Why is Xbox betting big on Kojima?

Hello and welcome to the Game Discovery Co show. Your place to learn all about the game industries, the goings on, and specifically game discovery. How are games being found? Or much more depressing, how are they not being found? But mostly this week, we're talking about things being found, things being funded, things being changed that were annoying in the world of video games. It is a good week. I probably should introduce myself. I'm Chris Plant and I am joined as always by my wonderful co-host Simon Carlos. How you doing today, Simon?
I'm doing good. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's it's a busy week. There's some interesting interesting stuff coming up here that we're going to be talking about. And I like it that we can talk about like we we talk about games a little bit, but the point of Game Discover Co is we don't just talk about games, we talk about the platforms and and what's happening with those. So, I think we have a good mix of that in this week's show. Yeah, I think you are 100% right and I think we can dig right into it because

good but strange news to start off with. Ubisoft is testing a workaround for its Ubisoft Connect PC launcher in Steam that as far as I can tell makes it so that you can keep all the features that I guess are good about Ubisoft Connect like cross progression, crossplay, player safety, etc. without having to actually launch Ubisoft Connect while using Steam, which means not having to have yet another launcher while you are trying to play a game on the platform that you actually prefer. Am am I right that they have basically created a tool to solve the problem of a different tool existing?
Yeah, it's it's to solve the problem of the tool that they made. And I think, you know, this is interesting to me because there's been a history of publishers really wanting to make launchers and, you know, some of them have done okay. Battle Battleet, I'd say, has done okay. And then the EA uh

launcher, whatever it's called nowadays, it might be called the EA launcher, um is uh is also doing, I guess, okay. Uh but but really, it's very difficult. If you don't have exclusives, then it's difficult. And what's happened in recent years is there was an attempt to keep um a lot of these PC games exclusive to launchers and it didn't really work because people just prefer to use Steam
and so everyone has drifted back towards Steam again in terms of big game releases. You know, Ubisoft was off off Steam for a while and on Epic Games Store for its big game releases and Epic Games Store is a bit more I guess permissive about launches uh or people are more people are more used to that. Um but yeah, I mean I mean la people are still trying to launch um launch launchers like uh certainly I think we did something on it but Alcat recently you know the RPG folks tried to do a launcher in the last couple of months and had to uh get rid of it within about 24 hours cuz people were so upset. But I think some of these publishers who don't have killer stuff that's off platforms

discover that people come back towards Steam and then people see players see the Ubisoft launcher is very intrusive and potentially unhelpful and and complain about it a lot. So I think Ubisoft is finally agreeing that uh you know unfortunately they haven't got a massive market share with this launcher. So they're going to step it back a little bit but it's not it's not they're not immediately doing it. This is like a test on Prince of Persia, Lost Crown, and so uh I think they will gradually potentially roll this out across multiple of their of their Steam games. Yeah,
my my first gut reaction was like, why not just remove the launcher? That seems like the ideal thing. But then the more I thought about it, the question changed to were these basic features just not included in games over the last I don't know decade of Ubisoft because it was understood that they were going to be in the Ubisoft launcher things like crossave and crossplay. So, is is that

the issue here that basically some core features effectively were not baked into the games and they would they might have been with a game that didn't have a launcher. So, now they they need those features, but they don't want the launcher anymore.
Yeah. I mean, I think the real problem with this is if you're talking about games that came out 2, three, four, even longer years ago, then who's got access to the source code to even do patches in some cases? Those teams may have been re well have been reassigned. And I actually think putting stuff back together can be really tricky. So I I think what you really see with stuff like this is people, you know, it's much easier to anonymize the system underneath the launcher and sort of background it than it is to go back to each individual game and work out how to hack out some of the stuff because presumably if the Ubisoft launcher is down, some of these games won't load properly and then you're going to run into all kinds of issues. So I think yeah, they're just they're just making it invisible for a subset of their games. may maybe eventually all of their games. But obviously um one undercurrent

of this by the way is that Steam does some cross promotion but big publishers really like doing cross promotion and Steam is Steam does not like really big publisher cross promotion. You know I've been talking about recently they they're limiting publisher sales with banners to one per year. So I think there's some pressure here. If you are a publisher and you have a catalog what use are you to people? One of the big uses is meant to be is meant to be cross promotion and Steam, you know, has fairly not very stringent but fairly stringent rules against again against against cross promotion. So I think I think that's that I think that I think that's part of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned the other uh ones that are are working maybe a little bit better. We spoke about Battlelet last week, right? And I'm curious, what's the difference? Like, is it is it that Battleet has firstparty exclusives that people actually want to play on the platform?

