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PlayStation’s new chairman and Sony’s current president was asked for his early assessment working directly with the games business during an earnings call on Wednesday, and told listeners he believes its studios can improve “when it comes to business”.

Square Enix has ordered a complete review of its developmental pipeline to increase the quality of future games and streamline, optimise, and synergise its way into increased profit margins. That's under the direction of Square Enix Holdings president Takashi Kiryu, responsible for the company's "aggressive" pivot to AI, who announced the news during Square Enix's latest financial results briefing.

The Official Xbox Podcast episode dropping later this week is going to be a big one. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, President of Game Content and Studios Matt Booty, and Xbox President Sarah Bond will finally address rumors that have been tearing the Xbox community apart for the past week. After leaks and rumors indicating that titles like Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Starfield, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would come to Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5 began to circulate, people got very confused about what this all means for Xbox as a platform going forward.

A week later, Xbox is ready to share its new business plans with everyone this Wednesday, February 15. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer, President of Xbox Sarah Bond, and Head of Xbox Gaming Matt Booty are coming together on the official Xbox Podcast at 3 p.m. EST on February 15 to share updates on the Xbox business.

 India's Unified Payment Interface (UPI) services will be rolled out in Sri Lanka and Mauritius at a virtual ceremony on Monday that will be witnessed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top leadership of the two island nations.

Currently, only Samsung and Google offer the longest software support for their flagships, which is seven years. OnePlus might receive praise for the clean UI it brings to its handsets, but it will likely be questioned as to why it does not follow the same approach as the two other companies, to which the Chinese firm’s President has an adequate reply. He believes rolling out software updates for seven years is pointless if the hardware cannot deliver the same experience.

12 members of staff at the developer Wayfarer, Airship Syndicate, are being made redundant.

Nintendo recently shared their earnings for the third quarter of their 2024 fiscal year (which runs from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024) and, as we reported, it was a good three months for the company with the Switch inching closer to edging out the PS2 as the best-selling console ever. Overall, the first three quarters of FY2024 have set a record for the company, with them bringing in ¥408 billion (or about $2.8 billion). But what about what comes next?

Square Enix is planning a major internal restructure of its game development system, as reported by Bloomberg Japan. The news came directly from Representative Director and President Takashi Kiryu, who spoke at the financial results briefing for analysts held on Monday.

AI roundup: Satya Nadella will be visiting India as part of his annual visit on February 7, 2024. On his agenda would be to explore various AI opportunities and for that, he would be meeting leaders in Indian startups space. Chinese authorities have started the approval process for AI models and already approved 40 models. Know more about AI happenings here.

Final Fantasy 6 director Yoshinori Kitase has said a remake akin to that of Final Fantasy 7's could take around 20 years to complete.

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. 

League of Legends maker Riot Games has stopped work on its Twitch rival.

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

Earlier this morning, Microsoft dropped a bomb, announcing the cutting of 1900 jobs from their Xbox and Activision Blizzard teams – nearly a 10th of their gaming division. It seems Blizzard was hit particularly hard by these layoffs, with president Mike Ybarra resigning and their upcoming survival game “Odyssey” being canceled. Well, we may now know a bit more about who was on the chopping block, and it’s not good news for those still holding onto the dream of physically owning their games.

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.

The president of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, has announced that he’s departing the company today (January 25). 

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 workers — or around 8% of Microsoft Gaming’s 22,000 employees — from its gaming division. The majority of layoffs are at Activision Blizzard, according to the Verge, though cuts will impact Xbox and ZeniMax employees, too.

Blizzard Entertainment’s untitled survival game set in an original universe is no more. In the wake of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and amid sweeping layoffs across various Xbox gaming teams, the company has canceled the project, according to a report from the Verge.

According to IGN, Microsoft has fired 1,900 employees from its video game divisions including Xbox and Activision Blizzard. The layoffs affect almost 9% of the 22,000 employees at the company. In a memo to staff, Microsoft Gaming CEO claims the layoffs come after leadership at Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard identified areas of overlap following the recent acquisition of Activision, Blizzard, and King.

