Andrew Webster | The Verge

Nintendo keeps making shooters more friendly and approachable

2026-07-21T08:22:25-04:00

Nintendo does a lot of weird things, but Splatoon might just be one of the strangest — or at least the boldest. The series started as an attempt to muscle into the ultra-competitive online shooter space, but in a way that feels a world away from the violence and bombast of Call of Duty or Battlefield. Splatoon is essentially candy-coated paintball starring a race of skate punk squid creatures, and across three entries Nintendo has just about perfected the formula. The series introduced the idea of competitive shooters to whole new audiences, and now it’s expanding: Splatoon Raiders takes it in a different direction, but with the same focus on making shooters more approachable.

As opposed to past entries, which primarily revolved around team-based competitive matches, Raiders is what’s known as a looter shooter. Think games like Destiny or Borderlands where you take on missions and explore dungeons in order to earn new gear and skills, which in turn let you take on more challenging missions and dungeons. It’s a genre where repetition is inherent in the premise as you replay levels over and over again in search of the best loot. This means that the moment-to-moment experience — how fun the weapons are to use, how interesting the levels are to explore, how much incentive there is to get new gear to play around with — has to be enjoyable enough to encourage those replays. And that’s exactly where Splatoon excels.

In terms of how it plays, Raiders is nearly identical to its predecessors. You still control a squid-like kid that can wield various weapons, ranging from guns that look like Super Soakers to gigantic paint rollers. Splatoon’s defining characteristic is ink: It’s what you shoot at enemies, but you can also transform from a humanoid into a squid in order to swim through it. Immersing yourself in ink lets you move more quickly through a level, replenish your health, and refill your ammo supply. The result is shooter action where you’re constantly moving, because standing still means death (or, in the parlance of Splatoon, getting splatted).

That all remains true in Raiders. But here you’re using those skills while traveling to various levels in order to defeat enemies and find treasure. The story has you playing the role of a mechanic aboard a craft that crash-lands on a mysterious chain of islands. Unable to leave, you and your fellow crew — which consists of members of the in-universe Splatoon pop group Deep Cut — set about building a rickety base and then exploring the islands in search of treasure and, hopefully, a way home.

Like most looter shooters, the gameplay cycle works like this: You gear up at base, head into a level, return home with some improved loot, and then do it all over again. There are a few types of levels in Raiders, which get progressively more challenging, and they mostly involve either defeating a huge horde of enemies before a clock winds down or collecting a large amount of fish eggs that drop from downed foes. Some levels are brief, lasting just a few minutes, while others require more exploration. There are also boss fights against some gigantic creatures that remind me a bit of the elaborate battles in Monster Hunter games.

Essentially, Raiders takes Splatoon’s core gameplay and transposes it into a new genre. And it remains a blast, with levels that have an incredible sense of tension; there were many times when it came down to the last few thrilling seconds, which determined whether or not I’d beat a level. And while you can play through the whole thing by yourself, Raiders also supports co-op play for up to four people.

What really makes Raiders work, though, is that it also constantly encourages you to experiment. One way it does that is through the sheer amount of customization options. There is a huge range of different weapons to use — my favorite is a katana made of sponge that can splash ink — and each one can be leveled up and tweaked by adding parts that can alter its abilities, making it faster or stronger. You also have multiple powers that unlock over time, each of which provides a different benefit, like a spinning top that explodes on impact or a turret that provides cover in a heated shootout. Finding what works for you means trying out a lot of ideas. But the game also goes a step further. In order to fully level up your abilities, you actually have to try out different items and use them for a prolonged period, and some stages even have different treasure depending on what you have equipped. This keeps you from finding one kind of playstyle and sticking with it through the whole game.

The remarkable thing about the original Splatoon was how it took one of gaming’s most intimidating genres — competitive online multiplayer — and turned it into something incredibly approachable. Raiders does the same thing for looter shooters. It’s not a never-ending grind where you feel forced to play levels repeatedly in order to see any progress, nor is it a live-service experience intent on sucking up all of your free time and money. It takes the basic elements that have made the genre so popular — exciting gunplay, challenging levels, fine-tuned customization — and puts them in a package that respects the player and their time. At a moment when the live-service space is imploding, and new shooters fail with alarming regularity, Raiders is a reminder of why these games are so popular in the first place — as well as a sign that Splatoon still has plenty of room to grow.

