‘Ready Player One’ to Storm Domestic Box Office With $53 Million
Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” will take over the domestic box office during Easter weekend with $53 million from 4,234 locations.
The VR-fantasy film starring Tye Sheridan launched a day early on Thursday after Warner Bros. decided to move up the release to take advantage of the vacation-friendly Easter holiday. With the added day, “Ready Player One” will come out more than $30 million ahead of the No. 2 film, “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony,” which is set to reel in roughly $16 million from 2,006 sites.
“Ready Player One” grossed $17 million on Friday, ahead of early forecasts, which had pegged the pic at around $38 million to $42 million for the Thursday through Sunday period. The film also opened day and date in 62 international markets, and earned roughly $28 million Friday for a foreign total of $42 million. In China, “Ready Player One” debuted at No. 1 with $14 million on Friday for a 60% box office share, marking the third-highest Chinese debut for a Warner Bros. film. Estimates for Saturday place the film’s take from China alone at $25.2 million.
Based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel, “Ready Player One” is set both in a dystopian version of Columbus, Ohio in 2045 and in an elaborate virtual reality world called Oasis, popular because it enables residents to escape the grim reality of their actual world. The film, written by Cline and Zak Penn, also stars Olivia Cooke, Lena Waithe, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance. The sci-fi movie is sitting at a 76% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has received a A- CinemaScore.
Lionsgate’s “Acrimony” ended Friday with $7.26 million, with $1 million from Thursday previews, and has received an A- CinemaScore. The thriller stars Taraji P. Henson as a woman scorned and out for vengeance. Perry’s last film, “Boo 2!” made $7.4 million between Thursday previews and its opening day.
In third at the box office is Disney-Marvel’s record-breaking “Black Panther” in its seventh weekend with $11 million. The film has amassed over $1.2 billion worldwide and is the fifth-highest domestic grosser of all time, roughly $13 million behind 2015’s “Jurassic World.” This weekend’s take will narrow that gap, and the film will likely become the fourth-highest-grossing domestic film of all time in the coming weeks.
Roadside Attractions’ “I Can Only Imagine” slipped one spot from last weekend to land in No. 4 with a still solid $10 million. With the addition of this weekend’s total, the film will have earned over $50 million in North America. Starring J. Michael Finlay and Dennis Quaid, the film tells the story behind the best-selling Christian single of all time, MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine.” The surprise box office hit added another 395 theaters to its range to take advantage of Easter weekend.
Sliding from its No. 1 opening weekend is Universal’s “Pacific Rim Uprising” in the fifth place spot with around $9 million from 3,708 sites. The number marks a 67% decline from the film’s premiere weekend — 2013’s “Pacific Rim” dropped by 57% between its first two weekends. Starring John Boyega, “Uprising” sees a new generation of fighters facing the supernatural Kaiju monsters. The film is at a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 53% Audience Score and B CinemaScore. Following the model set by its predecessor, “Uprising” has seen stronger numbers internationally, where it has earned over $120 million for a global tally of more than $160 million.
Other Easter-timed films include Sony-Affirm’s “Paul, Apostle of Christ,” which opened last weekend at 1,473 sites and should bring in $3.5 million through Sunday for a total of $11.6 million. Pureflix’s “God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness” will open to just over $3 million at 1,693 theaters.
‘Ready Player One’ to Storm Domestic Box Office With $53 Million
Watch this AI figure out how to place blocks in Minecraft
Artificial intelligence doesn’t compare favorably to humans when it comes to problem solving. Ask any eight year old child to place a few blocks on a grid in Minecraft and they’ll almost certainly be bored by the task. A computer, on the other hand, doesn’t grasp such difficult concepts so easily.
Stephan Alaniz, a researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Technische Universitat Berlin, yesterday published a white paper titled “Deep Reinforcement Learning with Model Learning and Monte Carlo Tree Search in Minecraft.” In his paper the scientist explains his efforts to create a superior method for training an AI to perform simple tasks based on visual input.
If we’re ever going to have robots that can live and work among humans seamlessly without damaging us or our property they’re going to have to understand how to interact with the environment using visual context. One of the most popular ways to train AI for this task is using video games with simple controls.
We can judge an AI’s effectiveness at completing specific tasks in a structured environment, like Minecraft, by comparing it to human efforts.
Watching the above video, it’s apparent that AI – even one that’s shown to be more effective than other agents trained to perform similar tasks – isn’t very good at doing simple things yet. But developing cutting-edge technology takes time — though advances in machine learning techniques are happening at a terrifying pace.
Future research will drive training times down, effectiveness up, and generate new ideas for algorithms that further blur the lines between artificial and human intelligence.
But for now, it’s interesting enough to watch an AI process hundreds of different moves as it tries to figure out a simple block placing challenge in Minecraft. It might be worth remembering, in the future, how simple these things were when they began learning.
The Next Web’s 2018 conference is just a few months away, and it’ll be 💥💥. Find out all about our tracks here.
Keywords acquired 11 game services firms in 2017 as external development grows
You may not have heard about Keywords before, but it has become a big player behind the scenes in external game development. Headed by CEO Andrew Day, the company acquired 11 game development services companies in 2017. It has amassed more than 5,000 employees
Keywords was founded as a game localization company in 1998 in London, and it went public in 2013. It now has facilities in 42 locations in 20 countries and four continents. The company provides just about any services for games, including art, engineering, audio, localization, player support, and game testing.
The biggest game companies use Keywords to launch their games in multiple languages on the same day across the globe. It tests those games to make sure that they work properly across platforms and regions. In November 2017, it acquired Seattle-based VMC Consulting, which was the biggest North American company testing video games.
I caught up with Day at the recent Game Developers Conference to talk about the global market for game development. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Above: Keywords Studios CEO Andrew Day.
GamesBeat: Tell us about Keywords.
Andrew Day: What Keywords is today isn’t what Keywords was. We started as a localization company, actually, localizing business software. Then, as games started to be localized, we found a niche for our services where we could marry the highly creative, immersive localization of storytelling in games with a more tool-based localization that’s used in business software. We created a bit of a niche of ourselves.
We became specialized in language services for video games, both the translation and testing of video games. Video games are made simultaneously in multiple languages, unlike film and TV, where it’s sequentially produced. Games are particularly complex, and often very story-driven, very rich in content. Cultural adaptation for games is complex. It’s a very specialized skill set. That’s where we started.
We saw that the games market as a whole was very imbalanced and a little bit fragile. You have very large global publishers, and they’re relying on hundreds of small companies for outsource services, just like Keywords in the 2000s. It seemed very imbalanced. You don’t see that in other industries. Hundreds of small companies, country by country, service line by service line. We thought this couldn’t continue. There would have to be some consolidation. If you’re a large company and you want to act more strategically with outsource providers, there’s nobody to engage with, nobody of any scale or sophistication, with the business acumen and transparency and financial strength and so on.