Because I can't figure out why all of them seem to be dying except for maybe Battleet.
Yeah, it's a lot about um I mean, if you think about Steam originally, Steam was built to play uh you know, Counterstrike and Team Fortress and things and there were a big user base on that. So, I think if you're building out of a big of something that already has a big user base, it's it's a little bit easier. That's why I mean I think the Rockstar launcher is a little weird, but the Rockstar launcher kind of works because uh you know there's there's obviously a game that everyone turns up to show. Whereas I think the Ubisoft launcher I I'm not sure there was one anchor game. A lot of their games are popular, but I'm not sure there's one anchor game there. And I think they introduced it a little bit later. And I think it al also to your point there are a lot of exclusives on battleet that you just can't play anywhere else. Uh so obviously like like your World of Warcrafts are not on Steam um and even even halfstone. So um you know so yeah I think it is about exclusives but the issue is unless you've got some killer

exclusives and people who are really used to this then you're not going to get a ton of people migrating or being happy about your launcher because they have enough to worry about without dealing with launchers. And also sometimes, you know, launchers come with uh baggage. People are kind of like, wait, has this got anti-che in it? Is my game crashing because of the launcher? Like a lot of times when games crash, people are like, it's the launcher. I don't think it always is, but like it's it's it's another thing that people worry about. So, I I think that's really really the issue with launchers.
Yeah. The the the strange thing about Ubisoft in particular is they also have the Assassin's Creed series which feels like it is trying to create its own sort of launcher in which you can hop into any game you want at any time through kind of a shared universe vision. Um, so these I don't know these things within the things. I was just playing Metal Gear Solid on Steam and the new collection. It also has this kind of overlay that you can launch instead of

the games to hop into everything. And I don't know, it's it's a feels a little bit like Inception sometimes of I would just like to play my video game.
Yeah. I mean I mean the obvious example of that just to end is um is you know at this point Call of Duty sort of has the Call of Duty app and we and I think other people have trouble tracking individual Call of Duty games nowadays because a lot of the stats end up in the main Call of Duty app and obviously the platforms have agreed or have been forced to agree that it's okay to have a Call of Duty mega app. Um you know even Steam has a lot of exceptions in place in place for Call of Duty. So I think if you're big enough you can get away with things sometimes. Yeah, well I mentioned Metal Gear and that is relevant for the next story because Hideo Kojima's new game or upcoming game Fizzant and it was dropped by Sony sometime this summer around June and it was picked up by Xbox and it will now be right alongside OD uh

which is not Garfield's arch rival. It is a horror game from what I can tell and Fizzant is kind of it looks like it may be a sort of spiritual successor to Metal Gear. They're promising some sort of like stealth action adventure game. This is strange news. Uh I think Kojima's games are broadly associated with Sony even though they're available on other platforms dating back to uh Metal Gear Solid specifically. And Sony's reputation, I think, has really really been cemented around prestige cinematic video games. I think that's the last 15 years of Sony where where they've kind of, you know, put all of their cards and now this is happening. So, I'm trying to understand, we'll get to the Xbox devel. Yeah, I was also very confused when when

this came out and I think the more I thought about it, the more I realized why this makes sense and I suspect it's probably a probably a good move for Sony and and and there sort of two reasons here. One is uh and Jason Shri's articles for Bloomberg were a little bit helpful for me in reinforcing some of the things that I I I figured was probably going on. I mean, the one thing is, you know, Death Stranding one and two have been expensive games. Someone was banding around $200 million. I don't know whether it was really $200 million for one or either of those games, but they were not cheap. And Sony is obviously willing to fund that because a bunch of their first party games are that it cost that much. And so at that point, you know that your bar goes up a lot. You have to be selling, you know, six six seven million copies of a game to do well. And um I mean, I think Death Stranding has done one did well. Death Stranding 2 is doing fine, but I think if the bean counters at Sony and increasingly there are bean counters at Sony cuz because everyone has to be very

careful about about their numbers nowadays and PlayStation has become incredibly important to Sony. I think if they're looking at another Kajjima game, especially if it's sort of a bit it's not like at least with Death Stranding 2, I think you understood what you were getting. Um but um you know I think I think these two new games are pretty out there and so I think uh from what I understand they may not necessarily be on time. There have been some money spent already on them and they're also looking at the fact that you know that that they would probably not be publishing on PC because they're starting to move all of their uh for all of their single player games to PlayStation hardware only because they want people to buy PlayStation hardware. So that's also taking away a revenue stream. So I think I think the combination of those things is sort of um making them think again. And this is just one obviously of a number of quite a large number of third party things or second party things. I would call this maybe a second party game that they've decided to um to uh deinvest from

