Tag: Industry - Page 30
News PSN's Monthly Active Users Increase to Eye Watering 90 Million
The biggest gaming network in the world
More people than ever are using the PlayStation Network, with monthly active users topping 90 million in November 2018 according to Sony. This means that almost 100 million accounts connected to the PSN at the tail-end of last year, and while the figure is bloated by multiple users from the same console or...
News Sony Wants Music, Gaming, and Movies to Collaborate
From consumer electronics to creative company
What kind of company is Sony? Historically, there was no debate over this question: the Japanese giant made consumer electronics. These days, with 47 per cent of its revenue driven by entertainment products, the answer is less obvious. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, chief...
News It Sounds Like Persona 5 Was a Bit of a Nightmare to Localise
Put your heart into it
Persona 5 has a lot of text, and obviously, all of it had to be translated from Japanese by a localisation team -- not the kind of job that we envy. The role-playing title was incredibly well received when it launched in 2017, but there were some criticisms made over its localisation, which is a little shaky in places. Again,...
News Square Enix Boss Says Game Streaming and Subscription Services Will Be Key to Future Growth
Here we go again
Square Enix boss Yosuke Matsuda has issued a New Year message, outlining what the company aims to achieve as we move into 2019. Most notably, Matsuda mentions "rapid adaptation of new platforms", specifically video game streaming and subscription services. "The current generation of game consoles has entered the late stage, and the...
News Evidence Mounts for Unannounced Uncharted Game
More recruitment at Visual Arts Services Group
Sony appears to be anchoring a new game development team to its Visual Arts Services Group division. For those of you who don’t know, the San Diego-based VASG has been leveraged by various first-party developers for motion capture work, but it’s been quietly recruiting talent from around the world...
News Japanese Developers Sure Do Love the PS4
Industry professionals big on PlayStation blockbusters
Look, there’s no question that the Nintendo Switch has brushed the PlayStation 4 aside in Japan, but Eastern developers still have a lot of love for Sony and its games. The latest issue of Famitsu magazine includes a poll voted on by 128 Japanese developers and industry professionals, and it...
News Player Numbers for Various PS4 Titles Crunched
Grand Theft Auto V the most played
Some smart statisticians have crunched the player numbers for a bunch of PlayStation 4 titles, using a combination of data from Sony’s popular My PS4 Life videos and Trophy completion percentages. It’s not a fool proof algorithm, as we don’t know the exact period of time that the aforementioned social videos...
News Spider-Man PS4 Dev Pushes Back Against Fan Criticisms Regarding DLC
Where's the Raimi suit?
For as long as we've known about Marvel's Spider-Man, one of the biggest conversations online was all about which suits would end up in the game. The PS4 exclusive wound up with a pretty large selection of costumes for Spidey to try on, covering outfits from the comics, the movies, and even some all-new creations. However, by...
News The Game Awards 2018 Attracted Almost as Many Viewers as The Oscars
F*** The Oscars, man
The Game Awards 2018 was another impressive event from creator Geoff Keighley, blending gongs with game reveals and a general celebration of gaming culture. There’s a ceiling for how good this kind of show can possibly be, and the former Bonus Round host is very close to achieving it. It’s only right, then, that he...
News Shawn Layden on Sony's Silence: See You in the New Year
What's the company cooking?
PlayStation chief Shawn Layden briefly appeared during The Game Awards 2018 last night to open the show alongside Nintendo boss Reggie Fils-Aime and Xbox overlord Phil Spencer – but while the latter two appeared later in the stream to chat about their respective platforms, Layden stayed out of the limelight. This...
Falling out
Good lord, is this ever going to end? First Bethesda releases a borderline broken game. Then it releases a gigantic patch that doesn't fix said game on PlayStation 4. Then it gets called out for shipping crap quality bags to people who bought the most expensive version of the game. Then it
News Former Dragon Age Creative Director Now Working at Ubisoft on Unannounced Project
Ubisoft RPG incoming?
Mike Laidlaw, one of the main creative minds behind much of the Dragon Age series, left BioWare around a year ago. Since then, he's been working as a consultant throughout the industry, but now he's back at a major studio. Today, Laidlaw's revealed that he's actually landed a job at Ubisoft Quebec as creative director on a...
