Video Games Industry Finance Cheat Sheet: Spring 2026, 14/05/2026
Console makers wobble, Tencent surges and Capcom breaks records đ
Console makers wobble, Tencent surges and Capcom breaks records in latest financial results
eBay rejects GameStop acquisition bid, calls it âneither credible nor attractiveâ
Subnautica 2 emerges in early access as our pick of the weekâs releases
Hello VGIM-ers,
Well, Iâm back from holiday. I spent a week in Paris drinking cidre, gulping down galettes and attempting to order pastries in French without the staff immediately responding in fed-up English. The results of the latter? Comme ci, comme ça.
Anyway, itâs one month until Power Play launches and things are gathering pace. The hardback is being printed. The audiobook is done. And the tour starts at Hay Festival in under two weeks. Gulp.
So, nowâs a good time to reveal some of the endorsements for Power Play to coax you into a pre-order.
I outlined five of them in full on LinkedIn. There are approximately a dozen rolling out over the coming month. But here are three abridged tasters for you.
âPower Play is essential reading for anyone trying to understand where the next influence operation is being built.â - Eliot Higgins, Founder, Bellingcat.
âFrequently surprising and utterly absorbing whether youâre a gamer or not.â - Jonn Elledge, Sunday Times bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders.
âAnyone who still thinks that video games are trivial will learn from this book exactly why they are not.â- Keza MacDonald, Video Games Editor, The Guardian.
Ready to pre-order? Hit the button below to get the book on Thursday 18th June.
The big read - Video Games Industry Finance Cheat Sheet: Spring 2026
Uh-oh: The latest set of games industry financial results has dropped. Once again, they paint a picture of an industry battling to find its way through tough times. And this time, it feels like the sector is being buffeted by things beyond its control.
Shifting sands: Whereas the problems in the industry after the Covid boom could largely be laid at its feet, the latest set of results shows that the business of selling games is being seriously affected by both global geopolitics and the emergence of an immensely well-funded â and component-guzzling â AI industry. The result is disruption in some of the sectorâs core heartlands, which is arguably accelerating its tilt away from its traditional markets towards a new world of players.
Note: As per usual, two big explainers for the cheat sheet. Iâve reported all results in dollars first and placed any accompanying currency values next to them in parentheses for the sake of ease. Net bookings in a video game financial context pretty much = spend on in-game currencies and relevant redeemable purchases.
Far from consoling
Executive reshuffle: The most obvious losers in the current markets are console makers, whose âsell cheapish hardware and make loads of money on gamesâ model has been borked by AI businesses guzzling GPUs. Xbox is taking the hardest battering, though that is largely due to its own failures. According to Microsoftâs results for Q3 of the 2026 financial year, Xbox content and services revenue slid by 5% year-on-year (7% in constant currency), and its hardware branch saw an alarming 33% drop in revenue. Itâs the fourth time in the past six quarters that the company has reported a downturn in its game revenue. The results led to Asha Sharma, the recently appointed Xbox big boss, to announce a serious shake-up of its executive team. Letâs hope they like chucking buckets of water over the sides of boats.
Pricing in a downturn: Hard times arenât limited to Richmond alone. Nintendo also finds itself in something of a bind, despite its impressive performance in the last financial year. Its net sales of $14.6bn („2.3tn) and gross profit of $5.7bn („909bn) for the full year ending 31st March 2026 smashed 2025âs results into a pulp. But despite Switch 2 sales exceeding forecast and some surprising hits strengthening its performance (PokĂ©mon Pokopia), the companyâs share price slid by 7% after it announced price increases for its nearly one-year-old handheld. Investors will be crossing their fingers that a rumoured Ocarina of Time remake and a new mainline Mario game will land in this coming year to provide some much-needed cheer.
Crossing fingers for a return to Vice City: PlayStation maker Sony had little cause for cheer either. The company reported âflatâ net sales of $29.9bn („4.7tn) in its Games and Network Services division, an increase of just 0.3% year-on-year. And while it reported that its operating income grew 12% in its games division to $2.9bn („463bn), it also recorded a $765m impairment loss on Bungie across the financial year due to underperformance of Destiny 2 and problems getting its latest shooter Marathon out the door. It also forecast an expected 6% drop in its games and network services revenue segment in the next financial year. Avoiding such a precipitous drop will hinge on whether Grand Theft Auto VI is released and if the company is forced to raise console prices again if component costs keep climbing.
