June 20, 2025 • 57 mins
This week we talk about all of Xbox’s announcements about their upcoming hardware, Marathon’s indefinite delay, console warrior lies that spread too far, more Mass Effect TV news, Death Stranding 2 was too good and much more. Click this link for my socials, all of my other content and ways to support: https://linktr.ee/baundiesel
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:22 | Opening
00:07:37 | News
00:54:32 | Updates
00:56:01 | Wrap Up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Bonfire Gaming podcast episode 342.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Xbox's next Gen. announcement marathon, losing
the race before it starts, Mass Effect, TV show news, and much
more. Gaming sucks right now.
(00:25):
This is a social media click bait, maybe some YouTube or some
streamer kind of statement you see fairly often right now and
it it goes off of this whole idea of that gaming is bad now
all games come out unfinished and have DLC in their live
service and they're only designed to suck money out of
(00:48):
your wallet and not to even be enjoyed.
When you see people talking about gaming, even some
developers, it's all about you know what a group what, what
some testing and their analyticssaid to do and that's why they
made the game. I think that is a really stupid
(01:10):
take. And I wanted to use this kind of
opening segment this week to, tokind of it just very briefly
kind of dive into it because it,this is something every time me,
I mostly see it on social media,but every time it'll be a video
or a post, I'll be like, oh man,gaming sucks so much right now.
(01:30):
When I was a kid, you know, games came out all the time and
I would play them forever and they looked awesome and blah,
blah, blah. And what I find is that, I mean,
most of the time this is just clickbait, right?
Like, like they're just, you know, targeting the people who
are the same ones who complain about every single game that
(01:51):
comes out no matter what. But there's also probably some
people who do do believe this, who who really do think gaming
sucks right now. And when they say that, what
they probably don't realize or acknowledge is that gaming for
them sucks right now. Gaming in general, I would argue
(02:14):
we've had multiple years in justthe last few years with more
games, more good games released than ever per year.
Not to mention we've had some ofthe best games ever made, at
least in my opinion, released. We just had boulders gate a
couple years ago, Boulders Gate 3, which even if you're not into
(02:35):
that type of game and, and I'm not I, I I think that's one of
the greatest games ever made. It may be the greatest game ever
made when you look at the whole package, not to mention other
games that people have enjoyed quite a bit as well.
Yes, there there is the occasional game that comes out
and it's obviously unfinished, it's lacking content, it's
(02:57):
lacking Polish, it's lacking this or that to push back.
Even against that though, a relatively unsuccessful game or
a moderately successful game came out, you know, six months
ago or whatever, or, or I guess a little more now less than a
year ago in Dragon Age of the Vale Guard, which has plenty of
(03:18):
its faults and some reasonable criticism, some very
unreasonable ones as well, I maysay.
But the one thing you can't say about it is it's not lacking
content. It's a good 30 to I mean, I
think my playthrough I even blewthrough it basically, you know,
40 to 60 hours, you know, for a playthrough with and probably
(03:40):
more than that if you 100% it asfar as I could tell, basically 0
bugs, a very technically sound game that as far as I know,
played well and worked well on, you know, all the consoles and I
presume most PCs and and you know, and that game wasn't very
successful. There are other reasons for
(04:00):
that, but the games like that are coming out.
That game came from not only EA,but BioWare, you know, so like
I, I just, I can't be bothered with, with this attitude.
It's just people think it maybe it sucks for them.
They're an adult now, right? They, they don't have as much
(04:21):
time to play games. So when they play a game, they
they might get to play, you know, maybe one or two games a
year where when they were younger in college and high
school and. You know they could.
Sit there and finish a whole game of the week, right?
And you can't do that now. And, and I think that sometimes
people's views on the stuff get skewed because it's, you know,
maybe gaming sucks for them right now.
(04:42):
Maybe they only get to play a couple games a year and they
bought the game that just didn'tvibe with them or whatever.
So it sucks for them, right? Or the worst case scenario,
you're talking about people who have dove into and, and and
gotten into the whole weird, youknow, kind of, I would argue
kind of right wing, hyper conservative, kind of, you know,
(05:06):
anti woke, like where every game's woke.
If a character is black in a game, it's a woke game.
Or, you know, whatever, you know, they, they've whatever
terrible path they've gone down.You know, those people can't be
helped, right? And then I feel for the people
who feel like gaming sucks now because they just don't have
time to do it. Maybe they had a bad experience,
(05:26):
But as someone who, you know, makes time to play games because
of the podcast I do and the videos I like to make, like it's
my hobby, you know, it's I spendtime with my family, I do my
job, I, you know, work around myhouse and I make sure all of my
stuff is cared for. But the thing I spend the next
most amount of time on is probably gaming, playing, making
(05:47):
content, you know, reading up onit.
And if someone in that position,I don't know if gaming's ever
been better, you know, obviouslythe industry isn't, you know, a
bit of turmoil. We're probably about to have
some more layoffs for Microsoft.I'm, I, I think I'm being like
intellectual about starting to not be as bothered by the
(06:11):
layoffs, Not because they're notbad, they're obviously bad, not
because they're not shady and selfish.
They're obviously both of those things.
But there's also been this recognition for me of like, you
know, these layoffs have always been part of the industry.
They just get more focused now than they used to.
I would argue they used to be worse.
It seems like from what I've seen where, you know, like you
(06:32):
finished you, you ship a game, unless you're one of the, you
know, higher up people in that studio.
You just assumed you were getting laid off back then, you
know, back in the day. And now you do see people stick
around for quite a while and layoffs do seem to be shamed a
bit more. But, you know, I mean, I guess
for me, it's just it's just become part of the thing.
(06:54):
So, you know, I pay attention toall this stuff and, and you
know, and while there are bad things happening in the game
industry, you know, with games, I don't know if it's we've ever
had a more consistent and, and more voluminous amount of, of
great games. But you know that that's
(07:15):
actually, I think it is a popular take.
I think if you talk to regular people who play games, they
would mostly agree, but if you judge it by social media and the
worst people possible there, then you probably wouldn't.
So I don't think gaming sucks right now.
And if you think it does, and I think you're wrong, let's get
(07:37):
into the gaming news. Xbox has announced a multi year
partnership with AMD to create their future Xbox Series
successor, as well as handheld and cloud gaming advancements
and mobile and everything. This was followed up by AMD
putting out some of their own statements kind of just
(07:58):
basically saying the same thing.What was interesting is that
both of these statements seem toconfirm or push back on, you
know, we knew and we've known that we are getting a, a series
replacement. So series X&S current Gen. that
they'll be releasing a new console.
For the love of all that's good.I hope they just released one
(08:20):
first party console. I, I, I beg them not to do the
multi tier thing again. I, I understand why they did it.
Maybe it was good for them and in the short run and maybe long
run, they they know better than I would, but I really just want
them to put out one really solidbox at the best price they can
afford. Anyways, they've seen also
(08:41):
confirming here that handhelds. So are they talking about the
handhelds they're claiming as their own, like the Ally X, the
Xbox Ally X2 or whatever, or arethey talking about this
propriety? You know, this this first party
handheld that was announced and then it was shelved and then it
was essentially cancelled according to Tom Warren, who's
(09:02):
always super accurate and not just throwing stuff at the wall
hoping it sticks. And now, you know, maybe this
means that it's still on on the board.
My assumption has been that they're they're definitely going
to do a a handheld at some point, like a first party one.
I just suspect the bulk of the focus is on the next console
(09:22):
right now, which this announcement to me makes it even
more likely that that 2026 date could be real.
And I've seen people be like, well, you know, Playstation's
probably not going to do PS6 until, you know, 2028 or
something, or maybe 7 at the earliest, Because I mean, they
just bought the PS5 Pro, You know, they, they just did their
(09:44):
mid Gen. refresh, suggesting that the PS five generation has
at least a few years left in it.And hell, they've, they still
need to release games for it. Man, Like I've been popping off
on that point for a while now. But you know, we got a bunch of
what should have been cross Gen.PS4 games at the beginning of
the PS5 and then we've just gotten like some third party
(10:06):
stuff and like Astrobot, we'll get Ghost of Yotai this year.
Death Strandings, Like it's not first party.
It's, you know, third party exclusive.
I I mean, I still need to finishtheir 5th Gen.
I'm pretty sure there's what it's like 12 a dozen Xbox
(10:28):
published games coming out this year that might be more games
than the first party games, someof these released.
And so those first party games are some of the best games you
can play. So I'm, I'm not dogging on that.
I'm just saying that it's strange, like their output's
been weird. But this whole idea that, you
know, oh, it's too early for another Xbox.
I think you're going to see Xboxputting out new hardware like
(10:50):
every two or three years. You know, with the, with the way
they're moving, they're obviously they don't care about
the generation thing anymore. And if anything, trying to get a
console out couple years, almostthree years before the PS6.
And, and then by the time the PS6 comes out, maybe another
(11:11):
edition, another, you know, a newer version of hardware and
you'll, and you'll run into the situation where, you know, first
party, third party, there's going to be dozens and dozens of
devices that can play Xbox and the heck can access the Xbox
ecosystem. And you know, they'll just
basically do a thing where, you know, from this console back,
(11:36):
they won't be compatible hardware anymore, but you can
still play on cloud if you want.And then we have this new thing
coming. You know, it's just basically
going to be, you know, pick yourpoison, pick your price point.
Are you enthusiast, you want to spend $4000 build a nice PC?
You know, you're a little more cost averse, you know, buy that
(11:57):
$800 console that's solid, subsidized a little bit, or you
just want to play on the cloud on your TV or your phone or your
old Xbox One and do that, that, that seems like what they're
doing to me. You know, maybe I'm wrong.
What was interesting is that statements from both of the
(12:19):
companies, AMD and Xbox, we're really focused on hardware
backwards compatibility. It's a big deal right now.
One of the big rips or burns, unlike that handheld LIX Xbox
Edition, is that it's going to play PC versions of games,
obviously. So there's a bunch of basically
old digital games on Xbox that it won't be able to play.
(12:43):
And there rumors have been swirling basically that they're
trying to figure out a compatibility layer for that.
I think it's mostly like 360 games because they were on that
proprietary processor, but maybesome Xbox One or maybe some kind
of weird outside cases, games that you never got like APC
slash X86 slash Xbox One or Series edition.
(13:08):
I, I, I suspect it's, I'd be curious to see the, the amount
of play time on games that can'tbe played on PC at this point.
I bet it's minimal, but it's still a thing, you know, for
game preservation. They've always talked about that
so much. It'd be good for them to
continue on that. They focused a lot on not
(13:31):
locking Xbox players to a singlestore.
That was specifically mentioned by Sarah Bond during the
announcement of all this stuff. So that's definitely
interesting. So we'll have the Xbox store.
Are we going to get a console where you can access Steam?
