Celeste Devs Cancel Next Game

<v Speaker 1>Don't bit, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this
<v Speaker 1>for January twenty three, twenty twenty five. For the next
<v Speaker 1>hour or so, let me help you sort through the
<v Speaker 1>world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with me
<v Speaker 1>Jeff Grub. Today, EA underperformed and it's pinning the blame
<v Speaker 1>on Dragon age and soccer, and Insomniac has a new
<v Speaker 1>boss that also won't tell us anything about Wolverine. But first,
<v Speaker 1>please join me and welcome in today's co host to
<v Speaker 1>Game Mess Mornings. It's Matt Piscatella. Matt, how are you doing?
<v Speaker 2>What? Hello? Jeff Grub, Hello, chat. This is a lot
<v Speaker 2>of fun. I'm very excited.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, glad to have you here. Analysts from the from
<v Speaker 1>Sircana group. Right, I'm still not used to it. Have
<v Speaker 1>you gotten used to it?
<v Speaker 3>No?
<v Speaker 2>And everyone still says the MPDE group, which you know,
<v Speaker 2>technically I'm supposed to get smacked if I say so,
<v Speaker 2>I won't. But yeah, we merged with IRA a couple
<v Speaker 2>of years ago and now we are Sirkana, the super
<v Speaker 2>research company.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, there it is all right. So yeah, whenever we
<v Speaker 1>do those reports about a an analyst to send this
<v Speaker 1>how many games sold the United States. Met does all
<v Speaker 1>that work, has all the spreadsheets, gives us all those
<v Speaker 1>little fun tadbits to talk about. Also, you know, occasual
<v Speaker 1>insights into other things happening in the market as well.
<v Speaker 1>Always appreciate it when we can talk about any of
<v Speaker 1>the stuff you offer us, Matt. But very excited to
<v Speaker 1>have you on the show. This is awesome. Anything you
<v Speaker 1>will think people should know about yourselves before about yourself
<v Speaker 1>before we get started.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, very quick. Rundown been doing this about seven years.
<v Speaker 2>Prior to doing this, I spent about fifteen years in publishing.
<v Speaker 2>Started at Activision Publishing at the time away back in
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and five. Left publishing as the vice president
<v Speaker 2>sales Planning at Warner Brothers Games right around twenty seventeen.
<v Speaker 2>So spent a long time and everything touching numbers, from
<v Speaker 2>trade marketing to demand planning, the business intelligence everything, green
<v Speaker 2>light forecast modeling. If you ever said, hey they dropped
<v Speaker 2>the price of a game by whatever, or hey they
<v Speaker 2>put that game on sale, I was they for a
<v Speaker 2>very long time.
<v Speaker 1>So when people would say don't they like money, were
<v Speaker 1>you the one that they were like probably talking about that,
<v Speaker 1>Like he was deciding whether or not they like that
<v Speaker 1>money or not.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know what, publishers turns out that they like
<v Speaker 2>money a lot.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, fair enough, excellent. Yeah, so Matt, I think, God,
<v Speaker 1>we've only met a couple times in person, but I
<v Speaker 1>did meet you with like the one time I remember
<v Speaker 1>for sure was at a PlayStation like Mixer, and that
<v Speaker 1>was a good time. They had some good food and
<v Speaker 1>drinks there. When you do get out to industry events,
<v Speaker 1>like what part of the industry are you normally mingling with?
<v Speaker 1>Are you going to meetings with executives or is it
<v Speaker 1>just like you know, you're free to go roam the
<v Speaker 1>show floor at a summer games fest.
