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

0:00This week it's Zelda vs GTA. Is this the industry's Barb and Hyman moment? Plus we chat trends, Jeff's new foundation and Ubisoft joins us to discuss their player council.

0:12Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This week's edition is sponsored by Keyword Studios. Of course, Keywords is that organisation that does everything to help game developers make their games, launch them and promote them, and then make sure they keep growing and are successful afterwards. They say they're supercharged by technology, they specialise in being great partners and have 13 ,000 people across 26 countries. They're a big global player. When it comes to sort of the marketing side of things and keeping players engaged, they're focused on helping studios understand their audience more clearly and building a stronger relationship with them from player support trust and safety to community insight and engagement strategy keyword studios helps teams respond to player needs with more relevance care and impact you can find out more on the keyword studios website or via the links in the newsletter attached with this very show speaking of this very show let's do it shall we this time next week i'm going to be in tokyo Tokyo Game Show is my first trip to Japan and I am a bit nervous but I'm also quite excited mainly to understand one of the world's oldest video game industries which has gone through its own peaks and troughs but continues to find where the global business goes and where it's headed naturally in the build-up to such an event we've had a number of special showcases lately last week Sony held one of its state of play events it didn't set the world alight there were plenty of interesting games in there though and this week it was Nintendo's turn who delivered a double bill one entirely focused on the legend of zelda and the other one you know as a more traditional direct now on paper the zelda direct sounded pretty similar to the sony showcase there was a lego model special edition controller and a movie reveal if you can call it a movie reveal and a lengthy deep dive into a remake of a game we all played 30 years ago and yet for reasons i cannot describe it was more exciting than nintendo one was it just was admittedly says the guy with a Zelda Ocarina of Time poster on his wall.

2:04Anyway, in this week's edition, I give a bit of analysis on that Zelda Direct in particular, and Ubisoft, they're coming on the show to talk about its new player council. I'm also going to touch upon trends, and my business partner, Jeff Keighley, has launched something new. We're going to talk about that as well. So let's go. Let's, though, talk about Zelda. So it turns out there is one game that dares come out in the same month as Grand Theft Auto 6. This week, Nintendo announced that the Legend of Zelda the Ocarina of Time remake will be launching on November 5th. It is a full two weeks before GTA arrives, but it's still within the danger zone.

2:39It's certainly a release date that most game publishers will be avoiding. Nintendo, though, they play by its own rules, and Zelda is a distinctive title that arrives on a platform that GTA isn't on, or isn't gone yet anyway. Now bear with me, because this might require some arguing, but could this be the console Industries' Barbenheimer moment. That might sound like a ridiculous thing to say, after all Ocarina of Time is just a remake, right? Surely that can't be discussed in the same breath as the sequel to the world's most successful video game, a sequel we've waited 13 years to play. Of course not, Ocarina of Time isn't going to be as big as GTA 6, but it's still a significant title.

3:18The nostalgia for this one is immensely strong, it is after all the proclaimed greatest game of all time one of the icons of the n64 era but this isn't all about attracting the people that played the game 30 years ago it's also about an entirely new audience now if you look at some of the more successful remakes in recent times like the resident evil remakes these games have managed to attract a new audience the resident evil 2 and resident evil 4 remakes outsold their originals there is an audience of people who have heard about these games but they're frankly the games are just too old they're too antiquated for people to properly play and enjoy today now Zelda is a very different franchise today to the one that existed in 1998 in fact it's a very different franchise the one that existed in 2016 2017's Breath of the Wild took Zelda to a height it never before reached before Breath of the Wild a Zelda game would be fortunate to break 5 million copies to be honest the highest selling one was 2006's Twilight Princess it sold just below 9 million copies and that was a launch title for the Wii which obviously was a sensation Breath of the Wild is now on 34 million sales.

