Weekly Anime & Game in Asia 2026-W29 (2026-07-07~2026-07-13)

Microsoft’s ZeniMax restructuring, part of Xbox cuts of about 3,200 positions and four studio closures by fiscal year 2027, follows a period in which Game Pass lost subscribers after a price increase. Separately, Alinea Analytics reported that Steam’s 2026 H1 revenue reached USD 11.1B, up 14.5% year over year, with new releases accounting for only 21% of it. Cygames moved a long-running project to Unreal Engine 5, CyberAgent is building a shared rendering system on Unity, and CRI Middleware added Godot support.

This Week’s Events

Cygames has transitioned its long-gestation project, Project Awakening, from its proprietary engine to Unreal Engine 5, reallocating experienced staff from Granblue Fantasy: Relink to target a hyper-photorealistic aesthetic. Similarly, CyberAgent, a Japanese internet company behind the ABEMA streaming service, is developing Sirius, a centralized rendering system built on Unity to standardize pipelines across its subsidiaries. By integrating Houdini, a 3D procedural-generation tool, for asset creation and Vertex Animation Texture for performance optimization, CyberAgent aims to address technical artist bottlenecks that have historically slowed development cycles.

CRI Middleware, a Japanese game-middleware company, announced full support for the Godot Engine as a first step in accelerating CRIWARE’s overseas expansion, and is targeting JPY 3B in game-business sales by 2030. At ICML 2026 in Seoul, Krafton and Odyssey co-hosted an event on AI for games. Industry leaders from Sony AI, Microsoft Research, and NCSoft discussed shifting AI focus from superhuman performance to supporting roles, such as automated quality assurance and in-game agents, which are essential for reducing the financial burden of AAA production.

ZeniMax is being restructured under an Xbox directive. By focusing resources on five core intellectual properties—Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein—Microsoft is making a move that Inven reads as an effort to shorten development cycles that previously spanned up to 15 years. The restructuring follows a period in which Game Pass lost subscribers after a price increase and Xbox lost its growth momentum. Separately, Alinea Analytics data show new releases accounted for only 21% of Steam revenue in 2026 H1, and within a series, a new entry has been observed to lift sales of older titles.

Game Freak, the studio behind Pokémon, will host its first-ever booth at Tokyo Game Show 2026 with no Pokémon titles; booth details have not been announced. Meanwhile, Singapore-based Elementa showed its Unreal Engine 5 city fantasy action RPG Silver Palace (also known as Shirogane no Shiro) at BilibiliWorld 2026 while running a PC closed beta test. In the indie sector, Orbital Knight announced People’s Press Kiosk, a simulation game set in 1980s communist-era Poland that emphasizes bureaucratic mechanics and moral decision-making.

The Seoul Central District Court dismissed NCSoft’s copyright and unfair competition lawsuit against Kakao Games and RedLab Games, a South Korean game developer, regarding the game ROM; NCSoft intends to appeal. In Japan, the Supreme Court finalized a ruling recognizing AIC, a Japanese anime studio, as a shareholder of AIC Rights, the entity that in 2021 agreed to transfer partial ownership of legacy IP—including Megazone 23 and Tenchi Muyo!—to Toei Agency, the Toei group’s advertising agency, distinct from animation studio Toei Animation.

A former executive at GungHo Online Entertainment, the Japanese company behind Puzzle & Dragons, was arrested on suspicion of breach of trust, and GungHo says the employee misappropriated about JPY 246M; GungHo formed an internal investigation team of two independent auditors and says it will expand compliance education and training. Separately, the sale of significant Sony Group stock by CEO Hiroki Totoki and CSO Toshimoto Mitomo, following the announcement that Sony will cease physical disc production for new PlayStation titles in 2028, drew attention, though observers note such sales are often made for routine reasons such as tax payments, and the transaction is assessed as having effectively no impact on management control.

Looking Ahead

Monitor the release cadence of ZeniMax’s five core franchises through 2027 to determine if Microsoft can successfully compress development cycles to support Xbox Game Pass. Observe the market performance of Game Freak’s Beast of Reincarnation following its August 4, 2026, release. Finally, watch for the adoption rate of CyberAgent’s Sirius system and CRI Middleware’s Godot integration, as these will indicate the industry’s progress in standardizing technical infrastructure.