The incredible success of Factorio, the impressive salary growth of Microsoft's CEO, the launch sales of the new Sonic game, and Kojima's thoughts on creative legacy — here are the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.
Factorio: Space Age
- Sales of the massive Space Age expansion for Factorio surpassed 400,000 copies in just four days. According to Wube Software, the warm reception from the community exceeded the studio's boldest expectations. The DLC currently has nearly 3,000 reviews on Steam, 97% of which are positive, and its release helped the game set a new record for peak online players — over 118,000 people.
- Total compensation for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella jumped 63% compared to the previous fiscal year, reaching $79.1 million. Meanwhile, his base salary remained at $2.5 million. Most of the amount came from various bonuses, including $71.2 million in stock awards (+81.5% year-on-year). Interestingly, Nadella asked the board to cut his cash award tied to the company's financial performance by half due to a series of hacking incidents at Microsoft. As a result, it amounted to "only" $5.2 million.
- SEGA reported one million copies of Sonic X Shadow Generations sold on release day. The platformer was warmly received by both critics (average score — 80/100) and players (97% of Steam reviews are positive). Peak online users on the Valve platform reached nearly 8,000 people, ranking fourth among all titles in the franchise. The new game trails only Sonic Mania (11,900), the free-to-play The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (15,500), and Sonic Frontiers (19,000).
- In response to questions from readers of the Japanese magazine An An, Hideo Kojima pondered over creative legacy. He noted that the perception and evaluation of artworks change over time, making it important for developers to create games and actualize only those ideas in which they have confidence. "If I create something I'm satisfied with, centuries later aliens might come and say, 'This is amazing.' I think that's what it means to leave something behind," the Japanese game designer stated.
- The audience for Dead Island 2 exceeded 10 million people a year and a half after its release. This includes users who tried the game through subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus. Let’s recall that Dead Island 2 sold one million copies in its first three days and crossed the 3 million mark by the end of the last fiscal year, which concluded on March 31.