The Slow Collapse Of Embracer Continues As It Sells More Studios

Good morning! Welcome back to Kotaku’s daily round-up of video game news and other stuff you might care about. This edition includes Embracer selling more studios, NBA Jam’s announcer didn’t get paid much, and Black Ops 7 improving its big co-op mode. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start planning out my Thanksgiving plate.

Embracer continues to crumble

A few years ago, Embracer spent a lot of money and quickly bought up many studios, becoming one of the biggest publishers in the world. Then, in late 2023, that all fell apart after a major deal collapsed. Embracer quickly began the process of restructuring itself and selling many of the studios it bought up. And that process is continuing, with Embracer selling Cryptic Studios and Arc Games for $30 million to Project Golden Arc, a company owned by some members of Arc Games’ management team. The deal was funded by XD Inc.

“This transaction supports our key priorities by strengthening our focus on strategic assets and core IPs in Embracer while improving profitability and free cash flow,” said Phil Rogers, CEO of Embracer. In other words: Oh god, we really need to start making more money and have to keep ditching studios to do so. Anyway, remember this company owns Lord of the Rings? 

New Nintendo Classics added to Switch Online

Black Ops 7 makes Endgame a bit better

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 isn’t great, but one of the best parts of the game is its Endgame mode. This is a PvE extraction-like open world thing that I’ve played quite a bit of since launch. But if you die or fail to extract, you lose all your progress. And that meant getting disconnected due to server issues would wipe your character, too. Bleh!  No more, however, as Activision and Treyarch have updated the game to add some disconnect protection. Now BLOPS7 checks your combat level before you hop in and saves it so that if you get disconnected or lose power, you can hop back in at that same point. Not perfect, but better than nothing!

NBA Jam announcer was only paid like $800

Tim Kitzrow, the voice actor behind NBA Jam‘s famous announcer, recently told The Escapist that he was only paid “like $800″ for his work on the best-selling arcade basketball game.  “When the game came out, and I found out it made a billion dollars, that’s when I realised I’d made like 800-and-change, maybe something like that,” he told the outlet. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m probably being underpaid. I might want to raise my rate.’” The full interview is worth a read.

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