If you’re an OG PC gamer you probably recall the neverending holy wars over console gamepads vs. PC-style mouse and keyboard setups. While the mouse and keyboard, with their fast turning and accurate aim, did have lots of benefits, one advantage only gamepads could offer was true analog character movement via analog sticks. Oof, those console kids had a point, and that simply couldn’t stand. Enter a rare beast: analog keyboards.

The $175 Wooting 60HE is an “analog mechanical keyboard” that looks a lot like a typical (though compact) gaming keyboard, with RGB lighting, a detachable USB-C cable, and all the usual trim. It’s that small word, “analog,” that sets it apart from the pack. Just as with the analog stick on an Xbox controller, every key on the Wooting 60HE can sense exactly how hard you’re pressing it. So in a supported game, you can delicately press the W key to creep along stealthily or jam it down to hit your full stride, just like in a console game. Its analog nature also leads to other unique benefits, like setting multiple binds per key.

I went into my tests of the Wooting 60HE expecting to focus solely on how it could augment the experience of competitive multiplayer games. Such is the value proposition of this device, with its solid build quality, per-key adjustable actuation points, and a variety of software-defined custom functions that make an undeniable difference in sweaty, competitive scenarios. It more than excels in this area. But what I didn’t expect was for the 60HE to improve single-player games in such a way as to encourage me to game more often on mouse and keyboard, even in PC games I usually default to a gamepad for. The 60HE has changed how I’m gaming.

In fact, I’ll take a moment to use a word I’m not fond of, but I think I can demonstrate in this review. The Wooting is making PC gaming more immersive for me.

A Real Competitive Advantage?

I focused my multiplayer testing on two shooters I know very, very well, games for which I’ve long since developed a solid understanding and reliable muscle memory. In other words, if this keyboard makes any appreciable difference in a competitive video game, these are the ones in which I’d be able to spot the improvements most clearly.

Halo Infinite and Rainbow Six Siege are my bread-and-butter shooters. I simply adore these games and they inspire me to get better in competitive scenarios. I’ve been playing Halo for over 20 years at this point, and Siege has been a staple for the past six or so. Halo is wired into my neurons, and Siege was one of the first games I got into on PC; its destructible environments have been the scene of many long nights of violent gaming with dear friends. So, if the Wooting 60HE makes any difference, these would be the games in which I’d be able to tell. I don’t think I was prepared for how immediate the difference was.

Let’s start with its custom actuation points. “Actuation point” merely refers to what physical distance a key must travel downward before the hardware recognizes an input. And the Wooting 60HE has a remarkable advantage here in that it uses analog switches through the magic of magnets, meaning you can, in the accompanying “Wootility” software, tell the key switches where and when to send a signal on a down press, at any depth from 0.1mm to 4.0mm.

In Siege, I adjusted my movement keys’ actuation points to have just 0.1mm of travel; when I noticed how lightning-fast my keyboard strokes translated to onscreen movement, I literally laughed. I think the words that emerged were, “Whoa, what the fuck, this is fucking sick. What the fuck?” It was the same kind of thrill you get when you upgrade to a better GPU and test out a previously demanding game, only to see it suddenly explode to life at higher framerates.

This had tremendous potential in both Siege and Halo. I was able to set my primary movement keys, WASD, crouch, and jump (vault, in Siege) to the fastest-possible actuation points. In Siege, I could start moving in an instant. Is that a Fuze charge I’m hearing? Time to insta-get-the-fuck-out of there. Turn a corner and spot Clash? (groans) Same, while appreciating that enhanced sense of responsiveness every step of the way.

I could also stop on a dime. The magnetic, analog function means that the keyboard can know instantly when the key is heading in the other direction, and in that precise millisecond end the signal (or trigger another key you set in the Wootility software as it returns to the default position). Enter a room and spot a Frost trap in Siege? I can stop instantly. Is that a Kapkan trap? Hit the brakes. I can keep moving to the last possible second of a Lion radar pulse and stop just before I give my position away.

And in Halo, I could deftly dance from side-to-side in showdowns with the Battle Rifle like never before. The idea of having to fiddle with an analog stick instead of just tapping keys to accomplish the same nuanced spacing adjustment now feels like a joke. And in Halo particularly, my jumps never felt more reflexive. This newly responsive input made the otherwise shallow Big Team Battle mode and vehicle-based maps in general more fun by letting me respond toe-to-toe with warthogs and ghosts that otherwise outmaneuver me on foot. It’s never been easier to pull off the more subtle nuances of the game’s movement vocabulary, such as curb sliding. I even started to finally get the hang of snap sliding, which I thought I’d never wrap my head around.

One of Halo Infinite’s more interesting additions to the classic formula is the ability to drop your weapon. This results in a faster animation switch to your secondary gun. On controller the default is to hold the Y button, and I haven’t found a good alternative mapping, so it’s hard to actually use this function as intended. On the Wooting I mapped it to Right Alt and reduced the actuation point to .1mm. Stripping shields with plasma weapons only to basically nudge the Alt key with my thumb to switch to a precision weapon and land a headshot—and hear the “Hold This” medal pop over and over again—actually had me afraid I was going to somehow trip anti-cheat.

Wooting 60HE Analog Mechanical Keyboard

Faster response times weren’t the only advantage of adjustable actuation points: I could set problem keys that I accidentally hit sometimes at a deeper actuation point, say 1mm rather than .1mm. Accidental grenade throws in Siege—you wouldn’t believe how often chill nights of casual Siege get interrupted by sudden shouts of “whoa get the fuck back get the fuck back” when someone hits “grenade” instead of “melee”—or premature firings of the equipment in Halo became substantially less frequent. This has an obvious competitive advantage, but it also made casual play more fun.

Response time is so remarkably improved and customizable to layouts you prefer that this keyboard and its software offer more than just improved response times, they let you customize it to how you play and what makes the most sense to you. You can also use custom functions and binds to come up with control layouts that are otherwise impossible on regular, digital switches.

For example, you can tell the keys to fire different commands at different press depths. Want to set the C key to crouch with a tap but go prone when you hold it? Easy. That frees the Ctrl key to map to something else. You could even have it trigger the Shift key when you press W down far enough, letting you auto-sprint with a full press. The software lets you set up to four different commands at four different heights per key.

The Wootility software also allows you to enable “Tachyon mode” which aims to deliver as-fast-as-possible 1ms input response times by sacrificing the actuation point feature and what Wooting describes as the “useless” RGB lighting effects. Thank god someone’s honest about all this Christmas tree bullshit. That said, I haven’t been able to notice any response differences in “Tachyon mode,” and prefer to retain the actuation point functionality. Perhaps more diehard, sweaty players could notice an improvement.

Walk Slow, You Deserve It

The competitive advantages of the 60HE’s analog keys is obvious, and I felt it immediately in games I regularly play.

But I also mentioned that this keyboard increased my immersion. I really enjoyed how nuanced, slower movements that usually require an analog stick were suddenly open to me with a mouse and keyboard. I’m talking about slow-walking up to the final boss because the weight of the moment demands it, driving at slower speeds in open-world games to listen to an NPC monologue, or casually exploring environments by gently nudging the stick to take in the ambience. That’s the type of immersion that mouse and keyboard users usually have to give up for the other advantages they enjoy.

I tested this out on Hitman 2, a game in which having variable-speed movement can make a serious difference. I could gently press the W key to move forward slowly and softly, and then push it further when I was at risk of being spotted. In Death Stranding, I was able to move through Mule camps and BT zones with the same delicate touch I enjoy on a controller. Survival horror, also, can theoretically benefit from this, but as I tested out Resident Evil 2 and 3, a limitation became apparent. Not every game plays nice with how the Wooting transmits its analog input.

The Wooting 60HE functions by spoofing gamepad inputs, making the computer think that the W key, for example, represents a trigger pull or a forward press of an analog stick.

Some games, which demand you only use a mouse + keyboard or a gamepad—never both at once—will thus not work with the 60HE’s gamepad emulation features. In those Resident Evil games, for example, I would slowly walk into a room to find I couldn’t look around with my mouse; that’s because the game had switched over to its gamepad-exclusive mode. As my mouse and the keyboard’s gamepad emulation fought for dominance, HUD elements and button prompts would rapidly flash between gamepad buttons and keyboard keys. (Some games, though not nearly enough, let you force the display of just one or the other type of button prompts.)

And while having the ability to map an analog key to an analog function like a trigger or stick is nice, you will likely have to spend some time customizing the response curve to what feels right. In general, using analog switches for analog functions is a little challenging to get used to, but I think that’s just a matter of developing new muscle memory for gently pressing keys. We’re likely all just used to bottoming keys out as a matter of course.

In order for analog movement to work as intended, a game has to support simultaneous input from both keyboard + mouse commands and gamepad commands at the same time. Fans of Valve’s Steam Controller are likely familiar with this dilemma, as it often prevented taking full advantage of that controller’s superior versatility. It’s also a problem with Valve’s more recent Steam Deck.

My beloved Rainbow Six Siege turned out to be another problem game that disliked simultaneous input. In theory, the 60HE’s analog keys could let my character move at any precise speed I wanted. However, when I did this, I could no longer shoot with a mouse click, since the game was in “gamepad mode” and expected a right-trigger pull rather than a mouse button. (If analog movement had worked as I hoped, I suspect it would’ve given me such an in-game advantage that Ubisoft might’ve personally showed up at my door to take this keyboard away from me.)

You can peruse the list of games that support simultaneous input on the PC Gaming Wiki, but fair warning: Some of the games listed there don’t actually support it, or might require some precise option settings I was unable to discover. Resident Evil 2 and 3 were unfortunately two of these, as was Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered.

I was able to, however, jump into Halo Infinite’s campaign and slow-walk around the ancient Forerunner environments in a way that let me enjoy it as a theatrical experience. I even got into a boss fight in which gentle movements around corners made the experience feel more immersive. I know, that word again, but I can’t explain it any other way. Perhaps this isn’t the best feature for hyper-hard difficulties in which you might need to boil everything down to binary, on-off movement inputs, but it made the game more fun.

When everything goes well and the 60HE works as promised, I love it. It feels like the best of all worlds. I get the precision aiming of a mouse, the quick access to commands under all of my fingers, and gamepad-style analog movement.

It also suggests that the retreat back to digital-only buttons on gamepads over the last two decades might’ve been a net loss. Hardware manufacturers should reconsider how analog input can result in a higher-quality game experience, and game developers should stop needlessly limiting games by insisting they only support one input type at a time.

A Solid Productivity Device, With Some Caveats

While the Wooting 60HE is a wonderful mechanical keyboard and very enjoyable to game on, it hasn’t replaced my trusty System76 Launch for daily work and productivity tasks, for a few reasons.