Or. You know, the Epic Store, GOG,
you know, who knows? I don't think that's going to
(13:53):
happen if you want me to be honest, but you know,
something's going to happen. They they said it, you know,
that's obviously a focus. And then the push for play
anywhere is big too, which is inthe hundreds, if not I think
thousands of titles. Now that you buy it on Xbox, you
can play it on your PC, you can play it on cloud, you can play
it on handheld wherever you want.
(14:15):
If you can log into your Xbox account, you got it.
As long as that you know the method in which you login can
play games, it's pretty cool. Just this weekend, this this
kind of long weekend, I guess mywife's out of town and this
(14:36):
Thursday and Friday I still had to work.
So my, my little one's been hanging out with me and kind of
just hanging out at the house while I work.
And she wanted to play her game.She's got like a bluey game and
you know, a handful of games on my Xbox that she likes to play a
Barbie game and so on. A brand new one actually.
And my setup is my Xbox is hooked up to one of my monitors,
(14:58):
but it's the monitor I use for work.
I have a two monitor setup. So I realized, hey, I should
just do remote play. So I went to grab your tablet.
She has a nice new Samsung tablet, logged into the Remote
Play website, linked it up, and she hung out in the room next to
(15:19):
me and played the Bluey game andBarbie and couple other things,
some of the Lego games. I think she was going nuts, man.
She was loving it and it worked great.
No issues at all, barely. It was actually light on battery
too. It's over Wi-Fi, so I'm sure
that helps. But yeah, like, like this
thing's cool. Like that's obviously the, the
(15:39):
old I've you've been able to do that for 7-8 years.
I actually my first streaming setup, my Xbox One was set up in
our home console by the big TV. And my first streaming setup was
I would use the Xbox app back then to remote play.
(16:01):
It would my Xbox on my screen and I would use the the Xbox
app, you know, remote playing asthe capture device and OBS and I
would capture that in the sound.And then I would look at chat on
my phone that was on the dock next to my computer.
And I would control most of the things using the numpad that I
(16:24):
had done like shortcuts and stuff.
So the, the remote play things been around for a long time, but
you know, seeing this use case for it was really cool with my
with my kid. It it it's so interesting
because you know, the last week,especially after this
announcement, all of the, you know, the, the console war talk
has been Xbox gamers like dunking on all the PlayStation
(16:46):
gamers who were, you know, saying that they're, you know,
Xbox is done. They're not making hardware.
You know, obviously that's not true and that's never been true.
They, as far as I could tell, we're always going to make more
hardware. They, I felt like they've been
pretty clear about that, but people were, you know, making
their own takes on that. But really, I think the take,
(17:10):
the more interesting take on it,at least in my opinion, is that
not only are they going to make hardware, they're going to flood
the industry with their hardware.
They're going to flood the ecosystem with things that can
play Game Pass or stream games or play Xbox or access that
ecosystem, whether it's TV's, phones, tablets, streaming
(17:34):
devices, you know, actual Xboxesthemselves, P CS PlayStation
Fives in some capacity. You know, it's laptops, third
party handheld devices, maybe first party handheld devices,
maybe third party consoles. You know, they, they are setting
(17:59):
up this situation where every single person who has any kind
of modern tech with a screen will likely be able to get an
Xbox account, sign up for Game Pass and play hundreds, if not
thousands of games whenever theywant as part of that Game Pass.
(18:20):
And what I don't think people realize is that that saturation
of the market is they, they don't want people to get on
cloud and just stay on cloud. They'll be happy to take their
money on the Game pass subscription, I'm sure.
But they want that person to be like, I like this and I like
this game and that game and thisother game.
And I'm excited about that game that's coming out that I heard
(18:42):
about this. Would this would be a lot better
on Xbox? Maybe I should buy a series X or
a next Gen. system or I haven't think about getting APC.
Maybe I should get a gaming PC and, and then they can access
all those things. Like I, I, I think not enough
credit has been given to the idea that, you know, this cloud
and, and, and streaming and, andall this stuff is encouraging
(19:06):
people to try to buy hardware, right, and, and to access even
more. You know, Xbox has always had
this focus, focus on, you know, monthly active users.
That's what their biggest thing.They, they don't care about how
many consoles they sell. They don't even seem super
concerned how many games they sell, even though I'm sure they
do care. But they, they want to know
people are active on their ecosystem because they know that
(19:26):
that's probably the future. And what's so interesting is
that we're going to run into this next generation here in the
next year, 2 years, three years where we have Nintendo doing
their thing on the side, 2 gins behind happy as can be.
We, we, we're going to have Xboxdoing this thing where they're
going to say, hey, here's a console, you want to buy it, We
would love that. You don't want to here's 15
(19:48):
other options to play our games.Go nuts.
Just please play them. And then you're going to have
PlayStation 6 come out in two orthree years.
And their strategy is going to be the same as the PS5 and the
PS4 and the PS3 and the PS2 and the PlayStation one.
And it's going to be, we have some exclusives.
(20:11):
And by then, hopefully they havesome really good ones.
My prediction is that games fromNaughty Dog, Santa Monica,
Insomniac, there's going to be games from them that are ready
by the end of the PS Five generation that they are 100%
going to hold back. Make PS Six games and make them
exclusive. They're just like they did with
(20:33):
God of War Ragnarok, just like they did with Ratchet and Clank,
just like they did with a handful of other games that
could have been crossed in. They just decided for them not
to be because they wanted peopleto buy the PS5, right?
And not just stay on the PS4. They're definitely going to do
that with the PS6 and they're going to keep on that strategy.
They just doubled down on it here in the last week where the,
(20:56):
the head of Sony, I think was like, yeah, like we, you know,
we've dabbled. You know, we're, we're putting
some games on PC like five yearsafter they come out on console,
after they've been remade and remastered 2 * 3 times for
console. You know, they, they've dabbled
in PC, but their focus is still console.
And it looks like the PS 6 is going to come out and they're
(21:18):
going to be like, if you want toplay these new games, here's the
PS6, pay US seven, eight, $900, here's your PS6.
Take it or leave it. It's got nice haptics in the
controller. And a lot of people will, you
know, they've sold I think like 80 million PS Fives despite not
that many exclusive games, despite not that much output
(21:39):
from their first party, which islike their strength.
They still sold a crap ton of consoles.
It's also because they sold likean insane number of PS Threes
and PS Twos. So they have like a, a good, you
know, loyal fanbase. It's just it's this next Gen. is
going to be so interesting. It's really going to be a test
(22:01):
of Xbox being experimental and PS6 being conservative.
PS6 will still sell plenty of consoles.
I'm sure they'll still have somegreat games, but I think you're
going to see, well or we won't see that Xbox is probably going
to be happy as a clam doing whatthey're doing too.
And this is where I really wish all their their profits, their
(22:22):
gross profits, like profit margins and all that.
I wish all that stuff was publicbecause even launch a new
console, I bet Nintendo's up in like the 20% and per profit
margin, if not higher. They're so defensive of that
high profit margin. I would guess Xbox is in the
like the 10 to 15%. And I wouldn't be surprised if
(22:43):
Sony's under 5% profit margin right now, canceling games,
shutting down studios, having games in turmoil before they
even come out like Marathon. You know, it's just, you know,
the issues with Bungie and they're still, they're about to
maybe acquire WB Games, which I have no idea what that does for
(23:04):
them, but you know, it's acquisition season all season.
I don't know. It's interesting.
It's cool to see Xbox making moves, confirming things.
It's not going to shut people up.
The insider Gaming, Tom Henderson, whoever his name is,
the big quote, UN quote leaker journalist guy, his his
publications podcast, all this good news, all this interesting
(23:26):
information about the next Xbox and the thumbnail for the new
podcast Xbox $1000. It's like maybe, shoot, we'll
know what the handheld might be that the high end handheld might
be a grand, but like, of course,of all the cool things to talk
about, you know, we have to now speculate about a console being
too expensive is what it is. So I'm curious, we'll wait for
(23:51):
for some more info. I bet we don't have to wait that
long. Speaking of Marathon, it has
been indefinitely delayed from their 2025 release date.
They claimed in a big blog that it's due to feedback from the
recent alpha test. But what they didn't
acknowledge, or at least not this time, that some recent
controversies. You know, just like the little
(24:13):
thing about some stolen art thatseems to be the basis of the
entire game's aesthetic being discovered and that they're, I
assume, trying to figure some ofthat stuff out with that artist.
My guess is that it looks like that art style and and much of
their actual art is so ingrainedinto Marathon.
I think their only choice is to license with that person and IA.
(24:37):
Man that artist should be so hilariously stingy and ask for
so much money. Because what they're pushing
against is the amount of money it's going to take for Bungie to
redo all of those assets and remove all of the stolen assets
(24:58):
is even half of what that's going to cost is going to be a
life changing fortune for that, for that, for that artist.
So hopefully they get their their payday marathon.
I man, if this game even comes out, I'll be amazed.
Honestly, I think what we're going to see is they're going to
(25:19):
try to rejigger some of the stuff.
They're going to realize that the most that they can really
play the latest game is a couplemonths.
I've seen some other people say this.
I bet they put out Marathon. Maybe it comes out.
It'll come out like a month before Grand Theft Auto 6.
They'll push it out there, see what happens, and then let it
disappear into the ether when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out.
(25:41):
And then late next year, the year after, Bungie will come out
and say the next era of Destiny begins.
Destiny 3 has entered full production and they are after
they get absorbed into PlayStation gaming, which they
aren't currently. They're actually a Sony
property. Then they'll get absorbed into
PlayStation and either be forcedto work on the Destiny 3, which
(26:04):
they seem to have avoided. So maybe they do or don't want
to do that and or they'll just become a support studio for
another studio. So maybe, maybe they'll give
them a Kill Zone sequel or something.
I, I don't know, I, I just mean like, like they just everyone,
everything went so wrong for marathon.
(26:26):
This live service push by Playstation's been a hot mess.
The marathon itself was a singleplayer property.
That's what people remember it for.
And it's ditched that to do thisthis cliche kind of, you know,
very timely extraction shooter push and and not do it very
(26:46):
well, at least in my opinion andmany other people's opinion.
It compared to arc Raiders because of when the test came
out badly. Arc Raiders was a ton of fun.
Marathon wasn't. And then this art controversy
just really hit them when they were down and and and, you know,
only further delegitimizes Bungie as a studio and you know,
(27:09):
PlayStation from the greater journalist.
Arc seems to be escaping most ofthe criticism with all of this
stuff, somewhat unsurprisingly, but just absolutely wild.
So I feel bad for the devs, all the people who have spent
hundreds of hours working on this game, doing the reload
(27:30):
animations and designing the environments and working on the
rigging on the models and all that stuff.
Like, you know, this game is going to come out maybe, and
then it's just going to disappear.
And it's going to be another oneof these situations where these
people, maybe they started theircareers at Bungie and all
they've ever done is work on Marathon.
And then it's hopefully going tocome out and it'll just be a
(27:53):
blip in the a blip in the pool, you know, So it's saying I felt
bad for the people at Concord, man.
