The Vergecast - Shuhei Yoshida on the future of gaming

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

It's a confusing time right now for gaming. Video games are becoming an increasingly expensive hobby. Games are expensive to make, too, and companies want to sell the most lucrative ones they can: Sony and Microsoft are cutting jobs to refocus on blockbusters. At the same time, we’ve got more ways to play than ever: handhelds, phones, even cloud gaming is getting better. So where are we headed? Today on The Vergecast, Sean Hollister asks that question of Shuhei Yoshida, who spent 31 years at Sony playing games and figuring out what gamers will pay for. Further reading: The smart home graveyard is getting crowded There may be a way to save your June Oven after all Nvidia says its new AI safety platform can contain rogue agents within ‘milliseconds’ Bose’s first wired earbuds in 11 years add noise canceling Xbox is barely Xbox anymore AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference — except the games Half of developers think gen AI is bad for the gaming industry In 2025, AI became a lightning rod for gamers and developers The golden age of handheld gaming is already over The Steam Machine is the most ambitious game console I’ve ever played The PS6 sure sounds like a handheld The Steam Deck makes PlayStation’s biggest games portable PlayStation exclusives aren’t coming to PC anymore I regret buying the PSVR 2 Xbox exploring ‘radically different’ console business models How Sony bought, and squandered, the future of gaming Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of sticking an S&S cartridge into your handheld. I'm your friend Sean Hollister, and today we're talking to Shuehai Yoshiba. He helped work on the original PlayStation. He produced PlayStation games for decades. He led Sony's internal publishing teams, and he championed indie games. A journalist once called him the soul of PlayStation, and he was pushed out of the company. But I don't just want to talk about the past. I first met Shue when he was wearing his technologist hat.

when he introduced PlayStation VR, and again when Sony embraced the Steam Deck PC handheld. I want to know how he sees the future of gaming. How will we play? How will games be made and played in an era when server farms are gobbling up all the chips, and developers have generative AI tools? Will people keep buying increasingly powerful and expensive boxes to go under their TVs? Or is the future handheld, or phone, or cloud? Shoe is a prolific gamer who thinks about all of it.

this, and at Sony, he wizard the room. But first, here's what's happening on the verge today. This is 90 seconds on the verge from Monday, September 28th, 2026. There may be a way to save your June smart oven. Grilling company Weber may be facepalm this past week when it chose to save a few pennies by nixing its cloud services, taking away features you paid for like a live camera review of your food. But two June owners have started Project July, which claims your oven can run its own server. Just unscrew seven screws and plug your laptop into the oven to install. They say they need to test it more before they offer a download, though. Do you trust Nvidia to contain rogue AI agents? It just announced a sandbox called the Open Agent Safety Platform that it claims can quarantine

rogue AI within milliseconds, keeping them from, you know, going off and hacking another company. CEO Jensen Wong, a man who notably does not seem to think the AI industry should slow down, told CNBC that AI agents should only have the info they need to do their job. InVIDIA claims the open agent safety platform is open source and doesn't necessarily require Nvidia's latest CPUs to run. And for the first time at 11 years, Bose is making wired earbuds again. They're $99 and have two microphones per earbud for both noise-canceling and transparency modes. Either nature is healing or this is a recession indicator, writes Verge subscriber Berkallium.

I just hope the USBC buds can de-throw on the earpots, Can someone please ship earbuds with an incredible mic? You can read more at Theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 28th, 2026. Support for the show comes from Sonos. Most of us here at The Verge are big movie buffs. When watching at home, I don't want that experience to be any less immersive than it would be in a theater. And sound plays a huge role in that.

The Verge has actually published a few pieces over the years about how much sound matters to a movie. From headphones to soundbars, a Sonos system pulls you in. So far, you might actually think the phone call is coming from inside the house. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system. Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying, excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore.

What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, How to Mind Your Manners. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Deepgram Flux TTS, different voices. Same model, all ready to speak. Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents. Flux reads the room.