because uh they did get in a little over their skis on on on a lot of this life service stuff and we're definitely I think overspending. What do you think their focus is moving forward? Because I said the image of Sony was prestige single player kind of action adventure games, right? And yet we know that they've been investing extremely heavily in live service games with some some pretty well-known failures and then some other games that are struggling. I think there's a lot of questions now around Marathon, a game I love, but I it seems to be troubled in some ways. And at the same time, we hear that this is canled. We I think Neil Duckman said this week that uh the the new game, the sci-fi game following up The Last of Us is the biggest and perhaps most expensive game that they've ever made. um which are not words I imagine the Bing counters suddenly love

to hear for a game that we still have no idea when slash if it will ever come out. And then we have Wolverine um which is maybe the first of these kind of games to get somewhat shredded by by reviews and we'll see how it does in sales. And on top of all of that, these single player games other than Spider-Man 2, they're not hitting quite as well as they used to. So, what avenue are they going to start heading down?
Yeah, I mean, I think they want more Spider-Man's and more Uncharted. I think that's really what what they want. And they obviously also, and let's not forget, um, consoles are getting a big lift from games like Grand Theft Auto 6, which will come to PC, but I'm sure plays really nicely on on PlayStation 5. So, I think um you know that I think those type of games are good because I think what they're realizing is a live service is really difficult to launch and if you do launch a live service game um you kind of do need to have it on a bunch of platforms I think and so may maybe it's better if you just keep the

third parties working on the live service games you know and then uh and then and then you're just making sure that the stuff you know you need some appointment viewing for PlayStation 5 because otherwise people will just wander off to PC and I completely agree with that
and so I I think uh yeah. So, and and let's be honest, the Hideokima game could be one of those, but I don't think they have the trust in him that that that's going to happen. I mean, I think he's also getting, let's I think he's over 60 now, right? He's getting a little a little later in in his career. And um I think it's fair to say he is in some cases thinking a little bit more left field. I don't think either Death Stranding one or two were particularly conventional games. And so, um you know, that that may be a discussion. The other of course fascinating thing here that I haven't seen a bunch of discussion of is he was really saved by Sony after he left Konami because they provided him the decimate engine right which is the engine made by by Guerilla and um certainly Death Stranding one and two would not look nearly as good as as they

do or play as well without decim if he's going over to Xbox then they're not going to let him keep decim are they? So that seems like that's going to be a a reboot into a new engine which is going to take take a pretty long time. So really interesting.
I mean on on that note when Kojima left Konami I I would say it was a relatively quiet departure. We didn't hear too much from it even from the Jason Shriers of the world in terms of what was happening behind the scenes. This is a very public split. This is Kushima going on social media uh late at night hour time and you know saying what is happening that Sony came to him and they weren't going to make it and I had to go looking for things and thank goodness for Xbox and then taking photos with Matt Booty and Asharma uh you know in in Xbox gear. What changed? How how do we go from this relationship which I would assume was much more personal. I mean literally working in the offices of Kjima or of

Konami to this split which seems I don't know it seems almost personal.
Yeah. I mean I think the Konami split is probably one of the uh most kind of uh vis like craziest splits in I think the history of video games given given what he did with Mil Solid. But Konami as is a very secretive company. So that's why they've managed to I mean I I I don't know if I've mentioned this before on the podcast but I've mentioned it to people famously um Konami email addresses are not your name. They are a random set of numbers and letters because they don't want you being poached. They don't want people to work out where you are. And I heard at one point I don't think this is true anymore. They used to rotate them as well. So you'd have to email all your contacts every six months and say here's my new randomly created email address. Thanks.
Oh my gosh.
But but but yeah I I'm not not sure the second bit is true. I know the first bit's true because I've emailed emailed people with Kam Can Konami. Um but anyhow, my point is I think there was a lot of drama among um like like on on on

