Gaming, in brief

Asha Sharma, the head of Xbox, Microsoft's games business, told the New York Times on 30 September: "Xbox is not for sale." [1][2][3]

She added that Xbox would look at "the right partnerships" and "the right operating model". [2][4] The New York Times noted that her answer does not rule out a spin-off. [6]

A spin-off would make Xbox its own company that still works closely with Microsoft. [6] Its costs would then come off Microsoft's books, the New York Times suggests. [3]

In June, The Information, a tech news site, reported that Microsoft's chief executive Satya Nadella and finance chief Amy Hood had considered spinning Xbox out. [2]

Xbox brings in about 6% of Microsoft's profits, the New York Times reported. [1]

Xbox reported a margin of 3% for its last financial year, which IGN reads as its profit margin. [3] In July, Sharma wrote that its margins are 3 to 10 times lower than similar businesses. [3]

This summer Xbox lost a fifth of its staff and shut or sold five studios. [1] Microsoft plans up to 3,200 Xbox job cuts in the year to June 2027. [2]

Last week Microsoft moved the Halo series and the studio Rare to Activision, its Call of Duty publisher, and cut 268 more jobs. [1]

Game Pass, Xbox's monthly games subscription, peaked at 34 million subscribers and then started to fall. [1] New Call of Duty games no longer join it on launch day. [5]

Analysts quoted by IGN doubt anyone would buy all of Xbox after the $69 billion Activision deal. [3] They think other companies may buy parts of it instead. [3]

Sharma says 500 million people play on Xbox each month. [1] She wants to reach players in Africa, Latin America and South Asia through cloud gaming. [1][3]

Shawn Layden, a former head of PlayStation in America, says Xbox must "pick a lane". [7][8] It can keep fighting PlayStation with consoles, or stop making them, as Sega did in 2001. [7][8]

Why it matters. Watch Gears of War: E-Day, Xbox's next big game, due next week, and any detail of Project Helix, the next Xbox console. [6][5]

Grasshopper Manufacture, the Japanese studio behind the No More Heroes games, said on 30 September it is independent again. [9][10] Goichi Suda, known as Suda51, founded it in 1998. [9] GungHo bought it in 2013, and NetEase, a big Chinese games company, bought it in 2021. [9][10] The studio published its own game, Romeo Is a Dead Man, this year, and Suda says it now knows how to do that. [11][9] Kotaku reports NetEase has been pulling back from Japan, and stopped funding Nagoshi Studios' first game this year. [11]

Why it matters. NetEase spent heavily on Japanese studios a few years ago and is now letting them go. [11] A studio on its own keeps its name and its games, and must find the money for each new one.

Dutch police arrested a 24-year-old man in Amsterdam on 28 September in an inquiry into ShinyHunters, a hacking group. [12][13] Reuters named him as Pepijn van der Stap, a security worker with past hacking convictions. [12] The FBI says he has led the group since 2025, and that the group broke into Rockstar, maker of Grand Theft Auto. [12][13] In April it demanded money from Rockstar, which refused, and the leak showed GTA Online earns over $1 million a day. [12][13]

Why it matters. ShinyHunters denies he is a member, and he has not been convicted of this. [12][13] The FBI publicly told the group's other members to come forward before they are found. [12]

Owners of 2020 Samsung smart TVs will lose the Xbox app on 3 November, Microsoft told them by email. [15] The app is how those TVs play Xbox games streamed from the internet, with no console. [15] Microsoft says the newer software behind cloud gaming no longer works on those TV models. [15] The New York Times also reports that work on an Xbox cloud controller stopped after Microsoft bought Activision in 2023, though an Xbox spokesperson says it is still being developed. [15]

Why it matters. Sharma says cloud gaming is how Xbox will reach new players in Africa, Latin America and South Asia. [1] On older TVs, the same service is shrinking.

Shuhei Yoshida, a former PlayStation executive, told The Verge that Sony and Nintendo should keep the PS5 and Switch 2 going as long as possible. [14] He said the parts inside consoles and PCs have risen in price far more than other entertainment. [14] He does not think many players or developers are asking for more power. [14] If the next console costs over $1,000, he suggested selling it like a phone, on a plan of about $50 a month. [14]

Why it matters. A new console starts with no owners, so games made only for it sell to few people at first. Rising part prices make that start more expensive for everyone. [14]

S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan, a research firm, expects money spent on games to rise from $204.4 billion in 2025 to $229.1 billion in 2030. [16] That is growth of about 2.3% a year. [16] It expects PC to bring in the most, reaching $49.23 billion, and cloud gaming to grow fastest. [16] It says Xbox Series consoles have weakened sharply, and PC will start eating into Xbox game sales by 2030. [16]

Why it matters. The firm expects the growth to come mostly from players already playing paying more, through subscriptions and in-game purchases. [16] It says higher console prices and costlier games could slow it. [16]

Ubisoft, the games publisher, renamed its Creative House 2 as Massive Entertainment on 30 September. [17] This part of the company makes The Division, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, with teams in Sweden, Toronto, Montreal and Paris. [17] It takes the name of Massive, a Swedish studio founded in 1997 and bought by Ubisoft in 2008. [17] Ubisoft split its games into these Creative Houses after years of weak results and closed studios. [17]

Why it matters. Each Creative House now answers for the growth of its own games, Ubisoft says. [17] Christoph Hartmann, who founded 2K Games, runs this one. [17]

Since Microsoft moved Halo to Activision, past and present Halo staff have argued about the series online. [18] Brian Jarrard, community director at Halo Studios, denied a claim that the studio kept a blacklist of critical YouTubers. [18] He called it "annoyingly false". [18] Frank O'Connor, creative director of the whole series until 2023, set out three paths for Activision on LinkedIn. [19] He urged it to hire laid-off developers from Bungie and Halo Studios. [19]

Why it matters. Activision has given few clues about who will make the next Halo. [19] Bungie, owned by Sony, has also lost many veteran developers in Sony's latest cuts, Kotaku notes. [19]

Undead Labs, the State of Decay studio Xbox bought in 2018, said last week it is now owned by its staff. [25] Before that, Splash Damage, a British studio, was buying it, The Game Business reported and Kotaku confirmed. [25] The money came from Emona Capital, an investment firm that backs Splash Damage, but the deal fell apart. [25] Undead Labs cut jobs as it went independent, and is finishing State of Decay 3 without a named publisher. [25]

Why it matters. Ninja Theory, another studio Xbox let go, also had sale deals fall through and now faces closure. [25] For studios Xbox drops, a buyer is not guaranteed.

Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds comes to Nintendo's Switch 2 on 5 December, with every free update so far, including new monsters. [20] Producer Genki Sunano told Kotaku it runs at a steady 30 frames a second in handheld play, even with four players. [21] He called the work of rebuilding it a painstaking process. [21] Separately, Monster Hunter Outlanders, a phone game made by TiMi Studio Group with Capcom, launches on 29 October. [22]

Why it matters. Capcom is taking its biggest series to a handheld and to phones at once. More people can play it without buying a new machine.

Funcom, the studio behind the survival game Dune: Awakening, is bringing it to consoles with a new single-player mode. [26] Joel Bylos, its chief creative officer, told GamesIndustry.biz that Legendary, which owns the Dune film rights, approves its work through tickets in a tracking tool. [26] He said games may copy Hollywood and raise money for each game separately, instead of risking the whole company. [26] He added that this only works for staff where unions are strong. [26]

Why it matters. Raising money one game at a time puts the risk on each project, not on the studio. [26] Workers hired for one game may then be on short contracts, Bylos warns. [26]

