GameBurst News - 1 Mar 2026

Today is Sunday the 1st of March, 2026 and this is your Game Burst News.

I'm Gary Tenteriplier, Ben O'Zan, and join me in the pod this week is Taylor.

Hello!

Right, we've got a news roundup when we did miss the big news story last week by about, I

think it's about six hours after we've recorded it.

We will no doubt get to that in the news round shortly, and then we've got a slightly shorter

pick of the week this week, but Taylor certainly got a very interesting new hobby to talk

about, and then we do have quite a bit of correspondence feedback, some of which I might

not read out because there's some really good ideas in there, and I might still do those

for the show, but I didn't know what to do with it, I didn't know what to do with it.

That's all right, anyway, the first news story is the Xbox leadership pledges to return

to console hardware routes, new leadership Xbox has moved to to reassure fans that are pledging

renew commitment to the brand's presence in console hardware market.

The statement follows after a wave of change, a wave of change unsettled the Xbox business

and brand at the weekend, with long time Xbox figured, but Phil Spencer quote, retiring

from Xbox after 40 years, and Sarah Bond, former president of Xbox, presumed to be

Spencer's replacement in waiting, suddenly departing as well.

There's obviously a bit more to this as well, and I want to read out another quote which

I'll look for in a minute, but the lady who's been putting charge is the former head of the AI

business or AI mark thing I think she's from and has no prior experience of playing games,

if that's only created a game attack six weeks ago.

Okay, no, no, then again, you perhaps don't need a gamer to be in charge of the business

because you want business to run. It's certainly a pressing shift given the fact that they

made moves to somewhat go multi-platform with some of their titles and stuff.

I mean, we've talked before how we're not entirely sure whether or not, you know,

the DS is possibly the last console that they might be doing, they had the partnership with

us. I can't remember to do the portable, streaming, being the A8, uh, uh, Azuz.

And there's definitely question marks over the Xbox side of things at the minute because it

seems the, the future is uncertain, or those of us who follow the industry so much definitely

are definitely feeling that there's a cloud of uncertainty over the Xbox division itself,

especially when you, you know, you've got the guys retiring, the supposed next inline leaving

and someone being put in charge who isn't known for gaming now. That, like I said, that might not

be a bad thing, uh, fresh eyes to the business, fresh eyes to the, to the division may actually

benefit, but it's a time we'll tell the situation. I've got the quote I wanted to read out,

let me just get down to it. So this is actually from, um, it's a Keith Stewart who, um,

who, who's batch, I suppose that is quite why I was a journalist, a gaming journalist for some time

wrote for edge for years and has written for the Guardian for many years now. He has a Guardian

blog on gaming each week along with rhythm at Donald and, um, this is from his, he's written a

really good blog article about, uh, about the knocks off news, but this was the bit that I think

really stood out to me. Um, so he said, there's concern around Sharma, that's the lady's taken over,

redeployment from the AI division. Uh, is she there to cut costs by further green lighting

or studio redundancies in favor of Gen I. I, um, can, uh, can, can, uh, I'll cut a bit out.

But anyway, uh, we live in the age of, of forever games, the mega vertical things like

Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Gestion, Impact, honor of Kings, billion dollar games that require

multi millions to create market and maintain. Might it be tempting for Microsoft to just quietly

phasor Xbox entirely? Well, that's exactly how Xbox co-creator Sharma's blackly put in an

interview on Monday telling games beats that quote, Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren't

the core AI business is being sunsetted. They don't say it, but that's what's happening. I expect

that her job is going to be a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.

And I have to say that was my, uh, he's put it more eloquently and in writing than me.

But that was my immediate reaction when I saw, um, who was going, how they were going,

you're going to get retired when you are told to retire.

Um, um, and, um, knowing Microsoft as I do, everything is about co-pilot. That's all they care about.

Um, and yeah, she's her background and what she's been involved with.

She's the ideal person to put in charge of something that's going to be basically put into managed

decline. So yeah, we should see, it's a time we'll tell thing. Um, like I said, we, we've

pushed out that they're now publishing onto a PlayStation, they're publishing on, they've been

publishing onto the Switch for a while. You know, PC games still going strong. So it,

yeah, it might be, it might not be, we can only speculation at this point in time.

We'll have to see what actions they take and go from there. Indeed.

