Daily Briefing: Wednesday 21st July

Netflix confirm expansion into games

Following a spate of rumours to the effect last week, Netflix confirmed via their latest financial results that the company is "in the early stages" of developing a games offering. The expansion will apparently build on the foundation laid by earlier dalliances with games like Stranger Things and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Netflix also confirmed that, at least in the beginning, their gaming offering will be mainly centred around mobile games. Subscribers will be able to access any of Netflix's gaming projects at no extra cost.

• The actual wording of Netflix's letter to shareholders reads that the company view gaming as "a new content category", along the same lines as previous expansions into original movies and shows. As for why Netflix are choosing now to actively pursue games, the letter states that the company feel that "the time is right to learn more about how our members value games" seeing as it's been nearly a decade since Netflix first pushed into original programming.

PES gets a F2P rebrand

Konami made the rather dramatic announcement this week that their flagship soccer franchise has been officially rebranded to eFootball and will be a digital-only, F2P title. This year's title will mark the debut of this new format and will release across consoles, PC, and mobile in August, with cross-play arriving shortly afterwards.

• It's all change at the PES household then, and Konami also confirmed that they'll be sharing some more game details over the coming weeks. It'll be curious to see how a F2P PES title will operate - Konami say they'll be regularly adding content to the game following launch and there does seem to be a battle pass in place. The Match Pass system looks to be tied to the eFootball equivalent of FIFA Ultimate Team - offering players and items in return for playing.

Square Enix respond to Final Fantasy XIV server issues

Final Fantasy XIV's servers have been having a bit of difficulty coping this last wee while thanks to what the game's produce and director, Naoki Yoshida, calls a "staggering and unexpected" uptick in popularity. While more popularity is undoubtedly a good thing for any game let alone a 10-year-old MMO like Final Fantasy XIV, it does tend to break things a bit. Yoshida says that the "extreme influx" of new players led to things like long queue times and an inability to create new characters.

• Yoshida actually goes into a surprising amount of detail on the reasons behind these technical difficulties in a blog post which is nice to see, but as far as a solution is concerned Square Enix are still experimenting with a few things. They are to expand their server and data centres though component shortages are standing in the way of that. In the meantime, the team will continue to raise login caps where feasible and also "humbly" ask players to log out while idle and avoid creating new characters at peak times. As a temporary measure, the dev team will be kicking AFK players for a while.

Ubisoft are apparently still making Beyond Good & Evil 2

The sequel was first announced way back in 2008 and we've seen very little of it since. This week Ubisoft saw fit to confirm via their new financial report that the game is still being made, but again that's about it as far as details go. Apparently, despite being announced 13 (!) years ago, Ubisoft still think it's "too early" to say when the game might release.

• In Ubisoft's financial report their CFO, Frederick Duguet, was asked whether it would be possible for Beyond Good & Evil 2 to release during fiscal year 2024. Duguet would only really respond that the team are "progressing well" with the game, a repeat of the same non-update CEO Yves Guillemot provided back in October when the Netflix adaptation was announced. Ubisoft apparently have so little going on that they have to pad their slate with games we (and possibly they) know nothing about.