Image credit @Valve

One of the interesting by-products of the Covid pandemic has been the insatiable demand for electronic hardware. The shortage of graphic cards, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles has been well-documented. It could be argued, given the current chip shortage impacting multiple industries, that streaming games could be an alternate solution. 

A “correction” to spending growth in the video games market is not a surprise. The spike in demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic was expected to taper off. The release of the calendar Q2 2021 financials from AAA publishers has mostly proven the assumption that the correction has come, but some uncertainty remains. Increased monthly active users and greater spending on some live service games such as Call of Duty and FIFA has added variables to the model, but overall a downward trend is evident.

What is E3? We know it stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo, and it has a chequered history of expanding, contracting and then blowing up to be this massive industry event that is now bigger than the sum of its parts when everything is a click away, what does E3 want to accomplish?

One of the interesting things to come out from the EA Battlefield 2042 trailer was the news that there will be no single player story assigned. This will be the first Battlefield game with no single player. The debate as to whether a single player mode is required in what is predominately a multiplayer experience can split the community, especially if the game did not reduce in price.

Did you get a physical game in a box for Christmas? Or better still, a new console? When it came to the new consoles you had two choices with either system: do you opt for the cheaper disc-less version, or the more expensive one that comes with an optical drive?

At the time of writing this blog (October 2020) all eyes are on the new consoles coming from Sony and Microsoft. Right now, there is a wave of heightened anticipation and excitement as we enter a new console generation, but something else just as seismic has been happening to the game industry for some time now. China has eyes on console gaming.

It is on the minds of every industry, every company, every government, and everyone in work. How bad will the recession of 2020 – 2021 be? When it comes to the console and PC video game market, this question is no less relevant.

The Unreal Engine 5 demonstration looked fantastic. There I said it.

Epic unveiled the new iteration of their Unreal Engine with a promotional video on the 13 May 2020. I highly recommend everyone to check out the Unreal Engine 5 demonstration video on YouTube, preferably on the highest settings your TV or monitor can handle. The new engine uses the latest technology in video rendering. As a layman who knows next to nothing about game development, when terminology like “Nanite virtualized micropolygon technology”, “Lumen” and “convulsion reverb” were mentioned, I was lost, but that is not important. All I know is what my eyes and ears were telling me. They were telling me – this looks and sounds stunning!

Out of nowhere, the coronavirus, Covid-19, turned the world upside down. Almost all the people in the world and almost all industries have been affected by the virus, the video game industry even more so. One only must read the Games Sales Data (GSD), produced by B2Boost, for the EMEA region to get an idea of the ferocity of change since the time Europe went into lockdown.

In 2003 I fell in love with a green lipped brunette called Jade. She is the heroine from the Ubisoft’s game, Beyond Good & Evil. Although the game was not a commercial success, it did get a cult following and received solid reviews with mostly 8/10 from critics. What made the game special for me was the fact Jade used her intelligence to figure out a way to defeat the bad guys and her weapon of choice was a camera (she did come armed with a combat staff that she used for defence…. obviously!).  Ubisoft will release a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil and the reason could largely be because Jade is such a unique, memorable character that gamers find appealing.