Studio Closures Versus Selling Assets

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Matchdays deserve Pepsi Greetings and satitations, welcome back to Sacred Sybols Playtation podcast. This is episode number. what is this? F, sixteen. I think so My name is Colm Moriard. I'm jined today by my son, Chris Reagun, Chris. We do things the old way today Yeah how are you? goodood to see you I'm good, I'm good, you know? I got up stupid early Or more more accurately like I went to bed so late that it was like, I'll just take it two hour nowap. Yeah Right. It's fine I don't know, I got like a weird It really sucks sometimes because like I get these really Cistent spikes of energy at like one in We're like, you know,'m just st I'm going to edit a bunch of old footage that I haven't looked in a long time And I'll be up for like hours and I'm just like I don't know why that happens at like one A am from. then w't publish it. Oh, I've made so many videos that I just haven't posted. Same It's ridiculous. U. Yeah, so I'm just I feel a little bit off, but I feel fine. Like I ate hadad some waffles and bacon Nice waffles no eggs. I'm of eggs unfortunately. Which is a bit of a bummer, but Eig. I'll rectify that soon Egg. Yeah, I was up really late. I'm always up late, but u I was up unusually late last night because we are uh, filling our pool up so like they put the they put the liner in finally and you have to fill it with a hose fill with a hose. I mean you could buy water from a truck or whatever but it's expensive. Dude it takes days So like At certain levels, you just have to keep checking it when it get certain levels, you cut it off and then they have to do certain things. So it's just like I had to monitor this thing. And so They started filling it a while ago then yesterday they were like, all right, this should be done around eight, eight at night. where it needs to be depending on like your water pressure. I'm like, okay, cool And then it wasn't uil like four or fifteen in the morning. that like I was able to that I was actually able to showut up. 'ause I had to keep going outside and like checking it. probably look like a psychopath if any of my neighbors would have seen it me. I had like I had a Cleman lantern, like one of the electric lanterns Loo like Paul R Revere Oh my Godd thats awes broke down Paul overv here. So yeah, I'm fuckingock ' because I had to keep fucking monitoring that, but everything's going swimmingly otherwise part of the pun Uh, no no uh Dustin today Right. That's right. He they he had his he had his kid. Yeah. Obeion ermman I u he I asked them So I we faceimes with them baby and so Holly and everything everyone's doing well. every I ask like what's the middle name? And he told me, but he didn't say publicly and he doesn't want to say publicly P probablyably prect the kids ident But it's dope. I'm typing it into the chat now U And I was like, o. Oh, that's cool. Yeah Very nice Very good It is u Beyon. Coin, Dustin, Chriserman Right as As we predicted. Yeah, exactly. you know O coerced. Right, exactly twisted his arm So it'll just be me and you for a while. Dustsin will come back when he's not going to be able to stay away from the show for more than a few weeks, probably, but he'll be off like from work for a while, but I think he wants to come back to the show sooner Um So we'll just keep it me and you. I I was playing around with the idea of guests, but I'm like don It's a hassle to schedule people.. I get it There are people that I think would there are people there that do awesome job on Sacred symbols plus and their own shows Brad, obviously Raddock and, Sandep and all these guys that I love, but it's like Yeah. This is the way the show was for years A lot of people just don't remember maybe or w around. I mean, we had there's still a lot of listeners from that era. so I think this'll be good. It's good to you Chris N be here today Um Talk talk about video games, L lot of news to get through as well. thingsings' playing happenings in the industry. The ironic thing, I think we'll talk a little bit about it probably in the in the comments at the end, but It's like, a lot of the news right now is just with Xbox. So everything that doesn't seem to talk about that seems to be kind of like, ah, Yeah, whatever They are kind of u they're in such an awkward position because they've never been in like a worse position as far as like their brand goes But they're also kind of like the bell of the ball Eone K kind of the center of the industry right now. Like as far as what people are talking about and what people care about. it's kind of It's a fascinating mix of It's a fascinating thing to inhabit. likeike a multifacet up. Like that's a very strange place to be. All the news is Xbox. Yeah, and some of it affects us here on the show, but not really. I mean, we we have to see. I mean, some of the studio closures, I guess and things of that nure will affect are out. But the stuff with Senua, I think is kind of crazy. Yeah And I'm not sure that I really I don't think we'll talk it later but the idea that they like, were, yeah, we kind of knew the game wasn't going to come out. Uh, we just wanted to give them a chance to like prome themsel and I'm like Why would anyone want to publish third hell blade game. Wh's who's going to do that Yeah, o Why would anyone want to do that Remember people I'm sorry, go to gs. Why would anybody want to do that if you, yourself are like, e, we don't want to do it?. we don't want to want. you can have it I don't know, man. It reminds me. Remember people used to really bust my balls about me saying like why did why would Xbox ever buy a ninja theory And then and it was like a thing that circulated and people clipped it and stuff. And I'm like, I don't know why you bought a Nina the. Yeah Nonetheless. And then people are like, Sony should bid. I'm like, why? because they made heavenly sword twenty years ago. Come on, man We don't need any more studios. We don't want and I don't want these scraps either, give me a break Yeah. U But yeah, all all this everything's happening with them and I think everyone's just on a posture of waiting to see what happens, but it looks pretty bleak. I gott to be honest So And I think there's a lot of delusion about what's going to end up happening here. If they do spin off Xbox and end up getting investors, that's the end of the hardware So they better hope that that doesn't that doesn't happen Yeah. No one's going no one's going to subsize Xox's hardw Ecept for like the trillion dollar company. So Yeah it feels it feels kind of feels bleak on that. I mean like they do again, I've said before and we've said before on the show, like they they have a Bright future as a third party publisherman brightest we do Yeah Yeah probably Yeah. they've got a lot of good IP uff that people are excited for. I mean, Fce alone is like and Fce is like the least is Force is the least interesting thing to me. does gangbusters all the time. So like I mean, they're not It's not they don't make shoddy software, generally, they do, but like they they make great software too. It's just Man They can't justify the box Yeah, it's it's hard. it seems like they'll probably go to the OM route maybe or something. I don't know. We'll see what happ. And we'll talk about Paysttation six Sony's plans with Plsttation six because there's indications that they might actually delay as well, although I think it'll be hard to do. So we have much to talk about today in that regard Yeah So yeah, we'll find the news in the seams of all this much bigger news Pople always bust ball you guys always talk about box. I'm like well, to be fair, the company we cover doesn't say anything or release any games. so right. So're doing we're doing our best over here. But welcome to our Sacred Smbols Playtation Pod.s to have everyone out. here with us as usual. We are fast approaching our eighth anniversary and a couple weeks That's right whichich is u Interesting as show she's been going going and going at one end. it won't stop U, and we're so pleased about that. So thank you for your support over on Patreon Patreon.ot com slashashAamMedia. You can join us over there for one dollar, two dollars five dollars, ten dollars for twenty five dollars a month. It's your choice. five dollars. it's the sweet spot I think we have like, I don't know, nine or ten thousand people or something sometimes at that at that I haven't really looked recently, but at that spot. that's where most people are in another So go check us out over there if you'd like You get Early and free access to all the shows in our netork, including sac symbol, of course, which is our flagship, but there's aunch of shows our network that others do about the other consoles and gameplay and all the rest And you can submit your inquiries to all the shows on the threads and the news feeed on Patreon. As you do here, our threads go live on Wednesday afternoons for sacred symbols. getet access to the discord. you can use RSS and Spotify links to circumvent your access to Patreon and just get your audio sent directly to you Sigredtimals pllus, of course is a major supplement that we publish every week for patrons only Uh We have a few things going. So we did Sacred Crross Duke last week. I did it with the Duke. People really like that episode That was fun The Saros conversation is up with the director of the game plus the review discussion andpoilercast. The doublez seven review discussion and splilercast go live this week and you were on that, Chris. Yeah How did that go? That was great. Yeah. that was my first time meeting Jason, right? Yeah, Jason play to him. Yeah. That was a great. That was a great Great show. He did a great job hosting too He really he really knows his double of seven and it was fun to out a little bit about it and learn a little bit. We had like a nice quiz Oh at the end, which I thought was kind of fun Cool. So yeah, definitely check that one out. That was that was a fun one to do Breat game. Aome's so good It's a fun game to talk about It's a fantastic game. We've had some really great games to try. I think we've had Th three or four like actual bang or AAA games this year so far that Ive played. I'm sure there oers I haven't played them Yeah. So look forward to that And so that would be going live. Pragmada, I told a lot of people were disappointed because Pragma is my favorite game of the year. So it would be good to talk about But we felt like we were losing time orver, but we are going to do it. I'm going to record it tomorrow for want of recording. So the day this goes live I won't put it up at some point in the future. I've been playing through that on what is it in sanity mode? It's pretty hard Oh my god, Yeah Um, So please look forward to that. And then yeah,ll we'll spool up Chris's idea of doing like a bungee conversation I think soon. there are also some interviews, good interviews coming up that I think I'm trying to get slotted for this summer. So Please look forward to that Uh, streaming sacred streaming Mondayays is one PM. had a meltdown on the stream last week, although I was having a lot of fun with it. It was it was really, it was a really funny and fun stream. Zenom moreor for M whereiardireadyote into us and said Hey fellowas What was up with all the projection on Monday stream? Can't remember the last time I saw you go full retard like that? Hope all as well. C congrrat to Dustin and Hoy I was having a great time. People were saying it felt spiritually like an old show I did called Callin and Greg Live on Twitch many years ago which was an insane show. And I was like, yeah, there's I'm weird and I like just being crazy. So It was a lot of fun. I'm glad people were enjoying that. We'll be back on the streams every Monday at one PM. and of course, you can watch those in VOD as well. I saw you keep pulling up that that because sometimes I'll like skim through lives just to see like what the questions are. And you didn't you didn't have any questions pop up at all But you did have that video of like some dude praying to Donald Trump. Yeah I love that came up like seven times, it feels like. I just kept playing it over and over again. it's so funny becausecause I kept saying, help me help me Dustin Firm and help me. then I was like, oh my god It's like that video and I love that. That video is so weird. Like what is help me Donald Trump That's a sad video to be. It is sad It is really like spiritually depressing. I noticed that about both videos that I showed that day because some people were like, that's sad. And I'm like, okay, And then I also showed the I bring out the Olice video, which is a favorite of mine Oh people Maury or Yeah Mory P ye Yeah. Yeah And people like it's kind of sad. I'm like, that's come on, man, it's sad That woman on that clip claims that when her grandfather died when she was young, he sat up in his coffin And his eyes looked like olives. So all of these decades, she's been afraid of olives like that I dont that's. I think's's That sounds fake as fuck to me to be honest It does sound a little fake Like what are you say? L how poorly did they embalm this This body. that his eyes looked like fucking olives It's ridiculous. And more, by the way, I've said it before about Mori Povich, but what What a man You know, like what a guy He is loveove him Lo M. He's definitely a figure. I feel like I watched something about Oh no, maybe it was Jry Sr. I get them honestly like really in my mind Apart from like the very hyper specific details about them, but like I get everything else. mixed up with them. Yeah, there was a Spring documentary, I think recently. I haven't watched it, but yeah it' I loved Sringer when I was dude. I loveved Springer. because what was fun about Jerry Springer was And it's the same with Mori. it was just not as ridiculous, not as white trash or whatever is like Jerry Sper knewact what he was doing And it was awesome You know, like he's not a stupid man. In fact, he was like wasn't he the mayor of Cincinnati or something we weird? Yeah Yeah, Yeah he had like a proper career and they just pivoted in this very weird Ver, very weird direction. L Sringer as a child of, you know Born the mid eighties, a child of the nineties like coming to in the nineties like sppring. Everyone loves spring. And it was like a touchstone And it got in more and more insane As time went on, which I loved. like They started having like, do you remember this?ike this shit is so funny in hindsight, Like they would have like family reunions and they would have like a feast You don't talk about like they would have like actual like they're gonna have Thanksgiving dinner or whatever, just so it creates like this Bedlam for someone to have to clean up later. It's like, what is going on here? And then Maury What's so funny about Mury is Morory started as a normal like kind of daytime talk show with like different topics and then he just leaned totally into lie detectors and father tests for like the last ten or fifteen years of his career. And it's like, yeah. and it's the same thing with Steve Wilcoos. So Steve Wilkos, I think that's over two, but he comes from Springer And then he would do the same shit over and over again. It's like, damn these shows are funny man Very funny A God, why you? Daytime TV doesn't seem like it's a thing anymore But I used to like used to stay from school, right? And it would be like a thing, like where you would get this whole pantheon of shows you don't usually get to watch. And like a price is right or something Um, And it would always mark those days off. L you feel like you were getting like forbidden knowledge. That is interesting. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Everything's streaming now. Like I mean, I have some form of basic cable or like some Like I have some I think I have YouTube TV because I got like some kind of it was like thrown into some deal that I had for something else and I was like, I gu I'll YouTbe TV for whatever Um, I don't know how much I don't know how much longer I'll have it But I messed around with it and it's like, yeah, it's fine It's kind of interesting to channel sururf, but like what are you doing It's not the same Yeah everything immediately. Like, what's the point, really? Right, exactly. Like and people are on their phones now and you just watch you. I have cable likeike pretty deep cable. I have it just for various like sports events or whatever But I do appreciate this because my cable bill between like my TV and my Innet is like two hundred and fifty dollars a month Um And it's like that's really expensive, but we we don't want to like miss any sporting events on some deep channel or like you everyone every so often you need something that's I alwaysel like this as a kid. if you didn't have access to TV, you almost felt naked I rented a band chouse with my friends after high school and we went to Fire Island, which is you know, off the coast of the southern coast of Long Island famous like vacation spot And we went on vacation, then my friends knew that I was so addicted to television at night that they lied to me I like So like they're like, yeah, we're going and we're gonna do this thing It's be great. And I'm like yeah, is there TV? likeike I want to watch, you know, I was like really, I remember so clearly when I was watching at night, like the Brady bunch and like Golden girls and weird shit like that. Like I was just really like And I'm like, yeah And once you're on Fire is Island, you're kind of stranded there. Like there are feres to go back and forth but it's not like And so they got me there that Ied and like, where's the TV and they're like, yeah there is no T Wait, so you went too far Isn't that the isn't that the island where that like that famous like massive party that was like supposed to happen ended up not happening and everybody got stranded there. Is that the same? Oh no, that's that's fire Fest That wasn't on Fire Island? No, no, that was like in the southwest. Yeah, it's totally different thing Fire Island is known more There's like a few Fireland has like a When I was young, Fire Island had I don't know if it's still this way, had a reputation of like, that's where the gay guys go to so, like to kind of like That was like the thing specific part of about it. it's a very it got pretty fucked up in the hurricane in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, I think It's like a barrier island And yeah, so different thing And it's like a very rich person thing that like people more middle class like go and do when they're younger. if they We rented a house that we it was in two thousand two. And I think we each paid like five hundred dollars and there was probably like ten of us. I mean can you imagine how much it cost now. So it was like a one once in a lifetime kind of thing for me at that point. What I remember about that too is so I was like eighteen is that there were these girls staying across like they're like little roads, you drive on golf cards And there was like these girls that like liked us But they were like older than us, like way older. likeike in their like late twenties, early thirties and I remember A One of them really liked me and she was like, Are you really twenty one? because we were drinking and stuff that and I'm like Yeah You know, like like that's like my big that's like my big memory of of it is like these girls thinking that we were like, we looked like probably especially boys look so prepubescent until they're like twenty five. It's like you really thought we were like Yeah our in our mid or late twenties. like so we I always remember also remember about that trip. is that they there's cops there, obviously, like Long Island cops and u We were playing beer pong on our porch under aage. and these cops came up. And uh They were totally cool. likeike what was really surprising because they were totally cool. we were like, Oh, what's going on here guys? like All right, see you later. I think one of them like threw a ball or whatever and then like and I was like, Jeez, what's going on That was on the island? Yeah, yeah. I guess I guess I guess everybody's chill around an island, I guess Yeah, it's like an island that people from an island go to. So it's like an island's island. You know, right. Very peaceful and tranquil. Yeah, notot that hostile. cops aren't looking to fight Right They're probably in in a more heads. they're probably in the headspace of like, I'm on vacation right now, even though I'm not You know what I mean, I'm on an island, it's beautif A I going gonna to restst people Understand that when I When we talk about this and I try to back up five or ten minutes, I have no idea how I got on this No, yeah, I don't remember either. I have no idea how we got in the fire round or why that came up Let's see merch last A media. store Brua Salt's dad about to suck off a shotgun rodin He did seem that way He's one of the more subtly funny characters in the entire movie Greetings. I have an idea for you, Colin, for your next physical game release Why not be a real Willy wonka and slipp in five golden tickets in the random game cases the prize being an NPC in your next game. I don't hate that idea. Hm The goal to take It's a nice idea. Yeah. That's a fun idea. I don't know I don't know about that prize though. Yeah, it's a lot You know, that's kind of, that's kind of a lot But I like the idea I've always I've always like the idea of the golden ticket. It's a great premise You know, it' something I never I didn't really quite under like in in this day of weights and measures and like all the exactness, like people would just be weighing boxes, like entire cases and seeing like the baseline and weight of the case and then like the slight gram, it weighs more when it has a golden ticket in it They would like totally ruin it because people do that with cards, I think, with like with like baseball cards and Pokemon cards, like the foiled cards are a little heavier. I think so like people weigh and they'll figure out, like, what's in what 's so insane. I feel like I just I really feel disconnected from main culture, like mainstream culture because I just don't I really earnestly just do not understand card games. just the card collect. Like I remember collecting Pokemon cards because it was just the thing that we all did. And I remember just liking I like the art on them and I like the show and I like the gam. So I was like, yeah, all right, I'll collect Pokemon cards But like the idea of like, yeah, I got I gott to get this one Like I don't think I ever once in my life was like seeking out a specific Pokemon card, you know Not once Or any trading card really. I I say it's so alien to me. I don't really understand it But it' a big thing right now. It is It's been a big thing for a while. It has been. It's revived. Like yeah, customizable card games came out in the nineties and they were kind of big and then they went away and then they magic and stuff and then they came back And uh, I've said it recently it's like, I played magic in the mid and late nineties. Like I was actually kind of an old school magic person at the time. And I knew even then that there were cards that people had that were valuable and expensive and good. But it wasn't even like people were talking about them for the price. They wanted them for their decks And this is what we were talking about recently, right on the show is What about the people that just want to play the game And if you're one of the people that was trying to play the game, whyn't you just print out the cards or something like that. Like there's something weird about the whole thing that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. It made a lot more sense in the nineties when you couldn't replicate things so easily. It's like how I feel about I bring up warhammer and I'm like well, you can just re d print these now Like you you don't actually need to You don't actually need to do it. It's like like Pragmata Um Dude, I tell I tell I tell the story every now and again because it makes card collectors like really angry. But like I remember I woke up. I can't remember how old I was, but I must have been like, Like eight, nine or ten, probablyrobably like eight or nine And I woke up one day like like late on a Saturday and late on a Saturday is like eleven And I saw like on my dresser there was like a stack of Yugio cards. I had never played Yugeio ever in my life Like never, I didn't even really know what it was at that time. Like I was more just Pokemon and that was it And I guess like in retrospect, I think my Aunt had bought them for me because she thought I might like them And so she left him on my she didn't wantan toisturb me or whatever. So she like left him on you know I mean? It's like,'s a t for when wake But I woke up and I think at that time I was like I was really into like aliens and like mystery and like matrix shit Th I woke up and I was like What is this? this is my m? I was like, oh, these must have just appeared here because it was like a glitch or something. and I threw them all out. J just toss them in the tr. I only I only think it's a gift now because it'd retrorospect like them'm like, oh, That was probably just like they were just trying to not wake me up. but like every time I tell this story, people like I can't believe it. You know it's so funny just threw them away. It's like straight into the trash I don't know, man. I find the behavior of people around these card games to be distressing It and u Like there are videos, so many videos if you just go and watch them and people like pillaging these Pokemon Like when they drop things at target or whatever and it's like so lame man like This isn't for you. And it's cool if you want to play But just buy a normal amount of things. like it bothers the fuck outem me. But I was a u I was a big hockey card guy when I was kid And I really enjoyed that and then And then yeah, magic and that I had baseball cards. I kindected baseball cards for a while too, but I was u You get the little book, like the little binders and the and and you put the cards in the sheets It's fun.. I totally understand it, but Now it's become a thing where like it's just so money oriented and I'm like, whereere's the joy in it Like where's the I used to just enjoy getting the cardars and reading the stats and putting them in and trying to complete teams. and I'm sure there are people like that still, but it just seems so commercialized in a way that is disappointing. And I honestly don't understand what the card companies get out of it. That's why I'm surprised I' like I would over manufacture everything. Wh who cares Yeah, because like they're not seeing the the sky high profits from the retail. So imagine how cheap it is to make a Like you're licensing a person and then likeike in a baseball card or whatever. and then it's like you're manufacturing them for what? a fraction of a penny. I would flood the fucking market like crazy with them. Maybe they just think it's they're getting away with highway robbery anyway. so like they don't w want to fuck with whatever is they got going on. Like they're selling paper You like to be like. They're selling they're not I'm not even being . They're selling the things that They're selling things that are ultimately the material that they display them in You know what I mean for like exorbitant for like not absurd amounts of money, but like way more money than itosts to make. So like they probably just don't want to rock the boat at all. They're like we got good thing going here, whatever it is we're doing. stay the course and do this I w'nder know how long this is going to go on. It'll go on for a while, probably if forget about it But like they, you know, they might be ono us at some point that is crazy. And then there's all the grading stuff that goes on with it. The grading agencies and like the biases that people think they're there. Like I read this thing recently where People say like it's almost impossible to get a ten rated or like a perfect rated unless you're like a known person in some of these like a known Pokemon collector or anything like that then they'll give it to you whatever. and I'm like Where do they even sell Like I feel like I like where do they sell Pokemon C? I feel like I've never even I think like Target Walmart Th those kinds of places plus like probably, you know, enthusiast stores and online. they Well know Yeahah, I know enthusiast stores like like I would imagine like Dragon's Den. Yeah, that kind of thing When I was growing up. The videos I've seen have been from like Target and Walmart. likeike, well, theyll have a little stand or whatever, and then like it'll just be raidated Yeah I guess maybe that's why I never see them Yeah because they'reing glass or something. Like they seem easy to steal also. That's what's confusing to me. I think they come in like large boxes now. so it's not like the little like ten cards and a thing anymore. I think they have those too, but I think the big things are like people want like the boxes of them. Right. I think that's what they buy Anyway Good Lord, fucking Christ. This is what happens when it's just you and me, but yeah, I know. In mind, I'm like this show will go a lot quicker Um You know what I really liked in the late nineties, people might remember during the Star Wars Revival, like before the prequels was of the Star Wars customizable card game. That was a a good ass game. And when I went to private school, I used to walk to like this card shop afterwards and just It's funny how capricious and insane I was with money know what I mean?ike you everything think about I don't know if you were the same I don't want to speak you but when was a kid it like My parents used to say to me and I think it's common it's like if money just burns hole in your pocket dude And I never really understood what that meant until I was like, yeah, it does like I cannot Oh I fifty dollars, I'm going buying g. Oh I had twenty dollars of going buy a CD. Oh I have ten dollars when to go to the movies. Like I had no comprehension of like saving anything Right No. Yeah. That was the same. I'm arguably still somewhat the same because now I'm like, oh, well, my money's like literally losing value in my pocket. Right. You know what I mean? So like there's really kind of like what do I need a gimbal? Okaykay Yeah, sure. Like why not? You might as well buy whatever That was the whole principle I said when I redid my pool was like I was like, I wanted to amortetize that cost as much as possible. in my mind I'm like I'm amortorizing for a decade or more And then Mica made the play. She's like first of, I'm sick of hear you bitch about everything all the time. Second of all, like, it's just going get expensive. So you might as well just do it now And I'm like you're You're abolute And It's sad that have that we have to feel that way. Either you have to have your money in like really ambitious investments or you have to spend it Yeah, literally. don It really is kind of just doing you no favors just sitting there Like you are you are, I think, un ironically at this point in time, it's not always going to be this way, obviously Butike at this point time, you're kind of better off spending money that you have Like obviously not to an eregious degree. Yeah, don't don't impoverish yourself. Yeah, don't impoverish yourself, but like I'm I don't know I'm looking around like,h, whatever I might die tomorrow, Who cares? I'm gonna buy I'll order a fucking Ill order five guys on postmates for an absurd fee. Why not? So expensive. I know it's ridiculous So so stupid like seventy five dollars a It's so insane. Like I remember when it was They must have been takaking a loss or something. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. used to be used to be awesome You know, it was like it was it was the same thing with Uber in like, twenty twelve It's like, what Like it's like you want to go across San Francisco for seven dollars or I'm like, o right? Yeah. L dude, early postbates was like the shit. Like it was it it really is crazy. Like you you were stupid not to do it Be it was just objectively just a better way to spend money and time And now it's just like Double the price of the meal you just bought, like no A walk. Yeah. I don't postmade almost, I mean, it's been years since I've been really, since California, I would order a lot of food, but these days we might do it once a month or whatever. Yeah, you know and only to embrace more sparingly Yeah, like and we do it only from specific places because we realize that like some of the places are really engineered and geared towards it. So like Chipotle for us is like really good over delivery. But if you buy something like Buffalo of wild wings or something it's all fucked You know, so like yeah, right. Yeahah, exactly P probablyably' pretty good for it actually. Yeah, it is. And they actually have things that are only available to order on the app which is interesting. Like I really like the quesadilla and you can't order that in person apparently, whichich I think is so funny. It's like, why That is very I had the quesadilla for the first time recently D you order? you it must have ordered it on the phone?. Yeah because I saw it likeike it was like available for I think it was like for free or something. It was like it was they were doing like a deal I was like, Yeah fucking whatever I. They' are pretty good. I think Tripoli is pretty good. I mean,'s I yearn for real Mexican food And you have obviously great access to real Mexican food. I do not. So that's about as close as it is That's what I miss most about California. I've said that many times is like Mexican food is probably my favorite ethnic food. and That's so funny. And it's like it's just not here. I mean, there's a few places but they're shit, they're shit Like that's the thing boss me.'s when people say like, oh, there's a Chinese food place here and're like, no, there isn't See that's the thing is that actually it isn't Yeah know, it's hysterical to me because it's like I feel like I have like some like almost the reverse. um relationship to it. it's not that I don't like ming, but I really like it But it is one of those things where it's like I grew up Caribbean food. And it's all the same ingredients, but like very different. You know what I mean? Like it's different rice, it's different beans I guess there's no tortillas exactly to the same degree. So like whenever I get Mexico,ood it's like Everything's almost right, but it's all wrong Like it's good still But like it's not, you know, I totally understand. Well yeah it's I grew up with. It's the same populations of people that were brought to all these and migrating and colonizing all these places. And so they just had different Interpretations dude the tortilla is like a king in my mind. L I eat so many tortillas that it's fucking comical flour tortillas, specifically the ones that corntillas are good. they're better for you But they're not the same they're fine But they're better for you, therefore Right, exactly. They're not they don't taste as good. The flour tortilla though is a fucking I do langer Banger. Well that Shout out to all the Mexicans. We love you You are loved You are loved It's funny you? Like Mexicans to me C What Oh, you think I would just say something? Is it an awesome first awesome first couple words of said like you fucking scoff Mexicans to me. They're like honorary Americans Right You know what I mean? Like it's kind of like Canadians, we just can't really tell each other apart in a way, but Mexicans obv are more distinct both racially and ethnically and language in all rests unless you're like deal with quQbeequa or something like Plus we took like half of their land and that's like where you are right now But I also It's like, yeah, so it's like text mes and all that stuff. It feels like inherently part of us You know, I would agree. Like when I when when I it's like, oh, we don't want any illegal immigrants in the United States this and I'm like, Ks can stay That's like kind of like, I'd have a little coun I st. It seems like a fair trade if you're take like fifty percent of their entire land U you should at least grandfather the midd a little bit You can stay They're a wonderful people the Meicans I feel bad for them because their country is kind of like in disarray all the time, you know They have like two states that are like totally Narco run Did't we talk about it on the show that like during the last election, there was something like seventy political assassinations in Mexico It's like like people just getting killed everywhere. Like so blatantly controlled by the cartels, that's the thing that I find a real shame about Mexico is like, And I said when I went there and I was like, I was so I was so bummed by like the incredible level of um, destitution Yeah,s just it's like, wow, man, this is right it's right there It it wass kind of a more it's kind of a more obvious version of whatever was going on And certain parts of the United States in like the seventies and eighties with like the mafia and shit like that whereere like just like where the Bronx was burning and like all All that crazy shit. It's like all this likeike, d I remember going like my parents owned a furniture shop when we were like when I was like really, really young, I think they sold in like two thousand or two thousand one or something So it was like, really early. But I remember like playing outside of the furniture shop and my parents would be like, don't go, don't go bu that build That's like I can't remember what my dad said, but he said something like he used a word that I thought was funny. It's not like a slur or anything, but he said it was like Italian. It was like something was like I wish I could remember the word he used That's gonna to drive me insane. He wass like, that' there's some Italian shit going on over there.. Stay away. Yeah, he's He's like, that's where the dos live. Yeah. say that I don't know if it was that. It was a or bleep that it'll be even funnier. Yeah. I'm Italian. I can say that Okay But was like don't play in front of thatility. that's old moberitory And it's like,h, interesting I didn't think about that I didn't put that together until later on, but I was like, oh, It's fascinating. Although at that point, they were like Even by that point in like early two thousands was like this wasn't really There wasn't even really remnants of that I thought you werere going to say Y dad drove a city bus and he was and he was like, stay away from those guys. You want to be with those guys, but you were so attracted to them that you couldn't help but getting iningatiated with them. And then you were like dad, that's the Bronx Tale. Dude, I it's crazy. New York is so funny because like I knew so many people who were just like, yeah, he's in the mub where he was It's just it is what it is. I'm like, o Okay I guess that is what it is over here Yeah. we' talked about a little bit on consstolation, I think that like on the Italian side of my family like People were definitely deeply connected through my grandfather's generation and then it seemed to kind of shake out After that and Yeah. And it was never really discussed and whatever. And my grandpa wasn't connected, but I think his brother was and like some cousins. And I said before that like my mom had a guy and it was like nineteen sixty six probably take her on a date and like hit her And she came home and apparently like these guys went and fucked them up Yeah, like some of these dires. so it's like That's It's got. Like came home and she was crying and I think my grandfather, herard dad was like, what's what happened or whver, then he like talked to some people and then they went and fucked this dude up So it's Oh boy. The sixties were an interesting time But yeah, it's so funny thinking about that. likeike imagine those people saw me. I'm like, yeah, I' I'm a his grandson And they're like, oh good You know, they're like that's wonderful Right. I also can't be made because I'm half Irish I'm not I'm notull Italian.' that the rule? I would capap out at a soldier, I think. Yeah. I don't think So funny I would that's ye the mob could never work in Puerto Rico No one's full anything Awesome Yeah like, yeah, cant be made. I always used to joke about that like, yeah, can't can' I can't progress any further All right, let's see Thats it. Yeah, I think's it. Let's get the topic of the discussion. That's it Jason Vanover wrote in I gott to actually keep footnotes here I guess. What should I do here? You know what I'm going to do here I'm going to number each of these. Just these inquiries And then I'll have them and then I can just type those in. Yeah All right, so Jason Van oververot him said I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge all the great Leons who have walked so fureon so future Leon could run. Leon Black of curb fame feared assassin Le on the professional. I had that I had post I used to go to like a movie that I don't know if you ever did something like this, but There was like a a local the video store and they would get the posters and then they would give them away. And I used to just get whatever I could And I remember getting like the professional, which was so funny. I also got an interviewed with the vampire and some of other random shit. and so they were just on my wall when I was a little kid Spanish explorer Ponance de Lon former New York Jet Lly on Washington. And and of course, the current Leon Goat Mr. Kennedy, to that list, welcome Leon Chris Coin, Dustin Furman A man I can only imagine will eventually take his place atop the Mount Rushmore of Great Leons All kiding aside, congrat to the Firminans for welcoming a happy and healthy by into the world. There really is nothing better than being a parent cheers boy I am very excited. Baby has a perfectly round head Mhm very handsome Um already bought him. I tweeted out. I already bought him a mic He'll be on the show. He'll take Dustin's job at some point, and he'll be cheaper because he'll be new to the workforce So we can we so we can take financial advantage of them He's so desperate for the work Right Oh God, especially by then Oh yeah. Ohh yeah Um, A lot of people wrote in about Leon Appreciate it Dustin, I'm sure he'll hear it. appreciates all your kind words as well. I'm trying to just leave him alone now and I'm sure we'll see him in the weeks to come Yeah Dante Martin's rode in. inst s curious on how Dustin will dodge his wife to watch his Echie. Is that how you say it? or is it Echy? I think it's Echy your anime during this period with a newborn baby. EC, C HI me. Pronunciation. H rhymes with the English word schchetzo Okay And Etchie is What is that? I don't even I genuinely don't even know what that is. is a slang term in the Japanese language, according to Wikipedia for playful sexual, playfully sexual actions. As an adjective, it is used with the meaning of sexy, dirty, or naughty as a verb The word etchy has been adopted by Western fans of Japanese media to describe works with sexual overtones In Western culture it has come to be used to refer to softcore or playful sexuality as distinct from the word henti whichotes connotes perversion or feticism I don't know. I don't know how he's gonna do it Ething I've learned about Or I shouldn't say everything. Most of what I learned about anime has been against my will. Yeah I understand I feel the same way. It's not even it's not even that it's necessarily against my will. It's that It's splash damage from the places that I've at. Right. That's a better way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. it's like, o, I like role playing games and it's like, oh, do you like this You know, I'm like No I don't I don't like that. at all. It's like fan service. You hear the word fan service likeike, that sounds nice. Why Why shouldn't the fans be servving and herere like, go, Oh boy Okay, lookook at those breasts Oh boy. So I don't know if he's going I don't know how's going to get away with doing that. I'm sure we'll watch with great interest, of course. But uh He'll be fine. He'll be good. He already showed to the kid one piece. didid you see that video No, I didn't see that. There hasn't like Yeah, they showed him like the intro like on a phone and he was just sleeping with our child. That's the amount of psychological damage you're just allowed to inflict on a child immediately is awesome It is it's funny.'s like wec the world. Yeah. weelcome to the world. Nobbody can tell you no Basically, they can't operate. Like you can't do anything It is so interesting like the It's not even necessarily my million like where like Mammals pop out often and can walk And I kind of w And it's like a baby is just helpless. It's what's so fascinating about thinking about cavemen. And like very primitive humans having these things And they do they take care of them Hences is strange It kind of, that is the one thing about like, u Just a way everything's evolved or I'm like, how the hell did we manage this Like it kind of doesn't make sense to me that that we got so far having babies that can do so little And and by the way are such a detriment to survival. They're loud. they smell undoubtedly attract all sorts of predators I guess that I guess that necessitates community though, I guess in a way that like it doesn't really like. I think that probably is the thing, right? Like so many animals can just like, they're immediately fine, so there's no real need to form communities in the same way. It's it's interesting you say that, Chris. This is going to be this going to make you laugh. but recently, I was reading about things and it came up the I like right clicked on it and started reading about the history of or or the evolution of menopause And it's and it speaks to this There's this theory in evolutionary science that menopause is uniquely human There's only a few animals in the animal kingdom that basically turn off. att some point, like their ability to like, you know, females the ability to like have children or whatever And they were saying that the theory is that that happens for that very reason that it tries to encourage women take care of other people's kids at some point. Like you can basically use your You go a little while, you have your own and then it cuts you off and then you have like this familial thing and then you're like,h, I'll care, I'll help you with that. now Right And it stops and it sos so what There was a reason I read that after all. L I could actually share that information with S like the evolution of menopause. I was like that's so because I never knew that. I just thoughtw everyone kind of shut off But that's not the c Yeah It's fascinating It is I'm so fascinated by evolution because It acts intelligently passassively It doesn't quite, it doesn't make sense for me. It's like, it's like, yeah, like It's for that end in it might bit how did it know other than just the survival of those with those instincts. It's very strange, very interesting. I'm very endlessly fascinated by it Now because it sounds intelligent But it's not. It's Yeah, it's completely yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's odd. Like random mutations. Yeah feel like I like I was born with that wisdom teeth and that was like a thing. that was like, I remember my dad and held me' like,h, that's weird And was like, well, what's happening? And I think they said like oh yeah, the people are evolving D not have wisom to that? I was like evolving. I was like a child when I heard like people were evolving. I was like, I'm going to evolve, and I was thking Pokemon because I'm a idiot But u Yeah, I don't know I't know what's going on Wisdom teeth are crazy though. like Like that that's thing that happens. Yeah. sucks. Thank than God, I didn't have to deal with that Mine, um Mine were not impacted, meaning that they didn't I still have all mine, but they made my teeth crooked as an adult, which is why I had to get advisaline as an adult because I didn't need braces when I was younger. Like it was a thing where I remember being like, so do we do it do we need in and being like, you really don't need them You're kind of lucky you know, and then and then, you know, you're in college or littlele and they come in and they're, boop it's good I didn't them as a kid because it wouldn't mtered I would had to do either No, yeah, it would have been a complete waste I almost had braces, but then I lobbied I lobbied against against it and my parents listened I I made a compelling case. I was like, Mom, dad, I'm skinny I'm small I can't see I can't do this. Yeah, you can't h this. because that's like, that's like infinity that's like the infinity Gauntlet with like all the everything wrong. Ething that could be possibly wrong with like a young boy I would have all of it. I was like, I can't do it I you need the chill. Yeah get bully I'm gonna get bullied into oblivion That's my parents were like, okay. They under I guess I also didn't necessarily need braces. Yeah. they just would have helped. Sure Yeah It's like a write a passage for a lot of kids these d I personally recommend I mean, it's not even more expensive is Invisal line is just so so good. I couldn't believe you know, you like hear about these services and you're like Does it really work like there does it really And it works and it doesn't hurt and it's fine. I'm like, yeah it actually it crazy enough. it did Right, But everyone has their own experiences of course so I don't want to You speak to your own oral health practitioner Joshua Pierstorf wrde in O gotta hit the enter button here So hello sacred crew, I want to congratulate Dustin and Holly on welcoming a new member into the Lastan family While talking to my wife about these events, my wife would like to know Colin, would you like to be her father figure died two years ago, and you are without child. This way you can skip all of the gross baby stuff and still have someone to pass on your advice. I will let her listen for your answer. What do we mean here Hm you know, like Are you talking about like George Michael father figure Or are you talking about like a literal father figure 'cause there's an element of eroticism to what you're saying I hate to say it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it either m not a fan of this Um I'm a married man, I'm a happily married man. And so In that regard, I can't be your father figure But if you're really looking for a father, you like you have father problems in other words. if you If you But if you really want like a forty one year old man, to give you advice Like right, I could do that for you Sure I do feel like I know a lot more than I did when I was younger don as long as her problems revolve exxclusively around PlaySation. Right, right. Things I know. Yeah, you've got a good you've got a good figure here. Plants U PlaySation Ketatchup, I love catchchp Um GI Joe Right. Yeah, American history These are all the all theajor food groups, right? Right? So I'm happy to be there for. But again, I need to father figure There's just a It is unfortunate. It is unfortunate that the internet has made it so that there is an element of disiscomfort around that concept Because I feel like when I was dowing up, that wasn't a thing. There's there's like a there's like a popular trend going or not maybe maybe it's not popular or maybe it's not going on right now. maybe it's an old trend or whate from a couple of years ago, but like There are these videos of I guess moms calling their husband's Daddy and other kids. Yeah And like all the kids are like, o But I think I genuinely think if I was like ten Like like when I was ten, if I heard that, I don't think I would have thought twice about it. Yeah, yeah, at the same. Like I genuinely don't think it would have it wouldn't even registered to be as anything weird Yeah, youve they did that or whatever, but like it's just like it's you know what I mean? Like there's something corrupting about the internet. Actually my my aunt and uncle, I think, do that with their kid And I don't feel weird like,'ll go ask daddy. Yeah Right Don't wake, Daddy Rember that Oh what? That I hated that that sounded familiar to me because I was like, what the fuck can I possibly know that from? Yeah it's like this weird ass board game. It was I think it was revived, but it's like a Bser And there was a song Like there was a song about it. I totally forgot about I totally forgot about this by Parker Bs or whatever they say.. What trash, manad No know, there was a there there are a lot of trash board games I realizeed that as a kid becausecause you'd some of them for Christas, you know, you would ask for them And some of them would be really good and some of them would be like, man, this sucks. I remember getting mouse trapped. And I was like, this sucks. I remember really wanting Mouseetrap and then never getting it U And so I was always like it was always a mystery as to how that game it looked fun to play, but also like I think intellectually, I was kind of like, there's no way that's fun to play. It's a party trick almost like, you know, It's like this complicated thing you do. And like, oh, cool And you lose like one part and it's over Yeah. Oh yeah, Mikea is just text me it's really windy out for some reason. now man, the weather is just like shit out of me here Um I looked up George Michael Father figure from nineteen eighty seven Be this is I always think of this song and this is a very perverted song too. And that's that because it's like That's all I wanted. somethingomet special, something sacred in your eyes for just one moment to be bold and naked at your side Sometimes I think you'll never understand me. Maybe this time is forever That's all you wanted. something special, someone sacred. Oh. In your life, just one moment to be warm and naked at my side I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mind. I will be your preacher teacher anythingthing you have in mind I will be your father figure. I have had enough of crime I will be the one who loves you till the end of time Are you sure you've had enough a grime ake It's it's it's a It's a belaboreered point, I think But there's a shocking amount of songs are like, you're just thirteen You look so good and it's like, what is this? What were people doing What is that? Why are there so many songs like that? Wh it's just like, oh, she she was just fourteen. She was just she was just thirteen. Yeah it's like What is that? Yeah I feel like I don't feel I don't feel like it's all that recent that that's a crazy thing You know what I mean? I don't think's like a new thing that it's weird for like a forty year old to be with a thirteen year old girl, you know what I mean? Maybe I'm wrong. I wasn't around back then, but That seems kind of universally insane I agree. I agree Take a seat. What was I really listening to recently with that Abba, dancing quQeen Nancing Qeen, young and sweet only seventeen. Oh yeah It's like, allright, I know you're sweet. Yeah. takeake it easy You know Why let her cann't she? she can be eighteen Dan Sweet young and Seet, only eighteen. oh yeah. I mean, that couldn't have been the Yeah there's the songs that are like dude, there's songs where it's like where where the age is like thirteen and it's like brother B Brother Brother. What is going? Because like I was like when I was seventeen, I was in college. so like seventeen to me, like is' like I don't. Yeah, me too actually. Like it doesn't it doesn't register to me it is insane because I just remember being in college when I was seventeen. So like That's it's weird but it's like, fine But like bro thirteen. et in the get in the just get in the cop car. Yeah Put yourself in a jail cell already and just be done with it Yeah, like that's Act crazy And I was going to say more, but let's just leave it on Let's move on. Monroses gurirky doctrine wrote in. and said Hi Sacred booys, this one's for the Long Island Viper himself. Colin, I visited Teddy Roosevelt's house in Oyster Bay and the Vanderbilt Manssion and Pletarium this pastkend was my first time on Long Island, and I can confirm it lived up to your years of praise The historic sites were fascinating in Huntington, where my hotel was Hunttingingon's very nice was a charming downtown. As a history buff, have you been to the Vanderuilt Msion or Sagamore Hill? And if so what are your opinion of them, of course Um They're awesome. I love that you came to Long Island and did a little bit of history stuff there Um, Stay for the food and then get out. We don't want you too long on there I was always happy to see someone go to L long Island. because again, it's a place I say you have to try to go there You can't just pass through it You have to have like some deliberateeness to go. And so it's a place that like if you sh a ton of people live there, but if you don't live there By the way, there is a rumor going around. I think it's probably speuspious, but that the Jets are are talking about moving back to Long Island, which would be fuck I would wear this flip out ew Jerse they play New Jery where the giants play than they have since the eighties. W. They used to play at Say Stadium and the Pgrams would run on a al out, That was before I was born So Mon Rse Girthy Doctrine. I'm so glad you enjoyed the homeomeland Sos a little bit of Teddy Rose about the greatest president becausecause he's obviously a Long Islander, but also because he was fucking crazy Yeah, love that. I love the story about So he was William McKinley's V vice president and Mill MKinley was assassinated so he became president And they couldn't get in touch with them for days because he was First of all, it was like nineteen oh two, or whatever. And second of all, I think he was like in Wyoming or something like at a cabin and they had to like send people for him to go find them I'd be like you're the president of the United States You gott to come home, you know? and every was like, all right. He was fuc. He's so such if you read about him, he's fucking dope. He's awesome, awesome guy Yeah, it's things like that where it's like this country's always been crazy. Yeah It's like I mean, I mean, even just like, I mean, we've talked about I've mentioned on the show before like that elephant we lyched in nineteen sixty Yeah you hul it from a crane. You look at that and you're like, we lynched an elephant from from a crane in nineteen sixteen Maybe things are just Maybe things have always just been this dumb You know what I mean? Like if they did that, like back like a hundred years ago over a hundred years ag, it's like Yeah, of course, like why not Like all the crazy shit that's happening now it's like f I guess it is in keeping. I just want to I just want to believe and I hope that there was a deep there were people with like us with deep senses of irony and like fatalism You know Seriously, like people that just thought it was funny Like shit that just they were just laughing as things were happening and they were just it was just a very fatalistic resesigned posture Um I would like to believe that that goes back all the way to the beginning hopefully yeah Like sarcasm, that's a human development. No other animal is sarcastic R Right. No other yeah, there's no other animal that like ironically does things You know, rightight. Like like a monkey's not gonna ironically peel a banana. Like, oh, I'm definitely gonna eat this. You know fininally, Chris wrote in and said, Hello guys, Colin, I'm curious if weeks like you have had recently where there has been a ton of recorded content. due to all the showcases and events come with increased challenges. Is it difficult to talk that much about video games in such a short period of time loveo the show and love all the extra content we have got recently. I feel kind of invigorated by by Reesey Adams personally I feel like we needed a shot in the arm, not as a company or a content farm, but like just as an industry, like it just felt You're right and you've said it for years that we're missing a We're missing these cultural beats now without E three and a more traditional games com and a more traditional Tokyo game show. It did feel good to get into the weeds again. And does it come with increased challenges? I mean, it's good to work. I don't I mean, I'm blessed to be able to do this.s Th these are sometimes long grueling days where like You work all day and you realize you don't even know what's going on in the world. You haven't looked at your phone or talk to anyone or whatever. But that's like I don't mind that makes me feel alive in a weird way I think the biggest challenge is just not being redundant becausecause you don't know what what people are listening to what? So you're kind, you know you're repeating yourself, but you have to kind of assume that you haven't the same audience in all of these different places. So that's a difficult thing But how you how do you feeling after all that Chris? we did a lot together Yeah, I mean, I feel good about it. Like I like I like when there's a lot to talk about because it means that there's just a lot of different threads to pull at. There's different muscles to flex too. like One of us might know more about something And then the others and the more news there is, the more likely that kind of thing will come into play Um when it's just a when it's a when it's a singular topic kind of week it it's, you know, it is what it is, but it's it's not as interesting And in my opinion, just because there's less There's less threads to pull I do think the biggest challenge is the redundancy. because like sometimes you're like I go through this sometimes too, when we're recording where it's just like, I would Man. They said really everything that I would say It feels it feels a little pointless to be like A. He said kind of everything I't got anything to say about it. You gotta have something to say. So so like, that's kind of the thing where it' like trying to figure like What can I add to this without making it seem like you're trying to force yourself to say something that you you know what I mean? Like it's it's trying to feel. you don't want to Catch yourself feeling time, I guess Yeah. ye. I try to it's funny because I don't often have that problem because I introduce everything It' kind of unfair actuallyctually, but I mean, that's fine Im in the capapain's chair That was me doing the the Somalian pirate thing I'm the captain. So I've seen movie I know what the mean All right. Chris, it's for to get into the news And there's quite a few things to talk about today. someome big items, some not so big. But we begin here with a very big item in my opinion, which is that Rockstar has finally broken their silence on Grandft Autero six the sense that They've announced digital and retailer preordders for physical versions will begin for Grand Dath Auto six on june twenty fifth. They are commommitted to the state I don't think there can be any more conversation about Will they or won't they be hitting their date. I think they've made it fairly transparent all year that they would hit this date. Sch Zelnik, of course, is given interviews where they're feeling confident. and of course, they need the shit. or get off the pot. So if you're looking for Grand that thr to six on Paysttation five or Xox Series XRS The preorders begin on the twenty fifth and the game of course comes out in November. If you go to roockstargames d. com slash VI Um for six in capitals like Roman numumerals There is a small page that shows some interesting stuff. we've seen Um We've seen a lot of this stuff already and there's not very much new, but if you go to the website, you see Vice City and you can actually See it in motion does it's It obbviously this is website graphical kind of flare and it doesn't look the way the game will look per se, but it just goes to show you the depth the breadth of the game yeah. I'm so intrigued by this game because I just want to see it Like more than playing it and seeing what the story is like I don't even care about that. L I want to be in the world And it's not very common for me to feel that way about a game. so Anyway I don't know why you would preorder. And also by the way, I don't think they've said what the price is And I think you might have letter about this. AJ White wroteen Instead of good Dity all. you the clip of Michael Scott running around screaming it's happening, Rocksar today confirm preordders for GTA six are going live, june twenty fifth. The post on the website ominously leaves out the price, so I ask What are your final guesses for base price? seeventy, eighty, one hundred What should the collector's edition include and how much should it be? I'm thinking a bag of cocaine and Ameran flag t tank tops so we all li the true Florida experienced Thankanks gentlemen Um, Ccaine's very, that's very sophisticated. I don't know that that would be the average that would be the maybe the average Miami experience. So yeah, good for byice city Fentanyl would probably be the average experience for for people in other parts of Florida Don't do any of those things P Chris, what are you thinkinking GTA six price Where's you gonna? My heads at I don't know if there's What's the standard price right now? seventy? seventy, I would say, least n ninety nine. S a couple of gotten eighty, but almost no one and then sixty is still pretty common too. Yeah, I mean, I I could see them doing I don't think they're going to go one hundred. I think I could see