You won’t be shocked to read, dear reader, that this particular writer did not manage to make it to Cologne this August. Life (sometimes) and finances (always) proved a bridge too far to cross. Not that it’ll come as much of a surprise; 2026 has very much been a down year for Yet Another Gaming Blog. We will fix that, I promise.
This past iteration of the planets largest video gaming expo was, once again, a virtual one for yours truly. Geoff Keighley (the creator of The Game Awards!) blessed my television once again with his Opening Night Live presentation. Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant’Albano, Resident Evil Requiem’s Leon S. Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft respectively, hosted this year’s future games show. The gamescom awesome indies show (hated not putting capital letters in there, but that’s what it’s called!) filled Thursday evening too. It was slick, and efficient, and ultimately a little lacking?
Don’t get it twisted; Gamescom week was a blast to take in. Three days of showcases is fun, the extensive coverage on the big (or big-ish) publications was “can’t miss” stuff. I found myself listening to an IGN podcast for the first time in about 18 months. Games being everything for a week is so good and so fun. And, like I said last year, if we can get the big platform holders to buy in, we can re-create what we lost when E3 dipped.
Powerpoint Presentation
“Opening Night Live” is a fine way to spend 2 hours, but it’s very clear that this is the bottom of Geoff Keighley’s list of priorities. The Game Awards is clearly his pride and joy, and Summer Games Fest is another of his creations, so it makes sense that the established event that he’s stepped into after the fact is the one that gets the least amount of focus. And, yes, I do understand that they can only show what’s actually coming out. But it felt like there was a distinct lack of major annoucements this year compared to last, compounded by the big end of show spots being occupied by “more Final Fantasy VII Revelation” and “DLC for an 11 year old game“.
There were some things that caught my eye, though. The Defiant is a first person World War II shooter from the perspective of the Chinese army as they defend the invading Japanese forces. This part of the war is barely covered in the medium, so it’s refreshing to see it become the focus in a new story driven game. Unclear if it’ll come to consoles. Here’s hoping.
Stage Tour is a rhythm action plastic instrument revival from Red Octane, the godfathers of the genre. I bloody loved Guitar Hero, and Rock Band specifically, and have been desperate for a new one of these for ages. All I ask for is a decent single player campaign, and Reptilia by The Strokes. I’ll even get a CRKD guitar in for the occaision.
There was stuff here for those willing to look. But it was a little difficult to not feel a bit disappointed once those credits rolled. On the showfloor, Konami and Capcom seemed to generate a lot of buzz from attendees, with their Castlevania and MegaMan revivals. I was a little disappointed that Nintendo chose to only showcase Nintendo Switch Sports Resort from their upcoming stable of releases, relying more on third parties. Yes, it’s very impressive that 007 and Modern Warfare 4 are gonna be on this thing, but my word would I rather just see what you’ve got going on. A week later, they’d do a pair of their own directs, including formally unveiling what The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will be on Switch 2. Would have been great to get some hands on impressions of it! Shame!
For another week, however, my world felt right again. Logging into Eurogamer and VGC, hammering whatever previews they’d managed to get out from the previous day, it was magic. It was like it always was. Over the course of the week, I noticed something in my local newsagents. A copy of Game Informer magazine. Granted, it was about 2 months old at this point, but this was the first time I’d seen one in the wild before. Considering I’d thought it’d gone extinct some time ago, this was quite the shock. So I bought it. For a tenner.
Stop The Presses
For those out of the loop, Game Informer is one of the premiere gaming magazine publication brands. Throughout my adolescence, I was picking up my beloved Official Nintendo Magazine every month. Sometimes, when I was venturing into London, I’d treat myself to a copy of EDGE or GamesTM (the premium choices for the sophisticated player) for a FIVER before getting on the coach. Oh to live under a semi-functioning economy once again. Game Informer, however, was always this mystical creature. It was a deeply influential name that literally informed how the gaming publishing industry would operate. It was a big deal for a game to be on the cover of EDGE; Game Informer literally made that something to aspire to. In a way, it was the industries taste-maker.
It was shuttered in August 2024. After 33 years in publication, an industry cornerstone closed its doors, and dealing a further blow to print media. Then, about 8 months later, the brand was purchased by “Gunzilla Games”, and the brand was reborn as an independent publication. Somehow this news passed me by, because that copy of GI was my reintroduction to the magazine titan.
Which leads to present day, where it was announced that Game Informer is now available to be subscribed to outside of the US. This, for me, is fantastic news. The print scene in the industry is waning. Only EDGE, Retro Gamer, and PC Gamer (off the top of my head I hope others exist) are readily available in British shops. Cast your mind back a generation or two, and you’ll recall each platform holder being represented by official and unofficial publications, and EDGE were challenged by GamesTM in a battle to become THE prestige games magazine. GamesMaster and CVG covered all platforms in a pretty silly manner. We live in a horrible time, to be sure.
I’d absolutely buy up an annual subscription if it weren’t for the price. I don’t have £100 for 10 issues of the magazine, nor do I have £65 for that digitally. This isn’t to disparage the endeavour, far from it. It’s just that, right now, it’s not an expense I can make. I’m not asking for pity, far from it (though, if someone who works for GI is reading this and wants to hook me up, hit me up). I don’t doubt for a second that it’s worth the price. £100 a year (reduced from £140) just doesn’t seem like a particularly great value for me, personally. I don’t even do that for EDGE, and that magazine is £7 an issue.
