Category: News

Today GameStop published its earnings for the three months ended October 28th, and they’re a bit better than they were a year ago thanks to what the company claims is strong demand for (new) games, the Nintendo Switch, and collectibles.

In terms of numbers, GameStop reports (GAAP) $59.4 million in profits earned on $1.98 billion in revenues, which is a bit better than the $50.8 million on $1.95 billion in revenues it reported during the same quarter last year. 

GameStop says game hardware sales rose 8.8 percent year-over-year, thanks largely to continued demand for the Nintendo Switch.

The company also saw sales of new games rise 5.4 percent year-over-year thanks to a “strong title lineup” (this is the quarter that, among other things, just barely caught the triple-threat October 27th release of Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein II and Assassin’s Creed Origins). However, the company saw sales of pre-owned games actually drop 2.8 percent year-over-year. 

Outside of games, GameStop reports earnings from its collectibles business rose 26.5 percent year-over-year, though even with that growth collectibles sales only account for roughly 6 percent of total revenues, whereas sales of new games accounts for 32 percent. Revenues from the company’s technology business (which encompasses things like smartphone sales via its Spring Mobile stores) actually fell by 10.2 percent year-over-year.

“Our third quarter sales results were driven by strong software demand and continued momentum for Nintendo Switch and collectibles,” stated interim GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo, who’s currently stepping in so that CEO J. Paul Raines can focus on dealing with a medical issue. 

“As we enter the fourth quarter, we are encouraged by the initial customer response to Microsoft’s Xbox One X, and believe that the holiday season results will be driven by new console hardware and collectibles. Our Technology Brands AT&T Wireless business underperformed our expectations for the third quarter and we anticipate that the fourth quarter results will be highly dependent on the availability of Apple’s next-generation iPhone X.” 

Violinist, game dev, and Area 35 chief Hiroaki Yura has been accused by a one-time colleague of taking the ~$1 million he helped raise in the Kickstarter campaign for one game (the JRPG Project Phoenix) and secretly spending it to make another: Area 35’s upcoming tactical war game Tiny Metal.

The accusation comes from game maker Tariq Lacy, who took recently to the Project Phoenix Facebook and Kickstarter accounts to post a claim that he’d been hired on two months ago to help out with marketing and PR, only to learn that the game was being made using funds that had been raised in the 2013 Kickstarter campaign for Project Phoenix.

Kotaku reportedly caught wind of these posts, which have since mostly disappeared, and reproduced them in an article today. According to these reproductions, Lacy claims that after learning where some of the money for Tiny Metal came from, he was directly told by Yura to “deflect any accusations that this money was from anyone other than private investors.”

“In actuality, Hiroaki only dipped into his own funds and asked for money from private investors after the funding that he had secured for Tiny Metal was running low,” wrote Lacy. “I refused this request to fabricate and minimize the truth for the purpose of misleading others, then told Hiroaki to remove me from all matters regarding Project Phoenix so that I would not be implicated in this affair.” 

Lacy then went on to hypothesize that Project Phoenix — which completed its funding in 2013 and was initially scheduled for release in 2015 — was “never meant to be released” and that it was a ruse to raise funds.

In response, Yura repotedly told Kotaku that Lacy’s posts were “posted by a staff whose contract has been bought out due to him being a toxic employee who has sexually harassed our female staff amongst many other problems.”

“The post is factually incorrect and thus was deleted from our account,” continued the Area 35 chief. “That’s all we have to say for now, we’re looking into releasing legal documents and other proofs after discussing this with our lawyer.”

Yura went on to state that the money from Project Phoenix‘s Kickstarter was used (in conjunction with his own money and other investment) to create a prototype build that was shown to the public in 2014. He went on to tell Kotaku that “Tiny Metal[‘s] initial investment came from a group of investors from Australia. This wasn’t enough however, to finish the development so the rest came through a deal with Sony Music Entertainment.”

After hearing about Yura’s claims regarding his conduct at work, Lacy reportedly told Kotaku in an email that the allegations of him being “toxic” and sexually harassing Area 35 staffers were false, adding that “[Yura] is reacting to my statement with libel.”

Area 35 formed up to begin working on Tiny Metal in 2015, and ran an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for the game in 2016. It was expected to release on PS4, PC and Switch tomorrow, but this morning Area 35 announced that the release would be delayed until December 21st.

Less than two weeks after the release of Ghost Games’ Need for Speed Payback, the team has pushed an update to the game that effectively speeds up players’ progression through the game’s systems by increasing rewards of in-game currencies.

What makes this particular update interesting is how it potentially lowers pressure players feel to spend real money (via “Speed Points” premium currency) to speed up their progression; this change comes amidst a flurry of updates aimed at similarly easing players’ progression through Star Wars Battlefront II.

EA released both games this month and, taken together, they paint a picture of big-budget teams (at EA, and perhaps elsewhere) struggling to find the right balance to strike when implementing progression mechanics, virtual currency systems, and microtransaction opportunities in full-priced games.

The sticking point in both cases seems to be that players feel the games are too demanding in terms of how much virtual currency they have to accrue to unlock in-game rewards (often received semi-randomly by opening “loot crate” analogs), and they feel pressured to spend real money to potentially speed up the process.

In response, a Ghost Games representative took to Reddit over the weekend to announce that the game is being changed to make earning in-game currencies like “Rep” and “Bank” easier in an effort to ” make the progression, especially around the ownership of cars, a much more enjoyable experience.”

By contrast, the dev team behind Battlefront II said last week that after a number of attempts to address player complaints about the game’s progression system, they would just temporarily turn off all microtransactions while they sorted things out.

It was a big enough deal that some NFS fans have speculated Ghost Games’ changes to Payback are a direct response, but the afore-mentioned representative claimed that “all this was already happening” before Battlefront II was pushed into the limelight.

In many games, particularly BioWare’s games, choices matter.

At GDC 2015, BioWare’s Leah Shinkewski revealed how the company moved beyond the traditional “import your save” approach to aggregate players’ choice data from multiple Dragon Age games across multiple platforms, then present it to players in a digestible online format: the Dragon Age Keep.

From corrupt save game files to platform-based restrictions, Shinkewski drew on specific examples to showcase how the Dragon Age Keep’s unique web-based approach successfully solved for cross-platform and generation challenges while creating the opportunity to engage with fans before, during, and after a game launch.

Her talk was fascinating and informative; if you missed it live, don’t skip your chance to now watch it completely free via the official GDC Vault YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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