TGO Daily | November 19, 2020 | The Game Awards Nominees Announced!
In The News
The Game Awards Nominees
The Game Awards have revealed their 2020 nominees, in advance of the event happening on December 10th. The Last of Us: Part 2 has been nominated for ten categories, Hades for eight, and Ghost of Tsushima for seven. As always, most eyes are set on the Game of the Year award:
I think it’s a fair lineup, though I see a lot of people saying that Doom Eternal should be replaced with Half-Life: Alyx. While I’m predicting that The Last of Us will get the win, I really think it should go to Animal Crossing. The other category I have my eye on is Best Indie:
Personally, while Hades is my game of the year, I don’t expect it to win either of these categories. Spelunky 2 was a far more anticipated release, and Fall Guys has had a major cultural impact that none of the others can compete with.
I hope you’re looking forward to this year’s show. Even though it tends to focus more on game announcements rather than the awards themselves, it’s always a great event to celebrate video games.
To see all the categories (there’s a lot!), check out the website.
Embracer Group
As is tradition when Embracer Group reports on their financials, the company has revealed that they have made a number of acquisitions — this time, it’s 13 different studios. They aren’t all developers though, there’s also a QA studio and PR firm in there. Of note:
Snapshot Games, which is the studio behind Phoenix Point and run by Julian Gollop, original creator of XCOM
Flying Wild Hog, best known for the rebooted Shadow Warrior series
Purple Lamp Studios, who they previously collaborated with on SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated
Zen Studios, developers of Pinball FX. They plan on branching away from pinball games, with an RPG in the works.
13 companies being added to the Embracer Group means they now have 4,445 employees working on 135 games at once. Their strategy continues to pay off for them, as the games division of the company brought their sales up 83% year over year.
Apple Cuts Revenue Share
Disclosure: This story contains information from mobile analytics company Sensor Tower, who I work for.
Apple has announced that they will be slashing the App Store revenue share beginning in 2021 for any companies who earned less than $1 million during the previous calendar year. The share will be going from 30% to 15%, but will remain at 30% for anyone above the $1 million threshold.
For context, this will apply to 97% of the publishers on the store, accounting for only 5% of the App Store’s total revenue. That’s a big deal for smaller companies, as the 15% difference can be make or break, and it will barely cut into Apple’s bottom line.
This move is made in the midst of a lawsuit Apple is battling with Epic Games, which puts the 30% cut at the forefront.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
The prequel to Breath of the Wild, and sequel to Hyrule Warriors, is called Age of Calamity, and the reviews are now available prior to its release tomorrow.
While the reviews are generally positive, the reasons for the positivity are quite split. Some reviewers love the story as a background to BotW, others didn’t like it at all. The combat was generally praised as a Warriors game, but the typical negatives of the genre are still there (repetition chief among them).
It’s also worth noting that many reviewers had technical issues with how it performed on the Switch, which is roughly comparable to the issues from the demo. Looks like a hardware update is needed for the Switch soon!
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