Latest in Video Games

If you have a teenager in your house, you shouldn’t be surprised by Nielsen’s latest statistic: Fortnite took in $1.8 billion in sales in 2019, more money in a single year than any game in history. SuperData, the video game arm of Nielsen, gave the numbers on the game. Epic Games owns Fortnite but doesn’t break out…

Facebook’s Oculus unit has acquired Beat Games, a company known for the virtual-reality video game Beat Saber. Terms were not disclosed. The company will become part of Oculus Studios but will also produce games for other platforms. Beat Saber is described as a light-saber-endowed spin on the game Dance Dance Revolutio…

For millions players of the video game Fortnite, the withdrawal symptoms are over. The Epic Games title, which went into a publicity-savvy “black hole” on Sunday, returned to full power Tuesday with a full-length trailer for its newest iteration. Live game play of the new chapter got under way after the trailer…

Epic Games’ Fortnite ended its 10th season with a flourish, going completely dark after an asteroid was depicted as blowing up the game’s map. “The End,” as it was touted on the game, came on Sunday afternoon. The 11th season is expected to debut this week. About 250 million people play Fortnite, with the game taking…

Sony’s long-awaited PlayStation 5 gaming console will arrive at the start of the 2020 holiday season, the company announced Tuesday. The news was confirmed in a blog post by Jim Ryan, president of Sony’s interactive entertainment unit. No pricing or exact release date were specified. Among the game titles planned for…

Shawn Layden, the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios, is exiting the top role overseeing the company’s PlayStation games development. The news came Monday in a tweet from Sony’s official PlayStation account. “It is with great emotion that we announce that Worldwide Studios Chairman Shawn…

ABC has told its affiliates that ESPN2 has postponed its planned Sunday airing of an esports tournament involving the video game Apex Legends in the wake of the recent mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio. The program, EXP Invitational Apex Legends at X Games, was set to air Sunday on cable outlet. In a memo…

President Donald Trump called for curbing “gruesome and grisly video games” that contribute to a “culture of violence” as a response to the horrific shooting sprees in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, but it had the ring of the familiar. Trump and other political figures have put blame at the industry’s doorstep…

Showtime's upcoming big budget Halo series is going to be a lot like the iconic video game and different in very strategic ways, the premium cabler's Entertainment president said today. "There's all kinds of new drama that we will be exploring but we will stay faithful to the canon," Gary Levine told Deadline Friday…

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, gaming’s biggest star, has switched allegiances. Starting Friday, he’ll move his livestreaming activities from his home at Twitch to Microsoft’s competing Mixer, detailing his online exploits at http://www.mixer.com/Ninja. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ninja was Twitch’s biggest…

The Fortnite World Cup Finals saw 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf (screen name: “Bugha”) crowned the first solo champion, taking home $3 million. In an indication of how big and enthusiastic the esports audience has become, the event drew 2 million concurrent live streams on Twitch and YouTube. Thousands of fans also…

This week, a special Comic-Con editon of the Hero Nation column… Watching the Game of Thrones contingent take their final (and somewhat complicated) bow this weekend at Comic-Con International I found myself wondering: Will we ever see the likes of the HBO hit series again? Fans will continue to debate the creative…