🎮 New Battlefield, Diablo 4 made over a billion and no Sims 5...
First Details about a new Battlefield, Diablo 4 made over a billion dollars, EA says “No Sims 5”, Skate Reboot will hit Early Access next year and more!
Hello friends,
Today is September 19th 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 First Details about a new Battlefield
🎮 Diablo 4 made over a billion dollars
🎮 EA says “No Sims 5”
🎮 Skate Reboot will hit Early Access next year
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 First Details about a new Battlefield
EA is finally putting the pedal to the metal with a new Battlefield. During a recent interview with IGN, Vince Zempella (CEO of Respawn Entertainment acquired by EA in 2017) confirmed a lot of new details surrounding the upcoming revival of Battlefield.
So far, the main pillars of the games are the following:
Back to the basics. The next game is going to focus on 64 players on a map.
Ambitious 128-player maps also proved unpopular with fans who preferred a more focused experience. Battlefield 2042 eventually went back to supporting 64 players per maps, and the next Battlefield plans to stick to that approach.
Going back to the class-based system.
Classes are kind of at the core of Battlefield, and we're going back to that
Aiming for a 2025 release.
We have a program that we're going to announce next year around getting more community in, because that's kind of the core of what we have to do — get the community back on our side, get that trust back. So I think we're in a really good place. Is it challenging? Of course, but it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't.
All in all, I think it’s a good thing that EA is getting back to the Battlefield and I hope they’ve learned a lot from their previous experiences to make this game a good one as the last Battlefield I played was terrible. But I’m still cautious of putting my hopes up too much. With EA you never know what to expect, a great game with a lot of potential or a janky disaster…
🎮 Diablo 4 made over a billion dollars
According to Senior Product Manager Harrison Froeschke, Diablo 4 has generated over $1 billion in revenue since its launch with $150 million being in microtransactions.
He also added that the game sales are expected to grow with a new expansion hitting the shelves during the following months. It’s the first of yearly planned expansions and will introduce a number of new features. Those new features include a new Nahantu region, new dungeons, runes, mercenaries, a new Spiritborn class, and will continue the story from the main game.
What’s funny is that the profile of this guy was taken down since this news was shared… My guess is that nobody wanted this information to go public in the first place or it was all just a ruse to convince everyone of the success of this game. But who knows?
It’s a very impressive number considering some of the previous instalments in the series (yes, Immortal, I’m talking about you). I’ve heard a lot of controversial opinions about this title and it’s one of the reasons I haven’t played it yet. Some say that there are too many microtransactions, which based on the number above, may just be true. But it also looks like there’s really more to it. I’ll probably give this game a fair try when it goes on sale next time.
🎮 EA says “No Sims 5”
According to multiple recent articles and interviews, the company decided not to make Sims 5 and instead focus on The Sims 4 moving forward.
EA’s Vice President and General Manager of “The Sims” franchise Kate Gorman explained the plans a little bit in an interview with Variety:
The way to think about it is, historically, ‘The Sims’ franchise started with ‘Sims 1’ and then ‘Sims 2,’ ‘3’ and ‘4.’ And they were seen as replacements for the previous products. What we’re really working with our community on is this a new era of ‘The Sims.’ We are not going to be working on replacements of previous projects; we’re only going to be adding to our universe. With that, you’ll see there are more ways to experience ‘The Sims’ on different platforms, different ways to play, transmedia, and lots of great offerings within this universe. So absolutely, we’re still continuing to support ‘TS4’ more than ever. Still continue to deliver expansion packs and updates and fixes. But what this is to say is, the way we’re going to do things going forward is a little different.
What this means is that we will continue to bring HD simulation experience and what people would want from a ‘5’ — but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to start you over, reset all your progress, and really feel like you’re going to lose all of that amazing play you put into ‘4’.
I mean, I guess that they are not done milking this cow. I’m not a huge fan of this game and I’m an even lesser fan of the monetization model they chose for it, but UGC (user-generated content) is all the rage right now, so it only makes sense for them to capitalize on all the expansions they’ve released so far. Probably a good idea, considering the production costs and the overall market situation. But I can see how the fans may be disappointed by this news…
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🎮 Skate Reboot will hit Early Access next year
It’s been a while since we’ve had a good skating simulator, don’t you think? I don’t know how I missed it in the first place, but apparently EA is getting ready to release the new Skate in 2025 via Early Access.
A few days ago the official Skate account on X added a post that the devs are “incredibly stoked” to announce that the reboot is launching via Early Access in 2025. The devs didn’t share any other details beyond that, but did promise “more” information about Skate’s Early Access plans would be revealed in the “coming months.”
There’s also a short teaser!
The last time I played a game like that was back in the 2000s, it was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and it was incredibly fun. It’s not the 40 hours AAA game by any means (and I assume that this one is not as well), but it’s a really great way to spend a few hours doing flips and riding around the neighborhood on a board without a care in the world. I may even end up playing this stuff, depending on the price of course 😅
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 New Hybrid mandate from Ubisoft
It looks like the full-remote era is coming to an end. Recently Ubisoft announced a company-wide change of policy stating all the employees have to work from their local offices at least 3 days per week.
This was bound to happen and I think that a lot of companies will join this trend and I think it’s mostly ok. After working for almost 3 years from home, it’s great to be in the office again and work with people in person, but it’s a shame that the companies can’t motivate people without resorting to mandates…
🎮 Co-founder of Blizzard is about to reveal a new game
Some time ago in 2020, Mike Morhaine (one of the co-founders of Blizzard) founded a new studio called Dreamheaven and now it not only has more than 100 employees, but it’s preparing to unveil the first internally developed project.
On the future of Dreamhaven’s titles, Morhaime originally said:
The size of these games probably are not going to be the size of a Blizzard game. But the quality bar we’re trying to hit is still there. We’re trying to still put out high-quality, polished games that people can love and enjoy and share with their friends.
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
and the recent episode of news on theEven though we are kind of writing about the same things, it’s always great to read someone’s different perspective. Also, with the amount of news coming up every day, it’s hard to actually keep track of all of them (let alone write about them). So, it’s great to have people like
who could help me (and hopefully you) to keep up with the industry!😄 Personal Update
This week was the calmest in months, so I had a lot of time to reflect on a lot of different topics including the community and in general my journey on Substack.
So, I’ll post a short update on the matter on Sunday!
Other than that, I’ve started thinking about advice that I got when I first joined my current company from one of the industry veterans. “If you want to get better as a Producer and Game Developer, start making games!” I’ve been so busy with my day-to-day that I completely ignored this one just because for a person who has 0 skills in art or programming, it sounds like a very unrealistic thing to do. But I’m confident that if other people did it, so could I. That’s why I started another list of ideas about some of the games that I always wanted to make and I want to start making them whenever I’m not busy writing, playing or working 😅
Which is probably a very short amount of time, but hey, the hardest part is always the first step, right?
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
Only 15% of Diablo's earnings were from micro-transactions? Not sure if that is good. I've totally fallen off the wagon with this one. It really ran out of steam for me.
I am always excited for the new Battlefield. Am I expecting an extremely buggy launch? Yes, of course. That is just how those battlefield games always are. If they actually release a finished product, I will be floored.