GTA 6 Netflix reveal causes Xbox and PlayStation sales to jump by a third

This week, console sales spike on GTA 6 reveal and we chat to Newu about the future of the video game business. [music] Hello and welcome to the game business show. This week's edition is once again sponsored by Keyword Studios. Keywords is of course the industry's endtoend partner. So in other words, they help game developers to make their games, to get their games launched, and then make sure they're being looked after beyond that launch. Um, they're all about long-term partnerships and impressive technology. They have 13,000 people in 26 countries. They are properly global. Speaking of which, they offer services to help your games go global whilst also feeling local. They offer localization services, QA services, localization, QA, and have experts in the player experience as well. Keywords help studios protect the meaning of their games, the cultural nuance, and in context quality across every market. That way, players get the real experience as you intended, not just translation. You can find out more on the Keyword Studios website or in the

newsletter that came out with this show. Speaking of which, let's get back to it and let's talk about Grand Theft Auto 6. The timing of the Netflix extended look meant we didn't get to do that last week, but also, you know, we love having some data, so it was worth waiting for. But before I go into some numbers, I managed to catch it as it went out during Gamescom. But because I was in Cologne, I was on a phone uh in a restaurant. So I experienced it, I imagine, just as Rockstar imagined I should. I did watch the whole thing late that night. I obviously thought it looked stunning. I'm not I'm no critic, but I was actually out with one of the industry's most prominent journalists and and he involuntarily went wow during the skydiving scene, which I think summed it up a little bit. Now, immediately after it went out, or at least around when it went out, I was on multiple mainstream channels talking about it. I was on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5, I was on CNBC. And what I found fascinating is that these media outlets were as interested in the Netflix partnership as they were the game itself, which goes to show Rockstar's ability to create stories around its

game. I really think the Netflix partnership worked, and the numbers do back that up. So, Netflix revealed that GTA 6 Extended Look attracted 31.1 million views. Now the way Netflix does views is it takes the total hours divided by the total run time. It was the number one English language movie in 87 of the 93 countries well ahead of the new whis film the whisper man and that number is up until Sunday just gone. Now there's been bigger Netflix things. Stranger Things is bigger but obviously Netflix only had an exclusive on this for 6 hours. It was then on up on YouTube after that. YouTube by comparison is on 17 million now. they count views very very differently and obviously the YouTube version is all over [clears throat] you know other media channels all the IGN's got a version of GTA or GameSpot's got a version of the GTA uh video so it's not a like for like comparison but obviously that's obviously very big in terms of pre-orders it's a little bit early tower has done some early calculations and says pre-orders are up 572% over 2 days

compared to the 2-day average during the previous 30 days now it's very rough right Now, NewU, which also tracks pre-orders, they don't have their latest figures yet. Um, they'll be coming on the show in a minute, though, to talk about GTA 6. They'll share the numbers up until uh end of July. One of the big questions around GTA 6 is whether it will materially impact sales of PlayStation and Xbox or PlayStation 5 in particular and Xbox Series X and S. Now, GTA 6 is a console exclusive. It's not on PC, so it will likely attract the attention of new and lapsed console players. However, we're also seeing unprecedented pricing of those games consoles due to the rising component costs. We talked about it every week on the show pretty much. So, how well how much of an impact is can GTA6 have uh to sort of compensate for that? So, I have managed to get some early data for the UK market. Um, Neilson IQ, which used to be called GFK, used to be called Chart Track, used to go right back in time. It was called Gallup. And they've been tracking console sales in the UK since the 1990s. They get the data directly

from the retailers, so it's real data. They tell us that uh after the GTA 6 reveal last week, so their week on sales of PS5 jumped 33%. And meanwhile, Xbox Series X and S sales jumped 34%. Now, the numbers are, you know, some of the numbers are quite low for games, consoles, but that's obviously a decent jump. Interestingly, and this is an aside, Nintendo Switch 2 sales also rise by about a third. Um, GTA 6 is not on Switch 2, of course, but Nintendo did announce a price increase on the console. It's going up by £50 in the UK, and that comes into effect this week. So, there'll be people getting their console in before the prices go up. So, that's why that had a good week as well. So, what can we conclude from those figures? Um, well, clearly GTA 6 is going to have a positive impact on console sales. It's [clears throat] not all going to be concentrated around November 19th either. People will be picking up the machines, you know, ahead of release. But just how big will the impact be? Will we see a surge that it will, you know, that it will positively impact the install base to such an extent that other publishers, developers, and games

will also see a strong uptick? Will it lift all ships? Of course, it's not all about console sales either. There's also people who, you know, have a PS5 or an Xbox and um maybe it's gathering a bit of dust or they don't play it very often. This is an opportunity to re-engage those customers. But but the data is we're seeing is positive. You know, these are big upticks. These are good numbers. Um but it's extremely early days. My official position, if anyone asks me, is I'm cautiously optimistic. I think it will cause a surge in sales, but uh uh there's a lot of variables involved. Right, that's enough of that. Or rather, it isn't actually because I'm about to welcome someone that's been doing a lot of analysis on GTA 6. His name is Ronan Patrick. He's a management consultant at Nuzu. And Yuzu just put out his global games market report. In that report, it estimates that the global games market will rise 6.1% to 213.9 million this year. And a lot of that spending is coming out of China and the US. The bulk of the money will of course be mobile. It represents 121.1 billion in revenue.

