Thank you so much for-to-playing my game - Mario

Hey there. September is here, let us know if you want us to wake you up when it ends. 😀

Meanwhile, we have some good news about Switch and Portal and some bad news about layoffs and studio closures. Sony is increasing subscription prices, but at least, in return, is offering absolutely nothing. And did you know how Mario's career started?

Also, of course, people started to play Starfield and the first reviews are in.

Hit the start button and let’s play

Welcome to The Power-Up #6

Round-up of the day

🎸 Imagine Dragons has dropped "Children of the Sky," an official song for Starfield, now streaming on all major music platforms. You can listen to it here.

🔀 CD Projekt Red announced that Phantom Liberty will be Cyberpunk 2077's single expansion due to their technological decision to transition from their in-house REDengine to Unreal Engine 5.

🔁 Also, an increasing number of developers will transition from working on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty to Project Polaris, the upcoming Witcher title, with a significant portion making the move after the launch of the former.

🧐 Sony/PlayStation just hit us with a lot of news.

📺 There is a rumor that Sony is working on a new and improved PS2 emulator.

%% PlayStation Plus Double Discounts promotion started 2 days ago on PlayStation Store. Discounts up to 35% for a number of different titles, but up to 70% for PS Plus subscribers.

🎮 PlayStation Portal Remote Player launches November 15 for $199. Pre-orders are now available on PlayStation Direct for some countries.

😱 Sony announced the PlayStation Plus Essential Monthly Games for September - and also a significant price increase across all three PS Plus tiers, offering nothing new in return. The games are: Saints Row, Black Desert – Traveler Edition and Generation Zero and can be downloaded starting September 6. Also, the subscriptions price hike pushed Sony’s share price up a little bit.

🪠 Nintendo will launch an OLED Mario Red Edition for Switch. It will be available starting October 6 for $349.99.

Biz Reel

Between December 2021 and April 2023, the UK's game development sector saw a 25% jump in combined direct and indirect tax revenues from £1.2 billion ($1.51 billion) to £1.5 billion ($1.89 billion), while employment in the industry grew by 15.2%.

Technology start-up NPCx raised $3 million in a funding round led by Kakao Investment to enhance AI-driven motion capture for non-player characters (NPCs) in games.

Also on the AI front, Ready Player Me launches AI-based Copilot to help developers streamline avatars. And Call of Duty partners with Modulate to use AI to fight toxicity in voice chat.

CD Projekt Red reported sales revenue of $79.5 million, down 14% YOY. Its net profit was $22.1 million, a decrease of 20% YOY.

At MavenHut, we were on a mission to rediscover classic games. Well, After resurrecting Tiny Tower, SuperScale is on a mission to revive more fading classics. You can see the big revenues you can still get from fading gaming properties, if shown a little bit of love.

😱 There’s a lot of bad news lately on the gaming jobs and studios front:

• Polish developer Black Eye Games announced it'll be closing down after 11 years. Medieval MMO Gloria Victis servers will shut down on October 31.

• Homeworld 3 dev Blackbird Interactive lays off over 40 employees. Game director Quinn Duffy, lead game designer Sean Storey, senior software engineer Joseph Hurst, design director Matthew Freedman and concept artist Chloé G are among those dismissed.

• Embracer Group is restructuring its business in the fallout of a $2 billion partnership deal collapsing. So it’s closing Saints Row studio Volition "effective immediately".

• As part of the same Embracer Group’s restructuring, Gearbox has made a series of layoffs.

All these restructurings mean there’s more talent in the market, as well. If you want to grow your team, this might be the moment to find people for the roles your studio needs.

Game Central

Spider-Man 2 will require 98 GB on SSD. The 2018 Spider-Man required only 45 GB on PS4 and 71 GB on PS5, while Miles Morales required 54 GB.

Baldur's Gate 3 is expected to arrive on Xbox Series X/S between September and November, following its PS5 release on September 6. Those who pre-ordered Digital Deluxe Edition on PS5 will have early-access starting tomorrow, September 2. We did and I can’t wait to play it! 😀

Super Mario Bros. Wonder will be the next side-scrolling, 2D Mario game, the first new one in 11 years. It is set to release on October 20 on Nintendo Switch. Here is the trailer:

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

Bobby & Andrei