PC Gaming Takes the Lead: Why 80% of Developers are Focusing on PCs

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. We have a five star review, really does help with the rankings. Let me know how I am doing, but this week we've got. Oh, a handful of gamers upset about the current president being inaugurated and wanting not. It's games that's gonna be fun to talk about. Battlefield Game has reportedly ramped up play tests, so we could be seeing more movement in closer to the release. The Xbox Developer Direct or whatever it's called. We'll be talking about that and what all that entails. Only really two games that actually really are two or three games that are important. Which is obviously gonna be doomed. The dark ages, which is looking to be really fun. We're gonna be talking about drag ages, the veil garden, how terrible it actually is for EA right now. Also gonna be talking about PC development and how has it skyrocketed. There's some new data on that, and also who's using AI in game development, the origin. And then can come deliverance as well. I think that should be, that should be about it. But we might talk a little bit more about other things. But anyways, let's get on with the show. Mm, that's good. Yes, the Biden is, Le has left office and Trump is now currently in office as our 47th president and well, some gamers aren't really too happy about that. Which is saying that they're playing games that you can fight Nazis after because they're equating Nazism to Trump, which is, well, if you're someone on the left or progressive and you listen to this show, you really don't understand what Nazim is at all, and you actually think it's on the right, but it actually isn't. It's actually more of a paradigm on the left because it is a offshoot of socialism and communism. So it's kind of ironic how much you would. Associate it with the right, but the right is actually more, if we're talking about the far right is more about anarchy than it is about socialism, Nazism, or anything about that. But they're upset because their president or they're nominee lost terribly, and so they're turning to. Games that have Nazis in them. So that includes Indiana Jones, the latest of it. It includes Wolfenstein, it includes Sniper Lee, and I guess Assassin's Creed, because somewhere in the Codex it says the brotherhood killed Hitler. So apparently we need Hitler back in our lexicon because Noah understands history. No one understands that there are other bad people. That don't associate with Nazism or fascism, and just because you don't like somebody does not equate to them to be a fascist or a Nazi. That is a complete, well, that's a stretch, but it's even a bigger stretch when this groups of people just cannot get over themselves and basically politics revolves around. Their identity and how they treat people and how they view people. I don't care if you voted for Kamala Harris, to be honest with you. I would still converse with you. I would still show you respect. The problem is, is that the other side doesn't do that, and they deem us well evil because we didn't align perfectly with them. That's the problem guys. You lost. It happens. We lost last four years. It turned out pretty terribly for you too. So now you lost. And guess what? A bunch of people were upset about the previous gen administration and that's what happens. But now you're taking out on games, which is fine. I'd rather you take it out with games anyways. But you cannot, you, we, we have this thing in gaming where we, we just, we associate the worst with people. It really needs to stop. I get it. You're upset. Fine. Take it out on gaming. That's completely fine. But stop associating people fascism with things I don't agree with. So all coast call it fascists because it's things I don't agree with. It's a childish argument and you're being a child. Anyways, moving on to Battlefield, reportedly is gonna be ramping up play tests, so. We all know Battlefield 2042. Well, it wasn't received well and rightfully so, it wasn't received well because it just had a lot of problems with it. The 128 player count wasn't great. Not because it couldn't work, it's just because the map designs were bad. It just not good. There were a lot of times there were very long sight lines with very little cover, so it was a sniper haven. It just, the flow didn't work very well. It just all round was. Just not a good experience because it's just a lot of it. It, battlefield 2042 was a very half-baked game that was released. It probably should have waited a couple, few more years to actually be a fully fledged out experience, but they just didn't have enough time because I'm pretty sure the CEO just wanted to push it out for whatever reason. But this time around, they have four different studios working on it, and they actually have committed to actually community type of play tests so they can figure out. What's working and what's not, and fix it before it launches. And they have a negative reaction to said game. So here we're, and they're gonna get player feedback. Hopefully it works out, but at least this is not what previously Battlefield Games had quote unquote betas, which was a month before launch, and everybody's like, you're not gonna fix all this stuff. So it's good to see that they're actually having traditional play tests and traditional betas that actually do. Help with the development of it. So we'll see how well this does. We'll see where they're going to go with this because it's also been reported that 98% of the people developing this battlefield game have never developed other battlefield games. So I'm a little skeptical about what's going on with it, but I will be hopeful that it will be a good battlefield, a return to form. Keen to the previous ones. One, three. I'm