First off: thank you to everyone who has jumped into ConsoleMe during Early Access, left feedback, reported bugs and helped shape what the game is becoming.

Early Access is a partnership, and the pace of what we have been able to ship is largely because you are here playing it.

Please keep providing feedback and we will look to include your feedback in the game!

Now, in this particular post... we wanted to take a breath and do two things:

(1) zoom out on what we have already added since launch, at a high level, because the list is long, and (2) share where we are headed over the coming weeks and months, including how we will keep improving the core studio, console, and games business alongside the big new systems.

WHAT WE HAVE INTRODUCED IN EARLY ACCESS SO FAR (HIGH LEVEL)

ConsoleMe was already ambitious on day one: a weekly turn-based game studio sim with real depth.

Since we have been in Early Access, we have pushed that in several directions at once: creative tools, platform and launch fantasy, mogul life, and live games that feel like their own products. Here is a condensed tour, not every patch note, but the through-line so you can see the progression.

Studio identity, vision, and how you build games

We have leaned into making your company and your titles feel yours: studio vision, box art, and a New Project Wizard that keeps evolving so creating a game feels like assembling a product, not just filling a form. The mix and themes work gave you more ways to express what you are making and how the market reads it. The tech tree and progression systems tie long-term strategy to what you unlock over the decades.

Launch day fantasy: marketing, hype, and getting products out the door

A big beat for us was the launch day angle: building marketing and hype around shipping on consoles and releasing games in a way that feels like the real industry: pressure, timing, and visibility. That sits next to tools like the Expo wizard, press calls, and founder flavour so runs feel like more than spreadsheets.

Magazines, manuals, and clarity

We care about you actually understanding the sim. The official console magazine, the in-game manual, and ongoing UI and copy work are there so depth does not turn into confusion. The status bar update was a major step: more of what matters, visible more of the time, with alerts that point you at problems instead of hiding them.

Wall Street, empire, and you are not just a studio

The stock market layer brought public company pressure and a different kind of late-game tension. On the mogul side, we added racing as an empire thread, then space venture as a long-shot prestige play: the fantasy that your founder's life is bigger than the office.

Console wars, platforms, and the business of hardware

The console wars update went after the platform fantasy in depth: online services, console variants, platform economy, and the wrinkle and rivalry of holding or chasing market share. More recently, design your console home screen made player hardware feel more like a real product people live with, not just a stat line.

Sports, spectacle, and passion projects

Football Chairman became a flagship depth pass: stadium, kit, league drama, the works. We complemented that with systems for MMORPG and MOBA titles as living products, so games as a service is not an afterthought. The Daily (newspaper mogul) and the wrestling federation passion project expanded what empire means: media, narrative, and weekly spectacle outside the code repo.

Engine Lab, universes, and creative infrastructure

Engine Lab ties your technology story to shipping and adoption. Story universes connect lore and franchise thinking across projects. Together they are the "we are building an IP factory, not one-off discs" layer of the fantasy.

If you have only played one era or one run, you might not have seen every piece, but that is the point: Early Access has been about breadth and depth in parallel, and we are nowhere near done.

WHAT IS NEXT: OUR EPIC ROADMAP (AND YOUR EXISTING GAME)

Going forward over the next couple of months or so we are organising work in three epics. They build on each other, and each epic also reserves time for polish and upgrades to the core game: the studio loop, consoles, releases, balance, UX, and fixes driven by your feedback (forums, Steam, reports). New stuff is exciting; making what you already have feel better is non-negotiable.

Epic 1: Empire Command Centre (first up)

We want a proper Empire front page: a visual, plain-English weekly command post: recap, risk, recommended actions, and "why this matters" drill-downs across the mogul layer and the systems you mentally group with it (engine, universes, football annual, wrestling, newspaper, stock pressure, and more). Think less tab-hunting, more "here is your week as a mogul." This is about making the game feel smarter and more actionable without dumbing anything down.

Epic 2: Empire portfolio / new businesses

We are expanding side businesses beyond today's passion projects: sectors like technology, food, retail, services, transport, health, media, entertainment, real estate, manufacturing, as part of a broader Empire portfolio fantasy. Player-facing, we are leaning into "Empire portfolio" as the label; under the hood we will extend what already works. This sets the table for a richer public life in the world of the game.

Epic 3: Political layer

Later, we open the political dimension: political capital, optional public office runs, deeper kingmaker and lobbying play, appointed power, and, when you are dominant enough, scrutiny and antitrust-style pressure from the state. Your history (releases, policies, scandals) becomes part of the story. Epic 3 sits after Epic 2 so that portfolio and visibility have real meat behind them.

Running polish (every epic)

Each release, we are holding capacity for core and existing ConsoleMe features. That means console and platform polish, game and launch flows, community systems, balance, bugs, and quality-of-life: whatever the current feedback says hurts most. The epics are the spine & polish is the heartbeat.

CLOSING

If you have stuck with us through this first month burst of Early Access updates, you have already seen that we are building ConsoleMe as a long-haul sim: more systems, more flavour, and, just as important, clearer, fairer, more fun iterations on what is already there.

We will keep posting as Epics 1 to 3 land. In the meantime: keep the feedback coming, it literally fills the polish column on our board.

Thanks again for playing.

The team