Just how much money has been pledged to game projects so far on Kickstarter? According to data released by the popular crowd funding platform, right around $107.6 million. Since the site's launch four years ago, more than 633,242 backers have pledged to over 4,500 Games projects, nearly 1,000 of these were pledged to in the last year.
With 18 more days to go, Richard Garriott's Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues has surpassed its $1 million funding goal. With that challenge out of the way, Garriott and his studio Portalarium have added a few stretch goals. As of right now, the Kickstarter has generated $1,031,716 from nearly 15,000 backers.
Richard Garriott's Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is within striking distance of being fully funded. The campaign has generated $905,628 of the $1 million in funding it needs, and a new announcement today from his studio Portalarium will likely put it over the required threshold.
Microsoft, who is not all that good at adding free-to-play games to its Xbox Live service for Xbox 360 (there are only a couple at this point), is probably happy that it allowed the free-to-play and kid-friendly MOBA game Happy Wars to launch on the platform in October of last year. As of today the game has been downloaded over 2 million times, according to maker Toylogic. While the game is completely free to download and play, players can purchase "Happy tickets" with real money to upgrade equipment and buy vanity items.
InXile has managed to raise over $2.1 million dollars in just a few short days for its spiritual sequel to the hit RPG Planescape: Torment. Initially the company was looking to raise $900,000, but that number was surpassed in the first six hours of the crowd funding campaign. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game based on designer and writer Monte Cook's new tabletop role-playing game, Numenera. The game will be distributed DRM-free for Windows (PC), Mac, and Linux and will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.
inXile raised millions with its first Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2, and within six hours of launching its latest crowd-funding campaign for the spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, it has hit its goal of $900,000. It looks like they'll be spending the next 30 days left in the campaign to come up with crazy stretch goals. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game, and a sort-of spiritual successor to Interplay / Black Isle Studios hit CRPG Planescape: Torment.
CCP Games announced that its long-running subscription-based sci-fi MMO EVE Online has surpassed the 500,000 subscriber mark worldwide for the first time in the game’s history. The milestone is a major one in the game's ten years of operation and follows the December 4 release of EVE Online: Retribution, the game’s 18th free expansion. CCP says that this latest expansion is its most successful ever. Also in December, EVE Online relaunched in China with new partner Tiancity to bring the game to a massive new audience where it has been thriving ever since.
Free-to-play mobile game Puzzle & Dragons from Japanese developer and publisher GungHo Online Entertainment supposedly generated around $65 million during January - or about $2 million dollars a day. These startling sales figures come from data collected by Japanese industry consultant Serkan Toto, who reports that the puzzle and RPG hybrid title has generated around $65 million in sales on iOS and Android in Japan last month.
Rovio's Angry Birds Trilogy has sold over one million copies worldwide, according to developer Rovio and publisher Activision. The duo also announced that the game would be coming to the Wii U and Wii later this year.
Angry Birds Trilogy was released in September 2012 for Xbox 360 with Kinect support, PlayStation 3 with Move support and Nintendo 3DS. The compilation offers three games - Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio, along with extra content such as additional levels, added features and brand new interactive backgrounds and spiffy new animations.
Kill Screen Daily points out some inspiring news for gamers in general and for Legend of Zelda fans in particular: Dark Horse Comics and Nintendo's collaborative hardcover book on the history of Hyrule, "The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia," is the top selling book on Amazon and has managed to top the
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Microsoft announced that worldwide sales of its Kinect motion sensing peripheral have hit 24 million, matching sales of the original Xbox system and outpacing the 21.7 million GameCube's sold by Nintendo. The company also said that it has sold 76 million Xbox 360 systems worldwide to-date.
Introversion's tiered pre-order idea for its upcoming Prison Architect game seems to have paid off a great amount of dividends for the popular indie British studio. The company behind such hits as Uplink, DEFCON, Darwinia, and Multiwinia says that it has sold 30,333 pre-orders, generating $1,019,265. The company accomplished this by offering different tiers much like the rewards you might find attached to a Kickstarter campaign.
No doubt Activision is delighted that over 100 million Skylanders toys have been sold across the United States. The company announced the milestone at the Toy Fair 2013, reports Destructoid. Activision says that the Skylanders franchise (Skylanders and Skylanders Giants) across all platforms has generated over $500 million since its launch in 2011.
Ubisoft announced that it has shipped well over 12 million units of Assassin's Creed 3 and well over 4.5 million units of Far Cry 3. That number includes all platforms the games are available on - as well as digital sales of both games. Ubisoft's total sales for Assassin's Creed 3 have now passed the 12 million mark worldwide, while Far Cry 3 sales are up over 4.5 million units, the French publisher announced today in its third-quarter financial report.
