Gaming, in brief

On 28 October, Microsoft said Xbox's revenue fell 2% from July to September. [1]

Xbox brought in $5.379 billion, against $5.508 billion a year before. [2]

In the three months before that, Xbox's revenue had fallen 10%. [2]

Microsoft's cloud business, Azure, made $33.1 billion, about six times as much as Xbox. [2]

Microsoft still expects money from consoles to fall from October to December. [5]

October to December will be the first quarter to count GTA 6 and Modern Warfare 4. [2]

Sharma has promised to return Xbox to growth by the end of June 2027. [4]

Xbox has cut over 1,600 jobs since its reset, and its first figures since show it still earning 2% less, with console money down 14%. [3][1]

Its boss blames a shortage of consoles, which AI firms buying up memory chips has made dearer and scarcer. [2]

"More demand than consoles available" turns a fall in sales into a sign of popularity, and nobody outside Microsoft can check the demand side.

They outbid console and PC makers for chips, and Xbox now has fewer consoles to sell. [2]

Savings from the Xbox cuts went partly into computing power and staff for research. [1]

Over 1,600 jobs have gone, with 3,200 planned by next July. [3]

How many Xbox consoles Microsoft could have sold.

Sharma says demand beats supply, but Microsoft has given no console sales figure for years. [2]

How many people pay for Game Pass now.

The last count, 34 million, is over two years old. [4]

Capcom, the Japanese maker of Resident Evil, sold more games than in any first half before. [19]

Its half-year ran from 1 April to 30 September, and downloads brought most money. [19]

Pragmata, a new game, has sold 2.7 million copies, more than double its first two days. [19]

Onimusha: Way of the Sword rose from 1 million at launch to 1.7 million. [19]

Old games did the most selling, helped by regular sales and discounts. [19]

Monster Hunter: World, from 2018, has now sold 30.83 million copies. [20]

Capcom gave no new figure for Monster Hunter Wilds, last counted at close to 11 million. [19]

Wilds lost many of its players soon after launch, and comes to Switch 2 in December. [19]

Old games sold on discount drove its best first half of sales ever. [19]

How many Monster Hunter Wilds copies Capcom sold this half.

Capcom left it out of its report, after near 11 million last year. [19]

Valve, which runs the Steam game store, met small studios in South Korea on 27 October. [21]

One studio said someone threatened to clone its game with AI unless it paid. [22]

Valve's Tom Giardino called that a matter for the police. [23]

"We don't want to be gatekeepers," Giardino said of the tools developers use. [22]

Instead he told studios to build a following and keep adding to their games. [11]

At Next Fest, Steam's demo week, players see random demos for the first 2 days. [24]

Small studios carry the cost, because Steam will not refuse games made with AI tools. [23]

Valve leaves it to them to guard their games against AI copies. [11]

Whether Valve will act on AI copies at all.

Its staff spoke at a conference, through a translated report, and Steam's rules have not changed. [23]

Epic Games makes Fortnite and Unreal Engine, the toolkit many studios build games with. [25]

Marcus Wassmer, its head of development, said engineers no longer write the bulk of code. [10]

They guide AI tools such as Claude Code and Codex instead. [26]

He said the tools fixed a kind of bug Epic had fought for a decade. [26]

One job he expected to take 3 to 6 weeks was done in about 1 week. [26]

"We are more concerned about the risks of moving too slowly," Wassmer said. [10]

Studios that build on Unreal will now use an engine partly written by AI. [25]

Nintendo made a Zelda-themed Switch 2 for the series' 40th birthday. [8]

The remake of Ocarina of Time, first out in 1998, comes on 5 November. [8]

Each round of pre-orders for the console sold out within seconds. [8]

Walmart, a big US shop, cancelled pre-orders a day before they were due to arrive. [9]

Its site then showed the console for $700, nearly $200 more, possibly from an outside seller. [9]

Nintendo's Bill van Zyll said the company "underestimated how well it would be received". [8]

He said more consoles are coming, but gave no dates or numbers. [8]

Until then, resellers on eBay are charging $600 to $800. [8]

Nintendo made too few, so resellers charge $600 to $800 on eBay. [8]

They lost the console a day before delivery, as the listed price rose to $700. [9]

When more Zelda Switch 2 consoles reach shops.

