The number of video game articles dropped by over 100,000 in Q1

focusing on the big releases and trying to get the best possible traffic. There a little bit of a red ocean aspect to it because everybody is going for those releases and a site like well probably IGN is going to end up dominating a lot of the search engine results. Broadly speaking, if there is one of those AI summaries on the Google search uh page, that results in like a 34% drop, I think, uh in traffic to the to the top listed [Music] article. Hello and welcome back to the game business show with me, Christopher Ding. This week, video game websites are publishing significantly fewer articles as the game media landscape continues to contract. Bethesda surprise dropped a major Elder Scrolls uh remaster. We're starting to see the first impacts of Trump's tariffs and Jackbox Games talks about Netflix getting in on its space. But first, let me introduce you to not one but two guest hosts this week. We have leading editorial consultant, the former editorial director at Read Pop and Gamer Network and the former editor

of Official Xbox magazine. We have John Hicks and renowned journalist and podcaster, former news director at IGN and former US Gamer editor-inchief Cat Bailey. Welcome John and Cat to the show. Thanks Chris. Thanks so much for having us. This is our one month anniversary of the game business show. Oh, congratulations. You are one month guest host. Oh, masletos. I've been absolutely loving it. It's been I just it's been an absolute joy. I certainly don't miss being part of a machine, but I'll we'll talk about that later. I thought I'd actually ask about Elder Scrolls. Do you I don't think you're on official Xbox magazine when Elder Scrolls Oblivion launched, but are you a a fan? Yeah, I mean I played it when it came out when I was I was still on PC magazines way back then, but it's not something I am rushing to I candidly I don't have time to play new RPGs, but let's go back to ones that um uh came out a long time ago, but uh it's interesting that they uh that Microsoft they kind of went from like rumor to here it is very rapidly. You know, the

kind of the announcement and the drop. Yeah. Which was um quite quite fun to witness. Um, and interested to see if that becomes more of a trend. And I think the last time they did that or the last time I remember them doing that was for um, Hi-Fi Rush. Yeah. So whether that's and I guess maybe that's relate to what we talk about in terms of like how games companies release things. Cat, you're a RPG expert. You have an RPG newsletter. Uh, what did you make of the um, I mean we knew this was coming. I mean it was a surprise we knew him. This wasn't this wasn't a surprise in in the sense it exists. Um but what did you make of the reveal? Yeah, we've known about this one coming for quite a while, haven't we? Well, first of all, it's a pretty impressive remake for the most part. Uh runs in 4K 60. It's an Unreal Engine 5. It has some frame rate hitches. I understand that it doesn't run extremely well on PS5 Pro, but it is

being uh considered to be quite a strong package all things considered, especially given that it's being sold for $49.99 and it's available right away and it's free on Game Pass as well. So, this is, I think, being perceived as a win. It got off to a very strong start on Steam. Uh, I checked last I checked it was easily in the top 25 of releases on that platform and that would be for people who are paying. Of course, Nintendo fans are comparing it favorably to the Tears of the Kingdom remaster which is being sold for more money and does not include any of the DLC and does not have access to cloud saves among other things. So, I think the cloud saving thing might have might have shifted. I saw a story it it got removed from the whatever that alert was that's confused people. I think I said this last week about the price. Obviously for me the Breath of the Wild Tears the Kingdom upgrade is not costing me anything because I'm a Nintendo

Switch online customer and I already own the game. Yes. It's one of those weird things. It depends on where you are on that spectrum. I think of where you in terms of how expensive that really is. Yes. John, you mentioned Shadow Drops. It isn't the first time Bethesda's done this. They did it with Hi-Fi Rush and it was although Hi-Fi Rush wasn't a in the end a big success outside of Game Pass. It did have a big launch. They announced that I believe in 2023 during an Xbox developer direct and they had like 2 million people rush in um I think it was 2 million um very very quickly. So they had a they had a decent launch was quite a niche title. They've adopted a similar approach here with a more established brand which is it doesn't surprise me this actually because um if if you think about the wider Microsoft world they launched a vowed and this is where cat's going to tell me they're completely different Chris stop comparing vowed and elder scroll but but they launched a vow a couple of months ago you didn't really want those two PR and marketing campaigns on top of each other that would have been a problem I'm not sure that's not saying that's a reason why they shadow dropped it but I'm sure it's a I'm sure it's a consideration it

avoids the sort of overlap there. Shadow drops can work very effectively. We not not not just with new IP like Hi-Fi Rush or Apex Legends, but also Metroid Prime Remastered was a shadow drop if you remember also back in 2023 where they and Nintendo announc like Oblivion. We knew it was coming. They announced it and they released it pretty much immediately and that was a huge success for Nintendo. In fact, at the time, a Nintendo executive, I might say, actually wondered if the Metroid Prime Remastered Shadow Drop had impacted pre-orders for Tears of the Kingdom that also went live that day. So, um, you know, it can work very effectively, this stuff. And in fact, we've just seen a Runescape shadow drop as well that happened um this month. So, the these these things do work. What surprised me a little bit was the fact they've decided to do it in the same week Claire Expedition 33, I always get the name of it um wrong, comes out the exact same and it's a big Game Pass title. Microsoft's been pushing that quite hard. It's got some good reviews. I don't know if you played it, Cat, but it seems to be seem to have done pretty well. And then they've dropped an

