GTA 6 preorders soar past $400M as leaks keep coming

GTA 6 has apparently cleared $400 million in preorder revenue, according to GameSpot — a figure that puts into perspective why Polygon argues the game is simply too large for any leak campaign to damage. The leaks themselves keep arriving regardless, with new details surfacing around cloning keys, combat changes, and random bird deaths. The Stop Killing Games campaign has felt compelled to publicly distance itself from a leak manifesto circulating under its banner, calling the use of illegal means to make a point unacceptable.

Sony is having a complicated week on the first-party front. A reported reversal on its live service co-op Horizon game — attributed to negative player feedback — arrives alongside confirmation that a tiny team is working on the next single-player Horizon entry, still years out. Naughty Dog's cancelled The Last of Us Online is back in the news too, with reports that it consumed hundreds of millions of dollars before the plug was pulled. An opinion piece at Push Square puts the broader failures squarely on PS Studios head Hermen Hulst.

A former Witcher 3 developer at CD Projekt Red shed light on the unintended consequences of ultra-realistic NPC behavior — namely, that women would drop babies at random in ways the team never anticipated. EA employees, for their part, are voicing unease over a potential Saudi ownership situation, describing it as hard to reconcile with progressive workplace values. And a dire industry forecast suggests that $1,000 launch prices for the PS6 and Xbox Helix could mean 39 million fewer consoles sold overall.