The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and GTA 6: The video game industry’s Barbenheimer moment

This week, it's Zelda versus GTA. Is this the industry's Barbenheim moment? Plus, we chat trends, Jeff's new foundation, and Ubisoft joins us to discuss their player council. Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This week's edition is sponsored by Keyword Studios. Of course, Keywords is that organization that does everything to help game developers make their games, launch them, and promote them, and then make sure they keep growing and are successful afterwards. They say they're supercharged by technology. They specialize in being great partners and have 13,000 people across 26 countries. They're a big global player. When it comes to sort of the marketing side of things and keeping players engaged, their focus on helping studios understand their audience more clearly and building a stronger relationship with them. From player support, trust, and safety to community insight and engagement strategy, Keyword Studios helps teams respond to player needs with more relevance, care, and impact. You can find out more on the Keyword Studios website or via the links in the newsletter attached with this very show. Speaking of this very show,

let's do it, shall we? This time next week, I'm going to be in Tokyo. Tokyo Games Show is my first trip to Japan. And I'm I am a bit nervous, but I'm also quite excited. Uh mainly to understand one of the world's oldest video game industries, which has gone through its own peaks and troughs, but continues to define where the global business goes and where it's headed. Naturally, in the buildup to such an event, we've had a number of special showcases lately. Last week, Sony held one of its State of Play events. It didn't set the world alike. There were plenty of interesting games in there, though. And this week, it was Nintendo's turn who delivered a double bill. One entirely focused on The Legend of Zelda, and the other one, you know, was a more traditional Direct. Now, on paper, the Zelda Direct sounded pretty similar to the Sony showcase. There was a Lego model, a special edition controller, a movie reveal, if you can call it a movie reveal, and a lengthy deep dive into a remake of a game we all played 30 years ago. And yet, for reasons I cannot describe, it was more exciting. The Nintendo one was. It just

was. Admittedly, says the guy with a Zelda or Queen of Time poster on his wall. Anyway, in this week's edition, I give a bit of analysis on that Zelda direct in particular. and Ubisoft. They're coming on the show to talk about his new player council. I'm also going to touch upon trends and my business partner Jeff Keley has launched something new. We're going to talk about that as well. So, let's go. Let's though talk about Zelda. So, it turns out there is one game that day has come out in the same month as Grand Theft Auto 6. This week, Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda Ocarine of Time remake will be launching on November 5th. It is a full two weeks before GTA arrives, but it's still within the danger zone. It's certainly a release date that most game publishers will be avoiding. Nintendo though, they play by its own rules, and Zelda is a distinctive title that arrives on a platform that GTA isn't on or isn't on yet anyway. Now, bear with me because this might require some arguing, but could this be the console industry's Barbenheimr

moment? That might sound like a ridiculous thing to say. After all, Ocarine of Time is just a remake, right? Surely that can't be discussed in the same breadth as a sequel to the world's most successful video game, a sequel we've waited 13 years to play. Of course, not of time isn't going to be as big as GTA 6, but it's still a significant title. Nostalgia for this one is immensely strong. It is, after all, the proclaimed greatest game of all time, one of the icons of the N64 era. But this isn't all about attracting the people that played the game 30 years ago. It's also about an entirely new audience. Now, if you look at some of the more successful remakes in recent times, like the Resident Evil remakes, these games have managed to attract a new audience. The Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 remakes out sold their originals. There is an audience of people who have heard about these games, but they're frankly, the games are just too old. They're too antiquated for people to properly play and enjoy today. Now, Zelda is a very different franchise today to the one that existed in 1998. In fact, it's a very different franchise one that existed in 2016. 2017's Breath

of the Wild took Zelda to a height it had never before reached. Before Breath of the Wild, a Zelda game would be fortunate to break 5 million copies. To be honest, the highest selling one was 2006's Twilight Princess. It sold just below 9 million copies, and that was a launch title for the Wii, which obviously was a sensation. Breath of the Wild is now on 34 million sales. Its sequel, which is 2023's Tears of the Kingdom, is approaching 23 million. Now, Zelda always had the reputation as one of the industry greats. It's an icon. Nintendo fans love it, but now it has the commercial clout to go with it. Now, let's bring those two things together. Significant franchise growth combined one of the IP's most beloved entries, and you've got a potentially tasty recipe here. The early numbers back that up. Outside of Grand Theft Auto 6, no other game has attracted as much trailer views and press attention as this Ocarine of Time remake. It was a clear winner during Summer GameFest season of trailer reveals. And if you just look at I've got some early data from the from