Across the video game world
Servicing its audience: The shifting nature of the global games market isnât only being felt in the console sector. Soon-to-be Saudi-owned service games publisher Electronic Arts posted an interesting set of results at what is likely to be its final set of public year-end accounts. Its overall performance across 2026 was mid, with net revenue climbing just 1% to $7.53bn, net bookings up by a more impressive 9% to $8.03bn and net income down by a slightly concerning 20.9% to $887m. But the companyâs net income grew by 81.5% in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, driven by the wild success of Battlefield 6, ongoing strong performance from Apex Legends and steady single-digit revenue growth across its sports portfolio. Good news for its comparatively cash-strapped new owners.
The cost of establishing trust: Meanwhile, Robloxâs results gave a full picture of how its platform is both eating the industry alive and creating entirely new challenges for an entertainment business to wrestle with. Headline growth figures for Q1 2026 looked strong. Daily active users hit 132m for the quarter, up 35% from this time last year, while hours engaged grew by 43% to hit 31bn across the three months ending March. Revenue was up by 39% to $1.4bn, with bookings up 43% to $1.7bn. But the companyâs net loss for the quarter grew from $216m last year to $248m in Q1 2026, with trust and safety spend growing 47% year-on-year to hit $197m due mostly to cloud-infrastructure costs. Thatâs the cost of growing a nation-state-sized games platform for you.
Video game superpower latest: The rise of China as the true superpower of the global games industry was underlined in Tencentâs latest financial report. Revenue in its Value-Add Services (VAS) division, where all its game stuff is nested, grew by 16% year-on-year to reach $54.3bn for the year (RMB 369.3bn). Domestic revenue leapt by 18% to $24.2bn (RMB164.2bn) after a strong launch for Delta Force and ongoing success with Honor of Kings, Peacekeeper Elite and cross-platform Valorant. International game revenue jumped by an impressive 33% to $11.4bn (RMB 77.4bn), with Supercellâs game portfolio and the mobile version of PUBG doing the business. The company said its strong performance was boosted by the rollout of AI across the business, which âaccelerated our content production, improved the user experience and enhanced our marketing efficiency.â Get ready for an online bunfight in five, four, three...
Balancing act: And for those looking for one final look at what life is like in the console heartlands, three Asian giants showed the importance of nailing your business proposition for a narrowing market of traditionalists. Lovely, lovely Capcom once again smashed it out of the park, with its tight focus on repeatable hits in series like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Street Fighter powering it to $1.24bn („195.3 billion) in net sales and an operating profit of $476.5m („195.3 billion) â a record financial year for the Japanese developer. Korean dev Pearl Abyss saw revenue jump fivefold to $210.6m (â©328.5 billion) for Q1 as a result of its surprisingly popular open-world game Crimson Desert pulling in over $170m bucks. But in contrast to these good news stories, SEGA recorded a net loss of $31.6m („5.7 billion) in FY 26 due to impairment costs on Angry Birds publisher Rovio and StakeLogic, as well as wider underperformance across its game portfolio. This resulted in the cancellation of a mysterious, but massive, âsuper gameâ project reportedly valued at $800m.
Change is here
More to come: Results season for the industry isnât over just yet. Take-Two will be unveiling its financials later today, batting away question after question about whatâs happening with GTA VI. Ubisoft will drop its results next week as it continues to transform from a slightly confusing megapublisher into a slightly confusing Embracer-style portfolio business.
Blufferâs guide to the results: But the latest results tell us a lot about the direction of travel of the industry at large. The console sector is being dragged forcefully away from its comfortable low-cost roots towards becoming a more expensive prestige product, whether or not its biggest players are ready for the change. The main growth in games is coming on new platforms with much lower barriers to entry and within Chinaâs sphere of influence. Businesses that want to succeed in the market have to tighten or clarify their proposition, both to sell games and to keep the confidence of shareholders seeking value in a shifting market.
