As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to drag Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard under a microscope, the company’s CEO wants you to know it’s actually Sony’s fault that console exclusives exist.
Baldur’s Gate III director Swen Vincke doesn’t think the sprawling fantasy role-playing game would exist if the team behind it, Larian Studios, had been gobbled up by another game company. “It would have been canned, guaranteed,” he told me during a recent interview. “There’s no way that a big publisher would have…
Larian Studios is shifting its upcoming RPG Baldur’s Gate 3’s release around a bit, and that means good and bad news depending on if you were planning on playing the game on PC or PlayStation 5.
Valve seems to be blocking video games created with AI-generated assets from being published on its online storefront Steam. A Reddit post from earlier this month, first noticed by GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless, includes a message from Valve explaining that it “cannot ship games for which the developer does not…
When is a game not a game? When it’s a sim, according to the head developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. While we quickly agree on a "fair enough" response to this assertation of non-gameyness, we also can’t help but spend much of this latest Electronic Wireless Show podcast remembering the most fun we’ve in the diverse world of sims, be it some actual flight simulating or merely bullying smaller dinosaurs. Also: we chat about how big a deal it is that the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection might not support mouse and keyboard on PC, and discuss what we’ve been playing this week.
Rare news, folks! RPG threequel Baldur's Gate 3 is now coming out on August 3rd - almost a month sooner than its previously planned date of August 31st. The opposite of a delay, then. The good news was announced today via a community update from developers Larian, in which we also received more juicy details about the game’s D&D races and classes, new companions, and a glimpse at just how massive Baldur’s Gate 3 really is.
Dark Horse is releasing a truly epic action figure of the one and only Doom Slayer. This 1:6 scale figure is modeled after the iconic hero's appearance in Doom Eternal, and it looks primed and ready to slaughter the legions of Hell.
Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive first look at this amazing Doom Slayer figure:
This Doom Slayer figure measures 12 inches tall and features 32 points of articulation. Highly articulated 1:6 scale figures are a bit of a departure for Dark Horse, which tends to focus on statues and non-articulated figurines like the Cyberpunk 2077 series of figures. However, in this case, Dark Horse has teamed up with the designers of Mondo to bring the Doom Slayer to life. The figure is sculpted by Mondo's artists and painted and prototyped by Hector Arce.
Naturally, the Doom Slayer comes with a number of weapons and accessories inspired by Doom Eternal. That includes a chainsaw, Crucible Sword, Heavy Rifle, Plasma Gun, Super Shotgun and the almighty BFG 9000. The figure even includes a Lost Soul enemy with acrylic display stand to ensure the Doom Slayer has a friend to eviscerate.
Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Games with Gold line-up for July 2023 includes Darkwood and When the Past was Around.
Revealed on the Xbox Wire, the two Games with Gold offerings will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Darkwood available from July 1 to 31 and When the Past was Around available from July 16 to August 15.
Originally released in 2017, Darkwood is a top down survival horror game designed to be challenging. Players must craft weapons, prepare traps, and fortify hideouts in order to survive the night, but use the day to explore and scavenge the eerie forests of the Soviet Bloc.
IGN named it among the best horror games of that year. "In a genre oversaturated with crafting-heavy survival mash-ups, Darkwood shines," we said at the time.
Coming in with a much cosier vibe, When the Past was Around launched in 2020 as an adventure point and click puzzle game about love, moving on, letting go, and the joy and pain of everything in between.
It tells the tale of a girl and her lover in a surreal world consisting of disjointed rooms from memories and time.
New games approaching also means that June's Games with Gold will soon leave the service, so be sure to download Adios and The Vale: Shadow of the Crown before they disappear.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most-anticipated role-playing games of 2023. It launches in August on PC, then in September on PlayStation 5. But why is there no release date for the Xbox Series X and S versions? At first glance, you might have thought Sony’s Jim Ryan had bundled developer Larian a basket full of cash to secure Baldur’s Gate 3 console exclusivity, but this is not the case. There is no exclusivity deal going on here. Which begs the question: what’s up with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series consoles?
The truth has to do with Larian’s ongoing struggle to get Baldur’s Gate 3’s two-player split-screen co-op running well enough on the Xbox Series S, and a Microsoft policy that enforces gameplay feature parity across Xbox Series X and S. This means Larian cannot release Baldur’s Gate 3 on any Xbox Series console until it’s optimised split-screen co-op on the S to the point it hits the quality bar it needs to satisfy players. This is not about a framerate difference, a resolution difference, or whether or not the S version has the same advanced graphics effects as the X version. This is about a key gameplay feature difference, and that’s where Microsoft draws the line.
