Category: Video Games

This week, Microsoft and Bethesda announced that they would be closing down multiple game development studios under their umbrella. These include Alpha Dog Games, maker of Mighty Doom, and Arkane Austin, developer of the disastrous Redfall among others. In the gaming industry, the conventional wisdom has long been held that bad games sink you and great games save you, which would lead many to drawing an unfortunate line between Redfall’s reception and Arkane Austin’s closure — but immediately stops supporting that conclusion when you get to Tango Gameworks.

Founded in 2010 by Shinji Mikami, the studio was largely known for horror games like Evil Within until last year. As part of a shadow drop release, the cool rhythmic action title Hi-Fi Rush garnered critical acclaim from all sides, multiple awards and nominations, and was recently ported to PlayStation 5. Xbox Vice President Aaron Greenberg even said that the game was a “break out hit” in “all key measurements and expectations.” Moreover, they did what critics and fans alike beg studios to do: make something wildly different outside of their comfort zones.

Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.

— Aaron Greenberg 🙅🏼‍♂️💚U (@aarongreenberg) April 21, 2023

Despite all that, late at night in Tokyo, the people who made a Game of the Year candidate were informed through an email by Xbox Games Studios head Matt Booty that they were closing the studio.

Hi-Fi Rush was, by Microsoft’s own admission, exactly the kind of game the Redmond giant has been convincing their audience to stick with Game Pass for, which sets unclear goals and expectations from the get-go. What exactly constitutes a success on Game Pass? Hi-Fi Rush topped a whopping 3 million players last year, but that clearly was not enough for the higher ups. The lack of transparency with the general consumer on how games are evaluated internally is understandable, but it seems that not even Tango was aware of what metrics their game seemingly missed.

Despite having worked at a Japanese game studio myself, it does not take much experience to understand that creative jobs perform better when there is greater incentive beyond decidedly-unclear goals at the end. No one is working on a video game in hopes that they can get to the finish line of release so that they can continue to bite their nails over whether a nearly-90 metacritic game will result in a studio closure down the line as corporate, as Booty puts in the email, “look[s] across the business to identify the opportunities that are best positioned for success.”

Which leaves us grasping within this self-imposed murkiness for an answer to an important question: If success cannot save your studio, what can?

This is a problem that is likely on the mind of every other Xbox studio that does not produce games commanding audiences of tens of millions. With the upcoming release of Hellblade II: Senua’s Sacrifice, it is not difficult to imagine that a successful launch would not shield Ninja Theory from Microsoft’s ever-floating evaluations. Now those talented developers who have spent years toiling away on their game across multiple changes in their parent company’s focus have an ominous pall hanging over their head. It is not just enough to make a good game, nor make a game that critics and audiences both like, but you have to hope that a C-Suite executive’s nebulous plans forward include taking your studio along for the ride.

We have long assumed that corporate ownership by one of the richest companies in the industry would inoculate studios from tragic closures, but we were wrong. We thought that putting out a game with a modest budget would be protection, but we were wrong there too. And now we have learned that putting out a critically acclaimed title that said richest companies openly brag about succeeding will not protect anyone. There truly is no more shelter to hide under in the gaming industry and developers and consumers both suffer from it.

When studios are concerned for their very existence, games like Hi-Fi Rush do not have space to make it to market. Tango Gameworks bet on themselves by making something different than what they are known for and, by every metric available to them, that bet demonstrably paid off. In a situation where their head was on the chopping block the entire time, waiting for the executioner to make the call on whether their axe comes down on the back of Tango’s neck, you could not get a Hi-Fi Rush.

It is also unclear at this point what players can do to support games they love anymore. When the act of championing a game you like can only be measured in numbers too absurd for most video games, then there is no reasonable way to patronize them anymore. If three million players are not enough, why should anyone expect that four or five or ten million would be? It is no longer satisfactory to executives for a game to be a decent success, so there is little reason for audiences to become publicly enamored with what they play. In one fell swoop, Microsoft managed to undermine any grassroots marketing efforts they could have counted on for games that are not Call of Duty.

The games industry is ill and things like this, like the closure of Tango Gameworks and high-quality studios like Roll7, are symptoms. They can be written off by people as not their kind of game or reasoned with twisted return-on-investment maximization brainworms, but they do not represent an industry that is happy and healthy. The industry is now trying to redefine what success means until it skyrockets into an utterly unattainable goal post. It is likely not by intention, the decision-makers are also flying by the seat of their pants on this high-speed rocket, but ultimately that doesn’t actually mean anything. Microsoft was supposed to be the company that stepped back and said “Not past this line.” Now they’re erasing the line in the sand and hoping we don’t notice.

Just over a year ago, Tango Gameworks and Xbox released Hi-Fi Rush, a musical delight that seemed to come out of nowhere. Hi-Fi Rush received almost universal acclaim – it was wholly unique, polished, and tightly paced. It was also like nothing developer Tango Gameworks had ever made before, and seemingly made explicitly for Xbox Game Pass. It followed closely in the footsteps of games like Psychonauts 2 and Pentiment, neither of which match the profile of the big, blockbuster AAAs that move millions upon millions of copies, and yet they were beloved anyway. Taken as a whole, they lent credibility and prestige to Xbox Game Pass as an accessible library of well-supported, beautifully crafted art.

Now, just over a year later, Xbox has decreed the award-winning studio behind Hi-Fi Rush no longer necessary to its business. Its work does not consist of “high-impact titles” that Xbox is prioritizing. It is not among “the opportunities best-positioned for success,” as Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty put it. Tango, along with Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, and hundreds of workers are being cast aside.

We’ve written about the devastating impact such mass layoffs continue to have on individuals within the games industry. We’ve also discussed some of the internal strife over Xbox’s identity. Now, brand new questions have emerged following Xbox’s latest shutdowns, few of them more pressing than what the future holds for Xbox Game Pass after the demise of one of its star developers.

Xbox Growth Pass

Xbox Game Pass has always been intrinsically tied to Xbox CEO Phil Spencer. Upon taking over Xbox from his predecessor Don Mattrick, one of Spencer’s earliest moves was to bring the brand back to a pure gaming focus after an unpopular pivot to entertainment. But he didn’t stop there. After a 2014 acquisition of Minecraft developer Mojang saw wild success, Spencer saw a pathway to linking his gaming growth ambitions with that of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s broader plans for cloud technology.

In 2017, the public saw those plans begin to unfold with the debut of Xbox Game Pass. At the time of its announcement, Game Pass was a huge deal: a monthly subscription service a la PS Now, but with direct game downloads rather than streaming and over 100 games at launch, including first-party games.

But exciting as that was for consumers, a gaming subscription service was always a risky business move. Similar services have come and gone over years, with even the best (Nvidia GeForce Now) falling short of massive popular success and some (Google Stadia) becoming cautionary tales. Netflix served as a proof of concept for such a service, but reports suggest that a number of Microsoft leaders told Spencer the service was a bad idea when he pitched it. At the time, Spencer was floating Rare’s upcoming Sea of Thieves as the ideal Game Pass game. But Rare boss Craig Duncan asked Spencer, “If every single person plays Sea Of Thieves on Game Pass, and we don’t sell a single copy. Are you kind of cool with that?” Spencer was.

When Game Pass debuted in 2017, it was more than a launch of a subscription service – it was the launch of an entire, multi-year strategy. Xbox started firing on all cylinders. It bought Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, inXile, Obsidian Entertainment, and Double Fine Productions. It spun up The Initiative and World’s Edge. It made the biggest-ever acquisition in gaming history when it bought Zenimax, bringing with it Bethesda, id Software, Arkane, Tango Gameworks, Machine Games, and Zenimax Online. Then Xbox broke that record again by purchasing Activision Blizzard.

In the process, Game Pass expanded. In 2018, Xbox began releasing first-party games on day one on the service. It added PC Game Pass in 2019 and implemented cloud gaming on mobile in 2020. Rumors swirled of Xbox trying to get Game Pass on Nintendo Switch, among other platforms, and of future Smart TV integration as well.

Through it all, Spencer made it clear that Game Pass was the centerpiece of Xbox’s strategy. It tied all the pieces together: console, mobile, PC, the acquired studios, outreach into new markets, cloud gaming, and Spencer’s dream of reaching 2 billion gamers wherever they happened to play. So what the heck is happening now?

