By Adam Hood
Hello! Welcome to what is the first in a series of new weekly articles from the Kirklees Gaming Central crew on the latest happenings in the video game industry. In these articles, we aim to look at a variety of news from video game releases, to events, controversies and more and then bundle them together in an easily digestible format, for you!
CD Projekt Red becomes Second-Largest Video Company in Europe
On the 24th of February, CD Projekt Red became the second most valuable video game company in Europe. This was confirmed after the game studios market evaluation surpassed $8 billion.
The current number one studio in Europe is Ubisoft, which currently has a market share of $9.52 billion. However CD Projekt Red is not far behind. As for reasons for the sudden increase to CD Projekt Red’s number two position. This is most likely due to the release of Witcher 3 Wild Hunt on the Nintendo Switch and Netflix’s The Witcher series. CD Projekt Red has also seen the sales of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt go up by 500% since last year alone and Revenue from the game on Steam reaching over $50 million.
Anthem’s desolate 1 year anniversary
As of this past month, Anthem is officially 1-year-old, however, we wouldn’t be surprised if you had no idea about the anniversary of the game, since neither the Developer Bioware or the publisher EA marked the occasion in any significant way.
Several staff members did wish the game a happy birthday, one being the director of the game Jonathan Warner, who tweeted “Happy Birthday Anthem!”. He further followed up with “What a journey this has been. My life has been forever changed this past year and I Want to thank all who have played and enjoyed the game. To the community that has stuck by us, you are amazing. I have no words. Just love and gratitude.
So while there was no official celebration of the anniversary, it leaked that the game is going through a complete overhaul leaked in November. So hopefully by the time the second anniversary comes around, there will actually be something to celebrate about the game.
Microsoft commits to free video game upgrades for Xbox Series X
Xbox head Phil Spencer recently announced a bunch of new features for the upcoming Xbox Series X, but one of the features that has us most excited is the announcement that games developed by Microsoft will only require a single purchase to be playable on either the Xbox One or the soon to be released Xbox Series X. Microsoft has also called for developers to join them on allowing for free upgrades for their games once they release on the Xbox Series X.
CD Projekt Red was the first developer to announce that if you purchase Cyberpunk 2077 for Xbox One then on the release of Xbox Series X you will be able to get a free upgrade for the game on the new console. It remains to be seen if other third-party developers will follow suit, but we hope they will.