Final Thoughts on Summer Showcases

Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe, or white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Fappuccino drinksver f youore buy your groceries. Elos me being this fit for work meal Gigo McDonald's Gwybassos Lecandios in Langna 's, Christian, Supiden, Police , David Beck's Beck arm. Lamin the Dream Jamal. Gronaldino, El Mago, Monsieur T Henri Son Sally Hyun Bing Alfonso Fonce Dames Santi Portekimenes Yela Portilla Hilkin Sea Tapo Brimes Legard World Cup Meal and McDonald's participate the solo existence Welcome back to Nection, Console Watch our show following all the latest gaming hardware. I'm Damon Hadfield. This week I'm joined by Maxcoville, host of podcasts beyond. From podcast Unlocked is Ryan McCaffery, and from Nintendo Voice Chat is Log an Plant . And all three of our platforms have held their big summer showcases. They've laid out their plans for the rest of the year and into twenty twenty seven. So it's time to survey the results. Who have the best showcase? Who has the best game lineup , I also want to address the elephant in the room for each platform. So let's get into it. Max, the PlayStation state of play was first, so let's start there. I thought it was a pretty strong showing this year. It was book ended by Wolverine and God of War Laufei, and we got a lot in between like Phantom Blade Zero until onto silent hill townfall and more. So how would you rate or how would you grade this state of play? I think it was maybe a B plus. I feel like on its own, it was good. The thing that I think is a little weird is that it didn't do much for Sony Exclusives. We got a couple we got until Dawn two , we got a War Laufi, we got Wolverine . That's good . But as far as the future goes, I think the awkward thing is that we got a couple former PlayStation console exclusive franchises sort of jump ship. We got we got the big reveal of Final Fantasy VIII revelation over Summer Game Fest and we got Kingdom He arts four over on Nintendo Direct, which we can talk about in a second with Logan's turn. But those are two franchises that historically have kind of buddied up with Sony. And I feel like Sony's announcements on their own were pretty cool , but as far as like stuff you can only get on PlayStation , that felt more like Square Enix going, hey , we're not only on PlayStation anymore. We're kind of moving elsewhere . So I guess in a vacuum, Sony did, okay, I was alright with it, but sort of once the dust settled, I was kind of like, Hey wait a minute, what's going on here? A lot of this, a lot of the stuff is is Cross platform , which has been kind of the running theme . And yeah, we got a we got a few reveals but I wasn't, I wasn't particularly blown away. I feel like Wolverine is impressive, but also I don't know. It was kind of like I'm already sold on it. You know, I was like, this is what I hope to see. Laufe was a cool surprise , but I'm already exhausted by the discourse around it. And yeah, I don't know. Again, the fact that they showed off that much of a playable thing without any hint of a release window , I don't know, not the most doesn't give me the most optimism for what's what's planned for next year. You know, it'd be nice to get kind of at least at the very least like, hey, you know, this is this is coming soon, but we just, you know, last December, we got to look at intergalactic from Naughty Dog and still no word on what's going on there. It's I think there's that sweet spot between announcing something, oh, I don't know, eight years ahead of time and not having anything to go on eight years later, like something Ryan's sure to bring up. But yeah, I think there's that sweet spot between , hey, here's this thing. It's out this fall and hey, here's this thing , release date TBD question marks . Yeah, it's like the narrative about PlayStation this generation has been that it' itss released pipeline is kind of dried up. It's not putting out as many first party games. And would you say that this latest state of play doesn't do much to change that? Yeah, kind of, we heard so many rumors about Sony Santa Monica's thing and Wolverine is a known quantity until Dawn was a nice surpr ise. But again, that doesn't quite feel like it's on the same , you know, the same scale as when we talk about most of the first party stuff . And again, that's not, that's not from Super Massive, the original studio. They've gone and done the whole Dark Pictures thing. This is from I forget the studio name, but they've mostly do like VR stuff, I think. Yeah, they've done a lot of support stuff. They did I think Astro's playroom, they did some yeah, some smaller VR things, but they don't really , they haven't really shipped any major stuff to give people an idea of what to expect from them. 