Xsolla president Chris Hewish has published a new book titled "Durable Advantage: Five Pillars of the Modern Game Business," unveiled at Gamescom 2026 in Cologne. The book addresses the gaming industry's current challenges of layoffs and contraction by proposing a strategic framework built on five pillars: relationships, commerce, intelligence, trust and time. Hewish argues that gaming companies have become overly dependent on third-party platforms such as app stores, which control critical business functions and restrict their ability to build direct relationships with players and gather complete business intelligence.

Hewish, a former executive at Activision and DreamWorks now leading a payment software fintech company, advocates that gaming companies must move away from the "hit-driven hamster wheel" by gaining full ownership of their business data and decision-making processes. A critical weakness he identifies is that many companies lack complete visibility into their own monetisation and player behaviour data when relying on third-party platforms to handle payments and commerce. Hewish illustrates this with an example: a company observing revenue decline in a particular country might incorrectly assume it needs more localised content, when in reality the drop could stem from players switching to a newly introduced payment method that the company's platform hasn't integrated—data invisible to the company if payment information remains with the platform.