Daily Briefing: Wednesday 2nd February

PlayStation will launch 10 liveservice games in the next few years

That’s according to Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki who, speaking in the company’s most recent earnings call, outlined that “through close collaboration with Bungie and the PlayStation Studios, we aim to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31 2026.” As we know, liveservice games are fairly commonplace these days, and Totoki credits a recent jump in revenue from these kinds of games as the primary reason for Sony wanting to pursue the model. It’s oddly refreshing when a company are so open about chasing moneymaking trends, aren’t they?

• Anyway, Totoki went on to say "from calendar year 2014 to calendar year 2021, the size of the global game content market doubled, driven by add-on content revenue from live game services, which grew at an average annual rate of 15% during this period. We expect this trend to continue going forward. Totoko also points to the early investments that the newly-acquired Bungie made in liveservice around 2014, saying that worked out pretty well for them. He also credits their “wealth of experience and superb technology in the space,” which suggests that Sony will be following the Destiny creators’ lead.

Techland have urged Dying Light 2 fans with early retail copies to wait for release day

Early retail copies of games are an unfortunately reality of the physical game market, and Dying Light 2 developers have tried to get out ahead of the incoming spoiler tsunami to ask fans to hold off until launch day. Along with wanting to wait for everyone to be able to experience the game together, Techland have also advised these early players that a significant day one patch will be releasing alongside the game. Techland say that, by waiting for release day, players will “also get access to all improvements and fixes we've implemented within [the] last weeks and will introduce with the day 1 patch. That's the way to experience Dying Light 2 the way it's meant to be played.”

• Techland followed up their request a couple days later with a few actual details on what will be in the game’s launch day patch. The studio say that they have added over a thousand fixes and improvements in the last few weeks, alongside another thousand “tweaks” to be included in the day one patch. This patch is particularly relevant for console players, as the PC version of Dying Light 2 is being updated in “real-time.” So there you go.

Team17 announce, then cancel, NFT plans

Earlier this week Worms creator Team17 announced their entry into the NFT space with the Meta Worms initiative. As part of a partnership with Digitial Asset Trading platform Reality Gaming Group., Team17 were set to introduce a series of computer-generated NFT collectibles based on their beloved franchise. Team17 described their collectibles as “unique, generative artwork” intended to “encompass content from across the 26-year history of the beloved Worms franchise. The company also emphasised that their NFTs would be high quality and “low energy consuming.”

• As is the case with all gaming-centric NFT announcements, Team17’s attempt to leverage 26 years of nostalgia to spin a quick buck didn’t go down so well. Alongside the usual fan outcry, their decision also attracted a surprising amount of criticism from indie studios like Playtonic Games (Yooka-Laylee), SMG (Moving Out), and Aggro Crab (Going Under: Internships Are Heck). Team17 eventually walked back their idea following this outcry, saying in a statement “we have listened to our teamsters, development partners, and our games’ communities, and the concerns they’ve expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space.”