When Epic Games, hot off the success of Fortnite, opted to open the Epic Games Store in late 2018, it wasn’t clear if it would able to compete with Steam, GOG, and the other behemoths in digital game sales. However, it has certainly made its mark, as the Epic Games Store has racked up 108 million customers in just its first year and generated an impressive amount of revenue.
The enormous figure came as part of a larger information dump from Epic Games, where the company also shared that PC players have spent $680 million in the store so far, and $251 million of that were on third-party PC games. Additionally, more than $23 million in coupons and discounts were funded by Epic Games, and 73 free games were given away, amounting to nearly $1,500 in value. Epic Games will continue giving away new free games every week throughout 2020, without any strings attached for keeping them. Some also work on Mac in addition to PC.
Of the active players last month, about 17% of them are in the United States, with Russia, China, Brazil, and Germany rounding out the top five countries. Popular games include Epic Games Store PC exclusives such as Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Control, and Metro Exodus. Among the larger upcoming PC exclusives include the action-RPG Godfall, which will also be coming to PlayStation 5.
“In 2020 we’ll continue to lead the way in open and developer-friendly store terms, with 88 percent revenue sharing, support for developer and publisher payment systems, and keyless purchasing integration with Humble (with more PC stores coming soon),” Epic Games said in the announcement. “On top of that, we’re offering integration with Epic’s platform-independent and store-independent online services with more than 300,000,000 customer accounts and 1,700,000,000 friend connections.”
Epic Games only looks to get bigger in 2020, and the company also hinted at additional cross-platform games coming during the year. We’ve seen a growing number of multiplayer titles, including Fortnite, allow for players to enjoy gaming together regardless of which system they own. It’s something we think will only get more prevalent with the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at the end of the year.
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.