So nearly 60% really between 55 and 60%. It estimates that console revenue will rise 22% to 46.9 million uh dollars. That's due to, you know, Switch 2 had will have a full year. GTA 6 coming out and there's the rising prices as well. The consoles just cost more, so they make more revenue um on an individual basis. Meanwhile, GTA 6 is uh is going to take full game spending to 17.5%. That's the biggest growth area for the year. New does expect player growth to slow to 3.2% comp that's a compound annual growth rate to 2029, which is down on the 4.4% we've seen over the last year. So that means there's a lot more focus on making more money out of customers and not just uh expecting the industry just to grow by the sheer number of new people coming in. There are a bunch of stats in this report, but I wanted to dive into a few points with Ronin. Um including the impact of GTA 6, where the growth areas are and what competitive areas can learn from it. Um the continued, you know, we've also got this continued rise of franchises and sequels. That's a big thing from the news report. Something

else about that as well. and a few classic uh game business topics that you would have heard me talk about before. So, let's go to it. Here's New Zoo's Ronan Patrick. Hello, Ronan. Welcome to the show.
Pleasure to be here.
We were supposed to meet up at Gamescom, but um Gamescom got in the way. Uh how was it for you?
It was well tremendously busy. I find games come a very funny event uh in that there's very very few other places in the world that you'll have a combination of uh elderly men with neck beards and you know uh teenage girls dressed out in outfits all in one place. So it's certainly an interesting one.
I go to a lot of the consumerist shows and I do get a little bit out of it. But Gamescom, I don't think anything I think there's an event I get more out of than Gamescom for my type of journalism. I'm sure if you're a tech journalist, GDC or CS has more, but um I always find it brilliant, but I kept it relatively tight. So, I came in Tuesday night and left Friday afternoon and I don't think I had a moment spare. It was um I'm

still tired now. You can probably hear it in my voice.
Yeah, I I crashed the days after. I was getting like 12 hours of sleep at night after. It's It's a really Yeah, it's a dra It's a draining event. Back-to-back meetings.
Yeah. I didn't have I have kids, so I I didn't get that. and have that pleasure. Um, do you find anything noteworthy? Did anything stand out for you that you were like, "Oh, that's
mainly conversations." Um, I mean, it's such an interesting event because you get a whirlwind of hearing what's kind of going on in the industry and hearing what people are up to. So, I heard a bunch of like interesting um, you know, approaches and you know, obviously industry is in an interesting place. I'm sure we'll we'll we'll get get to talking about that. So, hearing about all the ways in which people were adapting to that was interesting. What I find really fascinating about that is we haven't actually gone live with it by the time of doing this recording, but I've done a big interview with CD project and they're so the AAA model, right? It is so histo, you know, they they, you know, they don't think too much about cost. I mean, they do worry a

bit, but it's not the number one thing they worry about and
it works for them, right? And then I'm talking to an indie and they're going down the route of um a double A company and down the route speeding up development, a lot more cost- driven development. It's just it is a real um fascination to see so many different segments of the market even doing the same sort of games have a completely different strategies to deal with the way the industry is reacting. Anyway, yes, we I'm sure we will talk about it. I mean obviously I've noted the sheer number of Chinese companies um and Korean companies.
Yes. Yes. that were all across the event which I thought was uh noteworthy although it is important to remember I think that Tokyo game show Chinese companies often go there in quite a big number and they're not expected to this year I think it's going to be quieter um because of political tensions and so maybe some of it's a reallocation of budget but uh but obviously you can see what the market's doing well well and I guess that's part of your report right so you did this big report that you put out and they say the industry's you know

I think 6.1% you the report suggests growth around it's um
yes
it's not everywhere that's growing 6.1%.
No no not at all.
The reaction to the report though they seem strong. Anything surprise you about it?
Um reaction to it? No. I think I think the reaction was fairly I think the industry has re-calibrated and reaccepted the position where it's in in that most people that I've seen reacted to it except that this is positive news. But this is positive news in the context of um you know a difficult period that the industry has gone forward because
I mean at the end of the day uh as as I've seen some people react to you know 6% overall when you take out inflation that looks less impressive and that's part of a bigger story right which is from 2021 to 2024 the industry was completely flat but consumer prices rose by like 23% during that period And those are costs that the games industry and

its consumers are are paying. And that's a lot of the kicker which is so yes grew 12% last year 2025 and then grew we expect it to grow 6%. But if you put that in real terms um we expect the industry to still be down 13% on 2021 in real terms. And I think that's that's part of the struggle of the industry is that um the top line can grow but the costs side of it is something we are still we are still grappling with. M one of the things I think I see Emanuel mention it was that innovation is key and every time I speak to analysts um that seems to be the thing it's basically look game makers do something we can't predict was and maybe maybe that will change these outlooks and these predictions and I think that's an interesting thought you know an artistic industry get back to you know doing what

you do with art. Yeah, it's a it's a tough one because obviously the the onus on the we are ultimately in the entertainment space and we have to surprise and delight but on the other hand there is a question of what consumers often want are sequels franchises and existing titles.
Yes, of course.
I've done a fair bit of work on this. People haven't already always uh liked me pointing this out, but it's important to point out, which is to say, if you look at the share of revenue that goes to new titles, excluding franchises, sequels, etc. Uh on console, it's around 6 to 7% and then on PC, it's around 10 to 17%. So, a bit higher. But then within that you basically have a handful of IPs like Cyberpunk, like Hogwarts Legacy, uh like Arc Raiders, often you know big budgets, they take that. So I think there's a difficulty in that while

