Welcome to Lootbox - The Business Side of Video Games

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What’s in this Lootbox?

• 🐵 Black Myth: Wukong Sales

• 💰 Playstation 5 Pro Sticker Shock

• 🔥 Campfire Raises $3.95M

• 📷️ Meme

🐵 Black Myth: Wukong Sales

Black Myth: Wukong has reportedly surpassed 18 Million units sold so far. This would put their sales just over $1 BILLION.

Ya you heard that right, no need to clean your ears like the main character in the splash image above. This is your friendly reminder that the game industry is massive.

Keep in mind this game just released less than 4 weeks ago. Oh and its only on PC and PS5 so far (Xbox to follow at some point).

For those unfamiliar this is a AAA game from a new Chinese studio called Game Science. The game resembles Elden Ring with its intense boss fights but pays homage to Chinese mythology.

The game has dominated not just markets in the east but also the west taking the #2 spot on Steam for the 2nd highest peak CCU of all time.

My advice to game devs: make more high fidelity single player games.

💰 Playstation 5 Pro Sticker Shock

Sony has officially revealed the PS5 Pro and… its expensive.

The primary difference is the ability to play games at 60fps while maintaining high fidelity. Typically gamers would have to choose which mode Performance vs Fidelity modes.

Jury is still out on how well the console will perform and at $700 I’m wondering why more people don’t just buy/build a PC for that money.

The Verge has a great comparison article for those interested: here

🔥 Campfire Raises $3.95M

Campfire has raised just shy of $4M to build its AI powered game engine Sprites.ai. This funding comes from Y Combinator and Immad Akhund (founder of Mercury) among other investors.

Generative AI has been a touchy subject among game developers as most of the talent sees it as taking their job. Others view it as a tool just like Unreal Engine is a tool that has made it easier to build better and more engaging games.

Along with the funding round Campfire is launching a game to showcase their engine: Cozy Friends. The game has been described as “the world’s first AI-native life simulation game”.

I for one am stoked to see more of the game dev community working on GenAI tools and look forward to seeing how their Sprites engine takes shape.

📷 Meme

Thanks for Reading :)

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