Xsolla Connects Brands and Games at Advertising Week New York 2026

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 5, 2026--

Xsolla, a global commerce company, today announced it will be showcasing new channels for brands to engage with video game players, studios, and developers in New York City during Ad Week. Xsolla Connect NYC 2026 will bring together brands, studios, partners, and developers to discuss all the things to create direct-to-consumer experiences through video games. The Xsolla team will be active throughout Advertising Week New York 2026, October 5 to 8. Brands, studios, and developers will be joining the discussion around the new industry report focused on brands and games in Xsolla's Holiday Video Games and Commerce ebook.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261005988220/en/

Video games are one of the largest categories of entertainment spending in the world, yet most brands still treat the category as an experiment: a one-off promotional stunt or a single media buy, not a lasting engagement program. The traditional formats brands default to were never built for players. Interstitial pop-ups disrupt gameplay, banner ads go unnoticed, and in-game activations remain cumbersome and expensive to execute.

At Xsolla Connect NYC, Xsolla will make the case for a different way for brands to reach players:

The relationship between players and games is built on the commerce infrastructure behind more than 6,500 games trusted by more than 70% of the top 100 highest-grossing games. The foundational infrastructure gives Xsolla insights into how players spend, what they value, and when they are most open to a brand. These signals come from real transactions, not modeled audiences borrowed from someone else's platform, and Xsolla uses them to connect brands with games. With branded quests, players are rewarded with a brand's product for hitting a milestone they actually care about, such as beating level 50 or dealing 50,000 points of damage. The brand adds value to the game rather than taking attention away. Xsolla calls this approach Rewarded Marketing.

"Brands have spent years trying to get players' attention by interrupting them," said Chris Hewish, President of Xsolla. "When a brand's product is the item a player claims, the brand becomes part of the win instead of the thing standing in the way of it. Advertising Week is where the people who decide brand budgets gather, and we're bringing them a model that puts their product inside the moments players care about most."

Xsolla Connect NYC takes place on October 5 during Advertising Week New York. The full Holiday Video Games and Commerce ebook follows in mid-October.

For more information about Xsolla Connect NYC and the Holiday Video Games and Commerce ebook, visit: https://xsolla.pro/Advertising-Week-2026

About Xsolla

Xsolla is a global commerce company that builds and provides all the things developers need to launch, grow, and monetize video games. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, the company supports studios of every size, from indie to AAA, with solutions across direct-to-consumer commerce, intelligent payments, entertainment-based IP, and player engagement products. Xsolla helps developers fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games at scale. Trusted by more than 70% of the top 100 highest-grossing games, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record across 200+ geographies with access to 1,000+ local payment methods worldwide. Grounded in a deep belief in the future of gaming, Xsolla is resolute in bringing opportunities together and unlocking growth for creators everywhere.

For more information, visit xsolla.com

© 2026 Xsolla. All rights reserved.

Chris Hewish, President of Xsolla

Graphic: Xsolla

NEW YORK (AP) — Journal entries kept by Pope Francis before and during his papacy will be published this fall for the first time.

Image, an imprint of Penguin Random House Christian Publishing Group, announced Monday that “The Private Diary of Pope Francis” will be released in English and four other languages on Nov. 24.

According to Image, the book will provide an “extraordinary glimpse" into the late pontiff's “hopes and fears, struggles and prayers.” It will be issued in partnership with Libreria Editrice Vaticana, or LEV, the Vatican Publishing House.

The writings span from December 1992, just over two decades before he became pope, to August 2024, eight months before he died and was succeeded by Pope Leo XIV. The English-language edition of his private reflections was translated from the Spanish original by Sister Bernadette Reis and edited and annotated by Víctor Manuel Fernández, an Argentine cardinal who heads the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Francis was a native of Argentina and history's first Latin American pope. He was known for his down-to-earth style and emphasis on humility, including visits to poor countries with persecuted Christian minorities rather than the traditional strongholds of Catholicism. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, from an empty St. Peter's Square, he called for “all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”

At times, he was controversial. He angered some conservatives with his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and was widely criticized for saying that those who accused Chilean Bishop Juan Barros of helping to protect the alleged pedophile Rev. Fernando Karadima had committed slander. In 2016, commenting on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's vow to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, Francis said that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out “is not Christian.”

In his lifetime, Francis' books included “The Name of God Is Mercy” and the memoir “Hope.” He died on April 21, 2025 at the age of 88.

This story corrects in paragraph 4 that the writings span from December 1992, just over two decades before Francis became pope.

FILE - Pope Francis leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, May 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)