Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled – the spruce-up of the racer once referred to as “objectively loads better” than Mario Kart by Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell, causing eyebrows to catapult clean off people’s faces – is making its way to Game Pass this Wednesday, 4th December. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is, of course, developer Beenox’s effervescent remaster of 1999 PlayStation cult classic Crash Team Racing, which – alongside a significant audio-visual makeover – introduced elements from 2003’s Crash Nitro Kart and 2005’s Crash Tag Team Racing. “[It’s] is a gold-standard remaster,” Chris Tapsell wrote in his review back in 2019, “capturing the loveably janky, off-brand spirit of classic CTR – and then some.” “It’s just plain, dumb fun, a game completely unashamed of itself even now,” he continued. “I think that’s probably why, even beyond the enormously generous treatment it’s had from Beenox… CTR is still one of the best kart racers ever made.” He then slapped it with a Eurogamer Essential, whereupon heads across the world began to explode, Scanners-style. Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is the first game to be confirmed for Microsoft’s December Game Pass line-up (you’ll find November’s over here). It’s also the latest in a slow trickle of Activision Blizzard titles to have hit the subscription service – following on from the likes of Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Diablo 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – since Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of the publisher last year. And if you’re not already a Game Pass subscriber, you might be interested to hear Microsoft recently reinstated its previous £1/$1 14-day trial offer – but only for PC.
Category: Activision Blizzard
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I love World of Warcraft, but I wish Blizzard would stop looking backwards
How is it that the most exciting thing about Warcraft in 2024 is old Warcraft games from the mid 90s? I can’t have been the only one watching the Warcraft Direct broadcast this week hoping for a glimpse of the future, and of something new – to hear what director Chris Metzen has been doing since he returned to think about the future of Warcraft a year ago. Instead, all we got was remastered versions of Warcraft 1 and 2, and Classic servers for World of Warcraft Classic – Classic Classic – and a tease for player housing in WoW. That was as good as it got: player housing, which, admittedly, is exciting, but it’s still a niche development for a 20-year-old game. How many people, besides WoW players, are excited to hear about WoW expansions in 2024? They have become as predictable as winter.
Ironically, all the Warcraft Direct did was remind me how exciting Warcraft used to be, which I know is partly the point of a 30th anniversary broadcast, but isn’t it also about setting up what’s next? We used to hang on Blizzard’s every word, eager to see what it had been making for us. Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 – the latter rewrote the rules of the RTS. Then of course there was World of Warcraft, which really did seem to captivate the world. But how long has it been since it can claim to have done that? It’s telling that the most exciting thing to happen to WoW in recent years was the launch of Classic, five years ago. The future seems to have become about reliving the glory of the past.
It’s not just Warcraft that’s tiring. Look across Blizzard more broadly and ask, “When was the last time it gave us something new?”, as in actually new, not Warcraft Rumble new. Diablo 4, as much as I enjoyed it, wasn’t much of a surprise. Do we really have to go back to Overwatch in 2015 to find the answer?
What a renaissance moment for Blizzard productivity that was. Finally, as if freed from a kind of perfectionist paralysis, not one but two experimental and unfinished games were released: HearthStone and Overwatch. Both were enormous, company-changing successes, and they seemed to usher in a new age, one of creative transparency, as well as a willingness to try things and, perhaps, fail. Where did that go? HearthStone, as we were repeatedly reminded during the Warcraft Direct, is now 10 years old, and Overwatch is unironically having a Classic moment of its own, reinstating 6v6 play in a call-back to the game’s original launch. Where is the new?
Look, I know none of this exists in a vacuum and that Blizzard has had more on its plate than creative concerns in recent years. It was embroiled in allegations of workplace misconduct for years, and trapped in web of will-they, won’t-they Microsoft acquisition complications for just as long. Then, it was rocked by layoffs. Clearly, life at the studio hasn’t been easy, and I have every admiration for the people who’ve stuck it out and are the new face of Blizzard, and who’ve turned out games like Diablo 4 and the World of Warcraft expansions we see now. Evidently a lot of really important structural work at the company has been done. The Blizzard we’re presented with in showcases now seems more diverse, and the dialogue between game teams and their audiences feels more natural and open than ever before. Detailed road-maps lay out the path ahead, blogs detail upcoming features in depth, and videos document changes and design philosophies in ways Blizzard never used to do. There’s also experimentation and risk being taken on existing projects. Vital progress has been made.
But when is Blizzard going to excite us with something new again? It’s as though, in being tossed around a bit, the company lost some of its nerve. In clinging to former glories in the way it does, it comes across as shackled by them, because no matter how exciting a World of Warcraft expansion gets – or a trilogy of them, as we’re getting now – it’s never going to make the game as exciting as it once was, in that moment when it first arrived, when it was new. Reliving it over and over again in Classic isn’t the same thing. It’s true of Hearthstone and of Overwatch too – there’s no escaping the diminishing returns; there’s only so much excitement one game idea can naturally give.
Perhaps this is the curse of extraordinary live game success, an eternal clinging to a previous high and reluctance to do anything that might upset the audience and recurring paycheck. But for how long is that sustainable? When you’re pulled in several directions by several games, where do you find the time and creative space to do something new? Moreover, where do you find the desire and the appetite to take the risk?
