In This Edition, Matthew Ball on…

- The return to exclusives
- The DRAM crisis
- In-game advertising
- Future of consoles
- Plus! Streaming, his famous reports and Asha Sharma

Xbox love to talk about Asha Sharma’s first 100 days.

It’s a concept I typically associate with a new Government, and not for the boss of a video game company. But in some ways, it is fitting. Like a new Government, Sharma has come in and immediately made some fast decisions. She’s changed the name of the division, reduced the price of Game Pass, and brought back exclusive games. All things that can be done quickly with the approval of Microsoft’s CFO.

However, unlike a new Government, Sharma hasn’t quite condemned the former regime. In fact, she’s promoted some of the old guard. But there has been some implied criticism. The whole ‘return of Xbox’ suggests it had lost its way. And in her message to staff yesterday, she discussed the performance of the company over the past five years:

“Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.”

That message laid out the next 100 days, which will be considerably tougher than the first. The startling figure is that Xbox will end the financial year with a 3% accountability margin. That’s truly troubling, and a complete rethink of Xbox is taking place, from hardware to software development and everything in-between.

Xbox is going to invest more in its big IP and bets, and cut back on its more niche productions. It makes sense, but some of its smaller teams will be justifiably concerned. There will also be a rethink around Project Helix in the face of the current component price crisis. It’s inevitable the organization will need to be smaller.

It sounds bleak, but Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball told us this week that these challenges can be overcome.

“When I sat down with Asha for the first time, she asked me: “Is it fixable?” I’m a strategic optimist. I think it is incredibly defeatist to think that there’s any scenario that you can’t do better, that you can’t improve. How hard is it? Different question. What’s it going to take? Different question. How long is it going to take? Those are all different questions, but I am a strategic optimist. I joined because what she told me she wanted to achieve, I believed was right and achievable.”

Today’s edition of The Game Business Show was recorded on-stage at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. It is with Matthew Ball, and we discuss exclusives, the future of consoles, China, in-game advertising, streaming and more.

You can watch or listen to the conversation above. Or check out our edited transcript below.

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Xbox promises to be clear on exclusivity… eventually

Matthew Ball says that Xbox “absolutely” believes it will increase its market share by not releasing games like Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution on PS5. And that it was important to announce two console-exclusive games to show this isn’t some short-term experiment.

“It was important for us to include two titles so that people understood this was not a one-off,” Ball stated. “This is the start of a program, and players can expect a reliable pipeline that validates their historical investment in the Xbox platform, keeps them as Xbox players going forward, and everyone in the industry understands that exclusives are important to the growth and branding of that platform.”

Ball reiterates that the big live service games like Call of Duty will remain multiplatform, and that there are some games with previous commitments that will continue to come to PlayStation. He said that it will become clear which games will be console exclusive, and which games won’t be, but not today. For instance, I asked Ball why the upcoming Clockwork Revolution is exclusive but not the newly announced Senua, and he wouldn’t provide any further comment.

“Asha has been clear that our business today is not healthy,” Ball said. “Every day we are going to come more and more outwards about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. Today I can’t give you a more comprehensive answer of ‘here are all of the titles that players can expect that are going to be exclusive’. We know what those are going to be. We know how we’re going to make those decisions. We know how we’re going to be evaluated against those decisions. But what’s important there is that framework has to be external eventually. I understand why [people] are saying we still don’t quite get it. We have to communicate that internally. We have to communicate that to our partners. And most of all, the average current Xbox player, and the player that we want but don’t have, has to understand it very simply. That’s where we’re going. We’re just not ready to do it yet.”

It’s not all about increasing market share, however. Ball said it’s also about the existing Xbox player base.

“It has become difficult to articulate why you should pick an Xbox console. Exclusives are an important way to do that. This is why you’ll have seen such a quick shift to exclusives. We need to ask people to spend a lot of money today to become an Xbox player. That is a real ask. It’s expensive. It comes at the exclusion of other things. We have an obligation to work harder and more clearly to explain why you should be an Xbox player. Separate from that fact, those people that we asked to buy a console years ago, we still have an obligation to them to meet their expectations and to have them feel rewarded for which platform they chose.

“The more and more success we have in that offering, allows us to then invest across the rest of the ecosystem.”

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Xbox studios are behind the exclusivity plans

By going console exclusive, Gears of War and Clockwork Revolution should expect to sell fewer games. And this is particularly true in places like Europe and Japan, where Xbox has a relatively small presence.

“In every single one of those markets, PC tends to be the most popular gaming platform, at least for the titles that we’re talking about,” Ball answered.

“Windows is already where the world plays, and that’s a very important slogan to the company. We strongly encourage all players who want to play those titles to do so in those markets.

“We are trying to build a healthier business overall. In the short term, yes, there are going to be titles that are probably going to sell fewer units. That’s an investment we are making. That’s a decision that our studios are behind because they all believe this puts us on a path to your question, which is: Can we take market share? Can we grow? Can we be stronger? I believe the answer to all three of those questions is ‘yes’, and that will hold none of our franchises back over time.”

The console RAM crisis could last 2.5 years

One of the more sobering conversations in our interview was around the rising costs of making consoles. We spoke to Ball earlier in the year, when he wasn’t part of Xbox, and he said he was ‘pretty frightened’ by the RAM and storage crisis. Is he still frightened?

“More so. At the time [of the interview], there was a lot of, ‘Ball is being histrionic,’ on Twitter. However, six months later, I was underestimating how bad it is. Every single person in the industry is frustrated by that. It is bad for players. It is bad for the platforms. Our obligation to our publishers is to grow that base so that they can help grow their business at a time in which everyone is struggling for growth.

“The crisis is the right term. The crisis is not yet getting better. The window in which we and others are going to have to work through is getting longer, and that is going to constrain the category.”

The undersupply is estimated to be about 30 to 40% less next year, Ball added. “The Chinese ecosystem is rapidly onboarding production capacity, but we are still at a point in time in which a lot of work needs to be done to meet that.”

It will certainly impact the next generation of consoles, he added.

“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about [new console] Helix, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it is flexible,” he said.

“We are working hard to rethink what that console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way. [This crisis] may have acute effects for two to two and a half years, beyond that it’s hard to speculate, but the cascade and ripple will endure.”

The console market is not dying

“The reality is most players and revenue is on mobile,” Ball told us. “Second to that, we have the most hours and the most players on PC… but less revenue than on console. Console is a $40 to $45 billion business. Is it growing as fast as PC or mobile? No. Are there as many hours? No. Is my bet that that platform is substantially larger tomorrow or in 2028/2029 than it is today? No. But we are still talking about hundreds of millions of players who spend $40-plus billion per year in a category that they love, that I love.

“We have no desire to move away from the console business. And dying? No. It’s not declining. It is growing. It’s going to have a great year this year. What is important is that we restore that business for us. Do we need to get better at PC? Yes. Do we need to get better at mobile? Yes. But we can’t ask publishers and players to bet on us on other platforms where we are behind, where our technology is inadequate, before we shore up the platform we have, the platform that many believe we’ve mistreated.”

But what about the Roblox generation? Are they graduating to console?

“We see it all the time,” Ball answered. “There are lots of young people adopting consoles. Do we see the same rate of young people adopting consoles that they did historically? I haven’t seen in mature markets evidence that has dramatically changed.”

He adds that with the explosive growth in young people playing games, even if the share of them adopting consoles goes down, “the gross amount is still likely to go up”.

“There is, without question, a great future when you say a record number of people are playing games, and they’re usually doing that together. Where are they going to go as a platform? I’m not sure. What I can say is those titles like Roblox, incredibly popular on our console, and most of the creation and many of the players are happening on PC.”

He still believes advertising will be a big opportunity for PC and console games

When I last spoke to Ball, he brought up the prospect of in-game advertising being a big opportunity for game companies. Specifically, he talked about ads in pause menus and loading screens within sports titles, such as NBA 2K.

I put that suggestion to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who felt that putting ads in a premium game would be “unfair” to players.

But Ball still believes it’s an area that has potential.

“There is a two-sided problem,” he says. “The costs have gone up way too high on development, and at the same point, everyone feels terrible with prices going up on hardware or software or microtransactions. That is a challenge. It’s not good if that is the only option. I think the best evidence comes from the [TV] streaming space. In excess of 100% of net adds in the United States for years and years have been on the ad-supported tier. That has not excluded anyone from ad-free experiences. Those products are still there. They’re still popular. The question is not can we cram ads in everything. The question is, are there opportunities that allow the people who can’t afford, or wouldn’t try, to have an onboard to our properties and franchises?

“I don’t have anything to report on Microsoft’s plans. I’ve frankly not read into them despite my interest in the category. But it is coming from that perspective of how do we reach more people? How do we keep our products affordable? How do we make sure that we can continue to fund outstanding work from our development teams? That’s the goal. It’s not about placing an ad in front of someone so that we can sell, you know, a pizza.”

The famous Matthew Ball reports are not dead

Matthew Ball is famous for his State of Video Gaming reports. So, I had to ask, now he’s an employee of Xbox, does that mean an end to them?

“I would tend to think that if it comes out again, it would be shorter, but knowing me, it probably still won’t be,” Ball laughs. “I hope to publish more. It’s important for us as a company, especially during this hardship, that we communicate what we’re doing and why. In some instances, that’s just being honest about it. In other instances, it’s about revealing some of the details that you usually don’t disclose. We’re going to start doing that more and more.

“Right now, I can’t tell you what I would write even if I wanted to, but we’ll see.”

If Xbox can turn things around, the whole industry can

“If we can turn this company around and grow it, then the rest of the industry can in aggregate, too,” Ball concluded.

“Yes, I wrote [in my report] there are fewer people playing in the US now than five years ago. There are fewer people in the UK playing now than three years ago. At the same time, globally, there’s never been more players. There’s never been more player hours. There’s never been more revenue. Last year was a great year. We know that this year is trending really well. And even when you take a look at that overall picture, the ESA came out and said that we had a three-percentage point increase in the share of the US population that started playing games in 2026 that wasn’t in 2025.

“At the macro scale, we see a healthier than ever industry. You can find challenges. At the national scale, we see that players will come back when there’s a great slate. And I believe deeply that [Xbox is] capable of turning it around, and we have started. All of that is reason for optimism. Every single company in the industry is going through that same thing. It takes a little bit of time, but most of the people that I talk to ask the same questions: Where do you see the most opportunity? What I don’t hear is, ‘how do we retreat?’ And that’s a good disposition, and again, that gives broader optimism.”

That’s it for today’s edition of The Game Business Show. More from The Game Business Live, including interviews with EA’s Laura Miele and games legend Jason Rubin, will be going live in the coming weeks. Until then, thank you for reading.

Ubisoft is closing its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios, making cuts to its Barcelona team and reducing its global publishing operation. In total there are 380 jobs at risk.

Winnipeg worked across Ubisoft’s Anvil and Snowdrop engines, and has supported projects including Rainbow Six: Siege, Far Cry 6 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Ubisoft Belgrade has worked across Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon titles, The Crew 2, Rainbow Six and Skull and Bones.

Ubisoft Barcelona is being restructured to fully focus on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, having previously worked across numerous Ubisoft franchises, including The Division and Assassin’s Creed.

This is separate from Ubisoft’s mobile studio in Barcelona, which is unaffected.

The French publishing giant is making numerous cuts in a bid to reduce its fixed costs by €500 million, going from $1.75 billion in March 2023, to $1.25 billion by March 2028.

In January this year, Ubisoft closed its Stockholm and Halifax studios. A few weeks later, it announced plans to cut 200 jobs from its Paris division. There were also cuts at Ubisoft Abu Dhabi, RedLynx and Massive Entertainment. In February, it cut 40 jobs at Far Cry 6 and Splinter Cell developer Ubisoft Toronto. In March, it ceased making games at its Red Storm studio.

In 2025, Ubisoft closed its Leamington Spa studio, plus had office closures and job reductions in San Francisco, Osaka and Sydney. In fact, over 2025, Ubisoft reduced its headcount by 1,500 people.

• Turtles, Star Trek and original IP

• His AI scepticism

• ‘Cost effective AAA’

• The impending Warner Bros deal

• … Jackass

Last week during Summer Game Fest, Paramount revealed its games division.

Paramount Games Studio combines its two Skydance developers (including the Marvel 1943 team), with its licensing group. And it’s built out a publishing operation, which is signing titles such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin from Platinum Games, and Star Trek: Shadow Frontier from Bloober Team.

It sounds exciting. But I’ve been here before. At E3 2011, I met Paramount Digital Entertainment to discuss its big push into games. There was even a new Star Trek title. But the game wasn’t great, and the company soon gave up.

“The biggest difference [this time] is we have a crew of people who are seasoned games professionals,” says Shawn Kittelsen, the senior vice president and head of creative and production at Paramount Games.

“All of us have made hits elsewhere, and feel like there were opportunities to do something different and better. And we had an open mind in [Paramount CEO] David Ellison saying, ‘Yeah, we can do things our own way.’

“But the biggest difference from prior Paramount forays into games is we’ve already made some pretty substantial investments into key projects.”

It sounds promising, but there’s the spectre of Warner Bros looming over this. Paramount is about to acquire a company that already has a substantial games division that oversees huge titles like Hogwarts Legacy, the LEGO games and Mortal Kombat.

“There’s a long road between here and any transaction with Warner Bros closing and any decisions being made,” Kittelsen says. “We’ve been at work on this for a while, and it’s been a priority for the company. We’re setting up projects for the long haul. I don’t think any of our priorities today will change in the near term.”

I really enjoyed my chat with Kittelsen. Of course, we talked Star Trek and Turtles, but we also discussed the company’s sustainable approach to making games, getting licensed projects right, developing original IP and… Jackass.

You can watch or listen to the whole conversation above. Alternatively, here are my choice quotes.

“We’re going for blockbusters. We’re going for crowd pleasers. We want to find big audiences,” Kittelsen says. “So, what we do has to punch through the noise, but it doesn’t always have to punch through the noise at great expense. Sometimes it can punch through with great innovation.”

