Daily Briefing: Tuesday 22nd June

Cyberpunk 2077 returns to the PlayStation Store, but Sony counsel caution

Cyberpunk 2077 is once again available for download on the PlayStation Store, more than 180 days after the game's dreadful PS4 launch prompted Sony to delist the game from sale. The return comes after a series of high-profile updates and patches from developer CD Projekt Red but, while the game is now in a vastly improved state, Sony are still warning players against playing the game on a base PS4 until CDPR fix a few more issues.

• The warning came as part of a statement issued after the game's full return, with Sony advising players that they will still experience "performance issues" with the PS4 version while more things are being worked on. Sony instead recommend playing on a PS4 Pro or PS5 for the "best experience" because, y'know, we all have a few of those knocking around but still play on a base model for the sheer thrill of it. At any rate, Cyberpunk 2077 is back but it still isn't fixed yet.

Kim Swift joins Xbox Game Studios

The Portal and Left 4 Dead lead joins Xbox as senior director of cloud gaming as part of Microsoft's wider ongoing initiative to create "cloud-native games" that are accessible to players who don't actually own a gaming-ready device. Swift will be responsible for building a team to focus on "new experiences in the cloud"...whatever that means.

• Swift has quite the legacy behind her so it'll be interesting to see whether Microsoft can make the most of her talents. She was Valve's project lead on Portal and also worked on both Left 4 Dead games before a series of career moves saw her serve stints at Airtight Games, Amazon, and EA Motive. Most recently, she was a game design director at Stadia Games & Entertainment before Google shuttered all internal games development and jettisoned a bunch of wasted talent.

Activision shareholders vote to keep paying Bobby Kotick a lot of money

Activision Blizzard this week confirmed that they received shareholder approval for their revised executive compensation plan. The vote actually happened last week but results weren't finalised until yesterday after shareholders asked for more time to consider the options. It was a narrow victory in the face of staunch opposition though - the plan was only approved by 54% of shareholders.

• That opposition came, once again. from the CtW Investment Group who recently called on shareholders to reject Activision Blizzard's annual say-on-pay proposal. Despite being unsuccessful again this time around, the 54% approval vote does represent a slight dip on last year's 56.8% rating, which suggests that CtW are at least starting to get their point across. A statement released by CtW's Michael Varner notes that the proposal nearly didn't receive a majority, and credited Activision for doing "just enough arm-twisting for the measure to pass." We haven't heard the end of this one.

Tekken X Street Fighter is officially cancelled

The confirmation comes more than a decade after the game was first announced, with Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada recently revealing that the project "died" relatively early on in development. Speaking during his YouTube show, Harada Bar Radio, Harada revealed that development on the game "stopped but we got about 30% done."

• Tekken X Street Fighter has always been a curious beast. It was announced back at San Diego Comic-Con in 2010 and was intended to complement Capcom's own cross-over Street Fighter X Tekken. While the latter was eventually released in 2012 the former hung around in mystery - with comments from Harada suggesting that development was on-hold rather than entirely cancelled. The thinking was to avoid splitting the Tekken playerbase over several games, so job done.