How Tariffs and Trade Wars Influence the Future of Gaming Products

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and I'm your host, Fred Deister. If you please spread with this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps, you have a five star review. Really just help with the rankings and let me know how I'm doing. But this week we're gonna be talking about Marvel rivals, maybe Titan Fall 3:00 AM D, and the CPU market and how it's going with that. Also, talking about just the. Terrible unreliability of the gaming industry and keeping a job. It's difficult in that specific way. And Amazon Prime and video cards, it looks like they are requiring prime subscriptions for this one. And then the main thing I'm gonna talk about is the tariffs and how this is actually. Going to impact us the most because of how gaming, hardware peripherals are actually created and made. So should be interesting. So let's get on with the show. I. Mm, that's good. All right, so first off is. Oh, Marvel rival. Season two is coming to April 11th, and this is gonna be including a new map called Hellfire Gala. Two new heroes and various team up changes. The first new hero is Emma Frost, who will function as a vanguard with telepathic abilities. The second hero is Altron is described as a career vil who will serve as the main antagonist in the Hellfire gala. Season Tron will be the last hero to follow the game's current three month schedule. Starting with season three, a new hero will be released every month. This change will result in additional addition of 12 heroes per year, which could be a record for live service games. Basically, we're gonna be getting a lot of new heroes a lot quicker because. Why not? Marvel has a ton of heroes that they could borrow from. Eventually, this is probably gonna go back down, but for right now, they just have a ton of things they can do. They can push it out pretty quickly since they know what they're doing and know what they want out of this. So it should be interesting to see how well this actually plays out. But if you're looking for new heroes and something new from Marvel rivals, season two should be interesting. It's coming out in a. About a week-ish. Yeah, about a week. It's coming out. So be prepared for that. Alright, moving on with. Titan fall three seems to be not actually dead and could be released somewhat soon-ish. It looks like it could be revealed in the game of War 2025, scheduled for December, 2025. So this year you're gonna have a little bit of a longer wait for this one. So we've heard a lot about this. Is that. Apex Legends start off as basically Titan Fall three in some type of way, or they were actually creating Titan Fall three didn't actually happen. They created Apex instead. And then Apex Legends became a popular game for a while until no one really wanted to play it anymore. So now they're figuring how to actually make. Titan Fall three again, because everybody loved Titan Fall two and still being played for the most part. I still like playing it every once in a while. It's a very fun game. It has a lot of really great movements. It was very slick. It was very optimized, which is rare for games these days to be actually optimized except for Schedule one. Schedule one seems to be one of the few games very optimized for an early access game, so we are seeing a lot of. Interesting things happening. I think specifically because I think deep down, respon wanted to create Titan Fall three, but EA screwed him over with Titan Fall two, putting him in a really weird release schedule where it was between Battlefield and Call of Duty, and that kind of really hurt the games. Growth because you had two really big FPS blockbusters and then you wedged in the middle, which I didn't really understand. You could have waited several months and then actually made it a lot better that way, but teach zone, so hopefully this is actually true, but take it with a grain of salt. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hoping it's actually true. We're all hoping for this. All right. Moving on to a MD has nearly 80% of the CPU market based on Amazon US sales statistics from March, 2025. The Ryzen 7 9800 X 3D was the bestselling CPU with over 6,000 units shipped and it's projected to reach close to 7,000 units shipped, probably not as much anymore because of the tariffs. We will see about that one. The RYZEN 5 5500 is the second best selling CPU with over 3000 units sold AMD's total CPU sales amounted to approximately 31,600 units or 78.74 market share while Intel sales were around. 