_{Splatoon Raiders launches on the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23rd.}

Bethesda teases Fallout 5 soon after Xbox’s mass layoffs

2026-07-17T11:30:07-04:00

The Fallout TV series. | Image: Amazon

Xbox is currently in a “reset” period that includes laying off around 3,200 employees over the next year, involving deep cuts at beloved studios like id Software and Obsidian Entertainment. Now, in an attempt to show that things are still running fine, the company has announced a slate of upcoming projects at Bethesda Game Studios — which itself was hit with layoffs — including official confirmation that Fallout 5 is in the works.

“We’re investing more deeply in the worlds players love, giving creators a bigger role in shaping their experiences, and bringing our teams closer together so we can get our games into your hands sooner, support them longer, and continue building them alongside you for decades to come,” Bethesda director Todd Howard said in a statement.

There are no details yet on the next Fallout, and it sounds like the project is currently a ways off. Howard says simply that “Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today” and “Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination,“ while the game is described as being in a preproduction phase. The confirmation of the game’s existence comes more than a decade after the launch of Fallout 4, the last mainline entry in the series. Since then, the franchise has expanded with the online spinoff Fallout 76 and a live-action TV series.

Howard also revealed that a new Fallout game is in development at Obsidian, which developed 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas — “We’ll have more to share in the future,” he says — and that remasters of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are in development, though neither has a release date.

As for The Elder Scrolls VI — which was announced way back in 2018 — Howard didn’t provide a release window but said that the game will utilize the same technology platform as Fallout 5. He says that the game is “our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise.” Howard added that “we’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.”

Oh, and for those wondering about the fate of Starfield, Howard noted that the franchise “remains an important part of our future.”

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma previously said that, as part of the upheaval at Xbox, the brand was going to focus more on its most bankable franchises, with the eventual — and questionable — goal of being “one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.” This new slate of announcements from Bethesda, which Xbox acquired along with its parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, certainly fits within that model.

However, the timing of the announcements — especially considering Xbox just had a big showcase event in June — also makes it clear that this is a form of damage control, as the company attempts to show that the future isn’t as bleak as it seems following those deep cuts. Bethesda’s new game reveals are coming the same week that ZeniMax employees held a rally in Maryland to protest the layoffs.

Netflix tries to recapture Stranger Things magic with nostalgic re-release

2026-07-15T12:37:08-04:00

Netflix just can’t let Stranger Things go. Since the final episode aired on New Year’s Eve there’s been a behind-the-scenes documentary, an animated series that expands the story, and now, on the 10th anniversary of the show’s original release, Netflix has released a new version of the show’s first season. The episodes have all been rendered through a VHS-style filter to make it feel like a true product of the ’80s, and it’s surprisingly convincing — if you’re looking to re-watch the show from the beginning, this might be the best way to do it.

Netflix calls the new version of the show the “VHS Special Edition” and offers the following description on its site: “rewind and relive the first season with a video store vibe that’s glitchy, grainy, and gloriously vintage — just like you’d have rented it in 1983.” And I have to say, that’s pretty accurate. It’s not clear exactly how Netflix achieved the effect — it appears to be some combination of filters and cropping — but it’s effective. The scanlines, occasional crackle and visual glitch, and nearly square aspect ratio give off definite ’80s vibes, building on top of everything that already exists in Stranger Things.

A little treat from Family Video 📼

Stranger Things VHS Special Edition is now playing on Netflix! pic.twitter.com/kx1ZyMYoZ7
— Netflix (@netflix) July 15, 2026

It works especially well with Stranger Things’ first season, which is small in scale — at least compared to later seasons — and is absolutely dripping in influences from the decade. The first episode alone features references to everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Poltergeist. There are two things that stand out rewatching the show this way. One is that, at least early on, the production design is so accurate that it really helps create the convincing retro effect. If you didn’t know any better, you might believe this is actually an ’80s production. The other is that the filters actually help mask some of the CG effects, which haven’t aged especially well, but now can hide under a retro glaze. That goes for the slimy, filthy Upside Down as well as that terrifying original Demogorgon that stalks Hawkins, Indiana.

Watching this version of Stranger Things reminds me of playing old games using a CRT filter through gadgets like the Analogue 3D. It’s not exactly the same as popping a tape into a VCR, but the vibes are close enough. And for a show that tries so desperately to replicate the energy of films from the era, it’s especially fitting. It’s impressive just how much of an impact a simple filter can have. Nothing else about the show is changed aside from the visuals, and yet the experience is markedly different. The difference really hit home when a full-screen ad-break appeared with crisp and colorful visuals that are definitely from 2026, providing a stark contrast.