The Wooting 60HE is a compact, 60% layout keyboard, which means no dedicated f-row, no arrow keys, no home key, no delete key. Yes, the software lets you map keys to whatever you like, but there are only so many to go around before you have to resort to the second or third “function layers,”—a concept familiar to users of other compact-layout keyboards—which you can switch to by holding a certain key. When it comes to work, I really need at least a 75% layout. Also, my System76 Launch has a split space bar that lets its left half act as backspace. As a writer, this is too handy to give up. These are strictly “me issues,” however. Others may find a 60% layout more agreeable as a daily driver.

And while the mechanical “Lekker” switches from Wooting are really nice to type on and sound great—they offer an audible-enough linear press and lack a tactile bump or click—they were a bit too stiff a typing experience for me. Again, a me problem. Not an issue at all for gaming and, if I really wanted, I could order the lower-tension springs from Wooting, crack open the switches, and replace them all. This leads to another beautiful thing about this keyboard: It’s surprisingly moddable.

The case that the plate and switches sit in, for example, can be swapped. A couple of screws and you can put the guts in a more expensive, aluminum case. I found the plastic case the Wooting ships in to be more than serviceable, but if you’re into something like a Tofu aluminum, well, you can pop the 60HE’s guts right in there and have an even better keyboard than what you’d get out of the box. (Also, the 60HE’s yellow wristband, which some may find an eyesore, is purely optional.)

Wooting / BadSeed Tech

You can’t customize the plate or the analog switches, though. But why would you? They’re central to what makes this thing great. (The switches are lube-able, however.) This is a perfectly customizable device and can be improved. And it costs under $200. How even.

The Wooting 60HE lives up to all the competitive promises it makes of low input latency, adjustable actuation levels at a per-key level, and custom functions that will let you do everything but dodge bullets in your competitive game of choice. Its analog movement function, though limited by the support that needs to come from game developers enabling simultaneous input, allows for richer, more immersive gameplay experiences. The $175 price point feels surprisingly reasonable for something built so well, and you can mod it to a degree that matches many purely custom keyboards.

With its impressively well-built, moddable, and maintainable hardware, the Wooting 60HE is well worth the cost. Every critique I’ve considered is well balanced by its advantages as a physical device and as a novel input device. And though there are other analog keyboards out there, not all of them check all the boxes of the Wooting, which include killer, trouble-free software and high levels of customization in both software and hardware. It arguably sets a standard for other specialty keyboard manufacturers to match. And I wish them luck, because Wooting clearly knows what it’s doing.

Picture: Sony/Microsoft/Kotaku

Two months ago, Sony reinvented PS Plus, its longstanding membership program for PlayStation owners. Now, that’s a lot like Microsoft’s Game Pass: for roughly the same amount of money, both offer access to a Netflix-style library of on-demand games. Obviously, we had to stack the two services against each other.

Price

Game Pass is available as a subscription for console, PC, or both. The two separate tiers cost $10 per month. Xbox Live Ultimate, which joins the two and provides access to the EA Play Library (a similar on-demand games service) and Xbox Live Gold, costs $15 per month. There’s no way to pay months or a year upfront with tiered markdown (at least officially).

PS Plus is also available for a subscription, but it gets very complicated very quickly. There are two new levels. The extra costs $15 per month, or $100 for the year, and offers free monthly games, online games, and an on-demand games catalog, including some of Ubisoft’s library. Premium costs $18 per month, or $120 per year, and adds access to classic games, game trials, and cloud streaming for most games in the library. That’s a huge difference in price, and while PS Plus Premium is more expensive month-to-month, it’s actually almost 50% cheaper if you sign up for the whole year.

Winner: PS Plus

Diffusion

Game Pass allows cloud streaming, provided you pay for the more expensive Ultimate tier. The streaming feature is technically still “in beta”, but it’s for all intents and purposes operational. Microsoft recommended Internet speeds of at least 10 Mbps for mobile devices and 20 Mbps for consoles and PCs. According to Kotaku’s tests, it’s… good? Despite recent huge advances in cloud gaming, streaming still can’t compete with downloaded games. Latency, even minimal, is unbelievable. As such, cloud gaming is best used for puzzles, relaxing RPGs, light platforming, and other games that don’t require split-second reflexes.

Microsoft says “over 100” games are currently streamable via cloud gaming on Xbox Game Pass, but more games are being added every few weeks. Right now, the Game Pass library currently lists 381 streamable games.

Stray.Screenshot: Annapurna / Kotaku

To unlock streaming on PS Plus, you need to purchase the $18 per month tier. And even then, the streaming quality is nothing out of the ordinary. At best, it’s as good as Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sometimes it’s worse. Around 320 games in the Premium library can be streamed on console or PC, and a good chunk of them are PS3 games and classics rather than the full PlayStation 4 library. For example, Marvel’s Avengers and Stray are available on console but not in the streaming library.

Specifically, you cannot stream PS Plus games to your phone. For now, the service relies on Remote Play, which means you need a console to play on mobile and you need to be on the same WiFi network.

Winner: Game Pass

game library

Of course, a game-on-demand service is only as good as the one thing it’s supposed to provide: games.

At present, the Xbox Game Pass library has about 475 games, but that tally includes both tiers’ library, including the 92 games currently part of EA Play. The main appeal, of course, is that Microsoft is putting its entire first-party portfolio on the platform. This also includes major tentpoles, like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, as well as upcoming blockbusters like Starfield and Redfall, which become available on release day. Third-party games tend to last a year at most, though some, like Rockstar’s open-world Hold ‘Em simulator Red Dead Redemption 2, become unavailable after a few months. It’s unpredictable.

