This week in gaming: Sony buys Housemarque, Remedy promises more Control games, Xbox reportedly courts Hideo Kojima, and more!
In the spirit of keeping our readers up to date with what’s happening in the video game industry, the Doublejump Digest is a brief collection of the major news stories from the past week. Keep an eye out for the Digest every Sunday night, and head on into the archive for news from weeks gone by!
FROM DOUBLEJUMP
- Matthew thoroughly enjoyed his time reviewing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
- Ty explored the controversy surrounding Six Days in Fallujah and the ethics of depicting recent war events in a game.
- Callum discussed the plight of Mass Effect Legendary Edition and the plight of “undead” studios who exist despite losing key talent.
- Liam listed and explained his picks for Gaming’s Greatest Knock-Offs.
MAJOR NEWS
Sony acquires Returnal developer Housemarque
This week, Head of PlayStation Studios Herman Hulst announced that the company has acquired Finnish development studio Housemarque but stopped short of revealing the purchase amount.
In a separate interview with GQ, Hulst explained that Housemarque’s collaborative relationship with PlayStation, which dates back to Super Stardust HD on PlayStation 3, made it an ideal candidate for acquisition.
“The amount of collaboration between our external development group and Housemarque on the technical side, the production management side, and even on the creative side has been so deep,” he said. “So for us, it just makes so much sense to do that.”
Interestingly, PlayStation Japan originally uploaded a featured image featuring Bluepoint Games’s logo instead of Housemarque’s when posting the announcement to its blog but later corrected the “mistake”.
Bluepoint later updated its Twitter bio and recent job listings to add “Bluepoint Games is a fully independent self-funded studio” seemingly in response to the original PlayStation Blog post.
Neither PlayStation nor Bluepoint Games have commented on acquisition speculation as of this writing.
Remedy is working on two new Control games
Control developer Remedy Entertainment and publisher 505 Games jointly-announced plans to develop and release two new games based on the critically-acclaimed supernatural action game.
The first game will be a “4-player cooperative PvE (player vs. environment) game” tentatively titled “Condor” that will be released exclusively on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S with an initial €25 million budget.
Furthermore, both companies also confirmed plans to develop a “a bigger-budget Control-game” – i.e. a proper sequel – with more details expected “in the future”.
Report: Xbox is one step closer to signing new Hideo Kojima project
According to a GamesBeat report, Xbox and veteran designer Hideo Kojima have brought their potential professional partnership one step closer to reality by signing “a letter of intent” to work together in the near future.
While both parties’ respective legal teams are still working on the final agreement, Xbox has reportedly begun planning the resources for its Kojima project and allegedly brought on Portal and Left 4 Dead lead developer Kim Swift to help as well.
Neither Xbox, Kojima Productions (Hideo Kojima’s production house), nor Kim Swift have commented on this latest speculation as of this writing.
Sucker Punch announces Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut
On the eve of the game’s first birthday, developer Sucker Punch Productions took to the PlayStation Blog to announce a “Director’s Cut” re-release of Ghost of Tsushima for PS4 and PS5.
Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut will feature all of the base game’s existing content in addition to a new story that takes place on the island of Iki, with the PS5 version also featuring updated cutscenes with accurate Japanese lip synced animations and support for the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
Existing Ghost of Tushima players can “upgrade” to the Director’s Cut for a fee and move between generations for a fee as well when the game releases on August 20.
Blizzard gives new look at Diablo IV’s classes and enemies
Blizzard Entertainment treated eager Diablo fans with an updated look at some of Diablo IV’s classes and enemies to showcase the game’s (relatively) modern game engine that now features physically-based rendering (PBR).
Konami inks deal with The Medium developer, could signal Silent Hill series return
In more partnership news (via IGN), P.T. publisher Konami and The Medium developer Bloober Team announced that they have inked a “strategic cooperation agreement” that “includes jointly-developing selected contents and exchanging know-how”.
While neither company provided specific details about their upcoming collaboration, fans were quick to speculate that Konami brought on Bloober Team to develop a new Silent Hill game since, well, the latter previously boasted about working “with a very famous gaming publisher” on “another horror IP” and collaborated with Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka for The Medium.
Earlier this year, Yamaoka himself teased that his latest project was going to be revealed around this time and that “it’s the one that you’re kind of hoping to hear about”.
As of today, Yamaoka, Bloober Team, and Konami haven’t confirmed that they’re collaborating on a new Silent Hill game. Sorry, P.T. and Silent Hill fans.
VIDEOS AND TRAILERS
Dying Light 2 Stay Human — Monsters Gameplay Trailer
Hospitals are haunting places at the best of times…
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS — TAEGO Cinematic Trailer
Only three more days, folks!
Warframe — Yareli Overview
Digital Extremes continues its trend of making our Airbender fantasies come to life.
Warframe — Sisters of Parvos
Generic bad guy is bad.
Fortnite — Loki, The God of Mischief, Trailer
Because why not?
OTHER NEWS
- Riot Games has released an album of Twitch-friendly royalty-free music: Engadget
- A Plague Tale: Innocence and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 are this month’s free PlayStation Plus games: Polygon
- Conker: Live & Reloaded leads this month’s Games with Gold offering: Xbox Wire
- Terraria is rotating into Stadia Pro’s library: GameSpot
- FaZe Clan has fired Kay and suspended three more players who were all involved in a cryptocurrency scheme: Kotaku
- Codemasters has revealed the famous faces that we’ll see in F1 2021’s Braking Point campaign: GameSpot
- Mass Effect: Corsair would’ve brought the acclaimed series to Nintendo DS: YouTube
- Cryptic Studios has cancelled Magic: Legends’s final release: Polygon
- Casey Hudson has started a new studio: Engadget
- Report: Square Enix will delist its Final Fantasy V and VI remasters later this month: GameSpot
- Star Fox co-developer and industry veteran has said that he wants to work on a sequel to the original: YouTube
- Respawn Entertainment has doubled-down on Apex Legends cheaters: VGC
- Xbox will co-market Battlefield 2042 as the game’s “official console” platform: GameSpot
- Id Software cancelled DOOM Eternal’s multiplayer mode due to the pandemic: Eurogamer
- NetherRealm Studios has stopped working on new Mortal Kombat 11 content: Twitter
- Playground Games has halted ongoing development on Forza Horizon 4: Gamasutra
- Nintendo has hired one of the producers of the upcoming Mario movie: GameSpot
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