News Mash-Up - Week # 7

Top News Items

• • The fiscal year 2021 results for Roblox released. These are the first set of annual results since the Roblox Inc. went public since March 2021. Compared to fiscal 2020, revenue doubled to $1.9 billion but so did the losses. Negative net income doubled to half a billion dollars loss. Daily Active Users were 45.5 million, an increase of +40% year over year and hours engaged reached 41 billion, an increase of +35% year over year. The financials did not make investors happy, citing the results fell below expectations, and troubling booking expectations. The stock price fell by almost a third from a high of $73, just before the financial release, to a low of $49 some days after.

  • Netflix will work with Take-Two to adapt Bioshock into a film. No writer or film maker is yet attached, so its debut should not be expected until 2023. The Bioshock license negotiated means Netflix also has the rights to the spin-off story of Bioshock Infinite and the world of Columbia as well as the world of Rapture.

  • SEGA and Paramount have announced a third Sonic movie is in production. The sequel film, Sonic 2, will feature Knuckles and it is voiced by Idris Elba. That film is expected to release on 1 April.

  • The new TV show Halo, also coming from Paramount, has had a second season green light even before the first season has hit Paramount+ streaming platform.

  • From March 2023, the Nintendo eShop will close for Wii U and 3DS games. Funds from credit cards for Wii U or 3DS eShop accounts will cease to work from 23 May this year. From 29 August this year, funds from a Nintendo eShop Cards will also cease to work for these 2 platforms. Existing games or DLC bought will be honoured for future downloads. Nintendo announced that historic games would be accessible from their subscription services going forward.

  • The new  role-playing game Lost Ark, published by Amazon, surpassed 1.3 million concurrent players on Steam when it released on 11 February. This marks the game as one of the highest concurrent played games in Steam’s history.

  • Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, made a statement during Ubisoft’s latest financials, that opened the door for a possible future acquisition. Guillemot stated "We have always taken our decisions in the interest of our stakeholders, which are our players, employees and shareholders […] so Ubisoft can remain independent. We have the talent, the industrial and the financial scale, and a large portfolio of powerful IP [...] having said that, if there were an offer to buy us, the board of directors would of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders."

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Week commencing Monday 21 Feb. 2022