Report: EA Shut Down BioWare In Favor of Star Wars Battlefront 3

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Game Mess Mornings with me, Jeff Grubb, your host from GiantBomb.com. Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're going to be talking about a Zelda for kids by kids and Star Wars killed by aware. It's going to be a good one because we have Sean McDowell on the show. Turbo Sean, how are you doing?

Oh, I'm doing great, Jeff. I'm so happy to be here for a long day of work instead of down in Milwaukee celebrating with everyone down Wisconsin Avenue.

I could not be more thrilled.

We had to keep you away from the bratwurst and the brews.

Don't be too wild.

Yeah, we got to save you from yourself. You know, you're going to go ham and we just couldn't have that. What is what are the festivities like? And I know the parade's happening, all that stuff.

I mean, the city of Milwaukee is just going to be celebrating today. But yeah, the parade is the big thing. I know it's actually on TV right now.

I bet it is.

Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Saw them at the Packers game. Getting to do the Lambo leap, that was a lot of fun. Brewers is one of those teams where it's like, yeah, that's a team that should have won the World Series a long time ago. I just associate that team with baseball. I mean, their baseball team, that makes sense, but it's not what I mean. Just like Brewers is baseball to me in a lot of ways, where that's.

A team name that's so strong. I love Brewers. Brewers and then.

You know obviously Milwaukee had great teams in the 80s And things like that so yeah never won That's crazy well they put an end to that.

Yeah you said uh brewers are Baseball in a way and yeah I think of Like um someone in particular Who made it that way I don't know if you saw During uh the game I believe uh Two games ago in the world series Where they had the stand up to cancer Uh segment like they do and all The brewers just had uke written on their Card for bob uker and it's like That team, that city, they love baseball, man. So that was a really touching moment there.

And just the whole World Series was awesome to watch. And I'm really happy that they finally won. I know my mom, who's a Lifetime fan, was just like, she's never been happier.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's great to see. Yeah. Yeah.

Stuff like, yeah, you can remember those guys like they become fabric, part of the fabric of the city forever.

Like once you're part of it, it's just that that way forever. So exactly. Yes. Excellent stuff. All right.

We do have video games to talk about. It is Friday. It is almost Halloween. We should get into things and explain ourselves. We're Giant Bomb. Go to Giant Bomb dot com slash join. Become a premium member. If you do, you are supporting independent games media. We get to keep doing this fun stuff your way, our way. If you come in and support us, we are deeply thankful to everyone who does. It is enabling us to do even more cool stuff. It also enables you and empowers you to get ad free versions of our shows and premium exclusive content of which we constantly come up with new ideas and and of which there are several cool things happening right now that you can get if you just go to giantbomb.com slash join and become a premium member.

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Most weekdays, I, Jeff Grubb, will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you are watching live on Twitch, welcome. You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings or find the RSS feed on giantbomb.com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello, YouTube.

All right, we have a lot to get into, so let's start the morning mess with... Zelda chief Eiji Aonuma says some of the younger members of the Ocarina of Time remake team had never played the original game, and he says that's a good thing. This is from Wesley Yenpool at IGN. Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Zelda series at Nintendo for PS4, the last quarter of a century, has said some of the younger members of his team had never played the original Ocarina of Time, but insisted that this was very much a good thing for the development of the remake. Ocarina of Time launched on Nintendo 64 28 years ago.

That's just a typo. Weird that they would do that.

Well, while it's considered one of the most influential video games ever created, a generation of game developers were born after its release. Ahead of next week's release of the remake, Alanuma told AFP via the Japan Times that having people on the remake's development team who had never played the original Ocarina of Time actually helped. It's thanks to these young people by thinking about how to adapt the game in the best way possible, how to make it fun once you have the controls in your hand, that this remake came into being.

That is, again, according to Aonuma.

Given the 63-year-old Aonuma has been steering the Zelda ship for a quarter of a century, you'd forgive him for perhaps wanting to take his foot off the gas and pass the baton to someone younger. But it sounds like he's still keen to lead the Zelda franchise into the future. I'm very interested to see what the younger staff will imagine for future titles, he said. And he's extremely happy to offer his guidance so they can think together about the next Zelda.

You know, what that might be. He's given some hints. He talked about previously, Sean, about oh.

We, you know, we worked with Koei Tecmo on Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment, and that will influence the next mainline Legend of Zelda title.

That could mean any one of a million things, right?

He also, of course, talked about, you know, I wanted to do a sequel to Breath of the Wild because we had some ideas and we wanted to go deeper there. Maybe we'll do that again, but the next game will feel completely new. They're saying the kinds of things that they say when they know they have more than half a decade before the next Zelda game was going to show up. Maybe we're a little bit closer to that now, but It's still a ways off. They are probably actually still figuring out what this next Zelda really, really is going to be at the end of the day. And in the meantime, Ocarina of Time is kind of getting this fresh coat of paint thanks to these younger developers.

And I think that is how you end up with stuff like a jump button. It's like, yeah, of course it should have a jump button because a kid's going to pick this up and be like, wait, there's a gap here. How do I jump? You want me to just run toward the edge. You're a maniac. That's the kind of thing that does get addressed there. And I bet it goes even deeper than that.

Yeah, I think this is a really good thing for a remake of this type in general. I think we saw this a bit with Final Fantasy seven's remake trilogy, where you have people who made the original all those years ago on the staff leading things. But then the people who either are a little bit older and were heavily influenced by it or people who grew up with it because we're that far removed taking reins on things and it influenced the way they wanted to make video games.

And so I think it's only natural that you bring in those fresh eyes to say, hey, this is how I expect games to be as someone who's a bit younger. And if you're trying to appeal to a younger demographic and bring back this classic for that audience, it only makes sense that, yeah, you want to bring it up to spec with what they would expect. I think it's those blending of the two that makes for a good remake.

