Author: Trafficblast

Take-Two Interactive, the owner of Rockstar Games and 2K Games, confirmed on an earnings call that it has a whopping 93 titles in development, but the company won’t say if a new version of Grand Theft Auto V is among them.

During the earnings call, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said the 93 games are scheduled to launch by the end of March 2025. However, they might not all release. The 93 games represent what Take-Two has in the works right now, but Slatoff cautioned that, “It is likely that some of these titles will not be developed through completion and we will undoubtedly be adding new titles to our slate.”

During a Q&A, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked if a new version of Grand Theft Auto V (presumably for next-gen consoles) would be one of the 93 titles planned for release by the end of 2025. The executive declined to comment, but the company did confirm that the 93 titles will come from all of Take-Two’s divisions, including Rockstar.

“We haven’t yet made any announcements that aren’t reflected in today’s release. We don’t talk about specific new titles at these calls, we leave those discussions to the labels,” Zelnick said.

In addition to Rockstar, Take-Two owns 2K Games and 2K Sports, while it also operates an indie publishing label with Private Division. Take-Two also owns the mobile game company SocialPoint.

Of the 93 titles in development, they include:

• 63 “core gaming experiences,” including 15 “platform extensions of existing titles”
• 17 are “mid-score or arcade-style experiences”
• 13 are “casual” experiences
• 47 of the 93 are from existing franchises and 46 are from new IP
• 72 of the 93 games are coming to console, PC, and/or streaming
  • 7 of these will be available on mobile
  • 21 are in development exclusively for mobile

In terms of the business models, 67 of the 93 games are paid titles, while 26 will be free-to-play. Take-Two also confirmed that the 93 releases does not include DLC or add-ons.

Overall, Zelnick said Take-Two has the “strongest development pipeline in its history, including sequels from our biggest franchises as well as exciting new IP.”

Slatoff summarized Take-Two’s initiative in this way: “We’d like to keep up this velocity. It’s really important for us to build scale. And this is one way we’re doing it–we need more at-bats.”

Take-Two’s release slate for Fiscal 2021 will be “light,” but management said it expects to release an “array of titles” in Fiscal 2022.

In April, Kotaku reported that Rockstar Games had begun work on the next Grand Theft Auto Game, but the studio has yet to announce it. Grand Theft Auto V continues to perform exceptionally well, recently passing 130 million copies sold, with microtransaction revenue continuing to grow.

We’re so excited about this one. Who doesn’t want to see Peter Dinklage as Van Helsing and Jason Momoa as a vampire?! This is dream casting.

We’ll never stop fighting to get original stories made. We think you’re gonna love what we are all cooking up. Hopefully more news soon! https://t.co/Q91QJRZEYw

— Shannon & Swift (@shannonandswift) May 20, 2020

The Last of Us: Part II is finally nearly upon us, and as new details emerge we’re getting a better idea of how the long-awaited sequel will play. One new thing we’ve learned, thanks to the new Inside the Gameplay video below, is that you won’t be able to fully upgrade Ellie in a single playthrough.

Kurt Margenau, the game’s co-director, explains in the video (at around the 7:30 mark onwards) that The Last of Us: Part II will feature seperate weapon and player upgrade systems, but that you won’t be able to acquire the necessary resources to fully upgrade Ellie in a single playthrough. This is because the game is focused on the consequences of your choices, and that includes which skills you decide to focus on.

Naughty Dog wants players to make choices and then be forced to live with them, and to that end even the upgrade system choiced needed to have “a really noticable and tangible impact” on how you play. So if you decide to bulk up one of Ellie’s abilities, it might mean you can never fully develop another, for instance.

This means that players will experience different “builds” of Ellie, and it sounds like the intention is for this to have an impact on how you experience the game’s story. While you could not fully upgrade Joel in the original game until you hit New Game Plus, it did not fundamentally alter the game’s narrative, or your sense of the character, in any way. Speaking of which, the video also warns that you’ll likely miss entire story moments in your first playthrough.

The Last of Us: Part II releases for PlayStation 4 on June 19. If you don’t have a system to play it on, check out the limited edition The Last of Us: Part II PlayStation 4 Pro model.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – The Game, Ubisoft’s scrolling 2010 beat-em-up based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s hit comic (and Edgar Wright’s movie adaptation), hasn’t been available for some time. The game was delisted at the end of 2014, likely due to the expiration of one of Ubisoft’s licenses, and it has remained impossible to buy since.

Now, during a watch party for Wright’s film that O’Malley joined Twitter to take part in, the book’s author tweeted out a request to “bring back the Scott Pilgrim game”. The official Ubisoft account–which was not tagged in the tweet–issued a simple, cryptic response of an emoji scratching its chin.