<v Speaker 2>Usually it's at publishing events or retailer events. So I'm
<v Speaker 2>always talking with folks about where the business is going,
<v Speaker 2>what games are coming out, what's happening with consumer trends,
<v Speaker 2>everything from specific behavior to what might be happening in
<v Speaker 2>credit card debt or income levels or employment, like everything
<v Speaker 2>about what might impact this market. I get to chat
<v Speaker 2>about and it's a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 1>Excellent, All right, Well, we do have a lot to
<v Speaker 1>get into, so we should probably explain what we do
<v Speaker 1>here most weekdays. I Jeff Grub will help piece your
<v Speaker 1>gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe
<v Speaker 1>even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics,
<v Speaker 1>I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who
<v Speaker 1>will make me look smart. If you're watching live on
<v Speaker 1>twitch welcome, You can always listen to the show later
<v Speaker 1>on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings, or
<v Speaker 1>find the RSS on GiantBomb dot com. You can also
<v Speaker 1>catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
<v Speaker 1>Hello YouTube, All right, we have a lot to get
<v Speaker 1>so let's start the Morning Mess with EA does in
<v Speaker 1>fact blame underperformance of dragon Age and EA Football Club
<v Speaker 1>twenty five as it lowers forecast. This is from Andy
<v Speaker 1>Robinson at BGC. Electronic Guard says lowered its revenue forecast
<v Speaker 1>for its current business year partly due to what it
<v Speaker 1>called the underperformance of FC twenty five and dragon Age
<v Speaker 1>of the Veilguard. EA's initial guidance for its current fiscal
<v Speaker 1>year ending March thirty first anticipated mid single digit growth
<v Speaker 1>from its live service games, including Football Club twenty five. However,
<v Speaker 1>the company warned the market on Wednesday that it now
<v Speaker 1>expects a mid single digit dcline with an FC twenty
<v Speaker 1>five slow down during the Christmas period, accounting for the
<v Speaker 1>majority of that change. Separately, EA said on Wednesday that
<v Speaker 1>dragon Age of the Veilguard, released in October engage around
<v Speaker 1>and engaged in quotes is how they put it, around
<v Speaker 1>one point five million players during the three months into
<v Speaker 1>December thirty first, twenty twenty four, which it said was
<v Speaker 1>at nearly half of its expectations. EA now netbookings of
<v Speaker 1>around two point twenty one billion for its third quarter
<v Speaker 1>and an updated range of seven to seven point one
<v Speaker 1>to five billion for the fiscal year. That is down
<v Speaker 1>from seven point five to seven point eight billion that
<v Speaker 1>they were expecting originally during Q three. We continue to
<v Speaker 1>deliver high quality games and experiences across our proortfolio. However,
<v Speaker 1>dragon Age and EA Sports FC twenty five underperformed our
<v Speaker 1>netbookings expectations, said EA CEO Andrew Wilson. He does go
<v Speaker 1>on here, I want to read this quote and then
<v Speaker 1>we'll start discussing it. This month, our teams delivered a
<v Speaker 1>comprehensive gameplay refresh in addition to our annual Team of
<v Speaker 1>the Year update in FC twenty five. Positive player feedback
<v Speaker 1>and early results are encouraging. We remain confident in our
<v Speaker 1>long term strategy and expect a return to growth in
<v Speaker 1>fiscal year twenty six as we execute against our pipeline. Matt,
<v Speaker 1>I want to ask you what does it mean when
<v Speaker 1>a CEO says they want to execute against their pipeline?
<v Speaker 2>And it means that they have a lot of play
<v Speaker 2>in place that they expect to perform above where the
<v Speaker 2>current situation is. So there's there's a lot in the hopper.
<v Speaker 2>I might come down, but of course, you know, the
<v Speaker 2>best laid plans always come out in the wash, and
<v Speaker 2>consumers always have the ultimate final say. But yeah, that
<v Speaker 2>just means that that they've got stuff in store, But
<v Speaker 2>of course they're not going to tell you what that
<v Speaker 2>stuff is quite yet.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, let's start with football club. You know that one
<v Speaker 1>is just going to sort of wax and wane. As
<v Speaker 1>interested in the game, It's probably hard to put the
<v Speaker 1>finger on the pulse of something like that. There's so
<v Speaker 1>many people playing it at any one time. They're always
<v Speaker 1>making constant changes to the game, always trying to add
<v Speaker 1>new stuff, like making a change, and then suddenly there's
<v Speaker 1>a fewer people playing or spending money than expected. It's
<v Speaker 1>hard to say if that's because they're less happy with
<v Speaker 1>the game, or they're just spending time doing something else, right,
<v Speaker 1>it's got to be difficult to sort of measure something like.