that remains true and while other factors remain true, we're often going to see publishers taking a very defensive stance, which is to reinvest around their core IPs and franchises. What I will say to that though is doing a core IP does not mean lack of innovation. I
agree. I think about um what drove the Switch was a Zelda game, right? And then particularly and that was but it was the most it was the most it was a complete departure for Zelda but obviously they lent on the franchise and it found a much much bigger audience. And also I know that we talk about the percentages but I look at you know some of the games that have done well this year like Mecca Chameleon and Crimson Desert and Pragmata and I know that those aren't you know taking up the lion share of revenue. It's not a big they're not big live service games but they've been successful and they're all new IP. I was talking to Xbox while I was at Gamescom and I and I thought I said I think Fable is an interesting IP because obviously it's an established brand but it never really broke above 5 million units. It was never that big of a franchise. So, I

think that even though this this new game might be in line with what Fable was, I think in this modern industry where everything's so much wider and there's so many more people playing games of different interests, where niche games can be still big, um I I look at that and think that might be that might be an interesting one. But then you got companies like Focus and all the stuff that they're doing. Sorry, I'm going
No, no, no. I think I think the points you're making are really good and I I couldn't agree more. I think just because there's a focus on sequels and franchises doesn't mean you don't need to innovate. Um it's it's kind of like the way I describe it is is kind of an Apple model where the uh there's a priority based on capture an existing audience but then try and move them laterally onto different innovative products and new upgrades uh and etc. And I mean you you had I think John Bellamy on a couple of weeks ago. That was a really interesting one to listen to because he pointed out the Dragon Wilds around 75% of those who who took that game up were

existing Runescape users. So that's a really good example, right? It's innovation in the sense that Jagex is spreading to console and trying to increase their market share, but it works in large part because they have this base, this existing community uh that they've moved over. And I think the ultimate epitome of innovate within an existing play pattern is is, you know, the biggest title that's going to launch this year, right? Like GTA 6 from from what we've heard, there's going to be there's going to be tremendous innovation. There's the most obvious one that everyone's talking about with the the fact that they're going to integrate the um UGC component, which currently sits outside in terms of 5M, into the main online experience. But from what I've heard, there's also going to be kind of DLC uh in terms of the single player campaign. So, um Wow. We'll we'll see. Yeah, it be interesting innovation there, too.
I do wonder if if GTA 6 is going to be the last of its kind. I mean, don't me wrong, it's a it's a rare kind anyway.

Yeah.
I've heard people around that game refer to it as the last of the blockbusters. And um and like, you know, money's no object 10year development cycle.
Yeah. Yeah. And I know that, you know, Rockstar probably could do another one, but then there's also whether there's an appetite of two. One of the good conversations I've had is this realization from people in their like 50s that if they keep taking eight years to make a game, they're only making they only got one or two left before they retire.
Yeah.
Nobody really wants that. So, I do wonder. Well, let's talk about GTA 6 then because obviously that was the big thing that happened last week and you've been you've been putting some numbers out. Have you got any latest?
Yeah. So the latest is unfortunately we're recording this at the end of August and um the Nuzu platform takes a little bit of time to to release the latest. So I don't have August but I can give you the June and July numbers. So
um uh so for reference this is um Nuzu game performance monitor tracks uh digital spend in the US and five key European markets. And what we see is is

that in the final week of June, GTA 6 in its first week of pre-orders brought in $175 million and then in July it brought in $45 million. So given that 69% of the player base sits in those markets, we're looking at roughly for June and July around $320 million um global. Now, those are just like numbers, so I'll try and put them in perspective because they are truly they are truly staggering. They're not like the crazy numbers that were being published. Um, I think like one week after on X, but but uh to put that in reference, I looked at like nine big recent launches. So, I looked at like EFC 26, I looked at Battlefield 6, I looked at Spider-Man 2, and I looked at all nine of those launches. and their first week um combined GTA 6 is still four times uh more than those. So staggering

and obviously this doesn't include August so it doesn't include the actual proper game reveal of the game.
But yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I'm keen to dig into that once we see uh there's probably going to be another bump.
I tell you what I find really fascinating was the amount of friends that I had when you know from school asking me what's the cheapest way which cheapest way of me being able to play GTA 6. These people haven't bought a console in two in two generations.
Yeah. Yeah.
And um they're a little shocked at the pricing, but they're still trying to work it out.
It's 2x. Yeah.
Yes. Well, you don't obviously you don't need to pre-order. So, I always find this
Yes.
I always find this quite hard to sort of conclude much because it's not like they're going to be in short supply. It's not that there's going to be a
Yes. going to run out.
Yeah. It's not there going to be stock shortages come November 19th. Um so, do you think we can conclude much from it? Yeah, it's it's a really good point. You can look at the existing the like pre-order curve that has existed for different categories of titles and you can but the main thing you conclude um

which is what you've basically already stumbled upon which is that basically the lion share of purchases come like just before um because why not? You don't you don't need to purchase it now. what you register in a pre-order is you get a sense of the size of how big the devoted core is. Um uh I mean to to emphasize that um so far with the pre-orders or in the first week of those pre-orders, 89% of the pre-orders that came in were for the $100 edition, which is which is really high. That will probably come and taper down. Um, uh, you probably can expect a drift closer towards 50/50 by launch, but
I think there are some pre-order bonuses, isn't there? Like a month's access to GTA Plus and things like that. Um,
but yeah, you could pre-order the day before the
Exactly.
The $100 thing is really fascinating. I actually was quite surprised at what they thought of or conscious of using

