May 16, 2025 • 40 mins
Welcome back to Digital Coffee: Gaming Brew! In this episode, host Brett Deister serves up a fresh batch of gaming news, trends, and hot takes from the world of PC and console gaming. Brett dives into everything from Krispy Kreme’s playful Pac-Man donut collab and the creative journey behind Expedition 33, to the exciting new modding opportunities for Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2. He unpacks the latest updates on Marvel Rivals, rising Nvidia GPU prices, and Ubisoft’s selective reporting on Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
The episode also touches on long-awaited remakes like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and the enhanced Stalker trilogy, plus updates on Epic’s Unreal Engine 5.6 and the confusing Steam “data breach” saga. Brett shares thoughts on EA’s return-to-office policy, the state of Star Wars Outlaws, and whether the gaming industry is heading for another crash or simply a much-needed reset. Whether you want news, commentary, or a healthy dose of opinion, this episode’s got plenty of grounds to keep you caffeinated. So grab your favorite brew and get ready for the latest buzz in gaming!
3 Fun Facts:
- Krispy Kreme partnered with Namco to release Pac-Man-themed donuts, celebrating Pac-Man’s 45th anniversary with three unique flavors.
- The integration studio (modding tools) used to develop Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is now available for the public, letting gamers create new campaigns and game modes.
- The Stalker Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition is launching with remastered graphics, mod support for both PC and consoles, and it’s even optimized for Steam Deck.
Key Themes:
- Krispy Kreme Pac-Man donuts collaboration
- Expedition 33’s development reboot and outcome
- Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 mod support
- Nvidia GPU price increases and impact
- Ubisoft’s reporting on Assassin's Creed Shadows
- Steam’s reported data breach confusion
- Signs and realignment of the gaming industry
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew,
and I'm your host, Brett Deister. If you please subscribe to this podcast and all
your favorite podcasting apps, leave a five star review. It really does help with the
rankings. Let me know how I'm doing. But this week, we're gonna be
talking about Krispy Kreme's,
well, new gaming centric donuts,
(00:23):
expedition 33, a little bit more about that, and
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine two.
Marvel rivals, new interesting things going on there. Nvidia
in well, once again, the rising prices.
Ubisoft in their lackluster way of saying
that Assassin's Creed shadows is actually a successful game.
(00:46):
We also have Prince of
Persia, the sands of time remake may have finally come out,
maybe. Epic Games and its new unreal engine
5.6. And so this
this data breach that's not a data breach from Steam. So we're talking
a little bit about that
(01:10):
and what's going on with it. And then we're gonna
be talking about GSC game world.
Basically, the trilogy enhanced
edition, so the three previous games, they have already been
kind of talked about and plus with a bunch of new
updates as well. And, also,
(01:32):
we've got we've got Ubisoft's
Star Wars Outlaws as well that's gonna be out,
and then EA implementing in office
return to work. It's always going to be happening. And
are we talking about are we headed for a gaming crash? Is the gaming
industry ahead for another crash like it was in the eighties with Atari and
(01:56):
ET? We're talking about that but let's
get on with the show.
That's good.
(02:17):
Alright. So Krispy Kreme has announced a
collaboration between Namco to create
Pac Man donuts. The celebration or the collaboration
celebrates the forty fifth anniversary of Pac Man
video game franchise. New Pac Man cookbook is set to release
currently with the donuts. The donuts are currently available at Krispy Kreme
(02:40):
stores across The United States. There are three varieties of Pac
Man donuts, the Pac Man donut, an original glazed donut with yellow
buttercream flavored icing sprinkles, and a Pac Man
piece on top, the team ghost donut, an unglazed
donut filled with chocolate cream dipped in black
icing and decorated with a Pac Man maze and ghost
(03:03):
pieces, and the strawberry power berry donut filled
with strawberry flavored cream, dipped in red icing,
and decorated with white sprinkles and green
leaf icing. So it should be interesting if you're looking
to get some donuts, but you want a little bit more gaming flair to your
donuts, head over to Krispy Kreme. It looks like it's gonna be
(03:25):
good fun and it's gonna be good eating too.
Alright. So clear obscure expedition
33 is well,
it basically wasn't what it was supposed to be
when it was originally going to be made.
(03:46):
So apparently, it was supposed to be the game was set in this
Victorian England populated with zombies and
aliens. The narrative lead, Jennifer, say that the original story was
completely different from the the final version. The game is rebooted after
investors encouraged the developer, Sandfall Interactive, to take a new
direction. The studio has been developing expedition 33 for
(04:08):
six months before the reboot. The new new direction
was inspired by a painting liked by game
director, Broch,
and a short story written by Sedzberg
Yen. So basically,
what we we've got a way different version was supposed to be. I
(04:30):
mean, originally, it was going to be about
zombies and aliens, and then we got this, which is a completely different.
And I think it's actually better that they actually did it because it's a net
positive on actually what they did. But this is just kinda what
development looks like. Sometimes you're creating a game or
writing a story or something like that, and you're like, you know what? There's just
(04:52):
something not right about this, and I think
we just need to redo this and actually come up with something better.
And so that's what they did. They were working on for six months, and they're
like, change new direction, and this is how we got
expedition 33 instead of what we were originally going to be getting,
which I think it's a it's a good thing that they actually did this. And
(05:15):
I'm glad that the investors were
like, please figure out a new direction.
This may sound interesting, but I don't we don't think it's
actually gonna be a good thing. So I this was a
brilliant move by investors, a brilliant move by everybody at the team because basically what
we got was what is expedition 33 now, which
(05:37):
is a really great story and people are loving it. Alright. The
developer of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine two has officially
released the integration studio for public use. The integration studio is the
same editor used internally by developers for gameplay development.
Modders can use the integration studio to modify level scenarios,
game modes, the AI director, and UI elements. The
(06:00):
game director made the announcement on Space Marine two modding discord.
He expressed excitement about the community's potential creation including
cinematic campaigns and new game modes. He know that creating
custom geometry for new levels would be too difficult for modders.
So basically what they're trying to do is they're trying to make this like a
(06:20):
Skyrim. So when Skyrim came out, it was a
huge hit and then everybody was modding it and people are still modding it to
this day to do whatever they wanted. I mean, sky oblivion's
coming out from the Skyrim engine. And so this is
what they're trying to do because once they're done with development, they're not really
gonna work on anymore. They're gonna work on whatever new thing they're gonna be working
(06:42):
on. But at least this gives everybody else a chance
to create new things, create new stories, and basically bring
a very long life for space marines too. Because, I mean, every
publisher and developer actually wants that because when you have a long shelf life,
it keeps on selling. The problem is that a lot of publishers like, alright.
Onto the next thing. No. We will not allow the people that love this game
(07:05):
to modify it because that's terrible for our
sales and something something. It just doesn't really
make much sense, to be honest with you.
Alright. So you Marvel rival fans is celebrating the one year anniversary
since the closed alpha test. The season zero battle pass is
being introduced as a thank you to fans, and
(07:29):
it's basically starting right now, May 15, and
it's going to May 29. So you don't really got much. And you can earn
free rewards. Player players must purchase the luxury pass for
5 5 hundred and 90 lattice, apparently
$5, to get the extra stuff. It
also includes the
(07:51):
Scion venom that everybody mostly missed.
Now the developer has acknowledged community feedback regarding the battle pass, including the
future returns may happen, but will span at least two
seasons and be priced at a minimum 20% higher than the original
rate. So get it now before it goes up in price.