He continues: “We’re looking at really cost-effective AAA. We are not looking to try to chase GTA. I just watched your last Show on GTA. We’re not trying to chase our way into hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, which then puts not only the game at a high risk of not making its money back, but puts everyone who’s been working on it at high risk because we’ve bet the company on one title.

“We want to take appropriately sized bets for where the market is at today, and that means everything from exploring new ways of working with co-developers and support teams, to having a really strict governance process where we are not trying to start with a team of 300 people on day one, but we are starting with a small team that’s working on core vision, core mechanics, story and art and concept, and then gradually as we are validating each of those pieces of the game, building up to the point where we feel confident to scale production and go forward.

“A lot of people can speak to that, but that discipline is actually really hard in practice, because there are often forces outside. Whether it’s, ‘Well, we’ve got all these butts in seats and we need to keep them working,’ or it’s just like the institutional momentum of, ‘Well, can’t we make it faster?’ Having patience and a bit of foresight is something that doesn’t always come naturally to the game industry, and we’re trying to make that intrinsic in our core business.”

“We’re looking at building towards a future where we have multiple titles a year, and not just relying on one or two tentpoles,” Kittelsen explains. “That in itself would be a very high-risk way to run the business. We’re lucky that we have more mature properties, we have Nick Toons and SpongeBob and really strong kids’ properties. Making sure that we have titles that speak to audiences across the board throughout the year is our primary goal.”

The key to a good licensed game is making sure the people building it genuinely care about the IP.

“Platinum’s pitch for Turtles was more than what I had expected,” Kittelsen recalls. “I was expecting a Platinum pitch of, ‘we’re going to do this bombastic action and here are the systems.’ And instead, they pitched a game about the seasons of life, regret and change. They had a pitch that spoke to their passion as fans.”

He adds: “We want everyone who works on these games to be as passionate about the them as we are. It’s not just about, ‘how do we exploit these IP? How do we extract as much value from them?’ That is the worst possible way to go about this business. I didn’t get into this business to be a soulless value extractor. [You need to] channel a true and genuine and absolute pure love of the stories, the characters and the world. When you do that, when you channel that fandom into your work and your creativity, it resonates so much more with an audience.”

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is a new title developed by Platinum Games and published by Paramount. But the last we heard, it was being made by Black Forest and published by THQ Nordic.

“When [the new Paramount Games] team started, that previous version of Last Ronin was already not happening,” Kittelsen explains. “We came in and said, ‘So what’s up with Last Ronin?’ They said, ‘Oh, that’s gone away.’ We immediately said, ‘What can we do with Last Ronin then? That’s a no-brainer game to make.’

“We knew that there were not any plans to move forward with something theatrically for Last Ronin. I’m a huge Turtles fan, grew up with the Turtles, I was the target audience for The Last Ronin. So, we started looking at partners. Platinum was a really compelling partner with their track record with games like Bayonetta and NieR: Automata. They’d worked on a Turtles game previously. I’ll let them tell that story but, again, different Paramount team, different expectations and maybe not the best conditions. So, we approached it with, ‘what if we gave you the best possible conditions to make the best possible game?’ And we found them to be incredible partners”

Kittelsen is sceptical around whether AI tools will significantly speed up game making.

“It’d be really easy to win points with investors by saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to just use AI to make everything faster, cheaper, better.’ But those tools have not reached the point of maturity yet where we can say there are truly meaningful savings to be found. For one, while there are perhaps accelerative properties to coding that we can achieve with AI today, actual content development and generation is not moving that much faster and certainly not improving the quality of the content that we can create. We want human hands to be on our products.

“If we say ‘by fans, for fans’, and then we put AI in, then it’s… ‘Well, who made the decisions about what’s fun?’ ‘Well, we let the computer decide.’ Did the computer grow up collecting Ninja Turtles action figures? And comic books? And dreaming of skateboarding in the sewers? No.”

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It’s not all about SpongeBob, Turtles, Avatar and Star Trek.

“Games can be the origin for the next great franchise,” Kittelsen explains. “Last Ronin is a good example of being a super popular series of comic books and graphic novels, that hasn’t had an adaptation into mass media yet. We can build a new iteration of a known franchise in games and prove how much of an appetite there is for something like Last Ronin. And then use that to support a future film adaptation or a television series. That’s what we can do with the IP that we have that exists.

“For any global entertainment company, there’s a finite amount of content that you can put out for a given franchise before you exhaust the audience, and before you need to pace things out. So, no matter how many great IP we have, we need to be developing more. We can’t just rest on reheating the same stories and the same characters over and over. The fans of those stories and characters will eventually say, ‘stop we want something different.’

“We are exploring a portfolio that includes the franchise IP that’s already got a giant fan base. We’re exploring emerging IP, so things that haven’t been adapted into games or mass media before. And then we’re actually working on some original IP as well. We want to build franchises, not just inherit them.”

Similar to our recent interview with Hasbro, Paramount Games isn’t looking at mobile or live-service adaptations right now.

“Phase one is more about single player,” Kittelsen says. “Single player… it’s where the studios that we’re working with have made their bread and butter. It also makes the most sense for a lot of these franchises.

“But long term, absolutely, we want to get into live service. We want to get into mobile. But for the time being, we can find really great partners to work with [in these areas] on a licensing basis, or on a co-financing basis.

“You can’t really go halfway into mobile. It’s a big investment, not just in development, but in marketing and live services and user acquisition. If we go in, we have to go in with a pretty significant investment, and it’s very difficult to build that, and you see a lot of companies crash on the rocks going half measures.”

As we wrapped up our interview, I asked Kittelsen what Paramount IP would he like to see turned into a video game.

“If I set aside my business brain and just talk about what would be really fun... maybe Jackass,” he concluded. “I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so there’s a lot in the MTV catalogue that speaks to me that I’m always looking at out of the corner of my eye thinking, ‘We could do something really fun with you.’”

That’s it for today’s edition of The Game Business. Join us back here on Thursday for the full interview with Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball that we recorded on Monday. Until then, thank you for reading.

Hello. Neil Long here, founder and editor of mobilegamer.biz. I was at The Game Business Live to take notes for your regular TGB host Chris as he did his thing on stage this morning.

He sat down with Xbox strategy boss Matthew Ball, EA Entertainment leader Laura Miele and industry legend Jason Rubin to grill them about the past, present and future of the game business.

But perhaps most pressingly he spoke to newly-crowned Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball. So let’s start there.

Ball talked openly and frankly about his – and his new boss Asha Sharma’s – desire to “turn the company around”. And was blunt in his assessment of the current state of the Xbox business, even noting that Asha Sharma wondered if the Xbox business was fixable during the recruitment process for his new role.

Ball answered a question about Xbox’s exclusivity strategy in three parts. To paraphrase, big handpicked first-party games like Gears and Clockwork Revolution will be exclusives in perpetuity. Games designed to serve large live service audiences like Call of Duty, Sea of Thieves will continue to be multiplatform. Then there’s the games already announced for other platforms, which Ball said will come to PS5, PC and Switch where relevant and as already agreed with partners.

But he also acknowledged that the whole strategy is a little confusing, and promised that Xbox’s thinking around exclusivity will be better explained to the public in the future. “That framework has to be external,” he said. “Everyone in this audience is an expert, an aficionado of the field, and I understand why they are saying ‘we still don’t quite get it’.”

Ball stressed that players and the wider industry must “understand very simply” where Xbox is going with exclusivity in future.

However, when Chris asked why Clockwork Revolution is a console exclusive but Senua isn’t, Ball simply replied: “No comment”.

As a relatively new member of the Xbox executive team, Ball was clear that his first priority is to get the console business back on track. But he also acknowledged that platforms like PC and mobile are likely to be where the long-term growth is for the business.

“What is important is that we restore that [console] business before we look beyond to those other platforms. Do we need to get better at PC? Yes. Do we need to get better at mobile? Yes. At the same time, we can’t ask publishers, partners, and especially players to bet on us on other platforms where we are behind, where our technology is inadequate before we shore up the platform we have, the platform that many believe we’ve mistreated.”

At the same time, he stressed that Windows and PC is where Microsoft sees the largest player numbers in markets outside the US. “Windows is already where the world plays, and that’s a very important slogan to the company. It’s very important to Asha… at the same time, we are making an investment in our platform, the console platform, that is going to be strengthened by these exclusives.”

When we last spoke to Ball back in February, he said rocketing RAM prices made him fear for the future of the console business. And since then, he says it got even worse.

“I was underestimating how bad it was in February,” he said. “it is bad for players, it is bad for platforms…the crisis is not yet getting better.”

It is also leading to problems producing enough Xboxes to meet demand right now, he added.

“A lot of people are complaining about lack of supply of Xboxes… I can tell you definitively, demand for our console exceeds supply. We are putting them in as many stores as possible, we are producing them as quickly as possible. There is a severe limitation to how quickly we can do that.”

There was also a little hint at how the next Xbox, Helix, is shaping up amid that RAM crisis - and how Microsoft may now need to rethink its approach to the new console.

“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognisant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible.”

“We are working hard to rethink what the console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way.”

Ball said that memory costs could have knock-on effects for the business for the next two and a half years, and that “beyond that, it’s hard to speculate”

“But… we are working very hard to figure out the best way to navigate it for a way that works for everyone, that does not ask too much on players, but also doesn’t detract from other investments that we need to make.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Ball didn’t dare to predict the scale that GTA 6 might have when it arrives later this year – “I don’t know what the internal forecasts are. I get to plead the fifth a bunch today”.

He also asserted that he still thinks there’s some short-term potential for game streaming, isn’t too worried about losing young players to Roblox and stressed how important China will be to the future growth of Xbox. There was also a little chat about how implementing in-game ads in a smart way might help developers generate a little more ongoing revenue from their live games in the future.

But Ball finished up by recalling a frank and striking conversation with new Xbox boss Asha Sharma that took place as he took up his new role at Microsoft.

“When I sat down with Asha for the first time, she asked me…”Is it fixable?”

“She was not talking about the business, that’s part of it. She was talking about this specific business, which I’m now helping to run, which is fixable. I’m a strategic optimist. I think it’s incredibly defeatist to think that in any scenario you can’t do better...I joined because I believe I can contribute to that”

“I joined because what she told me she wanted to achieve, I believed was right and achievable… we can turn this company around and grow if we do better by our players – and we need to do that, we languished for several years – then the rest of the industry can in aggregate too.”

“At the macro scale we see a healthier than ever industry, you can find challenges at the national scale, but we see that players will come back when there’s a great slate…we are capable of turning around, and we have started – all of that is reason for optimism.”

The full video interview with Xbox’s Matthew Ball goes live on Thursday.

This is usually our exclusive mini podcast for paid subscribers. But today, as a treat, this one is free for all. And we’ve even got some exclusive bits for you, including a follow-up chat with IO Interactive boss Hakan Abrak about 007: First Light.

Plus, we share early data from an impressive Summer Game Fest, and discuss Xbox’s return to console exclusivity.

Enjoy!

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Xbox reignites the console war

In Brief: Xbox has announced its big upcoming Gears of War game will not be coming to PlayStation 5 after all. Gears of War: E-Day will now launch on Xbox and PC on October 6. Xbox also announced that new IP Clockwork Revolution will only launch on Xbox and PC in 2027.

What You Need To Know:

• Xbox had been releasing all of its games on PC, most of its games on PS5 and some of its games on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in an effort to improve the profitability of its titles and become the biggest video game company in the world. However, this has been negatively impacting sales (and engagement) of its Xbox Series S and X platform, with PS5 holding a commanding lead this generation.

• There have been calls from Xbox’s most vocal fans to make games exclusive again.

• Gears is a big title in North America, but it does have a global audience. The last game, Gears 5, sold 750,000 copies in Europe.

• Last year’s Gears of War Reloaded saw the series come to PS5. The PS5 version managed 580,000 players during its launch month (Ampere data), which is not insignificant, but that represents just 27% of the game’s console players (excluding PC). Of course, the Xbox version was accessible via Game Pass, which will have boosted figures there.

• Xbox says there will be more exclusive games in the future, but not live service titles. Most of the games it showed at Summer Game Fest are being released on PlayStation.

Summer Game Fest 2026 peak viewership jumps 20%

In Brief: Summer Game Fest saw record-breaking peak viewers of 3.6 million during its Friday livestream, a rise of 20% year-on-year (LevelUp Analytics). 2025’s event was the previous best with three million viewers. There were over 8,000 co-streams (up 25% year-on-year), with 7.3 million hours watched (up 30%). The event was headlined by major franchises including Resident Evil Veronica and Final Fantasy VII: Revelation.

What You Need To Know:

• There were 5,071 editorial articles about Summer Game Fest publisher in less than a day. Last year, 3,747 articles were produced over two days. (Press Engine data).

• There was also a 37.9% increase in publications covering the event.

• Other key reveals included the return of 1666: Amsterdam from Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets, Guild Wars 3, a major Monster Hunter Wilds expansion called Ascendance, a new strategy shooter called Crossfire, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, an ‘indie’ Sonic game Sonic Pico Park, Saw Genesis, Hot Wheels: Infinite Rush, and two new Cuphead titles.

• There were also new trailers for Virtua Fighter, Alien Isolation 2, Stranger Than Heaven, Gen Atlas, Star Wars Zero Company, The Wolf Among Us 2, Star Wars Galactic Racer, Control Resonant, Clutch and The Blood of the Dawnwalker.

• Meanwhile, Sony’s State of Play event also performed strongly, with 2.9 million peak viewers, up 38% over the year before (LevelUp data). The key games featured there included Marvel’s Wolverine and God of War: Laufey.

• The data isn’t quite in for the Xbox showcase, which also saw reveals and trailers, including Persona 6, Gears of War and Halo. It also promoted a new 25th anniversary green Xbox console.

007: First Light nears profitability after one week

In Brief: 007: First Light is nearly profitably after selling 2.7 million units worldwide in a its first week.

“This went above and beyond [our expectations],” said CEO Hakan Abrak to The Game Business. “It is a very, very well received game. It’s a Bond game, and the best Bond game on PlayStation and PC. It seems to be working really well.

