223: Kojima Crosses the Street

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home in auto-polices. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states. FX is American Horror Story Returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX is American Horror Story 13, now streaming on Hulu. Hey, what's going on everybody? Hi, welcome to the program. It's me, Jeff Gersman, your host for this week's edition of...

1:16The Jeff Gersman Show. Hello. It's been a wonderful weekend in video games. No? Alright, I don't know. Big games are happening? I immediately, you know, like any, look, any time I can go from reviewing something like Wolverine and then get right into something like a control resident. Like it's nice to have big games coming out, you know? At the bare minimum. At least there's that. Hi. Gosh, it's been a weird week. There's a story on my mind here that I don't even... There's something I saw. It just reads like it's complete. It could be complete utter bullshit. And it's just like the... There is a certain responsibility of like... Do you bring things that might be complete bullshit onto the program? Or do you let that bullshit sit?

2:19It's a weird dichotomy sometimes, but bringing dichotomy is probably not the right word to use there. Anyway, Wolverine is out this week. And I play through that last week. There's a written review up on the... Over at Jeff Dodd's zone. You can go read that for zero dollars. Go check that out. There's also kind of a review podcast sort of deal that is available either on YouTube or it's in the podcast feed over on Patreon. If you are... If you are so inclined. So I guess all that is to say I don't know that I'm going to exhaustively go over everything about Wolverine all over again because I think if you... If you want that, there are... You know, I have other places for you to see that.

3:22The short version is Wolverine is dull. The short version is Wolverine is a very straightforward video game with a lot of increasingly tiresome ideas. About its combat. And it kind of never really goes anywhere. The line I had been telling people... It is five hours of video games stretched out across ten hours. It's five hours of ideas rather stretched out across ten hours of video game. In some cases, the five hours might actually be kind of generous. It's a shame because it starts out pretty strong. And then as you sink into what Wolverine actually is and how it's combat works and how the game is balanced around that combat system. That's where it starts to fall apart. And then I think by the end of that you get to the value conversation about like... Okay, this is not a lot of video game for $70. I don't know.

4:24It's the sort of game that if it were spectacular. The price might be hard to justify for some folks. But it's a game... I don't really think it compares to the Spider-Man games all that much. They're not really... There are similar ideas in play here where like... If you get the special edition of the game, they're going to give you bonus skill points, which is sort of a weird thing for what Wolverine ends up being. But they did it here anyway. But you know, Miles Morales was a great spider. Miles Morales is the only great Spider-Man game that Insomniac has made. I guess I would say. Spider-Man 1 and 2 are like one of those... Those are phenomenal achievements. But I don't know that I would call them games that are exciting and thrilling and awesome start to finish, if that makes any sense. And Miles Morales trims the fat.

5:26You know, Spider-Man 1 is a killer game. It just kind of overstays its welcome a little bit. And you know, you kind of end up with some of the stealth sequences and what have you. Like, you know, again, it's a game that wears out. It's welcome. Wolverine does all of that in just 10 hours. You know, the full cycle of like, okay. I don't know if I want to do all this other stuff anymore. Like, it burns through that goodwill real, real quick. I was poised to really enjoy this game. I was like, yeah, you know, Wolverine is a fun character. And you know, there's a lot of opportunity to do some really cool shit with Wolverine here. And they were willing to go the distance on the M rating. And I really appreciate that about this game. You know, he's he's claw, he's just like he's getting completely destroyed. Like they do like metal gear solid four levels of like crawling through the fucking microwave thing.

6:32Multiple times in this game. And so there's like a brutality to all of it that I think is nice because I think it would have been very easy to shy away from that and go like, well, you know, Wolverine has been in T rated stuff as well. And so it's nice that they went there. And when they went there, they went there. Once they realized, hey, we're going to make a game that has like, you know, pretty brutal violence and dismemberment in it. They said, okay, well, the script is also going to be embedded in nature as well. And so they went with a very, you know, there's a lot of cursing in the game. And it's it's done well. I think the writing is nice. The dialogue for the most part is is good. The story at the center of Wolverine about Wolverine and Jean Grey, I think is really well told and an interesting kind of way to spin these characters, right? I mean, they're you know, they're able to walk away from a lot of what you think you know about Wolverine in terms of the people around him and whatever else.

7:37You know, then being able to kind of reinvent or are not it's not a full reinvention. I mean, it's still fucking Wolverine. But because they're like, hey, you know, we're we're we got our own numbered earth marvel gave us our own number for the Spider-Man games. So we're going to we're going to use that to tell, you know, kind of our own story. I appreciate that on some level. You know, I'm not like the biggest comic book guy in the world, but I I like that there are things about this game that you will see coming. If you know what these characters are and what they have done and there are things about these characters that you won't see coming. Based around, you know, some of the things that they've been able to to unwind or retail. And and I appreciate that about it. It's not an X-Men game. It's not a game where the X-Men exist. You know, it's a it's they're able to kind of do the wrong thing and I appreciate that. If if nothing else. And then that's that's kind of where it stops. It actually is kind of there is kind of nothing else.

8:37It's a game with a really wide Perry window. You can make adjustments like like a lot of modern games. You can you can tweak and tweak individual things like the Perry window. To your liking. And I messed around with a lot of that stuff after getting deep into the game. And I don't think that that's going to fix the actual problems that the game has on the combat side. Other than like the Perry is very sloppy. You can slap your way through the parrying by kind of just going by kind of as an attack as you're coming out of your attack animation. You start mashing the Perry button and hope for the best and more often than not. It kind of works out for you. And you get away with some stuff on the default settings. The problem is that they're they built a lot of that combat around that Perry and around the expectation. Like there are literal boss fights in that game where the only way to disrupt the enemy from healing is to Perry the shit out of them.

9:39And so enemies are building up stagger meters and you know you're there's a lot of. There's a lot of stuff like that where you know you're literally expected to do this Perry. Again and again and again and and and get people into a stun state as quickly as possible as well. Because once an enemy is stunned you can just murder them. And a lot of times that gives you a bunch of life back depending on if you kill them the right way. And as you fill out the skill tree there are more and more right ways to get that health back. But you don't need it. You know the thing I said along is something you kind of pick up around mid game. And it is when you basically like you hold heavy attack in the middle of a combo or after your your forehead combo. And he will charge up an attack that does a great deal of stagger damage. And then once they're staggered you hit heavy attack and he runs up to them and murders them and you get half your life bar back. And so a great deal of the game is you doing that over and over and over and over again because of guarantees that you're going to get life back as you go.

10:45And then you're fighting you then build up rage and as soon as your rage hits level three you can basically murdered lightly damaged enemies with one with one attack. It's like a L2R2 murdered them dudes button basically. And Wolverine is one of those situations where any one of these issues you'd be like okay well that's that's a maybe a little disappointing but whatever this is still cool. And so you end up in these situations where you got these boss fights where all of them expect you to parry people until the stagger meter is full. Or you could almost literally you know like I didn't test this out otherwise I'd still be doing it but like there are enemies that heal in such a way that again. If you're not parrying them the game starts popping up tool tips like yo man you should really be parrying this dude to disrupt his healing otherwise you know like the implication being like this fight is going to go on forever. Unless you do it this exact fucking way and I think that's crazy.

11:48Um you know it's it's a game that deals in kind of mild quick time events there's a lot of like I'm hanging on the side of a robot and now I've got to hit L2 to stick him like this no R2 to stick him like this and you know it's it's again on its face no one of these things is so egregious that like people should be up in arms pitch for example. I'm sorry but when you add all of this stuff up it just feels like a game. I don't know like it feels like a game where you just kind of don't know why they did it like this or just like there's a real lack of freedom to. To the combat and as you fill out more and more of the skill tree you're getting more and more things on it that you're just aren't going to use because you're like OK well this that's OK that doesn't even sound interesting in practice it's. In practice it's ineffective and all of this is less effective than something you gave me 10 levels ago. Um it's got two separate skill trees and you know like all of it is just like.

12:51Um there's a lot of stuff on there that's you know hey on the mutation meter if you spend a point here then when you finish enemy with this style of attack then the cool down on the attack that's in your circle button slot is refreshed faster. You're like that no one need this is unnecessary you did not make a video game that requires that level of babysitting of cool down and meters and like it's just not that game. And so all of it feels like it was made by different people almost at different times and it's this weirdly disconnected product. Um that doesn't feel good to play. It's unfortunate you know and on top of that you know like say what you will about spider man you know like I did say what but. Wolverine is a straightforward linear video game. You are going from point A to point B along the way you might find collectibles like whiskey bottles or materials that you use to build suits and even if you don't want to wear some of the suits.

13:57Um you for crafting 12 suits you get a health upgrade in 16 you get another one and so you're getting more health as you go for just buying suits and there's nothing else to spend those resources on so you should buy the suits. Um and yeah someone in someone in chat asked that the can basis that I saw the quick time events can't be failed yeah. Yeah they're kind of there for show on top of that which okay ask yourself what's the better. This is a real devils bargain would you rather fail the quick time event and have to fucking do it again or. Just have an animation play out slightly differently and you continue forward it's got a couple of vehicle sequences in it that are like striking. Um because it's Wolverine on a motorcycle and you're doing all this crazy stuff you're jumping off and getting off but like when you're actually literally on the motorcycle there's not.

14:58You can you know you crash into stuff and you can die and you know things things will happen along the way there but. It is it is light it is not the fail states there are are very light. Um the the first one being lighter than the second one the second one you're fighting a bunch of dudes with swords and you're driving up alongside them and murdering them and and so they can they can murder you back. But yeah it is a it's a game where they kind of. Streamlined out some of those sequences to the point where you're like why are these even here and the reason they're there is because they're cinematic and striking like I actually. For as much as they are not really challenging in any way shape or form I do think that the motorcycle stuff in the game is at least like a cool departure. But like it feels hacked in like the the steering on the but you know you never get confused for a racing game you know like Wolverine.

15:59Driving a motorcycle feels like something they hacked into an action game and not something that feels legitimately like driving like the steering on the motorcycle feels very fucked up but weird it's a it's a cute quite throwback in that weirdly specific way. Anyway I think it's it's a it's a game that in some ways is like richly polished in ways that you go like man this looks very expensive and then in other ways where you're like I don't. I don't know why you would do this I don't know why you would do this in this specific way but ultimately it comes down to this game is centered around you hitting buttons to murder dudes and that part of the game is extremely unsatisfying. And it does not change dramatically over the course of the game there are situations where one enemy set swaps out for another one. And at first you're like oh great different enemies and you realize like oh they have like one additional move compared to what I was fighting before.

17:01This is literally the same combat I've been doing this entire time and then you get to the third act and it goes back to the enemies from the first act you're like what is. Nah that was where I lost all faith in the game was you get back to fighting the same guys from the beginning of the game with like a light change in in some of the enemies. You're like dude I don't I just I don't want to do this anymore it's not a long game. But I did reach a point with it where I was like I just kind of want this to be over this needs to end now because I'm interested in the storyline I'm curious to see where they go with it and what have you. And so that was really the only pull. And so it's a shame I don't know like Wolverine is a disappointing. I had high hopes for it because some of the things that you know like when you heard like oh this is going to be a more linear game because obviously you know it's not going to be some open world you can't swing around the city like spider man and having Wolverine just running around the city would be real weird.

18:09And maybe not that engaging so like it makes sense like yeah yeah don't do that. And so it's it's good that they didn't do that. But to end up with a game that is short and still feels too long is a terrible combination to find yourself in. I think some other you know like I know Jordan I read his review over video games chronicle and you said like oh well you know the the claws feel like video game lightsabers like you're not killing anything in one hit. And you know Wolverine's claws should be I think the idea of like what Wolverine should or shouldn't do. I think that's a valid point it that didn't really bother me much over the course of the game because at some point. Much like it hasn't really bothered me in a lot of Star Wars games I think you just kind of go like that's a video game there needs to be some kind of challenge in it.

19:11If Wolverine's claws behaved like Wolverine's claws have done in every other piece of fiction out there then this would not be this would not be a fun video game because he would be truly invincible. And they at least make it brutal there's a lot of again a lot of dismemberment and you know you're cutting dudes arms off and legs in some of the kind of kill animations or whatever. And so I think that there's I don't know that that's valid and whether it's like a good representation of Wolverine the character is not really. I don't know like that's I'm not super interested in that because I'm just not enough of a comic book guy like I like Wolverine he heals real good and and fucks up shit. And he calls people Bob his hair sucks like yeah look at this guy he's tiny is like a short guy. And so like that part of it didn't really bug me that much I think this the story is really the only thing it has going for it and really great performances like the voice performances and a lot of the animation in the cut scenes like you know they're telling a love story here and they kind of need to.