the Canon split. It was just extremely under the surface. But you're right, this one is reasonably high drama. I think one of the reasons is I think you know folks kind of took folks at Sony sort of took him under under their wing and I think he it might be a little bit kind of um you know you know painful for him and I know folks you know I know folks like Mark Cerny were quite involved and Mark Cernney is still still prominent at a PlayStation but you know Mark um Mark is more on the hardware side historically and so um it may be with a you know a bunch of these management changes I think other people might have left who uh who maybe maybe Kajjima was a little bit close to but ultimately I think we Although it's fun to sort of make this all about the characters and it's a little bit about the characters. I think it's mainly about the cost. And I think if Death Stranding 2 was 150 million, $200 million game, it's probably not going to make its money back. And at that point, if you have another thing that's going late, uh, which it probably is and is looking pretty weird, then I think if I was Sony, I might be late. Yeah. I'm sure they didn't expect Xbox to very prominently pick it up immediately,

though, which is a little awkward.
Yeah. Well, last question on this subject. Let's get into the Xbox. What does Xbox get out of taking on a higher risk project after closing so many studios and slimming down teams? And this is this is not, you know, diversifying your investments. They already have OD and now they say they're also going to be helping with like, I guess, film and TV adaptations, which would have made a lot of sense for Sony. I I'm not sure how much sense that makes for Microsoft who has struggled with this infamously for decades. Um what what do they get out it other than you know the social media bump?
Yeah, I think it's I think it's about they understand it's about uh whatever it is Q rating or likability and I think I think in in their view if Xbox needs to go places people have to get back to
liking Xbox again. And
I don't know how much this is true. Um, you know, like, uh, but I think if if

you do live in a world where people are yelling about Xbox Daily, it's nice to do something where people aren't yelling. This is a very clear people will not yell at you for doing this thing. And so, um, you know, so I I guess, um, yeah, for me that's part of But also, there are people who've grown up with um with with PlayStation and Kajjima games who might be like, "Oh, I might check out an Xbox if if it's if his next couple are coming out." So, I think if you talk about the amount of money this needs uh and the amount of possible benefit, I think from the cost benefit ratio, it's probably it's probably a reasonable bet for Xbox actually. But I agree, if you're one of the existing Xbox studios that has been gutted or spun off, you might be like, "What the heck?" like we we are working super hard here and we got kicked to the curb and then you're sort of immediately going and taking pictures with Kajjima. But you know that business business is business I guess you would say.
Yeah. Yeah. I will say purely on the the gamer side of it as grim as that is to

say. It's one of those things where I am glad that a new Kojima game is getting made. Like that's kind of where I think a lot of like fans have landed, which is there's a lot going on here. It feels like the parents are fighting, but at the end of the day, one of the industry's most talented weirdos is getting to make yet another game at cost. And that's a net win in terms of people enjoying this field as an art form. So, I'm trying to I'm trying to put my mind there. I'm praying that with all this drama, the the the reward that I would like to get is the most batshit game imaginable. That that's when I will know if if it comes out and you know, you have to like adjust the antennas on your TV. First, you have to install antennas on your TV, then I'll have known
this was all worth it. Um, let's let's keep it moving. We have an update from a story that we had last week um

specifically about the front page uh curation and how it was becoming a little bit more algorithmic around uh discounts and events and and daily deals. Can you remind folks a little bit about how that worked? Yeah, I mean this is really just something the last one we did was quite specific I guess to data nerds which was some things that are labeled midweek deals were actually being grabbed algorithmically. It turns out I think this was part of a bigger change that people hadn't spotted at the time which I think is great which is basically like the whole deal section which is pretty close like if you go to the front page of Steam the sort of those big sort of banner uh like like really big icon deals and then directly above it is some mediumsiz icon and it says it says deals, right? It's uh um it's like discounts and events I guess is what it says. But um it does look like at this point that those used to be a little bit generic. Like if you weren't if you w didn't opt in yourself for a daily deal, they used to be just kind of like here's some big games that

you might like. We're not really sure. But myself and a couple of other people have noticed starting in the past few weeks. You're starting to get games that uh you know only have two or 30 hund reviews in a few cases. So they are going way deeper into catalog and they are recommending way more specific stuff than they used to kind of silently we're pretty sure. And this is great because it means that just any game that came out a couple of years ago that maybe sold 25,000 copies is now some sometimes for certain people getting recommended on the front page every day. And actually, if you had a game previously that sold 30,000 copies and came out two years ago, your chances of getting on the front page for anybody were limited to, I think, a daily deal once a year, even if they'd let you do that. So, I think, you know, it's for a much smaller subset of people, but I think it's another example of a Valve being good with curation and really getting a mix of titles in there more prominently.
Yeah, I am feeling much better about all this stuff after seeing the bigger

picture of what's going on. And and I will say Steam continues to be on an almost daily basis the best at showing me something that I had not seen that I actually find really interesting. And I don't always buy it. I do wishlist it. My wish list is now way too big. And what I'm impressed by is how well whatever algorithm or system they have in place is curating things from really the last like five years. Um, it feels like something might look new to me and then I find out it's from 2023. Yeah.
Um, and then there's also stuff that came out 2 days ago that somehow I missed even though I felt like I looked at everything that came out every day. Um, it's encouraging and it leads to the the final big story of the week which is uh a former epic wonder Cliff Blazinski blogged and let me tell you it's always good. one of one of our great uh uh bloggers slash uh video game directors

slash musical theater investors um uh coming off the heels of Hades Town's ongoing success. And what did he blog about? He blogged about Crash 2.0. Are we in another video game crash? Is this as bad as it's ever been for the video games industry? and his answer is is basically no but with a huge asterisk there. So what what were some of your big takeaways from this piece?
Yeah, and it's interesting and this was based on the I think the latest issue of Edge magazine which is mainly uh you know physical only is it has this kind of crash 2.0 on the cover. So I think it's actually interesting that in 2026 a magazine has managed to get this uh this going. I think actually Edge is just uh booting up a bit more of a website around its knowledge and its knowledge newsletter but yeah this story isn't quite online but I think Polygon maybe did some extracts from it and so people

are picking up on that and anyway so so I think yeah the discussion of is this definitely a crash and actually the newsletter that I have coming out today which this podcast will come out alongside it sort of talks about this a bit abstractly because I when I was talking to Ramy Ishmael uh he was asking me you know sort of is you know, should indies keep going is sort of is sort of the theme, you know, and yeah, so so basically I guess what what Tiffy B is saying is, you know, let let AAA face plant for a while, which is, you know, kind of aggressive of him because, uh, he keeps finding really good stuff in in in DA or in whatever you want to call slop that is fun and at a reasonable price and you can, you know, sample a bunch of quirky, innovative titles with friends is how he phrases it. So for him and he's not really been involved in the game industry for a number of years but very directly so he's quite divorced for it and it's just sort of speaking I think as a player for him he's kind of enjoying it which is interesting right

yeah yeah I mean I don't necessarily disagree with most of his points I do think it is funny to have somebody who's still cashing their literal V-Bucks um from Fortnite to say let let the industry uh belly flop but but the point stand. I mean, I I pulled out a few. Um, basically, this idea of people are tired. People don't want to be fleeced by microtransactions, but on the other end, they don't want to spend $70 on AAA games. And they don't want to worry about future updates and these like perpetual promises of more to come of, yeah, play it now, but it's like it's not actually the game that you're going to play. There's there's going to be more and more and it's going to get updates. And where that leaves us with is doublea games that they're going to launch. They're going to be finished. They're the thing that you're buying. Maybe you buy it for 40 bucks or like as he calls it slop, but specifically the friend slop games or these kind of $10 games. I would put like any standalone indie game in that space, right? And

that makes sense. Like that actually is a really good explanation of why we are seeing those things. Boom. and I think would be a good takeaway for the people who are betting on all of these big games right now because ultimately AAA and freeto play they're still the investment is still basically the same. You're still putting like gobs and gobs and gobs of money into the product.
Yeah. I mean I mean the only thing I'd say is people seem to want to think that this is a temporary thing and I I would want to push back. He's like leta face plant for a while. I say
I mean that that's the only thing here. I'm not I don't think I think what AAA is doing is going to do forever at this point. I I don't think I think a lot of people are kind of like survive till the new trencher investment arrives in next day. And and and I'm like and something I talk about in newslet it's that's not how it's going to work. I think people are going to find unconventional ways to make games it

less expensively. It's also very difficult to tell by the way how much games really cost because on Friday I was talking about Warogs which has obviously just come out and has done tremendously well and I was kind of like oh it's great to see like a AAA game doing sorry a double A game doing well because I thought since it's published by Team 17 and it might have a smaller team I thought it might have cost less but I subsequently come to find out that you know I knew it was 10-centent backed but I think it's using an engine from like another company that had a lot of a lot of money into it and it certainly was you know they're an independent entity now but there's a lot of this what weird leftover money. I know I know of like some some stuff that's come out on indie labels that had like millions of dollars into it that has since gone away. I think actually Enshrouded isn't a good example. Enshrouded which ended up doing very well two or three years ago. My understanding was that had uh like like that had a ton of money put into it and then was handed back to the uh to the debt. So, so I think my point is we're sort of on the on the tail end of this stuff. And I don't think there's

