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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.

This is just for paid subscribers to The Game Business. Paid subscriptions get you our week Micro newsletter and podcast, plus a monthly market report (and ‘free’ access to The Game Business Live events). It also helps support our normal newsletters and podcasts, which remain completely free and come out every Tuesday and Thursday.

You can find out more about all that below.

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.

Read more

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In This Edition,

• The Circana US charts are changing

• More on game exclusives

• Can a price drop save Game Pass?

• GTA players in for console price shock

Hello there. Welcome back to this week’s The Game Business.

At one point, this week’s edition was going to be so big that I wasn’t sure how we were going to fit it all in. But embargoes move and plans change. We ended up covering the PlayStation UK case yesterday (although it is still in today’s Show), and another piece has shifted back a week.

But I’m not especially disappointed, because that means we can 100% focus on our chat with Mat Piscatella, the senior director and top games analyst at US charts company Circana. We had a wonderful conversation on today’s edition of The Game Business Show, and I’ve written up some of his opinions, data points and observations in the article below. Including news of a change to the US video game charts.

Enjoy!

Next month’s US games charts will look a little different

The US video games chart company is changing how it’s doing its monthly charts and will now include projected digital sales figures.

The current chart from Circana covers all physical games, plus digital games data supplied by publishers. But not all publishers share their download data, which means certain titles are missed, or only physical sales are counted.

Speaking to The Game Business, Circana’s games boss Mat Piscatella says that from next month they’ll be running a chart that will look to cover the whole market. The company believes it can accurately estimate how certain games are selling based on the data it receives.

“We’ve been doing these the best-selling titles charts forever,” Piscatella told us. “We’re going to be moving towards a projected total market number for those top titles starting next month. So, no asterisks and dots around physical-only or whatever. We’ll be moving towards a complete projected list. Hopefully people will get a more accurate picture of what’s selling out here in the old US of A.”

Piscatella has already posted how the charts might differ. For March 2026, MLB: The Show 26 was the No.1 game according to Circana’s initial chart, but under its new projected model, Crimson Desert would have been No.1. Slay The Spire 2 would have also made the chart at No.7, and Pokémon Pokopia would have charted higher at No.3.

PS5 enjoys biggest week of the year so far, followed by its lowest

PlayStation 5 US sales reached a 2026 high in March, followed immediately by a 2026 low.

Speaking on today’s The Game Business Show, Piscatella was discussing a strong March for sales of video games and hardware, which included Sony’s flagship console.

“The price increase really boosted PlayStation 5 hardware at the end of the month. It had the biggest week of the year the week the announcement came out, and then subsequently had its two lowest weeks of performance since,” he said.

He added: “We’ve seen an immediate impact on the demand for PlayStation 5 hardware because of that price increase. But it could just be an issue of some demand being pulled forward between the announcement and the implementation of the price increase. These things take time to balance out.”

‘GTA 6 buyers are in for a shock at new console prices’

The PS5 price rise was certainly steep, and Piscatella expects a large number of players to be stunned by console prices when Grand Theft Auto 6 finally arrives.

“Those folks who don’t pay a lot of attention, but have heard that GTA is coming, and that’s a lot of people, they will show up and go, “GTA is finally out. I’m going to pick it up.” And then… “A $1,000 console!” There’s going to be a price shock for a lot of people. And yeah, I said $1,000 because I’ve just already assumed we’re going to get more price increases. I hope we don’t.

“What’s going on across pricing in the US has made the console audience shift towards higher income households really quite rapidly. Well over half of video game hardware buyers are $100,000-plus household income level. And the average price of hardware has gone from $250 in 2019, and we’re probably going to exceed $500 just a few years later. All the dynamics of the console market have changed quite dramatically in these last few years. It’s no longer a mass market video game device; it’s a video game device targeted to high income households. It’s a whole different economic picture too, which blows everything up.”

“Exclusives do matter, but not as much as some folks say”

Piscatella and I decided it was time to put the debate around video game exclusives to bed.

There is a lot of discourse around the possibility of Xbox shifting away from releasing games on PlayStation, and PlayStation scaling back its plans for PC. It’s the apparent return of exclusives. But do exclusives really matter?

“Exclusives do matter, but they don’t matter as much as a lot of folks say they do,” Piscatella told us. “I’ve been saying that for a while, and get yelled at about it sometimes, but it’s true. It matters to some folks and it doesn’t matter to others. [Non-exclusive game] EA Sports College Football, when that showed up in the US, was one of the biggest drivers of hardware we’ve seen in years.

“It’s a hearts and minds issue, as Jeff Gerstmann put it on his latest podcast. It’s a perception issue. It’s a positioning issue. It’s a marketing and brand issue, even more than it is a consumer demand one.”

Last week, we shared Circana survey data that revealed that the No.1 reason US gamers play on consoles is for exclusive games, with 41% citing that as the main reason for playing on Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo.

“But it wasn’t that far ahead of other things like, ‘that’s where my friends are’ and ‘I like buying physical discs’ and some of these other reasons,” Piscatella observed. “Everything matters to an extent.”

PlayStation had been releasing some of its single-player games on PC a few years after release. And Piscatella said he didn’t see anything in the data to suggest it hurt PS5 sales.

“It had no impact at all on PlayStation sales. We didn’t see a drop in PlayStation 5 momentum because these games were all of a sudden available on PC later. There was no blip whatsoever, and I really don’t think when those games aren’t on PC any longer, we’re going to see a positive blip. I don’t think it matters when it comes to console demand.

“However, it does matter to perception, right? If your marketing message and your brand positioning is, “We have all this cool stuff. Look at us.” Okay, well then that’s a different question. You’re trying to raise the overall profile of the thing you’re trying to sell.

“We tend to get a little too in the weeds on this stuff when more than 60% of people who turned on their PlayStation last year played Fortnite at least once, and there’s no exclusive in the Top 20 games by that metric.”

Of course, with console hardware continuing to rise in price, the conversation might be irrelevant when it comes to future generations.

“If the next generation devices are four figures, or $1,200… because that’s possible, then this whole conversation is kind of moot because these games are still expensive [to make]. You’re going to have to find audience, and if you’re selling a $1,200 box, you’re not going to achieve the same install base you would when they were $600. You’re just not. So, making back some of these investment costs on these big games, you’ve got to go where the market is.”

Call of Duty on Game Pass didn’t really benefit Xbox long-term

Circana has been reporting a rise in subscription revenue over the last two years, helped by price increases and the launch of Switch 2.

So, what does he make of Xbox’s decision to lower the cost of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99?

“It’s a big drop,” Piscatella said. “It makes sense pulling Call of Duty out because Call of Duty had a moderate impact at launch, but didn’t really impact anything long-term. It didn’t make a lick of difference on hardware sales when it made it to Game Pass, at least in the US. So pulling that out makes a lot of sense, making it more reasonably priced makes a lot of sense. But that’s a big percentage price drop, and are they going to make up for that by a huge influx of new subscribers? Microsoft signalled that they were expecting a revenue decline from Game Pass in the next quarter because of the price increase.

“It should help subscriber numbers, but is it going to help push the revenue higher? Does it have to? And what difference will it really make to Call of Duty sales? I’m of the position that the impact of Game Pass on Call of Duty sales volume was much lower than a lot of people seem to think. I think it’s being used as an excuse more than anything for the performance of the game. But we will see. The proof will be this holiday.”

Ultimately, Game Pass hasn’t been able to appeal to the mass market player.

“Game Pass might just be for that super dedicated player that wants to dabble in everything, whereas the average Call of Duty player plays Call of Duty, maybe Madden, maybe EA FC, and that’s it. That’s all they care about. Maybe Fortnite.”

He added: “[Xbox] tried to make this huge umbrella to try to get to that three billion gamers worldwide target that [former Xbox boss] Phil Spencer was talking about. Most of the people didn’t want to be under the umbrella. And now they’re trying to reposition to do the best they can with the people that really want to play those games. And hopefully they can figure it out.”

Meanwhile…

• VC firm Griffin Gaming Partners has launched a new $100 million fund for indie game. The Special Opportunities Fund provides funding in exchange for a share of a game’s revenue. The fund is led by Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender.

• Xbox have made some leadership changes around its platform business, these include new recruits and promotions. Jared Palmer, former CoreAI vice president of product and a senior VP of GitHub, has been named VP of Xbox Engineering. Former CoreAI president of design Tim Allen has been named CVP of Xbox Design. Jonathan McKay, previously a director at Meta and head of growth for ChatGPT and OpenAI, is now head of growth at Xbox. Evan Chaki, who had been general manager at CoreAI, will by general manager of transformation. And David Schloss, former Instacart senior director of product and growth, is head of Xbox subscriptions and cloud.
  
  There were some promotions and new roles, too. Jason Ronald is now accountable for Project Helix and the Xbox platform. Jason Beaumont, VP of Xbox experiences, will lead product and services. Fatima Kardar will remain VP of gaming AI and will lead a ‘newly formed personalization organisation’. And Jennifer Creegan, VP of strategy, business model, and insights, will now lead Xbox’s media business.

  
  There are some departures. Corporate vice president Kevin Gammill, who was part of the Xbox user experience team, is leaving. As is Roanne Sones, who was corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem. She will be shifting to an advisor role.

• In addition, Xbox is winding down Gaming Copilot on mobile and halting its development on console. The firm announced in March that Gaming Copilot would be available on console this year. It launched it in beta on PC, mobile and the ROG Ally handheld in 2025.

• Build A Rocket Boy has reportedly laid off a further 170 employees across level design, audio, QA and social. It follows the disastrous launch of the action game MindsEye in June 2025.

• Epic Games and Disney have launched creation tools that allow fans to develop their own Star Wars games within Fortnite. It includes gameplay features, templates and assets, such as characters, locations, vehicles and weapons from previous Star Wars/Fortnite collaborations.

• Remedy reported a slight drop in Q1 revenue, down 1.9% to €13.1 million Euros, and a 23% drop in profit to €1 million. In more positive news, the original Control saw a rise in sales year-on-year and has now surpassed six million sales.

• Atari has acquired the rights to the first five Wizardry games and the overall IP. The five titles it now owns includes 1981’s Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, 1982’s Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds, 1983’s Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn, 1987’s Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna and 1988’s Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

• Roblox has lowered its annual growth outlook due to the introduction of mandatory age checks and new safety measures. The firm’s Q1 revenue was up 39% to $1.4 billion, while net losses widened to $248 million compared with the $216 million the year before. However, due to the introduction of new age checks and verification, the company now expects full year revenue growth to be between 20 to 25%. As a result of this change, Roblox’s share price fell over 20%.

• Capcom has revised upwards its 2025 financial year forecast due to stronger-than-expected sales of Resident Evil Requiem. The publisher now expects net sales of $1.22 billion, which is up 2.8% from the previous forecast, and a net income of $342 million, which is up 6.9%.

• Sticking with Capcom, the company’s new IP Pragmata has now sold over two million copies in just over two weeks.

• Rebellion’s Atomfall is being turned into a TV series. The post-apocalyptic game set in the UK’s Lake District received solid reviews upon release last year, and has since won a BAFTA for Best British Game. It has also attracted 3.7 million players, boosted by its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass.

• The Steam Early Access release of Subnautica 2 has been set for May 14. The game is No.1 in the Steam Wishlists charts with more than four million wishlists.

That’s it for today’s edition. Join us next week for more big news and interviews. Until then, thank you for reading.

A major $2.6 billion class action lawsuit over PlayStation game pricing ends this week, which could force Sony to alter its business model.

The lawsuit was brought about by Alex Neill, who is representing consumers that purchased PlayStation digital content between August 2016 and February 2026. The action accuses PlayStation of having a ‘near monopoly’ on digital games and add-on content on PlayStation platforms. The case asserts that Sony sets strict terms and conditions on developers, and charges a 30% commission on every purchase, which results in “excessive and unfair prices”. It claims the prices are out of proportion to the costs.