20:27You know they need subtle facial animation to make that work and they they nail that pretty well so you know like kudos to them for for at least getting that part of the game really really right I'd say. But unfortunately you do have to play it and that's the part of the video game that falls apart so yeah really really hard to recommend it's it's one of those games that you think like. You know it's tempting to drag out the old like well fans of Wolverine will be able to see through that but it actually it seems like more one of those situations where people that consider the cells big fans of Wolverine might actually be the most pissed off by the way that some of this stuff goes down you know what I mean. And it's just some of the stuff in the chat here yeah I saw some of this going around it doesn't really. And Tony only says I heard a scribe is as jeans fart gas as arrows on the screen in a scrolling brawler and that sort of redeemed that aspect for me so it's Wolverine has like really good scent sense of smell and so there is.

21:40There is you know there's there's a definite like you're you're chasing chasing after people and following a scent trail because that's what Wolverine does I that didn't had nothing about that bothered me I think it's one of those situations where because the game wasn't out there were a lot of people like taking video and screenshots of from reviews and getting really mad about things out of context but like that's a thing. Like it's you know you're chasing after someone in a linear game and you know it you need to represent his sense of smell in some way. So I think it would make sense that you would do it in in that fashion like I don't know like as an in game system nothing about that bothered me it's very situational because it's only really it only really surfaces when he's like literally sniffing at the air and going. I think he's over I think she's over here I think you know and so it's like I you know. Of the things in Wolverine that you could be like disappointed to outraged about that is that doesn't even make the fucking list man I don't know what like again I think it's something that um.

22:53That you know it comes from from people just kind of looking at stuff and looking for weird ways to get mad but you know there are I think there are legitimate things in here that people could come away angry about it if you're if you're a specific type of Wolverine fan or whatever but it's it's um it's okay in some ways like borderline unacceptable and others. I didn't give it a three out of five and yeah if you want to hear more about it I've got a review written you can go read more about it over at Jeff dot zone let's take a break we'll come back we'll talk about other video games. That are available now after this. Sometimes when you hear people talking about cleaning up their computer you know they're talking about like oh I've got you know nine different files that are all underscore final sitting on my desktop and you know all these pictures the same picture over and over again I got a.

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25:02And hey you know if you're worried about malware it features the moon lock anti malware engine which is notarized by Apple to scan and remove security threats with a single click clean my Mac it does it all get tidy today try seven days free and use the code Jeff 20 for 20% off that's code Jeff 20 for 20% off when you go the clean my Mac dot com. This episode is brought to you by progressive insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses monetary magicians these are things that people say about drivers who switch their current insurance to progressive and save hundreds visit progressive dot com to see what you can save progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates potential savings will vary not available in all states or situations. I've also been playing a little bit of hot wheels infinite rush which is out now I've been playing on PC I will always check out a new hot wheels game because you know like they made a couple of good hot wheels games 20 years ago and this part of me that's just going to be broken forever go yeah let's see what this hot wheels games all about.

26:17Man how is it rush is like really close to being incredible and it but it misses it in just enough ways that it's like I don't know you could take it or leave it in some ways. They almost made a little open world kind of burnout game you know like the cars. Don't crash into each other but they fill up their boost in different ways and so you have like a drift boost versus a high speed boost and and they have different classes of cars. In the way that you know burn out paradise did. But it's not really game about crashing into cars which is a shame because they even give you button like two of the face buttons are devoted to like shunt like basically doing side hits you can jerk the car left or right with the X or B buttons. Square or circle I suppose. But it's not really used for colliding in you know you can certainly slam by the cars with it but the other cars don't go flying and explode or you know like nothing nothing cool happens and that's where I can think where it falls apart there's a lot of events in the game and the events themselves are not actually good.

27:31It's an open world game with a bunch of collectibles and so you can drive around this great looking world of the cars look awesome and and it runs. I've been playing on a steam machine a little bit and it's been running mostly fine over there to. And and it has like all of these kind of pieces to it and then it's like do this tourist mission go around and look at this and do like and the actual in game things they want you to do even the racing doesn't necessarily feel. Outstanding and and that's kind of where it breaks down for me is like it's a really good game for fucking around and then the minute you try to get serious about it like OK let's complete these missions unlock the rest of these islands is like yeah I don't. I don't know that I want to like slog through these different events to. Unlock the rest of this stuff like yeah like that's sort of where it to where it fell apart for me but it's there's something to it I don't know it seems like. My son wants to play it I have not seen him play it but it seems like a game that like kids might get super into.

28:36I played a little bit of sprawl zero and then my power went out I streamed a little bit of that last week and then it was like a hundred and six degrees. And I think between that and strain on. You know air conditioning like whatever like the circuit breakers. Flipped and the stream was silenced in the middle of playing sprawl zero sprawl zero was an interesting first person shooter I played the demo of it a little bit a little while back it's basically the first level of the game if you want to see that that's on you tube. It is mechanically strange in a way that I find interesting and but not necessarily something I'm having a great time with. The weapons most of the weapons are like you don't reload you're like throwing weapons picking up other weapons you're killing guys and grabbing their weapon and so you're like killing your way from one weapon to the next. And you know the weapons will behave differently when you're aiming down sights and compared to when you're not and so you can you know kind of choke up a shotgun and and reduce spread and then also you have this idea of a bullet time where you can kind of trigger that at any point.

29:49And when you're in bullet time and you kill enemies they drop health. And when you're in bullet time the weapons become like a little bit more devastating. And so like the game kept weren't like basically telling me hey you should really pop into bullet time and you this and like I don't need to I'm using a mouse and keyboard I know how to aim a gun in a video game it's 2026 like and so like having to basically pop into this slow motion mode over and over again to get resources. I found kind of just drag the game down. And this is you know from playing the first kind of couple levels you know and and I ended up kind of putting it down a little bit I do sort of want to get back to it and it made me wonder like did they do this because. Sometimes the action can get a little intense and if you're playing it on a console it might be too much so.

30:51Like they they hinge they built an entire game that hinges on you slowing down action to murder everyone. And then it retarges really quickly so you walk into the next room and do it again like it's. I don't know like it just kind of sucks the life out of it you know like there's an intensity to it that I think. Works really well and it has this kind of brutal vibe that I dig but like when the gameplay just kind of keeps boiling down to this sort of like hey the only way for you to recover health is to just do this over and over and over again. It's just kind of it's at some point like mechanically. Started really rubbing me the wrong way which is a shame I think there's there's a lot of cool stuff happening in sprawl zero and I do want to get back to it because. You know. I want to see you know if they if they move away from that or something later on in the game but it just sort of doesn't.

31:56Yeah it doesn't it makes a really strong first impression and then as you get a little deeper into that you're like hmm I don't know but that's that sprawl zero it's out now it's it's neat. If nothing else it is cool. And then I've been playing everyone's the hottest new release BS Super Mario USA power challenge this is of course the setella view re release of Super Mario brothers to. Super Mario USA depending on where you live. And this has now been fully translated into English for for I believe the first time. And it has been reconstituted into a single MSU one SNES package SNES ROM. That that lets you kind of play all of the stuff that was originally released for the setella view if you're not familiar with the setella view it was an add on for the super Famicom in Japan.

33:02That you would plug it into your satellite television service. And you know once it was plugged in you could basically get some interactive features you would be able to you know sort of download things from time to time demos for games the full games you know like there were stuff that would appear on the service. And this was something that appeared in four separate episodes now in addition to the part where it's the video game. It also because the I guess like the analog the audio channels on the satellite broadcast were open while you were doing this they built some games they did some legend of Zelda stuff and as well along these lines but basically they set up a thing where you are playing a sort of like score attack version of Super Mario brothers to. And also a audio broadcast is is beaming your way at the same time and so they built this like little radio play.

34:05That happens in the background while you're playing as and all of the characters in the game are talking to you but because they can't know where you are in the game at any given time. The story just kind of plays out while you're doing it. It's not like a one to one it's not you get a cut scene and then things stop and it does this like it doesn't it doesn't really work that way it's sort of like you're listening to a podcast while you're playing a game. But there are things that happen so this would happen at a specific time and the time is literally in the corner of the screen while you're playing it and you know you would have to tune in turn on your stuff at the right time in order to play this. And you had a brief window and they would re broadcast it in case you missed it and whatever else and and so they built in things into that time business that does affect the game. So like for example I think the first one of these is like as the characters are talking it's like you know I don't know it's like mouse or some of these other guys like having some you know some some back and forth about some silly shit.

35:11And you're playing as Mario they took out the ability to pick characters for the purposes of the story they're telling and whatever. And at one point you know the characters are going yeah well look at this and then suddenly you pop and change into Luigi or like all the enemies on screen you know are immediately killed like there are things that are like time to the audio broadcast that are represented in game. But it's not like a situation where like the it can't react to you jumping or you really finishing a level or you know like it has kind of multiple. Streams of audio that do line up to a certain extent but it's it's not like a one to one audio is synced to the video sort of a situation. And so it is this really insane and it's great so this is now this is this only happened in Japan and all of the stuff was in Japanese. A group of people got together and like translated it and did a fan dub of it and so you've got like fan dub Mario in there which is fucking fantastic.

36:15And it's super interesting to see this very tight window of time and technology where this seemed like a good idea. Because you know it is not unlike thermographics CD games in a weird way where it's like it's kind of a traditional video game but the audio is much more rich and red book and full featured and whatever like it's sort of like that like the game you're playing is literally just like okay this is a this is a super Nintendo game this is a port of a of an NES game. Ported up to 16 bit with like some lightly updated graphics and then they also have this other kind of crazy audio thing going on alongside it. This is a tell of you has been one of those like mystical bits of gaming technology from that specific time and you know it is very hard to duplicate.

37:20They had a there was a whole ambient radio station that they broadcast alongside this uh St. Giga. That was like built around the tide tables. So like they were on some shit out there when all of this was happening and and so it's uh. It's it's fucking like all of it is is like every every layer of depth that you dig into about this tell of you like you just find like the most insane concepts that made a lot of sense in a weird way based on the technology that was available you're like okay well we got the satellite service so we can beam down. You know kind of a lot of stuff um you know not entirely dissimilar to the Sega channel in some specific ways but with again this kind of richer audio experience built into it like it's it's just a. It's a fascinating piece of technology that is impossible to experience in its original form because the satellite broadcast are gone and you know the only reason that anyone has dumps of any of these.

38:26So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the roms to begin with is because you know when when it downloaded data to your little removable kind of storage card. Some people still have those and some of those still have data on them and so there's still missing stuff out there that people like well we're going to buy every set of you cartridge we see on fucking. whatever Japanese auction site Yahoo auctions, whatever, until we find someone who managed to preserve this one weird thing. And then on top of that, that doesn't store any of the audio. And so reassembling those audio broadcasts is something that has to happen. You have to find like, oh, someone with a VCR recorded this onto a videotape. And now we can kind of pull it out of that and clean it up and try to figure out what happened when. And so the amount of reverse engineering and just like recreation going on to make something like this Mario USA thing possible is, you know, like I'm not gonna say that this project

39:29in particular was worked on for a super, super long time. But in a lot of ways, like the Catelle of You scene or like putting together the Catelle of You stuff is like a decades long undertaking. And so anytime you see any fruits of that where like, hey, we managed to complete a project here. And on top of that, we did an English version of it. It's amazing. And so it's really great to see some folks band together to put that out. That the, what's out now is this English version is like, it's kind of compressed into something resembling more of a SNES ROM. So you're not emulating the Catelle of You. You can emulate a Catelle of You and do the stuff that way. I think they do have a split version of it. But basically it was four episodes that were released separately. And so they've combined those into one ROM and provide all the audio to go with it because there's another rabbit hole to go down if you're interested in some really wild shit.

40:30But like basically at some point, the MSU-1 standard is something that didn't exist on real hardware. Originally, but it's basically the short version is like, what if SNES games could have a CD or like CD quality audio associated with them? And so some people go and they hack ROMs to remove the original soundtrack and put in like arranged soundtracks and whatever. And they use that format sort of for that. Though there has been some cases where there've been FMV games that have been ported to the SNES using this technology. So it is kind of like what if the SNES CD was real and all of that sort of stuff, which is another kind of another weird rabbit hole. But it's been fun playing around with that. I need to spend some more time with it. I want to play through it all actually. But I kind of fucked around with the first episode

41:30just to get a feel for like what all of this looks like when it's working and it's again striking. The GameCube is 25 years old. As of, I guess what, yesterday, this week in Japan, November will be the 25th anniversary here in the United States, but it is official. The GameCube is extremely old, a quarter of a century old. I don't know that I have like, you know, like a lot of people, you know, and some people did this for the 20th anniversary. And so there, you know, this like flowery prose about what the GameCube meant and all of this. And I just, my experience with the GameCube is, yeah, I disagree. I don't know, the GameCube was totally, the GameCube is a platform that is less powerful

42:34than an Xbox, but more powerful than a PS2, as long as you didn't mind all of the FMVs looking like a garbage. And like I can't think of like what's a great GameCube game that is like an excuse to like, I don't know that I have answers to that question, right? I mean, obviously we've talked a fair amount about Super Mario Sunshine. And I don't have, I don't really have anything, else to say about that, but like Wind Waker, there are not a lot of GameCube games I would go back to and play again, I guess. It's the first place where Animal Crossing was available here in the States. And that is probably like if we were talking our accounts or whatever, I'm sure that Animal Crossing is probably the GameCube game I played the most.

