I don't need another shooter with a 100+ person team. The economics don't make any sense anyway. I'd much rather see what 15 can do, knowing their constraints. I'm more than willing to pay for that. www.videogameschronicle.com/news/john-ro...

$500M for Gears of War E-Day is likely an operational cost, not the specific cost associated with Gears of War. That doesn't make it much better, but we should be specific what we're talking about. Operational cost is what kills a studio. lordsofgaming.net/2026/09/the-...

The Biggest Threat to “AAA” Game Development is Operational Cost, not Budgets - Lords of Gaming

Ballooning budgets are often blamed for the high cost of video games, but that's not the core problem. Instead, we need to look at operational cost.

lordsofgaming.net

Current *US* sales of consoles, tracked against their previous generational device (LTD). As expected, PS5 is basically flat to PS4. Xbox Series units trail Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Mat Piscatella@matpiscatella.bsky.social · 3d ago

US. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service LTD Units (Through Month 71) PS5: +40% vs PS3, +1% vs PS4 XBS: -35% vs 360, -28% vs XBO Calendar year 7 YTD Units (Jan-Sep) PS5 (2026): -4% vs PS3 (2012), -3% vs PS4 (2019) XBS (2026): -81% vs 360 (2011), -45% vs XBO (2019)

Indies, and other small titles, are generally additive because people don't see them as taking time away from their mainstay games. They've broken through the market because they happen to the exact type of game that people are willing to play "on the side." www.gamesindustry.biz/indies-and-o...

Indies and original IP blew up in 2026

More than half of the games that sold more than 500,000 units in their first month were the start of a new series, and 43% were indies

gamesindustry.biz

If anything happens over the next decade in NA / Western "AAA," I hope it's the continued tearing down of walls between the development studios and the corporate office. In the games industry's rush to expand at the end of the 2010s, the separation between studios and the business became wider.

Modern Warfare 4 is the complete #CallofDuty package. - One of the best campaigns in the entire franchise. - Rock solid "return to form" multiplayer. - A genuinely exciting extraction mode (DMZ) that needs some work, but is a vast improvement over the beta in MW2.

The $500M number that's being associated with E-Day is absolutely NOT the cost of the project, or it's capitalized labor cost. That ridiculous number is even higher than the napkin math that you get when you run out The Coalition's total cost of business over 7 years.

Space Marine 2 has reached 15M players; a big milestone for a game that absolutely deserves it. Saber and Focus have a generational hit on their hands. Now load the holy ammunition and remember, the Emperor protects.

You'll need to visit that other site to see my article on EA's "Next Chapter" memo: x.com/GameOverThir...

PULLUP Entertainment released their Q2 26-27 report (includes H1 26-27 numbers). Overall, the quarter benefitted from strong back catalog sales, led primarily by #SpaceMarine2. The entirety of H1 26-27 came in under H1 25-26, as the previous year contained strong comparables and deferred revenue.

This is EA's memo regarding their future as a company. What should you take from it? It sounds eerily similar to Xbox's reset announcement. Why? Because it's the same corporate stategy. www.ea.com/news/buildin...

Building EA's Next Chapter

The below announcement was shared with Electronic Arts employees

ea.com

This is personal speculation: If #Xbox Game Pass ever goes to a menu service, I suspect cloud will be an extra addition at these prices (or reduced for a discount). Point being, my guess is that cloud will be taken out of Game Pass completely and offered as a menu item. news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/1...

Cloud Playtime Now Available to Test with XBOX Insiders

Starting today, XBOX Insiders* can try a new way to stream games by purchasing cloud playtime without a Game Pass subscription. This preview gives XBOX Insiders who do not have an active Game Pass sub...

news.xbox.com

This might be EA, but you can take this quote and apply it to every major, large-scale, gaming entity. "Across our portfolio, we’re making deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth,” the executives wrote."

Bioware is being closed and the next #MassEffect is cancelled. While I don't celebrate it at all, I spoke openly about Bioware no longer fitting into EA's current corporate plan. With the new debt from going private, Bioware became the obvious target (because they already were).

Whether by choice, or by economic force, this is the model that will see wider adoption across the games industry. Before you start typing, it does not mean that everyone will (or should) adopt it. I'm talking about the general direction, not exceptions. www.gamesindustry.biz/how-star-war...

How Star Wars: Galactic Racer kept the core team small and sustainable through "distributed development"

"When you shrink, there's a personal impact to people, but you also lose an incredible amount of knowledge"

gamesindustry.biz

It's hard to ignore the reality that the "old" games industry is, effectively, dead. I've often said that the covid shutdown era was the end of that model (1980s through 2021). The next era of gaming is going to see people play across a variety of platforms, devices, and software. labs.xbox.com

XBOX Labs | Let’s play with what’s next

Explore, experiment, and create what's next in play.

labs.xbox.com

People were debating me on overall platform first party unit sales for Xbox and PlayStation. I decided to pull Sony's first party unit sales that they report in their financials. Obviously, the decline exists. The old games industry died at the end of the covid shutdown era. This isn't a debate.

