5 Video Game Things I Learned | 2026 June 20 - June 26
The ups and downs of the video games industry can cause whiplash, but they’re also partially why I love this industry so dearly. I have five more things this week, and they’re once again a mixed bag of informative history and industry news that ranges from disastrous to peachy. While prices are rising, making the hobby more unsustainable than it has been in quite some time, video games as an industry continue to excel with Newzoo’s report of over $200 billion in 2025 revenue for the industry. I also got some interesting looks at a couple of games: one old and one new.
The Binding of Isaac: The Ultimate Practice
In the process of catching up on some old Game Informer magazines that I’ve fallen behind on reading, I read an inspiring article about Mewgenics, a roguelite RPG that released in February, 2026. Edmund McMillen, half of the passionate duo behind the game, discusses Mewgenics as a passion project dating back well over a decade. McMillen is probably most well known as a designer of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac. However, he has decades of experience dating back to the earlier days of Flash games.
What I found particularly interesting is how McMillen describes The Binding of Isaac as a “warm-up” roguelike in which to hone his skills in the genre before making Mewgencis. It’s hard to imagine The Binding of Isaac as some way for McMillen to practice his skillset. On top of reportedly eclipsing 14 million copies sold, the game often receives praise for popularizing the roguelike genre, a genre that includes successes such as Hades, Enter the Gungeon, Risk of Rain, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, and many more.
I also found myself intrigued by McMillen’s descriptions of how the thematic importance of the game to him has changed over the years. In the time that Mewgenics has been in development, a lot has changed for the designer. He’s been a firsthand witness to the success of The Binding of Isaac, released no fewer than 12 separate games, expansions, re-releases, and other game projects, and had children. While the game is what it is, some of the meaning behind the game have hit McMillen differently over the years. He now finds important themes that make him think, “what will happen to my children when I’m no longer here. What legacy will I leave for them, and what genetics have I passed to them? What disadvantages and advantages will those genetics have?“
Steam Machine Prices Revealed
Valve’s Steam Machine prices have arguably become the premiere video game news of the week, shocking everybody… except for me. A few weeks ago, I talked about Steam Deck prices skyrocketing, and I argued for why the price increases had to be so much higher than similar price increases for something like Nintendo Switch 2. Using a lot of the same logic, I originally predicted a base price of $999.99 USD for the Steam Machine when it was announced back in November, 2025. Now, with a base price of $1,049.99, I feel a bit vindicated.
However, that’s what I predicted before hardware prices continued to reach post-apocalyptic levels. Supposedly, Valve wanted to target a cheaper price point but wasn’t able to. So in actuality, I was probably wrong. Still you have to take the wins where you can get them.
What definitely caught me a bit off guard was the variations that can cost as much as $1,428 for a 2 TB machine with a controller. That price is getting pretty hefty. However, it’s not completely unreasonable for a PC with these specs. There are two different camps of people who are very upset.
The first camp is people who can’t believe how much a gaming console costs! Well, in case you missed it, Valve is advertising this as a PC because it is a PC. Now, is a console just a PC dedicated to video games without a keyboard and mouse? These days, yes. But the Steam Machine and the underlying operating system truly yield a full PC capable of anything any other PC can.
The second camp is people who look at these price points and say that they can get a PC a little higher powered for a little less money if they just build it themselves! Well… duh. That’s always been the case with PCs. Part of what you pay for with something like the Steam Machine is getting it pre-built. If you’re going to put in the sweat equity of building the computer yourself and tracking down reasonably priced, compatible parts, then you’ll pay less financially.
What I’m actually more excited about is the reveal that SteamOS is being released as a standalone operating system that anybody can use for their computer. This is exactly what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, it also ruins all of the alure of getting the Steam Machine in the first place. I haven’t gotten any hardware allowing me to use SteamOS yet, but I’ve heard remarkable things from Steam Deck reviewers and the like. I’m pretty determined to move away from Windows as it continues to feel clunkier, run slower, and take up more of my resources. However, I despise the Mac ecosystem, and I don’t want to jump through the hoops of running windows game builds on Linux. SteamOS gives me the best of both worlds: a new, non-Mac operating system that is literally designed to run Windows games hassle-free. Unfortunately, it only works for AMD GPUs at the moment. They’re working to get NVIDIA compatibility in 2027, and I can’t wait. It makes me wish I didn’t start with Intel-based CPUs and NVIDIA-based GPUs when building my first computer.
Video Games Earn $200 Billion
Holy moly, the video games industry is booming! Despite the grim outlook in much of the western world, especially the United States, video games continue to be a juggernaut of an industry. According to Newzoo, video game revenues worldwide are estimated to be $201.6 billion, marking the first time ever that video game revenues have passed the $200 billion mark. Here are some particularly interesting stats that made me think when I read them:
Mobile games continue to be the bread winner of the industry, accounting for 56% ($113.3 billion) of total game revenue. It’s always interesting to see how powerful mobile platforms are every year, especially since I believe they’re largely considered afterthoughts these days for “hardcore” gamers. However, mobile is the video games industry’s best way to reach broader and more casual audiences, in addition to a hefty number of dedicated gamers who do heavily value mobile gaming as their primary source of video game consumption. Furthermore, mobile platforms have a much stronger foothold in other parts of the world compared to the United States and Europe.
