“As part of our strategic evolution to focus on projects that leverage Amazon’s unique strengths and scale, including the recent re-launch of Luna and our Tomb Raider franchise partnership with Crystal Dynamics, we have decided to release Maverick Games from their publishing agreement with Amazon Game Studios,” said the spokesperson.

“We have tremendous respect for the Maverick Games team and the compelling narrative-led driving experience they’re creating. This decision allows Maverick Games the flexibility to find a publishing partner whose strategic priorities are better aligned with bringing their game to market. We’re proud of what we accomplished together during our partnership and wish them every success in the future.”

Creative director Mike Brown and co-founder/CEO Harindar Sangha thanked Amazon Games for the partnership in their statement. They also noted that the narrative-focused driving game is still in development, and that the studio has already begun talks with other publishers.

“We’re grateful to Amazon Games for their partnership and collaboration. Development of our debut title continues to progress as strongly as planned,” they said. “We’re in active dialogue with partners who share our long-term ambition for the IP and look forward to sharing more later this year.”

Amazon Games had originally announced that it would be publishing the title by Maverick Games back in May 2024. At the time, VP Christoph Hartmann still led the division, but he left the company back in January.

While Maverick Games hasn’t yet revealed many details about its upcoming project, the studio comprises industry veterans who have previously worked at large studios, including Forza Horizon developer Playground Games. Brown himself served as the creative director on the series before his departure.

Maverick Games was founded in 2023, and has been working on its driving game since then. The project is described as a “narrative-led open world driving game”. It is still unclear, however, what form this narrative will take and what kind of driving gameplay will be offered. While the studio has a strong background in open-world racing titles, the lack of “racing” in the description might indicate a different approach.

Amazon Games kicked off its move away from AAA game publishing back in October, when the company halted development on New World: Aeternum and laid off over 14,000 employees. In December, the company also sold the rights for the in-development MOBA March of Giants to Ubisoft. The title was described as an “ambitious new entrant” into a genre dominated by Dota 2 and League of Legends.

Wilds of Talandre will be bringing in quite a bit of content for Throne and Liberty, including a new territory, new gear, new bosses to challenge, and new 3-star dungeons that will offer a higher level of difficulty.

To kick things off, the video goes into the third major territory being added to Solisium with the update – the eponymous Talandre. The addition of this new territory essentially doubling the existing map size in Throne and Liberty. The territory will be comprised of six zones, with each one having its own story that players can follow.

Talendre will also be home to three new Abyss Dungeons, each of them being quite big. Crimson Mansion is the biggest of the new dungeons coming to Throne and Liberty, with four floors, allowing players to explore and play around with their positioning in fights.

The studio notes that, while the release of the new dungeons will be staggered, two of the dungeons will be launching at the same time in an effort to ensure that players are more evenly spread out across different zones and dungeons. The dungeons will also offer up more challenge than previous ones in Throne and Liberty.

One of the new Archbosses coming to Throne and Liberty with the update is Deluzhnoa – a large halberd-wielding being that is seemingly encased in ice. The boss will make use of various mechanics that revolve around ice. The boss will also feature new weapons that players can earn by taking part in the fight.

Speaking of weapons, the Weapon Mastery system is also getting changed. Once the update is out, players will be able to select the weapon they want to level up through the in-game menu, rather than needing to have it equipped at all times. The selected weapon will get Weapon Mastery points, which can then be spent to unlock new abilities for that weapon type. With the new system, Weapon Mastery for each weapon can now go all the way up to level 200.

Along with all of the new group content, Wilds of Talandre will also bring with it new solo dungeons that players can take on to get better gear, while also getting some practice in order to take on the much harder group challenges.

Fans of PvP also have plenty to look forward to thanks to the addition of Nebula Island. The new territory is composed of six zones, each one having its own set of PvP and PvE-based activities. Four of the new zones will have PvP enabled at all times, encouraging players to get in constant fights with each other.

Throne and Liberty came out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S all the way back in September 2024. For more details, check out our review. The MMORPG has also seen quite a bit of success since its release, with its first week alone getting more than 3 million players.

NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.

"The majority of the challenges came from ensuring New World: Aeternum performed well and looked great no matter what platform players chose, and maintaining the high bar set for the visual fidelity."

How much of a challenge was it scaling the game down to have it work on consoles?