them doing eighty Like I think eighty would be in that realm of reasonability But I also feel like I don't know, like why they're going to make so much money anyway. Why rock the boat at all? You know, like why give anybody a reason not to You know, like they're one of the this is one of the few games that like they could sell at fifty dollars and make like billions of dollars. That's the whole thing is that you can make different arguments about what you really think you should do here. And I'm sure that they gamed it out Sure Yeah. I think Schw Zelnk said on his CNBC interview because he was asked about the price like months ago and he was saying like, we're not going charge like an unreasonable price or whatever Something like, you know, in so many words. To me, that indicates like interternally, it's as you said, it's like the expxedition thirty three effect, right? Like The game's fifty dollars it becomes much more attractive The thing is You don't really need to do that 'rereat the ao. So like I think the only question is if you settle at seventy. or go up to eighty. I agree with you. I don't think would go any higher than that, but I think seventy is probably what it's going to be. And I think they realize you just don't need to like You don't need to be the game that that forces a new model on people. You can you're one of the few products that can very easily take advantage of the old pricing model and be perfectly fine All right That said, I'm sure the game is worth a lot more than seventy dollars is what I always say about. about the idea of exploring the price range. And yet I also think they understand that there's going to be such a huge GTA online environment ultimately built into this and this is going to be their new platform. they're going to make a fuck They're they'll be they're like, yeah, we'll be fine at seventy. I do think they can get away with eighty and by the way, Chris It would be fascinating if they tried to charge a hundred dollars because I think they get away with it So they really are holding themselves away from that level of money, but I think they have to be smart. and I think they're just excited to get it. I saw this quote fromchrales Zelenk where he said about the marketing that's gonna begin soon We are in the business of eating red meat for breakfast Guys, fucking' he's a psychad. It's such an insane thing to say for any reason. Yeah Like there's no context in which that isn't an insane thing to say Um Yeah, I think They're going to make money hands over hand over for hismen. I'm excited to see this. I'm so intntrigued by this game I'm excited. I'm anticipating it Not even necessarily Like I'm I'm sure by the time I'm done with it,ll I'll like the story and know like, you know what and I'll be deeper ingrained into it. But I'm just like, fascinated with this what this game is. from like a Just a broader industry perspective because this really is kind of the last big highly anticipated game reallyally of this stature. likeike I don't really know when the next one of these is really ever going to be. Um There's some that we have Like interpersonally in, you know, at at LSM or whatever, like Judas is probably one of those for me where likem I'm personally like stoked. But that's not like you know, millions of people, like billions of people like st like with baited breath waiting Um It's just such a different beast And I really cant remember I remember the last time a game like this came out And I don't know when the next one's going to be. Like I guess elder Srolls, six is probably like the compomparable But even that's like Quite away. And it's also small, way smaller W like it is you're right though, that is a comparable kind of event for the mainstream I guess it would be a little different because I don't know how I mean that those are mainreames that I don't want to underselly Syim or thelderros games. It' GT is just is substantially bigger you make the argument where this could be the last of its kind, really Um Just in that if you assume Grand that Auto games will always be distanced from each other like this now decade or more. I made the argument it's kind of crazy to say it and it's probably not true, but like it could be the last grand of photo g Just because like they might just build off of this forever I assume it is my sincere hope that they have a better single player pipeline built into this game than they did with GTA five. I think they kind of got lost in the sauce a little bit and reasonably so because of what where they were making money, but So it is possible based on where games are going and the fragmentation and microfragmentation of all audiences because like you're saying like we're excited about Judus and Judice will sell millions of copies, but it's Nothing. like Grand have thought it will sell in one second in pre orers what Judas is going to sell So It's reasonable to think that there will never be another game like this, actually which is kind of, unless it's free and phenomenal, like a fortnite Right. likeike I guess like that's what I mean.'s like there's there will be games that are overnight successes. likeike there there are things like Ac Riders where like Theyeople were kind of looking forward to Dark Riders and then it came out and then it kind of blew up. But like this extent where everybody just knows it's going to be huge And and they've known for years and they're anticipating it and then it finally comes out and it is huge and it breaks records. likeike I don't know. Like I feel like the only surprisees I feel like the only big things left are those like kind of surprise out of the gate You know, like like a hell divers You know what I mean? where that just kind of came out of nowhere and everybody loved it And even that, like Helddivers to GTA is like a massive. I mean, that's aparity but disparity is insane. So like, it's in a league of its own. I'm really excited about it. I hope it's great. I'm sure it's I'm sure if it's If it's going to be anything, it's going to be fucking very interesting And that's a reason enough for me to be excited. Yeah, games that make a billion, you know, in the billions of dollars are incredibly scarce and are typically free to play games. um or you know, service games let me see here, to sell. ude it's so comm. I know you're doing math right. It's so comical to think this is going to be seventy or eighty dollars when like, I think what is it, um ET for the Aari retailed for like forty in like nineteen eighty two. Yeah, it's which is like, what is that in today's money? it's like probably like a hundred morears It's probably like one hundred and thirty dollars or some shit. All right, so good Lord What the what's what are you trying to do Oh know, this is right. You to make a billion dollars Gross. So not even like with the splits at seventy dollars to make a billion dollars, you have to sell fourteen million copies So it's something more like twenty million copies once you figure out all the splits with all the platform holders games at full price Games don't Except for very rare things like Redead is another game that would do that. But again, these are fractional compared to Grand the Th. This is going be true event. And I think the I don't want to say the industry needs it. I've been thinking about doing a video recently about the video game crash of eighty three and people were saying like there's gonna be another video game crash and all that. I'm like, no There won' the problem because that People don't understand the video game crash was so bad that like the amount of money being made on video games It's so like eighty two, eighty three and then eighty three, eighty, forty five It was a small fraction of the amount of gross revenue by eighty five that was being made in eighty three, and it wouldn't recover until the mid nineties That's never going to happen Games are making more and more and more and more money And that's going to continue. It's about who wins and who loses And that is the where the crashing happens in the seams We'll talk a little bit more about that with studios and the structure of the studios and all the rest later in the show Number seven is more of a I don't know why I said number seven. I said because I put in the document. That's number two for you guys. I have these numbers lined up for a lock one for the timeestamps But just wanted to do a PSA. in case you still play PlayStation four, which I know a lot of you do, there is a new firmware update for it And it is mandatory apparently. So these are public remember we've talked to like they do a they do a security update like every year and even PS three still gets firmware updates. So I just like to let people know that in case you're going to play it because it is a little bit of a hassle. if you're turning on your console You're like oh fuck I got sit the sh especially on PSR. So when PSR gets updated again, which I'm sure will, I'll defitely let you And by the way, Isn't it fascinating that they still havent shut the PS three store off They tried to shut off five years ago And then they're like, Ah The same thing would defeated, right That's right And then it wasn't even five, mayaybe it was three or four years ago. and then it was like They just didn't go I was expecting they gave us a six month reprieve, but they really are just leaving it alone which is dope Appreciate that. Yeah. reate. And I wonder if maybe they're trying to stretch it out to try to integrate these its functionality into PS four, I would assume, which would then allow it to be backwards compatible. But I think we all understand that that's impossible. As we discussed on in recent weeks, Digital founder do this stuff about like PS three emulation and like some of the games. they were running on these like top of the line emulators and they can't even get these games to run. It's like, what the fuck was going on with this thing It's weird. The cell architecture is so funny. It's such a funny thing that they did. It's just so funny that you can't emulate it. Like it's so p you can't emulate the environment Becauseuse like yeah, it requires so much processing power, I I guess. It's also just such an unorthodox way to do like I think, u I don't want to talk out of my ass because it's like they Technologically, I'm quite lamean as far as as that stuff goes, Fairly certain like just the number of cores that the PS four had or the PS three had They were like all the courseores were like specified to specific functions, so they couldn't like Dynamically integrated.s like, oh, this needs more And this needs more Y so let's allocate. it's like, no, no, this is just for this it's like, why would you such a crazy thing to do? It is really it really puts in the context like the contemporaneous conversations around PS three development at that time about people being like, this sucks. And like I kind of went in one year and out the other I'm like just do just make the fucking games and shut up And then like all of these years later, you know It's like she Like the weird shit we had to do Mega fununny You almost have to give them a credit for figuring it all out m Yeah, especially on a console that was at that time struck because that's the shittiest thing is that like they were doing all this in the early PSR hour for a console that didnt think was going to die So yeah That was the it's PS three genereneration. There was something Something special about that generation. the roaring back of that machine is I don't think I don't think Sony get enough credit for it Like they figured it out They really did. They did it quick I think because it was existential Yeah pressure. And they still ended up losing money that generation, which is even the craziest thing. Like the PS three generation was a loss but they ended up winning which was kind of crazy like they pulled it out. I don't know how they did it man. because I think we used to write the NPD stories every month at IGN and I think it was like something like people can correct me, but I'm pretty sure something to the akin of like thirty something months, Xbox three hundred sixty Asolle PS three in a row buried it And it wasn't until the slim two thousand nine started turning things around. and it was uncharted too that really That was how I remember That was I remember in high school, that was like the big thing. It was like, oh, there's finally that was I remember the conversation being like, oh, there's finally a reason to have a PS three Milligarl four was kind of like that, but like Milligar Solid My look sounds so weird because I remember it being a lot more niche than it is now likeike compare I guess compared to Like nobody I knew at school was talking about millar solid for it. Yeah it was. I remember it sold fairly, a few million copies maybe, but it was not the phenomenon that it would become later on. Like I feel like it's just it's just wildly unplayable You know, for a lot of people because not because of the game. I'm saying it was on PS three and like it never well this summer if finally So like I just don't think people have even really had the opportunity it' true Anyway. Um, let's see So yeah, just a PSA for the PS four firmware and keep an eye on that if you're still playing over there for some fucking strange reason. All right. Big news of the week is a story that is not being widely reported, though, I'm going to use Push Squaareres report that ironically cites me bottom of s than you sacr sybles for theip So Here's what has happened And u It's ointing that more people don't report on this because I think only via a Um overwhelming amount of media coverage and I think pushing will Sony be forced to take a lot of these security issues Seriously. So of course, people remember last month My account got boosted through customer service U and what they call social engineering. So not really hacking. but pretending you're someone else and getting them to give you information And of course, we I obviously lost my mind about this and got really upset about it. Got my account back through my connections with Sony. Everyone knows the whole story a major security flaw in which people can basically very easily fake You find a Weak link customer service agent It's one of these third worldld agencies that they use, no offense. And so you just need the weakest link And then you just need nominal information likeike a person's email address and like maybe games they bought. and they'll shut your password. they'll change your password and shut your two factor authentation So that's that's fun. That's wonderful. So I solved that problem for me But as people know, I became very animated for others because My account was My accounts apparently been flagged and, like, there's only so much you can do about it. And as I understand, like a lot of the changes to my account now have to happen in Sanateo by a managerial level person. Um couldn't simply walk away at that point because it's like, well, first of all, I didn't take this issue very seriously until it happened to me which I think is a character issue. And so I was like, well, the best next, best character thing to do. is to try to help others. So I've been doing that behind the scenes and actually I've beenking a little bit on PSN profiles, forums with some of the users there about some stuff. It's like I actually have not said many things that I know and understand about the situation publicly because I don't want to I want to be useful Like, I'm not trying to like be I'm not trying to put my reporter I h on here and like nail Sony I'm actually trying to like help them And I'm overtly and honestly doing that. because I think it's importantm. I don't know that they necessarily need my help, but maybe they needed my push So anyway That issue seemed to be solved. and as we I don't think we noted this on the show, Chris, and I don't know why I forgot to do it, but They hired, they they posted hirings for anti fraud I saw that both in Samitay and London Um. You're welcome So So that's that's one thing that and I've been talking to them behind the scenes about that or whatever. and I recently exchanged emails with them about stuff last week. So there's this whole other problem No And this is less do you know anything about this? Have you been reading about this at all? I read a little bit Okay. It was it was the one the one thing on the document I was like, I got a I'm going to look up everything I can about this because this is hysterical. So it' it's a I have to admit, and I even said this in my correspondence with Sony where I'm like, I must admit This is Funny But you have a major problem on your heads So right Yeahah All right, so I'm going to kind of work in reverse. People know pork pancho, you know playay Marathon with him. He's an IT and like infoet guy. So he's been doing a lot of stuff for us. I'm not I didn't'm nasted to. He's just interested in researching and understanding these things. So Here's Here's what happened. Okay, and then we'll work backwards and I'll show you guys what what we think occurred If you go on PSN And you go to your profile, It shows you a series of widgets. Right? O of them is like your trophy widget One of them is like recently played and like The games that you've all played, one of them is the most played games, and one of them is your friends list all and I know this from from pork These all run on different like servers. I don't know we would call them stacks or blades or whatever. I have no idea. I don't know the terminology. But they're all like these separate things that are integrated in the PSN So like on one of these servers is your trophies On one of these things is like the PSN store or the PlayStation store and like your licenses And there's this other stack And it's the one that runs your reccently played games and like your entire game library list. and the hours you've played So not really Important likeike one of these things that feeds into this greater PlayStation ecosystem and they drag all this data in and show it to you. What ended up happening is that They Nfarious actors have figured out how to fuck with those lists So It's not really a security issue per se, because it doesn't really matter. You know, on one hand, but it shows that the PlayStation network is incredibly vulnerable to random things. And I think we already know this. Yeah. So here's the way I'm going to quote pork Poncho and he has this huge Twitter thread. I'll put it here for you. Yeah. ic. But I have it open. Oh, you have it. o, great. Yeah. Oh, its it's in the shap So He says this These are the different service blades. So it's like S service one is your game library and activity. This is where your recently played games live. Things like playtime, last, play D, play count. It uses CUSA or PPSA title IDs. Okay? There's like these new alpha numeric. you know, badges that attached to each game. Service to is trophies totally separate rest API using NPWR IDs. This means you can't write trophy data through the game library. It's a different service entirely. So if someone does target you via method, the method they're using here Y trovies are safer now Service three is entitlements This tracks the games you actually have purchased or a license for. It uses products, SQ IDs and content IDs so in an entirely different format. So again, These things all fold together and it's only that first service once. game library and activity that has been that has been breached What these guys figured out is that like you can just add whatever game you want. to a person's Game history And they've also figured out that you can mess with people's hours played And even nominally mess around with people's libraries by adding things to the library, but you just don't have access to them. So they're all like padlocks. And this all goes through the service. So people started noticing And this is where I think it gets funny. where they're like Dude There's a game called Sext store Simulator, which that exists on PSN It's in my play history at the top. I've never played it and it says I've played it for eight thousand hours Now the reason that this matters is because other people can see your play history. So if like you're a normal person with friends and family and coworers and you play, you know a few games on PSN, and then someone's like,h, what's Tommy doing And they go and look and it's like, the last game he played seex stor simulor, a game he' played for eight thousand hours and They started adding these games to different people's lists, So like Hent eyie prrincess and all these kinds of games Right. And people were like, what the fuck is going on here? Now some people, including me got hit extra hard I had tens of thousands of games. I think, potentially every game that's on PSN added to my list So What happened was that the widgets wouldn't even load And people started noticing this, so they would fail. It reminded me of on PS three. I think I remember told you, if you had a hundred friends on PS three, How smart games like wouldn't load Like Donation would just freeze. Like there are things that just don't work anymore. so these widgets are experiencing a load that they never in like a in a test ecosystem never. No one at Sony was like, what do we what how does this thing work if you have every game So like at some point It gets overloaded So my shit got extra fuck But for most people It was like sex sex store simulator Hent Thi, prrincess sex shop simulator, that kind of stuff And it all goes through this So But here's what pork pachro says When a phhantom game appears on someone's PSN profile, it only shows up in service one That's why affected players see a recently played entry but don't see it appear in their trophy list or purchase history Someone is injecting fake data straight into the game library without touching the other two services This is likely done through Sony's Activity feeed submission API It lets apps post stories like play the game There's a document Outh scope for it, which has been mentioned in public security disclosures before. You can see a bit more of that here. So he links to hacker onene dot com. This is a place where you get her bounties This is important So do you know anything about this stuff? like wherere like white hat orr grrey had hackers will discover vulnerabilities and company and they'll report them And companies will pay bounties to fix them U So this is a known vulnerability going back to the beginning of PS five apparently That Epoint accepts target account IDs and title IDs without ever checking that the account actually owns that game And that's where the hole is apparently in the security So he writes this. So that's almost certainly what's happening. The endndpoint trusts that the authenticated user is allowed to write information to whatever PSN account ID they supply to the API It doesn't verify that your token actually matches the account you're writing to And that's a classic example of a broken object level authorization issue in bug And he says, as I mentioned before, it also doesn't check into that account actually owns the game. It's trying to inject into the game library activity. So there's no license validation going on. and it's not even checking for the system level proof that the game was launched by the user Simply put, it's basically someone saying, hereere's a title ID that exists in the store backackend, be a deer and slap it onto that account for me It even works with unreleased or delisted games which is exactly what happened with GTA six earlier in the year Back in March, people found that they could spoof their recently played lists using uncovered pre release store IDs for GTA six Obviously, they weren't actually playing the game and there were no trophies recorded, but the solution Sony seemed to apply was just to scrub those IDs from the store. rather than actually fix their authorization gap So he gives a solution of what they need to do or whatever So I've been talking behind the scenes. I've been trying like so I emailed Sony about this a few days ago, and I'll leave that for now They know because they took that entire stack down. Now I don't know if you saw this like They just basically took it off the internet, like offline again. So like if you went to your PSN ID or your profile for like two days and you went to those widgets, they wouldn't load And that was universal for everybody, even though only certain people were affected. and it seems and I keep saying this And it sucks because it's a great website and it's not their fault It's like PSN profiles is the vector This is where they're going, They' like target people for sure. It might not be the only place, but it's definitely a mj source it And a lot of people there got hit So Push Square reports So I messageed Bush Square about this Hence the thank you to Sger Tmbs for theip And they reported on it and They reported on it in three different ways. first that it was happening. The second way was that they took the stack down so nothing was appearing anymore. So if you would go to recently played It would literally say once you play a game, your stats will appear. So they literally like they made it seem like no one played anything. for a long time. And then slowly they've been restoring functionality I noticed last night, they're basically reporting like things seem better for people. And I noticed on PSN profiles, some people are better and some people aren't. It seems that the hardest you're hit are the harder you're hit. The more unlikely it is that this is going to be unwound for you quickly and maybe at all. like I don't know I don't know what they're gonna do. What's interesting is that youre I'm getting interesting insight into the PSN just by like what is appearing. So like when I go to my games now My games were flooded with things that like I never owned. Now it's like showing me reverse order stuff beginning in like twenty fifteen likeike things that I bought like it's showing me things that I all the stuff I own But like when I'm at the top, it's like, here's LA cops which is a game from twenty fifteen Here's Pier Solar, another old roleplaying game. Dark Siderers three It usually shows you the things you bought at the top. So like there's they must be using they must be using cashed information or something to try to fix this for people. I don't really know what's happening, but That's the latestcare on the PlayStation network. So I think the biggest thing people have to understand and I tryed to explain this to people. they're like, oh this is a A This piss me off Let me bring let me bring this up as well Um so on PSN profiles, like people have been reporting, you know, being saying like so I've tried to talk to Um customer service or whatever, and like, you know you just get like the chat a random person They said so the person says, like Th games hent Thi prrincess, seextor S simulator whatever have been added to my list. What what should I do? It's embarrassing to see this and they write this Thank you for sharing this. We are aware of this issue and want to confirm that your account is safe and secured There is no foul play involved. The appearance of these games is a technical glitch and our engineers are actively working to resolve this issue as fast as possible. That's not true Yeah, what there is foul play involved and it's not a technical glitch Blake Now, here's another part of it and I can't substantiate this There is Scuttle butt That what And I think this is what Pork believes as well and someone who I don't know but had talked to behind the scenes about this like just a random entusiast. He could be theer for. I have no idea D end with this person and you're giving me some information, but this is what Pork thinks is true as well. is that It seems like it's possible. that the person who did this or discovered this reported this. to Sony And Sony, according to this theory was like, this is not bounty worthy. This is not a security risk. And so the person just unleashed it Oh U So who knows if that's true or not. But that message from and I'm not blaming the support agent. They're getting there whatever they're being told. they don't know anything. but it's like It's there's no foul play involved. Yes, there is. Yeah, that's a crazy thing to say And the appearance of these games is a technical glitch. No, it's not It's it's a sorry guys, a sex store simulator, sex shop simulator, and Henti prrincess have appeared in many tens and hundreds of thousands of your accounts. That's just a technical glitch Oh important thing about Hent Thi Princess the game Hent Thi Pincess, never published. But that's just it's just exists as an object, but it's not a game that exists. So yeah, just a glitch Awesome no foul play. no foul play in both. on't worry about it That when I saw that that pissed me off. That's such a ridiculous thing to say Who would believe that Well, when you read these threads and like you go to Reddit, are these places where people are talking about this stuff, a lot of people don' don't believe it. They think it's like oh, it's aitch.ome are like oh, it's like guerilla marketing I'm like, you guys are absolutely retarded. I am telling you what it is U. So we just continue to try to You know, like it is just listen, what happened to my account and the stink I made twisted Sony's arm into hiring new fraud people. That's good. That's a good first step This thing shows that even if the problems are incidental, there are quality of life issues for your audience and it was as easy as people accessing your API and telling it whatever they wanted. And to me, that's crazy Now There are of course bespoke access things to the PSN and people understand this PSN profile scrapes trophies And no, like, Sony let that happen. Sony doesn't have to let that happen. So like you want a level of access to like what is going on the PlaySation network store ideas. Like when we talk about the guy Billy, Billy Koon or the fuck his name is that like leaks everything, he has like some sort of access that like to the Playtation store So I'm not saying we don't want that stuff, but anyway, that's whats happening, Chris. Now, was your account affected? A lot of people, most people'less weren't affected. It should be noted Um, I don't They I don't I didn't check. To be honest, like I didn't because I've been playing a lot on like old machines over the last like over the last week. I'm playing on like PS two and shit. So I just haven't really turned My stuff on I tried to log in earlier. I tried to log in the middle of this just to check on my PC, but like it's now it's giving me a thing where it's It forgets my login all the time whenever I do it from PC, so I'd have to go to my console I feel like can you check mine? canan you check mine? Yes. I a show? I could actually becauseuse I don't know if I'm actually logged on on any of my I'm only logged in on my console, I think Playstation, PS app You see How dot I even search for it? Itesn't know recently probably It's been recently played right? and stuff like that. Yeah, like it it would show like it if you there's a decent chance you weren't targeted. you know. Yeah, I don't think so. Like because it's Destiny two z zo seven time crisis, which is all accurate U So I got out Scott free yet again But uh That's I don't know man. I saw that I saw this whole thing going on. and I was like, what are you what are you saying First of all, I didn't even realize that shit was on the the PlayStation store in the first place, L like Sxhop simimulator and stuff like this. Like I mean, I kind of I guess intntellectually, I knew that games like that must be there, but I just never I've never seen them Um So that was kind of like, oh, okay, interesting But the fact that this was The fact that this is a thing that actually happened and that you had seventy thousand games at to your account is fucking bewildering. It's just like It's I'm sad that this keeps happening to my account and like ruining my ability to enjoy my time on PlayStation. But at the same time I'm trying to make it so that maybe it' I'm a good person for it to happen to so that I can bring attention to these things and now try to souoop them under the ru As I told you, and I don't necessarily blame anyone for doing this and I'm not going to out anyone. it's not personal, but it's like What happened to my account when I got boosted, I am not I am far from the first notable person that this has happened to and Other people just chose not to try to run it up the flagpole and do something about it, but that's just not in my nature And I understand people don't like want to instigate nefarious forces and all that. I'm like, I don't want to instigate nefarious forces either. I just I want to be left alone likeike if you're