Electronic Arts recently announced that it is shuttering BioWare and cancelling its upcoming Mass Effect game and cutting 400 jobs in the process, after the gaming giant acquired the game studio in 2007. According to a former executive producer at BioWare, Mark Darrah, however, there may still be hope for fans of BioWare's myriad beloved franchises, including Mass Effect.

Mark Darrah on YouTubeRemember, BioWare, 100% owned by EA, so EA owns all the IPs. They own Dragon Age, they own Mass Effect, they own Jade Empire. So, that doesn't change the situation really at all... Now, there's nobody working on a game or games within the EA organization, and chances are there never will be, which might make them more likely to sell off those IPS, but it might also make them more likely to just try to forget that they ever existed and bury them in the vault.

Sony has confirmed it will not exhibit at CES 2027 in Las Vegas, ending a run that goes back to the very first show in 1967. A company spokesperson told Bloomberg that neither Sony nor any of its affiliates plan to exhibit at the January event. Sony did not have its own booth at CES 2026 either, but its Sony Honda Mobility joint venture still showed off an Afeela EV prototype at that show. That EV project was apparently the last big reason for Sony to keep showing up. Sony Honda Mobility canceled the Afeela 1 and a planned SUV in March, after Honda reassessed its electrification strategy, and the two companies said they would review the future of the joint venture.

Sony has also been pulling back from consumer hardware elsewhere, with TCL taking a 51% stake in a new joint venture that will assume its home entertainment business, including Bravia TVs. Sony's own statement says it "continuously and strategically" evaluates how it approaches events, and that its focus keeps shifting toward entertainment, intellectual property, and technology that supports creators. For gamers, it looks like PlayStation won't be using a CES stage next year either, although that was somewhat predictable. CES had slowly stopped being a Sony show already, but a 60-year streak ending is still strange to see.

Ahead of the official launch of GTA VI, Rockstar has put out a new set of mod guidelines for the upcoming action game, revealing strict rules surrounding the community's contributions to Leonida and the world of GTA as a whole. The modding guide, as spotted by users on the ResetEra forums, was silently launched on September 10, and it dictates what gamers and modders can and can't do with GTA games, imposing rather strict limitations in some places.

The limitations that stand out the most are the rules that disallow expanding or modifying "official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements" of Rockstar's continuity. The studio also forbids mods that "combine maps, locations, characters, storylines, in-game assets, or other IP" between different Rockstar games. This comes after an early 2025 incident in which Liberty City Preservation Project, a mod that recreated GTA IV's map in GTA V, was taken down by Rockstar Games.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced that it has acquired the assets of StreamElements, the largest cloud-based platform for live streamers, from Live Momentum Ltd, the former holding company of the StreamElements business.

The move is part of Razer's long-term commitment to building a more robust ecosystem for content creators that spans hardware, software, and partnership opportunities and brings one of the most widely used creator toolsets under the Razer umbrella.

According to Reuters, Intel has shared access to its renowned "Atom" CPUs with a startup called RosaicLabs Inc. This means Intel will be transferring some of its in-house intellectual property to a third party, a rare occurrence in the semiconductor industry. Specifically, the register-transfer level (RTL) code that defines each CPU part, which is later turned into the actual silicon, will be licensed to Rosaic. Intel's Atom CPU line runs on the x86-64 instruction set. Historically, Intel has used these Atom CPUs for entry-level and low-power tasks, including networking equipment. However, the Atom CPU portfolio is now much smaller than it used to be as Intel transitions to other areas. Before developing E-Cores, Intel designed one last "Tremont" microarchitecture, which ended up in "Elkhart Lake" and "Jasper Lake" silicon for embedded, low-power laptops, and Chromebooks.

Intel has since transitioned to E-Cores, which are effectively successors to Atom cores, and these cores are also built on a separate microarchitecture like "Gracemont." While it's not exactly clear which Atom CPU core IP will be shared with Rosaic, the company could be receiving the "Tremont" CPU generation or something newer to start its x86 silicon manufacturing. Additionally, Rosaic is currently looking to raise about $10 million, which would support its unknown chip ambitions, potentially based on low-power x86 design. We have yet to see any teasers or detailed product announcements.

