Month: February 2021

Mainland Europe saw a massive jump in not only video game sales in 2020, but also digital downloads of various titles. According to sales tracker GSD, which tracks both physical and digital sales of video games, 123.7 million sales were logged in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Benelux, France, Iberia, Nordics, and Poland alone, a 19% jump when compared to 2019’s numbers according to the report via GamesIndustry.Biz.

Of those games sold by tracked publishers, 58.7 million of them were downloaded and accounted for a 47% rise in sales when compared to 2019. Even with lockdown restrictions in place due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 65 million boxed games sold resulted in a 0.8% increase across those markets.

It’s worth noting though that those particular sales numbers don’t include Nintendo, Bethesda, and CD Projekt Red games, as those publishers do not share digital game sale numbers with the GSD.

Looking at the top games sold in those markets, football was unsurprisingly the best-selling title as FIFA 21 took the top spot in countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The only exception here was Finland, where NHL 21 reigned supreme.

What was a surprise though was Grand Theft Auto 5 taking the number two spot and several other older games also landed in the top ten. While digital download data wasn’t available, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons still secured the number three position on GSD’s top 20, which had the knock-on effect of causing a 57% surge in strategy game sales.

GSD Annual 2020 Top 20 Video Games (Digital + Physical)

1. FIFA 21
2. Grand Theft Auto 5
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
4. FIFA 20
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
6. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
7. The Last of Us Part 2
8. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
10. Red Dead Redemption 2
11. NBA 2K20
12. Super Mario 3D All-Stars
13. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
14. Cyberpunk 2077
15. Minecraft: Switch Edition
16. Ghost of Tsushima
17. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
18. Ring Fit Adventure
19. Just Dance 2020
20. Super Mario Party

As for the actual devices that these games were played on, Nintendo’s Switch console was the best-selling console of the year by a comfortable margin as it outsold the PS4–which took second place– at a rate of three-to-one.

According to data taken from Benelux, France, Switzerland, Nordics, Spain, and Italy, there was a 1.9% drop in sales but 5.59 million consoles were sold in total. Revenue from these devices grew by 12% to €1.7 billion.

Sony’s DualShock 4 controller was the best-selling accessory, followed by the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers in second place, and Xbox controllers for both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles. With €820 million in revenue generated, the accessories market saw a 14% rise when compared to 2019.

We may get some news regarding Final Fantasy 7 Remake this weekend, according to the game’s co-director. Motomu Toriyama said that an upcoming orchestral concert in Japan will include a “special program” with some of its own reveals.

Toriyama shared the news on the Square Enix Music Twitter account. The FF7R Orchestra Concert will take place on February 13 at 5 PM in Japan, or 3 AM ET / 12 AM PT.

“In addition to the performance we have a special program planned as well,” he said, according to a fan translation. “There will be a few things about FF7R that will be revealed only during this concert. I will also take part in this program, so please tune in!”

Given that the second part is still early in development, having just entered full production in the middle of last year, it’s unlikely we’ll see news regarding the sequel. We know that it was a timed exclusive on PS4, which means it could go to PC and Xbox as early as March. That would make the timing right on an announcement soon. Of course, this could just be announcing some kind of tie-in or FF7 merch.

FF7R was named one of GameSpot’s Best Games of 2020, and is one of relatively few games to receive a 10/10 “Essential” score in GameSpot’s review.

Terraria developer Andrew Spinks announced the cancellation of the 2D sandbox game’s Stadia port on his personal Twitter. The reason can be attributed to Spinks’ frustration with being mysteriously locked out from his Google account, and Google’s lack of responsiveness over the issue.

In a Twitter thread, Spinks described his three week long lockout from services associated with his account, such as Google Play, YouTube, and Gmail. He firmly maintained that he “absolutely hasn’t done anything to violate [the] terms of service,” and considered the “bridge burned” with Google.

“My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward,” he concluded. “I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little. Doing business with you is a liability.”

Spinks’ declaration comes on the heels of prior issues with YouTube, which is owned by Google. In January, the official Terraria account tagged YouTube on Twitter and asked for help regarding Terraria’s disabled official YouTube account. In a follow-up response to the situation, the Terraria team expressed their disappointment over the continuing lack of help in getting their YouTube account back up.

In his Terraria review for GameSpot, Tom Mc Shea rated it 9/10. He praised the game for its “empowering sense of discovery” and its ability to “continually excite your imagination with the endless secrets that await.”

Terraria is available on Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

The notoriously brutal survival game Rust has gotten a little bit softer, with the addition of a new game mode that lets you take it easy. Well, easier. The new mode has a number of changes aimed at more casual players, either to entice more players to join or just let the existing player base relax once in a while.

As detailed in the announcement, the changes make death a little less punishing, and help make you less of a target. When you’re killed, you can reclaim half of your inventory either where you died or at a Reclaim terminal. (Items left there will expire after two hours). You can only view the inventory contents of wounded players. You can also spawn at the Bandit Town or any Outpost safezones, and the maximum team size in Softcore mode is four players.

There will be 10 servers to launch with the update and run the Softcore mode, but developer Facepunch assures players that the majority of servers will continue running the standard vanilla Rust experience.

And speaking of vanilla Rust, the latest update adds some new features for it as well. Marketplaces have been added to Bandit Camp and Outpost monuments, which let you order items from vending machines and have them remote delivered via drone. But like any delivery service, you’ll need to pay a fee for the convenience–in this case 20 scrap. You’ll also need to wait to receive your items, which can take up to five minutes. Then you’ll need to claim the items within 10 minutes.

