TGO Daily | January 14, 2021 | Star Wars Heads to Ubisoft
January 14, 2021
In The News
Star Wars Loses EA Exclusivity
We have yet another development in the unfolding story around Lucasfilm Games. Today, it was revealed that EA will not retain their exclusivity over the Star Wars franchise after 2023. In fact, they have already announced that Ubisoft is currently working on an open-world Star Wars game. It’ll be developed by their subsidiary Massive Entertainment (The Division 2, upcoming Avatar game), and will be made in Massive’s “Snowdrop” engine.
It’s worth noting that the 10-year EA exclusivity likely wasn’t cancelled, which means that this game won’t appear until at least 2023. Lucasfilm has also said that they will continue to work with EA on Star Wars projects in the future. I believe they are currently working on a Jedi: Fallen Order sequel and Battlefront 3.
Paired with the Indiana Jones announcement from yesterday, we’re shaping up for a great early-to-mid 2020s run of Lucasfilm games.
CD PROJEKT’s “Commitment to Quality”
Today, CD PROJEKT and its CEO Marcin Iwiński released a statement regarding the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and their roadmap moving forward.
Based on [a] legacy of genuine and honest communication, you’ve trusted us and pre-ordered our game. And despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet.
I, and the entire leadership team, are deeply sorry for this and this video is me publicly owning up to that. Please don’t fault any of our teams for what happened.
Iwiński goes on to explain why last-gen consoles were poorly optimized, and tried to address some of the concerns around the review embargo situation.
Unfortunately, these statements accomplished very little. While they were published under a veil of transparency, they conveniently ignored a number of key concerns. For example, they claim to have missed many of the issues with the last-gen version of the game in QA, which is utter nonsense:
They also claim to no longer have obligatory overtime, despite saying this exact thing during the game’s development and still implementing mandatory crunch:
Finally, there was an attempt to address some the issues surrounding the game’s reviews, but ultimately failed to say anything of significance.
Perhaps it’s naïve to wish for a better apology or explanation, because ultimately there is no good excuse for the circumstances around Cyberpunk’s release. It was clearly a rushed game that needed to generate sales before the end of a fiscal year, and they aren’t about to own up to that are they?
Moving forward, they’re getting two major patches into the game. One in 10 days, the other in “weeks to come.” Then two free DLC packs, and free tech update for next-gen consoles in the second half of this year.
Hogwarts Legacy Delayed
This graphic says it all:
Announced in September as a 2021 release, Hogwarts Legacy is now out in 2022. No problem here — if the previous story is any indicator, it’s that you should take your time with games like this.
Also In The News
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