It holds context across the conversation, turn after turn. With consistent tone, interruption handling, and plenty of personality. So your agents keep it flowing and customers can just keep talking. Try DeepGram flux TTS free now until September 12th. Visit deepgram.com slash keep talking. Terms apply. Shuehiyoshita, welcome to the Vergecast. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Yay. You spent 31 years at Sony playing games and figuring out what gamers will pay. for. If you had to just reach into your brain and pull out a picture of where the industry is headed, where do you think all of this is going? So, you know, looking back how the industry has progressed, I think every year, almost, you know, every year for the last, you know, 20, 30 years, there are more people playing games, I think, you know, across many different devices and from all over the world and you know the gaming has spread to all corners of the world and the game creation

has spread to all corners of the world thanks to you know digital distribution of games anyone can buy games as far as you know you have access to internet and money and that anyone can now become a game creator as long as you have a PC and download some, you know, tools like Unity or whatever. And now, you know, AI tools is coming up. That's making even more larger number of people to become a game creator.

You know, I have a couple of friends who are really good at designing and creating art. They tell me they can now make games. by themselves by using AI coding. So that's really great news for gamers, you know, who can see, you know, more different types of games being created. But it could be a challenging time for all the game creators who want to make living by making games. Tell me a little bit more about AI gaming.

There are AI tools for game developers. You've talked in the past about how they might make game development easier, faster, let everybody become more of a game developer. But I'm also wondering if you've seen AI games themselves where the game, the AI is not used for the graphics, but in a way that actually makes you want to interact with generative artificial intelligence or characters that are built on top of that. Yeah, yeah, that's the most interesting aspect of AI tools, right? you know, what the AI tools will allow new kind of gameplay that has not possible.

So it's always Indies who try these new things first and release, and I played many games that takes people's input, like a natural language input, whether it's typing in or a talk, and the character talks back, or a story being created around what you say. And it's pretty interesting. And these games are being very short and small, you know, very experimental. And many of them are like a release for free as an experiment.

But these show, you know, promises of some new kind of interactions. But the question is that if these games make the use of the server, that's going to be a cost, right? So the cost, you know, has to be covered by, users. So one example is, you know, there's a new game, like a character-based AI chat service. You know, one of the popular characters from Kaua Techno IP was licensed to this service company who created the, you can chat, have a conversation with a very popular character from a popular game. I see. Riza chat, your midsummer dream story with AI Riza.

That's it. Yeah. So people are excited and, you know, the server was like almost, you know, shut down at the launch, you know, because so many people are connected. Only problem that I hear, there are lots of very heavy charge. If you want to have conversation, more conversation, you have to pay for credit. Oh, no. It's one of those. It's like, it's like, you know, of course, I think because, you know, it's using the server, AI server for. So that has to be covered by the users. So all things come with a price, I think. There's a lot of stigma against AI, and a lot of gamers are very vehemently against AI. A lot of people are worried about job loss and things like that. You said a moment ago that Indies are the ones to experiment with such things.

The stigma is so strong even that when I walked around the game developers conference this last time, people are not willing to tell you if they're using AI tools. If you say, hey, I'm a journalist. I'm writing at that AI. You know, game developers use it. They'll be angry. They'll be, they'll say, you know, of course we wouldn't do that. They don't want their names in print using.

But if you say, I will keep you anonymous, this is off the record or, you know, I just want a survey. I'm not going to print your name in the story. They'll be like, yes, actually, I used it to help me do this little thing faster. Yes, actually, I do believe it can help the industry. When you work with Indies, are you hearing the same? Do you hear something different? Do people want to use the tools?

Are they worried about the tools? Well, you know, I know that everybody uses it anyway, right? The big or small companies. And of course, Indies, you know, they have less to lose. You know, they are very open about, you know, talking about. You know, one of the developer, in a very premier developer in Asia, indie developer, one of the owners, founders, is a creative lead. He was saying that he has eight AI agents he's managing.

