139: I Need A Tongue Scraper!

[0] What's going on, everybody?

[1] Hello.

[2] Welcome to the program.

[3] We're here.

[4] It's Tuesday.

[5] And this is the Jeff Gerstmann Show, your home for video games news.

[6] Video games news.

[7] In the land of video games, one man stands alone and his name is Super Mario.

[8] And he's here.

[9] It's a him.

[10] Hang on.

[11] Oh, wrong button.

[12] Mushroom kingdom.

[13] Here we come.

[14] Okay.

[15] Now it's, uh, now it's, it's, uh, it's, it's bonafide.

[16] I think is, as how, I think that's, that's a can't canonized.

[17] Will you join a gang?

[18] What do you, uh, I don't know.

[19] Um, I was out last week at the P .O. Box picking up some things and getting into a fight with the people at the P .O. Box place over a missing package.

[20] And I went to there's a place nearby there that, you know, they get a little out there with some of the energy drinks they stock.

[21] Most of the places around me are really.

[22] Just stocking the bear like like Rockstar feels like it's it's on the way out in some of these locations like there's not a lot of shelf space devoted to Rockstar.

[23] It's a lot of monster.

[24] It's a lot of the weird Red Bull flavors and all of that stuff.

[25] But it's a lot of ghost and it's a lot of C4.

[26] And that's kind of cool.

[27] I don't know.

[28] I think that Ghost in C4 makes some solid stuff.

[29] But I'm always on the hunt for weird stuff.

[30] And it's been harder and harder to find weird stuff.

[31] Such that I was like, maybe this stuff is just solidified.

[32] And now we're down the weird road.

[33] Yeah, and like Alani New and Celsius, which are all garbage.

[34] That stuff is all trash.

[35] Celsius is absolute ass.

[36] and i wonder you know like oh now that now that everyone's just making pre -workout and putting it into a can um you know did the other did a lot of other companies kind of get scared away and yeah i don't know you don't see as many like regional or weird drinks but i did find a couple and so i grabbed one we tried one last week and it made its way to the uh to the near the bottom of the list here this is if you go to energy .guard .bike you can see the energy drink rankings I'll put them on screen here for people who are watching the video.

[37] Oh, that didn't.

[38] Oh, I need to do this.

[39] There we go.

[40] The latest was Pro Baller Sugar Free Zero, which made its way into the number 174 spot out of 181.

[41] Not a good drink.

[42] So proving that I'm...

[43] Well, I'm an idiot, but whatever this is already paid for.

[44] So I got to drink it.

[45] I mean, I don't want to go to waste.

[46] Uh, so I have a pro ball.

[47] This is pro baller.

[48] Wild berry zero is what I have here.

[49] And I'm hoping that the flavor of wild berry will chase away the flavor of, I don't know, man, stale piss.

[50] I don't feel like that.

[51] Whatever pro baller has going on.

[52] It was like, it was like a battery.

[53] It was like a sour battery.

[54] I don't know.

[55] So I'm hoping that maybe this will be less terrible.

[56] I brought a backup drink just in case, so I don't know.

[57] Let's just get to this.

[58] Let's just get to this.

[59] The other one smelled like an effervescent, like a Fresca almost, or like a 7 -Up.

[60] This smells exactly the same as that.

[61] This smells exactly the same as that.

[62] God damn it.

[63] I don't want, all right, well.

[64] It was a drink that stuck with me when I had it on Friday.

[65] This smells like, oh man, okay, all right, here we go.

[66] Let's try this.

[67] Ah, oh no, okay.

[68] So it's, oh, there's a wild bear, okay.

[69] It's exactly the same as the other stuff.

[70] The Pro Baller Sugar Free Zero, except that over.

[71] So it tastes like nothing.

[72] And then the flavor sets in and it's real bad.

[73] The whatever acidic, nasty, just the all of the poison part of it sets in is how the other one worked.

[74] This one, the bad flavor starts to set in and then you're hit with a rush of wild berry for about, I don't know, half a second.

[75] And then that wears off in favor of the just the rank.

[76] And so my tongue feels like it has been.

[77] Like, you know, it's it's it's like I'm it's it's like I let it's like I'm drinking water that I let a bunch of dirty pennies soak in for like an hour.

[78] Mixed with like, yeah, kind of like licking a battery with a little bit of a berry in there.

[79] Oh, that's not better.

[80] Nope.

[81] Ah!

[82] Nope.

[83] Still bad.

[84] Ooh, okay.

[85] It makes my tongue want to curl up into a U shape, which my tongue can do that.

[86] I don't know.

[87] You know, some people can't do that.

[88] I feel bad for them.

[89] It's just, okay.

[90] Yeah, that's just as bad.

[91] Okay, we need to get this on the list and, oh my.

[92] Okay.

[93] All right.

[94] Okay.

[95] I'm fine.

[96] It's a lingering flavor that really sticks to your tongue.

[97] That really, really sticks to your tongue in a way that I wish...

[98] Oh, okay.

[99] Okay.

[100] This is slightly better than Pro Baller Sugar -Free Zero, but it is still worse than Bang Purple Guava Pear, which is at number 173 here.

[101] So congratulations.

[102] Oh, fuck.

[103] Pro baller.

[104] What is this called?

[105] Wildberry zero.

[106] This sucks.

[107] This is a, this, this drink is bad.

[108] This is a bad drink.

[109] Don't drink it.

[110] Uh, you know, if you're with any luck, you'll have a hard time finding it.

[111] Cause it's not something that, you know, like, it doesn't seem like it has amazing distribution.

[112] Um, Oh man, I don't, that's going to be with me for a while.

[113] That's going to be...

[114] I need to...

[115] Okay.

[116] We're going to take a break.

[117] I'm going to go rinse my mouth out and get my backup drink.

[118] Fuck.

[119] Oh, man. Okay.

[120] I'll be right back.

[121] I'm going to go wash my tongue.

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[156] All right, we're back.

[157] And, um, I have my, I, I brought a, I got a, a rockstar fruit punch.

[158] And, um, that's way, that's way better.

[159] That was a bad, it was a bad time.

[160] Um, I, I, I should buy a tongue scraper and scrape.

[161] I should scrape it.

[162] to try to get the rest of this funk off it's yeah it's not not a good not a good time but you know what is a good time tokyo extreme racer um streamed a little bit of that last week and i've been playing a little bit of it since it's great that this game is this great that this game exists that genki still exists that this is all that what an amazing turn of events here i think you know there's not a lot of feel -good stories in video games these days, but there's something that feels good about the very idea that this game and this franchise can still exist in any way, shape, or form.

[163] It seems like, you know, just that type of driving game from a bygone era, it is, it is, it is a driving game from an entirely different era.

[164] They don't make fun, weird, separate driving games anymore, you know, like anymore, you know, everything just boiled down to licensed car extravaganza, and that's all you really get anymore.

[165] And so the, you know, with very rare exceptions, but even the exceptions don't never feel like they're really getting it done.

[166] And so something about this as like a cool throwback to the game that this franchise has always been exactly like this, basically, you know, some of the trimmings have changed, but.

[167] But this is basically what this game is.

[168] You are racing around in a circle on Japanese highways and you come up behind racers and flash your lights at them.

[169] And that starts a race against that rival.

[170] And then like literal life meters appear at the top of the screen.

[171] And whoever gets ahead and stays ahead for longest, generally speaking, wins the battle.

[172] You know, the life bar will start to drain out if you're if you're behind or if you're crashing or, you know, or whatever.

[173] And.

[174] That's that leads you to get more credits that you use to buy more upgrades and you can buy different cars.

[175] And, you know, that's the kind of the basic concept that fuels the entire thing.

[176] And.

[177] It's very simple, it's very straightforward, but it's very fun.

[178] It feels very different from the average racing game by default.

[179] They turn on this.

[180] Um, assist that will stick you to your lane and, you know, you're driving on a highway, so it's like a two lane road and the, you know, the, the, the bends and curves on it are what they are.

[181] It's not like you're getting these weird hairpin turns or anything insane like that.

[182] Um, but you do get turns that you'll have to slow down for, you know, and you have to be dodging traffic because it's, you know, it's nighttime on the Tokyo highways.

[183] It's just got such a great sense of style to it.

[184] You know, that.

[185] That style of the kind of Japanese, like the real Japanese highway system is such a specific thing that I saw in so many video games before I was able to see it in real life.

[186] And I mentioned this when we were playing it last week, but the.

[187] It was a great moment for me, finally, when, you know, because when you get to the airport.

[188] When you land in Tokyo, you don't really land in Tokyo.

[189] Narita Airport is like an hour outside the city or something.

[190] It's a bit of a trek, and there are a few different ways to get into Tokyo.

[191] The first year that I went, the thing we did was we took a bus.

[192] They call it a limousine bus.

[193] And you get on the limousine bus, and it drives you around to all the different hotels.

[194] uh in you know you you tell them what hotel you're going to and whatever and everyone gets on the bus and loads all their luggage on and you go and it's a very nice like relaxing ride it's not it's not the train when you take the train in it's it's the train and you're standing there with all your luggage on the train with a bunch of other people crammed in and it's you know that's that's and then you're getting to shinjuku station and you're rolling your luggage from the station to the hotel and all this other stuff and um so this just pretty much takes you right to the door And the side benefit of that is that you get to ride in on, you know, the roads and normally you get in and it's daylight hours, but there've been a few flights I'd taken over the years.

[195] And finally I took one that, um, that, uh, got in at night.

[196] And so it was this nice relaxing ride, uh, through, you know, all of this different, you know, the, the highways and stuff like leading into Tokyo.

[197] And you see all that stuff and you just go, oh, shit, this is.

[198] Ridge Racer is real, like all of that stuff is based on the way, you know, it's like like highways and stuff like that here don't really look quite like that.

[199] They're a lot wider usually, but, you know, highways and freeways here in the States are not it's not quite the same thing.

[200] Not as many tunnels, for example.

[201] And so, you know, you see all of the kind of.

[202] Going in and out of all these tunnels.

[203] And doing all this stuff.

[204] And you're like oh wow.

[205] It's just a great way to go.

[206] It's a great way to go.

[207] I recommend it.

[208] I recommend the bus.

[209] I assume the bus is still there.

[210] And a voice will come on.

[211] As you're going.

[212] And tell you about.

[213] Remaining seated.

[214] While you're on the bus.

[215] A nice lady will tell you nice things.

[216] So Tokyo Extreme Racer, you know, it is also based on that same real -world highway system, and it's just got such a style to it.

[217] And it's awesome to see.

[218] It's awesome to see another game kind of representing that aesthetic.

[219] and it's an early access they're going to add more stuff to it but it sounds like there are already like 200 rivals in it and you know there's a whole skill tree and you're earning skill points and buying parts upgrades for your cars and you know you can adjust the ride height after you've installed you know different uh you know springs and suspension and like like the sort of things that you might expect the car upgrades to to grant you in a more simulation style game um This has a lot of that as well.

[220] And I haven't really messed with that aspect of it too much because I just haven't had to.

[221] But a lot of that stuff is in there.

[222] And you should at least give it a look.

[223] I ran that video last week.

[224] It's on YouTube.

[225] Go check it out.

[226] And get a look at the game for yourself.

[227] It's such a highly specific style of game that...

[228] It's it's kind of not for everyone.

[229] You know, the the like one on one racing, the life meter, like all of that stuff is highly specific.

[230] I think it would it would probably appeal to more people now than it did when the games were coming out before.

[231] Strictly because there is such a lack of variety in the racing game space that I think that, you know, it's that that that that is something that.

[232] is just fantastic to see and so you know it's uh it's uh you don't you don't get a lot of this anymore and and so i i would i would recommend you go give a look to uh to to tokyo extreme racer um that's most of what i've been playing it's like it's like a weird nicely relaxing um almost did you like them when they originally came out no not at all like not even like in a world where there were a zillion racing games that were coming out all the time Those games always just felt weird and just like felt like barely like it was just like such a subset of a subset of like, oh, I'm just going to do these straightaway races on this like loosely populated freeway over and over again.

[233] Like what?

[234] And it wasn't until I decided I wanted to get all the achievements in the Xbox 360 version of the game that I really spent a lot of time with one and spending that time with it gave me a respect for that franchise that I just never really had before.

[235] you know, it takes some time to sink in a little bit and really feel like, like, no, I'm out here on these roads.

[236] I'm out here trying to, I'm fighting, I'm fighting these rivals, these, these rival gangs and I'm beating their leader.

[237] And I'm, you know, like, like all of this sort of stuff that, that comes with that, like the, the kind of loose storyline that is associated with, with all of this is, uh, is really fun as well.

[238] Um, and it's cool.

[239] Yeah.

[240] It's just, it's, it's a cool game.

[241] It's, it's cool to see.

[242] Um, it's cool to see this existing, especially in a world where, you know, it feels like we're getting fewer racing games all the time.

[243] Um, for me, it's been that in virtual fighter five, which just got a patch yesterday, I think, but there were no notes associated with it.

[244] There've been some complaints about the net code in that I've had some, I've had mixed experiences online with that game.

[245] Of course it is supposed to have rollback and, and, and all of that.

[246] And, uh, you know which is usually supposed to be the kind of the gold standard for online play but it just isn't right um it is it is like laggier than it should be more rollback frames than it should have and and all of that so it feels like something that needs to to be changed there oh i have not played it since that patch dropped i don't know if that patch did anything on the uh netcode side of things but um it's weird because the netcode in the beta I was having much cleaner matches more often in, in the beta that they had than I am in the, um, in the, the final, the final game.

[247] But maybe that's just a factor of like, not a lot of people bought it.

[248] And so I'm fighting against people that are overseas or, you know, I don't, you know, there's a, a number of things there, but I, I've been mostly been playing that like at weird hours.

[249] So maybe that's, maybe that's part of, um, maybe that's part of why, um, I also tried playing Spider -Man 2, which came out on personal computers.

[250] It came out for Windows this last week.

[251] And yeah, it has not run great.

[252] People were wondering, hey man, Spider -Man is supposed to be coming out tomorrow and they haven't put out any kind of specs or any information about the PC version of the game.

[253] What's going on?

[254] They've been weirdly quiet about it.

[255] And then like the day before launch, they dropped a bunch of like, here's the here's the specs.

[256] And and there you go.

[257] And unlike a lot of the other first party Sony releases that are coming to PC, a lot of like a lot of these other PlayStation ports to PC.

[258] Have have been.

[259] treated or or presented at least in a loving fashion um going so far as to like be like hey also uh this this thing is uh it's steam deck verified look at this it's verified on steam deck isn't that cool gotta get it spider -man 2 not verified on steam like uh no not a lot of information at all about there on um on the uh on steam deck compatibility and you know the the specs and everything so you you get the impression that maybe this thing just uh you know i i don't i don't like using the phrase king that it came in hot because every game does um but you know one one wonders if this was a real down to the wire situation or something because aspects of it seem rougher than well not every some of the there's been a couple of the other playstation pc releases that have been that have been weird also um but this one maybe feels like the most like okay this one is this one is is kind of effed uh this is also also the first game in what i i understand to be the new way forward for psn accounts on pc um they put out a another blog post about this stuff um they have made it optional for single player games and what they are doing is if you if you do choose to link your PSN account to any of these games they will give you bonus stuff so like you know for Spider -Man I think it's it's probably the suits that you got if you pre -ordered it on PS5 or something and like a couple of stat points or something I want to say that's what they did for for the PlayStation versions of Spider -Man.

[260] It was always like suits and maybe a couple of points and, you know, and I think God of War and Last of Us and stuff have similar bonuses and stuff now.

[261] And that'll be optional.

[262] So that's kind of splitting the difference.

[263] I fully expect that anything they do that has any kind of multiplayer whatsoever, that is going to be back to a requirement.

[264] So don't, you know, don't take this as like a huge reversal on a policy.

[265] standpoint it's more like okay we can get away with this and this will you know this will freak people out a little less or whatever the situation is I look at it as like you know so many different publishers and I don't like it anywhere but at this point singling out Sony on this stuff when you know 2K and so many other companies have done their own custom login and everything else it's you know a little weird the Hell Diver situation was strange because they, you know, they changed midstream and were like, oh, now you're going to need to tie up a PSN account if you want to do this.

[266] And they should have just been clearer about all of that and all of the messaging and everything else.

[267] But like recent 2K releases, like that tennis game they just put out, like you couldn't even.

[268] Pretty sure I couldn't even get past the main menu of tennis unless I tied up a 2K account.

[269] But yeah, I would fully expect anything that has any kind of multiplayer will require you to tie your PSN account because that's how they're going to build all of that stuff.

[270] But here they're going to make it more of a bonus, which is probably like a smarter way to go.

[271] I mean, you know, ultimately like, you know, the method, like the people running PlayStation tended to see the PC versions as a demo for you buying a ps5 as like oh you're gonna play one or two of these games on pc and then you're gonna say i can't wait six months i've got to buy a playstation 5 so i can get these games day one that seemed to be their mentality or the the concept there that they were like oh so you know like they they didn't necessarily view them as like here's a great way to make more money on games um i'm sure that was you know obviously like part of the process but like Internally, I know there was some, my understanding is that they largely viewed those and that they gave quotes as much publicly when this stuff was first rolling out, that they viewed it more as like a way to get you interested in buying a PlayStation, which feels incredibly backwards to me. Which feels like just a very suspect, like it just, you know, yes, like will, does that happen?

[272] I'm sure.

[273] I'm sure there's someone who said, oh, I played The Last of Us on a PC, and then I couldn't wait for them to bring Last of Us 2 to a PC, so I went and bought a PlayStation.

[274] Sure, it's a non -zero number, but the idea that that's going to be some dramatic lift in the PlayStation install base just seems ridiculous to me. So this change feels like it's more in line with...

[275] reality and how people want to use this stuff while still giving them opportunities to sign you up, get your email address, and maybe do some marketing to you by like, hey, it's PlayStation.

[276] It's over here.

[277] We got a little bit of it.

[278] We got some more of this over here if you want to hook it up to your television.

[279] And then you say, no, I'm all right.

[280] Just put it out on the thing I already own.

[281] I'm not going to go spend $500 to $700 for a potentially less powerful thing to run your games on.

[282] Um, so yeah, I don't know.

[283] It's, uh, I, I, all of this, I think leads down the same road.

[284] We were talking, um, last week with Adam, just about the, the very nature of where all of this leads and, and kind of the, the Xbox process and how they are, you know, they are just a, they are a multi -platform publisher that happens to make a console, um, more and more these days.

[285] And I, I do think that Sony is, you know, these games are very expensive to make.

[286] I, I, I really, this, this feels more like a shift to a shift that aligns them with reality of just like, okay, we don't need your PSN account.

[287] What we do need is for more people to buy these big games because they're incredibly expensive to make.

[288] And we maybe don't care where you, like they care where you buy them.

[289] They would prefer you buy them on PlayStation because they get to keep.

[290] that 30 % that valve gets or epic or whatever the percentage that epic takes these days.

[291] Um, 12, I don't know.

[292] Um, and, um, and they get to sell you a console and all of those other things.

[293] They would very much rather you, you play it on PlayStation, but they are willing to accept your money at a later date on a platform, uh, more of your choosing.

[294] As long as that choosing is not an Xbox.

[295] Um, I wonder if we get there eventually.

[296] I wonder if we get there eventually that they say, hey, actually, this stuff is so expensive that even if the Xbox console is not moving major numbers, it's a waste of our, like, we're not getting maximum benefit out of this product unless we also put it on an Xbox or something like that.

[297] Like, I could see it, but it's a numbers thing at some point.

[298] You know, that's just based on how much money they think they could make selling that stuff on Xbox.

[299] Because I think now they've got numbers going the other way.

[300] I think you'll see numbers now that Call of Duty is always going to be a bit of an outlier because it is the most popular, biggest selling game in the world every year.

[301] But when they put that thing on Game Pass, it didn't lead to a bunch of people abandoning PlayStation and all of that other stuff.

[302] So I think you look at that stuff and go, okay, if people are interested in their ecosystem of choice, And they have numbers based on MLB The Show also, more directly.

[303] When Major League Baseball stepped in and said, we're tired of our game only being exclusive to one system, do something about it.

[304] So they have some of that data there as well.

[305] So I wonder, again, MLB The Show appearing on Game Pass probably didn't lead to a rush of people dropping their PlayStations and abandoning them in favor of an Xbox.

[306] You know, maybe if you follow that math all the way down, you go like, oh, actually, yeah, maybe it does make sense for us to have, you know, if not day one, then eventually releasing some of these games on Xbox or something.

[307] But yeah, I saw that MLB The Show is continuing to be multi -platform, but it's not going to be on Game Pass, which is interesting.

[308] I'm sure that's just a business arrangement.

[309] you know, more than anything else.

[310] Like my understanding of how all that started was literally, it was MLB saying, dude, what are we doing?

[311] Like you're exclusive to PlayStation.

[312] Like, like we want to make, we're here to make a lot of money and there are baseball fans that don't own a PlayStation that are being left out in the cold.

[313] What the fuck is, you know, like we gotta, we gotta serve more people.

[314] And so the, you know, PlayStation was more or less persuaded to make that a multi -platform game by the license holder.

[315] Um, and, uh, you know, the world didn't end when that happens.

[316] You know, uh, I think I know some people over, I've known people over the years.

[317] I'm not currently in contact with any of these sickos.

[318] Um, but I have known people over the years that literally the only game they wanted to play was MLB the show.

[319] And they bought a PlayStation specifically for that.

[320] So, you know.

[321] when the generation shift happens, if, if MLB, the show is a multi -platform game, maybe they end up choosing Xbox next time because of game pass or something like that.

[322] There's, there's an opportunity there to, uh, you know, move some people over when, when new consoles are coming out.

[323] But, um, you know, those are numbers we won't see for a very long time.

[324] I have not played this, but I'm going to mention it because, man, I want to play Eternal Strands.

[325] I have it installed.

[326] I just haven't been able to get into it yet.

[327] It looks pretty rad as sort of an action -adventure.

[328] It's the sort of thing that I think if you were looking at it by old console genre standards...

[329] For a minute there, I was going to call it an action RPG, but that's such a specific connotation.

[330] It is not Diablo.

[331] But to me, it reminds me a little bit of, just from the trailers and some of the other stuff, it reminds me of that Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning game.

[332] The only Amalur game that made its way to shelves before Curt Schilling stole all that money or whatever the fuck that scumbag was doing.

[333] And yeah, so it kind of reminds me a little bit of that, like kind of a console -y role -playing game sort of thing.

[334] Seems like it has some interesting combat options.

[335] And I liked Kingdoms of Avila Reckoning, so I don't mean that as like, I don't mean that in a like a F this game kind of way.

[336] I mean it more of like a, it looks kind of like a throwback, like that sort of.

[337] that sort of quest based action adventure thing that we don't really see much of anymore.

[338] And, and I could go for, I could go for some of that right now.

[339] I have just not had time to, to dig into it just yet.

[340] So hopefully this will be the week.

[341] Hopefully this will be the week for that.

[342] and that's you know like yeah i don't know man call of duty started a new season and added some maps and i don't know they didn't change the menu music i was hoping they would why is it that call of duty's battle pass they do this like uh they do this uh tiered battle pass system where they will sell you a more expensive version of the battle pass called black cell and you can get the black cell version of the past and uh you come with a black cell versions of the skins and they look so fucking bad like they're all like I look like fire and there's literal smoke coming off the skin and ash and then but the regular version of the skin is like it's a knight and he's got swords on his back and all this other stuff that just it just looks fucking stupid like I don't mind like anytime they do any licensed whatever and they bring in licensed content like they brought in squid game characters or whatever I think that stuff generally looks okay.

[343] There's just something about literal, like fantasy style.

[344] Like I'm a knight and I have swords or I'm a big demon.

[345] Like the, the one crossover, like the Diablo stuff I thought looked really shitty.

[346] Um, that stuff just, that is the only stuff that feels so dramatically out of place to me. You want to play as Snoop Dogg in a Call of Duty game?

[347] I'm like, yeah, that, yeah, that, of course you do.

[348] We all do.

[349] Of course you do.

[350] Um, like it, it makes a ton of sense, but when you put in like Lilith from Diablo, I, yeah, it's like, yeah, I guess actually, yeah, maybe, maybe you don't want to play as Snoop Dogg so much anymore.

[351] That's really two for two.

[352] Well, two, two for three on that, isn't it?

[353] Nicki Minaj and Snoop Dogg.

[354] Yeah.

[355] I don't know.

[356] Choose better next time.

[357] Choose better next time.

[358] Activision.

[359] Who, who you, what, who are you putting in the next?

[360] Who are we putting in the next hip hop pack?

[361] JPEG Mafia.

[362] He's a veteran.

[363] It's a perfect fit.

[364] Put a Kimber in there as a blueprint.

[365] And that's it.

[366] That's my only advice.

[367] Of course, the new JPEG Mafia release came out yesterday.

[368] It is a director's cut of his previous album.

[369] Added a bunch of tracks to it.

[370] It's good.

[371] It's good.

[372] He's good.

[373] He's good.

[374] JPEG Mafia is good.

[375] I like JPEG Mafia.

[376] I like JPEGs.

[377] Why don't we take another break?

[378] We'll come back.

[379] We'll get into the news.

[380] Okay?

[381] Sound good?

[382] Good.

[383] We'll be right back.

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[410] All right, let's get into the news right here, right now.

[411] Right here, right now.

[412] I haven't played Eternal Strands and I haven't watched Botchamania 505.

[413] I'm behind.

[414] I'm behind.

[415] Back when the...

[416] So, you know, there's been a little bit of rain here in Southern California and the gigantic fires that burned up a lot of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena and a whole lot of brush and, you know...

[417] fields and such in the area um those are all fully contained um in the middle of all of that which was like a two or three week stretch of absolute chaos and uh me running my air purifiers and looking at maps of fires and going well that fire is right there and the wind is blowing it very dramatically in our direction so Should I turn the car around in the driveway in case this happens overnight?

[418] Anyway, nothing got terribly close to us where we are.

[419] But there were multiple situations where it was like, okay, there's a fire a mile away.

[420] There's a fire, okay, there's a fire here.

[421] There were just a ton of other closer, smaller fires that were...

[422] popping off all the time in the middle of all of that chaos and all of that loss of life and property you know so many people lost their homes i know i know multiple people that lost their homes um and yeah uh it's it's it's terrifying in the middle of all that was a report that um a plane a firefighting plane which they will you know they'll they'll take a plane they'll fly it over the fire and drop a bunch of water on it they can't really do it when it's too windy so like it was super windy so it was hard to hard to fight the fire that way for a while but they had planes in the air dropping uh dropping water and other stuff on the the fires in the middle of all of that was a report oh this plane had to be grounded it was on the way to drop more uh to drop on the fire It had to be grounded because a drone crashed into it and damaged the plane.

[423] And there was this swell of people in the area.

[424] I saw multiple people going like, what the fuck?

[425] What the fuck?

[426] Like, are you fucking kidding me?

[427] Someone crashed a fucking drone into a fucking plane where they like, oh, let's fly over the fire.

[428] It's going to look fucking sick, bro.

[429] Like, motherfucker.

[430] So, like, everyone was incredibly pissed.

[431] And like we need to figure out who the fuck flew this goddamn drone.

[432] They figured out who flew the goddamn drone.

[433] Turns out co -founder of Treyarch.

[434] Formerly of Skydance Interactive.

[435] Turns out it's someone in the video game with a history in the video game business.

[436] And so here we are.

[437] He was the president of Skydance Interactive.

[438] His name is Peter Ackerman.

[439] He has pled guilty, according to Eurogamer and the Hollywood Reporter, of flying the drone that grounded that plane.

[440] He could face up to a year in prison.

[441] So I'm guessing because he pled guilty and all of this other stuff, he will probably end up doing a bunch of community service and pay a bunch of money or whatever.

[442] The Eurogamer story here says...

[443] Ackman is said to have launched a drone from the top floor of a Santa Monica parking garage in an attempt to survey the Palisades fire, but eventually lost track of it a mile and a half from a starting point, at which point it collided with the firefighting plane.

[444] They eventually traced it back to him, which says he did not exactly come forward and say, it was me with the drone.

[445] It sounds more like they found the drone and said, whose drone is this?

[446] Acting U .S. Attorney Joseph T. McNally said the defendant recklessly flew an aircraft into airspace where first responders were risking their lives in an attempt to protect lives and property.

[447] The damage caused to the super scooper is a stark reminder that flying drones during times of emergency poses an extreme threat to personnel trying to help people and compromises the overall ability of police and fire to conduct operations.

[448] As this case demonstrates, we will track down drone operators who violate the law and interfere with the critical work of our first.

[449] And he is attempting to say that some of the safeguard features on the drone itself did not work.

[450] There is supposedly a geofencing feature that will prevent these drones from flying in a no -fly zone.

[451] But my understanding is that in order for that to work in a situation where there's a temporary no -fly zone, like a fire, um that you would have to have connected the drone up and all of that other stuff to uh to download whatever the the current no -fly stuff is if that if that stuff even worked it's yeah i don't and there's basically what he's saying is you know through his attorney saying that he accepts responsibility for his grave error and judgments so on and so forth however a number of mitigating factors that will come to light during the court proceedings will uh also be a part of this, I guess.

[452] But yeah, he joined Skydance Interactive in 2016 and recently left his role there, apparently, according to The Hollywood Reporter's reporting on this topic.

[453] So, congratulations, video gamers industry.

[454] You've found a way to be at the center of everything once again.

[455] Electronic Arts has issued some interesting new updates about the future of Battlefield.

[456] They've announced something called Battlefield Labs, and basically it's a, hey, we're working with the player every step of the way.

[457] We want to get your feedback early and often to make sure that we're representing the needs of the Battlefield community.

[458] Oh, God, please play.

[459] Oh, God.

[460] In conjunction with that, they have announced that Need for Speed, the developers at Criterion, primarily known for the need for, as the last developer standing working on the Need for Speed franchise, That they have been working on Battlefield for a very long time now, and that is not changing.

[461] However, they did say that Need for Speed will return.

[462] That's the news.

[463] They intend to make another Need for Speed game someday.

[464] And they should.

[465] I don't know.

[466] As we were talking about earlier, the number of different driving game franchises has just...

[467] It's been sad.

[468] It's been a very sad state of affairs.

[469] They continued to support Need for Speed Unbound, which is the most recent one, with DLC for a good long time after anyone was playing that game.

[470] Well, someone was probably playing it.

[471] But you know what I mean?

[472] I know some folks who really likes Need for Speed Unbound, and I wish I was more like them because, boy, I did not get anything out of that game whatsoever.

[473] And, you know, like by this point, you know, by the time this Battlefield game ships and then they go back and they're able to get a new Need for Speed game off the ground and and try to make something happen.

[474] It's going to be a very, very, very long time between Need for Speed games.

[475] But also, the Need for Speed series has been so disappointing for so long.

[476] What was the last actually great Need for Speed game?

[477] It was the remake of Most Wanted, right?

[478] I mean, remake.

[479] It was the Criterion version of Need for Speed Most Wanted.

[480] Which had, you know, some great multiplayer, like a lot of that stuff that, you know, you wanted out of a burnout game, they put into that Most Wanted game, just not the crashing.

[481] And that was a pretty kick -ass game.

[482] And then was it after that that they rebooted it?

[483] Yeah, 2015.

[484] That 2015 Need for Speed game where they put in the FMV and the FMV was very hilarious, but not good.

[485] I feel like that this is a...

[486] This is a franchise that is just kind of...

[487] It's felt like it's just been on the skids ever since, man. Like after that was Payback.

[488] And then after that was Need for Speed Heat.

[489] And then Unbound was December 2022.

[490] And just not, you know, none of those games are good.

[491] Payback, probably especially so.

[492] Payback was the game that was coming out right in the middle of all of the...

[493] microtransaction stuff around battlefront to need for speed had it just as bad if not worse at around the same time but all of the heat was on battlefront because it you know it was a licensed star wars game and so it was much easier for people to get angry about it um but like that the need for speed franchise has been i i think i think straight up bad man at least since 2015 if not earlier um But it felt like around the time of the PlayStation 4 launch, they really started to lose their grip on what Need for Speed needed to be.

[494] And that's not something...

[495] I don't mean that in like a...

[496] They lost their grip and oh, it's so obvious that they need to do...

[497] I don't have great answers about what you would do with Need for Speed at this point.

[498] Because I think if you go and you look at Unbound and if you go and look at Heat...

[499] Like it checks most of the boxes about stuff you would want in terms of just like, oh, well, it's an open world driving game.

[500] There's a bit of an underground illegal element to it.

[501] So you do have this kind of police gameplay around that.

[502] But I think that they just a lot of those games have felt so underwhelming and so flat and so lifeless.

[503] A lot of that stuff was made to be always online.

[504] Remember when Need for Speed came out alongside the PS4 and it was one of those second screen experience games where you could pull up your multiplayer session on an iPad and call in helicopters on the other players in your session.

[505] But the other players in your session were never near you ever because they had no reason to be.

[506] so it was like at this gigantic weight you're just like okay why is this game always online because there's a guy on the other side of the world driving great yeah thanks fun um it's uh it's sad i don't know it's a sad state of affairs like the need for speed franchise has had such highs over the years and it is it is just not it has not been It has not felt vital in a very long time.

[507] And I think now more than ever, you know, you look at Tokyo Extreme Racer, like that's fantastic as well.

[508] It's a fantastic game.

[509] It's great that it's here, but it is of a scale, right?

[510] It is of a certain scope.

[511] It is a less than full price game for a reason, you know?

[512] And I think that we need an alternative to Forza, Horizon even.

[513] And we need an alternative to Gran Turismo for sure.

[514] You know, there needs to be something else out there in the world.

[515] And the crew has not been it.

[516] I don't think the Assetto Corsa games have really been, you know, like, I don't think that those have done, you know, there's just, you need something.

[517] I think there's room specifically in the open world racing space.

[518] For something grimy.

[519] For something fucked up.

[520] You know?

[521] Like Forza Horizon is a theme park.

