Disney & Marvel Showcase Preview
E88: A preview of the September 9th Disney & Marvel Games Showcase.
Good morning gamers! The first ever ‘Disney & Marvel Games Showcase’ has been announced for September 9th and it will be live streamed directly from the D23 Expo hosted by Blessing Adeoye Jr. The digital showcase will feature new content from Disney & Pixar Games, Marvel Games, Lucasfilm Games and 20th Century Games. So, what can we expect at the showcase and what does Disney have going on in terms of games?
Confirmed new reveals from,
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Marvel’s Midnight Suns
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
A Sneak peek at the new Marvel game by Amy Hennig and Skydance New Media (currently rumored to be a Fantastic Four game).
Other projects that might get some airtime,
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Developed by Respawn, ETA release for March 2023)
Star Wars Eclipse (In early development by Quantic Dream)
Respawn’s Star Wars FPS (Lead by Respawn game director Peter Hirschmann)
Star Wars Strategy Game (Developed by Bit Reactor)
Star Wars Hunters (Developed by Zynga for mobile and Nintendo Switch, delayed to 2023)
Marvel’s Wolverine & Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (Being developed exclusively for PlayStation by Insomniac Games)
Marvel Snap (New Marvel based mobile card game by Second Dinner - in beta)
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (Delayed to 2023/2024 by Ubisoft)
Indian Jones (Being developed by the Xbox studio Machine Games)
Black Panther (Rumoured to be in development at EA)
Embracer Group - Acquisition Expert
Embracer Group published an interim report for their Q1 results from April to June 2022. The press release outlined their ambitious expectation for 20-35% organic growth during FY 22/23, their sustainability goals, a mergers and acquisitions update and other financial updates.
As of August 2022, Embracer Group released the following metrics.
12,750 employees and contracted employees in over 40 countries
120 internal game development studios
850 internal owned and controlled franchises and IPs
220 games currently in development
25 AAA games to be released in the next 4 years
Leading publisher and extensive distribution network across 50 countries
Embracer Group recently acquired the following game studios.
Middle-Earth Enterprises (IP rights to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit)
Tripwire Interactive
Limited Run Games
Tuxedo Labs
Singtrix
Undisclosed Studio (due to commercial reasons)
Sustainability is a priority for Embracer Group and they’ve set the following goals.
Double the number of female Managing Directors/Studio Heads by 2025 compared with the base year 2021/22.
Reduce the carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with the base year 2021/22, in line with the Paris Agreement, and set Science-Based Targets during 2022/23.
Every operative group to set sustainability goals during 2022/23.
The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake has reportedly switched development studios. Embracer Group commented on the ambiguous studio transition saying, “this was done to ensure the quality bar is where we need it to be for the title. We are not expecting any material delays for the title based on this transition".
Esports Corner
Riot Games have revealed their five-year plan for the Valorant esports ecosystem which will allow Challengers teams to make their way into the International Leagues. The Challengers League, which is the current entry point for the VCT, will expand to 21 regions where the best teams in each territory (Americas, EMEA, Pacific) will qualify for a new tier of competition called “Challengers Ascension”. This event is the cumulation of the regions best performing teams where one team per territory will be crowned champion, and will earn a 2-year promotion to the International League. The International League will expand by one team every year until the 14 spots in each territory are filled by 2027. Amateur teams will also be able to earn spots in the Challengers League through a new competitive mode directly within Valorant.
Enthusiast Gaming, the North American esports organization behind Luminosity Gaming, the Vancouver Titans (Overwatch League) and the Seattle Surge (Call of Duty League) have reported a $26.05m net loss during the first half of 2022. Despite the loss, the organization did report $98.26m in revenue during the same period which according to CEO Adrian Montgomery, is their “strongest half-year results to date”.
Rostermania ahead of the 2023 Call of Duty League is well underway and so far we’ve seen tons of drama including Crimsix being dropped by the New York Subliners, and Dashy announcing his free agency days before suddenly re-signing with OpTic. That said, the 2022 CDL season went pretty smoothly and the league saw some impressive numbers including the 2022 Champs peaking at 275k viewers. As teams prepare themselves for the next season, which franchise team has been the most successful over the last three years? The answer is Atlanta FaZe. They’ve ended each of the three CDL seasons with more than $1.1M in tournament earnings, and they have the highest total earnings with a staggering $4.2M.
Gaming Roundup
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered data miners have found files on PC suggesting that the game originally had a multiplayer and/or co-op mode.
Chris Sundberg, the former Avalanche Studios co-founder said that an open-world Iron Man game was canceled by Marvel after two years of work.
Grand Theft Auto VI will revert back to the way it used to release extra content and single-player DLC according to Rockstar Games insider Tez2.
Deliver Us Mars from publisher Frontier Developments plc and developer KeokeN Interactive has been delayed until February 2nd, 2023.
Assassin’s Creed Infinity will have one of its settings revealed next month according to Jeff Grubb. There’s a setting in Japan where you play as a ninja.
Ballistic Moon is working alongside Sony to build a game for the PS5 on Unreal Engine 5. The developers are formerly of Supermassive Games.
Activision Blizzard documents have reportedly leaked Call of Duty: Warzone 2 will release November 16th and Diablo IV pre-orders start December 8th.
Elden Ring has now shipped over 16.6 million copies worldwide since launch (as of the end of June 2022) according to Bandai Namco Holdings.
Death Stranding from Kojima Productions and 505 Games will be joining PC Game Pass on August 23rd, including ultra-wide mode and photo mode.
Mordhau, PC’s 64-player medieval hack-’n’-slash game is coming soon to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PS4.
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