not saying four, because four was awful at lunch. I know it's good now, but people have, people have short term memories on just how terrible Battlefield Ford launch was. It was bad. Plus, I think the gun plays done is great because of the r and g. I think it's pretty terrible too, but. Let's hope to returns the form to how we look at Battlefield Three, battlefield Four and Battlefield One. Hopefully with extra features brought from all those, including Battlefield Five. I still like the encampment set up where you can build sandbags and stuff. I think that should be brought back. DeltaForce brought it into their game so they're smart enough to understand that gamers actually like that. So I'm hoping that that stuff will be brought into it because if. It just feels better when you can create your own fortifications as well. So we'll see what happens with all that. Now, Xbox just had yesterday or Thursday. A just developer announcements and there were four games announced. Really? One that I didn't, it's a Creole one. I remember it. Expedition 33, ninja Guy Four and Doom The Dark Ages. So Ninja Guy four. I'm actually like really excited for. I think it's gonna be cool. Now, ninja Guiding two Black is out now because it came out yesterday. In Unreal Engine five. So if you really want to get back into like the Ninja guided, guided like I guess form, this would be the best way of doing it. It's out right now. You can get in on Steam. I just checked, but it looks really cool. It looks like, I guess souls, like before Souls Dark Souls was a thing, but it's kind of got that feel of, it's very hard, it's very challenging type of gameplay on it. So it's back to form on that and it's a good thing that it is because. We need those types of challenging games. So we'll see how well the four is. I think right now Ninja Guiding is mostly positive, so it's in a mostly positive state. Right now it's 50 bucks for it. So even though it's an old game, it is updated with the current epic Engine or Unreal engine I should say. So we'll see how well it is, but. It's at least a return to form for some developers and for some developers to understand what actually works. That's the biggest thing. We also had doom, the Dark Ages that came, that was announced, and it's coming out in May, which is pretty close, and it looks great to be honest with you. It's returning to form to the old Doom Games. 'cause Doom Eternal was, I called it Mario or Doom. Slayer. 'cause you just jumped a lot. And I was like, why is there all this jumping? But it's not a bad game. But this one just looks even more awesome. It's, it's full of testosterone field type of a game. You now have a shield a chain. Saw shield as well. So you can use it to block, you can use it to throw at people. You do a bunch of things. You have also have three different types of weapons. You have a flail, a spike, mace, electrified gauntlet, which is interesting. So finishers look more fleshed out and everything. There's no multiplayer, but it's fine because to be honest with you, the other dude, multiplayers, no one really play. They played it for a bit and then we all stopped playing 'em. So not that big of a deal. This will not be also the last doom. They'll maybe be making more Doom games, which is great 'cause these games are really good. This Id understands doom like nobody else. And they understand their player base like nobody else. The soundtrack is awesome, still not by the same guy, unfortunately because of their little tiff, but. With a company behind it that the other types of soundtrack. The soundtrack is still heavy metal rock type of flare to it. You can also ride dragons. You can also ride a huge, I guess mech is the best way of saying it. I mean, there is so many things in this game is insane. It's gonna be a good game. This is like one of my top like highlights of 2025. Maybe came to come deliverance too. There's a few games, but I'm skeptical about that one unfortunately. Because, because of things that they're, they've been doing. But this game looks like it's gonna be a fun, not trying to push anything, just kill demons type of thing. That all guys just wanna play this game. This is why it's popular. 'cause the guys wanna play this game and the developers is not. Insulting or making fun of guys, they're just like, here's a game. We know you guys love this game, so here's more of it. Guys are like, I'm gonna play this game. And just about every guy that's seen this is like, this game looks dope. I'm gonna play this game. Alright, so EA had their earning announcements recently and it did not look good. So unfortunately. Dragon Age underperformed sales expectations by 50%. It was bad, like so bad that the game director, who it's a he and a she, because I will never refer to people's disorders of they think they're a woman, but they're actually a man. He left three months later because he is an idiot. That thought that lecturing gamers was a good thing to do. You he ruined single handedly ruined Dragon age. 