Because you can't just have one or the other like you couldn't you couldn't just have an older audience who are sorry, you couldn't just have a younger crew who just sees the game as like, this is how I think the game is without some of that older influence of people saying, well, this is what the core of it is. This is what we wanted it to be.

This is the spirit of the game. You need those two teams working together. So that way that that older audience can then guide the younger members of the team and say, OK, so let's let's work together. Let's have this the soul of the game brought to life through, uh, through newer eyes.

I think that's it. Yeah. Like the headline says, that's a good thing.

Yep, exactly.

And, uh, you can see like, Oh, you know, this is all part of a long ongoing process for Nintendo of, of bringing in fresh blood, something that they've been pretty good at, despite the fact that they also have had a lot of people who, whose names are very familiar in charge of the same franchises for, as, as the story says, a quarter of a century, uh, when it comes to A.G. Aonuma, uh, But it's like that's not a sign that there's not like upward mobility. They are constantly refreshing the crop of people that they work with and bringing in the best of the best and sort of like skilling them up in the way of making games the way Nintendo does. But also, yeah, letting them kind of bring in their influences as well. We heard

a lot of those stories for Super Mario Brothers Wonder where it's like we're letting the young people just bring every idea they have and we're trying all of them. And you can tell it's like, oh, Nintendo thinks that is crucial to keeping their games feeling good. relevant and, um, it'll be especially noticeable here because Ocarina of Time has played one way for a very long time. We know that game kind of better than just about any other game because it is one of the most influential things of all time. And when we get it, we're going to see it and say, okay, can some new ideas make this thing feel more relevant than ever?

And it's like right now, my guess is, yeah, probably.

I think they fully understand what this thing needs to feel like when you do get it in your hands and having a team of, as you put it, split between people who are bringing the the experience of likely work having worked on the original ocarina of time mixed with people who were born after that game came out and never even played it that will be a very interesting to see on the screen and i bet it will be noticeable.

Right yeah because no game is sacred you know like every game has what developers view as mistakes whether the audience views them as mistakes or not all the devs are always like ah We could have done this better or ah i wish we would have done things a different way there uh the thing that just popped in my head was like you know sakurai was smash like as much as people revere super smash brothers melee as this like pinnacle of competitive nintendo gaming sakurai has always been like yeah i could have done better on that one and that's why like you know like he overcorrected with brawl and tripping and all that stuff like but that's why we have like four and ultimate like sort of blend a more casual yeah yeah it's blend the

two together more in a way that like the developer intended. And I think like when you get more chances to do so, you can see them like, yeah, fix things or add in, like you're saying, those new ideas that we've just gotten better at making games. Castlevania Belmont's Curse is reminding me of that. We talked about that on the Bombcast of like, sometimes you just learn how to do things a little bit better or a little more interesting, or at the very least in a way that the audience you're trying to appeal to with this new one is going to appreciate.

Yeah, like you could have more going on, more trust with the audience. The audience has also grown up alongside these games. So you could try things that originally you've been like, is this going to get this?

It's like, no, no. Now we have a lot of.

Evidence that we can make things a little bit more complicated and trust the audience. And that alone can make a big difference in what a game feels like compared to like when you like when you released it then versus releasing the game today.

Hey, this this game's out next week. What do you think it's going to get? What do you think?

Like in terms of like the response? Well, like what do you what's your prediction for the open critic?

What are you like?

What do you think it's going to do in terms of living up to the hype? Obviously, we're just guessing here, but let's talk about.

I don't know because I don't know who's reviewing it. And if I like had a better feel of who is reviewing it, I would have a better idea of that. But because I don't know if it's going to be. primarily the older audience who, you know, they, well, speaking of reverence, revere and respect that original game. And so we're going to judge it harshly against that one and their memories of it. Or if it's going to be a younger audience who is going to critique it and maybe tear it apart a little bit more if it doesn't do things exactly the way I want. I'm not exactly sure. I think I'm going to split the difference a little bit and say maybe it falls to low 90s rather than the original's high 90s. But I still

think that like there's going to be a lot of 10 out of 10s, I'd imagine, just because it's Ocarina of Time, if nothing else.

Right. Yep. Yeah.

And then, you know, I'm, I'm going to be curious still that this is something we talked about before, like that breath of the wild audience that is new to Zelda or, or newer in some ways that the ones that just you know millions of people play breath of the wild uh more than play ever played ocarina of time uh and they're going to be very interested in this that's all the all the evidence points to them being uh locked in on this game as the next big zelda thing rightfully so in a lot of ways but it's a very different game and i'll be i'll be very curious to hear what the response is from from that audience my guess is people are savvy enough to know what to expect with this game for the most part. I think most people aren't going to be

expecting breath of the wild. Probably going to get a couple people on, you know, like tick tock being like, I thought this would be more like breath of the wild. Like, what am I supposed to do here? And then it'll be good natured and they'll figure it out and probably end up still having a very good time with it.

So yeah, it's going to be very cool. And God, a week from now, we'll be playing this game. That's just, it feels crazy, but yeah, it feels crazy.

But yeah, here we are. Okay.

That was the first big story there, Zelda.

Let's get on here to this next one.

EA Electronic Arts chose to shut down BioWare so it could make Star Wars.

Battlefront 3 instead. It is claimed. This is from Chris Scullion at VGC.

One of the main reasons behind EA's decision to shut down BioWare was its focus on making Star Wars Battlefront 3 instead.

That is a claim, I believe, from Bloomberg.