Next up, I've got two valve stories. They're always entertaining. New York sues valve over alleged

gambling law violations and valve faces a 656 million pound legal claim in the UK courts as well.

First of all, New York attorney general has filed a lawsuit against valve alleging the company's

loot box system constitutes legal gambling. Um, the legal action focuses particularly on titles

Counterstrike 2, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 claiming they promote predatory behavior.

The case follows increasing global regulational scrutiny over how digital items are monetized

in live service games. And we've said before if the game's entry doesn't regulate itself and

governments will and that's happened all across Europe. And then secondly, a significant

collection collective action, uh, a collective action lawsuit against valve has been reached

in the UK courts with the company facing a claim of nearly 700 million pounds for its steam

platform dominance. The legal challenge is that in the gaming PC gaming giant has used its

market position to overcharge millions of UK customers for games that add on content. This

case represents one of the largest regulatory hurdles the company has faced on the British market

to date. Now, I know a little about the the English one. And it's,

it, it, it, while it sounds big and hearing you also sounds like it's written by people who don't

understand how the system works either. Yeah, and that's being generous. I see you smiling,

so I don't know if you've looked into it more than I have. I'm not quite willing to.

Yes, I agree with you. I think it's, I'm not mainly not so much

understands how it works, but I wonder what their motives are as well.

They're definitely questionable, though, so it's, it's not, it's not a valve as, as messed up this,

this feels no. Opportunistic, I think it's perhaps the best way to use it.

Valve don't do anything different to any other online market. No, it's really.

Because they're on about like, like, it's been a while since I watched the video on it,

but like, they were on about how, you know, if you, you had to buy DLC and it had to be through

their system, which is how every other system works. If you have a game on Xbox, you cannot buy the

DLC on Steam and have it work on the Xbox, you have to buy it to the Xbox store, same on

PlayStation, same on Nintendo. A lot of it, you start looking at it and go, I, not, like you said,

this is not a altruistic endeavor. It's a, what are you actually after? And you just talk to

Steam because you think I'll push over because they're not the massive giant corporation, but it

does mean when they, but Steam's one of those that they're a big bear, you don't poke those ones.

Because when they come, they come armed. I think they're probably a softer target because they

don't own the platform. So for things like, you know, because it's been loads of these lawsuits

against Apple and against Google with the Google Play Store. Yeah, but like, that was mostly active.

No, not intuition. It was someone in the back by Tencent, so they had

yeah, epic. Sorry, it was epic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think, and like with Microsoft and Sony, I think they've also had legal challenges over

the, the only 10 do have, but the difference with those is they, they do own the platforms,

so they can kind of justify, well, the, their, their proofing court is normally, look,

we, we own the hardware. And we need to make sure the software that runs on that hardware is

a world garden stable and tested all this. But then again, you can go with Steam. Yes,

they don't own the hardware, but you have the epic store. You had other stores. It's not

Steam's fault that the other stores were not capable of challenging them. You know, epic came

along and tried. And you know, how many years did it take them to get a shopping basket?

You know, it's silly things like that. Steam's not responsible for their competition being

a little bit tense. You know, that's not Steam's fault. No, I suspect these are like PC market

publishers behind the scenes. And they're looking to get a way of getting their stuff on Steam

without having to pay the, whatever it is, 34% margin. I suspect that's what it is. It's 30,

70 split, which is what most of the other stores do. I wouldn't imagine. I mean, I've got

60. I know, I probably might not. I don't know how the goggles shakes out because the goggles

always been a little bit more weird because, you know, you, while they do have some current titles,

you know, you don't particularly go there for triple A's, you go there to get like classic games.

So like you're asking the e-mails, dyno prices and things like that. So I'm not quite sure how

the revenue split works on them. Maybe it's the same way. Maybe it's not. I don't know.

So obviously sometimes they have to put the working to get things to run on one hardware.

But yeah, it's, yeah, this case is a weird one. I look forward to seeing what happens. I

can't see it going anywhere, but you never know. No. I suspect it would be thrown out. Or if they

do settle, it will be for a lot lower than that number. It's not going anywhere near it.

As the new one will valve another company's like e-mails, they've lost those court cases in,

particularly in Europe and in the UK, actually. So I think they'll probably lose them there. You know,

so the fact that it's 2026 and we're still doing loop boxes and trains, pretend it is not some

of what we're gambling is silly. It is. It is. Next up, Eurogamer and outside Xbox

staff hit by a new wave of layoffs. The games, media sectors faced further contraction this week as

IG and owned Eurogamer and its associated network launched a fresh round of editorial cuts.

