November 2022

Atlus shared the English and Japanese versions of the Shin Megami Tensei 30th anniversary logo, and each one features iconic demons like Jack Frost and Pixie. The only difference between the two logos is the text. Otherwise, they are identical.

First, here's the English version of the logo.

Next, here's the Japanese logo:

Pixie is sitting on the bottom of the “3” in 30 for the Shin Megami Tensei 30th anniversary logo, while Jack Frost is hanging off of the “0.” Pyro Jack is positioned above Jack Forst, right next to the “H” in “30th.” Decarabia is right in front of him. There is also another demon right about the “3” that looks like it could be Orthrus.

Bayonetta is known for her guns. I mean, it’s hard for them to not be the first thing that comes to mind, given she dual-wields one pair and another two are installed on the heels of her shoes for added firepower. But the series is also known for an array of equipment, with each entry offering a variety of items to beat up foes no matter where they hail. Bayonetta 3 is no exception, with yet another impressive weapon list, and I couldn’t help but feel that this time it was exceptionally good at calling back to the series’ past and lore.

Editor’s Note: There will be spoilers for Bayonetta 3 weapons and demons below. However, no spoiler screenshots will be shared, in case people want to skim through the article.

To start, Colour My World is amazing because you can’t have a Bayonetta game without a set of four trademark guns. It’s the staple, and it excels here. Especially as the Demon Masquerade tied to it is Madama Butterfly. This is an intrinsic part of Bayonetta’s personality. It feels so comfortable and familiar, yet the merging with Madama Butterfly adds this extra heft to each attack and fits Bayonetta’s “brand” so well. Also, this is probably silly to say, but the color scheme suits her so well too. Getting it in the first chapter feels like coming home.

In a new and wide-ranging interview with Denfaminico Gamer, Yosuke Shiokawa revealed a little more about what he's planning with his new studio, Fahrenheit 213. The interview itself covers large portions of Shiokawa's career, particularly his experience with mobile hit Fate/Grand Order and why he left developer Delightworks.

On leaving Delightworks and what's next for Fahrenheit 213

In the interview, Yosuke Shiokawa talked about when he decided to leave Delightworks and "start fresh." He mentioned that the turning point came in the Fall of 2020, when he had wrapped up development on Fate/Grand Order: Waltz in the Moonlight/Lostroom, a rhythm game spin-off of FGO. He said that as he was between major tasks, he tried to take on the challenge of launching a completely new title. Through 2021, he worked on things like preparing prototypes and pitches for new IP. However, things changed at Delightworks, and according to him, "the gap between what I wanted to do and what the company wanted to focus on grew larger." During this time, Delightworks President Akihito Shoji, one of the people who brought Shiokawa onboard resigned from his role, and it was decided that development would move from Delightworks to Aniplex (under what would become Lasengle).

The undersea adventure continues in the next Arknights event: Stultifera Navis. Latin for "Ship of Fools," Stultifera Navis continues the story from last year's Under Tides event. With it will come a new set of playable characters, two of which are limited. The event first ran on the Chinese edition of Arknights in May 2022, and it will kick off on the Global Edition on November 3, 2022.

To promote the Arknights Stultifera Navis event, Hypergryph released two trailers, with one animated in 2D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXIK977up6c

Here's the 3D trailer, which spotlights Specter and Irene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViYqM7bTzbk

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes' Arval is now available in Fire Emblem Heroes. The Mythic Hero joined in a new banner on October 31, 2022. Until November 13, 2022, people can pull on a banner to try and get the character.

Arval is a colorless tome user. The character comes with the Rite of Souls tome, which can inflict Guard on foes within three rows or columns, can grant Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 under certain conditions, and accelerates the Special trigger by 1. Arval also knows the skill Duality, which provides a +9 boost to both Atk and Res, guarantees a follow-up attack if health is above 25%, and inflicts weapon-triangle disadvantage on red, blue, and green enemies. There are also four Special Maps featuring Arval that include things like Orbs as a reward.

