Game News Round-Up

Tetsuhisa Seko, Nippon Ichi (NIS) president, has died at age 54

Ex-Gearbox Publishing devs form new publisher Cooldown Games

• Co-founder and CEO Steve Gibson said the plan is as it was at Gearbox: bring "promising projects" to the game market and continue working with his fellow alums after Gearbox Software was sold off to Take-Two last year
• Helping Gibson start up the new company are chief officers Matt Charles (product), Erick Cobbs (business), Jackson Hardesty (operations), Jeff Skal (marketing), Jimmy Sieben (technology), and Brad Schliesser (revenue).
• Cooldown's overall aim is to publish titles "where you don’t feel like you’re falling behind if you don’t play it enough." Skal noted the ongoing struggles with live-service and ongoing games trying to vie for players' time when they already have "forever games" set in stone. Cooldown-published titles, he reasoned, can serve as good in-between games instead of titles that "ask more of us than we can give."

Savvy Games hires Nika Nour as SVP and head of international business development

• Nour will oversee international partnerships, provide advice on mergers, acquisitions, and investments

Annapurna appoints ex-Netflix exec Leanne Loombe as head of games

• Loombe will oversee the company's publishing, development, and creative segments