Reports indicate that most of the experienced editors and the entire four-person video team are

amongst those affected while the popular YouTube channel outside Xbox is also been hit with behind

scenes layoffs. The move follows a turbulent period of the game and networks since the acquisition

in 2024 highlighting the continued crisis in media games journalism.

It's not just video games journalism when this is suffering, unfortunately, there's due to

generative AI. You have seen huge decimations from websites. I'm just getting rid of people

and just getting it because they will just get AI to write things. Yeah. And that is a big problem.

You know, I still believe very much so in the personal touch.

Yeah. The irony now is that I mean news websites used to be people writing articles based on

like press releases from the publishers and people out. But the irony now is the press releases

are written by AI, which are then summarized by AI on these websites. So and then read by other AI

and then summarized to the actual people that get to read it. So it's been through four sets of

of different AI models before you actually read the thing. But yeah, I mean, there's some quotes

there. They're also blaming sort of the usual things about ad blockers and things like that. But

I'm afraid these sorts of businesses have got to find another way of making money. I mean,

the ad revenue thing has been on the slide for a decade and I'm afraid AI has just accelerated it.

You know, so it has been a bit of a thing that I don't want to say. Some sort of that new cell

that print journalist has always been slow to that. And even though like you said,

the ad revenue has been on the way for a decade or more, they've not been quick to adapt at all.

James, I still think you need written journalists. I don't think you'll get to know a journalist.

And even if you don't like them, if they're able to present their criticism of something

in a worthwhile way, go, well, I know you're not, this isn't your thing, but you're saying this,

this and this. I know that's something that I can agree with. And I think that kind of works

important. I genuinely do. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and a lot of the good writers are on a sub-stack now.

So not Patrick Clepick and Steven Tutilo and people like that, they've got really good sub-stacks,

which, you know, they're really interesting to read. And you pay a small fee to read them,

you know, it's like a dollar or two a month or something to access their substacks. And that's,

I think that's really the sort of model that, you know, these sites need to, I know they,

I know you're a game, it does have a, you know, a fee like Patreon type thing. But,

yeah, you just can't, ad revenues been falling in every industry, like TV and everything

else for a long time. And I've always felt that if your business is based on ad revenue,

it's based on sand anyway. But, yeah, that's getting YouTuber, because they will tell you,

you know, if they're fun, you know, ad revenue goes down, it can be crypto. Yeah, brutal. Yeah,

exactly. Yes, but yeah, sad for the PR, I'll see who's actually affected, but there's

nothing to be a list of anyone yet. But there's some good people on those channels, so hopefully they

can find another way to exercise their creative creativity. Speaking of which creative director

of the next Assassin's Creed game leaves Ubisoft. This follows the news that was another top

Ubisoft designer left the other week. But Clinton Hawking industry veteran leading the

drama on the upcoming Assassin's Creed code name Hexie or Hexer has the party to Ubisoft

mid-wide accompanying restructuring. Hawking known for his influential work on Far Cry 2,

and Spencer Cell Chaos theory, is the second high-profile lead to Hexie's project in recent months.

Ubisoft has moved to really show investors and fans that develop and continues under a new

head of content, despite the internal upheaval. And this is the continuing

mess that is Ubisoft really. Yeah, okay, so it's the game cursor, is it Ubisoft? And I think

my one is on Ubisoft. They've been losing, right? They're top talent quite a lot

over the last few weeks, since they did that big restructure where they effectively have positioned

Ubisoft under this new umbrella, you know, the video games business under this new umbrella

company. Yeah. And there's just, yeah, I mean, you might have bad allegations against like

on the it's, yeah, it's just... In many ways, you kind of hope they sell their

IP to somebody else because then they get out from underneath the toxic culture in that place.

