Industry News May 6, 2020 GameAnalytics on mobile games: playtime up 62%, IAP spend temporarily grows 30% GameAnalytics has shared fresh data on how consumer behaviour changed in mobile games in response to lockdowns. The report analyzes traffic changes, playtime, IAP spend and genre trends in Q1 2020.
Industry News May 6, 2020 Epic releases Unreal Engine 4.25 with next-gen console support Developers can now download Unreal Engine 4.25, which supports Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. The Fortnite company intends to update the vervsion throughout the year.
Industry News May 6, 2020 MicroProse is back with three new titles Last September, MicroProse, the publisher of the early Sid Meier’s Civilization and X-COM games, announced its comeback. Now the company launched Steam pages for its three new titles.
Industry News May 5, 2020 Riverwood Capital invests $45 million in Sensor Tower Mobile analyst firm Sensor Tower announce a $45 million growth investment from Riverwood Capital.
Industry News May 5, 2020 Video game certification to resume in Japan Japan’s Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (CERO) will resume its review process on May 7.
Industry News May 4, 2020 Kickstarter provides protections for laid-off workers At the end of April, Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan announced imminent layoffs at the crowdfunding company. This was to offset the decline in revenue that the platform saw after projects on the site dropped by about 35 percent.
Industry News May 4, 2020 Half-Life: Alyx brings VR users on Steam to 2 million The release of Half-Life: Alyx was expected to get more Steam users into VR. And it did, even if owners of VR headsets still only consititute 1.9 percent of all Steam users.
Industry News April 30, 2020 My.Games to invest $10m in hypercasual games Mail.Ru Group’s video games division announced its plans to publish hyper-casual titles. Under the new publishing initiative, My.Games will invest $10 million in development and marketing until the end of 2020.
Industry News April 30, 2020 Manor Matters: Playrix releases new game: it’s not match-3, it’s hidden object Today, Playrix has globally released their new title. For the first time in a long while, it’s not a match-3 game. It is a free-to-play hidden object title called Manor Matters.
Industry News April 29, 2020 The Farm 51 partners with My.Games on World War 3 development Publisher My.Games has partnered with Polish developer The Farm 51 on the multiplayer military shooter World War 3.
Industry News April 29, 2020 Games for Carers: UK video games industry rewards NHS workers with 85,000 free games NHS staff can now claim free games or subscriptions from new website Games for Carers. All they have to do is enter their NHS email address and choose from more than 85,000 free games.
Industry News April 29, 2020 Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney: Targeting whales in F2P is wrong strategy In the F2P model, “whales” are players who are willing to spend much more in a game than average players. The terms comes from the world of Las Vegas casinos, where big spenders are referred to as “whales.”
Industry News April 29, 2020 7 steps from IAP to ads In 2019, publishers and developers received $13.8 billion in mobile game ad revenue. And that figure is growing more than 25% year over year.
Industry News April 28, 2020 Codemasters partners with Sperasoft on racing games Sperasoft, a Keywords studio announced its collaboration with UK developer and publisher Codemasters.
Industry News April 28, 2020 XR market to generate $6.3 billion in 2020 In 2020, extended reality hardware and software revenues will bring in $6.3 billion, according to revised estimates by SuperData. That’s down from $7.7 billion the analytics firm previously projected.
Industry News April 28, 2020 Bethesda donates $1 million to organizations responding to COVID-19 Bethesda announced on its website that it plans to donate $1,000,000 to charities involved in COVID-19 relief efforts.
Industry News April 28, 2020 App Annie restructures, with “small fraction of the workforce” laid off “A small fraction of the workforce” has been laid off at the mobile analytics firm App Annie. This is coming from gamesindustry.biz.
Industry News April 28, 2020 Phil Spencer: Xbox will not change business tactics despite “flood” of new players The head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders brought a “big flood of new people” to games. Specifically, Xbox saw a huge surge in the numbers of “new to Xbox customers.”
Industry News April 28, 2020 DayZ studio in Bratislava shuts down DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive shut down its studio in Bratislava.