What’s doubly worrying is that Blizzard does seem to have been trying. That “brand new survival game” set in a “whole new universe”, codenamed Odyssey, sounds like it was exactly the kind of ‘new’ I’m talking about. But it was canned – canned after six years of development amidst Microsoft-mandated layoffs earlier this year. It’s as though the suits came in, saw the risks involved, and only the risks, and thought better of it. Better to have a nice stable income from tried and tested brands instead. A rumoured StarCraft shooter led by former FarCry boss Dan Hay doesn’t sound anywhere near as interesting by comparison; it’s an idea Blizzard has been toying with for decades – remember StarCraft Ghost?
It’s a shame. Blizzard has produced some of the games I remember most fondly of any that I’ve played, and I’ve no doubt there’s the talent there to make more of them – to give us experiences we haven’t even conceived of yet. But does it want to? That’s the question. In looking to the past, it’s in danger of living in it and being hemmed in by its own success. I don’t want Blizzard to become a Greatest Hits band; I want to hear something new.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 could boost Game Pass subscribers by 2.5m to 4m
The launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 into Game Pass will hurt sales of the game, but will see millions of subscribers flock to Xbox’s service, leading analysts say.
However, the true success won’t be immediately known, as it’ll depend on whether Xbox can keep subscribers within the service in the months following the game’s launch.
Wedbush boss Michael Pachter believes that putting Call of Duty in Game Pass could result in up to six million lost sales, based on the idea that 25% of Game Pass subscribers may have bought the game anyway. However, he adds that the move could result in between three to four million people signing up to Game Pass to access the title.
“Good overall for Microsoft and for consumers,” he told us. “But the headline will say ‘Call of Duty sales are down’.”
Ampere’s chief games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls is a little more conservative, and believes that Call of Duty will result in a 10% increase in Game Pass Ultimate subscribers (so 2.5 million). He also says that not all of those will be completely new users, as it will include those upgrading from Game Pass Core and Game Pass Standard (Call of Duty will only be available in the ‘Ultimate’ tier). In fact, he feels a ‘good chunk’ of new subscribers will come from those tiers.
Harding-Rolls adds that although there will inevitably be some lost premium sales, there is scope to alleviate that through other forms of monetisation.
“The removal of the 14-day $1 trial offer is an indication that Microsoft needs to maximise its subscription revenue returns from the introduction of one of gaming’s biggest franchises at launch,” he says.
“There is no doubt that adding the latest Call of Duty will be expensive, at least initially, for Microsoft. However, Call of Duty is increasingly a live-service game first and foremost that monetises strongly in-game. Microsoft will be trading premium full-game sales in exchange for a bigger audience that can be monetised in-game instead.
“One of the key questions is how this might impact how the game is monetised and whether there is a bigger onus on in-game monetisation compared to previous entries in the franchise. In terms of audience expansion, Xbox and PC are likely to be key growth platforms. Cloud support at launch offers some potential, but I think the Call of Duty streaming opportunity aligns most strongly with playing on TV screens and PC monitors rather than on mobile devices where Call of Duty Mobile and Warzone are already popular.”
Newzoo market analyst Brett Hunt also believes that Black Ops 6 will attract a stronger audience this year, certainly compared with last year’s Modern Warfare 3. However, that’s not just because of its inclusion in Game Pass.
“Black Ops has always been well received and with a mutually exclusive campaign from Modern Warfare, new movement system in multiplayer, and return of round-based Zombies, this should result in numbers much closer to those of Modern Warfare 2 than 3. This is the most Call of Duty has been reinvigorated in recent years, and the numbers will likely reflect this.”
Newzoo says that Modern Warfare 2 attracted 21.7 million monthly active users in the US, compared with just 12 million for Modern Warfare 3.
One key discussion point is around the impact Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will have on PlayStation. For the past generation, Sony has had a content and marketing exclusivity agreement with Activision over Call of Duty, which has now ended. Game Pass is also unavailable on PlayStation 5. So could this result in some audience shift from PlayStation towards Xbox?
“Those who own both Xbox and PlayStation consoles may be swayed to play the game on Microsoft’s devices, but cross-platform play and multi-platform accounts mean this is not necessarily a permanent decision,” explains Harding-Rolls.
“Indeed, there could be a scenario where PlayStation-first multi-console gamers switch to Xbox to play the premium campaign while still playing F2P Warzone on their preferred console under a single Activision account. As such, I’m not convinced that the longer-term audience on PlayStation will be significantly disrupted, although Sony will potentially have its storefront share of premium sales undermined to an extent.”
“I’m not convinced that the longer-term audience on PlayStation will be significantly disrupted, although Sony will potentially have its storefront share of premium sales undermined to an extent”
Piers-Harding Rolls, Ampere
All the analysts we spoke to agreed on one thing, and that’s the success of this move will depend on whether Xbox can retain the new subscribers it brings in beyond the game’s launch period. And whether they are prepared to implement a strategy to continually engage new subscribers into 2025.
Katan Games’ Dr Serkan Toto believes there is pressure from Xbox to get this right.
“We all know that Microsoft’s gaming unit has not been growing as expected, which is why Microsoft greenlit the Activision Blizzard mega deal in the first place,” he said. “Now the pressure on Xbox is sky high: If Call of Duty will not make the Game Pass business model work, what possibly can?
“Nobody knows what Microsoft’s expectations are for Game Pass growth past launch, but if Black Ops 6 does not meet targets, things can become very grim very quickly. I also wonder if Black Ops 6 will be able to retain subscribers in the long run or if numbers will drop sharply again early next year, after the initial hype runs out.”
However, Pachter believes Call of Duty is the perfect game to keep users engaged.
“Call of Duty players generally play for much longer because of multiplayer and frequent map drops,” he says. “I think the average is closer to six months and a lot play year-round. The year-round players will sign up and stay.”