🎮 Silent Hill 1 Remake, MindsEye Reviews and Xbox Confirms Next Gen...
Silent Hill 1 Remake is In Development, MindsEye Reviews are Terrible, Xbox Confirms Next Gen Console with AMD, Warner Bros. Restructuring (Again) and more!
Hello friends,
Today is June 26th 2025 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Silent Hill 1 Remake is In Development
🎮 MindsEye Reviews are Terrible
🎮 Xbox Confirms Next Gen Console with AMD
🎮 Warner Bros. Restructuring (Again)
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Silent Hill 1 Remake is In Development
Following the success of Silent Hill 2 Remake, Konami recently announced that the same team will be taking on the endeavour to remake the game that started it all.
After exploding back in 1999, Silent Hill became almost synonymous with the horror genre while trying to compete with Capcom’s Resident Evil, and soon became its own beloved franchise. And now, almost 30 years later, Bloober Team is back with a contract with Konami to remake this game on modern platforms.
Unfortunately, there’s not much else that is known about this project aside from that. But it will be interesting to see how this remake will turn out to be.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why the whole remake process hasn’t started with this game, but I guess the second game got a bit more attention back in the day. Especially since the games are at least somewhat connected (based on the info I could get from various internet posts, since I haven’t played the first one). Regardless, it’s one more exciting project to look forward to!
What do you think about this announcement? Are you a fan of the series?
🎮 MindsEye Reviews are Terrible
After the recent release on June 10 of the already controversial game, the reviews are in, and they are not pretty. In fact, some even say it became the worst game of 2025 so far.
3rd person “GTA-killer” from a former member of Rockstar, Leslie Benzies, is definitely not doing so well, despite the fact that it is all over social media. Unfortunately, like so many games before it, the game was just too raw to be released. Everybody who played it is suffering from numerous bugs, lags and all sorts of performance issues, weird AI and a very repetitive gameplay loop. All in all, resulting in “Mostly Negative” reviews on Steam, 43 Metascore and 2.4/10 user scores.
With this project being the debut of the studio, many speculate that it might just be the end, even with the devs already acknowledging their shortcomings and committing to making the game better if players could just stick around.
But we heard this one before, didn’t we? For clarity, I have nothing against this game or this studio. I’m actually quite sympathetic. It was their first game that they really believed it, unfortunately, it was rushed to production without proper risk assessment or postponement to fix the most glaring issues, at least. These types of games tend to go one of two ways. The most likely scenario is that the game and the studio will be closed in the foreseeable future, and the less likely scenario is that these guys will continue working on this game and stabilize it as No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk.
Have you played this little gem?
🎮 Xbox Confirms Next Gen Console with AMD
Not so long after the release of Asus Ally, Xbox has announced that their next big console is already in development in collaboration with AMD.
Sarah Bond, Xbox President, recently reached out across multiple social media platforms to share this “strategic partnership” with AMD, with some information as to what it would mean to the future of Xbox:
Announcing that we’re building the next-generation of Xbox first-party devices and cloud, including our future Xbox consoles, together with AMD.
Next-level performance, cutting-edge graphics, breakthrough gameplay, and unmatched compatibility. Stay tuned for what’s next.
Together, we’re delivering deeper visual quality, immersive gameplay, and AI-powered experiences - grounded in a platform designed for players, not tied to a single store or device, and fully compatible with your existing Xbox game library.
And while this partnership is nothing new, I’m particularly interested in what this “AI-powered experience” really means. If you are not here for the first time, you know that I’m cautiously optimistic about AI, but some companies are pretty in-your-face with their “innovations” and I don’t think it’s a way to go. For example, Google does a terrible job with it. If you are using their products for work, they are constantly spamming you with “let us summarise those emails for you” or “enable the transcription with Gemini” or this that and the other thing, and I’m honestly going to lose it soon. But if it’s something useful and meaningful to the end-users, sure, let’s see what you’ve got!
What are your thoughts on AI being integrated into Xbox to “enhance the experience”?
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🎮 Warner Bros. Restructuring (Again)
Fortunately, this time without a new round of layoffs.
A few months ago, after the Suicide Squad fiasco, WB announced that they will be rethinking their approach and it meant shutting down Monolith, Player First Games and Warner Bros. San Diego, along with closing projects such as Wonder Woman, Multiversus and bunch of other things.
Now, a fresh report from Variety surfaced highlighting a bunch of new high-level changes in the company’s structure as well as reiterating that the focus of the company will be on “key franchises” such as Game of Thrones, DC Universe, Harry Potter and Mortal Kombat.
