Game industry business news

What a difference a year makes. Call of Duty WW2 has braved the artillery fire of franchise fatigue. Stormed the machine gun nests of digital shift and put a Churchill-like two fingers up to the loot crate furore. Some had written off the franchise after last year’s less-than-stellar sci-fi outing, …

Nintendo’s Switch platformer Super Mario Odyssey was the comfortable Japanese No.1 in its debut week, according to Famitsu data. The game sold 512k units in its first three days on sale, although unlike other territories this is not a record for the series – in fact, it’s the fourth highest …

Remember those hundreds of hours you spent hunting down collectibles to claim an elusive Platinum Trophy? It turns out they weren’t such a waste of your time after all. PS4 owners in the United States are now able to trade in their Trophies in return for (admittedly small) amounts of …

Blizzard’s hugely successful RTS title StarCraft 2 will become a free-to-play game later this month. From November 14th, all players will have access to the Wings of Liberty single player game for zero cost. Existing owners of Wings of Liberty will be able to claim the Hearts of the Swarm …

Activision’s Call of Duty: WWII is a hit, claiming a very firm UK No.1 on its debut week. The shooter bucked the trend of High Street declines by posting unit sales some 57 per cent higher than last year’s COD: Infinite Warfare. Revenue was up 21 per cent year-on-year. The …

The Esports Championship Series, better known merely by the acronym ECS, is becoming an institution in the worldwide Counter-Strike calendar. With the news that the finals for ECS Season 4 are taking place in a luxury hotel in Cancun, instead of the crowded Wembley Arena, we spoke to Michele Attisani, …

The move is supposed to encourage growth in the US tech industry but has been met with criticism over other issues within the reform around low income

The release of the iPhone X has propelled Apple close to the point of becoming the world’s first ever trillion-dollar company. Apple’s share price hit an all-time high on Wednesday after a 19 per cent surge on news of record pre-orders for the iPhone X. The news came as a …

The move from physical to digital is happening faster than most analysts had predicted. A report from Games Industry shows that in some instances, triple-A console titles are seeing as much as 45 per cent of their sales being claimed by digital. Indeed, Activision just yesterday revealed that digital sales …

Switch platformer Super Mario Odyssey has broken Mario sales records on both sides of the Atlantic. Nintendo has announced that the game shifted 1.1m units in the US in its first five days, making it the fastest selling Super Mario game ever in the region – a record it claims …