Month: October 2024

Piranha Bytes, the Embracer-owned German studio behind the Gothic, Risen and ELEX series, has reportedly shut down.

The embattled publisher Embracer had been seeking a buyer for Piranha Bytes as part of its vast and brutal swathe of cost-cutting that saw multiple studios shut and more than 4500 people lose their jobs – though ultimately was unsuccessful.

Job losses at Piranha Bytes were first reported at the end of last year and the company acknowledged earlier this year “a difficult situation” as it faced potential closure. Now a fresh report today by German website GameStar has confirmed the studio formally shut at the end of June, with its leaders now founding a new indie studio.

Newscast: With the death of Keystone, will Xbox give up its streaming console plans forever?

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Whilst acknowledging that game development has a “close relationship” with “AI-like technologies”, Nintendo says it is focused on “delivering value that is unique to Nintendo and cannot be created by technology alone”.
When asked by a shareholder to expand on “Nintendo’s initiatives using AI”, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that although generative AI was undoubtedly a “big topic” across the games industry, he believed the company’s “decades of know-how” was more valuable than AI when it came to “creating the best gaming experiences for our players”.
Furukawa also reflected on the issues of intellectual property rights, too.

Newscast: With the death of Keystone, will Xbox give up its streaming console plans forever?

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A new UK-based studio founded by former Disco Elysium development staff is working on a detective role-playing game.

XXX Nightshift will be the first project from Dark Math Games, which describes itself as a “breakaway group from the original development team of Disco Elysium”.

The team now has 20 members, including Disco Elysium veteran and art director Timo Albert.

XXX NIGHTSHIFT – A true detective RPG. Dialogue Gameplay Trailer

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Nintendo has today unveiled Alarmo, an interactive alarm clock that will respond to your body’s movements by playing video game sounds, thanks to its motion sensor technology.
On its debut this week (initially just for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, before wider availability next year), users will be able to choose from a total of 35 different alarms across five Nintendo games. These sounds include Super Mario Odyssey’s coin noises, Splatoon 3’s ink splats and Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Parasail music, to name three.
More alarm options are also said to be on the way as free updates. As for turning it off, all you have to do is get up and out of bed. Nintendo does note that if there is more than one person in the bed, however, the alarm clock may get a little confused.
“Alarmo can’t detect a specific person, so if two or more people are sleeping in the same bed within range of the sensor, the alarm may stop when one person gets out of bed, but restart once it detects there is still someone in bed,” the team wrote. “The alarm will stop completely once everyone is out of bed.” There is a button mode, though, which may be handy (literally) for those time…

Bungie’s efforts to build enthusiasm for Destiny 2’s future amid significant layoffs at the studio and fan concerns continue with yet more teases for next year’s Codename: Apollo expansion – which is now confirmed to be whisking players to a “Metroidvania-inspired destination”, as seen in new concept art, and arriving alongside “next generation” armour.

Bungie announced Codename: Apollo back in September as part of “major changes” that’ll see the studio launch two “medium” Destiny 2 expansions every year, instead of a single major release. At the time, Apollo was described as a “non-linear character-driven adventure”, with the word “Metroidvania” floated but not confirmed.

Now though, as part of its latest developer stream, Bungie has shared a little more detail on what’s to come. Codename: Apollo, as previously confirmed, arrives next summer as the first of Bungie’s twice-yearly “medium-sized” releases, which, for context, are said to be approximately the same size as Destiny 1’s Rise of Iron expansion.

Destiny 2 – Revenant: Act 1 | Developer Livestream

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Shattered Space, Bethesda’s first major expansion for Starfield, released a few days ago, but has unfortunately been met with middling PC player numbers and lukewarm reviews.
Over on SteamDB, Starfield currently has a 24-hour peak concurrent player count of 17,074, and a current player count of 9,740. In contrast, Bethesda’s much older release The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition has a 24-hour player peak of 21,494, with 13,772 of us currently making our way through the fantasy world.

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Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida outlined what’s coming up on Patch 7.1 in his latest Letter from the Producer Live event at Tokyo Game Show overnight, including new artwork, quests, and the Yuweyawata Field Station dungeon.
Expected mid-November, the patch, called “Crossroads”, will also include new Allied Society quests for Dawntrail, focusing on a new Pelupelu trader.
While Yoshida stopped short of providing any story clues, he suggested that these quests would be perfect for players levelling jobs to 100.

ファイナルファンタジーXIV 『第83回FFXIVプロデューサーレターLIVE』

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Microsoft is continuing on with its mission to provide us with as many different Xbox controller variants it can.
Today, the company debuted the Ghost Cipher Special Edition Xbox Wireless Controller, which features grey and bronze accents with a clear top case so you can see the controller’s inner workings (see header image above)
The Ghost Cipher Special Edition Xbox Wireless Controller will be available from next month, on 8th October, retailing at £64.99. If you are interested in purchasing one for yourself, you can pre-order the controller now.

Introducing the new Cipher Series translucent Elite Controllers – Xbox Design Lab

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New details about Assassin’s Creed Invictus have leaked online.
According to X/Twitter user j0nathan – a leaker with extraordinarily good prior form for Assassin’s Creed information – Invictus will be a Fall Guys’ inspired multiplayer game in which players will assume the avatars of different Assassin’s Creed characters and fight to get through each round.

Eurogamer Newscast: When it costs £700, who exactly is the PS5 Pro for?

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A comment on a Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 video appearing to be from Saber CEO Matthew Karch has raised eyebrows for stating that games should be about “glory kills” instead of “imposing morals on gamers”.
The comment, from an account named “MatthewKarch” purporting to be the Saber CEO, was made on a video by streamer Asmongold titled “Space Marine 2 is a reminder of what we lost”.
The video is a response to another from YouTuber Legendary Drops who described the recently released Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 as oozing “with so much masculinity that I feel like I’ve been in a desert for the last few years”. Asmongold vehemently agrees in his almost one hour response.

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