The release does raise some questions about the future of Stranger Things at Netflix. The franchise is still limping along with an impending season of Tales from ’85 and, presumably, an eventual streaming debut for the stage show prequel The First Shadow. Series creators the Duffer brothers, meanwhile, seem to have largely moved on. It’s not clear if anything post-season 1 will be getting VHS-ified, though I would guess that later seasons — particularly the set-piece-filled final season — won’t work quite as well given their much larger scale. It’s hard to imagine a shootout with a skyscraper-sized beast looking like a remnant from the ’80s. What is clear, though, is that despite Netflix largely moving on from the tentpole strategy that defined its early years, the streamer isn’t quite ready to let go of its biggest hit.

The tiniest MMO

2026-07-15T08:29:09-04:00

At its peak, around 12 million people subscribed to World of Warcraft so that they could explore the realm of Azeroth together. The audience for PointlessQuest is quite a bit smaller. On launch day, the game hit a peak of 15 concurrent players… and no, that sentence isn’t missing a word. Then again, basically everything about PointlessQuest is intentionally tiny. It’s a game that was developed as a side project by designer Gareth Williams, and it’s available on just about the least likely platform to house an MMO: the Playdate. Yet it has garnered a small group of hardcore players who are working together to burn through the early game experience. “The support from the community has been and continues to be amazing,” Williams tells me.

Despite its small scale, PointlessQuest has many of the hallmarks of an MMO. There are characters that give you quests, a fantasy landscape filled with monsters, and lots of loot and experience to gather. Your early tasks involve slaying slime balls and collecting chicken eggs, and if you play long enough you can unlock a bow and arrow. But things are also simplified for the platform. The world is rendered in black-and-white pixel art, and battles happen automatically when you bump up against an enemy. The game does support in-game communication — including both text and voice chat — but I’ve yet to actually see someone online at the same time as me to test it out.

Williams is no stranger to the Playdate. He previously released the old-school dungeon crawler Legend of Etad and the 3D space shooter Tau on the handheld, and he says that they “were wildly successful in the context of the Playdate.” But the origin of PointlessQuest actually predates Panic’s little yellow gizmo. Back in 2008, Williams started developing the concept as a web-based multiplayer game that was only ever played by a small group of friends. “Then it was forgotten about,” he explains, “saved only to a ‘projects’ backup folder that has moved with me across USB sticks, cloud storage, and various PCs over the intervening years.”

Years later, when he learned that the Playdate software development kit was getting networking capabilities, Williams decided to resurrect the idea as an experiment. He says that he had no idea if it would even work, so he utilized Claude to generate a “modernized” version of the codebase, which he says took a few hours. From there, he went about redesigning the game, doing everything from introducing maps and quest dialogue to creating pixel art. He notes that, while the codebase is largely LLM-generated, “all of the game content is 100 percent made by hand.” The final product took around six weeks to complete, and he estimates it would have taken at least a year if it was hand-coded. “Basically, PQ would not exist without Claude,” Williams says. “Whether that is a good thing or not, I leave to the community to decide.”

So far PointlessQuest has been a modest success. Williams says that more than 400 players have made a character and earned at least a single experience point, and the pay-what-you-want donation structure has earned enough to fund the game’s servers “indefinitely.” More than sheer numbers, though, Williams says he has been elated with the sense of community the game has garnered. “I’ve heard tales of epic group boss fights, fan art on Reddit (I commissioned the new title screen and logo from a player that has made a bunch of cartoons), to a potential poetry reading session in the game’s village library,” he says. “It’s been a blast so far.” The community has a wholesomeness to it that’s on clear display in this Reddit thread.

In fact, hardcore players burned through the game’s early content so quickly that Williams had to release an expansion — called “The Armpit of the World” — soon after launch that gave them more to do after level 10. A second expansion is currently in the works, aimed at those who hit the level 20 mark. The future of the game beyond that depends both on Williams’ ability to keep updating PointlessQuest alongside his day job and how the community continues to develop. He’s hoping to eventually get the game on Panic’s Catalog shop, which does currently accept games with AI-assisted code, to ensure the future of the tiny MMO is just a little bit bigger. “A Catalog release would vastly expand the player base and give me and the existing players even more reason to keep coming back,” he explains.

