New Game Plus (November 4-10)

PS DIGITAL TOP 20

Over on the PlayStation blog this week they featured the PSN top downloads for the month of October. While there isn’t really anything that jumps out as a major issue, there are a few things that are worth noting.

As expected Call of Duty Modern Warfare came out on the top of the list but Ghost Recon Breakpoint placing second does seem interesting. It was just a little under two weeks ago that Ubisoft had to adjust their financial projections based on a underperforming quarter led by Breakpoint. Yves Guillamot even went as far as to say

“while the game’s quality appeared on track – based on E3, Gamescom, previews and our latest internal playtests, critical reception and sales during the game’s first weeks were very disappointing”

In my mind these two things don’t add up quite right. On one side you have the Ubisoft founder and CEO talking about just how much of a disappointment Breakpoint was from reception and sales but then on the PlayStation Blog, Breakpoint charts at the second best selling game of the month. Possibly the only reason that it didnt rank first was because the juggernaut that is Call of Duty was released.

Combing through Ubisoft earnings reports, the company actually does a decent percentage of their game sales digitally. Keeping in mind that there is still PC, Xbox as well as the sales of physical media and you have to assume the game sold decently well. The assumption is that Breakpoints sales are disappointing to Ubisoft who were most likely expecting a repeat of Wildlands, especially with the extra marketing push and the addition of Jon Bernthal to give the game some star power. Breakpoint didn’t receive much in the way of good reviews, but I think one of the major reasons that it didnt meet the expectations set by Wildlands is due to the release window. Ghost Recon Wildlands came out in the spring, which generally is a quieter time for releasing games. Breakpoint is coming out at a time when there is too many options and customers either don’t have enough time or enough money.

Other notable new entries to the list include The Outer Worlds at number three which is impressive for a few reasons, its an independent single player RPG (developed mostly before Microsoft acquisition) that would seem like its only for a specific audience and secondly is that its basically free on game pass or at most would cost you one monthly subscription. The other notable new entry is WWE2K20 which has just been getting trashed by fans and critics alike for its less than mediocre quality and bugs. It placed at 17th on the top 20 which means that bad reviews and word of mouth will at least stop a lot of people from buying it.

It’s also great news that Spider Man, God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 are still on the list. I enjoy shooters as much as the next person but those single player experiences are a different breed that will continue to be made as the scope and scale of these games with the right support. RDR2 has continued to support its online mode and its sounds like it is coming along very slowly, God of War is now part of the PlayStation greatest hits and Spider Man getting some deep discounts help keep pushing these games.

PlayStation Corporate

In keeping with the PlayStation theme, this week things continued to change and evolve with the executives at PlayStation. Around a month ago, Shawn Layden mysteriously departed his role at Sony. This week there was an article on gamesindustry.biz that detailed another big change made within PlayStation and featured an interview with Jim Ryan. Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida will be leaving that role and moving onto a new position focused on independent games on PlayStation. Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), said that the new role for Shuhei will be about “celebrating external developers that are creating new and unexpected experiences”

In preparation for the next generation of consoles, Sony needs to see where the competition is making advancements on their position as leader. One area where, from the outside looking in, seems like Sony is trailing is within the indie game sector. Nintendo has put a focus on indie games on the Switch and even has mini directs focused on these games called Nindies. The Nintendo Switch, for some reason does seem like a perfect place to play independently made games. Over at Microsoft, they have been touting the ID@XBOX program since close to the launch of the Xbox One. You could make the argument that the ID program has been one of the few things that Microsoft got right from the start. Xbox also has the “Preview Program” which can help a lot of indie get out and get early funding while the developers continue to work on and evolve the game. Many independent games need and benefit from early access programs to help keep the project going.

Shuhei is a well known name at PlayStation and around the industry, which leads me to believe that PlayStation is very serious about independent games for the PS5. There are independent games on the PSN , PlayStation hasn’t been ignoring independent studios, they just haven’t been making them a priority. Jim Ryan said “Everybody knows just how passionate Shu is about independent games…they are the lifeblood of the industry, making our content portfolio so special for our gamers. These wildly creative experiences deserve focus, and a champion like Shu”. Jim Ryan has said that the company hasn’t stopped supporting indie developers, it has just transitioned a lot of the indie focus to the VR space where the amount of indie content on PSVR is “significant”

As for who would be taking over for Shuhei Yoshida as Worldwide Studios President, that position will be going to Guerrilla Games co founder and managing director Herman Hulst. Herman seems very personable, passionate and could be the face of PlayStation. When Sony has their PS5 reveal event, I expect Herman to be the keynote speaker. Seeing the growth of Guerrilla games grow from the little shooter that had a little potential with Killzone. It took that little potential and turned in into the blockbuster PS3 technical powerhouse that was Killzone 2 (criticisms aside). Guerrilla was then tasked with being a launch title on the PS4 with Killzone Shadowfall to demonstrate the power of the system. Creating the Decima engine to power the wildly acclaimed Horizon Zero Dawn was no small accomplishment and has given Sony a bonafide IP and brand with Aloy. Finally, working with other studios to create new IP’s using the Decima engine including SuperMassive to power Until Dawn, and most recently Death Stranding from Kojima Productions.

