Motherboard Prices Spike, Razer’s Productivity Mice, and The Reality of Gaming Demographics

Episode of Episode Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and I'm your host, Brett er.

You please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps.

Leave a five star review.

It really does help with the rankings.

Let me know how I am doing, but this week we're gonna be talking about.

PC Global shipments.

That's gonna be a fun one.

Deal with steams accessibility.

New options or features.

It's going to be adding with it.

It's gonna be interesting.

Discord has a new CEO.

Talk about the impact of that razor and it's two new mics.

The Pro click V two in the Pro Click V two vertical edition.

Yeah, there's two different ones.

Talk about a little bit about Elder Scroll's.

Oblivion.

Remastered and we're gonna be talking about the Robocop Rogue City.

Basically there is a release date on this one and Robocop Ro the

Robocop game is actually really good.

Also, developer 11 Bits Studio in its new Frost punk game.

Talk about little bit of how lords of the Fallen 2.0 is actually really

good and you should see if you is something for you to play and your

motherboards are gonna go up in price again, we're gonna talk about that.

And then why your target audience is my main thing is male and

why gaming is specifically male.

And we're gonna talk about that and why feminism and the gaming industry

does not mix at all and why it should be eradicated from the gaming industry.

In general, so let's get on with it.

Hmm, that's good.

I hope you guys are all having a very good Friday and looking forward to the weekend,

but it looks like global PC shipments are grew 6.7% year over year in Q1 of 2025.

Reaching 61.4 million units according to counterpoint research.

Preliminary data, the growth was driven by PC vendors accelerating shipments ahead

of anticipated US tariffs, and increasing adoption of AI enabled PCs coinciding

with the end of Windows 10 support.

Yes, shout out to Windows 10 is 'cause it's still better than Windows

11, even though I have Windows 11.

Not as good.

Not gonna lie.

Inventory levels are expected to stabilize in the coming weeks, suggesting that

the surge of shipments may be temporary.

The anticipated US tariffs are expected to dampen growth momentum in 2025.

Apple and Lenovo reporting strong performances with Apple, experiencing

a 17% year over year growth due to its AI enabled M four based

MacBook series and Lenovo achieving 11% growth through its expansion.

AI enabled PCs.

Novo held the largest market share during this the quarter.

HP and Dell reported six and 4% year over year growth respectfully and maintained

their second and third position.

In the market.

Other major brands also experience Pullins ahead of tariffs, uncertainty

leading to further market share consolidation among major brands.

And this is what we're gonna be seeing.

Next one we talked about is probably gonna be just as a big

issue with it, but we're gonna be seeing this happening quite a bit.

We're gonna be seeing.

A huge expansion or it was a huge shipment growth.

Apple just basically flew in five plane fulls of iPhones.

It is going to be one of those.

We're shipping in as much as we can now because it's going to hurt us eventually,

unless China and us go into the table and specifically China goes to the

table and actually stops playing the games that they've been playing for so

long because us politicians have been stupid with making deals with China.

Like I said, this is a bandaid that needed to be ripped off probably about

20 years ago and wasn't because of stupid politicians and bad trade deals.

You not have a country basically dictating a. Your critical

infrastructures and how much you get.

We dealt with this with Covid and now we're gonna deal with this with tech

until things stabilize and we get it more towards here or more friendly countries.

'cause if us goes to war with China, we are cut off and that is not a good thing.

And this is the bitter pill we have to take to really understand what we should

be doing to make sure that we, when this does happen, we are insulated from.

Critical infrastructure's not getting towards us.

'cause we rely on tech on everything, including defense,

including AI and everything else.

And if you leave it to solely one country to manufacture for the rest of the

world, you are hurting your own country.

Do not care what you think of this president.

It is a very.

Bitter pill to take if we do not change things around.

And that means getting precious materials from other countries, making grid

trade deals for that, and making sure that the west is strong against China.

That's the whole thing about this.

I. Is it sucks that everything's going up.

Of course.

I don't like it.

Nobody likes it.

Even the ones in favor of like me do not like that everything's going up.

But it is an imperative to make sure that we insulate ourselves from any terrible

things that might come in the future.

'cause we are betting on the future that China will eventually go to war with

the West, specifically United States.

So it is imperative that we start building things here and not giving China the

competitive edge to just cut us off with the knees and we can't even do anything.

We can't even make much of anything without China right now.

Which leads me into major motherboard vendors, including

asis, MSI, and Gigabyte, reportedly planning to increase the prices

of their motherboards since 2020.

The average selling price of Intel motherboards has written by 40%

compared to pre pandemic levels.

