Can AAA Gaming Survive? And New Gaming Consoles in 2026? # 377

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
You are listening to Video Games tothe Max. Hello, and welcome to
another edition of Video Games to theMax. I am your host Sean Garmer.
Here with me today Jeff from AnalyssaGaming and also the Gaming Mix podcast.
How are you doing? Oh,doing quite well. How are you
doing, sir? Doing okay?Just uh, you know, getting to

(00:35):
that end of the year. Christmasis on Monday, everybody. Some folks
like us on the Latino community,we celebrate on Sunday. So everything.
How is the Christmas stuff going foryou? I mean I work kind of
like almost like retail, so Idon't really get too much time off.
I'll get the Christmas Day, that'sabout it. I only get Christmas Eve

(00:59):
off because it's my day off onSunday, and then I have to work
all Christmas Day pretty much. Soyeah, I'll have to like use my
lunch break to like do the actualChristmas stuff, which is going to be
great. You know. I gottalove working in call centers where they just
never close. Yeah, and thenbeing a supervisor, I don't know,

(01:21):
they get to decide, like theyjust tell you, oh, hey you're
working this day, and then oh, you're also working the next day,
even though it's your day off too, because it's going to be ridiculous because
all the stuff was closed on Christmas. You'd think that people would understand that
your doctor's office and all that stuff'sclosed, but you'll be amazed on of
people that still call thinking that they'resupposed to work miracles or something. So

(01:46):
yeah, moving on to what we'redoing here today. Thank you Jeff also
for bailing me out the last minute. I was going to have Randy on
today because Mark actually has another surgery, or Randy said he woke up sick.
So Jeff was able to be awesomeand make it to where we don't
have to miss two weeks, whichlast week I missed because it happened to

(02:08):
be that the internet went out andit was out. I actually missed like
three hours of work because it didn'tcome back until like five o'clock. So
you know, it is what itis. And I never had that problem
really as I started working from home, so it was like, now I
know what everybody else has been goingthrough, which kind of sucks, but
still, you know. So whatwe're going to do here is talk about

(02:35):
some stuff that we didn't talk aboutlast week. So the last of us
online being you know, stop indevelopment. We didn't talk about the last
week, so we're going to talkabout that's here also PSPI pro Xbox next
with all that means. And alsojust want to make disappoint I am aware,
Jeff is aware, We're all awareof the terrible stolen data and ransomware

(02:59):
hacks that happened to Insomniac. Weare not going to talk about the contents
of that leak here. One,because it's terrible, it's stolen data.
We don't need to be promoting stealingthings. And also, in solidary with
the folks at that are Haven,which I work with, they chose not

(03:19):
to cover the leaks, so I'mnot going to cover that here either.
I'm sure at some point when itis well beyond our time and we're talking
about the future of things in PlayStation, maybe that will come up, but
we're not doing that right now.Pretty much all we did for on the
Gaming X podcast is we just wejust talked about the human factor of like

(03:42):
how Insomniac because it's it sucks.Yeah, we are going to talk about
use a little bit of data fromthere to talk about a broader topic about
Triple A Gaming sustainability, so justgoing to to be fair about that,
but we're not going to talk aboutcontents that are in the leak itself.
So with all of that being said, Jeff's also been talking about are also

(04:06):
been playing the Avatar Avatar Frontiers ofPandora game as well, so we'll get
to into that too. So let'stalk about all those things and more after
this. All right, So let'sgo ahead, I guess get the whole
thing out of the way here,start with the big topic. So,
Jeff, I mean you guys mighthave brought this up as well, and

(04:28):
you just talked about the whole thingwith the hacks, so I'm sure by
this point it happened a while ago, you guys that are probably watching or
listening or maybe you don't know thatInsomniac was hacked by a terrible ransomware attack.
They stole various things that are init, like terabytes of data.

(04:51):
Yeah, and it involves also personalinformation, which is the worst part of
it as well, and also thinkabout their upcoming games and and all of
that stuff. I'm not going toget into these specifics about what it all
entails. Uh, there are placesthat have decided to cover that, and
that is well within their rights thatyou know, there was a whole discourse

(05:13):
about what journal gaming journalist are supposedto do compared to you know, gaming
podcasts and other things. We allneed to get into that. Either.
I don't think that that's useful andI don't think that you know, especially
when they're using pictures from the actualleague. Yeah, like yeah, but
and it definitely sucks for the people. I feel so terrible for the folks

(05:33):
in in Zomniac as always, asalso for Capcom many years ago. When
you have this kind of thing happen, it's just awful, right, Like,
I think that's the thing that getslost in all this. It's it's
all about like what that affects theI think Jason Schreier head a thing this
morning about what all they have togo through now and we're talking about the

(05:56):
holidays, like what they have todeal with, just thinking about what's going
to happen to you, you know, could possibly happen now, just at
a terrible time, Yeah, becauseI remember people having to move when the
ESA leaked, Like yeah, Imean Jeff Grubb got a phone call from
a known stalker of his saying Ihave your phone number now. Yeah,
just incredible to me that like peopledon't realize how it's different if like folks

(06:23):
have said, you know, hey, this stuff got posted on LinkedIn by
accident or somebody posted a link theyweren't supposed to, or like se the
FDC thing early with Xbox. That'sdifferent than like it's the leaks are different
if it's something like the ninety clipsof the GTA stuff that is currently going
through court. You know, it'sdifferent when like footage of a game is

(06:45):
kind of released, you know,prematurely to it, like a national announcement
or whatever. Because again, likethat's not putting creators in harm's way,
whereas the leak like this essentially forpersonal information was leaked, like it's the
human cost it is substantial. Yeah, exactly puts them in like the crosshairs
because like people don't care if you'rea texture artist or an audio recorder like

(07:10):
audio engineer. If they don't likethe game, they're going to harass the
first person they can. If theyhave direct information to you, right then
that's their outlet. It sucks,definitely, So getting into the I think
a lot of the topic that hasbeen brought forth out of this. Aside

(07:30):
from the actual what's in the leakis this thought of because part of what
something that was revealed in there isthat Marvel Spider Man two's budget inflated to
over three three million dollars and itbrought up the light also let's go ahead
and bring in the last of USonline developments shutting down with PlayStation wanting to

(07:55):
push storage games of service and thenbasically not had to put out statements saying
we had to make a decision oneor the other. Either you get Games
Service, Last of US Factions Online, whatever you want to call it,
or you get the next Naughty Dogsingle player game. And now it also
made Sony have to make the PlayStationhave to make their whole decision about how

(08:16):
many games of service games are goingto come out, how much are they
spending on budget compared to if they'regoing to come out. If their first
one after this initiative is not youknow, and it's a ten pole one
for them, what does that meanfor the next ones? Like are they
going to be drastically inferior in quality? And bungeie too, Right, they
have the one that's supposed to beAside from Destiny to a marathon, like

(08:39):
do we even know what's going onwith that too? So yeah, it's
this thought of what is Triple Agaming sustainable in the way that it that
it currently is, Like do youfear that we're going to get one of
the other where it's game prices aregoing to have to go up to justify
this or or do you see moreof like budgets going down? Where do

(09:01):
you think the I don't think thegame price is going up because I mean
games are already at an all timehigh pretty much in regards to kind of
like what they're they're costing and whatyou're getting out of it. I don't
think anyone wants to pay, youknow, like paying ninety dollars now for
most Triple A stuff like, Idon't think anybody wants to be ninety dollars
for eight to ten or fifteen hourexperience like and pricing like per hour like

(09:24):
was it Zelnik was trying to likecast upon like the industry of like charging
per hour. I don't think thatworks as well too, because you can
put you know, six thousand hoursinto to Fortnite or something like that,
and that's free to play, youknow, if you're getting something that's like
you know, say Spider Island orwhatever their their multiplayer Spider Man game is

(09:46):
rumored to me or whatever like that, and they're charging ninety dollars for that
and you're getting six hours like sixyou know, six thousand hours of it,
same as Fortnite. Where does thatcost kind of relay between to play
in a paid game? Right?You know it it's going to vary.
It's it's it's definitely going to varyon kind of what the games are.

(10:09):
But I don't think like for astandard edition of a game, I mean,
like even the standard edition of Dragon'sDogmath is over one hundred bucks.
Yeah, and that I mean alsoadding in like you know, they'd like
to albody put in the digital withthe left editions and which automatically puts it
at ten more dollars and those kindof things. And do you have like

(10:33):
let's say they did go that route, because we've heard Capcom talk about it.
The games are are too cheap forthem, like what they decide to
price things at. Dragon's almost gonnabe their first seventy dollars game. We
see the industry basically make a shiftto seventy dollars. Do you have like
a where it makes you go,Okay, I think I'm not going to
be able to buy this many gamesnow if we get to eighty dollars or

(10:56):
ninety dollars. Yeah, I meanfor me, like game Pass has been
a savior for me because it's supportedthat and I mean have access to certain
codes and stuff. I don't haveCapcom or anything like that. So I
mean Dragon's Dogma is going to bea hard feel to swallow and I actually
have to purchase it. Yeah,I think, honestly, I don't think
prices for games should need to goup. I think the optimization of developing

(11:18):
them should be more streamlined in regardsto like, you know, maybe games
just did need to take a littlebit longer with smaller teams, because,
like you take a look at likeor the expectations of what those games should
visually look like. I think peopledemanding the highest graphical fidelity out of games
I think is a bit unrealistic whenyou have games that like are like Super

(11:39):
Mario Wonder, which was up forGame of the Year, and that's not
a visually like astonishing game in regardsto its contemporaries, Like it's a good
looking game, but Nintendo has provedthat you don't need to be the top
of the fidelity like Pyramid essentially tobe a game that is going to push
units. So I mean, likeit's it sucks for some teams, Like

(12:03):
you know again that you have Insomniacwho essentially are working on like three games
right now, and they're one ofSony's biggest studios. I think there's like
four hundred people or something there that'smore than Gorilla. That's more than Gorilla,
that's more than Naughty Dog. Andthose games had like a two hundred
and thirteen million dollar budget. SpiderMan had a much bigger budget, and

(12:24):
he was only available on one platform, you know, because like there's difference
when you have like a Horizon forexample, which was running on PS four
and P five, same with Godof War. But I mean the fact
that Spider Man two is only runningon one piece of hardware, right,
it had been more expensive if theywould have made it for PS four as

(12:45):
well. I mean also, youknow, you got to take an account
like inflation which has taken place sincethat game start development, where those world
those developers live, how much arethey getting paid the Marvel license itself,
which you know that also costs money. How much money they have to make
in order to in order to keephaving the Marvel license, so like all

(13:11):
of that kind of goes into effect. And then I thought it was very
approach, like very telling that therewas supposedly developers discussing they added so much
to this budget. And then adeveloper asked, will players even be able
to see that this budget was inflated? Like will they be able to tell

(13:35):
that this was this costs more?Right, it's a look bit different than
in a movie where you can kindof tell the difference of Yeah, and
even people were complaining about the lengthof Spider Man two, you know in
terms of like you know, howmuch you're getting out of it and stuff
like that. But I mean,for me, it's like that game still
felt like like it had filler,Like there's lots of stuff. I think