Sony’s counter-argument is that there is sufficient competition against its store and platform, and that the fees it charges developers allows it to sell hardware at a lower price to consumers.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is Alex Neill arguing?

Put simply, that Sony has been “ripping off” customers by charging a 30% commission on every digital purchase through its store. The case argues that Sony has a dominant position and is in breach of consumer law. Neill says that PlayStation has a near monopoly on digital game sales on its own platform.

Is it a monopoly?

The lawsuit argues that for owners of PS5, the only place they can buy digital video games is via the PlayStation Store. The counter to this argument is that most of the bigger PS5 games are still available via physical retailers, and PlayStation does have competitors in the digital space via other platforms. For instance, EA Sports FC 26 (last year’s best-selling UK video game) is available to buy via physical retailers, and via digital Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation and PC stores (plus streaming services). PlayStation would argue that this competition keeps the company honest, because if it charged more than its rivals, it would potentially lose customers to these other platforms and stores.

Didn’t Apple lose a similar case?

You are referring to Kent v Apple. In this case, Dr Rachel Kent successfully won a lawsuit that stated Apple’s 30% cut on App Store purchases was unfair. The Competition Appeal Tribunal concluded that Apple should lower its commission rates for developers and was found liable to pay £1.5 billion in damages to UK users of iPhone and iPad. The case that Alex Neill has put forward is basically the same.

Why is this any different?

It is similar, but there are a few key differences. Apple is one of just two main competitors in the mobile space (alongside Google). It’s often referred to as a duopoly. That’s not the case in the video game console market.

The bigger argument is around the costs associated with the PlayStation business. Unlike mobile, PlayStation is primarily a video games machine. It isn’t an essential item like a mobile phone. Therefore, Sony invests in marketing and promotional activity to bring in customers and support publishers. This comes at a price. PS5 consoles are sold at very low margins (and even at a slight loss). The idea is that the hardware is kept as low as possible to make games accessible to the widest audience, and then the profit is made up via the 30% fee imposed on the software sales.

PlayStation’s overall profit margin is typically between 9 and 10%.

Why can’t we have multiple digital stores on PlayStation?

PlayStation argues this would negatively impact the consumer experience, and pose security and privacy risks for consumers. Apple and Google have made similar arguments in its cases.

If PlayStation lose, will this result in cheaper games?

Alongside a financial payment for PlayStation users, the company may (if regulatory scrutiny follows) be forced to change the fees it charges developers. This theoretically could result in developers and publishers reducing the price of their games.

If PlayStation sees its margins erode on the software side, it could choose to increase the price of the consoles instead. After recent price increases caused by a worldwide shortage in RAM, this would be a tough pill to swallow for PlayStation.

What about the rest of the world?

This trial is only in the UK for now, but there are similar class actions in Australia, Netherlands and Portugal at an earlier stage. There is also another class action lawsuit in the US. This lawsuit focuses more on the fact that Sony no-longer allows for the sale of game-specific vouchers that allow other stores to sell digital PlayStation products. In this case, the court has preliminarily approved a $7.85 million settlement. However, the court has not decided if the company has actually violated any laws.

When will we know the outcome?

The closing arguments are being made this week (Friday, May 8). The Competition Appeal Tribunal typically hands down its decisions between three to 18 months after the conclusion of the trial.

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In This Edition,
IO Interactive’s Hakan Abrak on…

• 007 First Light ambitions

• Working with Amazon

• Lessons from MindsEye

• The future of Hitman

In a rare break from interviews and market data, I was invited to a video game preview event last month.

It was to play 007 First Light, the long-awaited video game return of James Bond. And I had a blast. If the three hours I played is indicative of the entire experience, then we’ve got something quite special here.

Now I spoke to Hakan Abrak, the CEO of developer IO Interactive last year about the studio’s approach to making games, including Bond and its flagship Hitman series. But a lot has happened in 12 months. Not just with 007, but also across Hitman, its third-party publishing business and the mysterious Project Fantasy. So, I was pleased to welcome Abrak back to discuss all this and more.

You can watch or listen to the full interview above. Or alternatively, keep reading for my selected highlights.

GTA 6 delay gave 007 First Light breathing room

007 First Light was originally scheduled for March. At that time, the game was arriving just a few months before Grand Theft Auto 6. But then the Rockstar title was delayed six months, and Bond quickly moved into its vacated position.

“It would be a lie if I said, ‘no, I don’t care’,” says IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak. “GTA is a huge behemoth in our industry. And that it got pushed gave us a bit more breathing room, and as you know, we also pushed the game just to make sure it gets the extra polish in. So, all that could then happen. We appreciate that. We never wish anyone ill. They have their good reasons for pushing it. I am certain it’s going be amazing.”

007 First Light (probably) didn’t cost as much as you think

007 First Light has been in development for seven years, features a starry cast, and an extensive marketing campaign. It looks extremely expensive, but we know from our interview with Abrak last year that IO Interactive tries to be cautious when it comes to budgets. So, are looks deceiving?

“This is the most ambitious project for IO Interactive, and also budget-wise,” Abrak says upfront. “But there is a thing in the industry right now around the success of the AA. You know, ‘how are we going to make money with these big [AAA] budgets in the industry today?’ And there are quite a few people coming to me and saying, ‘oh, I’m sure you’re hoping you can recoup.’ When it comes to building something quality and sustainable, I think we have proven that our approach, and concept, with our engine, and with the way our talent works, that not only do we deliver AAA single player games, but we build a community.

“I’m really happy about the feedback that they can see this is one up on what we’ve done before. But with our engine and efficiency…. it is a very expensive project for us. It’s our most expensive. And I’m not going to talk about exact numbers now. But I’m looking forward to talking about it, because these games can be done for half of what you hear about out there.

“It’s about bang for the buck. It’s about who is your team? It’s about what are you producing? What is your basis? And it’s not about, if you haven’t recouped in the first three months, you are doomed, or it’s over. Or if you did [recoup], then it’s onto the next one. That’s not how we think. We really think of this as a journey. It doesn’t matter if it’s multiplayer or single player.”

Abrak hopeful of more Bond games

Mid-way through the development of 007 First Light, the owners of James Bond changed and Amazon took full control of the IP.

“There’s always some settling to do,” Abrak admits. “There are new people that you have to talk to. But when that change happened, they were very, very impressed with what we had at that point already. And we just got into the collaboration, with all the beats and planning we had to do for the marketing.

“One constant partner from MGM, and MGM Amazon now, has been our executive producer from the other side. He’s been there from day one and is still here, and he’s been a pivotal anchor point.

“But from Amazon’s side, I’ll be so bold and say, they can see it’s a great game. And having invested and taken over that IP, they obviously want to make sure that everything that comes out is great. So, once they got into it and played, they became huge supporters. And we are very grateful for that.”

IO Interactive has an iterative approach to game development. With the firm’s recent Hitman trilogy, each sequel was made for a lower cost than the previous one through careful reuse of assets and technology. My assumption is that it’ll want to repeat that process with 007. But Bond’s new owners will have different ideas and plans to the previous regime. So, is Abrak confident he’ll get a sequel?

“We have a great relationship,” Abrak reiterates. “We are all about quality and to stand by what we do. And I think Amazon is in the same place. There’s no doubt that we all want to see how this is doing. It’s not only Amazon MGM side, is also IO Interactive side. Is our character going to be well received? Is there going to be a community that likes him and wants to see more?

“I’m so grateful given the stories we hear every day in this industry. We are so blessed that we are in a place where we can pick and choose what we want to do. So, if this goes really well and it’s a beloved thing from the community, why not?”

007 is already running on Nintendo Switch 2

IO Interactive was an early supporter of Nintendo Switch 2 with a port of Hitman World of Assassination at launch. The title didn’t chart highly, but Abrak tells us that it has had “steady, ongoing sales, and it’s an important platform for us.”

007 First Light is also coming to Switch 2, but it’s been delayed and is now arriving after the PlayStation, Xbox and PC versions. I had to ask, is this game about to do a Borderlands 4?

“What did Borderlands 4 do?” Abrak asks.

“The game got delayed and then disappeared.”

“It’s running on the Switch 2,” he responds. “We just want to make sure it’s good as it can be. I don’t want to hear it wasn’t a good version. To be completely honest, we need a bit more time to get it where we want it to be. We said summer. It’s probably going be late summer. But we’re going to get it out.”

He adds: “Bond has a special place on Nintendo. And I promise I will do everything I can, and I can do quite a lot being the CEO, to get that in a great shape.”

After the MindsEye disaster, what’s next for IO’s publishing business?

In late 2024, IO Interactive introduced IOI Partners, a third-party publishing business that works on external projects. Its first game was MindsEye by Build A Rocket Boy, a game that had a disastrous launch both critically and commercially last year, and the repercussions continue to this day.

IO ended its publishing agreement with MindsEye in March. Has the experience put the team off signing more games?

“We have a little team on IOI Partners, which is a different thing than IO interactive,” Abrak begins. “I don’t think it has put us off publishing. Those guys were working really hard and it didn’t pan out how they expected, and how we wished either.

“But it was a light distribution deal. If we are to do this in the future, we might want to be more involved in the production gates, or creative processes. But if you want to be part of that process, that obviously means a deeper commitment financially. That’s probably not a distribution-only arrangement. It’s a publisher deal. Something like that we haven’t done before, whether we do that in the future, I don’t know. We have many great plans and new projects coming in context of IO Interactive. The main thing we are about, just to make that clear, is to get our own creations into existence and publish them and distribute them ourselves, and have this close relationship with the community.”

Project Fantasy is safe despite Xbox reports

Once Bond is released, attention then turns to IO’s mysterious online RPG Project Fantasy.

The game had been backed by an undisclosed financial partner, which is reported to be Xbox (as leaked by FTC documents related to the Activision Blizzard acquisition). However, last year Xbox ended most of its third-party partnerships, and is only fully funding a small number of external productions (including Hideo Kojima’s OD game).

“So, first of all, I’m not going to answer what partner it is. I’m not going to confirm or deny anything,” Abrak says. “To the second part of the question, it is in a very healthy place, it’s still financed, and it’s amazing.”

IO will return to Hitman in a big way

Hitman World of Assassination continues to get updates, including limited-time missions featuring celebrities such as Eminem. But it’s been five years since Hitman 3, and IO has spent most of that time on Bond and Project Fantasy.

“It’s the curse of being ambitious sometimes. Bond is a very different game to Hitman, and building that core loop, and that core platform foundation, with whole new systems… that is very, very hard,” Abrak says. “And we just chose to do two of those at the same time.

“Now we are getting towards the end, Bond is being launched in mere weeks from now, and we are very far with the Fantasy project. Being on this side, we are looking forward to get into the weeds with Hitman again. Rest assured we cannot wait to get into the engine room and upgrade, invent and innovate with Hitman.”

Who would win in a fight: Agent 007 or Agent 47?

“That’s a nasty question,” Abrak laughs. “I think it depends on the environment. If there is a premeditation and planning, Agent 47. If it’s improvisation, 007.”

Thank you for joining us today. We will be back on Thursday with a bumper news edition, featuring some big stories, including the return of Circana’s Mat Piscatella on the podcast. Also, we have a bonus newsletter set for tomorrow! Until then, thank you for reading.

Not the busiest week for stories, although we’ve had a few financial results come out. And my favourite story is Capcom revising upwards its financial forecasts after delivering big numbers on Resident Evil Requiem (and that’s even without Pragmata’s recent succcessd).

As a reminder, our Micro newsletters/podcasts are for paid subscribers of The Game Business. And paid supporters can come to our event, The Game Business Live, for no extra cost. It’s on June 8 at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and features talks from Laura Miele (EA), Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog co-founder) and Matthew Ball (top industry analyst). Want to come? Click on the link further down.

Anyway, back to the news!

Capcom keeps on delivering

In Brief: Capcom has revised upwards its 2025 financial year forecast due to stronger-than-expected sales of Resident Evil Requiem. The publisher now expects net sales of $1.22 billion, which is up 2.8% from the previous forecast, and a net income of $342 million, which is up 6.9%.