We set ourselves up to lead the consolidation in the industry, bringing together all these capabilities, all this expertise, and making it available to our clients. None of what we do can we use ourselves. Everything we do is for our clients. When we’re buying another company, adding it to the Keywords family, we’re not taking that talent for ourselves. We make that talent available to all the video game companies out there.
We’re providing a framework, a financial backbone. We’re using our management tools to control what we’re doing so we can be efficient. High utilization rates. Decent levels of profitability. Good investment.
Above: Keywords develops across all platforms.
GamesBeat: How big are you now?
Day: We’re now 5,000 people around the world in 42 locations. We’re about a third in Asia, a third in North America, and a third in Europe. We have, for instance, about 700-800 people in China, 250 in Tokyo, 350 in Manila, and 500 in India. Here in North America we have about 900 people in the U.S., and then about 1,500 in Canada. The U.S. people are in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
GamesBeat: So even in some high-cost areas?
Day: Yes. What we do—we’re not an offshore outsourcing company. The skill sets are very specific to video games and to interactive content generally. It’s more about the skill than it is about finding low cost centers. You can’t find the talent. You can’t find people that can translate games into 30 languages in India. You have to be where the talent is. Also, where we can, we want to be near our clients.
We’re able to do a two-footed approach. We have one foot on the west coast and one foot in India or China, which helps manage communications, manage cultural expectations on things like art creation, and still get some benefit of lower costs. But it’s really not about cost so much. That’s important, but more important is the efficiency, getting it right the first time, and the overall service. If, through delivery of what we do, we put a lot of burden on the client side to manage it, it doesn’t add up.
GamesBeat: The platforms that are your most popular, are there any in the lead there?
Day: We’re agnostic to platform. About 30 percent of our business is on mobile and the rest is on PC and console. VR/AR is also an important component of what we do. But it’s really across the board. We don’t differentiate internally in terms of how we manage the business by hardware type. Obviously we’re investing in all the new hardware as it comes out so we can test and develop on it. We’re authorized by all the major platform holders to get development kits and test kits and so on.
Above: Keywords acquired 11 companies in 2017.
GamesBeat: I wrote a story about the people who made Cuphead out of Canada. They’re a small company, two dozen people at peak, and in the last six months they got into a deal with a company called Illogika and doubled the size of their team. It sounded like an emergency move, but not the usual way something like that would happen in your business.
Day: There’s all sorts of business in our business. There is the situation where a client’s got a problem and they need help and we can dig them out. But more of it is planned. We have reasonable visibility. Our clients share with us their slate of work for the coming year. They let us know what they want us to help them with so we can plan ahead a bit. That’s important for everyone.
The repeat business is very high. There’s a lot of trust in this. Games are very complex. Not many organizations out there have worked on these big games before. When you get into that highly agile process, which game development is, it doesn’t suit a lot of more structured companies. I can imagine, if you come from software services generally and you find yourself in the game space, you’d think, “My God, what is this about? I’ve never seen something quite so chaotic.”
GamesBeat: I’m reading Jason Schreier’s book right now.
Day: Yes, yes.
GamesBeat: He found a bunch of stories from game development, whether it’s Naughty Dog at 500 people or one guy making Stardew Valley for five years.
Day: Lots of different ways of cracking the same nut, potentially.
GamesBeat: A lot of crunch.
Day: Well, this is the other thing about the industry. The way I look at it, the industry has only been around for 30-odd years. When people started to make games they had to do everything themselves, internally, because there was no other way of doing it. A lot of our clients have built their business in that same mode. They haven’t had time to stop and think. “If I were starting this business today, would this be the way I’d build it?”
They describe themselves as publishers, but they actually have all the means for production as well. They’ve become very large organizations. There must be a lot of overhead in managing a large testing department, or a translation workflow where you’re dealing with 10 or 20 or 30 different vendors to make 20 different language versions of a game. People perpetuate those behaviors. You can understand, in part, why they do that.
But our whole idea is we’ve now created the scale and geographic reach such that, for those clients that want to, they can offload some of those activities on us and focus on what is strategically important to them, which is always about the IP, commercializing the IP and being able to tweak the player experience to make that better, more engaging, keep the player for longer. If you keep the player longer you have the chance of getting more revenue. The trend toward games as a service has been very fast, very demanding, adding a lot of complexity to our clients. One way they can manage some of this complexity is to offload some of the services side, which might now look like a distraction.
GamesBeat: Have you developed any technology on that front in the way that PlayFab or GameSparks did?
Day: We have some of our own tech. We’re always developing tools and stuff internally that enable us to handle assets better, to produce art audio pipelines that are more efficient, and automated testing.
GamesBeat: Is your focus more on the development side than running a game once it’s launched?
Day: Yeah, the live ops stuff—I would love to be more involved in data analytics and predictive analytics. What we do is player support. We have a large team of customer support people that are passionate gamers themselves, that can resolve a lot of issues on first-time contact with players on behalf of our customers. We have chat bots and stuff available to us as well where that makes sense. We can use a bit of AI and tech, but a lot of what we do is people-oriented. The technology that we adopt, such as machine translation and so on, that has a role to play, but ultimately, to make a really beautiful, compelling game, I don’t think you can get away from humans.
GamesBeat: Would Streamline Studios be another comparison, then?
Day: Yes, I know Streamline. They’re a competitor of ours in a single area. They would compete with us in art creation. We have more than a thousand artists working for most of the large game companies, creating art assets for their games. Some of that we go right into the fully integrated pipeline. We have access to the game engine and we can do all the animation and art delivery right into the engine. Some is it still more along the lines of, “Can you produce 300 characters?” And then the client integrates them. But increasingly we’re becoming more integrated in the production pipeline.
GamesBeat: It seems like there are some specialists out there in the space, like Scalefast. They handle that e-commerce section. And then there are the other live operations companies. It’s all a form of outsourcing, but in bits and pieces.
Day: Yeah, that’s the whole point. It’s all in bits and pieces. You get lots of small companies that are probably good at what they do, but it’s still quite hard for our clients, the big game companies, to partner with these small companies. For us, the ability to do—we have seven service lines, for art, engineering co-development, audio, functional testing, localization testing, translation, customer support.
Being able to do all of that scale to support triple-A games, the world’s leading mobile games—a lot of it is this relentless cadence of games as a service. That becomes really hard for people to do. But we’ve been living with that for a while now in the mobile side of the business.
GamesBeat: I remember that MZ had their real time translation process. They built a real time infrastructure for mobile games. I wonder how well that could work. Their goal was to have a worldwide game, with people talking to each other in real time across cultural lines.
Day: We work with MZ and do that translation for them and so on. I wouldn’t—it’s daily and weekly.
GamesBeat: It’s not that easy.