News Sony Publishes Neat First-Party Puff Piece
Visual Arts Services Group listed among developers
Sony’s published a neat video touring its first-party studios in the United States, with the intention presumably to try and recruit talent to its teams. The video includes interviews from key personnel at Sony Santa Monica, Sony Bend, PixelOpus, and others. In the clip, the staffers talk about...
News Social Media Scuttlebutt Says Microsoft Is Sniffing After Sony Studio
Money talks
Microsoft has been snapping up mid-sized studios like corporate acquisitions are going out of fashion, and now the social media rumour mill is aflame with speculation that the team in green is about to snap up a studio that’s worked with PlayStation in the past. This opens the floor to a raft of possibilities, from Supermassive Games...
News Final Fantasy XV Director Hajime Tabata Reveals New Game Studio
JP Games is born
Hajime Tabata, former Square Enix employee and the man largely credited for "saving" Final Fantasy XV as its director, has revealed his newly formed studio on Facebook. Named JP Games, the development team will have more information to share in January next year, when the company launches officially. Tabata left Square Enix at the...
News Sony Patented a Cartridge and Everyone Went Mental Over It
But it's not for a new handheld
A patent filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment and published this week prompted many to believe that the Japanese giant may be working on a successor to the PlayStation Vita, but despite the documentation depicting a new cartridge-like product, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with a hypothetical handheld –...
News PSN Account Banned Over Cultural Mistake Reinstated by Sony
Account reportedly back online
Yesterday saw an interesting story blow up on Reddit, as a Mexican PS4 owner shared how his PSN account had been banned because of a misunderstanding regarding his username. The moniker includes the word "Kike", a racist term for Jewish people, but as the user explained to Sony, it's also a shortened version of his...
News Sony Reportedly Bans PSN Account Over Cultural Misunderstanding
No solution in sight
It’s a holiday in the United States, so that means there are no press releases to mull over and games industry drama gets a big fat spotlight shined in its eyes instead. To be fair, this is an unfortunate story that we hope will be resolved promptly. Over on Reddit, a Mexican gamer claims that his PlayStation Network account...
News Lack of Subtitles in Spyro: Reignited Trilogy Is a Result of 'No Industry Standard'
Activision fuels the fire
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is out now, and it's a gorgeous remake of the beloved PSone platformers. While many are enjoying their time with Spyro and Sparx, some are left flabbergasted by the apparent lack of subtitles across the three games. Some minor characters in the games have them, but the main cutscenes don't, leaving...
News Let's Take a Moment to Remember Sony's Iconic E3 Moments
We're going to miss this
Sony may be skipping E3 2019, and there’s currently no word on whether it will ever return to the event, but we’ll forever have our memories of PlayStation press conferences and no one can take them away. Because we have a quota of headlines with “Sony” and “E3” in them to fill today, allow us to republish this...
News Cliff Bleszinski Says He'll Never Make Another Game
LawBreakers took its toll
LawBreakers really didn't do well. That much is obvious, but what isn't is that it took so much of a toll on developer Cliff Bleszinski that he was vowed to never make another video game ever again. A Twitter user reached out to the man himself yesterday requesting a refund for his purchase of LawBreakers. This was of...
News God of War Wins Big at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards
Multiple awards for Kratos
The Game Awards may still be a few weeks away, but that's not the only award show in town, with the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards taking place this evening. It was a big night for PlayStation, with the likes of God of War scooping up multiple prizes and Detroit: Become Human getting some recognition for its character...
News Expensive, Early Access Releases Are Big Business for Publishers
Dual release dates paying dividends
It’s the latest craze: games no longer have one single, defined release date – they have at least two of them. In the case of Battlefield V – which is available today for some people, was available last week for others, and will be available next week for any remaining peasants – they have four or more...
News After Five Years, PS4 Has Sold Over 86 Million Units Worldwide
Software no slouch either
Sony's celebrating the PS4's fifth birthday today, and it's throwing out some interesting stats regarding its wildly successful platform. Perhaps most worthy of note is that, as of September 2018, Sony has shifted 86.1 million consoles globally -- a staggering number, and as our very own Sammy Barker pointed out, it's...
News PQube Is Done with PS Vita, Says It's a Bird That Can't Fly
"Sony doesn't like the PS Vita games anymore"
Niche publisher PQube – the British company responsible for bringing a bunch of titles to market, including Cat Quest and Punch Line – has said that it’s ceased supporting the PlayStation Vita now. As part of a Twitch stream, the firm admitted that it wanted to continue releasing games for the...
