GamesIndustry

Some of the creators behind influential JRPGs Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts are working together to crowdfund spiritual successors to their past work.

The two new games – Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood – will share a "Double Kickstarter" project set to launch today with a minimum $750,000 funding goal.

Armed Fantasia is set in a futuristic take on the Old West and comes from a number of veterans from the 1997 PlayStation games Wild Arms, including lead designer Akifumi Kaneko and composer Michiko Naruki.

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Last Friday, the vice president of Meta's virtual reality social platform, Vivek Sharma, left the tech giant for a new position.

As reported by Reuters, the Horizon executive leaves the company after nearly six years.

During his career he previously served as vice president of of Facebook Gaming.

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Sony has acquired Savage Game Studios as the latest addition to PlayStation Studios, the company announced today.

Savage Games Studios was founded in the summer of 2020 by veterans with prior experience at Rockstar, Wargaming, Rovio and Next Games.

Last year, the team raised $4.4 million in seed funding to work on a shooter for mobile devices.

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This year's devcom Developer Conference saw more than 3,500 participants, a new attendee milestone for the Cologne, Germany event.

Devcom said that on site, the European games industry event saw an increase of 10% compared to 2019.

The conference saw more than 120 lectures by over 180 speakers on the floor during the three day period.

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The third day of Gamescom was time for this year's Awesome Indie Showcase. The indie-focused presentation spotlighted titles set to release later this year and new games scheduled for the year of 2023.

Some of the announcements that were made during the event are collected below.

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The blockchain tech sector is notable for the absurd amount of scams, fraudsters, liars, con artists, and other such deceptive bad actors it attracts. And as we talked about in this space back in March, people building their businesses in that sector have realized it has is a reputational problem about honesty.

Unfortunately, a common workaround for that honesty problem has been for companies to deceive people about their involvement in blockchain.

For example, there was this week's Gamescom Opening Night Live unveiling of Everywhere, the first game from Build a Rocket Boy, the new studio from long-time Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies.

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Today, gaming firm Embracer Group announced that its acquisition of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal, various IPs – such as Tomb Raider – has completed.

The deal was originally announced in May for the purchase amount of $300 million.

As part of the purchase Embracer has acquired the rights to the Deus Ex, Thief and Legacy of Kain franchises, as well as more than 50 back catalog titles.

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Sony may not have shown up for Gamescom this year, but the company still managed to dominate headlines from the show – although it might have preferred not to.

The announcement that the PS5’s price will be increasing in most global markets was pushed out as a post on the PlayStation blog earlier this week; Sony may have been hoping that news from Gamescom would soften the impact a little, compared with dropping this kind of news in one of the summer’s more empty weeks. I’m not sure it worked; there’s not much anyone wants to talk about this week other than price hikes.

So let’s talk about price hikes – not just Sony’s price hike, but the broader question of the upward pressures on the industry’s pricing, which has been brought into pretty sharp focus by Sony’s decision. There’s plenty of upset going around in consumer circles about the PS5 price increase, along with some gallows humour about how it barely makes a difference to those consumers who can’t find a PS5 to buy in the first place – but this isn’t the first price rise we’ve seen in recent months, and it’s highly unlikely to be the last.

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TinyBuild has acquired Bossa Studios' IPs, including Surgeon Simulator, I am Fish and I am Bread. The deal "includes an upfront payment of $3 million," the publisher said.

Going forward, TinyBuild will be the developer working on these IPs, while Bossa focuses on other projects.

Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers explained: "Since early 2022, Bossa has been focused exclusively in the genre of co-op PvE. We have been prototyping a lot, and now find ourselves in full production of titles we are pouring our hearts and souls into.

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Video games retailer GameStop announced that it's increasing the wages of assistant store leaders and senior guest advisors.

As reported by Axios' Stephen Totilo, CEO Matt Furlong said in a company memo that the changes will be effective in September.

Also store leaders (store managers) will be receiving a new compensation model.

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Xbox believes its TV app with Samsung – and no doubt future partnership – will be crucial in making streaming video games via the cloud a mainstream pastime.

But while watching, listening and even reading can be a one-handed activity for those fitting entertainment into their commute (for example), gaming is decidedly more active – it requires two hands, perhaps a dedicated controller and uninterrupted attention.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom in Cologne yesterday, Xbox principal product manager Harrison Hoffman said that while bringing the platform holder's library to mobile devices is part of the appeal of cloud gaming, playing on a television is still key.