The following characters also appear at a higher rate on the Arval Fire Emblem Heroes banner:

• Askr: God of Openness
• Chrom: Crowned Exalt
• Eitri: Youthful Sage
• Elimine: Scouring Saint
• Est: Sweet Baby Sis
• Letizia: Curse Director
• Lif: Lethal Swordsman
• Mirabilis: Daydream
• Otr: Kingsbrother
• Plumeria: Lewd Dream
• Sain: Green Lance

Here’s the official trailer revealing the character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjnDwCpDu_g&ab_channel=NintendoMobile

In Fire Emblem Warriors, the character is ever-present. Arval fills the same sort of role for Shez as Sothis does for Byleth.

In honor of Halloween, Square Enix took to the Japanese Twitter account for FFVII Remake to show Train Graveyard ghosts concept art. The images show some of the ghosts people will encounter while exploring the area. There are also new pictures showing off the Train Graveyard itself.

First, here’s the official tweet going over the details about the FFVII Remake Train Graveyard and its ghosts. It pointed out that these particular characters can’t return to the Livestream as usual, due to Eligor keeping them bound to the place.

https://twitter.com/FFVIIR_CLOUD/status/1587006473703260160

The ghosts essentially “guide” the party through the Train Graveyard and act as enemies. They can cast both Reflect and Shield on themselves, to protect themselves from magical and physical attacks.

To be more specific, here is the FFVII Remake ghost concept art.

This is what a phantom looks like in-game.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the latest works and offerings from the Giant Bomb Community. This week, we have new shows and more Extra Life goodness to talk about before you dive into the meat and potatoes of this edition of the Spotlight. Speaking of which, I will be participating in the event! If you enjoy the Community Spotlight feature, please consider donating to my page. Also, Marino, who is the person that edits this feature ad makes it actually readable, is in charge of the Giant Bomb Moderators account. If you appreciate our efforts to keep the site safe and fun, consider donating there as well. With that in mind, let's go ahead and talk about the site related news.

News

Hey, everyone. Let's start the news off with something incredibly positive! This week Jason and Lisa celebrated their 15th anniversary. If you have been watching Giant Bomb long enough, you might even be able to think of your favorite Extra Life moments involving Lisa! Regardless, feel free to congratulate them in reaching this very special milestone in their marriage.

Sword Art Online: Dive to Stage, a stage show adaptation of Sword Art Online, opens in Japan on November 8th, 2022. Ahead of the curtains rising, the show's official accounts shared images of the cast in costume. The show will debut at the Tokyo International Forum Convention Center.

Check out the gallery below for shots of the actors playing Kirito, Asuna, Yui, Silica, Lisbeth, Klein, Agil, Sachi, Diavel, Keita, Tetsuo, Sasamaru, Ducker, Heathcliff, Godfree, and Kuradeel.

[gallery columns="4" link="file" ids="938522,938521,938520,938519"]

You can also see the cast in motion via the promo video below. The promo shows actor Rin Matsubara playing Kirito, and Minami Tsukui playing Asuna. Matsubara also played Tokoyami in stage show adaptations of My Hero Academia. Tsukui played Harley Quinn in a stage play adaptation of Batman Ninja.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeNBJFGb32Q

Sony has released its financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2022, with sales growing across the board, but operating income going down in the games segment.

Q2 revenue: ¥2.75 trillion ($18.6 billion, up 16% year-on-year) Q2 operating income: ¥344 billion ($2.3 billion, up 8%) Q2 net income: ¥264 billion ($1.7 billion, up 24%)

H1 revenue: ¥5.1 trillion ($34.5 billion, up 9% year-on-year) H1 operating income: ¥651 billion ($4.4 billion, up 9%) H1 net income: ¥482 billion ($3.2 billion, up 13%)

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Netflix has announced yet another studio acquisition, bringing Cozy Grove and Alphabear developer Spry Fox into the fold.

The Seattle-based indie becomes Netflix's sixth internal studio, and its fourth acquisition since September 2021.

The streaming firm announced the purchase via its website, in which vice president of game studios Amir Rahimi wrote that Spry Fox will "help accelerate our creative development in another beloved genre and add to the growing variety of Netflix's games catalog that will have something for everyone."

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Today NetEase Games launches its newest game development studio GPTRACK50.

The publisher said that the office will focus on creating and distributing new Japanese gaming entertainment worldwide.

GPTRACK50 will be led by games industry veteran Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who joined NetEase back in August.

