Month: May 2018

Fortnite generated a lot of speculation and attention from its month-long tease of an impending comet crash, and it appears Epic is already trying to stir up another community mystery. This time, players have noticed an isolated hatch deep in the woods. It does nothing, but chances are Epic has bigger plans than simply inserting a mysterious door in the ground in the middle of nowhere.

IGN reports that the hatch is indestructible and marked with graffiti scribbles that may be clues. One Reddit user looked inside the hatch with the replay tool and found only a big slab of rock. Whatever purpose it will serve, Epic isn’t spilling the beans that easily. You can find the hatch in the Wailing Woods; here are some screenshots we captured of it:

The parallels to the TV show Lost seem intentional. It had a special penchant for teasing big mysteries and the second season revolved largely around a sealed hatch in the middle of the woods. As the mystery unfolded, the hatch was revealed to be one of several stations once operated by a research group that was running experiments on the island’s unique properties.

Last month, Fortnite spent weeks slowly teasing a comet that appeared to be growing larger in the night sky as time went on. It eventually collided with the map, taking out Dusty Depot and creating Dusty Divot in its place. The impact also seems to have uncovered several secret bases related to the new superheroes and villains motif. Meanwhile, the popular villain du jour Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War has been added to the game. But as you might expect from one wielding a cosmic glove to control everything, he was a little unbalanced and got hit with a nerf immediately.

Monster Hunter: World is truly a phenomenal success. Capcom announced today that the game has now shipped 7.9 million copies worldwide since its release at the end of January. This is good as of March 31, and it’s up from the 7.5 million figure announced in March.

Capcom said Monster Hunter: World is a “massive, record-setting success,” adding that it’s now Capcom’s “best-selling title in company history.” That may be true by the way Capcom measured sales, but other Capcom games have actually sold more units. Whatever the case, Monster Hunter: World is a huge success, and that’s encouraging to see.

Capcom announced the sales figure as part of its latest earnings report for the fiscal year ended March 31. The Monster Hunter: World sales helped Capcom’s overall net revenue reach ¥94.5 billion (up 8.4 percent), with operating income coming in at ¥16 billion (up 17.5 percent).

In addition to Monster Hunter: World, Capcom called out Monster Hunter XX and Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers for Nintendo Switch as top performers. Looking ahead, Capcom said it wants to “strengthen digital download sales” to help boost overall revenue and profitability; digital content is higher margin than traditional boxed media. Capcom also plans to further invest itself in the esports market, at least in Japan.

“In response to the worldwide excitement surrounding esports, and the increased attention paid to them within the Japanese market, Capcom is committed to making this sector a priority area of investment for business resources, and has established a new, dedicated esports division and facilities,” Capcom said.

You can read Capcom’s full earnings report here.

Week 2 of Fortnite‘s Season 4 challenges have been released for Battle Pass owners. These offer a set of objectives to complete when you’re not getting killed trying to become Thanos, and they each come with Battle Stars to level up and earn skins and rewards. But as with the first week, Season 4’s new Blockbuster challenges offer a free Battle Pass tier–provided you’ve got a good eye.

Once again, completing all of the challenges from a given week completes one of the Blockbuster challenges. And as with the previous week, the reward is a loading screen that is hiding a secret. Whereas the first Blockbuster challenge loading screen had the faint outline of a free Battle Pass tier that you could obtain in-game, this one hides map coordinates for the freebie.

Over on Reddit, user Bfor45 (with the help of fellow user qwert5656) was able to quickly crank out the Week 2 challenges, thus earning the Blockbuster reward. If you look carefully at the brick wall in the background, there are several alphanumeric combinations that correspond with areas on the in-game map: A3, A4, B3, B4.

If you follow where this guides you to (just south of Haunted Hills, as seen in the map above), you can find the Battle Pass icon and collect it to earn one free rank-up. However, be aware that this only appears if you’ve completed the corresponding Blockbuster challenge; you can’t cheat your way there by skipping the prerequisites, as you can with individual challenges that send you to a specific location.

Week 2’s challenges offer a mixture of fairly straightforward ones, like getting explosive kills and opening chests in Greasy Grove, and some that are more involved, like dancing in front of film cameras and searching between a scarecrow, pink hotrod, and a big screen. We have a guide to help you complete all of these, which will in turn let you get this Blockbuster freebie.

Marvel’s Luke Cage has a date with Netflix, and the streaming studio has released its debut trailer for the second season. After the events of The Defenders, Luke has gone back to Harlem as a hometown hero. It isn’t long before his celebrity attracts unwanted attention from another man, who also happens to be bulletproof. The trailer also hints at a continuing working (and flirty) relationship with Misty Knight.

