GTA 6 delayed, but trailer gets 475 million views
Oh, and Habemus Papam!
Hi, Tibi & Ionuț here, hope you're having a great day! 🥳
Welcome to the #66 FREE edition of the Game Vibe Weekly Newsletter!
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This newsletter shares video game industry trends, insights, and top games, all in an easy to read and fun format.
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👑 Highlights
Rockstar released the second GTA 6 trailer, which has been viewed 475 million times on all platforms.
Apple was ordered to remove all fees and restrictions on purchases outside the App Store.
President Trump proposed a 100% tariff on all foreign-made movies.
UK consumers spent £7.6 billion on video games in 2024.
EA exceeded Q4 expectations with $1.8 billion revenue.
Monopoly GO! earned $5 billion in 2 years.
Codemasters lost the World Rally Championship license.
Interesting
💡 Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed and will now release on May 26, 2026, marking a 13-year gap since the last game in the series.
💡 A U.S. court has ordered Apple to immediately remove all fees and restrictions on developers directing users to make purchases outside the App Store.
💰 Epic Games spent over $100 million on legal fees fighting Apple.
💡 Epic Games will let developers open their own online shops in June 2025, with no store fees on the first $1,000,000 in sales per app each year.
💡 President Trump proposed a 100% tariff on all foreign-made movies, including popular anime films, threatening to limit access to international films and causing major Hollywood studios' stocks to drop.
💡 ZeniMax union workers remain frustrated and continue pressuring Microsoft over contract talks, despite Microsoft saying it offered fair proposals.
💡 Roblox and Discord are being sued for allegedly enabling the sexual exploitation of a minor through their platforms.
💡 UK consumers spent £7.6 billion on video games in 2024, with the market now double its size from 2013.
💡 Check out this free Blender add-on that lets you easily create realistic roads with cracks and damage for your 3D projects.
💡 Electronic Arts says it is ready for faster growth after laying off over 300 employees and cutting costs over the past two years.
💡 Electronic Arts and Major League Soccer now let players watch live soccer matches directly in the mobile game through Apple TV.
💡 The Carry1st Africa Cup 2025 will feature a $15,000 prize pool for Call of Duty Mobile players.
Mobile
📱 In a Liftoff & Singular report, from February 2024 to 2025, casual games saw 2.4 billion installs and $11.9 billion spent on marketing, with ads viewed 1.1 trillion times and 36 billion clicks.
📱 Apple now allows app developers to add external links for payments outside the App Store, but they must pay Apple a 27% commission on those sales.
📱 Xsolla has launched a new payment button for mobile games, allowing developers to offer external payment options after a recent United States court ruling against Apple.
📱 Mobile games made up 15% of Electronic Arts’ yearly revenue, but overall profit dropped by 12% compared to last year.
📱 Unity fully migrated its ads network to the new AI ad platform Unity Vector, with all iOS and Android traffic now running on the platform.
📱 Scopely was named the top mobile game publisher, while Disney Solitaire generated over $1 million in its first month.
📱 Some celebrities are paid up to $4 million for a single mobile game advertisement.
📱 Flappy Bird 2025 is now available to play for free on the Epic Games Store.
📱 Monopoly Go earned $5 billion in 2 years and was downloaded over 200 million times.
📱 Delta Force Mobile reached over 10 million downloads in its first four days.
📱 Sonic Rumble’s launch has been delayed indefinitely just one week before its planned release.
📱 King designs special levels for Candy Crush All Stars by testing them with over 10,000 players to ensure they are fun and fair for everyone.
📱 In Q1 2025, the top 2% of game ad creatives captured 53% of $2.4 billion marketing spend, with casual and midcore games favoring excitement and gameplay hooks that boost installs and retention.
PC & Console
🎮 Rockstar released the second Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer, which has been viewed 475 million times on all platforms, showcasing intense action, and confirming the game’s release date as May 26, 2026. Did you see it?
🎮 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has sold over 3 million copies, with players killing nearly 500 million NPCs and stealing over 38 billion items since its February launch.
🎮 Walmart removed Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders but lists June 5 as the launch date, with base console priced at $449 and Mario Kart bundle at $499.
🎮 Xbox is raising hardware prices again and increasing the cost of first-party games to $80, marking the second price hike in two years.
🎮 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt celebrates its 10th anniversary in May 2025, with CD Projekt Red planning fan celebrations and a concert tour.
🎮 Split Fiction has sold over 4 million copies worldwide.
🎮 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold over 2 million copies in 12 days, earning a 92 average score on OpenCritic and gaining strong fan praise.
🎮 Mario Kart World introduces missions for the first time in 20 years, adding new gameplay depth to the popular racing series.
🎮 Gears of War Reloaded launches on September 10, with over 2 million players already pre-registered.
