Technologies
Why Video Games Are Primed for a Big Comeback in 2023
Between a generous slate of new games and stronger subscription services, it’s a fantastic time to be a gamer.
The video game industry suffered serious whiplash from the impact of COVID-19. Hardware and software sales skyrocketed in 2020 as people were stuck inside their homes with little else to do. But those same lockdowns hobbled the development of upcoming games, resulting in a barren slate over the last two years. There was a serious dropoff once you got past Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarok.
Now, with the industry well past the COVID lockdowns and with development back to full steam, 2023 could mark a huge comeback year for gamers. Piers Harding-Rolls, research director for UK-based market research firm Ampere Analysis, said he expects a rebound after spending in this area declined by 4% this year.
One reason spending should rise is that gamers are primed for new games. Getting a next-generation console like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X wasn’t easy over the last two years, but supply constraints have finally loosened up to the point that you could realistically get something in the last few months.
This year also saw the release of Valve’s Steam Deck, a portable gaming device that was similarly hard to buy early in 2022 but became more available by the end of the year. More gamers with the latest hardware means more gamers looking to buy the latest titles.
As important as it is for gamers to have hardware, it’s equally critical that they have new games to play. Due to delays stemming from COVID lockdowns, titles planned for release in 2022 were pushed to 2023. Combine these delayed games with others already planned for next year, and the result is what could be a stunning year for game releases.
“There is really a lot of content coming next year,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “I would say it will be the biggest since 2019.”
Some of the big-budget games that were pushed from 2022 to 2023 include Starfield from Bethesda Game Studios, Diablo 4 from Blizzard Entertainment and Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Add those to other titles planned for 2023 release, including Final Fantasy XVI, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter VI, Resident Evil 4 Remake and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and you’ve got a stacked lineup. And there’s a good possibility that more games planned for 2023 will be announced next year.
COVID debuffed 2022
Although this year saw the release of some amazing games, including Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarök, there were long empty stretches between these few quality titles in 2022. Between May and October there were only a handful of critically acclaimed games released, such as Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and niche indie games Stray and Neon White. Even some of the high-profile games, such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, felt like they needed time to smooth out a lot of wrinkles.
That was the impact of the lockdown finally hitting gamers. With developers stuck at home and unable to effectively collaborate on big projects, publishers delayed one title after another. But because the industry already had a backlog of games ready during the height of the pandemic, gamers didn’t feel much of a drought in 2020 in 2021.
The situation was akin to what the movie industry faced when a number of weekends saw few if any big film releases and theaters remained empty. Major films were delayed this year and pushed into 2023, including Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the Mario movie, Aquaman 2, Madame Web and The Flash.
And like the gaming industry, there are predictions of movie theaters rebounding in 2023 with a number of hotly anticipated titles.
Ignoring the drought
Even with few big-budget games coming out for most of 2022, gamers didn’t pay much attention as their own back catalog of games grew thanks to subscription services from Microsoft and Sony. Both companies stepped up their efforts in 2022, making for an abundance of gaming at such an affordable price.
This year saw Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media – which includes award-winning game developers such as Bethesda, id Software and Arcane Studios – continue to bear fruit for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. One of the best games of 2021, Deathloop, came to the subscription service after its exclusivity period on the PS5 ended. Then some classic Bethesda games went to PC Game Pass, including Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, Quake 4, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard and Wolfenstein 3D. Next year, Game Pass subscribers will be able to play some big titles on Day 1, such as Starfield, Redfall and Forza Motorsports.
Next year could be even bigger for Game Pass if Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard gets approval. The almost $69 billion deal would likely mean Activision Blizzard’s catalog of games, including Call of Duty, Diablo and Starcraft, will be on Game Pass. However, Microsoft is facing opposition from regulators in the US and EU over concerns that the Xbox-maker is becoming a monopoly. The Federal Trade Commission earlier this month sued to block the deal, even as Microsoft offered to make several concessions, including bringing the Call of Duty franchise to the Nintendo Switch and allowing Sony to add the military shooter series to its subscription service, PlayStation Plus.
Sony, meanwhile, improved its standing with gamers by revamping its PlayStation Plus service this year. The PlayStation-maker now offers a tiered subscription for gamers to play some of the latest games from the PS4 and PS5, or pay a little more to run classic titles from the PS1, PS2 and PS3 generations. While PlayStation Plus still doesn’t outshine Xbox Game Pass, it’s a far better alternative than what Sony offered previously.
Taking those three factors into consideration – hardware availability, big-budget game releases and competitive subscription services – 2023 is poised to be a massive year for video games.
Technologies
Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report
Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.
Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.
The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.
The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.
The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.
Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.
AI safety guardrails
Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.
In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”
Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.
“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”
Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.
Technologies
U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports
U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.
On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”
The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”
The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”
The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.
The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.
Technologies
Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down
Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.
Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.
Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.
Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.
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