Challenging GPU Market Dynamics: Nvidia, AMD, and Third-Party Developer Issues

Welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and I'm your host, Brett er. You please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps. You got five star review. Really just help with the rankings and let me know how I am doing. But this week we're gonna be talking about Elder Scrolls, four Oblivion remake, unfortunately Spectra Divide Dev shutting down. We're gonna be talking about Control two development. Also Marvel rivals, balance Patch highlights a little bit about that. War Hammer 40,000 space Marine three in development. Interesting. And Kingdom come Deliverance to 1.2 update highlights. And the Xbox AI thing, that's gonna be interesting as well. And. We'll be talking about the Nvidia and a MD and the third party developers first of all, weird stats and weird pricing and how that's all going about. So let's get on with the show. That's good. Alright, so first off is Elder Scrolls. Four Oblivion remake. So yes, it is supposedly in, it's gonna be coming out soon. It is basically going to be potentially releasing this month or next month. But the announcement should be available soon-ish. We're not really sure about that release to just, like I said, either this month or next month, possibly more next month. So announcement should be either this month or next month. Not really sure about that one. And development is Vir virtuous studio assisting kmi with metal gear. Solid Delta Snake Eater remake is reportedly involved developing the Oblivion remake. The biggest thing is that it's going to be rebuilt in the unreal Engine five. It's not gonna be in their creation engine that they're specifically using for a lot of their games, especially this one. It's gonna be in Unreal Engine. Also, there's gonna be gameplay overhauls. Key gameplay systems have been substantially revamped. Blocking mechanics are inspired by souls like games. The stamina system has been made more forgiving during combat and improvements to sneaking and archery systems have also been reported. Original Game Legacy Oblivion in initially launched in 2006 for PC and Xbox 360 was a major hit. Broadening the Elder Scrolls, audience of paving the way for the massive success of Fallout three N. Elder Scrolls, five Skyrim. It also had a massive controversy with the horse armor, DLC, where everybody was like, what is this and why does this cost so much? It was. Weird way, but they fixed it and said, oops, our bad. We won't do it again. And they didn't really do it again. But yeah, it was a fun game. It was. It was interesting. It had the Patrick Stewart in it as well as, I think Sean Bean was also in the voice of it. So it was an interesting game. I actually liked it quite a bit. It had like portals and stuff. It was an interesting difference between. That and Mor win because Mor win was before that one, and I'm actually excited to see what they do with it and how much it's gonna cost as well. Because this is a remake, so it's gonna be a more expensive thing than just a remaster. A remaster will cost less. A remake always costs more because they're remaking all the assets in it. But if this is the closest we're gonna get to elder scroll six, then why not actually get this one too? All right. Moving on to Specter Divide. So Mountaintop Studios, the developer of this one is shutting down six months after the debut of its free to play Tactical shooter Specter divide due to in insufficient revenue and active players to sustain operations. The season one launched attracted 400,000 players with a peak concurrent. A player count of 10,000 across all platforms, which is not a lot if they're on pc, Xbox and PlayStation. That's not actually, 10,000 is not a lot. Interest in revenue diminished over time, resulting in the inability to cover operational costs, funding and financial struggles. The studio secured over three 35 million across two investment rounds, but eventually ran out of funding efforts to find a publisher. Secure additional investments or explore acquisition opportunities Failed. SPECT divide will go offline within 30 days. New purchases are being disabled and refunds for money spent post. Season one launch will be provided. The exact number of current employees is unclear, but in September 20, 24 13, employees were laid off to extend the studio's substan substantial efforts. The CEO Nate Mitchell described the team's effort as a resilient but acknowledged failure to meet market demands. Despite the setback, he expressed pride in the team's decision. Dedication and journey since the project began in 2020. This reflects broader challenges in the gaming industry where competition involving player expectations make sustainability difficult. For some studios, mountaintop studios marks another example of volatile nature of independent game development. Despite significant financial backing. So yeah, I played it, it was a shroud backed game I guess I played it. It was interesting, but I just don't think it had enough to differentiate itself and with a very crowded market with Frag put coming out with Marvel Rifles, with Overwatch two Apex. But Pudge is actually doing really well. Also, I'm a re forger, like blowing up and then you just got a lot of games. And it just never found its niche. 