[522] It's literally, you know, it's like here's your Hot Wheels tracks and you're fucking looping in the air and yay!

[523] You know, like that's perfect for what that game's vibe is.

[524] It's look at our fucking never -ending EDM festival.

[525] Here's some fucking beats for you to listen to while you drive in weird loops.

[526] And it's fun, man. Forza Horizon is a fun -ass game.

[527] But it's too fucking clean.

[528] Need for Speed.

[529] Okay, here's what I would actually do with Need for Speed.

[530] I would present it as that alternative.

[531] Like, really emphasize the fucking crime.

[532] Not that you need to go GTA style or anything like that, but it needs to be like we are doing fucked up shit here.

[533] We are not in the right.

[534] We are not fucking Robin Hood street race.

[535] Like, no, the cops aren't evil.

[536] They're cops.

[537] They're evil, but not extra evil.

[538] They're not like, we're the good guys and all the mean cops wanted to like, no, the cops are not running a fucking weird drug ring that we have to bust up.

[539] The cops are not.

[540] No, they're just fucking trying to stop street racers because sometimes street racers get people killed.

[541] And you're like, yeah, man. that's right we're out here fucking shit up and crashing through billboards and all this other stuff along the way because you know you gotta you got at some point you gotta do that um i don't know man like need for speed needs to fucking it needs a grime to it it needs something it needs a certain type of grit and it doesn't it's not like oh it needs to have like We need to get influencers from the racing industry.

[542] We need to get these Hoonigan guys.

[543] Like, no, no, it's not that it needs to be.

[544] It just needs to be more fucked up.

[545] I don't know, like the everything that everything they've tried to do with along those lines, because, you know, yeah, there's, you know, they put ASAP Rocky in the new one.

[546] They try to tell a story.

[547] You know, they try to tell a story.

[548] Like, oh, your upgrade shop, and oh, the cops are bad, and oh, this is bad, and oh, this all...

[549] They're trying to give some kind of story in there, but it just never...

[550] It never coalesces into anything meaningful.

[551] They should do a better job on that front.

[552] I don't know, man. It feels like they've been trying to do that for a lot of years and just not hitting the mark.

[553] Maybe we just need an M -rated Need for Speed game.

[554] And it needs to be...

[555] Maybe in the cutscenes people get shot a bunch.

[556] I don't know.

[557] I'm trying to think, what would you do to actually make this work?

[558] But it's not easy.

[559] So, yeah, I don't know.

[560] I think like it's a really hard problem and it's only going to get harder.

[561] Like the more years away from Need for Speed, I think you you start to I imagine that you probably really get in your head about it and go like, well, what the fuck is Need for Speed in 2027?

[562] What do we do?

[563] What do we actually do?

[564] What are we actually making here?

[565] And there's probably going to be some temptation.

[566] We've got to go back to basics.

[567] And someone's going to stand up and go, what the fuck does that even mean at this point?

[568] We've rebooted Need for Speed multiple times over the years.

[569] What are you going to go back to the fucking asshole, the road and track fucking dipshit that's going to show up and fucking talk shit about your cars?

[570] Razor Callahan's dad, basically.

[571] Ah, man. I don't know.

[572] All of this could be sidestepped by saying, what if we made a new burnout game instead?

[573] I think it's been the thing that Forza Horizon has actually been really, really good at that I think a Need for Speed game could be smarter about doing going forward is Horizon is really good at bringing players together in a session.

[574] by having the forts of thons or some of the other different events, the way that they make the multiplayer work in those games is it's very much like, okay, everyone needs to drive to this location and then we're going to do a thing.

[575] And you're like, oh, cool.

[576] I'm going to, oh, that's happening right now.

[577] I'm going to go do it.

[578] Or you're not.

[579] And you know, they'll match up and do and do whatever else.

[580] Um, and so horizon has been really good about solving that problem that the first open world need for speed games had.

[581] of the first online open world Need for Speed games had where it was like, okay, there's no reason for these players to ever be in the same race ever or in the same session.

[582] Like, well, you know, this guy's over here doing his progression.

[583] You're over here doing yours and you're never going to see each other.

[584] Like Forza Horizon solved that problem and they solved it with a bunch of like fun mini game like solutions that are not just racing that, you know, there's a little bit more to it.

[585] And that spirit, the spirit of that is very much the multiplayer of Burnout Paradise.

[586] It's the, oh, we all need to drive to this location and everyone needs to do donuts until we've done X number of donuts and then we'll win.

[587] And then we go to the next one and we go and we all need to jump off this ramp and then we all need to hit this.

[588] And now there's a race and like the that sort of stuff that Burnout Paradise did.

[589] was awesome.

[590] But again, at the time, it was very session -based.

[591] It wasn't like an open world where you're drawing people together.

[592] It was everyone joined a session to do multiplayer shit.

[593] And so, I think, you know, the thing I would probably do is find a way to make a multiplayer mode that took the best of what Horizon does in terms of bringing people together while also trying to deliver something that more closely resembles that Burnout Paradise experience.

[594] Or that Burnout Paradise feeling.

[595] Because those events weren't always, in fact, more often than not, they were not competitive.

[596] They were cooperative.

[597] And so you would go in and do these co -op based goals.

[598] And, you know, everyone would just have fun driving cars fucking around.

[599] And it was cool.

[600] I would probably try to use that as the core.

[601] The problem is, you know, the Burnout Paradise stuff, the problem you run into there is because it's cooperative, you would have a lot of events that, like, would suck if someone wasn't doing it right.

[602] And so when you just randomly throw players together and they're not actually actively working together, that could be a pain in the ass in Burnout Paradise.

[603] But I think that's a solvable problem.

[604] But I would probably look at it from that angle, too.

[605] You know, like...

[606] finding ways to make that multiplayer about more than just like, here's eight cars they're going to race.

[607] I don't know.

[608] Cause like, that's so done.

[609] Who fucking cares, dude?

[610] Like, does anyone want to play a lot of multiplayer races in, they're just like straightforward races in video games anymore.

[611] I'm not sure that I do.

[612] I'm not sure that I need that, you know?

[613] If I wanted that, I would go for something more fantastical.

[614] I would, you know, like literally I'd be like, oh, you know, I could play Mario Kart or something.

[615] At least there's items or at least there's something going on.

[616] Or wipe out, you know, power -ups.

[617] You know, something fun to do.

[618] Blur.

[619] Give me blur, you know.

[620] But like the just, you know, hey, who's going to be the best racer here and all of that stuff.

[621] Like that has its place and, you know, you don't necessarily get rid of it completely, but it needs to take a massive backseat.

[622] To other cooler stuff.

[623] That you could do.

[624] And they find a way.

[625] And that helps them find a way.

[626] To make sure that everyone feels like they're contributing.

[627] And they're not losing.

[628] Everyone wins.

[629] That's the feeling you probably need to have.

[630] I don't know.

[631] It's tough.

[632] It's a tough problem to solve.

[633] Like I said.

[634] And I think it's a problem that only gets tougher.

[635] As the years go on.

[636] And so we'll see.

[637] Once Battlefield is done.

[638] if assuming that they do take this team at criterion that has been on battlefield for a very long time and say like, okay, now go make your car game.

[639] You hope that they are just like burning up with ideas that they're just like, oh my God, I can't fucking wait to get back to this fucking car game.

[640] I got nine things we're going to fucking do that are going to change the fucking world.

[641] You know, like hopefully, hopefully you got something like that.

[642] Um, cause I think if you just end up with another open world racing game and it's just like, eh, You race at night for when you race at night, the cops are out in fuller force.

[643] So you get twice as many points.

[644] All right.

[645] All right.

[646] I'm done.

[647] I'm done.

[648] Wrap it up.

[649] Meanwhile, yeah, Battlefield is going to take signups for people who want to be part of whatever early access Battlefield program.

[650] And, you know, so that's getting to a state where it is something that they're going to let more people play.

[651] And that's exciting.

[652] Like I've said, I very much would be interested in playing a new, a new Battlefield game.

[653] If it's good, they just haven't, they just haven't been good.

[654] Or rather, they haven't been good at launch.

[655] And, you know, by the time they get fixed and all of that sort of stuff, you know, everyone's kind of moved on to something else.

[656] I think some people thought that Delta Force was going to scratch that itch because it does have some very Battlefield -like undertones to one of its modes.

[657] But that game seems like absolutely fucking dire.

[658] In other EA news, after the release of Dragon Age The Veil Guard, Bioware has...

[659] lost a lot of people um the reports out of bloomberg and other spots video games chronicle has some of this as well um are kind of around the announcement that the studio is reorganizing and saying basically what the way that they phrased it was like oh uh you know we don't need a full studio right with with where mass effect is in production we don't need a full studio and so a lot of these folks that we have right now we're gonna look to move a lot of them um a lot of them out to other ea studios and place them other places like it wasn't necessarily a big layoff story though it sounds like a chunk of people have indeed been laid off um EA's financial reports pointed a finger at Dragon Age saying that it underperformed, which is unfortunate because it is a better game than that.

[660] It is quite a good game.

[661] The more time I spend with it, the more time I wish I could spend with it, really.

[662] But the way they're phrasing it, the GM of Bioware, so now that Dragon Age has been released, a core team at Bioware is developing the next Mass Effect game.

[663] Under the leadership of Mike Gamble and Preston Wanamanik, Derek Watts, Parrish Lay and others.

[664] And so more or less, this is a way for them to say, hey, we're getting rid of a lot of the people at BioWare.

[665] And, you know, good on him for being able to place other people like some of these folks at other places around EA and for not making it a massive layoff story.

[666] But but it is there.

[667] There are also there are also still layoffs involved in this.

[668] So.

[669] Yeah.

[670] Mass Effect, dude.

[671] What?

[672] I don't know.

[673] I don't even.

[674] I mean, whatever we've talked about mass effects here several times.

[675] I'm not going to rehash that whole conversation other than to say, I I'm, I'm not certain.

[676] I have not been sold on the idea of a new mass effect yet for as much as I have loved part of that franchise and that universe and all of that other stuff.

[677] I don't.

[678] That is, that is not something I need more of like that.

[679] The earth is still salted on some of that stuff.

[680] And I, I don't trust.

[681] uh a lot of that stuff now obviously a lot this is a lot of different people and it was a long time ago but they made that last mass effect game so you know maybe there's some hope there but i just yeah it's i i don't know what you're i yeah i don't know what you're hoping to accomplish because it's not like the mass effect games when they were coming out were lauded by ea as some massive sales success Like internally, I think that they probably eventually saw, there were probably some folks at that company that saw the trilogy concept and the connected games and whatever else of that original trilogy to be a fucking noose around their neck.

[682] When I think about the way that they presented Mass Effect 3 and the tightrope they tried to walk.

[683] with that game in terms of how they presented it to the public um it's you know it's a very hard problem to solve because here you are in a situation where Mass Effect 2 didn't necessarily do the numbers they hoped it would you're in a situation where it's a trilogy so you look at the sales of Mass Effect 1 and go you're gonna outsell the original and you know maybe um But you're telling a three part story.

[684] So the number of potential customers who would be interested in the third part of that.

[685] Maybe not.

[686] The massive number you're hoping to get out of a big budget release at EA at the time.

[687] And so on the business side of things, they were they were a little.

[688] They were a little underwhelmed, is my understanding.

[689] Mass Effect 2 probably ended up feeling like a success story for them, but I think around the time of release, I remember similar like, eh, yeah, this is not necessarily doing the numbers we hoped it would.

[690] There was a lot of stuff around EA at the time that was maybe not.

[691] That is my memory of it, but when it came time for them to sell three, they were trying to course correct because it was a situation where they had to find a way to get this game to appeal to people who had not played the other two games while also it being the conclusion of a trilogy that has lasted for like a fucking decade or whatever it was.

[692] And so they marketed it.

[693] I got multiple press releases from them trying to frame Mass Effect 3 as like, this is a great place to start.

[694] This is a perfect place to, you know, this is a terrific place to start the Mass Effect.

[695] You should get in here and you can play.

[696] We've put some things in here.

[697] You're not going to miss a beat.

[698] This is a fantastic place to start.

[699] You should just buy.

[700] I don't know what that experience was like, so I can't tell you.

[701] I suspect it was not a great place to start, personally.

[702] But also, the quality of that game is being what it was at the time.

[703] You know, it's not great any way you cut it.

[704] So Mass Effect 3 was, you know, qualitatively had issues on top of all of that stuff.

[705] But they've tried to walk that tightrope of like, okay, we've got to get you hyped up for the ending of this trilogy and all of the decisions you made and everything you, you know, everything has been brought to bear and now here it is.

[706] And while also saying you could just play it, you just, you just get it and check it out.

[707] You're not going to feel like you're lost.

[708] And I think the game reflects that in some ways because of how shallow so many of those interactions are.

[709] If you did play the first two games and did import that save and whatever else.

[710] I think a lot of that stuff is really poorly done.

[711] But I don't know.

[712] So I look at that and go like, well, what do you think a Mass Effect game is going to do now?

[713] After like all these years, after Andromeda, after every, you know, all of like that.

[714] It's not some beloved.

[715] I mean, Dragon Age is a much more beloved franchise, and there are people who fucking hate Dragon Age 2, and there are people who hated Inquisition when that game came out.

[716] The people that were like, oh, they've consolified my Dragon Age, and they did.

[717] Haha, they did.

[718] It made the games better.

[719] You lose.

[720] But yeah.

[721] They absolutely did do that, but I, you know, I think Dragon Age was in a better place than Mass Effect was for a good long time and Dragon Age didn't exactly, um, not blow any doors off sales wise.

[722] Um, and Mass Effect has much more shit caked on it.

[723] I don't know what you do to sandblast all that off and get it back out in front of people.

[724] Um, I just, yeah, I don't know.

[725] Uh, back when this was announced, I believe my, I believe my, what I said about this was this never works.

[726] This rarely works.

[727] Um, and here we are.

[728] The leadership at Sony has a leadership of the PlayStation division of Sony has changed.

[729] There are no longer co CEOs.

[730] There is now a sole president and CEO.

[731] There is now one person.

[732] The buck stops with him.

[733] And that is a Hideaki Nishino.

[734] He was co -CEO with Herman Holst.

[735] They were trying to do a thing where it's like, oh, on the hardware side, it's going to be this guy.

[736] And on the software studio side, it's going to be this guy.

[737] And then instead they said, hey, we don't like having to talk to two people anytime anything happens.

[738] So we're going to do this.

[739] We're going to do this and we're going to put we're going to, you know, put Nishino in charge of the whole division and Holst can report.

[740] in to to him um i think he still has a ceo title yeah he is still technically the ceo of the studio business group but from a reporting line perspective there is no way to look at that other than you are now one rung down um that's you know and and and that is how companies like it that is that is how companies like to do this They don't like to do co -CEOs.

[741] They don't like to do two people in charge.

[742] They don't like to have to, when there's messaging that has to be communicated downward, they don't like to have to talk to two people.

[743] They want to just know that there's one person they can talk to when this person is the person for all of it.

[744] They don't want to have to go like, well, okay, now I want to talk about the software side.

[745] It's like, no, just give me the top level.

[746] I'm a busy executive.

[747] I worry about movie studios and Walkmans and all of this other stuff that we make.

[748] So what the fuck are you doing over there?

[749] They just want to have one guy who's like, we're making video games.

[750] Are they good?

[751] Yeah.

[752] Great.

[753] Keep it up.

[754] Winnie Worm asks, how much of this is a direct effect of Holst championing Concord?

[755] I don't.

[756] That's.

[757] I would not necessarily.

[758] point to concord about anything that is going to be involved in modern playstation like a lot of those decisions were made under jim ryan and a lot of those decisions were you know like they they bought that studio like they did all you know there's just a lot of weird stuff along the way about that like this is not something that is going to be laid at herman holst's feet you know if uh something like lego horizon didn't sell you might go like hey isn't that your your pet probably your you know horizon's kind of your baby isn't it why did we do this again um like if those were questions that were being asked then maybe maybe you would ask some of those questions but i don't know how that game ended up being received internally um and so that's a that's a smart change i don't like i don't know it's who cares right but But that's a smart change from a like an internal process sort of perspective, probably because, again, this co -CEO thing at big companies, especially just doesn't really seem like something that works well at all.

[759] And, you know, I think I would I'm very interested to see what PlayStation looks like going forward from a software perspective, you know, with.

[760] with Holst overseeing, um, all of the studio business and all of the studios, um, you know, what, what happens there strategically?

[761] What, what are the, and what are the thoughts there around, um, what they're going to do?

[762] Because I do think that, you know, Everyone still kind of points to this like, hey, they're going to make 12 live service games.

[763] That's very old at this point and probably not the current strategy, especially in a world where they keep canceling them.

[764] And so I think you have to look at it and go like, well, what are they going to do going forward?

[765] Are they going to make more games the size and scope of Astro Bot because of that game winning awards?

[766] Or how well did that sell well enough to move things in that direction?

[767] Um, and, uh, you know, how will they end up, how will they end up moving forward, uh, on, on that sort of stuff?