Halo Infinite. Screenshot: 343 Industries

The library also spins regularly in third-party games and often serves as a launchpad for indie gems. This year alone, the Zelda-like tunic, snowboard sim Shredders, and puzzler-cum-dungeon-crawler Loot River have all launched on Game Pass. (Here is Kotaku’s list of the best under-the-radar games currently available.) The developers acknowledged to Kotaku that debuting on Game Pass reduces initial sales, but is ultimately worth it for the trade-off in advertising.

PS Plus Extra currently includes around 430 PS4 and PS5 games, while Premium adds another 395 from PS1, PS2, PS3 (streaming only) and PSP. While the classics are a nice bonus, by far the biggest draw is PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Bloodborne. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has pledged not to put its latest releases on the service day and date, and if Returnal arrives a year after release is any indication, it seems like a good bet that gamers will have to wait at least a year. year for 18 months before new things appear.

There are plenty of serious competitors in the third-party department, however. Games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Prey, Control, Doom and Tetris Effect are all present, as are indies like Celeste, Outer Wilds, Dead Cells and Virginia. The library has a lot of diversity and was bolstered most recently by the same-day addition of Stray, who is already a 2022 GOTY contender. The Ubisoft component, led by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is also a strong compliment. At the same time, Sony has yet to demonstrate that it is, or will be, as aggressive as Microsoft in courting a steady stream of third-party day-and-date additions. There is also no PC exclusive part of the library.

Winner: PS Plus

Ari: Going into this exercise, I totally imagined it would paint a clear picture of the superiority of Game Pass, but both of these services look fundamentally identical to me – right down to the user interface – with the new version of PS Plus from Sony slightly better in the few aspects that matter. The prices are mostly the same, but the option to pay for a year of PS Plus at a “discount” surpasses Game Pass in this regard. Of course, the big appeal of Game Pass is that it puts Microsoft’s first-party games on the service at launch, but… Microsoft has virtually no first-party games this year! Right now, this perk appears to be little more than a line of marketing.

Ethan: I also thought Game Pass would be the big winner, but now I’m conflicted as well. Not everyone can afford to pay a full year upfront, but that really changes the math in this game. There are other key differences as well, and while I don’t think they make one a clear winner over the other, I think it’s easier to decide which one you want to pay for. Want immediate access to a full catalog of some of the biggest and best games from the last generation? PS Plus wins. Want to stay on top of some of the best new games coming out every month and play them anytime on your phone? Then it’s Game Pass all the way.

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)

The video game market is consolidating like never before, and Electronic Arts is hustling like everyone else. the Battlefield and Fifa The manufacturer recently pursued a merger with NBCUniversal and also held potential acquisition talks with Disney, Apple and other companies, according to a new report from Puck. While no deal is currently in the works, it doesn’t look like EA is planning to give up anytime soon.

“In recent years, as media companies have taken more interest in the growing gaming industry, Wilson and Electronic Arts have held interviews with a number of potential suitors, including Disney, Apple and Amazon, telling me sources familiar with these discussions said,” wrote veteran Puck reporter Dylan Beyers. emboldened following the Microsoft-Activision deal. Others say EA is primarily interested in a merger deal that would allow Wilson to remain chief executive of the merged company.

But it was apparently a deal with NBCUniversal that went the furthest. According to Beyers, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was seeking to spin the entertainment conglomerate into a separate entity with EA, a version of the deal that remains current. EA CEO Andrew Wilson in charge of the new mega-company. Negotiations ultimately broke down over the price, however.

*dun-dun*

“We do not comment on rumors and speculation relating to mergers and acquisitions,” EA spokesperson John Reseburg told Kotaku in a statement. “We are proud to operate from a position of strength and growth, with a portfolio of incredible games, built around powerful IP, made by incredibly talented teams, and a network of more than half -billion players We see a very bright future ahead of us.

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Read More: Private equity eyes Ubisoft as next big gaming acquisition

Over the past year, there has been a frenzy of video game studio acquisitions, one that accelerated in January after Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two announced that it bought Zynga. for $12.7 billion and Microsoft announced plans to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for 69 billion dollars. Sony followed up weeks later with a deal to buy the studio behind Destiny 2, Bungie, for $3.6 billiona price that some analysts saw as massively inflated and possibly a sign of another mad rush for consolidation among the biggest players in the gaming industry.

During an earnings call in February, Andrew Wilson hinted that the company was focused on making acquisitions rather than acquiring. For proof, EA spent $5 billion last year it bought studios to increase its size. But now it looks like the publisher has aggressively pursued other ways to grow. Beyers reports that Wilson approached Disney as recently as March “looking for what sources described as ‘a more meaningful relationship’ than licensing deals.”

This news comes as EA has lost or dropped some of its biggest existing licensing deals. As the publisher recently revealed three new Star Wars games currently in productionincluding a new Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which is early 2023 release rumor, its exclusivity agreement with Disney for the Star Wars license will not be renewed when it expires in 2023. This has allowed competitors like Quantic Dream and Ubisoft to announce their own big Star Wars projects. EA also revealed last week that it was ending its similar 10-year exclusivity agreement with FIFA and that from 2023, to rebrand its successful football franchise EA Sports FC.

Whatever the future of EA, one of the main concerns about consolidation is its ultimate impact on the employees of these companies. Even though EA reported another profitable year, Kotaku recently learned that an estimate 200 customer service employees are laid off. According to four of the affected employees, their work is outsourced to cheaper third-party vendors in Romania and India.