Mark Pincus, who founded the games company Zynga, says he agreed in 2012 to buy Supercell for $400 million in cash. [24] Zynga's board blocked it, he says, after its $180 million purchase of OMGPop, the Draw Something studio, failed. [24] Supercell makes mobile games such as Clash of Clans. A year later, Pincus said, Supercell made $500 million in profit. [24] He told the Deconstructor of Fun podcast he wished he had fired his board. [24]

Why it matters. Owning a studio means keeping the money from its hits. Zynga's board passed on Supercell, which then made more in one year than Zynga would have paid. [24]

Sony will not exhibit at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in 2027. [31] It is the first time Sony has missed it since the show began in 1967. [31] A spokesperson told Bloomberg Sony is focused on entertainment, its own characters and stories, and tools for creators. [31] Sony once used CES for PlayStation news, and showed the PS5 logo there in 2020. [31] It has not gone to Gamescom, a big games fair, since 2019. [31]

Why it matters. Sony now shows its games in its own online broadcasts, where it alone decides what is shown. [31]

Games raised $26 million on Kickstarter in 2025, the same as in 2024, research by Ico Partners shows. [33] In all, 443 game projects were funded, 4% fewer than the year before. [33] Eleven raised over $500,000, the most since 2015, said Ico's Thomas Bidaux. [33] Developers told GamesIndustry.biz a campaign now needs an almost finished game and an audience already waiting. [33]

Why it matters. Crowdfunding lets a small studio raise money from players instead of from a publisher or an investor. [33] It works best for studios that already have fans.

World of Warcraft: Forever, a new version of Blizzard's online role-playing game, opens on 4 November, and its test version already has a gold-buying problem. [28] Some players pay real money for in-game gold, which breaks the rules. [28] Blizzard says it will now act against buyers' accounts as well as sellers', removing the gold or closing accounts. [28] A popular streamer, Ziqo, had most of the gold he received wiped but was not banned. [28]

Why it matters. In a game where players trade with each other, bought gold pushes up prices for everyone who earns it by playing. Blizzard is also asking test players about new classes such as Bard and Witch, players report. [29]

Jagex, the studio behind RuneScape, said its survival game RuneScape: Dragonwilds does not look as it should on Nintendo's Switch 2. [23] Players complained of blurry pictures after the game reached consoles in September. [23] Jagex promised fixes in several patches over time, not one big update. [23] It also sent Nintendo new store screenshots that match how the game really looks. [23]

Why it matters. Making a big game run well on a smaller machine takes months of rebuilding, as Capcom described for Monster Hunter. [21]

Naughty Dog, the studio behind The Last of Us, is planning a new Uncharted game, the site MP1st reports. [32] It would come after Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which the studio will fully show in 2027. [32] Shaun Escayag, who came back to Naughty Dog in 2021, is said to lead it. [32] A well-known leaker, NateTheHate, backed the report, and Kotaku says plans this early can still change. [32]

Why it matters. Naughty Dog has released few games during the PS5's life. [32] A new Uncharted may not arrive until the PS6. [32]

Nintendo released a free update for its 2026 Star Fox remake on Switch 2. [27] Version 1.2.0 adds three stages to battle mode and lets four people play on one console with a split screen. [27] Online lobbies no longer close when the host leaves. [27] Kotaku says the remake has not sold strongly, and the download costs $50. [27]

Why it matters. A free update gives a slow-selling game a reason to be noticed before the holidays, when Nintendo's Ocarina of Time remake also sits on the shelves. [27]

A 2015 Pikachu card drawn by Y. Fujishima for a contest in Pokemon Art Academy, a Nintendo 3DS drawing game, sold for $8.4 million on 28 September. [30] Only 100 copies were made, all given to the artist as a prize. [30] Another top-grade copy sold for $135,000 in June. [30] Only Logan Paul's Illustrator Pikachu, at $16.49 million, has sold for more. [30]

Why it matters. Rare Pokemon cards have broken several sales records this year, Polygon says. [30] The card was a prize, never sold in shops.