[768] I suspect that Astro Bot will not be some big, there's some people in the chat saying like, oh, Astro Bot's going to be a wake up going, you know, like I, I don't, I don't think Astro Bot's impact internally on their development will be something overly dramatic.

[769] I think you will maybe see something here and there.

[770] with a little bit more of that spirit a little more frequently than you might have.

[771] It probably helps the next game like that get greenlit.

[772] It maybe helps them take a chance on something along those lines.

[773] But you're not going to look at that and go like, oh, this is going to reshape PlayStation.

[774] You're like, no. It did not do those kinds of numbers.

[775] It's just not what they're built for.

[776] You will probably still see that Astro Bot Studio continue to make a bunch of stuff.

[777] And, you know, if Sony ends up picking up some projects along the way or doing things with some of that old IP along the way, I think that that stuff you could look at is like, oh, Astro Bot kind of facilitates this sort of mentality and what have you.

[778] But no, this isn't going to reshape this organization as we know it.

[779] It's really just a matter of like, you know, how many live service games are they going to continue to chase?

[780] Like how many, you know, and what happens with the studios that they already have?

[781] You know, what happens with Bungie at this point?

[782] You know, we're past the 10 years of Destiny.

[783] They are still putting out, they just sent out a press release today for something new that's going into Destiny 2.

[784] Obviously, they've got other games in the works.

[785] They've got whatever that mobile game is.

[786] They've got Marathon.

[787] Sony still has a piece of that game, Fair Games, if that ever ships.

[788] If that ever ships.

[789] I don't know.

[790] But like, what do you do with Destiny?

[791] Do you try to recapture that magic?

[792] And do you try to make a new Destiny?

[793] Because you can't just...

[794] Adding on to the existing Destiny is not going to bring players back in the kinds of numbers that are going to matter.

[795] The way that if you made a full -on new thing and marketed it as a whole new thing and found great ways to differentiate it from Destiny 2.

[796] And a great reason to move away from some of the Destiny 2 era technology into something that was maybe a little bit more easy to work on and whatever.

[797] I wonder what you do with Bungie at this point.

[798] They're going to sell them to Microsoft.

[799] They're going to sell Bungie back to Microsoft.

[800] Bungie's just going to be like this free -floating, like, I don't know.

[801] We ran out of ideas for what to do with them.

[802] Do you want to integrate them back into the Halo thing?

[803] You want to buy them from us and do that?

[804] No?

[805] Ah, shit.

[806] Damn it.

[807] Alright, well.

[808] I, yeah, but I, I just, I don't know, you know, obviously a lot of, or, you know, some number of Bungie folks like post layoffs got centralized and moved to a central services team and, and whatever.

[809] So, you know, that kind of further shrinks what Bungie is.

[810] Um, but like, what, you know, what, what do you, what do you do?

[811] Do you do something brand new?

[812] Do you just say like, Hey, We learned a lot about running a game like this from running destiny for 10 years.

[813] And we would like to do something.

[814] We would like to do a new live service game that is not tied to that universe at all.

[815] Like, like maybe they do something that is actually genuinely new at this point.

[816] You know, the, the takes the learnings that they've gained over this last decade for all the people who were still there.

[817] I don't know.

[818] You know, a lot of people gone from that, that studio over the years.

[819] But yeah, you know, do you, it seems like that they've, that Sony at least has smartened up to the idea of getting teams who are not well versed in live service to try to make live service products.

[820] Like it feels like they've at least learned that lesson.

[821] And so you have a scenario where they're, you know, they're not going to have.

[822] blue point make this god of war thing that you know presumably evolved into a live service thing or started as a live service thing it was definitely a multiplayer thing um and the the last of us thing you know getting canned like you that is the the slow lesson that it feels like the industry is learning and it's working its way up Right.

[823] There's a lot of people on the ground that know it already.

[824] It's burned into their bones.

[825] They've been burned before.

[826] They've been like, yeah, this doesn't fucking work.

[827] It's, you know, like that knowledge feels like it's moving up the tree a little bit to, you know, hopefully you get to a point where you don't make these dumb decisions where you're just like, I don't know.

[828] These guys can make any kind of game, right?

[829] Yeah.

[830] Sure.

[831] Let's do that.

[832] And a lot of times these are the games the studios want to make.

[833] It's not necessarily even, you know, and the caveat there is that the environment is such that it is probably easier to get a game like that greenlit.

[834] And so maybe they want to make it, but they also know that this is a game that will keep the studio lights on and keep their team employed because it will be something that they can get greenlit.

[835] So when you, you know.

[836] You know, it's very easy to say, like, I can't believe they made Studio X make game Y. Oh, they have no idea what they're doing, but that's rarely how it works.

[837] Like the Suicide Squad stuff, as an example, you know, sounds like that that was not necessarily something that was purely foisted on them externally.

[838] You know, and so the management you blame at some point is the Rocksteady management, some of whom left.

[839] As opposed to like, ah, Warner Brothers forced him to, you know, like it's kind of all over the place.

[840] And so it's never as simple as like Herman Holst showed up and said, we've got to make a game that makes $2 billion a year or we're fucked.

[841] You know, it's never that.

[842] It's like, hey, creatively, what do you want to do next?

[843] And they make pitches, right?

[844] That's how most of these studios and teams work.

[845] You know, sometimes it's strongly dictated like, oh, that's an interesting pitch.

[846] But what we really need right now, is Halo 3 or, you know, like whatever.

[847] We need a sequel right now.

[848] And so we're going to go in this direction.

[849] We're not going to make this, you know, and some of that is like a writing on the wall thing, too, where, you know, probably...

[850] Battlefield Hardline.

[851] When the team behind Dead Space said, oh, you know, yeah, we had some ideas for the next Dead Space game.

[852] But we really wanted to work on this cop Battlefield game.

[853] I sat in a room and heard them basically say that.

[854] I sat in a room and saw the folks from Visceral get up in front of the assembled press and say, we had some really cool ideas.

[855] And it rarely goes in that direction.

[856] Usually you just get the, we're very excited to work on this.

[857] But they threw in a...

[858] Yeah, we had some really cool ideas for Dead Space.

[859] Those can wait.

[860] We're really excited to work on the cop Battlefield game.

[861] It just had a vibe right out of the gate where you're just like, oh, you guys are not you guys are not like you guys pitched a Dead Space game and they said no. Which again, you know, I think if you look at the sales trajectory of the Dead Space games and whatever else at the time, I think that makes a ton of sense.

[862] Like, I think you have to look at it, you know, like.

[863] The types of games that EA was going to greenlight and all of that other stuff.

[864] They were not going to make Dead Space games forever.

[865] They were not going to be allowed to make Dead Space games forever.

[866] And Dead Space 3 was an attempt for them to try to get more money out of those games.

[867] They're like, okay, well, what can we do with the multiplayer?

[868] Can we do this?

[869] Try this with a microtransaction thing.

[870] Can we mess around with this?

[871] And some people did not like that stuff very much at all.

[872] I thought Dead Space 3 was a hell of a game.

[873] It's just that stuff.

[874] dominated the conversation about Dead Space 3 in a way that it did not deserve.

[875] But there you go.

[876] Speaking of ongoing games, this is not me taking credit for a thing.

[877] This is the thing I said last week.

[878] was perhaps one of the easiest things in the world to predict.

[879] It's not some, you know, I'm not, I'm not some fucking multiverse is going to shut down.

[880] That's yeah.

[881] Like when, when the story last week hit about the head of Warner games moving on after 12 years or, or whatever, like it was very easy to look at that and go, yep.

[882] They're probably going to kill multiverses pretty soon here.

[883] And yes.

[884] Yesterday.

[885] Well, they announced it last week, but yesterday there was statements from the director of the game that Eurogamer got a hold of where he says he's in deep mourning for the game and nobody wanted this outcome.

[886] You know, sad about the outcome, but grateful for the opportunity given to us by Warner Brothers and to each and every developer on the Player First Games and WB Games team.

[887] He thanked a lot of folks.

[888] We hope we made the characters true to themselves and felt authentic to your fans.

[889] But...

[890] Yeah.

[891] Season 5 will end on May 30th.

[892] At that point...

[893] The game will be pulled down.

[894] It will no longer be purchasable.

[895] But if you do own it, you will be able to continue to play it offline, quote, for the foreseeable future.

[896] Which seems like a real weird way to phrase that.

[897] Especially if it's an offline mode.

[898] Also, well, you know, I guess they probably have to run servers.

[899] It's a shame that they could not slap together some kind of peer -to -peer -based networking for this, if that's what it's lacking, and just go to something like a more basic matchmaking kind of thing.

[900] There's no reason that this game would have to go offline.

[901] I shouldn't say that.

[902] As a non -technical person, I shouldn't say that.

[903] um it's a shame that this is something like people should be able to still play this online in some form it's weird it's weird that that it will end up being completely offline but you know server costs and whatever because because the game has a full -on economy and microtransactions and all of this other server -based checks the built -in along with whatever they do for matchmaking and online play all of that stuff is going to be pulled offline um Someone's asking, does it cost that much money to Warner Brothers to run a server?

[904] It's never about just the server costs.

[905] It's never about like, you know, hey, there's a Linux machine in the copy room.

[906] Don't turn it off.

[907] That's multiverse.

[908] It's never that simple.

[909] It is always ongoing costs related to keeping those servers running.

[910] ongoing development costs related to oh wait we found that there was a uh you know there's a weird exploit in the server code and this happened and there's a we have a security issue and someone needs to fix it and and you know like like keeping developers that are you know knowledgeable on that code and everything else like those are the ongoing costs associated with that and so um So when they pull a server down, it's like, okay, we're also not going to dedicate any human, any persons, any people to this thing.

[911] And so they end up shutting it down for those reasons.

[912] That's why it ends up being a little bit more expensive than it seems because you probably have at least one person, if not more, that you are kind of keeping half, you know, like half their time is spent, you know.

[913] or some chunk of time is spent making sure that these servers are up and running and that they're not getting hacked and all this other stuff.

[914] And so it's easier for them to just, you know, shut it down and go, okay, now we have no liability.

[915] Nothing's getting hacked.

[916] Nothing's going to happen.

[917] You would hope that someone would put together...

[918] Like I said, there's nothing that complicated about what this game is doing to be played online.

[919] So you wonder, could there be a way to slap together a private server just for the matchmaking or whatever?

[920] I don't know enough about the game in particular to know for sure.

[921] Presumably the battles were not happening through a central server or something.

[922] Not everyone was just connecting to a server and running it that way because...

[923] That would probably be a bad way to do a fighting game, even a platform fighter.

[924] So.

[925] There are players who spent $100 on this game.

[926] And.

[927] In some cases, they did not get everything that they paid for the $100 founders package for this game.

[928] gave players, and if you purchased multiple founders packages, I think you could end up with even more of them.

[929] I should look and see how many of these I have.

[930] But the $100 version of the game came with 30 character tokens, and you could use those tokens to unlock characters.

[931] Of course, a lot of those characters you could also unlock in different ways.

[932] You could grind for them.

[933] There were situations where it's like, oh, this week this character is free.

[934] Just log in and claim it.

[935] And so as a result, there were plenty of ways for you to still have those character tokens left over.

[936] And they never made enough characters for you to redeem them all.

[937] There has been zero word from anyone involved in this about refunds of any kind.

[938] I doubt that there will be, but that would be a night that I don't.

[939] Seems like that they should have.

[940] I don't know.

[941] I don't know.

[942] They should refund people.

[943] In some situations, in some situations, they should be refunding people for what they paid for the game, at least partial.

[944] In some cases, I don't know how you do it.

[945] I don't know what the right and fair way to do that is, but I do think if you've created a situation where you sold a thing based on, oh, this is going to work for the next 30 characters, and you did not meet that goal, your game got shut down before that happened, then they should be figuring out some kind of refund situation, and it's alarming in a way that they have not.

[946] even broached the subject.

[947] This is another situation where they bought the developer of this game.

[948] Warner purchased Player First Games at some point during the development of Multiverses.

[949] And so they own it.

[950] There's also a team in there.

[951] They're based in San Diego.

[952] There's also a Warner Brothers game.

[953] It was like a WB Games San Diego studio that's separate from Player First.

[954] that I believe also worked on some of this stuff.

[955] There's like, there's, there's some, some ex midway talent, um, in the mix down there in, in, in some of that stuff.

[956] I want to say Sal Davina.

[957] I mean, there's a, there's a, or like John Tobias was down there.

[958] Um, I looked this up a while ago.

[959] We had this conversation.

[960] Yeah.

[961] So yeah, John Tobias is, you know, ostensibly at, uh, WB games, San Diego, and they did do some work on multiverses, I believe, but player first games is the studio that was kind of mostly, uh, was, was, was directly in charge of that.

[962] But I want to say that WB Sandy anyway, anyway, um, while we're on the topics of shutdowns, uh, another one that I don't think anyone will be too surprised by.

[963] Midnight Society, the developer started by Robert Bolling, formerly of Call of Duty fame, 402, along with a popular creep streamer known as Dr. Disrespect, has shut down.

[964] after uh dr disrespect was outed for being some kind of weird creep i mean more for the other thing not for the not for the fucking the streaming in a toilet at e3 not no not that not that stuff the other the other total piece of shit stuff that that fucking guy did so they distanced themselves from him at that point around the Uh, reports that the reason that he was removed from Twitch and banned from Twitch or around him, uh, messaging liners, uh, at the time the studio said, well, we're going to keep going on this stuff and we're going to, we're going to keep, keep working on it.

[965] Um, but, uh, they have announced that they, this is about six months after that, that they are, uh, that they are, they are shutting down says today we are announcing midnight society.

[966] will be closing its doors after three incredible years with an amazing team of over 55 developers contributing to our new IP, Dead Drop.

[967] We are actively seeking other game studios that would be interested in offering employment opportunities to our talented team members.

[968] If you know anyone who's hiring, please forward this message to them or DM us for direct intros.

[969] Yeah, the Dead Drop thing always seemed like a bad...

[970] like like it was an nft game on top of that like they were selling early access to the game but it was like you had to buy an nft to get access to it and i there was it was not there didn't seem like there was much there on top of all that and so it was this insane so now what happens to these i imagine that these nft holders i mean let's pretend that they were holding something of value but i imagine that that I imagine that they are now holding on to absolute zip zero, a useless, a completely useless token as opposed to a mostly useless token.

[971] I don't know.

[972] that's just i don't know like i i that's i i'm i'm i want to say like i i i do feel bad for the developers who are losing you know we're going to lose jobs alongside this stuff it's a bummer but also you were making an nft game with a fucking creep attached to it he already had some stink on his name at the time that this started what did you think you know like how did you think this was going to end Um, I, it just, yeah, I don't know, man. Like the whole, the whole thing always seemed like a shit show.

[973] Um, and yeah, so I, I don't, I don't know what the fuck to make of any of that other than like, yeah, yeah.

[974] I mean, I think even if, even if they had not parted ways with that dude and that dude had not been outed, uh, this would still be an eventuality for them.

[975] Like it, it just doesn't seem, it just never seemed like something that was going to happen.

[976] or be a going concern, I suppose.

[977] Eventually, we're going to stop having announcements like this.

[978] Eventually, we're going to stop having stories like this, but we're not quite there yet.

[979] Forza Horizon 5 is going to come to PlayStation 5.

[980] They announced that it will be released on PS5 this spring.

[981] It will contain all of the content and DLC.

[982] Well, I believe they will be selling it.

[983] They're not going to automatically get it for free.

[984] But the Hot Wheels stuff, the rally pack, the things that they added to Forza Horizon 5 over time will be available for purchase as well.

[985] It will have cross -play with the other existing versions of the game, which is pretty cool.

[986] Uh, because that will just bring a bunch of new players to the game.

[987] Like even, even if you play that game on PC or an Xbox or whatever, uh, the idea of a bunch of new players, uh, coming into the fold is, is not a bad thing whatsoever.

[988] Panic button is handling the port.

[989] Um, and it'll be out in the spring.

[990] I don't know.

[991] Like that's, I, I, this is.

[992] this ties into all of the other racing game talk that I think we've been having.

[993] Cause I, there's just not a lot of games like this, especially on PlayStation because the one game like this was an Xbox exclusive.

[994] So it's, it's again, it is always nice to see more quality driving games, getting out to a larger group of people.

[995] Um, because there's nothing quite like, you know, what are you going to, you know, go play the crew motor fast.

[996] Like, no dude, you're not.

[997] Um, Motorfest is not even really this type of game anyway.

[998] They kind of got away from some of the stuff that they did do in the earlier Kruget.

[999] You gonna go play Test Drive Solar Crown?

[1000] Let me answer that for you.

[1001] No, you are not!

[1002] Forza Horizon 5 is a quality product.

[1003] Um, Test Drive Solar Crown is not.

[1004] Um, and so there's just not a lot of competition for this style of game on the PlayStation 5.

[1005] And so in a world where, you know, Gran Turismo 7 exists and people love it, but it's an incredibly specific thing.

[1006] And so it's nice to finally see Horizon on the PS5.

[1007] It's nice to see this only get more confusing when you're talking about Horizon coming to the PlayStation 5.

[1008] You're like, wait, no, they already...

[1009] Was it like a remaster?

[1010] Was it Forbidden Dawn?