43:35But the coolest thing about the GameCube is that the boxes for the Japanese games were real small and real awesome looking with the slip cover and like just like really great boxes. But I don't, yeah, I don't really have anything, like there's no GameCube game that I desperately want to go revisit. Like I don't have a lot of fondness for any of the exclusive GameCube games, Billy Hatcher. Yeah, but also, yeah, Billy Hatcher. Yeah, right? I mean, fuck, dude. Yeah, guist. It was an interesting time because I think there was such a kind of, like, a lot of fun, but I think that's a lot of fun, but I think that's a lot of fun, I think that's a lot of fun, like there was such a, the online fan base for the GameCube, like the Geist people, they were just fucking maniacs.

44:35And you're like, okay, all right, why are we, why are we talking up a Geist again? You know, what are we, you know, like, a lot of people like eternal darkness, I don't know. You know, it's, it's not a, I don't know, it does some neat stuff, right? It had some cool ideas. Yeah, the Wavebird, sure. The first, like, great wireless controller, but in terms of like games for the GameCube, it's been a thing, like, you know, because like retro achievements added GameCube support and there are a bunch of GameCube games that you can get a chance from. And I went and like, look at the list. I'm like, oh, yeah, this, this just rolled out. I should play some GameCube games. It started looking down the list and we're like, oh, yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm good on this. Maybe it, maybe I don't need to revisit, revisit any of these video games. And it was, you know, that was the thing is like, you know,

45:37we were in an era when a lot of third party games were becoming, you know, kind of more and more popular over the course of that generation. And the GameCube got pretty good third party support, especially compared to the N64, you know, I would say that the GameCube is maybe, you know, it was, it was in some ways the most similar platform they had made in a while. And, and, you know, they would not make a similar platform, a game that was a platform that was similar to the competition, I suppose is what I mean there. For, for a good chunk of time there. And so they got what they got, right? You know, yeah, it's like, what do you remember? I think, what do I remember about the GameCube? BMX triple X. And how weird it was that the game came out of the GameCube. But it came out everywhere. And I remember reviewing three versions of every game. That is what I remember. I remember like having to look at three versions of a game.

46:37And what I said earlier almost pans out like to a fault. I'm like, yeah, you know, these games look better than the PS2 games, but worse than the Xbox versions. And the FMV usually looked like shit compared to, you know, some of the discs that had more capacity. And in some limited cases, the audio would suffer a little bit as well, you know. But yeah, I just, I don't have, I would say, especially now that we're playing through it again, and I'm kind of reconnecting with it in a way. I would say that the N64 is at least a much more interesting platform than the GameCube. But yeah, it's 25 years old. And it's definitely like that. My main memories of the GameCube were again, like getting hold of three separate versions of every single game and having to look

47:39at all three versions of a game to write the review. And like 90% of the time you say the same thing. Like the platform differences were all identical. But color did I have, I bought a, I bought a black one. And then someone contacted us, someone wrote in, because we had, I think we were doing a podcast at the time. And so someone wrote in and said, hey, I do like console coloring or whatever. If you want to send in some GameCubes, I will paint them for you. And Ryan Davis and I both sent in, because we weren't using them. Or anything. It's like, yeah, I could be without a GameCube for three weeks, who cares? I have one, like there's one here at work if I need one for work stuff, but like I don't fucking need a GameCube. And so I sent mine off and got it painted gold.

48:40And I think Ryan got his painted silver. His is like silver and black, like Raiders colors something stupid like that. And mine is like a sparkly fancy gold. It's real silly looking. And when I got it back, the fan wasn't connected properly. So I got it back and it's like, I hope this works and plugged it in and started playing games. I'm like, oh, this game works for five minutes and then immediately shuts off. That's not good. And then took it apart and realized that like the lead for the fan had not been plugged back in. So I plugged it back in, it was fine. Yeah, I don't know man. Happy anniversary to the GameCube. But none of its games. The Steam Frame is now available for pre-registration if you are in the market for a virtual reality headset. So, that's a million of people. Then Valve is ready for you.

49:41They're doing it the same way they did the Steam Machine where you go and click a button that says, yes, I would like one of these. And then later this week, I believe on Friday, they will close the registrations. They will shuffle them somehow and then start contacting people in that order. They have two separate models. If you want one with 256 gigabytes of storage, it can be yours for the price of $1,059. If you would like one terabyte of storage, that will run you 1299, 1300 bones for a virtual reality headset. It does not come with a power supply. They say, hey, if you got a Steam Deck power supply laying around, it works with that.

50:41Or we'll sell you one, if you want to give us another 30 bucks or 40 bucks or whatever it is, then you can get one of those from them as well. There's also an ergonomic kit with a head strap and I think hand straps for the controllers. But the head strap, I don't know. I feel like the Ergo pack for a VR headset usually ends up being worth the money. But they'll sell you a head strap for $60. And then there's some third party add-ons, like there's a separate company that will sell you a 5K color camera that bolts to the headset for $150. And this gives you color pass through instead of black and white. And it will do like spatial, it's a spatial camera. So you'll get like 3D visuals in the headset for your pass through, which is like, I don't know, that's interesting, I suppose. And you know, this is kind of the next phase of Valve's software kind of translation

51:44like on the fly translation or what have you where this device runs ARM. And so they have over 100 games already that are on Steam, that are listed as like Steam frame verified, of course much like any modern headset. You can stream games directly from your PC and play them that way. But if you want to run them natively on the device, there's a smaller, much smaller number of games that are currently supported that way. And so that's kind of similar to their work with Proton when it comes to getting games running on Linux. And this is actually in some ways, you know, much like it was with the Steam machine and the Steam Deck. Like this is the area that is super interesting, because if they really start building technologies for you to play windows-based video games on ARM processors, like a lot of these retro handhelds and a lot of this other, like it basically, other devices that might be in the same range of capabilities

52:44may find themselves able to run a lot of stuff. And obviously there are already software packages out there for stuff like the Thor and some of the other devices that are designed for you to run PC games to kind of pseudo natively on the device. My experience with that has been the shits. Though I did get Tehratech Legion running quite well on my Thor, and that worked quite well. So, yeah, I think that like more eyeballs, more engineers working on those sorts of problems, I think it's super interesting. The VR side of it, you know, it feels like that the main use case here is like, you really, really, really don't like Facebook. And so you're really stoked about the idea of being able to buy a headset that does not have Facebook's bullshit baked into it.

53:44But you will have to pay, you know, like double, like a Quest III is like 600 bucks, which is I think also too much money for AVR headset these days. And so, you know, you have to be willing to kind of go above and beyond that pricing in order to want valve's headset. I am broken inside. I want valve's headset. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know that I would ever actually use it with any frequency based on the Quest III that I bought and used, let's say three times over three separate sessions. They're just, you know, the killer apps for VR are all things that came out a decade ago. With your purchase, you will get a copy of Half-Life Alex. And so, you know, if you haven't played Half-Life Alex, you can do so.

54:46And I don't know. Will I get a steam frame and play space pirate trainer on it for another 20 minutes and go, yeah, the game's still good, maybe. But like, I don't, I'm done. I'm completely done with Beat Saber. I don't really want to play Gorilla Tag. I do like VR chat as a concept, but I don't know that I have a bunch of friends that use it on a regular basis. Reck Room shut down. And there just has not been an abundance of ongoing VR development. And I don't know that this is going to bring people back to the space, right? Like it's, you know, like the ship kind of sailed a little bit. And so I don't know.

55:49It seems like the best possible customer for a steam frame is someone who has really wanted a headset, but really doesn't like Facebook. And so now that there's finally one of these they can get that. And there has been, you know, there have been other options, but like here's a good, fully wireless, like, you know, like top of the line, fucking state of the art device that you can do all of this stuff. And so if you've been like somehow holding out, that's almost better because you have the entire catalog of VR barring except for games that have shut down, obviously, which is a shame because some of those games were some of the better experiences. And so like how many people are in that bucket that are also are, you know, are also going to be willing to throw down over $1,000 on this. And like I don't really care like that.

56:51I think that's that's an interesting problem that I think Valve has. You know, if Valve was trying to make this a mainstream device, which I don't think they really are per se, then, you know, it's kind of, I don't think that it could ever be that because I think again, if that, if that was going to happen, it would have happened by now. And I don't think this headset coming in on the market is something that is going to dramatically change the fortunes of VR developers or lead to more people saying, let's make some VR games. Like it just doesn't, it seems like the ship has sailed. It doesn't seem, you know, like there's still an enthusiast market out there and there are still developers working for that enthusiast market. And then you have the outliers like a gorilla tag, which has a much younger appeal. And so like kids love gorilla tag, I guess still.

57:56And yeah, I don't know, like for ease really like VR chat and I, you know, that's cool. I think VR chat is really cool as well. Yeah, the developers of Moss just went out of business. Last week, you know, Moss was a pretty cool VR deal. But it's just, you know, it's a, it's very late in the game to get excited about a new VR headset. And it's very expensive. These are, I think, you know, it's not unlike the issues that I think the steam machine faced and all of that. But the added, the added kind of VR thing is, I don't know, man, like why? I don't know, like they're kind of saying like how this can also be used to play 2D games.

58:58So, you know, and you can stream any game to you, which is, you know, like any, any VR headset of note is going to be able to do that one way or the others. It's not like some groundbreaking technology or what have you, but, but it is another potential use case, right? And with that, with that kind of add-on camera, the color camera, I don't, the increase in fidelity on the color camera, at least when you look at the stats is interesting in a way that you go like, oh, okay, like, you know, with that add-on, maybe there's some AR stuff. And the camera developers have some apps kind of based around that. Like, oh, scan in your environment and they'll be here in full color and you can walk around it and know what if you did the AR games and, you know, like, yeah, what if, right? Who's going to make them not me, not you? What are we, what are we fucking talking about here? And so, you know, like the biggest strongest takeaway from it is, oh, dude, they're going to make it so arm processors can play video games, holy shit.

59:59And if they get far enough with that, that's, that has repercussions far outside of just VR. And that sounds like potentially really fucking awesome. But as far as, hey man, you want to buy a VR headset? Like, I don't think the answer. I don't know that this changes the answer for that many people. I think anyone who's truly curious about this already got one or the other or, you know, they either bought a quest or they, you know, they're out there looking for a used PSVR to to rig up to their PC or something. And yeah, I don't know, like it's a, you know, I think I think I think people are still making VR pornography. I wonder what those numbers are. That's maybe the true bell weather. How much V, what's the, how many pieces of VR pornocontent are being created on a weekly basis? Stretch that back over the last decade. Like how much of that is being made and how much lower is that now than it was seven, eight years ago or whatever?

1:01:10That's the thing I'm curious about. I don't know. Anyway, it's, it looks like it, you know, it's, it's a very solid device, right? I mean, you know, like the, a lot of the stuff they've talked about with the way they're doing. Like what, like some of the foviated rendering or some of the other stuff that they're up to on that headset. It's like sounds awesome. It seems like it's probably, you know, the best headset in terms of mixing or yeah, foviate is streaming like mixing the, the capabilities of the headset with the convenience of the headset. So if you wanted a better, you know, there have been wired headsets. You could go out and spend way too much money on, you know, post post vibe, even post index. People have made some really weird headsets out there for people that that need it.

1:02:10But there's a lot of convenience you give up when you're dealing with with that sort of stuff. And so having inside out tracking and all of these sort of stuff that makes it a more consumer friendly VR headset mixed with the capabilities. I think all of that stuff sounds really awesome. It's just one of those things that like I, I think it's, you know, it doesn't, it's hard to get too excited about any of it. And because I don't think it really will change any trajectories for software development and what have you like VR just seems like it's, it's done. Not to say that there's zero coming out, but it's like the, the shot it had to be some bigger, weirder big deal. Like we're, we're years past that at this point. And so I don't think anything is going to bring that back. I don't think anyone is capable of bringing that back at this point unless there's just some full. You know, even if the glasses got smaller and lighter, but you know, you're always going to have some people to get sick when they use it.

1:03:18You know, all of the like, you got to get your VR legs talk from the first few years of this just turned out to be straight up bullshit. There's some people that are just going to get sick immediately and that's that. And so you just got all these use cases where it's like, yeah, this thing is like just fucking fucked. And the way Facebook treated it didn't help, but I, you know, people in chat now were saying, oh, Facebook strangled it, Facebook killed it, like, yeah, Facebook was not a good steward of the Oculus brand. Like don't get me wrong. But like, I don't think that like, I don't know that there were moves they could have made that would have made this like a fucking big deal. Like, I feel like the die was cast regardless of whatever the fuck Facebook was doing short of them going, oh, here's it's a hundred bucks short of them like giving them away or whatever. Like buying up a lot of the developers and then letting them grow stagnant and shutting them all down obviously did not help with software development, but like the funding situation for VR studios and VR games was like in the process of changing either way.

