News
- The Blood of Dawnwalker director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, says a delayed next-generation would be beneficial for Rebel Wolves
- Tomaszkiewicz says it's "easier" to work with the current generation and PC
- He says two more builds would multiply "the amount of work you need to do"
The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz isn't worried about the impact of what a delayed next-gen could mean for Rebel Wolves because working on the current-gen consoles is "easier."
It's unclear when the next-generation hardware will launch. Rumors suggest that the PS6 could launch as late as 2028, which would make it eight years between the start of the current generation, with Project Helix, the next Xbox console, also eyeing a 2028 release.
With console prices increasing due to manufacturing costs, not to mention the RAM shortages caused by a rise in AI data centers, there's a chance the next-gen consoles will be highly expensive.
While Sony and Microsoft have yet to reveal how much their new hardware will cost, a delay in the next generation could be on the table as the companies wait for things to settle down and for consoles to become affordable again.
This would also mean studios won't have access to next-gen tech for quite some time to develop their games, which would force them to stick with current-gen.
However, for The Blood of the Dawnwalker studio, Rebel Wolves, this would actually be beneficial to the development team.
The Blood of the Dawnwalker is the first installment in Rebel Wolves' dark-fantasy role-playing game (RPG) series, launching later this year, and has already teased a sequel set in a modern timeline.
When asked by Eurogamer whether the next console generation being delayed would be an issue for the studio and the future of the game series, the director said, "It doesn't at all."
"To be honest, it's even better for us," Tomaszkiewicz explained, "Because when you have the game, and you know the systems and the features adjusted to these particular consoles, you know what you need to do. Always, a new platform is a new challenge: you need to learn it, you need to know what are your borders, what you can do, what you cannot do. And also, it's an additional build you need to create that you need to take care of later."
The director continued, saying that since The Blood of the Dawnwalker has four builds - PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and two PC builds, it's already a ton of work for testers, so another console generation to work with would be another challenge.
"Let's say we have four builds, and later on you want to deliver a patch for the players. You need to be sure that these changes work on the Xbox, on the PlayStation, PC one, and PC two," Tomaskiewicz said.
"When you have next-gen, you're adding an additional two builds, and it multiplies the amount of work you need to do. It sounds easy but you need to know that there is a group of testers who need to test every platform separately - not only this particular change but whether the whole game has no blockers, if you can finish it from the beginning to the end, and so on and so on.
"It's a huge effort, to be honest, and if we work on the consoles we have right now, it's easier, because we know how many builds we have and it's easier to manage."
The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3.
- The FCC might ban anonymous phones
- This would mean the end of burner phones
- While this could help prevent certain crimes, it may also harm a lot of innocent people who require anonymity or lack the required ID or housing
It’s increasingly hard to be anonymous in the modern world — and in the US it might be about to get even harder, as burner phones could soon be effectively banned.
As reported by Fortune, a new FCC (Federal Communications Commission) proposal would require carriers and VoIP providers to collect various details from a customer, including their name, address, government-issued ID number, and an alternate phone number, before activating or renewing service.
Aside from the odd requirement to have a phone number before you can get a phone number — something which might prove challenging for anyone getting their first phone — this would effectively mean the end of anonymous prepaid phones, commonly known as burner phones.
That’s probably a bad thing, as while these might be associated with crime — with the FCC stating that this change could help them investigate “fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security” — there are also plenty of legal reasons people might want a burner.
Burner phones are usually cheap secondary or temporary handsets (Image credit: Future)Bad for privacy and dangerous for victims(Image credit: Emir Memedovski / Getty Images)As pointed out in a joint filing made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union: “This proposal would also prevent people from getting an anonymous phone line for safety reasons, such as a person in a domestic violence situation who does not have control over her personal phone line and needs to call a shelter, or a teenager being coerced by human traffickers who just wants to call for help.”
They further described this proposal as “a data collection regime that harms everyday, law abiding Americans”, while Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst on the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, called it “misguided and counterproductive,” adding that “Americans should not have to sacrifice their privacy because the Commission hasn’t exhausted more targeted alternatives to stop robocalls.”
And it’s not just victims of domestic violence and human trafficking that may suffer due to this. It’s estimated that roughly 15 million adult US citizens don't have a driver’s license and that 2.6 million have no government-issued photo ID, while unhoused people will struggle with the requirement to provide an address.
On top of which, anyone who values privacy may also take issue with this, especially as customer accounts from phone companies have previously been hacked, revealing the data tied to them.
Many commenters on Reddit also worry about the US turning ever more into a surveillance state with rules like this, with popular comments including “tightening the grip of the police state. Bringing the Orwellian world into reality," "they care less about criminals and more about surveilling everyone,” and “gotta track em all!”
So it’s safe to say that this proposal isn’t popular, and could end up doing more harm than good. Hopefully, that might mean the FCC seeing sense and deciding against it.