Connect with us

Gadgets

EA Records Best Year Ever Thanks to Apex Legends, FIFA Ultimate Team

Published

on

EA Records Best Year Ever Thanks to Apex Legends, FIFA Ultimate Team
Electronic Arts just had the biggest year in its history. On Tuesday, the Redwood City, California-headquartered gaming giant announced that the 2020–21 fiscal year delivered record revenues and sales, driven by the likes of Apex Legends and FIFA 21. EA grossed $5.63 billion (roughly Rs. 41,361 crores) in net revenue this past financial year, while “net bookings” — that includes products and services, sold digitally or physically — went up to $6.19 billion (roughly Rs. 45,475 crores). Of the latter, $4.6 billion (roughly Rs. 33,794 crores) came from “live services,” that refers to in-game microtransactions and subscription revenue generated from EA Play.

“To give some perspective, that $4.6 billion is equivalent to the sale of around 130 million copies of console games,” Blake Jorgensen, EA’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, said [PDF] on the earnings call on Tuesday. Jorgensen highlighted the free-to-play shooter Apex Legends, that had [PDF] “the best day, the best 24-hour period, the best week, the best month and best in-game event” of an EA titles in 2020–21. Apex Legends brought in $600 million (roughly Rs. 4,407 crores) for EA, passing $1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,346 crores) in net bookings to date during this past quarter. The game is set to expand further in 2021–22 with the launch of Apex Legends Mobile.

As for FIFA 21, Ultimate Team — the self-proclaimed cornerstone — had a terrific year with matches up 180 percent year-on-year, with the number of players growing 16 percent to over 20 million. FIFA is much bigger as a franchise — there’s also FIFA Mobile, and FIFA Online 4 available in select markets — and it now draws more than 100 million players worldwide, Jorgensen added. FIFA 21 has over 25 million players on PC and console. The Sims 4, released in 2014 though supported with updates ever since, has grown to almost 36 million players. In total, EA titles welcomed 42 million new players during 2020–21.

Looking ahead, apart from Apex Legends Mobile, EA has Mass Effect Legendary Edition due later this week. Then the following week on May 21, there’s the EA originals title Knockout City coming straight to EA Play and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. F1 2021 — from Codemasters, now owned by EA — will follow on July 16. FIFA 22 and Madden NFL 22 will follow in Q2 2022 (between July and September). Battlefield 6 and NHL 22 are slated to release in Q3 2022 (between October and December). And that leaves a new PGA Tour golf title, expected in Q4 2022 (between January and March 2022).

Most of these titles will be showcased at the 2021 EA Play Live, now slated for July 22, a month after E3 2021 in June. Driven by these new titles and annual releases — in addition to the behemoth that is Apex Legends now — EA says it expects net bookings to further rise to $7.3 billion (roughly Rs. 53,607 crores) in fiscal year 2021–22, 18 percent over the historic record it just set.


Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Gadgets

Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

Published

on

By

Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.



Source link

Continue Reading

Gadgets

BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

Published

on

By

BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.





Source link

Continue Reading

Gadgets

Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

Published

on

By

Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2017 Zox News Theme. Theme by MVP Themes, powered by WordPress.