EA wants advertisers inside the games themselves
EA's pitch to brand buyers this week was simple: stop buying YouTube preroll, start buying in-game real estate. The deck, which a handful of media buyers shared with us, lays out CPM ranges, an 'attention quality' score EA invented, and a roadmap for inserting banner-style placements into live-service titles starting late 2026.
On paper the math is good. CPMs in the $0.40–$0.80 range for impressions inside genuinely engaged sessions undercut almost every digital channel. The deck even includes a side-by-side against TikTok's average cost per qualified view that any CFO would frame and hang on a wall.
On the ground, it runs straight into the UK's Online Safety Act, which now treats personalized ad targeting in games used by minors as a regulated activity. EA's deck mentions compliance exactly once, in a footnote, alongside the word 'TBD'.
A sealed Mario just cleared $3 million
Heritage Auctions closed a Wata-graded sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. at $3.04M Saturday night. That's a new record, and it's the third record in eighteen months for the same SKU.
The retro auction market has the same structural problem the NFT market had in 2021: a small group of grading authorities, a smaller group of buyers, and a price discovery process that mostly happens in private chats. Pretending this is a healthy collectibles market is generous.
None of that means the buyers are wrong to spend. It just means the price is a vibe, not a valuation.
“Activision is calling this a modern release cadence. It is, more honestly, a soft launch in three coats of paint.”
Call of Duty is splitting its launch into three windows. Again.
Activision confirmed late Friday that this year's Call of Duty will ship in three staged windows: campaign on October 24, multiplayer on November 7, and Warzone integration on November 21.
The company is calling this a 'modern release cadence.' Three review embargoes, three storefront pushes, three chances for the multiplayer to drown out whatever the campaign was trying to say.
What it actually means for the rest of the industry
If EA's in-game ad pitch works, expect every publisher with a live-service revenue line to dust off the same idea by Q2. If it stalls under UK regulation, the same publishers will quietly bury the slides.
The Mario number isn't going to change how studios price games, but it will absolutely change how three executives think about funding a 'preservation initiative' next quarter.
And the COD split is, more than anything, a signal that even the biggest annualized franchises are running out of room to grow a single launch day. Splitting the event is how you manufacture three.
Like this? Get today's crumbs every weekday.
Follow Game Cookies for daily bites — one short email, plus the socials of your choice.