(13:58):
they could have it out to kindof save the budget. But yeah,
I mean, it's it's one ofthose things where it's the expectation of gamers
and stuff like that, of wherethey feel like they're getting the value out
of a game and stuff like that. And because There's there's tons of games
that are like a third of theprice and are just as long of those

(14:20):
games, and they're getting the samekind of recognition out of those games,
especially for like replay, whether it'slike multiplayer co op or anything like that.
Like single player games still have apurpose, But I don't think you
push the price up on those becausethat just makes them less opportunities to like
recoup those losses. Because like mostpeople, like they took a look at

(14:43):
Avatar and they're like, well,I don't want to pay seventy dollars for
that. I'm a wait for asale, and then that impacts that initial
bottom line. I mean right now, the season that we're in will automatically
drive prices down. I mean Avataris available for like forty percent of what
it was forty percent off right now. You know, so you're you're gonna
get those those those situations where ifyou outprice your game, no one's gonna

(15:09):
it's the same prices like DLC.Like if you if you put a game
that out or a DLC out that'scheap enough that people find value of it,
they're going to purchase it. Youknow. That's why we're seeing like
you know, even Capcom struggling withDLC prices for their costumes and street Fighter
six, like they're expensive for kindof what you get, you know,
so if you have that cheaper valueand cheaper cost, more people are going

(15:31):
to purchase it. Alan Wake Ithink was you know, like an interesting
one because it didn't have to worryabout the physical cost of printing discs because
it was a digital only. Solike there's there are cost cutting things and
whether or not that leads us intosay, you know, say Dot to
War three or inspider Man three orwhatever, like if they only release digitally

(15:52):
at the start to cut those costsand then do physical additions. But but
they but can they also afford that? Right, because a lot of the
talk around now obviously this is inI think this is a little bit different
because Alan Wake is Alan Wick two, Alan Wake, all of that is

(16:12):
much more niche game. Yeah,right, I want to see what happens
if But a lot of the talkis the fact that what Alan Wake two
should have had a physical version,I would have bought the game. And
you see a lot of that,right, you see a lot of people
talking about, well, I don'twant to support digital only this game,
the first one had a physical edition. All the other Remedy games had physical

(16:33):
editions. This should have had onetoo. I want to see what happens
if Marvel Spider Man three, Whathappens at the next Call of Duty?
What happens at the next like EASports FC twenty five or whatever, they
only come digital only. Will thatmake a difference because you don't see the
box in the store, will younot get the casual? Well, by
the game, you're generally not seeingthe box in the store on any on

(16:55):
almost any game, because like Walmarthas toward their gaming des pretty much gaming
like everybody has been removing their productsfrom box stores to a certain degree.
I mean, I think digital iskind of in that way where it's going
to kind of take over. Butthe same thing relies is like you get
a game that is like the caliberof Spider Man, and if it's only

(17:18):
available in digital, people are goingto buy it, you know, even
if like even the people like sure, you're going to have the physical only
crowd. But in regards to thegrand scheme of things, I think the
I will only buy physical is amuch smaller number than I think we're credit
for and so then all of asudden you have people essentially double dipping because
like say, for example, thatyou that you get Boulders K three,

(17:41):
you know, which sold fairly wellfor what it is. The moment that
they put up the physical edition,which is coming, how many people that
own the digital one are also goingto buy the physical one, right,
So you essentially have people buying thegame twice. And I mean, like
that's not on heard of. Imean, and usually the box one comes

(18:02):
with other stuff, so it's thenthe same prices when you bought it originally,
whereas by now the digital one ison a sale. Double dipping isn't
isn't isn't new. I mean tonsof companies have done it. I mean
they did that with like Last ofUs Remastered as well too. But yeah,
like it's just one of those thingswhere it's like, I don't think
increasing the price of the game isgoing to I think that would actually counter

(18:26):
what they're trying to do, becausethey're trying to push as many units as
they possibly can to garner sales.And I think that if you outpace that,
that bottom that that kind of ceilingthat they've placed right now with the
seventy US dollar game, which isabout ninety dollars Canadian I give or take.
You know, I think it createsa situation where they just they outprice

(18:48):
their audience, Yeah, because theydon't think anyone's willing to pay like one
hundred dollars for like a fifteen Wellnot only that, I think what we're
seeing also right now, which iswhat worries me, is all of this
where where we need to go afterestablished I p. Because it's the only
thing that will guarantee that you're goingto sell uh that much and be able

(19:11):
to charge that much. There's there'scomfort in the in a familiar product and
stuff. You know. It's justit's the same reason why like I think
Blade is going to be the bestselling game that are are Kane leon is
Oh yeah, you know, likethere's there's established property and the like.
You can you can get sales.You can get those types of sales out

(19:33):
of out of new properties that generallywould usually take an iteration or two to
really get because I mean, likeyou know, God of War sold fairly
well on the p S two andPS three, but like when you when
you kind of revamp it and bringit in for like PS four and PS
five, it's it's definitely gonna sellmore because you've had that history to build
up that IP. And some ofthese games don't get the luxury of creating

(19:57):
a new IP and then having itlast. They'll they'll know whether it's days
gone or whatever the case is,where like people generally like it, they
want to see another one, butnone enough people support it, you know,
the first game. Yeah, Imean it's telling that, you know,
game Industry Dot is released. They'reyou know, twenty twenty three whole,

(20:17):
like big old infographic that they doevery year, and the top ten
games are all franchises that are wellestablished separate Starfield, but Starfield also has
the whole it's coming from a wellknown developer that everybody knows. And so
it's like this is why they needto inflate the budget of Spider Man because

(20:38):
they know that people will buy it, right, Whereas to try to do
all that with an u IP it'sdangerous because it doesn't sell well. Yeah,
then they have to have a return, they have to, like right,
you know, like very few companiesare willing to take risks in that
regards because the expectation for Triple Ahas been become unrealistic. You know,

(21:02):
like if Spider Man two had,you know, set a ceiling in regards
to what it was attempting to doand the scope and scale of it,
it would be a much I thinksafer bet for Sony to kind of continue
doing those prestige style games. Butagain, like these companies are choosing to

(21:23):
make their games bigger and bigger andbigger every year, to the point with
if you're doing Spider Man three andit's not bigger and bigger and bigger,
you know what are you know,fans are are Garden not going to kind
of take to that because they're goingto see like this smaller experience because like
people had that issue with Miles Moralessaying like, all this game is only

(21:45):
like six or eight hours or whateverthe case is, but personally I thought
it was a better game than theother Spider Man game. So like,
I think, when you set likethe scale of of of how these games
are, they don't need to bebigger, they just need to be better
or and right, you know thatthat will impact a cost as well,
because if you're if you're not makingthese games that are absolutely massive and you're

(22:08):
creating these curated like you know,ten to fifteen hour games like Top.
You know, of doing everything,you're going to get more games more often.
But yeah, I mean I dothink that you know, like you're
saying, it does make a differenceinto you know, lower your budget a
bit. Understand that gamer. Youneed to start conditioning gamers that listen,

(22:32):
we can't just keep eluding the budget. This is not like a movie,
a movie thing where we can justkeep blowing this up. Even Marvel is
starting to realize that themselves. Lookat how many of their movies have failed
now and they might have to startcutting back themselves and how much they spend.
And gaming needs to do that too, because even Sean Laden said it
in twenty twenty, he said,we cannot keep having trouble a games continue

(22:59):
to blow up budgets and then thinkthat because you're at that mercy of what
if this doesn't work, how manypeople are you gonna have to lay off?
How many people are are gonna howmany jobs will be lost? How
many will this ip continue like thiswhole? How much devastation is it going
to affect because you had to takesuch a big risk to blow up the

(23:22):
budget. Again, well, ifyou take a look at like Sony,
Like, do you think Sony inthe next say, six years, are
going to take any risks whatsoever?No, do you think Xbox are going
to take a lot of risks inthe next six years? Yes? Yes,
And I think also because they areokay with releasing different budget games because

(23:45):
of game Best, Because that that'sthe one thing that has like is to
me, is making Xbox a betterpublisher in regards of the games is the
variety and the scale and scope ofwhat they're doing. Like Sony would never
a greenlit a Pentiment like a yeah, grounded and that's yeah, And like
pentinem is a lot of people's gameof the Year, So like that's one

(24:08):
thing. Is like the one thingthat I like but Xbox is doing in
regards to what they're doing for TripleA is they're creating a vast assortment of
of games and they're not going afterthese like high end, prestigious games,
which some people like, some peopledon't like, you know, like,
well, we'll remain to see whata Quadruple A looking game looks like with

(24:30):
perfect art, you know, butyou know, until we see something like
that, we don't know what xboxIs prestige game would be. Like,
I still would consider hell By Tooto be that because I think that is
going to be one of the bestlooking game period. But at the exact
same time, I wouldn't be abit surprised if that game is twelve hours.

(24:52):
Oh yeah, I don't think it'sgoing to be more than fifteen hours
at the most, because they talkabout from the Sony angle, and that's
what they don't realize is you getother ones like Sony when they released that
they started the PS four generation,they order eighteen eighty six. That game
was like what three hours? Yeah, it looked amazing, but you know,
they knew the scale of what theycould do. Like I don't know

(25:15):
what the budget of that game was, but it couldn't be anywhere near even
the First Horizon. Yeah, andI think you brought up a good point
about streaming services, like you know, Xboxes obviously accepted this is what we're
doing, this is our direction,whereas Sony is still sort of, oh,
the service is great, it's here, but we're not aiming for that

(25:36):
right And in fact, something thatcame out in the in the and all
of that is that Apparently when theyput Horizon Forbidding West on PS plus,
they lost a bunch of revenue thatthey cost possibly could have had because people
stopped buying the game because it wason PS plus. Right, do you
think that maybe they look at whatXbox is doing and saying, maybe we

(25:57):
do need to make different experiences andinclude they made the indie deals right where
they put the indie games on PSplus day won ever or but we're not
seeing them make smaller Sony games andsay let's put these on to get people
to no. But I think itwould be smart for them to do that
because like it would show that thefirst party kind of supports that thing.

