Embracer Group Split, Assassin's Creed Hexe, Apple decreases production of Vision Pro...
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Hello friends,
Today is April 25th 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Embracer Group split into 3 different companies
🎮 Early details on Assassin's Creed Hexe
📱 Apple cuts Vision Pro production in half
🎮 The Witcher 1 Remake is in development
🎬 Small update on Dune 3
🎮 Tales of Shire announcement trailer
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Embracer Group split into 3 different companies
This company has probably been the rockiest couple of years among all major Game Development players. After several huge rounds of layoffs, cancelled projects and studios (Volition 🫡), and the recent sale of Saber Interactive, now they’ve decided to split into 3 different entities to “unlock shareholder value”.
Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends will be focusing on LOTR IP, Tomb Raider and I assume other AAA projects (if any)
Asmodee will be in charge of their board games business, which they purchased for a staggering 3 billion dollars not two years ago 😱
And Coffee Stain & Friends will be handling all the smaller projects, from indie to AA and mobile.
All these new companies will be separate entities and will be separately publicly traded.
It’s all well and good, but I guess that this is the situation where changing the order of addends does not change the sum. Reshuffling and renaming the portfolio is not going to save the company from mismanagement and poor decisions if it simply refuse to learn from its mistakes.
Of course, it means that every company will have their own CEOs and senior management teams, but it probably won’t matter.
In one of his recent interviews, Lars Wingefors (CEO of the old Embracer) said, "I still feel I have the trust of many or all of my key entrepreneurs and CEOs that have joined the group. It's been difficult, but I think they all believed in the mission of Embracer." He is not going to maintain his position in any of the companies but will remain a majority shareholder and I guess that he will be on the board of directors for all of them.
I honestly wish good fortune to all three new companies, but I’m still a strong believer that to turn things around, you don’t need a new company or companies for that matter. 🤷
🎮 Early details on Assassin’s Creed Hexe
A few days ago Insider Gaming got some interesting details about an upcoming Assassin’s Creed game that we learned about from a teaser a year ago. It’s claimed that the game is in development by Ubisoft Montreal and an Executive Producer says that this game is going to be quite different from the ones that we’ve already seen.
From the official announcement below we know that the game is going to rely heavy on witchcraft and is probably going to be set in Central Europe during the 16th-century Holy Roman Empire.
So far we also know that the game is probably going to have a single female protagonist and going to have more of a linear progression. It seems that with the recent Assassin’s Creed games, the company is going further and further to its original roots. Personally, I would love to see a new open-world Assassin’s Creed as long as they spend just as long on side quests as on the story missions. But the producer already stated in one of his early interviews that “Not everything has to be a 150-hour RPG, right? To bring more diversity to the places we choose to visit and to how we choose to represent those periods.” So, I guess let’s agree to disagree, right?
Insider Gaming also claims to have early footage of the game with some gameplay and abilities, like possessing animals to do your bidding, small objects telekinesis and a fear system. So, it all sounds like a great recipe for success, but we’ll see.
So many speculations in just one section 😅
What do you think? Would you like to play as a medieval assassin-witch with supernatural abilities and reign fire on the Holy Roman Empire?
📱 Apple cuts Vision Pro production in half
According to a report from PC Gamer, Apple decided not to double down on Vision Pro due to less-than-mediocre sales numbers in the US.
The report suggests that the demand was much lower than Apple originally anticipated and that future updates may be in jeopardy.
I mean, it’s not really a surprise, isn’t it? I’ve never been too excited about AR/VR experiences, but the sheer price of this device is beyond imaginable. $3,499! I don’t know about you, but I imagine that there are not a lot of people in the world (even Apple fanatics) who can afford to spend so much money on such an uncomfortable device for day-to-day use.
It has its audience, but it’s definitely not as huge as the 800,000 devices of the original production plan stated. Apple also has a lot of software-related plans for this device, but it doesn’t seem to be going so well.
If you are enjoying the journey so far, you might as well subscribe to start getting all of this goodness right to your mailbox ✉️
🎮 The Witcher 1 Remake is in development
This news is a little bit dated, but I honestly just learned it this week thanks to Kotaku when I got into a rabbit hole of news on a completely unrelated topic.
Apparently, at the end of 2022, CDPR announced that they are working on a rework of the first game in the Witcher series. The one that started this amazing journey. And it looks like they (CDPR) are applying everything they’ve learned from other parts of the series into this remake. Namely, they are planning to introduce an open world as opposed to specific areas and zones.
Some of you may not have played it, but I spent hours and hours in it as a teenager. I vaguely remember the details, but I do remember this excruciating gameplay that was somewhere between Dragon Age 1 (not surprising, considering that they basically used the same engine) and your typical Action RPG. And I’m glad they’ve decided to move back from that. It was pure torture to combine all the different stances with action mechanics, but the story was great. The art style, story, music, and everything else was great. Especially for that time.
Now I’m not even sure what I want to play first, this remake or a completely new game, but in the same setting 🤔
What do you think? Are you planning to give this one a try?
🎬 Small update on Dune 3
Game Spot kindly shared a glimpse into what the future holds for Dune 3 from Denis Villeneuve (Director). It’s not huge and probably nobody is expecting anything to happen just yet, considering that the movie is still in theatres, but still.
❗❗❗SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen the movie, stop right here
First of all, the movies are probably going to be at least a trilogy as it was his plan all along and it’s going to adapt the the Dune Messiah novel, which picks up 12 years after Dune 2. The premise is that Paul and Shani are together again, but there is a lot of anger and resentment on Chani’s part. Understandably, considering the fact how things ended. But Villeneuve said that he already has everything figured out on how they reunite and handle this situation.
Also, he briefly shared his thoughts on the controversial popcorn bucket and discussed how s*x works in Dune's world. So, if you are interested, be sure to check out the whole article.
I’m not sure if his trilogy plans are going to happen though. The franchise is going strong and I’d expect that people would want to milk this cow as long as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised even if they turn the third movie into 2 parts. Hopefully, not.
🎮 Tales of Shire announcement trailer
Have you ever wondered what Animal Crossing would look like in Middle-Earth? Look no further!
Developer Wētā Workshop and publisher Private Division have released the first trailer for Tales of Shire. It has the same premise as Animal Crossing, but you are playing as your custom hobbit.
You can forage fruits and herbs, tend to gardens, fish, trade with townsfolk, and more, all while working to help Bywater.
The gameplay looks a bit clunky for my taste, but my partner got pretty excited and wondered where to play it now.
The game is scheduled to be released in 2024 on PS / Xbox and PC. (no switch?)
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
If you are enjoying the journey, you might as well subscribe to start getting all of this goodness right to your mailbox ✉️
Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
- Houston, we have a problem!
- Let's split into three...