Author: Zach Barbieri

The strategy of Embracer Group to aggressively acquire studios and IPs has yet to yield major payoffs, but the negative effects continue to pile up. In the Summer 2023 the company announced a plan to restructure, a decision that has so far resulted in a large number of layoffs, studio closers such as Saints Row developer Volition after 30 years, as well as multiple game cancelations. During the first fiscal quarter, which ended June 2023 the company had 153 unannounced games in development, a number that dropped to 138 games by the end of its second fiscal quarter and shrunk…

One of my most anticipated games of this year, Ys X: Nordics has finally received a window for release in the West. The game has already been released in Japan and Asia, dropping September 28th of last year. While the title was expected to be released this year, there was very little information released on a release outside of Asia until now. With Falcom and Nis similarly behind the Trails series as developer and publisher respectively, and with those titles notorious for their long localization time, it isn’t unfair to have been concerned about a longer wait. Despite this, the…

Due in part to the PlayStation 5 failing to meet sales expectations due to the previous holiday season, Sony has now stated that the system is “Entering the latter stage of its life cycle.” Sony had set an arguably ambitious sales goal for their platform, aiming for 25 million units sold by the end of this financial year in March 2024, but the company has since revised that to only 21 million units. This is due to sales during the 2023 Holiday period coming in lower than Sony expected despite the company aggressively promoting it. Sony had managed to sell…

At this point, most people probably know Don’t Nod from their Life is Strange Series. People forget, or maybe never knew, that the studio got its start with an action game named Remember Me. In the years since both of those games, the studio has grown to a publisher and developer of multiple titles, but it’s not like anything is really outside of the Wheelhouse, especially going into Banishers: The Ghosts of New Eden. Its complicated to put into words just what a AA game needs to do to be good, or even great but Don’t Nod continues to make…

Kadokawa Corporation, probably best known in the West as being the parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, has acquired the developer behind the popular throwback RPG Octopath Traveller. Revealed by gaming publication Gematsu, Kadokawa stated during a recent earnings call that they had made the studio, ironically named Acquire, a “wholly owned subsidiary”. This puts them among the company of such developers as FromSoftware as well as Spike Chunsoft. Despite being best known for the pair of Octopath Traveler games, they are also known for developing Akiba’s Beat game, as well as No Heroes Allowed VR. Kadokawa stated: To…

Game of the Year contender and PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man 2 will be receiving a big update on March 7th, Insomniac Games has announced. This update is set to include the highly anticipated New Game+ feature, something that was absent at launch despite having been an integral part of the previous title. Insomniac posted this news via X, adding to the announcement plans they intend to reveal a more detailed list of the content, including new cosmetics, that will be added closer to release. https://twitter.com/insomniacgames/status/1755275417898906098?s=20 New Game+ was originally planned for release before the end of 2023. This feature, along with…

Coming on the heels of Sony’s big State of Play for 2024, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had a smaller State of Play to build hype for the game which is now less than a month away. Square Enix showcased two trailers for the as well as a larger deep dive into everything players can expect from the game upon release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgdkN2tCAFw The open world akin to the classic world map was featured in more detail for the first time since the game was announced. This world will consist of multiple large areas connected seamlessly for the player to explore. Within…

Sega’s street-brawling epic about the criminal underworld, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth has hit a massive milestone, selling 1 million copies in a week of sales since launch. This is a major moment for the series, capping off a large worldwide turnaround for the franchise that began with Yakuza 0’s worldwide release in 2017. Both Ryu Ga Gotoku and Sega took to Twitter to announce the news, as well as thank those players for joining hero Ichiban Kusagi on his quest to Hawaii. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth has also become the most-played entry in the series on Steam, a…

Stellar Blade, the upcoming debut action game from ShiftUp, finally got a release date after years of waiting. This announcement finally came during Sony’s State of Play event on Wednesday, January 31st. Along with that reveal came the first in-depth look at the title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6XYHiBxkvk The trailer reintroduces us to two aspects they have already showcased, that earth is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland and that you play Eve who isn’t the biblical Eve but a stand-in. The player will be tasked with killing off an entire race of invading monsters, which based on the dialog is supposed to cause some…

Persona 3 represented an interesting crossroads for the series as a whole. At this point, the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series maintained a much larger audience than its spin-off series. This was also the first title in what many might consider the MODERN Persona series, changing a vast amount of gameplay elements including the creation of the now iconic social link mechanic. Some people have come to label Persona 3 as the darkest take on the series, forgetting that the two before it were still full horror games, something that this game began to move the spin-off away from slowly.…