certain terms, but locking away for players. They do seem to be taking away things that um was in the game, but specifically locking away behind that $100 edition, which is controversial. Um I guess GTA can get away with it.
Yeah. Completely inelastic.
Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know if other players could could could do that. I feel like GTA 6 operates in its own paradigm uh where it just kind of gets to do what it wants. Um one of the things I think is interesting though is there wasn't a strong tie-in to GTA Online. Um, so there wasn't like a clear you do this up front and you get all of these benefits in GTA 5 online. Um, uh, so that's interesting because that's what's sometimes done. I wonder if that is part of a general acknowledgement on their part that one of the big challenges they're going to have is to migrate the users from GTA 5 online which are there, you know, there are a staggering number of people playing GTA V online and they

need to migrate them over to GTA 6 online. So, that could be part of the reason. But it's interesting there were no um uh that wasn't tied to the premium product or on a higher skew.
Yeah. Well, the DJ online's the big question mark, isn't it? That's the thing. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't do our chat at Gamescom was because it was before the video and I was like, I don't know what they're doing with online and we still don't really know.
We don't
um what they're doing with online. Is it is it going to be part of the same package? Are they is it going to be a se I don't Is it separate game? Do they I [laughter]
And it's And it's And it's such an important question. Like I really do think that
it really is the dark horse of this conversation because we can talk as much as we want about premium sales and and they obviously matter but you know T2's latest earnings report 22% of the topline revenue came from premium 78% came from recurring. So we're only talking about 22% of the business here. Obviously a lot of that is is mobile. So that's very glib of me to say, but the

scale I think people seriously underestimate the scale of GTA online still. Like 13 years later, it's doing half a billion in terms of a run rate. Um 5M, the UGC modded side experience. It's like the number eight most played game. It's obviously a platform on Steam. It's like 180k concurrent. So the scale of GTA 5 online 13 years after is is tremendous. And from what I know, um, the expectations around what GTA 6 online will do are tremendous. From from what I know, um, from my financial contacts, it's the markets might be disappointed if it does less than a2 billion2 billion year run rate. So, we will see, but we know nothing about it. Uh, so we'll we'll just have to see. I guess from an industry point of view because the thing is the big comp topic around this is how what impact is it going to have on the wider business and

there is an element of hope that Rockstar can fix everything and uh can you sell us some consoles? GTA online is probably the more harmful component from a industry point of view. There's that element of you get GTA 6, you might get another game, you might if you're buying a console at the same time. Yeah. you might um you know maybe by the time we get into February when the when everyone's shifted their games too people have finished with the game and might be looking to move on but that online component is the one that will that will be sticky and will keep people from um
yeah a new black hole.
Yeah, even the premium component goes to to what we were discussing previously about sequels and franchises, right? like the fact that this has sucked all the air out the room, the fact that everyone's shifting, it's it's GTA 6 is the ultimate uh epitome of this point we were making where revenue is often concentrating into these kind of sequels and franchises and yes, you can innovate

um but often the innovation takes place within that structure of sequelization and franchise. So yeah.
Yeah. I I I it's a weird thing because I was looking at the September lineup for games um a couple of weeks ago which is obviously a lot of the games have moved out of there probably would have been October before and the October games have probably been in November before.
Yeah.
And um there are some games that cross over. I look at Control Resident and Silent Hill. I look at some of the games there and they do there is crossover. Obviously there's Blood of the Dawn Walker and now the Witcher 3 remastered in the same month. So that wouldn't have been ideal but they're all quite different as well. And I look at their primary audiences and I can see that they they're not the same. And I and I just think back to the industry that I grew up in and the market was so different back then. There weren't these black hole games. There wasn't things like Tik Tok. There wasn't even things like Netflix. Um but there was there was so many video games. Um I and I I mentioned this a few times on the show. In one week in 2008, there were more video games that came out than there is the entire of September. In terms of the AAA end, obviously I'm not talking about the indie end where where that's very

different.
You're right. Um it is it is there is a lot more focus on the sequels and even you look at the games that are coming out in February they're all [laughter] it's Tomb Raider it's Fable.
Yeah I I think you make a good point which is we are still seeing kind of a transformation in terms of of supply. Um I I was not at Gamescom I was speaking but at Brighton Developer I was speaking to one of the big platforms of um browser games. Oh yeah. um and they mentioned to me that they are seeing the AI impact and it is coming in like a flood. So they said um in the first quarter of 2026 they saw more applications for games than the entirety of 2025. So staggering numbers and I think that's where you're going to see these play patterns often being tested in terms of browser um and in terms of on on the big UGC platforms. That's where you're going to get this wave of creators who are basically vibe coding

their way. Uh and you'll see the testing of game play patterns. Like it'll be really interesting to see if in browser games we basically see new play patterns that we've never seen before. But uh that's that's the bull that's the bull that's the hopeful case. The the more concerning case I think is to observe that um even if we transform supply um that demand remains the constraint that we are all faced against. We cannot magically create you know thousands millions billions of new eyeballs. That number remains
that number is is increasing slowly. Um and I mean we talk about this in our in our report where in the key markets which drive revenue um player growth is slowing which means that logically the only place where you grow and that's what we're seeing is is is revenue per user um and a lot of that revenue per user growth is going to the existing sequels and franchises.