4:22Its sequel, which is 2023's Tears of the Kingdom, is approaching 23 million. Now, Zelda always had the reputation as one of the industry greats. It's an icon. Nintendo fans love it. But now it has the commercial clout to go with it. Now, let's bring those two things together. Significant franchise growth combined with one of the IP's most beloved entries. And you've got a potentially tasty recipe here. The early numbers back that up. outside of Grand Theft Auto 6 no other game has attracted as much trailer views and press attention as this Ocarina of Time remake it was a clear winner during Summer Game Fest season of trailer reveals and if we just look at I've got some early data from the from the Nintendo Direct on Tuesday according to Level Up 2.1 million people was watching this trailer watching the video during its peak to give you some ideas of what that looks like the GTA 6 reveal on YouTube so it doesn't include Netflix managed 4.1 million the PlayStation State of Play the week before which featured the new Final Fantasy 7 game peaked at 1 million views gamescom opening night live peaked at 2 million this Zelda Direct has done more than opening night live done more than the PlayStation State of Play by double more than the PlayStation State of Play the Summer Game Fest opening event was 2.2 million so it's in line with what Summer Game Fest event did peak viewership for the Mario Kart World Nintendo Direct was the last you know the last major Nintendo release for Switch 2 930 ,000 in April 2025.

5:48So this was a big numbers. The trailer itself, at the time of me recording this, was on 55 million views. Over the same period, so basically a day, GTA 6 extended look was on 80 million. I say GTA 6 on another level. Mario Kart World gameplay overview was 5 million. Final Fantasy VII Revelation release date trailer was 3.7 million. This is just benchmarks. There's not a criticism on the Mario Kart World trailer or the Final Fantasy trailer. this is purely to point out that this game is very very big the hype is real it's important to note however the ocarina of time is not like breath of the wild or tears the kingdom it's a far more linear structured zelda game it's not one of those titles where you can simply go anywhere and do anything in any order i would argue zelda has always been open world but there's a degrees of open world here more modern zelda fans which in the might not find ocarina of time quite as appealing now Nintendo has released games in what we call the more traditional Zelda style since Breath of the Wild came out there's been a HD remaster of Skyward Sword that's that's the Wii game that came out initially in 2011 a remake of a 1993 Game Boy game Link's Awakening and an early and there was an entirely new game in 2024 called Echoes of Wisdom these are more in the old school Zelda style all three games sold reasonably well between four and six million copies but nothing particularly significant certainly nothing breath of the wild level however i'd argue none of these games have the appeal of ocarina of time skyward sword is it is just a remaster of actual and the weaker zelda games and by the way zelda games are always great so it's not saying much link's awakening and echoes of wisdom are 2d zelda games they need sort of in the chibi style is a little bit less mainstream they're simply not as mass market of course how big ocarina of time becomes is going to come down to Nintendo itself.

7:40How much of Nintendo's Christmas marketing power will it put behind Ocarina of Time? And there are some messaging challenges. I found it somewhat entertaining in this week's video when Nintendo revealed that Link can now jump and that players can now move the camera around the character. You couldn't do that in 1998. If anyone played the game then, which was around 7-8 million people, you'd go, oh yeah, that's new, but both are entirely standard features in modern video games. I can't imagine there's many 15-year-olds going, what, I can jump? Quick, quick. Here's my pre-order. I certainly don't remember the GTA 6 Netflix reveal talking about the ability to move a camera.

8:19Nevertheless, it was fascinating how even with the initial teaser back in June, Nintendo is very much presenting this to an audience that hadn't played Ocarina of Time before. It's very much introducing the idea of this game, the story, and Navi, and the boy without a fairy, and all that kind of thing. This is a game as much for new fans who might have come in via Breath of the Wild, or perhaps will come in with the upcoming movie, as it is for existing users. I fully expect Nintendo to heavily push this game, much in the same way that PlayStation and Xbox are really putting their weight behind GTA 6.

8:53The console market is clearly in a tough spot right now. Sales are falling and prices are rising. We talk about it every week. But the solution to troubled times in the video game industry is to release interesting and exciting video games. I know I sound like a broken record, but it's true. And in November, within just two weeks of each other, we've got two very different, very powerful and very exciting video games coming out that are generating a lot of hype, a lot of excitement. I, for one, cannot wait. Now, before we move on to our interviews and some more news, I did want to bring up something that came out of this week's Here's the Drink.

9:29Now, if you don't know what Here's the Drink is, it's basically an opinion piece that I write. I do it every week, every Monday. it's often reacting news from the last week but not always it used to be called the game business micro but i didn't think it really sold what it was about it is only for paid subscribers we don't have a huge number of paid subscribers i know most people here will not have listened to it we do most of our episodes for free um but if you do pay to get the game business you you would have received this on monday morning and this week's one has sort of had a bit of a reaction to it so it's sort of uh and it was all around my attempt to counter some of the narratives that are going on in video games at the moment and i don't just mean the negative narratives we're hearing about the crash 2.0 for the video games industry and everything collapsing i'm talking about some of the trends that have been going on in video games so for instance the the sort of decline of the american video game development scene and the rise of china now everyone's moving to china or southeast asia in general and also conversations about hey consoles don't work anymore or western AAA video games don't work anymore.