What You Need To Know:

• Resident Evil Requiem has sold seven million copies worldwide, making it the fastest-selling game in the series to-date by a big margin.

• In the US, it is already in the Top Five best-selling Resident Evil games of all time, behind Resident Evil 5, the remake of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village and the original Resident Evil 4 (Circana data).

• Requiem reviewed very well, with an 89 Metacritic score, and a ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating on Steam.

• Although not part of the same financial year, Capcom’s new IP Pragmata has sold one million copies in two days, and early data suggests the game had a strong second week on the market, too.

Read more

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: March 2026

The headline numbers for February looked good, but really a lot of the success was on Resident Evil Requiem and game subscription services.

For March, there were a wider variety of winners across PC and console, including sports games WWE 2K26 and MLB: The Show 25, new IP Crimson Desert, and Nintendo Switch 2 enjoyed a strong boost on the back of Pokémon Pokopia.

There was also more growth for subscription, plus Resident Evil Requiem continued to do exceptionally well.

New games MLB: The Show, Crimson Desert and Pokémon Pokopia drives the market

There was an abundance of new games in the charts across all platforms, and most of them performed strongly.

Here are the key details:

Read more

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In This Edition,

• Are exclusives coming back?

• The state of influencer marketing

• Nightdive’s Atari boost

Hello and welcome back. I hope you’re having a lovely week.

We have a busy one for you today. In this edition, we dive into the data around exclusive games and discuss why PlayStation might be pulling back from PC releases… and whether Xbox should keep putting games on other consoles.

Our big guest on the Show is Jake Kulkowski. Jake is a top influencer specialist who has come up in two separate interviews we did this year (first by the Mewgenics devs, and then the Dispatch team). So, we thought, let’s have him on to chat influencer PR and marketing.

Along with Jake, we have a mini-interview with Larry Kuperman of Nightdive Studios. Larry has just retired from the remaster and remake specialist, but we managed to grab one final chat with him about the retro scene.

As always, you can listen to all this on the Show above. Or check out our highlights below.

Enjoy!

The return of the exclusive?

PlayStation and Xbox are reportedly reconsidering their multiplatform strategies.

Releasing game across all platforms has become a priority for big game publishers. Development costs have risen and the console space is showing signs of slowdown. As a result, third-party companies have been aggressively pursuing a multiplatform strategy, with an increased focus on PC, streaming, Nintendo and even mobile.

But it’s not just been third-party publishers. Xbox has been releasing all of its games on PC for almost a decade, and has started regularly publishing on PlayStation and Nintendo, too. Meanwhile, Sony has been releasing its multiplayer games – such as Helldivers 2 and Marathon – across Xbox and PC. And it’s also been launching its well-known single player titles, including God of War and Spider-Man, on PC (albeit, a few years after the PlayStation versions).

Now, Xbox is openly re-evaluating its exclusivity plans. And according to reports, PlayStation is planning to keep its single-player games exclusive to its consoles going forward.

So, what’s changed?

Exclusives sell consoles

According to Circana’s Q1 2026 consumer survey, 41% of US gamers say they play on a console because of exclusive games. That is a drop of 8 percentage points on Q1 last year, but it’s still the No.1 reason people choose to play games on PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox. The No.2 reason people choose to play on a console is because friends and family also play on it (38%).

Looking at sales and player data, we can see that exclusives do drive sales. This is most notably true with Nintendo, but it’s the case with PlayStation, too.

In November 2022, with the release of God of War Ragnarok, PS5 saw a significant spike in sales in Japan and the UK. During the week of release, PS5 sales jumped 116% in Japan (Famitsu data). Meanwhile in the UK, 38% of all PS5s sold that month were of the God of War Ragnarok hardware bundle (Nielsen IQ data).

It does fluctuate over time. 2025’s Ghost of Yotei and 2023’s Spider-Man 2 did have some impact on hardware sales, but it wasn’t as significant as God of War.

But the biggest driver of PlayStation hardware is actually non-exclusive third-party games. Titles like Call of Duty, FIFA and NBA dominate the PlayStation charts. In October 2023, the same month Spider-Man 2 came out, over half of all PS5s sold in the UK were bundled with a copy of FIFA 24.

Exclusives are important on PlayStation, and they’re a key differentiator. But for the majority of PS5 owners, exclusives are not the primary motivating factor behind buying the hardware. By contrast, Nintendo consoles are primarily driven by first-party exclusives.

Is PC a rival to consoles?

PlayStation has been releasing many of its single-player games on PC a year or two after their initial release.

This might appear to undermine the appeal of the console, but data shows that PC and console players can be quite different.

48% of spend on PC games is via microtransactions, and 29% of spend is on premium games (Newzoo data). The numbers are almost reversed on console, with 50% of spending going on premium games and 27% on microtransactions.

Newzoo data shows that 75% of console revenue comes from $50+ games. On PC, the cheaper games perform better. The sub-$30 category accounts for 30% of PC games revenue, whereas it’s just single digits on console.

Console players are focused on a smaller set of major franchises, they like AAA, annual sports games and live-service shooters. PC players spread their time across more games, buy at lower price points and are more active with indie games.

There is clearly some overlap between PC and console on the AAA end. But overall, PC players and console players behave differently. Therefore, releasing PlayStation games on PC (after a window of console exclusivity) makes strategic sense. There’s an audience that Sony isn’t speaking to on PC. So, it’s unlikely to have a major impact on console sales, and could potentially unlock more revenue and players for Sony’s big franchises.

Has it worked?

The results are mixed. When it comes to the live service games, PlayStation has seen huge success on PC (and even Xbox). Helldivers 2 had 7.9 million players in March 2024 (Ampere data), and the majority of those (4.6. million) were on PC. It’s similar with last month’s Marathon. According to Ampere, Marathon attracted over 2.2 million players during its launch month, with 1.1 million on PC, 660,000 on PS5 and 525,000 on Xbox.

But the single-player results are less impressive. God of War Ragnarok attracted just 300,000 players on PC in its launch month (by comparison, its PS5/PS4 launch brought in 6.9 million players). The PC release of Spider-Man 2 saw just 260,000 players at launch. Horizon: Forbidden West hit just 230,000 players. One single-player title that performed better was Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut, which saw 710,000 monthly players when it launched.

Of course, it must be noted that these PC games launched long after their console counterparts, and once the main marketing campaigns had finished.

Is Xbox likely to change course?

Unlike PlayStation, Xbox does release games on PC and console at the same time. But again, the results have been mixed.

Starfield did well on PC, selling over two million games on Steam back in September 2023 (Ampere). But if we look at last year’s games, the results were less-than-impressive. Avowed had just 140,000 players at launch, The Outer Worlds 2 peaked at 170,000, while Indiana Jone and the Great Circle reached just 240,000. Steam isn’t all about the launch period, and PC Game Pass figures are not included, but even so, these are soft numbers.

Nevertheless, Xbox has made PC a major part of its strategy, and it’s unlikely the company will reverse course on the platform. But what about PlayStation? Is putting games on PS5 working?

The data is generally positive. The company released Forza Horizon 5 on PlayStation last year and it was a smash hit, immediately bringing in millions of players. Sea of Thieves also attracted over two million players when it launched in 2024. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle also did reasonably well. 400,000 people played that game on PS5 during its launch in April 2025 (Ampere), which meant the PS5 launch was bigger than the PC launch.

It hasn’t all worked. The Outer Worlds 2 and the recent Starfield launch were more muted. But overall, the results have been solid.

But the challenge for Xbox is the collapse of its console business. Sales of Xbox Series S and X has fallen sharply, as has the number of active Xbox machines. In a memo to staff, Xbox leaders Asha Sharma and Matt Booty said that it wanted to stabilize the console and maintain “a healthy and high-quality base”.

Could a return to some form of exclusivity, or perhaps windowing, help achieve that goal? The Circana data suggests exclusives are a major motivator for players on console. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Xbox experiment with not releasing one of its upcoming titles on PS5.

Are exclusives coming back?

After several years of experimentation, it’s understandable that PlayStation and Xbox will start reviewing what’s working and what isn’t.

Releasing single-player PS5 games on PC appears relatively low-risk right now. But with the rise of PC-based handhelds and consoles (including the next Xbox and the upcoming Steam Machine), the availability of PlayStation games on these devices might weaken the appeal of Sony’s hardware.

So, the question becomes, is it worth it? And the data suggests, for a lot of its games, it isn’t. PS5 games on Steam, outside of live-service shooters, simply aren’t selling in high numbers. There may be games in the future where it is worth it. If Sony has a game for Chinese players, for instance, then a PC version would be sensible. But for now, the opportunity size doesn’t seem to be worth the investment, particularly if it harms how the console is perceived by the audience.

It’s a little different for Xbox. Series S and X is in last place and languishing. What’s more, the profit margins on Xbox’s first-party games are impacted by their inclusion in the Game Pass subscription service. Putting its games on PlayStation not only widens the audience considerably, it’s also an audience that will buy the games at a premium price point.

Xbox says its ‘North Star’ is daily active players and releasing games on PlayStation will help it grow that number. But it will come at the expense of its platform and services. In its memo to staff, Xbox says it “will build a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere.” And the best way to get players to use that global platform is by putting games on it that they can’t get anywhere else.

Therefore, I expect both companies will be more strategic when it comes to their multiplatform approach in the future.

Four Things we learned from influencer expert Jake Kulkowski

In today’s The Game Business Show, Guillotine boss Jake Kulkowski shared with us his insight into the changing world of game influencers. Guillotine is a specialist influencer agency that works with big clients like Sega and Bandai Namco, and also on major indie projects such as Mewgenics and Dispatch.

The whole conversation is worth listening to above. But here are the key things I took away from the conversation.

• Audiences want credibility and slightly longer content

“The bar was very low with short form content,” Kulkowski told us. “The view time was very low. The click-through rate was very low. It was very mindless. And for whatever reason, people, especially Gen Z, are moving away from that. They want to feel like they’ve left with something. TikTok was good for this when it moved away from dancing and lip-syncing, to people telling you little tips and tricks, or ‘did you know this?’

“Short form can’t always give you what you need, and long form can feel a little disrespectful of people’s time. So, they want the 10-minute version of stuff. They want short form to be episodic. ‘Where’s the part two of this?’ is one of the most common things you hear on short form content.”

• Most major influencer channels are down across the board

Platforms like YouTube are trying to boost discoverability of creators and channels, but that’s coming at the expense of the more established names.

Kulkowski told us that for YouTube users on mobile, 11% of everything they see is stuff they’ve subscribed to, whereas that number was 81% three years ago.

“Retention has become the challenge and everything is fragmented at the moment. You’re at the mercy of the algorithm. If [these platforms] are showing your new video on just 20% of your subscribers’ front page, that’s quite scary. So, we’re seeing views falling 10 to 15% year-on-year for the last two years for everybody. But overall, views are going up.”

• There is more scrutiny now on influencer marketing

The influencer marketing space has become a $33 billion business. And as a result, the days of “blowing games up with a tank” and impressing bosses with a big (but meaningless) number is coming to an end, Kulkowski suggests.

“Because of the spends going up, the scrutiny has come up and the accountability has increased. This is fantastic. It is really important that the industry does that because we’ve been in this incredible ‘last days of Rome’ phase, where people are just sending influencers to private islands to do escape rooms. Accountability is coming in a lot more.”

• YouTube is on the rise, but Twitch isn’t

We asked Kulkowski which of the influencer platforms are proving most effective for game companies in 2026, and he focused on YouTube.

The platform’s short-form content is competing with TikTok, YouTube Gaming is doing well against Twitch, and YouTube is just generally more credible with marketers.

“YouTube is really rising in prominence,” said Kulkowski. “YouTube is absolutely the number one thing that drives wishlists.”

TikTok is “sort-of in limbo” due to its divestment from ByteDance, Kulkowski explained. And although Twitch remains powerful, it is losing market share.

