Daily Briefing: Thursday 20th May

A new TimeSplitters game is incoming

We got a nice surprise this week when Deep Silver announced that not only is a new TimeSplitters game entering development "in the coming months", but original studio Free Radical Design has been reformed to work on it. Studio founders David Doak and Steve Ellis even involved once again.

• While this is all very exciting, that's about it as far as details go. Free Radical are currently concentrating on "building the studio" so things are still in the very early stages but it's good to see Koch Media making good on the "future products" promise they made when they purchased the TimeSplitters IP in 2018.

Square Enix hail Outriders as "next major franchise"

Square Enix announced this week that looter shooter Outriders topped 3.5m unique players during its first month, and is "on track to become the company's next major franchise." This is good news as Square Enix probably still haven't stopped crying about The Avengers.

• Square Enix are obviously very proud because we got an almost strange amount of detail to go along with the announcement. Studio head Jon Brookes praised the game's "extremely high engagement for cooperative play" with the average player sinking 30 hours into it.

Ex-Star Wars writer reunites with Amy Hennig

Todd Stashwick, the co-writer of EA's ultimately doomed Star Wars: Project Ragtag, announced on Twitter that he has joined Amy Hennig's Skydance New Media studio. Stashwick will work on a new game alongside a "core team" of industry veterans.

• Stashwick's announcement also linked to a few job vacancies at the studio which confirm that Skydance are working on “a high quality, AAA single-player story-driven action-adventure game.” It'll be interesting to see what they're up to.

Former Monolith boss opens new EA studio

In other studio news Kevin Stephens, former studio head at Monolith Productions, is leading a new studio at EA. The still-unnamed outfit will be based in Seattle and will focus on open-world action-adventure games.

• Stephens' stint at Monolith included overseeing the development of both Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, and while it hasn't been revealed what exactly his new studio are working on just yet, EA have confirmed that more information will be shared later this year. So there you go.