Video games in 2026: who's in control

There was a time, a beautiful one, when finishing a video game allowed you to do something far more domestic: lend it to a friend. The disc traveled from house to house, sometimes came back scratched, and quite often had to be requested back for months (or, failing that, copied again onto a silvery Verbatim CD-R). That small economy of favors was part of what we still call playing. In 2026, as we await ever more ambitious games, we must also ask ourselves how much say we will have over them after buying them. What happened to you, PlayStation? Sony announced that in January 2028 it will end production of discs for new PlayStation games. And while the measure excludes titles released on disc before that date, it sets a direction: new releases will be distributed exclusively in digital formats. The company presented the change as an adaptation to consumer preferences, a path already tested back in 2009 with the PSP Go. For the player, it means losing an alternative. Downloading a game is convenient. But being able to buy it used, sell it afterward, or lend it also has value. Not to mention starting or completing a physical collection. In Chile, where renewing a console and building a library requires choosing carefully, that circulation helps finance the next release. It is also part of the economy of places like Persa Biobío, Eurocentro, Paseo Las Palmas, San Agustín, and many more. The disc takes up space on a shelf, but its disappearance leaves more decisions in the hands of the platforms: the conditions of access, download, and transfer of copies. If your last name is Kojima The case of Hideo Kojima is especially revealing. PlayStation withdrew from Physint and Xbox took over its publication. Microsoft thus expanded a relationship that already included the horror title OD and that contemplates collaborations in film and television. It is tempting to read this episode as another goal in the endless dispute between consoles. But what interests us more here is what it says about the position of creators. Prestige opens meetings, but financing determines whether the game continues. For Xbox, adding Physint means partnering with a figure capable of drawing attention beyond a platform's usual audience. For the Japanese designer, it means continuing to develop it (this year alone, Kojima Productions launched, together with ASUS, a tablet available in Chile for more than 4 million pesos). Both parties can win, of course. But the episode is a reminder of how fleeting the relationships are that players tend to defend as if they were childhood friendships. Now, the company taking on Physint has also announced a sweeping reorganization. In July, under the direction of Asha Sharma, it presented a plan to cut approximately 3,200 positions during fiscal year 2027, with 1,600 immediate eliminations. It also announced the departure of four studios: Compulsion Games and Double Fine would become independent again, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs would pass to new owners. EA Sports… whose game is it? On another scale, Electronic Arts, the firm behind EA Sports FC, Battlefield, and The Sims, changed hands. The deal, which valued the company at around US$55 billion, was completed in August: the buyer was a consortium made up of the Saudi sovereign fund PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. Whoever buys a video game giant also buys routines. The EA Sports FC match before bed, the online season with friends, or that saga we have returned to for a decade. For the new owners, that bond has value: a community that returns with each installment allows the business to be planned around a known audience. The original agreement contemplated US$20 billion in debt financing. There a question arises about the future of those games: how much room will projects that need to find their audience have compared to franchises with more predictable revenues. Decisions about budgets and timelines will show how much margin their authors retain. Good releases, but… February was the month of the suffocating Resident Evil Requiem. The bloody Marvel's Wolverine appeared in September, as did Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave and Control Resonant. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve took off in October. Before that, the meticulous 007 First Light had presented its reinterpretation of James Bond's origins. It takes only gathering those names to recognize a season spanning action, horror, strategy, espionage, and aerial combat. The catalog also shows how much weight the familiar carries. Wolverine and Bond land with decades of history in their bodies. Ace Combat and Fire Emblem appeal to their own parishes of the faithful, while Control attempts to stretch its own universe. Working from proven franchises can yield great games, but the risk is evident: concentrating attention and reducing the space for new proposals. And there are still two names that threaten to absorb the end-of-year conversation. The remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is scheduled for November 5 and, on the 19th, Grand Theft Auto VI. Just two weeks between a return to Hyrule and another to Vice City. Two ways of selling us the future through places that already occupy a space in pop culture and our memory. Ocarina of Time carries a particular demand: producing wonder anew around a work many players know by heart. Can a masterpiece be improved? Its challenge consists of justifying every change and every continuity. GTA VI faces another kind of expectation, built over the thirteen years since GTA V, a title that is, with 230 million copies sold to date according to Take-Two, the cultural product that has made the most money in history. The expectation already shows up even in military incentives. A battalion of the US Army, stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, offered a special four-day pass coinciding with the launch of GTA VI to soldiers who renew their service commitment. At that scale, any detail ends up subjected to advance scrutiny: the width of a street, an animation, a reflection. In fact, leaks have turned that anxiety into an additional business. The group presenting itself as Cyberleek tied its threats to leak GTA VI material to demands for a physical edition and to the valuation of its own cryptocurrency. The player's curiosity ends up converted into traffic and the developers' work into currency for pressure. The technical leap NBA 2K27 also allows us to look at 2026 from another angle: the basketball game was the commercial debut of DLSS 5, Nvidia's technology that uses artificial intelligence to incorporate lighting and material details into scenes (on PCs with compatible hardware). Previous versions of DLSS focused on reconstructing images at higher resolution, generating frames, or improving ray tracing. This new stage intervenes more directly in the appearance of what we see, taking as its basis the image and the game engine's data. The result opens a discussion that goes beyond counting frames per second. More realistic skin, better-lit fabric, or a more believable shadow can enrich a scene. They also force us to ask how much of that appearance responds to an artist's decision and how much to the model's interpretation. Nvidia asserts that developers retain control. That control is fundamental: realism is one aesthetic choice among many. The price of entry For years, waiting allowed you to buy a cheaper console. In 2026 that expectation lost force. Sony announced new prices starting in April. Microsoft communicated another international increase in August. Buying later can mean paying more for hardware that has been on the market for years. The case of Nintendo allows us to measure a concrete change in Chilean pesos: the suggested price of the Switch 2 went from $629,990 to $659,990 as of September, an increase of $30,000, equivalent to roughly 4.8%, for the model without a game included. It is the same point of entry, months apart, at a higher value. For PlayStation, the commercial references consulted for this column show the magnitude of the outlay: the PS5 Slim Digital bundle with Astro Bot and Gran Turismo 7 sells for $649,990, the Slim version with disc drive and both games for $724,990, and the PS5 Pro for $1,089,990. At the most exclusive end, ASUS announced the ROG Xbox Ally X20 at $1,899,990 and its collector's edition, with lenses and accessories, at $3,099,990. To that, subscriptions, storage, accessories, and games can be added. The best of the year? In that climate we will arrive at the Game Awards on December 10. Its rules set November 20 as the release deadline for general eligibility, so GTA VI makes it in if it keeps its date. Since the rules also admit remakes, Ocarina of Time can be considered. The stage is set for two giants released fourteen days apart to hog the spotlight. We still have to play them, of course, even if on the Internet the match seems decided in advance. There the awards carry a critical responsibility. A ceremony can help discover works that fell off the radar, or end up confirming the distribution of attention that marketing has already established. Reducing 2026 to a duel between Rockstar Games and Nintendo would leave too many works turned into background noise. That tension runs through 2026: we have reasons to be excited about its video games and reasons to examine the business that sustains them. We can wait for Kojima, want to return to Hyrule, and count the days until GTA VI, all while debating the loss of options to buy and collect games. The future of video games is also played out in those details. In who can finance an idea. In who decides how long something stays available. And in something as simple as finishing an adventure and being able to tell a friend: I'll lend it to you.