Day: No, it’s not something for machines. It depends what you’re doing. You can use machine translation for certain types of content, where it’s not about how enjoyable is so much as just being able to make it understood. If you have a really good machine translation engine, of which there are not many, you can make a lot of content understandable. But actually making it enjoyable is a completely different challenge. I think it’ll be a while before that sort of vision can become a reality, where you can take all content in real time and make it consumable in 20, 30, 40, 50 languages.
Above: Keywords has offices in the U.S. as well for external development.
GamesBeat: With localization you’d hope you could get there are some point. Kate Edwards always talks about the “culturalization” work she has to do, though.
Day: Yes, I know Kate. We live with that every single day. That’s exactly what our guys do. The colors that you choose, or the symbols you have on walls in the background, all of that. Our guys are experts at that. That’s part of our role, to try and prevent our clients from making gaffes.
GamesBeat: What kind of specialists do you have in that area?
Day: We have subject matter experts. Depending on what type of game it is, we’ll have people that understand the history of the game, the backdrop to the game, the specific nature of things like tanks or battleships or whatever is part of the game. If it’s a children’s game we’ll have different people working on that type of content compared to working on a shooter. It’s very adapted to the content itself. You can’t treat all content the same. It’s all very different.
Increasingly now, we’re able to develop—we can do full game development. We can do co-development projects, where somebody like Ubisoft has five of their own internal studios working on Assassin’s Creed Origins, and a Keywords studio working on that game as well. We can work alongside them doing one specific aspect of the game.
GamesBeat: I’ve talked to a few iOS developers here about the difficult of developing on both iOS and Android. They’re choosing to go first on iOS and then have someone else handle the Android version, because of the fragmentation of the Android hardware.
Day: We do quite a lot of that. It’s not just iOS and Android. It’s also PC to console or console to PC, or back catalog stuff that’s going to be remastered for current generations.
GamesBeat: Do you do a lot of work for Switch?
Day: Yeah, we do Switch ports as well. Obviously there’s a lot of interest in Switch, a lot of Switch porting going on. It’s a very large, very vibrant, very demanding environment out there. I think we’re going to continue to grow. We’re growing very strongly and organically, just from repeat business with our clients, getting a bit more share all the time as we prove ourselves.
Acquisitions are also a big part of the Keywords story. We acquired 11 companies last year. The year before that it was eight and the year before that it was another eight. This fragmentation is enormous. Companies like to be part of the Keywords family, where we can relieve some of the financial pressure of running your own business and bring a lot more work to their door. At the same time, our clients like it because we’re able to put some financial footing underneath these companies worldwide, making them more solid and more easy for our clients to trust and partner work in more engaging work.
Above: Keywords
GamesBeat: How are financial results?
Day: Our revenues for this year are expected to be round about $308 million (250 million euros). I have to be careful here. I think the consensus from the analysts is around $43 million (35 million euros) in profit margin. We’re publicly traded in London. But of course those numbers are before any acquisitions. Any acquisitions we make this year will affect those.
It’s interesting, when you try to look at Keywords and the trajectory. It’s quite hard to follow. When you’re making as many acquisitions as we make, you have to try to get to the underlying revenues and profits of the business, rather than just the publicly quoted figures. At least on a historic basis. Looking forward, the numbers that you see exclude the effect of acquisitions. You have to add however many, six to 10 acquisitions that we might make during the year.
The good thing about it is that everyone who’s sold their business to Keywords has made some money, but they’ve stayed at Keywords, and they’re probably working harder than they’ve ever worked before. It’s not because we’ve got any handcuffs on them. They’re enjoying it. It’s a very exciting place to be.
We’ve gotten to this point from just being one of these small service providers in a single geography. We employed 50 people and had revenues of 3.5 million euros. Now we have a market capitalization of more than a billion euros. It’s growing fast.
Keywords acquired 11 game services firms in 2017 as external development grows
I Still Can’t Believe Microsoft Spent $2.5 Billion to Acquire Minecraft
In 2014, $2.5 billion might have looked like a lofty price tag, but each passing year is proving that “Minecraft” is more than just a game.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is no stranger to acquisitions. The company has written big checks within the last decade in order to purchase assets like LinkedIn and Skype, but even with its history of big buyouts, the decision to acquire Minecraft and its developer Mojang for $2.5 billion is one that stands out.
Minecraft doesn’t have flashy visuals or huge action set pieces. What’s more, its underlying technology isn’t something that ties into Microsoft’s other segments, and shelling out $2.5 billion for a studio dedicated to the ongoing development of a game that first released in 2009 was a bold move. That’s especially true because Microsoft has a checkered history when it comes to video game related acquisitions. However, the more time passes since the deal, the more it looks like Microsoft made a smart move.
Image source: Microsoft.
The world of Minecraft
For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, the game is like a virtual sandbox. Players can create their own worlds, socialize, and explore content created by other users. It’s sort of like a virtual Lego experience mixed with elements of social media — and the game is enormously popular.
Minecraft had sold roughly 50 million copies when Microsoft acquired Mojang in 2014. Today, the title’s sales have passed 144 million units, the third most of any game ever — and it looks like there’s still a long sales life ahead.
Minecraft isn’t a fad. It’s become a fixture in the gaming world, a sort of genre and platform unto itself, and Mojang’s title continues to add to a long list of sales and engagement achievements.
The game currently stands as the second-best-selling paid app on iOS according to AppAnnie, and it’s putting up great sales on other platforms as well. Minecraft released on Nintendo’s 3DS portable console last November and was the system’s seventh-best-selling game for that month, its third-best-selling game in December, and its fifth-best-selling game in both January and February. The title was the eighth-best-selling Nintendo Switch game in 2017.
Minecraft merchandise and spinoff content have also proven to be hits, with themed bedding, clothing, toy lines, and a YouTube miniseries produced by Mattel representing just a small slice of what’s out there across mediums. There’s even a big-budget Minecraft film in development.
Image source: Microsoft.
Minecraft is building bridges
In addition to putting up great sales numbers, Microsoft is using Minecraft to expand into new areas and take advantage of some emerging opportunities. The education-tech space is one area where that dynamic is evident. In 2016, Microsoft and Mojang released Minecraft: Education Edition — a version of the hit game designed for classroom use. Tech companies including Microsoft see a lot of opportunity in having a top position in ed tech, and Minecraft has the potential to be a significant asset in the space.
Educational video games have been around for decades, but Mojang’s magnum opus is unique in that it was already enormously successful before being adapted for teaching use. The game’s popularity and flexibility set the stage for continued evolution, with new tools and features being added that shape the broader world of Minecraft.
In February, Mojang debuted a chemistry-themed resource pack to Education Edition, and Microsoft also recently announced that an online Minecraft experience had helped teach 85 million people some basic computer coding principles.
The Education Edition suite had crossed two million users as of November. With the company charging $5 per student per year, that comes out to annual revenue of $10 million — not a bad start roughly 12 months out from release but still only scratching the surface of potential ed-tech subscription revenue and import. Minecraft: Education Edition also requires an Office365 subscription in order to log in, a move that gives schools another reason to stick with Microsoft’s operating system and software suite.