10:33We can get hung up on trends. And we can think this is the direction of travel for the industry when reality is the industry works in cycles and it can be really hard to tell what the overall trend really is. Now, there's been a few pieces lately. I've read a bunch of LinkedIn posts. There's a YouTube video I watched on the death of live service games. Rob Fahey wrote a really good piece on games industry. He's making his predictions about the video game industry. And actually, a lot of his predictions I really agree with then he certainly hits on many of the big topics. But the thing with trends is that they're rarely permanent.

11:05They often switch, and you need to dive deeper into understanding what's truly happening and whether it's actually likely to continue. I mean, let's look at the big one, right? So Amir Savat, who does all those of analysis on where the industry's heading and where the layoffs are happening and all the things going on in the video games industry, he was at Gamescom, and he revealed that over two further layoffs over the last five years according to his tracker has occurred in north america in total 25 000 roles have been lost around into 15 of the workforce in the us now we did cover this last year on our game business show but the data is still saying the same thing other regions meanwhile have seen gains asia pacific saw the number of available jobs increased by 10 driven by 12 growth in china specifically the number of roles in europe meanwhile has basically stayed flat it varies by country within europe by the way the UK is down a bit, France is down a bit France is slightly impacted by Ubisoft, the UK partially due to the likes of Sony moving out of it, and actually that's just it, when you dive into these markets, is it an overall trend or is it actually a big player moved out of it or something shifted or something changed there was a big failure, what's caused this?

12:15What are governments doing? What are they saying? What are trade bodies saying? What is the output looking like? You can see that when you get down to those the topics are actually a lot more nuance. The UK, for instance, it has a lot, you know, the size of the UK games industry in terms of employees has dropped slightly. But that isn't really the headline for the UK video game industry this year. At least it shouldn't be. The headline should be Forza Horizon 6, Star Wars Galactic Racer, Silent Hill Downfall, Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight, War Dogs, Grand Theft Auto 6, 007 First Light, expand the remit a little bit, and you've got Battlefield 6 and then you've got Fables coming out next February.

12:52It's actually a very strong period for British made video games. It's one of the strongest periods I can remember. It's incredible. A lot of top quality titles are either coming to market or have just come to market. And what impact is that going to have down the line? When UK studios are putting out so many massive games in big, big franchises. There is challenges in the UK market, absolutely. Almost all those games I listed are American owned or Tencent owned or whatever. But there's no denying the uk scene is putting out some big games right now and that's a good thing excites governments encourages investment encourages support in france president emmanuel macron has just announced that they're going to launch a major cultural festival to celebrate video games and this obviously comes on the back of clay obscure expedition 33 which had extremely well from last year focus is doing extremely well they're just unclutch we had maverick who making clutch on this week there's no doubt costs are putting pressure on the u.s industry right now and that will put pressure on local governments to develop solutions that might make the area more attractive again, if that's what they want to do.

13:53So you have to think about that. When is that going to come in? We've been here before. If you go back 15 years, there was the whole 20 years, maybe. You got the whole brain drain to Canada when Canada offered the tax relief and everyone started to move their employment to Canada. It's not the case quite so much anymore. Now, China is clearly the place where lots of investment is going in the video games. We saw that during Gamescom. It was a significant moment. It felt like a moment. Gamescom was awash with titles coming out of China and Korea and a lot of Southeast Asia. It was a very exciting time for that area of the industry, working those markets.

14:24It was a moment. But did you watch Opening Night Live? Which was the Gamescom pre-event thing that Geoff Keighley hosted. I have to say, a lot of the games looked pretty similar. Not all of them. There was a handful that stood out. But there was a lot of very samey looking games. This is the problem. when investment flows in and people start seeing success from certain types of games and genres everyone chases the same thing the industry does have a notorious habit of seeing a blinking red light and then being like a cat and going we've got to go get it what happens if many of these chinese games somehow don't deliver success because the markets become oversaturated what happens in that situation will we start seeing a scale back in china these things all happen in cycles they just do things ebb and things flow to be clear i'm not suggesting that China's suddenly not going to become a superpower in the global video game industry.