(26:22):
Because Sony has had a history wherethey do not support their own endeavors,
they allow third party companies to extensiblydo it. I mean, that's why
the Vida die, That's why thePSP died. Sony was just doing nothing
with it. That's why PSBR oneand two have done nothing, because Sony
themselves have done really nothing to promotethose services. So like, until you
see Sony actually participate in putting theircontent on those services, it's falling on

(26:47):
third party and all that all dependson their deals. That depends on their
negotiations that they're making with third partycompanies. And you see that a lot
of companies like Sea Off Stars orwhatever like where they have it where it
comes on Xbox game Pass day oneand PlayStation Plus day one, because they
see what Xbox is doing, theygo after it and say, hey,
we'll give you this amount of money. Can we put it on the service

(27:08):
and go from there. But Xboxis fully supporting game Pass, They're behind
that. They're giving you legit reasonsto subscribe. Sony for me, has
not given me a reason to subscribefor PlayStation Plus at all, like at
all. So like for their prestigegames, like yeah, sure, I'll
buy them throughout the year, LikeI'm going to be more selective just because

(27:30):
like I don't like Naughty Dog's output. But in terms of like Insomniac and
like Sony Santa Monica, like yeah, sure I'll buy those games day one.
That studio has done nothing to determe from getting those games. So
whatever Corey Barlog's team's working on,I'll be their day one right Yeah,
And I think that's this is what'sgoing to wind up happening. You're either

(27:52):
going to get where they feel likeSony says, well, we can't stop
doing what we do. We're gonnahave to just make our games either more
expensive or we're gonna have to goback and do something else. Then people
will then have to We already havetrouble buying every day things. If you
make things more expensive or you oryou don't want to accept that, you

(28:14):
won't be able to do what you'vealways done recently, you will get to
the point where people will just say, Okay, there's gonna be more people
that do what a lot of thecasuals do is I'm going to have my
one two games that I buy ayear and that's it. Everything else is
a sale. And then guess whathappens. A lot of your your big
old numbers that you get to promoteat the beginning of Oh, our game

(28:36):
just sold a ton that's going tostart diminishing and diminishing. And because you
decided not to accept the fact thatyou need to to get with the times
and you want to try to buckthe trend, it, I think it's
going to end up hurting them also, and I think that's why we've seen
them. They're trying to pivot towardsgames of service because they know that's like
guaranteed money. But then they alsorealize, oh wait, we're gonna have

(29:00):
to spend a lot of money todo games of service, like what happened
Naughty Dog. And it's like,see, it's like, in a perfect
world that the Last of Us Online, the stuff that they canceled, they
could have basically just laid the foundationin a very Naughty Dog way and then
had the team that was going todo the Last of Us to remaster or

(29:22):
Last of Us remaster takeover on that, but they ended up taking that over
in house. I can't remember thestudio, but like, because like I
don't think Naughty Dog themselves needs tomake that right, and they said it
themselves, they're not really a multiplayerservice studio, right, No, But
I mean they've they had multiplayer inthe Last of Us and didn't people enjoy

(29:45):
that? So like why this iswhat I mean. I get it that
their whole pivot was service, right, but like, why couldn't they have
had a Ghostushima type multiplayer mode againjust to have multiplayer? Yeah? Exactly,
because like they make that statement,but then like is sucker punched suddenly
a multiplayer studio. No, they'redoing both, and they pulled off both

(30:08):
extremely well. You know, likehad it been just like a mode,
Like to me, it just soundslike the scale of what they were making
outpaced what it should have just been, right, like they if that would
have just been a multiplayer mode addedinto Last of Us, you know,

(30:29):
you know, maybe it's micro transactionheavy or whatever the case is to generate
income because you know, do youcharge for it? You know, like
do you do you just included inthe game, and then suddenly more copies
of you know, Last Us pertwo cells because like you take a look
at like No Man's Guy, NoMan's Guys, all of its updates have
been free, and that's been financiallysuccessful with them. People just kept buying

(30:52):
the game, right, But Idon't know, to me, it just
sounded like that Last of Us thingwas a bigger scale than it needed to
be, right, And maybe that'swhat Bungee saw as well, that this
is starting to become maybe you needto focus on this and this and this
of it and not just making ita bigger game. Yeah, people,

(31:14):
we looked at it and said,out, if we do that, then
we'll have to completely change what thegame is. And yeah, because people
have talked about like, oh,like Microsoft's all this money, why don't
they put like all the all thelike they're like all their money into these
games and all that kind of stuffto make them look that good. And
my my answer has always been like, if you have, like you know,
if you're a homeowner and you havelike fifteen million dollars or you're gonna

(31:34):
spend it all on the stairs.No, You're gonna spread it across the
entire house, right, And that'swhy people just don't understand is that they
need to be able to spread thebudget that they have across all of these
different games. And there's there's nocompany that has an infinite budget because they
need to get a return on it. You're not going to see a games

(31:56):
you know, you're not going tosee any studio, you know, wanting
success spending more than like five hundredmillion dollars in a game, spider Man.
I mean, the only people thatcan seemingly do it and recoup all
their money is Rockstar because they comeout with like One Game of Generation and
then everybody whose plays that game,well, I mean, yeah, the
One Game of Generation that's only beenfor like the past, like what five

(32:19):
or six years, right, becausebefore they were producing like three to four
games pretty much. I mean theyhad but two or three Grand Theft Autos
just in the PlayStation two exactly.Because of the scale, because of these
games having to be the most graphicalmasterpieces of all time, you're never going
to get rock Star making more thanone game at a time. Yeah,
and even then they're alternating with RedDead, but then you know you're having

(32:44):
to wait a long time for thenext Red Dead they come as well,
because they again, like you said, they have to make they definitely do
have to make it a masterpiece becausethey have to get all of that money
back, which is talk about amovie type budget those games are, but
they're so beloved that people would justkeep paying them. And then they found

(33:05):
a cash cow with Grand Theft AutoOnline, would you ti. The other
thing that most people aren't even kindof paying attention to is that there was
no Grand Theft Auto last generation.Right. Yeah, they just redid five.
Yeah, they just re released that. So we went entire console generation
without having like a Rockstar game.Yep, I mean I mean a Grand

(33:28):
Theft because we had we had,Yeah, we have Red Dead, you
know, so like it's just youknow, these companies are not in These
companies are not set up to createmore than like one or two games basically
a generation now, because like youknow, we're gonna get maybe like one
more Sony Santa Monica game for thisgeneration, right probably maybe, And even

(33:52):
then, Gotta War Ragnarok was builtas a PS four game, so we're
gonna get one PS five game outof that studio. And so like most
of these studios now, if it'staking four or five, six years and
a console cycle is six, sevenor eight, we're gonna get one game
from each studio across the generation.And like that to me is like it's

(34:13):
because the expectations for these games havebecome, let's make the most graphical masterpiece
there is, the biggest game,YadA, YadA, YadA, like all
those types of things. But Idon't think they really need to, Like
I think they just need to makegood games. Yeah, they don't really
need to and you don't need tohave And that's the thing too, is
like it's not just one, it'salmost so many of their studios are that

(34:37):
way. Yeah, right, soit's not like to use the term for
Xbox in this way, like,Okay, you have Ninja Theory doing hell
Blade, you had, you haveTodd Howard doing Starfield, and then obviously
Elder Scrolls in the next Fallout orwhatever. Uh, you don't they don't
have every single studio of there isdoing something like that, right, so

(34:59):
that they have games coming out ina regular basis, and they even have
some like Obsidian working on several gamesat once, right, and not just
not just Okay, this one gamethat we take three million years to make
and then okay, finally comes outand it's amazing, but then what's after
that? You know? And thenlike right now, there's so much uncertainty,

(35:21):
yeah, as to what Tony isdoing for twenty twenty four. Because
of that, we don't even knowif all of Ninja Theory is working on
Helplay too, because the first Helplaywas only made with fourteen people, right.
I mean, they do have thatproject Morrow whatever that is that we're
still you know, But just tojust to move on for a moment to

(35:44):
like the future, I guess,yeah, is you know that Jeff Grub
was talking about on his game Misspodcast that pretty much certainly at this point
there is going to be psfive Propossibly coming out even you know, this
coming year, And Asto kind ofsaid that these same people that have been

(36:07):
leaking the information about a APS fivePro are also talking about Xbox may have
canceled what we saw in the FDCleaks with the Xbox frash bin looking thing
that's supposed to be there, alldigital, and then they're just going to
make a whole new console and thenstart the generation earlier in twenty twenty six.

(36:30):
See to me, this is justme thinking if you start the generation
early, you risk falling way behind, especially if Sony goes like, oh,
that's your specs and you're releasing xyear. Fine, we'll release in
a year later and we'll dominate thosespecs. Like it's different when consoles come
out at the exact same time,but at the exact same time, there

(36:51):
is a bare minimum threshold of whata developer has a baking a game that
is parody across all of them.So sometimes having that power is only good
for your first party titles because youdon't have to worry about other SKUs,
Right, But yeah, I don'tknow, Like the Pro was kind of
at an opportunity where it kind ofmade sense, But right now, I

(37:12):
don't think we've had really any teamsreally take advantage of the hardware that's out
right now to justify a pro,Like what is this pro going to do?
Is you're going to do like realtime like ray tracing just way better
in constant frame rates or are wegoing to see like substantial things that make
these games really really take advantage ofthe power. So I don't know,

(37:35):
and can they do it if theyneed to reduce yeah, exactly. Like
it's you know, it's kind ofone of those things where it's like,
you know, Sony is getting thesedevelopers to make these games, but they've
suddenly put like razor blades on theirchairs, you know, Like it just
it's such a weird thing where they'relike, yeah, we're going to make

(37:58):
a more powerful PS. Well,we won't have the budget to take advantage
of it, so you're just gonnaget like real time rate tracing and the
DLSS, right, so they don'thave to do so much with the graphical
work as far as making it lookI guess native four K or even better
than well, yeah, because thePS four is just like checkerboard rendering pretty

(38:20):
much across all of it, likethey gas Earn running in four K.
Yeah, I don't know. Imean this is the same Sony that was
like you're gonna have eight K gaming. Yeah, no, you're not gonna
have AK gaming, but just toplay. I guess Devil's advocate at the
moment, like, couldn't it alsowork in their favor as well? Of
what if this is another three sixtytype thing where they get to be first

(38:43):
and people jump on it and theyactually do make games that are I mean,
I don't know that you know whyxboxes. You know, this doesn't
seem like something that they I don'tknow how far in advance they have this
next Xbox and development, or ifthey did at one point have it for

(39:04):
twenty twenty eight and then decide thatmaybe we need to move this up because
we're already we already lost this generation, as Bill Spencer says. But then
they also don't they also talk abouthow much they care about the box,
but they don't care about the box. So yeah, I mean the only
way that I think Xbox kind ofkind of works to create to to really
say like a new Xbox and saytwenty twenty six or whatever the case is

(39:28):
and then still have a leg inthe race when Sony would pull out a
title or a brand new console,say in twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty
eight. Is if you just kindof adapt the PC route and you make
a large component of that console,what makes the console upgradeable? So then
all of a sudden, when PlayStationreleases their SPAX or whatever, then Xbox's

(39:51):
main unit they could sell you essentiallythat upgrade that essentially to kind of like
install it in there and again likethat just becomes a PC that point.
But if you make it a streamlinedprocess, then they don't have to fall
behind, because I think if Xboxreleases a console in twenty twenty six and
Sony waits until twenty twenty eight,then what is Xbox gonna They're gonna have

(40:13):
two years to compete before Sony releasessomething. That is one unrealistic because budgets.
But I don't know, the returnon gaming is becoming such a weird
thing, right. Whereas you canpromise the world in graphics, you can
be like, oh, you're gonnaget like, you know, one hundred
and twenty frames per second and truefour k in real time rate tracing.

