TGO Daily | February 15, 2021 | NPD January Report
February 15, 2021
Sometimes, games end up popping into my news feed that I haven’t thought about in ages. And I end up thinking to myself, “wait…the developers still have enough players to keep updating this game?”
I think it’s one of the benefits of games-as-a-service. The worst developers will take advantage of their players to get as much money as they can — but others will use it as a way to reward their most loyal players. Today, The Division 2 pops its head back up because it had a dedicated enough fanbase to warrant new content. Who would have guessed!
Until tomorrow,
Adrian
In The News
NPD Report - January
Every month, we look at the sales report put out by NPD and highlighted by Mat Piscatella on Twitter.
In January, hardware sales in the United States reached their highest for a January month since 2011 at $319 million. The Nintendo Switch continues to be the best selling console in terms of units sold, alongside the PlayStation 5 in terms of dollar value.
In games themselves, not much has shifted. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the best selling game of the month, which is nothing new since its release. It has also become the 20th best-selling game in US tracked history (since 1995). It’s easy to forget how many games they sell each launch. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla was #2, making it the second-fastest selling title in the franchise behind III. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was #5, which is its first time in the top 5 since July. Here’s the full chart:
343 Kills Halo Wars
343 Industries, the folks in charge of everything Halo, have previously mentioned that there were no plans on working on developing Halo Wars — the real time strategy version of the franchise. They had their focus on the Master Chief Collection. Well, now the MCC is completed, and fans of the franchise have been asking if they will return to Wars.
On their blog, they confirmed in no uncertain terms that they do not plan on returning to it:
…we want to give it to you straight: 343 Industries has no current plans for further Halo Wars 2 work including content updates, balance patches, bringing the title to other platforms, or a new game in the series. We will, however, continue to monitor the game and ensure everything is working as expected.
They intentionally avoided saying “never,” because you never know how game development goes, but they have a lot of other ideas and things to focus on.
Stardew Valley 1.5 Hits Consoles
One of the biggest updates in Stardew Valley history, 1.5, is now available on consoles. It adds a new island to explore, as well as a different farm type, alongside all the usual content updates that creator ConcernedApe will usually throw in there (items, animals, heart events, etc.). I wanted to let you know about this in case you were thinking about replaying the game — they’ve also added local co-op which means you can play it with a friend or loved one in-person now! Available now on Xbox, PlayStation and the Switch.
Here’s the full patch notes for when it originally released on PC in December, presumably they are the same.
The Division 2 Still Going
It might be a game you haven’t thought about in a while, but The Division 2 from Ubisoft is still going strong into 2021. They had previously pushed out “Update 12” as the final update, but they recently went back on their word and plan on adding even more content to the game, in a post on Reddit.
They didn’t provide any details about what the content would be, but I think it’s great the game is popular enough to warrant it alongside all the other games that Ubisoft has to worry about.
Adrian Made An Oopsie
Hey, last Friday I totally used the wrong image showing the casting choices for the upcoming HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us. Shoutout to “baronbranislav” in the Discord server for catching it. Goes to show how much television I watch, haha. Here’s the proper depictions:
More From TGO
Last week on the Discord server, I hosted a live Q&A with listeners. It turned out pretty well, and I’m going to try and do them every month now :) If you missed out, here’s the VoD if you want to watch it!
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