News Mash-Up - Week # 43

• • Microsoft gaming has reported its most successful Q1 results ever. For the quarter ending September 30, 2022, the company’s gaming division  reported earning $3.61 billion this year, a growth of 0.47 percent year-on-year. This growth makes this quarter the most successful one to date for Microsoft gaming.
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  • Ubisoft reported that its sales for the first have of the year are down slightly at €731 million, a 3% decrease year-on-year with an operating loss of €215 million (as compared to an operating income of €25.9 million last year). However, the company is optimistic that the second half of the year will more than make up for these losses.
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  • Meta net income dropped 52% in Q3 of their financial year to $4.4 billion, while operating income dropped 46% to $5.6 billion year-on-year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains optimistic, however, saying, "While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth."
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  • Jagex, the developer of RuneScape, has reported a record amount of revenue in its financial highlights for 2021, coming in at just under £125 million. This is a 4% increase from 2020, and the seventh year in a row that the company has reported revenue growth. This comes as RuneScape obtained its highest number of paying members throughout the year in 2021. 
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  • Capcom reported that during the first half of its fiscal year, until September 30, its revenue was down 30% year-on-year to ¥49.1 billion and its operating income was down 24% to  ¥21.9 billion. The company attributes this to a “tough comparison” due to its major releases of Resident Evil Village and Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin in the first half of 2021.
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  • Physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 only contain 72.23 MB of data, while the remaining data, totaling a massive 150 GB, must be downloaded upon purchase. Discs like this have been under criticism, because obtaining the rest of the game post-purchase can be a hassle and time and resource consuming process, particularly those with data caps and low internet speeds. Both are reasons that players often opt for a physical versus digital copy of a game in the first place.
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  • Due to the combination of a crackdown on gaming in China, its strict COVID policies, and other reasons, Tencent is no longer the country’s most valuable company. The stock price of Tencent has reached its lowest price in five years, as its overall market share was overtaken by Kweichow Moutai, a company specializing in Maotai rice wine.
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  • CI Games, the publisher of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, has announced that it is currently developing a “premium, multiplayer PVE tactical-shooter” known as Project Scorpio, that will be a live-service title. Underdog studio, the internal studio at CI Games responsible for the Sniper: Ghost Warrior games, will develop the title. It currently has an estimated launch date of 2024/5. 
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  • Striking Distance Studios and Krafton, respectively the developer and publisher of The Callisto Protocol, have announced that the Japanese version of the game has been canceled. This is due to the violence in the game, and therefore its inability to obtain an age rating in Japan. Those who had already preordered the game will receive a refund.
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  • Valve has recently come out with a “new regional pricing recommendation system” on Steam, and the launch of this feature could lead to price increases for some countries. Among these are a suggested price increase for the British Pound by 8%, the Euro by 18%, and the Argentine Peso by a full 485%.
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  • In opposition to recent reports stating that Electronic Arts will be stopping physical distribution of products in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, EA has officially stated that this is not the case. Physical distribution will continue in these German-speaking countries.
    
    

Week commencing Monday 23 October 2022