Last week, it was announced that EA was closing the historic Dragon Age studio. and canceling the Mass Effect game it was working on. Now, a new report from Bloomberg claims that the decision to close BioWare was mainly due to EA being presented with the opportunity to make a new Star Wars Battlefront game. Citing sources familiar with the situation who chose to speak anonymously, the report says that EA executives were looking at the company's portfolio for the next few years, conscious of the $ 18 billion of debt imposed on it as a result of its acquisition by Saudi Arabia's investment fund. The sources claim that EA's executives realized the publisher had two sci-fi action games planned, each

of which was set to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The next Mass Effect game, now believed to have been titled Mass Effect Universe and Star Wars Battlefront III.

It's claimed that EA chose to invest.

In making Star Wars Battlefront 3 and chose to shut down Bioware as a result, believing that a new Star Wars game was more likely to be successful than a new Mass Effect.

And yeah, okay.

I think if you present it that way of you have to choose one, I suppose Star Wars Battlefront 3 has the potential to make a lot more money because it's multiplayer and they can definitely still find ways to put... microtransactions in there. I know that this series has a sordid history with that stuff, but they will still find a way to do it. Mass Effect will be a little bit more difficult to do that, although they've been able to do that with Mass Effect 3 in the past as well. But it'll still be more difficult. And just the raw sales numbers, Star Wars games have the best ones or the biggest ones have sold better than the biggest Mass Effect games. But man, it just feels like if you get a Mass Effect game right, it

could have done extremely well.

And I just... Yeah.

OK, I guess I could see why executives at EA who are dipshits are like we have to choose one.

For me, as someone who's like, oh, I absolutely would have played both of these games.

And then and then if it's there's a lot of people out there who wouldn't play both.

They are.

It's because they are in very different audiences. And then you're you were never going to reach them with Battlefront three versus Mass Effect.

Right.

Exactly.

These are two different games for two different audiences. Very, very different audiences. There may be overlap in those audiences. You know, like people like you and me would check out both.

Sure.

Yeah.

But like yeah it absolutely.

Reads as an executive who doesn't understand gaming saying oh sci-fi and sci-fi well we have two sci-fi projects and like we're not gonna spend all this money on two things that might like cannibalize each other i know hollywood or movies or whatever the hell i seem to think very shallow reading yes very shallow and i don't think that's a good strategy and and the one that yeah yeah like mass effect would have made less money probably we don't know for a fact but probably and so it's so this okay this is the thing that we keep harping on it's the thing that we for the most part praise nintendo for now i think a lot of us praised xbox for in the beginning of game pass and then we praised playstation 4 prior to ps3

really You need to fill in the gaps in your library with other games. You can't have every single game be your GTA 6, your Elder Scrolls or whatever, you know, your big Bethesda RPG. You can't have it be your primary big tentpole game. Like imagine if you look at Nintendo because they're the only ones still doing it, like filling in those gaps with smaller games, even if it's just like one tier down. You can't just have everything be Mario. You know, they have all these other franchises that they still devote time to because you need to flesh out that library, even if you're not.

Even though if it was a Mario on paper, like you'd be able to say it would do better, but they don't just do that.

Right, exactly.

And that's even if you're not the first party, even if you're not the platform holder, like looking at EA. First of all, if nothing else, risk. What if Star Wars Battlefront 3 flops?

What if nobody cares?

Well, at least you would have had a Bioware RPG that, you know, if you gave them the resources and time to work on it properly, which seems to be something that Bioware didn't have there, it could have been a banger and it could have taken off. At the very least, it could have made up for any potential failures. That's...

to like have these teams helping each other out to raise the company up in general because you can't just bet all your chips on one thing yep.

It's uh and then you know what you described there is like oh yeah if they were to spread the spread out their bets and and kind of do right by both these games it certainly would increase the chances of them finding success and making more money than if they just have one of these things be a success.

The reality is probably going to be that, you know, as they point out in this story, the $ 18 billion of debt is they're going to focus on one of these games and they're not going to do justice to that one project. Like there's like Star Wars Battlefront three in our heads. Yeah, man, just make a follow up to Star Wars Battlefront two.

That should crush.

Are these two studios that are working on it, Respawn and Dice, going to have the time and resources to actually do that in a world where this EA company has to service $ 18 billion in debt?

And it's like, probably not.

This is probably just going to be something that is half-assed to a certain degree, and it's going to be obvious, and it could lead to that situation where it does flop and it has a lot of backlash because it's disappointing in a bunch of ways. And then maybe they spend years trying to recover that, or maybe they just give up on it because it's EA, and they're like, okay, let's just take the money we would have put into this and put it into more ultimate teams.

And sports games.

Uh, yeah, this is a company that is, is lost and sure. They can say this is the reason. The real reason is they just don't believe that making video games is the answer to their problems, which is my, has been my issue with a company like EA for a while.

And now that problem is worse than it's ever been. Right. Exactly.

Uh, yeah, I, I'm, I'm still going to look forward to star Wars battlefront 3, despite really despising this EA and the Saudi and Jared Kushner-owned EA, just because I do have a handful of people that I really respect who still work at Respawn specifically. But, man, if those people get out of there, it'll be easy for me to write off this company entirely.

We'll see. We'll see what happens with them.

That's the trick of it all, isn't it?

Yeah.

You know, it's the same thing like when we want, like when we look at a Microsoft game, it's like, man, I hate this company.

Yes.

But those artists are cool. They do cool shit. And I hope that the game is good. Maybe sometimes I hoping for stuff like Double Fine or, you know, studios like that where, ah, yes, you got out from under the shackles.

Now I'm happily supporting you. And guess what?

You had that really good game that you made and I can happily support that as well. So we'll see what happens with all this, though.

Exactly.

All right.

Let's let's take a break. We come back. We'll get into some more headlines.

And there's all that, you know, the swirl around Gears of War E-Day and how well it's really doing or not. We'll get into that after this break. If you want to skip out on these ad messages, we're going to go to. You can do so if you go to Giant Bomb dot com slash join, become a premium member. You can find the ad free version of the audio and video show there. We will be right back.

It is Game Mess Mornings. I'm Jeff Grubb. That is Turbo Sean.

That is the mace.

That is the mace. There you go. That's my wedding ring on the mace.

It just happens sometimes. Gears of War E-Day reportedly sold over 400,000 copies. This is from Robert DeFelice at Insider Gaming. How many copies has Gears of War E-Day sold? A new report claims it has sold at least 400,000 copies across Xbox and Steam. These sales exclude Game Pass access. I think once you include that, the player numbers is well into the million, like 1.5 million or something like that.

But in terms of game copies sold, which is still extremely important to recouping the costs on these games, 400,000 copies. Gears of War E-Day launched earlier this month and was the first game in the franchise since Gears 5 launched in 2019.

Players and critics.

Received the game very well, and it currently holds in 87 on Metacritic. A new report shed light on how many copies were sold. Tom Warren of The Verge reports Gears of War E-Day has sold more than 400,000 copies on Xbox and Steam, while Game Pass revenue remains unclear. Warren asks whether the Game Pass numbers are successful and whether they could have offset additional Xbox hardware sales or the sales a potential PS5 release could have generated.

Had Xbox decided to port the game to Sony hardware.

E-Day was one of Xbox's first major releases under Asha Sharma's leadership and the first to champion a soft return to console exclusivity for certain games. This follows the launch of Halo Campaign Evolved on PS5, marking the first time the legendary Microsoft franchise was a playable on PlayStation. For more on the latest scares, where they have a bunch of stuff here. Okay, yeah. 400,000 copies for a game that has reportedly.

The cost is somewhere between $ 300 and $ 500 million. The reason that that is such a wide range is people want to point to the fact that the Coalition is a studio that does a lot of work for a lot of other teams. So attributing all the cost of running that studio to the production of Gears of War E-Day is maybe a little challenging. I kind of think that while people can view it that way, I don't think Microsoft cares to view it that way. They look at one number versus the other number. The coalition costs X.

The thing that they produced made Y. And that's as deep as they look at it. I think they are very ruthless when it comes to this stuff. And I always think back to my conversations with people like the people at Rare early on in the days of Game Pass or when early on in the days of games going day one into Game Pass. Hey, you know, Sea of Thieves, it's doing well, but maybe, you know, it would sell better if it wasn't in Game Pass. But, you know, you kind of don't have to worry about selling because you just got to make sure Game Pass is going strong. And they were very adamant. No, we got to make our own money. And that never changed.

That was always the case. If anything, it got worse over time. And so I think 400,000 copies sold for this is going to put the studio in a very rough position.

And it was already going to.

Be in a rough position because even the studios that have had successes were seeing pretty big layoffs, pretty big cuts. I think Playground had some cuts despite having a very successful Forza game.

And that's Playground.

In the game that sold millions of copies, I think that Microsoft's going to look at these two numbers, the revenue generated from the sales of the game versus the cost to run the coalition, and it's going to be, like I said, rough for the studio here pretty soon.

Right, and I don't think that number is fair. Like, if they are doing other things, like helping out other studios or whatever, like, you can't... It is the Game Pass numbers all over again, where they're not just looking at the direct numbers, the direct sales.

They're trying to look at, like.

moving the cost of running the company onto the company and then like that's how we make game pass look profitable it's a very microsoft way of doing things where some someone in the chain at the top is saying this is how we need to shuffle the numbers around to make it look good to our bosses to make you look good to investors like whatever the situation may be and you can't you can't do that here where like no like if they're doing other things that that is value you have value there because i'm sure that other studios that have worked and i'm trying to remember like at the currency of xbox genuinely i'm trying to remember like who have they worked with who's like still there and uh who hasn't been shuttered or something.

Else like under xbox proper it is just um It's just Playground, In Exile, and The Coalition, right?

And then everyone else has been shifted elsewhere.

This is not talked about in exact terms, but we know that The Coalition works with the other studios when they're having issues with Unreal.

Yes, they are the Unreal experts, and a lot of the Microsoft studios use Unreal.

Exactly.

And so like any because they made the Unreal Engine sing because like that's kind of that was always the point of Gears really is to like present in that way. And so now, yeah, under Microsoft, that's exactly what that studio does. And so like there is value there. You can't hold that against them. And so when you have a game selling 400000 copies, sorry from.

The headline, I was like, I don't. why is that headline that way? I don't think that's good.

Um, that that's going to be bad for the team, but that's the situation put on them by Microsoft because of game pass.

I mean, to, to illustrate that. And, uh, uh, yes, there's this, uh, post here. I'm sorry. I've lost who actually shared this in chat, but I pinned it here.

Uh, Reese Elliott said that the 707 or 722,000 of the 1.7 million people who played E day through game pass bought the $ 30 premium upgrade. And that, that did come from a rich bad at game. Um, That speaks to. So, OK, let's explain what that is first. There is an advanced access version of this game where people could get it a week early if they had the upgrade. You get the standard version included in Game Pass. So if you want to get this game early and you have Game Pass, you pay $ 30 to get access to the upgraded version.

You haven't bought the game.

You've just bought this extra pass on the side to upgrade your version of the game that you were going to get from Game Pass.

And that unlocks it early. This speaks to a lot of.

People would have bought this game at a much higher price to get like to actually own it if it wasn't included in Game Pass. But they already have Game Pass. So why would they do that? Now, I think if you mix this together with like the 400,000 copies sold, 722,000 people buying a $ 30.

Pass to get the game early. Is that enough? And it's like, maybe still not.

