Canceled Blizzard Survival Game Details Leak Online

Gameplay from the canceled Call of Duty: Future Warfare has surfaced online, showing off gameplay and the futuristic setting of the canceled 2011 shooter. While the massively popular shooter franchise has largely been known for its modern military and World War 2-themed settings, the developers have sometimes branched out into other settings. The franchise has experimented multiple times with futuristic gameplay, with games like 2016's infamous Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Now, a newly surfaced video shows off an earlier take on a futuristic Call of Duty.

A recent update to Microsoft's website suggests that Square-Enix's upcoming Visions of Mana may be headed to Xbox Game Pass alongside its release. Square-Enix first announced the newest entry in the long-running RPG franchise during the 2023 Game Awards, surprising fans with the reveal of the newest Mana game. The RPG is set to arrive as the first brand-new main-series entry in the franchise in nearly two decades, with Mana's recent releases coming as remakes of older titles. Now, the newest Square-Enix game may be coming to Game Pass as well.

Chinese developer Kuro Game has released new information about its upcoming game, Wuthering Waves, confirming the game's second beta test and PlayStation versions. Kuro Game first announced the game in 2022 as a new action RPG with many fans drawing comparisons to Genshin Impact with its fast-paced and fluid combat. Early trailers saw Wuthering Waves showcase similar gameplay to «hack-and-slash» games, putting an emphasis on difficulty and timing with the players' inputs. Now, excited fans are set to learn more about the game with its second closed beta test.

Blizzard Entertainment's survival game, which it informally announced in 2022, was reportedly canceled over engine issues during its six years of development, according to a new Bloomberg report. This report follows yesterday's news that Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax divisions. Alongside this news, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra also announced he was departing from the company, and we learned the aforementioned survival game had been canceled. 

Following the huge layoffs (over 1,900 employees) announced yesterday by Microsoft across teams at Blizzard and Xbox, it was also revealed that Blizzard's survival game Odyssey had been canceled.

Microsoft recently announced widespread layoffs, confirming that it was cutting 1,900 jobs across its entire gaming division– which, following the company’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, also includes Blizzard Entertainment. The layoffs have also gone hand-in-hand with the cancellation of Blizzard’s long-in-development survival game, codenamed Odyssey, which was officially confirmed to be in development in 2022, and a new report published by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has shed more light on what brought about the highly anticipated project’s cancellation.

Fresh details about Blizzard’s cancelled survival game have been revealed.

The president of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, is departing the firm.

The recent layoffs across the various Microsoft studios include the vast majority of the customer service team at Blizzard. This means the multiple live service games run by Blizzard are currently operating with next to no moderators, game masters, and customer service representatives.

In early 2023, it was revealed that Blizzard had been working on a completely brand-new survival game based on an original IP. It was later rumored that the game would be called Odyssey and would feature a "cartoony" art style similar to that of Overwatch. It was all very exciting, especially since Activision Blizzard is almost allergic to experimenting with new IP these days, but unfortunately, we'll never actually get to play Odyssey.

The development team behind Blizzard's now-cancelled survival game, reportedly called Odyssey, is seemingly among the teams dramatically impacted by the layoffs at Microsoft today.

Blizzard's unannounced survival game has been canceled after spending more than half a decade in development. The move, which is bound to disappoint many of the company's fans, stems from Microsoft's massive layoffs that were disclosed earlier today.