People Can’t Stop Playing These Games

People keep telling me that nobody's buying new video games, but I have good news and I have complicated news. People are playing new video games. It just happens to be that they're playing a whole lot of a select few. We are going to talk about that in today's episode of the game discover co show. I am your co-host Chris Plant and I am joined as always by Simon Carlos. How are you doing today Simon?
I'm doing good on this bright sunny day. It's time it's time to dig into data again. And I and I'm sort of going against something I've been trying to do for the stories we talk about in here is I I try not to get too listy because if there's one thing that's terrible, it's people on podcasts reading out lists of games. But but I have I have made an exception because I think it's pretty interesting for one of the things that we're going to talk about in this in in in this podcast. Yes.
I mean, we should just dig right into this because it is very interesting. you pulled an updated list of the biggest median playtime Steam games in 2026. I

know that sounds very complicated. Can you give like the lay person description of of what this is?
Yeah, this is simply like we look at a lot of public uh Steam profiles for Game Discover Co Pro and so if you look at public Steam profiles, the total amount of time that someone's played a game for is listed on their public Steam profile. you could go check it out for anyone you happen to know happen to know their uh their their Steam username for. And so that's sort of interesting. So if we look at it for enough and we sort of we'll look at hundreds of thousands of these profiles that are public, then we start to get sort of a nice graph of um you know who's actually playing games for long periods of time. So, what we really did was we looked at I think we did this earlier in 2026, but we really wanted to do an update and we posted it on LinkedIn and it was really like four games that have been released in 2026. Which games with more than 100,000 players have been played for the longest by an individual player? The longest median median play time is what we're looking at.
Yes.

So you said like you want to avoid lists because we do have a list here and you can find that both on LinkedIn and on the newsletter and we'll talk about some of them but I look at it and I see three categories and I want to I want to get your read on if I'm I'm right here. First and most obvious is idle games. Games that are going to really be favored in this list because they're running at the bottom of your browser. So that's one. And I'm going to come back and talk about each of these. Next up, I would describe as games that people play just that and nothing else. And I would put maybe NBA 2K or uh EAFC here. And maybe I'm I'm wrong, like I'm sure there's data that could show whether or not these people are playing other things, but they have that reputation. And then there's the third category, and perhaps most interesting to me, which is games that defy the odds. Maybe these are RPGs, maybe these are other things, but for whatever reason, they have really found a way to break through in a big way. And I think

the first of those, and it's where I want to start, is War Dogs. What makes Warog so special? And why is it a little bit of a surprise even with its, you know, success to see it here on this list already?
Yeah, I mean, this is this is a lifetime to date for 2026. So, you would expect games in here to have released earlier in in in 2026 in most cases, but Wardogs is already up at 35 at median hours played. And that's that, you know, and the thing to note about this is this is out of anyone who's bought it, right? So, a median of 35 hours out of everybody implies that people who've bought this game, and I think, you know, there's been a good few million at this point, are really are really playing it a lot. So, I think that's why that's a little bit surprising given the release date on that is only September the 10th and it's already if you ignore the idol games of which there's a ton um it's already like number eight uh by by my reckoning on most played new games in 2026 by medium play time. So, that's

Yeah. So, so that's that surprised me and it shows I think that that game
is really wellcraftrafted like it really has been exceptionally played by people who bought it.
Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about the idol games because I look at this and I get that they're different in terms of like how focused the engagement is, but when I see, you know, over a 100 hours of engagement and then I hear from executives at places like Netflix that all they care about is engagement. We just want people to be involved in some way, right? Why have we not seen places like that hop into this trend? Why are idol games not a thing of interest to these these you know large platform holders? Well, one interesting thing about idol games, and I talked about this a bit recently, is there is a bit of a
idol games are slight misnomer sometimes when it comes to crossover with things like like incremental games, and I think we talked about this in the previous episode, right? That there's a lot of incremental games right now that are sort of clicker games, but you end up

