News Mash-Up - Week # 46

Top News Items

• • During Q2 of their financial year, Embracer’s net sales grew 190% year-on-year. During this quarter, the group finalized its acquisitions of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal. Although these acquisitions definitely contributed to Embracer’s sales growth, the group noted that 35% of the increase in growth was purely organic.
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  • Krafton, the publisher in Korea, recently released their financial data as well. During Q3 of their financial year, Krafton reported a revenue of $328.5 million and net profits of $171.5 million (increase in net profits +27% since last year). This revenue is the lowest for Krafton since Q4 2020 ($328.5 million), and marks a 17% decline year-on-year. Despite this lower revenue figure, Krafton’s net profits still increased, and they attribute this partly to the growth of PUBG: Battlegrounds, which showed an increase in sales in Q3.
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  • On the evening of November 16, there were a recorded 452,281 people were simultaneously recorded playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 at the same time. This number exceeded those of its huge rival battle royal games, Apex Legends and PUBG, which racked up simultaneous player numbers of 334,431 and 377,558 respectively.
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  • Phil Spencer, boss of Xbox, has spoken up in the ongoing Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying that Microsoft intends to offer Call of Duty on PlayStation “for as long as players want to play Call of Duty on PlayStation." This comes over concerns that Microsoft plans in the future to make the huge game franchise an Xbox exclusive in ongoing EU and UK regulator investigations. Spencer addressed concerns that Microsoft will suddenly “pull the rug out from under PlayStation” saying, “There’s no contract that could be written that says forever. […] This idea that we would write a contract that says the word forever in it I think is a little bit silly, but to make a longer-term commitment that Sony would be comfortable with, regulators would be comfortable with, I have no issue with that at all."
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  •  Xbox has decided to shelve its idea of a Game Pass streaming box, for which they produced a prototype earlier this year, as the company failed to get the box into its targeted price range of $99-129. Any more expensive for a streaming-only box, and Phil Spencer, Xbox Box, said it probably would not make sense, with the Xbox Series S priced at $299 already.
    
    
  • Microsoft is celebrating 20 years since the debut Xbox Live on November 15, 2002! For loyal fans who have been with Xbox Live for all 20 years, Xbox released a new badge for their Xbox Live profiles.

• • Team SoloMid (or TSM), one of the largest esports organizations, signed a deal with cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2021, making it officially known as TSM FTX. After FTX recently fell into bankruptcy in the last week, TSM has said that it will be consulting a legal counsel “to determine the next best steps to protect our team, staff, fans, players.”
    
    

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Week commencing Monday 14 November 2022