Activision Blizzard has reported new financial numbers for the July-September period, and it was a gigantic quarter for the gaming publisher. One section of the company’s business that did particularly well was microtransactions. For the three-month period, Activision Blizzard made $1.2 billion from microtransactions, which are called “in-game net bookings.”
This is a dramatic 69 percent improvement over the same period last year, when Activision Blizzard made $709 million from in-game net bookings.
Microtransactions are very big business for Activision Blizzard. For the latest reporting period, Activision Blizzard made $1.95 billion in revenue from all of its business combined, so the $1.2 billion figure from microtransactions represents more than half of the company’s total revenue.
Activision’s Call of Duty franchise was a bright spot for microtransactions. Microtransaction sales from Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone were four times higher than the same period last year. Growth was always expected, with far more players jumping into Call of Duty than usual this year
Additionally, Activision reported that Modern Warfare’s first-year sales are the highest in Call of Duty history, and two-thirds of sales came digitally.
Activision Blizzard also owns King, the makers of Candy Crush. Microtransaction revenue from King’s games grew year-over-year, but a specific number was not divulged.
Windbound will expand with a trio of free major updates over the next few months. The first of three major patches is out now, and it contains some new stat-boosting skins, a photo mode, and and new endless mode for the survival game.
The new Witch Skins are made up of three items–the Witch’s Hat, Witch’s Outfit, and Witch’s Staff–which give you a healthy stat boost when equipped. The hat makes potions last longer, the outfit gives you easier, closer respawns, and the staff is an unbreakable weapon that fires out enemy-seeking orbs after each melee attack.
Photo Mode, meanwhile, lets you pause the game and line up a photo, changing how Kara’s posed and adding filters. It lets you change your position, camera orientation, and mess with field of view, exposure, and time, just as in most photo modes. You can also equip Kara with a variety of different hats and accessories, getting some nice shots of your adventures.
The new endless mode, meanwhile, is called Eternal Voyage, and it allows the game to continue on past Chapter 5. The game will continue to get bigger and more difficult as you go–while it won’t expand indefinitely, you can expect challenges beyond what the base game offered.
All of these new features are offered for free, which will also be the case with the next two updates. The next one, which will arrive before the end of the year, will come with more Kara skins, a free sailing mode, and improvements to the Nautilus tower system. New towers, with fresh challenges, will be added.
The next update, coming in early 2021, will introduce more changes to the Nautilus experience, along with new enemies and attacks. A “corruption” system will be added, too, although it’s not clear what this will involve yet.
Kara’s Ancestral gear, which was available as a preorder bonus, is now available for purchase, too. This includes the Ancestral Attire, Oar, and Knife.
Windbound received a 5/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Windbound has its moments,” wrote reviewer Andrew King. “Much of the time, it was relaxing enough to zone out and search for crafting materials. But the game is built around finding towers, and that process becomes significantly less fun after the first level. There are only so many times you can search for a tower, no matter how winsome the presentation.”
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Twitch has had ongoing issues with DMCA this year, with its most recent wave of takedowns seeing the streaming platform sending a one-size-fits-all warning to streamers who had hosted infringing content. Twitch has since returned to sending out regular copyright notices, though they still aren’t helpful for streamers who want a long-term solution.
The issue has been illustrated by streamer Jake’n’Bake, who received a copyright notice over a snippet of a Kanye song appearing in a video from an IRL stream from 2018. As he points out, he never played the song himself, but likely walked past a business or person playing it.
Just to be clear… This is a 30sec clip from two and a half years ago. It was from an outdoor IRL stream. I probably passed by a shop or was in a place that was playing the song in the background. I’m now in danger of losing everything. How is this even realistic?! 😔 pic.twitter.com/zqYxfrshR0
The fact that this song snippet had been picked up illustrates streamers’ problems with the current DMCA situation–even when they go to lengths to avoid copyrighted content, it often still crops up when its least expected.
To make things even more difficult, streamers have almost no option to legally play music if they want to. The process of licensing music isn’t accessible to the average streamer, and as Jake’n’Bake points outs, copyright holders aren’t interested in replying to or communicating with streamers who have, or want to, use their music.
Last week, Twitch Partner Herman Li was banned from the platform, with some alleging that it was due to copyright issues over him playing music from his own band, DragonForce. Neither Li nor Twitch ever officially confirmed why the ban occurred, however, and Li’s account has now been reinstated.
