Nintendo can join the number of companies that sell their games for $70. The network noticed that on February 8, the Nintendo eShop opened a pre-order for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with a price tag of $ 70. However, almost immediately Nintendo removed the possibility of pre-ordering and hid the cost of the game.

The Australian government agency Screen Australia continues to invest in local indie developers. This time it invested a total of one million dollars in the authors of 11 games.

Banning the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard could hurt the ambitions of the UK authorities, Bobby Kotick believes. In an interview with CNBC, the head of Activision Blizzard said that if the deal does not take place, the country will lose the opportunity to become a European Silicon Valley.

The main scandal of the last day in the Russian game dev is the appearance of a two—hour appeal by the former head of the narrative department of MYTONA, Sergey Gres, to the company’s management. We have prepared a summary and highlighted the main thing.

Swedish Paradox Interactive summed up the financial results of 2022. Let’s go through the main figures.

The other day, sources of The New York Times reported that the British regulator may oppose the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard — Microsoft itself allegedly expects this. However, the corporation later denied the rumors.

On February 6, exactly two months have passed since the official release of Dwarf Fortress. In honor of this, Tanya Short, the head of Kitfox Games publishing house, announced that the game’s sales amounted to 606,342 copies.

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.