Like, think about this. There's there were, that was a
newly founded studio before PlayStation acquired it for that
game. You know, there's there's got to
be dozens of people who worked at that studio who owned that
was their first job or their first like AAA job.
(28:16):
They worked on this game. They did all the stuff They
probably did what they did really well.
And then the game came out had maybe the worst launch ever
because it shut down in a week like that was worse than the
game being cancelled in my opinion.
It coming out and then getting server shut down and refunded
almost immediately. And there's a bunch of devs who
(28:39):
did great work. If you ever look, there's some
great videos of like the reload animations and stuff in that
game and they're beautiful. They're the the people are
insanely skilled who worked on that game and all their work is
memed to joke that I'm sure in the industry.
You know, if you're an animator on Concorde, you can be like,
(28:59):
hey, look at this clip. I look at this reel I made of
all these animations. They're amazing.
Hire me now. You know, I'm sure it's a little
more forgiving in their own bubbles, but still.
So RIP marathon. Probably we'll see Push Square,
which is a very loosely defined as a gaming news and, and
(29:20):
journalist publication, put out this article recently suggesting
that Final Fantasy had only soldlike 20,000 copies on Xbox.
And it was this very obvious, you know, situation where this
studio, this, this publication was trying to basically dunk on
it. It, it was, it was just trying
(29:41):
to dunk on Xbox for, you know, it's bad PlayStation or it's bad
Final Fantasy 16 sales. So then some time passed and I
saw some people posting and I went back and I read the article
and they and they, they referenced this analytics firm.
I was like, I've never heard of these people before.
And there there was this really funny moment of looking up and,
(30:04):
and if you are, if you follow meon social media, you may have
seen it. So I, I made this post about the
situation. So I posted a screenshot of the
article from Push Square, which is this, if you don't know it,
they're, they're big fans of PlayStation, which is fine.
There's nothing wrong with fan publications, even though this
one seems relatively large or atleast notable.
(30:25):
So it's this push Square articlesaying, you know, bad sales,
Final Fantasy 16 on Xbox, blah blah blah, whatever.
And it references this analyticsfirm.
So then I look up the author of the article and I look at their
Twitter and their Twitter a few days before or a day before had
this back and forth between themand this person from the
(30:47):
analytics firm and theory, the analytics firm, I'm not under
the impression it's some like a big company.
It's like a person, right? And I started going through some
of these tweets. I felt like I was like solving A
conspiracy theory. And what I came to find is that
a day or two before they post this article, they, they had
(31:11):
said something like they like tagged this analytics firm, this
person saying layoff sales on Xbox.
And the person posted the numberas of this day, it was a week or
whatever after it came out on Xbox.
It looks like it's only been 23,000.
And then that person went and wrote this, this this journalist
from Push Square went and wrote this whole big article about
(31:33):
this. But then in some of the other
replies, you see people saying stuff to this analytics firm,
this person being like, where did you source that from?
And they posted and I, and I can't remember the exact
wording, but it was like, well, we know how much it sold on
Steam and Steam. On the Steam, it has this many
(31:54):
reviews. So if I take that, if I
correlate that with the number of reviews on the Xbox store,
then I think it sold about 20,000 copies.
And so they just made the numberup.
So they, they, I, I would, maybewe could do a study.
I don't know. I promise from the like, I
(32:17):
promise more people post reviewson Steam per capita or whatever
than they do on Xbox. I often forget that you can even
review games on Steam or on XboxGame Store Expedition 33, one of
my favorite games of all time. I haven't reviewed that game on
Xbox. I why?
I just, why would I, you know, on Steam, I, I've reviewed a
(32:41):
bunch of games on there because I look for it when I'm on Steam.
I have never looked for the XboxGame Store review score on the
game. I either play it or I don't.
I don't because I assume it's barely used by anybody.
I I can't imagine that's a largepopulation.
And and then I showed the on my social media post, like my 4th
(33:04):
picture was that the, the personwho said this about the reviews
was like was the analysis, you know, the analyst and this
wouldn't be that big of a deal. Push square is, you know,
they're fairly notable. You know, as far as like console
war fanboy, you know, pub, you know, journalist places go.
(33:27):
But the issue was not necessarily them, but it was the
fact that, you know, IGN other, you know, fairly notable
websites, you know, these other publications and and big time
content creators, influencers, people on on social media spread
(33:48):
this article, or at least the information from the article
everywhere. It was everywhere notable people
and nobodies right. And and that's the problem.
Like the problem isn't that PushSquare was wrong there.
If you ever look at their website, they're just clearly
huge fanboys. And that's fine, I guess, except
when you lie or you make stuff up or you have bad info and then
(34:11):
that gets that turns into like the general understanding of a
situation. That's what happened here.
Now, do I think Final Fantasy 16is going to sell like 10 million
copies on the Xbox? Obviously not.
It'll be lucky if it sells a million, I'm sure, but it's it's
not how much it sold. Maybe it has only sold 20,000
copies, but the way of finding that out isn't by just making up
(34:32):
some junk math with reviews right there there there's you
know, you've got to have some other way of doing that And and
since then, funny enough, the Final Fantasy 16 has bounced
around the the top sales charts for Xbox.
I I think it was in the top ten at one point.
So it's I'm sure it's selling OK, right, But I don't even care
about the sales. If I have to be totally honest.
(34:54):
I care about the fact that a bunch of notable people
reference this and used it as like a source, even though the
original source of this info wasfull of crap.
So be careful, be careful with what you believe out there.
One thing I've learned, whether it's in life in general,
politics, gaming, whatever, is if something feels too good to
(35:15):
be true, if a, if a story or a little info thing or a source or
something, you know, if there, if there's something that makes
you too happy, too excited, be 10 times skeptical of it and
find real good sourcing for it for yourself.
What sucks is that everyone doesthis whole like do your own
research thing, even though like99% people don't know how to do
(35:37):
actual research. You know, a big part of my
college education was empirical research.
So I know how I've written articles and I know how to
research articles. I know how to find primary
sources and how to vet those sources, and most people don't.
And we see that in all facets oflife, and we definitely see it
in the game world. So we got some news this week or
(36:01):
more of a leak perhaps about theMass Effect TV show.
It got this. It looks like it's some kind of
registration or something. I'm sure someone who's smarter
and actually reads things would know better, but basically
involved a couple places where there was a very basic
description of the new show and it's Mass Effect 1.
(36:24):
It's just Mass Effect one. It's it's been interesting.
The reaction has been strange because of course it's Mass
Effect one. What else would it be?
Like I understand there's peoplewho want like first contact war
or like a Side Story, kind of like what Fallout did where it
was a a Side Story with new characters, but in like a
(36:44):
familiar place, right. But but that's not going to work
for Mass Effect, at least not inmy opinion, at least not yet.
They are doing this kind of whatI said before and what I said
about the Mass Effect event in Battlefield.
They're they're trying to get eyes on Mass Effect.
They don't want to have the sameissue they had with Dragon Age,
(37:07):
the Veil Guard. At least that part of the issue
of people just not knowing what Mass Effect is of no one
thinking about it for a decade, right.
So this is fine to me. My only real gripe with the show
right now is I wish it wasn't live action because either it's
going to be so expensive to do the CGI right for the all the
(37:30):
aliens that even if it's successful it won't be
successful enough. Or.
It will be done cheaply and won't look good and it won't be
successful right? So I'm, I'm conflicted on it,
but I, I'm curious about this. I've actually reached out to the
producer and writer of the show to do an interview for my Mass
(37:54):
Effect podcast called the Mass Effect Hype Cast.
So if you haven't listened to that before, I just released my
10th episode. So you can go check that out and
we'll be having a chat. I assume not for a while.
They basically gave me the impression that they would love
to do it. It may be a while before they're
allowed to talk about it. So, you know, I I'll reach out
(38:15):
to them when we hear that they've begun or like ended
filming and we'll go from there.So related to that, the Mass
Effect event is fine in Battlefield.
They actually had to take the Normandy skin away from this
drone for some reason. I don't know why.
The actual event is interesting.You can get, there's a few
(38:39):
characters that have the N7 armor or Garris's armor or
something similar. And there's a few guns you can
put a skin on, including the XM8LMG, which you can put in
Avenger skin on that literally like changes it.
And if you put the right scope on it, it has the full like, you
know, kind of semicircle upper. And what's so funny about it is
(39:05):
I play the round with it and it's terrible.
That gun is awful. So the skin being for it is kind
of a bummer, but what's funny about it is that it makes you
realize how silly these guns look in first person.
If you remember, maybe you do ordon't.
Years ago there were some leaks that I, I don't know if BioWare
(39:26):
was doing it or DICE or whoever,but there was a battlefield ish
Mass Effect game that you know, some footage leaked of it was in
very early development. It looked like it was like pre
alpha footage, but it also showed like this Avenger and
first person and it looks terrible.
The ergonomics of most or at least some of the Mass Effect
(39:47):
guns just make no sense. If we're a third person game,
it's fine and that's what it's been right?
But from a first person perspective, it is hilarious
just how stupid the avenger looks like it takes up so much
of your screen, so much of your vision and it's just, you know,
nonsensical, right? But I will say.
(40:08):
There is something cool about running into a battlefield.
You see, like the arms, it has the N7 armor you can look down
and battlefield you can see yourown like chest and feet.
So you can look down and you seeall the armor and you're holding
the gun and it's it is cool. It's it's kind of a gimmick, you
know, but it's neat and it definitely got me hyped.
(40:29):
You can check out my social media pages at Von Diesel to see
the pictures I posted. So go check that out.
Oh boy. So Death Stranding is a few days
away. By the next episode it'll be
out. And there are a bunch of
articles in the last few days saying essentially Kojima
(40:52):
rewrote most of Death Stranding,or yeah, most of Death Stranding
too because early testers of thegame liked it too much.
There's some other quotes that he wanted to be more divisive.
Like I, I genuinely enjoy the battlefield.
I genuinely enjoy the the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
(41:13):
I appreciate the political messaging in it.
I appreciate much of the gameplay elements of it.
It's a great series. It's stupid, it's nonsensical,
but I've also really enjoyed basically every game in that
series I've played. I'm excited to play Snake Eater
Delta, the remake because I never did.
(41:35):
But I have to say that the the levels of pretentiousness and
this whole like force, like our tour status and this like I
rewrote the game because people liked it too much.
Like no one else would get away with this.
(41:55):
Like, like if he hears a hot take, if he said that in an
interview in English, he would get eviscerated.
But instead, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's Kojima.
Everyone's in love with him. I think a lot of people are
(42:17):
afraid to get like on his bad side.
I suspect that there's, you know, you don't want to not be
liked by him or, or for him to see or hear your name in a bad
way. Much like Jeff Keeley, I think
everyone's like afraid to be in his bad graces.
Even if it wouldn't really be that big of a deal.
I'm sure Death Stranding 2 is going to be fine.