7,500 units are 21.6 market share, a MD generated about 7.8 million in revenue compared to Intel's 1.5 million. I. The only Intel CPU in the top 10 bestselling list were the core I 5 12, 400 F, and the core I 7 12, 700 K with a ladder selling over 1000 units. The core I seven 12, 12,700 K is priced at an average of $234 while the core I five, 12,400. F is $33 cheaper and competes with the Ryzen 5 5600 x. So this is a big thing because before it was always Intel that was top dog. They made the best CPUs. A MD was the. Ugly, awkward second child of the CPU market, and nobody really ever bought from them until Ryzen came out. Ryzen changed it all for a MD and really hurt Intel because Intel has not really been able to match what a MD has done for since 2016. So it's almost been a decade where we've seen Intel not do very well. And this is not a good thing. Hey, I like a MD. I have a MD CPUs. I still prefer a MD CPUs, especially in the Ryzen just because it's just really, it's a really good chip for the price of it. So I, and they allow for. Longer, or you could use your motherboard longer for the current chip set, with Intel, always you had to upgrade to the motherboard to get the new CPU and a MD was like AIM four I think lasted for several years. AM five, which is the current one's gonna last for several years. So that was a big thing. A MD has always been good with multi-core type of functionalities and intel has always been good at the single core functionalities. But that has slowly changed a bit for a MD. They've gotten better at that, but still Intel's a little bit better about it. The other issue is that Intel chips have. At least the recent ones have been running very hot and just not as good as it could be, and the gaming performance hasn't been there for it, and a MD has been better for that, especially with the 9,800 X 3D. Even with the issues with asra, rock motherboards and burning 'em out, they still are the better option specifically for that. So we'll see what happens. I just. Just Intel has not gotten it together at all. They've been really hurting because they just haven't gotten together. They haven't figured it out yet. They're beaten terribly by tsm, MCs, foundries, and their business model, and that's not helping as well. What I, unfortunately, my C is eventually probably a sale to a MD for Intel. Because I just don't see them working out or a sale to somebody else because I don't see it working out at all. Now, I don't think a sale to China will actually ever happen, 'cause I think the US will actually block that. But I do think an A MD Intel sale could actually be on the horizon, only because just by last month's stats, they are woefully behind in sales. That's not good. Their GPUs aren't that great. They're interesting and they have really good AV one encoding and decoding. But they lag behind everything else. Their frame generation or their DLSS alternative is pretty good in general. FSR four is, I think it's gonna change that again, but they are the third child in all of this GPU market and they're just not doing very well in that area too. So it's really hard to understand how Intel's actually doing. Because even prior to this a MD excuse me, apple was looking to use Intel to make their silicon based chips and they just weren't really set up for it. And so they went with TSMC and the rest is history. They're doing really well with it. TMC is pro is second to none. They're the number one company to make CPU chips. Bare none. It's just, it's no contest right now. So it's interesting to see how this is all playing out. And what does Intel need to do to actually change this future because it's not looking very good. All on all honesty and Terrace might help a little bit with it if they can actually build and scale their business. But right now it's just not looking very good. And. I foresee looking at the sale to a MD. It has been rumored before that this might happen through the government, but nothing's actually transpired from that. But again, we'll see. I. All right. Moving on to the CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, the developer of Held Divers two, was talking about the in 2024, where the video game industry ex experience significant job losses due to massive layoffs. Continuing to 2025 with a recent layoffs of Ed Os Montreal and striking Distance Studios. He public called out for accountabilities from CEOs regarding the decision leading to mass layoffs in the industry. He stated that approximately 30,000 to 50,000 jobs have been lost over two years. If it's close to 50 K, that's 25,000 jobs lost in two years, or, yeah, 25,000 each year. So 25,001 year. 25,000 another year. The issue with a lot of this is happening is because of the games that they're producing or. Putting out, they just aren't good. They're not optimized very well. They're a specific target audience that doesn't really like the games any anyways, and they are negating their actual customers. So perfect example is Dragon Age, the veil guard. Gr. The Dragon H Series is a great series. Everybody loves the series, or Dragon Age Origins is still the best one of the series, but Dragon H two is okay. And Dragon H acquisition was still good, but still in the same vein, dragon Age, the Veil Guard came out and it was lecturing to us about gender I identity. It was, had a character creator with top surgery scars made no sense and it just. The writing wasn't there. I'm still