20% of last year's Nintendo Switch sales were to households that already owned one Even before releasing its entirely portable Switch Lite in 2019, Nintendo frequently named the fabled Second Household Switch as its biggest growth opportunity in the West.

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  Get a job: Join Grove Street Games as a Systems Engineer Grove Street Games is looking for UE4-experienced Systems Engineer to join its team in Gainesville, Florida.

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1 Analyst: Only 6% of iOS 14.5 users chose to opt in to ad tracking so far Very few iOS users are choosing to allow apps to track their browsing habits on their iOS devices according to an ongoing survey from Verizon-owned Flurry Analytics.

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  Itch.io's first Creator Day gives devs 100% of game revenue for 24 hours Game platform Itch.io is hosting its first Creator Day on May 14, and will forgo its usual cut of game sales made through its platform for a solid day.

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10 Don't Miss: Inside the deveptively simple design of Doom (2016) Doom's apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve. On the 5 year anniversary of its release, find out how Id Software tackled its demon-slaying game design.

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  Video: Animating God of War In this 2019 GDC talk, Sony Santa Monica's Bruno Velazquez discusses the process of transforming the studio's approach to how it animated Kratos in 2018's God of War.

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  Sega Sammy reports year-over-year jump in game sales despite fewer new releases Sega Sammy credits the performance of its game business to pandemic-driven the stay-at-home orders that defined the last year, but is approaching the next year with caution for the same reason.

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  Go behind the making of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales at GDC 2021 Insomniac Games creative director Brian Horton is giving a talk on the making of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales at GDC 2021.

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  Xbox Party Chat is becoming more accessible with speech transcription and synthesis  Xbox Party Chat is being bolstered with support for speech into text transcription and synthesis of speech from text.

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  Discord shows off Stages discoverability features, push for inclusivity Discord's upgrading its "Stage Channels" feature to help server owners attract new audiences and making a vocal push toward more inclusivity on the online communications platform.

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  Sponsored: What game devs need to know about Criminal Economics and the Game Industry How much do you really know about how the criminal economy works when it comes to the video game industry?

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  Nintendo Switch production 'more uncertain' due to semiconductor shortage Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has warned that Switch production may be affected by the ongoing semiconductor shortage. 

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  Monster Hunter: World has sold over 17.1 million copies worldwide Monster Hunter: World has topped 17.1 million sales in just over three years, according to the latest figures from developer Capcom.

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  Blog: What are the legal risks of loot boxes and are they gambling? The article aims to provide a brief overview of the regulation and recent court cases regarding loot boxes.

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  Digital software and catalog titles are driving sales at Square Enix Growing digital sales and "brisk" sales of catalog titles drove profits and sales in Square Enix's game division.

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  Epic, Blizzard alums gather to form all-remote studio Lightforge Games A band of Epic Games & Blizzard Entertainment alumni have announced the formation of Lightforge Games, a new all-remote studio dedicated to “changing how RPGs are played.”

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  The one game rating problem you really don't want to have There's one big gotcha around game ratings when releasing your game via IARC - and in the latest game discovery round-up, we look at what it is, and how to avoid it.

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17 Don't Miss: The creative challenges BioWare faced designing Mass Effect 3 Take a look back at this 2012 interview with Casey Hudson on the creative challenges his team faced while closing out the original Mass Effect trilogy.

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  Get a job: Disbelief is hiring an experienced Programmer Senior programmers at Disbelief are leaders and developers in their project; you should be comfortable working independently and with a team to develop, test and integrate software into a larger codebase.

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  Former Hitman, Halo devs form new AAA studio Twin Suns Corp. A trio of longtime game developers have joined forces to create Twin Suns Corp., a new studio taking aim at triple-A game development (with an initial funding boost from Hiro Capital and 1Up Fund.)

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  Weapon balance in Call of Duty: Mobile: A data-based, player-centric approach Matt Lewis, VP of mobile at Activision, writes about the weapon balancing process on the tremendously popular Call of Duty: Mobile, and reconciling data with qualitative player feedback.

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  At GDC 2021, you can learn about the making of Resident Evil Village The makers of Resident Evil Village will be breaking down the game’s creation at the all-digital GDC 2021!

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  Fledgling studio Hidden Leaf Games nets $3.2 million to create a new MOBA Hidden Leaf Games has raised $3.2 million to create a new MOBA and expand its fledgling studio.

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1 Embracer Group buys four more game studios for a combined $8.5 million The rapidly expanding Embracer Group has acquired four studios for a combined SEK 71 million ($8.5 million).

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  Blog: Optimizing Human: Fall Flat for mobile devices For over a year Codeglue has been working for 505 Games on the mobile adaptations of Human: Fall Flat. In this blog post we will explain how we optimized the game to run on mobile devices.

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