The Horizon Three Bet

For all the praise Game Pass receives from consumers, it’s become apparent in recent years that the service has struggled to meet its creators’ lofty expectations. On one hand, it’s been consistently praised as a great deal for consumers, and plenty of developers have praised it as well. The service has been a boon for indies, too, who have used its guaranteed funding to get their games over the finish line. At its best, Game Pass is great for Xbox’s internal creatives, many of whom have spoken glowingly about Xbox and Game Pass serving as a home for the kind of creatively interesting yet less marketable games that other parent companies or investors wouldn’t otherwise back.

But glowing reviews from some partners and consumers don’t necessarily mean the idea makes business sense for everyone. Larger third-party developers, for instance, have complained that Game Pass cannibalizes retail sales — concerns that Microsoft admitted last year were founded. Major third-party publishers including Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick have publicly stated they think the business model is a bad idea and aren’t interested in participating (though an acquisition solved the former disagreement). For Xbox, every single Game Pass game is a gamble that only pays off if enough people subscribe as a result.

“Microsoft initially wrote a bunch of big checks, which inflated the valuation of smaller and medium-sized game makers,” Joost van Dreunen, NYU Stern professor and independent analyst told me. “But unlike a premium model, in which a studio gets a piece for every unit sold, selling your game to a subscription service means you only get paid once. The upsell to developers has been that their participation would provide greater visibility and the opportunity to sell digital items on the back-end. However, as Netflix and Spotify will tell you, it is the blockbuster hits that carry the subscription and account for the bulk of playtime. The dystopian point of view here is that content creators are reduced to a cost-plus line item in a subscription-model that only values them for the increase in subscriber count they provide.”

For a while, this was a problem Xbox could afford to ignore. Microsoft’s pockets were deep, it clearly didn’t mind pouring money into the ambitious “Horizon 3” bet that was Game Pass, and Xbox’s expenditures were just a blip on Microsoft’s balance sheet anyway. But with the $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard – not to mention all the legal and government hullabaloo that came with it – we’ve started to see signs that Microsoft’s critical eye is now focused on its gaming division.

This new scrutiny comes at an awkward time for Xbox. Game Pass, the prize strategy that was supposed to tie everything together, is almost certainly not meeting internal expectations. Earlier this year, we got a rare numbers update: 34 million paid subscribers, up from 25 million in 2022. But that number alone doesn’t tell the entire story. The previous subscription total was just for Xbox Game Pass, but the update comes after Game Pass was merged with Xbox Live Gold to form Xbox Game Pass Core. So yes, Game Pass membership shot up, but that boost required Xbox to mandate the service in order to play games online at all. It’s unlikely the service is seeing nine million user boosts on the regular, especially with Spencer admitting that growth is slowing down.

What’s more, Game Pass was pitched as a game changer – a way for Microsoft to lead gaming in a new direction. But mounting evidence says it is far from completing its mission. Circana senior analyst Mat Piscatella notes in his assessment (which is focused on the United States), “subscription is not showing signs that it is becoming ‘the future of gaming.’” Premium games and free-to-play are still the dominant method of gaming, and subscription spending in the US has shown “flat to low single-digit growth since mid-2021.” Cloud gaming, pitched as the logical next frontier for such a service, has similarly failed to achieve widespread adoption.

George Jijiashvili, senior analyst at Omdia sees the struggles of Game Pass as symptoms of larger problems at Xbox, among them declining hardware sales during what should have been a growth phase for the console. While Xbox Series X and S hardware sales dropped 19% year-over-year in 2023 by Omdia’s estimate, PlayStation sales grew by 56%, and the seven-year-old Switch outsold Xbox by a factor of two. Meanwhile, Game Pass itself is set to fall short of reaching even half of its goal of 100 million Game Pass subscribers by 2023. For these reasons, Jijiashvili suspects “a drastic change in strategy” is required for Xbox to course correct, one which he suspects must include a focus on PC and mobile, especially cloud gaming.