Oblivion Elder Scrolls uh remake remaster. I don't know the difference anymore on top of the um on top of the game. That's the bit that surprises me. There's also Doom out in a couple of weeks, which I know is slightly different, but it is it's a Bethesda title as well. I'm sure there are nuances and reasons for it, but I I can't quite work it out. Maybe it's a a contraction, you know, or something, but it seems odd to have launched it this week. Well, I think Xbox has had some interesting times trying to set its release schedule in general. You think back to the release of Avoued, which was originally supposed to be coming out last fall and then got shifted over and ended up coming out in February instead, which ended up being right in the teeth of all the games that it was trying to avoid. And I get the impression, and this is not confirmed, but I get a feeling that there's a little bit of a left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing kind of situation. And so you have

Bethesda, which has a lot of independence within the Xbox studio system, deciding, okay, now is the time to put out Oblivion. This is this works well within our particular schedule. Though, of course, Doom: The Dark Ages was is within their portfolio as well. So, one two punch perhaps. I think the Shadow Drop device worked really well in this instance. I think that it if it had been in say a stream it would have gotten some attention but I think in this case it ended up kind of dominating the news cycle for its particular day. I saw so much coverage around it because it was the it was the thing that was happening so to speak. So, uh, I think maybe other publishers might take note when a remaster of this sort, uh, that they want to release is coming around and they want to give it that little extra push that helps it keep it above the rest of the pack. And I and I think it being a remaster

lends itself to this as well. Like Chris, you made the comparison to Metroid. Like, if they did a full ball marketing campaign for this, what would they say? You know, it's it's Oblivion. Here it is. like I I feel like uh unless they've made a lot of effort like adding adding new features or like really you know adding new content or something. It's not like a big campaign would have added a great deal anyway. So and and it means that you know they it's it's a big drop. It's a big RPG. As Cat says it was it was hugely popular. It's really been really well received in what is otherwise a relatively quiet period. you know, that's something to kind of keep keep the keep the fans going um before um you know, the the big sort of summer games rush. So, I think for certainly for for remakes, then I feel like it's probably more sensible to do the shadow drop thing because the community is there, the expectations are there, the features are well understood, just let them out. Lots of leaks, too. I feel quite bad for the Expedition 33 uh team because as uh Chris was mentioning,

they've been getting a big push from Xbox and now here they are. I don't know if they're going to get ex overshadowed. I think Expedition 33 and Oblivion have somewhat different audiences actually. If you're not familiar with Expedition 33, it's a how would I describe it? Final Fantasy by way of France in Unreal Engine 5. It's quite a looker. It got a lot of attention when it came around during summer gamefest, but it is very much in the Japanese tradition of RPGs where of course Oblivion, Elder Scrolls is one of the examples of the PC form of RPGs. So they they might be satisfying somewhat different groups and happily expedition 33 has been getting very strong reviews from what I was able to see. a lot of nines on nines and tens. And if anything, Expedition 33 may end up being a little bit of a slow burn as it were

that maybe it starts to pop up during awards season if it is indeed that good. Yeah. And it it's actually there even they even signed a movie deal on it. They're certainly trying to push it, but I I think when it comes to RPG fans, they there's a clear distinction between these two games, but obviously you look at it from maybe a slightly more mainstream perspective. They're all big fantasy epic looking titles. But you're right about that. I mean, John, you know, when you see a big RPG like Oblivion getting shadow dot, does your old editorial director instincts kick in? Do you start commissioning all the guides? And uh I was uh sort of reading around today and there's an awful lot of freshly updated Oblivion guides and uh sort of crafting tips and everything like that. I don't know to what extent people knew that was happening, but certainly all the leaks would definitely have helped from a kind of content strategy perspective to make sure everybody was like good and focused on that. Uh knowing that that's a uh some something to something to focus on. Just from a general editorial point of view, big RPGs are invariably huge traffic drivers

because they need a lot of explaining. There's a lot of there's a lot of tips, there's a lot of features, there's a lot there's a lot of like guide potential. So, gladdens my heart to see two two come along at once. M interesting release overall because of course we're all still waiting on The Elder Scrolls 6, which I believe was announced 7 years ago now, was it? In terms of The Elder Scrolls as a series, Oblivion definitely has its fans and it has a strong legacy as one of the one of the examples of an RPG that brought PC RPGs as we know them onto console. So, Oblivion, of course, came out in early 2006. It was a big Xbox 360 game at the time. John T, you probably remember it very well. I was I don't know. I I was just out of college. I was not in the games media at that time, but it was for many people their first taste

of The Elder Scrolls. And then Skyrim, of course, came out and really pushed that series truly truly truly into the mainstream. So, in many ways, Oblivion is a little bit of a tweener because Morowind is the the fan favorite, the the the cult favorite, whereas Skyrim is the mainstream one. But maybe because Oblivion is coming out now, it might not be as well known to a lot of people, so it might feel a bit more fresh. Um, just out of curiosity, did all of you see the stories about Sky Oblivion, the mod that had been in development that suddenly they were like, "Oh, great. Uh, a full a full official release just came out." Uh, okay. Yeah. I think the same thing happened Metroid Prime as well, didn't it? Wasn't there a remaster of that was in the for a fan and then it then theirs one. Mhm. I saw the Sky Olivian folks, they put out a nice social post going, "Oh, well you we wish them all the best. They given us all copies of the of the