Big news for Baldur’s Gate 3 fans: developer Larian has brought forward the PC release by a month, avoiding a potentially brutal clash with Bethesda’s behemoth Starfield.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was planned for launch on August 31, a day before Starfield’s effective September 1 release date. Now, the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 launches August 3, giving it a month head-start on Starfield.
The PlayStation 5 version, however, is delayed a week to September 6. The Xbox version is still without a release window, as is the Mac version.
In a community update, Larian said the new release date “means the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released at a time where you’ll have more time to play it”. That’s a thinly-veiled nod to players who were perhaps concerned about the prospect of choosing between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield on PC when they were coming out a day after the other.
In an interview with IGN, Larian founder and creative director Swen Vincke refused to namecheck Starfield as the direct cause for the PC release date shift, instead speaking in general terms about wanting to find a slot within the busy release calendar.
“I know the comparison [to Starfield] is inevitable of course because it's coming out,” Vincke said. “But I don't know if you've looked at the rest of the year, it's a super busy period. I don't think we've had as busy a year as this in a long time. You've got Zelda, you've got Diablo 4, you've got Starfield, Final Fantasy, there's a bunch of others I'm not mentioning. It's a really big year.
In 1995, to feed the students of Springfield Elementary School, the staff had been grinding up gym mats for meat. Only as the Lunch Lady of Springfield, Doris, noted, “There’s very little meat in these gym mats.” Now pretend the gym mats are Final Fantasy 16 and the paltry meat are elements that belong to an RPG and you begin to understand my lone, conflicting feeling towards how the latest Square Enix game plays.
By now much has been made about how Final Fantasy 16 is almost certainly a character action game first when it comes to how it plays. Producer Naoki Yoshida and team have made clear that Final Fantasy isn’t a set of turn-based gameplay mechanics, but rather a commitment to epic storytelling, a grand, sprawling adventure, and a heart-wrenching story. The gameplay could be anything else as far as they’re concerned.
Even before Final Fantasy 16, Square Enix moved away from blank canvas characters a long time ago, and the RPG elements remained primarily through stuff like how to set up one’s party, or even how to build one’s character. But even these elements are gone in Final Fantasy 16.
Sega has said it has a very close relationship with Microsoft but made clear the company is not for sale after court documents revealed Xbox boss Phil Spencer was interested in acquiring it.
When asked by Bloomberg if Sega was open to being purchased by a bigger publisher, co-chief operating officer Shuji Utsumi simply said: "No, not now."
The FTC's ongoing legal battle to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard revealed on June 26 that Spencer went to Microsoft CFO Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella to request approval to approach Sega and acquire its gaming studios.
This fell through, of course, and while Sega has no plans to be acquired by Microsoft, it insists the two still have a strong relationship.
"We are very close with Microsoft and have a great relationship with its management team," Utsumi said. "Microsoft particularly has a high regard for us. Xbox’s Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond are really serious
about values that video game fans emphasize."
Pokémon Go maker Niantic will lay off 230 staff - around a quarter of the company - and has cancelled a major upcoming project developed in conjunction with Marvel.
The company will close its recently-released NBA All-World game, end development of its upcoming Marvel World of Heroes project, and shut down its Los Angeles development studio. The news was communicated to staff via an email from company founder John Hanke, which has now been made public.
Pokémon Go, which remains lucrative, is safe. Indeed, Hanke calls it the company's "top priority" as it slims down and refocuses on the future.
The latest DLC character to join the cast of Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker is Obito Uchiha in his Ten Tails Jinchuriki form. Arriving as part of the June 30, 2023 update, Those wanting to use his Jutsu and outfits on their player avatar will need to purchase the Season Pass 6 or his $3.99 add-on.
Obito was originally added to the game in his normal form back in 2019. This new version depicts him while channeling the powers of the Ten-Tailed Beast. In this form, he can use the abilities Truth-Seeking Scorch and Cross Lantern. His Secret Technique utilizes the Nunoboko, a blade shaped like a DNA helix.
