A Delayed Bond, a Patient Industry: What 007 First Light Says About 2026

From the WccfTech article by David Carcasole:

IO Interactive had one final holiday surprise for players ahead of the release of its next game, 007 First Light: a delay. The studio announced that the game has been delayed by two months and will no longer release on its previously announced release date of March 27, 2026. Now, it will launch on May 27, 2026.

The news came in the form of a statement shared on the game’s official social media accounts, where the studio writes, “As an independent developer and publisher, this decision allows us to ensure the experience meets the level of quality you players deserve on day one.”

“The game is progressing well and is fully playable from beginning to end, so these additional two months will allow us to further polish and refine the experience, ensuring that we deliver the strongest possible version at launch. We’re confident this sets 007 First Light up for long-term success, and we sincerely appreciate the patience and continued support we’ve received ever since we revealed the game. We look forward to sharing more updates regarding 007 First Light in early 2026.”

Also releasing in May 2026

  • World of Magic: Rise of Magic, May 25, from Ice Dragons, a new studio, only launching on PC, nothing on its Steam page yet but a speaking model with a couple of voice lines; gameplay supposedly coming soon
  • The Relic: First Guardian, May 26 (a soulslike, as described by its own developers, PS5, XB Series X, and PC) from Project Cloud Games, which looks to be a new studio started up by PERP Games, a S. Korean publisher;
  • 007 First Light, May 27
  • LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, May 29

Basically no big threats on the as yet loosely formulated slate, but threats could emerge as the slate for 2026 congeals and people stop playing it so close to the vest. I would have actually thought that release dates would be falling off trees and that there would have been a land-rush to secure real-estate on the calendar and fill the void that GTA6 has left. But it seems like studios are still playing it risk-averse. It will make it then doubly-interesting when Xbox takes the stage in January for its Developer Direct as it will be the first major publisher show of 2026. Will they lock down release dates and strike at the opportunity or will we see conservative plays like “2026”, without even a season.

007 First Light is on the Glacier Engine, which has been heavily modified and upgraded to support IO Interactive’s ambitions to develop for multiple platforms in concurrent SDLC’s now.

Before we get into more on the Glacier Engine, it is important to note that 0007 is not the only game IOI is working on. They also have Project Fantasy in the works. Project Fantasy is “an ambitious new IP poised to redefine the online fantasy RPG genre for console and PC.”

The secret sauce of Glacier is really the part of DevOPOS that many people do not talk about when we talk about CI/CD pipelines, and that is Continuous Deployment. In most software engineering circles you will hear about CI/CD, or more commonly CI/CD pipelines, which stands for Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery. So let’s do a very quick primer. In the “old days” you would deploy an application by taking source code, compiling it into an executable, and then manually deploying the application to a Web Application Server, and then you would, often, connect it to a database. A lot of those steps would be done manually, and moving further to the left in that workflow, assembling the different modules of the code would be done by a single-person who I would often call my Buildmaster. Today, we template the code assembly and tag the various components under a version-control schema in a repository or repo, and write scripts or “jobs” that go through the repo, assemble the correct modules of code, and then conduct a battery of automated tests to yield a “build”. But in CI/CD, and where we refer to those processes, that discipline, as “DevOPS”, we often leave out the 3rd piece of the formal definition of DevOPS, which is continuous deployment. Typically, we still have some manual intervention step between CI/CD and deployment, not allowing automation to carry fully out to prod. 

Glacier supposedly fully realizes this additional piece, and allows the developers to quote “…change, update and edit all aspects of the game experience while the game is playing, across all platforms and consoles – and everything is real-time. Instant export, update, play and stop.”

It accomplishes this using a WYSIWYG UI, hot reloading everything / anytime, and automatic assets piepline.

When we say “hot reloading”, IO Interactive defines it as this:

“Live Updates Across Platforms: Changes made in one place (e.g., on a PC development environment) update simultaneously on all target platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, iOS, etc.), allowing for instant cross-platform testing and debugging.”

Now they’ve been running on Glacier 2 since 2012, electing to heavily modify and upgrade the engine rather than do a ground-up build of a Glacier 3. Glacier 2 was a total ground-up build.

So my personal hopes are high for 007 First Light. I’ve been very positive on the game’s premise and it is something I would definitely be interested in playing. It is not quite open-world but has large interconnected sandbox areas that provide a similar feel. So as an Ubisoft stan and fan of games of similar ilk, I am very interested and hopeful that this game sticks the landing.

Of course, in the annals of 2025, we have the blight of MindsEye, the first external studio game published by IOI as it tries to find its way as a publisher, and that was not a very good look. Of course, MindsEye is built on UE5, and that game was not IOI themselves building on Glacier. But until we have more confidence-builders, I’ll call my current state as a “keeping my fingers crossed” stance for right now.

