Nintendo has announced that it will improve the remuneration of Japanese employees, despite the fact that the company’s own revenues have decreased. It will raise the base salary of both new and current employees by 10%.

Nintendo has published a financial report for the last nine months of 2022. This period was productive for the Japanese company. In particular, the total sales of the Nintendo Switch reached 122.55 million devices, which is more than the PS4 (117 million).

Strauss Zelnick said in a conversation with investors that he is skeptical about the hype around AI. He does not believe that one day developers will be able to simply write neural networks “create a GTA competitor that will be better than GTA” and get a great game at the output.

Take-Two also reported on its finances. The company has released a report for the third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2022.

Activision Blizzard summed up the results of the fourth quarter of 2022, reporting several records at once. For example, net bookings have grown to a record level. They amounted to $3.57 billion — 43% more compared to the previous year.

In January, Playtika announced its desire to acquire Rovio. Today, the Finnish company confirmed that it is negotiating a sale.

With the support of AppMagic, the editors of App2Top have prepared a report on the most popular and highest-grossing mobile games in January (we talk about the successes of Attack Hole, Makeover & Makeup and “Spatula Battles“).

Last week, Turkish media reported that Sony had decided to close its office in Istanbul. On February 6, the company confirmed the rumors in a comment for the portal GamesIndustry.biz .

Bombora Publishing House has translated the Russian book “Power Up! How Japan breathed new life into the gaming industry.” Its author Chris Kohler wrote about the history of the development of the Japanese game dev and the impact he had on the global gaming industry. Kohler prepared his book based on many interviews with cult developers like Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima.

American judge William Alsup dismissed the parents’ lawsuit against Nintendo due to problems with the drift of Joy-Con sticks for the Nintendo Switch. He pointed out that there is a clause in the console user agreement that prohibits suing the company.

The New York Times newspaper, citing four people, reports that Microsoft is preparing for a confrontation with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The corporation believes that the regulator may try to block the purchase of Activision Blizzard.

The annual Grammy Music Awards were held in Los Angeles. This year, for the first time, the organizers presented an award in the nomination “Best Soundtrack to a video game”. It went to the composer Stephanie Economou, who created the music for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök.

Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay a fine of $ 35 million as part of an SEC investigation into harassment in the company, the media reported that Microsoft received objections from the European Commission on the deal with Activision Blizzard, the quarterly revenue of the Kadokawa gaming division jumped by 123% amid the popularity of Elden Ring, — we tell you what happened in the gaming industry this weekend.

It became known about the dissolution of the Fridays game studio, which has been based in Novosibirsk since its foundation in 2007.

Hazelight Studios boasted that It Takes Two took the bar at 10 million copies sold. It took the game a little less than two years to do this.

The former technical director of Oculus* tweeted a thread about PS VR2, which is due to be released this month. John Carmack said that despite the excellent technical characteristics, Sony‘s VR headset is unlikely to be very successful.

China’s NetEase continues to strengthen its presence abroad. She launched a studio called Spliced, which will develop an innovative project that “changes the idea of what a game is.”

The Japanese company Square Enix reported for the last three fiscal quarters (ended December 31, 2022). According to their results, both revenue and profit fell.

Despite the rapid growth in popularity of AI services that generate visual content at the request of users, from a legal point of view, their work (as well as the use of graphics created by them) raises many questions. I-Legal lawyers answered the most relevant of them in a special material for App2Top.