Daily Briefing: Monday 14th February

Horizon: Forbidden West Reviews Are In

Reviews are in, and it’s sitting pretty at 89 across OpenCritic and Metacritic. A throughline across reviews is that it’s an incredible improvement on the original in almost every way. Eurogamer, among others, were a little less impressed by story and characters, some criticism focuses on it feeling unfocused and more varied than makes sense, and some suggests that the RPG elements aren’t particularly unique - but the majority of opinion rests that, despite that, it’s a fantastic game.

• All the time Guerrila put into this has clearly been worth it, and we have another blockbuster success story from a Playstation Studio. Whatever they’re doing over there seems to be working, and reliably. Given HZD sold 20 million copies, they clearly have the freedom to work.

Cyberpunk 2077 Is Finally Getting Some News

The Cyberpunk Twitter account has announced a stream, scheduled for 4pm CET tomorrow (15th). No further info on what’s going to be discussed, but the rumourmill has been pumping out plenty of ideas: An upgraded next-gen version is coming within Feb or March, according to Eurogamer. Generally, we should see major updates, DLC, and future outlook for one of the most disappointing releases in gaming history - exciting for those still playing, or for those who decided to wait.

• CDPR have been quietly taking their time, and that’s the kind of approach they need to take if they want to claw back their tarnished reputation. That said, Cyberpunk taking well over a year to be the game it should be goes to show just how early they pushed it out the door.

Lost Ark Breaks 1.3m Concurrents: 2nd Highest Peak Ever On Steam

Over Sunday, Lost Ark’s long queues and big hype pushed it all the way to 1,324,761 players. It now sits below only one other game: the cultural phenomenon (3.2m peak!) that was PUBG. For comparison, 3rd place is CS:GO, with a record of 1,308,963. Amazon and Smilegate RPG are sure to be happy with this performance, even if a large majority of those players weren’t playing, but waiting in queue.

• The power of combining the Steam F2P audience, the novelty-seeking MMO audience and the weight of strong influencer and marketing campaigns proves that even a game that opens quite weakly can be explosive if targeted well.

PlatinumGames Will Let Themselves Be Acquired, But There’s An ‘If’

President Atsushi Inaba told VGC that he would be open to any possibility, but only as long as they’re afforded independence and freedom. “The most important thing for us is to have the freedom to make the games that we want to make,” “So I would not turn anything down, as long as our freedom was still respected.”
Given the missteps they’ve made since independence, with Yoko Taro’s Nier Automata ultimately credited for their survival, an acquisition and some guidance or production assistance would likely be a godsend for PlatinumGames’ future.

• They’ve had very few wins since 2017’s Nier sequel, with Nintendo seemingly footing the bill for Astral Chain and over 4 years of Bayonetta 3 development. An acquisition from Square Enix or Sony might be what they need to make games, instead of trying to make the money they need to make games.