(42:37):
It's easy to forget that Death Stranding one only has like it's
like an 80 or an 85 Metacritic score.
Like it it was good, but it wasn't like a masterpiece to
people. 2 is likely going to be better, but you won't be able to
convince me that you need to minus like 10 points from
whatever the open critic Metacritic score ends up being
(42:58):
because it is just like it's so strange.
He has like he like makes peopledrunk, like he like lowers
people's IQ. His games do or when people talk
about them, they they get Dumber.
I don't, I don't know if it's conscious and people are afraid
to like dare say anything bad about him and like the more like
notable media folks and influencers and stuff.
(43:21):
But like this just come on, let go.
I, I made, I changed it because it was too good.
Like it's going to be a very frustrating conversation around
this game because I have no doubt my mind that especially
the people who I tend to listen to are just going to glaze this
game so hard. Even if it's just like 100 hour
(43:43):
boring slog of a game with that makes no sense, that has no
story that makes any sense. It's just a bunch of random shit
that Kojima threw out there for fun just to see if he can get
away with it. Like again, I'm sure the game
play is going to be great because he's always done great
gameplay. I have 0 doubts about that, but
(44:03):
I have a feeling that when people were willing to be a
little honest about the first game that we're going to see
less of that about the second game.
We'll see some really cool news for me if you're one of my
Division Two holdouts. Division 2 has confirmed they're
working on changing the Washington, DC map to the season
(44:24):
to winter and I would assume associated weather events like
snow storms and squalls and stuff like that.
They, they, they tease this by basic by showing concept art of
the Capitol building covered in snow and like agents and like
winter wear and stuff. I I like I've said before, if,
(44:47):
if any of this division two postlaunch development is slowing
down the Division Three, they need to stop.
If it's not, then whatever, you know, do your thing like go
nuts. I guess like if this, if this is
making the Division Three even aday later, it shouldn't be
(45:08):
happening. But if they've got the team
assigned, if they've got the budget, if it would be soft as
cool with them doing it, whatever.
I guess I am curious. I'm wondering where I thought
the Brooklyn the Battle for Brooklyn DLC it was supposed to
be a lead into the next game. I have to imagine this will be
(45:30):
the actual lead into the next game.
I have long assumed that the TheDivision 3 will take place in a
place like Chicago or something during the winter again, because
if you're a Division fan, you may remember this.
But if you're not, The Division Two, which came out in 2019, is
a sequel to The Division One came out in 2016.
(45:50):
You have to keep in mind it's like 2017 in this game franchise
or whatever. It's only it's only like a year
has passed in the actual game story.
So you have to go all the way back to the first game and
remember that this game has onlyprogressed like a year with all
(46:11):
of the events, all of the seasons, all of the manhunts,
all of the post launch content for both games.
It's, you know, barely, you know, barely any time has
passed. So So what I assume the first
game took place the winter everything happened.
The Division two took place the following summer and I assume
the next game will take place inthe in the next winter.
(46:33):
It'll be one year from activation of the agents and the
dollar flu spreading and all of that, right?
So if this whatever they're doing with Division two where
they're going to add snow to theDC map.
Then cool, you know, I can work with that, right?
I I just I I'm I'm just curious because you know, for better or.
(47:00):
Worse, the events and the seasons and the manhunts.
Even to a point, the Brooklyn DLC.
Honestly, even to a point. Warlords of New York, the DLC
that came out back in 2020. They're fine, They're OK, right?
Like. They.
They're not. I don't think they're the best.
I think Warlords was obviously abigger deal.
(47:22):
It it's just, it obviously wasn't supposed to be there.
It was to me at least it was obviously supposed to be
Division One DLC or whatever. So it just, it's never fit.
And then what they've done with Division two since then, they've
just got, it's gotten real sillystory wise, just bringing people
back from the dead or they weren't actually dead.
(47:42):
Quote UN quote, like whatever, we're moving on.
But the the snow thing is cool. I I think there's a good chance
it ends up being the actual leadinto the next game, so we'll
see. CDPR claims that they're making
The Witcher 4 with consoles as the focus since Cyberpunk 2077
(48:03):
suffered from them focusing on PC and then scaling down.
I mean this makes sense. It also helps.
That the even. The current Gen. consoles that
are now, you know, 5-6 years oldare, you know, better consoles
today for Witcher 4 than the Xbox One and PS4 were for
(48:24):
Cyberpunk. It's it's easy to forget those
consoles kind of sucked. Like tech wise they were using
not mobile, but they were using like laptop grade hardware.
Both of them did and it was OK, but it meant that it just, you
know, it just had lower clocks and it just wasn't as fast.
They were just bad. Where the new consoles are using
(48:44):
actual desktop hardware. SO CS, the SO CS are like
full-fledged, you know, desktop hardware.
And then we've seen the results of that.
They they run games really well,all things considered.
So this makes sense. I also just caution people, you
know, CDPR has said lots of things in the past.
I, I, I like Cyberpunk 2077. It is still not the game that
(49:08):
they advertised. In my opinion.
It's very good. It's, it's neat.
I think it's way overrated. I, I think that it's extremely
shallow. It's all all glitz, you know,
it's, it's all show very little depth in my opinion.
But the show is really good and and I like the game a lot.
(49:30):
I've really come around on it inthe last year.
But I still won't give up my crusade to be like, it's great.
It's still not what it was meantto be.
So with Witcher 4, I just ask people to be very cautious,
especially after a few weeks agowhen they did the whole, it
wasn't really their fault, but they were involved.
(49:51):
The whole like Witcher 4 tech demo running on PS5 and it was
just a video basically. It was just a render.
It was a, it was a, it was a cutscene.
That isn't even the game. It was just a side project
essentially. So, you know, we'll see how that
plays out in the long run. Speaking of Cyberpunk, third
(50:13):
party games aren't selling very well in the Switch to supposedly
and that is the least surprisingthing ever.
People buy Switches to play Mario games right now they've
mostly bought it for Mario Kart and to play some of their old
Nintendo games, especially Switch games that at better
fidelity. Maybe if Nintendo has allowed it
(50:35):
to be upgraded and if you've paid for at least some of them.
But like Cyberpunk and other third party games not being that
popular on Switch to like of course they're not like you have
to remember, like the whole thing with this is Cyberpunk
runs like OK on the switch to it's like 1080P like 40 FPS or
(50:55):
or something like that's not very good.
Like let's just be honest, like that's a very mediocre
experience. You can get a better experience
on the base PS Five, the PS5 Pro, the Xbox Series X, and
probably S as well on a on. Any decent PC at this point you
can get a better experience like.
(51:15):
No one should be buying a switchto for 3rd party games.
If you have a switch to and nothing else and you just happen
to want to try out cyberpunk, OKcool.
But if you have any other optionto play Cyberpunk then on the
switch to, that's where you should be playing.
And I I wonder at this point howmany switch to owners only have
(51:37):
a Switch to? Over time it will be a lot
because a lot of people, especially the Switch one, just
had a Switch one or like three of them and no other consoles.
They'll get to that part of the market maybe eventually.
But the early adopters I suspectare people who are more involved
in gaming and probably don't just have a switch to.
Therefore, why would you play Cyberpunk on there?
(52:00):
I guess maybe mobile when you'reon the run, but that experience,
the whole 40FPS1080P I'm pretty sure is docked.
I can't, I don't even know what the undocked numbers are and
they're probably not great, so why would you?
I don't know. It's just it's this is one of
those things where this happenedwith a Switch as well, where a
lot of third party games ended up there and they would do it
(52:22):
like through streaming or by like significantly down grading
the experience. And just again, if you only have
it then OK, cool. I guess that's nice.
And all these companies reporting their games to that
because there's 150 million Switches out there, but they
don't those people don't care about Cyberpunk, Mortal Kombat,
(52:43):
especially not playing it at like 480P and like 20 FPS.
And I know the switch to is morepowerful, but you're only going
to see that bump really impact games for a short time because
you already have cyber .2077 that already that's a, you know,
a multiple year old game that already doesn't really run that
(53:05):
well on the Switch too. So you know what's going to
happen to Witcher 4 comes out. Do you really think it's going
to run well on the Switch too? Like it's obviously not right.
So yeah, this is the least surprising news ever and I don't
think anyone really cares. I guarantee Nintendo doesn't
because they're probably rockingup 25% profit margin right now.
And then finally, Nexus Mods hasbeen sold after I believe 24
(53:27):
years of private ownership. The founder of it had it that
whole time, said they're still going to be involved, but sold
it off. It's been this sale has been
kind of presented in like the nicest way possible, but it's to
an investment group. For what it's worth.
That investment group has made alot of statements and put out a
(53:48):
lot of info being like, hey, yeah, we're we're an investment
group, but we do get it. And here's a bunch of things
we're going to do to not, you know, to make it clear that we
understand like we shouldn't break what's not broken here,
right. So they've like they're
honoring. I didn't even know this, but
apparently they're at some point, I assume early.
(54:08):
You could get a premium membership for Nexus Mods
permanently. You could get a lifetime.
Subscription. And they're going to honor those
and all that kind of stuff. Now how long does that last?
Is that permanent? We'll have to wait and see.
I love Nexus Mods, mostly for Mass Effect, but you know,
there's some other games I I dabble with on there too, so
(54:28):
hopefully it all plays out. As for content updates, nothing
big. Continuing back from vacation.
Rest of the summer is pretty chill.
Not in no big plans, so I'll be around and then we'll be getting
into the new school year and that's when things get a little
crazy for me again. But yeah, I have a good month or
(54:49):
two here with no big things going on, so I should be putting
out podcasts on the regular schedule again this coming week.
I hope to get back on the streams.
I am streaming on 2K1440P on Twitch now and it looks really
good and it works extremely wellon my setup.
And you know, I'll keep on with the videos.
(55:10):
I've been putting out a bunch ofthose lately.
It, it, it's so funny, like, youknow, Mass Effect video, even
The Division or my podcast, you know, they performed fine for
me. And then I'll put out a video
about like Xbox's new console and I'll get like 20 views.
So please check out my other videos.
I would really appreciate it if you're on YouTube and if you're
not, go check it out. I would really appreciate that.
(55:33):
Make sure to subscribe as well. I do have a new Mass Effect hype
cast out. It's the 10th episode talking
about the TV show and some more depth, as well as some other
topics, including I believe thisis the one where I talked about
Jason Shire's article about BioWare, where I focused on the
Mass Effect side of that stuff and kind of didn't talk much
(55:54):
about Dragon Age and kind of basically just ranted.
So go check that out. And that's where we're going to
wrap this one up. So thank you so much for
listening to this whole episode.Subscribe to the show on your
favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or iTunes, and
subscribe to the Von Diesel YouTube channel to get all of my
(56:14):
videos, including this podcast. Thank you to everyone who
supports as YouTube members or Twitch subscribers.
