Today's extra meaty news:
* In a recent letter to shareholders, Unity's new CEO James Whitehurst warned that the company is likely to do a round of layoffs as part of their current plans to become a "leaner, more agile, and faster growing company." This warning was due to the results from their fiscal third quarter being "mixed" in terms of what the company had been expecting. The letter also admitted that the company's new runtime fee decision had caused a lot of problems for the company but they consider that to be an issue in the past.
Link:
https://www.destructoid.com/unity-wa...-fee-decision/ ,
https://s26.q4cdn.com/977690160/file...tter_FINAL.pdf
* In regards to Unity's disaster of their announcement of changes to their fees system that they later partially backed down from, a recent report from Mobilegamer.biz reported that several insiders within Unity stated that this whole plan was "rushed out" by upper management despite the objections by many within the company over the damage and problems it could end up causing to the company.
Link:
https://mobilegamer.biz/fuck-you-wer...me-fee-fiasco/ ,
https://www.eurogamer.net/unitys-con...ut-says-report
* In a recent earnings call, Sony COO, CFO, & President Hiroki Totoki announced that they company is scaling back their plans to release 12 live service games by 2025 fiscal year. Instead they currently are planning to only release 6 live service games during that time period and the official reason related to both their purchase of Bungie last year and them realizing releasing that many games in a short period likely meant a big sacrifice in quality and less long term big earnings potential for those games.
Link:
https://www.destructoid.com/sony-del...service-games/
* Based on a recent investor's call, Take Two announced that GTA 5 has sold around 190 million copies since its release in 2013 with around 20 million copies sold within the past year. The game is currently the second highest ever selling game but for some perspective, the all-time highest selling game is Minecraft at around 300 million copies sold.
Link:
https://ir.take2games.com/static-fil...9-80770b07279f ,
https://www.destructoid.com/gta-5-is...on-units-sold/
* According to a report from VGC, Embrace Group is currently planning to shut down Free Radicals studio, Timesplitters series developer, as part of the on-going serious financial related issues affecting the company.
Link:
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/...faces-closure/
* For those interested, Valve recently announced that they will be releasing a new OLED model of their Steam Deck that features improved specs and battery life on November 16th.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Destructoid
Valve has just announced the Steam Deck OLED, due to release in very short order on November 16. Effectively an upgrade to the baseline Steam Deck model, the OLED variant will even have a substantially upgraded battery, making the device that much more appealing.
What’s particularly interesting here is that as the OLED model of the Steam Deck rolls in, Valve is phasing out the 64 GB and the 512 GB variants of the original device. As of right now, these version of the Deck are only going to stay in stock while supplies last (with an appropriate price drop), and new buyers will be able to purchase the following versions of the device in the future:
256 GB LCD version of the Steam Deck at $399
512 GB OLED version of the Steam Deck at $549
1 TB OLED version of the Steam Deck at $649
... Aside from the obvious boon of a 7.4″ OLED display with HDR support which is “designed from the ground up for gaming,” according to Valve’s press release, the device also features the following upgrades compared to the previously available model:
6nm APU for improved gaming efficiency
Wi-Fi 6E for better download speeds
50Whr battery delivering up to 12 hours worth of gameplay
The top-spec 1 TB version of the Deck comes with its own set of exclusive boons, including the premium anti-glare etched display that was previously reserved for the 512 GB version, a special carrying case with removable liner, an exclusive startup movie, and an exclusive virtual keyboard theme. All in all, quite the bundle of goodies.
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Link:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/...eck_2023?tab=1 ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vTsZMvjJ-A ,
https://www.destructoid.com/valve-an...eam-deck-oled/