We got updates from the Xbox layoffs, new gameplay for a big upcoming game, a very surprising update, a leak for the Insomniac lineup and way, way more gaming news to go over. I’m back. I’m getting attacked by Light, but uh yeah, should still be a fun Sunday video. So, sit back and let’s go. So, last week, Dennis, who kindly stepped in for the Sunday video, already talked about the huge Xbox layoffs. And well, this week, we had some extra updates on the situation. And so for one, the Forsa Motorsport team turned 10, saw its team reduced by 50% and is now seemingly just a Forsa Horizon support studio. So high chance we will not see a traditional Forsa game again, which is sadly not a surprise as the most recent title did not do very well. While Forsa Horizon 5 and this insane now on PS5 sold 2.9 million units according to Alinia Analytics who has a proven track record, it’s the same as Astrobot. While this of course came out way later, Forsa Horizon 5 now also sold more on PS5 than Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Wild. We should get a new Forsour Horizon game next year. layoffs also hit Blizzard and they decided to put their mobile game Warcraft Rumble in a live ops only phase similar to Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm. Basically, people can still play it, but they are not releasing any new content for it. But the biggest news out of the layoffs were of course the three cancelled games. Ever Wild, the new rare game is no more, meaning that that studio will likely just be supporting Sea of Thieves from now on. I’m still really bummed about Perfect Dark with Deos X gone now, too. It really seems like this the end of the linear spy action games. I thought the gameplay looked very cool. We also know that Crystal Dynamics was heavily involved with the development. So, I’m curious what happens with the developers that were helping on Perfect Dark. Are they now able to move over to Tomb Raider, the other game Crystal Dynamics is making or not? Feels like we have not heard the last of this situation. And we now also learned a bit more about the third canceled game, the brand new MMO from Cinemax online that Xbox executives were blown away by, but then still cancelled. So Jason Shrier at Bloomberg reports that there was a demonstration of the game in March, and Phil Spencer was enjoying it so much that they had to pull the controller away from him so they could keep the meeting going. Also, play testers and many involved were excited about this project. It was a thirdp person online looter shooter with sci-fi noir aesthetic similar to Bladeunner with a ton of movement abilities like double jumping, air dashing, a grabble hook, etc. Maybe doesn’t sound too exciting on paper, but Jason Strier also saw a vertical slice of it and he thought it looks really great, too. So many people loved what they saw. Still, it got cancelled. Maybe one of the reasons is that they were scaling up to a team of 300 people but still aimed to release the game in 2028 while they started working on it in 2018. Like that’s a big investment into a looter shooter that usually has a low chance of success. But also the fact that these workers were unionized or some of them were in the process of becoming unionized is also a big reason for Microsoft to be maybe like yeah these guys we should let them go because they will only cost more and more and more. This was something Luke Stevens mentioned during our podcast free roam that you can listen to on Spotify. Totally do if you haven’t already. We now also learn more about Romero Games the co-founder of IT Software who started a new studio with his wife and was working on a new shooter. They got funding from Microsoft. They had meetings with Xbox a few days before their funding got pulled by these layoffs, but Microsoft did not say anything about it during those meetings. It just shows you how screwed up this situation is. In short, Microsoft is going to focus more on their sure bets. We also got a rumor this week that they are now working on multiple Fallout games. And I’m like, what took you so long? Wh Why did you buy Bethesda and only now are working on Fallout games? Xbox will be fine, but this whole generation has been one of 180s where they started with the promise of bringing AAA single player games like a perfect dark and still are not able to deliver on that. And by the time they finally had some big single player games, they were also coming to PS5. I bought a Series X because I thought, oh, I needed to play those exclusives. I don’t really touch the machine anymore. But times have changed. It’s fascinating overall, but it’s sadly at the cost of many developers that were just doing what they were told. Of course, curs your thoughts on the updated Xbox layoff story or in general. Drop it in the comments. Leave a like. That would really help me out and subscribe because we post one of these big gaming news channel videos every Sunday. Time for quick shots, new stories I will go over quickly. Starting with a very surprising The Last of Us Part Two remastered update, namely the chronological order mode. Yes, this lets you experience the full game in the chronological order of the events. I won’t spoil too much, but to give you an idea, the game basically starts with all the flashback scenes. So, the one with Joel and Ellie at the museum is one of the first things you will play, but also Abby meeting Owen. I think it’s kind of wild that they added this because Naughty Dog is known for their creative vision and switching halfway through to Abby and seeing her side is so integral to the emotions that they want you as the player to feel and it totally worked for me. I was like obviously Camp Ellie and then slowly was maybe in favor of Abby by the end of the game. Now they still recommend that if you never played it, you of course play it the original way, but this is such a unique way to replay it if you are in the mood. switching between the two playable characters, getting a new perspective on certain situations. The only other game I can think of that added something like this is Beyond Two Souls from Quantic Dream, but of course, correct me if I’m wrong in the comments down below. Either way, it’s a free patch for The Last of Us Part Two Remastered on PS5 and on PC. And if you beat it, you unlock a Nathan Drake and Sam Drake outfit for Joel and Tommy that you can then use in the no return rogike mode. So yeah, let me know if you will try this chronological order mode. If they ever announce like part three, I might go back to part two and then play it this way. That’s I think my approach to