🎮 Star Wars Total War rumored, GTA 6 release window, 2K's next iteration...
Star Wars Total War rumor, GTA 6 console release window, 2K plans to reveal some big news on a major franchise, Samsung's answer to Apple's "Crush" ad, Larian and Activision open new studios in Warsaw
Hello friends,
Today is May 21st 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Star Wars goes Total War, allegedly
🎮 GTA 6 release potential release date
🎮 2K plans to reveal the next iteration on “biggest and most beloved franchises”
📱 Samsung cashes in on Apple’s disastrous ad
🎮 Larian opens a new studio to help with “two very ambitious RPGs”
🎮 New Activision studio opens to develop narrative-based AAA franchise
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Star Wars goes Total War, allegedly
Insider Gaming is claiming (based on another report) that Creative Assembly, the creators of so many Total War series., are working on three new games in the genre and that one of them is based on the Star Wars universe.
It’s also claimed that this game will be the second one to be released (whenever it may be).
There are no details on what this game is going to look like, but one can speculate that it’s probably going to revolve around either Clone Wars or Empire vs. Rebels.
Honestly, either way, it sounds amazing! It sounds like a very promising idea to have the ability to gather my clones and recreate some of the best Clone Wars battles, like the battle of Geonosis. However, I’m a bit sceptical about the monetization strategies that Creative Assembly used in the past.
For example, I wanted to get into Warhammer Total War 3 after some of my friends had recommended it. The game costs 80 CAD, which sounds perfectly reasonable. What I don’t find reasonable at all is that every bloody DLC costs between 10-30 dollars extra. There is no season pass or anything like it. So, if you want a full experience with all DLCs, you need to spend around 420 dollars for it. What the actual f***?
The game basically copies the Sims on this matter, which is not something to look forward to.
What do you think? Are you excited about the possibility of Star Wars Total War?
🎮 GTA 6 release potential release date
Thanks to PC Gamer and the 2024 financial report from Take-Two Interactive, we now have a window for GTA 6 console release - the fall of 2025.
Even though it’s not an exciting news delivery mechanism, it’s still something, right? And even though the window is set, the company still can push it once we get closer to it. The Game Development process can be very unpredictable, but I think every gamer will agree that we would rather wait a bit longer than pay for an unfinished game.
Take-Two also said: “We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase.” Which was very “corporate” of them.
It’s weird though that we haven’t heard anything about the PC release yet, but I’m assuming it’s not going to be very far behind. 🚗🚓
🎮 2K plans to reveal the next iteration on “biggest and most beloved franchises”
Summer Game Fest forwarded this pretty cryptic message on X last week and it left a lot of people wondering on what exactly 2K plans to reveal on June 7.
There are quite a few franchises from 2K that could fit this description, but everybody is speculating that they are probably talking about either Bioshock, Mafia or Borderlands.
There has been plenty of speculation about all three of them over the years, but there were rumours about a Mafia game that’s been in development. So, maybe 2K decided to break the silence on this one, while other media projects are taking over other franchises (like a Borderlands movie, for example).
That being said, Bioshock also has been dormant for quite some time if we don’t count remasters. My money is on these two, but whatever it’s going to be, I’m happy to see more news and more games being developed by 2K.
But what I’m really hoping for is another Civilization 😜
What are you hoping to hear from them this summer?
📱 Samsung cashes in on Apple’s disastrous ad
There are a lot of rivalries between corporations all over the world, everybody is competing for something. And now and again we hear and see how one company capitalize on an ad campaign of another.
If you haven’t seen a disastrous Apple video about a new iPad, here it is:
The video itself has been met with a lot of criticism and personally, I think it’s quite disturbing and insulting. Apple even went ahead to disable the comments and by the looks of it, they are also clearing thumbs-down responses on YouTube. I’m not sure if you can even do that, but it’s surprising to me that this video has 0 dislikes with all the outrage that’s been going on in the media last week.
The idea was clear, it’s just that nobody really liked the execution. Myself included.
It didn’t take long for Samsung to capitalize on this opportunity. And this was quite a clever move by them. Honestly, I think Apple needs to replace their marketing department and Samsung should give a raise to theirs.
🎮 Larian opens a new studio to help with “two very ambitious RPGs”
Amid all the layoffs, it’s so incredible to hear that some studios are not only retaining their talents but also expanding with the announcement from Larian to open its seventh studio in Warsaw, Poland.
It’s not really surprising, considering how successful the last project turned out to be, but it’s still a pretty impressive achievement for the company that for years used to be considered mediocre. Now they are the force to be recorded with.
We still don’t know anything about the upcoming projects beside the fact that they have nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms and Hasbro. Swen Vincke (Founder) made sure of that during GDC 2024, but everybody is speculating that at least one of these games is another Divity game.
In the meantime, the company is opening a lot of positions in the studio to contribute to those upcoming projects.
It sure is tempting to check them out 😅
🎮 New Activision studio opens to develop narrative-based AAA franchise
Amazingly, less than a week after Xbox closed 4 Bethesda studios, they gave the green light to Activision to open a new studio in Warsaw to focus on a new game.
This is another good example of corporate hypocrisy. The official reason for the closure was about “keeping the business healthy in the long run”, but I’m struggling to see how healthy it is to close one thing to open up another. Or am I not seeing the bigger picture somewhere?
Rant aside, Activision also shared a blog post regarding Elsewhere Entertainment (the opening studio in question)
Built from the ground up, Elsewhere Entertainment is a premier and standalone studio dedicated to establishing an environment that inspires bold and diverse ideas. The team’s underlying mission encourages everyone to explore and collaborate creatively to craft a franchise with an enduring legacy that resonates far beyond games.
The talented team at Elsewhere Entertainment consists of a collection of storytelling experts whose credits include The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Destiny, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and Far Cry.
And now I’m wondering, how many people from shutdown studios have been offered a chance to join this new studio? None? 🤔
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
If Star Wars: Total War is going to be lore interesting it should fill the holes between episodes 6 and 7 :-) We have enough of media about the Clone Wars, I think. Then again, I will never pick up a Star Wars game, anyway, what do I know ;-)