After more than a year that they could not come to a new agreement and let games being removed from Chinese market (except Diablo Immortal), Blizzard Entertainment will return to China via Xbox consoles. Back in November 2022, when Activision Blizzard were still independent, could not reach a new business agreement beyond the availability of Diablo Immortal (a whole different agreement) and let January 2023 as the official month of most of Blizzard Entertainment games to be retired. This week's announcement is basically a Microsoft Gaming led gaming success in China gaming market, that includes to explore bringing new NetEase games to Xbox consoles and other platforms. NetEase hasn't been in the bench despite losing a powerful partner like Blizzard (which rumors saying that in part, is was due disturbed communication with unpleasant misunderstandings for then CEO Bobby Kotick), as buying and investing in Westerns gaming studios. For immediate effect, Chinese gamers will expect the recovery of access of previous available titles like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and other titles in the Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo and StarCraft franchises. Of course, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer considers this agreement a new Xbox victory for bringing more games to more players around the world. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹 🎮

Sources at Square Enix told Bloomberg that the company moved Yu Miyake from #DragonQuest producer after 32 years & reassigned to Mobile business. Reportedly, SE wasn't amused on internal delays of development of next main game. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹 🎮

Local media in Japan reports that a suspect of treating #Nintendo employees & fans and let the suspension of all esport activities at the Nintendo Live Tokyo 2024 was arrested. Identity & rationale were not published yet, but it was suggested/speculated that the individual is at its 20s and it is actually a government official in the Ibaraki Prefecture & he began tracking/interfering with Nintendo's business for some unknown benefits. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹 🎮

In a more than upbeat presentation than the "dire" scenarios that many outlets were rumoring, Microsoft Gaming finally came forward about the future of #Xbox and while acknowledging that all the mentioned things in the special Xbox Podcast episode were planned as early in December, it doesn't need to be taken a change of plans at all. Xbox Game Studios will be launching 4 unnamed games for Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch and it was hinted that 2 of them are more than a year since launched, are community-drive games and no, is not neither Starfield nor Indiana Jones and for now they are not committing on more games. First party Xbox games will be on Game Pass with no End of date, including new launches and actually, new games will be releasing on Day1 and Game Pass is an Xbox service exclusively. Activision Blizzard King Games will be coming to Game Pass starting with Diablo IV on March 28th. Phil Spencer interestingly acknowledged that there is an importance of exclusive games for platforms, that includes Xbox, but he foresee that the strategy will be small part for the industry in between the next 5 to 10 years. Regardless of that, Xbox President Sarah Bond assured that Xbox is not abandoning the hardware business and actually, next-gen Xbox is already in development and we are inbound for some news this Holidays season but, Microsoft Gaming did not acknowledged the future of physical games while addressing Xbox's view on gaming preservation. Tomorrow I will be given my takeaways in a new gaming podcast episode. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

At their Q3Y25 conference, Sony acknowledged on the gaming business (Playstation), that #PS5 hardware sales decline to the point to update the outlook on 21 million more units to be sold by EOY, down from 25 million. All this despite there were profit of Christmas season sales. Also, mayor Playstation Studios' games launches are not happening before 04/2025 while there are title currrently on development. For that reason and that Playstation 5 is entering its 5th year, that the company considers the current generation in its "latter days" and focus on producing high-quality productions and producing live service games." Back at Summer 2023, during the failed FTC demanding a Preliminary Injunction against Microsoft buying ABK, it was revealed that both Sony and Microsoft considered talking on next-gen and what's next for their respective gaming main product by 2028. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Nintendo announced that #NintendoSwitch have surpassed the 139.36 million unit sold and overtaking DS family as the best-selling video game system of all time in Japan. During their quarterly conference with investor, Nintendo claims that Switch will be main business for 2024 & didn't mention anything about its successor, slated to be released this year and reportedly, key partners are already developing games with dev kits. During the three months until December 31, Nintendo reported an operating profit of ¥184 billion yen, slightly down on the same period last year but still, went better than analyst expected. Analyst are impressed on how Nintendo have a steady business with an aged Nintendo Switch ecosystem & limited hardware compared to PC and gaming consoles, all this without major price cuts. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Microsoft reported its Q2 2024 performance with $62 billion in revenue & net income of $21.9 billion, both a raise respectively of 18% & 33%. Microsoft Gaming & #Xbox were up 61% of revenue on content, 3% in hardware & 49% in gaming revenue YoY. And yes, this is the first quarter that includes Activision Blizzard. Meanwhile other segments of Microsoft were up except Surface business which went down by 6% YoY. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Activision Blizzard run an additional layoff aside from Microsoft Gaming's last week, this time impacting 83% of its #Esport business letting go 60 people. The now Microsoft-owned conglomerate feels that 12 people is enough to operate taking in-context that both Call Of Duty and Overwatch League are now operated via outsourced companies. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