But who's going to buy it now? That's the... This region is either... I hate to say it's either

Chinese or it's the Saudis because that's who we're buying on studios, I mean, it's 10 cent or

it's the Saudi investment thing. And that hurts because you know, sat under Saudis,

unfortunately, called a lot of money into SNK, which I, these me going, I do not want to give

money to SNK now because you, who owns you? Which sucks, because because of my fighting inquiries,

I got so into SNK games, and I love them. Yep. And then finally, new Castlevania title is

announced for 2026. Konami, Konami has revealed Castlevania Bellman's curse, the first original

2D entry in the legendary franchise for several years during a major industry showcase,

developed in collaboration with the team behind Dead Cells. Like we mentioned last week,

they did the Assassin's Creed one as well. The title is set in 80th century France and marks

a significant return to the series Gothic roots. People may remember that there was a Dead Cells

expansion that was Castlevania as well, where basically that was Castlevania. So again,

this is not a surprise. The announcement follows a long period of legacy port leases and signals

over a renewed internal commitment to the publisher to call game properties. I don't think so.

I think it's small that Dead Cells did that really good expansion that was turned Dead Cells into

Castlevania and they probably said to Konami, do you want us to make a game for you and Konami

went, we like money, yes please. And that was probably just how it went.

Yeah, but it's in the hands of a really solid good developer. Yeah, yeah.

And make people happy. I laugh because I just realized I have bought at least two out of the three

of those classic packs. So the only one I haven't got is the most recent one. I haven't played a

single thing. I have never played a Castlevania in my life. And I keep buying these packs going

with the honest to gone intention of, I'm going to play one of these. It's a working progress.

It's a working progress, yeah. It's the thing, too many games, not enough time. Yeah.

Right. And let's move on to our picks of the Wigna says quite slim pickings this week. And

I'll give Taylor the most of the show for here because it's interesting what Taylor has been

building. So I'll quickly get my one at the way. So the only thing I've really sort of

played quite a bit of over the last two weeks is what week or so is a new ball game called

Speakeasy which is by Mattel LaSerder who's one of my favourite designers. Quite divisive because

the games are very heavy, like strategically heavy. But I played it twice over the past weeks

with two different groups. And this one's actually much lighter in relative terms than his other

games. But dramatically it's the game about running Speakeasy's in in Prohibition New York. And in

the game you have to basically build your empire, build Speakeasy's, build your casinos and your

nightclubs, supply them with Hooch all while avoiding other gangsters and the police and trying

to outkeep compete other players who are doing the same thing. So that's the kind of setup. But yeah,

it's a very pretty game, very elegantly designed. And yeah, I've been really enjoying it.

So, Taylor. All right, so I'm going to talk about a company called LumiRix. So I like it.

I have found it very satisfying to build. I'm not going to say it's not stressful,

but I definitely find it satisfying to build. And I have a certain niche. I tend to like vehicles.

It's just like a bit of cars or spaceships and things like that. But there's a genre that I love,

which is Cyberpunk. Now, LumiRix is a Lego competitor without licensing. So if you aren't aware

that the patent for Lego expired, so anyone can make Lego bricks now. It can't call them Lego,

but obviously you have competitors. And LumiRix is actually a really good alternative.

And one of the things I really liked about or that drew me to Lumi was the fact that one,

they had a whole set of cyberpunk kits. And unlike Lego, they come with lighting kits.

So if you want lighting kits for your Lego, you have to go to a third party. I actually have a third

party lighting kit for my Lego egg to one, which I intend to do pretty soon. And it was actually

bought for me by my brother. And I'm going to install that into Lego egg to one. But whereas

the LumiRix, the lighten kit comes with it. And it's actually tied into the instructions. So

as you build, like you would normal Lego, you do also incorporate the lighting and the the sockets

where sort of the pod to go. So I showed the guys the instruction book for my game stack,

cyberpunk. And I'm not kidding. It's about two centimeters thick. And that's just sort of the base

or the frame. And there was five instruction books for the pods that slot in.

So there's like a classic retro arcade. There's a VR thing and all sorts of stuff.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Another thing I wanted to actually mention up front is price.

So I paid about 130 quid. I think it was for the game stacks, which comparable to something in

Lego. It was a lot cheaper. You know, if this was Lego, you're probably talking the two to 300 pounds

worth of little plastic bricks, whereas this was much more affordable. So I had a great time

building it. The instructions are just as good as Lego. In fact, I think in some places,

they're a little bit better. So a lot of the bricks, the new bricks that you do in each section

are highlighted. So it's very easy to go. Oh, right. That goes there. That goes there. That goes there.

The lighting kit, like I said, is incorporated into the instructions as you build. So as you build up,

you're framing that, you know, you are incorporating the lights in now.