“I think the prediction is that [its market share] will be about 48% by the end of the year. Kick is rising incredibly fast. Kick maybe isn’t the best for gaming, but for constantly streaming yourself, eating at a Chinese restaurant or gambling, Kick is rising like no other.”

For more from Kulkowski, check out The Game Business Show.

Atari has made it easier for Nightdive to sign games

The remaster studio behind Quake and System Shock has found it much easier to sign games since it was bought by Atari in 2023

On The Game Business Show this week, we did one final interview with Nightdive’s business development VP Larry Kuperman ahead of his retirement. Kuperman is a famous face in the world of retro games, and we asked him about his experience in securing the rights to old games.

“It’s certainly been easier post the acquisition of Atari,” he said. “Atari gives us a certain amount of gravitas. Although there may be some people in obscure corners of the world who haven’t heard of Nightdive, they’ve all heard of Atari.”

We spoke to Kuperman after he showed us Nightdive’s remaster of Sin, which was initially planned for 2021, but is now set for later this year.

“Sin is a property that we acquired. Because we acquired it, and there was no outside agency, we didn’t have to promise anyone. So, it kept getting pushing back because we had opportunities to do little games like Doom and Quake, and obviously our System Shock game. But this is one where I felt we really owed our audience.”

That’s it for today’s bumper newsletter. We will be back tomorrow with our March market report (that’s for paid subscribers only). And join us next week where we will interview IO Interactive boss (and 007: First Light director) Hakan Abrak. Thank you for reading.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
Skybound’s David Alpert and Jon Goldman on…

• The Walking Dead story

• Launching its own studio

• Taking on Street Fighter

• Third-party publishing

• … Vampires

In 2001, David Alpert, Robert Kirkman and Jon Goldman met in LA.

The trio bonded over the idea that the worlds of TV, film, comics and games should be more closely intertwined.

“Today, that’s kind of obvious,” Alpert says. “But back then it was very far from the truth. We were coming off of the Doom movie. And Sony had just passed on buying Marvel for $15 million.”

Alpert, Kirkman and Goldman, who would go on to form Skybound Entertainment, noticed that film makers were obsessed with Box Office, TV people were focused on ratings, and games publishers just wanted to sell discs. Could there be a company that crossed all of those things?

Then in 2003, Kirkman co-created The Walking Dead comic. It was a hit, and Hollywood came calling. The deal was simple: Hollywood would make the TV show and get all the IP rights.

Alpert told them no.

“I got told every cliché,” he recalls. “I was literally told, I swear to God, ‘you’ll never eat lunch in this town again.’ I don’t even know what that means. I’m like, ‘I’m going to eat lunch today. I have lunch at my house.’”

Goldman adds: “We like lunch a lot.”

Alpert again: “It is one of my top five meals.”

Back to Goldman: “Those are fighting words. You’re telling me I can’t have a meal? That’s terrifying.”

Six years later, Hollywood came back and was far more amenable to Skybound’s terms. 16 years later, The Walking Dead is a juggernaut franchise. It’s still one of the biggest shows on Netflix.

In the end, Skybound retained the rights to make The Walking Dead games. However, the TV partner could develop titles based on the TV show.

“So, there are some games that came out that we didn’t have anything to do with,” Alpert laments. “And without disparaging our partner, they did a crap job. Those games were terrible. Ok, I am disparaging our partner.”

He adds: “When we’ve succeeded, it’s because we’ve embraced what’s core to the brand. The Walking Dead game from Telltale is a perfect example of that. We set out to make a zombie story that makes you cry. A lot of people wanted to come in and make a twitch shooter. And that’s not true to the brand.”

To Invincible

Skybound’s philosophy is that there is no primary medium. The TV show and the video games are not ancillary to the comics books.

“You never know where you’ll encounter your fan,” Alpert says. “The first medium might be the game, it might be the t-shirt. And if that’s bad, they’re not going to come in. If I had encountered Game of Thrones first in the game space, I never would’ve read all the books and watched the shows. So, you have to treat everything the same.”

Goldman adds: “Look at how much money people spend in video games and how much time they spend. You have to respect them. You can’t give them crap. That’s like a dereliction of duty.”

This leads us onto Skybound’s next big IP: Invincible. The adult superhero franchise, like The Walking Dead, began life as a comic. It’s since transitioned to TV as a hit animated show for Amazon. And this week Skybound will release a major game based on the property: Invincible VS.

“Comics give you the freedom to create a fantastic IP and experiment in a low consequence mode,” Goldman explains. “TV popularizes it. And then video games, of course, are a big investment. So, we want to make sure that there’s a large group of fans ready to embrace it. And to do that, we need to make a hit TV show.”

The company has experimented with Invincible games before, albeit in a small way. There have been smaller projects, mobile games and integrations into things like Fortnite.

“We believe that Invincible is perfect for video games, but we like to just confirm that before we invest heavily,” Goldman says. “And it passed all those gates.”

Skybound is really investing in Invincible VS. Unlike with The Walking Dead, there is no outsourcing going on. The game is being made by a new internal studio called Quarter Up. It’s also using talent from the TV series, including the writing team.

“This has to be something our fans love and we’re proud of,” Goldman says. “And you can’t always do that by offloading it to someone else.”

Quarter Up is a new studio, but the team is a familiar one. It’s made up of people from Double Helix, the developer behind the underrated 2013 Killer Instinct reboot. Like that project, Invincible VS is a fighting game in the vein of Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Kombat. It’s a competitive genre, and Skybound needed expertise.

“[Quarter Up co-founder] Mike Willette wanted to put the band back together,” Alpert says. “And they f-ing love Invincible. They were like, ‘we want to do a game that’s for the fighting game community and for Invincible fans, and we want to make it awesome.’ That was exciting to us. A talented technical team that understood the genre intimately, and had massive love for the IP.”

On paper, Invincible makes sense as a fighting game. The TV show is full of characters and lengthy fight scenes. Nevertheless, this is a hyper competitive genre filled with well-established names. And it’s not a genre you can enter cheaply.

“It’s mostly an arena-based game,” Goldman explains. “There are much bigger genres we could have taken on, like an open world thing. So, it gives us some constraints. Yes, it’s super expensive. We’re competing against giants. But it has some limitations that allow a newcomer to edge its way in. We’ll find out, but the early signs are pretty awesome.”

Alpert adds: “The fighting game community is pretty stable, right? There’s been a lot of iterations of the same games, and people are hardcore set in their games. There are Street Fighter players, there are MK players, whatever. They have their game. But there’s a whole generation of people that love Invincible that might be perfect for fighting games, but probably haven’t picked one yet. They’re like, ‘I’m 20 years old. Am I going to play Moral Kombat when there’s been 20 editions that I haven’t played before, and I’m going to get my ass kicked because I don’t know any of the moves?’ Whereas, they’re native to this environment.”

Goldman again: “Strategically, we’re in between some release windows. From the very beginning we have stayed close to the fighting game community. We got their feedback and showed them early builds. We have tried to show them the utmost respect in shaping this game, and I feel them pulling for us. There are no guarantees in life, but it feels like we’re on a great runway.”

Skybound’s decision to do this itself is about protecting the brand. It believes a bad adaptation can have lasting consequences on the IP overall.

“It’s possible to find a partner that treats your baby the way that you would treat it. But it’s rare,” Alpert says.

“Jon and I and Robert, we’re owners and principles of the company. We’re not going anywhere. I’ve been working on Invincible since it was launched 23 years ago, and I anticipate working on Invincible and The Walking Dead, and all the other IP that we own, for the rest of my career. If I put out something bad next quarter, next year, even if I make a bit of money, it puts me in the hole. It’s something I have to remake back. It’s this long term vision that we’re able to execute, because I know that if everything else at Skybound doesn’t work, The Walking Dead and Invincible are going to be around for decades to come.”

Next: Vampires

Beyond The Walking Dead and Invincible, I had to ask if Goldman and Alpert had any thoughts on what its next games IP could be. And the duo pointed towards the audio drama Impact Winter.

“It was an Audible original,” Alpert tells us. “It actually was the number one Audible original of all time. It was the first time they took a podcast off platform. They took it to Spotify and Apple Podcast, and it went to number one on both of those charts. Now we have a deal at Netflix to do a TV series with the director of The Hunger Games. We’re hoping to be in production soon.”

Goldman adds: “We have a hunch that vampires will work with video game players just like zombies and superheroes.”

But first, of course, it’s all about Invincible VS.

“All indications are positive, but everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? We’ll see how that goes,” Alpert concludes. “And assuming that goes well, we do have a five-year plan to build out additional capabilities and to build bigger and more immersive experiences. Both for Invincible, The Walking Dead and our other IP.”

What about Skybound’s indie publishing?

Skybound Games has been an active publisher of indie games over the last five years. And it’s launched some well regarded titles, including Before your Eyes, The Big Con, Closer The Distance and Goodnight Universe.

However, the last story related to Skybound’s third-party publishing business is around a legal dispute between itself and physical indie specialist Iam8bit from December last year (something the company didn’t comment on). And Alpert and Goldman told The Game Business that Skybound is now primarily focused on its own IP.

“We’ve had a number of different strategies to try to figure out how to play in the gaming space,” Alpert explains.

“In the beginning it was like, ‘oh, we should do the same model that we’re doing in comics and television in the game space.’ And we got some really cool stuff, and we were able to find some interesting opportunities, but ultimately launching a brand-new IP in this ecosystem, while completely possible, it’s also really hard.”

He continues: “We had some successes and we had some failures. We probably had more failures than successes, to be honest. But we learned that going to market is really difficult and it’s only getting harder. So, we wanted to figure out how to be smarter about it.”

Goldman adds: “With Invincible VS, we’ve not only built a development team, we built a top flight marketing and publishing team. We hired top team members from Blizzard. We learned a lot in indie publishing, but we’ve upped our game a tremendous level. And we felt if we’re going to spend all those resources, we should do it on our own IP.”

That’s it for today’s edition. We’ll be back on Thursday to discuss exclusive games, influencers and much more. Until then, thank you for reading.

Welcome back to another edition of The Game Business Micro.

Things are a lot busier this week, and one company that made a lot of noise (and is starting to dominate our Micros a bit) is Xbox, which detailed the beginnings of a strategy in a memo to staff this week, alongside making changes to its Game Pass offering.

Elsewhere, Circana reveals some pretty good US sales figures and the Warner Bros and Paramount deal overcomes its first hurdle.

And a reminder to all paid subscribers to The Game Business: You can come to our Live event as part of your subscription. The event will feature on-stage interviews with EA’s Laura Miele, games legend Jason Rubin and leading analyst Matthew Ball. But you do have to register. You can’t just turn up with a subscription, because we won’t have the room. You can sign-up below.

Let’s go.

Xbox charms fans and shows its thinking

In Brief: Microsoft Gaming will now be called Xbox going forward. The company has set ‘daily active players’ as its ‘new North Star’. In addition, it’s set out its ambitions around hardware, content, experience and services.

The firm’s Asha Sharma and Mat Booty wrote in a memo: “Xbox will be where the world plays and creates. We will build a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere. Console is at the foundation, delivering a premium experience, and cloud brings that experience to any device. You can play where you want, and your games, progress, friends, and identity stay with you across console, PC, mobile, and cloud.

“Xbox will be built to be affordable, personal, and open. We will offer flexible pricing so it’s easy to get started and keep playing. The experience will adapt to you, letting you customize how you play, helping you find what you’ll love, and connecting you with the right people. And we will be open to all creators, from individuals to the largest studios, giving anyone the tools to reach a global audience and keep their games growing over time.”

What You Need To Know:

• Microsoft Gaming was established in January 2022 following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

• In the memo, Xbox admitted that players are frustrated, its PC presence isn’t strong enough, pricing is hard for people to keep up with, and search, discovery and social have become too fragmented.

• It also said that a new generation of players are coming online with different expectations, and that half of the game industry’s revenue is outside of Xbox’s core Western markets.