Building a multiplatform position
Minecraft has put a Microsoft property on nearly every modern gaming and computing device. At a time when many of the video game industry’s big hits are transitioning to a platform agnostic model, that’s giving the company some valuable data for future software releases and strengthening its presence on emerging computing platforms.
Image source: Microsoft.
Minecraft is already one of the big software draws for virtual-reality headsets — perhaps the closest thing there is to a killer app in mixed reality at the moment. Along those lines, chief technology officer at Facebook‘s Oculus division and game development legend John Carmack once said that Minecraft was the single most important virtual-reality game.
Microsoft has also made the game a part of its own push into the mixed-reality space. One of the first demos for the company’s HoloLens augmented-reality headset featured users transposing the game on to real-world surfaces. The HoloLens hardware is still a long way from going mainstream at the consumer level, but Microsoft has also put the game front and center in promoting its Windows Mixed Reality platform.
A great asset at a good price
In Minecraft, Microsoft appears to have purchased an asset that will pay for itself in relatively short order and help the company strengthen its business outside of gaming. Mojang reported $126 million in profits on $259 million in sales in 2013. That means that Microsoft paid roughly 20 times Mojang’s trailing earnings to acquire the developer in 2014 — a price that’s looking pretty nice in light of Minecraft‘s continued performance.
The game’s sales and margins have likely gotten better since the acquisition based on unit sales growth and the addition of in-game purchases to the title. When you factor in the potential for continued growth and the other ways that the game is an asset to the company, Microsoft made a great move acquiring Minecraft and Mojang.
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I Still Can’t Believe Microsoft Spent $2.5 Billion to Acquire Minecraft
Noxcrew is a full game studio making content for Minecraft Marketplace
Above: Noxcrew’s Summer Mini-Games Festival is a hit on the Minecraft Marketplace.
Minecraft’s Marketplace is growing fast enough that it has enabled several creators to focus on the platform as their full-time work. The Noxcrew team, which makes popular Marketplace content like Summer Mini-Games Festival, has taken that even further by employing the equivalent of an entire development studio.
Noxcrew chief executive officer Stefan “Noxite” Panic and co-owner Joe “Avondale” Arsenault both told GamesBeat that working on products for the Minecraft Marketplace is their day job. But the team is way bigger than the two of them.
“We have around 15 members, comprising of level designers, artists, musicians, writers, technicians, and marketing managers,” said Panic.
That’s bigger than a lot of indie studios that are making their own games, and the Noxcrew team thinks that is one of the key reasons their content stands out on the Minecraft Marketplace.
“We produce all our own music, textures, art, sound effects, and voice acting in-house,” said Aresnault. “And for the longest time, we were the only team who could say that.”
The Noxcrew leaders also think that they have found an audience by always trying to build something unexpected. Minecraft is a game about building things, and Microsoft has opened up its tools to enable anyone to begin modding assets. In that world, Marketplace content needs to surprise people while also maintaining a high level of quality.
At the same time, Panic and Arsenault don’t think that this space is closed off to new creators. They both expect a new generation of Minecraft community members to rise up and make their way into the Marketplace.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to get into Minecraft content creation,” said Arsenault. “The technology for the Bedrock Engine is still very new, and the community making content for it is very active and helpful, especially with new creators.”
Panic agrees.
“Noxcrew itself made it onto the Marketplace by ‘just starting to make stuff’ a long time ago,” he said. “I believe in the longevity of the Marketplace and as long as you know how to make your content look good to the public after it’s made, I don’t think it’s ever too late!”
Noxcrew is a full game studio making content for Minecraft Marketplace
Library listings: Minecraft, Star Wars and online branding on tap
The following programs are being held at the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library. Note that the library is now open Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. The library is no longer open on Wednesdays due to budget cuts.
Sensory Storytime
Sensory Storytime has sessions on April 21 and 28. Each session is from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. This is an interactive program especially designed for children on the autism spectrum, those who are sensitive to sensory overload or have other special needs, and those who have difficulty sitting through a traditional storytime. A parent or caregiver is required to attend with their child. Registration is required for each session and is limited to eight children.
See Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be playing Tuesday, April 3, at 7 p.m.
Learn about online branding
The Monroe Chamber of Commerce, Fairfield County SCORE and the library are sponsoring “10 Critical Tools for Promoting Your Brand Online (& Making Your Life Easier) on Friday, April 6, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. This presentation will uncover fresh ways to create or maintain a powerful and positive brand image on social media and in your digital media strategies. Lunch will be served, and networking opportunities will be available before and after the event. Registration is required.
Look back at 1918 flu epidemic
Hamish Lutris will present “I Smell Death Here: The Great Flu Epidemic of 1918” on Monday, April 9, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. This presentation will center on a short history of disease in the western world, te swine flu itself, its pathology and effects.
Career Tuesdays returns
Career Tuesdays Workshop Series focuses on interview skills on Tuesday, April 10, at 10 a.m. Registration is required.
Minecraft Meet-Up set
The next Minecraft Meet-Up will be Tuesday, April 10, from 4 to 5 p.m. This is for children in grades 6 to 12. Registration is required and limited to 12. Call the library (203-452-2852) or visit the Teen page to register online.
Program takes you on Italian tour
Town Council member and retired Monroe chemistry teacher Enid Lipeles will present a “Travelogue of Venice, Florence and Rome” on Sunday, April 15, from 2 to 3 p.m. In venice, see Doge’s Palace, St. Mark’s Basilica and take a gondola ride. After viewing art treasures in Florence, Lipeles will take everyone to Rome to see the ancient Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica and Square, the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel. Registration is required.
Speaking with the Victorian Dead
Historian Robert Cox will explore the ideas that Spiritualists in Victorian America had in mind when communing with the spirits of the deceased in a program on Monday, April 16, at 6:30 p.m.
Artistic creations for adults
Sculpy Clay for Adults: Spring Flowers will be Tuesday, April 17, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Anna Mastroianni returns to show participants the techniques for making miniature Sculpy Clay flowers. Registration is required and is underway. It is limited to 16 people.
Nachos & A Movie set
Local teenagers, grades 7 to 12, can enjoy some nachos while watching Thor: Ragnarok on Friday, April 20, beginning at 6 p.m. Registration is required and limited to 20 people.
Spring concert series continues
Rhythms of the World with Judy Handler and Mark Levesque will be Sunday, April 22, at 2 p.m. Experience an exuberant celebration of cultures with this exceptional program of music from the around the world for guitars and mandolin. No registration necessary. Refreshments served after the concert.
Library listings: Minecraft, Star Wars and online branding on tap
Fortnite passes Minecraft to become the biggest game on YouTube
We all know that Fortnite is big: The biggest game in the world by some measures. Ninja’s recent Fortnite livestream with Drake crushed Twitch’s concurrent viewer record with more than 630,000 people watching simultaneously at one point, a mark that was beaten just this week by a Spanish-language stream on YouTube that pulled in nearly 1.1 million concurrents.
