Update Patch | February 2024
February 2024 is over, with another month of games and news transitioning from the present to the past. The month has seen plenty of past titles coming back however, whether they were reloaded like Persona 3, remastered like Tomb Raider 1-3 or remade like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Also, there was another big game that unfortunately for some, reflected the worst qualities of present live service games.
1. Layoffs
We begin with layoffs, a topic so depressingly constant I’ve had to rewrite this section three times.
Big Jim has come under a lot of scrutiny over his time at PlayStation… but hey, at least he gave us this iconicc bit of camera work.
Sony announced via blog post that 800 employees across its subsidiaries would be let go. In an email sent to employees, outgoing President & CEO Jim Ryan described the rationale for the cuts, stating, “changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company. We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community.” In particular, PlayStation Studios’ London studio will be closed and major cuts to the developers of Horizon: Call of The Mountain, Firesprite Studio, was also reportedly heavily hit. In separate reports, Insomniac Games confirmed via a statement that cuts had affected them and Guerilla Games were also reportedly subject to cuts.
Electronic Arts announced its own layoffs the day after, with 5% of its workforce being cut. In a note to staff, CEO Andrew Wilson said the cuts were part of shifting away from, “development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry." Wilson would go on to say, "This greater focus allows us to drive creativity, accelerate innovation, and double down on our biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities — to deliver the entertainment players want today and tomorrow." A statement by EA Entertainment President Laura Miele confirmed that Respawn’s rumoured Star Wars FPS game would be cancelled so the company could focus on “(Star Wars) Jedi and Respawn’s rich library of owned brands”.
Andrew Wilson seen here in “uber chill, maximum relax mode.”
Other smaller studios have confirmed their own layoffs. Supermassive Games (Unitl Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology) have also confirmed to its 150 staff members in the U.K. that their jobs are at risk and 90 jobs are confirmed to be cut.
Deck Nine Games (Life is Strange: True Colors) announced a layoff of 20% of its staff. In a statement on Twitter, the studio said “These people are amazing, talented and awesome developers. They have made a huge impact during their time at Deck Nine Games and we did not take this decision lightly.”
Over 8000 workers in the video game industry have been confirmed to be made redundant in 2024, as calculated by Kotaku.
2. PlayStation State of Play & Earnings Call
Editor’s note: I just think its important to be able to put faces to the C-suite executives reporting record profits while also laying off hundreds of employees.
Aside from announcing layoffs, PlayStation also had an earnings call in February.
Sony released financial results for the quarter including the holiday season. The quarter saw the company make $9.6bn from Game & Network Services up 16% from the previous year with digital game and add-on content accounting for $4.2bn. Hardware sales were also up year-on-year to $4.4bn. The quarter also saw the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 which has already hit the 10 million sales mark
Whilst the figures certainly represent a positive period for Sony, the President, COO and CFO of the company, Hiroki Totoki, stated that the remainder of the calendar year would not see any new entries from established first-party IP. As detailed by VGC, Totoki confirmed to investors “[Sony aims] to continue to focus on producing high-quality productions and producing live service games. But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year”. Sony’s fiscal year runs from April 2023 to March 2024.
3. Xbox Business Update
Following plenty of rumours and speculation, senior leadership at Xbox detailed their strategy for first-party games and the Xbox brand going forward in a prerecorded podcast. The podcast saw Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer, Xbox President, Sarah Bond, and President of Gaming Content And Studios, Matt Booty, being interviewed by the internal Head of Premier Broadcast and ex-IGN Editor-in-Chief, Tina Amini.
Things must be getting real hard a microsoft if Phil needs to start a podcast to get that BlueChew sponsorship money.
The podcast confirmed that four games would be heading to other consoles. These were later confirmed to be Tango Gameworks’ excellent Hi-Fi Rush, two Obsidian games including its multiplayer survival game, Grounded, and 16th-century whodunnit, Pentiment, and Rare’s popular live service pirate game, Sea of Thieves. Speaking on the strategy, Spencer said it wasn’t a “fundamental change” to Xbox’s exclusivity but that the decisions were made for the “long-term health of Xbox”. Interestingly, Spencer did posit that he felt in the upcoming years, exclusive games would be “a smaller and smaller part of the games industry”. When it comes to other games, Spencer categorically confirmed that this wouldn’t include other big exclusives such as Starfield or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle but left his language vague enough that this could change for any titles at a later date.
Bond also took the time to announce the first wave of Activision Blizzard games coming to Game Pass since formally completing Microsoft’s merger with the gaming giant. Last year’s Diablo IV is now set to launch on the 28th of March on the service. Bond also dropped the most recent number of Game Pass subscribers we’ve heard in some time, stating that the service currently has 34 million subscribers. Bond also mentioned that this holiday period would see Xbox releasing some news relating to hardware, but didn’t give specifics as to what that would be.
The podcast also made note of preservation, with the leadership team keen to stress its importance despite plenty of talk around cloud gaming. Spencer spoke to the iterative nature of Windows and that they “try to bring that same view to consoles”. Spencer also spoke about having “respect for the investments that people have made” on Xbox and games going forward, but there was a lack of discussion on physical media and the role it has.
4. Nintendo Switch 2 Rumours And Direct
Plenty of rumours have continued to swirl this month around Nintendo’s next console, following our own reports of devkits being shown to developers at Gamescom last year, several additional reports corroborated the new console was shown off to partners behind closed doors at Gamescom 2024.
