Explore every episode of the podcast The Game Business Show

It’s a jam-packed edition once again. On the Show, we’re joined by Poki’s Romy Halfweeg to discuss the rapid rise of web-based game platforms, and consultant Cassia Curran comes on to chat video game pricing.

Plus, we discuss the shock closure of BioWare, and tease a bit of our upcoming interview with ‘father of PlayStation’ Ken Kutaragi. Enjoy!

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In this week's edition, Chris is joined by Commodore CEO Peri Fractic (real-name Christian Simpson), A Star Wars actor and YouTuber who now runs one of gaming's most iconic brands.

In our chat, we discuss the success of the C64, the appeal of its 'digital detox' flip phone, the company's partnership with Cyberpunk, its move to publishing video games, growing to Atari levels and more. Enjoy!

It's a mega edition of The Game business this week, featuring two huge interviews. Our big focus is on Activision’s bid to regain fan trust with this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, featuring insight from chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl. We discuss leaving PS4, Xbox One and Game Pass, returning to Nintendo, the disappointment of Black Ops 7, the GTA 6 opportunity, press coverage and the surprise success of the Black Ops 1 and 2 PlayStation ports.As well as that, we also have an interview with Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilley and Fuse Games boss Matt Webster to discuss a more independent approach to making Star Wars games, and what comes next for Star Wars: Galactic Racer.

This week, we speak to Velan Studios leaders Guha and Karthik Bala, who run the studio behind the new Star Fox remake on Nintendo Switch 2.

The Balas, who had previously founded Vicarious Visions, discuss how they won over Nintendo, how they keep costs low as an independent US developer, working with big IP, taking risky bets and finding a 'middle way'.

In today's bumper The Game Business Show, we're joined by leading analyst Joost van Dreunen as we discuss the perils and opportunities from a rapidly consolidating video game industry.

We also reveal how the GTA 6 and Zelda reveals boosted console sales, how PS5 physical games performed last month, who came out top in September, and there's a small interview with Pearl Abyss Europe CEO Lybee Park about Crimson Desert, too.

In this edition, we welcome Philip Holt, the boss of State of Decay developer Undead Labs. The studio has just declared its independence from Xbox, but has had to lay off a 'significant' number of staff as it prepares to release State of Decay 3 next year.

We discuss the studio's new independence, why it didn't find a buyer, whether it has enough to finish the upcoming horror game, the business realities facing smaller teams and his "irresponsible" approach to transparency. Plus, lots more!

In today's bumper edition of the Show, we discuss the layoffs in the games media, plus we have two interviews. The first is with the leaders of Bloober Team and Broken Mirror Games about finding weird horror titles akin to Backrooms in the film world.

Plus, we chat to New York Games Week's Guy Blomberg about the surprise soft launch of the event next week.

We chat with four leaders from EA's Criterion studio about how it made Battlefield with three other international studios, and whether the studio is still the same one that made those Need for Speed and Burnout games.

In today's The Game Business Show, Chris speaks with Tencent’s Yong-yi Zhu at Gamescom. The two discuss Tencent's bid to find the next Larian or FromSoftware, the success of Chinese-made games in the West, the company's ambitions for Hollywood, and the advice he gives Tencent's huge army of studios. Enjoy.

In today's edition, Chris dives into the changes at Xbox and why the cuts - although brutal - are necessary and sensible. Plus, two leading localization experts chat about the challenges in releasing games in other markets, and the impact of AI on the translation sector.

We speak to the head of Rainbow Six: Siege Joshua Mills about the challenges that followed last year's major X update, the hack that took out the game over Christmas, life under new Tencent ownership, how to handle GTA 6, younger vs older players, and, erm, Moana.

This week, we're joined by Japanese video game industry expert Dr Serkan Toto, and we talk about the state of the Japanese video game industry, the dominance of Nintendo, impact of China, the rise of PC and lots more.We then welcome Lyrical Games' Blake Rochkind to discuss the $40 price point of Valor Mortis, and why the publisher felt they had to go low during a hyper competitive moment for the video game industry. We also talk broadly about the rise of AA (or rather III) video games.Plus, Nex Playground secures more funding, and more!

In this bonus edition of The Game Business Show, Chris talks to Balatro publisher PlayStack about how the hit poker game has transformed the company, why it's not looking for a 100% hit rate, and what it expects from its new owners.

