Tag: finance

Posted on by

Oculus Rift to retail at $599; $200 above initial 2014 projections

Virtual Reality and augmented reality are the biggest trend in gaming right now, and the Oculus Rift is perhaps the most well known VR headset slated to operate with both the Xbox One and PC.

The technology is exciting to gamers and even for some non-gamers, but the biggest concern for the hardware was a simple one for many. Price. And Oculus seems to have heavily under estimated what the price was going to be when they suggested anywhere between $250 and $400 back in 2014.

Oculus Rift has been confirmed to retail at $599 — a full $200 above the highest estimations. The package will come with the VR headset, sensor, Oculus Remote, cables, Xbox One Controller, EVE: Valkyrie, and Lucky’s Tale. Perhaps they value the package like this but still value the Oculus itself at $400, but it certainly won’t make it any less frustrating for gamers.

And that $600 price tag is just for United States customers. Canadians will have to pay over $900 to get the headset on its March 2016 release date.

In an interview with eurogamer in 2014, an Oculus rep stated “We want to stay in that $200-$400 price range.” But he did warn, “That could slide in either direction depending on scale, pre-orders, the components we end up using, business negotiations…”

It seems “business negotiations” went poorly for the Oculus Rift.

Preorders have just gone live for the Oculus Rift’s March 2016 release.

Posted on by

Microsoft launches “17 days of deals” for holiday season

Black Friday is long over but Microsoft isn’t done with the deals now offering more price cuts on popular games on Xbox One. Their “17 days of deals” is supposedly Microsoft’s biggest sale ever with major titles like Halo 5 getting 20% off and Rise of The Tomb Raider 35% off. Exact prices will vary by region.

The majority of the deals are arcade games that won’t exactly blow you away, but that doesn’t mean there’s plenty of good titles scattered in the nearly 100 deals that MajorNelson listed on his blog.

The Witcher 3: Wildhunt may be the best deal right now at half price. This massive open-world RPG by CD Projekt Red has restored many gamers’ faith that developers can make an incredible high quality experience without adding micro transactions or only partially working games. It’s well deserving of the Game of the Year awards it’s winning from multiple outlets.

Ori and the Blind Forest (50% off) has been a name in the mix for best art from multiple outlets — including this one.

Borderlands The Handsome Collection is on the high end of discounts with a 60% price cut. Borderlands 2 is one of the best multiplayer games even today and the Pre-Sequel looks better than ever on a new generation console.

Destiny: The Taken King (25% off) the major expansion pack to Destiny adds a huge chunk of content to the base game, expanding the story, and adding more gear and weapons.

Forza Horizons 2 Storm Island content pack is now 75% off and a must have for any current player that hasn’t made the jump for the extra off-road content as of yet.

Just Cause 3 has been out for less than month and is already 20% off. One of the most chaotic sandboxes you can play in with an absurd amount of destruction.

Dragon Age Inquisition (40% off) from Bioware is another testament to the developers strength with making great RPGs. This continuation of the Dragon Age series was in contention for Game of the Year Last year.

Other notable games:
Grand Theft Auto V (40% off)
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (50% off)
Call of Duty Black Ops III (17% off)
Mad Max (33% off)
Need for Speed Deluxe Edition (60% off)

Check out the deals right now both on the Microsoft store and on the console’s own online store.

The deals will continue from December 22 to January 7 with offers changing weekly. Daily deals will also be available.

Full list of games available at MajorNelson.com

Posted on by

Gamestop CFO predicts sales rebound for Star Wars Battlefront after Black Friday

This is one of the most saturated holiday seasons ever in gaming with major titles such as Fallout 4, Halo 5, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and many many more. Star Wars Battlefront was expected to be among the top sellers, but after its first week it’s clear that EA and other parties have to reel back their projections.

In the latest Earning Conference Call, Gamestop called out Battlefront along with Halo and Tomb Raider for underwhelming sales numbers in the build-up to this holiday season, but Gamestop’s CFO has not lost hope in a great turn-around.

“…we anticipate that this game is going to be a very strong game, when the movie launches in mid-December. Not to mention the fact that we have it prominently displayed in our Black Friday, and in fact we’re the only retailer that has it with significant discount, which is also going to guide sales.” – Tony Bartel, Gamestop CFO

Gamestop is relying on the success of every single title due to release during this Q4 with themselves and other brick-and-mortar stores continuing to combat the growing sales of digital gaming, but the exact sales numbers that Black Friday is helping make up isn’t quite available yet — it’ll be at least a few days before we get any idea. Though, it’s reasonable to predict that digital gaming will continue to widen it’s lead on physical game sales.

Still, gamers and investors should expect better of Star Wars Battlefront. EA has launched a massive advertising campaign for the game, but so far it seems their emphasis on the PS4 has in-fact hurt their sales — the PS4’s userbase of Battlefront gamers is larger than that of the Xbox One and PC installbase combined.

While Battlefront took the brunt of Gamestop’s criticism, Bartel didn’t single out the Star Wars title — Halo 5 was another game that didn’t live up to expectations. Microsoft claimed it was the best launch in Halo history, but Bartel seemed to disagree telling reporters to direct questions regarding the exact digital sales-numbers of Halo 5 to Microsoft.

