TGO Daily | April 19, 2021 | NPD March 2021
TGO Daily | April 19, 2021
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the newsletter, and thank you for your patience last week as I finished up school. Here’s my sentiment about my completion of university in a tweet:
With a lot more free time on my hands, I should be good to go with bringing the newsletter to you every weekday.
That being said, what I also learned last week is that I save a lot of time by skipping this write-up and only doing the audio version of this show. The only reason I am continuing to do it is because I think this is generally a valuable resource which I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on. If I ever need to cut corners for the sake of time, this might have to be one of the first to go, sadly.
Anyway — super happy to be back, and now let’s talk about some video games!
Until tomorrow,
Adrian
NPD March 2021
The monthly NPD report from Mat Piscatella is out on Twitter once again — let’s look at what’s going on in the industry! (NPD = United States video game sales tracking)
Hardware / Console sales: $680 million was spent, which is 47% higher than last year, and the highest March month in recorded history. The previous record was $552 million in 2008. The Nintendo Switch was the the best selling console, which it has been for multiple years. Also, a record has been set:
Software / Video Game sales: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War continues to be a major seller, having been the #1 seller in March 2021, Q1 2021, and the 12-months ending in March 2021. Monster Hunter: Rise was #2, and is already the second best selling Monster Hunter game of all time. The only other new addition is Outriders which appeared at #3. Last month’s top seller, Super Mario 3D World, is now at #4. Here’s the top 20 chart:
Amazon Cancels Lord of the Rings MMO
Amazon Game Studios have cancelled their planned MMORPG based on the Lord of the Rings franchise. They were co-developing the game with a Chinese company called Leyou Technologies, until they were acquired by Tencent in December. After that point, Amazon was unable to come to an agreement with Tencent to continue development.
This doesn’t mean that the concept is going to disappear forever. Leyou have the rights, and could find another developer to make the concept.
It’s another unfortunate event in Amazon’s short history as a games studio. The company has already had multiple major titles cancelled, and their flagship game New World has been delayed a number of times.
Resident Evil Showcase
Capcom held a digital event recently to announce a bunch of things about Resident Evil.
1. They made the announcement that Resident Evil 4 is going to be getting a full VR re-release for the Oculus Quest 2. More details to come from a future Oculus event. You can check out the gameplay trailer here.
2. A demo will soon be available for Resident Evil Village. It’s a little convoluted — for anyone not on PlayStation, there will be a single 60-minute demo which can only be played during an 8 hour period before it disappears. That shows up on May 1/2. On PlayStation, there will be two separate demos. For the timing details based on regions, check the PlayStation blog. One of them has already happened.
They also announced that Mercenaries mode will be returning to Village, which is a time trial mode that is common for the franchise. You can also catch the trailer for the RE animated series “Infinite Darkness” which will be on Netflix, or see the collaboration they’re doing with Dead by Daylight.
The Grab-Bag
Genshin Impact getting 1.5 update and launching on PlayStation 5 on April 28
There was discourse on the internet this weekend about what Days Gone director had to say about consumer purchasing
There were also rumours that Square Enix was going to acquired. They quashed that
Netflix’s Castlevania animated series returns on May 13th for fourth and final season
Say Hello!
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