Daily Briefing: Monday 24th May

Overwatch's lead character artist leaves Blizzard

Renaud Galand announced over the weekend that he will be leaving Blizzard after 12 years to "embark on an exciting new adventure." Galand shared a picture of his badge on Instagram saying that he will "cherish" his time spent on Project Titan, Overwatch, and Overwatch 2 - and calls the team his "second family."

• Galand's career at Blizzard began in 2009 when he joined as a character artist on Project Titan - Blizzard's ultimately doomed MMO that ended up forming the basis for Overwatch. he then worked his way up the artist ladder and became Lead Character Artist in March 2020. Galand designed some of Overwatch's most iconic heroes - from Mercy and Tracer to Mei and Zarya. We don't know what he's up to next, but that's another high-level Blizzard creative out the door.

Is a new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game on the way?

The notion comes courtesy of Jess Margera (CKY drummer and Bam Margera's brother) who, speaking on a recent podcast, may have let slip that a new Tony Hawk game is in the works at Activision. The interview was discussing the importance of licensing music as a musician, and Margera said "I believe we’re doing the new [THPS game] coming out too."

• The question is then, what kind of game are we talking about? Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1&2 Remastered was fantastic so a 3&4 follow-up could be another win. Margera's band CKY even had a song featured on Pro Skater 3 - so it's definitely a possibility. A Pro Skater 6 probably isn't out of the question, either, but 5 did such a number on the series that Activision may want to ride the proven nostalgia wave a little longer.

Microsoft now have publishing duties for The Outer Worlds

Microsoft have officially taken over publisher responsibilities for "future iterations" of The Outer World from Private Division - one day after Take-Two Interactive stated that they were completely committed to the franchise. Private Division will support and market The Outer Worlds through its upcoming Murder of Eridanos DLC release on Switch, then Microsoft will take over.

• It's an odd series of comments. The Outer Worlds has been very successful for Take-Two, selling 3m copies since it release back in October 2019. The thing is that Microsoft purchased developer Obsidian way back in 2018, so Take-Two's comments during their investor call made it seem like they would still be involved going forward. Nope.

Looks like Netflix want to expand into games

That's according to a new report from The Information who, leaning into their unbelievable dry name, suggest that Netflix are looking for an exec to lead future game development initiatives. The belief is that the streaming giant could be aiming for an Apple Arcade-style service, which would make a decent bit of sense, to be honest.

• While this is still just speculation at this point, Netflix appear to have already confirmed the expansion. In a statement issued to Gamespot, the company said that they are excited to do more with "interactive entertainment" after shows like Bandersnatch and gaming collaborations based on properties like Stranger Things. It'll be interesting to see what form this expansion takes - Netflix said in 2019 that they had no intention of creating a gaming streaming service, so watch this space.