The game Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era recouped its development costs in just one day, Sony has agreed to pay $7.8 million for a monopoly on PlayStation, and analysts have found that exclusives remain the main reason for purchasing consoles — here are the main events in the gaming industry from the past weekend.
- A California court has preliminarily approved a settlement between Sony and American gamers who sued the company in 2021. The gamers claimed that prices in the PS Store increased after Sony stopped selling digital versions of games for its consoles outside the store a few years ago. Under the settlement, no changes are expected in the PS Store, but affected users can receive compensation from Sony. The company will allocate $7.8 million for payouts to Americans who purchased certain games between April 1, 2019, and December 31, 2023. Notably, a similar agreement was nearly reached last year, but the court rejected it because Sony initially wanted to compensate users with vouchers for the PS Store instead of cash.
- The analytics firm Circana asked US gamers why they buy consoles. It turns out the most popular reason remains the availability of games that are not on other platforms, with 41% of respondents giving this answer. However, this is down 8 percentage points from last year, suggesting the influence of exclusives is gradually decreasing. Other common reasons include having friends or family who play on the same console (38%), the convenience of playing with friends (37%), and the ability to play in a comfortable setting, sitting on a couch in front of a TV (36%).
- VR studio Survios, known for games like Alien: Rogue Incursion and The Walking Dead: Onslaught, experienced layoffs. Former employees reported this on LinkedIn. Although the exact scale of the layoffs is unknown, it is suggested that a large portion of the team was affected. Furthermore, one post indicated that the studio "in its current form" will essentially cease to exist soon. Survios has made no public comment on the situation.
- The new Heroes have had an impressive start. According to Unfrozen, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era earned enough on its first day of early access to cover production costs, and by the end of the third day, the game sold 500,000 copies. It is also performing well on Steam with peak concurrent users reaching over 60,800 on Sunday, May 3, making it the best performance for the franchise on the platform.
- Meanwhile, sales of Windrose surpassed 1.5 million copies. The pirated "survival" game achieved this milestone two weeks after its release.
- Over the weekend, two games crossed the milestone of one million wishlists. The developers of the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake and Metro 2039 announced reaching this benchmark. Recall, the release of the first is scheduled for July 9, while the second is set to come out sometime this winter, although an exact date has not yet been announced.