After solid growth during COVID 19-related shutdowns, gaming peripherals are expected to fall 13% this year, said a Wednesday Omdia report. Category sales rose 20% in 2020 “as consumers sought to improve their home entertainment options,” it said, but two years later, different trends have hit the category: a “correction” initiated by lockdowns and tightened consumer spending, said the research firm. Spending on gaming peripherals rose with the "huge increase in games content spend in 2020, as gamers sought to optimize their console and PC games playing with high-end accessories, while new consumers picked up a gaming habit and increased the total addressable market,” said analyst Dom Tait. Turtle Beach, Razer and Logitech were also “major beneficiaries.” Content spending is projected to fall this year by 4% “as consumers feel more able to delay the purchase of new peripherals than miss out on games themselves,” Tait said. The peripherals market is in a more positive position than pre-pandemic, he said, saying the $199 price for the recently announced DualSense Edge wireless controller for PlayStation shows manufacturer confidence in the high end of the market. Gamepads are the highest selling product in gaming peripherals this year, holding 45% share, Omdia said.
Samsung will begin preorders Nov. 1 for the 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive series for gamers, it said Friday. The 990 Pro and 990 Pro with Heatsink are optimized for PC and console gamers and creators, tripling storage capacity, it said. Read and write speeds are 7,450 Mbps and 6,900 Mbps, respectively, it said. SSD prices are 1TB ($169), 2TB ($289) for the Pro models; Heatsink versions, which include RGB lights, are 1TB ($189) and 2TB ($309); a 4TB version will be available next year, Samsung said.
HyperX bowed the second-generation Stinger headset for PC gamers, adding DTS Headphone:X audio for a more immersive experience, the company said Tuesday. Its earcups rotate 90 degrees for adaptive fit and comfort during breaks, and the headset has audio controls on the earcup, plus a swivel-to-mute, noise-canceling flexible mic. The 10.5-ounce Cloud Stinger 2 ($49) is available through Amazon, Best Buy and the online HyperX Shop, it said.
Chinese internet company NetEase debuted Naraka: Bladepoint for Xbox Series X consoles and on the Xbox Pass subscription service June 23, and in its first two weeks on the market, “an impressive 1 million new players jumped into the game,” said Chief Financial Officer Charles Yang on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. The next version of Naraka: Bladepoint will be for the Xbox One, and NetEase is working “simultaneously” to bring the title to mobile platforms, he said. “Development is progressing smoothly and pre-registration has been very encouraging, with more than three million users already registered without much marketing,” said Yang. The NetEase mobile games pipeline is “bursting” with other titles in the making, including Harry Potter: Magic Awakened, which is “under preparation for global launch following its debut in China last September,” he said. “With our latest round of beta testing in July, we received very positive feedback from the player community.”
ViewSonic added a curved monitor to its gaming lineup, it said Thursday. The 1080p 24-inch Omni VX2418C ($149) has a 165 Hz refresh rate and 1-millisecond response time, the company said. Connections include HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2 and audio out, it said.
U.S. mobile gaming ad revenue will rise 14% this year to $6.26 billion, said eMarketer Friday. Double-digit growth, fueled by increased time spent on mobile devices during the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to continue through 2024, it said. The smartphone is "by far" the most popular device for gaming, allowing advertisers to reach casual gamers who don’t pay for ad-free platforms, it said. Mobile gaming will reach $7.87 billion in ad revenue in 2024, or 2.5% of all digital ad spending, eMarketer said.
GameStop invested in a “dedicated blockchain team” during its fiscal year ended Jan. 29, and is on pace to launch its nonfungible tokens marketplace by the late-July end of its fiscal Q2, said CEO Matt Furlong on a Q4 earnings call Thursday. “We are going to continue taking steps to create new offerings and make targeted bets in blockchain gaming and cryptocurrency,” said Furlong, who joined GameStop as CEO in June after a nine-year career at Amazon. “We have learned from the mistakes of the past decade when GameStop failed to adapt to the future of gaming.” GameStop had a string of interim CEOs after Paul Raines left for medical reasons in November 2017. GameStop was so “capital-starved” when Furlong arrived “that we have had to rebuild it from within,” he said. “We’ve also had to change the way we assess revenue opportunities by starting to embrace, rather than run from, the new frontiers of gaming. Although there is a lot more hard work and necessary execution in front of us, GameStop is a completely different company today than it was at the beginning of the fiscal year.”
JBL announced a limited-edition Quantum One gaming headset with the 100 Thieves geo print design on the headband. The $300 wired headphones, with active noise cancellation, will be available beginning at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday exclusively on the StockX marketplace, it said Friday.
U.S. gamers spent 30 seconds more a day on average engaged on mobile apps in 2021 than in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, defying eMarketer expectations that time spent on gaming apps would decline after 2020, said the research firm Tuesday. App-based gaming will be about 13% of all U.S. app time this year and remain above 12% for the foreseeable future, it said. Higher engagement is being driven by increased overall time spent with smartphones and by an uptick in gaming app adoption by older smartphone users. Among Generation Z users, Roblox and Discord are driving gaming platform growth; games including Pokemon Go and Candy Crush are popular across generations, it said. EMarketer predicts a “slow, but steady” increase for mobile gaming apps in years ahead, beyond “just a pandemic phase.”
The latest Nintendo portable gaming system, Nintendo Switch OLED model, is available in stores, said the company Friday. The $349 system has a 7-inch screen, adjustable stand, a new dock with a wired LAN port and 64 GB storage, it said. It comes in white with a black main unit and in a red main unit with blue controller.