playing it through PlayStation 'cause it's free. But that's the only way I would play this. And I still don't like really want to play it. That's the funny part. I'd rather play other games like Schedule One. I don't know why, but that game is just fun. And so they forgot to bring the fun in it. Now, dragons Vil Guard is pretty optimized for a BioWare game. But with all the other issues that happened, it just didn't do very well. And I still foresee that Assassin's Creed shadows will still not sell very well since we still have not gotten the numbers and everybody's oh, it actually sold well, it's like you haven't given us numbers. Esof has not given us numbers and their stink is, their stock is still tanking. So my issue is when you keep on preaching to us a very specific ideology that is basically regarded or hated on for what it does, you will not sell very well. The problem is that this has been going on for a few years and it's been catching up. I think Covid, we were like, okay, whatever. We need to play some games 'cause we're locked in here. And then we're like, okay, we can go out anywhere. I'm tired of this. AA or quadruple A from Ubisoft isn't great. Skull and Bones was awful. I didn't ever played it, but it just didn't look great. Star Wars was at the time, not great. It's better, but still I don't, why didn't you just allow me to create my own protagonist or character? That would've actually been a lot better and probably sold a lot better too. So you had a ugly female character, and then you had Dragon Age, the veil card, which. Was lecturing us on gender I identity, which no one really wanted or cared about, and a very lackluster writing. Then you had Assassin's Creed Shadows that largely used, very controversial history Plus with the non-binary of some historical characters that were never non-binary 'cause that didn't exist, plus gay sex scenes. And it's really? Do you guys not wanna sell anymore games? And this is why Ubisoft. Went from a publisher to an IP holding company instead because they saw the writing on the wall and it's not very good for them. So there is a reason why it's been tanking so hard is because most of these games that probably should have sold well, didn't because they don't understand how to sell to their customers anymore. It's all the activists that are in there. They, you need to fire all of them. Get the people that actually want to work actually like their, the customers actually as one of the customers. And that's why you will sell successfully again. But this will keep happening unless you stop with it. All right. Moving on to why the poor availability of GPUs have basically made a. Amazon require prime subscription to actually order the GPUs because it's so hard to get the A MD or the Nvidia. It's even worse for the Nvidia GPUs. Plus with the tariffs. I don't think you're gonna see a lot of people jumping to spend $4,000 on a 50 90, since it seems to be uptick to $4,000 plus with the other. Quote, unquote, budget friendly GPUs that are inching towards a thousand dollars. It doesn't look very good, and I think you're gonna see a lot of hurt from this. I understand tariffs are a hard thing to swallow. I'm not either for or against this. I am watching this, which we'll be talking a little bit about that later on, but right now you're gonna have to actually have an Amazon subscription to actually. Amazon Prime subscriptions say to actually get this now. I think this is a smart move because a lot of scalpers have been scalping this and then inflating it to insane prices, which probably won't seem any insane anymore because of the tariffs going on with China, and specifically it's to hurt China. So this is why it's gonna be bad for gaming peripherals and gaming hardware in general, because majority of the stuff is being made in China. It's being developed in Taiwan and then pushed over to China to actually create in China. And this is going to have a huge ripple effect in the gaming peripheral slash hardware sector in general. But we'll see what happens. And specifically what is going to transpire from this, but it doesn't look good at all. It kinda looks it's not gonna be great. Moving on to the modding scene and why gaming developers and publishers should not negate the modding scene. Now, some games have done a great job of modding and some games have just not carried anymore. I'm looking at you Battlefield. Battlefield Two had a great modding scene. It's why the game was played for so long is because the moders kept it going, and that's how we got developers for squad. They did the project Reality, desert Combat, or just Project Reality Modding, which basically made it modern game with more vehicles, more weapons, a little bit more realistic in a way. And then what that led was to squad. We also had. Other types of modding going on with Bethesda and Paradox. Skyrim specifically had the longest shelf life because of modding and of a lot of other developers have come out from that. I think Adam Fall came