going to be more money coming in here most of the time. And so I think if you're saying let ala face plant, I think what you're talking about is the AAA industry with an exception of very large games as a service titles and people who are willing to make giant bets because they have another massively profitable game. Um, you know, that's that's going to be less and less for the next 5 to 10 years. And so you you you may find at some point that the only big expansive more you know more than $20 million uh AAA single player games are being made by PlayStation like that may be in five years time literally what is happening. So I think I think we have to um we have to be careful when we sort of say for a while.
Yeah it's there are a few things going on here for me with what with what you said. I agree first and foremost which is the perpetual raising of prices. It clearly was unsustainable years ago and yet we've kept making them bigger and

bigger and bigger in any way. I I'm hopeful that when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out, most people are going to look at that and say, "I'm out." You know, like I'm too too rich. I I we can't do that. Clearly that's that is like the apex and we need to figure something out. I'm hopeful that that's true. Um that said, I wonder how much of this is I don't know finally being a mature industry and hitting the equilibrium of how much a game costs to make. And by that I mean word is that uh the blood of Dawn Walker, I think I got the title right, had about the same team size as The Witcher 3 and was made in a shorter amount of time though. But like the Witcher 3 when it came out, that was an expensive game. Blood of Dawn Walker now is seen as like double A. And maybe that is just like the price to make a game. If you look at the film industry, there are understood prices that that you're

going to go out and make these things. And maybe the issue here is not that AAA um is going to die, but that I don't know. We're almost reverting back to the AAA of 5 years ago and saying like this is about a stable range. Let's stick to it indefinitely.
Yeah. It's also how much it cost what country. I mean, obviously, you know, Don Walker is Poland and um and I'm guessing uh you know, the average salary versus Naughty Dog is going to be like 30%. Like like so so so immediately you're getting let's say Dor Mo was a $40 million game. Uh you know, for Naughty Dog that would be that would have been a $130 million game. So So I think I think this is where you're really getting the regional differences playing out. I even I I I noticed this a lot and obviously historically a lot of AAA has sort of ended up pacing against tech salaries and for whatever reason tech industry salaries have managed to continues to go north. We'll see if that

keeps happening. Uh and I think the tech industry actually has a little bit of this problem over time as well which is certainly if you look at the rise of AI uh AI companies are much uh less uh peopleheavy than your oracles and your sales forces. So I think I think you are running into this issue where um if indeed you can do any of this information work from anywhere in the world. Uh then um you know and maybe some people have special skills but I'm I'm no longer convinced that a certain region of the world in video games has any special skills at which point um you know stuff is stuff is going to trend towards smaller and in lower lower GDP areas whe you know whether whether you like it or not. So I think that's I think that's a big thing that's happening. I also do think that people, my impression is the average person, especially the people coming up, are just buying less $70 games every year. I think what happened is we got very into like when you were building up your backlog, you're much more willing to do it. But over time, the game needs to be really special now for you to shell out

like your $60 or $70. And I think I I think that is starting to have an effect. I think that's why we're seeing a lot more of these $10 $15 games doing well because you're willing to, you know, you're willing to play that for like a $15 game for two or three weeks and you're like, "Oh, that's fine." [snorts]
Yeah. $70 didn't normalize. I think that's the the strange thing here is price hikes happen. Inflation happens. Eventually, your brain just gets used to it, I think, often. And what is strange to me about the $70 video game is we've now had it for a while. And yet every time I see it, I'm like, woof,
that is that is I that is an extra cost. That is $10 more than what it should cost. And whether that's fair for the industry or any of these things, I get it. that having that happen alongside all the economic issues that people are facing right now couldn't have been worse timing because it really does feel like a premium tax and one that makes even me somebody who didn't always wait

for the sales think wow I should I really should just wait for the sale because that's I I'm I'm burning for some reason in my head I'm burning that extra 10 bucks. That's actually interesting. And I think you are uh in the ordinary for people who sort of like let's say you bought an Assassin's Creed game 10 years ago
for 60 bucks. I I think that's what those people think. But I also think that people who are coming up are just looking at how much fun they get out and how many hours they get some of these games. Like I just did a feature on the game uh on on the game on the game yet another zombie survivors, right? Which which and I was looking they sent me the stats on that game. is a10 to $15 game depending on whether it's on sale or not and it has 12 hours median play time. Uh you know so at that point you're sort of working it out and you're like whoa I mean I got I mean I know most people don't do that math but it is a buck an hour. Um, and I do not think that most people are. So, at this point, you are a little bit like, "Oh, I I need to think

