headlines and hot takes: june 2026 edition

Hey guys, it's Nate. And it's time for the the headlines and hot takes for June 2026. And boy howdy, we've got quite a bit of a. It's June has just been an absolutely buck wild month. We started out really positively the games showcases so there was a PlayStation Direct, then there was the summer Games Fest and a whole bunch of other stuff. There was games being released out the wazoo and it was was really pretty cool at first and then you know, things pretty quickly devolved and June has been one of the more negative months that we've seen over the last couple of years in the industry just and well, let's just kind of get into it. So Microsoft last at the end of last month, here at the end of May brought on status Statistician. Someday I'll learn to talk. Not today. But they brought on Matthew Ball. He's stats guy, he's written some books. He did a really interesting PowerPoint that basically demonstrated that like, you know, more than half the money in games is driven by massive games like Roblox and Fortnite and you know, the others really pretty savvy guy and Xbox picked him up as one of their chief strategy officers there and Asha brought him on board and he's had a number of interviews that have been really interesting. He was over on the game business podcast and I've read a few things from him already. He's kind of been pretty prolific on just social media as a general rule and to be honest, I think that leaves a little bit to be desired. I kind of wish Xbox staff were like. Or the Xbox C suite would just kind of like just be quiet and fix things. But maybe they're going to. But boy howdy, this has been quite the ride. So like I said, everybody started off pretty strong and honestly we're going to start with just Xbox News and we're going to be here for a little bit. They started off with, you know, some pretty. The big kind of showstoppers here were the fact that they didn't announce that the new Gears game and Clockwork Revolution are going to be console and PC exclusives. And that's actually kind of exciting. That shows that, you know, they do recognize that maybe consoles aren't, you know, they might not be your breadwinners, but they give people a reason to play on your platform. And actually I think that does signal that they are semi legitimate about doing something in the console space. But it's pretty much, you know, and so that was exciting and I think that really Energized and charged up a lot of the Xbox fan base. But it has been just an absolutely roller coaster of pain because a memo came out and it was really released on Xbox Wire and I had read somewhere that people speculate that it was. This was an internal memo that they figured was probably going to get leaked at some point in time. So they just put it on the wire. But it's the next 100 days and painted a bit of a grim picture. And one of the things I think that it did do too is it also sort of laid out, you know, the fact that Asha is really dedicated to I think being a little bit more transparent. I think, you know, you know, she in that says that basically the Xbox brand has been struggling and has suffered and that some of the decisions made by the previous administration have really put them in a pretty damaged spot and that they're. They're all going to kind of have to like lock in and there's going to be a lot of, you know, there's just going to be some frustrating. I think the. The 1/4 it was like some of these decisions are going to frustrate you. And in reading that it was really kind of refreshing because I felt like there was a lot of honesty on the other side of that. I do think that she was basically sort of using business speak to prep. Prep the people over at Xbox for what was coming. And it's just a pile of layoffs and closures. They id @xbox just was announced that they shut down bunch of different closures. Several devs are being shut down or being evaluated for shutdown or they've been given the opportunity to potentially buy themselves out, including Ninja Theory. And this is nine days after they announced their newest game in this. In. In Senua's story or Senua Saga, if you would called Senua so not the best. But that game actually looked really promising and they had said that they were going to dedicate. Actually they were really focusing on making the gameplay much more substantial because those games I, I haven't played the second one to complete to completion but I did play the first one and it was good but the. The game elements weren't really super great. But hearing they were going to be focused in a little bit more on just gameplay was exciting because they actually hit a really a pretty incredible bar as far as fidelity and performance and I think so that was. That was really interesting. But then like I said, nine days later comes out. Oh well, Xbox is selling them which is a little confusing right because it's one of those things where it's like why would you announce this game at a showcase and then turn around and close the dev? And some of what's been reported is that they were actually. They're just hoping that by putting this stuff out there they're actually making these studios a little bit more enticing for potential