from the Bethesda scene. We also have. Minecraft has a huge modding scene. This is why the game is still as popular as it is. Maybe not the most popular game anymore that's Fortnite, but still a very popular game in general. And so Splash Damage came about from the Quake era when the Quake engine was like one of the most popular engines, and now it's not anymore. Id dropped the ball on that one and Epic kind of took the reins on that. But that modeling scene from. Splash damage led to creating Quake three Fortress, which eventually. Allowed them to work with its software. I think they made Quake Wars. They made a Bethesda game called Brink. They made a few other things, but the, it wouldn't have been possible without the Moding scene. And the Moding scene allows you to see your talent and hire the top talent from the modding scene, because that's basically your best way of saying, look, we've got some really great talent that we could actually bring aboard our developers. And this doesn't second guess if they'll actually be a good employee or not. Culture wise, they, they may not be, but from a work standpoint, they will probably help your business and your game go along while, so this is why modding is very important to bringing up the next generation of developers, bringing more talent into the business, and just in general helping you sell more of your product. But unfortunately, a lot of developers have stopped doing this because. I don't know reasons. They don't really give really good reasons. They're like, oh dice was like, oh our frostbit engine's really difficult, so we didn't wanna do modding because it's really difficult. I'm like, so you don't think that people can figure it out and be smart enough to figure it out better than you, or do you just not want to do it because it'll be very difficult for you to do it. That's the biggest problem. Right now that I see is just that issue. So right now, this is where we're at. I think more mod, I think modeling should come back. I think it's a great tool and I think that they're sorely lacking in looking at fresh talent through this. All right, moving on to. Liberation Day, which happened April 2nd of this month 'cause it is April. And Donald Trump, to his word, has said that he will place tariffs on countries that have reciprocal tariffs and that he did. And this specifically was to hurt. China, it wasn't to hurt anybody else but China. The reason being is because China has been flooding our markets and taking our manufacturing jobs away from us, which makes us less self-reliant. And so we could never really go to war with China because if we go to war with China and make all our stuff that we actually need, we would be screwed. It's a very terrible way of doing things. Since we haven't had actual like a big war in a very long time, I really would call him the Iraqi war in the Afghanistan war, a quote unquote war. But we hadn't actually had a really big war in a very long time. It made sense. It was cheap rocks you could actually make and people got rich off of this. The issue is that gaming also did this, especially the hardware and the peripheral side of it. 'cause I used to work for some of them. And what would happen is that they would develop. The technology in Taiwan, ship it off for mass production in China and then they'd ship it to the United States to be sold, and it worked very well for everybody. They make cheap products, cheaper products, some for a reasonable margins, get rich. Now the problem is that Vietnam and China and Vietnam is very screwed right now with all these deals. They're very screwed. They have a massive tariff on them, and so what's going to happen is that a lot of the peripherals are going to go up in price right now until they figure out where to go to actually make it more affordable. Now, everybody says tariffs is a tax and. Yes and no. Tariffs are a way of changing behavior. So if you do a tariff saying, I don't want you to do this, but do this instead, people will generally do it. They might huff and puff and get all mad, but they will generally do it. The issue is it's a gamble too, because you may not actually get those jobs. You could and you could not. It really depends on. Just the factors and just the incentives that you have for building in America, quote unquote. So like Corsair Razor Logitech, all them could actually figure out a way to manufacture here. Aada, like a bunch of 'em. T SMCs already had deals with the Trump administration for creating foundries here. Intel already has a foundry in here, but looking at the other ones, we are seeing that. It's gonna be a short term hurt. Long term, not really sure. Can't dictate the future, but at least in the short term, we are gonna be hurting. Pricess are gonna go up. Nintendo Switch two might go up too. 