iirc these are the guys working on the Knights of the Old Republic remake, right? Good news for that project if that’s the case, and good news for Saber in general!
Good for them. Also glad they are going to continue developing the KOTOR remake, although with everything that's happened with that project it feels like it will be years before we see it again.
This is crazy, between this and Gearbox leaving they’re almost dismantling in front of our eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this in the gaming industry, at least not in this scale.
Im glad these studios are seeing the writing on the wall and taking control away from Embracer. Embracer is just fucking shit up closing up studios and killing off games in development.
And I asked this elsewhere, but what the hell is Embracer doing? Theyre eating themselves alive by doing this. Whats their endgame? How are they supposed to have any profits when theyre dumping all their product? Just how much debt did they get themselves in?
This deal happened because Embracer is shedding debt, and this is how you shed it. They just listed their debt a few months ago as 2.12B, so this and Gearbox will go a long way toward getting it down to a level they can actually afford. Meanwhile, it's very hard to track what they still own, but one of those things is Tomb Raider. They'll also have tons and tons of smaller bets. Alone in the Dark, Titan Quest II, and Gothic look to still be under their control, for instance.
Electronic Arts has announced the closure of Ridgeline Games, the studio working on a new single-player Battlefield campaign.
As reported by IGN, the project is reportedly set to continue with “some” employees from Ridgeline set to join Ripple Effect – another Battlefield studio working on a different experience within the franchise.
This is according to an internal note seen by IGN, which suggested Criterion producer Danny Isaac and studio head of creative Darren White will take over the project following the departure of Ridgeline’s former head and founder Marcus Lehto yesterday.
GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to EA for further clarification.
The news followed mass layoffs at EA, which will see 5% of its workforce cut as part of its restructuring plan which involves closing offices and sunsetting some of its live service games.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a note to staff that the company is planning to “move away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.”
They really did nothing to limit scalpers. I like to imagine scalpers with dozens of Xboxes sitting around because they all came back into stock. Not taking a stand against scalpers will probably hurt in the long run, they don’t buy games or subscriptions
There have been rumors and speculation, but that’s not what MS is saying.
“More interestingly, [Xbox President Sarah] Bond teased a roadmap focused on next-generation hardware.
“'And what we’re focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions they’re building,” Bond explained in the recent episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.'”
Yeah I had heard rumors that they were going to focus on multi platform gaming instead, but apparently they will still be doing more consoles. That’s good!
I’ve always had an Xbox, but the One is my last. The game pass is like cable TV, hundreds of meh games to choose from, one or two gems…the game library itself is…a lot less than what I can get elsewhere.
it’s just there isant reason for me to get another one or the next version…so I’ll be getting a steam deck.
Steam deck for sure was one of my best purchases the past few years. Sure you can’t play AAA games for more than like an hour before the battery runs out… but you can still play them. Played through the first 50 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn on that bad boy while I was out of town for a few weeks.
Besides that, it’s my FAVORITE way to play indie games. Easily get 3-5 hours on it, and the controls are WAY more comfortable than on the switch. Couple that with steam sales and it’s just fantastic
It’s really quite bad imo, but it’s surprising considering how the consoles are basically the same, hardware-wise - the Xbox on paper might even be technically more powerful.
I think that if they’d been able to get out there with a couple of great 1st party games early in the generation it might have helped swing the market in their direction but they didn’t and now it doesn’t matter.
Interesting article. They also talk about indies and different consoles:
Having heard some indies at GDC talking about skipping Xbox and PlayStation because there just isn’t much of an audience for indies on those platforms if you can’t get included in their subscription services, we ask Lowrie about how healthy the console ecosystems are for indies these days.
He echoes the indies we heard from in acknowledging that Switch stands apart from Xbox and PlayStation on this front.
“They’ve created an ecosystem – and therefore a user base – that is really open to interesting concepts and gameplay ideas,” Lowrie says of Nintendo. "The PlayStation and Xbox user, for as long as I’ve been doing this… there’s a lot of people that still like indie games, don’t get me wrong. Cult of the Lamb has done very well on those platforms. But I think the large majority of those people buy those platforms to show off what they can really do. They’re looking at Destiny. They’re looking at Helldivers. They’re looking at Starfield. They definitely push those.
“I think the platforms themselves all are really strong believers in indie games. They really do push them. I think on the other end, the consumers – as big as they might be – there’s still a smaller portion than we would like on Xbox and PlayStation that are open to looking at a pixel art platformer and going, ‘I’ll give this a shot.’”
I wish we had more small publishers. It’s so rare to go into a store now and see a $20-$40 title from some rando. Cheap enough that I can go “Oh, that’s interesting looking I’ll grab it”. Limited Run is great and all, but there’s no magic when you pre-order something 8 months out.
The return on indie games (if there even is a return) is already vanishingly small for 99% of releases - printing and distributing physical copies would just be pouring even more money down the drain.
Oh no doubt. It’s a shame too. We saw the death of the mid-level developer long ago.
When I go to cons I try to buy any smaller self-published titles I see, but wish the market could support smaller devs while remaining consumer-friendly with a “coop” publisher. An entity that can eat a loss while still finding gems that would be lost to time if stuck on a digital store.
That isn’t to say that smaller titles are dead. Currently I look out for stuff published by Soedesco, GS2 Games, Team17, Microids, EastAsiaSoft, etc etc.
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