AI-Generated Summary
Summary of Key Points from Gaming News and Insights
This week brought exciting developments in the gaming industry, offering a much-needed boost after recent challenges. Expedition 33 emerged as a standout success, selling 1 million units (excluding Game Pass) within days of launch. Developed by just 33 people, it’s already profitable and has become the highest-rated game of the year (9.6 on Metachronic). Its success highlights two key industry lessons:
- Turn-based combat can thrive in AAA games when executed well (as seen with Baldur’s Gate 3), contrasting with studios like Square Enix’s shift toward action-heavy RPGs.
- Small, passionate teams can deliver high-quality games with lower financial risk and greater creative agility, challenging the need for bloated studios (e.g., Ubisoft’s 19,000 employees).
Meanwhile, remakes/remasters continue to prove lucrative (Oblivion’s shadow-dropped remaster hit 4 million players via Game Pass), though timing is critical—too soon can dilute nostalgia.
Other highlights:
- Ghost of Yote (Oct. 2 release) adopts a non-linear story (à la Assassin’s Creed), sparking debate about narrative impact.
- Forza Horizon 5 lands on PS5, marking Xbox’s strong 2024.
- Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed roadmap reveal (April 30) and Dune game beta details.
Final thought: The industry’s future may lie in balancing innovation with leaner development—proving that quality and passion can outweigh scale.
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📜 Full Transcript
This was a very interesting week for the gaming industry that could use some wins after the many flops that we of course saw last year. So, I want to go in depth on what we can learn from the success stories this week and how it will impact the future of gaming. Also, of course, we got Ghost of Yote updates and way more gaming news to go over. So, sit back and let’s go. Expedition 33 is a huge success. At launch, they announced 500,000 units sold. And just now, a few days later, they reached 1 million sold. And this number does not include Game Pass players. As you might have heard, this title is made by 33 developers, so it likely already turned to profit and will only go on to sell more, which is more than deserved. It currently is the highest rated game of the year on Metacritic and has the highest user score I think we’ve ever seen, 9.7. Like if it wasn’t clear from my don’t sleep on this game video, you should really get it if this ever looked interesting to you. But also, if you don’t play turn-based games normally because it’s way more actionoriented. The link to that video where I explain it all if you are curious in the video description. Although I hope they launch a demo. I think that would really help. I will keep you posted on that. And this proves two interesting things for the gaming industry. one that a turn-based combat system in a AAA game could really work and will mean that your game can still sell very well. Of course, we saw this with Bouldersgate 3 already. Like, if your overall package is very appealing, people will try a combat system that they might not like at first. While we have companies like Square Enix who are afraid to embrace their roots with the recent Final Fantasy games by making them way more like a DMC style action game in an effort to appease to a more mainstream audience. But in the case of 16 and Rebirth, it never went beyond the core Final Fantasy fans and actually turned some of them off because the RPG systems were not as deep. While Clare Obscure is embracing their turn-based style, making it the best in class and that will turn heads. Another interesting lesson is of course the fact that you can make a AAA quality game with a very small passionate team and that that is maybe the way to go for many studios. Not only because your risk will be significantly lower because you only have to sell a certain amount of copies, way less than if you would have a 100 plus team working on the game for 5 years. But also because you can be more agile. You don’t have as many cooks in the kitchen trying to push the game in one direction over the other because they looked at data from marketing research, etc., etc. It’s another test bed for why Ubisoft having 19,000 employees with the output that they have is insane. and could be way lower, which might even benefit the quality. So, yeah, super interesting. Let me know, of course, if you’ve been playing the game or are looking to pick it up in the comments down below. Game of the Year suddenly got way more interesting. This game might win if GTA gets delayed. And maybe it could have been bigger if Microsoft did not shadow drop one of the biggest releases of the year a few days before it, the Oblivion remaster, of course. Like, real quick, I wonder what the plan was. They already had Expedition 33 as the big game pass title. They probably promised them to have like the full spotlight and then they kind of overshadow it with their own thing. I think it’s kind of weird. Either way, they announced that over 4 million players have already played the game. So, this does include the Game Pass numbers. Huge, of course, and also welld deserved because this re-release of course does way more than give the almost 20-year-old game more modern graphics. In these Sunday videos, I of course like to look at the gaming news from a broader gaming industry perspective. So also here, let’s look at four takeaways from this very successful launch. I think one is of course the shadow drop nature of it. It of course was already leaked. Like if you watched these gaming news roundup videos that we make every week, you already knew that this was going to happen and when it would happen, but of course many are not up to date. So then the available now was huge and I really think other gaming companies are taking note. Like some products always need that reveal to release period from a few months or even years to build up anticipation and explain the