Digital E3 also cancelled
This could be the best thing that happened to its organizers.
While painful, it is a great moment for the ESA to regroup and think about what they want the 2021 event to look like.
I see lots of restaurants here in Brooklyn coming up with creative solutions to drive traffic (e.g., Buy soup for emergency personnel with your order), so I expect event organizers everywhere are similarly brainstorming on how to get through this.
There will be more insurance clauses in contacts, no doubt. And that all-important sponsorship money will move slower than usual, too. It raises the same question for all the other major events Gamescom (Germany), ChinaJoy (China), Paris Games Week (France), the Tokyo Game Show (Japan), and G-Star (South Korea). Nevertheless, this one counts double because we’re months away from a new console hardware generation.
My take: Sony and Microsoft will mostly ditch meatspace conventions altogether in favor of live-streaming and other online events. Despite their best efforts, Sony’s E3 showcases faced increasing criticism over the last few years. Digital events are cheaper and easier to manage and reach a lot more consumers that way. You can have journalists and reviewers come see the new shiny thing at an invite-only gathering. And corporate suits will just go meet in some hotel lobby like they’re already doing anyway.
Still, it’s a shame. But this was always going to happen. Covid-19 is just making it go faster.
On to this week’s update.
NEWS
Newly jobless become full time video game coaches
Games mediate human interaction, and its contemporary digital expression is no different. Being able to successfully play a popular video game is now part of how people socialize online. Games like Fortnite have evolved into online social hangouts where game play is secondary. So it makes sense that we see the emergence of professional video game coaches that help people figure out how to play a game in much the same way that people have tutors or practice to improve their abilities elsewhere. Spending a few hours with a coach to show you the ropes starts to make sense. Link
New ESRB rating re: loot boxes
The games industry’s rating outfit, the ESRB, announced it will now add the presence of loot box monetization to its ratings. In response to the growing criticism over the past few years, it only makes sense for the industry to self-regulate rather than to wait for Big Gubment to do it for them. It leaves me with two thoughts: (1) the use of the term "In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)" to indicate loot boxes makes technical and legal sense, but many of us will read right over it, and (2) very soon it will no longer be parents needing ratings to help navigate titles when buying games for their kids but vice versa.
“Here, dad, this one has no online multiplayer, no micro-transactions, and no silly dances. It's rated B for “Boomer Appropriate.”
Play more games, get more smarter
In a study on
“the long-term effect of experience with action real-time strategy games on temporal visual selective attention”
researchers have found that
“expert players of real-time strategy games have faster information processing, allocate more cognitive power to individual visual stimuli, and allocate limited cognitive resources between successive stimuli more effectively through time.”
See, that is why video games should be on everyone’s resume. Link
Apple buys NextVR, maybe
It’s unclear to me why you would disclose that Apple is ‘likely’ to buy a company, especially in a precarious segment like VR, but here we are. Previously a string of investors and creatives got excited about Facebook’s $2bn acquisition of Oculus in the hope that Zuckerberg’s involvement would blow the space wide open. That obviously hasn’t happened. We’re now walking on even thinner ice, as Apple has been rumored to invest in VR and AR, but is, apparently, only making a $100MM commitment. For Apple that is a miniscule amount of money. Does this mean that VR will be a massive new hit and the next new amazing thing? No. In the short term it serves to give off the impression that Apple is still at the front of tech innovation. In the long term, it may present a ‘paradigm shift’ in how we access content and interact with technology, but that remains a large unknown. Link
CD Projekt Red earns $125MM in 2019
With its biggest Q4 ever, the firm is up +68% y/y and doing well. The release of The Witcher 3 on the Switch and GWENT’s success on iOS beat expectations among Wall street analysts. That does not change, however, its increasing dependency on the upcoming September 17 release of Cyberpunk 2077. The company has been doing well because of the success of The Witcher 3. What distinguishes CD Projekt Red is that it also generates about 25% of revenue via GOG.com, its very own digital storefront. Even with a reliance on mostly PC and PS4 for the bulk of revenue, the company is one of the few unlikely contenders, like Epic, that can compete with Steam. Will Cyberpunk be its Fortnite moment? Link
Sony buys into Bilibili
The name of the game for platform holders is live streaming. With Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook all owning or having significant stakes in live streaming platforms, Sony couldn’t be left behind. And so it dropped $400MM on shares in Bilibili which bought it just under 5%. Bilibili is the exclusive agent for mainland China for Aniplex’ hit Fate/GrandOrder and online games contributed about 43.4% of 19Q4 revenue. Link
PLAY/PASS
Play: Minecraft Raytracing. Swoon. Link
Pass. NASCAR driver lets everyone know he's a racist in livestream competition. In cyberspace we can all hear you scream. Hard pass
Play. This Saturday (4/18) we’ll see the kick-off of the world’s first computer-based professional chess competition for elite grandmasters: the Magnus Carlsen Invitational. Link