You can catch Obito's new trailer below:
[embed]https://twitter.com/BandaiNamcoEU/status/1674402345931751424?s=20[/embed]
Launching back in 2018, Shinobi Striker is an arena fighting game that lets players create their own custom shinobi avatar or fight as one of the characters from the shows. The game is currently on its sixth season of content. Those of us who own Season Pass 6 will get access to the new DLC packs for Obito (Ten Tail Jinchuriki) and Kaguya Otsusuki as they release, as well as the already released Minato Namikaze (Reanimation).
The latest RPG by developer Nippon Ichi Software is Xicatrice, and it released in Japan. That also means a new launch trailer, alongside new information about the title. The game has been described as a “superpowers x high school RPG.” The main character is a former member of the police force that lost his super powers in the past, and is now the teacher in charge of guiding a class of students with the same sorts of abilities. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
The plot of Xicatrice involves humanity awakening to supernatural powers approximately 100 years ago. While some people used their powers for the improvement of society, others abused them. To protect and educate each new generations of super-powered individuals, a special class was created, called RAUT (Reserve Anti-abnormal Unusual-talent Team).
The story of the game begins in 2023, when a teacher who lost their powers as a result of an incident is assigned to the class RAUT 302. As the teacher, the player is tasked with coaching each of the seven students individually and as class, as they learn to use their superpowers in battle. The students will face creatures created by negative human emotions, as well as criminals who take advantage of their powers in turn-based combat.
Additionally, if the we fail to help the student overcome their emotional scars, they might be overwhelmed by their own superpowers and meet a bitter end. Each student’s ending will change depending on player input when leading them.
Square Enix announced that the Dragon Quest X themed tarot card deck will be available for purchase again on July 15, 2023. The deck includes 22 cards of the Major Arcana of the tarot. The deck costs 2,200 JPY (or roughly $15). The cards are now available for pre-order from the Japanese Square Enix online e-store. [Thanks, Game Watch!]
The card deck is designed after the cards that appear in Dragon Quest X as part of the Fortune Teller vocation. Each card is based on iconic monster designs from the entire franchise. The card set comes with a downloadable code for two items for the online version of the MMORPG.
You can take a better look at the Dragon Quest X Tarot Card deck in the gallery below.
[gallery columns="4" size="medium" ids="970799,970798,970797,970796" link="file"]
Dragon Quest X now available in Japan in Online and Offline versions. The offline version is the latest to release, and is available for the Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, and PC via Steam. The Sleeping Hero and the Guiding Ally, a new expansion for the offline version, released on May 26, 2023.
Mewtwo is about to join Pokemon Unite. The character will join the roster on July 21, 2023. There are no details on its moveset or abilities yet. However, it will be part of the second anniversary celebration for the game. The art also teases the Mega Mewtwo X and Y forms.
Here's the official announcement. Mewtwo is in the front. To the left behind the Pokemon is Mega Mewtwo Y. On the right is Mega Mewtwo X. This could suggest that when someone plays as the character, they'll be able to evolve it into one of those two forms, which were introduced in Pokemon X and Y.
The Legendary Pokémon Mewtwo is coming to #PokemonUNITE on July 21! #UNITE2ndAnniversary pic.twitter.com/TmpTxebZHP
— Pokémon UNITE (@PokemonUnite) June 29, 2023
BlizzCon is returning to Anaheim, California, this November and Blizzard has released new details about the event, including what to expect, pricing, and when tickets go on sale.
BlizzCon 2023 will take place on November 3 and 4 in the Anaheim Convention Center and tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. ET on July 8. A second wave of tickets will go live at 10 a.m. PST/ 1 p.m. ET on July 22. General admission tickets cost $299, and that price includes a live event ticket, in-game goodies, the official BlizzCon backpack, and early access to the BlizzCon store.
There will also be a $799 Portal Pass ticket available as well. It includes all general admission perks, a separate registration and security line, exclusive Portal Pass lounge access (private concessions and viewing lounges, gameplay experiences, and more), and early entrance to the convention center.
“We are so excited to be welcoming everyone back to Anaheim for BlizzCon 2023,” BlizzCon executive producer April McKee writes in a press release. “This year, we are doubling down on the community experience for both in-person and virtual attendees, with beautiful, immersive activations throughout the Anaheim Convention Center, as well as providing all BlizzCon on-stage content for free via livestream for our global community.”
