Take-Two Interactive makes one of the biggest acquisitions in the gaming industry, while Bend Studio's former director laments the cancelled Days Gone sequel, in this week's gaming 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 recap of gaming news, Take-Two Interactive plans to spend $12.7 billion to acquire one of the biggest mobile developers in a bid to enter that section of the games industry. Former Bend Studio director Jeff Ross gave some additional details on the cancelled Days Gone sequel that the studio failed to pitch to Sony. Meanwhile, Sony intends to combat PS5 shortages by prolonging production of the previous console instead. Nvidia silently announces a new GPU refresh after already announcing two brand new graphics cards at CES 2022. All that and more in this week's review of the biggest news in the games industry.
Take-Two Interactive Moves To Acquire Zynga For $12.7 Billion
This week, publisher Take-Two Interactive has announced plans to acquire mobile game developer Zynga for $12.7 billion, set to finalize (pending approval) in Q1 2023. Zynga is known for developing and publishing some of the most popular mobile and browser games of all time, including examples like Words with Friends and FarmVille. Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau explains that "Take-Two’s best-in-class capabilities and intellectual property" will assist with expanding the publisher's mobile game efforts.
At the moment, it's unclear what these efforts will look like, as there are no confirmed projects in development as a result of this acquisition. That being said, it's clear this is an effort to expand Take-Two Interactive's biggest franchises (Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead, Borderlands, 2K, etc.) into the mobile gaming market. This acquisition in particular marks the most expensive acquisition made in the video game space, ahead of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda/ZeniMax in early 2021.
Former Bend Studio Director Laments Cancellation Of Days Gone Sequel
In an interview with USA Today, former Bend Studio director Jeff Ross spoke out on the potential of a Days Gone sequel after news has been buzzing on the canceled sequel by Sony. Because other established franchises had somewhat middling first entries, Ross believed that, given another entry and opportunity for a Days Gone sequel, a new entry would've been a significant improvement over the original game.
This all comes on the back of reports earlier this year that Ross accused Sony of allegedly making Days Gone seem like a "disappointment," despite approximately selling a similar amount of units compared to Ghost of Tsushima's eight million sold. Ross had worked on a Days Gone 2 pitch before leaving Bend Studio, and now Bend is currently working on a new IP. The studio had previously pitched an open-world Resistance game to Sony, but was not approved.
Sony Commits To Additional PS4 Console Production, Xbox One Discontinued
In response to the global component shortage affecting PS5 supply, Sony is amending its plans for phasing out of PS4 console production in 2021. To combat the constant shortage of PS5 consoles and massive demand, Sony has brought into production an additional one million PS4 consoles for 2022. According to the report by Bloomberg, "people familiar with the matter" stated that it's easier to source the chipset used in the PS4 than it is for PS5.
Sony has always consistently continued production of older generations in spite of newer consoles releasing. However, for Xbox, Microsoft has ended production and discontinued Xbox One consoles in favor of ramping up Xbox Series X/S production. While production officially ended at the end of 2020 for Xbox One, stock for the Xbox Series S is evidently pretty well-supplied despite an impressive sales rate.
Nvidia Reveals New RTX 3080, 12GB VRAM Version
After CES 2022, where Nvidia already revealed the RTX 3050 and RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards, the hardware manufacturer evidently had one more new GPU to announce this year. Though this GPU hardware update wasn't give any kind of significant marketing or announcement, the update means newer RTX 3080 cards will come with 12 GB VRAM, along with higher teraflops output, additional CUDA cores, while maintaining a similar clock speed. No word on official MSRP or pricing yet.
Stalker 2 Delayed To December 2022
Stalker 2's release date was delayed significantly, pushing from late spring to early winter of this year. Originally, Stalker 2 was intended to release on April 28, 2022, but the game's release has been delayed to December 8, 2022. GSC Game World cited that the additional seven months will help the development team fulfill its vision for Stalker 2, and that "development should take as long as necessary, especially in the case of such a project."
Call of Duty Vanguard Crosses Over With Attack On Titan Anime
In perhaps one of the most surprising crossovers with Call of Duty, content from the massively popular Attack on Titan anime is now available. The highlight of the new Attack on Titan crossover was the new skin for the Daniel Yatsu operator, making the Call of Duty: Vanguard character look like Levi Ackerman. Additionally, several unique weapon blueprints are named after weapons and themes from the anime as well, including the "Historia" and "Ymir Curse" weapons.
Techland Promises 'Five Years' Of Content For Dying Light 2
Marketing has started to ramp up for Dying Light 2, which infamously led to the "500-hour completion time" that the game allegedly has, but what's more impressive is Techland's planned support for the game. Techland has promised "at least five years post-launch with new stories, locations, in-game events," and more throughout the game's lifespan. The original Dying Light saw a similar amount of post-launch support, something Techland intends to replicate with its sequel.