'cause it was like a blend between Counterstrike two in a lot of ways, but with two different bodies, I guess the best way of saying it. So it had an interesting thing, but I just don't think it was interesting enough to do anything about it. So that's the main reason why it failed. But it was interesting. The gameplay was smooth. There was nothing wrong with it. It just. Didn't have enough to actually sus sustain it. So that was the major issue that everybody had. Control two is actually in development. So Remedy confirmed that Control Two has officially entered full production. Currently Remedy has three games. In this phase, it's gonna be Control two FPC Firebreak, a co-op game in the Control universe, formally Project Condor Max Pain one and two, remake. Enter full production in August of 2024, powered by North Light. Engine Control two will use Remedies proprietary North Light Engine, promising advancements in action, gameplay, and storytelling. The game is being developed for PlayStation PS five, Xbox Series X and S, and if you actually played Allen Wake to the Lakehouse DLC, you basically saw elements of control two in there, and that's how they announced it in a way. But no one, not very many people play Allen Wake two, even though everybody loved the first one. The second one kind of well had sweet baby ink fingerprints all over it, and people do not like that. I guess consulting firm. I don't even like the consulting firm anyways, but most of the games they touch have failed miserably. The other issue with Remedy is that they are really locked in Step within Epic, and so they chose to basically make exclusive or timed exclusive for a year or so. So that does hurt sales quite a bit because everybody's I don't wanna play on Epic Game Store. I'll go play it. On Steam 'cause I like steam. 'cause steam is really good 'cause Steam cares about it. But it should be interesting to see what is gonna happen within in control two. Are they gonna go back to. Not having Sweet Baby Inc. Within their development cycle, and it's not going to be quote unquote, so woke because that is a main component of what a lot of players do not like in games, and developers need to understand that this does not help. So it should be noted that. Just make a really great game. Have good gameplay, have a good story. Make sure not like Allen Wake two, which apparently the main character really wasn't the main character in the game. It was some black woman. Make sure the main character is the main character in the game. I. That's what we want to play. We play these games specifically for that character. If you make Max Payne one and two remake and Max Payne is not the main character in the game, then people are like, why am I playing this? This is a different game. That was the issue with Alan Wake two and they even confirmed that they haven't made up like most of their costs from the game, even though it's been out. And it's sad because I like Remedies games. They're actually pretty fun and interesting. But man, just stick to what makes games great and you will succeed. If you don't, you will have problems. Moving on to Marvel rival's balanced patch highlights. So the patch went live on March 13th at 2:00 AM and the patch aims to maintain the current rich diversity of strategies within the game. While optimizing a small number of heroes, developers are focusing on maintaining the diverse range of strategies. Seen in season one and a half. That means rush comps, double flyer setups in Vanguard heavy lineups. And here are the hero adjustments. So human torch is getting a buff to his primary damage output, and ultimate abilities. Fire cluster ammo increase from 12 to 14. Projectile speed increased as well. There's also going to be energy, increased cost for his ultimate ability from 3,400 to 4,000. Activation wave damage increased by 10. Now 80 inflamed tornado damage increased from a hundred and to 120 per damage per second. So Ironman's getting in different. Adjustments. So direct damage reduced from stage one and stage two from 55 to 40, and stage three from 65 to 50. Spell field damage, increase from stage one and two from 35 to 50, and stage three from 40 to 60. Similar adjustments to the. Armor Overdrive version or Repulsor blast is direct damage reduced by five to 50. Damage and spell field damage increased by 10 to 65. Hook D aggregates, health improvements, light force dagger. Health healing allies now restores 16 health up from 10, so you get six. Extra health restores and spell field healing per hit, reduced from 18 to 16, but still a net boost overall. And then the GE general notes is the changes are aimed to adjust specific characters without disrupting the current meta players have praised the human torch buffs as necessary due to his initial weak, ultimate ability. Yeah, I played human torch. He's interesting. He's. Slower ish on the flyer thing. If you have storm on the wind, she's actually a lot faster, but if she's on lately, she's slower, but you have that option of switching back and forth. Ironman is a lot faster when he's in flight mode, but when he's kinda like floating around, he's still a little faster than human torch. Human torch is flight mode, which kinda is very slow. It's not really great. But it was hard to actually like, hit targets with his primary fire. So it's good to see that it's getting a buff 'cause it needed that buff and then it's ultimate. Yeah. Unless you had three fire tornadoes hitting the same person, it really didn't do as much as it should have. The Ironman one's interesting. I'm not really quite sure about that one. 'cause it's getting complicated with all these damage outputs and the stage ones and stage twos and the differences. But it looks like direct damage is getting a Nerf and kind of the splash damage is getting a buff, which I guess is okay. But I feel like it would be better if the direct damage was a above and the indirect damage was a Nerf, because I feel like. Aiming it should be a little bit more precise. The cloak and dagger, I'm fine with. I'm fine with it. They focus more on the healing part and it giving her a little bit more healing output, but not too much because we don't want, we want like breaks in that so we can actually eliminate heroes, but we'll see how well this actually happens with everything giving it more time after these. I'm excited to see what Season Two's gonna bring, but it should be interesting to see what all this is going to be about. All right. Moving on to Warhammer 40 K. Space. Marine three is officially announced to be in development with collaboration with games workshop development with for Space. Space Marines two has officially begun. However, no platform or release window has been disclosed yet. And if this is like really early, yeah, you don't expect much from this focus on spa war Hammer, space, Marine two, the developers are continuing to support. Space Marine Two, with updates and new content in the coming years space. Marine Three will expand on the series featuring an immersive single-player campaign on multiplayer mode innovations aimed at redefining standards for third person game action games and spectacular large scale battles to elevate the gameplay experience. The goals for the development is the game will incorporate lessons learned from Space Marine Two and build on its success to deliver a large, more ambitious experience is described as a true love letter for Warhammer 40 K universe. And then Focus Entertainment emphasizes. Raising the genre of standard, delivering a significant upgrade in action game quality. SBR Interactive views the project as an opportunity to exceed the expectation of the fan base and further expand the franchise. So I'm excited for this 'cause they did a really great job. They hit it outta the park with Space Marine Two, which the original Space Marine was actually created by Relic, which they didn't do the second one. Went over to Saper. So I'm actually really excited to see what they do with it. It was a really fun game. They actually really captured the feel of the War Hammer 40 K series, and they didn't make it any woke whatsoever. It was high testosterone, brooding type of game that anybody that loves this type of games would actually enjoy them. Multiplayer was good too. Alright, moving on to. Can you come deliverance to 1.2 update highlights? So this finally introduces official modding support through STEAM Workshop. You could argue it through Nexus mods, but we all know what Nexus mod is just a woke progressive hell hole that won't allow you to actually create mods that you actually want if it doesn't fit within its paradigm, even though they have quoted saying that they're about diversity, it is all crap. They are awful. They are the worst. And we need to find a new spot. 'cause I, when, if they first did this, they banned the first Spider-Man one where they changed all the pride flags to United States flag or the Yeah. US flag. That's when I went and I'm done. I'm done with you guys. That's stupid. You shouldn't have meddled at all. It, there was no point to meddling. It's a single player game. Who cares if someone changes the flags? You're not playing the game. The person that installed the game is playing the game. This has nothing to do with you. Anyways, moving on. Players now have tools to modify over 300 game elements, including ui, combat Mechanics, RBG elements and AI behavior. STEAM workshop support simplifies finding, installing and managing mods for the game. Offering more flexibility for mod makers and more nudes 'cause that's what most of it's gonna be about nudes anyways. Game modification possibilities, players can tweak. Mechanics, expands the game world and creates entirely new adventures. Examples of mods include character transformation, turning all characters into skeletons, turning chickens into dinosaurs, and adjusting jiggle. Physics patch in additions. The patch introduces over a thousand fixes and improvements to the game. A barbershop feature lets Henry change hairstyles, which temporarily buffs his charisma. All right, hardcore More update hardcore mode previously expected in this patch. We'll now release later in the springs of nothing yet on that one. And then. Really, that's kinda the biggest thing, which, I mean it is surprising. So basically you could change where you, you don't have to deal with the gay scene at all. And you could also change the guy, which Nexus mod again band from black to cumin, which is a little bit more historically accurate because ESG and diversity really did not help that part of Kingdom Deliverance. 