News Game Plus - Week Ending April 12
E3 and IGN Summer of Gaming
Since the official cancellation a few weeks ago E3, we have been told that the company was working on ways to bring together the same group in a digital format. However, it seems that the ESA has come to the conclusion that its best to leave behind 2020 altogether and regroup for 2021. According to Rebekah Valentine from games industry dot biz, the ESA said “ instead, we will be working with exhibitors to promote and showcase individual company announcements...we look forward to bringing our industry and community together in 2021 to present a reimagined E3 that will highlight new offerings and thrill our audiences”.
Does this mean that the ESA couldn’t figure out a way to make this work in 2020? Based on the self isolation that everyone is under right now I would have to lean towards yes. As we have already seen over the past month with some of the leaders in the industry including Microsoft and PlayStation working from home doesn’t allow you to give the same level of professionalism that customers have become accustomed to. Last week Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, sat down with IGN to talk about the series x and how the current situation is affecting it. Except it wasn’t a polished production with top level lighting, sound and video, instead it was an online conference call. This means that it has some audio issues and some lag among other things. I don’t have any issues with this as the current state of things has caused many to work outside of their comfort zone but I’m not sure that the ESA wouldn’t get the understanding of the industry for technical hiccups that would likely occur digitally.
On the best of days when trying to conference digitally something goes wrong, people disconnect, audio cutting and this would put ESA and E3 greatly out of their comfort zone. I assume they understand that a lot people want E3 to fail. It has become in style to hate on E3 and trying to put together a digital event with the amount of moving pieces from many different companies would just give fuel to the fire. I think E3 is making the smart choice and completely abandoning 2020 and leaving it for others to rise to the occasion with more experience in delivering digital content.
I also find it somewhat funny that they think they are the best place to go for news regarding what the companies will be doing in lieu of E3. Even during E3, I don’t go to their site looking for the latest news or reveals as their are plenty of outlets that can provide top tier coverage quickly and concisely.
As for what company will be rising to the occasion and trying to fill the void, late last week IGN announced Summer of Gaming. Johnathon Dornbush posted an article on IGN explaining how the company plans to offer an event in the place of E3. Although no dates have been published yet, it will be happening in June and so far there is a large number of developers and publishers that will be taking place in the event
“IGN will be collaborating with a number of partners for the Summer of Gaming, including 2K, Square Enix, SEGA, Bandai Namco, Amazon, Google Stadia, Twitter, Devolver Digital, THQ Nordic, and more. Expect more details in the coming weeks. The event will include live broadcasts and on-demand programming featuring IGN's editorial coverage of the work of game developers from around the world”
Based on the event still being a few months out, I think the list of participants is pretty great so far and I assume that more and more will be added in the coming weeks. Even if Microsoft and Nintendo have digital conferences as well but decide not to take part with IGN and their Summer of Gaming, it will most likely still be featured on the popular gaming site. Most of the programming with likely be built around the big publishers.
“More and more people are turning towards video games for entertainment and escapism. Last week we saw new records for traffic across all of our platforms — we’re excited to bring this Global, Digital Event to our audiences and partners- as this will be an event not to be missed,” said the EVP and General Manager at IGN
Being able to see analytics of that nature certainly makes the decision easy if you are IGN. The other major factor is that this type of content delivery is already very much in the comfort zone of what IGN does. It will be interesting to see how this changes things going forward especially if companies see great results during IGN and their summer of gaming. This might be the start of IGN getting into the conference business as they are already a major hub for gaming news.
PS5 Controller
As it seems that so far Sony and their approach to the PlayStation 5 has been somewhat strange and not quite hitting the same high notes that Xbox has been achieving. At CES we got nothing but a logo reveal, which was underwhelming on its own but it also looks identical to the previous iterations before it. Then just a few weeks ago Sony shared with us their supposedly intended talk for GDC which was overly technical and intended for developers. Most fans were not happy with that presentation even though they announced that it would be a very technical talk. Hype levels still grew and led to disappointment.