A MD motherboards have experienced 35% increase in average selling

price during the same period.

The motherboard market has recently begun to recover while, so this is the

unfortunate issue with the pandemic has really has not helped anything.

The previous administration in the US being just incompetently

stupid about inflation.

Now we're blaming this administration for the inflation that we incurred previously.

'cause we overspent on things and we didn't actually save anything.

So here's where we're at.

Things are gonna go up again.

Is it this president's fault that they're going up?

Yes, to a certain extent, yes.

But from 2021 to 2024.

I should say January, 2025.

It was under the Biden administration's issue of how much it has increased

and everything has increased.

Now with the tariffs and everything that is actually laid.

The blame is on Trump for that specific thing.

The price of eggs were not this.

Yes,

you lay the blame on what they actually are currently

doing, not from their previous.

Things that they haven't done.

So will prices go down?

It depends on the deal, and it depends on how quickly we can get

up those infrastructures in tech.

I know TSMC does have a foundry in Arizona.

I do know that they're trying to get them more to build there, which

is fine and which should happen, but right now is going to hurt.

Hands down is going to hurt.

Everybody, nobody is liking this pinch, but like I said, I think it's necessary.

Unfortunately, we're gonna see prices of GPUs games because Nintendo decided that

the switch, two games needed to be 80 to $90 each one stupid idea and hardware.

Hardware is going to go up.

Everything that we liked that was not very expensive is now going to be expensive.

It is the nature of the beast.

We are not gonna get out of this

for the foreseeable future.

I do not know what business deals are happening, but

it is now China versus us, the west versus the east type of the situation here.

So we'll see what deals come up.

We'll see what.

Cooler heads actually do what shrewd businessmen actually do.

And if it actually pays off, great.

If it doesn't, we're gonna be in a world of pain.

Alright, moving on to Steam.

Steam is introducing accessibility tags to assist disabled players in

finding games with inclusive features or just features that help them.

I hate the inclusive.

Inclusive does not actually mean what inclusive is, so it's

just features that will help.

People that are disabled to play games, which I'm in favor of.

Developers can now use the new questionnaire in Steam Works to describe

how their game supports accessibility.

The questionnaire includes options for adjustable difficulty, text size, color

alternatives, high contrast, te speech to texts, text to speech, custom volume

controls, and narrated game menus.

Late this year, steam will allow users to search for games based on

specific accessibility features.

Accessibility options will be displayed in the sidebar of the store page

valves stated that they have gained, they have gathered feedback from

developers and gamers with disabilities who improve experience of steam.

The new tags differ from those introduced by the ESAs Accessibility Game

Initiative, which could potentially cause confusion as noted by consultant Steve.

Sayer, or you could just follow what Steam's doing.

Recent UK Technol technology Secretary Peter Kyle criticized steam for

how for hosting a sexually explicit visual novel that included themes

of non-consensual sexual contact and violence following the criticism.

Developer Xerox games announced it would withdraw its visual novel

from Steam after it was removed from the from sale in several countries.

Now, look, I'm not actually defending this 'cause.

That type of a sexual assault is never warranted or good for society as a whole.

However, UK seriously, you guys had grooming gangs that raped young women.

You have an issue with your immigration.

You have immigrants that don't follow your Western morals, and

now you're criticizing this.

Not the best.

Look Europe.

Europe, you have issues with your immigration.

You have issues with people coming into your countries that do not follow your

rules or laws, and you let them do it.

And then you're saying a game is actually worse than what you're actually dealing

with when you guys sweep it under the rug.

So I don't even want to hear this from pompous idiots like Peter Kyle,

who should worry more about his citizens, especially the women, the

white women getting raped, stupid.

Politicians, it's look it over here.

We'll just not really deal with our actual issues.

We'll deal with this technology issues that well, maybe a paid

game so you can pay for it or not, and maybe it goes is a top seller.

I don't know.

I didn't even really know about it until the controversy, which is

funny 'cause every time there's a controversy in the game, guess what?

The popularity goes up, which basically means more people want to

buy it, and then when you start to ban it, more people want to buy it.

So instead of actually creating a hub up about it, you could have just ignored it.

It probably would've gone away.

But no, we must fight the injustice of games being horrible to a certain.

Subset of gamers enjoy it, but let's ignore the actual real issues in our

country 'cause that works out well.

Alright, moving on to Discord.

And Discord has hired a new CEO and I'm not even going to actually say his name

because I'll butcher it or I'll try it.

It's Human Saini sounds Indian, but.

The current CEO will be now board of the directors, and the announcement

was made on April 24th, 2025.

