Call of Duty, CD Projekt, Dontnod: the business news of the week

Game news Call of Duty, CD Projekt, Dontnod: the business news of the week

Call of Duty: Activision Franchise $ 400 million in sales

The Call of Duty license seems stronger than ever. It has passed more than 400 million copies since his birth in 2003That puts it ahead of franchisees like Pokémon and FIFA that have the 368 million and 325 million games sold. In May 2019That said, around 300 million sales were made prior to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Black Ops Cold War, and Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered. Activision no longer says anything about Call of Duty “Premium” individual performance and prefers to release some numbers for free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone, which has had 100 million players since its launch in March 2020. Including Call of Duty: Mobile, developed by Tencent, the Call of Duty ecosystem had sales of $ 3 billion in 2020. The 2021 episode has not yet been revealed by Activision, but there is talk of a return in World War II.

To also read: From 2003 to the present, Call of Duty rose to be the king of the mainstream FPS

Dontnod returns to profit

2020 was a rich year for Dontnod. The Paris studio released Tell Me Why in August and Twin Mirror in December. Two new storytelling games that did not contribute to the company’s sales increase (13.5 million dollars compared to 13.9 million dollars in 2019), but the The net profit is positive again (949,000 dollars compared to a loss of 86,000 in 2019). Dontnod’s cash position was $ 21.2 million at the end of 2020, before $ 50 million was raised in January 2021, boosted by the stake ($ 30 million) of Chinese giant Tencent. “We are starting this new year with significantly increased financial resources in order to accelerate our ambitious development plan.”, commented CEO Oskar Guilbert. Dontnod has no fewer than “six original creations” in the works, including five self-published and one in co-production with Focus Home Interactive, which will be released between 2022 and 2025. A cast that is reinforced by a seventh game from the Danish studio PortaPlay, which is co-produced and edited by the French company. The company currently employs more than 250 people in France, excluding members from the Montreal office opened last year. Dontnod’s full annual report is available here.

CD Projekt takes stock of its 2020

With 468 million dollars in sales and 253 million dollars in net profit2020 was by far the greatest year in its history for CD Projekt Annual reviewThe Polish company reveals that Cyberpunk 2077 sales were 13.7 million copies as of December 31stof which 7.67 million on the PC, 3.84 million on the PS4 and 2.33 million on the Xbox One. We also learn that the game was developed by a team of 530 CD project developers who know a total of 5,200 people contributed to this project, including the The total budget is 263 million dollars, making it one of the most expensive games in history. CD Projekt did not comment on the sales dynamics in the first months of 2021. The studio has considered approximately 30,000 claims as part of its game reimbursement program costing $ 1.8 million. ‘Euro. This without taking into account the refunds made directly by Sony (reminding us that the game has been withdrawn from the PS Store), Microsoft and the various resellers around the world.

CD Projekt reiterated its desire to “bring Cyberpunk 2077 to a level that anyone can enjoy, regardless of platform” by providing patches, additional content and the PS5 and Xbox Series optimized version planned for the second half of 2021 become , The Witcher franchise has exceeded 50 million sales, including more than 30 million for The Witcher 3. The latter had the second best sales year after the release (2015). It will also be eligible for a “next gen” version – with a free upgrade – in the second half of 2021. The license will also be discussed with the mobile game The Witcher: Monster Slayer scheduled for summer season 2 of the Netflix series End of year. Let’s finish with a mention about GOG.com, CD Projekt’s PC game store, which also had its best year in 2020 with 75 million dollars and a net profit of 4.5 million dollars. 10% of Cyberpunk 2077 PC sales were made on GOG.com.

Focus Home Interactive in the Streum On studio

Following the acquisition of Deck13 (The Surge) last June, Focus Home Interactive acquired – for an unspecified amount – of studio francilien Streum On. This team of around twenty employees is based in Nogent-sur-Marne specialized in FPS Since its inception in 2007. She first signed EYE: Divine Cybermancy (2011) before partnering with Focus Home Interactive in 2013, which resulted in the creation of Space Hulk: Deathwing (2016) and Necromunda: Hired Gun, which will be released on June 1st . “We share a common vision and our collaboration has always been very efficient and fruitful. Our goal is to offer players ever more ambitious and spectacular titles and we are convinced that Focus Home Interactive is the ideal partner to continue our development together.”, commented Pierrick Le Nestour, President of Streum On. For its part, Focus Home Interactive confirms that it is entering the acquisition race and states that it is “in active discussion with many studios”. Recall that the French publisher gave several of its partners (Cyanide, Spiders, Passtech) into the hands of its competitor Nacon / Bigben, while Giants Software emancipated itself and decided to license the future work to the lucrative Farming Simulator license publish.

Focus Home Interactive was carried out for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021 Record sales of 171 million dollars compared to 143 million dollars in the previous year. The company is pleased with the success of new titles such as SnowRunner, Curse of the Dead Gods and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, but also with the “strength” of its previous catalog, which has grown by 60% over the previous year. Focus Home Interactive is now preparing to launch Hood: Outlaws & Legends (May 10th), Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground (May 27th), Necromunda: Hired Gun (June 1st) and Evil West (late 2021) in front. . In addition, The publisher will announce three more major titles at E3 in June and the Game Awards in December. It has already been confirmed that projects with Dontnod (Life is Strange) and Asobo Studio (A Plague Tale: Innocence) are in the works.

Discord: End of the Microsoft buyout negotiations

Discord won’t end up being bought by Microsoft or any other company, at least in the near future. A month after the mention of discussions on the subject, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters agree that the platform with 140 million users should no longer be bought up, but should go public, even if an offer of more than 10 billion dollars was mentioned. Discord was launched in 2015 and has seen an exploding number of users since the health crisis began. This brought the young Californian company Discord Inc to sales of 130 million dollars in 2020 (up from 45 million dollars in 2019) by using the Discord Nitro paid subscription.

Briefly in the week’s business news

• It takes two is a huge success. The co-op game by Studio Hazelight and Josef Fares was released on March 26th already sold a million units.
• While it celebrated its third anniversary yesterday, the management game Frostpunk surpassed the bar three million sales, announced 11-bit studios.
• Spiritfarer was released in August 2020 500,000 copies soldknowing it is also available in Xbox Game Pass. Thunder Studio Lotus Games hosted the Lily update to celebrate this milestone.
• Japanese independent show BitSummit will return on September 2-3, 2021. Streams with live announcements, gameplay sessions and panels are planned.
• Mario Kart Tour generated $ 200 million since its launch in September 2019 on iOS and Android according to estimates by Sensor tower. It also has more than 200 million downloads.
• The Epic Games Store is now offering Download third-party appslike the Brave browser, the core software for game creation and the itch.io indie game store.

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