The majority of the challenges came from ensuring New World: Aeternum performed well and looked great no matter what platform players chose, and maintaining the high bar set for the visual fidelity. Additionally getting the controller feel took a lot of work not just for combat and making this feel natural for players but also how they would navigate the complex system of menus.

How have you balanced especially the PvP with the concessions made to cross-platform play?

We definitely wanted controller to be competitive with keyboard / mouse in PvP. We added a number of passive assist features for controller, including reticle and magnetism and homing. We changed our movement system for controller to grant full 360 degree movement, and we added an active target lock. Thanks to player feedback in our beta tests, we think we have found a good balance for the target lock, but we are continuing to keep an eye on it as more players enjoy the game.

Did the development team ever consider changes to the mechanics or structure to accommodate console players?

A lot of work went into navigation of the UI (simplification of interactions) and support for controller (combat to menu navigation). On the controller we made camera adjustments to better follow the camera around target lock. We added a virtual cursor & keyboard (with variable friction and magnetism settings), aim assist and settings, target lock, haptics, etc. — and so on. We also added plenty of gamepad shortcuts in the UI to make the VC easier to use (e.g. X as a default to action/proceed). Additionally we also made sure consoles still support keyboard and mouse, in case that’s how players would prefer to play.

"Over the past three years we’ve listened to players and made hundreds of improvements and additions to New World—from completely revamping the story and early levels of the game, to adding new end-game expeditions and mutations, new weapons, and many quality of life updates and rebalances. And now, with New World: Aeternum, we’re adding even more."

Aeternum marks a sort of a fresh launch for New World. What are the new functions and features you would advertise to lapsed players as the most significant? Obviously, they can expect cross-platform play and better controller support as part of this update, but what else?

Over the past three years we’ve listened to players and made hundreds of improvements and additions to New World—from completely revamping the story and early levels of the game, to adding new end-game expeditions and mutations, new weapons, and many quality of life updates and rebalances. And now, with New World: Aeternum, we’re adding even more—including the first ever large-scale PvP zone, new 10-player raid, gear-score increase to 725 and end-game solo trial challenges. If it’s been a while since they’ve played, now is a great time to come back and find a really fresh and exciting experience waiting for you.

In the near future, what else can new World players expect to be coming to the game? What do your post-launch plans look like once Aeternum is out?

New World: Aeternum has a bright future with more seasons, more content updates, and in-game events planned for the future. We will have more news on this coming soon.

Do you see a chance, hypothetically speaking, of this game launching on the Nintendo Switch successor?

Right now we’re focused on providing a great experience for players on our current platforms.

Amazon Games and NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty launched earlier this month for PC and consoles, and the free-to-play MMORPG has attracted a rather healthy player base already. Amazon has announced that the game has seen over 3 million players in is first week across all platform, who have collectively played it for over 24 million hours. The game has also been viewed on Twitch for more than 11 million hours in total so far.

“Bringing Throne and Liberty to players around the world has been a huge shared undertaking by our team and our friends at NCSoft, and we’re so pleased to see the results as players join the game,” said Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann. “We’re only getting started, and we have a series of updates planned including our first castle siege coming soon.”

Though platform-specific numbers are unavailable, according to SteamDB, Throne and Liberty saw a peak of over 336,000 concurrent players on Steam over the weekend.

In our review of Throne and Liberty, we gave it a score of 6/10, saying, “Throne and Liberty might end up being a fine MMORPG in the long term, but currently, it has little in the way of new or interesting ideas to draw players away from other heavyweights in the genre.” Read the full review through here.

Throne and Liberty is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Throne and Liberty is currently entering into a market that’s essentially filled with entrenched players. Classics of the genre like World of Warcraft and others have taken up a gigantic chunk of the MMORPG market, while games like Destiny 2 have also swept up a chunk of MMO fans who might be more interested in action-oriented gameplay. For Throne and Liberty to be able to make a dent in the western market, it has to offer something truly unique from other online games these days, and while the title does have some interesting ideas about PvE and PvP content, it ends up falling short on many counts.

