Daily Briefing: Tuesday 11th January

Sega open second Japanese development base

Sega announced this week that they have opened a new office in Sapporo, as part of their ongoing initiative to establish new “development bases” across Japan. Sega already have a number of internal development studios in Japan, like Sonic Team and Ryu Ga Gotoko Studio, but these teams all work out of Sega’s main Tokyo headquarters. These new development bases will enable talent to be less densely packed, and presumably allow for further expansion on down the line.

• According to Sega Sapporo’s new website, the studio will have a number of duties across “development, design, debugging, sales, import and export of game hardware and software, planning, production and sales of character products”. That’s a pretty wide range of responsibilities, but it apparently doesn’t end there as the studio’s job listings suggest they will be creating new characters and locations for Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis. Sega said back in November that they will be investing $1bn in internal development over the next few years, so you have to wonder what’s next on the list after Sapporo.

Xbox boss wants cross-platform bans and blocks

Speaking in a new and incredibly far-reaching interview with The New York Times, Spencer outlined how he would like other console manufacturers to work alongside Microsoft to ensure that ban-lists and block-lists follow players between platforms. Specifically, Spencer said "something I would love us to be able to do - this is a hard one as an industry - is when somebody gets banned in one of our networks, is there a way for us to ban them across other networks?" This thinking extends to cross-platform blocklists, which would severely limit an abuser’s ability to just swap to a different platform and carry on.

• Spencer’s comments came as part of a wider discussion on keeping Xbox clear of toxic content. He was surprisingly candid in his answer, stating simply that Xbox is “not a free speech platform.” He went on to say “we're a platform around interactive entertainment and video games. And we're not there to allow all kinds of social discourse to happen on our platform. That's not why we exist." That’s pretty clear as interview answers go, though Spencer did also dodge a few questions during the interview, most notably on whether Xbox would ever consider freezing relations with Activision Blizzard in the wake of their ongoing scandal. Spencer confirmed that Xbox have indeed “changed how we do certain things” with the company, but wouldn’t comment beyond that.

Horizon Forbidden West has leaked ahead of release

The much-requested sequel to 2017 hit Horizon Zero Dawn isn’t out for another couple of weeks but it appears that an early build of the game has already leaked onto social media. Images of what was claimed to be the PS4 version of Sony’s upcoming big-hitter appeared on Twitter over the weekend. Media outlet VGC were informed that the leak was indeed genuine and, save for a few missing art assets, reportedly contains all the core content planned for the final game.

• Sony appear to have acted pretty quickly in the face of all this. The leaked screenshots were removed due to the standard “report from the copyright holder” which a) all but confirms their legitimacy and b) shows Sony on the same kind of clean up effort we saw story spoilers for The Last of Us Part II began circulating online back in May/June 2020. For the moment, it doesn’t seem like the actual build of the game is being circulated on file sharing sites, and you have to imagine Sony have people watching every possible avenue. Horizon Forbidden West officially launches on PS4 and PS5 on February 18th, so be wary of the internet if you’re super excited for that one.