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Zynga always had its detractors, being a poster child for the social gaming boom that some traditional developers and players found derivative, exploitive, or just plain evil.

But a decade ago, the social gaming giant had become a punching bag for essentially anyone and everyone. It was already in a precarious spot, suffering from a deflating Facebook social gaming bubble and struggling to build up much of a presence in mobile gaming to offset those losses. But the sentiment around the company got notably worse starting with a handful of developments in the last week of July.

First (and, if we're being honest, foremost), the company stumbled financially. This industry will forgive a lot if you're making money – hello, Activision Blizzard board of directors – but no profit margin means no margin for error.

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In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz today at Gamescom, Bandai Namco Europe's CEO Arnaud Muller addressed the impact of the current acquisition spree in games on smaller publishers.

While acknowledging that Bandai Namco is in a privileged position, Muller said that the company has to implement measures to safeguard its partnerships and IPs, while smaller publishing outfits might suffer more directly from this consolidation trend.

"What I find is that we have to secure the IPs that we create with the studios we partner with," he said. "When we invest in IP creation, when we invest in marketing for these IPs, we also have to keep in mind that we have to get some sort of security towards the future of the studio that develops this IP, if the IP doesn't belong to us.

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French publisher Microids has unveiled its own music label, Microids Records.

The subsidiary aims to collaborate with musicians and composers to release soundtracks from games it has published.

The first two albums to join the label will be the soundtracks from Syberia 2 and Syberia 3 composed by Inon Zur.

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(Editor's note: After publication, we learned the start-up in question is basing its game on blockchain technology. Given our editorial stance on the subject, this is not a story we would normally cover.)

Former staff at Disney, EA and Kabam have formally unveiled a new game company that aims to "take on climate change using the power of play, people and technology."

The studio, named Carbon Counts, was formed in November 2020, but has been operating in stealth while working on its first mobile title, EverForest. As players progress through EverForest's story, the studio says it will plant real trees in return.

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When it comes to a job in video games, game developers often face a choice: Either work for a big AAA game developer on a massive, multi-year project, or join an indie outfit on a smaller, more personal title.

There are pros and cons to both. It’s the bigger companies that work on the big brands and create the more ambitious games (at least technically speaking). But the downside is that they can be a bit more corporate, and you don’t get the same vibe and connection you can get with a smaller outfit.

However, there is a middle ground with developers such as Warp Digital. Warp Digital has fewer than 30 employees, but it teams up with AAA companies on some of the biggest games imaginable. In fact, right now it’s working with legendary developer Funcom on its new survival game set in the world of Dune.

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Sony has increased the recommended retail price of PlayStation 5 in dozens of markets around the world, including the UK, Europe, Canada and the company's home market of Japan.

Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced the change in a blog post, attributing it to "the global economic environment."

"We’re seeing high global inflation rates, as well as adverse currency trends, impacting consumers and creating pressure on many industries. Based on these challenging economic conditions, SIE has made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price (RRP) of PlayStation 5 in select markets."

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The second day of Gamescom saw the Future Games Show take place, hosted by 2018's God of War acting talent Danielle Bisutti and Christopher Judge.

The presentation featured new game reveals and release date announcements. The show focused on titles releasing later on during 2022 and well into 2023. Some of the announcements that were made are collected below.

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A Little to the Left is one of these indie games with a niche core idea that only needs a short teaser to convince thousands of players that this is exactly the game they had wanted their whole life.

If the thought of jumbled cutlery items, cupboards left ajar, or frames ever so slightly tilted have you break out in a cold sweat, and you feel great satisfaction fixing these little imperfections, it's likely A Little to the Left is for you.

And the highly awaited indie darling finally has a release date, with developer Max Inferno Games revealing at the Future Games Show today during Gamescom that it will launch on November 8 on PC and Mac, with a Switch and mobile release still on the horizon as well.

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Today, Denuvo has unveiled technology that it says will combat Nintendo Switch video game piracy.

Within the announcement it explained that anyone who intends to play a game must purchase a legitimate copy of the title.

The Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection will run checks into a title's code to stop gameplay on emulators. The sofware maker said that it will not impact gameplay for users.

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Former GTA producer Leslie Benzies debuted his new studio's first project at Gamescom last night, and the project has already stirred some controversy.

In the wake of the announcement of Everywhere, various people pointed out on social media that Benzies' Build A Rocket Boy studio had been hiring for blockchain developers.