(08:12):
I mean, the this is the thing about BattleBest is there really is no, like,
defined price, and they can charge whatever they want to as long
as you'll buy it. And, I mean, $4.99 is not a bad price,
but, you know, it is what
it is. But,
I mean, you got Overwatch two now with Stadium, and that
(08:35):
has kinda revived the game because it did need a revival. And now you
have this, which everybody's saying is, well, not doing very well
because of the revival of Overwatch two, but you're gonna have that push and pull.
And, yeah, they're gonna make mistakes, obviously, and
Blizzard has already made pretty big mistakes for Overwatch in
general. But we'll see what actually happens
(08:58):
with this and if actually season zero battle
pass is actually gonna be something good to get or not. I mean,
it's all cosmetic, so it's not really going to help you all that much.
But if it's gonna be a 20% higher rate than the
original, that's that's a pretty significant jump from the original. It's like,
well, I better get it now before it goes up in price again.
(09:22):
Speaking of going up in price, NVIDIA has reportedly
raised GPU prices by 10 to 15%.
The increase in prices is attributed to surging manufacturing
costs. Factors contributing to the price increase includes tariffs and price
hike from TSMC, and these costs are filtering
down to retailers. So if you're really wanting that sweet, sweet 50
(09:45):
or, yeah, 50 series graphics card,
well, enjoy the thing that you like right now because it's gonna be way more
expensive. And I don't think this is going to help Nvidia whatsoever when they
keep on doing this. This is insanity. It's already really expensive to
get the 5,000 series if you can get one, if you
can find one. And when you find one, you gotta get there quick or it
(10:08):
goes well, it goes away.
So I was considering upgrading, but after, like,
everything else coming out, I was like, you know what? These don't seem to be
that great. They're really expensive. They're only getting more expensive.
I'm gonna keep my $30.90 card for a while longer because
what's the point of trying to get something that is arguably better
(10:30):
than mine, but is arguably expensive?
And I'm like, well, 39 is gonna be good for a while until they can
all figure out the actual new pricing, until they can all
figure out the manufacturing and bringing things over to US if
need be because that's really where it's gonna go. So
I would say for right now, until they configure the manufacturing process and bring down
(10:54):
those prices, you probably should wait a while.
It's just not great.
Alright. So moving on to to Ubisoft reported that
Assassin's Creed Shadow South outperformed Odyssey in
(11:17):
sales and player count. Shadows generated the second
highest day one sales revenue in franchise history only behind
Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Well,
within a day of its launch, Shadow suppressed the Steam
launch of Valhalla, but Valhalla came out two
years after it came out on Steam. So I don't really
(11:40):
understand this. This, like, oh, it it did better than a
game that was already out, but finally came to Steam. Okay?
Player engagement for shadows has reached a hundred and sixty
million hours. Ubisoft acknowledged the decision to delay
shadows contributed positively to its quality. Yeah. Sure.
The game is currently holding a very positive rating of 80%
(12:03):
on Steam, and Odyssey is
rated slightly higher than shadows on Metacritic.
Ubisoft has plans for future updates
and additional shadow content, but you know what?
It's just it's not that great. I didn't even
I was like, I'm I'm I'm good. I don't I don't really want
(12:27):
this game. I don't really wanna touch this game.
There's just so many problems with it from my
perspective that I was like, I'm good. I don't want
this. Enjoy
enjoy playing this game if you enjoy it, but there was just a lot
of problems with it,
(12:50):
and it just didn't really hit that
plus with the black samurai and everything. And right now, if
I'm looking at this correctly,
it's at 4,222 players playing right now.
Now, obviously, this is more in the middle of the day, but even
if we look at historically, it's been around
(13:13):
probably around 4,000 players
playing. The peak was 64,000.
And even on Sunday, peak times is
about 7,000. Couldn't even crack 10,000. So my
issue with all this is that they are still not giving us numbers. They're
still really trying to make this look like it's a really great
(13:36):
game by skewed aggregates. But
when you look at steam overall, it just it
just doesn't look great because it just
there's just nothing to go off of because they won't actually
give us any numbers whatsoever.
(13:57):
And I don't know. I
mean, even looking right now, Assassin's Creed Odyssey still has
more players than the shadows, and it's older.
I mean, I don't really understand
this whole thing about it. I mean, even if I
look at Valhalla, it's lower.
(14:21):
So the previous game is lower, but the game came
out a lot late a lot earlier
is doing better than the one we have right
now. So
it's just these numbers just do not make sense to me.
(14:43):
And they keep not wanting to share the actual sales numbers. They go, oh, it's
a success. I'm like, if it's such a success,
why are you withholding the numbers? It's not really that difficult
to do.
Anyways, moving on to Prince of Persia, the sands
of time remake, which is finally going to be coming
(15:06):
out before April 2026. So you still got a little
while to do it. Development reportedly started over from scratch,
and the original writer and English voice actor may no longer be
involved. Now the game has been delayed three times and moved to
a different studio. The fiscal year for Ubisoft runs from April
1 to March 31. Meaning, the game must be
(15:29):
released before March. The
game is expected to contribute to Ubisoft's
financial performance alongside other titles like Assassin's Creed shadows and
Rainbow six mobile. So
the this is good and bad. It's unfortunate that original writer and the original
voice actor is not there anymore, but it's good that it's finally coming out. The
(15:51):
problem is that they had to start over for whatever
reason. It was starting over to DEI it. Yeah. It's not gonna go very well.
But if it's starting over to actually make it better, fine. I understand.
But Ubisoft does not have a great track record of making
great games as of late.
But we will see what actually happens with this and if it's actually
(16:14):
gonna be any good. So I foresee it coming out either
from now until March 31. We'll see
how far along they actually are. It's probably gonna be more around
March 2026.
Would be more accurate, but, like, again, we'll see.
Alright. Epic Games has released unreal engine 5.6 preview for
(16:37):
developers. The developers can download the preview via the Epic
Games Launcher GitHub and Linux. The game aims to
enable vast, high fidelity open worlds with a target of
consistent 60 frames per second. Ubi's,
Unreal Engine 5.6 includes device profiles based on Fortnite's
optimized setting to achieve 60 frames per second on all supported platforms.
(17:01):
Streaming performance has been optimized for content streaming in and out
of the world at run time. So, hopefully, this
will help with all the stuttering issues that has been reported because
Unreal Engine five has not been great. Four was actually
the the best out of all of it. It was stable. There wasn't all these
weird stuttering or problems that we've had
(17:23):
since five has released because five just added a lot of different types
of features. I guess the best way of saying it
was destruction with the lighting and
everything else. Really cool, really nice, but
it has caused quite a stir. So we'll see how well developers
actually make it with this one and see if,
(17:46):
like, Dune awakening can actually use 5.6 to
help kinda mitigate a lot of this issue.
Alright. So the very confusing, did Steam have a data
breach or not? So it was originally reported that there was
a a data breach
by affected users of Steam. The breach reportedly
(18:09):
involved the information of 89,000,000 Steam accounts, which has
appeared for sale on the dark web. The data allegedly
include users' one time passwords and phone numbers. A threat actor claims to
be auctioning off its information for $5,000.
At the time they're recording, more than 30,000,000 concurrent Steam users were
online. Users are advised to change their password to secure
(18:31):
their account. It's always recommended to to do two
factor authentication. So
we'll see about that. But then it came out that, well, no.