<v Speaker 2>That, it is, and this is really where the crux
<v Speaker 2>of the myss probably lies. Live services for EA is
<v Speaker 2>the biggest deal, Yes, far bigger than any individual game
<v Speaker 2>or full game that you would sell. So this is
<v Speaker 2>probably where the bulk of this is coming from. It
<v Speaker 2>And look, and we were talking about AFC. It's a
<v Speaker 2>live service game. It's one of the live service games
<v Speaker 2>competing with all of the other sports games and all
<v Speaker 2>of the other live service games in the market, right,
<v Speaker 2>so it's even up against like a Marvel Rivals or
<v Speaker 2>a Fortnite or even a Rollblocks for that time and
<v Speaker 2>time is really the most important bit. So you know,
<v Speaker 2>that's what really matters, is how the players are engaging
<v Speaker 2>with the title and monetizing, and that will be subject
<v Speaker 2>to what else is going on in the market, both
<v Speaker 2>within gaming and externally as well.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it's i mean not just the games, right,
<v Speaker 1>It's always say people are spending more time on TikTok,
<v Speaker 1>so that is also taken away from a live service game.
<v Speaker 1>That's something that seems to be happy more frequently as
<v Speaker 1>these companies recognizing that they're competing outside of games. But
<v Speaker 1>you're right, FC twenty five very likely the bulk of
<v Speaker 1>this that is their breadwinner for the most part, and
<v Speaker 1>that doesn't mean they haven't looked for growth elsewhere. They
<v Speaker 1>were like, okay, we will separate EA Sports from sort
<v Speaker 1>of EA publishing. Let EA Sports do its thing, and
<v Speaker 1>then E Publishing can focus on stuff like Dragon Age
<v Speaker 1>the Veil Guard. I'm sure their expectations were higher for
<v Speaker 1>that game than it actually performed. It seems like it's
<v Speaker 1>another one of these big games that, while fine in
<v Speaker 1>many regards, just slightly missed the mark and consumers. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. It seems like they punished it for it
<v Speaker 1>for that, you know, punished as much as you know,
<v Speaker 1>we're not going to spend our time on that is
<v Speaker 1>a punishment.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And it's been a challenge with most single player games,
<v Speaker 2>even the hits this year. They come in for a
<v Speaker 2>month or two and then they fade away as people
<v Speaker 2>fall back into their live service or other comfort games.
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of something we're seeing not just in gaming,
<v Speaker 2>but across the board. This like turtling in towards comfort
<v Speaker 2>like you know, when you turn on when you turn
<v Speaker 2>on TV if you have TV, when you turn it
<v Speaker 2>on or you turn on a streaming service, what does
<v Speaker 2>it feed you? It feeds you friends or the office
<v Speaker 2>right these comfort shows. It's similar to what we're seeing
<v Speaker 2>at games right now, where people are continuing to fall back,
<v Speaker 2>whether they're playing Madden or they're playing Fortnite, like they're
<v Speaker 2>falling back into these comfort games rather than really taking
<v Speaker 2>big risks or trying new things or or you know,
<v Speaker 2>spending big dollars for a game that they may or
<v Speaker 2>may not end up liking. And it's a real challenge.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean you're seeing that every single month in
<v Speaker 2>this market where these big new single player games, you know,
<v Speaker 2>even the hits, they don't stick around too long.