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It's you know, it's campy B movie horror which, is a weird thing to make quadruple video games about . Ryan, we'll get into Xbox in just a second, but what did you think about the state of play ? Yeah, you know, it's it was good. I enjoyed it, but to Max's point, I feel like Xbox has been the platform that's been maligned for not having first party games for years and years. Now that was true for a very, very long time . But over the last two to three years , they've really turned that part around. The exclusivity conversation another piece of it, which we can get into because now they seem to be pivoting back to exclusives . But in the Xbox showcase , I counted a minimum of six party reveals , whether it was just new gameplay, release dates, but there was a lot of first party representation is my point in the Xbox showcase. And with PlayStation, it was basically just the book ends, as Max mentioned. It was there two heavy hitters, one for this year, one for I presume next year with of War, but yeah, so I definitely enjoyed it. I'm there for the awesome first party stuff when it does come around , but yeah, I wonder when PlayStation fans will start to start to go wait a second, wait, where are all the first party games that we bought this thing for? Logan, how would you grade the PlayStation Studio Play? Yeah, I think I'm aligned with these guys. I think it's somewhere in the B range. I think it's interesting when I look across all the showcases this summer, I feel like there was a lot of really cool announcements, but no like singular platform really stands out to me. And I think the state of play exemplifies that. It's like, oh, there's a lot of cool stuff coming everywhere, but then from the first party studio front , I'm not that hot on Wolverine. I didn't really love the look that we got at it. I thought it I look at that game and I know exactly what it's going to feel like. It's going to feel like Spiderman but bloodier. And it just did not super stand out to me. And then I thought God of war looked really cool. I agree with Max. No date or no window or anything was really surprising after seeing over twenty minutes of it. So I thought it was fine. It just did not blow me away. Got it. All right, Ryan, the Xbox showcase, lots of stuff this year very important year for Xbox. Of course, we got to see Gears of War Ed and learned that it is a console exclusive. We got to see more of Halo campaign evolve, new levels coming to that. Got to see DMC ander Mnod Warfare four, clockwork revolution is also an exclusive. There are a couple of personas. So what do you think of the showcase this year? I'm kind of between a B plus and an A minus. Last year I on our live show, on our live post show with Unlocked . I called it the best showcase they'd ever done and I would stand by that a year later. They just they blew it, they just blew everything away last year . And this year I kind of figured it wasn't quite going to be on that same level because really Microsoft shown much of their hand. Like we kind of know a lot of what they've got coming up. Now to their credit, they delivered a lot of release dates in this year's showcase. And so I think I think I would give them the benefit of a doubt and say it's an A minus and I'll go through why because I wrote down out of everything in there . There's kind of a top ten. I mean, we had gameplay and concrete release dates for Gears War E day , Fable and Halo campaign evolved. That's significant. So it's like those are all set in stone. Those are happening. Halo's definitely coming out next month. Gears is definitely coming out on october sixth and Fable is definitely now that it's avoiding Grand Theft Auto six coming out in February after in fairness, it had been delayed a couple times before that . You mentioned clockwork revolution, getting some more gameplay and a twenty twenty seven window for that , and that's an exclusive . The Senua reveal AKA't Don call it Hellblade three and this one looks it seemed like they're trying to make it clear from the jump on Senua that they're they're directly addressing the lack of gameplay criticism from Hellbl ade two by showing that trailer was like mostly combat . So that's that's cool . Persona six as a big reveal. Sure, multi platform game, but awesome to have that on Xbox's stage , another third party, but looks super cool. This was one of my favorite new game reveals from the past week on any of the showcases was Magicians, the Devil's Deal , the first person shooter with , you know, magician powers and it definitely kind of had a dishonored sort of art style to it. That looked great. Summer is here, and Kroger is your destination for hot savings. Find unique items at low pr ices with our exclusive brands. 