15:14That is clearly happening. But I do think that suggesting that it's happening in the expense of the West, I mean, it can certainly seem that way right now. I don't know if it will seem that way in two or three years. It might not. Of course, it's not just about games being made in China. It's about companies in the West outsourcing development to markets where it's cheaper, such as those charities in Southeast Asia, India and China and stuff like that. It's clearly happening as companies try and drive down costs. but as we've spoken to a few studios lately not everyone is doing it and it doesn't make sense for everybody I mentioned earlier we had Maverick Games on this week you should check it out, it's a really fun interview Mike and Harinder were very candid anyway, they actually said they don't do too much outsourcing because they find it slows them down and the outsourcing they do, they tend to work with people who are nearer to them we've seen companies like Harvey Smith he's the former Arkane Studios boss he opened a new studio called Black Pony Immersive we had them on the show and he made a point of the fact that his team are american uk developer fuse games which are making star wars galactic racer they made a point that all their outsource partners are british sometimes they're doing it for cultural reasons sometimes it's because of time zones and sometimes it's because it's people that they trust or simply because they want to make sure they have the right talent not just the cheapest talent whatever the reason may may be outsourcing to other markets isn't something everybody's doing and it's not going to work for every studio and in fact you know many studios are actually pushing against it the things with trends it's not always wise to follow them and not everyone does now people are talking right now about the death of the console industry and there's no doubt the console market is extremely challenged but also i'm wary of even saying that we've been here before pc industry was dying 20 years ago the handheld games market was on its knees until the switch arrived and changed all that the reality is new products and new games can change momentum behind a trend in a moment.

17:03As we've talked about earlier about Zelda and GTA 6, maybe the console trend will be reversed come November. It might be a bit premature to suggest that, but it's certainly possible. All I will caution is these things you read on LinkedIn, these opinions that you're reading there or these articles that you're getting and that proclaim the future direction of the business, just do what I do and read it and go, yeah, but question it, poke holes in it, ask if this is a temporary trend or a permanent direction of travel because often you find it isn't now before we move on to our interview i do want to bring up one new story that you might have read on game file this week so our friend steven tortillo regular guest on the show he did an interview with well the co-founder of the game business jeff keely and mark cerny the architect behind multiple playstation consoles now both of them have announced a new thing called the nova Games Foundation.

17:57It's not related to the Game Awards, it's not related to PlayStation, it's entirely a Jeff Keighley and Mark Cerny thing. It's an unaffiliated standalone philanthropic philanthropic, I can't say the word, project. It's a university-backed fellowship program intended to offer six-figure grants to 20 young game designers every year. And hopefully for decades to come, that's the goal. It's no-strings-attached funding where they get mentorship from game industry leaders, a combination intended to aid the development of groundbreaking new video games that is what jeff and mark are hoping to achieve now nova will be collecting applications from 13 affiliate programs at universities across eight countries this includes the new york university university of south carolina alongside the abate university in scotland which is one of the big development universities in this country and there's also university in france germany australia as well so it's going to be a hundred thousand dollars per recipient with about a quarter of nova fellows that can also then claim half a million dollars for projects that are shaping up particularly well payments will be delivered based on development milestones and recipients will own their games nova will help promote the work developers will be free to pursue the publishers and platforms of their choice and nova will indeed help make publishing introductions too speaking to game file mr keely mentioned that how he's never felt it appropriate to commercially invest in video games given his position but he said i've never owned stock in a game company or taken financial stake in a game nova is philanthropy we aren't taking equity or looking to recoup the grants the return we're hoping for is creative helping new voices make games and find their footing mark and i each made multi-million dollar donations to establish the foundation and we intend to keep contributing we hope others will join us um those others include hazelite boskett joseph faris who has also backed the fund mark's ernie also told game file the industry has changed immeasurably since i started in games in 1982 these graduates have talent training tools that outclass what we had back in the day by an astonishing amount but they face a tough road ahead getting traction in the industry and many could benefit from our support we want to be there to give it to them very good now i think you probably had enough of my voice uh to be honest you've probably bored of it um so let's get some different voices on the show shall we during gamescom ubisoft announced that it was soft launching the player council it's a platform where players can sort of test their games and give feedback directly to developers you know other publishers do this ea does it and xbox does it as well the player council is run by a sort of it's run by ubisoft connecting games together and it lets players basically test early concepts and prototypes as well as updates to existing games there are four games that are in the player council now one is riders republic which you might have heard of it's existed for a while life service sports game the other is atomega now that's interesting because it's a game from 2017 that they didn't really do anything it's sort of been faded into the background well developer ubisoft reflections has sort of returned to it and it's in this player council um there's also a few other things that are in there there's an online multiplayer game called code name split point and a single player strategy game called code name rook which players can now go in and test if they want to be part of this council the interesting thing about this is that as they test things as they give feedback the players can sort of level up and get more access to deeper and earlier and bigger projects it's the only reason it's a fun thing to gamers do although you could argue that they're ultimately working for you was off for free but this is ubisoft's way of trying to get games in front of players earlier to get that important feedback now talking about the initiative and what the thinking behind it is and where it all came from i spoke to vi alexander who is the director of the player council and arnold fremont who is the associate director of community at Gamescom.