buyers. And again there's also the opportunity for some of these companies to or these studios to buy themselves out. Among their Tim Schaefer and company over at Double Fine. They. They have gotten the axe but they, they're also just unionized and so that's gonna kind of gum, gum, gum some stuff up. But there also talks about compulsion arcane and undead undead labs getting the kibosh as well. So there's a lot of turmoil and this is stuff that has just been blowing up all over Twitter and X and there's a lot of speculation and a lot of it really isn't. Yeah, we don't know what. We don't know yet. But it's not looking good. And this is on top of just the fact that the Halo Combat Evolved remake, I forget what it was called something campaign Evolved I think something like that which was going to be available on PlayStation for the very first which is available on PlayStation for the first time. When it first released there was some weird like basically you were going to need multiple PSN accounts PS/ accounts to play couch co op and you know, there was a bit of a hubbub and of course there were some people trying to just sort of, you know, justify this and sort of like, you know, some of the fan. The Xbox fan base was trying to sort of say oh no, this just makes sense and you know, it's not that big a deal. But Microsoft ended up fixing the back end pretty quickly. So that is no longer. No longer the case. But again just that's kind of weird. So there's a little bit of egg on their face from that. But then and this is just kind of one of the things they raised their prices again or they will be in August and that the Series s will starting August 1st cost as much as the Series X did when it first released. I had it all but it's like $500 for the 512, $600 for the Series S1 Gigaby Series X consoles sort of brushing up against, you know, almost $1,000. It's just, it's just chaos. And I think that it's. There's one of a couple ways that we can look at this Right. Is that this. You know, a lot of times we don't always like to think about this, but hard times like this actually sometimes are necessary to do pretty serious course correction. And so, you know, in keeping with sort of, I think Asha's been very upfront and honest about just the state of Xbox and well, and that Phil Spencer and just the shape that was left in by Phil Spencer and company. And when you look at Saya Nadella's statements about, you know, basically not wanting to really subsidize Xbox as a brand anymore, like she's, it's, it seems pretty evident at this point in time that she's been given the task of making this profitable. And so they're exploring a lot of options, but that also means that they have to do a lot of cutting. They have to sort of trim a lot of the fat and sometimes they're going to cut right down to the bone in a lot of ways. And so it could be that this is life savings, life saving surgery. It could also be that this is just the death blow and that Xbox will just sort of retreat into, you know, being a third party publisher or something. Who knows at this point in time but only time's really going to tell. But it, it is absolutely wild. And they have, it's just been. I, I actually, I pulled up a timeline here. Give me one second. And this is just, this is not a perfect timeline here. But so June 1st they announced, they had their announcement for the June 7th game showcasing Gears of War E Day Direct. June 7th they have that. June 10th reports emerge that Xbox is preparing major layoffs and restructuring after a fiscal year end. Also, Asha Sharma Discusses Xbox next 100 days and hints at Game Pass and hardware strategy changes. I think one of the potential changes there was they talked about maybe doing ads to help subsidize like a lower tier Game Pass subscription. June 16, some more Game Pass titles were announced. June 25, Xbox announced that starting August 1 all the consoles will get price increases. Then there's some coverage about just June 25. Also Reuters present some coverage of the price increase and just broader Xbox business challenges. And then yeah, there's just been again a lot of talk about the price increases and then also the fact that they did apparently discontinue the 2 terabyte console model. So it's, it's been a lot. That's a really. And again started out very high, lots of really cool games coming out of Microsoft and so it was really exciting and then we got this. But I don't Want you to think that Microsoft is the only one stepping on rakes. And while it's not nearly as big in some ways, I think it's socially, it's probably got a little bit more of a. It's got a little bit. It's resonated a little bit more with me personally, so, you know, not to be completely overshadowed. PlayStation decided they wanted in on the fun too. They wanted to make people angry too. And so I present to you more Destiny drama. And there's just kind of been a bunch of stuff over here. One of the things that like I'm going to reference, I've got a. I should probably just open this stuff up sometimes. But they're. Liana Ruppert, she used to work at Bungie. I think she was a community manager or something though. She had just a series of really pretty revealing tweets. Like she kind of just put