Gaming
Square Enix Commits to Business Consolidation in 2023 as New Rumors of a Sony Buyout Surface
In 2023, Square Enix will put a lot of emphasis on business consolidation, according to a newsletter from president Yosuke Matsuda. Although the Japanese publisher has a busy year ahead of it, with much depending on titles like Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy XIV’s continuous development, and perhaps even Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the business is dedicated to strengthening its foundation.
You might recall that in 2022 Square Enix sold a number of their Western studios, along with franchises including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, to Embracer Group. Since then, the publisher has worked to strengthen its emphasis on in-house research and development, and this trend won’t be altering.
Square Enix plans to “accelerate our efforts to strengthen our internal development capabilities” over the course of the “medium to long term” by “further expanding our internal talent pool, as well as more swiftly concentrating our resources on the development of titles that are competitive globally.” In other words, it seeks to increase its portfolio while committing to its own projects.
This makes sense when you think about how many new games Square Enix launched in 2022. Since Matsuda emphasizes the significance of “end-to-end global publishing,” the corporation does in fact seek to refocus its publishing activities. Previously, the business’s Western and Japanese publishing divisions ran rather separately. The objective is to become “One Square Enix,” Matsuda continues.
However, given the current state of the game industry, it stands to reason that Square Enix is gearing up for a significant sale. Those that post on forums and social media would have you believe so, at least. Square Enix acquisition rumors have been around for a very long time and have been very persistent. Following this letter from Matsuda, rumors have once again begun to circulate because consolidation has long been associated with new management and making a company more appealing to bidders.
But we’ll need more persuasion. There hasn’t been any conclusive evidence to support the persistent rumors that Square Enix wants to be acquired. And since competition watchdogs are currently opposing Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, we doubt Sony would take a similar step anytime soon.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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