Electronic Arts just wrapped its last year as a publicly traded company with a new sales record. Control 2 is on track and not over-budget. The latest milestone on Microsoft’s “return to Xbox” road map is a new boot logo. It’s your Kotaku Checkpoint roundup for May 6, 2026, where we are getting to know a new member of the Xbox team who has a great Guitar Hero analogy for AI.
GameStop’s cosmic-brain CEO Ryan Cohen recently went on the OpenAI-owned TBPN network to do damage control on his eBay takeover bid after going on CNBC and sounding like he’d just suffered a concussion. The stock has still not recovered from its post-cable-news slump. GameStop employees are not impressed.
EA had a great year and it’s all thanks to Battlefield 6
The best-selling game of 2025 propelled the soon-to-be-Saudi-Arabia-owned publisher to a new annual sales record of $8.026 billion. While its quarterly earnings were marked by a year-over-year decline in live-service revenue, investors are still set to receive a nice dividend ahead of their private equity buyout this summer.
“Driven by our talented teams and disciplined execution, we delivered a record FY26, highlighted by the incredibly successful launch of our iconic Battlefield franchise,” CEO Andrew Wilson said in a press release. “With the recent completion of a debt process that was met with strong investor demand and our ongoing constructive engagement with regulators, we look ahead to closing the transaction and the opportunities it will unlock.”
The earnings report comes just two months after an unconfirmed number of Battlefield 6 developers were laid off across the company despite the game’s blockbuster success. “We’ve made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community,” EA said in a statement at the time. “Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we’re continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs.”
There’s a chance we could get Final Fantasy 7 Remake part 3 DLC
Part 1 got Intergrade, part 2 got nothing. What about part 3? That depends on “how strongly fans continue to support Final Fantasy 7 as both a title and a franchise,” Naoki Hamaguchi said in a new interview with ntower (via Gamesradar). He remains “open to exploring those possibilities proactively.”
Control 2 only cost an estimated $50 million and Remedy wants to keep it that way
“The team and the studio has done excellent work to stay on track. Has done excellent work to build a triple-A game on a relatively small budget. That’s something we’ve seen from Remedy before. That’s something we’ll see again from Remedy,” new CEO Jean-Charles Gaudechon said in a recent earning’s call (via Game Developer).
He continued, “Honestly, there’s something pretty incredible about the way games are being built at Remedy and are being thought through and managed. It has not always been the case, I know that. There have been some hiccups in the past. But the team has done incredible work on Control Resonant.”
Xbox has a new boot-up logo
New boot up coming next Wednesday. Sound on! pic.twitter.com/9HHrZHwjpH
— Asha (@asha_shar) May 6, 2026
Joke’s on them: I never turn my Series S off.
Full-priced game sales have become a luxury
62 percent of player no longer buy full-price games, according to a new survey of gaming audiences by IGN Entertainment. “[Gen X] come from a point of view of midnight opening, full price games, console base… [they] want to get everything they possibly can, get as much juice out of that lemon as possible,” company SVP of marketing Karl Stewart said (via GamesIndustry.biz).
He continued, “Whereas you look at Gen Z, who live in a world of platforms… games don’t end, but social and community becomes a massive part of their DNA. So they want to be a part of a community where they’re able to say, ‘I’m the most informed. I know most about this game.’”
Investors might be pressuring Nintendo to raise the price of the Switch 2
The company’s stock price has fallen five months in a row as it holds the line on a $450 console even as Sony and Microsoft have raised prices on their respective machines. Bloomberg reports that investors want to see a similar move from the Mario maker in order to “protect” profit margins on the Switch 2. Of course, Nintendo also has to make sure it sells a lot of the new console, and so far there have been plenty of reasons for players to sit tight on the last-gen version.
Dying Light franchise director leaves after 13 years
Tymon Smektala joined Techland in 2013 as a game designer and recently served as head of the entire zombie franchise. He wrote on LinkedIn, “After years with Dying Light, I’m moving into a new chapter. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’m proud of what we’ve built.”
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