Just Cause 3 Hype

Late last month, Kwalee Labs launched its first-person horror shooter Luna Abyss on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. But not even a day-one Game Pass release was apparently enough to save the jobs of the team that made Luna Abyss. Kwalee Labs CEO and production director Hollie Emery announced on her LinkedIn page that she and the other eight members of Luna Abyss's development team were laid off earlier this week for undisclosed reasons. "Unfortunately as of yesterday, the entire team has been made redundant; a decision that was completely outside of our control," wrote Emery. "As a result, the entire team are available for work as of today." Emery also stated that she and the rest of her team were "enamoured by the love and support it received both by our industry and critically by journalists and media. Whilst we faced many challenges along the way, it has been the highlight of our careers--and we are incredibly proud that it has finally seen the light of day." According GameSpot's sister site Metacritic, Luna Abyss had an 81% score and was largely received well by critics. While the title's Game Pass numbers aren't available, its peak concurrent players on Steam was 18,597 near launch. However, its most recent 24-hour peak was only 310 players, which marks a dramatic drop-off. Luna Abyss puts players in control of Fawkes, a woman who has been imprisoned on a moon called Luna and tasked to excavate and explore the deep passages beneath the surface while monitored by her A.I. prison guard, Aylin. As Fawkes uncovers the secrets of Luna, she's forced to fight for her life against cosmic horrors that defy description. Presumably Luna Abyss will remain available on its current platforms. The layoffs of Kwalee Labs' developers comes at a time when even prominent first-party studios at Xbox are currently negotiating with Microsoft to avoid being shut down. The final fate of those studios is currently unclear. View the full article

Ever since we learned the name of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, fan speculation began running rampant about what the third and final entry of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy would be called. While, thematically, many considered "Reunion" to be a fitting choice, that was disqualified as it was the name of the Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII remaster, which arrived in 2022. In early June, we finally learned that the name was Final Fantasy VII Revelation. Oddly enough, while on stage at Summer Game Fest 2026's live show, director Naoki Hamaguchi focused more on another word that begins with "re." "As I spoke about in my stage presentation, the central theme of this title is going to be 'Resolve,'" he tells Game Informer. "That could mean a lot of things, but one of them is the resolve of our party player-characters heading into the final battles. What kind of resolve do they have in them? What are they feeling? What are they thinking about? Things like that. We're going to really dive deep into that specific aspect of their emotions and what they're thinking. It's going to shape a little bit differently between the choices that the players take, so the overall game experience might change a little bit depending on those choices that the players might take, but the goal is for the characters to feel closer than ever for the players." When I ask Hamaguchi directly if, given that response, "Resolve" was ever in consideration for the name of the third part, he is direct in his response. "The central theme being 'Resolve,' and it being a word that starts with R-E, that's just a coincidence," he says. "It wasn't really a candidate for our title. We landed with 'Revelation,' because that was the word that was the best match for what we wanted to depict in the third installment of our series. One thing I can share about the title 'Revelation,' though, is that we kept this under the veils for the longest time, and we wanted to be very careful about it. We have a very huge development team, but among those development team members, only five or six people knew about the title. Most of them found out about the title at the SGF stage presentation!" I asked Hamaguchi about the name of the third entry during our 2023 Rapid-Fire interview with the director of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, he responded, "That is kept inside [creative director Tetsuya] Nomura-san's head," before he rejected various joke pitches I gave him, so the secrecy of the announcement checks out.   Given the themes of the third act of Final Fantasy VII, I'm curious if there is any inspiration for the final entry of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy from the final book of the Bible, The Book of Revelation. "Some people might make that connection with Christian [mythology], but from our point of view, it was more about revealing all these unanswered questions that the fans may have with Remake and Rebirth. I think a lot of fans and players were just really wondering, how this is going to go down, and how the trilogy is going to conclude. As a response to that, this is our message, to say that this is the end of everything, this is where everything gets revealed, and this is where you will find out all the answers." Final Fantasy VII Revelation is set to arrive on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC in the first half of 2027, marking the first time the Remake trilogy is going multiplatform on day one. To learn how Hamaguchi feels about bringing Final Fantasy back to Nintendo, read his thoughts here. To learn more about the changes coming to Queen's Blood in Revelation, head here. View the full article