21:37And here is that interview. Hello, welcome to the show. It's lovely to have you on. Now, this is really, really interesting. You've sort of gamified the player feedback process. Let's start with the beginning. Where did this start? Where did this come from? Well, getting player feedback has been something that's always been important for Ubisoft. We have user research and other departments and we do alphas and betas, etc. This is something that our teams have been asking for to be able to get even closer and bring players in even earlier in the process than they have in the past. And so we thought, how can we help them?

22:15How can we put something together that brings the devs and the players into one place to have a two-way conversation and talk about the best ideas to make the games as great as they can be? And so the Player Council was born. Yeah. Obviously you do player feedback before. You've been doing it for years and years and years. One of the things you mentioned there, getting them in earlier, what's different this time? What's new about this that you just weren't doing before? So the idea is really to have a complementary approach. We will continue to do close beta, close alpha, tests, etc. Continue to listen to everything that players are saying on Discord, forums, etc.

22:53It's just that here we want to make sure that there is a dedicated platform to allow the dialogue between the players and the dev teams and build the trust. Because here, we're going to take risk, basically. We're going to provide games that are live, like Act Omega and Riders Republic in the console, but also prototypes that don't even have a name, that are still very, very early and more to come. So that's really the big difference, but it's a complementary approach, not really a new thing. and it's important to keep in mind that, as mentioned by the way, it's all the dev teams that are part of this program are fully voluntary and are asking for this feedback.

23:37So they are looking forward to it. Is there not a risk of it spoiling something that you might have, you know, brewing and exciting? Because obviously surprise is all part of the video game industry. I think the players who are going to be drawn to the Player Council are the type who want to know, who want to be involved, who want to have their voice heard during the development process, and they're less concerned about spoilers and more interested in helping collaborate on a great game. You know, it's free to join. Anybody can join if they want to, as long as they're 18 older. So I think when people self-select into sticking around, contributing to game after game, giving feedback, they're going to find themselves part of a community and having a lot of fun doing that.

24:26And making the games great so that when it goes out to the broader audience, people who weren't interested in being part of the process, that the game is something that everybody can be proud of, everybody can be happy about. And the production team will be able to decide also when they want to join the player council. So it can be at any stage of their life cycle. so at the very beginning or it can be later, etc. So some games that can be narrative-focused, etc. may want to start very early to test the core gameplay loop, etc. but keep the mystery. And we've seen it in Ubisoft, in the industry, with the early access, etc.

25:07you often give a bit, the first campaign, the first part of the chapter and then people will discover the rest. Yeah. But with a very solid gameplay, because this is what we want to achieve with our players. Is it just games or is features like maybe could the Players Council test maybe a feature of something that might end up in a, I don't know, an Assassin's Creed or something down the line, but it's, they won't necessarily know that. It's like a test. This is a new tool for our dev teams to be able to use when and how they need to. And it's a place to incubate new ideas. So some of the projects that show up on the player council are not ultimately destined for a launch.

25:46We might get a certain way through it and go like, okay, great, we've learned a lot. Now it's time to put that on the shelf and move on to the next great thing with what we've learned. I see. And teams are definitely going to experiment. So we're not going to, you will probably see a lot of games that are in the earlier phases cycle in and out, where you'll see that games that are reaching the later phases are going to kind of continue with the momentum, with the feedback that they're getting from the players and the excitement of the dev team. So it will depend on the project, what exactly happens, and it's up to the dev teams at the company to decide if it's right for them.