Those are impressive moments by any measure, but according to “influencer marketing platform” Matchmade, Fortnite has now surpassed an even bigger milestone—Minecraft—to become the most-viewed game on YouTube. Minecraft has long dominated YouTube’s videogame scene, accumulating billions of views per month. It’s been in a slow decline since last summer, however, and while Fortnite has yet to hit Minecraft’s lofty peak heights, it has now pulled ahead of it, breaking 2.4 billion views in February and climbing even higher this month.
Fortnite is also leaving leaving its more direct competitors in the dust. Clash Royale, the biggest mobile game on YouTube since March 2016 (minus a brief Pokemon Go interlude) has entered an accelerating decline since Fortnite showed up, and PUBG viewership has leveled off as well.
“The pace of Fortnite’s growth is astonishing. Between January and February, Fortnite’s viewership grew a whopping 151 percent,” Matchmade wrote. “During the past 6 months, The average month-to-month growth rate of Fortnite viewership on YouTube is +97 percent. Content creators are on board, and we’ve seen the number of Fortnite videos jump from 9945 (Feb 1st) to 12762 (Mar 1st) in just one month—an increase of 28 percent.”
Matchmaker cited a few possible factors behind Fortnite’s spectacular YouTube growth. Some are obvious: Fortnite is free and available on just about every relevant platform while PUBG is restricted to PC and Xbox One and will set you back $30, and Fortnite is shiny and new, something Minecraft definitely is not. But YouTube also made changes to its algorithms in August 2017, “which changed how content is discovered” and also coincides with the beginning of Minecraft’s and Clash Royale’s decline.
YouTube’s lead of gaming content Ryan Wyatt chimes in.
There’s also the obvious explanation: You can ride your own rocket like it’s a TNT-packed Fortnite hoverboard—or as Matchmade put it more prosaically, “Perhaps most importantly, the game is fun to play.”
For a closer look at how it all came to be, don’t miss our step-by-step history of “How Fortnite became the biggest game in the world.”
Fortnite passes Minecraft to become the biggest game on YouTube
Minecraft gets another shot at Hall of Fame glory, and fans can help it this time
Among the nominees for the Strong National Museum of Play’s 2018 World Video Game Hall of Fame, one game stands out: All the other games are at least 15 years old–including Asteroids, Ms. Pac-Man, Half-Life, and King’s Quest–but Minecraft exited beta in 2011, making it the sole nominee born in this decade. The game has also earned a nod twice before–and it’s been snubbed twice before–in the Hall of Fame’s four-year history.
Arguably, the snubs happened for good reason. Past winners include classic games like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong, and some of the more modern winners—like Halo: Combat Evolved and World of Warcraft—have had their legacies tested for well over a decade. By contrast, Minecraft is still in active development by Microsoft, and while it’s prompted countless clones in the present day, we can still only guess at its long-term impact.
Then again, the Minecraft-loving masses could finally impose their will this year through a new Player’s Choice ballot. The top three winners will join 27 other ballots cast by industry experts, giving it a greater chance at earning an induction spot–whether it’s deserved or not.
That’s all well and good, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of Ms. Pac-Man, which should have won a spot even before its male-centered counterpart did.JN
Minecraft gets another shot at Hall of Fame glory, and fans can help it this time
‘Ms. Pacman,’ ‘Minecraft,’ among finalists for World Video Game Hall of Fame
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Calling all gamers to help pick World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees. Twelve finalists were named Tuesday for the class of 2018, pitting “Ms. Pac-Man” against “John Madden Football.”
Also in the running are: “Asteroids,” “Call of Duty,” “Dance Dance Revolution,” “Final Fantasy VII,” “Half-Life,” “King’s Quest,” “Metroid,” “Minecraft,” “Spacewar!” and “Tomb Raider.”
New this year, the hall is inviting gamers to weigh in on inductees. Online balloting closes April 4.
A panel of experts will vote as well.
The winners will be inducted May 3.
Jon-Paul Dyson, director of International Center for the History of Electronic Games, says the finalists span decades, gaming platforms and countries of origin.
“But what they all have in common is their undeniable impact on the world of gaming and popular culture,” Dyson said. Both the center and World Video Game Hall of Fame are inside The Strong museum.
Museum officials say thousands of nominations were submitted from more than 100 countries. To be recognized, games must have proven their popularity over time and influenced other games or forms of entertainment. They can be electronic games of any type — arcade, console, computer, handheld or mobile.
About this year’s finalists:
— “Asteroids:” Released by Atari in 1979, the game sold more than 70,000 arcade units. Millions more played it at home on the Atari 2600.
— “Call of Duty:” The first-person shooter game drops players into a World War II setting for a blend of action and historic narrative. Launched by Infinity Ward/Activision, the game and sequels have sold more than 260 million units since 2003.
— “Dance Dance Revolution:” Konami’s 1998 game spread from Japanese arcades, including to a home version for Sony Playstation.
— “Final Fantasy VII:” The 1997 game introduced 3-D computer graphics and other upgrades to the popular franchise. The game sold more than 10 million units, making it the second most popular game for the Sony Playstation and helped popularize the Japanese role-playing genre.
— “Half-Life:” After its creation by Valve/Sierra Studios in 1998, the game added the ability to modify the game itself, providing countless replay possibilities.
— “John Madden Football:” The 1990 reboot by Electronic Arts became a pop cultural phenomenon that has sold more than 100 million copies.
— “King’s Quest:” Sierra On-Line co-founder Roberta Williams in 1984 made her game a hit on personal computers with its unique visuals and irreverent humor. Seven sequels have followed.
— “Metroid:” Nintendo’s 1986 game introduced the first playable human female character in a mainstream video game.
— “Minecraft:” A top performer since its introduction in 2009, the game lets players in a worldwide, online community build elaborate structures from pixilated blocks.
— “Ms. Pac-Man:” Midway launched the follow-up to the Pac-Man arcade game in 1981. It became one of the five best-selling arcade games of all time.
— “Spacewar!” was created by members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Model Train Club in 1962 on a main frame computer. It is credited with helping to launch the multibillion-dollar video game industry.
— “Tomb Raider:” The 1996 game and its protagonist, Lara Croft, inspired a movie of the same name, featuring Angelina Jolie.
The 27 members of an international selection advisory committee will cast ballots for the winners. The three games that receive the most public votes from the new “Player’s Choice” voting will count as another ballot.
‘Ms. Pacman,’ ‘Minecraft,’ among finalists for World Video Game Hall of Fame
Minecraft Star Wars Sequel Skin Pack Announced, Available Now
Star Wars: The Last Jedi recently arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD, giving millions of fans the chance to watch it all over again. But that’s not the only place where you can celebrate your love for Star Wars.
