Future of Xbox Hardware Strategy

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I mean it's it's actually I mean it good. There was a fire not too far away and now the gloom has come in and taken care of that, which is nice. Hello, I'm Jeff Gerersman, your host for this week's edition of the Jeff Gerstman showow It's a podcast about video games and computer entertainment By that, I mean pornography. Oh that means something else. Okay, all right, well, whatever. Okaykay. All right My Noint falcon away and we'll get on with things. How's it going ' been u An interesting week of N not great news. I don't know. L the interesting video game releases And and some some kind of sad news I guess around Around some stuff here. I am of course referring to the release of Yoshi in the mysterious book, I know. Drim tidings, you know, to brring your way Um, yes, they put out they put out the new Yoshi video game and we've been we've been playing bits and pieces of it here and there. Around the house, my daughter played a little bit of it and then bailed and went right back to Tomodaci life. I think she's she is just obsessed with with Tomodacci life at this point. and You know, she's just like telling her little stories and making her characters do silly things and They're having babies and they're, you know, they're getting mad with each other and all this other stuff. And that's been been fun. Yoshi, the Mysterious book is really interesting Um Like I wish it wasn't a Yoshi game because the egg stuff is is kind of in this game, but like it's, I don't know. they've improved upon the egg throwing stuff from you know, all the way back in the day to, you know, Yoshi's Island or whatever. So You know, it's not it's not Yoshi's Island bad, I guess. But like there's They did a really interesting thing here where You know, Yoshi is going into a book that has been messed up, I guess. and they named the book mister E And I think that they should just like they should They not realize that that scumbag pickup artist mister E wrote all those books years ago and like it was like a big scumbag. It's a really weird thing for them to do. Maybe I'm the only one who remembers. that like that piece of shit was like God, That's just a fucking crazy thing. Anyway, the book is named Mrter E and it's a real throwback to some dark days But, you know, it's kind of meant to be a look at the different animals and creatures of this whatever storybook or you know, like whatever iss going on Um, And so you'll you'll get to a page that's about a flower. or about a a spring animal or something, you know that bounces, you know, and and Your job is to go in there and find all of these different ways to interact with it that will then fill out the pages of the book with statistics and information about what these creatures are capable of And after you do enough of that, it'll say like, oh, you know, do we should name it. Do you want to name it or do you want me to suggest a name? you know, because the game the game has names for all that stuff. But if you want to name them all things, you can do that. And, you know, you're finding five flowers along the way and and so you're you're You know, there'll be stuff like oh, there are spring monsters like little frogs or I don't know what they are, but they the little springing guys And when you bounce on them, it plays a musical note And so it'll do stuff like, oh, you know, like it one of the pages in the book will be if you go do Re mi fasso Latito. and then there'll be another one for going backwards on it. that'll, you know, be a little bit harder to find if you're not sure what to look for Um, you know, it'll play like a twinkle, twinkle little star on on one set of them. And so if you complete the song, you'll get up to the top and there's a flower up there to collect But also it'll say, oh look at that. you played a song on the things. It's crazy And so it inspires you to kind of interact with the creatures in as many different ways as possible where like it'll be like a flower that you can like, oh, well, if I planted in the ground here, it'll do this and it'll make this area change into this. and that's an interesting interaction. And so You're hunting for these specific interactions over the course of the game. and I think it's like a really, really neat idea U like I haven't played enough of it to to, you know, say with certainty, but also it kind of gets a little old. They built in things to to where like if you get stuck, you can you know like spend some currency to get a hint or whatever about like, oh, what might I be looking for? Because you know, some of these interactions are going to be relatively obscure U And so they're going to be, you know, they may be a little difficult for some folks to find And so it's good that they put that system in there. but it also sort of Like that also kind of reveals maybe the game's downfall a little bit is that It's it's two fold, right? There are things where you're prodding at it and thinking this should be a thing and it's not. And there are things that you go Oh, that was a thing. Weird. okay And so your expectations about what the sort of what the different interactions could be. sometometimes those line up And you feel smart and you're surprised and ah, yay. And sometimes you're like, no, this has to be a thing. Like why would this other thing be here if it wasn't going to be a thing And you obsess over a little thing that turns out to be nothing And, um That is a little frustrating or, you know, can be Usually if you just kind of like bail on that and just kind of like focus on finishing the level. get through it and then go back in and figure out what you're missing. That ends up being sort of a better way to go. if you just are looking to make progress consistently But but it's it's a really neat idea. They they They had a neat idea and they executed it mostly well and that's I don't know, I don't know for a Yoshi game, that's kind of all you can ask for Um And, uh And yeah, for as much as my daughter was watching trailers of that game prior to its release and asking me, when we getting it? when when it when' is it coming out? we are we going to buy it? What are we doing? I'm like, we don't mean, o It's the sand's It's a long store anyway. And then she played it for all of like forty five minutes and then hasn't touched it since. So I don't know, you know, take take what you will from from that from that end of the experience, I suppose. Um I've been playing a little bit of dzble zero seven first light. I've not gotten too deep into it. I'm still basasically at the beginning of a game. Um And uh It's interesting, you know, like like hearing the game described as I You know, like I saw someone was was describing it as like one part hitman, one part uncharted and yeah, I mean they they did not just make a new hitman game. but like tech wise it is definitely a bump up from hitman. There are some things about it that you see in terms of just like the way James Bond moves and walks and the run button and some of those other little things that you go like, yeah, okay. think I see a little bit of Not necessarily like hitman DNA, but like Iio interactive DNA, I suppose, you know, like they They hit upon a really good set up with the most recent hitman game. So you know, it makes sense that they would maintain some aspects of that Like the start of it is really good. You know, they they put you through Um, you know, some some early kind of pre I mean, that's the whole story, right is, you know, James Bond becoming James Bond or whatever, but like they do a they do a good job of starting that out as like, oh, you're just a dude on a helicopter and shit goes bad and now you've got like a lady in your ear he trying to get you to do spy shit because the mission went so sideways that they're counting on you a lowly airman to to kind of get the get the job done And and I think that's a really interesting setup for the early part of the game. Um It's funny, you know, like it's James Bond is such a fucking weird character, you know, like Origins of James Bond When I think about the origins of James Mond, I think like, oh, we're telling like Cold War era stories and these are like weird fifties era, sixties, you know, he's a young man and the SAS, you know, like like you think about some kind of post World War two thing or whatever because the James Bond franchise has been around forever But this is a game where very quickly you're encountering like biometrically locked guns and shit you're just like, o, okay. yeah It's a, you know, it's is a it is it is a modern day retelling or not even a retelling. I guess they haven't really, you know, they haven't really gotten into it, but like You know, you find a like one of the first things you find when you get inside is like a fucking submachine gun You're like, I found a gun,' got the sear that was fred off and all a thisden And the lady in your ear goes like Yeah, that's really cool. Those are discontinued and they're biometrically locked and you just sets it back down and walks away. You're just like, o, okay Yeah, we have bio it's like a fucking metal gear solid four out here. And so yeah, you know, it's it's, you know, it's not It is not the like swinging fuckking Martini fucking Roger Moore Sean Connery James Bond game which obviously, you know, that's Of course, right Um But like it ends up being kind of a weird Yeah, I don't know. L like like right off the bat, I think that that's kind of my thing about it is like this this kind of weird retelling or this this weird kind of re originating of James Bond as a modern current figure. becausecause that's I mean, Roger Moore better or worse. Roger Moore is the James Bond that I grew up with. likeike the when the the James Bond movies that were coming out when I was a kid And first when I first heard about James Bond, it was when Roger Moore was playing the role. And so like That's, you know, I think he I Th think he did fine But like when I think about James Bond The first image that comes into my head is still somehow fucking Roger Moore, which is, I don't know Weared Tim you know, Timothy Dltery did a really good, you know,, but yeah, so it's u It's, you know, it's got it's stealth mechanics. It's got its cover system. You know, there's a kind of a dash to cover thing that they do. where you're if're if you're far away like a little bit a distance from cover, you can tap U you can tap the run button and he will just dash into cover quickly, which is kind of cool Um And yeah, I don't know. the intro to the game is a very guided experience. It's very much like likeike it's mechanical. and Hitman was very mechanical, but Hitman was mechanical in like a clockwork kind of way for this to be a story driven game where you're progressing through an environment. Like there's There's a moment early on that I kind of got hung up on a little bit because you're you're they've showed you like how to dash behind cover But it's not always immediately clear How much cover is good cover and will they see me if I go cover to cover And so they have these sequences where there's just a bunch of fucking guys with flashlights and guns walking out And they're just like standing there and there's like eight of them. And you're like, okay, well clearly, I mean,, you know, like they haven't shown me anything about how to fight U in the game yet. There's no been no tutorializing about fighting or anything of that nature. So clearly I'm not supposed to get behind a guy, which was like the first thing I did before that part is there's a guy who breaks off from the pack and I'm like, oh, this is where's going to show me how to snap a dude's neck. and I walk up behind him and nothing fucking happens. And I'm like, oh, and then he turns around shoot shoots me. and I'm like, oh, great, okay I guess we get to go back to a checkpoint, Great But u The early cover stuff is funny because all those guys walk out there and they just fucking stop because they're waiting for you to make your way along this kind of broken cover to get over to some grass. And there's no tutorial indication that says you need to go this way. Um, which, you know, there probably doesn't need to be, but it's just it's kind of a silly thing of like I sat there for a little while going like, are these guys going to turn around, walk away and then I follow them or what the fuck? Because it was not like the cover didn't look like cover. It looks like terrain, which is to the game's credit, it looks like realistic terrain and not like here's a low fucking wall for me to hide behind Though then a couple of minutes later, they literally have a fucking low wall for you to hide on Um, And I sat there for a long time just at some point going like, is one of these guys gonna come down and shoot me? Because like did they program something in to go like, dude? You've broken the fucking. You you you broken K Fabe on stealth in this game. U And we need to kill you and reset you back to the checkpoint because it's dumb that these guys have stood here for five minutes, but they will just fucking stand there until you fucking move. It's really dumb Um, and and so like that That kind of mechanicalness U that Hitman's full of it, right? But Hitman makes its entire game around the idea of that mechanical nature. L likeike Hitman is you manipulating and turning those gears yourself and going like, okay, have I stick a wrench here and do this to the gears and do this, then they'll walk this way and then I'll go over here and do this and Um, and and so like That sort of behavior, I think is absolutely perfect for that game U somethingomething like this here was a little like Yeah This seems this this It was it was an early moment of just like, these video games are still video games They have not they have not u They have not beaten that stuff yet. Um Anyway, I've been messing with it on PC. It looks really nice there and runs really well. Also, the PC version of the game maybe has one of the worst settings menus I've ever seen where all of the settings are just listed and you have to push a button into them to get the setting to expand out so you can see what's selected Is this set to ultra? Is this set to DLA Is this set to what? It like, okay button into it and then it'll expand out and then you can then now you see it. like Okay now let me back out of that and look at the next setting. Is this set how I want to set it? Like they don't just show you here are the current settings. It's like srazy, whoo would do that There's nothing cinematic or exciting about it just's terrible. It'serri Um They should change it. It's a dumb thing to fucking get hung up but like the settings menu is done poorly and they should completely rip it out and replace it one of these days Um But I'm looking forward to spending more time with it for sure. Like it's, you know, I think it's u I don't know. like it's got a sufficiently cinematic feel to it out of the gate that you, you know, you're like, okay, like I want to see I want to see more of this thing For sure. so So I will be spending some more time with that in the coming days Um I also played some Vortica, which is on steam now.. Vortica, This is one of those games couldn't tell you How Vortica ended up on my steam wish list What moments I went like, o Vortica, I need to, you know, I need to know about this when it comes out I couldn't tell you how long it's been there. Maybe I could. maybe Steam shows that. U But I got a message last night that Vortica was out. And I was like, what is this? Well, I put it on my wish list, so I should probably check it out And it's cool. It's a top down, you know, kind of a dual joystick shooter sort of thing I. But you're also getting melee weapons and you can equip everything to everything And so you are getting all of these different items like a belt light that'll light up an area. You're getting crowbars and knives as well as guns And you can put anything on any button you want. If you find a mapping unit, which seems like something they give you in maybe the second dish level or so then then you can pull up a map and you can even assign that to any button. It's a weird interface, but I think it works it works pretty well Um But it is a top down, you know, like you're exploring space stations and you're You know, it feels like a game. there's a separate rogue light mode that you can go into that is like, hey, we're throwing away the story here and you can just go on these missions and do stuff Um and and get in there and just get items, get out, all that sort of stuff. But but I'm playing through the more kind of story focused mode right now, which is not a heavy focus on story, but it feels like it's kind of feeding your missions in a logical order instead of just kind of dumping you into an environment and saying, goo run these missions over and over again until you die. U It's got a good feel to it. The, you know, the dual joystick nature of it is, you know, like the guns need to reload and stuff. So it's not just like you're dumping all the time U it has a very Yeah, Rajago says it looks nuclear thronish. Yeah, there is a there is a mildly cartoonish look to the visuals, I guess I would say It's that type of indie game. It's that type of indie game look Indie game look number twelve Um it's not painterly. Um, but yeah, no, it's a s It's a pretty neat game vard against V O R T I C A U Go give the trailer a look. It seems like it could be a neat one of those. I need to put some more time into it Either way. Let's take a break. 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I don't I don't know why the mere mention of Unreal Engine six makes me fucking per They're going to make unreal Egine six. I mean, of course they were, but they went ahead and announced it over the weekend U Well, I guess they didn't so much announce it as they showed a trailer for Rocket League the same rocket league They are going to overhaul it finally. This is something they've been threatening to do for a while. att one point they said they were going to bring it into Unreal Engine five And then they showed a a it's not even a trailer. It's like a picture of the rocket the the The rocket arena Rcket No, rocket arena The Rocket League fucking stadium And you can see every blade of grass And then a car drives onto the field and it's really shiny. people in that fucking French stadium W fucking bonkers Actually not so much. out of the people in the stands were into it, but like the people doing commentary were like going what What? Did you know? Oh my Godd. Did you know? I did not know that they were going to do this? It was like just fucking ridiculous. Anyway stupid Um It was bad. It was yeah, it was it was typical esports commentary, but applied to an announcement about a game and it's always, I don't know, like it was just you just like, oh God, these people. Um I didn't know they were gonna do this. Did you know? it's like six of them at the desk trying to like like fake excitement about a thing and going like who which one of you knew ahead of time? Oh I tried to get the information, but they wouldn't tell me. And there's like a man in a hat like before the trailer airs like a guy in a fucking suit with a hat comes he's like standing in this fucking Like this hexagon fucking tunnel. And let's talk about the future of Rocket League. And it's just like what the fuck are we doing? Anyway, And they showed this like very brief thing And then they like, you know, mock flipped out about it and and then that was that. The end of the trailer just shows the unreal logo and then they draw a little six on it and that's it Oh, by the way, it's unreal Engine six. They have not really given any additional details. um, about When that is happening or when the engine is getting this update or what it means for any other game developer or anything like that Um It's funny, man. one of the things I find that makes that makes for a good esports game as an esports expert. But generally speaking The games that seem to like really get their claws into a community and stay there for a really really, really long time Um Are games that run on anything? Games with really low specs that can run on damn near any machine and run well there so that people around the world can play the game no matter what and you're getting more and more people into the game. That's that was the big counter strike secret When you ask the question, why does Valorant look like dog shit? It's that's why. Um is because they wanted to keep the specs down. And so the idea of them saying now Rocket League is going to be the first game to ship on un realal which I guess they didn't say that but that's the First game announced to be moving to Unreal Engine six That seems like a very fucking questionable fucking concept So Um, Yeah, I don't I don't really I don't really quite know what to make of that, but I don't know. they're going they're going to do that. and u And that's that's really about it. It's been what is it? It's been like four is years since Unreal Engine five. I feel like the Unreal Engine five has a bad rap and I think that maybe only some of that is is earned. It was earned in the early days for sure. like the early days of UE five felt Um Rough You know, the games that were meant to be some of the big early show pieces for UE five, you know, they rolled it into Fortnite and people were pissed Be for some of the same reasons I was just talking about, because like the system requirements suddenly fucking went jacked up and Some suddenly all these players were CPU bound and and Fortnite suddenly ran like shit. And they're like, what the fuck, you know, like they spent all this time talking about like, well, Nanite is going gonna to do this and we're going, you know, like all of these features and you look at it and you go like, that's actually that's some really cool shit. But it feels like that the end result of that did not match their early ambitions when they talked about the engine rolling out When they talked about Lumen, when they talked about all the stuff they were doing for UE five Nowadays, I think, you know like things are in a better place like, you know, people have gotten better they've updated the engine also like they, you know, it is it is a more optimized and better product than it was when UE five originally shipped. So you know, like like they've certainly done work to improve the situation But a lot of those early games, a lot of those early UE five games Um, were're kind of a mess And and yeah, that's, you know, asZggan points out, like Borderlands four was last year and had pretty shit performance. I I don't know how much of the Borderlands four issue you can pin on UE five though. I guess like that's, you know There's always going to be a, you know, developers have to develop it the right way a certain they have to do some stuff do it and maybe Maybe some of that was was out of their hands. I don't really know. like there' certainly been success stories on UI five in the years since. but it still has I think it has maintained a certain cloud over it even as a lot of the issues have been ironed out over time and whatever, like UE five still, then that's why I say it gets sort of a bad rap sort of an undeserved bad rap because I think they have largely fixed a lot of that stuff But u Yeah, I don't know. People were not thrilled by it. And and it ties into kind of this whole generation of consoles and how do these games perform and how these you know, I think there's been been a lot of stuff about that. So I think that's why when they said, Hey, we're moving to unreal Engine six All I could do was laugh because I'm like yeah, let's get right back on this horse, man I wonder what they will announce in terms of features because you know, for all we know Like like ideally they say, hey, we're making Unreal Enggine six and it's going to run on a lot more machines, it's going to run favorably on a much wider array of GPUs and CPU's and You know, we're really working on that front because U I don't know if you noticed. No one can fucking afford to go buy new graphics cards. Um, let alone new CPU's, Motherboards Ram all, you know, like The upgrade pipeline is slowing And so rolling out a new engine right around now. if their focus is going to be like, man, you can fucking see every blade of fucking grass and you're going to do this and well, you better buy some more, you know, like if that is the The reality for Unreal Engine six, like they are fucking walking into a brick wall. they' like this is a terrible situation. You know? It's like it feels like the worst time imaginable for u for there to be some kind of major tech iteration that ends up you know, like requiring people to to upgrade or something like that. So hopefully keepeeping that in mind as they develop this. and realizing that like GPUs are out of control GPU pricing is out of control. like all a lot of pricing across the board for PC components, obviously console pricing, like just everything top to bottom is really fucking bananas And it's not like it's, you know, getting better And so yeah, I'm very curious to see what they have to say about U about what Unreal Engine sixix is going to bring that unreal Egine five did not because this this feels like This feels like it could be a real Itust just a real I don't know. It feels like a real bad time for that, I guess Um E with new consoles theoretically around the corner Like that stuff seems like mildly up in the air, right Sony said as much in their last earnings call. If you take that at face value, which you kind of have to do because they're not going to lie to their investors Um you know, they got out there and said like, yeah, as far as like timing and pricing and all this other stuff like it's really you know, I don't know. the shit's real bad out there. We got to really think about it And that seems to be the case So yeah, I don't, you know, like if if major console launches are being rethought or at least like being done a little more carefully than they have been in generations past new engine tech like this If they're targeting the wrong end of the spectrum here, that seems like it could be fucking disastrous Um maybe they'll come up with their own shader delivery technologies that will will finally stop shader compilation in UE games for for one like once and for all. like everyone is working on one, right? Like Valve has had theirs for a while Microsoft is pushing their advanced shader delivery stuff forward U for PC games. And and so like that stuff is getting a little bit better. I just I wonder if if Unreal is going to go, we got one too We also have a repository full of pre compompiled shaders that you can download from wouldn't be the worst thing the world. Someone will eventually get it right. Someone will eventually roll it out in an in dramatic fashion and fix that problem PC players T It hasn't quite happened yet Yeah, I don't really there's there's there's not really a lot of other news. The other thing I'll say about the Rocket League stream is if you like dudes who look like they might say, you do not want this smoke If you like, u And if you if you watch this podcast, you probably do. If you like pasty pudgy white dudes looking tough wearing fucking, you know, soccer uniforms that have been repurposed to be esports uniforms Um Brother Let me tell you the Rocket League esports stream might be for you. They got these guys walking through this tunnel and there's smoke and the guy walks out and he's just like he's trying to fucking have his fucking He's trying to mean mug the camera. He's trying to give you the best screw face he got and you're just like, I don't what do If you're here in France to play Rcket L league, stop it. Um But if you like that rightight around I think it's like the match that takes place like right after the trailer or whatever. because I was I had to skip around because it was live The event was live when I heard that the trailer was in there. So I went skipping around looking for it and happened upon these fucking dudes. And I was just like, oh man Great stuff. Less great stuff Destiny two Um has reached an end Bungeie posted an update here. They say, you know, hey For almost twelve years, we've you know, destiny, you all so stuff It has become clear that after the final shape, we have reached the time for our shared worlds and destiny to live beyond Destiny two As our focus turns towards a new beginning for Bungie We will begin work incubating our next games. To that end on june ninth, twenty twenty six, we will release the final live service content update. for Destiny two to begin that new journey as a studio, though active development may be concluding We will ensure that Destiny two remains playable just as the original destiny is today Many changes in this final update will aim to ensure that Destiny two is a welcome place for players to return to Um And they've got like a kind of a long set of, you know, kind of patch note style stuff saying like, hey, here's here's the stuff that we are Here's the stuff that we are rolling into the game to kind of put it into more of a like a maintenance mode style of thing This has been This feels like something that has been destined to happen for years now. Um, Destiny two has not been on a great track They have not been been doing amazing numbers or You know, but like it has not been raking in the money the way they thought it wood and all of that other stuff, I think is is accurate. Um for a while now Um And as even with updates like the final shape coming out, like you you look at You look at that content. And you go, okay, yeah, like there's this is cool But like not in a way that's going to like bring a mass of either new players or returning players back to the game. This is the thing that I've been talking about with Destiny two for a very long time U is that Destiny two became increasingly unfriendly to returning players With every update, I would try to get back into it I haveve had some amazing times with Destiny too Destiny two, on the whole is a really good game U that hit the skids pretty hard because they, you know, and I think in a lot of ways, it felt like they were really just targeting the players who were still with them, which is great to supererve that Audience That audience has not been big enough to sustain the game, I think I think for a while now And u It never really felt like, you know, they did their big redesign of of the the main screen when you first get connected of like You know, hey, we're going to point you at content and you should do this. Here's the things you should do. They tried to K kind of at least point players in the right direction if they weren't sure what they should be doing next I found that That particular revamp be incredibly underwhelming and not actually solve the problem Um You know, they had a couple of bad updates that the existing fanbase didn't like. And That's going to drive people away from the game They did their Star Wars thing that like had some neat ideas and a couple of interesting visual looks, but also had this weird, I don't know, like this desperate sort of feel to it Um And so, you know, it's been on this downward trajectory for quite some time I would say years at this point And so like it's been retty obvious. that eventually they would move on from Destiny two. Destiny two was not in some position of strength where they were like, we're going to invest a ton of money into this to do a big expansion and do a big this or do a big that Like no, they did that in all the expansions leading up to the final shape, like they they they blew it a couple of times along the way there to You know Um And so at some point, you just don't keep investing money into that thing Period If you're Bungie, if you're Sony, if you're anybody, anybody with a, you know, looking at the, you know, the state of the game. I feel like externally even without any real, you know insight into Wout any major inside inside into the game. I mean, I feel like we've we've heard bits and pieces of like You know, oh well rightight after Sony bought it is when Bungie really started kind, you know, like like the game really took a turn for the worse and the numbers have been like weirdly down and maybe not that weird because, you know, if you look at the track record of updates but like they the game, the content was not good And so if you're already on a small smaller player base than you want to have And you are putting out content that is getting those players to give up on the game let alone getting new players through the door and trying to acquire new users and all of that stuff, like at some point, that game's just going to stop. And that's what it's doing. I think it's really sad And I think that's something that a lot of bungie and ex bungie people out there have have shared some things like that. A lot of this gets chalked up to You know, if you believe what we've been hearing about Things at bunge for a while now Um A lot of bad management You know, A lot of Parsons's telling you about how many cars he has. This stuff You know, they've gone through rounds and rounds of layoffs. Um And Destiny two was very famamously a hard game to do update, you know, just a hard game, you know, like they they vaulted content. they put they took content out of the they took good content out of the game, G onboarding content that if you wanted to get someone new into destiny too. That's the content to do it with, man They ripped that out of the game. H And unfortunately, that that's kind of the One of for me one of the saddest things about this kind of maintenance mode or you know, the end of active development is they're not able to put that content back into the game You know Um It's not like they can unvault it and go like, here we go Um Obviously, it would take a lot of work and probably a lot of money to do that And this is not a game that they're looking to spend more money on. So that's that unceremonious to a certain extent. Um And's it's a fucking bummer Um There's been some additional reporting around this out of out of Bloomberg who reports that that, you know Like some people were like, oh well, this is, you know, the great they're going to work on Destiny likeike no, Destiny three is not in development, there has not been some green lit project, you know, from this reporting. there has not been some Like, hey,, we've got the next one coming or anything like that Um By multiple accounts, it sounds like the studio is bracing for layoffs on the other end of this kind of maintenance mode rollout, which is, you know a couple weeks off here because they will not need the number of people they currently have to make new content for Destiny two if they are not going to make any more destiny content And so this is going to reshape this studio again You know, a studio that's already been through a number of layoffs U And u It sounds like that there are some pitches and some projects and that you know, people trying to put something together and It's like, hey, what we should make this, we should make this But nothing has been nothing's gotten off the ground at this point. The studio will it sounds like they're going to focus on marathon which marathon season two starts pretty soon here B mostost accounts, it sounds like, you know, everyone on the development and publisher end of the marathon thing is they are they are in You know, like they're they're going they're going to keep going on it. Um And they should Like that's like Marathons' a fucking amazing game He just fucking fantastic It needs some things. U And and the interesting thing is when you read some of the Marathon patch notes And you read some of the recent stuff that Joe Ziegler said, He's the director of the game Um He mentions a lot of experimental stuff their stuff that they go like, okay, we're thinking about you know, some like they're thinking about ways to make that game slightly friendlier to players which I think is probably smart. It's the problem that Destiny two eventually ran into, right Eventually Destiny two. became something that was was too much for a new player to get into and really get into in a major way And Destiny two by its very nature and Marathon is doing this right now with the cryo archive with it with its kind of you know, end game activity that they have right now They are building It It's really It's a catch twenty two, man. It's a real fucked up situation because when you go back and you look at the raids of Destiny two or there's destiny as a whole as a concept You know, you go look at Vault of Gass, you go look at some of the other You know, ra I did I think I did three raids over my over my time, my time with Destiny U w or three Anyway, um Do things in that game other games don't do Craft encounters And they craft experiences in ways that are incredibly deliberate that are very high touch that are wonderfully different than just about anything else going Destiny's raaids Obviously, you know, they took cues from MMO raids of the past, you know, like obviously, you know, world of Warcraft casts a bit of a shadow over over that game They built things that and got players that would never do that in an MMO. They got players to get in on that at a rate that is still impressive The statistic I would really like to know, and there's probably an achievement or something we can look at tell us something about it What percentage of destiny players do you think ever actually completed a raid? It's Amazing content And the bars you have to clear in order to even be able to access it let alone be equipped and like like dialed in enough to complete it too high of a bar when your goal is to make a big mainstream, you know, like you've got to keep people coming through the door to keep the lights on for your game Brin's got a quote here I don't know where it's, but it says eleven to fifteen percent of all Destiny two accounts have ever completed a raid It's not a super high number It's still somehow higher than I thought it would be. Um And so they're making content that no one else is making. They're making A style of mission, a style of encounter, a style of boss fight that like no one else is really doing, especially in shooters U and it's wonderful stuff Crazy You have to fucking spend so much fucking time to this thing that most people are never going to do it And when you look at Marathon right now today You see them Kind of repeating that same process Pryo Archive is the kind of end game content in Marathon right now. It's a, you know, its it's a major operation. You're going in there with players and You know, you've got to clear six different vaults to get to the final boss and and you know, like there's a lot of mechanical density to that stuff. It is it is in a lot of ways different from the rest of the game Um And in a lot of ways it's very similar to the rest of the game, but if you've played the rest of Marathon, you know There's youre you're kind of getting in doing new contracts, you're getting some stuff. you're getting to like Cryo is in I'm not high enough level to even fucking run Cryo. because a bunch of other games came out and I haveve not been able to play nearly as much marathon as I wish I could But like having seen enough of Cryo archive on various streams and talk to people about it, like it's that same style of fucking amazing content that you simply do not see anywhere else It's a level of puzzle solving that is higher than, you know, like they they expect a lot of their players And it's fucking awesome. So few games are willing to do that And I think there's a good reason why so few games are willing to do that is because they're trying to reach the widest possible audience and do all this other stuff And so like that's the situation that Bungie is putting itself into again with Marathon in a different way And so when you see the update from the director and he's talking about like, we want to experiment with different kind of TVE content or different kind of PVP. like, you know, we they want to have They want to have content in that game that fits whatever mood you happen to be in at the time If you want something that's a little more laid back and lower stress, or if you want to go all the fucking way, they want to have something for you And so I look at that and think about that they have with Marathon. It's new, it's exciting. It's fucking great I think that they've got an opportunity Build off of that keep that game Keep that game special the way it kind of needs to be also find ways to just extend something of an olive branch to the rest of the world and go like There's cool shit here for you too. And that's the hard balance. And I feel like that's the balance that got worse over time. with destiny I feel like with Destiny two I would hear great things about the raids. I would end the dungeons and some of the other kind of like cool stuff that they were doing as like end game content prerestige content, whatever you want to call it But like the mission to mission stuff like I fucking. had a strong dislike for just about everything I've played in Destiny two over the last I mean, at least two years, but probably realistically, like longer than that U Like that stuff's just, you know, like it kind of from a lower perspective, like disappears up its own ass in a way that if you're not constantly there with the game, I don't remember who these characters are. I played forty games between this Destiny expansion and this Destiny expansion You're just like okay, yeah I don't know if it' fucinking The crow is you know, like I's just like, fuck, whatever, man. and they didn't do a great job with that stuff. And I feel like the original lore of Destiny is like pretty straightforward in its own weird way There's a ball in the sky. peopleeople think it's Jesus or whatever and it stops talking to people. So now there's a guy who speaks for it You're like, okay And somehow some of these some of these people are immortal and when they die, they come back. And also there were wizards on the moon, You know, like, whatever, man Destiny P McCartney was there. Um So yeah, I don't know. I think they they didn't do a great job of like kind of keepeing people up with the lore during breaks in the game. They didn't do a great job of like pointing you at the new content. I had a couple a couple of times where I loaded it up, there was new content out and Destiny does a thing where when there's new content or you know, when they row out a new expansion and you buy it or whatever, it drops you right into the first mission and you go And, um You can still quit out of it and kind of do whatever, but like it's, you know it tries to get you into the mission. So I went into the first mission. I think it was the first mission of the The Star Wars stuff Um And I got to the end of that mission and there's these big walking tank thing, you know, like like big kind of It's the it's the no respawn zone at the end of the mission and there's there's big shit there And I bang my head against that thing for like forty five minutes alone A lot of times they the game would match you in with other players for that kind of initial mission to make it seem bigger than it is. you're like, oh, we're all going to do this and all the, you know But this time I was all alone just kind of doing this thing And just kept dying over and over again. I felt like I didn't have the right fucking items to take this thing on. Like I didn't have the right equipment or something And so I did that for a while And I was like, I've got other stuff to do with my life than this. and that was the last time I played Destiny two And and yeah, I don't know.'s this whole thing is a fucking bummer, but it's not like a shock, I guess.'s It's surprising just because destiny has been there for so long, twelve years. twwelve years of their ten year plan They survived activision They survived the president of Activision Apparently showing up at the studio with drawings his child had made of spaceships. and said like, you should put these in the game They survived that. Um And so to go all the way through to the other end on this thing Like the writing, I feel like has been on the wall for a long time. Like there's nothing about this that you go like believe they But the game is so good, you know, like like you look at it and go like, yeah, it's probably about time. It's probably about time for for Destiny to development to wrap up I wish that they were doing it for more of a position of strength. I wish I want to see a destiny. I still in spite of everything I just said, I would be extremely interested in a Destiny three in a new game in the Destiny franchise That is not a mobile game. Um I would be very interested in that I think you do a time jump. If I were writing Destiny three, I would be like, hey, it's been like two hundred years sense the events of Destiny or whatever. and now even that stuff is now another weird legend tasted on top of the weird white ball in the sky shit and you kind of, you know, a new generation of guardians and new like you kind of do something like that give it something of a reset. Um And it's all racing. There's no guns. It's all just Fucking sparrow racing Um But yeah, it's u It's it's it's a, you know, like and apparently they are like I said, apparently they are the reporting is that they are bracing for layoffs in the wake of this which I think is, you know, Like if they're not going to be making a game making or maintaining Um, A game as large as destiny is with new content then there's probably people at that studio. And and also they're not rolling right into, you know, full production on a brand new thing then that studio is probably still somehow too large for what they're doing, I guess. I don't know Um And it sounds like some Destiny two folks have rolled over onto Marathon. and so they are they are focused on that. I think there's, you know Again, Marathon is a very special game. It is special in like, not in the way that destiny was special It is equally special in a completely different way, I guess is what I would say Um I think that the The way they've pulled in the lore from these ancient fucking Macintosh games is beautiful And they've made it accessible in a way. L it doesn't feel like you're like well, I need to go back and play some fucking nineties fucking met. like no, you don't need to They will reveal they'll tell you what you need to know. But they've done a ton of fucking cool shit U they've done a lot of really cool things inside of Marathon since its release And u It's a game that like, even though I'm not like playing it every single day anymore, like every single patch notes, a set of patch notes, I read for it, I go like, oh fuck yeah Like every step they take seems like a step that is further in the right direction m They just have to make it through season two you know, like if you think about the development of game and how long it takes and how development of post release content often takes place before the release of the game. A lot of the stuff in season two. like they've done great like pivots and experiments and they're finding ways to kind of freshen up the game and do things that I bet were not initially on their their, you know, their roadmap or whatever The bulk of season two is stuff that they thought they would do, you know prior to the game's release And so in some ways, season three probably ends up being the first one that is truly shaped player feedback and the needs of that audience. And so Um I wonder I wonder how season two will end up fararing. It sounds like they're doing like a nighttime version of one of the levels in season one, which That sounds fine, but it is not a marquee like, o, shit, you know, it's not You want new content relit content You know, I mean U There's been some, you know, like like I guess the Marathon steam reviews took a hit because a bunch of Destiny fans lashed out at it. Like this is not Marathon's fucking fault You know, this is like I said, I think there's a lot of this stuff you could lay at the feet of Bungie's management and You know, Destiny was a nice little business that I think if they had been smarter about how they updated it. I think that they would have been in a better place U And, you know, In some ways, The other piece of this is like Bungie is a studio that was purchased by Sony under a different regime You know, There's something to be said. like the frustrating thing about companies, the frustrating thing about corporations is that On top of it just being like compompanies are, you know, corporations are fucking' soul crushing entities by their by design and everything else You also have to deal with the individual humans and their own motivations and egos and all this other shit too And so when you're the guy who says, I'm going to buy this company You're the one who builds the case of we've got to buy this studio. It's going to be a big huge with it's part of our future. We're going to get out there and get into live service games, for example. And this is one of the studios we need to get. and they are the Marquee premier studio in the world for doing this And we're going to give them billions of dollars Um R is right as their game, right as their bread and butter is turning the corner. You know, right at the time when Destiny two is like Yeah yeah, I don't. Um is is is like a pretty wild piece of timing. but The thing it does puts that person on the hook desperately try to make that acquisition succeed. And now Jim Ryan's not there anymore And so you have a regime change at the top of Sony, Herman Holst is still there Still there Um you know, doing doing his thing, obviously, but like and so I'm sure I'm sure a lot of this like, oh these live service, this live service this and that. I'm sure a lot of that just gets pinned on I bet Jim Ryan is a very easy scapegoat for a lot of problems that touched a lot of people that are not just Jim Ryan U When I think about how these things typically work, that's not inssider information, I am kind of speculating a little bit here, but do have a situation here where Now the guy who would have been probably One of the main people who would probably want that acquisition to succeed is now long gone And so that's a little less protection for bunging. studio that already didn't have a ton of it. because they were external and they kept they were kept separate instead of rolling into the entire kind of Sy Sony studios umbrella or whatever, like they were they were kept allowed to be independent and whatever else. and this's kind of a some weird stuff around that stuff sometimes, but . But yeah, speaking as someone who threatened to quit a company not long after it was acquired get a very keen iew into how far some of those people are willing to go people who said, yes, let's spend the money to buy that thing Um, You get a very keen sense of how desperate they can be to not look like oh shit I was the one who said we could buy this website and then all the fucking people quit Be we fuck them on their contract Um So yeah Um So, you know, like that's now now Bungie is kind of in a situation where I think they don't have that level of protection and everyone's just trying to figure out like, what do we do going forward And I think Marathon is a really good thing to rally around. At least you can look at it and go like this game is of a high quality Like we're not rallying around shit here. We're not like taking garbage and trying to prop it up. It's like, here's a really fucking good game peopleeople that play it fucking love it. How do we get more people to play it As that ship sailed, What have we got to do And hopefully they get the opportunities to do that because I think that game and the players of that game, I think, deserve it Um But it looks like for now Bunchie is going to be solely focused on marathon and we'll see You know, assuming these layoffs are in fact legit and they do take place, which I assume they would be. whyy wouldn't they be Um then we'll kind of see what that looks like they have the resources they need to succeed Either way I'm really, you know, again, like as much as it's not Huge surprise. I am very sad to hear about the end of Destiny two. Destiny was a special thing in a lot of ways. Destiny is a game that is kind of on the road onn the same road of like Online multiplayer games as like fantasy star online. Like there's There's not like a direct lineage. It's not like, oh, this is the spiritual you know, it's not like they sat down and said, we want to make one of those, but But there's a Destiny did things differently because they made the game in a much more modern time than Sega made a fantasy star online for the Dream cast Butom They made a lot of really interesting choices right off the bat. structurally that I think set them up for making something really, really awesome And Destiny at its best was really, really awesome U Also, Destiny was Destiny One was a game that launched with not nearly enough content Remember when that beta came out? the demo came out for Destiny pre release And then like I don't know if this was something that was like talked about publicly a lot, but I remember playing through that demo and the word going around of like, by the way That demo is like a lot of the fucking game The demo was like a fucking way bigger chunk of Destiny one than you think it is and going like, wait what? So right out of the gate You know, u Right out of the gate, they had that issue. And some of it was just like, okay, well, well players are not ready for this type of online update thing. and You know, the raid did was not there on day one Um And then, you know, they had a really good expansion after that, but like that took time And so like Destiny one was was kind of a fucking shaky launch You know U. pulled it off You know, they pulled it off and they pulled it off a lot longer than I think a lot of other games would have done. And when you think about the turmoil and weird shit they went through structurally from, you know, deal they had with Activision to you know, getting out of that deal, but also like all of the details of that deal leaking out in the infinity Ward lawsuit. Um, All of that stuff super crazy. and then them getting acquired by Sony here, you know in relatively recent days. from being the fucking studio that made halo that Microsoft bought and then let go Iependent Bungie story is fucin unlike any other studio in history Like the twists and turns of that that company went through from the days of making myth and, you know, like just making Mac games and all of the other stuff that Halo was originally going to be, you know, like And then getting acquired by Microsoft and suddenly it's the biggest thing in the world As far as Microsoft is concerned Um And it became one of the biggest franchises in the world, you know And as much as I think three forty three gets a little bit of a bad rap sometimes Um When Bungie moved on to other stuff, It was never the same You know Bungie is probably a hard studio to maintain, you know, it's probably pretty expensive All all through the years, right Um But we'll see where things go from here? I would love to, you know, and At this point, it would fundamentally be a different thing because it would be probably completely different people by the time By the time anything got green lit and put together and whatever else, like who knows what Bungie would be? Wh knows what, you know, what what Sony's appetite for it would be But I hope at some point, do see another destiny game I don't know that I am holding out extremely high I don't know that that'll happen In fact, if you had if I had to guess, I would probably guess like probably not You give it some years Give it some time. I could see someone coming along and going like, dude We made too much money, we built too much brand equity around the name destiny to not make a fucking another one of these Right now is probably not the right time. If you look at the destiny to states and some of the things they've done with that game for the last couple of years, like why wouldn't you You might not want them to roll right on to Destiny three right now because they've not exactly been hitting home runs with Destiny two But I think with some time away from it I wouldn't mind. I would love to see another game like this. So We'll see This industry has a kind of a gross habit of dredging things up years years after that seems sensible to do so and going like, this is back So I wouldn't be too surprised. We got You know, four years down the line. And someone said, Hey It's time. It's time to do this So I'm not exactly going to be holding my breath Um You should check out Marathon. it's fucking really good. It's fucking really good, dude. U Infin Infinity Wward has new studio heads. Mark Grigsby and Jack O'Hara are our co studio heads of IW now Um And they're not necessarily talking about the game, but they kind of did an interview. likeike it it seems like Activision or somebody or I't they wanted to get the word out that like, hey Infinity Ward is on some shit. It feels like that's the attitude they want to And we've got new studio heads. And so it feels like that's been something that they It was like a very short interview that showed up on IGN And and the Infinity Ward social media has has tweeted some stuff out here that again, doesn't really get into the game here It's more just like setting the table Um for the studio Just sort of a weird thing, but okay, here's what they wrote We are infinity Ward. We build a visceral like right out of the gate visceral immmersive comombat experiences that hit different As a new chapter begins for this studio, we're focused on what defines us. Passion, precision, obsession, and an unrelenting drive to make the best entertainment in the industry Our next game is the result of that mindset, determined, bold, relentless, by a team pushing every detail, every system, every moment to its limit On behalf of everyone at IW, we're proud of what we've been building and excited to finally start sharing it with you, Mark and Jack, Studio heads, IW U And then according to Vo games chronicle. com. They then then did get out on another social media post And and say that what they are making is the quote the definitive modern warfare game So you know, we've we've heard that this game is going to be Modern Warfare I for a long time Maybe it won't be called that. you know, that's been been some of the talk on it It's u But we don't know that for sure, but it is a game that is going to be set in some form of the modern warfare universe. To me, this says that they want you to care about the new callall of Duty because they know that the last one did not get the job done And, um I think this is probably a smart move to at least try to, you know, like this isn't necessarily distancing themselves from Last year's game But it is trying to like again, set the stage of like, we've got new studio heads. We are fucking really pushing on this thing And we are we are looking to make the fucking best one of these we can make That is kind of the attitude that that studio seemed to have in twenty nineteen or whatever when when when the modern warfare reboot was in development And the interesting thing about The interesting thing about that game is how many of the different systems and different things that they touched Things that would go, you know, lightly touched for years were suddenly getting, you know really Great overhauls. Audio, I think is kind of one of the uersung ones of those, but like in a world where Battlefield was often cited as having really great audio and You know, callall of Duty just didn't. like they really overhauled their audio and took huge steps in the right direction there They year of multiplayer that year They had some interesting ideas around kind of third mode type stuff campaign itself was engaging in a way that the series hadn't been for a few years prior Black opps three and four were, you know, as much as people like zombies and three and everything there. Like the campaigns were basasically non existent and, you know, like you had this other O one of them had, you know, no campaign. the other one was the whole Frozen forest thing. Like Black opps really kind of got out there a little too far and the games started suffering. They wanted to be a hero shooter. They started putting characters with special abilities and ults in it and stuff. and I think it was in a lot of ways, that stretch is like the darkest period the franchise has ever seen That period from, I guess like ghosts. Black ops four, probably right There's like stuff Well, I guess like advced warfare is really good Pain in infinite warfare is really good, but the multiplayer was like kind of fucking fucked And so there's like there's bright points for sure along the way there. but But like that felt like a period of decline for the franchise overall Um It feels like they're kind of in that same boat again I would say it's too soon for them to be back in that boat again, considering they already kind of pulled the ripcn on a reboot And and they can't exactly do that again You know, we Between Black op seven and modern Warfare three being these games that felt very tacked on to the previous years's game to the point where the talk was one of them was just going to be paid DLC U. They need You know? Like they they need to write the ship and that is something that Infinity Ward did last time that they needed it They fucking nailed it And so I'm very interested to see what this ends up being Um, I think they're in a weirder and different hole. than they were last time out Be I feel like there's a certain fatigue on this that is not that you're not going to get away from er curious to see what they end up doing. and yeah, presumably they're going to announce that game soon. You know, they they wouldn't be doing these types of interviews if they were not going to be a significant part of the Xbox showcase. U So I expect that that's going to be, you know, something there for sure. And maybe they will announce it before this as, you know, I mean, yeah, video Games Chronicle speculates that hey, maybe the game will debut during game one of the NBA finals because they've certainly done before like that has been where they've shown their first commercial or or stuff like that. So, you know, it's entirely it's entirely possible that they do something like that again Um I think that, you know, yeah, someone mentioned in chat that, you know, they like being tied to war zone Um maybe is kind of a notot a sustainable sort of path. And yeah, there is something to the idea that like, you know, having to tie into war zone every year kind of, um limits what they can do . And I wonder what ends up happening there. War zone is still probably too big for them to just kind of throw away and go like, oh, well, that game is going to be over there now and our new game is not going to really tie into it or or like, hey, we're going to put these characters in the game and you'll have some kind of shared progress, but it's really not the same. I guess the war zone needs to be its own thing War zone needs to be its own battle Royale game And if you buy the premium callall of duty thing, you get a bunch of content in the free to play game. And, you know, which is sort of how it is, but also it still ends up being tied to every year of the game in a way that I think doesn't necessarily probably doesn't help zone have that cadence either if I had to guess I think some of those go back to the roots of warar zone, you know, I've said it before, but you know, hearing about the early days of war zone The talk was that Bobby Kodick Always thought of War zone as a demo You know, like like in order for him to be sold on it being a free to play thing that they had to say like, oh, yeah, this is going to be the free thing that gets people to go buy the real game when you know, with the popularity of Battle Royale at the time, being what it was that the pitch should have been like, hey, we need to make this free to play because we can fucking monetize the shit out of it and we can do this and sell this and do this As a result, it started out directly tied and it wasn't playay there for a bit, right? It started out directly tied to Ye' Call of Duty U I guess it was the Blackout, right? But when they moved to Warzone, that's when they made it free to play id that stuff there Either way, the game will not be on game passass. So There's that. But yeah, I don't know. we'll see we'll see where this goes. I don't really, you know, the other little bit of information that we know about it directly from the source is that they said it is not being developed for previous generation consoles, which would be the first one of these in a very long time that has not been which I wonder then if that has another kind of implication on Um What happens with War zone, right? I mean, they they probably want game to be probablyroably want to keep making money off of PS four players who want to play wararzone there, right? I would assume U Seg is re teasing the crazy taxi game that they've been working on. They This is something else that video gameschronicle. com picked up on there was a social media post with a little bit of a a little picture of a taxi in it last week. Nothing Nothing major, but it seems to indicate that we will probably hear more about Crazy Taxi in the very near future. consonsidering Summer Game Fest is b a week and a half out now. I assume that we will see something there The game was originally announced confirmed as part of the Game Awards back in twenty twenty three. seemems like a very long time they've been making a new crazy taxi. I can't believe they're making a new crazy taxi It seems like an insane idea I hope that that is just me being a little small minded about what Crazy Taxi can be because crazy Taxi to me is a perfect example game from an era when Comanies were still trying to figure out how to bring arcade games home And crazy taxi is cool is crazy taxi As that arcade game is crazy taxi, something that you're going to pay full price for Yeah M I don't know That doesn't that doesn't immediately sound like a great plan. U And so I look at it as an opportunity for them to make a game that is much larger, but then is that fun? Is that Crazy Taxi? Do they do they, you know, do they get too far away from what Crazy Taxi is? And maybe this is it would be weird for this game to be in development for this long, but maybe this game is a small arcade focused thing. And it will not be a full price game, right? I mean, you know, it's we don't we don't know right now. But it seemed like the indication around some of these games that they were making between this and Jetet you know, whatever they do with Streets of Rge, like the way that they announced this stuff had the feel of going big on these franchises You know what I mean And and maybe that's off base, but it's still a really weird I don't I don't really know how you build a whole game or Crazy Taxi is a thing that I like playing for about forty five minutes and then like, yeah, cool And then coming back to it, U a while later, Oh long while. I mean, these days a very long while, but like I u I don't know. that's just such a weird It's aird thing to bring Um It's a weird thing to bring But I really want to see what they're gonna to do with it. I do think that there there is something there. There's certainly something there to kind of that is worth bringing back I am probably I don't know, man. that off I don't like the offspring enough to for that to be like a thing that U I see people multiple people in the chag go Well, you know, if they put if they bring back offspring for it like No, offspring kind of sucks, dude. It was a great time It was a great time for that offspring song to be in that exact game Great era. for that But like if you're telling me, hey man, we're putting this game out and yeah, we're putting this like back in it like I don't know But I also I think you can't get away from it. I think there's probably no way for them to like if I were a Betten man, I would absolutely say yes that song appears in that game Um You know, I think you you kind of you can't get away from it at this point, but Um Giant skkull, the studio Started by Stig Asmoson kind of post his time at respawn They had announced that they were working on a dungeons and Dragons game. Hasbro has announced now or I guess Bloomberg has reported that game is no more that game has been canned Um, no real reason you know, there's The quote that Wizards of the Cast gave is u You know, we decided not to pursue an early concept from Giant Skull. We have great respect for Stig Asmerson and his team and ev value our ongoing relationship And then Asmuson gave a quote that also said thingsings are good and that they're still talking to wizards of the Coast as well as other potential publishing partners. So This is not something that is shutting down the studio U And so it sounds like that they are going to be out there pitching something around, mayaybe not this game, but maybe Maybe something else, but Um that they have chosen to not go forward with that game. People seemed very excited about it at the time of announcement. you know, Stig had his name on some really wonderful action games over the years. and so so he's got quite a reputation for himself and you know interesting to see what that studio eventually pulls up with I don't know, I don't know what to make of this, you know, like's it's the sort of thing where like, you know, Dungeons and Dragons is like I mean, it's still I mean, like it feels like D and D is is kind of It gets into the conversation a lot more these days than it did maybe five years ago or whatever. And so It feels like it would be a good time for them to have a really solid Dungeons and Dragons game U And u Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. that's sort of a weird move, but you know, it could be something as like Maybe that game was just not coming together Like you could It could be something as simple as that and there might not be anything else kind of crazy to get into or scuttle butt or whatever But but yeah, that's That's kind of the long and the short of that. Let's take one more break. We'll come back and maybe we'll get into some emails After This. probably need a bed probably need a new bed. I feel like, you know, some rough science here. everyveryone could use a new bed. No one is getting a new bed often enough But it's, you know, getting a new bed's a hassle. What are you going you know, lay on, you know, go to some mattress store and get high pressure sales tactic to by some Maniac. No. No, you're gonna get a mattress online. I've gotten some mattresses online. and let me tell you, I've gotten some bad mattresses online. But yes You can Get some good mattresses online Lisa Lisa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind So if you're a side sleeper, you know, they got different sizes, different weight limits, all that other stuff, depending on what you're looking for. and from night one, you will feel the difference premium materials to deliver serious comfort and full body support no matter how you sleep They've got a sleep quiz. you know you just go fill out the form on their website and go like I sleep like this and then I sleep like this, but I like this and I'm this and And then they go, you should probably get this. I went through that process. They sent me a mattress And' Bad ass This is not just about sleep though They're about impact. They work with local nonprofits across the U.S to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need with over forty three thousand mattresses donated to date Go to lisa. com to get thirty percent off select mattresses. plus get an extra fifty bucks off with the promo code Jav exclusive for you That's L E E S a. com Promo code, Jeff for thirty percent off select mattresses plus an extra fifty dollars off support the show. Let them know we sent you Lisa d. com promo code Jeff Hey Babes, It's Paris Hilton. So I was checking my points balance in the Hilton Honors app the other day. and yeah, I've got about a billion, which feels excessive. even for me. Just kidding, you can never have too many Hilton Honors points. And I want to do something iconic this summer, so I'm giving away all my Paris points. Just find somewhere you've always wanted to stay, then go to my socials or Hiltons's and tell me about it. Just make sure you're a Hilton Honors member and I might be sending you Paris points Because when you want points that make your summer even hotter, it matters where you stay I suppose some maybe a last bit of news here, the one Pat Bayer pointed out that there was a Someone on Twitter noticed that Destruction All stars has been delisted from the PlayStation store and that the multiplayer servers have been shut down U There's a photo of the I guess the destruction All Stars news page on the Playsttation itself. Multiplayer services for destruction all stars have been taken offline. Destruction points have been removed from sale on the PlayStation store and can be redeemed until the twenty fifth of november twenty twenty six Arcade mode remains accessible for returning players It's always weird when companies just kind of pull the plug on a thing with zero fanfare, but I guess like Maybe there's no winning on that Because if you announce you're going to do it and then do it, then you get two hits of peopleeople being bummed about it, even though the game was not good in the first place and all that other stuff Um, And if you just kind of like go like, hey, man, like no one's playing this game like no one barely anyone's going to notice anyway So let's just do this Um Destruction All Stars was not a great game. It was one of those early PlayStation five games that you're like, this is in a It's funny, man that You know, this game happened and you know, we still are like in this weird limbo with twisted metal and But Struction All Stars went through a phase of like they were trying to sell it for full price and like it's just not a game Not a not a not a good not a good car combat kind of experience. And yeah, and so yes now now Sony has pulled the plug on it. So so that's that U The surprising thing I think here is that maybe that it was still running. to do it for the new Let's get into some emails here cast guard. bike is the email address. You send an email to me If it is Cool I will read it on the show V guuy one with the question that's on everyone's lips How long until Foam stars is gone? Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes my son still launches foam stars and just walks around the lobby shooting foam. He has not figured out how to get into a game and I think that's fine because I don't necessarily want him playing multiplayer games Anyway, but u he occasionally launches Foam stars. I'm pretty sure Foam stars is maybe maybe that's all you can do. Maybe all you can do is get in the lobby. I't know, but but I think believe Foam Stars is still up and running Question here is X deffiant still up? No. No X defefiant was they have client is offline Let's see here U Zpp wres in it says I'm completely devastated the news that Bungie is ending live updates for Destiny two In final shape I took a more relaxed approach with the game and only tune in when new story beats would come out and to date I haven't played the game since finishing the reennegades campaign five months or so ago One of the most disappointing things about the situation is that last August, they started a new narrative saga with Edge of fate bringing an overall different feel to the game. It was a very character centric approach that looked like it was going in a direction. It was very new and fresh for Destiny. Now we're left wondering what that was going to be with new characters like Lodi and Bale Lode Raven's flock is all here. What hurts more is if we were yet another game in the Destining franchise, I find it hard to believe that they would pick up where they would left off and would opt for something like a prequel or something far forward in the future of the timeline whichich makes sense, but leaves us narrative and lore sickos a bit empty If I knew how this was going to this is how it was going to pan out. I would have I would have rather they ended service after the final shape rather than teasing us all with a good time breaks for the developers community and narrative team. They deserved much better than this. Yeah. I hadn't really I had not really heard any discussion of what story stuff they were trying to get off the ground or what they did kind of after the final shape story was. I did play some of the stuff with, I guess Ladi, Ladi He seemed real shitty, I don't know just like I what we what the fuck is this That was the one where they made you roll into a ball all the time, right? That was the one where they gave you the Metroid Ball ability and had you roll through tunnels Let' see here Next email from Mike in Vienna I let my eight year old son try Roblox for three weeks. It was awful and I have now banned it from my house using a network level block In my opinion, the game loop is downright evil. Most halfway decent games make you feel like if I improve my skills, I'll get rewarded So you try, fail, try again, succeed, feel good Roblox is the only game I've ever played that actively hijacks this dynamic and makes you feel like the only way to succeed is to buy roeucks It's almost clinically designed to make you feel like shit about yourself The worst part is my son kept remarking that he doesn't actually like the game, but felt compelled to play because all his friends are on it Anyay I've told him he can't play anymore. Obviously, he's mad at me for ruining his good time But honestly, this is the one time I'm putting my foot down on a thing. I'd rather him and his buds play Fortnite than this garbage It's not Um Yeah. Yes, Roblox is I think from a wide variety of angles, right We only a lot of the time we only really hear about the Uh the predator angle of this, which is don I't want to sweep that into the rug. That's that's obviously a fucking major problem as well. As much as they try to, you know, change up who can talk to who in chat and the moves they've tried to make. there U that has classically been a problem with that with that product. For me, it is the games themselves, the way things are designed inside of Roblox And, um The way things are monetized inside of Roblox are Um Really scummy I don't know what limits Roblox puts on the people that create games in Roblox when it comes to how and when they monetize There's a lot of forced popups because you like walked on a certain square on the ground and then it pops up a thing thing, oh, do you want double luck for the whole server? Then you need to give us three hundred twenty nine roobus likeike the The number of different like and some games are better or worse about that specific thing. Like some games don't pop things up as much as possible There will be games where you were upgrading, say, a brain rot And if you click the button one too many times because you don't have enough money to pay for that upgrade it'll pop up and go like, do you want to buy some money? You can click this button and you can spend some robus to, you know, add some robucks to your account. Let's do that? And every time you misclick It feels like it's popping something up in your face the UI in some games is laden with like ads for you spending money inside the game. likeike you get a bonus guy over here. you get an overpowered character if you give us twenty nine of these or Open all your packs of cards now for one hundred and forty nine Reucks and like there's so many different offers being thrown at you onn a constant basis And the design of a lot of these games is just a fucking endless treadmill And so By design Any money you spend in any of these games is just being thrown away becausecause you'll always find something better half an hour or an hour later because that's the nature of the game. And then if you do get to the top of the content and there are no more, say, brain rots for you to collect Wait a week And they go, we've added a whole new tier of brain rots for you to collect now And so it's like A bunch of idle games, a bunch of incremental games which that's not everything that's in Roblox, but most of the time I've spent in there has been looking at stuff like that. It's a series of incremental games that are constantly trying to get you to spend money And they are constantly developing and designing themselves in ways that optimize that process of like, how do we get these people to spend money? There was a game that I was playing like a fair amount of Um in Roblox as as I've kind of been on this journey of like, what the fuck is this thing And now that I know, I probably need to just like stop, but I'm still like fucking around with a couple of things in there But one of the games that I had spent quite a lot of time with Um, What it it's called kick No, no, it's not kick It's it's be a lucky block and it's another fucking brain rock game But it's like an idle incremental game where you're kind of like leveling up your guys and you're getting more money from them and then you use that money so that you can be stronger, so that you can get better stuff. you know and it's, you know in a lot of ways, a classic incremental game Over time, you know, I started reading the documents. I talked about this not that long ago, but as I started reading the documents about how people make money off of Roblox games and seeing like, oh, you get money if you're the first thing that a person plays if they play your game for ten minutes And then I not started noticing as soon as I saw that, how many different games had like timers and little things in there that were like Oh, every five minutes, you're going to get an item and at ten minutes, you get a really good one likeike they're really trying to optimize to get you to stay for ten minutes Um The game I was playing was, you know, you can't steal brain rots from other players. And you just kind of build up your stuff and you know, like it's build it all up Um And over the last couple of weeks, I've watched that game steal mechanics from another game that is more popular, a game called Kick A Lucky Block and you see whole cloth mechanics just come right into this other game. And they go like, oh, hey, we reworked the speed system in favor of this thing where you got to lift weights and now this other stuff and lifting weights takes time. So you better sit here ten minutes or more And watch this guy just pump iron A And then they introduced something where you can apparently now steal brain Rots. from other players, which that was not there before. And alongside that they've introduced something where if you give them, I believe it is six hundred Rbucks a month or week or something not like Yeah, you can prevent people from stealing your brain rots. You put a big stop sign, a big no stealing sign on your base If you pay them, if you if you pay them their protection money It's just a straight up fucking shakedown. After like months of the game not having those mechanics to then introduce like, oh, by the way, all your shit can get stole king crazy Um And so top to bottom, you have these games that could disappear in a fucking heartbeat. Like the creator of a game could go like, oh, I'm done with this one and it's not making enough money anyway, so I'm going to make it private And if you spent money in that game, It's just gone. that game's gone Your benefits don't transfer over to some other game. It's not like I bought this, you know Um And so It just becomes like the longer you stare at it, the more insidious it reveals itself to be. And it feels unregulated in a way Um that is crazy to me I feel like even Roblox as a company B probably better at coming to these games and saying, Hey, don't do that Or hey, you know, like we've built some best practices. This feels like worst practices This feels like they sat down and said, Hey man's take it all the way back. Darkest days of mobile game development Fucking iPhone three G era fucking crazy shit And maybe it's more like iPhone four, iPhone five like the It's before like the mobile industry learned a lot. and the mobile industry has optimized in ways that is, you know, that has made those games make money, but they've also optimized in ways that make the games less fucking filthy and in your face about it, you can argue that that's worse if you want Um Th these games are constantly like, boom, want this, want this, want this. And now imagine you're a kid who's got friends that, you know, like you like, I'm gonna to stunt on my friend by buying a really fucking good brain rot. and then you buy it and then like five minutes later you find a better one for free. And you're like,, fucking great every step of the fucking way is some fucking insidious fucking trap And the social nature of it makes it fucking worse Most of these games are fucking slot machines built on top of other slot machines built on top of another slot machine, where it's like, okay, I'm going fucking roll this random thing and then depending on how much I've played the game, I've built up a luck number that is going to influence what I'm going to get out of that. So it'll be a higher tier of thing than I would get otherwise. But then also there's another random thing where it could be a higher ter of creature that gets me even more money that way. so it's like a gold version of it or whatever. And so it's like you're opening fucking trading car packs and all of it its fucking garbage Because the whole thing is built on a fucking mountain of shit It's fucking terrifying When you see like the active player counts, I know I freaked out about the fucking this shit about a month ago, but like it is still It is still fucking bananas to me The number of active users you see on some of these games and you see what the games are and you're just like, this shit is fucking terrible. But I guess if you're there and you're voice chatting with a friend and you're doing your then thenen I see why you might stick with it. I see why it might become your everything And it's that's not a Like I'm not trying to be all high horse about like some aspects of this stuff, but like it's a I'm not trying to be all high horse about it. Like the video game industry needs to do, you know, like but Instead, it's more like this shit is fucking low quality and throw away. And it's like there's something kind of interesting about that because if you want to play a bunch of fucking like Very low rent incremental games, there's a billion of them and you look at and you see how each one is built and you see like, oh, they also have this thing this other game has. And you see these design concepts like infect other games. like almost like, oh, this was really effective for these guys when it came to like monetizing or do this. I'm going to put that in my game. And so you see these things just kind of like You see clones of games pop up, you see like all this other shit and it's just like it's really fucking wild you see like like the way that that stuff takes shape, like the ecosystem and the way ideas reverse from gave to game to game. Um Especially largely in the name of monetization, I think that stuff is really like scary and it's just wild to fuckking look at man. It's really nuts So yeah, I don't know. like you know, eventually, you know I imagine one of my kids is going to hear