Daily Briefing: Monday 20th December

Final Fantasy VII Remake's PC port is dreadful

It actually feels like a while since we've had a truly god awful PC port to get good and steamed up about. Not that that's a bad thing of course, the general trend of the AAA games industry finally endeavouring to pay attention to the PC audience is something to be celebrated. This is perhaps why it's so jarring that the recently released PC port of Final Fantasy VII Remake is just so bad, and Square Enix's extra premium price tag likely isn't helping either.

• According to new testing from the folks at Digital Foundry, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is "the worst AAA release...on PC in a good long time." Journalist Alex Battaglia reported experiencing "incredible stutter," while John Linneman outlined that "the smooth presentation [of Final Fantasy VII Remake] was central to its storytelling and this version compromises it." Battaglia later concluded "I humbly submit that no one should buy it." These issues would all be bad enough by themselves, but Square Enix's decision to sell the game at $70 on PC makes everything feel a lot more galling. They're the first publisher to pursue a $70 pricing model for PC games, but is this the kind of thing they'll be releasing?

Even Microsoft can't track down an Xbox Series X

You know the stories of stock and supply chain issues really are true when one of the biggest games companies in the world is struggling to get ahold of one of their own consoles for an official tournament. The Halo Championship Series, Halo Infinite's first official tournament, will be played using dev kits rather than actual retail versions because Microsoft can't find enough of them to put on the tournament. Developers 343 Industries have reassured players that dev kit functionality will be identical when played in retail mode and won't affect performance.

• This is a bit of a wild story though it is oddly reassuring to know that supply chain issues aren't just affecting regular players like us paying really close attention to online stock trackers. Of course, a more cynical view would be that this is a marketing stunt by Microsoft in an attempt to engender a "look, we're all in this together" kind of feeling but that probably isn't the case. At any rate, 343 Industries' esports and viewership lead has reassured competing players that the Xbox Series X dev kits are "functionally identical and will be operating in "retail" mode so it's the exact same experience, they just look a little different."

Tencent have acquired Turtle Rock Studios

Christmas may be around the corner but Tencent aren't done buying themselves presents just yet. The Chinese media conglomerate recently announced that they have acquired Turtle Rock Studios, the developers of popular cooperative zombie shooter Back 4 Blood. According to a joint announcement issued over the weekend, Turtle Rock will join the Tencent studio portfolio while retaining its independent operations [...] and its existing team will continue to run all studio operations, led by co-founders Phil Robb and Chris Ashton.” Turtle Rock themselves have also emphasised that the acquisition "will have no effect on Back 4 Blood."

• 2021 has been a busy year for Tencent in terms of acquisitions and investments, especially when it comes to partner studios outside of China. This year saw Tencent either invest in or outright acquire a number of Western game studios like Klei Entertainment (Don't Starve), Yager (Spec Ops: The Line), Sumo Group (Sackboy: A Big Adventure), Fatshark (Warhammer: Vermintide), and Wake Up Interactive (they own Ninjala developer Soleil). Tencent have also made smaller investments in everyone from Dontnot Entertainment and Bohemia Interactive to Remedy Entertainment and even FromSoftware. This renewed foreign investment push seemingly stems from tightened gaming restrictions within China, and 2022 could see more of the same.