If you're interested in supporting this podcast and all
of my other content, please check out the links in the show
description. If you have any questions or
feedback, let me know. My Discord, hit me up on social
media at Von Diesel or at the Bonfire, or you can even leave a
(56:37):
comment on Spotify or YouTube. That is all I have for this
episode of the Bonfire Gaming Podcast, so until next time.
This is the Bonfire Gaming podcast episode 342.
I'm your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Xbox's next Gen. announcement marathon, losing
the race before it starts, Mass Effect, TV show news, and much
more. Gaming sucks right now.
(00:25):
This is a social media click bait, maybe some YouTube or some
streamer kind of statement you see fairly often right now and
it it goes off of this whole idea of that gaming is bad now
all games come out unfinished and have DLC in their live
service and they're only designed to suck money out of
(00:48):
your wallet and not to even be enjoyed.
When you see people talking about gaming, even some
developers, it's all about you know what a group what, what
some testing and their analyticssaid to do and that's why they
made the game. I think that is a really stupid
(01:10):
take. And I wanted to use this kind of
opening segment this week to, tokind of it just very briefly
kind of dive into it because it,this is something every time me,
I mostly see it on social media,but every time it'll be a video
or a post, I'll be like, oh man,gaming sucks so much right now.
(01:30):
When I was a kid, you know, games came out all the time and
I would play them forever and they looked awesome and blah,
blah, blah. And what I find is that, I mean,
most of the time this is just clickbait, right?
Like, like they're just, you know, targeting the people who
are the same ones who complain about every single game that
(01:51):
comes out no matter what. But there's also probably some
people who do do believe this, who who really do think gaming
sucks right now. And when they say that, what
they probably don't realize or acknowledge is that gaming for
them sucks right now. Gaming in general, I would argue
(02:14):
we've had multiple years in justthe last few years with more
games, more good games released than ever per year.
Not to mention we've had some ofthe best games ever made, at
least in my opinion, released. We just had boulders gate a
couple years ago, Boulders Gate 3, which even if you're not into
(02:35):
that type of game and, and I'm not I, I I think that's one of
the greatest games ever made. It may be the greatest game ever
made when you look at the whole package, not to mention other
games that people have enjoyed quite a bit as well.
Yes, there there is the occasional game that comes out
and it's obviously unfinished, it's lacking content, it's
(02:57):
lacking Polish, it's lacking this or that to push back.
Even against that though, a relatively unsuccessful game or
a moderately successful game came out, you know, six months
ago or whatever, or, or I guess a little more now less than a
year ago in Dragon Age of the Vale Guard, which has plenty of
(03:18):
its faults and some reasonable criticism, some very
unreasonable ones as well, I maysay.
But the one thing you can't say about it is it's not lacking
content. It's a good 30 to I mean, I
think my playthrough I even blewthrough it basically, you know,
40 to 60 hours, you know, for a playthrough with and probably
(03:40):
more than that if you 100% it asfar as I could tell, basically 0
bugs, a very technically sound game that as far as I know,
played well and worked well on, you know, all the consoles and I
presume most PCs and and you know, and that game wasn't very
successful. There are other reasons for
(04:00):
that, but the games like that are coming out.
That game came from not only EA,but BioWare, you know, so like
I, I just, I can't be bothered with, with this attitude.
It's just people think it maybe it sucks for them.
They're an adult now, right? They, they don't have as much
(04:21):
time to play games. So when they play a game, they
they might get to play, you know, maybe one or two games a
year where when they were younger in college and high
school and. You know they could.
Sit there and finish a whole game of the week, right?
And you can't do that now. And, and I think that sometimes
people's views on the stuff get skewed because it's, you know,
maybe gaming sucks for them right now.
(04:42):
Maybe they only get to play a couple games a year and they
bought the game that just didn'tvibe with them or whatever.
So it sucks for them, right? Or the worst case scenario,
you're talking about people who have dove into and, and and
gotten into the whole weird, youknow, kind of, I would argue
kind of right wing, hyper conservative, kind of, you know,
(05:06):
anti woke, like where every game's woke.
If a character is black in a game, it's a woke game.
Or, you know, whatever, you know, they, they've whatever
terrible path they've gone down.You know, those people can't be
helped, right? And then I feel for the people
who feel like gaming sucks now because they just don't have
time to do it. Maybe they had a bad experience,
(05:26):
But as someone who, you know, makes time to play games because
of the podcast I do and the videos I like to make, like it's
my hobby, you know, it's I spendtime with my family, I do my
job, I, you know, work around myhouse and I make sure all of my
stuff is cared for. But the thing I spend the next
most amount of time on is probably gaming, playing, making
(05:47):
content, you know, reading up onit.
And if someone in that position,I don't know if gaming's ever
been better, you know, obviouslythe industry isn't, you know, a
bit of turmoil. We're probably about to have
some more layoffs for Microsoft.I'm, I, I think I'm being like
intellectual about starting to not be as bothered by the
(06:11):
layoffs, Not because they're notbad, they're obviously bad, not
because they're not shady and selfish.
They're obviously both of those things.
But there's also been this recognition for me of like, you
know, these layoffs have always been part of the industry.
They just get more focused now than they used to.
I would argue they used to be worse.
It seems like from what I've seen where, you know, like you
(06:32):
finished you, you ship a game, unless you're one of the, you
know, higher up people in that studio.
You just assumed you were getting laid off back then, you
know, back in the day. And now you do see people stick
around for quite a while and layoffs do seem to be shamed a
bit more. But, you know, I mean, I guess
for me, it's just it's just become part of the thing.
(06:54):
So, you know, I pay attention toall this stuff and, and you
know, and while there are bad things happening in the game
industry, you know, with games, I don't know if it's we've ever
had a more consistent and, and more voluminous amount of, of
great games. But you know that that's
(07:15):
actually, I think it is a popular take.
I think if you talk to regular people who play games, they
would mostly agree, but if you judge it by social media and the
worst people possible there, then you probably wouldn't.
So I don't think gaming sucks right now.
And if you think it does, and I think you're wrong, let's get
(07:37):
into the gaming news. Xbox has announced a multi year
partnership with AMD to create their future Xbox Series
successor, as well as handheld and cloud gaming advancements
and mobile and everything. This was followed up by AMD
putting out some of their own statements kind of just
(07:58):
basically saying the same thing.What was interesting is that
both of these statements seem toconfirm or push back on, you
know, we knew and we've known that we are getting a, a series
replacement. So series X&S current Gen. that
they'll be releasing a new console.
For the love of all that's good.I hope they just released one
(08:20):
first party console. I, I, I beg them not to do the
multi tier thing again. I, I understand why they did it.
Maybe it was good for them and in the short run and maybe long
run, they they know better than I would, but I really just want
them to put out one really solidbox at the best price they can
afford. Anyways, they've seen also
(08:41):
confirming here that handhelds. So are they talking about the
handhelds they're claiming as their own, like the Ally X, the
Xbox Ally X2 or whatever, or arethey talking about this
propriety? You know, this this first party
handheld that was announced and then it was shelved and then it
was essentially cancelled according to Tom Warren, who's
(09:02):
always super accurate and not just throwing stuff at the wall
hoping it sticks. And now, you know, maybe this
means that it's still on on the board.
My assumption has been that they're they're definitely going
to do a a handheld at some point, like a first party one.
I just suspect the bulk of the focus is on the next console
(09:22):
right now, which this announcement to me makes it even
more likely that that 2026 date could be real.
And I've seen people be like, well, you know, Playstation's
probably not going to do PS6 until, you know, 2028 or
something, or maybe 7 at the earliest, Because I mean, they
just bought the PS5 Pro, You know, they, they just did their
(09:44):
mid Gen. refresh, suggesting that the PS five generation has
at least a few years left in it.And hell, they've, they still
need to release games for it. Man, Like I've been popping off
on that point for a while now. But you know, we got a bunch of
what should have been cross Gen.PS4 games at the beginning of
the PS5 and then we've just gotten like some third party
(10:06):
stuff and like Astrobot, we'll get Ghost of Yotai this year.
Death Strandings, Like it's not first party.
It's, you know, third party exclusive.
I I mean, I still need to finishtheir 5th Gen.
I'm pretty sure there's what it's like 12 a dozen Xbox
(10:28):
published games coming out this year that might be more games
than the first party games, someof these released.
And so those first party games are some of the best games you
can play. So I'm, I'm not dogging on that.
I'm just saying that it's strange, like their output's
been weird. But this whole idea that, you
know, oh, it's too early for another Xbox.
I think you're going to see Xboxputting out new hardware like
(10:50):
every two or three years. You know, with the, with the way
they're moving, they're obviously they don't care about
the generation thing anymore. And if anything, trying to get a
console out couple years, almostthree years before the PS6.
And, and then by the time the PS6 comes out, maybe another
(11:11):
edition, another, you know, a newer version of hardware and
you'll, and you'll run into the situation where, you know, first
party, third party, there's going to be dozens and dozens of
devices that can play Xbox and the heck can access the Xbox
ecosystem. And you know, they'll just
basically do a thing where, you know, from this console back,
(11:36):
they won't be compatible hardware anymore, but you can
still play on cloud if you want.And then we have this new thing
coming. You know, it's just basically
going to be, you know, pick yourpoison, pick your price point.
Are you enthusiast, you want to spend $4000 build a nice PC?
You know, you're a little more cost averse, you know, buy that
(11:57):
$800 console that's solid, subsidized a little bit, or you
just want to play on the cloud on your TV or your phone or your
old Xbox One and do that, that, that seems like what they're
doing to me. You know, maybe I'm wrong.
What was interesting is that statements from both of the
(12:19):
companies, AMD and Xbox, we're really focused on hardware
backwards compatibility. It's a big deal right now.
One of the big rips or burns, unlike that handheld LIX Xbox
Edition, is that it's going to play PC versions of games,
obviously. So there's a bunch of basically
old digital games on Xbox that it won't be able to play.
(12:43):
And there rumors have been swirling basically that they're
trying to figure out a compatibility layer for that.
I think it's mostly like 360 games because they were on that
proprietary processor, but maybesome Xbox One or maybe some kind
of weird outside cases, games that you never got like APC
slash X86 slash Xbox One or Series edition.
(13:08):
I, I, I suspect it's, I'd be curious to see the, the amount
of play time on games that can'tbe played on PC at this point.
I bet it's minimal, but it's still a thing, you know, for
game preservation. They've always talked about that
so much. It'd be good for them to
continue on that. They focused a lot on not
(13:31):
locking Xbox players to a singlestore.
That was specifically mentioned by Sarah Bond during the
announcement of all this stuff. So that's definitely
interesting. So we'll have the Xbox store.
Are we going to get a console where you can access Steam?
Or. You know, the Epic Store, GOG,
you know, who knows? I don't think that's going to
(13:53):
happen if you want me to be honest, but you know,
something's going to happen. They they said it, you know,
that's obviously a focus. And then the push for play
anywhere is big too, which is inthe hundreds, if not I think
thousands of titles. Now that you buy it on Xbox, you
can play it on your PC, you can play it on cloud, you can play
it on handheld wherever you want.