“We’re getting very close to [profitability]. The trajectory looks really good. There are obviously some royalties and models that are involved in this. But it is looking like that is going to be a very solid scenario, and will be profitable faster than we thought we would. 2.7 million week one. Now we’re a couple of days after that, and we haven’t completely confirmed the physical part of it, so we’re probably at three million now.”

More from Abrak:

• Over the next year, IO Interactive has a roadmap of free updates and additions to the game, including a new story chapter. “We’re not one to do a big blockbuster release and then it cools off,” Abrak told us. “We are going to massively support this and keep the content going and the world expanding, as we did with Hitman.”

• There is a question over whether Amazon, which took over ownership of the Bond IP mid-way through the development of 007: First Light, will continue to work with IO or head in a different direction. “Amazon is a huge company,” Abrak said. “We have a fantastic relationship with them. And there will be news, soon, about this in the near future.”

• The developer hopes to sell more copies of the game once GTA 6 launches in November. “We are definitely thinking about that opportunity, because we know there is going to be a lot of lapsed players buying a PlayStation again because of GTA. A third-person narrative experience… having played the GTA campaign, and after looking around, I’m sure Bond could be a candidate for them to play afterwards.”

• At Summer Game Fest, IO Interactive announced a partnership with Saber Interactive to remake the original three Hitman games. Abrak said Saber approached them about the idea. “Saber is seeing massive momentum, and their passion and approach to reignite this was something that appealed to us.”

• Other older IO games include Mini Ninjas, Kane & Lynch and Freedom Fighters. The first two are still the property of former IO Interactive owners Square Enix. But what about Freedom Fighters? “IO has done many different IPs, and IPs we’ve prototyped and not seen the light of day,” Abrak explained. “So, we like to fool around with things. And we’ve been fooling around with some Freedom Fighters stuff, but right now it’s Hitman, Bond and our new IP [Project Fantasy].”

Meanwhile…

• Paramount Games has formed, bringing together the Skydance development teams with the Paramount Games licensing division. The firm has announced two new projects at Summer Game Fest, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Platinum Games and Star Trek: Shadow Frontier by Bloober Team. It’s also working on Marvel 1943. We will have a full interview with the new Platinum Games tomorrow (Tuesday, June 9).

• Merge Mansion creator Metacore is cutting 159 jobs in Finland and closing its offices in Germany and Sweden, ahead of an acquisition by Supercell. Supercell was already the largest shareholder for the mobile developer. Metacore CEO Mika Tammenkoski said: “We have built an organisation with growth ambitions that have not materialised as expected.” Supercell believes it can turn the game around and that its best years are ahead of it

• UK publisher Secret Mode has acquired Chained Together from Anegar Games. The co-op platformer was released in June 2024 and has sold more than 10 million copies.

That’s it for today! If you enjoyed that, and you’re not already a paying subscriber, we do these every Monday morning. So join us!

Looking ahead, we have The Game Business Live event today, so expect something from us around that. Tomorrow, we have a bumper extended interview with the new Paramount Games. And on Thursday, you can watch our on-stage interview with Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball.

Until then, thank you for reading.

The Game Business Live returns on Monday, June 8 in Los Angeles, and we have a special pre-event treat for our readers.

Data specialist Ampere has put together an exclusive report that dives into relevant topics, data and insight that will relate to some of the topics at this year’s event. The 35-page report is titled Winning Attention & Defining Cultural Moments:
Key forces shaping console/PC games in 2026, and it covers:

• The expected impact of the FIFA World Cup 2026 in the US

• Who might feel the most impact during the launch of GTA 6

• What we can learn from Battlefield 6 vs Arc Raiders

• The rise of Roblox and the decline of Fortnite

• TV, Movies and Fortnite’s Overwatch collaboration

You can download the free report through here.

The Game Business Live will touch upon some of these topics, and features interviews with Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball, EA Entertainment President Laura Miele and video game legend Jason Rubin.

The event is now sold out. It is sponsored by Kuro Games and FortySeven Communications.

Here is the full schedule:

08:30 – 09:30: Registration/Coffee/Muffins
09:35 – 09:45: Introducion – Geoff Keighley and Christopher Dring
09:45 – 10:20: The Game Business Show w/ Matthew Ball
10:20 – 10:55: Interview: Laura Miele (EA Entertainment)
10:55 – 11:05: Break
11:05 – 11:55: Legend Interview: Jason Rubin
12:00 – 13:00: Networking Tea/Coffee

There are more details on the event here, and the sessions will be released as episodes of The Game Business Show in the future.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,

• Who will suffer most from GTA 6 launch?

• EA set for World Cup victory

• Summer Game Fest Play Days Interview

• The process of making a game trailer

• Plus, Switch 2 UK sales milestone and State of Play reaction

Hello there!

It’s Summer Game Fest week. And not only are we rushing around Los Angeles speaking to people, but we’re also running a sold-out live show on Monday.

So, you’d probably forgive us if we took it a bit easy with this edition. But not us. Oh no. In fact, we have four guests on the how today.

• We’ve got Amanda White and Jon Gibson of Iam8bit discussing the SGF Play Days event, which starts on Saturday.

• We’ve got Samantha Lester of ICHI Worldwide telling us all about building trailers for events like SGF.

• And our guest host is analyst Piers Harding-Rolls from Ampere, who is sharing with us a whole load of exclusive data. His team has created a special report to coincide with The Game Business Live (that’s the live event I was talking about). The report launches tomorrow, but we’ve teased some of the headlines below, specifically around GTA 6 and the FIFA World Cup.

• On top of that, we chat about PlayStation’s State of Play event, and reveal some exclusive figures around Nintendo Switch 2 in the UK.

What a treat! You can watch or listen to the Show above. And I’ve picked out some of the key headlines below.

Enjoy!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is most ‘at risk’ from GTA 6 launch

New online games are likely to suffer the most at the hands of GTA 6 this November, says data firm Ampere.

According to its report Winning Attention & Defining Cultural Moments (which has been released to support The Game Business Live next week) GTA 6 is likely to impact all games, but will particularly appeal to players of shooters, sports games and sandbox titles.

Ampere analysed the performance of GTA 5 and GTA Online during December 2025, which saw a 29% jump in players following the release of its Safehouse In The Hills update. Of the 4.7 million new players to the game in December, 15.5% came from (and stopped playing) the newly released Battlefield 6, 12.3% came from Fortnite and the same number came from Call of Duty (including all COD games).

Another new live service game, Skate, also saw a large number of players leave to play GTA Online.

“This data suggests that newer releases were among the biggest losers when GTA 5/Online took off,” Ampere said. “Battlefield 6 had only launched two months prior, and Skate four months prior, meaning gamers had not had enough time to become deeply engaged, and we are likely to see a similar outcome around the launch of GTA 6.”

When it comes to genres, over 700,000 new GTA Online players were enticed away from shooters, 619,000 were coaxed away from sports games, while 622,000 arrived from the ‘other’ genre, which was primarily sandbox games.

Ampere boss Piers Harding-Rolls therefore expects Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to face the toughest retention challenge when GTA 6 arrives. The shooter launches just four weeks before Rockstar’s game.

However, he notes that GTA Online has some of the weakest retention rates amongst the big live service games, which suggests there will be an opportunity to win back users further down the line.

Check out The Game Business tomorrow for the full report.

EA Sports FC set for World Cup boost… even without the FIFA licence

EA may not have the licence anymore, but an unofficial World Cup mode within EA Sports FC is expected to be the big winner of the upcoming tournament.

The FIFA 2026 World Cup takes place in the US this year, and it’s the largest one so far, with 104 matches planned.

FIFA and EA parted ways in 2022, with EA rebranding its popular FIFA games as EA Sports FC. This year, FIFA is partnering with various games, and has teamed up with Netflix for an official World Cup tie-in.

But EA is still planning to get involved with the newly announced ‘The World’s Game’ mode. The update may not carry the World Cup name, but it will include the official kits, crests and player likenesses of 41 of the 48 World Cup teams.

EA said that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar caused a 40% jump in FIFA 23 sale in the US. Meanwhile, Ampere says that global daily active users for that game increased 20% when the official World Cup 2022 mode was added, compared to the latest EA Sports FC 25 during a comparative period.

The US is the largest market for EA Sports FC in terms of monthly active users, but less than 6% of US players engage with the game, Ampere says. Therefore, with the World Cup taking place in the US, this represents a huge growth opportunity for EA.

“EA Sports FC’s scale means it will continue to gain the biggest upside from the FIFA World Cup even without the licence and the ability to add an official mode,” the data firm said.

The full data can be seen in the new report Winning Attention & Defining Cultural Moments, which is released to tie-in with The Game Business Live. The report launches Friday, June 5.

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Nintendo Switch 2 hits 1m UK sales

Nintendo Switch 2 has got off to a strong start in the UK, selling 1m units in one year – 30 weeks faster than its predecessor.

It’s the sixth fastest-selling home console in UK history, behind Wii and every PlayStation console except the PS1.

Nintendo’s position in the UK is weaker than other markets. Globally, Switch 1 is the second best-selling console of all time, but in the UK it currently trails PS2, Xbox 360, Wii and PS4 in terms of lifetime sales.

The average price of Switch 2 during its first 1m sales is £428, considerably cheaper than every console ahead of it except for the PlayStation 5, which had the average selling price of £442.

This year’s Summer Game Fest Play Days is ‘biggest yet’

A record number of media, creators and exhibitors will descend upon Summer Game Fest this weekend, claims Play Days organizer Iam8bit.

Play Days is the in-person media event that takes place in Los Angeles shortly after the Summer Game Fest showcase. It features upcoming games, developer access and media presentations.

The likes of Amazon, Annapurna, Atari, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Capcom, Epic, NCSoft, Nintendo, Saber Interactive, Wizards of the Coast, Xbox and more are set to for the event.

It’s been a tough year for games media, with website closure and job cuts, but that’s not impacted attendee numbers, Iam8bit says.

“Our numbers are actually up from last year in terms of the number of media coming,” revealed Iam8bit co-founder Amanda White. “Also, our creator numbers have skyrocketed. They’re significantly higher than last year, which may in itself reflect how the journalism world is evolving.”

Fellow co-founder Jon Gibson added: “We love media and journalism, but it’s a creator’s world. It’s evolving in a wild and different way, and we’re certainly embracing it.”

Gibson says attendees can expect more experiential and social media-friendly activations at Play Days this year, and even teased the first ever “Summer Game Fest pool”.

Considering its growing popularity, we asked whether Play Days might consider moving venues in future years.

“We have contemplated the question you’re asking,” White said. “And we have some potential notions if the need arose and we needed three times the space or something. We do have ideas about how we might hold onto this intimate casual feeling, and take the event somewhere new. I won’t reveal where.”

Gibson added: “We chose this campus for a very particular reason, because there’s always been secret venues, and every year we activate more of them. So, it doesn’t feel like a larger footprint, but there’s more places to go.”

Check out our full interview with Iam8bit in today’s edition of The Game Business Show.

Meanwhile,

• God of War and Marvel’s Wolverine headlined Sony’s State of Play on Tuesday. The digital event opened with Wolverine, an M-rated take on the character from Spider-Man developer Insomniac. It closed with God of War Laufey, a new take on the series starring Faye, the wife of traditional series lead Kratos. It’s being made by God of War developer Santa Monica Studio.

• Other key announcements included horror sequel Until Dawn 2, the return of Stuntman in Stuntman Hollywood, a new Rayman title in Rayman Legends Retold, plus a plethora of release dates. Dune Awakening is coming to console September 22, Control Resonant is due September 24, Silent Hill Townfall is also September 24, Onimusha: Way of the Sword is September 25 and Ace Combat 8 is out October 2. Meanwhile, Phantom Blade Zero was delayed until October 29, and the Tomb Raider remake was pushed to February 27. For some reason, nobody picked a November date.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is launching on October 23, 2026 on Xbox Series X and S, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. It is not coming to PS4 or Xbox One, and will not launch in Xbox Game Pass on the day of release.

• ESA’s 2026 Essential Facts About The US Video Game Industry reveals that the average age of US players is 37 (up from 36 in 2025), with half of all players aged 35 or older. 84% of kids aged five to 17 play video games, the same as in 2025, while 63% of adults play games, which is 3% higher than 2025. US Players spent 21% of their weekly screen time on games, averaging 12 hours a week.

• Valve has significantly increased the price of its Steam Deck by over 40%. The 512GB OLED model is now $789/€779/ £669, and the 1TB model will cost $949/€919/£779. Previously, the 512GB OLED model was $549/£479, with the 1TB model coming in at $649/£569.

• Xbox has delayed Fable to February 2027 due to the congested release window in 2026.

• The Witcher 3, which first released in 2015, is getting a third major expansion called Song of the Past. It launches next year. Developer CD Projekt also revealed that the RPG has now sold 65 million copies worldwide. The Witcher 4 is currently deep in development.

• 007 First Light has sold 1.5 million copies in 24 hours.

• Atari has acquired Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale for $29 million, potentially rising to $40 million. The company stated it will use the developer to expand its mobile development and publishing capabilities.

• Rockstar employees have formed the Rockstar Game Workers Union, which operates as a subsidiary of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain. The Union planned to launch last year after surpassing the 10% membership threshold, but that was delayed after Rockstar dismissed 30 employees for distributing confidential information in a public forum.

• The California State Assembly has passed the Protect Our Games Act. Consumer movement Stop Killing Games celebrated the decision. The bill would require game companies to give players advanced notice before shutting down games that require a server and “provide a way to keep purchased games playable afterward, such as offline access, community servers, or another workable option.” The bill now heads to the California State Senate.

• Integrated Media Company, the owners of GameSpot and Fandom, have agreed to acquire Balatro publisher Playstack. The UK firm’s current owner TruFin had been looking to sell its 84.5% stake in the business.

That’s all for today. On Monday, our paid-for Micro podcast will recap many of the big Summer Game Fest reveals. While on Tuesday we have an interview all about a big announcement taking place this week (but we can’t reveal more just yet).