being able to clicker/ idle games, but you end up being able to disable having to click. So, they're really just incremental games. And those are kind of the games I think you burn through those games and I think often seven or 10 hours and they're great but then you're done. So what I would say is the kind of games that are the very top of this list like um Task Bar Hero or Desk Crawl are specifically ones that sit at the bottom of your screen idol games. So I think that is the main difference. So they really are another window element versus a whole bunch of other clicker and idol games. you actually are fully concentrating on them when you're playing them most of the time and you don't necessarily and you actually come back I think in many of cases you come back to them but maybe stuff has happened uh and but that you haven't had the app open so I I would say this is the main difference I mean we've got I think at the very top here median is taskbar hero average hours played is 271 but what's really happening here
is someone has that open while it's

incrementing on their desktop they are not interacting with that game for so I'd say that's why those games should you know I think it is interesting to your point though I I'm often surprised this subg genre is not pursued more by people because people do really like it but it's it's just very quirky for pe I think a lot of conventional devs to think about [snorts]
I want to be clear that I am not wishing this into the world and I'm almost afraid that it's like reading the neconomicon but I'm just surprised that Netflix doesn't have a game that will overlay on the bottom right of your screen like this while you are watching Netflix. Something to keep you focused on the Netflix cuz that seems to be all they care about. Uh it just seems like a much more natural fit than a lot of things they're doing. But again, I do feel like I'm like making a plea to the blood gods that I don't actually wish for. Have how should I put this? What is the actual takeaway for people

who are listening to this show when they hear this? It's like should this be giving them a sign of like where the opportunity lies or is this like yet another example of wow people are playing new games a lot of time is actually just going to a very select few
yeah I mean what I do is I look further down the list to your point I'm not looking at the idol games really and I'm not looking at EA Sports uh you know whichever version of EA Sports because you're right those are games that I do agree with you most people are playing principally those games a lot and even more so on console than on Steam, but it still happens on Steam. And some of those sales numbers are not giant. By the way, we have EA Sports College Football in here. It's actually only got 120,000 players on Steam. So, um, it's got a ton more on I think it's got a few like four million more on on console, but I'm just noting it's sort of a particular niche of people. But yeah, I I go further down this and what I look at is I mean if I scroll further down past the stuff that I talked about uh

that I put in LinkedIn, I I'm just looking now in our interface in our pro interface and we have Blood of Dorm Walker is down here at number 18 which is interesting. Uh we have Way of the Sword at number 20 and then we have interestingly we have Mortal Shell 2 which has sort of done pretty well but people sort of stopped talking about a little bit. It's at number 22 and it's got 23 hours median out of any anyone who's played it. Um, also down here is Windows, Control, Resonance, all these games have over 20 hours. So, that's the takeaway that I sort of take, which is I think you start to understand past the hype. Uh, w of these titles are people actually sitting down and playing. I don't I don't know. I don't think 23 hours on console revenant is all the way through, but you know, they're playing them a lot, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean when I hear that about Mortal Shell, it makes me want to play the game more because it makes me think the people who are actually playing it seem to enjoy it. Um, I want to keep things moving and talk about some more numbers. This is from the consulting firm. Is it Vivato or Vivato?

I'm going to say Vivato, but I actually don't know.
Let's go with that. This is Adam Boy's uh consulting firm, and they have been surveying game execs about their firm's usage of AI. Uh, and a big takeaway here is this quote. 94% use AI in at least one of nine production stages, but 52% rate how deeply it is built in their full production pipeline at three or lower out of 10. And you've described this uh kind of style of adoption as wide but shallow. And I'm curious if you could explain what you mean by that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think firstly I think it's cool that Vivato is doing this because they have very good connections in the industry. So it's like a 100 execs anonymously, but these are going to be larger companies who are actually making notable games in the space, I'm sure. Um, so yeah, I mean what what you're really seeing at this point, I guess the point is, you know, certainly if you look and and they have like a little teaser. You can't get the full document, I think, unless you pay, but they have a little two-page teaser document. And