When it comes to variety of content, Throne and Liberty offers up quite a few ways for players to spend their time, including the main quest, several side quests, and even tertiary activities like crafting, gathering, and fishing. The game also includes group content, including a series of dungeons that players can take on. Throne and Liberty offers up an interesting take on the classic MMORPG convention of classes with different roles that players can take on. Rather than locking a character into a specific class, and by extension, a specific style of play, players instead have the freedom to switch their roles around depending on what they might be in the mood for. Rather than classes, players will instead pick their weapon of choice, which in turn fills out their list of abilities. Players that prefer to keep enemy attention on themselves so that their teammates can focus on dealing damage might be drawn to the Sword and Shield, while Wand and Tome users can then focus on healing their group, while Bow, or Dagger users can kill off enemies with abilities that deal damage.

This class-less structure also has the side benefit of allowing gameplay during the early leveling process to remain fresh. Since players can switch their weapons, and by extension their entire skillset, if raining down fireballs on enemies is getting boring, you could always switch to the Greatsword and get up close and personal with your opponents instead. The downside of this structure is that progression becomes harder the more you want to experiment. Different weapon users will find different types of armor useful, after all, and if you’re the kind of player that likes switching things around, you’re going to be grinding quite a bit in order to craft the right set of equipment for your chosen roles. Playing the game as a solo adventurer feels like it’s balanced towards the player not really switching between different weapons, since you happen to find enough materials to keep one set of gear up to date.

Another unique aspect of Throne and Liberty is that it allows all players to shapeshift into different animals. Rather than offering up any concrete gameplay bonuses in battle, like for example the Druid class in World of Warcraft, these shapeshifting abilities are more focused on allowing players to explore the world of Solisium in different ways. Players can shapeshift into an otter, a hawk, or a large cat. These forms allow players more freedom and increased speed while exploring the world by water, air or land respectively. Aside from this, however, the shapeshifting doesn’t really offer anything new and can essentially be looked at as Throne and Liberty’s own take on mounts.

"Rather than classes, players will instead pick their weapon of choice"

When it comes to core gameplay, Throne and Liberty is a real-time action RPG, with an interesting focus on being able to parry and counter attacks. Much like other MMOs, enemy attacks in Throne and Liberty tend to be telegraphed well, and players have the option of either moving around to avoid the attack, or to counter the attack without having to move at all. The system seems to be designed around making gameplay for the tank role more exciting, but ultimately feels rather underbaked, since the button to counter attacks ends up feeling like yet another defensive ability that players will have to use anyway. While interesting in theory, the counter system doesn’t really do much to distinguish the game from its competitors in any meaningful way.

One of the best things about Throne and Liberty is its visuals, and it’s hard to argue that Throne and Liberty doesn’t look great. The character models are all well detailed, allowing for armor and clothing to look like they naturally belong on these characters, while the world itself can often be really fun to explore thanks to just how breathtaking it can often end up being. The game offers up a few zones that players can explore, each offering up different themes and vibes, ranging from the large city of Kastleton, to the spookier, more atmospheric Carmine Forest. There are also the ruins of an epic battle in the form of the Titanreach Ruins, and even the tropical forests of Lizard Island, which also happens to be filled with poisonous flowers. All of these zones are also subject to different weather conditions, as well as a day/night cycle, which can do quite a bit to change the atmosphere of the area.

One of the potential downsides of Throne and Liberty is the way in which it has been monetized. A premium currency, Lucent, can be purchased by players, which can then in turn be used to buy things through an in-game shop. The in-game shop, at the time of writing, only features cosmetic items, including outfits and pets. What this means for the game’s economy in the future is currently unclear, but being able to pay real money for items that are otherwise earned in game certainly can’t be a good sign for the long-term health of an MMORPG.

"It’s hard to argue that Throne and Liberty doesn’t look great."

The endgame content in Throne and Liberty is quite lacking, since there isn’t much for PvE players to do aside from dungeons. The game revolves more around PvP, with Guild-versus-Guild events where player guilds have to battle it out against each other to seize control of Boonstones and Riftstones. Unfortunately, there isn’t really much in the way of raiding content like World of Warcraft or Destiny 2 where players can get together to take on more challenging forms of PvE content, and the dungeons, while fun, tend to fall on the easier side of things.

It also doesn’t help that getting into endgame content can be a challenge in and of itself. The grind to get your equipment up to par in order to simply just staying alive beyond a single hit in some of the game’s higher levelled zones can be an excruciating experience.

