by RootSec
Discord plays middleman between PlayStation and Xbox, while Resident Evil Village sees record player count, in this week’s recap of games industry news. Game Rant has compiled some of the biggest gaming news stories from this past week together into a concise post for fans and enthusiasts to stay up to date on the most important events in the industry per week. Highlighting the most relevant stories, this list is not inherently and totally objective, and will not contain every news story this week. Rather, this is intended for gaming fans who want a quick rundown on the largest/most impactful stories that occurred in the last week in games.
In this week’s gaming news, Resident Evil Village sees record players and viewership on Twitch at the game’s launch. PlayStation enters into an agreement with Discord for further integration. Bungie announces Destiny 2‘s upcoming synthwave-inspired season coming next week. The ESA announces several new companies confirmed to be attending E3 this year. The Yakuza developers unveiled the latest sequel to the spin-off series Judgment, coming later this year. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade receives its final trailer ahead of its debut on PS5. All that and more in this week’s roundup of games industry news.
This week saw the release of Capcom’s seminal survival horror series Resident Evil, evidently to record player numbers according to Steam and Twitch analytics. On the Twitch side, total viewership at launch was around 420,000 on launch day alone. A combination of larger streamers’ fans among comparatively smaller content creators led to Village‘s record-breaking viewership compared to the 225,000 and 300,000 for Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2/3 Remake viewership at launch.
On Steam, Resident Evil Village set records for concurrent player counts as well as being among the top three best-selling games on Steam throughout the week. Positive reviews, among general excitement for another Resident Evil 7-esque game, has lead to great success in Village‘s first weekend.
After an apparent bid by Microsoft seems to have fallen through, Discord has entered into another similar agreement that it already has with Xbox. This week, PlayStation announced via the PlayStation Blog that the platform has formed an integration agreement with Discord. It’s unclear how extensive this integration will be at the moment, but both companies intend to “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.”
Discord has a similar integration with Xbox currently, though it’s particularly limited. Xbox players can only voice chat with other Xbox players on Discord, not cross-platform. There’s no indication that PlayStation will do anything more than the same, but Xbox also previously hinted at the possibility of cross-chat integration for Xbox in the future.
The newest seasonal update for Destiny 2 is now confirmed as Season of the Splicer, a very Tron-esque sci-fi season based around a new scheme enacted by the Vex. Guardians have to defeat the Vex that have imposed an “endless night” on The Last City, all the while teaming up with a Fallen Splicer Mithrax, who communes with machines. Season of the Splicer begins on May 11, lasting until late August, presumably as the penultimate season until The Witch Queen in 2022.
As for the content roadmap, Season of the Splicer brings with it a new 6-Guardian “Override” activity, the return of Vault of Glass raid, Solstice of Heroes, as well as the introduction of transmog (“Armor Synthesis”). This season’s exotic weapon is a new “Cryosthesia 77k” Stasis sidearm, while also adding 30 legendary weapons into the loot pool, including old weapons like Hung Jury.
Among the initial list of confirmed companies, several big developers and publishers were not part of E3’s confirmed list of attendees. However this week, the E3 Twitter confirmed another slew of developers and publishers for the trade show’s online event: Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Namco, Gearbox Entertainment, XSEED Games/Marvelous USA, among others.
Previously, companies like Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive, and more were confirmed among the announcement of E3 2021’s digital showcase.
As Yakuza moves on to a traditional, turn-based JRPG approach, it seems the roots of action RPG Yakuza will love on through Judgment. Sega revealed this week that a sequel to Judgment, entitled Lost Judgment, is coming later this year simultaneously to Japanese and Western audiences. Ryu Ga Gotoku studio has also confirmed that Yakuza will continue onward with the Like a Dragon approach of JRPGs, and Lost Judgment will serve as the conduit for the action RPGs of the studio’s past.
As the first episode of Final Fantasy 7 Remake heads to PS5, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade received a new trailer with plenty of new hints to the Episode Yuffie DLC. Several details on new boss fights, the inclusion of a Ramuh summon for the first time in Final Fantasy 7, and a Fort Condor minigame coming as well in Intergrade.
Additionally, PlayStation also confirmed that timed exclusivity for Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be extended for at least six months beyond Intergrade‘s release date.
As Jade Raymond moves on to their own independent game development efforts, additional former Stadia developers have moved to join Haven Studio. Six new employees all formerly used to work at Google Stadia, similar to Raymond, who used to be the VP of Games at Stadia previously. Back in March, Raymond ended up leaving Stadia as Google closed all first-party development efforts for the game streaming platform.
Raymond has since formed Haven studios, and has partnered with Sony for a PlayStation-exclusive IP for PS5.
