We’ve gotten more details on what Tango Gameworks was working on when it was shut down by Microsoft earlier this year. It was later bought and revitalized by Krafton.
Maria Park, Krafton head of corporate development, said in a GamesIndustry.biz interview that Tango had been working on Hi-Fi Rush 2 when the news came down from its parent company. Not only that, but the team had a six-month-old build to show Krafton while negotiating the deal. A report had already revealed Tango had pitched the sequel, but it wasn’t clear if it was in development at that time.
Park explained that work on the sequel is on hold for now until the IP acquisition goes through, but the new Krafton-owned Tango will continue development after that.
“We won’t really rush to the market just to deliver a sequel. We want to make sure that the sequel is actually at a quality level that surpasses the community’s expectations,” Park said.
A team at Tango was also working on The Evil Within anniversary content. This spiritual successor to Resident Evil, which was also spearheaded by Tango founder Shinji Mikami, released on October 14, 2014. The series is often overlooked, but it packs in incredible atmosphere and a unique mix of gameplay genres — from survival horror to open-world exploration. The sequel, The Evil Within 2, is celebrating its seventh anniversary on October 13.
However, Park reiterated that the company is only acquiring the rights to Hi-Fi Rush and not any of Tango’s other properties. The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo are staying with Microsoft. This has been the messaging from Krafton since it announced it had bought the studio.
“It would’ve been great to get all the IPs,” Park said. “Knowing Microsoft’s direction with the IP sale, we didn’t want to push too far with this acquisition, so we primarily had Hi-Fi Rush under discussion because it would complicate the process and elongate the entire negotiation process.”
Microsoft unceremoniously closed Tango, alongside Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, and internal support studio Roundhouse Games, in May to focus on “prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds,” according to head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty. These former Bethesda studios became Xbox ones after the latter company purchased Bethesda parent ZeniMax Media in 2021.
The fate of Hi-Fi Rush was of particular interest because it had released in 2023 to critical acclaim and high player counts thanks to Xbox Game Pass (Microsoft has never released sales numbers for the game). It had also just been added to the PlayStation 5.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.