• In terms of hardware, it wants to stabilize its current generation of consoles, deliver Project Helix as a device that plays PC and console games, and lead in high-performance accessories.

• In terms of content, it will grow its popular brands, evolve third-party partnerships, expand into China and other mobile-first markets, maintain and grow its live games, and boost ‘creator-centric platforms’ such as Minecraft, Elder Scrolls and Sea of Thieves (I’ve asked what they mean by ‘creator centric platforms’).

• In terms of experiences, the company wants to make Xbox the best place for developers to make games, and will overhaul discovery, customization, social and personalization.

• And in terms of services, it will fortify Game Pass with ‘clear differentiation’ and make cloud play ‘feel native, fast and reliable’. It may use M&A to accelerate slow growth areas in the services segment.

• Xbox also said it will re-evaluate its approach to “exclusivity, windowing, and AI”, which is generating lots of conversation online.

• Earlier in the week, Xbox reduced the price of the Game Pass Ultimate subscription service by over 23%, going from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. It also reduced PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. As a result, future Call of Duty games won’t be included in either service when they launch, and will now arrive in the service around a year later.

Read more

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition,
- The troubled story of Samson
- We discover a cool card game for developers
- Plus, an abundance of news stories

Hello! And welcome back to The Game Business.

It’s a busy week for news. We’ve had Xbox price cuts, BAFTA winners (and losers), new game divisions, new title announcements, big sales numbers, more job cuts… a real mix. So, lots to go through.

Our guest is Christofer Sundberg. He is the head of Liquid Swords, the developer of Samson. The GTA-like game had a tough journey to launch, and its release has been marred by bugs and flaws. Sundberg tells us his story, and what to expect from the console launch in September.

Plus, I discovered a cool new card game aimed at video game studios.

You can watch all of this above, or read the key bits in the article below.

Enjoy!

Troubled Samson is being fixed and coming to PS5 and Xbox in September

GTA-style action game Samson will come to PS5 and Xbox in September, developer Liquid Swords told The Game Business.

The game launched earlier this month on PC, and has faced criticism for an abundance of bugs. The game’s current Steam rating is ‘mixed’.

“The launch has gone a bit so-so,” said Christofer Sundberg, founder and chief creative officer at Liquid Swords.

“The game suffered from way too many bugs and a lack of polish. We’re correcting it almost daily now. The reception is starting to become more positive. For us, it was just a must to get the game out. But any game released in this day and age is a success.”

Sundberg is a video game development veteran. He co-founded and was creative director at Avalanche, the developer behind Just Cause. He sold the company in 2018 and formed Liquid Swords in 2020. At that time, the studio had little trouble attracting investment, with NetEase backing the firm. But when it sought publisher funding in 2024 and 2025, the market had become more challenging.

“The publisher climate was terrible,” he explained. “We were quite far on in a number of discussions, but we felt that we couldn’t trust this game to be picked up. So, we decided to self-publish. We had quite a large budget ask as well.

“We had to adapt to the current state of the business. That led to lowering the ambition and cutting away at the meatier RPG aspect that we had.”

The firm also had to lower costs. The company had 96 staff working on the game, including contractors, and that dropped to just over 40 in February 2025.

“That was terrible,” Sundberg said. “Those were our friends, coworkers and great developers.”

With limited financial runway, Samson had to launch when it did. It was now a shorter, AA experience, and it wasn’t in a ready state.

“We’ve never pretended to be any bigger and better than we are,” Sundberg said. “We’ve been quite honest. It’s hard not to read all the comments. But what is heartwarming is that so many wanted it to be much bigger. They almost thought we were lying when we’ve been repeatedly saying, ‘this game is a bit rough around the edges. It’s not a 100-hour experience.’ But it’s almost like, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep on saying that. We know that it will be a new Just Cause in the end’.”

Liquid Swords is currently fixing those bugs on PC. And it’s also gearing up to release Samson on consoles.

“We are releasing new updates and patches weekly. It will be what most expected it to be. And we are releasing it on console in September. By that time, I don’t think we will have many new features, but we’ll definitely work on polishing.”

He added: “The plan from the very beginning was to deliver on PC and console simultaneously, but for financial reasons we couldn’t. We didn’t have the bandwidth. But now the game is out, we do. And the game is already running on consoles. It just needs to be optimized, and then we have to go through the submission”

The firm is targeting PS5 and Xbox, with no plans for a Nintendo Switch 2 version.

“It’s so graphics heavy that it wouldn’t run very well on Switch 2 without some serious compromises on the graphics side,” he told us.

Crucially, the console version will arrive before Grand Theft Auto 6 in November.

“I don’t see GTA as a competitor, it’s like a phenomenon,” said Sundberg. “Everything in entertainment competes with it. The next Taylor Swift concert competes with GTA. The next big Netflix show. When a GTA releases, it’s just Christmas for everyone. With all that said, there will always be room for games aside from GTA.”

Beyond consoles, the plan is to develop more Samson games. And Sundberg still wants to realize the original vision for the game.

“I see this as a sort of an endurance race,” he explained. “I’m a retired endurance athlete. I’ve approached almost everything I do in this business on the long term, not just trying to make a lot of money and retire.”

“It was great when Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft. But everyone was just setting the bar at that level, without realizing it was a very unique deal.”

He concluded: “I don’t have any rush or even a desire to sell Liquid Swords to someone. I’d rather see us be successful on our own. We’ve gone through highs and lows. We know what we have in the bank. We’ll just keep on doing the work and focusing, importantly, on significantly improving Samson. And then create stability for the company as well.”

Check out this game leadership card game

I hosted a number of on-stage interviews during London Game Festival last week, and one of those interviews was with Melissa Phillips, the director of Games Leadership.

The company has just developed a new card game called Studio Situations, which is designed to help developers prepare for challenging leadership situations. Players pick a job role, a seniority level, a situation, an incident and a resource, and have to role play the best approach to a specific challenge, which could range from the game being overrun with bugs, the original vision holder leaving, the team suffering burnout and many more. There are more unique ‘wildcard’ situations that can be applied, too.

“Research has shown that if we talk about issues before they happen, you’re more adaptable, you’re more flexible, you’re more resilient… but only if you have plans in place already,” Phillips told me. “This gives you a really safe way, before the pressure is added and you’re in the middle of game making, to find a situation and talk about it. So, if and when it happens, you’re more prepared.”

The Studio Situations card game is available to pre-order now from the Games Leadership website.

Meanwhile…

• According to Circana, March US game revenue is up 8% thanks to strong sales of Crimson Desert, MLB The Show 26, WWE 2K26, Marathon and Pokémon Pokopia. Overall for the quarter, game spending is up 5% to $14.6 billion.
  
  Meanwhile, Video game hardware spending was up 69% in March to $500 million. Switch 2 was the best-selling console for both March and the year-to-date, with PS5 in second place. Nintendo Switch 2 sales remain 12% ahead of Nintendo Switch launch aligned.

• Capcom’s new IP Pragmata has sold over one million copies in two days. The publisher said an early playable demo, plus releasing the game on Switch 2, helped achieve the milestone. It’s the second breakout success for Capcom this year following Resident Evil Requiem, which sold six million copies in less than a month.

• Xbox has reduced the price of Game Pass Ultimate by over 23%, from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. It’s also reduced PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. As a result, future Call of Duty games won’t be included in either service when they launch. New Call of Duty titles will now arrive in Game Pass roughly a year later.

• Two new games divisions have been launched by large Japanese entertainment companies. First, Hello Kitty creator Sanrio has opened a self-published game brand called Sanrio Games. It plans to release ten games over the next three years. The first is Sanrio Party Land for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, which arrives in Autumn 2026.

• Second, Toei has established an in-house publishing label called Toei Games. Toei Animation is known for Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sailor Moon and Digimon. Toei Games won’t actually work on those properties, and is instead focused on developing new IP.

• Sticking with Japan, Koei Tecmo has raised its financial forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026 due to strong sales of Pokémon Pokopia and Nioh 3. The company now expects ordinary profit to increase from $232.2 million to $345.2 million (up 48%). Operating profit is now due to rise 16.1% to $225.9 million.

• The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain is taking Mindseye developer Build a Rocket Boy to court over alleged data privacy violations. This follows the instillation of Teramind surveillance software onto employee PCs.

• Video game media website Kotaku has hired Rebekah Valentine as its new senior reporter. Valentine is a highly regarded news journalist who joins from IGN. Prior to that, she worked on GamesIndustry.biz (with me). She has also been a guest on The Game Business Show. Kotaku says it’s recently doubled its traffic and is looking to grow again.

• Nintendo has announced that single-player Splatoon spin-off, Splatoon Raiders, will release on July 23. This game has not featured in the Nintendo Direct broadcasts, and has instead been revealed via the Nintendo Today app.

• The Elden Ring movie, directed by Alex Garland, will come out March 3 2028, with production beginning this spring. The cast includes Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Tom Burke, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Offerman, Ruby Cruz and Cailee Spaeny.

• Iron Galaxy has had to lay off more staff. The studio is behind top remasters and remakes including the Metroid Prime remaster and last year’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. The company said on LinkedIn it had hoped the industry would ‘get back to normal’, but has now accepted that the current market conditions are permanent.

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 picked up the big prize at the BAFTA video game awards. The RPG won Best Game, Debut Game, and Performer in a Leading Role for Jennifer English. Dispatch also won three awards, including Animation, Audio Achievement, and Performer in a Supporting Role for Jeffrey Wright. Ghost of Yōtei received two awards for Music and Technical Achievement. Other winners included Atomfall, Despelote, South of Midnight, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Blue Prince, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, No Man’s Sky, Arc Raiders and LEGO Party. Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen won the fellowship award.

• Sticking with BAFTA. Upcoming indie game The Quiet Things, from BAFTA breakthrough winner Alyx Jones, was supposed to receive a trailer during the awards ceremony last week. However, its appearance was cancelled 24 hours before the event. BAFTA said it felt the trailer might be triggering for some (the game deals with childhood trauma and abuse) and so made the decision not to show it. Jones was “devastated” by the call. The trailer is out now.

• Oh and Apple is getting a new CEO. John Ternus will replace Tim Cook on September 1.

That’s it for today. If you’d love to come see us in person, and are in the LA area in early June, why not come and see us at The Game Business Live? You can find out more here.

Until next time, thank you for reading.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube

In This Edition, Poncle’s Matteo Sapio on:
- Vampire Survivors spin-offs and tie-ins
- Opening studios in Japan and Italy
- Working on over 15 projects

During last week’s London Game Festival, I spoke with Matteo Sapio, the chief strategy officer at Vampires Survivors developer Poncle.

We were speaking in front of a live audience, and it was one of the most revealing interviews I’ve done since launching The Game Business. During out chat, Sapio announced:

• That Vampire Survivors has now surpassed 27 million players

• Poncle is opening studios in Japan and Italy

• It has over 15 projects in active development (and even more in earlier stages)

• It is licensing out its engine to other brands and studios to build ‘Survivors’ games based on popular IP

• It has paused its third-party publishing plans

“Vampire Survivors came from a solo developer,” Sapio explains. “It was Luca Galante, who made a game for him and his friends. Vampire Survivors exploded, and in two or three months, it sold more than one million copies. Luca’s yachts are video games. So instead of buying a yacht, he made the Emerald Beyond DLC [for Vampire Survivors] with Square Enix, which we released for free. Things grew organically from there.”

The Poncle strategy

Poncle is working on three types of games.

First, there are spin-offs to Vampire Survivors. This includes the deck-building card battler Vampire Crawlers, which is out this week.

“We [are using] the famous Vampire Survivors IP to experiment in new genres,” Sapio tells us. “We love card games, but we are not very good at card games. They’re complicated. So, we made the game that we wanted to play.”

Second, Poncle is working on original IP. Sapio says the company is currently developing two entirely original properties.

