Digital video game sales hit $7.7 billion in April, easing from record high
Digital video game sales pulled back slightly in April after striking a record high in the previous month, as seasonal factors set in and some high-flying titles got their wings clipped.
Global revenues from video games downloaded to PCs and consoles or played online unblocked games totaled $7.7 billion last month, down from an all-time high of $8 billion in March, analysis by gaming intelligence firm SuperData shows. Despite the sequential slowdown, April's haul marked a 9 percent uptick from a year ago.
The figures did not reflect games bought in stores.
March is a historically strong period for digital games, so it's natural for revenues to tick down in April, SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen told CNBC.
Sales usually pick back up during the back-to-school period in August and September, but van Dreunen says this summer's figures may be particularly strong as developers look to build on the success of "Agar.io" The smash hit forced gamers to head outside to hunt down digital critters linked to real world locations.
"That really blew people away. You're going to start seeing more of that. People are going to try to copy that formula," he said.
Another trend to watch, according to van Dreunen are Chinese mobile developers looking to crack the U.S. market with their sophisticated mobile games that play more like PC titles. One such title is "Honor of Kings" from Chinese Internet and media giant Tencent, which was the seventh highest grossing mobile game in April.
The mobile segment posted 8 percent sales growth in April, helping to offset slight revenue declines in premium PC and pay-to-play online titles, console downloads and social media-based games.
Cramer talks to Take-Two Interactive's CEO
Two of March's top performers — EA's "Mass Effect: Andromeda" and Ubisoft's "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands" — saw sharp revenue declines in April, perhaps due to poor reviews, according to SuperData.
"Mass Effect: Andromeda," the fourth installment in a sci-fi role-playing franchise with a hardcore cult following, fell out of the top 10 entirely last month.
"The loyalty among the audience in the game is very, very strong historically, and they just weren't able to capitalize on it," said van Dreunen.
One standout in the premium PC segment was Bluehole's "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," a new massively multiplayer online game in which players parachute onto an island and try to defeat and outlast other gamers. It hauled in $34 million in April despite being in limited release.
Take-Two Interactive saw continued strength in its "Grand Theft Auto" franchise, offsetting news this week it would delay the sequel to its hit "Red Dead Redemption" until 2018. Revenue for "GTA V Online" jumped from last year, as players made in-game purchases on the "Tiny Racers" update, which mimics the franchise's 90s-era gameplay.
This week in video games, May 29, 2017: Xbox launches game-subscription service
This week, Tekken 7 gets released, Red Dead Redemption gets delayed, and The Long Dark gets a date for the full-fledged retail launch. But first, Xbox rolls out a game-subscription service.
Xbox Game Pass begins this week
Microsoft is giving people more ways to play games with Xbox Game Pass, a monthly subscription service that will cost $11.99 in Canada.
Subscribing gives you access to more than 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, including recent titles like Halo 5: Guardians and Lego Batman, older greats like Borderlands and Viva Pinata, and entire series like BioShock and the first Gears of War trilogy.
You're not just streaming these games, either. With your subscription, you'll actually download these games to your Xbox One so you can play lag-free and without using up your home Internet-data plan.
You'll need a free Xbox Live account to join Xbox Game Pass, and if you're an Xbox Live Gold member (which costs between $5 and $12 a month, depending on your prepayment), you also get early access to games that are coming to Game Pass.
An Xbox Live Gold membership is also required to play online multiplayer and also comes with the monthly "Games With Gold" program, which delivers full versions of games to members for free.
Titles that are part of Game Pass will change each month, and being a subscriber gives you a 20-percent discount on games you decide you want to own.
Xbox Game Pass launches in Canada on June 1. Microsoft is offering a free 14-day trial.
Hinterland's The Long Dark launches on all platforms this summer
On the east coast of Vancouver Island, game designer Raphael van Lierop and a group of developers have been working away on The Long Dark, a game set in an environment that looks a lot like the area around Mount Washington and the Comox and Cumberland valleys.
Van Lierop's studio, Hinterland, released the game on Steam as an Early Access game, which meant that people could pay less than a full game would cost (US$20), to be able to play a game that was still being worked on. A year later, the game became one of the first titles in Microsoft's Xbox One Game Preview, a similar program.
Well, the beta testing is coming to an end. The Long Dark is going to be released in its first retail version on August 1, and it's also coming to PS4.
In all this time, The Long Dark has really been only a game of exploration and survival. It provided the environment, the elements, and the systems and left everything else up to the players.
On August 1, with the retail release, Hinterland is also releasing the first two episodes of the game's story mode, Wintermute. The developers expect that the episodes will each bring three to five hours of play, and the final three segments coming in the next year.
The price of the kizi game is going up to US$35 before the end of May.
Red Dead Redemption 2 delayed until spring 2018
The sequel to Rockstar's western epic has been pushed back a few months to allow developers to have the time they need to "ensure we can deliver the best experience possible for our fans", according to a release.