A powerful world boss in Diablo IV has been slain in only a dozen or so seconds. And while that’s impressive enough on its own, it’s even more amazing that it was basically one very powerful Necromancer that wiped out this usually hard-to-kill baddie.
This past weekend I played a beta version of Mortal Kombat 1. I was part of an “online stress test” organized by NetherRealm Studios so the team could prepare the servers ahead of the game’s official launch. To quickly sum things up: So far, so good.
Developer Yager Development has announced that its free-to-play multiplayer shooter The Cycle: Frontier will go offline forever on September 27. The developer gave a few reasons for the shutdown, including an interesting one: Cheaters ruined the experience for everyone involved.
Back in May, it was announced Final Fantasy XVI would be banned in Saudi Arabia. Officially, it was because developer Square Enix refused to alter scenes in the game for the territory, which led to rumors and speculation that the 16th game in the long-running RPG series would have explicit gay sex scenes, which…
No one likes a spoiled surprise. But if you’re Battlestate Games, developers of the indie extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov, then you really, really, really don’t like it. Recently, the dev has threatened to ban anyone who datamines or even shares datamined content from the game. The threatens haven’t gone over…
On Thursday, fans of the hit Nickelodeon cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender received an adrenaline shot in the arm by way of an announcement trailer for a new action-adventure game set in the universe that’s due out later this year. Unfortunately, its gameplay looks a bit bland, and the trailer doesn’t reveal enough…
World Of Warcraft Classic is introducing Hardcore realms where death is permanent. Blizzard say testing of Hardcore will begin on the Public Test Realm today, June 29th, and have outlined how it'll impact PvP, Battlegrounds, quests and more. In short: they're all being changed to try to stop your death being random or cruel.
Cities: Skylines often felt more like a traffic management sim than a city simulator, as I spent hours tinkering with my road networks to try to clear jams. Cities: Skylines 2 looks like it's going to support an even deeper level of tinkering, judging by two feature spotlight videos released on roads and traffic AI.
Among the new additions: car crashes, much improved pathfinding, and car parks. I find all of these as exciting as each other.
Later this year, Sports Interactive will show and release Football Manager 2024, the latest in their long-running sports simulation series. In a blog post earlier today, studio head Miles Jacobsen described FM2024 as "the most complete version in the series' history", but also "the last of its kind."
That's because next year's Football Manager 2025 will apparently be, "for the first time in decades, a true sequel," and introduce a new graphics engine, new user interface, "advanced" animations, and women's football, among other changes.
Cyberpunk FPS Robocop: Rogue City is hosting a closed beta running from July 3rd - 9th, letting you step into the shoes of the part-man, part-machine violent law enforcer. There’s no word yet on what’s exactly included in the playtest, but you’ll presumably be shooting a ton of stuff, making things go boom, and using your inhuman strength to play ball with human bodies. (as seen in the gameplay trailer below.) You can register for the playtests here.
The Witcher: Old World has all the warning signs. As a crowdfunded board game, it follows the common trend of launching alongside a half-dozen expansions which shove years worth of content into the product line. The core box is big enough as is, occupying a healthy amount of space and throwing the lofty weight around of its intellectual property. The chance to fall into the role of a Witcher and trek across a board in pursuit of ferocious beasts is clearly appealing and sells itself. What’s surprising is how this manages to be so compelling and outright joyful in its adaptation.
This game is not a lark. Łukasz Woźniak’s translation of this Polish media wonder into a board game is impressive. It allows you to wield the twin blades of a Witcher, traversing across the continent and visiting locations such as Cintra and Stygga. It's set long before the time of Geralt, with Witchers belonging to one of several orders which they represent with honor and courage. They set upon the world to vanquish beasts and turn the darkness to light.
Players seek four trophies–primarily through felling creatures in card-fueled violence -- with the first to attain that number bringing fame to their name and to their school. In terms of game design, it’s a race with each player acquiring skills and developing their character before setting upon various wandering monsters.
Scorn, the horror puzzle adventure game released last year on Xbox Series X/S and PC, is coming to PS5, PlayStation and Ebb Software announced today.
While there was no firm release date other than "later this year," a new PlayStation Blog post shared some new details on what PS5 players can expect from the upcoming horror game. This includes support for the PS5's DualSense controller, which according to Ebb Software Technical Artist Jovan Vučković, the controller will aim to "deepen the player's immersion and to let the whole world "breathe" in a new way."