the Nintendo Direct on Tuesday. Um, according to Level Up, 2.1 million people was watching this trailer, was watching the video during its peak. To give you some ideas of what that looks like, the GTA 6 reveal on YouTube, so it doesn't include Netflix, managed 4.1 million. The PlayStation State of Play the week before, which featured the new Final Fantasy 7 game, peaked at 1 million views. Gamescom opening night live peaked at 2 million. So this Zelda direct has done more than opening night live. Done more than the PlayStation State of Play by double the more than the PlayStation State of Play. The Summer Game Fest opening event was 2.2 million. So it's in line with what Summer Gamefest event did. Peak viewership for the Mario Kart World Nintendo Direct was the last, you know, the last major Nintendo release for Switch 2. 930,000 in April 2025. So this this was a big numbers. The trailer itself at the time of me recording this was on 55 million views over the same period. So basically a day. GTA 6 extended look was on 80

million. I say GTA 6 on another level. Mario Kart World gameplay overview was 5 million. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation release date trailer was 3.7 million. This is just benchmarks. This is not a criticism on the Mario Kart World trailer or the Final Fantasy trailer. This is purely to point out that this game is very very big. There the hype is real. It's important to note however that Aquin of Time is not like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. It's a far more linear structured Zelda game. It's not one of those titles where you can simply go anywhere and do anything in any order. I would argue Zelda's always been open world, but there's a degrees of open world here. More modern Zelda fans might not find Ocarine of Time quite as appealing. Now, Nintendo has released games in what we call the more traditional Zelda style since Breath of the World came out. There's been a HD remaster of Skyward Sword. That's that's the Wii game that came out initially in 2011, a remake of a 1993 Game Boy game, Link's Awakening, and an early and sorry, and there was an

entirely new game in 2024 called Echoes of Wisdom. These were more in the old school Zelda style. All three games sold reasonably well, between four and 6 million copies, but nothing particularly significant. Certainly nothing Breath of the Wild level. However, I'd argue none of these games have the appeal of Ocarine of Time. Skyward Sword is it is just a remaster of act one of the weaker Zelda games. And by the way, Zelda games are always great. It's not saying much. Links Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom are 2D Zelda games. Sort of in the chibby style is a little bit less mainstream. They're simply not as mass market. Of course, how big Ocarina of Time becomes is going to come down to Nintendo itself. How much of Nintendo's Christmas marketing power will it put behind Ocarina of Time? And there are some messaging challenges. I found it somewhat entertaining in this week's video when Nintendo revealed that Link can now jump and that players can now move the camera around the character. You could you couldn't do that in 1998. If anyone that played the game then,

which was around 78 million people, uh you go, "Oh, yeah, that's new." But both are entirely standard features in modern video games. I can't imagine there's many 15y olds going, "What? I can jump quick quick quick." But here's my pre-order. Um, here's I don't certainly don't remember the GTA 6 Netflix reveal talking about the ability to uh to move a camera. Nevertheless, it was fascinating how even with the initial teaser back in June, Nintendo is very much presenting this to an audience that hadn't played a Queen of Time before. It's very much introducing the idea of this game story and Nav'i and the boy without a fairy and all that kind of thing. This is a game as much for new fans who might have come in via Breath of the Wild or perhaps will come in with the upcoming movie as it is for existing users. I fully expect Nintendo to heavily push this game, much in the same way that PlayStation and Xbox are really putting the weight behind GTA 6. The console market is clearly in a tough spot right now. Sales are falling and prices are rising. We talk about it every week. But

the solution to troubled times in the video game industry is to release interesting, exciting video games. I know I sound like a broken record, but it's true. And in November, within just two weeks of each other, we've got two very different, very powerful, and very exciting video games coming out that are generating a lot of hype and a lot of excitement. I, for one, cannot wait. Now, before we move on to uh our interviews and some more news, I did want to bring up something that came out of this week's Here's the Dring. Now, if you don't know what Here's the Dring is, it's basically an opinion piece that I write. I do it every week, every Monday. It's often reacting news from the last week, but not always. It used to be called the Game Business Micro, but I didn't think it really sold what it was about. It is only for paid subscribers. We don't have a huge number of paid subscribers, so I know most people here will not have listened to it. We do most of our episodes for free. Um, but if you do pay to get the game business, you you would have received this on Monday morning. Now, this week's one has sort

