As ever, there’s plenty happening in the world of gaming.
While the industry continues to grapple with layoffs and studios being closed, there are lots of positive things on the horizon too, so let’s take a look at another week in gaming news!
Street Fighter 6 gets a brand new DLC character
This week, a brand new DLC character was announced for Capcom’s popular one-on-one fighter Street Fighter 6, and it’s an iconic character from the franchise’s history.
A new trailer released just a few days ago heralded the arrival of everyone’s favourite gloomy warrior Akuma, who will make his way into the game sometime this spring.
If you’re a Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice fan, you’ll likely appreciate Akuma’s appearance in Street Fighter 6, since to us, he resembles an extremely buff Sculptor.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown gets a roadmap
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is the best game not enough people have played this year, and this week, it received a roadmap detailing future updates.
These updates include a boss rush mode, a speedrun mode, and a permadeath mode, as well as new challenges, new outfits, and a paid piece of story DLC hitting later this year.
In short, there’s never been a better time to try out Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, so go buy it if you haven’t already!
MultiVersus makes a reappearance
If you’ve been wondering just what happened to Warner Bros’ Super Smash Bros-esque “platform fighter” MultiVersus, then this week yielded an answer to that question.
The answer is this: MultiVersus is reappearing in May. The previous release of the game was nothing more than a beta test, but this launch will be the real deal.
Developer Player First Games promises multiple new characters and stages, as well as various gameplay and networking improvements to ensure that the game lives up to expectations.
Starbreeze’s CEO departs
Ill-fated sequel Payday 3 has proven to be an insurmountable problem for developer Starbreeze’s CEO, it seems, as he left his position this week.
The circumstances under which Tobias Sjögren left his position are unclear; it could be a “jump before you’re pushed” situation, or it could well have been entirely his own decision.
In any case, he’s been replaced by interim CEO Juergen Goeldner while Starbreeze looks for a more permanent occupant for the position. Will this help to turn Payday 3 around?
Survival games are go: Enshrouded plans and V Rising release date
The survival game is having another moment right now, it seems, as two of the genre’s most popular exports got news this week.
Enshrouded, which has only been on release for a few weeks, got a roadmap in which we learned about all the things coming to the game soon. Rejoice, for it will soon be playable on Steam Deck!
V Rising, meanwhile, got a 1.0 release date, with the undead RPG rising out of its tomb on PC in May. It’s also arriving on PS5 at some point, although we haven’t got a release date for the PS5 launch yet.
Embracer Group sells Saber Interactive assets
In yet another instalment of the Embracer Group saga, the embattled company this week sold off some of the assets relating to Saber Interactive, a publisher formerly under its umbrella.
These assets include Saber Interactive itself, as well as several studios under Saber’s remit, such as legendary FPS developer 3D Realms and Rocket Arena studio Nimble Giant.
A couple of projects started under Embracer’s auspices will continue development, however, including a game being worked on by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and several AAA projects.
Apex Legends team hit by layoffs
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like a week can go by in the gaming industry without news of layoffs, and such was the case this week, as we learned that Apex Legends developer Respawn appears to be the layoff wave’s latest victim.
Several Respawn employees posted about the layoffs on their LinkedIn profiles, expressing dismay and disappointment regarding the scale of said layoffs.
According to an EA spokesperson (who was speaking to PCMag, whose story we’ve linked above), these Respawn layoffs were part of an earlier wave, but it’s still sad to receive confirmation that they’re happening.
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection provokes ire
Many fans were looking forward to the launch of Aspyr’s Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, which includes the two games released during the sixth generation rather than the more recent reboots.
However, when the games launched, they were met with an extremely negative reception, largely owing to technical issues surrounding online multiplayer, including high ping and low server availability.
Aspyr released a statement on its website in response to this controversy, but the statement isn’t very comprehensive. It simply pledges to continue working on the game and thanks fans for their “overwhelming support”. Hmm.
Palworld is getting its first raid
Lest you thought Palworld had somehow vanished after its massive wave of popularity on release, think again. Developer Pocketpair revealed what the game’s first raid will look like this week.
As it turns out, your first Palworld raid will pit you against a “powerful evil Pal” by the name of Bellanoir, who’s threatening the Palapagos Islands with her presence.
As many have pointed out, Bellanoir bears more than a passing resemblance to Pokemon’s Gardevoir, but we don’t want to rake over those old coals again, so we’ll just say that we’re looking forward to taking her on.
Helldivers 2 racks up millions upon millions of sales
If you’ve played Helldivers 2, then you’ll probably know it’s proven a global sensation, with millions of players around the world flocking to its satirical world to shoot some bugs and bots.
Analyst Doug Creutz (via Bloomberg) reckons that the game has racked up at least 8 million sales to date, and that the numbers are getting bigger with each week.
It’s safe to say that we’ve got a bona fide hit on our hands with Helldivers 2, and with murmurings of new enemies on the horizon, don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
