Daily Briefing: Tuesday 3rd August

J. Allen Brack is leaving Blizzard

The confirmation comes courtesy of a letter to the Blizzard community written by president and COO Daniel Alegre which states that Brack will be leaving "to pursue new opportunities." In his stead, Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra will be appointed "co-leaders" of Blizzard. Oneal was the head of Vicarious Visions before it was merged into Blizzard, when she became Executive Vice President of Development; while Mike Ybarra joined Blizzard in October 2019 following a 20+ year stint at Microsoft. He served as Executive Vice President & General Manager of Platform and Technology at Blizzard, overseeing Battle.net and their Development Services units.

• Alegre's letter outlines that Oneal and Ybarra will “share responsibility for development and operational accountability" at Blizzard, and credits them both as being "leaders of great character and integrity and are deeply committed to ensuring our workplace is the most inspired, welcoming environment for creative excellence and to upholding our highest game development standards.” Brack's departure both is and isn't a surprise, coming after he was heavily criticised for his lacklustre response to the ongoing Activision Blizzard sexual harassment lawsuit.

Konami say eFootball will be "basically a demo" at launch

eFootball, the F2P successor to the PES series, is set to release in "early Autumn" this year and Konami aren't exactly making the best case for it existing - having recently confirmed that the next bold step forward for the franchise will be missing a sizeable number of features at launch. The official eFootball Twitter account stated in a Q&A session that the game will be a demo "in many ways" at launch, as it will release with "a limited number of teams and modes."

• According to the development roadmap that was unveiled alongside the game itself last month, eFootball will launch with the ability to play "local matches" with nine different teams, as well as cross-generation multiplayer. Things like online leagues and team-building modes will come later in the Autumn alongside cross-platform play. While it's perfectly normal for live-service games to receive more content over time, they don't often launch in such a malnourished state. Considering Konami have effectively ousted one of their flagship franchise to introduce eFootball, you would perhaps expect them to hold off releasing it until it's actually worth playing.

2K Games set to announce "exciting new franchise" this month

Speaking during the company's Q1 earnings call earlier this week, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff confirmed that "later this month, 2K will unveil details of another exciting new franchise planned for launch during this fiscal year." That timeframe could point to a reveal during the upcoming all-digital Gamescom 2021, with the game itself set to release sometime before April 2022.

• As for what this new franchise could be, that's very much up for speculation. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says that his studio has put "years of work" into this mysterious new title, meaning that it's another project on top of the recently announced fantasy Borderlands spin-off Tiny Tina's Wonderland. There is more to come this year from Take-Two, as well, as Monday's earnings call also confirmed that the company had delayed two of its "immersive core" titles until later in the year. Take-Two had previously signalled their intent to release 21 games during the current fiscal year, and we're still waiting to hear what a bunch of those are.

Elder Scrolls veterans announce new fantasy RPG

OnceLost Games is an indie studio that was founded way back in 2019 by a few veteran Elder Scrolls developers and creatives. Julian LeFay, the so-called  "father of The Elder Scrolls", serves as technical director while Ted Peterson is the design director - he was a lead creative on The Elder Scrolls with credits across Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion. Vijay Lakshman is executive producer, he's another one of the main creators of The Elder Scrolls, and Ian Phoenix is marketing director - he runs a YouTube channel called Indigo Phoenix that specialises in gaming analysis, review, and documentary content.

• Back when the studio was first unveiled OnceLost said that they would be making a singleplayer fantasy RPG - which they this week announced as The Wayward Realms. It's a grand, open-world fantasy RPG where "choice and consequence are experienced on a scale never attempted before." It may be a while until we see anything concrete about the project but it'll certainly be worth keeping an eye on as yet another example of a project being born out of AAA talent and experience moving into the indie space. In the meantime, the game is available to be wishlisted on Steam.