(14:15):
If you can log into your Xbox account, you got it.
As long as that you know the method in which you login can
play games, it's pretty cool. Just this weekend, this this
kind of long weekend, I guess mywife's out of town and this
(14:36):
Thursday and Friday I still had to work.
So my, my little one's been hanging out with me and kind of
just hanging out at the house while I work.
And she wanted to play her game.She's got like a bluey game and
you know, a handful of games on my Xbox that she likes to play a
Barbie game and so on. A brand new one actually.
And my setup is my Xbox is hooked up to one of my monitors,
(14:58):
but it's the monitor I use for work.
I have a two monitor setup. So I realized, hey, I should
just do remote play. So I went to grab your tablet.
She has a nice new Samsung tablet, logged into the Remote
Play website, linked it up, and she hung out in the room next to
(15:19):
me and played the Bluey game andBarbie and couple other things,
some of the Lego games. I think she was going nuts, man.
She was loving it and it worked great.
No issues at all, barely. It was actually light on battery
too. It's over Wi-Fi, so I'm sure
that helps. But yeah, like, like this
thing's cool. Like that's obviously the, the
(15:39):
old I've you've been able to do that for 7-8 years.
I actually my first streaming setup, my Xbox One was set up in
our home console by the big TV. And my first streaming setup was
I would use the Xbox app back then to remote play.
(16:01):
It would my Xbox on my screen and I would use the the Xbox
app, you know, remote playing asthe capture device and OBS and I
would capture that in the sound.And then I would look at chat on
my phone that was on the dock next to my computer.
And I would control most of the things using the numpad that I
(16:24):
had done like shortcuts and stuff.
So the, the remote play things been around for a long time, but
you know, seeing this use case for it was really cool with my
with my kid. It it it's so interesting
because you know, the last week,especially after this
announcement, all of the, you know, the, the console war talk
has been Xbox gamers like dunking on all the PlayStation
(16:46):
gamers who were, you know, saying that they're, you know,
Xbox is done. They're not making hardware.
You know, obviously that's not true and that's never been true.
They, as far as I could tell, we're always going to make more
hardware. They, I felt like they've been
pretty clear about that, but people were, you know, making
their own takes on that. But really, I think the take,
(17:10):
the more interesting take on it,at least in my opinion, is that
not only are they going to make hardware, they're going to flood
the industry with their hardware.
They're going to flood the ecosystem with things that can
play Game Pass or stream games or play Xbox or access that
ecosystem, whether it's TV's, phones, tablets, streaming
(17:34):
devices, you know, actual Xboxesthemselves, P CS PlayStation
Fives in some capacity. You know, it's laptops, third
party handheld devices, maybe first party handheld devices,
maybe third party consoles. You know, they, they are setting
(17:59):
up this situation where every single person who has any kind
of modern tech with a screen will likely be able to get an
Xbox account, sign up for Game Pass and play hundreds, if not
thousands of games whenever theywant as part of that Game Pass.
(18:20):
And what I don't think people realize is that that saturation
of the market is they, they don't want people to get on
cloud and just stay on cloud. They'll be happy to take their
money on the Game pass subscription, I'm sure.
But they want that person to be like, I like this and I like
this game and that game and thisother game.
And I'm excited about that game that's coming out that I heard
(18:42):
about this. Would this would be a lot better
on Xbox? Maybe I should buy a series X or
a next Gen. system or I haven't think about getting APC.
Maybe I should get a gaming PC and, and then they can access
all those things. Like I, I, I think not enough
credit has been given to the idea that, you know, this cloud
and, and, and streaming and, andall this stuff is encouraging
(19:06):
people to try to buy hardware, right, and, and to access even
more. You know, Xbox has always had
this focus, focus on, you know, monthly active users.
That's what their biggest thing.They, they don't care about how
many consoles they sell. They don't even seem super
concerned how many games they sell, even though I'm sure they
do care. But they, they want to know
people are active on their ecosystem because they know that
(19:26):
that's probably the future. And what's so interesting is
that we're going to run into this next generation here in the
next year, 2 years, three years where we have Nintendo doing
their thing on the side, 2 gins behind happy as can be.
We, we, we're going to have Xboxdoing this thing where they're
going to say, hey, here's a console, you want to buy it, We
would love that. You don't want to here's 15
(19:48):
other options to play our games.Go nuts.
Just please play them. And then you're going to have
PlayStation 6 come out in two orthree years.
And their strategy is going to be the same as the PS5 and the
PS4 and the PS3 and the PS2 and the PlayStation one.
And it's going to be, we have some exclusives.
(20:11):
And by then, hopefully they havesome really good ones.
My prediction is that games fromNaughty Dog, Santa Monica,
Insomniac, there's going to be games from them that are ready
by the end of the PS Five generation that they are 100%
going to hold back. Make PS Six games and make them
exclusive. They're just like they did with
(20:33):
God of War Ragnarok, just like they did with Ratchet and Clank,
just like they did with a handful of other games that
could have been crossed in. They just decided for them not
to be because they wanted peopleto buy the PS5, right?
And not just stay on the PS4. They're definitely going to do
that with the PS6 and they're going to keep on that strategy.
They just doubled down on it here in the last week where the,
(20:56):
the head of Sony, I think was like, yeah, like we, you know,
we've dabbled. You know, we're, we're putting
some games on PC like five yearsafter they come out on console,
after they've been remade and remastered 2 * 3 times for
console. You know, they, they've dabbled
in PC, but their focus is still console.
And it looks like the PS 6 is going to come out and they're
(21:18):
going to be like, if you want toplay these new games, here's the
PS6, pay US seven, eight, $900, here's your PS6.
Take it or leave it. It's got nice haptics in the
controller. And a lot of people will, you
know, they've sold I think like 80 million PS Fives despite not
that many exclusive games, despite not that much output
(21:39):
from their first party, which islike their strength.
They still sold a crap ton of consoles.
It's also because they sold likean insane number of PS Threes
and PS Twos. So they have like a, a good, you
know, loyal fanbase. It's just it's this next Gen. is
going to be so interesting. It's really going to be a test
(22:01):
of Xbox being experimental and PS6 being conservative.
PS6 will still sell plenty of consoles.
I'm sure they'll still have somegreat games, but I think you're
going to see, well or we won't see that Xbox is probably going
to be happy as a clam doing whatthey're doing too.
And this is where I really wish all their their profits, their
(22:22):
gross profits, like profit margins and all that.
I wish all that stuff was publicbecause even launch a new
console, I bet Nintendo's up in like the 20% and per profit
margin, if not higher. They're so defensive of that
high profit margin. I would guess Xbox is in the
like the 10 to 15%. And I wouldn't be surprised if
(22:43):
Sony's under 5% profit margin right now, canceling games,
shutting down studios, having games in turmoil before they
even come out like Marathon. You know, it's just, you know,
the issues with Bungie and they're still, they're about to
maybe acquire WB Games, which I have no idea what that does for
(23:04):
them, but you know, it's acquisition season all season.
I don't know. It's interesting.
It's cool to see Xbox making moves, confirming things.
It's not going to shut people up.
The insider Gaming, Tom Henderson, whoever his name is,
the big quote, UN quote leaker journalist guy, his his
publications podcast, all this good news, all this interesting
(23:26):
information about the next Xbox and the thumbnail for the new
podcast Xbox $1000. It's like maybe, shoot, we'll
know what the handheld might be that the high end handheld might
be a grand, but like, of course,of all the cool things to talk
about, you know, we have to now speculate about a console being
too expensive is what it is. So I'm curious, we'll wait for
(23:51):
for some more info. I bet we don't have to wait that
long. Speaking of Marathon, it has
been indefinitely delayed from their 2025 release date.
They claimed in a big blog that it's due to feedback from the
recent alpha test. But what they didn't
acknowledge, or at least not this time, that some recent
controversies. You know, just like the little
(24:13):
thing about some stolen art thatseems to be the basis of the
entire game's aesthetic being discovered and that they're, I
assume, trying to figure some ofthat stuff out with that artist.
My guess is that it looks like that art style and and much of
their actual art is so ingrainedinto Marathon.
I think their only choice is to license with that person and IA.
(24:37):
Man that artist should be so hilariously stingy and ask for
so much money. Because what they're pushing
against is the amount of money it's going to take for Bungie to
redo all of those assets and remove all of the stolen assets
(24:58):
is even half of what that's going to cost is going to be a
life changing fortune for that, for that, for that artist.
So hopefully they get their their payday marathon.
I man, if this game even comes out, I'll be amazed.
Honestly, I think what we're going to see is they're going to
(25:19):
try to rejigger some of the stuff.
They're going to realize that the most that they can really
play the latest game is a couplemonths.
I've seen some other people say this.
I bet they put out Marathon. Maybe it comes out.
It'll come out like a month before Grand Theft Auto 6.
They'll push it out there, see what happens, and then let it
disappear into the ether when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out.
(25:41):
And then late next year, the year after, Bungie will come out
and say the next era of Destiny begins.
Destiny 3 has entered full production and they are after
they get absorbed into PlayStation gaming, which they
aren't currently. They're actually a Sony
property. Then they'll get absorbed into
PlayStation and either be forcedto work on the Destiny 3, which
(26:04):
they seem to have avoided. So maybe they do or don't want
to do that and or they'll just become a support studio for
another studio. So maybe, maybe they'll give
them a Kill Zone sequel or something.
I, I don't know, I, I just mean like, like they just everyone,
everything went so wrong for marathon.
(26:26):
This live service push by Playstation's been a hot mess.
The marathon itself was a singleplayer property.
That's what people remember it for.
And it's ditched that to do thisthis cliche kind of, you know,
very timely extraction shooter push and and not do it very
(26:46):
well, at least in my opinion andmany other people's opinion.
It compared to arc Raiders because of when the test came
out badly. Arc Raiders was a ton of fun.
Marathon wasn't. And then this art controversy
just really hit them when they were down and and and, you know,
only further delegitimizes Bungie as a studio and you know,
(27:09):
PlayStation from the greater journalist.
Arc seems to be escaping most ofthe criticism with all of this
stuff, somewhat unsurprisingly, but just absolutely wild.
So I feel bad for the devs, all the people who have spent
hundreds of hours working on this game, doing the reload
(27:30):
animations and designing the environments and working on the
rigging on the models and all that stuff.
Like, you know, this game is going to come out maybe, and
then it's just going to disappear.
And it's going to be another oneof these situations where these
people, maybe they started theircareers at Bungie and all
they've ever done is work on Marathon.
And then it's hopefully going tocome out and it'll just be a
(27:53):
blip in the a blip in the pool, you know, So it's saying I felt
bad for the people at Concord, man.
Like, think about this. There's there were, that was a
newly founded studio before PlayStation acquired it for that
game. You know, there's there's got to
be dozens of people who worked at that studio who owned that
was their first job or their first like AAA job.