A tasty RPG that will make you very hungry

2026-07-11T08:37:53-04:00

Roleplaying games are often defined by excess. Storylines that span dozens of hours, side quests so big they could be their own game, massive worlds that require complex maps to explore, and casts so big you start forgetting character names. That’s part of what makes these games feel like epic adventures, but it can also make them intimidating, particularly if you have limited spare time. Dosa Divas, on the other hand, manages to capture much of that same feeling in a package that spans less than 10 hours. And it does it with a bold sense of style and a story that seamlessly flits between big themes and personal drama. There’s just one big drawback: This game will make you very hungry.

Dosa Divas takes place across a small collection of towns that have been overrun by a single corporation that has made cooking illegal, giving it a monopoly with its food-like nutrient paste. This is problematic not just from a financial perspective, but also a cultural one, as these places all have deep histories connected to food. What are the residents of a traditional fishing village to do when they can’t fish anymore? You play as a pair of sisters named Samara and Amani who join forces to take down the evil corporation, which just so happens to be run by their little sister Lina. So it’s a story about saving the world from capitalism, a story about the cultural importance of food, and also a story about how hard families can be. Also, there are sentient mech suits, including one that’s in your party through the whole game.

This all plays out like a fairly traditional turn-based RPG. You travel the world fighting enemies — they range from pesky lawyers to, uh, your own parents — leveling up and getting stronger along the way. There’s a timing element to battles reminiscent of Mario & Luigi where you have to hit a button at the right time to defend or attack, and Dosa Divas adds some interesting elements like cooking, which lets you both create healing items and feed hungry citizens by completing brief minigames. It’s a fun twist on the standard “item” in an RPG, and reminds me a bit of taking a break to cook in Final Fantasy XV. The game’s slick, stylized graphics also make the meals look particularly appetizing, so I wouldn’t recommend playing Dosa Divas on an empty stomach.

What’s remarkable about the game is that it crams all of this — interesting world, satisfying gameplay, rich story — into a comparatively small package by streamlining things in smart ways. You only learn a couple of abilities over the course of the game, for instance, but they’re all important for battle strategy. Similarly, while you can customize your characters somewhat each time you level up, you can only choose between improving their strength, health, and special abilities. This structure gives you a lot of the same satisfaction of playing an RPG without all of the busywork. And best of all: no grinding!

The story hides its depth in a similar way. On the surface, it’s an occasionally silly, frequently straightforward critique of capitalism. You hear growling stomachs to alert you there’s someone in need of a meal, and you can tear down corporate propaganda to improve your status in each town. But Dosa Divas is at its best when the story gets personal. Through flashbacks and candid conversations, you really come to learn the complex familial relationships that define Samara, Amani, and Lina, and just how integral food has been in their lives, beyond simply being a source of sustenance. No one is a pure villain or hero in this game. The boss battle with their parents is a particular highlight, as it feels like a real, raw argument between people who love each other but can’t always accept the ways others change and grow. It might hit a little close to home for some players. Aside from the mech suits, of course.

In many ways Dosa Divas is a careful balancing act. It’s a roleplaying game that shrinks down an epic quest, and a raw and personal story that isn’t afraid to get silly or tackle larger themes. The most impressive part of the game is that it manages to be all of those things without feeling bloated or unwieldy. It takes just as much time as it needs to — which is a good thing, because now I have lots of cooking to do.

_{Dosa Divas is available now on the PC, Switch, and PS5.}

Xbox’s bold plan for the future sounds nearly impossible

2026-07-06T20:17:59-04:00

It’s another bad week for the video game industry. Microsoft outlined a series of layoffs on Monday that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma described as “the most significant restructure in Xbox history.” But buried in Sharma’s memo was a curiously optimistic statement: “I want Xbox to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect,” she wrote.

Xbox has been a shambling mess after Microsoft spent billions of dollars with little to show for it, and now it aims to reach a much bigger audience with a much smaller team, amid one of the most challenging times in the industry’s history. Sharma’s billion-person goal would sound outlandish at the best of times. Right now it sounds nearly impossible.

The job cuts will see Xbox laying off 1,600 employees this summer, with another 1,600 expected over the next year. This is all part of broader restructuring at Microsoft, though the gaming division has been hit particularly hard. Four internal Xbox studios — Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, and Ninja Theory — are also being spun out as independent developers, which is perhaps the one bit of good news. Those studios were acquired over the years primarily to bolster the offerings on Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription gaming service, but now it seems that the company is moving in a different direction.