Comcast, Disney and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver

The video game industry is currently undergoing a tidal wave of consolidation, and Swedish holding company Embracer Group is using it to become one of the newest players in a rapidly shrinking space. A few years ago, most people had never heard of it. Now it’s bigger than rivals like Ubisoft and Capcom, and should get even bigger as it goes. picked up Square Enix’s Tomb Raider Studios and Marvel’s Avengers.

I wish there was a succinct way to explain what Embracer is and where it came from, but there isn’t. It started as a nesting doll of investment companies that started out in retail. It’s now a vast network of independent publishing branches and individual studios that make and sell every type of game you can imagine. The brainchild of Swedish businessman Lars Wingefors, Embracer was created in 2011 and bought out other game companies since.

It was originally called Nordic Games Holding and grew out of Wingefors’ previous experience in selling excess video game inventory to the international market. Instead of selling EA’s remaining games, Nordic eventually decided to start selling their own. First, he seized the assets of the Austrian publisher JoWooD (Gothic, SpellForce) during a bankruptcy in 2011, then in particular many leftovers from THQ (Darksiders, Homefront) in 2013, after which it was rebranded as THQ Nordic.

At the time, it looked like grave robbery, but perhaps even less lucrative. By now, it’s clear that Nordic Games’ ambition went far beyond just being a THQ zombie and giving the world Darksiders III. The holding company went public in 2016, renamed Embracer in 2019, and now has over 100 studios and publishers housing more than 10,000 employees, making it bigger than Activision Blizzard in terms of body count.

Pretty much the only thing the band did besides buy stuff was hold a sharply reprimanded the 2019 AMA with 8Chan. “I condemn any unethical content that this website represents,” Wingefors later wrote in its apology. “While no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize that simply appearing there implicitly felt like we did.”

Monday’s $300 million deal to acquire Crystal Dynamics (Deus Ex), Eidos Montreal (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Square Enix Montreal (Hitman Sniper) is one of Embracer’s most high-profile deals to date. . Along with securing the rights to things like Thief, Legacy of Kain, and over 50 other “back-catalog games” (i.e. Gex), the sale would also see Embracer’s ranks swell by 1,100 other game developers. But in purely monetary terms, it would be one of the smallest checks that Embracer investors have cut in recent years.

Here’s who else he recently bought:

April 2020: Port house Saber Interactive for $525 million February 2021: Borderlands maker Gearbox Entertainment for $1.3 billion April 2021: Ad-supported mobile game publisher Easybrain for $640 million April 2021: Star Wars Remaster Aspyr Media machine for 450 million dollarsAugust 2021: 3D Realms and seven other studios for 313 million dollarsDecember 2021: Asmodee, French publisher of board games and RPGs for 3 billion dollars

While mega publishers like EA and Activision rely on selling tens of millions of copies of a few annualized franchises, Embracer has been busy buying dozens of baskets and stuffing a few eggs into each. Its subsidiaries publish everything from Biomutant to World War Z. It owns 4A Games, which makes the post-apocalyptic Metro series, as well as Dambuster Studios, which made Homefront: The Revolution, and is the latest studio to be cursed with development. of Dead Island. 2, a sequel that’s been MIA for eight years. As well as reclaiming old THQ properties (it bought Kingdoms of Amalur in 2018), it added new independent studios behind cult hits like Ghost Simulator and Little Nightmares.

If you want to get a sense of the scale of Embracer’s acquisition rabbit hole maze, consider the mind-blowing case of the upcoming Saints Row reboot. The parody series of GTA was created by Volition, the famous studio behind Descent, Summoner and Red Faction. THQ acquired Volition in 2000. When THQ went bankrupt in 2013, Volition was sold to Koch Media and became part of Deep Silver. Summoner and Red Faction were sold to Nordic Games. In 2018, Nordic Games finally bought Koch Media as well.

In addition to reuniting old gaming IPs, Embracer attempted to reform long-defunct studios. Free Radical Design was formed by developers who worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. In 2000 it released TimeSplitters. In 2008 it went bankrupt and was sold to Crytek. It went terribly, and eventually all that was left was sold to Koch Media. Last year, Embracer reformed Free Radical Design with the original founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to bring the “much-loved” TimeSplitters IP back to life.

When THQ went bankrupt, it seemed like a sign that there was no more room for midsize publishers in an industry dominated by first-party staples and $100 million blockbusters. Embracer’s strategy seems to confirm this. Instead of trying to be king of the hill, he’s going to be king of the rest. It rarely releases major games, but one of its bets occasionally hits big like 2021’s Viking survival sim Valheim.

Who knows how it will work. Hopefully this means the developers at Eidos Montreal can keep their four-day work week and we will eventually have another Deus Ex who does not have the fortune of an entire company on his shoulders.

Picture: Ubisoft

Private equity firms could start circling Ubisoft, Bloomberg reported Friday. The talks are early, but include interest from companies like Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co. While not private equity, current and former Ubisoft developers Kotaku has engaged with interviewed over the past few months believe the company will eventually sell to someone in the midst of a falling stock. price and ongoing production struggles.

Bloomberg reports that Blackstone and KKR & Co., the world’s two largest private equity firms, have “investigated the French business” and have “a preliminary buyout interest” in Ubisoft, but the company has not. yet concluded “any serious negotiations with potential buyers.