remaster. I'll make up for those hundreds of hours of work they've put in." Yeah, I think they're putting a brave face on it. But yes, that must be I bet it bit of a kick in the teeth. But also, I mean, I had really kind of put the numbers together to like 2006. Gosh, that was a long time ago. Yeah. I say as somebody who reviewed day came out. Um but that was you know you know getting on 20 years ago. So that's there's going to be a huge chunk of the of the gaming audience who's just never really played with it or engaged with it. There's also going to be I'd imagine a lot of the modern Elder Scrolls fans today ones that engage with the franchise regularly are MMO players. Right. Yes. I have a very different perception of that franchise than I think perhaps a lot of the younger um people that might be into it. Well, I'm going to switch on to our main topic because we did touch upon it John's past, but also Cat's past there in the editorial because I have some data around what's going on in the games media. Now, the top 135 video game websites, they published collectively

635,000 articles during the first quarter of this year, which sounds like a lot, but it's actually a 13% drop nearly actually about almost exactly a 100,000 article drop compared with the same period in 2024. A lot of that is actually guides websites who um who have perhaps been hit by by recent Google changes. But uh there's also significant drops for IGN according to this IGN's article counts down by 250% although I imagine there's there's some anomalies going on there. That's quite a big drop but game spots also down heavily. Famits down heavily. Eurogame is down by by a big number as well. There's probably a few reasons for this but one of the reasons for this is also quite apparent. This is all data from Press Engine, by the way, who are sort of PR tools service provider. They've also shown that they have seen a drop of 2,92 press contacts. So, they've had 2,92 press contacts disappear from their database over the last 2 years. Now, those press contacts could be all sorts of people, but it will include amateur journalists and part-time writers,

freelance journalists as well. But obviously, there is a big drop in the number of people writing about video games today. And of course then there's been redundancies that have hit almost all major games media outlets. John, you we've all been in these meetings. I'm a business journalist. I'm often sit in these meetings and I hear about the challenges in the consumer space or the things that you're trying to do and I'm often with openeyed fascination about what's going on, how does it all work. But call me naive, but dropping journalists and therefore reducing the number of articles being written, that's just going to result in less money. Aren't we aren't we in a downward spiral here? call it possibly. Um I think obviously I'm not blessed with um particular insight into the uh the organization that have have been kind of reducing output but broadly speaking yes if you produce less then that's going to reach a smaller audience and that's going to have a measured impact on revenue. Uh my expectation would be that it's driven by revenue dropping away and by audience dropping away. I could talk for a great

uh for a very long time about this about the kind of like like the bigger picture kind of challenges but I think the short version is that in media not just games media for the last sort of 10 20 years the focus has been very much on scale and you grew your business by reaching more people uh and there was a big push in games media particularly into guide content and things that were going to attract a lot of search traffic and that is quite a challenging place to be. uh lots of people did it. Lots of mainstream brands have done it. So that was always an an incredibly competitive space and now Google has made some big changes. I know a lot of smaller sites have really suffered from that. There's been a a refocusing on on the very biggest sites. The ad revenue has been a bit a bit more dicey. Games media, much like the games industry, had a sort of big sugar rush through COVID because lots of people were indoors. All the audience figures went up and you know, money was cheap. uh interest rates were low. So there was a lot of consolidation in the kind of the sort of smaller mid-range end of the market. And now the

audiences have dropped a little bit. There's been all the you know all everything we've heard on the games business and elsewhere about you know this kind of consolidation into like a smaller number of games. Um and I think overall there's just been a drop in audience figures. My my suspicion is there's been a drop in audience figures. I think there's a bunch of businesses particularly on the margins who didn't have particularly strong margins themselves that have been kind of cutting back and I think the bigger companies have also been facing that. My suspicion is that traffic hasn't been wonderful. Advertising revenue has hasn't been wonderful. So, and the most expensive uh thing on the balance sheet is always going to be people. So, that's going to be what they cut and try and make that up. Hm. I think it's worth pointing out that last year we had Powworld in January and that was followed by Hell Divers 2 and those were two games that were very popular and bolstered a lot of search traffic. And

interestingly enough, I look at the first half of this year and there have been plenty of releases. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 comes to mind as a really strong one back in February, but without having actual access to the traffic numbers, I'm wondering whether they were able to kind of match up to what was coming out from last year. So, that might have had a little bit of an impact. I I think John did a great job of breaking down what's been happening in the last few years um in the games media. Some of it also is that if you look at sectors outside of the guides area, they haven't been seeing a huge amount of investment. So, what you're seeing is people who are leaving the press, the games press, because they're feeling burned out, they want to make more money or whatever, making the leap and there aren't necessarily people to

replace them. There isn't the the pipeline is not uh not there in the way that it used to be. And I think that can end up impacting output as well. Obviously from an industry point of view, what I what I'm worried about here is what I've heard throwing around is terms like we money ball it now. We're all about the bigger games. We focus in on those I mean that was kind of the case for years, but it seems to become increasingly the case where you know if we focus in on those big titles, we we can output fewer articles but you know produce still decent traffic and and generate significant revenue that way which is fine from a media business point of view. I don't know from an industry point of view, which I know is not the media's problem this, but there's this big discoverability crisis in video games. There's more games. We talk about there being fewer games, certainly the type of things that generate a lot of media traffic, actually more games than ever. Um, and from an industry point of view, the the the fact that there are fewer journalists. I know that influencers are are out there. It's a bit more fragmented that market, but um with

