Daily Briefing: Thursday 18th November

Activision say new zero tolerance harassment policy shouldn't apply to Bobby Kotick

Activision Blizzard management has reportedly informed employees that the company's recently-implemented "zero tolerance" policy on harassment, discrimination, and abusive behaviour will not be applied to CEO Bobby Kotick because there is "no evidence" to support the allegations made against him.  Activision Blizzard held a series of virtual conference across its various business areas to discuss the findings of a damning report published this week by The Wall Street Journal.

• Fielding questions and queries from disgruntled staff, Activision Blizzard COO Daniel Alegre said that the company doesn't "have evidence" of the claims made against Kotick because they happened over ten years ago. This, combined with Activision Blizzard board of directors' almost immediate affirmation of confidence gives the impression that Kotick isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's no wonder staff morale is in the toilet.

Capcom delay Pragmata into 2023

Onto some refreshingly game-related news, and Capcom have unfortunately pushed back the release of their intriguing new project Pragmata from 2022 to 2023. In a statement published to Twitter earlier this week, which features a truly stunning animation of the game's main character, Capcom said “our team is hard at work on the project, but to ensure this will be an unforgettable adventure, we’ve decided to shift the release window to 2023. In the meantime, we have a brand new artwork to share with you. Thank you for your patience.”

• Pragmata was originally slated to release sometime next year on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. It's apparently an adventure game set in a dystopian future version of the moon, which honestly sounds like an ace setting for game. We don't know a whole lot about Pragmata beyond what Capcom said when it was announced last June: "our development team is hard at work on this brand new game title, making full use of new next-gen tech, such as ray-tracing, to create a breathtaking and immersive sci-fi setting like never before." We do know that Pragmata will be Capcom's first completely new, multi-platform, globally released IP since Dragon's Dogma in 2012.

Xbox to follow PlayStation's lead in fixing potential CMOS issues

Speaking in a new interview with Axios, Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed that he is acutely aware of potential future issues with console CMOS batteries and that the Xbox team are currently working on a fix. The CMOS battery controls the systems internal clock and can eventually die. While they should be fairly easily replaced, the problem is that the console would need to connect to official servers to re-authenticate if the battery is switched out. That's not a problem now, but it could become one should Microsoft decide to shut down the current Xbox live servers - as reset consoles would have nothing to connect to and would therefore essentially be dead.

• Sony recently issued a fix to prevent a similar issue happening on PS4 and PS5 in the future, following widespread fears that a future CMOS failure could render the console unable to play physical or digital games. Xbox seem happy to follow Sony's lead o this occasion, with Phil Spencer telling Axios that “the hardware team is hearing the message about our consoles […] should allow for the ongoing relationship between the player and the content that they own. So we hear the message and the teams are looking at things.”