Yeah. Yes. I do think there's still opportunity for the industry and I've said this before uh to be more successful with older demographics and I don't and I mean older demographics that grew up with gaming we wouldn't have considered them older demographics wouldn't consider them existing demographics at all but that you know I mentioned that my friends in their 40s going oh I'm interested in the PlayStation they aged out of consoles I still think that's strange you get that TV you know or aged out of TV aged out of music and I and I think that that's partly how does our medium react to that and mobile has been the thing. Um, but you know, this is an audience of people that historically have been happy to buy premium goods. Um,
definitely
they're not necessarily like, oh, I want to play it for free. They just want to they want something that's snackable and easy. And I actually think I've always had a theory that the success of Nintendo Switch is partly driven by this audience of people that uh that like these experiences but don't have as much time. But but that's a that's an aside. what you were saying a moment ago about the AI thing is that we had Unity on last week and in that interview he

talked about how you know it from an artistic point of view more people coming to market and creating stuff is is a good thing and but he doesn't necessarily think it will lead to more professional games it just sort of it it will lead to a lot of people you know expressing themselves perhaps creatively whether it's in Roblox whether it's in browser games but not necessarily competing with those um more professionally made titles um um from from established teams. Uh, and I and I it's interesting is something that Matthew B said on the show again connect to what you said around how rob some of the successes of Roblox I think he talked about steal a brain rot in particular. So he's never seen anything like that before and is that something that the the console market and the PC market, you know, even the mobile market might be able to learn from that and bring that sort of experiences into their games.
Well, I think it's happening. I think it's happening already. Um, I think Friends slop is basically Roblox coming to Steam where the existing play pattern of highly casual, low graphical fidelity

and an overwhelming emphasis on um doing absurd and funny gimmicky things with your friends is coming and then it's just being captured by Steam.
Um, so I I definitely think there's something to learn there. Uh, and it is I mean we've we've we've done work on this. We've looked into the ultimate question of of do do Roblox players kind of age up or do they age out? And and spoiler alert, the the kind of the answer is both. But [laughter]
yes,
but uh but yeah, that's that's definitely one of the things you're happening um where as people age up um they're still looking for these kind of social experiences. Um, but I would I would I would caution that because I I think I know you were you didn't mention this as a question, but I think the point you were making was really good before and I want to reiterate it, which is we often forget about older demographics. Like the truth is there is no one video game industry anymore. If

you look at the number of people who play games since 2000, we've gone from basically 19 to 39 year olds, overwhelmingly men. Now, we've aged up and down simultaneously, and that's one of the reasons why we need all sorts of games. So, it it personally frustrates me tremendously when you see articles on on linked cringe and the like where they're basically saying X is dead, long live Y. So, they'll say, you know, um these highintensity, high graphical fidelity premium games are dying because the younger generations want this or vice versa. You're like, "No, because we just need to serve both audiences and they have different needs and different wants." But yeah, crazy.
I put it down to people, older people in the industry, and maybe I'm being completely generalized here, but when on, you know, in the '9s, in the early 90s, there were basically two audiences of video games. I'm being incredibly general here. There were kids and there were geeks, right? And I was at one point both, but they were the audiences.

You made games for children and you made games for gamers, basically. But now everybody is a gamer. So suddenly the idea of there being one trend, you know, this is where the industry is going. Well, the industry is going in every direction. That's the that's the reality of it. That's what happens when you reach this scale. And so I've always pointed out that this year we've had AAA new IP like Pragmata and Crimson Desert breakthrough as well as established sequels breakthrough as well as indie games and friends lot breakthrough and double A is now apparently a thing that didn't work like nine months ago and now is the thing everybody's doing. Like it's just the truth is it all can work. It's very hard. It's so competitive. There's loads of things out there. this idea I keep one of the lines I've repeated on this show several times and my audience will tell me off for saying it too many times but it is the fact that the trend today is there is no trend
yes
I think there's a great quote in a GI interview with Fuse games we had them on before and he said like you know um we live in an industry where the industry is so large that even niches can reach millions and millions of players and I actually hated it when the industry used to do this remember when everyone said 3D platforms don't work anymore let's

we'll abandon that or move on to the next trend and EA were famous for it I always used them as like the their sort of canary in the mind that they would go right everyone wants mobers and everyone would drop mobs and go yeah we're not doing that anymore and then they'd move to the next trend and they would chase it. Um, we can't even chase trends in the industry now nowadays anyway. Games take too long to make that. By the time your games come out, the trends moved on. So, just don't worry about it. Don't think about it. Just do the thing that you want to do. Um, um, based on your own um, analysis and understanding of your audience. Um, so I agree with you very, very much.
Nice.
You go back to GTA a little bit. Will it save console?
Uh, it's it's difficult to say. Console's had a rough a rough period. We expected basically to uh re hit its 2021 peak so to speak in 2026. Um uh we expected to drive a very large amount of premium spend. Uh as I mentioned before it can save console but that doesn't necessarily save the rest of the market in terms of it can be its own its own

black hole. But I think with console, you know, one of the big question marks that we've been looking into is this whole components crisis. Um, and and how everything factors into that because um I mean PS5 is now at what it's like 60 in inflation adjusted terms. It's at 67% more expensive. Xbox is twice as expensive. Uh we expect a kind of um uh we expect because of that and Call of Duty to see an an uptick in the install base. Not as high as it would have been uh otherwise, but nothing nothing particularly like massive. Um, so that's not the best news, but there is a there is a silver lining when we talk about this general components crisis point, which is to say perhaps some of the fears are are