Of course, Glacier and much of what IOI does, and what it sounds like they are building Project Fantasy towards, leans in the direction of Open World, Games-as-a-Service, living world types of game structures, so it will be interesting to see exactly what they do with the world of 007 once it is built. I can definitely see a repurposing for an online game where you have worldwide operatives from different agencies and in-world missions you get went out on, the ability to work with other agents, for agents to go rogue, for operatives from different countries to cooperate, as well as PvP. But of course, it could also just be kept separate from IOI’s other ventures and used for the next Bond sequel. We’ll have to wait and see.

Who Controls the Greenlight? How a Saudi PIF–EA Deal Could Reshape Game Development Financing

Quoted from the VGC article by Andy Robinson

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will own 93.4% of the Battlefield publisher, if it clears government scrutiny

Electronic Arts’ proposed sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has been approved by the company’s shareholders.

The $55 billion takeover deal was approved in a shareholder vote on Monday. The takeover will now require approval from government regulators to be finalised.

Should the acquisition be approved, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will own 93.4% of the EA Sports, Battlefield, and Sims publisher. Silver Lake Partners – an investment fund run by a US private equity firm– will own 5.5% of shares.

The financial details of the deal are as follows:

$36B in equity

$20B in debt

A 25% premium for shareholders, and I think that is the important factoid, it’s a thing we need to look at and consider when the details of the Netflix, Warner Bros, Paramount love triangle come up, what is that premium being offered to shareholders in both offerer deals, if any.

But specific to this deal, David Rae wrote about this two months ago, echoing some of the same sentiments that I’ve voiced in the intervening months. Rae is currently the CFO and COO at Lussa, a next-gen game development platform & engine, specifically focusing on tools enable implementation of procedural generation, intelligent debugging, and natural language design

That what I would expect us to see is a tilt in what comes out of the greenlighting process, which is the means by which the gaming industry traditionally exercises governance by financial and P&L leadership over the creative process and project execution. What MUST happen, by defn when this deal goes down is that that $20bn debt, which I believe will be owed to JP Morgan, MUST be repaid, and with the terms and conditions that are agreed to by Silver Lake, the Saudi Arabian PIF, and Silver Lake.

And on that note, I believe that this is also the assurance that will be offered to the FTC and any regulatory oversight, when we talk about the concerns that have been raised by congress on the control of an American media company by a foreign entity. That with JP Morgan involved, there should be little concern b/c should a default occur or other legal action need to be taken, those assets would revert to JP Morgan Finance qnd then they would preside over disposition of those assets and IP to other, I am sure at that point, American corporations. 

At any rate, I feel pretty sure that what we won’t see is another Sea of Solitude, Lost in Random, Unravel, and maybe not even a Kingdoms of Amalur or game from Hazelight Studio. In past history, EA has had things like the EA Partners Program, EA Originals, and EA Creator Network initiatives that have provided investment capital to back studios that made a successful pitch to the board to get financial and publishing backing for their title, which could include marketing and other support. 

And to me that is part of where the “is this good or bad for the industry” really needs to come down on. For a few years now, there has been discussion coming out of the post-pandemic GDC, what will now be called the GDC Festival of Gaming, about how the landscape of financing game development has radically changed. And i think that conversation is significantly more important than the “down with exclusives, your games need to be on every platform” thesis. We need to take a good hard look at how game development gets financed in a time when much of the venture capital / investment equity firm backing has been eroded from traditional finance pipelining. And then IRT this deal specifically, what it will mean when yet another potential financier is taken off the table. 

Of Saturated Inventories and Too Little Demand (A Proof Scribbled in the Margin) – Games Don’t Need to be on Every Platform

If Steam gamer’s only spent 14% of their time in new games in 2025…

Then assume that 14%  = 0.14 the demand signal for new games on Steam…

Steam MAU is 132mn…

Give 264mn for consideration of the monetized PC gaming market to account for people playing Fortnite, Riot games, etc…anything untracked…

So for any singular title release in any given month the total potential sell-through at max is 264 * 0.14  = 36.96mn.

Now on Steam, the top 100 new games in a year make 91% of the revenue of new games. Out of the 19000 that come out in a year these days.

So if I am deferential and say that all of any PlayStation published games are in that top 100, then the max sell-through of any singular given title is 3.7 mn units.

In 2025 PlayStation published to Steam

  1. Stellar Blade
  2. Lost Soul Aside
  3. Midnight Murder Club
  4. The Last of Us Part II Remastered
  5. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

So at best PlayStation would have sold 18.5mn copies.

Earning $1.3bn.

Of which they would give Steam 30%, so PlyStation’s the would be $910mn.

Which is 2.8% of their current revenue.

As a cross-check you can work from the fact that Steam makes $17bn in a year. Even if I allowed the assumption that all of that revenue is from new games (which it absolutely is not), then those top 100 games earn $15.5bn.

If 5 of the PlayStation published games are all in the top 100, then assume that they earn 5% of that revenue, assuming it is spread evenly.

Then PlayStation would make $775 million, of which, again, they would give Steam their 30%, so the PlayStation take would be $542.5mn.