We speak to Joe Brammer, CEO of Bulkhead, which has just launched the smash hit 100-player first person tactical shooter Wardogs.

Just nine months ago, the studio was under threat from going under after Tencent no-longer wanted the team. Now, it’s had one of the surprise hits of the year, with two million games sold in Early Access after just one weekend.

In this interview, Brammer discusses the shock success of the game, the impact on the team, the reality of crunch within the studio, his attempt to run his own video game showcase, and how he’s looking to scale-up to handle the demand for Wardogs.

Enjoy. 

This week, Chris looks at the potential of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the month GTA 6 launches, Ubisoft talks about its Player Council, Geoff launches a foundation, and Kojima gets closer to Xbox.

We speak with Maverick Games bosses Harinder Sangha and Mike Brown about being dropped by Amazon, the "offensive" offers it received from other publishers, the state of the racing genre, taking on Forza, and its dream of becoming the greatest game developer in the world. It’s a good one!

In today's edition, Chris shares the latest data from the GTA 6 Netflix reveal, including its impact on PS5 and Xbox Series S and X.

Transcription by ESO. Translation byMeanwhile, Newzoo consultant Ronan Patrick comes on to discuss GTA 6, the fate of consoles, the rise of sequels, friendslop and more.

Plus the latest stats from Gamescom!

We speak to CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michal Nowakowski about the switch to making multiple games, returning to The Witcher 3, why it released Cyberpunk 2077 too early, the fate of video game consoles, TV adaptations, The Witcher 4 and a whole lot more.

It’s our bumper Gamescom edition of The Game Business Show.

In this edition, Patrice Désilets, the creator of Assassin’s Creed, speaks to us from Gamescom about the newly launched 1666: Amsterdam. He talks returning to Ancestors, and the reality that he may only have a few games left to make.

We also chat with Raccoon Logic, specifically game veterans Alex Hutchinson (also a former Assassin’s Creed creative director) and Reid Schneider. We talk about their new hockey game Breakaway Hockey League, which was here in Cologne, and why they’ve had to abandon the old ways and embrace a new world.

Finally, we offer a sneak peek at next week’s big interview featuring CD Projekt joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski.

Oh, and we’ve all the big news from Gamescom.

In today’s bumper edition of The Game Business Show, we chat to Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg about his '100% optimistic' view on the future of the video game industry.

He also chats about the tech firm's turnaround, his approach to leadership, the AI ‘threat’, the future of consoles, Netflix, Unity’s friendship with Epic, the rise of China and Korea, and a whole lot more.

In today's edition of The Game Business Show, Chris is joined by Piers Harding-Rolls. The two discuss the potential impact of $1,000 game consoles (should they happen). The two also dive into the publishers that need to prepare fans for the moment PlayStation stops disc production in January 2028.

(Check out our newsletter at TheGameBusiness.com that shows the types of games and companies most likely to be impacted by this decision).Chris is then joined by Felix Falk, the head of the german trade association and organizer of Gamescom.

Felix talks about next week's event in Cologne, alongside the political angle for 2026.

The Game Business' Christopher Dring chats with legendary immersive sim game maker Harvey Smith (Dishonored/Deus Ex) and executive producer Ben Horne (NBA/Redfall) to discuss their new studio Black Pony Immersive.

The three discuss whether the 'immersive sim' is dead, lessons from Redfall, building a new studio in 2026, being positive in the face of a continued misery and a whole lot more

In this week's The Game Business Show, Chris is joined by policy expert Dr Celia Pontin to discuss Stop Killing Games, the consumer movement that wants to stop online video games being discontinued.

Why does the campaign keep losing? Why is the industry so intent on fighting back against it? Chris and Celia dive into the complications around this growing issue.

This week we speak to Sumo Digital Co-CEOs Andy Stewart and Gary Dunn. One of the biggest UK game studios, Sumo was behind huge hits including three Sonic racing games, two Sackboy titles, Crackdown 3 and more.

But following a $1.3 billion acquisition from Tencent in 2021, the firm has fallen away, cutting staff and selling off its publishing business. And it's been six years since the BAFTA winning PlayStation game Sackboy: A Big Adventure.

Chris catches up with the studio to talk about the challenges facing work-for-hire developers, the importance of its India team, trying to resurrect classic franchises, AI, tax relief, working on full games on a smaller budget and more.

This week, we are going through the big games still to launch this year, using data (check out thegamebusiness.com to see the full charts). Outside of GTA (and the sports games), what will be the biggest video game of the year?

