This Week In Gaming – July 30

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This week has been very interesting in the gaming community. Some devastating news, amazing news, and even some news that seems too good to be true. Believe it or not there’s a lot to talk about and I’m going to try my best to hit the big topics while acknowledging the relatively smaller ones. (XmanFiles)

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News Roundup

• Grand Theft Auto VI news from Bloomberg has been released and there’s a lot to talk about including the setting, characters, and the plan to support it going forward. Additionally there have been cultural and workplace changes at Rockstar that have been said to improve the employees’ experience working there.
• The highly anticipated KOTOR remake has been delayed indefinitely. The new potential release year was said to be 2025.
• There are some rumors pointing to Sony being greatly interested in buying Square Enix Japan.
• A single player Black Panther game has been reported to be in development by EA.
• Warhammer 40,000 Darktide has seen a delay now slated to come out on November 30th.
• New Horizon Forbidden West DLC could very well be on it’s way.
• Sony is investing in mobile gaming with a new controller accessory.
• A new studio formed by old CD Projekt Red developers is working on a new game.

Grand Theft Auto 6 Update

GTA 6/Rockstar got a huge update from Bloomberg and honestly I’m intrigued. There’ll be two protagonists Bonnie and Clyde style. This could introduce a very captivating dynamic and an interesting relationship between the characters advancing the story in new ways for the franchise. The main locale will be an area strongly influenced by Miami and more cities will be added over time. The working title is “Grand Theft Auto Project Americas”, I’d assume that it’s eluding to the fact that more major cities will be added to the game making a mock version of America. In addition, Rockstar has been putting practices in place to promote a better work environment. The changes at this massive developer’s studio includes: more producers to reduce crunch, schedule changes to be more flexible with off time, contractors being brought on as full time employees, removal of abusive employees, and mental health and leave benefits to help employees. I’m all for these kinds of things in the gaming industry. Lately there has been a trend of the grandiose developers that we all know and love to have toxic workplaces. I think it’s crucial that we hold these companies accountable when they do things like that because in return there’ll be more reports like this. As long as the devs are comfortable and taken care of there’s a better chance that they’ll keep making good games. (XmanFiles)

Link to the Bloomberg Post: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/gta-6-release-date-rockstar-cleans-up-image-after-employee-backlash#xj4y7vzkg

Knights Of The Old Republic Delay

I think its safe to say when the KOTOR remake was announced, the gamming community was amazed. It came completely out of left field and was met with high anticipation. But there was an aura about it to me, and I just knew it was too early of an announcement to be coming any time soon. Low and behold, the game’s new target window is 2025. It seemed pretty weird that the studio Aspyr would be doing a project this ambitious. There are minor details surrounding this delay, such as the demo not being sufficient enough for the 2022 release date. In the end it was reported that all hands are on deck to do this beloved game justice. The main takeaway from this situation is, developers should try to refrain from announcing games this early. The practice is annoying to me. The idea of announcing a game that’s coming out in 3+ years is kind of pointless because the majority of consumers will forget that it was announced until there’s something addressing it. (XmanFiles)

Link to the VGC Post: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-remake-has-reportedly-been-delayed-indefinitely/

Sony Could Potentially Buy Square Enix

According to an ex-Eidos Montreal developer, there could be Sony-Square Enix acquisition on the Horizon. Stephane D’Astous has stated that he’s heard Sony is very interested in Square Enix due to their close work and heavy standing in Japan. Earlier this year Square Enix sold off its western studios to Embracer group. This was speculated to be a move to increase the allure of their buyout to Sony. I could 100% see this happening because it would make the most sense. Although I do want to see the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy on XBOX, alls fair in love and war. Therefore it would only be right that after the Activision Blizzard – XBOX deal, Sony makes a big move within the gaming industry. (XmanFiles)

Link to the Square Enix Post: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/square-enix-reportedly-sold-western-studios-to-prepare-for-sony-acquisition-3277673

Single Player Black Panther Game Is On The Way

Earlier this week Jeff Grubb said that there was a new Black Panther game in the works and that he’d give more details the following morning. Thats just what he did. This game will be a single player experience developed by an EA game studio founded by former Monolith VP, Kevin Stephens. It will follow the successor to T’Challa in an open world adventure going through the trials of becoming the next Black Panther. I’m actually pretty excited about this one. Earlier in the year the next Star Wars Jedi game was announced and now this. It’s pretty ironic considering EA’s “They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games” tweet that they’re making two high profile single player games. Black Panther (aka project Rainer) is said to be in early development and I’m really looking forward to more news surrounding this game. (XmanFiles)

Link to the Gamespot Post: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/black-panther-single-player-game-reportedly-in-development/1100-6505826/