they did talk about the the things that have the biggest uh, you know, the biggest overlap. And, you know, it was code and engineering, general productivity and concept and pre-production are all around 80% plus are being used a little bit. Design and prototyping 68%. But stuff like narrative and world building 55% live ops and monetization only 37%. So I so when I say why but I I'm saying I think what my impression is game companies bigger game companies are I outside of code helpers which I think a lot of people are using whether they admit it or not. Um I I think you know there's a lot of people experimenting with this stuff. I know there's been some pre-production art that people have shown that that that has been AI related. Uh I've forgotten which game that was for, but it was pretty controversial because that's a good one where you know concept artists do not want to be uh uh dis disintermediated by AI. So So I I think it's just sort of

like the reason I like this but I do think it's showing shallow usages. I don't think anyone in medium [clears throat] and large companies is throwing out all their concept art for the next game. But I think what they are doing is they're they're trying things. Maybe they're saying, "Oh, we got a bunch of concept art here. Let's see what what other conceptual things we can make if we show this to an AI." Like, I'm sure that is happening.
How how much do you think this is? Oh, there's a lot of experimentation. They're trying things in a bunch of different places. And how much if any of this is if we don't say we are using AI, our board will be mad. Our investors will be mad. there is like a top very high top down pressure to perform that you're using it at various phases because that is what's what's expected basically of a tech company in 2026.
Yeah, I mean there's the classic question of how much yeah how much would you use it versus how much do you think you have to use it because you won't be seen as forward thinking if you don't use it. That is a good question. I would

say at least this survey is anonymous so no so nobody is at least fronting to us that they're using it. they're very much just talking about it. I I have the impression this is, you know, how much people are genuinely using it and um and I think in most cases it's because they're at least intrigued by it. Uh you know, this is high high level folks intrigued by it. But I would say like they're saying like how much is it integrated into the pipeline? Uh I I'd say only
only I think 30 like the medium was three out of 10. So really uh of those 10 possible some of those I listed some of those pipelines you know it's really only integrated in any way in in three of them for most people and I'm highly presuming one of them is code and engineering and the other one is general productivity. So so if you if you talk about [laughter] if you talk about the actual stuff that's game specific I it's that's one out of the one out of the whatever it is eight that's left. So, I I would argue that this shows relatively weak pickup of AI from a from a

non-coding non like, you know, maybe you're using it to organize or organize development a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. It's interesting.
I mean, I I'm sure people see that 94% use at nine production stages number and are wondering why don't we say see 94% disclosure rate on Steam for games? Is it is it because it's just not applicable to the things that Steam requires that disclosure on? Yeah, I think a lot of it is code and productivity uh for medium and larger games and and also sometimes it's stuff in the earlier stages like I do think some people are using this for prototyping and then they will uh remove any prototype art or audio assets, you know. So, so, so I think in the end people do realize that certain elements of the PC and console audience do not like this at all. I would also say we're going to have a newsletter about this later in the week. You know, I've seen some surveys and even the survey we did on Steam, um, you know, we we we did a

survey of our kind of Steam fans a while ago and I and I do point out we got some stick for it, but it did clearly say that a fairly large chunk of the audience is neutral or mildly positive on a bit of AI use like like so it really is what filter bubble you are currently in. And I think I and I said this actually in our discord earlier today. I think the AI usage as a filter bubble is incredibly strong. So you you have certain groups of people who are just like absolutely not and you have other sets of people who are like sure [laughter] it's it's tricky, right?
Yeah. I I I mean we'll keep moving in just a second. There's one last thing I want to hit here, which is I'm so glad that this survey and data exists, but this is 72% CEOs, uh 15% CTO's. It very much represents the the highest level and I'm not it's good to have a number for it but it's also kind of the least surprising information of most CEOs and

CTO's are going to say that they're using these things or that they're they are excited to and also that they will only do that when it's off the record. The the the data that I really want to see is this exact same thing. Do it off the record but with active developers, people out of management positions at these studios of how much they are using it, how much they like using it, how much they feel like it is a a required thing because I mean it this the piece itself seems to really get at this. Nobody wants to talk about this. And it is this weird thing of on some level I'm waiting for the CEOs to put on the big boy pants or just the big grown-up pants is a better way of non-gendering it because that's what you're paid for. Like this conversation needs to be had. And I think it's this weird thing where it's weird how there's almost like um these like satellite sources of information that are coming out where this conversation is not being had directly. that's being had via like survey data.

