New game + April 22-28
Dead and Undead
In terms of what new games hit the shelves or digital storefronts this week we have a couple of big games with Mortal Kombat 11 and the PlayStation exclusive Days Gone from Sony Bend.
Starting off with Days Gone and how it’s been a very interesting road to relase for this game. It was first announced way back at E3 2016 and the gaming landscape has changed. Wheter you liked the game or not there is no doubt that Red Dead Redemption 2 changed the way open worlds function and anything less feels like a video game of last generation. Everything in that game felt so alive. Towns would remember your face if you committed a crime, people wouldn’t respawn in you killed them, almost everything in Rockstars world had repercussions. That is a tough bar to achieve for most developers who are just starting to develop a game now, let alone a game that was somewhat built back in 2016. I haven’t been able to get my hands on it just yet but the reviews are averaging middle of the road. The current metacritic is sting in the low 70’s with most being in that range but a few people are giving it high 8’s and 9’s and on the flip side you have some scores in the 4’s and 5’s. The common complaint across all reviews, good or bad, is that the game is just too long. It sounds like if you just mainline it and rush through everything you are looking at 30 plus hours with the most common time I heard being over 60 hours. 60 hours isn’t a bad thing unless its artificially inflated with repetitive quests and pointless missions, which unfortunately it sounds like. This seems like a problem in the industry that if you make a short single player game you will get backlash from the fans so you try to pad it out but if you don’t have anything good to say I wonder it just does more damage. I wonder how good the game could have scored if a lot of the fat was trimmed and there was a tighter story somewhere in the 15-20 hour range. I think under 10 you are asking for trouble selling at full price but in the 15-20 hour range you can avoid most of that and then if you have more to say you can add DLC as well.
It also sounds like its never quite sure of its identity and whether it wants to be a full on survival or a video game. It sounds like it might have been a better time and more committed if it would’ve embraced some of the survival elements and crafting of State of Decay. There isn’t much more I can really say without playing it for myself
The other large release this week was Mortal Kombat 11. This is the the third instalment of the trilogy in the rebooted MK universe. I haven’t been able to play too much of it just yet but not being a huge fighting game fan I can say that this game is a lot of fun. The reviews for this are currently sitting at a 83% which is right on par with the last game MKX that is also sitting at an 83%. I think I am currently about halfway through the story so far and it feels like a big budget Hollywood action movie. There is a clever written storylines that leave open a lot of possibilities for sequels or dllc, some great set pieces, and good pacing. The story mode isn’t going to win any oscars but its big budget sci fi fun. The only gripe I have with the story so far is just how bad Ronda Rousey is as Sonya Blade. All of the lines just fall flat and nothing comes across as genuine. I am not sure how hard it is to do voice work for a movie or a game but all of the lines just feel forced and robotic. For me personally I find that almost every time Sonya is on screen I feel pulled out of the immersion. I am left wondering why NetherRealm chose her to voice Sonya. They could have used any female voice actor and worst case scenario it would have been the same only cheaper.
There is also a crypt mode, online mode and tower mode but the only other mode I have tried is the Tutorial mode which is amazing. It is very helpful to a non fighting gamer to learn what a lot of the terms are such as dash cancels and when to use them for most effectiveness. Its a very deep tutorial to do everything including all the characters you are easily looking at a few hours. I don’t think the online portion will ever be the reason for me playing this game but I am more than happy to battle in the tower, and story mode and there is also an AI battle mode where you can just earn currency passively when your AI battles other AI. This leads us to out final point about MK and that is the micro transactions and the different amount of currency the game offers you. The one you can buy with real world money is time Krystals. The other currencies are coins, souls, and hearts. As I am not sure deep and am still trying to get my fighter legs under me I haven’t had a chance to peruse the store yet but from what I have read the rewards are basically fractions of what you need to spend and for each character there is 60 skins and numerous weapon skins. There was a reddit post where a user broke down the cost and it would be over $6000 dollars to purchase everything in the game. Similar to a lot of games you can also earn everything in the game without spending real world money but how long would it really take. As NeatherRealm is clearly aware of just how important MK is to them they did issue a statement very soon after release that they will be adjusting the reward system and gifting players a lot of in game currency as an apology.
MillionZ
Keeping with the theme of recently released games World War Z from Saber Interactive has announced that it has sold over 1 million copies in its first week. Via a press release their CEO said “we are humbled and thrilled by the immense success so far of World War Z….moving forward we’ll continue to expand the game and its community with new improvements, stability updates, and bonus gameplay content, beginning very soon with a special new mission for the Tokyo Episode”. This is great news to hear for this company who have mostly worked on other developers games or ports. I think that a large part of the success is that people just loved Left 4 Dead and haven’t had a proper next gen experience since. There was Evolve but that was too dependent on your other squad mates using their abilities properly and at the right time. Its only currently reviewing at an average of 75% but I think this is a case of under promise and over deliver. Whereas most games nowadays over promise and under deliver which means that even if a game reviews decently the majority of gamers are upset with the game and it won’t sell well. This seems like a game that will garner a larger cult audience over time and a developer that it willing to support it. Let’s wait to see.
