Morning DLC: Video Game News And Rumors 1/13/2016
"Epic chief Tim Sweeney took to Twitter yesterday to publicly apologize to a man who was temporarily blocked from creating an Epic Games account because his name was flagged as matching one on a list of “Specially Designated Nationals” maintained by the U.S. government."
This is a delicate and frustrating situation–on one hand, the man’s name “Muhammad Khan”, apparently matched four others so named in the Specially Designated Nationals listing. On the other, not only are names alone an incredibly finnicky way to determine whether a person is a criminal or a law-abiding citizen (as this is another case of the quinessential “John Smith” example), but exactly what someone’s name being on that list has to do with signing up for an Epic Games account is still unknown. Hopefully the issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Epic indicates it will work on a fix that will match other information, such as addresses, before flagging people in the future.
In addition to the really cool New Nintendo 3DSes we’re seeing for Pokemon’s 20th anniversary this year, Pokemon has plenty of other surprises in store. New TCG cards and Pokemon Center merchandise will satisfy those who want Pokemon swag to celebrate. Those with Pokemon X/Y, or ORAS can slowly add to their collection of Legendary Pokemon this year through a series of events beginning in February, where the Pokemon will be available at participating retailers via download. And, Pokemon will get a commercial during the Super Bowl. Nice!
"Video game retailer GameStop on Tuesday reported sales results for the all-important holiday period. For the nine-week period ended January 2, GameStop total global sales rose 1.8 percent to $2.99 billion. However, it wasn’t all good news, as the store’s share value took a dive today (more on that below).Comparable store sales grew 4.4 percent worldwide (4.9 percent in the US and 3.2 percent internationally), while new hardware sales rose 4.5 percent. GameStop said consumers were “motivated” by the temporary price cuts that both Sony and Microsoft implemented for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One respectively."
During their holiday sales announcement, GameStop dropped the news that their earnings per share for both Q4 and the entire year would be a few cents lower than predicted. No one was happy with this, apparently, as their shares dropped by over 10% yesterday. The shares are slowly climbing again, but this just goes to show how a single remark can change an entire outlook, whether in the short or long term.