to be expected with the launch of PS5 and Xbox Series S/X in November.
Unsurprisingly, Nintendo Switch remains the dominant platform by quite some margin. Switch console sales are up by almost 77% in October 2020 compared with the same period last year.
Elsewhere, over 4.3 million accessories, points cards and toys-to-life products were sold across EMEAA during October, driven heavily by PlayStation Store wallet cards (followed by Xbox Live Gift Cards). The highest charting accessory was the DualShock 4 controller for PS4 at No.3.
The performance is a slight drop on the 4.5 million accessories, points cards and toys-to-life products sold in October 2019. But again, we should expect to see some drops in these areas ahead of the launch of new consoles.
In terms of just accessories (so headsets, controllers and cases), sales are actually up slightly, from 2.1 million in October 2019 to 2.2 million last month.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...r-emeaa-charts
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November 11th, 2020, 17:15 Posted By: wraggster
US consumers spent more on video games in this year's third quarter than in any other July-to-September stretch in history, according to the NPD Group.
The NPD Group today announced the finding of its quarterly market dynamics report, saying the $11.2 billion Americans spent on games represented a 24% jump over the previous year's total.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...on-games-in-q3
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August 23rd, 2020, 21:27 Posted By: wraggster
The UK National Videogame Museum is reopening on August 22, 2020 after having been closed since March due to COVID-19.
The reopening comes alongside a number of new safety precautions being mandated by the museum, including pre-bookings, limited visiting slots, face mask requirements, sanitization procedures, and more.
Earlier this year as COVID-19 lockdowns began to take effect, there were concerns that the museum would be forced to close permanently due to a lack of funds.
However, a fundraiser for the museum raised over £200,000 to support the institution, well over the £80,000 fundraising goal.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...s-this-weekend
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August 23rd, 2020, 21:23 Posted By: wraggster
It's hardly an original observation, but 2020 has been one hell of a year. It stands to reason that one of the more catchy coinages has been the term "doomscrolling" -- the act of opening Twitter first thing in the morning and scrolling down to find out what fresh hell has unfolded while you slept, even though you know for certain that it's going to put you in a bad mood before you've even had your first mouthful of coffee.
For the games industry, too, it's felt like brand new reasons to drink heavily have been coming thick and fast. Even cushioned by some great sales numbers thanks to a global population suddenly finding itself with a lot of indoor leisure time to fill, we've still faced a year in which the industry has been forced to rapidly adapt to remote working (with very mixed success), rocked by a host of scandals over inappropriate behaviour and sexual harassment, witnessed an ongoing spat over digital distribution revenues that's become increasingly bitter, angry and cynical, seen its growth in markets like China threatened by geopolitical sabre-rattling and attacks on democracy, and now faces a major demand-led recession just in time for two new console launches -- for at least one of which headline software titles have been delayed into next year."It's been a year of upheaval -- and upheaval almost always creates opportunities for someone"
What I'm saying is that there hasn't been a whole lot of good news to write about. There have been some fantastic games released, of course, and a handful of important success stories, but for the most part, almost every good story has had a caveat, and few of the clouds have had much of a silver lining.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...clouds-opinion
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August 23rd, 2020, 21:22 Posted By: wraggster
Another quiet week for UK games retail means that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has taken the No.1 spot despite a 2% drop in sales week-on-week.
Few games tend to launch during the Summer months, and this week there's only one new game in the charts in the form of PGA Tour 2K21, which debuts at No.2. It marks a rare appearance of a golf game in the UK Top 40.
That means the other niche sports game in the Top Ten, UFC 4, falls two place to No.3 after a 38% drop in sales week-on-week. The EA game topped this physical retail chart last week.
Otherwise, it's a pretty standard weekly chart. One notable difference is that price activity on PS4 exclusives has seen a spike in sales for those games including Spider-Man at No.7 (up 75% week-on-week), Days Gone at No.13 (up 162%) and God of War at No.24 (up 60%).
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-lands-at-no-2
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August 18th, 2020, 22:18 Posted By: wraggster
As a wise and very bald man will eventually say, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
I've written several times this year about how the most remarkable feature of the run-up to this year's next-gen console launches is how adeptly both Sony and Microsoft are handling everything. No balls have been dropped, no feet firmly wedged into mouths, no vainglorious statements made that will come back to haunt everyone involved. Nobody's tried, inexplicably, to turn their console into a glorified viewing device for live TV, or claimed that it's a miracle wonderbox that consumers will gladly get second jobs to afford.
The future visions articulated for Xbox and PlayStation are quite divergent, but each of them has thus far been outlined adroitly and sensibly. Yet even though both companies are deftly navigating around the pitfalls of a pre-launch year, it's hard to escape the sense that the cards are increasingly stacked against them, and successful launches of the scale they would naturally desire may now be impossible. Put bluntly, 2020 might be shaping up to be the worst year imaginable in which to launch a new console -- let alone two of them.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...unches-opinion
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August 18th, 2020, 22:17 Posted By: wraggster
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronic Arts, asserting that the Ultimate Team mode in its sports games breaks gambling law.
The lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District of California, and specifically cites the state's gambling laws as proof that games such as FIFA and Madden should be governed by them.
The plaintiff is one Kevin Ramirez, who represents a proposed class of more than 100 other individuals, according to court documents seen by VGC.
He is calling for a jury trial and damages of $5 million.
The case claims EA "relies on creating addictive behaviours in consumers to generate huge revenues."
Ramirez himself assets Ultimate Team compelled him to spend money, having spent more than $600 in both FIFA and Madden since 2011.
"EA's Ultimate Team packs are loot boxes," the case reads. "Buying the packs are nothing more than a gambling bet.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...eam-loot-boxes
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August 15th, 2020, 00:02 Posted By: wraggster
A list of 2020's best-selling video games in Japan has emerged and Animal Crossing: New Horizons is comfortably topping the charts with more than five million units shifted.
The figures come from data released by Famitsu, offering insight into the Japanese video games market for the first six months of the year.
The report only takes physical games and download cards into account. It shows that Animal Crossing sold more than five times as many copies at retail as the next biggest title, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which shifted an estimated 931,165 copies.
New Horizons broke sales records for Switch in Japan at launch, becoming the console's fastest-selling game to date, and has since been confirmed as the best-selling Switch game of all time in Japan.
Famitsu also shared market figures for revenues generated at retail. Consumers spent ¥95.47 billion ($905 million) on software and ¥79.3 billion ($751.9 million) on hardware.
This amounts to a combined ¥174.8 billion ($1.6 billion) spent at games retail during the first six months of the year.
Both hardware and software show significant increases from the first half of 2019, when software made ¥73.99 billion ($701.4 million) and hardware generated ¥66.1 billion ($626.7 million). The total revenue for H1 2019 was ¥140 billion ($1.3 billion)
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...he-year-so-far
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