Posted on by

Making sense of Microsoft’s recent controversial news

As of late Microsoft and the Xbox division have had some controversial news surrounding them.

Here’s a quick recap of what’s happened and a reasonable thought process making Microsoft’s decisions seem less crazy.

First is a major change to Xbox Live’s staff —

Eric Neustadter, one of the guys who made Xbox Live awesome serving as an architect for the platform left Microsoft.

Over his 14+ year career, most notably as Xbox Live’s main architect, Neustadter was a great asset making Xbox Live what it is today, but the online service has been running generally smoothly since the Xbox 360 and the platform has been stable enough where those around him can continue to keep the service at a high quality level without Neustadter being around.

Yeah, Microsoft has had some DDoS problems and other minor issues, but the Xbox Live service is generally reliable — plus free games are always cool, eh? (Except you Pool Nation FX.)

Next issue!

For the entire life of Xbox Microsoft has always reported and measured the success of their consoles through sales numbers and the amount of consoles shipped.

Friday it was revealed that Microsoft would be taking a different approach — using Xbox Live subscribers to measure success.

Microsoft’s decision to use Xbox Live membership rather than sales is said to be done to measure “active users.” People that have turned on their consoles and signed in within the last month are the only ones included in that metric. It’s done primarily because Xbox 360 sales are declining with the new generation in full swing and showing active users makes them look better. (The only thing gripe I have is that they could still just show Xbox One sales specifically instead of packaging it in with the 360.)

What else?

A little less than a month ago, Phil Spencer commented saying that Xbox doesn’t need to catch the PS4 to be considered a success.

This is technically true considering the Xbox has objectively been a success from Microsoft’s stand point. They make a f*** ton of money from it and it’s generally viewed positively by those that play on it. From a financial perspective it kind of makes less sense though to be okay with stagnating, but Spencer is definitely correct saying they’ll be okay if they aren’t ahead of the PS4 by the end of this console generation.

Posted on by

Microsoft looking at Xbox Live memberships rather than consoles sales for success metric [Poll]

For consoles today the constant battle in market share is often what most people look to when analyzing which company is doing the best. The current status is pretty clear with Sony’s Playstation 4 taking a decisive lead over the other consoles of this generation — the Xbox One and the WiiU.

But Microsoft is shying away from the physical console sales to determine whether they are successful or not. Instead, the company will look at Xbox Live memberships to decide if they’re continuing to make progress as a major player in the console gaming industry.

The decision to switch to online subscriptions probably won’t affect the general gaming consensus that the PS4 is winning the race, but it seems a tad suspicious that Microsoft is going ahead with the switch just as the overall revenue for Xbox fell at the same time the revenue from Xbox Live went up.

And the news that Xbox Live revenue is on the rise while Xbox console shipments is stagnating is not surprising — especially for a Q3 report in 2015. Xbox 360 consoles are declining as it nears its 10 year birthday and Xbox One sales stagnate for gamers electing to wait for the holiday season for buying a $400 console.

Regardless of the decision, Xbox Live should be the cash cow for Microsoft with digital gaming on the rise. It grew by 6% revenue-wise with a 28% increase in its userbase (now at 39 million). The quality of the platform is what makes the Xbox One at all stand out against the PS4’s superior hardware and measuring the active users gives a more realistic idea of who uses their consoles.

But still with Sony and Nintendo still using shipments as their major success metric it will seem a bit odd when Microsoft shows off users rather the consoles shipped every quarter. It’s unclear whether the company will continue the quarterly reporting of console sales — or how often they’ll report them.

Do you like Microsoft using Xbox Live as a metric for success?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
Posted on by

Mobile gaming giant, Gameloft downsizing; closes seven studios

Logo-Gameloft-Platinum-screen

Amid recent struggles derived from an increasingly saturated market, Gameloft, one of the largest producers and developers in the mobile-gaming market has had several subsidiary studios fail to reach even after the first half of 2015 and in an effort to cut their losses have let loose seven studios.

The french company lost over €4 million through Q1 and Q2 and Michel Guillemot, CEO of Gameloft, is moving forwards with cost-reduction program that encompasses the closure of the seven studios.

“This first-half loss is due to the seasonality of our business as well as to the disappointing level of revenues achieved by the three games developed by Gameloft specifically for the Japanese and Chinese markets.In order to return to profitability in the second half of 2015, and to past profitability levels in the medium term, Gameloft has initiated an ambitious cost reduction program since the start of the year and in the process closed seven development studios that had become unprofitable,” – Michel Guillemot

Despite this recent dip in company health they still stand as the number one game producer on iOS and Android with over 172 million monthly users spread out across the globe. Europe/Africa/Middle East currently accounts for the largest chunk of those players at 30% while Asian and North American markets account for 28% and 27% respectively.

Gameloft is hoping that they’re upcoming releases of Disney Magic Kingdom, Order & Chaos 2: Redemption and TRIVIAL PURSUIT & Friends will make up any past struggles.

Even with this loss of individual studios, Gameloft will have released 17 mobile games by the year’s end.