What is that direction? Well, it isn’t entirely clear. (Confusing strategies are pretty standard for Xbox of late.) Xbox has been losing a lot of money — Sharma claims that “in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested” — and now it seems like the goal is to focus entirely on major properties that have a better chance of being blockbuster hits. Sharma says the teams that remain at Microsoft will “focus on higher priority projects.” That means not just those closely associated with the brand, like Halo and Gears of War, but also massively popular franchises under the Xbox umbrella, most notably Minecraft and Candy Crush.

In fact, as part of the most recent restructuring, Helen Chiang — who previously oversaw the Minecraft franchise — has been promoted to a new role as Xbox’s chief operating officer, reporting directly to Sharma. “She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results,” Sharma said of Chiang’s upgraded role.

With that focus on bigger projects, some of the changes at Xbox make a certain sense. If your goal is to reach a billion people each day, a game from a quirky studio like Double Fine about a sentient lighthouse probably won’t move the needle in comparison to expanding Minecraft or Candy Crush.

But the reasoning for other cuts is much more opaque. If your goal is to lean into big games, why would you also be “making reductions” at places like Bethesda (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), id (Doom), and, perhaps Xbox’s most prolific studio, Obsidian (Avowed, The Outer Worlds)? It seems more like those teams would need further investment — and at the very least, to not have to spend the next year wondering if they’ll be hit by the next wave of layoffs — to create a major blockbuster at a time when the industry is as volatile and unpredictable as ever.

You only need to look at the sorry state of the live-service space to see how poorly things can go when companies are simply chasing big numbers. The entire industry saw Fortnite become a money-printing cultural phenomenon and hoped to re-create it for themselves, collectively spending billions of dollars in the process. The result was a graveyard of canceled games and studio closures. In 2026, even Fortnite itself is struggling.

This all makes Sharma’s goal of eventually reaching “a billion people each day” seem all the more absurd. It’s not clear what metric she is using to measure that number. It’s extremely unlikely Xbox will reach that in terms of daily players even if you factor in mobile games and an expansion into China and emerging markets like India, which Sharma is planning to do. King says that its lineup of games attracts more than 200 million monthly players, so you’d need quite a few Candy Crush apps to even get close. And that’s assuming that follow-ups will be as successful as the original, which is rarely the case (just ask Niantic). Sharma really wants to continue to push the Xbox brand into Hollywood, so maybe Fallout viewers — Amazon says 100 million people watched the first season — will count toward that goal. But even if you add up games, TV shows, and Game Pass subscribers, 1 billion people a day is a very large number.

So instead of a clear path forward at a time of heightened uncertainty, Xbox has a vague and seemingly unattainable goal in front of it. And it’ll be doing that with a team that is smaller and will continue to shrink. “These changes are about a bigger future for Xbox,” Sharma claims, “not a smaller one.” But it’s hard to see how that’s the case. Xbox was already experiencing an identity crisis heading into these layoffs, and this lack of vision isn’t making things any clearer.

Nintendo will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next year

2026-07-06T10:15:48-04:00

Nintendo is making a new version of the Switch 2 with a replaceable battery in Europe — but its predecessor has a very different future. As part of an updated FAQ about revisions to Nintendo hardware in Europe, the company confirmed that it will stop selling all iterations of the original Switch on the continent starting next year.

Here’s the full statement:

From mid-February 2027, almost ten years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems — specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027.

The news comes as Nintendo is making a bunch of changes to the rest of its lineup due to EU regulations requiring user-replaceable batteries. Starting this summer, the company says it will start introducing updated versions of various devices on “a rolling basis,” ahead of the regulations coming into effect on February 18th, 2027. “There is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries,” Nintendo says.

The Switch 2 is the most notable product being updated — the new version is expected to start rolling out in the fall — but there will also be versions of the Joy-Con controllers, Joy-Con 2, Switch 2 Pro Controller, and N64 and GameCube Switch controllers with user-replaceable batteries. “Due to a variety of factors, revised products may not become available in all European countries simultaneously,” Nintendo notes.

It’s currently unclear what fate might await the original Switch in other territories, but the decade-old hardware is still getting notable first-party game releases, including Rhythm Heaven Grove and Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.

