The concluding expansion for Destiny 2 is just around the corner. After six years, Bungie has decided to craft the perfect farewell expansion for the game called The Final Shape. There has been no solid information regarding the expansion as fans are patiently waiting for the Bungie livestream set to conduct next week. Moreover, the presentation may also include more information regarding the future of Destiny. The livestream will be held on Tuesday, August 22, 2023, at 4 pm BST/ 8 am PT on YouTube, Twitch, and Tok, where fans will be greeted with an hour of pre-show.

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The Final Shape will be the Concluding Expansion for Destiny 2

The Final Shape expansion will follow the beloved The Witch Queen expansion released in 2022 alongside Lightfall. While the Destiny 2 community does not particularly praise the latter, it shares essential plot elements to aid the upcoming expansion. With the upcoming expansion, Bungie is expected to conclude its Light and Darkness Saga alongside its long-running lore. Next week's main show will unveil all the details regarding The Final Shape. Bungie also mentioned that the presentation would address Destiny 2's Season 22 details, such as the next reprised raid, and more.

Moreover, you can also expect a post-show after the main one, which will feature the developers discussing and focusing on the upcoming updates for next year. This means a lot to the Destiny fans, as the title is set to receive tons of updates following the concluding expansion. The Season of the Deep (Season 21) has been a long-running expansion for ten weeks. With Season 22 being a breath of fresh air, much is set to change in the game. Fans are highly excited regarding Destiny 2's future, as The Final Shape has a lot of potential to craft a new game or branch out towards a new plotline within the universe. The Final Shape is expected to drop sometime around February 2024, as the specific release date is yet to be revealed by Bungie.

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If we look at the upcoming slate of zombie games, arguably the most hotly-anticipated is State of Decay 3. Fans have been patiently waiting for Undead Labs’ ambitious third entry in the series, but as the months pass by, patience is becoming thinner.

Now is the time for Undead to put everything it has behind its next game, but unfortunately, that also marks the end of the line for its beloved State of Decay 2, which today gets its last ever update.

Thankfully, this 38th and final patch will see the State of Decay 2 go out in style. This substantial update essentially sets it up for the future and gets it in the best possible shape with quality-of-life improvements, balancing changes, adjustments to event rewards, and some bug fixes.

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What Does Update 38 Bring To The Game

One of the biggest changes in Update 38 is the addition of community inventories. From the community screen, users will now be able to access the stashes of all other survivors in their base. This makes swapping, organizing, and storing gear so much easier.

For people trying their hands at the State of Decay 2, they also need to factor in a new momentum mechanic that will slow their vehicle if they drive through water. While 4x4s will be affected less by the water resistance, it is an added splash of realism that players will need to watch out for.

Apart from the gameplay changes, Undead Labs has not only added some brand-new clothing items but it has also generously unvaulted any past time-gated content. It mostly has seasonal gear for events like Halloween and Christmas. Several weapons and vehicles have also been added to the world spawn pool.

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Will the State Of Decay 2 Go Offline?

Update 38 is currently live in the State of Decay 2. Users will be able to check out every single change in the full set of patch notes here. Although this is the last update for the game, Undead Labs has already assured it won’t be taken offline.

While State of Decay 2 is still worth your time, the home stretch of the agonizing wait for the State of Decay 3 release date now starts. For players suffering from State of Decay fatigue, there are several other zombie games to try out for now.

The team responsible for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has been disbanded, as per a report from French media outlet Origami. In a video posted, Origami reports that the team behind The Lost Crown was disbanded despite seemingly positive reports from developers on their experiences working on the game.

Per a tweet by Gauthier Andres: "I've heard and read 'It was the best game production in my entire life' three or four times in a single weekend while getting information on the game's development. One after the other I was told it was seen as a beacon of hope to create a safe space for people that were burnt out by Beyond Good & Evil 2. The team has been disbanded by Ubisoft."

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Now Sequel For Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown

The video also states that the game’s fate was effectively decided just a few weeks after its release. The core game development team reportedly fought to get a sequel or at least more expansion beyond the single “Mask of Darkness” expansion, but Ubisoft allegedly needed more help on other projects that had better sales potential.

According to the report, The Lost Crown did not meet the company’s expectations, and executives expressed concerns that a sequel would cannibalize long-term sales of the first game. The game was developed at Ubisoft Montpellier, which employs hundreds of people and was last known to be working on the infinitely-in-limbo Beyond Good and Evil 2.

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The Team Has Shifted Focus To Other Games

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Senior Producer Abdelhak Elguess sent the following statement to IGN, "I'm extremely proud of our team's work and passion at Ubisoft Montpellier to create a game that resonated with players and critics alike, and I am confident in its long-term success. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is now at the end of its post-launch roadmap with three free content updates and one DLC that was released in September.”

"We are now focusing on making the game available to more players: it was recently launched on Steam, and will be available on Mac by this winter. Most of the team members who worked on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have shifted to other projects that will benefit from their expertise. We know players have a love for this brand and Ubisoft is excited to bring more Prince of Persia experiences in the future." 

The doors on The Wolf Among Us 2 haven’t been closed yet, despite rumors suggesting otherwise. Recently, a whistleblower claimed development of The Wolf Among Us 2 was in peril, and the team at Telltale was at a "critical point where they might have no choice but to shelve it."

In a statement shared with Eurogamer, Telltale has ensured that work on the game continues. "As a rule, we don't comment on rumors and unsubstantiated Reddit threads," a Telltale PR told us. "But development on The Wolf Among Us 2 continues and we're excited to share more about the game with Telltale fans and our community when the time is right."

