Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications!
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
Xbox Updates
Last month’s reporting quickly provoked an official response from Xbox, announcing that the next episode of the Official Xbox Podcast releasing February 15th would discuss “a vision for the Future of Xbox.” In the podcast, executives Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty very broadly discussed the next steps of the Xbox strategy, confirming that four select first party titles will release for PS5 and Switch this year, games that have been out and exclusive for at least a year, and the larger first party slate (Starfield and Indiana Jones are mentioned by name) have not been currently greenlit for multiplatform ports, they are on the table, and they explicitly acknowledged this could change at any time. The internal meetings the day before emphasized that Xbox hardware isn’t going anywhere, but that “every screen can be an Xbox,” and ABK being essential to their future, starting with Call of Duty: Black Ops – Gulf War coming this October.
Xbox consoles will continue to be their flagship experience with hardware planned for Holiday 2024 and the next generation, and that flagship will be built on the same foundation of first party Day One on Game Pass, Game Pass only on Xbox, keeping third parties on Xbox, and maintenance of systems like the digital store, crossplay and cross-save, backwards compatibility. ABK on Game Pass was among these various loose reassurances of the future, with Diablo 4 announced to be releasing for Game Pass on March 28th. The four games were not specified in the podcast itself, but were reported by The Verge as Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded, the same ones we’d generally already heard of, and were all soon officially confirmed in various ways.
Anyone with sense should be able to understand that these are empty sentiments, only money will talk for anything and everything here, whether it’s more Xbox hardware releasing or where Xbox software will release. Whether as soon as previously expected or not, don’t be surprised to see Xbox multiplat releases continue. Tom Warren at The Verge offered additional insights on top of the reports from last time and earlier in this section, adding that future games like idSoft’s next Doom are also already under consideration for multiplat release with no current final decision, much like these existing bigger games so clearly are.
February 7th: The massive layoffs at ABK we covered last time provoked another likely ineffectual complaint filed by the FTC against Microsoft, to which Microsoft responded by saying that Activision was already planning large layoffs before the buyout was completed.
February 12th: Local followup reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle gave more details about the recent layoffs at ABK, with Toys for Bob and Sledgehammer Games losing 86 people each and seeing their physical offices closed in favor of remote work and relocation.
February 29th: In a wonderful surprise of good news, current Crash Bandicoot and Spyro series developer Toys for Bob announced that they are successfully removing themselves from first party Xbox and Activision Blizzard King to become a fully independent studio. Support for Crash Team Rumble is ending, but Toys for Bob is currently exploring a possible continued partnership with Xbox, and continues work on their next project in early development.
Everything Else
Last time I noted a combined 6000 gaming layoffs just in the month of January 2024 after last year’s 10K+ total, and these appalling totals grew with between 1500 and 2000 people fired during this month.
February 5th: Veteran game designer Laralyn McWilliams tragically passed away at age 58 due to complications from heart surgery. Her career started in 1994 and brought her to High Voltage, The Saboteur’s Pandemic, Skydance, Sony, and Microsoft; most recently, she was a creative design director at Microsoft since 2018, until taking a year off to address these health issues.
Independent studio Crop Circle Games was revealed to have suffered layoffs and potentially paused development on their debut AAA project.
Rerelease specialists Forever Entertainment and developer Storm Trident revealed their next project, Night Slashers Remake coming to all platforms in the future, based on the 90s arcade beatemup.
February 6th: IGN is unionizing! Almost three years after the infamous editorial override on support for Palestine, the IGN Creators Guild has been officially formed by more than 80 employees, representing 87% of eligible staff, signed with the Communication Workers of America, and confirmed to receive voluntary recognition by parent company Ziff Davis as expected, as they previously did so for Mashable and PCMag when they unionized in 2018. The staff elected to form their own union rather than join the aforementioned Ziff Davis Creators Guild because the respective teams are based on opposite coasts, California versus New York. Legendary reporter Rebekah Valentine spoke with GamesIndustry.biz on behalf of the union, which will be prioritizing better pay, layoff protections, and diverse hiring.
Ubisoft’s sequel Valiant Hearts: Coming Home will be coming to all consoles after a period of Netflix exclusivity.