The downside is my first light that I put in, which is the main wall for the bonn floor, broke.

And I didn't test it because it does tell you to test before you start. That's the important

thing to do. I didn't test. So I don't know if it was broken out the box or I broke the cable

while I was trying to incorporate it because it was quite a long piece. So it is entirely

possible that I broke it because I didn't know what I was doing. So that's a bit of a shame,

but that's the only light that is broken. Everything else works. And if I do remember,

I will post some pictures and some videos upon the Facebook page for you guys to take a look at.

And just like Lego, it features lots of little hidden details and things. So you've got that

that style of, so if you're like, oh, how, you know, you'll have rooms with certain items in,

that's in there, you know, like the classic arcade in the top section actually has you build

three arcade machines, little arcade cabinet looking machines, which is great. And like

there's thought out things that this is a joystick, this is a gum, you know, this is a light gum game.

Around the back that you can't see is actually a body in hand. There's a ripper doctor basically

hiding it at the back of the arcade, which I thought was fantastic.

And also just like Lego, it is very structurally, it's a structure building as well. So you will

be building structural supports and things like that. There's a lift in my, in the game stack.

So and that's building out more technical pieces. So Lego Technica. So it's built more like that.

So it's a lot of pegs, a lot of round holes, things like that. It was a really fun build.

It was not a quick build. This thing was two and a half thousand pieces of like, well, not

of loomie bricks. So it took me roughly about 15 hours to build it. So it took a while.

I'm really satisfied because it can run off battery pack. So runs off three triple three AA

batteries. It also has a USB connection. And it's on my shelf next to my Xbox. So it's like,

hang on, okay, it will reaches my USB port. My Xbox, I'm just plugging that in and living it

turned on permanently. And some of the lights color change. It's all really well thought out. It was

really fun. And it's one of those things I keep looking up there. I can't believe I built that.

Yeah, now I thoroughly, if you're looking for a Lego build and a challenging Lego build,

I would actually recommend the loomie bricks, especially because of the lights, the lights do make,

I mean, the theme itself really helps. But the actually a bit of ability to have your light and kit

in built in there really sells it. And I really love it. I'm thoroughly impressed with it.

The point that I, there's five kits in this cyberpunk theme of buildings. And the temptation to buy

them all is quite high. So I'm already eyeing up the Japanese restaurant next. There's the game

stack which I bought. There's a Japanese restaurant. There's an apartment complex. There's a

fashion house. And there's a train station, a futuristic train station. However, if cyberpunk is not

your thing, loomie bricks also do steam punk. And the thing that gutted me the most was the steam

punk train was not available at time. When I had the money, I was like, I wouldn't bought that.

But yeah, there's a, so that if you like steampunk, there's quite a few elements to go through there.

You know, if I get through the cyberpunk, I might do the steam punk next. They do stand in

like street scenes as well. So there's train stations there. There's a record shop which looks

amazing. The video that actually convinced me to buy the loomie bricks actually on the toy store.

The toy store is fantastic. It has lots of little rooms set up. So there's like an art room.

There's a cash register. There's also some things that you know, you would expect to find in a

toy store. And it's like the level of detail is comparable to to Lego. And the structural

wheel is comparable to Lego. In the good and bad ways as well. Because like some of the roofs,

I am not fond of the connections. They seem to be a little bit light or don't connect as well as

I'd like. But yeah, now I had an absolutely fun time building this Lego thing. And like I said,

I will pop pictures of videos on one Facebook. And it's yeah, it's on the Facebook page. And yeah,

I really like it. And yes, I over 100 quid is pretty expensive. But if you are into Lego and building

stuff, you all know that it's not, you know, it's not a nice Lego stuff. It is dear. I mean, I would

love. Well, I mean, it's got the enterprise. I'm not keen on it. But I think that's because

that shape of ship does not translate well into a Lego design. However, Star Wars really translates

very well into Lego. A lot of the Star Wars ships look fantastic. They will set you back astronomical

amounts of money, especially if you want the good millennium Falcon, you're talking 800 pound.