(40:34):
But do these publishers have the budgetto really pull that off. I don't
think so, And did the majorityof gamers number one care and then number
two have the hardware to also,Like you know, you have to have
the TV. You have to haveto have the TV that will do that
and everything else. So it's like, are you wanting to do the big

(40:54):
upgrade to perhaps not even get thatlike too or like we've already seen you
said with this generation, right,we haven't really had people just blow us
out of the water, except maybeAlan Wake two and a few others that
really just oh wow, this gamelooks amazing. This looks like what you
promise us, you know, anduntil I feel like, until we get

(41:16):
that with a lot of games,if they can even do that because of,
like you said, the return ongaming at this point, why are
we even talking about releasing another console? Why are we even talking about I
mean, I can kind of understandthe pro part, just because I guess
Sony wants to make sure they keepgetting people buying their console. But it's

(41:37):
not like people are not buying theconsole right now. I mean it's selling
three to one over Xbox or whatever. And maybe That's why for US is
thinking about maybe we need to startthe generation faster. But I feel like
there's if they're gonna do it,there's got to be some kind of something
that allows. Maybe it is morecloud based right where they can use the

(41:59):
cloud like they promised with Xbox One, with Xbox Series games will work on
Xbox One because of the cloud makingthem work or whatever. Would that be
able to facilitate them not being atsuch a graphical disadvantage at that point when
you get to twenty twenty eight.I mean, this is all speculation.
They may not do any of this, right other than the pro they may

(42:22):
not do any of this, Sowe're just we're just going with that speculation.
But it is interesting to think aboutwould it even benefit to make constant
generations shorter when Nintendo's doing the oppositeand they're they're they're raking in the money.
Right, The Switches lasted how long? We don't even know for sure
if the Switch two is going tocome out next year or not, and

(42:44):
they're still selling like crazy. Uh, do you think it's possible maybe if
Xbox is franchise, you know,maybe maybe this whole thing works like Xbox
once with that vision Blizzard and theyget all these known franchises that all of
a sudden start doing very well forthem. Could that possibly be something that
helps them say, okay, wecan because we've nintendoized some of our franchises.

(43:07):
Now people will come regardless of whetherthe graphical quality is ridiculous, they
will still come for whatever Blizzard makes, whatever Activision makes whatever. But does
the max Yeah, I mean Xboxdefinitely has a lot going for them.
I mean, you know, Sony'seven kind of shown that they're kind of
like concerned about what Microsoft has,just because like they are kind of getting

(43:30):
their hands in as many pies asthey possibly can cloud gaming, whether it's
like going on mobile and stuff.They've been releasing their stuff day and date
on PC. So like they've gota good revenue stream. Because you take
a look at like how much moneyXbox is actually bringing in and still being
like being down three to one,I don't think that concerns them really that

(43:52):
much at all. I think it'sgoing to be a lot scarier when you
start getting that two to one orone to one, and then an Xbox
does have that ability to kind ofleap frog. But yeah, like honestly,
like I think it's Xbox Like havingActivision is going to be a huge,
a huge boon because of the propertiesthat it has, whether that means

(44:13):
like the future of Diablo, thefuture of Overwatch, the future of Call
of Duty, like there are plansin place for a lot of that stuff
being on other platforms because of preexisting deals and things that they needed to
do to get that deal signed.But I mean they've got a lot of
other games as well too, becauseI know people have been wanting like another
prototype, they've been wanting like areturn to like some of the other shooters

(44:35):
that like Raven was working on,and all sorts of stuff, plus a
lot of backlog stuff like whether it'slike you know, Hexan and all these
other games and stuff like that.Because there's a lot of properties that Xbox
have that resonate with a certain amountof audience. I don't think every single
one of those games are amazing bigsellers, but they do have those They

(45:00):
do have those games that will kindof definitely help them that don't have to
be these big, massive scale gameswith outrageous budgets, because I think probably
like the biggest budget game coming outof Microsoft is probably going to be either
Fable or the next years and thenperfect Dark as well. Yeah, and

(45:20):
thank you to the the LinkedIn personthat commented about plant reading and talking as
much as again, Yeah, theindie developers, right, we've seen so
much indies be able to kind ofbecome like, I guess the Double A
of what we used to have whatwe used to call Double A, right,

(45:43):
and and so many Triple A developersnot what happened with it? You
just mentioned god we Rhandormrock. What'slike the big thing with the indies right
now is roguelikes, roagulikes, youknow, so oh, let's now they
have two of their major games,Last of Us, uh Part two,
Room Masters and God of War.Oh, let's just have a rogue black
mode. And of course they dida great job with God of War of

(46:05):
adding and story stuff and whatever theymakes that, Like I still can't believe
that thing's free. But like that'sthe kind of thing that you we look,
we talk about Triple A and andall this stuff about how oh Triple
A is the Yeah, Triple Ais the one that gets everybody's attention.
But now indies can also if TripleA gets too much and we start increasing
the process of Triple A and andpeople will start looking at indies and saying,

(46:30):
well, but this game kind ofdoes what that game does well,
technically much money to get this getthe thing. Technically an indie game one
game of the year. Yeah,technically yeah is independent. And I mean,
like you take a look at likemost people's top ten lists for across
outlets and stuff like that, anda lot of that stuff is indy as
well, because a lot of thosegames kind of resonate, they kind of

(46:52):
do things and take risks, whereaslike most big publishers are not taking risks
anymore. They're not been publishing weirdthings Like Ubisoft used to publish the weirdest
stuff. They're no longer doing that. They're like ninety percent of their stuff
is like Ubisoft Originals and then theother ten percent is like you know,

(47:13):
other things like Avatar. But Imean, like it you're not going to
see most Triple A kind of takingon as bigger risks for a lot of
their bigger stuff, like even Xbox, like their risks are a lot smaller
games. But I mean again,like Penitent Resonant for people, Grounded was

(47:34):
super fun, like I enjoyed playingthat game as well too, And that's
one thing I like about Xbox isthey are creating those experiences where it's like
I would love to see Sony makingsome of those games, Like I would
love to see like a almost liketwo D like Raction Clank, you know,
something that had like that two pointfive D or something like that,
Or whether or not they they geta team to make like a Jack and

(47:59):
Daxter game that is like a smallerbudget type of thing, like if they
remade Jack and Daxter, that couldbe a smaller budget game. It doesn't
have to be a big massive thing. But I don't know. It's the
budgets for these games are getting outof control and the sustainability is very,
very very tough because especially when yougot you know, companies that are doing

(48:22):
completely like all three companies are doingcompletely different things. You know, Sony
is keeping through their prestige stuff,Xbox is basically creating a lot of variety
to kind of grow game Pass,and Nintendo again is like dancing to the
beat of their own drum, likethey don't care what anybody else is doing.
I mean, like if you takea look at the leak specs,
for the next switch, like it'sit's as powerful as like the consoles are

(48:44):
pretty much like last Yen. Yeah, but I don't know. It all
comes down to like what these companiesare doing to kind of stay afloat.
And I don't think Sony is goingto be able to keep creating these these
big, massive, you know,two hundred to three hundred million dollar games.

(49:04):
I don't think that is going toI don't think that's going to work.
And like, you know, Idon't know who's going to be taking
over for Sony after you know,Jim Ryan leaves, but obviously they're going
to have something put in in placeto kind of like, Okay, what
is going to be our ceiling forthese games? What is going to be
you know, like the budget thatthey need to because they can't make another

(49:27):
Spider Man two that is that expensive, right? And I think he also
brings up a good point too thatthis is why they may also continue,
you know, Sony may may gointo some kind of acquisition because they need
studios that already know how to makethese smaller games that are not going to
make make Naughty Dog and make Insomniacand make everybody else have to do that.

(49:52):
Now we have these other studios thatwill do that also, see the
stupa thing is like with that kindof reasoning as well too, is like
you know this, you know theinformation that's come out of whether or not
of people that they've had to likego essentially from like Insomniac, Like why
not kind of just take those peopleand form another studio because you have like

(50:14):
Insomniac to me, is the mostwell oiled machine Sony has. The output
that they have is astonishing. Theyalready have two games this generation, technically
three if you count Miles Morales,right, So I mean like, if
you can't make them work with theamount of people that they have, acquiring
more people just doesn't acquire more studiosdoesn't make any sense considering like we already

(50:37):
have rumors of another Sony studio beingshut down this year. You know.
That's what makes me said about likeJapan's studio, they made some of the
weirdest stuff, but it was likesomething you could count on to be like
this is gonna be good and maynot be like the biggest state of the
world, but it's gonna be goodto me. Like the acquisitions that Sony
and Microsoft have both made have beenrealistic to the company me and their goals.

(51:00):
It's when you get acquisitions like throughan Embracer, where they were just
kind of like, let's buy everybodyand then completely screw them over after because
they you know, of all thestuff that's been happening with Embracer, because
like everyone talks about like an Xboxowns so many studios, they're like,
oh my god, they only thirtystudios. Yeah, Embracer owns like what
two hundred studios. It's not evenin the same ballpark like at all.

(51:23):
Like Embracer bought way too much,but they also were hedging their bets on
a two billion dollar deal from Saudi, Like I don't know why Xbox just
didn't go in going hey, here'slike six hundred million or whatever and make
all of your games available in gamePass for the next decade. You know,
like there's deals like I mean theyown who knows they did? And
Embracer was like, no, youknow, it's so we don't need money.

(51:45):
We'd rather just shutter these three studios. But it's it's really unfortunate what's
having an Embraser And unfortunately it's probablygoing to continue into twenty twenty four as
well. Everyone thought this year isgonna be bad, twenty twenty four is
gonna be way worse for layoffs.It's going to be stupid. And it's
just because that's yeah, they're they'rehedging their bets on all these types of

(52:07):
deals and stuff going through, andlike you know, like they owned the
Lord of the Rings license, theycould have sold that for the two billion
you know that they were making.They I don't know that there's so many
things that that Embracer could have doneto essentially fuel that money. But I
mean like they don't have that thatthat fallback capital that you know, like
Microsoft has for example, Like Microsofthas much money. But I mean again,

(52:32):
I think we're still going to seeyou know, more layoffs I think
even from Microsoft. Yeah, definitely. Do you know, We've seen it
from so many studios this year.It's unfortunate. And that is one thing
I do think that if the furtherand further we get as also that Infragram
pointed out that eighty three percent ofgames were bought digitally this year as opposed

(52:57):
to seventeen percent physical, which isa crazy number. And then revenues I
think are like ninety five to fivepercent that the more and more you do
digital, the more and more visibilityyou might have for these indies that do
similar things to what the Triple thegames are doing, and you might have
people start moving towards like, oh, I can play you know, let's

(53:17):
play it is these more of theseBalders Gates, see if stars, et
cetera, and and they become justas big as Yeah. Like the comment
just kind of posts now is likeyou have a lot of like innie games
that can now self publish because it'sincredibly easy for them to do that because

(53:38):
before they had to rely on publishers, you know, like whether it's going
to like E three and making negotiationswith those companies. There's tons of companies
that are also reaching out to likeyou know, Xbox or PlayStation or whatever
the case is too kind of havelike game pass deals. Because there was

(54:00):
the I can't remember the name ofit, there was a game that came
out a couple of weeks ago onxlox where they ended up because of the
deal they got with Microsoft, theyended up delaying the game for a year
and building even more content because they'relike, well, we can now make
the game we wanted to because ofthis budget, and you get a lot
of those companies that are getting thatmoney, and again that's publisher money,

(54:22):
and if they don't have those theykind of have to release these games that
are these small indie experiences and thenkind of use that success to kind of
then make the game that they actuallywant the next time around. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean the Trip aWay model that is going right now is

(54:44):
one that they have to evolve whatthe game is, the scale of the
game, and kind of work ina budget that kind of allows those games
to make revenue, to allow themto take risks to have the chance to
make that revenue. Again, like, you get these unrealistic expectations, especially
through score Nix, where like they'llcreate these games that sell well, but

(55:08):
Squarreannix is like, oh, youdidn't sell well enough, so now we're
going to sell your entire studio.It's very interesting because the Scarenks is weird
because they are actually the kind oflike the example of they make a differing
budgets of games, right, butthen it's weird how they expect them to
seemingly sell the same no matter whatkind of game it is. And it's

(55:30):
like you can't really expect a mana game to sell as much as a
foul fantasy and then even then like, uh, you know, it's it
seems weird. It just seems well, I'm surprised they even did that Star
Ocean remake, considering the last StarOcean sold horribly. Yeah, well,
I mean they're hedging on the factthat Star Otion two is more known than

(55:52):
making the new one. That theysure so, and I do think he
you know, the the LinkedIn personthat that commented as well brings up a
good point about the launcher. Andwe just saw what happened with the Epic
and Google thing, how Epic wonright what they couldn't do with Apple,
they were able to do with Google. And now apparently at some point don't

(56:16):
know how this is going to gowith appeals and whatever that people are going
to be able to launch their havetheir own launcher in the mobile source.
So the Microsoft is wanting to dowith Xbox right with having King and all
that stuff, and Sony has madedeals with mobile folks as well. Do

(56:37):
you think that's another thing that we'regonna start seeing, We're gonna are we
gonna start seeing more mobile games madeby those publishers. I mean, well,
I mean there's a lot of money. I mean, Benchin Impact proved
that if you can make like asuccessful mobile game, you're going to make
all the money in the world.I mean they've got three games, you
know, pretty much going with HonkyStar Rail and then ZZZ his own.

(57:00):
I can't remember that what the abbreviationis for that, but yeah, I
mean like there's there's one of thosethings where it's just like making new ips
is very difficult. I mean,that's why we're still going to see like
another Years of War, you know, like they're they're they're still going to
do that. We're still gonna getlike another Force of Horizon at some point.

(57:22):
They're making Fable. I mean,like take a look at the the
Game of the Year nominees this year. They were pretty much like all established.
Yeah, so I mean like it'sit's very very tough of creating a
new IP that has the same graphicalfidelity of what people are demanding from Tripoy.

(57:43):
Like I don't need like the highestgraphical fidelity for a game to absolutely
entertain me. I mean, like, yeah, RoboCop Rogue City looked amazing
because of its unroal engine vibues,it's people look like garbage. But I
mean that was still, like,I think, like my fourth favorite game
this year. So I mean likethere's there is like there is an expectation

(58:05):
that is gotten out of hand forTripoy to the point where the return on
all these games is very very difficult, yeah, for them to maintain,
And I mean like it's it's goingto be a very very tough, Like
next year is going to be avery very interesting year because I don't think
we're going to see the same amountof these like big high budget games kind

(58:27):
of creating being able to exist still, you know. And you know again,
yeah, like the live service modelfor a lot of these games,
Like I wouldn't be a bit surprisedif, like the next year's multiplayer is
more live service than what the previousones were. I wouldn't be a bit
surprised if the next Gears of War, if they just release a big live

(58:51):
service Gears of War and then dothe story campaign later, because they can
afford to do that with game Pass, they can afford to split that stuff
up. You know, I thinkthink also, you know, he he
brings up a great point about you'regonna get a lot more remakes and remasters.
And that brings me to what Segaannounced at the Game Awards that they're

(59:12):
they're bringing back a bunch of theirold franchises, right, and but those
aren't also like remakes. Those arejust kind of like brand new versions of
it, right, But they don'thave to be. I guess that also
kind of leads to the whole they'renot. I don't think they're going to
necessarily be like, they're not goingto be what Sony does. They're going
to be more sort of understanding thatthese are while they're known franchises, they're

(59:37):
also not the most you know,well known either. They're trying to bring
them back, so they're going tohave a budget in mind for them.
I think that isn't the same thatyou're going to see with what we see
with Sony right now. So Idon't know, if you know, Sega

(59:59):
has a great deal with Microsoft,I don't know if some of those are
going to be you know, withgame Pass and Mind and that kind of
thing as well, But I couldI could see a few of them probably
hitting on game Pass. I don'tthink the entire lot is going to go
there because they also said and morebecause they showed, like right, you
know, they showed a bunch ofstuff, but they also said and more.
I think some of the more it'snot really obscure. But like the

(01:00:22):
Shanobi one, I could see thatbeing a game pass title because I don't
think it has the same brand recognitionas something like you know, Crazy Taxi
is well known, jets Hit RadioFuture is well known to Sega fan.
Shnobi does have some of that poll, but I don't think that the same
extent. It'd be interesting to seewhat Jet like Jet said or Jet Grind

(01:00:43):
you know, does for the futureof its line, because I mean,
like Bomb Rush Cyberbunk came out andwas pretty much that game. Yeah,
definitely, you know, I Ithis is it's such a like interesting conversation
as far as just what happened.There's a lot that's going to happen.
Like you said, twenty twenty fourmay just I don't think that's gonna be

(01:01:05):
as great as this year. Idon't know that we're going to get the
amount of amazing releases that we didthis year. But I do worry about,
like what you said, is thethe negative impact that's going to be
felt more and we're going to havemore and more of these conversations, you
know. And the thing that thatgoes about it is that games are having
these four to six year development cyclesand they're basing all that that they're hitting

(01:01:30):
all their bets on a trend thatis part of what that game is.
It's it's very, very tough becauseyou get a you get a company that's
say, spending like, you know, two hundred million dollars on a game
that has like a particular type ofthing, and then an indie game that
has half that budget comes out ayear before and could possibly do that idea

(01:01:54):
better. You know, Like it'sit's it's a it's a it's a tough
situation, you know for that kindof stuff. And like yeah, like
you know the comment there like Microsoftdoes dominate the online space. I mean
see if Thieves is kind of proofof that as well too. You know,
Sony parent company, Sony pushed forthe Bungee acquisition because Sony owns them,

(01:02:16):
not PlayStation, so I mean likethey they want they wanted a lot
of their tools essentially for for beingthat type of thing. But yeah,
like it's it's It's one of thosethings where like, we're gonna get games
of all of all types, whetherit's live service games, whether it's just
traditional multiplayer games, co op games, single player games, sports games,

(01:02:39):
Like, you're still going to havethat diverse catalog, but you're gonna have
less risks within that diverse catalog.Right. And it's again like, if
Sony can't get their first live servicegame out of the bat, I don't
know what that's going to look likegoing forward, which they've had issues with
already, not not just last thosebut a number of you know, Destruction

(01:02:59):
All Stars supposed to be the oneat the beginning of the generation. That
thing people forget about that game,especially with like people going like all red
Fall was like the first like disasterof this generation. It's like, no,
Destruction All Stars is a worse gamethan Red Fall, and I don't
like Red Fall, right, Yeah, exactly. It is about minimizing risk,

(01:03:20):
it is about doing all those things. I feel like that's kind of
what Sega's doing as well, Likethey feel like they it's been long enough
they can do these in the samestyle. Also, dot Mu showed them
that, you know, you canmake a street fighter game streets a rage
game and it's amazing. So secondfal they figured why not do it on
our end two? But yeah,I do think that they're taking that inspiration

(01:03:44):
from the indie side and saying,look, all these indie games are coming
out that are like the games wemade, why don't we try to do
that, Just hopefully that they doit with minimizing risk in mind and understanding
that there's possibility that because those gamesalready exist, they may not hit as
big as Yeah, like even ifyou take a look at it, like

(01:04:06):
the studio that made Immortals of Badium, Like they ballooned up their staff to
make that game based on you knowagain, they had EA money, git
that EA Originals program and stuff likethat, and that game did not do
well and they basically are now backdown to their core studio. They had
to let go like practically like whathalf their studio or something like that.

(01:04:29):
So it's it's tough for these singleplayer games because they are one and done
experiences to balloon up to the pointof of what they're doing right now.
So Sega is making like a wholebunch of these like smaller experiences because like
I don't see crazy Taxi or JetsGrind the Jets at Future or whatever they're
calling this one, or Golden Axeor streets Rage. Being these massive games,

(01:04:54):
I think they are going to bekind of small, fun, bite
sized experiences. You know, Jetsthat's going to be a little bit bigger
experience than say something like the GoldenAxe or whatever. But I mean,
like, I see you know,being a good like eight to ten hour
game. I see Sites of Ragebeing a good probably four to five hour
game, because that's kind of basedoff repetition. Arcade games have always been
shortly exactly, you know, GoldenAxe, I could see being like a

(01:05:16):
ten hour game maybe, But yeah, like bringing back like older releases and
stuff like that. Nostalgia is ahuge, you know trip when it when
it when it works, I mean, we we had every single studio has
something that they're working on that hasto do with the remake remaster h D

(01:05:38):
two D now is the one.Capcom already said they're not done with the
remakes of Hopefull. They were gettingCode Veronica in five. Yeah, I
don't know what they're going to dowith six. You know, we make
one again and then you long enoughSony basically remaking anything that's more than a
month old. So like I'm expectingas Spider Man one the spring next year.

(01:06:00):
Let's let's hope we don't go thatfar. Oh god, that will
be already remaking right in a rock. It's probably almost ready to release.
Yeah, it's that is all Ithink. Really interesting to see what we're
going to eventually get. Let's seeif any of these Sega games come out
next year or if that's for furtheras well, and also say you can

(01:06:23):
do that why because they have personathey have uh you know, like a
Dragon and uh well yeah, Ialmost don't even include them as part of
like a Sega because like they've runtheir business so well. But it's still
nuts that they have two of theirfriends who's coming out within a week of

(01:06:43):
each other. Like who is thinkingabout this, uh this release calendar for
them? Also, like why areyou having a huge lack of Dragon release
and then a remake of a gamethat people have been waiting on coming you
know, within a week of eachother. I mean, I know P
three reals on game Pass, butstill I don't know, give people all
the more time? Yeah, no, infinite wealth. I don't think it's

(01:07:04):
a game pass. No, No, that was only a guide end that
came to the game pass. ButI think infinite wealth you have to go
buy it. But it's it's stillcrazy to me that they're they're doing that.
But we're gonna talk about releases.I guess something that we used to
go to to look at upcoming releasesis now officially officially dead. It seems

(01:07:26):
like because the ESA themselves, theorganizers have said it is do you have
I mean, I get it.Summer Games Fest has kind of taken over
sort of what E three was inthat vein, but it still hasn't taken
what E three used to do inthe periphery in the background so much.
What do you have any thoughts onthat going away? And like any memories
of ethere or whatever that you Well, I think there's a I think there's

(01:07:48):
a lot of different ways now thatindie companies and can reach out to like
publishers in regards to that because there'sprograms put in in place like the ID
at Xbox and all that kind ofstuf. So I mean, like again,
like a lot of those companies wouldyou know, bring their their presence
to these trade shows to be ableto talk with publishers and big deals and

