Welcome to GamesBeat Next 2026. This event is about great moments in gaming, entertainment and tech.
The launch of Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19 is going to be one of those great moments. We all know that GTA VI is going to dominate social media on that day. But we’ll see just how Take-Two and Rockstar and gamers themselves ride that wave, turning those moments into memories, and turning those memories into history.
We had a great moment in our first New York event with Strauss Zelnick and Reggie Fils-Aime, with Alex Lee pulling off a couple of great fireside chats. That was a sign of how much GamesBeat has grown.
But we know you have high expectations for us. We’re not here to just grab the social limelight for just one moment. We want to make an impact that lasts.
We’re opening today with a console wars session that hopefully will not only make a memory for all of you. It will make some history.
I’ll tell you about how that session came about, mainly because it tells us something about the new GamesBeat. Gina and I have a good partnership and we can push each other to do the right thing at the right moment.
For this event, she asked me what’s a session that I’ve always wanted to do. I thought back to a historic session that I saw 25 years ago, in 2001, as a relatively fresh full-time reporter on games. I watched an E3 panel that, for the first and only time, brought together the top current leaders of the Xbox, Sony and Nintendo. I remembered they kind of insulted each other, and then they never did it again. I mentioned this idea to Gina and she said, you should do it.
But I objected, saying these companies would never do such a risky panel now, and they probably don’t want to share the stage with each other. My experience told me this would be a waste of time. But Gina pushed me. We thought about what would work. And so for the first time in 25 years, we’ve got a session that will bring together past leaders of Sony, Nintendo, and through the magical multiple personalities of Peter Moore, Sega, Xbox and Electronic Arts too. So thanks to Gina for pushing me to make use of my rolodex.
It’s an important time to do this, because the industry has been through a tough time. The layoffs have been horrible. Some have called it a crash. Others predict that the crash is still to come, thanks to the coming impact of AI. There has never been such a tumultuous time in games. But there’s also never been such an opportunity before the people in our industry to dream about reaching billions of people while at the same time conquering other industries like movies and TV.
We’re going to seek the counsel of these leaders, who will be able to take advantage of speaking together in public freely, without corporate overseers, and bring home the lessons of generations to our crowd today.
Now our event happens to overlap with a very important election. I like to think of it as a momentous election, and a time of a new hope. I hope to see a common thread. If GamesBeat had a political policy, it would be peace through play.
It’s never too late to fix things that are broken.
Just look at Asha Sharma. She is trying to fix Xbox, first by cutting back on spending. But she has an ambition to reach a billion players every day. She is embracing the UGC of Minecraft, the frontiers of AI, and she’s fighting the attention war with movies and TV. It’s a controversial strategy, with a serious impact on the livelihood of thousands of people that shouldn’t be disregarded. I recall interviewing one developer who was laid off three times and became homeless for a time. That developer was figuring out what to do with her life after being part of the Xbox layoffs in July. There is so much at stake in getting the answers right. And perhaps trying to save the jobs that are left is better than giving up and leaving the patient dead on the operating table.
Who has seen episodes of The Bear, the show that takes you behind the scenes of running a restaurant? It’s so intense, like a pressure cooker, and it’s got different challenges every day. It’s a lot like the behind the scenes of the game industry. It isn’t pretty. Yet just when you’re ready to give up, and turn the lights out in California, you see a glimmer of hope. Look at Gardens Interactive, a small California company that has a team of dozens and just raised $35 million. As the lesson of GTA tells us, this industry’s fate always hangs on a handful of successes amid a sea of failures. If you’re average in this industry, you’re dead. You have to be an outlier.
If you’ve noticed, there’s a lot of traffic in San Francisco. There are lots of Waymos, and a lot of talk about some bigger industry called AI. I am thankful that it has brought new life into San Francisco and Silicon Valley because I’ve lived here since 1994. Just a few years ago, the streets were empty. The economy is still broken into haves and have nots, but this is a city in the middle of a boom. But they’re creating AI companies here with astronomical valuations, but not necessarily a ton of jobs. Many of those have gone elsewhere. Nvidia, which I always like to say I wrote the first story about, is valued at $5.2 trillion and it’s about 47 minutes away on a good day. OpenAI, the maker of frontier models, is about eight minutes away from here.
If you’re here and you’re in games, you might ask yourself, what the hell am I doing here? Why didn’t I study chip design instead? But I think the market has it wrong. Chips and data models? That’s the boring stuff. If you look at the history of digital electronics, the valuable stuff isn’t what’s under the hood. Rather, it’s the entertainment that sits on top of it.
Sure, we have a $200 billion industry in gaming today. But if you play your cards right, maybe games and entertainment will be the biggest creators of joy, and that means that someday they will be sitting on top of the puny businesses of Nvidia and OpenAI.
Now, I don’t mean to hyperventilate about AI. But it’s worth looking into in a deliberate and intelligent manner. It’s worth bringing the conversations into the transparency of a sunlit open conference on neutral ground, where you check your swords and shields at the door. It’s like an episode of The Bear, played out in front of everyone eating at the restaurant. That’s why we have 15 technology and AI sessions here at GamesBeat Next, out of a total of 49 sessions. There will be talks that offer food for your soul, like how to stay on the side of fun, rather than the side of addiction. And how what you’re making is not just entertainment. It’s a cultural artifact that someone might dig up a thousand years from now. Curating these particular talks are where I am pushing the industry to move in an ethical direction. Not that you need a push.
Our roster speaks to the marriage in the Bay Area of games and technology, which is the hallmark of GamesBeat Next. We also have lots of sessions on the gaming business, culture, development and more. You can engage with our 119 speakers who come from many diverse parts of our industry. We are not feeding you AI slop.
We hope these sessions show you where you need to go. We congratulate you as survivors. If you’re in this room, you’ve earned that title. You’re in the right place at the right time. And we appreciate your presence — because you keep our journalism honest, grounded, and accountable. I write every story as if I had to defend it in front of one of you sitting in front of me.
We can assemble this crowd because we have the rolodex. Do you remember what those things are, the little black spinning things? We’ve also got a lot of help, including the rolodexes of 30 advisers who helped get speakers for this event.
When I started out as a business writer, I wanted to follow the money. What has kept me here all these years is following the people — the founders taking chances, the developers building something new, the investors who take risks, the teams doing important work that don’t always get the recognition they deserve — and the players who hold the ultimate power of fandom. After more than 20,000 stories in the past 18 years, I’m still delighted when I hear a successful entrepreneur say “you covered us when no one else would.” Thinking about this long arc of relationships – which became more important as we spun out in 2025 – is something I want to instill in those who eventually replace me.
We have the responsibility to bring transparency to the industry, and we appreciate all of you who help us do that every day. But we’ve discovered that we can play a key role in connecting people, whether it’s introducing people to get jobs or matching entrepreneurs with investors or simply bringing people together. We’re not just observing from the sidelines; we’re also creating connections and opening doors.
It’s been my honor to serve with a great team that works hard to keep pace with such a fast-moving industry. We spun out with eight people in April 2025.
I’m very thankful to have our journalism crew of Alex Lee, Rachel Kaser, Sam Smith and Jolie Feld. We’ve also got an awesome business team in Gina Joseph, Cathy Simpson, Andrea Gottfried, Marissa Hayes, Eva Luong, Joy Connell, Madison Shelton, Matt Casamassina, James Singian, Mary Ellen McKenna, Kelsea Watkins, Rachel Heleva and Alexei Ilynkh. Among our volunteers is Marla Takahashi. We have so many people to be thankful for, including our volunteers, our sponsors, our speakers, and our advisers.
Now every now and then, I like to say we need your support. You’re our community, and we can’t survive without you. I do not say this from a position of weakness. In this age and in this business of games, asking for help is a sign of wisdom. We need our sponsors. We need our attendees, subscribers and readers. Our humble reality is like being a sailor on the seas of fate. But our strength is something akin to a moral and social bond. Our power, which you might call the freedom of the press, comes from you. Our power holds together our raft. It is something to cherish, on this eve of an important election day. And so it is from a position of power, not weakness, that I say thank you for your help.
We appreciate having so many great friends. And we hope to keep earning your trust with the best quality events and the work of our mighty but small team of journalists. I’m grateful to all my colleagues and the people in the industry I have known — sometimes for decades — for making all this possible. And thank you to our new friends as well for being here. You are welcome including at our next event on December 10 in Los Angeles – our Hollywood & Games event on the same day as The Game Awards.
And may tomorrow be a brand new day. Go out and make some history.