Until then, thank you for reading.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
Embracer CEO Phil Rogers on…

• Winning back trust

• The plans for Fellowship Entertainment

• Reducing development costs

• Tomb Raider and Amazon

There are more changes happening over at Embracer.

With all the various spin-offs, divestments, closures, and lay-offs, it can be hard to keep up. The company has spent the last few years reshaping itself following almost five years of excessive expansion had left it with over $2 billion in debt.

Its latest proposal, on paper at least, makes a lot of sense.

Embracer adopts this decentralized model, where the companies it owns act largely independently. Now, it is looking to unite some of its best-known studios and IP into one standalone, centralized, public business called Fellowship Entertainment.

Under the leadership of current Embracer CEO Phil Rogers, Fellowship will be home to Warhorse and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Crystal Dynamics and Tomb Raider, Dambuster Studios and Dead Island, Middle-earth Enterprises and, well, Middle-earth. Plus, many others.

“When we think about the business going forward and how do we win in the entertainment industry, the idea was to create a smaller group of studios where there’s more alignment in terms of games, genres, tech stacks and what not,” Rogers told The Game Business. “With IP being a core theme.”

“Certainly, we’ve got a collective way of looking at stuff.”

To illustrate this, RPG developer Warhorse announced it is working with Middle-earth Enterprises on a Middle-earth game.

“If there was one thing that really symbolizes what Fellowship could be, the right teams working on the right IP, then that was a great thing to announce,” Rogers said. “And the fact there was some online rumors about it, we just felt, let’s just say it. It really does symbolize [what we can do]. Of course, we wanted to also mention that they’re working on the next instalment in Kingdom Come. It was important to get that balance.”

He added: “We had something like 15 million likes on that Warhorse post over the course of 24, 48 hours. That’s a great response.”

During our chat with Rogers, we discussed rebuilding trust in Embracer, the return of Tomb Raider, licensing dormant brands like TimeSplitters, AI and future acquisitions.

You can watch or listen to the whole conversation above. Alternatively, read our write-up below.

The Embracer story has been well told, but it’s worth a recap.

Between 2019 and 2023, it spent billions of dollars acquiring companies like Saber Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, the Middle-earth IP, Koch Media, Gearbox, Asmodee, Warhorse, Eidos Montreal, and on and on.

And then it all went wrong. The industry stopped growing. A $2 billion investment deal fell through. And Embracer was forced to sell assets, cut staff and close studios.

As a result, the Embracer name has become a byword for the excessive spending that characterized the video game industry in the early 2020s. And there’s understandable animosity from employees, investors and the wider industry.

“It’s been a very humbling experience,” acknowledges Rogers, who joined Embracer towards the end of its spending spree.

“There’s a lot of reflection on that in terms of how the industry changed and could we have not all predicted this?”

He continues: “We know we’re on a journey. Internally it’s about getting in front of [employees] and talking more plainly, which we’ve tried to do. People need to understand what’s going on in the industry, how it impacts us, what we’re doing, what do we want to do more of, perhaps what we want to do less of… so they understand some of the logic.

“I’d hope trust is improving. In the industry, if you poll 100 people [asking] what they think about Embracer… whatever that score is, I want it to be better in a year, two years, five years, and that’s the pragmatism. Lots of companies in this industry have had tough times, and then reset and rethink things, and then improve. We’re absolutely in that camp.”

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In today’s Show, Rogers speaks extensively about managing development costs.

We discussed the success of Warhorse, the team behind the medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The title was a critical hit and has sold five million copies worldwide. What’s more, Warhorse is based in Prague in the Czech Republic, which is a considerably cheaper place to run a developer compared with California, where sister studio Crystal Dynamics is based.

“When you talk to studio execs, people know about man-month rates [the cost to employ one person for one full month] and how they vary across the world. But there has to have talent as well,” Rogers explained.

“I really feel there’s a resurgence now of European-based development talent. Great people in California can make great games, but when your man-month rate is that much higher than the rest of the world, you’ve got to really make sure those skills are at that level of differential.”

A cheaper location can help. But Rogers said that keeping costs under control is more about establishing the underlying systems with a core team.

“I don’t think necessarily with more money you find more fun,” Rogers continued. “I remember your interview with Owen [Mahoney, former Nexon CEO]. I spent time with Owen at EA, and Owen talked about his reflection on [hit shooter] Arc Raiders, and once they knew they had those underlying systems in the game, they felt confident that they could manifest something that would [work] when people got their hands on it. We all understand in the industry that if you’re building without those systems, costs can easily get out of control.”

Meanwhile, not all games need to be huge AAA endeavors. Rogers pointed to a series of Tomb Raider spin-offs that he oversaw at Square Enix.

“We called it the Lara Croft series,” he remembered. “Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was made with 20 people in about a year. They took creative decisions like… it’s very hard to get the camera right, so let’s go isometric. That solves the problem. And we wanted to introduce co-op. Introducing co-op into a tens of million-dollar development would be risky. But doing it in a way where you could do it in a 12-month production was [more manageable].”

What about AI tools? There’s a lot of excitement that AI could speed up teams and therefore drive down costs.

“It depends on how teams want to utilize AI,” he said. “There is pre-production, production, post-production. Post-production is where you’ve got your game, now you’ve got to debug, you’ve got to localize, and really polish it out. [With AI tool] do you use the same amount of time but just do it deeper and to a more polished state? Or do you quicken it up to take time out of delivery?

“Pre-production’s a great one. If you can concept and get to pre-production prototyping quicker, do you do more? Do you take more shots on goal? Could you do 10 prototypes versus historically when you might have only had the budget for one or two? We’ll have choices here game-by-game and team-by-team.”

Amazon’s decision to back out of video games has seen it close studios, cancel projects and end publishing arrangements with numerous developers.

But one partnership it is holding onto is Tomb Raider. Amazon is publishing this year’s Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and next year’s Tomb Raider Catalyst, which are being made by Embracer’s Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog teams.

Rogers admitted that Amazon’s decision to scale back has had an impact on these projects, but it’s not all been negative. In fact, it’s brought Embracer closer to the people running Amazon’s games streaming platform Luna.

“It’s had a massive change in terms of who we’re connecting with,” he says. “But in some ways, it’s just shortened some cycles.

“Luna is interesting. I do think about how the gaming industry is going to expand, and streaming could really offer something. So, the fact [Amazon Games Studios and Amazon Luna] were quite separate before, but now it’s run as one group, means we’re closer to the Luna leadership, which has been helpful.”

This is particularly interesting around the upcoming Tomb Raider TV show, which will air on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon could cross-promote both the show and the games, and make them accessible side-by-side. It’s something it attempted with the recent Fallout TV series.

“There will always be dedicated machinery,” Rogers said. “But for a lot of people, coming home, turning on a TV, and then seeing an option between watch this or play that... isn’t that really cool? And then if you want to play, you just pick up your controller of choice.”

During its announcement last month, Embracer said it wants to licence out its dormant IPs to external teams.

These IPs include Saints Row, Deux Ex, Legacy of Kain, Red Faction, Thief and TimeSplitters. Companies can license the IPs, build new games, create film adaptations, or even just remaster or remake older titles.

“We can’t work on everything ourselves,” Rogers said.

“I feel intuitively that licensing for this next 10-year chapter could be interesting. We could find other teams who say, ‘I’ve got this idea’, ‘I’ve got a treatment.’ This happens in other entertainment forms, right? You get treatments, and you work on that basis. Whether it’s remakes, remasters, a new treatment or an adaptation in some way.”

During its earnings, Embracer discussed the prospect of future mergers and acquisitions.

This is more for the Embracer side of the business, Rogers said, as opposed to the Fellowship side. And he insisted the firm has learnt from past mistakes.

“It’s certainly with learnings,” he said. “Funding for any M&A would come through organic cash flows, which is really important to mention. The Embracer [segment] has a lot of businesses that have created good positions. Some of them are very specialized. And again, if M&A can help grow those businesses, then it’s on the cards.”

He added: “Going back to my time with Owen [Mahoney] at EA. He used to talk a lot about discipline in the business and margin structures. EA back then used to have a very clear capitalization, so what was capitalized and what was expense. Your P&L was basically more in line with the cash flows. If you’re making profits, you’re making cash. And that will give us an opportunity to look at M&A as an option.

“The original Embracer thesis is interesting, which is how you create an umbrella for entrepreneurs. There’s common ownership with some controls and guidance, but let these people get on with their business. And that’s [still] the thesis but evolved now for 2026, with tons of learnings.”

That’s it for today’s edition of The Game Business. Join us on Thursday for our Summer Game Fest preview edition. Until then, thank you for reading.

In just one week we will be live in Los Angeles, hosting talks with Matthew Ball (Xbox Chief Strategy Officer), Laura Miele (EA Entertainment President) and Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder). It’s coming together well! We do still have some spaces left (but we won’t soon). So, if you’d like to come, tickets are available here. If you’re a paying subscriber to The Game Business, there is a link lower down for you (because you can come for free).

Now, onto the news. It was a busy week. The next Call of Duty has been revealed, FIFA has set out its games vision, Steam Deck had a monster price hike, plus financials for Take-Two and Ubisoft.

Let’s dive in.

Can Call of Duty recover ahead of GTA 6 launch

In Brief: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is launching on October 23, 2026 across Xbox Series X and S, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. Developed by Infinity Ward, the game will feature a campaign, multiplayer and the extraction mode DMZ. It is not coming to PS4 or Xbox One.

What You Need To Know:

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 follows the commercial disappointment Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 last year. For the first time, Call of Duty was not the No.1 game in the US and was outsold by rival game Battlefield 6.

• Since 2022, Activision has been releasing a big Call of Duty game followed by a direct sequel the following year. But the results have been mixed. 2022’s smash hit Modern Warfare 2 was followed by 2023’s underwhelming Modern Warfare 3. Meanwhile, 2024’s Black Ops 6 was hugely popular, whereas 2025’s Black Ops 7 was not. As a result, Activision will no-longer follow this release strategy.

• According to Ampere, Call of Duty’s monthly active users dropped to 12.5 million last month, the lowest number since tracking began in 2022. The series peaked at 36 million players in November 2024.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be the first Microsoft-owned game not to be released into Xbox Game Pass the day it comes out. The title will be released into the subscription service around a year later.

• The upcoming game’s October release date means it avoids going head-to-head with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 6, which launches on November 19.

Why was the Switch Deck price hike so steep?

In Brief: Valve has hiked the price of its Steam Deck by over 40%. The 512GB OLED model is now $789/€779/ £669, and the 1TB model will cost $949/€919/£779. Previously, the 512GB OLED model was $549/£479, with the 1TB model coming in at $649/£569.

What You Need To Know:

• Valve said in a statement: “Steam Deck itself hasn’t changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole.”

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Every month, exclusively for paid subscribers, we dive into the key charts, statistics, facts and stories from the previous month in video games, including some exclusive data and analysis from us.

Interested in becoming a paid subscriber? You will find the link below.

The State of Games: April 2026

The new releases slowed slightly in April, but there were still some interesting success stories. Nintendo’s second Tomodachi Life game proved to be a real hit, while there was a big breakout new IP success in Pragmata.

In mobile, a couple of Arrows made it into the download charts, while video game movies scored big in the trailer department.

But it was a tougher month for game consoles, with few major releases and a big price rise for PS5.

Tomodachi Life delivers big numbers, while Pragmata shifts 2m copies

In terms of PC and console games, the MAU chart is eerily familiar, but the US games chart from Circana (which features estimated digital sales for the first time), contains a number of new IP and a No.1 for Nintendo.

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In This Edition,

• GTA 6 reviews

• Zelnick defends 2K

• Console price concerns

• Plus! Future’s Dan Dawkins joins us on the Show

The Game Business Live will take place in Los Angeles on Monday, June 8. We will be interviewing EA’s Laura Miele, Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin and Xbox’s Matthew Ball live on stage. Tickets are available now.

Hello and welcome back to The Game Business.

We are very busy getting ready for The Game Business Live on June 8 in Los Angeles, where we will be doing on-stage interviews with Matthew Ball (Xbox Chief Strategy Officer), Laura Miele (EA Entertainment president) and Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder). We’ve got some surprises planned and it should be a special event. Tickets are still available (and paid subscribers can come at no extra cost), but we will be sold out before June 8. So if you’re interested, do sign-up!

Today’s edition sees us dive into Grand Theft Auto 6, featuring comments from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick and data from the ESA. Meanwhile, on the Show we’re joined by Dan Dawkins, who is content director at media giant Future, and also runs the GTA 6 O’Clock newsletter and podcast.

As always, you can listen and watch it all above, or read it below. Enjoy!

Do review scores matter for GTA 6?

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick insists review scores are as important as they’ve ever been ahead of the release of GTA 6.

Speaking to The Game Business, Zelnick said “of course” the critical reception was important for the upcoming blockbuster action game, and that it matters as much today “as it has in the past.”

“Rockstar’s scores are typically in the mid-90s, sometimes high 90s,” he said. “Not many games can say that. And that’s a reflection on Rockstar’s commitment to quality.”

Rockstar’s last two games, 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 and 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, both managed a 97 Metacritic score. But Dan Dawkins, content director at games media giant Future, said that repeating such a result will prove harder in 2026.

“We are 13 years past the release of GTA 5. The media and cultural environment has completely transformed,” he said on today’s edition of The Game Business Show.

“At that point in time, let’s say 2014, it was easier - not easy, but easier – to handpick the journalists you wanted to review that game ahead of time. I was one of those journalists.

“Social media is so noisy. And someone has to be first to say the thing you like is rubbish. Someone will do that. All narratives are available at once now about everything. Rockstar are going to get, from the gates, some dissenting voices. Does it mean the game is any more or less brilliant? I don’t know. But there is going to be dissenting voices.”

Nevertheless, new data reveals that professional reviews are not even in the Top Five sources of information for gamers considering a new game.

According to the ESA 2026 Essential Facts About the US Video Game Industry report, which launches next week, 42% of gamers sometimes read or watch professional reviews when considering a new game (while 11% always read or watch professional reviews). Official trailers, user reviews, forum/social media posts, family and friend recommendations, gameplay videos, and trial versions all came out higher when it comes to where gamers seek out information around new titles.