of had a bit of a reaction to it. So, it's sort of uh and it was all around my attempt to counter some of the narratives that are going on in video games at the moment. And I don't just mean the negative narratives we're hearing about the crash 2.0 for the video games industry and everything collapsing. I'm talking about some of the trends that have been going on in video games. So for instance, the the sort of decline of the American video game development scene and the rise of China and how everyone's moving to China or Southeast Asia in general and also conversations about hey consoles don't work anymore or Western AAA video games don't work anymore. We can get hung up on trends and we can think this is the direction of travel for the industry when reality is the industry works in cycles and it can be really hard to tell what the overall trend really is. Now, there's been a few pieces lately. I've read a bunch of LinkedIn posts. There's a YouTube video I watched on the death of live service games. Rob Fay, he wrote a really good piece on games industry is making his predictions about the video game industry. And actually, a lot of his predictions I really agree with, and he certainly hits on many of the big

topics. But the thing with trends is that they're rarely permanent. They often switch and you need to dive deeper into understanding what's truly happening and whether it's actually likely to continue. I mean, let's look at the big one, right? So Amir Savan um who does a loads of analysis on on where the industry is heading and where the layoffs are happening and all the things going on in the video games industry he was at Gamescom and he he revealed that over twothirds of the layoffs over the last 5 years according to his tracker has occurred in North America. In total 25,000 ROS have been lost amounting to 15% of the workforce in the US. Now we did cover this last year on our game business show but the data is still saying the same thing. Other regions meanwhile have seen gains. Asia Pacific saw the number of available jobs increase by 10% driven by a 12% growth in China specifically. The number of roles in Europe meanwhile has basically stayed flat. It varies by country within Europe by the way. Um the UK is down a bit. France is down a bit. France you know is slightly impacted by Ubisoft.

The UK partially due to the likes of Sony moving out of it. And actually that's just it. When you dive into these markets, is it an overall trend or is it actually a big player moved out of it or something shifted or something changed? There was a big failure. What's caused this? What are governments doing? What are they saying? What are trade bodies saying? What is the output looking like? You can see that when you get down to those, the topics are actually a lot lot more nuance. The UK, for instance, it has lot, you know, the the size of the UK games industry in terms of employees has dropped slightly. But that isn't really the headline for the UK video game industry this year. At least it shouldn't be. The headline should be Forsa Horizon 6, Star Wars Galactic Racer, Silent Hill Downfall, Lego Batman Legacy: The Dark Knight, War Dogs, Crown Theft Auto 6, 007 First Light, expand the remit a little bit, and you got Battlefield 6. And then you've got Fable that's coming out next February. It's actually a very strong period for British made video games. It's one of the strongest periods I could remember. It's incredible. A lot of top quality titles are either coming

to market or just come to market. And what impact is that going to have down the line when when UK studios are putting out so many massive games in big big franchises? There is challenges in the UK market. Absolutely. Almost all those games I listed are Americanowned or or or 10-centent owned or whatever. But there's no denying that the UK scene is putting out some big games right now. And that's a good thing. It excites governments. It encourages investment. Encourages support. In France, President Emanuel Macron has just announced that they're going to launch a major cultural festival to celebrate video games. And this obviously comes on the back of Clay Obscure Expedition 33, which did extremely well from last year. Focus is doing extremely well. They're just clutch. We had Maverick who making Clutch on this week. There's no doubt costs are putting pressure on the US industry right now, and that will put pressure on local governments to develop solutions that might make the era more attractive again if that's what they want to do. So, you have to think about that. When is that going to come in? We've been here before. If you go back 15 years, there was the whole 20 years

maybe, you got the whole brain drain to Canada when Canada offered the tax relief and everyone started to move their employment to Canada. It's not the case quite so much anymore. Now, China was clearly the place where lots of investment is going in the video games. We saw that during Gamescom. It was a significant moment. It felt like a moment. Gamescom was a wash with titles coming out of China and Korea and a lot of Southeast Asia. It was a very exciting time for that area of the industry working those markets. It was a moment. But did you watch opening night live which was the games comp pre-event thing that Jeff Keley hosted? I have to say a lot of the games look pretty similar. Not all of them. There was a handful that stood out but there was a lot of very same looking games. This is the problem. When investment flows in and people start seeing success from certain types of games and genres, everyone chases the same thing. The industry does have a notorious habit of seeing a blinking red light and then being like a cat and going we got to go and get it. What happens if many of these Chinese games somehow don't deliver success because the markets become oversaturated? What happens in that

situation? Will we start seeing a scale back in China? These things all happen in cycles. They just do. Things eb and things flow. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that China is suddenly not going to become a superpower in the global video game industry. That is clearly happening. But I do think that suggesting that it's happening in the expense of the West. I mean, it can certainly seem that way right now. But I don't know if it will seem that way in two or three years. It might not. Of course, it's not just about games being made in China. It's about companies in the West outsourcing development to markets where it's cheaper, such as those charities in Southeast Asia, India and China and stuff like that. It's clearly happening as companies try and drive down costs. But as we've spoken to a few studios lately, not everyone is doing it and it doesn't make sense for everybody. I mentioned earlier, we had Maverick Games on this week, right? A big interview. You should check it out. It's a really, really fun interview. Mike and Herinda were very candid. Anyway, um they actually said they don't do too much outsourcing because they find it slows them down and the outsourcing they do, they do tend to work with people who are nearer to them.