This crossroads for Xbox comes at a difficult time for the games industry as a whole, too. As Piscatella explains to me, one of the biggest challenges for any video game company now is the impact of games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, and similar games that pull the vast majority of player time and spend all on their own. The pandemic saw video games shift “from a growth market to a mature market,” he says, with both engagement and spending effectively hitting caps. If companies want to see growth, they have to pull players away from those games – a tall order indeed.

“If we know the ceilings, and we know more about where, why and how people are playing (and really the ways they want to play, since we have all that data from 2020-21 when there were very few competitive activities to gaming), then it’s tougher to make big bets on huge shifts in that behavior. I’m speculating a bit here,” Piscatella says.”But when I look at what’s happening, I see a strategic shift not so much because one strategy failed, but because of a realization that chasing one particular strategy may not be optimal or deliver the desired results.”

A brand at the X-roads

Today, Xbox finds itself at an impasse. It has to start returning Microsoft’s investment, and soon. It can’t back out of its lofty promises for first-party games on Game Pass without risking consumer fury, especially amid hardware declines. That means relying on something other than Game Pass to rake in the cash. Sarah Bond mentioned an upcoming mobile storefront that would capitalize on the power of recently acquired Candy Crush. Analysts I spoke to have been predicting this would happen in 2024 for months now, but it’s still unclear whether or not such a marketplace will need Game Pass attached to succeed or, if so, what that even looks like.

Mobile is powerful, but it’s not enough to transform Xbox’s business strategy, especially given its extreme lateness to the market. On top of the mobile storefront, Xbox’s new strategy will almost certainly include the reassessment of platform exclusivity for even more games — something Jijiashvili says is long overdue. Jijiashvili also expects Xbox to work on expanding its PC market via PC Game Pass, especially now that Activision Blizzard’s portfolio is in play. Van Dreunen suggests Xbox might add new tiers to Game Pass – perhaps one tailored for mobile, or an ad-based version.

But none of that necessitates a robust portfolio of creative, unique, smaller games – like Hi-Fi Rush – that previously seemed tailor-made for Spencer’s vision of Game Pass. Even if Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty insists otherwise. Xbox has promised, for now, that Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall will remain available, but for how long? Already, Redfall’s promised updates and planned DLC have been binned, and in an age of digital ownership there are no guarantees that either game will remain available forever.

Even more importantly though: what happens to the studios that were making them? There’s been plenty of nervous speculation online already about the possibility of Xbox shutting down studios like Ninja Theory or Obsidian once their upcoming projects – Hellblade 2 and Avowed – are out the door. The idea of shutting down such storied, acclaimed studios would have seemed absurd until recently, but the games industry and Xbox in particular have reached a point where nothing seems off the table if an executive believes cuts will help a bottom line somewhere.

It’s not the only possibility, though. A more likely, if not exactly happy, possibility is that Xbox starts taking on a more hands-on role with its owned studios, similar to its competitors. Previously, Xbox has been praised for a hands-off approach that allowed studios like Obsidian to make games like Pentiment, though the flipside is that studios like The Initiative have apparently floundered without strong creative direction. Xbox could start directing its studios to make games and IPs that it expects will be more than just critical darlings to sell Game Pass.

For years, Xbox bet that if it had enough incredible games in one place, it could fundamentally change the calculus of how players chose to play. It lost that bet, but it did create an excellent service in the process. Now Xbox appears to be doubling down on that bet, but not in the way we might like it to. It appears to be prepared to give up the incredible, risky, boutique projects that made Game Pass so wonderful in exchange for Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and a PC/mobile-first strategy. Great games, it seems, are no longer enough.

When I asked Simon Carless of GameDiscover.co newsletter about Game Pass’s impact on Xbox’s first-party games, he acknowledged it was a tricky question. It’s difficult, he says, to work out what “success metric” Xbox is using for “expensive to make” boutique titles – it might be player counts, user ratings, retention, in-game purchase spend, new Game Pass users, or something else entirely. But he does note that as Game Pass growth stalled, the latter two metrics are increasingly becoming Xbox’s focus.

