New Game Plus August 12 - 18
Console Tariffs
A few weeks ago we talked about the impending tariffs that would be applied to goods imported from China. As mentioned previously, companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have spent decades and millions of dollars establishing logistics and infrastructure in China to produce their consoles and accessories. This week the USTR or United States Trade Representative announced what the next steps involving the imposed tariffs on 300 billion of chinese imports would be. The first step is that the tariffs will go into place on September 1st however the good news here is that some items were excluded from the September 1st deadline. According the to press release “certain products are being removed from the tariff list based on health, safety, national security, and other factors and will not face the addition tariffs of ten percent” The press release went on to list the items that would be excluded from the September 1st date and will currently be pushed back to December 15th. These items include a lot of the holiday shopping items such as “cell phones, laptops, video game consoles, certain toys, computer monitors and certain footwear and clothing items”
This is great news and a good step in the right direction for fans of video games. I am curious to know just how much pressure the joint letter from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft put of the government. It’s possible that it made or difference or it didn’t affect anything but those are three large corporations with some influence on what happens. The tariffs are currently being pushed back to December while the trade talks with China are still underway. The large hopes for gamers is that the tariffs get completely thrown out as we are on the brink of a new console generation.
Loot Boxes
Video games seem to be receiving a lot of bad publicity these days regarding things like loot boxes, sorry surprise mechanics, violence and tariffs. In a step in the right direction, The ESA or entertainment software association has sent out a press release stating that the big 3, being Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will be displaying the odds of loot boxes in the game. This goes for games moving forward and also implementing them into already released games. Not only is the big 3 involved but also many developers including Activision Blizzard, Take Two, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Bungie and Electronic Arts have also announced they will be posting the odds for their loot boxes.
Since the early 90’s gaming has always caught some negative attention for one thing or another but the good news is gaming has always monitored itself without federal regulations getting involved. It started back in 1994 with the main culprit being Mortal Kombat and how violent it was for the times. The ESA founded the ESRB or Entertainment Software Ratings Board to give games ratings and put them on the front of the box so parents could get a better handle on if a game was appropriate for their children. Subsequently Mortal Kombat received a MA-13 rating and I’m sure some stores even enforced it for a while.
It wasn’t long ago that video games found themselves in hot water with loot boxes in general. It always takes a catalyst to propel these problems to the mainstream. Back in the 90’s, it was Subzero ripping off someone’s head with their spine attached. This time the catalyst was mobile gaming. With the cost of most mobile games being free or 99 cents, developers needed to find a way to monetize. The way to do this as you should already know was by in game purchases including loot boxes. This quickly made front page news when parents would get credit card bills for thousands of dollars worth of in game purchases. Quickly Apple starting displaying if the game had in game purchases with other companies quickly following suit. Well companies have not stopped trying to fool us into buying more and more loot boxes so the problem had escalated to the point where federal involvement was on the brink.
Hopefully listing the odds on all loot boxes will help cool off the hot water on loot boxes for the time being.
July Sales
As usual, around the middle of the month we get a new NPD report and as usual, all of this information was found on the YouTube channel for Mat Piscatella of the NPD group. These sales were for a 4 week period in July that ran from July 7 through August 3. Off the get go it was a great month for software sales as this was the best July over the past 4 years.
The best selling game of the month was madden which marks the 20th year in a row that madden is the best selling game in a month it was released. The last time it wasn’t was in 1999 when final fantasy 8 beat it out. Normally madden has always released at the end of August but has come out a month earlier this year for some reason. It became the 8th best selling game of the year which indicates that it sold well but not that well. Normally when a game gets top spot it also usually asserts itself into the top 3 selling games of the year as we have seen before this year with games like Mortal Kombat 11, the Division 2 and Anthem. EA hasn’t been in fans good graces for awhile and this years madden is apparently riddled with bugs. Combine those 2 factors along with a July release when most people are outside enjoying summer and you have underwhelming sales.