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EA Sports reveals that 23 days after FIFA 23 launched consumers have played the game for 15.7 billion minutes to date.

The firm provided other statistics which include that users have spent 15.7 billion minutes playing the game.

Consumers have also amassed 1.7 billion matches since its release.

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The recently announced EA Motive game based on Iron Man is just the beginning of Electronic Arts' partnership with Marvel, the publisher announced today.

EA said it has a long-term deal with Marvel "to develop at least three new action-adventure games that will be available for consoles and PC."

Like Iron Man, the other games will be original stories set within the Marvel Universe.

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At last week's GI Academy Online – our annual event aimed at students – keynote speaker Louise O'Connor of Rare fame shared what she felt had changed the most during her time working in games, as well as the opportunities facing new generations seeking a career in the industry.

O'Connor joined Rare back in 1999 as an animator, having trained at Dublin's Ballyfermot Senior College. She has contributed to nearly all of the developer's subsequent projects, and is perhaps best known amongst the studio's ardent fanbase for her animation and voice work on Nintendo 64 title Conker's Bad Fur Day. Since being hired over 23 years ago, she has risen to the position of executive producer on one of the studio's current projects, multiplayer fantasy adventure Everwild.

The first significant change that O'Connor has noticed during her career in games is how the audience has broadened. Not only that but how publishers and developers measure their success is dramatically different.

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In Japan, Sony's PlayStation 5 has sold over 2 million hardware units since its November 2020 launch.

As reported by Siliconera, per publication Famitsu, the console reached the sales figure after nearly 102 weeks.

The site notes that the PlayStation 4 reached 2 million units sold after 90 weeks.

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There's just one week left to nominate your choices for the next wave of Game Changers.

This is our ongoing series of articles profiling people working hard to make the games industry a better place – and this year we'll be diving even deeper into their work.

While the Game Changers of 2020 and 2021 were compiled into lists of short profiles highlighting their accomplishments, this time we'll be running full in-depth interviews that explore the work they do and how the industry can better support their efforts.

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Chromatic Games, formerly known as Trendy Entertainment, is reportedly still grappling with toxic work culture issues.

Back in 2013, the Dungeon Defenders studio was the object of a Kotaku investigation, exposing accusations of mismanagement, institutional sexism and permanent crunch.

Now, a new report from Polygon highlighted similar issues persisting, with one source saying that the studio allegedly "wears people down and takes advantage of new game developers eager to work in the industry," the publication wrote.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has posted a far better week at physical retail than last year's disappointing Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Sales of the new title are 42% up compared with Vanguard, and nearly 9% up over Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from 2020.

Sales are down 61% compared with 2019's Modern Warfare, although downloads have since become dominant and digital sales data will be available later in the week. 53% of boxed sales were on PS5, 29% on Xbox and 18% on PS4, although do note that Xbox tends to perform more strongly when it comes to digital market share.

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Swedish retail giant Ikea has threatened legal action against a solo developer over the setting of his upcoming horror title.

Developed by Jacob Shaw, The Store Is Closed is a co-operative survival game that's currently in development and seeking funding on Kickstarter.

The title is set in an "infinite furniture store" where players will need to "craft weapons and build fortifications to survive the night" while they "build towers to the sky to find a way out."

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ForeVR Games has raised $10 million in a series A round led by Lobby Capital.

The funding round also included participation from existing investors, namely VC funds Bessemer Venture Partners and Galaxy Interactive.

The company, created in 2020 by Zynga veterans Marcus Segal and Mike Pagano Doom, aims to use the funding to create the "Wii Sports of VR," continuing to focus on family-friendly games.

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An unknown retailer has started selling Sony Santa Monica's highly awaited God of War Ragnarök two weeks before its release date, leading the studio to release a statement trying to control the damage.

Over the weekend, significant spoilers for the title started to appear online, with creative director Cory Barlog initially being the one expressing his frustration on Twitter, saying: "A retailer selling the game nearly TWO WEEKS before release. Just so disappointing." (emphasis original)

He later added: "Sorry to everyone that you have to dodge the spoilers if you want to play the game fresh. Completely fucking stupid you have to do this."