According to Kotaku’s sources, Ubisoft has worked closely with several external consulting firms in recent years to audit various parts of its business. While companies will do this to become more profitable and prepare for the future, sources Kotaku spoke to suggest this is a sign that Ubisoft is trying to put its books away for a potential sale.

On a flurry of recent major game acquisitions, including Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two buy zyngasony buy Bungieand Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to absorb Activision Blizzard, it looks like a game of eat or be eaten for those left behind. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said as much during an earnings call earlier this year, in which he placed the FIFA publisher firmly in the camp of “big fish looking to eat game”. other fish”.

Ubisoft has been more timid about its survival strategy. When asked on his last earnings call why the French publisher had apparently received no interest in the offer, chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet said he would not speculate on why any offer had been made, before being corrected by CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot. The company, says Guillemot, neither confirms nor denies “if” potential buyers had approached him.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been bleeding money and MIA for years. Picture: Ubisoft

If someone wanted to buy Ubisoft, they would potentially get it at a huge discount. The stock was above $110 per share in July 2018. It is now at $41. But they would still need to go through the Guillemot family, which is currently estimated at 15% of the market capitalization company of just under $5 billion.

CEO Yves Guillemot celebrates repelled a hostile takeover attempt by French media conglomerate Vivendi after securing funding from Tencent and others in 2018. But some current and former sources within the company now believe the 35-year video game industry veteran may be seeking an exit strategy.

They point the departure of his son Charlie Guillemot last year which means that there are no more parents to take over the family business. Ubisoft was also hit by a continuous wave of attrition among his senior talents. He continues to struggle with the aftermath of a consideration in the workplace for sexual misconduct which began in the summer of 2020. And some of its biggest projects continue to face upheaval, delays, or being trapped in development hell.

Like Bloomberg communicated in February, Ubisoft has decided to turn one of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s planned DLCs into a standalone interim game instead to help fill holes in its release schedule over the next 18 months. In the meantime, the next Far Cry, Ghost Recognitionand full-fledged Assassin’s Creed games remain further away than Ubisoft previously anticipated, according to three sources familiar with their development.

When asked for comment, a Ubisoft spokesperson sent Kotaku the following statement:

We do not comment on rumors or speculation. Ubisoft has unrivaled creative and production capabilities, with more than 20,000 talented people collaborating in our global studios on game development. Thanks to them, our long-term approach and our appetite for creative risk-taking, we have built some of the strongest proprietary brands in the industry and have many exciting new brands and projects on the horizon. We also have one of the industry’s most comprehensive and diverse portfolios of cutting-edge services and technologies, and a large and growing community of engaged players. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the rapid industry growth and platform opportunities that are emerging right now.

Correction: 4/23/22, 1:51 PM: A previous version of this article referenced the wrong Ubisoft stock symbol.

Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN (Getty Images)

Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard was new capital today, both in terms of the magnitude of the case and its shock value. But we shouldn’t be too surprised. It was inevitable. A handful of companies have always wanted to own it all, and nothing will stop them.

The proposed sale – the technicalities dictate that I must remind you that it has yet to be approved – involves some shocking numbers. $70 billion is counterfeit money, a fictitious sum normally reserved for national budgets and defense agreements. The union of these two companies, with all these properties and all these games, alongside a home console and a massively popular subscription service, instantly changed the entire shape of the video game industry.

But a deal like this was always going to happen sooner or later, and if it wasn’t Microsoft and Activision, it would have been Sony and EA, or Tencent and Ubisoft, or someone else buying something else. Because that’s how it works. Video games are trapped in the same hellish systems as everything else on this planet, and are subject to the same cruelly unfair, almost dystopian rules.

It’s all about money. All. It’s all about steady growth, rising stock prices and dividends, while everything for us as people who love to play games gets worse, from exploitative microtransactions to shoddy launches in going through the looming threat of NFTs.

It’s like Microsoft just can’t help it, despite the fact that they’re already literally the second richest company on the planet, a company that already makes video game consoles, was already a publisher of games, already owned game studios and had already made some of the biggest games on the planet. They couldn’t help it because there is no rest for the rich. Corporate inertia means that there is no satisfaction in being big enough, or powerful enough, or rich enough, when there is always the possibility – and shareholder demand – of having more.

It’s almost comical that Microsoft spent $70 billion on a company called Activision Blizzard King, the result of mergers between three previously independent (and hugely successful in their own right!) companies coming together just to make money for some investors. , only for this company. eventually redeemed. There is always a bigger fish!

Remember that this is not a normal purchase. There is simply no precedent for a sale of this magnitude in the video game industry. Biggest previous acquisition before this one was the $12 billion paid by Take-Two for Zynga… earlier this month. The biggest before that was the $8 billion Tencent paid for Supercell. Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is in a whole different stratosphere.

To put it into perspective, both financially and culturally, it’s a “Disney buys Pixar and Star Wars and Marvel” storyline. Disney’s monolithic domination of popular culture over the past decade has been absolute, and it sucks. He was there for all to see for all these years, screwed up everything from the rest of the film industry to the theaters and that’s the kind of large-scale deal that’s now happening for games as well video, like this grim reaper meme going door to door.

Look at the ongoing consolidation in other industries. Amazon is devouring every store in America and crushing entire cities under its feet. Google and Apple know everything about you, sell all the ads on the planet, and kill the media along the way. Almost anything you buy at a grocery store owned by only ten companies.