This month has seen additional rumours and speculation around the console rear their head. Perhaps the biggest of these was reports around the launch with VGC amongst others reporting the console was set for a release window of Q1 2025. This has been furthered by the Japanese publication Nikkei, which claims the console will launch in March 2025.
Oh hey, its a visual recreation of the video game industry in 2024.
In the meantime, Nintendo held another Direct showcase focused on third-party partner games. This is where reveals of former Xbox exclusives were made, with both Obsidian’s Pentiment and Grounded due to arrive on the console on the 22nd of February and 16th of April respectively. Other big announcements included a remake of Warren Spector’s Epic Mickey entitled Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection which contains both the original games and 64-player multiplayer, and another trailer for the upcoming Unicorn Overlord from Vanillaware and Atlus.
5. Dontnod Alleged Mismanagement
French studio Dontnod found itself coming under criticism from the French union for video game workers, STJV, who alleged that company values of “caring about one another” are “not put into practice”.
In its report, the STJV alleges three key failings at Dontnod when it comes to the studio’s workforce. Firstly, the union says that recent releases were “tumultuous” and caused developers to be “left in the dark”. This comes down to the fallout after last year’s excellent Jusant was considered a commercial failure and team members were dispersed and left without work to do for two months, and that last year’s delay to this month’s Banishers: Ghost of New Eden was communicated to workers 30 minutes before the decision was made public.
Secondly, it alleges the company has barred “any means of direct communication” between company employees and the STJV and that “dialogue is impossible”. Lastly, the worker’s council formed in the wake of unionisation claims that since forming, they have noticed a “gradual disappearance of opportunities” for discussion with management and “workers in distress, leading to sick leave and departures”.
In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, the company responded to the allegations, saying “The allegations of staff being 'regularly mistreated' do not align with our company values and culture…We want to emphasise that these allegations are taken seriously internally. We maintain a continuous dialogue with our employee representatives and open channels of communication to address any concerns expressed by our team members.”
6. Elden Ring DLC Trailer
Whilst there were plenty of announcements, none were as massive and exciting as the trailer for the upcoming Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree was released.
Oh man… We’re all sooooo dead.
The three-minute trailer detailed what was expected from the original promotional art, with the DLC based around empyrean Miquella, brother of optional boss and master of the annoying waterfowl dance Malenia. Those who went to Moghwyn Palace will be aware that Miquella resides in a cocoon and the trailer details Miquella’s interest in the Land of Shadow, an entirely new area with plenty of new bosses, legacy dungeons, weapons and more. The DLC was revealed to be launching on 21st June and according to game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, it is FromSoftware’s, “largest expansion to date in terms of overall volume” and that it will be “larger even than Limgrave in the base game”.
The DLC will certainly be costly, with the DLC being priced at £34.99. The release will also coincide with a collector’s edition that along with the DLC, will come with the official soundtrack, a hardback artbook and a statue of prominent DLC character and likely endgame boss, Messmer The Impaler.
7. Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Launches Poorly
Rocksteady Games had a tricky month following the release of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. After the game’s poorly received gameplay trailer in 2023 resulted in a long delay, the game finally released but encountered a number of problems over the course of the month.
Following some poor previews, concerns were raised when review codes were seemingly withheld until the day of release. Of course, whilst Rocksteady and Warner Bros. aren’t required to send out early review code, it did indicate internal concern following those previews. Upon launch, players with early access to the game via deluxe editions encountered a major bug where upon logging in to the game which requires an always-online connection, the game immediately registered players as having fully completed the game’s story. Rocksteady took the servers offline in response to perform maintenance.
The various issues have been compounded with a low player-base over the course of the month. As pointed out by PCGamesN, the game’s peak day-one player count on Steam of 12,667 was less than half of Marvel’s Avengers. The player base on the 17th of February would also dip below 1000 players. Whilst this only accounts for Steam players, it does indicate concern as to the game’s ability to retain players. This has led to Warner Bros. acknowledging the difficult start on a financial call. As reported by IGN, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels described the game as a “key” release for the year and that it had “fallen short of our expectations”. It remains to be seen if the fortunes for the game and Rocksteady will turn around with several seasons of content already planned for the coming months.
Patch Notes:
Preservation concerns continue following the de-listing of Spec Ops: The Line, Devil May Cry 4 and Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition from Steam. The former was removed due to expiring licences, whereas the latter is more unclear.
Plenty of companies have reported positive sales and player figures this month, with Palworld accruing 25 million players across all platforms, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth selling 1 million copies within its first week, while fellow Sega RPG Persona 3 Reload also broke the million sales mark, and Resident Evil 4 Remake reaching over 6 million sales.
Moon Studios’ next game following the Ori franchise, No Rest for the Wicked, has been delayed for a few months, now due to launch in “Q1 Fiscal 2025” which means April - June 2024.
A poster and trailer have been released for the cinematic adaptation of Gearbox looters shooter Borderlands, with cast members including Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black.
Award celebrations continue, with the Grammy Awards handing their Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
The DICE Awards also went ahead. The big winners were Marvel's Spider-Man 2 picking up 6 awards, and Baldur's Gate 3 attaining 5 awards respectively.
Octopath Traveler developer, Acquire, has itself been acquired by FromSoftwares’ owners, the Kadokawa Corporation.
More stories are coming out about studio Fntastic as a new report details allegations of mass crunch for developers and employees even being fined by management for work deemed unsatisfactory.
Employees across Ubisoft’s French studios took part in a day of strike action following unresolved negotiations in the annual salary for workers.