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YouTube saw a spike in gaming viewership for last month, as StreamElements today released its monthly State of the Stream report, with live streaming game content hours watched on the site jumping 42% to 434 million for the month.

Other streaming services didn't far as well, with Twitch hours watched dipping from 1.87 billion to 1.8 billion, while Facebook Gaming sank 18% month-over-month to finish September with 328 million hours watched.

Facebook has been shedding viewers all year, having peaked in January with over 600 million hours watched and declining almost every month since then.

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Sega Sammy Holdings revealed that the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise has sold 1.5 billion units as of March 2022.

The sales milestone includes both its full game and free-to-play offerings, the publisher said in its 2022 integrated report.

Sega Sammy also shared the lifetime sales from its other video game IPs.

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Remember HoloLens?

Just in case you don't, it was Microsoft's augmented reality headset, announced in 2015 and shown off at that year's E3 with an interactive Halo experience, a stage demo of Minecraft, and a whole lot of talk about revolutionary potential.

The Wall Street Journal certainly remembers it, as this week it published what amounts to a "Whatever happened to…" feature detailing the product's pivot from gaming gadget to enterprise productivity asset to "lethality increasing" military equipment, and how it struggled at each step to validate its effectiveness in any of those roles.

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The first ever Scottish Games Awards took place night, as part of the inaugural Scottish Games Week.

A panel of industry judges decided the winners for the evening, which was chaired by VGC features editor and author Chris Scullion.

Ion Lands' Cloudpunk was the big winner, picking up three awards for Art and Animation, Best Large-Budget Game, and Creativity. While the studio is German, Cloudpunk's lead writer Tom Welsh is from Scotland.

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'Tis the season! It's not really Q4 until Call of Duty has released, and today happens to mark the launch of Modern Warfare 2.

Infinity Ward is at the helm of this year’s entry in the Activision-published franchise, a sequel to 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which itself was a reboot of the original title of the same name.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which releases today on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC, will soon be joined by Warzone 2.0. The follow up to 2020's Warzone is still a free-to-play battle royale, and will actually roll out a bit later, on November 16.

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Angry Birds studio Rovio is set to open a new office in Barcelona, Spain, to work on some of its existing titles.

The studio will work in tandem with the firm's HQ in Finland, and will provide development support for games including Angry Birds Friends and Dream Blast.

In an announcement, Rovio called Barcelona "a bustling hub of mobile gaming talent," but did not disclose an exact location for the new space.

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The 2022 Global Industry Game Awards took place last night, hosted annually by the International Game Develoepers Association.

Arkane was the big winner of the night with Deathloop, which secured 13 different awards spanning the art, audio, design, technology and support categories.

It Takes Two from EA's Hazelight Studios also picked up ten awards, one for engineering, two for art, design and support, and three in the writing category.

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The release of the upcoming horror game The Callisto Protocol has been cancelled in Japan.

According to an announcement made via the game's Japanese Twitter account, the title was unable to secure an age rating from the Japanese Computer Entertainment Rating Organisation.

"The Callisto Protocol has decided to stop the release of the Japanese version," the statement said, a translation of which has been verified by our sister site Eurogamer.

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Subscriber numbers for Microsoft's Game Pass have failed to reach growth targets laid out by the firm for the second year in a row.

As per a new filing spotted by Axios, the company set a 73% growth rate for the subscription service for the fiscal year 2022 ended June 30, but only saw an increase of 28%.

The targets also served as a performance incentive for CEO Saya Nadella's pay, as well as other executives at the firm.

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The success of Xbox Series X/S has been an absolutely staggering turnaround for Microsoft's fortunes in the console market, putting the company back on something approaching an even footing with Sony despite the (largely self-inflicted) drubbing it suffered in the previous generation.

Nonetheless, when we discuss Microsoft's success in this generation there's always an elephant in the room, and every now and then, the elephant gets a little restless and a little harder to ignore. The Xbox Series consoles have fantastic hardware. Moreover, the company has gone back to its winning playbook from the Xbox 360 era with a brilliant services ecosystem. For all that, though, its software line-up remains weak – incredibly so, in fact, for a console that's approaching its second anniversary.