Ultimately, Throne and Liberty feels quite underbaked. The notorious monetization that some MMORPGs are known for tend to leave a bad taste in my mouth, and Throne and Liberty doesn’t really offer much reprieve in this regard considering the presence of an in-game shop, and historic releases from the region like Lost Ark. The level of grinding required to level up different weapons and roles also feels quite sharp, and if you want to keep things interesting, you’ll definitely want to experiment with various weapons. All of that said, however, Throne and Liberty is a gorgeous game that plays fine, and even has a few interesting ideas here and there with regards to combat and exploration.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

Currently, for instance, Crystal Dynamics is looking to recruit a Senior Franchise Artist to work on the Tomb Raider franchise as a whole. The studio says the role will involve will involve providing “visual guidance to external teams developing content under the Tomb Raider brand umbrella” and create new assets and leverage existing ones to provide support “across multiple mediums”.

As for the next Tomb Raider title itself, little itself is known about it in an official capacity, though leaks have claimed it will be an open world title set in India, and will star a more experienced Lara Croft as its protagonist. 

Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann said earlier this year that new details on the next Tomb Raider weren’t “too far away”, and later said that development on the title was progressing well. Read more on that through here.

“We have enjoyed a strong relationship with Amazon Games throughout the development of Blue Protocol, and both of our teams are disappointed that we will not be able to deliver the game to players around the world,” the publisher said in a recent statement.

Though Blue Protocol launched to much fanfare, it also had several issues, which the development team went about addressing. The Western release was pushed back, but unfortunately, despite having “worked hard to prepare” for the same, Bandai Namco has decided “it will not be possible to provide a service that satisfies all of you.”

It’s worth noting that the main reason for the end of service could be due to the title’s underperformance. When the publisher cancelled five unannounced projects earlier this year, it was reportedly due to a 21 million yen impairment loss from an “underperforming” title assumed to be Blue Protocol. Bandai Namco didn’t explicitly confirm this, but it’s now looking more and more likely.

The publisher has other online-centric projects like the extraction shooter Synduality: Echo of Ada in development. Stay tuned for further updates in the meantime.

At least that’s what Christoph Hartmann, vie president of Amazon Games, says. Amazon Games was confirmed as the next Tomb Raider’s publisher in December of 2022, and as per Hartmann, in spite of the chaos surrounding Embracer, Crystal Dynamics continues to make good progress on the development of Tomb Raider.

“People obviously look at what the parent company is doing, but it never impacted on resources, never led to any changes on management for them, so they’re fine,” Hartmann said in an interview with IGN. “I mean, doing a new Tomb Raider, the bar is so high. The longer you go, the expectation goes higher, so it’s a huge, huge task, but things are progressing. I mean, there’s some really great ideas here.

“Obviously, we’re not going to share any with you even if we would love to, but things are going well, things are moving forward. And from what I could tell, Crystal was pretty sheltered, because also when you look before… they went through a couple of ownership changes anyway before, it’s not brand new for them.”

Earlier this year, leaks claimed that the next Tomb Raider game was going to be set in India, and that it would feature an open world structure, while previous reports have also claimed that the game will star a more experienced version of protagonist Lara Croft.

It remains to be seen when exactly the next Tomb Raider will be officially revealed, but earlier this year, Hartmann said those details weren’t “too far away”. Read more on that through here.

Available until July 23rd, the beta will be available in North America, Europe, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Language and text options include English, Japanese and Korean, though one can also select French, German, Spanish and Brazilian-Portuguese for the latter.

Crossplay support is also enabled, allowing those on different platforms to team together. However, progression won’t carry over to the game.

Throne and Liberty launches on September 17th worldwide. It offers PvE and PvP modes, including the ambitious Castle Siege, which supports thousands of players. The exact content of the open beta is unknown, but it would be the perfect opportunity to stress test the mode. Stay tuned for more details on the full game release in the coming weeks.

According to publisher Amazon Games, it won’t be too long before we finally get some news on Tomb Raider. In a recent interview with Variety, when asked about when the company will share details on the next Tomb Raider or the Lord of the Rings MMO being developed by Amazon, vice president Christoph Hartmann said that those details weren’t “too far away”.

“It’s not going to be tomorrow, but it’s not too far away,” he said. “As I said, we’re getting into a much more regular cadence of shipping games. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you right now… It’s all about quality. You don’t want to just be rushed out. That’s doesn’t work. It has to be Triple-A quality, because the bar is so high.”

Little is officially known about Tomb Raider other than the fact that it’s being built on Unreal Engine 5. Leaks have claimed, however, that it will star a more experienced Lara Croft, and that it will be set in an open world India.