overblown when it comes to software. Um, it's important to remember that the lion share of time is often spent on um older titles. Um, and the closest analogy we have to a hardware shock is during the 2020 2021 GPU shortage. Um, and you didn't see engagement or revenue on PC being um being taken off off off course. Um, you basically saw a reallocation of spend into software. So, um I think there's question marks over the next hardware cycle being delayed and that being extremely likely, but yeah, hard to say. So, yeah, it's a weird thing with the cost of consoles. I always think they always see them as quite a premium products. And we often see people are willing to spend, but it's very high. The um my always thing that I've always said about consoles, and be fair, I said it before the component crisis, I don't think this generation has been a particularly interesting one. you know, there's been occasional hits,

but I think it's been a bit boring. And uh and in this market where, you know, every no one's short of things to do or play, I don't think you can get away with that. But um maybe it's just my own slightly blinkered opinion of it, but GTA 6 is not going to be boring. I think there'll be lots of people interested in that, excited by that. But and the key is is to keep putting out some interesting stuff. I think part of the problem is this generation is co meant that all the studios went into the new generation slightly behind.
Yes.
Um and then you've also got the fact that games are taking longer to make anyway and they've only really in the last couple of years started to work out hey can we is there ways we can speed things up without harming the quality. We I always talk about Naughty Dog is one of my favorite examples of this is that one of the one of the most iconic you know console game makers in the world. they haven't made a game this generation and um and and that's not uncommon is you know we had had Mark I interviewed Mark Sony a couple of years ago and he said we're approaching the point where game development cycles are longer than console generations and

that's for me that's not right. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't logically make sense. The whole point of these machines is to enable game developers and if game developers can't make a game in time then they're not enabling them. I actually believe the longer generation made sense regardless of whether or not there is the situation going now. Obviously, I hope the component price crisis sort of does alleviate in the next, you know, couple of years. Um, anyway, those are my opinions which I've expressed before.
Yeah. To to circle back on one of them which I think is is the problem isn't just that it takes so long to make them. I think the compounding problem is our inability to validate retention before launch on PC console. I think that's the other cause of a lot of a lot of the issues. So if you combine that with long lengthy cycles, um it can become really problematic because unlike mobile, we can't like slowly acquire users over time. So you're basically you need very large amounts of marketing spend at launch. Um and all of that ratchets up the risk if retention was never there. So the danger with these really long

cycles is that you develop for a market that no longer exists. Uh, and you don't I mean, we need to basically be I've I've spoken to loads of publishers about this cuz this is something that that they that keeps them up at night is how do we basically validate and make sure that the retention is high throughout because it's really really hard to do. So,
that's the one of the reasons put offs investors, you know, it's the fact that when investors invest in something, you can normally tell after a year if it's going well. With games, you don't know until you launch the thing. But I mean, well, but then that's changing because we had on the show last week our Gamescom special last week had um Patrice Desle and and Alex Hutchinson and then the Raccoon Logic team on. Both of them former Assassin's Creed people were making games, but they've gone straight into early access.
Yes.
They've never done that before. That was new for them. That increasingly seems to be what um game companies are doing, which I mean admittedly you still need a largely finished game. You can't just put a prototype.
Yes, it's a tough one. We had Ubisoft launch its player council at Gamescom, which is like this big thing where they

get groups of players in and they test things and test things and test things. We've seen EA in the last okay 5 years now with what they did with Skate and Dead Space, which I'm not entirely sure worked out for them, but but they had them in right from the start. So, I think we're we're seeing companies sort of react to that. And we've got professional businesses set up that are, you know, built around, hey, how can we give you this this these these testings and these this um user? I don't know if it tells you everything you need to know, but it
Yeah, the the the challenge is because I' I've spoken to I was at Gamescom I was speaking to a chief publishing officer who was was mentioning that now, you know, with studios they basically put the game every four months they put it in front of their target audiences and that's just how rigorously they want to test test it. And I think the challenge is is that you put your game in front of a golden golden cohort and it goes, "Oh my god, look our D28 retention is, you know, upwards of 28%." But it's uh it's not the same thing uh having that having that level of retention with your golden cohort, this

kind of curated set of players. So um it's difficult to difficult to know before launch.
It is useful to have that though. I always look at High Guard as an example back early in the year which didn't do that at all. And I do wonder if it had a small cohort of diehard fans. They might have had some defenders because I felt it came under a quite unnecessary level of attack. Um but it didn't have anyone sort of coming in and going well starts they might have been of course correct some of the decisions they made which weren't you know which I think were correctable. Um but um they didn't have anyone just going I know you're wrong about this on social media. It was just it was just waves of negativity. Do you think the industry's given up on audience expansion?
Um I don't think so. I think audience expansion is happening sim I think what's happening is the the industry is is stratifying where audience expansion is still happening um but it's happening largely in kind of the Middle East Africa where you're seeing large amounts of audience expansion uh pockets of of APEC so I don't think I think there's still tremendous you know excitement I I

do ad hoc consulting projects for people looking to kind of expand into emerging markets and we still tremendous excitement there. So I think there isn't necessarily a giving up on it but I think there is a recognition that you know the US spender is nine times more valuable than one from from MEA and when we look at where the growth in the industry is coming from like for instance in 2025 70% of the growth came from the west and from China and of that so they drove 70% of growth of that growth 70% % of it came from monetizing existing users more. So I think especially amongst the big publicly listed companies there is a recognition that if we want to hit our quarterly targets and we want to grow that that growth is likely going to come come from uh increasing revenue per user