(01:08:11):
and all that kind of stuff,and that kind of stuff I think still
happens, it just happens in avery different way. Summer Game Fest kind
of is been an okay replacement forE three, but with everybody kind of
just coming and doing their own thing. Some are like the Summer Game Fest
has just kind of become more ofa blanket around the whole summer more so

(01:08:32):
than just that type of thing.And you know, E three was kind
of on its last legs, youknow when when Sony left, when Nintendo
left, and then they created thedirects and then that kind of set the
standard and everybody's doing directs now,and then COVID hit and then that was
the final nail on the coffin forthat because live events and then you know

(01:08:55):
E three also, like ESA leakedthe information, which you know, put
kind of a bad taste in everybody'smouth on the ESA going forward. And
I mean, if RePOP couldn't doit, no one can, because RePOP
does packs and packs does extremely well. But at the exact same time,
RePOP put out the feelers for gettingthese types of people to show up,
and there just wasn't enough interest togenerate that type thing because it's a very

(01:09:19):
expensive thing to put off. AndI think with everybody kind of doing their
own thing, I mean a lotof companies celebrate that thing. Devolver is
known for doing their own thing,and they put on a big show to
announce games, Like there are thesethese big things. Nintendo does their own
stuff, and like Capcom does theirown spotlight if they have publishing deals or

(01:09:42):
Square NX as it deals with Sony, then Sony puts out their stuff through
their their shows. Xbox has theirdeveloper directs and all that kind of stuff,
Like there's no reason for E threeto exist in the way it does.
And even Summer Games Fest, youknow a lot of that stuff.
Like if you look at any SummerGames Fast, like eighty percent of that
show could have just been a traileron YouTube and it would have generated the

(01:10:08):
same interest, not views, butthe interest right for those games, because
like you look at like the GameAwards, there was probably about ten games
that were shown after the Game Awardsthat we've already seen, right, But
I think the Game Ward is differentbecause look at the amount of views that
thing got, Like you get theviews, but I mean, like it's
the interest that matters in the end, because you can have a trailer that

(01:10:29):
gets like eighty million views, butif those don't translate to interest, then
a lot of those publishers they don'twant to They don't want to kind of
invest the money because they suddenly haveto buy floor space, they have to
fly everything over there. I mean, like there was a there was a
joke saying, like, you knowwhat was what is what is the real

(01:10:50):
definition of India? And someone puta picture of like a bunch of developers
like returning a TV heading to returnto TV after the Game Awards because like,
you don't have that budget. Soa lot of these companies and stuff
they don't they don't need to bringtheir presence over to these trade shows because
that all that is is advertising andif they can do the advertising on their

(01:11:11):
own terms, then you don't needthings like that. Jeff Keigley brings in
a large amount of eyeballs on theproducts, which is why Summer Games Fest
is what it is is because hecelebrates the industry in certain ways right in
certain ways not but in regards tore replicating E three, Summer Game Fest

(01:11:32):
is the only thing we have thatreplicates E three in that respect, But
a lot of it is the timingaround other things. Because you look at
Summer Games Fast and everyone calls itSummer Games Fast, but you have Summer
Games Fest with a one day andthen like Day of the Devs, and
then Sony's things, and then Nintendo'sthing, blah blah blah, but none
of those really belong to Summer GamesFest. But because it takes place in

(01:11:54):
a certain week or a month orwhatever, it kind of molds into one
thing. Whereas E three used tohave it where it was like E three
press conferences and then you'd have Sony'sand the Nintendo's and Xbox and stuff like
that, but it was all underthe E three banner. Most of this
isn't under the Summer Game Fest banner, like because you have like the like

(01:12:16):
the Summer Game Fest showing, whichis like the three or two or three
or four hour show where Jeff Keely'sshowing trailers and all that kind of stuff.
But then Microsoft's thing is not SummerGames Best, right, they'll tie
it into but it's not. They'lltie it into it, so it's become
this thing where everybody's just doing theirown thing, but it's during that week

(01:12:38):
of E three because that's been thestandard for a very very long time.
Yeah, it's unfortunate, like wedid, you know, we would see
developers be able to meet up witheach other and games happened because of E
three and these games that have happenedin an elevator right right, Yeah,
because they met each other. Eitherit's I don't know that it's Ethany was

(01:13:01):
also like an industry facing show whereit feels like Summer games Fest is not
that. Also, Samur gains Festalso needs to I think Jeff Keeley needs
to separate what he does for theGame Awards to Summer gains Fest and stop
trying to make this about we needto get the highest of the high people
in here, and Summer games Festneeds to be more like Ethani whill you

(01:13:25):
try to get anybody that wants togo there to try to get more coverage
and get it out there, andit feels like you can't get like you
guys or otter Haven or smaller sitesto yeah show up, I think,
and that's terrible. I think nextyear they will expand a bit more because
they do have that that type ofthing where you go into that the play

(01:13:48):
days thing. Yeah, like whenyou go in there and you see that,
but I mean like you're only gettingthe big guys there. I don't
know, Like I think Packs isone of those things where it feels that
need for like the smaller teams andstuff going in. But I mean,
like Summer games past, like unlesshe expands into a bigger venue, I

(01:14:09):
don't see it replacing E three inthat respect. Right, It's it's possible.
Does he even want to do that? Also? Right, because it's
it's it's up It's really it's Killy'sthing. It's up to whatever he wants
to do. Does he really wantto completely be what Ethane was? I
think that was part of the problemof why he wanted to get out of

(01:14:29):
I know he wanted to lead becausethe E three was trying to like branch
off into like being more built aroundinfluencers and weird novelty things, because like
there was just tons of that stuffthat E three was trying to do that
he just didn't want any part of. But I don't know, like because
like right now he's still doing thething where like he's bringing press out to

(01:14:50):
try these games and stuff. Likethat, and if you just expand that
to even twice the venue size,you could bring in smaller teams and stuff
like that. I don't know whetheror not that he has like an Indie
Outlet Day or something like that whereit's just nothing but the smaller outlets on
one day and just extended by oneday. I don't know. Yeah,
And it's as has been said here, it's it's really about the fact that

(01:15:15):
they can directly give you know,these publishers and everything. It's great what
Killy does, but they're also youknow, giving their digital event directly to
the consumers. They're be able toset the pace and set everything in and
Kelley just kind of wanted to makehis own branch around it. And it
is cool to have all of thesedifferent things together with it. I still

(01:15:38):
would like it to be a littlemore truncated still, Like sometimes it disc
feels like it's that month happen andit's like, oh my god, there
is so much stuff to try toeven it's gotten better, right Nember the
persone was like two three months worthof things and it felt like it never
ended. But I do feel likemaybe that needs to be and improved as

(01:15:58):
well. As so like maybe weneed to condense it a little bit more.
That's what was the nice thing aboutE three. It was like three
or four days of, oh,this is all happening, and then that's
it, you know, because there'slots of conferences that take place during the
summer of gaming that were a prettymuch at the exact same time as others.
Yeah, because you would see likeoutlets basically swapping back and forth or

(01:16:19):
kind of covering stuff. But thenyou've got other ones that didn't need the
trade show, like the Coasch Media, Like that was the most boring conference
I've ever seen in my entire life. Yes, I don't know. It's
it's one of those things where it'slike the publishers don't need these events anymore.
They can reach directly to their consumers. They've got platforms that they can

(01:16:42):
reach on, like you know,like Nintendo can toss their stuff on a
direct But yeah, it's it's ait's a completely different industry now. And
like COVID again, like it putthe nail in the coffin of a lot
of live events and they just didn'thave the strength to kind of come back,
and in that time, publishers werelike, well, why do I
need to spend eighty thousand dollars toyou know, show up at the ship

(01:17:08):
all or stuff to E three,let alone the two or three hundred thousand
dollars to rent the space. Theydon't need it anymore. No, definitely
not. And then also like thething is as well, we saw all
different kinds of publishers start to adoptthat. And one of the ones that
that loved E three, they lovedthe show of E three was Gbsoft and

(01:17:29):
they started making their Ubi Soft forwards. You've been playing a ubi Soft game,
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. Yeah,review, what did? What did
you think of it? I've beenhearing a lot of is is it Avatar
far Cry? And I think thefar Cry thing only comes from the fact
that it's Ubisoft. To me,this is more of an evolution of what

(01:17:51):
Crisis was doing, because like againlike this is a completely different team.
This is Massive this like this isMassive making this. This isn't the far
Cry team. So I mean ithas similarities, and I think that any
open world, outdoor kind of gamedoes. But to me, this feels
way more like Crisis, Like You'vegot kind of like like sealth mechanics based

(01:18:15):
on action in a very visually stunningworld, and it just feels more like
that. It still has some ofthe like the copy and paste in nature
that you get with something like farCry and even like Horizon zeroed on,
but that stuff needs to exist topat out its world. I don't think
you're going to create unique experiences everytwenty feet, So I mean like the

(01:18:39):
tried and true nature of what itdoes for like repetition for for what it
does in the world. I thinkI still think works. I think it's
those things are tried and true fora reason they work. I went into
Frontiers of Pandora only watching the initialreveal trailer. This was no gameplay,
this is just like we're making Avatargame. So I went into the game

(01:19:01):
knowing absolutely nothing. I didn't watchany trailers whatsoever. Anything that I posted
I didn't like, like kind ofconsume. So I went into it basically
completely blind and the only thing thatI was expecting was like a far Cry
type of skin essentially, you know, draped in Avatar. But to me,

(01:19:25):
it felt more like Crisis, AndI really enjoyed the game, Like
the combat is extremely fun, thestealth mechanics are light enough that they don't
feel like they're overpowering. It isthe probably probably the best looking game ever
made. The graphical fidelity, Likethe people are still fine, they're fine,

(01:19:46):
you know, but the the visualfidelity in this game is staggering for
the amount of like vegetation that youhave, like that's all in game,
Like it it is unreal how muchgraphical fidelity is packed into its game is
It's super fun. Is one ofthe best two wee's off games I've played

(01:20:11):
in years. Like I got soverpoweredthat I was taking out those scorpions in
like one arrow, and it's it'ssuper fun. Like the the uh Ekons,
they're like they're not as agile asthe trailers kind of show off.
They are a little slow, butgiven the fact that you are traversing large

(01:20:33):
open areas, it feels slow,but you are progressing really fast, you
know. Like it's it's like whenyou're in a plane or whatever and you
look down you're like, oh,we're not really going that fast, and
then all of a sudden, likefifteen minutes later, you're in another state.
You know, like yeah, itit. It is is a very
good game and the fact that it'son sale right now, Like I really

(01:20:55):
do recommend it, like it it'scanon, gains us to the films even
though it takes place like after thesecond one, because it's like a big
time jump, like it starts.It starts like yeah, like at the
very beginning of the game, justlike a time jump, and they talk
about like how this like Avatar namedlike Jake Sully has like up tip the

(01:21:19):
balance of whatever and all like allthis kind of stuff, and then like
you're kind of putting these like incubationchambers whatever, and then you wake up
like sixteen years later. So likeit doesn't it doesn't need to tie itself
to the films even though it iscanon. According to it'll be soft,
so I don't know exactly like howit'll play into future films or anything like

(01:21:43):
that, but it does a goodjob. Like you've got the different clans
that all feel different and unique,They've got different things that they can do.
It is it. It's it's reallyreally good. Like I do like
the combat, the like you caneither go like pure navvy and just do
bows and you have this like weirdlacrosse stick that can kind of throw bombs.