Game Sales
NPD released its top sales for the month of March and unsurprisingly Tom Clancys The Division 2 came in at number 1, which is impressive considering it was released on the 22nd. Other notable new entries to the the list were Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro and Yoshi’s Crafted World. Items of significance of include that GTA V made its way back to the top 10. Anthem falls out of the top 10 after just one month, however it still the third best selling game of the year so far. Sekiro coming in at number 2 on the month and number 8 overall is interesting because the NPD doesn’t track digital sales nor does it track sales on BattleNet which probably would have boltstered its numbers much greater as Sekiro was published by Activision Blizzard.
Earnings Reports
We got a couple of earnings reports this week from Nintendo and Sony. Starting off with Sony they had a few things to talk about. The first was just how well the sales for the PS4 were doing overall even though they fsaw a decline year on year.
On the heels of last weeks Wired Magazine exclusive about the PS5 announcement, speculation began to circulate about when the system would be arriving. Well we didnt have to wait long to narrow the window down as in the earnings report they noted that there wouldn’t be any new hardware in the next fiscal year which means that the earliest we will see the next generation PlayStation will be May 2020.
Overall this year Sony saw an increase in software sales, increased Playstation Plus Subscribers. For the next years projections they are anticipating flat sales for the year overall, with a decrease in hardware sales and an increase in game sales. This is all pretty standard stuff at the end of a console life cycle. As the install base for the PS4 is now at a staggering 96.8 million. That is a large accomplishmen considering how poorly performed compared to the Xbox 360. With that kind of install base its not a surprise they are expecting software sales to be up.
One thing they noted is that hardware cost would be up and that we wouldn’t be hearing anything new at E3 as they have decided to skip their normal time slow this year.
The spot didnt stay vacant for too long as this week Square Enix announced that they would be giving a special broadcast on Monday, June 10th. Typically, Monday has been the day for Sony to announce their plans. This is a big spot at E3 that will bring a lot of attention, which has a lot of people wondering just what they plan to show. Some of the possibilities include the Avengers title that was announced a few years ago for Crystal Dynamic or the long in development Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There could be a lot of potential games from Tomb Raider, Hitman, Dragons quest or Final Fantasy Series. After the last Deus Ex, Square said that the series would be on hold. Considering the last entry was in 2016, it doesnt seem like 3 years would really be considered on hold. So anything from Deus would come as quite a shocker. Nier Automata was a critical darling so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see something from that series. Seems like a long shot but I was a huge fan of the GO games that they released for mobile but later ported to console. Their was Tomb Raider GO, Hitman Go and Deus Ex GO with only the first two being ported to consoles. I never played them on mobile but was a big fan of them on PlayStation. Im not suggesting that they bring those back because I think they announced the GO series didnt sell well but something creative using the IP they already own would be a great idea. Having something like the GO series on the Nintendo Switch would be a perfect fit. We dont have long to wait to find out what they think was E3 worthy.
What we don’t know about E3 just yet is when Nintendo is planning to do their Direct. This week Nintendo released their fiscal report for the year ending March 31, 2018. This week Nintendo also announced the official release date of one of their biggest first party titles of the year, Super Mario Maker 2. They announced at their last Direct that the game would be coming out in June and true to their word they shared that the game would be released on June 28th, leaving only a few extra days to remain before July. They haven’t gone into a huge deep dive on what makes the game a true sequel just yet so we can expect a large chunk of their E3 Direct to be heavily focused on this game. Another thing came across to me as interesting was that pre orders for the game in Europe and Asia will come with a custom Mario Maker stylus. I think this would basically be the most essential way to create levels on the Switch but the big question is why havnt’t they announced the same pre order bonus here in North America. I hope it’s only a matter of time before they share this announcement with us. It’s possible that they have something even better in store for North Americans. The release date for Super Mario Maker 2 seems coincidentally close to the rumored release of the next version of the Switch that we have been hearing so much about. The more budget friendly is supposedly the one that is coming first.
It was also announced that the Nintendo Switch has now passed the N64 on the all time sales list for Nintendo. The N64 sold in the range of 33 million whereas the Switch is now sitting nicely at 35 million. Next up on the horizon is the SNES which sold 49 million but according to the conservative projections they should pass that with around 53 million as Nintendo is anticipating 18 millions until sold this upcoming fiscal year. Their stock took a little hit this week with the conservsative forecasting but they should have a problem hitting it with large releases including Mario Maker, Links Awakening and Pokemon as well as additional titles that have yet to be revealed yet they said.
In terms of comparison the Switch is trending very close to the way the Wii did and that system ending up selling over 100 million. I think depending on how long they support the console for it could well exceed that number if they treat it like the DS and keep giving us revisions.