Turns out Nintendo isn’t in as good financial shape as Sony’s PlayStation Network, which outperformed the entire company this past financial year.
The PSN made 529.1bn yen, or nearly $4.9 billion U.S., which is notably more than Nintendo’s 504.4bn yen, or roughly $4.66 billion U.S.. This fact came to light thanks to Twitter user ZhugeEX.
Sony's PlayStation Network sales hit 529,000m yen which means that PSN generated more revenue than the whole of Nintendo (504,000m yen).
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 28, 2016
While it’s significant that one company’s online storefront made more than the entirety of one of its biggest competitors, it’s none too surprising. Nintendo’s Wii U has been struggling since launch. Even with its bevy of quality titles, consumers haven’t been too attracted to the touchscreen-controlled console.
Compare that to Sony, whose PlayStation 4 has sold phenomenally well. According to VGChartz, the PS4 has sold a whopping 39.81 million units in the two-and-a-half years it’s been out. That completely destroys the Wii U’s 12.98 million. With an install base as high as Sony’s, it’s hard to compete.
But even then, it probably wasn’t digital sales alone that accounted for Sony’s massive online success. Much of it probably also has to do with its PlayStation Plus subscription service. Once a voluntary program that gave gamers free goodies and discounts, it’s now all but mandatory. With the release of the PS4, Sony made the $50 a year PS+ subscription a requirement to play games online.
As for Nintendo, its 3DS is selling well; currently it’s at 59.11 million units sold globally. But with the influx of mobile, a slice of the handheld pie isn’t as big as it used to be. Nintendo recognizes this and is already moving forward by bringing games to mobile and is developing a new console, cod-enamed the NX. It will be launching in March 2017 with a brand new Legend of Zelda game in toe. This means that Nintendo will not be showing off its new system at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, leaving many fans in the dark for the time being.
H/T Eurogamer | Photo via Toshiyuki IMAI/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”