News

Xbox’s Phil Spencer, Fortnite Team Want Fortnite PS4 And Xbox One Cross-Play

Published

6 years ago

March 12, 2018

Anthony DiMoro

The pressure is heating up for Sony to come to the table to talk about cross-play opportunities.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer and the development team behind the popular Fortnite want to see a cross-play option between Xbox One and Playstation 4 players, after both brands have developed cross-play relationships with PC and mobile.

Microsoft has been open to the idea for a few years and now has developers backing up their push to get a resistant Sony to discuss options.

Up to this point, Sony has not been interested in as Playstation executive Jim Ryan explained back in 2017 while speaking to Eurogamer.

“It’s certainly not a profound philosophical stance we have against this” Ryan said while also stating that Sony is “always” interested in discussing these ideas with companies.

But an Xbox relationship?

“Unfortunately, it’s a commercial discussion between ourselves and other stakeholders, and I’m not going to get into the detail of that on this particular instance.”

Ryan then pointed to the concern about allowing it’s own players, which include children, to connect to a network outside of theirs.

“We’ve got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft–the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it’s all ages but it’s also very young,” he said. “We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.”

While there is an openness to discuss options, it doesn’t seem like Sony is in any rush to do so.

However, with some momentum behind the pleas of gamers and companies to look into making this idea a reality, things could progress a bit quicker.

Business

Patreon Hires Twitch’s Adiya Taylor as New Corporate Communications Lead

Published

1 month ago

March 16, 2024

Anthony DiMoro

Content creation platform Patreon has officially tabbed Adiya Taylor as their new corporate communications lead, effective in February, according to an official announcement.

Taylor worked for Amazon’s video game streaming platform Twitch for three years in a variety of roles, most recently serving as the company’s senior monetization communications manager prior to her departure.

Taylor’s hiring comes after Patreon brought on Brielle Villablanca as Vice President of communications and creator advocacy back in November 2023.

“I’m thrilled to begin crafting and implementing a communications strategy around policy, trust and safety, product and more,” Taylor said during an official post on the networking platform LinkedIn, adding that she believes Patreon is a “true advocate” for creators.

“I’m looking forward to more storytelling around how we’re fostering fandom so that creators own long-lasting businesses built around their artistry,” Taylor added.

Business

Microsoft Bringing Four Games to Rival Consoles

Published

2 months ago

February 15, 2024

Anthony DiMoro

Microsoft has responded to recent reports that there will be changes to it’s first-party strategy and has confirmed that four game titles will be released on rival consoles.

More specifically, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that ‘Starfield’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ will not be among the four titles heading to other platforms. Both games had a number of candidate platforms, per reports, adding that this is “not a change to our fundamental exclusive strategy.”

“We don’t damage Xbox and we can grow our business using what other platforms have to help us with that,” Spencer said, according to GamesIndustry.biz. “Looking forward, I think there is an interesting story for us of introducing Xbox franchises to players on other platforms to get them more interested in Xbox. We think there’s a good brand value for Xbox there.”

Xbox president Sarah Bond announced that Activision Blizzard games would begin to be added into Game Pass offerings, starting with Diablo 4, which will be added on March 28th.

Additionally, Bond said that Microsoft is still working on hardware for the future and that their focus regarding the future is “delivering the largest technical leap you will ever have seen in a hardware generation.”

Business

Sega’s Revenue See Rise to $27 Billion

Published

3 months ago

February 9, 2024

Anthony DiMoro

Sega Sammy has released its financial report for the nine-month period that officially concluded on December 31st, 2023, and that report that demonstrated a rise in overall sales and profit despite a decrease in sales for Sega’s new titles.

That decline was offset by growth in pachislot and pachinko machines, however Sega had lowered its sales forecasts for the full financial year.

Here is a breakdown, courtesy of GamesIndustry.biz.

Net sales: ¥349.9 billion ($2.3 billion, up 28.7% year-on-year)
Operating income: ¥54.4 billion ($364 million, up 42.4% year-on-year)
Ordinary income: ¥57.2 billion ($383 million, up 42.7% year-on-year)
Net sales were up 130.3% to ¥120.2 billion ($805 million) in this segment
Ordinary income increased by 521.3% at ¥45.7 billion ($306 million).
Entertainment Contents segment, which includes video games, net sales were up 4.2% at ¥219.3 billion
Profit decreased by 52.5% to ¥19.7 billion ($131.8 million) as a result of weak game sales

You can read a breakdown of the entire report at GamesIndustry.biz here.