This didn't actually happen. What actually
happened was it really there really was nothing.
(18:52):
It was old passwords that were already
not really useful anymore, and it just
it it didn't make none none of this makes any sense.
So I don't even know if there was a hack or there wasn't, but
it's been auctioning off maybe just to get money.
Probably sure it's more to get money or not. But it's it's a weird
(19:14):
confusing time when it's like, yeah, this happened,
but not really it happened. But, yeah, it happened.
But, no, it didn't happen. It's like, wait.
What? Like, I I don't really
understand. Like, why would why did this
happen? But here we are. Here
(19:36):
we are. So I changed my password
because I've had it happen to me before people did compromise and
stuff. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna change my password. And
they came out that nothing actually this is a nothing burger. They
valve claims that there's no data breach whatsoever. Now if it
comes out that there was a breach, well, it's a good thing I changed my
(19:58):
password anyways because now I have to deal with it.
But as of right now, can't do
anything about it. It's unfortunate, but you
cannot do absolutely anything about this thing whatsoever.
So here we are. So as a precaution, I probably would
(20:18):
say change your password. If you don't have a password management system, definitely get a
password management system. Use the steam
app and do the steam guard as well. This will help with
any of that nefarious things going on. But having a
strong password and changing it would be even more beneficial
for everybody. Alright. Ubisoft has announced
(20:42):
well, it's gonna be addressing issues on Star Wars outlaw and also
is going to be the second DLC story, Pirate's
Fortune, is going to be, well, coming
out or actually already came out alongside with patches. The patch includes
Kay's ability to switch smoothly from her blaster to two handed
weapons, ability for Kaye to free fire while riding
(21:04):
her speeder. So you can actually fire your blaster instead of waiting for the
stupid, like, ability to shoot,
like, the dead eye but on your speeder, which is great because I don't no
one understood why, and I still don't even understand why I couldn't just shoot on
the speeder. Very weird that they never actually added
this. There's also new space contracts with multiple challenge
(21:27):
challenge types for additional rewards. Patch also addresses
various issues including audio lines playing out of order.
That's fun. Props disappearing or floating during cut
scenes. That's pretty funny. Fixes to prevent
players from being unable to complete intel quests. A fix to
prevent Kaye from getting trapped in a room on
(21:51):
T'Shara T'Shara while respawning. Well, that would
be uncomfortable and unfortunate.
But, hey, at least they're updating it. Do I still think they should
have just done, female protagonist?
No. I really think they should have just let you be a smuggler and choose
which one you wanna do. I think that would actually been a better move,
(22:13):
but here we're at it's not a bad game. They actually did
fix it, but they should have waited to fix a lot of these issues because
when it first launched, people were trashing it, and rightfully so, the AI
was stupid, and it's still pretty stupid.
You I mean, there was a lot of issues. You really couldn't do a lot
of things. I still am really confused on why why you as
(22:37):
a female smuggler, you can basically
knock out stormtroopers with your fist, but you can't move them.
So is she strong or is she not? Are we gonna be in reality or
we're gonna be not in reality? It it just never
made any sense. But fine. This
(22:58):
is where we're at right now. At least we get free fire while
riding the speeder now, which is small
victories, I guess. Alright. Do you love
Stalker? Have did you not get a chance to play the three original
ones way long ago? Well, developer
GSC Game World announced Stalker Legends of the Zone trilogy
(23:19):
enhanced edition. The remaster is set to be released on May
20 for console and PC to enhance. This edition includes remastered
versions of the first three games in the Stalker series, shadow of Chernobyl,
clear sky, and call of Prepyat.
The the remaster features updated lighting and reflections, upscaled
(23:40):
textures, improved water effects and sky boxes, and upscaled
cinematics. Both console and PC players will have access to mods created by
the stock community. The remaster includes performance options for
the PS five, Xbox series x, and s allowing players to choose between various
modes, quality, balance, performance, ultra performance. Console
players can opt to play with keyboard and mouse. Nice. And the
(24:02):
PC version is optimized for the Steam Deck and includes Steam Workshop
integration. Hey. That's a big win. I mean, the original games were
great too. If you haven't actually had a chance to actually do it, I would
say wait for the enhanced versions to get all of them. When they
released, they were well,
they had issues, but they were still really good
(24:24):
games. Way before
the souls like things, this was kinda like the old school souls like, but
in a first person shooter mode. Hard as hell, but fun
to play. So if you haven't played them, I highly recommend you look after
that because it's coming out in about five
or actually four days now. About four days, it's gonna be coming out,
(24:46):
so it should be good. And add on top
of that, GSC game will announce patch
1.4 for stalker two, which adds over 700
fixes. The patch addresses specific issues such as
means can now use a corpse eating animation if dead bodies are
nearby. Alright. The fix was made for an issue where
(25:08):
shooting sausages sausage props produce
blood particles. That's pretty funny. Improvements were
made to enemy behavior, allowing them to use cover
effectively and communicate tactical actions better.
Weapons now have a new stat called handling the weapon
stat has been recalibrated for accuracy. Human characters
(25:30):
can now melee attack mutants and have a finite number
of grenades based on their roles. Various bug
fix fixes and performance optimizations were implemented including
improvements for to m p c pathing and animation.
Alright.
Moving on to EA. So
(25:53):
EA has made a new office in office working
policy requiring local employees to return at least three
days a week phasing out remote roles. Employees living within a
30 mile radius of the office must commute at least three days a
week under the new hybrid policy.
Employees outside the 30 mile radius can continue to work remotely unless the
(26:15):
role is designated otherwise. EA plans to sunset the
off-site local work model over the next
three to twenty four months depending on location.
Any exceptions to the new policy of future remote
hiring will require approval from EACO
Andrew Wilson or company president Laura Mile.
(26:40):
The changes are described as a shift from decentralized approach
to a global globally consistent work model.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated that in person work
provides a kinetic energy that fuels creativity,
innovation, and connection.
So if you work for EA, you now gotta go back to work. You
(27:03):
can't just stay in your home office all
the time and work. You gotta go back into work at least three days a
week, whether you like it or not. If you live 30
miles outside of it, maybe depending on your role.
This is the this is the reality we live now is that companies don't like
it that you're not working where they can see you. It is very much
(27:25):
a control issue regardless if they will admit it or not.
And you could be doing your best work regardless of where you're at, but it
also takes a lot of discipline to actually work while you're at
home and not do other things. So there is this push
pull. Do I agree with it completely? No.
But I am not the head of the company, so
(27:48):
they can do what you want. Don't like it. Don't work for them. But that
is the state we are. Of course, not working from means you have to find
a job, and that is a train wreck as it is in 2025.
So good luck to everybody. I know it sucks that you
have to change everything over again. The COVID
remote work era is over. We are going back to
(28:08):
normal work time.
Alright. So my main thing is, are we headed for another gaming
crash? Gaming had a huge crash in the eighties
following Atari and their game
ET or extraterrestrial. If you don't know, ET was a is a
movie made in the eighties by Steven Spielberg. It was a very popular movie,
(28:31):
very fun movie, and that's how
was it his production company, Ambelin, I think it is, got the
little kid riding in the moon thing. That's where he
got it from. But
it's not the same. So in the eighties, there really wasn't very many
companies doing gaming. Gaming was still very, very new. You had
(28:54):
maybe the Commodore, but that wasn't popular. The popular most popular
gaming device was Atari, and Atari did several different
versions of Atari. Had a lot of really good
success. Pitfall was a really good one. There was a dungeon
game. There were some Star Wars games that came out. Like, it
was riding high on its success
(29:15):
until e ET came out, and
that was horrendously panned and actually drove
Atari to bankruptcy because it was just
unoptimized. It had so many bugs. They're funny
bugs. And it was just not a great game,
which apparently, they did
(29:37):
actually bury a lot of the Atari e t cartridges
in New Mexico. Memory hold that.
