Author: Trafficblast

Sales tracker Superdata has revealed its monthly sales chart for July 2019, tracking worldwide digital sales across PC, console, and mobile.

Consumers spent $9.02 billion on digital games in July, up from $8.56 billion in the same month last year.

Grand Theft Auto V Online’s Diamond Casino update led to a huge uptick in sales for Rockstar’s immensely popular game. Earlier this month, the developer announced that GTA Online had broken its record for most players in a single day on July 23, and most players in an entire week between July 23 – 29. The company didn’t share specific player numbers, but Superdata estimates the game sold $69 million across console and PC following the Diamond Casino update, so the numbers certainly back Rockstar’s claims up.

The update, which introduced a casino full of games to play, rewards to earn, and new story missions to complete, led to one of the best digital sales months for the game since it launched back in 2013. It also marked the first month of double-digit year-over-year growth since August 2018.

Elsewhere, Fire Emblem: Three Houses had the best digital launch in franchise history, selling 800,000 digital units on Switch in July. This follows NPD Group’s monthly sales chart from July, which showed that Three Houses recorded the highest first-month sales for a Fire Emblem game of all time in the US, good enough to make it the second highest-selling game of the month, behind Madden NFL 20. NPD never shares actual sales numbers, but add on the 800,000 units sold in worldwide digital sales and it’s safe to assume Three Houses had a very successful launch.

Season 2 of Apex Legends kicked off in July, generating $37 million across both console and PC. This is double what Respawn’s shooter made in June, but only roughly half of what Season 1 earned back in March. The Titanfall battle royale game courted controversy this month after its Iron Crown event introduced overly expensive new cosmetics. This led to altercations on Reddit when a thread discussing the event took a turn for the worse once developers began criticizing the community with insulting language and saying most players are “freeloaders.” Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has since issued a statement apologizing for the incident.

Another battle royale title, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, sold a further one million units after a price cut. Superdata estimates PUBG sold 1.1 million units on PC in July, with an average selling price of $18. Sales are still down significantly from last year, however.

The first footage for Marvel’s Avengers was revealed earlier this year at E3 2019. Square Enix then followed that up at Gamescom this week, sharing a lengthy new gameplay trailer that showed each of Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk in action. Yet the character designs for all five heroes is still a hot-button topic.

Some fans have taken to the internet since its reveal to voice their concerns over how Marvel’s finest appear in the game. Crystal Dynamics’ lead creative director, Shaun Escayg, previously said there were “currently no plans to change our character designs,” but it appears Captain America and co. will be receiving some extra polish ahead of next year’s launch.

Speaking to PCGamesN at Gamescom, Avengers editorial director Casey Lynch said that “everything about the game is going to continue to change as we polish, as we approach launch right now. But things that we’ve shown both at E3 and here, it’s all been pre-alpha. There’ll be changes to everything from the characters to a lot of what you see.”

A spokesperson for Square Enix clarified that “by changes, we’re talking about polish. What we’re doing is we are continuing to add detail to their character models, we’re improving the lighting, we’re improving the skin shading. So, what you’re hopefully seeing is the characters continuing to look better as we get closer to launch. But in terms of changing character designs, that’s not currently what we’re looking at.”

The Twitter account, Have We Heard Anything About Marvel’s Avengers, shared a comparison between the Black Widow seen in the E3 footage and the one shown in the leaked San Diego Comic-Con trailer. It’s clear to see improvements have been made, and with Marvel’s Avengers not due to arrive until May 15 2020, there’s still plenty of time for further polish to be coated on our favorite heroes.

In other Avengers news, we discovered new story details at Comic-Con earlier this year, including information on how co-op works, and we also have a full rundown of every superhero confirmed in the game so far.

Earlier this month, Kotaku Australia reported that DayZ was refused classification in Australia due to “illicit or proscribed drug use related to incentives or rewards.” This prohibited the game’s physical release in the Oceanian country and resulted in its removal from Steam, the PlayStation Store, and Xbox Live.

The five-year-old zombie survival game was going to feature a cannabis joint that restored health, though implementation of the medicinal restorative had yet to be completed. In response to the ban, developer Bohemia Interactive chose to edit the game on a global scale to avoid splitting the player base, and it appears to have worked.

Kotaku Australia reports that the Australian Classification Board has recently updated its website, noting that DayZ is now rated MA15+. The application confirms that this version of the game has been modified, meaning a cannabis-less version was reviewed and approved by the board. The new rating should clear the way for DayZ to be restored on all digital platforms, and Bohemia will have the go-ahead to release a physical version in Australia now that the ban has been lifted.

This isn’t the first time a game has been refused sale in Australia. The government’s antiquated guidelines have previously resulted in games like Fallout 3 and Mortal Kombat 9 being completely banned from sale until the offending content was edited out–or in the case of We Happy Few, taken to a review panel. Even in the past few days, Hotline Miami 2 was made available in Australia for the first time ever following its Switch release. But even that might not last.