Rich Man’s Game
Yes, I do appreciate that in not supporting print journalism, I’m contributing to the further decline on print media. But, as the cost of existing in this hobby continues to rise, we simply have to make tough choices when it comes to how we engage in it. Thanks to AI, the industry is in the midst of a component crisis. The cost of parts to make consoles is exponentially more expensive than it was when this generation started, meaning that platform holders are turning every trick possible t keep profits up. Because God forbid the line doesn’t point directly up for a little bit. So the cost is passed onto the consumer, obviously. In 2020, I spent £449 on a disc edition PS5. For a PS5 with a disc drive in 2026, you’re looking at £569.99. An Xbox Series S, the weakest current gen console, is now £429.99 (up from £249.99 at launch), and the Series X is £669.99 (up from £449.99 at launch). That the Switch 2 (now £429.99, from £395.99 at launch) is at the price it is feels miraculous.
At this point in the PS4s life, you could pick one up with a game for about £200. The rising price of machines 6 years into the generation suggests that the next set of consoles, which surely won’t drop until 2028 at the earliest, will be close to, if not breaching, a grand each. That’s gross.
That’s obviously bad, but that isn’t even where the bad news ends. If you can afford the cost of entry, getting games to play is another financial hurdle to jump. It feels like £60 is pretty much locked in now as the standard RRP for a big title. If you shop around, you’ll no doubt be able to find good deals. But platform holders do not want you to do this. Sony announced in July that disc production will end in January 2028, meaning that absolutely nothing can release physically on PS5 from that point. And that sucks so much. A huge part of my teenage years were spent in the pre-owned aisles of Game and Game Station, and I picked up some of my now favourites for a fraction of the £40 RRP. That allowed me to stay engaged with gaming as a hobby, and plough more of my own money into it as I grew older. The scenario where physical media doesn’t exist on PlayStation, undeniably THE leader in cutting edge console gaming, is that of a monopoly. No discs means no game swapping, no trade ins, no pre-owned market full stop. It means they control the price of entry indefinitely. At the time of writing, The Order: 1886 can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store for £34.99. It came out in 2015. It’s on eBay for a fiver, right now.
Now, to give Sony the slightest out, just because they’ve announced the end of discs, doesn’t mean they’ve announced the death of physical media. There were some rumblings, not long ago, that the PS6 will either be a fully handheld/console hybrid, or have a hybrid option alongside a more traditional console. This could mean they’re shifting to cartridges, ala Switch and Switch 2, or offer some sort of physical key for a digital download (like those Game Key Cards you hate so much). We won’t know for certain until they announce their PS6 plans. It does, however, leave those of us with physical libraries without an option to carry our titles over to a new generation in the same way those who have built digital libraries have. It’s up to Sony to demonstrate how we’re to be served.
I dare say this is emboldened by Rockstar’s decision to release GTA VI as a code-in-a-box rather than on a disc. The biggest entertainment launch of all time will happen in November, and every single modern gaming liberty is being taken to maximise profit for everyone involved. £69.99 RRP, with an £89.99 “ultimate” edition, and it’s download only (presumably so it doesn’t leak early). They will make billions overnight, and justify every financial decision as a result.
Death by a thousand cuts
And then there are the cuts. Christ on a bike. Not a week goes by without Sony, Microsoft, EA or Ubisoft announcing they’re making hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people redundant. During the COVID pandemic, the gaming industry was awash with investment because people were at home and playing games more than ever. It didn’t occur to anyone with money that things might open up one day, so they opened new studios, over-hired at existing studios, and chased exponential growth. Obviously that growth stopped when it was decided that the pandemic was over (it never was over), and that investment dried up. And the worker was the one who paid the price.
In 2026, I’m seeing that Halo will now be made by Activision. That feels egregious. Rare, one of the UK’s foremost studios, is now reporting to Activision. That feels like a crime against art. Microsoft are closing new studios every other week, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Sony, too, are shutting studios, with BluePoint, a company famed for modern gen ports of older games, struggling to get a God Of War live service title (what were they thinking with that idea?) off the ground. Modern gaming is currently stuck in a cycle of upping prices, reducing taskforces, and claiming AI will help somewhere down the line. It’s a mess.
Despite all that, Nintendo are doing a good job of keeping games somewhat accessible. Two of their big releases this summer (Star Fox and Splatoon Raiders) released for just over £40. Their games are £10 cheaper digitally than they are physically, encouraging players to buy through them, without breaking that generally accepted £60 RRP. They haven’t, to the best of my knowledge, closed any studios or announced mass layoffs either. That isn’t to praise Nintendo for not taking the mick. It’s to say that, at a time when so many others are, it’s refreshing for things to feel normal in one corner of the industry.
What was the point of this whole thing? Dunno. I had some thoughts I wanted to get out there. It’s my blog, I can do what I like with it. Think I’m gonna do a preview of a specific game, next, just to get back into the swing of actually covering things. Sorry for disappearing.
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