FIVE AT 5: TESTRONIC NEWS ROUND-UP

We’re back with our weekly round-up of the news, articles and quirky industry snippets that have caught our eye over the past week, including the ‘Survive till 2025’ mantra, GTA 6, EA’s booming mobile business and more…

With the past year or so having been one of the toughest on record for the games industry, ‘Survive till 2025’ has become something of a catchphrase amongst those battling through it. And Gamesindustry.biz quizzed some leading developers and business leaders on exactly how to weather the storm, including these words of wisdom from Avalanche Studios Group CEO Stefanía Guerún Halldórsdóttir: “Difficult times require resourceful and resilient leadership. It's about preparing to face uncertainties and being capable of recovering from setbacks." Read on for more top tips - https://shorturl.at/0rN2L

With the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) striking over the potential use of AI in games, SkyNews has taken a look at what gamers (and the industry itself) need to know about game performers not working until their demands have been met. And you can find out for yourself here - https://shorturl.at/TInYx

EA reported a mixed bag of results in its Q1 2025 financials. As Pocketgamer.biz points out, the games giant generated $280m in profit during the quarter, which was down 30% year-on-year. However, EA chairman and CEO Andrew P Wilson claims that the results exceeded expectations and highlighted the record? net bookings for EA Sports FC Mobile. “FC Mobile is the blueprint for our mobile strategy, grounded in leveraging the expanded access points offered via the mobile platform to continue to grow our largest franchises,” he said. Dive in for more number crunching here - https://shorturl.at/KpKmq

Sticking with the financials, and Microsoft has reported its full year results, with Game Developer taking a look at the numbers. It highlights that Xbox console hardware revenue has dropped by some 13% year-on-year. However, ‘Xbox content and services revenue provided some balance, increasing by 61 percent year-over-year in Q4–driven by 58 points of net impact from Microsoft's seismic Activision Blizzard acquisition’. There’s more here - https://shorturl.at/YyUel

Finally, and back to Gamesindustry.biz, which takes a look at ‘GTA 6 and the PlayStation 4 problem’, asking: ‘Can Rockstar's next opus convince fans to put down their DualShock for a DualSense?’. The full analysis is here - https://shorturl.at/eg4MK

That’s it for another week. We’re off to watch the Olympic Games on TV now, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on these articles!

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