EA has cancelled yet another Star Wars game, this time an interesting-sounding project that was in development at EA Vancouver.

Making Star Wars games is very, very hard, and no one knows that better than Electronic Arts. The publisher has now cancelled three consecutive Star Wars projects: Visceral Games' Project Ragtag bounty hunter game in 2017, then EA Vancouver's live-driven open-world Project Orca in 2019, and now Project Viking, yet another EA Vancouver title. This marks the second EA Vancouver Star Wars project that EA has cancelled in a row.

Sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier that Project Viking was an open-world game derived from the Battlefront series. Viking was meant to fill the large Millennium Falcon-shaped hole in EA's 2020 Star Wars games lineup and launch on the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. EA killed the project in early 2019, sources familiar with the game say.

Following the acquisition of Saber Interactive, The Embracer Group (also known as THQ Nordic) now owns a whopping 163 game series and franchises.

While scouting The Embracer Group's recent earnings, I found something quite interesting: Raw numbers that show just how massive the company's gaming presence is. The media titan currently has access to over 150 new IPs, and has a massive global dev pool of 92 teams worldwide across a multitude of wholly-owned studios.

The company's pipeline is just as big as its IP treasure. There's 96 total games in development at Embracer's studios, of which 52 have yet to be announced. A lot of these projects aren't AAA endeavors and are a long ways off. Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors says he wants to release at least two major AAA games by March 2021 (possibly Dead Island 2 and Saints Row V, both of which have been in development for years now).

Temtem, the popular Pokemon-like MMO, is off to a tremendous start with over 500,000 copies sold in its first month.

Crema's monster-catching MMORPG is an early access sensation on Steam, pulling in over half a million users in just one month. The hunger for a Pokemon-esque experience on PC is real, and backed with a mighty $573,000 Kickstarter and Humble Bundle as publisher, Temtem is now a bonafide success on Steam.

Temtem is largely familiar territory to Digimon and Pokemon players, featuring a plethora of catchable creatures with their own abilities, elemental affinities, and other traits. There's a stamina system instead of a PP system, and combat features unique 2v2 battles for tag team action. The biggest departure is that Temtem is online and allows for native team-based co-op at any time. Gamers can connect, play, and interact with other Temtem tamers, and tackle PVP battles to boot.

The global coronavirus infection continues disrupting critical technology supply lines, and this time Valve's proprietary Index VR headset is affected.

With the VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx on the way, everyone wants a Valve Index virtual reality headset. But there's just one problem: They're completely sold out, and have been for months. Now Valve says Index supplies will remain scarce due to the coronavirus, which sees China forcibly closing manufacturing facilities and plants in an effort to curb the contagion.

Valve confirmed the news to UploadVR with the following statement: "With Half-Life: Alyx coming March 23rd, we are working hard to meet demand for the Valve Index and want to reassure everyone that Index systems will be available for purchase prior to the game's launch.

However, the global Coronavirus health crisis has impacted our production schedules so we will have far fewer units for sale during the coming months compared to the volumes we originally planned. Our entire team is working hard right now to maximize availability."

Today the District Court of California announced a settlement agreement between Crytek and Cloud Imperium Games, but no specifics were revealed.

After a long 3-year legal battle, Crysis developer Crytek and Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games have finally settled their legal dispute. New court documents filed yesterday confirm the news, and stipulate both parties have up to 30 days to outline the exact details of the agreement. These details probably won't be publicized.

"Pursuant to C.D. Cal. L.R. 40-2, Plaintiff CRYTEK GMBH and Defendants CLOUD IMPERIUM GAMES CORP. and ROBERTS SPACE INDUSTRIES CORP., by and through their counsel of record, hereby notify the Court that they have reached an agreement in principle of terms to settle this action in its entirety and are working to document the terms of their agreement. Following execution of the agreement, the parties will promptly file a joint stipulation of dismissal. The parties respectfully request that the Court allow the parties thirty (30) days to document and execute their agreement and to file the joint stipulation of dismissal."

On the heels of Fortnite's big season 2 reveal, analyst firm SuperData notes a marked drop in digital revenues through January 2020.

Still a titan of the industry with $1.8 billion earned in 2019, Epic's battle royale sensation Fortnite kicked off 2020 with reduced revenues. The weight of Fortnite's earnings slide has pulled down the entire free-to-play console segment by 42%, analyst firm SuperData notes.

"Console spending was down a steep 42% in the free-to-play segment (due to lower Fortnite revenue) and down 19% in the premium space," the firm wrote in its recent January 2020 worldwide spending analysis.

Square Enix today confirmed Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be playable at its PAX East booth from February 27 - March 1.

While Sony pulls out of PAX East, other Asian devs like Square Enix are excited to show off their biggest games. Right now, it doesn't get much bigger then the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. A fully-fledged playable FF7R demo will be hosted on-site at PAX East in Boston, giving die-hard fans an opportunity to try out the re-imagined RPG with its new real-time hack-and-slash combat system. This will be the fifth major city to get access to the demo after key events like E3, Gamescom, and Tokyo Game Show.

The news could also strongly hint at Square Enix releasing the public PS4 demo soon. A bit ago, the Final Fantasy 7 demo was leaked out, revealing key info about the game including characters, animations, file size info, and of course the actual gameplay itself. Considering how close we are to release (the Remake is just 7 weeks away) it makes sense to release a demo shortly after PAX East's hands-on event.

Coronavirus scare prompts Sony to skip GDC 2020 and miss a valuable opportunity to court developers for its next-gen PlayStation 5 platform.

Sony has confirmed it won't be at this year's annual Game Developers Conference to protect employees from potential coronavirus exposure. The news comes days after Sony decided to likewise skip PAX East. But missing GDC is a much bigger deal, and could have a more significant impact on Sony's next-gen plans.

GDC is a closed developer-centric event where the biggest names in gaming like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo come together to showcase new tech, talk about platform features, and overall try to inspire developers to make games for their systems. Sony's absence could sever a link to the third-party PlayStation community during the critical pre-PS5 phase when devs typically ramp up their projects. These events are important and often expose key technical data that's essential for game devs, while also introducing new hardware, techniques, and overall system capabilities to games-makers.

THQ Nordic now has a whopping 8 dozen games in development, and more than half of them are unannounced.

The Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) is an absolute powerhouse of gaming that has potential to completely revitalize dormant IPs. The company, which has access to a treasure trove of franchises, currently has 96 total projects in its lineup and only 52 of them have been revealed. This is a pretty big jump over the 80 projects that were in development as of May 2019.

The company's recent buyout of World War Z developer Saber Interactive adds tons of opportunity to this games lineup. Saber brings 9 IPs over to Embracer's staggering arsenal, complete with 8 unannounced projects that're currently in development.

Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale will be a playground for 200 players, sources tell Video Game Chronicle.

Activision's new Warzone gametype for Modern Warfare is a big deal. The incoming battle royale mode will support 200 players on a map that's twice as big as Black Ops 4's Blackout BR, complete with free access on console on PC. Warzone will be both a standalone free-to-play download as well as baked right into premium Modern Warfare versions, and is expected to support cross-play on all platforms.

It represents years of planning it could be the biggest mechanism for engagement the publisher has ever seen, with potential to make tremendous revenues from in-game microtransactions. Activision is collecting all of the industry's current best money-making strategies and packing them into one game. Warzone has it all: Free-to-play accessibility with no bar for entry, monetization via in-game purchases, massive engagement opportunities with cross-play on all platforms, a huge churning 200-player gametype that promises lots of action, carnage, and memorable moments, and the unique F2P and premium cross-play mechanic.