There is perspective in these math walk-throughs that establishes that many of the conventional perspectives on this are not correct; games need to be on every platform, PlayStation should go day-and-date and such. I do not know how you solve some of the challenges by creating an even bigger over-inventory problem on Steam. 

And, ofc, you will also then have some PC gamers who will not buy PlayStations, thereby reducing PlayStation’s CLV via loss of customer acquisition and retention. 

A Big Player Steps Back: Micron and the Myth of a DRAM Apocalypse

Micron is bowing out of the consumer DRAM business. A quick explainer. Micron is one of the “Big Three” in the DRAM space. Alongside Samsung and SK Hynix. The three giants, with a few other smaller players, were expected to generate close to $130bn in revenue this year, having closed out with about $97bn in 2024. Those three combined earn 90 – 92% of that revenue. Before you flip out, there is more to the tale of the tape. In 2024, Samsung and SK Hynix were at near parity, earning roughly 40% each of the market, + /-; at the end of the day, without splitting hairs, the two earn about 75% of the overall market revenue together.

Micron makes up somewhere between 9 – 15% of the remainder, depending on what source you consult. Leaving between 8 – 10% or so that is earned by the smaller players. While a very lopsided market, Micron exiting the space is not that big of a hit, although it will definitely lead to a rise in prices, a trend which was already underway. The smaller players include Nanya Technology Corporation, Winbond Electronics Corporation, and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Group. Each of these has some current limitation with its business model (regional supplier, value supplier for low-end budget applications, niche products for specialized applications) before they could mount up an effort to replace Micron. Still, that is the most likely scenario. I don’t think we are looking at a catastrophic choking of the supply chain in the DRAM market. But a cyclical supply constraint that will be corrected for by another competitor.

Supply-chain wise, these ODMs cover down on wafer fabrication, die preparation & testing, assembly & packaging. They then send these “packaged chips” out to the OEM’s, in the case of DIY retail parts, to your GSkill’s, Mushkin’s, Corsair’s, PNY’s, etc, (Micron’s own house-brand is Crucial so that brand may likely go away completely) and to SI’s.

For the OEM’s, they mount them onto a PCB to create the memory modules in retail packaging that you buy from Amazon and Newegg. The SI’s, the Dell’s, Apple’s, Lenovo’s of the world, etc, place them directly in their own pre-built products.

So yes. A challenge to the supplier-side of the equation. A black-eye to the market. But a thing I think that will be recovered from. As I mentioned in an earlier piece somewhere, this is not a Tsunami, earthquake, pandemic, or nuclear plant meltdown that is creating an inability for the industry to make DRAM. But a contention of the available supply. And the industry wants to sell you memory modules. At scale. Not at the reduced demand that will be seen from $600 – $800 memory modules. They will figure it out. But we may all need to hunker down for a bit.

The Disintermediation Game: Xbox, Copilot, and the Next Front in Platform Power

I wish I had more time to write today. Unfortunately I don’t, so I am going to present some ideas, some queries and scenarios I asked ChatGPT to juggle, and some references for thoughts on the impact of AI on eCommerce and how it could impact the video game industry and provide insight into what Microsoft is doing with the Xbox app.

There is currently a large movement by the trillion-dollar club and other big AI players such as OpenAI and Perplexity, to have 3rd party AI services supplant the typical digital spelunking we all do across multiple digital storefronts, or even within digital storefront product aggregators. We can see where this trend is showing up in the data by many industry analysts researching the space:

Salesforce: With AI Adoption Surging, Shopping Behavior Is at an Inflection Point

How AI is rewriting the rules of search and shopping – by the numbers

Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool

And here we can see how you can use Copilot’s integration into the Xbox App to find the next game for you to play

It’s not much of a hop-skip-and-jump for this to turn into results that can also advertise where you can buy that game and compare prices across those digital storefronts. I’ve talked before about how dark patterns could be used to present to consumers multiple digital storefronts to source games from and present price comparisons. The application of AI takes that one step further.

The Xbox app HarmonyUI does what several game utilities already did in terms of aggregating your digital games library across multiple storefronts. In that way it adopted the same functionality as Playnite, GoG, Discord, and, quite frankly, Steam could do (although all of them are not as easy and non-complex in pulling this off).

In similar vein, there are services that will find out what storefronts a game is available on digitally and compare prices across them. IsThereAnyDeal, CheapShark, DLCompare etc do this. And is not too far a leap to consider that Copilot could easily do the same. The question is simply a matter of whether Microsoft could navigate any regulatory scrutiny and mask exactly what it was doing to achieve this objective.

A lot of outlets have been asking how can Microsoft possible make money by introducing digital storefronts that incentivize people to buy from them instead of the Microsoft / Xbox store on their own 1st-party device and 3rd-party Windows-licensed devices. Microsoft is not introducing Copilot to the Xbox app out of the goodness of its heart. It is being used to observe the consumer behavior patterns of gamers. And as the models are trained, that learning could be used to drive consumer behavior as well. The data itself would also be valuable, as data that is labelled, curated, cleaned, validated, conditioned, and available with a publicized ontology is incredibly valuable to businesses. This could become another B2B value-stream within Microsoft as 3rd-party publishers could find it to be of vast use.

