The main thing for the weekend (May 7-10)
Sony, Nintendo and Zynga have published financial reports, Chinese teenagers have been banned from donating to streamers and streaming themselves, and Stardew Valley sales have surpassed the milestone of 20 million copies — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.
Registration for developers has opened in the Russian marketplace NashStore. The authors of the platform have already sent invitations to 3,000 application owners. They also reported that a total of 250 thousand people have pre-registered in the NashStore since the announcement. The marketplace will start working for users on May 16.
The VR studio Arcadia, which developed the survival Requirement VR, announced the closure of its office in Moscow. She did it because of what is happening in Ukraine.
The Chinese authorities have banned minors from watching streams after 22:00. In addition, teenagers under the age of 16 are no longer allowed to stream (and those who are 16-18 years old need to ask their parents for permission). Donations were also banned.
Tencent continued its expansion into the foreign market and opened a division in Liverpool. Its employees will support the development of games from the company’s partner studios.
Strauss Zelnick has extended his working contract with Take-Two Interactive until 2029. Under the terms of the updated contract, bonuses to his salary will become more dependent on microtransactions in games, including the sale of NFT. According to Axios, Zelnik will be able to earn millions of dollars annually on bonuses (with Take-Two shares).
Sony has reported for 2021. She reported that the revenue of her gaming division amounted to $21 billion — an increase of 3% compared to 2020. During the year, the company sold 11.5 million PS5 and 1 million PS4. Game sales fell 10% to 303.2 million copies.
Nintendo said that its revenue over the past year decreased by 3.6% to $ 13 billion. During this time, the company sold 23.06 million Nintendo Switch consoles — 20% less than a year earlier.
Zynga has also published a financial report for the first quarter of 2022. The company’s revenue increased by 2% to $691 million. However, the net loss also increased — by 7% to $25 million. As for the audience of the company’s mobile games, their MAU grew by 27% to 209 million people.
The CharlieIntel portal, citing Activision Blizzard data, reported that the number of Call of Duty: Mobile downloads reached 650 million. The number of users playing Call of Duty on smartphones every month in 2021 almost equaled the number of those who played on PCs and consoles.
▫️The circulation of Stardew Valley has exceeded 20 million copies sold. Of these, 13 million were on the PC. It took the game six years since its release in February 2016.
▫️EA has stopped cooperating with FIFA. The company has officially announced that from 2023 its football simulator will be released under the name EA Sports FC. Shortly after, FIFA announced that it was in talks with “leading game publishers, media companies and investors” about developing a competitor to EA Sports FC by 2024.
Riot Games has filed a lawsuit against the Chinese studio Moonton again. The cause of the conflict, as in 2017, was Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. According to the company, this game copies League of Legends.