To discuss this, I am joined by my old friend James Batchelor, the former editor of GamesIndustry.biz and current communications lead at Digital Bandidos. Enjoy!

This week, we are joined by Digital Extremes president Sheldon Carter, and we discuss the massive growth of Warframe, the death of Destiny, the firm's 'trust-based development philosophy', it's careful approach to making Soulframe and much, much more.

Amazon's game streaming platform Luna is coming to the Prime Video App, and Chris speaks with Amazon's games boss Jeffrey Gattis to chat about it, plus his views on Netflix's Unhinged, the future of James Bond games, the games he's signing (and not signing), reaching an audience that might not exist... and potentially being an alternative to $1,000 consoles.

Returning to The Game Business Show is Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy. Chris visits the RuneScape developer to hear about its ambitious plans to topple World of Warcraft, the phenomenon that is Old School RuneScape, the 'pain' of trying to save standard RuneScape, coming to consoles for the first time, and finding fans in China. It's a fun chat! Enjoy.

In this week's edition of The Game Business Show, we are joined by EA's in-game advertising boss Alex Dao to discuss putting ads within PC and console games. Dao discusses the opportunity, how to win over marketing people, what the new EA Advertising platform is all about, and making sure you 'do it right'.

In today's The Game Business, we are joined by Netflix's Sean Krankel, who runs Night School Studio and is the general manager of Netflix's narrative video games.

Krankel has just launched Unhinged, a 30-minute horror game that is streamed via Netflix and stars Sadie Sink (Stranger Things), Zoë Kravitz (The Batman) and Troy Baker (Indiana Jones). It's a game controlled by your mobile phone, where you'll direct the main character and also receive calls from the supporting cast. It's been a breakout hit, and we chat to Sean about building games for people who might not own a console or gaming PC, what might come next, and what the goal is for Netflix.

In this edition of The Game Business Show, we discuss the state of the video game media with Alex Donaldson, the owner of RPG Site and former editor of Eurogamer. Alex is just launching a brand new games website called Respec, which is designed to be a more playful consumer publication. We also speak with Atari’s new European boss Andreas Deptolla about the company’s plans, including its goal of turning MobyGames into the ‘IMDB of video games’. Plus, of course, we discuss the latest cuts at Xbox.

Today, we speak to Saber Interactive Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits about building AAA games smartly, and why the firm is all-in on licensed games.

We also discuss the developer's huge slate, which includes games based on John Wick, Jurassic Park, Hitman, Turok, Stuntman, Star Wars and more.

Xbox plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs as part of a major restructure, and will divest of five studios: Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs and Arkane Lyon.

In today’s The Game Business Show, we discuss how people at Xbox are feeling about these imminent cuts and changes. Plus, we analyse PlayStation’s decision to end disc production.

And our guest is Midwest Games CEO Ben Kvalo, who has a vision for a more sustainable future for video game makers.

In this special edition of The Game Business Show, we tell the story of Jason Rubin, the man who co-founded Naughty Dog, tried to save THQ, and then attempted to establish virtual reality at Oculus and Meta. Not only did we speak with Jason, but also numerous other industry legends and friends. We think it’s a pretty special session, filled with fascinating stories and insight. We hope you enjoy it!

In this free version of The Game Business Micro (it's usually only for paid subscribers), we discuss how we ended up with this situation at Bungie, plus what to make of the Xbox price hike. More at www.thegamebusiness.com

It’s a bumper edition of The Game Business today. We discuss the Steam Machine and whether there will be enough stock of game consoles this Christmas. Plus, we hear all about a new $50 million games fund aimed at ‘visionary creators.But our main chat is with George Osborn, who is the author of the new book Power Play: Video Games, Politics and the Battle for Global Influence. He joins us to discuss his findings around Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and more.

In this episode, it's another recording from The Game Business Live. We speak to Laura Miele, the president of EA Entertainment, to discuss how a Command & Conquer mobile game changed the company, the story behind bringing Skate, Dead Space and EA College Football back, single-player games, The Sims movie and lots more.The interview was conducted ahead of EA's acquisition by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (plus other funds), which Miele could only really touch upon (but we did ask).

This week on The Game Business Show, we are joined by Lucy James talking about her newsletter lookingfor.game (which is a sister publication to TGB). We also share some new stats about Summer Game Fest 2026 and how it boosted the media. But of course, the big conversation is on the expected cuts at Xbox. Enjoy.