The company's mission has been to bring people together around games.

The current CEO has expressed gratitude for the experience relationship built

with leading discord, and acknowledges that he basically wanted to get

himself out of the job and find.

Somebody new so they could eventually go public is the whole

thing, is to go public, to get on the stock market and hopefully to

raise more capital that way.

So you could either hire more people, do better features, I don't know,

have your own little AI there.

'cause AI is everywhere now.

It's kinda RGB, but for the world.

'cause RGB was like.

Usually just keyboard mice for a while and then it's Hey, let's make

everything RGB, and everybody's yay.

At least I was, 'cause I was like, I don't need everything.

RGB, I just need everything to work.

And I agree that lighting your keyboard is prob is very important.

Especially if you don't, if you work with no lights on.

But beyond that, I don't really see very much.

But discord, iss cool.

I guess it's all right.

It's better way of actually communicating with your friends than actually using

the games or some games on voice chat.

'cause it'll be recorded and it's alright, I'll go over to Discord.

And you go, never hear me.

That's what it's gone down to.

I. All right, moving on to Razor and Razor is introducing two mice,

the pro click V two, and the Pro Click V two vertical edition.

The vertical edition is razor's first vertical mouse design.

The pro click V two is priced at $99, and the vertical edition's priced at $120.

Both mice feature ergonomic designs focused on productivity rather than

gaming, even though it's very razor.

ESQUE type of design This time around, they include features such as pro

buttons, razor chroma capabilities, and an AI prompt master For quick access

to chat, CBT or Microsoft Co-pilot, standard Pro click V two has a 30 degree

tilted angle, rubberized side grips and extended thumb rests in a free spinning.

Tiltable scroll wheel.

The vertical addition has a 71.7 degree angle, a large cutout for thumb grip and

extended base to reduced wrist strain.

The new version two V two versions replaced the original pro click

design and collaboration with.

Human scale.

The original model had a white and gray design.

While the V two models have a typical razor game, if you stick razor is

selling both mice through its online and physical stores with a vertical edition

also available at authorized resellers.

Yeah, I did look at it.

Yeah.

It's very gamer esque, which is funny.

It's supposed to be for productivity and it's like black with REB.

I'm like, yeah, that's not for just normal people.

That's for gamers with productivity.

I. Look, I'm not all in favor of it, but like I said, RGB is

a little too much sometimes you just don't need all that stuff.

I picked up a course a Corsair mouse with no RGB and it's

great 'cause it lasts longer.

'cause actually putting on lights on everything makes the battery dialogue

quicker depending on what you do with it.

Can turn it off fine, but sometimes if it's just productivity,

just leave the lights off.

You don't need 'em.

You really don't,

but we'll see.

Alright, moving on to Elder Scrolls.

Yes, oblivion.

Remastered was shadow dropped a few days ago and it's causing a few ripple effects.

First of all, they were like, we were trying to keep the.

Basically the what made oblivion.

Oblivion still there, but we'll take off male and female and put body type

A and body type BI mean come on guys.

Leave the male and female there too.

It has nothing to do with offensive.

It is an it is a truth.

We have to get to that.

Your bi, your sex, I'm not gonna say biological sex.

'cause there that equates to that.

There's nonbiological sex.

Your sex.

Is what dictates everything about you.

So it should not be really that offensive to put your sex there, male

or female, not body type A, body type B.

We're not interchangeable.

This is a imperative truth.

You cannot get around it, so stop it.

Luckily there are mods and unfortunately, actually.

If I did this a few days ago, unfortunately the next mod took

it off, but it looks like they put it back on because there's so much

backlash about it because it's dude, it's a single player game.

You should not be banning things because it doesn't hurt anybody.

It's a single player game.

Most gamers want male or female because it's true.

This should not be controversial, but it is 'cause crazy people.

If you disagree with that, you are crazy.

Get help or go touch grass or go for a hike, or just look at nature.

I don't know why this is so controversial, this is a non-starter,

but there's also other implications because of the shadow drop.

It sh it could hurt indie games because indie games don't have enough money to.

Pushed out a lot more ads for that.

But look, it's going to be one blip.

People are gonna enjoy it.

People are gonna play it for a while and then you can get back to it.

Like I said, it was a one blip of excitement.

I'm excited for it.

I had to get it because it's oblivion.

It's an old school.

Be.

That's the game that's actually good.

Unlike Starfield, they actually, took their time, made some good

quests, didn't have thousands of planets that were just basically

the same thing over and over again.

There's one planet.

And it is pretty good.