26:24I'm kind of excited to see Atomega sort of... I'm not entirely sure that's how you pronounce it, but it's sort of... Because it's Ubisoft Reflections, it's the Grow Home team and all that kind of stuff. I covered all of that back in the day, not being too far from me. But is that just to test this? What's the story behind that? You mean on Atomega specifically? Yeah, yeah. So Atomega is a very interesting case because indeed we released the game in... 2017? And so the team has been working on other projects for a while, etc. But it was always in the back of their mind. And so recently they were able to see that the community was still active, still playing games, proposing ideas, etc.

27:03And so they wanted to resume this adventure with the players. And they already started in July, where they started their test down, introducing new quality of life improvements, etc. And now they are officially joining the player council to go to the next step in terms of player feedback. Wow. This might be a really silly question, or even might be a question that's impossible to answer, but what does good feedback look like? It's not a silly question at all. You know, good feedback is going to be something that resonates with the other players that are part of those play tests and playing that game alongside you, and also about something that resonates with the game team.

27:47Since it's a collaboration, it's a two-way discussion about what's right for the game, the dev team has its vision and its intentions, and they share that through the game that they're making. Players will play that, come to their own conclusions about how successful that is, how much they like it, how much they're enjoying it. And what's great about the way that we've built the Player Council is that it's powered by games together. And so people can come into the community platform, post an idea. other players can upvote that idea so if it's something that is resonating well then more players are going to upvote that idea they're going to add their own contributions and and maybe add more detail to that idea and then the devs are going to see oh this is a really important feature or or concept to the community let's understand what it is that that that that that the intention is really behind that.

28:49You know, it may not be that the dev team does exactly what the idea is because they're professionals, they're experts in the game and the vision that they're trying to achieve. So they'll take the intention of what the community is saying, turn it into, you know, new gameplay, make a new build, let them play it and get feedback and the whole process starts all over again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine gamers in the player council, how much they do and how much they contribute how much they feedback sort of up to them in in many ways but um how do you reward them for their because you know for helping you make hit games we acknowledge the contributions that they're making when they're making things that are that are effective that are actionable that is resonating with the dev teams and the players we want to acknowledge that and we'll be doing that through a tier system so when they of course make these contributions they'll increase to a higher tier and that new tier can unlock more access to more confidential projects, to earlier prototypes, to spaces where they're able to have even deeper discussions or see additional elements of the game-making process.

30:00And so we reward them with access. When they say, hey, I want to contribute, we acknowledge it and let them do it more. I'm fascinated. What sort of people use who do these sort of things? Is it like maybe people that aspire to be game developers themselves? Well, there is no real specific target on our side. It's really all people that want to contribute, that want to be part also of this community. Because for us, it's a community platform first and foremost, for the players, for the games and the studios. People will be able to also select their preference in terms of game, genre, etc. We will see a lot of people that are interested about the back scenes.

30:42How is game development happening? How do we make decisions? Why do we do this? Not that, etc. So people that already care maybe about a franchise, about brand, about Ubisoft at large, or are just excited about the next big thing. Yeah. Is the goal that like most games, all games end up sort of going through the player council? It's always going to be a decision for each game because it's going to be right for some teams, not right for other teams, depending on the phase that they're in and the goals that they have for their project. So I hope that we see more as the platform continues to evolve.

31:22It's a new tool that is available to all of our teams. So if they want to use it, it's here for them. And I think that what we're seeing from our dev teams is an appetite for earlier feedback, for more direct feedback, for being able to have this two-way dialogue with the players so that they can, you know, feel better knowing that they're on the right track. I guess you mentioned it earlier, there is always this friction, I always think, between listening to the players and getting their feedback and reacting to it. But obviously, there's still an art form, right? And it's still an artistic vision.

31:57Feedback is a very... it's a big word in the English language that can mean a lot of things. And what is important for us is that indeed, people will share feedback because they want new things. They want, for example, more of the same, new features, or completely something else. But there is never a right or wrong feedback. For example, on Riders Republic, you may be interested in a specific brand of skis, or you may be interested in a specific toy or whatever, but your opinion is as good as the opinion of everybody else. So we would just want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to share their voice.