“We can definitely argue about whether closing critically acclaimed studios like Tango Gameworks is the best way to deal with [Game Pass growth stalling out],” he says. “But I presume that, via Microsoft’s new success lens — ‘did lots of people get retained in this game, and perhaps might pay for extra things in it?’, or ‘did new people signed up for Game Pass because of this game?’, some beloved, high quality games don’t fit the bill. For example, Hi-Fi Rush going to PlayStation is a high-profile move. But we’re estimating it’s sold way less than 100,000 units on that console so far. In a multi-billion dollar corporation like Microsoft, that’s a rounding error.”

Van Dreunen, for his part, says Xbox is ultimately going to be fine. It has Microsoft, and thus time and money on its side, even if its parent company seems to be cracking down on the big spending. Microsoft won’t abandon gaming, and the big bets will likely continue, even if the shape of them seems likely to look less and less like Spencer’s Game Pass vision from a decade ago. “[Xbox] recently celebrated the 20-year anniversary of its Xbox console, which it introduced at great cost and amidst massive skepticism from analysts, gamers, and investors. Today, Microsoft is the third-largest game company in the world, generating $25 billion annually. As a trillion-dollar company it has the resources to outlast other companies for decades. I’d expect Xbox to use that to its advantage.”

And yet, the shuttering of Tango and Arkane was a massive shock to an industry already reeling from two straight years of relentless job and project cuts. The carnage across video games seems poised to continue for at least a few more financial quarters, and any rebuilding of the lost talent is likely to take far longer. Xbox is apt to sail the waves of the industry for years to come, whether or not Game Pass turns out to be the wind at its back or an anchor dragging it down. But Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin are gone, and there may not be many studios like them for the foreseeable future.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

PlayStation’s first half of 2024 has been quietly successful without necessarily setting the world alight. Helldivers 2 proved a surprise megahit in both a critical and commercial sense, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is one of the best RPGs of the year so far – even if it hasn’t quite sold the number of copies both Square Enix and Sony may have been hoping for – and, as recently as a few weeks ago, both Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade launched, bringing with them exciting brands of sharp action.

These exclusives have been bright spots in an industry otherwise plagued by layoffs and studio closures (of which Sony has played no small part in), but when it comes to what else to expect to play on your PS5 in the back half of 2024, there’s a worrying lack of announced games and dates – especially compared to the strong first-party offerings Xbox currently has lined up. Of course, this could all change soon as we rapidly approach the summer showcase season where exciting new reveals will undoubtedly steal the headlines. Sony will, presumably, want something shiny to show alongside a potential unveiling of the heavily rumored PS5 Pro. But how many of those fresh announcements will actually be playable within the next six months is another question, though. My guess is very few.

Beyond this year’s upcoming Silent Hill 2 Remake, Death Stranding 2 in 2025, Bungie’s Marathon, and a couple of other first-party releases we’ll cover shortly, PlayStation’s cupboard is looking relatively bare, especially when it comes to games from those keystone PlayStation Studios. It begs the question of what each of these teams – those that helped build the PlayStation library into the strong place to play it is today – are up to now, and how long before we get to both see and play them. So let’s take a look at what each of those developers (not including support studios) are doing, and when we can realistically expect to see new games from them.

Naughty Dog

Arguably the jewel in the PlayStations Studios crown, Naughty Dog’s last full release was 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2. The Uncharted developer hasn’t been completely quiet since then, releasing both remastered versions of The Last of Us Part 1 (in collaboration with Iron Galaxy) and Part 2 as recently as this January. But Naughty Dog’s most notable recent announcement wasn’t a new launch, but the cancellation of a multiplayer entry in the series that the studio had spent many years on before deciding to turn its attention back to where its proven skills lie: single-player adventures.

In March 2023, co-studio head Neil Druckmann stated the developer had chosen its next project but didn’t confirm if it was The Last of Us Part 3 or something else. In the 14 months since we’ve heard very little, aside from a small tease in The Last of Us Part 2 making-of documentary where Druckmann stated he has a “concept” in mind and that there’s “probably one more chapter to this story.”

Could we see a reveal of this new project soon? Whether it’s a continuation of Ellie’s story, a return to Nathan Drake’s adventures, or something completely new entirely, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see an announcement this year, even if playing it is still a way off. The relatively short two-to-three-year gaps between Uncharted and The Last of Us games are long gone, sadly, with four already having passed since Naughty Dog’s last.

