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WEEKLY · THURSDAYS 1PM EST

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Xbox wants to be an entertainment company. Playing it safe won't get it there

Xbox wants to be the world's number one entertainment company. Never Entertained on whether it has the IP, who streams GTA 6, and AI remixing old games.

OCT 9, 2026

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──FROM PATCH NOTES — WEEKLY ANALYSIS BY COLAN NEESE

Read — while you wait for the next show.

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OCT 2, 2026

The Biggest November Ever... Rising Tide Or Black Hole?

▸ Identify the 2–3 tent-pole releases that will define your competitive window and plan around their gravity, not against it.

Industry & BusinessContinue on Substack →

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Past streams.

November is an attention problem: why you can't counter-program GTA 6

GTA 6, Ocarina and WoW all land in November. Never Entertained on why you can't counter-program a 60-hour game, and why only owned communities come through.

LIVEOCT 2, 2026

Nobody is on the hook: Halo, Bungie, and the vest cycle that outlasts the game

Halo went to Activision after fourteen years and nobody in the building ever paid for it. Colan Neese, Simon Pulman and Justin Ruiss on the vest cycle that outlasts the game.

LIVESEP 25, 2026

Game Pass bought installs, not players: what actually brings someone back

A leaked Game Pass overhaul, an 84 shipping into GTA season, and Blizzard reopening the vault. Every way this industry buys players can be switched off. Memory cannot.

LIVESEP 18, 2026

GTA 6 vs. Zelda: The Wrong Fight? | Never Entertained #1

Everyone’s picking a side in GTA 6 versus Zelda. We’re asking whether it’s the wrong fight. Welcome to Never Entertained, where Greg Posner, Simon Pulman, Justin Ruiss, and Colan Neese argue about the week in games, media, and IP. On episode one: - GTA 6 vs.

LIVESEP 11, 2026

GTA 6 versus Zelda is the wrong fight

Never Entertained launches: Nintendo out-brands Sony on a Target shelf, Wolverine is designed for everybody and lands for nobody, and Netflix reaches for theaters.

LIVESEP 11, 2026

GTA 6 has not started marketing yet: the two billion question and why surviving November is not a plan

GTA 6 is already the biggest launch Colan Neese's tracking has seen, and the TV blitz starts at NFL kickoff. PD Live on what that does to every other fall release.

WITH GREG POSNERSEP 3, 2026

We Watched the GTA 6 Extended Look Live. Here Is Who It Was Actually For.

Rockstar put 26 minutes of GTA 6 behind a Netflix login and explained none of it. Justin Ruiss and Simon Pulman on why Netflix's best games business might be marketing.

WITH GREG POSNERAUG 27, 2026

Millennial Slop and the Elden Ring Clone Era: Why Opening Night Live Felt Like a Rerun

Opening Night Live was a slate of things you have already played. Alexander Lee and Colan Neese on the Elden Ring clone era and the game eating the fall.

WITH GREG POSNERAUG 27, 2026

Your feed is not your player base: Disney's licensing win, Wolverine's backlash and the GTA 6 leak

Insomniac read its X feed as its player base. Netflix claims a billion reached while cutting everything. Disney just read the report card and won.

LIVEAUG 20, 2026

Attention beats acclaim: Bandai's six-game fall, Remedy's flop risk and YouTube's higher wall

Bandai Namco ships six games into a fall everyone else vacated, Remedy learns acclaim is not a strategy, and YouTube raises the wall on creators.

LIVEAUG 12, 2026

GTA 6, Nintendo, and Roblox earnings: growing the player pool or squeezing it?

Take-Two, Nintendo, and Roblox all reported in the same week. Simeon McMillan of Accrued Interest joins to read the numbers operators should actually watch.

LIVEAUG 6, 2026

GTA 6 eats the fall: the demand data behind gaming's one-game season

PD Live breaks down the demand data behind gaming's one-game fall: GTA 6 owns 12 of 18.5 demand-share points, and everyone else is scheduling around it.

WITH GREG POSNERJUL 30, 2026

Ads in games are not the problem. The seams are.

Ads, subscriptions, casual games and clips all work. Player Driven Live with Richard Goldsmith on the seams that break them: the funnel, the metric, the ad load.

WITH GREG POSNERJUL 16, 2026

Xbox: end of an error, not just a bad week

Microsoft's gaming layoffs and studio spin-offs weren't a bad week. Player Driven Live on Xbox's 64-cent problem and why ad-funded discovery is the way out.

WITH GREG POSNERJUL 9, 2026

GTA 6's zero-ad launch and the death of physical media

Player Driven Live breaks down GTA 6's earned-media launch, Sony killing physical discs by 2028, and why Xbox can't buy its way back into the platform race.

WITH GREG POSNERJUL 2, 2026

GTA 6 Won Summer Game Fest by Posting a Box Art

Greg Posner and Colan Neese on the week attention stopped meaning what people think it means: GTA 6's post-marketing, the Steam wishlist lie, Poki's quiet rise, and Bungie's collapse.

WITH GREG POSNERJUN 25, 2026

Xbox's Restructuring Isn't an Asha Problem. It's a Game Pass Math Problem.

Microsoft can't seem to stay out of the news, and this week it earned the headlines the hard way.

WITH GREG POSNERJUN 17, 2026

Blizzard Built a Market That Killed Its Own Game

Tomorrow on Player Driven Live: a legendary Diablo III mace sold for $250 in Blizzard's official auction house, then resold on a third-party site for $12,000. That gap is the whole story.

LIVEJUN 4, 2026

Let Bungie Die

Bungie's mindshare has collapsed 86% since 2019 and Destiny is winding down. Colan and Greg unpack what went wrong at Bungie, why Bond's launch curve still has room to run, and what Activision's Modern Warfare 4 surprise drop signals about Call of Duty's next era.

WITH GREG POSNERMAY 28, 2026

Who Pays for Attention in Gaming Now? Inside the Xbox Ad-Tier Debate and the Death of the Open Web

WITH GREG POSNERMAY 21, 2026

IP Name Is Not a Marketing Strategy: What Forza Got Right That Bond Got Wrong

Forza Horizon 6 landed a 91 on Metacritic, pulled data showing unprecedented traction in Asian markets, and flew its influencer event to Japan to sell car culture instead of game features. Bond, releasing in the same window, bought an NBA halftime placement, put dev talent in turtlenecks for YouTube interviews, and assumed that 007 still carries weight with anyone under 35. One of these games will be a cultural moment. The other will be fine. That contrast, laid out across a full episode of Player Driven Live by Greg and analyst Colan, is the editorial spine of something practitioners running live games and planning launches need to hear: audience assumption is a budget leak.

LIVEMAY 14, 2026

Can Ubisoft Win By Going Backwards? Xbox's Ad Future, and Ranking the Best Star Wars Games Ever

This week on Player Driven Live, we dug into three conversations that kept pulling us in different directions — Ubisoft's remake strategy and what it means for one of gaming's biggest franchises, whether Xbox should build an ad-supported free tier, and a May the 4th-inspired ranking of the best Star Wars games in history. We also talked indie games, Subnautica 2's questionable launch window, and why someone grinding on a souls-like after their day job reminded us both of something important about how games actually get made.

LIVEAPR 30, 2026

Why Microsoft Pulled Call of Duty from Game Pass... And What Comes Next

Sony's exclusivity strategy just became impossible to ignore. This week, as Pragmata climbed the charts and Saros loomed on the horizon, it became clear that PlayStation is making a deliberate choice: fewer games, bigger budgets, zero Steam ports. And it's working.

LIVEAPR 16, 2026