Tag: news

Why The Game Awards Impact Game Sales

It’s another year of The Game Awards hosted by the host, Geoff Keighley, to see who will receive awards voted by gamers across the world. The Game Awards has always been a great fan voted show but for gaming companies, it’s a great time for sales and marketing. Every company hopes their games are nominated in some sort of fashion; not for clout or prestige, but rather the influence it has on gamers to purchase their titles. With over 10 million viewers and growing each year, The Game Awards are a chance for bigger sales, especially so close to the end of the quarter.

If you notice on the Gaming Consoles and PC, you’ll notice The Game Award Sales now. Companies are happy to set their title on sale to align with their nomination. If anything, these nominations help viewers know what game is actually “good” and worth spending their hard earned money on. Obviously, opinions will differ from person to person but to the gaming companies, they are just happy to earn a thousands of dollars.

For the gamers/viewers, The Game Awards are a good chance to speak their opinions and nominate their own personal GOTY. Even open discussions on social media like X, Facebook, Reddit or whatever is great because it allows people to discuss their feelings and what may have ignored or their overall excitement and hope that their favorite may win. Developers like Kzutaka Kodaka, saw the amount of discussion regarding his title: The Hundred Line, and how people felt it should have been nominated. Their happiness of the discussion is always nice and while their titles may not have been nominated, the amount of discussion can lead to more sales for games.

While some will criticize The Game Awards for just being a trailer push for Developers and awards that “don’t matter,” it’s one of the biggest sale times for Game companies and every one of them are hoping you spend your dollars on them.

The Last of Us Part 2 release Feb. 21, 2020

The Last of Us Part 2 finally has a release date. The new trailer showed Ellie with a group of survivors and losing a loved one. This drives Ellie in a quest for revenge against an organized group.

Clickers, humans, and dogs are the enemy in the game. But most importantly, Joel is showcased in the trailer. Many fans speculated whether the character died in between games due to lack of the character’s appearance in trailers.

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Twitch continues to dominate the Game Streaming Service

Video game streaming has become a bigger entertainment on the internet. There are so many different games to watch, personalities, and styles of playing. As game streaming has become more popular, more alternate streaming sites have showed up. YouTube Game Streaming has been around for a few years but recently Google shut down YouTube Gaming because it confused users. Facebook Gaming is the newest competitor and it can connect already fans of the games to streamers. Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, is the most popular service. Most of the audience data comes from StreamElements. StreamElements is a new growing streaming service. It started back in late 2017 and it allows streamers to show games through multiple channels; including Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook. It also has a professional interface and helps provide useful data to streamers.

Who has the biggest audience?

According to the Wall-Street Journal, Twitch maintains the highest amount of game audience with 70% of hours watched among all services. 2nd is YouTube which had 19.5% of audiences according to StreamElements. Facebook Gaming has approximately 5% while Microsoft Mixer has 3%.

It will be interesting to see if the other platforms can take more of an percentage from Twitch. The platform still has the easiest streaming service, search functions, and most importantly: a dedicated gaming audience. While there are many people use YouTube and Facebook, a huge percentage aren’t dedicated or people who enjoy games. Twitch started with a core audience in mind and has continually improved their services for viewers. Many online personalities also have their core audience on Twitch. Unless the company does something horrendous that would deter the personalities, I think Twitch will remain top dog.

 

Skybound Game will finish Telltale’s The Walking Dead

Telltale has found a company to finish Clem’s story for The Walking Dead: The Final Season. 

Announced during New York Comic-Con by Robert Kirkman (Creator of the Walking Dead), Skybound Games will finish the game. Skybound Entertainment, the parent company, publishes The Walking Dead comic book series and many more. A part of the good news is that Skybound will work with the original Telltale team for the project. While final details are still unclear on when the full game will release or who is working on the project, fans can rejoice as The Walking Dead: The Final Season will be finished. Skybound Games have worked on mobile games and tabletop games for The Walking Dead series. They have also published video games such as The Long Dark and Slime Rancher.

Sources:

Skybound News

Skybound Twitter