Retailer warns of GTA console stock shock. Plus, why is Russian propaganda still on Steam?

This week, Steam's answer to the games console carries a hefty price tag. We discover a new games investment fund aimed at auters, and we are joined by George Osborne, the author of Power Play, video games politics, and the battle for global influence. Hello, and welcome to the Game Business Show. Uh we're heading into the summer months. It's very hot here in the UK, but that does mean things start to get a bit quieter for the video game business, which after the last few weeks of Summer Game Fest, Xbox news, and State of Unreal, it's a bit of a relief, at least for now. Um I'm sure I'll be climbing the walls in a week. Um but, there's still a lot to go through. Plus, I've been diving into this new book. It's called Power Play. It's by George Osborne. George is the world's leading journalist about video games and politics. He has an excellent newsletter called the Video Games Industry Memo, which you should subscribe to. And he's with me right now. Hello, George. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Chris. Great to be back again.
You've been doing a bit of a book tour, is that right? Sort of I've seen you partying around and doing talks and all sorts for you. How's the whole launch

gone?
Uh yeah, I think it's gone pretty well. I feel like the world of books, it's it moves a lot more slowly than the world of games, you know, where people are talking about, all right, what's my wish list doing? Uh how many things have I actually managed to sell today? I think I'll find out how many books I've actually sold within like maybe a couple of weeks, who knows.
Oh, wow.
really matter matter too much in in that that part of the world. But, that the actual launch itself's been great. I've been on tour now for a few weeks. I started at Hay Festival, which is one of the big literary festivals in the UK. Uh popped off to Florence, to Brussels, done a couple of dates in London, and then I'm off on UK tour in the next couple of weeks before heading to North America, where the book launches on the 21st of July. So, I'll be in town for that in New York.
Oh, wow. Can we have Keza on a linear about her book, which is very different type of book, but um um is the title the same? Did I get the title? I want to know if I'm pitched the title right. Okay.
Yes, yeah. Title Title is the same. The

front cover is different if you are in North America, you're going to get a much greener book in terms of the front cover choice. It's It's much darker in terms of the UK. So, if you do have a preference over green or black for a front cover, make sure that you order the appropriate edition.
I need to know why. Why What is it Americans like green?
Again, the wonders of differing industries. When we talk about video games, obviously when you release a game, you essentially assume that you've basically got the global rights to it and you just begin distributing through a digital storefront. You localize, you hit those markets. Book rights are still sold on a territory-by-territory basis and on a language-by-language basis. So, I sold the rights of my book primarily to my UK publisher who got the charmingly named UK and Commonwealth rights. And then the book was picked up separately by publisher called Prometheus for the North American rights. And when you're trying to work out when you launch a

book, you have to account for things like distribution. And whereas with the UK, we were able to speed up distribution to make sure we hit a certain deadline so we could hit those earlier tour dates, in the US, you might know this, Chris, it's a very large country and it takes a long time, yeah, for books to get out of the place. So, the book's actually printed, but now mostly what's happening is just a steady process of distribution across the country. So, yeah, it's an interesting an interesting tapestry of right sales.
Why is the But why is the cover different? Because they could not just use the same one.
Well, so apparently there are different tastes in terms of different markets.
I don't know. I guess you had you have different box arts and games you're used to.
Yeah, absolutely. But I I think in particular there's there's a general desire within the North American market to have something that feels like it's designed specifically for the market. I think it's an important thing for consumers there. Apparently, when it comes to

books, uh, the extent to which that is true or not, I'm just going to say I'll take my agent's word for it.
Yeah, you're you're you're trust the experts. All right. Um, we'll dive into the book in a moment. But before we do, I've got a few stories I'd like to get your take on, George. Um, I don't know if you've seen the first one. Of course you have, it's the big story of the week. Uh, it's around the Steam Machine uh, Valve's living room based console-like PC. I mean, the idea of it, I think, is to be a sort of semi-rivalish to the PlayStation Xbox, but it's a PC PC console hybrid, I guess. It was revealed last year, lots of people got excited. But then the component crisis really ramped up, pricing shot up, Steam has delayed it delayed its rollout. But this week finally announced the pricing details, and it's quite something. Um, there are two variations of the Steam Machine, effectively. There's the 512 GB version, which will cost $1,050, uh, or 1,039 euros, 879 pounds. That's without a controller. There's a 2 TB version, again without controller, which is $1,350, 1,360

euros. I The price I'm I might need to check that number because those they The prices are reversed here for some reason. And one 1,150 pounds. There's also a version that comes with a controller, which adds $80, so many euros, or 60 pounds onto the price of those machines. Um, the 2 TB version does come with extra face plates, if that makes a difference. It's a huge price. The reviews have also been pretty mixed. These aren't the most powerful PCs going. Uh, so from a PC gamer perspective, it's sort of an interesting curio, but isn't going to excite too much. From a console gamer perspective, it's just too pricey. Um, that's not Valve's fault, but hopefully you can get a PS5 Pro for a lot less uh, money. George, what did you make of it? Have you got your you going to get a pre-order in? Are you a Steam Machine person?
Well, I think the main thing that I find irritating about this is I only to rewrite the first chapter of my book because uh an enormous amount of the first chapter of the book was about the way that video games played a really important role in essentially flattening the cost and access to high-end technology. So, particularly looking at

smartphones, GPUs, and just simply actually just just consumer computing uh technology anyway because obviously people wanted uh ever more powerful devices, ever better screens to be able to play things on. And uh I obviously wrote that chapter about a year and a half ago.
Yeah.
Now looking at it right now going out into the market, I'm like, "Well, I look like a mug." Um but I do think in in terms of it's big problem, I think.
Moore's law seems to have died.
Yeah, exactly. But I but I also think in terms of what you've just discussed there, I I feel like it's it's in a bit of a death zone. It's caught between that that place where it's clearly too expensive to be a kind of pseudo console replacement. Um and it's also too expensive to be that that kind of midpoint in someone's PC device category of going well, if you just want a machine that's a bit cheaper to play your Steam games on, you're not going to spend that kind of money to to to get it. And actually,