A Reuters report citing three sources revealed that Tencent is developing a licensed, monetized free to play mobile port of Elden Ring. From Software was recently revealed to have directly bought the name trademark of Elden Ring from Bandai Namco.
Lastly, Nintendo released its earnings report for the Holiday 2023 quarter, which revealed that around 7 million more Switch consoles were sold during the holidays, updating the lifetime total to just under 140 million sold (139.36m to be exact), solidly maintaining momentum and hitting another major milestone even as overall sales continue to slowly decline ahead of the imminent next generation. This was good enough that the company actually raised its projections for the fiscal year and its final quarter back up by half a million console units after previously revising down. The publisher’s investor Q&A continued to dance around any info of substance, especially about next gen, which is expected to see its formal reveal sometime this calendar year.
In software, Tears of the Kingdom showed good early legs by breaking 20 million copies sold whole Super Mario Bros Wonder reached 12 million sold in a very strong launch quarter. Pikmin 4 sold about 700K more copies in its second quarter to reach 3.3 million, further cementing its status as far and away the series’ biggest success yet. Super Mario RPG Remake debuted to 3 million copies sold, immediately outselling the original. Older first party titles that can sell at least a million per year are steadily declining to just the main evergreens, which saw a new milestone in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet surpassing Gold and Silver and 24 million copies to be the third biggest Pokémon games behind only Gen 1 and Gen 8.
February 7th: Disney’s Bob Iger did indeed make the major further move into gaming that his fellow executives were urging, though it fell short of outright acquiring a major publisher, with all the extra expense and moving parts that would require. Announced during Disney’s latest earnings call, the multimedia giant has purchased a $1.5 billion equity stake in Epic Games and collaborated with the company to develop a Disney franchise metaverse operating as the next major new mode within Fortnite, launching “soonish” according to Epic’s reveal trailer. This new stake gives Disney a minority shareholder status at Epic roughly on par with Sony’s, well below Tencent or Tim Sweeney himself, but nonetheless giving the corporation a significant vote on Epic’s business decisions and board. The investment does help put a dent in Epic’s operating costs, but doesn’t match them in scale, and is highly dependent on the success of their obviously very unproven new metaverse. The partnership builds on years of Disney being a main Fortnite collaborator, including the infamous exclusive Star Wars moment.
Take-Two Interactive and subsidiary 2K laid off workers at Visual Concepts Austin, one of the offices for supporting the developer of staple series like NBA2K and WWE2K, and the core developer of last year’s Lego 2K Drive.
February 8th: Developer Hidden Path Entertainment announced that they will fire 44 employees and halt development of their current open world RPG project after an extended period without new funding secured. The studio saw smaller layoffs at the start of 2023 when Wizards of the Coast severed its support and D&D license for the game, and evidently no new partner has been found since for the small team.
Tenchu creators and Octopath Traveler series support developers Acquire have been bought out by Kadokawa, the holding company which is best known in gaming as From Software’s parent company.
During Ubisoft’s latest earnings call, the publisher said that debut VR game Assassin’s Creed Nexus had disappointed financially, and as a result it will not continue VR investment, dealing yet another blow to the struggling market.
February 9th:
French union SJTV published a report on major developer Don’t Nod, criticizing development leadership choices and the broader strategy of developing many smaller games at once. Poor guidance, contradictory info, frequent deadline changes, understaffing, bad terms for contractors, etc. were all cited as concerns backed by sources at the company. For one example, the decision to delay the just released Banishers from last November to February was made by leadership and devs were only told 30 minutes before the news went public. Communication/guidance is a particularly severe issue, with an in-office notice board being the primary method despite 75% of a 300 person staff being fully remote.
Dead Cells was officially announced by Motion Twin to be ending post-launch support later this year after five years’ worth of 35 major updates (the last yet to arrive) and five paid DLCs. Evil Empire had previously stated plans for support into 2025 with another expansion after Return to Castlevania. Former MT developer Sébastian Benard publicly criticized this choice for hurting Dead Cells’ support team Evil Empire creatively and financially without any warning, and for being motivated not by practicality but to ensure that Motion Twin’s new game Windblown isn’t overshadowed by a game MT stopped making years ago. When he made a followup blogpost, the substance of the criticism didn’t really change, Benard just adjusted his tone to be a bit gentler on his former employer.
