‘Stellar Blade’ Lays Out A 2024 Roadmap, And Talks DLC And Sequel

Stellar Blade is not a live service, but the plan is to continue to support the successful new IP all throughout its release year here with some amount of new additions.

In a new presentation, SHIFT UP has laid out future plans for the game this coming year, where updates have already included things like a Boss Rush, new outfits and some QoL features. Coming up:

• The much-requested Photo Mode – Around August
• More new outfits – After October
• Collaboration with other IP – Some time near the end of the year. Going to put money on Nier being one of the collabs.
• More DLC and a Sequel – No firm dates on these yet, but given the success, it’s now the plan. I’m not sure whether DLC would be a true story expansion or more things like the Boss Rush. But given that a sequel is also planned, they may want to start work on that.

It’s not a ton of stuff, as two of those three things are new outfits, and then photo mode to…take pictures of outfits. But it’s something and I do imagine they want to start work on larger updates and the sequel, which will obviously take a long time.

In the same presentation, director Kim Hyung Tae talks about how they mainly wanted to make a good new IP rather than something to squeeze out extra profits, which is why they avoided micro transactions. This is clearly a game that could have made significant money selling extra Eve outfits rather than having them all earned in-game for free, but it’s the Insomniac Spider-Man philosophy and clearly it worked out very well.

There has been an exhausting amount of culture war controversy surrounding Stellar Blade, but if you strip all that away, it’s a game that reviewed well, sold well, is well-liked by players and a true rarity of a brand new AAA IP from a new developer in that space debuting strongly in an industry full of huge players making endless sequels. It’s a significant achievement.

My guess is that with the scale of the game, a Stellar Blade 2 would probably be 3-4 years away. I wonder if by then Xbox might court it for a multiplatform release, though there have been rumblings that maybe Sony should add the up-and-coming SHIFT UP to its in-house roster before they get even bigger. We’ll see if that happens or not, but I wouldn’t want meddling in what made things go so well with the original.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.