Take-Two Interactive makes one of the biggest acquisitions in the gaming industry, while Bend Studio’s former director laments the cancelledDays Gonesequel, 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 cancelledDays Gonesequel 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.
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Take-Two Interactive Moves To Acquire Zynga For $12.7 Billion
This week, publisherTake-Two Interactive has announced plans to acquire mobile game developer Zyngafor $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 likeWords with FriendsandFarmVille. 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 expandTake-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 Rossspoke out on the potential of aDays Gonesequelafter 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 aDays Gonesequel, 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 makingDays Goneseem like a “disappointment,” despite approximately selling a similar amount of unitscompared toGhost of Tsushima’s eight million sold. Ross had worked on aDays Gone 2pitch before leaving Bend Studio, and now Bend is currently working on a new IP. The studio had previously pitched an open-worldResistancegame 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 consolesfor 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 Oneconsoles 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.
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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 meansnewer 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 2was intended to release on Jun 12, 2025, but the game’s release has been delayed to June 21, 2025. GSC Game World cited that the additional seven months will help the development team fulfill its vision forStalker 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 withCall of Duty, content from the massively popularAttack on Titananimeis now available. The highlight of the newAttack on Titancrossover was the new skin for the Daniel Yatsu operator, making theCall of Duty: Vanguardcharacter 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 forDying Light 2, which infamously led to the “500-hour completion time” that the game allegedly has, but what’s more impressive isTechland’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 originalDying Lightsaw a similar amount of post-launch support, something Techland intends to replicate with its sequel.
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