Welcome to the Inside Games Roundup, the only gaming news show brave enough to make it through the entire episode without asking you for $150. Yes, that’s right. Blizzard just dropped a berserk crossover in Diablo I and we’ve got a blatant cash grab to talk about. We’re we’re talking alltime great here. Uh Lawrence is away on vacation right now. That’s why it’s just Brian and I for the roundup. So, let’s continue with our stories. The Diablo event includes six themed cosmetic packs, four class specific outfits, including the iconic Berserker armor, a waror mount, and a pet. It all sounds really super cool, right? Until you realize there’s actually no bundle, no discount, and the entire collection adds up to a soulc crushing $150. Yeah, and I crunched the numbers for you guys. Each armor set clocks in around 2,800 platinum. That’s roughly 25 bucks a pop. Now, if you want the mount, that’s another 25 bucks. What if you want the pet? Oh, you can save money. That’s $22. Uh, but thanks to Blizzard’s microtransaction tiers, you’ll need to cough up basically 150 bucks for the biggest platinum pack just to afford it all, leaving you with 2,000 useless leftover currency and of course, a lingering sense of betrayal because it is not worth this money. Oh my gosh. Uh, as Reddit user, that sucks. As Reddit user pew pew to the face pointed out, the skins combined cost more than double the price of the game and its DLC. Yeah, and it’s really a massive bummer for a number of reasons. This was the first ever external IP collaboration for Diablo. Teaming up with a legendary manga series makes total sense. Blizzard teased it for weeks and now something with a ton of potential just turned out to be a pretty naked cash grab. Um, they I I wonder I wonder if this will make money, Brian. Um, on a on a gameplay trailer, fans went off on the cosmetic prices with one fan writing, “Diablo I doesn’t deserve this collaboration from this masterpiece,” and another simply saying, “I’m uninstalling.” I feel like even Star Citizen is blushing a little bit from this. Sadly, the DLC still less expensive than some of the more egregious cosmet. I mean, they they can get ridiculous. Most recently, we had that League of Legends notorious $500 Faker skin bundle from last year, but yeah, this one uh still pretty gross. Yeah, this I don’t I mean, you know, it’s one of those things where I wonder if we’ll ever get sales numbers for this because then if we get sales numbers, we can find out if people actually decided to not buy this and then sort of steered Diablo away from this. But if League of Legends is any indication, Brian, then then there people are going to buy this. Yeah, it’s a bummer. I I get that some people, you know, just will buy anything. But you just hate and I get the argument like, well, we need to we need this to kind of fund the game, but this is a full price game. Diablo is not a freetoplay game. Yeah. No, you’re exactly right. Um, man. Oh, man. All right. Speaking of prices going up, because of course everybody knows, uh, console prices are creeping up because of the Trump tariffs. Yeah, if you were hoping to snag a new console this summer without, you know, selling a kidney, uh, you might might want to pause on that. Thanks to the recently enacted tariffs, the price of hardware in the US, it’s already rising and it could get a whole lot worse. Yeah. A new report from the Consumer Technology Association based on data from trade partnership worldwide warns that video game console prices could spike up to 69% nice in the US. Yeah. The main culprit is that 145% tariff on electronics imported from China which you know happens to be where most by far the most video game consoles are made. 87% as a matter of fact and that could push the average console price up by a brutal $428. Now, President Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate some of these tariffs he enacted because he started the trade war, not China. Uh especially after the public outcry for the last few months. Um but we are really already seeing signs of these uh these tariff effects. Yeah, Microsoft just raised the price of Xboxes in the US by as much as 130 bucks. The Series S now starts at $379.99 and the 2 TBTE Series X hit a wallet melting $729.99 and then accessories and games didn’t escape the price hike either. Nintendo for now is holding steady on the price of the upcoming Switch 2 thanks in part to its manufacturing base in Vietnam, but it’s already bumped up accessory prices and isn’t ruling out future hardware increases. Uh, President Chutara Furukawa has said that they’ll consider what price adjustments we should make if the tariffs shift further. And literally nobody knows what the what’s going to happen, not even the mad king himself, right? When you just raise prices by whim, like nobody Yeah. Nobody can predict this. Sony, meanwhile, uh they’ve yet to announce any US increases, but they have hiked the price of the PS5 overseas. So, we’ll see. Brian, we reported on this a few days ago about how Xbox was raising their prices with consoles and a lot of people were like, “You forgot to mention the tariffs. That’s the reason they’re raising the prices because of the tariffs.” That is that is one of the reasons, but here’s the problem. Once you can’t you can’t unring that bell. So once they’ve risen the price of this console and then the tariffs whatever go away or reduce or whatever happens, uh they’re never going to lower the price. That I don’t I mean that might be years away if it happens at all. Totally. I mean, look at the prices of groceries during COVID when those spiked and inflation and all that stuff. They didn’t just go back down after. They’re not like, “Oh, yeah, our bad. We’ll we’ll Yeah, it’s here to stay once they do that.” Yeah. So, these uh these tariffs are bad for basically everybody. So, uh hopefully hopefully these will lighten up and I guess whatever uh all these countries will start doing a little more negotiating. They just they affect everything too. like I like to build those little Gundam models, Gunpla. And they were like, “Yeah, we we might we we might have to change the price because of the tariffs.” So, it’s just like everything. We’re so interconnected all over the world. It’s not just one or two. It’s going to be everything. Uh allow me to quote our president who said, “Uh, Brian, you should only have two Gunpla models, not 30.” All right. So, I totally disagree. I need like 300. Okay. But yes. All right. Let’s move on to our next