32:39And with the platform, we will elevate those voices and help the team prioritize and make decisions. I know feedback isn't a new thing, but it does seem to be this sequence has come in the norm. I'm going back a few years now when EA announced Skate and almost from the very moment they could have anything remotely playable, they put it in front of people and said, right, tell us what you think. Nintendo did it last year with that test I have no idea anything about. How would you like to see this develop in the future? Where do you hope this is going to go? This is the kind of platform that really brings together two of my passions.

33:12So I've been making games for a long time and I've been a gamer for even longer. And this is bringing together those two sides into one thing. And so what I hope is that we continue to build deeper relationships with our players as developers and that our players feel heard, that they feel listened to, that the games that are being made are the ones that excite them, the ones that interest them, and they feel are worth their time. And so I think when we invite players in to the foundational moments and to the entire process, then we're going to be surprised. we're going to grow, we're going to learn.

34:01And that dialogue between the devs and the players is going to create a shared respect and a shared sense of ownership that I think will just pave the way to even better games and happier developers who feel like they're really hitting the mark because developers are artists. They want to make something that people like and players want to play something that they like. Yeah. I always wonder. Some people take feedback better than others, but that's a different skill entirely. I'm out of time, but thank you so much. I'm excited for it. I'm excited to see Atomega come back as well. And yeah, thank you so much.

34:41Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we hope that players are able to find something that interests them and join the community. so thank you to to vai and arnold there for joining us um all that's left me to do now is run through the big stories from the last week and we've actually had quite quite a large number of stories including one that only just broke really xbox has swooped in to save kojima productions' metal gear solid successor fizzint the game was being funded by playstation it's a playstation studios game but sony said it would be cancelling the project in mid-june apparently now kojima said that he was determined to keep the project alive and sought a new partner eventually finding xbox xbox is publishing another kojima productions game the horror game od which is sort of a guess the sort of successor to what he was trying to do is silent hill before konami parted ways with him playstation's been a big supporter of hidey kojima's development studio ever since he left konami they helped set their offices they signed his game death stranding and its sequel death stranding 2 on the beach they weren't the most commercially successful of video games but i kind of is why you sign kojima kojima's your art house director he's the the credibility player you've got your big marvel game for the fans and you have the sort of art house david lynch like kojima on the side um honestly big pr win there for xbox sony's having a pretty having a summer to forget really on that from sticking with platform holders because it's been the week nintendo held its direct video we talked about and the zelda direct earlier but they also held another one where they showed off a load of games i actually thought it was quite good it was missing a heavy hitter but then you know these just the games are coming out of the six to nine months these aren't necessarily all the games in fact they're not all the games pokemon winds and waves from the big games nintendo have next year wasn't in it xenoblade genesis which isn't the biggest game in the world but that wasn't in there either what was in there was a lot of games for starters there were some big third party titles monster hunter wilds monster hunter's huge on nintendo so that's quite a big one the capcom warshow showed resident evil 2 3 and 4 remakes coming to nintendo switch in october there was two persona games final 57 revelations was in there so lots of lots of games for the total japanese audience and there's also the surprise launch of mecha chameleon which is out now that's the hide and seek indie game which is currently the best-selling video game of the year in terms of nintendo's own first party games there were sort of two big announcements there was a 2d metroid game called metroid ravenous i mean it's big for me i love that game i love 2d metro games they're not going to sell massive numbers but you know they've got an audience and the other one is kirby in the world beyond which seems to be a sort of open worldish kirby game now the last kirby platform title that only came out a few years ago was actually a big hit sold nearly 8 million copies so it's um it's it's growing franchise that Nintendo also showed updates of Mario Kart World, Pikmin 4, Star Fox has a new trailer for the Fire Emblem game they've got coming out next week there was more from Switch Sports Resort which is coming out in October.