According to data from IT24.se, Mojang generated revenue of nearly $240 million in 2012, with $100 million of that cash coming from license fees. Mojang's only product is the ultra popular Minecraft, though it is available on Xbox Live, PC, and mobile devices (iOS, Android). The information comes from Thomas Arnroth, a Swedish author who is writing a book about Mojang called "A Year With Mojang: Minecraft Behind The Scenes."
No one can deny that PlayJam's Kickstarter campaign for its GameStick Android console has proven successful, though not as successful as that other Android-based console Ouya. The Kickstarter campaign closed with $647,658 - $547,658 more than it was seeking with its original goal of $100,000 (the Ouya closed with nearly $8.6 million raised).
Temple Run 2 has been downloaded over 50 million times on iOS, Android and Kindle devices, according to developer Imangi Studios. The latest game from Imangi Studios reached that milestone in just 13 days, breaking the previously set record for the fastest growing mobile game (Angry Birds held the previous record with 50 million downloads in 35 days in April of 2012).
As part of an update to reveal what they have been up to since the release of the Legend of Grimrock (including a release of an editor that allowed players to make mods for the game - 450 are available as part of Steam Workshop as of this writing), developer Almost Human revealed that its game has sold over 600,000 copies since its release. Of course much of the success of the old-school first-person RPG had to do with being included in the pay-what-you-want DRM-free Humble Indie Bundle 7.
ArenaNet's Colin Johanson says that the popular online-focused RPG Guild Wars 2 has managed to sell over three million copies since it was released and launched in August of 2012. He made the announcement as part of an update on the game's official site detailing what new content the company plans to bring to Guild Wars 2 players in the next few months.
The very first game to be classified under the new Australian video games ratings classification of R18+ is Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge for Wii U. Prior to the new rating - which went into effect officially on January 1, 2013 - games with the kind of content that Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge contains would be refused classification and would effectively be prohibited from being sold in the country.
Organizers of the game-related charity Child's Play announced that more than $5 million has been raised in 2012, making it the biggest year for the charity to-date. In 2011 Child's Play managed to raise $3.5 million. A representative for the charity thanked event organizers, volunteers, and participants in various charity drives for their hard work and dedication to achieve this new milestone.
Runic Games has hit a milestone with its PC isometric action RPG, Torchlight II: one million sales. A tweet from the official Runic Games Twitter account revealed the milestone.
"We had an amazing 2012, and proud to say that Torchlight2 has sold over one million units! Thank you! Happy New Year's Eve everyone :)," Runic Games confirmed.
Humble Indie Bundle 7 has broken another milestone this week - surpassing the $2 million sales mark. As of this writing, the pay-what-you-want DRM-free bundle has made $2,174,171.12 from the sale of 332,411 bundles. Yesterday organizers of the bundle added three new games: The Basement Collection, Cave Story+, and Offspring Fling - for those willing to pay more than the average price.
Mojang's popular world building game franchise Minecraft had a wonderful Christmas / holiday season, according to tweets from company co-founder and Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson. According to Notch, the company sold 453,000 copies of the game across all platforms during the Christmas season.
"Across all platforms, Minecraft sold 453k copies on dec 24! Wowzers! <3," he tweeted.
He corrected himself in a follow-up tweet shortly thereafter:
According to a Famitsue report (by way of The Verge) Sony has halted shipments of its ultra popular PlayStation 2 game console in Japan. The last generation console has sold over 150 million units worldwide since its launch in Japan on March 4th, 2000 and is the most popular home console of all time.
The Android-based console that took Kickstarter by storm and captured the attention of the online gaming community has started to show up on developers' doorsteps. The $99 Ouya raised $8.6 million on Kickstarter. Today the creators of the system started shipping 1,200 consoles to developers (or those who pledged money at the developer level reward tier). Developers who want to play games on the system can get started with the system's SDK.
Developers who didn't get the special Ouya console can also access the Ouya SDK (ODK) online under a free Apache license.
While we're not sure if it will ultimately sway the publisher and developer of Dark Souls II, we applaud the efforts of the people behind a petition on Change.org, who managed to get 10,000 signatures on a petition asking From Software and publisher Namco Bandai to bring the game to the Wii U.
According to new data from MediaCreate on sales in Japan for the week of Dec. 3 - 9, the Nintendo 3DS has sold more units to-date than the PlayStation 3. The 3-D enabled hand-held system managed to do this in the region in less than two years to boot.
