Video game industry analyst sees contentious digital-only for AAA games as norm ca. 2028. Says Mat Piscatella of Circana:
'Digital only AAA releases are here. Over the next 2 years this trend will accelerate, and by 2028 or so I think it'll be the norm for most Xbox and PS releases. Nintendo likely won't move as fast, but then again it's Nintendo and they're always full of surprises.'Full read here.
Related, I'd be interested to see YoY data on collector editions and bundled collectibles/game collateral, seeing if there's any sales decline there.Not surprising.
And honestly physical media is becoming more useless because although you have a disc you still have to download tens of gigabytes to make it playable on consoles.
Consoles are going the way of PC gaming.
Activision Blizzard sales healthy:
There's speculation that MS is trying to get the deal closed ASAP. In mid July the contracts between MS\ABK needs to be renewed for the merger agreement. ABK is in a much healthier place than it was when MS made the initial offer. There's no guarantees ABK doesn't decide to walk away from the deal unless MS offers a lot more money.
Bobby even alluded to this when he was talking about the consequences of the deal not going through.
Can they even close? Aside from the CMA debacle in the UK, did the FTC (or whatever body in the US gets the final call) even make its ruling yet on where it stands on the deal?
Dead Cells is getting an animated series due for release next year
Strong rumors that Sekiro is also getting an anime adaptation.
Ubi CEO confidently pegging new chapter for the company on Star Wars game, mobile, and F2P focus: