You bested me. Yet, I'm the one left standing." - Basim (at Eivor’s grave)

Hey there!

Glen Schofield is leaving his own studio, after the failure of The Callisto Protocol. Ubisoft announced PC specs for Mirage. 37 million individuals are eligible for a refund from Fortnite/Epic Games.

And… do you know who Sami Järvi is? 😊 

Hit the play button, because we have a lot of Biz Reel news today.

Welcome to The Power-Up #15

Round-up of the day

🚔🔫 Criterion, renowned for the Need for Speed and Burnout series, will primarily concentrate on EA's Battlefield franchise, while a smaller team continues Need for Speed development.

🦠 Destiny 2 was unplayable a few days ago, and Bungie confirmed that the game instability was due to external DDoS attacks.

🤑 Leaked documents show launching AAA games on services like Xbox Game Pass is costly, with Microsoft estimating payments of $100m to $300m per game, compared to development costs like $220m for The Last of Us Part II. Despite these high costs, Microsoft's financial strength allows such strategies, while Sony finds them financially impractical.

🔫 Ubisoft announced the development of Tom Clancy's The Division 3 by Massive Entertainment, with Julian Gerighty, current creative director for Star Wars Outlaws, set to become the executive producer for The Division brand, once Outlaws is launched.

🪚 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has made a strong debut, attracting over 4 million players within its first month on the market.

🎲 Steamforged Games, in collaboration with Guerrilla Games, has announced the Horizon Forbidden West: Seeds of Rebellion board game, featuring an official story set before Aloy's arrival in the Forbidden West, slated for a Kickstarter launch in November.

🏷️ Valve has announced its early 2024 game sales lineup, likely to aid developers in submitting games for themed monthly sales from January to April.

Biz Reel

📌 Tomb Raider developer, Crystal Dynamics, has faced a new round of layoffs by Embracer, coinciding with the end of support and delisting of its 2020 game Marvel's Avengers in September.

📌 Following the collapse of a significant deal with Saudi Arabia group Savvy Games, Embracer Group foresees additional layoffs and studio closures. CEO Lars Wingefors is exploring external investment for some projects to alleviate layoffs, but acknowledges that restructuring, downsizing, and closures are unavoidable in certain instances.

📌 Glen Schofield, co-creator of Dead Space, is leaving Striking Distance Studios due to the commercial failure of its debut game, The Callisto Protocol. Schofield had founded the studio in 2019 with Korean publisher Krafton Inc.

📌 Finland-based studio Spectarium has secured a €5 million seed ($5.34 million) round to develop its inaugural game, Myths, an AI-powered cross-platform action RPG set for a soft launch in 2024. Founded by industry veterans, including those from EA, Epic Games, Riot or Square Enix, Spectarium garnered this funding in a round led by BITKRAFT Ventures.

📌 Amber has inaugurated its first studios in Taiwan and the Philippines, marking a step in its global expansion strategy. The Taiwan studio will be managed by Jason Chien, former director of game services at Amazon and founder of Bit Toys.

📌 North American game composers and sound designers earn an average annual salary of $128,500, $57,000 more than their global counterparts who earn $71,300. The report also highlights a gender pay gap in North America, with male audio designers earning, on average, $18,586 more than their female and nonbinary peers.

📌 Virtuos has introduced a new development division, Virtuos Tokyo, aiming to expand business partnerships with Japanese developers. The studio will be led by Pierre Guijarro, with key roles held by Ryo Arai and Ryo Nakagawa.

📌 US regulators are notifying over 37 million individuals eligible for a refund following the Epic Games’ $520 million FTC settlement in December 2022. Those affected, due to COPPA violations and misleading "unintentional purchases", have until January 17, 2024, to file a claim.

📌 A 2023 survey reveals a 21% average salary increase for mobile game developers, with Germany experiencing the highest raise of 24%, and the US and UK seeing a 13% increase. However, Canada witnessed a 1% drop in salaries, while India saw a significant decrease of over 10%.

📌 Niko Partners forecasts India's gaming market revenue to hit $868 million in 2023, marking a 21.2% YOY increase, identifying it as the fastest-growing market. The market value is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.1% over five years.

📌 Tencent’s Honor of Kings continued to be the world’s top-grossing mobile game, generating $238 million in consumer spending across Google Play and The App Store.

Game Central

🕹️ Insomniac's Spider-Man sequel has gone gold, indicating it’s ready for release on October 20, with the team continuing to make updates and address bugs in the next weeks.

🕹️ Assassin’s Creed Mirage arrives in less than a month, and Ubisoft has released the game’s PC specs. While it will run at 4K 60fps with HDR, it will feature increased performance with Intel XeSS on PC. The game is also optimized for Intel ARC GPUs and 13th gen Intel Core CPUs.

🕹️ Sam Lake, Remedy’s Creative Director, will be Detective Alex Casey in Alan Wake 2. Many years ago, he was Max Payne.

🕹️ Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, releasing on November 10, features an unusual element where players can use marijuana as a weapon.

🕹️ And finally, here is every Game Pass title from Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2023.

That’s it for today. Thank you for reading. Stay powered-up until next time.

Bobby & Andrei