How many time have a said this? The term "cannibalize" is incorrect when it comes to Game Pass. When used in reference to a business, it is when a company loses revenue due to their own product accidentally (or purposely) causing another not to be purchased. Game Pass is REPLACEMENT revenue.

Mat Piscatella@matpiscatella.bsky.social · 3w ago

And it isn't straight cannibalism if a person paying for Game Pass plays an offered game through the service. Please. Let's be serious people. Or at least try to be.

There's a group of people who apparently refuse to accept that the developer (or publisher) sits down with Xbox to negotiate an appropriate payment for their game to be placed in Game Pass. If they don't like the payment, they can simply say "no thanks."

Ace Combat 8 moved 1M units faster than any other game in the series. x.com/AceCombatGam...

Circana released their numbers for the August 2026 US video game market. Mobile content sales led a general decline in video game consumer spending versus August of 2025. YTD, 2026 is down versus 2025 (-3%). Hardware remains a tough sell. GTAVI, and a new CoD, are on the horizon.

Mat Piscatella@matpiscatella.bsky.social · 3w ago

August 2026 U.S. Video Game Market Highlights Thread from Circana - US video game projected total spending across content, hardware and accessories dipped 9% in August when compared to a year ago, to $4.3 billion.

Interview with Undead Labs - Phillip Holt. - Investors were critical of the fact that a significant portion of the team is in Seattle (one of the most expensive CoLa regions to develop a game). Base cost, base cost, base cost. I keep saying it. www.thegamebusiness.com/p/how-undead...

How Undead Labs saved itself and State of Decay from oblivion

Studio boss Philip Holt on leaving Xbox, staff cuts, “irresponsible transparency” and the future

thegamebusiness.com

Ace Combat 8 feels like the culmination of all the best parts of other Ace Combat games, while simultaneously reducing the tedium of certain mission types. I don't know if I have a favorite game in the series, but AC8 would be what I consider on the top half of the list.

I've been consistent since Asha Sharma took the EVP spot at #Xbox... This does not look like a sale. Instead, it looks like a serious attempt to revamp the business into something more flexible / viable / operable in the modern video game market (circa 2022 and later).

For those interested, Wolverine debuted 7th on the US PlayStation engagement tracker (Circana). I don't place a lot of weight on the engagement trackers these days (lack of movement), but Wolverine has been a talking point as of late.

Mat Piscatella@matpiscatella.bsky.social · last mo.

Circana Player Engagement Tracker - US Top 10 Titles by Weekly Active Users (Not Concurrent) - W/E Sep 19, 2026 - Marvel's Wolverine debuted 7th on US PlayStation - Aniimo launched in top 20 across PS (19th), XBX (10th) and Steam (11th) - RuneScape: Dragonwilds placed 11th on Xbox in release week

Had a great time talking about the organizational moves at #XBOX with ILP. There was a lot to cover in this one. Pull up a chair and stay awhile.

𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝕮𝖔𝖌𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖔👑@lordcognito.bsky.social · last mo.

Major topics & passionate debates in the Realm! S/O to @vicious696.bsky.social for heartfelt insight on the Destiny topic. S/0 to @gameoverthirty.bsky.social for corporate restructure & financial nuance on the Reset Topic. Realm was SPICY & hilarious on accountability;) THANK YOU

WARDOGS is reporting 3M copies sold. However, with these kinds of numbers the curse of early access becomes very real. At 3M sales, there is an immense amount of pressure on the studio to start treating the game like a released product instead of "early access."

Since many of you probably refuse to log into X, here's my most recent #XBOX article in two images. OK. Three images. What is going on Arkane Lyon?

I haven't posted here in a while, and obviously there's been additional news on #XBOX (and other things). Here's a catch-up thread: My article on X regarding the second round of XBOX layoffs / restructuring. I will eventually repost it to my website. x.com/GameOverThir...

Hooded Horse's CEO posted about something that I've also noted on my own Steam homepage: Discoverability changes are improving visibility to all types of games. I can vouch for the "personal calendar" increasing my click rate on games of almost any variety. www.linkedin.com/posts/tim-ho...

Steam recently made a fundamental change to indie game discoverability. Simon Carless reported it in his newsletter a few days ago: "Spotting smaller Steam games getting more front page referrer...

Steam recently made a fundamental change to indie game discoverability. Simon Carless reported it in his newsletter a few days ago: "Spotting smaller Steam games getting more front page referrer traf...

linkedin.com