And third, there will be a range of new ‘Survivors’ games based on other IP. These are Vampire Survivors-like games set in other universes. Some will be developed by Poncle, whereas others – such as the upcoming Warhammer Survivors – are in collaboration with other studios.

“A lot of people came to us and said: ‘Let’s do a collaboration with Survivors’,” Sapio begins. “Survivors seems very simple, with simple graphics. But it’s actually quite complicated.

“If we have knowledge of the IP, we will [make the game] ourselves. But a lot of times we don’t. If you have an IP, for example Warhammer 40k, which has decades of story and lore, we don’t want to risk disappointing the fans. So, we made an engine called the Vampire Survivor Engine, which is a kind-of template with all the Vampire Survivor juice inside, and we then we’re giving it to people that we consider the IP guardians.

“We are a fan of Survivors games. Luca has 3,800 hours on Steam in Vampire Survivors. We want to play these games. With Warhammer 40,000, [developer] Auroch is the best guardians of the IP, so we gave the engine to them. We look forward to playing it. Obviously, we are giving them any help they need.”

Poncle has already worked with other IP via DLC for Vampire Survivors. It partnered with Square Enix on the Emerald Beyond DLC, featuring characters from the SaGa series. It’s also teamed-up with Konami to bring Contra and Castlevania to the Vampire Survivors world. And Sapio says that indie developers are proving attractive to IP owners.

“When you have big IPs there is a lot of responsibility, because player expectation is incredible,” Sapio says. “There’s so much money and expectation that it creates tension. But with indies, there’s the possibility to steam off a little bit of this tension. They spend less money, they manage the risk better, and they can even risk a little bit more. And when you have an important IP, indie people will give their life to do their best. And in the end, if the game doesn’t work, you still have ideas and passion. This is something IP stakeholders are taking advantage of.”

But is there really enough room for numerous Survivors titles?

“With Vampire Survivors, it’s been three years,” Sapio answers. “We want to close the game. We try to. We put in adventures, we put in time limits, but people want more. So, we continue to invest in the evolution of the genre.

“There are a lot of Warhammer people that never played Vampire Survivors. Vampire Survivors is big, but it’s still a niche. It’s still indie. We released the trailer for Warhammer Survivors, and we had 300,000 views in two days. There’s a lot of people that don’t know Survivors. That’s why I think there’s an angle, and that’s why [IP owners] want to work with us. But… if it doesn’t work anymore, it’s okay. We had a lot of fun. We made a lot of money.”

Opening new studios

Poncle is expanding as a result of all these games. The developer is based in the UK, but it’s now opening studios in Japan and Italy, too.

“We had interest from Japanese companies,” Sapio says. “They wanted to work with us. And you know, the Japanese like to deal with Japanese companies, in Japanese and with a Japanese contract.

“Then there’s the talent. In Japan, there are some unique views and unique creativity. We found nice talent over there. And maybe we could work with some Japanese IPs. So, we thought it would be efficient to have a base there. That’s why we are expanding. Obviously, we’re based in UK. We’ll be Italy, we’ll be Japan and then we’ll see.”

Sapio says that by opening smaller studios he hopes to maintain Poncle’s indie spirit.

“We are not talking about a gigantic remote studio. We are thinking about it like a federation of studios. Our idea is to have little teams of people - five, 10, 15 - working on different projects. The structure will be, we will have a designer, a bunch of producers, and this little team that’s agile and flexible. That is how we think we will maintain this spirit. Because what is the indie spirit? It is mainly freedom and taking risk with ideas.”

He continues: “We don’t want to be AAA or AA. We’re efficient with costs. We don’t take useless risks. We invest in people. So, with 15 projects, one can fail, one can go good, and you balance that.”

Sapio adds it is working with partner studios, too. For example, Vampire Crawlers is developed in collaboration with Nosebleed Interactive.

A third-party pause

One thing that Poncle isn’t doing is publishing third-party games. It launched its Poncle Presents publishing label and released two games last year (Kill The Brickman and Berserk or Die). But the firm has decided to pause this… for now.

“It was a learning experience,” Sapio admits. “We did publishing because we wanted to give back to the community, and to release games that maybe no-one else was able to release. Berserk or Die is a game that you play [by bashing] a keyboard. It was very strange. We wanted to help. But we found that we weren’t able to give the right support. We didn’t do the best for this game. So, we’ve paused a little bit. At the moment, profit is not a priority. We’re trying to build a community. And we will continue to do publishing in the future.

He adds: “We thought, a little bit naively, that with love and money we would be able to support these projects, but it maybe needs more structure.”

Even without publishing, Poncle has hugely ambitious plans. After three years of Vampire Survivors, 2026 will see numerous new titles, including Vampire Crawlers, Warhammer Survivors and more to be revealed. I ended our on-stage interview with a question I always ask… where does Sapio see Poncle in five years?

“40 projects in parallel development at all times everywhere in the world,” he laughs. “I mentioned before about the federation of studios. If we can have this beautiful machine that is able to have so many projects that can go good and can fail, some are in collaboration, some are for money, maybe some moonshots… that’s what I want to see. We don’t want to do a gigantic studio working on a gigantic game.”

Update: The original story said Poncle was working on 15 games. They’ve clarified that this might include DLC.

That’s it for us today. There are lots of stories, interviews and data coming from The Game Business this week. So, stay tuned to your inboxes. And remember, if you’re in LA at the start of June, why not join us at The Game Business Live?

Until next time, thank you for reading.

Xbox has reduced the price of Game Pass Ultimate by over 23%, from $29.99 to $22.99 a month.

It’s also reduced PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 a month.

As a result, future Call of Duty games won’t be included in either service when they launch. New Call of Duty titles will now arrive on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass around a year later. Existing Call of Duty games, including last year’s Black Ops 7, will remain available in the service.

The cuts come six months after Xbox significantly raised the price of Game Pass in October last year. Game Pass Ultimate rose from $19.99 to $29.99, and PC Game Pass increased from $11.99 to $16.49. At the same time, Xbox added the Ubisoft+ Classics Collection and the Fortnite Crew subscription service to Game Pass Ultimate. It also promised to release more than 75 day one games into Ultimate every year.

In a blog post, Xbox acknowledged that there isn’t a single model that suits everyone, but said the changes are a reaction “to a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten so far. We’ll continue to listen and learn”.

It was another pretty quiet week for video game industry news, although there were plenty of headlines coming out of Roblox, and whole lot of discussion points generated by this year’s BAFTA video game awards.

Regular readers will know this Micro is for paying subscribers of The Game Business (unlike our Tuesday and Thursday shows, which are free for all). Now, last week we announced our speakers for The Game Business Live (including EA’s Laura Miele, Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin and leading analyst and Epyllion CEO Matthew Ball). The event takes place in Downtown LA on Monday, June 8, and tickets are available now. Paying TGB subscribers can come for ‘free’ (and by free, I mean as part of your subscription). All you need to do to register is click on the link at the bottom of the email.

That’s it! Let’s take a look at the news.

Roblox makes more changes to strengthen child protection

In Brief: Roblox has added two new age categories in a bid to better protect younger players online. The firm has added the Roblox Kids category, which are for 5 to 8 year-olds. This category prevents use of chat tools and users can only access games labelled ‘minimal’ or ‘mild’. The second category is Roblox Selects, which is for children aged nine to 15. This category features games labelled ‘minimal’, ‘mild’ and ‘moderate’. Chat is available but in ‘default mode’, which allows for text conversations but not voice. It can also be turned on and off by parents.

What You Need To Know:

• Roblox utilizes age checking technology to determine the age of the user, and therefore which age category they fall into.

• Roblox is also adding new parental controls including the ability to block specific games, manage direct chat, and approve games that are not otherwise available to an age bracket.

• Roblox is coming under increased pressure over being a perceived danger for children. Perceived risks include grooming and the exposure to inappropriate user-generated content.

• This week, Roblox paid $12 million to the state of Navada, which was challenging the company over not doing enough to protect young people online.

Read more

Hello! Welcome back to The Game Business.

It’s a busy one this week. We are announcing our speakers for The Game Business Live in Los Angeles, with EA’s Laura Miele, games legend Jason Rubin and leading analyst Matthew Ball taking to the stage on June 8. Tickets are available now (and paid subscribers can come for free). Full details are below.

Our guest this week is UK government minister Ian Murray, who talks about supporting game studios, and the impact of Grand Theft Auto on the British industry. And we dive into the future of Xbox Game Pass following reports that Microsoft is set to cut the price, having only raised it six months ago.

You can watch or listen to it all above, or read the highlights below. Enjoy!

UK minister: It’s not a problem that Grand Theft Auto isn’t UK-owned

Grand Theft Auto being made in the UK has had a huge impact on the local video game industry, says the UK’s Minister of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Ian Murray was talking to The Game Business to launch a £28.5 million fund for UK developers that want to get new ideas off the ground. And we discussed how 2026 is shaping up to be a banner year for British games, with titles such as Grand Theft Auto 6, Forza Horizon 6, Fable, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Star Wars: Galactic Racer and 007: First Light all scheduled for this year.

However, the majority of those games are not UK-owned, with US firms such as Take-Two, Warner Bros and Microsoft in charge. Is this a problem for the UK?

“Only partially,” Murray told us. “I’ve been to Take-Two in Manhattan and all they talk about is that Grand Theft Auto 6 is being built in Scotland, essentially. You gain from the jobs. You gain from the skills. You gain from the economic activity. You gain from the prestige. I suspect when you talk about other titles like Fable and LEGO Batman, I wonder whether they would be as successful or be as made in the UK if Grand Theft Auto wasn’t the title that it is, and people know that it’s made here.

“Yes, you want the IP to stay in the UK. But actually, for us, in terms of the sector plan, the jobs, growth and the skills, having [these games] made here is a big, big part of that.”

Murray said the issue is not exclusive to video games.

“Paddington is owned by a StudioCanal in France. The refugee bear from Peru, that came into Paddington Station and eats marmalade sandwiches, is owned by the French. But a lot of the economic activity around that is benefiting people here in the UK.

“It’s not ideal. We’d obviously prefer the perfect. But let’s not let the perfect get in the way of the economic activity that these games have. Grand Theft Auto 6 will probably be the largest launch of anything this year.”

He added: “It’s always been a difficulty because there’s always an exit strategy. And that exit strategy for the owners, for the creators, is often selling out to one of the bigger companies, of which some, like Take-Two, are not based here. So, yes, it is a challenge, but we shouldn’t look the gift horse in the mouth of being the creators and having the skills to make great games.”

The new £28.5 million fund is part of an effort to develop more home-grown IP. The fund includes financing for exploring new ideas, building prototypes, and getting games to that initial commercialization stage.

“Hopefully we’ll get some really good people who want to enter the industry as the developers of the future. People who have ideas, but they’ve never really been able to push them on. And then some people who’ve got the idea and prototype, but they want to get it to the next stage,” Murray said.

Elsewhere in our interview:

• Ian Murray believes the UK industry should speak with ‘one voice’ if it wants to secure the same financial support as the TV and movie industry. “The gaming industry is a bit more fragmented. The TV and film industry have been around for a long time. It tends to, as a sector, speak as one voice regardless of who you speak to.

  [Video games] is a relatively fledgling industry. But it’s doing really well […] it’s growing very quickly and I think that things will certainly catch up.”

• I asked Murray if concerns around online safety, and areas such as loot boxes, make it harder to secure support from government. Not at all, he said.
  
  “It probably helps. All of these issues that you’ve raised, they are concerns not just for government and the public, but for industry.
  
  “There’s nobody in the gaming industry that wants to harm children. There’s nobody in gaming that wants loot boxes to be ripping people off. There’s nobody in the industry that wants games influencing young people to do bad things. Nobody wants that in the industry. Nobody wants that in government. So, it’s important to have a partnership about how we resolve some of those issues. And of course, when you’re talking about these issues, you always go to extreme case studies to make the point. But actually, the good guys always do the right things, and the bad guys always do the bad things. And it’s up to us to find that balance of how you regulate properly to protect audiences and to make sure there’s a level playing field for the good guys.”
  

