Analytics

On March 28, the WN CEO Summit took place. This time it was held in the capital of Great Britain. It was attended by 100 high-ranking employees of gaming and IT companies from 15 countries of the world.

It is difficult for smaller mobile devs to avoid problems that can affect the development and lifecycle of their games. ZiMAD M&A manager Yana Vesnina discusses the key challenges and shares some professional tips in an article for Game World Observer.

CD Projekt has released its financial report for the full year ended December 31, 2022. Thanks to strong sales of Cyberpunk 2077, the company recorded its second-best year in terms of both revenue and net profit.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced that the E3 exhibition will not take place in 2023.

Yana Vesnina, M&A Manager at ZiMAD, told about the challenges facing young mobile game developers in her column.

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. This week they are wanted: a middle-level product analyst at Azur Games, a game producer at Playkot and a game designer at Airicore.

Circana (formerly the NPD Group) has released a new report on the best-selling games, consoles, and accessories in the US for February 2023. PlayStation 5 drove growth in the hardware segment, with Hogwarts Legacy dominating the game sales charts.

Many have been wondering what happened to CD Projekt RED veteran Jason Slama after he was first appointed as the game director of the next Witcher project. It turns out that he is now working on a new NFT title at Pixelcraft Studios.

It has been a few months since Blizzard games went offline in China. A new report sheds light on why NetEase and Activision couldn’t agree on a new licensing deal, leaving millions of players on the sidelines.

Rob Cooper decided to leave Ubisoft. He managed the company’s business in Northern Europe and the Middle East, as well as helped it enter new markets.

data.ai has published a report on the state of the mobile games market in the first quarter of 2023. Here is some data on player spending, installs, as well as the highest-grossing and most downloaded titles.

Gamers are still spending more on mobile games than they did before the pandemic. As the analysts found out data.ai in the first quarter of 2023, users worldwide left an average of $1.63 billion a week in mobile games – 28% more than at the beginning of 2020.

On March 12, the Sensor Tower analytical company published a large-scale study on the situation in mobile gaming by the end of 2022. We have already written about him briefly. Time for detailed material with key calculations from the study.

Last year, the French spent €5.5 billion on video games, consoles and gaming PCs, according to the SELL association. They spent more only in 2020 and 2021.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has reviewed Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. According to the regulator, the $68.7 billion deal won’t reduce competition in the market.

The Fair Trade Commission of Japan announced that it does not object to the sale of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft for $68.7 billion.

Last week, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell accused Sony of monopolizing the “high-end console market” in Japan, saying that the company owns a 98% stake. Now 10 more members of the US Congress have joined her accusations.

Tractor manufacturers are now looking to the Farming Simuator series as a powerful marketing tool. Developer Giants Software gets so many requests from companies that it is enough to cover development costs.

Manufacturers of tractors and other agricultural machinery actively use Farming Simulator to promote their products. In an interview with The Guardian, the developers from Giants Software said that they are now signing so many contracts with companies that this allows them to cover all the costs of supporting the game.

Conversion funnels are one of the basic tools for quick analysis of player behavior. What they are and how you can work with them,” said Cameron Hozouri, CEO and founder of ByteBrew, an analytical platform for mobile games.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has updated its provisional findings related to Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Due to new evidence, the regulator has narrowed the scope of its concerns.

The British antitrust regulator has published new preliminary findings regarding the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. He no longer believes that the deal will cause significant damage to competition in the console games market.

11 years have passed since the release of the Japanese Puzzle & Dragons mobile battler, but this does not prevent the project from still making good money. Sensor Tower estimates that by the end of February, Buttler’s revenue exceeded $6.7 billion.

US Senator Maria Cantwell is alarmed by the situation on the AAA games market in Japan. At the last meeting in the US Senate, she accused Sony of monopoly, saying that the company owns 98% of the market.

The third material, completing a series of articles about the monetization strategy of Belka Games. It is dedicated to the company’s work with advertising, the cultivation of personnel and trends in the niche.