Yeah.
Uh and rather than like here's what's actually going on in the industry. And that just seems untenable.
I'll give you an example of that which is I don't think we're going to do it now, but I was I was trying to find someone to uh to actually reverse engineer some Steam Next games that we suspect are AI generated to work out whether they're AI generated or not. And I don't think I we we have a newsletter coming out on this later in the week, but we had some really interesting results from uh the engine breakdowns of the Steam NextFest games because we survey the engines, which really implies to us there are a bunch of vibecoded games coming in on the low end uh for Steam NextFest. Again, many of those games, as far as we can see, are not really disclosing that they use AI in I mean, to be clear, if they used AI in the code, they do not have to disclose under Steam rules, but I think a lot of them are using art and and audio as well and and not disclosing. So, yeah, it's just a it's just a giant mess, but I do think we should keep talking about it and keep poking at it because I think it is
really important to work out what's

going on, right?
Yeah. And I I and I think we're all just barreling towards like people are going to have to start talking. like people just need to talk because this just is not going to last. But speaking of things that are viodated and have also caused controversies, let's talk about jailbreaking the PlayStation 5, which was already, I'm sure, freaking Sony out. And they are working to get this addressed with a new uh update that you're going to have to use if you want to be able to play GTA 6 to avoid this jailbreak. Um, but if you aren't updating, it now appears that you can do Steam games on PS5 via Linux emulation. And this is bonkers. Can can you catch folks up just in brief on like what has been going on with the PS5 jailbreak? Yeah, I mean my understanding is that there's always been as as you may know there's always been various console jailates going on uh of people being able to work out how to play unofficial

games on their consoles. And I think one issue has always been, you know, in certain, I'd say higher GDP areas of the world, you don't see it so much. But I'd say in in many other areas of the world where just buying a console is expensive. Uh and there's a lot of unofficial stores, you just see crazy amounts of jailbroken consoles. Like I've been to China before, like on previous generations, and all they were selling there was jailbroken consoles with a bunch of games on the hard drive already. So, so I think, you know, that that has been historically a big problem for console manufacturers. And so I think, you know, PlayStation is really trying not to have that happen again. I mean, the good news is that the games are so large at this point that you're not going to fit many on a hard drive.
So, so but you still there's still stuff you can do with external hard drives and have a whole bunch of stuff like like preloaded. So, I think there is, you know, this kind of this kind of piracy is is a danger and I haven't actually haven't looked into a lot of details to discover whether you know and maybe it hasn't been disclosed whether, you know,

more AI usage is is part of the reason why there's more jailbreaks coming out. But what I would say is, you know, the person who coded this kind of steam, you know, Steam games running on PlayStation with a nice interface which is just on GitHub right now, which is kind of crazy. I mean, you have to provide your own Steam games and compile them the right way and also Javate your PlayStation in the right way. It's it's pretty damn complicated, but but it is it is pretty mind-blowing that we get to the stage where and part of this is, by the way, because Valve has spent so long funding the Linuxization of Windows games. Uh, and so it's made it's made it possible to port very easily from platform to platform. But, you know, yeah, we're just seeing a whole bunch of
uh, you know, reverse engineering, some of it sloppy, some of it less sloppy. I think this Linux stuff is actually going to be quite good because it's based on a lot of the tech that Valve has directly and indirectly funded for running Windows games on other platforms. And so, there's no reason you can't uh, do that on PlayStation. So, it is
it is kind of mind-blowing and I don't really know what to make of it. The only