In the normal course of things, a console which failed to deliver a solid line-up of exclusive titles by its second birthday would be dead in the water, but we're not dealing with the normal course of things. Microsoft is maintaining consumer goodwill and enthusiasm on the back of a promise: that the games are coming, and while it may take a while, it'll be worth the wait.

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Long-time Sega game designer and producer Rieko Kodama has died at age 58.

A memorial message for Kodama, from staff credits found on the Sega Genesis Mini 2, was shared on Twitter.

As reported by IGN, it was confirmed that she passed away on May 9. Details about her death weren't provided out of respect for her family's privacy.

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Ubisoft reported its first half sales results today, posting revenues down slightly but still handily beating its guidance issued after the first quarter thanks to back-catalog sales.

Despite the revenue dip and operating losses, Ubisoft was upbeat in reporting its first-half sales results for a handful of reasons.

On the revenue front, the single-digit dip was actually significantly better than Ubisoft had told investors to expect.

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During Q3, Meta's net and operating income saw notable decreases year-over-year, while its revenue fared better but also came in at a decline.

The tech giant released its financial results for the three months ended September 30 yesterday. Here's what you need to know:

During the three-month period, daily active users grew by 3% year-on-year to 2 billion, whereas monthly users increased by 2%.

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This week, Scottish developer 4J Studios announced a move into the publishing business, with aims to release independent titles from partners it has been supporting.

For the last decade, 4J Studios' focus has been primarily on Minecraft – the team was responsible for bringing the Microsoft-owned title to multiple PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles, boosting the game's popularity outside of PC.

In addition to its Minecraft ties, 4J is also linked to Chroma Ventures, a VC fund led by studio co-founders Paddy Burns and Chris van der Kuyl. Now, the developer is seeking to use its own status as a game maker and investor to fuel and launch independent titles as a publisher, with the simple yet effective vision of making games that are for everyone.

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Tunic was announced to the world with a splash at Microsoft's E3 2018 press conference. And while it gave the game an enviably high profile right off the bat, it also set expectations and created some challenges for the game's publisher, Finji.

In a presentation at Megamigs last week, Finji co-founder and CEO Bekah Saltsman went into detail about how the publisher spent the last 19 months up to the game's release trying to manage expectations and communicate to prospective customers just what sort of experience they were in for.

"Tunic an isometric action adventure where you play a tiny fox in a big world and explore the wilderness, fight monsters, and discover secrets," Saltsman said, encapsulating the basic pitch of the game. "And that's all we ever told you, you're welcome. And all of those are true statements about the game. However, people filled in all the stuff we didn't say about Tunic with their own ideas, and as the internet is wont to do, not entirely based on anything we said."

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We recently added US revenue data for console and PC games to Newzoo Expert, so we thought we’d share some high-level data and insights, focusing on in-game ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) and ARPU (average revenue per user) per title for PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

As readers of Newzoo's Global Games Market Report will know, game companies have diversified their revenue streams via an array of monetization tactics. This includes not only full-priced premium games, but also DLC, free-to-play monetization and subscriptions.

Luckily, our revenue data for the US includes metrics like total revenues, ARPU and ARPPU. We even split out revenue streams like DLC, microtransactions and subscriptions. All this data is available by game, platform (PlayStation, Xbox and PC) and genre in our Newzoo Expert platform.

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PlayStation's London Studio has always been one of Sony's most experimental teams

From SingStar to EyeToy, Wonderbook to PlayStation Home, and most recently VR, London Studio has a reputation for working with and often defining new technologies.

Not all those projects succeeded, but the ones that did would go on to inspire the entire industry.

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VC fund Hiro Capital has announced that it has become the main investor in Loric Games, a studio recently created by former Mythic Entertainment veterans.

Loric Games was founded in March by Brian Johnson, Ray Soto, and Rob Denton, who was the co-founder of Mythic. Johnson and Soto are both veterans of the Dark Age of Camelot developer as well, having worked on the likes of Ultima Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Hiro's investment will go towards Loric's debut title, which will be announced in 2023, with the studio due to specialise in co-op survival RPGs.

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Jagex has released its financials highlights for 2021, reporting record revenue just shy of £125 million.

This represented a 4% growth compared to 2020, and the seventh year of growth for the company.

The announcement said that it was driven by flagship franchise RuneScape, which reached its highest number of paying members in 2021.

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