We've seen companies like, you know, Harvey Smith, uh he's a former Arcane Studios boss. He opened a new studio called Black Pony Immersive. We had them on the show and he made a point of the fact that his team are American. UK developer Fuse Games, which are making Star Wars Galactic Racer, they made a point that all their outsource partners are British. Sometimes they're doing it for cultural reasons, sometimes because of time zones, and sometimes it's because it's people that they trust, or simply because they want to make sure they have the right talent, not just the cheapest talent. Whatever the reason may be, outsourcing to other markets isn't something everybody's doing, and it's not going to work for every studio. And in fact, you know, many studios are actually pushing against it. The things with trends, it's not always wise to follow them, and not everyone does. Now, people are talking right now about the death of the console industry, and there's no doubt the console market is extremely challenged. But also, I'm wary of even saying that. We've been here before. PC industry was dying 20 years ago. The handheld games market was on its knees until the Switch arrived and changed all that. The reality is new

products and new games can change momentum behind a trend in a moment. As we've talked about earlier about Zelda and GTA 6, maybe the console trend will be reversed come November. It might be a bit premature to suggest that, but it's certainly possible. All I will caution is these things you read on LinkedIn, these opinions that you're reading there or these articles that you're getting and that proclaim the future direction of the business, just do what I do and read it and go, "Yeah, but question it. Poke holes in it. Ask if this is a temporary trend or a permanent direction of travel because often you find it isn't." Now, before we move on to our interview, I do want to bring up one new story that you might have read on Game File this week. So, our friend Steven Tortillo, regular app uh guest on the show, he did an interview with well the co-founder of the game business, Jeff Keley, and Mark Cerny, the architect behind multiple PlayStation consoles. Now, both of them have announced a new thing called the Nova Games Foundation. It's not related to the game awards. It's not related to

PlayStation. It's entirely a Jeff Keley Mark Cerny thing. It's an unaffiliated standalone philanthropic philanthropic can't say the word project is a universitybacked fellowship program intended to offer six figure grants to 20 young game designers every year and hopefully for decades to come. That's the goal. It's no strings attached funding where they get mentorship from game industry leaders, a combination intended to aid the development of groundbreaking new video games. That is what Jeff and Mark are hoping to achieve. Now, NOVA will be collecting applications from 13 affiliate programs at universities across eight countries. This includes the New York University, University of South Carolina alongside Abbert University in Scotland, um which is one of the big development universities in this country and there's also university in France, Germany, Australia as well. So, it's going to be $100,000 per recipient with about a quarter of NOVA fellows that can also then claim half a million dollars for projects that are shaping up particularly well. Payments will be delivered based on development milestones and recipients will own their

games. Nova will help promote the work. Developers will be free to pursue the publishers and platforms of their choice and Nova will indeed help make publishing introductions too. Speaking to Gamefile, Mr. Keely mentioned that how he's never felt it appropriate to commercially invest in video games given his position, but he said, "I've never owned stock in a game company or taken financial stake in a game. Nova is philanthropy. We aren't taking equity or looking to recoup the grants. The return we're hoping for is creative, helping new voices make games and find their footing. Mark and I each made multi-million dollar donations to establish the foundation and we intend to keep contributing. We hope others will join us. Um those others include Hastike Boss, Joseph Ferris, who has also backed the fund. Mark Ernie also told Game File, "The industry has changed immeasurably since I started in games in 1982. These graduates have talent, training, and tools that outclass what we had back in the day by an astonishing amount. But they face a tough road ahead getting traction in the industry, and many could benefit from our support. We want to be there to give

it to them. Very good. Now, I think you've probably had enough of my voice. Uh, to be honest, you've probably bored of it. Um, so let's get some different voices on the show, shall we? During Gamescom, Ubisoft announced that it was soft launching the player council. It's a platform where players can sort of test their games and give feedback directly to developers. You know, other publishers do this. EA does it and Xbox does it as well. The player council is run by a sort of it's run by Ubisoft connecting games together and it lets players basically test early concepts and prototypes as well as updates to existing games. There are four games that are in the player council now. One is Riders Republic which you might have heard of. It's existed for a while. It's a life service sports game. The other is Atamega. Now, that's interesting because it's a game from 2017 that they've it didn't really do anything. It's sort of been faded into the background. Well, developer Ubisoft Reflections has sort of returned to it and it's in this player council. Um, there's also a few other things that are in there. There's an online multiplayer game called Code