Strauss Zelnick defends 2K following 2025 missteps

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick insists 2K is “crushing it” despite recent missteps.

The label has delivered strong results in sports with the likes of NBA 2K, but it’s had mixed fortunes when it comes to its other titles. Last year’s Borderlands 4 had a disappointing launch on PC, while the new Civilization game fell flat with players.

“I take responsibility for any missteps anywhere in our company,” Zelnick said. “The responsibility is with me. That’s my job. Borderlands 4 was highly successful. It will be a very profitable lifetime title. [Civilization] 7 was very successful and it will be a very profitable lifetime title. Both did face some challenges in their initial release, and those are being addressed. We have just released a very significant update for Civ 7. We’ve released updates for Borderlands 4. There is more content coming for both games.

“I definitely can acknowledge missteps with both releases, but at the same time, these are great franchises, these are great iterations, and we couldn’t be more thrilled of how the business is going broadly. I think 2K is crushing it across the board. If the worst you can say in a year when you’ve had this kind-of [financial] performance is that a couple of titles did slightly less well than you would have hoped, and you’re addressing whatever challenges you face and you’re still generating profits with both titles… that’s a high-class problem. I’ll take those problems any day of the week.”

Two upcoming 2K Games titles, Project Ethos and BioShock 4, have taken a long time to arrive due to various development issues. Meanwhile, GTA 6 and Ken Levine’s Judas (which are not part of 2K) have also taken longer-than-expected to build. So, we asked Zelnick if it’s a priority for Take-Two to speed up the development process.

“I wouldn’t confuse long development cycles with a lackadaisical approach to development cycles. Everything we do is in the context of milestones, budgets and delivery dates,” he responded.

“Certain titles are so complex and so challenging to build, they take a long time. It is possible that recent developments in technology will allow us to compress some development timelines without comprising quality, and we will hope to do that. But everything that we do here is thought out and reasoned, we don’t just wait to hear how things are going. We make choices about how we are going to develop in the context of what our creative teams are trying to achieve and what we believe the market demands in terms of quality in order to deliver a hit. We are in the business of making hits. Everything we do is in service of trying to make a hit.”

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What else did Zelnick say?

• Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 has just had its biggest sales year since launch, and has hit 85 million players globally. We asked Zelnick if he feels this is driven by the anticipation for Rockstar’s next game, GTA 6.
  
  “No,” he said. “I do think Rockstar Games almost uniquely has a brand position in entertainment, because consumers tend to be interested in all of their offerings. But no, I think that stands alone. What we’re seeing with Red Dead Redemption 2 is that we have a very loyal and engaged audience. And they love the title. And by the way, I love the title.”
  

• GTA Online delivered another huge year, boosted by the ‘A Safehouse in the Hills’ update. But with GTA 6 looming, could we expect to see engagement fall for the hit live service game? “I don’t know where GTA Online performance goes after the release of GTA 6, I have no reason to believe that the performance will not continue,” Zelnick answered.
  

• When we last spoke to Strauss Zelnick, he said he wasn’t concerned by rising component costs for video game hardware. Since then, PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 have both had price rises. So, we asked the same question again.
  
  “I am sure the price increases will have some influence, and I don’t think it will be a positive one,” he said. “I do think consumers remain highly interested in interactive entertainment, and in the consoles that deliver that entertainment.”
  
  Chief financial officer Lainie Goldstein added: “We do think GTA 6 will drive console sales.”
  

• Take-Two is not expecting an exodus of Rockstar staff once GTA 6 launches. The upcoming blockbuster has had a prolonged development, and so we asked Zelnick if he’s anticipating some turnover once the game is launched.
  
  “We don’t see that in our company. We have a very low attrition rate at Rockstar. Take-Two’s overall attrition rate is about half that of the industry average. And we have a lot of work to do after the launch of GTA 6. I have no reason to believe that we’ll see any changes on composition of the team here.”

Meanwhile…

• Sticking with Take-Two, the publisher reported a 19% increase in both net revenue and net bookings for its 2026 financial year. The firm reported that mobile made up 50% of its net revenue for the year. NBA 2K was a big hit, with revenue up 10%, and the game shipping 10 million units. Zynga also achieved its highest level of net bookings since Take-Two bought the company in 2022. Looking ahead, Take-Two expects to deliver 20% growth in its next financial year on the back of GTA 6.

• Ubisoft reported a sharp 21.8% decline in revenue and 17.4% drop in net bookings for its 2025/2026 financial year. The firm also warned that its next financial year will be a ‘low point’ in terms of free cash flow. This is due to restructuring costs and a softer release slate. Its next big game is a remake of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, which is due in the summer. Ubisoft said it will deliver a ‘strong rebound’ in the 2027/2028 financial year, with new games in the Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon series set to launch before April 2029. The news follows the cancellation of six Ubisoft games and a delay to seven others earlier this year.

• Epic Games has announced Unreal Engine 6, which will be used to power the next era of Rocket League. The reveal was made during the Rocket League Paris Major last weekend.

• Bungie is ending updates to its hit shooter Destiny 2, and will now focus on developing new games. The studio confirmed that Destiny 2’s final live-service content update will take place on June 9. Bungie launched the extraction shooter Marathon in March.

• Microsoft has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-Fonden AP7. The 2022 lawsuit contested Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and accused CEO Bobby Kotick of rushing the sale, and thus depriving shareholders of a better stock price.

• A PlayStation State of Play showcase has been announced for June 2, 2026. It will feature the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine game from Spider-Man developer Insomniac.

• Bitsummit set a new attendance record last weekend, with 68,208 visitors, a rise of 17% year-on-year. The indie event took place in Kyoto, in Japan, with an industry day on May 22, and public days on May 23 and 24.

• Games services specialist Room 8 Group has appointed Juanita Draude as its CEO. She joins following leadership roles at Monks and Publicis Groupe, as well as NBC Universal. She replaces Anna Kozlova, who left the role after seven years last month.

• The Game Maker’s Sketchbook has announced the selections for its fifth annual showcase, featuring artwork from Pragmata, Borderlands 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Monument Valley 3, Keeper, Absolum and more. The project, which highlights artistry in games, is supported by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), Iam8bit, and Fortyseven Communications. The works will feature in an online gallery, at Summer Game Fest: Play Days on June 6 – 8 in Los Angeles, and can be pre-ordered via the Iam8bit website.

That’s it for today. We’re back next week with a big Embracer interview, plus we get ready for a promising Summer Game Fest. See you then.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
Remedy’s Jean-Charles Gaudechon on…

• Protecting Remedy’s identity

• Making Alan Wake and Control bigger hits

• Control Resonant competition

• The FBC: Firebreak misfire

• AI scepticism

Remedy fans were alarmed when the Finnish developer announced its new CEO.

Jean-Charles Gaudechon (or JC, as he’s known) is a former EA executive who has spent much of his career on live service and free-to-play games. His credits include FIFA, Battlefield Heroes and Eve Online. He’s also spent recent years working on sports apps.

On paper, he doesn’t seem like an obvious fit for Remedy, which is famous for its brilliant, weird, narrative single-player games like Alan Wake, Control and Max Payne.

But these games haven’t always delivered strong sales. It took more than a year for the acclaimed Alan Wake 2 to turn a profit. So, does this new appointment represent a change for Remedy? A pivot away from the weird and risky, and towards safer, more commercial productions?

“There’s been a lot [of talk] about EA,” Gaudechon says of his appointment. “What does it mean to have someone that has been spent time at EA? And I completely understand the fear of, ‘is he going to bring methods that work for a massive company and crush the soul of a studio like Remedy?’

“But I think I got chosen because I know exactly what Remedy is. And what needs to be protected, needs to be supported and needs to be grown. Remedy is one-of-a-kind. It’s a studio that has amazing creative drive. It’s a studio that also has been messy here or there, and that’s the beauty of the type of games that were made and how. What I hope I can bring to Remedy is vision on where the company could go and where we could make some improvements.”

He adds: “Who am I to change the DNA of a 30-year successful game studio?”

Far from being stung by the audience reaction to his appointment, Gaudechon was reassured.

“Remedy is one of the few studios which is genuinely supported by players. Even my announcement was something I loved, because people were protecting Remedy.

“When I was announced, people from the industry and close friends sent me messages saying things like: ‘JC, that’s awesome. Congrats.’ And the last line was, ‘Don’t fuck it up.’ It was: ‘We love Remedy so much. Don’t fuck it up.’ That shows you how much people love Remedy.”

Gaudechon wants Remedy to double down on the games it’s always made. And then it’s about finding ways to turn those critical hits into commercial ones.

“Remedy is already one of the biggest game authors, with very strong signature products,” he says. “Now after seeing it from the inside, there’s so much more we can give in terms of super strong authored, creative, crazy stories and gameplay. Honestly, we haven’t achieved half of the potential in terms of the products that we make.”

He adds: “But as franchises Control, Alan Wake, etcetera, could give a lot more. There’s a vision on thinking bigger for some of these IPs, which need to find its audience much, much further than the current audience. It’s super exciting.”

So, if Remedy isn’t going to change the games it makes, how exactly is it going to grow? In today’s edition of The Game Business Show, we discuss this, the upcoming Control Resonant, the firm’s partnership with Annapurna, AI, self-publishing, Asia and lessons from FBC: Firebreak.

You can check out the full conversation in our podcast and video above. Or keep on reading for the main talking points.

Remedy is building franchises

Central to Remedy’s growth is turning its IP into established franchises.

This strategy pre-dates Gaudechon. In fact, Remedy had already signed a deal with Annapurna to produce Control and Alan Wake TV shows and movies.

“We need to think more about how we are approaching our IPs as a franchise,” he tells us. “How do we grow the community?

“[Our deal with] Annapurna goes into making our games, our franchises shine further and reach an audience that doesn’t exist today. It’s a pity, I think Alan Wake should have sold more. Control should have sold more. To me, that’s one of the first things we need to fix, even before trying to make more games to a certain extent. First of all, maximize the potential of the ones we have, because they’re incredible. And cross-media is going to help us do that.”

Expect Control Resonant’s marketing to get a little weird

Part of this franchise development will be aided by Remedy’s move to self-publishing. And we should expect its unique, somewhat bizarre voice to extend beyond the games and into how they’re promoted.

“No one can really talk about our games as well as us, especially as Remedy makes pretty unique and special games,” Gaudechon says.

“And I wouldn’t say that wasn’t understood by publishers before. We had great partners in the past. But I think we couldn’t really have as much of a unique voice on the publishing front as we have in our games. And self-publishing is opening the door for us to do that.

“It was a big part of me also accepting the job, because this is something that will push Remedy into a new era.”

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“GTA 6 will raise the tide”

Taking an unconventional approach to marketing might prove crucial for Control Resonant. The action RPG is due this year, and it’s a highly competitive time for AAA games, with a certain Grand Theft Auto 6 due in November.

“It’s a year, I believe, that’s going to raise the tide,” Gaudechon says. “It’s going to put the spotlight even more on games than maybe in past years. Hopefully [GTA] will sell consoles. And raise the tide for all the players out there.

“[For us], it’s less about trying to make your money back in a few days. Now you’ve got multiple ways to have a longer tail. It’s going be fun. You can expect quality from us. You can expect a voice that will cut through the noise. Expect us to be as loud as we can and hopefully pique people’s interest.

“We’re not going to play safe.”

Remedy learnt a lot from the FBC: Firebreak misfire

Last year Remedy released the co-operative shooter FBC: Firebreak. It proved to be a rare miss for the developer. Not only did it struggle to find an audience outside of subscription services, but the fan response was muted, too.

“I’ve spent a lot of the past two months trying to understand how the sausage is made, how this came together and also what worked and what didn’t” Gaudechon says.

“There have been learnings at development level, how the concept and project came together and how it was supported throughout the studio. There are many things that can go right or wrong around a product from birth to being live. We’re super proud of the dev team and what they’ve done. They really pushed hard and the conditions are not always the best. Let’s put it that way. Whether it’s the success it should or shouldn’t have been, well, there are a lot of things that come into play. It’s also the first self-published game, which was at a smaller scale than Control Resonant will be. There were some learnings there, too, around how you go through that process, how you position a game, how you manage community, et cetera.”

Of course, FBC: Firebreak was an online game. And these games require a different approach and skillset compared with a single-player story game.

“It’s easy to judge in hindsight, so always be cautious here when you realize how hard it is to make a game, and especially a successful one,” Gaudechon explains. “I have tremendous respect for previous management and for the team, which is still here doing awesome. But it doesn’t always work. Going into a bit of a different genre, that’s when you see that the leap is sometimes much bigger than it looks. That’s one of the big learnings.”

Don’t expect a free-to-play mobile game from Remedy.

During Remedy’s financial results earlier this month, Gaudechon talked about giving the team focus. But to quote former Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney: “focus isn’t saying yes to a couple of things, but saying no a whole lot of things”. So, what is Remedy saying ‘no’ to?

“Remedy will be defined even more by the stuff we don’t do, over the things that we keep doing,” Gaudechon agrees.

“The things we shouldn’t do is a free-to-play mobile game. This is not something that makes sense for Remedy today, and may never make sense. It’s more about building on our core IPs. If, as an example, Sam [Lake, creative director] comes to me and says, “Hey, I’ve got a super cool idea around Alan Wake. We could do this on mobile.” Then cool, we’ll speak about it. Because that actually builds on one of our core IPs and strengths, and we’re not just trying to go after a market segment. That doesn’t make sense. You don’t try to go after business and turn that back into making a game. That’s never worked.

“To me, [the things we don’t do] is everything that goes far from our core strength, which is narrative, single player and some of the awesome IPs that have been created.”

He adds: “In years to come, I think there’s going to be more and more vanilla products that are just trying to make quick money. How do you differentiate yourself? By your creative voice, by actually saying and standing for something that is unique to you, that represents you. Remedy has done the hardest part by doing all this.”

“AI is not going to make things cheaper”

Now for the obligatory AI question. During the company’s financials, Gaudechon spoke about maintaining Remedy’s strong discipline around costs. Many of its competitors have turned to AI to see if that can help make games faster (and by extension, on a lower budget). So, is this a focus for Remedy?