'cause Dragon age was a dark fantasy and they went to this more heroic. Very dumbed down, very mass effect like combat. They just didn't understand the modern audience, the modern gaming audience. They always like to say that I'm like the modern gaming audience is what's been, has what's been for like 20 years or more like, like it hasn't changed that much. But here we are. So I. EA stock was in a free fall. I think it went down like 30%. It was bad. It was like, oh, yeah. By the way, dragon Age did not do well, and one of the other games did not do well. And EAFC 25 also failed to meet its target projections. And so the stock market reacted accordingly and said, we're selling our stock, but. I'm hoping the publishers and developers are getting the message. Stop making these types of games. We don't want them. I'm not saying stop making Dragon Age, I'm saying stop making it in this particular way of doing it, where the writing was dumbed down, where you were lectured for Miss. Pronoun or mispronouncing or not doing their pronouns or whatever, I don't really care, but not, not clearly or like correctly identifying their pronouns for whatever, and it just like, it ran well. That was the funny thing. If this game actually had good writing and it ran well, it would've been game of the year, but unfortunately it ran well. Combat was dull, and the writing was abysmal. You cannot have an RP G, have bad writing. That's just like 1 0 1, the basic understanding of it. The problem is that they did, and they didn't try to actually make it a Dragon Age game. It was basically its own little weird converted version of it that didn't make any sense type of game. I didn't even play it. Well, I play it. I'll probably play it if it's on a deep, deep, like $10 discount. That's the only way I'll play this one. And Star Wars outlaws $10 discounts. It has to be $10 and I may pick up them, but not at full price. Nope. Nope. I would be wasting my money. I. For a game. Also, it looks like Dragon Vegar has gotten its final big patch, so there'll be no more updates for it. That's the funny part, is that EA had no confidence in this game that they didn't even have DLC planned for it. That's bad when you know your game is not gonna do very well. So you say we're not having any extra content with this because we know we didn't really do the best game like leadership had. No faith in this, and I understand why you had a lunatic as the game director who just hired other lunatics, and then if anybody disagreed, well, you were in trouble because you had to agree with the lunatic running the game. Never let lunatics and village idiots or fools run your studio, run your company or anything like this, because. You get incompetence, and that's what happened. It was pure incompetence of, we know the modern gaming audience and you didn't because your sales projection was off 50%. Half who thought putting transition scars or top surgery scars on your character was a cool thing to add. It's a fantasy game. You could be a male or female anyway, so it doesn't matter. You don't have to pretend to have scars. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. This is why I have content for Marxists, which are basically progressive, which is basically woke. I've contempt for them 'cause they're idiots. Alright, moving on to some interesting. Basically data from GDC survey. So finds that about 80% of developers are making games for PC more than double the number, working on PS five and Xbox Games. So the PC development growth is that GDC states that the gaming industry reports highlights significant increasing gaming developments for pc. So this marks a rise from 2024, which is last year from 66% in 2023, which is 65%. So it raised. About 14% from last year to 80%. Now the PC is the dominant platform for game development. Far suppressing other platforms, which is the PS five is 38% in the P in the Xbox series, SSX slash S. I hate these naming of these consoles for 34% significant, but it is easier because. There's different platforms. It's an open platform for the most part, and it's easier to get on steam. It's easier to get on Epic. It's easier to get on the other platforms if you want to, but it's not very hard to do it. It's a lot easier. The only issue that you have is that you have to actually, is. Optimize for other machines. You have a ton of other configurations and stuff. That's probably the hardest part to do, and I think if we figure out a way of doing AI models, we could probably figure out a way of actually optimizing it better. Right now, this is where we're at now. Long-term trends there has been a steady growth in piece of gaming development, like I said, 56% in 20 26, 60 3% in 2022, and then 74% interest ex expressed by developers in 2025, up from 62% in 2024. Now, one of the reasons why is the steam deck, the steam deck. Has contributed to PC's popularity among developers, 44% developers noted that the STEAM deck as a platform that interests thems the most. Plus with valve pushing out their steam os. I think this could be a new renaissance for PC gaming. Now I always say the PC gaming is a better one of it 'cause it's just an open platforms better things to do. Plus with Steam Deck. Kind of like looking at what. Nintendo Switch did, but also making it more open to things than what Nintendo's doing. Really only get Nintendo for their exclusives because Nintendo really doesn't have anything great beyond their own exclusives. They're basically, that's their bread and butter. That is what makes them the most money. Zelda, Mario. Mario Kart, Kirby, Yoshi, like those things are the ones that make Pokemon are what makes them money. That's why they keep it a closed ecosystem as opposed to pc. PC is popular because it's an open ecosystem and just about anybody can attempt to make it on pc. That's why we see a lot of like hits coming outta nowhere, like how Divers two, like black myth, that type of thing. And it's how Doom got so popular. It's how first person shooters got its start is through pc. Like we wouldn't have first person shooter without Wolfenstein. Doomed, doomed to Mar Marathon, which was on Mac, weirdly enough. But it all started with pc. Without pc, you really wouldn't have, the popularity is, now I know Nintendo saved the console game market, 'cause Atari killed it with et. But still, I mean, you wouldn't have it without it now. Now there are biases in the survey that about 56% response are from the us which, okay. And another 16% from the uk, Canada, and Australia. But I mean, you have to look at