Lifetime sales of the 3DS came in at 8,799,378, beating out the PS3 which came in at lifetime sales of 8,716,260 units in Japan. The PS3 has been on the market in Japan for six years. In terms of sales in Japan for the week, the Wii U came in on top at 308,142, followed by the 3DS at 211,499, and the PS3 at 36,994.
With just one hour remaining before close, the Humble THQ Bundle has managed to break the $5 million mark off the sale of almost 870,000 bundles. The average price paid for this Windows-only pay-what-you-want bundle currently sits at $5.67. In case you missed previous stories on this particular bundle, the Humble THQ Bundle contains Red Faction: Armageddon, Darksiders, Metro 2033, Company of Heroes, Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, Saints Row The Third, and several game soundtracks.
Valve's digital distribution platform Steam has hit a major milestone, according to data found on the service's statisitics page. According to the data found there Steam recorded a record 6 million concurrent users over the weekend - up from the last record of five million concurrent users in January of this year. The exact peak simultaneous user figure was 6,046,314 at around noon we assume PT) on November 25.
Technogeek: If the developer were male there wouldn't have been a "conversation" in the first place.10/19/2014 - 2:27am
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Monte: trolls are just at their absolute worst when it comes to women and feminist. You could bet good money that if the developer were male the trolls would be silent and the conversation would actually focus on the journalism.10/18/2014 - 9:18pm
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Monte: Papa: Not the first time we've had a journalism scandals before, but the harassment never got close to this level; the difference with this scandal is that feminists are involved. Without the feminist angle, their would be A LOT less harrassment10/18/2014 - 9:15pm
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Papa Midnight: Monte: That's honestly rather short-sighted. As has been proven with other persons who have been targeted, if it wasn't Quinn, it would be someone else.10/18/2014 - 6:26pm
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Avalongod: I think that's part of what gives an esoteric news story like this real life...it taps into a larger narrative about misogyny in society outside of games.10/18/2014 - 3:29pm
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Avalongod: @Monte, well the trolls made death threats that came to police (and media attention). I think this is tapping into a larger issue outside of games about how women are treated in society (like all the "real rape" stuff during the last election)10/18/2014 - 3:28pm
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Wonderkarp: Zippy : Havent tried the PS4 controller. might later.10/18/2014 - 2:37pm
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Monte: Seirously, If Quinn was not involved and GG was instead about something like the Mordor Marketing contracts, the trolling would have never grown so vile and disgusting. There have been plenty of movements in the past that never sufferred from behavior..10/18/2014 - 1:57pm
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Monte: We have seen scandel's before but the trolling has never been as vile as what we see with GG. Trolls usually have such a tiny voice you can barely notice them, but its like moths to a flame whenever femistist are involved.10/18/2014 - 1:53pm
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ZippyDSMlee: Wonderkarp: You might be able to if you had a PS4 controller.10/18/2014 - 1:00pm
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MaskedPixelante: http://store.steampowered.com/app/327940/ Night Dive starts charging for freeware.10/18/2014 - 12:21pm
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Matthew Wilson: the sad thing is there are trolls on both sides of this. people need to stop acting like their side is so pure.10/18/2014 - 12:19pm
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MechaTama31: So, only speak out on a scandal that hasn't attracted trolls? I wouldn't hold my breath...10/18/2014 - 10:49am
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Monte: I feel like GG just needs to die. The movement is FAR to tainted by hatred and BS for it to be useful for any conversation. Let GG die, and then rally behind the NEXT gaming journalism scandal, and start the conversation fresh.10/18/2014 - 10:33am
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quiknkold: and we dont have a Dovakin to call a cease fire10/17/2014 - 7:37pm
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quiknkold: The whole thing is Futile. Both sides are so buried deep in their trenchs that there isnt a conversation. Its just Finger Pointing, Name Calling, Doxxing, Threats. there needs to be a serious conversation, and GG isnt it.10/17/2014 - 7:37pm
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quiknkold: I thought it was a good article. Jeff is right. I feel like GamerGate did destroy its message. I am for Ethics in game journalism, but man. so much hate. and its on both sides. I've seen some awful stuff spewed on twitter. Its a big reason why I exited..10/17/2014 - 7:34pm
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Matthew Wilson: while he focused on gg, he did call out both sides crap.10/17/2014 - 7:18pm
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Papa Midnight: That was a damn good read offered by Jeff Gertsmann.10/17/2014 - 7:17pm
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Matthew Wilson: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/letter-from-the-editor-10-17-2014/1100-5049/ deferentially a nice write up.10/17/2014 - 6:44pm
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