Chapter 1: What are the latest industry updates affecting gaming?
If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter.
Chapter 2: What does the closure of Bluepoint Games mean for the gaming industry?
And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat.
Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again. Follow The Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello and welcome into The Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Biohazard Lindberg, senior editor at The Ringer and your host here at Button Mash.
Chapter 3: How are recent leadership changes at Xbox impacting the brand?
Flanking me today so closely that they're almost making me a Ben sandwich are two cherished colleagues. Ringer Deputy Art Lead, Resident Evil Remake, Matt James. Hi, Matt. Hello. And our third chair today, providing valuable backup, Ringer Freelance Contributor, Joshua Code Veronica Rivera. How do you feel about that nickname? Oh, I love it. I always thought Code Veronica was a cool name.
Well, now it's yours. You're welcome. Happy to have you both here. And to quote Leon Kennedy, I'm sure you boys didn't just tag along so we could sing Kumbaya together at some Boy Scout bonfire. Maybe we can do that a little later in the pod. Then again, maybe you did. No, you didn't. We're here to talk about one of the most anticipated and most warmly received video games of the year.
Resident Evil Requiem, developed by Capcom, of course, and published on all platforms on the same day as this podcast. which means if you're listening to me right now, you can go play Resident Evil Requiem. It's there for you.
Chapter 4: What are the first impressions of 'Resident Evil Requiem'?
You can put on this podcast while you creep around zombie-infested mansions, which might be a good way to lower the tension a little bit. And it takes a village to cover video games, a Resident Evil village. And so I'm happy to have you both. We're going to get into everything surrounding this latest Resident Evil release. Of course, we're not going to get too deep into specific story spoilers.
We will describe the basic structure of the game. Maybe we will allude to some ways in which it relates to the history of the franchise. But we know this thing just came out. We don't want to ruin everything for you. Although the internet has done a pretty decent job of ruining this game's plot for everyone already. Thanks, leakers. Anyway, we will talk about all aspects of this gigantic game.
We just have a bit of news to talk about first. So let's lead, as we usually do, with our patch notes section. And we just have two notes for you today. The latest indications of industry decline, the latest stories in video games that everyone is upset about and has been for the past week. We're going to talk about a PlayStation-centric story and an Xbox-centric story.
There's been a leadership change at Xbox. There's also been yet another studio closure at Sony. So let's start with the latter. Bluepoint is no more. The famed remake studio that has made many great new versions of old games. is not going to be making any more of those because they have been shut down.
You have perhaps played Bluepoint's versions of Shadow of the Colossus, Demon's Souls, of course. They worked on Uncharted. They worked on God of War. And somewhat unceremoniously, last week, Sony announced that it will be shutting down Bluepoint.
And this is just the latest in a string of disasters that have befallen studios that have been acquired by Sony in a bit of an expansion spree in the post-pandemic craze. Matt, what did you make of the decision to shut down Bluepoint Games?
I think it's just shocking, right? It's absolutely shocking from multiple angles. For the most part, I feel like their remakes have been very well received. I mean, personally, I thought that their Demon's Souls remake was... Excellent. They were, you know, the studio that had the most chance, I think, of possibly remaking Bloodborne as so many gamers wanted to see. Yes. R.I.P.
the non-existent Bloodborne remake that everyone kind of counted on. Would have been an easy cash grab. I mean, I assume. So from a quality of work standpoint, it's shocking.
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Chapter 5: How does 'Resident Evil Requiem' connect to the franchise's history?
But as we all know, quality of work does not equate to getting to keep your job in this industry, unfortunately. But on the flip side of things, just from a financial perspective, it's shocking to see Bluepoint be closed because... they are specializing, they were specializing in remakes and remasters, and that is one of the most guaranteed sources of income that you could find in the industry.
Remakes and remasters are huge in this era, and they were known as the best of the best in this. You know, it's just flabbergasted. I'm flabbergasted. Of all the studios, I thought that would have been one of the safer ones. And here we are, they're gone.
And the reason that I think this provoked such shock and also disdain, not just the fact that Bluepoint has been shut down, that a lot of people like the games they worked on, that 70 people were laid off or about to be as a result of this, but
Chapter 6: What gameplay mechanics stand out in 'Resident Evil Requiem'?
Also that, well, we've described them as remaster specialists, but they were miscast after being acquired. And that's, I think, the part that's so flummoxing is that you acquire Bluepoint Games who have this specialty. They've done this one thing and they've done it extremely well.