where are most of the gaming development coming from? US mostly. I'm not saying that any other, no, no. Other country has a gaming development, but most of them are resided in here. We are seeing more in China, but, and there's some in Japan too. Countries with significant mobile gaming markets, ea. China and Japan are un underrepresented. Well, it's mobile gaming, so who cares. It was also challenging in the, the industry layoffs. One in 10 developers report will being laid off in 2024. Studio closures, 4% of gaming development studios were shut down. So that's, that's, it's interesting to see like. For so long I heard PC gaming's dead, PC gaming's dying, and then all of a sudden it's like, no, it really isn't because it just has that longevity. I could build a PC game that could PC that could last for years and just update the parts to it without getting a whole new system. And then eventually, every five years or so, you could update the whole PC itself. You could still piecemeal it, but eventually you just kinda wanna refresh. But with. Consoles, you just have to buy a whole new console. You can't update the pieces inside of it. So it's each his own. I mean, this is the last time I'm getting, like, really besides the switch is the last time I'm getting any console months because I can just get the PlayStation games on PC now. So I don't need a, a PlayStation console anymore, which is fine with me. We also have another one about AI and generative ai. So this study was found through Game Game Spot, and basically what it says is generative AI and gaming development. So usage and generative generative AI is that 52% of their survey game developers are working at companies using generative ai. 36% of developers personally use generative AI tools to game for game development. Concerns. 36. 30% of respondents believe generative AI negatively impacts the video game business. A 12% increase compared to 2023 concerns include IP theft, energy consumption, and bias in AI programming pro programs. Okay. So yeah, there's gonna be ai, a bias and AI programs because guess who programs the ai? We do Guess who has the biases? We do not. Hard to figure out where the biases come from. AI adoption by role, business and finance role, 51% are mostly, are most likely to utilize AI tools, community marketing and pr. 49% among with reduction and team leadership at 41% also rank. Highly in AI usage, which makes a lot of sense because it's just a lot of daily tasks that can be utilized for ai. And so, I mean this, this, this is a, yeah, I mean, PR marketing is always using this type of thing, and you kind of have to roll with it as well. AI use is by age. 28% of developers from 18 to 34 use AI technologies compared to 47% among developers over 55. Which is surprising given the fact that usually when new technology comes out, it's the younger generation that actually uses it, not the older one. We're have seen a flip here, which is interesting in itself. Job loss to ai. EA CEO believes a AI will initially cause job losses, but it ultimately create more jobs as seen in part of labor revolutions. Actor strikes reflect concerns over AI use in their field. Then it it 'cause it had to do gender representation and LGBT representation and ethnic demographics. Alright, here we go. So men made up of 66% of the workforce down from 75% in 2020. I wonder why? Because quotas are terrible and you need to stop it. Women are non-binary. So non-people or people that don't exist represent 32%. Showing year over year increases. I wonder why, maybe it's because you guys push this so much instead of meritocracy, which actually works and would actually make you money, you do this instead and you lose business ethnic demographics, white, Caucasian developers among account for 59% of the workforce. Yes. So what it's always like, they, they, these studies, they have to be like, Ooh, look, the white man, bad. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're so bad because you're a racist. Like seriously, like all this stuff is stupid. Yes. People use AI from all walks of life. Yes. Every business use AI on all walks of life. The fact that we have these types of breakdowns is because wants to show like, look, we're still progressive and you're losing business, and one in 10 developers have been laid off because your games are crappy. Congratulations on diversity of being very superficial because if this is all you care about in diversity and not actual thought and how you think and how you work with problems, you have a narcissistic superficial problem. Industry layoffs, like I said, only 30% of response were concerned about potential layouts, partially attributed to many already being laid off. Ouch. Layoff surge in 2024 and continuing to 2025, and it's gonna hurt unless they actually figure out and turn it around. PC development, 80% of developers are working on PC games, making it the leading platform. PS five 38% and then so on. Android is 29% and iOS is 28%. Look it, you play iOS and mobile games specifically just because you're bored. A lot of 'em are not good. So that's where it's live service games, developers, attitudes. 