gonna to fuck with me in my shit. it's like, well What else is there to do Um So yeah, hopefully this is so someone on the PSN profiles noted that It looks like the these they say quote, looks like the Sony's bandaid fix was to filter from the games played, etcetera. any games that your account doesn't own the license to Seems like a decent way to quickly remove most of these absurd games and playt times for many profiles, but at the cost of removing the tracking from any legitimately played games, like physical games or shared games. There is a problem and also I think the hours for a lot of people's games are busted and it's unclear if they can really fix that shit. Like so I'm going to like they I am positive they can do it on a case by case basis, like go in and fix it but it's like I don't They're not going to do that So like there has to be a batch solution or And the other thing ins says you were saying, like peopleople had bring this to my attention, likeike your shit's all fucked up and's like, I would never noticed becauseuse I don't to look at that stuff either Like everything works fine when you go on PSN for me It's just those widgets don't load but I never look at them So it's like so I'm glad people brought it to my attention and I was able to try to help We'll see what happens crazy I don't know, man, P Playsttation networks kind of kind of sucks Kind of a mess. to say the least Excuse me I was saying that on PSM profiles, I'm like, I just feel like things haven't really changed Like, PSN has always kind of been a joke And I think we have a level of st Stockholm syndrome with it because it's what we're used to But like you just don't hear about the shit on the other networks. No, you know, I do I remember a big a big thing back when When the hack happened, the big like the big one that took PlayStation Network offline for three weeks or something like that I feel like I remember being three weeks Some people say it's a longer. S I think it was about three weeks. look. In my memory, I remembember it being three weeks, about a month Um, I remember the big that was the only thing you really had to say for a while As like an icebox guy You know what I mean? Because it's like everybody would be like, oh, you'reaying for you're paying for your online. It's like, yeah, well it doesn't go offline for an entire month. Like I guess it was a joke for for a long time. Yeah. Agably Arguably still is. It's kind of amazing that they recovered U ye Yeah, it's an insane It was That really is inse. there too be fair that is a I wouldn't say it's the best time for that to happen, but it's definitely a better time to happen than if it were to happen now when like so many games are online and so like so much of the ecosystem revolves around digital Licenses and purchases like that Um, they kind of got lucky that it happened in twenty eleven and not you know, twenty eighteen or twenty seventeen or something like that J less online dependent back then It's funny, man, L like I was looking. it's twenty four days. so you're right. And I'm just reading some of the stuff on Wikipedia and it's like, Yeahah, I reported on this so much. I think some of actuallyite my cite my work. But yeah all you might remember that particular situation, so like there was a guy named George Hotts. who's like still a dude in like the tech industry. who at the time was like a younger person, like a hacker And he jail broke the PS three I don't know if you remember this and Sony Sudem Like personally. Apparently, this was done in retaliation for that. Oh wow So am That's crazy. Yeah And I remember it so well. I just remember the whole situation so well because It was such to be frank, I mean, it was like peak IGN and it was it was such a boon to just having things to write about and things to talk about and And yeah, it was a onlyly kind of period with. And I feel bad for the game. like it killed socom and a few other things just by sheer timing And Sony recovered which is kind of Amazing actually It was a bad. It wasn't something where it's like, o function like they exposed every user's personal information, their credit card information, their addresses. like it was bad And I actually remember talking I was kind of like quick on it because like I was in the industry, obviously, so like we learned about it very quickly And it was spreading quickly but I remember calling Bank of America which I was with at the time to talk to Like and be like my credit card is exposed. I need you to like take it down. And I'm like, And I remember telling to the lady like you're about to get a lot of calls And she was like she was like, o, like kind of kind of thing. you know, like and lo and behold That's what happened. So Bad Bad, bad bad, bad memories, book good memies Well, speaking of PlaySation There is new reporting now. We'll stick with push square, our friends over there. our friend Samy writes. aboutbout this emmbracer report. So embracer, of course, is the mega publisher that we've made fun of for many years that vastly overexpanded, but they're doing their thing still and they've truncated and they're surviving. They released it an annual report as they get through their fiscal year about what they think is going on. and there's an interesting statement in it We don't need to get any further than this statement Um, and it's Some analysts believe that Sony is now considering pushing back the debut of its next PlayStation console. From twenty twenty seven to twenty twenty eight or even twenty twenty nine, E quote I D don't think they would talk they would know. And I don't think they would talk out of their ass like this. Analysts are wrong. I'm an analyst and I'm wrong about things Sometimes right. Usually right? I mean ask Xxox out write I Um There's an argument, Chris that like Moore'slaw makes that Moving is not a trivial thing. All right It would even be cheaper to manufacture and store it. then to move. becausecause you get your place in the line. You have your assets allocated. And yet I really have a hard time believing they're releasing this console next year. It just doesn't like When you listen to Asha Sharma and others speak about Xbox, like they're saying like, you know They've been buried by component pricing in a way that somebody hasn't and they say that that like they're a uniquely effected entity in this regard. But everyone has to deal with with these problems. And again, I just feel like there's a lack of demand and Spring twenty eight seems like it would be more ideal, but even pushing it further than that. But that's also selfish of me because I just don't really feel like we need new consoles What do you think of this? about some about now embrace or big publisher saying like that they're they understand Playstation might move the console I mean, I've been saying this for a while, man. Like I just the energy is not Like you can feel it in the air, man. Like it's just like it's not, people aren't stoked about seeing what the next playaystation is or what it can do. like and obviously these things change when we get to see them You know, people always like new shiny hardware that does new shiny things When they see it U, but usually beforehand, there's like some anticipation. There's buuzz about like Oo, what could it be You know, there's like all these like hypotheticals's like this u this wishing that's going on. It's like, Oh, I hope it does this. hope it does that I don't seem to see that really in any of the spaces that I'm in. and the spaces that I'm in are fairly videoideo game oriented Like no one seems to be. wondering what the next PlayStation is going to do because the PS five does everything they needed to do Uh, and people are struggling to find things that they want out of it that aren't already taken care of really. and there's I don't know, man. it does seem The idea that there's going to be a new Playsttation out next year feels fundamentally not real Like it just I don't have it I can't base that on it. It just doesn't feel correct. And u I I could see them pushing it. twenty twenty nine would be wild Um Although to be honest, I think that is probably the most appropriate time for them to do it That would probably be the time when people would be like kind of more excited, more interested There would be some feeling that enough time has passed that the technology would be worth investing in at that point Um, We don't know how long the economy is going to be kind of fucked also. So like that that leaves the rest of this year kind of wishy washy Um But I could easily see a twenty twenty eight you know, Push instead of next year because next year just doesn't it doesn't feel right man Yeah, I don't know this is just intuition really But like it just doesn't I don't see it I totally agree. I think u Like you were saying like, you have nothing to go off of but you feel this way. I think feeling is a good. intuition is a good thing to follow if you've been doing this for a long time, which we have and it's like There just seems to be no eyesight over and again. There seems to be no energy for this thing that. by this point in previous generations there was like a real energy for the next thing In this generation, we see tens of millions of people still playing PlayStation four Right. I think things are I think times have just changed I also think that The economy is obviously making things very complicated because at this point, like the PS five should be dirt cheap and They should be selling them briskly And they're not. I actually think I read a report that like PlayStation five sales are like really low right now because of the price hikes Like even for them one usually lower, they're kind of stuck a little bit. And uh Well, we have this question and I think this was originally a question at the end of the show. I brought up here because and I replaceed it with something else because I think it speaks to this a little bit. Monday Bk wrote in and said Hey boys, with most of the week's gaming buzz around the Xbox studiooss bloodletting a trend that will no doubt come to Sony's first party studios I agree Do you think that Sony needs their own Asha Sarm and subsequent poison pills to get things back on track for the PSX launch While Sony isn't even close to the dire straightits Xboxes in, the PS five generation will no doubt be looked at as a waste as wasted opportunities Thanks for the great content as always and get Consent from that chicken, get consent from anyone only the chick. Um It is true that PlayStation is not in the same position Xboxes and Xbox is in a truly dire situation for their gaming hardware brand However, I think the pressure is much higher on Sony. because Play they have to make Playsttation worker, the company Xbox goes away, N nothing really changes for Micsoft It's not an important component of what they do U Playsttation is a vital component of what Sony does. It's become more and more vital the longer it's existed and everyone who looks at their financials knows that. so there's like a lot riding on getting this right Like a lot more is riding on this for Sony than it is for Microsoft. And it's probably a little bit scary There are advantages they can leverage They of course, have deep decades old electronics expertise incredible rel Moos Law talks about this like incredible relationships with all these different companies He says like the people at these companies like the Sony people a lot more than the Microsoft people because they're much more serious, like engineering level people So they have certain things that they can leverage, however I think that the financial reality is is like I'm not entirely sure if they can If you're if you're manufacturing something much later Like so you're going from twenty seven to twenty nine. It's like, well, at that point, why would you manufacture the same machine G I'll be so far behind. Right Exactly. L I can see them going spring twenty eight or even manufacturing on time in say, fall twenty seven and holding them Um I don't if you go much further than that, you have to really ask yourself, like what are we doing And it could be that they're going to do that where they're like, we're just going to scrap this entire thing. we're going to eat a lot of money Um, We're going to lose our place in line And that's fine because we'll get in line in twenty nine with this new machine, this different machine, like a different PS six And I don't know if that's I want to say I don't if's possible. it'sly I don't know if that's viable or feasible, and I don't know how nervous they are behind the scenes Because I think one of the major things that they're struggling with is just price for the PS five And if you can't get people to move over to PS five, then I don't know I don't know what you do with the PS six. and I just I think they' I think they're This is just a cosmic situation of of The tariffs and the economic stuff is like not even really the major issue anymore. It really is now this, like the component crunch and we were saying it earlier about buying things now because things are just getting more expensive. It's what' been saying about PlayStation five for years. It's like, ironically You would think, if you ask me like, what would PS five cost now in twenty twenty It's like Colin in twenty twenty six Like what do you think PS five would cost like like hundred bucks. And if that were true, by the way and have a bananza on our hands, but it's the exact opposite I would love to see the PS five generation extended But I just don't know if it's I don't know if it's free I'll have to have Mor' lawn to talk about it again too I don't know if it's feasible or practical. I mean he really makes the case. It's just not as easy as you think to move Um Yeah, no I mean it's definitely not as easy as it looks. And to be fair, I do want to say this It's not necessarily that I don't think And maybe it should have been how I've talked about this. I what I feel like what I feel in my in my soul is that if Sony is to put out a machine next year, that's an insane thing to do That's really what I L they could do it becausecause it's like this is what the timelines have determined Um you know, it is what it is. We got to get it out now because if we wait another year or two, then it's going to be an outdated machine. Although you could make the argument that there's not really another console to compare it to really. So like dated machine in comparison to what If no other home console is really even competing in the same ground, you have to switch doing its own thing you know and nextXbx is kind of gone Um So arguably like maybe that's not even really that big of a deal for them because it would still be miles ahead or potentially miles ahead of with the base PS five or even PS four P is Um It just feels like That just seems like an insane thing to do even if even if it is just like, oh, here's the timeline becausecause nobody wants this thing. It's not going to be affordable Like I know that there's like this thing about like, the components of it are probably going to be cheaper because of X,Z it's just like, I don't, man I don't know. I don't know whether like I don't, I'm sure that there's people way smarter than me that can figure out why that makes sense to me that justt I can't swear that I can't square a PlayStation six coming out that's cheaper than a PS five proro. It doesn't register to me. That's possible. And And if such a thing is possible It would it would it would kind of imply to me that there's a compromise being made on what's being sold to the point where why would I buy that Right, R. I already have a PS five proro like, you know what I mean? Like possibly be better than what I have even though it's cheaper. Like I feel like a lot of people are going to be wrestling with that because it doesn't make sense. It's not things are That's not how anything work. Yeah, it's funny, you say that because I had seen that brought up in the context of I had thought about it as like, all right, so if that's really true, and again, like intellectually I understand how that could be true it but if if it's true, then wouldn't you immediately discontinue the PS five Like, why would you even sell it Right. It speaks PS five and PS four, which it does or will then you would just immediately pull the PS five, I would assume and just like we're shutting it down. Like there's literally reason manufure this machine And that's the right I I struggle with because I don't think that was part of their plan either Like Every console comes out and you still kind of were able to marinate in the old console for a couple of years NES to S NES. T no Genesis to Saturn. like there's no there's no exceptions. So I don't know, man'am. It's going to be I am I was saying this on another show recently where I was like, what's exciting is like, we'll kind of know this time next year and we'll probably know early next year what they're really going to do. and it's going to be so exciting just to haveave Sony finally acknowledge and talk about it Yeah and like a real way. They they're going to have to do it they have to make they have decisions to make dude about and they probably already made them about what they're going to do with this machine. But I agree with you. The only place that I've been where I felt like there was real excitement for it was when I was on M's Lws dead show and I was like, And hardware people, which is what listen to his stuff, like people that are really enthusiastic about electronics and whatever, they're into it. But I'm like, I f understand. And by the way, I'm into it. I'll buy it I just yeah, I just it's me. It's not like you don' not make You're kind of making it for me, but you're not really making it for me. You're making it for a much broader audience than me So right I always like new hardware. I like opening a new box with a new shiny thing in it, even if it does barely anything different. I have a PS four I have a PS five Pro And it's like it's, it is better than the base PS five, but like it doesn't feel like it you know, a revolutionary change. It doesn't feel like a monumentally different machine to me U But it's fun to get those days. likeike I like that stuff But like I'm not the average person You know, like it's just like it's a very different thing And you're going have to convince a lot of people who are a lot more casual There's millions of people on PS four, like you said Like tens of millions Tens of millions And And I gott to be real like n PS four I keep wanting to say PS four proro for some reason. PS four proro so rained in in my memory Um The PSI proro runs everything at a degree where I'm like, I'm completely satisfied with it Like I just finished D of seven and it was great. And I had literally no problems with it at all Whereas like I feel like by this point in the PS four generation, I was starting to notice You know what I mean? I was like I was like, oh man That's that's a little rough. you know, this isn't o we're at thirty still Like I I'm just left I'm I'm left with no wants really Like they're going to have to find new things to sell me that I didn't even realize that I wanted. And mayaybe they'll do that to their credit. Like it's possible. Um I just literally cannot fathom what it could be that they could show me. That would make me really, really excited for a machine that is going to be essentially a PS five that runs things even faster and even oh it's eight K resolutions. Like I don't care About AK? Yeah I don't even have an AKTV doesn't m O twenty frames is cool, but like sixties, sixtyies great Perfectly fine. Yeah, I agree with you, entirely Chris. like I'm very satisfied right betweenween residentval requium Pragmada zble zer seven That kind of stuff. It's like these these are great games, dude. and they work great and they run great Iight. I agree with you. I'm not much of a graphics for but This generation doesn't feel long of the tooth to me, if anything, it just feels like it's unubstantiated and almost didn't exist And uh So we'll see, we'll see what happens. But I thought that was an interesting little story Nonetheless about the potential future if publishers are kind of talking openly about that Something to keep in mind they're certainly taking it seriously All right, over on the website, the games business the host of this show, Christopher Dring sat down and spoke with a couple of guys from House Mark and I thought that they had some interesting stuff to say. So I thought we would go through over this a little bit. Of course, House Mark is the Sony own first party studio that just reallyle Saros and is best known perhaps more recently for returnnal And of course Rezog Gon and Sardust and Detonation, all the ges we talk about so much So he sat down and spoke with two different people. One of them is Michael Hiveri, who I spoke with on our show a couple of weeks ago, and he's an old friend of mine. And the other one is Al Lari Kotin, who is the longtime studiohe of House Mark and the co founder of the team And of course, Housemark is the is the unity is unification of two finnished teams in the nineties Bloodhouse and Teramark and the name Housemark Um So here's a few quotes First of all, he says they're talking a little bit about Saros and I thought you'd like this Chris He says they use a term here playing the game. He s, quote If you get into the flow state, it starts to be what we call bullet ballet It just starts to be second nature and you immerse yourself in this world What do you think of that as a genre? Ballet that's cool I like that. Yeah, I like that. Because it does bullet hell People Some people call Housemart games bullet hell I don'tree that they're bullet hell games. I think bullet Hell games are way harder. And I also think bullet hell games are two d So like there's there's more of a three D feelield of the ballet And I like Yeah Yeahip allalley. You could tell that I mean, it's definitely, you could tell there's blood Hell in it But it in and of itself is not a bullet hell. Yeah, like for bullet hell games to be as hard in three D as they are in two D You would have to saturate the world with an order of magnitude, more bullets, because you have more places to go So that's why I feel like it doesn't quite read, like It's like I've been seeing with me the Hollllowower recently peopleople being like, oh, it's like souls game and'm like just becausecause it's hard doesn't mean it's souls game. That bothers the hell of. It's like, How' your souls? What are you talking about Yeah What do you mean there's a if there's aarry it's aouls game. and it's like, oh my Godd It's okay, is this old or whatever W you remember that article that was like crash Band when the insane trilogy came out and they were re call it like, dark Souls a platform. Oh shut up and relax. Yeah, we got to have a wide wider lexicon vernacular of things to say They also talk a little bit about what they're trying to do U And I thought it was interesting they use from software as like kind of a North star for them This quote and this is Cutin talking again. He says,Qote from softare has been doing a similar genre for a very long time and built up their fan base over that period We have two unique games out, reteturnal, SarosS. It's kind of a new thing that you need to educate the market about so that people say, hey, these flow states are really cool From software's journey from Kingsfield to what they are today, we're not presuming that would be we would be anywhere close to that, but Like them, we will keep our core, keep educating the market that these are the coolest games you can play. That's our goal I kind of like that. I mean Howouse Sark on one hand lacks the financial emphasis that Sony needs right now. and yet they are experimenting in a way that I think is useful. It's just hard for me to imagine them breaking through in the way Fromsoft did. Mbe mayaybe that will happen. And he's right, like Kings's field is fundamentally the same game as like Demon souls. it's just it's a Demon souls a more robust, more hardcore version of it, but they got there. You think Housemark can follow a similar trajectory It's possible. I I got to be real like I kind of I don't like I liked Seros. I liked reteturnal I worry though that the transition between those things, like I feel like they're going in the opposite direction kind of Are they not? Because like they like Sarus is actually less Like if you're going to use like if Kings'field is some is similar to Darkous, but Dark Souls is a more hardcore version of Kingsfield If we're using Saros and Rurnal as as the analogous kind of factors here, like They've kind of gone the opposite way, where it's like reteturnal is more hardcore than Cyrus' So they're actually arguably like making it making the game less itself. Yeah, that's a good point as it goes al. Now granted, you could make an argument that like Paternal is a more hardcore version of the stuff that they made before Um you could make that case and you'd probably be right Um, So it's, I guess it's there's there's room for experimentation. Um like I think Elder like Elden Ring Night Rign is not a particularly hardcore game. It's like, you know, it' It's a very different kind of casual or casual in comparison to their prime their prime stuff So like, there's ro for experimentation. but like I think, I don't it's hard for me to imagine it breaking through, but I also I'd be foolish to count anything count anything out. You know, It's just they seem like very niche games. and they seem like niche games on purpose. and s good and bad, depending on how you slice it and depending on what you're looking for, depending on what Sonys looking for. I know that Sony is in the market right now of making big blockbuster stuff. And the same thing with Xbox, by the way, they're refocusing entirely on big name IP So maybe this's just not what they need right now U but I like that studios are out making weird experxperimental shit I just, u I think it's a bummer that that stuff isn't as rewarded as it should be. And I think the reality is it's like that stuff isn't rewarded as it should be is because the main audience is a lot more casual than it used to be No, it's it's a different audience been like the games audience is way more different today than it was in like, you know, the PS one do error Yeah, you're right. You're right. And I I wonder like they were purchased in twenty twenty one. at the time, we were we were, I mean, I still believe House Mark and BluePoint were excellent purchases and exactly what Sony should have done and It is my sincere hope that though they're under new leadership since that era they understand what they have with House Mark I get a little nervous about how Sark just based on the performance of Sarows and how much the game purportedly me cost and that they're not going to make that money back, I don't think. At least not anytime soon And they actually speak a little bit to this Um the game business says Housemark isn't at the fr software scale today Sarros launched in April during a competitive window for video game releases. and although it found an audience, it didn't light up the sales charts, but there's still time, Heveri says. And then Um they say quote, it's funny, returnal when we shipped. It started gaining traction a bit later. A lot of the community got to unlock it a little bit more and then that tends to trickle down and people get more interested in it And then Kutin says, quote, this is just the start of the discussion and conversation with the gaming community. If you have played Saros You know that there are a lot of things we can do to tweak and add We hope we can keep doing that for a while. quote. And I did ask Gregory Ludden, the director of the game when I interviewed him what the future was for Saros because they do li to upgrade their games and he didn't have anything to say They did release a photo mode though. and I must say this, I maybe you should have brought up last week. I think it's when I first noticed it, They did something very clever where the photo mode has like a series of trophies attached to it where it's like, go take a picture of this. Go take a picture of this creature doing this. Go take a picture of this boss. ike I'm like, that's kind of c Um, yeah I do wonder what Sony's fix Sony has a typical fixation on first party games of updating them and sticking with them for a while. and yet we saw with Ghostiote that like legends kind of came and then they're like, are we're done 's over And I wonder if it a similar trajectory to get you on the next game, which is probably going to be more lucrative. Now There are a couple other things in here that I thought were worth talking about as well Um, And I think major thing that I want to say here is Well, first of all, they've gone from they're saying Stard us ten to twelve people and now they're up to one hundred and twenty. So a fairly expensive studio to run in Finland But he says this, u Putin does about what they want to do next. And this goes to your point about where they might be going. He says Q, we just pin ourselves, Are we dreaming that we were given this opportunity to create this thing, a new game and new IP with these resources You talk about Sarah we are quite grounded as well. We were twenty six years as an independent just managing to survive and moving from one game to another Right now, we are talking about how to proceed with SarOos and discussing with the community, but Then of course, what what should we do in the future There are interesting opportunities we'd like to look at That might not be at the scale of Sarow's There are so many things that we want to explore and we will find whether it's possible or not. I am so deeply attracted to the idea of Housemark reverting back to what it used to do, which is ApleA games. I just don't know that that's a safe place for you to be either Like I think that that's going to create an unfortunately an ecomic tension for them where they're going to get themselves shut down. if they don't Duce games that sell and make money. And I know people want those games and I appreciate that It's just not where the future is for PlayStation anymore. Those games, other people can make those games in spades You don't need to pay for an expensive cow to get this boutique milk. You don't U And so I would love for them to go back like super Stardust and these games are incredibly special They really are But at one hundred and twenty people, I don't know, man. unless what you want to do is do a tearaway style thing where you have a small team Make something while you move on to the next thing that's bigger, I don't know I will say this, Chris, because there's a lot of conjecture around what will happen to house markarket. I don't know Like I think layoffs are obviously coming to Sony Studios I wouldn't be surprised they even shut one or two of them down. I think that's Unfortunate, but true I'd be especially worried if I were Ben, for instance On the other hand, so like that that's true and that's happening And I think that that will happen, you know, next quarter. They have to remain, I think, vigilant in and allocating these resources properly and understanding, I think what the purpose of the first party is at this juncture. and unfortunately, it's just not to make small things So I do think that there is a potential tion there and yet, I would also say that I feel like Sony wouldn't be letting them do all these interviews if they were going gonna to really At least at least I I would hope that they would be organized enough to know like we know we're going to hit these guys. Let's not Put them on the meeting board You know, wasn't there like a whole thing where like Jim didnn't Jim Ryan go to like a party? Oh London Yeah. And then they shut it down the next week So they I mean, it's true's best history of that. And then right I mean, even right now, like in the news with u with a Hellbade in Sen Sena with Microsoft where they they let them show off their game and then that's brutal man. knowing that they were going to shut up. So it's like I I know what you're saying, but like I never put it past. these companies to make like really weird decisions like that I don't know, I think Housemark can can be I think they can have a really compelling future, but I do wonder like purposes in this in this new paradigm Uh do you do you even Do you see a potential future where they just get spun off? or not spun off, but u I don't know get independence. Yeah. I mean, I it is my hope that if the it is my hope that Beuse people are talking about this a lot with some of the Micsoft Stios and I'm like, I really find double Fine might be able to find investment, but I find it someome of the stuff dubious,ike I don't