Following the recent disappointing deliberation by the European Commission on the Stop Destroying Videogames citizens' initiative, the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921) was a California bill, proposed by Assemblyman Chris Ward, that would force game developers and publishers to make paid video games playable even after they were shut down. Despite things looking positive, with the bill passing the California State Assembly with a 43-16 victory, it has stalled in the second-last phase with a State Senate Committee vote, which saw four members vote yes, three vote no, and three other members abstain. As explained by a Stop Killing Games volunteer, a bill needs a majority "yes" vote in the State Senate in order to pass, which means it only needed three additional votes in the Senate Committee. If it had passed, a final draft would have been created by House and State members and submitted for approval.

In a Reddit post, the Stop Killing Games volunteer also highlighted the movement's determination, stating that the organization had gotten as far as it had with "a U.S. budget of zero dollars. No paid staff in California. No war chest. No in-person lobbying operation," and on a compressed timeline. The SKG movement also had to argue its position against the well-funded ESA (Entertainment Software Association) lobby, who presented a number of alarmist arguments against the bill. Some of the arguments included claims that Minecraft and Call of Duty community servers were "illegal, and they are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers." despite Microsoft providing the very instructions and resources required to host those community servers.

Mere after the reveal of the Valve Steam Machine, accessory maker Dbrand announced that it was releasing the "Companion Cube," a Steam Machine accessory that was modelled after the Portal weighted companion cube storage box. Following massive interest in the Companion Cube in the week since its announcement, Dbrand announced that it has been forced by Valve to pull the product from its website and social media pages, despite Dbrand's efforts to retroactively seek licensing rights from Valve in response to the takedown notice. Dbrand has complied and wiped the Companion Cube from its online presence, redirecting the product page link to a Reddit post explaining the situation, but fortunately the original product page had been archived before the Companion Cube's untimely demise. Dbrand will also be issuing refunds to anyone who purchased the Companion Cube.

Dbrand explained in the post on r/Dbrand on Reddit that it was contacted by Valve's legal team and informed that the Companion Cube was Valve's intellectual property and that the accessory maker did not have license to use the IP in such a capacity. According to Dbrand, the Companion Cube was the culmination of seven months and over a thousand hours of engineering work that resulted in four sets of injection molds being produced. The Companion Cube was reportedly Dbrand's second-fastest-selling product to date behind the Switch 2 Killswitch, and fans of the design have expressed both disappointment in Dbrand for not approaching Valve and licensing the product correctly and understanding that Valve may not want its brand attached to a product whose engineering and thermal qualities cannot necessarily be verified.

As we've seen previously, many modern game studios are leaning on artificial intelligence to accelerate game development workflows—both for code completion and graphics applications—and Sony recently confirmed in an annual SEC form that it too is using AI. As spotted by The Game File, Sony says in the regulatory filing that it is using AI in a number of ways throughout the game development process, with the filing making specific mention of automating "repetitive tasks," in order to improve efficiency and productivity in software development, QA, 3D modelling, and animation workflows. It's unclear if this means players will soon start seeing AI-generated textures in games, but it seems likely that this will eventually be the case. The verbiage in the SEC filing suggests that Sony wants to lean into generative AI so that its game developers and artists can spend more time on hand-made game art.

Within the studio business, AI powered tools are automating repetitive workflows and improving productivity across areas such as software development, quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animation, allowing production teams to focus on building richer worlds and gameplay experiences.

Lenovo Group Limited (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) (together with its subsidiary, "Lenovo" or the "Group") today announced it has completed the acquisition of Phoenix Technologies' firmware (BIOS) technology business registered in Dublin, Ireland, including its related intellectual property and expertise. The acquisition brings firmware development and additional core software expertise in-house, enhancing Lenovo's ability to manage critical firmware across its entire PC portfolio and, over time, across other AI-enabled devices.

