The GamesIndustry.biz Microcast

GamesIndustry.biz's Chris Dring and James Batchelor deliver another short, sharp analysis of the biggest stories happening across the business of video games.Today's microcast covers: Take-Two's latest financial results Ubisoft's latest financial results Strauss Zelnick: Key companies took E3 for granted Next week's PlayStation Showcase As always, any feedback on this new show format would be appreciated. Please email news@gamesindustry.biz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the new GamesIndustry.biz Microcast. In addition to our full-length, in-depth discussions of key topics from across the industry, we are also experimenting with a new short-form format in which we analyse the biggest stories as they break.Today's episode covers the European Commission's approval of Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition, the record-breaking UK launch sales of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Amazon's announcement of a new Lord of the Rings MMO.We're keen to hear your feedback on this new episode format, so please email editorial@gamesindustry.biz with your thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The GamesIndustry.biz team gather around their mics to discuss the biggest stories from the business of video games.This week, we discuss the recent cancellation of E3 2023, the myriad factors behind it, and what comes next for the long-running trade show. With the industry's needs changing over the years, and the rise of new ways to reach your audience, the very purpose of E3 has been the ongoing subject of debate - so how can the event evolve in the future?For further context around this discussion, be sure to read our interview with ESA president Stanley Pierre-Louis and Chris Dring's opinion piece on why the industry simply didn't want this year's vision for E3.As always, you can get more news, insight and analysis at www.gamesindustry.biz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode seven of the Playable Futures podcast turns its attention to the future of game consumption, and the shift in the dynamic between user, creator and platform. The result was a wide-ranging, insightful conversation between two brilliant guests – Stephanie King, Chief Administrative and Legal Officer and Playco, and Karol Severin, Senior analyst, VP of data, and Co-Founder at MIDiA Research. Both brought robust analysis and fascinating data – and a lot of vibrancy and infectious Through their conversation, what becomes clear is that today's gamers are bombarded with more choices than ever – and yet we all only have 24 hours in one day. The attention economy is a place of more movement than ever before. Publishers and developers will increasingly need to have agile tactics in order to take their games to players, rather than work to bring users to platforms.Their episode’s conversation also covers themes that are commonly preoccupying the sector at the moment – saturation and discoverability, for example – but with a realistic and enthusiastic outlook on how things will develop in the future. King and Severin discuss games as collected shared experiences; games as identifiers for tribes; and escape versus connection. The Playable Futures Podcast accompanies Playable Futures, a collection of insights, interviews and articles from global games leaders sharing their visions of where the industry and medium will go next. A series of ten articles so far have been published on GamesIndustry.biz, with more planned. Playable Futures is a collaborative project brought to you in partnership with GI.biz, UKIE and Diva. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The GamesIndustry.biz team gather around their mics to discuss the biggest stories of the past week.On this episode, we begin with the report that 2023's Call of Duty release will be a follow-up to 2022's Modern Warfare 2 that originally began an expansion. It will plug the previously reported gap that could have seen this year become the first since 2005 not to see a new entry in the series, with Treyarch's next game pushed to 2024.We ponder Call of Duty's reliance on an annual release, Activision Blizzard's reliance on Call of Duty, the wider impact the series has on the global market, and the challenges Activision faces in rolling out a not-quite-full-scale Call of Duty in 2023.In the second half, we turn to Larian Studios' recent revelation that it's unable to release Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox until it can get certain features running on the low-end Series S model, which is a requirement from Microsoft. The discussion goes from potential solutions to supporting the less powerful console to the possibility of a mid-cycle console upgrade in the current generation.As always, you can get more news, insight and analysis at www.gamesindustry.biz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcia Deakin, Co-Founder of Next Gen Skills Academy, Shahneila Saeed, Head of Education at UKIE and Director of Digital Schoolhouse and Keira McGarvey, Head of People at FuturLab join Will Freeman for the latest edition of our Playable Futures Series.Episode six of the Playable Futures podcast assembles a panel of experts to tackle the challenges and opportunities of the industry’s talent pipeline, and how the sector finds itself at a crossroads in terms of future proofing recruitment for the medium and long term success of the sector. The Playable Futures Podcast accompanies Playable Futures, a collection of insights, interviews and articles from global games leaders sharing their visions of where the industry and medium will go next. A series of ten articles so far have been published on GamesIndustry.biz, with more planned. Playable Futures is a collaborative project brought to you in partnership with GI.biz, UKIE and Diva. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The GamesIndustry.biz team gather around their mics to ponder the year ahead. Rather than offering predictions on what we think will happen in the business of video games this year, we share our hopes for what we want to see.  The discussion ranges from serious concerns such as the desire to see more unionisation among developers and fewer immoral monetisation practices, to more personal wishes such as more innovative AAA games, a fresh wave of quirky indie titles and, er, the return of companion apps. We also share our most anticipated games of the year. You can find more news, insight and analysis at www.gamesindustry.biz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The latest of our Playable Futures series tackles the industry's foundational duo - Publisher and Developer - and looks at what the future holds for Publishing in a sector in which the rate of change is rapid and accelerating. It’s also one in which the balance between Community, Audience, Developer and Publisher has shifted irrevocably.  