thing to note is that PlayStation is clearly taking this very seriously because yeah, basically what they're doing is they're saying in order to do anything online, you have to upgrade to our latest operating system and their latest operating system uh you know that completely blocks this particular exploit. So yeah.
Yes. The the weird thing about all of this is back to the vibe coding and people who are for or against whatever bubble you're in. There's been some real drama around this too from what I understand. And I know Zach Sweiseen at Kotaku and Chris Pson at Aftermath have reported a lot on the turmoil in the Linux community around basically like AI spoiling their effort. So people who put years and years and years of work into this and then you have AI kitties like figuring out an exploit and then reporting it to Sony. Um uh because they're I I understand cash rewards basically.
Oh, there are definitely bug bounty. I mean, Valve has a bug bounty program, so

yeah, I'm sure I'm sure PlayStation probably does as well.
So, it is it it's strange in that it seems to be both making some of these things move faster and also seems to be causing its own headaches and these communities are themselves kind of in in duress. In terms of the Sony of it all, do is this just a game of whack-a-ole? like are because of AI and how fast these exploits can be found are are new things going to be found just as fast as new updates come out?
I think so. There's also been some reports I'm not sure I put it in the news earlier, but there's also been some reports that Switch 2 is starting starting to get cracked and there's some and there's some game dumps available online which were not previously available. And so yeah, I think the problem is if you if you leave like AI is very good at probing network security. So if you leave it poking the right stuff for long enough, it's finding stuff. I mean this PHP exploit we just took half the internet down over I believe I think it was independently found by a couple of people but some of them we're using we're using AI as kind

of more efficient probing. So um yeah I think this is going to continue and I think it's going to be an issue for honestly for people who run closed platforms which is the console manufacturers. I think if you run a more open platform I mean I mean to be honest there have been some problems. We've never really talked about them, but there's been some problems that I think Steam has had to lock down themselves with stuff like file manifests. Like people have been, this hasn't been discussed very widely, probably for good, but um people have been pirating Steam games by by grabbing their file manifests and then you can sort of trick Steam into downloading the you used to be able to stick trick Steam into downloading the full game if you had the file manifest. So that's another piracy thing that's going on. So I think all this is is whack-a-ole and the platforms just have to have to deal with it. I I do also wonder how much worse this could get because of the price of hardware going up that people want to stretch their hardware as far as possible. They don't have as much money for the games to actually run on the

hardware and that these concerns with a jailbroken PS5 or a Switch 2 that you're talking about that maybe in the past were not as big of a deal in America will become more of a deal. I don't think this will ever be like the main way, well not in the foreseeable future people are using this hardware, but I can't remember if we had talked about it on this show or it was somewhere else of we will reach a point where somebody at your local market at your local strip mall is going to be happy to sell you a hacked one of these things. Um, and that seems more inevitable than it ever has before to me.
Yeah. I and I think also the rise of these kind of ROM like devices you can buy on Amazon that run a whole bunch of kind of old old console games has made it a little bit more I don't know culturally acceptable to do this uh just because oh I can't get them easily they're all expensive to buy physical I'll just go grab all these ROMs. So I think it's a I think it's an area that we we have to look at very carefully

basically.
Yes. Yes. Uh, I have more data, Fris, to dig into about whether or not people are playing more video games. This one is coming from Circon's new survey of quote normal US video game consumers. They say that 41% of US video game players buy at least one new game quarterly compared to 36% a year ago. Uh though a reminder here, only 5% of those folks say they buy a game uh more than once a month and 13% around once a month. I will add some like context here. A Yuggov poll in September of 2025 found that 12% of people go to movies once a month, which is pretty in line with that. And I do wonder how much that shows kind of a general measure of interest in new and novel experiences versus what is free and easily available. But for this number for for this growth of players