know why you would want to invest in these teams Frankly, I don't know why you would even wantan to invest your own money in a double fine. They haven't released aame that is sold in a long time Um and House Mark has stature and like they're one of Finland's most important game developers, but like it's like Could they run at a wouldould they be able to spit split away and sustain one hundred and twenty people? Very unlikely, but like, will they be able to go back to their independent roots end and be able to solidify themselves as an independent studio again. that would be my hope that they would be given that option. But we'll so know. We'll see. Yeah, I just think it's it's It's just I think what's bothering me a lot about like modern game development right now is just like the the inflation of these budgets and like just like yearsars of war being like, four hundred million dollars. Like, what do you Like look, make no mistake as a player I Really excited to see what a four hundred million dollarsar gears game looks like If you have to be like, okay, we got to sell Uh fucking We got to sell fifteen million copies First party to break even Like at a certain point, it's like, what do you unless you're GTA, which like you know you're going, you know you're going to be fine I just don't understand why a lot of why most studios aren't operating from the Asp operating from the break even sale number backwards You know what I mean? Like shouldn shouldn't you be more focused on that Like shouldn't you be like, okay, we can It'll take we need to sell We want to make a game that we can break even with like like two million cobies You know what I mean? Right I understand it's like difficult to figure out. and I understand that there's like a lot of ecomic factors that get in the way of that. I get that But like I think it's so unhealthy to be like we got to break even at fifteen million copies. like this is not sustainable We can't keep doing this. No, exxactly like I agree with the assessment about Saros that it clearly sold softly I just don't know what that means. I don't think it's a sign. I don't think Cyrus is good as eturnnal. I don't I also think that A lot of people love it and it's a very good game And I just think maybe player it's ironic like five years, player behavior' kind of changed. It could be that if you put Returnal in this place in Saros back then the sales will be identical because I think people just are behaving differently. May There's also like that was that was kind of when was a return? was that twenty twenty? It was it was april twenty twenty one it was was five years to the date of of Sar Relely state. So it it was a launch window game So that's pandemic A game That was like during A very different time also, right. A lot more people playing games. I don't know man Theres There's a lot of course dreking that needs to be done as far as like right sizing And uh, just scaling things in an appropriate way. Like I don't wantan to be waiting six to seven years for new video games And I especially don't want to wa for them just because like they got toa put fucking peach fuzz on every character to make sure that they're hyper realistic because if they're not Everyone's going to freak out like they did with the Halo Infinite Bute board when he was getting mailid and that one s That's the thing that's bothering me too, by the way. Like this demand for like, we want things quicker and And it's like, why are we putting this much money into these things? Like whyy do we have four hundred million dollars gain? It's because if is because when people skimp on a fucking animation for one frame, you guys sigle it out and then freak out over all over the place This is why people are scared to not put that money in because they're afraid of a frame going viral That's gonna fuck their entire game up It's all like, I don't know. you get what you you get what you you wish for, I guess. Yeah. I'll be interested to see. I I am trying to read positively into House Mark doing a lot of media rounds, N not saying he's going to happen a sucker bunch because I don't think it's going through. They might have playayoffs. but They didn't do nearly as many interviews for Ghost as That's true. as I don't know what that's all about either to be honest. They were not nearly as successful And that game's probably sold ten times better, literally. thenen Yeah, then Sarah. Okay Chris, I'm very intrigued to what you think of this next story. We have a letter from John who says, Hello gents We're a little more than a month away from Halo finally coming to PlayStation, a very legendary moment The trophyist was recently revealed and I wanted to hear from Chris What is your take on the platinum requirements, which include a lasso run cororrect me if I'm wrong, but up until recently there was still a bounty open for anyone who could complete a last run of Halo two, and now they expect us me imortals to do this What are the odds youllak your fingers obtaining this one. So on Halo Waypoint. uh, they the gameer score for the achievements is here too, but the trophy list is here I don't really know how to interpret it. I'm very curious to know what you think of it. Yeah, these are these are cool, man. It's it's surreal I'm going be to get a platum in and hal again it's kind of that's really cool but I mean, these seem interesting. I like the idea of some of these like there's one without taking damage like I one like there's definite going to be a meta, right? where's like, there's definitely gonna be like, o There's there's a best level to do that on you know, or things like that But as far as the Lasso run goes, that's legendary all skulls on. So legendary difficulty, the highest difficulty with all the difficulty modifiers turned on Um, The Halo Tube bounty was cleared. It took about it took a couple weeks, I think It took either two or three weeks for somebody to do it. which is crazy That's like. It's really difficult. But also Halo two is notoriously difficult because that game was put together in about eleven months based on like an old scrapped version of the game that couldn't run on like a stencil engine that they had running on Xbox that they could not actually chip And so they didn't have a lot of time to balance legendary like normal legendary on Halo two without any difficulty modifiers is fucy. I have not done it. Like I haven't done I've played the shit out of all those games. I have not done. It's fucking so hard Um So that was comical is what I'm saying Every other game, I think is achievable Laso. It's difficult. It's definitely difficult and it's going to be stressful. I think this will be possible. I wonder though, because some of u some of the skulls in this game The skulls used to be entirely difficulty modifiers, so they used to all just make the game harder with the exception of I think one or two that gimmick skulls Like I think one made rare combat dialogue a little bit more. Oh cool, like way more that was the I would have been your daddy skull, which is awesome U So that made rare comment dialogue more common. And then I think another one was like run birthday party where like if you get headshots, confettte explodes. And that one's in this too But like there's other skulls that like give you infinite ammo In this one and there's skulls that let you fly around the map. like without like they just like hover across the map just to break the game open. So I wonder I wonder if there's going to be like a particular set that is leegendary All Skulls on that excludes some of those trivializing skulls I actually feel like last time in this game if it is true to the name where like it's just all the skulls that are available Be fucking mega easy Um But I feel like there must be some caveat to that But it looks Achievable to me. likeike this is u This is exciting, man. this is cool. I like I like what they're doing with it especially especially like that it's a halo game that doesn't have any multiplayer trophies because those were the Those were the hardest in a in every. I think I got all the achievements in three and ODST and I almost got an enreached but they took away one of the playlists. And so I just couldn't I just couldn't do it and that was always a bummer to me. So to know that that's not a danger here is is nice. and u a lot more enticing to me. Did you do you remember it was like an early achievement in trophy thing that they stopped doing because they realized it was annoying where you like had to get within the top one or five percent of like like all people on a leaderoard or something like that. And it's like eventually it becess, you know And yeah, thank God, they as far as my memory serves, like I don't think any Halo game ever did something like that. That would be so that would be so aggravating. Yeah, I think I might have been like an early Fza game or something did that and it was basically impossible Um yeah, I've probably But they were learning how to do these things. I mean, they didn't really understand how achievements worked at the time I do like the whereere is it Oh yeah, activate all thirteen terminals. Lore, have mercy. I that that was Oh yeah, any name for trophy. Yeah I'm excited. july twenty eighth for Halo campaign evolved on Playsttation five as early as the twenty third if you preorder it, which is twenty dollars or not preorder it. If you get the special edition, which is twenty dollars more, I'm not going to do that. ten dollars I would have done it We'll see how I feel the time.'ll see you Yeah, if there's nothing There's nothing to play, I might. Yeah right Exactly But I think I'll I think o' wait. I got to say I'm looking more forward to it than I thought I would. I think it looks a lot better than it did last year. My main concern was like that unreal engine stuttering that they had when they first showed it off. and that seems to be gone now. I have my own minor nitpicks. I'm really attached to the series, so like I'm really sensitive to really hyper specific art design things that like nobody gives a shit about but me and like maybe like a handful of other hardcore people, but I think they it looks like they've done a pretty good job bring it forward And again, I'll say this again, it's just like it's way It's so much nicer looking than that twenty eleven anniversary thing they did. I really hated the way that game looked. That game is fucking ugly a sin I can't I cannot get over how ugly that game is Surreal shipman with the trophies,'re right there with Halo be very curious to see how if they really do continue to bring them all over or not at this point don't I don't think anything' is going to change Yeah Yeah All right This is a quick story. I just wanted to acknowledge this is that according to a website the insnyder. com. this is apparently like an entertainment newsletter that's fairly famous that you have to subscribe to. I didn't subscribe to it. So I don't have the full information. However, people have been linking to it because it is entitled exclusive Mark Hamel joins season three of Pacock's twwisted Med. So I don't the details ofact what he's doing, what he's playing. I'm paying for this. h What do you think of that? Mark Hamel coming to a peacock' Swist of Medal, by the way Peacock for freeing quotes now because it's part of my Comcast subscription I got an email being like to activate your free Pacockck subscription I' like, right So I have peacock, there's nothing. I think Seinfeld and the office are on there. so it's good for that So yeah, I still himt watch the second season of Wice M metal But I should do that I meanwere it It' suppos to be good. I mean, obviously's good and did well because they renew it again. but Mark Hamill. Yeah I wonder who he'll I actually don't like, does he has he ever played anybody in interested bedalle? I genuinely don't know. I don't I don't think so either. but like maybe don't know I don't know I'll look That's cool. I mean I like Mark Hamillel's performances. I think he does a really good job. I think he's a good actor I don't know what to make of that though, really. Like if I were casting Mark Hamon, anything I'd want him to do a voice for something. likeike maybe like a like a faceless character or something like that. the like he voices like, I don't know, like he' just got a great voice. Like that would be what I would do. likeike butm I'm struggling to remember Any character in twisted metal even can function that way if there's like a robotan. I don't It's been such a long time I only really remember Axel and the fucking clown What's a clown's name? Twet swetoth, right? Yeah I don't'm not I'm not like a big twist of metal person myself I'm trying to find live action roles Television. He has a lot of roles here. voice roles, okay Nothing for He's got a ton of voice ro. Yeah, nothing for twisted metal teelevision Are there video games? Yeah, here you go I wish I could remember. know know wing commommander, that's the one I remember him being a big deal in back in the day. That was a big deal that he was in those games Wasn't he also in star citizen or am I insane? Yeah, I think Who was that actor who was like Maybe it was him, or maybe it wasn't, but like there was like some I remember they like they announced like some crazy big actor who was in Stars and it Star and And remember being like, oh, weird The cast for squad trailer for it and everything. Let's see Star Citizens single player campaign squadron forty two has Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill Henry Travel and Jillian Anderson, Andy Cirkcus, and Mark Strong, according to Gemini. A L little weird That's a stacked cast for a game that I've never heard anything about That whole game is so It's like a total mystery Obviously it works. Yeah. I mean, obviously like they wouldn't be able to keep doing this, I don't think if it wasn't something which is what's perhaps most fascinating about it, actually, if that makes any sense. where it's like actually they maybe didn't rip anyone off I don't know. Maybe not. I don't know. It's a very eve online kind of game to be where I was just like, I'm not even You do what you got toa do I guess. I'm never gonna to wrap my head around any of this. Yeah, I remember that the Wikipedia says I remember reading this last month, they surpassed a billion dollars in crowdfunding So clearly people like it Like that's what's. You can't really hate on it because it's not, it doesn't seem like a shell game or something like that. It actually theyre actually. And Squadron forty two is supposed to be like the single player shooter, which is kind of neat So Right. I don't know if they're going to like dust five one forward or anything like that. I think it hopefully it'll just stand onn its own. God Dust five one four I what a good idea. It's E is a great idea. It's a bummer. Like that's all execution, men because that is a that is a dope idea Oh shit myC just Yeah go ahead do you that Chris is just shutting his AC off if you're not a video listener, so we'll wait for him to come back. All right, he's returned I swear to God, I always wake up and I feel like I must like in a daze like turn it off and I accidentally set it to auto or something Beuse I feel like I make a note to just no. I don't want the AC getting on It's like my freeze. It's funny. Yeah, that's I've been experiencing that too is we actually we were talking about it last night because I'm like, it's so fucking cold in here Like, why is it so cold? Like why does the AAver shut off You know, and it's because it's so hot out, I think that it's like humid and it's confused or something I like I don't. I'm like I'm like fucking frigid like, why is it so cold? I'm like, I'm not comfortable, you know All right God I keep the lock whered I'm sorry I keep fucking the u Just figure it out. I keep fucking the time, Jamps up Do some pav work All right, some quick call of duty news here Trc, the one of the call of duty studios owned by Activion, which was in turn owned by Microsoft now revealed Black ops and black ops two were both coming to Playstation They'll be released in July. Iron Galaxy, the port studio is doing the ports on their behalf Black opps and Black opps twoour our course of PlayStation three games and are therefore on our ecosystem isolated and locked off of our platforms. This is not a problem on Xbox where these games have been playable for years So Black opps came out in twenty ten, Black opps two in twenty twelve, both from Tre Aarchc I played Black opps one. I don't think I played the second one I think I might have been kind of out by then. Well, no, twenty twelve I think I was still playing them I don't know I have these lofty goals all the time of playing all the call of duty campaigns I've been saying for years now. I used to when they would come out. I just stopped. You know it's one of those things where you say something over and over again And then you reflect back and you're like it's not true anymore. Like it's not even remotely true that I play callall of Duty And it's like E except for the last few years and then look back it's like, haven't played of Dut in like ten years Um, So no, it's not true. So maybe I'll get back to these. I don't know, but what do you think about these coming over Cool. Like I' I'm always going to be a proponent of old the games coming forward and gettingetting off of stranded hardware U I think it's cool. I think it's cool for preservation' sake Um And blackups one, I have vague memories of Backups one I played. I remember on my Uh my sister was dating guy and he had and they had moved in with us because they were like moving from Arizona to New York and they just needed They were just in our house for a while And he had a PS three that he wasn't using, and he let me borrow it for like several months. and that's how I got a lot of time in with the PS three in that generation Played some infamous And I remember Black opps one was was the call d the game that he had And I remember kind of playing a little bit of it and being interested. It was really more of a novelty thing for me because I was like, what is a multiplayer game Like what is a What does a shooter feel like on PlayStation? And It was weird It wass very odd Yeah. I can see that very way to get used to But um only have experience with a little bit of the multiplayer bllack opps one and I think I play Black opps two split screen at like nephews. at like my cousin's houses or something like that. I don't have a lot of experience with these games but I would play Black Offs one. campaign again because or I guess for the first time because like that's the one that people talk about You know, I think I played the first level when like back when it was new and I remember like, I'm not really feeling it. I feel like now I'm M in the mood for that kind of thing Ah. But I'm glad to see games moving forward. There's too many games stranded. Yeah. Yeah, we're getting fewer and fewer of them, which is good. like Medal gear like we were saying earlier Medalear Slld four willllon. that's like I would argue that's probably the most notoriously stranded game at this point on PS three. I mean, there's there's other first and second party ones, but as far as like mass accessibility, I feel like MGS four is was actually severely hurt by being on PlayStation twentyy. Yeah at that time too Ah Yeah, I don't know, man. I think I think it's There's an argument to be made that like,, do we really need these old games coming back if we were always talking about there too many games? It's like, well let me tell you, I would easily trade one million like the one million sex shop simulator games And all that sl If we can get rid of all that and just bring every other game that that used to exist that was good forward, I think that'd be a way better trade off in my opinion I have no qualms about getting old good games ono the store. justust because it's more games You know what I mean Yeah fucking sushy fl out of here. Yeah. Yeahah, exactly well they are. there'. I mean, I'm so pleased that they seem to be They I would love to know. I should reach out to some of these developers to see like what are they saying to you behind the scenes that you're doing it yourself L right These guys are like Oh, we'll just take a off T for water. I'd love to know more about that because they they got a drone circling the the premises. It's, you know you got to we bust Sony's balls a lot. and I think reasonably so. and they don't talk and they don't communicate, but they're clearly listening And yeah, I I feel like isten I don't want pat ourselves on the back too much, but like I feel like the show plays a role They bitch a lot about a lot of things and they're solving a lot of these random things. And it's good And no one else really bitches about these things like I do This issue specifically, I feel like is a thing that we're all really passionate about. L it bothers the fuck out of me. Yeah me too Me too. And I'm so pleased like every I stped. I don't want to dk on them Twitter and like hur their feelings forever. But like every time I see one of these guys, be like we have to take our games down, it's like, good fuck Fireissors. Go fuck yourselves Like for you fucked everything up. He's fucking greedy assholes All right Like as a lover of PlaySation network, I would never do that to Playstation Network. You know what I mean? Like I would never I would never I would never flood the storefonts with garbage knowing that though I can make money, I'm ruining it I feel like I ass a lover of video ges. Yeah, short of it. Which to me inherently like means this is like you're just, this is inherently nefarious to me All right, few more pieces of news for us to get through Chris I thought this was interesting. I don't know how much P this audience will want to talk about this, but I think this is fascinating This is an electronic arts press release Says Electronic Arts introduces EA advertising, launching brands directly into gameplay and live experiences So there's a few things and I'll read some of this, but There already are plenty of live ad there's already plenty of advertising in EA games And you and I have had a conversation in the past, Chris, and I am specifically talk about EA sports games One of the ironic things about EA sports games is that they are more authentic becausecause they have real brands and advertisements in them. because that is part of it And I'm watching the World Cup right now and there's an advert. you know, they have a little wall in the back where and it's like just constant array of ads and stuff. And I'm like, this is the way it works. And if you didn't have those, or it just said like EA sports It would be it would feel fake like like an exhibition or something So right. I've long thought that EA is uniquely positioned to take advantage of that and they already do But what they're doing here Is they're creating like a real brand to do it and It says quot, EA advertising is expanding EA's ecosystem by enabling brands to integrate directly in the gameplay through dynamic. real time placements from stadium signage to custom in game content designed to enhance, not disrupt the player experience. In these interactive gameplay environments, brands become part of the game itself reflecting how players engage with advertising in real world context Brands can activate across live environments, tailoring plplacements to meet campaign objectives and update campaigns with ongoing optimization informed by aggregated engagement insights. So I won't get too deep into the weeds here because it's boring for a lot of people, but I'm like, this is notot a bad thing. and by the way, twenty billion dollars leverage buyout Ain't gonna pay for itself So EA's got to figure out new ways to generate revenue and this is it. I mean This is definitely deeply connected to that. But there are some interesting stats they already have about how this has already worked for them Um, where is it? Is it here Hear us So they already have they say EA advertising has already started to partner with leading brands to deliver in game experiences across the EA portfolio. This is already what's happening. Visa a proud partner of ESportsFC and E sports college football is partnering with the EAS sports to deliver immersive participatory experiences in and beyond the game connecting its global network with a community of hundreds of millions of players Low's, which integrated into the EA sports FC mad and NFL in college football through ultimate team challenges and branded player content. It drove more than nine hundred eighty seven thousand gamesplayed and more than two hundred thousand challenges completed Red goal engaged EA sports FC players through branded in game objectives, team kits and athlete ambassador collaborations, driving more than one one hundred twenty eight million matches played. one point two million objectives completed and strong engagement in game and social engagement And on and on they mountain and do,xfinity Pacock and so on So like it's already going on and I like that kind of shit because they're like, yeah, you didn't even notice and it's already working for them. So I don't know that there's much too much more to say about this, but It's just so funny because people are talking about in game advertising and how deleterious that would be. and I agree with that. For the most part Right. But what they're saying is it's not Allan Wake with the Verizon and the duras cell batteries, wherever the fuck it was our energiz It's gonna to be like these dynamic things that make more sense either timing or people or who you are and And I don't kind of hate that because it It just unfortunately, we are so commercialized in society that it makes things real Yeah, that is the weird kind of oboros of it, I guess where it's just kind of like, yeah, Everything is so hyper fake that the more fake it feels, the more real it feels. It is odd that is odd about that. But like I do think like I think you're right, EA sports. and even I said this in a previous episode where I think even C crazy Taxi is like one of those one of those IP where it's just like there aren't really many IP that I would want product placement in, but like these are these are them Now, yeah, sports is not to my taste. likeike I don't I don't particularly care. but like I also I agree with the idea that like because I think I remember playing a sports game a long time ago and I think the banner adds along the stadium was just like the a sports or like it it was just something that was clearly wouldn't be there. And I remember feeling like Now this feels kind of weird. Like I remember thinking like I don't like that really U So I think there's a case to be made that it fits in these things. L I want I want people in Crazy Taxi to tell me like, take me to Pap. Right, right. You know, like, I want that. Like because that adds to it. It makes. It actually juxtaposes how absurd what you're doing is with the fact that like you're being you're taking these people to completely mundane real places. I love that This is one of those like give an inch take a mile, things where I think you got to be careful because like I do think Well I well, even in sports games the you know, the the banners on the side of the stadium and those kind of ads make sense and even maybe billboards in certain certain areas That's cool where it begins to be annoying though is when like, pop ups start coming in Like when they start deciding that that's okay to do That's going to be fucking annoying Under no circumstance what I want like I think popping up during my gameplay like completely breaking the immersion of, you know what I mean? It's like o, pizza or like a QR code for like pizza hut in the middle of fucking cray taxi, you know what I mean? that pops That shit is like You got to be careful with it. Yeah, agreed. And I don't know if I trust publishers to be as careful with that type of advertising as they should be U So it's hard for me to be like, yeah, do it Um But I do think there is like a there's a gray area there or like there's there's nuance to The types of games where It makes more sense in I don't want to see in splinter cell. You know I don't want San Fisher being like goldfish, the snacks, the smiles back You know what I mean? like I would I would fillm myself, I think on the spot It's funny too much for me. Yeah it's funny. I don't play sports games anymore, but I did since the early SN well NES had sports games, but they weren't very good. But the early SNES period all the way through PS in the PS three and PS even a little PS four I was playing sports games still And uh, Ads really started to introduce themselves like real life things in the PS one and really in the PS two era. The problem with it was it was the same everywhere. So like even if you went to like different buildings or different arenas, different stadums, it would always be the same kind of it just so it actually made things seem even faker. And so yeah, getting into a more I think the dynamic part of it is what's important for the realism and they can Listen, it's advertising and they're money off of you, but at least they can spin it in a way that makes the game seem better. And I think that that puts EA sports specifically in a very unique position It's to be much harder to do that with them Oh, by the way, speaking pizzaut, I saw the video going around. I never saw this when I was out, but did you see the Majorelson Pizz hut video What? I thought that might be what you brought up why you brought it up So o no, back in the Xbox I just saw it because it was circulating recently, but back in the Xbox three hundred sixty era, I guess there was a pizza hut app on Xbox three hundred sixty. Oh, I do remember that. And like there's an app there's a video of him like doing it and using it. And I'm like, Jeeesus, this is so interesting. It's so cumbersomeative. It's such a product of two eight or whatever it is, you know? Yeah, the idea that you would log like turn your Xbox on to order pizzas and A actuallyually he's using connect in it. so it must be like twenty ten, eleven, something like that, maybe I think I remember I think I feel like I this Beuse it was you says it was fifteen percent off if you did it on the Xbox Yeah I think I might have done it and like just to do it because I remember even at the time being like, this is so silly Like I want to order I want to order a pizza from from my Xbox. That sounds so absurd to do I think I did it and it was fine but I just never did it again because why the fuck would you That is so funny, though. I've tootally forgot about that All right. Um So if you haven'ten that, by the out there go look at theajor Nelson Pizaood video,'s interest L'm Lucky, I'm looking I do remember this He's kind of back in the fold, I think a little bit Yeah, I always liked Major N. I had no problem with him. I mean, he like that was there they had like a real personality at that point in my opinion Yeah, and then it just immediately stops Really crazy. Like after Connect, they kind of went all downhill. Yeah. All right, This actually should have been I guess noted earlier. So we talked about GTA six earlier, but that's because that broke this morning. So I didn't even account for this, but we're going to talk about GTA five here briefly And it's that if you are so put your listening ears on If you're still playing GTA five on PS four for some reason Rcks are sick of it They don't want it anymore. It's annoying them So Now, right now, you can begin to get a digital upgrade of GTA five on PS five for free If you have the PS four gin the. So you can migrate your story mode and your online progress Everything, your career rewards, everything migrates over. However, it's worth noting is I went and read about this because they have a migration website and I went and read, onnce you do it You can go back, but your character on PS four will be in stasis the stats don't carry over in the other direction So like it migrates everything as it is one time over to PS five and you can don't have to pay the upgrade fee now. You can do it for free So If you are doing that, still PSA for you have fun I saw this on circulating a website called cheathappens. com, which I feel like is familiar, but I don't know what it is. They have an interesting report here. It says, quote, Sony Patt's Playsttation contontroller buttons that harden and soften based on gameplay And they say, quote, we at cheat happppens have dug up a new Sony patent that will change the feel of controls by altering button hardness in real time. The invention discusses contact parts whose hardness changes dynamically via a new hardness control unit The contact part or the buttons can be made of magnetovisco elastic