Bucharest Games

?? Hi, Tibi here, hope you're having a great day!

Welcome to the #18 edition of the Game Vibe Weekly Newsletter!

This newsletter is created out of passion for video games and industry news. The intention is to share weekly trends, business insights and top performing games, all in a nice format, and build a vibrant community together.

Happy reading!

?? Vibe of the Day

Let's start the day with a song.

My recommendation is The All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret, on Youtube or Spotify , featured in the iconic Rock Band and in Fortnite Festival 2023.

Feeling the vibes?

?? Highlights

• Amazon opens new game studio in Bucharest.
• Gameloft closes the studio in Cluj-Napoca.
• Microsoft will integrate AI into games.
• The Gaming Market in 2023 made $183.9 billion.
• Experience the vibe of Dev.Play Conference 2024!
• Honor of Kings is going global.
• Helldivers II sold 12 million copies in 3 months.
• And lots of goodies inside the newsletter.

?? Interesting

• Amazon opens new game studio in Bucharest as its first studio in Europe, led by former Ubisoft managing director Cristian Pana . As of the moment of writing this there are 26 open roles . Grab them while they're hot! ??
• Sony names 2 new CEOs at PlayStation. Hermen Hulst at Studio Business Group, which includes all of PlayStation’s first-party teams and Hideaki Nishino at Platform Business Group, which includes console hardware, technology, accessories, PlayStation Network and third-party relations. They will succeed Jim Ryan.
• Gameloft has decided to close the studio in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, opened 15 years ago, and to fire all 136 employees. After the information surfaced in the media, Gameloft announced that it intends to keep the studio in Bucharest, "which remains an important asset and is working on projects."
• Microsoft announced the Proteus Controller, a $299 modular wireless controller of small cubes with interchangeable faceplates. It lets Xbox gamers with disabilities customize their controllers. I think I might even try it, seems ergonomical.

• In the United States, 61% of Americans ages 5-90 play video games at least one hour each week, that means 190 million. The average player is 36 years old, and the average adult player has been playing for 17 years. How long have you being playing games for?
• Larian Studios, developer of Baldur's Gate 3 created a new studio in Warsaw, Poland. Larian now operates seven studios across Barcelona, Dublin, Gent, Guildford, Quebec, Kuala Lumpur, and Warsaw. That's some encouraging news for the industry!
• "For the foreseeable future, 100 percent of the net revenue from Immortals of Aveum purchases goes directly to our studio," the company Ascendant Studios said, meaning that EA, the parent company will not get any revenue .
• Microsoft has revealed that it will integrate AI into games, showing a demo within Minecraft where the AI helps the player.
• Did you know that you can play Steam games in a parked Tesla car? Well, Tesla is dropping support for Steam in its cars.
• Disney will allow Fortnite creators to make “Disney-themed gaming experiences” through its new games and entertainment universe. This is huge!

?? Business

• Take-Two, maker of GTA 5, revealed its fiscal report for 2023. The annual net bookings increased to $5.33 billion and GAAP net losses of $3.74 billion.
• Newzoo lowered its forecast for the Gaming Market in 2023 from $187.7 billion to $183.9 billion.

• Sony's full-year financial results show net sales of $72.2 billion, up 12% year-on-year. They also managed to ship 20.8 million PlayStation 5 units. That's a lot of PS5 consoles.
• In the fiscal year 2024, Nintendo sold 15.7 million Switch units.
• Tencent, which owns Supercell, Riot, plus large chunks of Epic Games, Ubisoft and others, made $6.7 billion in Q1 2024.
• Serbia's top 15 most successful games companies totaled $190 million in 2023, up 17% year-on-year.
• The cofounders of Playrix, brothers Igor and Dmitry Bukhman are the 27th richest people in the UK, with an estimated personal fortune of over ￡6.3 billion. Amazing, congrats on that!
• Mobile net bookings during Take-Two’s fiscal year 2024 were $2.76 billion, up on 2023’s total of $2.5 billion.

• The Japanese publisher Bandai Namco reports record sales of $6.74 billion and saw full-year profit rise more than 12% to $651.4 million, but only $33.4 million on games.
• IGN Entertainment has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital brands for an undisclosed sum, including publications such as GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun.

??? Events

• Experience the vibe of Dev.Play Conference 2024! Dev.Play is a conference which takes place annually in Bucharest, being organized and managed by the Romanian Game Developers Association . This year they host some great talks on the state of the industry, leading creative teams, mobile F2P distribution, investments and a great after party. Make sure you grab your ticket . The event takes place June 3-4 in Bucharest, Romania. Don't miss your chance to network. Are you going?