Name Split Point and a single player strategy game called Code Name Rook, uh, which players can now go in and test if they want to be part of this council. The interesting thing about this is that as they test things, as they give feedback, the players can sort of level up and get more access to deeper and earlier and bigger projects, it's the idea is a fun thing to gamers do. Although you could argue that they're ultimately working for Ubisoft for free, but this is Ubisoft's way of trying to get games in front of players earlier to get that important feedback. Now, talking about the initiative and what the thinking behind it is and where it all came from, I spoke to V. Alexander who is the director of the player council and Arnold Fremont who is the associate director of community at Gamescom and here is that interview. Hello, welcome to the show. It's lovely to have you on. Now this is really really interesting. You've sort of gified the player feedback process. Let's start with the beginning. Where did this start? Where did this come from?
Well getting player feedback has been something that's always been important for Ubisoft. We have uh user research and other departments that and we do alphas and betas etc. This is something

that our teams have been asking for to be able to get even closer and bring players in even earlier in the process than than they have in the past. And so we thought, how can we how can we help them? How can we put something together that brings the devs and the players into one place to have a two-way conversation and talk about the best ideas to make the games as great as they can be. And so the player council was born. Yeah, obviously you do player feedback before. You've been doing it for years and years and years and you one of the things you mentioned there getting them in earlier. What what's different this time? What what's new about this that you just weren't doing before? So the idea is really to have a complimentary approach. Uh we will continue to do closed beta, closed alpha test, etc. Continue to listen to everything that players are saying on Discord, forums, etc. It's just that here we want to make sure that there is a dedicated platform to allow the dialogue between the players and the dev

teams and build the trust because here we're going to get we're going to take risk basically we're going to provide games that are live so like Omega and Raiders Republic in the console but also prototypes that don't even have a name in that are still very very early and more to come. So that's really the big difference but it's a complimentary approach not really a new things u and it's important to keep in mind it's as mentioned by the way it's all the dev team that are part of this program are fully voluntary and are asking for this feedback
so they are looking forward to it is not a risk of it spoiling something that you might have you know brewing and exciting obviously surprise is all part of the video game industry
I think the players who are going to be drawn to the player fair council are the type who want to know, who want to be involved, who want to have their voice heard during the development process and they're less concerned about spoilers

and more interested in helping collaborate on a great game. You know, it's free to join. Anybody can join if they want to, uh, as long as they're 18 older. So, I think when people self- select into sticking around, contributing to game after game, giving feedback, they're going to find themselves part of a community and having a lot of fun doing that and making the games great so that when it goes out to the broader audience, people who weren't interested in being part of the process, that the game is something that everybody can be proud of, everybody can be happy about,
and the production team will be able to decide also when they want to join uh the player console. So it can be any stage of uh the life cycle. So at the very beginning or it can be later etc. So some games that can be narative focused etc may want to start very early to test the core gameplay loop etc but keeps the mystery and we've seen it uh

in the industry with the early access etc. You often give a bit the the first campaign, the first part of the chapter and then people will discover the rest
but with a very solid game play because this is what we want to achieve with our players.
Is it just games or is features like maybe could the players council test maybe a feature of something that might end up in a I don't know Assassin's Creed or something down the line but it's it's they don't won't necessarily know that it's like a a test.
This is a new tool for our dev teams to be able to use when and how they need to. And it's a place to incubate new ideas. So some of the projects that show up on the player council are not ultimately destined for a launch. We might get a certain way through it and go like, "Okay, great. We've learned a lot. Now it's time to put that on the shelf and move on to the next great thing with what we've learned."
I see.
And teams are definitely going to experiment. So, we're not going to you will probably see a lot of games that

are in the earlier phases cycle in and out where you'll you'll see that games that are are reaching the later phases are going to kind of continue with the momentum with the the feedback that they're getting from the players and the excitement of the dev team. So, it it will depend on the project uh what exactly happens and it's up to the dev teams at the company to decide if it's right for them. I'm kind of excited to see at a mega sort of I'm not entirely sure that's how you pronounce it but it's a sort of because it's Ubisoft afflections it's the grow home team and stuff I covered all of that back in the day not not being too far from me but is that just to test this what's the story behind that
you mean an atomega specifically
yeah yeah
so atomega is a very interesting case because indeed we released the game in 2017
and so the team has been working on other project for a while etc but it was always in the back of their And so recently they were able to see that the community was still active, still playing games, proposing ideas,