elastomer Jesus, a mouthful I know. That softens or hardens based on magnetic field strength Other hardware methods like fluid filled membranes are also explored that aim to achieve the same goal Sony's goal here is to let players experience different tactile feels for an enhanced sense of realism and adaptability Pantsays quote The operating device can dynamically change the hardness of the contact part in response to external control commands, therefore by sending control commands to the operating device The information processing device can change the hardness of the contact section. in real time. So as they know here, it's like an it's like a more extreme version of Tapics, I guess And I gott to say, I don't really hate it. I was The idea of resistive buttons bothers me until you consider that DualSense now has those and the triggers and it's actually kind of cool. and Saros uses them That way actually. It gives you four buttons instead of two which I which I kind of dig. So I'm not saying you would have that functionality on the face buttons per se, but resistance o. don't hate it By the way, as we always say, Chris, when we talk about these, Sony almost never uses their patents Yeah ye they've hadat them and to protect their inventions. That's it. So what do you think? Sure I mean, the first thought that goes That comes across my mind when I read something. this is like, we' How cute are we going to be getting with this You know what I mean? Like I I appreciate that there are strides being made. I think the haptics on the PS five controller, the dual sense are cool I always turn the adaptive triggers off. they kind of bother me But that's also because I play a lot of multiplayer stuff and I just it feels distracting and disadvantageous for no real reason Um I don't know. I don't need my controllers to be more complicated than they are, really And I feel like we're just trying to be cute with a lot of things and trying to find like novelty spin. You imagine of like the three D TV era. You know, where it's like, it's a three D TV It' like, wouldn't you want that? It's like yeah, Iess in theory, but then like you do it and you're like, it sucks N really I hated that shit Chillzone three was one of those big games that they were trying to like push, I think with that three D TV that they were making, remember that Dude comomment of all anniversary had a three D TV mode. and I remember I tried it out because my parents had got I think I told them not to do it but they just wanted it because Avatar That was around Avatar time So like, Avatar was huge and like they' like, oh, there's a three D blue rray that you can buy and three D TV, and you can have the three D experience at home and it was like a big deal I remember I tried it and it was cool. It was interesting, but It was not preferable to just not having to wear glasses You know, not having to wear three D glasses to play your video game. Like that was way better to me. So lot of a lot of times when I hear things about this, I just see like All I see really is another part of my controller that is susceptible to breraaking. Right? Yeah, the more moving parts and all these things it's true Right. I never got over this. I had like an uncle tellell me like I I opened the recline like we had a recliner in our living room. And I remember I opened it once and I was sitting down and he told me, it's like, that has one fewer lever pulls in it now that you've done that And that stuck with me in a way that like, I don't know. now I think about it all the time. like every time like I drop my controller on my sofa a little bit too hard, I'm like, fuck, that's It's like maybe like a couple of hours off this So like from whatever like from whatever its expiration date would have been. like now it's like maybe like a couple hours earlier And I think about these things all the time. Like I have a lot of controllers that like the triggers stick. You know, and I'm just thinking like, damn So I don't know. I look at it as just over complicating things and just making things more expensive and making the components a little bit harder to find and making it more tedious to repair. And like I'm good with my controllers as they are, really I don't know if I really need much more than what we have now. I'm still fascinated by the idea I've been bringing up about using the same controller on PS six It's like a cost cutting maneuver. I don't know. I could Does a console feel like a new console without a new controller? I mean, PS three did and it had an old controller, which is wireless But I I wonder I wonder if feel PlayStation had a history up up until four of using basically the same form fact R. So like they kind of got away with it in a weird way for a while, although obviously we know the intention was not to happen. It's so funny when you think about it, they're like, u they're like, what do we do? And they just use the same mold. It's so funny. It is an awesome story. But it's also funny because PS one like they kind of arguably put the PS twol controller out for PS one with the dual S shock Yeah. And so like So and there's that first version, the dual analog, which is like that obscure playlaystation controller that they did first, you know The dual analog. There was a dual analogue controller that was not a dual shot controller Dual analogue. I think I might have had one of those. It had concave, like really concave sticks L You'll notice this one controller Concave Original maybe. Do you see it Bea that Mly I'm not Yeah I'm trying to 'Ccause every time I look for it, I'm just saying like standard I'm not saying any concave anyway. Yeah M maybe I misreembering. This one original controller Oh this one doesn't have Yeah. Oh Yeah hear it. Oh, this is the one I think it Oh, yeah. it's got dual analogue, but it doesn't have right. It was it was dual analog before they put the rumble in it. And it was a different Rer. It's the same And it's got like different sticks. like I don't, it's funny, manike I don't even remember that controller. like being on the market. I know it after the fact, but I'm like, I remember going straight into dual shock. So there was like this brief period of time where they had this like other controller, which is weird too. when you think about it Yeah I had this one. because I remember it had no dual shock branding and it had analog on it And I remember hitting the an you would hit the analog button and it would glow red and you'd be like, what the fuck is this doing? because no games really used it for a while. Right? Yeah, I love that bud Yeah and the you're exactly right And the u I think they put the convex sticks on the dual shock to differentiate them Um I was I was v I I don't remember Concave. I remember Concave was Xbox W that? Oh wait, ye, I'm sorry, Concaave was cononvex The convex, right on a partart of the rounded Um, Dia But yeah man, that's that' so funny. I' looking at pictures of them now like like a d a PS one dual analog controller, so not the dual shock is a hundred dollars on eBay used. because I think I think it is a fairly rare controller for sure I was really uphit ass at that point and I don't remember it, which is just, but I also wasn't much of an excuse. You can't I can't say that, I'm sorry. You say upshit ass The fuck does that even mean? That's awesome. boy. That's so much better than whatever the correct thing to say was I was gonna say like I was so into video games Here's what I want to say U That's awesome. boy, oh boy, oh boy. All right, we need Dustin, we need you All right, a couple more things to get here, my friend. I just wanted to acknowledge Epic keeps talking about Unreal Engine six. In fact, they've been talking about it for a little while and we haven't talked about it too much on the show. Some people have written them a little disappointed about that. I don't think there's much to say about it yet What I've always interesting here are a few things They are changing some things around within pipelines on Real Engine to incorporate AI, which is I don't know if you saw this. Now, I don't think this is a bad move for them toolsmaker It's about how people utilize and leverage the tools. I think they'd be kind of stupid in eff fact not to maybe do that Yeah, it's going to have a consequence for them and I don't know if you saw this that Um Conle which is the creator of vampire survivors, vampire crawlers has an activation with Fortnite, which he has said they are not going to do now because of it Oh, interesting. So like there are going to be consequences for this, but I gott to say from that because they say here ote, we're building development pipeline features such as an MCP with integrations for Claud, Gemini, and others as creativity and productivity multipliers so that teams can focus their efforts on the essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time on time consuming manual tasks So that's the way they're kind of putting it. The big thing about this is and this is the thing that I think is going to really differentiate on Real six, although Unreal five does this already. I think they're just really leaning into this is e're enabling content code and economies to become portable and interoperable across games, ecosystems, and engines through open standards to enable developer collaboration on a much greater scale than ever before big thing is been standards What they're basically trying to do is try to fold everyone to these ideas that things will just work a certain way. And you and I have talked about this in terms of gameplay. which I don't think is really a way that you would want to do. but we always said, like jumps should just be X We should just have an agreement that's like when you jump, you press X. When you shoot, it's hard too That's a different sort of standard, but what they're saying is like they want to make development standards so inoperable interoperable that you'll be able to bring them between engines and obviously between seamlessly between hardware, which is pretty exciting. And I think will make things much cheaper because you have to license this So you need to keep costs down and if they can do that for you. I think they have something kind of interesting. People can go read. there's a full, it's called the Road to UE six and you can read. It's a big blog post But what they say is it will release early access at the end of twenty twenty seven and that by twenty twenty nine, mid twenty twenty nine, It'll be um, ready to go Yeah they said like twelve to eighteen months of. Right Exactly Um And that sounds about right because Ui one was ninety eight two two thousand one, three, two thousand six four is the big gap. That's twenty fourteen F twenty twenty two. So this will be like within that eight, seven eight year period which I think it will work for them It like yeah Yeah, I mean, I read up a little bit on this and it's like It is there's parts of this that are unfortunate. I mean, the gen AI integration is K kind of a bummer because it means it means ostensibly that like Most games in Unreal will have to kind of have that disclaimer of like made with AI because it seems like it's going to be so integrated into the engine that like it'd be dumb not to use it Um I don't know. AI is such a weird rabbit hole to go down Because it really is just genAI is my main issue Yeah, me too she, me too I'm the same mom. I'm fine with AI tools like making things easier. Like they just did a premiere. they had an update for preremiere recently where they had like it they had an AI u Mask tool. that uses like data to to under like basically you highlight an object and it kind of understands what it is you're trying to separate from the video. it's like, this is great This is a tool And it's not like, and if I need to iterate on it, I can The issue is like I was like, o, make a character Give him a hat Yeah I mean like, that to me is just like fuckingame. But I totally agree You and I are the same place. the GAI stuff is the problem We'll see. Un Lch is weird. Like it's gone kind of because I remember when It was probably like three hundred sixty PS three era when Unreal Engine started to really be like a big Like I remember seeing it a lot in that generation and it was associated with like really cool, like really big like I remember yearsars of warar was like the big showcase for them under the three hundred sixty And it was like impressive and people wanted a part of it But like it feels like this generation Unreal Engine has been kind of like a mess. It's had like a lot of memory leak issues. There's a lot there's a lot of great games that I just can't really get into because it just runs so poorly Um Fortlland four is one of those games I think Obivion is one of those games well. Oblivion rememake or Rasser more What was it called? whatever, whatever that Whatever that game is. Yeah, what is it called? look Remast rememastered Uh It's unfortunate, man. It's because like I think Unreal Engine used to be like a like a It used to not have a stigma and now it kind of does. And even with the Halo campaign evolved, like a lot of the issues have been kind of ironed out. like the big issues, like the memory leak issues are not a problem with that game, but like I've seen like, similar complaints of like, oh, yeah, there's some like there's some there's some Lens flare smearing and There's like a general fizziness to the look of everything with the way it does nanite rendering and things like that it's like man, it's kind of a bummer I don't remember Unreal engine having so many caveats. in like early on. Yeah, unreal what the Unreal three D. X was the big one, right that everyone loved That was the one that like was at the turn of the generation, the PS three and three hundred and sixty, like r a lot of games right on realal three Yeah, huge, huge games. Yeah, the Batman games I think of famously were on Unreal three. Yeah yeah, the Arkham games, the u Ye games. I feel like every I feel like damn near every great game back then. The Massive Eect trilogy, Bioshock But were bioshock infin. I don't know about bioshock specifically,. Oh yeah, Bo sha Thiss a lot of good shit The theliv lands obviously Oblivion remastered it's called by the way in case you' curious Yeah. Oblivion came up sppring twenty five. Yeah That's a bumber too, because Ik both of those games I really lied Borderlands forore and Iked the Livy, but I was just like, bro, I can't keep D you did I did I ever tell you like what the deal was with those games where like you they would run fine and then you'd play them for like maybe like forty five minutes to an hour and then you start noticing it would slow like they say a leak or whatever they call. Yeah, so basically you'd have to like restart the game every hour And drove me in memory both. Yeah. ye. Yeah, especially with u not so much with Borderlands. Borderlands, I I could kind of deal with it maybe but like specifically with with u Oblivion, where that's a game you're kind of supposed to get lost in. To have to reset every hour was like I'm not getting I'm not getting what I want. Yeah. I remember that was what I believe that's what Termea from Borderlands when it came out and then kind of it kind of because I love Borderlands, but I'm not going to play it like that. I'm sure they fixed it now and that's probably why they didn't they just canceled the switch do version because they're like, already fuck That's right. We can't do that We can't we can't we can't make it work Can't do it man, sorry, can't do it man So yeah, UI six we'll get more information. I wonder what the the well, I guess it's going to be some of their own games. because I think they already tease Rocket League and stuff but migrating over it. but I wonder like what will be the first big third party ges I'm sure they're already develop. you E six and we'll see And u It's funny man, I totallyree with you. like we do need to begin differentiating and the AI conversation so tired but about generative AI versus just kind of the usefulness of AI. I always think we used to use these really bespoke word programs at IGN to write strategy guides because we can write macros into them and then they would replace and do shit for us in them. And that's kind of we had to write them ourselves. so like you had to do like you would say like you would write like these things where it's like every three You wouldd have these things where images needed to be inserted across a guide or whatever, but you didn't want to do it manually. So you'd like write this macro that would do it And I'm like, that's kind of like one step further I won't pretend that I really interact with AI very much because I don't. I think I interact with AI most when I'm just Googling and that Google is just just gives you whatever, you know, like whatever it is now. so I'm like, I'm not trying to use it, but the one place I do try to use it is I use uh Chat GBT and just ask a questions about gardening And like because I'm always in my gardens and I'm always planting things and I'm always asking questions and I have like a dialogue going with it, basically Like what is this plant? What do I do with this? Is it good to do this? And it remembers things? And Mike is like I'm really, I think she's really disturbed that I have like this ongoing dialogue about my gardens and my plants with this AI chatot kind of But I'm like it's been really helpful And basically it's what I was saying about strategy guides last year, I think where I'm like It's just a search engine. It's like a dynamic search engine. But I'm not at I have it's funny like I do try to test out like What did I do to it the other day Oh, I was like This is where it gets crazy and I'm like you guys are in so much trouble, man I was like, make a save room in a resident evil style game that looks comfortable and like you would be able to rest and kind of collect yourself there And it made a room that looks like it's out of Resident Eil with a typewiter on the desk and an umbrella logo I'm like you guys are shock Like totally shot. It's it's like it' you're not even hiding ye You know, like. And I'm like, this is different And it's always got that same It's like, why I can't believe people use this shit seriously. It's like the images all look the same. They have the same quality to them This like very shiny supernatural thing going on whenever you ask them mate and I'm like, damn, I can't believe people really find value in this like It sucks It's so funny like it's so funny that these. I was having this conversation with like a friend of mine where we were talking about like it's it's kind of actually interesting that early AI, like or like early Will Smith eating spaghetti You were that like crazy right, right horn how that's goinged. Yeah It's funny to me like when you think about that, like where it's like that was actually more likeike visually and artistically distinct than it is now that it's better at rendering Will Smith eating spagheti. Like there was actually like a It's not a style because it's not a person doing it, I guess, but like there was a way that the computer would render that stuff that was so unlike the way a person would do it that it actually kind of made that in and of itself interesting. Like if AI had frozen in that way way where just like made this like these really like these weird fuckking facsimiles of people that were chimeras of what like a real person would be through the lens of a computer that barely understood anything That was actually a more artistically interesting vision than what it is now, which is just like phhoto realalistic but shiny. It's weir Like there's there is actually a style to older AI art Yeah, that's in compare in comparison. That's interesting Uh but yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Well, because I think everything's reducing as a computer would to Efficiency, maybe or not even like what people it's like the we keep saying the introduction of the M dashes and how bad that is for me into like into AI writing Um It's like, maybe this is just the best way to do it. doesn't really know to explore the textures between that. I don't I don't know. But I just think so it's like when I when I When I use it in ways that I think are more practical, like a replacement for a search engine or just knowledge It's like it's kind of cool When you're replacing The intuition of a human or the creativity of a human, whatever. Yeah whatever. We've talked to I use about it I used it that way for a while for like for like about a month And then I started doing like an experiment where I would like I would ask it something and then I would Google like Google what I would have asked it. orr like in search engine terms, I guess, because you can't just like speak to it as casually orr you can't speak to Google as casually as you can at Chat GPT. And I just I saw too many like Disparities whereversus like, oh, this is just not right at all And so I just kind of stopped using it I'm sure it's probably getting getting better as time goes on, but I don't know, man. Th are weird ass times. that we're in right now I agree. Cam me tell you how many videos I've seen of like a Anthropomorphic strawberry cheating on a banana You know, I'm just like, what are we what are we doing? Well, this is what didn't we talk about this recently, Chris that I was like, I'm getting fooled by AI videos to to the point where they're contextually wrong They're not really visually wrong. Right? It's like this isn't this isn't this doesn't feel human, but that the aesthetic is not necessarily off as much as What is happening is off And that is a scary place to be with moving pictures especially Still shots are a little easier to theern But those are also contextual as well Yeah. But it's as we've said for a long time they will become perfect. and then it's going to become a deeper philosophical question All right Final news is about actually we have another piece of news because I'm gonna have to add something, which we'll do in a minute. but two pieces of CapCom news quickly. I thought this was really interesting The website Automaton had which often does this translated a Fitsu interview Famitsu of course is the famous Japanese gaming publication from know going since the eighties. They spoke with the president and CEO Harohiro Sujimoto And he said something extremely interesting because They were basically saying, and I was like, wow, this is fascinating. I wonder if this would be more divisive if this was making the news more or if people were noticing this more They right here at Automaton, Capcom's flagship IPs like the Monster Hunter, Resident Evil and Treefighter series have maintained their popularity and continue to produce hit games decades after they were originally created. And Sujimoto considers Capcom's organizational transformation T be one of the biggest reasons why this was possible I don't know how I feel about this. This is what he says In the game industry, when a title becomes a series, it often ends up depending heavily on a particular developer becoming what you'd call an individual driven title If that person doesn't make one, there's no next installment The direction of the series becomes tied to the ideas of a single creator We discussed this issue with the central figures behind each franchise. and ultimately agreed that we should abandon that approach. What we came up with instead was the idea that every title should essentially be rebilildt from the ground up We didn't mind even if sales temporarily declined as a result, and by switching to a team based approach to game development come changed dramatically in quote. And then Automaton picks back up and says Suchjimoto believes this decision has paid more than paid off allowing new entries and Capcom's most valued IPs on a regular basis This also means that acknowledge and expertise accumulated by development teams is handed over generationally. securing each franchise's longevity Additionally, he considers this to just be just as important when it comes to developing new IPs with twenty twenty six's Pragmata being a symbol of Capcom's team oriented development structure. What do you think of that Usually we are so focused on the chemical beans and the Miyamotoos and the Miyazakis and You know, all of these guys And he's basically saying like, we're not doing that anymore. And what's so funny about that is that they created some of those people whether it was in afune or Makami and others And they're realizing like it's not necessarily working. I think they realizeed that with Megaan. Megaman didn't really work without inafune for a while and now it works fine So What are your thoughts on this? I think it's a pretty, I think what he's saying is a pretty dramatic thing, actually Yeah, I mean, I understand it. Like I mean, like Ken Levine and God bless him, it's been like ten years, you know? And there's probably like a hybrid there's probably perfectionism that comes along with auturship in a way that doesn't really exist when you know, you're a team building a product. And I'm sure by the way the people the team building a product care also, but it's just a different it's a different level of emotional investment, I guess, if it's if it's your baby versus the teams Um, And so like I understand what they're saying. On the other hand, though, withith Capcom I don't think I would never How should I say this Capcom iss doing very, very well right now And that should not go under Appreciated But I don't know, man. I kind of finished Resin Eil nine and I was like, yeah, this is a team based The team definitely made this It's good It's It's a very good game. I enjoyed it But it's like it's a nine hour game. It's it's very kind of I't know I was expecting more at a resasonable night be honest h What I got was fun and nice and but I like it less as as as I get further away from it. I do think that beginning area is great. what's that? the care center? Yeah, yeah yeah. I think after that I think after that, it just kind of feel it does kind of feel like a committee kind of game. Like you're in this room for a while and you do the thing and then you go to the next thing and everything's like barren, you're in a lab, like I don't know I don't want to say it's they're doing a bad job because that's not necessarily true, but like there is something that I felt in that game where it's like there's something there's like a vision here that's kind of missing I think. That's interesting Yeah, because I really liked the too, but you're right. I mean, you in my opinion with RequiM which I thought was awesome, but like there is the bones of the open world gamer. You know, like there's there's another game there that they werere making And they they put them together you can feel the station like I remember getting to that point where like there's an entirely new menu system that opens up midway through the point of the game midway through the game and you're like oh my This was stished together by a team that needed to get something out. and like You know, no disrerespect. likeike I think it's a again, it's a great game.s it's one of my favorite of the year, I think W I don't think team based games are inherently bad or negative. and I think there a lot of team based games to happen to be some of my favorites. but You can definitely feel that that difference in like a Arthneeval nine versus something like a bioshock infinite. like you know what I mean? Like you can feel that Um If it works for them, it works for them. I mean, who might argue with them? They're making money hando for this. their franchises are in a better place than they've ever been really So it's clearly working for them But also like it's hard you can't ignore from software, you know, like 're kind of dominating right now with like the opposite mentality. So it really is a matter of like what works best for your team, what works best for your IP what works best for the types of games that you're making and how well you can execute on those ideas. I think either I think or tour driven development and team driven development are both valid as long as you can deliver on the execution as long as you're in a healthy place to do so. So yeah, it's pro to them for figuring it out. It's well said. I think It's funny with Capcom, you can't argue with the results. both financially and critically They're just in a really good place I also feel this though, Chris, as we exit this story is I think it's kind of like having your cake and eating it too or at least Publishers, if you know enough about how games used to be made in Japan and how how people crazy people used to be in Japan about about personnel. they kind of the powers that B Like I think Sujimoto is the son of the founder of Cfcom. So his dad was one of the people that made it so that KG andfune couldn't use his real name in the credits becausecause they were afraid he was going to be poached People at Konami, I've told this before. do you know what I think I said this on the show I don't think it's like this anymore but if you would email people a Konami They all had alphanumeric email addresses So like you would email, oh, I have to email like this guy. It's A one three seven two B X at konami dot com d And that was so that like no one could email anyone and no one knew how to find or contact people because the people that operational and institutional knowledge who were important. and It's so great. So if you go read like like Castlevania credits or whatever it's nonsense because it's no one's allowed to use their names. And you hear the storyies always make fun of the story about how Nintendo stopped letting Miamoto ride his bike That's a real story becausecause they were afraid was going hurt him So like They created this environment Right So then Ironic in my opinion, Chris is that Capcom then was the company that got hit hardest when those guys turned Um because It wasn't just in afune always gets, you know, the most shine, I think from that, but And of course, Ego with Konami and later Kojima We we had brought Makami earlier like and Kamia, the Clover guys at Capcom, Capcom spun them into their own studio. They made like a comy and something like that and they're like, byy And they got kind of burned by it And I'm surprised it took them so long to acknowledge it. though. I think you can see and their output that they' known this for a long time now It does work for them, generally speaking. I do think there is a level of inconsistency though like you're saying, we always bring up Rident Eil three remake, which is just markedly weaker than everything else And if you had the same teams making them It would take way longer and that's undesirable as well, but it would have been a better game So I don't know Yeah Yeah, it's tricky. But yeah, it m sense to not want to rely on like an individual like I think about Konami a lot where they' they're sitting on metal gear and they they kind of can't really They kind of can't do anything with it, really Like they can oldld games forward and mayaybe remaster some stuff, but they definitely got like They've got the breraak glass in case of emergency medical solid one remake sitting there, I guess But They can't really do anything with that series really, because like their main creator left and everybody kind of knows Everybody who's in the metal gear knows There's no casual metal gear fan Who doesn't know about Kaojima? you know what I mean? Like no one on this earth likes metal gear and doesn't know anything about Kajima. So like they're just stuck with this IP that's like really, really valuable that they can't really do much with And I can see why a company might not want to be in that position ever ever So ye if you look at the Castlevania onene credits, this is Konomi so it's not Calcom, The director is Trans Fishers which is a which is not a real person.s it's actually Hitoshi Akamatsu The screenplay was written by Vram Stroker a music by James Banana Like it's like, this is what they were doing to hide their talent So that's so psychotic, man.'s so good one hundred pict Just a quick story as well kind of an ancillary to this or corollary, I should say, is D let me cry five. Vo Games Chronicle had, so this game came out in twenty twenty one What no, twenty nineteen, I want to say, right Something like that. Let me see here Yeah no, twenty nineteen or s was nineteen Devil Make Cry five sold two point one million copies in its first fiscal year Right, So that was twenty nineteen. And then it's sold appreciably ever since then, But this last fiscal year, its sold more than any other year two point seven million units. So Capcom is creating like a really impressive backcatalog of games that people are revisiting granted. I'm sure it's not anywhere near full