Portal's Month in Games - September 2024

Summer is over; autumn has arrived. Falling leaves have replaced ice cream vans. The kids are back in school, and you can’t take three steps without slipping on a conker.

What does all this mean for the games industry? Absolutely nothing. I just needed to write an intro for our latest Month in Games. Enjoy. 

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Sony reveals PlayStation 5 Pro

Sony announced its much rumoured PS5 Pro on September 10 during a tech presentation by PlayStation’s chief tech boffin Mark Cerny.

The digital-only console boasts an upgraded GPU, advanced ray tracing (good old Ray) and “AI-driven upscaling.” 

What does that actually mean? Higher frame rates and better-looking games, essentially. 

This glow-up applies to games currently in development and more than 8,500 PS4 games (who counted them?) and select existing PS5 titles. The latter will see boosts to their fidelity via upcoming patches.

‍Eyebrows have been raised at the price of the new console, which comes in at $700 in the US, £700 in the UK and €800 in Europe. That’s a 59% difference in price between the standard console and the souped-up version. 

By comparison, the PS4 Pro launched at a price that was 33% higher than its older, weedier brother.

As mentioned, the Pro is digital only. Attaching a separate disc drive will be possible, although that will set you back a further £100. Those keen on verticality must pay an additional £25 for a separate stand. Oof. 

PlayStation 5 Pro launches worldwide on 7 November.

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Concord’s final flight

The PS5 and PC multiplayer shooter Concord was unceremoniously pulled from sale this month, just two weeks after it launched. The news came from game director Ryan Ellis, who admitted that the launch “didn’t land the way we’d intended.”

‍Concord took flight on 23 August to average but not disastrous reviews following eight years in development at Firewalk Studios. 

Sales, however, were markedly worse with GameDiscover.co’s Simon Carless estimating that PlayStation shifted just 25,000 copies of the game in its first few days.

Sony bought Firewalk in April 2023 as part of its master plan to bring 12 live service games to market by 2026. 

Then PlayStation head honcho Jim Ryan was the driving force behind this strategy, crediting live service games for much of the “enormous growth in the gaming industry” since 2012.

Those ambitions have since been revised, with the Japanese company announcing delays to half of its GaaS projects last November, noting that “game quality” had to come first.

So, where do Concord’s failure and Jim Ryan’s retirement leave Sony’s push into live service? In a recent GI Microcast, Chris Dring suggested that Sony may put its full weight behind a select handful of its GaaS projects it deems most promising rather than back all 12. 

If that’s accurate, further Concord-style stories might be on the way.

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Flappy Bird strikes back

Remember 2014? Interstellar was in cinemas, Shake It Off was almost certainly top of the charts and Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin had just undergone their “conscious uncoupling”—simpler, happier times.

Meanwhile, many of us were addicted to a mobile game called Flappy Bird. 

For the uninitiated, Flappy Bird was a one-button game which asked players to guide the titular avian through a maze of Mario-style pipes which must have bordered on actionable.

It was simple. It was moreish. It was intensely irritating. 

Despite being intensely irritating, Flappy Bird was wildly popular. At one point, its developer Dong Nguyen claimed that the game was pulling in $50,000 a day from ad revenue. Yes, a day.

But its success bothered its creator. So much so that in early February 2014, Nguyen took to Twitter to let people know that he was pulling the game from sale.

Nguyen later told Forbes, "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed… But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever."

Cut to this September, and Flappy Bird has been raised from the dead, not by its creator but by an entity called the Flappy Bird Foundation Group, which appears to have acquired the rights.

Disappointingly, the revived game features cryptocurrency and a bunch of contentious F2P mechanics—is nothing sacred?

Nguyen is less than happy about Flappy Bird’s return. He broke seven years of social media silence to point out that he isn’t involved in the new game, didn’t sell the Flappy Bird rights and doesn’t support crypto.

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Unity u-turns on Runtime Fee

12 months ago, in the first-ever Month in Games, we wrote about Unity and their controversial “Runtime Fee”, which would see devs obligated to pay a charge every time their Unity-developed game was installed on any device.

Unity’s move was seriously controversial with many devs abandoning the engine in favour of alternatives like Unreal or Godot.

Now, a year on, and Unity has killed the Runtime Fee. Matt Bromberg, the company’s CEO, said the decision came after “deep consultation with our community, customers and partners”.

In its place, the tech company will return to a traditional “seat-based subscription model” for its game dev customers. Unity will also only consider price rises on “an annual basis.”

Will it be enough to tempt devs back to the engine?

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Nintendo sues Palworld maker

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have issued a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the studio behind megahit Palworld, for infringement of “multiple patent rights.”

We’re not going to go into too much detail about the lawsuit. Firstly, we’re not lawyers; secondly, lawsuits are generally quite dull.

Instead, here are some links to further reading by people smarter than us.

• A patent lawyer speculates on one of the patents that Pocketpair may have infringed.
• IP expert claims lawsuit could take years. “it could be that Nintendo actually wants to see it through and wants it to take long.”
• Analyst says Nintendo is likely to win. "I cannot really remember a single lawsuit that Nintendo itself initiated in Japan that they lost. I think they won every single one of them."
• Pocketpair responds. “we will do our utmost for our fans and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.”

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Rise of the robots

With something like 50 games released on Steam every day, game discovery is harder than ever. Most titles are made by small teams, are self-published and have little or no marketing budget.

These games are often too under the radar to be of interest to press or influencers, making it almost impossible for them to succeed in such a competitive market. So, what’s to be done?

Say hello to Totally Human Media. They’ve created a program that pulls in data from Steam and uses it to create automated videos that shine a light on games that would otherwise go unnoticed. 

Videos are then uploaded to a YouTube channel called We Love Every Game. THM’s aim is for every game released on Steam to be featured in one of their videos.

It’s a noble ambition. You can learn more about the how and why of it all on the THM website.

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Out this month

September is usually when the release calendar begins to heat up. And while 2024’s vintage isn’t up there with the best, there was plenty to get excited about.

Who saw this coming? Astro Bot launched on 6 September to universal acclaim, becoming the highest-rated new game of 2024 by Metacritic score. The Verge even described it as “the game you buy a PS5 for.” High praise.

It’s always good to see something a bit different. Enter UFO 50, a gaming anthology featuring 50 8-bit-style games made by some of the brightest minds in indie development, including Derek Yu of Spelunky fame.

Stellar reviews have highlighted the package's depth and breadth, which ranges from sports games to in-depth RPGs. 

‍Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 enjoyed a successful launch this September, becoming the UK’s fastest-selling Warhammer game. Reviews have been very positive, with critics praising its wealth of options and the faithful adaptation of the grimmest of universes. 

Speaking of grim, here’s Frostpunk 2! The follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed misery manager sees players return to the never-ending winter to build and develop their cities in the face of so much snow.

Reviews have been excellent, with critics highlighting its expanded scope and compelling new mechanics.

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Signing off

That’s it for this edition of Month in Games. Don’t forget to join us on X, Instagram or LinkedIn to share your thoughts on the latest industry news.