Each week the Bidstack team curate the most interesting stories from the world of gaming, advertising and esports to help you keep ahead of the pack when it comes to in-game advertising.
Discover the most interesting news and views from the past week below.
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The US video games industry experienced a record quarterly high in Q1 2020. It’s been reported that consumers spent close to $10.9billion on digital console and PC content, mobile and subscription spending, hardware and accessories. Gaming content attributed the most with $9.58billion from titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot and Grand Theft Auto V to name a few.
Amazon have finally released their first title, Crucible. The free-to-play, team-based PC shooter game was developed together with Relentless Studios. The release of Crucible is another step for Amazon to increase their market share within the gaming industry. Amazon’s technology underpins a lot of online game platforms, however their first significant move into the gaming industry was when they bought Twitch in 2014.
McLaren Racing announced that they have teamed up with London-based esports organisation, Veloce Esports, to manage and develop McLaren’s sim racing team. Veloce have been tasked with event success, racer development and increasing the team’s international presence. The esports organisation and McLaren are also working on creating a path that could lead up-and-coming racers to represent McLaren by establishing an academy.
Sony have been relatively quiet when it comes to news about the upcoming PS5 release. Earlier this year, Sony released images and tech specs of the new PS5 controller, Duel Sense which had gamers wagging their tails and they released the logo for the console, but no further detail. President and CEO of Sony, Kenichiro Yoshida said that Sony are working with first and third party developers for the new game experience and that they plan to introduce the titles soon.
Game publishers, Take-Two, announced in their Q4 and fiscal 2020 financial results that they are planning to release 93 titles across the next 5 years. 47 will come from existing franchises and the remaining 46 will come from new IPs. Take-Two is the parent company of many publishing labels including 2K, Rockstar Gaming and the latest edition Private Division.
Bidstack’s Marketing Director, Vanessa Goff-Yu and CRO, Lewis Sherlock, took a closer look with Mediatel to find out why brands are now getting involved with gaming. What is it about the gaming industry that’s got advertiser’s attention? Is it the $3bn spend on in-game advertising in the US, or is it more people are watching Twitch over live TV?
Lewis Hadley
