Games Industry Discussion

[Jabalous]

28 minutes ago, BLOOD said:

Quarter of a Century old today and i am still feeling so young

 

$TTWO to $25, then? 

 

Nah, I can see $70 +/- $5 as a bottom. Would be ~50% off ATH. 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Jabalous

[BLOOD]

@Jabalous Haha that nice. Thank you

 

Gaming got crushed this week by- Universal/DreamWorks' (CMCSA) How To Train Your Dragon 3 doing ~$60M the highest in the Dragons trilogy sorry Anthem and other new video game releases.

 

Companies/Ticker: Comcast Corporation (CMCSA), The Walt Disney Company (DIS), Tencent Holdings Limited (TCEHY)

 

Note: The way i see it, Media Conglomerates and Big Techs will acquire all these gaming firms in next decade or so, Walt Disney (DIS) already owns minority stake in Epic Games along with Tencent ((TCEHY) owning 40% and buying the whole gaming industry.

Edited February 24, 2019 by BLOOD

[BLOOD]

 

Public trade Gaming companies stock valuation are all going down until they are total worthless and Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) will be the most impacted, in other words F*CKED!

Edited February 24, 2019 by BLOOD

[Candy_Licker]

Surely Bioware will receive the coup de grace by EA after that.

[BLOOD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXRFKRqSJ44

 

Companies/Tickers: The Walt Disney Company (DIS), Comcast Corporation (CMCSA), 21st Century Fox Inc. (FOXA), AT&T Inc. (T), Netflix Inc. (NFLX)

 

(Here is hoping there is alot of surprises)

Edited February 24, 2019 by BLOOD

[Tchuck]

Frostbite is a dog to work with if you aren't making a FPS. At the time, it lacked a lot of tools, a lot of pipelines, a lot of improvements other engines already had. It's why it took EA some time to get it into FIFA. 

 

Still, Amy Hennig was a sh*t director who wanted to micromanage every single aspect of the game, and largely the responsible for the failure to deliver a Star Wars game. sh*t like demanding every character have their own custom rig, shunning pipeline suggestions that didn't come from her core group, taking months to decide on very minor details... It's all on her.

 

Anthem will fail, though. It brings nothing new and interesting that hasn't been done. Had it used the Mass Effect IP, at least it would have had a better chance.

[Jason]

With digital sales and in this case EA's subscription service it's a bit difficult to gauge how a game has sold with just physical sales numbers but Anthem's physical launch sales in the UK are shocking really. 50% below ME: Andreomda and far below the numbers other looter shooter games have pulled.

[BLOOD]

With gaming in uncertainty right now here is hoping all public game companies do not start selling themselves or go private but both cases are totally inevitability.

Edited February 25, 2019 by BLOOD

[Zello]

I think more companies should go private.

[Tchuck]

33 minutes ago, Zello said:

I think more companies should go private.

Absolutely. Shareholders are a cancer for a creative venture: they are there for the purpose of making money, preferably on the short term. 

[Jason]

Gaming is not really in uncertainty, AAA development is. Particularly AAA development by the mega publishers like EA, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two.

 

We're getting multiple AAA GaaS games every year and they're all half arsed and chock full of monetisation. Creativity and ambition has went out the window in favour of games they can turn into casinos and fashion shops. It also doesn't help that competition is insane, it used to be that FPS games competed with other FPS titles, RPG's with RPG's, etc etc, but because AAA gaming these days has adapted so many progression mechanics and MMO-lite stuff that we've ended up with Call of Duty, Battlefield, Fortnite, Anthem, Destiny, Division, RDRO, Apex Legends and more all competing with each other.

 

There simply aint enough meat in the pie for everyone to go home happy, hence massive lay-offs across the industry. The AAA GaaS might just be about to burst and it's entirely the fault of the greedy publishers chasing the tails of competition because they looked at what they're doing and thought "we can do that too".

[Tchuck]

GaaS could be fantastic if executed well. A game that is continuously supported and improved? Sign me up!

 

Though I gotta say, I think the fault on Anthem relies solely on Bioware. As hungry for money a publisher EA is, they actually are very lenient with studios. They give nearly free reign for them. Usually goes that the studio pitches the game they wanna make, detail the expenses, potential income and whatnot, negotiates, and EA signs off on it. But then they have to delivery. If they deliver, great, everyone is happy. If they don't... they get shut down. EA doesn't mandate that games use lootboxes and crap; that's nearly always on the devs themselves.

[Jason]

GaaS has been executed well, it's not even a recent thing either. The old sub-based MMO's were games as a service and they flourished.

 

The issue is that quality has gone down the drain because publishers realised they could released broken games and then take 2 years fixing them. That worked (unfortunately) for a few years because there was no competition but these days? Yea, no. 

 

BioWare are at fault with Anthem too but EA aren't free of blame. All rumours pointed to the game not being ready, at all, but they didn't want to delay it any longer. It's no coincidence that EA have had flop after flop in recent years. Anthem, Andromeda, Mirrors Edge, Battlefield V, Battlefront 2. Even Fifa, which sells sh*t loads admittedly (cause no competition) doesn't review as well as it used to due to EA ignoring key issues in favour of Ultimate Team.

