Bellular

Daily Briefing: Wednesday 26th January

Blizzard announce new IP

Blizzard this week announced that they are making a “brand new survival game for PC and console.” Well, announced may be too strong a word, as we don’t even know what the thing is called nevermind actual gameplay details. The project was revealed in a job listing advertising for a number of key vacancies, though the fact that several senior roles are seemingly already filled does suggest that the game already has some time behind it.

• So far, ...
  2022-01-26 17:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Daily Briefing: Tuesday 25th January

Raven Software announce structural changes

Now here’s one that’s already causing quite an uproar across the internet and social media. We covered earlier this week that a group of quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzard’s previously-striking Raven studio had voted to unionise, and had asked their parent company to officially recognise their union. While we’re still waiting on an official response from Activision Blizzard, Raven’s own management have announced struct...

Are We Still In Ny’alotha? N'zoth's Fever Dream

Here's a popular theory: The Shadowlands is a fever dream induced at the end of Ny’alotha, and we’re still laying there, on the ground, drooling Azerite out of our mouths. This is a kind of tongue-in-cheek way players feel Blizzard could walk the story back, but is there evidence for it?

Daily Briefing: Monday 24th January

Raven Software developers have voted to unionise

The Activision Blizzard news really does just keep coming these days, doesn’t it? This time around, a group of quality assurance testers at Call of Duty Warzone developer Raven Software are officially looking to unionise with the Communication Workers of America. The Game Workers Alliance, which currently has around 34 members, have asked parent company Activision Blizzard to officially recognise the union, which would make it not onl...

Daily Briefing: Friday 21st January

Firaxis veterans form new indie studio

Well here’s a surprise, a group of AAA game development veterans breaking off to form their own indie studio with a focus on innovation, creative thinking, and employee care that doesn’t have anything to do with Activision Blizzard. Veterans of XCOM and Civilisation developer Firaxis games recently announced the formation of Bit Reactor, a new studio with the goal of creating turn-based tactics games with “high-end production value...

Warcraft’s Deepest Secret: The Children of Azeroth

The most interesting story hidden in Warcraft is this ancient myth: One of Azeroth, An'she's suffering, and Elune's misdeeds. The Tauren seem to know more than we could imagine.

Daily Briefing: Thursday 20th January

Take-Two are now happy with the GTA Trilogy

That’s straight from the mouth of Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick who, speaking in a new interview with CNBC, claimed that Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition (what an unwieldy name) has performed “great” since it released back in November. This, of course, vastly underplays the sheer amount of mechanical issues the Trilogy experienced at launch, and this is something Zelnick sticks to throughout the intervi...

Daily Briefing: Tuesday 18th January

Microsoft are buying Activision Blizzard

Well, this is a big one out of nowhere. Microsoft this week announced a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard for a truly insane $68.7bn. Not only is this the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history, but it is also the largest acquisition in the history of the wider games industry, eclipsing the previous record set by Take-Two Interactive just last week with their acquisition of mobile gaming giant Zynga.

• Xbox boss and media darl...
  2022-01-18 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Velen & The Upcoming War: Blizz Soft Confirms Future Expansion?

Blizzard have given Velen a new character bio on the official site, and it all but confirms our next arc.

Daily Briefing: Monday 17th January

Halo Infinite’s shop is getting a few price changes

Developers 343 Industries made the announcement over the weekend that they will be changing the price of several items in the Halo Infinite in-game shop following feedback from the playerbase. In a series of tweets, 343 Industries’ design head Jerry Hook said that the team have “been monitoring the discussions on the shop, bundles, and pricing closely since launch. He went on to say that Halo Infinite’s shop will vary from we...

Daily Briefing: Friday 14th January

Final Fantasy XIV will go back on sale at the end of the month

In the very definition of suffering from success, Final Fantasy XIV was removed from sale in mod-December 2021 in the midst of server issues brought on by the launch of its phenomenally popular Endwalker expansion. In a blog post published on the game’s official website at the time, director and producer Naoki Yoshida announced that digital and physical sales of the games were to be suspended as the team fought to handle...