buying new games, how much should we read into this? Is is this a positive change or is this kind of just a blip in the data set?
Yeah, I mean I think it's mildly positive. The reason I liked this data set is I think it just reminds us all that, you know, many of us who follow the industry are constantly thinking about what games to pick up and checking stuff out every week and blah blah. And I just think it's a really good reminder and I think this is, you know, very much a general populace, not people who are because we do a lot of surveys with Steam fans and they respond to like our giveaways of keys and stuff like that. Those guys are pretty hardcore. I think we've already said um I think I think you know we've already said publicly like 18% of those people own a Steam Deck, right? And so that's you know that that's really whereas I think we think like I don't know two or 3% of the general population who play Steam like own a Steam Deck. So so I think that the issue here is a lot of the surveys you see even our surveys are can be a little bit kind of like well here's here's what the Steam fans are doing. I think it's worth talking to them because they're often the people who buy more games so you really care what they're talking

about. But I think this is a great, you know, Sakana, formerly MPD, has always been very good at these kind of, you know, here's what's going on in the much broader market. And I think, yeah, if if you're looking at the much broader market, it is kind of, you know, a really interesting number. You know, you know, 29% of all people are saying they're playing games and not buying anything this year. And so I think that's really good to think about. They're playing uh, you know, they're playing Fortnite maybe on their PS4. I don't know. So, so you know, so a lot of them are in in ecosystems. Maybe they're in the Roblox ecosystem. Maybe they're in uh, you know, a previous EA Sports FC ecosystem and they didn't decide to upgrade this time. I don't know. But like the the point is I think it's a really good view of a lot of people already in ecosystems. And I think I think the set of people that you need to buy your game if it's a smaller indie game is is is in a different subset than you might think.
Yes. Yes. How ho how much do you think GTA 6 is going

to mess up all the data? Like is it going to be a thing that when we get datas like this in four months, you're going to always have to have this is the data and this is it minus GTA 6.
Yeah. I I don't know. I mean GTA 6 is so weird. The other thing about GTA 6, as we've discussed before in this, is it is coming out single player only right now. And so I I do think the real boom in GC I think don't get me wrong I think many many millions of people are going to buy this. But I I think it gets really interesting when the multiplayer stuff hits because if you think about uh you know the the what's what's going on in the world people are really interested in co-op for example like the GTA that's shipping is going to be completely single player to start with. So so I would say uh yeah in 2027 I think we're going to find out find out more about that. Uh I I I do think GTA is a sort of once in a generation uh event. So that might
maybe every other generation at this point.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But um but yeah, I

mean it's it's going to be super interesting to see that game hit and see who picks it up and see who's talking about it because I'm still
I'm still really interested in the effect on general interesting games, particularly with it being, as we've discussed, unavailable on PC. It's just super interesting. Like what what's going to happen?
Yes. I the closer the game gets, but really the the idea of the multiplayer gets, the more I'm curious about what the hell this thing is going to be because GTA Online to me is such a reflection of a relatively close to the MMO boom way of thinking about online games. And you're right, co-op is king right now. Slop games to some degree, battle royale and extra uh extraction shooters. But I just wonder if maybe what we all have in our heads for what GTA Online could be is completely off from what this thing actually might be. If it'll be something closer to the, you know, seven games that you can actually get when you open Fortnite. Uh very very

curious.
Yeah,
we should get to the main stuff uh that we do every week, which is what is going on? What happened last week? What is happening this week on Steam releases? How was last week for everybody?
Yeah, it was pretty interesting. I mean, there were two, I'd say, really big titles, and those were, of course, Call of Duty uh the the latest Call of Duty hit Modern Warfare 4. It's a little bit difficult to see its numbers because it's integrated into the main Call of Duty app, but we can see the main Call of Duty app hit 180,000 CCU on Steam. And uh some of our console numbers show uh you know that things going very well as well. So, in general, this appears to be a return to form. there's no battlefield against this game uh this year and people seem to be really liking the single player of Modern Warfare 4 and I've also heard good things about the multiplayer. So, um I actually yeah I think I think you know they've the sort of somewhat back on track. I think as we discussed last week having get having people to get excited about a $70