Warhammer 40,000 Darktide Has Been Delayed

As you can see above, Warhammer 40k Darktide has been delayed to November 30th. This really isnt that serious to me. I’m still very excited for this game and I’m all for games getting more time to finish baking so we as consumers, get the absolute best product they can put out at that time. I only worry about the titan that is God of War: Ragnarök overshadowing this release thus sweeping it under the rug of popularity. (XmanFiles)

Link to the Gamespot Post: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/warhammer-40000-darktide-delayed-to-november-for-pc/1100-6505976/

Horizon Forbidden West DLC Potentially Leaked

Horizon Forbidden West fans saw a post from Peggy Vrijens, who did Aloy’s mocap, was spotted in her mocap suit. Another post saw Louis Van Beek and Peggy Vrijens (The two previously worked on Horizon) together. While this is all speculation currently, we do know that eventually Horizon: Zero Dawn did get The Frozen Wild’s DLC, so its not entirely out of the question to get a DLC for The Forbidden West. Let’s keep an eye on this one. (JusBernard)

Link to Gamerant Post: https://gamerant.com/horizon-forbidden-west-dlc-rumors-explained-actor-location/

Sony Mobile Gaming Peripheral Announced

Sony announced their mobile gaming peripheral and has named it the “Sony Backbone”. At this time it is only compatible with IPhones. The backbone allows streaming of both PS and PS4 games. While not a true successor to the PSVita, it offers a nice way to access your game library on the go as long as you can establish a good connection. (JusBernard)

Link to Playstation Blog Post: https://blog.playstation.com/2022/07/28/introducing-backbone-one-playstation-edition-an-officially-licensed-controller-for-playstation/amp/

New Ninja Game From Ex CDPR Developers

Ex CDPR devs under a new studio known as Dark Passenger are reported to be working on an online ninja game with PVP, PVE, and Co-op elements. May come as no surprise but this game is being developed for PS5. Other platforms to be announced at some point the currently only PS5 has been confirmed. This probably made my son cry when he read it! The game is said to contain a broad weapon set, deep customization, as well as skill progression. it is said that this game has been in development for approximately 2 years, so hopefully will get a glimpse by the end of this year or early 2023. This announcement is especially exciting because I am beginning to see a trend with more and more new studios being formed from veteran developers who have broken off to realize their own vision. This is what will invigorate gaming once again. The industry is long overdue for an injection of new creative blood to drive Innovation once again. (JusBernard)

Link to Gameranx post: https://gameranx.com/updates/id/337386/article/new-studio-dark-passenger-working-on-ninja-game/

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What’s The Latest !?!?

In March of this year, Ubisoft announced a new technology called Scalar. While the technology made bold promises, many were left scratching their heads and didn’t fully understand how this new tech would innovate the future of game development at Ubisoft. Scalar promises to take advantage of the monumental computing power of the cloud. It will utilize what are called microservices. A microservice attempts to address a single concern or a specific action. With traditional software, everything was designed together into a single application. This type of application design is called monolithic design. Developing monolithic applications can take much more time, because you have to ensure new enhancements don’t break the entire application and each time the entire code base has to be refactored. Monolithic design suffers from longer testing cycles because there are many more points of failure, creating numerous opportunities to break the application. With microservices, you gain faster development times and cycles, fault tolerance to prevent the entire application from breaking, and most importantly, vastly improved scalability – hence the name – Scalar! Taking all of the context I’ve just provided, take a moment to wrap your mind around what this could mean for the development of video games and the worlds in which we play. Today, we enjoy the benefit of downloadable patches for games that we play on a fairly regular basis. Developers often provide quality of life downloads for patches that improve games. This is a far cry from the era I grew up in, where whatever you bought was what you got, bugs included. With Scalar, we may no longer have to rely on downloading patches, as this will all be taken care of in the cloud. For example, developers may make enhancements to AI, install new game assets, even create entire levels all unbeknownst to the player until they embark upon that specific section of the game. Additionally, leveraging the computing power of the cloud, there are essentially no limits to what developers can create. The introduction of new hardware each cycle begins to become a moot point here as a PS5 or Xbox simply becomes a platform which receives the streaming. However, Scalar is not Stadia. Rather it is a tool that utilizes the cloud and is available for Developers at Ubisoft to create without limits. All of this Tech talk has me extremely excited about the future. When I look at games like Assassin’s Creed which are developed by Ubisoft, I am truly intrigued to think of what these games will become when they take full advantage of Scalar. Let’s keep an eye out to see the first game that really takes advantage of this technology. I will be writing more as developers begin to utilize these new tools. Stay tuned to 36th Generation for all things related to Scalar as well as other influential and innovative gaming technology both hardware and software! (JusBernard)

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Conversation Of The Week

So there’s been a lot of different conversation topics this week but I’m going to add a few more. What are you playing? What are you looking forward to? Which one of these topics this week caught your attention? Let me know in the comments below !!!