Xbox is a disaster

2026-07-06T09:23:24-04:00

Gears of War: E-Day.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the bleak state of the video game industry, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

Microsoft closed out Summer Game Fest with a bang. The company’s annual June showcase was packed with crowd-pleasers: Halo, Gears of War, Fable, a translucent Xbox, and even some pleasant surprises like new Persona and Crazy Taxi games. It was the kind of event that harkened back to the boisterous days of E3, when the industry was in a healthier place and game reveals were cultural events.

It was also a sham.

Just three days after the showcase, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma warned of a “reset” at Microsoft’s gaming division, which would require “making hard choices.” The weeks that followed were filled with reports of impending layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations. Ninja Theory is reportedly one of the studios on the chopping block, despite having just revealed a new game at SGF. If all this comes to pass, Xbox will be a shell of its former self.

After muscling its way into the console space nearly 25 years ago, Microsoft’s gaming division is at its lowest point ever. And the fallout from some disastrous decisions is going to get very ugly in the coming weeks and months.

It wasn’t always this way. With the arrival of the original Xbox in 2001, Microsoft seemed poised to be a viable contender in the space, with all of its resources helping it play catch-up with the likes of Sony and Nintendo. Major exclusives like Halo and a prescient foray into online play through Xbox Live helped to solidify this position for a time. But Microsoft flubbed the launch of the Xbox One in 2013 with an ill-fated push into non-gaming features like TV, and the brand has never really recovered. With the oft-confusing Xbox Series X / S generation, the company only fell further behind.

There are many reasons for this, but arguably the most damning was Microsoft’s extremely expensive push into subscription services. On paper it made some sense: Streaming services like Netflix were upending the film and TV landscape, so maybe the same could happen for gaming. Microsoft made some absolutely gigantic bets on this unproven future, spending billions of dollars to acquire studios and publishers in an attempt to build out a large library of content for Game Pass that would lure subscribers.

And while Game Pass proved popular initially, it ultimately plateaued, which meant that Microsoft spent all of that money on a business that didn’t grow anywhere near as large as it expected. (The service currently has around 30 million subscribers, while Microsoft had hoped to hit 100 million by 2030.) This misguided play also coincided with the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which suggested that Xbox wasn’t a single console but rather a suite of Game Pass-capable devices, leading to even more confusion around the brand.

How it’s going

Just how bad are things? As Sharma and Xbox’s chief content officer Matt Booty wrote in the “reset” memo, “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.” The Activision deal, meanwhile, cost $68.7 billion. The company spent all of that money just to make it even less clear what an Xbox is.

This past February, there was a major shake-up at the Xbox division. Former boss Phil Spencer, who oversaw the brand through the Game Pass push and its many costly acquisitions, retired, while former president and COO Sarah Bond left the company. Despite some uncertainty around her lack of experience in the world of gaming — her prior role at Microsoft was head of the CoreAI division — Sharma’s early days provided some cause for optimism. She appeared willing to listen to fans on things like backward compatibility and exclusives, scrapped the unpopular Microsoft Gaming branding in favor of just Xbox, and moved the brand away from controversial AI features. She also made some strange and superficial changes, like restyling Xbox as XBOX.

But it’s clear the issues at Xbox run much deeper than a simple name change can fix. Sharma inherited a business that spent colossal amounts of money and had little to show for it, and now the bill is coming due. What makes this especially tragic is the sheer pedigree of the game studios that are being impacted. My colleague Tom Warren reported that Microsoft was mulling over closing at least five studios, which includes the likes of Arkane — best known for the wildly influential Dishonored series — and Double Fine Productions, a beloved team behind cult hits like Psychonauts, and more recently Keeper and Kiln. That’s multiple teams filled with talented individuals responsible for some of the most notable games ever made. Now they’re being discarded because of poor decisions they had no part in.

What happens next

It’s important to note that Microsoft currently exists within a video game industry that is perpetually on fire. Hardware is getting more expensive by the day, successful studios are being gutted, anti-consumer behavior is the norm, and major hits are crashing down to Earth.

But even amid this apocalyptic landscape, Xbox’s issues feel particularly existential. Its hardware and subscription businesses are both faltering, and now it’s decimating its game development teams as well. Tom reported that the impending layoffs are expected to start next week, and it’s not clear yet just how widespread they will be. Part of the uncertainty is that we don’t know exactly what will happen to these studios; some may be hit with layoffs, some may be closed entirely, and some may be spun off as independent entities.