💬 Have you seen any other cool news? Drop a message and we can include them in the next edition.
Events
🎟️ Unreal Fest Orlando 2025 is a four-day event from June 2-5 with sessions, expos, and networking for game developers, filmmakers, architects, and more, held at the Orange County Convention Center with tickets starting at $749.
🎟️ To celebrate The Witcher 3’s 10th anniversary in May 2025, CD Projekt Red is launching a global concert tour featuring new live arrangements of the game’s soundtrack, starting in Poland and Boston and continuing across Europe and North America.
🎟️ The Digital Dragons Conference 2025 , between May 18-20 in Krakow, is a major European B2B event for the games industry. Are you going?
🎟️ The IndieGameBusiness® Deep Dive: Marketing is a free one-day event for game developers to learn marketing strategies from industry leaders, offering access to a network of 4,000 developers and 600 publishers, held on Wednesday, May 14.
💬 Continue reading in the app or web page.
Business
💰 Electronic Arts exceeded Q4 expectations with $1.8 billion revenue, +5.8% YoY, and $254 million net income, +39.5% YoY, driven by strong sales of Split Fiction, and growth in EA Sports FC and The Sims franchises. Yet layoffs are still present.
💰 Nintendo is reporting a decline in net sales by 30.3% to $8.3 billion.
💰 Tripledot will acquire 10 mobile studios from AppLovin for $800 million.
💰 Polygon was sold by Vox Media to Valnet, resulting in layoffs of many staff members.
💰 Codemasters will lay off staff in 2025 after losing the World Rally Championship license, as part of Electronic Arts’ wider plan to cut about 400 roles.
💰 Microsoft earned $70.1 billion in sales last quarter, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence tools.
💰 TikTok was fined 530 million euros by Irish regulators for mishandling children’s data.
💰 Metaplay launched a new free plan which gives developers access to the same backend technology used in games like Merge Mansion.
💰 Dream Games, creator of Royal Match, has been acquired by CVC Capital Partners in a deal valuing the company at $5 billion.
💰 Microsoft won again against the Federal Trade Commission, clearing the way to complete its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
💰 Starbreeze will fully acquire Payday 3 publishing rights from Plaion to boost the franchise after sales dropped from $44.5 million in 2023 to $7.7 million in 2024.
💰 Unity’s sales fell to $435 million in the first quarter of 2025, down from $460 million in the same period last year.
💰 Roblox earned $1.04 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2025, even though it lost $215 million.
VR/AR
👓 The secret to Beat Saber, one of VR’s best-selling games, is that it is not a rhythm game but a “motion game” that scores players based on broad, precise swings rather than timing. Did you know that?
👓 Sightful launched Spacetop for Windows, a subscription app, $200/year, with AR glasses, $899 bundle, that turns laptops into large virtual workspaces and offers a 100-inch display for improved productivity and comfort. Looks comfy.
👓 Meta Quest 3 and 3S now allow developers to publicly release apps using headset cameras to scan and interact with the real world.
👓 PHI Studio and Agog offer a four-week immersive artist residency in Montreal with $15,000 CAD grant, supporting XR projects focused on social impact, open to creators across North America.
👓 Ghosts of Tabor has sold over 1 million units and earned $30 million in revenue ahead of its PlayStation VR 2 launch.
👓 Mojang officially ended virtual reality support for Minecraft on PC and PlayStation VR after March 2025, but unofficial mods still allow VR play.
👓 Impact Reality launched Impact Inked, a new VR-native game publisher set to release at least four original VR-first titles, starting with Surviving Mars: Pioneer.
Podcast
Any podcast lovers here? We got you!
🎙 Mishka Katkoff and Maor Sason, CEO and co-founder of AppCharge, discuss the implications of the recent Epic vs. Apple ruling as they explore the potential benefits for small to medium-sized studios.
🎙 Why do most good games still fail today, even with great gameplay? Markus Wilding, former marketing leader at Take-Two, 2K joins Harry Phokou to reveal why visibility is now more critical than quality.
👍 Game to Wishlist
I’m excited to tell that the recommendation for this week is coming from Cluj!
🎉 Drunkonauts is a chaotic party brawler for up to 8 players, local or online, with jetpacks, physics-based combat, and wild weapons (slow, freeze, blind & more), think Gang Beasts meets Party Animals in space.
It’s published by Enchanted Crafts Studios, as their first title as a publisher, and developed by solo dev Rareș Laris Marhao (Nebula Developers Lab).
🎮 You can wishlist the game on Steam and try the early demo on Itch.io and support development with feedback or donations!
Have fun!
💬 This is not an Ad, but if any of you want to collaborate on that, give a shout my dear friends!
🥳 You're Awesome!
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Have a great day!
Tibi & Ionuț 🔥