Daily Briefing: Tuesday 1st June

Xbox may have just locked down two years of Dolby exclusivity

The suggestion comes courtesy of the French wing of the official Xbox blog, which says that both Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision will remain "exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem for two years." The Xbox Series X|S consoles have been Dolby Atmos compatible since they released last year, and the blog confirmed that Dolby Vision will be arriving "sometime in 2021."

• The post has since been removed, though not before being captured for posterity on Twitter like all stories like this. The PS5 currently doesn't support either Dolby Atmos or Dolby Vision, but whether that's down to a conscious decision on Sony's part or ongoing Xbox exclusivity remains to be seen.

EA just de-listed all their old Need for Speed games

EA made the announcement in, of all places, the Need for Speed subreddit. A member of the development team confirmed that "as of May 31st" Need for Speed Carbon, Undercover, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed, and The Run would be removed from all digital marketplaces.

• Each game's respective in-game stores are also now offline, and all online services will be turned off at the end of August. It's an odd decision by EA, who state that the decision to "retire" a game is always a difficult one, but it's the complete lack of advance notice that annoyed fans the most.

CD Projekt Red say Cyberpunk 2077 will "live up to what was promised"

CD Projekt Red issued their Q1 financial results this week, with studio president and co-CEO Adam Kiciński reiterating that CDPR "intend to live up to what we promised our gamers in January" regarding Cyberpunk 2077. Improvement are still being made, and CDPR do seem convinced that they will turn everything around.

• Kiciński says that CDPR are still fully committed to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 - so much so that "nearly half" of the team are still working on it six months after release - and even as the studio prepare to move into parallel development on "future unannounced projects" from next year.

Ubisoft say Far Cry 6 is political after all

In what can only be described as another classic Ubisoft u-turn, it turns out they think Far Cry 6 might be a bit political after all. The game's narrative director, Navid Khavari, writes in a new official blog that the game is not only inherently political but also inspired by real-world events and history.

• Khavari writes that Far Cry 6's story is political because "a story about a modern revolution must be." He also writes that there are "hard, relevant" discussions about conditions in the game's fictional setting of Yara - which was heavily inspired by very real events in Cuba. Khavari's statements effectively walk back what he told The Gamer - that the game wasn't meant to be “a political statement about what’s happening in Cuba specifically”. Sounds like someone received a strongly-worded email after that interview, doesn't it?