The main thing for the weekend (April 28 – May 1)

Kerbal Space Program 2

• Bloomberg, citing Take-Two Interactive documents, reported that the company plans to close two studios. The first studio is Roll7, known for OlliOlli and Rollerdrome. The second studio is Intercept Games, which developed the Kerbal Space Program 2. A representative of Take-Two Interactive in a comment to Bloomberg did not confirm or deny the upcoming dissolution of the studios, but said that the company would continue to support the Kerbal Space Program 2.
• The Netherlands-based KeokeN Interactive has laid off almost all employees. Only its founders Cohen and Paul Deetman (Koen Deetman, Paul Deetman) remained on the staff of the studio that created Deliver Us Mars and Deliver Us the Moon. As KeokeN Interactive explained, she has been trying for a long time to find funding or partners to work together, but without success. In the near future, the studio wants to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the development of the Deliver Us Home game.
• Square Enix has notified investors of significant losses in the fiscal year due to the cancellation of a number of games. They amount to $142 million. According to the company, the decision to write off the costs of the games was made as part of a new strategy. Earlier, Square Enix announced that it would release fewer games, but of higher quality.
• Remedy Entertainment has published a financial report for the first quarter of 2024. Compared to last year, the company's revenue increased by 56.2% to 10.8 million euros, and operating losses decreased 2.5 times to 2.1 million euros. Remedy Entertainment also announced that the Chinese giant Tencent now owns 14.8% of its shares. In November 2022, Tencent's share was 5.01%.
• Rise of the Ronin surpassed both parts of NiOh in terms of initial sales. This was announced in the annual report by Koei Tecmo, the parent company of the development studio Team Ninja. She did not name the number of copies of Rise of the Ronin sold. As for other data from the report, over the past year Koei Tecmo has earned $ 534 million (+7.9%) with a net profit of $ 217 million (+9.2%), more than half of the revenue came from mobile games — $ 309 million (+40.6%).
• The analytical company Circana spoke about the state of the US gaming market in March 2024. According to her calculations, in a month Americans spent $4.88 billion on the purchase of video games, gaming hardware and gaming accessories. This is 4% more than in February. The best-selling game in March was Dragon's Dogma 2, which shifted the leading Helldivers 2 to second place a month earlier. However, Helldivers 2 remained at the top of the bestseller list for the whole of 2024 in the United States.
• Hooded Horse has announced that the medieval town planner Manor Lords has been bought more than a million times a day. In addition, the game was ahead of all other urban planners and projects in related genres in terms of peak online on Steam. According to SteamDB, at its peak, 173,178 Steam users were playing Manor Lords at the same time.
• Sales of the Gray Zone Warfare action shooter exceeded 400 thousand copies per day after the game was released in early access. The developers from Madfinger Games said they did not expect such a rush. Now the studio is trying to fix bugs and is actively working on hotfixes.
• The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of South Korea wants to reduce the dependence of the country's residents on mobile and online games and increase sales of games for consoles. It has developed a five-year plan to support local console developers. In particular, the authorities will help the studios in signing contracts with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. In its statement, the ministry noted that in 2022, South Korea was the fourth largest gaming market in the world with revenue of $16.04 billion. At that time, the country accounted for 1.5% of revenue in the console games segment.