• Last year, when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won numerous awards and sold millions of copies, the French government celebrated it by awarding its developers with knighthoods. Why doesn’t the UK celebrate its successes in the same way?
  
  “If we were the US, we’d be puffing out our chest, putting up the flags and marching up and down the main street championing what we do,” Murray noted. “We have traditionally not done that from a cultural perspective. Let’s go and puff our chest out and try and be a little bit more bombastic about how good we are at this stuff and sell ourselves a bit better.”

Check out our full interview above.

How do you solve a problem like Xbox Game Pass?

The big story this week is that Xbox is set to change the pricing on Game Pass. Again.

This time the subscription service will receive a price cut, just over six months since its whopping 50% price hike in October last year. The catch? Brand new Call of Duty games could be excluded from the service (or at least will need to be added on).

A drop in users was inevitable after that initial hike, but Xbox would have expected a rise in revenue overall. Xbox boss Asha Sharma reportedly told staff that Game Pass had become ‘too expensive’, so presumably it’s lost more players than anticipated.

Unfortunately, lowering the price won’t instantly win those players back. There’s a re-convincing job that needs doing, although with an upcoming slate of Forza, Fable, Gears of War and Halo, it’s at least got the software to make a compelling case.

However, a price change is a short-term fix. There’s a longer-term reckoning that needs to happen with Game Pass.

Regular readers will know I’ve had my doubts about the subscription service. In 2018, Microsoft made the disruptive decision to put all of its games into Game Pass, including brand new AAA titles. That proposition is now only available to subscribers of the ‘Ultimate’ tier, but it remains Game Pass’ unique selling point.

There is clearly an audience of hardcore Xbox players that wants this. And according to Microsoft, because of Game Pass, that audience is playing a wider variety of games, and spending more, too. That’s a good thing.

However, for Game Pass to truly succeed long-term, it needs to go beyond the hardcore. The problem is that most gamers don’t play enough new games to justify the cost. According to Circana, only 15% of US gamers buy more than four new games a year. Game Pass Ultimate has an annual cost of $360, which is the equivalent of over five $70 games. So, the math doesn’t add up for most players. A game subscription service doesn’t have the same appeal as a TV or music one, because the consumption habits are different.

Perhaps Game Pass could adopt a ‘credits’ system. Players subscribe and receive a certain number of credits to spend on games. A new Call of Duty will use a lot of credits, while an old classic will be much cheaper. It’s still a full buffet, just not ‘all you can eat’. It could work, but it sounds complex.

A simpler solution would be to jettison new releases entirely and adopt the PlayStation model, where you get a wide selection of back catalogue games but not new ones. I think there’s a legitimate argument around doing that.

It all comes down to this question: what does success even look like for Xbox? As a division it seems a little lost. Caught between being a major third-party publisher and a platform.

It’s also caught between being a video game company and a division of Microsoft. It’s easy for me to say that Xbox needs to get back to basics and just make some hit games, keep them exclusive to its platform, and stop trying to disrupt everything all the time.

But Microsoft doesn’t want Xbox to spend its energy fighting for second place in the PC and console market. That cannot be the ambition. That not why it spent $70 billion on Activision Blizzard.

So, what is the ambition? Is it streaming? Is it subscription? I don’t believe either of those are the future. And judging by the cuts at Amazon (and before that, Google), Microsoft’s big tech rivals don’t seem to believe it is, either.

The Game Pass experiment has caused some damage. It’s eroded the margins on Xbox’s first-party games to such an extent that it’s had to publish them on PlayStation and Steam, undermining its platform business in the process.

Xbox needs to find a purpose. A goal it can point its considerable talent and resources at. Right now, it’s trying to be a subscription business, a major third-party publisher, a digital retailer, a streaming platform and a console. That’s a lot, and many of those areas get in the way of each other.

Xbox needs to find its focus. And I’m not convinced that’s Game Pass.

EA’s Laura Miele and game legend Jason Rubin headline The Game Business Live

EA Entertainment president Laura Miele, video game legend Jason Rubin and leading analyst Matthew Ball will headline The Game Business Live this June. Tickets are available now.

The event takes place on Monday, June 8 at The Grammy Museum in Downtown Los Angeles, hosted by Christopher Dring and Geoff Keighley. It is part of the Summer Game Fest program of events.

The Game Business will conduct live on-stage discussions with Miele, Rubin and Ball. Ball will discuss the state of the industry, and react to some of the key reveals during Summer Game Fest. Meanwhile, Rubin will look back at his huge career in games, from co-founding Naughty Dog and directing Crash Bandicoot, to stints at THQ and Meta.

We will also sit down for an interview with Laura Miele, who leads EA Entertainment, which oversees major franchises including Apex Legends, Battlefield, The Sims and Skate. Miele has spent over 30 years in video games, with a proven track record in developing creative teams and delivering business results.

Paid subscribers to The Game Business can attend The Game Business Live as part of their subscription. Check your inbox on how to register to attend.

Subscribe now

Alternatively, tickets can be purchased separately through here.

Finally, Summer Game Fest: Play Days Industry Day badge holders will also be eligible for access to The Game Business Live as part of their purchase. Summer Game Fest: Play Days is an invite-only event that will feature hands-on experiences from the industry’s leading publishers and developers. Video game industry professionals interested in attending Industry Day (June 8) can apply for consideration here.

Interested in sponsoring The Game Business Live? Please contact info@thegamebusiness.com

Meanwhile…

• Roblox is launching a new subscription service: Roblox Plus. Beginning April 30, Roblox Plus will cost $5 a month and offers discounts on in-game items and other ‘exclusive’ benefits. Roblox will cover the cost of the discounts so it doesn’t impact the revenue for creators.

• Sticking with Roblox, the company is adding two new accounts for minors: Roblox Kids for children between five to eight, and Roblox Select, for ages nine to 15. The new accounts, which launch in June, will align content, communication options, and parental controls with an age bracket. Roblox is also adding new parental controls including the ability to block specific games, manage direct chat, and approve games that are not otherwise available to an age bracket. Roblox has come under criticism for not doing enough to protect young people online, and this is part of its on-going efforts to solve that.

• PS5 hardware sales surged in the US during the week ending April 4, according to Circana’s retail tracking service. It comes just ahead of the console’s $100+ price rise. “US spending on video game hardware for the week nearly doubled when compared to the same week a year ago,” wrote Circana senior director Mat Piscatella.

• The UK video game market reached £8.7 billion in 2025, according to the trade body UKIE. Software sales grew 7% to £6.03 billion, hardware sales increased 3% to £2.17 billion, sales of game-related films, TV shows, and soundtracks increased 70% to £159 million, while toys and merchandising rose 43% to £333 million.

• According to data leaked by a hacking group, Grand Theft Auto Online is generating around $1.3 million a day. It matches analyst estimates that the Online mode makes around half a billion dollars a year. Take-Two’s share price rose as a result of the leak.

That’s it from us today! Join us next week for more news, analysis and interviews.

EA Entertainment president Laura Miele, video game legend Jason Rubin and leading industry analyst Matthew Ball will headline The Game Business Live this June. Tickets are available now.

The event take place on Monday, June 8 at The Grammy Museum in Downtown Los Angeles, hosted by Christopher Dring and Geoff Keighley. It is part of the Summer Game Fest program of events.

The Game Business will conduct live on-stage discussions with Miele, Rubin and Ball. Ball will be discussing the state of the industry, and reacting to some of the key reveals during Summer Game Fest. Meanwhile, Rubin will look back at his huge career in games, from co-founding Naughty Dog and directing Crash Bandicoot, to stints at THQ and Meta.

We will also sit down for an interview with Laura Miele, who leads EA Entertainment, which oversees major franchises including Apex Legends, Battlefield, The Sims and Skate. Miele has spent over 30 years in video games, with a proven track record in developing creative teams and delivering business results.

Paid subscribers to The Game Business can attend The Game Business Live as part of their subscription. Check your inbox for how to register to attend.

Subscribe now

Alternatively, tickets can be purchased separately through here. We are currently running an Early Bird 2-for-1 ticket offer until May 4th (limited quantities).

Finally, Summer Game Fest: Play Days Industry Day badge holders will also be eligible for access to The Game Business Live as part of their purchase. Summer Game Fest: Play Days is an invite-only event that will feature immersive exhibits and hands-on experiences from the industry’s leading publishers and developers. Video game industry professionals interested in attending Industry Day (June 8) at Summer Game Fest: Play Days can apply for consideration here.

Interested in sponsoring The Game Business Live? Please contact info@thegamebusiness.com.

Hello hello,

Tomorrow we will be announcing our line-up for The Game Business Live in Los Angeles, which is part of Summer Game Fest.

The event takes place on Monday, June 8 at The Grammy Museum in Downtown Los Angeles. And we will be interviewing, live on stage, a senior leader at one of the world’s biggest video game publishers, plus a genuine industry legend behind one of the world’s most famous video game studios. We’re very excited. Myself and Geoff Keighley will be there.

Tickets go on general sale tomorrow. But paid subscribers (that’s you) can sign-up today. Tickets for paid subscribers are free*.

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The studio was formed in 2022 by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the director of The Witcher 3. He initially funded the studio himself, quickly found investment, and its first game - the AAA open world RPG The Blood of the Dawnwalker - is nearly ready for release.

“I am surprised that it went so smoothly, to be honest,” Tomaszkiewicz says on today’s edition of The Game Business Show. “Everybody was saying that recruiting the team is this really hard thing, bur for us it was quite easy because people wanted to work with us. People said that creating the game is a really hard thing, but we’re getting really good results from the focus tests. We’re confident. I’m surprised that we haven’t encountered big problems.”

This doesn’t necessarily make for an exciting edition of The Game Business.

“I know, I’m trying,” he says. “But it is hard for me to say something went really wrong, because it’s coming together really well, and the people are happy. This is the biggest reward for me, I have a happy team making a great game.”

There was some drama before the launch of Rebel Wolves. Tomaszkiewicz had worked across all three The Witcher games, beginning as a junior tester on the first before rising up to lead development on the third. He also held a leadership position on Cyberpunk 2077. Over that time, CD Projekt changed significantly and Tomaszkiewicz found that difficult. In 2021, he was subjected to an internal investigation over allegations of workplace bullying. He was found not guilty, but left anyway and apologized to staff for “all the bad blood”.

Tomaszkiewicz had found himself in an environment where he had to be a boss, when he just wanted to make games.

“It’s different working with 150 people than 500 people. At Rebel Wolves, we have 160 including administration, the publishing department and so on. And I am among the people all the time. I’m working with everyone side-by-side, speaking with everyone… I know everyone. When you have 500 people, the management is like 100-plus people. With Cyberpunk it was 125. It is not possible to know everyone or to work with everyone every day. The creative process, the fun, is different. And I didn’t want to work like this anymore. I want to work like we worked in the past, with a smaller amount of people, struggling and fighting for solutions in every area of the game.

“I’m creating, and I’m not just someone on top who is testing the game and disconnected from the people.”

Tomaszkiewicz says he considers himself more a leader than a boss.

“My role is not to tell people exactly how to do stuff,” he explains. “My role is to help them get to the final solution.

“This is something totally different than being only the boss, because when you try to force people to do something, in 90% of situations, it’ll fail. In our industry, people are artists and they need to have ownership. They need to feel that they’re creating. My role is to show them the direction where I want to go, but it’s their role to achieve it, because then they fulfil that creative need. When you’re stealing it from them, and saying: ‘I want to do it exactly like this,’ they are not the artist anymore. They are outsourced. And they’re not motivated.

“It’s important to remember that what we are doing is an art. And to create it, you need a really good team that is well motivated and wants to create the best game in the world. And who are your allies in this, let’s say, war of creating. Because making a game is not easy. Every department is doing different stuff. The technological dependencies between them are so complicated that it’s really easy to break the game.

