Pixels 97 – Numbers Numbers Numbers!


On this episode we discuss:

  • Numbers: Fortnite concurrent players, best selling games of the generation, Pokemon Go, Activision Blizzard
  • X018: Microsoft buys Obsidian and InXile, Gamepass everywhere, Crackdown 3, mouse and keyboard
  • Tetris Effect, Tabata quits, K/DA, Paris Eternal…
  • And more!

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Comments

  1. Discaddict says:

    Great episode as usual.
    Once again it’s sad that Daniel’s audio quality is so poor. He’s a bit hard to understand him sometimes.

    Just wanted to react to the fear of mobile for the classic gaming industry (PC/console).
    It’s funny to see how “old” people like us can be afraid of future of gaming. What if they (editors) go full mobile? well as you mentioned it, classic gaming is going pretty well in revenue but is also declining on the console sales. Gaming audience is shifting from classic to mobile. And newcomers as emergent markets or younger people are gaming mainly on mobile.
    Mobile already won on the global revenue and I think that classic company are adressing mobile market not only as a way to expand but also to get another leg to stabilize their activities. Diversification is key.
    I was VERY disappointed by seing Diablo on mobile. And the more and more I think about it, the more I am pleased to see a classic gaming company trying something on the mobile market. May be they can show us, show them (ie the rest of mobile industry) that they can both earn money and satisfy the gamer. The only thing I’ll be looking at is the business model. So wait and see even if my optimistic thoughts are facing the reality which is business models on mobile will never suits my expectations.

    • I agree with the idea that developers need to diversify, if only to make sure they’re not left in the wind if things do shift dramatically. The one thing that I want to insist on though is the fact that the mobile market is additive to the existing market; I don’t think most PC/Console gamers are replacing their PC/Console games with mobile games, simply because they don’t fill the same gaming need. Maybe it’s possible to make a mobile game that does scratch that itch (maybe Blizzard will manage), but as long as they don’t, mobile games and traditional games will continue to coexist. And as we’ve seen, traditional games still make a lot of money, even if mobile games do too (and sometimes possibly more). I’d almost compare mobile games now to console games “back then”. There are a lot of difference, but consoles didn’t make PC go away, and some gamers are exclusive to one type of plateform, and some go across all of them. Mobile is still “too” different to include most core gamers I think, but maybe Blizzard will start a change in that…

      • Discaddict says:

        Thanks for the answer.
        Don’t you think that the younger audience is mostly playing on mobile device ? I don’t know on which support Fortenite is most pIayed but I see the mobile version as a success. And fortenite is the game i would have never expected to see working on a phone.
        So I am really curious on the switch market. Will it continue to grow and reach more than 50M or will the growth slow down and then show us that the dedicated mobile console market has come to a top spot.
        In the meantime, Blizzard is the first big publisher to port a PC game (ok it was card game) on mobile with cross progression and meet a tremendous success. Epic with Fortenite did the same with even more supports (ie console). We can see that game as a service on any device seem to be one of the key of success and hope that this will become the new standard.

      • I think there is no question that there are more mobile gamers than “core” gamers (let’s call PC/Console that for the sake of simplicity). My argument is that mobile gamers won’t eclipse core gamers, even if there are more of them, because core gamers are overall more dedicated and ready to spend big sums of money than mobile gamers. Mobile business models rely on acquisition heavy and questionable free to play practices, where as core gamers look for interesting and fair game design.
        Maybe we’ll see a class of mobile games emerge with those qualities too (Diablo Immortal, possibly), but until we do, I don’t see core gamers and PC/Console games disappearing…

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