In midst of uncertainty about Valorant esport 2024 season, Riot Games confirmed running layoff afffecting 11% of workforce or letting 530 people go. TLDR & the same with other companies/industry, they over-hired & have business redundancy. #Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Unfortunately for Sony this week, Rhysida hacker group went on their deadline after only 2% of the stolen data on their hack to #Playstation Studios' Insomniac Games was actually sold and the remaining 98% was released on the Dark Web. The loot is actually more than 1.3 million files totaling 1.67 terabytes and includes much more than anticipated than a swift hacking usually manages to copy. As expected in this kind of big stole, future games, and internal HR documents, budgets, more are in the public yes and as well Insomniac’s future projects, including the upcoming Marvel Wolverine game, a publishing agreement with Marvel that promises future games. Of course, the "promised games" is on the stipulation that Sony and Playstation needs to comply with goals set by both Disney and Marvel and maybe isn't just that Sony has strategically held the movies and videogames rights for Spider-man. Along with Wolverine, seems that Sony is ready to answer EA's take on Marvel Iron Man and now Bethesda/Xbox Game Studios's take on Marvel Blade as Insomniac landed a exclusive X-Men game, pending to be announced. As for more Marvel games, the Venom game is slated for a 2025 release, followed by a 2026 release of Wolverine and early estimate for X-Men is at 2030, which probably might see Iron Man and Blade being in this 7 years interval. Other documents reveals that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was not a total financial success despite being the flagship game for the launch of PS5 with a miss of 10% below Return Of Investment or in plain language, the game was not profitable at least in normal sales channel. A follow-up Ratchet & Clank main game is currently in development with a target release year of 2029. Finally and honestly I wasn't expecting anything centralized on the Playstation business and much-less being housed on one of Playstation Studios's servers but, here is the bad luck for Sony. Apparently, Insomniac Games had probably copies of documents that appears to be for Sony Interactive Entertainment to actually hold and there was a report on Steam sales of Playstation games brought to PC. Numbers includes: -Horizon Zero Dawn - 3.3 million units -God of War 2018 - 2.5 million units - Days Gone - 1.7 million units -Marvel Spider-Man Remastered 1.3 million units -Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves 483k units -Marvel Spider-Man: Miles Morales 450k units -Sackboy A big adventure - 62.9k units Surprisingly, there are documents related to the Activision Blizzard acquisition by Microsoft and as excepted, concentrate on the Call Of Duty side of thing including the fear that Microsoft could find ways to differentiate Xbox and Playstation versions of COD. Game Pass subscription and the public perception that Xbox has indeed "lost the console war" as a way to transform the gaming business in one that could have Playstation left behind because their premium sale model and pro hardware model as subs are more feasible for gamers The insistence that the Playstation model is outdated is because Sony feels that Activision Blizzard gives Microsoft strategic value in live service, mobile and PC Storefront and Microsoft can supply, console, PC and subscription services. Reminder, currently the main tasks that Activision Blizzard is working along side Xbox is the new Mobile game app store, reportedly being made from the best of Battle Net & Microsoft Store with King leading the project, which Microsoft has said was the main reason to buy ABK. And with this recap.... BE CAREFUL, Wolverine's leaks apparently are in the wild and there is a PROBABILITY of seeing videos of an early version BOOTABLE of the game as well pics and assets for the game. I am not spoiling anything after this post. #Gaming #GamingNews #Gamestr