Facepunch says the goal is to make trading safer and encourage more of it, and to that end, the drones are invincible. No shooting them out of the sky to loot their sweet contents. That Facepunch immediately recognized this was necessary should say something about how how not-soft the usual experience actually is.

BioWare’s classic sci-fi adventure is due for a new lease on life when Mass Effect Legendary Edition launches in May, but what effect will this version have on existing and upcoming mods for the original trilogy? That’s the question that Mass Effect Legendary Edition project director Mac Walters answered on Twitter, promising that something was going on behind the scenes and that BioWare had reached out to the modding community.

“We’ve have been in touch with a few in the modding community to learn how best to a) update everyone on changes that will impact existing mods, and b) set the modding community up for success going forward. It’s ongoing, and we’ll discuss in more detail by launch,” Walters tweeted.

The question came in response to a conversation involving Orikon, a modder whose Priority Earth Overhaul mod attempted to improve on Mass Effect 3’s final level by including a vast array of restored cut content, new gameplay elements, and various improvements, ranging from bug fixes all the way to entirely new cutscenes.

Orikon is currently working on new Mass Effect mods and has said that this news hasn’t changed their plans. Whether any of these mods will be technically compatible with the Legendary Edition, also remains to be seen. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out on May 14 and includes various tweaks to the original game to bring it up to speed with its first two sequels, such as improved aiming and driving.

The entire package includes almost all of the DLC, but don’t expect to see the Pinnacle Station DLC thanks to its source code being corrupted, Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, or camera angles focused on Miranda’s butt. For even more details, check out everything we know about Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

The game that makes the process of moving house actually fun–Moving Out–will continue to grow with a new expansion coming this month.

The “Movers In Paradise” DLC launches on February 25 and it includes 14 new story levels, four new move characters, and 10 new arcade levels. As its name suggests, Movers In Paradise takes players to some lovely tropical locations where they’ll need to move more stuff. Take a look at the announcement trailer below:

The DLC will be available on all platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It’s not immediately clear if this is a free or a paid expansion pack.

Moving Out is developed by Australian studio SMG and Swedish company DEVM Games, with Worms company Team 17 handling the publishing.

The latest update before this one was the free “Moving In” expansion that turned the game on its head and challenged players to move furniture back in to a house.

Moving Out is a wacky, physics-based couch cooperative moving simulator in the same vein as Overcooked. It launched in April 2020 and ended up taking home the Game of the Year award during last year’s Australian Game Developer Awards. The game is funded in part by Film Victoria, the branch of the local government in Australia that gives grants to film, TV, and other media projects.

Microsoft is hiring for a “new project in the Halo universe.” GamesRadar discovered a job ad for a producer that will work on this unannounced project.

“This is your chance to work on one of the most exciting and creative intellectual properties in the industry with one of the industry’s most talented teams,” the job description says.

The job ad doesn’t mention any specifics about the game, but a desirable candidate should have experience shipping “AAA current generation games,” the page said.

Other job ads for careers on the Halo team specifically mention Halo Infinite, so this new project is presumably something different. Notably, this new producer job ad is not posted on developer 343’s own careers page, but instead only on the wider Microsoft website, for whatever that’s worth.

Given that Halo is one of Microsoft’s crown jewels and one of the most prominent in all of gaming, it’s not a surprise to learn that the company is looking to build on it with new projects. In fact, it would be more surprising if this was not case.

In addition to whatever new Halo project this might be–the description doesn’t even specifically state that it’s a game–Microsoft just recently confirmed that it’s expanding Halo: The Master Chief Collection with a “new place and way to play.”

The next brand-new Halo game is Halo Infinite, which releases in Fall 2021 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. There will be at least one beta test held prior to launch, and you can learn more about it and how to sign up here.

The co-creator of Terraria has canceled the upcoming Google Stadia version of the game after his Google accounts were locked.

Andrew Spinks, or Demilogic on Twitter, explained that he has lost access to all of his Google accounts, including Google Play, Google Drive, YouTube and Gmail. Spinks has been trying to recover them for over three weeks, but his attempts have been unsuccessful, as he claims he has been “given the runaround” by Google.

“I absolutely have not done anything to violate your terms of service, so I can take this no other way than you deciding to burn this bridge,” Spinks adds. “Consider it burned. Terraria for Google Stadia is cancelled. My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward.”

I absolutely have not done anything to violate your terms of service, so I can take this no other way than you deciding to burn this bridge. Consider it burned. #Terraria for @GoogleStadia is canceled. My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward.

— Andrew Spinks (@Demilogic) February 8, 2021

“I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little,” Spinks continues. “Doing business with you is a liability.” Just a few days ago, fans had spotted that Terraria had been rated for Google Stadia on the Pan European Game Information website. It now looks like that version of the game won’t see the light of day.

Spinks’ Google difficulties appear to have started in late January when Terraria’s official YouTube account was disabled. The Terraria Official Twitter account posted about it last week in a (unfortunately fruitless) effort to grab Google’s attention.

Explaining the scale of the issue, Spinks wrote: “My phone has lost access to thousands of dollars of apps on @GooglePlay. I had just bought LOTR 4K and can’t finish it. My @googledrive data is completely gone. I can’t access my @YouTube channel. The worst of all is losing access to my @gmail address of over 15 years.”

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/terraria-first-two-nights-in-terraria-tutorial-video”]

Back in 2011, we awarded Terraria on PC a 9/10 review, saying, “This devious little indie sandbox title borrows so many ideas from Notch’s game that it essentially is Minecraft in 2D, but it also beefs up the familiar gameplay in exciting ways.” The game has since come to a dozen more platforms, but it seems Stadia won’t join that list.

In other Google Stadia news, Google recently shut down all of its internal games studios, affecting approximately 150 employees.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.