Jagex, the company behind classic MMO Runescape has been acquired in a roughly $1 billion deal by two private equity firms.
February 14th: Three separate Ubisoft studios and hundreds of workers began striking over pay: Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Montpelier, and Ubisoft Paris embarked on a strike organized by the union SJTV after annual salary negotiations fell through.
Suikoden creator Yoshitaka Murayama sadly passed away on February 6th due to “complications from an ongoing illness”, as announced by his last team, Rabbit & Bear Studios. He will not live to see his developers release their long awaited Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes in April.
Another Princess Peach: Showtime! stand-alone trailer was released, revealing four more themed worlds and costumes: Figure Skater Peach (rhythm/QTE), Mermaid Peach (adventure), Mighty Superhero Peach (brawler), and Dashing Thief Peach (stealth/hacking.
It was Sony and PlayStation Studios’ turn for the usual post-holiday earnings call, revealing that the PS5 actually underperformed for the 2023 holiday relative to the lofty projections set by the previous regime of Jim Ryan. The console had two years of shortages, a single year of growth/peak, and is now officially entering the latter half of its life and expected to be in decline for the remainder of its lifespan despite only just starting its fourth year. Revenue is repeatedly breaking records, but profit is not keeping up. The console sale forecast for this fiscal year was revised down from 25 million to 21 million after 8 million PS5s were bought in the holiday quarter, bringing console sales for the year up to 16 million and lifetime console sales to just under 55 million. If that’s the best it can do and it’s really all decline from here on out, the PS5 will not outsell the PS4, let alone match the PS2 like Jim Ryan declared in 2020.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 did its part by ultimately selling more than 10 million copies in its launch quarter, but suffice to say there’s a lot other points of concern. Pessimism for this next fiscal year in particular, April ’24 to March ’25, comes primarily from the self-admitted lack of “any existing major franchise titles.” Ghost of Two-shima is indeed missing this year, and so is Horizon, God of War, Last of Us, Uncharted, Marvel, etc. The one first party game originally announced for this year was Firewalk’s Concord, but it was a no show at the State of Play after the huge internal shakeup late last year, so it was probably delayed, and this year might literally be empty for marquee first party PlayStation.
The next Astro Bot might be able to make this year, but no matter how much we all loved Astro’s Playroom, that was still a small and free, and its sequel will most likely be PSVR2 exclusive just like Astro Bot Rescue Mission was PSVR1’s system seller last generation. But anyway, to compensate for this state of affairs, the new President Hiroki Totoki plans to be more aggressive with PC ports going forward, will keep pushing rereleases just like Jim Ryan did, and will attempt cost reduction where possible, but for hardware that’s simply not doable right now, the PS5 Pro is only going to raise the price ceiling again later this year. A week later, that updated PC strategy began to bear fruit as Sony announced plans to make PSVR2 headsets PC-compatible via software update later this year, expanding its limited library with all existing PCVR games.
February 15th: Disco Elysium owner ZA/UM was reported to be firing 24 out of roughly 100 people and canceling the latest in a series of failed projects, as published by Marco Wutz at Video Games by GLHF. Most but not all of those expected to be laid off were part of the development team for a now canceled stand-alone expansion to Disco Elysium, which was meant to replace Disco Elysium 2 after it was also canceled. A new IP game has been paused while two other projects remain for the moment, within a larger workplace culture that continues to be abusive and dysfunctional without the original game’s ousted creators.
The first teaser trailer for EA Sports College Football 25 was released, ahead of the game’s full reveal in May and launch this summer as the second entry in the successful post-FIFA EA FC series. In accordance with being required to get college athletes’ consent for game appearances, EA has also sent out offers to thousands of players across the US, offering $600 and a free copy of the game as compensation for players to opt into appearing in the game. The top 100-ish players have received bigger offers in exchange for required active marketing participation.
February 16th: Sighs, takes deep breath Suddenly, just about every usual reporting source for Nintendo on the planet (most recently the Nikkei) started to say, with quickly escalating confidence, that the Switch 2 console had just been delayed from Holiday 2024 to a March 2025 launch. General consensus is that Nintendo’s main goals with this decision were to ensure the largest possible slate of Day 1 games for the new console and to prevent supply shortages at all costs. Nintendo leadership reached this decision very recently and quickly alerted its third party partners, which were the source for all of these reports. The Switch 2’s reveal was most likely delayed from March to June 2024 in conjunction.