While Facebook has struck a deal with a number of major music companies to license their music for its streamers, so far Twitch hasn’t announced anything similar beyond Twitch Soundtrack, which provides music streamers can play in the background of live streams (but not saved videos). It’s also been facing criticism from the music industry, which is putting increased pressure on the streaming giant.
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Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine aren’t the only Ubisoft games that have been delayed. The French publisher confirmed in its latest report that its new Avatar game based on the James Cameron film franchise has been pushed to a new date further in the future.
This new Avatar game, which is in development at The Division studio Massive Entertainment, will now release during Ubisoft’s financial year that begins in April 2022. The first Avatar movie sequel, Avatar 2, is scheduled for release in December 2022 after its own delay. It would make sense that the game will release around that time to capitalize on the hype, but no firm date has been announced yet.
The new delay for the Avatar game was made in response to the delay of the movie, Ubisoft management said on an earnings call.
Ubisoft’s first Avatar game came out in December 2009 alongside Cameron’s blockbuster that would go on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time until it was dethroned by Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
Almost nothing is known about Ubisoft’s new Avatar game, apart from the fact that it is set on Pandora and will come to PC and consoles. No date has been set and no gameplay has been shown. Given the timeline, it’s expected the game will release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
In addition to Massive Entertainment, the new Ubisoft studio Ubisoft Stockholm is contributing to this game. Ubisoft announced that it hired Battlefield veteran Patrick Bach to lead the team, which is on a hiring spree.
As for Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Siege, they are now scheduled to release in Ubisoft’s fiscal year 2021-2022, which means they will arrive between April 2021 and March 2022. During an earnings call, CFO Frédérick Duguet narrowed that timeline slightly, saying the company expects both to hit in the first half of the fiscal year.
One of Microsoft’s secret weapons for next-gen is Xbox Game Pass, the company’s subscription service that already has 15 million members. It could be a big deal in the future, as the subscription model shakes things up in terms of the business of how people consume games.
He told GI.biz that Game Pass has the potential to help games succeed where they might not have otherwise.
“Game Pass and things like it allow titles to be successful where the economics of the business, and having to sell things at retail to sell X amount of copies… That works against some games. Just like in other avenues–let’s take television or movies. Certain types of comedies or big budget dramas went away,” Howard said. “TV went to the cheapest thing they could make for a long time, reality television, which I could equate to a free-to-play match-three game. What brings eyeballs? What’s cheap? Right, let’s get it out.”
When subscription services in the film/TV industries came onto the scene, there was a renewed investment from the companies in quality content, and Howard said the same could happen in gaming.
“Subscriptions came along and now you see the quality and investment in dramas or historical fiction series,” he said. “That’s where creators are able to go and create these things people want and it makes sense for everybody: the people paying the bills, the people creating it and the people consuming it. That’s what we see happening with games with things like Game Pass.”
As an example, Howard said the classic adventure game genre could see a resurgence in popularity through platforms like Game Pass. “Those are games that really don’t make a lot of economic sense at $60, or maybe even at $30 if someone’s going to play it for five or six hours, but in a system like that it makes complete sense,” Howard said. “It drives a lot of people saying ‘Hey, I got to experience that and I wouldn’t have any other way,’ and the creators got to make it without the burden of ‘Will this be successful? Will we get to make another one?'”
Overall, Howard said he feels “extremely optimistic” about the potential for Game Pass. “Not just to people playing it but to creators being unbridled in terms of what they can create,” he said.
Lone Survivor, the hit 2012 2D horror game, is getting an expanded, improved remake in 2021. Super Lone Survivor has been announced for PC and Switch, and developer Super Flat Games has said that it’s being totally rebuilt in a new engine.
The game, which has been revealed with a new trailer, will feature a new scenario called “Ascending,” which we don’t not much about yet. The PC version will now support gamepads and ultrawide, as well as 4K effects. The Switch version will run at 60fps.
The developer says they are “considering difficulty modes,” and the Ascending content is being designed because they have no interest in making a sequel, but still want to revisit the game.
You can check out the trailer, made in-engine, below.