I'm going to get 40 or 50 hours out of this game if if you try and do this math uh in in order to make it worthwhile." And if you and it does happen if it's like a I know Uncharted is occasionally run to this, but if you're like, "Oh, it's an 8 hour game and I have to pay 70 bucks." People are starting to be like,
you know, like I'm I'm not so sure. So, yeah, I don't No, I mean it is a problem that some of these uh you know more repeatable low lower asset creation uh titles, some of the rogike stuff is coming in and providing a lot of fun and sort of replayability at lower levels. And I think that further puts pressure on the sort of epic $60 and $70 game.
There there's a thing that happens as a result with these games too of wanting to create that sense of value is the games just inflate. And we have games like Oni, Musha, and Wolverine that are longer than they necessarily need to be. And you see that show up in the reviews because you need to communicate that this thing has value. There is one last detail I want to hit on, and we can we can zip to the to wrap things up. But

the the the blog also mentions this idea that fancy visuals are concealing kind of tired and weak mechanics. And I think that shouldn't get lost. I would just say as you think about what is going on for people who are listening with AAA games that even the most typical gamer is starting to get a sense for, oh, I've done this before and I've been doing this for like 20 or 30 years. And I think a lot of what we were seeing in the Wolverine kind of backlash or negative reviews is that of this feels like a game from 20 years ago that is concealed by all of the kind of top level visual trappings. And I think that'll be a conversation that I'll put a pin in because I want to keep things moving and and maybe we'll talk about later. But before we wrap up, I want to get to the main stuff, the exciting stuff for me, because I always want to know how things are doing and what I can look forward to. Last week and this week on Steam releases, how did things look

last week on Steam?
Yeah. So, I mentioned it a little earlier in this podcast, but Warogs has certainly been a big release and I think much bigger than perhaps anyone expected. And it got up to I mean, I think it might be up to 400,000 cc. Now, when I when I wrote the newsletter on on on Friday, it was 337,000.
Uh, but yeah, I mean, it's just a nicely done,
very nicely done Battlefield uh armor kind of like uh 100 person shootery kind of thing. And these don't come along very often at this kind of scale. And it is a more expensive game. It looks good. I mean, it's definitely not a $10 million game, especially now. I know it's a 100 person studio. I think I was thinking it was more like 50 60 person studio, but I think it was 100. So um yeah, so so the point is however that was funded and and and however that came through uh you know the team behind it seemed to be really into that genre in a way that I think some other people haven't been. I think they did understand uh what you know I think they had a previous game that did okay. I think was it Battalion 1944 or something

and so I think they had some history in that genre and probably players and so yeah it's just done it's just done extremely well. They had some uh some some queuing and otherwise tech issues on launch day, but people have forgiven them by now, I think.
Um
I mean 35,410 reviews very positive now, which they brought up. I think it was mostly positive and they they have now carried that's staggering.
Yeah, it's it's it's super impressive. There's obviously a set of people like it's you know it's like your Battlefield fans. Plus, I do think a lot of people who play Friendlop are willing to play this kind of shooter if they feel like it's good enough. And so, um, yeah. So, I think it's perfect. And so, yeah, it's it's it's done very well and that's sort of in some ways a surprise story. In some ways, not because we were talking about it, I think a few times leading up to launch. It had very good trending wish lists. It had some really big play tests. So, I don't think it was a complete surprise in the last 6 months, but maybe a year ago, you might have been surprised about that. So, yeah. So, that was the big guy. And then the other

two I want to talk about from last week was H Halloween the game came out which I think I we talked about briefly last week and has done done pretty well. You know, it's sort of a spiritual successor to the Friday the 13th game. Um and some other ones. Uh I think it's done much better than than the Killer Clowns game which I believe the same people were involved in. So it's a it's about 30 33,000 CC year. It hasn't got the best um the best reviews actually. I think I think I think some hardcore fans weren't completely into it, but it does seem like the kind of thing they can they can build off. It's very much in the in the Dead by Daylight space, but Dead by Daylight has tended to dominate recently, especially because they've done a great job, I think, of finding um you know, guest guest horrible people you have to kill. And and so I think that they've really turned that into an excellent game to the service. So
yeah. Um, and then and and and and then one more game that I wanted to mention because we did cover in the newsletter, a game called called a game called Wonderberg, which is a game where you're like a little turret on wheels and you and it's sort of a rog light and you and