<v Speaker 1>Do you when you do talk to companies and when
<v Speaker 1>you're looking at the data, do you get the sense
<v Speaker 1>that this the state of things as it is now,
<v Speaker 1>with the black Hole game taking up so much people's
<v Speaker 1>time and energy and money, is just how it has
<v Speaker 1>to be going forward forever? Or is it a trend
<v Speaker 1>that will eventually break and create space for another new innovation,
<v Speaker 1>whether that is a game design innovation or a game
<v Speaker 1>business innovation.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, one of those two things has to happen. If
<v Speaker 2>I knew which of those two things were going to work,
<v Speaker 2>I'd be out doing that rather than of course looking
<v Speaker 2>at sales numbers. Right, I'd be out making that game
<v Speaker 2>or making that innovation. But it has to happen. But
<v Speaker 2>when you look at this market, you know, if you
<v Speaker 2>look at something like Call of Duty, Call of Duty
<v Speaker 2>Black Op six, which is the best selling game of
<v Speaker 2>the year in the US this year, the franchise itself
<v Speaker 2>has been the number one selling franchise in the US
<v Speaker 2>for sixteen straight years, and that you know, Call of
<v Speaker 2>Duty really was one of those games that really started
<v Speaker 2>this live service revolution. How do you get people I
<v Speaker 2>would know, something like a Fortnite or a Rowblocks or
<v Speaker 2>a Grand Theft Auto when they've spent so much time
<v Speaker 2>and put so many dollars and have built not only
<v Speaker 2>like a relationship with the game, but a relationship with
<v Speaker 2>other people that play the game. Like these are people's
<v Speaker 2>social hubs, especially in this world, right, people really fall
<v Speaker 2>back into those comfort areas. How do you how do
<v Speaker 2>you encourage people to leave that try new things? I mean,
<v Speaker 2>that's that's just been one of the biggest challenges in
<v Speaker 2>the market today.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I mean, as someone who has been playing
<v Speaker 1>games a long time and and enjoys live service games,
<v Speaker 1>definitely gets into them occasionally, not like I once did.
<v Speaker 1>Like I was once very much into Call of Duty
<v Speaker 1>and was playing one thousand hours per copy of those games,
<v Speaker 1>like everything put out one a year, I'd play another
<v Speaker 1>thousand hours. I'm not that way anymore. I definitely am
<v Speaker 1>like kind of looking for the game I could spend
<v Speaker 1>some time with, have an adventure with, and move on.
<v Speaker 1>Part of me is accepting that I am that the
<v Speaker 1>industry is. I feel like the industry is putting me
<v Speaker 1>a little bit on an ice flow and sending me
<v Speaker 1>out to sea and being like, we don't really need
<v Speaker 1>you anymore. And then I'm like, Okay, well, there's plenty
<v Speaker 1>of indie games for me to take up my time,
<v Speaker 1>and I will focus on them. But I mean, is
<v Speaker 1>that a feeling that is reasonable that the Triple A
<v Speaker 1>publishers are not necessarily interested in the kinds of things
<v Speaker 1>that I'm interested in anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Well, there's really a fragmentation going on in the player base.
<v Speaker 2>Like everyone watching this stream, every member of Giant Bomb,
<v Speaker 2>you'd be very much into that core enthusiast community of
<v Speaker 2>people that really want to know and love video games
<v Speaker 2>as they've always been new adventures, new ways of playing,
<v Speaker 2>new things to do. This is a small but very important,
<v Speaker 2>incredibly important version of the market. But when you look
<v Speaker 2>at the market as a whole, what we're seeing is
<v Speaker 2>a big presence of people that will just play mobile.