Santa Monica Studio

Santa Monica Studio released God of War Ragnarok to huge success in late 2022 and followed up with the surprisingly lengthy free Valhalla DLC in December of last year. However, what’s next for the studio is a mystery, although we do know Cory Barlog – game director of 2018’s God of War – moved on to helm a new project in 2021 after leaving Eric Williams to fill Ragnarok’s director seat. Little to nothing is known about that new project, but given it’s been in development for a number of years already it wouldn’t be beyond belief to see it revealed this year.

As for a new God of War game, well, we likely can’t expect that as quickly. Despite the gap between Ragnarok and its predecessor being only four years, the end of Kratos’ Norse saga signals a new direction for the series which, naturally, means it’ll require a lot more work from the ground up. We can hope, of course, but don’t expect to see everyone’s favourite angry dad any time soon. That said, we wouldn’t say no to a remake of the original trilogy…

Insomniac Games

Insomniac is arguably Sony’s most prolific studio, releasing either a Spider-Man or Ratchet and Clank game every couple of years for almost a decade now, most recently last year with the hugely successful Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. But in a worrying sign of the fragile state of the games industry, even a game of that magnitude couldn’t prevent layoffs from occurring this year in what turned out to be a doubly damaging couple of months for the developer, following a huge data breach and subsequent theft.

The data theft revealed that the highly anticipated Wolverine game is not expected until 2026 at the earliest, but also that a Venom game may arrive before it in 2025. Either way, it’s highly unlikely Insomniac will be springing any surprise games this year, and after all the studio has gone through recently I think it’s fair to allow it as much of a break as anyone.

Sucker Punch Productions

Sucker Punch has been very quiet since 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima. Work is presumably underway on its next game but, truth be told, we have little idea what exactly that is. Common wisdom would suggest a direct sequel would be the most logical move due to the success of the first game, and a 2022 job listing might be a small clue towards this notion.

A posting on the studio’s career page looking for an Encounter Designer noted that responsibilities would include delivering “interesting and varied encounters in an open-world game, with a particular focus on melee combat and stealth”. This certainly suggests a return to Japan, but could easily also suggest (to an admittedly lesser extent) a new Infamous or Sly Cooper game, or something altogether different. The truth is we have no real idea, but let’s just hope that silence is broken soon.

Guerrilla Games

Guerrilla followed up 2022’s Horizon: Forbidden West with last year’s Burning Shores DLC as it continued to build out Aloy’s story. With the West Coast-set sequel ending on a cliffhanger, it’s not a stretch to expect the Amsterdam-based studio to be working on the third part of the trilogy next. We wouldn’t expect any news on that one soon however – the development time between Zero Dawn and Forbidden West was five years so we’re likely a little while away from seeing Aloy and her metal dinosaur friends again soon.

We do know that a multiplayer Horizon game is currently in the works, though, starring “a new cast of characters and a unique stylized look”. Perhaps this is something we can hope to see more of sooner rather than later, although this year may be a stretch.

Housemarque

Returnal brought Housemarque a level of mainstream appeal that had previously evaded the Finnish studio, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it returned to that world. However, that seemingly won’t be the developer’s next game as back in 2022 it confirmed it had started work on a new project that was in the “early days with us starting a new game, a new IP.” It’s currently unclear how the departure of Returnal director Harry Krueger – who had been at Housemarque for 14 years – has affected the development though. For now, this new game remains a mystery but maybe we’ll hear something soon.

Firewalk Studios

Firewalk is the first studio listed here to actually have a game (albeit tentatively) listed for a 2024 release. Revealed last May, Concord is a PvP multiplayer shooter with a retro-futuristic sci-fi aesthetic that can be gleaned from its CGI announcement trailer. But, we’ve heard practically nothing since. We’re hoping to see some gameplay soon, otherwise that 2024 date might start to look a little shaky.

Haven Studios

Fairgame$ is set to be the first game from Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios and is a competitive heist game we’ve seen little of beyond a stylish CGI trailer. With no release window as yet, we’d be surprised to see it drop later this year – last November, Sony president Hiroki Totoki said it was reducing the number of live service games due for release before March 2026 from 12 to six.