1:04:24So again, like a Facebook didn't buy those studios. I don't think a lot of those studios would still be out here making fucking who who box off his big dollars on VR games. I feel like this stuff kind of would have happened either way. And so I just, yeah, I don't know, like it's just like Facebook. Facebook burned a lot of money doing a lot of very stupid shit and that's the only thing that Facebook is good at anymore anyway is wasting a bunch of money on really stupid shit. So good on them for for being very on brand, but but I don't think that that made or broke any like much of anything about VR like long term. Let's take another break. We'll come back. We'll get into the news. I don't know if you heard. Hideo Kojima is in the news. I know, I know.

1:05:41I don't actually save money on this stuff. It's nice to have another set of eyeballs just kind of keeping track of stuff as the spending goes on and rocket money will do exactly that. It'll track your subscriptions. It'll also just kind of generally let you know where your money is going. It'll split everything up by category let you know like hey, you know, maybe you're. Maybe you're ordering out a little too much on the food front. Hey, did you know the groceries are getting more expensive? I need rocket money for a lot of things letting me know the groceries are getting more expensive. This is maybe not one of them, but rocket money does a ton of things. It can even help you track and cancel your unwanted subscriptions with just a few taps. They'll get in there and do it for you, which is which is rad. It's really really really rad and there are some cases where they see a bill and go hey, this storage locker you're paying for the one that they raised the price on every single year because what are you going to do?

1:06:45If you're stuck out of the storage locker didn't think so. Maybe we can help negotiate that down to a lower price. You know, that's one of their premium features you go in with rocket money and say okay, here's the information on my account and they go off and they see if they can strike a better deal for you, which is awesome. I've had rocket money save me money on a handful of things over the years. It's been it's been awesome. I saved hundreds of dollars literally hundreds of dollars. They can also help kind of automate your savings. If you're looking to kind of save some money, it'll help you kind of set some stuff aside little by little. If you're looking to save up for a trip or like a pool or something, it'll be nice to have a pool. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Modeling is your spending and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster, join it rocket money dot com slash Jeff G. That's rocket money dot com slash Jeff G rocket money dot com slash Jeff G.

1:07:46FX is American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX is American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu. Here comes the feeling to Xbox. PlayStation decided they woke up the other day and said, you know what, it's not bad enough that like with all of this Wolverine conversation is reflecting really poorly on us. Let's see if we can fucking get another get another one in there. Sony a PlayStation has decided to part ways with Hideo Kojima and Kojima productions for the product fizz int.

1:08:51Short for physical intelligence, I suppose. Effectively canceling their relationship with the game, which they announced a while back. It was like Herman Holst and Kojima and you know they didn't have anything to say about it because Kojima was working on I think you know this was even before death stream. Two was out and so they were like, yeah, we're gonna we got another game. We got another game of the works another game of the pipe. Let's do it. And basically fizz int was the type of game that Kojima had been known for like here's a stealth action game. Obviously due to him no longer being with Konami, you know he can't go and make more metal year games, which I think is probably for the best for everyone involved at this stage. I mean, it seemed like he didn't want to make any more metal games anyway, but Sony finally talked to me someone finally talked him into making a game in the genre that he, you know, if not invented to completely popularized.

1:09:54In the form of fizz int and they were off to the races and we didn't really hear anything more about it until. A couple of days ago when PlayStation announced, hey, yeah, we're not we're not doing we're not doing that anymore. We're done. We're done with we're done with this. They've decided to step away, which is the the phrasing that that that PlayStation has used PlayStation announced to this, but this sounds like it happened a while ago. Kojima got onto social media and said as confirmed earlier through our official channels in mid June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the fizz int project. Pizz int is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima productions determined to keep the project alive. We've spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner in the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields.

1:10:55We found in X box a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future. And we have decided to team up with them once again, please rest assured the development of fizz int are genre defining action espionage title is ongoing and will continue moving forward. This led to a very short announcement on the Xbox side of things short in a way that like almost makes you feel like this thing came together real quickly that like I wonder if this was something that they were going to announce. Somewhere themselves down the line and then PlayStation decided to be like we're actually just going to say that we're doing this and we're just going to. And that forced some scrambling to to get this out of there like it sounds like it looks like they had. You know there's there's like a little bit of assets here like what there's like photos or something of asha sharma and Kojima right.

1:11:55But the Xbox wire post for this is like. Turs. Today, Kojima has spent his career challenging conventions and expanding what games can be. Kojima productions announced the next chapter of his partnership with Xbox. Here's a quote creators have choices about where and how they bring their ideas to life were honored that Kojima son has chosen Xbox to work with Kojima productions on fizz int. Did he choose or did he set his ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at Xbox said asha sharma Xbox CEO. So I mean for a game that was in production with Sony for a good long time to say we're honored that he chose Xbox is a really funny way to put it. But hey, it goes on this expands our relationship with Xbox beyond O.D. as we move forward with the development of fizz int we remain committed to redefining the action espina genre or players around the world said today.

1:12:58O Kojima game creator and founder of Kojima productions. In addition to O.D. and fizz int this relationship will also extend beyond games with Xbox and Kojima productions collaborating across film and television to bring new stories to broader audiences we look forward to sharing war as development progresses. So it sounds like that maybe that was something that was part of Kojima's desire for the fizz int project and that something that because Sony has Sony pictures and all of this other stuff that they were able to offer something similar. And so I'm sure that Xbox had to then step up on this and be like yeah we can do that we do that halo show. And yeah, O.D. obviously the other project that Kojima is working with Xbox on and that is the horror themed game. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft will bend over backwards to do some of this film and television production for Kojima, especially immediately after they have not even after like but but after they went through the first half of their layoffs.

1:14:16And certainly make the case that a Kojima game probably moves the needle with a certain subsection of the audience much more than the studios that Xbox has parted ways with. I don't know that's especially as Xbox strategy continues to change away from making games for game pass and getting back to the business of selling video games. Alright, so that's yeah, I don't know this led to a report from Bloomberg. Getting into some of the specifics around the cancellation. Which I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to puts any of this together with you need to look at numbers to go, oh yeah, I bet that this is. But Bloomberg is saying that the financial performance of the death stranding games is one of the reasons why PlayStation felt okay about backing away from this.

1:15:21The Bloomberg story from one Jason Schreier says. One major factor behind the decision was the commercial performance of Kojima's previous two games death stranding and its sequel, which didn't meet PlayStation's revenue expectations said the people who asked not to be identified discussing information that's not public so that's one piece of it. Obviously, you know, the death stranding deal was sort of a weird one because you had a situation where PlayStation was obviously involved in the production of that game like they used gorillas engine on that game. And so they were giving Kojima technology and all this other stuff and then like 505 games published the PC version or whatever. And so was this weird publishing deal where it was not fully exclusive to PlayStation, but Sony had set up this relatively sweetheart deal to get these games first on their platform. And then the games did what they did, which you know talking about revenue expectations is always kind of a weird one because without knowing what those expectations were in conjunction with with were those expectations realistic in the first.

1:16:32Dick in the first place, you know, it's it's not a finger you can reliably point in any one direction because you're like, oh, maybe actually PlayStation had extremely unrealistic expectations for Kojima's weird fucking backpack baby game. I look at this as a sign of the the ever changing video game industry and the idea that Sony would be willing to walk away from this says that you know that they're far more bottom line focused than you might think as opposed to like a scenario where you go like well look. Yeah, dude like death stranding to yeah sold like two million copies or whatever I think I want to say death stranding one was what it was like 1.6. I don't have the numbers in front of me but the but I think it eventually hit two after a hit PC and I don't know I don't know what the breakout across platforms became at that point but.

1:17:35Death Stranding did find for a Kojima productions game meaning Kojima productions is you know or was I don't know what size there are now but like the initial pitch for Kojima setting up his own studio outside of canami was like okay we're not going to have the resources that we had a canami it's going to be a smaller operation we're going to have to think more nimble that's why we're going to go out and get this engine from. Herman he's going to hook us up and we're going to get back to work and we're going to get a game out the door I mean faster ideally faster because we need to we need to get moving we need to keep moving. And so I like that to me was the initial pitch of Kojima productions. And so they were never meant to be making big gigantic triple a games that do big gigantic triple a numbers right they was like here okay we're setting up a studio so that we can keep making weird shit. And Kojima's got a name and so like that will be an opportunity for us to you know like this game will be outsized in its presence in the marketplace because we can present it as the next game from the Kojima because like all of these other things.

1:18:42I don't think the death stranding came in under budget also I do I death stranding is such an interesting case. There have been a handful of games out of PlayStation over the years where. You talk to somebody and and and here here you know. Yeah yeah we got this game coming up I think it's going to get the shit beat out of it and reviews I don't think I think this is going to go but. And then they're like pleasantly surprised like oh wow okay it actually reviewed way better than we thought it was going to and and any of the internal protections did. And and so someone is like surprised that they kind of like snuck one past the audience or something like oh shit we thought we were cooked Wolverine seems to well we'll see how Wolverine does I don't know. I know that there were some people that did not think Wolverine was an amazing game but but yeah there's death stranding. Was was never meant to be like this massive massive video game the other the other piece of the puzzle here according to Bloomberg.

1:19:51Is that fizz in itself has already missed deadlines and was on track to be quote from their story well over budget despite being years away from release. And in addition to that that this was not something that was going to be. Permanently excuse well the article here says PlayStation was reluctant to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in another game that wouldn't remain permanently exclusive to the company's own hardware. So that would tell you that fizz and was eventually going to end up somewhere else and it wasn't a full on. Exclusive game to begin with which. I don't know I don't know why you do that I don't know why they did it with death stranding other than like death stranding was always kind of meant to be a small game. But also yeah the so yes. The chat here Sony knew what they were getting into its Kojima they knew yes yeah yes you know this is the same Kojima that was demoing Jeep stealth not that many years prior to this like no man you back the Jeep into a parking space and they won't see it you know like like with some of the ground zero stuff.

1:21:04And ground zero was meant to be a smaller thing in its own weird way so it's not like it was his first project or first modern project. It was designed to be smaller in scope or or what have you death stranding is a game about systems you know it's a. Anyway I think that all of those reasons sound logical but also those are assumptions you could have made prior to signing death stranding one. And so the takeaway from this I think is again you know whether it's change in play stations appetite for prestige games from from creators like Kojima. And and just an appetite for just blowing that amount of money. You know it's a shame like it's crazy because like man you you got two of these fucking death stranding games out of him and then he finally is going to make the game is known for.

1:22:15And you're going to it's going to be on your technology it's going to be not like there's a lot of like you finally got to a point where he's going to make the closest thing to metal gear he can make and that's the point where you go like yeah we're fucking out like goddamn dude like but that could be telling at the same time right like did they escape a burning building that osha Sharma was more than happy to run into holding a bunch of money going I don't know. Here we need something we need to win Twitter hates it and we'll see you know this is still years out so will Xbox be left holding the fucking bag on this one who can fucking say it's certainly a possibility. But I think you could take this as a sign out of PlayStation. You know Xbox has been getting dragged through the shit for like how many years straight now two or three or whatever and I feel like the.

1:23:22Like rightfully so don't this is not where I'm going with this but. I think the thing that people have been missing all along with this is something I think you know a handful of people. Bring up is this idea like hey yeah like PlayStation's not. Like PlayStation's hiding some stuff better because they had some games coming out earlier they've had this like PlayStation. Succeeded by keeping its mouth shut a lot of the time right and now they're they're at a point where now they're opening their mouth again because now they've got the PlayStation 6 coming maybe someday so they've got to get this physical games announcement. Out of the way so they've got open their mouth about that they've also got a first party slate that I think you know they realized was very focused on single player stuff this single player prestige stuff is only getting more expensive to develop. Right. You know what's the reports that Wolverine was how many hundreds of millions of dollars like you know like a ten a ten hour game.

1:24:26$70 game this ten hour like you know there's. Like something has to change on that front and so that's logically. Maybe not the right answer but you can see the logic where PlayStation would get to a point where they go oh. We should have some fucking multiplayer games. We should probably have some live service stuff like we like this portfolio cannot just be a bunch of single player fucking sad prestige video games. That we then convert into two seasons of Netflix shows like we've we've got to fucking diversify this portfolio and so you see how they would stumble into the live service thing you see why they would buy bungee. And then that has gone miserably for them in most ways right they've canceled they've walked away from a lot of a live service stuff they've had like Jim Ryan took the fall for like they they've had leadership change. And now you get all the weird leadership change stuff and that leadership change stuff includes someone coming in and looking at the books and going you signed what with this guy.

1:25:28Death Stranding one and two did this and you re up to your like yeah man like dude we've got to get out of this deal. Um. So you know I don't feel like PlayStation is an extremely healthy place right now either. And all of this is happening against the backdrop of the turning of the generation and the components crisis and all of these other kind of nightmare scenarios that we're all kind of living through right now. So with all of that in mind like I can't be like shocked like too shocked I guess that PlayStation you know got out of this deal canceled this game and that Xbox ran into snap it up.

1:26:28And I hope it works out because I think like the idea of Kojima making an action espionage whatever stealth thing again is interesting. I don't think death stranding is especially good I never did but I respected that they made it I respected that I can hammer the like button on someone else's ladder. You know I like it when Sam Porter bridges drinks all the monster energy drinks you know. And I appreciate that they made that game but like I can't fault PlayStation for going like yeah it's cool yeah all right that's a that a pat on the back for me for allowing Kojima to make the death stranding games does not fucking pay the bills and uh and we at some point we got to figure something out like okay yeah I get it I get it. Um.

1:27:31But you know for a game for a game that will see theoretically I guess they were reporting going around you know I don't think anyone's really confirmed this on the record but it would make logical sense that now that PlayStation is no longer involved with that game it will not be able to use. Uh guerrilla's engine any longer either and so depending on how far into pre-production or wherever they are with with fizz and uh they they will have to. You know undergo an engine change at some point to I don't know what they were using for od I assume it is not. Uh the the decima engine. So you know they could always it's you we okay like people are saying that apparently od is an unreal engine game that would be the likely. Scenario right is that they just go fuck it will we'll make it in unreal. Um.

1:28:31They're going to install good dough and then. So it's yeah. It's one of those kind of gut punches in the way of like. The old video game industry would never do this the old video game industry would see it through. PlayStation would suck it up and go yeah right we're gonna we're gonna stick with this thing and and maybe we don't re up the deal with Kojima if we're not happy after we get this game out of them like you know. They would have kind of said hey there's still an upside to this game if not from the game itself then from the prestige of being associated with Kojima this that. But um. But obviously like. You know leadership changes all over the business right you've got new people in charge over at Xbox you know there's been significant change at PlayStation. Um multiple times over the last what 10 15 years like since the days of the PlayStation 4 when you look at like the people that were running things.

1:29:36Pre you know like the Jack treten days the the twilight of Jack treten's run into like. You know Sean laden coming on and then Sean laden not really getting. The full authority that Jack had because PlayStation very quickly reorganized in a way that suddenly the US office didn't like everything was being run you know out of. Jim Ryan's purview you know and so like the whatever whatever happened with that if that was a power store I don't know how to actually. Classify that or how to how to kind of characterize those changes but you had just a lot of leadership change at PlayStation. Um from a very successful time. And and then yeah then you get into the days of PlayStation 5 and you kind of get into get mired into into all of this live service stuff and whatever. Yeah Andy house like Mason. It makes it does Andy house isn't there anymore he was a big Kojima booster yeah I like. Andrew house not being a PlayStation anymore I think if you wanted a catalyst for a lot of that change that is probably a pretty significant one.

1:30:46And yeah I mean certainly not the only one but you know you you've got a there's just been a lot of movement there and now you have. You know similarly massive movement or you know whatever version of it I don't think it's as massive just because PlayStation has a bigger weirder footprint than. Maybe the Xbox leadership did. But you know obviously significant change over there and now you've got a situation where everything is so expensive no one can afford to fuck up no one can afford to have a pet project anymore. Like hey this studio is over here they're doing their thing there may be not making a ton of profit but they're not losing us a bunch of money either and there's some cool prestige comes that and that's you know there's something cool being affiliated with this cool to not cut them loose fuck this we don't have we don't have. Time or resources to have these types of projects in our portfolio anymore it's got to be fucking if we're going to go we got to go now. And so that's I think where Xbox is at I don't think PlayStation is there quite yet because I think PlayStation is in a deeper weirder funk.

1:31:47Because you know like I think the PlayStation stuff comes back around a hardware and what are they doing with hardware in addition to. You know the amount of resources they wasted chasing life service stuff and then all of that kind of backing away like what is the next step for Sony like if you were if you were running PlayStation like it's it's a it's a bit of a and think about it reasonably you know but if literally if you were running PlayStation what the fuck do you do. You've got what inner galactic and then a theoretical another uncharted sequel. You know you've got like the God of War game coming up here and then in addition to that they got out there and said and then after that we're going to make another game with crados like. Awesome are the are those money are those games going to change anyone's fortunes are those games going to push this business in a dramatically new direction or or whatever like there's there's just a lot of stuff around that that I just look at and go like I think that they need to like it's it's it's one of the nice things about intergalactic like honestly is at least you could look at that and go like that looks like something fucking different.

1:33:02Out of these studios like that's. At least at least there's that and will that be a hit or not who knows man I don't know like it looks the trailers have looked interesting you know like. But I think that you know like there is this this problem of like okay you've got. Marathon which marathon's in the news again we'll talk about that a little bit later but you've got bungee which what is bungee do next. If anything. You know they've obviously made cuts and shut down places like blue point they've shut down their operation to port games to PC which doesn't seem like a like in the wake of Wolverine doesn't seem like a big of a loss I don't know certain amount of just like yeah. And you know do you have fair games do you have other you know what what other games you have waiting in the wings we talked last week about their maybe being a kill zone project being investigated inside of gorilla which.

1:34:17I think sounds smart and potentially interesting but I you know unless that game comes out in as some massive hit. And some big multiplayer. Cash Center some some big you know kind of revenue generating thing like I don't know and. Yeah hell divers sure like eventually you get those guys to go back and make a third hell divers and hopefully they don't fuck up hell divers to player based by making another one or something like you know yeah sure maybe. Maybe you go back to the well on something like that with that team and that studio. Um. You know you have house mark which you know they they shipped this year and I that game feels like it kind of came and went I know was it the one of the founders or one of the kind of higher up set house mark I think just stepped away. That was in the news. Um. But like what do you do with PlayStation you know there's these they're in a weirder boat even the Microsoft I think in a few ways.

1:35:19Because you've got. A lot of very dormant properties that have been dormant for a lot longer I think even then you know then certainly something like halo or something like the problems that Microsoft has around like halo and gears I think are significant. But then you look back at like the PlayStation lineage and the number of franchises that they have just like thrown by the wayside and you go like well you know yeah it's fun to sit here and go like they should make a new wipe out but like I don't know dude should they could they. Could they could they recapture what made wipe out actually intriguing back then I don't know. Yeah another Omega boost sure yeah I don't know I would yeah new fat prince like you know sure sure a new vibribbon I would be awesome. I would be very excited if they tried to make a new vibribbon and just tied in like you know apple music and and you know whatever streaming service supports to make vibribbon work I would take a port of vibribbon that just tied into streaming services that big that's all you need.

1:36:22And then everything's fine. Astrobot is the best thing they've got going. Like there's no you can't fucking there are no flaws in Astrobot Astrobot is like the to me maybe not from a sales perspective I don't know how well it did but like quality wise in terms of like a property you can continue to build on for years to come Astrobot is fucking gold. So yeah I don't know I think you know obviously these are problems that are going to have to be solved. Once the after glow of GTA is gone so these are problems that people need to start thinking thinking about how they solve right now. And yeah so there is this kind of stay right now right because this holiday will be all GTA all the time and if it's not that's a larger problem but but it is incredibly likely that GTA will will be the thing for 2026 and then what do you do when when you know you you're 30% of all the rock star sales.

1:37:39Has has started to dwindle a little bit or that game starts to taper off or whatever then what what's your portfolio look like then what games are you going to pursue. And and that's something that I think. Is is a little difficult to predict right now you know. You probably eventually get another last of us right. I assume they do a three or yeah they just remaster the remake and why not. But that's not going to happen anytime soon right I mean that's they've they've already got projects right so is it's. Yeah I don't know yeah they've it's right they have until dawn to in the works which you know that's that's interesting but. I think that the PlayStation has found themselves in a very interesting time from a first party studios perspective and.

1:38:39I am not sure how you that's that's a problem that takes a lot of years to get out of and you know hey by not spending a ton of money on fizz ints maybe that lets them fast track a couple of other things to you know exist in 27 and 28. There's another quote here from an Xbox spokesperson in the Bloomberg article about Kojima betting on Kojima son is an easy call we believe in his team's ability to build triple a games with ground breaking new IP and we believe in OD. Fizz ints in our growing partnership. Yeah and I also yes one one little one little piece of the puzzle here is that the deal also includes film and TV rights. For fizz int and OD. And then aushish armor has said that expanding Xbox properties to linear media is a significant part of a strategy.

1:39:41This is also the PC perspective which which the Bloomberg article smartly brings up you know in playstations case like they don't put games on PC they did at one point but now apparently they don't. And so for that game to eventually end up on PC from some other publisher or whatever like playstations not really to fully exploit that whereas Microsoft just publishes all of their games everywhere well and by that I mean Xbox and PC which they like to call Xbox by the way they they they a lot of press releases using the phrase Xbox console. And also Xbox on PC like it's it's a very it's a continually confusing lineage of naming conventions so at least they're consistent on that. But yeah you know like they're they're able to also put that game out on PC and make it play anywhere and do all of that other stuff and so like from a strategic perspective Xbox in that specific way is at least a little more aligned to to take advantage of that.

1:40:48And then we can't just say that it's a very good advantage of every version of that game which I can imagine will ever come to playstation. With the with Xbox is picking choose mentality around its its games I'm sure there's a zero percent chance that they put that game on PlayStation I bet Kojima even at this point would be like yeah fuck those guys. We'll come back we'll talk about we already you know we are talking about games coming in 20 27 and 20 28 so all to come back we'll talk about 20 29 and 20 30 as if that's a real thing Jesus. Catching hair loss early can make all the difference sooner you start the better your options him's make starting simple with a 100% online process and personalized treatment plans delivered straight to you. Yes, him's offers convenient access to a range of prescription hair loss treatments with the ingredients that work including choose oral medication serums and sprays.

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1:43:01Light your candles, draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX is American horror story 13 now streaming on who. It's the year 2030 and here at the star craft. I think. Of time. We're going to make a first person shooter. Or a third person some kind of shooter. Blizzcon happened over the weekend. Um. They announced some stuff. Let's see here. So star craft this was a game that was you know had had leaked in a couple of different ways Dan Hay has been over there working on it. You may recognize Dan Hay's name for from Ubisoft's far cry games.

1:44:02Where he did some some really solid work over there. They're making an open world shooter set in the star craft universe. The quote here that your gamer has is you know it's something new an open world shooter where every step is earned not from above but down on the ground in the mud in the fire. And they announced this game for release in the year 2030. And a lot of people have been expecting that there's been talk about a hey we're going to make a you know we're going to make some kind of shooter. In the star craft you know like I said word word it word it sort of leaked about it and a lot of people ran with us to go like oh they're making the new destiny and they're making a new you know they're going to make a new live server like this is. Like they're they seem very clear and saying like this is not a seasonal game. This is not designed to be a multiplayer like you know there.

1:45:07It does not sound like that is the game that they are making. They are looking to make some kind of single player open world. You know like if you want to put the pieces together and try to figure out what that maybe means is you know well I don't know. The guy that made a lot of far cry games is going to make another one but this one is in space or on an alien planet or something. Sci-fi far cry which far cry was already sci-fi but you know what I mean. At least it originally was I don't know. It's not so much anymore like far cry got. Far cry is a weird franchise I don't want to spend the time to unpack the far cry franchise right now. And so there's a cinematic they put out but it's you know it's a cinematic the trailer it's whatever they also announced Diablo 5. The fifth Diablo game.

1:46:07And you'll have to wait nearly as long for that one that'll be out in spring of twenty twenty nine. As if anyone will be alive then I got twenty twenty nine twenty nine somehow still in attainable year twenty thirty sounds like man fuck you know that was actually I mean but okay so. Something we've spoken about a lot with regards to something like a Gears of War with that with that being right around the corner. Who star craft is old. When was the last star craft game it has been a long time they started putting out star craft to in like what twenty ten. And then did you know there they're kind of sequel. Starcraft to trilogy type thing. A couple of things here do people do star craft fans want a single player kind of story driven shooter set in the star craft universe which maybe number two.

1:47:14Will anyone who likes star craft still be alive in the year twenty thirty. Or will they all be dead will we all be dead will I make it to twenty thirty. Hope so I think so. Odds would be in my favor but do I don't know like. What the fucking fuck like it just you know like it's it just feels like this very ancient property because it is. Because star craft is an extremely fucking old property and so like the idea of hey we're going to bring back and we're going to do it in this weird side game kind of thing. And yeah everyone's excited about star craft give me some to shoot yeah Jimmy this is Jimmy this is Jimmy except this is not Jimmy this is this is set I believe decades after the events of other star craft so. Jim Rayner probably not a factor which is also depressing. Um. If only they had put Jim Rayner into a fighting game it was.

1:48:15It was on the table it was on the table at one point it was on the table at one point. Um. Anyway that's a different story for. Probably probably a story for more like twenty thirty anyway. Diablo they're going to make Diablo five old ship in spring of twenty twenty nine they're also working on a Netflix series. The I guess the log line for Diablo five is like what if the demons one what if hell was on the earth like doom to or some shit. And so what if earth is bad like yeah I don't know man what if. And so that looks to be the story that they are going to tell in that game sanctuary's darkness is spreading. Um. And that they are also saying Diablo one sanctuary is fallen so that's that's the story they're looking to tell there nice and rosy for these these modern times.

1:49:20Um. And so like these are crazy far off dates right like these are you know these are years away I guess you know twenty twenty nine is really only. Well spring twenty twenty nine is under three years out so not that crazy of a time frame I suppose when we break it down by the numbers twenty thirty is maybe not as insane is it immediately sounds as well. And they're out there saying yeah the reason why we did this is because we want to show confidence in our development process and the games we're making and we feel really strongly about these products. And when they're going to ship and so we want to get out here and say that so when these games get delayed in two years it's going to be well no one will remember who no one will care it'll be fine. You can always delay a video game no one will notice or they will notice but they will not remember like this is the third kind like only. Like the video game equivalent of policy walks are the only ones who go like they delayed this game three times like who yeah I don't know man games get fucking pushed like shit I don't know if you noticed developing a video game is fucking hard.

1:50:27It's a real shit show so when games get delayed I all you can really go is like yeah yeah I guess man. Shit's fucked. And so these are both games I am interested in I don't know my job low four was well. The oblo four was fun to play through once. And they've added content to it and obviously they do their seasonal thing which I hold no appeal to me whatsoever. But they as they rolled out new content I finally did. Through the process of like hey I'm going to put Diablo on the steam machine that'll be fun let's see how it runs I went through and just like hastily out like they they at one point reworked the skill trees in Diablo four to such a degree. That all your characters were like they they removed all the skill points and so you had to respect completely. And and when I initially launched it I was like man fuck this I don't I liked my build where it was at I don't want to spend a bunch of time staring at this skill tree but I finally just kind of spent the points perhaps unwisely but

1:51:36through them back into the abilities I had before it's like I don't know this will be fine I'm sure it's fine drop it down a level of difficulty if I have to who cares I'll go back to normal instead of hard three or whatever. And yeah I don't know like it's the content they added to it I think is fine but I just I don't have any kind of energy for any kind of live service Diablo whatsoever. Like all of that seasonal stuff that they think is going to keep people hooked so that they can sell cosmetics whatever stuff I'm just like I don't I'm not here I don't care I care about you telling your story I care about this barbarian spinning in circles and murdering everything in its fucking path and I like those as long as there's more of those like more story. Then there is spinning barbarian then will be okay and at some point you run out of story and go like what do I do now. Like what if you created all new character and did it for a season and I like no no no no no no no.

1:52:36So the news of Diablo 5 sounds great cuz they'll make new content and maybe I'll be able to spin around in circles and murder everyone and maybe I won't I don't know will see what character classes they end up doing. But I you know the seasonal model for them I think is pretty ingrained so I have to imagine they would continue down that road when Diablo 5 does eventually launch. In the year 2062 they have also decided to spp. They're gonna make another world of warcraft remember when they made another world of warcraft they're gonna make another another world of warcraft they're going to be running three separate worlds of warcraft. What the fuck. This one is called world of warcraft forever it will launch in November. And as far as I can tell this is so this was the people talked about this under the name classic plus because they did a world of warcraft classic where they kind of rolled back to like hey what the early world of warcraft back when you cared about this game back before we made a bunch of insane bullshit that only insane bullshit enjoyers enjoyed.

1:53:56Remember when you like to remember Westfall stew remember making Westfall stew world of warcraft is back motherfucker and you can you know like they made you know because they saw that there was an audience of players that wanted to make Westfall stew and fucking go lineup for fucking. Go run van cleaf over and over again or whatever um they saw all the private servers out there and said man. Those guys are breaking the law let's make our own classic world of warcraft so that we can get people to fucking pay us for it they'll pay us to kill hogger trust me. And so they they made wow classic and people kind of rejoiced and now they're doing it again except the so. This is so they're going to make world of warcraft forever and they're going to scale it back again to like it's a level 60 cap and it's like kind of like original wow but instead of adhering strictly to classic wow stuff with quality of life things.

1:55:10They're going to like expand some of the original like it's basically like what if they had it all back and they can make different choices and so they're making new zones and races for this other kind of different old wow I think. I've watched the trailer a few times I watched the stuff they put out for it and just like a couple times I'm like okay I think that's what they're doing I can't fucking tell anymore. Euro gamer had a like their breakdown on it is is this this was from their live vlog so it's not you know it's kind of written stream of consciousness but I appreciated that kind of bullet point style new zones. Mount high all a zephyrus aisle river glades expanded original zones new dungeons new raids 10 and 20 player raids new skills and talents new race and class combos new playable race the sky born a new battle ground 1000 new quests new items and rewards new professions content new reputations account wide perks and SD HD character toggle and updated world visuals.

1:56:16I believe I saw some screenshots of UI stuff that looks like they're also putting controller support into this thing. The stories I remember hearing about the first two years of world of warcraft and the amount of time PlayStation and Xbox courted blizzard to say can you put world of warcraft on our platforms. For blizzard to eventually say nah and not do it. Because they were making enough money on their own they didn't fucking have to worry about it really but but like they you know there was a time man when the console. Manufacturers really really fucking wanted wow. And so there was a lot of thought then about like yeah what would controller support look like for world of work craft that sounds fucked. I mean maybe you could do a different version of wow that would you know work better on a controller I don't know that you could you know because this was at the time when all of the UI mods were really.

1:57:22In full swing on world of warcraft and they hadn't cracked down on any of it yet. You know automated corpse runs and we should like that. And so you start to thinking about like well you know you could do UI mod that would do I mean you could kind of yeah I guess you know some classes would play better than others but I can do you could do a controller support for world of warcraft I guess. And I'm sure blizzard did similar thoughts as well but just like on the outside looking in knowing that you know that there was interest there. It was something I thought a lot about but yeah they they they did do yes brin says you know she says I play almost entirely with controller is already possible with an add on called console port yeah. So yeah you know like you can you can do that with some of the stuff they have now back back then they did not have. There was no UI mod or anything that would bring in proper controller support but yeah that's cool that they eventually did it but.

1:58:25But that was the thought right is that world of warcraft would eventually have to come to consoles because everyone wants it so bad. And and you know blizzard is life course they'll do it I'm sure that they spent a lot of time prototyping um. You know controller support or whatever and just eventually kind of never did any kind of official thing there in the early days but so it's funny after all these years for them to go like oh yeah yeah yeah we're gonna yeah we're gonna do that. So with controller support I imagine that they eventually bring this to Xbox. At minimum like if they don't also do PlayStation you know why not. They're looking for revenue you know they want players wherever they can get it it's you know. Um. It makes sense to to bring that game everywhere. But the idea again of them maintaining multiple different versions of world of warcraft just seems so fucking bonkers like it makes perfect sense from like like when you break down why they did it and why they're like oh yeah you know what.

1:59:37Like private servers there is a lot of interest there we can do that ourselves and that'll be a way that we can keep people subscribed to this service. The idea that they're rolling out a full on third separate thing on top of that is real fucking crazy. And interesting I don't know like I don't I just don't have a ton of um. I don't know I played so much war of the warcraft in the early days not like you know lose my life drop out of school you know like I you know like it wasn't like that but. Hundreds of hours hundreds and hundreds of hours there in the first like year or two and like the betas I mean that was honestly. It was kind of like the bad problem is like we were getting into like friends and family betas and then. Spending 150 hours in a beta on a server that is going to get wiped in two weeks you know it's like weird shit like that really uh.

2:00:38So when the final game came out I was like okay time to do all this again but now it's real. And now I'm sure like what all these years later God what I mean what is the highest like slash played for a world of warcraft player I imagine there must be some kind of. Like dick measuring contest around that it's got to be like a thousand I mean what's what are we talking like a thousand days like I'm sure someone has. Yeah three octas five figures at least 10,000 hours. Yeah 22 years so what is it like if people spent like five years over the last 22 playing world of warcraft two or three years I don't know that's. That's that's too much you know and a lot of that is probably I imagine anyone that's put that much time in is probably just like. Sitting in fucking I don't know storm wind with sitting in a fucking town just chatting with people right.

2:01:40Like using it as a chat room all of their friends are there they just kind of like do that right so. Man. And then new content comes out and you're like oh right I have to play this video game now we can't just stand here. Nice to see a blizzcon with um you know some some kind of wild new announcements I guess you know it feels like for a while there it was just like kind of like. And I think this stuff existed there as well I can just like here's a new guy for heroes of the storm you remember that right. Here's what we're doing with Overwatch. But these are conceptually interesting ideas. Also a conceptually interesting idea is a marathon marathon is latest delay. I don't know man you'll kind of only get one shot at this and so this is this is an intriguing thing they're doing that if it doesn't work this game is done.

2:02:44I feel but if it does work then they're going to at least have a shot at making a new fresh appeal to an audience we'll see. They were originally set to release a new season of content on September 22nd they have delayed that. Um they put out an update here kind of saying what the plans are looking looking forward. The content originally planned for September will now arrive as part of our symbiosis update on December 8th alongside the new runner shell which is character class permanent pve experience and a refreshed perimeter zone the other. The update will also include a social space slash firing range and experimental TDM mode and improvements to new player onboarding. That all sounds intriguing that all sounds like the stuff I want to see. For what it's worth. Before then we'll really at least a we will release a smaller focused update on October 6th resets progression and the in game economy refreshes rewards and improves the live game while giving the team the time needed to deliver the larger experiences planned for December and March.

2:03:56We're also moving away from a strict seasonal schedule instead of tying major updates to fixed seasonal deadlines we're giving the team more flexibility to build test and improve features before they are released. Since launch you've told us that marathon needs more depth more variety stronger progression and better reasons to keep playing over the long term we agree. Addressing that feedback requires us to change both what we're building and how we deliver it and so they go on to kind of layout what the. What those deliverables will be so it sounds like the October update is not going to result in any meaningful new content but it is a reset. And what they're saying is that there will be a progression reset quality of life improvements live tuning and balance updates they will also bring back the vault breaker experience for a period of time there which has been their kind of pve. Thing that has been pretty cool. And that in October and December they will continue to run gameplay experiments and share what they're learning including where player feedback is influencing development so that's why I say this is a risky thing right this is something where they are asking their what is what they do have left as a dedicated player base they're saying hey fucking stick with us we don't have anything new for you but hang out.

2:05:18Hang out and we've got we've got everything on for December they're moving you know this would have been season three I guess right but then instead they're going to drop the seasonal stuff which I it makes sense right I think on a certain level like the seasonal model the road map images that a seasonal model leads to the expectations that you have to fucking ship all of that shit either at the beginning of the season or at some kind of midpoint like here's our mid season content drop or whatever. I think that cadence is like sounds really limiting to me. On the development side and so you know you saw them fucking around with different ideas over the course of a season and also you know like sometimes feeling like they had to cycle this stuff in and out so if moving away from seasons gives them more flexibility to fuck around that's probably a good thing. All of the stuff that they are planning for this now December update sounds solid and it sounds like solid stuff that new and old players should in theory be into.

2:06:27And so if you're going to make a stand and maybe if not your last stand maybe it's your second to last stand or you know like whatever but if you're gonna if you're gonna take your shot. And try to get this game on some kind of track get it exposed to new players you know if they can put together some kind of marketing push around the December update to say hey it's got fucking team deathmatch now. It's got more stuff like like stuff that is less intense stuff you won't need your heart medication to enjoy. You know it's not ideal right like ideally you have all of that stuff figured out out of the gate when you're big marketing push hits and you launch and whatever but. If you can't have it there the next best time to have it is as soon as you fucking can so so I think when you look at where they're at. This sounds interesting as someone who really enjoys the movement and abilities and shooting in that game a team deathmatch mode actually sounds really awesome because I think the main thing that you need.

2:07:37You know there are a handful of things you need you need a place to fucking experiment with your abilities where you don't lose a bunch of shit. And so the sponsored kits do that to a certain extent where you like okay I get free gear so if I lose this gear who cares. But it does still turn these encounters into a situation where like if you lose this encounter you're kicked out of game you got to fucking squad back up you got to get back in you got to do that like so the idea of having some kind of fucking deathmatch mode or something where you just go in there and go yeah let me fucking learn how the guns work I need to know how this gun shoots. I think is. The right idea. And more deathmore variety like you know the things they are saying I agree those are things that would certainly help the fucking game. But ultimately the thing that I think they learned that you know it's all the stuff we talked about pre release but you know they're finding it out firsthand is like there's not a lot of people that want something that is that fucking hardcore that is that fucking intense there's an intensity to marathon that is.

2:08:50You know. Part for the course for the genre but they found a way to bridge the gap in some ways you know from an action perspective and from you know just bungee's kind of. Track record in action games if you will that this had a potential to break out. It didn't but I don't know like it it but it's also it's a brutal fucking game for people who like brutal fucking games and when that game is fucking. Doing it it's fucking awesome it is it is the best thing I've played this year. Fucking easily. But it's very intense and sometimes I don't fucking I don't want that 24 seven I can't play marathon full fucking time I can't fucking do it I can't my heart can't fucking take it it's too much and so having more variance in that experience for situations where you're like I just I don't want to get fucked over.