you go around and like accumulate other parts and and again like we thought that was going to do good and it's a it it's done decently on reviews, but it but it got to 10,000 CCU so that's going to be pretty pleasant. You know, if if a game doesn't have pre-orders, I think my rule of thumb is maybe it's going to, you know, its max times 20 might be its week one sales. So, that game is going to have sold, I think, a couple hundred thousand just on week one. So, that's great.
Um, yeah,
I am very cur Yeah, I was going to say what what do we have for this week?
So, I guess what we have it's a weird section of games actually because I think a couple of them are free to play. There's this game, Ano, which is a free-to-play creature uh collector, and also active ma active matter, which is like a multiverse horror shooter, which I think is free to play as well, although I haven't researched it in a lot of detail. Um, so those are the two big guys, interestingly. And then after that, uh there's just like some weird weirder stuff like Dimra Wraith, uh the

uh the Guild one remake if you if you like your kind of uh Eurogen or whatever that game is. So yeah.
Yeah, it is a very weird week. I know that we usually do the comparison of what do I have on my Steam calendar and if you told me this was in the middle of April and there was nothing coming out, that's what it would look like. It is a game called Rig Riot. There's a game coming out called Draco and the Seven Scales that looks like Legend of the River King meets I don't Pokémon. A lot of weird stuff. There's a game coming out called Blackwood that is Simon. By day you run a DVD store in 2012 New York. By night you're a ruthless assassin. This game looks kind of expensive.
Never heard of it that things are just coming out.
It does seem like it's the following weeks where the AAA stuff just kicks right back into gear. We have a week of

Control Resonant and Silent Hill. The week after that is Ace Combat. The week after that is Star Wars Galactic Racer and Gears of War. and Hellraiser. We're just we we start moving pretty fast uh after this week. Uh but before we can get to those weeks, we have to wrap up this show. Normally, I would have my question here, but it's been a longer episode, so I'm going to keep it very simple. Before we go, Simon, what are you playing right now? What What are you making time to enjoy? Here here's my problem, and I think I've I think I've said this before on the uh on the podcast, like most of what most of what I play is the interface to Game Discover Code Plus and [laughter] Pro. Um because I'm Yeah. Yeah. Which is is there's there's a lot of there's upgrades like I have to write the upgrades myself and put them in our change log. Uh there's all kinds of powerups you have. So yeah, so so so ultimately I've inadvertently gified my job. I I I do play stuff. Uh but honestly uh like Balis Row is the

only thing I've played in the last two or three weeks and I got back into it a little bit because sometimes I play it um on Xbox on the TV and I discovered that I'd forgotten it has a challenge mode which I'd never really tried where you get given like like silly things like there's one where you you know you you get a lot of limited or unlimited stuff and you still have to complete it. So I I started playing through some of the uh basic challenges but I'm not like I am not a good battle ro player. I'm like 35 hours into it and I think I've I haven't I haven't even unlocked all the decks yet and on on basic. So I so I'm I am not Yeah, but but the point is and one of the things I like about Valro is it's fun no matter what your skill level and so I'm relentlessly mediocre at that game, but I do like I do like coming back and trying out some new stuff. Yeah,
I love it. Um, I've been so deep in Star Wars Zero Company and I am mentioning that only to put a lantern on it so we talk about it more when Galactic Racer comes out because I think what is going on with Star Wars and Disney's video

game production in general is really fascinating and that is a little tease of things to come. But for now, we're going to wrap things up. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, like and subscribe. whether that is on YouTube if you see us right now or on your podcast platform of choice or you're just watching it inside of the newsletter. And speaking of the newsletter, Simon, what can people enjoy beyond this show with Game Discover Co.?
Yeah, I mean I mean I'm I I'm still putting out the newsletter and there's going to be some cool stuff in that. I think later this week we we have some interesting new data coming out. Uh and then and then besides that I think you know we do have uh and actually we're going to be launching bit of exclusive for newsletter in like maybe two weeks time we're going to be launching a bit of a redesign for our plus and pro data set. So we'll have a much nicer UX and UI. We're actually combining uh if you're a pro user we're combining our PC and console uh sites because we have them on separate subdomains right now which is a little awkward. So so we're

putting putting everything together in in into one. So uh yeah, so that's what we're working on uh for our sort of pro- enterprise users and then uh and then and then that change will also be visible for our plus users and those are the folks who pay us, you know, 20 bucks a month to get access to the extra stuff on our Discord and all that kind of good stuff. So yeah, so so that's what that's what we're working on and that's what you can expect. [snorts]
I love it. Well, thank you all so much for listening. I am Chris Plant and Simon, you want to take us out?
Yeah, I'm Simon Carlos. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next