Of course, this is not a confirmation that the game is coming back. But at the same time, the game has a bit of a cult following, and to raise people’s hopes like this would be cruel.

This might not be much to go on, but it’s enough to give us some hope that the game could return for modern systems–especially since it would be a perfect fit for Switch.

Ubisoft is planning a digital showcase for Summer 2020. We also know that they have an unannounced AAA title due before March 2021, alongside Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and the rest of their line-up.

In July 2019, online games retailer G2A extended an offer to devs to open up its records to an independent auditor, and to reimburse the developers 10 times the value of any game keys that were found to have been illegally sold. So far only one developer, Wube Games, has taken them up on the offer, and G2A has finalized a figure of $39,600 as compensation for stolen Factorio keys.

While G2A initially promised to involve an independent auditor in the process, their most recent blog post on the subject says they found that “none that would meet our agreed requirements.” Wube then agreed to G2A carrying out its own internal investigation.

The developers provided G2A with a list of 321 keys it believed had been illegally sold, and G2A concluded that 198 of those had been sold on its platforms. G2A has agreed to pay Wube Software a total of $39,600 for the keys, 10 times their full retail price. The company confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that they have received the payment in full from G2A.

While G2A called the original offer to developers a limited-time one, they’ve pledged in their blog post to work with any other developers to reimburse chargebacks from stolen keys, if the developers can prove to G2A that the keys were illegitimate.

Despite the amnesty payment, G2A’s blog doesn’t take responsibility for allowing these fraudulent transactions to take place on their platform, instead framing it a lesson to a few bad actors. “We wanted to send a clear message to the gaming community that fraud hurts all parties,” the post reads. “As we spell out in this blog, fraud directly hurts individuals who buy illegitimate keys, it hurts gaming developers and it ultimately hurts G2A because we are forced–as the transaction facilitator–to cover costs related to the sale. We wanted to amplify that message and capture people’s attention, so pledged to compensate developers ten times the value of any chargeback fees they incurred, despite the fact that we had nothing to with the illegal acquisition of these keys.”

However in a separate statement sent to Polygon, G2A took some responsibility for illegal transactions on its site. “We would be the first to admit that, in our formative years as a company, we took too long to recognize that a small number of individuals were abusing our Marketplace,” a spokesperson said. “However, the criticism we received was the wake-up call we needed, and over the last years we have been totally committed to tackling any incidents of fraud on our site.”

A racing game cockpit manufacturer with ties to PlayStation might have accidentally revealed the logo for a new Gran Turismo game. Furthermore, the social media post showing the logo suggests a 2020 release date.

The post in question, which was made across Twitter (below), Facebook, and Instagram, asks followers: “What racing game are you most looking forward to in 2020?” Many comments have jumped upon the GT 7 logo, as Gran Turismo 7 has not been officially announced or unveiled yet. The other games in the tweet–Dirt 5, Automobilista 2, and F1 2020–are all confirmed.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, this is not confirmation of Gran Turismo 7, per se. However, the manufacturer has a working relationship with Sony–the GT Track PlayStation Edition is an officially licensed PlayStation product. Searching across numerous fan mock-ups, we could not find a logo matching this one–although it’s possible that the social media team at Next Level Racing is being speculative, and has created this logo internally.

Polyphony Digital has previously confirmed that a new Gran Turismo is in the works, so Gran Turismo 7 seems likely. Whether it’s a PlayStation 5 launch game, or a late-era PS4 release (much as Gran Turismo 6 was a late PlayStation 3 game), the idea of a new Gran Turismo releasing in 2020 is not far-fetched.

It’s also possible that this was not an accident at all, of course, but any further analysis of what this could mean would only be speculation. At the time of writing, the posts–made seven hours ago–are still up.

Sony is expected to reveal the PlayStation 5 launch line-up soon.

DICE is giving away free currency in Battlefield V to make up for recent issues. The studio announced on Twitter that everyone is getting an allotment of 200 Battlefield Currency (BFC) as a thank you to fans for their patience for recent issues regarding the game’s weekly mission.

The BFC is automatically applied to your account, so you don’t need to do anything at all to claim it. The problem was related to not being able to unlock the latest weekly reward, and the following week’s challenge should go forward without issue.

Battlefield V’s latest big update was version 6.6, which rebalanced many of the game’s vehicles and made further changes to weaponry. The update also tweaks the layout of several of the game’s maps, particularly Wake Island, and adds body dressings for vehicles, as well as fixing many small bugs and issues. You can read the full 6.6 patch notes here.

The next major update for Battlefield V is coming in June, and it’s expected to be the game’s final significant patch. The studio is now transitioning to work on a new Battlefield game set for release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021.