[1011] Forbidden Zero?

[1012] Which one's which here?

[1013] But yes, the good Horizon is finally going to be released on play.

[1014] No, whatever, man. That's the shitty...

[1015] The first Horizon game is fantastic.

[1016] Forza Horizon 5, also a hell of a game.

[1017] Even better if you didn't play any of the games before it.

[1018] The biggest criticism I have of the Forza Horizon franchise is that if you've been playing all of them, it is harder to get excited about the newer ones because...

[1019] it's there's a formula there for sure uh and so if you have not played any of the horizon games uh five is a great place to get it's yeah it's a it's a hell of a game so you should definitely check that out if you have not regardless of whatever platform you're on i suppose you know um We were talking about this on the discord when it got announced and I forget who it was, but someone brought up like, Oh man, I wonder if they'll do a bunch of cool trigger stuff with the dual sense.

[1020] And I really fucking hope they do.

[1021] I really, really hope they do.

[1022] The, some of the trigger stuff in Gran Turismo seven is just like next level haptics.

[1023] Like it's so good.

[1024] Um, And the rumble triggers on an Xbox are cool.

[1025] But the DualSense is just capable of, like, more.

[1026] And if they can have a really good haptic experience on that, it would be fucking awesome.

[1027] I hope that all this talk about Xbox supposedly working on a new controller that would do more, you know, that might have things like this.

[1028] Not just like, it's red now, but also clear.

[1029] Okay, great.

[1030] I hope that the reports that they are working on a more advanced controller end up being true because I would love to see a standard of haptics across all platforms.

[1031] And I think if Xbox is going to get into the business of putting their games out across all platforms, it would behoove them to have, to match the functionality at least on the Xbox controller.

[1032] to allow for this level of haptic experience because i do think it gets a little weird when you know every single game that comes out is like oh well you know we spend a lot of time on the trigger stuff on the ps5 but the home team i don't know it i mean it rumbles it's cool it's not bad but it ain't this so i i think it would be good and also like competitively good, I suppose to, to use those triggers and that would lead to more developers using them across all platforms.

[1033] And, you know, as someone who uses a dual sense controller on PC, there are games that do use it and it's rad when they do, but it's not that many.

[1034] It's not that many.

[1035] Uh, and so this will be out in the spring.

[1036] Yeah, that's, that's kind of all we know about it right now.

[1037] is that it will be out in the spring.

[1038] Someone asked, do you think that Forza Horizon 6 will be cross -platform when it ships?

[1039] Yes, absolutely.

[1040] 100%.

[1041] Like, this is all paving the way.

[1042] Like I said, there will come a time when we don't talk about this stuff because it's going to be everything.

[1043] You know, there's going to come a time when this stuff is so day and date across all these platforms.

[1044] Like, they will have eventually shifted their production at all of these Xbox -owned studios now.

[1045] to include Switch 2 and, you know, PlayStation 5, where it makes sense, you know, if a game can't, you know, whatever, where it makes sense, right?

[1046] They will presumably still do some games that only happen on PC for control reasons or whatever, but even in those situations, like, games you think would only be available on PC have made their way to console more often than not out of them lately, so.

[1047] So maybe it will just literally be goddamn everything.

[1048] But yeah, we will eventually hit a point where this stuff is so day and date and so locked in and just so not a story that we're just going to go, yep.

[1049] They announced the new Halo.

[1050] It'll be stories like that.

[1051] It'll be like the stalwart franchises.

[1052] Forza is probably one of those.

[1053] Like I imagine Gears comes to PlayStation.

[1054] E -Day?

[1055] E -Day?

[1056] Like, at this point?

[1057] Like, why not?

[1058] Unless you are doing, you know, unless you want to, like, find ways to get that community into the game a little bit more, and then maybe you issue the trilogy or the remaster or whatever the fuck.

[1059] Maybe you do PS5 versions of those.

[1060] But yeah, there'd really be no reason not to.

[1061] And so, yeah, Gears on PS5 seems like something that would very much happen.

[1062] And so you'll have stories like that where you go like, oh, Gears, like Marcus Phoenix is a man's face that is largely associated with the Xbox brand.

[1063] And then you go, yeah, he still is, but the Xbox brand means something different now.

[1064] And, you know, Master Chief will end up being another thing there.

[1065] Like when, you know, they're moving Halo to Unreal Engine, like they're, you know, it will seem strange when it happens, but there's no reason for it not to.

[1066] And that'll be it, you know, like that's once you're once you're kind of on the other side of it, you know, it'll just start to happen like Elder Scrolls six probably ships.

[1067] On all platforms at once, right?

[1068] You know, it's not something that they wait on and whatever.

[1069] Like they, you know, they'll they'll they'll put Starfield out on PlayStation at some point, you know, and they've got all these, you know, like like Panic Button is doing this port.

[1070] to PS5 for Forza Horizon, but I would assume, I shouldn't assume, but I would assume that more of this work of putting it on multiple platforms will just start to happen in -house at the studios.

[1071] That's already happening with Call of Duty and some of that stuff, right?

[1072] And so I imagine that those games eventually, like maybe they outsource the Starfield port right now because they're busy.

[1073] They're like, Wait, you want us to go back and port this game to this other platform?

[1074] We have Elder Scrolls to make.

[1075] We're not going to stop everything and do that.

[1076] Maybe a team and I don't know how they're structured or whatever.

[1077] Maybe they could just have a team do it and it's not that big of a deal, not that big of an impact.

[1078] But I would not be shocked if Starfield was another external port job or something, right?

[1079] But we'll see.

[1080] Whatever.

[1081] They'll do it.

[1082] They'll make it happen.

[1083] There's no reason not to.

[1084] Yeah, the Starfield Game of the Year edition is a very funny sentence.

[1085] Starfield Game of the Year edition on PS5 is an easy bet.

[1086] They really should not call it Game of the Year edition.

[1087] I'm sure someone called that the Game of the Year, right?

[1088] Someone probably.

[1089] Starfield you know they'll just do Starfield deluxe edition it'll come with the DLC or whatever right and they'll put that out on Xbox for sale at the same time and as they do on PS5 or whatever as a bundle but that sounds mean it sounds like I'm being mean and I suppose that's true but no Starfield was not it I don't feel like they would be able to get away with calling something Starfield Game of the Year edition.

[1090] It's not.

[1091] No. It is very much not.

[1092] Especially with the other games that came out that year and all of that stuff.

[1093] But I just mean across the board.

[1094] No. God.

[1095] But yeah, we'll eventually get on the other side of all this talk, right?

[1096] It's an interesting world that we live in these days with all of this stuff, you know, like the.

[1097] You know, you see people say like, oh, you know, basically Microsoft is I think this I think this is something else I saw on the discord or I can't remember, but.

[1098] Someone was saying, oh, Microsoft is basically pulling a Sega.

[1099] But.

[1100] They're going to still make hardware.

[1101] It's like this weird moment where, you know, when Sega went multi -platform.

[1102] But like, what if they still continued to support the Dreamcast?

[1103] And what if they made another system after that or whatever?

[1104] And what have you?

[1105] That would have been weird.

[1106] The thing about the Sega transition that was different.

[1107] And I don't think that they announced it this way.

[1108] I think it was just the way that we heard it.

[1109] So, you know, it's another, this is an interesting lesson in rumor reporting and leaks of that nature.

[1110] But we, you know, and I've told this part of the story, I've told the story before, but we heard first that Acclaim was going to be publishing Crazy Taxi and a couple of other Sega products.

[1111] on the PlayStation 2.

[1112] And at the time, it was this mind -blowing, like, this has to be bullshit.

[1113] What the fuck are you talking about?

[1114] Like, there's just no fucking way.

[1115] And it just seemed insane.

[1116] And there was a whole internal process.

[1117] I've talked about that.

[1118] That's not what I'm talking about here.

[1119] But, like, we heard that bit first.

[1120] Hey, Sega games are coming to PlayStation 2.

[1121] And you're like, the fuck they are?

[1122] What is this bullshit?

[1123] What?

[1124] But when you hear the other part of, and by the way, the Dreamcast is going away.

[1125] You're like, oh, big.

[1126] And so I think a thing to, you know, the reminder out of that is we hear a lot of stuff.

[1127] A lot of stuff gets reported or leaked or, you know, just like people fucking talking out their ass on Reddit about a thing that they heard was going to happen.

[1128] And sometimes that stuff may be incredibly true or it may seem incredibly far -fetched, but sometimes it can be very hard to extrapolate this nugget of information into the full picture.

[1129] I suspect this is what happened around the...

[1130] Remember the reporting around the switch pro the, Hey, we're going to make a four case, which, and you know, this was some years ago, like Bloomberg was reporting on it.

[1131] They were, they had sources that were talking about this thing as was a thing, you know, like they don't just make shit up, you know, like this isn't someone going off of bad sources and, and, and poorly sourced reporting and, and whatever else it's people, you know, like, Bloomberg is not just going to fucking like put their neck out there on some bullshit, you know?

[1132] Um, but we don't know the full story, you know, was it something that they were experimenting with?

[1133] Was it something that they thought about bringing to market?

[1134] Was it something where they thought, Hey, we're going to bring, we're going to bring a platform to market much earlier than we originally thought we, you know, like, Oh, they were going to do that.

[1135] And then, and then, Oh, this, you know, As the pandemic ramped up and the supply chain went to shit and everything else, it doesn't make sense for us to try to launch a system in this time frame and what have you.

[1136] There are a lot of things that can happen there.

[1137] So I don't think that any of the things that were reported about that device were truly the full picture, but there was something going on.

[1138] Something going on that they were at least probably floating past third parties in terms of just like, hey, this is the thing we're thinking about making.

[1139] And over time, what they were making probably changed.

[1140] And whether that was part of COVID or whether that was the supply chain, things that happened because of COVID and everything else kind of changed their direction or gave them cover.

[1141] Because remember, the other thing that happened when COVID started was everyone bought a fucking Switch and everyone started playing Animal Crossing.

[1142] And so it was this scenario in the middle of all this where it's like, oh, this thing has legs in a way that, well, holy shit.

[1143] And so they didn't want to cut that off by trying to produce another device so soon.

[1144] I am speculating here as well.

[1145] But all I am saying really is that sometimes you hear a lot of things that don't make any sense whatsoever or you'll see these leaks and reports.

[1146] You're like, what the fuck is really happening here?

[1147] Like, think about the way that the multi -platform Xbox stuff was leaked out before it was officially confirmed.

[1148] And how now it starts to seem like a cohesive and cogent strategy, whereas at the time it felt like panic mode, holy shit, oh my god.

[1149] And instead it's like, oh, you know, yeah, like, yes, hey, revenue from hardware is falling.

[1150] Of course it is.

[1151] We're this many years in.

[1152] And we're third place.

[1153] You know, the numbers were like, what, they're off like 7 % on hardware or something like that.

[1154] I'd have to dig it up.

[1155] But like, you know, the Microsoft numbers around Xbox sales, surprise, they're not awesome.

[1156] They have known that for some time.

[1157] And so, of course, they're going to be like, oh, we, well, you know, we need to figure out a way to pivot in this race.

[1158] We need to figure out a way to make this business work.

[1159] We, you know, and we need to figure out what works for us.

[1160] And so they're finding their way through it.

[1161] And I think that we're at a point with it where I look at it and go like, yeah, this is the right move for them.

[1162] I also I'd still maintain that.

[1163] I think that if if the Xbox was just magically selling gangbusters, they would not have done any of this.

[1164] They wouldn't have had to or they would do it in a different way.

[1165] Do it in a different way is probably more likely, because like I've said, I do think that, you know, as games get more expensive at that high, high level.

[1166] Even Sony is going to have to try to figure out ways to get more people to play games than people who own their device.

[1167] And they're selling quite well at the moment.

[1168] So yeah, I look at that stuff and just go like, yeah, you hear these bits and pieces of the story.

[1169] Everything about the early word around the multi -platform Xbox story sounded like panic and mayhem.

[1170] To the point where I was like, I had to contact someone at Xbox and I emailed him and I was like, hey, I'm sure you're fucking busy because it was like in the middle of all the leaks and everything.

[1171] It's like, I'm sorry.

[1172] You know, I know things are probably weird.

[1173] And he wrote back and we're like, no, they're not like they're super not super not weird over here.

[1174] Like, OK, thank you.

[1175] And you know, on one hand, of course, he's going to say that.

[1176] But on the other hand, like, yeah, you know, like you.

[1177] The only weird thing that happened there is that that stuff leaked out.

[1178] And I think that people started to wonder, is there some internal fight happening there where they're leaking this out to try to poison the well to turn public opinion against the multi -platform story so hard that Microsoft has to deny it and pivot away from it?

[1179] Like, you know, like what sort of fights were happening internally?

[1180] I think like a lot of that.

[1181] A lot of those types of conversations started to rise up around that time.

[1182] It was just like, oh, these leaks are specific in a way that look like someone trying to win an argument the hard way.

[1183] Which, you know, has happened over the years, but.

[1184] But I digress.

[1185] Nintendo also announced some of their numbers like surprise, surprise.

[1186] The switch is not.

[1187] is not selling the, they're cutting their forecast for the, uh, for the sales of the initial switch.

[1188] And also giving these statements like, Oh, we don't think that the, you know, we don't think that the sales of the switch two are really going to cut into the sales of the switch one all that much.

[1189] You're like, really?

[1190] Okay.

[1191] I mean, I mean, do you mean that in a way where you're saying, yeah, these things were going to fall off a cliff either way?

[1192] Cause that's sort of what, you know, like they've got a couple of, They have, what, three Switch games announced right now, right?

[1193] It's Metroid, Xenosaga, and was it Pokemon Legends?

[1194] ZA or whatever it is.

[1195] I think those are the only three games they have on the books right now.

[1196] But the other statement is they're saying, hey, we'll support the Switch for as long as it sells.

[1197] And that to me says that that gives them an out to not support the switch, because I honestly I don't see unless there's such a dramatic price difference that they feel a need to keep the initial switch on shelves for a lot longer.

[1198] I don't I don't see that being, you know, I don't really see that that being something that they they keep supporting the initial switch.

[1199] for a dramatically long period of time but it probably does mean you know like i've been as i've thought my way through it i'm like oh i wonder if they do end up actually just putting metroid out on the new one and not the old one but i if he's going to be out there saying you know if furikov was going to say you know hey we're going to keep supporting the switch for as long as it makes sense that that to me is at least an indicator that a game like that would be um cross -generational And not necessarily just a holdout for the new device.

[1200] Um, but yeah, you know, they, they cut their forecast and you know, like who knows if they'll even hit that.

[1201] Cause it's not like, there's nothing to buy.

[1202] Like, you know, you don't look at it as, as like a big, you know, you're like, Oh, okay.

[1203] Yeah.

[1204] Guess what?

[1205] No one's buying a switch.

[1206] Why?

[1207] There's no games coming out for it.

[1208] Everyone already bought one.

[1209] They're good.

[1210] Switch is good.

[1211] It's a good, it's a good little thing.

[1212] It's old.

[1213] And there's a new one coming out pretty soon.

[1214] So, you know, a lot of reasons to maybe not buy one right now on either side of it.

[1215] But, you know, like the analysts and some of this other stuff are just like, they had better hope that they are not going to ship in the fall.

[1216] Because if this Switch 2 is not coming out to the end of the year, they have nothing this year.

[1217] They are not going to hit whatever, even their cut forecast is something that they probably won't hit.

[1218] Which is, you know, yeah, no shit.

[1219] Yeah.

[1220] In our last story.

[1221] The Video Game History Foundation has launched its digital library.

[1222] This is at library .gamehistory .org.

[1223] And this is a lot of material.

[1224] They had some server issues.

[1225] I have not been able to really dig into it.

[1226] too deeply yet uh because when i was the they had just rolled it out and the server was uh straining under the strain of that strain they've got a lot of um and and they have you can search it with text and and get good results uh they have ocr'd a lot of a lot of old magazines so if you are looking to research uh specific topics specific games uh specific video game clowns like there's a lot of different things that you can you know turn up in those results by just searching for a game name or searching for like if you search for if you search for my name which was one of the few things i got to work um and now it's not working i that's all right um I feel like I'm doing something wrong here.

[1227] Anyway.

[1228] There was some magazine ad for some game that had a quote from a review I wrote in it, which typically quotes from reviews only listed the outlet, but there was one that listed my name in it.

[1229] And so I go weird.

[1230] But they've got a lot of stuff.

[1231] It's not just magazines.

[1232] It is a collection of.

[1233] paperwork um from someone named mark flitman who had a lot of documents and stuff from his time working at various companies around the industry um and so there's a lot of like there's some fun dev stuff in there there's a lot of stuff they have not processed yet uh that they still need to kind of scan and get in there and um but but this is their early access launch it's really cool You can go in there and, you know, if you're just looking for like, what were, you know, what was the discussion around this game prior to its release?

[1234] You can narrow it down by year and kind of look at all of that and dig through that stuff as well.

[1235] It's a really cool resource.

[1236] It will probably, it will end up helping, I'm sure a lot of people making YouTube essays about old games will probably will probably benefit greatly from this as a, as a source.