a lot of stuff out there that was more or less an open secret. But then she confirmed that someone was pretty true that a lot of that. She's one of the people who kind of said that Bungie was in pretty, pretty dire situation prior to being acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion a few years ago that, you know, she confirmed basically the rumors that they were on sort of a path to insolvency in a lot of ways. And a lot of that was. And there's been a ton of reporting, including a lot of reporting from Paul Tassi and Jason Schreier about some of this stuff as well. But that this is just, it's. It's been one of those things where upper management on Bungee grossly mismanaged money. And that in a lot of ways. One of the, my favorite, you know, lines here was that Paul Tassey wrote an article and it just, I'm gonna just he. And it's sort of a sum of some of this, but it's a $0.02 insider report on why Destiny 2 died. And he kind of wraps up with two bullet points and he has a little bit more of the article here. But, but because of the enormous, and I'm quoting him here, because of the enormous scale of content that had to be produced non stop as fans revolt against its scarcity, Destiny was only very rarely profitable during its entire lifespan. When Destiny was profitable, those extra funds were often immediately misused by leadership at the time, funneled into way too many simultaneously simultaneous incubation projects or ideas like spending tens of millions of dollars on a new unneeded 208,000 square foot headquarters. And that's kind of, you know, that's, that's the long and short of it. And a lot of Ms. Ruppert's, you know, tweets sort of confirm again a lot of these things. So it's kind of been one of those things where this community again, you know, besides the fact that the We Want Destiny 3 people on Twitter and in Facebook are just. Have quickly become my least favorite people. You know, they just absolutely pollute timelines or we're polluting timelines. I think like that that movement has sort of lost a little bit of steam here. But it's kind of, it's just been a wild ride over there in and of itself. You know, one of the things that happened, you know, after the final, and I'm going to sort of throw it up in air quotes because there's. I think they're already talking about needing another patch, but it's. That one's not confirmed for anytime soon because Sony laid off, you know, pretty much as soon as that final patch for Destiny 2 went live. I was, I think the number I saw was 292 people. So almost 300 people, which just, you know, that's almost, almost cuts the studio in half. And there were a lot of people talking about like, you know, that somehow this was all just a revenge plot from Herman Holster. The higher ups at Sony's, you know, at Sony C suite who were angry because they felt duped by Bone, by Bungie. And that was just a weird rumor that showed up on, on Twitter and X. And again, Paul Tassi sort of covered some of that and he did a little bit of digging around and that's. That was not the case at all. I mean, I think if anything, it's like Sony one wanted Slash wants Destiny to make money. But the thing is that the reality is it's just. It's been a wildly mismanaged property. And so it's just kind of one of those things where so Destiny drama has, has just continued to unfold. And this is what I'm going to say though is like in spite of all the outcry and the disappointment and everything else, I think Destiny in some ways is the best it's ever been. I've been thinking about it and, and reading articles that actually kind of confirmed that it's like the fact that it's like it's in a fairly stable place. The loot pools are really generous. Like the, the build crafting is pretty fun and there's an actual endpoint and you don't have to worry about your build being nerfed to death or redundant within a month or two. And so that does change some things, but in some ways it makes it a much more stable and a much more enjoyable experience. I know that I've been enjoying my time with it over the last few weeks since the, the last update went live. And so yeah, it's just, it's been super messy. And you know, of course, to sort of cap it all off, Sony this month reported that they are recommitting to live service. And it's just, it's one of those things that they have just not been able to, to just crack this one at all. And Ethan Gatch over at Kotaku writes, you know, his headline is Live service games have proven to be a near impossible nut for Sony to crack, but the PS5 maker isn't giving up. And to sort of. Oh, where was that quote? I just. So this is from Hideki Nishino who says we believe that live service games are content that attract users on a global level, so we want to continue to revitalize the market through both first party and third party content. He said that in an interview with Famitsu. He also continued with Live service games it's important to continuously provide something. The genre itself is relatively new and I think many people are trying various things. So we want to continue to take on that challenge within that context, which to be honest feels really at odds with the decision to close Bungee. I mean, or to, to kind of