As for Guerrilla Games, Hermans position will be taken over by Angie Smets, Jan-Bart Van Beek, and Michiel van der Leeuw who will all take over as a studio head committee. This could be permanent or this could possibly just be in the interim until the proper processes have taken place. Herman took to twitter to publicly give his congrats to the three who will be taking over “its been a true privilege running the studio with you, and it gives me great comfort knowing that the team is in such capable hands” This committee will take over with a full plate as the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn will be very important to the PS5. Horizon Zero Dawn came out very early in 2017 and with the PS5 expected to launch late 2020, its not inconceivable to think that the sequel could be a launch title. Based off Guerrilla Games history with supporting the PS4 with Killzone Shadowfall at launch, giving the PS5 a huge AAA launch title could have a greater impact than imaginable.

XO19

Switching major consoles for this next story with Xbox releasing a little news about XO19 on Xbox Wire. The article explains that for this years event there will be over 24 titles that will be at the show and will be playable. The event will be taking place between November 14-16 in London, which is a change of scenery for the event that took place in Mexico City last year. The big takeaways from the event last year included a few major studio acquisitions including Obsidian Entertainment who just released the critically acclaimed The Outer Worlds. The game seems to be doing well with sales too according to a few sources. It has placed third overall for the top digitally downloaded games on the PS Store as well as publisher TTWO revealing at their earnings call that the game is performing above expectations. X018 also including a first look of the shrouded CrackDown 3 multiplayer and some GamePass announcements were made, PUBG, Ori and the Blind Forest and Hellblade being some notable additions. Overall nothing groundbreaking came out of XO18 but overall there were some solid announcements.

This year we can probably expect a similar affair with nothing revelatory but still some decent announcements. In terms of what games will be there in the over 24 group they mentioned, its a pretty varied assortment. Some of the games that I would like to see more of include Bleeding Edge, the latest team fighter from Ninja Theory. Minecraft Dungeons looks like a very capable Diablo style dungeon crawler that I am very intrigued to see more of and hopefully whet my appetite for that genre. Wasteland 3 shows potential and I am interested to see how Microsofts acquisition of the studio has helped this games development.

According to the official Twitter of Xbox XO19 will be kicking off with an episode of Inside Xbox you won’t want to miss. The show will also include 12 Xbox Game Studio titles including new reveals, new GamePass reveals and some Project xCloud news. I don’t foresee the episode of Inside Xbox bringing the heat as you can see from the content of what was revealed at last years event but there will be quality. The whole event will be streaming on Mixer as you would expect.

TTWO Q2 FY2020

The last quarter was generally pretty great for the whole of video games. Last week we took a deeper look at the earnings reports from Nintendo and EA with both of those companies showing some great growth and profitability. This week TTWO revealed their earnings for the second quarter and following suit things look good overall. Net revenue grew 74% to $857.8 million in just the last quarter alone and digital net bookings were up 63% to $695.3 which shows that every day more consumers are moving to a digital world. These figures show tremendous growth versus the same time period the year prior. This is great news for TTWO as that means more profit for them. Based on the strength of the quarter, TTWO has raised the outlook for FY2020 as a whole, which makes sense and gaming companies make most of their profit during the holiday Q3. Despite the large increases in expectations the stock was down on the week based on the fact that they have little to no new offerings for the holiday.

CEO of TTWO Strauss Zelnick, explained the companies perspective regarding that argument and the rest of the earnings report in an interview with Rebekah Valentine from GamesIndusry.biz. In terms of sales specifics Borderlands 3 has sold 7 million copies, RDR2 has sold 26.5 million copies and GTAV has continued to march on to 115 million copies sold. This doesn’t come as huge surprise as GTAV has been a mainstay on the NPD charts every month since its release for the XBOX 360 and PS3 back in 2013. Strauss even discussed recent issues that Ubisoft has had releasing a sequel to an live service game and their stance was that you need to continue to support both games indefinitely “We have to meet the consumer where the consumer is, and there’s no rulebook around how you create transitions or new products in a world of live services” Which makes sense why there are fewer titles released from TTWO as a whole.

In terms of how TTWO plans to compete this holiday season, Strauss thinks that a thinner holiday might help overall with their stable of games. “It isn’t a strongly competitive holiday season, and given that we’re actively in the market with RDR2 and Borderlands 3 and most recently with Outer Worlds, I think there’s some benefit to having less competition” and continued on explaining that even though the holiday season seems like it has less large releases across the board, you still need to have great games to succeed. “Consumers will not show up unless its the highest quality, even if there’s nothing else out there”

This fits inline with the TTWO mantra of releasing quality over quantity because I think even if you dont buy a game that’s critically very successful, it does stay on your radar. When the time comes around that there isn’t much in terms of new releases or if there is a sale, you are more than likely going to give a game like that a chance.