"This transaction is a strategic step forward for Lenovo," said Luca Rossi, President of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. "By bringing firmware development in-house, we are strengthening our core engineering capabilities and gaining greater control over one of the most critical layers of the computing experience. This will enable us to accelerate innovation, enhance security, and deepen our vertical integration, while also unlocking meaningful cost efficiencies. With its strong heritage and leadership in firmware, Phoenix Technologies brings differentiated expertise that will further strengthen our portfolio."

A new patent application by Sony may provide players with an alternative to pausing a game that would ostensibly prevent halting gameplay execution by putting the game into an alternate gameplay state while players deal with momentary distractions or decide whether they want to fully pause the game to deal with something like a message. The patent, (US20260021411) filed with the USPTO, explains a number of potential ways to achieve this, seemingly with the idea that different games and genres could implement different versions of Soft Pause. Sony touts Soft Pause as particularly useful for VR use cases, in which a jarring pause and cut to a menu screen may cause nausea or dizziness

The Soft Pause concepts include everything from having the game slow down while the feature is active, making the game easier, guiding the player towards objectives or enemies, boosting player assist features—features like aim assist or stretching time windows for certain inputs—or even having a machine-learning tool take over from the player entirely while Soft Pause is active. It's unclear if that ML model would be trained on player data or if it will offer more generic support. It remains to be seen if or when this will be implemented at all, and, realistically, it could go either way. If it is implemented, it will also be interesting to see how each game implements it, especially in competitive games. Currently, being AFK in a competitive game can be disastrous, and, while something like Soft Pause might be able to provide something of a solution to short AFK moments, although games like Paladins already have an AI that takes over gameplay when players are disconnected. Other recent Sony patents include an adaptive controller of sorts that puts all controls into a touch interface.

The AI arms race is now in full swing, and corporate espionage is reaching levels beyond what we previously imagined. According to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), former Google software engineer Linwei Ding has been convicted of economic espionage and theft of confidential AI technology, specifically related to Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). An FBI investigation revealed that the ex-Googler was suspected of stealing information about the entire infrastructure surrounding TPUs, including chip architecture, external connectivity, and more. The DOJ concluded that Linwei Ding was acting for the benefit of the People's Republic of China (PRC), with the primary goal of stealing sensitive intellectual property that Google has spent years and billions of US Dollars developing. Naturally, Google collaborated with the FBI to protect its intellectual property and found the former employee guilty of stealing as many as two thousand pages of confidential information.

U.S. Department of JusticeThe trade secrets contained detailed information about the architecture and functionality of Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and systems and Google's Graphics Processing Unit systems, the software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and executing cutting-edge AI workloads. The trade secrets also pertained to Google's custom-designed SmartNIC, a type of network interface card used to facilitate high speed communication within Google's AI supercomputers and cloud networking products.

Over a week ago, GPD seemingly jumped the gun with their announcement of forthcoming official Bazzite support—specifically destined to roll out on their range-topping Win 5 handheld gaming PC. Within a day or two—following wider news coverage of GPD's bold declaration, issued via their own subreddit—Bazzite leadership and community managers stepped in. Currently, GPD's AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" APU-powered gaming device can run the Fedora-based Linux distribution, albeit in an unofficial manner. User feedback—stretching back to last autumn—outlines system crashes, inconsistent delivery of game audio, control input problems, and more. In theory, a proper GPD + Bazzite Org collaboration would lead to a much more stable release of this well-regarded gaming OS.

The Bazzite team has vehemently refuted GPD's recent claim(s) over the past week, but in a fairly scattered manner across Discord, Reddit, and other community discussion hubs. As of yesterday, a definitive statement has been published by Kyle Gospodnetich. On Universal Blue, the Bazzite creator and maintainer stated: "recently, GPD made a statement that an 'official adaptation' of Bazzite is happening for the GPD Win 5, and that we (the Bazzite team) have received hardware from them. I want to make clear that not only have we not received hardware from them, (plus) we have (had) no recent contact with GPD, of any kind. A GPD representative appears to be directing their users to a Discord other than our own for support as well. The Bazzite Team will never ask you to go to a Discord server other than our own for support. Please exercise caution, whatever they're working on is entirely unofficial and out of our control, and will not be supported by us in any way. We ask (that) GPD cease using the Bazzite name, logos, or other intellectual property until this matter is resolved."

