Top Story
PlayStation 4 passes 100 million consoles sold
Sony announced that they have sold over one hundred million PlayStation 4 consoles in their latest earnings call, with the last 3.2 million sales finally pushing them over the one hundred million mark.
The company also revealed that the digital download share of software sales has passed the 50% mark, meaning digital downloads are now outselling physical disc copies of games.
It’s no surprise to anyone that the PlayStation 4 has been a massive success since it launched in 2014. To put these sales numbers into perspective, Daniel Ahmad – Senior Analyst at Niko Partners – has looked at the console sales data to show just how impressive this is.
Sony sold 19 million PS4s in 2017 and 17.8 million in 2018
The PlayStation 4 is the fastest-selling home console to reach the one hundred million sales mark, beating both the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii. PlayStation 2 took five years and nine months to reach this sales milestone, while the PlayStation 4 took two months less.
If you tuned into E3 this year, you probably noticed that it lacked a bit of its usual punch, and that is was mostly down to Sony’s absence. Sony has made it clear that they are focusing heavily on the PlayStation 5, with the console rumoured to launch at the end of 2020.
We already know the PlayStation 5 will feature an eight-core, third generation Ryzen CPU in addition to a GPU that supports ray-tracing. Sony stated the PlayStation 5 will be backwards compatible with PlayStation 4 titles, alleviating concerns that game libraries could be confined to the older machine.
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Which Fallout game is the first according to the series’ chronology?
- Fallout 1
- Fallout 3
- Fallout New Vegas
- Fallout 76
The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!
News Bits
Mega Drive Mini delayed in Europe & Middle Eastern regions
SEGA Europe has announced that the Mega Drive Mini launch will be delayed by two weeks in the European and Middle Eastern regions due to logistical challenges. It appears that the Americas and Asia are unaffected by this delay, meaning these areas will be playing the SEGA Genesis Mini on September 19th while the Mega Drive Mini will launch on October 4th. In case you missed the announcements that revealed each of the forty games included on the mini console, you can check them out here.
Disney TSUM TSUM FESTIVAL will be rolling onto the Nintendo Switch in Europe this year
You may have seen the Disney TSUM TSUM toyline, a cute collection of log-shaped versions of beloved Disney characters spanning Mickey Mouse to Sulley from Monsters, Inc.
Well, it has now been confirmed that a European release of Disney TSUM TSUM FESTIVAL will unleash these little rectangular bundles of fun onto the Nintendo Switch on November 8th this year.
Arriving in Europe just a month after the initial Japanese release, hereís hoping that we also receive the pink and purple Joy-Con, Disney-themed Switch – which has only been announced for Japan so far.
Daily Fact
Fallout 76 was not the first attempt to create an online Fallout game
There was a lot of Fallout 76 news at QuakeCon this week – including the introduction of raids, updates to the battle royale experience Nuclear Winter, and more details on the NPC characters that are finally coming to the game. While Fallout 76 is the first persistent online experience in the Fallout series, it’s by no means the first attempt – in fact, several attempts to get Fallout Online off the ground have fallen through in the past.
The famous/infamous one is the attempted Fallout Online by original series publisher Interplay, which started development in 2006 – prior to Bethesda picking up the Fallout IP. The two companies made a deal that Interplay would be allowed to continue, provided funding was gathered and development started within two years. This didn’t happen, and Bethesda sued Interplay to get them to stop – even claiming that they had only allowed them the name “Fallout Online”, and not anything related to the Fallout universe. After a lot of unpleasantness, Fallout Online was cancelled.
Funnily enough, Interplay and Black Isle Studios had originally considered a Fallout MMO years previously, but Interplay wasn’t financially in a position to do it. What a shame…?