News THQ Nordic Reports Dramatic Increase In Earnings Thanks to Series of Studio Acquisitions
55 games in development
Earlier today, we reported that THQ Nordic had purchased Bugbear Entertainment, developer of Wreckfest and the FlatOut games. This, along with Goat Simulator studio Coffee Stain, is the latest in an extremely aggressive phase of acquiring independent publishers and developers, and as it turns out, the strategy is paying off...
News THQ Nordic Acquires Bugbear Entertainment, Wreckfest Coming to PS4 Next Year
Smashing
THQ Nordic sure has a lot of stuff going on, doesn't it? The latest deal to be struck by the publisher is with Bugbear Entertainment, the Finnish developer perhaps best known for its FlatOut series. The studio is now part of THQ Nordic's collection, and all intellectual property now belongs to the publisher. This one isn't completely out...
News Obsidian, InXile Will No Longer Make PlayStation Games
Both join the Xbox family
Microsoft has added two more former multiformat developers to its first-party roster, meaning that both Obsidian Entertainment and InXile Entertainment will no longer make PlayStation games. The former is perhaps best known for Fallout: New Vegas, while the latter created Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. Both studios have...
Poll Do You Buy and Play Single Player Story DLC?
Extended adventures
Square Enix hosted a livestream this week in which the company shockingly cancelled multiple planned Final Fantasy XV expansion packs. While the decision was primarily motivated by the departure of director Hajime Tabata, it has raised an interesting conversation about the viability of story-based, single player DLC packs...
News PlayStation Now Is the Biggest Gaming Subscription Service
According to market research firm
PlayStation Now is generally given short shrift in gaming circles, with more attention placed on Microsoft’s heavily promoted Xbox Game Pass service. However, it seems Sony’s streaming and download subscription has been quietly bringing home the bacon, as new research from SuperData makes it the market leader by...
News Square Enix Reports Huge $33 Million Loss Thanks to Luminous Productions Change
Publisher takes a big hit in latest financials
Things aren't exactly smooth over at Square Enix these days. From the outside looking in, at times it's seemed as though the publisher is shockingly mismanaged -- especially on the Japanese side of things -- and now the company's reported a $33 million loss in its latest financial briefing. According...
News Square Enix Acquires Stake in The Turing Test Developer
Begins work on new IP
Square Enix has purchased a 20 per cent stake in The Turing Test developer Bulkhead Interactive, which will see it continue to collaborate with the Derby-based studio on upcoming shooter Battalion 1944 and also start work on a new intellectual property. More information, according to the publisher, will be announced at a later...
News Greg Miller to Host Kinda Funny Games Showcase in December
Nearly 50 games to be shown
If you were left disappointed by this year's lack of PlayStation Experience, you might be in luck. Where normally we'd have a presentation from Sony to close out the year, famed gaming personality Greg Miller has been organising an event to take its place. The Kinda Funny Games Showcase now has a date set in stone: 8th...
News Sony Boosts Forecasts as PS4 Closes on 100 Million Milestone
Company in extremely good health
Sony has revised its fiscal year forecast for PlayStation 4 hardware sales up from 17 million to 17.5 million, as the console has reached 86.1 million units shipped. The staggering statistic means that the Japanese giant’s current console is in roughly the same ballpark as the PlayStation 3’s lifetime total –...
News EA Motive Founder Jade Raymond Departs Montreal Studio
'We wish her all the best'
In a surprise move, former Ubisoft executive and EA Motive founder Jade Raymond has left the behemoth publisher. Games Beat reports that Samantha Ryan – who’s currently in charge of Maxis, BioWare, and EA’s mobile studios – will take over, fronting all of the company’s North American sub-units apart from Respawn...
News Alien: Isolation Devs Making a New Tactical Shooter
What will it be?
Creative Assembly, the studio behind the highly regarded horror title Alien: Isolation, is recruiting for a new project. It's not entirely clear what exactly the new game will look like, but from the job description, we can glean a couple of details. The listing asks for a programmer to join the team to work on "a brand-new and...
News Legendary UK Magazine GamesMaster to End After 25 Years
Multiformat publication GamesTM also axed
It’s been a rough decade for games magazines, and two more casualties have been claimed. Legendary publication GamesMaster, which has been running for a whopping 25 years, will end on 1st November, as will its multiformat accomplice GamesTM. Staff from both magazines will be redeployed throughout Future,...