 

Or to put it simply, 9 years ago BioWare made one of the greatest games of all time. Last week they might have just released one of the biggest gaming flops of all time.

[Tchuck]

6 years, for this. It's appalling. It should have been delayed, and I blame EA for not doing so. But BioWare took the risk from the beginning. As a friend of mine (and former EA Canada dev) says: EA will give you the rope (made of money), but you will be the one doing the hanging. They'll give you the resources for you to make what you say you are going to make: if you make it, great! if not...

[BLOOD]

@Zello @Tchuck @Jason Great comments (replies) folks.

[Zello]

EA has an NBA Live survey.

 

https://eaca.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0BZxRVlrXLItem1

 

They're still trying I'll give them that.

 

Edited February 28, 2019 by Zello

[BLOOD]

Week Highlight (NEW Series); Top stories of week ending March 1st 2019 from the world of Telecommunication-Media-Technology

 

1. AT&T set a new precedence for M&As specifically vertical integration -it completed it acquisition of Time Warner renamed WarnerMedia in June 12 after upon a win from the US District Court (Trial Courts) after winning unanimously at the US Circuit Court (Appellate Courts) finally defeating the US Department of Justice.

 

2.  Fortnite S8 is launched  setting a new record. The King of Battle Royale is now #1 on Twitch again.

 

3. Take-Two making an acquisition or something? The company cancel it meeting at Morgan Stanley Media Conference.

 

4. Anthem not a flop? According to GamesIndustry.biz report on the EMEAA sales chart

 

5. Brazil finally approved Disney acquisition of Fox with the deal to be likely competed by next week.

 

Note: This series joins Breaking News (Daily) and Stock Valuation Projection (Anytime). New inputs from you all will be so much appreciated. Discussion will always be the most important aspect of this Thread. Thank you all

Edited March 2, 2019 by BLOOD

[Jabalous]

 

[BLOOD]

@Jabalous So that why Take-Two missed the Morgan Stanley Media Conference...Great Interview and Thank you for sharing

 

Note: Take-Two acquires controlling interest in 9 Story through it Canadian branch buying 75% stake from ZMC. Strauss Zelnick is a Legend!

Edited March 3, 2019 by BLOOD

[Zello]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02/26/thq-nordic-apologizes-for-hosting-ama-on-site-blacklisted-by-google-for-child-abuse

 

THQ nordic is dumb

[Jason]

The fallout for that THQ AMA disaster was like a car crash in slow motion. In the hours after the AMA when people slowly began to pick up on it the damage control was basically "eh whatever", it was only once mainstream gaming press picked up on it that they were like "oh we f*cked up massively".

 

Shoutouts to Mark though!

 

(????????)

[BLOOD]

7 hours ago, Zello said:

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02/26/thq-nordic-apologizes-for-hosting-ama-on-site-blacklisted-by-google-for-child-abuse

 

THQ nordic is dumb

That f*cked up...now their brand could suffer from that going forward. Thank you for sharing Zello.

 

EA on a roll with Apex and Anthem? https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-04-uk-charts-anthem-holds-no-1-as-lego-movie-2-dirt-rally-2-0-and-trials-rising-make-top-10

Edited March 4, 2019 by BLOOD

[Jason]

Not sure I'd be saying they're on a roll with Anthem just yet. The UK physical sales were bad and given that they haven't publicly released any sort of launch numbers yet may suggest that it's not exactly set the world on fire. Plus, you know, the whole Sony offering refunds cause the game is hard crashing PS4's lmao. It's also got virtually no competition, February and March are very dry months for games this year.

 

Apex is doing great though, Fortnite's new season brought the Twitch numbers back up but from what I've seen there's a lot of hype for Apex's battlepass that's coming this month.

[Tchuck]

Yeah, reports of Anthem shutting down and bricking PS4s...

 

If Anthem doesn't pick up some steam soon, I'm pretty sure EA will kill it.

[BLOOD]

I totally agree with you guys, however Apex is truly a Fortnite killer https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/apex-legends-shatters-fortnites-days-to-50-million-player-record-1203154236/

[Jason]

Yea it really isn't. Fortnite is still top dog.

[Static]

On 3/4/2019 at 8:49 AM, Jason said:

 It's also got virtually no competition, February and March are very dry months for games this year.

Division 2 comes out on the 15th, so it'll be interesting to see if Anthem can survive pass that. 

[Jason]

20 minutes ago, Static said:

Division 2 comes out on the 15th, so it'll be interesting to see if Anthem can survive pass that. 

Not entirely sure it survived it's own launch nevermind The Division 2's lol.

 

Crash and console bricking reports are getting more and more widespread as well. Still no announcement from EA/BioWare about it as far as I can tell just yet either. This could get pretty messy if there's no fix.

[Static]

11 minutes ago, Jason said:

Not entirely sure it survived it's own launch nevermind The Division 2's lol.

 

Crash and console bricking reports are getting more and more widespread as well. Still no announcement from EA/BioWare about it as far as I can tell just yet either. This could get pretty messy if there's no fix.

 

They've only acknowledged the issue, no word on a fix.

 

 

[Jason]

Ah didn't catch that. It's potentially such a messy situation, if it is indeed bricking consoles then you could argue it's Sony/MS's fault for passing it for certification too.