“To create something that is special is really hard. And to do it, the team is the most important thing. The vision is important, but vision without the team to achieve it is nothing.”

Art over money

Tomaszkiewicz wanted a studio where people can “grow old together”. And part of that was to build a company driven by art, not finances.

The Blood of the Dawnwalker might look like ‘The Witcher with vampires’, and that probably would have been enough for gamers to get on-board. But there are a lot of new concepts being tried here, and that comes from the artistic need to do something different.

“The problem in this industry sometimes is that people opening companies are thinking [too much] about how to make money,” he begins. “This is a really cold approach for the games. You cannot create art like this.

“I gathered around me people who love RPGs, and from the beginning we knew that we wanted to create story-driven, open world games with some twists. Opening a new company to do exactly the same things we did in the past is a problem, because we’ll not feel that we’re evolving, or developing ourselves. It was really important for us as artists. We want to push the boundaries of AAA RPGs by adding some risky stuff, which gives you more immersion, more emotions, and a different feel when you play.

“I think that this [idea] is growing these days, because when you look at Clair Obscur, or Crimson Desert right now, those games are different. They are not a copy of other AAA games, but delivering something quite fresh. And I’m really glad of it because I’m starting to feel like I did in the 1990s when I played games on my 286 PC, or even on the Atari where every game was different game. Every game was some unknown. We want to deliver a similar experience for people.”

Even so, The Blood of the Dawnwalker is inevitably going to get compared to The Witcher. Is he comfortable with that?

“Really comfortable. I feel really confident about our game.”

Investor frenzy

In the beginning, Tomaszkiewicz funded the project himself, before taking it (and Rebel Wolves) to outside investors. 2022 was not an easy time to seek funding, but he wasn’t short on offers.

“We were in a different situation than the other companies, because we had people on-board with a really good track record,” he explains. “We started to work on the Unreal Engine. We had the whole presentation about the vision, what we wanted to achieve, and all the documentation around the costs. It was really clear to investors that we knew what we were doing. We spoke with a few companies, and all of them wanted to invest, and we were in the situation where we had to choose one of them.”

In the end, the team took funding from Netease.

“One or two days after meeting Netease, we got the term sheet through. It’s hard to believe, but the team, plus a really good idea, all documentation, including the commercials, showed that we know what we are doing.”

The final leg

The Blood of the Dawnwalker is nearing certification. It’s almost ready. And it’s doing well. There was positive buzz coming out of Gamescom last year, and according to GameDiscover, it’s approaching one million wishlists on Steam. There are other RPGs ahead of it (including Microsoft’s Fable), and it’s a busy year for big games. But if Tomaszkiewicz is worried, he isn’t showing it.

But then the ambition for Rebel Wolves is a modest one. Tomaszkiewicz isn’t trying to create a second CD Projekt. In fact, he wants to do the opposite.

“The vision for our team is to stay the size we are,” he concludes. “Maybe we’ll need some help in some areas after this game comes out, so we probably will grow a little. But I’m afraid that if we grow more, we’ll lose this communication and process we have right now. I want Rebel Wolves in 10 years to be exactly the same size.

“I want to sell [enough copies] of [The Blood of the Dawnwalker] so we can secure the production of the next two games, and create some unique stuff. I don’t have a vision to create this big corporation that will do five games at the same time and be huge. I want to stay small. I want to enjoy making games as I am right now.”

Thank you for joining us on today’s The Game Business Show. We’ll be back Thursday where we’ll be speaking to a politician about the video game business. Until then, thank you for reading.

It has been a very quiet seven days for video game industry news. This coming week promises to be a little busier, and it certainly will be for us, as we’re travelling around London Games Festival, hosting talks and attending the BAFTA game awards. If you see us, do say hello.

But although last week was quiet, there were a few interesting developments to let you know about. So, let’s take a look.

Amazon simplifies its Luna game streaming service

In Brief: Video game streaming platform Amazon Luna will no longer feature game stores, individual game purchases or third-party subscriptions. This means players will no-longer have access to the EA, GOG or Ubisoft stores via Luna, and Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games subscriptions are being discontinued on the platform.

What You Need To Know:

• A-la-carte game purchases are no-longer available via Luna. Previously purchased titles will stop working from June 10, 2026 and will be removed from Amazon Luna. Players are not eligible for a refund.

• Gamers who had bought games via EA, GOG or Ubisoft stores could play these games via Luna. Going forward, that will no-longer be possible.

• Luna users will be eligible for a complementary Luna Premium subscription as a ‘thank you’ for supporting the service so far.

Read more

Hello and welcome back!

We’ve managed to go this long without doing a full AI-focused edition of The Game Business. But today I really wanted to share with you this chat I had with Jon Gibson, the head of transformation at Keywords Studios.

Keywords works with major game developers around the world, so it has quite a nuanced perspective on AI. And I found what Gibson had to say fascinating. He talked about AI being in its ‘chaos’ phase, and how few studios have worked out how to use it within their pipelines. It’s a great chat and I’ve selected some choice quotes below. Of course, you can also check out the full interview above, on YouTube, or via all good podcasting platforms.

Also this week we touch upon the Super Mario Galaxy movie, and the familiar sounding Netflix Playground. Enjoy.

The uncomfortable truth about AI

Keywords Studios has tested over 500 AI game development tools, and found only ‘half a dozen’ actually help ‘in the right way’.

That’s according to Jon Gibson, head of transformation at Keywords Studios. Gibson joined us on The Game Business Show ahead of his GDC talk on ‘the uncomfortable truth about AI in game production’, where he discussed how “everyone’s focusing on building better AI, and no one’s really focusing on how to use it in a live production environment.”

He said: “AI feels like it’s in the chaos phase right now. And we need to move to the usable phase. How do we use AI in live production environments? How do we use AI in a way where it complements teams rather than potentially threatens teams? And also how do we use it in a context where it’s governed, it’s controlled, it’s IP safe, it’s legally safe, it’s ethically and morally safe? The gulf between cool AI demos where you put in a prompt and you get something amazing, to actually AI in production where you get consistent, high-quality results steered and directed by humans, is quite a big leap.”

He continued: “A lot of people focus on what’s cool. They focus on the tool itself or the model itself, rather than what they’re trying to do. A company will use a tool or build a tool without a specific use case and try and cram it into their production pipelines, rather than flipping that problem around and saying: ‘What are our pain points? What are we trying to solve?’ And then building a tool against that.”

Gibson said that most AI game development tools are currently not fit for purpose.

“There’s a lot of garbage out there,” he explained. “We do a lot of R&D within Keywords. We tested about 500 different AI tools on some of the R&D projects we’ve done, and there’s about half a dozen that we feel complement development in the right way.”

The focus on cool AI tools, rather than how they might fit within development pipelines, is potentially exacerbating concerns amongst game makers. Gibson pointed to the GDC State of the Industry report, which revealed that 36%* of developers are using AI, but 52% don’t approve of its use. [*Note: Gibson incorrectly said 90% in the interview].

“I think not having controls and governance around AI is part of that issue,” Gibson said.

“A lot of companies are not really explaining to their people why they’re using AI, and why it’s a good thing, and what the strategy is. They’re going into using AI models without that clarity. And it concerns developers.”

Ultimately, AI tools will only work if the culture within the organization supports the strategy, he said.

“That culture is really about helping developers understand what they’re using, why they’re using it, and how it affects them and how it affects their roles specifically.

“There are very few people I meet who are totally closed off to using AI in game development. What you find is people asking questions, which a lot of businesses are currently unable to answer. We’re gradually reaching a point where those questions are being answered and people are becoming more comfortable and confident about the usage of AI in game development.”

He added: “It’s a slow process. That statistic of 52% of developers being concerned about the usage of AI, that’s gone up every year for the last three years. As AI tools and AI models and AI technology in general has become more prevalent, the lack of understanding and the concern has increased. Until we’re able to work out how to meaningfully build this technology into production pipelines in a way that is safe, in a way that adds value, in a way that complements the talent that already exists in this industry, and doesn’t threaten that talent, I think there’s always going to be that level of concern.”

Overall, Gibson told us that AI will have a meaningful impact on game development. He compared the technology to the shift from 2D to 3D, which also proved chaotic until game development pipelines caught up.

“We’re at that same phase with AI,” he said. “It’s impressive. It’s amazing. It’s transformative. It’s revolutionary. But going from a single prompt and something amazing, to something consistent and high quality that can be used in game development, that’s where the gap lies right now.”

Netflix targets 14.5 million US gamers with new Playground app

Streaming giant Netflix has ramped up its bid to win over kids and parents with a new mobile app featuring the likes of Peppa Pig, Sesame Street and Dr Seuss.

The Netflix Playground (not to be confused with the Nex Playground) will feature a selection of games available to all Netflix subscribers that feature no ads, in-app purchases or extra fees. The games can even be downloaded and played offline.

The kid’s games market is significant. According to Ampere, there are 14.5 million gamers under nine years-old and four million under five. But with growing concerns over the digital health of children, there’s been an increased focus around online safety and screen time management for younger players.

Kids giant Roblox has struggled with this conversation, with parents growing concerned around the title’s social tools and user generated content. 35% of verified users on Roblox are under the age of 13.

Netflix isn’t the only new competitor targeting kids and parents in the video game space. The camera-based game console Nex Playground has proven to be a hit in the US, and also features trusted kids brands such as Sesame Street, Peppa Pig and Bluey. It also adopts a subscription model, with no in-app purchases.

Of course, the other major player in the market is Nintendo, with its high-profile kids brands such as Mario and Pokémon. The company has sold over 170 million Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles worldwide.

Meanwhile…

• The Super Mario Galaxy movie delivered $372.6 million in revenue for its five-day opening weekend, which basically (but not quite) matched the $375 million of the original film. Mario is now the only animated movie franchise to have two films that delivered more than $350 million in its opening weekend. The film didn’t do great with critics, with a 42 on Rotten Tomatoes. But fans were happier, with an 89 fan score. The film had a budget of $110 million.

• The Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 collection for Nintendo Switch jumped up the charts in the UK following the film’s release, with sales up 107% week-on-week (physical sales only). However, the game missed out on the Top Ten (Nielsen IQ data). Nintendo is set to release two games starring popular characters from the film in the coming months, including a new Star Fox and Yoshi game.

• In what is a rare moment for the mobile video game sector, Supercell CEO and co-founder Ilkka Paananen will be awarded the prestigious BAFTA Fellowship next week.

• Hazelight has now sold 50 million games across its three titles. 2018’s A Way Out has sold 13 million copies, 2021’s It Takes Two is on 30 million, and 2025’s Split Fiction has sold seven million copies so far.

• The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Nintendo’s patent around in-game characters summoning a sub-character to aid it in combat (as seen within the Pokémon series). Nintendo has two months to respond, with the option to extend if necessary. It is all part of Nintendo’s on-going case against the 2024 game Palworld, which it believes infringes on multiple patent rights.

• This is potentially good news for Hello Games. The No Man Sky developer just announced a new No Man Sky expansion which appears to be similar to Pokémon. It’s called Xeno Arena, a new feature where players explore the universe to collect a team of creature companions, then use them to fight other creatures in turn-based battles.

• Five independent studios have established an ‘alliance’ called Nova Assembly. Developers Unfrozen, Sad Cat Studios, VEA Games, Weappy and Game Garden will share expertise and resources, and even establish their own publishing division to handle marketing, distribution and community. In total, the Nova Assembly has ten titles in development.

• The Nintendo Switch 2 version of 007 First Light has been delayed until later in the summer. Developer IO Interactive said that the Xbox, PlayStation and PC versions are still set for May 27. Hopefully this one doesn’t do a Borderlands 4 and disappear entirely.

• Eidos Montreal has laid off 124 employees, with studio head David Anfossi also leaving the developer. The redundancies are reportedly the result of the cancellation of a long-in-development new open world IP.

That’s it from us today! We’ll be back next week with more interviews, news, analysis and insight. Plus, full details for our upcoming The Game Business Live event in June. Until then, thank you for reading.