fewer journalists there, they're all sort of maybe not under pressure, but they sort of know that they've got goals to hit and they know the big games will will deliver those goals. Um then that makes it perhaps harder to it makes it harder to um potentially write about this stuff, which is not a great time for that to be going on as well. I mean K actually could you deal with on the news side over the last few years so perhaps it's not something that you're too much experience with but did you find it did you find there was a there was a difficult there was a challenge in trying to balance covering stuff that you sort of wanted to cover that you know you wanted to cover but also then also having to cover the stuff that was you know going to deliver the best performance was there was there something that that's what you had to balance yes and no I mean of course as a journalist you want to go for whatever happens to be newsworthy and what the biggest games are the ones that are newsworthy. M the funny thing is the the the moneyballing it as you're describing it, focusing on the big releases and

trying to get the best possible traffic. there a little bit of a red ocean aspect to it because everybody is going for those releases and a site like well probably IGN is going to end up dominating a lot of the search engine results or Polygon for example and it's it's really tough especially if you are just focused entirely on gaming SEO our friend Alex Donaldson who runs RPG site has found actually a lot of success by kind of focusing on the more boutique games the games that I would describe as maybe a little more blue ocean putting out very strong guides for Swigden 1 and 2 HD remaster which nobody is covering but because they have authority and because they are really well done guides those are the ones that are popping up and for the handful of people who are actually going out and searching for this game that's where they end up going and they end up staying on the site for

quite a long time. And I think that that's a tough pitch for a site like IGN, which is necessarily about scale. But it's funny because you look at the way that Google has been shifting in recent years. It is kind of moving away from the big players in many ways and giving more of an advantage to these boutique expertise sites. So, I think it's kind of a tough challenge actually, especially for the the much larger games media sites. They're caught in a little bit of a a little bit of a vice, it almost feels like, where they're trying to scale up, they're trying to grow year on year, but they're trying to focus on the big games, but Google's prioritizing other things. If Google starts, you know, you start being able to get those answers to the questions you're asking directly on Google through its AI. I spoke to um the fandom um yesterday and he said not seeing any particularly negatives at the moment of that area but expect they might do and that's um I know that's a

popular area of concern at the moment on social media people chatting about it. Yeah, I mean there was some data that came out last week from uh one of the SEO firms ah refs that said broadly speaking if there is one of those AI summaries on the Google search uh page that results in like a 34% drop I think uh in traffic to the to the top listed article and even if those summaries do site a source it's relatively rare people click through to it because they've got the information why why would they go there um I think to I I completely agree with C I think it's a very difficult place to be for larger sites who are, you know, have um public owners, they have, you know, quarterly they have quarterly targets. They have to they have to show growth. And to use your phrase, Chris, the money balling approach is the closest thing you have to a reliable way to do that. But it's extremely competitive. The larger sites do increasingly take it all. There are increasingly non-games media sites that

uh will also go after that stuff because gaming guides are a brand safe way to prop up your traffic even if you're like a PB listings magazine or a national newspaper and we've seen those people kind of come in and move into that space and the curation work which is incredibly important and that was always my take was was always well it was it was that kind of like eating your greens kind of thing from an editorial strategy perspective is that well the guides will drive deliver the scale but the um the cur curation and the, you know, kind of highlighting new games and doing interviews and things like that, those have never done any traffic. But even on the sites that have very much built built a brand around that and have very noisy commenters demanding, you know, new indie games and that kind of stuff, they don't see traffic to those things when they cover them like ever. Like it's never ever been a traffic source. It's been it's always been a small audience that really values it. uh the small audience includes the developers and the publishers and the and the people actually making the games as well because as as you say Chris the media is

serves a necessary purpose for kind of highlighting those things and I think to Cat's example of of RPG site and and their focus I do think my personal prediction for games media and media in general is that there is going to be this bifocation between like absolute heavies who can go for the money ball thing and absolutely dominate the Oblivion remaster. or the Elder the new Elder Scrolls when whenever that comes out. Everybody else, the only real opportunity I see existing is going to be narrowing the focus and and covering one niche very very well and having a small dedicated audience uh and bluntly having being able to monetize that audience in a way that doesn't rely on programmatic advertising. that subscriptions and Patreon and doing those sort of showcase events where the you know where the where the people pay to the blue password and that kind of thing. That is what I was going to bring up because I actually subscribe to two magazines, right? I subscribe to Doctor Who magazine and Retro Gamer and Doctor