?? The winners of the giveaway are announced at the end of the newsletter!

• Connect at HGC Barcelona 2024 with over 500 industry leaders from more than 45 countries in the gaming market, including UA/Ad Monetization, Publishing, and Development sectors, on June 22-23. Are you going to beautiful Barcelona?
• Summer Game Fest is around the corner with Xbox, PlayStation, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Sega, WB Games, and Ubisoft. They will take part in the 2 hour showcase on June 7.

?? Mobile

• Solo Leveling is at #1 top downloads and making a big push to #6 top revenue, nearly overtaking Monopoly Go. Royal Match is still #1 in revenue.

• Last War: Survival Game is the new #2 Top Revenue game, and Candy Crush pushes past Monopoly Go.
• MOBA game Honor of Kings, a success in China, is coming to global markets on June 20th. First launched in 2015, the game has generated $15.6 billion in lifetime revenue on China's App Store.
• Squad Busters hits a new milestone with an incredible 30 million pre-registrations before global launch, one week after the 20 million milestone. Amazing!
• New games that are launching soon include Rainbow Six Mobile, The Division Resurgence, EA Sports FC Tactical, a new puzzle-RPG themed Game of Thrones: Legends and Battle Guys: Royale.

• GTA: San Andreas is by the biggest Netflix game downloaded so far. The chart also gives a good reference on how many people are playing games on Netflix.

• Zombie.io, a new game from the same publisher of Legend of Mushroom, is probably spending $100-150k/day, based on the number of UA channels and creatives with around $200k/day revenue, according to Matej ?? Lancaric .
• RetroArch is the biggest name in console emulation to hit the App Store so far and you can play with Frogger across the road, or beat your buddy at Mario Kart.

?? PC & Console

• Helldivers II sold 12 million copies in 3 months, surpassing God of War: Ragnarok with 11 million copies in 3 months. Now that's a mighty achievement!
• Medieval city-builder Manor Lords has sold over 2 million copies in under three weeks. Wow!
• Game sales in Europe reached 10.5 million in April, 6.2% less than in April 2023.

• In the last edition , I spoke about Helldivers 2 being delisted on Steam after Sony's controversial PSN account linking requirement caused backlash. The game is relisted again in a few countries such as American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• The popular RPG franchise Fallout is going to be added into Fortnite. Makes sense for Epic to ride another wave, right? I love the announcement.

• Hades II is out in Early Access and it's performing well with 94% positive reviews out of 33k. Derek Lieu broke down it's release trailer so you can learn from the best what to do in your launch trailer.

• Ubisoft has ended development of The Division Heartland, the free-to-play game set in the universe of Tom Clancy’s The Division.
• Little Kitty, Big City reaches 1 million players on Xbox Game Pass. Congrats to the kitty and Double Dagger Studio !

??? Podcasts

Any podcasts lovers here? I got you!

• Curious to see what a path from an employee to a $1.5 million solopreneur looks like? Experience Matej ?? Lancaric solopreneur journey in his own words together with Michail Katkoff .

• Not an actual podcast, but it's 2 hours of Mark Brown with a list of the 100 games that most helped him to learn about game design. Did I mention that Fraggy Road (our first game) was made in the GMTK Game Jam 2023? In just 2 days!

?? Cool Stuff

• This week's best of Blender artists made me nostalgic of Romania in the 90's. I remember these type of buses when I was growing up. Check out the rest of the illustrations collected by Bart Veldhuizen , they're beautiful!

• Baldur's Gate 3 fan creates a working playable mysterious artefact controller from a 3D printer.

?? Giveaway Winners

A week ago Dev.Play Conference partnered with me to do a giveaway with FULL PASS tickets to the conference in Bucharest this June.

And the winners are Amira K ., Aniela Ariton , Alexandru-Mihai Stan and Petrica Simion .

Congratulations and see you at Dev.Play 2024!

P.S. If you were recently laid off from the games industry, Dev.Play has 60 tickets for free. Reach out to them and connect with your future opportunities.

?? Game 2 Play

Meet Xzibit and the Crew in Chrome Valley Customs. This partnership is crazy good and a real Match-3! Help save the garage by restoring classic cars to their former glory. Congratulations to the team at Space Ape Games and here's the announcement post by Bryan Cindell .

You can give the game a try on Android and iOS . But watch out, it's addictive!

?? You're Awesome!

Wow, you've made it to the end!

I hope you found this newsletter fun and interesting!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Reach out if you’d like to collaborate on anything.

Have a great day!

Tibi