story. Uh, the release of the Oblivion Remaster actually helped Expedition 33. A lot of people were worried that it was going to hurt Expedition 33. Yeah. And when the Oblivion Remastered dropped the same week as Clare Obscura Expedition 33, it kind of looked like this there was going to be this weird showdown that RPG fans weren’t ready for, but uh, Clare Obscur rode the hype wave and came out stronger. So, that’s awesome. Yeah. Kepler Interactive senior portfolio manager Matt Handra said, “We felt pretty confident that we could stand beside it, crediting the game’s distinct identity, Game Pass debut, and growing momentum. And it turned out the flood of RPG chatter actually boosted both games with Kepler saying it was like a barbenheimer on social media cuz it it it really was. Everybody was super excited about both games. Yeah, you love to see that. And RPG fans speaking as well, we can play a lot of games at once. Uh and in the end, uh both of them found big audiences. Claire Obscure sold a million copies in 3 days, more than a million copies. Oblivion remastered clocked in at over 4 million players. According to the researcher Aier, 35% of Clare Obscure players also played Oblivion, showing that yeah, RPG fans didn’t pick sides, they just played more games. So, that’s awesome. Love to see it. Really good for all of us. Uh, and speaking speaking of good for all of us, apparently Doom: The Dark Ages is okay. ATM. Yeah, I looked at the reviews. Uh, it releases soon. Uh, they are more than decent, I would say. The PlayStation 5 version sitting at a solid 84 on Metacritic. Reviewers praising particularly the new shield and parry mechanics. They’re super fun, Brian. I played a bunch of it. Uh, the video games, yeah, they’re really, really fun. Video Games Chronicle wrote, quote, “While not every new addition works, the game’s new open zones are a treat, and the Doomslayers arsenal still incredibly fun to run around with.” Dexerto said that it has quote utterly fantastic combat and that momentto moment action is among the best in series history. That’s awesome. Ultimately though, they they dinged it a little bit and said it falls short of the high bar it set with Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, but that’s a really high bar in fairness. The game releases next week, May 15th, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S. If Lawrence were here, I promise you he would tell you that he’s been having a very, very good time with it. Uh, I have played a number of hours of Doom: The Dark Ages. I very much recommend this game as well. Um, and I feel like you can’t go wrong. There’s an early access period, but once it goes on Game Pass, give it a shot. I I played 2016 and absolutely loved it. Uh, I didn’t play Eternal for some reason, but yeah, I’m totally going to check this one out. It’s great. It’s super fun. Uh, moving on to our next story. Uh, Epic admits that this Epic Store sucks. I read Tim Sweeney talked about how the Epic Store is not very good. Tim has his problems, but I love when he just gets candid. Uh, yeah, the now the Epic uh Epic Game Store launcher, I I guess you could say it’s improved over the years, but even even CEO Tim Sweeney agrees it’s still not great. In a recent interview, Tim Sweeney said flatly, “The Epic Games launcher is clunky.” citing years of disappointing people and failed attempts to fix the Epic Games launcher. It is very clunky. Yeah. He told the podcaster Lex Freeman, “We’ve not put enough emphasis on the quality of life features. We’ve recognized this very clearly multiple times and we’ve gone through multiple refactorings, but you know, that’s definitely been a disappointment to us and to a lot of users.” Sweeney also restated his long-held position that the Epic Launcher shouldn’t adopt all features offered by Steam, but said wants all the convenience features that makes it as easy and fun to use as Steam. And it really is more clunky than Steam. And I I will say Steam has been was clunky for years and years and years as well. And Steam took I want to say 15 years to get actually like a an app that I wanted to have launched on my computer. Um, and Epic’s still not really there yet. This is what happens when you try to reinvent the wheel, too. I I’m I’m all for competition and all that, but it’s like Yeah, Steam is like you said, I had decades now to and people hated Steam when it launched, too, but um yeah, it’s been a while. All right, let’s do a 5-second review. This is Bellatro. I know I’ve reviewed this before, but I was at the gym this morning and I was in the restroom on the toilet doing a run and I looked up. I had been in the bathroom for 20 minutes playing. I thought they were going to like throw me out when I realized what I had done. I I have 130 hours in this game, Brian. Uh and it’s uh I just won’t stop. I can’t stop and I don’t even want to play it anymore. I just I just keep playing it. the the I had gotten it to where all I had to do was play a pair each time and it would it would just you know I you know when you kind of break the game almost it was it’s so addictive. It’s awesome. Let’s move on to the games coming out this week. First up, Palia. Craft, cook, fish, and farm with friends as you live the life of your dreams and discover an enchanting adventure filled with colorful characters and a mystery to unravel. Comes to PS5 and Xbox Series X May 13th. Next up, The Precinct of Verno City, 1983. Gangs rule the streets and your father lies restless in his grave. Clean up the city, uncover the truth, and embark on thrilling vehicle chases through destructible environments in this neo- noir action sandbox police game. It comes to PC, PS5, and the Xbox Series X, May 13th. Next up, Doom: The Dark Ages is the prequel to the critically acclaimed Doom and Doom Eternal that tells an epic cinematic story of the Doomslayer’s rage. Players will step into the bloodstained boots of the Doomslayer in this never-before-seen dark and sinister medieval war against hell comes to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X May 15th. And last, but certainly not least, Capcom Fighting Collection 2. Capcom’s new fighting collection hits the stage. Choose from fan favorites like Capcom versus SNK 2, Mark of the Millennium 2001, and Project Justice to 3D action games like Power Stone and Power Stone 2 in this collection of eight classic fighting games. Comes to PC, PS4, Switch, and the Xbox One May 16th. 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