With the continuing success of Helldivers 2, PSN/Steam hiccups aside, I’m sure PlayStation will look to learn the positive lessons from its development and apply them to future projects such as Fairgame$. The next step will be seeing a gameplay reveal, which is something we can realistically hope for this year.

Bend Studio

Bend has been pretty quiet since the release of Days Gone way back in 2019 but in 2022 a few slithers of detail were revealed about what the Oregon studio is currently working on. It shared that its new game will “build upon the open-world systems of Days Gone” but won’t be announced until “the time is right”. Apart from knowing it won’t be a continuation of Deacon St. John’s story, we really know nothing. Enough time has passed, though, that hopefully new info isn’t too far away.

Media Molecule

Media Molecule spent most of the past decade working on Dreams, the game creation and curation project that was released in 2020. But as a result of significant layoffs at the studio earlier in 2024, live support for the game will soon end as MM aims to ensure “Dreams transitions into a self-sustaining platform”. There has since been no news on what the developer’s next project will be.

Team Asobi

Team Asobi has brought everyone’s favourite little robot, Astrobot, to both traditional and VR platformers for the entirety of its 12-year existence. Previously part of Japan Studio, in 2021 it became a standalone studio following the success of PS5 launch game, Astro’s Playroom. What’s next though is yet to be revealed, but in 2022 studio director Nicolas Doucet revealed it would be Asobi’s “biggest to date.”

This is one we could theoretically see soon as plenty of time has passed since the developer’s last release and we know development has been in the works for multiple years now. Hopefully, the long-rumored PS5 Pro would be a perfect place for Asobi to replicate the success of Astro’s Playroom as a technical showcase for a new console that was also incredibly fun. Fingers crossed we get a reveal this year at the very least.

Bluepoint Games

Following the success of both the Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls remakes, Sony acquired Bluepoint Games as a first-party studio in 2021. We don’t know what its first project since joining the PlayStation Studios family is, though, but we do know that the developer has expressed its desire to create an original game, rather than reimagining another classic. Perhaps we could see a reveal this year.

Polyphony Digital

Polyphony has been making Gran Turismo for 25 years now so it would certainly be a shock to see it veer from that path in the near future. Having only released GT7 less than two years ago, it’s unrealistic to expect anything new from the racing masters any time soon. Let’s come back to this when the PlayStation 6 arrives.

San Diego Studio

Similarly, San Diego is well established as the MLB The Show studio. This year’s entry only dropped in March, so we can expect to see another next Spring if history is anything to go by.

Firesprite

Having recently focussed on VR games, Firesprite most recently developed Horizon: Call of the Mountain for PSVR 2. What’s next is anyone’s guess, however. A new VR game would be the educated guess, but given Sony’s lack of commitment to creating games for its second headset, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the UK studio pivot to something more traditional.

With recent reports of layoffs and unrest at the developer, a live-service Twisted Metal game was reportedly canceled, with the studio supposedly working on a new PlayStation game called Project Heartbreak. Details are thin on what this is though, and when we can expect to see it.

That’s everything we know about upcoming first-party PlayStation games, and the truth is very few release dates look to be coming up quickly. Of course, this can and likely will change soon, and with GTA 6 looming on the horizon in 2025, it does make sense that many publishers are waiting for Rockstar to make the first move when picking a window. That said, that doesn’t prevent 2024 from still looking relatively empty when it comes to PS5 exclusives. Let’s hope that after a summer of reveals the outlook will look a lot brighter, not only for players waiting for new games to play, but for the developers who work so hard to deliver them to us.

Simon Cardy wouldn’t love nothing more than another adventure with his little Astro Bot friend. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.

Square Enix has admitted Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Final Fantasy 16, and Foamstars failed to meet its expectations.

In a financial call reported by Bloomberg, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu told analysts that sales for all three games failed to hit expected revenue and profit, resulting in an overall hit to operating income for the business.

Square Enix announced launch sales of three million for Final Fantasy 16 after it went on sale in June 2023, but it has yet to announce a follow-up figure since. According to Bloomberg, while this initial momentum was in-line with expectations, sales have slowed.

