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US gaming industry records another excellent quarter as pandemic fuels sales
The COVID-19 pandemic has utterly decimated a number of industries over the past several months, but the U.S. gaming industry continues to benefit as people continue to be stuck at home. Yet another report from NPD highlights an excellent quarter, with spending hitting a new Q2 record in the States.
According to the figures, gamers spent $11.6 billion, marking a 30% increase over a year prior. It was also a 7% increase over Q1’s 10.9 billion, as spending continues while the pandemic continues to rage.
Games themselves comprised $10.2 billion of that figure (itself a 28% increase y-o-y), with some familiar titles occupying the top spots, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The gaming hardware category saw a 57% increase from 2019, with Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One all seeing strong sales.
The Switch isn’t a surprise, given shortages experienced earlier in the year. Perhaps a bit more unexpected are continued sales on the PS4 and Xbox One, given that both consoles are set to be eclipsed by next-generation devices later in the year. Of course, those upcoming systems aren’t doing gamers much good during the current moment of stay at home orders.
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Microsoft showcases mobile gaming accessories designed to work with Xbox cloud gaming
Way back in the before times of October 2019, Microsoft announced that it would be expanding its Designed for Xbox stamp of approval to a line of mobile accessories. The play was pretty obvious: The company is trying to get serious about smartphone gaming through the backdoor approach of its own Project xCloud streaming service.
Without a major in-person gaming conference this summer, Microsoft is announcing a number of new additions to the line this morning, by way of blog post. The line is getting five approved devices from names that should prove familiar to anyone with a passing interest in gaming accessories. All of them go up for pre-order today, ahead of the September 15 launch of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Most of the included accessories are, unsurprisingly, controllers. Aside from latency, the biggest hurdle to this type of technology is control. After all, we’re talking about playing console games on a touchscreen handset. Without a sufficient accessory, the vast majority of titles just aren’t going to fly here.
Thankfully, Razer, PowerA and 8bitdo all have forthcoming controllers designed expressly for the purpose of xCloud streaming. Both the expandable Razer Kishi and PowerA MOGA XP7-X Plus Bluetooth controllers run $100, while the clever mini 8bitdo is $50. PowerA and 8bitdo also offer smartphone clips for wireless Xbox controllers, priced at $15.
Also getting the Xbox thumbs-up are the $100 Arctis 1 from SteelSeries. The headphones are designed specifically to switch back and forth between console games and mobile devices.
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Microsoft showcases gameplay from ‘Halo Infinite’ and other Xbox Series X titles
Last month Sony showcased gameplay from a slew of upcoming PlayStation 5 titles, including Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray and NBA 2K21. Today it was Microsoft’s turn. The company announced 13 titles for the Xbox Series X back in May, but today it gave gamers the best look at what the next-gen console will have to offer when it arrives at the end of the year.
Like Sony, the company promised to offer some actual gameplay from the upcoming titles, though plenty of standard gaming trailers were also on display at the virtual event. Xbox chief Phil Spencer kicked things off by noting that there would be titles from 9 of 15 Xbox developers on display, including five first-party games.
As expected, the company kicked off with the latest version of Halo, because, hey, it wouldn’t be an Xbox release without one. Halo Infinite got a substantial portion of the spotlight, with extended gameplay from the start of the title.
The company says the title will be “several times larger” than the last few Halo titles combined. More big Bungie news, with the arrival of Destiny 2 on the Xbox Game Pass. The title will be available free to Game Pass subscribers later this year.
Rare’s Everwild was one of the biggest surprise hits of the event — and easily one of the most striking. The title was offered up as a preview trailer late last month, but the developer offered up a better look at the dreamy, psychedelic game.
Another Xbox mainstay, Forza, also got some time at the top of the event. With the Motorsport name, the game bucks the standard number system of the past several entries in the popular racing title. The game will run at 60 FPS in 4K and will utilize the system’s ray tracing tech for improved graphics. The title is likely to debut at some point next year.
Another in a long line of date-less titles is the latest entry in the popular zombie series, State of Decay. The third installment didn’t get much info beyond that, but did get the lovely above cinematic trailer.
Arriving this month for PC and Xbox One, Grounded is a delightful Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-style backyard adventure. An Xbox Series X release is also scheduled. Today’s event closed out with a fairy getting swallowed by a frog for an extremely quick preview of Playground Game’s Fable IV.
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Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2020 will launch on August 18
After a series of closed alpha tests, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios and Asobo Studio today announced that the next-gen Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 will launch on August 18. Pre-orders are now live and FS 2020 will come in three editions, standard ($59.99), deluxe ($89.99) and premium deluxe ($119.99), with the more expensive versions featuring more planes and handcrafted international airports.
