News Mash-Up - Week # 15

• • China approved 45 games after a long drought of not approving new games since July 2021, however, the country also extended its crackdown on gamers’ livestreaming games. Reuters reported that the Chinese National Radio and Television Administration has “temporarily regulated” the live stream of “unauthorized” video games from Chinese streaming sites. The basis for the ban is due to "chaotic online livestreaming and teenage addiction to games have raised widespread concerns in society and effective measures need to be taken urgently". Chinese gamers today cannot play multiplayer games online for more than a few hours a week and minors are restricted to just 3 hours during school weeks.

  • In response to an investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, Sony and Nintendo will update their terms of conditions for their subscription services. Sony will contact subscribers who have not used the service for some time, to remind them it exists, and they are paying for it. Non-responders will have their subscription terminated.
    Nintendo will no longer sell Nintendo Switch Online subscription with an auto-renewal as its default setting.

  • In the past week the Sonic The Hedgehog 2 has now grossed over $100 million domestically (US) and over an expected $230 million worldwide. The first film total gross box office was estimated at $150 million. In the eight days in release, this means the film has the highest box office of any film project based on a video game property.

  • Intel has said that its new laptops containing the powerful Arc products will be available for purchase by the end of Q2’22. The new CPU/GPU was designed for gaming in mind, with “Xe Super Sampling” technology that allows for upscaling. The Arc laptops have already been released in South Korea and initial benchmark results have been a little disappointing as they have fallen short of Nvidia's GTX 1650, however to its credit it does mean a dedicated GPU is no longer necessary in a laptop, saving on size, weight, and possible battery usage.

  • SEGA announced it is planning numerous AAA game projects under the banner “super game”. SEGA producer Masayoshi Kikuchi has declared some enthusiasm for NFTs with future game releases, "gaming has a history of expansion through the connection of various cultures and technologies like social networking and game video viewing […] it is a natural extension for the future of gaming that it will expand to involve new areas such as cloud gaming and NFT. We are also developing Super Game from the perspective of how far different games can be connected to each other.”
    
    
    

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Week commencing Monday 18 April 2022