Is more one better?

Yeah.

It's still a good game though.

Why not have you know Patrick Stewart as the voice of the old king?

Who wouldn't want that?

Or moving on to Robocop Rogue City.

Unfinished business is going to be released on July 17th, 2025.

This expansion continues the story of Robocop Rogue City, but

players do not need to have played the original game to enjoy it.

That's nice.

The plot involves OCP working on a project called Omni Tower, which

is a housing complex for residents evicted from Delta City Development.

A group of Mercer series attacks the Metro West precincts dealing components from

Robocops Medical Chair with their next target being the Omni Tower Omni Towers

described as a potential power source that could give the mercenaries access

to OCP technology, including robocop.

Players will encounter enemies traps, bullets as they navigate the tower.

The expansion features, flashback sequence allow players to control characters

including Robocop, Alex Murphy, and former OCP scientist Miranda Hale.

The original Robocop City is included in this month's PlayStation

Plus, and it's a good game.

I don't care what any of the others, it's a good game.

It's actually a solid good game for robocop and for a

first person shooter, it's.

Single player, which I don't mind, but it's a solid game.

It'll be fun.

And if you haven't played it, please enjoy it 'cause it's good.

So another thing, looking forward to it, I haven't seen any prices on

this, but I'm matching it between 20 to $30, maybe $40 if that.

Luckily it's not being Nintendo and doing.

Hey, this is $80.

Heck, even oblivion is $50 for the deluxe edition and you can

get it for green and gaming for a little bit less if you need to.

But seriously, we don't need higher prices on digital games.

Now remember when the talking point was if we have digital games, it'll

cost, it won't be as expensive.

And it's yeah, that didn't really work route for you guys.

'cause it is still expensive.

I. It's even more expensive now because you just grew the teams

that you didn't really need to grow.

I feel like sometimes people just hire people to hire people without

really knowing if they actually need 'em or not, and then you get bloated

teams that make terrible games.

Speaking of games, post developer 11 Bit Studios announces a new title, frost Punk.

1886, which is a re-imagining of the original Frost Punk game.

The game is being developed using Unreal Engine five.

Technology is slated for release at some point in 2027.

The game will feature, improve visuals and include new content, mechanics,

events, technologies, and buildings.

And Charlie New.

Purpose Path will be introduced in addition to the existing

faith and order path.

The transition from original games proprietary liquid engine to Unreal

five will enable mod support.

Woo.

Yeah, the first two games are actually pretty good.

I think Frost Puck two is still in early axis, which is weird that they're

actually doing additional one unless they have more people to move it over there.

But Frost Punk was good.

Frost Punk two is actually really good as well.

And this one should be interesting to see what they do with it as well.

If you like strategy games, this is actually a very unique one that

I think that is well worth your time if you enjoy strategy games.

If you do not, and obviously it's not be well worth your time, but I've enjoyed it.

All right.

Moving on to Lords of the Fallen 2.0.

So it looks like it's getting RA reviews from gamers because it actually has

beautiful female bodies, not like.

The other games where you can make ugly if you wanted to, but at least

they have beautiful looking ones.

They actually listened to their customers and guess what?

It was more played than Assassin's Creed, shadows.

Yeah.

I'm still never believing he was the number one game in March, 2025.

I'm sorry you, you don't give me numbers, you just tell me to trust you.

I'm not going to do it.

Gimme the numbers.

Give us the numbers.

But you won't.

'cause it's easier to just say, trust me, it was the number one selling game.

I'm like, no,

but I'm glad.

I'm glad Lords of the Fall and two 2.0 is better at launch as being well received

because I think it's actually a really good game with a really good art design

and it should be celebrated for that.

We need more games like this.

And more developers that go, you know what, I'm gonna take a stand.

I'm gonna back the customers that I know are gonna this

because I'll be rewarded for it.

Not oh, screw you misogynist, we're gonna do it this way.

And so like our game.

And it's no, and we will not buy your game.

And they're like, how dare you racist and misogynist for not liking our game.

I'm like, alright, if you're gonna keep on calling me names, no matter what I'm gonna

do, I'm still not gonna buy your game.

But screw you as well.

Because really telling people what to do and then name calling them is

not the best way of making a sale.

It's a good way of not making a sale and then them never,

ever buying from you again.

Just how it is.

Alright, moving on.

So

here's the thing.

I have said this time and time ago, but I feel like I need to reiterate this.

If you are in the gaming industry, your target audience

is most likely, mostly male.

It's not even up to discussion.

The reason being is because most games follow the hero journey as you're the

unknown hero or your well-known hero.