Challenges ahead: And while there is a chance that disruption within, say, AI could shift the dynamics of the industry, itâs pretty clear that the industry is at the mercy of transforming technology and geopolitical machinations in a way it hasnât experienced before. Navigating that while still achieving the core challenge of making fun games people want to buy ainât gonna be easy, thatâs for sure.
News in brief
Gamestopped: eBay has rejected GameStopâs $56bn acquisition offer on the basis that it is âneither credible nor attractive.â Bloomberg reports that the company rejected the video game retailerâs offer because of âuncertaintyâ around its financing plan, the risks of an acquisition and its potential impact on eBayâs growth. The fact that GameStop is a quarter of the size of eBay and that its acquisition offer was almost entirely vibes-based suggests that the rejection was probably for the best.
Building games for EU and me: Arjan Brussee, the co-founder of Guerrilla Games, has said that he plans to build a âEuropean alternativeâ to video game engines Unity and Unreal. Speaking to delightfully named Dutch podcast De Technoloog, Brussee said that âno one is currently making an engine that is fully European-hosted, built by Europeans, and complies with European rules and guidelinesâ and claimed this is a problem because of the widespread use of game engines across wider society. One for European policy bigwigs to keep an eye on.
Widening the GNET: One for the academic/policy-minded among you. The Extremism and Gaming Research Network has formally joined the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, based out of the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at Kingâs College London. The move wonât change the way the network functions, but it will increase access to institutional support and access to a research ecosystem to continue its important work.
I said Iâve been to the year 9999: Thinking of playing an accidentally leaked early version of Forza Horizon 6? Think again. Playground Games released a statement on social media confirming that players who have accessed the game, which appears to have been leaked by accident rather than through a more malicious hack attack, will be barred from all Forza games until 31st December 9999. The game releases next week, just in case you think you want to run the risk of a multi-lifetime ban.
Spread the Wordle: Wordle is about to get its own TV show. NBC has confirmed that the game will be adapted into a quiz show hosted by US news host Savannah Guthrie. Filming is set to take place in Manchester, with the show broadcast in both the UK and the US. Jimmy Fallonâs production company, Electric Hot Dog, is bringing the show to life ahead of its launch in 2027.
Moving on
Former Tekken head honcho Katsuhiro Harada has formed a new studio with the help of SNKâŠFelix Baker is Director, Data Services at SEGA EuropeâŠAmy Graves is now Senior Partnerships Manager over at MythwrightâŠTom van Dam has been appointed as Aviaâs VP of Business DevelopmentâŠAnd Stephen Hey, Laura Harper, Louise Andrew, Michael Pattison, Carl Jones, and Caroline White have all been appointed board members for the newly formed Manchester Games Network. Letâs hope they get their lobbying asks and dance moves nailed before Andy Burnham heads south, eh readers?âŠ
Jobs ahoy
BBC Studios is looking for a Producer, Gaming and Interactive in LondonâŠLego Digital Play has been advertising a Game Design Director role for a couple of weeksâŠHasbro is hiring a Senior Writer in Austin, TexasâŠBad Robot Games has posted a Senior Producer role in the StatesâŠAnd IGN Entertainment has a rare Guides Editor posting in AustraliaâŠ
Events and conferences
Power Play Book Tour, UK - Multiple dates, May-July
Gamesbeat Summit, Los Angeles - 18th-19th May
BitSummit, Tokyo - 22nd-24th May
Summer Games Fest, Los Angeles - 5th-8th June
VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July
Games of the week
Subnautica 2 - The sequel at the heart of a lawsuit featuring the most hilarious misuse of generative AI ever, finally enters early access.
Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes - Itâs FtL but with a fleet of ships from Battlestar Galactica and procedural storytelling. Whatâs not to like?
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Rip-roaring Indy adventure lands on Switch 2 and pulls off a Cyberpunk by actually looking pretty good.
Before you goâŠ
A video game satirising the Trump regime has been installed in an arcade machine in Washington D.C., sparking global mirth in the process.
Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell has been installed on the National Mall by the Secret Handshake Group.
It allows players to make meaningful choices as the Commander-in-Chief, such as invading Iran or, erm, just ordering a Diet Coke instead.
You can play it online here.
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