What You Missed This Week in Video Games

Sony’s second virtual reality headset launches this week

"Game On" is The Fly’s weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.

NEW RELEASES: This week’s most notable release is Sony‘s (SONY) PlayStation VR 2, the company’s second virtual reality headset. The device, which works only when connected to PlayStation 5 consoles, releases February 22 at a suggested retail price of $549.99, and is compatible with exclusive titles such as "Gran Turismo 7" and "Horizon: Call of the Mountain."

Meanwhile, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) "Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe," an enhanced remake of a 2011 Wii game, launches exclusively for Switch on February 24. Additionally, Sega’s (SGAMY) action-adventure title "Like A Dragon: Ishin," a remake of a 2013 PlayStation 3 and 4 game, launches February 21 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S (MSFT), Xbox One, and PC, while Square Enix’s (SQNXF) role-playing game "Octopath Traveler II" rolls out February 24 on PS4, PS5, PC, and Switch.

UBISOFT: Last week, Ubisoft (UBSFY) reported a year-over-year decline in third quarter net bookings and reiterated its 2022-2023 net bookings outlook and its 2023-2024 non-IFRS operating income guidance. The company noted that while the macro environment impacted the video game industry as well as the company’s own results, its established franchises and live services games "have performed solidly." "In an intensely competitive environment for shooter games, Rainbow Six Siege has performed remarkably well," said CEO Yves Guillemot. "This momentum, seven years after the game’s release, is promising as we look to launch Rainbow Six Mobile next fiscal year. The Assassin’s Creed franchise reached new player engagement records over the past quarter, and we are excited to bring Assassin’s Creed Mirage to players in 2023-24. Similarly, we are looking to bring The Division to a larger, global audience, with the release on mobile of The Division Resurgence, also next fiscal year."

TENCENT VR: On Friday, Reuters’ Josh Ye reported that Tencent (TCEHY) is scrapping plans to venture into virtual reality hardware as the current economic outlook prompts the company to cut costs and headcount at its metaverse unit. The company had plans to build both virtual reality software and hardware at an "extended reality" XR unit it launched last year. The unit had come up with a concept for a ring-like hand-held game controller, but difficulties in achieving quick profitability and the large investment needed to produce a competitive product factored into the company’s shift away from that strategy, according to Ye, who sited multiple sources.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s Raffaele Huang and Newley Purnell later reported that Tencent is seeking to be China’s exclusive seller of Meta’s (META) Quest 2 headsets. According to people familiar with the matter, Tencent has proposed to Meta that it become the exclusive seller of the VR headset in China, and has sought to publish Chinese versions of existing videogames for the device. The discussions between the companies are still at an early stage, the people told the Journal, adding that issues that would need to be addressed include how user data would be handled.

Click here to check out recent Media Buzz Sentiment on Tencent as measured by TipRanks.

ROBLOX AI: In a post to the company’s blog late last week by Daniel Sturman, Chief Technology Officer, Roblox (RBLX), Sturman stated in part: "Today, Roblox provides creators with a platform that enables end-to-end tools, services, and support to help them build the most immersive 3D experiences. With Roblox Studio, creators have everything they need, out-of-the-box and for free, to build their experiences and publish immediately on all popular platforms, reaching 58.8 million people daily worldwide. With the advent of generative AI techniques, however, we are seeing an opportunity to revolutionize creation on the platform, both by augmenting Roblox Studio to make creation dramatically faster and easier, and also by enabling every user on Roblox to be a creator… We are building a platform that will enable every user to be a creator – not just those comfortable with Roblox Studio and other 3D content creation tools… This vision requires a set of tools significantly more accessible to a typical user than exists in any environment today – things like voice and text or touch-based gestures rather than intricate mouse and keyboard movements. Generative AI tooling can help make creation intuitive and natural for users and be directly embedded into experiences, allowing any of our 58.8 million daily users to create unique content that can be shared across the platform. We also see a huge opportunity for the AI community itself to become creators on the Roblox platform… Our teams are working on rolling out tests for two new AI tools in the coming weeks: generative AI materials from a text prompt and generative AI code completion to help increase development velocity. These are just our first steps to bring the creation power of generative AI to our creator community. I’ll be sharing more this week at my talk on the Tech Stack for the Metaverse at DeveloperWeek. And Stef Corazza will also share more during his talk at the AI Summit of Game Developers Conference next month.

OTHER STORIES TO WATCH:

• Hackers allegedly stole internal data from Activision Blizzard (ATVI), TechCrunch reports [read more]
• Microsoft signed a 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo platforms [read more]
• Saudi Arabia’s PIF boosted its Nintendo stake to 7.08%, Gamesindustry.biz reports [read more]
• Take-Two’s (TTWO) Firaxis named Heather Hazen Studio Head and confirmed that a new "Civilization" title is in development [read more]

Keywords: video games, game on, ubisoft, playstation, vr, virtual reality, roblox, tencent