Mojang has announced that it has released a new Star Wars Sequel Skin Pack for Minecraft, which is available through various digital storefronts for the low price of $2.99. You can find more details on its availability over at the Minecraft Marketplace.
The developer worked very closely with both Lucasfilm and Disney to capture that Star Wars essence in the skin pack, which features various characters from both The Last Jedi and the 2015 release The Force Awakens. This includes older Han Solo, General Leia Organa, Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren, Finn, Rey, older Luke Skywalker and Supreme Leader Snoke. This is just the beginning, as a number of characters from both films are available.
This is the latest skin pack to be introduced to the world of Minecraft, as we’ve seen countless ones offered over the years, from The Simpsons to Doctor Who to various Marvel properties.
The Minecraft Marketplace makes it easy to shop for these skins, so you can change up your game on the fly and see what they do for you. This helps extend the replay value of the game tremendously, enabling Mojang to support its millions and millions of fans, who keep coming back for more.
There’s a possibility that this release could lead to other skin packs coming over the course of the year, though the developer hasn’t said a word about what could be coming next. So, for the time being, just enjoy the Star Wars pack that’s currently available, and relive those great memories from both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi – if you’re not doing that from watching the movies, that is.
Check out the trailer above, which features a number of the skins in action, and then get to building in Minecraft for various platforms, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U, as well as a plethora of mobile devices and tablets.
Minecraft Star Wars Sequel Skin Pack Announced, Available Now
Noxcrew is a full game studio making content for Minecraft Marketplace
Above: Noxcrew’s Summer Mini-Games Festival is a hit on the Minecraft Marketplace.
Minecraft’s Marketplace is growing fast enough that it has enabled several creators to focus on the platform as their full-time work. The Noxcrew team, which makes popular Marketplace content like Summer Mini-Games Festival, has taken that even further by employing the equivalent of an entire development studio.
Noxcrew chief executive officer Stefan “Noxite” Panic and co-owner Joe “Avondale” Arsenault both told GamesBeat that working on products for the Minecraft Marketplace is their day job. But the team is way bigger than the two of them.
“We have around 15 members, comprising of level designers, artists, musicians, writers, technicians, and marketing managers,” said Panic.
That’s bigger than a lot of indie studios that are making their own games, and the Noxcrew team thinks that is one of the key reasons their content stands out on the Minecraft Marketplace.
“We produce all our own music, textures, art, sound effects, and voice acting in-house,” said Aresnault. “And for the longest time, we were the only team who could say that.”
The Noxcrew leaders also think that they have found an audience by always trying to build something unexpected. Minecraft is a game about building things, and Microsoft has opened up its tools to enable anyone to begin modding assets. In that world, Marketplace content needs to surprise people while also maintaining a high level of quality.
At the same time, Panic and Arsenault don’t think that this space is closed off to new creators. They both expect a new generation of Minecraft community members to rise up and make their way into the Marketplace.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to get into Minecraft content creation,” said Arsenault. “The technology for the Bedrock Engine is still very new, and the community making content for it is very active and helpful, especially with new creators.”
Panic agrees.
“Noxcrew itself made it onto the Marketplace by ‘just starting to make stuff’ a long time ago,” he said. “I believe in the longevity of the Marketplace and as long as you know how to make your content look good to the public after it’s made, I don’t think it’s ever too late!”
Noxcrew is a full game studio making content for Minecraft Marketplace
Minecraft’s Star Wars Sequel skin pack adds Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren
Minecraft will enable you to hang out with some cool people from a galaxy far, far away thanks to its new Star Wars Sequel skin pack. This downloadable content is available now on the Minecraft Marketplace for 490 ($3) or platform specific stores like the Nintendo eShop. It is available now.
Microsoft worked with Disney and Luscafilm to produce this skin pack, which enables players to customize characters to look like the heroes and villains of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. You can play as old Han Solo, General Leia Organa, Poe Dameron, and even Supreme Leader Snoke. Every other major character from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are also included in the bundle of cosmetics.
This skin pack is available for every device that runs an official version of Minecraft.
DLC is one of the biggest ways that Microsoft and Mojang are keeping Minecraft’s revenues up. This is especially important on Minecraft’s Bedrock platforms, which are devices like smartphones, Xbox One, and Windows 10 PCs that run a universal version of the game that all hook into the Minecraft Marketplace.
That in-game store features extra content from The Minecraft Team, but it also is the home of externally developed worlds, skin packs, and more from the community. The Minecraft Marketplace creators are earning a living selling virtual items and maps for the block-building game, and Microsoft gets a cut of those revenues.
By introducing something like new Star Wars-related skins, it could get more people into the Marketplace and spending money on content beyond stormtroopers and Benicio del Toro’s DJ.
Minecraft’s Star Wars Sequel skin pack adds Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren
Watch this AI figure out how to place blocks in Minecraft
Artificial intelligence doesn’t compare favorably to humans when it comes to problem solving. Ask any eight year old child to place a few blocks on a grid in Minecraft and they’ll almost certainly be bored by the task. A computer, on the other hand, doesn’t grasp such difficult concepts so easily.
Stephan Alaniz, a researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Technische Universitat Berlin, yesterday published a white paper titled “Deep Reinforcement Learning with Model Learning and Monte Carlo Tree Search in Minecraft.” In his paper the scientist explains his efforts to create a superior method for training an AI to perform simple tasks based on visual input.
If we’re ever going to have robots that can live and work among humans seamlessly without damaging us or our property they’re going to have to understand how to interact with the environment using visual context. One of the most popular ways to train AI for this task is using video games with simple controls.
We can judge an AI’s effectiveness at completing specific tasks in a structured environment, like Minecraft, by comparing it to human efforts.
Watching the above video, it’s apparent that AI – even one that’s shown to be more effective than other agents trained to perform similar tasks – isn’t very good at doing simple things yet. But developing cutting-edge technology takes time — though advances in machine learning techniques are happening at a terrifying pace.
Future research will drive training times down, effectiveness up, and generate new ideas for algorithms that further blur the lines between artificial and human intelligence.
But for now, it’s interesting enough to watch an AI process hundreds of different moves as it tries to figure out a simple block placing challenge in Minecraft. It might be worth remembering, in the future, how simple these things were when they began learning.
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Draws Praise in Latest Trailer
Bandai Namco has released another trailer for Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, which shows off just a bit of the praise the game has received. The trailer showcases some of the scores and positive remarks reviewers have lavished upon it, supercut with some of the gorgeous fotage from the game.
Ni no Kuni II follows young Evan’s journey to reunite and reclaim his kingdom as well as the involvement of character Roland in the grand scheme of things. We’ve seen several different looks at combat, as well as other glimpses of the great-looking game thus far, but this trailer is all about trying to get you to want to embark on the journey with Evan, Roland, and company.
Our own Alex Gibson rated the game a 5/5:
“This second adventure has been worth the long wait in every respect, and I’m already salivating over the prospect of what the future holds for the series. Until then, though, I’m contented to remain at Evermore, immersing myself in the delight of building my very own Revenant Kingdom.”