'cause everybody knows it was ham-fisted in and it doesn't make any sense at all. But it's good to see that the mod support, so basically players can go in and be like, you know what, I don't like this. We're changing it. And here's the mod to help you change it. Screw you. Nexus Mod Screw you. All right, so I know you're all thinking, man, I really wish I had a gaming ai. Microsoft and Xbox have something for you. Introducing co-pilot for gaming, which features personalized gaming, re recommendations, seamless game setup and management coaching to help players overcome in-game challenges, ensure that players remain in control of win and how to interact with it. So I guess no clippy version for gaming, which would be. Hilarious and frustrating at the same time. Core principles. Capacity, adaptability and personalization. Primer goal to reduce the time spent on tasks like searching and set up, allowing more time for actual gameplay. Copilot uses natural language to provide situations, specific advice and tips during gameplay. Designed to be non-intrusive and activated only when players choose to engage with it. Aims to help players at the right moment. Such as when you're stuck on a level or needing strategic advice, early access via the Xbox Insider programs, starting with mobile devices and eventually expanding to other platforms. Player feedback is critical for refining the tool. Over a thousand tiles now support Xbox Play anywhere. So it's ubiquitous with everything. And this is like the push for more AI into gaming. But to be honest with you, you could just check YouTube. There's so many different like tools and tips and stuff that it, it's not really needed. And you have endless possibilities of doing half this stuff and a lot of times it's kinda let us just figure out, people are making fun of it because it's this is just for game journals, journalists. It's probably true, but. Man, does this just seem really funny? I just don't know. AI is great for a lot of things, but this, let's not get too carried away with it. I'm pretty sure it's going to have its niche and that's really where it's going to be. It's not gonna go anywhere else. And what's the point? Yeah, great. You're not gonna make a new clippy, a version of Clippy 2.0. You're supposedly non intrusive, so you're either gonna have to push a button or say an insert Hey, whatever it's gonna actually be called, and then that will probably prompt it to go up, but it's dumb. Alright, so there. Things happening within the GPU market that are frustrating to a lot of gamers. But let's get in on some of the specific things and I'll kinda give you an overview of what I think about the whole industry itself. So Nvidia released the, their graphics cards, the 50, 90, 50 80, 50 70 ti and 50 70 in a short span. And so they decided to say, Hey, look. We sold more than the 40 series at the same timeframe. The issue is that the same timeframe with the 40 series was only the 40 91 GPU. You have about five different, four different gpu. In that same timeframe, and you're saying we sold more, but the problem is that there was more stock with the 40 90, and there're in stock with four different skews of your GPU, but you're like, but we ship more. It's okay, but no one can buy your new graphics cards. Nobody, not a single person can buy it. Why are you celebrating this? This is like really dubious just to be like, look at what we did, and it's you didn't really do much. You did a paper launch. Like really a paper launch. Shouldn't be excited for that one, especially when it's also just. The MSRP is more of a moving target nowadays as well, and everybody's ex not really happy about that. The 50 70 TI starts at $1,149 to 50 80 costs, 1600 plus, and the 50 90 listings around $4,500 on eBay because it's the only way you can buy this stuff. I don't think Nvidia, you shouldn't really be doing a victory lap on like how much we've sold since probably 90% of what you sold went to scalpers anyways. And so no, this is not a victory lap really. This is a really you're going to do this. I know this is a PR little stunt, but this is pretty bad PR stunt. This is people are like, yeah, no, you shouldn't really be happy about this. And so if they actually did like a timeframe of the same amount of GPUs from the 40 series or the 50 series, you would see that the 40 series actually sold more. Plus. This is the time when the 30 series actually had enough stock where it didn't really matter anymore, and except when the first time when I was trying to get one and it was a pain in the ass, just like the 5,000 series to actually get it. That's why when I was thinking about upgrade to the. 5,000 series and then saw all these things about how there's no stock. I was like, yeah, I'm good. I'm not gonna play in this game anymore. Seriously, Nvidia, figure it out. Like you guys need to start launching with enough stock. You don't launch with enough stock and you think this actually works. It doesn't work anymore. People are frustrated. People don't care. I understand that. 10% of the market is from the GPU side of things, and the rest of it now is from ai, but eventually that's the AI is going to dry up. It's not gonna be as innovative anymore. It's not going to keep on going at this exponential rate as it is. But