While the studio's current website makes no mention of blockchain jobs, an Internet Archive capture of the site's careers page from June shows that blockchain had its own category of postings, alongside groupings for art, animation, audio, design, and others.

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Not-for-profit Creative Enterprise has joined GI Live: London as a speaker and sponsor.

Creative Enterprise, which is a part of Creative UK, is a series of initiatives that help games companies access connections, training and networks to help grow their business

GI Live: London takes place from Tuesday, September 20 to Thursday, September 22. The first day is a digital-only day, while days two and three will take place at London Excel alongside the EGX consumer show. Tickets are on sale now.

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The Interactive Software Federation of Europe and the European Games Developer Federation today released their Key Facts report, an annual overview of the European market that provides a snapshot of who is playing games, how much they're spending on them, and other such details.

While it's valuable to have such data points, most of the numbers only change modestly year-to-year, making headline takeaways sometimes difficult to find for news organizations. So this year we thought it would be interesting to compare these Europe trade groups' bigger picture report with that of its American counterpart, the Entertainment Software Association's Essential Facts report, normally released around E3 each year.

One area where the two markets were similar was in gender breakdown, with the US having 48% of players identify as female and Europe seeing that figure come in at 47.8%.

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Today, Super Smash Bros series game director Masahiro Sakurai has launched a YouTube channel dedicated to game design.

The Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games video series will be available in Japanese and English.

"I want to try and help make games around the world a little more fun," he said.

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Horizon Forbidden West has spent a third week at the top of the UK physical charts.

While the Sony game has enjoyed another burst of sales fuelled by hardware bundles, Nintendo Switch Sports has moved up to No.2, taking the place of Two Point Campus.

Two Point and Sega's university management game launched last week and soared to second place, but has fallen down the charts to No.14 following a 76% decline in sales.

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Original story: UK publisher PQube Games has been accused of exploiting two studios it was working with on an upcoming title.

Toge Productions and Mojiken Studio shared today that A Space for the Unbound has been delayed due to PQube Games allegedly using the pair's Indonesian heritage to receive a diversity grant from a "well-known platform" during August 2020.

"The diversity fund was a grant fund intended to help underrepresented developers, especially during the pandemic," the two developers wrote in a statement. "However, instead of giving those funds to the developers as the grant was intended, PQube Games intentionally withheld information about the grant and used it as leverage for their own commercial gain.

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Despite big AAA titles doing an increasingly larger part of their sales digitally (68% of Elden Ring's launch sales were digital in the UK, for instance), there is still value in retail for mainstream IPs, Daedalic's head of publishing Jonas Hüsges says.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom today, Hüsges talked of the importance of meeting the audience where it is with its upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum title – and that also means in store, where you can potentially attract a new audience who won't know the game necessarily but will recognise the IP.

"With a mainstream big IP, you want to go through shelves, and we hear positive feedback from retailers as well," he said. "They understand that this is a brand that they [can] put front and centre in their stores and that will resonate with people who just walk about, because they immediately understand what they're getting and what the product is."

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You can now download the latest episode of The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast, in which we discuss the highs and the lows of 2022's Gamescom Opening Night Live.

James Batchelor is joined by Alex Donaldson of sister site VG247 and RPGSite to discuss the biggest reveals and announcements for last night's showcase.

Over the course of the episode, we discuss the breadth (or perhaps lack thereof) of games on show, the importance of giving smaller publishers the opportunity to shine in the absence of major players, and the long-awaited reveal of Everywhere - the debut game from the studio formed by ex-GTA producer Leslie Benzies.

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Video games publisher Rogue Games will shift to a permanent four-day work week this September.

The formal announcement was made on LinkedIn by CEO and co-founder Matt Casamassina.

"There will undoubtedly be a few challenges in making this happen, but we think we can juggle it in ways that ensure there are no gaps for our developers, business partners, or customers," Casamassina said.

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Gamescom kicked off with a two-hour trailer fest Opening Night Live hosted by Geoff Keighley. The event featured a number of big reveals, updates, release date announcements and more, some of the biggest of which we have collected below.

● The show kicked off with a teaser trailer for Everywhere, the first game from Build a Rocket Boy, the new studio from former Grand Theft Auto Online producer Leslie Benzies. It has shooting, driving, and a big emphasis on self-expression, with one developer saying the team has put "a lot of focus on the current zeitgeist and what it means to represent yourself digitally in a game." The team wants to have the game in players' hands next year.