gut Bungee. It's like you have now granted there's a lot of, there's a lot of mitigating circumstances there and so Bungie still is there, it's still alive. But most of the staff that's there at this point in time is dedicated to working on Marathon, you know, so. Excuse me there. So there's that and they, they probably do I think. You know, one of the things that Herman Hull said in, in his statement was that just given the fact that like a lot and there have been a lot of things shut down as well, like you know, Destiny 3 was pitched apparently a rebranding of DES called Destiny Infinite or Infinity. Lots of again lots and lots of speculation and just lots of like just wild headlines. Some of it confirmed, some of it again just speculation. But you know, with one of the things in, in the statement in shutting down when Bungie was was all the, the layoffs were announced was that basically pulse to just for whatever reason, I'm not sure why that dude still has a Job from, from all reports, he's a really nice guy, but it definitely seems like he's just kind of out of his element that he kind of got promoted just a little bit beyond his, his competence. And you know he's, he's responsible for a lot of the. Just the egg on Sony's face in regards to. For with a lot of this live service stuff like he championed Concord, but. Yeah, anyways. Yeah, yeah. Just goes to show, you know, sometimes you don't always have to be good at something I guess, which is honestly he's a great studio head. Like I think his work over at Gorilla is just something like again the horizon, the, the. The. The pivot from being a first person shooter studio to making sort of an open world adventure game of that caliber and quality is. Is really pretty impressive and just I think he's just anyways back on track. But what he said is that none of the, the incubation projects that Bungie had at that point in time were in a state where they were basically they were gonna. They weren't gonna need anybody to scale like they weren't gonna need all those bodies and they weren't in a position where they could maintain all that. So for right now it's. They're continuing to support Marathon. They're continuing to stay with Marathon and I do think that that will. That represents a fairly interesting opportunity for them. Again, it's a pretty niche game and it's pretty excellent. Like I played, I played it, you know, not tons and tons and tons, but I played a few hours and it's. It really is very peak bungee but it lacks accessibility which is something that Destiny kind of had. Anyways, the whole thing is it just feels weird to close to basically lay off half the studio of one of your only sort of live service teams and then sort of turn around within a few days and sort of recommit to saying like we're going to revitalize the. The games as a service market. And, and I. Yeah just weird. But in other news, which is pretty nice Nintendo, you know, so it's not all doom and gloom because of course Nintendo's got to be that little ray of sunshine for everybody. And they, yeah they. They gave everybody pretty much on staff, you know, a 10 raise. So yeah, go to Nintendo you be you. So I don't. There's a. I guess I kind of want to have like a bit of a hot take here is like there's been a lot of really unhealthy dialogue around all of this I think watching the Xbox community crash out online, watching the Destiny 2 or the Destiny community crash out online, some of this is, like, people are taking this really personally. And this is the thing, is that video games are art, but they're also a business, and there's a business proposition there, and they need to make money, and we don't always have to like that, but that's just the reality of these things. And sometimes the business side of these things fails, and that's okay. And that as businesses, they need to do course correction. And I think as fans, we can and maybe rightfully should be disappointed. And I think, you know, there's. We should be angry at people who mismanage these properties and abuse their positions and ruin things that we love. But, like, they're just. You know, I'm gonna say it, and it's. It's one of those things where it's like, it is only video games. And while a lot of people are. Are affected, especially over at, you know, at Bungie, you know, I'm guaranteeing that, like, a lot of those people did pretty well for themselves, so I'm sure they'll land on their feet. They're talented people. They're. They're good workers. And I think over the last couple years, we've seen repeatedly that small teams, small, fairly independent teams. I'm looking at you, Claire Obscure, Expedition 33 from Sandfall can do big things. So. Yeah, anyways. Yeah, so don't take it personal. Like, be a fan. Love the things. But, like, let's just all take a step back and recognize that sometimes businesses got to do business stuff. Anyways, that's the headlines and hot takes for this month, guys. Yeah, I'm flying solid tonight. But all that being said, until next time, be good, do the things, and if you don't like something I said, feel free to get a hold of us. Or if you think I'm super smart and handsome, I wouldn't mind hearing that either. All right, until next time, guys. Later, Sam.