If you’re interested in seeing what’s going on in the sprawling sequel to the Studio
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Draws Praise in Latest Trailer
See Geralt of Rivia Show off His Moves in Soulcalibur VI
We’ve known that CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher himself, Geralt of Rivia, is coming to Soulcalibur VI, for a while. But we haven’t really gotten a chance to see his moves in the fighting game broken down just yet. That’s all changing as of today, with a more in-depth look at things. CD Projekt RED’s Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz took to a new video clip to show off Geralt’s moves, with a fighting style that shows off his “scalpel-like” moves in combat.
“Our role was making sure that Geralt in Soulcalibur VI moves, feels and plays like Geralt from The Witcher 3,” says Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz. “However since movement, timing, play-perspective and general responsiveness are very different in the fighting game, we had to go back to the drawing board and reinvent the way Geralt behaves in certain situations.”
Soulcalibur VI is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC by way of Steam this year, including Geralt and your favorite characters from the series. There’s a lot to look forward to if you’ve been following the venerable fighting game since its inception. You can watch the Witcher himself in action in the clip below, along with additional insights into what makes him such a formidable opponent. Looking for a new main to go to when you delve into Soulcalibur when it launches? You may have just found him.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Gameplay Trailer is Classic Fallout Meets XCOM
Funcom’s upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is receiving a ton of attention. Judging by the recent gameplay trailer, that attention is well-deserved.
Exploration is the name of the game in Mutant Year Zero; according to the trailer, it will feature plenty of open areas for players to explore at their leisure. Players can snoop around, scour the game world for items to use or trade, complete missions, recruit new teammates, and fight all sorts of enemies. Moreover, as players explore the world, they will discover much-needed levity in just how detached the game’s post-apocalyptic world is from the modern one. Even though Mutant Year Zero is full of mutants and robots, characters believe a picture of a cartoonish moose portrays a demon and confuse a boombox for a literal bomb. It’s the kind of humor that’s tailor-made for post-apocalyptic RPGs and is extremely prevalent in games like Fallout.
Mutant Year Zero, while it seemingly will focus on an expansive world and narrative, will feature an equally-robust combat system. Stealth will play a vital role; if the player initiates combat from outside an enemy’s detection radius, he or she will have a chance to finish the battle before the enemy even knows what happened. That assumes, of course, players use stealth-oriented weapons such as silenced pistols and crossbows; noisy weapons like shotguns and grenades are almost guaranteed to draw unwanted attention. Moreover, before fighting enemies, players will be able to strategically position characters to effectively take out separated enemies and ambush the rest. In some cases, players can even turn an enemy’s superweapon against its would-be masters.
When Mutant Year Zero’s combat starts in earnest, it uses the same turn-based system as XCOM and Harebrained Scheme’s Shadowrun games. Players will be encouraged to fight tactically, seek cover whenever possible, and use special abilities to gain the upper hand. Some abilities, such as standing guard and firing on moving enemies, will be standard for this game genre, while others, namely mutations, are slightly more unorthodox. Yes, a game called “Mutant Year Zero” features mutations.
Each time a character levels up, he or she gains access to new mutations that can be swapped around while out of combat. Some need to be activated, such as stone-like skin that makes characters more resistant to damage, while others are passive, like being short to easily hide behind low cover. Moreover, players will be actively encouraged to change mutations, as some are more situational than others; bunkers with low ceiling will render wings useless, while robots will practically be begging to be targeted with the ability to disable electronics.
Weapons will also be a key feature in Mutant Year Zero. Players will be able to find them in the game world and upgrade them at their home base. Like abilities, weapon upgrades will contain a mix of standard and unconventional enhancements. Weapons can be improved to hit harder and more accurately, and they can also be upgraded with ammunition that lights enemies on fire or knocks them back.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden’s gameplay trailer shows plenty of promise. Any gamer who has played Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, or Hong Kong will likely feel right at home. We at Twinfinite will continue to cover this game, which should release later this year.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Gameplay Trailer is Classic Fallout Meets XCOM
Lego Incredibles Zooming Their Way to Consoles and PC This Year
Warner Bros. Interactive and TT Games have unveiled the next official Lego game, and it’s, well…incredible. Literally. Lego The Incredibles is coming soon, releasing as both digital and physical editions on June 15 alongside the film’s debut in theaters. It’s coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
Lego The Incredibles will feature much of the same fun the previous titles did, with an open world hub that lets you travel to locales like Nomanisan Island and Municiberg, with additional features such as “crime bosses” as you play through the hub world. As you complete additional areas of the world, you can start fighting crime in extended locations.
The campaign, however, will borrow from both movies and feature original content as well. The same familiar puzzle-solving, combat, and Lego-related building quests will be interspersed with other attacks and powers based on The Incredibles’ abilities to play into the family’s strengths. So while it’s going to largely be based on the Lego games you’re familiar with, it’ll be beefed up in the areas that count so it can feel more like an Incredibles-related adventure.
So if you’ve been jonesing for more of the superpowered family and more Lego games, this official reveal should keep you pretty excited, especially since you can go grab it the same day as you see the movie and take the magic of the family home with you.
Lego Incredibles Zooming Their Way to Consoles and PC This Year
John Cena Will Play Duke Nukem in a Deadpool-Styled Movie
Duke Nukem is known for two things: kicking alien ass and always being out of gum. Soon he’ll be known for a third thing: being played by John Cena in a movie.
According to CinemaBlend, producers Andrew Form (The Purge,Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Brad Fuller (Project Almanac, The Purge) have confirmed that Cena, after months of negotiations, is officially attached to an upcoming Duke Nukem movie. Well, for now, anyway. Form stated the script has yet to be penned, and, as with any actor, Cena could potentially leave if he reads the script and doesn’t like it.
While the Duke Nukem movie doesn’t have a script yet, Form and Fuller are already determined to make the movie’s tone match that of Deadpool. This decision is strangely fitting since Duke is overtly sexist, but in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. Plus, his chauvinism somehow adds to his machismo charm, as odd as it sounds. Form even acknowledges the challenge of turning those normally negative personality traits into endearing ones:
You know that having a misogynistic guy in today’s world, how do you make that fun and lovable and at the same time he’s got to be an incredible badass, so those are the things that we’re struggling with and we’re going to try and come out with what I hope is a really fun ride. That’s the goal, is for it to be a really fun ride.
Some might balk at the thought of Cena being up to the task of playing what might just be the prototypical badass video game hero, but, like fellow wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson, he has plenty of experience in both action and comedic roles (and a few that are both). Plus, in sunglasses and a flattop haircut, he could potentially be a dead ringer for the character. Given his ever-growing experience as a voice actor, he could conceivably also sound almost identical to Duke’s original voice actor Jon St. John by the time filming starts.
