E3/2020

This is some fairly big news for this early in the year but after revealing the PS5 logo last week at CES, Sony had to keep the momentum going.  Sony announced that they would be once again skipping E3. Sony deciding to not partake in the gaming festivities again comes as a bit of surprise to me as it seemed like last year was a one off.  

Last year was a bit of an experiment for Sony.  It’s no secret that E3 and the ESA are becoming less relevant than they used to be. The world is constantly changing and evolving and the gaming landscape is no different. Where it was once a necessity to have a large stage presence at shows like E3, it also comes with a hefty price tag and its now possible to capture attention in other methods that are more beneficial. Sony skipping E3 in 2019 seemed like it would be a one year absence. The common thinking from most and even voiced by Sony is that they didnt have enough for it to be worthy for them or fans of PlayStation.

Sony had this to say last year “As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community.  PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate, think differently and experiment with new ways to delight gamers. As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can’t wait to share our plans with you.”

Based on the limited amount of exclusives Sony had in 2019 post E3 combined with the fact that they had already locked up the console race for this generation, not participating didn’t seem like it would hurt them. It actually allowed them to do an experiment on their marketing that wouldn’t hurt them in any way. Since they had sold around 100 million units pre E3 last year, many third party games would still get purchased on PlayStation whether or not they were at the show. It would however allow the company to see if there were other ways that they could target their audience with a more direct approach.

As they said they can’t wait to share their plans, it was assumed that they would be throwing a big show of their own around the time of the show, like an EA Play, XO, or even bring back PSX. Instead they did almost nothing new except for take a page from Nintendo’s playbook and do a prerecorded showcase in the vein of Nintendo Direct.  State of Play is what the showcase was called and so far the rollout has been uneven.  

Stepping back into present 2020 and with two new consoles set to do battle again, it was assumed by most that Sony would return to E3. If only revealing a logo at CES wasn’t curios enough, PlayStation has announced that once again it will not be attending E3. A surprise to say the least as E3 is one of the bigger video game conferences for North America seems like an ideal way to get some messaging out for your new console. Speaking with Games Industry dot biz, Sony elaborated on their decision to skip the event for the second year in a row. 

"After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020. We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year” 

"We will build upon our global events strategy in 2020 by participating in hundreds of consumer events across the globe. Our focus is on making sure fans feel part of the PlayStation family and have access to play their favorite content. We have a fantastic line up of titles coming to PlayStation 4, and with the upcoming launch of PlayStation 5, we are truly looking forward to a year of celebration with our fans

We weren’t left with long to ponder what would the competition do as Microsoft was quick to announce their intentions. Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, tweeted “Our team is hard at work on E3, we look forward to sharing with all who love to play what's ahead for us. Our artform has consistently been propelled by the cross-section of creativity and technical progress. 2020 is a milestone year in that journey for Team Xbox.

As it’s expected to see PlayStation take a more streamlined approach with just one console, it will be in Microsoft’s best interest to get in the public eye as much as possible as it seems like they will be launching with multiple consoles. Most likely we will be getting full reveals in Spring so we don’t have long to find out more details.

Delays 

Depending on how you view the situation, 2020 was quick to offer more unfortunate news in the form of two games delays. Final Fantasy 7 Remake was delayed a little over a month from its original release date of March 3 to April 10th. The other game that got delayed was Crystal Dynamics ‘The Avengers’ and this game is getting pushed deeply back from its original release date of May 15 to September 4. 

Both of these delays speak differently from each other.  The Final Fantasy delay being somewhat short, indicates that the game just needed a little more polish as opposed to a deep overhaul. It’s unfortunate that FF7 wasn’t able to hit the early March date as it seems that it had a pretty nice window. It would have been arguably the first must play game of the year and would have been released ahead of many of the other huge blockbusters of Spring. Unfortunately, in its new window, it will now be released after Nioh 2, Doom Eternal, Animal Crossing and all of those games are fairly highly anticipated. I understand that FF, especially FF7 has a deep cult following but time and money are finite resources. . I still think that the FF7 remake has enough devoted fans and has been showing well at preview events that this shouldn’t affect the sales of the game too much.

The more troubling delay is clearly The Avengers which hasn’t shown well since the beginning and has the job of trying to convince fans why they should be interested in the game in the first place. Not using the MCU character likeness would have clearly saved the studio some royalty fees and expenses but it came at a cost. People are left to wonder what universe this game is set in among other issues the game has. These include not looking fun, graphically pleasing or even explaining what the actual core gameplay loop is. 

The Avengers getting delayed until September is worrisome for a few reasons with the first being that a four month delay seems concerning that the game has major issues that can’t be polished out or it’s not focus testing properly. The second reason is that pushing the game back until very late summer / early fall will most likely find in lost in the abundance of new console news, reveals and releases. The avengers was already fighting an uphill battle trying to convince gamers why they should be interested, now it will have to convince them of why this game is more worthy than a next gen title as well. 

The one and very far possibility is that Crystal Dynamics is actually saving the game for next gen.  This is the only optimistic view on The Avengers at the moment. Crystal Dynamics portfolio is all over the place with hits and misses, but their most recent work on the revival of the tomb raider series should install some confidence that this team will be able to get the job done, however with a lack of experience in a live service, massively online game, the studio is in uncharted territory. 