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I'll admit, I had pretty low expectations when they announced it because you know, it was it was announced alongside all these other IP revivals that Teg is doing. And so I kind of thought, oh, if they're just doing a bunch of these old IP's, they're probably going to be lower budget, not super great. And it remains to be seen on Crazy Taxi, but it look ed better than I maybe I just had low expectations, but I thought that looked pretty good . Bad Magpie and Vivarium were two super interesting indie reveals. And then like as a little cherry on top for me as an old guy, the translucent green twenty fifth anniversary console and controller were super cool . So yeah, I thought it was an excellent showcase, not as not best ever like last year, but they had a ton of really great stuff and actually and didn't just announce games, they gave us concrete release dates for several of their their heavy hitters and gave us twenty twenty seven windows for a lot of stuff to look forward to for next year . Yeah, Xbox has kind of the opposite problem of PlayStation. Xbox has a lot of games, but it's having a hard time selling consoles. So do you think anything in this showcase looks like it could sell Xbox hardware? Well, they're certainly hoping that Gears of War ED will do that. And whether it can remains to be seen. The original Gears of War in two thousand six, exactly twenty years ag o, this is the twentieth anniversary . That sold a lot of three hundred sixty's . So can Gears of war e day convince either people who haven't upgraded to this generation yet because of how damn expensive it is to finally jump in with Grand Theft Auto six looming and choose Xbox . I don't know. I mean, Gears Award has always been a great series. I think the coalition who's handled Gears four and five have done a tremendous job with the IP . But yeah, I mean, it's probably going to take more than just gears of war Ed to sway people . So that remains to be seen, but it's I got to imagine that Xb ox is it's like a very, very large cargo ship where they you can't turn it on a dot . So it's it's probably going to take a while before we start seeing more and more and more exclusives and for that to become the norm again rather than the exception, which it is today. Max, what did you think of the Xbox Surecase? I thought it was really good. I thought it was a really cool victory lab for Xbox. really Like it genu,ine it ly felt like a twenty fifth anniversary celebration. The translucent console, I think is fantastic. I love that thing. And it really is cool to see him carting out , you know, kind of the big flagship IP like, I've, never really been a Halo or Gears guy. Otherwise, it probably would have done a lot more for me. But having them, I mean, even Crazy Taxi had a, I think the last one was on the original three hundred and sixty or original Xbox. The original . And I mean we saw we were hearing rumors about a jet set game kicking around, so maybe we'll get that too. But I was kind of I thought it was a good mix of, again, kind of legacy Xbox IP and a few third party things. And I want to play that magpie game very badly. Yeah, I don't know. I give it I think slightly slightly up from Sony maybe like it maybe an A minus I don't, but they're but they're very close in different ways. They're kind of they're almost leaning in different directions. Honestly, it's kind of I sort of wish that Sony was doing similar stuff, you know? Like it really it genuinely felt like they were looking at their back catalog and being like, what do people like about this brand? Let's bring that out here. And the fact that it was so stacked with the release dates was really cool. It's nice to actually have a concrete idea of when we're going to be playing these games. And yeah, I mean, I had good a good variety and maybe not quite as explosive as previous years, but you know, a solid showing nonetheless . I want to add real quick Damon, just tugging at my heart strings as somebody that had the pleasure and privilege of starting their career ten years at official Xbox magazine . I just I love that the translucent green twenty fifth anniversary console reveal had a stack of official Xbox magazines there. So that hit me right in the field. That's great. I missed that. That's great. Logan Rio is positive on Xbox as Ryan Maxwell. Yeah, yeah, I really liked it. I'm a huge halo fan. I will play the Halo original campaign whenever they release. So I'm excited for that. And then Crazy Taxi is one of my favorite games from the GameCube era, so I'm really excited that series is coming back. Spyro's an awesome revival. And then no one's mentioned yet. I don't think fable. Every time we see that game, I'm like, that's going to be the best game that comes out next year. I think it looks really, really awesome. Well, of course, there's also the Nintendo Direct , which is just yesterday now. Of course we got finally got that occurring of time remake confirmed. Got a fire release date for Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave . What do you do? Oh, sorry, that's also really cool stuff. Lots of cool JRPGs if you're a fan of RPGs. I really like the new HD two D Final Fantasy Final Fantasy Residence. That looks cool. So how would you grade the latest Nintendo Direct? Yeah, I think that you can you have to grade it from two ways. And one is if you're only a switch to owner what a show, great show, like an A minus and if you have other consoles like a B minus or C plus, like it's it's very different because third party really dominated this show and we saw so many ports of really awesome games that are coming to a Nintendo platform and for me as somebody who started covering Nintendo in the Wii U era and then through the switch and now switch to, it's still crazy to me to see stuff like Lies of Peace or Devil May Cry five just coming to a Nintendo platform. That's really cool. I've played those games. I know all of us have played those games elsewhere, but if you only have a switch to, that's fantastic news. The first party front, I think that man, that Acrea in Time League took a lot of wind out of the sa ils of that reveal. And I think that is a big disappointment. I'm very excited for it. I still really, really liked the trailer and I can't wait to see more. Would have been really nice if we had not really known about that going in. Otherwise, Xenoblade Genesis, that's a big reveal for that franchise that grows and grows with every single entry. Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave looks like three houses too. People love that game. It sold extremely well. That's a cool reveal, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Sure. Switch sports sold like fourteen million copies on Switch One. So run it back. It just, I think Ocarina of Time was supposed to be that big knockout blow, but we all saw it coming a mile away. So it was it was fine. I was not blown away, but I didn't think it was a bad show. Do you think it was a mistake not to show more of Acran of Time is it supposed to be out later this year? That's really hard because had this not leaked, I think that it's the perfect reveal for it because we can all talk about what level of reimagining is this going to be and what's a goron going to look like in this crazy art style that they're going with and all these things that we can kind of speculate on, but I think just going in knowing that it was going to be there. We all felt like that's it. Like we were hoping this would be the reveal party for it. So you can ask, should Nintendo have pivoted once this information got out there? But I feel like this is a global company . This stuff's probably set for a very long time. It's got to be very hard to pivot once something is leaked. So I don't know. I think that 's not like you can pre order it right now or anything. So it's not like they're asking people to buy it. This was just like a hey st,ay tuned. We'll show you more. So I would have liked to see more, but I don't necessarily think it was a mistake not to show more. So we got Starfox coming up, then Fire Emblem and Ocarina of Time and then just a ton of third party stuff coming up coming up for Switch Switch. at a very successful first year, but we have a price site coming up. Do you think the current lineup is enough to keep the momentum going and sustain the sales at a healthy pace? Yeah, I think Accarina of Time once we actually see that thing. No, no, nobody's going to worry. I think we'll see it in September. That's after the price hike hits. Look, look at the views that trailer is doing online right now. It's crazy. It's probably going to end up being in the top three or maybe the most watched trailer of any game from this thing. That's going to be a juggernaut for them. And that will be a system seller. Yeah, it's a remake, but it's a remake of is a top five most iconic game of all times. Is that fair? Yeah, maybe easily . Yeah, like that's it's going to be enormous. And then I look at this is I look at the Japan market where the Switch two price hike has already taken effect. And if you're, if you love RPG's and JRPGs, this was an amazing show, Xena Blake, Final Fantasy, like we're gettingal f Fantin asy seven Revelation on Launch Day next year. I think that this direct was maybe geared more towards the Japan audience that already has to deal with that higher price and the September direct may be more geared towards us. And also Nintendo just they're doing this now where they aren't doing the thing where it's, here's twenty minutes of God of war. Goodbye. You have no idea when it's coming out. When they show a game, they glue a release window onto it, and they're really only showing us stuff six months out. It's very rare we see something like a Xenoblade that's coming out next year. So that's their new strategy. I think it leaves us wanting a little bit to see what's a little further down the road, but that's just not how they're doing it anymore. All right, Max, how would you grade this week's Nintendo Direct. Yeah, I think Logan nailed it it really depends on whether or not you've been playing other platforms, but I will say that Ocarina is definitely a heavy hitter . There's talk about, you know, GTA is the is the big behemoth that it is I. think And if there's if there's a game coming out this year that can actually stand maybe not toe to toe but put up a fight. I think Ocarina is a very, very strong contender just in the basis that like this is if you know, let's say you're , you don't know, you're someone's grandma or whatever and you're looking at the brand new video games and the brand new consoles and you've got, you know, two boxes that can play this this, you know, emerated car stealing game, which everyone's going to bu y. Or you can get this other console that has one of the best games ever remade, retooled. I don't know. Like it's it's sort of a known quantity but not. I do wish they'd shown more of it, but I also think it's really cool that Nintendo is able to keep these things so close to the chest until it's so close to release because that