Our monthly digest of what happened in the gaming industry is here. February brought several pieces of interesting news about Death Stranding 2:On The Beach, the successor of Nintendo Switch or about the next Battlefield game. But before we get there, let’s check out what releases in March!
Video of the Month
If you are a fan of feudal Japan, you will be excited for the upcoming game Rise of the Ronin. It is coming out on March 22 and Team Ninja, the Nioh’s developers, released a new trailer to taking a deep look at the combat! “Embark on an epic journey across the war-torn 19th-century Japan in this combat-focused open-world action RPG,” says the official description of the game.
Top Five February News
Hideo Kojima revealed new information about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The game will take place on a different continent than the previous game and Norman Reedus’s Sam Porter Bridges will not work for UCA anymore, but rather for a private company. Moreover, the newest Kojima’s project will feature real-time terrain change like floods, forest fires, and earthquakes. The second Death Stranding will release in 2025 exclusively for PlayStation 5.
Nintendo has reportedly delayed the successor to Nintendo Switch. IGN claims it will not launch before March 2025, which is a change from earlier reporters that informed it should come out in September or October 2024. The new console will feature similar hybrid functionality with a bigger screen, better hardware and it should also be fully backwards compatible with the 2017’s Nintendo Switch.
PlayStation VR2 headset is being tested for PC. “We hope to make this support available in 2024, so stay tuned for more updates,” said Sony in a blog post, stating that the goal of this step is for “PS VR2 players to access additional games on PC”. The first PS VR never officially came to PC. However, the modding community was able to make it work. Similar thing happened with the second VR headset, but now it seems the modders will not have to work so hard if Sony brings it officially itself.
EA’s next Battlefield game will feature a free-to-play battle royale mode, Insider Gaming reported. It should also come back to its roots after the lackluster and buggy Battlefield 2042 which did not sell well and wasn’t received by the community due to is design choices. As for the game’s setting, it will be set in the modern day somewhere around 2025 – 2030, with a strong story-driven emphasis on modern technology in war.
Sony managed to sell over 54,8 million units of PlayStation 5 with 8,2 million units sold in Q3, which is up 1.1 million from the same period the previous fiscal year, Gematsu informed. The newest Insomniac Game The Marvel’s Spider-man 2 is also doing very well. Since its October launch, it managed to sell over 10 million copies. In March, it is also receiving a new update with a New Game+ game mode and a new trophy for replaying it.
Statistic and Chart of the Month
Nintendo Switch was released in 2017 and up until 2023, it managed to sell over a billion Gaming software units – physical games. The most successful year for Nintendo was 2022 with over 235 million sales. The last financial year experienced a slight decline with just close to 214 million units. In the coming years, the final number will steadily decrease, as the Switch’s life cycle is coming to its end. The new console from the Japanese gaming giant is supposed to release around March 2025.
The console market is also represented by Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation. What we already know is that PlayStation is outselling Xbox 2:1 but how about the revenue from games? It is about the same, as Statista expects PlayStation to win 63:37 in terms of the distribution of PlayStation versus Xbox game content revenue between 2023 and 2025.
Quote of the Month
Xbox has announced that five of its exclusive games will be coming out on PlayStation, which came out as a surprise to not only Xbox fans, but also the PlayStation ones. “Honestly though, it’s pretty cool of Xbox to realize that Sony’s internal studios haven’t announced the release of any major exclusives this year and therefore give them all of theirs,” said Daniel Ahmad about the announcement, mocking Sony for not having any major exclusive titles lined up for 2024 yet.
Number of the Month
Elden Ring is one of the most successful games From Software has ever made. And the sales just confirm it, because as of February 2024, it managed to sell whopping 23 million units worldwide. That number will just increase, as the developer is planning a big expansion for this June.
Photo of the Month
Released on July 30th, 2018, Vigor is a free-to-play battle royale shooter developer by Bohemia Interactive, a studio from the Czech Republic, just like Fanatic Games. At first, it came out on Xbox One only, but later on, it got released on PlayStation consoles as well as Nintendo Switch. The main objective of this third person shooter is to stay alive for as long as possible.