“Remedy makes authored games and really artistic games,” Gaudechon says. “The creative imprint is really high. So, we are being extremely cautious and not embracing AI clearly. But… prototyping, early development, maybe. If the team feels that in parts of development it can help, I’m not going to block them from doing so. There’s absolutely not going to be a top-down mandate to say: ‘Hey, now you should try to speed that up with AI.’

“My stance is that AI is not going to make things cheaper, and it’s not going to make things cheaper for a pretty long time. People thinking, ‘Oh, we can now make games cheaper with this’, I have big question marks around that. And what types of games by the way? I said this during the earnings call, good luck trying to do Alan Wake 2 with AI. Try to use Genie and do that, and we’ll see where you land.

“But we’ve always been an R&D studio. It’s always dabbling with tech stuff. So, I’m not going to block people from doing so. But we’re going to be extremely cautious on that, never getting anywhere close to creative and anywhere close to user-facing.”

That’s it for today. Join us on Thursday where we’ll be talking GTA 6, plus sharing some exclusive market stats. Until then, thank you for reading.

The Game Business Live returns to Los Angeles on Monday, June 8.

The event will feature three live recordings of The Game Business Show, featuring guests Laura Miele (EA Entertainment president), Matthew Ball (Xbox Chief Strategy Officer and analyst) and Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder and former leader within THQ and Meta).

The event takes place at The Grammy Museum in Downtown Los Angeles, and is hosted by Christopher Dring and Geoff Keighley.

Matthew Ball will share insight into where he sees the future of the video game business, while reacting to some of the big reveals during Summer Game Fest.

Laura Miele will discuss the future direction of EA, covering games like Battlefield and The Sims, plus industry trends such as AI, Hollywood, and the future of single-player in a live service world.

Finally, Jason Rubin will close the event by looking back through his career, featuring special guest appearances, and covering the formation of Naughty Dog, the creation of Crash Bandicoot, the end of THQ, and the rise of VR at Meta.

Tickets are on sale now. And paid subscribers to TGB can come along for free. Details below:

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Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,

• Announcing live service games

• Interview: Nex Playground’s global plans

• PR giants Fortyseven and Indigo Pearl unite

• Interview with EA Capital Games (podcast only)

The Game Business Live will take place in Los Angeles on Monday, June 8. We will be interviewing game industry experts Laura Miele, Jason Rubin and Matthew Ball live on stage. Tickets are available now.

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The Game Business Show.

We have had lots of news this week. Including the story we broke yesterday around Xbox’s new leadership hires (featuring TGB regular Matthew Ball). Meanwhile, Embracer is being split in two. Indigo Pearl is merging with Fortyseven Communications. Sony isn’t releasing all of its games on PC anymore. The US market keeps growing… It’s all going on.

On the Show itself, we have three interviews for you. We chat with Nex Playground CEO David Lee, the head of EA’s Capital Games studio Erik Larsen. Plus, we ask PR veteran Chase Colasonno the big question: how do you announce a live service game in 2026?

You can hear all of those conversations in the podcast and video links above. Or, I’ve picked out some choice stories below.

Enjoy!

How do you announce a live service game in 2026?

The level of hostility that greeted Highguard was surprising.

Announced during The Game Awards, the online shooter received a devastating backlash from players. It seemed undeserved. Its only real crime is that it was announced at the end of The Game Awards, which has historically been a spot reserved for more fan-favourite titles.

In the end, Highguard didn’t prove strong enough to sustain an audience, and it closed down after a few weeks. But the whole story highlighted the negativity that exists towards these free-to-play live service games.

“A lot of live service games need to go into their announcements and launches with the understanding that trust is low and there are sceptics everywhere,” advised Chase Colasonno, senior vice president at Fortyseven communications.

“We’re dealing with an oversaturated market. We’re dealing with a lot of unkept promises from other games over the last decade.”

We invited Colasonno onto the Show this week because of his expertise in announcing games, and to share some advice on how developers should approach revealing their live service title to the world. And here are the edited highlights from our conversation:

How should developers announce a live service game?

Colasonno: Leading on hype alone just isn’t enough. It’s not cutting it. You can see where the successes are. It’s people with credibility, who provide clarity about what they’re doing, what they’re building, setting expectations, and then being in it for the long term. Showing the commitment and the roadmap and what they’re building towards, and more importantly, how they’re building with the community.

Community, transparency, and just letting the software do the talking is so incredibly important.

What doesn’t work anymore?

Colasonno: There was a time when it was a game ‘from the creators of’ or ‘the team behind’ or ‘the visionaries of’. It was the prestige by association. Those are great for financing and funding conversations, but it doesn’t carry the same cachet with players than it did back in the day

Also, the age of paying streamers to play on day one is no longer a sure shot to win the long game. Knowing your audience, knowing who you’re going after and building a community by focusing on them is absolutely the most important thing. You want the creators and streamers and even press that you think are part of that audience, and you want to bring them in early, show them the game and turn them into believers.

What if players are unhappy?

Colasonno: A lot of times people are afraid to pivot and change up their strategy. Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Certain feedback from the community can be like a punch in the face when you’re expecting things to go one way and all of a sudden no one’s on board. It’s important that your marketing communications team think about how to rework. From a developer standpoint, you need to rethink how you’re doing your roadmap. Everyone needs to be on the same page where they’re looking at feedback, they’re listening and they’re ready to adjust.

Should you do a big announcement?

Colasonno: “Don’t over promise. Don’t overhype. You’re always going to underdeliver when you try to sell something in a really extravagant way.”

“The key is to figure out where’s the point in time where you can get people in. Start small. You need to bring them in closer and form that community, form that trust. And then creators are going to hop on, too. And then press. The community isn’t just the player, it’s the whole ecosystem, and you want creators and press along for the ride.

“A lot of developers aren’t about overhyping. It’s a marketing thing. But the communications and marketing team need to align with the voice of the studio. And a lot of times, that gets missed. It’s… ‘we’re going to go bombastic, and everyone is going to want to play’. At the end of the day, that’s proving not to be as effective when there’s a tonne of sceptics and burned players out there.”

Check out the longer interview with Colasonno in today’s Show.

Nex Playground turns to Ed Sheeran, Bluey and football as UK launch looms

Nex Playground is working with developers and musicians in different countries as part of its global expansion plans.

The camera-based games console was the surprise hit of Christmas 2025, selling out across the US and even (briefly) out-selling the Xbox Series X and S.

Next month, the console launches in the UK for £269, with retailers Argos, Smyths and Amazon already taking pre-orders. And to appeal more strongly to UK players, Nex CEO David Lee told The Game Business that it’s working on UK-friendly content.

“We have been bringing in UK IP,” he told us. “We are also doing more to bring in UK music into our experiences. We have licensed songs from Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran. We already work with three UK-based game studios to bring some of their creations onto the platform. And we are adding a new mini-game to Bluey that’s really designed for the UK audience. In sports, we’re also doing more as well. I can’t talk about it yet, but we are certainly doing more with sports that the UK market loves.”

So, a football game then?

“Yeah. We’ll be doing more in football.”

Lee told us that after the UK, the console will roll-out to the rest of Europe, with an Asian launch set for 2027.

“Going to each market, we want to be respectful. There will be a localization effort, bringing in local IPs, local artists, and local studio deals as well.”

When we spoke with Lee last year, he talked about 2026 being the biggest year yet for Nex Playground. But that was before the RAM shortage, which has forced the company to raise prices in the US.

“We are still fairly optimistic about how the product will do this year,” he said. “We want to continue to operate responsibly, because it’s a service that we’re operating. We speak with the community and when the costs come in in a way that we cannot absorb, then we do raise the price in order to remain sustainable.”

He added: “We have secured our supply for the year thankfully. Supply is always limited, but we are better prepared this year than the last.”

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US PR giant Fortyseven enters UK market and unites with Indigo Pearl

One of the US’ biggest PR agencies is coming to Europe.

Fortyseven Communications will open in London, with a division led by the company’s EVP and co-founder Craig Sinel. The new division will incorporate the UK PR team at Indigo Pearl. Both Indigo Pearl and Fortyseven are owned by Keywords Studios.

In addition to the European move, Fortyseven is launching a Creator Relations practice. It will be led by Meghan Camarena, a content creator and YouTuber best known as Strawburry17. The firm says this division is built specifically around how creators work, and will focus on ‘real voices, thoughtful programs, and partnerships that last longer than a single post.’

CEO Sibel Sunar said in a statement: “Bringing Fortyseven leadership to the UK, welcoming the wonderful Indigo Pearl team, and launching our new creator practice opens up a whole new world of creative firepower and reach for our clients.”

Meanwhile…

• Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream was the best-selling game of April in the US, with over $41 million in physical and projected digital spending, according to Circana. The Nintendo game debuted as the No.9 best-selling game of 2026 so far. Capcom’s Pragmata was the second best-selling game of April. It was No.1 on PS5, No.2 on PC and No.3 on Xbox, and was in the Top 15 on Nintendo Switch 2. Meanwhile, Nintendo Switch 2 was the best-selling console of the month. Overall, US spending on games and hardware in April was up 3% year-on-year to $4.3 billion.

• Embracer Group plans to split into two public companies next year. The first is called Fellowship Entertainment, and will be a centralized company (whereas Embracer was decentralized). It will look after The Lord of the Rings IP, Tomb Raider, Darksiders, Dead Island, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Remnant. Developers under this company will include 4A Games, Warhorse, Crystal Dynamics, Dambuster, Eidos-Montreal, Flying Wild Hog, Gunfire Games, Middle-earth Enterprises, Redoctane and Dark Horse Media. It will be led by CEO Phil Rogers.

  
  Meanwhile, Embracer will remain a decentralised organisation. It will be overseeing Destroy All Humans, Desperados, Gothic, Killing Floor, Kingdom of Amalur, MX vs. ATV, Reanimal, Ride, Screamer, Titan Quest, and Wreckfest, as well as licenses such as Hot Wheels Unleashed and SpongeBob SquarePants. Companies under this business include Aspyr, Beamdog, CrazyLabs, Deca, Demiurge, DPI Merchandising, Limited Run Games, Milestone, Plaion Partners, Plaion Pictures, THQ Nordic (including 35 subsidiaries), Tripwire and Vertigo Games.

• In other Embracer news, Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse is making two new games: Another Kingdom Come adventure, and an open world Middle Earth/Lord of the Rings game.

• Ubisoft shares fell 16% after the Assassin’s Creed publisher forecast further losses in its upcoming financial year. CEO Yves Guillemot said that the following year is “expected to represent a low point in our free cash flow trajectory along with a softer release slate and restructuring costs.” The release slate will pick up in the following year, with games in the Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon franchises.

• Wizards of the Coast has ended its publishing agreement with Giant Skull, which is the new studio formed by Stig Asmussen. The firm was working on an action adventure game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Wizards said it will consider new project proposals from Giant Skull. This news broke six hours after we published our interview with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks (Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro).

• The PlayStation Plus Essentials subscription service has increased in price by $1 a month. This is due to on-going market conditions and doesn’t apply to existing subscribers.

• Sticking with Sony, PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst has reportedly confirmed to staff that the firm’s single-player games will remain exclusive to its own consoles and no-longer launch on PC. That’s according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schrier. Multiplayer titles such as Helldivers 2 and Marathon will remain multiplatform. Sony’s single-player titles have had limited success on PC so far.

• Sensor Tower has acquired AppMagic. Both companies provide estimates and insight into the mobile app market, covering revenue, downloads and more.

• Valve has introduced 17 new tags, removed 28 and consolidated or renamed many others in an effort to clear up confusion and improve discoverability on Steam. ‘NSFW’ and ‘Mature’ have been removed because ‘Gore,’ ‘Violent,’ and ‘Sexual Content’ tags already exist. ‘Well Written’ and ‘Masterpiece’ have been eliminated due to inconsistent use, whereas things like ‘Drama’ and ‘Ambient’ have been cut because people didn’t really use them. New additions include ‘Bullet Heaven’, ‘Zoo’, ‘Organising’ and ‘Decorating’, Some others have been changed for clarity. You can read the full list of tag changes on the Valve website.

• Nexon’s Arc Raiders has just reached 16 million sales worldwide.

• Square Enix’s sales are down 8.3% for the financial year ending March 31, 2026, due to reduced revenue from its MMO, mobile and browser games. However, its overall profits are up 21% due to strong sales of back catalogue titles and cost savings across the organization.

• Spanish Metroid developer MercurySteam is cutting jobs due to the ‘productions cycles of our industry’. Outside of Metroid, the studio also develops its own IP, including 2025’s Blades of Fire.

• Subnautica 2 has sold two million copies in 12 hours. The underwater survival game was the most wishlisted title on Steam with over five million wishlists.

• Ubisoft has rolled out accessibility tags to some of its games, including Rayman Legends, Rayman 30^th anniversary Edition, Splinter Cell Blacklist and Valiant Hearts: Coming Home. More games will follow. It’s part of Ubisoft’s commitment to the Accessible Games Initiative that the Entertainment Software Association set-up. The initiative developed a tagging system so players with disabilities can find games that meet their accessibility needs.

That’s it for today’s edition. We’ll be back next week with a world exclusive interview with Remedy’s new CEO Jean-Charles Gaudechon. Until then, thank you for reading.

Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet.

The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions.

The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business.

His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector.

Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co.

Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope.

His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results.

In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox.

The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console.

“These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.”

Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
Hasbro’s Chris Cocks on…

• Avoiding live-service

• Launching a AAA new IP

• Tackling rising costs

• The AI opportunity (podcast only)

The Game Business Live will take place in Los Angeles on Monday, June 8. We will be interviewing game industry legends Laura Miele, Jason Rubin and Matthew Ball live on stage. Tickets are available now.

Since 2018, toy giant Hasbro has spent nearly $1 billion on its video game business.

That’s what it’s cost to build six game studios, to create an internal publishing organization, and then make a bunch of games. The first two, sci-fi RPG Exodus and D&D action-adventure game Warlock, are due next year.

