Gaming, in brief

Arrowhead boss Shams Jorjani told Gamescom the playbooks used from 2010 to 2020 no longer work. [1]

Studios used to assume a game would sell at least a certain amount. Jorjani's version of that number: take a zero away. [1]

He said the bottom has fallen out of every business case studios had. [1]

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain named the habit underneath it. Publishers only study the games that sold well, so failure teaches them nothing. [5]

Cain called it survivorship bias, and said the search should also cover what the games that flopped had in common. [5]

Saber's Tim Willits argued the reckoning is North American, not global. Saber has 3,500 staff across 15 studios and no development in North America. [2]

Willits said Saber's driving game SnowRunner cost around $6 million and has brought in hundreds of millions. [2]

He said World War Z was made by about 50 people and has been played by 32 million. [2]

Newzoo forecasts console revenue up 5.1% this year, to $46.9 billion. [3][4]

Take out Grand Theft Auto 6 and that growth is zero. Newzoo's Emmanuel Rosier said console revenue would be flat against 2025. [3]

Rosier said the game will be cannibalistic to other releases. GamesIndustry.biz gives that as the likely reason so many studios moved their dates. [3]

CD Projekt Red now runs The Witcher 4 on PC, PS5 and Xbox every day, because Cyberpunk 2077 was built PC-first and shipped broken. [6]

Why it matters. Newzoo publishes its full report on 10 September; the figure to watch is console revenue with Grand Theft Auto 6 taken out. [3][4]

Politico reported the White House is weighing tariffs on chips and on the goods that use them, including consoles. [11]

Why it matters. Nintendo raised Switch prices weeks after the 2025 round, which the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional. [11]

Xbox boss Asha Sharma told the BBC the whole industry must innovate on affordability and efficiency. That, she said, is something it has not had to do. [12][13]

Why it matters. She named the cause as the crisis in hardware and components, and said Xbox has not had to think this way before. [12]

Microsoft priced its translucent green 25th-anniversary Xbox at $899, with preorders from 27 August and a 13 November launch. [15]

Why it matters. Under the shell it is an Xbox Series X, which itself now lists at $799.99 after an earlier rise. [16]

Netflix dropped its plans for big games. Instead it hosted the Grand Theft Auto 6 extended look, six hours before YouTube got it. [17]

Why it matters. Grand Theft Auto V has sold more than 230 million copies, so the audience was never the problem. [19]

Rockstar told creators they could share reaction content after the Netflix debut, without saying whether they could show footage. [18]

Why it matters. Co-streaming a showcase is normal, and a copyright strike is not a small thing for a channel. [18]

Video Games Europe put 2025 revenue at 30bn euros, after expanding its report from five countries to sixteen. [20]

Why it matters. The original five fell 4%, to 25.7bn euros. [20]

Newzoo said Rosier's remarks that the Epic Games Store cannot recover were not supported by its data and should not be treated as its assessment. [31]

Why it matters. Epic answered with numbers: third-party spending up 57% to a record $400 million in 2025. [31]

MBC Group, 54% owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund since 2025, is building a games studio around 1001 Threads of Mizan. [21]

Why it matters. The studio's head calls the region fast-growing, and says it has ruled out using generative AI. [21]

Gamescom filled all 233,000 square metres in Cologne, with more than 1,600 exhibitors from 67 countries. Its indie area grew 16%. [22][23]

Why it matters. ChinaJoy drew over 438,000 attendees this year, so the largest games show in the world is in China. [22]

Hoyoverse opened Opening Night Live with Nodusfall, followed by games from Krafton, NetEase, NCSoft and Chengdu's Eclipse Glow Games. [10]

Why it matters. Arrowhead's boss says Asian studios have reached a tipping point in quality. [1]

Alinea Analytics estimates Phantom Blade Zero has taken over 300,000 Steam pre-orders worth $14.5 million, with 1.6 million wishlists. [24]

Why it matters. That is an outside firm's estimate, not a figure from the studio. [24]

Google told Android developers that apps over its new memory limits will be slowed down and may be shut off, blaming the memory shortage. [25]

Why it matters. Mobile is 57% of what the world spends on games. [4]

Nintendo raises the 256GB Switch 2 from $449.99 to $499.99 on 1 September, in the US, Canada, the UK and Europe. [26][27]

Why it matters. Bundles including a game arrive from late September, priced above $500. [27]

More than 30 licensed movie games came out in 2007. In 2025 the nearest thing was an event server in Minecraft and Fortnite skins. [28]

Why it matters. Half-Life 2 cost $40 million in 2004; Marvel's Spider-Man 2 cost about $300 million. [28]

Xbox is trialling a game streaming tier paid for by ads. An eMarketer survey found 52% of players would quit over repeated disruptive ads. [29]

Why it matters. One in five said good ads would make them play a game more often. [29]

Creative UK launched Fast Forward, sponsored by Barclays and backed by lottery money, matching games, film and TV firms with industry mentors. [30]

Why it matters. It is help running a company, not money to make a game. [30]

The European Games Developer Federation named its 2026-28 board and re-elected Hendrik Lesser as president, with funding and skills access on its agenda. [32]

Why it matters. Its stated agenda is better access to funding, talent and skills, while Europe's longest-counted markets shrank 4%. [32][20]