The GTA 6 extended look presentation on Netflix caused a pretty substantial surge in sales for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in the US.

Netflix's GTA 6 extended look had 31.1 million viewers in four days, which is to say it seemed to go down pretty well, especially since you could watch it for free on YouTube hours later. It was a massive success: the game looked extremely impressive throughout the showcase, and it clearly pulled in some, as PS5 Pro stock disappeared pretty soon afterward.

Circana's Mat Piscatella reports that following the premiere of the GTA 6 extended look, "In the US, combined PS5/XBS hardware unit sales for the week ending Aug 29 increased 14% versus the prior week."

He notes that PlayStation grew by 17% and Xbox Series X|S by 9%, and that "The combined increase across both platforms amounted to less than 8k units." Meanwhile, Nielsen IQ (via The Game Business) reports that in the UK console sales jumped by 33% for PlayStation and 34% for Xbox.

But you can only wonder what the jump would've been like if consoles weren't becoming somewhat prohibitively expensive for many. The PS5 Pro is almost a grand after Sony bumped the price up by 150, with the regular PS5 consoles getting $100 on top, while Xbox consoles jumped by $100-$150 depending on whether you get a 512GB or 1TB console.

Since the GTA 6 premiere, I've had multiple people who haven't jumped in on this generation ask about which console to get for GTA 6, but many are simply unwilling to spend that much, especially since this is the only generation where consoles have gotten more expensive as it goes on.

So yes, it's a big bump, but you have to wonder how much bigger it could've been if not for the ongoing global RAM shortages courtesy of it being funneled into the AI slop industry.

GTA 6 wasn't "fully formed" when Trailer 1 released, Rockstar boss says, but the Tom Petty song it used was a "mission statement" of where it was going

On September 6, ChatGPT employee Rohan Varma, who works on the company's Codex coding tool and previous worked at Palantir, proudly revealed Elderwood, a vibe-coded multiplayer game which he later openly described as a "RuneScape clone." By September 9, actual RuneScape developer Jagex had filed a legal notice "asking us to take down the website," and now Elderwood is no more.

"Elderwood has closed," reads the copycat's website. "We received a notice from Jagex asking us to take down the website. Following that notice, we are discontinuing Elderwood's operation, and the game is no longer available."

From the tearful goodbye letter – which is attributed to Varma but, given that he said he used ChatGPT to showcase the game, was likely written with AI assistance – you might think Elderwood was an original game, not a shambling pile of slop and broken copyrights.

"Thank you to everyone who joined us," it adds. "For the levels earned, the laughs in chat, the suggestions, the patience with bugs, and all the little moments in between: you made this a joy to build and a world worth sharing. We're keeping the high scores available as a record of what you achieved together."

As videos from Rohan show, Elderwood was flagrantly styled after early RuneScape, with many menus and items lifted one-to-one and the overall aesthetic mirroring Old School RuneScape closely. It goes without saying that there are several things wrong with it, and it looks noticeably worse than OSRS. But skills like Woodcutting, items such as gold pieces (GP) and party hats, locations like Varrock and Falador, and reams of other details make the ripoff obvious. This was surely a layup for Jagex lawyers.

"In [sic] asked GPT-6 Astra in Codex to build RuneScape and deploy it to a ChatGPT Site," Varma said at the start of this short saga.

Over on the Old School RuneScape subreddit, players are celebrating the death of Elderwood like it's an upstart gladiator that just got gutted in the Roman Colosseum after insulting all their mothers.

"VICTORY DOWN WITH AI SLOP!" declares a top post.

"'Inspired by.' The utter disconnect these people have to reality needs to be studied," reads one reply.

"Weird how inspiration just means stolen assets and AI generation of the game itself. How inspiring," a player agrees.

"Couldn't even write their announcement without AI," says another.

"This stupid project got 1000 times more attention as a result of this sub and we're all dumber for having learned of it," observes one user.

Earlier this year, dozens of game developers told GamesRadar+ why they don't want to use generative AI.

After 25% positive Steam reviews, Soulslike dev realizes people hate AI slop and admits "if it looks like the effort is not there, that is a fair reading of what is on screen."

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has seemingly reacted to the news that Sony has dropped Hideo Kojima's highly anticipated stealth game, Physint, allowing Xbox to swoop in, and he's just as surprised as we are.

Overnight, PlayStation announced that "we have made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS on its project PHYSINT." However, Kojima's own statement highlights this move as being a lot more one-sided than you might expect: "In mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the PHYSINT project," he reveals, going on to say that "we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner," leading Kojima Productions right back to Xbox, which it's also teaming up with on horror title OD.

The concept that any company would want to cancel a Kojima game is shocking, and the situation of PlayStation essentially handing it over to its main competition only makes it weirder, even though it's unclear if Sony could have known that's where the game would end up. Yoshida, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has responded to the news on Twitter, expressing how "surprised" he is (translated by GamesRadar+).

Although his original post isn't shared in response to anything in particular, it's obvious that this is what he's referring to – he doubles down on the sentiment in a separate reply to someone asking him about it directly.

While Yoshida might not have said much, the fact that the news has prompted him to respond like this at all speaks volumes. Sony is in desperate need of a win after its announcement that it's stopping production of physical discs for new PlayStation games in 2028 – the backlash it's prompted from folks opposed to an all-digital future has been immense, with the company's comment sections everywhere filled with cries of "no disc no buy" more than two months on.

Needless to say, deciding it doesn't want to bring Kojima's Metal Gear Solid spiritual successor to life isn't it – in fact, it looks like the opposite. Even with the company's reassurance that "we continue to have great admiration for Hideo Kojima's vision for the game," the general response across the internet is disbelief that Sony would give up on what, from the outside, looks like an easy win.

Despite the change in circumstances, Kojima is clear: "Please rest assured that development of PHYSINT, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward."

As Hideo Kojima turns 63, the Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator says "I would like to remain focused on creating games" despite the interest in movies.