And if he wants, he can create a game by himself. But he wouldn't choose to do so because he has a good team. But in the future, instead of hiring new people, Maybe he invest in tokens. Wow. Yeah. So another example, I may have already said that the, you know, a couple of friends in the industry, you know,

who are very good at game design or creating art, they are saying they can now make a game by themselves. You know, like this game designer, he was saying that when he was, you know, making game, his design was limited to the ability, capability of his programming. So it was very difficult for him to make progress. But now he can rely on AI tools that he can now make design a game that he wants to design

because he has an AI programmer partner that he has. And he's now saying that he may be able to release two games a year. or like that. So I think that's the reality. And of course, everybody using Gen AI art to experiment the new concept art or art direction research. You know, not that they use that in the game, but, you know, coming up with different ideas quickly. Really, that's speeding up the game development process. And of course, QA and localization and, you know, all of the, all of the,

process. Oh, yes. I remember even before Generative AI, there was a time. I used to be a game tester for a little bit. I haven't game tested at Sony briefly. There was a time when you would have to have testers walk around the edges of every level of a game to make sure that they can't walk through the wall or walk through the stairs or walk through the floor and fall forever. And now that's done automatically. You know, no person has to be. to physically walk a character into every wall. Yeah, AI does it 24-7, right, while people are sleeping. So, yeah, they walk diligently, yes.

But because of that stigma, I'm curious, as a thought exercise, imagine that you are still in a position where you have, you know, a $500 million budget at a big company to decide what games get greenlit. what would it take for you to say, we are going to make a game that we are going to say it's AI, it's going to be an AI game, and the technology is just instrumental to this. What would you need to see?

What kind of fun would the player need to experience in order to make you want to greenlight that game? Well, I think, you know, of course, you know, people are studios big or small, are already using AI. And I think it's more about the communications I think industry will find a way to communicate to, you know, players and, you know, media that the, you know, AI use for these purposes.

And no one would complain about, you know, tools that, you know, expedite the development or QA or doing things instead of creating new art or new, you know, design or, you know, These are the things that are actually not showing great results. People can still tell the AIGEN, you know, AIGEM videos. For now. Yeah, for now. For now. But so as long as companies can communicate correctly that these are the areas that they are using AI

and these are not usage, they are usage. I think people will start to accept it because it's a reality. People on these PCs with these AI tools, they're making all these games, where do you think they're going to play them? I've heard people say, you know, they always want to be in their living room with a box. I've also wondered if the future is handheld. The Switch is about to surpass the PlayStation 2 as the best-selling console of all time. And the Switch 2 is the fastest selling of all time.

where do you think to play these games? Well, Switch and Switch 2 have been super popular, not because it's portable, but because it's a hybrid, you know, portable and console. If Switch was just portable, like Switch Lite, the audience could be much more limited. So there are, you know, benefits of Switch being console connected to TV and people get together,

the living room, playing together. You know, you look at, you know, all the advancement of technologies bringing new devices. You can play games and games revenue on smartphone, I think is the biggest. But the PC and console are still, you know, steadily growing, I think. And people like myself, I grew up playing games on console. I really like the ease of use of console. I just, you know, set up, you know, connect to TV and, you know, now buy games on console and download and just play. And while I'm sleeping, you know, all games get updated and ready for me to come back to.

By the way, my recent, my current favorite device to play games are Steam Machine. Oh, yes. You know, rare people who are who can afford to pay like a huge. $1,500 for that. You started out with some criticism of the steam machine. You were saying maybe that this is too expensive for anybody except if they're research against, but I think you've turned it around, haven't you? Well, no, I was talking about, you know, the price is not friendly for, you know, most

of people, but luckily, you know, I can justify spending money because I still work in the video game industry, so it's part of research. Has that replaced the PC handhelds for you? Because I know you also, you were one of, even while you were with Sony, you were a big proponent of the Steam Deck. Yeah. I feel like you're one of the reasons

that so many big PlayStation games came to Steam Deck. And then also, I know you had an Xbox ally handheld. Is this Steam machine, this lean back experience, replacing those handhelds for you as the way you play? I am, you know, still. I was a big fan. or portable gaming PCs.