2:09:51I don't want to have to like sit here and fucking be in this pressure cooker of fucking over people or getting fucked over or whatever like you know so. I am curious to see what they do with pv I'm curious to see what they do I would not want to walk away from that experience though I think that that fuck you over get fucked experience is core to what they've made. And so it's good that they would have it. And they need it. It is a big differentiator from most other shooters on the market obviously not the arc rate is of the world though I don't know I feel like the talk of our creators I feel like anytime our creators comes up now it's just people complaining about cheaters or something like there's been some shift in the conversation around that game that that feels. Not great anyway finding ways to make marathon occasionally friendlier or permanently friendlier for players that want that that's probably just good business and I think you know as a player I would I would be very open to a wider variety of experiences.

2:11:04Where it's like yeah okay like I'm just not up for this right now I don't want to have to fucking be as leaned fucking forward fucking tent it hands draped over mouse and keyboard like fucking white knuckling it like it's it's a fucking great game. But I just can't live like that. You know so yeah I don't know from that perspective I think that these are you know when you look at the situation they're in these all seem like really good moves on their part. You you do kind of back into some talk around like is it possible for a game to turn it around. This long after you know like like a lot of people have kind of moved on like a lot you know like. Is there a road to get people interested in marathon like you have this lever that they can pull of like okay we're going to we're going to really. Get this pv stuff going.

2:12:04We're really going to we're going to get that that stuff up and rolling we're going to try to experiment with the TDM stuff like we're going to try to have the this other these other things. And then you have the other piece of it which is like at some point down the line they can make that game either free to play across all platforms or they can say it's part of PlayStation plus or whatever and maybe they do both of those things at the same time. Or maybe that's a maybe that's a third level red it's a sneaky secret third lever. Is you put it on PlayStation plus on December 8th alongside the symbiosis update and then at some point next year you just say actually the game is just free to play across all platforms now. And you change monetization around some of that to to maybe better support the game financially because right now it's just like there's some fucking. You know. Skins and that's probably not enough if they made the game full full on free to play they would probably have to find different things to sell you than what they are selling right now which is not a great place to be anyway.

2:13:11I think that's a very uphill battle I wish them the best because I think the game is fucking awesome. But it I can't just sit here and go like this is going to work and it's going to be game because it's just like it's a very very uphill kind of battle we'll see how it pans out this is I someone is spouting bullshit in the chat here. Zoria says. Do you believe the rumors that bungee might restart destiny to development fucking no. That's not a real rumor that you made that up no one is no one is that dumb. Um. The people that would do that work are no longer with the company in a lot of cases right I mean it's it you know the work that you would need to do to destiny to to even restart development like what you know what you wouldn't do that. You would say okay maybe we do want to make another thing you know the maybe maybe we do want to make another destiny project and and whatever you know sure.

2:14:16Do I think there will eventually be another game set in the destiny universe I think so. You know sure. You know like it's anything's possible right. But I don't think that that happens soon because I think if you if you were going to just go in green light destiny three right now then why did you stop making destiny to right. Like the situation got to a point where they were like okay wait this isn't you know this isn't paying for itself anymore like whatever the financials were it got to a point where it didn't make sense for them to continue destiny to development period. And I will tell you as someone who I was looking the other day you can sort your trophies you can sort your your games played on PlayStation by number of hours and I had never seen this list before but I was sorting by number of hours played and destiny one is my most played game on PlayStation with something like 450 hours.

2:15:26And then destiny to which I mostly played on PC I think but it was still like in my top 10 most played PlayStation games anyway I say as someone who played a fuck load of destiny to and somehow I like a double fuck load of destiny one. They destiny to like they they mistakes were made destiny to like the ship had sailed multiple updates ago you know they had they had gotten into such a weird rut with their seasonal stuff of like how all these menus look exactly the same and then their major expansions would come out and people go like well the story is cool like this stuff is like there's just there's just there's some there's just there's so many it's not it's not a simple case of like destiny to was doing great and then they came in and said no more like destiny to was in a bad place destiny to found themselves in a bad place for a variety of reasons you know you a lot of people who are at bungee and are no longer there and even some people who are still there have a lot of things to say about the leadership and management of bungee and the destiny end of that process right like it just

2:16:43for for whatever reason like it's the blame game doesn't help anybody here right now but for whatever reason bad content came out seasons got further and further away from the core of what that game was and and also harder to follow as someone who wasn't living and breathing destiny to every waking moment and then they made their weird star wars thing and you're like that's quaint in some weird ways but also why what's a lot of real weird shit that just didn't hit and the player base suffered you know as a result the active number of destiny to players like like it's so no the idea that like all they're going to restart destiny to development like no dude they were on the fucking ropes it was not a they were not in a good place going back to that place doesn't magically save you know it's not like all everyone's coming back because we the skeleton crew cranked out another fucking battle pass like no dude it's no adding two more multiplayer maps and like another fucking chapter of story like I don't know destiny needs something greater than that if it wants to survive it would need a full on sequel

2:18:02and that's expensive and takes more people than they have right now so it's you just know there's no world in which short term they are announcing a fucking another destiny thing it just it wouldn't make any sense I would love to be wrong but it just it simply does not make any sense we'll see what happens with marathon I am I'm pulling for it but you know that's a that's a rough spot to be in Rayman Legends retold has also been delayed this game was originally planned for October 1st they put out a statement on Monday pushing it back to December 3rd according to video games chronicle dot com your home for the news I find this statement really funny because it's a real like their quote is while the game is officially gone gold we've decided to take extra time to make sure every detail gets the carat deserves

2:19:13so what is what is gold me I mean gone gold is the worst term to use for anything anymore because it doesn't I mean you know going gold means that you can go manufacture discs that is the if you're not familiar it means that you've burned your gold master and it's going off to manufacturing so you can make all these great physical discs that you're going to sell in stores in a world where day one patches are the norm and everything else the idea of going gold is just a dumber and dumber concept this time goes on and the first person to use gone what I'm sure that someone is used on a digital only project by now but the minute when physical discs are no longer available to to developers even if they wanted to put press them on discs the minute one of them uses gone gold it's going to be a very sad sad time.

2:20:17Well the game is officially gone gold we said take extra time to make sure every detail gets the carat deserves in the meantime we can't wait for you to see what we've been working on and so they're putting out a trailer like next week I guess. And a selection of creators and press will share fresh hands on impressions that just I feel like starting your your delay announcement was like the games done but we decided to push it back to make it even better is just like what you do. Talking about what are you saying. And so I you know. Is this a situation where they want to push it until after the release of GTA instead of before are they getting into a window like we're pre order numbers looking bad like what is the situation here. Did they go gold but it was actually terrible and so they're going to make it good you know I don't. If if people have already played the game and will share fresh hands on impressions by the 22nd then that would tell me that you're not that's a that's a week away.

2:21:20So I don't know what work you would do between now and December for a game that already went gold also it's it's Rayman legends retold it's like a re release of it's like a remake of a game like it's a I don't know. It's a real weird statement to make. And and VGC kind of speculates here it's possible that you we saw the seeking to avoid clashing with other titles in an unusually strong late September and early October release schedule itself caused by developers shifting their games away from GTA 6 so it may have just been like everyone went like oh we got to put our games in you know like no they got to be out no later than early October to get out of the way GTA and then when everyone did that they realized like over a man is going to get crushed and so we need to push it so that it has something resembling its own lane that's probably. That's the only way that this makes sense.

2:22:23But they have to be sure to say we're not delaying it because it's broken oh it's done it went gold it's fought no the game is good it's it's done man we're just pushing it back to make it even more done. Because for whatever reason no one will get out there and just say hey because of the competitive environment in in in late late September early October we've decided to make sure that the game is like I like that feels like it feels like being honest about a move like that. It doesn't impact like I don't that's not negative that doesn't seem like a problem I don't think I would come away from an announcement like that going like oh they don't think their game can compete. Especially because it's a remake of Rayman Legends like not not to you know like it looks neat. But it's not some big brand new big old triple it you know it's it's not on that same level so I think it makes a ton of sense for them to go like oh dude yeah.

2:23:24The block is hot so we we we're going inside the block is too hot we'll be back in December it'll be fine. But dog it's like I don't know if you're out here like we are we are indeed out here and let me tell you. The block is hot. You know. And that's it for the news. Why don't we get into some emails podcast at guard dot bike is the email address you can use it. You can send me some emails. Cody in orge County. Right into ask what are the best Sega CD games in your opinion you mentioned a couple of weeks ago that NHL 94 might be the best Genesis game.

2:24:27Does that make it a lock for the best Sega CD game versus a much smaller library. I remember the organ during play being the biggest difference from the Genesis entry. I'd put snatcher Spider-Man versus Kingpin and NHL 94 on my list. And in these modern times I think you know like when it came out no one was talking about snatcher as a big deal. Not that I remember it wasn't until Hideo Kojima became Hideo Kojima that people started going like oh well snatcher and Sega CD version is an English. So that's a great word you know like it's kind of a retrospective reworking of that. I think I think I'm not saying that snatcher is not a great game I don't know I never finished it I always meant to I'm really good at starting snatcher I'm really bad at finishing snatcher. I mean clearly the right answer here is make your own music video marky mark in the funky bunch I don't even know why we're.

2:25:29You know it's it's got it's got marky saying momo momo make my video ski like what do you know what do you want. Video was fat. I think if you're looking at what are the best Sega CD games I think it like in some ways you are also looking at games that fully take advantage of CD ROM technology of the era. So I I think like it becomes less about the best games and more about the most interesting games. And in some cases those interesting games are shitty. Like sewer shark. I like sewer shark it's not I can't tell you sit here and tell you it's a good game because it's it's kind of not. But it's a very interesting game panic is a really awesome fucking weird thing. NHL 94 is just a Genesis game on disc with yeah different some different audio better announcer better organ whatever else.

2:26:33I think net and night trap is like canonically the Sega CD game you know but. Wirehead is really ridiculous. That shitty basketball game no. That the game where you are the basketball. Let me look at a list here real quick. Let me look at a list rebel assault one of the most returned games in history at that point in time because people got it and realized it was such bullshit. Wonder dog that game sucks. Yeah man I don't know like the Sega CD library is real weird and you do have that split of games that are going in that more terbographics. Like that PC engine CD model of like we've enhanced regular ass video games and that's kind of what you know snatcher is to some extent and.

2:27:38And well like soul fees. And some of those other games. Like you know echo the dolphin came out on Sega CD it's not a it's not a massive change eternal champions came out on the like there's a like ECCD. Has like you know their FM FMV fatalities which are real dumb and and it's a better game than the Genesis game but. It's still bad. I remember flashback on the Sega CD being an okay version of that game I don't know I want to play flashback again one of these days but I never know which version to play is like the 3d version yeah I don't know. Kids on site that's huge. I don't know what like what are the best Sega CD games it's a really it's a really weird catalog.

2:28:39You know sonic CD had you know red book audio when some a little bit of like scaling and rotation because the Sega CD had it's kind of. Make shift mode seven style stuff in it and so that game has a little bit of that in there. It's it's WWF rage in the cage clearly that's the best. Clearly that's the best. It would be interesting to to look at the Sega CD library and determine with the magic of science like what are what actually is the best Sega CD game because when I go back to Sega CD games it's usually for jokes. It's usually for like I let's see I'll take a look at some of this stuff and it's usually because we're looking at double switch going on God. And you have that kind of cluster of people that really like the RPG stuff that came over but a lot of that is working designs and you know now now working designs is even then they were to a certain extent but.

2:29:55People have issues with some of the localizations on some of those games obviously you can fix that with re translations and whatever else but if we think about what originally came out. For a lot of that stuff it's yeah black hole assault fun to say that spider man again I don't remember that remember that spider man game being any good but but Cody has cited it is one of his three best I yeah I don't know that I played much of the Sega CD game. I played spider man on the Genesis quite a bit but I'm looking over this list and it is a it is a good reminder of just how dire some of this stuff is man. You got a lot of FMV games obviously your dragons layer your cobra commands your road road blaster whatever they.

2:31:01Whatever they called that road Avenger. You got like a port of samurai showdown. You had shadow of the beast to know where you going come back now come back. It's a really yeah it's a really strange line up of games. Yeah the principle for Sega CD is a pretty decent version of the game you're right I do remember that being a pretty. A pretty okay version of that but but you know the only reason to go back to that platform now I think with with some exceptions like your snatchers and stuff but like if I'm doing any kind of Sega CD stuff. It's usually sewer shark or night trap or like wirehead or just some of the goofy like to make your own music video stuff like the silly ass shit that they put out on that platform that to me is the reason to return.