in key markets. So sort of maybe in the short term.
Um I'm conscious of the time and I know there's a lot there's a lot in your report. I'm not going to go through all of it. Obviously it does talk about where the growth is coming from and and it is coming from a lot of different markets, different territories and I think I think my bigger concern is the jobs going out. From a western industry person's point of view, it's the jobs going to uh yes other markets. Um it's interesting. We've spoken to a few developers who are like, "No, we're, you know, we had Harvey Smith on talking about his new immersive sim game. He made a big point that all the developers are American." And it isn't because he's been particularly patriotic. It's just I think he's just trying to make a point that we've we are everyone's in the you know, all the contractors we're using here. A few games who making Stars Galactic Race made a point of saying that all of this work work for higher teams, they're working well are based in the UK. So there is an element of I think that but I I for a lot of companies there is a lot of outsourcing coming from um um um a lot of moving talent or finding talent particularly if

they can you know if you're making an RPG why not work with talent in Eastern Europe because they're really good at RPGs as well. It's not like you're just you're not just saving money you're going to where the talent is. So
I mean Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. The Witcher, you know. [laughter]
Um it's uh all of that stuff. Boulders Gate. But yeah, that's my slight concern about that trend. But there is there's some push back.
Yeah, the report isn't Yeah, the report put it this way. [snorts] So my my colleague Mackielle has done work into market share gains by publishers and in mobile in particular I mean across the board we're seeing Chinese publishers gain market share in Avery major market abroad. So from 29 to 2025 um Chinese publishers market share in EMI has grown from 19% to 37% and in the Americas 11% to 27%. Um so kind of doubling and almost tripling. Um so that is definitely uh yeah that is definitely a

trend we are seeing.
Yeah I'm I'm not interestingly I mean obviously there are the big live service games that are coming out there doing very well. When it comes to sort of the black myth Wukongs there's a lot of it. I don't know how much of it and which it is naturally is going to grow the market share because there's more stuff coming out and being promoted on a on a global scale but I I don't I don't think I've seen anything particularly special. It's interesting. It's targeting audiences doing quite a good job with that but I I don't think I've seen anything that's uh oh I'll be interested to see once all these games all the games you saw at Gamescom start coming to market how many of them actually hit and what that might mean for developers in China as well. There's a lot there's a lot of it. Yes. And I think part of the problem is is that um risktaking and cost management are two sides of the same coin. I know we often say, you know, um like creativity and economics are are are fundamentally linked. I think Mitchelli has done a great job in his podcast of hammering this message home. But in

[snorts] markets where the economics are making more sense, that's sometimes where you're seeing more creative risks being taken. And it's those creative risks as as we've discussed which are kind of going to surprise and delight gamers. So um I think for instance I I know that I might have been quite some of the things I've said might not be tremendously optimistic but for instance I know people are really excited about regions like Vietnam and um their kind of game making capacity and loads of seeing loads of really interesting things happening out there. But yeah.
Yeah. I'll ask one more question. You've talked about how franchises and sequels are becoming more and more dominant.
Yes. And that's fine if you're a big publisher. That's what Xbox is doing. Fine, we'll just put our money behind our um our big franchises. What do you do if you're a smaller studio?
Yes. Uh I get asked this question a lot cuz I'm a consultant and newsroom. We kind of often are helping with specific ad hoc client questions. I think the number one thing is to kind of um uh embody the mentality and spirit of Jay-Z

uh who said um I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man. uh which is to think about uh how you can become this bigger and wider play um which uh you're looking to grab any distributional levers you can and there are basically four big distributional levers that you can grab right now. So the first is you can tap into uh existing IPs. So if your IP isn't big you can think about licensing one. Uh, we saw that the only free-to-play game to kind of really break through recently has been Marvel Rivals. So, leveraging the biggest IP there is tapping into existing play patterns. So, you can move someone else's community over into your game by, you know, leveraging, you know, a lot of big games have come out of mods. But to give you an example of that, I I spoke to a really interesting studio over Gamescom who have built um a game and and their wish list is doing really well

and they basically formulated the game by looking at the genre they were playing in and they read basically every single Steam negative review and they built it like a formula upwards going like okay we're going to have what is the existing audiences want and then let's take let's pain solve for these exact and precise native ones. So that's example of building around existing play patterns. you can um third distributional lever you can grab is community. Um, so we were talking about this more about kind of building around early access and that I think Hell Divers 2 is a really good example of a game built around community because the actual play structure of having major orders. Um, so major for those who haven't played Hell Divers 2, major orders are something the community has to do together in order to get the goal that necessarily encourages and fosters discussion and debate about how we're achieving that major order. And then the final one is just to think about your own studio's like brand power, about its own reputation, about building that out over time. I think a really good example

of a studio that is obsessed with its own brand power is like CD Project. Um, and you know, for instance, there's a joke, right, that The Witcher will never The Witcher will never come out. That in and of itself is testament to the brand power because everyone assumes that they've learned from the mistake of cyberpunk and they will take as long as it takes to get necessary and people know that and they'll wait to buy it. So um yeah, grab grab those distributional levers. Um think of yourself as Jay-Z. Yeah, it's rem it's remarkable really CD project by the time this has gone out we would have done our big CD project interview and um it's remarkable how much goodwill they have considering how disastrous their last major launch was and it is and okay they've done they've fixed it and they've done a massive DLC update that was really good and stuff but
um there is so much you know they they won Gamescom with a remaster
I know incredible sign of the times too though yeah [laughter]
it really is a good good note to leave on actually. Um um Ronan, thank you so

