EA: 'There is no weakness' in Star Wars Battlefront sales

Electronic Arts was "a little bit" surprised by GameStop's comments that Star Wars Battlefront had "underperformed."

As reported by Eurogamer, talking to investors, GameStop executive Tony Bartel stated that three recent AAA releases - Halo 5, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and Star Wars Battlefront - had not performed as the chain had expected.

"We're not going to quantify it in terms of actual numbers," Bartel said, "but we had high expectations that diminished somewhat as it got closer and it failed to hit those lowered expectations."

According to EA's Peter Moore, however, Battlefront is still expected to hit its target - 13M copies sold by the end of March 2016 - as planned. 

"[GameStop's] comments were interesting and little bit of a surprise to us particularly as the CFO in the call then started to correct [Bartel] as the call went on," Moore said during an investor briefing. "So from our perspective I'm here to reaffirm our guidance of 13M units sold in for the fiscal year. 

"There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title and I want everybody to understand that based on where we think this title is - and based on the marketing beats ahead of us, in particular, the movie launch over the next two weeks - we feel very comfortable we're going to hit the guidance that we've given analysts, investors and Wall Street alike."

World of Warcraft's at its lowest player count since 2005

World of Warcraft isn’t at its strongest right now. In fact, according to Activision’s Q2 2015 Earnings Call, the subscriber numbers have dropped to their lowest point since 2005, with only 5.6 million subscribers. This is a drop of 1.5 million players since its last quarter.

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A chart made by MMO Champion shows some worrying things: this has been the lowest subscriber count since before Burning Crusade, the very first expansion. WhileWarlords of Draenor did cause a small spike in subscriptions, it only got it to the same place as at the start of Mists of Pandaria.

According to Activision, Fury of Hellfire managed to stabilise the subscriber rates, and it seems confident that the new expansion to be announced at Gamescom will help bring the playercount back up. Not to mention the Warcraft film due to be released next year that might help get the game back out there.

It’s also still the biggest subscribed-to MMO in the world, 11 years after release, so maybe this drop is to be expected considering it’s a dinosaur in online game terms.

I played WoW for the first time last month, and chose not to resubscribe. I just couldn’t find a decent guild or any interesting social aspects which is usually what I’d want to play an MMO for, despite me enjoying most of the other things I saw in the game.

Have you managed to stick with WoW?

Blizzard's done telling us how many subscribers World of Warcraft has

Every three months, like clockwork, Blizzard has shared World of Warcraft subscription statistics as part of its quarterly report. The MMO is perfectly healthy, but the fanbase isn't at the fever pitch that it was at several years ago. Subscriptions have mostly seen a steady decline, save for when expansions release. As such, the media loves to irresponsibly run "World of Warcraft is doomed!" articles.

Blizzard's sick of it. Following the announcement that World of Warcraft now sits at 5.5 million subscribers (the lowest of the past nine years), the developer is done publishing subscription totals. During an earnings call, it said "Note that this is the last quarter that we plan to provide subscriber numbers. There are other metrics that are better indicators of the overall Blizzard business performance." It wasn't elaborated upon as to what metrics would be used.

You can hardly blame Blizzard for finally going this route. Every other MMO on the market would be drunk on euphoria if it could touch 5.5 million subscriptions. WhenWorld of Warcraft hits that, it's supposedly bad times, ahoy. Losing players is never a good thing, but World of Warcraft's still in a much better position than its competitors. Now, it's going to have to find creative ways of telling us that it's just fine without misleading investors.

World of Warcraft: Legion will arrive 'on or before' September 2016

Well, Blizzard is seemingly letting all of the beans spill out before any of its BlizzCon conferences take place this weekend!

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According to an image straight from Battle.net (which has been taken down), the World of Warcraft: Legion expansion will be due "on or before" September 2016. If you pre-order you'll instantly gain access to a level 100 boost, as well as 7-days of early access for the Demon Hunter class. It's priced at $59.99, or $69.99 if you spring for the Digital Deluxe Edition.

There seem to be bonuses in tow for World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III, andHeroes of the Storm. A Hearthstone extra is strangely absent. Expect more info to be officially unveiled at BlizzCon.

$289 PlayStation 4 now available (yep another $10 cheaper)

Remember when Sony announced that there will be two $300 PlayStation 4 bundles? Well the deals are now arriving, and in fact over at eBay you can find a PS4 Battlefront bundle $10 cheaper at $289.99.

The discounted PS4 consoles will run through December 19th, though we suspect a $300 price tag may be the norm come Q1 2016. For the eBay deal linked above, the retailer in question is Antonline (an authorized Sony reseller) and their deal will run until the 15th or until sold out. We've been told that there's 4,000 units available so its doubtful to last for more than a few days. Tax in CA/GA only and you'll get the full warranty.