(01:22:09):
And then like you have your spearthrowers and stuff that we also have
like shotguns and assault rifles, andthe shotgun is so good against the the
mechs. But it's got a goodstory. And the one thing that I
will say that is very interesting isthe movies kind of have this surface level

(01:22:30):
approach of kind of conveying the colonialismand all that kind of stuff, Like
it it doesn't, I think,dive into those things like to extensive degrees.
But this game does not pull anypunches. Like it definitely is pulling
from like the history of like whenlike the Catholic Church would like abuse and
torment and kidnap indigenous people. Likeit dives right into that stuff and it

(01:22:55):
becomes a core pillar. Like there'sa part where like they're investigating like one
of the old facilities when they werefirst taken and they there's they bring up
this like audiophile how they were talkingabout how like the r RDP or RPD,
I can't remember what it is,like the RDA or something like that.
Yeah, the facility that the peoplewere like essentially scrubbing the nove off

(01:23:19):
these kids like this is mercer here, and yeah, like they it does
a incredible job at conveying that storyin a way that does not pull away
from the message. It doesn't pullaway from anything. There's a character that's
kind of involved in a lot ofthat stuff that's kind of with you that

(01:23:42):
you can either, you know,accept the past or confront it. You
can choose to like, you know, determine if they were really in the
wrong. And it's it's such awell crafted story. It has some pacing
issues, there's parts of the storythat are not amazing, but the core

(01:24:02):
message of what it's doing with thatstory is unbelievably well done. And I'm
not an Avatar fan, you know, Like I think the films are fine.
They're visually striking, which is whatthis game is, so it follows
in that tradition. But no,it's it's a really decent game. And
like, you can turn off allthe navigational stuff. So if you get

(01:24:25):
the the the hints of like,oh you can find this camp if you
follow the river that looks like asnake at the bottom of a mountain that
looks like a panther like, andthen you follow those things if you want,
or you can just pull up yournavy vision like a blue dot gotta
go there, and so like youcan choose how to go through that game.
So if you want to just liveoff the land and explore and go,

(01:24:47):
you totally can't. You'll find tonsof side quests and people. Well
that's sorry. I'm glad that atleast that's that's what it was something I
was going to get. I'm nota big Avatar fan either, but that's
good to know that you don't haveto necessarily be an Avatar fan to enjoy
this. It is a good gameon its own. Also, k med

(01:25:10):
what's up? And happy holidays yetas well, thanks for Watchmen, and
yeah, it's it's just it's reallygood that like it's sad that you so
also brought it out like now,and you know, people are kind of
in the It is great for likethe holidays, right if you're an Avatar
fan and you're looking for something togo buy your kid or buy somebody that
is an Avatar fan and they havea PS five or both. The reason

(01:25:32):
the best time for them to releaseit was pretty much around Christmas when you're
going to have that that the shopgiving, you know, the gift giving
kind of stuff going, and yeah, like you know it sucks that it
gets released after the Game Awards havealready determined the game of the Year,
and it's released at a time whensome of the best games are discounted.
I mentioned that in my opening paragraphof the review. But this is a

(01:25:53):
game that I don't want people tosleep on. It is very, very
good. It looks amazing even onPS five and an Xbox Series X.
The only difference really for Series Sis it just has the thirty fps version
and it has less foliage. Buteverything else, like all the retracing,
all that stuff still there. Ifyou've got a good PC rig that can

(01:26:14):
run it and you put all yoursettings to max that's not max, you
can Actually there's an Unitanium mode thatruns even better, so look out look
on how to unlock that those settingsand it will look even better. Digital
Foundery did a view on it,and they didn't know about it until they

(01:26:35):
got half their video done and they'relike, yeah, so there it can
look better, and they showed itand it's crazy. It is. It
is astonishing how good that game looks. The real time lendering rendering that they
did for the lighting changes is waybetter than what they did for the division
it's a completely different system, butit still uses the Snowdrop engine. But
this is a visually stunning game thathas like decent action and good stuff.

(01:27:00):
And again that's crisis. That's thevery definition of crisis. And like,
yeah, I can see people comparingit to Far Cry or Horizon zerd On
and all that kind of stuff.But in the end, it is a
very good game. It's got agreat story. The characters are not as
memorable as I think that they couldbe, but I think that's just because
there were so many names thrown atyou, whether you're knowing like Otuma or

(01:27:23):
Atwo, Like there's all these namesthat are so similar right where like you're
you know. But it does itdoes a good job with its with with
what it has, and it isvery very entertaining. Well, that's awesome.
Here will have to be one thatI'll I'll definitely check out. It
is uh, it is getting puton sale a lot. I think it's
like or something like that. Yeah, and I think even if you have

(01:27:45):
it, like when they were sellingon a QVC it was like thirty bucks
or something, or you can justget a one month for Ubisoft Plus or
whatever the service is called and youcan play it on there. I would
think about doing that with The Princeof Persia when that comes out, because
I'm excited for that coming out prettyquick in January. Anything else do you
want to talk about gaming wise thatyou've been playing, Well, I've been

(01:28:08):
playing Warhammer forty k Rogue Trader,which is kind of like the boulders Kate
three of Warhammer. It doesn't quitehave that same budget or presentation. You
know, that's kind of unfair becauseyou know it is what it is.
But if you are looking for something, if you if you've played Boulderskate three
to death and you're like, Iwant I want to play something like that,

(01:28:30):
check out this game. It hasthat clunky, kind of chunky kind
of Warhammer feel, so like everythingfeels like it's very weighted. Some of
the systems in regards to like progressionand all that kind of stuff are a
little confusing, but it's still reallygood. For what I've played of it
so far, I've put about sixor seven hours in. It's a it's

(01:28:51):
supposed to be have anywhere between fiftyand one hundred hours, depending on how
in depth you get with a lotof the stuff. But it's it's an
inconsistent on what's voiced and what's not, but the stuff that's voiced is really
good, and it's it has somethingsimilar to Final Fantasy sixteen, where if
you don't know a certain word,you can press why and then click over

(01:29:12):
and any words that are highlighted youcan see the definition for them. So
if you don't know what, likeyou know a certain Warhammer term is,
because like I'm a very surface levelWarhammer fan, like I love the video
games, I don't know anything elseabout anything else for Warhammer because like Dark
Tide was super fun. I enjoyedplaying that. But Road Trader is really
good. It runs really decent onthe Steam Deck, so I'm playing it

(01:29:35):
there. But yeah, it's it'sreally good so far. It definitely scratches
that itch. If you're looking forsomething that is similar to boulders K three,
just don't don't expect the depth orpresentation. That's just not there.
And even the lead designer on thatgame went on Twitter is saying like you

(01:29:55):
can't compare us to boulder K three, right, Well, it just it
just doesn't work that way. Somany when you're talking about like a game
that's been game of the year forso many reasons, Like that's very hard
to try to make that comparison.But if you're looking for a good CRPG,
Rogue Trader is very very good sofar. The cast of characters are
really nice. You get to,like within about an hour and a half,

(01:30:16):
you get to pick a choice ofwhether or not you are like for
the Emperor, for the people,or like for death type of type of
things. So you have these differentways that you can go throughout the game
that kind of change, certain equipmentthat you can wear, certain quests,
certain people like they'll they'll take tocertain things because like I have the people
that I have on my team rightnow, some of them are like yeah,

(01:30:38):
Emperor go, and then some ofthem are not so like it it
varies, and it's got that it'sgot the depth there where you can pick
a lot of different choices, Likeit's got a lot of the same systems
where it makes the roles on certainthings, but it's not as in depth
of a D and D experience assomething like Boulter's Kate. This is more
akin to something like Divinity Original Sin, where it has the systems, but

(01:31:00):
it doesn't commit one hundred percent toa particular like rule set. But it's
it's good. It's good so far. Like again, I'm only about six
hours in, so like I've gota lot going on there. But you
can like make your ship and allthat. You don't make your ship,
but like you can customize it oncertain things and stuff like that. But
again, like it's got up.It's a game that has a budget,

(01:31:24):
and you do see the budget,so they're in there. There are not
like full big like animated cut sceneslike you know for dialogue or anything.
Everything is basically from that viewpoint.The shooting feels like really chonky, and
I like that. But it's itcan be super violent and super gory,
and the it's it's really good sofar, like I am, I am

(01:31:46):
quite enjoying it. It's got avery nice look to it, so that
you can make what your ship kindof looks like to a certain extent interiors,
and you can add people into differentpositions and stuff. But it is
it is quite good or it's goodto hear, so you know, just
for me, I guess to kindof start wrapping this up, I have

(01:32:10):
I'm gonna feel like the old manin the room. I don't play Fortnite.
I usually don't play those kind ofgames. So I am a huge
rock band fan, and knowing thatthere was a mode added to Fortnite called
Portnite Festival, I had to tryit out. Even though it doesn't have
right now, doesn't have the instruments. They are fairly PDP is going to
make instruments or at least make theguitar that you can then use the port

(01:32:33):
Eye Festival because it seems like they'renot going to try to make a rock
band five, They're going to makea rock band whatever. This is going
to be in here. And Idon't know if you tried it out,
Jeff at all, but no,I've seen people talk about it, and
I've seen the only people. Theonly thing that people have been really like
driving home that is bad about itis the monetization is way too expensive and

(01:32:54):
it doesn't have the content to kindof support what it is right now.
Yeah, the song seem more expensivethan what they are on rock Band four,
and also the fact that they switchedthem out constantly, so the only
way you actually get to keep thesong that you play by yourself is if
you buy it. So it iskind of more like a yeah, let's
what if we had a Spotify versionof rock Band, will we constantly keep

(01:33:15):
switching stuff out? Uh? Dogtoo? Yeah, that's right. Yeah,
you know, for purchasing a songfor a certain license or a certain
degree like timeline of license. Moreso than just saying because that's been the
problem with like bringing those games backor remastering them or whatever the case is
is, they'd have to rework allof those agreements and that could be even

(01:33:36):
more money than what they'll pull in. Yeah. I mean it is amazing
to me when they announced on That'sthe whole reason I've always had an Xbox.
This was the three sixties because Ihave like two thousand songs on rock
Band, and then when like theyhad them all come out for rock Band
four, I was like, Wow, this is incredible. I thought they
were going to be, you know, lost forever. I'd have to always

(01:33:57):
go back to my three sixty orsomething or my Xbox one. And the
fact that you know it still worksand all that is great. I do
think this is a cool thing.I think I'll be interested to see you've
got all these new people into rockBand. Maybe that only play Fortnite and
didn't play it before. I'll beinterested to see if you have Fortnite instruments,

(01:34:19):
if that's going to really start awave of guitar Hero rock band again.
Yeah. I mean you have Microsoftwho could literally bring back Guitar Hero.
Yeah, that's too, they coulddo it because I tried the racing
thing as well too, like theFortnite racing that they did. Yeah,
I played that as well. Wouldnot. I thought it was good.

