Xbox is going through another brutal wave of layoffs and studio changes, it really sucks to see. They call it a “reset”.

The only silver lining is that some studios are not simply being shut down but rather being allowed to live to fight another day. Double Fine and Compulsion Games are going independent again, and according to the reports they are keeping their IP and catalog. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold to new ownership, with funding still planned for Senua and State of Decay 3.

But this really is Xbox's big reset.

Years ago they went on an interesting strategy, they bought a ton of studios to create more content for Game Pass, but apparently that strategy did not grow the way they expected, Game Pass has been declining the past few years (partly thanks to massive price increases). Now Xbox seems to be pulling back from the "many smaller studios making lots of different games" approach and doubling down on bigger franchises.

For example Obsidian was reportedly hit hard by layoffs, multiple projects were cancelled, and instead of continuing toward another Avowed or another original IP, the studio is being moved toward a new Fallout game.

And I guess that makes business sense, if your current strategy isn't working try something different, but it is also sad to see layoffs in the industry continuing. Fallout is awesome but the whole point of having studios like Obsidian, Double Fine, and Compulsion is that they make weird, creative, distinctive games. If everything gets pushed toward only the safest mega-franchises, the industry gets a lot less interesting.

But again the silver lining is those studios are going independent and not just dying, so I look forward to whatever Double Fine cooks up next as an independent studio again.

Do you want to make a living as an Indie Dev? Then you NEED to learn all about Marketing! It’s a crucial topic nowadays.

Check out my videos with Steam Marketing Expert Chris Zukowski to learn how to get more wishlists and sell more copies.

And if you want all that marketing knowledge condensed into one single place then get his Wishlist and Visibility Masterclass. It is currently on discounted as part of his Summer Sale.

Get it HERE!

The Publisher of the Week this time is Epic Sounds and FX, which like the name implies has tons of audio and sound effects.

Get the FREE Card Game Sounds which would be perfect for any card game like Balatro or Slay the Spire.

Get it HERE and use coupon EPICSOUNDSANDFX2026 at checkout to get it for FREE!

Unity 6.7 Alpha 2 is out, and the big news is the first experimental release of the CoreCLR Desktop Player!

This is a very very important milestone because CoreCLR is the future of Unity. It's what will be the foundation of the engine for the next decade.

Anytime I mention CoreCLR and all the amazing possibilities there's always one comment that doubts it will ever come to pass, there's some people that are inherently suspicious and assume they will just cancel it. So the fact that Unity has been making constant progress and is now at the stage of shipping public experimental builds is really encouraging.

The long-term benefits will be very big: more modern C#/.NET support, better runtime foundations, faster iteration over time, and more.

Now to be clear, this is still experimental and NOT something you should use for production yet, it's just an Alpha. This is just the first step, but a pretty massive step. If you want to help them out you can download the latest Alpha and give them your feedback.

Unity 6.7 is also important because this is expected to become the next big LTS version, so seeing it reach Alpha is a big step.

One big thing about CoreCLR is removing Domain Reload which has a few implications, main one being iteration speed (which is awesome) but has the "downside" of static fields not being reset automatically which means you need to handle that. gitamend has an excellent video tutorial on preparing for CoreCLR.

This is very dumb, and also very funny.

A developer made a Steam Summer Sale Simulator, which is basically a fake Steam store where you can "buy" games without spending any real money. You get fake wallet funds, add games to your cart, check out, hear the satisfying sounds, unlock achievements, and get the dopamine hit of buying games… without actually buying anything.

This is so silly but and honestly, maybe this solves a real problem.

A lot of people (myself included, at least a few years ago) buy games during Steam sales and then never play them. Their library keeps growing, the backlog gets bigger, and at some point the real game is not playing games, it is collecting discounts.

So this simulator cuts out the middleman. You get the fun part of impulse buying without spending money and without adding even more games to your infinite backlog!

This is NOT an April Fools joke!

NVIDIA has some expensive GPUs. If you cannot afford a super expensive RTX 5090 ($5000!!!) then they're making something maybe you can afford, Trading Cards!

If the card market wasn't so insultingly insane this would actually be a pretty fun way to celebrate the history. They're making cards about their history since 1995. One is referencing the GeForce 256, another on the GeForce 3 or the 10 series, etc.

Apparently you can't actually buy them, they're being used for giveaways both on their socials and in various community events like Bilibili World 2026, QuakeCon 2026 and gamescom 2026.