price but that you're pushing IP by the millions for a game that came out in the PS four era. Bodes really well for what they're doing. They have a really good. I know we we beat the drum with Capcom or Capcom It's like they're killing it They really are and they're not done this year. I mean, what's so crazy Two of the three best games of the year, in my opinion are theirs. Pragmata is definitely my favorite game of the year and Resident evvil. And then they're not done. They still have a On Musha coming later So It's just I don't know, man. they're just killing it And I want to congratulate them for that. There is a final story, though And let me put this in the chat here. I saw this pop up and Oh way shit, I put it in the It putence God dam it Um We've had these rumors. So Jason Sreryer, the journalist reported some time ago that Sony's just not going to release its games on PC anyoreless they're multiplay And a lot of people doubted that or whatever. I don't know why. Listen, like you can feel how you want about Jason Sreer. I've had weird interactions with in theast and I've started good interactions with them in the past, but like he obviously knows what he's doing And I don't I can't think of a single thing he's ever said that didn't come true. T bere wrong about that? So I don't think you needed this in otherds. But u Hideyaki Nosino, who's the CEO of Playsttation, as we know, He used to be CEO with Herman Holspen and he is now the loone manan at the top. He also was interviewed by Famitsu And push square has a translation of part of what he was talking about here PC games. So I just thought I would add this to the record. I don't know there's more to say about this because we understood that this was true, but here's confirmation ote, platform selection has always been determined based on the characteristics of each individual title. If for releasing a game when PC allows us to maximize the value of that game's experience, we will continue to consider it As our primary policy at present for first party single player games, we intend to further refine and enhance the unique value of gameplay experices that can be delivered on Playsttation On the other hand, for live service games, we believe it is important to enable as many people as possible to play through online multiplayer, and so we will continue to regard releases on both PS five and PC as the basic approach Regardless of which platform or title is released on, our decisions will be guided by the principal that players should receive the best possible experience. One that maximizes the strengths of that particular game So There you have it from the horse's mou So I doubt that's going to stop every anyone from saying anything still to this day, but here, I mean, there it is if you needed more proof if you didn't believe Jason's reporting. Do you have anything you want to say about this before we move on No, I mean, this is pretty obvious. I mean this is what I was saying. It was just like you they especially and again, I know I've said this before on other episodes, but like dude, like In a time where People aren't really hungry for the next Playation machine People aren't clamoring for more of it kind of got to double down and you've kind of got to You kind of got to showcase value. And the way you do that is by just making sure that your exclusives are by making sure there's a reason to O the machines and be in the ecosystem And being on PC does kind of undermine that. And also like the to the effect that it like helps them, to the effect that they make money on PC, it's just like it's negigible in comparison to the amount of money that they would gain if they just bolstered their U console ecosystem. So. Seems obvious. Yep, I agree and we'll see u how this will looks moving forward, but we'll obviously see Tokon this summer releasing on PC and PS five, but we'll then we'll see. Wolverine releasing only on PS five. And so I'll get a little bit of taste of both of those things All right, Chris's time to talk to us about or talk to everyone about what we're playing I'll get out of the way quick. I don't know how much you have to either to be honest. I don't have to say this I platinumed Doublez seven first light that's platum number two hundred and eleven Um The trophies are There's a cool system in the game where you can go to any chapter and then any checkpoint in that chapter. And so if you have a guide, you can get all the collectibles really quickly However, there are two things There's one where I think in chapter ten, you need to have a certain weapon on your or like ability on your watch? Oh the laser Yeah, right. So you must actually play through from chapter nine to get those particular things, which is a little annoying. So there's something to keep an eye The other thing is that the tropies are a little Janky and I thought they were totally broken and I think they were But I was told that you can do a certain thing to make them pop. so When I started getting all the collectibles, some of the trophies weren't popping and I was getting annoyed. So I sent tape to the cloud and I was like, I'll try this again But actually the trophies are just megal latent because the game is always online I don't know noticed that about it. So like if you wait like literally thirty seconds or so like the tatrophy will actually pop And uh There was a so IO was apparently aware of this and they patched the game, I think on the eleventh and the patch inadvertently stopped the game from disconnecting from the servers as well and going offline. So you couldn't even play it that way. so I think it'll be worked around much easier in the future, but that's what I had to do. So yeah, that's out of the way. and then I'm back to Pragmata because I'm preparing and taking notes for the Soilercast or review discussion already beat once but I'm playing through on insanity mode. It is Pretty hard I really, really like it though. I think one of the cool things about it is it really forces you to hack a lot and use the things in the game that you don't know like it depends on how you want to play it, but I wasn't like trying to overheat enemies or necessarily or try to like fill up necessarily intentionally the bar that lets you use like your overdrive attack or whatever insanity mode is all predicated on that stuff and it's really cool. I'm really enjoying it. There are five sections in Pragma, I'm in the fourth section. ay Ill to tonight I don' So that's all I'm doing for now Thisince here you're playing crazy taxi on PlayStation two, which is u Interesting, I never played the PS twoversion of Crazy Taxi Yeah, it's it's it's fun. L, I don't have much to say about it either. I just kind of like I was There's a bunch of games that I'm really looking forward to and it's when I'm really looking forward to stuff, it's hard for me to really get into It's hard for me to start anything isn't those things. I don't know what it is U So I've been kind of looking around like what's a light game that I can play? And Crazy Taxi was just s in there it was like, you know, I haven'ted my PS two on in a long time. Let me uh Let let me let me fire it up. And it's fun. It's just like, dude, like it's I love how jankky the physics are Like the it's the funniest shit in the world like hitt a car and watching it like like just barrel in a way that makes no sense Uh I hope that's retained Yeah, when they go back to it for the twenty twenty seven u the new game. but Yeah, I was just enjoying it, trying to What I forgot about it though is and it's because like so much game design has happened since the original crazy Taxi is that like there's a So you have to toggle between drive and reverse T accelerate and reverse, you have to you have to hit the trigger as well. That's right. So like it's it's the same button to go whereas it used to be like, I think there's other games where like you either pull back or like maybe it's the the opposite trigger or whatever So that took some getting used to. I'm shit at the original crris attax. I played more of Crazy TXi three high roller on the original Xbox. Yeah, the Xox exclusive But It's just, it's great, man. Crazy Taxi is just good fun, greatreat soundtrack. notot much to say about it. It is what it is, you know what I mean? It' It's very much what you see is what you get, but it is it is deceptively fun to play. Like it's one of those games that looks so simple uh, and is But like the joy of interacting with it and the joy of actually like moving through it and watching your impact on the world happen, like watching traffic get fucked up and watching people dive out of the ways as you barrel. is satisfying and fun So u Sout out to crazy taxi. I'm in that headpace now I' been listening to a lot of bad religion No I was like, I was like, you know what, I' 'll jp on. I'll jp on a crazy tax. Um, I'm looking here on and profiles like, Yeahah, I remember When they ported it to PS three in twenty ten, I played it a little bit That might be a fun one to play on stream at some point to reaclimate myself, may keep that in mind. Chr shout out to therigin Crazy Taxy a wonderful g Yeah, I was a dream cast guy with that. for sure at that time All right, let's get into six questions comments, concerns, thoughts and ideas, Chris and end this episode as we always do, with inquiries from the audience You've heard your inquiries throughout the show, but you'll hear more of them now. And you can speak your inquiries via the thread in the news feeed on Patreon. Each and every week, they go live. on Wednesday afternoons, and are deleted on Thursday so you have about twenty four hours Patreon dot com slash last dayay Media couldn't without your support. We we appreciate. The first inquiry com from Leon, Dustin's new baby infant. who says hello Sacred sluts Has PlayStation lost its Riz Many of these recent E three season game announcements would have debuted exclusively at Sony State of Play just a few years ago. Instead Sony' competitors got first divbs to show games like Final Fantasy seI Revelation, personersona four Revival, personersona six, Celler Blade two Resid of Veronica, Wo Long two, the Dragons Doggment I two DLC and many more. This less't spell doom for Sony but it is a worrying trend especially when it comes to their partner relationships. Slay Station is simply the default console now where these games will sell regardless so third party publishers are trying to get the bag through marketing deals with Xbox and Nintendo. is Sony overconfident now and not paying to have these games associated with their console Is Sony failing to manage relationships with third party developers in particular Shift upp's decision to show Stellarblade to somewhere other than the state of play seems like a canary in the coal mine, considering Sony's hand in the first game' success Thoughts gentleen But I did notice some of this, so like the persona stuff is not a huge surprise because Xbox has a relationship with SeEga developing around gamepass that they've had for a couple of years now. And so they're locked into that and they're going to do U The Final Fantasy seven and Resident evil stuff I mean, I think the summer summer Games fest is just kind of bigger I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong. I think Sony does, I don't know if it's losing its ribs per se. I've said before, I think Sony has kind of an image problem But I don't know if that plays to the developers and publishers I think Sony is probably in the position to be the least aggressive in trying to net these guys A lot of this stuff is also determined ahead of time And they have to show things that others wouldn't show and they have to make room for that. So like the new Silent Hill game for instance, is a Plsttation console exclusive, so that has to take up space there and so on and so forth. Can you read into this a little bit?m sure you can Um I don't think Wol Long two is that big of a deal. The catom stuff is Big, but not a huge deal. Stellar play too. yeah, I'm not crazy Shift up doesn't seem to I don't want to say treasure that's not really the right word. It doesn't really seem to value its relationship with Sony as much as it used to anymore And I think a lot of that is driven by the fact that Stellarblade's success, though was early because it was a PlayStation console exclusive. It's success really, I think its's wider success came from steam And I think that itss wider success came from overseas So I don't think PlayStation likeike if I were them, I wouldn't want to be with PlayStation either unless they were really, really offering to like blunt our costs in a way that made it make a lot of sense. So I almost feel like you're talking about two different things, which is like Sony's lack of quality image these days, I think is real. People are really hard on everything they do. And they've kind of put themselves in that situation and that's something to deal with But I don't know if I see it through the state of play lens because I still think they had a lot of good premieres. And I just think suummer Games fest is just a bigger deal. And then when you see the persona stuff at Xbox, you're like, well, they had to do that. They're with Sega. I mean That's what's going to happen They theirre game pass games So What do you think, Chris? Has PlayStation lost its Riz? I don I think you could even maybe read someomewhat the opposite in the sense that I don't know. if you're trying to if you're one of these big Games Um I feel like you kind of want your moment, right? Like you kind of want your moment in the sun. You want to make your splash And to be honest, I just don't think there was room. like Final Fantasy Vven needed to have that ending splash But so did God of war And so like You know, where are you going to go reallyally And like, doesn't it help to be you know, uh, the biggest story of the event as opposed to being just one of the biggest stories of the event. You know, like would you rather have your resineval Veronica code Veronica remake going up against A new God of warar announcement You know, like, is that something that you want Maybe, mayaybe not. likeike, I don't know. I don't know what the logistics are. I don't know how they view it I don't know if they view it as like we could be part of like a star studed show or if they look at it as like we want to kind of have some attention of our own. I would imagine it's more that than the other. Um So I really I really just think it's a logistics issue. I literally just think like they had twenty minutes of God of war gameplay. And they had twenty minutes of I mean, ostensibly twenty minutes A a Tital Fantasy seI for summer Games Fest You know, it f was it was like four trailers or something. Yeah, It was ridiculous. So I really just think it's a matter of just like there's games the games are where they make the most sense I don't think it I don't think it I think people are reading into it a little bit. Yeah, I think so too. I thought all three shows were really strong actually consistently strong where they're all like in the Bes And I can't really complain about that, but I yeah, I also want remind everyone, Chris that the losing party, so in this case, like an Xbox, for instance, is has the greater desire to spend more and make it more tantalizing for people to play ball with them. And so that's going to obviously be Iirreresistible to studios that can literally think about it Xboxes showcase showed twenty four Playsttation games They only showed twenty eight total games. All the M of PlayStation logos on it. Sony just gets those for free. Th guys still get to release their games over there, and then they're like, all right, fine, you can pay us for this or we get on game passing, whatever. it's like, right Do doesn't hurt us I mean, it doesn't affect us at all No. do I really do I really believe in my heart that Peaceudio onces personersona six at the Xbox showcase? No D don't believe that for one second Wh they that's where it is and it'll sell fine and they showed a shitty logo It's not so again, I agree with Chris. I wouldn't read much into it. I do think Sony has an image problem That's another question entirely and I'm not entirely sure how they turn it around except for to deliver the goods Make sure Wolverine's great, Make sure La is great makeake sure intergalactic especially is great and just shut everyone up. All right, second inquiry comes from Brent Linkquist, who says, Hey, fellas, I'm a lifelong resident of Washington State and it's prohibitively expensive to live here Starbucks recently relocated to Tennessee and that got me wondering, is it worth it for so many to consider relocating studios like Bungeie or Sucker Punch to more economically friendly locations I know it wouldn' sove their problems and I'd hate to see them leave my home state, but it's getting ridiculous around here as always, thanks for the show. This wouldn't work because I think First of all, anything is theoretically poss And like you said, Starbucks is moving, like everyone's moving out of these like frankly, these bluer states to redder states because it's just cheaper to do business in these places So that comes at a major cost The first thing is that like You have to bring your people with you Um You could do that. Companies do that and they pay for your moving and they set you up and they try to help you out But if the point is to say move Scker punch from Bellevue to Knoxville Are you going to go to all of them and be like, all right, we're moving all of you and they're all in. and then it's like, all right, and you're all getting a twenty five percent pay deduction In other words, like how does it really help you it's actually enormously helpful to the people at Suckhamatch to be like, so, you're going gonna pay us Seattle prices. in Tennessee And from that perspective, it's like, okay, and then it just kind of defeats the purpose. I guess real estate would be cheaper You're also leaving places where people want to be. and it's not as simple as like and leaving. when I got my first job, corporate job out of college, I could do whatever I wanted But if you have like a child in school or you have like a house, it's like it's not that trivial. So it's a nice idea, but it's not going to work. The bigger thing is in my opinion is to Also, I should say this, Starbucks moving its headquarters and like its operation is a much bigger deal that saves way more money than a studio of a one hundred people or a hundred. That's another thing Yeah, yeah. It's like, if you were saying like should SIE move to whatever, Florida Be like, yeah, that might be a good idea, actually, but that's different. That's a way different scale of money Um You also just have to realize that I think if you're going to invest in new projects or invest in new teams, you just do it in different places In other words, you keep your legacy shit. Like you'd crazy to have another studio in Santa Monica or another studio in Bellevue. You wouldn't be so crazy to have a studio in Sel or spinning something up in Tokyo or even in Prague So I think those are almost like They should be more anticipatory of future costs then trying to blunt the cost they've already incurred in which I don't think they would really be able to do it Because like I'm saying like, if you're going to move all these people, so it's like, so they all just work for suucker punch still, and now you're just paying them the same amount ofoney. And that's also expensive to do to move. Like it's not you lose half of them as well. So ye Yeah, you youll lose a lot of your talent. If you're moving to if you're moving to a place like Tennessee Uh your talent you better hope that you retain the talent that you do have because it's going to be hard to attract talent there Um, there's not a really There's not a reliable pipeline. I mean, dude, even New York When I was u When I was in when I was in high school and I was graduating and I wanted to do game development, there were there was no meaningful Game design, anything in New York And that was in twenty fucking twelve You know, that wasn't like eighties or something. So like You have to imagine the Tennessee is even more dire where it's like this's just who the fuck who the fuck is over there building games So like there's a lot of cost that goes along with it. It is not trivial to move an entire operation evenven if it's, even if it's just like a hundred people or like a studio It's trivial for a person to move So like I don't know. that's it's the wrong wayay to think about it. I think you're right though. likeike if you're to real if you're going to open Studios anywhere, you're probably looking overseas. Yeah, I don't ye, again, I think the anticipatory thing is just easier and then just kind of dealing with the fixed costs you have now and Is it ideal to have nought at do all at the water garden in Santa Monica? It's like it's unimaginable that it could be much more expensive than that. So no it's not ideal Um And then you have to pay people to live there and stuff like that. But as long as they continue to deliver the goods, I think everything will be okay. But it's a nice idea. And you're right, like major corporations do move all the time and thousands of people go with them I just think it's It's different and it's also more staggered. Like as I understand the Starbucks move, it's not like everybody's moving And that might be the intention eventually, and I don't blame them. And by the way A major thing that's happening in Washington is not only the And you know this, Brent because you live there, but it's not only the cost of living, it's that they just got rid of they introduced an income tax And now it's only for people that make a million dollars or above, but it's going to obviously trickle down as it always does with new tax law. and that scares a lot of people, especially business owners. And I think that's why people are fleeing Washington. And that's a bummer because that was always the coolest fucking part about being in Washington state for a lot of people was the no income You basically get a blue state kind of metropolitan Life with the perks of a red state like not paying income tax. I mean, it's unimaginable Mhm in a And it's too bad, man. I was I don't give a shit about Washington as far as like a municipality. Like I don't live. But like I was bummed when they when they did that because I'm like, dude I knew so many people that were that worked at Microsoft and Pople at sucker punch in other places where were like, damn they had a good. Like real good Yeah And they still do for now. But it won't, it won't last All right, Connor Reese writes in next And he says Hi guys Why are game stududios so often shut down instead of sold If there's a willing buyer wouldn't selling the studio Tent or IP bit be a better financial outcome than simply closing it for the tax write offff I mean, Connor, don't you say what the obvious thing is if there's a willing buyer The thing with we've talked about this a little bit earlier with the Xbox stududios is you see the studo like compulsion. like who in the world is gonna to buy compulsion Why would you ever do that Um Why would you buy double fine And by the way I'm not entirely sure that the IP is going with them In fact, I would think I would think Microsoft would be fucking nuts to let them take the IP. It's like, you guys can go We're keeping your shit You don't just get to walk away with your games. it could be an activion bungie like, right, Chris with Destin or what IO do with Hitman and Square Ex Sure. yeah, But I don't know why you would do that. Yeah, I mean, it it does depend It's kind of IP dependent, isn't it becausecause there are Hitman really is an IO Like I really kind of don't know who else could make a hitman game really Like that is a very specific skill set. It's like I couldn't imagine really being interested But don't you think square also did that because they realized it was just bad PR You know and they're like its That's I mean, that's also true, but it's what I'm what I'm saying is I don't think I don't know. It seems to me that The reason Studios sell Or the reason stududio shut down is because A, there is no buyer and also just like, it's kind of easier to just be like, hey, it didn't work We can shut the studio down And we retain the IP. fairly certain that's how that works If you if you shut down Like if you shut down U U double fine today You would own Psychonons and those things So there's really, you don't lose the IP. if you shut the studio down and you get to save money and you you get to retain that IP and it's not like a sony it It's not like a Sony Spyerman isue where like, oh, we got to make a new psychonauts game every three years to renew the license. It's like they just have So I don't know. I just think it's like there's I think the real issue right now is that there's not a lot of buyers The market, people aren't looking to buy right now. Right. I mean, in my opinion, Chris, if like people are not interested in Blue pointoint which seems like there's no interest in it, which is crazy in my opinion, then there's not going to be any interest in Major theory. I mean, maybe if you scaled, I mean, I would imagine regardless, if these studios manage to save themselves, they will be massively scaled down, I assume and probably lose their real estate and all that kind of stuff But if I were Microsoft, I'd be like, well, we invested in you. Obviously, things have changed I think with compulsion specifically, you never really delivered anything meaningful for us The very least we can do is we'll let you go, but we're and we're not going to try to like you can I'm not even sure they're letting themselves buy themselves back. I think they're trying to find them investors, which I think is I think that's above and beyond actually. because Really, you could just write down impairments on them and absorb that. But if you let them walk away for like a dollar or whatever, whatever they have to pay like some nominal fee So I think Microsoft's kind of doing right by them, but I also feel like that's also an optics game. Eespecially because I think they're like, what do I'm just making this up And it's like, what do we pay for compulsion? twenty million dollars?ike, who gives shit like, we don't need to sell them We can just let them go. And if they and if they want to be shut down then or if they can't find investment, which they're not going to, I imagine, then Again, I think the best Double Find has the best chance because I think Tim Schafer is just so deeply connected Right remember? I believe Tim Shafer was one of the co founders of that website Fig. We haven't talked about that website in a while I don't think they really do anything anymore. And I wonder if That might be the future Considering Psychoaots two before Microsoft bought the team in twenty eighteen or whatever it was Proud funny that. So on fake So They have options, I think. Tim Schafer is a well known auteur of sorts Microsoft just let them make whatever they wanted and that was really stupid Um, that game kill. I mean, it's cool, but it's like when I saw that game'm like are you serious Like you're serious, this is what you seriously have them doing and there San Fran they're on like third avenue King Street in San Francisco, like premium real. You guys have these guys just sitting there making kiln You your fucking mind So like to me, I look at that I'm like you kind of feel bad for them because they were mismanaged. Like they actually It's what I always said. It's like, these guys aren't making any money. likeike how is this working? And it's like they actually almost believed the hype. When you saw a game like south of midnight oratever that games call's like, God, Almighty are you ser? mean, it's a cool idea. I don't hate it. It's just like you can't have your first parties making games like this era. This is not the way works. No way I understand the game pass fodder idea But since Game hasest didn't I don't know if you saw this. I went dug up the old image that they circulated or that leaked of like their projections. and they literally thought they were going to be at seventy five million right now, like right now. They're at maybe twenty five to thirty. So under the auspices of like their expectations, a double fine and making Killin works M but not not here So it's a long winded way Connor of saying like there are no there are very I think very few studios that would find buyers right now. Look at what happened the negoti. I didn't I didn' put this up like that game's dead apparently. Like even he couldn't find investment. They needed forty million dollars to finish the game. It's a lot of money, but it's like, I'm actually authentically surprised like Sony or someone didn't come in and be like, well fin well you can finish it for us. as a second party game or something. If he can't find Investment You think These guys are going to find investment. I mean, I guess we'll see It's rough out there. The bigger thing, this is my sports poison brain But it's like, I'm surprised publishers don't trade. s That's like the more interesting thing because you see studios sometimes in people's families where youre like, you know that studio would make more sense here, don't you? And this studio will probably make more sense with you Let's make a little deal Um Instead, what you find is that studios leave hands and enter other hands. That's what happen with Rare which is, of course, a famous Nintendo studio And what happened with Bungie which went from Xox to independent to Sony I think everyone's scared at MMA right now And I think that's reasonable. And by the way, I think you'd look pretty stupid at buying or trading or acquiring anything when you're about to lay a bunch of people off. And just reiterate what I earlier,ony is definly imune. likeike they're definitely to lay off. There's no doubt I think they're just waiting for the next fiscal quarter if I'm be honest, because they're already incurring impairments from the bungee write downs, which are not done. That's the other thing is they're not done Writing that down. notot even close Yeah. There's like a seven hundred million dollars hit or something on it's like holy All right. Fourth inquiry, Chris comes from Nick Stoltty This this afternoon gentlemen Congratulations on the birth of Leon S. Furman. Coin lately, you've been talking about how PlayStation and Xbox should exit the A in AA space My main objection to this idea is Nintendo success Oftentimes, they're cheap casual games like Animal Crossing or Pokemon out sell nearly every first party game Xbox or Sony has ever released Tomadacci Life and Pakopia both seem to capture more attention than Xbox replacaceation this year It seems to me Nintendo is PlayStation's primary competition, and Sony has ceded vast swaths of the audience to them Is it really wise to double down on the AAA hardcore audience Uh I don't know how you feel about this Chris. I mean, it's an interesting conversation to have Nick, but like Nintendo is different. Nintendo, Nintendo. It's a little different right now with Switch two because it's getting a lot of ports And obviously it has a very vibr Indian Aen. Nintendo isn't Nintendo without its own games. And I've been making the argument that not only is PlayStation PlayStation without its own games, It is literally right now, PlayStation withithout its own games I mean, if you count like Death training to, and Yote, these are great games, but there's no didentifiable quarterly or it twice quarterly releases from them like there is in Nintendo because Nintendo has to do that And so I just think it's different Would Sony want to be in Nintendo's position? I don't think so. Sony makes way more money than Nintendo. onn a gross revenue basis, likeike more than twice as much. So I think they're just in different spaces and I'm not diminishing what Nintendo does. Nintendo makes an enormous amount of profit and they drive their own revenue, but it all sinks on and hinges on them. and You can see people's disappointment with the last Nintendo direct obviously Oakcrea of timee remake is going to be huge is going gonna be biger than anything Playsttation does this year Maybe not. Wolverine might be pretty big actually. but It's like, yeah, that's their bread and butter. Zelda Mario Donkey Kong, random sports spinoff Th like Animal Crossing or Tomadachi life, like you were saying, like Kirby and there's a Yoshi game that just came out and this is their thing And these games do drive sales and I think more than that, they drive a sort of stickiness on Switch that I don't think exists on the other platforms by virtue of the fact that the other platform holders don't have treat their catalogs like that because everyone