We are publishing a new list with gaming vacancies. This week they are wanted: a game analyst at ZiMAD, a chief accountant at WN Media Group and a leading game designer at SVMD.The selection was prepared by Marina Lopatina, Director of Business Development of Talents In Games.

Not a day without news about AI. This time the info guide is from Unity. The company is working on an AI ecosystem that will “put AI game development tools in the hands of millions of creators.”

Atari has agreed to purchase Night Dive Studios, an American company that is currently working on a remake of the original System Shock. The maximum amount of the transaction can be $20 million.

The Bombora publishing house announced the appearance on the Russian shelves of the book “Fallout. Chronicles of the creation of the legendary saga“. The book is written by Erwan Lafleuriel, editor-in-chief of IGN France. It is primarily dedicated to the world of the game and aspects of its plot.

Microsoft has announced some major changes to its ID@Xbox program. The updated acceleration initiative aims to empower underrepresented indie game developers and lower barriers to entry for them.

At the end of last year, 10 gamers from the United States decided to prevent Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard and sued the corporation. Their attempt was unsuccessful. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that there was not enough evidence in it.

The Russian government may help domestic developers with publishing games in China. Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Chernyshenko instructed gaming companies that are part of the Competence Center for the Development of System-wide and Applied Software for Gaming Services (hereinafter CCR) to prepare proposals for the necessary measures of state support for the export of games.

More game companies are trying to incorporate AI technologies into their development processes. Ubisoft has introduced Ghostwriter, its own machine learning tool that should make it easier for writers to create interactions and dialogues with NPC.

The La Forge research unit from Ubisoft Montreal showed the Ghostwriter neural network. Her main task is to help screenwriters with writing phrases that are pronounced by NPCs.

On March 6, the Appodeal growth platform published an interactive report on the dynamics of eCPM over the past year. We tell you what you can learn from it.

Atomic Heart has reached its first milestone in terms of player numbers. This follows Mundfish’s recent comments about the studio’s future plans and approach to game development.

DStars has revealed the shortlist of nominees for its annual DStars Awards. The event will celebrate the best Italian games and developers of 2022.

On March 20, Remedy Entertainment published a more detailed version of its annual report. The document provides additional information about the company’s production pipeline and business strategy.

The sanctions have seriously affected the Russian gaming market. According to the results of last year, its volume decreased by 80%, the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) estimated.

China has issued a new batch of licenses to publish foreign games for PC, mobile, and consoles. Some of them will be released in the country by Tencent and NetEase.

The National Press and Publications Administration of China (NPPA) has issued licenses for the release of 27 foreign games in the country. The list of approved games included, among others, Merge Mansion from Metacore and Spring Valley from Playkot.

Microsoft has serious plans for its mobile expansion. According to Xbox head Phil Specner, the company wants to open its apps store as soon as next year.

The head of Microsoft‘s gaming division in an interview with the Financial Times said that the corporation could open an Xbox store for mobile devices as early as next year. This will happen if regulators approve the purchase of Activision Blizzard.

Dream Games has announced the launch of its first overseas office. It is located in London.

Kepler Interactive called the releases of Scorn and Sifu very successful, Ubisoft closed its division in Italy, and Team17 announced layoffs — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

Microsoft has offered the European Commission a package of remedies related to its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the future of the Call of Duty franchise. The regulator has now postponed the deadline for its final decision.

User funnels are a powerful marketing benchmark. Cameron Hozouri, CEO and co-founder of mobile game analytics platform ByteBrew, has broken down the significant differences between Any Order and Closed funnels.

For the second time in a month, the European regulator has pushed back the date by which it should make a final decision on the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

The second material by Evgeny Gilmanov, head of monetization at Belka Games, is about the principles that guide the development and implementation of a monetization strategy in the company.

The analytical company Newzoo has published a detailed report on the state of the console and PC games market in 2022.