But here's the problem. After that came Nintendo,
because NES came out, and that revitalized
the gaming industry. Actually, it saved it as a lot of people
say. So we're not really in that same territory. We got
(30:00):
Sony. We got Nintendo. We got Microsoft
or Xbox. And they're all doing
relatively well. I think I read recently where Nintendo
sales figures were down because of, quote, unquote, the price. I'm like, no. No.
No. Nintendo. It's more than just the price. You'll
break my switch two if you, quote, unquote, catch me
(30:22):
emulating and or hacking or whatever. That
that doesn't sit well with gamers, and you should know better than that. And
you're you're raising your prices of games, the game the digital
game key, which is ridiculous in and of itself. There there's a lot of
issues with what Nintendo's doing, and it is affecting their bottom line. They just
want a minute. You also have Microsoft,
(30:45):
which is pushing its game pass more than it's pushing its hardware. It's also
diversifying where it's releasing its games to be more on
all of the platforms. You also have Steam, the number one
dominant digital distribution site on PC. It also
has the Steam Deck. You also have various other companies making
gaming PC handhelds too. So it
(31:08):
is a very diverse ecosystem now.
It just doesn't rely on one to do everything.
Now are we headed for, like, a realignment on things?
Yes. There has been too many games that have come out that have
bombed terribly, and they've had high budgets
(31:29):
to actually get them to release. Concord was probably the most
significant one out of all of them because it
had a very long shelf life of development and
a very high budget. We also had other ones. Anthem was another
big one that flopped a little while ago. We also had Star
Wars Outlaw flopped. We've had
(31:52):
that south of whatever I don't
know. It's the d I one that recently came out that nobody's playing.
We've had a lot of different games that just haven't done very well, but we've
also had a lot of games that have done very well. Schedule one isn't one
of them made by one person. We have Expedition
33, which sold really well. Kingdom Deliverance two sold
(32:15):
very well. We've had some shining moments in the gaming
industry to say that, no, it's not all crashing. The
issue is right now is price. The hardware is
getting expensive, as I said, with NVIDIA raising 10 to 15% on
their GPUs, and games are getting more expensive
with Microsoft and Nintendo saying that they're raising their prices
(32:37):
to fit to $80. Microsoft's
gonna be doing it this Christmas season, and Nintendo's already
implementing it with their Switch two games. So you do
have a lot of issues going on. Plus, we have a thriving free
to play market as well. There's so many different
avenues right now that a crash is not
(32:59):
inevitable, but it's a lot harder to do
because of the different things going on.
Now could we be facing a crash
eventually? Maybe. Unless the realignment actually works, which basically
means the realignment needs to be smaller teams. You you
stop having five or six developer teams or companies
(33:22):
working on one game. It's just it's insane. I never thought it
worked very well, and you can see with Call of Duty, you you can see
with Battlefield. It just it it's not it's not really going to work
as well as they hope it, and plus the budget balloons.
So instead of selling a few million and being a success,
you have to sell, like, ten, fifteen, 20, 30,
(33:44):
40 million instead, which is a lot harder to do
when your previous games on looking at battlefield
have really just made gamers more upset about
it. So
I think we're in a realignment phase right now where
(34:07):
where publishers have to understand that,
yes, make new games, but do not hate on
strategy games. RTS is as temp is writing. Great
game. Don't hate on turn based types of games as
expedition 33 has shown, and, I
mean, stop chasing trends all the time. It's very
(34:29):
easy to chase the trends, but the trends don't always offer you
big cash outs. The reason why Overwatch was so successful is
because it did something that we either haven't seen in a while or it was
actually something truly new. I think it's more of we haven't seen in a
while, and it kind of it brought about
this new genre of hero shooters that everybody was trying to
(34:51):
emulate. But remember, we had we had
Gearbox make I don't even remember the name of it, but they had a similar
one that didn't do very well either.
Because Overwatch was such a huge success that actually killed
Battleborn. In other words, they killed Battleborn. So we
have this dynamic of, like,
(35:15):
make sure that you're creating games that not
necessarily trendy, but they're new and inventive, and it's
a good story too. That means get rid of Sweet Baby Inc.
Means get rid of DEI. And understand, and I keep on
harking on this, and I hope someone from the gaming industry
understands. Your main target audience
(35:37):
is men, so stop hating on them. I don't
care what the journalists say. They're stupid. Most of them
are stupid. All of them. But most of them. Most of them from
Polygon to all of them, and they've they have all their issues going on too
as a lot of these are being sold off to other companies or just basically
filing for bankruptcy in general. So understand
(36:00):
that your main target audience is
men. If I see more women in your development than
men, I'm gonna be questioning if it's gonna be a good game
because time and time again, it's usually been
not good. Make a good
story and stop caring about gender so much.
(36:21):
Stop caring about gender. Stop caring about skin color. Just make a
good game. If it's a black person that's in the game and
that's your main protagonist, alright, show me as it's a good character written.
Don't show me that you just create a black character just to create a black
character. That does not work anymore. Show
us. Because we are gonna be very scrutinizing on every game
(36:43):
now because it's it's rising in prices. And
so that's what we're gonna that's what's going to
happen. I don't care if, for example, doing the
dark ages is only a single player game. Great. Implement a
co op portion too eventually. That will actually help
expand it as well. If you can, allow for modding tools.
(37:06):
Allow the gamer to eventually just create their own stories through it.
It can be unofficial. I don't it doesn't really matter to me.
But allow for a participation with the
community and look at what previous
ones have done really well. Look at what Helldivers two did really
how they did really well, then sucked, then did really well again.
(37:28):
Look at what expedition they're doing. We did well. They were six months into the
development, and they're like, this is not working. We're gonna redo the story.
That paid off hugely for them.
Look what kingdom come deliverance two has done. A really more hardcore
RPG with no magic. Not a bad idea to do as well.
(37:49):
Look and I and I hark on this. Look at old genres that are
dead and maybe revive them. Look
at I mean, Star Wars Squadron. I I still don't understand
why EA has not done a second one. It did really well for what it
was, and people loved it for what it was. So
it baffles me that Lucasfilm hasn't tried to figure out how to make
(38:11):
another version of it or make a version,
like, similar to this in Arcadia space in game.
Why not? Or make it more like no man's sky
than star wars. Or make an RPG like starfield and turn
it into star wars, which is happening. Like, look at different
things you can do and try to see if you can work on this
(38:34):
because doing the same thing over and over again, people just don't care about
it. And don't rely on your
remasters so heavily. I get it, and I'm glad that remasters are
happening. Don't rely on that. Make them for games that
were really stellar at the time, and you're like, you know what? These need a
new refresh. That's fine, but don't rely on
(38:56):
it. Don't do the Last of Us thing where you have 50 different remasters or
remakes, and you're like, okay, seriously, guys? It was a fun game, but
it's not that good.
