Dmitriy Byshonkov’s Post

📊 Games & Numbers (04.09.24 - 17.09.24) 🎮 PC/console games ◾️Sales of Black Myth: Wukong surpassed 18 million copies in just two weeks. This was reported by Daniel Wu, one of the founders of Hero Games, the largest shareholder of the game's developers. According to him, the game's development cost $70 million and took 6 years. ◾️Street Fighter 6 sales reached 4 million copies across all platforms. The total sales of the series as of the end of the first half of 2024 stand at 55 million. ◾️Sales of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 are approaching 3 million copies, earning more than all other Warhammer universe games combined in 2023. ◾️Harrison Froschke, Senior Product Manager at Blizzard Entertainment, revealed on his LinkedIn the revenue of Diablo IV. The game has surpassed $1 billion in earnings, with $150 million coming from microtransactions. Blizzard had officially reported that the game earned $666 million in its first 5 days of sales. ◾️More than 1 million people have played Citizen Sleeper. The studio and publisher (Fellow Traveller) proudly shared this on their social media. ◾️Released on August 15, shapez 2 has already sold 260,000 copies. In the first week, the game was purchased 70,500 times. It launched with 330,000 wishlist entries. ◾️Earth Defence Force 6, released in September 2022, has sold 550,000 copies in two years. 📱Mobile games ◾️According to Appfigures, the gross revenue of Royal Match has reached $3 billion. The previous billion was achieved in January this year, and the game has surpassed 300 million downloads. ◾️Sensor Tower reports that The Last War: Survival has earned over $900 million since its release. 30.4% of that amount came from the US, 22.9% from South Korea, and 12.4% from Japan. The RPD (revenue per download) in South Korea is $53, the highest among all countries. Additionally, The Last War: Survival accounts for 30% of the revenue from strategy games in South Korea. ◾️In its first year, Monster Hunter Now has earned over $225 million, according to data from AppMagic. ◾️Trivia Crack by Etermax has been downloaded more than 800 million times. It took 11 years to reach this milestone. ◾️Using AppMagic, mobilegamer.biz found that games from Netflix Games have been downloaded more than 210 million times. The leader is GTA: San Andreas with 25.2 million downloads. ◾️Infinity Nikki by Infold Games has surpassed 14 million pre-registrations. The game, in addition to mobile platforms, will also be released on PlayStation 5 and PC. All the links to the sources are here: https://lnkd.in/dnGv8H-c

Is the market for turn based games bigger than we realize, and could that be due to online discourse? Probably not. That said since there isn’t data to support or dispute this, I choose to believe that it is the case. I asked several people who I suspect have an online argument addiction and their favorite video games, by far, are turn-based games such as XCOM and the like. Turn-based games have maintained their popularity across different age groups across the decades. The recent success of Baldur’s Gate 3, a turn-based RPG, winning Game of the Year in 2023, demonstrates that there is still a significant audience for this genre. Other popular turn-based franchises like Pokémon, Civilization, and XCOM have also contributed to the ongoing appeal of turn-based gameplay. Who knows, perhaps soon we will see an explosion in demand for turn based games in the market once people realize that enemies stay defeated in games, when that isn’t always the case in online arguments, minus the block feature.

Have you ever played a video game that left you wanting more? I certainly have! My first thought was, "Remake Soul Reaver and the Legacy of Kain saga". But what about you? What games would you like to see remade? According to GamesIndustry.biz, the best time to do so is between 10 and 20 years later. #gaming #remakes #legacyofkain #soulreaver https://lnkd.in/gYJfrSr3

Question: Who are the top 10 (or 11.?) games? What can you learn from these titans? With mindGAME Data's filters, you can quickly filter down to the Industry Titans and Market Leaders segments to get a quick snapshot to who makes up this cohort. To my surprise (honestly!) it almost came to a clean top 10 with BANDAI NAMCO Studios Inc.'s Elden Ring being the outlier here, which peaked because of the trailer drop for Shadow of the Erdtree. (sidenote: #eldenring is a monster game and is one the best performing games by peak mindshare for all games tracked, so a trailer for a DLC doing well is not shocking at all). What else is interesting? If you remove Erdtree, what you are left with is 10 live service games. Ok.. but aren't gamers sick of live service games? Well, with the exception of Sony Interactive Entertainment / Arrowhead Game Studios' Helldivers 2 (2024), every other game on this list is at least ~4 years old. Lets run through that list.. Xbox Game Studios Publishing's Minecraft (2011) Riot Games' League of Legends (2009) & VALORANT (2020) Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V (2013) Roblox (2006) & to be fair more of a platform. Epic Games' Fortnite (2017) Garena's Free Fire (2017) Supercell's Brawl Stars (2018) miHoYo's Genshin Impact (2020) This is not to say that the only way to succeed is to be a game that is a live service experience that happens to have been released around 2020 or before. But.. it would be foolish to release a game now and not take into account that a significant portion of the gaming audience is engaged with at least one, if not more, of these massive tentpole games. There is always the chance to catch lightning in a bottle like Palworld (which has since dropped) or Helldivers 2 (which has likely peaked). Also, you can be a single player, non-live service experience and see a sustain high mindshare score ( Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 is example to that) That said, one of the challenges that faces our industry that often goes under discussed is that idea that not only is a new game competing for the time and attention for the games that are released around said game.. this new game is also competing against everything else that came before. #brawlstars #freefire #fortnite #roblox #gta5 #valorant #leagueoflegends #minecraft #videogameindustry #gamingindustry #videogames #gaming #datavisualization

Here is a rewritten article about the biggest video games releasing in June 2024: The month of June 2024 is set to be an exciting time for gamers, with a slew of highly anticipated titles hitting the shelves. From narrative horror to competitive arena gameplay and expansive open-world exploration, there's something for every kind of player. One of the most highly anticipated releases is Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, a new expansion to the critically acclaimed Elden Ring series. Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is another hotly anticipated release, promising to bring spooky fun to gamers of all ages. For fans of competitive multiplayer, Star Wars: Hunters is shaping up to be a major contender, with its fast-paced arena gameplay and rich Star Wars universe. And for those who love a good scare, Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game is set to deliver a thrilling horror experience. These are just a few of the biggest video games releasing in June 2024. With such a diverse range of titles on offer, there's never been a better time to be a gamer.