if you want to play your games properly, you're almost certainly going to go, "Well, if I'm spending that much, I might as well spend more." And I I mean, look, I I still expect it to obviously be popular. I mean, I still expect with with the supply constraints and everything that there'll be plenty of stories about it selling out. I just worry about its long-term prospect unless there's a meaningful change in, you know, uh the amount of money that AI businesses are investing in data centers, right?
From an industry point of view, anyone hoping this might be a a thing that could drive more engagement or users, I think that that that's not going to happen. Um I think there will be some people Steam users that would like the you know, a TV-friendly device to complement their other Steam Deck machines, but that's even more niche than a Steam Deck. And Steam Deck, although very popular, is not um uh immensely uh you know, it's not immensely successful. It's hardly growing the Switch. Um there's a few people who are throwing this might mean that the or suggesting

that this might mean the next generation might cost over a thousand uh dollars for those machines. Um it could do. I wouldn't put my money on it at this point. So, Matthew Ball, we interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. He says that um China's ramping up production, but we're probably looking at two two and a half years of this sort of situation hap- being an issue. So, we're looking until um 2028. It's not entirely clear if the games consoles, which you might expect next generation to arrive in 2027. It's probably not going to. So, the situation might be improved by then. That's what at least from where we're sitting today. And also, I think there's there's probably more of a willingness from PlayStation and at the moment Xbox, by the sounds of it, as well, to subsidize a bit, as well. Whereas, there isn't that willingness from Valve. Valve doesn't have the same power, neither does Xbox, actually, but neither of them have the same power in the market to be able to you know, with those component pricing, cuz they just don't make as many devices. I wouldn't necessarily assume

that it's going to result in a thousand. It might do, though. It's going to be a next generation will be expensive. Um but it's a
Yes.
whether it'll be quite that level, I don't know.
Yeah, I I can't see it hitting that kind of level because I mean, just the sort of the fundamentals of basically console economics and and how you're going to try and get yourself enough of an install base to to sell enough games to be able to justify what you're doing. But, I certainly feel like it's much more likely the next generation will take longer to arrive. I think that's that's pretty much tied in. And I wonder as well, you know, and this is a half-formed thought, so I apologize to your listeners and and viewers in advance, but the one of the great things that drove innovation within the earlier games industry was about the fact that actually technology was pretty expensive. You know, if you're looking at the sort of the '70s, the '80s, the '90s,
Mhm.
consumer electronic tech was pretty pricey. And so, people had to really go, well, what components do we genuinely need to achieve what what we want? And I

think it's difficult to have that level of innovation when you know, an Open AI um is going out there and spending huge amounts of money or or essentially in vast amounts of cash on on buying components for data centers. But, I wouldn't be at all surprised if part of what people are thinking about at the moment is going, well, we need to try and look again at how we can eke maximum performance, maximum efficiency out of what's actually available and a bit cheaper to try and find those efficiencies. But, uh yeah, I I think it's a tricky situation, I think, for the console industry. And I think when you look at you know, obviously this this Steam Machine is provoking the conversation, but I think actually Switch 2 and saying the company that has most specialized in really grinding the cost of its devices down to make them as as successful as possible when even they're having to whack prices up to a a pretty chunky amount of money,
Yeah.
uh that's telling you a lot of where things are going.
Yeah, my immediate issue is actually

more about the shortages. I spoke to a major retailer this week um who informed me that they've been told there will be console stock shortages at the end of the year around the launch of GTA 6. Now, um I tried to get a little bit more information out of this cuz this is uh is this all consoles? Cuz Xbox have already kind of said this. And Matthew Ball, in our interview, he said, "I can tell you definitely demand for our console exceeds the supply. We are putting them in as many stores as possible. We're producing them as quickly as possible. There is severe limitation on how quickly we can do that, but it's not a question of appetite. We need to do more, but there are constraints there. And so, there are unfortunately a number of different markets which we do not have supply. There are other markets which where we have inadequate supply. That is a privilege of the company and it's a challenge for us to figure out. Obviously, there are more shortages of Xboxes in popular Xbox markets like the UK and US. They clearly prioritized those. And Xbox is in a different position. Ash Sharma has already said this to to their competitors because of decisions they've made. They've basically scaled back on the hardware front of things and all different issues is the reason why they can't produce as many devices. But obviously, with GTA 6 launching and everyone's sort of getting their hands on be a big boost for the

console market. The idea that might not be even at these inflated costs the hardware in the first place people to buy. I think it's um yeah, [clears throat] I think the second-hand market will probably have a good time.
Yeah, absolutely. Um I have another story. Um this is one that you wouldn't have seen, George, but there's a new game investment fund called Den Mew. Um it's a $50 million fund. And now, it's rarer than it used to be uh to do these sort of stories, but funds do still crop up. But what caught my eye with this one is that it's about visionary game makers or or ters is the term they use. Um it's funding for all types of games, double A, triple A, indie, free-to-play, PC, console, mobile, everything. But the key thing is they want to back visionaries, a group of people deeply connected to the Chinese and Japanese markets is where they come from and can they can then they think they can help bridge the gap between those worlds. But it's still a project-based fund. Um we're not back to the equity days with this. So, even though they're backing people, still games they're ultimately funding. They do want to fund across multiple projects. I spoke to the general partners, Michael Fan and Ryan You, about this. And Michael said Michael I asked him Michael about the

what what what what does he mean by an auter? And it was a very long answer he gave me, but I condensed it. He basically said, "We're looking for auters as in the people at the origin of a creation. They're the ones who are defining the vision, but even within one team for one project, there could be many people who are co-auters." Ryan gave me quite a long answer about the project-based approach. As I say, because they're backing people, I was like, "Why are you backing games? Why are you not backing studios?" And he gave me a great answer. And for people that aren't so familiar with investment, this is quite interesting, I think. Equity sits at the bottom of the capital stack. It's the residual claim, last to get paid, unsecured, carrying the full downside, a long-term investment horizon. To compensate for that, equity has to price in a very high return. And because a fund ultimately has to exit through M&A or IPO, only a consistently fast-growing company gets it there. So, equity structurally forces the company onto a growth treadmill. So, they chase the next big thing, make bigger and riskier bets, keep the growth rate up. The brutal part is that even a second hit at the same scale doesn't grow the company. So, a judgeship a great profitable game and still be a failure. That's also why so many gaming companies, large and small, chase live