Fire emblem three houses has been given glowing reviews across the board. It seems that the fire emblem fans along with new fans who have seen the reviews have helped this game become the 2nd best selling game of the month. This is pretty impressive for two reason. The first is that it is a Nintendo Switch exclusive, whereas madden is multi platform and the second reason, as I have mentioned before is that Nintendo doesn’t disclose digital sales to the NPD group. This means that Fire Emblem three houses came in at second with just physical sales. If you try to make some assumptions, you could look at Nintendo’s last earnings report and see that they are under the industry average for digital sales with around 25 percent of their total software sales being through the EShop. You could roughly add 25 percent to the sales of Fire Emblem. As we don’t have the exact figures of how much these games sold it would be interesting to know if 25 percent more sales would be enough to be the best selling game of the month
This was an amazing month for Nintendo overall for many reasons not including Fire Emblem being the second best selling game of the month. Nintendo occupied 6 of the top 10 games of the month with exclusives, the Switch was the best selling system of the month and the Switch Pro controller was the best selling accessory of the month. That is amazing news for Nintendo who are building momentum into the fall with a steady stream of releases including the new Switch Lite, Links Awakening, Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Pokémon Sword and Sheild. This isn’t even taking into account the new SNES rumor that we will get into in the next story but overall Nintendo has to be thrilled with the summer performance
Super FCC Filing
With Nintendo on a roll and seemingly making all the right decisions, this next stories authenticity could prove that Nintendo are masters of timing. One of the biggest features that people have been asking for on the Switch is to be able to play retro games. Most notably is the 16 bit era, classic Super Nintendo games that have stood the test of time.
I saw this article on Polygon from Michael McWherter about how this week a reset era user spotted a recent fcc filing by Nintendo that looks unmistakably like the back of an SNES controller.
On the FCC it is listed as wireless game device and only shows the back but it does list the model number and that is where it starts to look like we might be getting these retro classics sooner than later. The model number is HAC042, The Switch itself is HAC 001 and the NES controller from last year that was available to purchase for subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online was HAC033 and 034. If you look closely at the image you can see what looks like a similar connection bar that the joy cons have with two indentations for the top button. Last year Nintendo Switch Online launched on September 18th and with that came the launch of the NES classic library. This was the Netflix style of classic NES games that were added to the system with a few new entries every month. Although it launched with a decent chunk of the best games from that console, anything else of significance was added in the following months shortly after. Now that we are coming up on the first anniversary of Nintendo Switch Online, the quality of NES titles isn’t the classics that most people are looking for anymore. Instead these are harder to find gems that collectors may be interested in playing.
There have been rumors if Nintendo Switch Online will start offering tiers of subscriptions and that possibly a higher tier would include the SNES games. This is very on track for what the industry leaders are doing with Netflix offering multiple tiers depending on features you want, whether that be more users or higher quality.
I still think that around 20 dollars a year the Nintendo Switch Online service is great at its price point for the inclusion on retro games, online play and cloud storage. I would be ok with paying a few dollars more to have access to Super Nintendo games the way the service offers the NES games.
The ideal scenario for the release of the SNES would launch on the one year anniversary of the Nintendo Switch Online service which we are only about a month away from at this point so it might just be wishful thinking. The last, full Nintendo direct was back at E3 on June 11th so getting a Direct before September 18th isn’t out of the question. Gamescom is coming up next week and it’s possible that Nintendo might want to capitalize on the extra attention the world of video games will be receiving during that time. The average time between direct is usually around 2-3 months so it wouldn’t be unheard of if we got a direct featuring some upcoming fall releases for Nintendo
There will actually be a Nintendo showcase on Monday August 19 which they are calling Indie World. According to the social media post from Nintendo of America “tune in for an all new showcase featuring roughly 20 minutes of information on indie games coming to the Nintendo Switch” So if you are a fan of Nindies, then be sure to check that out. I am hoping that we will hear some news regarding Killer Queen Black as it has been quite a while since we have heard any news regarding the arcade port. I would also like to see a little bit more depth on the upcoming release of Torchlight 2 coming to the switch in just a few short weeks. Will there be local co-op like other famous dungeon crawlers on the Switch.
Xbox PSA
Finally our last story of the week involves more of a PSA, This week GameSpot released an in depth interview series with Phil Spencer that they conducted at E3. This series ranges from everything to how the launch of the Xbox One, Project Xcloud and the future of streaming, his beginnings with Microsoft and what his hopes for the future of Xbox look like including Project Scarlet. Obviously, I strongly urge you to go and read all the articles especially if you love Xbox, or just the the nature of the business. Phil is a very business savvy individual who has helped Xbox find its footing again and you could even go as far as to say kept Microsoft in the gaming industry. There is way too many articles and too much information to try to do it justice in just a few short minutes so be sure to check it out.