(28:16):
They worked on this game. They did all the stuff They
probably did what they did really well.
And then the game came out had maybe the worst launch ever
because it shut down in a week like that was worse than the
game being cancelled in my opinion.
It coming out and then getting server shut down and refunded
almost immediately. And there's a bunch of devs who
(28:39):
did great work. If you ever look, there's some
great videos of like the reload animations and stuff in that
game and they're beautiful. They're the the people are
insanely skilled who worked on that game and all their work is
memed to joke that I'm sure in the industry.
You know, if you're an animator on Concorde, you can be like,
(28:59):
hey, look at this clip. I look at this reel I made of
all these animations. They're amazing.
Hire me now. You know, I'm sure it's a little
more forgiving in their own bubbles, but still.
So RIP marathon. Probably we'll see Push Square,
which is a very loosely defined as a gaming news and, and
(29:20):
journalist publication, put out this article recently suggesting
that Final Fantasy had only soldlike 20,000 copies on Xbox.
And it was this very obvious, you know, situation where this
studio, this, this publication was trying to basically dunk on
it. It, it was, it was just trying
(29:41):
to dunk on Xbox for, you know, it's bad PlayStation or it's bad
Final Fantasy 16 sales. So then some time passed and I
saw some people posting and I went back and I read the article
and they and they, they referenced this analytics firm.
I was like, I've never heard of these people before.
And there there was this really funny moment of looking up and,
(30:04):
and if you are, if you follow meon social media, you may have
seen it. So I, I made this post about the
situation. So I posted a screenshot of the
article from Push Square, which is this, if you don't know it,
they're, they're big fans of PlayStation, which is fine.
There's nothing wrong with fan publications, even though this
one seems relatively large or atleast notable.
(30:25):
So it's this push Square articlesaying, you know, bad sales,
Final Fantasy 16 on Xbox, blah blah blah, whatever.
And it references this analyticsfirm.
So then I look up the author of the article and I look at their
Twitter and their Twitter a few days before or a day before had
this back and forth between themand this person from the
(30:47):
analytics firm and theory, the analytics firm, I'm not under
the impression it's some like a big company.
It's like a person, right? And I started going through some
of these tweets. I felt like I was like solving A
conspiracy theory. And what I came to find is that
a day or two before they post this article, they, they had
(31:11):
said something like they like tagged this analytics firm, this
person saying layoff sales on Xbox.
And the person posted the numberas of this day, it was a week or
whatever after it came out on Xbox.
It looks like it's only been 23,000.
And then that person went and wrote this, this this journalist
from Push Square went and wrote this whole big article about
(31:33):
this. But then in some of the other
replies, you see people saying stuff to this analytics firm,
this person being like, where did you source that from?
And they posted and I, and I can't remember the exact
wording, but it was like, well, we know how much it sold on
Steam and Steam. On the Steam, it has this many
(31:54):
reviews. So if I take that, if I
correlate that with the number of reviews on the Xbox store,
then I think it sold about 20,000 copies.
And so they just made the numberup.
So they, they, I, I would, maybewe could do a study.
I don't know. I promise from the like, I
(32:17):
promise more people post reviewson Steam per capita or whatever
than they do on Xbox. I often forget that you can even
review games on Steam or on XboxGame Store Expedition 33, one of
my favorite games of all time. I haven't reviewed that game on
Xbox. I why?
I just, why would I, you know, on Steam, I, I've reviewed a
(32:41):
bunch of games on there because I look for it when I'm on Steam.
I have never looked for the XboxGame Store review score on the
game. I either play it or I don't.
I don't because I assume it's barely used by anybody.
I I can't imagine that's a largepopulation.
And and then I showed the on my social media post, like my 4th
(33:04):
picture was that the, the personwho said this about the reviews
was like was the analysis, you know, the analyst and this
wouldn't be that big of a deal. Push square is, you know,
they're fairly notable. You know, as far as like console
war fanboy, you know, pub, you know, journalist places go.
(33:27):
But the issue was not necessarily them, but it was the
fact that, you know, IGN other, you know, fairly notable
websites, you know, these other publications and and big time
content creators, influencers, people on on social media spread
(33:48):
this article, or at least the information from the article
everywhere. It was everywhere notable people
and nobodies right. And and that's the problem.
Like the problem isn't that PushSquare was wrong there.
If you ever look at their website, they're just clearly
huge fanboys. And that's fine, I guess, except
when you lie or you make stuff up or you have bad info and then
(34:11):
that gets that turns into like the general understanding of a
situation. That's what happened here.
Now, do I think Final Fantasy 16is going to sell like 10 million
copies on the Xbox? Obviously not.
It'll be lucky if it sells a million, I'm sure, but it's it's
not how much it sold. Maybe it has only sold 20,000
copies, but the way of finding that out isn't by just making up
(34:32):
some junk math with reviews right there there there's you
know, you've got to have some other way of doing that And and
since then, funny enough, the Final Fantasy 16 has bounced
around the the top sales charts for Xbox.
I I think it was in the top ten at one point.
So it's I'm sure it's selling OK, right, But I don't even care
about the sales. If I have to be totally honest.
(34:54):
I care about the fact that a bunch of notable people
reference this and used it as like a source, even though the
original source of this info wasfull of crap.
So be careful, be careful with what you believe out there.
One thing I've learned, whether it's in life in general,
politics, gaming, whatever, is if something feels too good to
(35:15):
be true, if a, if a story or a little info thing or a source or
something, you know, if there, if there's something that makes
you too happy, too excited, be 10 times skeptical of it and
find real good sourcing for it for yourself.
What sucks is that everyone doesthis whole like do your own
research thing, even though like99% people don't know how to do
(35:37):
actual research. You know, a big part of my
college education was empirical research.
So I know how I've written articles and I know how to
research articles. I know how to find primary
sources and how to vet those sources, and most people don't.
And we see that in all facets oflife, and we definitely see it
in the game world. So we got some news this week or
(36:01):
more of a leak perhaps about theMass Effect TV show.
It got this. It looks like it's some kind of
registration or something. I'm sure someone who's smarter
and actually reads things would know better, but basically
involved a couple places where there was a very basic
description of the new show and it's Mass Effect 1.
(36:24):
It's just Mass Effect one. It's it's been interesting.
The reaction has been strange because of course it's Mass
Effect one. What else would it be?
Like I understand there's peoplewho want like first contact war
or like a Side Story, kind of like what Fallout did where it
was a a Side Story with new characters, but in like a
(36:44):
familiar place, right. But but that's not going to work
for Mass Effect, at least not inmy opinion, at least not yet.
They are doing this kind of whatI said before and what I said
about the Mass Effect event in Battlefield.
They're they're trying to get eyes on Mass Effect.
They don't want to have the sameissue they had with Dragon Age,
(37:07):
the Veil Guard. At least that part of the issue
of people just not knowing what Mass Effect is of no one
thinking about it for a decade, right.
So this is fine to me. My only real gripe with the show
right now is I wish it wasn't live action because either it's
going to be so expensive to do the CGI right for the all the
(37:30):
aliens that even if it's successful it won't be
successful enough. Or.
It will be done cheaply and won't look good and it won't be
successful right? So I'm, I'm conflicted on it,
but I, I'm curious about this. I've actually reached out to the
producer and writer of the show to do an interview for my Mass
(37:54):
Effect podcast called the Mass Effect Hype Cast.
So if you haven't listened to that before, I just released my
10th episode. So you can go check that out and
we'll be having a chat. I assume not for a while.
They basically gave me the impression that they would love
to do it. It may be a while before they're
allowed to talk about it. So, you know, I I'll reach out
(38:15):
to them when we hear that they've begun or like ended
filming and we'll go from there.So related to that, the Mass
Effect event is fine in Battlefield.
They actually had to take the Normandy skin away from this
drone for some reason. I don't know why.
The actual event is interesting.You can get, there's a few
(38:39):
characters that have the N7 armor or Garris's armor or
something similar. And there's a few guns you can
put a skin on, including the XM8LMG, which you can put in
Avenger skin on that literally like changes it.
And if you put the right scope on it, it has the full like, you
know, kind of semicircle upper. And what's so funny about it is
(39:05):
I play the round with it and it's terrible.
That gun is awful. So the skin being for it is kind
of a bummer, but what's funny about it is that it makes you
realize how silly these guns look in first person.
If you remember, maybe you do ordon't.
Years ago there were some leaks that I, I don't know if BioWare
(39:26):
was doing it or DICE or whoever,but there was a battlefield ish
Mass Effect game that you know, some footage leaked of it was in
very early development. It looked like it was like pre
alpha footage, but it also showed like this Avenger and
first person and it looks terrible.
The ergonomics of most or at least some of the Mass Effect
(39:47):
guns just make no sense. If we're a third person game,
it's fine and that's what it's been right?
But from a first person perspective, it is hilarious
just how stupid the avenger looks like it takes up so much
of your screen, so much of your vision and it's just, you know,
nonsensical, right? But I will say.
(40:08):
There is something cool about running into a battlefield.
You see, like the arms, it has the N7 armor you can look down
and battlefield you can see yourown like chest and feet.
So you can look down and you seeall the armor and you're holding
the gun and it's it is cool. It's it's kind of a gimmick, you
know, but it's neat and it definitely got me hyped.
(40:29):
You can check out my social media pages at Von Diesel to see
the pictures I posted. So go check that out.
Oh boy. So Death Stranding is a few days
away. By the next episode it'll be
out. And there are a bunch of
articles in the last few days saying essentially Kojima
(40:52):
rewrote most of Death Stranding,or yeah, most of Death Stranding
too because early testers of thegame liked it too much.
There's some other quotes that he wanted to be more divisive.
Like I, I genuinely enjoy the battlefield.
I genuinely enjoy the the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
(41:13):
I appreciate the political messaging in it.
I appreciate much of the gameplay elements of it.
It's a great series. It's stupid, it's nonsensical,
but I've also really enjoyed basically every game in that
series I've played. I'm excited to play Snake Eater
Delta, the remake because I never did.
(41:35):
But I have to say that the the levels of pretentiousness and
this whole like force, like our tour status and this like I
rewrote the game because people liked it too much.
Like no one else would get away with this.
(41:55):
Like, like if he hears a hot take, if he said that in an
interview in English, he would get eviscerated.
But instead, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's Kojima.
Everyone's in love with him. I think a lot of people are
(42:17):
afraid to get like on his bad side.
I suspect that there's, you know, you don't want to not be
liked by him or, or for him to see or hear your name in a bad
way. Much like Jeff Keeley, I think
everyone's like afraid to be in his bad graces.
Even if it wouldn't really be that big of a deal.
I'm sure Death Stranding 2 is going to be fine.
(42:37):
It's easy to forget that Death Stranding one only has like it's
like an 80 or an 85 Metacritic score.
Like it it was good, but it wasn't like a masterpiece to
people. 2 is likely going to be better, but you won't be able to
convince me that you need to minus like 10 points from
whatever the open critic Metacritic score ends up being
(42:58):
because it is just like it's so strange.