Alongside the announcement of 1,900 layoffs and the departure of Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Co-founder Allen Adham, Blizzard's unannounced survival game has been cancelled. Revealed shortly after news of the Microsoft acquisition in January of 2022, little information about the game was ever released to the public aside from vague recruitment posts, though the abandonment of unfinished projects is not unheard of, as the cancellation of the ambitious MMO Titan famously led to the development and release of Overwatch in 2016. As reported by the Verge, Microsoft Game Content and Studios President Booty says Microsoft will be “shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”

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Earlier this morning, it was announced that Microsoft is laying off 1,900 staff from its gaming division, a reduction of around 8% of Microsoft Gaming's total workforce. Following the announcements, Mike Ybarra (also known as Qwik) has announced on X that today is his last day at Blizzard Entertainment.

Microsoft is laying off around 8% of its Gaming Workforce, affecting game developers across Xbox, ZeniMax Media, and the newly acquired Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft has announced that it will be laying off 1,900 members of its 22,000-person gaming division. 

Update, 9:51 a.m. ET, 1/25/24:

ASUS India introduces the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405), an Intel Evo Edition ultraportable laptop that signifies a notable addition to the Zenbook Classic series. With this ASUS laptop, the company aims to redefine premium design, extend battery life, and champion sustainable practices along with artificial intelligence (AI).

Today, Resolution Games and Wizards of the Coast announced a collaboration on the world's first D&D virtual reality game, now in production for a future release.

AI roundup: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's tableau will provide in-depth information about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for various industries and the general public at the upcoming Republic Day Parade. In a surprising event, a robocall utilized AI to impersonate President Joe Biden's voice, discouraging voters from going to the polls. This and more in our daily AI roundup. Let us take a look.

After 31 years on television, World Wrestling Entertainment Raw’s run as TV champion is coming to an end, but only so its reign on streaming can begin. WWE has signed a new deal with Netflix that will make the streaming service the exclusive home of WWE’s flagship series, Raw, in the United States. The deal was announced on Tuesday and will also move many of WWE’s other series over to Netflix, particularly outside the United States.

Motorola was acquired by Lenovo back in 2014 from Google, and since then, it has carved somewhat of a market for itself in this cutthroat space, but nothing too drastic. However, the company intends to change that and is betting on the future, believing that its smartphone brand can become the world’s third-biggest. In fact, one Lenovo executive is putting his paycheck on the line while boasting such claims.

It seems that Nintendo's original plan for Pokemon Stadium was even wilder than what we got, according to a recently unearthed speech from the late Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi.

The president of Japanese publishing giant Square Enix, Takashi Kiryu, has said he wants his company's output to be more diverse.

With almost half of the world's population heading to the polls in a national election in 2024, leaders at the World Economic Forum are grappling with how the arrival of ChatGPT will affect these democracies — and how governments will in turn regulate AI.  Leaders in artificial intelligence including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates weighed in this week at Davos, the gilded annual conference where billionaires hold forth on global problems. While all said they took the threat of artificial intelligence on elections seriously, there was a split in whether they thought major disruption was likely.Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella somewhat downplayed the risks. “It's not like this is the first election where disinformation, or misinformation, and election interference is going to be a real challenge that we all have to tackle,” he said, speaking at Bloomberg House at Davos on Tuesday.

Square Enix appears to be on the verge of shaking up its development portfolio. According to its president, we may soon see fewer titles, but a more diverse array of genres coming out of a developer and publisher traditionally known for its massive RPG franchises.

Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu says he wants to diversify the studio's lineup of games by relying less on "strong IPs" like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Hogwarts Legacy was the bestselling game in the U.S. in 2023, according to new data from Circana, the company formerly known as the NPD Group. Warner Bros. and Avalanche Software’s game set in the world of Harry Potter outsold this year’s Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, breaking that brand’s four-year streak as the No. 1 annual moneymaker in the U.S.

Korean electronics major Samsung will manufacture its latest artificial intelligence-loaded Galaxy S24 series at its India factory for both domestic sale as well as exports, senior company officials said here.

The people who founded Rocksteady Studios have started a new development studio.

