Daniel Ahmad

Square Enix is a famously hard master to please, and eagle-eyed fans interested in industry analytics will have noted that despite launching over a month ago on 29th February, exclusively on PS5, hard sales figures for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are yet to be released. Considering it took just three days for the firm to trumpet Remake's success during a similar period and six days for Final Fantasy XVI, it should be no huge surprise that the sequel is underperforming in some sense.

Microsoft has reportedly decided that, yes, Call of Duty 2024 will launch day and date into Xbox Game Pass.

With the PlayStation 5 entering the second half of its life, figures from Sony indicate around half of all current PlayStation gamers are yet to upgrade to current gen.

As the industry digests the latest deluge of earnings reports, attempting to parse the information and present a clearer picture, one piece of news is likely to fuel more than a few pointless arguments on social media: despite marginally missing its own revised target, Sony shipped 4.5 million PS5s last quarter, estimated to be almost five times as many as Microsoft managed with its Xbox Series X|S consoles combined.

Sony has been quite successful with the PS5. According to the Sony’s recent earnings reports, courtesy of analyst Daniel Ahmad, the company sold around 4.5 million units of the PS5 over the last quarter. For a larger picture, around 59.2 million units of the PS5 were sold in totality as of the end of the previous financial year on March 31, 2024.

Sony expects PS5 sales to gradually decline as the console has entered the second half of its console cycle.

Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed that its PS5 console had sold 59.2 million units as of March 31, slightly below Sony's own forecast.

Sony shipped almost five times as many PS5 consoles as Microsoft did Xbox Series X/S consoles during the first calendar quarter of 2024.

Square Enix today warned investors that its next earnings report will include a significant hit due to a number of cancelled projects.

Square Enix has suggested it’s cancelled or rescoped unannounced game projects, as it continues to reassess its overall development strategy.

The long-awaited Lost Soul Aside out of Sony's own China Hero Project could be nearing the development finish line as the PS5, PS4 title has been handed a Chinese age rating, clearing it for release in the country. Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners, adds this likely means news surrounding the game's final release will likely be shared soon, potentially within the next three months.

We’ve been hearing about Lost Soul Aside for years at this point, and though the Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy-inspired action RPG has continued to look impressive with each of its new showings, details on when the game will actually launch have remained frustratingly elusive. That, however, might change soon.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is reportedly underperforming commercially.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura has «completed» the story for the remake's final third instalment.

Despite releasing to universal acclaim from both fans and critics, it appears that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may have failed to perform well sales-wise, according to a notable industry analyst. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth potentially underperforming may bring into question the popularity of the franchise as a whole.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has reportedly sold «about half» the sales of its predecessor Remake in the same timeframe.

The highly anticipated game Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second installment in the ambitious Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, received widespread critical acclaim when it launched in late February.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth enjoyed widespread critical acclaim upon its launch earlier in the year on a level that no game in the series has in a long, long time- though it seems that critical acclaim isn’t quite translating to commercial success in the manner that Square Enix would have hoped for.

Last night, IGN posted a news piece about how Undawn, a free-to-play survival game starring Will Smith as some kind of apocalypse pal called Trey, has been a massive flop. Released in June 2023 for mobile and PC, Undawn had an allegedly huge budget, according to Reuters sources, but which only brought in under $300K last month, as estimated by research firm Appamgic. And on hearing this news everyone went: "Sorry, what are you talking about?"

Mass layoffs at Microsoft’s gaming division this week reportedly include the closure of departments dedicated to bringing physical games to market.

Microsoft's decision to cut 1900 staff members has reportedly seen the company's games retail teams reduced, prompting fresh questions over Xbox's future in the physical games business.

One of the hottest topics in video games is the future of physical media, with both Microsoft and Sony making moves to suggest digital will eventually win out.

The recent leaks of Microsoft’s court documents for its recent trial against the FTC have dominated the news cycle for several days now, and more new nuggets of information are still continuing to filter through. For instance, it’s now also emerged that out of Microsoft’s two current-gen Xbox consoles, the less powerful (and cheaper one) had a significantly larger share of the market than its counterpart, at least as of early last year.

Overwatch 2 has been taking a beating in Steam user reviews, and game director Aaron Keller has responded to that pummeling as part of a broader blog post discussing the release of the game's Invasion update.

Overwatch 2 has the ignominious honour of becoming the worst user-reviewed game on Steam ever, although its recent launch on the platform has seen tens of thousands of players.

Overwatch 2 has made history by becoming the worst-reviewed game on Steam. Publisher Blizzard, which usually kept its PC games locked to the Battle.net client, brought its team-based shooter to Steam on August 10, only to be flooded with negative reviews. At the time of writing, merely nine percent of the overall ratings (111,234) are positive, with many criticising the title's approach to locking heroes and cosmetics behind a battle pass and the cancellation of its long-advertised PvE mode. While Blizzard might have expected some backlash, this reception must've been eye-opening for them, given Battle.net did not have a review system in place.