Loot! January 2022

New year, new look! We've changed things up with a fresh style & new ideas! As the year rolls on, we'll have neat specials, and two awesome sets: class cards, and beast sets. I'll have pictures of everything IRL to show soon. Versus our past pins, this new series is larger, and it's got a new art direction that's going to look awesome in person.

A few other things will change, such as packaging, where we're developing a new design that'll look great & be more durable.

...

Daily Briefing: Thursday 13th January

PlatinumGames’ president and CEO has stepped down

Kenichi Sato took up the position back in April 2016, but revealed in a new statement posted on PlatinumGames’ official website that  he left the role last month. Atsushi Inaba, who was previously the vice president and head producer of development at the studio, has stepped into Sato’s vacant role. Inaba was previously the CEO and producer at Clover Studios, so he certainly has experienced in the realms of upper leadership....

Daily Briefing: Wednesday 12th January

Xbox Series X|S has officially sold one million units in the UK

Thanks to a significant, and extremely overdue, increase in Xbox Series X stock in retailers across the UK, December 2021 saw the Xbox platform’s biggest sales month since it launched way back in November 2020. Despite widespread stock and component shortages across the industry, Microsoft maintain that the Xbox Series X|S are continuing to sell faster than any previous generation of Xbox console.

• According ...
  2022-01-12 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Daily Briefing: Tuesday 11th January

Sega open second Japanese development base

Sega announced this week that they have opened a new office in Sapporo, as part of their ongoing initiative to establish new “development bases” across Japan. Sega already have a number of internal development studios in Japan, like Sonic Team and Ryu Ga Gotoko Studio, but these teams all work out of Sega’s main Tokyo headquarters. These new development bases will enable talent to be less densely packed, and presumably allow for further...

Daily Briefing: Monday 10th January

Capcom are teasing some Street Fighter news

It looks like Capcom officially kicked off the 35th Anniversary of the Street Fighter franchise with a new logo and series of mysterious tweets over the weekend. The logo in question is nothing overly interesting - a 35th Anniversary artwork where the “35th” is stylised after Street Fighter’s iconic logo - but it was the accompanying tweets that are worth a double take.

• Capcom’s USA Twitter account posted the logo alongsi...
  2022-01-10 14:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Daily Briefing: Friday 7th January

Turns out that Fallout television series is going ahead after all

This one has been a pretty long time in the making, as Bethesda first announced their partnership with Amazon and Kilter Films way back in July 2020. The project has since essentially floated around in public attention stasis ever since, but we got a bit of news this week with confirmation that there’s actually a decent bit of talent attached to it.

• According to a new report from Deadline, the Fallout seri...
  2022-01-07 15:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post

[EARLY ACCESS] The Future Of Sylvanas.

What's going to happen with Sylvanas after 9.2? Here's everything laid out... and how we think it's going to go.

[Early Video] The Future of Sylvanas

The 2022 videos have begun! Apologies for not posting more, I'm going to detail why soon, but a TLDR is that I've been struggling quite a lot with a chronic pain issue, and the second half of 2021 got real rough. I think I'm on the right track now though. Much more soon!

Oh, and YouTube auto generated that as the thumbnail. Good job YouTube!

Daily Briefing: Thursday 6th January

Konami announce NFT push

It seems that Ubisoft and Square Enix’s previous (highly confusing and ill-advised) pivots into NFT trading has started a big of domino effect of stupid decisions. This week, the ever money-hungry Konami announced that they will also be launching an NFT scheme as a way to “celebrate” the 35th Anniversary of the Castlevania franchise, though it’s unclear how they envision flushing an historic series’ image down the toilet to be a worthy birthday prese...

Daily Briefing: Wednesday 5th January

Sony reveal PSVR2 specs amid pledge to advance gaming

Sony Interactive Entertainment finally revealed some details on the new piece of hardware during their CES 2022 keynote earlier this week. The company's next generation of VR headset has admittedly been knocking about for quite a while in rumour form, but it is now confirmed to be called PlayStation VR2, while its new controller is the PlayStation VR 2 Sense Controller, presumably in an attempt to link up with the PS5's DualSense c...