And then you task them with doing something completely different, which is reportedly a live service God of War game. And that got canceled. And that probably led to the closure of Bluepoint. And so you have asked them to do something that they've never done before that they presumably weren't the greatest fit for.
It's very much like you take Rocksteady, which has distinguished itself with the Arkham games, and then you say, make us a live service game. And granted, they played a part in that decision too, but that's not really in the studio's DNA. And so I think that's the frustrating thing here, really, is that
Chapter 7: How does the story of 'Resident Evil Requiem' resonate with players?
You see the statement from PlayStation executive Herman Holst, and he's talking about all the challenges, all the headwinds in the industry. We're operating in an increasingly challenging industry environment, rising development costs, slowed industry growth, changing player behavior, broader economic headwinds, etc., etc., Sure, that's all true, but it's hard to say the industry made us do it.
When you chose to reassign this specialist studio to something that it most likely was not suited for, then you canceled those plans and then you scuttled the studio entirely. It's hard not to see that as self-inflicted and self-sabotage. Joshua, what do you think?
Yeah, it's also, I mean, like, Fair to have it out for Sony and Holst because this is the latest of... I think three, four years ago, he had said that Sony had 10 live service games in the pipeline. Sony had a big push and we have not seen most of them.
And some of them we saw for two weeks before they disappeared forever.
So it just looks like... mismanagement of several studios. Like Matt was saying, Bluepoint had such a clearly defined lane, a thing that they were good at and appreciated for, and then they were put to do something else entirely.
Not only something else entirely, part of an ongoing boondoggle, which kind of seemed like a boondoggle when it was announced, but the only hindsight part that we have is that we've seen them cancel stuff and You know, Concord failed, you know, but it does seem like an act of hubris to put so many eggs in this one basket. It would have felt even a little bit different, right?
If they had put them on a different project entirely. Yeah. That wasn't tied to this life service initiative.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What are the final verdicts on 'Resident Evil Requiem' from the hosts?
And maybe more will come out. Maybe there will be a Jason Schreier TikTok blow by blow. How did this happen exactly? But from afar, at least it's hard not to have that interpretation. And I think that's what leads to a lot of the live service fatigue and frustration, which we talked about last week. We praised the upcoming PlayStation lineup and all the games that were teased.
But we also talked about High Guard and how everyone had it out for High Guard and why there is just no patience whatsoever for this genre. And I don't think it's solely that there are so many games like that and that it's hard for new ones to stand out, but also because you have studios that are just being forced to fit into this. It's very much a square peg, round hole sort of situation.
And when you're actively cannibalizing talented studios that could make other kinds of great games... to feed the live service beasts and then not even have those games come out or be successful. That just feels like a huge own goal. And I think this is the third studio that Sony has officially closed after acquiring it over the past few years.
Others have been downsized or haven't released any games or have undergone struggles like Bungie, for instance, which of course will be releasing Marathon. in a week, which we will talk about on Button Mash. And so there is still a lot being placed into this basket with the Horizon game that is about to be beta tested that we talked about last week with Marathon.
We'll see whether any of those gambles pan out, but they didn't. for Bluepoint, unfortunately. RIP. Hope those people go on to do something else excellent, freed from the shackles of live service constraints. But this is why I think live service development has kind of become the T-virus of video gaming. This is why it just feels like everything's infected and we can't get away.
But before we talk about the T-virus, we have one more bit of news to discuss, which is a change at the top at Xbox. Phil Spencer is out. He is retiring. He, of course, has led Microsoft's Xbox efforts since 2014, and he has been at Microsoft for close to 40 years. So that alone is sort of a seismic change. But you also have other changes.
Matt Booty, who was the head of content at Xbox, is being promoted to chief content officer. He's sticking around. But Sarah Bond, the former president, is out. And there's been some post-changeover sniping in the press about her. And the new head of Xbox gaming is Asha Sharma. who most recently was running Microsoft's core AI efforts.
And that alone is enough to strike fear into the heart of some gamers. She was at Instacart previously. She did have a long-ago stint at Xbox, but... She isn't really from the gaming world. So I don't know that we have learned anything definitive. This is a big change, which was released somewhat hastily a week ago because of some reporting that was about to drop.
And so the timeline for these announcements was actually moved up, which was why it sort of seemed like a Friday news dump. So the timing, I think, was not exactly the way Microsoft had planned it. But Asher Sharma has been doing the rounds and doing various interviews and reassuring some people and scaring other people.
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