So I used to buy one or two new machines every year, like, you know, GPD and Aces or, you know, Ayanio, you know, these, you know, mostly Chinese. You know, Manchester has created beautiful portable gaming PCs. And the most recent favorite was Log Exports AliX that I purchased last year when it came. And by the way, When I received my machine, I posted saying that this is Xbox. And with parents, and actually it's a PC.

I think that's what we all found out, was that it's not quite an Xbox. But there's this sense that maybe PC is the way things are going. You know, I'm hoping that the project Helix, I think they're going to update the UI for, It's going to be another hybrid, right, PC and the Xbox. So I hope they will make it easier to play games from, you know, Steam or, you know, Epic store. But it still supports all, you know, three or even more, you know, sources of games on PC. So it's great. So that's the downside of Steam Machine.

So because I want to play games, PC games on Steam Machine now, I cannot use the Xbox game plus PC games. So that's a downside, I guess. And I guess you won't be able to do as many PlayStation single player at the games there in the future either. I mean, you were presiding over an era at Sony of incredible openness. It wasn't just you, of course. But this was the era when Sony opened up crossplay. We started to see the PC games come.

I remember at one point you said that it's almost like printing money putting games on PC, and I think they made like a billion dollars bringing their games to PC. I thought so. Yeah, I thought so. When, you know, first party, oh, by the way, when I was running the first party development, we are not allowed to move, you know, AAA first party games onto PC. So we ported some smaller games to PC and that's fun, but we are not allowed.

But in the PS5 generation, they started to moving, you know, AAA games to PC, and some games sold really well. And for, so because I knew how easy it is to port the game to PC, because PlayStation is PC architecture. So, and they can, of course,

upgrade and improve the game to fit into PC needs. But compared to creating new game or even porting to other potential platforms, porting to PC should be pretty budgetary. It's very straightforward now. The architecture, like you said, is the same. And the UI is getting more like that. If Helix is basically literally a PC that happens to play Xbox games, and of course, Sony also, same architecture, basically a PC, but it does, you know, it has more proprietary layers on top, I wish that would mean the games would go everywhere. Sony put out a YouTube ad that's only on PS5 is its new campaign.

And I know you're not there anymore. You weren't there for that ad. But I'm curious, how do you feel that these games will not be coming to PC now because they feel they need to change their release models? Yeah, yeah. So I talked about, you know, my days, like a PS4 generation, you know, Sony didn't choose to release AAA games, first-party games on PC because they thought, you know, making it really PlayStation exclusive

was important to appeal to console gamers. And during PS5, when they started to porting games to PC after a year or two, right? Not the day and date. A couple of online games, you know, they are doing day and day. But for single-player games, they gave a window of exclusivity to PlayStation platform. And they felt that would be, you know, good enough to appear, you know, to PlayStation users, but at the same time,

by releasing first-party games, IP to PCs, and reach new users potentially, and those users, you know, playing first-party games on PC, might become a fan of that IP right in the future, you know, come to PlayStation.

You know, that kind of thinking, I think they had. And these days, they seem to be preying that, idea back to like all the days. Yeah, because I'm not connected to PlayStation anymore, so I do not really know, but probably that, you know, first-party business versus platform business. Now platform business side is kind of winning the argument like this.

Yeah, platform side always won something exclusive, right? The place I wanted the exclusivity is for the extra items that you're trying to. tried to attach to the console or the handheld, like the PSP, the Vita, and of course your pet project, the PlayStation VR. I feel like people who bought those didn't get as many games specially made for those systems as they hoped there might have been. Do you know what goes into those decisions? Well, yeah, because I live, you know, these days like a PSP, PSV, Vita, and VR.

managing two platforms at the same time is so hard. You know, every asset, every team from development standpoint, we have finite number of studios and finite number amount of budget, annual budget to spend. And we always have to divide that budget and teams into, you make games on Koso, you make games on portable. Or you're your next game. would work on both or something like that.

