A new report from Video Game Insights shows that co-op games have become more prominent on Steam in recent years and that the trend will continue in 2024.Per VGI, nearly 800 games with two or four-player co-op as a core mechanic came to Valve's storefront in 2023. 2018 had 383 games, making this a sizable increase of 108.6 percent.Things really took off in 2020, which saw 647 games co-op games released on Steam. When the pandemic hit, those games made up 6.6 percent of the year's releases and 43 percent of all units solid.For 2023, co-op titles made up 6 percent of Steam releases, but also 36 percent of games sold on the platform. Big titles in that demographic include Remnant II, Diablo IV, and Payday 3.To date, 5 percent of all games released throughout 2024 have been co-op tit…
Sea of Thieves only made the voyage to PlayStation in late April, and already it has become the most-downloaded game on the PlayStation 5.Rare's shared-seas pirate game made the top of the PS5 list across both the US and Europe. Coming in second and third place respectively were Madden NFL 24 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in the US, and Grand Theft Auto V and F1 24 in Europe.While numbers weren't given, Sea of Thieves' milestone is impressive in the larger context of Xbox bringing it and other games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.Xbox revealed Sea of Thieves would go multiplatform in February alongside Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Grounded. All four have come out in the months since, and this is notably the only real milestone for any of the games that jumped ship fr…
FromSoftware is one of many triple-A studios that's managed to avoid layoffs over the past two years. And if president Hidetaka Miyazaki has anything to say about it, that'll remain the case as the industry's larger rough period persists.Talking to PCGamer, the Elden Ring director was asked about the studio's ability to soldier on as other studios either cut staff or closed entirely. He doesn't want anyone at his studio to get cut "in a million years," a thought apparently shared by parent company Kadokawa."I think the people at Kadokawa…understand that I hold this view very strongly," he said. "While we can't say 100 percent…at least as long as this company is my responsibility, [layoffs are] something I would not let happen."…
Gorilla Tag developer Another Axiom claims the multiplayer parkour jamboree is the most popular title on the Meta Quest Store.The studio explained its VR title has seen over 1 million daily active users and over 3 million monthly active users. Notably, it added its player community continues to expand.Gorilla Tag launched back in 2021 (initially via early acces) and became the first app to hit over 100,000 reviews on the Meta Quest Store. It's also available on SteamVR.Another Axiom dished out those metrics during a recent fireside chat at the Augmented World Expo (available on the company website), and claimed Gorilla Tag's success shows that "the time for VR is in fact, here and now."The studio said Gorilla Tag has attracted over 10 million lifetime players and genera…
The Crash Bandicoot series keeps going strong, as the Crash N. Sane Trilogy has now sold 20 million copies.Activision Blizzard's been cagey on the game's performance since it sold 10 million copies in 2019. But the new milestone shows it's still drawing people in, and it may be the most successful Crash title ever.In April, a Toys for Bob developer quietly revealed the studio's sequel, Crash 4: It's About Time, sold 5 million copies since its 2020 launch. Depending on the the game, earlier entries (per individual Wikipedia pages), reportedly sold between 1 and 6 million copies.Why has N. Sane done so well? Being remasters of the original three games helps, given the nostalgia held for those original PlayStation titles, as does them going on sale on a continuous bas…