'cause they actually withheld the pre-orders because they just don't know. About the price. Right now, the price I think is around 500. It could be up to $600, so that could actually hurt even more. And so when you actually bring prices up, people consider it. They're like do I really need this? Can I just use this switch in general? Do I really need to switch to with its mouse controls and I have to buy a new micro SD express card, and that's more expensive. And and then all my games, if I wanna upgrade 'em, I can. Some of 'em will be free. But the other ones, like the Zelda games will not be free. It's a paid upgrade. Like you have to factor all these things, is the Mario Kart world or whatever it's called, really worth it. And so these are all the factors that go into it. Like keyboards. Like keyboards are great, but. They can last a really long time, and maybe some of 'em are cool, but it's do I really need to spend an average right now is 200. Before the tariffs, it could be 300 to $400 now because they're not made here anymore. And business are gonna be like, look it, can we absorb the cost or not? Can we move production here? Can we ramp it up eventually production so we can actually. Bring this cost down and so we are not actually having to inflate prices and then kill our business. That's gonna be the main thing. Products being made better here for the most part, yes. I remember having a Phillips sound system, has a CD player and everything. That thing lasted 16 years and probably would've lasted longer if I didn't get rid of it. That thing was built like a beast. I thought it was gonna die a few times and it never died. It kept going and I think that was the last one that was made in the us. So yes, generally speaking, not making it in China makes better products, especially in the United States. The other issue is that China's gonna be in a world of heart 'cause most of their population don't, can't afford. Of this stuff. And so they've been trying to go to a more consumer type of economy where their actual citizens buy their stuff, but it's not working because the communists are like, how much power do we give the citizens? And they don't wanna give 'em too much. And so you have this issue where they just flood markets destroy the internal economy or the local economy, manufacturing jobs and everything else. Take that over. And that's how they get rich. And so what Trump's trying to do is look it, we're done with this. It's gonna be here or nowhere. So this is where we're at. Prices are going to get more expensive. I'm not sugarcoating this whatsoever. They're going to get more expensive now. How much more expensive it could be a 20% uplift. It could be even more. I. But I would say about conservatively 10 to 20% price increases on things is probably pretty good conservative estimate right now. So just be prepared If you're trying to build a new system. I wait a year or two, or I piecemealed upgrades, maybe you're like, maybe I don't need a new pc. Case, maybe I don't need the top of the line ram. Maybe I don't need this. Maybe I could figure out how to do a piecemeal, maybe I just buy an A MD motherboard and CPU and then I can just upgrade the CPU when I need to. These are the things we're gonna have to figure out. GPUs are screwed because they're already expensive enough and they're gonna be more expensive. I probably see the 50 90 going to about 4K, maybe 5K. The 50 82,000 to 2,500, the 90 70 xt, probably a thousand dollars to 50 70 ti probably a thousand to $1,500. It is gonna get expensive quick, and the third parties are all making their stuff in China. That's gonna get expensive quick until they move their production somewhere else. Or Vietnam makes a deal with the United States. Or something else. But right now stock market's gonna be hurting. If v's gonna be hurting, a B'S gonna be hurting. Intel's gonna be hurting. They're all gonna be hurting because that's how investors look at it. And uncertainty is not their best friend. So we're gonna be hurting a little bit. We'll be forever. I don't know. I can't predict the future. I want you to be aware of these tariffs are not specifically to harm us. They're specifically to harm us. A very specific country that has looked upon as very aggressive and wanting world domination. So we wanna stop that, obviously, but we'll see what actually happens in the future. Can't tell the future. All I know is the short term, there's going to be a price pain. And you're gonna fill it or not buy it. Anyways. What do you think? You think I am crazy and that this is not gonna happen, or that I'm a Trump loving person because I haven't been railing against him. Whatever. I don't know. Leave the comments in below. But thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brewer. Really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to this podcast only favorite podcast, podcasting app, five Star Review. We'll just help with the rankings. Let me know how I'm doing. And join me next week is to talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. All right, guys. Game on. Get those games that you actually have fun with. Maybe not buy that new keyboard for a little bit and see you next week later.