[1237] Oh yes.

[1238] Yes.

[1239] Uh, frozen transform in the chat says that there was, yes.

[1240] EGM wrote an article about the NFL blitz tournament that I won.

[1241] Um, because Craig Kuyava, who was at EGM at the time placed second.

[1242] I think they, they mentioned him in the article.

[1243] Um, apparently I wrote a mortal combat for strategy guide that ran in OPM.

[1244] All right.

[1245] I could see it.

[1246] Sure.

[1247] Maybe that happened.

[1248] Um, who, who the hell knows?

[1249] There was something, man. I, the thing I want to find is, and, and, uh, Tim, like, I think Ben Hanson and Tim Turi, I think both looked into this at one point and could not find it.

[1250] But like, there was a, there was a mortal combat three move list that ran in an issue of game informer that I helped out with.

[1251] Um, based on the location, like they, they showed it at a trade show was the first time they showed the game.

[1252] I went to Reno to play mortal combat three, uh, dropped out of college to go play mortal combat three.

[1253] And, uh, and I was there.

[1254] Andy McNamara was there.

[1255] Ryan McDonald was there.

[1256] Glenn Rubenstein was there with us.

[1257] And, um, and we just played a bunch of mk3 and just kind of as we were finding moves we wrote them all down and then i think that ended up running in the magazine and i want to say that they credit like it was my name was misspelled as it often is in the credits of things um but i'm pretty sure that i remember seeing that list in the magazine with my name misspelled on it and going oh oh well i guess it still counts as a print byline of some kind um But that never, I don't know, like they both looked and could not find anything like that.

[1258] And so it's a mystery, man. I don't know.

[1259] I don't think I just fucking invented that, but who the hell knows?

[1260] But yes, that library is up again.

[1261] It's library .gamehistory .org.

[1262] They have a list of things that they have in their possession that they have not added.

[1263] I have a bunch of stuff here that I still need to send them.

[1264] I'm not sure because I sent them a good...

[1265] number of like press releases and a bunch of other stuff like that, that I don't think that they have gotten to and a bunch of other weird bullshit that they, you know, like that they, I think they may have auctioned some of it off memorabilia and things that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily need to keep, but I don't know what they intend to do with that.

[1266] I know originally they were going to do like a charity auction and auction some of that stuff off, but I sent them my plush Bubsy and I hope that they just keep it.

[1267] I don't, it was just sitting in my garage getting dirtier all the time.

[1268] Um, and so, uh, yeah, I have a bunch more stuff that I need to send to them.

[1269] Uh, I have a bunch of like pre like before the release of the game cube, I have their, like a big, big old press kit from that.

[1270] I have some Sega stuff from TGS.

[1271] Um, like 2001 or two or something like that.

[1272] I forget, but I have a, I have a whole bunch of stuff that I need to, but I still need to send their way.

[1273] Um, so yeah, go check that out.

[1274] It's neat.

[1275] It's real neat.

[1276] And that's going to do it for the news.

[1277] Let's get into some emails.

[1278] Podcast at guard .bike is the email address.

[1279] Feel free to send me an email and I will check it out.

[1280] Of course, if you want an ad -free version of this show, you can get it at patreon .com slash Jeff Gerstmann.

[1281] Thanks to everybody who's been supporting the program over there.

[1282] Some bonus content up there as well to see additional shows and contents and writings and videos and all of that.

[1283] Feel free to go over there and check out the various tiers on display.

[1284] Let's see here.

[1285] Levi from Ohio writes in and says, I've finally gotten around to playing Dragon Age Veil Guard, and while it isn't perfect in every way, I've really enjoyed it.

[1286] Based on the sales numbers released, it seems like I'm in the minority.

[1287] That generally doesn't bother me, and I have no problem making up my own mind about games.

[1288] However, In today's game development world, not meeting targets means you never see that franchise again.

[1289] I'm a big fan of all the Dragon Age games, and I'm bummed at the idea of the series not getting any more entries.

[1290] I hate feeling bad for a billion -dollar company, but it seems to me like they got the short end of the stick here.

[1291] The amount of negativity surrounding Veilguard was not proportional to its quality, in my opinion.

[1292] Are there any franchises you were sad to see killed, especially when they were still putting out good games?

[1293] And is there any hope that Bioware will be back in the Dragon Age world in another 10 years?

[1294] You know, at this rate, will there be a studio called Bioware in 10 years?

[1295] I think is a valid question.

[1296] Not necessarily because of anything that they have done qualitatively.

[1297] Again, like you, I think the Dragon Age Veilguard is a heck of a game.

[1298] But if next up for them is Mass Effect, again, I just don't see them...

[1299] I don't see them meeting expectations of whatever that is, unless this Mass Effect ends up being a much smaller production.

[1300] Maybe they end up doing something little, but that's probably not the case.

[1301] It's hard to say.

[1302] As for Dragon Age, I don't know.

[1303] I could very easily see this being the final Dragon Age game.

[1304] Again, you know, something that probably deserves to continue or rather like I think qualitatively and from a franchise perspective like like has earned its keep.

[1305] Largely, but.

[1306] But I could.

[1307] I'll say it's iffy.

[1308] I don't I don't think that they're I'll tell you this.

[1309] I don't think that they get this mass effect out the door.

[1310] And then immediately go back to Dragon Age.

[1311] You know?

[1312] Like, this is not a game that probably did well enough.

[1313] And, you know, Dragon Age probably will do fine for them for a good long time as like a catalog game.

[1314] But some of those catalog sales probably get cut off these days because, you know, they end up on EA Play.

[1315] They end up on Game Pass eventually.

[1316] And so they make money a different way.

[1317] So the long tail is a little different.

[1318] Dragon Age seems like a game that...

[1319] you know could could sell okay for a good long time maybe not be a barn burner but you know like people always like oh here's a here's a good 70 to 80 hour game and it's and it's it's pretty well received yeah dude let's let's get into that you know in a year or two right um footmunch asks in the chat is there a possibility of a say larian dragon age game I mean, there's always a possibility of anything, right?

[1320] Sure.

[1321] Like you could pick up the phone and, you know, you could have that conversation.

[1322] I think Larian doesn't need it.

[1323] I think that there's, and I think that Larian could probably make their own thing.

[1324] And I don't really see the benefit to Larian to make a Dragon Age game unless EA was paying them, you know, like.

[1325] paying them quite well to to do it right so in a situation where larian is not going to move forward with the dungeons and dragons license i think that says to them that they are going to make their own thing and they've basically written their own ticket with balder's gate 3 in a way that lets them continue to make their own thing and have it succeed um Whether that's another divinity or, you know, like if, or if they just decide to make an entirely new thing all over again, I mean, who knows, right?

[1326] But, but Larian's in a position where it would be weird for them to go and make a Dragon Age game or go and make a game for anyone else because of how well Baldur's Gate 3 did for them.

[1327] So is it possible?

[1328] Sure.

[1329] Like if they were really passionate about it, if Larian was like, man, we just, you know.

[1330] It's a bunch of people here that just fucking love dragon age and thinks it deserves better.

[1331] And we're, you know, yeah, yeah.

[1332] You know what?

[1333] Yes.

[1334] Like we're the, the business terms to this make enough sense for us to do this.

[1335] Like, no, they, they don't, they don't need that.

[1336] Um, they don't need that.

[1337] So, so no, um, it's possible in the sense that like, there's nothing stopping any of that from happening, but there's no, there's no incentive in my view for that to ever happen.

[1338] Um, or for that to happen right now, Let's say Larian puts out a game and it tanks.

[1339] Let's say Larian, you know, they end up in a more dire situation.

[1340] You could see them signing on to be like, okay, yeah, we'll make a...

[1341] Alright, we'll make a new Dragon Age.

[1342] Yeah, Larian...

[1343] Maybe instead, Larian should just buy the rights to Ultima from EA.

[1344] And they don't even need to do that.

[1345] They should make their own thing.

[1346] I don't even think they should necessarily make a new Divinity.

[1347] I think that they should make a brand new thing.

[1348] Because if they make a game and say like, hey, here's Divinity 3 or whatever, then it's like, oh, it's another third game and I gotta take a chance on that.

[1349] And I didn't play those other Divinity games.

[1350] What's that even all that?

[1351] Like with something new, they get to cash in on the popularity of their previous game while also providing a brand new starting point for all of those players that they got.

[1352] All of those players that they pulled in.

[1353] Over the course of Baldur's Gate 3.

[1354] If they started something new.

[1355] Like a brand new IP.

[1356] Everyone's in on the ground floor.

[1357] And everyone's excited about it.

[1358] It doesn't need to be.

[1359] A new divinity.

[1360] But to answer the question.

[1361] Are there any franchises you were sad to see killed.

[1362] Especially when they were still pulling out good games.

[1363] Syndicate is kind of my.

[1364] Syndicate both times.

[1365] Syndicate, when they stopped making Syndicate games originally, it was because I think that they never found a good way to make a sequel to Syndicate.

[1366] And Syndicate Wars was not a great game when they were making that stuff back then.

[1367] And then when Starbreeze rebooted Syndicate, it's an awesome thing on its own merits, you know?

[1368] Uh, and so I, I, I would have loved to have seen a proper sequel to that, the continuing adventures of miles kilo along with their really awesome co -op multiplayer experience that unfortunately is no longer playable because those servers got shut down.

[1369] Um, I think there's a lot of that bullfrog stuff, honestly, that you could, you know, like, I don't know, man, what about a new populace?

[1370] And you can sit there and you can say, oh, well, you know, what about goddess or, you know, the other 22 can stuff or the stuff that Mongo knew made like, no, no. And yeah, satellite rain.

[1371] Someone mentioned satellite rain, which is a game that is very much in the, in the vein of syndicate without having the syndicate license.

[1372] Like, yeah, satellite rain was neat, but it wasn't a syndicate game.

[1373] So no one noticed.

[1374] You could also argue that that genre of game is maybe kind of like that, that ship has sort of sailed a little bit.

[1375] And so that's, that's sort of hard.

[1376] The Benny man says black and white is the most requested thing for Gog to bring back.

[1377] Gog launched a thing where you can go request games and then, and then I don't know what's supposed to happen from that.

[1378] Gog will try to make it happen, but like, i don't know there's a lot of business that has to happen for some of those games to come back and sometimes it doesn't always happen or whatever but black and white i i didn't much care black and white was okay i don't know it was okay at the time it's not a game that i want to play ever again i'll say um so Yeah, I don't know.

[1379] Syndicate's a good one for me. Like, you know, I think that Crusader...

[1380] We could just...

[1381] This whole list could just be fucking EA IPs, dude.

[1382] Like, if they made a brand new game in the Crusader universe to follow up on No Remorse and No Regret, it would be a reboot at this point because it's been so long, but Crusader was...

[1383] Those were incredible games.

[1384] Uh, yeah.

[1385] Dungeon keeper would be a good one.

[1386] Ultima is a fantastic answer to this.

[1387] The Ultima franchise deserves better.

[1388] You could, or you could, you could make the argument that the Ultima franchise deserves better than what it's getting these days.

[1389] Um, yeah.

[1390] Sim golf.

[1391] Fuck.

[1392] Yeah.

[1393] Sim golf.

[1394] Absolutely.

[1395] Why not?

[1396] Um, other, you know, like, uh, Hmm.

[1397] I'm trying to think about other franchises.

[1398] I mean, I would have said virtual fighter, but now we are going to get a new virtual fighter, which is really crazy.

[1399] Magic carpet.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] Magic carpet was a cool tech demo.

[1402] I think making a new magic carpet in this day and age would be strange because magic carpet was like, it was cool that it just did.

[1403] what it did and looked how it looked.

[1404] And that's hard to, I don't know.

[1405] I don't know.

[1406] Burnout.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] Burnout's a great answer.

[1409] And like, yeah, they should, they should continue to make burnout games.

[1410] Um, I'm at a point, man, this is sick.

[1411] This is sick.

[1412] What I'm about to say, but I'm at a point right now with video games where I'm going to say, I would be interested, in fact, I want them to make a new army of two.

[1413] What the f - I don't, I'm not proud of that.

[1414] I don't, I don't know why, but just like, I could go for fuck, I could go for that right about now.

[1415] I could go for a new fucking army of two.

[1416] Let them talk about Wu -Tang some more.

[1417] If you put, if you, Look, listen, if you made the guns gold and loud, you would draw aggro more.

[1418] And so you could pull out your flashy gun and draw aggro with it so that the other player could flank.

[1419] It's not an amazing idea, but it is an idea.

[1420] And it was an in -world justification for having dumb -looking fucking diamond -encrusted guns.

[1421] And I'll give him that.

[1422] And then you would go back to back and it was like a dumb little sequence and it was not awesome.

[1423] But like that...

[1424] I could really go for a new army of two.

[1425] I would be...

[1426] legitimately excited if they announced like an army of two is coming back i'd be like yeah yeah it is hell yeah i i would i don't know why i really i can't answer you i cannot i cannot tell you why i cannot tell you why but i just there's something about that dumb shooter and it is a dumb shooter That I would be interested in seeing a new one of those.

[1427] We need more dumb shooters.

[1428] I don't know.

[1429] Freedom Fighters.

[1430] A new Freedom Fighters.

[1431] A sequel to Freedom Fighters.

[1432] Would be.

[1433] Potentially.

[1434] Really cool.

[1435] Along those lines, I would say like a third Kane and Lynch game would be potentially really interesting or has the, I mean, I mean, anything could be potentially really interesting, but, um, you know, the, the Kane and Lynch one is bad because it is because they learned it's, it's like they took all of the wrong directions.

[1436] From what made freedom fighters so good.

[1437] Whereas Kane and Lynch 2 is.

[1438] This amazing like Kane and Lynch 2.

[1439] Is.

[1440] Nothing fucking did that the way they did it.

[1441] Nothing mastered that look the way they mastered that look.

[1442] And you can't do it as well because that aesthetic is a little played out now and it doesn't happen anymore.

[1443] But Kane and Lynch 2 has this smeared blurry color like GoPro.

[1444] Like it's meant to look like you're shooting it on shitty cameras.

[1445] And so it looks like an insane independent film.

[1446] And then it's like a decent cover shooter.

[1447] It's like a decent Gears of War style cover shooter or whatever.

[1448] And so it's a totally different game than the first one and a much better game than the first one.

[1449] But the look of it, and it's like the camera glitching and all these digital artifacts and stuff because it's getting knocked around as you're running through these corridors and whatever.

[1450] But it has that kind of visceral body camera look that is fucked.

[1451] that other games didn't capitalize on.

[1452] You saw some film try to do things in that style, of course.

[1453] But nothing did that the way that game did that.

[1454] And it is still worth looking at because I think stylistically, it nails that so well.

[1455] And it'll look dated now because I, you know, I think that, you know, it looks dated for the same reason, like blinking 12 o 'clock or, or the kind of like, you know, eighties, nineties camcorder blinking time and date thing.

[1456] Like that's kind of a dumb aesthetic now too.

[1457] Like it's for those reasons, right?

[1458] You know, all everyone's phones got way better at shooting video.

[1459] And so all of the tiny little things that you can use to shoot video now just look good and they don't look like that.

[1460] So.

[1461] Um, so it's sort of a, you know, it's, it's a moment in time that they captured like, you know, along the way unintentionally that I think also kind of like, yeah, it's a period piece.

[1462] It's a period piece.

[1463] You're right.

[1464] It is.

[1465] Yeah.

[1466] Kane and Lynch too was a period piece.

[1467] They didn't intend for it to be that, but, but it is.

[1468] Um, so yeah, I don't know.

[1469] Maybe they were going to make that movie.

[1470] Maybe you could update your review to include the mention that there's going to be a film based on this.

[1471] Yeah, that's not going to change the score.

[1472] Why are you giving me notes from the publisher?

[1473] Okay, I'll get my shit and go.

[1474] Alright, fine.

[1475] Jose from Puerto Rico writes in and says, I've been listening to your podcast for a while now and I've noticed that on several occasions you've been in the know of games or game projects.

[1476] that have yet to be revealed.

[1477] You've said phrases along the lines or after the said game has been released or canceled.

[1478] Yeah, I heard they were making this.

[1479] Most recently, the Bluepoint God of War game.

[1480] What's curious about this is that contrary to other outlets and especially podcasts, you're not in the business of leaking or creating rumors.

[1481] I find this surprising because a lot of other journalists' whole persona is in fact talking rumors and leaks.

[1482] He says, I mean, I get it.

[1483] It kind of brings traffic.

[1484] Is there any particular reason you choose not to do this?

[1485] I would guess you either don't want to put stuff out that you're not 100 % sure about and then have to deal with the negativity.

[1486] Not to mention the credibility hits, but that's just my guess.

[1487] What is your mindset on this?

[1488] My mindset on this is that a lot of this stuff is stuff that I have heard second or third hand from a single source.

[1489] And it's not something that I have verified to be definitely true.

[1490] And so I'm not going to get out there and say something that I am not more certain about.

[1491] The God of War thing in particular was funny because I heard that second or third hand a really long time ago.

[1492] Just once.

[1493] I was like, oh, weird.

