Sherbytes: Industry News Megathread, v.2

[Valhoven]

Game needs to have an established legacy, track record of international lan events in that country and some luck with the immigration official overseeing applications.

Certain countries have it ingrained into their culture making politicians aware of it. Macron used esports as part of his reelection campaign and Denmarks Prime Minister spoke at a CS event before the grand final:

Yeah, in Nordics we've regular television channels that show only gaming programmes or competitive play. It's normal for us to flip through the channels and see it just like football. I never really thought this wasn't normal in any developed country today, TBH. Life now is equally digital. So too can be sports.

 

[Valhoven]

Microsoft is legitimately becoming one of the worst things to happen to gaming.

One year ago

Dring relativised it cold as ice yesterday:



Microsoft is basically the American Embracer at this point

 

[Valhoven]

Samsung launches 114-inch micro LED TV.

Price? 130K USD. Lol.

In addition to the massive size, the reason for the 114-inch version's KRW 180 million ($132,630) price tag is the set's use of Micro LED.
Like OLED, each of the millions of tiny LEDs packed onto a substrate produces its own light and color without the need for backlighting or a color filter. But Micro LED TVs have several advantages over OLED, including brighter colors, being more power-efficient, faster response times, and improved brightness – we've seen several Micro LEDs with a maximum brightness of 2,000 nits across the entire display. The most important element is that it uses an inorganic LED structure, offering a longer lifespan than OLED and no burn-in issues.

TechSpot introduces the product here.

 

[Valhoven]

EA CEO sings AI praises:

MORE THAN HALF OF EA’S DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES CAN BE “POSITIVELY IMPACTED” BY AI, ANDREW WILSON CLAIMS

(...)

“Maybe even more profound than that – when we build a game we have animation and run cycles. In FIFA 23, we had 36 run cycles, which gave you a kind of believability of human performance inside of that game. When we launched EA Sports FC 24, we had 1,200 run cycles.

“This adds to the individuality and uniqueness of each player, and delivers our players more immersion in the game, a more engaging experience that is more true to what they watch on television on a Sunday afternoon.

Full read here. (External)



EA CEO Andrew Wilson says there's a "real hunger" among developers to use generative AI to speed up development.

More than half of EA's development processes can be "positively impacted" by AI, Wilson claims.

 

[avenue94]

EA CEO sings AI praises:

MORE THAN HALF OF EA’S DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES CAN BE “POSITIVELY IMPACTED” BY AI, ANDREW WILSON CLAIMS

(...)

“Maybe even more profound than that – when we build a game we have animation and run cycles. In FIFA 23, we had 36 run cycles, which gave you a kind of believability of human performance inside of that game. When we launched EA Sports FC 24, we had 1,200 run cycles.

“This adds to the individuality and uniqueness of each player, and delivers our players more immersion in the game, a more engaging experience that is more true to what they watch on television on a Sunday afternoon.

Full read here. (External)



EA CEO Andrew Wilson says there's a "real hunger" among developers to use generative AI to speed up development.

More than half of EA's development processes can be "positively impacted" by AI, Wilson claims.

That is a good use of AI. But doubtful that it would stop there, especially at a company like EA.

 

[KaNesDeath]

Yeah, in Nordics we've regular television channels that show only gaming programmes or competitive play. It's normal for us to flip through the channels and see it just like football. I never really thought this wasn't normal in any developed country today, TBH. Life now is equally digital. So too can be sports.

Can write paragraphs on paragraphs on this but im having trouble keeping it pithy, lol.

Here in the USA esports has repeatedly been tried on network television since 2008(?). Everything here is ratings driven and the typical esport viewers prefers consuming it online over network television. While the demographic audience has advertisers creaming their pants. Sadly esport viewers are extremely stringent on spending compared to traditional sport viewers. Which scares away non-endemic sponsors while at the same time pricing out endemic sponsors.

Broadcasted esports was slowly following the trajectory last decade of eventually ending up on network television. But then Activision/Blizzard with their greed around Overwatch League killed all future esport broadcasting rights.

 

[avenue94]

Can write paragraphs on paragraphs on this but im having trouble keeping it pithy, lol.

Here in the USA esports has repeatedly been tried on network television since 2008(?). Everything here is ratings driven and the typical esport viewers prefers consuming it online over network television. While the demographic audience has advertisers creaming their pants. Sadly esport viewers are extremely stringent on spending compared to traditional sport viewers. Which scares away non-endemic sponsors while at the same time pricing out endemic sponsors.

Broadcasted esports was slowly following the trajectory last decade of eventually ending up on network television. But then Activision/Blizzard with their greed around Overwatch League killed all future esport broadcasting rights.