Since last week's showcasing of Fable, executive and lead members of Playground Games have engaged with press outlets. One interesting tidbit emerged from a reportedly private conversation—the possible porting of Microsoft's upcoming AAA flagship fantasy/comedy title onto Nintendo's Switch 2 hybrid console. Another headline generating Q&A session has provided a look back at Playground leadership's decision-making, although some industry observers will question whether the British studio had much say over development roadmaps, following an Xbox takeover. Ralph Fulton, a company co-founder and current general manager, has divulged an insightful backstory to GamesRadar.

The team leader recalled that: "the first conversations we had about doing something other than Forza Horizon and building a second team go right the way back to the year after we shipped Forza Horizon 3 (released around late September 2016, exclusively on Xbox One and PC). (That game) had gone really well in pretty much every dimension. It was the best Forza Horizon we'd made. The team really hit its stride—FH3 was really high-quality, it landed with a wide audience. We felt great about that." At this point in the GamesRadar article, emphasis is placed on the Microsoft/Xbox Game Studios buyout leading to a whole new set of ambitions coming to the fore at PlayGround Games.

Adeia Inc., the technology company known for developing foundational innovations in the semiconductor industry, announced today that it has filed patent infringement lawsuits against Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

"Earlier today, Adeia took legal action against AMD to protect our intellectual property rights and the investments we have made in our foundational semiconductor technologies," said Paul E. Davis, chief executive officer of Adeia. "For years, AMD's products have incorporated and made extensive use of Adeia's patented semiconductor innovations, which have greatly contributed to their success as a market leader. After prolonged efforts to reach a mutually agreeable resolution without litigation, we believe this step was necessary to defend our intellectual property from AMD's continued unauthorized use."

Seemingly as part of its ongoing lawsuit against Palworld's developer, Pocketpair, Nintendo applied for several patents to protect what it saw as intellectual property being ripped from Pokémon games. One of those early patent filings at the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) described effectively the creature capture mechanics you see in most Pokémon and similar games these days. The patent describes the game mechanic as throwing an object at a character, after which the computer determines whether the character in question is successfully captured. It also mentions throwing an object at a character in a game in order to limit the character's movement in the field. According to Games Fray, this patent application has now been denied, meaning Nintendo may have to find another linchpin in its ongoing lawsuit against Palworld's developer.

The denial of the patent comes after the patent office examined prior art that was submitted by an unnamed third party. As Games Fray goes on to explain, however, the decision to deny Nintendo's patent doesn't necessarily spell victory for Palworld and Pocketpair. Firstly, the patent denial is "non-final," which means Nintendo can contest the ruling and defend its position. Secondly, and this appears to be more important, while Japanese judges regularly do consult with the JPO and respect the decision of the Patent Office, the patent is non-binding, meaning the final decision is still up to the judge's discretion. For Nintendo's part, the patent in question forms a core part of a family of patents, so if it is eventually "finally" denied, Nintendo may lose additional resources to fight against its perceived threats, since that patent would weaken its claim to other patents in the patent family.

A recently filed class-action copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, makers of Claude, alleged that the AI company infringed on the rights of authors by using their work in its AI training data. The lawsuit has gone on record as the largest copyright class-action ever certified, with the US District Judge William Alsup allowing up to 7 million claimants to join the lawsuit. According to Wired, not even a month after the suit was filed, the judge has announced that Anthropic and the authors who filed the suit may have come to a settlement in principle.

While the details of the settlement have yet to be finalized and announced, the lawyers representing the claimants are confident that the "historic settlement will benefit all class members." According to reporting by Wired, it seems as though Anthropic may be settling the case precisely to avoid having to go to trial, despite the same judge having previously ruled that using legally-acquired books to train AI models was considered fair use. The case in question seems to hinge on the fact that the way Anthropic obtained some of the books could be considered piracy. Supposedly, Anthropic used as many as 7 million books in its training, which could potentially have amassed damages north of $1 trillion, by some estimates. According to the law firm representing the class of authors, the details of the settlement will be announced in the coming weeks, and there are many proponents of AI who fear that cases like these may set the precedent for similar copyright cases in the future.

