TGO Daily | November 6, 2020 | Xbox X|S Reviews
In The News
Microsoft Series X|S Reviews
With the help of this gamesindustry.biz article, here’s a summary of reviews of the next-gen Xbox duo!
Overall, the critical reception of the consoles have been largely positive. Microsoft delivers on their main selling points of improved load times, onboarding from the Xbox One, and graphical upgrades. Because of this, reviewers also felt like there was something lacking from the release:
“Despite the value of the Series S and the performance of the Series X, though, these new Xbox models are rather uninspiring. They feel more like upgrades than revolutionary new options. Because the Windows-like interface is almost exactly the same...and the controller is only marginally different, it doesn’t really feel as if you’re play with a new and exciting console.”
“…but equally, there's not much to criticise: they do everything they promised to do, and they do it well.”
— Keza MacDonald, The Guardian
One big negative that was consistently identified was the lack of new flagship games to play (ala Halo Infinite). Many of them played catalogued or Game Pass games in order to generate their thoughts.
As for the Series S, the smaller of the two consoles: it was praised for it’s cheap price, but unfortunately only gives 364GB of storage out-of-box. This, combined with the lower max resolution, means that you will have to figure out what is most important to you with your gaming.
Whether you’re buying an Xbox, PlayStation, or neither, I hope you’re excited!
Source: gamesindustry.biz
Nintendo Financials
Nintendo reported on it’s second quarter/first half, and the results are honestly staggering.
Their H1 brought in $7.4 billion in revenue, which is up 73% year-over-year. They also tripled their profits. They didn’t attribute this growth to anything specific, but that’s probably because they have a number of things performing extremely well.
The Nintendo Switch was moved nearly 7 million units in the second quarter, bringing the overall total to 68 million units. Animal Crossing shipped 26 million since its launch 6 months ago (!!!), making it the second best selling Switch game of all time. For comparison, Mario Kart 8 has now sold a total of 29 million units to-date — a game that’s been out for over 3 years and has sold consistently well ever since. Super Mario 3D All-Stars shipped 5 million units in 2 weeks.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
EA Financials
Electronic Arts also had their first quarter financial report. That timeframe features the release of Madden, UFC 4, Rocket Arena, and Star Wars: Squadrons. Those titles generally performed at or above their expectations (besides Rocket Arena, I would assume).
Otherwise, Apex Legends is on track to become a $1 billion franchise by the end of their fiscal year, so that game is performing extremely well.
EA Play, their subscription service, has now grown to 6.5 million subscribers, especially thanks to it now being on Steam. That will grow even more once its incorporated into the Xbox Game Pass. For comparison, the latest metric we have for Game Pass is 15 million subscribers, so EA is doing surprisingly well on that front.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
Kerbal Space Program 2
KSP2 has been delayed once again! The game is now slated for a 2022 release, after having multiple previous delays and a developer change.
“We knew we were taking on an immense technical and creative challenge when we started this project…We’ve heard time and again from this community that quality is paramount, and we feel the same way. It’s not enough to deliver a bunch of new features – those features have to be woven together into a stable, polished whole. We’re creating a reliable foundation on which players and modders alike can build for another decade or more. That involves solving problems that have never been solved before, and that takes time.”
— Creative director Nate Simpson, quoted in Rock Paper Shotgun
The first KSP is a highly ambitious and technical game, with a strong community. It sounds like the developers are putting their resources into the right places, so hopefully it will be top quality when it does eventually come out.
Say Hello!
That’s all for today :) If you want to get in touch, you can always reply to this email. You can also DM me on Twitter, or come join the community on Discord (it’s awesome)!
This newsletter is a companion/alternative to a mini-podcast I produce. The show is archived on YouTube, with most people listening on Amazon Alexa devices — but it’s also available on all podcast hosts.