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Mortal Kombat 11 wins back-to-back rounds as the best-selling game of May 2019
Analyst Mat Piscatella came out of hibernation last night to share a look (via Twitter) at The NPD Group’s report on the best-selling games from May 2019. Once again, NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat 11 landed on the top of the list, and it’s now the best-selling game for all of 2019.
Days Gone managed to hold its position as the runner-up for the month of May, fighting off PC-exclusive Total War: Three Kingdoms (which proved popular enough to slide into the #3 spot) and fellow new release Rage 2 (#4). Perennial favorite Grand Theft Auto V rounded out the Top 5 in the #5 slot.
This year’s most popular titles played musical chairs throughout the remainder of last month’s Top 20. Some went up (Minecraft went from #14 to #9) while some were trending down (Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 dropped from #4 to #12).
The Switch was the best-selling console platform in May and as the PS4 and Xbox One continue to ride off into the sunset, it’s also remained the best-selling for the 2019 calendar year.
Overall, total industry sales were done 11% versus May 2018, but that can probably be chalked up to a paltry selection of new releases last month. You can find a full list of best-selling games from May 2019 after the break. (more…)
Uncharted film adaptation will open in theaters on December 18, 2020
The pieces are finally coming together for Uncharted’s big screen debut. Tom Holland has officially signed on to play a younger version of Nathan Drake in the film adaptation and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it even has a release date… December 18, 2020.
It’s been a long, long road for the Uncharted movie to even make it to this point. A fan campaign tried to secure the role of Drake for Nathan Fillion all the way back in 2010, but it was Mark Wahlberg that eventually got the part (with Robert De Niro aboard as Victor “Sully” Sullivan). Both would later drop out, and Holland was put in place in 2017 (though Fillion would get to portray the character in a fan film released last year).
There’s still a lot we don’t know about Uncharted‘s cinematic aspirations, but we do know that Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) will direct the film for Sony Pictures, and the current draft of the script was written by Jonathan Rosenberg and Mark Walker.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Mortal Kombat 11 was the best-selling game on all platforms in April 2019
The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella has given us a look (via Twitter) at the best-selling games from April 2019.
Unsurprisingly, Mortal Kombat 11 KOed the competition as the top game during the period. And according to Piscatella, NetherRealm’s fighter also became the first game to sit atop the charts as the best-selling individual game on the PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One in the same the month.
Not far behind was Sony’s Days Gone. The post-apocalyptic action game was developed by Sony Bend, and while it might have been overshadowed by some of the other titles in the consolemaker’s catalog, it landed in the #2 spot for April.
The remainder of April’s best-selling games chart is made up of a lot of titles we’ve seen before, including recent releases MLB 19: The Show (#3), Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (#4), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (#7), and perennial mainstays Grand Theft Auto V (#6) and Minecraft (#14).
You can find a full list of best-selling games from April 2019 after the break. (more…)
The Video Game Canon: Tetris Remains the Best Game of All Time in Version 3.0 Update
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
Once again, Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle masterpiece, Tetris, stands atop the Video Game Canon.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Video Game Canon, it’s a statistical meta-analysis of 53 “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that were published between 1995 and 2018. To qualify for inclusion, each list had to include at least 50 games, as well as some form of editorial oversight in the process (lists made up solely of reader polls or fan voting were excluded), and no restrictions on release dates or platforms.
After feeding each “Best Games” list into the Video Game Canon machine, the games were ranked against each other using the C-Score, a formula that adds together a game’s “Average Ranking” across all lists with the complementary percentage of its “Appearance Frequency.” Combining these two factors allows us to create a list of games that have universal appeal across a long period of time without punishing any game for being too old or too new.
Five new lists were added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 3.0 update, bringing the total number of games to be selected by at least one list up to 1,182. The most expansive new list came from Game Informer, which published The Top 300 Games of All Time in April of last year. Hyper (The 200 Games You Must Play), IGN (Top 100 Video Games of All Time), and Slant Magazine (The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time) also published new lists in 2018.
I was also able to reach back into the history books a little bit after stumbling upon a list from 2009 by Benchmark.pl, one of Poland’s largest technology blogs. Aside from a handful of titles (most notably, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), most of the games created in Eastern Europe or played by Eastern European players aren’t on the radar of your average gamer, so digging through The Top 100 Best Games of the Twentieth Century gave me an interesting window into a population of gamers that I probably don’t think about as often as I should.
Even with these new additions to the dataset, Version 3.0 didn’t signal any huge changes to the Video Game Canon over last year’s Version 2.0 update, but the movement amongst the games in the top ten does bring to mind a round of musical chairs. And after the music stopped, nearly all the titles scrambled to find a new place to sit.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com for all future updates to this project and to explore the complete Top 1000.
