It’s that time of week again when we take a fond look back at the top five news stories from the week. Welcome to the Weekly Wrap-Up. Below you’ll find a brief summary of the stories, but for the full articles, click on the hyperlink. Feel free to let us know if you agree or disagree with our choices; if you have suggestions for future entries, feel free to email me at jeremy.tyler@bagogames.com.
Enjoy!
Number 5
Ubisoft Believes Next Assassin’s Creed Title Will Not Outperform Previous
Ubisoft have shared their views on how well the next entry into the Assassin’s Creed series will do at retail and it’s surprising to learn that they are not expecting Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to outperform last year’s Assassin’s Creed III.
The revelation came from CEO Yves Guillemot who spoke during an investor conference saying:“To come back to Assassin’s Creed IV, in our numbers we have… we expect less than last year.”
Number 4
PS4 Won’t Be Delayed Into 2014
As soon one journalist realised that ‘Holiday season’ can spread out into 2014 in regards to exactly when the PlayStation 4 will launch there was immediate panic in regards as to when European gamers could expect to get their hands on Sony’s next generation console.
Looking back at the PlayStation 3′s launch, European countries were the last to get their hands on Sony’s machine which has obviously left a bad taste in the mouth of PAL gamers who could only sit back and watch as our friends across the world began playing their new console.
Number 3
EA Sports Executive Sells Entire Stake In EA
Andrew Wilson, the executive vice president at EA Sports, has sold his entire stake in Electronic Arts and thus has made sure to make a pretty penny or two by doing just that.
Andrew Wilson originally had 32,085 shares in the company which, when sold, were valued at $21.42 each which earned him a nice sum of more than $687,000. This was revealed in a SEC document, which was filed last Thursday which links with also makes him the only executive at EA to hold no shares to their name.
The decision for Andrew Wilson to sell his shares may had been encouraged after EA announced that they had both an exclusive Star Wars deal with Disney and a FIFA license extension which saw the companies share price shoot up by more than 17% making it the highest since the end of 2011.
Number 2
Pachter: Talk of The PS4 Has Faded In Favor Of The Next Xbox
Although we are getting ever so closer to the time of year where the world gets into a frenzy in regards to video game news it seems that one game industry analyst, Michael Pachter, believes that Sony have already made a big mistake due to the hype for the PS4 dropping due to the upcoming next-generation Xbox reveal.
Michael Pachter shared his thoughts in the latest episode of Pach-Attack, his weekly web series hosted on Game Trailers, where viewers send in questions, which they would like, answered by the man himself. The question, which revealed Michael Pachter’s opinions, was innocent enough asking if Microsoft’s decision to reveal the next Xbox 2 weeks before E3 2013 was a mistake. He replied:
“Microsoft and Sony have both departed from prior practice by having an independent event different from E3. Sony was very smart to do a reveal event in February. I thought they kept the buzz up and a lot of people talked about the PS4. That talk has faded. You know now that we’re in late April, the Xbox event is May 21st, that talk has faded. Now talk is all about the next Xbox event, so there’s no buzz in front of it. They announced it about a month ahead of time and they’re going to get buzz for the two weeks heading into E3″.
Number 1
EA “Have No Games” For The Wii U
We all know that whilst the Nintendo 3DS is soaring to new sales records and stuffing shop shelves worldwide with the latest blockbuster titles the Nintendo Wii U is edging closer and closer to the bargain bin, even coming pretty close to the price of the powerful handheld when it was cut down to £149.99 by UK retailer ASDA. Well when you thought it couldn’t get any worse… it does.
Despite Nintendo spending some of their E3 time a few years ago explaining their “unprecedented partnership” with Electronic Arts, it seems that it hasn’t all gone according to plan after the developer spoke to Kotaku confirming that:
“We have no games in development for the Wii U currently.”
Honorable Mentions
This week had a lot of big news and the news staff and I found it hard to narrow it down to the usual five stories:
- Sony’s Resistance To Return In The Future?
- Ubisoft Has Suspended Development on 1666
- UK Newspaper: “3DS Is The Best Console Ever”
If you missed out on the big news items this week, you can check out our weekly podcast and get an audio update of this week’s madness from our podcasting team. Listen to us as we talk about some things seriously and a few other things not so much. We guarantee this episode will make you shake your fist at times and nod your head at others.