Stephen Totilo

Your game is blowing my mind. And fascinating my kids. Well done

You can thank Vice City Subs

NEW: We've got a new sales figure for...Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories?

In an effort to block someone's attempt to trademark "Vice City Subs", Take Two's lawyers said VCS sold over 7 million copies since launch. (Prior disclosed number was 4.5m)

Item 2: www.gamefile.news/i/189381015/...

(MLB also felt like the "zone" part might be confusing, because of, you know "strike zone")

Activision abandons key Call of Duty trademark after Major League Baseball objects Plus: An updated sales figure for… Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

NEW: Major League Baseball took issue this week with the name of Call of Duty's "World Series of Warzone" esports series, citing potential brand confusion

Activision then bailed on the WSoW trademark

I'd be surprised if they try using "World Series" again

www.gamefile.news/p/world-seri...

Game File | Stephen Totilo | Substack The business and culture of video games, from a reporter with 20 years on the beat. Click to read Game File, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

My favorite is Game File (www.gamefile.news). The guy who runs it is an inspiration.

Time for Netflix to pivot and buy Xbox

The Story Behind the Failure of ‘Highguard’ The ‘raid shooter’ game from Wildlight Entertainment had a promising start but lost players fast

NEW: Inside the failure of Highguard, which flopped so badly that developer Wildlight laid off most of its staff just two weeks after release.

Here's the story behind why people loved working at Wildlight, why Tencent pulled funding, and how it all fell apart: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

A tough read, but one I'm so glad to see @adashtra.bsky.social cover for us

Anyone discover any great demos in the current Steam Next Fest?

I've played (and enjoyed) Titanium Court and Australia Did It.

I'm downloading tons more. But there are 3,404 demos overall, so suggestions are welcome!

New York sues video game developer Valve, says its 'loot boxes' are gambling New York's attorney general sued Valve, a video game developer whose franchises include Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Dota, accusing it of violating state gambling laws and threatening to addict c...

Well now...

www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Also in this:

- Sharma picks an Xbox vet (and former start-up colleague) for her chief of staff
- And some key Xbox what-ifs regarding a division that launched a $300 console without a killer game and used to have Roblox as a console exclusive

Xbox’s new leader, five days later And some crucial Xbox what-ifs relevant to Xbox's past and Xbox's future

Fun fact: Asha Sharma's appointment as CEO of Xbox is her second time working on Microsoft's gaming brand

A Microsoft rep confirmed to me that she did some Xbox work back during her initial 2011-2013 Microsoft stint but didn't specify what she worked on

www.gamefile.news/p/xboxs-new-...

It took decades, but I'm now RE-pilled.

As I played the Leon parts of the game... it hit me. I had reached a moment in my life when it could actually be useful to distinguish my Kennedys from my Redfields, my Birkins from my Spencers, my T-virus from my G-Virus.

12 hours with the superb Resident Evil Requiem (and 9 hours with Resident Evil 2 Remake) Uh-oh, the new Resident Evil game has infected me with the RE virus

REVIEW: I liked Resident Evil Requiem so much that I took a break while on review deadline to play RE2 Remake through for the first time... a game I'd say is mandatory for this one

Requiem, you see, is an excellent Resident Evil game about Resident Evil games

www.gamefile.news/p/resident-e...

Checking to see if the old USB drive I found has room for some screenshots I need to transfer

Feels like you could do a whole ass career in the games industry and never ship a single game.

Scoop: Ousted Ubisoft developer Ashraf Ismail working for Tencent Ismail exited Ubisoft in mid-2020 amid allegations of abuse of power.

I reported in 2022 that TiMi Montreal had hired Assassin's creed Origins/Valhalla lead developer Ashraf Ismail to build a game.

Five years later, yet another studio closure where the team didn't even get to release anything.

www.axios.com/2022/07/28/a...

Tencent closes TiMi Montreal game studio The game industry's contraction is unrelenting.

Another Tencent story I'd been chasing: TiMi Montreal, founded in 2021 with ambitions to make a AAA open-world game, has closed

Continuing a brutal stretch of shutdowns. And another instance of Chinese game giants pulling back from their western studio start-ups

www.gamefile.news/p/tencent-ti...

Named the Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered act, the legislation, known by its blunt acronym, would expand residents’ rights under state law to sue immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct.

Proud of my state’s legislators

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/n...

Nintendo considers the $65 video game PLUS: Checking in on Sony's studio acquisitions, Steam Next Fest preview, and more

BONUS edition of Game File (aka what I planned to send Friday before the big Xbox news)...

We talk about $60 games, $70 games... $100 games??

Nintendo, ever the innovator, has tried $65 a couple of times this year

www.gamefile.news/p/nintendo-c...

the q in Requiem is a 9!

As Bond continued, she noted to two public relations minders on the call that she was going "off book" to share a personal story: When I was a little girl, I was in second grade and my math teacher wrote four numbers on the board: the life expectancy of a white man, a white woman, a Black man and a Black woman. And she said she was trying to teach us statistics. I was the only African American child in the class and everybody started whispering: "Why is Sarah going to die earlier?" It was awful. And the teacher says, "Oh, we don't mean you, you know, because you eat good food and your family has money and a house. We mean other Black people." No joke. I mean, they did have a bawling kid in here. And I said, "Well, then I'm going to live to be a billion years old." And they were like, "That's not really going to work." But the thing is, I realize now at a company like Microsoft and at a brand that has global consumer reach like Xbox, it is not about making it possible for one person to live a billion more years. It is about making it possible for a billion people to live one more year. And that's what I'm doing.

Xbox executive calls for more diversity in gaming The number of Black people in the games industry has hovered around 2% for 30 years.

With Sarah Bond set to leave Xbox, I wanted to point people back to this interview I did with her in 2021. She went "off book," as she put it, taking a personal turn that I hadn't expected but definitely respected.

www.axios.com/2021/06/22/s...

Who knows what the future brings

But I think it's worth noting that two of the roles represented here (Microsoft gaming chief, Nintendo of America president) are now held by women (Asha Sharma, Devon Pritchard)

And PlayStation's business updates these days are delivered by Sony's first female CFO

Nothing official, but Satya Nadella picked the new boss for the gaming division and does not seem to have chosen his president of Xbox

Phil Spencer retiring from Xbox, Microsoft AI exec Asha Sharma taking over gaming division Xbox president Sarah Bond to depart Microsoft. Sharma, hyping Xbox, promises: "we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop."

NEWS: Phil Spencer stepping down, Microsoft AI exec Asha Sharma stepping in

Sharma commits to gaming in memo to staff. Notes: "we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop."

www.gamefile.news/p/phil-spenc...

"The Resident Evil Movies Were the Only Pair of Footprints in the Sand"

Possible best headline of the week

BIG: 6-3 decision written by Justice Roberts.

Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissent.