Sony makes an unexpected reversal of its legacy store shutdown, while Overwatch's game director leaves Activision Blizzard, in this week's recap of the biggest video game 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 review of gaming news, the initially planned shutdown of PS3 and PS Vita's services have been halted by Sony due to backlash and negative reception. PlayStation also seems to be testing a new video service for PS Plus subscribers, but it's not available worldwide just yet. Xbox Live's free-to-play restrictions have officially been lifted, similar to PlayStation. Jeff Kaplan, veteran of Activision Blizzard, will be leaving the studio after nearly 20 years in the gaming industry. This year's DICE Awards winners have been announced, with a surprising change of pace for the big winners. All that and more in this week's roundup of games industry news.
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This past week, Sony made the unexpected decision to reverse the shutdown of several legacy stores in the wake of negative response and backlash. Online storefronts and services for the PS3 and PS Vita will remain online, as opposed to the planned July 2, 2021 shutdown date announced by Sony. In a PlayStation Blog post by Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan, they frankly stated that "upon further reflection... it's clear that we made the wrong decision here."
Despite the PS3 and PS Vita stores remaining online, the only exception to this reversed decision is the PSP. PlayStation Portable online storefronts and services will still be shut down on July 2, 2021.
After an image leak on the PlayStation website, Sony confirmed that PS Plus Video Pass is a real offering by PlayStation currently in testing. In an interview from Spider's Web, Sony Interactive Entertainment VP of global services Nick Maguire confirmed Video Pass is a video streaming offering being tested on PS Plus subscribers. Video Pass is currently under a beta/trial period of one year, exclusive to Poland PS Plus subscribers, with no clear public phase confirmed at this time.
The testing phase of Video Pass offers 15 movies and six television shows, including heavy-hitting movies like Baby Driver, Venom, Arrival, and many more.
On the Microsoft side of things, a big change has finally come to Xbox's online services for free-to-play gaming. As of April 21, all free-to-play games on Xbox will be playable without an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. Games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Roblox, and Warframe are now playable for all Xbox owners without the need of Gold membership, a perk that's been available on PlayStation previously.
This perk also applies to party chats on Xbox consoles as well, eliminating the Xbox Live Gold requirement for participation in larger voice chats. Additionally, the "Looking for Group" services will also be available for those free-to-play titles as well.
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Winners of the 24th annual DICE Awards were announced this week, with Supergiant Games taking home the majority of awards from the show. Hades, alongside winning the Game of the Year award, also received: Action Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Game Direction, as well as Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game.
Sucker Punch Productions' Ghost of Tsushima also took home four awards for art and audio direction. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2 won Outstanding Achievement in Animation and Story as well, a change of pace from the many Game of the Year awards that Naughty Dog's latest game received at other awards shows for 2020.
Games industry veteran Jeff Kaplan has announced their departure from Activision Blizzard, after almost 20 years working at the company. Announced in a press release on the official Overwatch website, Blizzard Entertainment confirmed that Kaplan was leaving the Overwatch development team as leadership shifts to Aaron Keller. Keller was a founding developer of Overwatch proper, and will now serve as game director on Overwatch 2.
Kaplan also made the effort to put out a public thanks on the Overwatch community and competitive subreddits, asking players and fans to support the Overwatch 2 development team as best they can. Kaplan has not announced any new plans or intentions to re-enter the gaming industry currently.
Despite the wave of sustained controversy surrounding the game's launch, CD Projekt Red recently announced impressive sales numbers for Cyberpunk 2077. According to the disclosed sales numbers, which reportedly factor any processed refunds via retail and digital stores, Cyberpunk 2077 still sold 13.7 million copies in 2020 alone. That's building off the approximately eight million confirmed pre-orders prior to Cyberpunk 2077's launch.
It's a surprising number considering the controversy surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 post-launch, as well as CD Projekt Red's expected provisional losses of $50 million for all current and future refunds of Cyberpunk 2077. At the same time, it's worth noting CD Projekt Red's overall sales revenue for 2020 exceeded $560 million total, of which Cyberpunk 2077 (and tangentially The Witcher 3) contributed to the most.
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