News Mash-Up - Week # 35

• • In an update to last week, following the recent announcement of Sony’s PS5 price increase in many regions around the world, Microsoft has released a statement saying that it will be keeping the price of the Xbox Series X (from £449.99) and Series S (from £249.99) constant everywhere.
    
    
  • On August 29, Sony announced its acquisition of Savage Game Studios. Savage Game Studios was founded in 2020 by industry veterans from multiple companies and is currently in the process of developing "a new unannounced AAA mobile live service action game."
    
    

• • NetEase, the Chinese publisher of Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo Immortal, has acquired Quantic Dream, the French developer of Become Human. Quantic Dream is NetEase’s first studio in Europe.
    
    
  • Sony and Tencent have both recently increased their stakes in FromSoftware, the developer of Elden Ring. At the moment, Sony owns 14.09% of the company, while Tencent owns 16.25%.
    
    
  • Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has announced that Call of Duty, along with other Activision Blizzard titles such as Overwatch and Diablo, will eventually join Xbox Game Pass, but will still release on PlayStation the same day. This announcement comes amid the $68.7 billion Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
    
    
  • The Facebook Gaming app will be closing its service on October 28, 2022. Although users will no longer be able to access the mobile application to watch Facebook Gaming livestreams, they will be able to do so via the principal Facebook application.
    
    
  • Valve has begun to test an updated Steam Mobile app on the app store, with a modernized design and updated framework. At the moment, it is part of a “limited beta” and not yet available to the public.
    
    
  • Netflix has decided to end its Resident Evil series after just one season. The show was released initially on July 14 of this year and did not perform extremely well in Netflix’s top 10 or in ratings, receiving a 55% critic and 27% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
    
    
  • Despite recent initiatives beyond console gaming, PlayStation has reassured its players that it remains committed to its “big-budget single player” games. Herman Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, directly pointed to the largest releases of this year in a recent blog post, mentioning “Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, MLB The Show 22, and on November 9th, the highly anticipated God of War: Ragnarök."

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  • Xbox will be making a virtual return to the Tokyo Game Show 2022 on September 15. There will be a range of other presentations, including major ones from Square Enix, Sega and Atlus, and Koei Tecmo.

Week commencing Monday 29 August 2022