service. It's one of the few models in gaming that can deliver the sustainable growth equity demands, but with a much lower hit rate. Some studios do compound organically through IP, but that usually plays out beyond even a 5-to-10-year horizon. That equity model was the right one when the industry was growing double digits, and it's still right for startups genuinely chasing the next platform technology or distribution innovation. But for the vast majority of game companies, the math doesn't work that way, and we think that growth all costs boom-and-bust cycle is a big part of why the industry is seeing it is even with a $200 billion pie. Pie is quite vehement as to why the project-based approaches more sustainable and much better for the for the video game industry. I know that you're in this world. Their model is to participate at the asset project level. They're saying everyone gets a meaningful share from day one, so there's no waiting to recoup before the developer gets their share. They back beyond a single game, I said that earlier. They do often add a minority equity component to the deals they do, but that's not their primary return driver. They do pay for that equity. And they're not passive money, as they do all get involved. They all have input into the game as well as with

the release of the game. They've already backed a bunch of titles: The 100 Line, Last Defense Academy, Blue Protocol, Star Residents, Bleach Soul Residents, Labyrinth for the Demon King, Moto Slizone, Silly Polly Beast. They also backed a AAA title based on a major entertainment IP, which I They didn't tell me what that was. Over the next couple of years, they have new plans to invest in 10 to 10 to 20 additional projects. It's quite a wide gap.
Uh it sounds good.
Yeah, sounds good. I mean, you know, I'm I'm sitting here thinking, "What's my idea?"
Yeah.
Now, it's time for my auteur era.
Do we auteurs, do we count?
I I think I think we're auteurs. And and what really stood out for me actually was it reminded me of an event I was at a couple of weeks ago. So, I was at I was at First Playable in Florence.
Oh, nice. I love that event.
It's an event for the Italian games industry, and mostly it's an opportunity for the Italian games industry to meet publishers. So, you know, we're not talking about a fund here, but we're talking about people going in project-based funding for for various games. And the the thing that really

stood out to me was just how many publishers were there. Like there were there were like dozens of them. You had all of the major platforms, reps from pretty much every single major publisher. And I was like, "Well, why are you here?" And it's like, "Well, the Italian industry keeps coming up with quite weird and engaging ideas that you're not seeing anywhere else." And you know, yeah, okay, it's pretty cost-effective compared to other markets. But the thing that really was stood out is that in a market that is so saturated and so full of content, having ideas or stories that can really essentially just sort of clang, you know, make a load of noise and really cut through, I think is actually a genuinely interesting way to get yourself through this content crash, to get yourself to a point where you're getting, you know, coverage, enough recognition to push yourself forward. And and so many of those developers, when I was looking at those Italian games, obsessed with horror games, and it all felt very kind of auter-y. And I think

whether or not this fund specifically goes ahead and succeeds by picking up those kinds of titles, what I think is really interesting is that we are moving into a phase with the games industry where everything is becoming much more thesis and idea-driven. It's much less about we're a publisher or we're a fund and we fund some stuff. It's like, cool. It's increasingly becoming we're a fund and we are targeting this kind of game or we are a publisher and we are looking to pick up this kind of thing, you know, someone like Pantaloon who are the email first publisher who's essentially we're looking to pick really curated indies that can appeal to an audience of tens of thousands cuz we can reach them. And I think that's the thing that really stands out for me as interesting is saying a fund like this I feel like is a byproduct of market maturity of people starting to say we may not deliver, you know, the kind of 10x returns that people are hoping for from say when they're chucking money after an AI business cuz that's just not going to be possible. But if you can

find a thesis and find a story that audiences resonate with and back the right things, then yeah, you're not going to get those gangbuster returns, but you may well deliver those kinds of solid returns by hitting a mature market consistently with things that they want. So, I think it's interesting. I just wonder, you know, whether or not I think I think whether or not that the phrase "auteur" is tightly enough defined by what they're trying to do.
Yeah, right. And we've talked about this actually on the show quite a bit, this sort of movement to doing things that are about the art team, you know, not leaning to the art side of video games, don't rely on the trend side of things. But I was still interested, so to sort of sort of ties into what you were saying. Because they managed to get $50 million in commitments, right? And I was a bit like, okay, we get it. We're in we're in this industry, but how did they get that? How did they get that money? Michael told me basically with much difficulty was the answer. Um,
[clears throat]
Michael told me it was brutally hard. We started it at the worst possible time.

Most major funds in video games want to get out of video games. Everyone wanted to talk about AI, defense, pharma, or robotics and we just wanted to talk about video games. And not only that, we wanted to invest in PC console premium games or indie games. We talked about looking for iconic games when everyone only wanted to invest in big genres and big categories. When we discussed having the artist at the center, everyone was only talking about how to replace humans with machines and automation. And when we first talked about our thesis regarding the emergence of the Chinese premium games market or the renaissance of the Japanese game market a few years ago, this is obviously we get it. I think people see that now. And connecting these scenes with the West, very few people were interested in these Asian premium games and looked to other regions. And nothing in our presentation was trendy, basically. I'm extremely grateful to our investors. Yeah, he says, [clears throat] especially the people who backed us early on conviction before the proof points were in. And he made a whole thing about this what we're talking about. He added that if no one takes risks and tries something new, we'll all end up playing the same thing over and over and we will lose. And Ryan, his other partner backed that up by saying games are one of the defining cultural forms of this era and the largest entertainment market in the world. So when capital rushed out of

games and into AI, we saw a mispricing. Being contrarian isn't the point, but being a contrarian on something this large and enduring with the right thesis and the right structure to capture it is. That said, it wasn't easy. We started Base in one of the toughest fundraising environments in recent memory for anything outside of AI. Well, ultimately convinced people came in two ways. First, investors who already know gaming and share conviction and thesis. Then then as I early investments began to perform, more financially driven LPs came in on that as well. So, they do have I think they have a fully formed thesis. As I say, Michael gave me a very long answer to the alternative thing. I just cut it down for the sake of it.
Is is is is is this is this a classic actually go and read the article, George, when it's published?
Yeah, it is. There was a lot more to it, I think. But yeah, I'm glad there were investors still willing to back those things. One of the challenges I've had with video games is that there's an element of maybe we're not making enough money to reinvest ourselves, but then we're also a lot of the companies that are making the money aren't necessarily publishers or investors, so that that that money's not necessarily fed back into the industry. And I think it's one of the challenges that we've got. But anyway,

those are the stories I wanted to talk about, George. Let's talk about Power Play. I've read the book. It is uh sometimes concerning, but I'm I don't know if there's a hint of optimism I'd like to find, particularly if you get to the end um in there. You know what? You must have done this a lot bunch of times by now with all your book tours.
Give me the precis.
I mean, this is it. I've done it so many times that now it's starting to fall out of my head, strangely enough. Don't know. Okay, so so Power Play is a book about how video games have become a channel for political influence. And at the heart of the story is a misunderstanding about video games that everyone who listens to this, watches this will understand, but a lot of the rest of the world doesn't, which is that video games are social spaces. They are not the antisocial activity that they've been painted as. They instead each exist at the center of a digital information ecosystem, which is various layers of everything from in-game communications to company communications to various social media platforms, all interconnecting and wrapping around every single game and every single game community.