But at that point, again, that's very on Microsoft for building their ecosystem in this way and then having these expectations on these studios who have to live with the consequences that they have no control over. And again, we could say that all we want. Microsoft doesn't care. The people in charge don't care. They don't look at it that hard. They just look at the numbers on the spreadsheet and make ruthless decisions. And I think we would all argue here pretty dumb decisions because it's like there is something wrong at the root of how you are selling video games. And it is leading to these issues for these studios who are doing excellent work. The best reviewed Gears of War.

In like 20 years.

Yeah.

And that's I guess that's the key of it all here is that's what I wish Asha and the current leadership would do at Xbox is make Instead of being ruthless and making the hard cuts, I saw that was a Fortune article or whatever that was just glazing her left and right. I'm like, no, don't praise the person who's making the ruthless cuts that need to be done because all she's doing is upending people's lives. No, look at it pragmatically of like, what value are you bringing?

How can we reinvest your value? How can we shuffle things around here to make this all work? I know there's, you know, people of Xbox past have made decisions that put everyone in a tough situation here. That's how we get to things like, yeah, the Game Pass funkiness. But you need to be looking at all the good that these studios bring in all the art. that is being brought to the table here and lifting that up in a way that isn't just, oh, you sold 400,000 copies because I fear that's going to be the thing that's going to be pointed to. Your game didn't sell well and ignoring the revenue that you had to generate elsewhere and the value you're bringing to studios elsewhere. I hope things will be all right for the studios, just where

I'm at right now.

Yeah.

Yes.

A lot of people at the coalition have done great work to just, you know, make games better across the board over there.

And yeah, it's. like they will be undervalued. All right.

John Romero's game has a new publisher, but the original version of the game is not coming back. They are basically having to restart the concept here.

We'll get into why. John Romero says his studio has a new publisher.

It's an undisclosed publisher after it lost funding from Microsoft. He confirmed this in an interview with VGC while at Gamescom Asia. The staff for the studio fell from 110 people when it was working with Microsoft down to five. Ten former sub-team leads have returned. So the current team is approximately 15 to 16 people, and that is why the game that they're making now is not the game they were making then. The previous version of the game did require more than 100 people working on it to get that idea out the door. They have re-scoped Respect, and now they are working with a much smaller team and a publisher that understands that. to take all the assets and the IP that they still own, they did

get to keep all that stuff, and then take, I just dropped my phone, and then take those ideas and turn them into something that will make sense with this much smaller, obviously much smaller budget.

But, hey, John Romero's still making games.

I'll take the win where I can get him, especially in the wake of the destruction of all the cuts at Microsoft.

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaking of Microsoft and maybe not taking the best routes with things. But this is a this is a good end to this story ish in the fact that they, you know, with a new publisher, they can start building back up. And yeah, dang, 110 down to five. So basically just like the people running the company and I had to rebuild everything.

That's rough.

But hopefully they can get things back to something resembling what their idea was and what they wanted to do, obviously. You know, if there was Microsoft funding that you were banking on there, it was probably pretty substantial. Like if that deal was in place, it probably won't be as big here unless they're going with like a really large studio, which as we've talked about several times on GMM recently, there just doesn't seem to be that kind of funding going around anymore. So, yeah, hopefully they can bring in if they're just doing the same game over again, just with a different. slant because they don't have that budget there.

Hopefully they can get things back to where they want it to be.

Yep, absolutely.

You know, he he's going around talking and doing talks and stuff like Gamescom Asia. He's out there still very involved in making games. And you can just tell that, you know, if people have ever read Masters of Doom, it really was a wild time when he was a young man and they were making games at id and him like maturing and becoming this elder statesman in a very sort of I don't chill.

Dude has been awesome to see.

He is one of those guys where it's like, Oh, I'm glad that I sort of put him on a pedestal as opposed to many other people at that time who I did, who have all proven to be mostly shitheads.

He has not, he's been, he's just a cool guy. And I hope that this team that he's.

Working with can really just get, you know, see it through and do something that is neat. You know, it doesn't need to be the biggest thing in the world. Just make a cool game with cool levels and I'll be there.

Exactly. Yeah.

I'm always reminded of like any time I see one of his like, hi, Sandy, we hope you're doing well. Just like any time Sandy Peters and says I'm stupid. It's just like the second you see him wishing Sandy.

Well, it's like, oh, he's about to dunk on this.

Great.

Yeah.

John Romero just seems like a cool, cool dude.

He was in a real all time shit talking heel back in the day when they were when they would play deathmatch games. And some of those stories are incredible. I always want to do a sleep demon short on Instagram about him at some point.

I'll do that soon. All right.

Mainline Resident Evil story could wrap up in the next 10 years, according to producer.

This is from Verity Townsend at IGN.

IGN recently reported Resident Evil series producer Jun Takauchi commented that Capcom's survival horror series story could end in the next 10 years. However, this does not mean that Capcom plans to stop making Resident Evil games in the next decade.

Okay, yeah.

As Takauchi told 47 News, picked up by Yahoo Japan, in a recent interview with the release of Requiem this year, I feel like the first 10 years... have reached the end of a chapter, so I think the conclusion will come in the following 10 years. This quote set news outlets and fans wondering if Capcom plans to wind up its popular franchise by 2036. However, what Takuchi is specifically referring to here is the company's 10-year branding concept for the survival horror franchise. This vision kicked off with the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2, which Takuchi refers to in the previous paragraph and involved much mulling over how to deal with Resident Evil's overarching story.

The series story wasn't all planned out from the beginning. It expanded with each new release.

