In The News
BioWare pushed back against an extremely unflattering piece by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier detailing alleged failings in Anthem’s development. “Very few things went right in the development of BioWare’s latest game, an online cooperative shooter that was first teased in mid-2012 but spent years floundering in pre-production,” a part of the article reads.
The developer’s response reads, in part, “We’d like to take a moment to address an article published this morning about BioWare, and Anthem’s development. First and foremost, we wholeheartedly stand behind every current and former member of our team that worked on the game, including leadership.”
GameStop:
GameStop’s full-year earnings have been released. It reported “a $673 million loss on $8.3 billion in global sales,” Gamasutra’s Alex Wawro writes. “That big $673 million loss (GAAP) is one of the largest in the company’s history, and quite a bit less than the $34.7 million profit the company reported during the same period a year prior.”
GameStop CFO Rob Lloyd doesn’t seem worried Sony has stopped selling digital game codes at retailers, GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch writes. “‘Most of the sales of full-game downloads … at retail come in the form of currency,’ he said. ‘So the move by Sony to go back to the currency model, we don’t expect it to have a material impact on our results because we’ll continue to sell that currency.’”
Sony updated its refund policy on PlayStation to include a 14-day decision period.
Lucid Sight rasied “$6 million in funding to expand its MLB Champions and Crypto Space Commander blockchain games to traditional game platforms,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi reports.
Klaas Kersting launched “the Phoenix Games group,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor reports. “The new initiative will focus on free-to-play games and is designed to solve the issue that small to midsize studios often struggle to get capital individually.” Kersting previously founded Flaregames.
Many more games have been approved in China, according to Niko Partners. “As of March 29th, a total of 989 video games have received licenses since approvals restarted on December 19th.” That includes 959 “domestic titles” and 30 “foreign titles.”
Romero Games and Paradox are partnering for a strategy game, PC Gamer’s Tom Senior writes.
The top Twitch channels by hours watched in the last week can be found courtesy of TEO.
IN: Nvidia Director of Technical Marketing Tom Petersen has left to join Intel.
Chase, formerly of Twitch, is now head of communications at StreamElements.
Extra Esports News:
The end may be near for eSports.com, according to Dot Esports’ Alex Leckie-Zaharic. “After what appears to be a financial collapse, esports community portal eSports.com has been entered into provisional liquidation by a Munich district court on March 14 this year. According to German esports site gameswirtschaft.de, a lawyer has been appointed to ensure what assets the site has remaining are frozen until the insolvency case makes its way to the courts.”
Hyperice launched an esports scholarship “at the University of California Irvine (UCI). The scholarship will implement Hyperice’s knowledge and technology to support two individuals with a sports medicine background, starting this autumn,” Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch reports.
HyperX is re-upping its NBA 2K League partnership for the second season, TEO’s Andrew Hayward writes. “The company also sponsors five NBA 2K League teams, including Mavs Gaming and 76ers Gaming Club.”
Well hmm. The England and Wales Cricket Board “have announced it is working alongside sponsorship management company, Strive to understand the potential of esports. The appointment will see the ECB and Strive working to ‘evaluate the potential of esports, and how video games engage young people,’” Esports Insider’s Graham Corking reports.
IN: Thomas Schmidt joined ESL as its chief commercial officer.
OUT: Eugene “Neirea” Shumilin is no longer with G2 Esports.