Daily Briefing: Tuesday 4th January

Square Enix's controversial NFT pledge causes share price uptick

Square Enix's unexpected (and distinctly unwanted) pivot into NFT and blockchain technologies has already proven to be one of the biggest stories of the admittedly young year, but it's worth talking about again because it already seems to be doing the trick. As poorly received as the news was by fans and observers across the internet, Yosuke Matsuda's pledge to incorporate the controversial technology has caused a surge ...

Daily Briefing: Monday 3rd January

Samsung's new TV line will have built in Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, NFTs

Samsung made the...interesting announcement as part of CES 2022, outlining that their new 2022 range of Neo QLED televisions will ship with a new native Gaming Hub with support for cloud-based streaming and NFTs. The idea is to unite all gaming content in one dedicated location, meaning that the Gaming Hub will handle any console connections, livestreaming, and cloud gaming from places like Google Stadia ...

Daily Briefing: Wednesday 22nd December

Over $6000 worth of games were apparently added to Xbox Game Pass this year

That's according to new calculations from outlet The Loadout which, suggest that the new games introduced to the Xbox Game Pass console and PC library were collectively worth $6,317.35. This final total was reached using the price of each game as listed on the Microsoft store as a baseline, and it certainly is a pretty impressive figure considering Xbox Game Pass Ultimate only costs like $15 a month.

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2021-12-22 17:01:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Daily Briefing: Tuesday 21st December

Ubisoft facing staff exodus

That's according to a new report from Axios which, citing interviews with numerous current and former employees, suggests that Ubisoft are currently in the grips of severe staff falloff. A wave of departures in the last 18 months is referred to as "the great exodus: or "the cut artery" by people within the company. According to a bit of LinkedIn trawling by the outlet, Ubisoft's attrition rate is around 12% across their 20,000-strong workforce. This is sign...

Daily Briefing: Monday 20th December

Final Fantasy VII Remake's PC port is dreadful

It actually feels like a while since we've had a truly god awful PC port to get good and steamed up about. Not that that's a bad thing of course, the general trend of the AAA games industry finally endeavouring to pay attention to the PC audience is something to be celebrated. This is perhaps why it's so jarring that the recently released PC port of Final Fantasy VII Remake is just so bad, and Square Enix's extra premium price tag likely ...

Daily Briefing: Friday 17th December

Epic Games Store adds a shopping cart after three years

The Epic Games Store's annual holiday sale kicked off this week and the surge in traffic is kind of wreaking havoc with a marketplace platform that is honestly pretty unstable at the best of times. The various promotions and sales went together to create essentially the perfect storm of server congestion. Epic are currently running a "15 days of free games" promotion wit the most recent one being Shenmue III while Fortnite had a ...

Daily Briefing: Thursday 16th December

Ubisoft's developers aren't too impressed by the company's NFT strategy, either

We've already covered Ubisoft's bizarre attempt to expand into the NFT space a couple of times between our news channel and this very daily newsletter, but the fallout is showing no signs of stopping now that some of Ubisoft's own employees have admitted to being confused by the initiative. That's according to a new report from Kotaku which outlines that Ubisoft's internal messaging hub is filling up with ...

Daily Briefing: Wednesday 15th December

Keanu Reeves may have just outed a small CD Projekt Red marketing lie

Okay, this is a bit of a weird one but it'll still be fun to bring up because actor Keanu Reeves may have just exposed a bit of a fib on CD Projekt Red's part. Reeves is currently on the press circuit for the upcoming Matrix: Resurrections but interviews have spanned a whole range of topics beyond that, namely video games and more specifically Cyberpunk 2077. When asked whether he has played Cyberpunk 2077 Reeves, w...

Daily Briefing: Monday 13th December

Bungie apologise for studio culture

The apology comes following a new report from IGN in which over two dozen current and former employees banded together to discuss and criticise the studio's toxic culture. Collectively, the employee testimonies paint a picture of a studio that is now moving forward after tolerating an openly toxic environment for many years. The report itself is very interesting and primarily focuses on Bungie's narrative department which was infamous for crunch, bu...