And, yeah, because the platforms are very different. You know, PSVR was still on PS4, the same architecture, but the, you know, the games has to be uniquely made for PSVR. So that's still specific to PSVR. And so all these need for dedicated resources was really difficult to manage. And at least, you know, when I was at Sony, I felt very constrained to be able to support both. And in the end, the console was the biggest business for the company. You know, we had to prioritize the console side.

Some people would question, why do you come out with the headset to begin with if it's not going to get that level of the level of support that people would hope and expect? I imagine that was pretty hard for somebody who championed it, like yourself, to not have those resources. You can stay after the fact, right? You can say that after the fact about everything. You know, we are so excited. You know, we are bringing the experience that was never possible before on the regular TV. So we are so excited. But one of the reasons I've been saying the success of Switch is,

The same, I'm sure Nintendo has the same problem. When they are doing both console and portable, they have to divide their resources between two completely different platforms, but Switch merged the two into one. So all games work as a console game and a portable game, and they are able to dedicate all the resources, studios, and budget into one platform that was Switch and Switch 2. So I think that made managing resources much easier

and being able to support the platform much better than they used to. That brings me back to the affordability question. In particular, Sony and Microsoft are both facing this problem. But Microsoft has a very interesting selection of messaging. It says that, on the one hand, it says that it needs to pursue radical new business models. business models that we've never seen before, the people have not considered before, in order to not have people paying thousands of dollars

for the console. But it also says that it does not want to subsidize the Xbox anymore. So it's not going to do the Razor and Blades model of, you know, we're going to try to make up the money on the games and then make the console cost less money because we know you're going to buy games to go with it. What do you think these radical new business models could be? Are they going to put ads in all of our games?

Are they going to rent the box? Do you have to pay for a subscription service? When you buy Xbox Live for $200 a year, we'll give you a box if you keep paying for it like a phone every month for 24 months, you know? Well, $200 a year doesn't may not be enough, right? You know, if it's over $1,000, there are a higher price and it comes with, you know, basically the services

so maybe $300 a year or $400 a year. Yeah, like a $50 a month subscription had that. And while Sony and Nintendo have sold enough number of current generation hardware, right? So because of the cost of goods, they might be looking, pushing back the launch of next gen. And I think they should try to keep the current generation as long as, possible because you know I think people are very happy using you know PS5 and switch 2 people have finite you know budget and it feels like PC and consoles the components very specific to these devices have increased the price you know

are way more than or the other form of entertainment people who have you know systems like PS5 switch 2 or PCs, you know, good enough PCs, probably will be, you know, happy to play games on them and not necessarily consider replacing. Well, I for myself, I have, you know, gaming PC for work that I purchased five years ago. That was pretty good. And while I was thinking to replace, you know, my gaming PC, this price hike happened. So I was late to replace it.

Oh, yeah. I got in early. I lucked out. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wish I had made that decision a year ago. So I think that kind of thinking will happen to many people. I don't think lots of people are asking for more power.

We need more power. Or even developer, I don't think developers are asking, you know, we need better hardware or like that. So I think that means that the current generation, you know, Sony and Nintendo are doing, are going to do pretty well for many years to come still. Xbox is a team who wants to change the, you know, competing landscape. So it's going to be hard for them, but it's their time to play. So it's very exciting, you know, what's going to happen. next year. So, right. Support for the show comes from Sonos.