And what you see is that essentially that turns every game into the equivalent of a bar, a cafe, a football stadium, where people come together and congregate. And what happens when people congregate, it's pretty inevitable. They start talking. They form identities. They form groups. And they politicize. And this is as true of Viennese coffee houses as it is of the community around, you know, say Holiday Inn Silk Road, you know, going and having good old chats with the bread and four and about what they're doing within the game, but then also talking much much more widely around their lives. And the the the general argument of the book is to say that this has happened, but in markets generally where video games grew up in a a more sort of traditional manner in the way that we talk about uh the emergence of the PC console industry in the 1980s and 1990s, a perception around the medium set in that it's for a narrow audience, that that audience is childish and not particularly engaged with the world, and that it's not really worth paying

particular attention to it. Whereas in much of the rest of the world, a different story emerged around video games. The medium comes out of the smartphone era and comes into the world at the same time that social media is starting to upend a lot of the political landscape. You know, particularly something like the Arab Spring is really in the forefront of lots of people's minds. And so lots of groups, state actors, begin to look at games and go, "Well, what happens if we start leaning into this space? What happens if we start leaning into the communities within them that have a lot of power within this digital space and try to control with it control them, try to collaborate with them, or try to co-opt them for our own ends." And and Power Play is basically an exploration of that and it explores it across particularly places like Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, what's going on within violent extremism, and then particularly what's going on with the Trump administration at the moment in the US and and populist America. And yeah, I I think as you say,

you used the word concerning. I've had a couple of people use the word terrifying, which I think is uh, you know, always interesting about your own writing. And especially interesting about your own writing when you're someone who has literally championed the industry as head of communications for a trade association who's loved games all their life. You know, the book is trying to present an honest and realistic picture about what's going on and tries to end on a note of saying, "If this space is being competed, what can we do as both an industry but as a society to protect the people who play?" Because almost everyone who's in video games and playing actually just wants to have the ability to play fairly, freely, inclusively protected. So, that's that's the gist of it.
Yeah, it's really good. And there's sort of three acts. The first act is very much explaining into people video games are really significant and here's why. And I think a lot of people probably listening to this show will know that bit, but it I still a lot in there that I think some some of them will. I do find some people are so heads down in

their world they don't necessarily see the broader impact and power of video games. Sometimes it surprises people. I had Laura Miele on the Game Business Live and she sort of did this whole thing about how powerful the video game industry is. I'm sitting there going, "Yeah, let's get to the bits." I'm in my brain I'm going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, people know that." But then afterwards people going, "It's really fascinating when you think about the impact this is having." I'm like, "Oh, actually, maybe people I assume people know. I know, therefore everyone must know." But yeah, there's that bit and then there's these the segment in the which I think is the probably it, which is the as you say you go through how Saudi Arabia sort of investing in video games and e-sports. You go through China and how they control things in quite a inconsistent way I find quite fascinating. And I your explanations around it was really, "Oh, I see why they randomly change their minds on this after a couple of years." And then we get into Russia, which is a lot more propagatory I think in terms of them what they're doing. And then the end, the last segment is his
[laughter]
What What should you do about it? I found it really interesting. The Saudi stuff I found really fascinating cuz obviously I've just done this piece with

EA. They weren't able to talk about the deal because it hasn't gone through yet. Interestingly with the Saudi thing, I've never quite understood it cuz I sort of understand how buying e-sports helps, right? You know, they're hosting events in their countries, they become the home for these experiences and just as they do with sport and all the investment they're doing in WWE and things like that. So people see the country, they might visit the country, they might think, "Hey, I know they've killed some journalists, but they're all right really." What I don't fully comprehend is how buying EA or Monopoly Go or investing in Nintendo actually I get how it helps them economically, but I don't get how it helps them achieve any of those sorts of more soft power goals that you were talking about in your book.
There's a couple of things to it and I think throughout that chapter as well one of the things that I say about the Saudi strategy is the big reason why it's successful is that they take it seriously. All right, they have built a a that truly combines the economic goal of building a games cluster to getting access to these assets and and to having control of them. And I think in terms of

the the way it has a soft power impact, I think there's there's a few things there that I think are particularly important to to bring up. The first is the way soft power works. You know, the idea behind it is it's soft. It's not meant to be you're sending a tank across the border to go and enforce yourself. It is the American administration dropping Hollywood films into Afghanistan after, you know, they've they've gone and launched the assault there post-9/11 because they're trying to win over the population. It it's meant to be this process of steady attraction. And that attraction can work in lots of different ways, but particularly with within the game space, I think for the industry side of things, you see a lot of money flowing into the sector at a time when there isn't much cash flowing in. So, naturally, you're going to look at Saudi Arabia and go, you know, to what extent has it changed? And it has meaningfully changed since a decade and a half ago, but you're also then willing to potentially just soften your criticism. You're willing to talk a little less about, you know, human

rights issues. You're willing to say a bit more, well, it's just a different cultural perspective. And of course it is, but you know, we need to go back to Jamal Khashoggi and his his criticism of the regime before his death in which he said, you know, essentially, to paraphrase, we've replaced a Wahhabist theocracy with a place where the entire culture is do what the Crown Prince says. So, there's that element on the capital side, but I think in terms of the player side, I think that the biggest thing around something like EA is it's that missing piece in the puzzle for its wider game strategy as a major publisher, but it also helps Saudi Arabia achieve something that it's not been able to achieve in sport and is part of the reason why they've been moving back, which is just quiet influence across the entire information ecosystem. And you know, the example I use is this. Saudi Arabia buys Newcastle United via the public investment fund for about $300 million. Its fan base starts talking incredibly positively about the Saudis because they were owned by Mike Ashley, who was a

terrible businessman and broadly speaking not the nicest football club owner around. And what you could see was that gave the Saudis sort of a little ocean of influence, but it couldn't really go any further because Newcastle United is essentially the biggest team they could buy and anything else that they would buy would just be supporting that kind of flagship project. By buying Electron cards, what you do is you get a relationship with an organization that has direct connections to all of the players of every major sport, all of the clubs of every major sport, and every single league and tournament. And when you go and look across all of the major sports it works with, you see that there is mountains of content created around each of each of these games. You know, you can see things like Texas Tech posting excited tweets when its Raider mascot is included in college football for the first time. You see 2.8 million views on Bruno Fernandes and Gabriel Magalhaes of Arsenal talking about their EA Sports FC stats at the start of the

