Nvidia has announced that its cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, will come to vehicles.
Hyundai Motor Group, BYD, and Polestar are the first car manufacturers currently working on the effort with the chip maker.
The motor companies already use Nvidia's technology for their self-driving vehicles.
What’s the difference between a good gameplay trailer and an award-winning gameplay trailer? Outstanding capture. Creating game trailers is no easy task; it’s a team effort that demands ingenuity and creativity at all stages.
We have worked on trailers for games such as Alan Wake Remastered, Project Zomboid, The Ascent, and PUBG. Here's our top tips for getting great quality footage out of any game, regardless of your expertise.
Before capture starts, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of the game mechanics and the overall objective. Be sure to spend some time experimenting and owning how the game works. New ideas will come to mind playing with the game’s boundaries.
Original story, January 4, 2023: Wizards of the Coast has reportedly cancelled "at least" five of its video game projects, leading to several layoffs.
A Wizards spokesperson, who talked to Bloomberg, said the company is still "committed to using digital games" but "made some changes to our long-term portfolio to focus on games which are strategically aligned with developing our existing brands and those which show promise in expanding or engaging our audience in new ways."
They added that "fewer than 15 people" will be made redundant as a result of the cancellations, though these employees will be given options to apply to other roles within Wizards.
ByteDance reportedly laid off hundreds of staff in China at the end of the 2022, affecting employees in its games branch among others.
According to sources who talked to the South China Morning Post, the redundancies impacted TikTok's Chinese version, Douyin, as well as its gaming and real estate businesses.
Chinese publication Jiemian reported that collaboration platform Lark (known as Feishu in China) saw 10% of its workforce cut as part of the layoffs.
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Federal Trade Commission has said there are currently no "substantive" settlement talks between the US government body and Microsoft over the latter's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
During a brief pre-trial hearing via telephone yesterday, FTC attorney James Weingarten said neither side had engaged in significant discussions over a possible settlement that would negate the need for a trial, Reuters reports.
Roger Kean, co-founder of UK game magazines Zzap!64 and Crash, has died.
As reported by Fusion R Gamer, his cause of death was attributed to motor neuron disease.
In 1983, Kean established Newsfield Publications alongside Franco Frey and Oliver Frey.
Microsoft is now the second AAA gaming publisher to see unionization in its workforce, as Zenimax Workers United and the Communications Workers of America today announced that a supermajority of roughly 300 QA developers across Zenimax's US operations came out in favor of unionization.
The developers gave their support either by signing a union authorization card or voting through an online portal.
Microsoft has already recognized the union, the group said.
When it comes to capturing video games’ current zeitgeist, few do it better than Gamefam.
That’s not to say the 2019-founded outfit is conventional or typical. Far from it, in fact. For one, the team largely focuses on making and publishing games and experiences delivered within metaverse gaming platforms. In step with that focus, Gamefam has established a deep understanding of the GenZ demographic’s needs and tastes, informing its work on live-operated original games, virtual concerts, and experiences that connect brands or artists with new audiences within Roblox.
The resulting breadth of potential has also seen Gamefam build works for other giants of the live space, from Fortnite to Minecraft. And yet it is Roblox and its 58.8 million daily active users in particular that have offered Gamefam the opportunity to establish thundering momentum over the past 12 months.
Marvel Snap has amassed $30 million in player spending since its October 2022 release.
As reported by MobileGamer.biz, per Appmagic data, the US made up the lion’s share of revenue with $17.5 million.
The other four top-earning markets included South Korea, with $2 million.
China's National Press and Publication Administration have granted publishing licenses for 44 international titles to release in the country.
As reported by Reuters, among the approved list of games were Nintendo's Pokemon Unite and Riot Games' Valorant.
Among the video game regulator's approvals, several include South Korean titles, which have been restricted for import to China since 2017.
Every year, we turn to a panel of trusted analysts to ask them what they see coming down the road, and ask them to assess their predictions from the previous year.