Think about the first time you heard your favorite song. Who were you with? What did it make you feel? Was it the music or the lyrics that grabbed you first? And what were the specific tech specs of the sound system it was playing on? Yeah, nobody remembers that last part. Sonos gets that. Their system is designed to just be there. Clear, ready, out of the way. So nothing stands between you and the next song.

that hits you out of left field. For a bunch of years now, I've been incredibly jealous of my friends who have Sonos speakers. I was just always impressed how all that sound and punch and energy came from that speaker in the corner. But Sonos recently sent me two of its play speakers

and now I truly, truly get it. Everyone knows that the quality is immediately noticeable when you listen to a sono speaker, but the bigger thing that I've learned is how everything is working together and creating this little ecosystem. It's just really important.

to me, especially as audios become more integrated into our daily media lives, whether that's the music, a movie, and yes, the Vergecast or Virgin History or Decoder, I want it to sound as good as possible. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you.

They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyle is a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists.

That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah. are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jamfaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like, young voters aren't that complicated after all.

It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Phoebe Judge. And for more than a decade, I've hosted the podcast criminal. telling stories about people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. But while I was starting one of the very first true crime podcasts out there, I was also taking phone calls from my sister, from prison. This fall, I'm going on tour, and I'm telling a story I've never told before, my own. Get tickets at thisiscriminal.com slash live.

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oh, I don't want to put all that RAM in it. I don't want to pay for all that RAMs. They look at cloud gaming. Sony has said, hey, thin client devices like the PlayStation Portal are very interesting. Maybe we should do more with that. I'm curious, as somebody who's been in the position you've been in, you know, managing budgets and green lighting games in Eternal Studios, have you seen interest in making cloud games that actually justify the costs of cloud servers, that use the power of the cloud to do things

that have never been done before? I've heard of people putting together teams to do this, but I haven't heard of them actually producing a game that does that. Even when I was at Sony, you know, hardware team, Aron teams, you know, pushing, yeah, this is a new, you know, new platform, new technology, you know, studio, can you come up with the game that, you know, make use of the cloud servers? And my reaction was, who's going to pay for that?

If we make a game that depend on, you know, people accessing servers and, you know, company have to pay for the cost of servers and the electricity and the internet connection, who's going to pay for that? And I was sure the company, the accountants will calculate the time that each game use the server and add that cost onto the profitability of the games. So I was like, wow, that's interesting, but we don't know what to do. So I tried to avoid that conversation.

So like you said, you know, there have been some claim that their game that can only possible. Like, you know, I still remember the launch or announcement event during the DEC of the Google Stadia. Like Phil Harishman was standing there and making like a big, you know, presentation that he's so good at. And of course he was talking about their games only possible using the power of servers. Look at those beautiful graphics.

And I was still thinking so who's going to pay for that? I'm wondering if there's going to be an inflection point where the AI servers, the old AI servers, because right now, you know, people are buying up lots and lots of GPUs to put in the cloud.

They were not necessarily doing that before unless they needed cloud gaming. servers, but now there are all of these data centers filled with GPUs. When some of them age out, does that change the economics, perhaps? And does, do a thousand dollar consoles change the economics? Will people start thinking, okay, cloud gaming might actually be viable now because the economics have changed? You know, any service that require very, you know, quick, pin time, so, you know, small, the location of servers, server farm is pretty important. So they try to match the demand of access

with the number of servers serving the specific market that server is situated. So when the technology changes and they invest in new server farms, and like you're saying, old server farm might become available for something else. Cloud gaming could come in and make use of these servers with very cheap price. I don't know.

It might be possible by the company, big companies like Microsoft or Google, who have lots of servers already for Amazon. But I don't know. I feel like for a very long time, phones have been perhaps the most popular place to play games, but they're not the kind of place you and I necessarily play our games, right? It's thought at least that phones are not where serious games are played, but you talk to indie developers all the time,

you think the future is indie, you consult on indie games, as people are saying, maybe I shouldn't spend so much money for the console, do you think the developers are going to refocus their effort on the thing that everybody has in their pocket already. That kind of thinking happened maybe 10 years ago when the mobile became the large part of the gaming market. And almost all companies who moved from console PC space to mobile

came back to console PC space. Because the kind of thinking, you know, as a game creator or a service provider, you have to think about designing games for mobile is pretty different. The kind of way, you know, people spend time playing mobile games is different. And of course, there are new games coming out, especially from China and also Korea, that are targeted for mobile but still work on PC and console, like Genshin and all those, you know, games. That's super popular. And these companies, you know, they are design decision.