The last part may come as a bit of a surprise, given that Microsoft and Asobo are using assets from Bing Maps and some AI magic on Azure to essentially recreate the Earth — and all of its airports — in Flight Simulator 2020. Still, the team must have spent some extra time on making some of these larger airports especially realistic and today, if you were to buy even one of these larger airports as an add-on for Flight Simulator X or X-Plane, you’d easily be spending $30 or more.
The default edition features 20 planes and 30 hand-modeled airports, while the deluxe edition bumps that up to 25 planes and 35 airports and the high-end version comes with 30 planes and 40 airports.
Among those airports not modeled in all their glorious detail in the default edition (they are still available there, by the way — just without some of the extra detail) are the likes of Amsterdam Schiphol, Chicago O’Hare, Denver, Frankfurt, Heathrow and San Francisco.
The same holds true for planes, with the 787 only available in the deluxe package, for example. Still, based on what Asobo has shown in its regular updates so far, even the 20 planes in the standard edition have been modeled in far more detail than in previous versions, and maybe even beyond what some add-ons provide today.
Image Credits: Microsoft
Because a lot of what Microsoft and Adobo are doing here involves using cloud technology to, for example, stream some of the more detailed scenery to your computer on demand, chances are we’ll see regular content updates for these various editions as well, though the details here aren’t yet clear.
“Your fleet of planes and detailed airports from whatever edition you choose are all available on launch day as well as access to the ongoing content updates that will continually evolve and expand the flight simulation platform,” is what Microsoft has to say about this for the time being.
Chances are we will get more details in the coming weeks, as Flight Simulator 2020 is about to enter its closed beta phase.
Image Credits: Microsoft
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Newzoo forecasts 2020 global games industry will reach $159 billion
Games and esports analytics firm Newzoo released its highly cited annual report on the size and state of the video gaming industry yesterday. The firm is predicting 2020 global game industry revenue from consumers of $159.3 billion, a 9.3% increase year-over-year. Newzoo predicts the market will surpass $200 billion by the end of 2023.
Importantly, the data excludes in-game advertising revenue (which surged +59% during COVID-19 lockdowns, according to Unity) and the market of gaming digital assets traded between consumers. Advertising within games is a meaningful source of revenue for many mobile gaming companies. In-game ads in just the U.S. drove roughly $3 billion in industry revenue last year, according to eMarketer.
To compare with gaming, the global markets for other media and entertainment formats are:
- Pay TV: $226 billion in 2019 (excludes streaming services)
- Publishing: $261 billion in 2017, of which books accounted for $121 billion
- Film: $101 billion in 2019 ($42.5 billion from box office)
- Music: $62 billion in 2017 ($30 billion recorded music, $6 billion music publishing, $26 billion live music)
- Board games and playing cards: $12 billion in 2018
- Podcasting: $863 million 2020 advertising revenue (there is no good data on subscription and live events revenue in podcasting, but it is fair to estimate it at a fraction of the total ad revenue figure)
Counting gamers
Of 7.8 billion people on the planet, 4.2 billion (53.6%) of whom have internet connectivity, 2.69 billion will play video games this year, and Newzoo predicts that number to reach three billion in 2023. It broke down the current geographic distribution of gamers as:
- 1,447 million (54%) in Asia-Pacific
- 386 million (14%) in Europe
- 377 million (14%) in Middle East & Africa
- 266 million (10%) in Latin America
- 210 million (8%) in North America
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In spite of an uncertain economy, US video game sales remain strong
May marked another extremely strong month for gaming sales, according to the latest figures from NPD. Between software, hardware, accessories and game cards, Americans spent around $977 million. That’s a 57% jump since the year prior and the highest it’s been for the month since 2008, when the country was feeling the strain of the Great Recession.
All of this is made more remarkable by the fact that the United States has been struggling with COVID-19-related pains for months now. This week, another 1.5 million Americans filed for unemployment, bringing the total number to 44.2 million since the beginning of shutdowns. But as countless other venues for non-essential spending have suffered, gaming has thrived.
It’s clear that games are how Americans are choosing to spend whatever sort of disposable income they might have, as they’re stuck at home, away from other humans. And that spending has continued for a few months now, even after Microsoft and Sony have begun hyping their next-generation consoles — both due at at the end of the year.
That, perhaps, is part of why Nintendo continued to dominate console sales with the Switch, in spite of hardware shortages. Animal Crossing: New Horizons remained the top-selling title for the console (and third over all), owing to the online cult it has amassed through social-first gameplay. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto V took the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively, on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
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Microsoft showcases 13 new titles for the Xbox Series X
With conferences canceled indefinitely, companies are increasingly reliant on online events to hype product launches. As they prepare to release a next-gen console before the end of the year, expect plenty of live streams and blogs from both Microsoft and Sony in an attempt to flesh out all that their respective systems have to offer.
