- Casual game publisher Big Fish Games is the latest company to be hit with layoffs, with approximately 9% of their 524 Seattle employees under the axe. The company has also closed its Vancouver studio. The cuts seem to be related to the company’s cloud service, with CEO Paul Thelen writing to the staff in an email: “The most significant decision we are making today is that we are discontinuing our premium cloud delivery business. This service is not growing as fast as we had hoped it would and is not on a path to profitability.”
- Warface, the freemium shooter by Crytek, is opening up its final closed beta today before the game launched in North America, Europe and Turkey later this year.
- Crytek has also announced that the new version of their flagship product, CryEngine, is now available to developers. The CryEngine is behind games such as Crysis 3 and Ryse.
- David Cage has revealed more details about Beyond: Two Souls at gamescom. The game is confirmed to support two-player cooperative play, with players able to press the Triangle button to switch between Jodi and Aiden. The game will also have an accompanying iOS and Android app, which will allow for a simpler form of control.
- An interview with Team ICO lead Fumito Ueda reveals that The Last Guardian is indeed still in the works, but is no longer the top priority. In the interview, translated by Polygon, he says that SCE Japan Studio, who are working on the game, are currently working on Puppeteer and Knack.
- The enhanced PlayStation Vita port Muramasa: Rebirth is coming to European regions in Q3 this year.
- Finally, the PlayStation Network title Rain will be out on October 2 in PAL regions for PlayStation 3. There’s also a new developer diary out detailing the beautiful yet haunting music you can expect to hear when it makes it over.