game every 12 months with the Call of Duty name is is tough. And so we'll see if they can do it for the next five years in a row. But I' I'd say uh mission somewhat accomplished here. Um the the other one I wanted to reference was Final Fantasy Resonance, which I think is pretty interesting. Like I didn't realize this. My my colleague Alejandra was talking about this is that I didn't know that it's a little bit based on um on a on a on a mobile Final Fantasy RPG, Brave Xius, I guess. So, um, really it's interesting because I think a lot of old school Final Fantasy fans have not been a fan of, uh, the direction the franchise has gone into over the past few years, which is quite rambly and extended and less kind of classic Final Fantasy. So, this is really Final Fantasy Residence is a classic Final Fantasy game that has the 2D HD kind of pixel art and from what I understand executed really well. So, it got to I think 25,000 CCU on on PC. I think it's actually up to 30 or 40 by

now and also has I think some really good numbers on console as well. So, I think this is a bit of a return to form for Square Enix.
I do think it is funny that I don't know 15 years ago we had things like Call of Duty being converted into mobile games and people bemoning it and then it making a fortune and people actually loving the game. And now we have uh mobile games being converted into PC and console games and people bemoning the very idea of it and then it coming out and people loving it because it's actually the thing that they want. It is this weird I don't know these weird pivot points I guess in terms of trends where you see this happen. But I believe this was also what happened with um one of the previous Square Enix RPGs Octopath Zero.
Yeah, you're right. that was also mobile. Now, I will say uh Resonance, as I understand it, is extensively changed. So, that's why that's why people have no issue with it. It's sort of the the bones of those mobile games that have been built over extensively. So, I think they did a did a great job there. Yeah.

Uh looking at this week when we get to play my favorite game of Am I in a bubble?
Stuff that I think is is going to pop. I I have Phantom Blade Zero, which feels like the easiest bet I can make this week. [snorts] And then there's a few things. There's games like Emberville, Sulfur, which I believe is coming out of early access. Yeah. And Queen's Domain, which is part of this larger trend of games that seem to be influenced by uh kind of early Kingsfield from soft style games.
Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, I think of the ones we mentioned in the newsletter, uh, those are those are two of the four. Uh, Phantom Blade Zero, obviously, I think 2.4 million wish list. I don't know how many in the millions of wish list. So, that that game is is going to do very well.
Uh, no matter how good it is, but I think it's going to be good as well. Um, and then, yeah, and then Emberville is interesting because it's like a pixel art ARPG builder kind of game and and I think I think it's quite it's

interesting when those games end up doing well. And I think it does look like it's going to do well as long as they execute. that's got 660,000 wish list. And then we have the cyberpunk shop simulator probably stolen which which has been doing really well on in NextFest. It was one of the highest rated in NextFest. And then there's a floating island game called Atmosphere which also I have on the list 360,000. So yeah, I mean I think those are true. I Yeah, Queens Domain is interesting. I wonder if Queen's Domain is going to be a bit bit niche because um OG Kingsfield is like a bit of a throwback now. [laughter]
Yes. Yes. Yeah. It seems to be that and um early Elder Scrolls games are having a moment in the indie community. I just don't know if any of them have popped up in a huge way just yet.
But it is true. It is it it is from software adjacent. So that probably puts it in a in a kind of higher echelon than like because we talked about agent 64, right? And agent 64 did fine, but it was just running on Yeah. just people in their 50s who played it in their 20s, whereas there was an argument. Yeah, I

was going to say [laughter] if it had come out 15 years ago, maybe a different story, but uh a little bit different now.
Yeah.
Um, cool. Well, what else do you have coming up with Game Discover Co and Pro stuff?
Good question. So the stuff we're working on right now actually one thing we're working on which is fun is we're redoing our publisher interface for plus and pro which is we looked at this sometimes we have pages with numbers on them and we look at all the numbers and we're like wait a minute these numbers aren't actually that helpful even though they're true and so that sort of happened with some of our publisher pages for example somebody pointed out to us we have total revenue uh on on our publisher pages for all their games but we don't have average and median revenue per game on the overview pages which is kind of what you want to look at if you're I don't know looking at looking working with a publisher, you're like, you want to know what's their average or median. So, we're in the middle of uh redoing a bunch of our data both on our publisher details pages and our publisher overview pages. So, it's more useful. Like, I think we previously had somewhat hilariously uh if you add up