Studio Flare, the studio founded by former Marvelous executive vice president Toshinori Aoki and former BlazBlue series producer Toshimichi Mori, have released the first key visual and concept artworks showcasing what it has been working on.

Studio Flare, the studio founded by former Marvelous executive vice president Toshinori Aoki and former BlazBlue series producer Toshimichi Mori, have released the first key visual and concept artworks showcasing what it has been working on.

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Build a Rocket Boy, the development studio founded by former Grand Theft Auto series producer and Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, completed a $110 million series D fundraising to launch its products.

Build a Rocket Boy, a Scotland-headquartered game development company founded by one of the former lead developers behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, today announced it has raised $110 million in a Series D round of funding.

Google layoffs: The Alphabet-owned company on Tuesday confirmed it is eliminating "a few hundred" positions from its global ad team, amid a push to use artificial intelligence for efficiency and creativity. The job cuts to its "large customer" sales team are intended to result in better support for small and medium size businesses advertising on Google's platform, according to the internet giant.

As reported by VideoGameChronicle, Square Enix confirmed at a recent press event that their upcoming live service game, Foamstars, uses some assets generated by AI. This follows a New Year’s letter from the company’s president, Takashi Kiryu, that stated the company would more aggressively pursue the use of the technology.

Artificial intelligence lab OpenAI published a blog post Monday seeking to address fears that its technology will meddle with elections, as more than a third of the globe prepares to head to the polls this year. The use of AI to interfere with election integrity has been a concern since the Microsoft-backed company released two products: ChatGPT, which can mimic human writing convincingly, and DALL-E, whose technology can be used to create "deepfakes," or realistic-looking images that are fabricated. Those worried include OpenAI's own CEO Sam Altman, who testified in Congress in May that he was "nervous" about generative AI's ability to compromise election integrity through "one-on-one interactive disinformation."

 The Earth is heating up, as is conflict in the Middle East. The world economy and Ukraine's defense against Russia are sputtering along. Artificial intelligence (AI) could upend all our lives. The to-do list of global priorities has grown for this year's edition of the World Economic Forum gabfest of business, political and other elites in the Alpine snows of Davos, Switzerland. It gets going in earnest Tuesday and runs through Friday.

PC and microchip companies struggling to get consumers to replace pandemic-era laptops offered a new feature to crowds this week at CES 2024: artificial intelligence (AI). PC and chipmakers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel are betting that the so-called "neural processing units" (NPUs) now found in the latest chip designs will encourage consumers to once again pay for higher-end laptops. Adding additional AI capabilities could help take market share from Apple.

Netflix’s runaway hit The Night Agent has got a big update ahead of its second season as a whole load of new cast members have joined the show. 

Industry veteran Shuji Utsumi has been appointed as the head of Sega's Western business.

There was a ton of anticipation over Konami bringing Silent Hill back into the limelight. After years of being dormant, the mainline video game franchise is returning. Just a couple of years ago, Konami unveiled that several Silent Hill projects were in the works, including new installments and a remake. Silent Hill 2 is arguably the most cherished installment for that survival horror franchise. So fans were skeptical when it was unveiled that it would receive a remake. Now that we’re a couple of years out from that announcement, the developers behind the game feel marketing should be ramping up soon.

Shuji Utsumi has been appointed President and COO at Sega, as well as Representative Director CEO of Sega of America, and CEO of Sega Europe.

Sega has announced some significant restructuring at the top of its western business’ hierarchy. Shuji Utsumi, who had been serving as Sega of Japan’s co-COO and the head of its game contents and services umbrella, has been appointed as the new President, CEO, and COO of Sega America and Sega Europe. He will take on his new role on April 1.

Streaming giant Twitch is set to lay off around 500 members of staff this week according to a new report.

Microsoft Corp. is using powerful computers and artificial intelligence to help researchers speed up the painstaking work required to discover new chemical compounds and materials that could be used for everything from batteries to eco-friendly paints.