Who magazine. I subscribe to that because there is an there's always an article in there like here's the second unit director of a 1978 episode of Doctor Who interview and there's about 300 people interested in that article and I'm one of them and I will pay the67 however much that magazine cost me in order to read that article and so when you don't when you go specialist you go niche although the audience might be smaller you might find a more willing audience to to pay for it that's the biggest issue I always think media generally and has been for the last 20 years that if we don't pay the media and that's why we end up with articles like you. The one thing I hate about the moneyboarding it is when you see sites that go fans are all saying the same thing about the latest Mario Kart trailer or they've got the same six complaints about the same about I'm like oh god it's just such rubbish and it's like and it must be and I don't know I don't I'm glad I don't have to write that stuff you know I actually say to the people that do the time extension website which is a website I go on quite a lot like I pay for that you know I'd give you money for that you know if you you should never base an entire business

strategy on what I would do but um but it's certainly a um on that note Subscribe to Axe the Blug on an independent RPG podcast. Uh uh no, I totally agree. The independent media I think is pretty vibrant. Uh I personally subscribe to several websites. I subscribe to Defector, which uh is an American website that subscription base that is based on the former people who ran Dead Spin. I subscribe to 404 media which does fantastic fantastic reporting in the tech space and there are other independent outlets that are starting to spring up here in the game space. I mean there's of course your newsletter Chris, there's Steven Totillo's uh the game file which is regularly really really good. several others as well and of course aftermath and I think there's something more joyful I think to serving a an audience a dedicated audience who

are there to spend money on good reporting um and good games coverage and so it's not quite the race to the bottom with all due respect to like my colleagues in the mainstream media who are kind of doing their best it feels more like it feels more joy joyful I think to be in that space. Andy Robinson was telling me who's who runs VGC that when they open their Patreon and the stuff they do on their Patreon is the stuff that his team enjoy doing the most because it's it's for an audience that's paying this for fans and it's it's um there's something about that that's a it's a smaller audience but it's the one that matters more. Yeah. And you play to your strengths more. You're bringing out your voice and your personality and people respond to that. It's not as calculated, I think. And it's and it's also to to site another like looming boogeyman that's coming for media at the moment is is AI just in generally like AI can do a seemingly halfdeent job of

kind of basic factual summary. There are all sorts of problems with with the delivery, but there are some things that you know like kind of baseline financial reporting things that it can do equally as well as as a human because if you just take an earnings report and pull out the details, put some sentences in it, it can do that. There's a sort of genuine risk I think that there's a lot of kind of quite peruncter coverage is just going to get done by AI in future and again that's just going to like eat away at the audience and and the business model for the for the sites that previously used to do that. Whereas to Cat's point, like if you have a um a very distinct personality, you have a very distinct voice, uh you you have an audience that that cherishes that, then you are as much as is possible, you are insulated from that. And I think the sites that or the brands that will endure, I don't work with them anymore, but I used to site Rock Paper Shotgun. Like Rock Paper Shotgun has a very distinct voice and a very distinct outlook and it's very well established. it has and it has a community that expects that and I can and I and I can see that like kind of like enduring uh

for for a very long time whereas lots of the sites that kind of popped up in the last 10 years that were very much focused on you know chasing uh Google traffic and you know word clues and uh and that kind of thing they never they never you know justifiably never really had the opportunity to kind of build a voice themselves and then once Google chokes that off then they're kind of left high and dry and This follows all the other sources of traffic. You know, 15 years ago, you could run a successful media business on traffic you got from Facebook or social media. And that's that's gone away. All these platforms uh are the intermediary in media now. And increasingly they are not interested in referring users away. They want to they want to kind of keep it all for themselves. So independent media is the future says a number of independent media creators. I I don't know if it's like the big brands will endure like IGN I don't see IGN's going anywhere you and you look at

you know poly and polygon you know which is relatively young by games standards right like it's I think it was the last the last big site to launch those sites um have um have have a huge footprint there they already have those audiences they can hold on to them I think gaining um a big audience and making money from it um for everybody else is I would say harder than it's ever been. And I think there will be more smaller success stories that set out to focus on a smaller section and reach a smaller audience but um do well by them. So I took over US Gamer in 2017 and I find myself thinking back to that lands what the landscape was in the media at that time. this year as the Switch 2 is coming out and if you compare it to 2017, 2017 I think Gamer Network was really really strong actually. Eurogamer was really continuing to move up a lot. Had

a really incredible team behind it. You had Waypoint had basically just started and was getting a a large investment from uh Vice Games. I think Fan Bite came along a couple years later and there was this willingness to put money into these large sites. I I think Polygon was considerably larger at that time as well. And you kind of look back to you look at it now, Waypoint is long gone, Fan Bite is long gone. GameSpot has gone through multiple ownership and has shrunk considerably. It feels like IGN is IGN and Future I suppose are the only really major players in the how would I describe the freetoplay sites. So yeah, it's a little actually just just to agree like there was and even way back when I started which was like very early 2000s that was still there

was still a zillion like smaller smaller sites. Um I mean even your eurogamer was a small site. Eurogamer was the was the little site that kind of blossomed uh and left and left all the kind of most of the other ones behind it. That was the kind of the peak of well that was when to as as you said Chris when when it was possible to say right well we're going to our business model is we're going to give everything away free on the internet we're going to monetize it through advertising and over the course of the subsequent sort of 20 or so years that's just become increasingly um less plausible as as a business model. I don't I don't think anybody's going to invest in a conventional media business or, you know, in a media business that doesn't have some way of monetizing their audience that isn't just through scale and and then advertising. It's all about subscriptions and Patreon and and and increasingly B2B. So, obviously the games business. Yeah, of course. Chris, you've had a you've had a very strong start after the first month. you've been off to an absolute fire and there's been