When we were planning the Resident Evil 2 remake and coming up with the 10-year branding concept, this, and by that he means the story, was what we puzzled over. If you play through all of these games, I think you'll work out the meaning behind the order of the remakes. Basically, they just did come up with a little bit more planning this time to be like, okay, let's tell a more cohesive story And I don't know if I've noticed that necessarily, but maybe by the time it's all said and done, I will have. And I think this is probably them recognizing the cadence of what has happened with Resident Evil up to this point, where it is about every 10 years, they have needed to sort of retell the soil and try something a little bit different. So

bake that into the planning going forward and then be ready to do new resident evil by the time you get to the end of that plan and it's like yeah that's probably smart to like like be ready to reassess what you're doing with this franchise um on the cadence that so far you've had to do that because you've made whatever game that that people just got a little bit you know it got long in the tooth the most obvious example being resident evil.

6 right right Yeah, I think with the remakes that he brings up here, I'm not sure I noticed like them trying to be more deliberate with the story in the sense of this is something we are intentionally doing as much as I was just like, oh, yeah, it's a remake with like a lot more resources. Of course, they're going to like, you know, flesh out the story or something like that. OK, if they're being more deliberate with it, that's an interesting thing to note here. But I think with the Requiem, a lot of people assumed that would be the end of the main Resident Evil story because we have a trilogy ish wrapping up there.

We we've had this story going for so long that it's. Resident Evil has a Jedi problem, Jeff. where just Resident Evil cannot escape the Raccoon City outbreak. It just everything needs to be tied back to that in some way, shape or form. Even when you get off the rails with things like Resident Evil five and six, it all goes back to like, well, Wesker and everything like that.

Like he's he's a problem, just like the bioweapons that Umbrella develops. Resident Evil doesn't need to be all that, but it's been tied to that for so long that even seeing it could wrap up in the next 10 years here, it's like I think a lot of fans were even if they're enjoying the games, wished you would have done that a little bit earlier. So it's it's nice to I guess at least see it's it's in the back of their brains when they're making that stuff.

Right.

That that's that does feel like the most we can hope for is they at least apparently had a conversation about the idea of wrapping up the story in some satisfactory way. My belief in their ability to actually execute on that, and that's not because I think they're incapable or something.

It's just the nature of these kinds of massive IPs.

You do something new, and you're going to spend five years working on one of these games.

You're just going to throw in all the.

New ideas you can because it's an opportunity, and you're not going to miss those opportunities. And that will invariably lead to the expansion of gameplay, but then it also leads to the expansion of the lore itself. and some new character that, and then, and then, you know, you want to make that character feel extra special. How do we do that? You wrap it back into Raccoon City and Wesker and all that stuff. It'll happen over and over again.

It just, It pains me that like I think some of the weakest parts of Requiem specifically were like the Raccoon City stuff and the stuff that they kept trying to tie into the old lore. If it was just like a new bioweapon menace or whatever, a new like a virus outbreak or something, you could even like stick with that if you really wanted to. But just Grace is a cool character and like everything going on there could.

Have been separate.

Even like the Leon character didn't specifically need to be Leon, but like they obviously put him in to sell copies of the game, really, and then just tied him into all that with his infection and everything like that and trying to like sort of solve the mystery there and like, oh, what's going to happen with Leon here as we saw in like those initial trailers? Yeah, I don't know. I think Resident Evil would be just fine without necessarily that attachment to the old characters and everything. Nothing else like we talked about with Ocarina of Time earlier in the show.

Younger people don't know who any of these characters are anyways.

Like they might grow attached to Grace and not necessarily specifically know Leon. Also, the fact that he's like on the cover of Resident Evil 4, which was really big in our thought that they don't necessarily have that attachment to them. I think Resident Evil as a brand would be just fine and they can move on.

Yes, they will.

When they move on from this Resident Evil, it will be on to... new resident evil that is very reminiscent of all the things that everyone always brings up when they talk about resident evil. So it, capcom's fully aware of that that's what it'll look like uh and and maybe that's you know this the plan gets a little bit scuttled by the time they get to 2036 and they're like i actually know we're going to continue this but like we said the fact that it's in the back of their mind might mean it looks a little bit more coherent than it would otherwise.

We'll have to see.

OK, Ubisoft has no more Assassin's Creed remakes in active development.

Sean, this is from Chris Scullion at VGC. Let's see here.

In a fall 2026 update posted on the official Ubisoft website, head of content, Jean Guisdon, gave an update on the progress of its multiplayer Assassin's Creed game codenamed Invictus, as well as its darker horror based Assassin's Creed codenamed Hex. Glissan also addressed player speculation about more remakes following the success of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resync and stressed that none are currently in development. One thing we want to be transparent about today is that we currently have no other Assassin's Creed remakes actively in development. Our teams are already focused on the next chapter of Assassin's Creed titles, including projects you haven't heard about yet, featuring new settings

and stories. But don't mistake that for a closed door. Like many of you, we love the idea of revisiting our classic titles, and we'll keep exploring opportunities to bring older titles back.

Elsewhere in the.

Update, I gave an update on the Assassin's Creed multiplayer spinoff, codenamed Evictus. Basically, they're like, hey, we've been testing that, and we're going to try to make it even more like Assassin's Creed.

People loved it. That does fly a little bit in the face of some.

Of the reporting we heard around it, where it's like people... Didn't seem to love any of the play tests. And we're comparing it to like a weird fall guys. But with Assassin's Creed, which is like that is a very bizarre thing to hear. Like, that's the take on the multiplayer. But they're like, OK, people like some of the stuff where it is about climbing and getting around. And they just didn't like the fact that there wasn't a lot of stuff that made it feel like Assassin's Creed. And then Hex is the one that is in the Holy Roman Empire, Germanic area, and has witches.

And stuff like that.

That does seem to be the next big major Assassin's Creed, and they're talking about it here a little bit.

