Doom Eternal isn’t just an excellent follow-up to 2016’s Doom in terms of quality — it’s also a great seller. Bethesda announced the fast-paced shooter surpassed all previous games in the series for opening weekend sales numbers. This makes it the fastest-selling entry in the series so far and one of the most played games this past weekend.
As the second title in id Software’s rebooted franchise, it doubled its predecessor in launch revenue for Bethesda. On Steam alone, Doom Eternal broke a record for the highest-selling game last week. This resulted in an impressive player count as well on the PC service, with over 100,000 concurrent players unleashing hell on the demon hordes all at the same time.
“We want to thank our millions of fans for their enthusiastic support of this amazing title,” Ron Seger, senior vicepresident of global sales at Bethesda, said. “Despite thousands of retail stores closing, we are pleased so many fans have been able to enjoy Doom Eternal.”
Bethesda hasn’t released specific sales numbers just yet for the demon-slaying game, but they’re likely to grow while many players around the world shelter in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus also prompted GameStop to sell Doom Eternal a day before its original release date to prevent overcrowding in stores as players also rushed in to buy Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch. Both were set to release on March 20. GameStop split the crowds amid criticism over keeping the stores open at all. In-store sales were put on hold shortly thereafter.
The Nintendo Switch version of Doom Eternal still isn’t out following a delay from port developer Panic Button, which also brought Doom to the Switch in 2016. Sales will likely increase once Switch owners are able to get their hands on Doom Eternal.
Digital Trend’s gaming writer Gabe Gurwin enjoyed the gory sequel, noting that it is a “pulse-pounding masterpiece” and “one of the best first-person shooters of this generation.’’
“Doom Eternal is a bigger and even better version of its predecessor, recognizing exactly why fans loved that game so much, while giving them even more reasons to love the sequel,” Gurwin said in his review.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.