Daily Briefing, Friday 4th December 2020

Hello and welcome to another issue of the Bellular Daily Briefing - industry happenings sent straight to your digital doorstep

Dragon Age and Mass Effect leads exit BioWare

BioWare this week announced that general manager Casey Hudson and Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah will be leaving the studio. Both men called their departures "retirements", with Hudson wanting to "make way for the next generation of studio leaders."

• Hudson had been with BioWare since 2000, save the period 2014-2017 when he was at Microsoft, while Darrah had been with the studio since 1997. These long careers will be hard to replace - BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey is set to replace Darrah, meaning the head of the Anthem reboot is now overseeing Dragon Age.

Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creators to form new studio

Keiichiro Toyama, the director of the Silent Hill and Gravity Rush series, announced his departure from Sony this week to form new studio Bokeh - he is joined by Junya Okura, Gravity Rush's lead designer, and Kazunobu Sato, lead designer of Puppeteer. Both Sato and Okura had been with Sony for nearly 20 years.

• These high-profile departure come amidst rumours that Sony are stepping away from Japan in favour of focusing on the US market, with many rolling Japanese contracts not being renewed. Sony have denied this but Toyama told Famitsu that he wants "to enjoy creating from now on" so maybe there is a bit of strife?

Sea of Thieves to shift to Battle Pass model

Rare announced the shift to a season system and Battle Pass in a recent developer update, where creative designer Mike Chapman confirmed the team will be moving on from monthly updates.

• The shift is expected to happen in January 2021, with each season lasting three months and bringing new content and new ways of playing, as well as "regular and featured live events." Sea of Thieves has had a strong year, bolstered by its Steam release, so it'll be interesting to see how this change goes over.

CEX staff aren't happy with PS5 pricing

The UK high-street retailer has been under fire from staff and customers for some ludicrous PlayStation 5 pricing - with Sony's new console selling for a whopping £815 in-store, quite a mark-up from the £450 RRP.

• CEX are also offering to buy PS5 consoles for a wild £650 in cash, a full £200 over RRP, and the offer has seen quite a few consoles come into stores to be sold on for an even higher price. These are some crazy numbers and it's no wonder staff and customers aren't impressed - CEX may legally be fine here, but morally they're very iffy.

Batman: Arkham Knight gets a couple of new skins

Bit of a weird one to finish - Batman: Arkham Knight, a game released in 2015, just got two new skins for the caped crusader. A new update has introduced the "Anime Batman" and "Zur-En-Arrh" costumes - rejoice!

• These skins have, strictly speaking, been in the game for quite a while - but unlocking them involved logging into Arkham Knight's official forums and messing around with WB Game IDs, so it's for the best that they're now out in the wild. Five years is some exclusivity period, though.

That's it for today, friends - catch us back here on Monday for more gaming news and have a wonderful weekend!