37:34Zelda wasn't in this Direct because it was in the one that they did the day before. They also showed a new horror IP from Bloober Team called Onyx the Dark Grip. I'm calling this out because it gave me Eternal Darkness vibes and I'm a big GameCube fan. I'm a big fan of that niche horror game from 2003. So yeah, I thought it was a solid Direct. Lots of games. Quantity more than quality, but there's some good stuff in there as well. Keyword Studios. This isn't a sponsored message. This is just a news story about Keyword Studios. They've brought together seven of its creative agencies into one organization called free animal the new agency brings together gnet itchy kwm maverick trailer farm big farm and fire without smoke these are sort of uh marketing groups clients will continue to work with the same people but they can now plug into a sort of wider global network and if they need certain expertise they can tap into each other it makes sense it makes sense on paper i received a newsletter this week which i thought was really interesting it's from music exp who were sort of a music and gaming newsletter and they looked at the engagement figures for every track and artist featured in the Netflix Grand Theft Auto 6 review and I thought this was interesting.

38:36The newsletter found that artists featured in the trailer saw monthly Spotify listeners grow 670 % week on week and tracks featured in the trailer saw week on week growth of 9 ,177 % in Spotify streams. Obviously, percentages don't mean very much but I have to say it's just about the impact of the music in Grand Theft Auto and it's really interesting. You should check out the newsletter. A couple of other stories. lego digital players acquired off-road games that's a uk mobile developer formed by space ape games employees and no financial details were disclosed uh frontier has a scene adjusted operating profit jump 62 percent of the uk team to 21.4 million pounds that's for its 2026 financial year the highest in the company history actually very well done the results are due to strong sales in the jurassic world evolution planet coast on planet zoo franchises alongside increased tax credits and expenditure credits the studio has also decided to deal with disney to create a game featuring its ip which is almost certainly going to be a disney world sort of rollercoaster tycoons type game i'm excited about that we've got some sales numbers here mint rockets adventure rpg day the diver has now hit 10 million copies that's obviously a bit a bit smash hit indie game what indie-ish game i'm not going to get into that debate again uh the first big games of september have sold well as well on a mushy way of the sword from capcom has sold 1 million copies in a single day while rebel wolves is the blood of the dawn walker has sold 1 million copies in two days not so good news now a steam maintenance bug has led to the achievement list of a number of unreleased and in some cases unrenounced games becoming visible on sites that collect steam achievement information via an api there's some interesting titles been leaked there it's a bit of a shame because i imagine they were going to feature in some announcement events coming up seven employees of future lab have been very redundant this is following the cancellation of an unannounced project that was in pre-production the project was unrelated to the power wash simulator IP which is where the company makes most of its money.

40:23More bad news here, Life is Strange developer Dontnod has warned that it may not be able to continue beyond the end of January 2027 unless it secures further external financing. Gross cash has fallen from 17.9 million dollars at the end of last year to 9.3 million by the end of July so they're burning through cash very fast. And these are some stories from the week before that we didn't get to. Xbox is going to introduce monthly cloud gaming limits for Game Pass subscribers from November. Game Pass Essential will be limited to five hours of streaming time every month premium to 10 hours and ultimate to 15 hours subscribers can then purchase additional hours once the time is up xbox says this is going to affect four percent of game pass subscribers and the decision is due to the rising cost of cloud gaming as more players use it for longer going back to playstation they had a state of play event last week it was okay i thought um didn't again didn't go down in a storm but it looked like the nintendo direct didn't really but it was solid it announced limited edition dual sense controllers at time with gta 6 alongside a date for final practice 7 revelation which is april 8th 2027.

41:19he also announced until dawn with two which is out january 28th the game actually being helped made by ad hoc uh the developer behind dispatch alongside the uk team that's working on it that's that's interesting elsewhere during the state of play a lego playstation reveal double fine that's the old xbox studio shadow drop keeper on ps5 and there was new content for south ghost of yotai monster wilds and crimson desert oh there was a few new ip uh there too um ps5 exclusive folk horror game called hunter's moon that seemed interesting and a new kanami title set in 1920s new york named rhapsody in scarlet and finally the white house has launched arcade.gov a website of browser games built around donald trump's immigration policies that use all sorts of iconography and music from popular video games and features a logo based on the classic sega design it also did a zelda thing to tap into the zelda stuff you know the white house is doing quite a lot to sort of tap into video games i guys and i suspect game companies can be too terrified to tell them to stop but that's it from me today that's all the news we've got we will be back next week of course we might have four editions for you next week don't want to promise it just in case something falls through but it should be a busy week including interviews with the rainbow 16 play stack plus a deep dive into the japanese video game scene to make sure you don't miss any of it head on over to the game business.com stick in your email address and i'll send you an email the moment a new episode goes live but until then thank you for tuning in