Premier League season. My club Luton Town runs competitions every year when EA Sports FC comes out, you know, buy you can win a copy of EA Sports FC often with but we've put a Luton player on the on the sleeve for one edition, right? And so when you think about all of that influence and you think, "Okay, now all of that is going to be allied to what's going on with the E-sports World Cup." So all of that kind of influence around competitive sports tournaments starting to come in. And then remember as well that in terms of the one area of Saudi Arabia's sports strategy that it is maintaining is its relationship with FIFA ahead of the 2034 World Cup, you've got a really strong tie in there between what's going on in the digital world of football and what's going on in the physical and I think my kind of, you know, I don't want to say that this is the most solid prediction in the world, but I would not be at all surprised if one day we see EA Sports FC running a FIFA World Cup mode again in, say, 2034 in time for the Saudi Arabian World Cup, especially once Gianni Infantino and co

realize the rest of their video game strategy isn't working. So, it's just that quiet process of developing a gravitational pull and an quiet influence. You know, we're not going to see Mohammed bin Salman on the box of EA Sports FC. That's not what's going to happen.
No, and I guess with that stuff they don't need to they don't need to buy the companies. They did that deal with Ubisoft around Assassin's Creed Mirage and the Valley of Memory DLC, which is a little bit more like Saudi history sort of thing. And you can now you know, you can buy your way into EA Sports game. Mountain Dew has a team in college football. Yeah. You don't need to own the things to have that influence, but I guess it's it's interesting we talk about Newcastle and that I guess a lot of Newcastle fans think a bit more positively about um the market. EA's certainly not overly liked by gamers. And they have obviously quite a bad reputation. So, you know, I'm sure if they're if they start commissioning a load of Command & Conquer and Dead Space and and games that people are I was doing a piece of EA and the comments are all like, "I want a I want a new SSX."
I was going to say they could do SSX Asian Olympic Winter Sports Edition,

which was initially going to be in Saudi Arabia in 2029, but funnily enough that's that's been one of the canceled projects. Was the Saudis were were trying to host that and pulled back from it. But I I think just, you know, to sort of round this off as well is of the you know, you're right, EA itself not necessarily the most popular company in the industry. Very few people going to go out to bat for it, but if you think about all of those influences and creators for F1, EA Sports FC, Madden, you know, saying that all of those people are now going to be very firmly within that orbit. And when you look at something like the EA Sports World Cup, one of the things that the foundation does, as well as funding teams, is it encourages teams to bring influences out with them to the World Cup to come and experience Saudi Arabia. And it is honestly a fair part of their narrative and a fair part of their argument. It's very much come out and experience it for yourself, see what's going on. But again, it's very much about doing so within tightly defined parameters. And if they were to start pushing on the question

of, "But okay, so what's going on in terms of LGBTQ plus rights in your country?" That welcome would suddenly become more frosty. So, you know, it's that mixture of finance and cultural influence that I think the Saudi Arabians get and therefore it gives them influence within the information ecosystem. So, that that's a major thing.
If I'm going to go with my naive optimism here, and it is naive optimism, it applies to China and all these sort of things. These partnerships with Western companies, these investments, these acquisitions that were happening, and China's pulling back a bit from it now. Are we all growing a bit closer together? And isn't that potentially a positive thing long-term? You know, if big American companies, big American games, and not just American games, European games as well, be working with the Saudis, is there not Is there not an upside?
I mean, I I wish I could say that I think there was, but at the moment I don't think there is. I mean, I think you know, the archetype for it is much more what does Russia do with its cash after Vladimir Putin comes to power. And

a lot of its money gets invested especially across Europe both into things like sports partnerships again, so things like Gazprom sponsoring Schalke, but all the way through to working with Germany on energy security, working in terms of London and the legal system and the financial system. And and the idea behind that, you know, the the democratic thinking was, "This will bring Russia closer to us and it will allow them to become a a modern democracy cuz Vladimir Putin has said that's what's going to happen." And actually what it was was about strengthening Putin and the oligarchy around him by making it much harder for the West to combat him because you suddenly have a load of Russian money tied up within various countries closely associated with political parties often and that has that kind of dulling effect that I was talking about earlier with the Saudis of saying, "Well, you know, maybe they're all right." and then as Russia begins to siphon off parts of Europe, you know, what it's doing in Georgia and in South Ossetia, once it

gets to Crimea, it becomes actually quite difficult to build a consensus to stop that because the money has infected everything and I think if Saudi Arabia was buying it under a different administration in the US, I might be inclined to say, "Yeah, these are things coming together." but the deal was done precisely because Jared Kushner was involved with that, had identified the opportunity, pushed it forward, and then was able to push this deal past likely national security concerns in the US. And this is much closer to the writer Anne Applebaum, what she calls autocracy Inc., which is the way that authoritarianly minded people are building networks of interconnected influence to try to maintain their positions in power. And I look at that and go, I think unless we are beginning to chip at the edges of that, and I think particularly and the thing that I would really like to see is, you know, when we tend to talk about entering markets like Saudi Arabia or China, we talk a lot about adapting to their local norms and

and and cultural needs and fine, let's let's do that. But I would say equally if businesses want to work with us, then we should be having a much stronger demand on them in terms of the democratic side of things. We want to see that you're respecting people's rights. We want to see that you're investing in things that strengthen local rights for people to express themselves and and then align with that or otherwise what's happening is the money is just infecting our system and therefore as a result of that, starting to corrupt the politics underneath it. So, I would love to share your optimism, Chris, but unfortunately, I I'm as you've seen from reading the book, a jaded, cynical man.
Well, so about China, as well. I One thing about China I never quite understood is why did they let Steam international operate? Yeah. They control what's sold and bought in their country in terms of how foreign games are released in that country, except they allow this store to just and people can just put the games in there.
Yeah.
And they they know it, you know, I I talked to any of the analysts that