all the CCU for for a particular publisher, what do you get? And that's kind of an interesting number, but if we really looked at it, we were kind of like, who's who's benchmarking both based on total CCU? So, we've so so that's what we've been working on this week, and I think that's rolling out over the next few days. I love it. Um, I do have a final question for you, which is we have a new uh Wii Sports, Switch Sports, Switch Sports Resort, whatever you want to call these games, uh, that is out. And I am curious if this is, speaking of games that resonate resonate with like 40 and 50 year olds, is this still a trend that we see as family games? these kind of motion game experiences or is this kind of now a legacy brand for the Nintendo Switch?
Yeah, it's a really weird. You don't see many I remember when the Wii came out, all these like 2K games had all these sub labels where they were doing these kind of like Wii Sports style games.

Um, yeah, it's just like a very weirdly Nintendo thing. I do think it's a bit of a hangover from when the Wii controller was very casual friendly. And obviously that still exists in theory, but I don't really think it's the main thrust of why people play Switch 2 necessarily to be like, you know, chucking chucking their arms around a whole bunch. Um.
Yeah.
Yeah. I I just think it's a game that Nintendo knows how to do and people are charmed by it and it's a very Nintendo first kind of thing, but I don't see other people being You're right. I don't see other people saying, "Let's make a miniame collection." I mean, if I think about mini game collections, actually the only one I can think of that's actually done well recently is UFO 50. A very different type of miniame collection, but that really is a 50 in1 game pack that really made it work because they spent so long on the games. But yeah, I I think in general,
um, also players, I think, want to spend six or six to eight for one game. They don't want to they don't want to pay $50 in general for a whole bunch of games of which they might like two of the all

they buy. And I think Nintendo gets away with this because it's Nintendo obviously and it's a first party game. But um yeah, I I I think it's probably
probably not the my my approach in most other people. But that's actually a really interesting question.
Yeah. I I I I wonder in hearing you say that it has to compete against the Robloxes of the world where it's like, well, if you want to play seven different games that are good but not great, that exists. In fact, you can play a thousand of those games all from the same menu. Um, and I I I am curious to see with the sales where motion controls click or don't click with younger people. I was surprised to see my eight-year-old, it was fine, charmed at best, indifferent at worst with the game. But I do think uh times have changed enough that the idea of people not knowing how to use a video game controller, which was more of a problem when the Wii came out, just doesn't seem to be an issue. So, I don't know. I'm I'm very curious to see how sales do for this game and

also curious to see if we see more commercials for it during like football games or holiday specials this fall if like this is an effort to actually get in front of more of like the people who have not already bought a Switch too.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm just looking at our rankings for it because obviously we keep we keep that most downloaded game rankings. And right now, as of uh the end of last week, um it is number one most downloaded, including free games on both the US and UK Switch eShop charts. And that's for the for the eShop version, not the physical version. I know people still like buying physical. So, yeah, I would say it's very much resonating like some first some first Bed Nintendo games don't don't get to number one on all downloads. So, I think it's right now it's very much resonating. We'll see how it does in a few weeks.
Interesting. That sounds good. Well, we should wrap things up. This has been another episode of Game Discover Co Show. You can always subscribe to this feed whenever you want for free and hear more of these episodes every week. You can also obviously subscribe to the

newsletter Game Discover Co. And you can get so much more from Game Discover Co. Plus and Pro. That's it. I'm Chris Plant. Simon, can you take us out from here?
Yeah, it's been a delight. I'm Simon Carlos. Thanks for listening. And we shall be back again in a week, whether you like it or not. Bye.