huge success in the media business has been really rough for as long as I've been in it. Um but it's been real bad over the last sort of 5 years but the bright spot has been B2B. Um because again because B2B is fundamentally narrow in its focus. You're talking to a industry you're talking to a specific group within that industry and you can laser focus on those people. You say that but as soon as the jobs advertising disappeared it got really tough. Um and and you know you know games in short biz is is what happened there. You just seen games beat spin out as a as an independent um outfit and you have to imagine that if venture beat was happy with the way that was going that they wouldn't have allowed that to happen. Um, I think it's great that there's we we've all been able, you know, Steven with Hello is sort of B2B sort of sort of um and Simon Carlos over at Game Discovers done an amazing job there, but it's obviously they've gone really we've gone even niche increasingly into those sort of um spells and it's great as an independent level and I think yeah, I think it's it's definitely this space space I'm in does allow for a little bit

more experimentation in terms of monetization and because you are talking to a different audience audience that actually a lot of the time can just write off their subscription to something as a expense, right? So, it's um it's it's it's it's a little different, but well, I'm going to quickly, you know, I'm conscious of the time and I do have a couple of smaller stories to sort of get on onto. I've been touching on the tariffs of pretty much every single episode of um of the game business. We're starting to see some impact now of those those tariffs on companies coming out of China. So, we saw a story that um I've never heard of this company before, so I apologize if I get the name wrong. and Bernick, I think, has stopped shipping its retro handhelds to um um um the US because of uh because they're made in China. Um um by the way, there's 125% plus potentially 20% tariff on on Chinese goods. And Nintendo has also raised the price of some of its accessories. Um that's so they've gone back on store with pre-orders now for Switch 2 in the US, but they've had to raise the price of the accessories because that's they're made in countries like China that have or China have a big impact on

that. I have a friend of mine, I won't name the company, he makes figurines and they're made out of China. And I I asked them how he's doing about the whole situation. And he says, um, it's a case now of whether or not he just gives up. We talk a lot about the hardware, the consoles, um, what those big companies are going to do and what's going to be the impact there. And that's has the broadest impact upon the whole games industry. But it's the sort of this side of the market, the accessories, those goods that have managed to manufactured cheaply in China and get them shipped over to to other countries that are basically facing closure over over this sort of thing. There was some state a comment from Donald Trump this morning. I don't know really know why he can take any comment now uh that comes out of that uh is whether it's actually an indicator of what's going to happen where you know he thinks that those the big Chinese tariff will go down but it's very hard to invest and predict and base decisions on at the moment um because of the uncertainty in those places but we are starting to see some impact on the on the of those tariffs. Yeah. And I think I saw something like there's

starting to see things to do with I think like DHL's inbound shipping. They've said um they're no longer accepting things worth over $800, I think. So there's it's that that uncertainty is just going to to to percolate, isn't it? Like businesses don't want to invest in those circumstances. And actually to to briefly drag it back to to media, that's going to that's going to be bad for the media business as well because when companies are being nervous and they're cutting back, the marketing budget is always the first thing to go. So that's going to trickle down to to media as well, even even before you get to things like if GTA 6 comes out this year, then nobody's going to advertise against that and Rockstar is not going to advertise with games media because why would they? Everyone's going to buy it anyway. So there's there's lots of you know the these are things that that that can be additionally bad for games media as well already happened right I mean last year was survived till 25 and so many publishers were cutting

back or going away entirely and they weren't spending the ad dollars on websites. So even when they were doing okay in traffic, they weren't getting the money that they needed in order to make good on that traffic. So they were it's a it's a tough one. The ad the the ad market is a bad is really rough at the moment and has been consistently for a couple years now. But, uh, turning to the actual tariffs, uh, well, I'm I'm the one who's here in the United States kind of with a front row seat to a lot of what's been happening here. And I think the chaos is probably the most impactful aspect of it cuz it's just impossible to make any long range plans because the tariffs keep changing. Every few days, we get a new announcement. Well, the tariffs are going up here, the tariffs have been cancelled here. There's been a 90-day pause on this. There have been exceptions granted to that. And you're right, it's it's more

than the final products. It's impacting the supply chains considerably. The parts, it's the parts that they can't get that are allowing them to make the final product, which is becoming which has been very rough on uh on everybody. I think uh the Nintendo Switch 2, I think I I think we were at least a lot of us in the US when Nintendo announced that they were delaying the the pre-orders from April 9th to um April 24th, which is tomorrow as of the recording of this podcast. It I was expecting I was kind of bracing it for it to jump to $500, something like higher than that. And so Nintendo seems to have taken the approach of we'll raise the price of some of the accessories by between5 and $10 and we'll keep the price of the base console where it is because if you raise it anymore, you start encroaching into

uncomfortably premium territory with this device which is not Nintendo's mo and historically has not been. No. Well, I think Nintendo manufactures a lot of its well, I don't know if it's a lot. I don't actually know the exact number, but a chunk of its US inventory in um in Vietnam. They moved uh manufacturing there. And um obviously they the pause on the tariffs paused that the I think it's 46% in a tariff on Vietnam, which is um which probably makes it a little bit easier. Also, an internet has shipped a bunch of units already. But yeah, but long term, you know, if that tariff comes back on Vietnam and and and those sort of things, we may see it encroach in premium territory. But then I don't even know I think you might have to reclassify premium territory in the US in terms of um of what is it? And this is a problem actually for the industry. And I'm I talk about I I'm one of those people that um we talked about pricing a little bit on the show a few times now, but I'm I didn't think when I