specialize in that market. I'm like, "All right, how does Steam get away with it?" And they said, one, they don't know, and two, but the government knows.
Yeah.
And so, uh you've been doing this whole um segment on China. What's your take on that?
Yeah. So, I I think there's two layers to it. So, I mean, yeah, the Chinese government knows because Steam obviously has a an official version in China, which I believe that the partnership is with Perfect World. I don't know, you know, a citation needed. I think it's Perfect World. Um but there is there is Steam China, which is localized, which I only has games that have obviously been officially licensed for release. So, the only way you get to that point is if the Chinese government knows you because you need to have a relationship with the CCP to actually just get to that point point in the first place. So, if they know, why do they do it? Well, it comes down to the way China's censorship net actually operates in a modern digital world, which is to say, historically, it used to predominantly run upon centralized fear. So, you know,

say, for example, you are in the '70s or '80s and you're a dissident and you want to campaign against the Chinese government. You print a load of stuff and you start distributing leaflets. So, what's the easiest way to clamp down on that? Restrict who can have access to printers, and if you discover anyone who's got one, you beat them up, you arrest them, you break the easy. Digital world changes that. Suddenly everyone is able to create content and even in a country as increasingly sophisticated as it is in terms of monitoring and policing content, if you have a billion people creating stuff, you're frankly not going to be able to control everything that they say because it's just literally impossible. And so, there's an academic called Margaret Roberts, she talks about how China instead has put in place what what she describes as a porous censorship net. So, if the F of fear is now less effective because you can't go and basically beat up everyone who's going to potentially think or post on a social

media site something that's a little critical of the regime, what you do instead is you impose friction on them and you also flood them with narratives that support what you're doing. So, friction is things like um, you know, the golden shield technologies which slows down access to certain parts of the internet or puts in place the great firewall that limits access to some foreign sites. And the idea there is to say people can still access stuff, but they have to do things like download a VPN to do so, at which point if we see the downloading of VPN, we can just mark them on a list and go, "Okay, interesting. Using a VPN. Wonder what they're doing that." And then on the flooding side, if people are saying things that you don't particularly like, but it's not necessarily explicit political criticism like, "We're really disappointed with the way uh, police maybe were overzealous with the judicious with policing a protest." You just flood the environment with messages from your supporters, from bots, from state media to to go and balance your narrative. And so, when this all comes into place in the context

of Steam, China at the same time as doing all of this has recognized that if you offer individuals in the country enough economic freedom to feel like they can spend their money how they want to do so, then actually they're willing to put up with with quite a lot of censorship and willing to put up with quite a lot of not saying what they would think and the process of self censorship. So, if someone wants to access Steam, if they use a VPN to do some so, you know, use a booster to get themselves up to enough enough speed to download things or play an online game, as long as they're not doing anything that's particularly obviously against the regime like posting pro-Hong Kong slogans, the regime's like, "Knock yourself out." They don't really mind. And, you know, I think it was as a sort of an indication of this kind of gray market existing, a great example of this like last year was Hideo Kojima turning up to promote Death Stranding 2 at a Bilibili consumer conference when the game doesn't officially have a license to release in China

because they don't care cuz you're just playing a game, but it's when the playing of a game or engaging in a digital activity turns into political chatter that turns into group formation, that's what the Chinese government is trying to stop. So, if someone's going and downloading a single-player game on Steam or even, you know, account co-op game, they're not going to bother. They don't care. But, if it becomes obvious that then they're starting to post on Steam forums a load of comments that are potentially negative towards the regime, that'll be the point where the net kicks in.
One of the tones I got between your um Saudi and China chapters was Saudi seemed to be it was very much like how they're using video games to further their goals. With China, and China weren't doing that, too, but China it was a lot of protection. It was a lot of them saying like games are a potential threat and and we need to be mindful of it. So, both of them are taking games seriously, which is ultimately the theme, right? These countries are taking games very, very seriously, but one is again the

just the tonal I felt the tonal difference was was one is like going, "Yes, we can use games to sort to solve some of our problems." And China was like, "Yes, games might cause us problems." And that's part of their tone of it. And I guess one of the messages is that actually we all should be thinking of it like that in a way. Not that we're necessarily happy that China's doing that or happy that Saudi's doing that, but actually we have tax breaks in the UK, right? And tax breaks have a culturally British element to them, which isn't necessary. You don't need to have that in order to get the tax breaks, but it can help. I see little things like that, which can be used to promote the country in a positive way or all those sort of things, but I don't see not necessarily a positive way. There's nobody waking up to both the opportunities and also the threats of these of this medium. This is the whole point of your book, I mean.
Yeah, there's there's no strategic dimension to it. You know, why is Saudi Arabia doing so well in video games? Well, because it has a national strategy that is comprehensive, that thinks about constructing a video game cluster

in pretty much the exact way that you would go about constructing a video game cluster, you know, building all of the layers of the industry. You know, I know you've had I think you've had Nicholas Lovell on before talking about the games industry isn't one thing, it's multiple sectors coming together. The Saudis have got a strategy that really understands that and then allies it to all of their wider goals in terms of of soft power. And the strategy itself is officially signed off by the Crown Prince. And so, when the Crown Prince says this is important, Saudi Arabian society responds. And then you see see this kind of kind of impact. And when you look at what China's doing, I think it's difficult to discern precise strategic dimension to it because obviously Chinese political culture is much much more secretive. But when you look at all of these elements of control around things like content censorship, around designing login systems that are managed by the Ministry of Propaganda, but just also in terms of understanding where there's actually genuine economic value from this industry and China doesn't want to kill

or suppress that because they understand economic instability is one of the key things that leads to political instability. You can see that they are building carefully thought-through strategic interventions that support the goals of the state while also still achieving those economic benefits. And we frankly don't have those kinds of things within most Western nations. Like the UK, you know, talking about tax reliefs or the games fund. It's like, okay, those are good interventions. They genuinely help the industry, but what is the strategic layer? What's the plan? You know, who is writing that? Who is delivering it? Which body do we have to drive this forward? And the answer is is that, you know, and they they do the best they can. We have a couple of officials in our culture department who are essentially trying to steer the games industry but without any meaningful mandate, any meaningful strategic intervention. And that's obviously not going to deliver anywhere near the kinds of results that tens of billions of dollars of targeted

investment or a strategy that seems to be defined across multiple parts of the Chinese government is going to do. So, I Yeah, and I think ultimately a lot of my book at for however depressing it is in certain places, one one of the chapters a friend of mine described as bleak peak. So, you know, they you've got that to look forward to. It's almost always across every single one of these groups I'm talking about, the hedge to my pessimism is the fact that they take it seriously. And it's my It's not just a screed against these countries or against these communities. It's a book that's saying they're actually doing some pretty remarkable stuff here cuz they have really drilled into the potential influence and are taking advantage of it.
What surprises me, you talked a little bit more about taking it seriously, is there's there's the game Squad 22 Z O V or something, um which is a game where you Those that don't know, it's a game you take part in conflicts in Ukraine as Russia and basically kill