I had some fun with getting ChatGPT to present some scenarios off of some prompts that I formulated from these readings (again, pressed for time). The use of AI to disintermediate traditional digital storefronts& platforms by subverting and supplanting discovery as a means to becoming the primary user-pipeline to find optimal distributors is a thing. Nilay Patel of The Verge has written on this and spoken extensively about the topic on Decoder and The VergeCast.

Nothing speaks more to this effort for Microsoft and Xbox to become the optimal intermediary for all gamers to go through to get to their games and for all suppliers (publishers) to get to buyers (gamers) than this quote by Sarah Bond in her January 2022 interview with her former employers, McKinsey & Company:

“If you can make one distribution mechanism so a developer can reach all potential three billion players with one instance of their game, their [development] costs go down as their reach goes up.”

If you are interested in the gaming industry, you should read the McKinsey interview and make sure you are up to speed on Xbox’s desires and plans for a “ubiquitous global gaming ecosystem” and how Bond thinks of asking people to pay money to buy a game:

“…if you put these barriers up before people and you say, oh no, you’ve got to pay me $70 before you can even start, well, while you will have a business model there, it isn’t the winning business model. The winning business model has to be compelling in and of itself. And the monetization flows from that.”

At any rate, from the fun I had while trying to save time:

ChatGPT generated result:

Prompt from me: Write me a scenario where Xbox uses Copilot’s integration into the Xbox app to disintermediate digital storefronts on PC including Steam, Epic, and GOG, and then describe how this tactic executes on the theories of chokepoint capitalism and enshittification

ChatGPT Response: Let’s construct this as a plausible near-future scenario — half business analysis, half critical theory — to clearly show how Xbox could leverage Copilot integration in the Xbox app to cut out (disintermediate) Steam, Epic, and GOG from the PC gaming ecosystem, and how that move would embody the mechanisms of chokepoint capitalism and enshittification.

Scenario: “Copilot Plays Next”

By late 2026, Xbox completes a deep integration of Microsoft Copilot into the Xbox app for Windows. The feature is marketed as “Copilot Plays Next,” an AI gaming assistant that promises to “help you find, launch, and play your next favorite game.”

Initially, the service looks like a benign quality-of-life upgrade:

  • Copilot analyzes a user’s Game Pass history, Xbox achievements, and even external game libraries (via optional account linking).
  • It recommends new titles, auto-installs patches, optimizes graphics settings, and summarizes community reviews in natural language.
  • Crucially, Copilot also begins to handle purchase and download functions directly through the Xbox app, presenting them as “one-click installs.”

Users are told they can “link” their Steam, Epic, and GOG accounts for a unified experience. But over time, the Xbox app becomes the default interface for all their PC gaming needs. Copilot presents every title—regardless of publisher—as if it’s part of the Xbox ecosystem.

When players click “install,” Copilot quietly routes the transaction through Microsoft’s infrastructure, not Steam’s or Epic’s. Microsoft begins negotiating publisher-side API access agreements that allow the Xbox app to pull down builds directly from Azure-based mirrors, bypassing competing storefront clients.

Soon, Steam and Epic are reduced to background account authenticators, invisible to users. Microsoft pitches this as “simplifying the experience,” but in effect, Xbox has interposed itself between the player and every other store, making all roads lead through its app.

Phase 2: Data Lock-in and the Copilot Graph

As usage grows, Microsoft leverages Copilot’s telemetry and behavioral analytics to personalize everything:

  • Copilot nudges players toward titles on Game Pass or those published under Xbox’s partner program.
  • “Dynamic pricing suggestions” use player data to optimize what each user is likely to pay.
  • AI-generated summaries and reviews displace community voices; Copilot curates what players see about a game.

Third-party storefronts lose their data visibility. They can’t observe or influence the discovery path anymore, because the Xbox-Copilot interface has become the new chokepoint — the only place where the player interacts with the broader PC game market.

Phase 3: The Lockdown

Eventually, Microsoft introduces “Copilot Secure Downloads”, citing anti-fraud and anti-mod security reasons. Only games verified through Xbox’s Copilot pipeline can auto-update, stream, or earn achievements.

Developers who refuse to integrate with Copilot lose access to visibility within the Xbox app’s search results.
Steam, Epic, and GOG still technically exist—but the economic flow now moves through Microsoft’s payment rails and recommendation systems. The “digital storefronts” have been disintermediated into passive infrastructure.

Theoretical Analysis

1. Chokepoint Capitalism in Action

The concept, coined by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, describes how corporations seize control over key points in the supply chain to extract rents from both producers and consumers.

