Developer Shift Up Shares New Details on Stellar Blade 2 and Project Spirits

It's been a few months since I last wrote to you about Stellar Blade, though even during this time, Shift Up has managed to deliver an impressive title regarding its collaboration with Shinji Mikami's new studio (Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil series), which goes by the name Unbound. But beyond that? It's been a very quiet development period for what's supposed to be the Stellar Blade sequel and the developer's next flagship project currently called Project Witches. Yesterday, Shift Up released its quarterly reports, and within them, as usual, we're discovering quite a few new details about the status of its current projects.

When the developer was asked about the development process and distribution strategy for the next game in the Stellar Blade series, the answer was that the development process continues smoothly according to their quality standards, and at the same time, Shift Up is also becoming an independent publisher, which will allow them to invest in marketing that will be unique and suited to the game's identity, in order to showcase the uniqueness of their title—likely in response to previous publications before the release of the previous game regarding censorship of things like blood that, according to foreign reports, were censored at the last minute from the game following instructions from Sony, which distributed the first game on PlayStation 5 and PC. It should be noted that in the past the developer stated the game should release during 2026, but in the slides discussing the next game, there's no mention of a specific release window. Will we see it this year? I'm trying to stay optimistic.

When asked about the status of the developer's next flagship title, Project Spirits (formerly known as Project Witches), the developer responded that their next title is in good development, thanks to well-calculated expense management and a well-structured development process, and additionally they plan to share new details with the player audience during 2026 (will we see updates during the summer events?). In the next part, a question came up regarding the acquisition of Unbound and the background to the collaboration with Shinji Mikami, and it was said that the decision to collaborate was natural and that both sides share different strategies when it comes to game development, and that there are already several projects of varying sizes in development under Unbound's roof, and that details will be shared with the public in the future.

Finally, Shift Up was also asked about its planned publishing business, and they answer that the next Stellar Blade game and Unbound's games will be published by them. Not very surprisingly, Project Spirits was not mentioned in this part since it's being developed in collaboration with Level Infinite, Tencent's global publisher, and according to (unconfirmed) leaks, it appears the game may include quite a few turn-based game elements, and if the reports are correct, the game is mostly being developed in China and not necessarily by the studio in Korea, and it appears some developers aren't excited about the project at all—but all of this is just rumor for now. Until we get new details about this game and the Stellar Blade sequel, what do you think about this? Looking forward to Shift Up's next games? Unbound's games? Feel free to share with us in the comments!