In The News
Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto Online “delivered its best quarter yet,” according to their press release on second quarter earnings. It “has now sold-in more than 85 million units … [and] is now the all-time best-selling video game, both in revenues and units, based on combined U.S. digital and physical sales across PC, console and portable.” Congratulations on being the coolest kid on the block.
NBA 2K18 sold “over 6 million units … [and] recurrent consumer spending on NBA 2K grew 57%.”
Ninety people at Telltale Games are looking for new jobs. GamesIndustry.biz’s James Brightman writes that “25% of its workforce” has been cut, effective immediately. “The company-wide restructuring is taking place to ‘make the company more competitive as a developer and publisher of groundbreaking story-driven gaming experiences with an emphasis on high quality in the years ahead.’”
IO Ineractive is reassuring fans that the Hitman series is alive and well. Chief executive officer Hakan Abrak said, in part, “‘I want to let you know that we’re making great progress, and we have exciting new features and some franchise firsts, which we can’t wait to tell you all about. You’ll have to wait a little longer as we don’t plan to start talking about that until some point in 2018,’” according to Venture Beat’s Jeff Grubb.
That contract that pushed SAG-AFTRA to suspend its voice actor strike was ratified. “The notable feature in the three-year Interactive Media Video Game Agreement is a new bonus structure, which gives performers extra payments based on sessions worked. The bonus payments begin with an additional $75 and can add up to $2,100 after ten sessions,” Engadget’s Saqib Shah reports.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds passed 20 million copies sold.
Dead. Like, super dead. The most dead. The deadest. Miiverse is no more. “The service closed down at 1am today,” Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett reports. I’ll let you click that link to see the uh, interesting fan tributes.
Multivarious CEO Chris Volpe did a Q&A with the Entertainment Software Association about “the video game industry, the types of games and technologies his studio focuses on, and why he thinks Columbus could be the next Silicon Valley.”
Here’s a snippet: “We have three pillars. First is internal IP; the games and apps that we make that cover a wide variety of games in many spaces, including a game called Hatch-It! which is about three years old now on mobile. We have another…”
Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau intends to “‘give them [consumers] the right offering at the right time as they’re looking for something new to do or in addition to what they’re doing’” as part of Zynga’s growth strategy, GamesIndustry.biz’s Haydn Taylor reports. “The recent acquisition of Peak Games card studio to the tune of $100 million is emblematic of Zynga’s strategy going forward.”
Pokemon Go raids were updated with new Pokemon and were shortened from an hour to 45 minutes “after the raid egg hatches,” Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips reports.
Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot has thoughts and opinions about upcoming consoles. ‘We think we still have a minimum of two years in front of us before something new is coming,’ Guillemot stated. ‘But that’s our perception, we don’t have any confidential information on that front,’” GameSpot’s Oscar Dayus reports.
Kevin Knezevic also noted Guillemot’s comments on single-player games. He said, in part, “‘Those types of games can continue to sell for a long time.’”
Assassin’s Creed Origins doubled Syndicate’s launch sales, Phillips reports. “35 per cent of copies sold were digital downloads, Ubisoft confirmed last night. That’s compared to just 15 per cent of Syndicate’s sales being digital. Assassin’s Creed is ‘officially back’, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot commented.”