No matter what you're trying to save the day.

Guess who that appeals to more often than not men.

Because men always have the idea of if they want to go, they want to

go in a blaze of glory or they want to go saving their family or their

wife or their girlfriend or their kids, saving them being left behind

while you go and flourish, live on, and this is not unknown to guys.

Really.

For a lot of women it is.

'cause you have the opposite side and obviously men and women are different

if that offends you apparently you're just offended at life.

But this is the moral imperative.

Your target audience is more than likely male.

So appeal to the male audience.

Don't gimme a feminist stupidity.

Don't gimme girl bosses.

I do not care anymore.

It is tired and it's old and we don't like it.

We want the one, we wanna be the ones that's tonight that saves the chick,

not the one going, I don't need a man.

And be like, all right, I'm not gonna play this game anymore.

I don't need to be yelled at in real life.

I don't need yelled at in the digital life too.

So most games and that's why I say most, 'cause not every game is there's

some games that appeal to women and that's fine, but most games.

That do have a hero are gonna appeal to men, so might be good to actually

have a male character most of the time.

Now you could do a character creator.

I don't really care.

And you can have male or female, not body type A, body type B, please stop,

but appeal to that will make you sales.

This is why Doom, the Dark Ages is very highly anticipated because they

understand it's a male audience.

This is why Boulders Gate three is doing very well.

It's why oblivion besides the stupid body type A, bio type B, but there

are mods for it, and you can get the mods like it because it knew there

was a male and female and you could play a female if you wanted to.

Nothing about it, but for the most part, feminism's not going to work anymore.

No guy likes it.

Unless you're pretending to be a male feminist then I would say, please stop.

Because you don't really believe it.

You just wanna sleep with a girl that, I'm a feminist, so am I. No, you're not.

No guy really believes it.

We just want we, we just like the girl that, that is a feminist.

We're like, all right, this helps me sleep with you.

Then I'll believe it and then it actually never happens.

'cause you get friend zone and then well, anger ensues.

So I'm begging you either hire male PR people, male marketers that

understand it or hire competent female.

Ones that understand that their target audience is males and they don't hate

males, which is highly unlikely 'cause they probably went to school and

school will tell 'em to hate males.

I'm begging you developers understand the moral truth about this.

Most men like to be the hero.

Most men want to save the princess.

It's why games from the start have been mostly directed towards males.

Even Nintendo way back when, where it's like, how do we market this?

We probably should market this towards males.

And guess what?

You guys flourished because of it.

Not because you were inclusive.

Because inclusive means you're exclusive to something and it's usually

white males, to be honest with you.

And white males were really tired of it.

Like we're not gonna buy your game.

That's why Concord failed.

That's why Marathon will probably fail.

And you might as well just get the marathon classics 'cause

they're really great games on free.

They're free on steam.

Don't give us weird art.

Designs unless it's like gothic and there's like the beauty in

like the dark gothic, that's fine.

But it is like these weird dystopian like tech stuff that looks ugly.

We don't want that.

We like looking at pretty things.

That's why we like girls.

Most women are pretty.

So for the love of God, understand feminism.

Creating a hero's journey.

Don't mix hating on men, because that's your target audience

won't make you successful.

You actually make a product for the majority of your customer base.

So understand this, we want male and female back.

We want the hero's journey.

We don't want to be lectured to on why we should buy the game.

'cause we don't want to be mis misogynist and toxic me masculinity or anything.

'cause doom.

The dark angels is toxic masculinity to feminist, but it's actually regular

healthy masculinity because toxic masculinity is being effeminate males.

That's what toxic mess, toxic masculinity is when we have real masculinity.

It's not toxic.

Deal with it.

Deal.

If you're in a industry that is majority of males and deal that feminism doesn't

work anymore, we don't like it, we're not gonna buy your games anymore.

We are taking a stand and if you don't listen to us,

you're going to feel the pain.

Your game will fail, your sales will be lackluster, and half

of your team will be gone.

If not all of the de developer will be gone.

If we have to do this harsh.

Lesson for you all.

We will do it and we will continue to do it and we'll play schedule one instead

because I don't know why, but being a drug dealer is actually somewhat fun

in Schedule one 'cause it's a little hilarious and it has a fun gameplay loop

and it's not that expensive and it's made by one guy that knows his audience.

You wanna be successful, know your audience.

Make it for your audience.

If you don't wanna be successful, do what you've been doing 'cause that's

working so well for you right now.

All right, so anyways, thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew.

Really do appreciate and join me next week.

Let's talk about what's going on in the gaming industry.