And the Lego set that I actually genuinely want more than anything is almost 400 pounds, it's about

400 pounds, nearly 400 pounds, which is written down. I want the Lord of the Rings out. Well, that's

so, so stupidly expensive. Well, yeah, now if you want an alternative, I'm

living the rich. I bought it through Amazon. I was very happy. Do follow the instructions,

test your lights first and be a little bit gentle. I don't think they're fragile. But I think some

of the solder points might not be the best. And I don't know enough about wiring to fix it

unfortunately. So I'm down a set of lights, but what is working more than makes up for it?

So you probably all do more. I have found out what you were talking about. I have found out

the answer to my question before we started the show is where do they come from?

So because it's quite a new name, apparently they used to be called get this fun hole.

The rebranded to Lumibrix back in in 2025. So quite recent. Yeah, so they are Chinese. They're

based in Guangdong. But they actually started out making lighting kits for Lego sets.

That's where they started. Yeah, and the system they use is a system called go bricks,

which apparently is a kind of open source Lego brick standard. And it's supposed to be as,

you know, considered the gold standard for quality outside of Lego itself.

There you go. Yeah. And it says they've got warehouses in US, UK, Germany, and Canada.

Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned the rain juice.

Yeah. And you mentioned the steam pump train though.

Yeah. Steam punk cyberpunk and sci-fi are the things. I mean, when I was looking at

I've got the website and what I like is it's a bit like how Lego used to be. Well,

they used to make the Lego city stuff and it's cool. I have a plan. If I do get all the

street scenes for the cyberpunk is I also want to get some of the custom minifigs,

some hides certain characters throughout it. So some way you might notice like the doctor

and some way you'll see, you know, dog brown or something. So that's kind of fun things to do.

And actually, because I have a little delorean, I am wondering if I can like hide that

away and they're seeing somewhere that we think will be fun.

Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. I like they've got like a whole like Western theme and things like that.

There's some really cool, really cool things that they do.

Yeah. Very good. Yeah. I'm almost I'm slightly intrigued.

There's a rabbit hole. I don't need to go down to move away.

Move away. An expensive rabbit hole. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah, that explains the name.

And the name comes from literally luminated bricks. That's what they call luminate bricks.

Right. So we got some feedback from last week. So I'm going to read these out in the order they came.

But I mentioned earlier that one of Tony's suggestions I might edit what Tony said because

I might save those as a bit of a show idea if ever we have a quiet week.

But so start off with, we had correspondence. These are all in blue skies.

If you want to reach out to blue sky, just use the hashtag game burst.

And you can find myself and Jerome and Taylor on their as well. Although we don't check it very often.

But yeah, if you message me, I do, I do check it sort of couple of times a week. But

first of all, cybalm said the latest pixel addict magazine number 32.

There's an excellent interview with game developer Patricia Curtis. She talks about the struggles

of being a trans woman in the 80s and the impact they add on their programming career,

worth buying a copy just for that article. Call of not red. I've seen a pixel addict. Well,

I've not read red, read that since one of the very early editions. So yeah.

I'll find a link and include it in the show notes.

Yeah, there we go. I'll add that to the show note.

Next up, Andy Lee said I was, I always wondered the size of the game burst audience

and those stats were very interested to hear. I started listening to Taylor James and Lewis

in the James and Jaili Lewis era to pass time whilst taking my son to nursery. He's now 18.

Dustin's the buggy anymore. Wow.

And then this is where Tony suggested some topics. So I'll read a couple out, but I might keep

the desert island this one. We have done before many years ago, but it'd be curious to revisit that one.

And he also said, would you, you wouldn't show 18-rated film to a child? Well,

depends on the film, depends on the child, actually. But do game ratings have a similar

damaging effect? Watch your personal experience in Household Rawls.

I grew up watching stuff like Nat Mariner and Alan Street and Ali's. I think I did that fine.

Yes, exactly. Aliens is still one of my favourite movies of all time.

Anything I love more than perhaps Aliens is Blaine Runner, but I took a lot to appreciate that one.

Yeah, I'm a believer in parental guidance on that sort of stuff. So if you feel...

Well, yeah, in all fairness, too. So I can talk about this, because I'm not sure you can,

but my prime example is I have let Michael, who is now 11, play Five Nights at Freddy's.

I have let him watch that Five Nights at Freddy's movies.

Yes, they're not particularly gory. You know, I wouldn't may watch just something like

terrifying, but I allowed Michael to dictate whether or not he felt comfortable watching him.

He had the TV remote, and if he did feel like comfortable, I got too scared.

He would stop moving it and walk away from it, and that was fine. That was honestly fine.