Today, Microsoft took to YouTube, Mixer and Twitch to give the world a better idea of what to expect from the upcoming Xbox Series X release. Recent updates have, understandably, been largely focused on console hardware, as the company attempts to distinguish from the upcoming PlayStation — after all, the systems will likely be launched within weeks of one another.
This time out, however, games were very much the thing. The Xbox team showcased a baker’s dozen of titles this morning, including:
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft)
- Bright Memory Infinite (Playism)
- Call of the Sea (Raw Fury)
- DiRT 5 (Codemasters)
- Madden NFL 21 (Electronic Arts)
- Scarlet Nexus (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
- Scorn (Ebb)
- Chorus (Deep Silver)
- Second Extinction (Systemic Reaction)
- The Ascent (Neon Giant / Curve Digital)
- The Medium (Bloober Team)
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (Paradox Interactive)
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon (SEGA)
The company hasn’t issued specific dates for titles (those will largely be dependent on publisher), but a recent blog post notes, “Our goal remains to launch Xbox Series X and Halo Infinite this Holiday.” Clearly the MS’s language is more uncertain than earlier — after all, these are uncertain times we’re living in.
All of the above titles are “Xbox Series X Optimized,” which means they’ll be able to be played in 4K at 120FPS, load faster and utilize DirectX raytracing among others. Nine of the 13 also use Microsoft’s Smart Delivery System, which saves users from having to rebuy titles, regardless of the console it’s played on.
More info on the above can be found on Microsoft’s blog.
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EA games on PS4 and Xbox One could be ‘upgraded free’ to next-gen console versions
2020 and 2021 will be one of the periodic transitional eras in gaming as Sony and Microsoft debut their shiny new consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To ease the process (and spur adoption of the next generation), EA may make its upcoming titles free to “upgrade” to your chosen console.
On an earnings call last night, EA COO Blake Jorgensen at the end of his remarks noted a possible effect on revenue “from the games we are launching for the current generation of consoles that can also be upgraded free for the next generation.”
EA declined to comment on the comment, but the meaning seems obvious enough. It likely refers to “cross-gen” games that will appear on both existing consoles and those set to debut later in the year. If you buy the next, say, “Battlefield” game on PlayStation 4, you will have the option to transfer it somehow to the PlayStation 5.
Exactly how this would work is not clear — there will almost certainly be some rigmarole involving deactivating the license on your old copy — but the effect is a positive and consumer-friendly one. People can buy a game, from EA anyway, safe in the knowledge that they can continue to play it even if they buy a new console. That hasn’t been the case, in general, before.
In fact, the whole transition is looking to be a relatively easy one: The new consoles will be backward-compatible with many games from the previous generation; services like online access and monthly free games will cross over; some hardware and accessories will be shared; built-in streaming options mean improved portability.
EA’s apparent commitment to cross-gen upgrades is among the first, though some publishers and developers have floated the idea or declared support for it, pending approval from the console makers themselves. The confirmation could trigger an avalanche of announcements as others hurry to assure gamers that they, too, will provide this option.
Sony and Microsoft are the ones left holding the bag here: While a sale is a sale for EA or Ubisoft, the console makers are under tremendous pressure to show their console launches are successful. (Nintendo, as usual, is pursuing its own agenda independent from the cadence of its rivals.)
Part of that strategy is high-profile next-gen exclusives that people save up to buy alongside the new consoles, providing revenue spikes and platform lock-ins. When a large amount of those sales occur earlier in the year, and technically for the previous consoles, it’s not a good look.
These policies have a way of evolving right up to and beyond the moment of release. Sony clowned so devastatingly on Microsoft’s confusing and limited game transfer policies at E3 2013, the outset of this console generation, that it affected the whole zeitgeist, boosting PS4 sales and forcing Microsoft to reconsider. (You can see me in the video of it; I’ve rarely heard a crowd so excited about something.)
It’s better to err on the side of liberality, it turns out. EA, which has routinely erred in the other direction over the last few years, hopes perhaps to curry favor in advance of a gaming market opening up in new directions. We’ll see if other companies follow suit.
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Microsoft just revealed a ton of new info about the Xbox Series X
There will be no E3 this summer. And quite frankly, the future of just about every conference for the year looks to be in jeopardy, at best. Understandably, Microsoft is releasing most of the Xbox Series X info online in the meantime. A few weeks ago, it offered some key insights into the next-gen console; today it has come out with far and away its deepest dive yet.