In this case:

  • Xbox’s chokepoint becomes the discovery and AI assistance layer — the Copilot recommendation and installation system.
  • Developers can no longer reach PC gamers without passing through Xbox’s algorithmic gate.
  • Gamers no longer choose freely among storefronts; Copilot’s interface steers them toward Microsoft’s preferred outcomes.

By owning the layer of convenience and intelligence — the one that seems to “help” users navigate choice overload — Microsoft transforms user trust and AI integration into a tollbooth.

Publishers pay for visibility. Players pay with data. Competitors pay with obsolescence.

2. Enshittification as the End State

Borrowing Doctorow’s second framework, enshittification describes the lifecycle of digital platforms:

  1. They’re good to users, to attract them.
  2. Then they exploit users to serve business customers (advertisers, publishers).
  3. Then they exploit everyone to extract maximum rent for themselves.

Xbox’s hypothetical Copilot-driven strategy perfectly fits this arc:

  • Stage 1: Free AI discovery tools, deep integration with existing libraries, and frictionless installs make it seem user-first.
  • Stage 2: Recommendations become promotional inventory for Game Pass and publishing partners.
  • Stage 3: The entire PC gaming ecosystem becomes a closed funnel feeding Microsoft’s subscription and payment systems — a user experience optimized for revenue yield, not enjoyment.

By the time users notice the degradation — slower access to non-partner games, AI-mediated search manipulation, missing community reviews — the network effects are too entrenched. All their achievements, cloud saves, and curated experiences are tied to the Copilot graph.

What began as “integration” ends as total intermediation — a soft monopoly achieved not through exclusivity, but through user experience capture.

Summary

PhaseActionTheory in PlayOutcome
1Xbox integrates Copilot into appUser convenience baitUser dependency
2Purchases routed through XboxChokepoint capitalismStorefront disintermediation
3Recommendations optimized for MicrosoftEnshittification (Stage 2)Preference distortion
4Copilot Secure Downloads & visibility controlEnshittification (Stage 3)Market lock-in and rent extraction

Finally, one other example I want to present is me using ChatGPT to cut-out traditional digital storefronts and platforms for discovery and weave my path to a purchase

Prompt from me: I need a list of recommendations of the top 5 newly released real-time strategy games in 2025 and at least three prices for the cheapest digital storefronts I can buy them from today

ChatGPT Response: Here are five strong new-release (2025) real-time strategy (RTS) games you should check out, along with current “cheapest digital storefront” pricing where available. Keep in mind pricing can vary by region, key marketplace, or discount—use these as rough benchmarks and always double-check for authenticity and region compatibility.

Top 5 RTS Releases of 2025

  1. Tempest Rising
    • Release: April 24, 2025 for Windows. (Niche Gamer)
    • Deals: ~$39.99 (Green Man Gaming) / ~$33.63 (Gamivo) / ~$35.72 (Electronic First)
  2. Broken Arrow
    • Release: June 19, 2025 for Windows. (Wikipedia)
    • Deals: ~$30.99 (Loaded) / ~$30.20 (G2A) / ~$31.60 (Instant-Gaming)
    • Note: Official Steam listed price ~$49.99. (Steambase)
  3. Commandos: Origins
    • Release: April 9, 2025 for PC (Windows) plus consoles. (Wikipedia)
    • Deal: ~$29.56 (Instant-Gaming)
    • Note: It’s more a real-time tactics / stealth-RTS hybrid, so if you prefer traditional base-builder RTS you might regard it differently.
  4. Cataclismo
    • Release: March 20, 2025 for Windows. (Wikipedia)
    • Deals: ~$9.12 (G2A) / ~$13.99 (Eneba) / ~$14.45 (Instant-Gaming)
    • Note: Great value if you want something more indie and niche in the tower-defense + RTS space.
  5. The Stone of Madness
    • Release: January 28, 2025 for Windows (also consoles). (Wikipedia)
    • Deals: ~$14.99 (GOG sale) (GOG.com) / ~$11.89 (Epic Games Store) (Epic Games Store) / ~$17.49 (Standard edition on GOG) (GOG.com)
    • Note: More of a stealth-RTS hybrid with strong narrative focus.

Notes & Considerations

  • Some of these games blur the line between pure “base-building RTS” and “real-time tactics” or hybrid formats; pick according to how “classic RTS” you want.
  • Discount markets (G2A, Eneba, etc) often offer the lowest prices but risk region-restrictions, key legitimacy, or bundle caveats.
  • Prices may change frequently (sales, regional pricing, key-marketplace fluctuations).
  • You might wish to wait for further discounts if you’re not in a hurry.
  • Because you mentioned you enjoy playing on both PC and handhelds (Steam Deck etc), check for compatibility/verification (Steam Deck Verified or Proton status) if portability matters.

No Savior Is Coming: The Post-Platform Reality of the Gaming Industry

Yesterday, PC Gamer, along with numerous other outlets, reported on the large-scale layoff at Amazon, the corporation cutting some 14,000 jobs. The PC Gamer angle was to focus on the impact to the gaming division specifically. And I wanted to further pull this industry event apart in conjunction with the statements of yesterday from Satya Nadella, CEO and President of Microsoft. Because I think they are indicative of trends we will see across the gaming landscape here in the next few years and entering into the next generation. This will go in the way of unfurling as few popular narratives in the Twitter gaming community.