He's also played stuff like Mortal Kombat and things like that. He's not particularly his back,

so he's never been faced enough to really get in deep with that. So again, like you,

you know your child, and age ratings are there to give guidance. Yes, they are,

they are, you know, you can't walk in as a ten-year-old. You can't purchase it.

Yeah, it's not illegal to play the game. It's just unlawful for the shop to sell it to another

agent. It's down to knowing and working out what best suits your child. You will know,

and you've got also got to let someone have a bit of that freedom. You know, my mom,

but I said, give me the freedom to sit and watch something like aliens, and yes, I might have

hit behind the cushions and stuff when I got scared. But again, in my head, I knew it wasn't real,

so it gave me a fascination into how special effects work, so that sent me off on a whole

different tangent of working out or looking up and reading about how special effects make,

because in fact, then we didn't have YouTube and stuff. We didn't have extra features.

You didn't know how the magic was done, so whenever you could get one of those shows or something

that showed you how stuff was done, how it was always fascinating to buy it. So yeah, again,

each case is different. There's no right or wrong answer, I think.

Agreed. No, I'm hungry. And then finally, from Tony said, really get discretion, discussions on

the stats. This is last week, because there was a list of questions about podcast stats, and so I

did actually sort of dig them out and had a look. And so please, you don't really care or have

stellar ambitions. No, as we said last week, it's the first time I'd looked in years,

we're probably about AC months, two years, first time I've actually looked, and I've never looked

in that much detail for a long, long time, probably more than a decade. I think in format

is great. The quizzes were fun, but obviously a lot of work, yeah. And to be fair, that was

initially mainly Lewis, who did the quiz, and then Mitch, I did, I did a couple, but it was

too much of a hard work, and then Mitch did the actual work. And they took hard work in writing

the questions, it was hard work to edit it, it was, yeah, that was, that would have been

just a full time thing on its own. Yeah, I mean, with AI tools today, the writing the questions

and stuff would be a little bit easier, but the editing, again, I mean, I use, I've been using

a very AI tools for the last few years to do like the post-processing on the show to take out,

you know, sort of background noises and auto leveling and all that sort of stuff, but

it's so you don't necessarily have to go through and sort of cut things out like we used to,

but doing the new show was a lot of work because it was like multi-track and you're having to put

in sort of buzzers and all kinds of things in it. So yeah, it was a good, I would say,

four to ten hours worth of work to do the new show.

Of course, yeah. And that's some, yeah, per show.

The new show is a little bit easier. The new show is easier, yeah.

Yeah, and I said, I do use, I do use a number of AI tools to make it even easier. I mean,

these days because the tools are so powerful, I can normally turn out and edit and post it at about

30 minutes, whereas it did use to our early days. It did use to take like an hour or so,

hour or two. So things have sped up, you know, much as the criticize AI, I was also very powerful

when there's making lots of very manual tedious jobs much, much faster. But yeah, I don't think

we'll ever probably do a quiz again. It's just too much, too much hard work, but we might do,

we might do a topic show, which is why Tony, I said, I'll um,

yeah, um, yeah. Yeah. Case need, we have a slow week. We did one for Christmas. We did a

bit of a topic show. So we might do one on like special occasions, but anniversaries, things

like that around the year, um, or if this like a really, really slow news week, then that's not

the time to kind of chuck in a topic. Um, but they said to think for you, uh, blah, blah, having five

people slowed it down. So it slowed down the phone flows. It felt like things were rushed,

but I do like the deeper dive topics. Yeah. So well, and often if we have a good news topic,

we'll go deep on that on the new show. That was the idea is that we have like headlines. And then

if there is one, we want a deep dive on, we will. So yeah, but thanks for all your feedback and

support. Always appreciated. Um, and uh, yeah, if you want to leave feedback again,

please wait to go on to Blue Sky and just post something interesting and just use the hashtag

game burst and then, uh, I can find it. Uh, right. I think we can wrap things up there. So, um,

always do thank Taylor for joining me in the pod this week. No problem. And thank you very much.

And, uh, yeah, I've been Gary Santilla. Oh, I better not understand. We'll back just try

thinking my work, Gary. Yeah, I'm going to travel as much anymore, but I still have to try and

remember. Um, we should be back. Yeah, we will back next week with all your video game news.

I do hope you'll understand.