It’s a worse story for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Initial momentum failed to reach Square Enix’s target, Bloomberg said. Tellingly, Square Enix has yet to announce a sales figure for the game, the second in the company’s planned trilogy of Final fantasy 7 remakes.

As for Foamstars, Square Enix has yet to announce a sales figure for this live-service, Splatoon-like game. Bloomberg reported that Square Enix admitted it had fallen short of expectations.

On the bright side, Square Enix said it’s confident Final Fantasy 16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. And, according to Bloomberg reporter Takashi Mochizuki, Square Enix said sales of Rebirth and Foamstars “aren’t necessarily bad.”

Square Enix said:
-FF16 sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum was in line with expectations, but the games failed to reach FY goal as its momentum slowed. No updates from sales number last announced at 3 million
-FF7 Rebirth sales fell short of expectations. Initial…

— Takashi Mochizuki (@6d6f636869) May 14, 2024

This week, Square Enix announced a significant company reboot amid tumbling profits. Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth both launched as PlayStation 5 exclusives, but Square Enix said it will now “aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy that includes Nintendo platforms, PlayStation, Xbox, and PCs.”

Overall, it’s a tough time for Square Enix, which had already absorbed ¥22.1 billion (approx $140.9 million) in what it called “content abandonment losses” ahead of today’s financial report. Square Enix did not name the canceled or rescoped in-development titles.

Looking ahead, Dawntrail, the expansion for ongoing MMO Final Fantasy 14, launches in late June. Square Enix also has Kingdom Hearts 4, the third game in the Final Fantasy remake trilogy, and Dragon Quest 12 in the works. In January, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said it might be time for a younger generation to lead the franchise and helm Final Fantasy 17.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Helldivers 2 sold over 12 million copies in its first 12 weeks on sale, making it PlayStation’s fastest-selling game of all time, Sony has announced.

Speaking during an investor call, Sony said Arrowhead’s PlayStation 5 and PC live-service shooter exceeded its expectations, hitting the impressive sales milestone on May 5, 2024. Helldivers 2 beats out Sony Santa Monica’s God of War Ragnarok, which hit 11 million copies 75 days after launching across PlayStation 4 and PS5 in November 2022.

Helldivers 2 launched on PC and PS5 at the same time with cross-play fueling its co-op PVE action. You play a Helldiver who fights against alien robots and bugs across a number of players as part of a Galactic War, with Arrowhead pulling the strings alongside the regular release of Premium Warbonds that add new weapons and gear to the mix.

Helldivers 2, which launched priced $39.99, saw an explosion in popularity that initially caused significant server problems. As Arrowhead worked to fix these launch issues, player numbers continued to grow, with Helldivers 2 becoming one of the most-played games on Steam with a peak of 458,709 concurrents. Sony does not divulge PS5 concurrent player numbers.

Since then, Arrowhead has butted heads with Sony over the Helldivers 2 IP owner and publisher’s decision to force PC players to link their accounts to PlayStation Network in order to continue playing. Sony eventually backed down, although not before a Steam review bombing campaign that looks set to become the inspiration for a new in-game cape.

Helldivers 2’s breakout success will no-doubt encourage Sony to release more of its multiplayer-focused video games on PC and PS5 at the same time. Currently, it continues to release its single-player games on PS5 first, before eventually making their way to PC. It may also encourage Sony to consider releasing more games at a budget price, given Helldivers 2’s success at $39.99. Concord — a new PVP multiplayer FPS from Firewalk Studios coming to PS5 and PC in 2024 — may follow suit.

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt reacted to the news in a post on X / Twitter, saying: “it’s crazy to think that there are more Helldivers than there are Swedes.”

As announced in the Sony earnings call, we have sold over 12M units!

It’s crazy to think that there are more Helldivers than there are Swedes 🤯

What a massive achievement from everyone involved in realizing @Helldivers2. A massive thank you to the community for your support,…

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) May 14, 2024

Arrowhead is expected to be planning to add more content to Helldivers 2 over the course of 2024, with vehicles and a third enemy faction expected to arrive at some point.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.