"Since there is no spoken dialogue in the game, we have put a strong emphasis on environmental storytelling, " the PlayStation blog notes. "[H]ence haptics are a great addition to this peculiar audio-visual experience."
The blog post mentions how the DualSense's adaptive triggers will allow each in-game weapon and tool to have "a subtle, but different feeling of weight" to help further immerse players in the experience. While the controller's light bar will represent how much health a player has, changing in color in "appropriate situations."
Ebb Software also confirmed in the blog post that Scorn's PS5 release will get both a digital and physical version of the game. Scorn was released last year as a console exclusive to the Xbox Series X/S and PC, but it has yet to receive a physical release on either platform. While a 2020 tweet from the official Scorn Twitter account mentions that a physical version would release "at some point," it has yet to receive a disc version on Microsoft's console.
Silent Hill 2 Remake and Layers of Fear developer Bloober team is officially moving on from psychological horror games to instead focus on something more "mass-market".
As reported by Engadget, 2023's Layers of Fear — which was an all-in-one remake of sorts of the first two games and their DLC — will be the studio's final foray into the psychological horror genre, which also included games like The Medium, Blair Witch, and Observer.
Switching over to what's internally known as Bloober Team 3.0, however, the studio will begin making horror games that are more action focused and require more from the player, perhaps closer to something like Resident Evil.
"We focused on the story, we focused on the mood, we focused on the quality of graphics and music, but we didn’t put a lot of attention on the gameplay mechanics," said Bloober Team co-founder Piotr Babieno. "It wasn’t our target. But we decided that there was a ceiling that we couldn’t break if we did not deliver something fresh, something new.
"We decided that our next titles should be much more mass-market oriented. We’d like to talk with more people. We’d like to deliver our ideas, with our DNA, not by environment or storytelling, but by action. So all of our future titles will have a lot of gameplay mechanics. They will be much bigger."
UPDATE 30/6/23: Microsoft has responded to Canada's statement last night issued by its Competition Bureau, released as legal proceedings brought by the US Federal Trade Commission were just wrapping up.
In short, Microsoft noted that Canada's window to meaningfully respond to the deal had now passed. Globally, only the US and UK stand opposed.
"We received notice from the Canada Competition Bureau that it would continue to monitor our acquisition of Activision Blizzard after the formal waiting period preventing the deal to close expired," a Microsoft spokesperson has said. "We continue to work with regulators around the world to address any remaining concerns."
Between the remaster of We Love Katamari and the imminent Pikmin 4, it’s a good time to be a little guy in video games. Joining that group is Smushi Come Home, another game about being a tiny person in a big world. It was casually released during the 2023 Wholesome Direct and if you need any game to define what wholesome means, it’s this.
You play as Smushi, a mushroom man living on an island with his family of other mushroom people. It’s all lovely and cozy until the fateful day when Smushi is captured by a large bird. Flown far away and dropped into the bird’s nest, Smushi heads out on a quest to get back to his family. What follows is an adventure platformer about exploring a cute world on the forest floor.
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Screenshot by Siliconera[/caption]
MAPPA uploaded the opening for Yuri on Ice on its official YouTube channel. However, it’s unlikely that this means more content is on the way. The official MAPPA website does not list the Yuri on Ice movie in the "Coming Soon" section anymore.
The Yuri on Ice opening features Dean Fujioka’s “History Maker,” and the animation focuses on the three main characters Yuri, Yurio, and Viktor as they are figure skating. Flashes of color appear on the screen every time they move their arms. Though the show is quite old at this point, the video already has almost 31,700 views on YouTube as of the time of writing.
You can watch the Yuri on Ice opening here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bGivPNjbrw
Yuri on Ice came out in 2016 and has twelve episodes. A movie, Ice Adolescence, was announced after the show ended and was supposed to come out in 2019. However, it seems that MAPPA does not plan to work on it any time soon based on the Works tab on its website. Yuri on Ice follows figure skater Yuri Katsuki, whose idol Viktor Nikiforov has come to Japan specifically to be his coach. The show won several rewards and is popular not only with the anime crowd but with real-life figure skaters as well. It’s still influential today, such as in Yuzuru Hanyu’s “History Maker” routine at Fantasy on Ice 2023.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 PC and PS5 release date changed. Previously, the game was going to appear on both platforms on August 31, 2023. Larian Studios announced the PC version is bumped up to August 3, 2023. However, the PS5 version got pushed back and delayed until September 6, 2023. It also confirmed a Panel from Hell: Release Showcase will air on July 7, 2023.