Narrative 1: “If Xbox leaves the platform gaming space, we’ll be ok. PlayStation and Nintendo won’t run rampant because another competitor will come to save us.” First thing to level-set is that I think we need to start thinking about the competitive space no longer constrained to just “console”. I think the market is growing in complexity in a way that we need to think about platforms competing, and then at Tier 2 we need to think about content. So I won’t co-mingle mobile with traditional console + PC content. But where there is similar content, I will set platforms against each other (I’ll get to the wobble that mobile content converges on later). From the PC Gamer article:

…former Prime Gaming VP Ethan Evans said earlier this year that “we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits. We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems, and they weren’t going to switch platforms just because a new one was available.”

There is a two-fold problem to narrative 1. The first is that, no, another competitor is not coming to save us because the investment to do so now is so massive that only a member of the trillion-dollar club can mount such an effort. 2 have tried and failed, 1 is still in, 1 is only gaming-curious, 1 is mounting up but will go in as a technology provider only, and the other is going to remain within the bounds of AR/VR. I think we’re tapped out on any of them being the last-minute hero coming out of the portal. There is no “On Your Left” moment. Because, second fold, even when the bigs get in, they cannot rapidly develop the content-talent to make their tech stack enabler strengths part of a viable solution.

Narrative 2: “AAA content will be preserved and a race-to-the-bottom won’t be kicked off because users will always hold the line on quality.” Like literally are you f***ing kidding me? We’ve seen nothing but a slide towards low quality for twenty years now. Yes, we’ve held the line on quality within the confines of a certain volume of the industry. But there is a compartmentalized part of the ridge where users are more than happy to follow the mudslide downhill. That’s how we enabled F2P, that’s how we enabled MTX, that’s how we shifted focus from story & narrative to the grind. Now you need to look at where Amazon Gaming is staying in the pool. With an AI-generated game Courtroom Chaos, starring Snoop Dogg. Because casuals will eat that over Luna delivered via the Cloud to their TV. And so investment dollars will follow that type of content. And you can see a similar movement underway at NetFlix.

And Xbox is following suit. When you string together the comments of Bond, Booty, and Nadella over the last few days they mean one thing. Content made to compete with Tik-Tok and YouTube short format video. Which means it has to be low-cost, delivered in quick iterations, much faster than the current gaming industry norm, and at high-margins. You need look no further than the model of the MiHoYo universe to see what they are talking about. Now combine a pinch of NetEase and dacha-palooza and you see where Xbox IP’s are going to wind up. Also, expect another acquisition to be made while there current US Administration is in office. It’ll start with 18 months of runway at least before Trump is out, will be designed to buff the XBOx IP content pool to enable this Genshin Impact / Honkai Starrail strategy.

When we allow these companies, via poorly enforced regulatory frameworks, to achieve mass consolidation of the industry and enable enshittification by the trillion-dollar club….chokepoint capitalism…this is the race to the bottom that you will get.

The only defense of which is the buyers being willing to support the high-quality content being purveyed by the smaller competitors on the market.

Narrative 3: “Cloud is the way of the future.” I’m not entirely convinced of that. Cloud takes massive infrastructure. Billions of dollars in data-center and infrastructure build-out. Yes, while many companies are undertaking that, I think these efforts will be unfurled by someone answering the challenge of the local personal computing environment. It is a dream we use to call the PAN, or Personal Area Network, and believed it would be enabled by Bluetooth. But that hasn’t panned out, no pun intended. I’ve written some starter material to what I think is actually going to happen once Cloud reaches its apex and maxes out it’s “get gud”. Without our planet going the way of Krypton, depleting our core, and needing to evacuate to Mars. I plan to draw and diagram this concept out in the coming weeks and make some diagrams, but for now I’ll just quote the Twitter posts:

Nvidia’s Quiet Retreat from 8GB GPUs Could Reshape PC Gaming Standards

Many console gamers have gotten it twisted in their efforts to console war with their brothers and sisters across the aisle on the Xbox side of the House. They have unfairly accused the Xbox Series S as being the culprit that is holding back gaming. But as I have often advised, it is not the Series S. It is actually the 8GB GPUs that Nvidia and AMD send to the market, and force developers to take black-eyes over when the performance of a new game on them is horrific. But it may pan out that these cards may be seeing the end of days.

PCGamesN reported today that they have seen indications that Nvidia has sent out guidance to AIBs that they do not want to see a glut of these things sitting at retail. Nvidia elected to make 2 SKU’s of its RTX 5060 TI GPU, one in an 8GB configuration and one in a 16GB config. And the 8GB version is not selling. I had thought that that item would still find traction with the eSports crowd, as they generally set all visuals to low settings in order to crank max frames. But it appears that that is not enough to get these potatoes moving.