Continuing the trend, the snake-themed villain this time around appears to be Bushmaster, a super-powered crime boss in Marvel continuity. On the whole the season appears to add a bit more levity than the first, along with some science-fiction zaniness like Misty’s robotic arm. It’s coming on June 22.

The Marvel Netflix universe has been one of mixed results. The big team-up feature The Defenders was notable mostly for finally ending a plotline that had gone too long already, and Iron Fist was generally panned. The most recent addition was season 2 of Jessica Jones, which had a stellar first season but slowed down for the second.

Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and occasionally casually referencing big events like the Battle of New York, the Netflix series are kept corralled in their own storytelling space. That means that the street-level heroes that make up the Defenders team–Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage–were nowhere to be found in the mega-blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. That movie broke more records over the weekend, becoming the quickest movie ever to reach $1 billion.

Electronic Arts today reported earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter and the company had a record year, despite all the noise and controversy surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront II.

For the full year ended March 31, EA pulled in revenue of $5.15 billion (up 6.2 percent), while profit was $1.04 billion (up 7.9 percent). Results were rosy for the fiscal fourth quarter, too. Revenue for the period jumped 3.6 percent to $1.582 billion with profit up 7.2 percent to $607 million. (Percentage changes provided by GI.biz).

The good times for EA are expected to roll on in the current fiscal year. EA said it expects to make $5.6 billion in revenue for the period and a profit of $1.11 billion. EA’s lineup of big-name, revenue-driving titles for the year include BioWare’s new IP Anthem, the next Battlefield game, all the EA Sports games, and whatever other surprises may be in store.

“Fiscal 2018 was a year of strong growth and continued transformation for Electronic Arts, as we expanded the reach of our leading franchises like FIFA, Battlefield, and The Sims to more players across more platforms and geographies,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. “In the year ahead, we will expand the world of play with amazing new experiences and new IP, more competition, and industry-leading subscription programs. There has never been a more exciting time to be engaging and entertaining global communities.”

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen added, “Our success is driven by the way we have changed, and continue to change, our relationship with players. They want more depth in their favorite games, and fresh content that can hold their attention year-round. This has made our business much more stable and enabled us to deliver a dependable and growing cash flow to investors.”

In the wake of massive criticism from fans, EA removed microtransactions from Star Wars: Battlefront II just before the game launched in November 2017. Microtransactions were added back in April, so whatever revenue EA has made and continues to make from them will not be publicised until EA’s next earnings report later this year.

Unsurprisingly, it was EA’s digital business that helped spur growth during the year. What EA calls “digital net bookings”–which include mobile, full-game downloads, and “live services” i.e. microtransactions–surged 17 percent to reach $3.538 billion during the year. Here are some other takeaways from EA’s report today:

• “Nearly 18 million players engaged in competitive gaming across FIFA 18 and Madden NFL 18, up more than 75% year-over-year.”
• “The Battlefield community, across current generation consoles and PC HD, now has more than 54 million players life to date.”
• “The Sims community had more than 80 million Sims players across PC and mobile in fiscal 2018.”

For more on EA’s earnings report today, check out the additional stories linked below.

Battle royale games like Fortnite and PUBG could have a major, lasting impact on the gaming industry overall, according to publisher Electronic Arts. During a Q&A with investors today following the company’s latest earnings report, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said EA welcomes innovation because it helps bring new players to gaming, which in turn helps EA.

“We welcome innovation in the industry,” Jorgensen said. “That’s what makes this business so exciting and fun to operate in. If you look back over the 20 or 30 years, the innovation that one game team’s done goes through the whole industry. It’s fantastic. We welcome innovators like Fortnite or PUBG that really help everyone’s thinking. We feel that’s great for the business as whole.”

While Fortnite is supremely popular, a single game is not going to sink publishers like EA. Jorgensen intimated that Fortnite’s success has had some level of impact on its business–because of course it has–but he said the impact hasn’t been meaningful. He pointed out that no one game can capture 100 percent of the market.

While Fortnite as a shooter game is theoretically competing with EA’s lineup of shooters like Battlefield and Battlefront, Epic’s title is also helping expand the shooter category. He theorised that Fortnite is helping bring young players to gamers, who may eventually move on to other games–like maybe the next Battlefield game.

“In particular, [Fortnite is] bringing younger people into the marketplace and younger people into first-person shooters, and I think that’s good for the long run health of that category for all of us in the industry,” Jorgensen said.

During the last EA earnings call in January, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the global FPS community is undoubtedly interested in battle royale games like Fortnite and PUBG. And while he did not rule out adding a battle royale mode to a Battlefield game, he said EA’s wider focus is to think about “new and innovative ways to play” across all of its games.

In other battle royale news, Fortnite recently added an Avengers: Infinity War crossover event that brings Thanos to the game.