20th Century Fox used Alien: Isolation’s cutscenes and “new animations” to create a brand new Alien movie
Sega and The Creative Assembly have teamed up with 20th Century Fox to give Alien: Isolation a second lease on life. The 2014 game, which took place between Alien and Aliens, has been reedited into a feature-length digital series that gives fans another chance to experience the story of Amanda Ripley’s search for her missing mother:
Fifteen years after her mother disappeared on the deep space towing ship Nostromo, Amanda Ripley travels to a remote space station that may hold clues to her mother’s fate. But disaster strikes as she arrives at her destination.
The series will be available exclusively through IGN and will feature “a combination of new animations and original cinematic cutscenes from the game.” As part of this partnership, the website spoke to the animators about the extensive lengths they went to to create these new animations:
“[We knew] that we would need to change the POV from first person, where the player is the character, to one where you are now watching Amanda Ripley navigate within the world,” [Fabien DuBois, a Director at animation studio DVgroup] said. “We then made storytelling choices based on the idea that we would be going deeper into Amanda Ripley’s psychology – to discover her demons, her fears, her motivations. The final series is comprised of three types of scenes: brand-new scenes that are rendered from scratch, cinematics taken directly from the game, and first-person scenes from the game we re-shot, edited and inserted a CG model of Amanda Ripley. Viewers will get to enjoy an exciting narrative that doesn’t repeat the Alien: Isolation story, but completes it.”
All seven episodes of the Alien: Isolation digital series are now available, and the first episode has been embedded above.
Kingdom Hearts III, Resident Evil 2, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe unsurprisingly lead NPD’s list of best-selling games from January 2019
Kingdom Hearts fans were kept waiting more than a decade for the third game in the franchise, but Square Enix finally rewarded their patience with the launch of Kingdom Hearts III last month. As you might have guessed, fans purchased the game in droves, pushing it all the way to the top of The NPD Group’s list of best-selling games from January 2019.
Two highly-anticipated re-releases, Resident Evil 2 (#2) and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (#3) were close behind, and Bandai Namco’s Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (#7) and Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (#12) also cracked the top 20.
However, while several games had strong starts on the sales chart, the industry overall suffered a decline last month versus January 2018. All together, GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that total sales (hardware, software, and accessories) were down 19% to $893 million.
You can find a full list of best-selling games from January 2019 after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, FIFA 19, Grand Theft Auto V, Kingdom Hearts III, Madden NFL 19, Mario Kart 8, Minecraft, NBA 2K19, NPD, Red Dead Redemption 2, Resident Evil 2, Spider-Man, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Party, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Tales of Vesperia, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Yacht Club delays Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown
Yacht Club Games originally planned to close the book on the Shovel Knight saga on April 9 with the release of Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown. But plans change, and late last night the developer confirmed (via their official website) that both titles would be delayed by “several months… at most!”
Naturally, this delay will also apply to the upcoming retail release of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (a compilation containing all five Shovel Knight games), as well as the Amiibo 3-Pack featuring Specter Knight, Plague Knight, and King Knight.
This is not a major delay so much as more space to bring everything together for a polished and complete finale. As always, these last steps require coordination with many teams beyond our own.
We realize the delay is disappointing. To communicate better with everyone moving forward, we will not be announcing a new date until we know one for sure, from all partners involved. All builds shipped out, updates ready to launch, for everybody and everyone. We will announce it for good once it is 100% all across the board!
The final two games in the Shovel Knight saga are currently in development for the PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, but other platforms will also get in on the fun. King of Cards will be available as a free expansion on the 3DS, PS3, Vita, and Wii U for owners of the original Shovel Knight, while Showdown will receive a similar release on the PS3 and Wii U.
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Vita, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Shovel Knight, Shovel Knight Showdown, Shovel Knight: King of Cards, Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
Insight Editions will release The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook in March 2019
It looks like Insight Editions will expand their line of game-themed cookbooks in March 2019 with the release of The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook.
The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook will be written by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, an author who previously cataloged the fictional cuisines from Hearthstone and World of Warcraft. Readers can expect to find more than 60 recipes from “Skyrim, Morrowind, and all of Tamriel” in the book:
Feast on all of the delicious dishes found in Skyrim, Morrowind, and all of Tamriel in this beautifully crafted cookbook based on the award-winning Elder Scrolls game series. Immerse yourself in the diverse cuisines of the Nords, Bosmer, Khajit, and beyond with these recipes inspired by food found in the Old Kingdom, across Tamriel, and more. With over sixty delicious recipes for fan-favorite recipes including Apple Cabbage Stew, Sunlight Souffle, Sweetrolls, and more, The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook will delight every hungry Dragonborn.
The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook will be released on March 26, 2019.