Kojima ditches PlayStation and Blizzard returns to old franchises: September 9-15 news round-up

Hey readers,

It looks like the new talk of the town is a first-person shooter called Wardogs. As the trailer proudly declares, it’s neither a battle royale nor an extraction shooter (because to hell with those popular genres, apparently!), but rather a king-of-the-hill-style milsim. Three teams with 33 players each fight over a control zone, and there’s a complex in-game economy that will have players manage their finances and try to make a profit from their battles.

The beta for Wardogs is a massive hit on Steam, but the downside is that players were met with absurdly long server queues when it first launched. Some players lambasted studio Bulkhead for prioritizing streamers and influencers in the queue (which isn’t that unusual of a practice for launches like this), leading to in-game announcements from the developers saying “We are dick heads” as a joke response. The CEO of Bulkhead also said that the studio won’t hire anyone who criticizes the practice of crunch on social media.

This’ll be an interesting game to follow for sure, to say the least. Now let’s get into the top headlines of the week.

In a story that people are talking up so loudly that you’d think a major international scandal has occurred, Hideo Kojima (the brains behind Metal Gear and Death Stranding) has jumped ship from an exclusive deal with PlayStation, bringing his stealth-action game Physint to Xbox. The project was first announced in 2024 at a PlayStation State of Play stream, and the game is meant to mark Kojima’s grand return to the stealth genre decades after giving PlayStation a major hit with the first Metal Gear Solid title.

According to Kojima, PlayStation Studios told Kojima Productions in mid-June that the company would cancel Physint, which led to Kojima seeking a new partner for the game. That new partner just happens to be PlayStation’s main competitor, Xbox. Kojima Productions is already collaborating with Xbox for a horror title called OD, which has Jordan Peele attached as a writer and actors Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer, and the late Udo Kier in the cast.

In other words, Xbox is now bankrolling both of Kojima’s upcoming games, a puzzling move considering, you know, the current state of Xbox with its mass layoffs and other conundrums.

According to Bloomberg, Kojima raised alarms within PlayStation, reportedly going over budget and missing deadlines. There was also concern about the potential profitability of Physint, as it’s said that both Death Stranding games, originally published by Sony, did not meet the company’s revenue expectations.

Reportedly, both games broke even, but just barely. And although PlayStation published the titles, Kojima Productions owns the rights to the Death Stranding IP, and Death Stranding eventually received ports for Xbox and Apple devices. With that in mind, it might not make sense for PlayStation to foot the bill for Physint, which might not remain a PlayStation exclusive forever.

There’s not much we know about the game for certain, other than it’s meant to be somewhat of a spiritual successor to Metal Gear. We know that actors Charlee Fraser, Ma Dong-seok (better known to American audiences as Don Lee), and Minami Hamabe are in the cast, and there are also tin foil conspiracy theories that Robert Pattinson will play the lead character. The tagline for the game is “Here Comes The Feeling,” which, as with most elements of a Kojima game, sounds like total nonsense without any context.

In what feels like the most substantial BlizzCon in years, Blizzard Entertainment revealed that it’s going back to the well by reviving some of its most famous properties. As teased, there is indeed a new StarCraft game in the works, though that won’t launch until 2030 (at the earliest, I presume).

Additionally, Diablo 5 is on the way, and it comes out in spring 2029. There’s also a Diablo animated series in the works for Netflix, though Blizzard didn’t share any additional concrete details about that project.

The new StarCraft game will stray from the franchise’s real-time strategy roots, as it’ll be an open-world shooter with an emphasis on narrative. Players will create and name their own character and follow their story to the end. Blizzard describes the game as a traditional “box product,” as opposed to an always-evolving online live service title. Expect side quests, missions, and character progression. Dan Hay, who previously directed the Far Cry series for Ubisoft, is leading development of the StarCraft project.

Meanwhile, Diablo 5’s narrative director is a BioWare veteran who worked on the Dragon Age series. The game will center around a traveling caravan of allies that the player grows over time, which should lead to some elements from “traditional” RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age coming into Diablo.

In the world of Overwatch, Blizzard is retooling Sombra into a Support hero and adding a “cool” vampire Hero named Doctrine to the roster. Blizzard also shadow-dropped a new campaign for Warcraft 3: Reforged called Forsaken Kingdom—the first campaign for the game in over two decades. There’s also a new version of World of Warcraft called World of Warcraft: Forever launching on November 4.

Outside of BlizzCon, 1,900 employees at Blizzard ratified a union contract with Microsoft, which should provide protections relating to issues like the use of generative AI, layoffs, and remote work, to name a few.

(In this section, I’ll address a question or curiosity about gaming from readers. Submit your inquiries through this Google Form and read my explainer in a future newsletter!)

That’s it for this week. I’ll be contemplating whether I still want to try Marvel’s Wolverine or not. Will you?

Catch you later bub,
Chris Compendio