Remember TheChineseRoom, better known for creating games like Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture? It’s recently been acquired by Sumo Digital, which is currently developing Crackdown 3 for the Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. The announcement is shocking, considering TheChineseRoom “went dark” with all staff laid off in September 2017.

A blog post from TheChineseRoom co-founder Dan Pinchbeck revealed the news today. “Following the studio’s closure in summer 2017, we were faced with a decision,” the post read. “We knew we didn’t want to just start over, trying to recapture a time in our history where we could push out arthouse titles and survive the process. It was an amazing few years, but it came at a cost, one that I knew I wasn’t about to take on again. And it was time for a change—to make different games, explore new ideas and, if TCR was going to reboot, to evolve into something that opened up new opportunities.”

Pinchbeck revealed that some concepts which were never developed by the studio are still “very much on the table”. These include titles like The 13th Interior, which Pinchbeck and Andrew Crawshaw (designer of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) created a prototype for.

“The game still needs a little bit of work to nail down some core mechanics, but then it’s finding the right opportunity to roll out the rest of development. It’s very much still in the plan to finish it up at some point. There were also two other concepts we were playing around with—very different types of games for us—and they will remain gently percolating in the background,” said Pinchbeck.

Another project, So Let Us Melt, which was in development for VR platform Google Daydream, may also be revisited. “Injecting more mechanics, building on the gorgeous art and audio the old team created and getting it out to a wider audience,” are the current plans, so there’s a chance that it could arrive on other platforms.

Of course, Sumo Digital is also working on a new game with Pinchbeck, which will be bigger than the previously mentioned titles. “It’s exciting times. A fresh start. If this was a game script, a gravelly-voiced man would probably say something about a ‘new dawn’.”

What are your thoughts on TheChineseRoom being brought back and acquired by Sumo Digital? How will this affect the latter’s future, especially after Crackdown 3 has wrapped? What could the “bigger” title be? For now, all we can do is speculate, so let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Research firm SuperData had updated its expectations on a few VR headsets and noted that thus far, especially after Black Friday, that the platform has been the “biggest loser” in sales till now.

Speaking to Games Industry International, the firm noted that lower sales were due to “relatively fragmented title line-up and modest marketing effort.” Expectations for platforms like PlayStation VR in 2016 were downgraded from 2.6 million to 750,000. This has been attributed to “supply inconsistencies and lack of marketing.”

SuperData director of research and insight Stephanie Llamas noted that, “They did not offer any first-party deals this weekend, restock bundles or market the device, pushing instead for the PS4 Pro. They have also pointed out that VR looks even better on a Pro than a standard or slim PS4, so the message to most gamers is: get the Pro now, then the PSVR later. As a result, we won’t see them break 1M shipments until well into the new year.”

It was noted that this approach meant Sony were “being cautious before fully investing in the tech. They can afford to take it slow since they have no competition for now, so their supply and sales will rise steadily into 2017 as opposed to riding the seasonal wave.”

Other hardware saw similar degradation in expectations. Google Daydream went from 450,000 to 261,000, for instance. Interestingly enough, estimates for HTC Vive (450,000), Oculus Rift (355,00) and Samsung Gear VR (2.3 million) remain unchanged.