This is all we want. Naughty Dog's losing it because they
just don't really understand see, usually Neil drunk
(39:16):
Dunkman or Dunkman or whatever. I don't know what he is then.
But we're not heading for a crash. We're heading for a realignment and gamers are
like, we want games that are fun. Stop trying to
anger to us. Stop trying to tell us how terrible we are. We just
want really good games that are fun, that have great stories.
And we can kind of, like, get lost in and escape reality.
(39:40):
Not really lose reality, but escape it for a time and then come back to
reality and then deal with the things we have to deal with. That's all we
really want.
Just some food for thought.
But, anyways, thank you for listening to this podcast. I really do appreciate it.
As always, please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcast amps. You have
(40:02):
a five star review. Will this help with the rankings? Let me know how I'm
doing. Join me next week as I talk about what's going on in the PC
gaming industry. Alright, guys. Stay safe. Get to understanding what
games you like to play. Just play those.
And see you next
week. Later.
And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew,
and I'm your host, Brett Deister. If you please subscribe to this podcast and all
your favorite podcasting apps, leave a five star review. It really does help with the
rankings. Let me know how I'm doing. But this week, we're gonna be
talking about Krispy Kreme's,
well, new gaming centric donuts,
(00:23):
expedition 33, a little bit more about that, and
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine two.
Marvel rivals, new interesting things going on there. Nvidia
in well, once again, the rising prices.
Ubisoft in their lackluster way of saying
that Assassin's Creed shadows is actually a successful game.
(00:46):
We also have Prince of
Persia, the sands of time remake may have finally come out,
maybe. Epic Games and its new unreal engine
5.6. And so this
this data breach that's not a data breach from Steam. So we're talking
a little bit about that
(01:10):
and what's going on with it. And then we're gonna
be talking about GSC game world.
Basically, the trilogy enhanced
edition, so the three previous games, they have already been
kind of talked about and plus with a bunch of new
updates as well. And, also,
(01:32):
we've got we've got Ubisoft's
Star Wars Outlaws as well that's gonna be out,
and then EA implementing in office
return to work. It's always going to be happening. And
are we talking about are we headed for a gaming crash? Is the gaming
industry ahead for another crash like it was in the eighties with Atari and
(01:56):
ET? We're talking about that but let's
get on with the show.
That's good.
(02:17):
Alright. So Krispy Kreme has announced a
collaboration between Namco to create
Pac Man donuts. The celebration or the collaboration
celebrates the forty fifth anniversary of Pac Man
video game franchise. New Pac Man cookbook is set to release
currently with the donuts. The donuts are currently available at Krispy Kreme
(02:40):
stores across The United States. There are three varieties of Pac
Man donuts, the Pac Man donut, an original glazed donut with yellow
buttercream flavored icing sprinkles, and a Pac Man
piece on top, the team ghost donut, an unglazed
donut filled with chocolate cream dipped in black
icing and decorated with a Pac Man maze and ghost
(03:03):
pieces, and the strawberry power berry donut filled
with strawberry flavored cream, dipped in red icing,
and decorated with white sprinkles and green
leaf icing. So it should be interesting if you're looking
to get some donuts, but you want a little bit more gaming flair to your
donuts, head over to Krispy Kreme. It looks like it's gonna be
(03:25):
good fun and it's gonna be good eating too.
Alright. So clear obscure expedition
33 is well,
it basically wasn't what it was supposed to be
when it was originally going to be made.
(03:46):
So apparently, it was supposed to be the game was set in this
Victorian England populated with zombies and
aliens. The narrative lead, Jennifer, say that the original story was
completely different from the the final version. The game is rebooted after
investors encouraged the developer, Sandfall Interactive, to take a new
direction. The studio has been developing expedition 33 for
(04:08):
six months before the reboot. The new new direction
was inspired by a painting liked by game
director, Broch,
and a short story written by Sedzberg
Yen. So basically,
what we we've got a way different version was supposed to be. I
(04:30):
mean, originally, it was going to be about
zombies and aliens, and then we got this, which is a completely different.
And I think it's actually better that they actually did it because it's a net
positive on actually what they did. But this is just kinda what
development looks like. Sometimes you're creating a game or
writing a story or something like that, and you're like, you know what? There's just
(04:52):
something not right about this, and I think
we just need to redo this and actually come up with something better.
And so that's what they did. They were working on for six months, and they're
like, change new direction, and this is how we got
expedition 33 instead of what we were originally going to be getting,
which I think it's a it's a good thing that they actually did this. And
(05:15):
I'm glad that the investors were
like, please figure out a new direction.
This may sound interesting, but I don't we don't think it's
actually gonna be a good thing. So I this was a
brilliant move by investors, a brilliant move by everybody at the team because basically what
we got was what is expedition 33 now, which
(05:37):
is a really great story and people are loving it. Alright. The
developer of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine two has officially
released the integration studio for public use. The integration studio is the
same editor used internally by developers for gameplay development.
Modders can use the integration studio to modify level scenarios,
game modes, the AI director, and UI elements. The
(06:00):
game director made the announcement on Space Marine two modding discord.
He expressed excitement about the community's potential creation including
cinematic campaigns and new game modes. He know that creating
custom geometry for new levels would be too difficult for modders.
So basically what they're trying to do is they're trying to make this like a
(06:20):
Skyrim. So when Skyrim came out, it was a
huge hit and then everybody was modding it and people are still modding it to
this day to do whatever they wanted. I mean, sky oblivion's
coming out from the Skyrim engine. And so this is
what they're trying to do because once they're done with development, they're not really
gonna work on anymore. They're gonna work on whatever new thing they're gonna be working
(06:42):
on. But at least this gives everybody else a chance
to create new things, create new stories, and basically bring
a very long life for space marines too. Because, I mean, every
publisher and developer actually wants that because when you have a long shelf life,
it keeps on selling. The problem is that a lot of publishers like, alright.
Onto the next thing. No. We will not allow the people that love this game
(07:05):
to modify it because that's terrible for our
sales and something something. It just doesn't really
make much sense, to be honest with you.
Alright. So you Marvel rival fans is celebrating the one year anniversary
since the closed alpha test. The season zero battle pass is
being introduced as a thank you to fans, and
(07:29):
it's basically starting right now, May 15, and
it's going to May 29. So you don't really got much. And you can earn
free rewards. Player players must purchase the luxury pass for
5 5 hundred and 90 lattice, apparently
$5, to get the extra stuff. It
also includes the
(07:51):
Scion venom that everybody mostly missed.
Now the developer has acknowledged community feedback regarding the battle pass, including the
future returns may happen, but will span at least two
seasons and be priced at a minimum 20% higher than the original
rate. So get it now before it goes up in price.
(08:12):
I mean, the this is the thing about BattleBest is there really is no, like,
defined price, and they can charge whatever they want to as long
as you'll buy it. And, I mean, $4.99 is not a bad price,
but, you know, it is what
it is. But,
I mean, you got Overwatch two now with Stadium, and that
(08:35):
has kinda revived the game because it did need a revival. And now you
have this, which everybody's saying is, well, not doing very well
because of the revival of Overwatch two, but you're gonna have that push and pull.
And, yeah, they're gonna make mistakes, obviously, and
Blizzard has already made pretty big mistakes for Overwatch in
general. But we'll see what actually happens
(08:58):
with this and if actually season zero battle
pass is actually gonna be something good to get or not. I mean,
it's all cosmetic, so it's not really going to help you all that much.
