Month: October 2024

July 19 is the official release of EA Sports College Football 25, but it was already a success with its launch days earlier.EA bragged that thanks to its Early Access launch with the deluxe edition, the game amassed 2.2 million players. Through the EA Play trial, it added another 600,000 players to its ranks.Making this more impressive is the numbers are strictly for current-gen consoles. The game released only on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with no PC port (at time of writing) or last-gen versions."The response we’ve seen from across the collegiate landscape, athletes, creators, celebrities and the core community has been nothing short of spectacular," said EA Sports GM Daryl Holt. "We couldn’t be more excited to welcome millions more into the game with today’s launch."

EA Sports has another winner on hand

Sports games tend to do very well for EA in terms of players and revenue. The deluxe edition for College 25 ran for $90, and that gamble has clearly paid off for the publisher.College 25 is the first new in…

The FTC recently claimed Microsoft had turned Xbox Game Pass into a 'degraded product' by increasing the price of certain subscriptions and removing day-one access to first party titles from a new 'Standard' tier.  Microsoft begs to differ.The Xbox maker has issued a reply to the FTC and claims the regulator has pulled together a "misleading, extra-record account of the facts."The company fired back in a letter spotted by The Verge reporter Tom Warren and indicated the FTC is attempting to "reinvent" its case against the tech giant after failing to stop its merger with Activision Blizzard.It claims the FTC failed to take key facts into account when appraising the new Xbox Game Pass tiers and price plans, such as the inclusion of Call of Duty for Ultimate members and multiplayer access for Standard subscribers."Microsoft is offering a new service tier, Game Pass Standard, which offers access to hundreds of back-catalog games and multiplayer functionality for $14.99/month. It is wrong to call this a 'degraded' version of the discontinued Game Pass for Console offering. That discontinued product did not offer multiplayer function…

Last week, mobile developer Rumble Games (or R Studios) closed its doors, laying off 36 people. According to senior web architect David Bethune, the hammer came down from parent company Forte."This is [Forte's] second recent studio axing after Phoenix Labs got this treatment a few weeks ago," wrote Bethune. He added that the now ex-staff will only receive a single month of severance.Founded in 2011, Rumble was known for a number of free-to-play mobile games like Towers & Titans. At this moment, it's unclear if the title will be kept operational, and what studio will continue development if that's the case.Bethune also shared some thoughts on his former employer, and Rumble's previous owner Aristocrat. To him, both studios were "ruthless about pursuing mythical future profits while they can the teams that actually make things."His words echo previous statements made amidst the industry's layoff spree in recent years. Back in March, Dwarf Fortress designer Tarn Adams said layoffs were conducted by "greedy, greedy" executives driven by incentives to cut staff when possible."I'm tired of it!" Bethune continued. …

As MultiVersus heads toward its second season (for the second time), its creator Player First Games has been officially acquired by Warner Bros.Per Variety, co-founders Tony Huynh and Chris White will retain leadership of the developer. The former noted that being a part of the WB Games umbrella will benefit the studio and its playerbase."We have worked with Player First Games over several years to create and launch MultiVersus," added WB Games head David Haddad. "We are very pleased to welcome this talented team to Warner Bros. Games."MultiVersus first launched with an open beta in 2022, and was gained popularity not long after. WB Games affirmed it'd stick with the title and Player First, all but saying it was safe from the then-aftereffects of the WB Discovery merger.After its beta was shut down last year, MultiVersus returned as a full (but still free-to-play) game. Now running on Unreal Engine 5, the title appears to be doing well enough that WB wants to further invest in it and its studio.Warner Bros. previously said it wanted MultiVersus to be one of its live-service champions. Time will tell if the game can live up to those ambitions, and what else …