saw the price of the Switch too um in with Mario Kart back bundle, I didn't think it was too horrific, but obviously a lot of people I've spoken to um were um I didn't think it was horrific at all. Actually, I thought it was quite reasonable. But in an industry where everyone the industry's moved into trying to drive its average revenue per user, they're trying to get more money out of the people who are buying games because the profit margins are quite tight for a lot of companies. Oddly not Nintendo, but for a lot of companies and so they're trying to sort that out and and and and balance that out. But in doing that, we are potentially limiting our ability to expand the audience of video games. And that is where I always think there's a big conflict. And we'll talk about this on the show in the future as well. There's this conflict between how do we expand the audience for video games? How do we bring in new users to um um um uh the games market whilst also making sure that we're maintaining our margins and tariffs like this is just making that job already hard and almost impossible job even harder. I think Mario I played Mario

Kart um um uh Mario Kart World and I and I thought this was brilliant. This is amazing. I think everyone should play this, but they're not going to be able to afford it. And so it's and it's and I think that's um uh how we bridge that gap is is is if we can I think is is I think audience tastes are changing in some ways. I've seen segmentation data that shows that people who are younger than 30, they're playing on mobile, they're playing freeto play, they came up on Fortnite, they came up on Minecraft, and those are the games that they are turning to. I mean, there was that kind of stunning number from a couple a few months ago that showed just how much play time goes to the top 10 service games. Yeah. Compared to a lot of the other games and that contrasts a bit with the sort of

renaissance that you're seeing out of Steam where it just seems like the it breaks a new record every single month. It feels like with so many people going and playing on PC. But I wonder if we're going to see a situation where premium console and premium PC experiences like I don't know Oblivion start to become more boutique become geared toward older audiences. You were already there. You're talking about actual data from the likes of you know Ampair and Yuzu and those sort of companies that are sharing that information which is really insightful. I I think about the reason why I think Nintendo has managed to largely resist that world or they haven't completely is because I I I'm in the playground. I've got a 5-year-old and I pick them up and their kids have all got Pokémon backpacks and Mario backpacks and all that clever stuff, whether it's from the movie or whatever it is. But from there, parents prefer that because they're going, I can buy a product and a game like my my wife downloaded an Angry Birds game because my son loves this Angry Birds CBS thing.

CB is like is the British um uh BBC bas for children and there's a little app that's then there's a ripoff of Angry Birds on it and it's not very good. So my wife, oh you should play the Angry Birds version. So you downloaded that but it's a new Angry Birds game and it's one of those things where the game is fun for about an hour and then if you want to keep having fun you have to start spending money and and she's like oh what have I downloaded? What's going on here? And I went and I went and I she I said stay clear of all that because it's it's that you I'm happy to buy the thing right because I'm I'm in a privileged position where I can but um I'm happy to buy the thing because I'd rather um that was the experience that my children are getting rather than being hey watch this advert. Hey oh you want to you want to actually be that boss pay the 99 p and open loot boxes. From a parenting point of view, Nintendo's quite safe and that's why I think um they still they've managed to bring through these generational that sort of thing. So this industry, it shifts all the time. It was only a few years ago. It feels like a few years ago

that PC was dead. It was all over. PC gaming was uh was doomed and console gaming was the future. The number of times PC gaming has died since I've been been doing this. Yeah. It's interesting to me that well but to so the vations there is that you have all these good Pokémon backpacks. Those backpacks came from China. Merchandising has been a huge revenue source for the industry and around the industry over the last few years and it's heavily dependent on um largely on sort of Chinese manufacture. So there's going to be a particular that's going to be another sort of second order consequence and it's not like games retail was in a good place to begin with but they're very heavily reliant on you know Funko Pops and and that kind of stuff and now that's you know that's that's really under threat. video games um kept right that you know the younger audiences are very are very big on freeto play. They have affinity with franchises that were not in existence when we were when you know when we were coming coming up um and you know obviously Roblox which is just

incredibly nebulous format. There's all sorts of nonsense on there but games are increasingly digital so and that's a harder thing to put the tariffs on. Like they those don't have to get put on a boat. So my suspicion is and I don't know the answer to this but they um and there's going to be a whole bunch of you know if the the US administration starts looking at steam and their and their reach in in China that's going to be a difficult conversation. Well, yeah. All of the tariff chat been overwhelmingly about goods and increasingly games are services and I think there's room for them to sort to well at least there's there is some uncertainty for them to operate at least. I'm conscious of the time. Um but yes, obviously I think if they start putting tariffs on services I think that might hit the US because that's what they're particularly good at. That's what where their free traffic. I'm going to end on um one story that's in the newsletter. Uh we don't have to speak too much about it, but back at GDC, if you cast iron back a month, uh you may have missed this