etc., etc. And so they wanted to to resume this adventure with the players. And they already started in July uh where they started their test down uh introducing new quality of life improvements etc etc. And now they are officially joining the player console to go to the next step in term of player feedback.
Wow. This might be a really silly question or even might be a question that's impossible to answer, but what does good feedback look like?
It's not a silly question at all. Uh, you know, good feedback is going to be something that resonates with the other players that are part of those play tests and playing that game alongside you. and also about something that resonates with the game team since it's a it's a collaboration. It's a two-way discussion about what's right for the game. The dev team has its vision and its intentions and they share that through the game that they're making. Players will play that, decide come to

their own conclusions about how successful that is, how much they like it, how much uh they're enjoying it. And what's great about the the way that we've built the player council is that it's powered by games together. And so yes,
people can come into the community platform,
post an idea,
other players can upvote that idea. So if it's something that is resonating well, then more players are going to upvote that idea. They're going to add their own contributions and and maybe add more detail to that idea. And then the devs are going to see, oh, this is a really important feature or or concept to the community. Let's understand what it is that that that that the intention is really behind that. You know, it may not be that the dev team does exactly what the idea is because they're professionals, they're experts in the game and the vision that they're trying to achieve. So, they'll take
the intention of what the community is

saying,
turn it into, you know, new gameplay. Yeah,
make a new build, let them play it, and get feedback, and the whole process starts all over again.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine gamers in the player council,
how much they do and how much they could do, but how much they feedback sort of up to them in in in many ways, but um how do you reward them for their cuz you know, for helping you make kit games?
We acknowledge the contributions that they're making when they're making things that are that are effective, that are actionable, that is resonating with the dev teams and the players. We want to acknowledge that and we'll be doing that through a tier system. So when they
of course
make these contributions they'll increase to a higher tier and that new tier can unlock more access to more confidential projects to earlier prototypes to spaces where they're able to have uh even deeper discussions or see uh additional elements of the game making process. And so we reward them with

access when they say, "Hey, I want to contribute." We acknowledge it and let them do it more.
I'm fascinated this. What sort of people are use um who do these sort of things? Is it is it like maybe people that aspire to be game developers themselves?
Well, there is no real specific targets on our side. It's really all people that want to contribute that want to be part also of this community. uh because for us it's a community platform first and foremost for the players for the games and the studios. People will be able to also uh select their preference in term of games genres etc etc. We will see a lot of people that are interested about the vaccines, how is game development happening, how do we make decision, why do we do this, not that, etc. So people that already care maybe about the franchise, about the brand, about should be stuff at large or are just excited about the next big thing.
Yeah. Is is the goal that like most

games, all games end up sort of going through the player council?
It's always going to be a decision for each game. Uh because it's it's going to be right for some teams, right? Not right for other teams depending on the phase that they're in and the goals that they have for their for their project. So, um, I hope that we see more as the platform continues to evolve. It's a new tool that is available to all of our teams. So, if they want to use it, it's here for them. And I think that what we're seeing is from our dev teams is is an appetite for earlier feedback, for more direct feedback, for being able to have this two-way dialogue with the players so that they can, you know, feel better knowing that they're on the right track,
I guess. You mentioned it earlier. There is always this friction, I always think, between listening to the players and and getting their feedback and reacting to it. But obviously, there's still an art form, right? And it's still an artistic vision. Feedback [snorts] is a a very uh

it's a big word in the in the English language that can mean a lot of things. And what is important for us is that indeed uh people we ask will share feedback because they want new things. They want uh for example more of the same new features or completely something else.
Yeah.
But there is never a right or wrong feedback. For example, on Riders Republic, you may be interested in a specific brand of skis or you may be interested in specific toy or whatever, but your opinion is as good as the opinion of everybody else. So, we would just want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to share their voice. And with the platform, we will elevate those voices and help the team prioritize uh and make decision.
I know feedback isn't a new thing, but it does seem to be this seems becoming the norm. I I'm it's going back a few years now when EA announced Skate and almost from the very moment they could have anything remotely playable. They put it in front of people and said, "Right, tell us what you think." Nintendo did it last year with that test