Is Sony avoiding Free-to-Play Multiplayer games in its Live Service Model? About a third of their State of Play event was dedicated to Concord, Sony’s upcoming hero shooter. Suprise Suprise, Concord won’t be Free to Play. Rather it will follow the Helldivers 2 strategy: launching at a $40 price point. There is an interesting opinion piece on Gamesindustry.biz that dives much deeper into what this may mean for Sony, and the effects on the game lifecycle. To pull some interesting quotes from the article: ‘’ Sony is making things a bit harder for itself by avoiding free-to-play – but its calculation that this approach will lead to a more sustainable live service business in the medium to long-term may be well founded’’. ‘’ The decision of whether or not to charge up-front for the game has knock-on effects across the design of the game’’. ‘’ Sony has been watching the Hoyoverse cash roll in on PlayStation; it sees and understands how F2P works and what it requires and has nonetheless made a choice to eschew that approach’’. It being an opion piece, all we can do at this point is make educated guesses about the Live Service Model Sony is going to employ. Looking back to 2023 where we’ve seen Free-to-Play games being shut down for reasons other than not enough players e.g., Rumbleverse, Knockout City, Apex Legends Mobile and more. Combined with games that have become platforms themselves – Fortnite, Roblox etc. that people keep coming back to, it may make sense to charge an entry fee for a live service game. What are your thoughts? The opinion piece: https://lnkd.in/eAXA2iqA.

Live-service games have become the new norm for AAA releases it seems like. While the public sentiment seems to be that these need to be done with, companies can't seem to stop trying to produce them? They are clearly profitable (games like Fortnite, Valorant, CSGO, or Rainbow Six Siege) but can it be replicated? In the article I read, they performed surveys among different developers to see if they had hope for the live-service genre of games and majority didn't think they would last, while some still hold out hope. I personally think that live-service games will never truly go away, regardless of how successful they are deemed to be. It makes sense to make a game that can constantly be updated and changed to keep players engaged for many years. I consistently praise Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege for one of the best live-service games ever released. Almost 10 years old, the game is still popular; developers have made unbelievable improvements to the game to keep it modernized and consistent with other games releasing today. Whether it is gameplay improvements, UI updates, or overhauling the game for next-gen consoles, the game has done incredibly solid. Are live-service games the future of gaming? Or will they slowly fizzle out until the next thing comes? #gamedevelopment #liveservicegames #gamedesign Article linked below :) https://lnkd.in/gkHUPA56

Let’s talk about the consistency of one game, or multiple games by one company, over the last 12 years (almost). Even though I have not played Counter-Strike 2 a whole lot…I was diving into the data for the game at: https://lnkd.in/gVQuUZG9 out of curiosity at what steam games are doing very well at this time! Counter-Strike being #1 by a landslide. What is just beyond impressive is the track record that this beautiful game has had through time, and following a hard to beat Counter-Strike: Source. Let’s face the music that Valve, on the whole, is one of the most consistent game publishing and producing companies of all time, time and time again. In 2023, to put into perspective, Counter-Strike has had a whopping ~879,000 players per day with a peak player count of 1,802,853 in a single day. What I think is even more fascinating is just how durable this series is though because if you date it back to its core in 2012 - a whopping 932 players per day in July. I mean…to see year over year that this game has kept consistently growing in player count averages is just incredible over the last 12 years (almost) with minor ebbs and flows. Furthermore, I don’t think people realize sometimes how hard this is to do. In fact, Valve has done it time and time again with several of its staple game franchises! And now that this “Aha moment” and excitement are both done, here are some of the many Valve games that come to mind and that I have enjoyed through time: Garry’s Mod - just vintage and still one of my favorites personally…just freaking hilarious! Portal Series - if you want an interesting story, read this one when you have time as to what led to this game being created! Team Fortress - one of my favorites and taught me grenade and bunny hopping! The Half-Life Series - Loveeee this series! Half Life: Alyx - to this day, I have heard that this is the best VR game of all time (need to play it) Left 4 Dead - what a fantastic and memorable series and fun coop game this was growing up Defense of the Ancients series - let us not forget this classic multiplayer battle arena game that’s again stood the test of time! What is your favorite game produced by Valve if you mind me asking? Please share in the comments below! Image found here: https://lnkd.in/gSV2t2ue #videogaming #videogames #success #datadive #valve #trends

Valve Corporation’s Steam platform offers an extensive catalog of video games for digital distribution, from AAA blockbusters to tiny treasures. Out of all these thousands of games, one game sticks out for its gameplay and outrageous price. With an astounding $1,499.99 price tag, “The Ascent of King Artys” is the most expensive game on Steam as of 2024. Let’s examine what this game delivers to justify its price and what makes it so costly, or talk about the most expensive game on SteamSteam. To learn more about it visit the blog site: https://lnkd.in/ehzfmwrC #steam #videogames #gaming #pcgaming #expensivegames