Tencent's Polaris Quest recently announced Light of Motiram as a free-to-play survival game set in a vast open world overrun by large mechanical beasts—Mechanimals, they're called—and what few humans still roam the lands eke out a tribal existence. It's not difficult to see why Sony Entertainment just initiated legal proceedings against Tencent over intellectual property infringement (via Reuters), alleging that the new game is infringing on its Horizon franchise.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of Horizon Forbidden West is now live]

When Light of Motiram was announced, many gaming publications reported on its similarities to Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, and this reporting is part of Sony's case. However, Sony's legal claims stem from more than just game journalists and online voices picking up on the similarities. According to the complaint, Tencent initially tried to collaborate with Sony on the upcoming Light of Motiram, as a new game in the Horizon universe, but decided to go ahead with the announcement and development of the game despite Sony declining the collaboration. Sony says that Light of Motiram also features identical gameplay elements, in-game art, and themes to the Horizon series. It should be noted, though, that while there are obvious aesthetic similarities, Light of Motiram is a survival-craft MMO, whereas games in the Horizon franchise are story-driven single-player games.

Throughout the Spring season, Electronics Arts (EA) has reduced development team numbers across several of its international first-party game development studios. According to a fairly fresh IGN news report, another North American operation has been shutdown. Cliffhanger Games was working on a triple-A Black Panther intellectual property, with Marvel's full approval—as teased back in mid-2023. IGN's inside sources have leaked an email—allegedly authored by Laura Miele, EA Entertainment's president—that was addressed the latest round of layoffs at Cliffhanger Games, and unspecified "mobile and central teams." Apparently these adjustments are necessary; Miele (reportedly) believes that these changes will: "sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities...These decisions are hard. They affect people we've worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We're doing everything we can to support them—including finding opportunities within EA, where we've had success helping people land in new roles." In recent times, company leadership had openly discussed a move away from licensed IP projects. Supposedly, Miele's email mentions a focus on core EA franchises going forward: The Sims, Skate, Battlefield, and Apex Legends.

eXtas1s, a somewhat unreliable source of inside track info has weighed in with related news. The Spanish leaker shared an offbeat claim: "I have learned that around 400 more layoffs are coming at EA, the total closure of Codemasters HQ, and that those developers will be integrated into EA Sports (F1), and a new Need For Speed that is already in development." Going back to late April, EA declared that an unspecified number of layoffs were underway at Codemasters. Earlier this month, the long-running British racing game specialist had stopped working on the popular WRC franchise. Since then, NACON—a French publication house—has picked up the FIA World Rally Championship license. Within the same time period, an official announcement outlined the cancelation of two unannounced projects at Respawn Entertainment. Prior to cessations, the Los Angeles, California-based outfit was working on two "early stage" titles—insider reports suggested that one of these mystery IPs was some sort of nascent Titanfall title. Interestingly, Respawn's leader—Vince Zampella—is steering the next Battlefield game. Several EA studios have been roped into a multipronged production approach.

US lawmakers are moving forward with a proposal requiring high-performance graphics cards and AI processors to carry built-in geotracking technology to keep sensitive chips out of hostile hands. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas introduced the Chip Security Act on May 12, 2025. Under this legislation, the Commerce Department would have the authority to mandate location-verification features in any device subject to US export controls, with manufacturers given six months after enactment to comply. The bill applies to a broad set of products classified under export control classification numbers 3A090, 4A090, 4A003.z, and 3A001.z. That includes everything from advanced AI accelerators and rack-scale servers to certain gaming graphics cards like NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090. Manufacturers would be required to embed hardware or firmware capable of reporting each device's physical location back to a centralized registry maintained by the Commerce Department.

