Author: Emil John

The Witcher 4, tentatively referred to as Project Polaris, will not be a reskinned version of The Witcher 3, as it will feature brand new gameplay mechanics. During a Q&A session following its financial report for Fiscal Year 2023, Michał Nowakowski, joint CEO at CD Projekt, was asked regarding the remaining development time, in years, for The Witcher 4. In response, he stated that he is unable to give a specific time frame because doing so would be leading on to the release date, which is not something the studio has historically done, and it will not be doing that…

Legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu will return to compose the main theme song for the sequel to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the final part in the Remake trilogy. During a special talk session between Nobuo Uematsu, Tetsuya Nomura, and Kazushige Nojima on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Nomura asked Uematsu that, since he worked on the main theme song for Final Fantasy VII Remake, titled Hollow, and now the main theme song for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, titled No Promises To Keep, it stands to reason that he would come back for the sequel and final part in the…

Lifetime sales of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s second game console, the PS2, are over 160 million units, based on the latest information. Speaking during the PlayStation Podcast to commemorate his time at Sony Interactive Entertainment, former President Jim Ryan discussed his run with the PlayStation brand, from starting up the first offices in Europe before the launch of the PS1, to his retirement next month as CEO. Podcast host Sid Shuman asked Ryan about what comes to his mind when he thinks about his work with PlayStation during the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s. In response, Ryan associated…

The development of Rockstar Games’ upcoming open world action title, GTA VI, is falling behind schedule, though there are no significant changes in plans for the game’s release. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has offered his views on the recent drop in share price following a report that claimed that the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto series is behind schedule and may be delayed to 2026. In addition, he has shared insight into whether this information regarding GTA VI missing its target release plans is accurate. Schreier highlighted the realities of game development, stating that games are always behind schedule…

A developer who worked on NetEase’s upcoming super hero team-based PvP shooter, Marvel Rivals, claims to have not been paid for their work on the game. The developer in question is character concept artist William Bao, who took to Twitter/X to share that he had worked on Marvel Rivals with NetEase during the COVID period, and that he did not get paid for it. He mentioned that he began to get suspicious around the start of week 3 of his work with the studio. The management at NetEase told him that he was merely working on an art style test…

A US District Court judge has ruled in favor of PlayStation in a patent infringement lawsuit worth $500 million involving controller technology. The lawsuit, filed by Genuine Enabling Technology (GET) against Sony Corporation in 2017, alleged that the communication technology used by Sony’s PlayStation console and controller violated GET’s “730 Patent, entitled ‘Method and Apparatus for Producing a Combined Data Stream and Recovering Therefrom the Respective User Input Stream and at Least One Input Signal.” GET highlighted that Sony’s controllers use a dual-frequency transmission method, where button inputs were sent on a ‘slow-varying’ frequency and motion control inputs on a…

Yakuza developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio remain firm on using its Dragon Engine for future entries in the series. Speaking during an interview, Yutaka Ito, Technical Manager on the Yakuza series at Ryu ga Gotoku Studio, stated that the studio’s Dragon Engine is here to stay, and that the reason behind training new employees to work in Unity and Unreal Engine is to have them aid in making the Dragon engine better and keep the development team up to date whenever the technological landscape in the game industry changes. Ito shared that the reason behind the improved graphics seen in…

A leaked presentation from GDC 2024 has revealed the estimated subscriber count for Blizzard’s massive multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft. As per community estimates based on the leaked GDC 2024 presentation for World of Warcraft, the game currently has a subscriber count of 7.25 million. It’s worth noting that calculations are based on the assumption that the Y-axis of the subscriber count graph shown during the presentation begins at 0, and that the last officially available subscriber count since the launch of Legion i.e. 5.5 million. The data in the slides from Blizzard indicate that World of Warcraft’s subscriber…

Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida has teased the possibility of a Final Fantasy IX remake being in development. During the the Final Fantasy XIV panel at Pax East 2024, producer Naoki Yoshida teased the possible existence of a Final Fantasy IX remake. He revealed that those who pre-order the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail expansion will receive a miniature version of Final Fantas IX’s protagonist, Zidane,  as an adventuring companion. Yoshida mentioned that fans may have noticed a lot of Final Fantasy IX references at the panel, though he added that the reason behind it is a secret. This is…

Rockstar Games is reportedly “confident” that the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, GTA VI, will have a 60 fps mode on PS5. In response to a question regarding the possibility of a stable performance mode in GTA VI on PS5, HaiLin Si, Senior Material Artist at Rockstar Games, stated that the development team is “confident”, though he isn’t sure about the game’s rendering resolution in said mode. He also mentioned that Rockstar North remains the primary team working on the upcoming Grand Theft Auto title, and that other studios are only there for support. HaiLin described GTA…