TGO Daily | October 19, 2020 | NPD Report, Sept 2020
Welcome back to the news week! I hope you had a tremendous weekend.
In the midst of all this gaming craziness, I’ve hit midterm week! So I’m off to go complete some projects and study for tests. Thankfully, they’re not too intense :)
Until tomorrow,
Adrian
In The News
NPD Report - September 2020
The NPD Group have released their monthly report, which tracks video game sales across many mediums and shares the findings. September was a pretty big month for video games — here’s what they found:
Marvel’s Avengers was the best selling game in the US. This made it the second highest superhero game launch in history (behind Spider-Man), and instantly became the 7th best selling game of the year so far.
Runner-up of the month was Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Nintendo only share their physical sales data with NPD, so if digital sales were included it may have taken the #1 spot. Despite that, it became the 2nd best physical release of the year, behind Animal Crossing, and is the 6th biggest physical launch in Nintendo US history.
Coming in at the #4 spot was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, which is now the best launch in Tony Hawk history, beating out Underground 2 from 2004.
Finally, Crusader Kings III took the #7 spot, and instantly sold more copies than Crusader Kings I or II ever sold. It’s also the best launch in Paradox publishing history. Big thumbs up to them!
Source: Mat Piscatella on Twitter
Will Bethesda Games Be Xbox Exclusive?
I’ve been seeing a lot of intrigue about a recent interview that Phil Spencer did with Kotaku about the Bethesda acquisition, and thought I should clarify it.
Here is the excerpt that is hitting the headlines:
“Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?” I asked.
“Yes,” Spencer quickly replied.
A lot of outlets have taken this quote, stripped it of its context, and created egregious headlines stating that the game will not be going to PlayStation. A better understanding of their position is detailed later in the article:
“I don’t want to be flip about that,” he added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”
Feel free to interpret the statements however you would like. The truth is, we probably won’t have a definitive answer for this until the marketing campaign really kicks off. They’re likely being intentionally vague so that they can still change their mind up to that point.
Stardew Valley Goes Local
Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone is currently creating version 1.5 of the game, and he recently revealed that it will include splitscreen co-op. No longer must you farm with your friends online.
Folks on PC will be able to get up to 4-player co-op, but other platforms may be limited to 2. The screenshots he shared on Twitter also teased out a bunch of new content that people are speculating over. Feel free to give it a look yourself:
Also In The News
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is released, and it’s absolutely hilarious! This article shares how everyone’s cats are getting in the way of their game.
Steam developers do a deep-dive into how the Steam front page is generated
More From TGO
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