Lone Survivor is a horror game about the survivor of a plague, and the game tasks you with dealing not only with monsters, but your own hunger and mental state. The game earned an 8.5/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Lone Survivor helps you remember what quality games are really all about: an emotionally enrapturing experience that leaves you with plenty of questions to ponder and possibilities to imagine as you go about your day,” wrote critic Eric Neigher.
Halloween fell on a weekend in 2020, and in a normal year that would probably lead to a huge box office take for whichever horror film released. However, with Halloween Kills delayed and the COVID-19 pandemic meaning that cinemas are still not entirely safe, just one new horror film went wide over the weekend, and while it topped the US box office, it didn’t earn much.
Come Play, aka The Babadook But With An iPad, was the weekend’s top movie. Deadline reports that the movie has earned an estimated $3.15 million over the weekend from 2183 screens, overtaking last week’s #1, Honest Thief. That movie, which stars Liam Neeson, dropped 43% for a $1.35 million weekend.
Come Play stars Gillian Jacobs (Community), John Gallagher Jr. (Westworld), and Azhy Robertson (Marriage Story). Reviews have been mixed, but leaning positive, with a 59 rating on Metacritic.
While $3.15 million isn’t a huge take, the film’s budget was just $9 million, so no one is losing too much money here. There’s no real precedent to compare this to; the closest comparison is the most recent horror film to open wide in the US, The New Mutants, which opened to $7 million in August (and had X-Men brand recognition).
This is also, notably, the first weekend since release that Tenet has dropped below $1 million across a weekend at the domestic box office. It earned $885k from October 30-November 1. This is Tenet’s 9th week in cinemas, and it has earned $53.8 million in the US and $293.3 million in the rest of the world, for a total of $347.1 million.
Also opening in limited release over the weekend was horror movie Spell, which earned $210k from 369 screens.
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Producer Matt Hohl has now shared some new insight on the updates, and they sound exciting. In an interview on Halo Waypoint, Hohl first reminded players that the update will land on November 17, so it won’t be there at launch, but fans won’t have to wait long.
In terms of the upgrades, there is a “raw performance improvement across the board,” Hohl said. If you have a supported display, you can play Halo: MCC at up to 120fps/4K on Series X and 1080p on Series S. “
This was a big engineering effort as each game within MCC has unique performance challenges. While there are similarities to the efforts on the PC versions of each game, the work to do this on Series X|S is not always the same and included some unique challenges,” Hohl said.
Whether or not you’re playing at 120fps, MCC will get various graphics enhancements. Players can expected increased draw distances and an “improved split-screen experience” for both campaign and multiplayer. Hohl also teased that the loading times are dramatically improved. “I can’t wait until everyone gets to experience these loading times,” Hohl said.
Hohl teased that the loading times are so zippy that the development team needed to factor this in to ensure a smooth matchmaking experience.
“One of the side-effects of the new consoles is that loading is so much faster now that we have to make sure it doesn’t disrupt matchmaking,” Hohl said.
Elsewhere, MCC on Series X/S will support FOV sliders. There will also be cross-generation gameplay, so people on Xbox One can play with those on Series X/S. However, it remains to be seen if players on the new consoles will have an advantage due to the better graphics, frame rate, and draw distances.
The Xbox Series X and Series S both launch on November 10, just two days before Sony’s PlayStation 5. The more powerful Series X retails for $500, while the smaller, less powerful Series S comes in at $300. If you’re still searching for a preorder, check out our Xbox Series X/S preorder guide for stock alerts at various retailers.
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A new Vampire: The Masquerade title has been announced, and it’s something a bit different from the others titles. The game, a battle royale set within the universe of the RPG series, has been unveiled by developer Sharkmob on the company’s project page.
The currently unnamed game has a teaser trailer and a brief description on Sharkmob’s website. It promises a gameplay scenario “where vampire sects are at war across the streets and rooftops of Prague,” and that players will be able to either go solo or team up with others. There will also be a hostile “Entity”, which is going after all vampires on the map.
You’ll have access to supernatural powers and weapons, and can tap into blood reserves to make yourself stronger as you hunt down your foes from other factions.
You can watch the teaser trailer below. It does not contain gameplay footage, however.
As some comments on the video point out, open street warfare goes somewhat against the concept of the “Masquerade” of the game’s title, which is meant to keep vampire affairs secret–but perhaps the game will deal with this in some way.
The game is currently tracking for a late 2021 release. Platforms have not been confirmed.