News Mash-Up - Week # 38

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  • Apple has announced that beginning on October 5, it will increase prices on the App Store and for in-app purchases across countries using the Euro as currency as well as Poland, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Chile. It appears that the lowest price of purchase will be raised from €0.99 to €1.19. This price increase excludes already automatically occurring subscriptions, and developers will be able to decide whether they want to maintain the current prices for already-subscribed customers.
    
    
  • Xbox has stated that it will continue to pursue M&A activities. Given the current frequency of mergers and acquisitions among gaming companies across the industry, Xbox has decided to proceed with their own M&A pursuits to stay competitive. Additionally, Xbox has stated that there are currently no plans to raise prices of either the Series S or X models of the console.
    
    
  • In the stock market on Friday, September 16, Roblox Corp.’s (RBLX, +0.79%) share price faced a decline in stock prices, ending the day at with decrease of 9.2% at a price of $39.50. On Thursday, September 15, after Roblox Corp.’s Investors Day, the share price declined as well. For the week as a whole, the company’s share price decreased by 13.22%. These declines in price came after Wall Street analysts speculated that many of Roblox’s current strategic goals, including catering to an older audience, could prove problematic.
    
    
  • Rockstar has admitted that it was hacked during the weekend of September 17, leading to a large leak of Grand Theft Auto 6 development materials that are currently in-progress. Rockstar said that it was “extremely disappointed” at the event, but also expects its live services like GTA Online to continue without issue. During the day, shares of Take-Two, the publisher of GTA, dropped 6%.
    
    
  • Twitch recently announced that there will be a partial gambling ban put into place on October 18. The gambling ban will target roulette, slots, and dice games as well as cryptocurrency gambling sites due to their damaging effects to young users. Notably, it does not include sports betting, such as fantasy sports.
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  • Sega has decided that with the release of Like a Dragon: Inshin in the West, it will be excluding the name Yazuka from all future releases in the RPG series. The “Like a Dragon” name “more closely align[s] with the Japanese name.”
    
    
  • Sony is reportedly in the process of creating a PS5 with a removable disc drive, to be sold either with or without the disc drive. The planned release date for this console is reportedly around September 2023. With PS5 production costs on the rise, this could be a way for Sony to cut some costs by moving towards a single PS5 model in the future with an optional drive for consumers who choose it.
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  • Following the reveal of the new PSVR2 headset for PS5, Sony has stated that games for the first PSVR will not be compatible with the new headset. This is because “developing games for PSVR2 requires a whole different approach than the original PSVR” to “deliver a truly next-generation VR experience” according to Hideaki Nishino, the Senior Vice President of platform experience. New features of the PSVR2 will include a 4K HDR display, eye-tracking, and 3D audio among others.
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  • Microsoft has announced that the PC Xbox app will be integrated with HowLongToBeat, a crowdsourced website that shows the average time that players generally spend completing a game. The information from HowLongToBeat will be appended to “most” PC Game Pass games in the store.
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  • Microsoft recently removed online DRM or “digital rights management” checks when playing an Xbox One game on a Series X console. These DRM checks previously made an online connection imperative to play many games, rendering them unplayable in the case of, for example, a power outage. Now, with this requirement removed, players are another step closer to always having access to their games.

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  • The video card manufacturer EVGA has decide to stop its production of video cards after facing issues with the multinational technology company NVIDIA. Video cards currently make up 78% of EVGA’s income, but the partnership with NVIDIA was “not ultimately profitable” according to the company.

Week commencing Monday 19 September 2022