much for your time. Um the news report, is it fully out next week?
I'm not the best person to ask, but I think it is already out, but yeah, but yeah, could be next week, the full one.
Thank you so much.
Wonderful to be on the show.
Thank you to Ronan there. All that's left for me to do is wrap up the news from the last week. And uh we were at Gamescom last week. There was lots of news coming out Gamescom. We've covered all of that already, but now we have some Gamescom stats. So Gamescom 2026 drew in 368,000 visitors from 131 countries. That's a 6% increase over the previous year. It's worth knowing Gamescom counts visitors as individual people going through the turn style. So if someone goes for 4 days, that counts as four visitors. It's a footfall number effectively. It's still huge. In total, uh 1,743 companies from 66 countries exhibited. That's up 11% from 2025. It's apparently a sellout, although I did see one space just saying international exhibitors accounted for 72% of participants. 36,000 trade visitors came along and

around 50% of those came from outside of Germany. So great numbers for Gamescom there. The most viewed game of Gamescom was the 11-year-old The Witcher 3. CD Project showed off DLC for the game songs of the past. It's the first DLC for the game in a decade. If you um go back to our interview on Tuesday with CD Project Red CO, it's really uh fascinating that they didn't just show off the DLC for the game. There was a remaster of the original 2015 game that was shown as well. The Witcher 3 remastered comes out on September 29th. I think Space is not far away. Um, interestingly, a game that's a bit like The Witcher made by former Witcher devs is out this week. Blood of the Dawn Walker, so you know, a little bit competitive there. The Witcher 3 clocked up 50.7 million trailer views according to Level Up. Number two trailer was Anata from Netis with 47.2 2 million views, followed by Hyover's Noticeful with 45.5 million views. Over to Saudi Arabia and Savvi Games Group CEO Brian Ward has stepped down after 5 years in the role. He's going to be replaced by

Turkey Alaweiser. I probably pronounced that badly. I apologize. He's the deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, PIFF, and head of international investments division. He will he will be the interim acting CEO. Savvy is the group that obviously acquired Scopia and Nine. you don't know um they are funded and owned by the PIFF. Uh PIFF is the major investor behind EA. Um they they they're part of that big $55 billion acquisition. So big big organization and a new CEO coming in sort of loosely connected to EA. This story is Star Wars Zero company developer Bit React has furled around 80% of its workers ahead of the game's releases. According to Gamefire, according to our friend Steven Toillo, the decision was not related to EA Star Wars or Disney. I'm assuming there was some other deals, something that fell through, some game project that sort of collapsed that meant that they had to furlow a bunch of staff. I I don't know the details. Certainly surprising. Uh the game has reviewed very well, but as I've sort of said earlier that um uh there's a lot of these XCOM like games coming out. I'm not quite sure how big the XCOM like genre is as but anyway,

the game has gone down very well. Journalists love it. Um it seems to be doing all right on Steam. So hopefully um hopefully hopefully it'll find its audience and uh some of those staff can come back to Bit React. The fact they've been furoughed suggests that they do expect to be able to bring them back. Next story. Godo game engine company W4 Games has raised $18 million in a series B funding round led by 10centent. It was also signed an agreement with the Chinese conglomerate to scale Godo. In Asia, W4 has raised $33 million in total from all sorts of different investors. It was formed in 2022 by the founders of Godo, which is an open-source engine to provide services to developers using the tech such as console porting. The race is the commercial element. According to Steam DB, over 1,250 games are using the Godto engine. So, it's certainly growing. It's only getting bigger. Let's talk about tariffs. So, like PlayStation and Nintendo, Playdate Maker Panic has received a refund from the US government after the tariffs it introduced last year were deemed illegal. Unlike PlayStation, Nintendo, Playdate is passing the refunds on to consumers, which it had initially charged customers

more for. Now, Nintendo argues it actually mostly swallowed the cost of those tariffs. Um Nintendo didn't actually increase the price of the Switch 2. They did increase the price of the Switch One slightly. Um and PlayStation makes similar arguments. Going back to Saudi Arabia, Roblox will open a headquarters in Riyad in Saudi Arabia. This is to support its creator program in the Middle East and North Africa. There's a lot of growing developers there. Some interesting talent emerging out of that market. Elsewhere, Netis is free to play. Whoopsie open world action RPG. Where winds meet now has 100 million players. Only came out in November 2025. Is of course free to play. Um but uh fantastic numbers there. 1047 Games is shifting away from live service shooters and ending active development on Impulse and Splitgate Arena Reloaded. And finally, uh we are going to an event in October called Game Republic New Horizons. I think I mentioned it before. I'm going to be interviewing Ken Couturagi on stage. I I may also be doing other interviews. Um I'll let you know near the time about that. But they've just announced a new speaker. It's IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abra who obviously

has been on this show many times. He will host a 007 first light session at the event. That's it for me. That's the roundup. Um, thank you for joining us. We will be back next week with more news, analysis, insight, and interviews. In fact, our very next show is going to be with Maverick Games. I did a big interview just before Gamescom on Clutch and and the journey to it finding a publisher. It's surprising, shall we say. But until that time, that's it from us. If you would like to make sure you don't miss it, head to the gamebus.com, put in your email, and you'll get an alert every single time we do a new episode. But until then, thank you for tuning in.