else sells their games on their platforms. And if you're buying something like Resident Evil on Switch two you're buying the worst aversion. And so I don't know if that makes sense you? But that's kind of how I see it. There is no future for Sony and A and AAA games. I don't know how elses to impress this upon you Yeah. I know you hate it I hate it too. I love those random games. The days that you and I, we bought them and played them Most people didn't And some people would say like, oh, they took a ride or on journey or they took a ride and it's like true. Like, those games were big, and they were really important. and you can have those, but you don't need to buy studios and you can have second parties do that And that that's where I feel like that's differentiation between the first and the second party and that's why I keeping Chris Sony should just really be making AAA games Like there's no other excuse Yeah, I mean, I feel so many different ways about this because I do think Sony should focus on AAA games, but I also feel like Aple A doesn't need to be so AAA, I guess Um, I don't know. I look at Nintendo and Nintendo's operating on a different wavelength though, because Nintendo is in Japan. Their studios operate in Japan. It's a very different situation. likeike they have a lot to gain In comparison, like And by the way, the one American team released a game th one bought And metro which was that? Oh ye, M. Yeah, exactly Yeah. Mro. Metroid Prime or. Yeah Metroid Prime four, I guess, wherever the fuck was going. Yeah. and Metroid Prime four was like a very I don't know, to me that did not read like a triple And to be honest, like none of their games are really read to me even E leegend tollell the Breath of the Wild and T tears of the Kingdom like Th those are really great games. I I really quite like them Um They they're not They're not up to the same I don't want to say quality because it's not necessarily the right word. There's a lot of different ways to measure that But like they feel like really, really good double A games Like in my opinion You know, like all of the Nintendo stuff And they're operating in Japan. It's like way cheaper to run You're competing in with Playsttation' all in America now, basically. like there's Play stations is operated out of America. Yeah. so it's just it's a different ballgame entirely It makes more sense for Nintendo to focus on these smaller games, not only because that they not only because they rely so heavily on first party in comparison to a lot of other Um or their all their competition, but because it's it yields more It yields more rewards to do that because the expense is lower There's a tolerance on swwitch for And I want to say lesser quality because it's not necessarily I ord it, although that is true for Pokemon specifically They really shit Pokemon games all the time and they don't nobody seems to care I think that's a I I know I was about to say I think that's a good thing, but that's not that's not necessarily good thing. I do think we need generally as a space to be more okay with things that aren't fucking You know hyper realal like look at how, o, it's like a tech demo that you can play. I think we need to we we need to get away from that I think we need to be more okay with just playing a video game that's unapologetically a video game Not necessarily losing quality or anything, but just like not so focused on the stuff that costs hundreds of million dollars to make Perfect And we need to get back to the joy of play that I think Nintendo is so good at. like Those leegend toZld the games are janky You know, like Tomodaci life is the fuck even is that. It's Yeah it is ridiculous It's a weird. I watched excensively's It's a weird game and it's it's got nothing It's arguably got nothing but rough edges But people love it. And I think that's actually a great thing about Nintendo's audience is that they all for all the shit talking that we do about like, you know, their platform and their shitty hardware and You know U Their audience understands the joy of software in this space in a way that I don't think that the other two I feel like we've gotten lost in the sauce of like, Chasing fidelity And that's come to bite us in the ass because it's made everything more expensive and for very little return in comparison. So I think everything needs to be shifting. I think I do think PlayStation should focus on AAA, but I also think AA needs to downscale what triA means? There's thisry Let me find it real quick, this is actually an interesting I didn't include it because it's not really an important game But There was a game that came out recently that everyone loved. Yeah Luna Abyss. you know this game? It's a shooter, first person shooter. I actually wantan to play it It's from a studio called Quali Labs, K W L K W A L E E It was in Game passass and it got really good reviews and people liked it. And the game came out and then it's like a double A or and even an A first person shooter, and then they just shut down It's like, it's just The era of A andAA games rose as as tonics to AAA space that simply couldn't keep up with demand The great like there were interstitial games for many generations. I say this all the time. We all know this we grew up in these eras In a time crunched, game crunched industry You have to be pretty special like a vampire crawlers or somethingomet like that too get people's attention outside of the free to play major games, the ten poole games, the sports games, there's just too much. There can It would be people always long for Japan' studio especially, I'm like, you don't understand like Or maybe you do understand you're just refusing to really grapple with it. is like, there's no future in those games It makes no sense for Sony to create pipelines of having to support these games and And I' mightm not even talking about it from a developer perspective, but now you have to put PR on them. you have to market them You have to manage them Now we have to mock review them. Now we have to do this. Now we have to do that. These are like these things stack up and it never worked for them. These Sony was putting game after game after game after game out all the way through most of the PS four era That's why Santa Monica used to produce all the XTv stuff from America. There's a fucking mill dude, I could rattle off the amount of games that came from that from there that no one played. Bound counter spy You know, dokey dokey universe There's a shhadow of the Beast There's a million of them Like you could just there's a shit ton and they were coming out of EXDev in Japan as well, and some of them out of Britain as well. and some of those worked and some of those didn't. But it's just like I feel you and I hear you I think Sony should just let other people make those games And if you really are passionate about a Kenna whichich is a AoubleA game, I would say. Maybe they're trying to kind of get in the AA. Emberly Labs is obvious a very talented studio. it's like, go make a relationship with them sayay like, give us the game on PlayStation cover your marketing costs, We'll do the PR representation for you, will offset some of your costs. You don't have to do anything more than that. And you certainly don't have to invest in studios that make those games in terms of being first party, it's just, it's I hate to say it, it's over Open your eyes. You didn't play Rin. A lot of you didn't play Tokyo jungle A lot of you didn play trash panic Like there's some come on, man, we all existed in this universe and those games had a chance because there was actually nothing coming out around them. Now you imagine imagine releasing fucking callalling all cars Today Yeah for what? Wh who's going to play it Diddler wrote in as he sometimes does Oh no He says, Hey, guys Do you think the RE engine should get more praise? Since they use the same engine for every game, it's probably why their output is so high What do you think about the RR enngine do you have any thoughts I think it's a good engine. I think the thing with A Engine though is that like it it's become immediately obvious to me when it shows up You know, like it's not like surprising anymore Yeah, you've recognized Resident evil, I want to say R Yeah, it was just like you could tell by the hand or like I could like I've or even before that or like not before that, but like just after that, like the face on that on that old lady. I was like oh this is resinal. And I and I knew that not only because it's just like, okay, this engine' really identifiable, but also there's context clues also. It's like if you were a new IP, you wouldn't You wouldn't be it's doing this slow lead upp. You wouldn't be doing this slow burn. likeike this has to be something that we know. Um, So that kind of helps too. But like it's a good engine. It's clearly very nimble. They're clearly able to do a lot very quickly Um, which is a very, very under That's that's a very important feature that an engine needs to kind of have. Um They're able to iterate quickly, it seems. So I mean, it's a good engine. I don't have any Any qualms about it. It's definitely u one of the better ones that I've interacted with. And I do like that it's, again, I like that it's its own bespoke thing. I like when games feel distinctly themselves. Um And I think that's going to become less and less common. as the industry moves forward. Yeah, I won't presume to speak about this from a technical level because I'm unpared to do that. I will say the reason I wanted to use this inquiry was I do think Capcom deserves a lot of credit for normalizing the use internally of a static engine. This can really pay dividends for your organization if you can figure it out. Obviously, this has tanked other developers Look at Bethesda with the creation engine and look at what happened with Telltale They got completely fucked by their engine after a while. It was over for them. Um But if you can get it going And you create an engineering pipeline and something. this is what IC used to be, not the ice everyone's talking about now, but Iice at Sony, the initiative for the common engine The idea was to like get something for all of the studios. and I think the closest Sony has ever gotten to that in recent meory obviously is Desima Yeah. But It can't be understated that if you have an oper if you have a this is what's so impressive about Fortz attack working with Fable is like they've they've broken open this idea of multi genreizing theseese technologies that save significant money If you don't have to pay five percent licensing fees or even more and have all these toolss. and then you have to hire people that are specialize that specialize in these external tools. But On the other hand, Capcom no doubt has AE engine experts. Now they won't be able to go anywhere and use that anywhere else, but they will be incredibly valuable And this is what's happening with decessima as well. And why people are always like in the Netherlands. trying to like get experpertise about that and Kojimas talked about that a little bit specifically with the training too just from the capitalistic perspective, like they've done a really nice job of investing in something that really matters It's the different it could be a differentiator between your game being profitable or not It's like, oh, our gam's looking pretty good. Okaykay, did we pay our licensing fees and like our over middleear fees? And it's like, not yet. Okay. now how are we lookingking? Oh no, the game' in the red now So just doesn't have to worry about that. and that's nice. Yeah, that is true. There is a Yeah, I mean, they've they've got a really good system going. Well R right. That's why I was saying with the creation like the creation engine for inst Bza, that thing is fuck them beyond belief. Like It's horrible L like Starfield, it's like it's like this feels like it's ancient this game. We even playing it on PS five Yeah. So it's not not everything's good. And I was and I brought up telltales as the other example because that's just the most famous example I can think of where that. That engine started to degrade to such a degree that it was actually hysterical Like what it was doing. I think we brought up on the show somewhat recently that like Game of Thrones when they released that game, it started to just delete people's saves And like do weird shit. It was crazy. like and that's what I think destroyed them Yeah, I think I feel I'm so weird with the stuff. I like I like the jankiness of like certain I like when crereation Engine does something that makes no sense and feels janky and weird. Like just because I like that it's distinct. And again, I value that more and more as as we default to Unreal. I know City Project Red is ditching Red Engine to go to unreal for which are or I believe him and Obviously Halo, although Halo, I think is like that new Halo game I think is like running the Halo Reach engine underneath a layer of Unreal or something? Like there's some weird thing going on with that game by So I don't know. like I know what people mean when they say like creation engine sucks and all those things. and that's not necessarily wrong. Um, I think it it's a double edged sword really with with that type of thing. like Capcom obviously has has it set because they've got a really nimble engine that seems to be easy to work with. It seems to be easy to iterate on. Not all engines are like that, obviously. I think Fable like with Fortzatech, ndoubtedly it's taken them a long time to figure out how to Jerry rig that engine to do an RPG And I would imagine that that's why it's taken so much time. Not only not only from an engine perspective, but just like trying to figure out how to design for a game like that as a studio that's only done, you know, racing I'm sure that was like a challenging thing The issue that you run into, I guess, is that like you have all these hyper specialized talents that like really can't go anywhere. And so like when so when they're gone, it's like, where the fuck do they go? Like they don't have any And that's kind of the benef of unreal. It's like you can c your you're Tent pool kind of widens because now everybody has this industry standard tool that they're familiar with that they have access to at home. I have Like I can open up on Real Engine right now and tink around with it which is cool. Like the accessibility of that. It allows people to practice. It widens your talent pool, it allows you to get help on things really quickly. It allows you to iterate a lot quicker Um but you do lose a bespoke kind of quality And so like a deepends on what you' what you what you value. I wonder If the benefits of not paying the licensing fees for an engine Like, is that better than spending like three more years than you thought you would have trying to figure. You know what I mean? Like what's the cost of like if you're building a game for three years and then that gets three years added onto it because the engine is bespoke and very finicky and very weird. Like is that better than just paying the licensing fees for an engine that's easier to work with that only allows your game to work have a three year development cycle, you know what I mean Yeah. I wonder if I wonder if that's math that's done. Yeah because fables definitely in a b predicament, I think Um as far as like just just from the sheer time that it's taken to develop this game U Not say it'll be bad or whatever. I think it'll be K kind of cool actually, but That game's got to sell how many copies to make its money back At this point, you figure like because where's that studio? Where's playground? They're in the UK. They're in Sheffield, I think Right. So like, I mean That game hass been in development for Well, I guess they also have like they also have forortts of bolstering them. they've put out forts of stuff. So like Well Lemington spa. That's that's actually like the hotbed of game development in England. So yeah. yeah, they. I mean, that game is undoubtedly very expensive at this point, but No, very interested to see how that all works out for them Final inquiry comes from Herman's March who says Colin in last week's episode, you dec cried anti W critics for selling out for a little profit incentive but I think you're missing the enormity of the cultural backlash. This noise isn't just coming from some niche of YouTube creators, from some of the biggest streamers like Asmin or XQC to Jaffie, the creator himself, even if un'mwittingly pointed out The obvious tnd of maail replacement Not that. Oh, female main characters, FEMC's. I've never seen them in my life are generally a problem. When the industry hasoutinely dismissed or berated their core audience for noticing the pattern, anything that looks woke or feminine in a masculine franchise will drive gamers up the wall. I'd ask that you keep an open mind and find goodwill critics such as Luke Stevens, in my opinion I'm not going to find any critics necessarily because I don't give a shit really about this argument in a deep way. It's not to be dismissive as much as it' to say like it's just not something that's naturally interesting to me and so I'm not going Not going to get too crazy about it. but Herman's March, I wanted to be clear about something I'm not saying that there aren't people out there making an enormous amount of money doing this stuff What I'm saying is that the people you often hear about like stop. He's making money off of you. Like the normal sub suspects, those people, I'm like, no They're not And Chris and I have talked about this privly and publicly Chris knows better than anyone what people are making on YouTube. He has a great intuition for it And he's very experienced on the platform. It's like, yeah, of course people like Asmond Gold and all those guys. First of all, I don't really know much about that guy, but I have heard him speak and I'm like, he's Equin. He has he can articulate his opinions. You might not agree with what he says or who we I don't know. I don't know But it's like, I heard him speak for the first time. I'm like, Well, he's not nearly as crazy as everyone was saying he is I can see why a person like that would make a lot of money. That's not the kind of person I'm really talking I'm talking about like the bottom of the barrel barnacle like creatures that are selling out for nothing. And then people when you bring up their names, everyone's like, you're just making them more famous or you're giving them attention. I'm like Dude, you at a normal office job are making more money than this So so just so just think about that. nextext time you think that everyone That is in fact, Herman's Mart, I'm kind of making a case for you in that like The grifting angle in quotes, I think is a little disingenuous because Srifting for what? you could just go get a job and make the same amount of money. You're not making that much money if you have to crowdfund your lawsuit I'm just letting you know I'm not saying lawsuits are cheap. I'm saying people that make you think Asmond Gold if got sued by someone would crowdfund it right That to me is the difference and I'm not trying to make fun of anyone's financial position as much as I'm saying For all of the Asmen goals I don't know who QC is, like these bigger people that are dead do that sort of thing. That's awesome. There are a lot of Grifting no nothings. that do it almost for free That's what I'm saying. And that's the difference and that's the embarrassment of it in my opinion So that's why I wanted I want to say that because I want to be clear about that. It's not of course, there are people making a lot of money on this, but not the people you think Or at least a lot of people they think say it's like these people stream for a hundred people and get super chats and do all that kind of stuff. You probably make more money at your fucking shift Thats all. That's I'm saying Yeah, I don't know. As far as like the enormity of the cultural backlash, like I just, I don't know, dude. I think I'm at a place and again because I've seen, I've watched these spaces for a very, very long time. Like I've been in the weeds I've been in rooms with some of the people who are huge now and I've seen I knew them when they were normal and I've heard the way they talk and been behind closed doors with him And it just kind of like I just know intuitively that it's just like I just don't buy I just don't buy it There's there's a lot of a lot of this is performative A lot of it is For money Um, And I'm also just kind of quite frankly, like not very impressed Now seeing like When I was younger, I was impressed by people who did well. And then I was in rooms with people who did well And I became significantly less impressed. Good for Asmond Gold he's making a lot of money and XUC and you know, like fine It doesn't end inherently imply a level of Validity or it doesn't imply a level of intellect or it doesn't imply a level of knowledge about a subject. I've seen how far people can coast with like fucking no knowledge of anything It kind of blows my mind like there was with respect and I want to be respectful here. likeike there's there's a destiny creator who I've been watching for quite a while. his name's Astacross. He's like he would make videos about builds and he's like kind of, he knows a lot about destiny and he was giving a She tweeted something about like how like, oh Sony laying bungie off has nothing to do with business. It's just revenge or whatever. And I'm like, you must know more So either you're pretending to not know this or you're pretending to not understand like the obvious facts of the industry, which is like no one does anything. No no one tanks a company for revenge that they spent billions. Like it makes no sense Like it's intrinsically stupid U or you just straight up don't know what you're talking about And I kind of don't know what what's scarier. That's the most disappointing thing to me. It's like either way it's bad because either people are incentivized to pretend they're stupid because it's more interesting to people and that's what gets cl and that's what people aspire to be now. stupid O people are just not knowledgeable about anything that they're talking about and they're finding success in it anyway. So like, I don't know, a lot of it just kind of I glaze over for a lot of the stuff because it's just like, okay, you have a problem People are making videos about A lot of female characters in video games and people are angry about it. it's like, okay, fine, but it doesn't mean it's justifiable anger and it doesn't mean I care about it. M said, you know, yeah, most said Yeah, I don't. it's like I believe I'm interested in many things, and I think it's interesting enough to like see what people are saying, but I think it's just so predictable and rote that And the champion, many of the champions of it so bankrupt. morally, intellectually, whatever I just I think a lot of these people especially these smaller people like again, the Asmen gold guy and hearing him speak, I'm like You put him in a room with that smash JT guy and You is it smashy? Is it te? I don't even know which one's the real one now. I don't know I think that might actually be the real name Like, Asmond Gold's probably ten times smarter than him And that's kind of the point I'm making. It's not a defenseive a person I don't really listen to either. It's to say like There are different echelons that become quickly and obviously Clear to one listens or inter and as I did interact with these people, and you realize, wow, these people are dumb as fucking rocks. And you're almost giving them too much credit Like you think that they're It's like this guy is like the fucking Scrooge McDuckan the gold coins. I'm like no is not And that's that's that's the point I was making about very specific people where I'm like, no, you'd be surprised And I don't I don't believe I'm not saying he's making peanuts. I'm saying like, would you sell out to make Would you sell your soul like that to make hundred thousand dollars a year Yeah That's nothing I wouldn't And I think that's like the max of what he might make And I'm not saying that that's not a lot of money. I'm saying, look at what the cost is dude. Look at how much a clown these people look like. L look at how stupid like just It's hard. It's hard for me to respect because as somebody who had the opportunity to sell it for way more and didn't. likeike, it's just like I look at it and I'm just like, what are you doing? Me too. do and As go and Asmond like, I do think he's smarter than Smash JT I also like I don't know, I've seen a lot of Asmond over the years and I think he's also kind of like a little bit him but it's but it's also like he's not borderline disabled That's what feels bad about Smash JT. is like, I don't really what, I don't know how to feel about it because I think he might be just genuinely retarded Uh so like There is like I mean I really mean that. Like I think there's something like it feels kind of mean But u It's funny I felt said that I said that on the show, right when I was on his show, I felt that way where I'm like, I feel like this is kind of like We're not in the same way class And I'm not trying to be a dick headad to you, but it's like you are not on the level. And And there is something, but he's so pernicious and aggressive to people and so annoying that like you can't help it You can't help but criticize that level of interactivity that to that like he is so I mean, I don really know what he does on a day to day basis, but in my experience with him, it's like, damn you really I don't know, dude. Like I like it it's rough. You don't meet people like that in your adult life very much. Like I'm not trying to be ant but you don't. Like you don'tet people very much in your adult life where you're like, holy fuck L no, rarely if ever, if you just if you go outside, you don't run into these people So it's just, it's It really is fucking fascinating. So I don't know what to do about it either sometimes I'm dealing with it. I'm like, oh my God, like, It's worse than I thought. You know, and and so How can one not help but And some people be like, oh, the attention helps them and all that. I'm like, mayaybe it does, but I'm actually of the mind that you have to fight for your space and also Not all Atention's good attention And if those kinds of appearances follow a person and you do it over and over again that becomes their whole. thenen you become like a lole cow And then you have to ask yourself like, is that how you want to live your life? Beacause usually people in that experience, that's all they can do So then that's like a total trap you know, um It's the. I'm not trying to count other people's money at the end of the day. I'm just telling you like you would have to pay me extraordinarily better than that to sell out like that. And like Chris said, like I've also been offered money to sell it now. not selling out has been even better for me. but it's like it didn't have to be that way. It's very easy to take that money It's just surprising what people would do for so little. be that's I'm Yeah that's that's the thing too like, I really don't care how much money you're making. Like to me, it's just like It's embarrassing either there's either one of two possibilities. Either you are legitimately F either you are legitimately deeply perturbed by a trans ghost in the skyline of the of the of the box art for Halo campaign evolved. either that's genuinely a thing that you're experiencing, where you're like experiencing this like psychosis or you're pretending to for an audience of people that you know are just stupid and they're going to eat it up. And that's think neither of those are like good or interesting or well well, they're interesting. I shouldn't say interesting. Nither of those are enviable positions to be in my opinion. Itsike either you're insane or you're pretending to be insane for money. and it's like a I'm good. I've seen a few people say too like, well, why do you want to you talk bad about some of these audiences? likeike why do you want to alienate people? And like, generally, I don't want to alienate people. The thing is that If you watch that level of content earnestly and you like it and you're into it It is impossible for me to understand how you could possibly listen to this Like we're not the same. We don't have the same like they're There can't be crossover. It's it's impossible You can't listen to something like this or anything in our network where people that actually play and understand video games talk about video games then listen to that and then volate back and forth and be like, oh, I don't like the way you treat person. It's like I think you need I think you're in the wrong place They think you fell here somewhere in the sky like a stork dropped you or something, you know, because I don't know. So that's why I'm so comfortable doing it.'s like we're not this, we're not going to the same audiences. There's no way. Like the average IQ of the people that That listen, earnestly, it's like the purple box art Like that kind of shit. that's like we're talking about in the eighties for your IQ at the most. and that to me is that's like You're like an elementary school student or something Itselfl Yeah, it's like self evident. in a lot ofays that's the audience overlap is not there. That's why like I'm okay with like alienating certain people because I feel like the old it's kind of those things where it's just like, I've said this before. A lot of people are really eager to squeeze into shoes that don't fit them. Right? where if I'm talking if I'm talking about people who are like freaking out But like actually freaking out about like the the bisexual lighting and halo or whatever And people are offended by that, I'm only left to assume that you consider yourself one of those people. in which case, you're not watching me anyway. So like I just I can't care There's enough people and there's enough there's plenty of audiences. Yeah, exxactly. That's exactly right Rakfrast's all be have Mm, shows over Dustin don't come back. We were fine without you. No can we miss you, Dustin And we'll have you back whenever you're ready. But Chris this was fun. It was good to talk to you and good to see you as always. Any Any closing comments before we go No, man, what what's what's today looking like? U It's Thursday. I feel like I definitely have stuff to do. I have to check my calendar haven't calear on your fridge? I have a I have like a dryer when on a dryerace? I have like a liquid chalk kind of clear calendar that I just use because I hate Hving to replace Does Yeah, I actually one like it's like modular. But I've been kind of like lazy with like keeping it updated. So I've tried in the last couple of days, but I've got a busy week. I know VidCon is happening. Oh. That don't of fiber go I don't think I'm going to go, but like I think people are going to be in town and around. so I'll probably be making the rounds seeing some people over the course of the next week or two. Iide that. moreore more crazy taxi I don't know. crazy. C cool Crae and tax head Make some crazy money. Th' mind if I do it Beum Yeah, for me, I'm just gonna I don't know, maybe it's eighty nine degrees outs hot and I'm going tobe Maybe walk the dogs or something and I gota work out and Gott to get back to Pragmata and continue taking my notes to prepare for the US playlayercastmorrow The United the day this goes live on Patreon, the US. plays its second World Cup games so I'm also looking forward to that to seeing what that's all about Um Yeahah, pretty much that's it. So and Father's Day this weekend So happy Father said everyone out there. all the fathers Dustsin to Dustsin, especially,es, of course All right, Chris, well, good to see you. A appreciate you. You to see you next week. And we'll see everyone out there next week as well. Thank you for a lot kind of support of all things we do here Patreonot com slash last dayay Media and last dayayedia. st for mer We'll see you next time. until then Take care, guys Sacred syymbols, a PlayStation podcast is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Collins Last Stand LLC, and is proudly recorded in the USA The show was conceived by, is written by and is directed by me, Colin Moriarti. My co hosts are Chris Ragon Maldonado and Dustin Furman The show is produced by executive producer, Dustin Ferermman. All of Last Stan's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narviz. As you know, all of Last Stan's shows, including sacred syymbols, are fan funded on Patreon at patreon dot com slash lastastan media. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent Deavor Thank you. 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