game. Like if Expedition 33 was shadow dropped, it would not have done as well as it’s doing now because nobody would know about it. But for a remaster of a well-known game in one of the biggest franchises, I think it actually benefits it. You launch it when the hype is at the highest and don’t need weeks or months to explain why an Oblivion remaster is cool. Like imagine if Days Gone Remastered was Shadow Dropped. I think that would have been way bigger. That title now came out a few days ago and I hear no one talk about it. I still need to jump in myself, but yeah, I’ve been busy with all the other games that I already mentioned here in this video. So, I would not be surprised if Ubisoft, for example, had a meeting this week about potentially shadowdropping the Black Flag remaster instead of doing the regular reveal to release strategy. I totally think that could work as well. Yes, maybe you’re already noticing it. It’s kind of a different Sunday video than normal. Want to go more in depth on certain topics and what we learned from them. I think it’s interesting. Of course, let me know your take in the comments down below. Leave a like. That would really help me out. And subscribe because we post one of these big gaming news round of videos every Sunday. Another takeaway is that remasters and remakes just remain a very good option for companies to make money. I think especially for these big RPGs that have a lot of quality content but are super hard to play or enjoy right now because of outdated gameplay mechanics like they could be huge when given the proper remaster or remake treatment. Fallout 3 of course comes to mind. The Witcher 1 is already in the works or even Witcher 2 I think could work too. Ubisoft can of course go crazy with their Assass catalog which they are obviously going to do as well. But I do think you need to have that 10 to 15 year window for it to make sense because then you also have a new group that just was not playing games or was very young when the original came out. Like on the other side of the coin is Sony who I think is actually hurting excitement for some of their titles by remastering or remaking them too early. Like imagine if they never touched Horizon Zero Dawn and then released a remake 20 years later like Oblivion. I’m not sure if they can get the same excitement if they do that. I think it’s also interesting that Bethesa went with the remastered branding for Oblivion because with the combat, the hut, and progression changes, you could argue that this is also a remake. We’ve seen remakes that change less. But I think it’s smart of them to stick with the remaster name because now it exceeds our expectations because with a remaster, we usually only expect a graphical upgrade. So, I also would not be surprised if more games just go for the remaster name and then still add way more stuff to surprise us and be have us be like, "Wa, this could be a remake instead of calling it a remake themselves, but falling short of what Capcom has, for example, done with Resident Evil." Curious to hear your thoughts, of course, on this. And now, we also this week finally got the release date for Ghost of Yote in probably the final safe week of the year if you don’t want to launch close to GTA 6, October 2nd. like that game is probably end of October or mid November if it of course doesn’t get delayed. Love the new gameplay that they showed of the new weapons. I totally think that that will be one of the biggest strengths of this sequel instead of only having a katana. But the big news is that unlike Ghost of Sashima, Yote will have a more open approach to the story where we can choose to go after the targets in the order we want, Assassin’s Creed Shadow style. And I know not everyone liked that in Shadows. I personally like the freedom in open world games. And if there are actually gameplay benefits like big unlocks, like new weapons linked to going after one target before the other, I think that could be really cool. Then everyone’s experience with the game will be different. I got the Kusariama as the first unlock, you maybe as the last one. I think that could be cool. But yeah, the question marks of course then still remain regarding the narrative. Can it still have that great buildup like Tsushima if we get way more control ourselves? We’ll go a bit more in depth on this on the react channel soon, but totally check out our trailer and info breakdown video already if you haven’t by clicking the link in the video description. A ton of info in that video. This coming week, the pre-orders for Ghost of Yote actually go live on May 2nd to be precise, 10:00 a.m. local time, which is 10:00 a.m. Eastern in the US. So, you have to get up early if you are on the West Coast to secure your collector’s edition if you want. Although I’m curious how fast they will go for $250 for a similar mask compared to the collector’s edition of the first game. I would have preferred an actual statue for Yote, but I digress. There’s also no steelbook, which sucks. And you also get a digital code, although I don’t mind that. I think it makes more sense as more and more people don’t have a disc drive, of course, on their PS5 or PS5 Pro. Let me know if you will get it in the comments down below. Forsa Horizon 5 is launching on PS5 this week. should be another big launch for Xbox that have really found their groove this year so far, which is great to see. On April 30th, Ubisoft will announce the first post-launch plans for Assassins. Will of course cover that here and on the Assassin Raptor channel. So hopefully we get some cool stuff there. I’m sadly unable to do my Monday stream, but I will be back on Thursday with the weekly reset shadow stream here on the channel with of course a news roundup like this at the end of the week. So subscribe to not miss anything. A like would really help me out and check out our video preview for the new Dune game by clicking on the screen where you can also win beta codes. By the way, I will speak to you soon.