I have no idea anything about. How would you like to see this develop in the future? Where would you where do you hope this is going to go? This is the kind of platform that really brings together two of my passions.
Okay.
So, I've been making games for a long time and I've been a gamer for even longer and this is bringing together those two sides into into one thing. And so what what I hope is that we continue to build deeper relationships with our players as developers and that our players feel heard, that they feel listened to, that the games that are being made are the ones that excite them,
the ones that interest them and they feel are are worth their time. And so I think when we invite players in to the foundational moments and to the the entire process, then we're going to be surprised. We're going to grow. We're

going to learn. And I that that dialogue between the devs and the players is going to create a shared respect and a shared sense of ownership that I think will will just pave the way to even better games and and happier developers who feel uh like they're really hitting the mark cuz you know developers are are artists. They want to make something that people like and players want to play something that they like.
Yeah. I always wonder some people take feedback better than others, but that's a different skill entirely. Oh, I I'm out of time, but thank you so much. I'm excited for it. I'm excited to see atamega come back as well. And um yeah, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we hope that players are able to uh find something that interests them and join the community.
So, thank you to to V and Arnold there for joining us. Um, all that's left for me to do now is run through the big stories from the last week. And we've actually had quite quite a large number of stories, including one that only just

broke really. Xbox has swooped in to save Kajjima Productions' Metal Gear Solid successor, Fizzant. The game was being funded by PlayStation. It's a PlayStation Studios game, but Sony said it would be cancelling the project in mid June, apparently. Now, Kajjima said it was determined to keep the project alive and sought a new partner, eventually finding Xbox. Xbox is publishing another Kajjima Productions game, the horror game OD, which is sort of a guess a sort of successor to what he was trying to do with Silent Hill before Konamih parted ways with him. PlayStation's been a big supporter of Hidekima's development studio ever since he left Konami. They helped set their offices. They signed his game Death Stranding and its sequel Death Stranding 2 on the Beach. They weren't the most commercially successful of video games, but I kind of why you signed Kajjima. Kajjima is your art house director. He's the the credibility player. You've got your big Marvel game for the fans and you have the sort of art house David Lynchl like Kajjima on the side. Um honestly big PR win there for Xbox.

Sony's having a pretty having a summer to forget really on that front. Sticking with platform holders because it's been the week Nintendo held its Direct video. We talked about uh the Zelda Direct earlier, but they also held another one where they showed off a load of games. I actually thought it was quite good. it was missing a heavy hitter. But then, you know, these are just the games that coming out over the six to nine months. These aren't necessarily all the games. In fact, they're not all the games. Pokémon Winds and Waves, one of the big games Nintendo have next year, wasn't in it. Zenoblade Genesis, which isn't the biggest game in the world, but that wasn't in there either. What was in there was a lot of games. For starters, there were some big third party titles. Monster Hunter Wilds. Monster Hunter is huge on Nintendo, so that's quite a big one. Capcom also showed Resident Evil 2, 3, and four remakes coming to Nintendo Switch. Um, in October, there was two Persona games. Final Fantasy 7 Revelations was in there. So, lots of lots of games for the sort of Japanese audience. And there was also the surprise launch of Mechamed, which is out now, and that's the hide-and-seek indie game, which is currently the bestselling video game of the year. In terms of Nintendo's own first party games, there were sort of two big

announcements. There was a 2D Metroid game called Metroid Ravenous. I mean, it's big for me. I love that game. I love 2D Metroid games. They're not going to sell massive numbers, but they, you know, they've got an audience. And the other one is Kirby in the world beyond which seems to be a sort of openw worldish Kirby game. Now the last Kirby platform title that only came out a few years ago was actually a big hit. Sold nearly 8 million copies. So it's um it's it's growing franchise that Nintendo also sold updates for Mario Kart World. Pitman 4. Star Fox has a new trailer for the Fire Emblem game they got coming out next week. There was more from Switch Sports Resort which is coming out in October. Zelda wasn't in the this direct cuz it was in the one that they did the day before. They also showed a new horror IP from Blubbertine called Onyx the Dark Grip. I'm calling this out because it gave me Eternal Darkness vibes and I'm a big GameCube fan and big fan of that niche horror game from 2003. So yeah, I thought of Solid Direct. Lots of games quantity more than quality, but um there's some good stuff in there as well. Keyword Studios. Um this isn't a sponsored message. This is just a new story about Keyword Studios. Um they