But if it's gonna be a 20% higher rate than the
original, that's that's a pretty significant jump from the original. It's like,
well, I better get it now before it goes up in price again.
(09:22):
Speaking of going up in price, NVIDIA has reportedly
raised GPU prices by 10 to 15%.
The increase in prices is attributed to surging manufacturing
costs. Factors contributing to the price increase includes tariffs and price
hike from TSMC, and these costs are filtering
down to retailers. So if you're really wanting that sweet, sweet 50
(09:45):
or, yeah, 50 series graphics card,
well, enjoy the thing that you like right now because it's gonna be way more
expensive. And I don't think this is going to help Nvidia whatsoever when they
keep on doing this. This is insanity. It's already really expensive to
get the 5,000 series if you can get one, if you
can find one. And when you find one, you gotta get there quick or it
(10:08):
goes well, it goes away.
So I was considering upgrading, but after, like,
everything else coming out, I was like, you know what? These don't seem to be
that great. They're really expensive. They're only getting more expensive.
I'm gonna keep my $30.90 card for a while longer because
what's the point of trying to get something that is arguably better
(10:30):
than mine, but is arguably expensive?
And I'm like, well, 39 is gonna be good for a while until they can
all figure out the actual new pricing, until they can all
figure out the manufacturing and bringing things over to US if
need be because that's really where it's gonna go. So
I would say for right now, until they configure the manufacturing process and bring down
(10:54):
those prices, you probably should wait a while.
It's just not great.
Alright. So moving on to to Ubisoft reported that
Assassin's Creed Shadow South outperformed Odyssey in
(11:17):
sales and player count. Shadows generated the second
highest day one sales revenue in franchise history only behind
Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Well,
within a day of its launch, Shadow suppressed the Steam
launch of Valhalla, but Valhalla came out two
years after it came out on Steam. So I don't really
(11:40):
understand this. This, like, oh, it it did better than a
game that was already out, but finally came to Steam. Okay?
Player engagement for shadows has reached a hundred and sixty
million hours. Ubisoft acknowledged the decision to delay
shadows contributed positively to its quality. Yeah. Sure.
The game is currently holding a very positive rating of 80%
(12:03):
on Steam, and Odyssey is
rated slightly higher than shadows on Metacritic.
Ubisoft has plans for future updates
and additional shadow content, but you know what?
It's just it's not that great. I didn't even
I was like, I'm I'm I'm good. I don't I don't really want
(12:27):
this game. I don't really wanna touch this game.
There's just so many problems with it from my
perspective that I was like, I'm good. I don't want
this. Enjoy
enjoy playing this game if you enjoy it, but there was just a lot
of problems with it,
(12:50):
and it just didn't really hit that
plus with the black samurai and everything. And right now, if
I'm looking at this correctly,
it's at 4,222 players playing right now.
Now, obviously, this is more in the middle of the day, but even
if we look at historically, it's been around
(13:13):
probably around 4,000 players
playing. The peak was 64,000.
And even on Sunday, peak times is
about 7,000. Couldn't even crack 10,000. So my
issue with all this is that they are still not giving us numbers. They're
still really trying to make this look like it's a really great
(13:36):
game by skewed aggregates. But
when you look at steam overall, it just it
just doesn't look great because it just
there's just nothing to go off of because they won't actually
give us any numbers whatsoever.
(13:57):
And I don't know. I
mean, even looking right now, Assassin's Creed Odyssey still has
more players than the shadows, and it's older.
I mean, I don't really understand
this whole thing about it. I mean, even if I
look at Valhalla, it's lower.
(14:21):
So the previous game is lower, but the game came
out a lot late a lot earlier
is doing better than the one we have right
now. So
it's just these numbers just do not make sense to me.
(14:43):
And they keep not wanting to share the actual sales numbers. They go, oh, it's
a success. I'm like, if it's such a success,
why are you withholding the numbers? It's not really that difficult
to do.
Anyways, moving on to Prince of Persia, the sands
of time remake, which is finally going to be coming
(15:06):
out before April 2026. So you still got a little
while to do it. Development reportedly started over from scratch,
and the original writer and English voice actor may no longer be
involved. Now the game has been delayed three times and moved to
a different studio. The fiscal year for Ubisoft runs from April
1 to March 31. Meaning, the game must be
(15:29):
released before March. The
game is expected to contribute to Ubisoft's
financial performance alongside other titles like Assassin's Creed shadows and
Rainbow six mobile. So
the this is good and bad. It's unfortunate that original writer and the original
voice actor is not there anymore, but it's good that it's finally coming out. The
(15:51):
problem is that they had to start over for whatever
reason. It was starting over to DEI it. Yeah. It's not gonna go very well.
But if it's starting over to actually make it better, fine. I understand.
But Ubisoft does not have a great track record of making
great games as of late.
But we will see what actually happens with this and if it's actually
(16:14):
gonna be any good. So I foresee it coming out either
from now until March 31. We'll see
how far along they actually are. It's probably gonna be more around
March 2026.
Would be more accurate, but, like, again, we'll see.
Alright. Epic Games has released unreal engine 5.6 preview for
(16:37):
developers. The developers can download the preview via the Epic
Games Launcher GitHub and Linux. The game aims to
enable vast, high fidelity open worlds with a target of
consistent 60 frames per second. Ubi's,
Unreal Engine 5.6 includes device profiles based on Fortnite's
optimized setting to achieve 60 frames per second on all supported platforms.
(17:01):
Streaming performance has been optimized for content streaming in and out
of the world at run time. So, hopefully, this
will help with all the stuttering issues that has been reported because
Unreal Engine five has not been great. Four was actually
the the best out of all of it. It was stable. There wasn't all these
weird stuttering or problems that we've had
(17:23):
since five has released because five just added a lot of different types
of features. I guess the best way of saying it
was destruction with the lighting and
everything else. Really cool, really nice, but
it has caused quite a stir. So we'll see how well developers
actually make it with this one and see if,
(17:46):
like, Dune awakening can actually use 5.6 to
help kinda mitigate a lot of this issue.
Alright. So the very confusing, did Steam have a data
breach or not? So it was originally reported that there was
a a data breach
by affected users of Steam. The breach reportedly
(18:09):
involved the information of 89,000,000 Steam accounts, which has
appeared for sale on the dark web. The data allegedly
include users' one time passwords and phone numbers. A threat actor claims to
be auctioning off its information for $5,000.
At the time they're recording, more than 30,000,000 concurrent Steam users were
online. Users are advised to change their password to secure
(18:31):
their account. It's always recommended to to do two
factor authentication. So
we'll see about that. But then it came out that, well, no.
This didn't actually happen. What actually
happened was it really there really was nothing.
(18:52):
It was old passwords that were already
not really useful anymore, and it just
it it didn't make none none of this makes any sense.
So I don't even know if there was a hack or there wasn't, but
it's been auctioning off maybe just to get money.
Probably sure it's more to get money or not. But it's it's a weird
(19:14):
confusing time when it's like, yeah, this happened,
but not really it happened. But, yeah, it happened.
But, no, it didn't happen. It's like, wait.
What? Like, I I don't really
understand. Like, why would why did this
happen? But here we are. Here
(19:36):
we are. So I changed my password
because I've had it happen to me before people did compromise and
stuff. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna change my password. And
they came out that nothing actually this is a nothing burger. They
valve claims that there's no data breach whatsoever. Now if it
comes out that there was a breach, well, it's a good thing I changed my
(19:58):
password anyways because now I have to deal with it.