As part of the larger earnings report, Remedy finally officially announced sales for Alan Wake 2, confirming that it did indeed not only perform well in its launch window, but it actually outperformed the launch of the developer’s previous biggest hit, Control, selling 1.3 million copies after three months/at the beginning of February, recouping “a significant part of…expenses” (not profitable yet but close) already. Both this success and the general end of principal development on AW2 have been good for Remedy’s other projects like Control 2 and the Max Payne Remake, shoring up the size of their development teams and increasing the pace of production. By the end of the month, Remedy leveraged its satisfactory finances to gain full ownership and management of the Control IP, including Control 2 and Condor, by purchasing rights to it from original publisher 505 Games for €17 million Euro or roughly $18.4 million. At the end of calendar 2024, 505 will stop publishing the game and Remedy will take over, potentially with a new more limited publishing partner.
February 19th: Independent studio Build a Rocket Boy fired an unknown number of people as work continues on debut game Everywhere.
Ikumi Nakamura’s studio Unseen released a new developer diary preview for their game KEMURI, first revealed at the Game Awards. Prioritizing a healthy workplace culture was discussed in conjunction with broader details of the online co op action game. The video features Ikumi as well as concept artist Nass and game director Misuzu Watanabe.
February 20th: IGN’s Fan Fest event featured a couple notable announcements, like a June 2024 launch date for the asymmetric multiplayer Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Konami and Limited Run Games collaborating for a brand new remaster of the extremely rare, acclaimed Game Boy Advance game Ninja Five-O for Switch and PS4/5.
More than six years after the next installment in the Digimon Story series was first announced, the latest update on its status revealed that longtime producer Kazumasa Habu departed from the series last April and left the project’s development in new hands.
February 21st: As promised, after two years since launch and a year since the DLC was announced, FromSoft published the full trailer for Elden Ring’s $40 Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, announcing a June 21st 2024 release date for all existing platforms, alongside a bundle with the base game and a collector’s edition, but with only digital codes for the DLC. The expansion is set in a new completely separate open world, the Land of Shadow, entered from Miquella’s cocoon at Moghwyn Palace; the world is the size of at least one of the game’s main areas like Limgrave, and the world design more actively integrates the open space and Legacy Dungeons into each other. More to be expected are the usual new weapons, magic, monsters, bosses, etc., and the narrative focus on Empyrean Miquella that many predicted. The February reveal timing, June release date, and new special edition packages of the game were all leaked in advance.
Nintendo Partner Showcase
The presentation opened with the first of the previously discussed mulitplat Xbox games, Obsidian’s Honey I Shrunk the Kids style multiplayer survival game Grounded, releasing on Switch, PS4, and PS5 on April 16th 2024 after its September 2022 1.0 release and July 2020 early access release. Obsidian’s masterpiece Pentiment was also confirmed for Switch (plus PS4/5) in this event, announced in the ending sizzle reel to be releasing a day later (2/22) in a near shadowdrop. Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves unexpectedly skipped this event and saw a standalone press release officially announcing they will release for PS5 on March 19th and April 30th respectively. Perhaps still Switch 2 bound? Multiplat physical releases for both Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment were also immediately revealed by Limited Run Games. The state of physical releases from major publishers going forward really is going to rest on the shoulders…of a company owned by EMBRACER GROUP.
Developers Adglobe and Live Wire officially revealed the sequel to their acclaimed 2021 Metroidvania, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist launching in PC Early Access on March 25th with a 1.0 release on Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series later this year. Indie dev Furniture & Mattress officially revealed Arranger: A Role Puzzling Adventure coming Summer 2024 to PC, Switch, and PS5. This RPG is focused on puzzles reassembling the world around you and comes from a team which includes David Hellman, the visual artist of Braid. Atlus and Vanillaware officially set the launch date of Unicorn Overlord for March 8th and released a demo. Capcom revealed Monster Hunter Stories Remaster, the 3DS original in HD with full voice acting coming Summer 2024 to PC, Switch, and PS4 to join its 2021 sequel. Embracer Group and in-house developer Purple Lamp Studios, who made Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated and its followup The Cosmic Shake, had a big surprise waiting: Epic Mickey Rebrushed, a faithful remake of the Wii cult classic 3D platformer scheduled to arrive in 2024 cross-gen for PC, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. Brand new abilities and controls are confirmed for the game, good news for anyone who remembers the original’s camera.