If Star Wars: Battlefront isn't your cup of tea, the only other discounted PS4 would be the Uncharted Collection bundle - which is also available at Best Buy, Walmart,GameStop, and Amazon. Also of note, if you need a new game with your PS4, Best Buy is running a B2G1 free promo.

Dog fighting Ace Combat 7 announced for PS4

If you have a jet-shaped hole in your heart, boy oh gee golly gosh do I have news for you. Ace Combat 7 has just been announced for PS4 at the PlayStation Experience in San Francisco. Bandai Namco will be bringing the series' aerial combat to the PlayStation 4 with Unreal Engine 4 and an environment renderer called trueSKY.

Ace Combat 7 will utilize PlayStation VR in some as-yet-unknown manner. Homoerotic glances at your co-pilots? One can hope. What I'm really excited about is a potential sequel to the best QTE ever.

Minecraft is officially coming to Wii U this month, Nintendo has announced

$29.99 on December 17

Ever since Minecraft: Story Mode debuted on Wii U, rumors have been flying around that the console would finally get a legit version of the game, mostly due to the fact that the real engine was used in Telltale's narrative series.

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Nintendo has just announced that Minecraft: Wii U Edition is coming this month for $29.99. It'll arrive on December 17, and the publisher is currently working with Mojang on "new content for Nintendo fans to be released at a future date." Mario skins? You betcha.

Of course, the port will support off-TV play, and a few other content packs, detailed below.

Content packs:

• Battle & Beasts Skin Pack
• Battle & Beasts 2 Skin Pack
• Natural Texture Pack
• City Texture Pack
• Fantasy Texture Pack
• Festive Mash-up Pack       

Paid DLC:

• Festive Skin Pack
• The Simpsons Skin Pack
• Doctor Who Skins Volume 1
• Doctor Who Skins Volume 2
• Star Wars Classic Skin Pack
• Star Wars Rebels Skin Pack
• Star Wars Prequel Skin Pack
• Mass Effect Mash-up Pack
• Skyrim Mash-up Pack
• Plastic Texture Pack
• Candy Texture Pack
• Cartoon Texture Pack
• Steampunk Texture Pack
• Pattern Texture Pack
• Greek Mythology Mash-up Pack
• Halloween 2015 Mash-up Pack

Microsoft wants to make it possible to buy Xbox 360 games directly on Xbox One

As I've said many times, Microsoft's Xbox 360 backward compatibility feature on Xbox One is pretty awesome. It's been very smooth so far, with one caveat -- you need to purchase Xbox 360 titles online, or on the actual 360 marketplace. Right now, you can't actually buy legacy content on the Xbox One.

Given how well Microsoft's online storefront works it's not that big of a deal, but it would be nice to see one day. Thankfully, Phil Spencer has confirmed that it is in the works, noting on Twitter that they've "heard this request" and that they are "working on a solution."

While there's no excuse for Microsoft's horrible DRM-laden strategy out of the gate, competition is a good thing, and I'm glad they're still in the console market to some degree.

Phil Spencer [Twitter]

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Tony Hawk 5 gets a massive patch that adds content, fixes bugs

It still has a bit to go

For roughly two months, Tony Hawk 5 has been plagued with bugs, from online connectivity to fundamental gameplay flaws. Finally, developer Robomodo has pushed a patch this month that rectifies some of the problems, while adding two additional levels and a few quality of life tweaks.

Even though this patch does fix some issues based on my testing, it doesn't wholly make up for some of the other shortcomings, like uninspired mission and level designs. In the end, I really wanted to like Tony Hawk 5, but a complete lack of polish brought it down. I hope this isn't the end for the franchise -- Activision needs to give it another go with another developer before it trashes it.

Check out the full patch notes below.

1.03 Patch Notes:

Content

• Additional levels have been added (Underground, Wild West)
• Additional character campaigns have been added (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tyler the Creator)
• Lighting and visuals have been improved for several levels
• Ability to regain Special Meter during a single combo has been added
• Per-Mission Leaderboards have been added
• Added option to "Return to Freeskate" while in a Mission or Mode
• Added option to "Return to Freeskate" while search for the other player for Co-op Missions or Modes
• Tutorial has been updated
• Many Pro Skaters' Textures have been updated
• Several Pro Skaters have received Sponsor update
• Create-a-Park Levels have been updated
• Increased the total number of Stat points a Campaign can earn from 128 to 150

Gameplay

• Several gameplay mechanics within the levels have been updated
• Grinds were updated in several of the levels

Networking

• The User Generated Content Rating System has been updated
• Added Likes/Dislikes to the User Generated Levels
• New Challenge UI Flow for matching during FreeSkate has been added
• Leaderboard functionality was updated
• Several multiplayer modes have been added and updated
• Modes added include "Daily Grind," "Skate Hoarding," and "Manual Mayhem"

UI

• More options for user preference have been added including:
• Double tapping grind button to activate slam
• Opt in/out of Global Voice Chat
• Several UI audio effects have been added
• Misc - minor UI fixes and improvements have been made

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