News PS4 Downloads Account for 2.7 Per Cent of Global Internet Traffic
Analyst dissects the data
With PS4, digital downloads are incredibly common. Users are able to download games, of course, but if you also think about streaming via PlayStation Now, patches, firmware updates, and other bits and pieces, the amount of total data must be pretty staggering. Well, according to a new report from Sandvine, 2.7 per cent of...
News Sony Wants 100 Per Cent of Its US Operations to Be Powered by Renewable Energy
And it's aiming for 2030
We all need to be thinking about conserving energy, but it’s especially crucial that companies run their operations responsibly and in a more environmentally friendly manner. Sony was recently given a very poor D-rating by Greenpeace in a tech report, after it relied on just five per cent renewable energy to power its...
News Bandai Namco to Distribute Cyberpunk 2077 in Europe
Partners with CD Projekt Red once more
As we know, CD Projekt Red has partnered with Warner Bros to distribute its highly anticipated RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, in North America. Now, it's been announced that Bandai Namco will cover the same duties in 24 European countries. This was a fairly safe bet, as the Polish developer made the same moves for The...
And apparently it was their choice
So a big stink was raised early this week when news came out about Rockstar employees working 100 hours a week in order to finish Red Dead Redemption 2. As is always the case here on the world wide web, everyone immediately lost their minds over a small quote that, according to the developer, didn't necessarily...
News Rockstar Worked 100 Hour Weeks to Get Red Dead Redemption 2 Done
Life on Marston
Ever wondered what it takes to get a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 finished? According to Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser, it’s a lot of hard work. The company, infamous for its extended periods of crunch, was working “100 hour weeks” multiple times in 2018 in order to get the Spaghetti Western out of the door. That...
News Sony Hiring for Next Generation Marketing Campaign
High PS5
Sony basically confirmed the PlayStation 5 last week, and now it’s recruiting a Senior Product Manager to help plot out the roadmap for its next generation console. The role – spotted by ResetEra on career focused website
News SEGA Wants Simultaneous Worldwide Release Dates for Its Games
About time
Over the last few years Japanese publishers in general have gotten a lot better at localising their games in a more timely manner. It's still far from perfect, with recent titles like Dragon Quest XI coming to mind, but advancements have certainly been made this generation. That said, SEGA seems to know that there's room for further...
News Sony Looking to Crank Up Communication with Fans
Time for talk
If there’s any criticism of Sony at the moment, it’s that the company is far too quiet. The manufacturer was very vocal at the beginning of the generation, but it has let its products do the talking in recent months. While it’s hard to complain about the quality of the PlayStation 4 – especially with both cross-play and name...
News Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Is More Anticipated than Red Dead Redemption 2, Says Report
Blackout
Analytical data company Nielsen has published a list of the year's most anticipated holiday games. The list is based on a survey completed by around 6000 people, but takes into account a number of factors, such as general awareness, purchase interest, and consumer rating. Brand recognition and a few other things also feed into the results...
News Obsidian Entertainment Likely to Leave PlayStation Behind
Microsoft's sniffing
Obsidian Entertainment, the studio perhaps best known for Fallout: New Vegas, looks like it will be leaving PlayStation behind, as reports suggest that it’s about to be acquired by Microsoft – although nothing, as yet, has been signed. Ironically, the developer’s been in financial trouble for a fair few years, after...
News European Commission Reveals New Games from Tequila Works, Zoink
Brexit means Brexit
You may have seen the European Commission’s logo during the loading screen of several games, and that’s because it makes contributions to various indie developers in order to help get their projects off the ground. As part of a new document which details the dozens of releases it will be co-financing in the future, the...
News Guerrilla's Recruiting Rainbow Six: Siege Talent for a Secret Project
Online shooter on the way?
Guerrilla Games has been quietly hiring some of the top talent behind Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege for a super-secret project. Simon Larouche – who previously spent three years at the Dutch developer working on Killzone 2 – served as the game director on Ubisoft’s smash tactical shooter, and has been working on...
News Retained Telltale Staffers Now Also Made Redundant
Skeleton crew axed
There were reports today that Telltale Games was looking for a new company to re-hire former staff in order to finish up the final two episodes of The Walking Dead, which was wild in its own rights. However, this is a story that keeps escalating by the day, and now it’s emerged that
