#video games news

[gamesline]

On this week's Bulletin, we cover all the big games from Keighley's Summer Festival of Fun™, as well as the questionable new AR headset from Apple.

[my-fortnite-blog]

Fortnite News!

This is the new trailer of the new season!!

OMG!! Everything looks amazing!!

I want to play 😭🥺

Ok

We have an official image of Eren Jeager!

And the new skins of the battle pass

Everything really looks amazing!!

[retrogamingblog2]

[exhausted-archivist]

To expand on this (thank you Felassan for your work), for those I see in the notes and I know people are asking this, any numbers you find on google like dai selling 12 million copies is lifetime numbers. This means it has sold 12 million since its 2014 release and not what you should be looking at in comparison to this number.

Overall this article very much sounds like EA had a bad quarter over all with their sports stuff under performing in expectations as well. While it is not great news for those of us concerned about it, it is not a "only BioWare did poorly" situation, which are contextually very different.

Going to stick the rest of my extrapolations under the cut since its long.

Another thing to note is we have no idea what EA's expectations for datv were. Previous reporting stated that Veilgaurd was performing as expected. Where/when the shift was that it failed to meet expectations is up to speculation. Launch was good, we saw that it met expectations. Continued growth is likely where it fell short if I had to hazard a guess.

Because in comparison, yeah if it does mean sales, datv didn't meet dao or da2's sales within a 3 month period. We know that these are the figures for the first two games (source)

Dragon Age: Origins — 3.2 million copies sold in three months

Dragon Age II — over 2 million copies sold in two months

I couldn't find one for dai, only the lifetime sales. Which also to clarify we don't know if this 1.5 million reached is sales. Every form of informal tracking as there is next to no metric of hard, reliable data outside of the pending EA reporting call.

Additionally, according to Gamedevreporters substack

Despite mixed player reviews, Dragon Age: The Veilguard showed the best concurrent user count among all EA’s story-driven games - 89,400 people. Only multiplayer games like Apex Legends, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, and The Sims 4 (after transitioning to the F2P model) had higher numbers.

To put all of this into further context of "we need EA to clarify their expectations". Capcom found Dragon's Dogma 2 (DD2) to be a success at selling 3+ million copies. But while we don't have hard numbers from Square Enix, they reportedly found the modern Final Fantasy (FF) games to be below expectations. This includes the widely popular second installment of FF VII remake. (source)

Jason Schreier: "NEW: EA is slashing its forecast for the fiscal year due to the underperformance of holiday games EA Sports FC 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. EA says the new Dragon Age reached around 1.5 million players, missing expectations by nearly 50%. [link]" [source]

Article from Bloomberg:

"EA Says Bookings Slid on Weakness in Soccer, ‘Dragon Age’ Games Slower sales of the sports title account for majority of the miss. By Jason Schreier --- Electronic Arts Inc. said bookings fell to about $2.22 billion in the third quarter ended Dec. 31, missing forecasts of $2.4 billion to $2.55 billion due to the weak performance of two holiday video games. The Redwood City, California.,-based publisher, in a preliminary statement Wednesday, reduced projected bookings for the 2025 fiscal year to a range of $7 billion to $7.15 billion. Its previous guidance was for $7.5 billion to $7.8 billion. Bookings from live services — revenue generated after the initial purchase of a game — will decline by a mid-single-digit percentage. The company had previously expected a mid-single-digit increase in bookings. EA pinned most of the blame on its soccer title, EA Sports FC 2025, which was released in September to mixed reviews. The company introduced a refresh this month. The roleplaying game Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which came out in October following a turbulent development cycle, reached 1.5 million players during the quarter, missing the company’s expectations by around 50%. “We remain confident in our long-term strategy and expect a return to growth in FY26, as we execute against our pipeline,” Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson said in the statement. The company is scheduled to report more complete results on Feb. 4."

[source]

[info on the upcoming reporting call in February]

[madame-helen]

[nupsume]

legends 🌟

[yusuke-of-valla]

WE LIVE IN A HELL WORLD

Snippets from the article by Karissa Bell:

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of performers, has struck a deal with an AI voice acting platform aimed at making it easier for actors to license their voice for use in video games. ...

the agreements cover the creation of so-called “digital voice replicas” and how they can be used by game studios and other companies. The deal has provisions for minimum rates, safe storage and transparency requirements, as well as “limitations on the amount of time that a performance replica can be employed without further payment and consent.”

Notably, the agreement does not cover whether actors’ replicas can be used to train large language models (LLMs), though Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas said the company was interested in pursuing such an arrangement. “We have been talking to so many of the large AAA studios about this use case,” Nivas said. He added that LLMs are “out-of-scope of this agreement” but “they will hopefully [be] things that we will continue to work on and partner on.”

...Even so, some well-known voice actors were immediately skeptical of the news, as the BBC reports. In a press release, SAG-AFTRA said the agreement had been approved by "affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community." But on X, voice actors said they had not been given advance notice. "How has this agreement passed without notice or vote," wrote Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash in Pokémon. "Encouraging/allowing AI replacement is a slippery slope downward." Roger Clark, who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, also suggested he was not notified about the deal. "If I can pay for permission to have an AI rendering of an ‘A-list’ voice actor’s performance for a fraction of their rate I have next to no incentive to employ 90% of the lesser known ‘working’ actors that make up the majority of the industry," Clark wrote.

SAG-AFTRA’s deal with Replica only covers a sliver of the game industry. Separately, the union is also negotiating with several of the major game studios after authorizing a strike last fall. “I certainly hope that the video game companies will take this as an inspiration to help us move forward in that negotiation,” Crabtree said.

And here are some various reactions I've found about things people in/adjacent to this can do

And in OTHER AI games news, Valve is updating it's TOS to allow AI generated content on steam so long as devs promise they have the rights to use it, which you can read more about on Aftermath in this article by Luke Plunkett

[humming-fly]

was anyone gonna tell me shadow saved rouge's life in sa2 or was I just supposed to find that out playing the game myself

(this worked out as a rather fitting closer for the Final Day in Year of Shadow haha, hope ya'll have a fun new year! 🎉🎉🎉)

[iww-gnv]

SAG-AFTRA is going on strike again. This time, the union is calling a work stoppage against the major video game companies after nearly two years of trying to renegotiate its Interactive Media Agreement. The decision to hit the picket lines comes 10 months after the union’s initial strike authorization vote. The strike goes into effect July 26 at 12:01 a.m. The 10 companies facing the strike are Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Epic Games, Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc. “We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement.

[xinyuehui]

△ THEY ARE THE OPTIMAL WEAPON FOR DESTROYING ONE ANOTHER. * THIS EXPERIMENT IS NEVER TO BE RESTARTED

[enyasaints]

In search of a Thanksgiving miracle.

Suffering from moderate nerve damage from diabetes. This is Diabetic Neuropathy. I have been trying to fundraise for a motorized wheelchair to the ease the burden and pain of walking. I have had some luck but not enough to reach my goal. I am out of words and I don’t know how else to beg or plead

https://gofund.me/0159370e

Begging with tears in my eyes for a THANKSGIVING miracle.

Direct Aid:

Venmo: Enyasaint

Cash App: $Enyasaint

[owldart]

They figured he was an angsty TEEN not an angsty THIRD GRADER

[retrogamingblog2]

[setaflow]

Gay pride happens in June and gay wrath happens whenever hbomberguy drops a 3+ hour video essay about a specific topic