We are joined by Housemarque studio head Ilari Kuittinen and brand director Mikael Haveri who discuss how to make their games appeal to more people, the experience of being part of PlayStation, and the transition from small indie to AAA team

This edition of The Game Business Show is with Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball, recorded on stage at The Game Business Live.

In this candid conversation with the Xbox leader, Ball shares the thinking and vision behind console exclusives, the frightening DRAM crisis, China, in-game advertising, streaming, working with Asha Sharma and the future of his famous industry reports.

Today, we speak to the all-new Paramount Game Studios and its creative lead Shawn Kittelsen. In this fun conversation, we chat about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin game, its horror Star Trek adaptation Shadow Frontier, building original IP, AI scepticism, 'cost effective AAA', whether the impending Warner Bros deal will change things. Plus, we touch upon Avatar Legends and... Jackass.

It's The Game Business Micro, the Summer Game Fest special.The Micro is usually for paid subscribers, but for this week we're making it free for all. It is a quick run through of the big stories of the last week, complete with some exclusive data and analysis.Today, we chat Xbox's return to exclusivity, 007: First Light's impending profitability, the success of Summer Game Fest and more.

This week on The Game Business Show:

- Amanda White and Jon Gibson of Iam8bit discuss the 'biggest yet' Summer Game Fest Play Days event, which starts on Saturday.

- Samantha Lester of ICHI Worldwide tells us all about building trailers for events like SGF.

- Our guest host is analyst Piers Harding-Rolls from Ampere, who is sharing with us a whole load of exclusive data around the impact of GTA 6 and the FIFA World Cup

- Plus, Nintendo Switch 2 hits a new UK sales milestone, and reaction to PlayStation's State of Play

In this edition, The Game Business Show speaks to Embracer CEO Phil Rogers. We discuss the formation of new Embracer spin-off Fellowship Entertainment and what it all means. We find out what Amazon's decision to pull out of games has meant for Tomb Raider. And we chat development costs, M&A, AI, and winning back the trust of the industry.

Enjoy.

Today’s edition of The Game Business Show sees us dive into Grand Theft Auto 6, featuring comments from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick and data from the ESA. We’re joined by Dan Dawkins, who is content director at media giant Future, and also runs the GTA 6 O’Clock newsletter and podcast, to chat through what we might expect from the blockbuster launch in six months.

In this edition of The Game Business Show, we have the first ever interview with Remedy CEO Jean-Charles Gaudechon.Gaudechon discusses the anxious reaction from fans to his appointment, and why it’s a good thing. Plus, we talk Control Resonant launching in the GTA year, Remedy’s reluctance around AI, the Asia opportunity, turning Alan Wake and Control into big commercial hits and lessons from FBC: Firebreak.Enjoy!

We have had lots of news this week. Including the story we broke yesterday around Xbox’s new leadership hires (featuring TGB regular Matthew Ball). Meanwhile, Embracer is being split in two. Indigo Pearl is merging with Fortyseven Communications. Sony isn’t releasing all of its games on PC anymore. The US market keeps growing… It’s all going on.

Joining us on the Show, we have three interviews for you. We chat with Nex Playground CEO David Lee, the head of EA’s Capital Games studio Erik Larsen. Plus, we ask PR veteran Chase Colasonno the big question: how do you announce a live service game in 2026?

Enjoy

We are joined by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, who is overseeing a $1 billion investment into video games, including the development of major new D&D titles. In 2027, it will release ambitious sci-fi RPG Exodus and D&D action adventure Warlock. But it also has a successful licensing business, which in recent years has led to the likes of Baldur's Gate 3 and Monopoly Go.

We speak to Cocks about its huge investment in games, why none of its first-party titles are live service projects, moving development outside of the US, how it is using AI... and Scooby Doo.

This week, we’re joined by two leading video game investors. First, we have David Gardner, one of the world’s most successful gaming VCs who backed Supercell, Unity and NaturalMotion. He speaks to us about the state of game investment, where it’s heading and what may cause it to come back.

Then we welcome Hooded Horse and Griffin Gaming Partners’ Tim Bender, who shares details about a new $100m indie fund.

Plus, we chat investor anxiety over Nintendo, Sega’s cancelled ‘Super Game’, Capcom’s results, Sony's AI push and a whole lot more. Enjoy.