A new report claims that Microsoft has snagged a new major deal for another potential AAA blockbuster.
As reported by Exputer, Xbox Game Publishing has signed a deal with Hundred Star to publish their first upcoming game. The reason this is a big deal is that Hundred Star is comprised of a lot of former employees at Rocksteady Studios, the studio who redefined superhero video games with the Batman Arkham franchise.
Hundred Star was founded by the same people who founded Rocksteady, Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, and also has a few ex-Rocksteady staff under it as well. Sefton and Jamie left Rocksteady before they had finished work on the now infamous Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
As we had reported, Sefton’s and Jamie’s departure was confirmed by WB Games president David Haddad in October 2022. Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League would go on to release in January 30, 2024. We also reported on the founding of Hundred Star, about two weeks before this release.
Before we continue, we have to address something else related to Sefton and Jamie. In 2020, The Guardian published a report that the studio dealt with sexual harassment issues internally. The report claimed that Rocksteady’s leadership, who included Sefton and Jamie, failed to adequately address these issues.
Rocksteady would claim they had worked on these issues. They even published a letter from some of the people who raised these issues claiming that the studio had adequately handled these issues. While we may take this as a sign that those issues were resolved, they could have been factors that led to the departure of these Rocksteady employees.
While Sefton and Jamie are rightly remembered most for the Batman Arkham franchise, their pedigree isn’t exclusively those games. Their first game as Rocksteady heads prior to the first Arkham title was Urban Chaos, and prior to that Sefton and Jamie worked at Argonaut Games, with careers dating back to the 1990s.
So it’s fun to imagine them making a new superhero game, but Sefton and Jamie could leave superheroes behind. This new game may not even necessarily be a 3D action title like the Arkham games were. For better or worse, we won’t know the details on this title for a while, since they are clearly at the starting phases of its development. But hopefully this is something that will pleasantly surprise us in a few years time.