But in terms of the fact that they're not doing any remakes, I'm surprised only because.

There's a couple immediately you can begin to think like, okay, do the first Assassin's Creed game. Bring that back in a reimagined way. Just do a little bit more to it than you did with Assassin's Creed for Black Flag. But the reality is Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag is basically what a modern game still is in every way.

And Assassin's Creed 1 would need quite a bit more work.

So I guess they're looking at their opportunity costs here and going, if we make something new, maybe it could be even bigger. But that can't last for too long, right? They're going to start remaking more of these. Black Flag was too successful for them not to do more. What do you think?

I would think so, because if nothing else, remakes are all the rage now in general.

Yeah.

Again just talked about ocarina so why would you not do more of the ones that people really like i suppose the thing there is uh i i'm not the biggest assassin's creed fan like i dabbled with the first couple ones i was like all right this seems cool and then like when people say oh this is doing something really new and interesting like um uh was it odyssey that was like the one that people really liked that's the one i really liked yeah i'd like pop in check it out so I'm curious how much more juicers to squeeze for Assassin's Creed in particular, like what remakes.

People are looking for there.

It seemed like Black Flag was like a really popular one and highly requested one. So I'm not sure what else people would be looking for there.

Yeah, I think the first Assassin's Creed would be very interesting to see. And then the Ezio trilogy would be the other one that I think at this point people have a lot of affinity for that character and that trilogy and Brotherhood is great. like one of the better games of that generation i really like that game quite a lot um yeah it's those ones are all xbox 360 games and that would be a little bit more work than you know assassin's black flag which was a 360 cross-gen game with xbox one uh and had so many other features and felt like a much more fully fledged game and was easier to translate uh into a remake now They've done re-releases of the XCO trilogy before remasters.

So we would be talking about a full-on remake. And yeah, for three games, that would be a lot. But it's like, God, Capcom's shown a bunch of these studios. Konami's showing that that is a very viable thing to sort of keep your franchise feeling relevant in between the release of the bigger games. And Ubisoft is a company, they used to release Assassin's Creed games annually. every year they had one for a decade plus for a very long time. And I think that like they, part of them wants to like get back to that. And the only way I could see them possibly pulling that off is if they begin alternating with a remix. And even then that would be once every two years or once every year and a half at the, at the quickest or something like that. But, um, yeah,

Assassin's Creed is a massive franchise in terms of its appeal to a broad audience. Um, and to hear them still working on things like Invictus, this multiplayer game, I'm just like, man, I don't know if that's ever, ever going to be what that audience really wants, but Ubisoft always chasing trends and, uh, we'll see what they try to pull off there. And in the meantime, I guess I'm looking forward to hex. We'll have to see more of it, but I like the idea of the setting at the very least. Uh, You a Resonance of Fate guy, Sean?

Resonance of Fate is another remaster that's happening. Just real quick, Trias is enhanced remasters available on PS5 and PC.

It's $ 35. There's things here. Let's see here. It's going to have updated visuals.

Yes, it's going to include the downloadable content. They have a double speed exploration, so you can fast forward battles and events. That seems to be mostly what's happening here. I think this game stood out. I remember it, but I don't remember how people felt about it necessarily.

I know it's very beloved.

I it never really hit with me. I tried it once or twice here.

I think. Yeah, I think I tried it twice.

I tried the original and the the re-release that they initially did there. And neither of them clicked with me. But I can like see that as one of those.

Nothing else.

I respect tri-As for like doing weird and different stuff with RPGs. I know that there are RPGs are often like the RPG sickos RPGs.

So I know it's a very beloved one.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, speaking of RPGs, then let's check in on how Final Fantasy Resonance did, at least in Japan. It did top the charts in terms of launch week sales when you combine all the skews.

But, yeah, of course you do.

Final Fantasy Resonance sold 133,191 physical copies in Japan during its first four days. Combined across platforms, it outsold every other game that week. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort topped the individual SKU chart, but Resonance's three versions occupied second, third, and fourth, with Switch 2 and Switch making up 62% of the physical launch copies, 82,000 copies alone for Switch and Switch 2, and then PS5 making up the remaining 37.9% at 50,000 copies. My takeaway here, Sean, is those are pretty good numbers, and I think this should be a signal to square Enix that turn-based can work that throwback final fantasy. Uh, like that's not just a gimmick. There's a lot of people sort of waiting in the wings

for that, that, um, an old school approach to just not just the visuals, but overall game design is something that.

People are craving. I guess, what do you think this says to square Enix about the future of final fantasy?

It says listen to fans and give them what they want because people people want them to save Brave Exvius. Like, you know, that's a smaller portion of the audience. But people also want them to just have a traditional turn based RPG. And so that by turning one of those things into the other, they knocked out two birds with one stone.

And I think that's. That's great.

They did a good job, but I'm having a lot of fun playing it, as I said, as my bedtime game. It does remind me of, yeah, when Final Fantasy was a primarily turn based thing. I could rely on that to be like just a fun experience, a fun little cozy experience. And I think Final Fantasy can be in both lanes. I think it can be this big budget over the top action RPG series. As well as a traditional turn-based series. Like, it always felt weird to me that they felt the need to diverge and do Bravely Default and then later Octopath and stuff like that. When they could have just done Final Fantasy, branded everything, and presumably it even would have just sold better. They did that back in the 90s of just, like, taking random

concepts and branding it Final Fantasy. And they absolutely did better than they would have on their own.

Yeah.

I think maybe they should just go back to doing that.