Exporters must also notify the Bureau of Industry and Security immediately if a unit is diverted, tampered with, or appears at an unauthorized location. To keep pace with evolving security threats, the legislation calls for a joint one-year study by the Commerce Department and the Department of Defense on potential new tracking and safeguard mechanisms. Following that, the two departments would conduct annual reviews for three years. If they determine that additional measures are warranted, they would have two years to draft and finalize rules that outline new requirements and present a detailed implementation roadmap to Congress. NVIDIA has noted that its current architectures are not built for post-sale tracking, and adding such a capability could delay product launch schedules and increase development costs. AMD and Intel are likely to face similar obstacles, as integrating secure location-verification may require redesigning sensitive intellectual property and altering established supply-chain processes.

Today at Intel Foundry Direct Connect, the company will share progress on multiple generations of its core process and advanced packaging technologies. The company will also announce new ecosystem programs and partnerships, and welcome industry leaders to discuss how a systems foundry approach enables collaboration with partners and unlocks innovation for customers.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will open the event by discussing Intel Foundry's progress and priorities as the company drives the next phase of its foundry strategy. Naga Chandrasekaran, Intel Foundry chief technology and operations officer, and Kevin O'Buckley, general manager of Foundry Services, will also deliver keynotes during the morning session, sharing process and advanced packaging news while highlighting Intel Foundry's globally diverse manufacturing and supply chain.

Rumors about the recent cancelation of an unannounced Blade Runner project; following the alleged completion of a pre-production phase at Supermassive Games. Insider Gaming's "exclusive" article proposes that the UK-based computer game development studio had started work on a "character focused, cinematic, action adventure" around September 2024. An inside source disclosed a "Blade Runner: Time To Live" title, and a futuristic "New Zurich" setting—in 2065. The online publication has acquired "internal company documents" that apparently outlined a 10-12 hour single player campaign experience and a "compelling story blending the philosophical themes of Blade Runner, with kinetic action-adventure gameplay." Veteran members of Supermassive's "The Quarry" core dev team were reportedly involved in the IP's early-stage production cycle.

Insider Gaming outlined a surprising mix of internal details—sourced from their industry mole—suggesting that this project is/was not related to Alcon Interactive Group and Annapurna Interactive's still in-progress Blade Runner title. The report described some of Supermassive's key goals: "a full release was planned for September 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and the 'Gen 10' Xbox and PlayStation systems. It was set to have a full development budget of roughly $45 million with $9 million of it being used for external performance capture and acting talent. What wasn't included in the budget, however, was original music production, image rights and usage fees for performers, QA and game testing, localization, and any future DLC. As with any budget, the amount was subject to change as development got underway and costs rose or fell." The British company is still working on Directive 8020, an original premise sci-fi interactive adventure—presumably, nearing the end of full-blown production within the coming months.

After many rumors and supposed leaks claimed that Tencent was preparing a buyout of Ubisoft, it seems as though an alternative solution was reached, with Ubisoft today announcing that it has created a new subsidiary to house some of its biggest gaming franchises. According to the announcement, the new business entity is "based on its Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six brands," and it received initial funding from Tencent, which owns a 25% stake in the new business. Tencent's investment in the new subsidiary is to the tune of €1.16 billion.

The announcement also gives us an indication of what to expect from these game franchises going forward. For starters, Ubisoft mentions that the new subsidiary—and likely the capital injection from the Tencent investment—is part of a new business model that would allow it to invest more in increasing the quality of its creative outputs. Supposedly, it will focus on quality story-driven solo games and growing its multiplayer offerings with more frequent content updates, more social features, and introducing "free-to-play touchpoints." The acquisition comes after a series of delays marred the lead-up to the launch of the latest Assassin's Creed Shadows, which ultimately seems to have been a commercial success. In keeping with other trends, Ubisoft mentions in the press release that the move to split off these gaming IPs will also help accelerate its recent moves to make these gaming franchises multi-platform. Recently, Ubisoft has repeatedly stated that its strategy moving forward would include more multi-platform day-one launches, as opposed to console exclusives and timed exclusives.