After previous leaks, Sega and Atlus officially revealed Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance, an expanded and remastered rerelease of the 2021 RPG in the same vein as Person 5 Royal et al. Vengeance will feature the original unaltered campaign and the new story route as separate options when it launches June 21st 2024 for PC, Switch, Xbox One/Series, and PS4/5. Embracer Group appeared again for Aspyr to reveal the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection coming March 14th to PC and cross-gen Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, which adds some new content to the excellent 2004 and 2005 multiplayer originals as an apology for being a $35 release with no alternatives on the consoles people actually care about, while I take solace in my cheaper, equally good Xbox BC versions and little else. After a truly excessive amount of confusion, South Park: Snow Day appeared in this Showcase to confirm that it is in fact coming to Switch when it launches soon in late March. And yes, it too is from Embracer Group.
Bandai Namco revealed two multiplayer licensed titles, Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream coming to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, and Gundam Breaker 4 coming to PC, Switch, and PS4/5, both launching in 2024. Sega and RGG announced Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble coming June 25th 2024 as a full Switch exclusive: a brand new sequel entry built off the success of the recent remasters, the first fully new Monkey Ball game since the PS Vita one from 2012. It features a full 200 course Adventure Mode, while expanding the series to new horizons with new modes and extensive multiplayer support with local co op and a 16 person online battle royale race and boss gauntlet mode. Returning from the Game Awards, World of Goo 2 appeared to reveal its advancements in puzzle gameplay from the 16 year old cult classic, and announce that it will launch on May 23rd 2024 for Switch and PC as a console exclusive, just like the original was Wii and PC only.
Level-5 finally announced an October 10th 2024 release for their Switch exclusive life sim sequel Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. Developer Aggro Crab showcased their charming 3D soulslike Another Crab’s Treasure and officially set its multiplat launch date as April 25th 2024. Several shadowdrop releases arrived one after another: the full launch of Christian Whitehead and co.’s 3D platformer Penny’s Big Breakaway, the multiplayer mode paid DLC for hit Suika Game, Devolver Digital’s demo for 2D driller action platformer Pepper Grinder, which launches March 28th as a Switch console exclusive, and the long-awaited Switch remaster of Game Freak cult classic Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On. The climactic sizzle reel featured the aforementioned Pentiment, Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley releasing March 7th, EA Original metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU coming April 23rd, party game Demon Slayer – Sweep the Board!, Kingdom Come Deliverance – Royal Edition coming to Switch March 15th, and Wayforward’s remake Contra: Operation Galuga coming to all platforms March 12th.
There were two more major announcements to wrap things up. Several more games from Rareware all arrived for NSO that very day: my beloved Blast Corps for N64, Killer Instinct OG for SNES, Snake Rattle n Roll and RC Pro AM for NES, Battletoads for SNES. Finally, a brand new third entry in the Endless Ocean series was revealed from original series developer Arika and publisher Nintendo, Endless Ocean: Luminous coming May 2nd 2024 as a full Switch exclusive. The ocean sim will unexpectedly feature roguelike and mass-multiplayer elements.
February 22nd: Riot Games officially re-revealed its long in development FTP League of Legends fighting game spinoff, which survived the recent demise of the Riot Forge spinoff division. Project L officially became 2XKO, coming in 2025 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X after public playtests planned for throughout this year.
Alongside the release of the latest BG3 hotfix, in response to fan demand Larian Studios officially announced plans for a “robust cross-platform mod support” Patch to arrive later in 2024, better optimizing the game for modding and bringing mods to the game’s console ports.
February 23rd: The first of multiple sales updates rolled in to start telling the narrative of what did and didn’t work for games in 2024. Sega is doing very well for itself by launching two bona fide hits just one week apart, Like a Dragon 8 and Persona 3 Reload. Each sold more than 1 million copies in their first week, instantly becoming their respective franchise’s fastest selling entries; Infinite Wealth is set to quickly surpass LAD7/Y:LAD for outright bestseller, while P3 obviously has a much steeper hill to climb against the standard set by Persona 5, but clearly it has successfully established that Persona will endure as it begins to move past the P5 era.