It’s boring and it’s dangerous (monopolies are ironically terrible for a free and open market), but even gloomier than the economic realities is the fact that in a system where only the pursuit of profit matters, there is no there is no room for justice. Bobby Kotick deserved to be kicked out of Activision with nothing. Instead, he’s going to leave at sunset with more money than we could ever hope to spend – for on top of the obscene sums he’s already made– and will not suffer any repercussions for his role in promoting and protecting a company-wide culture of harassment that lasted for decades.

What really pissed me off today, however, wasn’t this deal itself – as I said, it was happening, regardless of who was involved – but what it means. It’s not a shock one-time purchase, where every other company involved in video games just sits back and thinks, wow, that’s bad news for us, but we’re just going to carry on as if nothing happened and hope for the best. No, because this system is sick and deranged and the only impetus left for competition is to do the same, consider this:

It’s the future. There’s no way boardrooms everywhere from EA to Ubisoft to Sony won’t be full this week with panicked executives talking about their options for something similar, because their only instinct will be to match that. To keep up, make the stock price go up, until there are only 2 or 3 companies left at the top of the food chain, and things get a little worse for the rest of them. ‘between us. Because they don’t know anything else.

Illustration: Annapurna Interactive

2021 is basically done. Old news! Now all people care about is this hot new thing called 2022, and its many, many release dates. Have you heard about our upcoming stacked February? Even taking into account that the pandemic and supply issues will likely shift some things around and cause some delays, the year still looks promising.

With that out of the way, here are some of Kotaku’s most anticipated games of 2022. Obviously, the list is not exhaustive, and we’ve left out some, but not all, of the more obvious triple-A inclusions. For that, you may want to check out our list of every game coming out in 2022 and beyond, which gets updated any time a game gets announced or delayed. But without further ado!

Dying Light 2 Stay Human

Does the world need another zombie game? Maybe not. But the first game was fun, and the second one appears to keep that great parkour action mixed with RPG systems while adding more characters and narrative choices to the mix.

Sifu

Sifu is a visceral-looking martial arts action game by the makers of Absolver and it looks rad. Every gesture flows seamlessly from one move to the next in the combat, which reminds me of some of the best fight scenes from movies like The Matrix or Kill Bill.

Rumbleverse

Another battle royale game? Hmmm…But thankfully, Rumbleverse ditches the guns and bombs of other entries in the genre and replaces it with melee-focused action. Suplexing someone off a rooftop sounds like a great way to shake up the somewhat stale state of battle royales.

Horizon Forbidden West

One of the best (former) PlayStation exclusive games with an engaging story, beautiful open world, giant robot dinosaurs finally gets a much-needed next-gen sequel. What else is there to say?

Gran Turismo 7

Forza Horizon 5 is a lot of fun! But I do miss the slower vibe of the classic Gran Turismo games. Gran Turismo is a series that makes you earn licenses and features a progression system from crappy cars to speed machines. Plus, Gran Turismo has some all-time classic race tracks, and seeing them recreated in the newest game on PS5 sounds wonderful.

Triangle Strategy

Screenshot: Square Enix

When it comes to the quality level of Triangle Strategy, there’s no guesswork involved: We already know this game is gonna rule—because it’s already got a demo! It’s a grid-based tactics gameplay (in the vein of Fire Emblem) and more proper nouns than you can keep track of (…also in the vein of Fire Emblem) make for what’s sure to be a tactics RPG for the ages.

Tunic

This might look like another Zelda clone starring a cute fox in a strange world.

But Tunic is much more than that. As Kotaku’s own Ari Notis explained earlier this year after playing a time-limited demo of the game. “I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that trusts me as much as Tunic does.” This is because everything in the game is in a weird, fictional language and the game doesn’t translate this. Instead, you rely on your knowledge of games to work stuff out, leading to a truly powerful experience.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Borderlands may not be the most mature or well-written video game franchise out there. There are times when the dialog makes you wince, or will perhaps tempt you to pop in a podcast while it’s on mute or something. But it’s hard to deny that easy-to-play, drop-in, drop-out co-op crossplay with tons of quests and loot. It is a game engineered from the ground up to be played with friends, and now we’re taking that foundation and transplanting it into a wacky medieval fantasy world with magic spells and swords. Sounds like it could be a winning combo?

Weird West

From Devolver Digital, Weird West is an attractive-looking cowboy-themed top-down supernatural action-RPG with elements of stealth and immersive sims. That might be a mouthful, but the game looks great and, following a delay, should be out in March. Can’t wait.

Saints Row

After the events of Saints Row IV, many were curious about the future of the series. How do you top blowing up the Earth and defeating an evil alien empire? The answer: You don’t. Instead, you hit the reboot button. While some fans are worried that this new entry might be too silly, I’m happy we aren’t going back to the bland days of Saints Row 1.

Starfield

Bethesda games might not always be the most stable, but when it comes to big worlds filled with interconnecting things to do and places to explore, few studios are better. I mean, look how many times people keep buying, playing, and modding Skyrim a decade after its initial release. Starfield is also Bethesda’s first new franchise and first truly next-gen game. The idea of getting to see what the studio can do with more powerful hardware and a new engine is very exciting, even if it might need a few mods to make it truly great.

Bear and Breakfast

Originally, this cozy-looking game was supposed to be out this year. But it has since been delayed into 2022. Bear and Breakfast is a wilderness hotel sim from Gummy Cat and while it looks adorable, it also seems to be hiding some Gravity Fall-like secrets behind its warm and fuzzy surface.

Card Shark

Not many games teach you about real card tricks and cheats. Not many games look as cool as Card Shark. What I’m saying is: I’m happy this game exists. Coming to Switch and PC next year, Card Shark is set in 18th Century Europe and will feature roguelike elements and progression.