There’s enough here in the rumor that I sense that Nvidia is considering moving on from 8GB GPUs overall and we may finally be seeing a point in time when these things go the way of the Do-Do. With the PlayStation 5, the primary high-end console with the majority of market share, baselined at 16GB of RAM, and that being the core target for many developers, the 8GB GPU is always going to struggle running modern games.

And developers are only expending wasted energy supporting them, and constraining their game designs based on them.

The 16GB RTX 5060 Ti sells for just $70 more than the 8GB version. And the AMD RX 9060 XT 16GB sells for the same price as nVidia’s 8GB SKU. So it’s a no-brainer that most consumers would choose to either save up for one more pay day or just buy the 16GB Radeon card. Either way, good riddance. The 8GB GPUs have been causing us all problems on both PC and console, as game-designs can be impacted by cross-platform games going to both console and PC day-and-date. There are few things more poetic than consumers actually being informed, voting with their wallet, and driving the market towards equilibrium and that forcing a change in the behavior of suppliers.

Yes, please. More of that.

From Wave XLR Woes to Workflow Wins: My Week of Tech Transitions

My Elgato Wave XLR finally took a pooper last week. Or at least it appeared like it did. While on Mooch’s “Crossfire” episode, the mixer threw every fit that it had been throwing for the last several weeks. I would lose everyone else’s audio, they would lose my mic, I would hear crackling voices…I force-closed Discord and re-entered the call several times. I changed USB ports. Then replaced the USB-A cable with a USB-C cable. Finally I gave up and just changed out the whole mixer.

While I ended that show feeling the Elgato was done for, I was reminded that I’d been about to throw out a Thrustmaster controller out a few weeks ago that I thought had gotten bricked during a firmware update. At the last minute, I’d decided to give it another go and it worked. I’d been convincing myself for months that the Wave XLR and my Mac mini M4 just did not get along and had an occasional spat. But all of the times before, unplugging and reconnecting had fixed the problem and I would only have the problem once. The episode of Crossfire was the first one where I’d experienced a cascading, repeating set of failures.

Still, I didn’t chuck it but sat it over at the160Stack, my gaming PC with the Ryzen 5950X+32GB  DDR4+RTX 4070 GPU. Last night I decided to give it a test while playing some of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PC. I used nVidia’s ShadowPlay (I have no idea what it is really called now and insist on continuing to use the old branding; LoL) to capture the game video and my mic, an Audio Technica AT-2035. the160Stack is my loudest gaming PC by far, boasting 10 fans.

And it gives off an audible roar that I can hear whenever I am mic’d up with headphones on and unmute. The Wave XLR worked fine. And using the Voice Focus plus the Noise Suppresor handled the wind noise with aplomb. If the mixer and those plugins can handle the160Stack, every other PC will be a breeze.

In the meantime, I’ve replaced it as a podcast mixer with the Maono E2 Gen2, which has performed pretty well although I have not QA’d its results thoroughly. I thought I could hear an airy kind of backdraft sound whenever I unmuted on the last podcast I was on. It has what looks like 3 different inputs to control the Mic level and I will have to play with those. 

In other SysAdmin news, I migrated anything and everything I needed to out of Notion and into Apple Notes. Then closed and deleted my account. This was a major step towards prepping to be on Macs and iDevices only for my personal life-management and production work; I’ll only use Windows machines for gaming. The next major move is to get everything out of OneDrive so I can cancel my subscription to Office/Microsoft 365. There’s some synergy there because the only reason I ever started using Notion was because OneNote, which I used for 25 years, become so absolutely horrible. Now the primary reason I have kept a 365 subscription was for photo storage and my Apple One plan and all of my Apple devices handle that with aplomb. I’ll use a mix of Journal and Pages for daily tech diaries and blogging. The one nit I am concerned about is moving my Master Lifting Exercise spreadsheet from Excel to Numbers. I have never been efficient with navigating the differences between those two. I am starting to use Numbers at work and in small personal tasks to get used to the shift and to look for any gotchas. Worst case I’ll just move it to a Pages doc or a Note for now. Good times ahead.

When the Cool Factor Fades: What Apple Gets Right and Xbox Still Misses

It’s been about a year since I made the decision to convert entirely to iOS for my mobile needs and shift to MacOS for everything I do computing, using Windows only for gaming. I have had some brief moments of remorse for my ex, Android. I still have my Google Pixel Fold and Samsung Z Fold5. I even broke them out for a couple of months over the summer to see if the love was still there. It worked until I watched the iPhone 17 announcements and then I was over it. But Android is still trying. Showing up at parties she knows I’m going to be at in that favorite black miniskirt. Digital Trends ran an article this morning that indicates that Samsung’s rumored trial-fold may go to wider markets than the suspected China + South Korean deployment we’ve heard of. And still I am unmoved.

