Sony looks set to step away from the handheld gaming market, as production of the PlayStation Vita winds down in Japan. As initially reported by Gametsu, the news appeared on Sony’s official Japanese PlayStation website. Presently only black and ‘aqua blue’ coloured Vitas are manufactured in Japan; and they are now marked to note that “shipments are scheduled to end soon”. PlayStation had already confirmed Vita production would end in 2019, but it is now clear the discontinuation may come relatively [...]

New game ‘clipping’ service Medal has raised USD$3.5m (£2.7m) in investment. The success of the funding round appears to demonstrate that Medal’s short-form video clips platform has potential and appeal. Certainly, tech-savvy investors are apparently convinced. Medal lets users record the previous 15 seconds of their gameplay with a single click, bringing the approximate function of the ‘share’ buttons seen on console to the perennially booming PC market. Clips can then be shared as a generated link, or via the Medal [...]

Social Networking giant Facebook saw its mobile app downloaded more times than those of any other publisher globally in the closing months of 2018, according to a new report. The Facebook app was downloaded 800 million times through October to December last year, putting it a significant way ahead of the next best performing publisher, Google, which counted over 650 million downloads through the period. The numbers come from insights by enterprise-level data outfit Sensor Tower, which looked at downloads across both [...]

For all its snowballing success, esports arguably has a perception problem. Say ‘esports’ to those both inside and beyond the worlds of games, brands, and marketing, and they will perhaps imagine something like a vast arena with sweeping spotlights passing over 20,000 cheering fans, as pro players in heavily branded athletics jerseys do battle in a game like League of Legends. Perhaps a commentator will be unleashing flurries of jargon as a team manager nervously paces back and forth near the [...]

Ever one to be modest about its achievements, Nintendo has revealed that the huge success of many of its current first-party IP titles has left the company longing for more. As revealed in a new investor-facing Q&A report, the company is looking to expand the reach of its games and connect with more new users. Any contemporary game company is likely to be pursuing those goals, of course. But recent months have seen new Pokémon titles ‘Let’s Go! Pikachu’ and ‘Let’s [...]

Over the past days and weeks, a number of the global games industry’s major triple-A publishers have seen share prices drop as finical results have come in. Electronic Arts (EA), which this week saw its Fortnite challenger Apex Legends enjoy a stellar launch, saw its share price fall by a peak of 19%, with Bloomberg identifying disappointing sales of the first-person shooter Battlefield V. As highlighted by Bloomberg, EA’s adjusted revenue is expected to come in at USD$1.17bn (£902m) for the quarter [...]

In the span of five years, mobile gaming has grown from the smallest segment of the gaming market to a USD$70bn (£61.6bn) industry. It’s unsurprising then, that the past couple of years have been huge for mobile gaming acquisitions, from Zynga buying Gram Games to Niantic adding VR-focused Seismic Games. In this piece, Simon Spaull (pictured below), MD EMEA, AppLovin, charts the most significant acquisitions in the mobile gaming space of late and what they signal for the future of the [...]

A lot of businesses in the global game industry would like a slice of the ‘battle royale’ pie. And it’s no surprise. Fortnite is a battle royale game – sometimes called a ‘BR’ title – and we all know how well it has done. The shooter hit 200 million players in November last year. According to a source speaking to Tech Crunch, its creator Epic banked USD$3bn (£2.3bn) in revenue through 2018. But, more than all of that, the free-to-play competitive online [...]

According to a new report, the EA Sports division of EA has seen its free-to-play mobile games bank revenues of USD$1bn (£763m) to date. That’s according to research by mobile data outfit Sensor Tower. The estimate – which reflects spending across both the Apple and Google Play stores – totals revenues from EA’s releases across the Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, NBA Live, and EA Sports UFC mobile franchises. Remarkably, it does not include money generated by EA Sports titles licensed to and [...]

There are two main reasons playable ads offer a beguiling option for game developers, publishers, and marketing teams. Primarily, of course, they give a player a chance to try a game without having to spend a penny or download a kilobyte. Equally, there’s a good chance that those who do click through and download the game are likely to be readily engaged, retained users who are more willing to spend money. After all, if they like the playable demo enough to step [...]