PC revenue jumped 12% year over year, bringing it to $43.6 billion. Newzoo claims this is the largest YoY jump for PC games in their datasets. But…
PC is still in last place behind mobile and console, with console slightly edging out PC with $44.7 billion.
Revenue from DLC is way down; 23.4% down YoY, to be more exact. This got me wondering if there was some sort of reduction in the amount of DLC being produced by studios that led to such a dramatic downturn. However, I found nothing of the sort. While we already saw that PC has the smallest slice of the pie, I only have access to the publicly available Steam data, and I do believe PC platforms account for a significant enough portion of DLC releases to show some compelling data.
On SteamDB.info, I found that there was a 15.6% increase in games released on Steam from 2024 to 2025. Similarly, there was a 15.3% increase in DLC released over the same period. So I don’t believe the culprit to be a lack of DLC available. A more likely contributing factor could be the mere 5.9% increase in DLC with a rating of 70% or higher. This points to a lower percentage of high-quality DLC released in 2025 compared to 2024. When coupled with a stellar set of game releases in 2025, I believe the industry’s smaller percentage of high-quality DLC releases were potentially overshadowed by base games.North America grew the least in terms of YoY percentage by a wide margin. NA revenue grew 5.7%, well below the global average of 9.1%. Newzoo attributes this to “its heavier console skew and softer live-service performance from US-dominant franchises in 2025.” My personal translation: “Large U.S. game corporations continue to flounder with their strategies of trying to force live-service games down players’ throats, leading to a higher volume of failed projects that make no money. People are sick of everything having a live-service model, and companies don’t want to listen.“
Unhinged: Night School Studio’s Next Game
Night School Studio’s next project was announced, and it has captured my attention. Unhinged is a horror game exclusively playable on Netflix (since Night School is a Netflix subsidiary) with your phone as the controller. While the concept sounds interesting, and the studio’s reputation for high quality dialogue writing and voice acting shines through the trailer, I do find myself concerned by the constraints on the project.
Seeing as the game is a Netflix exclusive and only requires a phone and a Netflix account to play, I can’t help but think that Netflix’s thumb is on the scale for this one. Developing mobile applications in between larger game releases is something Night School did prior to being acquired by Netflix. However, this one feels like a major release in and of itself. If that is in fact the case, and this game isn’t a stop on the way to a major release, then a Netflix-exclusive release feels like a risky maneuver for Night School to attempt if they make these types of decisions with autonomy. Choosing the phone as the sole controller also strikes me as more of a constraint directly or indirectly from Netflix rather than a creative choice by Night School.
I also wonder what the metric for success will be for Night School. There certainly will be a metric they have to hit in order to keep the studio off of the chopping block. However, the game has no associated purchasing or ads, according to Netflix. So how will Netflix determine the success of Unhinged? Even large corporations that are fully engrossed in video games don’t seem to know how to set reasonable expectations for their first-party studios to hit. What does a company primarily associated with the film industry think a successful game looks like on Netflix?
Now, talking about the game itself, it looks impressive. While I do suspect that Netflix influenced the selection of the player’s phone as a controller, it sounds like Night School may have made the most out of the restriction. I’m excited to see how the game plays when it releases on June 30, 2026.
Micron Predicts Longer Hardware Shortages
The drastic shift by technology companies (and everyone else, for that matter) to hone in on artificial intelligence has spelled disaster for prices across the globe. Looking around my room where I type this post, I can identify no fewer than a dozen different devices within eyeshot that contain at least one microchip. Most of them have several, dozens or even hundreds of microchips within them.
However, as artificial intelligence has swept the world, more computing power has been required to keep up with the heavy demand. Additionally, a huge swath of tech companies are looking to pour more and more resources into AI research, development, and upkeep to continue increasing demand and, therefore, revenue. Because of that, the supply of microchips for all other purposes outside of AI-related data centers has shrunk drastically, sending prices through the roof. Everything is becoming more expensive as long as at least one microchip is required. This has led to severe constrictions particularly in the memory and storage markets.
Micron, one of only three primary suppliers of memory microchips across the globe, previously exited the consumer market at the very end of 2025 to focus on business-to-business transactions. Now, the company has reported large volumes of orders for chips that tie up a significant amount of their manufacturing for upwards of five more years. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra claims that we can expect a gradual improvement in the supply shortages starting in 2028, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of their business deals have five-year terms, severely limiting the outflow of chips to businesses not dominated by data centers and AI.
Personally, I think this says less about corporate greed and more about the danger of monopolistic structures. As I stated before, there are largely three companies across the whole globe responsible for memory chips: Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. All of these are publicly traded companies, meaning they have a financial and, oftentimes, legal responsibility to do what is best for the company’s revenue, not what is ethically sound. Undoubtedly, the best way to make money with computer hardware today is through data centers and artificial intelligence. Public companies essentially have a monopoly on memory chips, so with AI’s surge, a lot of companies have their hands tied. Without a significant private player in the semiconductor business providing memory chips, these things feel inevitable… and scary.