Sony continued the road to PS5 with strange decisions by unveiling the new controller which they are calling the DualSense. It was unveiled on the PlayStation Blog on a random Tuesday afternoon with no notice, likely in response to the reception of their GDC planned talk. Sony was clearly feeling gun shy after their technical specs talk with Mark Cerny that drew ire of the internet. It’s expected that the internet will hate on everything you do, they did announce it a day in advance which allowed hype levels to build up, even if only for a day but it felt like there was extra animosity towards the presentation. This explains the surprise drop of the PS5 controller.
Even though the post from Hideaki Nishino, Senior VP of Platform Planning was short, it still said a lot based on looks, features it has and features it doesnt have. The name Dual Sense is a departure from the commonly used Dual Shock which has basically been a staple of the systems controller since it was first introduced a few years after the release of the original PlayStation. Eventually the DualShock gained enough popularity and became the standard by phasing out the original. Since the introduction of the Dual Shock, the only time it hasn’t been included with a new console is when the PS3 launched with the SixaxiS, which wasn’t well received by the fans due to its lack of vibration, which wasn’t included for legal reasons.
The PS3 eventually amassed strong sales with over 80 million units sold but it was very slow out of the gate likely in large part to its price which was deemed high at the time, it’s different CELL processing and its lack of Dual Shock inclusion. I don’t think you can under estimate the value of a great controller. Slow sales shouldn’t have happened when you are following up on the best selling system of all time. The PS2 sold over 155 million units, thanks in large part to the system containing a DVD drive. At the time it cost basically as much to purchase a DVD player, which made the purchase of a PS2 an easy choice. My reasoning for comparing the PS3 to the PS5 is that these two systems are beginning to show a lot of similarities. As the saying goes those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
The first similarity is the following of massive success. As mentioned the PS2 was a monstrous success which is likely never to be repeated at 155 million units and the PS4 has been nothing but a winner this generation. It started out strong with their best controller and simpler console architecture that allowed third parties to easily make games for the system. The PS4 has sold around 106 million units as of December 31, 2019, and will likely finish as the third best selling console, only behind the Nintendo DS and the PS2. The other similarity is that the PS3 and the PS5 will both launch without a Dual Shock. As mentioned, the PS3 shipped the Sixaxis and the PS5 will be shipping with the Dual Sense.
I felt like that information is relevant before diving into the Dual Sense itself. The first thing that you notice is the design. It does seem like it is heading more towards the shape of the standard Xbox One controller with less pronounced side handles, it does still include the PlayStation signature parallel thumbtacks though. They have talked about them before but they mentioned the adaptive triggers that will have the improve immersion. The share button that Sony was ahead of its time on when it created the DualShock 4 has been replaced with a create button. They didn’t explain what the specific changes were but said “with create we’re once again pioneering new ways for players to create epic gameplay content. We’ll have more details on this feature as we get closer to launch”
One of the added features that I am not too sure on just yet is that DualSense will include a built in microphone array. They aren’t trying to replace the headset but they want to make it easy to jump into a quick chat if you need. I think this is much better than that ridiculous single earbud that the PS4 shipped with that sounded terrible and could easily get misplaced. My main issue is that I don’t trust large corporations to not monitor everything and use that data to market to me or anything else devious I wouldn’t want to know about. I also hate when playing games and you go into a lobby and all you hear is feedback from cheap headsets, loud music, dogs barking, or anything else that forces you to have to mute all. I hope that this is designed in a smart way that only picks up within a certain audible level or within a certain range.
Finally, the two tone colour scheme and design of the controller does make you wonder what the system will look like in comparison to it. I myself am hoping for something more traditional and less energy drink or science fiction space station. I personally love the look of the Xbox Series X as it doesnt look like a toy, but instead looks like any other modern day device an adult would own like a router or a streaming box or a digital assistant.