Ukrainians. It disinformation tool and all that sort of things. Not a very good game, but but what's surprising I mean I might be I read this wrong. Is it only banned in Germany and Ukraine? Is it Is it that which startles me. Like that's yeah.
Yeah, I mean so yeah, so Squad turns to his off yeah it's tactical shooter. It directly promotes Russian narratives around the Ukraine war. It's also technically unofficially actually now it's officially now used as a training manual for youth cadets in Russia to help them understand conflict and understand some of the basics of conflict. The thing is it's that it contains obviously sort of very prominent pro-Russian propaganda. But one of the things that I found out when speaking to lots of officials especially former officials within the US government is one of Russia's big understandings around its information operations is how to stay within the rules within democracies. So it is it has learned how

to intervene and interfere and disrupt the information landscape in democracies in a way that makes it hard for people to fight back. So you know, for example, you know, the State Department when it was taking foreign disinformation a bit more seriously than it is under the current regime. Essentially you had to prove that certain parts of the Russian state was directly funding or sponsoring an act for it to be essentially labeled or upgraded from you know, something that you suspect of being an information campaign to something that you can publicly identify as doing so. And so Russia learned extensively about how you flush money through proxies, you know, if you want to get a story into the US actually what you can do is go to a South American news outlet that writes in Spanish, get them to write a story for you. You pay them off to go and do so and then it gets picked up across the Spanish news and then steadily washes its way into the US, you know, literally across borders into into the south of

the country. And that's I think the thing that Russia understands with games is Steam is basically unmoderated, you know, realistically they have incredibly low moderation standards. And so if you release games into there, you've got suddenly global reach on your content, which if you then go to the Steam page as of Squad 22's of, you see on the forums that there's a full-blown propaganda war going on underneath it, you know, with Ukrainians and Russians fighting over what their perspective is and and what the game says about the war in general and the war more generally. But the only reason why it's banned in certain places is where specific elements of Russian iconography, specifically the Z symbol, um, that's being painted prominently on on the side of of of Russian tanks, that has been banned in Germany and Ukraine specifically as a hate symbol. And so therefore it's banned in those places. So it leaves a really big question, which is simply Steam knows this is a propagandistic release. They know that this is created by the Russian government. They've had plenty of

interactions with the Russian government because they've got a strong relationship with Roskomnadzor, the country's censorship agency. So if they're willing to work with the Russian state to censor content in Russia to try and keep Steam online, I think they should probably take Russian propaganda off its stores internationally, um, if it wants to demonstrate it's a responsible business.
Yeah, you are quite critical of Steam in the in the book. Um, but your point's a perfectly sound. Um, I'm conscious of the time and I've not got on to some of the subjects I wanted to to to bring about. I like your advice. I mean you said government should ultimately use games to target social issues and you bring up grooming and misogyny and racism. Um, I find the latter two in particular is just happening in broad daylight these days. Problem is partly is because I think social media algorithms. Oddly this connects us a very mundane point I made in the show, um, about a week ago. Well, I was talking about how I'd love to see more in-person events around video games because sometimes the cynicism of social media, the criticism of social media will will because of

naturally how social media works, if you say something controversial or you know, people will react to it which will push those controversial opinions to the front and if you say, "Oh, I quite like this." No one's liking it, no one's commenting, it goes down the fit. And I was thinking very much about the God of War game which did really well in the numbers in terms of people viewing and engaging it but because it doesn't start Kratos, there was a lot of people that didn't like it and some of it they didn't like it because they like playing as Kratos, I'm sure.
Yeah.
But there was obviously pissed off people that didn't like it because it stars a woman and I I'd love to say that, you know, I'm being devil's advocate, maybe it is just because of Kratos. No, there's people explicitly saying it's because they don't want to play as a woman.
Yeah.
And I was thinking to myself, but does everyone think that? And it can sometimes feel like everyone. And some of the absurd conspiracy theories, you know, the amount of people sharing the and I don't think most people were mocking it to be fair, was somebody who said that the box art on Halo has bisexual colors on the box which is subliminally, I don't know, doing what? Making everyone gay? I can't I can't

work out what they think that's achieving. But all of that stuff is all I keep seeing at the moment. It seems to be that those political opinions are dominating. It can sort of end up steers media coverage because they think that's what everyone thinks and what everyone feels about stuff. I don't have a question but it you it's the Well, that's the bit that's the bit that
most directly impacts, I think, people in the West.
Yeah, and I think what's interesting is you know, you write something, you write something like a book, you finish it months and months ago. Well, I mean I actually finished the the core of the manuscript 9 months ago, 10 months ago. And new things come along that really start shape shape your thinking around it and I think talking about this and saying like, "Okay, how do we understand what people actually in this landscape are thinking? Who are they? What are they saying? And why? Uh there's a bit of research that um going to be publishing a piece about this week uh from a polling firm called More in Common in which they'll be looking at video games and and

disinformation specifically amongst a audience of young men that they call as part of a segment that's called skeptical scroll list. So, it's a particularly um coherent part of British society, roughly 10% of there who are disenchanted with their lot in life, who are finding things difficult socially, but are much more likely to be young, male, and playing video games. And what they found out from from a poll of about 2,000 of them is that this group is four times as likely to say they're confident in spotting misinformation, but twice as likely as the rest of the British population to say they believe conspiracy theories like the government is hiding aliens from us. And so, you have this difficult challenge of a digitally savvy, noisy audience who are within the games industry and within our our communities who have a tendency to believe fringe mad things like there's bisexual uh lighting in the sky of a promotional image, and have enough

coherence amongst themselves to actually form like a campaigning caucus and then really sort of tilt the discourse. And so, you know, when when putting it back to be like, "Well, what can we do about this? And what what can we do about uh groups like this?" Because these are the ones who are particularly primed to be um turned towards a Russian information operation or brought into like populist campaigning movement. Uh you know, the answer within democracies is to try and learn from elsewhere and look at something like and I I'd particularly draw it back to the example of football culture in the UK and about how in the 1980s football culture looked like it was just football hooligans, violent men who were nihilists, who wanted to find reasons to fight one another. And it wasn't until the Hillsborough disaster in which 97 people who innocently went to a football match were killed as a result of a major crush that was exacerbated by policing frankly incompetent as a result of treating everyone there like a violent hooligan. It wasn't until that happened

