Daily Briefing: Thursday 9th September

Sony acquire Firesprite

The Liverpool-based studio have worked with Sony a number of times in the past across titles like The Playroom, The Playroom VR and Run, Sackboy! Run! In fact, several of the studio's members were actually part of Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Liverpool back in the day so this recent acquisition has brought things full circle to some extent. Firesprite announced earlier this year that they were working with Cloud Imperium Games on Star Citizen's Theatres of War multiplayer mode, and we haven't had any word yet on how the acquisition will affect this ongoing partnership.

• Sony have actually been pretty busy this year on the acquisition front. Back in June, Returnal developer Housemarque officially joined the PlayStation Studios family while PC-port specialists Nixxes joined the roster a month later. At the time there were also a whole lot of rumours that Bluepoint, the folks behind the excellent Demon's Souls remake, were also on Sony's shopping list but we haven't had anything more on that since.

Xbox One controllers are getting an upgrade

According to the new Xbox Wire blog, Microsoft will be bringing a few Xbox Series X|S controller features to their older range of Xbox One controllers: Dynamic Latency Input and Bluetooth Low Energy. DLI sends controller inputs to the console more efficiently as a means of reducing input lag. Xbox One controllers currently send inputs every 8ms regardless of when the console actually needs the data, meaning a player pressing a button just after that window could experience an additional 7ms of latency. Bluetooth Low Energy allows for smoother compatibility with non-Xbox devices like Windows 10 PCs, as well as iOS and Android devices.

• The update is currently live for Xbox Insiders on the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha tiers, which means that it should be with the general Xbox One populous before too long. The update will add both Dynamic Latency Input and Bluetooth Low Energy functionality to Xbox One controllers with Bluetooth support, as well as the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 and the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Nice to see the whole Xbox family getting a bit of an upgrade, especially when its two newest members are still pretty difficult to track down in stores.

Jagex reverse course on Runescape HD mod removal

Earlier this week Runescape developer Jagex moved to block a fan-made HD release of Runelite, an open-source third-party client for the 2007 version of Runescape. Runelite released in 2016 but retained a lot of the original game's rough edges, with the HD conversion intended to introduce things like improved textures, lighting, and draw distances. Jagex blocked Runelite HD a day before it was supposed to go live on the grounds that they were currently "investigating" the possibility of making their own HD update of Old School Runescape. Any unofficial versions would therefore be "at odds with our own plans."

• Runelite HD creator 117scape reportedly offered to compromise and only make the project available until Jagex released their own update, but was turned down. The situation prompted such a fierce reaction from fans that Jagex reversed their decision after just one day and reached back out to 117scape to figure out how to proceed. It seems like a good development in what was yet another story of increasing hostility toward the modding community, though the fact that Jagex also had to publicly condemn abuse against their staff following the initial block decision adds a negative tinge to the outcome.