The game is being designed for PS4 and Xbox One. The publisher has indicated that more information about the game will be coming this summer, perhaps at the annual E3 event in Los Angeles in June.
Get caught up on the Tekken story in time for Tekken 7
Fighting game Tekken 7 releases this week for PS4, Windows, and Xbox One. The franchise started in 1994 with an arcade cabinet and since then has become one of the bestselling fighting-video-game series.
There's a narrative that underlies the games, starting with Heihachi Mishima throwing his five-year-old son off a cliff. Kazuya survives the fall and seeks revenge against his father.
Publisher Bandai Namco put together a video games recapping the storyline through the first three games in the franchise. It was created with eight-bit graphics and it is hilarious.
Are video games harming your kids?
I have three school-age children. In my view, they spend too much time on screens, most especially video games. I worry about my kids and video games, as do most parents I know.
Now look, I've been getting paid to write about video games since the 1980s. Video games help feed and clothe my kids. So, yeah, I have a vested interest in their being, broadly speaking, widely accepted in society. But that doesn't mean I'm going to abrogate my responsibility to my children, to make sure they receive a well-balanced upbringing, plenty of exercise and a varied view of what life has to offer.
I personally believe that video games are great fun and often beneficial — educationally, emotionally and socially. They are relaxing and diverting, a bit like watching TV or reading books. I wouldn't want my kids to overdo those things either.
But games are also slightly different from more passive entertainments in that their feedback loops are powerful, especially to children. You can really get lost in a video game, and that’s a wonderful feeling. We can all get hooked on a TV series or on a book but (in my experience) nothing gets its claws into you like a video game.
Many game designers, especially on mobile games, understand the psychology of children all too well, and are skilled in designing games that coax long hours of play.
This worries me, and so I restrict the amount of time my kids can play games, while also taking careful note of the games they play. I do not allow them to spend money on in-app purchases without my permission. (I know for a fact that my 11-year-old would bankrupt me on buying FIFA 17 players, if he got half a chance.)
But that's just me. I'm not here to tell other people how to raise their kids. My rules are specific to me and my family. I don't worry too much about my kids seeing and playing violence in games, for example, something that shocks some of my adult friends. I don't have all the answers.
This is why I want to recommend A Parent's Guide to Video Games to other parents who are concerned about games. It's a well-balanced look at video games, broken down into chapters based on the most common concerns parents have about games.
Author Dr. Rachel Kowert takes a close look at addiction, aggression, cognitive development, sexism and social well-being, as well as physical and mental health.
Kowert is a research psychologist whose work is dedicated to the effects of games in society. Her previous work includes The Video Game Debate: Unraveling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Video Games (2015) and the 2014 textbook Video Games and Social Competence.
For the first chapter on addiction, she takes a dispassionate look at what that word actually means when divorced from buzzword status, giving note to the findings of organizations like the American Psychiatric Association.
She then acknowledges that children can show signs of addictive behavior in their relationship to games, and offers medical research as well as examples of warning signs. She finally gives sound advice to parents to watch out for signs of distress and of changes in behavior.
All this is common sense, but usefully cogent in the context of many parents' lives, which are torn between all sorts of demanding responsibilities. Sometimes, we all need to be reminded to use common sense.
On the question of on-screen violence, and its potential to lead kids to act out, she presents various recent research reports that show little connection between the two, and castigates some of the wackier attempts to discover some link. However, she notes that some studies have found short-term rises in mildly violent behavior among children immediately after playing violent games.
This is the sort of observable behavior which, while relatively harmless, leads parents to worry. I’ve seen one of my kids yell “terrorists win!” while playing in the garden, something picked up from watching me play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In that situation, I modified my behavior, not his.
Rightly, Kowert is more scathing in her chapter on sexism and misogyny in games, pointing to research that shows a link between male games players and sexist opinions, though she notes that games are not the only cultural conduits within which these ideas are rooted. She also picks out the vital stat that 63 percent of girls and women who play online games have reported experiencing sexist behavior from other players.
Her book includes a frequently asked questions section that addresses many common concerns from parents, such as "are all online gamers lonely basement dwellers?" To people who've spent their lives playing games, this sort of a question may seem positively ignorant, but it's worth remembering that not all parents are familiar with every sector of popular culture.
Gaming has often been badly misrepresented in popular entertainment. Vicious hate groups like GamerGate have done little to assuage the fears of outsiders.
In the past, the growing subculture of "gamers" often reacted defensively to any kind of scrutiny, usually because those doing the scrutinizing were political opportunists. Now that gaming is an almost universal pastime, it deserves to be treated with the full rigor of scientific inquiry.
A Parent's Guide to Video Games is a useful little book for anyone whose children play games, and who wants to feel assured that there's no harm being done.