Crystal Dynamics issued a statement on their website regarding the delay and as you can expect it sounded like every other studio statement regarding delays.”We committed to delivering an original story-driven campaign, engaging co-op, and compelling content for years to come. To that end, we will spend this additional development time focusing on fine tuning and polishing the game to the high standards our fans expect and deserve”

We have one late addition to the delayed group. You can run but you can hide Avengers as the popular and easily most anticipated game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed from April to September 15. Ignoring most of the reasons I just explained why a delay of that long was troubling for Crystal Dynamics, this is less of a concern for the futuristic RPG. CD Projekt Red is a publicly traded company and they understand that not shipping the game in a quarter will affect the stock price. It’s also important to note that The Witcher 3 was delayed a few times as it was originally due out in 2014 then was delayed a few times until 2015. Most would agree that game turned out just fine in the end. Also it’s very important to note that Keanu Reeves can no longer be trusted. 

NPD 

Right around the middle of the month the NPD group treats us to a new batch of video game sales data for people to dissect. This batch was a little different due to the fact that the decade just ended and so on top of getting the December 2019 highlights, there was also the whole of 2019 highlights as well as the top performers of the decade.

Starting with the more recent information this data runs all of December and trickles a few days into January. As always, the NPD data only represents the US market but its a good indicator of the industry as a whole. As expected for a year that will be the last full year before new consoles hit the market and with less mainstream games than 2018, spending was down around 15 percent vs the same time as last year.  This was generally the same case for every month this year when comparing to the 2018 version. This was reflected in the total spending for gaming being down in 2019 around thirteen percent compared to 2018. 

Total spending being down on the year didn’t stop Activision, Infinity Ward and Call of Duty doing what it always does. Sell games! Modern warfare was the top selling game for the third month in a row and this next piece of data is astounding. For the 11th year in a row, Call of Duty has been the best selling game of the year. I find that to be absolutely nuts. I understand the mass and broad appeal of the franchise and I generally check out the game every year myself but don’t stick around. The perplexing thing is how much you hear that the series is dead, no one liked ghosts, no one wanted jet packs, we want a campaign and even with all the negatives people saw about this game it still sells copies by the boatload. 

As for the unknown quantity, that would be Respawn and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. Leading up to the release of the game there was a lot of concern if the studio could deliver an action adventure game that wasn’t a first person shooter. A first in the studios somewhat brief history. Upon release the reviews critiqued the game for having a lack of polish and having an array of small bugs. It seems that neither of those issues amounted to much as for back to back months, Fallen Order placed second on the charts and keep in mind only behind Modern Warfare. Even more great news for Respawn was that with only two months on the charts, it became the sixth best selling game of the year and has become the best selling Respawn title to date. This studio has made some great games including Titanfall 1&2, Apex Legends and its great to see them hit such a milestone with the game having only been available for a few months. It’s great to see the hard work from Stig, Vince and the whole team to get the recognition. 

In terms of hardware and accessories, the Nintendo Switch was the best selling console of 2019 which makes complete sense as it has entered the prime of its lifetime with hardware iterations available and a plethora of amazing titles to purchase. If you buy a new console then a new controller is a top priority and the Switch Pro controller was the best selling accessory of the year. Staying on the Switch tangent, half of the top 20 best selling games of December were first party Nintendo titles. They have a way with evergreen titles like no other company, they almost never go on sale, the gameplay is usually timeless and this creates a constant demand for these games. Looking at the top ten best selling games of 2019, only two weren’t released this year which include Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. 

Looking at the decade, it comes as no surprise that the PS4 was the best selling console of the past ten years as Sony recently revealed how they have sold north of 105 million at CES. On the flip side of Nintendo having evergreen titles, Sony can rely on being the place where you want to play the biggest third party games in addition to having some great exclusives occasionally. The list of the best selling games of the past decade can certainly attest to their strategy. GTAV was the best selling game of the past decade with Red Dead Redemption 2 and seven of the top ten being Call of Duty games. Most surprisingly was that ghosts was sixth, considering fans of the series rank that one near the bottom of the pile. 

Gamestop 

Personally I don’t know why they revealed their holiday earnings because they are on track with how things have been trending lately for the company and that is down. They are a public company and they are required to disclose quarterly filings but I do think they have any requirements to reveal specific holiday periods. It just makes sense not to draw attention to the negatives. 

The holiday period that they are reporting is the nine week period ending January 4, which covers the Christmas shopping, the Black Friday shopping and the Boxing Day shopping. If there would have been any beacon of hope for their fiscal year 2019, it would have been during this period. 

Total global sales were 1.83 billion for the nine week period which was down almost 30 percent from the same period the year prior. As a result of these weaker than expected figures the company saw its share price take a dip of around 15 percent this week. 

George Sherman, GameStop’s chief executive officer said, “We expected a challenging sales environment for the holiday season as our customers continue to delay purchases ahead of anticipated console launches in late 2020. However, the accelerated decline in new hardware and software sales coming out of black Friday and throughout the month of December was well below our expectations, reflective of overall industry trends. On a positive note, we continued to see growth in the Nintendo Switch platform, which supports our view that our sales will strengthen as new consoles and innovative technology are introduced.” 

Things don’t look good for GameStop as we approach a new generation but the company still seems optimistic with recent store closings, human resource restructuring and new plans to draw back gamers through experiences. George Sherman continued on by saying “we believe we have the right long-term action plans in place to optimize profitability and increase new revenue streams in advance of new console introductions for holiday 2020. We look forward to delivering progress against our strategy as we move through the year.” 

The company hopes that this year will buy it enough time to course correct and adapt to the changing marketplace. It will be interesting to see how much online retailers take a chunk out of the sales of the next gen consoles this holiday.