A trio of alums from Pixelberry Studios have formed a new team of their own in Candlelight Games. Per the website, the Washington-based team will make narrative-based titles "[that] unite people through shared experiences.""Our mission is to deliver heartfelt, character-centric narrative games with meaningful choices that truly resonate with players," wrote co-founder Andrew Shvarts. "We're…committed to creating immersive experiences that stay with you long after the credits roll."Shvarts previously worked at Pixelberry as a creative director on its mobile narrative game, Choices. His fellow co-founders, Megan Schwarz and Royal McGraw, also worked on the game as a respective lead writer and executive producer.Schwarz and Shvarts were among those let go from Pixelberry earlier this year when the studio laid off an unspecified number of staff. More recently, the Choices developer was acquired by Series Entertainment.The three have individually said they'll offer a first look at their unannounced debut project "soon."…

Space Goblin Studio – an indie team with “AAA credentials” – has revealed its debut game, Astrobotanica, is set to release in early access in 2025.
Delivering a “unique blend of survival, exploration, and plant wizardry”, Astrobotanica is described as a “lush open-world survival adventure” that “transports players to prehistoric Earth, where an alien botanist crash-lands while searching for plant species to save their dying home planet, Aya”.
You can see it in action in the teaser below:

ASTROBOTANICA – Official Announcement Teaser

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The sad and beautiful wolf adventure Neva has a release date.
Neva, which was initially announced back in May last year, will launch across PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on 15th October, the team announced during today’s Nintendo Direct. On its release, it will retail at £16.99.
Described as an “emotionally-charged new adventure”, Neva follows the story of a young woman named Alba and her lifelong bond with a wolf.

Neva | Release Date Trailer | Coming October 15

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Defunct publisher Adult Swim games has published "sunset statements" on a number of its indie games' Steam pages, noting "Adult Swim is no longer able to continue as publisher for this game and the developer is not available to take over as publisher at this time."As spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, the near-identical statements were posted to the pages for Super House of Dead Ninjas, Traverser, Mega Coin Squad, and Zenzizenzic on Tuesday, and in at least one case, the developer was not actually contacted for a potential rights transfer, with Bitmap Bureau LTD (which made Super House of Dead Ninjas under a different name, MegaDev) taking to X to note they would like to keep the game going.

The interest is still there for some Adult Swim-affiliated developers

"Well, we're still active (under a new name), and more than willing to keep Super House Of Dead Ninjas alive!" the post said. In a reply, the developer said, "We sold the IP to Adult Swim back in the day, but we&#x…

Tose, a Japanese developer that's assisted larger studios with development on their games, saw consistent losses during the third quarter of the 2023-2024 fiscal year.In its recent earnings report spotted by Automaton, net sales for the studio came to 3.243 million yen (or $20.1 million), down 27.6 percent from the previous year. Overall losses amounted to 367 million yen over the nine-month period.

Cancellations and project delays to blame

As translated in its report, Tose puts the blame on several projects being cancelled by unnamed clients. Some were in development since the start of the 2023-2024 year, and their cuts led to "a large loss" in revenue.Blame was also laid at in-progress projects being pushed to the 2024-2025 year. As such, Tose has lowered its forecast projections from 5.520 million yen to 4.830 million yen for the remainder of the fiscal period.Tose didn't list any specific projects, but it's worth noting that throughout the decades, it's worked with Nintendo and Square Enix. The 44-year-o…

Joseph Rubino, a former cinematics editor for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V, suggested the game's planned story DLC was scrapped once Grand Theft Auto Online grew into such a gargantuan hit.Talking to SanInPlay, Rubino revealed he was at work on an expansion focused on Trevor, one of the game's co-leads. Story DLC for each lead was previously datamined, and Trevor's actor Steven Ogg mentioned its existence in April.Per Rubino, prioritizing GTA V's multiplayer marked a shift in Rockstar's hopes for the open-world game. It was such a "cash cow" that he claims the studio didn't think single-player expansions would be able to properly stand beside it."I think looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made," he added. Further adding to the sting was the DLC was quite a ways into development before it got cut, which he admitted made him "a little upset." Even so, he said "a lot" of that expansion was put into GTA Online. "It's not like they wasted it," he acknowledged. "It was really, really good."GTA Online has been so ever-pr…