Daily Briefing, Thursday 14th January 2021

CD Projekt Red apologise for Cyberpunk 2077 launch...again

Studio co-founder Marcin Iwiński this week released a video once again apologising for Cyberpunk 2077's launch state on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - he also provided an updated roadmap for patches, DLC, and next-gen upgrades.

• Iwiński said that the intention was to build the game for high-end PC's and then adjust it to run on consoles, but the team underestimated the complexity of this task - and internal testing "did not show a big part" of the issues console players experienced at launch.

Lucasfilm to partner with Ubisoft on new Star Wars title

The newly-reformed Lucasfilm Games will partner with Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment on an as-yet unannounced "brand-new, story-driven, open world Star Wars adventure", with VP Douglas Reilly calling this announcement "just the beginning" of an exciting year for the studio.

• This is the first time in eight years that a company other than EA has worked on a Star Wars title, and just six months after EA announced that they planned to "double down" on Star Wars following recent success. EA's partnership with Lucasfilm will continue, but Star Wars fans can look forward to a lot more variation in future.

Steam had more monthly active users than Xbox and PlayStation in 2020

Steam's newly-released yearly usage roundup this week confirmed that it has eclipsed both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live in terms of monthly active users - Xbox Live saw 90m MAUs, PSN 102m, while Steam was sitting pretty with 120m.

• Steam attributes some of this uptick to the ongoing pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures - Steam broke its own concurrent user record multiple times in March 2020, and again when it surpassed 25m simultaneous users at the start of January. Stay safe, play games.

That Indiana Jones game won't distract Bethesda from Starfield and The Elder Scroll VI

While many fans were excited at the prospect of Lucasfilm Games' collaboration with Bethesda, others were slightly concerned that development of the licensed title could interfere with Bethesda's carefully-communicated priorities roadmap.

• Todd Howard being an executive producer on the Indiana Jones title exacerbated some of these fears, but SVP of marketing and comms Pete Hines took to Twitter to reassure fans that Howard's "main focus remains directing the upcoming Starfield and TES6 games", which themselves "weren't affected by today's news."

That's it for today - catch us back here tomorrow for another batch of gaming news!