Days after Deus Ex director Warren Spector announced that he was quitting the business, another former Ion Storm developer, Harvey Smith, has revealed Black Pony Immersive - a new studio dedicated to the creation of "imaginative first-person action RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent game systems." The announcement features the maxim: "through the looking glass, we’re chasing a dream of mystery, meaning, and creative play." Hey, I understood that reference! Sure sounds like an imsim shop to me.

Black Pony are based, or at least, "centralised" out in Austin, Texas. Smith - former creative director for Dishonored 2 - is joined in the cockpit by a couple of other former Arkane developers, Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare. The studio's wider workforce are located around the United States, and include people who've spent time at Spider-Man makers Insomniac, Fortnite wranglers Epic, Just Cause inventors Avalanche, and Saints Row... bejanglers Volition.

It's a hopeful turn of events because it wasn't long ago that Microsoft closed Arkane Austin, creators of the very good Prey 2017 and the sadly not very good Redfall. Nic (RPS in peace) had thoughts. Microsoft are currently taking the axe to what's left of Arkane in Lyon – as of writing, the developers are haggling out the terms of their sale, closure or buyout with the Xbox team. Smith alludes to this in a forgiveably buzzwordy press release.