It can't be overlooked either that esports do not gain all the subsidies that traditional sports do and losing out on gate/in person viewership is brutal. The latter hurts both directly and also indirectly (you can't get a drink sponsor who sells in your stadium, etc.)

 

[method115]

Looks like MS isn't done yet and more cuts will be happening. I don't know how true this is but someone said MS has already let go of more people than Embracer has.

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox turmoil

Xbox employees are bracing for what follows more layoffs.

www.theverge.com

 

[Dizzy]

 

[Valhoven]

Pivotal decisions to be made by Microsoft on Call of Duty franchise treatment:



Microsoft is considering another Xbox Game Pass price increase, debating whether to launch new COD games day one into the service.

The acquisition of Activision Blizzard has increased Microsoft scrutiny on Xbox.

–––

But Game Pass has not seen the massive growth that Xbox boss Phil Spencer may have been hoping for.

Mat Piscatella, executive director of analysis firm Circana, said that monthly, non-mobile, video-game subscription spending in the US “has been flat to low single-digit growth” since the middle of 2021.

“In our data, Game Pass spending really had its big growth period in late 2019 through early 2021 and has since settled,” Piscatella said. “Purchasing games and add-on content as well as free-to-play models are still the vastly preferred method of getting to video games by US consumers, at least for now.”

While there’s no indication that Xbox plans to ditch the Game Pass model, there are hints that its big bets have not paid off. During the most recent quarter, sales of Xbox content and services were up 62%, but as Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out last month, the growth was entirely due to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. On social media, he noted that without sales from that deal, Xbox gaming revenue would have been down approximately 5% year over year, “with no software and services growth and sharp hardware revenue decline.”

 

[KaNesDeath]

First event of Overwatchs new esports league run by ESL is complete. Peak viewership is down ~48% over last years Overwatch League Spring split:

 

[Valhoven]

Nintendo today announces pulling of native X / Twitter support, following earlier withdrawals of both PlayStation and Xbox.

Removal of native video and image support goes into effect next month for the platform.

Reasons remain undisclosed but is rumored to be exorbitant API costs after Twitter raised their prices last year.

 

[Valhoven]

Tom’s Hardware reports here that EA CEO is wanting to put in-game ads in AAA games they publish.

They apparently tried to do this in UFC 4 but widespread player backlash had them walk it back.

On this being a bad idea, he says they’ll be very thoughtful about how they introduce ads to the players. Well, I’m glad player faith in EA is so high. These words certainly allayed any grief I had over even the thought of this industry practice. /s

Imagine fighting some ancient dragon and an ad for HDMI cables appears at the top of the screen covering part of the sky.

Awful.

 

[Zazen]

Nintendo today announces pulling of native X / Twitter support, following earlier withdrawals of both PlayStation and Xbox.

Removal of native video and image support goes into effect next month for the platform.

Reasons remain undisclosed but is rumored to be exorbitant API costs after Twitter raised their prices last year.

Elon turned it into a shitshow. It’s fucking terrible. Porn everywhere, Nazi posts everywhere. Horrible. Perhaps most annoying is none of the comments on there are related to what you just read.

 

[Valhoven]

Elon turned it into a shitshow. It’s fucking terrible. Porn everywhere, Nazi posts everywhere. Horrible. Perhaps most annoying is none of the comments on there are related to what you just read.

100 on that last point. OPs feel wastelanded without background or context, witticisms, and counterpoints – all the good stuff. It’s instead unrelated cascading memes or clips; comes off in a way like ads.

 

[rikwebb]

The first Marathon game from 1994 is now up for free on Steam with another 2 games coming soon too

 

[Valhoven]

The first Marathon game from 1994 is now up for free on Steam with another 2 games coming soon too

Is the new Marathon previously teased by Bungie still in development as far as we know? Or did that get shelved?

 

[rikwebb]

Is the new Marathon previously teased by Bungie still in development as far as we know? Or did that get shelved?

No that's still being worked on, it was Matter that was shelved

 

[KaNesDeath]

It can't be overlooked either that esports do not gain all the subsidies that traditional sports do and losing out on gate/in person viewership is brutal. The latter hurts both directly and also indirectly (you can't get a drink sponsor who sells in your stadium, etc.)

This is partially true for stadium revenue does help offset operation costs. While the lion share of revenue is still generated through broadcasting rights.

Gamestop was trying to pivot into this before they became a meme stock.

 

[My Spot]

Nice of Rockstar to wait 14 years and after it's easy to emulate the Switch port to finally bring RDR1 to PC.