The panel has seen some turnover this year with two of our regulars – the NPD Group's Mat Piscatella and VoxPop's Stephanie Llamas – unable to take part. We're grateful to them for their help over the years.
To bring the panel back up to full strength, we've brought in two new faces, with Midia Research senior analyst and VP of data Karol Severin signing on and Niko Partners founder Lisa Cosmas Hanson presenting predictions from her team.
An update in YouTube's moderation policies has reportedly led to increasing demonetisation of gaming content on the platform.
According to VentureBeat, YouTubers like Penquinz0 have noticed an uptick in demonetised videos after a policy update cracking down on game violence.
Content creator RTGame has also shared his experience on Twitter, highlighting that the policy changes applied retroactively as well, demonetising several of his videos.
Archer Maclean has died.
The developer passed away last month at the age of 60, with the news spreading via social media over the end of year break.
Maclean was best known for the various titles he developed during the 1980s, including his debut game Dropzone and sports outing International Karate (including its expanded edition, International Karate+).
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Microsoft has secured another approval for its proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Last week, Chile's Fiscalía Nacional Económica – the National Economic Prosecutor's Office – cleared the merger following a phase one investigation of its potential impact.
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Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has shared the firm's ambitions to bolster its "internal development capabilities" in 2023 and shed light on why this goal is not at odds with having sold Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, and Square Enix Montréal.
In his new year's letter, Matsuda explained that selling the three studios to Embracer in May 2022 aligned with Square Enix's objective to "further concentrate [its] resources as the increasing sophistication and complexity of game development have made such endeavours more costly to pursue."
Sonic creator Yuji Naka has been officially charged with insider trading offences.
According to VGC, Japanese publication NHK reported (in a now deleted article) that the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Naka and former Square Enix employee Taisuke Sasaki at the end of December.
The pair is being accused of using confidential information (namely that Square Enix was working on mobile title Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier with Ateam Entertainment) to invest in Ateam.
The final UK boxed chart of 2022 has landed, and Sony's God of War Ragnarok ends the year on top.
The new God of War has been a big hit over Christmas, boosted by a PS5 hardware bundle. It is actually the fourth biggest new game launch of the year (in terms of sales from physical retailers).
God of War leapt two places despite sales falling 29% week-on-week. Of course, this is for the post-Christmas week, and every game reported a sales decline during this period.
Very little has changed in the final UK boxed chart leading up to Christmas Day.
FIFA 23 was still No.1, with sales up 16% over the week before. This was followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (up 2%), then God of War: Ragnarok (down 7%), Mario Kart 8: Deluxe is still at No.4 (down 4%), Pokémon Violet holds sixth place (down 8%), and Nintendo Switch Sports is still at No.6 (sales flat).
The biggest difference in the charts is that Sonic Frontiers re-enters the Top Ten at No.7, driven by offers that has seen the game fall to below £32 at UK retail. The Nintendo Switch version was the best-selling edition of the game last week.
Staffers from Blizzard Entertainment's Proletariat studio have announced that they are seeking to unionize.
The group of 57 employees formed the Proletariat Workers Alliance.
The alliance made the union announcement on Twitter.
ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area is a game that's not concerned with heteronormativity or alienating audiences with its nearly entire cast of beautiful Black and Brown characters.
It's my game of the year because it looks and plays like the games that I want; creative work that's unapologetically representative of its developers and audience. This is the kind of title that keeps me fervently invested in indie game developers.
ValiDate is a visual novel that stars 13 people in their 20s navigating life, love, and themselves. In volume one, you play as Malik, Inaya, Isabelle, and Emhari. As the player, you help them navigate this scary thing that's called life.
As 2022 wraps up, the GamesIndustry.biz editorial team found time to sit down and write about their own personal favourite games they've played this year.
The caveat is that the games we choose don't have to be 2022 releases, just a game that took our fancy this year for one reason or another. Our individual pieces are now all live on the site to read now, but here's a handy roundup of all of our Games of the Year pieces. See you next year!