What strikes me about Hasbro’s games plan isn’t so much what it’s doing, but what it is not doing. It has seen first-hand how much money games-as-a-service can make. Monopoly Go from Scopely is one of the most lucrative games in the world, and Monopoly is Hasbro’s IP. So, it knows the financial potential of having a big online free-to-play game, but not a single Hasbro studio is making one.

“We’ve got some big marquee brands, more casual games like Monopoly and Clue, and then our entertainment brands like My Little Pony, Peppa Pig, and then we have some more core brands like D&D and Magic: The Gathering. Maybe Transformers and G.I. Joe I’d throw into that camp,” explains Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks in today’s The Game Business Show.

“That’s a really broad portfolio. So, where were we going to place our bets versus where we’re not? And we chose core games focused on PC and console, with more traditional business models. It was a safer bet for us.

“We’ll be building games mostly around D&D, Magic, Transformers, maybe some of our other properties, maybe selectively some new stuff. It’ll be very focused on action-adventure and role-playing games for PC and console. And then, we’ll partner with the best in the business on more casual games, mobile games, new and emerging platforms like VR, et cetera. I think we’re the number one digital games licenser in the world by a fairly large margin. That’s pretty lucrative business. It also really helps us reach a lot of different gamers, and helps to fund those efforts in building out our first-party capabilities.”

In video games, we’re familiar with the risks associated with games-as-a-service titles in an over-saturated and highly competitive landscape. But when it comes to companies outside of the industry, it’s typically the big numbers of Roblox and Fortnite that have caught their eye. Hasbro’s approach to video games is refreshingly old school.

“You can invest $100 million to build a really great mobile game, or a really great games-as-a-service, like a shooter. And the upside is you make billions and billions. But how many people achieve that upside? It’s very low single-digit percentages, if even that. The downside is you don’t make anything back, and it’s basically a wash.

“If you look statistically, and that’s dangerous because it’s a creative enterprise, but if you invest a fair amount of money and give a fair amount of time to a talented team to do a more traditional game, you probably won’t make billions, but your chances of at least making your money back is much higher. And even if you fail, you’re probably making 50, 60, 70 cents on the dollar back. So, when we just looked at the risk-reward equation of that and we looked at the design sensibilities we have — frankly the kind of games we like to play, and I’m more of a traditional gamer — we felt that to be the safer route.”

He adds: “I think there’s always going to be demand for good games that deliver a nice 40 to 50-hours worth of content set at a fair price.”

It might seem safer, but Hasbro’s premium games strategy is still high risk. It began making its own games in 2018, when companies were investing huge sums on big teams that will spend the best part of a decade on a AAA game. That’s what Hasbro has been doing.

But that space has shifted. Independent developers are increasingly taking over, making games faster, or with smaller teams, and delivering similar results. And Cocks admits that when it comes to Hasbro’s next wave of projects, it may need to adapt its strategy, including making games in cheaper locations.

“The cost to make those games has gone up quite a bit since 2018 and 2019,” he observes. “That’s something we’ll be thinking about in the next round of games. How do we diversify where our studio locations are? Right now, they’re pretty North America-based, particularly US-based. How do we use great markets like Montreal? We build a lot of RPGs and action-adventure games, and certainly there’s awesome talent in Eastern Europe, so how do we tap into that market? And then how do we use partners? We announced a joint venture with Saber Interactive for a to-be-announced game. We’ll lean into all of the above as we evolve the model.”

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Through its Wizards of the Coast business, Hasbro has a number of video game-friendly franchises such as Dungeons & Dragons. And the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3 proves just what a good D&D game can achieve.

But Hasbro’s first game is not a D&D title. It’s something called Exodus, an entirely new sci-fi RPG from some of the people behind Mass Effect. A big AAA new IP is a rare sight in today’s industry, and I suggested to Cocks that if this was pitched in 2026, maybe he wouldn’t have given it the green light.

“First off, the team at Archetype, founded by James Ohlen, but then Chris King and Jesse Sky… it’s a lot of people from BioWare who made some of my favorite games,” he argues. “Gosh, being able to acquire talent like that and gather them all into one place, that doesn’t happen very often.

“And yes, it’s a new IP, but it’s not unfamiliar ground to us. Exodus is effectively D&D in space. We’re familiar with role-playing games, and familiar with how to make good ones. It’s a genre we understand.

“And lastly, in 2018 this was true, but I think it’s even more true in 2026… it’s a space that hasn’t had a good game in a long time. It’s been a while since Mass Effect 2 and 3. I think there’s a big need in the marketplace for that, and we’re certainly seeing that with the fan response. So, while it’s kind of a bold and maybe a risky bet, my hope is that it’ll be a good one. I get to play the game now and then, and I’m pretty pleased with how it’s coming together. Time will tell if it’s a good financial bet.”

I was starting to wonder if the Hasbro games strategy is just built around titles that Chris Cocks wants to play.

“Well, I’d be lying if that wasn’t true,” he laughs. “I definitely think passion is an important ingredient in wanting to invest in things. Passion yields a player’s understanding, a fingertip touch and feel for the game, and it helps you guide your investments when used wisely.”

Hasbro closed one of its studios earlier this year (Atomic Arcade, which was making a G.I. Joe title), but Cocks says it is still expanding. It’s building a publishing and ‘shared services’ function in Montreal. This is a group of people that will work across first-party and partner games. There are 150 people working there currently, and that’s expected to rise to 250 to 300 people in a couple of years.

Nevertheless, we’ve been here before. How many times has a major entertainment or technology company tried to crack video games, over-spent, and then closed it all down a few years later? We’ve just witnessed Amazon do it over the last six months. What makes Hasbro any different?

“I suppose we already start differently in that most of Hasbro’s reach, a lot of our revenue, a huge percentage of our profit, is based on games,” Cocks answers.

“We’ve been making games for 160 years, since Milton Bradley made The Checkered Game of Life in 1860. We know games pretty well. We have a history of making video games. Hasbro Interactive was founded in the ‘90s. We’ve been doing a digital version of Magic since 2002.

“We’d be operating with our head in the sand if we didn’t recognize that video games are the dominant play platform of our age and likely for the future, whether it’s a kid starting to play Roblox at the age of seven or eight, picking up a AAA game and a console at like 10, 11, 12, or mobile games throughout their lifetime. If you’re a company that’s based on play, you got to be able to figure out how to make your play be relevant on those platforms. And while we do a lot of partnerships, and that’s been pretty lucrative for us with games like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Monopoly Go, we need to have a piece of that and we need to understand it.”

Nevertheless, doesn’t Baldur’s Gate 3 and Monopoly Go also prove that Hasbro doesn’t need to have its own studios to be successful in video games? If Exodus and Warlock don’t deliver, Hasbro could just focus back on licensing and partnerships and still enjoy great results.

Yet Cocks insists that Hasbro understands video games. And that it won’t simply discard its $1 billion investment at the first sign of trouble.

“Do I want to be profitable? Yeah. Would I like it to be the next big business for Hasbro? Of course. Our shareholders want that, too,” Cocks concludes.

“Are we going to be patient? Do we think it’s a long-term investment? Yeah. The near term is Exodus and Warlock coming out next year. It’d be great if they were profitable, but more importantly, if we set the foundation of… Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast know how to make great games, and we’ve set up a couple new franchises, and we have a nice long pipeline for the next decade of game development… I’d feel pretty good about that.”

That’s it for today’s edition. Join us Thursday where we’ll be discussing the latest news, Nex Playground’s international expansion, and how to announce a live service game in 2026. Until then, thank you for reading.

Plus, a bit of interesting data news, as Sensor Tower acquires AppMagic.

Let’s dive in.

P.S. Don’t forget to register for The Game Business Live in Los Angeles. Details below.

Is PlayStation’s AI vision a shareholder pleaser, or something more?

In Brief: Sony went into detail on how it’s using AI in game creation during a corporate strategy presentation last week. PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino believes AI will lead to fresh experiences, better discovery and will lower the barriers to entry for making games. In terms of how the company uses AI, Nishino-san said AI is automating repetitive workloads, and accelerating areas like QA, 3D-modelling and animations. Studios such as Naughty Dog and San Diego Studio are already utilizing AI tools.

What You Need To Know:

• Sony CEO and president Hiroki Totoki said that AI will allow the company to “take on more innovative and ambitious projects”. He insists that ‘human creativity’ must remain at the center of its AI plans.

• PlayStation’s Nishino-san said that first-party developers including Naughty Dog are using Mockingbird, which is a tool that generates facial models from performance capture. It’s used to ‘optimize’ how the developers process data from live capture. It doesn’t replace the human performers, Sony said.

• The firm is also animating things like hair via AI tools. Hair animation was previously a labor-intensive job.

• Nishino-san also highlighted the AI-powered racing agent, Sophy, which is used in Gran Turismo 7, and how PSSR used machine learning to enhance visual quality and framerates on PlayStation 5 Pro.

Read more

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,

• Could AI solve investment woes?

• The growth of Turkey (podcast only)

• Griffin’s new $100m indie fund

• Plus, Nintendo, Sony and Sega news

Welcome back to The Game Business.

This week, we’re joined by two leading video game investors. First, we have David Gardner, one of the world’s most successful gaming VCs who backed Supercell, Unity and NaturalMotion. He spoke to us about the state of game investment, where it’s going and what may cause it to come back.

Then we have Hooded Horse and Griffin Gaming Partners’ Tim Bender sharing details about a new $100m indie fund.

Plus, we chat investor anxiety over Nintendo, Sega’s cancelled ‘Super Game’, Capcom’s results and a whole lot more.

You can watch or listen to it all above. Or, as usual, we’ve picked out some key stories below. Enjoy!

AI could entice investors back to games

AI could see money flow back into the video game business, says one of the industry’s most successful investors.

David Gardner is a 45-year industry veteran, best known for his 26-years at Electronic Arts. Today, he’s a major VC investor and co-founder of London Venture Partners. He’s backed the likes of Supercell, Unity and NaturalMotion, and sits on the board of various major companies.

During today’s episode of The Game Business Show, we asked Gardner if he agreed with comments made by former Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney, who said “VC entry into games has been a trainwreck”

“In short, probably,” Gardner said. “We were one of the early ones to start with a dedicated game-focused fund. We had so much early success. That was during that massive rise in mobile. Unicorns [start-ups with a valuation of at least $1 billion] were made from that. And it attracted a huge amount of capital. And then of course, COVID. Hollywood had to shut down productions and gaming was going through the roof. So, billions and billions poured in, and basically teams thought, ‘Now we can just hire anybody and build anything.’ Because if you’d worked at Supercell or Riot, you’re going to get funded, and most investors weren’t from the games industry and they were just funding any of the names that came through.

“I remember when we had one of our first mega investments, so $100 million capital raised. The game shipped, and it did like $500,000 in revenue that month. It needed to do $10 million. We’d been on this project for five years. And it reminded me of why EA was criticized for not investing in new IP. You realize that when you’re spending $100 million on a game, it needs to work. You can’t just write it off.”

There are still VC-backed projects and studios to come to fruition. But Gardner said that VCs need to make roughly five times what they put in, and overall they’ve put in around $7 - $8 billion.

“So, we need $40 billion in exits,” he noted. “And we’ve had a few billion here and there. So, we’re going to see that on an aggregate basis, venture has overinvested in gaming.”

Increasingly, VC funds have pivoted to other industries, including games-focused ones like London Venture Partners. For instance, LVP has invested in a finance app called Rule, which has game-like elements but is actually about tracking a user’s spending.

“That’s more blue ocean,” he says. “1,000 games a day are being released. It’s a red ocean. It’s super hard. We are still doing some games, but they have to be an extraordinary team.”

VCs may have shifted away from game investment, but AI might unlock future funding, Gardner said. In particularly, he’s talking about games or platforms that incorporate AI to create new experiences.

“I’m not sure I’m inventive enough to describe it, but I think it’s going to feel like magic,” he said. “It’s going to be something where we partly do something as a player, and then the AI snaps that to a game flow and a logic that works, and that is fun. If music were an analogy, you might hum a few notes, and then it will create the symphony for you. I think that could be pretty magical.”

AI tools could also make game companies more investible in the future, Gardner added.

“These long, long, long development cycles are a problem. The only strength that a start-up really has is being nimble, and being able to move fast with a new idea. I do worry for the industry if we continue to have these mega long projects. This is a bit like what China’s doing in the car industry. Why do you need a five-year development cycle? They’re working on two-year development cycles. Now, in the old days, the output and quality wasn’t that good, but they’ve gone through so much learning, and now you’re like, “Oh, actually the car is better and faster.”

“AI and small teams… that is the new business model, at least for a new IP. You get in, you start the flywheel moving, your community, you get your cash flow coming in because people are spending. And then you go big. You don’t have to have a mega team. You have more and more AI agents running to help your development be productive.”

Gardner stressed that AI won’t lead to a better product, but it’ll help investors and businesses know faster whether something is working.

“If you’re heading in a bad direction, you will get there quicker,” Gardner added. “Can we compress getting to, ‘this is going to work’ from five years down to one year, which is how it used to be in mobile? One of the reasons we made a lot of money in that era, was it was half a million dollars to make a mobile game, and you needed to make six of them to find one that worked. So, $3 million would get you something that would make you $10, $50, $100 million.

“If we can get roughly down to a similar time, and under a million dollars to figure out whether something works, you can fund teams and afford a few million dollars risk, because the reward is going to be a $100 million franchise. If you can do that, then the game is back on. I’ve seen so many pitches that, more or less, is three to six-person teams with a full AI stack.”

But the technology only works if the team is good, he stressed.

“Can they get the quality? Are the individuals any good? Because the AI will just get them quicker to some place, whether it’s a good place or a bad place. My work as an investor is to figure out: is that team going to be able to nail it? Are they going to be able to understand what the customers will love? And can they even get along during the journey?”

He concluded: “We are going to have to wash through all the bad [AI] investments like we did with VR and Web3 and everything else. But humans are ultimately so greedy, but so optimistic. They all keep coming back for more. And we will get there.”

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New $100 million indie fund would take “minority share” of a game’s revenue

A $100 million VC fund that backs projects rather than studios will take a ‘minority share’ of a game’s revenue.