You know, they're making it, you know, making sure the gameplay works on mobile first. And, you know, but it's still, you know, 3D action adventure game. It's great to play on PC and console as well. So, and they put so much resource to create these games. So I think before any. other regions, you know, Japan or West had time to react to these moves, I think they have already cornered the market. I don't think mobile, even as popular as it is as a device, will not replace the, you know, games on PC and console.

What is it about the phone that keeps it from being where those games are played? Is it the screen size, is it the controls? Is it the platforms? Is it the platforms? Is it the platform that's running on it? We know that Steam, for instance, the PC platform. Valve is building all of the hooks that you need to run that on mobile chips and possibly on mobile phones. But I don't know if that's what the phone is missing. I think it's control. And as a part of my love of portable gaming PCs, there are portable Android-based games.

gaming devices with proper buttons and two sticks. You know, six-inch screen, you know, it's like a PSVita or a Nintendo City Light in terms of hardware form. And the problem with these devices, there are very few games that, you know, I can enjoy playing, like, you know, Mihoyo's kind of games. So after, you know, five or six of games, you know, like four guys works great, you know. But after four or five games, there are not many other games that these devices will succeed. So I just go back to portable gaming PCs.

But some interesting thing is when the indie games, like PC games, become popular, some of them are ported to mobile, and especially those new platform companies who want to serve games. to subscribers, like Netflix or Amazon or these companies, and, you know, potentially Apple as well, would like these good games already released on PCs to come to mobile. And I don't know how much these games are being utilized. These games are, you know, served for the retention of subscribers. so people don't talk about the sales or whatever.

Because these companies are looking at the number of downloads. And one time I saw that the most popular games on Netflix service, I think, were the GTA, old GTA games, right? Grants of Auto games. They have, yeah. At least people download these, and I download them as well. They're still quite among the most popular paid games on Android, I believe. the GTA, San Andreas, for instance, Vice City.

I don't know how many people play it, but they certainly want to see that it runs on there and they try it out. Grand Theft Auto is kind of a singularity in the industry. Other game companies try to avoid releasing games around the same time. It is the biggest game in many, many years that we are getting finally coming out. Do you think we're ever going to see a game like Grand Theft Auto 6 again? After 15 years, maybe GTA 7 will see it.

Or any, you know, these companies from China, they might try to emulate or compete, you know, because there will be, you know, 15-year gap after GTA 6. So, you know, no one should underestimate the power of these Chinese companies. That's true. Mihoyo, when we first saw Genshin Impact, when the first videos of Genshin Impact came out, a lot of people thought, that is a Zelda Breath of the Wild clone. And then it became something very different and much larger, and now that company's a powerhouse, right?

And they just released a new game, right? That looks like Eldenling meets a monster hunter. So they are very, very seriously going for high-end, really in a more hardcore gamer. And I wonder they are not, they may not be targeting to mobile this time. You know, I talked about, you know, when they release new games in Mihoyo, they always make sure the game plays so well on touchscreen, you know, mobile device. And, you know, release the higher-spec version on PC and console. But the trailer, you know, they just released new game,

looks so high-end that they might be really going. seriously into this PC console space this time. So it's pretty interesting. I do wonder if mobile handhelds might be the future, if people do adopt them, if developers do adopt them. But if they're very much stuck on PCs and consoles, then I wonder if it's the hybrid console. That is a PC itself that's going to be the future. It's so difficult to know. It's been a real pleasure talking the issue. Thanks so much for joining us. you. It was fun. That's it for the Vergecast. Let us know what you think.

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