that we emerged with this mixture of some regulation, yes, but also a much wider push towards invoking the standards that clubs wanted to live about saying, "We don't want this to be a place for violent young men to go and beat the living daylights out of each other. We want to bring women into stadiums. We want to bring the full racial mix of the UK into our communities, and we want them to feel welcome and safe and included." And as essentially the commercial side of the game starts to take off the Premier League, the result of making that decision has been that the Premier League has become the biggest league in the world, the most commercially successful, the best attended, and also now starting to see the same results outside of things on the women's game specifically. And so, when I was talking about what we do about it, not tolerating things like misogyny, racism, it's it's central to setting the standard across our communities that says, "We don't want them to be dominated by loud, noisy voices who have maybe either been weaponized or are

trying to weaponize our spaces for their own ends. We want to state what standards we want to follow, and we want to appeal to as many players as possible. Because the more people who are playing, the better the industry's going to be, the more welcoming your community's going to be. And ultimately, making that decision about do you want to run the bar where the windows are smashed in, where there's the people glowering in the corner and shouting things at people, or do you want to run the bar that's popular because it's clean and it's welcoming, and the the community within there is friendly, and the staff are, you know, capable of helping you out with things, but if something's going wrong, they're noticing something and and reporting it to the right people. And that even though this might just seem like a wider safety thing, it's also about protecting our wider values, too. Because if you promote those kinds of values, you start to see it reflected in the wider conversation. So, you know, I know you didn't ask a question, but that's kind of my answer to it.
Yeah, well, yeah, well, I guess the answer is what do we do? George, thank you. I I I there's so much more we could

talk about. There really is. There is so much in this book. But hey, that's why you people need to buy the book. Um Power Play uh video games, politics, and the battle for global influence is out now from all good bookshops in the outside of the US. In the US, you got to wait till July. Um yeah, but uh um I guess you could order it uh internationally. Thank you for joining us. Again, it's a really fascinating insight into the world of video games and its and its influence. And I think hopefully the important thing is not just people in the video games industry read it, but actually the wider world. And I think your last point there is is what we want to see, right?
For some games companies, they talk the talk. They're very much saying what you're saying there about setting our values and sticking to them. There are some that I'm not entirely sure are there yet. But um hopefully they'll read this and they'll they'll get there. Thank you so much. You're more than welcome. Right, before we leave, I have one more thing to do, which of course is go through the big news of the last week. And the big story, and this isn't the story we would normally cover on the

Game Business Show, but it is Grand Theft Auto. GTA 6 is open for pre-order. Take-Two has revealed there will be two versions of the game, the standard edition, which will cost $79.99, which is about That's about $10 above the usual price of video games. And the ultimate edition will cost $99.99, or $100 basically, and it will include an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia's story. Rockstar has also confirmed the physical edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 will not feature a disc at launch. It will instead have a code in the box. Players who pre-order the standard or ultimate edition before November 20th will get the vintage Vice City pack which features a collection of items that flashback to when the neon burned brightest. Um a few notes here. This is the second big game to come in at $80. Um it joins Mario Kart World, the Nintendo Switch 2 launch title from last year. This could instigate other companies following suit and selling games at that price. I'm not convinced it'll happen on at least I'm not convinced it'll happen on mass. GTA is a special case really. Uh the disc in the

box is a bit of a surprise mainly cuz GTA is such a big mass market product that it will do very well at physical retail. The decision will understandably upset some players and potentially impact the less digital savvy consumers, but in truth for the majority of people it won't make much of a difference. It will make it easier for Rockstar to keep working on the game right up until launch without the need to have something ready for duplication and distribution and all that kind of stuff. It'll also prevent pre-owned and second-hand sales and reduce the likelihood of the game leaking ahead of release. I swear that last point is the important one. The big losers will be games retailers, although there aren't as many of them these days and they will still be able to sell a physical copy of the game. Um second-hand outlets like eBay and CeX will struggle a little bit, although with the price of games consoles at the moment I'm sure they'll benefit from that side of thing. They'll ultimately all need to basically there's secondary opportunities for retailers around other items and hardware and things like that. The winners of course are the PlayStation and Xbox stores which will benefit the most I suspect from this. Ultimately gamers will still buy. It's GTA after all. Um

some other stories for you. Um Atari's mobile games database has launched a platform for industry professionals which allow people to share their career progress, successes, and access personalized job postings, insights, and industry tracking. Either sound like a video game LinkedIn. The service launches today as a free beta which some pay with some paid elements um when the tools launch fully. Mobygames is the concept is due to shortcomings of other professional networkings that don't networking that doesn't cater for the of what it's like to work in video games. And also cuz jobs boards that don't capture the right data and networking that drives how careers move in the industry. Um good luck to Moby Games, someone who tried to run and develop and invest in the jobs board. A gamesindustry.biz is a lot more complicated than it looks. A new publisher's formed called Trail marker games. It's led by former executives from GameMill Entertainment, which is the best which is best known for franchises is um franchise tie-ins mainly, but games like Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, and

Cobra Kai. The new publisher's four titles that will launch in 2026 and 2027 including a new arcade beat 'em up set in The Walking Dead universe called The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival. Two other stories, Nintendo Switch online pricing will increase in Japan. A 1-month plan will increase from 306 yen, that's $1.89, to 400 yen, $2.47. Um annual prices are going to 2,400 yen, that's $14.86 to 3,000 yen, which is $18.58. Um Switch online plus expansion pack prices also rising as well. Um one of the co-founders of French games giant Ubisoft, Claude Guillemot, has been killed in a plane crash. He was 69. Sega has reported that Sonic Cross Wars and Shinobi Art of Vengeance had underperformed. You already knew that about Sonic Racing. Sega said it will be shifting its market strategy to focus on influencers and community as a result. And finally, developer OtherSide Entertainment has made 17 redundancies after the cancellation of Project Argos. The firm said the game isn't viable in the current games market. That's all the

stories for today. Uh thank you for joining us. Thank you to George for speaking with us today. We'll of course be back with more news, analysis, insight, and interviews in the days and weeks ahead including next week, Jason Rubin. Uh if you want to make sure you don't miss that or any episodes or any newsletters that we put out, head to the gamesbusiness.com, stick in your email, and you will never miss a thing. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.