For Episode 5, presenter Will Freeman speaks to Jean-Paul Hardy, General Manager of Gearbox Amsterdam and Thomas Hegarty, Founder and Director of Roll7. Veterans of the publisher/developer relationship, the duo draw on their many years of experience in publishing and developing videogames and take a long view on what is in store for the future. Hardy reflects on how things have changed since he started out, when the publisher was responsible for a game’s launch and little else. “When I started in the industry, you just launched and left. Print was king and if you had the budget you would do TV. Then all of a sudden online was the holy grail of marketing and publishing. I’ve seen 20 holy grails come by since then and these days it’s all about data-driven things.” Today, as Hardy explains, publishing has evolved to encompass more than “simple” awareness. “It’s so many things and it only gets bigger and bigger. If you don’t limit yourself and focus on key areas, you’re going to get spread so thin. You won’t be able to do everything properly.” Hegarty reflects on how specialist, nuanced and important Marketing has become, as well as the value that a Publisher’s perspective can bring.  “As we’ve grown our ambition and our budgets grow, there’s more risk attached to what we’re doing. We can’t just hope we’ve hit the right note. We’ve got to do the analysis and that’s where working with a publisher has been really good.  Interestingly, they settle on certain fundamentals that seem to characterise the publisher/developer relationship whatever the era: trust and open, frank communication.  “The publisher still has that same love of gaming that a developer has,” Hardy states. “They just look at it in a different way because we have different expertise.”   “Community is absolutely key. It always has been,” adds Hegarty, “There has been a big shift in the last couple of years where we actually see active changes within the game from people watching live on Twitch and that makes you think very differently about the game from the design point of view, which goes all the way through to how to release the game.” Are we looking at a future where the audience, developer, publisher and community become more interwoven? One thing is for sure - this episode leaves you thinking that the future is positive and exciting, and despite the inevitable challenges - good publisher / developer relations will provide plenty of solutions.  The Playable Futures Podcast accompanies Playable Futures, a collection of insights, interviews and articles from global games leaders sharing their visions of where the industry and medium will go next. A series of ten articles so far have been published on GamesIndustry.biz, with more planned. Playable Futures is a collaborative project brought to you in partnership with GI.biz, UKIE and Diva. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The GamesIndustry.biz team gathers around their mics and discusses their favourite games of the year. In addition, we discuss several of the honourable mentions, the titles we've delved deeply into throughout the course of 2022 but haven't quite established themselves as our favourites. You can read our full thoughts on each member of the team's on the site throughout this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a double whammy for our latest episode of the Playable Futures Podcast, with gaming communities at the centre of the discussion. For this episode, presenter Will Freeman chats to Mark Reed, Founder of Heaven Media to reflect on gaming’s relationship with marketing and the important role that communities play in shaping its landscape. He then interviews Romain de Waubert de Genlis, Studio Head and Chief Creative Officer at Amplitude Studios who discusses how his platform Games2Gether aims to bring the gaming community into the dev process. Both spokespeople take a long view on the importance of community, but what becomes clear is that factoring community into marketing strategies (amongst other project milestones) early in a campaign can prove pivotal in its success – and in many ways it always has been – but as we look to the future it will be an important key to success.  As Mark Reed says: “For as long as I’ve been gaming, communities have always been at the heart of gaming and that’s still very true today.” Having witnessed significant changes over the course of a lengthy career, Mark reflects on how studios, publishers and developers have had to adapt to put their players and, crucially, engagement with them, first. Reflecting on the '90s, when the majors ignored their player base until launch, Mark suggests that the industry has now begun to accommodate them as early as possible. After all, if publishers don’t nurture their audience, they stand a chance of falling at the first hurdle. If communities are key to successful games marketing, what is their future with regards to the creation and making of new and exciting titles?   Romain, meanwhile, is co-founder and Creative Director of Games2Gether, a video game co-creation platform that brings the gaming community together and provides a platform for creators to swap ideas and collaborate on development. This further democratisation of the creative process puts budding developers first, enabling creators to swap ideas in a like-minded environment with no gatekeepers. “What people usually don’t like when they try to interact with a team is they will feel that they’re not being listened to… We have one million players, so it’s hard to tell everyone to listen to everyone at any one time, but it’s all about transparency.” And what Romain touches on here is something that is true when applied to gaming communities, dev communities and is a core principle of good games marketing to boot – with clarity, simplicity and openness the sector can maintain new and powerful channels of conversation and use the benefits thereof to build the games industry of the future.  The Playable Futures Podcast accompanies Playable Futures, a collection of insights, interviews and articles from global games leaders sharing their visions of where the industry and medium will go next. A series of ten articles so far have been published on GamesIndustry.biz, with more planned. Playable Futures is a collaborative project brought to you in partnership with GI.biz, UKIE and Diva. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices