Reflecting on Grand Theft Auto Five

Greetings and salatutations, welcome back to Sacred Smbols A Playsttation podast This is episode number four hundred and eighteen. We're almost to a four hundred twenty Oho, is' that exciting? My name is Paul Moriard. I'moined always by myon Chris R Gon Chris. It's good to you today, friend. How are you Good, good, never been. It feels like it's never a slow newswek Now man.'s it's always picking up Yeah, it it's it's interesting times. For sure. goodood for business. good for our business. Yeah I don't know how good it is for other businesses h But it's good for our business and u Yeah, fun to talk about. It reminds me a little of what's going on with football too. Like this is usually a dead zone in football and yet there's a lot of news right now too. It just seems like everything's kind of bubbling to the surface and we'll get to all that. We' go into it nice and slow. No no need to rush We're here and we're hanging out. We the summer, it' It's early July It is So fucking hot out 't I have a sweat around, which is funny because I've we've made it very cold in Yeah, u It's ninety six degrees It it feels like I think it I think like I was saying it feels like it's one away eight. Um You walk I walk went outside to bring the dogs out and when I woke up and I just walked you're walking like a wall of water basically. suspended in the air thr in How's when you're in there, Chris? It's a it's a nice sixty degrees. No, that sounds nice. It's been it's been so chill. I think the high was like seventy seven or something Uh, it was like or it was around that that temperature. like Everything's fine. And then I get calls from like my friends in New York or whatever. it's like it's impossibly hot. And I'm like, all right good. You borrowed it from us for a little while crazy here for a little bit and and then it just kind of subsided and now you guys have it. the East has it Yeah, it's it's bad. It's only going to get worse apparently for the next couple days. Apparently me see here on fourth of July, we're recording this on the second I have to go to a party on the fourth of July, which is going to be, you know, dubious at best, I think. Yeah, tomorrow. so one hundred and two degrees Friday, one hundred and two degrees Saturday and that's just that's just the that's not what it feels like that's the actual The actual temperature. I just got an email from Patreon It says, you have one refund request to approve or decline. Let's click on it and see This site doesn't secure a support a secure connection. All right Cooking at it anyway. What is the u Quest I didn't mean to subscribe, I just wanted to look at the page What? I didn't mean to subscribe. I just wanted to look at the page But you have seeee this person saying I won't say his name, but it says he's A member of the Q and A threads Tars that's ten dollars, But his lifetime amount is thirty one twenty six. So what was the accident because you've been here I'm going have to marinate on this We don't very many work refund request. and I do the last one says here the last one we got was in April and I did I did do what was his request I was signed under the wrong ID and wanted a pledge under my Apple ID declining this one But I'm going to sit on it for a minute Yeah, marinate on it. think Yeah. marinate on it. I' want to make any rash decisions. It says it expires in seventy five days, so I have a little bit of time to figure this out You can string it along for a while So what else going on in your life, Chris, everythingverything else good with you. It's good to see you as always, you're looking fit Yeah, I mean, everything's kind of everything's normal. I'm in the middle of like really doing a deep clean of my apartment because it's getting to that point where it's like I've accumulated it. I don't really buy a lot of stuff But I do accumulate things every now and again. it's like, oh, I got this thing and it's like, what is this wire? doing here. I've got a junk drawer full of stuff that I'm like, I should probably just empty this out. So I'm in the process of doing that. I did the D', I'm serious about it, man. I'm like, I move the fridge out Oh yeah, that's a clean behind the fridge. satisfying. Wipe the top of the fridge, all that stuff And it's like I'm serious. Now it's like, If you survive this cleaning session, like you're You you're probably going to survive forever I like it go deep clean I like to go deep clean myself You gott to keep things orderly in your normal life, but every once in a while, I was saying this just a couple weeks ago you gotta go crazy with it and get every square inch. I just did the top of the fridge myself a few weeks ago. I even did the top like in our kitchen, very tall ceilings in the cabinets actually end And then there's like a space neverever ever ever. it's like twelve feet off the ground or more I like climb on a ladder and then get on like and then I am up there and I'm dusting it And I'm like, really, you don't need to be doing this, but also there are just a bunch of nails sticking out of it because of the way they put it in so So I'm like this is like a fucking sabbath. This is like a Kevin McAallllister sort of situation up here, like they would put some sort of treasure up there and then bandits would get fucking stabbed in in the wrist and die. Yeah, it's just to kill clumsy rats. Right. or mice as they try to make their escape Oh man, mice We had a mouse living in our garage a few winters ago and we didn't know until we moved to things afterwards and you can just kind of see the remnants of it and' like, oh good Yeah, it's always fun. That's wonderful That's wonderful here. We out, we were walking after dinner like at night at like eight or nine at night the other night, and there was a huge snake and it reared up. As like it was like on a person's lawn and we were on the sidewalk And I was like Jesus Christ Those are probably harmless snakes though, right? around?. Yeah, that one was, we looked it up My uncle, there are poisonous snakes here Becauseuse Mike and I were talking like, where we're from, there are no poisonous snakes Like in New England and u And a lot Garter snakes. Yeah, garternakes and all yeah, right But they are poisons here. The other thing we saw the other night Because we go out like when the when the sun is going down, So like this is like when the this is the day night transition for animals And we saw a wolf spider for the first time It was the biggest spider I hadd ever seen in my life, like with my own two eyes. horrifying. We actually stopped and looked at it I know this is going to bother people, but I'm like I feel the need to kill this thing. But then but then I was like I was like, it's too risy. I don't know what this thing's capable of. I don't know. And then we looked at up when we got home so we left it alone. We looked at it when we got home and it like it can move twow feet a second I'm like o, good So I would have like went to stopp it and it would have already been up my pant leg R . No, you don't want to fuck horrify. You you know it's crazy? I don't know if this is true around you But I only learned about this recently Is there' certain parts of the south where like there's a thing called Spider Shine. Are you familiar with this? No So I don't know if it's specifically with the phone camera or if you need specific lights, but if you have your phone camera out And you have your flashlight out and you kind of like pan across your lawn at night, you can see like little glows in the grass and a lot of people think it's do But it's actually like the reflection of the light out of the spider's eyes. Oh, good And it's I'm going do that tonight Scare Mica Yeah, hopefully you don't get too many glows because we get a lot we have a lot of spiders here, man There's so many spiders that it's there's so many more it's amazing how many spiders there are around at any given moment consonsidering how little I see them Right Exactly. L like they're they're masters of stealth in ways that I didn't anticipate. It makes It kind of makes them Things like o my god, what's that movie? Rick Moranis I drink the kids? how do I drink the kids? It makes like things like that like feel a little bit more like I mean Aside from the science, right? Basically make that feel a little bit more believable because I'm thinking in my mind, like where are these Spiders really I feel like I never see it's like a game of grounded I uh, No, I agree. L you're always within proximity of a spider Like becausecauseuse when I go out there, I'm like, damn dude if you just look there' just so many bugs and animals and things around here Well now one's very natural, but it's just different. And and like I My guy I laugh at this all time is I sit on my back porch and I smoke joints whatever. know I was out there at like three in the morning smoking a joint last night. before I went to bed and likeike bugs just run into the house. likeike they're so stupid. Like you just hear that like you just hear full speed ahead like a beetle just being bo. like like just like this like siding noise and then just fall to the ground and then like flutter and like and like go I'm like, whyy are you you guys just And there's a million different kinds of them, and they're all just I don't mind them so much. I'm not so Oly spiders really creep me out Hm, or very exotic bugs. like but like I I don't really give a shit In fact, like I have a lot of pollinating, like my yard is like a pollinator yard in quotes ' we have so many fucking plants and flowers and stuff like that. So I like the bees and I like the butterflies and I like the dragonflies M man, these other things, these mosquitoes and these horsefies and these spiders devious creatures. I just don't want them on me Right That's my only If you can respect my autonomy, just like not land on me or notot fly like not whisper a slur in my ear real quick. Like like it feels like they do sometimes. feels like really to fairy is the way Yeah, I hate I hate that shit. And like, especially when they're persistent, so like you keep swatting and you just hear it And you're, why can't I Get you. Yeah And also why you're here for so long NatTs do that sometimes They'll hover around your ear for a while. It's like it's if they're trying to tell you something I think they might be attracted to like the heat or something of your ear maybe or something like some or I don't know. they're dumb This comes up every few months on the show, like they got to eradicate the mosquito. they can do it Yeah, I'm not I'm not concerned with the Uh, what's the word? e ecological Yeah, the you really concerned with the ecological blowback of getting rid of mosquitoes One of my favorite things about mosquitoes though is that they have their own mosquitoes You knowes, right? Like yeah, we tell yes. My favorite thing about him.' like I love like what it's Karmic. What a Like that's the most con that's the best evidence I've ever seen that there is a God is that mosquitoes have to suffer the consequences of themselves as well That is justice It's funny, like I wonder if they realize how much we hate them Now they just don't have that they don't have the bandwidth to understand that I was watching this interesting thing about be intelligence and like how there's like there was these studies done recently about how like these things are maybe smarter than we think Like. But they really only have so much processing power at the same time Cant anthropomorphize him too much There's different types of intelligence, I think. I think being able to, I mean, bees are incredibly smart But like they're not going to like place my catlet the converter with any real with any real significant Prow us Yeah, it's, I don't know. There's like ten thousand of them and they're like lifting it like lifting it out of the car . I'm more convinced of like puses Oh yeah. and things like that. You know, like that, I think there's like there's something to it where I'm like, like, are you are you on the level? is like the question. Yeah, like Yeah, like if you were Beause I think we know intrinsically like if you gifted the gift of speech to like a dog, it wouldn't say anything of any real value You know, it would ask for food probably They would say like hungry, hung Right, right, hungry P playaying playay. It wouldn't say. But I think an octopus might askk you something You know what I mean? Like I feel like it's just a little distressing might write the next great American novel U unfortunately ye I don't like animals. We talk about this region l with monkeys where I'm like I don't like animals that are on the level where I'm like, you're too on the level. like I feel like you understand too much and it's weird for me Yeah you can communicate with each other really, but like you're deffinitely as stupid a dog or something. And I love dogs, but like the dogs are suspended at three year olds, basically human three year olds. We've talked about it before is that Dogs come out smarter than humans Right. And like as a small dog, they're actually smarter than a small human. and then they just stop Right and then the heart itself. Right, Exactly. like a two and a half years old or whatever And then it's like It's different for these monkeys. They cap out at like ten You know And it's like, I don't know, dude, like you have some sort of dolphins, the same thing. like, What are you doing What's going on in your life know Yeah. This is why we need to go to Mars because there are no animals there No bugs kindind of fuckking do we find some worm Yeah, yeah, great Godob God fororssaken creature Oh man boy. Wlcome to Sacred symbols, everyone. It's good be here with you guys today for episode four hundred and eighteen. We're pleased to be sitting with you. It's usually three of us, but are producer and co host Dustin is on aternity leave and he'll be back whenever he wants to come back. but He's seeing all of your well wishes and he appreciates you guys U And I'm basically just trying to leave him alone Um I don't know, I just don't want to When you when I don't like being I'm like, I'm Dustin's boss. It's like don't I don't really like that, but nonetheless that is the reality. and you don't want to hear from that person. That's my opinion You know Right, Right like you don't want to hear from him Right now Yeah, your boss. Yeah, like like I actually would feel more comfortable getting in touch with him if he was on the clock, but he's not So just let him do his thing. Let him enjoy You know, let them enjoy. Lyway I don't know man I'm like trying to keep it together every day in my life. Oh yeah It' becoming more difficult. You can get this three days early at free over on Patreon. Patreon.ot com slash slash dayayedia for early, free access to this show and all the shows in our network many shows defining Duke the Xbox Bockcast by Cog and Maddie. We have Summonseign Gameplay podcast hosted by Brad. We have the Nintendo podcast co hosted by punching upp co hosted by Bad. Mica And of course, sacred symbol pllus as well every week, the supplement to this show only on Patreon, at least in the beginning, audio and video. we get into interviews and topics and discussions and game reviews and all the rest. So I recently had Rese Elliot on for a two hour conversation. He's from Millenia Analytics. We talked lot about the game business literally U Oh, I have this in here twice, I think, the end of Destiny. You're doing this, right? Or have you done it already? The u ye, it's your part of me mean mean C. We're gonna we're going to try and do it, I think in in the next u day Okay, cool. So that's the I hope so that's the next one. I have nothing prepares If you if you I could probably pivot, but let me know when you can I'll let you know by the end of today Pragmada review discussion went up recently, B bunch of SarO stuff, Saros review discussion in Spilercast and the interview with Saros is Greku Laden and their brand Michela Barry, so please look forward to that. And yeah, there's so many other things. I have a few things lined up for July But I think there's a lot of There's just so much happening that I want to be able to be a little bit more pliable too Um I want to have hog back on to talk about some things We're not covering it here. It's a little above our pay rate on the show, but like I want to get into the lawsuit that that has been filed I think in California against the RAM manufacturers. I don't know if you saw that that they're like they're cabal and they're colluding with each other. Noreticabal a cartel and that they're colluding with each other. I want to get into all that stuff I think that'll be fun. So keep an eye for Sacred streaming continues as well. That's every Monday onene PM Eastern time I've been going alone for a couple of weeks and then I had Lockmart on last week. We're having a good time over there. So come join us. We'll get into some more gameplay and some other stuff as well. I'm kind of getting my C legs because I don't really know what I'm doing. Although I'm getting better at setting it all up. It's not as the thing I keep reminding myself Chris when Iream is I'm like Ive said this on the stream is The stupidest motherfuckers you've ever met do this It's's it's what I it's I had to remind myself of this when I don't like driving Right? But when I was younger, And I don't drive really. But when I was younger and I had to get my dad boughtght me I'd thought this of like Ford Rer and I would learn how to drive it all the rest That was what I told myself And I was like a high schooler Im You can do it This dude has a sixty five IQ. And he's fucking hurtling down the Long Island Expressway You can do it U So it's the same with the streaming setup where I look it It was very d It is daunting It's a lot of bullshit. It's way too complicated But u But also we're not just going live with like, I can just go live on my phone But like obviously, we use OBS and have like an overlay and the ability to to know to. So there's, I'm sure there's a lot to Nonetheless, it's getting better It's getting better. we had a good time with Lockmort Thank you for everyone's kind words on that owers wrote and said hello sacred crew gl to see Lockwore was able to attend sacred treing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday or maybe Thursday. Who's the next guest I'll hang up and listen while I purched Nughtyar before the PS three store friendont shuts. you should buy Nauyar because it's a wonderful game. It's a woful game It's ridiculous thing to say about Naughty Bear. but I liked a lot U The next guest I don't I don't know. Oh, I did reach out to Jaffy because I thought it would be a good like a really good time to have him on. And he's always available and And he's always willing. You know, Jeffy and I have a really good friendship behind the scenes very strong friendship. So he's always available for me and vice versa. This time surpred because I just emailed. I'm like,'s' do Jffpp. And I kind of st I forgot about and a few hours later I got the email respse and he's like, Oh, I'm he's traveling at that time and I'm like, what Oh. What do you mean Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. so don't know. So that's out the door. I don't. Well we'lligure it I feel like I don't want to do it until Dustin comes back because it's a little too sophisticated, but I think we got toa get the PS three more involved especially with recent news Oh yeah yeah. and you know, do some other stuff. I don't know. I'll figure out. I have a lot of my mind right now It's a busy time. Merch Lest Media at store Brandon Stark wrote it in and said, Hello Chris Khann and maybe welcome back to Dustin for the Pysical Media segment Merch idea, you're getting a little presumptive, aren't? Merch ideea parity of the secondcond Amendment crowd We need a sticker or a shirt that reads, come and take it next to a picture of a game case. Hope everyone has a good weekend Yeah We could do that. I don't know I love the come and take it flag, like the Texas Revolution flag. I think that flag's dope m And there's obviously the form of like the asssault rifle on it as well fairly famous I don't know how we would represent a game, like a It's monochrome, right? It's black and white So you can't have like Too much detail Um You can't have like so it can't be the CD because it just it won't look right I don't think And then the case, it's just a rectangle See the come and take it flag is awesome because it's a canon. Right? Like you can tell what it is I don't I like the idea, but I don't I don't know I don't know. I don't think it fits I don't think it works. You could probably get some talented artists to figure it out, but like it's not us I had a u I had a come I bought on Amazon years ago I bought a come and take it shirt with like the with an assault rifle on it. I thought it was cool But I thought it was just going to be like the bre over the breast like a little thing just some little mild thing. It was a whole thing It was a whole thing. Th then I got it. Yeah, and it's like it was like, I think I think it was so I think it was like that on and then on the back, it's the huge version of it version of it. And I'm like like an M four something. I'm like, all right I don't think I can wear this to work That's awesome get topics of discussion. Obviously we have big topics in the games industry to get into, which will will patience Patience, please Relax Sacred Symbols is sponsored by Better Help, the online solution to talk therapy that lowers all imaginable barriers to entry and getting the care you may need Learn more now at betterterhelp. com slash symbols It's hard for some of us to understand, but even here in the modern era There still exists a reluctance among some people to seek out therapy even if they feel they need it BetterHelp's twenty twenty six State of Stigma Report surveyed two thousand Americans and revealed that while eighty five percent of them believe getting support is wise, seventy four percent say society discourages them from doing so In other words, there's a disconnect here that still needs to be bridged. 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Visit cash d. app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures Hyiley and Andy wrote in and said goodood day, gentleen Giving a shout out to all of the LSM for keeping me distracted in recent weeks during a truly tumultuous time My wife's water broke nine weeks early with my child being born just a few days later Everyone is one hundred percent healthy, That's good to hear. We will all be practically living out of the NICU for at least a few weeks Please join me in welcoming baby girl Lily into the LSM family. Assuming all continues to gets out a good time to bururn Yeah It wasn't It wasn't a good time. My body. Yeah, it's not a good time Asuming all continues to go well, my only hurdle will be protecting her for my wife's unhinged Genshin impact habit. That is too bad Lily named after Lily Mo which in turn is named after Lillily, a dog Right? I see what you're doing Interesting. Congratulations to you. That's wonderful. Yeah, congrats. That's great Nine weeks ear That's very early, but I'm glad everyone is healthy. that medicine, modern medicine is pretty remarkable. I know're I know we're impatient because like there are things we like famous football player just got diagnosed with MLS for instance And like there are these things that just linger for generations and we don't know what to do about it and it's horrifying. And like you see them coming like slow moving freight trains and you can't get off the track But for all of those are horrible things, there are so many other things that we've like just sort it out Yeah it's pretty cool Free kn Yeah, that's cool. That's That's really early though.'s it's wild Glad everything's all right Still the character creator wasn't done yet. Yeah, it's like accidentally you accidentally skip to the end. like oh shit But at least at least everyone's okay. It's not like the baby came out looking like blood my bloodborne characters something like that because I need might want to put it. right. That would go back. You're not done yet We're not done yet Gotta spend weeks living in a jar with like translucent skin tank ia I was always fascinated by that emmpire strikes back, like Luke in the back to tank after he gets attacked by the Wampa. Like it's so cool looking like suspended with like the mask over them, the cool two one B droid dealing with them. Oh God Empires. I know they had it at that point. I know that from u I know that's from Dragon Ball Z And in Dragon Ball Z, they have like the basically that Yeah, literally that And I think I think Weapon X. or whatever is also the same because I think they made a figure for that like the Wolverine, whatever. I don't know th Yeah, R coming in like a thing like that as well that it was really cool I would't mindving a back to thanank. Like you have like like people have like these like isolation chambers and these coold the bads and all this like put me in the Get the two one B droid to put me in the back the tank for fucking thirty minutes. I need to recover a little bit. See seeee just a normal fucking person back to tank Just like what are you recovering from? It's like, I just read a lot of really annoying news. Yeah I'm a little hung over Right Andrew C wrote in and said, Hey sacred tenents Slow News week, huh? My girlfriend and I recently got our own place. Congratulations The apartment is awesome. We're related to be in our own space without roommates, but there is one caveat Our upstairs neighbor walk neighbors walk around in whatk I can only assume to be concrete shoes from five AM to one AM So that's the twenty hour Parcel of the time. They don't sleep very much dad. I've mentioned it' to management, but at what point do I take matters into my own hands? Should I leave a QR code on their door that links to a video of people walking loudly? or should we just swallow it and wear headphones when sleeping Have you ever dealt with noisy upstairs neighbors? If so. What did you do? Thanks in advance for the insight. I'll hang myself by my PS five disk edition and listen Can everyone stop hanging themsel? Like I don't know why you want to do that like It's not that bad It also seems it also seems like quite frankly like a really bad way to go. Yeah. You don' want to hang yourself. I don't know if I don't know if I want to experience that really I mean It is there's no good way to do it really You know, like that's but I'm saying like that's like goodood part of it. is like there's no easy switch. You know, like some people want to be gratuitous Some people want to be dramatic Right, rightight But there's no like easy way to do it And that's good. Think twice. Right And three times thrice, even before you do anything stupid Your s. I' no stories of people who jp off the bridge and then like, they're phalling they're I don't want to do this. Yeah, it's like, well too late Enjoy Well, those people end up being fined somehow. Yeah they bring a phone or whatever. Belly flob God Mm Apparently like at some point the tension of the water and the speed, like your terminal velocity. It's like hitting concrete Oh yeah. I mean, is so interesting I mean, you feel that even if you slap water Yeah. Like if you're in a pool or something's like it's incredibly incredibly hard if you like hit it with enough force. I always just thought like if you're going really fast, it wouldd be hard to line it up. if you jumped out of an airplane over the ocean, let's say, right And you had a and you didn't have a parachute, but you had a rock. like let's say it was like a rock the size of like a tennis ball. and You're falling and you're falling and you're falling. and right before you hit, you'd throw the rock down under you Seriously, it breaks the tension of it breaks the surface the surface tension of the water And then you probably go right through Maybe. I don't know that sounds I time it well. No, let's test it out. Let's get Jamie Heineneman And the mythbusters to hear that It sounds Cause then you'd be flying into a rock though, wouldn't you If you we fly on here, I guess you would encounter it. Maybe you need someone on the ground to do it Like right before you land like just throw the rock in the water Right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That reminds me of like like troll physics or something for like like, u Like just before a plane crash just jump You know, and then you'll be fine. Right? likeike yeah, just get out just yeah, exactly the place The problem is you're also going that speed when you jumped. No, I know, I know I mean, if given enough time, If you were suspended in like low gravity and you jumped and the plane was still going, eventually you would hit the back of the plane if you were given enough time because you're slowing down immediate It's just that everything is going T fast anyway, don't kill your Yeah, yeah. as far as the noisy neighbors go is the spirit of the question Yes. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've probably been the noisy neighbor. I don't the thing The thing that always bothered me though is when management would be called on us because We're not murderers. So like I just don't understand why you wouldn't just like If we're being allowed, just knock on our door and ask us to like I don't care about that. like it's fine. And I've done that before also. and people are normal about it. Because most people don't know how loud they be. they don' know what it's they don't know. You can't Unless you're literally testing it out with like friends of yours in different apartments in your building You don't know how much noise you're making and how much how much of it goes through a wall or whatever, like you don't know Like, most people are just like genuinelypologic They're like, I'm sorry I didn't And then they, you know They don't do it Yeah, just be more mind Yeah, it is putting you in a position and that's unfortunate but yeah, you got to go talk to them at least first You got to give them an opportunity to self correct Yeah It might go badly. They might be dick headads, but at least then you wouldn't care. Yeah, that can be let loose At that point you could do the manager stuff, but it always bothered me whenever like it would be like man whenever management was like the first option,' like really, you're gonna to tadtle Yeah. rightight rightight. It's kind of coming to me like a fucking adult. like Yeah it just seem seemed insane. And when people did that, by the way, I had less of an inclination to care. And like whenever manageerment would be called on us, it would be like, all Let's u Let's install a sound system Night of spite You know, It always bothered me I, uh yeah, I've had generally good neighbors, thankfully in my experience. I lived in dorms when I was in college, obbviously that's going to be allowed and boisterous or whatever. and I don't give a shot about that. Yeah There was a place in college that so I always lived in the dorms, but I basically was dating a girl the entire time in college. so and she lived off campus so I basically just lived with her. Like I was like one of the best roommates for the people I was living with Oh was never there. And then Um You would think I was annoying to the people she lived with and maybe I was, I don't know, but I don't think so. and they used to because they would I would like I was I just stay in herom basically and it was quiet, but I would take out the garbage and do this, you know, these little things or whatever and there was a situation where one of the places they lived one of the years, like the people upstairs were really loud They walked around loud. We had like conflict with them and what I remember was like being I just rememember it so well with them being like, you don't even fuck you live here You know? me I think it's so funny. I'm like I know, I'm somehow involved in this though And then Later things like kind of cooled like I didn't I thought they were kind of dickheads actually. They were they weren't like the nicest people to us generally But then they like knew that we smoked weed Um because you could probably smell it the hallway or whatever. So They like asked us to get them weed a few times and they were but because they were dick headads for to us I would buy them weed and then I would take skim a little off the top. He might as a quid pro quo for your loudness Yeah. I remember it sounded like they run roller skates, like upstairs. It was like it was insanity. But other than that like as an adult I've actually been kind of blessed with pretty good situations. When I lived in the building where you and I met that building, that building is like a new newer luxury building and you can't hear shit in that place, right? Like so like in the older places I lived It was fine. When I lived in my place in San Francisco for most of the time, I lived there, it was an old Chinese widow widower Um But dip Now he I do remember he had he I didn't understand this. L suddenly he had a dog R? likeike out of nowhere and'm like I'm like Johnon has a dog But then like, so what ended up fast forward? It's like His son left his dog with him because they had a baby and the baby and the dog like the dog didn't like the baby or like some weird shit So like what are you doing So for a few years, like this dog just randomly lived with him And he would lock him in the back room when he wasn't there Um and and it was like a yappie dog and you' just hear it and it was right above my room. And that was one problem, but like I used to just take a broom And just boom Boom and like sca and the dog would stop And then when then I realized I was leaving these little divbots in the ceiling and like when I moved out and everything was empty, I like looked up. And there were just like these like little, like not even like a millimeter, but like you could see where I was bashing on the ceiling Um That's crazy that That's crazy that a dog That's I got to be honest with you Like I would if that happened, like if I had a kid, And the dog hated it immediately I'd be really concerned about that. It's like Rosemary's baby Right Yeah. it's just like like Yeah know, difficult it is to piss off a dog as like completely docile stranger that's like half the size of it. I mean, like I't know, like there's somebody that's like,h I dont know, we got to keep an eye Like that would actually unironically determined how strict I was with the with that kid You know, Like if the dog growls at the baby, it's just like, no grand theft auto. Yeah, right, right, right. You got we got a there's a like a perhaps a sociopathic or psychopathic tendency within this child. Yeah, like I don't know, I don't know what's going on, but like A That's concerning. That's concerning. Andrew, as Chris said, you have to, you have to it's unfortunate. It's one of the hallmarks of the show, You've been put in a situation. and I hate that shit.. I hate it. I hate being in situations, I hate being put in situations. But nonetheless You find yourself in a situation I think you got to just put your shoulder into it and be like, we're going We got to talk to these people and just let them know. I its you got to And then and then you go from there. But that's where you begin the campaign. And it could just and then every every choice you make from here it could end like that Like Chris said, Tat, like it does go from a The difference between tattling and reporting is giving the person the opportunity to self correct first. And then at that point you have to go to the powers that be Same if you have a dispute with your neighbor or whate Uh My my it's funny because I just had everyone over for Father's Day. And so people have now observed this like three seasons in a row I live in like a neighborhood with like, you know, like kind of windy roads. so My backyard is actually like a c like, if you look out the backyard, it's like a circle kind of like an oval of properties that all like look into each other's yards And so I border likeike four houses Like my yard is like like a weird pallelog gram. I don't know if I And u One of the guys like never mows his backl It's just like dead Like long, like wild looking grass in deaden And every time someone like like we have people are like, oh It's like across a culvert, we both have fences. It doesn't bother me, really. I don't give a shit. And people are like, oh, like, what's this? And I'm like, what am I going to do? Like it's not like what do I care Right, know I actually told them I'm dead up, I'm like, this just makes my yard look way better You know, likeike you're looking around you're like Oh, nice yard, nice yard, W Oh Not so nice yard and then so on and so forth. I'm like, this is good this actually works to my advantage in some way. But also you have to understand that so like it would be easy enough for me to go to the AHOA. This is the example I was going to bring up is like But I would never do that to someone. unless they were like preposterously decickaded and actually know this person and see knowing a little bit, maybe you have to learn a little bit Andrew about. about the situation you find yourself in because I happen to know this person. He lives by himself. hisis name is Anthony He was a long haul trucker And he actually used to park his truck, like his little cab in front of his house And he's like He has like he's retired now and his knees are shot and he's all fucked up. So you gota just so I'm like, I'm what am I getting like? Who cares, man? This guyss got biger fish to fry. Now if he was like blasting music or his house is like true disrepair, or maybe if I was selling my house And you didn't want like people to be like be like what the fuck is this, you know, like to turn a buyer off or whatever. mayaybe you'd get a little. But even then I'd go and be like Can I mow your back on? Like, that's what would probably do. is' like I'll mow Yeah. It'll take five minutes You know,m Andrew good luck to you, it's tough You'll persevere. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't I couldn't live in a situation like that like that would There would have to be a resolution to that can't just live Oh man. you can. You can't live in like a like a truly I remember when when I was a freshman at Northeastern, like my roommate who was fine, but like he snored and it ruined like I was just I was prepared for it. likeike every night where I'm like, I have to deal with this again You know, like Yeah. it there's some noise there's some noise that uh I like noise But like there's there's a type That is kind of in ind deffensibly. irritating City Yeah, I grew up in the city. So, like I'm used to being loud likeike even like even like car horns and shit Like it really it just reminded it all it did was give give me the calms. It was like calming in a way because I just I knew that the world was still there Wh which is like a weird way to frame it. It was just like, oh, everything's fine Things are life is still going on. likeike I can I can relax knowing that their cars going by and people arguing in the street and you know, just loud conversations and whatever Uh, but if it's but if everything is silent And then there's just like Bashing footsteps above me That's a different scenario. Right, rightight. you know, I Yeah, I like yeah, city noise like random noise My apartment in San Francisco was near Lincoln, which is a thoroughfair on the south end of Golden Gate park so lot of traffic on there and like, yeah, that didn't bother me at all. But I am having a situation now in my backyard like so my u The compressor in my pool pump broke so they had to replace it. And he used to the pull pump used to make like a white noise lroud, but like a white consistent white background noise. Now it makes like a R kind of like whirling noise, but it it's low. Like you wouldn't even pay attention to it. But then I emailed the p people because I'm like listen, dud I go into the pool and I space out That's what I do. I just like looking the I like look in the sky and like drink a beer and I just look at the fucking clouds or something like that I'm like, it's distracting shit out of It wasn't like this. it is now. like I'm sorry. I know this is a weird thing. You're probably rolling your eyes, but like someone's got to look at this It's like it can't, it can't stay like this I needed to go back to the white noise Why noise is good? Yeah Yeah, D Daggan has white noise a white noise machine in his house which I had never seen. People use something like usually something for to make white noise. Like I have a fan that makes white noise But there's like a white noise manufacturer which is so strange That's people.nt couldn't you just playay that on your phone or something Yeah, I mean, there's probably a fucking spotify someone's probably making a million dollars a month on Spotify Wh just can white noise. Yeah, white just white noise The track is seven days long and people just play it Oh man JP Morgan John Doe wre. and said, afternoon Colin and Sn I write today and ask Colin what his succession plan is shouldould tragedy befall you? Will you let a woman, Mama Micah inherit your throne? Your right hand man Dustin Mayhaps your brother The Wild card Jaffie Jff, arere you serious Will you divide the fiefdoms amongst your generals like Alexander, or will you name Baby Leon and let a council of Regents tend to your kingdom? in the years before he reaches the majority. That's a good idea Or will you simply cry havoc and let the dog let's slip the the dogs of God of war Thank you J. Morgan John oververriting We've talked a little bit about this, I think on constolation back in the day, but I would assume Mikeah would take the company over Interesting. I just don't really know I'm the sole owner of it So if we didn't have it in a will, otherwise, she would just inherit the company but along with everything else. So But I think I would want everyone to do what they would want to do. L I think what would be important would be to like for everyone to get together and say like, do you want to continue And if so like how does it go? Because I think that would be important that like we don't want to have prisoners And then you would have to kind of reimagine what the company was. And maybe it becomes more of like a collective. at that point. I don't really I don't really know Yeah Yeah the big question is to whether or not Mike If she were to step into the role, whether or not the audience would Assume she killed you Right And that would be a safe assumption B the way. What does she know about any of this? That would be yeah, I mean, I am notiouslyicidal. I'm not suicidal Oh man I really don't know. Can we stop talking about me dying Yeah,s it comes up a lot It's getting a little grizy at this point comes on fairly often My friends, let's get into the new Dylan Gibson wrote in and said another slow newewsek, I bet Mhm By the way, we had almost four hundred inquiries submitted this week, which I'm pretty sure is a record When I saw it, I looked at it, I was like, oh Godd I mean, I gotta be honest with you, that's why that was the first thought in my mind. I'm like, oh my Godd, I got to read all this fucking shit. Um, But like the thread goes live at three PM on Wednesdays, Eastern and I went look I usually don't even look at it until like midnight I put the show together that afternoon and then I usually patch it everything else in at that point G people time But I went and looked at like four hundred and thirty or five or something and it already had like one hundred and fifty comments. and I was like,h, Christ, I gotta like start tearing through this. So multiple times yesterday I started going through and getting the threads together. So thank you guys so much for submitting. but on a slow newews weeeknd it is certainly not Indeed, we'll get into the first topic now, and Jack Feying says what an unfortunate newswek to not have Dusty Boy in the house Physical defenders rise up you want us Ls Fermm Gsood to see you. Welcome to the show. Wlcome back to the show It's been a few weeks. You're not back permanently yet. that signal. byy the way P pretty good. pretty good Very good someone tweeted at and He said that took you three hours didnn't it? And I'm like It took me like forty minut Oh yeah I mean, I'm saying that in being like, it took an exorbitant amount of time for me to be That is a very long time for what that image was. I was like I was like I had, you know, I'm using the magnetic Las so. I'm doing, you know, I'm just not very good. Also now when I load Adobe product, it tells me that no longer supports my operating system. like, okay So everything's going on really well th. But Dustin, it's good to see you. pleasure to have you ere's the bab h The baby's downstairs. I believe he's satiated. He like literally thirty minutes ago, Holly changed his diaper. Go to pick them up. My hands are just covered in piss And that's the reality I've learned in the last two weeks is that It was just a lot of piss, you know,s not too different from your normal life No, no, he's I've been baptized a few times already Just straight from the f like a man has pissed on me in the last two weeks. Yeah That's right but it's great. everythingvery is going fantastic. That's one really like legitimately though, like he, u I know things can change very quickly But as of right now, he's not like Cky very U easy overall to deal with. He eats a ton. So that's like the hardest thing is just like staying consistent with the feeding. I mean, it's mainly Holly. Holly is being drained, figuratively in Come on, man. So, what's wrong? No comeome on.. I just that that word drained is like, I don't know, there's something about that word I learned something Yeah. and I'm sure Holly will be okay that I mentioned this. You know, they say like, oh, when A mother when they're breastfeeding, if the baby starts crying, they'll start leaking Absolutely true I didn't know. it seems like something that wouldn't be true, but it actually is true that the people will start crying and then Something activates. It's actually pretty fascinating. That is that does sound fake to me But I also believe it No One other baby thing well As C' not actually back. but one thing I do want to bring up is Chris. before I left, you were talking about evolution and how much of it having a kid is a debuff And how did this even happen Right. And I've been thinking about that on and off since he was born It's amazing ? Like When you have a baby When they're in fresh baby They have you have to wake up every two to three hours for ws And as you said, he cries, he can attract predators The mother needs like constant like the baby needs constant attention, but the mom also needs help It's it's crazy So It's not Yeahah, things are very good Good, good. I'm glad to hear Um It'll be on Literally on Italy h All right Guys There's a lot of news this week and doesn't we have you here for the first one only I don't know if you're going to stay for the second, too, You can stay as long as you want, but This is the one everyone wanted you. and this is why I put the dustin signal in the air Yeah It seemed like you simply had to come back Although I told you, I'm like, no pressure. I mean you do what you want. But I felt you probably wanted to. I felt you probably felt it inside of you. I was I felt it inside me and before you said anything, there were many people in the audience that were like, This Dustin is your moment And I'm here to answer the call. Well, on the PlayStation blog, two different posts were posted and we'll get into the first one first and the second one second as the order usually goes B bothoth written. I was thinking about this. Sid Schuman had to write both you know, they put Sid Suman's name on both these, which I think is hysteric He is the Cs guy. I mean, it is kind of his job Physical disc production ending in january twenty twenty eight for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles It is written says As consumer preferences in the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital Physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting january twenty twenty eight. Following this date, new games will be available in PlStation store and at retailers in digital formats only This transition has no impact on games that that already released or we' be releasing prior to january twenty twenty eight in disk format. This is a natural direction for Sony Inactive entnterertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today We'll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games. I don't even know what the fuck that's supposed to mean And provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games whether that's at retailers or on Playsttation store We remain committed to delivering a world class gaming experience to our fans and we thank you for your continued support. It's worth noting, I don't how people actually go to the station bllog that listen to the show, I mean it's their official mouthie.'s an interesting place to You'll note that many posts have, you know, dozens of hearts and maybe a few comments, a couple dozen comments at most, maybe a hundred comments if it's big This post has six thousand eight hundred and fifty six comments on it. I've never I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen that and No, um That might be as many comments as every post over the last year. Playtation Wog is gotone and combin So guys This is huge news. It's all anyone wants to talk about, as we said earlier in the show where Chris and I did, we had a record number of inquies, almost four hundred So I've been doing a lot of reading. Now the thread or our document that you guys don't see out there is very long this week because I put a bunch of inquiries in here with different topics that we can touch. I don't think we'll get to all of them but they're just a way for us to structure things William Jackson wrote in And said I'm personally glad that physical games are going away It's well past time this call was made by someone with the grapefruits to do it. Bravo Sony, good riddens. Why would you ever want to share a game with a friend or family member? They're all POS casuals anyway, make them pay for price? Why would you ever want to walk into a retail store and see that physical disc garbage displayed? You don't need to feel the excitement of browsing for sales mixed with nostalgia, Gr up Why on any planet Would you want to proudly display your dumb ass collection to signal to the world you don't have sex Why do some people still insist on preserving the spirit of video games? Nearly ninety percent of games are bought digitally get on the train, grandpa. The time for sppirit community, identity, Wonderan and warmth passed you by long ago. Bravo, Sony Good ridance I love that Mittle piece a little piece of sarcasm begin things out Dustin Let's hear from you first What are your thoughts Yeah. well, this certainly came as a surprise. Uh We all knew that someday this would happen. I just think that We expected it to be another Genation for this happens And so this news is also really interesting coming after the GTA six news that you guys m sure covered last week being basically digital only with the code in box only existing on at retail. So You'd have to imagine that Sony tipped R Rockstar off about this and was like, yeah, It's not even like worth doing the disc four because we're kind of wrapping this up. Um But yeah, it's extremely Disappointing news. Clearly there's thousands of people that as you mentioned in the PlayStation blog and across Twitter and everywhere. And our own comments, as you said that are deeply, deeply upset about this. And I think it makes sense as I think the hardcore gaming base that is plugged in to these different outlets are going to be the most likely to have physical games and be the most vocal about this decision Um So that's kind of my My High in the sky thoughts are Um They' they're doing this because partartially for the handheld, I think, because of course that's going to be digital only. Like I don't think anyone expects Uh any kind of like they're not going to attach a disk drive to the the handle. Right So they're doing it for that Um I really do think the main reason for this is to have greater control over the marketplace and the sale of these games. Now the PlaySation blog does point out that they do plan on uh, having codes I don't know whether it's going to be a box with a code in it or just a card like you see Nintendo and Xbox do that and what PlayStation used to do. being at retailer. So It is um As I I had a tweet that went big a few days ago that was I got apparently it was on Asmond Gold and Moist Critical U last few days. which was crazy just pointing out some of the pricing discrepancy between a site like Amazon and the PlayStation store U and We've pointed this out before in the past on this show. And in fact, Colin, I believe it happened to you with the Kingdom Hearts collollection that you bought for Yeah fif bucks or something. Yeah. fifty bucks. Yeah or something. So which is a good value, I feel like. I just it is always going to annoy you when you see that kind of ship pop up later, you know Right. Like I don't mind I think it's a bunch of games but yeah it sucks when that happ Yeah So I guess the The thing I'll conclude on for now since I think we should get everyone on the record for this is just that Um as I feel like this is such a It's such an interesting decision right before as they are getting ready to talk about PlayStation sixix and with the rumors about Playstation sixix and what the Bill of Materials is going to cost and they're looking at ways to increase their profitability. And so they make more profit on digital games simply. I mean, there's no middleman. there's no shipping. There's all these different people that need a cut with a physical game And so this is an option for them to make more profit not only in the short term But in the long term with their ability to really set the prices on games Well, well, we had a satirical write and we'll have a more serious one now and we'll pitch it to Chris After this pallet in of pain writtden And by the way, as I said, a shit ton of you wrote in I tried to be as I tried to distribute as much as possible. Please be patient with me Hey CNC Podcast Factory, what do we think of Sony's decision to discontinue the production of physical game disks in the years to come I feel that this can lead to less than desirable outcomes. Imagine getting banned on PSN. I don't have to imagine that. orr getting locked out of your account and losing all of your games Also cutting out the second handand in retail markets. Anyway, I'll pack your Amazon packages and listen. So Chris Let's get you on the record. What are your thoughts here? And by the way, I will say this at the top as we lead into what you're saying. People are thinking that this is a very simple cut or dry thing what is right or what is wrong. I think this is an exceptionally complicated situation with many, many layers. and I want to get in all of them So let's hear let's Chris, let's stay forty thousand feet and see what you think Yeah, man, not good Not good in my opinion. I think I think again, it's just it's too early to do something like this. I think And And I know I understand it's like, oh, well, this is just the announcement 'sing to happen in twenty twenty eight twenty twenty eight also, I think is just too early. Like I feel like there's there needs to be more of like a There needs to be more of a lead up to something like this. and it also just There's a lot of arguments. I understand like they want to keep there's the middleman and they want to keep a really tight control over the marketplace in which people buy their games This coming so soon after The news about them revoking licenses to digital purchases from the TV side of things and from the movie side of things Like it's it just doesn't look good They don't do that with games as far as I'm aware. like it's a games business. so they're better about it But This is just another example, in my opinion of just this This war on the concept of ownership that is happening broadly designed to keep you paying consonsistently for the same shit And we've seen and this is like a broad topic in general too. like the subscription model and like all of this stuff that's kind of eroded the concept of even just owning these things I like the idea that our only option to own PlayStation games going forward. will be just digital I'm a I'm a digital customer primarily But there's some games that I get physical If I can L If I love them. if there's like it's like kind of it's the way that I treat platinums in some way where it's just like, I really love this game. I'll get it. I have a couple of discs U But even lately, it's just like the The special editions of games are just coming with no No game at all And it's like, this is disappointing And I don't I just think this is broadly This feels just nefarious And I get the inclination as a business I get the desire to cut out a middleman, believe me. but I don't know, man. I think as the prime as the prime u How should distributor, I guess. Playsttation is the default console, right? Steam is has been all digital forever. Xbox is longong done away with with physical games at this point. I feel like there's some level of responsibility that you have I don't know if it's I don't know if'd go so far as to call it a moral responsibility necessarily, but like I'm tired of everything being a profit motive purely. Like I'm tired of everything just being like we don't we don't design buildings in an aesthetically pleasing way anymore because we need to make sure that we can resell a McDonald's to a bank if we need to. Like it's all these other shitits. like can we just have something nice Do we just invest in something nice for just the consumer base and just for people in general, I think investing in the broad Um I guess, I don't know, emotional health of your consumer base, I think is a good investment, I think And I don't know I just don't like this even as a digital customer myself But that's my broad feelings on it. There There's deeper things that we can get into, I'm sure. but, yeah, there's a million different threads to pull out That's very well said. I mean, I totally agree with a lot of what you're saying is like When we say it all the time for us too, is like we don't we as a small company, we don't have stockholders that we have to please whereatever. and that's maybe part of the problem, certainly a big part of the problem of runaway capitalism, but like I don't maximize profit. at all And not even a little bit I know that's kind of like that's kind of crazy to some people, but I'm like, no, like, we're fine And like things are good and we don't want to like ring everyone dry. You have to worry about a lot of things outside of the immediacy of what you're doing. like Like loyalty Goodwill. Value. And I don't think there's any doubt that like Sony is fucking its reputation up. I think in a way with in ways that are not They've been here before It's not like it's you know, unreetrievable from the depths of hell, like where they've been right now. Like think about the PS three era for instance, and how bad that was. It was bad. like for and I know we have a lot of younger people that listen or just weren't playing games that during the time it was fucking bad The pSry in two thousand six, two thousand seven, thousand eight was fucking bad. It was in bad sha. It was getting walloped Um And there was a lot, a big question of if someone like soone if PlayStation was going to survive. Sony was much more diversified at that time too, so it was like a little less dangerous than it is now Now, I want to preface everything I say with a few things that I think are important Number one is similar to Chris like it and not similar to Chris like game more extreme likeike it doesn't affect me at all. I' the gamer That is the is in the vast majority of people that play on Playstation I represent actually the mean gamer from a distribution standpoint There's just no doubt Um Purchasing behavior is not normal. I play way more games and buy way more games People interact with PlayStation digitally and I'm one of those people. and so this has zero effect on me at all Um I haven't bought a physical game and I haven't bought a physical playlaysttation game. It's funny to say, actually because we'll Chris and I will talk about later but I'm playing GdW zero five right now, and I think that was the last time I bought a physical Playsttation game So twenty thirteen And um To me, I The thing I'm confused about with it is that it goes into what Chris was saying about All right, prorophet says this and our margins are this But like at what cost Do we sacrifice This to get the numbers to go up without all sorts of deleterious effects following us In other words is it really worth? Um And that's my big surprise here is It's important to preface another thing and what I'm about to say with saying like, Sony didn't just pull the pin on this They know They've known this for a long time. This indicates a lot about PlaySation six, which there's only two things about PlayStation six, which could be true about this right now, right? They were going to have a disk drive and they they removed it which is hard to believe. N going to be a disc drive in the PS six that you that came natively with it. That would be so And and a lot of people are saying like, oh, this is to remove the cost of the, you know, get the cost down. I'm like, no, like it probably just never had one internally The question is like, would you have some sort of external drive that would connect to it? And I think that's what we all assumed And it's hard for me to square the financial realities of that where I'm like, well You have this shrinking face They have more data than anyone about the way people interact with their games. So they're being informed by the way people are acting And it is important to note that like if physical games were were more if there was a preponderance of physical game purchases in the in the space, they wouldn't do this. So it is important to note something like they do say something very true which is ote This is a natural direction for Sony In interactive entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. That's true If you read the Circana data on physical game sales, it peaks in two thousand nine and it's at an all time low. It does seem like this year will actually be better for physical games than last year, which is interesting. I think it has to do more with like quality releases. Think of all the Capcom games, for instance that are coming out.. And like things like u, imes in desert and just there's big games this year But nonetheless, the trend is the trend. So I think as we like we're all incensed for this and I think for different reasons It's important to note that to be fair That like They are right in a way Like this is what the consumer is doing Qestion is Why wouldn't you just allow now to back up one more space. It's like The question really is Wh are your hardcore audience? Who's your hardcore audience and There are probably some casual Playsttation players, probably a lot of them actually, that buy games physically, but they don't really buy games that much They play FIFA or they play like call duty or whatever, and they like to go to the store and they buy those games. But really, the people that buy your physical games are like your core gamers These are the people that are really important to engage immediately It's actually kind of worth not making as much money on them, per se by selling them physical discs to keep them engaged because the vibrancy for playlaySation comes from people like that And there's also no denying that U so I guess the big thing that that I'm confused about is like they can they have all these financial excuses. They're not going to talk about any of it. But like there's a lot go that there's a lot that goes in the physical games manufacture that they can just get rid of from the internal management, like people will get laid off at Sony to like shutting down presumably the entire factory apparatus of making Blue Ray discs for PlayStation All of those people are laid off. Like it's not a trivial thing. It's not to say you want these people to lose their jobs. Of course, you don't, but it's like they're going to save a lot of money by doing this. The question is, why wouldn't you do the opposite which is to go to the audience And this is why you have to give interviews. And you have to be media trained and you have to be able to talk about this in a sophisticated way. and they really have no one that can do it, I don't think This is saying like listen Here's the data for PlayStation It's in our financials but we want to outline this stuff for you This is the digital sales of games, These are the physical sales of games. You can see the numbers are going down It's becoming difficult for us as a company to justify the costs in doing this We want we don't want to abandon you, though. It's important that we don't It's important that we you guys understand that we understand that a lot of you millions of you like physical games. and we don't want to abandon you, but we have to let you know that it's just It's becoming difficult. We're raising the price of all of our physical games ten dollars. If you want to buy the if you want to buy the digital game, you know, starting in twenty twenty eight, you can even say Starting on january first, twenty twenty eight, physical versions of games that publishers choose to publish on our platform will be ten dollars more than they will be digitally at launch Dc drives are going to go up in price fifty dollars. Like you could just pass along Cost And it sucks That's kind of the way it is because what you can what they can say is like we refuse to let the majority of our audience subsidize this anymore And I don't know if that makes sense to you guys, but that's the way like you could just position it like that You would obviously want to massage it But like Yeah You could just say like this is becoming this is untenable for us at this current time, but we don't want to abandon you. This is the this is the deal. What do you think Chris I don't know, anything to maintain the option, I guess I guess to me, it's like I know you likeike, oh, they're right that you know, physical is shrinking or whatever and then digital is the prime way that people play. likeike and I agree. am I am primarily digital. But it's important that like I don't know, data data can often I think about how Xbox was right. in twenty thirteen, when their data suggested, hey, most people use their Xboxes to stream Netflix Let's have a let's have a showcase where we just focus on like, you know you know, the media apps because that's what most people are interested in and it killed They' in Hire brand So I think it's important like data is useful and you can even you can act on it I think it's not even unwise to not act on it, but like what you were saying, it's like That's a way to do it. or or you know what? make physical physical games a more boutique thing that that would deserve a higher like make it so like, hey, we get the manuals back. but it costs more or whatever, right? phhysical games become like a kind of collector's edition or something Just something to maintain that access and maintain that option because like, justust relying solely on the data and just like going like, all right, the data says this, let's do it. It's just like You're not thinking thinking about the splash damage of of what you're suggesting and what you're doing. I mean dude this is the worst press that PlayStationations had probably ever Yeah, I mean, it's probably the worst press ever Yeah. I mean, certainly since the hack, but in twenty eleven but And the interternet's different now than it was then They would have had roasted Oh for that during that era now, but it just wasn't quite like Oh It would have been it would have been apocalptic if pol theit network was down for three and a half weeks. I don't know. again, data is important. It's valuable. It's worth looking at it. it's worth acting on, but like you got to You can act on you can act on the right data in ways that can fuck you entirely. as Xbox has shown us, as other companies have shown us, too, but that's the Xbox is the most analogous and the most obvious in this instance where're like, you just gott to be careful And I don't think this is careful Well let me pull on a thread here. Yeah please pase to kind of tie what both of you guys are saying together is that If I remember correctly, Colin, the insomniac elak had data, which is now of course, old data about their physical versus digital sales for PlayStation first partarty And I remember that that split for those games was not what we'll call industry average If I remember it correctly PlayStation fans specifically by first party PlayStation games Physically. Like I feel like there were splits that were like thirty, forty percent. For certain games, we're buying them physically Yeah, I'm trying to find Gemini is saying Oh yeah the Insomniac Lague shows some seventy percent yeah, its that some games stll up to seventy percent physically And one game fifty three percent physical in the US alone The ratio is at that time for first party physical to digital was thirty five physical, sixty five digital, but it seemed like it spked for games like Um Spidan. So ye, So that's one of those things where Chris, you're talking about like data has hidden information that you don't know. It's like, well Sure. Maybe it not maybe. it is trending that direction. But as Colin was saying This is something that is clearly deeply important. to your most hardcore of hardcore people And those are the people that you do want to accommodate. and compromise with to some degree And we haven't even open the can of worms. that's like, o, well what about everyone who has PS four and PS five physical games for PlayStation six Yeah likeike I go fuck myself. I wonder that's one of the things I was saying on Twitter was I was like, I always assumed that the disk drive would work on PS six. like, well, I always assumed that there would be a disk drive for PS six But maybe Yeah, that may that would be fucking that would be so fucking crazy in my opinion if they did something like that. where they're like, oh We're not making the games But if you want to play your old games, like we'll make a disk drive for PS six like, holy shit, reallyally? I know really that uncommon I mean, uncommon nowadays, but think about like it wasn't there For the psychenesis or something like a master drive Oh yeah, for like for the master system Yeah. Yeah it's not unprecedented that you buy something to gain back we. Yeah, that's true. I guess it's just like kind of rubbing salt in the wound where it's like, well, this is like this is almost the harder part is making the drive Making discks, pressing discs 've pressing dist since the early eighties, dude. Sony is like the master of pressing discs Right It's unquestionably more expensive to make a bespoke drive than it is to make M do. I hope they do something like that because that would be fucking hysterical. I I know Xbox is talking about like and who the fuck knows what the hell Xbox is even doing anymore because they just It just seems like a T like the kind of I don't, I don't even know, but like I think they said something or I heard something about them working on like maybe a way to digitize like a way to digitize physical games going forward or something like that Yeah saw I saw that, which I don't I don't understand how would I don't understand how that works. like Yeah. I don't know I don't know The only thing that I would think is like is each disk printed with like a unique Maybe on it or like the code. It has to be that about disks. Yeah, it would have to be. The only other option would be that you would have to burn like something onto the CD or something that would like disable it or something. and that obviously can't be done with the laz like their hardware. so it's like There's got to be like you either had to disable the disk or you have to Right. And I'm not saying disabling it from working like like on your console, maybe. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. sounds it sounds ridiculous. It to get a program the game to install it off the disk and then and then laser scratch it. Yeah, exactly That right. likeike have to do something. I think that that when I I can't remember who posted that Um Rumor or leak or whatever. I was looking over it and it was saying that It wouldn't work with Xbox one games, but W workk with sereries X. games and that It would So if you put it in and you convert it to digital It will remain as a digital game But if you put that game in someone else's console, It will revoke the digital status of the game. That's interesting. That's a kind whichich is cool That's a cool idea That would be an interesting compromise because basically you're at you'd have to have some kind of online DRM for that. Let's be like, hey We'll let you use this digitally, but you but you have to be online And because there would be ways where it's like Okay, makeake it digital and then turn your like unplug your ethernet forever. and then you can just use this game and give it to a friend or something But it would at least be a compromise of like, okay, we'll let you use these games, but You have to be online in order to use them. Yeah. it's interesting. I mean I guess my whole thing with this guys is and I think we all we all agree on this is like I just don't understand why you would do this. would I'm sure the math is compelling. from a numerical standpoint I'm sure they're like, we're gonna to So much more money now I think that that their strategy probably even withstands the fact that they're going to lose people because of this The problem for the people that are leaving and we'll talk about this a little later is like there'shere for you to go I mean, like The status quo, that Playstation will enter in twenty twenty eight has long been the status quo on other platforms. The only place you can go is switch. You're going to go there Wellm it Well the issue isn't necessarily, I don't think it's necessarily that people are going They're leaving to go find other places where it's physical. They're going to places where like, all right, well If I'm going to go if I'm going to be on a platform that is all digital, I'm going to PC B Because why the fuck would I not do that? Like Yeah that is that is such I have I have access to everything I theoretically can I can alter everything that I do have I have cheaper access to to the stuff that would otherwise be incredibly expensive. Like if if we really are entering a situation where like there's no physical games anywhere then m going to go to the most flexible platform that offers me the most that offers me the most to play with becausecause then now there's nothing really pold me to this. There's no And the other thing worth pointing out about PC because everyone has their different things that they care about with this issue. And so if your issue is DRM related A lot of people assume every game on Steam has steam DRM in it and that's just not the case. Like, for example, I just looked up I've been playing Dragon Quest eleven on steam because Im like have mods in it stuff. I just look up Uh I mod it so it looks better. It looks like the original version because the S version is the swwitch version. We'll talk about it They the DRM that they had in it is removed So own that copy of Dragon Quest eleven. I can play it. I can copy it to something. I can play it without the internet connection own that copy forever Steam is the client that I play it through, but I don't have to anymore. I could just open I could remove Steam from my computer and I could click the EXE copy to a drive I could put it on a fucking disk if I wanted to So It's worth pointing out that there's people like, well, you're going to have the same problem on steam and And it's like, well Yes and no Yeah, it's You guys make a compelling point that I don't think I would disagree that the best place to be in this digital ecosystem is steam. If you have the rig to run, you know, the games you want to play and all the rest, As I understand, even at the height in prices for Pro, the P is still the cheapest way to play highw. All right and we will probably remain that way, but it's a matter of your own We're going to discover this with the new consoles when they come out period. but like your own your own financial resistance towards these market forces and where you want to be. like There's no doubt that this is invoking in people this idea that they need to kind of figure out where they're truly going to settle and I think that there was An assumption that physical gamers would be able to settle kind of nicely at least for the next ten years, let's say on As like their sales plum, and plumment, plumb, which they. Um until it just it comes to a point where guys like But even then You could imagine first of all, who knows what PlayStation looks like in twenty forty? I have any idea what we're going be doing at that point Um, But like you can even imagine them They're being OEM disc drives and like boutique disc manufacturer. In other words This gets into the difficulty of or not the difficulty, the complexity of what it goes into making a disk. The out the output of the disk is cheap But there's a lot of work that goes into making it And You have to certify it yourself and you have like so in other words, like Sony has to kind of it's Sony's responsible for all of it And even if you like downsized it, they would still have to certify everything and whatever. you'd have to offload a lot of that. And that could just be too much for them to withstand, then they're like, we got to do it now I want to get a little bit into their strategy because Susan B Anthony Bourdain wrote in And said, Hey guys Irrespective of your thoughts about ending physical discs, how do you feel about Sony's strategy Ses to me the broad options were ripping the bandaid off like this were ending with the whimper of rapid year over year reductions and physical pressings until the market was ninety eight percent digital then ending it I'm surprised they went in this direction It's unusually bold for better or worse thoughts. This I think is part of like there's multiple hearts. It's like it's like some sort of beast in a video game. There are many hearts of that matter, but this is definitely one of them is Both the strategy of what they're doing and why they're doing it and when they're executing it I will say that for PlayStation six This is a good strategy Let's assume you Let's put aside thatone the three of us don't agree that they should be doing this for various reasons, right? Like I don't think they should be doing this Let's assume that it is what it is, right? Okay. So it is what it is. What's a good I Are we going to announce PlayStation six and tell everyone at that time? We're going to say it Six months before we announced the PlayStation sixix so that when we start hyping everything up and everything there will be no disappointment when there is no disk drive and no option for a disk drive and that it's an all digital platform. We have to do it now And That's why I think that There's this idea, like, will they reverse course, right And I'm like, I think they could for PS five And in fact, I might not be surprised if they do Right? Like All right, we will still keep we're going to shut PS four down maybe. This is what they did with the when they tried to shut the PSN stores down in twenty twenty one. they tried to shut everything down they're like, All right, we'll keep the VveT on the PS three re open we We're shutting the PSP down And that's and that's what they did Maybe they do a similar thing here where they're like, all right, we'll keep manufacturing for PS five Blu Rid discs open But not for PS four they're in a're they're handcuffed now to this decision Because if they reverse course now They can't acknowledge PlayStation sixix yet So when the PlayStation six stuff happens, people will be like, oh maybe there'll be a disc drive and' be, dude it's been decid three years ago. this thing was't having a disc drive We've known this thing wasn't having a disk drive I think that The other option, which I don't know how quickly you can work in this regard, and maybe this existed and they decided to pull it is like the external disk drive, which is what we always thought was going to exist for it Um, Maybe at some point they were just like, we're not doing it Or maybe it never existed at all And that's a reasonable expectation when you think about it Right? Because think about the strategy of They were already going to have a problem with the handheld And what they're basically doing is tackling it from the other direction, which is to say We're either going to have to describe to people that if you buy the physical version of the game on PS six can never play it on your handheld That's one poison pill or We shut disk manufacture down for PS six entirely because no one's really playing on disc comparable to digital. And we don't have to explain any of that. And then we can have true interoperability with our console in our handheld. And I think that that seems to be this poison pill they they took. againgain, I don't know the right strategy would have been, but I think it's probably better to just give people the disc option. and again, I think just removing it to a boutique level like you guys were saying, like even saying like, we're selling the games ourselves. likeike if you want physical games, like you buy them for us You know, like this is the way it's going to work. Like we're going to sell a disk dririve. you're going to subsidize it. We're going to sell these games from us for ten dollars more. You're going to subsidize it. That's it And I think like You There are just so many more options that weren't so that were dramatic, yet not so dramatic and they didn't really explore any of them. And so I just feel like they're I'd like to be wrong because it would be an interesting story for them to turn things around. but I'm like, I'm probably I'm pretty sure they're not going to walk away from this. likeike I think this is They can't set a precedent that every time people complain like obviously you want to listen to your customer, right? But like You a bitch enough and we will reverse course even though it's against our entire strategy. I don't know how many times they can really do something like this before it becomes like who runs the company and who has the direction and who has the strategy I don't know. That's why I it's just, that's why I'm fascinated by this because I think it's truly complex Yeah I was listening to our buddy Tom Mooslaw is dead about it. And I kind of touched on some of this earlier, but a lot of his thoughts are like There' with the bill of sale PlayStation six potentially being very high. And we are long We are far from the era of subsidizing consoles. this is a way, I guess you could argue that they can try to keep their profits higher while trying to Keep the cost of the PlayStation sixix because they won't need they they'll still make money off it, but maybe they won't feel like they need to make as much because they can be certain that they're going to make one hundred percent or you know, you know what I mean? They're going to be making the full split or one hundred percent on all their digital sales. They don't have to worry about people sharing or letting someone borrow it or anything like that. they're like We can feel confident going into Playsttation six that we are going to make as much as possible each game sale as opposed to before Yeah, like there's I agree that that could be part of the strategy and that that's I think They didn't just do this I guess is what I'm saying likeike to be fair to them, like they didn't just do it. It might blow up in their face. Like I said, it might be the wrong choice. But there's probably deep analysis into like how this all works and their war plan and They must have known that this was going to be the response. Like I wonder if like this is exactly what they expected as well. you would you'd be curious to be like fly on the wall with them I'm much more interested in the strategy behind it than like the execution. I guess is what I'm say Here's one thought about the strategy that we touched on earlier that I just think is Crazy that it wasn't acknowledged becausecause you're right that they're getting ahead of PlayStation six because they want Playsttation six However many months from now You know, everyone will have , you know, Simmmer down right Wness Well it doesn't imagine imagine PS six being announced and then they said this. This is all it would be like this. It would be horrible. It would be like the worst thing that ever happened. It would be like Xbox one. Yeah, it would be awful. So yeah, they're definitely nipping into the butt They' they're getting ahead of it. and I think that that makes sense But thing that I just think is crazy is that When I read when I look at this and they they go through everything, it's like, okay. I'm reading between the lines. Everyone's reading between the lines about what this means for PlayStation six. PlayStation six is not mentioned in this, but everyone knows what this means And so For me, and I'm sure many other PlayStation consumers, it's like, okay, well What about my collection? of games And what does that mean for me moving forward Like For PlayStation six am I just going to have to leave my entire PlayStation five library behind because I bought them in a way that they sold them to me. Am I not going to be able to play my PlayStation five dis games on PlayStation six? It's It's introduced a huge question about the backwards compatibility that I think has, again, it's not It's one element of many where it's like Okay, well, I guess I guess I just don't know Boy months potentially about what the status of my library is if there was It would require them to acknowledge something's on the horizon, but a line like we're investigating options for people to takeake their physical library with us into the into the future of PlayStation kay good that I feel like my investment is taken care of. At the same time to play deevil's advocate with myself, it's like I'm buying a Playsttation five game to play on a Playsttation five. So Backwards compatibility is like a bonus in some ways. but it is becomes such the norm that we just expected. Yeah. It become standard Yeah gu four gu five gu six should be interoperable with each other. There's like no doubt about that in my mind L we already have we have a machine people who want physical games PlayStation five. Yeah I mean I saw that going around and I was like, thats man It's crazy, it's crazy. This is this is just like I don't really I got I just wish I understood the full texture of the decision and all the different things that went into it because it's like I don't really get it I don't really I understand the trendlines I understand all of that. It's just that you didn't you couldn't find any off ramp along the way. Like I've already presented all of them. Like just jack prices up, likeike do anything hard The thing is it should wor for it. Like I can I can and I said this on Twitter too.' like I can buy vinyls from like my favorite modern bands still And vinyls have been a dead format for Nearly forty years, like thirty years or something Yeah for. I mean, definitely by the of the nineties So like if I can it's just it is it's just it is crazy to me that I'm able to buy of vinyl for a new band in twenty twenty six, but like in two years, I won't be able to buy a new Playsttation game physically. that option won't be there. It's cra I don't know. that just seems insane to me. Like it doesn't It doesn't compute. like it doesn't make sense, it doesn't square And there's no reason why they I don't think there's any reason why they shouldn't look at that. Uh analogous kind of market and say like, well, we could make boutique Physical games Maybe we'll print fewer of them or something, right? But like we can have something we can have something for the physical collector that is clearly out there and clearly passionate and clearly engaged Um And by the way, while you're at it again, I know I said this before, but just like make B big physical games a little I partart of the reason why I stopped buying physical games is because like they stopped like it just it became a bare minimum kind of thing It's like, okay, here's a box, hereere's a cardboard cut. Here's a cardboard square in it that gives you like, I don't know. Three days of Xbox Live gold or something, no manual And it's just like, here's the disk. You know what I mean? they just kind of stop putting effort. there's like there's, you know what I mean? Like there was there was something special about physical games at a certain point where like it came with a nice stylized manuual and all that stuff. So like you would you could imagine a scenario where like This is Turt the shrinking market for physical games becomes a bit of an opportunity. where it's like actually Okay. This market is shrinking, but maybe we can Maybe we can make this something Maybe we can put a little bit more effort and bring some of the magic back. and yeah, maybe'll maybe we charge more for it actually because that Makes sense But at least Acknowledge that it's there It's The vinyl thing blows my mind becausecause music way beyond games is an infinitely more dead medium physically. than anything else. I would I would imagine maybe there's no Mbe TV has it beat. Maybe TV has it beat. Yeah, sure. But or something like that because of streaming and all that. But like I don't know. it just seems crazy to me. The thing about vinyl as much as I want to just agree with you is that vinyl is on an update upward trend. And I think an artist an artist will make way more money selling a vinyl to you than you know, however many listens they get. So there's like more of a financial incentive to sell someone a vinyl. ure with I guess it's more like A better comparison might be like bllue ray movie or a four K movie versus a stream where it's like those are are also way on the out. like Many retailers don't even sell them anymore. Target doesn't sell. blue rays or fcase to my knowledge anymore Um But they're still available. They're still very boutique and there are these boutique manufacturers like criterion collection or something like that. and Major movies still come out on on disk. There're still There's not as much money to be made there, but the people that do want them show up for them and are willing to spend the money on it Right. Yeah, I mean, well, that's kind of what I mean. I think I think you can again, if make this not You don't have to I guess what I'm suggesting is like you could take the I just what you' say vinyl are growing but like vinyls are growing specifically because Like there's a lot of factors going into that. and it's, I think a large part because for a long time, they weren't You know what I mean? Like they were stagging for a while. And then like and then streaming becomes this thing and it's becomes over it becomes really oppressive. And I think there's a general trend. I don't know if it's like a majority, but like there is a general trend among younger generations where there is kind of this championing of physical media again. Like, I don't know if it's like this big thing for universally But I think people are Even younger people are kind of lookingoo around and realizing that like there's I don't really own anything And this sucks. Yeah and and I think there's there's something to be said. like if you can be a company and you can take advantage of that and you can like really like service something like that and like Again can make these physical copies of these games, maybe a little bit more boutique. Yeahah, can charge more. And maybe if you make something more special Maybe you would see like somewhat of an upward trend. Um If you treated them seriously, if you had like theseZ in game manuals, like GTS six comes with like a map You know what I mean? or like and I don't know. there's there's a number of things I think that you could do to bolster these things in a way that could also net you more money Um, and more goodwill, more importantly because goodwill is like a it's a hidden it's a hidden cost that I don't think a lot of people consider Um a lot of businesses consider, I should say But you're right. I think the blue egg comparison is probably more accurate And maybe there's an you know, maybe there's even an argum to be made where like, look, there's not a lot of investment in disc technology. We haven't seen an improvement in this technology. what we're going to need for PS six is part like could we even fit What of a PS six game could we even fit on a disc? But like none of this is communicated There's no communication on any of this. And also but what is communicated is this weird kind of tacit admission like does this Does this Initiative or does this move of like saying it's like, okay, or january twenty twenty eight is when it stops? Does that kind of implicitly imply that like, okay, PS six is coming out in November year Yeah why would you becausecause if it came in November of the previous year You're going you're going to put effort into printing like three month of PlayStation six discs If that like that's an interesting. We have that quite. I think someone might have ask that later like what it implies about the release of the PS six and I think a lot of people are getting the implication that it's like spring twenty eight at the earliest And I think some people are saying fall twenty eight. and I think that's an extraordinarily long time to hold on to the PS six, which will be manufactured next summer, it seems like. So I actually still think it could be twenty twenty twenty seven and means basically nothing because they're basically because I was thinking about that same thing, Chris, and I was like, well It allows them to withstand that last fall of PS five releases. likeike your sports releases callall of duty And you know, that kind of shit and It might mean really nothing for PS six is releasase because will PS six just simply won't have the option have disks anyway, but you'll still get this for PS five. That's why I wonder if like the way that they ameliorate this ultimately is aily glist in the PS six is a digital machine The problem is they can't say that yet. You know, like they can't they haven't ever acknowledged the machine. like they they kind of tacitly do and we know it exists I saw some people are that are out of the loop and I don't blame you for being out of the loop A few people responded it's like you, why do you talk about it? like like it's going to have a handheld in a console. because it's going to have a handheld in a console, Dude, likeike this has been known by people that have had access to this information for years, you know, But they could maybe be like, all right, we'll just keep making PS five discs. And I think that if there is a compromise on that, that's what they're going to do They just can't position it like that because they can' annou acknowledge PS six. So what they'll end up saying is something like We're shutting the PS four shit down Again, the analog to the PSP Vita PS three Yeah. We're shutting the PS four shit down. We'll keep the PS five games alive and then they will say nothing about PS six. And then they hope that they kind of did a little chip damage to the idea that when they announced the PS six and w. where do you put your disc? you know like you don' We tried to tell you that. Um Maybe they can thread that needle, but that's probably not the PR ideal for them. I would assume at this point. like I think the unfortunately for them, I think since they let this out of the out of the the genie out of the bottle and since they can't probably I mean they they can't alter what their plans are with PSX What are they going to do It's a runaway train, I think, at this point. I mean, I just They could make a this drive for it. And I feel like you would have to imagine one was in development for it at some point that like ye, I just know from my own conversations with people at Sony over the years and even When I was at Sony HQ and Id talked about like the PS the dual shock fours with like offset sticks and all the things they were talking about there Like They probably are and do a lot of shit Maybe you just maybe one of them is on ice and you're just like, all right, like we gott to go back and fix it. I mean, they do Dustin, they do have the opportunity If they wanted to eat shit Like release a Nishino video in Japanese sububtitled thirty seconds We've heard you we made the wrong choice and we are working behind the scenes to what we have to do Little bow And you know Um, And I'm sure they're probably considering the possibility of that, but I maybe they're not. Maybe they're like who mayaybe when they came up with the strategy a long time ago, they're like, this is going to be really hard. And you better batten down the hatches So I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. They could become the good guy again, but I don't know if that's going to be the case Speaking of the strategy Do you guys think that I think you're right that this they were obviously planning this out for a while Do you think the timing was specifically done? Like they were like, okay, we're going to We have really bad news. We got to figure out when we're going to say it Why don't we just wait? uil we can sandwich oursel between other bad news or like and if we can't, then this is the final day. It's like Is it possible they're like, manan, Xbox has taken so much shit? If we can just Slide this news in here for the Armageddon of Xbox Studios happens next week then People will maybe move on a little quicker because there will be other stuff That's possible I think I think that that's totally within the realm of possibility. shouldhould they be able to move that quickly and they and certainly They've understood what we've all understood for a while now where like this could have even been This could have always been the plan and unleashing it could have happened later and they're like and they had a few weeks to say like What if we just did it now you know,, although I would say this doesn't to be fair eararly they announceced july first, the beginning of a new fiscal quarter This isn' their fiscal year because their years go March to March, I believe, remarks or We have March to Apri No March Markrays, would be Um and It's also and this is important is this might be one of the best times in the entire calendar to release bad news, especially in the United States. Although It doesn't really translate overseas, which is like the fourth of July is a dead zone for news. Like people there's like shit buried around this time in politics and in sports and in all sorts of shit all the time Yeah. And it's happening right now with a few different things. So There could be that angle too where it's like this is just a good time to do it fiscally and this is a good time to do it in terms of positioning with our biggest market, but I don't know So yeah, I mean, I think that for me that was more of like a fun idea of like what if that. I mean that should mean very l That should happen Dustin it's not. it's not that outrageous. I mean, they definitely play off each other like that. There's no doubt. And I think that I wonder certainly it was timed with GTA. bright becausecause maybe a lot of people that maybe or a lot the few like die really truly die hard physical people were like All right, fine. I'm going to preorder GTA. I'll do a digital game. rip that band aid off a little bit And then also they made like what like a billion dollars already in pre orders. And they're like, look We don't we don't we can feel confident about this because we just made so much money on GTA of exclusively digital Yeah, it's I just hope they're smart enough to know that you can't learn lessons from H of. We talked about this, so you weren't on the show, but we talked about this last week about like 'causeuse people were talking about like, what can you get away with pricing? What can you get? I'm like, you can't read anything into it that they're unique. They're basically selling one hundred dollar game, as Chris has pointed out, with an eighty dollarars gamed version of it You're not that guy You're not that guy.'re guy Yeah, not. It's a quintessential, you're not that guy. Yeah. It's like you can't It's so I'm excited to see that like the next person try that, you know what I mean? the next, I don't know, like a Ubisoft game comes down. It's like it'sy, it'sy bucks You a h Well, they would probably they would defite they would need that game to be eighty dollars at this point, like how much money theyveent, how much time they spent on it. But You're not. I want to get into this next inquiry because it we we have so much to talk about still, but it's like And we're gonna be here for a while, I think, but if that's all right, but There is this idea of like, well, all right, why are they we've gotten a little bit into this but like why are they doing this? right? Daniel Son wrote and said, heyCC without the D. Yve little f. are you gave Why you gay? Let keep it simple Why doesn't PlayStation just give us the option I totally understand that I'm in the minority nowadays and that eighty to ninety percent of gam sales are digital. I want to put an asterk in that because I think it's we have to kind of cllick on that I bet that physical collectors are among the most hardcore engaged customers on every platform I don't expect to be subsidiz by the majority of customers, which is to say I am absolutely willing to spend extra money on a disk drive and physical editions of games I think it's obvious that beyond practical reasons, Sony has financial incentives for the decision to end this production on their platforms because it gives them complete control over their customers and They don't have to split revenue anymore But still as someone that spends money on games literally every month and that purchased hundreds of games on PlayStation in the last decade, I'm forty four I have to say I feel a little bit left behind by Sony and it feels frustrating because they just have to give us this o because they just have to give us the option in all capital letters. Now I want to say the and we brought this up already, but he said eighty to ninety percent of game sales are digital It is fair to reiterate and to say that this is heavily skewed by most games not being available physically And so if you bought a Silk song It's like, what are you to do You know, you bought vampire crawlers You bought like these are only available digitally and obviously, these numbers skew heavily But it's also worth noting that we even th know publisher level numbers of like takeake two says that only three percent of their revenue is derived from physical sales So when you take everything to account like shark cards and shit like that, it's like Yeah, it is what it is, you know, it is what it is Um, just be fair I'm sorry youre to say something here No, I just wanted to that's that's a good point to make too, is that's just like the availability of digital games and the cheapness of them by the like a lot of indie games are that like It's a steam game, so it doesn't count. but like there's a of games like this on O all platforms where it's like Mech a Chameleons is like five bucks and it's like a huge game, right? it's like five dollars. Right. Like, yeah, of course. R I just wanted to reiter it So I want to get I think we all understand that this is being done for as companies do for monetary reasons I do think that there probably are a few other reasons to do this that have nothing to do with money, but could have major complications. And I tweeted this out yesterday and I don't think a lot of people understood it. I just tweeted out that like there are all these different you know, reasons like consumer habits and cost savings and all the rest that Sony would be doing this. But then I just I was like, what about this And I tweeted out a picture of the PS four version of Star Wars Racer Revenge I think most people didn't understand it and it is a little bit of a niche joke That's the game that you need physically to jailbreak the PS five And without it, you can't do it And I wonder if part of the calculus, maybe not an important part of it, but if part of it is Sony said, like we can just shut this entire vector down Like we literally, PS five was literally fine until someone split it open with that fucking physical copy of that game. you know, and B big problem for us moving forward on our all digital platform. And I think That's got, I don't know Dustin, you're much more technical to me. certainly that ro probablyably played somewhat into it, right? It's to say like we don't have to worry about that anymore. Like that was a freak thing and We just because like if we had a vulnerability like that, like the vulnerability is on the digital version, I think, too, but they just patch it And then you can never download the original version again, like you have no access to it You would have to keep your PS five offline forever. to not get down with the patch You think that that might have played a I mean, that's an extraneous role, but a role nonetheless Yeah. Well, I think Sony got lucky too that it was that game. Right And and not some mass market like FC twenty four or something. Right. Yeah. I would imagine that's certainly Part of it. I I'll be honest that I'm not super aware about what the PlayStation five jailbreak scene even is. I usually just see like Bloodborne running on PS five at sixty FPS four K. You know, videos like Digital Foundry is done bunch like that and people are running Linux on PS five now, but Certainly, yah Sony of all people. would know the pain of having jailbroken consoles. I mean, just look at the PSP easy that thing was to hack how much money they probably lost because people were just downloading games. I was a teenager. I was one of them. that was hacking my PSP. I had a hackP It was downloading ISOs. Yeah Okay. Yeah. to be fair, I didn't know what to do with it. My someone at IGen did it for me and I only had an NS and an S andES emulator on it. but But you what I remember was you couldn't play anything on at all. like you either had to have the PSP dedicated to that or you had a dedicated to playing new games because the remember the new games started coming with the UMD updates, like the F firmware updates on them and would fl you just basically made it a digital only and piracy only PSP So Yeah, that's certainly I think a factor Um I touched on this earlier. I think it's a good point time for me to point out. I mentioned my tweet earlier and I wanted to address about it because There are so many replies about it. This isn't the first time you've addressed a tweet, I feel like No, I will There's no nuance on Twitter. Yeah,. You know, Uh so it's it's I think it's worth P pututting some nuance on something U numberumber one is that on Amazon, a lot of people are like, well, those games are on you're comparing an on sale game to a not on sale game And it's like, dud thoseose games while it shows like twenty percent off on Amazon, that twenty percent off is showing like what their standard MSRP is Go look at the price history of those games on Amazon Those haven't been MR MSRP For months or even years It's not like a Amazon Prime D saale Those are pretty close to just what the relative I mean, they do fluctuate a little bit if you look at the price systemter in Amazon but That's, you know, they're not really like what we consider a sale U the second thing And this was a mistake on my part, but I think the point still stands Right now on PlayStation, some of those games I listed, like I believe God of W and Grant Turismo Their special editions are on sale right now on PlayStation. And they are the same price as the physical version on Amazon, mayaybe even slightly cheaper So that's something I just didn't realize. L it's weird to me that PlayStation would put God of War Digital Deluxeedition or God of War Ragnarok Digital Deluxe edition on sale. the standard version is not on sale I just didn't even realize that when I was making the tweet The point still stands because right now when I happen to make those screenshots, it's the summer sale that they're trying to compete with Steam summer sle So as soon as that saalle's gone, The point still stands. No, I I agree with you. like there definitely is a price control angle here. though I think it is more sophisticated and complicated than people are letting it on to be like I don't because Amazon is buying these games on masse. I'm pretty sure they can just then I don't think Sony's the one telling them to charge less for them. I think they're willing to do that, right? L and I can put we could put our game on sale whenever we want. PN So like a lot of the stuff is up to ninety nine point nine nine percent of the games on PSN are not PlayStations games. And so people can really they so they like I'm not saying you're wrong. What I'm saying is it's kind of passing the buck. publishers. because Pton and this is, I think, a big part of it, Dustin is that Big enemities Don't want discs smallmall entities do want disks So think about like like, well, we just saw with take two. But like The general reality I saw Rhese Elliott actually tweet out about this and it's true is like Making a game you have to have a master of a game The idea of going gold is from the idea you guys know this, but for the audience that doesn't know this. likeike when we say games gold, that's terminology because you set the of gold master of a disc an actual physical disc to send to the a manufacturer That's where comes and That's a thing you have to do. You have to commit to a build and you have to do it early And big entities are like, we don't w want to do this anymore This is annoying. We literally can deploy a preload like they're doing with Grandeft Auto a week before the game comes out, not three months before the game comes out. you know what I mean? And So and they're like, and we'll make more money selling digital games too. We all like if you're EA or take Tour and we're like, we also benefit from getting rid of the middlean What's really interesting is it fucks the cottage industry shit Bad And I had noticed this on Twitter yesterday. It was like to be a fly in the wall limited run games right now, man'am Like yeah, you're in a lot of trouble. Um, I'm in danger. you know, like, Uh It's Okay They're a little more diversified than some of these companies. and I know I'm really good friends with the guys at East Asiaft and I'm not so worried for them because they are truly like in digital distribution it happened forever limited run has started to do that. L the rug rats collection that just came out. like they print they published out digitally U So they're they're getting to where they need to be, but that's going to destroy the retail side of their business And I don't think there's any respite for companies like that because Nintendo The worst kept secret about all this is Nintendo' is just sitting back and like kind of smiling because They want out to. Like They've already showed you that with the keycard stuff And they don't give a fuck And they'll make like the normal cartridges for big games and they'll do all that sort of stuff. But they like, they don't want to do this shit either So like, like the thing that they benefit from is just being the last man standing and the fact that their hardware that just came out is accepting they'll be physical switch games for years But that's not enough to withstand the damage that's going to be done to these these niche boutique publishers and I can I can speak from my perspective too is it kind of sucks for us I mean We make pretty good money on the physical games for Lily Mo that we sell through lastaststand. and So it's funny, like the smaller the company is that somehow is attached to these different things, the more they're going to be injured while the bigger companies I wonder even Dustin like when they knew. because I'm like they couldn't have been told right then I wonder if they were just told like last week or something because that shit would have leaked, you would assume at that point. that would be bad news for Sony that leak. that they need to control the messaging on that, but I would imagine they probably told them and the EA iss like, Okay I mean, yeah That's fine with us We don't have to we we don't have to fucking get time at your fucking Indiana factories and manufactured discs in Austria and all this random shit and then hear people bitching about there's no instruction manual all that. I'm not saying any that's right but like from their perspective, they're And you saw that again take two as the proof in the pudding. I think you're right about that is It's not going in the opposite direction, the biggest game, though you can't learn much from it biggest game was like, all right, well We'll do it. And I think that that at least sets a predicate for thinking about it moving forward But I do feel I feel for those little companies because they're this is like an extinction level event Do you think the GCA did that because They knew this was happening Oh yeah I think so. Yeah, Dustin was saying that earlier and I feel like for sure. But I wonder though, Dustin, it's like They can kind of play this both ways becausecause they can be like, oh Next fall we'll have a disk and it'll be a much more robust version of it and we'll just sell it to you again And better get it now You know, kind of shit. like I I almost think like you're kind of just like sitting rubbing your hands together being like, this is L like the black guy behind the tree peeking out I love that w his suit. I love that. Yeah L that me you know, and so I I think I think they're just they're going to get away with it and then they'll make it work for them later . I think people are vastly overestimating why Take two did that though Like I really do think a lot of it has to do with the security of the game And I think I think people are I think people are a mistakeate. They're not saving any money by manufacturing cases and shipping them And then just not putinting a disck and putting it in. like, this is like pennies on the dollar. Yeah 're doing it because they don't want the game leag different story entirely All right So yeah, I wanted to point those things out like it's obviously monetarian and this gets a little more into it Cracklin Bones says, you boys. Did not Sony coinventent the Blue ray and get a licensing fee for every bllue ray produced? I love the way wrote that Why would they ever want to kill disc productrodion If like Cin had said, producing them is dirt cheap, they are I have said that and they are. I'll go into a little bit of that wouldouldn't you want that little passive income forever, not just from games but from movies So I'll tell you right now that like I can get The lowest run of PlayStation games you can do is a thousand. I've talked about this. It's actually like a thousand fifteen and You can be the smallest developer And you can get those games man a thousand of those games manufactured. in a disk or in a case, disc in case, you know, cover sheet all wrapped around. Sealed cases shipped to your house for under ten dollars a unit Okay, so That's if you're buying a thousand of them What do you think that number look like if you're buying half aillion What do you think that number looks like you're buying two million of them I mean, so yeah, it's it is there's no question that it's cheap They just don't want to I'm not even sure if it's the manufacturing, that's the problem. I don't think they want to ship them. And I don't think they want to split the money with the retailers. They don't need to anymore. And that's a big part too guys is remember, we've talked about this. I remember judging and balancing this many years ago during my journalistic careers like There was always this idea Vita was the first crack actually in it, which was like, we got to play nice. We can't the retailers over we rely on them too much stillill And I remember the first crack in the armor was Vida when Vita started differentiating prices between digital and physical games. whichich is why it wouldn't be that unprecedented for them to do that again. Um, This is a sign that they're like, yeah, we can actually kind of just drop a bomb on these guys now don't really need them And that's another sign that physical sales are waning And even the way you get physical games are waning and that most people probably get their physical games from non game stores Another very the biggest game seller has to be Amazon, you would assume I would assume the second biggest game seller is Walmart. I know for decades the biggest music seller in the country was Walmart. whichich is crazy because I don't think they carry explicit content. by the way so you' always getting the clean version What he bought it there It's this, I don't know, man's it's a deep economic question But yeah, Sony did co invent the Blue Ray and they do get money, like they are a licenseur of it Um Dustin, doesn't that just go to show you though that like they're like, yeah, it's not worth it What does this mean for Blue Ray movies B by the way Probably nothing Yeah I would say probably nothing. But because that would be kind of unimaginable as well, although that's again of a vanishingly small group of people too Yeah so I don't know. I don't know Interesting question, though Yeah, I would imagine that their their licensing fee from a disk is pretty minuscule compared to the amount they have to get from a retailer, as you were saying Colin I think the blue r, like as far as movies, it's like a Totally different business where because so many movies are streamed from a service, like Netflix or Amazon or something like that And I'm not talking about like a one time rentter or something. I'm saying it's on their subscription service They will gladly sell you a blue ray because they will make so much more off that individual purchase than one you watching it one time on Netflix. Yeah I u Yeah, you're right. And it goes also into what you were saying earlier about Gaming is kind of a unique place where it like There's multiple ways for a game to make money, but it's all in the game Like there's no, there's no extern externality to it Like the process of CD Tor. You know, whatever kind of thing, merch obbviously merch exists all that, but it's it's these are edge cases Tax was really good for that for a long time, notot so much anymore Developers would go there and make a lot of money just selling random shit, but there really is no externality for them. They have to make the money through or in the game And so there's like fewer ples for them to go and escape increase in pricing. And by the way, those small licensing fees do add up. I mean, the scuttlebt about Wi was that Nintendo didn't want to pay the DVD licensing fee, which is why there was no DV play in it Right. Yeah. So an expert I'm sorry. Xbox played DVD's but you needed to buy the remote. in order to use the D remember nature of the Xbox because that's where that licensing fee That's how they were able to pay for it Jonathan Chherlin wrote in said, Hey guys, Just read the news that Sony is going to end physical disc production on all games on their platforms. Was wondering, do you think that this means the price of physical games is about to shoot up Because aren't they essentially saying all PlayStation phhysical media is going to go out of print on january first, twenty twenty eight? Do you think that if publishers still wanted to print discs for their games on PS four and PS five, they would still be able to do that after the date How does that work? And what does that mean for companies like Limited runun games Personally, I just bought four games from my Amazon wishlist that that I've been on the fence about just in case. So I wanted to bring this up because there are a few clarifications that are probably going to be needed I would imagine game prices will stay stagnant until this is done Maybe they'll jack up the last run of them. I think that would be pretty shitty of them to do. And I don't really know that has much play here I also think that like He brings up the PS four and PS five thing. This is kind of where I'm a little confused about This is where I think they can get out of this if they were choosing to get out of it, which is say like, all right, we'll continue to make these older games And there simply will be no physical games on PS six and you'll have to decide if you want to opt in or not at that time But they still have to again, they still have to run and certify those things.'s it's a dangerous kind of thing from a quality standpoint to like offload that And I think that they realize that you can't You just had there's a lot of trust implicit in something like that And I just don't think they really want to do it But I do believe so too answer the question more scctly, it's like, once Sony stops certifying those disks, it's over. Um, You can't make them anymore And so There are few things we'reer like I haven't even talked to the guys that Lily Mo about this because I've been thinking about it. is like one thing I'm really disappointed we didn't do prrint a Vveita game and then just hold it likeub we've published video games, but like that we didn't like, when weew were running of time it's like just publish the video game don't sell And then like in five years sell it And I think I want to do that for people some like some of our games is like just get them get reprints of them and then just sit on them becausecause I think it would be kind of cool to and not like charge a forune for them in the future. That's not the idea at all. It's like in other words, I have like this really cool thing that like if you're just patient, like planting the seed and watching the tree grow Are you patient enough to sit in its shade Like, yeah, like think I think doing cool things like that would be cool. And I imagine a lot of companies will be smarter about that this time around. to be like one of the last Vita or one of the or like Vita games. We were one of the last Vita games sold, but I think we were We were like fourth or something like fourth last. we knew back in the dayan remember Here's a mentioning companies like Limited Run and also what we do option makes me wonder if limited run will be totally okay Maybe not totally okay, but they will survive is that A lot of people that buy limited run games either a first of all, they keep them sealed Uh and also if they want to play the game the physical version of it takes so incredibly long for it to show up They have already bought it digitally Um I wonder if some of these companies can survive by making U video gameless special editions For example, like Cin, when we do well Saints Saints Layair, I think we'll be able to do it Before Oh yeah, way before we'll get more than Sain.tslaaird. Yeah. We have we have a year and half But after that for So a Lily Lamo game far in the future Would people be interested in us selling a special edition that has a manual It has the sticker, like all of our stuff, it just doesn't have the game in it And we charge less for it. Yeah. But it's like here's something, a physcical product to celebrate the release of it And like limits run, they do all they do like figures and all kinds of garbage that you don't need Yeah,'ve you're right. I've thought about that too. and I think what will determine that is like who? who are buying these games Is it people that want the physical version of the game or is it people that want to collect it? Like I know that I feel like I'm kind of an edge case where like with Castaslevania spepecialeditions, for instance, like I could give a fuck about these ges on disk. I own them on digitally, we'll own them in quotes on digitally I wanted the accoutremments But I don't know that most people are like that. I think they get the accoutrements they want them but they want the game. and I don't know. I would be If I would be if I were at these companies, these small niche publishers, I'd be liaising, you know, liaising with Sony as quickly as possible to see like what What can we do? I mean, I don't know. I think it's you're right that there's a way out, but like these companies will have much smaller effect moving forward If you're not if you if you don't control the actual product And you just have like like your fan gaming, you know, fan gamer or that website, which is good. and they do some physical run stuff too, but like you're really more about like the the pins and the posters and this it's like that there's money to be made there the margins in physical games. That's why I was saying earlier it's like Ironically, the margins for physical games comparable to what a third party published digital indie game would get are way higher. You want a sel physical goal In other words when youre when you're in indie, while It goes in the other direction because of different costic constraints and all the rest. So Um, let's see This is an important one Declin wrote in and said, Hey boys, With PS six reportedly going digital only, does Sony have any plans to actually improve the storefront before pushing us off physical media No alternative to the PS store, poor discovery, weak sales compared to competitors, painful refunds, and still no way to gift or share games like switch two', virt keycards Backwards compat is Th then two with PS three PSP and VIa versversuses already stranded And after Sony pulledas purchased movies and shows from people's accounts, why should we trust that licensees are any safer Dustin Fermman, if you can hear us, please save us So This is a and this gets in I think, the nitty gritty of the things that if this is going to be the status quo, then there there need there are things that need to happen And this is one of them is and I would imagine that they know this and I would imagine that the PS six' storefront will probably be different in some meaningful ways. You already kind of see evidence of it rolled out like there's ways to leave like text reviews on PlaystStation. you know, like in some different ways now on like the website. like all these things that I think they'll integrate later Yeahah, Chris, let's go to. haven't heard from you in a while. I mean, The PlayStation store is And they are improving things I want to give them credit. like the shovelware purge has been awesome. I love that. But they have big problems before we even get into the technical stuff is like It's just not a great storefront compared to steam and they need to do something about it if they're going to go into this all digital future Yeah, I mean, they they definitely should. I think it's actually kind of up in the air as to whether or not it would be a different St. I think it's up I think it's up in the air as to whether or The PS six' UI will really be any different. It wouldn't be There is a precedent with Sony specifically going from PS to PS three where they, you know, they've just taken the UI and reported it over given conolle' position as it stands now This is a very unique time and a very unique market and a very unique environment and audience that it's releasing into where And we talked about this last week where it's just like the appetite for this machine doesn't really seem to be there. So the strategy around it, feels like let's put it this way. We already know that PS four stuck around for a very, very long time We know for a fact at this point PS five is going to be around for for a while. Arguably PS five may be Just the baseline for how things are going to go. I think it's up in the air to whether not we even get a true PS six exclusive, honestly Um Tuly L only runs on PS six. likeike, I don't know if it's as clear cut or obvious as as we might assume So If this next machine is really going to be looked at is like I think there's an argument to be made that this may be like a PS five pro pro type situation where like the big gimmick or the big change will be the handheld element The fact that like, yes, it's a stronger machine, yes, it's more capable. But the main thing about this is that you can take it on the go. or something like that And that'll be the thing that differentiates it. And that'll be the main the main draw And so because that's the main draw and it's not like this whole new machine and ecosystem, they can probably price it in a way that's a little bit more boutique and then, you know, make make more money on it. It can position itself as a more optional hardcore machine And there's not really that much need in that case to really make it a different user experience than the previous machine anyway, you kind of in some ways might even want to have it as similar as possible Series Xited this from Xbox onene, where it's the same exact UI. and PS three to PS u or PS V to or ye, PSP to PS three. Silar. So like I could see a similar thing happening with PS. PS six. And if that is the case They need to overhaul the PS five quite drastically, I think especially with the storefont becausecause dude I don't even understand like I There's such a simple thing that I would I think would go a long way, which is just like Have upcoming games be its own thing I hate looking at like most recent or whatever and it's a bunch of shit that's not available yet, because it's just like Tens and tens of pages of stuff that like is for pre order or something That's the most recent, brother That's not what That's not what that means? Yeah. agreed at all. aggreed or new games And it's like this is out next year. preordder right now. It's like this is not a new game This isn't a game yet So like there's little things like that. obbviously, they're doing a good job with, you know, getting some of the Sumble wear out And, you know, I I commend them for that. That's a Good news and in a string of neegative games industry news, but like, u I don't know. I really don't I don't think it's a guarantee that the next UI or the next storefront is going to be much better or much different Um We'll see in fact, I think there's precedent that The opposite might actually be true. Yeah. I mean, there is an idea. I mean, with PSP and PS three, they were trying to make like a PlStation OS almost. And there is this idea, I guess that like you would want to make things consistent and unify them Iart of getting a new console too is like the new the new feeling They they have to balance that So we' saying about the controller as well, is like you don't really need a new controller And it could be a way to kind of save money by not, you know, you want to sell dual senses still, but obviously you wouldd have to, love him. So maybe you do that other question I think that's this next question in my opinion is for me So obviously people are agased because they're physical gamers roubber. That doesn'tffect me at all. This affects me and I think This is a major component of what I think needs to change. Hashim Barrat wrote in and said Good day Sacred Gents with an all digital gaming space seemingly inevitable Do you think we should get more guarantees on our ownership of our digital purchases We are paying the same price for a physical copy and sometimes even more by buying an expensive version and the DLC I feel like it should be fair to upgrade the license to a full ownership of our digital purchases and maybe a cheaper price since they will be stop manufacturing physical copies Thank you for the amazing content and I wish you all a great week I'm not entirely sure much can be done about the things we've already bought I feel so strongly about what I'm about to say that I actually think that like there might like the government might even need to get involved at some point. and it will probably be the EU more than Congress or whatever, but There needs to be This idea of digital licensing needs to change. I understand that like I understand what it is But it is a Weasily weigh out of truly selling a good takes advantage of long Bible length Uulas and Consumer misunderstanding going back more than twenty years going all the way back to really iTunes about like what you own and like what you what you don't and what you have access to and what the difference is between owning a physical good and a license. And this is the fundamental pivot point of owning a physical game versus down you know, peopleople always say to me it's like You don't really own the game. You like Ioundm like, I know, dude, I know My assumption is that we'll always have access to them And really And we're going to talk about the PlStation movie thing later, which I think is a kind of a different story if I'm being honest with you. but like we really have had almostone none of games get delisted But like you have access to them And there hasn't been a lot of like chicannery with rare exception behind the scenes of like, them being like, no, we're just getting rid of this game entirely and you can't play it anymore. This really happens more in the multiplayer and games of service space where the games are just inoperable I was trying to think about like what could they do because the licensing thing basically gives them a way out if like and this is what I always say about like if if you lose access to your Playage games, Sony's going out of business Like there's just there's just no way that they would let that happen. you know Yet As we're going to learn with the PS three and Vita stuff, like they do say like there will be they basically say there'll be a day when you can't download the games anymore. And to me That's a bridge far too far. And I wonder like what kind of legislation might be necessary or what kind of guardrails might be put on wherein Licensing means more than that because we live in a different Paradigm now digital one And I've said this ad nauseum your accounts Like your digital presence is actually extremely vitalal to protect. And if you're like a ten year old on PlaySation network You should conceivably You have access to that account when you're seventy What does that look like? and how do you do that? And I think it's complicated. it's what, you know, the stop killing games thing We were talking about how complex that is because it's like, well you can't really do very much to keep a multiplayer game going and they have all these solutions about like bots and all this I wonder if like some of it is like Does Sony enter money from every sale into escrow or something where it's like, this is the money like the pennies per purchase that we set aside if Sony ever gets into existential trouble and like these will keep this money will keep the servers live for Like I was trying to think about like, what do you do? I don't know But like I think I think people should be guaranteed permanent access to these things. And I think this goes all the way into, I mean, of course, we went into this a lot when my account got boosted And I told you guys that I said this to Sony and they didn'tcknowledge PS six to me I'm saying that they did, but I said to them, I'm like, you guys are about to sell this digital handheld. and People's accounts can get stolen by calling some fucking call center and they can just lose it I'm like, I don't think so. There are a lot of things that need to happen If you're going to move in this direction, I don't mind you moving in this direction. It's convenient And I like it But I should never have a true worry in my heart that I can lose access to this stuff. unless I do something truly egregious And I just think that like there needs to be more pressure about this because they're not taking it seriously enough. and I think this gets to the heart of it is like, yeah, you got to figure out a way to make this more than a quote unquote license. It's too slimy. And it's treating your customers like vagrant emeral customer, you know, vagrant ephemeral consumers of of a good in a time as opposed to treating it like they might want to revisit it at some point like the expectation was And I know that like there are things that disappearnt. like and I'm sick and some of the things people bring up really annoy me likeike I'm sick of hearing about PT for instance I' sick of Like PT was a demo for that you didn't pay for for a game that never came out And for it was available for many years likeike in other form like other ways and it's been played a bunch of times and all thiss like enough already about fucking PT. What I'm really worried about is like the shit you buy And it might be as easy as that escrow fund going into refunds if games disappear or pro rated refunds or whatever you might want to look at. And there might be you might you might release a pro rating table about X years distant at this price, you get this much money but they got to do something They have to So I agree with you Hashiman Yeah, what do you think about this Nussin It it I was when I was thinking about this, it's interesting that Uh like even a console like the W, for example to my understanding You can still re downownload your Wii purchases Like Nintendo still has those servers up But you have to have of the Wi itself. Yeah, you have to have that wee Yeah, yeah But U because it was long before their accounts. Yeah. I was talking about that recently in another context where I'm like it's so crazy man. like Yeah, I probably literally spent five hundred or more maybe even closeer a thousand dollars on that stupid virtual console All right U And same for like three D S. The three D S store has been long gone, but if you made purchases on your three D S And I believe that is account based. You can still go and redownload those. but It is a good question. It's like, should digital good be treated the same as a physical good? because it's like If you think about it, like Nintendo doesn't have the right or Playsttation, right Like Sony can't be like, M h Your copy of Crash Bandicoot We need to come to your house and take that back Sorry, you can' own that anym We know you sold it to us And we know you've used it a long time, but u No, it's got to go. it's gott to come back It would be like absolutely fucking notot You can't have that back. You sold it to me But because a digital good doesn't exist in the physical plane of our world U suddenly then that is like, oh, well, no, they totally legally can say, no, we're taking that or you can't we're not going to allow you to get access to that anymore. which I guess that's the argument. It's like, well We're going to give you a cutoff date and make sure you if you want to keep these, you have to download them. and have them on a hard drive. or something. it's like I don't think so Yeah, it's I understood the Let me say this, I've been very understanding, I think, of all of the shit that people didn't anticipate about this era I brought up recently the Wonder Years using a cover of a cover of their intro song, you know, the Joe Cocker cover of the Beatles song, like they didn't have these these perpetual licenses then because they didn't anticipate any of this shit So like Instead of paying Joe Cocker's ask, they were like, No, we'll just have a cover of that song over it I was saying about nine hundredo two zero when I went back and went through that again back when I lived in California, like there were just episodes missing because there's just so much fucking music in it. and patient with that because I'm like, yeah, that sucks You really couldn't have known We've had more than enough time for you to figure it out at this point. You know, like we like, All these different ways out and these different cagey little things. It's like it's enough already You gota you got to just, you got to wait this is what it is, man. You got to sort it out. ASAP It's Yeah, good. please. Okay good. I was going to say before you read the next question, I need to dip out for a second. Holly has to use the bathroom and needs me to watch Okay, do you want to stop do want to we'll stop the recording here? Oh no, no, You can keep going. Okay. o back. Okay is or poerer wrote to us and said. Hello Colin and Chris. Did you catch that Sony is now going to be selling digital games again at retail stores This was a small part of the noise this week, but it appears in the PS blog outlining the changes to physical games in twenty twenty eight So he stopped allowing digital license sales at retail back in twenty nineteen, and this return means retailers could sell these for cheaper than PSN, which is a small silver lining It's funny because I didn't pick this up when but it is there, but I didn't really pick it up when was first when we first read it or when I first read it yesterday U, which is that they they do say that. they say U Following the date, so january twenty twenty eight, new games will be available on PlayStation store and at retailers in digital formats only And yes, this has been something this is something that was discontinued back in the PS four era I assume this is some sort of make good to the retailers, I guess and that gives some sort of perception of optionality to the audience. you're getting it through the same thing really, but like Yeah. because it is a weird reversal. You have to assume that's what it is,? that they can't maybe they don't want to burn them. te And they can have a little and they'll have retail presence which is important. I wnder what that means though Like I woered like, is it are they going to is it going to be like the Rckstar thing where it's just like it's going to be a case still No Iident be like more like when you go just card like Yeah like I think it's what Nintendo does. Like when I go into Target, I always go to look at Nintendo's thing and they just have these lines of cards Um, And I wonder if thatame. Yeah, I wonder if. Yeah, right for each individual game and I wonder if they'll do that because because I think they would do that They actually kind of backtracking, they kind of have to do that because otherwise they will have no footprint U right, you know, like, theirir space is going to go away at all these different stores and you don't want that So it's just an interesting thing that I get It is a silver lining. It's just that it it doesn't solve the problem. It just gives you multiple places to buy. The game and I wonder how price resistant those are too. like I wonder if Those are basically akin to And it could be this way now. I really don't know how it works. but are those akin to like, you know when you go and buy like, I'm going to buy a Barnes and Noble card for someone and you pay for it and then they scratch it off and then like the point of sale is like the money exchange. I wonder if it's like one thing lower than that where it's like Target is basically selling this on consignment And Liting Sony will pay them at the point of sale Um In other words, it's just Sony doing it themselves as opposed to giving them any sort of flexibility in pricing. I don't know if that's actually the case or not We'll see Yeah. I mean It doesn't real it's it seems like a band aid You know, it's like okay, you can get your digital copy you can get your digital code at a retailer Uh, that's not I don't know That means so little to me. It's I remember when I saw those cards or whatever stores or whatever. I just remember being like, why would I Why would I buy this? Why would I do this here? Like it's what what a roundabout way of getting to the same exact it doesn't solve the problem of ownership as well. No, no, that that's the big thing. That's the big thing. I think the key The key issue, I think, u I don't know, man. I think we have to start waking up to the reality that like, the motive isn't even like, it's not even It'sinking a profit motive. It's just like a bare minimum viability modotive in a lot of cases, or it's at least getting to that point or it's just like, is the barmimum, like whatever Yeah, I think I think it's about control in a way too, which I think the next inquiry gets into quick though Yeah about the codes at stores. Yeah. Well I guess maybe it relates to, but the one reason why someone would Chris Is that they have a gift card for that store, I guess Like a kid, like they get Yeah fifty dollars target card, thenen they can buy that code via that gift card. Yeah No you're right, you're right. Gift cards are just insane to be also as opp proose. Like like I never understood the gift card thing. Like you're gonna buy I'm gonna to buy money that's worth less Right. yeah Yeah Well dude, that's, I mean we're we have a lot of gift cards right now for our baby stuff. and I'm like, well, I really want to buy this thing for the baby, but I have this gift card here. So it's like I guess I'll just spend my own money and save the gift card. And there are still people too that donon't want to put their credit card online in this day and age, which That's like kind of like it feels weird away because you know, the three of us spend so much money online and my credit cards wherever. but like My credit card iss not on Playsttation network right now. That's true. Yeah. M the recent happenings. it eventually will go back in there, but it's like I I kind of understand it to some degree. Yeah And it's worth reiterating too, like because we were talking a little bit about access to your games wherever, but it's like the security. the situation on PlayStation needs to be. ratcheted it up to an extreme degree and I hope they know that. L If you're going to go all in like this Which is reasonable enough if that's your decision, then Understand they're going to be serious b reaching ramifications if you fuck this up That is the texture to the background of this conversation, I think, as well is like the reliability of Sony in general as a as a purveyor of these goods in the first place. I like the security of the Playsttation store is a massive issue The u UX of the Playsttation store is a massive issue I know you said it's a different thing talking about like the the movie purchases, and I do think I agree But it does say something about how much they respect at least a portion of your digital library Like they would never They're Playsttation. So like games are the center of their business and PlayStation is the center is the center of Sony, really It's like the core of Sony. And so like they're not going to be stupid with games. Like they're not going to like revoke your access to games that you've paid for. I like in prettyrety much ninety nine point nine percent is. scenarios TV is a little bit secondary, likeike what are you doing? even buying TV shows on Playsttation? It's weird. But it does say something Yeah, it might not be that important, but it is something. Well, no, I agree with you. L like what I was saying earlier is like they need to be in a position. and again, I think this comes from legislation and new kind of corporate governance of Let's say you call governance. Let's called the stewardship of your stuff. and taking it seriously is like They what happened with Studio Canal and and PlayStation with their movies and TV shows should simply not be possible Right Yeah. like and and again, I'm um a little more patient with old deals. like you haven't been able to buy TV and movies, TV shows and movies on PlayStation for a while now U I'm a little more patient with that than I am with like anything moving forward. It's like you have to know better now likeike it's it's You're right. I mean, we'll talk about that later becauses it seemed like it was a bad story. It's a worse than that as we've been talking about, than just the fucking movie thing, All right, a few more things to get through. Um Yeah, Ab AbdaL wrote in and said, Hello gents Sony's announcement that they'll end physical game production in twenty eight reminded me of an episode a few weeks back on an audience question about external marketplaces selling PSN game keys or lack thereof Des't mentioned steam off or something like that, but that was mischaracterized Steam does let developers sell Steam keys, but only five thousand are provided by default which is nothing at scale. What's five K copies for something like GTA six Their docs say additional keys, requests are reviewed case by case and more keys aren't guaranteed Right now, no digital game marketplace offers a service like that truly and that makes sense to me. But given the recent news, do you think that that will have to change soon I have a really hard time understanding how it changes This would this would only be forced by legislation and Again, something that would probably happen in Europe that would force them to bend around the world I get nervous about this. I don't like I don't like this idea that like you have to sell things in multiple places. Why? L I don't like to me, I'm like, I don't know. I think you should explore all avenues to reach your consumers, but like at the at the barrel the gun Like I don't, I don't know And he's not saying that by the way, but like You would have to it would have to be that way because no one is going to voluntarily join a system like where like you can undercut each other on each other's like, you'll have this universal platform where all all of the The u The hardware manufacturers compete with each other. on games that are on each of their platforms, like that's insanity. You know, like it would It would be it would be very pro consumer, but as we're going to talk about I'm not so sure proroconsumer really works for businesses all the time As we see well, as we see with it a certain competitor Um, so You have to do things with like some sort of rationality to it. and like I don't think the monopoly PlayStation has in selling games on their own platform. That doesn't bother me I don't know. it just like I just think that that's almost normal and reasonable. It's like, yeah, of course they do They're going they're going to have like they're going to make proprietary hardware and then give you access to four different storefronts. that would be the end of PlayStation. And by the way I remember saying this when we discussed this a while ago is like, I'm going to be pretty fucking pissed if people actually try to do this which they which they might through lawsuits and all the rest because it could ruin everything. It's one of those things where it's like bee It's what I said about H helelix and like that the multiple storefarts to be very carefful, there would be no different. PlaySation would we get fucking destroyed from like from a parasite within running on its own hardware likeike I don't know. I don't I'm I don't know if you guys have any opinion on it but I can't even compute how a digital storefront that allowed you to like buy whatever you wanted on PSN or you buy it on PSN with modular pricing That seems like That would again only happen to the barrel of a gun and undermine PlayStation' business. And I don't I don't and into that. Thats to me, I think is a bridge too far. I think, um accross the board, there's a lot of I mean this also relates to the steam machine, which is a whole different thing that I have not been here for in the pricing, but Valve and Sony are two very, very different companies I know they're selling the same kind of product, but they operate and make money different ways Um Similar ways But Um I as far as like the selling on multiple storefonts, I Is is something that maybe before I come back, I need to read up on more because I agree with you, Colin, that it's like Seems crazy that Steam is able to do that. and just be like, yeah, we're fine not making that money I mean, they are a private company that has way less overhead and maybe that's just part of their ecosystem. Yeah, like I don I really don't know how it works because we get steam keys when when we publish games and I think we get a lot of them, but I don't think I mean, I know this is true right for PSN and Xbox and whatever Nintendo is like you can't sell those keys Those are for like distribution it that whole that completely undermined like it's just Well, I want to read this real quick because that was what I was referring to before. Will wrote it and said Xbox has been the most pro consumer brand in the console space for the past seven years. They're on the brink of hardware extinction. That is all. There's something to that You have to watch out for the business or there will be no product You know, so you' You have to be careful Well, I mean Their business got shot in the foot specifically because they weren't consumer and they had to very veryer quickly pivot to the point where like nobody really trusted them There was really again, like dude that twenty that twenty to thirteen. Uh But like always online DRM machine That was not a pro consumer idea You know, that was not a very that was like the like the fact that PlayStation won a generation and arguably like carried inertia for like a damn near a decade off of video of two people handing a case to one another You know what I mean? That's all it took. bare minimum. againain, this is what I'm saying, bare minimum Bare minum viability. It's just like, you can share gameool That's it We'll reward you for it And Xbox didn't do that and it nuked their brand And they tried to pivot like you can't go pro consumer after you've already like, shut the bed immensely. I think. L you kind of have to You have to you kind of have to have a consistent philosophy of that and you have to employ it And I think that generally does well. You obviously have to look after the business side as well, but like I don't think it's necessarily fair to say like, Xbox was proc consumer. L look how that turned out. It's like, no, no, they're in this situation because they weren't And they only survivive this long actually because they pivoted a little bit I would argue Well, there are certainly contrary Arguments happening out there as well, although the prevailing wisdom is that this is a bad idea and people are upset. We do have a write in from Brandon Price who says gentlemen W Sony announcing the end of physical disc productrodion I have noticed yet more doom and gloom spreading throughout the industry and in gaming discussion circles I wanted to remind everyone that the consumers have spoken. Correct me if I'm wrong, what isn't rato now about eighty twenty with digital media dominating? We live in a world where the majority rules. I just can't stand all this nonsense about the hobby is dying and how could they do this? This is not going to affect the overall quality of games, which is ultimately all that matters He writes it on out I want to say that like based on the margins And this is where I think it's dangerous to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater based on like the kind of slim margins that Sony is running on right now and Playstation's running on. I mean, you can't afford to kind of throw away twenty percent of your audience Um You can't even afford to throw away really half of that audience or even a quarter of that audience So Don't The consumer has spoken with their behavior, yes, and the inevitability of where this is all going is undeniable They simply didn't need to do it now. They didn't need to do it like this And I think they have more explaining to do I do want to say one thing is, I've been very nice about all of this. But there is one argument I want to bring up that I am a little little tired of hearing about And there are other argents by the way that I'm tired of hearing about to, but we've gotten into these a bunch of times. likeike I'm so tired of like the game preservationit It's like, shut the fuck These games all like these g these machines are hacked to such a fucking degree at this point that like everything's playable. And most games are on PC like I just hate when people are like game preservation act, I like all That's not, that's N why we necessarily need physical games, but teach their own This is an argument though that I hear sometimes that I'm like, I feel like we need to Re really talk about it David Rirecter says Hey guys, I know Colin and Chris are all digital, asMI, but I think Sony is making a mistake removing discks as an option There are plenty of people who live in rural areas that don't have great internet that still rely on physical games I wish the world's internet infructure was good enough to make going all digital non issue, but I think Sony has jumped gun this one I don't think this is true anymore. You can get Starlink anywhere And it's It will run on your your playsttation will run it. You can tether a fucking five G connection to your playsttation. through your phone Like I'm not saying that these things are ideal, but like I feel like it's not twenty ten anymore. You know, it's not even twenty fifteen. It's not even twenty twenty Sony cannot make decisions about like people who are somehow buying PlayStation sixes and not connecting them to the internet I'm sorry Like That whole thing just just, it doesn't strike me the same way anymore T is going to buy a thousand dollars console and not have an internet connection And if you're in the middle of nowhere There are options by the way, they've been options for like thirty years to get in the middle of nowhere satell. I using satell at internet at my friend's h in like nineteen ninety eight it suck But I just I feel like I don't know. I'm just tired of this argument Like it's time to accept that like the interternet is ubiquitous, that you have it And if you don't have it, it's kind of by choice at this point And I mean that in a gaming context. I don't mean that in affordability context. I don't mean that in access in developing or third world countries. I'm not saying any of that I'm saying like here in the United States, like it's kind of preposterous that you would buy a playaysttation and then be like why I don't have the internet What Am I crazy There's an argument about very, very slow internet that it's like, well it takes like, I don't know, a five megabyte, ten megabyte connection. There's certainly people in rurw areas that still have that that it's like a huge chore to it's like, okay, we'll let the game download overnight or something like that I just think that this is like It's what we were saying about the military access, right? And people some some guy was like I'm on a submarine And I'm like, yeah That sucks and like I want I think In an ideal world, like you would have access to whatever you wanted and whatever. But like we can't like things that become more and more of an edge case I think like we can't keep all edge cases in mind anymore. and it's just kind of It's twenty twenty six Yeah, I understand there are people that live in the middle of nowhere. I understand that there are people that don't have like, But it's like There are options for you now. It's not the same as it was ten years ago And it's just weird for me to believe that someone that's like a technologist that would buy alayStation six and put it on his beautiful four K TV,'s like, but I don't have the inter I' like I think you do And I think I'm tired I think I'm tired of hearing this this conversation I'm going to hear from him about that one And fininally, just to reiterate, poopy face tomato nose wrote and it' a question for Lillily Mo Do you plan to print physical copies for your studios's future games after their cutoff d? Thanks. That will not be an option. Again, just reiterate what I reiterated earlier. Like when Sony cuts it off, it's done There is no It's not like it's not like, uh the new cuphead games going to be on master system, like a native master system game, but that's not like They can just make those now. They're cartridges It's different on these newer machines. So we're not going to have come enine run of games. I'm sorry, go. No, like I was gonna ask, is there like just like a point Is there like an allotted amount of time that passes where like You can just kind of freely make something for an old machine and manufacturer just doesn't care. Like like what's the what's the rules on that. Well, I think because I know people just make I know people can just make playaysttation games. PS one. Yeah. I don't, I think things By the way, that's it's actually anish I'm so glad you brought that up because it's in my notes which Iven't barely read because I I think we've covered almost, but it's like In an ideal world And I don't know how much money this is a complicated thing, but it's like, really, Sony should just be like, you can kind of publish on whatever you want We'll facilitate it You want to publish your game on PS one You're like your homerew PS one game, or you want you want to sell a thousand copies.ike that would be the fucking true ideal That would be really cool And I did' not it, right? Like is that there's that that u The Game Plusver that the Canadian retailer is selling new copies of PS three games Like there' some weird shit going on. So I don't know I like that almost indicated the exact opposite that they were maybe going backwards and I don't know, but It reminds you, Chris of what I was saying, like color dream and tension and like the guys that were trying to manufacture like bootleg games and I think It doesn't even have to do with the physical manufacturer of them. It has to do with like sequence and like, whether you are allowed to bypass it or not. That goes into the Nintendo Galube u game genie like whether a game is being changed or not and accessed in an illgitimate way. So I think it's So I think in other words, I just don't think Sony gives a shit anymore about PS one. I don't, I don't think they. I think Sega doesn't care about the master system, but they probably could I think it's probably not worth going after sure. Yeah. know. I just wonder like what the like what the rule like because surely that's Surely at a point in time it would have been illegal, but I guess it's only illegal so far as the company is willing to defend it, I guess Yeah, presumably. And I also think that there's like Itust to know more about this, but I think there's there's different rules about hardware and software where and like the new N sixty four and like the new SES, like the things that people are making are illegal Is it legal But I think that like the games are a problem. And the home brew stuff probably isn't a problem because They're not claiming. like I guess if you took like some sort of homebrewed NES game that they release and just didn't put it in a Nintendo You're not technically breaking the line. I mean, who gives shit if you did, Right. You're playing it on like some bootleg NS and you're playing some bootleg NES ges So really But I don't know. Hogan I talked about that at some point about like, u The circumventing of boot sequences and like how that's kind of like the And again, the tension and thees cartridgees they look different to. I don't know if you guys remember them. they were they were black. Yeah There were some good tensing games too. They did didn't do RBI baseball Yeah. and they did their version of T Tetris, right, whichich that was a big that was like the big one Nintendo was freaking out about All right, that's all we have for this topic Dustin are we saying goodbye to you now Yes, we are. All right. You've had enough. I've had enough. I want to make sure Holly's Take care of. I gotta make her dinner, you know? what are you makingake Take care of the baby, feed the baby from my breast thomy breast, but I would like doing the bottle feeding and I enjoy it. It's really fun.s it's nice What do you think of Grag Uh he he's into it. He's he doesn't like Silvando, which is questionable. Yeah I'm like I like Silvando. You know, What are you trying to say?' eccentric. Yeahah as you is I'm gotta be honest, I hate Sillvanda And it's not because of any sexual overtones, it's because I don't like theater people I' been around them I work with them. And he reminds me of that time of working with theater people. And I'm like, I can't do it. Yeah, I understand inccredibly valid Fair enough. Well, it's good to see you. We'll see you when you decide to come back in the future. hopefully nothing catastrophic happens that calls you in the meantim we shall see. This was fun. I'm glad I could hop in And I will return at some point All right, well, hop out. Well We've disappeared Dustin back to the Phantom zone Right. He's stuck he's stuck in a parallelogram. Right Yes, indeed indeed But the news keep the hits keep on coming. and we have to get through these I am less bothered by this. for the most part, I'm bothered by a specific part of this, but this isn't a huge surprise So St Tuman also published this I saved the wipe id Schuman who iss the content the Cs director at PlayStation. and he's been there forever. I've known him for a long time. I just for people well, you were listen earlier since the same show I was saying it's just so funny They made him put his name on both of these Yeah So they published the thing that we've already discussed for two hours and now They publish this as well. an update on PlaySation store for PS three and PS Vita Qote after nearly two decades of supporting the PS three console generation, we wanted to let you know we will be closing the PlayStation store on PS three as well as on PSVita PlayStation store and PS three will close and select markets starting this year, followed by global closures for PS three and PSV to next year That means new content purchases will no longer be possible once the PlayStation store closes on these devices The ease the transition players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future U underwine As the Playsttation store continues to evolve to support modern commerce systems including updated payment processing standards PS three and PSVa are no longer able to support these updates at the level required As a result, we will need to close PlayStation store on these devices in the time frrames as follows. So Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, PlayStation store on PS three will close starting august twenty twenty six so iminently dditional Latin American and Middle Easternries Playtationoreorm PS three will close starting in late twenty twenty six. And then in all other countries, PlayStation store and PS three and Vita will close in july twenty twenty seven. We know that this news may be disappointing the PS three and PSV to players who hold a special place in their hearts. for this generation of gaming. PS three and PSV to represent an important erra in our PlayStation history so this was not an easy decision for us to make As we continue to expand the PlayStation experience on newer devices that most of our users are playing on today We need to focus on more of our resources on delivering the best gaming experiences on these platforms as you look forward towards the future. aheadwards the Trump sorry Um I brought up and I put a link in our document as well that It's been five years since they tried to do this And it was in April of twenty twenty one, as people might recall, that. Sony announced they were going to shut the PS three and Vita stores and For those that are excited about the potential that Sony will reverse course on the disc thing, which I think is possible, but unlikely, just based on the semantics we discussed This was the last time that people complained about something so loudly that they reverse course. I didn't think we would get a reprieve of what is essentially six years. And it's kind of hard for me to be too upset about that Yeah. att the point that this was done by the way, and we know this from the insomnac hack, which happened the next year Um There were still a couple of million people a month playing on PS three That number' gotta be down to hundreds of thousands and From the perspective of if you're using these devices actively, you have not even been able to publish games on them YSriies hasn't gotten new games, I think since twenty fifteen And Vita hasn't gotten new games since twenty twenty two. So That's you've kind of had your opportunity. That's not what sucks What sucks is the sentence that they will that there's an indefinite nature or what they say the foreseeable future, you'll be able to download the games And this is no Beno to me at all. Clark Petriry wrote in and said Colin, please discuss the whiplash from last week's sacred and sumon sign comments about the PS three and Vita stores remaining open into the news this week. Did you bring this calamity upon us? It is possible For those that didn't listen to Sumns sign last week I was on it with Brad and I talked about the PS three and Vitaourore still being up. I brought the eye of Saoron upon it and I do apologize about that Um What are your thoughts man? What are you I mean, there's I guess there'sultle tethers. One is like the store's going away And then two is They will simply not commit to making these things available forever. and I Part of me understands technical ramifications, but I'm surprised that They just haven't figured this out yet. like Yeah. abandon the hardware That's reasonable enough, but like not the games Yeah Yeah, this is u like I agree largely like it's it's fine. The storefront closing and not being able to download new stuff. It's like I that's yeah, okay Um, It's hard for me to be mad at like a five year heads up. You know what I mean, that's pretty ample time to collect what you need to collect Um Yeah, I don't this whole like for the foreseeable future You have access to the things that you bought that you bought and download. It's like I don' That's not good. And I think It would be less of an issue if just a lot of this software was just brought forward in the first place, which like Again, so much of it is just stranded on that machine Uh Really important stuff too, like to the history of the brand and to the history of the machine and the ecosystem, you know, resistance Um, you know, kill zone Uncharted was there for a while and then they got they got brought forward. than God, but you know it's too much is stuck there in my opinion. and I think you got to I don't know. I don't know what the cost is of maintaining that ability, but like It's got to be cheap. given how many people are going to be using it. And I just I think it's probably worth keeping with really. like dont I don't see a benefit to Get getting rid of that. the store front I get it bit like I get Yeah, like, like, That bothers me a lot less. like especially because like you said, it's a five year reprieve plus another year Once I said it. Yeah. L So if there's something on there that you want, go get it You've had all of this time to do so. and I have no It's like whatever It's sad for those that discover PS three late because I've made the point Chris many times in the past like I could make 's the case that PS three is my favoritelaystation console.ike I love the Playstation three It's an awesome machine. I mean, it's we have stock like we said, Stockholm syyndrome up the Waazoo with this thing It's got a great catalog of games and it was such a unique and interesting console and experience and how it roared back that generation and just ended on such a high note. It was awesome And so I feel for people that discover them so late. but like, yeah, I think we agree. interacting with the store in terms of being able to buy things, like I under they don't want to deal with that shit anymore. And like there's a lot of security issues in like your credit card and. and it you're interfacing with a fucking machine from two thousand six. They don't want to do it anymore. And I'm like, Yeahah, okay What I'm so concerned about though is this idea that like I guess they've basically admitted in so many words, right? Like We can't figure it out Like we simply aren't going to be able to get these games over And I I think that creates a level of urgency. Austin Prentice actually wrote in about this, but he says, Hello boys with this week's news that the Playlation is closing the PS three and Vita stores and signaling that the PS six will be all digital It makes me shudder at all the games that are at risk of being left behind on old platforms, especially Sony's own games. If only they had a studio built specifically to port and remake old games for new hardware alS I guess there's no point in feeling blue over it. justust thought I'd point that out. And he says blue and point Looking forward to discussion this week and best wishes to the Firman family. It goes beyond that, man, L They need to have an external team much smaller than or at least cheaper than Blue Boy. Maybe they would be as big churning a lot of this stuff out like for preser this is where I was making fun of preservation earlier, it's like This is a preservation issue, although it really isn't because these games have been pirated a million times and they're on. you can just emulate them Well Yeah Well, the PS three though is like in part particularly u preservation issue I think, because the cell architecture makes it so so impossible to emulate relives to other other, you know software There is actually, I think A really good case to be made that like there's a real There's a real imperative Um for PS three to be brought. You know what I mean Like I think Yeahah, I don't know sor. Yeah. No, no, you. Well, I was going to say, like certainly I think you you could be right. I think certainly like They must have invested a bunch of time and certainly some money into trying to figure it out. And I wonder if they just are like it Especially because maybe they're planning on you know, maybe Socer Punch did tip their hand about doing more infamous like you know, remasters and stuff and Maybe they just have a plan to get some of the biggest stuff off of there and celebrate it in some sense, but like there are things that are going to inevitably be left behind that will not be playable outside of those illegal How's and at that point That's what I always say about piracy. It's like, I really don't support it for things that you can easily play or buy. But like if they're going to do that to it, then it's like, well It really will be your only option at that point. and that's kind of their problem that youres. I I do agree with him though that it is a it is a sad state that Even if they act now, like there will be games that will just be like for u folk folklore or haaze, like these games that are not necessarily great, but like or layer, like all these these are never getting ported And so they' literally just die And that is something to be said about, although Those games are physical games, and I guess you could just always buy them. Yeah And I assume they'll say that. That's This would be so much more dramatic, Chris if it was PS four or but beyond because right. That's when you're really heavily invested digitally. I was invested digitally in PSR I had a sh ton of PSR ges digitally I bought PS games all the time. I had a bunch of XY two sixty games that I don't have anymore And they shut their shit down recently too, right Like or they they announced that they were going to I could be wrong, I feel like it happened a while ago. Yeah. I don't think it'sreasonable. But also I Well, because I bought and downloaded Lost Planet. T kind of recently from The Xbox for sixty s. so maybe it's avail it's just available as a mirror know Well, that that's what that's what they they really did. that was That's like the one feature on Xbox that I'm jealous of is just like the interoperability between the consoles that doesn't exist on PlayStation side because they just didn't have the foresight to do that And they realize with PS four that they had to get out of that. So they made the decision they had to make. It just so happened. like nothing, no decision they were going to make was going to make the PSR easy to deal with So right ye So they did what they had to do, but I just it's just all these years later and it's like, really like You don't want to question the engineering talent It's just like, wow, this really is I guess insurmountable. actuallyually, didn't we talk about how digital Foundry did a thing with a PS three emulator recently where it's like surprisingly bad Yeah ye, it's That generation in general is not the best like because I've I've tried only recently Did I really get into trying to do emulation again? becausecause it's just like, all right, you know what? It's getting ridiculous. Like a lot of these games aren't coming forward. I own the physical copies of these games so like Honestly fuck it And I tried to emulate Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Mercenaries too, I think, onZinnia, which is like some some Xbox three hundred sixty one and even those are kind of and fucked up like the lighting on mercenaries is broken and I can't, I don't know how to fix it and Marble crashes like Five seconds into the game. I'm like that It's u it's tricky But I don't know, preservation is important. I think there's a lot of games on that old machine that are that are worth worth being remembered, I think, but I't know I just don't know what you do Yeah, there's no I obviously they have no solution I've To be fair to them, not that I'm like deep into the home brerewing world or anything I'm not, but There's been no like major push from outside being like, we figured it out Like we did it. hereere's how do it Like nothing not no like white hat kind of like Yeah, you have to he you to assume. likeike if you did figure it out, you'd go immediately to Sony, right? Yeah, I would think like how much can I how much can I get for this solution. Right. And I just think it's not figure outable as it were in that easy of a way it's too complicated. And yeah I think that's what digital Foundry was saying was like like you need so much horsepower to circumvent all this shit that like it basically like you almost need like a PS six level. Console deal with it, which is funn when you think about it Um Sull king wrote and said, heyacrred What I am most upset about is that Sony suggests that someday you won't be able to download PS three games you won't anymore They said foreseeable future. They can't actually expect me to never need to download PS three games again. and that would mean they expect me to have everything downloaded and to never need to download stuff ever again. How would that not be illegal I'm already looking for a lawyer for this and if they announce no more PS three game downloading, I will be taking legal action if I need to. But what's your opinion on this opinion is that I think what Hogue would tell you, I don't want to speak for him too much, but I guess I will hear is There is no doubt that in the language that of PS three's Uula, that they can do whatever they want Now it doesn't makeake it right And this is why I was saying earlier, Chris is, There's got to almost be legislation around this shit. like where you just can't do this Um And I don't know if you can almost grafather old things in as much as you can make a preparation for the future at this point. Right But that's the fucked up reality is that And I don't think Sony wants to be punitive towards their their I really don't think any company wants to be punitive towards their audience and towards their consumer base. likeike that doesn't make any s Um It's what we were saying earlier about the speeciious kind of reporting around Bungie and like Sony taking revenge on Bungie. It's like, I don't think so.. That would be the most insane. They've done enough damage. I don't think they need to now take revenge on on the damage they've already brought It's the same thing here where it's like Sony doesn't want to do this. It's like, I think that They can make the argument that these are more vectors in the PlayStation network. I don't know what their thing is, but like You almost want the long arm of the law to say like, you can't do this to people att least not going forward Yeah, when I bought Super Rubadub or whatever in two thousand six, should I have expected that in twenty twenty six I'd be able to play it well We weren't really thinking about that, I don't think Yeah But now that we have hindsight and now that we've seen the evolution of everything And as I noted earlier, it really starts with Apple and iTunes, this entire idea of owning this digital good Right? Yeah, right. And like this idea that like, well, do you own it and How much control do you have and what can you do with it? It all begins with them And I think I think it it's and it's funny. PlayStation network is only a few years. It's like five years after that. It's not that long after the iPod is introduced And actually I think Yeah, no, Yeah, two thousand one So in two thousand six for the PSN. so as we understand it now, so It's all Nascent It's in the ether, like it's all no one really knows what they're doing. Someone's got to do something about this And I don't know if something can be done for PS three because you're saying you can sue them As the old saying goes, you can sue anyone for anything Yeah. I just don't know if they're just going to you probably might not even get to court. They might just be like, this is what you signed. We have Yeah, you know Unfortunately, you didn'tad it or didn't understand it. No one does I don't read it. Yeah, which is insane also. Like I feel I feel like the Yul is the Yula in general is so like I don't know What's that joke about like how a U sense where every user loses access? Right, exactly. I understand too, Chris, like this is what people argue. It's like the whole this is they want you on Cloud They want you using like external infrastructure to access everything And and like, you know offload local computing That's where this seems like it's all going probably and One thing I'm sure they'll do is obviously they'll have all these games in the backac endnd and they'll have your records and all the rest and maybe they just reintroduce it sometime in the future and maybe they ge you to access those things in the future You know, um I wouldn't put it past them at this point Let's see Mm, anything else to say? I want to I'm going to skip this next one, but the I do want to end with this inquiry It would have been interesting to hear Dustin talkking about this as well, because we could have ended the last one with this too, but I know we get all of this in first. SL wrote in and said, hello, SS crew Not since the announcement of the Xbox One, have I seen a console manufacturer piss away their brand equity with such violence and velocity Under different circumances the announcement that Sony is ceasing production of game diss might not have been received so poorly If this were a normal generation where consoles were steadily reducing in price, Sony was releasing exclusive first party titles at the same cadence as the late PS three and PS four and Vide game prices weren't steadily escalating, and Sony didn't just and hadn't just voided the digital purchases of hundreds of films. PlayStation gamers likely would have reacted with, I don't like it, but I'm getting enough value that I will accept it. Those are not our circumstances And I'm not confident Sony understands just how quickly a brand can go from trusted to hated Sony is at this time demanding higher prices on hardware while offering fewer first party games per year while demonstr demonstrating openly just how flimsy digital ownership is within their ecosystem And that's without considering how much of a shitill PSN security has proven to be I'm not sure Sony understands just how bad the perfect storm of PR nightmares they're creating is Do you think they understand Or do you think they feel they're so untouchable? They can get away with anything This is a very twenty year old coded questions. The same exact things that people were asking reasonably so about PlayStation nearly two decades ago for different reasons. And I will say SL that I don't blame Sony for all of the things you're blaming them for, specifically the hardware stuff There's no fucking universe that they want to be charging you nine hundred dollars for a PSy pro. And there's no universe where they had any prognostication from their analysts and their strategists that it was going to cost that much This is the reality of tech right now And I forgive them for that And we'll talk a little bit more about that later on because they talk about You know, the idea of subsidizing hardware So I want to throw that away. likeike I don't think that the hardware thing sucks everyveryone's victimized by it. No one is immune to it It's unfortunate timing, right Uh It's bad decisions. It is these are not good decisions But all it is not helped by the fact that over the overall timing of all of this and the realities of the u The The economy, tech big tech and where it's going It it just it is a perfect storm You know To me, I I wonder, Chris, like, I don't even wonder like I've said this. I articulated this. already, like in recent episodes where I'm like, I think Sony's kind of got a problem Mhm He's like You don't want to ovestimate it You don't want to even overestimate the effect of this on their business Like what's going on right now? Certainly the PS re and Va thing has almost no like no one cares about that Like we care Like, no oneives a flying fuck about that definitely they definite care a lot more about the disc thing. But you can even say like, well, they've they' they're going to withstand that. it's negligible ultimately and they understand that that's what's going to happen I think like death by a thousand cuts is a pretty real thing And I think the one thing that I will say about Sony and just their approach to marketing and speaking is they do come off like they feel like they're above it and I think if you if they don't start If they don't start lubricating the lines of communication And they don't start like an entity that gives a shit about their customers in a meaningful way There they might come up for a rude awakening Next generation Because as you were saying, everything is conspiring towards towards these Insane Um hardware prices that are turning people off. againgain, through no fault of their own. They want to make this thing as cheap as they can. We all know that and understand that It's it's the product by which everyone plays the game They would give it away for free if they could Uh, but they they're constrained within the financial realm. In other word, they're not trying to make money on their hardware And they know they're not going to But like they just seem like they don't give a fuck Yeah. And I think that they're encouraged by that by What I've noted for quarter after quarter after quarter, which is like they're making a lot of money they've calculated so far that it doesn't matter And I think at some point, it will Because if you abandon your hardcore And there's no one there to buttress your ecosystem And make no mistake. your ecosystem is buttressed by people that buy a few games a year and all of that, but there are heavy users that are the tastemakers. open up the channels towards finding a lot of games and They cover the games and they're the influencers around the games and all the rest like dont, man I just think they are they are so insulated at this point that it almost becomes like you don't even know like all right, so imagine If they werere like, we're going to talk Who's going to do it Yeah Well like there's not even really a logical person anyymore, that like space Yes, sir you have Sirney? Who willll hear from no doubt in the next six months, probably or eight months. You have Nishino Wh would be interesting to hear from him and And he did give we'll talk about him a little bit but he gave an interview to Fitsu recently You have Herman Holst who has no credibility, in my opinion and shouldn't be talking about anything And there's there's they're really like the Geo Corsies and the Adam Byses and the Shuhee Yoshidas and the Jack Trents and the Sean Laydens's and Even the Andrew houses and like I'm not entirely sure I know what Nishino sounds like When he talks Like I can hear in in my mind's ear all of those people speaking Yeah my god, I can't really I know what Nishhino sounds like. I even know what Herman Hole sounds They do I hope they understand. for their sake What? Yeah Let's not overestimate the splash damage from these different decisions. PlayStation will continue They're going to be profitable They'll make money. But what does the mid the long term say And what do you lose by leaning more into explanations If the right? I said that earlier about the game the physical game stuff, right, Chris. If this is the reality, then just explain it to us like we're adults Right. And say like this is becoming unsustainable Here are the numbers Wouldn't it be God forbid Here are a few examples. off recent games from thirird and first partarty And you got to make the case R Right when you when you make decisions like this. And and again, it's it's The strategy of not talking fact I don't know, facts are the way they are often because of the tapestry of reality that surrounds them. It was a good idea to not talk. At a certain point But variables change Things change, realities change Um Economies change, standing changes, desire changes, hunger changes, appetite changes Demmand changes, all of all these things changes. All these things change And the same strategy simply cannot work for all of them There is no one size fits all strategy for anything that exists So if your strategy still to this day, is we're not talking. when the reality of everything that surrounds that strategy is completely different to what it was You're bringing You're bringing Cles to the NBA. Like this is not you' in the wrong outfit You got to start talking becausecause now like you're the last guy Really? Like in this space anyway In this space, there's Nintendo and they're doing their own thing. I get it But like Xbox is off doing fucking they're off having a manic breakdown Uh, you know, PC is kind of, you know, they're there and they're doing their thing, but even they're kind of, you know, they're Um, they've got the bad press too for um you know, the steam machine through no fault of their own, I would Imagine Um You're the last guy in this space And you can't be like a creepy silent guy like just like not explaining himself as he makes all these like moves that are obviously not good facing the consumer Um I don't think most people really earnestly gave a shit that the Xbox one was always online In their heart of hearts, I bet if they didn't know that, they would have bought the machine and they just simply wouldn't have been aware of it And they would have gone on as if nothing was was going on There nothing was wrong Everybody knew that it was always online. and everybody knew that a lot of people knew that it was a problem And that spreads That's a wildfire.. And even people who don't care You know I don't I don't use physical games really I think it's bad that they're doing this And there's undoubtedly going to be. And I think there's going to be a lot of and I understand we've moved forward from that into a different space, but like, dude, like I think u I think you're going to have a lot of people who also don't necessarily care but are making decisions on what they hear And that's not what you want in a time when your next machine is not really that enticing to people people there's no appetite, there's no hunger, There's There's no yearning for this next machine This is a this is a bad conffluence of ingredients in my opinion. And again, you're right. we shouldn't overestimate the splash damage of it. It's not nuclear or anything, but it's not Far from fucking ideal, dude And that's all it resets the whole war of Like the commercial war going around PlayStation. It just resets it under different bound. We don't know where it's going to go now. It's not the bottom won fall out now It's just to say like, did someone just like launch a missile into like the foundation of this thing that might come back to haunt you later. and I just the one thing I'm I feel certain about with Sony is that they they Like we said about Microsoft, it's like they just won't shut the fuck up And I think there is a notion in PR and in media where it's like, if you are explaining, you are losing I think that there is something about that, but Sony has understand that they have a lot to explain now and that might be because they're losing And and they're they're not losing to the old competition, obviously. They're losing in different ways Right. And It requires some level of explanation and I just I wish they understood that you can talk to us like adults that like you can explain things to people. There there things I read their financials. like I go through they do say a lot of things, but like they can just try to be more overt about what they're saying and stop. Stop nipping around the issues Go and explain why hardware is more expensive. Do a really deep dive interview. send your hardware guy in a fucking digital foundry and explain it. And she like Yeah guys in and ideal we like you can even be honest and say like we thought we like Hey guys, I'll be honest with you, When we were kind of gaming this out before PS five even launched, we thought the console was going be three hundred dollars by this And by the way, the three hundred dollars would have been no profit for us. We were just willing to sell it at that cost. That we're selling it at this cost goes to show you how out of control things have become out of our hands and that we're doing the very best we can do to deliver the goods. You can do things like that. You can do things like that. They're afraid, I think that they' they that maybe the people they don't have maybe they do and we don't see them anymore, but They've kind of dispatched their talented speakers The people that can go, you know, gladhand and massage things and Yeah. I will also say that I feel Sony just needs to They need to be it comes off as holier than now in a way sometimes. And there's something very prestigious about that when brands do that? People like that Apple does it a little bit, but Apple talks a lot too They had these big events and reveals And then they manage those expectations. And I just think that what worked for a while is good, but it has to change And maybe they know that. and maybe it'll all change around PSX and maybe they just don't want to talk yet. and maybe we'll see much more around this next year. but It just feels like, yeah, they don't seem to understand the gravity of the situation in the mid to long term The major thing, of course, is that and we bring this up all the time, right? Chris Sony's incredibly dependent on PlayStation. It's like what's going on with Xbox and Microsoft is not that serious comparable to Microsoft. They can spin it out. I mean, Microsoft makes probably one ten dollars or whatever from Xbox Sony makes like one in two dollars from PlayStation So They gota This is the golden goose, dude. There is nothing left Y movies Yeah. movies are good, music's good, but like there's really nothing lefteft. you got to be careful I will say this though, and this is not is something that's come up very often, but like the stock market liked the announcement which is o yeah U, of course. But But it is worth noting It is worth noting like this year, Sony's down almost twenty points I'm sorry, that's it win twenty percent to twenty point. So they're not whereere they used to be? I mean, Sony You know, at one time, let me see if I can find it here, Max. Yeah Sony's trading at twenty dollars now Um, It was trading at twenty eight dollars just last summer And even in the summer of twenty two was trading at this point. So they're not down in the short term, but up in the longer term, but It's I don't know, it's a precarious thing And I don't necessarily worry about them because I do think they have a level of inertia Yeah I think that they And they they they've just benefited from becoming the default. Yeah, the thing that saves them is the fact that they are the default and a lot of people have already invested a lot in them. you know, like u Xbox had a lot of inertia going into Xbox one, but like they just kind of It was the start of a new generation. So this is different, right? Like this is like the mid the mid to late point of a generation that already exists. And by the time the next generation exists, there's not going to be real competition in the way that Um, in the way that there would have been Um just because people have established their digital libraries. Um, It's funny you canmost imagine like I wonder Like if my if Xbox hadn't already Um, D done away with physical games for the most part. A Its funny it's funny to imagine like the layup this would have been. for them You know, they could have rever they could have put out that video kind of if if they were in like a if they were in like a completely, you know, if if their situation wasn't so fucked. And u, you know, they they were still doing Uh, Physical games is just like damn dude, would have been That would have been an interesting. reversal full circle moments. L like, well, here's We're still doing this Yeah, and I mean, they they technically, I mean Helix is not going to have this drive, I imagine, but the They are technically still doing disc like they haven't announced the end of their disc manufacture for Xbox series or even Xox one, I think still get disc gam It's just that they're more seldom and that there's really because of game passes, we know that there's really no right play for that over there I mean, I could be right. I feel like some some first party skips discs or something like that. likeike I can't I'm not I'm not super sure. I feel like I remember hearing something about like, how they don't really do it Yeah, well there's I think there the thing is is that it could be an interesting opening for them, but it's what I was saying earlier about big companies versus small companies like they don't want to make these fucking things No, yeah, for sure. yeah. And that's why even think Nintendo having some sort of advantage here' like they're like, yeah we have an advantage and we're going to continue with physical games because that's what our modern hardware allows, but like we don't want to be doing this also If you you got them in an honest moment. I don't know man We'll see what les. Yeah, it is, it is a lot. and we'll see how this all goes moving forward, but Let's get through the rest of the news here The hits do keep on coming. I promised earlier that we would talk about hardware subsies and this comes from videoames video game Chronicle that writes, Sony says it doesn't plan to sell hardware at significant losses but is monitoring the market with PS six in mind. And they write, quote, during a Q and A session held at a recent meeting based around the company's game and network services division One attendee ased Sony executives to provide an update on their current thinking regarding hardware pricing and profitability spepecifically referring to the next generation platform The attendee asked the execs whether it was quote, reasonable to assume that your pricing will continue to prioritize profitability of the hardware as it does today,quote The official answer given Sony's transcript from the QA noted that it considers its hardware to be one of the most important parts of the gaming experience and that it wants to make sure users recognize the value offered by its hardware. It also stated that the company doesn't plan to sell hardware at a losts as a matter of principle but that it's currently monitoring the market situation, quote And this is from I was, I think this is when Nino specifically saying this quote First, we regard hardware as the base for providing the gaming experiences and by offering products such as PlayStation Portal remote Player We aim to provide experiences tailored to users' playstyles beyond the living room which has traditionally been considered the primary usage environment As for pricing, it is not realistic for us to absorb all component cost increases and we have already implemented some price increases outside Japan At present, however, sales are proceeding as planned. And we do not believe this has led to a decline in customer demand asterisks there because I disagree As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware significant losses. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring the market. and get to noon to evaluate our approach We believe it is important for us to make every effort to ensure that customers fully understand the value we provide in relationship to pricing This is important, Chris because There's recent rumors, I think from that guy Kepler saying that the u Bomb as they say in that space for the PlayStation six right now is about nine hundred Um If they don't want to subsidize the cost of everything, then you can imagine that you'll have a eight hundred ninety nine c PS six I still feel like there's a psychological barrier to a thousand dollars. And I think at that point, they probably would start subsidizing. And I also wonder if they already signed the contracts like with a Micron, they recently announced that they signed a deal with sixteen companies but didn't list who the companies were to lock in prices for five years and And I wonder if Sony's one of those companies What do you think of this? I mean this isn't a huge surprise that this is part of the honesty that I'm talking about. You just don't bury this in a Q and A published on Sony. com's invvestor relations website. And you don't and you don't say it in such a mechanical way Yeah, they're very robotic Um And it doesn't really do them any favors. I mean againg, like I largely agree. I don't know if I have much to say about it. Really like I'm not surprised buuy it. Um This is ultimately going to be like we'll see what comes to this when the time comes really like I don't know if there's really much value in even speculating. And also the same thing too it's just like, That's what they're saying now you know the reality is that like everything is changing so quickly and so sporadically and nothing feels predictable Now you know, like it doesn't feel like there's a like they're they're monitoring market situations, but like how how much monitoring can you really do to to this completely schizophrenic worldorld state. So like we'll see We'll see what happens, but I'm not surprised by it Im not surprised toar The reason I said, by the way that So he says in Nishino had said that there seems to be no effect on demand for the increased pricing. likeike that just seems to be not played out at all and in the data. because games industry up. businessiz reports Playsttation hardware and this happened right after we published last week, so this is a little bit of old news but we should add it to the record. PlayStation hardware sales fall to their lowest mayay total since two thousand. Based on unit sales, not cumulative money, which would be a really bad sign since the consoles are so expensive But based on unit sales There's been a fifty eight percent year on year drop in the United States for PlayStation five and that It's total in May for may twenty twenty six was the lowest number of Playsttation units sold in a May in the United States since two thousand, which was the last year of PS one Um When everyone was waiting for PS two. So's not a huge surprise their PS two would only be a few months away from that point. you know, that fall This is catastrophic because u It doesn't show that there's a low demand for the console itself. It goes to show that there's just the price tolerance that we've been talking about is starting to be breached in some way and This I was thinking about this. I'm like, dude, this includes may two thousand seven May two thousand eight These are pretty add months PlayStation and that they're selling So that suggests they're selling thousand units a month or something in the play in the United States like some really bad Yeah number So I don't know what he's talking about when he says that. Although they, I guess they didn't have that data at the time because this was this Q andA A apparently was in early June and it was published But u Oh, ye, fair But I still think that's kind of like what do you mean I feel like you should know that intrinsic. L I don't like that doesn't even seem like you really need Uh you could kind of Stick your finger up to the wind and feel that Yes what I mean I don't even I don't, I don't know if you even really need the numbers to know that like, yeah, obviously ye, duh The price of the machine is insanely high. Most people already have it who are interested in So yeah It's not doing well And nine hundred dollars is kind of nuts Yeah, that's for the proro to be fair. six fifty for the regular PS five but still Crazy. prrice. B bestest investment ever dude Hilarious launch ye. Yeah, I think about I think about it now where it's just like U Man, what a good what a good idea this whole this whole time. It's funny man like say I don't know. I just feel like the situation is rough for everybody, but like there is a ridiculousness about charging so much for these machines Again, I know it's not their fault but it's just like canan't blame anyone for. not wanting to spend this much money on a piece of hardware at this point And I guess Grand A Auto or Wolfverine and these other games are going to be guns to people's heads, but Um, yeah It's just and this is why I was saying earlier. it's like it would be cool if they were just honest and say like this has gotten so out of control. like we didn't anticipate this and We're sorry, but ' out of of our hands. As far as software sales since we should just get into that here since We're talking about Sicana May's best selling game in the United States was zo zeroven first lightight, not a huge surprise. there. It's Horizon six. was number two and that will kind of stay up there. PlayStation release comes later this year, of course. Legacy of the Dark Knight was number three, the new Lego Batman game and Subnaautica two at four. And as I understand, Unknown Worlds has gotten their bonuses which is cool after being you know, after suing and getting fired and all that kind of shit that went on. you can listen to the Sacred symbols plus if you want more about that, we covered quite a bit there Tomod Dacci life, living the dream stays at number five. MO' show twenty six at six. Crimson desesert, number seven. Yoshi in the mysterious book at number eight Cve to be Black op seven number nine and Mio Ko W worldld to ten now I will be clear at what I said a month or two ago when Sircana started doing this. I think Sircana data in some way is Well, it might be more reliable, but it is less exact than ever, because now they're including projections For those that refuse to sell their digital sales, they just kind of make it up based, I'm sure on some sort of algorithm that makes sense, but It's worth noting that Nintendo games are showing up in a much bigger way now because of that. and that's good because I'd rather have some level of accuracy, but it's not Exactly You're to date. Resident evvil Requiem remains the best selling game in the United States for the year, Crimson desesert Number two, ML be the show twenty six Sony own. Number three z zero seven F first Light is already the fourth best selling game of twenty twenty six. Fortza Horizon sixix is already the fifth best selling game of the year The Lego Batman, leegacy the Dark Kight is already number seven Komadachi life is number eight. believe it or not Pretty incredible st So those are the sales numbers. We'll have June sales soon enough, I assume They haven't been se um, Piscateella hasn't been from Sercana hasn' been breaking down the consolealesently, which is a little annoying. used Iic I noticed that the thread was like kind of bare Yeah, it has a lot of like interesting data, but not anything I really want to go into here All right Next up is let's see Oh yeah So this oh yeah, this so this comes from a I was I was promising earlier So I'm trying to keep footnotes here for WWWCCF tech inter translated an interview. that Hideyaki the Sino. the CEO of PlayStation Um gave an interview with Fitsuits in Japanese, obviously so they translated it. And I think one of the major things, there were a few things in there that he talked about because he talked about PC ports as well We'll talk about that ortly, but the maj thing he talked about here that I thought was interesting is u this idea of live service games. Now. Sony's approached a live service outside of Hell Divers Of course MLB's annualized kind of success. they really haven't found any meaningful success in this space. And we've been we've found some of their approaches a little peculiar O obviously. we were talking about Midnight Murder Club last week and how they kind of just abandoned that game, which was kind of a cool idea. meananwhile. They just seem to not be able to quit fair game slash break in So Here W W CCF tech writes Nishino was asked if PlaySation will continue to pursue live service games and He says this, quote With live service games, it's important to continuously provide something. The genre itself is relatively new And I think many people are trying various things So we also want to continue to take on challenges with that context Um I don't think that this is Bad things I don't know. I know a lot of people disagree, but I just don't know that they can stop investing in these things And I know this this before everything went off with all this other news that we talked about, this was really making the rounds in a pretty fiery way around the internet theore We're pretty upset about it. And like I said, he also spoke about PC games and Um where they're going to put their their various games and he reffirms that, you know, their live service games will come to PC. I think I think we already know that, but that they really want to kind of maximize the single player stuff for PS five So I think that was probably the reason they sent him out to Famitsu, but as usual, Sony kind of says things in a meilly mouth and weird way instead of just being more straightforward But I don't mind that strategy. What do you think Chris Yeah, I mean it's not that I mind the strategy. It's just like the again, this is So much of Sony lately and their messaging has been so poorly timed Because for them to be like, all right, like we're going to, yeah, we're going to double down on live service. And I think we all knew this if we just if we know the industry, we know that they're not going to stop Um To hear something like that literally twenty four hours after you shut Destiny down You know, it's like that's not the best look for people. know because they're gonna look at you and you're like what? But I do think so I the reality is unfortunately and To be fair, they've done this to themselves Sony's name attached to a live service game now is sort of It's a bit of a toxic Association now. It's almost like u I don't know, it'd be like, hey, you win a free dinner with Benjamin Netanyahu. It's like, I don't know if that's Even if you feel either way about it, it's like, this is not the is not how I want to spend my night You know, like, This is uncomfortable. Yeah. So like I think I think they just kind of unfortunately with Concord and not even just Concord, but just like and not even just Concord as like as the game and the disappointment it is, but just like the budget behind it and like the passion behind it and you know, Herman Hall's like championing of it and then like how it ended up and like how quickly it died and All these things, That's a stain You know, and it might seem unfair or whatever and it probably literally is because like not every team working on a live service game is the concourord team and you know, U if you're familiar with just how people act. and how people receive information and how people behave, like it's just like this is it's going to be a stain on their reputation forever. And if And now I think the destiny thing is kind of on top of them too, where it's like Okay, you've put out Concord and you've shut down Destiny, arrguably The only live service game that you have that had any capability of really blowing back up or like notot to say that Destiny wasn't financially struggling, but like there was a way I think to keep doing destiny in a way that was cost effective. I don't know how that would have looked or like what it would have been like, but people were happy with that last update And that was not even really a full expansion at all. You know, like it was just like quality of life changes and like some things here and there and I think that game had like one hundred K on steam. I think Destiny two was like a hundred k on steam concurrently and steam by the way is Destiny's least played base. Like steam for Marathon and Destiny are like inverted in that way. whereere destiny most players are on a console So like that's a pretty healthy space or like a healthy number of players like and I got to be real with you, man, like If you're hoping to get dying destiny numbers out of breakout brereak in, whatever I don't know what to tell you really Don't think that's in the cards I would be astounded. if I'm wrong like, holy shit, like, you know, God bless, you know, like amazing amazing for them 'Cause that would be like a massive subversion of expectations. How definitely donon't see Fair games or whatever the fuck it's called Um, doing what they needed to do And so with that on the horizon, it's just like, too hear this. It's, again, we're committing to live service. We've got a destiny. We've fucked up with Concorde and now we're we're committing to fucking up in the immediate future, like And maybe a lot of that is unfair. a lot of that is assumptions and a lot of that is like, you know, it's how it comes across. and not necessarily how it is, but how things come across is often Oftten more important, like perception is kind of reality in these spaces. and bad perception can influence reality in a way that's not to be not to be trifled with or underestimated. So We'll see what happens, man. I u I'm rooting for them in that space. I know it bothers a lot of people, but I I just feel like I understand what a lot of people just seem to refuse to understand, which is that That's what it is. By the way, if you read the interview, they consider Tokon one of these games So I think they're they're they're um Definition is both loose and quite vivid in that It's just games of that have some level of interactivity, storefront expansion, stuff like that. So it doesn't have to be the games we necessarily envision, but I justue, true. I don't how many times they say the thing over again. They see the numbers. they know, they know. In fairness though like Tokhan is a Marvel Ipe, you know what I mean? Like that's It's almost separate. because it's to be just because it's Marble Um, We'll see We will indeed We brought this up earlier and just something to add to the record that the French film outlet or film publisher Studio Canal. is stripping its game off the PlaySation netwk Sony writes on PlayStation dot com that quote, from september first, twenty twenty six due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal and it will be removed from your video library, end quote. So as you recall, for many years, you were able to buy TV shows and movies from PlayStation Story. That's not been functionality in some years now. That stuff still available in your back catalog except for the stuff that they've started taking down and it includes these five hundred and something films There's nothing too big here. I mean, there are some big things like I saw Terminator on the list and some other stuff, but a lot of this is is foreign language. I was reading a little bit about Stio Canal. I don't know anything about these you guys They're French and they don't even have outside of Europe and outside of the French speaking world, they have no native distribution. they use others to distribute. And I wonder if that has something to do with this. This again just goes into not knowing the rules when you really should have known the rules I think that this is worth being upset about in a way, but I will say that I imagine this doesn't affect very many people At the same time, No one was very few people were buying any of this stuff on. That's why they stopped selling this stuff after a while. It's like, this is not even worth having this. For those that wanted to go back and watch this stuff in the future, it obviously sucks and you obviously bought it under a different pretenses. Yeah It's funny. It's like I don't know, man. becausecauseuse I'm looking I just remembered that like so the movies and TV app on a Windows conn is the same movies and TV app that connects to your Xbox Lve account, even from back in even from back in like two thousand five or whatever. So I have like like a season of the Andy Milanaka show And sh and just sh and like, uh just really random One season of Xplay The video game Awards two thousand eight That's awesome. that I bought for like back then that I still had access to the seven two thousand seven video Game Awards. like It's I don't know. it's weird. L Its I don't know its. I don't know, I don't know how difficult it is for somebody to do that, but like I guess it's weird. And I guess they're different machines and they're different companies and they're different, everything everything, I guess from inside and out is different, But like it's weird to see I guess in both ways where it it's weird to see Xbox do things so easily that Sony can't figure out. and I guess vice versa, right Like with just like like delivering First party titles that are good, like as far as like Playsttation is Th's hned. And Xbox is like kind of like floundering and like constantly mismanaging. And then, meanwhile, on the side of back compatibility and like honoring your digital purchases, it seems like they're really good about it U . Yeah, it's I think this sucks. like I don't wantan to give so too much credit. Like I imagine they just don't wna pay Right, You know, Yeah. So it's like And they might be right where they're like, whatever, man. It's ob obviously we're not doing anything technically illegal. It's in the Yulo when you bought this stuff and Um This affects almost nobody Yeah, for nonetheless, it's just it's it's not not a good Taking into account with everything else that's going on. it's just a sign of things to come, I think or a side of the times, let's say aggree All right. Next up is Seun Layden giving an interview recently on a podcast, V games Chronicle went in. Um, and uh transcribe it which I appreciate KB Rote andant and agents Seun Leayd's recent comments about being surprised that Sony reverse course on publishing games on PC made the rounds this week. His point was that PC releases were a way to expose PlayStation IP to an audience that wouldnt have considered buying hardware. I know you've gotten into detail about why you think Sony should have been more aggressive in that space, but I think his analysis is coming at this from the wrong angle. Wh the chances of PC players moving over to Playsttation are extremely low There may actually be a higher chance of Playsttation players moving over to steam once they realize they get those games there too My question is this, do you think the PC strategy may have been underestimated the risk of PlayStation players migrating this team rather than overestimated the chance of PC players buying a Plsttation. Well, This gets into what Seaan was saying, obviously KB, and I'll read that out for people that are not familiar, but he gave an interview with a podcast called PSI and he says They basically talked a little bit about I guess I never really thought about this. like Seaun Layden was one who decided to do this with PCA. So obviously this is like one of his pet projects And he says, quote, firstirst of all, the games don't go on PC for like a year or whatever it is It's not day and dayate And if they think that a game coming out eighteen months after its launch on another platform somehow stopped a sale from happening eighteen months ago in a hardware business, I would like to see how they can improve that thesis. You can feel that is true, but I don't happen to feel that's true. If someone's waiting eighteen months for something to come on PC, we didn't lose a sale of them. They weren't going to buy the hardware anyway There's and he goes on to later say, quote, there's been a lot of misunderstanding about my decision to put games on PC I think exclusivity is very important to a platform business. That's how you differentiate. If you want Zelda, you go to Nintendo. you need Maro, that's where go. that That's where you find it And at the PlayStation business, we did exclusivity through PS one, PS two, PS three, and that was just the standard of the day We had Japanese companies who would be exclusive to the PayStation platform through our relationships with them. And so that became the standard way you sold the platform Moving into PC or multip platform releases is really about two things. The pC thing in my mind anyway at the time was not to make money, frankly It was how to get my intellectual property in front of people who wouldn't normally see it How do I get the world of Horizon to be seen by people who aren't in the Playsttation world Not necessarily because they're going to bu alay station. I wasn't that crazy. I didn't think that was going to happen But as we take our intellectual property across other media, whether it's in the films, or it's television or in comic books or in merchandise, you need to have as many eyeballs that are aware of this character of this story end quote I thought this was interesting, Chris because He says something here, I think kind of low key that punctureures a hole in a lot of people's thoughts as to why they were doing this, which was Well, maybe if they buy horizon, they'll bu a seQel they'll buy the playaysttation. He's basically saying like that was never what he thought was going to happen And ye and that it hasn't happened I think he kind of ignores something though important, which is that there and it's what we had noted when this when they started pulling back, which was This works if you he says they're not really in it to make money. spread the IP and I'm like, I don't know about that I think if you were making two X, three X, four x, what you were making on PC, probably would have kept them there So I think I think money did dictate it And I think you just weren't it's it's the saying he said, Juice of the juice not worth the squeeze wasn't worth the squeeze. three hundred million dollars, cumulative money, most of it hell divers means that it's simply not worth it But I think if you're making one point five billion dollars off of those sales, Yeah I guess I can understand it, but like I think u Especially in if you're looking at it from a trans media perspective, like I can understand it Uh, but I also think the reality, again, the reality has just kind of shifted where it's just like we're You're operating under the assumption that this is a machine that people are hungry to You know what I mean? Like, you're operating under under the assumption that there's an appetite for the machine And right now there's kind of no appetite for the machine and a lot of people are looking more skeptically at it. And it's not to say that everybody's going to become a PC gamer. That's obviously not true, but like You know, I think there's more curiosity now than there usually is because of price. and once you breach a certain price, once you breach like nine hundred and ninety nine and you're into the thousands You're kind of in the territory of like, well, I'm already kind of spending a lot of money You know, like I, I mean Why not get a PC at this point You know, like that was a different it's a different, um It's a different thing, and I think they need to make the PS six as appealing as possible. and the way to do that is exclusives. And I think I think that's the I really do believe that that's at the heart of the reason why why they've pulled back. I do think the money is a part of it. But I do think just like they need to make a case for this next machine in a way that they probably haven't had to in a while and in a way that they didn't anticipate having to Um, And I really I mean, it's an interesting thought experiment or like an interesting You know initial desire, we' just like, all right, we want to spread our IP around so we can do trans media stuff But like how much transmediauff is pllacation really? Like we had u twisted metal but wasn't wasn't a twisted metal g Right It was they were supped to be exactly to me we never even we weren't even supposed to know that, which is so funny. That's the thing I do soony everyone was like Sony cancel all these games and I'm like they did They didn't really announce any of them. They announced the last of us You know,, but To be fair. they didn't get that far along. You're right. like, yeah, there's uncharted O obviously the last of us has benefited a lot in game form from HBO. Until Dawn wasn't supposed to be very good. they And what's funny about Horizon going first and he chose Horizon to go first was they have nothing ready for Horizon still in trans trans media. So little strange from that perspective, and I feel like that's going to be a really difficult thing to do cheaply Um We'll see, man. I u The audience know I feel about this. I think Sony should have remained more aggressive, but we'll see how how this works out for them. I know I know that theain the mainline core Playstation fan is thrilled. they're not releasing their games on PC anymore. I was never that precious about it I also think the Sitch experiment idn't necessarily work very well because I just don't think they did very much with it. They off looaded all that shit the banda AMo, and then they went to like B and C tier stuff so you'll never really know how it all would have worked out. That's the thing, That's the thing that bothers the fuck out of me is like I would have just been curious how it would have worked Even releasing a game on PC like single playayer day and date. Just to see, just to see Let's like get cared away and promise too many of them, but like just what would have one have done What they might have realized is that the data would have been very front looaded like it was with the PC releases to begin with, where I think they got lulled into a falseense of security which is why I don't believe him when he's like, Well I mean, I believe him but it's like Well it wasn't really about the money. and I'm like, well it must have been about the money You know, uh It shouldn't be part of it. money's always part of it with a greatorate. like what are we talking about Bam I would I would have lo to the one thing I would have lo to ask him If I had a I should reach out to S Lady, you'd probably do the show. He on followed me on Twitter a few years ago when I was crit critical of him about working for TenScent. So don't I feel like maybe he doesn't like me anywmore, I don't want to like push myself on But what I would have asked him was you, after he answered some of this stuff, was like, what do you make of the novelty factor? You and I have always discussed that Like how do you like do you did you see that too? like that there was a did you bake in the novelty factor because I do believe that's why games like Zero Dawn and Days Gone did so well. and They might have just read that and been like, this is the baseline. Bys You know, uh It's all uphill from here and that wasn't the case and that wasn't the case. Right All right. few more quick items, Chris and then we can get into what we're playing we can wrap things up with the inquiries from the audience We talked about Marvel Tockon earlier And we know the game is coming very shortly to PlayStation five But they've announced three new characters and they did so at Evo The characters are in they joined Ghost Rider as the samurai outrider So we've known about Ghost Rider since the game was announced. but the three new characters Blade Loki Deadpool and Deadpool is voiced Noah North interestingly enough didnid't he do the voice in the PS three game? Yeah, he did, yeah You don't see him very much anymore. Yeah They also re reiterate that the open beta for the game on both PS five and PC will run from july twenty fourth. Excuse me through twenty six and Blade will be playable there as well Um, Game launch is, what August So we're getting pretty close now or to a Marvel Tkon fighting souls. I'm not into it, but I know this is a major game for PlayStation and I feel like Maybe a little juice with this game I mean, it's a fighting game. It's got to be it's going to be constrained.ven the biggest fighting games like Street Fighter and Moral Combat seell in the single millions It takes them years to reach five, six, seven million copies. So you got to be patient I think Arc systemstem works. This is a great relationship for so many to have and I hope it's the beginning areeom relationship that I've V very unpopularly said, I hope spans into other things with Sony outside of Marvel Um Again, I would love to see them makeaking ar like a guilty gear style or lays boost stle game withlayation character. I think'd fucking insan Maybe this is the beginning of that. or maybe no one cares. I still feel Chris you and I disagree on this a little bit, I think. A little bit. I still feel like there's something to that That would be cool do again. Yeah PlayStation All Star sold a million copies Im not saying that's a hgeccess but's good for a fightingame U Yeah, I don't know. like I would like to think that I just don't know there's something in the way of it for me And I think it's just, um The IP is so specific And I think if it was in the in the rich tapestry of PlayStation IP, I think yes I think, you know, like in the in the every generation, like IP that were that was like associated really heavily I think you'd have something But if we're just operating on just like modern first party Um, and things that they currently own I don't know. I feel like a lot of your iconic characters are Ironically, like characters that you no longer own You know, like I crash in Spyro and and like seeing those it's crazy to me that those characters weren't in Smash already Yeah, it is interesting. And obviously, I was annoyed as fuck back in the day that PlayStation all they just couldn't figure it out with activision. It's like Yeah. and I know they were frustrated behind the scenes because it's like, of course, we've tried Like they're they're not they're not in like like o Oh yeah, Crash bandicp It wasn't like they would say that kind of shit behind the scenes. Like of course, Right, right. It just didn't work out Yeah, I don't know. That's a little pet project that m I maybe for the future to talk more about, but We'll keep an eye out for More Marvel Tok on stuff, I'll be very intrigued to see how it does when it comes out both critically and commercially have to rely on other people because It's certainly not gonna to be me. All right U This was interesting. I don't know if you saw this. I believe that this broke this morning. Sorry, I'm trying to keep footnotes again An Mush she got moved up An Eusha wayay of the sword or O Musha way of the sword, people make fun of me how I say it You was going to come out september twenty fourth, it is now going to come out september fourth. So they're giving they're moved it up about three weeks And I think it's kind of u pooisonous either way Now they're like in like around Bloodwalker or Dawn Waler rather, Bood of the Dawn Walker and some other stuff. can' wit for this game,ude I'm really excited for this game. And excited to see C by the way is the second time the shear Capcoms pushed a game up They did it with Marcota as well Yeah, that's true. confonfidence They're like, we're done, boys get this thing out there. I mean, when you look at it, that's two months away. I mean, I assume the game is going to gold Yeah fairlyminently, I would imagine. So there's that for Oni Musha W of the story, which I think all three of us are going to play on the on the show when the time comes. And then we have new PlayStation plus Essential games Jie wre and said Hey boys, lots of other news week, so I'llouch on PS P plus essential Games this mon Tve of Duty Mitor for three, for the King two and Cross Code are all crossed gen titles no doubt a nice addition to the millions of PS four users libraries Is this another effort to show value to get people to move off of PS four or just a happy coincidence that all titles are crossed Thanks. I'll hang around and listen. It is probably a coincidence, but it could be a nice little gesture. I mean, remember It was just last year where they said that they were going to kind of stop even really including PS four games as much as they used to Yeah. I think this just happens to be the games that they've selected or gotten access to. So the big one is called of duty modern warfare three which will be available both PS four and PS five. This game came out in twenty twenty three. Obviously modern Warfare four is the next call of duty game that comes out this fall. so they're trying to Get you ready prepared to play that I'll check that I won't check that out probably, but I'll add it to my list For the King two, I had to look this up. This is a game that came out a couple of years ago. It is a strategy role playing game Um, there was a PS four game called For the Kane that came out in two thousand nineteen or twenty eighteen as well. So there's that. And then There's this game Crosscode, which is a role playing game that didn't come out the PS four I believe until twenty twenty, maybe, but I think came out in the late teens And the thing about Crosscode is I believe I bought it. I'd have to look, but I remember being told that it was very puzzle centric and I just that kind of turned me off from it because I thought it looked really great. It's a very sixteen bit styled. JRPG styled game. so Nice little selections there. I think this is a pretty good month. What do you think Yeah, I mean, I don't know, nothing for me really. likeike from what I know, I mean for the Kame two and Crosscoode are just not my not my kind of game and M Ware three from what I remember is uh I think that's the campaign that had like I think that's the that's the game where like the campaign was built on like the bones of the Oh right, I forgot about that where they yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, it was like a like a huge tutorial for the extraction. I could be That sounds correct, though, in my memory Um So this is kind of a wee A weak month for me, personally, but I mean, It's good It's to be good for somebody The final thing this would have been good to have Dustin on the show for, but he's obviously not here Variety reports, personersa live action TV adaptation in the works at Netflix They write quote, Netflix is developing a live action series based on the personersona video game franchise variety as has learned from sources Christopher Monfett is attached to write the adaptation, in addition to serving as executive producer and showrunner Seaan Levy, Dan Levine and Robert Atwood of twenty one Lughs will also executive producers Let's see. is there any other information here yet? Persona has proven to be a wildly popular RPG franchise with the plot while the plot varies from game to game. They typically focus on Japanese high school students who must go through normal daily routines and build and maintain friendships while also dealing with supernatural threats Netflix declined a comment for varietyies story Um, we have really we I would stay in read about this because I thinking maybe I would even bring this up to Dusin, but he's not here Just wanted to add that to the record. I have nothing to say about it. I hope that they don't use Japanese kids so everyone gets really offended Probably I know this Seaan Levy guy is u know, that's I mean, I know he's a big name at Netflix I don't know if he's really made anything of consequence though Like he's u he's in charge of, I guess, like free guy. And I guess thatadpool and Wolverine he was a part of. Um But most recently he was attached to I think, stranger thingsings And that last season Stranger things that that everybody hated So I lo that thing wasraight. Remember with like, everyone had this theory that was there was going to be like a secret epise Yeah, which would have been dopeest fuck. Yeah, it would have been awesome It would haveve been so cool, but I wish because because it's so cool, you just kind of knew that it wasn't going to happen Right You know, I was like, that's too good have a fake out like fake out ending. Be so boss All right, that's all we have for the news, Chris Let's get to where we're playing And we can linger here as long as we'd like I'll go first Platinum Luna Abyss. That's my two hundred and thirteenth Platinum. I really liked that game. I highly recommend it. If you're into shooters, first person shooters I think it's a really, really interesting. Again, it's it's like I said, I or doom. It like game meeting reteturnal, meeting, Metroid Prime, meeting u freedom wars And I think people would really really enjoy it. So take a look No one really played it. so it wouldll probably be new to you And the game I'm otherwise hanging out with is Grand Theeft Auto five. Sooufull Bison wrote in and said, Colin, I apologize for accidentally sending you an invite to my GTA heist last night. Will you forgive me for clouding your gamer focus More importantly, how does GTI five hold up in a post reed dead Rdemption two world As your opinion on the game changed in any major way I'll celebrate the birth this great nation And listen Um I played Grand the Thoto F when it came to PS three, but I probably played it for like fifteen or twenty hours and I just wasn't really into it and I stopped playing it Of course, you have to remember like PS four was about to come out And we were kind ofcus on other things. And before you knew it, we were just kind of gone And the PS three, they they released it natively later. I had the PS three add it on disk And u couldn't put it in the PSwo So uh kind of conspired against me at that point So I've been spending a lot of time with it. I'm probably I've probably played it for Teen hours, maybe Um it's so funny, man. L first of all, I think the one thing I'll say is that it holds up a lot better than you'd think from a cultural point of view I think the major thing that they got in into the game that was lacking in, let's say, four and certainly in the trilogy on PS two was like You would be using beepers or like flip phones and stuff like that. and they got the smartphone in this game You know, it was probably like probably the equivalent to like an Apple four or you know iPhone four or something like that. But it's like that changes the whole game and makes it feel very grounded and modern One thing I will say, Chris about this game and this is not something I appreciated at the time. I had been to LA many times at the point that it came out, but I wasn't very familiar with it. But I had lived in Santa Monica for almost three years as you know, that's where we met and The version of LA in this game is pretty impressive Wh I was like, I know where I am right now Like now it's all truncated and it's not quite right But I was telling Micael like when I was like in Venice and Marin Del Ray and then going into the Santa Monica and going to the Pier and then going up into Melbourne, I'm like, this is exactly right. Like this is to the point where I'm like, this is kind of creepy because it's it's like a it's like it's a not quite right space, but like there's so many things about it or like specific buildings Th theseese staircases and I'm like, this is all exactly the way it is And I't I didn't realize it. And then I went to like Hollywood or what do they call vinewood or whatever in this. And I'm like, this is This is like Right, This hotel is here and this thing is here. I might It's just kind of cool. Again, it's a much smaller version. LA. is such a sprawl, obviously. And so is this game. It's a huge sprawl comparable to the previous ones. but I was like, wow, this really captures Los Angeles I know that better than ever now having lived there And I don't think I appreciate it to the point. but it makes it makes a lot of sense because you and I have reflected on Liberty City. spepecifically in GTA four, capturing New York so well and it's like, we knowew York, that's why we understood that and that might be lost on other people. So why wouldn't they get this? And then I don't know Miami at all. I've been, but I don't know it. It's like I can't wait to see what people have to say about GA six from that regard and how true to form it's going to be The other thing I'll say about this game And this is not a huge surprise. It's really well written and The voice performances are exceptional I actually feel a little bit bad saying this because I met him and he's a really nice guy and I even did like a skit with him, but Danny Tambarelli is probably the worst of the performers Who is that? He's u he's he plays the, um The sun Like the red headed kid. Oh, yeah He's probably like the Beause like some of the performances like there's the character Lester, who's like the handicapped guy or whatever. and it's like he's like, I'm like, damn, some of these performances are just They're all really well done. And I was laughing specifically about a group of white guys writing all of this Franklin dialogue and shit Um Right And just a flaggrrant use of the N word and all this kind of stuff. It's just really, really funny. It makes me excited This game is old. I mean, Mike and I, know I've playing Mike and I've been talking. She's a really big fan of the game and I was talking. I'm like, you know This is the PS five version of the game that came out in twenty twenty two, but this is a PS three game. Under the hood and what it is, it's a PS three game It's a late PS three game It was an expensive and long and development PS three game, although it only took them five years to make it. I mean, it's so funny when you look I know. it's and u And that was considered like an extraordinary weight. Even though we waited four years between San Andreas and four, it was like, you have five years. Everyone was so annoyed The other there's so much to say about it, but one other thing is that it is so much more than the campaign and I know this intuitively, but I never experienced it because when I played the game, it was right when it came out and GTA onnline didn't even exist in those weeks So When you I'm fascinated that when you turn the game on, there's like these three verticals, like these blades almost And you have to write you have to write R one twice to get to the campaign that like doesn't even want you to play the campaign. It, which is not hu surrise.'s like GTA onnline, sharkarts Heists Like all these different GT plus, all these different options and I'm like, damn dude this like you and then I look at my friend's list. I'm like, Jesus, have a friend's list of two thousand people make Thirteen people are playing this right now And like and like u Soulful Bison said, I'm like, I have a whole in game friends list of people playing the game People sending me requests to go do things with them and stuff. And I'm like, Damn, this game Again, you understood what it was, but being in it, it's like Jesus Christ, like this really is a lifestyle for people and the next game is going to My expectations for the game for the next game are even higher now when I see the way This this game functions where I This was pretty cool in twenty thirteen. I'll be very interested to see what a couple of billion dollars and a few thousand few thousand of you can do with this new version of the game The one disappointment, of course, is hearing GTA six and this is not a surprise is going to probably run at thirty frames even on PSI Pro, which is I yeah And I was hoping for forty on PS five pro. I'm still kind of hoping for that but it's going to be Pretty stinky Be I am playing it at a very clean, hopefully it's a PSR game, a very clean sixty frames And I had to keep reminding myself and I was saying that to my get two Chris is like I have to remind myself it didn't look like this and it didn't play like this like over and over again. didn't look like this didn't play like this, D didn't like this, didn't play like this But it is pretty fun. And the had I'm using the FPS controls because the native controls and Gread I thought were fucking nonsense. That's one thing that I'll be very interested to see what they do as well. The rockstar button combinations are always fucking weird It's insane But yeah, shout out to shout out to the game. It's it's a really It's a really great game and it doesn't feel dated or antiquated in very many ways at all. I mean, the biggest Antiquation of it is not even the graphical lookook it's really the characters and the models The world actually looks fine The lighting looks good Cars drive awesome. I mean, it's a fun game, and it's just funny. It's a funny fucking game And it's just silly And over the top and stupid So yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I'm really hooked into it Um And I was talking to Mikeah about this too is like, becauseuse she used to play GTA online a lot. I was like,, maybe I'll jump onl. some point I don't know what to expect. I don't know what's going online, but we'll find, I guess, at some point Yeah. I don't remember like I played a fair bit of it. I never finished it. I actually jumped into it again kind of recently just to get my bearings and before I decided to jump into San Andreas U Be that's the one I have no real experience with outside of like borrowing it or like playing it at cousin's hous But I played GT online for a little bit at the beginning And I remember I kind of swore it off becausecause I tried to I tried to steal this other guy's car, but I couldn't because he had insurance Oh And I remember being like, what is this I can't steal another player's car Grand Theft auto felt ridiculous to me. Like interesting. It really bothered me. I don't know if it works that way anymore because it's definitely a very different game now But u 'use that was in like literally maybe like the first week or two Um, But Gy this little five is great I still like I think, um just resonates with me the most just because again, New York City and I think that story is like Really good and really interesting. I love the story of like like immigrants in that space. It's like I feel like it works Thee music is great I'm kind of running through Grandth that of San Andreas right now Um because it's always been this game that like I've had tangential experience with. like I played it I would play it at my cousin's house or my cousin's apartment in in the Bronx And I was like kind of fascinated by it, but I only I only really fucked around with like cheat codes and stuff So like I never really played the story. I didn't really know who any of these characters were So I'm going through it right now for the first time And It is it is not like Radather Thot of five in the sense that it is it is quite dated It is monstrously confusing. As far as like the controls go, it's like, dude, it's And you might remember this actually. Do you remember in Spiderm Man PS four, like base Spiderman PS four, how like whenever Spidererman was indoors, It felt like he was just It felt insane the way he was like moving around because was he was calibrated for like outside. Right. I remember I was talking about that at the time San Andreas feels that way kind of all the time. Like the way that you can just increase speed with CJ at any moment and then just turn on a dime is like it's completely like there's no weight to it, which like arguably like you could make a case that like if bike control a little bit better Starting with four, five and you know, I guess starting with four and reed dead Like the weight behind the character. I don't know. Like I remember when I was a kid kind of being annoyed by it Bet in GJ four and GJ five, like You had so much weight and you couldn't move as precisely or as like U as quickly, but like now I kind of miss it becausecause at least in four and five, I kind of, at least I knew where I would end up But like in Sanras, you're like It's it's insane. and that's all there's a lot, there's a lot of driving missions where like I'm in the driving mission right where have to I have to chase a guy Uh I picked up somebody from prison who he just out of prison and he's on his way to kill somebody had Fery clelearly just molested the hell out of him in prison And that's like the entire He's like he's like it's it's like a bicycle chase or like a motorcycle chase. you're like chasing him through these like really windy pads with these really precise and imprecise controls It's not a fantastic play experience, but Similarly to five and I guess like every Rckstar game since. There is an element of like the world that is like really E in this like neutered kind of like dated PS two environment Um I am just impressed by the map of it. Like these neighborhoods feel real, even though they're clearly like four polygon boxes with like really low low grade textures on them And the characters, even though they're like, they're giving their dialogue through like mics and they're peeking It's so funny L like the quality like the overall quality is so funny but funny. They're all but they all feel real. And they're all like really enjoyable characters to to spend time around it. It's like, damn this is u This is cool Like I didn't know it was cool in the way that it is when I was a kid. I just thought it was like, I, you Th get CJ in a jet pack and fly around and just shoot people. It wass like, all right, that's fun But like what's here like written is It is fun. Um, a little strict. You're kind of weak early on and you can't take a lot of punishment and like, They hadn't figured out third person shooting quite yet. Arguably nobody had until probably like years U Maybe R me before you could make an argument But like Yeah, you like aim with R one and it doesn't always lock ono people, but sometimes it does and it's like it's it's The play experience is a little rough. but But it's a good game.ike I really, I really enjoy it. Um I'm getting my ass kicked constantly. I got an achievement or trophy completely by accident where like I wanted to swim to the bottom of the ocean just to see like what was down there and see how far I could get And I drowned and I think the like the the tra I think it's the trophyies called like the tragedy of the Santa Maria And you open it it just says, And it made me laugh. It was just like that is so Blunt But yeah, I'm on to grade the Thoto kick. Cool Yeah me do lately. and I I'm excited to move on to five. which I dabbled in a little bit before I started San Dreas is to got to feel and get motivated But Yeah, I think I think it'll be fun. I still haven't fucked around with three or Vice City I think I played a little bit of Iity ten minutes of it. and I was like, this is rough, man Um, Yeah Vity is Vice City has been arguably my favorite, but it's just the setting and the music F is probably as we said, probably my favorite, my favorite favorite. Yeah, they are rough gam. What's funny is that the one that's available now, like the controls are much better Oh in the in like the trilogy version as opposed to the PS two port versions Yeah, I might I might, if I'm feeling up to it after five because I do want to go from San Andreas to five Um And then maybe I'll go back to Vicity in that collection or something. because I do want to get these games off my list Like they've been like these these big tedpole games, like these huge games that have just been kind of like, I've only really experienced four in its entirety. Yeah I'm enjoying my time with Yeah, I'm going to try to be ambitious with this July and into August if I can and just try to get through some stuff as well. But I don't want toite off more than I can chew. I know that after this, I'll probably I gotta probably do like Allen Wake or something, Allen Wake too We're kind of running out of time. How Animusha moving kind of fucks me up too because I wanted to play Annimusha one two again as well. And actually Animusha four is out So it's like cheese, man How far into Allenint two did you get Pretty far like thirty percent through, I think, but I just don't really remember. so I'll just restart it again. I think that's what the PSN says though when I look Yeah, I hope you get to it. I love I definitely will. There's no way I'm playing control resonident without doing that and replay control one as well more importantly in some way All right, so that's what we're playing. We'll have more to say next week, of h coursese as we always do. Let's end the show, Chris, as we always do with inquiries from the audience, twelve questions comments concerns, thoughts and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, Patreon.ot com slash last day media. You submit your inquiries on the threads so go live each week And then I go through them and I select what I want to use. And most of you won't get used each week because that's just the nature of it, but I try to be as equitable as possible And as I said, this thread was incredibly out of control this week. So I did the best I could Josiah Elmer wrote in and said, hello gents I write you with sorrow in my heart with more console price increases, discontinuing physical diss and anticipating more layoffs It has been a grim few weeks for the video game space I don't want to sound like an a apocalypptic cist I didn't even heard that wor, but I can't imagine that but it says it's a word But I can't imagine that these decisions won't have a permanent negative effect on the industry When will enough be enough? When will consumers vote with their wallet For me personally, I feel like taking a break from one of my favorite hobbies as this new wave has bummed me out I will say this Chris, I don't know what you think about this, but People are onboarding too much of this stuff, I think. likeike It's we're observers And we're obviously complicit in all of it as consumers as well. L we our behaviors dictate things and we're obviously going our responses will dictate the future. But I wouldn't let this like spill into your real world That was kind of what happened with my PSN account thing where it's like that spilled into my real life where like it made me feel like shit Um And I understand that, but I just I try to ward people off of those things. And I'll also say This idea that like we're in a crash, I think is a little misguided. I wish I had more time to do things because I would write write a video about this, but like The conditions that crashed the industry in nineteen eighty three simply don't exist anym. And yeah, so yeah. so Video games are I think, on the precipice of two hundred billion dollars in annual revenue, it's not going anywhere The thing that people have to remember they as we wade through this space and whatever is The only thing that will change is that more money will come in And then there will be different winners and different losers as time goes on and the volume of those winners and losers might change this idea that Gaming crash was because people thought gaming wasn't permanent. It was looked at as a fad I mean, it's a lot of reasons, bad games and all the rest, but They they were like, yeah, all right, that's well, that's video games, everyone and then and everyone's ready to move on and there certain people they were like Wait, what are you talking?ike we barely scratch the surface, but they're a permanent silo of entertainment. And and they're not going anywhere. and people are not going to stop playing them I think people miss u mislabel like I think what people mean when they say a crash is not necessarily what the crash refers to. I think I think what they think they're saying is that like, The games industry is going to go through a massive period of upheaval and rapid change and a lot is going to go wrong I think that's absolutely true But like that's what a crash. I just think people just don't really know what the games industry crash of the eighties. I they just kind of hear about it and just assume things about it Um What what I think will happen and I mean you can this can either bum you out or you can feel completely neutral about it. is just I just think I think American AAA game deev is kind of going away That's good likeike I really do feel like it's going to be like American games are going to be indie games, I think more like really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really small teams And I think a lot of the money is going to move overseas to emerging markets like India, China for sure. Uh I think maybe like places like Eastern Europe will stick around for for a while But like The AAA likeike west coast Um machine. I think that's That's got to That's got an expiration date. Yeah. I think you're, I think you're right And Yeah, I'm especially worried about California based AAA devs and I assume It's funny because you were saying like things might go wrong. It's like actually I think things have already gone wrong and now we are in Oh yeah, the ramification pro like the ramification state And It's just that I think a lot of the arbiters of these different decisions haven't come to grips with it yet. You can see a lot of this with the way people talk about Phil Spencer When Phil Spencer was still at Xbox he was the saavior of Xbox. He was the only reason Xox still exists. Now that he's out, it's like, oh, this guy fucked everything up blah. It's like well, what is true? Th bothoth those things can't possibly be true And I think it's because we're in this tumultuous period of not really knowing, but I just want people to onboard too much of this stuff because it's like, yeah, it seems negative, but don't let it ruin Regardless of where you play, don't let it ruin your experiences. The games are still the games. They and I still stand by that we are in a perpetual golden era There are so Many games dude. when I see games every day on my social media you where I'm like, what the fuck is this? And there's just I don't even I don't even think about playing them usually because it's like, I don't have any That's Yeahah. So just focus on the games. I think the people that are going to be happiest moving forward are just going to be the PC people Be it just kind of is what it is Right? Like There's none of theseights over. When's the last time we bought a physical PC game? I think the last time I bought a physical PC game was literally in like, nineteen ninety nine or so So it must have yeah, for me it must have been like no later than two thousand one Um So yeah, I think might have been no use Command and Conquer Red alert, I think, I. was the last PC game that I got. But whatever year that is. But I think yeah, I Th PC iss going to flourish. I mean, this and like you said, like we have so many good games now. like it's not, it's not even And by the way, like every year is better because like more games from the past are being brought forward to modern hardware too. So like like those those tooy Story games are coming who like who the fuck ever thought that that would be like I That's I didn't think a bug's life, the bug's life, the license video game is coming. Like We're just getting all the stuff that we used to have that and having it run better and the stuff that is coming out, I do want to you know worn against cynicism in the sense that like the industry might be in a rough place and there's a lot wrong with it and there's a lot of bad going on. but like the software itself is really is really good. And even even some of the stuff that's coming out of just like the really reallyally small indie space. likeike that meechac Chameleon game is exploding. like ten million copies and like day or ser not a day, but like in a really, really short amount of time.' like one dude or something made it And it's there's there's cool stuff happening all the time. Yeah, it's like it's a it's a roulete wheel now really without with lacking guard rails and predictability with really bad odds And I think that's the major the maj change Nick Fury, agent of Iice, wrote in and said, Dear travelers How do you feel about the news that Exodus will no longer feature a full character creator as initially intended My favorite kind of games are those with the potential for meaningfully different choices across different playthers Ive beat the M spepect trilogy with every permutation of class and choice and I'm halfway to doing the same for Baldder's Gay three Being able to create visually distinct player characters makes these subsequent playthroughs feel fresh It's much easier to project person person personality differences, pardon me ono characters when their appearances reflect those distinctions Balter's Gay three it made sense for my muscle bound half orc, barbarian cod you're a ner to choose different dialogue options and make different moral decisions than my pososh Elven paladin. Finally, a robust character creator can curtail criticism from players on both sides of the aesthetic divide Traditional gamers can create conventionally attractive characters while those who advocate for realistic depictions can create characters as plain looking or outright ugly as they'd like. There's no need to pander to one group to the potential exclusion of the other I did see this and I was a little confused by it because it does seem like the kind of game that It's kind of based around that sort of thing. I mean, it obviously is a spiritual mass effect game and so making your own shepherd, male or female, female shep, Fem shep or a male shhepherd. Now. I will say Nick Fury agent of Ice that I always went towards Even if your game as a character creator, unless you truly don't market it in a certain way There's going to be a default for the protagonist like Not only is there a default commander shhepherd for male or female, but like they're literally on the box art And then they give you and frankly, when I think of Mass effffect, I think of male Commander Shepherd with his shaved head. I mean, that's that was my character I do like the idea of having both worlds. So but I think you're right. like getting rid of the character creator is peculiar. I wonder if it's just a technical thing. Maybe they're just running out of time and money and they just don't want to do it Maybe they're afraid of the various ways their QA team has bastardized it, which I'm sure is a fun process and makes horrible things I really I don't know. But I don't want to beat a dead horse because I know you and I've talked about this before Chris, but I don't really give a shit about creating a character personally So It's not what I'm really in for typically. and I gotta be even more honest with you and tell you is that when when I do make a character, I make them as grotesque as I possibly can I'm never tri I don't think I've ever tried to make like a truly cool character I'm always trying to like jack it up So Maybe not for me. Yeah, my obblivian character is fucking hideous. Uh Yeahah, I'm kind of with you. Like I like a character creator and when it's robust and there, but if it's not there, I don't really care about it. my Um My Commander Shepherd, I think maybe the first time I played it was different, but like every single time I've played Mazavic since then It's been default, commander Shehepherard. because I just it's not really part of the game I care about. I care about The gameplay and the decisions and like the narrative that's in front of me. So like, I mean of a bummer, but like I can't say it's gonna affect me too much. that interested But uh Generally speaking, I er on the side of like put a character creator and it's like definitely I I would prefer to have it than to not I guess. Yeah, I mean, if it's cool for people that enjoy because I know people just lose a lot of time and they really like to make a character. but to me, and I know it's like the wasastelander and Fallout three or whatever where it's like it's not really a specific character per se, but in something like Mass effffect,'s like, Well, Commander Sepherd's a person kind of just want I'm not I'm not Commander Shepard. Like I guess I just never went in and be like, this is me. Like when I play a first person shooter, I'm like, this is my perspective. I'm like I mean no, not really. I mean, I'm not doom guy. I'm just playing a first person shooter. And so maybe it's just a way of you look at like look at your fiction as opposed to being Being I will say it's like, um, It comes off to me in not a bad way, just like it's very the character creator thing is very feminine to me It reminds me of like what people say about like Um The different ways that men and women generally like read books or absorb fiction and how they An average man and an average woman might perceive a certain situation, put themselves in it or observe it from the outside. It comes off as a very similar thing to me But their own. Nick Furyage of device I called you a bitch Yeah, I don't know. I think they're just fun things tool around with. I look at them as just I always mess with them as far as like, It's fun to see like what the game will let you do and what the game will let you get away with. But I did trent tend to make ugly fucinking Saints Ro was great for that. Yeah, it was. I do remember. Saints Ro you could make the most disgusting absurd creatures ever. L that might be my favorite character creator, I think Ssorow Because they's just like there's clearly no rules. They didn't give a shit proroke animations or anything Matthew Boone wrote in Nest Chris and said, Hey guys I'm a little late to this one, but I had a question about game sales numbers Why are companies so reluctant to share them I assume part of it is because they're competing with each other, but if you're deep enough in the industry, can't people get a good idea of numbers anyway? And maybe think of Colin mentioning that he was asked not to talk so much about sales numbers. Why is that such a big deal If everyone found out your game sold say fifty thousand copies, what's the downside What does a company actually lose making thosebers public? I wish sold fifty thousand copies Um It's funny you ask this, Matthew, because I think that it's a reasonable question and yet I think If you're deeply connected to the industry these days, it's fairly obvious. Right? Like Look at the way people bassardize steam and concurrent numbers and try to read things into them and like where something is on a leaderboard and where something is on most downloaded or most preorddered and Part of it is like, well, now you're giving specific data that pegs things, which is kind of pardon in the sexual way. So like Y game X is number fourteen on Cirana and then you discover it sold fifty thousand copies So then it's like, all right fifty thousand copies. Everything above this sold more, everything below this sold less. It's not scientific because that's not global, You're right in that and this is what I always say about Olinia and there are others where it's like people pay a lot of money for access to these numbers and people that think that they're really like devastatingly wrong are crazy because people pay a lot of money for these numbers And it's all algorithmic And then they go in and they correct things. It's what VG Charts has done for many years where they like make up numbers and then they'll go in when there's a specific number and peg it to what it actually was and then go from that number So I think Private and public companies alike don't want to give out too much data. and I've always If it was up to me, I would tell you how much our game sold, but like I've been told not like that people think I talk too much Because one of the arguments I made was that I really loved how I love how open and I wonder I think they've done the same thing with Mina, but they haven't done it granularly yet is like Yacht Club Games is like one of the most transparent companies about how many copies their games sell. They do like these deep blog posts about like console splits and where people are buying the games and all the rest. They even do these for the games that they publish U They did this for Cyberhadow. they did this for Shovelnight Treasure Trove U orr not Treasure Trope the Shovel andight Dig game and so on and so forth. So I understand it's a little peculiar. and some companies are very comfortable doing it. But I also think that I think numbers are misrepresented and mischaracterized. We always talk about Final Fantasy sixteen and three million copies in like a week and it's like three million copies It's like, are you fucking kidding me? It took Street fighter six like three years to sell that many copies. You know, um, yeah But again, then you have these arguments. So I think they just look at it as being like, e We'll either sneak it in like a financial statement. That's what Sega does, That's what Nintendo does. or will'll like tangently talk about something. That's what Sony does. Sony has the long list of sales numbers, but you have to look at the dates ' they'll have like, it'll be like bloodborne And then it'll be a glass updated july twenty fifteen And then it willll have like a number But they do that kind of shit So that's the reason Matthew I All right Josh Kisscall wrote in and said to Semen, Push square reported that Doom the Dark Ages is dropping an incredible sounding DLC. new missions, weapons and something they're calling end game Not only is this incredible as Dark Ages was great, but it sounds like something a lot of single player games could do to keep players engaged for longer Do you think metedier and more frequent end game DLC for single player games could generate much needed revenue? orr do you think it's usually wiser to move on to the next thing as soon as possible Thanks and see you at the Freedom two hundred fifty Fair I don't think you will. I don't think you'll see anyone there Um So This is an interesting question, Josh because I think that the It seems to me, I don't know if you observe this Chris, and I don't know the math behind it. Per capita is probably true, but there's so many more games. wherein Single player expansions and support seems to be lagging heavily And I think that there are two reasons for this. Either you do like pack style thing like u powerwash simulator does. You have like full fledged expansions like cyberpunks. Um, but the era of like really hitting a game with DLC kindind of done unless it's a multiplayer or game or a game as a service And I really think a lot of that stems from the fact that like during that era, People were excited to sell you things, of course But they were also excited to compel you to never sell your game and Right But events have conspired, we've talked about some of them already on the show it's like you're not selling your a digital copy of anything. And if they don't have to worry about that Then They really like I am not entirely convinced that expansions make much sense and DLC makes much sense from a financial perspective, because it's like It's a way to boot the game back up to get people to Borderinds three or Borderinds four, for instance, has a shit ton of expansions that are coming in and verticome There are certain types games that I think can of absorb it Generally speaking, I just don't know that This is cool, but I'm kind of over the dark ages. It's too late for me There's No reason for me to return to it I don't really see the financial benefit of it. They'll probably sell a bunch of copies of the game at a cheaper price than they were originally. And so that's kind of free money in quotes. And I know that Doom of the Dark Age didn't do very well, so I think that's mostly because it was in Game passass, but And I agree with you, Josh. I think I think doom. I'm much more hot on doomatorages than Chris I thoughtt that game was dope. But yeah, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not I'm not interested in it. And I think a lot of the u Aizon Detre as I've been saying recently is u for this kind of stuff doesn't really exist anym. I think people are excited to move on. there's too much competition. There's way too much competition being like, you want to go back and play Doom You platinum, Do you want to go back and play it again? I'm like, not really. I mean like That's a lot of other things for me to do right now. So what are your thoughts Yeah, I mean, we've talked about it before, but like I mean, I'm generally not a DLC person. I like to like if I'm done with a single player game, I like to I like to just be done with it. And I also like selfishly when I'm done with it knowing that I could come back to it and it's the same game that I left. Um you know, there's u, there's some DLCs that kind of fuck the game entirely like there's one, u for DSX , I was the first one of the reboot Mankind divided was the sequel, right? Yeah, at all look. So it' human revolution Days like's Human Revolution had a DLC that like it inserted itself into the middle of the story and just It was clearly designed for people to play after they beat the game it's in the middle of the story and just completely fucked by the experience of that game Um And so that's a bummer because I would read reviews of like Han revolution being like, o, this is great. And then I would hear about like the the definitive ition with the DLC like thrown in there and every's like, this is rough. And so like I kind of I have a complicated relationship with the DLC. I think doom the Dark Ages that DLC looks good. I might actually play it. I lik Doom the Dark Ages as well. It's just not my favorite I just think Eternal is so good Um, and it hits exactly what I want out of like a game like that. It's like really difficult and challenging and it like makes you play it a certain way. Doom Darkge is more kind of go with the flow, which I also like. So I might play the Dark Ages DLC. But that's an exception that I really kind of only would make for a game like Doom Or like cyberpunk or something, where it's just like it' exceptional like, all right, I'll give it a go and see see what's going on Um But I generally agree with you that like the financial imperative to do it kind of doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. because you'd imagine that DLC has a ceiling of however much the game sold Yeah like you're never you're never going to get more than your customer base. So I always thought standalone DLC made more sense. I like standalone DLC more. I want to play it more than rego DLC Yeah, I'm more inclined. like like a Far cry three Blood dragon. Like when that came out, it was all over it firstirst of all, was it what an insane. Yeah, it was a cool idea. It was really inssane premise U and things like that. like I'm more inclined for that kind of thing. Um, I think it's wiser to move Zach wrote in said Hello, my sacred slitters, Colin, you've been saying recently that it would be impossible for Sony to delay the PS six, but I am failing to understand why You keep saying that that the consoles have to get made and I totally get that they have to manufacture them to keep their place in the line and all the rest, but Why would it be impossible for them to sit on the consoles for a year to delay the release The rate that technology is improving has slowly slowed massively, so it's not like delaying a year would put them so far behind in terms of power differential The biggest thing they would have to worry about is the money it would cost to manufacturer and house the consoles with leaks being a secondary concern but I don't it's as imp posossible as you sa sayve for them they kick the can down the road. Let me know what you guys think and keep on fucking that chicken. Remember, Zach, like We don't know big the PS six is, we don't know how big the box is gonna be But imagine manufacturing manyany millions of them single millions, many millions them and then storing them right here I mean, no, it's not impossible. There are warehouses, bonded warehouses and all over the place that will do that for you. It's expensive I wantna reiterate what I reiterated last week about kind of the revelation I had from other peopless thing where we'm like Really Sony's in a position where they should just sell it as soon as they can And if that's fall twenty twenty seven, just do it You'll sell millions of them, the people that are going to overpay for them and then you lower the price later. That's your best bet as opposed to like think about it Think about it Zach, you're asking them to hold the console and then sell it for cheaper later when they could just sell it earlier There are people that will pay almost anything for it I'm not saying you want to you want to take advantage of those people, but you kind of do I mean, if they exist and you're going to sell them and they be, yeah, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by selling it now. and then we can drop the price even precipitously later and look genius. and maybe people complain that they paid too much for it, but that's just the nature of the market. So I mean, they could manufacture it and hold it for more than a year, but I also think you have to understand that like at some point the tech does become old it's also in danger of All sorts of problems. I mean, imagine all the issues that could happen in Aare. I'm sure you trust those people with you know air conditioning and all the rest, but you never know You're just Tantle, you're tempting in that regard. It's a shitty situation for Sony to be in a shitty situation for all hardware manufurers to be in. I actually think I agree Um, Gally, I don't think it's a great idea to launch it next year just because I feel like the appetite is not there. But that also depes on the fact that like we haven't That's also heavily contingent on the fact that we haven't seen the machine. We we don't really know what it does. This is all hypothetical Like when it's real and we and we see it and we see the sleek you know, whatever the form factor is going to be and You know, like maybe that'll change and more people certainly more people will be excited to see it once it's real Um and they know more about it But Yeah, I think u I think it's just better to just get it get it over with really Um Well, they're going to be sitting a warehouse forever. Yeah, you don't want that. moldy and shit. Right You't want that All right, Chris final inquiry comes from Brinsley Logic, who says, greeting sacredb symbolologists, pardon me Tw weeks in a row, Dust five hundred one four has come up, so I thought I'd make it a third. What a great idea it was Although the format of the ground missions could get competitive, knowing that Fury was being rained down from the heavens was far from fellow players vying for control of the skies above us really added to what was otherwise would have been a mundane effort to expand. the Evon Line player base My son and I spent many hours on this title and had some great bonding moments during it P and peace and thanks for memories outside of Hell Iibvers What franchises do you feel could benefit from a dust a dust like shared world supplemental experience? Well'll hang up Take one to look at EVon on theline and go back to mining my business. I mean that's the smartest move if you're looking at EV online becausecause no one understands how it's played Um Yes, we've we've filated Dust five hundred four a lot recently and yeah, it is Chris and I have said like I love the idea of it and there are games that it could be done in and the It's just a matter. It's so risky. games are so expensive now I'm pretty sure CCP ate shit on EV online. I mean, I'm not an E online on D five hundred four They also made it a PS three exclusive, which I think was probably a dubious decision, although that was the the decision they made to I think defray some of the cost of it I mean, dude, like Grand Dft Auto six is one of those games where like there could be like millions of key components of that game Obviously, I think that the Duet of two games is what he's really talking about and there there are really interesting Like, um, Like Ace combat Or like imagine being like on the ships likeike that the aircraft carriers or whatever. a lot of games like Battlefield. could benefit a great deal from kind of this Really having a game in the sky, really having a game on the ground. I know it's kind of going between those two things, but imagine if you had a really fleshed out game in both places and they interact with each other But I do wonder, Chris, it's an idea that has never really been reapproached. and I think there's a reason for that is that it's complex and it requires two vibrant multiplayer games, and you're asking for a lot Yeah, that's a That's a tall order. I also just think like generally, like novel ideas like that. I mean, we talked about Midnight Murder Club. Not too long ago where it's just like these are this is a great idea But Sometimes there's not an appetite for great ideas. Sometimes people just want something that they kind of understand and That doesn't demand a lot of That doesn't demand a lot of thought it's a little bit easier to sink into, a little bit more of a background experience. and that's what most people kind of are into. and As good as an idea is, like you can you kind of can't force people U to adopt it I've long thought it would be like a really cool idea to have like a like like an RTS kind of game where like one person on each team is like the guy in the sky And like everybody else is like Everybody else on the team is like FPS And like they're directing and like they've got a guy on the mike and they're like You know what I mean coordinating and st Yeah. That's cool But that's a lot I think it's a great idea I don't think it would do well. Yeah it requires too much luck. I mean, you could and that's what it would really need, right? Be we've talked about so many times the idea that good and great is not good and great enough. And so like you could say like, yeah, we have these two inter inter changeable games that interact with each other And they're both great. and it's like That's step one. Now you get P now Now you got to deploy them both into the wild and get people to play both of them And that's ye. And with five hundred four, that was an easier prospect than than it was now. and ironically, Eve still is played by hundreds of thousands of people. so They're doing fine. It's just, u I think the commercial realities of it stop it from happening. It's not unlike we say about Mass effffect. and what's so cool about Exus and a few other games that really are really all about choice and bringing Banner saaga is another of these games, Bringing choice between the games But that doesn't happen a lot, not because it's not cool and funp, because it's really fucking hard And and you can't and it locks you in. You have to have like plan, you have to have knowledge fore knownledge of things you're about to do and you have the guarantee that they're going to happen then you yeah wasn't to pull the plug on bioware at that time They might now All right Chris So we have is a nice long episode, a lots to talk about. It's good to be here with you and it' good to see Dustin a little bit as well. Just a little bit I don't want to see him too much right now Just a little. We'll ease back into it What's going on with you the rest of today? U It's a little bit later because we got a media episode today. so it's almost three I still want to I'm still in the middle of deep cleaning. so I I want to get my deep cleaning done. but I'm trying Iess I got to fure what I'm going for dinner I really don't Uh. You got time ig up. Yeah, I probably gott to go grocery shopping too. It's a whole rands All this Yeah, but ye it' good though it's good to do it But tonight I'm probably gonna to put together the document for the Destiny Bungie Sacred episode're going Cool ye Yeah, I'll get that right up now when we're done here. Um But outside of that, my day is pretty I'm gonna to be indoors, I think Yeah, me too. It's ninety eight degrees out right now, so so That is great. It's like, I think, what's the number in good old Burbank Seventy six Yeah. wish. I wish that would beautiful. Pfect I'm araid to look outide and see what coition my plant are in right now they're going they're going to need health ton Oh, yeah Yeah, for me, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go work out and, I'm waiting for the Sundayight now. I'll go float in the fucking hot tub or the I mean the pool but it's a it's a hot tub Its just s to we areough and have a beer and just kind of bake for a little while and then yeah, back to Grand Dft Auto tonight. And have you been watching the World Cupital? No. I really I know what's going on With it like I've heard I know Mexico one or something. Like I really Yeah, all three host teams have moved on to the round of sixteen, which is cool. Yeah, I have no, um I just I just don't I can't I can't care. Yeah. I saw they did a I saw they did a, uh Like that, I cared at all about the NBA That was not the next one. that that was a miracle on All the people all the people in the audence are sports people, that's a miracle on your part. that I carired at all. Yeah, that captured a lot of people It did. Yeah It did. I would otherwise let's not put let's notush it socerough Right, Fair enough. It's a little too faroreign for artists. All right, Chris, was good to see you as always, thank you for your time Do will to Thank you all out there for your love kind and support. We appreciate you, Patreon com slashastAMedia for early at free access and lastAMedia. store for merch. S'll see you next time. Until then Take care guys Sacred symbs, 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 Rayagon Maldonado and Dustin Fermman The show is produced by executive producer, Dustin Ferman. All of Last Stan's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvias. 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 Deav Thank you. Neil Ayman, Ross Marenka, Morgan Ashley, Michael Vecio, Daniel Dia Moore, Patrick Leslie. Donald John Vaders, Steve Innerfield, Smokeless Joe, Neo Sapien L. Sarry Toby, Colin Davenport, Stehven Bonnell. 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