gaming is. Should be looked at as another like really key thing to do. But the, unfortunately, that AI market is gobbling up all the GPUs and nobody can actually buy GPUs, which makes it frustrating. Everybody's you know what? I'm just gonna not buy any right now. We'll wait out. We'll wait until everything kind of calms down and I can see what's going on because frankly, it's frustrating. Which compounds it to AMD's graphics cards, which at launch, they were actually at MSRP, but now the third party partners they decided to make it more expensive. Now I understand that. The original price was not what it was supposed to be, so a MD changed the original price to be lower than what it actually was, and now third party board providers are like, you know what? I'm just gonna go back to what it originally was. Plus, with all the tariffs and all the, it's gonna be on, hit on us. It's not gonna be hit on us. It's gonna be 10%, it's gonna be 25%, it's gonna be this. You have a lot of moving parts, which unfortunately makes it really frustrating to buy something at a supposed price it's supposed to be at, and they, and MD's we highly encourage our partners to actually hit the MSRP and the board partner's nah, we're just gonna, we're just gonna make it more expensive. Which goes to show you there is pain in tariffs. I'm not against tariffs, but there is some pain in the beginning because you have to build it up, you have to make sure you have the resources and the buildings to actually do it. So there's always pain in the beginning, but I'm more confident that eventually it will. Come down in price it eventually it will. It's just right now in the initial, like people are wanting to buy a graphics card and NVIDIA's useless with actually giving us graphics cards. So we're going to a MD and maybe Intel, but not so much Intel because it's Intel and they just started to do GPUs and. I haven't really thought about them so much, but then there's a MD, which has a kind of a rocky relationship with GPUs a lot of times. Isn't that great? Or is great or is not great or is great, or does some great things here but not great things. There is always behind on Nvidia, but this time they actually caught up with FSR four, but they're. Output on this is okay with hitting with the 50 70 T TI I and the 90 70 xt. It's okay. It's not okay. It trades back and forth. Okay. How about the content creation side? It's not great and so I'm I guess we're just gonna keep my 30 90 for a while 'cause it still works. I'm not spending that much money on eBay for a graphics card that is way overpriced be, and then people just have to buy it, which actually helps the scalpers go, I should buy more. And then you get this lovely issue of overpriced graphics cards. So there's two issues here. One is, yes, the uncertainty of the market, which is are the tariffs? Are there not, are there going to be tariffs eventually? Are there not a MD changing their pricing schemes? And then Nvidia just not making enough GPUs for the market. And people just willing to buy whatever they can get, which is another dumb thing to do because you should just never buy it, just to buy it and just hurts everything in general. So there's a hodgepodge of things that are going on that some of 'em just need to quit it. Us, for example, a lot of you just need to stop buying it from eBay. Stop it. This is one of the main reasons why it's so expensive too. The low stock from Nvidia, that really needs to stop too. But I don't think it's gonna stop anytime soon because AI is just a money maker and so they prioritize their money maker over what is not as much of a money maker, which is unfortunately the gaming sector. And then we have a MD and Intel. It's all right. They still need to do a lot better, and they still need to actually have a flagship one and then a MD while you're finally competing. In some areas that's good, but consecration is seriously lacking. So here we at. Us not really happy about what's actually in the current market and A MD trying its best and Nvidia not caring and everybody forgetting about Intel because who really cares? So we'll see. I'm not really that excited for it, but I. We will see what the market drags up, but I'm telling you, it's painful everywhere. The only, I think saving Grace right now is that Steam has a summer sale right now, or spring sale, one of those sales, but it has a sale going, a huge sale going on right now. So I guess you could drown it in old games that you can actually play for cheap. That was probably the best list alls I can give you until. Things improve, which doesn't look like it's improving anytime soon, but what do you think? You think it's gonna improve anytime soon, do you think? I'm way off letting me know in the comes blow. But thank you for listening too. Two digital coffee gaming brewer. Really do appreciate it and join us as we talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. And please subscribe to this podcast on one of your favorite podcast, and you have to a five star view. It'll just help with the rankings. Let me know how I'm doing and join me next week as talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. Alright guys. Stay safe. Get deploying the games you want. Be patient about the GPUs that you want, and see you next week later.