Whatever happens, though, Xbox will look drastically different once it’s all over. And given the dire state of console gaming, these might not even be the last changes for Microsoft’s gaming division.

By the way

Sharma has done a lot of work to clean up the messaging around Xbox, but plenty of confusion remains, particularly when it comes to the company’s console exclusivity strategy.
At the same time the Xbox is struggling, a new player is entering the space, as Valve launches the console-like Steam Machine.
As always, Nintendo largely operates in its own parallel universe that has allowed it to largely weather the current storm.

Read this

Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has done some excellent reporting on the turmoil at Xbox, and has also helpfully condensed everything into a video on his YouTube channel.
Matthew Ball is Xbox’s new strategy officer, and in an interview with The Game Business he explained how the brand is thinking about the next console, currently codenamed “Project Helix.”
Speaking of execs, Booty talked to Game Informer following the SGF showcase to try and explain Xbox’s ever-changing strategy around exclusives, saying that “We want there to be a reason to believe and a reason to buy Xbox.”

Apple TV is hitting its stride

2026-07-02T17:46:10-04:00

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. | Image: Apple

Since its inception, Apple TV, née Apple TV Plus, has built a reputation on quality over quantity. It has far fewer shows and movies than the likes of Netflix or Disney Plus, but generally speaking, the projects it does put out are quite good. It’s a strategy that has brought comparisons to the HBO of old, and 2026 has featured a particularly strong mix of new hits and returning favorites. It took a few years, but Apple TV seems to be finally hitting its stride.

In terms of brand-new series, this year’s offerings have been fairly spread out across genres. Leading the way has been the delightful Widow’s Bay, which skillfully manages the difficult task of being scary and hilarious at the same time. Joining it have been Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which explore stories about single mothers and sex workers from very different perspectives, and a splashy and frequently unhinged remake of Cape Fear led by stars like Amy Adams, Javier Bardem, and Juliette Lewis.

That’s a pretty solid lineup on its own. But what has really helped flesh out Apple TV’s offerings is that those shows are coming out alongside the continuation of existing properties, many of which have been chugging along for several years. The last few weeks have included new seasons of the sci-fi detective series Sugar, the postapocalyptic thriller Silo, and Star City, a spinoff of the long-running alternate history series For All Mankind.

The next few months look like a similar mix. Dark Matter, Slow Horses, and Ted Lasso will all be back with new seasons. Meanwhile, there are brand-new thrillers like Last Seen and the Anya Taylor-Joy-led Lucky, along with a pair of buddy comedies: Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh in Mayday, and Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in Brothers. Maybe this year Apple will even finally put out its long-delayed series The Savant, which explores domestic terrorism.

It took a few years to get to this point. That required landing on not only a handful of hits that could go on for multiple seasons, like Slow Horses and For All Mankind, but also exploring different genres. Apple has been particularly successful in the realm of science fiction, but many of its most talked-about series — like Ted Lasso and Widow’s Bay — are comedies. At this point, the service offers a strong mix of both lighthearted fare and more traditional prestige television. It’s a trend that looks to continue, at least for the foreseeable future. The likes of Silo and For All Mankind are coming to an end, but new seasons of heavy hitters Pluribus, Severance, and awards darling The Studio are waiting in the wings, while a much-anticipated adaptation of William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic Neuromancer is also incoming.

What’s particularly notable about Apple’s focus on premium-style television is how it differs from the growth mindset of its competitors. Netflix is the prime example. With the end of series like Stranger Things and Squid Game, the streamer has become less reliant on tentpole TV shows. Instead, reality television, live programming, podcasts, and even interactive games have become a big focus as Netflix attempts to reach a large, broad audience. Disney, similarly, has been experimenting with turning Disney Plus into “the immersive, interactive digital centerpiece of the company,” which will involve focusing on things other than traditional programming to lure subscribers.

Apple TV obviously isn’t perfect; its film offerings leave a lot to be desired, and upcoming features like the toy car adaptation Matchbox don’t instill a lot of confidence. It has also begun expanding into areas like live sports, including Formula 1. But on the television side, the streamer’s approach is refreshing. While nearly every subscription service seems steadfastly focused on appealing to as many potential customers as possible, Apple TV is simply a place for good TV. Signs point to that potentially changing in the future, but for now the service is the closest thing streaming has to a prestige home.