These two are the most expensive games Sega has ever released yet, emphasis intentional, but they’re working at much more manageable scale compared to something like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which can simultaneously fall short of expectations and be one of the biggest sellers of the year so far. For a better one to one comparison, look at Helldivers 2 being a big hit and a big live service but still working at smaller scale, it’s not a $40 game by accident. If this industry isn’t ready to abandon live services yet, it needs to let them work smaller, not bigger.
Tekken 8’s another success story, 2 million copies after one month, faster selling launch than its predecessor which was the series’ bestseller so far, good for continuing the modern fighting game renaissance, keeping things competitive for Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, and goes to show what doing what you do best with polish is worth. That’s all the 2024 specific sales stories so far, 2022 and 2023’s biggest hits continue to show legs, but what’s there to say about that?
February 26th: A new report revealed that small developers working with the Apple Arcade service have increasing concerns about its stability and treatment of them. The tech giant supported its service’s splashy launch with aggressively generous upfront payouts, but its payments have been in sharp, continuous decline ever since with some compensation cut entirely. Apple Arcade has been in a pivot largely undefined to its partners with an unknown number of titles first canceled in 2021 in favor of a “safer” direction. Apple also neglects companies whose titles they’re unsatisfied by, dropping communication quickly rather than renegotiating. One developer is quoted as sensing the “smell of death” around the service.
Bloomberg reported that horror narrative adventure developer SuperMassive Games is firing around 90 out of over 300 employees.
Danish indie developer Die Gute Fabrik, creators of Saltsea Chronicles, Where Is My Heart?, and more, announced that they had just halted production and disbanded due to failure to secure funding, much like many other indies in the past year.
The official release date of another major Stardew Valley update, Version 1.6, was announced as March 19th for PC with all other platforms ASAP.
February 27th: Months after previous reports of turmoil and pressure about layoffs at the publisher, Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation Studios officially announced via email/press release that they will fire roughly 900 employees worldwide and companywide, or 8% of total staff. Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Guerrilla are all confirmed to be affected, and the single largest studio layoff is the full shutdown of London Studio, a 22 year old subsidiary focused on peripherals from EyeToy to SingStar and PSVR. SIE UK was hit hard in general, with another UK subsidiary, Firesprite, developers of The Persistence and Horizon: Call of the Mountain, also affected, and overall presence and functions of SIE’s UK branch will be reduced. Multiple games were newly canceled on top of the ones killed last year including at least two more live services, namely both Firesprite’s Twisted Metal reboot and what London Studio was working on. Jason Schreier reported on Twisted Metal’s cancelation while confirming that the co op Horizon game in-house at Guerrilla is one of the surviving live services.
Ed Nightingale at Eurogamer issued an extensive report of greater issues at the Firesprite studio, with accusations of gender discrimination, crunch, and more causing a widespread hemorrhaging of talent.
Developer Playdead promoted their upcoming GDC appearance by discussing the very long awaited followup to Limbo and Inside, showing off a new piece of artwork and revealing that the game is a 3D open world adventure built in Unreal 5.
Nintendo moved forward with suing the creators of Yuzu, one of the main Switch emulators for PC and mobile, seeking compensation and a complete shutdown of the software due to the widespread ‘theft’ it facilitates like more than 1 million pre-launch pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom.
Pokémon Presents 2024: Along with the usual minor updates for mobile games, raids in the console games, and multimedia, there was a single, brief cinematic reveal teaser for the next console game, Pokémon Legends Z-A, set “entirely within Lumiose City,” capital of the French Kalos region from X&Y, and launching in 2025. I think the title is, wait for it, because the letters come both before and after X&Y, befitting the futuristic elements of the trailer. Oh and congrats on seeing your first cross-gen Switch game, everyone. I’d say this franchise skipping the retail holiday this year is a pleasant surprise, but it doesn’t really count if it’s just the first quarter of next year anyway, especially if there’s another new gen right afterwards, just like the last Legends. And it makes “what’s the Nintendo holiday plan now” question all the sharper.