I was almost positive that with the recent release of the PS4 back button attachment that paddles on the back of the PS5 controller was going to be the standard but it seems as though, they are likely just testing the market to see how it was received and whether or not they should create a Dual Sense Pro analogous to Xbox and their elite controller. “We also took thoughtful consideration into ways to maintain a strong battery life for the DualSense’s rechargeable battery, and to lessen the weight of the controller as much as possible” This says two things, one its going to be a heavier controller and two the battery will be rechargeable. Not explicitly mentioned but based on the picture it will include a USB C which is great as it is becoming the technology norm and charges faster.
The blog post ended with SIE President, Jim Ryan giving a statement “DualSense marks a radical departure from our previous controller offerings and captures just how strongly we feel about making a generational leap with PS5. The new controller, along with the many innovative features in PS5, will be transformative for games – continuing our mission at PlayStation to push the boundaries of play, now and in the future. To the PlayStation community, I truly want to thank you for sharing this exciting journey with us as we head toward PS5’s launch in Holiday 2020. We look forward to sharing more information about PS5, including the console design, in the coming months.”
It’s clear that Sony is aware of just how different this controller looks compared to previous iterations. Im hopeful all the changes will be for the best but more importantly, things still look like they are on schedule for the release of the PS5 this holiday.
CD Projekt Red
One of the most anticipated games of the year is without a doubt CyberPunk 2077. Although we were supposed to be playing it this month, it was sadly delayed until September and that was before the pandemic. This past week CD Projekt revealed their FY2019 earnings report and there is plenty to take a look at and plenty of information regarding Cyberpunk 2077 that can be taken from the report and their statements as well.
Before digging into anything CyberPunk related, lets take a look at the bigger picture of the company based on their financials from last year. Things looked pretty good for the Polish company as they made $124.7 million in 2019 with $101 million of that coming from digital sales, $38.8 coming from GOG. That’s great news for the company as their total digital sales account for over 81% of their total revenue and digital means more money for the publisher. The benefit of this is obvious but more money allows them to grow and reinvest in the company, which in the end hopefully provides the gamer with better experiences. The companies digital sales were up quite significantly from 2018 when it was $80.3 million.
This is amazing news as during the conference call after the earnings they were asked about the benefit of digital vs physical and responded by saying that “for the initial period of the Witcher 3, market sales on each digital copy we were earning twice as much as on each physical copy” They did speak on how some factors affected this including royalties and fixed marketing costs but its clear that digital greatly helps the developer.
The company has demonstrated the value of patiently producing a top tier title as The Witcher 3 continues to sell extremely well since its release in 2015. The Witcher 3 sold around six million unit in 2019 which was in large part thanks to the Switch launch and the Netflix show starring Henry Cavill said President, Adam Kicinski in his opening remarks. The Witcher 3 was delayed and supported post launch with some free and paid DLC and things turned out quite well.
As for if the title will be delayed and how its progressing towards it September release, Adam Kicinski said “since mid march we have been working from home, while ensuring continuity of all our operations. Our goals havent changed; first and foremost, we intend to release CyberPunk 2077 in September. We feel motivated and have the necessary tools at our disposal to meet this goal”
The senior VP of business development answered many questions regarding where the company stood with CyberPunk 2077. When answering some of the written questions he noted “the game is in a complete form. Its done and its all bug fixing and polishing. In terms of QA testing — its about 130-150 people working on it right now.” This is amazing to hear for gamers and for investors as the company took an early approach to the pandemic and had everyone work from home before the epidemic hit Poland.
Finally, as for whether or not the company is concerned with launching in the fall, which is typically a crowded time during a regular year, Even with the possibility that blockbuster titles like The Last of Us 2 might be released in September they said “We’re not really worried. You’re never launching in a time thats exclusive to you; there’s no such thing. September has been a very competitive period and we’ve always been aware of that. We believe we are launching a must have title. We dont know how many titles will pop up in that window…but we’re not planning to move our dates just because somebody else is going to land in the window”