Warner Bros. Games has announced that the Harry Potter action-RPG Hogwarts Legacy sold over 22 million copies by the end of 2023, with roughly 2 million of those sales over the December festive period. «But it’s not just the units sold that I’m so proud of, it’s just that it delighted the fans so much,» Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad told Variety.

Sony showed off the latest prototype of its electronic vehicle collaboration with Honda by driving the car on stage using a PlayStation 5 controller.

This year's CES event has been utterly dominated by the constant talk and promotion of AI, and Intel's Client Computing keynote meeting was no different. However, executive vice president Michelle Holthaus did say that Intel's next CPU architecture for desktop PCs, codenamed Arrow Lake, is on target to hit the market in the second half of 2024. Oh, and it's the 'world's first gaming processor with an AI accelerator'.

You can save a bunch of money on all kinds of things this New Year, including video games. One of the best games of 2023 is a from-the-ground-up remake of Resident Evil 4 (see our 10/10 review).

At its recent CES 2024 press conference, Sony took the chance to show off the company's future tech possibilities by driving a car onto the stage. Admittedly, that in itself isn't all that remarkable, but what makes this little stunt more interesting is that the car was being controlled by a PlayStation DualSense controller.

There's no denying that Hogwarts Legacy was one of the biggest games of last year, with millions of Harry Potter fans jumping at the chance to enrol in that iconic wizarding school and unravel a mystery decades before The Boy Who Lived was even born.

Expanding its already vast portfolio of gaming laptops, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has unveiled its latest innovation, the Omen Transcend 14 Gaming Laptop at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024 in Las Vegas. The company calls it the world's coolest and lightest laptop and also HP's most personalized gaming laptop yet.

Today, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment released new sales data on Hogwarts Legacy via an interview with Variety. The game has sold over 22 million copies in 2023, adding two million units just in the month of December, according to the publisher. Moreover, according to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad, it is the best-selling game released last year.

In the company's biggest layoff ever, Unity Software is cutting 1,800 members, roughly 25%, of its staff.

Unity has announced it intends to lay off approximately 1,800 employees, or around 25% of its workforce.

It’s funny how a few years can change things. At one point in time, the Harry Potter franchise was one of the biggest and most profitable media series in the entire world. Then, things started to change after the main series wrapped up its main book line and movie adaptations. First, they tried to do spinoff movies based on an entirely different wizarding period, which heavily backfired on them. That’s not even mentioning what happened with series creator J.K. Rowling. But then, in 2022, things changed with the arrival of a certain video game you might have heard of: Hogwarts Legacy.

Warner Bros. has teased plans to release more games based on in its Wizarding World franchise following Hogwarts Legacy’s success.

Harry Potter spinoff game Hogwarts Legacy managed to sell an astounding 22 million copies in 2023.

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Nvidia revealed the GeForce RTX 40 Super Series of GPUs at CES in Las Vegas on Monday.

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AMD will be hosting its "Advance AI" event at CES 2024 in just a few hours where the company will unveil new desktop & laptop products.

Microsoft Corp. executive Dee Templeton has joined OpenAI's board as a nonvoting observer, according to a person familiar with the matter, as part of a broader boardroom overhaul following the brief ouster of the startup's chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman. Templeton has worked at Microsoft for more than 25 years and is the company's vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has already begun attending board meetings, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment. 

The PlayStation 5 Slim seems to be selling well compared to the original model, but it seems like it is still not enough to outperform the PlayStation 4, according to a new report.

30 years after cluttering up PC keyboards with the Windows key, the key responsible for booting you to desktop at the worst possible moment in your Dota 2 match, Microsoft is poised to once again transform our keyboards. 

Square Enix‘s action-adventure game Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is currently free on Epic Games Store.

AI Roundup: Several notable developments took place in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) today, January 4. Microsoft launched the Copilot key, a key that can summon Microsoft's AI chatbot at just a press of a button. Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday said that AI will be one of the two key issues for Italy during its one-year presidency of the G7. Nearly 58 pct of the researchers think that AI could have catastrophic effects, according to a new survey. All this, and more in today's AI roundup.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has promised that if Hollywood doesn't move forward with the movie in 2024, he'll "figure it out outside". 

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