brought together seven of its creative agencies into one organization called Free Animal. The new agency brings together the Gina, Itchy, KWM, Maverick, Trailer Farm, Big Farmer, and Fire Without Smoke. These are sort of marketing groups. Clients will continue to work with the same people, but they can now plug into a sort of wider global network, and if they need certain expertise, they can tap into each other. It makes sense. It makes sense on paper. I received a newsletter this week, which I thought was really interesting. is for music exp who were sort of the a music and gaming newsletter and they looked at the engagement figures for every track and artist featured in the Netflix Grand Theft Auto 6 review and I thought this is interesting. The newsletter found that artists featured in the trailer saw monthly Spotify listeners grow 670% week on week and tracks feed in the trailer saw week growth of 9,177% in Spotify streams. Obviously, potentially don't really know much, but I have to say it's it's all about impact of the music in Grand Theft Auto. It's really interesting. You should check out the newsletter. Couple other stories. LEGO Digital Players acquired Off-Road

Games. That's a UK mobile developer formed by Space Ape Games employees. No financial details were disclosed. Uh Frontier has seen adjusted operating profit jump 62%. It's another UK team to 21.4 million pounds. That's for it 226 financial year. The highest in the company history actually. Very well done. The results are due to strong sales in the Jurassic World Evolution, Planet Coaster, and Planet Zoo franchises alongside increase tax credits and expenditure credits. The studio has also just signed a deal with Disney to create a game featuring its IP, which is almost certainly going to be a a Disney World sort of roller coaster tycoon type game. I'm excited about that. We've got some sales numbers here. Mint Rocket's adventure RPG data diver now hit 10 million copies. That's obviously a bit smash hit indie game or indieish game. Not going to get into that debate again. Uh, the first big games of September have sold well as well. On Amushia, Way the Sword from Capcom has sold 1 million copies in a single day, while Rebel Wolves is the Blood of the Dawn has sold 1 million copies in two days. Not so good news now. A Steam maintenance bug has led to the achievement list of a number of unreleased and in some cases unannounced

games becoming visible on sites that collect Steam achievement information via an API. There's some interesting titles been leaked there. It's a bit of a shame because I imagine they were going to feature in some announcement events coming up. Seven employees of Future Lab have been very redundant. This is following the cancellation of an unannounced project that was in pre-production. The project was unrelated to the power wash simulator IP, which is where the company makes most of its money. More bad news here. Life is strange. Developer Don't Nod has warned that it may not be able to continue beyond the end of January 2027 unless it secures further external financing. Gross cash has fallen from 17.9 million at the end of last year to 9.3 million by the end of July. So, they're burning through cash very fast. And these are some stories from the week before that we didn't get to. Xbox is going to introduce monthly cloud gaming limits for Game Pass subscribers from November. Game Pass Essential will be limited to 5 hours of streaming time every month, premium to 10 hours, and ultimate to 15 hours. Subscribers can then purchase additional hours once the time is up. Xbox says this is going to affect 4% of Game Pass subscribers and the decision is due to the rising cost

of cloud gaming as more players use it for longer. Going back to PlayStation, they have a state of play event last week. It was okay, I thought. um didn't again didn't go down in a storm, but it like the Nintendo Direct didn't really, but it was solid. It announced limited edition Dual Sense controllers that tie in with GTA 6 alongside a date for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, which is out April 8th, 2027. He also announced Until Dawn with two, which is out January 28th. The game actually been helped by Ad Hoc, the developer behind Dispatch, alongside the UK team that's working on it. That's that's interesting. Elsewhere during the state of play, a Lego PlayStation system revealed Double Fine. That's the old Xbox studio Shadow Drop Keeper on PS5. And there was new content for SAS, Ghost of Yo, Monster Hunter the Wilds, and Crimson Desert. Oh, there was a few new IP there, too. Um, PS5 exclusive folk horror game called Hunter Moon. That seemed interesting. And a new Canon title said 1920s New York named Rapidity in Scarlet. And finally, the White House has launched arcade.gov, a website of browser games built around Donald Trump's immigration policies that use all sorts of iconography and music from popular video games and features a logo

based on the classic Sega design. It also did a Zelda thing to tap into the Zelda stuff. you know, the White House is doing quite a lot to sort of tap into video games, I guys. And I suspect game companies are going to be too terrified to tell them to stop. But that's it from me today. That's all the news we've got. We will be back next week. Of course, we we might have four editions for you next week. Don't want to promise it just in case something falls through, but it should be a busy week, including interviews with the Rainbow Six team, Play Stack, plus a deep dive into the Japanese video game scene. To make sure you don't miss any of it, head on over to the gamebus.com, stick in your email address, and I'll send you an email the moment a new episode goes live. But until then, thank you for tuning in.