Tag: Year

2017’s Predictions Revisited: How Did We Do?


It’s that time of year, folks, where MMO Fallout looks back on our predictions for this year in order to hand ammunition to the very people who regularly remind me that I have no idea what I’m talking about. This year I did pretty well, out of 30 mostly serious predictions I would say that I only got about 6 wrong.

And when you’re done remembering the year, take a gander at this list of tips to keep your memory sharp into your 50s.

So let’s recap.

  1. Nostalrius getting a cease and desist and Blizzard announcing Pristine Servers: Nailed it on both counts, minus the part about Nostalrius allowing the cease and desist to escalate to a full on lawsuit.
  2. Laura K Dale would continue leaking Switch news: Also true, although we will never really know if Nintendo tracked down the person leaking the information.
  3. Steam overloaded with trash games: Yep, in the form of Steam Direct, Valve has never allowed so many shysters and con artists on their platform as they did in 2017.
  4. Firefall shut down: Called this one, although the folks at Red5 didn’t even bother to acknowledge the allegedly existing console version when announcing the PC sunsetting.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down: 100% wrong on this one.
  6. SAG strike ends: Called this one on all accounts, that there would be concessions on both sides and people would go back to not pretending to care about voice actors receiving residuals.
  7. Trions Worlds would bungle a launch: This is like predicting that the sun will rise, so I’m not exactly looking for kudos.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still not coming to the west: And it still isn’t.
  9. MMOs launching in the East and dying before coming to the west: Kritika Online has already shut down in Southeast Asia before coming to Europe/Americas.
  10. Decent selling HD remakes with extras: Kingdom Hearts, Metroid, among other games.
  11. HD Remakes with microtransactions: As sure-fire as it seemed, I’m pretty sure that not a single game released an HD remake with microtransactions shoved in.
  12. Resident Evil 7 the first major VR game and streamers: Both happened, first being that Resident Evil 7 was a smashing success for VR and a streamer eventually did make a video that he crapped his pants.
  13. South Park: South Park released and it could indeed be summed up as “pretty good,” and the game was criticized for its poop jokes.
  14. Activision and Call of Duty: Well Activision didn’t hold development on Call of Duty, but WWII was a return to the series roots, and Activision has not explicitly addressed the falling sales from Infinite Warfare.
  15. No Man’s Sky gets updates, no players: Half correct on this, did not anticipate that people would flock back to No Man’s Sky in the numbers that they did.
  16. Bulletstorm Flops: It did, and odds are you’ll find Bulletstorm heavily discounted at your local game store. Currently Bulletstorm has less than 10 people playing, and peaked at launch at 1,200.
  17. Video game movies: Only one video game movie released stateside this year, the Resident Evil film. It didn’t underperform in box offices, but I’m guessing most of you already forgot about it.
  18. Daybreak becoming a home for wayward developers: Stay tuned.
  19. Valve being sued: Did not happen.
  20. Governments will pay attention to lockboxes: It’s starting to happen, although gamers are not seeing the inherent worthlessness of these boxes in many games.
  21. Troll games and Ukranian money laundering: Troll games have become more prevalent on Steam, and the platform is definitely still being used for money laundering by Ukranian developers.
  22. Yooka-Laylee Launch: Right on this one, the game launched and it was pretty well received.
  23. Game from ex-STALKER developers: I’m going to fit Escape from Tarkov into this list.
  24. Star Citizen misses its release dates: All of them.
  25. Camelot Unchained: The game didn’t launch, therefore the rest of the prediction is meaningless.
  26. Conan Exiles launches, Funcom realizes that developing MMOs is pointless: Yep, enough that they decided to reboot The Secret World as a non-MMO.
  27. Darkfall Reboots: They launched but have not yet cannibalized each other.
  28. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers: 99% sure this happened.
  29. I get a lawsuit threat from an indie developer: More than once.
  30. John Smedley joins new startup: Of course he did.

Square Enix Releases Fiscal Year Results, Divorces From IO Interactive


Square Enix has released their end of the year fiscal results, boasting an impressive boost to revenue thanks to the launch of strong AAA titles like Final Fantasy XV. Final Fantasy XV boosted revenues alongside Deus Ex and the Playstation 4 version of Rise of the Tomb Raider, alongside strong downloads of prior releases. Net sales for the MMO division dropped from 31.6 billion Yen to 22.7 billion which Square blamed on the lack of expansion releases for Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X. Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Stormblood, launches June 20th with the latest expansion for Dragon Quest X coming later this year.

Upcoming titles include Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Hearts III, the Final Fantasy VII remake, and an unnamed Marvel title. The news wasn’t good for everyone as Square Enix also announced this week that they will be selling off Hitman developer IO Interactive, leaving the fate of the franchise in question. Square Enix’s entire presentation can be found here. The sacking of IO Interactive comes alongside Square listing the developer as an “extraordinary loss,” to the tune of 4.89 billion Yen (approximately $42 million USD).

Electronic Arts Posts Growth In Q4 2016


swtor 2014-10-22 11-35-14-34

Electronic Arts has posted its year end results for the fiscal year 2016, and everything is coming up profit. The publishing behemoth raked in $4.5 billion in revenue this past year, up from the $4.3 billion in the fiscal year ending in 2015. According to the company’s own projections, the next year should continue the trend with an estimated $4.9 billion.

As sales of digital goods climb, packaged games continued to lose market share. Digital revenue has taken over physical media by a growing margin, $2.5 billion compared to $2.0 billion, while EA’s profit margin has increased to an eye-popping 82.7%. PC gamers make up 26% of EA’s revenue while consoles account for 51% with mobile making up the rest. The console market had the strongest growth the past year, a 22% increase in revenue year over year.

Gamers hoping to see the end of downloadable content will have to wait another year, as customers spent $1.1 billion on “extra content,” a separate figure from the $570 million spent on mobile. Subscriptions and ad revenue made up $339 million while full game downloads accounted for about half a billion.

Fiscal year 2017 sees the launch of several big name titles, including Battlefield 1, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and Mass Effect Andromeda.

There was no mention of The Old Republic that we could find in any of the documents.

(Source: EA)