February 28th: Electronic Arts joined the endless industry turmoil by announcing a 5% reduction in workforce, which is to say firing almost 700 people, while also sunsetting some existing games, canceling multiple major projects, and planning an overall pivot away from licensed IP due to the expenses of licenses and profit sharing, instead increasing emphasis on “owned IP, sports, and massive online communities.” Developer Ridgeline Games has been shut down completely and its founder, Halo vet Marcus Lehto, has left EA, while DICE and other support teams continue work on the next Battlefield game that to which Ridgeline was contributing. The Star Wars FPS in early development at Respawn, which had only just leaked as a Mandalorian focused game with extensive use of jetpack based movement, is confirmed to be canceled, but Star Wars Jedi 3, Bit Reactor’s Star Wars strategy game, and the early dev Marvel projects like Iron Man and Black Panther, are all confirmed to be safe with EA continuing its partnership with Disney despite the decreased emphasis on licensed games.
As reported by Jason Schreier, Rockstar officially ordered a full return to office for developers in conjunction with the final stages of production for Grand Theft Auto 6, justifying it with the argument that it benefits productivity and strengthens security, the latter of which the company has famously struggled with of late. Not every single person is made for remote work, but that only makes truly free worker choice the correct option. Remote work as a whole is beneficial for many reasons, and all of the remote working developers I personally know are completely happy with it. The Independent Workers of Great Britain union has rightfully publicly criticized the decision and cited Rockstar employees directly, who say that this will harm them and was done without their consultation, and that the issue of remote work vs office work has been a series of broken promises from Rockstar leadership that makes them “fear management may even be paving the way for a return to toxic crunch practices.”
Star Citizen‘s Cloud Imperium Games confirmed an unknown number of layoffs.
February 29th: Earlier this month, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors said that their mass-sacrifice of assets was in its “final stretch” with a few larger divestments left to go, after 1400 layoffs and 29 games canceled. And here’s one of them: As reported by Jason Schreier, Saber Interactive has successfully become a private independent publisher again in a $500 million sale to select investors, bringing Saber’s 3500 employees, its games like the KOTOR Remake, and “multiple [other] Embracer subsidiaries] along with it. Kotaku reporting quickly confirmed that Gearbox is also being sold off soon.
The Kotaku article by Ethan Gach also reveals what trouble Gearbox has personally faced thanks to its parent company’s financial issues. Dozens of layoffs occurred, those not fired faced hiring and pay freezes, and general chaos. Budget shortfalls directly caused brand new projects to be shelved in favor of emphasizing the Borderlands and Wonderlands IP, with both Borderlands 4 and Wonderlands 2 successfully progressing in different stages of development but went through serious upheaval before getting there.
Brazil’s Wildlife Studios, one of the largest mobile developers in the world, announced that it was firing 133 people, roughly a fifth of the studio, in their third round of layoffs in three years.
Nacon Connect: Highlights of the publisher’s event include an early access release of Greedfall 2 this summer, a shadowdrop of comedic survival game Welcome to ParadiZe, and a full reveal for Terminator: Survivors, an open world multiplayer survival game set in the post-apocalypse of the classic franchise, set to release in Steam Early Access on October 24th 2024.
March 1st: Deliver Us The Moon/Deliver Us Mars creators Keoken Interactive revealed that four members of their previously 19 person core staff were fired, and that this was held off “as long as humanly possible” by the studio’s CEO and managing director both going several months with reduced pay.
Indie developer and support studio Radical Forge announced that they fired six people as development continues on their second original game.
Larian’s director of publishing Michael Douse gave an update on the still-awaited physical release of Baldur’s Gate 3, explaining that development of the just-released Patch 6, and the process of getting Patch 6 onto the game’s PS5 and Series S|X discs, had caused a delay by forcing the late addition of a fourth disc to the Xbox release. The PS5 edition is using two 100GB discs while the Xbox edition is now using four 50GB discs due to Microsoft refusing to pay Sony extra for the larger blu rays.
2018 hit RPG Octopath Traveler was unexpectedly and temporarily delisted from the Switch US eShop due to the game’s publishing rights transferring from Nintendo to Square. Hit indie roguelike card game Balatro saw a similar temporary accidental delisting in multiple territories due to the game’s age rating being changed for gambling content which is evidently not actually in the game.
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