42% of developers expressed no desire to work on live service games in their next project because they don't work. They're highly risky, and you really have to hit it outta the park to make it work. Like Helldivers two did a great job in the beginning to head some rough issues. They did a great job. Problem is that Sony f it up. Then they came back and made it still really good. Then you have June four, which is okay, you have path of Exile two, which did a better job than June four, even though I gotta get back into it, but I can't get back into it 'cause it's so laggy for me that I just couldn't deal with it and just was like, I'm gonna wait until you guys figure out the whole situation. Market trends, live service market is competitive, but shrinking as evidence by cancellation. Like Sony's recent God of war, life service game, which made no sense to me, but sure. I. Study. Study details compiled from over 3000 developer responses. Majority of responses came from independent and AA studio developers with just 15% from AAA developers down from 18% previously. So a lot of it's been more of the smaller development market, which makes more sense. To look at it because though that is actually what's gonna be the most important moving forward, because I think AAA is dying because of the rise of budgets. Just the terrible mismanagement of how to create games, not understanding what your audience is, and they're just awful. Lot of times they just aren't that fun and they're chore a lot of times. So we'll see. We still got doomed dark ages, which I feel like it does know how to make their games and who they're actually making games for, only because it's the people within the studio that understand what they're making the games for. If it was anybody else, they would not understand and probably make it even worse. Anyways, moving on to Yay. Origin Launcher. Oh, the launcher that everybody hated but ea made you use it anyways, is no more. It is going away in April 17th, 2025. So if you still have it, which I don't understand why you have it, you might wanna get rid of it. If you have a 32 bit Windows key, well you might wanna upgrade to 64, just a thought, and you're gonna have to go over to EA desktop, which is no better, to be honest with you. It's still pretty crappy. I'm kind of tired of. I've been tired for these game launchers for a while, but you know, here we at, I got Battle net, I got ea, I got Ubisoft one, you play or whatever it's called. I've got Galaxy and I've got unfortunately the EA games, launcher and Rockstar Launcher and that's really about it. There are a lot of them and frankly there should be like maybe two, three. But in that heyday of like, look, steam is making a lot of money. We should make our own game launcher. And then they do, and then they're like, this is harder than we thought. And well, the thing that Valve did very well is they're like, Hey, let's make this experience great for the customer because if we make it great for the customer, they'll want to use it. The other companies are like, Hey, let's make it great for us where we can make money and screw the customer. And everybody's like, yeah, we hate your product. Like, well tough use it anyways. And it's like, Ugh, that's how I feel about this. But all in all, from what I've been seeing from this year so far. There are some shining moments in it, but there are still some lingering problems with it. There are gonna be some games that are just going to not work because gamers are either tired of the girl boss thing, they don't wanna be lectured to, or this repre or this superficial representation is just outrageously dumb. And Intel developers actually get it that most of their target audience. It is male and a good portion of it's gonna be white males. They're not going to do very well. You can't keep on making fun of your customer and insulting your customer and expect him to buy your game. That's what happened with Dragon Age Veil Guard. You. You hated the white male. Then you lectured us on why you shouldn't mispronounce pronouns. And then you wonder why no one wants to buy your game. And that was in 2020. That was last year. Like I remember one episode, I was like, I can't remember what good game was on last year. And I think Black Myth was one of the few ones that was actually good. I. Am I skeptical about Warhorse Studios and King Income Deliverance? Yeah, a little bit. Which leads to it, which reveals that King Come Deliverance Two is going to get three expansions and a hardcore mode coming in 2025. So it comes out beginning of next month, I think February 4th. The controversy is that originally Henry was. A straight white Christian male and now you can possibly be gay in it. So the communities in our uproar are going, why are you changing it? And they're like, would you make it more interesting? I'm like, you could have just left it out and you could have just had other MPC characters be gay and try to hide it. 'cause back then it wasn't appropriate to be it. You're also gonna have a little bit more diversity in the game, which, we'll see how it plays out. I like the original one. I think the original one's great. I'm hoping this one's just as good and it's not. It's just what, like the vibe is still what the original one was, but we will see what it's all about when it comes out February 4th, but I still am optimistic that it's gonna be a great game. Very excited for. Doom, the Dark Ages when it comes out in May. User guidance probably gonna be an amazing game as well. So we'll see. There are some, like I said, there are some bright shining moments and games that we're gonna see it, but I'm really interested to see what the Double A Studios are gonna do, because. They're the ones that understand, for the most part, the gamers the best. Triple A studios have kinda lost it, and they need a, they just need better markers and better people in place that don't want to insult the white males because they are white males. We'll see. Anyways, thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew. I really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to the podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps, the Five Star Review. Will this help with the rankings? Lemme know how we're doing and join me next week as talk about what's going on in the PC gaming industry. All right, guys. Day C gets games that well you like to play to next week later.