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When Is The Wolf Among Us 2 Coming?

The Wolf Among Us 2, will be set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables comics - was originally announced back in 2017, but development was stopped when Telltale Games faced significant lay-off and was shuttered in 2018.

It seemed like the end for the sequel; however, a little less than a year later, it was announced Telltale was being resurrected under new management - a surprise development that would eventually see The Wolf Among Us 2 re-announced, with the project kicking off in pre-production.

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Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 To Launch On January 2025 For PC

With the first anniversary of Spider-Man 2’s PS5 launch just a few days away, developer Insomniac has announced the acclaimed superhero sequel will launch for PC on 30th January next year. Insomniacs isn’t ready to make platform-specific enhancements just yet, but it has confirmed Spider-Man 2’s PC port will come with all the extra content released through the game's various free post-launch updates. 

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 comes to PC in two versions. One will be the standard variant, which comes with all the above, plus a pricier Digital Deluxe Edition. The latter packs everything that the standard edition offers, alongside ten exclusive suits - five for Peter and five for Miles - plus early unlocks for Peter's Arachknight suit, Miles' Shadow-Spider suit, and the Web Grabber gadget.

The Deluxe Editions also offers +5 skill points and some extra photo mode items. It’s imperative to note that anyone who pre-orders the base game also gets the Arachknight suit, Shadow-Spider suit, Web Grabber, and +3 skill points.

Netflix’s push into gaming might not be going as planned. First reported in Game File and confirmed by Netflix, the streaming giant has discreetly shut one of its studios, the first in three years since it started foraying into gaming.

According to Game File, the shut studio was known as Blue. In 2022, the company announced it hired former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny to run the studio.

Since then, Blue has roped in several game industry veterans with experience working on high-profile franchises including Halo and God of War.

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Netflix AAA Game Studio Shut Without Launching a Game

If reports are to be believed, Blue was developing a multi-platform AAA game for an original IP but was shut down before the could be announced or launched. Netflix has released a steady stream of games on its platform since the start of its gaming experiment in 2021.

Though it started with a small handful of hyper-casual mobile games, Netflix’s offerings have expanded to include mobile exclusive ports of iconic games like Grand Theft Auto and Hades its own internally developed exclusives like Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit and Oxenfree II: Lost Signals.

Netflix also acquired several studios to support its gaming arm. The most recent additions were a mobile game studio in Helsinki, a new studio in southern California, and Cozy Grove developer Spry Fox. But with the closure of Blue, Netflix’s trend of expansion might be over as well as its grander AAA ambitions.

Also Read: Netflix Begins Testing Game Play on TV, PC and Mac

Netflix's Latest Game Will Take You Back To Your Childhood

Netflix is launching Minesweeper as part of its selection of subscriber-only games, and the game is now available for iOS as well as Android users. The classic puzzle game that most people know from Microsoft Minesweeper, available in Windows 11 and versions dating back to 1990, has fresh colorful graphics and new modes.

Netflix’s take on the classic game looks a whole lot like the old Minesweeper, but it adds a Journey Mode that takes players to different levels across world stages as well as unique daily challenges.

While looking for and flagging sea mines on a grid is a logic puzzle that’s often cloned in plenty of money-seeking games on the Play Store and App Store, Netflix subscribers will not find any in-game ads or microtransactions in the streaming service’s new edition.

Games might not be the biggest reason subscribers come to Netflix, but a lot of indie games, aged triple-A titles, and now Minesweeper’s S-tier idle time-killing abilities coming to the service continue the company’s attempts to maintain the stickiness of its service with subscribers.

Naughty Dog’s next title will reportedly focus on giving players more freedom. Well, that’s what minnMax founder Ben Hanson said. He claims to have received some information about the secretive project from “somebody very in the know, who worked on the game.”

“The tone was like, you are all not ready for how amazing this thing is going to be, and the tone was—I’m not going to say the game that they referenced to compare it to because I don’t want people to be like, MinnMax said it was going to be exactly like this—but they compared it to a game with a lot of player freedom.”

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Naughty Dog Not Focused On Traditional Narrative

Hanson added that Naughty Dog’s upcoming game was compared to Hitman. In 2023, Naughty Dog head Neil Druckmann said that he would like the studio to focus less on traditional narrative in future projects.

“I’m more recently intrigued by stuff like Elden Ring and Inside, that don’t rely as much on traditional narrative to tell a story,” he told The Washington Post. “I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, and moving around a space, and understanding a history of space by just looking at it and examining it.

“To me that, right now, is some of the best joy I get out of games – [those] that trust their audience to figure things out, that don’t hold their hand. That’s the stuff I’m really intrigued by going forward.”

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Many Games Under Development At Naughty Dog

Druckman added: “I think those are tools in your toolbox and it’s about how to use all these different aspects – some of it from other media, some of it [as] found notes and environmental storytelling.

“I think there’s a way to push that stuff forward, at least, for the kind of games we make at Naughty Dog. I’m really intrigued – again, [we’re] never resting on our laurels, and trying something a little bit new, a little bit different, that not everyone’s going to like, but that’s okay.
 

“And again, it’s stuff that we’re working on now – I can tell you that the teams are very excited by the different projects we have at Naughty Dog.” In July, he said that there are several games under development at Naughty Dog. These games include “multiple single-player projects,” but he emphasized that while they won’t all be The Last of Us titles, they will have a similar goal.

“We create experiences that are steeped in story and character, especially relationships,” he told the LA Times. “The stories have some sort of philosophical core that everything is going to revolve around and feed into.”