this. But again, curious to hear your thoughts in the comments. We got some first ever Mafia the Old Country gameplay this week through IGN First and I’m happy they shared it because the couple of trailers we had so far had some red flags and we still did not really get a good idea of what the quality of the game will be. And I think this 9-minute footage did that for better and worse. They really seem to nail the Italian Sicily 1900 setting. The environments look beautiful using one of the old cars to get from point A to B. The vibe is really right. I did like some gameplay elements where you have a melee weapon like the knife that has three uses and can be used to open a gate which will cost you one use and another one for a stealth takedown on an enemy. So, you have to be a bit more strategic. But this gameplay also really showed that we should not expect a groundbreaking game. This is not going to evolve the mafia formula. If anything, this looks like a PS3 title in terms of regular conversations, gun pickup animations, enemy AI, throw a grenade next to a car, and nothing happens. You really notice this game was made on a smaller budget and with a limited death cycle, something we already knew. My biggest takeaway is that the story is going to be very important to carry the very familiar gameplay. I still think it’s going to be six to seven hours as I predicted all the way back in January, but we will find out soon enough as the game is already out on August 8th. $50. Let me know if you are interested in Mafia the Old Country in the comments down below. Stalker 2, the open world survival shooter that launched last year on Xbox and PC, is coming to PlayStation 5 with PS5 Pro announcements and Dual Sense features. The way they announced it is pretty funny, having the Colonel play the game in game and then the player character taking over the controller. The game got praised for the amazing atmosphere, dynamic weather, and survival elements, but it also had a ton of bugs at launch. They’ve since then done a couple of big patches with thousands of fixes, but I checked some videos from people who recently played it to see if it actually got any better, but they still noted that there were a ton of AI spawning, graphical issues, and more. Now, this PS5 version releases in late 2025, so they got more time to polish it up, but I do think that if this looks interesting to you, I would recommend waiting for some reviews when the PS5 version drops. But cool that the game is of course coming over. And real quick, a PlayStation game that is coming over to Xbox is Hell Divers 2. We did not mention this in the recent Sunday video, but it’s kind of crazy to see on an Xbox page PlayStation listed as the publisher. Now, we of course knew that Marathon is coming to Xbox 2, even though Sony now owns Bungie, but I could totally see that this Hell Divers move means that if Sony has more successful life service games in the future that would only benefit from having a bigger community that more games will come over, like maybe Fair Games or even Horizon Online. We of course have to wait and see if these games become a success like Hell Divers 2. But yeah, we’re overall living in crazy times where exclusivity is less of a thing because these games cost way more to make. So, at one point, it only makes sense to give more people access to your product. Still though, I think there’s a higher chance that Xbox stops making consoles than that we ever see Sony release their single player titles on an Xbox. Moving on to the rumor roundup where I look at the biggest rumors of the week and give stars with three being I believe it and one being, let’s take this with a huge grain of salt. So, we got YouTuber Max Show saying that he got insider information on the current road map of Insomniac games, namely that Phenom is going to launch in 2026. If you’re not familiar, we learned about this game from the Insomniac League and how it would be a standalone title similar to Miles Morales. The leak first had it for this year, but that would be wild if Sony would just announce it and then launch it a few months later, but not impossible. Then Wolverine in 2027. That game was announced at the same time as Spider-Man 2 in 2021. So kind of wild, but we did have some shakeups at the end of last year with the creative director going to Xbox to lead Perfect Dark, which always seemed kind of like a demotion, especially as Perfect Dark was already in development hell and now of course cancelled because it was in development hell. So something feels off with Wolverine as well. Like why would Brian leave? The Ratch and Clank directors have by the way taken over now, but yeah, 2027 I think makes sense. And then Max show speculates that Spider-Man 3 is in 2029. Look, I don’t think Max Show has a track record of any kind, but I don’t think that 2026 for Phantom and 2027 for Wolverine is weird. I think they still, if they want to get a Spidey game out during the PS5 generation, going for a Miles Morales type situation makes sense. And again, I can totally see why Wolverine needs an extra year because of the shakeup, but still one star as I don’t think this rumor means it will actually happen. Like, we could also not see Venom. They could also just use that content that they were planning and putting it in Spider-Man 3. We know for a fact though that Sony will launch a Ghost of Yote level single player game in each financial year. So, what will be the game from April 2026 until March 2027? Wolverine or Intergalactic. Maybe intergalactic is actually earlier. We will have to wait and see. Curious to hear your thoughts. So, in short, I totally think that this could work, but I don’t think this rumor means that it will actually happen. So, one star. This coming week, new PlayStation Plus extra games will drop with the highlight being Cyberpunk. And I also want to shout out Banisher’s Ghost of New Eden. That, by the way, also got a new PS5 Pro update. I totally recommend that you give that game a shot if you are in the mood for a linear action RPG that has really cool use of dialogue choices. It’s a double A game, but again, I think it really has some great stuff going for it. I’ll be back this Monday with the Monday stream going more in depth on the topics we discussed and of course everything else with you. So, hope to see you there. Countdown link in the video description. And we will have other content with of course a Sunday news roundup like this at the end of the week. Subscribe and check out our Ghost of Yote breakdown. Of course, we got the state of play this week. And I will speak to you soon.