But as of right now, can't do
anything about it. It's unfortunate, but you
cannot do absolutely anything about this thing whatsoever.
So here we are. So as a precaution, I probably would
(20:18):
say change your password. If you don't have a password management system, definitely get a
password management system. Use the steam
app and do the steam guard as well. This will help with
any of that nefarious things going on. But having a
strong password and changing it would be even more beneficial
for everybody. Alright. Ubisoft has announced
(20:42):
well, it's gonna be addressing issues on Star Wars outlaw and also
is going to be the second DLC story, Pirate's
Fortune, is going to be, well, coming
out or actually already came out alongside with patches. The patch includes
Kay's ability to switch smoothly from her blaster to two handed
weapons, ability for Kaye to free fire while riding
(21:04):
her speeder. So you can actually fire your blaster instead of waiting for the
stupid, like, ability to shoot,
like, the dead eye but on your speeder, which is great because I don't no
one understood why, and I still don't even understand why I couldn't just shoot on
the speeder. Very weird that they never actually added
this. There's also new space contracts with multiple challenge
(21:27):
challenge types for additional rewards. Patch also addresses
various issues including audio lines playing out of order.
That's fun. Props disappearing or floating during cut
scenes. That's pretty funny. Fixes to prevent
players from being unable to complete intel quests. A fix to
prevent Kaye from getting trapped in a room on
(21:51):
T'Shara T'Shara while respawning. Well, that would
be uncomfortable and unfortunate.
But, hey, at least they're updating it. Do I still think they should
have just done, female protagonist?
No. I really think they should have just let you be a smuggler and choose
which one you wanna do. I think that would actually been a better move,
(22:13):
but here we're at it's not a bad game. They actually did
fix it, but they should have waited to fix a lot of these issues because
when it first launched, people were trashing it, and rightfully so, the AI
was stupid, and it's still pretty stupid.
You I mean, there was a lot of issues. You really couldn't do a lot
of things. I still am really confused on why why you as
(22:37):
a female smuggler, you can basically
knock out stormtroopers with your fist, but you can't move them.
So is she strong or is she not? Are we gonna be in reality or
we're gonna be not in reality? It it just never
made any sense. But fine. This
(22:58):
is where we're at right now. At least we get free fire while
riding the speeder now, which is small
victories, I guess. Alright. Do you love
Stalker? Have did you not get a chance to play the three original
ones way long ago? Well, developer
GSC Game World announced Stalker Legends of the Zone trilogy
(23:19):
enhanced edition. The remaster is set to be released on May
20 for console and PC to enhance. This edition includes remastered
versions of the first three games in the Stalker series, shadow of Chernobyl,
clear sky, and call of Prepyat.
The the remaster features updated lighting and reflections, upscaled
(23:40):
textures, improved water effects and sky boxes, and upscaled
cinematics. Both console and PC players will have access to mods created by
the stock community. The remaster includes performance options for
the PS five, Xbox series x, and s allowing players to choose between various
modes, quality, balance, performance, ultra performance. Console
players can opt to play with keyboard and mouse. Nice. And the
(24:02):
PC version is optimized for the Steam Deck and includes Steam Workshop
integration. Hey. That's a big win. I mean, the original games were
great too. If you haven't actually had a chance to actually do it, I would
say wait for the enhanced versions to get all of them. When they
released, they were well,
they had issues, but they were still really good
(24:24):
games. Way before
the souls like things, this was kinda like the old school souls like, but
in a first person shooter mode. Hard as hell, but fun
to play. So if you haven't played them, I highly recommend you look after
that because it's coming out in about five
or actually four days now. About four days, it's gonna be coming out,
(24:46):
so it should be good. And add on top
of that, GSC game will announce patch
1.4 for stalker two, which adds over 700
fixes. The patch addresses specific issues such as
means can now use a corpse eating animation if dead bodies are
nearby. Alright. The fix was made for an issue where
(25:08):
shooting sausages sausage props produce
blood particles. That's pretty funny. Improvements were
made to enemy behavior, allowing them to use cover
effectively and communicate tactical actions better.
Weapons now have a new stat called handling the weapon
stat has been recalibrated for accuracy. Human characters
(25:30):
can now melee attack mutants and have a finite number
of grenades based on their roles. Various bug
fix fixes and performance optimizations were implemented including
improvements for to m p c pathing and animation.
Alright.
Moving on to EA. So
(25:53):
EA has made a new office in office working
policy requiring local employees to return at least three
days a week phasing out remote roles. Employees living within a
30 mile radius of the office must commute at least three days a
week under the new hybrid policy.
Employees outside the 30 mile radius can continue to work remotely unless the
(26:15):
role is designated otherwise. EA plans to sunset the
off-site local work model over the next
three to twenty four months depending on location.
Any exceptions to the new policy of future remote
hiring will require approval from EACO
Andrew Wilson or company president Laura Mile.
(26:40):
The changes are described as a shift from decentralized approach
to a global globally consistent work model.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated that in person work
provides a kinetic energy that fuels creativity,
innovation, and connection.
So if you work for EA, you now gotta go back to work. You
(27:03):
can't just stay in your home office all
the time and work. You gotta go back into work at least three days a
week, whether you like it or not. If you live 30
miles outside of it, maybe depending on your role.
This is the this is the reality we live now is that companies don't like
it that you're not working where they can see you. It is very much
(27:25):
a control issue regardless if they will admit it or not.
And you could be doing your best work regardless of where you're at, but it
also takes a lot of discipline to actually work while you're at
home and not do other things. So there is this push
pull. Do I agree with it completely? No.
But I am not the head of the company, so
(27:48):
they can do what you want. Don't like it. Don't work for them. But that
is the state we are. Of course, not working from means you have to find
a job, and that is a train wreck as it is in 2025.
So good luck to everybody. I know it sucks that you
have to change everything over again. The COVID
remote work era is over. We are going back to
(28:08):
normal work time.
Alright. So my main thing is, are we headed for another gaming
crash? Gaming had a huge crash in the eighties
following Atari and their game
ET or extraterrestrial. If you don't know, ET was a is a
movie made in the eighties by Steven Spielberg. It was a very popular movie,
(28:31):
very fun movie, and that's how
was it his production company, Ambelin, I think it is, got the
little kid riding in the moon thing. That's where he
got it from. But
it's not the same. So in the eighties, there really wasn't very many
companies doing gaming. Gaming was still very, very new. You had
(28:54):
maybe the Commodore, but that wasn't popular. The popular most popular
gaming device was Atari, and Atari did several different
versions of Atari. Had a lot of really good
success. Pitfall was a really good one. There was a dungeon
game. There were some Star Wars games that came out. Like, it
was riding high on its success
(29:15):
until e ET came out, and
that was horrendously panned and actually drove
Atari to bankruptcy because it was just
unoptimized. It had so many bugs. They're funny
bugs. And it was just not a great game,
which apparently, they did
(29:37):
actually bury a lot of the Atari e t cartridges
in New Mexico. Memory hold that.
But here's the problem. After that came Nintendo,
because NES came out, and that revitalized
the gaming industry. Actually, it saved it as a lot of people
say. So we're not really in that same territory. We got
(30:00):
Sony. We got Nintendo. We got Microsoft
or Xbox. And they're all doing
relatively well. I think I read recently where Nintendo
sales figures were down because of, quote, unquote, the price. I'm like, no. No.