Warner Bros. Games Montreal studio head Yves Lachance now serves as Senior Vice President and will focus on games based on the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones franchises. Meanwhile, NetherRealm Studios’ Shaun Himmerick is taking on the Senior Vice President role to maintain the company’s Mortal Kombat and DC Universe efforts. Finally, Warner Bros. Games New York’s Steven Flenory has also been promoted to SVP of central tech & services and will manage game and publishing technology, customer service, quality assurance, and user research.
Our company is home to some of the biggest franchises in the world, and we are optimizing our team structure to develop long-term franchise roadmaps to delight players and fans of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat and DC games. We are very fortunate to have a strong stable of development and technology talent, and Yves, Shaun and Steven are respected leaders with excellent track records in their areas of expertise. I’m looking forward to working closely with them and the team as we work to make the best games possible for our key franchises.
Well, at least they didn’t layoff more people. Seriously though, I think it’s admirable that they are trying to adapt the best way they can, but I’m still not clear as to what was that horribly wrong with the Wonder Woman game and how come it’s not a part of the “DC-focused” approach…
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 The Outer Worlds 2 Becomes the First 80$ Microsoft Game
After the announcement about the price hike for games and consoles, we are inevitably entering an era when a AAA title costs 80$, and The Outer Worlds 2 recently became the first such title for Microsoft.
Microsoft highlighted that these price changes “were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development.”
While it’s somewhat understandable with regards to the current market situation, it’s understandable that players are not happy about it. Some execs even think that the true fans will find a way to make it work with the game they love, according to Insider Gaming.
And that’s true for some cases, but my guess is that gamers as a whole will be far more selective with games in the future.
🎮 Elden Ring Movie Director Respects The Source Material
That’s what I call dedication to the source material 😅
According to IGN, Alex Garland, who is set to direct an upcoming Elden Ring movie, is on his 7th playthrough of the game. And here are some of his thoughts on the bosses in the game:
It's Malenia who's the tough one. I'm now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I've leveled up, I've got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again.
That was the technique I learned with Dark Souls. It's not that you get better, it's more like monkeys and typewriters. You just keep doing it, and eventually, one day they're dead.
I honestly find great joy in reading stuff like this. It means that when the movie does come out, at least we will know that the director respected the franchise enough to get really familiar with the source.
🎮 Marathon is Delayed Due To “Clear” Feedback
After a somewhat controversial round of Alpha tests for Marathon, Bungie and Sony decided that the game still needs to spend some more time in the oven and shared that they will be delaying the launch until the feedback that they got is addressed:
Through every comment and real-time conversation on social media and Discord, your voice has been strong and clear.
We've taken this to heart, and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our Dev team, we’ve made the decision to delay the September 23 release.
You’ll hear from us again later this Fall when we can share the progress we’ve made, alongside the game’s new release date. Thank you again for your patience and — much more importantly — your passion. Your continued feedback will help us make Marathon the incredible gaming experience we all know it can be.
Well, at least they’ve saved themselves from another Concord disaster. Now it’s a question of whether they have really heard what the community told them or just listened…
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
and !
Being among the first people who subscribed to my newsletter,
will always hold a special place in my heart, and I can’t recommend enough, as I’ve been reading it myself ever since I joined this platform. This time shares some thoughts on Switch 2, which I appreciate very much, since I’m in the process of trying to decide what my first handheld console is going to be 😅 As usual, great stuff!😄 Personal Update
I’m not sure if you know this, but I have 2 siblings, and the oldest one is turning 16 this year. And he recently asked me about a QA path and what it takes to be a QA. And this was quite a surprise to me.
Let me explain. My brother is great; I love him to death. However, like many of the late Gen Z and Gen Alpha, he has very few interests apart from video games, TikTok/YouTube, and his professional ice dancing career. For clarity, this is fine, don’t get me wrong, I was the same when I was his age 😅
What I was surprised is the reasoning behind it and his readiness to get into it and start learning some stuff that may be useful in the future, and something that he could turn into a career. I can’t express how proud I am of that, and now I need to dust off my QA program that I was teaching a while ago 💪
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
I've watched a few MindsEye gameplay videos and reviews, and while it looks bad, this also feels like another case of internet dog piling because it doesn't look THAT bad. Instead, I think a lot of content creators jump on these fads so they can be a part of the conversation, then try to outdo each other with how much they can slam the game.
In terms of Mindseye, do you really think it will be the end of the Studio? They have other projects that they are actively working on like Everywhere do you think they would just pivot more to this?