[1494] Like I said at the time, I heard it as, not at the time, but when they canceled it, the way I heard it was Bluepoint is making a multiplayer God of War game.

[1495] And I heard it from like a couple of places, you know, it was like a couple of times, but it was like extremely removed.

[1496] It was not someone at the studio.

[1497] It was not, you know, it was not like a verified thing.

[1498] And then that was it.

[1499] And it never came up again.

[1500] And I just kind of was like, well, that's weird.

[1501] So then you're like, well, maybe, maybe that was incorrect because now it's been so long that you're like, well, clearly if.

[1502] This was something that I heard about, you know, it was circulating outside of the studio X number of months ago or whatever.

[1503] If it hasn't been announced yet or there hasn't been further leaks, then maybe it wasn't true at all.

[1504] And so you get, then you start second guessing all of that stuff and you're like, huh?

[1505] And, you know, the real answer is if that was like my business and my beat, then, you know, you get on the phone and you pound it down, right?

[1506] You run it down like a news person would.

[1507] Um, and that's never really been my beat.

[1508] That's never really been, you know, my, my forte or whatever.

[1509] Um, and so in that situation, you know, that was, I, I, years, I believe.

[1510] Um, and then this Bloomberg story came along saying, Hey, this blue point got a war game got canned and I'm like, Oh shit, really?

[1511] Like just like a month ago.

[1512] I was asking another writer, hey, did you ever hear anything about this game?

[1513] And said, did you ever hear anything about Bluepoint working on the God of War game?

[1514] And the answer was like, no, never.

[1515] What?

[1516] No. What?

[1517] And I felt crazy.

[1518] I was just like, well, shit, dude.

[1519] All right.

[1520] And you just figure at that point, oh, maybe it was a flash in the pan idea that maybe they spent a few months on it and then decided to not.

[1521] you know they didn't green light it they didn't move forward with it and whatever and but you know like it was always in conjunction with the story of like hey blue points gonna stop doing remakes blue points gonna work on their own stuff going forward and so you're like okay that all fits together that they're gonna make a new a new game and this is gonna be the thing they're making um and so that was always weird every time blue point would come up in these conversations about like i heard that they're doing bloodborne and i would sit there and go like i don't think I don't think that that's what they're doing.

[1522] It doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be doing that based on everything that's been said publicly and also this other thing.

[1523] Um, and so, uh, that's, that's a big part of it is like, you know, I wasn't, I was never at any point confident enough in that story to say, I can tell you right here exclusively that blue point is working on a God of war game, you know?

[1524] And, um, And it just never was anything that I had chased down to such a degree that I was 100 % positive that it was happening.

[1525] And to be fair, the people that get shit in this space, the people that do deal in rumors and leaks, some of them do have standards.

[1526] Not all of them.

[1527] But some of them do have standards for this stuff where they do try to verify and make sure that this stuff is true.

[1528] Some of them have actual integrity to it.

[1529] But that doesn't stop them from being wrong sometimes.

[1530] You know?

[1531] Plans do change, pal.

[1532] Like this shit, that does happen.

[1533] You know, they can report, hey, I heard that this was happening and this is the time frame that I heard about it in and when it's supposed to happen and then maybe poof, it just goes away.

[1534] Like, oh, they decided not to do it.

[1535] Or, you know, all of this stuff changed.

[1536] They decided to work on this instead.

[1537] And this, you know, like all of the stuff around Bloomberg and the Switch Pro, I think kind of fits into that, at least to a certain extent.

[1538] Like, they're not going to be easily misled because they're going to do the work.

[1539] Like, Jason Schreier has something of a track record, right?

[1540] And that's the thing that also sort of happens in this space is once you have a track record for that type of reporting, you will find that some people will just come to you with it, you know, and be like, hey, just want to let you know, I've been working on this for the last eight months, but I just got laid off from the studio.

[1541] Fuck them.

[1542] Or whatever reason they have for telling you.

[1543] And so, you know, as you break stories like that, if you're breaking them responsibly and breaking them, I guess, honorably, because there's like a shitty way to do it and a sane way to do it.

[1544] I think if you're being like a regular adult and being a real human being about that style of reporting, then I think that, you know, other people with something that they might want to leak.

[1545] If they're a fan of what you do, they might come to you and tell you.

[1546] I've had that happen multiple times, even though I'm not necessarily in that line of work.

[1547] I've had some people that are like, oh, I'm into what you do.

[1548] Yeah, I'm working on this.

[1549] And like, oh, here's a bunch of screenshots of this and whatever.

[1550] But the other thing I don't do is I don't go, hey, can I run this?

[1551] There's a lot of stuff that I have heard over the years that I've heard because of You know, because I'm not on that beat.

[1552] That's sort of the other thing that happens.

[1553] I remember I was having a conversation with...

[1554] We were filming something.

[1555] It was the PlayStation 4 unveiling in New York.

[1556] And we were on the set of TRL at the MTV Studios in Times Square because Jeff Keighley was still a part of game trailers and he was filming his show.

[1557] Is like panel show.

[1558] In New York.

[1559] And so it was the.

[1560] You know.

[1561] They were all part of MTV.

[1562] They were all part of Viacom at the time.

[1563] So they gave him that studio.

[1564] Because TRL had been long off the air at that point.

[1565] Not the first time I had been in the TRL studio.

[1566] Weirdly enough.

[1567] But that's because we snuck in once years ago.

[1568] Anyway.

[1569] I was sitting in there.

[1570] And I was talking to Andy McNamara.

[1571] And Steven Totillo was there.

[1572] And.

[1573] The thing we had, the interesting thing we had right there was we had a live feed of the event and Sony was going through rehearsals.

[1574] And so we had a live feed of them doing rehearsals for the PlayStation 4 unveiling.

[1575] And as we're sitting there, like they're running through lines and doing through the thing and we're able to sit there and see it on a monitor and they said the words PlayStation 4 out loud.

[1576] You're like, oh, okay, there it is.

[1577] I mean, of course it was going to be, but, you know, they hadn't confirmed the name at that point.

[1578] Everyone was still calling it Orbis or whatever.

[1579] And then I think, you know, Andy and I were having a conversation about like, oh, I heard this, heard this.

[1580] Oh, yeah, I knew this was going to be.

[1581] And Stephen was like, hey.

[1582] You guys seem like, you know, a lot of this.

[1583] How come you don't report any of this?

[1584] Because, you know, Stephen's at Kotaku at the time, and that's that's very much their beat, right?

[1585] That's very much the style of reporting that they're into.

[1586] And my answer for him was the answer I'll give you to this is like, if I was this type of person, like that was reporting all of this stuff on a regular basis, no one would ever tell me any of this stuff.

[1587] You know, like these are conversations I'm having under the guise of like, Hey, this is really off the record.

[1588] Like, don't, don't do this.

[1589] And you're like, Oh yeah.

[1590] All right.

[1591] Like, I could burn that bridge and be a dick to the person that I agreed, you know, and say, like, oh, yeah, here's this.

[1592] Here's everything about the, you know, here's everything about the Nintendo Switch 1 back when they were going to announce that.

[1593] Like, you know, I could have had all of that stuff, probably.

[1594] Someone at a third -party publisher that I talked to about it would be very angry if I did that because not a lot of people had those dev kits at the time, and I would be giving details that would be highly traceable.

[1595] But, you know, there were situations also where we got our hands on the PlayStation 4 Pro docks from the dev portal that Sony runs.

[1596] If you're a third -party developer, you can log in and get the information, the specs, whatever you need as a developer for some of this stuff.

[1597] They had posted stuff for the PS4 Pro.

[1598] Of course, it's all NDA, whatever, don't leak, don't leak.

[1599] Everything on there is supposed to be.

[1600] So, naturally, someone sent it to us.

[1601] And so I'm sifting through all the PS4 Pro docs and I'd look at it for a while and go like, you know, I've never seen anything out of the dev portal before.

[1602] I don't know if this is legit or not.

[1603] Like it looks good.

[1604] It all looks real.

[1605] And so I had to go to someone who was a developer and say, Hey, I'm not necessarily looking to use you as a named source or anything like this, but can I bounce this off of you?

[1606] And can you like nod your head or shake your head?

[1607] real or not and so you know he's like here's here's these docs and the response was yeah that's yes that is i i can this is i can confirm that this is i have access to the same document you're like okay cool um and so it's not about getting a quote from that developer saying like it's fucking rips or oh what a pain in the ass you know like it's not about anything like that it's about just like i need to verify that this stuff is good that this information is good and so You know, we ended up asking a couple of people those sorts of questions about that.

[1608] But yeah, it's a mix of just like, you know, you know, you have those conversations with people.

[1609] And the only reason you get to have some of those conversations with people is because you're not in that space trafficking in those types of rumors and reports and what have you.

[1610] Because of that, that can make it sometimes a little difficult to, you know, like there have been situations where like, You know, like I've interviewed people, you know, I've interviewed people multiple times and been on camera to the point where, you know, something people assume that you're like best buddies with everyone that you have a good rapport with in an interview.

[1611] It's not always the case, but sometimes it actually is.

[1612] And I found myself in situations where I've gotten my hands on a bunch of information.

[1613] that like i didn't get it from the obvious like it's you know it's a case where like oh i've interviewed this person multiple times they work at a at a first party they work at a hardware manufacturer whatever it is like if i suddenly have all of this stuff people are going to very directly assume Oh, you got it from this person because you've interviewed you, this person seven times and you know, or whatever they're, they're on your E3 couch every single year, you know, like all of that sort of stuff.

[1614] And, and so you have to have some delicacy around that as well.

[1615] And so those are situations where like you kind of make it, have to make a choice.

[1616] Like, is that person going to be like, you know, am I going to interview this person and have fun and do this?

[1617] Or am I going to, or this, or are we like backdoor source?

[1618] We're having this conversation because you can't have it both ways.

[1619] because you're going to end up getting that person in a whole lot of trouble down the line, even if it's not their fault.

[1620] Um, or put them in a situation where, you know, other people internally may have to, you know, may ask them questions like, Hey, are you talking to this guy?

[1621] Are you doing like, and I would never want to put those people in those positions.

[1622] And so like, it's sort of, it's a weird, it's, it's a weird touchy feely sort of thing.

[1623] And you know, I think everyone would navigate it a little bit differently, but like, that's just not something that I've, Like that type of rumor reporting and breaking exclusive game stuff.

[1624] Like, yes, it does lead to a good, a decent amount of traffic when it does well.

[1625] I think it's interesting, though.

[1626] I think if you look at some of the people that have had big types of leaks and stuff like that lately.

[1627] Like I did this recently.

[1628] It was like the last wave of this stuff I was looking at and looking at these podcasts that everyone's writing news articles, sourcing the same podcast or sourcing the same YouTube video.

[1629] like when the specs for the ps5 pro leaked it was you know like whatever some tech thing um and he had stuff from the dev portal that i was able to look at and go like oh yeah that's straight out of the dev portal like that looks i mean you know it's been a lot of years and so some of their pages and things are the stationary looks a little different or whatever but yeah that's totally legit um but um it doesn't always you know yeah like it didn't always lead to like the like oh millions of people are listening to this podcast because this person As the straight dope.

[1630] It doesn't always.

[1631] Lead to lasting traffic.

[1632] Of that sort.

[1633] Unless you have one every week.

[1634] That's the pressure.

[1635] If your business is built around that.

[1636] You have to have that.

[1637] Constantly.

[1638] And you have to have it.

[1639] Before everybody else.

[1640] And the minute you have it.

[1641] 20 other places have turned your podcast into a news story.

[1642] Uh, and, and instead people will just read that news story instead of listening to your podcast.

[1643] And so, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't always, it's not something that always leads to like a sustainable growth of traffic or, or, or whatever.

[1644] I think it can be a very cool piece of an overall editorial strategy.

[1645] Um, And it's salacious, right?

[1646] It's exciting because you're like, oh, man, what the fuck's going on?

[1647] But it's not always the smartest way forward.

[1648] And also, it's just never really interested me. The other thing is, I don't want to necessarily be the sort of person who...

[1649] One of my least favorite things, and this is something like podcasts really...

[1650] really underscored this type of behavior.

[1651] But it was like the type of person who will get on a podcast and like say they knew a thing without adding anything to the conversation just to say, oh, I knew that.

[1652] I know it.

[1653] Oh, yeah, I knew that.

[1654] Because then it becomes like, okay, well your job is to report like, you know, especially people who are in news reporting positions and stuff that would be, that would behave that way.

[1655] It was like this weird, like, okay, why aren't you doing your, why aren't you?

[1656] Okay.

[1657] Why didn't you, why didn't you do that?

[1658] Why didn't you do that then?

[1659] You know?

[1660] So I, I try to be mindful of that side of things too.

[1661] Cause I think that that can be fucking stupid.

[1662] Dino says, am I referring to wrestling podcasts?

[1663] No, but it's all the same.

[1664] The thing I have realized over the last several years, the last couple of years really of following wrestling, especially with AEW coming out and causing a new type of rumor, the person jumping from company A to company B or vice versa, that sort of rumor coming back in a way that it hadn't been.

[1665] Uh, since the nineties, um, it's all the same stuff.

[1666] It's, it's all exactly the same stuff.

[1667] It is people reporting on things that they heard.

[1668] And sometimes they have a good track record for that stuff.

[1669] And sometimes they verify a thing.

[1670] And sometimes it's just like, yeah, I don't know this fucking mid card guy that I'm friends with told me all this stuff and whoops, half of it isn't true.

[1671] Uh, and, and you know, like, Oh shit, it turns out I had a bad source or it turns out there are a lot of people, especially in the wrestling business who are telling stories about other wrestlers because they want to hurt that person's reputation.

[1672] And so there's even more bullshit in the space.

[1673] And so there's even more like, and it's all personal rumors because you're, you're having rumors about like an individual, like, Oh, this person.

[1674] is cheating on their boy for this person went through half the locker room and this person, you know, and, and like really salacious, fucked up gossipy stories that don't matter.

[1675] Um, but because it's salacious, there's interest in it.

[1676] Um, and so you have people that try to traffic in that stuff and it's been nice and a weird way to see some wrestlers on social media push back against that instead of never acknowledging it and just being like, you're full of fucking shit.

[1677] and and also fuck you like some of these people need to be called out on some of this stuff um because some of the reporting around this has just gotten gross uh and then you've got former wrestlers in there that are you know desperately trying to maintain some relevance and so naturally they start a podcast uh and then they tell a bunch of fucking ugly stories that aren't true either because you know they're just they have an axe to grind with one company over another and all this other shit it's just like There's a bunch of weird stuff there, but like the reporting is the same.

[1678] Like I see a lot of people talk a lot of shit about Dave Meltzer, who was a. He is a he's been reporting on wrestling since for longer than I've been reporting on video games.

[1679] And.

[1680] And like, you know, like he, you know.

[1681] He's been doing it for a long time, and I think that there are other people out there that are more well -versed in the kind of faster, more social, more like the quick news hit, like, hey, this happened, or hey, this rumor, or hey, we got the, you know, we got to look at the rundown for Raw this week, and so here it is.

[1682] Like, the Sean Ross saps of the world are just a little bit more modern in their presentation.

[1683] And I think, you know, that guy's doing all right work, too, as far as I can tell.

[1684] And, you know, Meltzer doesn't get everything right because no one who is trafficking in, I heard from a guy backstage that this was the thing, is always going to be right.

[1685] And in some cases, he's going to give his opinion on what he thinks maybe happened in that situation.

[1686] And because that's a podcast that gets charged for, the reaction I see to that is like, He'll be he'll be asked a question.

[1687] And, you know, I'm also seeing this out of context because I don't I don't really engage with that guy's stuff.

[1688] And I don't I don't I don't listen to his podcast on a regular basis or whatever or subscribe to that.

[1689] So even even I'm kind of, you know, hearing it second, third hand or whatever.

[1690] But you will see people who are taking a part of a podcast.

[1691] They are taking it out of context.

[1692] They are typing up the quick part of it to post to Reddit.

[1693] And then but but like.

[1694] And so it's what's probably a totally normal segment in the situations where I have run it down and be like, I bet that dude didn't say anything like that.

[1695] And you go and listen to it and go like, oh, yeah, this is part of a much larger conversation.

[1696] And what he's saying is, oh, I think that this maybe happened or this this kind of, you know, he's kind of speculating and he's very clearly speculating.

[1697] And then people will just respond because it's been boiled down to a Reddit post for and it doesn't even need to be one.

[1698] His people go like, oh, you fuckers paid ten dollars a month for that shit.

[1699] It's like, okay, you're taking like a side conversation off of a multiple hour podcast that had other stuff in it.

[1700] It's just like people are so quick to shit on some of those people.

[1701] But also, you know, like the wrestling business, it's much easier for plans to change in the fucking wrestling business than it is even for video games because video games have to still be manufactured.

[1702] Video games have to go gold.

[1703] you know, hardware still has to be pumped out and all this other stuff.

[1704] So things get set in motion in a way that you can visibly see.

[1705] Whereas like, if you just heard, oh, I heard the plans for this person is that they're going to bring them back and have them win this title and do this.

[1706] And then that doesn't happen.

[1707] Like, yeah, I don't know.