No. Nintendo. It's more than just the price. You'll
break my switch two if you, quote, unquote, catch me
(30:22):
emulating and or hacking or whatever. That
that doesn't sit well with gamers, and you should know better than that. And
you're you're raising your prices of games, the game the digital
game key, which is ridiculous in and of itself. There there's a lot of
issues with what Nintendo's doing, and it is affecting their bottom line. They just
want a minute. You also have Microsoft,
(30:45):
which is pushing its game pass more than it's pushing its hardware. It's also
diversifying where it's releasing its games to be more on
all of the platforms. You also have Steam, the number one
dominant digital distribution site on PC. It also
has the Steam Deck. You also have various other companies making
gaming PC handhelds too. So it
(31:08):
is a very diverse ecosystem now.
It just doesn't rely on one to do everything.
Now are we headed for, like, a realignment on things?
Yes. There has been too many games that have come out that have
bombed terribly, and they've had high budgets
(31:29):
to actually get them to release. Concord was probably the most
significant one out of all of them because it
had a very long shelf life of development and
a very high budget. We also had other ones. Anthem was another
big one that flopped a little while ago. We also had Star
Wars Outlaw flopped. We've had
(31:52):
that south of whatever I don't
know. It's the d I one that recently came out that nobody's playing.
We've had a lot of different games that just haven't done very well, but we've
also had a lot of games that have done very well. Schedule one isn't one
of them made by one person. We have Expedition
33, which sold really well. Kingdom Deliverance two sold
(32:15):
very well. We've had some shining moments in the gaming
industry to say that, no, it's not all crashing. The
issue is right now is price. The hardware is
getting expensive, as I said, with NVIDIA raising 10 to 15% on
their GPUs, and games are getting more expensive
with Microsoft and Nintendo saying that they're raising their prices
(32:37):
to fit to $80. Microsoft's
gonna be doing it this Christmas season, and Nintendo's already
implementing it with their Switch two games. So you do
have a lot of issues going on. Plus, we have a thriving free
to play market as well. There's so many different
avenues right now that a crash is not
(32:59):
inevitable, but it's a lot harder to do
because of the different things going on.
Now could we be facing a crash
eventually? Maybe. Unless the realignment actually works, which basically
means the realignment needs to be smaller teams. You you
stop having five or six developer teams or companies
(33:22):
working on one game. It's just it's insane. I never thought it
worked very well, and you can see with Call of Duty, you you can see
with Battlefield. It just it it's not it's not really going to work
as well as they hope it, and plus the budget balloons.
So instead of selling a few million and being a success,
you have to sell, like, ten, fifteen, 20, 30,
(33:44):
40 million instead, which is a lot harder to do
when your previous games on looking at battlefield
have really just made gamers more upset about
it. So
I think we're in a realignment phase right now where
(34:07):
where publishers have to understand that,
yes, make new games, but do not hate on
strategy games. RTS is as temp is writing. Great
game. Don't hate on turn based types of games as
expedition 33 has shown, and, I
mean, stop chasing trends all the time. It's very
(34:29):
easy to chase the trends, but the trends don't always offer you
big cash outs. The reason why Overwatch was so successful is
because it did something that we either haven't seen in a while or it was
actually something truly new. I think it's more of we haven't seen in a
while, and it kind of it brought about
this new genre of hero shooters that everybody was trying to
(34:51):
emulate. But remember, we had we had
Gearbox make I don't even remember the name of it, but they had a similar
one that didn't do very well either.
Because Overwatch was such a huge success that actually killed
Battleborn. In other words, they killed Battleborn. So we
have this dynamic of, like,
(35:15):
make sure that you're creating games that not
necessarily trendy, but they're new and inventive, and it's
a good story too. That means get rid of Sweet Baby Inc.
Means get rid of DEI. And understand, and I keep on
harking on this, and I hope someone from the gaming industry
understands. Your main target audience
(35:37):
is men, so stop hating on them. I don't
care what the journalists say. They're stupid. Most of them
are stupid. All of them. But most of them. Most of them from
Polygon to all of them, and they've they have all their issues going on too
as a lot of these are being sold off to other companies or just basically
filing for bankruptcy in general. So understand
(36:00):
that your main target audience is
men. If I see more women in your development than
men, I'm gonna be questioning if it's gonna be a good game
because time and time again, it's usually been
not good. Make a good
story and stop caring about gender so much.
(36:21):
Stop caring about gender. Stop caring about skin color. Just make a
good game. If it's a black person that's in the game and
that's your main protagonist, alright, show me as it's a good character written.
Don't show me that you just create a black character just to create a black
character. That does not work anymore. Show
us. Because we are gonna be very scrutinizing on every game
(36:43):
now because it's it's rising in prices. And
so that's what we're gonna that's what's going to
happen. I don't care if, for example, doing the
dark ages is only a single player game. Great. Implement a
co op portion too eventually. That will actually help
expand it as well. If you can, allow for modding tools.
(37:06):
Allow the gamer to eventually just create their own stories through it.
It can be unofficial. I don't it doesn't really matter to me.
But allow for a participation with the
community and look at what previous
ones have done really well. Look at what Helldivers two did really
how they did really well, then sucked, then did really well again.
(37:28):
Look at what expedition they're doing. We did well. They were six months into the
development, and they're like, this is not working. We're gonna redo the story.
That paid off hugely for them.
Look what kingdom come deliverance two has done. A really more hardcore
RPG with no magic. Not a bad idea to do as well.
(37:49):
Look and I and I hark on this. Look at old genres that are
dead and maybe revive them. Look
at I mean, Star Wars Squadron. I I still don't understand
why EA has not done a second one. It did really well for what it
was, and people loved it for what it was. So
it baffles me that Lucasfilm hasn't tried to figure out how to make
(38:11):
another version of it or make a version,
like, similar to this in Arcadia space in game.
Why not? Or make it more like no man's sky
than star wars. Or make an RPG like starfield and turn
it into star wars, which is happening. Like, look at different
things you can do and try to see if you can work on this
(38:34):
because doing the same thing over and over again, people just don't care about
it. And don't rely on your
remasters so heavily. I get it, and I'm glad that remasters are
happening. Don't rely on that. Make them for games that
were really stellar at the time, and you're like, you know what? These need a
new refresh. That's fine, but don't rely on
(38:56):
it. Don't do the Last of Us thing where you have 50 different remasters or
remakes, and you're like, okay, seriously, guys? It was a fun game, but
it's not that good.
This is all we want. Naughty Dog's losing it because they
just don't really understand see, usually Neil drunk
(39:16):
Dunkman or Dunkman or whatever. I don't know what he is then.
But we're not heading for a crash. We're heading for a realignment and gamers are
like, we want games that are fun. Stop trying to
anger to us. Stop trying to tell us how terrible we are. We just
want really good games that are fun, that have great stories.
And we can kind of, like, get lost in and escape reality.
(39:40):
Not really lose reality, but escape it for a time and then come back to
reality and then deal with the things we have to deal with. That's all we
really want.
Just some food for thought.
But, anyways, thank you for listening to this podcast. I really do appreciate it.
As always, please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcast amps. You have
(40:02):
a five star review. Will this help with the rankings? Let me know how I'm
doing. Join me next week as I talk about what's going on in the PC
gaming industry. Alright, guys. Stay safe. Get to understanding what
games you like to play. Just play those.
And see you next
week. Later.
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