While the movie is a long way off, we will pay close attention to this movie. With luck, it will help redeem the Duke Nukem franchise after the disappointment that was Duke Nukem Forever.
Local Multiplayer Is a Go for Minecraft on the New Nintendo 3DS
The Minecraft official Twitter has announced that local multiplayer is now up and running on the New Nintendo 3DS version of the game. After updating their copies of the game, players will be all set to play Minecraft with friends using a local wireless connection.
The New Nintendo 3DS was released back on Feb. 13, 2015. Two years later, Minecraft was released for the portable system on Sept. 19, 2017. The game features both a creative mode and a survival mode. In creative mode, players have unlimited resources with which to build their world. This sort of environment makes it easier to build the sprawling cities and landscapes that players of the game have become known for producing. In survival mode, players must explore and mine for materials to build with, as well as deal with creatures that might kill them. Since it is on the New Nintendo 3DS, the game uses the system’s touchscreen for checking the map and managing inventory. As a minor feature, the game also comes with five skin packs and two different texture packs.
The classic version of the well known game was first released to the public on May 17, 2009. The sandbox video game has since gained quite a bit of popularity. It is now available on a wide variety of platforms, including Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. On Minecraft’s official website, you can buy the game for PC and Mac for $26.95.
Minecraft for the New Nintendo 3DS sells for $29.99 on the Nintendo eShop. It is published by Mojang AB, and developed by Other Ocean Interactive.
Local Multiplayer Is a Go for Minecraft on the New Nintendo 3DS
February NPD 2018: Monster Hunter repeats as top game in the U.S.
Gaming consumers in the United States are dropping money on hardware and games even as February had a dearth of earth-shattering new releases. The industry is so hot right now, that it can’t help but generate year-over-year growth with $995 million in total sales, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. That’s up 23 percent from $811 million during the same period in 2017.
Here are the numbers for February 2018:
- Total: $995 million (up 23 percent from $811 million in February 2017)
- Hardware: $316 million (up 55 percent from $204 million)
- PC and console software: $397 million (flat from $397 million)
- Accessories: $282 million (up 35 percent from $210 million)
“Year to date 2018 spending across video game hardware, software and accessories is up 39 percent when compared to the same period a year ago, to $2.1 billion,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “Growth has occurred across all categories, with hardware being the primary sales performance driver.”
It’s important to keep in mind that NPD’s report has some gaps in it. It does not report digital sales data for every publisher. It also does not include DLC, microtransactions, or mobile. So this is a snapshot of a wider, more dynamic market.
Let’s get to the charts.
Software
- Monster Hunter: World
- Call of Duty: WWII
- NBA 2K18
- Dragon Ball: Fighterz
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
- UFC 3
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Mario Kart 8*
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds**
- Bayonetta 2*
- Madden NFL 18
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins
- FIFA 18**
- Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet
- The Sims 4**
- Star Wars: Battlefront II
*No digital sales included
**No PC digital sales included
“Dollar sales of Console, Portable and PC Games Software combined to reach $397 million in February 2018, flat when compared to a year ago,” said Piscatella. “Gains in Nintendo Switch spending offset declines across all other platforms. Year to date, software spending has grown 24 percent, to $916 million.”
As always, Nintendo’s games have long tails that keep them selling at full price for years. That trend is continuing on Switch for hits like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
“Mario Kart 8 returned to the top of the Nintendo Switch chart for the first time since May 2017,” said Piscatella. “Nintendo was February’s leading publisher in software dollar sales, while Capcom remains the top-selling publisher of 2018.”
While Nintendo Switch is filling in the gaps left by the other platforms, Capcom’s Monster Hunter is one of the main reasons we are seeing year-to-date growth. It is once again dominant in February. This is the second month in a row that it has topped this chart.
“After leading the market in January, Monster Hunter: World repeated as the month’s top-selling title overall, once again leading on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms,” said Piscatella. “Unsurprisingly, Monster Hunter: World is currently 2018’s best-selling game.
Indie open-world role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance also made it into the top 10, which is a huge feat and shows just how well that game is performing at retail.
“Call of Duty: WWII was February’s second best-selling title,” said Piscatella. “And it remains the best-selling title for the 12-month period ending February 2018.”
Xbox One
- Monster Hunter: World
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Call of Duty: WWII
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- NBA 2K18
- Dragon Ball: Fighterz
- UFC 3
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins
PlayStation 4
- Monster Hunter: World
- Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
- Call of Duty: WWII
- Dragon Ball: Fighterz
- UFC 3
- NBA 2K18
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Madden NFL 18
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege
Nintendo Switch (physical only)
- Mario Kart 8
- Super Mario Odyssey
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Bayonetta 2
- Splatoon 2
- Pokken Tournament DX
- Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
- Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Arms
- Dragon Quest Builders
Nintendo 3DS
- Pokemon: Ultra Sun
- Pokemon: Ultra Moon
- Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology
- Mario Kart 7
- Minecraft
- Super Smash Bros.
- Mario Party: The Top 100
- Super Mario Maker
- Kirby: Battle Royale
- Super Mario 3D Land
The best-selling games of 2018 so far
- Monster Hunter: World
- Dragon Ball: Fighterz
- Call of Duty: WWII
- Grand Theft Auto V
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds**
- NBA 2K18
- Super Mario Odyssey*
- Mario Kart 8*
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
- UFC 3
The best-selling games over the last 12 months
- Call of Duty: WWII
- NBA 2K18
- Destiny 2
- Madden NFL 18
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Star Wars: Battlefront II
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Mario Kart 8*
Hardware and accesories
Since the launch of the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One X, the PlayStation 4 has no longer dominated the hardware sales. Nintendo and Microsoft are both seeing growth as well.
“Hardware spending in February 2018 grew 55 percent when compared to a year ago, to $316 million,” said Piscatella. “Spending gains were driven by growth in Switch and Xbox One hardware sales. For the 2018 year-to-date period, hardware spending has increased 79 percent to $594 million.”
The Switch phenom story continued in February, for example.
“Nintendo Switch remains on a record-setting sales pace,” said Piscatella. “Over the first twelve months in market, Nintendo Switch has achieved the highest installed base for a console platform in history.”
But even if Sony isn’t leaving the competition in its dust, it still came out on top last month.
“Sony’s PlayStation 4 was the best-selling console in February,” said Piscatella. “And it remains the best-selling console year to date.”
Last month was a record-high for February for accessories and gamecards at $282 million. That broke the previous February record from 2016.
Gamepads are an especially large category with year-over-year growth of 46 percent.
“Gamepads were the month’s best-selling accessory group,” said Piscatella. “Headsets/headphones, power supplies, memory cards, and case/organizer categories all experienced double-digit percentage growth in the month. These gains offset a 75 percent decline in interactive gaming toy sales.”
PS4’s DualShock 4 Wireless Controller in Black was the best-selling accessory of the month and of 2018 so far.
February NPD 2018: Monster Hunter repeats as top game in the U.S.
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