[1708] It doesn't take much to change fucking plans.

[1709] Go like, ah, I don't think we want to do that.

[1710] Erase it, write something else.

[1711] So I, I don't know.

[1712] Like people that report on wrestling in that and, and like get nonstop shit when they're wrong.

[1713] And they should get some.

[1714] But also, I think a lot of that stuff is largely couched in like, this is what we heard the current thing is.

[1715] You know?

[1716] And I think if those reporters are presenting it as like, this is what's going to happen, then that's on them.

[1717] They're dumb.

[1718] They shouldn't ever say that unless they've seen something that leads them to believe it's 100 % happening.

[1719] Otherwise, they need to say like, here's what we're hearing.

[1720] We're hearing that this is the current plan because those plans do change.

[1721] Sometimes a contract doesn't get signed until the day before a thing and then someone returns who you thought wasn't going to return.

[1722] That's the nature of that particular business.

[1723] There's a lot more mobility and a lot more humanity around it than a lot of the reporting around video games.

[1724] That's why I look at that stuff.

[1725] So much of it can be so tragic because people are just so shitty.

[1726] When people are shitty about like, Oh, an Xbox rumor or a game didn't get announced or that, you know, or, or the game name was wrong or whatever.

[1727] It's, it's like, whatever.

[1728] When people are like, Oh, this person fucking lost this match and did this.

[1729] And I can't believe they did this.

[1730] And this, you know, like wrestling fans are fucking.

[1731] Yuck.

[1732] Yuck.

[1733] With the way that they react to that type of knowledge.

[1734] So I don't know.

[1735] I try to.

[1736] I don't know.

[1737] I'm trying to consume significantly less discussion about wrestling than at least current wrestling.

[1738] The blow -by -blow, here's the rumor of this, and on Raw tonight, this is going to happen.

[1739] That end of it is just like, who cares?

[1740] It doesn't really matter.

[1741] And so, yeah, that's my recommendation for anyone who's into wrestling is just like step away from.

[1742] Get off Reddit is actually probably the, you know, and people who look at Twitter for wrestling stuff seems like an absolute disaster.

[1743] Like Blue Sky's wrestling stuff is getting worse by the day because Blue Sky is catching on and becoming more popular.

[1744] And so as more people make the move, a bunch of fucking boring, fucking bad takes come with them.

[1745] but like, I don't know.

[1746] People just seem like fucking scumbags.

[1747] People seem like they, they treat wrestlers like absolute fucking dirt, man. The way that like on social media and stuff like it's, it's really, it's really fucking nuts.

[1748] Um, I don't know, but, but also all, all that said, I don't think I'm really, you know, like I have not watched WWE.

[1749] Uh, well, I watched the Royal rumble.

[1750] That was going to be my thing.

[1751] It was going to be like, okay, I'm going to like, this is a year where I'm not into it and I'm going to watch the Royal rumble to see if it draws me back in.

[1752] It did not.

[1753] So I don't really see myself watching much WWE for the foreseeable future.

[1754] Something will drag me back in.

[1755] Eventually it kind of always does.

[1756] Um, but yeah, I don't know.

[1757] I thought maybe the new day heel turn was going to be a thing that, uh, that, that maybe, Got me to stick around, but I'm just not doing enough with it.

[1758] I'm, I'm too impatient for that.

[1759] There's too much, there's too many hours of show that are not that for me to sit through that looking for the five minute segment that I want to see.

[1760] So, uh, so I I'm, I'm done with WWE for a while, I think.

[1761] Um, and AEW has been in a weird space.

[1762] I don't know.

[1763] I, I, I've, I, I don't feel like watching AEW is a waste of time.

[1764] Um, but some of their, I don't know, they have some interesting, good characters and some, some, some of their storylines are bad.

[1765] That's wrestling though.

[1766] Some of the storylines are bad.

[1767] Um, but as long as, I mean, you know, but then you've got Harley Cameron and that's amazing television every time.

[1768] So fucking, yeah, uh, that's going to do it.

[1769] Oh wait, let's, let's maybe we can take one more question here.

[1770] We got a little bit more time.

[1771] Adam from Portland writes in and says I've never been a person to trade in my old console when the new one comes out but I've been thinking is it wise to hold on to an old system with a sealed internal battery?

[1772] I've been entertaining the idea of trading in my launch model switch for the switch to because of backwards compatibility, but it's also hard to let go of launch day hardware.

[1773] Do you think there is any reason to hold on to a switch one?

[1774] We, we won't know until closer to launch.

[1775] I don't, we won't know until they publish a list of like backwards compatibility, like, like games that are not compatible with the switch two.

[1776] So, um, I might say if you had an OLED switch that like, oh, hey, you know, that would be kind of cool.

[1777] You know, that's a good screen.

[1778] A launch model switch has other certain benefits that you could always look into.

[1779] Yeah, you know, you could do some dirty stuff with a launch model switch and fuck around with it that way if you didn't need it anymore.

[1780] We won't really know until we see how many games are not compatible on the Switch 2.

[1781] If it's a large number for some reason, then that might be a reason to hold on to a Switch 1.

[1782] If it ends up being Labo or whatever, then no. I don't think that would be enough to...

[1783] Unless you're a big Labo fan still.

[1784] Labo was neat for...

[1785] a few hours there and that's about it.

[1786] Um, but yeah, you're, you're onto something.

[1787] I think the, the sealed internal battery thing is, is definitely like a, I hadn't really considered that.

[1788] You're not wrong, but there's like, ah, yeah, there's eventually that thing is going to be fucking useless.

[1789] And, um, maybe you should, maybe you should get rid of it.

[1790] That's not a bad reason to get rid of it.

[1791] But, uh, Yeah, until we know more specifics about the backwards compatibility and everything else, I would probably at least consider that.

[1792] Unless you're just like, hey, fuck it.

[1793] Just sell it now.

[1794] I mean, if you wait until the Switch 2 is out, I bet you will get less for it then than you would right now.

[1795] But it depends on how much you use a Switch.

[1796] And if you are likely to miss it over the next, let's say, six to nine months.

[1797] Three to nine months.

[1798] I don't know.

[1799] I don't know when that thing's coming out.

[1800] Steven writes in and says, with all this talk about Xbox releasing all of their IP on as many platforms as possible, it makes me wonder how long this approach has been in the works.

[1801] If I remember correctly, the sentiment up until recently was them kind of slightly denying this strategy.

[1802] It seems like Phil, for the longest time, was holding the ravenous Xbox fans at bay.

[1803] saying the games wouldn't go elsewhere.

[1804] Then that all seemed to change on a dime with this whole everything is an Xbox.

[1805] I know the plan all along was to get Game Pass on all the consoles.

[1806] And I know, say, Minecraft and Call of Duty are everywhere.

[1807] This plan honestly kind of makes the most sense to me. Services, since the Xbox One days, have always been the strategy, putting significantly less focus on the first -party games.

[1808] It seems like releasing everywhere, having said games come out on day and date on Game Pass just makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?

[1809] I think that they have been figuring it out as they've been going along.

[1810] I think that they have, you know, I think that they have been watching their hardware numbers and trying to figure out what is the best way forward for their brand.

[1811] Um, and their services, you know, we heard back and, uh, back around games.

[1812] Calm time is when there was that brief window of criticism from third parties saying, man, no one is buying our games on Xbox.

[1813] And I'm sure that there is some percentage of Xbox player who subscribes to game pass and never buys a game.

[1814] Right.

[1815] Um, You know, Xbox likes to have numbers like, oh, actually the Game Pass subscriber is the most engaged and they buy the most games and, you know, like, yeah, okay.

[1816] But I think there's, you know, there's obviously got to be the other side of that of like, you know, the casual player who might have bought the big game every year.

[1817] Again, I think about my roommate who would buy Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and that was it.

[1818] Unless a Battlefield was out that year or something, but, you know.

[1819] But that was pretty much it in terms of like games he would purchase.

[1820] If Game Pass suddenly floods that type of consumer with hundreds of games at all times, then that player might not buy that Assassin's Creed when it comes out.

[1821] Because they might just go, oh, well, I already got all these other games and this will probably come here eventually.

[1822] So whatever, I'll wait and play it.

[1823] I think that there's probably a sensible person out there who is just using an Xbox.

[1824] to play Game Pass and never purchasing anything else.

[1825] And so it makes sense for third parties to be griping and grumbling because you've got a situation where, you know, the Xbox hardware is already not selling great.

[1826] It is selling behind the Xbox One.

[1827] And then you've got Game Pass serving most of those casual players' needs really well.

[1828] You know, you have to wonder why would those players go and buy other games or, you know, yeah.

[1829] And the other situation is just like how many of those Xboxes are just being used to play Fortnite on top of all of this, you know, like you're like, forget about game pass.

[1830] Like how, you know, how many people are just using it to play Fortnite and, you know, a couple of other free to play games and what have you, you know, there's, there's definitely situations like that too.

[1831] Um, so I think that they probably looked at the erosion of the hardware numbers and the software sales that kind of went alongside that.

[1832] And, you know, they had game pass running for a while and they've, they've had opportunities to tweak it and stuff.

[1833] I think, you know, the idea of like, what if we could get game pass on switch?

[1834] Like that conversation came up years ago, right?

[1835] And I think the thing you run into there is like, there just aren't enough games.

[1836] Like, you know, you would either have to do it as a streaming thing, which makes a lot more sense now than maybe it did even when the conversation first popped up.

[1837] Or like, are you doing deals with, you know, third parties on switch to say, let us, let us make you part of our game pass on switch offering.

[1838] Like, is Nintendo going to be okay with that?

[1839] Like, no, probably not.

[1840] They never would have been okay with that in that form.

[1841] they would make their own subscription service and offer those games instead of letting Microsoft come in and run it, right?

[1842] So it's just, you know, you wouldn't, that never really made a ton of sense.

[1843] It makes a lot of sense from the Microsoft side because, you know, especially as the streaming stuff catches on, well, catches on and not the word, continues to exist is maybe the word.

[1844] But, you know, it makes sense in a form of like, oh, well, the Switch would be really good for streaming Game Pass games like anything would anything with the screen.

[1845] Sure.

[1846] And that's why they're at this point where they say everything's an Xbox.

[1847] But a Switch is not an Xbox and a PlayStation 5 is not an Xbox and all the other stuff.

[1848] Unless, you know, they decide to allow this streaming service on that platform.

[1849] Now, I think that Sony like, OK.

[1850] This is not the same thing.

[1851] but it's close enough that it's at least worth saying out loud.

[1852] AntStream exists on some of these devices, right?

[1853] I know AntStream is on Xbox.

[1854] If AntStream is just on Xbox, then maybe this is a non -conversation.

[1855] No, AntStream Arcade is on the PlayStation 5.

[1856] And so this is a streaming service that you can use to play old games.

[1857] It is weird.

[1858] And you can pay them, you know, what, $40 a year.

[1859] Or I guess they have a lifetime subscription offering as well if you want it.

[1860] But like their whole thing is like they do a bunch of emulated games, but they're streaming it to you through the cloud.

[1861] And so you are in a situation where you can go and you can play all these weird old Amiga games and arcade games and whatever else.

[1862] on a stream and there's like they did some scoreboards and tournament stuff around it that's like it's not terrible the part where it's a cloud stream of a game that was expecting you to be playing on a fucking crt with like almost zero input lag is a part that like sort of sucks dude like it's it's not great but it's a scenario on playstation where you can subscribe to a service and get access to a bunch of games.

[1863] Game Pass is the exact same thing.

[1864] So there's no, like, platform...

[1865] The only case that I think Sony would make that would, like, prevent this from a policy standpoint would be, oh, those are games we already sell on this platform, whereas AntStream is not.

[1866] Generally speaking, I'm sure some of the ant stream games have crossover with some of these retro collections and whatever there, there almost has to be.

[1867] But I look at that and go like, well, you know, why wouldn't game pass exist on PlayStation five?

[1868] They already allow this other streaming service that plays games that has a subscription fee.

[1869] It's, you know, so from a cloud streaming perspective.

[1870] It seems like you could do Game Pass that way.

[1871] Now, the reality is that Sony would be like, what?

[1872] No, what?

[1873] No. And then Microsoft would be like, no, we don't want to do it this way.

[1874] We want to do it where if you sign up for Game Pass on PlayStation, you can play the native PlayStation versions of the games and not have to play it through the cloud.

[1875] So, you know, there are reasons both qualitatively and business -wise why that probably wouldn't happen.

[1876] But it does make sense on the Switch, but the Switch doesn't have AntStream, so it's not as clean of an analogy.

[1877] I don't know.

[1878] Anyway, long story short, I do not think that this was Xbox's plan all along.

[1879] I will say that I think that they have been watching this industry go through some very dramatic changes.

[1880] They have watched every bit of that writing as it appeared on that wall.

[1881] And they could have acted sooner.

[1882] But I think they had a hard time figuring out how to get away with it or how to how to do it without, you know, it's a big change for their existing fan base, right?

[1883] Of like, hey, by the way, these are going to be PS5 games now.

[1884] And now that they've done it and like, yeah, there were some initial like, you know, like they got taken to task by people on social media for a little while.

[1885] They're past that now.

[1886] They're on the other side of it.

[1887] There's no reason to care about.

[1888] any of that.

[1889] There never really was.

[1890] The numbers already indicated that it was the right move for them to make.

[1891] If there were more people like that, enough people that a boycott would matter, then they would have enough people buying the games in the first place, right?

[1892] But they don't.

[1893] But they didn't.

[1894] So in order for them to grow, in order for them to continue on the path that they want to be on, hardware doesn't necessarily have to be a major part of that story.

[1895] You know, it's certainly a part of that story right now, but for how much longer?

[1896] I don't, I don't know.

[1897] I don't know where that stuff goes.

[1898] I don't, I don't know.

[1899] You know, it's, it's hard to say a lot of this stuff is, you know, we're getting into some different kind of a different style of uncharted territory than I think we're used to when it comes to generations turning and new platforms and everything else.

[1900] And it's not just the streaming stuff.

[1901] It's not just the AI upscaling stuff.

[1902] It's not just the multi -platform cost of development stuff, but it's all of those things together that you start to wonder, like, you know, how am I going to play these games?

[1903] Is it going to be on an Xbox?

[1904] Do I need to get an Xbox?

[1905] Like, when is, you know, do I play these on a PlayStation?

[1906] What happens to the PlayStation long -term?

[1907] You know, like all of that stuff that I think is...

[1908] Weird.

[1909] Now.

[1910] But the actual answer is you will need some place to play these games.

[1911] You will have to play these games somehow.

[1912] If it's not an Xbox, is it a PlayStation?

[1913] If it's not a PlayStation, is it a PC?

[1914] Does someone have an affordable PC that is going to run these games the right way?

[1915] Microsoft were to get out of the hardware business, which I don't necessarily...

[1916] I mean, they're still making Surface Pros somewhere, right?

[1917] Microsoft is always in some weird hardware business.

[1918] But even if they're not primarily making Xboxes as boxes, there still has to be a place to play these games.

[1919] And they have to ensure that.

[1920] You know, whether that's, okay, we've done enough deals that all these games are coming out on PlayStation 6.

[1921] And a Switch 2 and a Switch 3, you know, whatever.

[1922] And, you know, PC.

[1923] And if that's enough for them, then cool.

[1924] But, you know, they'll probably want to have their own platform just to make sure of that, right?

[1925] Okay, there's always going to be a place to play these games that's, like, affordable.

[1926] That's not you walking out and buying a high -end gaming PC for however many thousands of dollars that ends up being, you know?

[1927] Like, they're going to want to try to have something.

[1928] so i i don't know i don't know what that means going forward and and you know with r &d costs for a console do they go down because we're you're you're not chasing after the highest most powerful fill rates and everything you know i'm like i don't know but it's a it's a really interesting time for this business um it has been for a while but it's just like i don't know like as as this stuff continues to process and shake loose and and whatever like it just it it you you find yourself confronted with a lot of very interesting new problems to solve.

[1929] And the solutions to those problems can be very exciting in ways that make gaming more accessible to more people, more parts of the day, whether it's handhelds or, you know, whatever, right?

[1930] And so I think, you know, there is a potential for great change in the ways that we engage with games that I think will not necessarily be bad.

[1931] It's not like, oh, it's going to be all streaming all the time now.

[1932] You know, like those sorts of doomsday scenarios that we were talking about a number of years ago.

[1933] That seems very unlikely, but that will be an option for the people who accept that as an option, I guess.

[1934] Anyway, that's going to do it for the show.

[1935] We could navel gaze about this stuff for another two hours.

[1936] It's just, it's such a fucking crazy.

[1937] Again, you know, as someone who's been.

[1938] Reporting on this business since the late days of the Super Nintendo, since the days of the Sega CD, I guess, it's never been like this.

[1939] And I find that endlessly fascinating.

[1940] I'll be back Wednesday to stream some more stuff and we'll play some games.

[1941] Maybe that'll be some good time for some Eternal Strand or something.

[1942] I don't know.

[1943] We'll figure something out.

[1944] Anyway.

[1945] I'll be back Wednesday and Friday.

[1946] And of course, next Tuesday with another episode of this podcast for you.