Nintendo says more are coming but gave no dates or numbers. [8]

GTA 6 comes out on 19 November, and no other big game comes within 5 days. [13]

Publishers are choosing dates on purpose to keep away from it, GameSpot reports. [13]

Circana, a US sales tracker, says nearly 1 in 3 players there plan to buy it. [13]

Its analyst Mat Piscatella called the fear of clashing with it "completely overblown". [13]

The new Hunger Games film still opens the next day, 20 November. [13]

Newzoo said publishers released many big games in September, before GTA 6 arrives. [14]

Newzoo says that crowded calendar makes it harder for any one game to stand out. [14]

Wednesday's South Park episode showed new footage of GTA 6. [7]

Eurogamer checked the footage was real, and Rockstar, which makes GTA, is thanked in the credits. [7]

The clip shows Jason, a lead character, fighting a man on Vice Beach. [27]

The episode used GTA 6's launch to joke about the US midterm elections. [27]

South Park airs on Comedy Central, a US cable channel. [28]

Rockstar already has a deal with Sony to market GTA 6 with the PlayStation 5. [7]

Eurogamer counts it as part of Rockstar's marketing, three weeks before launch. [7]

Edge, a games magazine, ran a long preview of GTA 6 with Rockstar's leaders. [29]

Its map is almost as big as GTA 4, GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 combined. [29]

Rockstar's Aaron Garbut said it has "an order of magnitude more interiors" than earlier games. [29]

Its people in the street have about 600,000 animations between them. [30]

A team in Los Angeles of writers, directors and producers worked on those people alone. [30]

It is the first new GTA game since 2013. [28]

PC Gamer notes that GTA 5's emptier northern areas got a lukewarm welcome from players. [29]

Bank of America told investors a new GTA Online could come in early 2027. [15]

GTA Online, the online mode of GTA 5, still makes Rockstar a lot from paid extras. [15]

Rockstar calls GTA 6 a single-player game and has named no date for an online mode. [15]

The bank guesses January to March; GameSpot says a PC version could come then too. [15]

Bing Gordon, a founder of EA, said 75 million copies sold would be "mind-blowing". [31]

He also said GTA 6 succeeds if people play it instead of watching Thanksgiving football. [31]

Take-Two, which owns Rockstar, does not say what the game cost to make. [31]

Why a game is given a season first and a day only near the end

A studio first names only a year or a season

Shops cannot take firm orders on a season

A named day lets shops take orders and plan adverts

A missed day breaks those orders and costs trust

So studios name the day only once the game is nearly done

A year can slip quietly. A named day that slips breaks orders other people have already placed.

Witchbrook moved its year twice. It got an actual day only when the end was close.

It missed 2025 and then 2026, and was given an actual day, 28 January 2027, only now.

Its maker had named only a year, so moving it to 2027 broke no pre-orders.

Its makers promised a disc but no day, even with Sony's 2028 disc cut-off ahead.

Rockstar has named no day for the online mode, so a bank is left guessing early 2027.

Waiting has a cost too. A game with no day gives buyers nothing to pre-order, and other games fill the gap.

Shop staff, players saving up and the people still making the game all plan their months around that one day.

Phantom Blade Zero, a sword-fighting game from S-Game in China, came out on 28 October. [32]

At its peak, 431,541 people were playing it at once on Steam. [32]

When Eurogamer wrote, only Counter-Strike 2 had more players on Steam. [32]

Rhys Elliott, an Alinea analyst, estimates it sold 850,000 copies on PC and PS5. [32]

He thinks Chinese sales on Tencent's WeGame store take it well above 1 million. [32]

Black Myth: Wukong, another Chinese action game, peaked at 2,415,714 players in 2024. [32]

S-Game has not given its own sales figure yet. [32]

Eurogamer calls it more success for games made in China, after Black Myth: Wukong. [32]

How many copies Modern Warfare 4 and Phantom Blade Zero have sold.

Activision has not given a figure, and Phantom Blade Zero's numbers are an analyst's estimate, not S-Game's. [2][32]

Phantom Blade Zero, made by S-Game in China, had 431,541 people playing it at once on Steam on its first day.

EA closed BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect, last week and cancelled its next game. [33]

Laid-off staff told BFM Tech, a French site, about the cancelled Mass Effect: Universe. [34]

Staff said a flag like the Pride flag was cut from a demo for EA bosses. [34]

EA's new owners include Saudi Arabia's state fund, the Public Investment Fund. [34]

The reporter said staff feared negative feedback from conservative executives. [34]

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk called EA's sale to private owners "the final nail in the coffin". [33]

He said yearly sports games are an easier business than BioWare's long, complicated games. [33]

EA has not answered Kotaku's questions about the flag. [34]

Why the Mass Effect: Universe team removed the flag.

