Category: News

Square Enix Releases 9-Month Finance Report


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Square Enix today has released their nine month period report ending December 31, 2014, and the news is good. Compared to the report from the same time last year, figures have increased across the board in substantial numbers. Operating income has shown an 89.6% boost to $126.02 million, net sales up 16% to $1.01 billion, net income up 110.8% to $92.8 million, and ordinary income up 65.6% to $140.73 million.

In their filing, Square Enix pointed toward the success of mobile and PC browser platforms for its success, titles like Sengoku IXA, Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light, and Final Fantasy Record Keeper. MMORPGs such as Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X were also noted for “making favorable progress.”

Also contributing to Square Enix’s success is the continued growth of comics and merchandise licensing, while the arcade sector has maintained itself despite decreased sales through efficient store management. Overall, Square Enix projects the end of year sales to hover around last year’s figures.

(Source: Square Enix)

SOE Now Daybreak Game Company


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Sony Online Entertainment has made a shocking announcement, revealing that the company has been acquired by Columbus Nova and will be spun off from the Sony brand. The news was revealed just minutes ago on Reddit.

This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more!

As part of the move, Sony Online Entertainment will be hereforth known as Daybreak Game Company. What does this mean for players?

It will be business as usual and all SOE games will continue on their current path of development and operation. In fact, we expect to have even more resources available to us as a result of this acquisition. It also means new exciting developments for our existing IP and games as we can now fully embrace the multi-platform world we are living in.

(Source: Reddit)

H1Z1 To Cheaters: Thanks For The Donations


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Sony Online Entertainment has an excellent track record on fighting cheaters, to the point where in Planetside 2 many developers have thrown in the towel and given up. H1Z1, currently in early access, is looking to be no different.

SOE senior game designer Jimmy Whisenhunt has posted to his Twitter account regarding a recent wave of bans, thanking the cheaters for their generous donations.

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You can follow Whisenhunt on Twitter for further ban announcements.

(Source: Twitter)

Ultima Online: Rampant PvP Drove Away 70% Of New Players


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Ultima Online’s second expansion, and its new continent Trammel, has been debated nonstop since its introduction way back in the year 2000. Gordon Walton, currently working on the upcoming MMO Crowfall, is responsible for Trammel and posted a lengthy piece explaining why the update came to be.

In his post, Walton explains that Ultima Online was losing 70+% of its new players within 60 days of subscribing due to the intense nature of the game’s PvP. Trammel was introduced in a time when Electronic Arts had planned on shutting down Ultima Online to push players towards the then in-development Ultima Online 2, noting that the executives at the time didn’t fully understand the idea of an MMO (supporting a game long after release as opposed to launching a new title). The good news is that Trammel doubled the subscriber base, the bad news?

The bad: Without the “sheep to shear” the hard core PvP’ers were disenfranchised. They didn’t like preying on each other (hard targets versus soft targets), and they became a smaller minority in the overall game. The real bad though was that the intensity and “realness” of the game for all players was diminished. This was the major unintended consequence.

Walton admits that Trammel was unsuccessful in bringing back the disenfranchised players, only 5% of whom returned of which few stayed. As for Crowfall, that game is being developed with the mistakes of Ultima Online in mind.

We are specifically making our game for players who will like the kind of experience we will create, not trying to cast a wide net to get a mass market audience. We want the folks who will appreciate an intense gaming experience with real risk, winning and losing. While we want as many players who are engaged in our game as possible, we won’t need millions of players to make our game work.

(Source: Reddit)

It’s Official: Massively Is Shutting Down


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I owe a lot to Massively and the Joystiq network, seeing as they are one of the bigger news websites to regularly share my content with a wider audience, so it’s sad to see that they will be shutting down on February 3rd. With the small number of mainstream MMO news websites, Massively was the top source for news for myself and likely many of you. It was nice to see a big company like AOL funding the Joystiq network.

The decision, it appears, came from the top echelon of AOL.

We all suspected this was coming eventually a year ago when a VP whose name I don’t even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering, hard-won 40% year-over-year page view growth by… hacking our budget in half.

The post hints at the possibility of the Massively team striking out and self-funding their next endeavor. We wish them the best of luck, and by we I mean me.

(Source: Massively)

RuneScape Lays Out February Updates


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February is upon us, and for RuneScape that means another month of new content.

Demon mobs are being updated this month with new drop tables, titles, materials, and various other tweaks to make the activity more inviting. Following is the reintroduction of the Wildywyrm, a rarely appearing creature that can only be found in the open-pvp land of the wilderness. Later on in the month, players will be able to take part in a new quest to pull off the greatest heist in RuneScape.

Other events this month include a double experience weekend and Game Blast event from February 20th through the 23rd. There will also be changes coming to combat to make the game more responsive and fluid.

(Source: RuneScape)

Pantheon Store Has Been Removed


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Visionary Realms has announced that the Pantheon shop is going the way of the dodo. Citing their vision for the website, VR’s associate community manager Kilsin announced in a forum thread that the store will be reevaluated and, possibly, relaunched in the future without any game altering items.

All purchases already made will be honored, noting:

We will not however sell anything that could be mistaken for giving a player an advantage, so if we decide to bring the store back online or create a new one in the future, it will only stock Pantheon merchandise and fluff items that supporters can enjoy, no item sold will contain stats or any type of advantage over other players.

(Source: Pantheon)

Elder Scrolls Online Cleaning Inventories


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Managing your inventory is about to get much easier with Update 6, which will introduce a new collections system. When the update goes live, mounts, vanity pets, and costumes will be removed from player inventories and stored in the collections window.

The news post notes that the collections system will be widened to include more categories of goods.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

Nexon Engaging Hostile Takeover Of NCSoft


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The relationship between Nexon and NCSoft has reportedly turned sour as the former has decided to take on a management role in the latter. Over two years ago Nexon purchased a majority stake in NCSoft, announcing at the time that it was purely for “investment” purposes. Relations between the two companies apparently soured when NCSoft appointed CEO Kim Taek-jin’s wife, Yoon Song-yee, to the role of President without notifying Nexon.

CEO Kim Taek-jin has vocally announced his displeasure with Nexon’s decision, stating:

“Nexon’s latest decision will damage the values of the NCSoft shareholders and weaken the competitiveness of the entire Korean game industry due to the (companies’) differing management philosophies and business models,”

NCSoft and Nexon have had a hard time getting along since the shareholder buyout, as differences in business perspective and management resulted in the failure of their first joint project: Mabinogi 2.

(Source: Korea Herald)

Frontier Developments Layoffs At Halifax Studio


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Frontier Developments announced in an investor update today that 15 positions have been cut at the company’s studio in Halifax. While layoffs post game launch are not unexpected, this move seems to be another step in an ongoing consolidation out of Canada and into the primary office in Cambridge.

With its business emphasis now on two major self-published franchises, Elite: Dangerous and Coaster Park Tycoon, Frontier is re-focusing its development activities in Cambridge where the expertise in these franchises lies.

Job openings are still available on the Frontier Developments website as work continues on Coaster Park Tycoon.

(Source: Frontier Developments)