2:32:01Yeah or yes or Chuck rock to son of Chuck obviously obviously a huge a huge thing. Crafty. Is Sonic CD the best Sega CD game. No. No. I like Sonic CD a lot and then you know I played a little bit more of it recently and I think I get why people shit on that game a little bit now but to me it is still like the last acceptable Sonic game. I don't know it's Sonic one it's Sonic two it's Sonic CD everything else can sit the fuck down. But Sonic CD also maybe not. Maybe not a great game I don't know who can say. Let's see.

2:33:06Jeff from Queens sent in a picture of Scott Rogowski running his live trivia game out of a subway station. I think that I think that Jeff here in Queens did not realize that that this was happening I got notifications on my phone that this was happening. Scott Rogowski you may remember is the host of HQ the trivia app for phones that did a live streaming trivia game. He's been back for a while now with an app called savvy that is doing something similar but it's more of a word game it's more like playing word live. And I don't think it's I don't think it's got the juice that just a straight up trivia game would have but it is fun to see Scott Rogowski doing a live thing this is like his app or whatever they I guess they did a they they normally broadcast out of a studio. And they broadcast an episode of savvy live from a New York subway station last last week or the weekend maybe but it looks like Jeff here in Queens stumbled upon it and says it seems he's falling on hard times.

2:34:21No that I mean maybe I don't know but like it's literally him he's got his own app now he's not working for like fucking insane people like now he gets to be the insane person I guess so good on for that at least. Let's see Brandon writes in from Lowell and says someone has been reviewing reviewing games for a while I'm curious when the trend of adding quotes from reviews to trailers or printing them on the box started do you ever have quotes from your reviews used and how do you feel about it. I think it's fine normally they ask and so I actually cleared some it's always kind of weird because it's because of the lead times involved in producing a trailer or producing box art or or magazine ads or whatever the quotes for being used they would often ask us to use quotes from preview coverage and so it was very hard for us to justify.

2:35:24I kind of terse statement from a preview like a hands-on preview and say yeah go ahead and use that to say game spot says the game is good is we don't know yet we haven't reviewed it like the preview process came away positive maybe the game is shit that certainly happened before. People that previewed can and Lynch seem to like it quite a bit. So I got asked I got asked recently I don't know if this showed up anywhere because I think they they end up they end up. They end up asking for more quotes than they end up using and and so PR for remedy got in touch after summer game fast with a quote for only see if I can find it. For control or something I said in the the stuff that I did with I came out of there with some footage of control and putting up a video of that and so they asked for something that I remember correctly had a curse word in it.

2:36:32Let's see here quote approval for. This is when I wanted to get approval using the following quote quote pretty fucking good. Let me know if that's permissible and I wrote back and said yeah it's fine by me go for it. Is control resident pretty fucking good find out later this week. So I don't know if they use that or not but they did ask for permission permission to use it the thing that happens sometimes with quote approval or like trying to use review stuff on the back of boxes and I didn't know that this was a apparently regular practice in the tech world. But like CNET charged for that if you wanted to use a quote from CNET on your packaging or in your advertising they wanted to feed like they had an external company that handled that.

2:37:35And and so you went through them for like a light it was like a licensing department or something and apparently that is like. I don't know how widespread that still is or whatever but it was like fairly widespread in the in the tech sector for tech coverage that they would they would seek a fee for that type of thing. Especially if you wanted to use like a logo or something like that then then they would want to get paid for that. I remember finding that out at the time and that they had been doing it for a long time and thinking it was one of the sleasiest fucking things I had heard ever. Because the that leads to a scenario and it doesn't because it's not enough money to fucking matter at the end of the day. And so no one's writing a review it's not like the writer got a kickback of that money if their work got credited or whatever. But like still the the incentives there are fucked right you're creating a situation where like if your review contains a fusive language that is likely to get quoted and licensed then that's income based on you saying a thing is good.

2:38:50And I think that fucking sounds filthy as shit. From the other side of it I see the argument of like well if they want to build their reputation off the back of our brand if they want to use our logo and say this got an editor's choice award or this got this then they should have to pay to license that from us. Like on that end of it I go yeah. I guess if they if yeah I see I see why I see why or I see the argument that could be made on that stuff but at the end of the day it just feels. Filthy and for not a lot of money because how much money are you making per one of those and how many are you doing a year whatever else like it just seemed like why introduce a conflict of interest where there doesn't need to be one. So yeah I don't know how widespread that is or if who is still doing it at the time but I remember like when we when game spot found out that that was how seen it operated it was very much like.

2:39:59What the fuck like and it was not a big deal long term was like I don't know whatever they do their fuck fuck whatever. Yeah yeah a thousand dollars to put this fucking scene at logo on this fucking refrigerator thing whatever okayers but at the time it was just like yeah this seems. Kind of shady um we'll see maybe we can take one or two more. Let's see here. Ben from leads right since it says on last week's show you said the word bully out loud and it reminded me to email in in regards to one of my favorite games of all time. Slamsity with Scotty Pippa. Uh bully will turn 20 years old on October 17th 2026 and in celebration I recently finished a 100% playthrough of the shotty PC port which reminded me what I loved most about it while for better and worse the game itself is hardly aged any differently than the PS2 grand theft auto trilogy.

2:41:10The American high school setting is strangely unique in the medium and no game has ever even really attempted to copy bullies homework until a particularly bad steam release this year. Do you have any memories of the game fond or otherwise and why do you think it is that we just haven't seen anything like it's sense even if there's no chance of rock star making it themselves. Um so like it's because of school shootings it's because of the idea of kids and violence and all of that other stuff it's because the game is set in a school it's because the game was called bully which they had to change in other parts of the world to what is it a can is can I'm edit I think is what they called it in. Is that just a straight I think they band it out right in Australia and then the UK they called it that so but it's yeah that's why like you know it's because of violence and school. Which I think is like for the the care that rock star took like the game is not about shooting up a school it is not that is not even a thing you can really even do it's not a game about guns.

2:42:22But all it took was the media controversy of the people that make grand theft auto the game where you shoot cops is making a game said in a high school or said in a school. And that was a big deal like that was one of those like oh politicians are saying dumb shit about video games again let's tune in to this stupid bullshit. And so I think that that is probably on the list of reasons why we haven't really seen anyone else go down that road. Because they don't want to deal with anything similar. It's probably part of why you know I'm sure it's at least on the list of reasons why rock star has not revisited bully themselves with any sort of bully to. Jack's back. So yeah it's.

2:43:26I think those are probably the major reasons is this because of the yes Kevin's back Jack right yes. I think bully is a wonderful game. I think the the idea of them making a game that you know it's not grand theft auto it is not it doesn't come off like a re skin of that game or they they carved out their own thing with bully. And and it was awesome it was it was a great fucking game like the story was interesting like they they found a way to make that story work. And you know it happens at a scale. That almost you couldn't do you know like the you know smart phones I think ruin a lot of stuff that would happen in bully. If you were to remake bully and try to update the story it doesn't make a lot of sense anymore.

2:44:29And so you know you kind of have to set it in a similar time frame I think for it to work it's got a great soundtrack. Great soundtrack fun story plays fine for the era you know. Some of that stuff is a little rough around the edges these days but you know whatever. But I think that a lot of the stuff you know it's it's schools have gotten more fucked not less right you know whether it's metal detectors or I got my first email this week about. Like my kids are going to do some kind of indoor shelter in place drill this week. And for what I think might be the first time I might make my daughter would have done it last year. But you know my son is going to school for the first time this year and so is his first time. You know like. It's just not really a fertile ground for playing around in with video games it you could argue that maybe it never was but.

2:45:35It hasn't gotten better since the release of bully it's only gotten worse. And so I think that it just becomes. You could call it a taboo you call it just like it's you know just bad territory to get into and and whatever else but like. It's it's hard to pull off that type of like 80s style high jinx. About like oh the yeah nothing crazy is going to happen it's the 80s I don't know we're just telling a fun story and this guy's got a slingshot. No he's silly kids not gonna punch him and grow football with his dudes head and you know like it's just not. You know. Like the commercial appeal of that is is appeals to only a certain demographic and even some of them wouldn't necessarily want it anymore so trying to sell a modern video game. Set it a school and whatever else I think you know kind of. Becomes something different.

2:46:35Yeah yeah yeah I guess mixed tape you know maybe does at least try to go in the similar direction life is strange certainly. Pushes some buttons I don't I'm not saying you can't set a game in a school. It's a little bit harder when you're the makers of Grand Theft Auto and you're making a brand new franchise that no one has seen or played. Or at least like the people writing the articles have not seen or played and not bothered to ask anyone who has seen or played it. I was one of the frustrating things is like having done preview coverage of bully and seen it prior to its release. To see the stuff kind of swirling around it was just like this is dumb like I've seen this game it's not what there's it's not this is not the game. That these people are making it out to be it is not some monstrous thing like rock star is a lot of things but that is a level of irresponsible that they would never ever. Be deliberately you could argue that hot coffee is a very irresponsible thing of them to do but that is more of a.

2:47:41Development snafu than anything else. Let's see. I'll take this last one here David writes in from Louisiana. With the release of Wolverine with the release of the Wolverine reviews and many outlets giving it a higher score I was wondering do you feel at the top level of games reviewers have an implicit incentive to curve higher. To encourage customers to grab the latest big release. I don't think anyone's greasing palms out there for good scores but more so if all the most expensive games crash a good portion of the industry would be in trouble. As I'm typing this I feel like I'm putting more weight on whether review scores matter to the majority of customers in the first place I will. The everyone is already in trouble so no so I but I you know as someone who's been doing this a long time I will say it is kind of the.

2:48:43You know we're talking about the scene at stuff earlier but like when we talk about incentives and conflicts of interest like you sure you can argue that there is an inherent conflict and interest when you run a video game focused publication because what happens if video games go out of style or out of business. Your publication goes out also this is what trip Hawkins tried to warn game pro about in his insane letter about portal runner right. He's trying to say like hey we're all on the same side here man why are you saying portal runner is bad it's because you've got angry young men reviewing video games no there's no so but the reality of it is like no no one gives a shit like it's the. No no no one no one reviewing games is sitting there going like well if video if my review puts video games out of business then I'm going to be out of business like no I was always operating under the assumption of just like hey man if this shit isn't viable anymore and it goes away it probably deserved to go away.

2:49:49You know. And so yeah you could you could try to draw that line and say everyone's going to give games a better than average shake because they're incentivized to stay in business or whatever the reality of it is even when games get glowing reviews they don't always sell I think the relationship between reviews and sales of games. Has never been great but it is certainly completely detached from it these days in ways that it wasn't even back then. But like yeah the the existence of enthusiasts media it's not just video games I mean music publications. Would be in the same boat right if none of the hot albums sold like at the end of the advertising market gone to shit anyway and so the dotted line you could try to draw between like okay if this video game sells well then this game company will have more money to spend on ads on our website so that we can stay in business like there's so many different dumb lines there that just would never work.

2:50:56You know like no one could like pull the levers to like make that work because none of it actually they were dotted lines at best. Reviews don't lead to more sales reliably there was maybe a time when people tried to come up with formulas I would make that work but it was never. It was never firm science it was you know just like we think you know if a metacritic is this then it's probably going to just ensure you could say if it metacritics this then it's more likely that it's going to. Sell these types of copies and whatever else but there's so many other factors there even back then when things were a lot more simple than they are today today it's a fucking mess so it's even crazier. So no I again there's there's no pressure implicit or otherwise to do that if you are a reviewer thinking that your work holds such importance that you're going to bring the entire industry in the entire publishing world down. With your review of a fucking video game well I good on you for having like that level of fucking insane confidence someone has to someone has to have that insane level of confidence out there.

2:52:08But who's left right. Who's left to be insane in that specific way you know obviously IGN just laid off a bunch of folks you know like no one you know it's. It's it's fucking bad out there and it has nothing to do with with any of this. Game review stuff is just. It's it's bad all around um and that's going to do it for the show. Thanks everybody for coming through. And listening to me talk about all of this stuff. As only I can because if I don't do it the entire video game industry will collapse. It was me all along. No again if you want to read more about Wolverine you go ahead over to Jeff Dodd's own I did I did that I did some writing about Wolverine I will have something similar for control resident.

2:53:08I had a lot of experience. Ideally later this week. Depending on how long that game is I suppose I have not finished it yet but but yes I'll have something to say about control resident at some point down the line. And yes I'll be back tomorrow will play some other video games and do some stuff. Of course Friday we will rank some Nintendo 64 games it'll be a good time. FX is American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all star cast reprising fan favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX is American Horror Story 13 now streaming on Hulu.

2:54:09Hello. Look what TJ Max dragged out. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. We are digital we are downloadable we are streamable. The fashion event of the year is certified fresh. Pull yourself together we have worked to do. Critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel. That's all. Get run way ready for the Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney Plus and Hulu rid of BG 13. At ZockDock we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry that doctor's not a network. Press one for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours. The next availability is in three months. But ZockDock makes finding the right doctor easy. Download the app and search by specialty insurance and availability. Read real patient reviews then book instantly. ZockDock ready to be seen.