Mystery box shows are complicated for everyone — even the actors

2026-07-01T17:58:32-04:00

Silo is such a complicated show that even its showrunner gets confused sometimes. While filming the final seasons of the Apple TV sci-fi thriller, Graham Yost remembers two instances where he messed up details: once it was an actor who realized that a conversation they were about to shoot should’ve already taken place, the other involved the Japanese localization team pointing out that a subtitle didn’t match what was going on onscreen. In both instances, the problem was ultimately fixed, but Yost’s reaction was the same: “Oh shit, you’re right.”

Keeping everything straight is one of the big challenges of working on such a complex series, and as Silo enters into its final two seasons, the challenge has only increased. So it’s a good thing Yost has a team working alongside him looking for those mistakes. “It’s a lot to keep track of, but everyone is pitching in,” he says, “and I love this sense of collaboration.”

Season 3 of Silo starts streaming on July 3rd, and it expands the story’s scope quite a bit. The series follows the lives of the residents of a huge underground bunker hundreds of years in the future. The silo is home to 10,000 people who essentially live in a vertical city, one divided into layers that each have their own jobs and cultures, from the mines at the bottom to the government up top. The only way to navigate the silo is through a massive spiral staircase that goes from top to bottom, creating a very physical form of class division.

Initially it seemed the residents were the last remnants of humanity living in a postapocalyptic wasteland. But over the course of the first two seasons, it became clear that they lived in but one silo of many, each housing their own communities while isolated from the rest. Season 3 adds a new wrinkle: showing how the world came to be this way in the first place, a process that starts in a world that looks much like our own.

The season 3 premiere constantly jumps back and forth between the bleak future where we’ve spent the last two seasons and our present day, when the decisions were made that led to everyone being trapped inside of underground bunkers. Things are already complicated as the show picks up from last season — protagonist / silo mayor / reluctant revolutionary Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) has just become the first person to venture between silos and is now suffering from memory loss — and the multiple timelines only ratchets that up.

“It’s a lot of pieces you’re trying to put together.”

The cast of Silo all have different techniques for dealing with this challenge, which becomes even harder given that scenes are rarely shot in chronological order. For some, daily team meetings with directors can be an invaluable tool. “A lot of days, we’d start the day with story time, and the director would go through where we’re at, where we just came from, what happens next,” explains Alexandria Riley, who plays newly promoted authority figure Camille Sims in the show. “It’s already a complicated story anyway, but then when shooting out of order, you do get a bit foggy.” Ferguson notes that the hair-and-makeup team can be particularly helpful in tracking the story, as they need to be on top of things like scars and burns to maintain consistency. Every detail counts. “The little changes that you do have enormous ripple effects going forward,” she says.

“It’s a lot of pieces you’re trying to put together,” adds Common, who plays Camille’s husband Robert on the show. “It is our job to know where we are, but thank god we had support, too. There are times when I’d have to talk to Alex about something just to be reminded.” The two actors even had separate rehearsals together to make sure they had everything down.

Others took a different approach. Jessica Henwick, for instance, joined the main cast as the present-day investigative reporter Helen in season 3, and says that “I didn’t read any scenes except my own. Because I’m a fan of the show, I wanted to preserve that experience. I will watch season 3 as a fan and see what happens. I don’t know what happens except in our storyline.” (Henwick is such a fan that, soon after she was cast, she had a single goal in mind: “I went to the set and explored the stairs.”)

One thing that doesn’t help much, however, is delving into the source material. Silo is based on a trilogy of books by author Hugh Howey; the first two seasons explored the first book, while the final two will wrap up the rest of the story. But much has changed in the adaptation as the TV show attempts to both make Juliette a more visible figure in the central part of the story and update some of the plotlines to reflect present day concerns like AI.

“I started reading the books and realized very quickly that that wasn’t going to help, because the books are so different,” explains Ashley Zukerman, who plays a congressman in the present day storyline. He says that keeping both the novels and the TV show in his mind at the same time wouldn’t be helpful and instead found “that reading the whole scripts and then finding a way to forget [what his character wouldn’t know] was useful.”

With two seasons to go, Silo is racing toward a conclusion as it attempts to wrap everything up. Yost says that four seasons was always the plan, so the process has been figuring out how to fit everything into a set number of episodes. But since the final two seasons were filmed back to back, it also means that the Silo team are done having to worry about keeping all of those complicated plotlines straight. And as much as she says she’ll miss the experience of working on the show, there is one thing Ferguson is excited to be done with beyond memorizing storylines.

“I fucking hated running up and down those stairs,” she says.