Goodbye Volcano High

Screenshot: KO_OP

One thing’s all but certain for Goodbye Volcano High: It’ll probably make us cry. Really, we’re talking about a narrative adventure game starring anthropomorphic dinosaurs graduating high school. At least based on the pre-release materials, the whole thing is steeped in the particular flavor saccharine indie rock that’s perfectly suited for saying farewell to one part of life—and hello to the next. The dinos already had one end of an era, but Goodbye Volcano High’s seems like it’ll pack far more of an emotional wallop.

Kirby and The Forgotten Land

Kirby might be a beloved Nintendo character with a long history of popular, colorful games. But that doesn’t matter. Like so many other franchises and characters, even Kirby is making the leap to the open-world genre. But hey, The Forgotten Land looks cool and it could be a smart way to bring in new players who might have never cared about past 2D Kirby games.

Metal Slug Tactics

Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett had this to say about the upcoming tactical Metal Slug spin-off coming to PC in 2022: “Sure, the Metal Slug experience is now slower, but all the style remains, from the goofy character design to the exaggerated death animations. Plus there are still fat tanks and boss fights, only now everything is turn-based tactics instead of fast-twitch action, and it all looks cool as hell.”

Neon White

Screenshot: Annapurna Interactive.

Neon White eludes easy categorization, which is precisely why it’s so exciting. It’s a first-person shooter, but there’s an element of randomness via a deck-building mechanic. It’s also part platformer, part visual novel, part dating sim, and part RPG. Levels are designed to fly by in minutes or less, encouraging speed-running. It’s a veritable soup of genre-mashing that seems like the type of game you’d have to play to fully understand. -Ari Notis

Planet of Lana

This game could make waves solely on the power of its aesthetics. That it’s a puzzle-platformer set, according to the developers, “across centuries and galaxies” only further stokes the intrigue. One caveat: You play as a child accompanied by an adorable little critter, so Planet of Lana is probably going to be a bit of a heartbreak. -Ari Notis

Shredders

There’s no liminal space when it comes to boarding games. They’re either comically unrealistic (Rider’s Republic, SSX) or admirably committed to Newton’s laws (Steep, Amped). Based on early footage, Shredders lands squarely in the latter camp, with athletes throwing misty flips like they’re competing in the X Games. If we can’t have the next Skate game for another million years, Shredders is the next best thing. -Ari Notis

Slime Rancher 2

Ranching slimes is a hard life. But it’s also a lot of fun. The original Slime Rancher was a game that could easily suck away hours and hours of your day, asking you to collect, breed and care for dozens of different slimes and slime variants. The sequel looks to be more of the same, but now with even bigger worlds to explore and more slimes to collect. It also comes to Game Pass on day one next year.

Somerville

This looks like a game made by Playdead (known for Limbo and Inside), which tracks, seeing as it’s being developed by one of that studio’s co-founders. Like Playead’s oeuvre, Somerville is an enigma of a platformer, with trailers that basically scream “WTF is going on here?” If the obvious inspirations are any indication, we’ll still be wondering after the credits roll. -Ari Notis

Splatoon 3

Splatoon was very good. Splatoon 2 was twice as good. Logic dictates that Splatoon 3 will be three times the game the original Splatoon was, right? While competitive players will love having more stuff to compete with and over, the best thing about Splatoon 3 is the introduction of a dedicated, fully fleshed-out single-player story mode, so us solo players can learn more about this strange squid kid world without being shot at. Well, at least not by other players. -Mike Fahey

Replaced

Replaced landed on Kotaku’s radar thanks to an E3 trailer with a killer earworm. But that soundtrack laid the backdrop for a platformer with gorgeous pixel art, crunchy-looking combat, and a riveting premise (you’re an AI unit trapped inside a human body). Also: train fight. Woooo! -Ari Notis

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

Screenshot: Ubisoft

The first Mario + Rabbids game confused many when it was announced back in 2017. But once people played it it was… okay, still kind of weird. But also a well-made and slick turn-based tactical game, not unlike a simplified Xcom. Sparks of Hope looks to once again give Mario and other Mushroom Kingdom characters big, cartoony guns and teams them up with Ubisoft’s Rabbids. But this time they have to save the whole galaxy!

Oxenfree II

The first Oxenfree saw a bunch of teens sneak onto a spooky island overnight, hoping to party, only to open a supernatural portal to a long-dormant mystery that can only be solved with radios. Well-written and dripping with some killer synths, Oxenfree’s ending left the door open for plenty of new shenanigans.

Stray

It’s a game about a cat. You play as the cat. In an apparently post-human world occupied by booze-swilling robots. Not sure how a premise gets any better than that.

Pokémon Legends

It’s Pokémon meets Monster Hunter. Pocket Monster Hunter. We get to explore vast open (but not too open) areas of the early Sinnoh region, back when it was wild and untamed and known as Hisui. We’ll get to see what the Pokemon world was like before humans and monsters learned to live in harmony and every other NPC had tips on training. And hey, new ways to play with Pokemon are always good. -Mike Fahey

God of War Ragnarok

I just want to toss the ax around for another 10 hours or so. Oh, and I guess I want to see what happens next after the first game’s ending, that writing was great. Boy! But mostly it’s the ax tossing.

Breath of The Wild Sequel

It’s a sequel to one of the most beloved and popular video games ever released, except this time we take to the skies and maybe kiss a dehydrated mummy. Of course we’re excited.