🎮 Witcher Multiplayer Game Update, Spider-Man 3 and a New Studio from Sony...
Witcher Game may allow the creation of your own Witcher, Spider-Man 3 could be in development, Sony opens a new AAA studio, A hard year for Ubisoft and more!
Hello friends,
Today is January 21st 2025 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Witcher Game may allow the creation of your own Witcher
🎮 Spider-Man 3 could be in development
🎮 Sony opens a new AAA studio
🎮 A hard year for Ubisoft
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Witcher Game may allow the creation of your own Witcher
Recently a rumour surfaced that internally called Project Sirius from CDPR (multiplayer spin-off on the Witcher series) is going to introduce the creation of your own witcher after all.
According to Game Rant, a job posting for a Lead 3D Character Artist at The Molasses Flood (Boston studio leading the development of this game) is a basis for this. The job description states that the person accepting this position will report to the Project Sirius Art Director and will work with other members of the creative team to "ensure characters align with the project’s artistic vision and gameplay needs" and to deliver "world-class characters".
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily suggest that we are going to be the ones creating those characters, but fans all around the world look for any clues at that point to understand what kind of a multiplayer game we are going to get.
Personally, I think whatever it’s going to be, I’m game. I’ve been playing and replaying these games for a long time and that’s saying something. Fun fact, when the game was first released I was so against it and refused to play it because it was “inaccurate” and “overhyped” 😅
🎮 Spider-Man 3 could be in development
Another interesting speculation based on a job listing, this time from Insomniac. And it suggests that Spider-Man 3 is already in the early production stages.
According to a newly posted job listing for a Senior UX Researcher, this person would be responsible for “leading the research process for a AAA title,” and will be required to work at Insomniac Games’ Burbank UX Lab over a 3-month period to help with a project that is already in early production.
Now, it’s worth noting that there are at least 2 projects already confirmed by Insomniac, Wolverine and Spider-Man 3. We haven’t heard much about the first one in quite some time, so it might just be related. The point is that nothing is certain at this point, but whatever it is, it’s great that it’s moving forward.
As a great fan of their games, I’m very much looking forward to both. My personal bet is that this role is more for Wolverine as this game probably requires more research than Spider-Man just because nobody has seen it before (us, gamers, I mean). And UXR is usually responsible for early playtests and confirming any assumptions about the game being either interesting or not. So, we’ll see if my guess is current during the following months 😅
Which one are you waiting for more? Spider-Man or Wolverine?
🎮 Sony opens a new AAA studio
And more good news from the world of Sony. Apparently, Sony has opened a new AAA game studio in Los Angeles, California. This unannounced team is the 20th studio under the PlayStation first-party umbrella and seems to be working on a new groundbreaking AAA IP for PS5.
According to a job posting from the PS website:
We are a newly established AAA studio based in Los Angeles, driven by a team of seasoned industry leaders and experienced game developers.
Our mission is to create the next groundbreaking AAA original IP while reimagining the development process with a lean and highly efficient approach. We’re seeking talented individuals who share our vision and are eager to join us on this journey.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing Sony hasn’t shared any details about this new studio. But fans around the world are already speculating whether it’s a studio for Jason Blundell, a renowned Call of Duty: Black Ops developer or maybe it’s a team developing Bungie's Gummybears incubation project.
Whatever it is, it’s always nice to hear about new studios being open rather than closed 🥳
If you haven’t subscribed yet, this button is just for you ⤵️
🎮 A hard year for Ubisoft
It’s been a rocky 2024 for Ubisoft (especially the second half) and it looks like this one is going to be even harder. Ubisoft has announced that it has appointed a group of “leading advisors” to assist with exploring company options moving forward.
According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, this group of advisors will “review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.”
Following the strategic and execution reviews initiated by the Executive Committee a few months ago, Ubisoft is taking decisive steps to reshape the Group in order to deliver best-in-class player experiences, enhance operational efficiency and maximize value creation.
I don’t envy them right now. By all accounts, it looks like everything is on the line with their 2025 releases and if they go belly up, then it looks like the company is going to sell and then everything will change. And honestly, I don’t know if it’s for better or worse. The last few years Ubisoft didn’t really shine with their games, at least for me. Maybe it’s time to make a change…
What do you think? Do you think the AC: Shadows is going to be a success or a failure?
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 Transformers: Reactivate leaked gameplay after the project stops
So, last week we talked about the cancelled Transformers game and following that news, the gameplay footage from a 2020 build was re-leaked revealing a bit about what kind of a game it was supposed to be.
Despite all the missing textures and rough animations, this build looks surprisingly polished for a discontinued game. And again, we are talking about a build reportedly from almost 5 years ago…It looks like it was close to something, but unfortunately, all we have now is a memory.
🎮 Who launched the first nuke in Fallout
If you are a fan of the series, you probably won’t hear anything new here. But recently I encountered an article on Insider Gaming that finally answers the question “Who launched the first nuke in Fallout?”
The answer is surprisingly China, according to the interview with Fallout co-creator Tim Cain:
The reason we got nuked is: bio-weapons were illegal and somehow China found out we were doing FEV [Forced Evolutionary Virus]. And they were like, ‘You have to stop it.’ And we went, ‘Okay’. But all we did is move it.
At least now we know the answer, right? Did you know about it?
🎮 Fortnite player count is finally known
I don’t know about you, but I always wondered how many people are playing Fortnite. I mean, I knew that the audience was massive, but a recently published article from Insider Gaming shows just how much.
At the time of writing, 2,934,859 players are playing the game right now and an all-time-high player count was about a month ago with 14,343,880 concurrent players. That’s a big number…
On fortnite.gg, users can see exactly how many people play Fortnite and find out statistics such as gain percentage and average rates, plus player peaks. The website itself contains a lot of other stuff that may be interesting to those who actually play the game, but I’m not one of them 😅
Were you at all surprised by those numbers? I kind of was and wasn’t at the same time…
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
with a great article about how use Notion for game docs.
Honestly, this template looks better than what we have 😅 In general, I’ve been kind of disappointed by Jira, Confluence and other Atlassian products, but it remains an industry standard, so we kind of have to use it. It’s great though that other people exploring alternatives and it looks like Notion might be the answer. Now we just need to wait when it becomes as widely used product as Jira 😁
😄 Personal Update
I’m already thinking that after a start of the year like that, I need to take another vacation 😅 A lot of paperwork, a lot of regular work and a lot of internal changes in our studio are piling up quite nicely in a way that I don’t have the time for anything else but work.
My group is back to figuring out the game to play together since I don’t want to play Baldur’s Gate 3 anymore. So, if you guys have any ideas of coop games that we can play with a group of 4, I’d appreciate it (I know I already asked, but I can’t help that my memory is filled with work).
What are you up to these days? How’s your start of the year?
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
If you feel like supporting me and my work, consider Powering-Up GameDev Relay 🎮
Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.