We'd try to usually avoid multiple team members picking the same game, but Vampire Survivors impressed both Marie Dealessandri and Brendan Sinclair so much that it made its way onto this list twice.
Original story, December 23, 2022: Microsoft yesterday filed its response to the US Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint over its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as reported by CNBC.
The 37-page response covers numerous arguments Microsoft has already made in public or to other regulators, stating a lack of incentive to make Call of Duty exclusive, a desire to grow its minimal footprint in the mobile gaming space, and painting Sony's protestations as those of a dominant market leader looking to hinder disruptive innovation that could benefit consumers.
"Sony may prefer to protect the revenues it gets from more expensive individual game sales, but the antitrust laws do not serve to insulate the dominant market player and its favored business model from competition," Microsoft said.
Picking a live service title for my 2022 game of the year felt like a bit of a copout, and I'm sure at any other game website, it may be perceived as such. If this piece had to be about a game released this year, I have some solid favourites: God of War: Ragnarok, Citizen Sleeper, and Neon White, to name a few. Alas, tomorrow is my last day at this wonderful website, so I'll do what I want.
At GamesIndustry.biz, we refuse to be tethered by arbitrary constructs such as the calendar year. Great entertainment is timeless (unless it is indeed a live service title in which content can be removed from the internet at any time). With that in mind, my game of the year award ultimately has to go to the one title that managed to squeeze 600 real-life hours out of me, Destiny 2.
I was an early adopter of the Destiny franchise, hot off the heels of Halo and raring for a different space adventure. My enthusiasm did not endure. I picked up the first game at launch and within a week, had traded it in. "Truly one of the most captivating sci-fi universes I've ever spent time in"I didn't quite grasp the concept of a live service on consoles back then, I wanted the content I'd paid for immediately and fully. Years passed, the original Destiny gave way to 2017's Destiny 2, and I found myself gazing longingly at the game, often dipping in for a runaround, and ultimately growing tired of how unwelcoming it was.
The first six months of the fiscal year saw 50% of Atari's business segments decline year-on-year.
The company released its financial results for H1 which ended on September 30, 2022. Here's what you need to know:
Although half of Atari's business segments were on a downturn, its blockchain division was also ahealthy performer. It pulled in €1M ($1 million) during the six months, up 101% year-over-year.
A private consumer lawsuit was filed in California this week that aims to stop Microsoft from completing its $69 million acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The suit, filed on behalf of 10 plaintiffs in California, New Mexico and New Jersey, is seeking an order to block the deal over antitrust concerns.
According to Reuters, the complaint claimed Microsoft would gain "far-outsized market power in the video game industry, with the ability to foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices and further inhibit competition."
It has now been a full decade since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when a 20-year-old man went into the school with an AR-15-style rifle and killed 26 people, most of them first graders.
It was a senseless tragedy, and one that has only been compounded in the years since by the complete lack of action to prevent similar tragedies from happening again, and again, and again.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, politicians and pundits pointed to three possible culprits: guns, mental health, and video games.
Roughly three quarters of public comments on the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard were in favor of the deal going through, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority revealed today.
The comments were collected over two weeks in October as part of the regulator's inquiry into the deal. It received roughly 2,600 emails, but excluded around 500 because "they contained abusive content (with no other substantive content), or were blank, unintelligible, stated to be from non-UK consumers, or not in English."
The remaining 2,100 were split with three quarters in favor of the deal, one quarter against, and a negligible number taking no clear stance on the merger.
A new report from Newzoo forecasts that the games market will generate $184 billion in 2022.
The estimate represents a 4% decrease year-over-year. The PC Games segement was also predicted for a decline, its poised to make $2 billion this year, down 16% year-over-year.
The intelligence firm provided a full breakdown of the global video game market's divisions.
EU regulators sent gaming firms an inquiry to gauge concerns about Microsoft's proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard.