something about Roblox at school And I'm going have to fucking do something about it, but I am not planning I feel like I've now spent enough time with it to good understanding of what it is so then when it tries to come in my home, I can fucking stop it You know We'll see. U An anonymous email asking the hottest questions that are these have to be kept anonymous. I wanted to know what your thoughts are on the Warhammer IP in terms of video games As you know, Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer forty K have spawned tons of video games spanning the decades And touching almost every genre you can think of, action, CRPGs is tactical Grand strategy, first person shooters, mobile, gotcha games and plenty more. I'm curious, what you think are any standout games from the IP to U And if it ever made you interested in diving deeper into the lore or even the actual miniature' hobby itself Personally, I got into the hobby thanks to Dawn of War and specifically the Dark Crusade expansion because I thought the necrons looked awesome Now I run an actual warhammer store which is both challenging and tons of fun. That' Qite the path To give you some perspective on how the video games can affect our side of the business. When Space Marine two launched in September of twenty twenty four, my storeed record sales from that September all the way through t about april twenty twenty five It was an absolutely massive hit and got tons of people into the hobby It had a huge effect on sales that the company had to actively plan around the sales drop for this past fiscal year. Now I see why you wanted it to be anonymous. It I don't Space Hulk PC, which I guess it also came out on three DO That's a warhammer game, isn't it I played a fair amount of that and thought it was cool U played a lot of the Whammer MMO that Mythic made I thought that it had some neat ideas. I also knew some folks who were working on it and and talk to them a lot about it and all of that stuff too. So I mean, look, obviously, I'm a huge warhammer guy. There's there's a cave named after me in that game, right? So they wouldn't they wouldn't go and do that if, you know, if I wasn't like a big hammer headad. I think that's what the that's what we call them If I wasn't a ham headad Uh, then then why would they anyway, uh, no I, uh I don't really have a huge interest in Warhammer Um I thought that last space Marine game was fine Um, but like I I don't There's some things about it that are don't like I don't like spelling orc with a K. I think it's gross. I think it's filthy. I think it looks it's yucky I don't like I don't like all the ways that the the that some of those guys talk when they talk about the choppers and all that other stuff. like the Britishness of it I find like as someone who like I like a lot of British content, a lot of a lot of British fiction. British comedy, especially But something about the way that those can weird monsters. like are British in their own weird way. I find really off putting in that property. I don't know why Um U But yeah, and I just I don't, you know, like aren't those things made of lead? Like I handle a lot of lead growing up. I, you know, I don't want to get lead poisoning. so I kind of want to I don't go I don't want to get into miniatures. I don't want to paint anything small a small or big. I don't I don't have a don't It's not I think it's cool that people do that. I don't want to do that. It doesn't, they don't use pewter anymore. It's okay, it's all plastic and resin. okay, att least there's that But yeah, dont I don't really have a ton of interest in the property or the or the the figures. I don't know. Like I just don't, it's not. I like Starcraft. You'd think that I would like the thing that they stole it from, but I don't. So you know, it's Yeah, I don't know. Like I look at the games as as a and have to like look at them as like, are these just good games on their own because the IP doesn't IP I don't I don't I'm not going say I find the IP like actively repellent or anything like that but it is not something that I don't immediately go, o, cool a war haammer game, especially over the last like, you know What is it five years or like however long it feels like they've been Um Re fucking licensing that shit out wide It feels like that we've gotten a lot more and a wider variety of wararhammer games. So like I think that's cool. Like if youd like that stuff, then great Um But again, like, you know, I looked at Space Marine two and was just like, this is neat. I don't care about the stuff that people care about it for, but like as this game, you know,'s it's fine. It's it's neat. It's a neat video game, but not neat enough for me to want to finish it or anything like that. So yeah, I don't know. I just don't really It's not something I am chasing. It's not something I am following. It's not something I'm like Oh the new wararhammer games guysw they had there was a new batch of wararhammer games announced, right? did a thing If I remember right that was on the front page of steam, I'm sure it's gone by now But uh Yeah, and I I don't I don't have a a lot of I just don't have a lot of interest in it. and I just don't think the figures like when I see people with posting pictures of the figures they painted, I go, that's fucking cool. but I wouldn't want those. I don't think I would want to have Warhammer figurines. I don't Like as far as like stuff I would put on a shelf go like check this shit out It's just not it's that's not the the check this shit out vibe that I have I want like a really good Masterpiece sound wave You know? Like I want to I want to do like a, you know, if I want like here's Here's a really good Megatron. you know, like that's that's kind of more my speed, man. I don I don't really have I just don't. Mind's like, what, you know, what if you Put a bunch of neo Geo cartridges on a shelf and you could just look at the names of them and nod your head and go, yeah That's some shit right there That's more my speed, I don't know Um, But I can't you know, also, you know, I think part of it is like I don't think I would be very good at painting. being Between being colorblind and not trusting myself to deal with really small, things like I don't also don't think I would be very good at that Um Let's see here Joey writes in from Pennsylvania You know, if you want to know what the kids are into Joey's got your back I'm a high school teacher who leads a video game club at my school. Lately I've been struggling to get kids to join due to a complete lack of interest among the student body The only games that most kids are playing are Roblox or Clash of clans. Even the more quote tuned in kids tend to only play cheaper indie games on steam or specific niche game genres One of my students is obsessed with Victoria three of all things. Well When I mention to them that I've been playing games like Resident Evil Nine or Pragmata, I'm usually met with comments like unk Slop or what even is that I know that Pragmada is a newer more niche game, but resident evil, when I try to talk to these kids about games like I'm excited about. They seem wholly uninterested. I don't even have particularly niche tastes. I took off work to play Black op seven for God's sake I'm only twenty eight, but I feel so old and out of touch with what's popular for gaming when I talk to my students And when I try to get them onto different games and genres, they just seem to not care Are we cooked Doomed to head into a gaming landscape full of only brain rot and gardens. Will this email ever end? Yeah, It's u Yeah, I mean,, I think we were we were kind of Yes, they are they are also forcing the teachers in my district to use AI in all of their lesson plans now. So this generation is cooked beyond video games Hay twenty twenty six, great Um Yeah. I mean this is this is an industry wide problem to a certain extent of like how do you get an incoming generation to care about these games And like if if you look at the Like, look at this Cash here. I think the common situation that you have here And you can't really blame the kids for this Those games are fucking expensive Like what's a machine that's going to run Resident Evil nine properly that's, you know, not a computer because well, I don't know, a high school kid could have a computer have a proper computer So we're talking about teens really really They've been trained that games are free. They've been trained that games they get roblocks on their phone and they already have to have a phone because everyone has to have a phone And so that's their exposure to video games. And so I think for a lot of these people, the idea of sitting down and playing a video game in front of a television or a fucking monitor. is not what they're looking to get out of games. In a general sense, it's just not what they're looking for in a video game you know, story driven stuff. likeike for them games are more of a social thing for game for them games are more of a quick kind of like, Hey, I'm just doing this real quick here and then I'm ono the next thing or or whatever, And so I think the way that those kids grew up and the way that those kids have learned to interact with games is dramatically different than the experience that any previous generation has had And this is the thing that people have worried about for a lot of years in some ways around just the rise of mobile games in general You know, the launch of the PlayStation four, we were wondering if people wanted consoles anymore because how popular phones had become and everything. you know, the PlayStation four did great and, you know, it was not a problem, but now Flash forward another ten, twelve years here and suddenly it's like Well, these consoles are still selling But the incoming generations don't want this shit the same way that they used to They're not getting excited about this. They're not getting into. they're not going to go spend seventy dollars on a console game. their parents are not, you know Unless their parents still like games and still play games. whichich is, you know, like a hit or miss, right? Some some parents are going to still be out there doing that. parents of high school kids at this point You know, That's Yeah, you know, I think its it's very easy to see a situation where like these kids just, that's what they think video games are and all this other shit is like old Like this is like for people who used to make games a long time ago and this is why okay, sure this is This is how it happens or whatever. and yeah Um So I can't blame them for Having that perspective because I think that's just the way the world works now I just don't know what you do about it. and I don't know if there's anything to be done about it. you know, like tastes change, right If taste changed to such a degree that you could never have another resident evil game again. I would get it That makes sense In some ways, it's maybe weirder that we're still able to make and sell these games. you know, I think the thing that's happening is you're just seeing like multiple different game industries bracketed out by age, you know? A lot of people grew up and didn't stop playing games And and so that audience that was there for the PlayStation two is now still and and now they have a little bit more money to throw around ideally. And so they're the ones that are able to afford this stuff And and obviously this stuff is only getting more expensive, so more and more of those folks are going to get priced out of this business Oh And so I don't really have a good answer to that. I think that's the That's ultimately I think the crisis facing ' the traditional video game, the traditional console game, whatever it is, you know And why you see, you know, like part of the Xbox thing of like, hey, we' we're making sure that cloud gaming is part of our thing and a prominent part of our thing. And they seem to be working on a controller dedicated to, hey, get this instead of a console and just play on your phone or play on your TV or whatever That is them trying to find a way into this like it's a thing, you know, like it can can serve a couple of different purposes, right? Like, oh, can we can we do this for people who can't afford a new console? Or also, but can we do this for players who would never know that our games existed any other way Put out a new James Bond game today And it was like a fairly big deal fuck is James Bond If you're under thirty, if you're under forty, like at some point like what the fuck is James Bond He's a British guy and he drives an Aston Martin. Do kids even care about cars anymore? Do kids even care about like like from the fucking internal of it all the way out, you have all of these kind of shimmering fucking waves of who gives a shit if you're below a certain age, right In a lot ofays,, you know, I'm fucking fifty and sometimes I feel like I am like James Bond. That's old man shit You know Um And they the majority of Bond movies have probably been made while I've been alive, right? So But there's something about the I don't know, James Bond is for fucking old men. James Bond is like you want to sit around and fucking, I don't know. You're one of those bourbon weirdos. like I'm gonna sip some brown liquor and then I'm gonna James Bond kid care about fucking James fucking spy shit You know what I mean That's nothing against the game itself, but just conceptually What does that do for anyone under the age of fucking twenty five What does that do for anyone eighteen to twenty four or whatever, right? you know Like demographically speaking, who gives a shit about James Bond? When was the last James Bond movie? It was like a few years ago now, but it's not like I feel like those movies, I don't know, some of those movies are pretty fucking good But like, dude Who's identifying with that character or that concept and like and going, I' well, I've gott to get the new James Bon game Ballera Tchinen says, ideea. James Bond, but he's a brain rot. okay. All right. James Zenini Gandalf Bondini at wee, she says the last bnd, we've made seven hundred seventy five million dollars. It's not exactly a dead franchise. seven hundred sev five million that's a lot of money U Again, you know, I don't mean say that these things have zero appeal, right But when you bracket it out by age much of that money came from Who's getting into James Bond in this day and age? Like Golden eye,' like the video game, disgustingly enough, crazily enough U, you know, like the game, Golden eye was one of the best inroads to James Bond for like a generation of kids You know It was great that like Golden Eye the movie was actually pretty good after I feel like there was, you know, we get that liivving daylights that weird Timothy Dalton era. you get that kind of weird sort of, you know, stuff in the middle there and then, you know, we come out of that Pierers Brosnan G get into that Perce Brrosnan stuff and like, that stuffs all right But like, that's the last the last like cultural touchstone for like I feel like anyone My generation on down that was like, oh, James Bond is cool and matters That's it's goldenye, the video game. It's not even the fucking Movie You know Jhrey Will says Casino Royale did okay culturally. didid it? yeah, I guess Again, like that's a pretty decent movie And the thing I would say and because it is stone cold true, the only thing that gets me thinking about Golden Eye the movie is Botomania cultural touchstone for me Um Ala asks Do your kids like Batman? They don't know, I don't think they know who Batman is I don't know like that Lego Batman game came out and I was like, I wonder if, you know, wonder if this would be like a fun thing for them to play or or whatever. I think I'm at a point here where it's I'm going to have to start getting two controllers and letting them play together because there's too much fighting Over who is playing what Um But also I think there's like some fun multiplayer stuff that they would even that they would be potentially into I don't know if Mike Batman, that Lego Batman game might be too much for him. It's weird to have a game It's weird to have a Lego game opens with your parents getting murdered I mean, they they don't really dwell on it too much It's sort of a thing where like if you didn't know what was happening there Like it would maybe you'd be like, huh Weird, but like they kind of They do like the Lego jokey thing As the parents are getting killed and you're like, who are these fucking? Who are these games for? This is like a really fucked up kind of it's just a weird yeah Um The game is interesting. I wish it was less Lego and more Arkham. That's kind of You know, after after playing some of it last week, I guess I should have talked about that at the top of the show, huh U ike, yeah, I don't know. I don't like at some point you're making Lego Batman at some point those story beats are like worth like if you're above a certain age, it's very funny to joke about that stuff and depict those moments in that way. But at some point you go like, who are these games for? what This feels a little fucked up Um, but I guess for a kid it would for a kid, I think that scene would mostly just be confusing. because they don't necessarily dwell on like, oh, the parents just got smoked. It's just like they're there in one scene And then there's just a bunch of fucking Lego blocks in the next one And the young Bruce Wayne is sad and then he goes off to do the tutorial level And he's grown up, you're like, whatever, okay. U But yeah, I don't know I don't think my kids really have seen. I mean, you know, my son is kind of into Spider Man. though I think we sort of incepted that in him by buying him a Spider Man backpack and then And there was that good Spideran show, the cartoon. the recent one And then they did an Ironman spinoff, which is Not nearly as good Um B and his amazing friends, whatever it is. And he was into that for a little bit, but is extremely not anymore now he only watches Rubel and crew Yeah. anyway, yeah, the Lego Batman games is a sort of a weird one. But yeah, I think that I think that a lot. you know, like what the fuck are kids supposed to do You know, like I feel like there was a time when just every video game coming out was something you could get like excited about because you just liked video games And now, you know, video games are just like a thing, you know, like everything else. It's good that that happened because it means that video games became mainstream. in the way that they certainly were not in the mid eighties You know, even even at the height of Pacman fever or the the height of the NES Like it was still something that was very much thought of as four kids and was a maybe a fad and parents didn't fucking understand it and they weren't into it. and that was that, man. It was something that was very much socially looked down upon. I did not have friends who played video games likeike very very very small number Even at the height of, you know, Super Mario Brothers and all of this other stuff, like Kids at my school did not fucking have Nintendo. I did And maybe like one or two other kids did, but they were not interested. And uh Video games are just a part of modern culture anymore. They're part of a huge, you know huge multimedia rollouts include video games and include all this other stuff. And it's It's just another medium for better or for worse, right Um, and uh, I don't We kind of lost something along the way there, but it was worth it It was worth it in some ways because now the video game industry is so much bigger, even even with all the shit that's been happening these last few years, like it is still just a larger, bigger deal But Yeah, I don't know, man It feels like it feels like the the like like this email. There are generations that are just not going to be into it And I wonder if we're going go through that and how how the video game industry will continue to respond to that because it started manifesting as The boy everyone just plays Minecraft. The boy, everyone just plays Fortnite. Now it's like Fortnite doesn't seem like it's in the same boat. Obviously, Epic just laid a bunch people off and said that the game is, you know, the game is dropped off and the game has been dropping off seemingly kind of substantially, you know, and You could say maybe some of that is because it wasn't on the app store or whatever Um, which is funny because it feels like that they they picked their fight with Apple at the exact wrong time because getting off the app store and going off of all that stuff was Around the time that it feels like Roblox went from like being a big deal to being extremely fucking entrenched. Why would you go back to Fortnite? Um So anyw, but like, you know, you these games felt like forever games, but like I guess the thing is is if Fortnite's not doing well, where's that audience going? And I bet it's nowhere. I bet it is. They played a bunch of Fortnite for a while and now they're not playing anything That's my assumption I don't think there's a migration path. you know, you to think like Get kids to graduate from Minecraft At first it was the conversation was about Minecraft and then as Fortnite and Roblox blew up as well became like, can we, you know, as kids older, they're not going to want to play this stupid bullshit. They're going to want to play resident evvil not, you know, like think so We'll see. Um Nash in the UK writes in with a logistical question about reviewing video games A line in your latest Patreon post where you mentioned having had to finish games for work had me thinking, what games over the years do you think your enjoyment or opinion of were' most impacted by having to finish them for work You recently talked about having to power through Occarina over a weekend but it being a game you still highly regard, arere there inverse examples? Are there games you think you'd have a more or less favorable view on in your experience been more relaxed h, I don't think so. So you know, part of the reason why I was a fucking real good Cpanyman video game reviewer for all those years is because that's just how I fucking played video games A And so like I if it was a game that I wanted to play, I would be blazing through it Either way U And so no, I don't like that is just kind of how I play games. It's largely still kind of how I would like to play games. It's just I have a lot of other stuff going on. and so it gets harder to do that The thing in that Patreon post is what I'm talking about in there is I'm talking about I guess you could talk about both Soros and mix tape. Those are both two games that like walked away from and it felt Um It felt great to be able to say I don't like like like I don't think this game is good enough for me to spend any more time with it and I'm done with mix tape, that was incredibly fast With Sorross, I played, you know a good eight, nine hours of Sorrows I think there's, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff in that game that I just like, but there's also just enough about it that I'm like, eh this I don't this is I don't like any of the characters like none of the storyline stuff is doing anything for me at all and the gameplay is getting very tiresome. and so It felt good to get to a point where I had played quite a lot of that and then was like, yeah, cool. I'm good aybe I'll play some more of this, maybe I won't But I'm not going to like break my neck trying to finish this game. just so I can write a fucking thing about it. and it felt very freeing again as someone who has had to power through a lot of bad games over the years. It is very freeing to be able to say like, I just don't need to do this. And I'm going to write about what I'm going to write about and I will I will say I didn't finish this game Maybe the end of it's amazing and it's a fucking five out of five, you know, like, like, maybe it's fucking incredible. Like you know, like just take that into consideration when you're reading what I have to say about it I think there's two things to take away from that. One, I didn't like it enough to keep playing it, which says something about a game. And to, hey, you know Maybe the end part of that game is incredible and ties it all together in a way that like, oh, now I care about the story and the characters and all this other stuff. But certainly It's certainly possible conveying that out front and saying here's the situation, I think is and I not like putting a score on it obviously and not saying this is a review, you know, like saying what it is. Hey, I played a bunch of this game. Let's talk about it Mix tape as maybe fifteen minutes I don't know And it was just something about the smarminess of the character and like being like preached to about the value of mixtapes and all this other stuff and being like, yeah, no I know what a fucking mixtape is Thanks Um Combined with but really it was the stop motion animation made me fucking immediately run away from that game Like if it had just been like, oh, I think that the way, you know, like if I wanted this type of creey music nerd shit, I would just go watch H Fidelity again or you know, or whatever. Like, you know, if I wanted this kind of teen experience, there's like a billion Joh Hugh movies, you know, there's like betteret ways to get that thing that are not interactive per se. but they don't need to be. Um And u, Yeah, I don't know. I found a lot of the writing in the early part of that game to be immediately off putting, but I probably would have still powered through it if the game ran at a normal looking frame rate because that game has you doing skateboarding at the very beginning of the game and like literally has the Tony Hawk trick system in it. and you're like, oh, this is okay, this is kind of cool. excepted fucking s and feels like fucking shit. becausecause of the fucking frame rate stuff And then when they go into cutscenes M' like jump off the skateboard and start moving at a full frame rate And you're like fucking fuck, come on Just give me that Let me fucking turn it on This game looks like fucking dog shit otherwise and feels awful in the hand Um And then she jumps right back on the skateboard and in the frame and goes boom And that that's their artsy thing and And you know, hey, congratulations. You saw the Spiderm Man movie that did that I think games that are doing that are making a huge mistake Because I think you can do that in a non interactive, you can do that in a movie all day long And that's your artistic choice and it looks like that. I think you the minute you put it into something that people have to control think it fucking feels terrible in a way that I'm just simply not going to play any more of that game And it felt good to go, Yeahah, I'm fucking good with this. fuck this Like I don't like I already find it kind of annoying and I find this part of it Absolutely miserable. I'm really curious that Wu Tang game that is that they announced a while ago that is still not out South of Midnight and Mixtape are not trying to always do like major combat, like frame perfect, like, you know There's a lot of stuff in those games that are, you know they're very narrative focused and you can kind of get away with it. Wu Tang is like a fucking like if you look at it, it's like a character action game and they're trying to do this shit ass frame rate thing in conjunction with character action game And that seems like the exact wrong thing to do the exact wrong thing to do So yeah, I'm really curious to see how that thing ends up because Jesus That seems like a terrible fucking idea. Um Yeah, I ultimately, I think that like that's the The influence of into the Spider verse or whatever. that's the There's two of them, right? Or there's one still coming out I think that For as much as that was a striking unique look that is really cool to see U as like a kind of a spectacle I think trying to put that into the interactive space is one of the dumbest things you can do And so that's what I thought about mixtape. But again, I, you know Like after fifteen minutes of it I was like, I can't fucking stand this. Like whyy am I doing? I'm good. I'm good. I don't need to do this. I got other games I can be playing. I don't need to do this. And so it's more about that. It's more just about like, hey Um There's a certain amount of suffering or whatever. There's a certain amount of bad game I'm willing to put up with and still play through for like, hey, I'm going to write a review of this or like there's a certain amount of like hours I'll put into a thing And the freeing thing about not being kind of on that clock or on that reviewer reviewer timetable is not about, oh, I can play these games at a more relaxed pace because that's just how I'd like to play games anyway If if I'm playing a game I like, I'm devouring it. I'm like this is this is all I'm doing. This is all I'm thking about. I'm trying to fucking guys like that's just that's how I played games before I started reviewing games It's what made me an effective reviewer is because I could finish those games quickly and move on to the next assignment U There were a lot of games that needed to be reviewed and I was there to do them And so that's just how I always played them. And so it's not that I want to play them at a more leisurely pace. Sometimes that can be nice, but it is more that like now I have the ultimate freedom of like No one's going to come to me and give me shit if I just walk away from this and don't play anymore of it And that's nice So so that's more what I was getting at on that post on Patreon. I think a lot of the stuff, a lot of the talk about mixed tape is like like Mildly interesting, but I think people got a weird axe to grind with it probably doesn't deserve either way. I think it's, you know, it it's the sort of thing where like I like the writing as I encountered it, I was like, I don't, this is not I don't want to see this. I'm not interested in this. This is This is a kind of fucking weird nostalgia thing that I'm looking at and' like, Yeahah, you know, yeah, sure This is this is not the Divo song I would have gotten, but I guess, you know, hey good songs cost money, right? So yeah, I don't know. it's But yeah, I don't it kind of became the, u A game of the day, I don't know. they stopped like fucking pocket watching. Marathon player numbers for a couple of days to shit on mix tape for whatever dumb fucking reason I don't think mix tape's good Not for those fucking insane made up reasons Anyway Um Mingo asks, how would you fix Blitz Ball rip it out completely never do it again. It'sy. J get just take it out entirely. Simple stuff. Given your extensive knowledge on the ways Blitzball sucks, I was wondering what your suggestions would be to make it better or to perhaps actually make it great I mean, I would remove it from the game I would make it a cuts scene Yeahah, it would be a cutscene that you watch for fifteen seconds of Blitz ball highlights, you go hu And then you move on to the next scene in the game You would never play Blitzball You should never play Blitzball if you had to play Blitz Ball I would say make it a real video game, makeake it real time instead of the fucking weird math problem that it is I would turn it into actual fucking underwater soccer. I don't think that would be good either, but it would be better than fucking better than the fucking math. That's for sure Bordon Tago writes in with some questions about the logistics of capturing footage for a game review When using video as a medium to present a game review, I've often wondered about the logistics of capturing, selecting and editing the footage for the final posted version of a review I thought maybe you could shed some light on how you managed this When you had a game that would theoretically have a lot of footage like an RPG, I'd imagine trying to parse through hours off the Witcher Th or Elden Ring for a clip would be daunting As a reviewer or as a manager of a team of reviewers, how would you capture all the footage and parse it down in a presentable way Yeah, I this is this was one of my least favorite parts of the process only became more important as time went on. When I am reviewing a game I am trying to think about the game review. I am trying to think about the game and nothing else And so the process of going, oh, I should probably capture this and remembering to go turn on what was at the time like a eightight millimeter, like a mini or a mini DV tape corner and hitting record on a mini DV player that was wired in all the way. to then record that footage and then knowing when to stop it The fucking worst. And so it became so I so because I didn't want to fucking taint the review with my hatred like I didn't want to make the process fucking suck in a way that was going to fucking make the process worse I would go and review the game. I would play through the entire game and not think about any of that shit That should And then I would go back and record some footage after the fact You would try if a game had multiple saves, you would try to have a couple of saves throughout the game that you could return to for having a varied look at the footage But sometimes they didn't and sometimes you would have a save that was just at the very end of the game. And you would only be able to then start a new game and get footage from the beginning of the game U And so sometimes I would just do that And so sometimes for more important games or games where I wanted to capture and show something specific, I would say, hey There's a boss, you know, because you're handing at this point, you're handing the tape off to an editor at Gameespot because they they had enough people for that back then For a while they were hiring what they called Predators Ducer editor. I was like, that's the worst thing to call some what you why are you Why are we calling people that? That's not don't do that Do not do that Um D't do that Oh. Sometimes you know, you're just handing a tape off to someone and then they're putting the, you know, I'm writing a script And I am reading the script in front of camera and then they are taking the footage of me reading the thing and the footage of the game and they're cutting between the two of them. And and trying to make that look good. And they did a good job. I did not, you know, I could have like were there ways I could have made it easier on that end of things for those people maybe Um, but I really didn't like It was my least favorite part of the review process for sure, was recording the footage. And so We tried to think about different ways to do it where it was like, okay Just record the entire game. I'm going to give you a bunch of tapes and you're going to hook this thing up and just record the entire thing But then you've got twenty hours to you know, to forty hour, you know, however long the game is of footage to to fuc and crawl through. and I'm not going to go through that I am already ono the next game in a lot of situations. I'm like, okay cool. That's done. All right, I need to start on this thing now And so going through all that footage and putting timecodes on. this is a boss fight here, like that's Um, That stuff was was not I don't know. like I think that's a tricky process to do right. U Stuff like shadow playay and some of these things that are like, you know, oh, you know, dump the last sixty seconds to disk I think that stuffs kind of interesting. Um, spepecifically for that reason because you can go, oh, some cool shit happened It'd be nice to show that in a review. And so I think if I was trying to make actually good video reviews today U probably turn on stuff like that possible flashb recording or whatever and try to and try to record stuff directly But yeah, I hated that. I hated it Let's see here else we got Shiny from Indianapolis wrote in twenty four minutes ago and said this is my first email, but hearing the kids not liking video games is confusing because I've had the exact opposite experience My nephew's in business school played high school sports and has been wanting a PS five for a while He played Fortnight with his friends and then they moved on to other games. I asked if his friends played games a lot And he said he was the only one stuck on Xbox, but a lot of his friends had a PS five and he wanted to join them Even my niece in college mentioned wanting a switch to play games on the bus I guess that emailers are asking kids, but it might be peer pressure if they're asking groups or maybe a regional thing. likeike I said, it's only personal experience but it's some hope. Yeah. I mean The switch is very popular and obviously It is a very popular way to play Fortnite I got I got a kid on my swwitch friends list that, you know, that he was a friend of the family. they moved away, I don't know, they're somewhere haven't seen them in a bit, but But I was looking through my swwitch friendriends list and going, who is this? And there was someone on there that had like two thousand hours a forortnite on the switch. I was like, holy shit. I was like, real was like, oh,'s, it's thaty it's that guy Um you know, like the, you know, there have been interesting spots of like V games reaching people that they don't normally reach and a lot of that, I think happened through the pandemic. like the Weird success, I guess it's not that weird But the overwhelming success of animal crossing during the pandemic, I think was really fucking interesting. because there was a lot of people who didn't play game or hadn't played games in a very long time that like you know, they just kind of word of mouth traveled in such a way that like a bunch of people wanted to get a switch and play it and do all this stuff. And I think, you know, you have those kind of interesting breakout moments as well Um But yeah, I don't know, those kids exist the ones that want to play proper video games on on proper video game machines And we'll see we'll see how it goes. Rad Jago in the chat says so much of my Xbox friends list is now their kids playing on their accounts. Yeah I have a I've definitely messaged someone and then back via text like, oh, that's kid plan Oh. I will stop sending you curse filled messages about your trials times, then Rram from Maryland writes in, what is the dividing line between a video game t shirt that looks cool versus one that is incredibly embarrassing? Are they all embarrassing? I personally don't think this, but it comes close I think that if a shirt has an understated design for a cool, generally older game that it's generally acceptable basically. if someone can look at the design and not immediately recognize it as nerd bullshit. But also I have a very shitty quality Virtual Fighter two promo shirt that I found in Tokyo, and frankly, it looks baller as hell. Green Tiforce shirt is a no go for me though. What do you think Um Yeah, man. I that's there is that sort of like line where you're like, it would be cool if it had You know, it wouldd be cool if it was just a cool design that if you knew what it was, you're like, oh yeah, okay. That's from a video game But if not, you know, it kind of just still looks like a cool shirt It's like the wrestling yeah, wrestling t shirts, I think, have the same problem where I think even a wider percentage of wrestling t shirts We're fucking terrible. Just the worst, most embarrassing shit. Oh. But I don't know, like people, you know, was people a lot of people dress ironically again. likeike that I feel like that's That's on the rise again, so who cares Just wear it with confidence and anything will work. Yeahah, I don't know. like the yeah, what's the I think yeah that it's it's got to be that kind of like That design that works no matter what. But at some point, you're still just wearing a t shirt with some fucking design on it, which I feel like at that point Why not just fucking lean all the way in? you know? Like if you're not going to be Quarter zip, fucking dip shit, dude or whatever You know If're going if you're going to continue to wear t shirts, I feel like just go for it and just live, baby Eier said than done, I know Michael writes in New York And asks who is the Xbox Helix really for Well, I'm excited about the possibility that the Hix and Steam machine are poised to make PC gaming more accessible For a mainstream audience, I also recognize that this capability set will not speak to the same audience that bought one hundred million PS five s or Nintendo Switches Do you think that there's that much of an audience that has been eager to get into PC gaming But is intimidated by the complexity of it that either box would see those mass market successes versus a portable PlayStation six especially with the era as the era of console. Esespecially with the era of console subsidies seemingly dead Im struggling to see how this charts back to a path of console success for Xbox here So what am I missing Um So Yeah, I mean, it's a fair point because I do think that like at the end of the day when it comes time for Xbox to market whatever the next Xbox is They're not going to spend a ton of time on also like if it is if this isn't in fact the case. if it's a big if still because we don't know. But They're not going to spend a ton of time going, by the way, it's also a PC and you can do anything you want on it Like that's something that'll be like an interesting selling point to a subsection of people. The things that get people to buy consoles are the same things that they always were. It's ease of use. It's accessibility, it's price and a certain amount of like social around all of that, right I think some of that is broken, right? Like the price the price conversation is completely fucked. But What they're going to go for is like, hey, we think this is the most powerful console around, right? I mean, they're still going to play that game And I think Sony will try to do the same thing. They will try to go like look at how round these tires are. Look at you can look at the reflections in these puddles How fucking insane they look. Isn't this sick as hell? Here's venom or here's, you know, like whatever. Here's Nathan Drake he's back. And so I think both PlayStation and Xbox, I think have like a a hard time because you know, the pricing will be so out of control The thing about the PC stuff or whatever. and you say steam machine as well Like the what you're marketing is, hey, we made this as easy as a console With a steam machine, that's the value With a steam deck, that's the ideal scenario is like, hey, you can play all these games. There are so many fucking games on steam Again, that's not something that they're even trying to market to a mass audience That something that they sell on steam. You got to know about it You have to have, you know, if you don't already know about all this shit because you're already playing PC games, you need to see one and go, o, cool I think it would be cool to have one of those And then you buy one and then you go, oh wait, what do you mean I can't play a game X, Y or Z on it because of anti cheat because of this because of that. And you have to understand or learn. what it is you really bought Um, because it is still not quite ready for prime time. It's still not quite ready for the mainstream xtbox, I think bridges that gap a different way And they will continue to sell things that they call Xbox games. U and it's not just going to be here's a PC, right U And so yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of the messaging around it will be really muddy and a lot of the ideal consumers for those things will be kind of strange. I don't know. I think there' so many, there's such an uphill battle with all of this around, you know that's still around price and availability and until that stuff gets solved. until you can figure out like here's how to maybe Here's how to maybe play this sort of stuff You know on a on a quote unquote console or whatever. ye Rad Jams Chays Yeah, GTA six won't be playable on every Xbox except maybe via cloud. So I think that would that would betray their promise. I think that like that GTA six I think you would very much need to be able to play the Xbox series X version of GTA six on whatever a Hix is through backwards compatibility Like I think that the promise that Xbox has made with their audience for generations now is exactly that. So I think you're I think you're wrong there, but I will fuck, we'll see I mean, you know, but the the idea here is that there's going to be something about the Xbox mode on whatever this hardware is that will let you play those games and not just have to play PC versions of those games because those don't exist in every single case Um And I feel like that that is that is something that is inherent to the Xbox experience would I would actually say the same thing about PlayStation at this point as well that like that would be a major break in trust for those types of systems and those types of programs, the backwards compatibility stuff I also don't think that boox would allow themselves to be put in a position where they're shipping a console that doesn't run GTA And maybe they end up solving that because maybe the PC version of GTA just is magically available by then and they can just kind of do something That way to solve it But I Whatever they're making needs to be able to run series X games. I feel like that's table stakes type stuff at this point considering where the last couple of generations have gone with it. and and how it's been built. So I I would I would actually be shocked if they allowed a new Xbox to ship that could not run that game Bom A All Xbox series X games within some amount of reason You know, there's a handful of games that don't play for one reason or another, right? Some of it's like, oh, well, you know, hey, The Xbox O connect games don't work anymore. L obviously, obviously, right Um Or like in some cases, what was it? Like Fortnite didn't run like the you couldn't play the Playsttation four version of Fortnite on a Playsttation five. It was technically not backwards compatible But also they had a PS five version of Fortnite ready. and so you just got that instead And yeah. so yeah, I don't I don't think that that'll be ase But yeah, I think like Michael's question is valid. I do think that there is something to be said for making a case for This is true, I think across the board They will need to make a case. Wh do you want this console What is the selling point of a PlayStation six? What is the selling point of an Xbox Hix Just in a general consumer sort of sense, right I feel like we've really hit a point of diminishing returns on graphical fidelity. Um for a mainstream audience I feel like a lot of them you know, I could be wrong, but I suspect we will we've hit a situation where you could show someone who doesn't play a lot of video games, a PlayStation five game and tell them it was a PlayStation six game and they would go cool. or vice versa. You know If we look to the PC for, you know how far the fidelity stuff goes and higher resolutions and higher frame rates and everything else There's nothing happening on PC that is like a dramatic game changing sort of thing It is going to make games look so much better PlayStation sixix or whatever. that even like, you know, I feel like if we get another generation of Nvidia cards that play video games instead of fucking run shitty chat bots It's hard to imagine a world where that's like some dramatic shift. When you when you look at the some of the bullshit they tried to do with the The fuckin fucking putting makeup on all the fucking models and shit the DLSS five point five or whatever the fuck it was. shit is fucking horssehit, dude And it doesn't like even that stuff at its best is not looking so much better or whatever than mod current video games You go, o, this is a generational shift This is a huge deal, you know, I don't think I don't I think we're past the point of seeing a trailer for a video game or a screenshot and saying This is the this is some full on next level shit. Oh my go. Like the Witcher stuff that they've show, the Witcher four stuff like looks really good You know, and you look at it and go like, damn dude But it's like you say damn dude because you've played a lot of video games And you kind of know what you're looking at. And you know to look around the look at the edges and look at this, look at that. youre like, huh, okay. But even that is not like the most gigantic leap forward. likeike again, if you showed that to someone who hadn't played video games Obsessively four years I don't think that they would understand the what they're actually looking at I don't think they would understand the Like Oh, this is super impressive. oh my god, video games have changed, you know, like it's. they would never have that reaction to it which yeah, the witcher stuff was not PSX footage or anything like that But I'm saying that was a very good looking trailer that at the time, you were like, oh my god, this is like this looks fucking really cool This looks like some next level type shit Um So yeah, I don't know. like, you know, the PlayStation five' a selling point was not that different from the Xbox's selling point, but the PS five, they tried to sell the speed of the hard drive One of their big marketing points for PS five launch was look at how fast this shit loads. And you can go from here to here and it just loads right up and you can hit this button on the main menu of the PS five and suddenly hear Spidererman swinging around Some games took interesting advantage of those features And most games didn't And so it hasn't really been made good on. So maybe we just see more of that next time around as well. That being kind of nice. I don't really know, you know, L what do you at some point like you could see them very easily. like leaning on the very buzzwordy AI shit You know Like if you got to impress a mainstream audience who is not as dialed in as, you know, the average player average consumer of video games you know, if you if you show them and and maybe I'm I don't know, like a public sentiment a sentiment about AI is obviously like Next let's say Um I would think that, you know and maybe this is out of date now because because maybe the ship is sailed. But I think at one point If you had told me they were going to show the next Xbox by showing you Here's the new Elder sccrolls and now all these NPCs fucking talk to you because they're powered by the cloud By the magic of fucking artificial intelligence. now all of these dip shits want to fucking talk your ear off I would very much believe it. thousand percent Now I think that, you know, people have realized that that's not a good way to show a game and that that's not necessarily a fucking interesting thing to do in a game Because you don't want to fuckking talk to all those fucking people. was like, o, great, everyveryone has generic quests for me. That's fucking rules. It's like radiant fucking minus five. That's great Um And so I, you know, I think everyone is smart enough to know That would not go super well But you know, if you'd ask me a couple of years ago, how would they show it and what could they try to show I would say, oh they'll probably just fucking try to pull some shit like that out of their ass And it's not going to be good but they'll try to fuckking so look at this. you can have you're having a real conversation. Milo is real That's how you market the next Xbox. Milo is real ping, Milo is real. This is the fucking future that we have wanted. Milo in all caps All caps when you fucking spell Milo's name But yeah, don I don't, you know, and you know, I'm not the most technically minded fucking dude in the world. And so maybe there's some really obvious shit right around the corner, technology wise that would you would be able to look at a game and go, wow, okay. we couldn't do that last time around but I don't I have my doubts, man. I have my fucking doubts For sure And that's going to do it for this week's show Thanks everybody for hanging out. We will be back next week with another episode of the podcast. Of course, You can also go to Jeff Dodds own learearn more about the Patreon, read some of that stuff that we were talking about in those emails there. And and so on and so forth. I'll be back Wednesday. We'll do some other stuff and Friday we'll rank another batch of eight Bitten Nintendo games Somehow, there are still more left Can you believe it ridicul The Athletic Brewing Company crafts award winning non alcoholic beers for those who want to be part of every round. 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