A variety of things went down in the past two weeks, but let’s lead off with something from today.
Developers Were Direct In Xbox’s New Showcase
Microsoft’s Xbox Developer Direct showed off updates on a few new titles. We got our first look at MachineGames’ Indiana Jones game, The Great Circle, that’s coming out this year surprisingly.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II got its release date, dropping May 21st.
Obsidian’s next RPG epic, Avowed, is confirmed for Fall this year. There was a “deep dive” on the game shown at the Direct.
Square Enix showed up to talk Visions of Mana, the next Mana title after a decade. They also showed off a nice chunk of new info.
And finally, Ara: History Untold, a Civilization-like game made by people who worked on the classic series.
2024 is Already Rocky in the Layoffs Department
A variety of layoffs have transpired in the past while, including
- Discord laying off 17% of their staff.
- Google has released “hundreds” of staff from their Google Assistant team.
- Behaviour Interactive of Dead by Daylight fame has cut “around 45 people”.
- Unity laid off 1,800 staff even after releases in November last year.
- Twitch laid off 35% of their staff, following multiple layoffs last year.
Layoffs continue to happen at an intense rate in our industry, and most of it can be attributed to poor management and overhiring.
And Yet, Games Continue to be Made
Even though they let go of a few people, Behaviour Interactive was also able to put out a new season of Dead by Daylight content. This time around, famous writer Alan Wake will be joining the game as a survivor.
Xbox and PC exclusive Hi-Fi Rush has been rated for Xbox One, PS4, and Switch.
The Golden Sun GBA games have been added to Switch Online + Expansion Pack.
Sometimes Good Things Happen!
NCSOFT, rights holders of City of Heroes, have given full license to Homecoming, a CoH fan server, to officially run the servers with their support.
Eddy Gordo has been confirmed as the first DLC character for Tekken 8.
A debug version of Persona 5 has leaked onto the Internet Archive. A few things have been dug up so far, including unfinished versions of iconic music from the game.
…But Also, Dumb Things Happen Too
For some genius reason, all heroes will now have a self-healing passive ability in Overwatch 2 next season.
Square Enix said that they used AI art for in-game icons in their upcoming title Foamstars.
Also, the Apple Vision Pro launches today, here’s Geoff wearing it.