Griffin Gaming Partners announced its Special Opportunities Fund last week. It is a way for studios to secure VC funding without giving up equity. The fund has already backed fifteen titles, and it’s being run by Tim Bender, who is also CEO of publisher Hooded Horse.

“Very normal for this fund would be an investment in the $1 – $2.5 million range,” Bender told us on The Game Business Show. “There is going to be plenty that go lower, and plenty that go above. It’s really about what’s promising. You don’t want to take a smaller dev that can do it for $200,000 and say ‘let’s do it for $1m now’, because that can ruin projects. And there will be teams that might need a bit more.”

Griffin will take a share of the game’s revenue after release, and that share will vary depending on the scale of the investment.

“The common thing is it will always be a minority percentage. It should be something less than 50%. The idea is to participate alongside, to leave the studio fully incentivized, to leave them with all the cash-flow that they need to continue to invest in the game post-release, and make it the best it can be. So, always the minority share, but with the exact terms differing very greatly based on what’s fair, what’s needed, and what went into it before we got involved.”

Meanwhile…

• Nintendo’s share price dropped more than 9% after its financial results last week. The firm expects to ship 16.5 million Switch 2 units in its next financial year, which is a three million drop on the year before. Nintendo says this is due to stronger-than-expected sales in the first year, plus a global price rise on Switch 2. The console will soon cost $50 more in the US, ¥10,000 more in Japan, €30 more in Europe and $50 more in Canada.

• Sega has cancelled its ambitious Super Game project. The title was to combine Sega’s online capabilities with its library of major IPs. However, due to strong competition in online games, the firm has discontinued the project., Sega is also lowering its focus on free-to-play due to the weak performance of its Rovio business.

• The former face and leader of the Tekken series, Katsuhiro Harada, has formed a new studio with SNK. SNK VS Studio is based in Tokyo, and Harada will be its CEO. SNK is known for the The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Showdown games.

• Sony went into detail on how it’s using AI in game creation. CEO Hideaki Nishino believes AI will lead to fresh experiences, better discovery and will lower the barriers to entry for making games. In terms of how it uses AI, Nishino-san said AI is automating repetitive workloads, and accelerating areas like QA, 3D-modelling and animations. Studios such as Naughty Dog and San Diego studio are already utilizing AI tools.

• Capcom saw a rise in profits across all divisions for the ninth consecutive year, driven by Resident Evil Requiem, which has now sold seven million units worldwide. Older Resident Evil games also sold strongly during the period. Overall, Capcom sold over 59 million games, with 49.5 million coming from older releases.

• Sticking with Capcom, new IP Pragmata has now sold two million copies in 16 days. The game will be part of the publisher’s next financial year.

• The PC version of Forza Horizon 6 leaked over the weekend ahead of its May 19 release, with pirates cracking and sharing the full game online. In a statement, developer Playground Games says that any players caught playing the pirated version will face a ban from the entire Forza series.

• Nintendo legend Takashi Tezuka is retiring. Tezuka-san has worked on almost every major Mario game from Super Mario Bros right up to Super Mario Bros Wonder. He also played a major role in The Legend of Zelda and Pikmin series.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back next week where we’ll be joined by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks. Until then, thank you for reading.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
PlayStation’s Christian Svensson on…

• Getting games on PS5

• The rise of China and South Korea

• Funding for indie games

• Why the future is very bright

There are around 10,000 developers and publishers that work with PlayStation today.

The platform holder has five internal teams devoted to helping them, from providing dev kits and sharing best practices, to PR, marketing and even funding.

Sony says it’s a big investment. It’s one of the reasons it charges a 30% commission fee on games sold via its store. Attracting and supporting game developers on PS5 is costly.

But does it need to keep doing it? Xbox has scaled back its console business. Nintendo delivers mixed results for third-parties. And although Steam is a major platform, it’s also a saturated one that speaks to a slightly different audience. PlayStation is such a clear leader in this space, does it need to invest so much in external teams?

“If you look at PlayStation’s history, from the beginning we’ve been a very third-party focused ecosystem,” says Christian Svensson, VP of second and third-party content ventures and strategic initiatives at Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“If you talk to [SIE CEO] Nishino-san, who has a very product-led background, he’ll say, ‘PlayStation is just a plastic box without content.’ And third-parties are the lion’s share of the content. So, it is critical that we continue to lean in and drive, and be ambitious and bring new voices to the platform. If we ever stop doing that, the industry will stop growing. We have, as an industry leader, a responsibility to continue to drive and push and to grow the whole industry, not just our own business.”

Our chat with Svensson follows a question from one of our readers about working with PlayStation. How do you get a game on PS5? How do you get selected for PlayStation Plus? What about a slot in the State of Play broadcasts? Is there any funding available?

In today’s The Game Business, Svensson answers those questions, plus a lot more. And he tells us why he’s “super optimistic” about the future of the industry.

You can watch or listen to the conversation above, or check out our write-up below.

It starts with a form…

The journey for prospective PlayStation developers begins at partners.playstation.net. There they’ll find a form where they detail who they are, what they do and what they’re making.

“It is not an onerous experience,” insists Svensson.

“Once you’re registered, we have an ingestion form, where you can tell us more about your project, when’s it coming, you can submit pitch decks, trailers, builds, all sorts. And our Partner Development team actually goes through that.”

Doing this means that PlayStation is now tracking you.

“If we aren’t aware of your game, the opportunities on how we can work with you are very limited,” he adds. “This is the first triage point for how we manage those 10,000 partners with a very small team. [It means] we know what’s coming and can elevate to other teams across the business for where there are opportunities to engage.

“You can make asks of us. And, as we’re doing things like programming State of Play, as we’re doing things like funding opportunities, or grant opportunities, or participation in our indie days or any other content communications pieces, those are things that start [with that form].”

That includes PlayStation Plus, too. Although Svensson stresses that PlayStation doesn’t put many brand-new games into the subscription service.

“We do them largely for indies, and there’s probably between four and six a year that we focus on,” he says. “But again, it starts with our content intelligence piece and then flows from there.”

Finally, once the teams have signed up, they’re eligible for a free dev and test kit.

Funding isn’t core to what Sony does (but it does offer it)

For smaller developers, Svensson’s teams focus a lot on discovery, education and marketing. They host indie breakfasts at GDC and Gamescom, where they present to around 75 people and answer questions over coffee and pastries. And indie games frequently feature on the PlayStation blog and in State of Play broadcasts.

“We put indies on the same stage as our very biggest AAA partners,” Svensson says. “We don’t think them as less than, we think of them as an amazing complement to the breadth and depth story that needs to exist on our platform.”

But what about the thing that indie developers need most in 2026… money.

“On the funding side, I don’t want to diminish what we do,” Svensson begins. “We have funded either wholly or partially more than 120 projects this generation. But that is not the core of what we do. And that’s not counting Hero projects, by the way, which are separate [more on Hero projects below].

“We [also] have a small diversity set of funds that we issue every year. Again, it comes through the process of that initial submission. And we have a very small non-recoupable indie fund, which we deliver to have some content come to PlayStation that might not otherwise get to us.”

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The Hero projects are five to ten-year visions

PlayStation has been investing in new markets via its Hero Projects. Specifically, the company is helping to fund games from China, India, North Africa and the Middle East.

The console business is relatively small in these territories. China is big on mobile and PC, India is a mobile-first market, while North Africa and the Middle East are also heavily mobile (but some PC).

Svensson explains: “We need to build a community of developers that have experience and understanding of what it means to make games for PlayStation.

“This is a long-term play. There’s not a commercial near-term angle. This is growing the dev community first, get local content that hopefully resonates with local audiences, which helps grow the player community. And then it’s about, how do we bring regionally relevant voices to our globally, massively engaged audience? How do we expose that global audience to themes and content that they may not have had access to before?

“But these are five, 10-plus year visions for ecosystem growth, both from a supply side and a player side. “

Svensson says PlayStation has made big strides in China since the China Hero Project started in 2018.

“India, we’re a little bit further behind,” he adds. “The talent pool is there in a different way. We still have a lot of work to do, but its scale is promising. And Middle East and North Africa are a little bit further behind India in terms of the talent pipeline and experience.”

PlayStation shipped its first India Hero Project title last month called Fishbowl, but it’s not yet released a game from its MENA Hero Project.

“It’s an ongoing thing,” he says. “We’ve done three waves of China Hero Projects and we’re sourcing and getting ready for a fourth wave. We’re bringing on outside investment to help scale what we’re doing there. Similarly, we’re bringing in outside investment in Middle East and North Africa to scale some of the efforts that we’re making there. [We’re focused on] these three regions in the near term. Budgetarily, the investments are not insignificant, and we’re going to stay on the course while we continue to grow those regions.”

China and South Korea are exciting PlayStation

Svensson’s teams work with developers globally, and when we asked what’s exciting him in 2026, he immediately pointed to what’s going on in China and South Korea.

“The pace at which I’m seeing teams in China and South Korea move are astonishing,” he says. “The scale and the responsiveness in their approach, it’s something that we’re not necessarily seeing from some of our Western or even Japanese teams. It’s really impressive. The content that’s also coming from there is very different than the stuff that we’ve seen before, at least on PlayStation.

“It’s been exciting to see the evolution of what those teams are working on, and how they continually push each other. As large as the dev community is, they all know each other and they all talk. It’s interesting to see what their trends and trajectories are relative to Western dev communities. There’s a different dynamic there.”

PlayStation has no ‘genre plan’

PlayStation isn’t looking for specific game genres, Svensson insists.

“We want to see games with strong, original creative visions. There’s no genre plan. That doesn’t exist. We want to see strong points of view and strong visions. In the case of things that we fund, we also want to understand that the production discipline is there. That they’re resourced correctly and they’re thoughtful about how they’re planning their teams. What is the right scale of the team to achieve the vision? Are they being too ambitious? Is their budget too big? Is their timeline too long? Or is it the other way?

“And then it’s understanding a pathway to market. We work with so many developers that are great at making games, but they grossly underestimate the work it takes to stand out, to create resonance, to build community. Or they think about it way too late. They’re so heads down on making the game that they’ve missed the commercialization piece of the puzzle. And that’s a problem.”

PlayStation is wary of giving partners a heads-up on first-party launch dates

One thing I was interested to find out is whether Sony helps studios with their release windows.

For example, PlayStation is releasing Marvel’s Wolverine on September 15. So, before that date was announced, if a developer had come to PlayStation with a similar release timing, would they have said anything?

“Air traffic control we have to be very careful with,” he explains. “Games move all the time. You could tell a partner, ‘Hey, you might not want to be in the first half of September’, so they set their game in October… but then that big first-party game moves to that October date. You have to be very careful with that kind of telegraphing. It can come back to bite you.”

“We as an industry should be super optimistic”

Svensson and his five teams know what’s coming. They’re helping new studios and working on games that might define the future of the business. Therefore, his perspective on where the industry is heading might be useful.

“In the future there’s going to be more touch points with players than ever, and figuring out how to navigate the number of devices, the number of audience segments, and finding your audience for your game, that’s going to continue to be where the challenge is,” he says.

“I’m in an incredibly privileged position to have amazing visibility into what games will be for the next 3, 4, 5 years. I literally cannot explain to you… last year was an amazing year for games. This year will be even better. Next year will be better still. The trajectory of content is unbelievably positive. And we as an industry should be super optimistic about where we’re going in spite of the headwinds.”

As we’ve discussed on The Game Business before, the challenges the industry is facing today is based on decisions made five years ago. And the decisions that are being made today won’t necessarily be seen for another half a decade.

“And obviously the decisions we’re making now take into account where we are at this moment,” Svensson concludes “We’re anticipating where we’re going to be. There are no dire times for the industry ahead as far as I’m concerned. Very smart decisions are being made by our partners and by platforms. Be more comfortable than you think you should be.”

That’s it for today. We’ll be back on Thursday where we will be joined by one of the world’s most successful video game VCs. Until then, thank you for reading.

It’s Micro time! Our round-up of the big stories of the week, and what we made of them.

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Today, we’re going to look at the big Nintendo and PlayStation financials, and run through some of the key headlines from the past seven days.

Enjoy!

Nintendo to raise Switch 2 price and predicts console sales slowdown

In Brief: Nintendo will increase the price of Nintendo Switch 2 by $50 in the US, ¥10,000 in Japan, €30 in Europe and $50 in Canada due to the rising component prices. The firm had shipped nearly 20 million Switch 2 in its last financial year, and expects to ship 16.5 million in its next financial year.

What You Need To Know:

• The Switch 2 price rise begins May 25 in Japan, and September 1 in US, Canada and Europe.

• In Japan, Nintendo is also raising prices of Nintendo Switch Online. A one-month membership will now cost ¥400, up from ¥306.

• Nintendo Switch 2 has shipped 19.86 million units since June last year. That’s five million more than its initial forecast, and nearly one million more than its revised forecast from November 2025. It remains the fastest selling games console, ahead of Switch 1, PS4 and PS5.

• Nintendo says that a combination of price rises, and an unusually big first year, means it expects Switch 2 will sell 16.5 million consoles in its next financial year, which is a year-on-year drop of three million units. However, across the two years – assuming it hits this target – it will still be tracking ahead of Switch 1.

• On Switch 2, Mario Kart World has sold 14.7 million units, Donkey Kong Bananza has sold 4.5 million, Pokémon Legends: Z-A has sold 3.94 million, Pokémon Pokopia has sold four million and Kirby Air Riders has sold 1.87 million.

• On Switch 1, the new Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream has sold 3.8 million units in just two weeks, with 60% of its players coming from Switch 1. Meanwhile, the ports of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen have sold a combined four million copies.

• In total, Nintendo sales are up nearly 99% to $14.6 billion, with a profit of $2.2 billion (up 27.5%). For the next financial year, it expects $13.3 billion in sales (down 11.4%), but profit of $2.3 billion (up 2.7%).

• Nintendo saw digital sales increase 25% year-over-year, which will prove a key metric in its commercial growth.

• Upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games includes Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Starfox, Splatoon Raiders, and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.

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