Many I’ve heard from this year feel that Apple has gotten “boring”. This seems to be mainly oriented around the notion that there are no whiz-bang features that break the veil and hit the zeitgeist as “new”. This may be true. The creeping incremental blips of iPhone improvements certainly do not feel like they are racing along at Formula One speeds. But one of reasons I do not regret my choice is that those updates and improvements that do arrive are largely reliable. At least the ones that I care about. I’ve been a die-hard digital ink user since it stated showing up on TabletPC and PDA’s back in the 90s. Despite that life-long love for that functional paradigm, I found that over time I just fell more and more out of love with my foldables and the Galaxy Ultra. I stuck with the Galaxy Note for four models and then graduated to the Ultra and the Fold as soon as it incorporated S-pen functionality. But so often the functionality would become broken, unreliable, unexciting. The innovations were often initially exciting but my ability to rely on them, especially in a hobby-life that is heavily dependent on digital production work-flows, much less my actual work, became too low for me to maintain interest in the science experiments vs GSD (getting shit done).

I used to criticize Apple, and the iPhone particularly, for being guilty of emphasizing form over function. But the truth is that the things that we might think of as just formative become so reliable that their functionality congeals over time into a tool-fabric that is an accelerator to GSD. 

While my thoughts on this topic vectored in the direction of my tech life this morning, I also struck on the gaming allegory to this as well. I feel like this is a principal problem with Xbox too. Maybe in some ways, right now, they are the Android of the gaming market. I had a responder to one of my threads over the weekend say that Xbox was constantly making “amazing innovations”; that, as the scrappy tail-end underdog, they were consistently bringing better innovations to the table.

That may well be true. But it is only impactful if people care about them. If they break the veil of people’s perception of usefulness and being a value-add. Quick resume is probably a great feature for some people. But I never use it. And what is clear from the metrics of market-share is that less than 10% of a market exceeding 310 million console players thinks it is important enough to warrant buying an Xbox.

I see that a lot of Xbox fans are infatuated by the novel. By the anticipated improvements from the HarmonyUI. By Bazzite. By configuring your gaming PC to emulate the simplicity of functionality of a gaming console. But I think they miss the point that most users find these science experiments just that.

Novel. And do not acclimate to them even when they are productized. And so I think that the notion that Xbox is conditioning its die-hard faithful console user-base to transition to PC may be a dubious enterprise. Xbox has brought a lot of innovations, or at least normalized them. Cloud streaming. Access via subscription. The offset joystick controller configuration. There were even more in the OG Xbox and 360 ea. Xbox Live. The hard drive. Network connectivity. And in those eras, those innovations mattered.

But most consumers just want good games. They don’t care if they can access them via novel delivery mechanisms and low-cost access points. They just want good ones. Whether they be first-party, third-party. They want them to look good. To feel special. They want them frequently and reliably. 

I think the market reality is that until Xbox delivers on that, the “amazing innovations” won’t matter. They will always be the purview of the uber-uber-geek. The person who builds a Raspberry Pi to do the same flippin’ thing that some other COTS device that is already on the market could do. And while it is cool to say that your dog can roll over 4 times out of ten that you tell them, most prefer the dog that will sit and heel 10 out of 10 times.

Writing Against the Silence: A New Season, A New Device

I start writing tonight out of a grand sense of malaise. The events in the United States of September 10, 2025 and since have left me feeling untethered in a way that I have not felt since the last infamous date of similar timing, September 11, 2001. I just find it difficult to be motivated to pursue any of my studies of the gaming industry, history, politics, or the consumer electronics industry. I am kind of forcing myself to write right now in hopes that just forcing myself through the motions will yield some forward momentum and resolution.

My fall Apple upgrade package arrives tomorrow. A new iPhone 17 Pro Max 512GB, the AirPods Pro 3, and the new Apple Watch Series 11. I’m pretty excited. But admittedly only in the keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ sense of the matter. I am looking forward to the shift to Boss Mustang Orange. It’ll match my AirPods Max. I do look forward to the advanced noise cancellation and translation functionality of the Airpods Pro 3. But other than that, it is really just the slight feel of excitement to be in the first wave of Apple fans on a new product launch.

I made the shift last fall, but bought the iPhone 16 late. I got the MacBook Air M4 and iPad Air 13″ M3 this spring as soon as they launched. But I was pretty alone in my FOMO for those; the Apple fans that got in that pool with me were not wide-spread. So this will be the first year in a very long time that I’ve gone at launch and the first time ever since I converted to being a Apple-1st technorati.

The transition, overall, has been great. It’s just a load off to not have to worry so much about keeping up with Android and all of those products; or Windows as well. I caught a bit of homesickness this summer and broke out my foldables as I hadn’t really squeezed all of the ROI out of them that I should have. My Galaxy S23 Ultra as well. But they are mostly now being configured for trade-in devices now. And it probably means that, after having my brief summer fling with my ex, I probably need to buckle down and dive even deeper into the Apple ecosystem and really focus on using it for everything.

The clock turns. The King is Dead. Long live the King.