A momentary respite, perhaps, from the news of the world, this morning brought four separate blog posts, a hands-on video and a whole lot of information for developers. Bookmark this glossary post in the meantime, if you need to cross-reference any of the information referenced here or in the original post.
At very least, it will help you sound a bit smarter when you explain all of this stuff to a loved one.
Okay, let’s start with the spec breakdown:
So, a custom 8 core AMD Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2-class GPU. “Xbox Series X is the biggest generational leap of SOC and API design that we’ve done with Microsoft, and it’s really an honor for AMD to be a trusted Microsoft partner for this endeavor,” says Corporate VP Sebastien Nussbaum in the post.
Per the Digital Foundry deep dive:
[T]he Series X processor is actually capable of running four Xbox One S game sessions simultaneously on the same chip, and contains an new internal video encoder that is six times as fast as the more latent, external encoder used on current xCloud servers.
That’s coupled with the GPU stuff we already knew about, including the promise of 12 teraflops of processing power, equating to double what the Xbox One X could do and eight times the original Xbox One. There’s Variable Rate Shading (VRS), which allows for the system to focus on given effects on screen and DirectX Raytracing for improved lighting, reflections and other fine touches.
“Without hardware acceleration, this work could have been done in the shaders, but would have consumed over 13 TFLOPs alone,” Xbox system architect Andrew Goossen tells the site. “For the Series X, this work is offloaded onto dedicated hardware and the shader can continue to run in parallel with full performance. In other words, Series X can effectively tap the equivalent of well over 25 TFLOPs of performance while ray tracing.”
Today brought some impressive early gaming demos as well. Gears 5 showcased 60 FPS videos in 4K (double the Xbox One X FPS), improved resolution textures and other details like fog and particles.
There’s a solid-state drive on board with 1TB of storage, coupled with 16GB of RAM and a 4K Blu-ray drive. Around back, there’s what appears to be an HDMI port, Ethernet port, two standard USB ports and an expansion slot. Here’s the Seagate storage expansion module from the aforementioned hands on video:
The controller, too, is getting an overhaul. It ships with a pair of AA batteries (though you can upgrade to rechargeable). Senior Designer Ryan Whitaker says inclusion was a big part of some of the design changes here, as gaming continues to grow with a mainstream audience:
One key area we’re improving is fitting a wider range of hand sizes, especially smaller hands. By accommodating hands similar to those of an average 8-year-old, we found we could improve accessibility and comfort for hundreds of millions more people without negatively affecting the experience for those with larger hands. We did that by rounding the bumpers, slightly reducing and rounding parts around the triggers, and carefully sculpting the grips.
There’s a Share button on board, in an attempt to make it a more social experience, along with design changes focused on making it easier to play older games via xCloud. Microsoft clearly wants to make game play more platform-agnostic, as it moves to more cloud-based experiences.
The Xbox Series X is due out at the end of the year and will go head to head with Sony’s latest offering.
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Microsoft offers a closer look at the next Xbox
It’s been a few months since Microsoft announced the impending arrival of the Xbox Series X. The somewhat redundantly named console made cameo during the Game Awards, getting a late 2020 date in the process.
We got at glimpse at the big, boxy design and peek into a handful of features, including the new wireless controllers and backward game compatibility. It didn’t, however, really get into the nitty gritty of what’s going to set the next-gen console apart. Thankfully, MS’s head of Xbox Phil Spencer is back with some honest to goodness specs.
“Xbox Series X is our fastest, most powerful console ever, designed for a console generation that has you at its center,” Spencer writes. “This means a high-fidelity gaming experience enclosed in a quiet and bold design, with the ability to discover thousands of games across four generations, all with more playing and less waiting.”
The headline feature here is, naturally, a new processor. Built on top of AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture, Xbox says chip is able to deliver four times the processing power of the Xbox One. The silicon offers 12 teraflops of GPU performance — that’s double the Xbox One X and 8x the original Xbox One. Other notable additions include Variable Rate Shading for improved frame rates and resolution and DirectX Raytracing for better lighting.
Quick Resume is basically what it sounds like, letting players pick up on multiple games, exactly where they left off. Dynamic Latency Input aims to bring more responsive feed back from controllers, by reducing latency. 120fps video will be supported by the console, along with HDMI 2.1, which automatically switches to the lowest latency mode to reduce game play lag.
As noted above, backward compatibility is central, now that Microsoft has a few generations of consoles under its belt. Game Pass is increasingly important in the company’s play moving forward, as it ramps up focus on cloud gaming.
More information is promised in “coming months.” Once again, Microsoft will have a stiff competition on its hands, with the PlayStation 5 currently slated for “holiday 2020.”
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