The account comes from anonymous former staff, and EA has not replied. [34]

Skydance, the company formed by Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery, now owns their game studios. [35]

Those include NetherRealm, which makes Mortal Kombat, and Portkey Games, behind Hogwarts Legacy. [35]

On Monday its bosses, David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz, offered some staff money to leave. [36]

They called it a one-time offer, ahead of layoffs they say are coming. [36]

Skydance aims to save more than $6 billion a year within three years. [36]

Staff must also work in the office 5 days a week. [35]

It is unclear whether game studio staff are offered the buyout. [35]

They face a one-time offer to leave, layoffs after it, and five office days a week. [36]

Whether Skydance's game studio staff can take its buyout.

The memo did not say which teams are eligible. [35]

Sanrio, the Japanese maker of Hello Kitty, ended a merchandise deal with the TV drama Vivant. [37]

Vivant is a spy thriller made by TBS, the Japanese broadcaster. [37]

Hello Kitty, My Melody and Cinnamoroll had been sold dressed as characters from the show. [38]

China's state media called the show's Chinese agents, who torture a Japanese spy, a deliberate smear. [37]

Sanrio apologised and said it will check future tie-ups more carefully. [38]

Chinese media say Sanrio made $117 million in China in the first half, up over 40%. [37]

Relations between China and Japan are at their lowest in years, the BBC reports. [38]

TBS, a Japanese broadcaster, bought a $150 million stake in Legendary, a Hollywood studio, in January. [16]

Legendary makes Godzilla films and is adapting Street Fighter and Gundam too. [16]

From this month, TBS staff are working from desks in Legendary's Los Angeles offices. [16]

TBS has also set up Studio Monowa with Korea's CJ ENM and the streamer U-Next. [39]

Nippon TV let CJ ENM lead its first joint drama, Merry Berry Love, on Disney+. [40]

Disney+ says it is this year's most watched Japanese live-action premiere worldwide. [40]

Korean firms have years of experience selling dramas abroad, CJ ENM's Japan boss said. [40]

Toho, a Japanese film company, released Godzilla Minus One in the US itself in 2023. [17]

Before that, Toho had repeatedly failed to sell its films outside Japan, its boss said. [17]

The film opened with $11.4 million and earned $57.1 million in North America. [41]

Boss Matsuoka Hiro said the move "brought the profit to us". [17]

"It wasn't a strategy; we just tried," he said in Tokyo. [17]

The next film, Godzilla Minus Zero, reaches North America on 6 November. [17]

GKIDS, a Toho label, will release it there, so Toho is its own distributor again. [17]

The Japan IP Market will run again at Cannes, France, on 14 and 15 May 2027. [18]

It connects Japanese rights holders with producers and partners from other countries. [42]

Cannes's film market and Tokyo's TIFFCOM market run it together. [18]

The first one, in May 2026, included Kadokawa, Shochiku and Toei. [18]

The return was announced at TIFFCOM in Tokyo this week. [42]

Cannes's market boss said it gives Japanese stories lasting access to foreign partners. [42]

Good Smile Company, a Japanese maker of anime figures, runs its own online shop. [43]

It first said on 23 October that an outsider had got into its shop's data. [44]

A hidden program sat on its card payment page from 21 to 23 October. [43]

Full card details of 2,800 customers who paid in that time may have been taken. [43]

For 402,466 saved cards, the last four digits and expiry date may be exposed. [43]

The company emailed the 2,800 and told Japan's privacy regulator. [43]

For saved cards, names and security codes were not taken, the company says. [43]

Up to 2,800 people's full card details may have been taken from its shop. [43]

Modern Warfare 4 scored 89 on Switch 2 and 88 on PS5 at Metacritic. [45]

Metacritic, which averages reviews, gave PC 87, but had too few Xbox reviews for a score. [45]

That is despite Microsoft owning Call of Duty. [45]

Xbox's technology chief, Scott Van Vliet, said reviewing on Xbox "takes too many steps today". [45]

Reviewers sometimes must send a machine's ID and wait for it to be approved first. [45]

He said the first fixes are coming soon. [45]

Kotaku says PC review copies usually arrive first, so many reviewers simply play there. [45]

Xbox has a new division, XP, to turn its games into films and TV. [6]

Its president is Kayleen Walters. [6]

Peter Berg and Taylor Sheridan's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare film is due in 2028. [6]

Activision and Paramount Pictures are making it together. [6]

Modern Warfare 4 took 4 years to make, said Infinity Ward's Jack O'Hara. [6]

Films are one way Xbox looks for new money while its consoles sell less. [6]

Wardogs, a shooter from the UK studio Bulkhead, made the most money on PC in September. [14]

Newzoo counted sales in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. [14]

Wardogs beat EA Sports FC 27 within three weeks, while still unfinished and in early access. [14]

Remedy's Control Resonant sold over 1 million in its first month. [14]

It is the first game Remedy has sold itself, without a publisher. [14]

Newzoo's Mert Sahin said hits like Wardogs show games need not cost full price to compete. [14]