He has like he like makes peopledrunk, like he like lowers
people's IQ. His games do or when people talk
about them, they they get Dumber.
I don't, I don't know if it's conscious and people are afraid
to like dare say anything bad about him and like the more like
notable media folks and influencers and stuff.
(43:21):
But like this just come on, let go.
I, I made, I changed it because it was too good.
Like it's going to be a very frustrating conversation around
this game because I have no doubt my mind that especially
the people who I tend to listen to are just going to glaze this
game so hard. Even if it's just like 100 hour
(43:43):
boring slog of a game with that makes no sense, that has no
story that makes any sense. It's just a bunch of random shit
that Kojima threw out there for fun just to see if he can get
away with it. Like again, I'm sure the game
play is going to be great because he's always done great
gameplay. I have 0 doubts about that, but
(44:03):
I have a feeling that when people were willing to be a
little honest about the first game that we're going to see
less of that about the second game.
We'll see some really cool news for me if you're one of my
Division Two holdouts. Division 2 has confirmed they're
working on changing the Washington, DC map to the season
(44:24):
to winter and I would assume associated weather events like
snow storms and squalls and stuff like that.
They, they, they tease this by basic by showing concept art of
the Capitol building covered in snow and like agents and like
winter wear and stuff. I I like I've said before, if,
(44:47):
if any of this division two postlaunch development is slowing
down the Division Three, they need to stop.
If it's not, then whatever, you know, do your thing like go
nuts. I guess like if this, if this is
making the Division Three even aday later, it shouldn't be
(45:08):
happening. But if they've got the team
assigned, if they've got the budget, if it would be soft as
cool with them doing it, whatever.
I guess I am curious. I'm wondering where I thought
the Brooklyn the Battle for Brooklyn DLC it was supposed to
be a lead into the next game. I have to imagine this will be
(45:30):
the actual lead into the next game.
I have long assumed that the TheDivision 3 will take place in a
place like Chicago or something during the winter again, because
if you're a Division fan, you may remember this.
But if you're not, The Division Two, which came out in 2019, is
a sequel to The Division One came out in 2016.
(45:50):
You have to keep in mind it's like 2017 in this game franchise
or whatever. It's only it's only like a year
has passed in the actual game story.
So you have to go all the way back to the first game and
remember that this game has onlyprogressed like a year with all
(46:11):
of the events, all of the seasons, all of the manhunts,
all of the post launch content for both games.
It's, you know, barely, you know, barely any time has
passed. So So what I assume the first
game took place the winter everything happened.
The Division two took place the following summer and I assume
the next game will take place inthe in the next winter.
(46:33):
It'll be one year from activation of the agents and the
dollar flu spreading and all of that, right?
So if this whatever they're doing with Division two where
they're going to add snow to theDC map.
Then cool, you know, I can work with that, right?
I I just I I'm I'm just curious because you know, for better or.
(47:00):
Worse, the events and the seasons and the manhunts.
Even to a point, the Brooklyn DLC.
Honestly, even to a point. Warlords of New York, the DLC
that came out back in 2020. They're fine, They're OK, right?
Like. They.
They're not. I don't think they're the best.
I think Warlords was obviously abigger deal.
(47:22):
It it's just, it obviously wasn't supposed to be there.
It was to me at least it was obviously supposed to be
Division One DLC or whatever. So it just, it's never fit.
And then what they've done with Division two since then, they've
just got, it's gotten real sillystory wise, just bringing people
back from the dead or they weren't actually dead.
(47:42):
Quote UN quote, like whatever, we're moving on.
But the the snow thing is cool. I I think there's a good chance
it ends up being the actual leadinto the next game, so we'll
see. CDPR claims that they're making
The Witcher 4 with consoles as the focus since Cyberpunk 2077
(48:03):
suffered from them focusing on PC and then scaling down.
I mean this makes sense. It also helps.
That the even. The current Gen. consoles that
are now, you know, 5-6 years oldare, you know, better consoles
today for Witcher 4 than the Xbox One and PS4 were for
(48:24):
Cyberpunk. It's it's easy to forget those
consoles kind of sucked. Like tech wise they were using
not mobile, but they were using like laptop grade hardware.
Both of them did and it was OK, but it meant that it just, you
know, it just had lower clocks and it just wasn't as fast.
They were just bad. Where the new consoles are using
(48:44):
actual desktop hardware. SO CS, the SO CS are like
full-fledged, you know, desktop hardware.
And then we've seen the results of that.
They they run games really well,all things considered.
So this makes sense. I also just caution people, you
know, CDPR has said lots of things in the past.
I, I, I like Cyberpunk 2077. It is still not the game that
(49:08):
they advertised. In my opinion.
It's very good. It's, it's neat.
I think it's way overrated. I, I think that it's extremely
shallow. It's all all glitz, you know,
it's, it's all show very little depth in my opinion.
But the show is really good and and I like the game a lot.
(49:30):
I've really come around on it inthe last year.
But I still won't give up my crusade to be like, it's great.
It's still not what it was meantto be.
So with Witcher 4, I just ask people to be very cautious,
especially after a few weeks agowhen they did the whole, it
wasn't really their fault, but they were involved.
(49:51):
The whole like Witcher 4 tech demo running on PS5 and it was
just a video basically. It was just a render.
It was a, it was a, it was a cutscene.
That isn't even the game. It was just a side project
essentially. So, you know, we'll see how that
plays out in the long run. Speaking of Cyberpunk, third
(50:13):
party games aren't selling very well in the Switch to supposedly
and that is the least surprisingthing ever.
People buy Switches to play Mario games right now they've
mostly bought it for Mario Kart and to play some of their old
Nintendo games, especially Switch games that at better
fidelity. Maybe if Nintendo has allowed it
(50:35):
to be upgraded and if you've paid for at least some of them.
But like Cyberpunk and other third party games not being that
popular on Switch to like of course they're not like you have
to remember, like the whole thing with this is Cyberpunk
runs like OK on the switch to it's like 1080P like 40 FPS or
(50:55):
or something like that's not very good.
Like let's just be honest, like that's a very mediocre
experience. You can get a better experience
on the base PS Five, the PS5 Pro, the Xbox Series X, and
probably S as well on a on. Any decent PC at this point you
can get a better experience like.
(51:15):
No one should be buying a switchto for 3rd party games.
If you have a switch to and nothing else and you just happen
to want to try out cyberpunk, OKcool.
But if you have any other optionto play Cyberpunk then on the
switch to, that's where you should be playing.
And I I wonder at this point howmany switch to owners only have
(51:37):
a Switch to? Over time it will be a lot
because a lot of people, especially the Switch one, just
had a Switch one or like three of them and no other consoles.
They'll get to that part of the market maybe eventually.
But the early adopters I suspectare people who are more involved
in gaming and probably don't just have a switch to.
Therefore, why would you play Cyberpunk on there?
(52:00):
I guess maybe mobile when you'reon the run, but that experience,
the whole 40FPS1080P I'm pretty sure is docked.
I can't, I don't even know what the undocked numbers are and
they're probably not great, so why would you?
I don't know. It's just it's this is one of
those things where this happenedwith a Switch as well, where a
lot of third party games ended up there and they would do it
(52:22):
like through streaming or by like significantly down grading
the experience. And just again, if you only have
it then OK, cool. I guess that's nice.
And all these companies reporting their games to that
because there's 150 million Switches out there, but they
don't those people don't care about Cyberpunk, Mortal Kombat,
(52:43):
especially not playing it at like 480P and like 20 FPS.
And I know the switch to is morepowerful, but you're only going
to see that bump really impact games for a short time because
you already have cyber .2077 that already that's a, you know,
a multiple year old game that already doesn't really run that
(53:05):
well on the Switch too. So you know what's going to
happen to Witcher 4 comes out. Do you really think it's going
to run well on the Switch too? Like it's obviously not right.
So yeah, this is the least surprising news ever and I don't
think anyone really cares. I guarantee Nintendo doesn't
because they're probably rockingup 25% profit margin right now.
And then finally, Nexus Mods hasbeen sold after I believe 24
(53:27):
years of private ownership. The founder of it had it that
whole time, said they're still going to be involved, but sold
it off. It's been this sale has been
kind of presented in like the nicest way possible, but it's to
an investment group. For what it's worth.
That investment group has made alot of statements and put out a
(53:48):
lot of info being like, hey, yeah, we're we're an investment
group, but we do get it. And here's a bunch of things
we're going to do to not, you know, to make it clear that we
understand like we shouldn't break what's not broken here,
right. So they've like they're
honoring. I didn't even know this, but
apparently they're at some point, I assume early.
(54:08):
You could get a premium membership for Nexus Mods
permanently. You could get a lifetime.
Subscription. And they're going to honor those
and all that kind of stuff. Now how long does that last?
Is that permanent? We'll have to wait and see.
I love Nexus Mods, mostly for Mass Effect, but you know,
there's some other games I I dabble with on there too, so
(54:28):
hopefully it all plays out. As for content updates, nothing
big. Continuing back from vacation.
Rest of the summer is pretty chill.
Not in no big plans, so I'll be around and then we'll be getting
into the new school year and that's when things get a little
crazy for me again. But yeah, I have a good month or
(54:49):
two here with no big things going on, so I should be putting
out podcasts on the regular schedule again this coming week.
I hope to get back on the streams.
I am streaming on 2K1440P on Twitch now and it looks really
good and it works extremely wellon my setup.
And you know, I'll keep on with the videos.
(55:10):
I've been putting out a bunch ofthose lately.
It, it, it's so funny, like, youknow, Mass Effect video, even
The Division or my podcast, you know, they performed fine for
me. And then I'll put out a video
about like Xbox's new console and I'll get like 20 views.
So please check out my other videos.
I would really appreciate it if you're on YouTube and if you're
not, go check it out. I would really appreciate that.
(55:33):
Make sure to subscribe as well. I do have a new Mass Effect hype
cast out. It's the 10th episode talking
about the TV show and some more depth, as well as some other
topics, including I believe thisis the one where I talked about
Jason Shire's article about BioWare, where I focused on the
Mass Effect side of that stuff and kind of didn't talk much
(55:54):
about Dragon Age and kind of basically just ranted.
So go check that out. And that's where we're going to
wrap this one up. So thank you so much for
listening to this whole episode.Subscribe to the show on your
favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or iTunes, and
subscribe to the Von Diesel YouTube channel to get all of my
(56:14):
videos, including this podcast. Thank you to everyone who
supports as YouTube members or Twitch subscribers.
If you're interested in supporting this podcast and all
of my other content, please check out the links in the show
description. If you have any questions or
feedback, let me know. My Discord, hit me up on social
media at Von Diesel or at the Bonfire, or you can even leave a
(56:37):
comment on Spotify or YouTube. That is all I have for this
episode of the Bonfire Gaming Podcast, so until next time.
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