In the update, the team went over why the PS5 Baldur’s Gate 3 release date got pushed back. It is essentially a measure to ensure overall quality. It noted it isn’t hitting 60 fps on the console yet and they don’t want to resort to 30 fps. The announcement also noted, “the benefits of a short delay outweigh the downsides of rushing the PS5 release and having to downscale.”
The announcement also offered on update on the Mac and Xbox Series X versions of Baldur’s Gate 3. The Mac one is in development and will arrive “at a later date.”
Here’s the full statement from Larian Studios on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox Series X version:
Square Enix shared a Star Ocean: The Second Story R Claude C. Kenny teaser on Twitter. It's a brief trailer highlighting the character. However, while short, it does offer us a bit of insight. For example, we get to hear some snippets of his English voice acting during it.
Here’s the full Star Ocean The Second Story R Claude teaser. It begins with him waking up on Expel in a forest. He hasn’t met Rena yet. He’s just first getting his bearings. After that brief clip, we get to see him taking part in two fights. In one, he uses his Fierce Dragon Roar Blade Art. (In the past, it was sometimes called Dragon Howl.) In the other, he performs Mirror Blade.
Claude C. Kenny, a young officer in the Pangalactic Federation who excels in both sword and hand-to-hand combat.
During his investigation on the Planet Milokeenia he discovers an unfamiliar mechanism that transports him to a faraway planet in #StarOcean The Second Story R. pic.twitter.com/zSqW7nGqk5
— STAR OCEAN (@StarOcean) June 29, 2023
Pokémon Go developer Niantic has announced a massive restructuring, where it will be closing its Los Angeles office, terminating over 200 employees, and scaling back development on a few titles as it narrows its focus towards supporting current titles while increasing its commitment to mixed and augmented reality development.
In an email sent to staff by CEO John Hanke (which you can read here), he explains that the pandemic-era surge of recruitment and expanding pipeline of projects ballooned to the point that, once the pandemic ended, the resulting expenses outpaced its revenue.
“In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively, expanding existing game teams, our AR platform work, new game projects and roles that support our products and our employees," Hanke writes. "Post Covid, our revenue returned to pre-Covid levels and new projects in games and platform have not delivered revenues commensurate with those investments. This change will bring expenses and revenue back into line while preserving our core assets and long term upside.”
Hanke also cites an increasingly crowded mobile market and changes to mobile advertising making it difficult to launch new titles at scale. He also points to technology challenges creating an AR market that has developed slower than anticipated due to an overall lack of investment caused by what he describes as a "global macroeconomic slowdown."
Annapurna Interactive, the publisher behind games like Stray and Neon White, held a showcase today to reveal new games, and updates for previously announced ones, shine the spotlight on new developers, and more. It even unveiled its first-ever first-party game. We have all that and more in our breakdown below.
While the showcase featured plenty of updates about games we’re already excited about, it also featured four new game reveals.
Perhaps the most significant announcement of the showcase, Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth, is a new game set in the same world as the iconic Blade Runner film franchise, and Annapurna Interactive’s in-house studio is developing it. This marks the first time the publisher has developed its own game, and its development is being led by Chelsea Hash, who previously served as the game director of Solar Ash and a technical art lead on What Remains of Edith Finch.
Annapurna Interactive has revealed Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth, a new game set in the same world as the Blade Runner film series, and it's the first game developed in-house.
Annapurna has published plenty of great games, but it announced last year that it had created a new internal studio to actually develop one. And now we know that game is Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth. As the name suggests, it takes place in 2033, which puts it between the original film and its sequel, Blade Runner 2049. Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth takes place in a dystopian Los Angeles like its cinematic predecessors, and the game's events occur after the Blackout hits.
Not much else was revealed about the game, but you can check out its moody cinematic trailer for yourself below:
As you can see, this game looks very Blade Runner, and we can't wait to learn more about it. Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth's development is led by game director Chelsea Hash, who previously served as the director of Solar Ash and technical art lead on What Remains of Edith Finch.
Annapurna Interactive says Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth is the first new Blade Runner game for consoles and PC in development in 25 years. It's due out sometime in the future on consoles and PC, but there's no word on when to expect it. However, Annapurna Interactive says it will share more details about the game soon.
