After the recent release of Fantasian: Neo Dimension on PC and consoles, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is currently working on another game as part of his farewell tour, one that he envisions as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy 6. While Fantasian was supposed to be his game development swansong, the veteran game producer explained that his time on the game was highly enjoyable for him and that he couldn't turn down an opportunity to continue working with the Fantasian team.

"I was thinking of making Fantasian: Neo Dimension my final work, but the fantastic team that was assembled to complete this project was so enjoyable to work with that I found it hard to part ways," Sakaguchi said to The Verge. "Humans are greedy creatures, aren't we? For that reason, I'm currently working on a new project with the same team that worked on Fantasian: Neo Dimension. It's generally going to follow a similar style to my previous works, and it'll be something that can be a successor to Final Fantasy 6 in a good way--our goal is to create something old but new at the same time. It'll be part two of my farewell note."

Final Fantasy 6 was the final mainline game in the series to be developed in 2D, as the series shifted toward 3D game graphics with Final Fantasy 7. Highly regarded as one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time thanks to its deep gameplay systems, ensemble cast, and story-based focus, Final Fantasy 6 has been ported to numerous systems over the decades since it was first released. When asked last year by French YouTuber Julien Chieze, Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase explained that a remake of Final Fantasy 6 in the same style as the recent Final Fantasy 7 remakes would be quite challenging to produce and would take about 20 years to complete.

The challenging times at Ubisoft continue, as the French gaming company has announced it is closing one studio and downsizing others in the firm's latest round of cost-cutting that will see about 185 people lose their jobs. Ubisoft underwent multiple waves of layoffs in 2024 as well.

Ubisoft has confirmed that it is closing Ubisoft Leamington, a support studio that contributed to titles like Star Wars Outlaws and Far Cry 5. The team created the DJ Hero series for Activision before being acquired by Ubisoft in 2017.

A spokesperson for Ubisoft told GameSpot that is is closing Ubisoft Leamington as part of the company's ongoing mission to "prioritize projects and reduce costs." In addition to closing Ubisoft Leamington, Ubisoft is undergoing "targeted restructurings" of Ubisoft Dusseldorf, Ubisoft Stockholm, and Ubisoft Reflections.

Following its recent launch on PC, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth broke a concurrent-players record on Steam for single-player entries in the franchise over the weekend. The RPG--which initially launched on PS5 in February 2024--saw over 40,000 people exploring the game with Cloud Strife and his friends.

Eurogamer reports that Final Fantasy XVI hit over 27,000 concurrent players on Steam last year. That falls far short of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's number of 40,564 from Sunday, per SteamDB. However, Final Fantasy XIV holds the overall record for the RPG series, seeing a peak of more than 95,000 concurrent players after the Endwalker expansion in 2021. Keep in mind that it's an MMO, though, where online co-op is a major feature of the experience.

Last week, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi clarified previous comments about Cloud and Aerith's relationship. Previously, Hamaguchi had inferred they had a sibling-like bond but has since explained to Automaton that "no one will make any official statements about who Cloud likes."

This month's brief ban of TikTok in the US saw Marvel Snap get caught in the crossfire, as it was inaccessible to US-based players for several days. After that issue was resolved, developer Second Dinner pledged to reward players for their patience, and it looks like there'll be a lot of free stuff to grab this week.

Second Dinner explained how this will work on its social media channels. First off, there'll be separate rewards packages for US-based players and the international playerbase. Each package will be subdivided based on collection level, with the higher collection levels getting the lion's share of the goodies. These are substantial drops, as Second Dinner will be handing out currencies, variant cards, and more. This stuff typically equates to hundreds of dollars if you were to buy them in the game's expensive microtransactions store.

It's worth pointing out that the existing US-based players are defined as accounts created before January 20 inside the US and have shown any activity in the last 30 days before the outage, Second Dinner wrote. The developer explained that if US players made use of a VPN service to get around the downtime, it will not affect their eligibility for the compensation package. "This includes players from outside the US VPN-ing into the US to try and receive the US Downtime Package," Second Dinner added.

A modding group has released a mod that brings GTA: Vice City content into the GTA 4 engine, despite efforts from publisher Take-Two Interactive to stop them. This project by Revolution Team, called GTA Vice City Nextgen Edition, ported missions, cutscenes, and the world from Vice City into GTA 4's engine and initially required players to own a copy of GTA 4.

The development team said its YouTube channel was taken offline by Take-Two. That led to the creation of a new channel that houses a launch trailer for the mod, as well as a decision to rework the mod's requirement. Originally, the mod required GTA 4 to play--something that was done to "show respect to the publisher." Now, that requirement has been dropped, and the mod can be downloaded and played as a standalone game. As always, though, you should be careful about what you download online.

"Our team's channel was deleted by Take-Two Interactive two days before the project's release. A lot of time and effort was invested into its development, including hundreds of hours of streaming," Revolution Team's statement reads on an updated teaser trailer.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has once again commented on the company's strategy as it relates to launching its own first-party games on other platforms. As Spencer has been saying for a long time already, he believes Xbox is strongest and best-positioned when it launches its own games on other platforms. A game remaining exclusive to Xbox in perpetuity "doesn't work for us" going forward, he said.

Speaking to Destin Legarie, Spencer was asked directly if he could confirm if Bethesda's RPG Starfield would remain exclusive to Xbox on console for the time being. Spencer said, "No."

He added: "There is no reason for me to put a ring fence around any game and say, 'This game will not go to a place where it will find players, where it would have business success for us.'"

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has said doubled down on Microsoft's commitment to the hardware space via Xbox, saying the company aims to "win" by providing the best experience out there. At the same time, Spencer admitted that times have changed. These days, it's a "game-first" market as opposed to "platform-first," he said.

Appearing on the GamerTag Radio podcast, Spencer said, "I want people to pick hardware based on the capabilities of that hardware and how that fits into the choices they want to make about where they want to play. We want our hardware to win based on the hardware capabilities that we have."

Spencer said the biggest, most-played, and most successful video games out there today are multiplatform games that are not locked to one device. Spencer said he's hopeful his teams can create a platform with Xbox that appeals to developers who make those kinds of games.

Assassin's Creed Shadows will be censored in Japan due to its depiction of gore and has received a mature rating from the country's video game rating system.

According to Ubisoft Japan (translated by Automaton), depictions of dismemberment have been completely removed from the Japanese version of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Other versions of the game will still have the ability to to toggle the dismemberment feature on or off.

『アサシン クリード シャドウズ』海外版（北米・欧州）と日本版 表現差異について#AssassinsCreedShadows pic.twitter.com/v3XrcppwMf

Assassin's Creed Shadows has also been rated CERO Z by Japan's video game rating system, which is the equivalent of North America's ESRB rating of M. The Japanese version will have some modified voice lines as well, but Ubisoft Japan didn't provide any additional explanation or details.

Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja have announced that Rise of the Ronin will hit PC on March 11. It was first released on PS5 back in March 2024.

The PC version of Rise of the Ronin will cost $50 on Steam. Additionally, players who purchase the game on PC by April 2 will receive the same bonuses that came with preordering the game on PS5--the Hayabusa-ryu, Nioh-ryu, and Aisu Kage-ryu styles for katana, as well as the Hayabusa-ryu style for naginata. Another bonus includes early access to Iga Ninja's katana and Iga Ninja’s armor set.

The Steam version has new features, such as 120fps support, customizable keyboard and mouse controls, ultra-wide and super ultra-wide monitor compatibility, and 8K resolution support.