Esports is officially becoming the next big thing. Hot on the heels of Madison Square Garden's recent acquisition of Counter Logic Gaming, the possibility of an Esports Olympic event is currently in consideration for the Paris 2024 Olympics. In 2016, global Esports viewership had reached an impressive 320 million people worldwide, with over ÂŁ400 million ($520M USD) in revenue generated. [...]
Read more
Israel-based mobile gaming studio Plarium has been acquired by the Australian casino firm Aristocrat for $500 million in cash plus performance based earn outs spanning the next two years. Plarium runs a portfolio of browser and mobile strategy games including: Throne: Kingdom At War Vikings: War of Clans Sparta: War of Empires Stormfall: Age of War Pirates: Tides of Fortune [...]
Read more
Steam has seen a spike in new game releases after the implementation of Steam Direct, Valve's newly launched publishing platform. According to data gathered by Ico Partners, a rising trend in release numbers can be seen before and after Steam Direct's debut. Here are the number of releases of the previous weeks (from mid-April 2017). đ¤ pic.twitter.com/SJaiXvdMqe â Thom âđ˛ [...]
Read more
NCSoft reported Q2, 2017 earnings today that showed overall sales increase 8% both quarter over quarter and year over year to $229M. Net income (profit) came in at $27.3 million. The most interesting bit of news from the earnings presentation as usual was the breakdown of sales by franchise: Guild Wars 2 sales hit an all time low this quarter [...]
Read more
Square Enix reported quarterly earnings today and reported a big bump in MMO revenue thanks to the successful launch of Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood. MMO revenue jumped from $53.3M to $84M in the April to June quarter: More impressively though is the continued strength of Square Enix's mobile games. Smart device and browser game revenue was $214M in the quarter [...]
Read more
Activision Blizzard reported earnings today and surprise surprise, the company made A LOT of money. The company recorded $1.63B in revenue and net income (profit) of $243M for the quarter ending June 30, 2017. These aren't record numbers, but they are the highest revenues for the company for a quarter with no major game launches. More importantly though, the company [...]
Read more
It's been a good week for George "HotshotGG" Georgallidis, founder of Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) as Madison Square Garden purchased a controlling stake in his eSports team. The Madison Square Garden Company will be adding Counter Logic Gaming to its already impressive portfolio of professional sports teams including the New York Knicks (NBA), New York Rangers (NHL), and New York [...]
Read more
Last month, Venezuelan twitter user @KalebPrime sent a tweet that helps put Venezuela's ongoing economic crisis in terms gamers can understand. The value of the Bolivar, the national currency, has fallen below that of gold in World of Warcraft. At the time of the July 14 tweet, the price of WoW gold stood at 8385 per US Dollar. The market [...]
Read more
Intrepid Studios is inviting the gaming community and fans to visit their Ashes of Creation booth at PAX West where they will be showing off live gameplay and will give players a chance to test out the game for themselves. According to a recent press release, a Game Master will be leading a four-man team through the demo where each [...]
Read more
Itâs a sad day at BioWare as they mourn the loss of veteran designer, Corey Gaspur. BioWare announced Gaspurâs passing in a dev blog posted early yesterday. Gaspur started working for BioWare in March 2007 and had worked as a designer for a number of games such as Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2 and [...]
Read more