Four-figure consoles, AI clone fears and a struggling studio

Luke Plunkett's reaction to a Fortune profile of Xbox chief Asha Sharma centres on one detail in that piece. Microsoft has internally projected its next console, codenamed Helix, at $1,200 to $1,800 for consumers, unless the company subsidizes the cost. Fortune also reports the prospect of further layoffs at Microsoft-owned studios.

Plunkett argues that this lands on a weak market. He points to the cost-of-living crisis, shrinking visual gains from each console generation, thinning Xbox exclusives as AAA budgets climb, and weak Series S/X sales at a $499 launch price. Even a subsidized $1,000 machine would cost twice that. He calls the plan a historic disaster, says he is amazed Microsoft is still committed to it, and half-seriously suggests his own joke about re-releasing old consoles may be the industry's real way out.

CounterpointThe figure is an internal projection reported by Fortune, not an announced price, and Microsoft could subsidize the hardware as the report itself notes. Executives and analysts who favor premium hardware would say a high-end device can serve a small enthusiast base without needing mass-market sales, a case Plunkett does not engage.

Previously: The earlier edition reported that PS6 memory and storage costs alone could top $680. — Monday October 19 edition.

Nathan Grayson's piece covers the aftermath of Xbox senior business strategy manager Brandon Stirrup's weekend of posts. Stirrup claimed that anyone can build a game with a prompt, and that gaming is the only industry pretending not to use AI. He deleted his X account on Monday evening, which an Xbox source told PC Gamer was because of the volume of replies.

Grayson treats this as the model arc for a bad poster: say something dumb, dig in, get buried in replies, log off. He then uses it to needle Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, whom Aftermath has long said should leave social media. The piece is satire, not a rebuttal. Its one substantive point is that AI use at Microsoft-owned studios is already well known.

CounterpointSupporters of Stirrup's underlying position, that studios should openly acknowledge AI use, would say the piece mocks his posting style rather than answering the argument. It also concedes his main factual claim, that Microsoft studios already use AI.

Previously: The earlier edition covered Stirrup's pro-AI thread and exit from X alongside a code-copying dispute among Needle In A Haystack clones. — Tuesday October 20 edition.

Digital Sun, maker of Moonlighter and Cataclismo, has scaled back a planned public playtest of ReVamp to its Discord community, saying launch is still months away and a build shared with tens of thousands of players felt too risky. Alliance Arts and Who You cancelled the public demo of Drunken Goddess Reflux on October 16 in favor of closed sessions. They said imitations of the game's presentation and gameplay could be produced quickly with AI and released before launch.

This Week in Videogames ties the moves to a wave of AI-assisted decompilation projects that have produced unofficial ports and recompilation mods. decomp.dev, a community site for decompilation knowledge, announced it was winding down partly because of AI involvement. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has also announced an Xbox Labs initiative in response to the code-porting projects. Digital Sun said it wants platforms to strengthen protections for original work so small studios can keep sharing games early. Alliance Arts also cited a second reason: it was not equipped to manage restrictions on posting and streaming gameplay.

CounterpointDecompilation advocates say these projects serve preservation and let classic games run on new platforms, which is different from cloning an unreleased title. The developers' fears are about what could happen, and the report cites no confirmed clone of a game in playtest.

Previously: The earlier edition covered a code-copying dispute among Needle In A Haystack clones and Xbox manager Brandon Stirrup's pro-AI thread and exit from X. — Tuesday October 20 edition.

Rowan Kaiser calls Star Wars: Galactic Racer a terrific Star Wars experience and a blast to play, with a run-based structure that makes it a racing roguelike. He is unsure it works as a racing game. In his framing, arcade racers are about relationships with rival cars, while technical racers are about learning the track and tuning the car. Galactic Racer, he argues, does neither.

Opponents show up mostly as engine lights ahead of you. Tracks are stitched from variants of each planet's layout, with no map or racing line, so they are hard to learn. He says the tunnel-or-wall confusion is the game's biggest annoyance. Speeder parts are largely cosmetic, and each campaign starts from the same base car. Kaiser concludes that survival is the main motivator, not racing. The full text is behind a free signup wall, so this summary covers only the portion available.

CounterpointFans of roguelike structure would say survival and temporary run-based builds are the design, and that judging it by Mario Kart or Gran Turismo standards misses the point. Kaiser himself praises how fun it is to play.