● Funcom showed a trailer for Dune Awakening, a new open-world survival MMO in the sci-fi franchise, coming to PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.

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Today's Gamescom Opening Night Live event featured the first teaser trailer for Wyrdsong, the debut title from Something Wicked Games.

Something Wicked is the product of founder and CEO Jeff Gardiner, a former Bethesda developer who worked on The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, as well as Fallout 3, 4 before serving as project lead on Fallout 76.

In keeping with his professional experience, Gardiner tells GamesIndustry.biz that Wyrdsong will be a "dark, preternatural historical fantasy open-world RPG set in middle-ages Portugal."

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Bungie is launching Destiny 2 on the Epic Games Store today.

The announcement was made during this afternoon's Destiny 2 showcase, which gave an in-depth look at the new season, as well as further details on the game's next premium expansion, Lightfall.

The collaboration between Bungie and Epic will also see Destiny cosmetics appear in several of the latter's titles, including Fortnite and Fall Guys.

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Today, gaming firm Capcom has revealed that Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak has sold over 4 million units globally.

The expansion to 2021's Monster Hunter Rise launched on June 30.

Capcom also shared that to date, Monster Hunter Rise has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide.

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Today sees the launch of Saints Row, the next instalment to the titular game series made by developer Volition.

Saints Row has been marketed as a soft reboot of the series for this console generation, modernising the game's trademark humour and whims while still retaining its chaotic, open-world environment. However, early reviews seem to signify that the game may have fallen short of its ambition to revitalise the series.

As of writing, the game has a PS5 Metacritic score of 63, based on 43 reviews. While there's still time for more reviews to come in, it's currently the lowest rated Saints Row game so far.

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Studio leadership needs to better manage its expectations if they wish to prevent crunching during development.

That's according to ZeniMax Online Studios creative director Rich Lambert, who spoke to GamesIndustry.biz during Devcom in Cologne today about the ongoing development of the company's flagship MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online.

Recent reports claim ZeniMax employees crunched while working on Fallout 76. When asked if the same occurs on Elder Scrolls Online, he said: "There is some – that's part of game development."

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The organisers of Devcom and Gamescom have reported that a participant has been banned from this week's events following an alleged incident of sexual harassment.

An email was sent out to Devcom attendees today, stating that the team behind the Cologne conference was informed of an incident that happened yesterday evening where a man "used inappropriate language to sexually harass a participant."

The accused was identified as an employee of an external service provider "that does not belong to Devcom." He has been "dismissed from his service and escorted from the site," as well as banned from future events at Koelnmesse.

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Project Cars and Project Cars 2 will be removed from sale in the coming months, developer Slightly Mad Studios has announced.

The first racing simulator launched during 2015 and its sequel released in the year of 2017.

The titles' removal announcement was made via Twitter and the reason was attributed to expiring car and track licenses.

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At Devcom today, UN Environment's chief of education, youth and advocacy, and Playing for the Planet co-founder, Sam Barratt, called for the games industry to act in the face of the climate crisis.

In a talk entitled "Lessons learned while Playing for the Planet" that he co-hosted with the UN's Lisa Pak, UNEP's Xiao Wang, and Ubisoft's Dominik Kirner, Barratt highlighted the current momentum in the games industry and how it's in a prime position to lead efforts to be greener.

"The opportunity for engagement and connection is limitless," Barratt said, explaining that gamers are no longer playing just to "play" but also to connect and learn, meaning the industry has a fantastic opportunity to send the right message about the climate crisis, but also to be more environmentally-friendly itself.

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The development of the upcoming remake of Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic has reportedly been passed to another studio.

Bloomberg reports that the project, which was initially being led by Austin-based Aspyr Media, is now in the hands of Saber Interactive, specifically one of its European studios.

Both developers are subsidiaries of Embracer -- the Swedish firm bought Saber in February 2020 for $525 million, and then snapped up Aspyr in February 2021 for $100 million.

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Microsoft spent $600,000 to bring Big Cheese Studio's Cooking Simulator to Xbox Game Pass, according to a recent filing.

As spotted by Twisted Voxel, the platform made a one-off payment to publish the title on its subscription service.

That figure was reportedly equal to 22% of the developer's net profit from the last fiscal year. The filing goes on to say that the Game Pass agreement "will significantly affect the company's revenues."

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