doesn't, you know, kill anticipation, that doesn't kill hype. We did the Daily Fix today talk about another non update about the state of the Elder Scroll six and how they're going to talk about it when it's ready . They announced that in twenty eighteen. Yeah . And it's and we don't have anything to go on. And it's like, you know, you look at how Skyrim was revealed. It was less than a year before it launched. They were like, Here's a release date in December. It's coming out in November . The fact that Nintendo's coming out with like, hey, surprise twenty twenty six. Again, the leak kind of took some of the fun out of it, but it's still really cool to see and I think that that one game on its own is packs quite a lot of punch . And yeah, again, it's also kind of being like , does anyone here like Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy because we got those two and resident evil and devil may cry like it's it I mean the Switch was always sort of in its own weird little category compared to the either either generation of PlayStation or Xbox, but the Switch two really feels like it's up to speed with this generation. And yeah, it's it's doing great and it's cool to see Nintendo supported as well as as well as do. I would say Nintendo had the best showing of the three . Well, Ryan, we did not get that three D Mario we've been waiting for. You and I both. But what did you think about the Nintendo Directs? It's probably a B minus for me. It really my big takeaway was that Square stole the show between Final Fantasy Resonance, a turn based HD two D Final Fantasy game. Sure, it's multiplatform, but it debuted on Nintendo stage. I mean, that's I'm a huge sucker for HD my favorite new visual style of, I don't know how the last many years that it's just it's such a clever, beautiful thing for those of us that grew up in the eight and or sixteen bit era . So that was a really cool reveal. And then I mean Kingdom Heart's four and we everybody's been waiting to see anything from that for Eons now and for that to debut on Nintendo Stage is super cool. I certainly agree with my colleagues that the Okarina of Time remake, that would have melted the internet. That would have been the only thing everybody was talking about from this entire past week of all the showcas es if it had been a surprise. And so it is a little bit of a shame that the cat was let out of the bag pretty early on that . But as such, I have to agree with Logan. I think they should have shown more as a result of that leak from a while ago. I mean I don't know how Nintendo specifically works and I know that they can very much march to the beat of their own drum, but I know for a fact that some of these other showcases that they definitely get adjusted and tweaked and changed right up to the last minute . So I have to imagine now you can't just conjure a polished gameplay trailer out of thin air, but Nintendo did have time here from when this leak had initially occurred. So still some mystery left to be solved there, certainly including the release date, but but yeah, I mean still fascinated to see exactly I mean I hope it's I hope the remake lives up to the game meaning I hope it's not just like a quick and dirty you know l,ow budget not, super great looking remake. I hope I hope it's it's as awesome as Ocarina deserves to be . So that remains to be seen, but yeah, it's not a lot for me personally given that I've got these other two platforms that are also giving me a ton of gain . Do you guys think that the discourse around Zelda would have been bigger and louder had they shown more? Or do you think the fact that it is such a short and sweet teaser has got so many people kind of wondering what it is and speculating back and forth? What do you think Logan? Yeah, I think that it's the second one. I think it's absolutely about the speculation. And I think with Zeld a, we only get to do this every so often. It's only like every five, six or seven years we see a new art style for a three D Zelda game. And I think that a lot of people freak out about it, a lot of people like it. I think it's fun. I'm happy . us Theyually do it when the game's three or four years out, not three or four months out. So Nintendo's like speedrunning a traditional three D Zelda hype cycle in the span of six months, but I think that's great. Like I think that's a cool thing that we're existing in this moment of uncertainty right now where we don't we have one piece of the puzzle. We know what young link looks like, and that's it. I think that's a really fun spot to be in. And I think that the internet agrees agreed . Well, regardless of what platform you play on , there's lots of fun stuff coming for PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo for the rest of this year and into twenty twenty seven. We want to know, think about all the showcases over the past week, what do you think was the biggest surprise from the summer showcases King ofart Hes four, maybe God of War Laufe, maybe resin evil Veronica. Make sure to vote at iGen. com or on Spotify. The day this episode goes live and we'll share the results with you next episode. And that's our show. Thank you to Max, Ryan