I'm not saying that you can't do original IP or anything like that, but why can't Final Fantasy be both, right?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I do think they seem to be trending in that direction. I don't think they've explicitly said that's the plan of focusing on Final Fantasy in such a way that it's like, oh, we're going to try new things, but we're going to find ways to make them feel Final Fantasy. But I do think that will be what we end up with here in a few years after that. several year long stretch of having four to five smaller rpgs and other kinds of games that mostly came and went and couldn't find an audience even when some of them were pretty decent uh deal field chronicles and stuff like that um yes yeah they will find ways to to sprinkle in more final fantasy and i think that would i think

one of the things that maybe caused them to be hesitant about doing that is well if we're going to put final fantasy on the name we have to like maybe just do a little bit extra and good i do think that's where Square Enix needs to be. Do a little bit extra to all these games just to put them that much more over the top. And my limited experience with residents so far is that's exactly what they did. Like they they just took a concept of let's rescue this mobile game and kind of make it feel like a full fledged release. They did that and then just a little bit more. And I think it's noticeable right right off the bat.

In that game.

Alright, that does it for the headlines. Let's get to the poll question from yesterday. I'm going to get the most up-to-date results here by refreshing youtube.com slash atgiantbomb slash posts.

Let's see here.

Would you try World of Warcraft if it came to consoles with full controller support?

45% said yes. 55% said no.

That's a huge number of people saying yes there. I think World of Warcraft still just is that game. I got people, it will just be one of those games that is around for 50 years. It's just going to be there forever. And yeah, that's a huge number. I'm surprised by that. But we'll see if that happens. It does feel like that's also trending in that direction. And by this time next year, that just might be a reality where you can easily do that.

No new poll question today, everybody. It is Friday.

We're going to do the Bomb 12 here pretty soon. We'll also talk about what's happening on Giant Bomb later today. But before we do that, Sean, tell people where they can find you, about your Twitch channel, all that good stuff.

Yeah, TurboSean everywhere, S-H-A-W-N. If you want to watch me play usually retro games on the weekend in my free time, sometimes newer games if they're appropriate for the season. Like right now I'm playing Castlevania Belmont's Curse because it's spooky and I like it and I need a good spooky thing for the spooky season. Um, yeah, you can check it out over on the Twitch channel. I also put those VODs up on my personal YouTube under the same name.

But yeah, if you just want to hang out, chill place, chill environment to just chit chat a little bit while I play games like that.

Again, usually retro.

Yeah, I stream on Saturdays and Sundays over on twitch.tv slash TurboSean. Otherwise, yeah, right here on Giant Bomb. I'll be producing stuff all day today while Jan takes some well-deserved time off. I won't even use the cute phrase. No, Jan's taking a vacation finally, everybody.

Thank God.

Yep. Awesome stuff. I'm glad he is as well. All right.

On Giant Bomb today, we'll be back for Unprofessional Fridays at 3 p.m.

We'll hang out.

I think we'll maybe play a couple of I don't know. I might play Nidhogg. That's some Halloween update.

That'll be fun. I have that. My arms are longer now. If you are a premium member, and if you're not, go make it happen for this. Today at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m.

Pacific time, the Giant Bomb Video Store opens up once again. The Weekend Rental Club will reconvene to find these weird lost games from the 90s that never really existed.

This time for the Halloween special. Don't miss it.

It's going to be a lot of fun. I think we're going to play some weird stuff this time. Really looking forward to it. So we'll hang out. It'll be a chill time. And we'll play some stuff that you probably haven't seen before. Maybe if you have, you're like a cool dude and you can tell us all about.

It in the chat. Don't miss it.

Giantbomb.com slash join if you're not a premium member, if you want to be a part of that.

All right. And then next week we'll be back with a bunch of coverage. Zelda will be out. It's going to be wild. In the meantime, though, let's see here. Anything else worth bringing up? Hey, it's time for the Bomb 12, everybody.

These are the 12 games that really matter to people who are really playing video games. Let's get right into it. Number 12 is Star Wars. Zero Company popping back up on the list. Number 11, again this week, I believe, is Silver Pines. Number 10 is Well Dweller. Do you have it ready to go?

Are you ready? Are you all right?

Yeah, I don't know why it's the outdated one, but keep rolling.

Sure, whatever. Yeah, keep going here.

Number nine is Deadlock. Number eight is The Witcher 3. Number seven is Phantom Blade Zero. Number six is Star Wars Galactic Racer. Number five is Control Resident. Number four is Final Fantasy Resonance. Two residents in a row. Number three is Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave. Number two, Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then number one, Castlevania Belmont's Curse, I believe for the second week in a row. I'm right there with you, Sean. It's the spooky game I need. It's got such good vibes for this time of year. Just, you know, werewolf men and flea men hopping around and haunted... knights uh armor and stuff like that with all kinds of crazy spooky pictures in the background and great excellent music it's just got such an atmosphere the way a metroidvania game should and it's it's still like i'm can't put it down i'm having such a good time with it's got.

That shmovement man you know i love that.

Got the shmovement it's got the shmombat that's what we're calling it now uh it's it's fantastic everyone should play it All right.

Let's see. That's the Bomb 12. We'll do it again next week, everybody. Next Friday. I believe there's no reason we wouldn't.

Oh, no.

Wait. Yes. No, we'll do it. I don't leave until Friday evening. So, yes. Next Friday. Okay. Yes. I'll be doing this show still, and we'll catch up on the Bomb 12 at that point. Go to the website.

Get the most up-to-date vote here button, and it'll take you to a Google form. If you just go to giantbomb.com and scroll down a little bit, I'll also update the current Bomb 12 to reflect what we did here today. In the meantime, I think that's going to start wrapping things up for this show. Sean, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and talking about video games, man.

I appreciate it.

It was a good time, Jeff.

Likewise.

Thank you all for watching and listening. You are the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one. Take care of yourself and goodbye.

Report: EA Shut Down BioWare In Favor of Star Wars Battlefront 3

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