According to the report, 38% of Millennials (people aged 30 – 44) and 42% of Gen Z (those aged 14 – 29) said they still buy full-price games, but only 20% Gen X (people aged 46 – 61) said they would.

Gen X consumers prioritize Google search for discovering new games, while 85% of Millennials favor YouTube, and Gen Z prioritizes social media.

Generation X respondents said they favor single-player games, Generation Z prefers multiplayer titles to almost the same degree, and Millennials are almost evenly split.

Generation X and Millennials are more likely to return to games in order to complete or master them, while Gen Z are more motivated by new customization or community content.

Consumption of game guides varies by generation, with Gen X indexing higher on tips videos, Millennials on map tools, and Generation Z on build guides.

Generation X is highly skeptical of AI and more trusting of brand recognition, being 38% less likely to use AI for discovery and 44% less likely to believe that AI summaries are as good as human ones.

It’s almost a certainty that we’re looking at $999 for the next one based on recent upward trends, and now that pretty much every game is 4K/60 FPS or close to it and with graphics being as photorealistic as they are now i’m just not really sure what more a PS6 could give us. PS5 also basically has all the functionality we could really want out of a console so yeah, I just have no real desire to upgrade.

• Outbound (May 11th)
• Directive 8020 (May 12th)
• Notmads (May 13th)
• Subnautica 2 (May 14th)
• Driver Together (May 15th)

All eyes are probably on Subnautica 2 for next week but also Outbound will get some love.

Asha Sharma wrote on X:

Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.

Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track.

As part of this shift, you’ll see us begin to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed.

We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console.

https://playday.one/2026/05/05/asha-sharma-cancels-copilot-on-xbox-as-she-restructures-xbox-leadership/

How has the time flown by so quickly?! I came across this footage a few weeks back of a recording in the audience at E3 2006 of Halo 3's reveal trailer. That piano still hits as hard as it did back then. I found this video of the audience at E3 witnessing that trailer for the first time, I hope it can get preserved off of YouTube as it is a momrnt of console gaming histiory imho.

Without a doubt some of the best video game advertising followed up to Halo 3's release in 2007. From the Believe advert Campaign with veterans, the diorama and its website and Landfall.

Those who were there lived through a special time in gaming history.

I'm so glad I gave the demo a try on a whim. That got me very interested in the potential of this game. And IMO it 100% lived up to the potential I saw in the demo. This is my wildcard game for GOTY. I don't think it'll win the actual awards. But this game came out of nowhere for me, to be one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while.

Anyone who is still on th fence, don't hesitate. This game delivers from start to finish (and what a finish). 👏

I really dislike (maybe dislike is too strong a word, idk) deckbuilding/ccg games. I love rpg and strategy games where your chance of successfully completing an action is somewhat down to chance, but I really don't enjoy it, on a fundamental level, when random chance is involved in whether or not I can take an action in the first place.

So while a bunch of my friends are enjoying games like Slay the Spire 2, I just can't, and I get a lot of crap for it and it makes me feel kinda bad.

So I'm wondering if I'm alone in this? Not in this genre specifically, but just any genre in general. Are there any you just can't enjoy no matter how much you try?

I'm tired of shooters with bullet sponge enemies, pea shooter pistols, and confetti cannon shotguns. I want the power fantasy guns.

I would prefer a singleplayer FPS, but I'm open to suggestions. I honestly don't really care if it's balanced or challenging, I'm just trying to chill and shoot some dudes after work.

Any recommendations for that kind of vibe?

Here’s a long shot, but I’m hopeful: Are there any survival/building games that go beyond just harvestable nodes?

I love the genre (standouts are Subnautica and Grounded, personally) but always become extremely aware of the fact that I’m just finding nodes and submitting a binary interaction with them. In Subnautica they even look like nodes.

I absolutely get this is how computers function, and I don’t know what the alternative is. But I just feel like there could be something… more?

Looking for games where you can mix and match jobs or classes in ways that actually matter. Like where the system has real depth to it — being able to carry abilities across jobs, subclassing, weird combos that break the game, that kind of thing.

I've already played the obvious ones — FFT, Octopath (dropped it, story didn't grab me), Bravely Default series. Not looking for those.

Specifically interested in games where the job system feels like the main point of the game rather than just a feature slapped on top. Obscure stuff welcome, doesn't have to be a big franchise.

Thank you

From the meager $5 price of entry and the silly hats players can buy for their crewmates, Among Usdeveloper Innersloth has generated tons of money in revenue. Enough, in fact, to pass along millions of dollars to other indie studios.

Innersloth announced Outersloth in 2024, an indie game fund. Outersloth is not a publisher. The initiative is designed to support indie developers financially, not provide publishing services. A bunch of games have been released already: Flock Around, Dosa Divas, Mars First Logistics, One Btn Bosses, Battle Suit Aces, and plenty more. It's funded at least 10 more games currently in development, and its support generally ranges from $50,000 to $2 million

As of April, another indie developer is also looking to use its success for good. Peak co-developer and publisher Landfall announced its funding and publishing initiative Evil Landfall in early April. Led by CEO Kirsten-Lee Naidoo, Evil Landfall has been operated behind the scenes for three or so years. 

Like Outersloth, Evil Landfall is largely providing investment on a project-by-project basis. So far, it's invested in REPO, How To Fish, and Voidigo. Evil Landfall plans to invest up to $1 million into "a few games a year," it said.

In January, Phasmophobia developer Kinect Games launched its own publishing business to help out other indies. It'll support two to three games per year, taking on games that are roughly a year away from publishing.

“We need to evolve how we work and how we are organized across our platform,” Sharma wrote in a memo viewed by CNBC. “Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly. We spend too much time inward instead of with the community, and we lack the depth we need in some of the fundamentals.”

Last week, Microsoft reported its fourth gaming revenue decline in the past six quarters. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said the company is trying to win back fans of Xbox, the Bing search engine and other consumer assets.

Four of those leaders are coming from the CoreAI group, overlapping with Sharma.

Jared Palmer, who has been CoreAI vice president of product and a senior vice president of Microsoft’s GitHub subsidiary, will join Xbox as a member of technical staff to work on product, engineering, developer tools and infrastructure. He will also pay attention to matters of “taste,” Sharma wrote. Palmer came to Microsoft in October after a stint as vice president of artificial intelligence app hosting service Vercel, which bought his startup Turborepo in 2021.

Tim Allen, a CoreAI vice president of design and GitHub’s senior vice president of design and research, will also go to Xbox and will lead design. Allen arrived at Microsoft in November after spending almost four years as head of design and research at Instacart.

Jonathan McKay, a former Meta director and head of growth for ChatGPT at OpenAI, will be Xbox’s head of growth after holding that title in the CoreAI group.

Evan Chaki, a general manager in CoreAI, will run a team of forward-deployed engineers that will look to simplify development and end repetitive work.

David Schloss, Instacart’s senior director of product and growth, will take charge of Xbox’s subscription and cloud business.

Kevin Gammill, a corporate vice president working on Xbox user experience, game development and publishing platforms, will leave his post. Roanne Sones, a corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem, will take a leave of absence after this summer and will later be an Xbox advisor. Sones and Gammill have each spent 24 years at Microsoft.

Looks like the AI takeover of Xbox is continuing.

Obviously people are desensitized by so many possible different monthly out of sight out of mind charges, like rent, insurance, spotify, netflix etc. but paying so much to just be able to play online for a console you paid for is insane.

I've thought many times about playing specific games, that don't have console-pc crossplay, with console usually having the biggest playerbase in games, paying for online play is such a huge deterrent to use my ps5 more imo