As reported by Reuters, the European Commission sent a 91-page questionnaire earlier in the month regarding the acquisition.
People familiar with the matter said that gaming companies such as publishers and developers were likely to receive the questionnaire.
I've gone through a lot of Spider-Media this year.
In addition to rewatches of Into The Spider-Verse and No Way Home, I've read six volumes of Spider-Gwen, seven volumes of Miles Morales, and a mix of classic and modern Amazing Spider-Man storylines I never got around to in the past. I've also made it partway through a replay of the 2018 Spider-Man game and watched most of (the quietly brilliant and my 2022 earworm) Spidey & His Amazing Friends.
This is partly because I'm a big Spider-Man fan but this is more of his world than I've ever taken in within the space of a year – and that is primarily thanks to one Miles Morales.
High on Life has been confirmed as Xbox Game Pass' largest launch of the year, as well as the biggest single-player release on Game Pass since the service launched.
According to Xbox, Squanch Games' cartoon shooter is also Game Pass' biggest third-party launch of all time.
The title, led by Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland, has been sitting atop Game Pass' most popular games tab since its launch earlier in December.
For our final podcast of 2022, the GamesIndustry.biz team gathers around their mics and discusses their favourite games of the year.
In addition, we discuss several of the honourable mentions, the titles we've delved deeply into throughout the course of 2022 but haven't quite established themselves as our favourites.
You can read our full thoughts on each member of the team's on the site throughout this week.
Non-profit organization co-working space dedicated to games development GamePlay Space has closed its doors after eight years.
GamePlay was established by Execution labs, Concordia University, various local institutions, and indie groups.
The decision to close was due to the difficulty sustaining itself during the COVID-19 pandemic and transitioning work climate.
This year's Jingle Jam has raised over €3.4 million ($3.6 million) in global donations.
The program's charities of the year included Campaign Against Living Miserably, Special Olympics Great Britain, and Mermaids.
Since the Bristol-based Jingle Jam began in 2011, it has amassed $22 million in charitable donations.
Tencent has purchased a 20% stake in the South Korean video game studio Shift Up.
As reported by South China Morning Post, the conglomerate is now the second largest shareholder in the developer behind Goddess of Victory: Nikke.
A month after launching in November, the mobile game Goddess of Victory, published by Tencent subsidiary Level Infinite, generated $100 million in consumer spending.
Consumer watchdog Which? has urged Nintendo to provide a compensation option to buyers that have experienced Joy-Con drift.
In a new study, the organisation tested five pairs of Joy-Cons sourced from consumers, alongside the base Switch console model. All five sets had drift issues, with the left stick affected the most.
The laboratory test found several manufacturing issues, dust and other contaminants were found inside the controller despite dustproofing cowls on the joysticks. It also said that the drift issue was likely caused in part by noticeable wear on the joystick slider contact points.
I've been low-key worrying about this Game of the Year write-up for months, because I didn't really know what it was going to be about.
I quite liked Elden Ring, but I didn't get terribly far into it and didn't have much of anything interesting or new to say about it. It's a From Software Souls game, and the open-world is a great match for From's punishing style of design and its myriad reminders that you aren't ready for this boss or that part of the world yet.
Much like last year, I spent most of my gaming time this year immersed in retro games. I considered making Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast my Game of the Year pick, mostly for how the Logitech G Cloud and emulation have allowed me to enjoy the game in ways I couldn't on the original hardware: in handheld form, with save states, fast-forwarding through the way-too-many random battles.
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2022 has been a busy year for GamesIndustry.biz (and continues to be so. Could the news slow down please? It's nearly Christmas). Brendan has already taken an in-depth look at the biggest stories of the past twelve months in This Year In Business, but it's time to look at good ol' statistics.
Yes, it's our annual Year In Numbers infographic in which we condense everything you need to know about where the global games industry stands into a single (but very long) JPG. In the graphs and tables below you'll find:
