It’s been another brutal week in the video games industry. Sure, there’s been massive highlights like the launch of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but the crushing wave of layoffs and redundancies that is sweeping across the games industry has hit Sony, EA, Deck Nine and more. The only glimmer of hope is seeing developers potentially being spun off into independence instead of closed down.
In the News This Week
- Mass layoffs hit Sony Interactive Entertainment – London Studio shutting down, Naughty Dog & Insomniac also affected
- EA layoffs hits 5% of its employees – Mandalorian FPS cancelled, Ridgeline Games closed
- Report: Embracer closing in on sales of Saber Interactive and Gearbox
- Toys for Bob goes independent, but explores partnership with Microsoft
- Greedfall 2 – The Dying World will hit Steam Early Access this summer
- Rockstar plans full return to office for GTA 6 developers, citing security and productivity
- Nintendo sues creators of popular Switch emulator
- Terminator: Survivors is an open world survival game coming to Early Access in October
- Remedy acquires the rights to the Control series from 505 Games – includes Control 2 and Condor
- F1 24 is launching in May with a full reveal coming in April
And it’s that time of month for PS Plus subscribers:
Games in Review & Featured Articles
It was all about reviews this week:
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 8/10
- Inkulinati – PS5, XSX|S, PS4, XBO, NSW, PC – 8/10
- Ultros – PS5, PS4, PC – 8/10
- Classified: France ’44 – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 7/10
- Skull and Bones – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 7/10
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong – NSW – 6/10
- Slave Zero X – PS5, XSX|S, PS4, XBO, PC – 5/10
We did feature a solitary preview though, of the quirky strategy game Unicorn Overlord, before rounding out the week with What We Played, featuring Helldivers 2, Crisis Core and (of course) a ton of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Trailer Park
Pokémon Legends: Z-A announced for 2025
Dragonkin: The Banished is a co-op hack ‘n’ slash coming out in 2025
Explore off-road in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s latest trailer
Your Achievements
Here’s what you in our community have been up to this week:
- TSBonyman has continued chipping away at Elden Ring, doing a bunch of side quests and clearing the underground locations, before gaining access to Leyndell.
- And MrYd’s efforts to clear some backlog went poorly. He had a lot of fun with Helldivers 2, played some Diablo 4, and got in a lot of time with Granblue Fantasy Relink, so the only backlog clearing he actually managed was half of A Plague Tale: Requiem. He’s also swanned off to a big fancy IMAX screen to watch Dune Part 2. Lovely!
That’s the round up for this week. We’ll be back on Monday for more gaming bits and bobs. See you then!
