In The News
Telltale Games’ new CEO is Pete Hawley, Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat reports. “Hawley succeeds Dan Connors, who cofounded the company in 2004 along with Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander … ‘It’s quite an honor to join the team,’ Hawley said in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. ‘I’ve been a huge fan since Telltale reinvented the old LucasArts games.’”
Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg now has a copyright strike on his YouTube channel. YouTube accepted Campo Santo’s DMCA takedown request and removed PewDiePie’s 2-hour Firewatch video. “‘It’s a pretty big deal,’ Kjellberg said. ‘If I get more than three of them, my channel will shut down,’” Julia Alexander at Polygon reports.
Esports > traditional sports. At least when it comes to younger people. Limelight Networks released a study showing that “Of the 4,000 people, more men and women from ages 18 to 25 watch esports and online gaming than all traditional sports combined … Out of the 500 Americans polled, over 20 percent of those in the millennial age bracket watch esports regularly,” Dot Esports’ Aaron Mickunas writes.
Intelligent Delivery is Microsoft’s new solution to save hard drive space and reduce download times, Eurogamer’s Richard Leadbetter reports. “The new system – known internally as Intelligent Delivery – aims to save hard drive space and reduce download times by allowing users to only download the assets they’ll actually need, as opposed to the complete game package.”
Mountain Dew and Doritos are coming together to give away Xbox One Xs. “The two brands have launched a promotion that offers gamers the ability to collect codes on specially marked Doritos snacks and Mountain Dew flavors, including two new limited edition flavors of Game Fuel—Arctic Burst and Tropical Smash,” AListDaily’s John Gaudiosi reports. “The contest kicks off September 25, allowing customers to bank codes. Starting October 23, each code enters the player into a sweepstake to win an Xbox One X.”
Madden topped the sales charts in August with Grand Theft Auto V coming in second, Game Informer’s Imran Khan reports. “Notably, Agents of Mayhem did not make a particularly large splash after its August 15 release, and Uncharted: Lost Legacy did incredibly well considering it launched about a week later.”
Destiny 2 took the top spot for physical sales in Japan. “Destiny 2 on the PS4 sold 50,263 package copies in its first four days on sale, edging out Splatoon 2, which sold 44,981 copies,” Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft writes. “During that initial week in 2014, Destiny sold 91,277 copies on the PS4 and another 49,503 copies on the PS3.”
Rovio is going public Sept. 18 and “Fresh details have emerged on the upcoming Initial Public Offering for Rovio that values the Angry Birds firm at roughly $1bn,” GamesIndustry.biz’s James Batchelor writes. “The company plans to sell €30m ($36m) worth of shares, aiming for a minimum of €10.25 ($12.26) and a maximum of €11.50 ($13.75) per share.”
Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken’s producer since 1994, sat down with Gamasutra’s Brandon Sheffield to talk about “how Tekken is always arcade first, how the series made preparations for input lag beginning with the shift to LCD screens, and how to please both competitive and casual players simultaneously.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver is eyeing up Twitch stream-style broadcasting for basketball, Dot Esports’ Nicole Carpenter reports. “Silver suggested that making sports broadcasts appear more like esports streams could help boost viewership numbers … ‘If you think about Twitch, for example, and see what it’s like to follow those competitions, it’s constant chatter of fans [and] there’s all kinds of other information appearing on the screen,’ Silver said.”
LawBreakers is having a bit of a hard time, but Cliff Bleszinski told GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch in an interview that “‘There is a situation where players look at numbers on Steam; that doesn’t happen on PlayStation 4. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but you look at PC, [concurrent user] health versus PS4, PS4 is doing fine.’” He also said he’s going to try to be “‘less of a dick’” toward people online.