(01:34:40):
I think it's good. I justthink it lacks the content. I think,
honestly, this this stuff could havereleased I think in the spring with
even more content and just been morefuture rich. Because that's the thing that
sucks about these like live service games, is like they release kind of like
scraps and they're like, don't worrythat the meals coming, just like here's
these like appetizers until we actually getsomething, and that's that kind of sucks.

(01:35:02):
It's kind of like epics thing oflike hey, we're gonna see if
you like this, so we're gonnagive you this and if you like it,
well then we'll keep doing. Butyeah, the other game I've talked
about a few times, but Igot a lot lot farther and in Stars
and Time. Yeah, I've onlysaid you like like bare minimum on that

(01:35:26):
as well. Yeah, It's I'mnot you know, big into these time
love games or whatever, but thisone is grabbing me. It's probably also
because the characters are so good thatthe story and the character work in this
game is it's fantastic as far aslike, look, they talk a lot,
but you actually kind of want toread what they're saying, right,

(01:35:47):
and like the banter they have witheach other is is really fun and all
of that. You know, Ilike the sort of the premise of the
story and getting to see that goon. You know, I'm part of
I'm in the act three part thatapparently is supposed to be like the most
kind of time consuming part, soI haven't gotten to that yet to see

(01:36:10):
like what I've seen folks talk about. But as far as what I've been
through and just kind of having thatexperience of like, Okay, this is
what I have to do to goto the next loop and figure out how
to get this key from this timeand all, it's like actually really neat
for me just to kind of experienceit, and then having all the character
worth that kind of pushes me throughand then also it being an RPG as

(01:36:31):
well that it's turn based and youdo have all the sort of old turn
based mechanics kind of has an undertailfeel as well. So yeah, I
definitely think people should should with thewhite borders and stuff. Definitely. Then
I'm enjoying a lot. Hopefully folksthat have played it are enjoying it,

(01:36:53):
and I just I feel like itis kind of one of those like underrated
gems that it came out like theweek of Thanksgiving, and probably it was
like the worst time for it tocome out because you also had I think
percent of five Tactica and like aDragon guide In also come at the same
time, and I think all ofthose games maybe except for guide In,

(01:37:15):
because Infinite Wealth is coming out soquickly after people kind of just put that
on a list of Oh, I'mgoing to play these and then who knows,
you know, I didn't. Ithink it was fun, but it
felt like if they had just donethis as some type of like Yakisa like
DLC Netflix No, like Netflix animatedmovie, you would have got the same

(01:37:39):
story across because like, yeah,so much of that game was filler,
but you could tell because they wasmeant to be DLC. Yeah, so
much of that game is gated,like it feels like, oh wait,
but I can't go yet because Ihave to do something else, and it's
like it's it's weird, Like Istill I still do enjoy it because it
is that Yakisa. It's like youknow, curious like last like real time

(01:38:00):
combat kind of yakaza game. Solike there there is that of it,
and there's there some pretty good emotionalmoments. But to me, this this
could have just been an animated movieleading into Infinite Wealth because like the amount
of story that's actually there is abouttwo hours. Yeah, no, I
agree with you there. That's kindof why I've been a little bit.

(01:38:21):
I'll play it here and there,but I haven't just totally dived in to
playing that constantly because of the wholeit feels like I'm being pushed to do
all of that, which you knewand like a dragon normally, but it
feels more and there's so much ofit's like, oh, I could really
go for some sushi and then youhave to blug around looking for sushi.
I'm like I just started ignoring thosepeople. Yeah, like the substories,

(01:38:44):
it was kind of weird because likethe substories were so good in the previous
games because you just stumbled upon them. They just they were just there,
you saw. But now you haveto go into a menu and click it.
Like it doesn't have that same discoverability. And that's the thing that kind
of was, I don't know,it feels like it's a task instead of
yes, like, oh, we'refinding these stories and now I kind of

(01:39:05):
want to see what happens with this. Now it's more like, oh,
I have to do all these littlethings so I can get that amount of
points that I need so I cankeep going into the story. And that's
kind of like again, it's itis fun, but to me, like
I'm really looking forward to Infinite Wealthbecause like I only played most of Like
a Dragon, like Thechibon, Ididn't get too terribly far in it,

(01:39:30):
and I did like what it wasdoing. But I played the demover inn
at both and I'm like, yes, I am, I am sold on
this and like as much as Ilike, I'm gonna play it in English
because I like it Chibun's voice actorin English and I like hearing the game
in English. But Kiu's voice,God, is it bad? Yeah,
you could turn Ki to be ifyou can, if you have him speaking

(01:39:50):
Japanese and everything else was English,great, right, best of both worlds.
It sucks that that's uh what,but I'm used to playing those games
Japanese. I did play a lackof Dragon in English. So I'm with
you on the Holy two months boys, acts and everything will be interesting once

(01:40:12):
we get to the bigger game.How that's all received and all that,
But yeah, anything that like youhave coming up, I guess you want
to promote we So we just hadour podcast today going over our own personal
top tens, so those will beposted on the site once I we have
a bunch of categories and stuff likeyou know, like the best spinoff and

(01:40:35):
like a best action game and bestsoundtrack and best voice actor and all that
kind of stuff. So once thatkind of hits, and I'm hoping to
have that one hundred percent done onNew Year's But we just had our podcast
so that should be hopefully coming outlater tonight for tomorrow for the top tens,
and we also crowned our Game theYear for Analystic Game as well too.

(01:40:58):
It all came down to basically apoint system essentially because before it was
originally where Jordan had won the gameawards type of thing, so whoever he
gets the game awards breaks a tie, and the problem with that is that
there's only two of us, sothere was always going to be a tie.
So we did a point system essentially, and one of the games that

(01:41:19):
we that scored the most points tookOur Game the Year, and it was
one that we felt, you know, kind of worked towards what he was
doing and it's an excellent game.But you'll see that on the podcast,
and then eventually we'll be putting theyear end stuff on the website, which
will be a top ten our Gameof the Year, and then all the
categories, yeah, we're going todo I was going to have Randy give

(01:41:45):
his top ten this week when hewas on, but so he might end
up doing that in written form fornext week, and then I'll kind of
just give out his when Mark andI gave out ours on the next podcast
episode, and then we'll probably theweek after that do our top twenty five

(01:42:05):
games of twenty twenty three, andyou know, we just did our top
ten, and then like the categories, I think there's like probably like thirty
categories. I think, wow,just kind of covering the game we have
the best podcast game and you know, best like how we did how we're
doing ours is best indie slash smallscale game. Okay, so that Dave

(01:42:28):
the Diver naturally fits in there,but yeah, like I've done that before,
but it's just been me. Sonow having Jordan on the website and
stuff like that, Like there's somecategories that we're gonna have to have discussions
about and stuff like that, Likebest fighting game for me, for example,
is one that I've played and Ithink it is the best fighting game

(01:42:49):
this year. But yeah, itall varies depending on the type of category
because I want to have as muchof a first type of thing to have
those games because like if you putlike, for example, like a top
twenty five, If you do itlike a top twenty and you put a
game at like seventeen or eighteen,what kind of recognition does that really get?

(01:43:12):
Where if I could put it aslike, oh my my number sixteen
game was best podcast game of theyear, my best game to listen to
a podcast too, type of thing, like it's one of those games that
type of thing, But yeah,you know, because like you get a
game like Dussant and Dusant is veryvery good, and to me, it's
a very very good game that youcan put a podcast on and just wrap

(01:43:36):
that game in the length of thepodcast. Very true. I enjoyed my
time with that game as well,So I'm curi with you there. It's
definitely one that I like the music, but I could I usually just started
putting something else on and just like, okay, let me make my threat
through this. And very much,thank you so much Jeff for anytime coming

(01:43:58):
on and helping out. Definitely golisten to both him and Jordan on the
Gaming Mix. Go check out theAnalystic website. Go check the Outer Haven
as well. We just did ourI'll link it in the the description I
was. I did blurbs for theOuter Haven Game of the Year. Also
kind of did my top ten throughthere. Mine might change a little bit

(01:44:21):
from the one I did with thembecause I've played some more stuff since then,
but it's it's I can't believe theone that won won. I'm sure
there will be a lot of controversythat folks to go check it out for
the Outer Haven. Yeah, forthat Haven. Yeah, I haven't checked.
I haven't checked to see what theirtheir game of the year is,

(01:44:41):
but they did it on the everybody'stop tens. Uh, kind of makes
it into a points and then yeah, that's what we ended up doing today,
like we did like our number oneis worth ten and then nine,
yeah exactly six and are one thatwon got twelve points. So you know,
it's one of those things where likeit just it just how it works.
And then it was the one titlethat was on both of our lists

(01:45:03):
where we were like, yeah,I could totally I could totally pick It's
actually a lot better to do itthat way. I've really been thinking about
doing it that way this this year, especially because it's only two of us.
Like you guys, we had wehad a typebreaker type of thing whereas
it was either going to be likeBoulders K three or allen Wick two,

(01:45:23):
you know, and then if youdo the type breaker thing, then that
that title wins because of a decisionlike that, not because it's you know,
it's just one of those things whereit's like you have to do some
type of system otherwise when you onlyhave two people, if there was a
third or a fourth or a fifthor whatever, where you had a lot

(01:45:44):
more coming in to make those decisionsexactly a lot easier to to kind of
have those clear things. But yeah, we used to do it well every
year before then, except last yearweek it was only the two of us,
and I was like, this wholetrying to argue about which one should
be where and ordering it on thepodcast is not as fun because you don't
have the different voices coming in andwhen it's just two people, it's like,

(01:46:09):
Oh, this kind of it feelslike we're just going through a list
and a process, and I'm like, we're gonna do that, I might
as well just I like what GiantBomb did this year where they kind of
argued about what was going to needthe number and then people just they did
the ordering with their tops, topfives and all that, and I was
like, that kind of makes moresense than than doing it this way.

(01:46:30):
So we'll see someone made the finaldecision when we get to that, but
that's for a couple of weeks fromnow. Next week will definitely do our
top tens, so that's something tolook out for, and then we'll do
our multi spated games that twenty twentyfour as well, and another show probably
before the Game of the Year one, So definitely go check out Jeff's stuff,

(01:46:50):
Go check out out our haven,go go check out I forgot to
do the house giving at the beginningbecause we we had so much to talk
about, But go check Rathertion broadcastingstuff on the YouTube channel W two network
and if you go subscribe over there, you don't just get what we do,
you get what they do, whichis pretty much like everything that has

(01:47:12):
to do with entertainment and movies.They've reviewed Godzilla minus one, they've reviewed
The Boy in the Heroin review wasdone with the top of Kki Folks on
Animal the Anime podcast. They justdid the Wonka movie review Scott program takes
off, so they've done a lotof stuff lately, so definitely go give

(01:47:35):
them a shout. And we're alsoavailable podcasts, so you can check us
out there. So again, thankyou Jeff and everybody, have a happy
holidays, Merry Christmas. We'll beback and forth the new year, but
yeah, for sure, everybody,enjoy your your holidays and we'll see you
next week. Everybody. Bude

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