Axis Studios, the VFX company behind the cinematic reveal trailer for 2011's Dead Island, has gone into administration. Per GamesIndustry, its shutdown has resulted in 162 employees being laid off.Based in Glasgow, Scotland and founded in 2000, the studio created cinematic trailers for a number of games. Along with Techland's zombie game, it's done work for Microsoft (Halo, Gears of War), Riot Games (League of Legends: Wild Rift), and Digital Extremes (Warframe).Per Scotland's Interpath Advisory head Alistair McAlinden, the studio was losing projects recently. That, along with an "increase in labour costs," greatly impacted Axis, whose directors were said to have explored alternatives before choosing administration.Along with games, Axis also worked in TV and film. It contributed to VFX for Doctor Who, Netflix's Love, Death, & Robots, and Marvel's The Incredible Hulk."Axis has been a studio of choice for key production companies and has produced content for household names," added McAlinden. "It is a great shame to see a creative business in Scotland close its doors."
The TV adaptation of Xbox's Halo franchise has been canceled after a two-season run.Per Variety, Paramount+ opted not to pick up the show for a third season. The cancellation comes following season two's finale airing in late March."We are extremely proud of this ambitious series and would like to thank our partners at Xbox, 343 Industries and Amblin Television," wrote Paramount. "We wish everyone the best going forward."Despite this, a source told the outlet that Xbox, Amblin, and 343 would try shopping the show around to other networks. No specific names were given, but streamers like Netflix and Prime Video have been known to pick old previously cancelled shows.
A history of Halo's transmedia journey
Microsoft was trying to get Halo out of games and into live-action since Bungie was originally helming the series. Different directors were attached to make a hypothetical movie before those ambitions were scaled down to television.To date, Halo is Xbox's only franchise to be adapted for TV and fi…
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…
Kotaku Australia is being shut down by publisher Pedestrian Group so the company can focus on its own brands.The Guardian broke the news after obtaining an email sent from Pedestrian Group CEO, Matt Rowley, to a number of employees across the company.Pedestrian Group currently licenses the Kotaku brand and others including Gizmodo, Vice, Refinery29 and Lifehacker (which are also being axed) so it can deploy them in Australia.Rowley described Pedestrian Group–which is owned by media conglomerate Nine–as a "highly successful business" in that email, but indicated the company has decided to move away from licensed brands."We've made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome–the entire business," he said."This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people."