Jason Blundell—a veteran producer (at Treyarch) of many entries in the highly popular Call of Duty (CoD) franchise—has confirmed the founding of a new video game development studio: Dark Outlaw Games. This fledgling outfit started operations under the umbrella of Sony Interactive Studios (SIE). In an interview conducted by Jeff Gerstmann—a well-liked video game journalist—Blundell disclosed a very fortunate (early days) situation: "it's such a privilege to be able to do it with Sony as a new first-party studio...Sony doesn't set up first-party studios all the time. To have that privilege is humbling, it's really nice. I'm really excited." Industry whispers previously pointed to the "circa late 2023/early 2024" formation of an unnamed first-person shooter specialist team at PlayStation Studios, comprised of Jason Blundell and other ex-members of Deviation Games. This older organization started off back in 2020, under Blundell and Dave Anthony's direction—by June 2021, SIE announced an exciting partnership with Deviation Games. This "second-party" collaboration pointed to a new intellectual property destined for launch on Sony's market leading PlayStation 5 home console.

In 2022, Blundell left Deviation under mysterious circumstances. The Los Angeles, California-based studio would eventually limp to a disappointing end in 2024; with no finalized product released. The eventual founding of Dark Outlaw Games is a point of curiosity, given Sony Corporation's widespread gutting of staff headcounts across first-party studios in early 2024. As revealed to Gerstmann during their bonus podcast episode appearance, the seasoned CoD vet outlined current project conditions: "staffing up (and) keeping it kind of 'low key' as the team develops its game...We're getting the team to jell, getting the ideas clicking—I'm a programmer at heart, so let's test those assumptions: Is it working? You're trying to escape velocity." The growing Dark Outlaw team has busied itself with an unannounced project. Blundell described a secretive approach—rushing in with a premature unveiling would not be appropriate at this point in time. He elaborated: "(Dark Outlaw Games) has worked away in the shadows for a while, and when we've got something to talk about, we'll step out into the light...But, you know the story for me is about the game, not about the studio...so the reason why we're not doing a fanfare or shout about it from the rooftops is like, let's get something, right?"

We're announcing changes at Niantic that will set us on a bold new course. Nearly a decade ago, we spun out as a small team from Google with a bold vision: to use technology to overlay the world with rich digital experiences. Our goal: to inspire people to explore their surroundings and foster real-world connections, especially at a time when relationships were becoming increasingly digital. To bring this mission and technology to life, we started building games; today, more than 100 million people play our games annually, with more than a billion friend connections made across the world.

People have discovered their neighborhoods, explored new places, and moved more than 30 billion miles. They've also come together at our live events - where everyone is a participant, not just a spectator—contributing over a billion dollars in economic impact in the cities that host them. As we grew, the company naturally evolved along two complementary paths - one focused on creating games and bringing them to the world, and the other dedicated to advancing augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and geospatial technology. Meanwhile, the rapid progress in AI reinforces our belief in the future of geospatial computing to unlock new possibilities for both consumer experiences and enterprise applications. At the same time, we remain committed to creating "forever games" that will last for generations.

Bandai Namco Entertainment is commemorating PAC-MAN 's 45th Anniversary with an unprecedented year-long campaign. Featuring a host of activities and partnerships celebrating the legendary gaming icon's legacy in entertainment and popular culture, fans from around the world are invited to join in this momentous milestone. The campaign planned to run throughout 2025 and into early 2026 revolves around the theme of "imPACt" to capture how one of video games' original icons has spanned generations and is now recognized around the world as Bandai Namco's ambassador of fun and goodwill.

Born on May 22, 1980, PAC-MAN immediately gained a following as an innovative and fun classic arcade game and quickly rose to pop culture fame. With notable brand recognition around the world, the PAC-MAN brand is one of the most beloved on the planet and continues to thrive as he enters his 45th year of entertaining fans of all ages. To capture this enduring legacy, Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc. is debuting a visually stunning trailer that takes fans on a nostalgic journey. Directed by Miles Cable of Bodega Virtual and produced by LEFT, the trailer is brought to life entirely in Unreal Engine to showcase the icon across multiple eras while reimagining his world with modern visuals and dynamic storytelling.