story. Jackbox Games announced a partnership with Amazon Game Lift to basically create a streaming service for Jackbox games where you can access their party packs through devices like smart TVs and and Roku. Um and it sounded interesting. I spoke to the Jackbox CEO, Mike Builder, and he told me that they they might start releasing games more frequently as a result rather than just putting it all into one pack at the end of the year. They even started talking about signing third party games for the platform. All very niche, all very interesting. But the reason why I I wanted to talk to Mike is because this was announced at GDC, but also announced at GDC was that Netflix is also looking into building party games just like Jackbox's titles that use the phone to play basically and putting them into their streaming and subscription service. So, in my interview with Mike, I thought I'd ask about that. And uh here is what he said. There's a lot of people chasing this. I think that there's there's a there there. And I don't think it's necessarily going to be one dominant player. I think there have been a few that have existed. Obviously, in the past, if you look at cloud gaming, you talk about Stadia, you talk

about kind of really big initiatives. Um, I think the people that are approaching it right now are a little more measured with it. Um, I I think Netflix is actually wise in that, you know, I think one of the flaws of Stadia back in the day was this was a console killer. It was a replacement for your AAA, you know, PC rig. was, you know, AAA 4K gaming all the time, anywhere that you want. And I think the thing that, you know, was maybe misunderstood was a lot of people have invested years of their lives into those platforms and they have entitlements and achievements and they have friends lists and they have a group and a cohort that they play with whenever they get online. And so, you may be able to play that AAA title in the cloud, but people want to play it on their PS5 because that's where their friend group is. That's where their their their you know their uh uh all their all their blood, sweat and tears has gone for the last 10 and 15 years that they've owned that console or or generation of console. Um and I think with uh with our kind of games that doesn't matter. Um as I mentioned before

we also don't need this right. So, when you talk about a cloud gaming service and now you need to Bluetooth connect your, you know, generic controller to a television, uh, that adds friction. Um, and, you know, we've we've learned, uh, throughout the course of building our infrastructure and and our platform that eliminating friction is key to getting people into the game. The moment you everybody's got to get on the same Wi-Fi or everybody's got to pair a device to this thing, you've introduced friction. You're going to lose people. the interest in playing that particular game is going to go away pretty quickly. Um, and so, you know, the whole basis of Jackbox.tv being a website, doesn't matter what device you're on, doesn't matter what network you're connected to, cellular, Wi-Fi, etc. You can join and play. A lot of that is with intent because we wanted to uh eliminate the friction of play. Um, but again, I think our kind of games serve themselves really well for that stream 10-foot experience. Um, and you know, my guess is Netflix has identified the same thing

and that's why they're chasing a category of party games. It's interesting because obviously streaming has yet to take off in the in the AAA space, but Mike there is talking about how actually more casual games that target different audiences might be sort of way forward. Does does streaming party games appeal to either of you? Yeah, the the fewer barriers to entry, the better, honestly. I play Jackbox with my friends all the time. Oh, really? Yeah. And it's a it's been a great game for many years and it's the kind of game that is really easy to get people who aren't normally gamers into. You just say just sign in on your smartphone. It's great. Okay, come on. And historically, we've had to get it on Steam or get it on our Switch and then set it up and everything. We have to have a dock. So just being able to have it directly through a service strikes me as a wise move. Anything to remove the friction of being able to get into these games. And Netflix itself, I think, has

been really trying to find the right balance. It's been experimenting a lot. They had a studio that wanted to make a hardcore competitive shooter through a I don't think that's going to work in a streaming context with uh you know variable variable online connections and input delay and whatnot. So this strikes me as a kind of a good direction for that. Yeah. And and I think that's that's kind of tapping into the uh slightly more kind of casual gaming space which is always been enormous. um you know those um mobile games have always um been like what been wildly successful for the for the last sort of 20 years and it also uh honestly thing brings brings to mind to me and this is a deep cut for the for the heads is one versus 100 when that was on Xbox Live back in the day. That's a deep cut. Wow. But that was a I mean it was broadly a streaming experience. It was like it was

sort of destination television and it was wildly popular. Um, I people were extremely uh distraught when when Microsoft killed it. And that strikes me as a you know that's that's that's a proven way to kind of but that was how you could bring people together like not even just in the same room. That wasn't a couch game. That was you could uh um do that with online players as well. So I think there's great potential there. I'm glad that uh the Jackbox don't feel too intimidated by. Well no. Yeah. Yeah. Well then just like there's the they call the Jackbox their murder mystery game which is I forgot the name of it now but their third one this year and that's gone online. um uh component to it for the first time and they were talking about some of the stuff they can do with streaming in terms of like people watching in and all this kind of stuff. It sounded it sounded interesting and promising if if it can find an audience. But obviously Netflix has got probably around 700 million people that utilize that service. And so having games in there that actually might appeal to 700 million people and not just to the the small crossover of people that might want the GTA game, which is still huge, is certainly certainly interesting. Well, that's it for today's show. Um, thank you Cat and

thank you John for joining me. Uh, I think we could have spoken for ages. We already have spoken for ages. Um, but I appreciate you having on the show and I hopefully I can invite um, uh, you back in the in the future. We'd love to come back. Yeah, I'd love to. We'll be back on Tuesday for our feature show. To make sure you don't miss an episode though or any of our big news updates, we do just do normal newsletters from time to time. Please sign up to our free emails atthegamebusiness.com. Until next time, thank you all for tuning in.