The sudden exit of an executive, without a timeline, is usually one of a handful of possibilities: 1. Another offer that won't sit well with the current employer. 2. A fundamental disagreement that can't be resolved with other execs. 3. A black & white policy violation. For example, I once saw an executive removed when it was found out they were giving contracts directly to certain suppliers (violation of our contract policy). Obviously there are more possibilities, but those are some of the more common situations. It's very hard to say what truly happened to the XBOX COO.

On one hand, I find Gears of War E-Day to be a visual masterpiece with excellent gameplay. Overall, it's great, and I mean that. On the other hand, it will almost certainly be the first thing I uninstall when I need to make room for other games. Our gaming group put significant hours into Gears 5, especially horde mode. I just don't see that happening again. They've all moved on and no one but me is interested in it. And I think that's the broader problem with Gears as a franchise. It's just not part of the "conversation" anymore. Those years are basically over. If this franchise continues past E-Day, it needs to be built at a much lower cost. No release on PlayStation "saves" this franchise. The core problem has very little to do with whether it's multiplatform or not. The challenge is the industry, the consumer, and the economics.

Another point for the standard formula. Machine Games recently published their EOY financials for 2025. After converting to USD, their "revenue" is as follows. (I put revenue in quotes because they run chargebacks to the parent company. They don't sell anything direct.) USD 2021: 48M 2022: 33M 2023: 35M 2024: 43M 2025: 34M These numbers track to their reported studio count of about 174 employees. You might note that salaries in the report don't amount to full value of the chargebacks. That's due to the idea that the cost of an employee is roughly double their base salary, plus whatever other licenses / business that Machine Games "sells" to Zenimax and/or MSFT. What does this mean? The short version is that the EOY revenue is roughly what it cost to keep machine games open for that year. allabolag.se/bokslut/machine…

Warning: Using Steam charts to look at concurrency data in #CallofDuty Modern Warfare 4. Before I do this, let me be clear that Steam data is obviously woefully incomplete when it comes to Call of Duty. Consoles supply the majority of CoD players. HOWEVER, we can use it as a probable sample of the global concurrent population, since generally speaking, a sample SHOULD represent the characteristics of the full volume. 1) The first thing that jumps out at me is that the general concurrent population of people returning to Call of Duty for ANY reason was generally higher, and more consistent in 2024 versus 2025. 2) The release of Black Ops 6 brought a healthy concurrency spike to the Steam version of CoD, but after the launch hype died down, consistent concurrency DROPPED under the the consistent concurrency of the MW2 era. The MW2 era typically saw about 150,000 concurrent people, but the BO6 era quickly fell under 100,000. 3) Black Ops 7 barely moved the needle in concurrency. That particular release stands in stark contrast to the normal Call of Duty yearly release. The data demonstrates how poorly it was received. 4) The Modern Warfare 4 release shows a greater change in concurrency than we saw with the release of BO6. The BO6 release saw a concurrency spike of about 157k to about 315k. While MW4 starts from a lower concurrency, the spike goes from 45k to 227k. BO6 release spike: ~158k MW4 release spike: ~182k What does all of this mean? 1) Black Ops 6, and whatever changes came along with it, broadly decreased concurrency after the launch hype window. 2) Black Ops 7 didn't bring people back. It underperformed, obviously. 3) MW4 is demonstrating a significant spike in general interest. While they are starting from a lower average concurrency, a significant number of people are likely checking out CoD again.

Look, I wanted to see #MassEffect 5 as much as anyone, but this is going to amount to nothing. You're better off signing the petition and hitting up EA on social media. Not only are video game boycotts entirely useless, the raw number of people who play EA's other games will completely eclipse the small number of people attempting a boycott.

Modern Warfare 4 is the complete #CallofDuty package. - One of the best campaigns in the entire franchise. - Rock solid "return to form" multiplayer. - A genuinely exciting extraction mode (DMZ) that needs some work, but is a vast improvement over the beta in MW2.

I want to see games perform well across the board, but being the top of the Circana charts in September doesn't mean much...yet. It needs consistency, which could happen. (You can estimate the US sales using relative data.) Financial return and "top of the charts in September" are two different topics. Wolverine is another 5+ year development cycle at a "AAA" studio that employs 400-500 people (large operational cost base). Do we need to do the math again?

If anything happens over the next decade in NA / Western "AAA," I hope it's the continued tearing down of walls between the development studios and the corporate office. I believe we see some of this happening at XBOX with their accountability position, but in order to right this ship, there needs to be an honest relationship between the business reality and what's going on at the studio.

It's probably worth reminding people that the Arkane situation is still an ongoing conversation. Despite the threat of closure, there are likely things going on behind the scenes. I wouldn't call it done, until it's done. (...and that could very well still happen.)

Change a few names and this would fit perfectly into 2026. You can always look at individual problems, and claim certain small decisions doomed whatever game / studio you choose, but in the big picture the economics are far more important.

Circana released their US video game sales numbers for September 2026: September content sales YoY came in slightly down (-2%), while the monthly total was basically flat to September 2025 (-1%). This places the full 2026 YTD at about -3% to 2025. Hardware is in a weird place because price changes are causing the raw revenue to increase, while unit sales are challenged (PS5 unit count actually increased 22% in Sep YoY while Switch 2 and Xbox fell.) - #Wolverine came in at the top position for the September US sales chart (ranked on dollar sales). - The Blood of Dawnwalker debuted at position 5. - Onimusha came in at position 7. - #AceCombat came in at position 9. (Given what we know about unit sales of these games, we can make a few ballpark assumptions about the others.) - Wolverine did not (yet) break into the full year chart. - #NBA2K27 is now the full YTD sales lead by revenue (non-mtx). - RE Requiem moves to position 2 YTD. - Non-mobile subscription revenue fell (YoY) for the first time since Feb 2024 (think PS Plus, Game Pass, NOA, EA Play). - Madden and College Football do not appear on the YTD chart. However, EA sales are a projection, not shared numbers. Full Source: bsky.app/profile/matpiscatel…

To answer a question that was asked: Why not just foot the bill for longer until Blade releases? Action adventure games have the worse ROI model in "AAA". Even successful games often suffer from a low, or negative ROI. Blade requires a license fee. A release date of late 2027 is speculation, especially with how often games end up delayed in their final year. Keeping the studio within Xbox means continued high headcount burn, even after Blade releases (all for a title that has no real chance of coming at the high end of the sales model).