<v Speaker 2>A fifty percent of content spending on video game products
<v Speaker 2>this year came from mobile. We also have a really
<v Speaker 2>big portion of the market which we call easy accessors
<v Speaker 2>and transitionals and what that means in terms of gamers
<v Speaker 2>segmentation or basically looking at the psychographic profiles of who's
<v Speaker 2>playing games. These are people that'll play things that are
<v Speaker 2>easily accessible, like they have their Chromebook or some other
<v Speaker 2>type of PC that they already have, What can I
<v Speaker 2>play on it? What can I play on my mobile
<v Speaker 2>device that I can jump into for free and just
<v Speaker 2>kind of mess around? And transitionals people who used to
<v Speaker 2>be more of the core audience that now because they
<v Speaker 2>have jobs and kids and everything else, we're transitioning away.
<v Speaker 2>So that traditional poor gaming audience that was basically the
<v Speaker 2>gaming audience, say in the early two thousands, it's really changed.
<v Speaker 2>Gaming is broadened in so many ways. But what that
<v Speaker 2>means is that there are different needs for being met
<v Speaker 2>for different groups of people, and those other groups of people,
<v Speaker 2>while they're not spending as much time or money as say,
<v Speaker 2>the core group, for so many of them that it
<v Speaker 2>kind of makes up for it. So, you know, back
<v Speaker 2>in the day, the only way to play a video
<v Speaker 2>game was to buy a console, buy a disc game
<v Speaker 2>and put it in the in the console and play it,
<v Speaker 2>you know, or a PC. But now there are so
<v Speaker 2>many ways to play, so many ways to engage with
<v Speaker 2>content that publishers are really having to pick and choose
<v Speaker 2>where they allocate their resources, and they're going to go
<v Speaker 2>to where the biggest return is going to lie until
<v Speaker 2>that changes. Like this is just kind of what we're
<v Speaker 2>probably going to see for a while, which a very
<v Speaker 2>long winded way of saying yeah.
<v Speaker 1>No, perfect, yes, that it represents how I'm feeling about
<v Speaker 1>all of it, And then I might just think about
<v Speaker 1>the culture war stuff and entitled entitledness and the finickiness
<v Speaker 1>of gamers. We're fickle. The core audience I'm specifically talking
<v Speaker 1>about the broader audience does seem to be like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I'm Anopoly game. Okay, yeah, we'll play that. And I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure there's plenty of drama within the Facebook page of
<v Speaker 1>Monopoly Go. I'm sure that exists, absolutely, but it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>seem to come from the same place of of like
<v Speaker 1>of entitlement that we seem to be dealing with in game,
<v Speaker 1>where it's like, these publishers, don't they know that we
<v Speaker 1>pay their bills, so shouldn't they be listening to us?
<v Speaker 1>And we're mad about this and it's got to get exhausting.
<v Speaker 1>You said they will go where the biggest return is,
<v Speaker 1>and it's well, we're not the biggest return, and we're
<v Speaker 1>also kind of annoying to deal with. At a certain point,
<v Speaker 1>it has to break them where it's like, why did
<v Speaker 1>we spend all this time trying to get Dragon Age
<v Speaker 1>the Vail Guard right? For these people? They were never
<v Speaker 1>going to be happy with it in the first place.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe we would have, but that's how it has to
<v Speaker 1>feel at this moment.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, it's it's high risk, right, Not only do
<v Speaker 2>you have to deliver a great game, and however you
<v Speaker 2>want to defind what makes a great game. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's up to whether it's a high metacritics score or
<v Speaker 2>or whatever way you personally think that is. Yeah, have
<v Speaker 2>to not only deliver a great game, but every single
<v Speaker 2>point of your mess has to be perfect. And like,
<v Speaker 2>for example, you know, back in the day, Assassin's Creed
<v Speaker 2>came out and and uh, that image, the screen shot
<v Speaker 2>came out of the character whose face disappeared, and all
<v Speaker 2>that were we're floating eyeballs, right, one screenshot like that
<v Speaker 2>comes out and all of a sudden, you're you're really
<v Speaker 2>fighting just to get the games message across, right, and
<v Speaker 2>and you're you're mentioning a couple of those points we've
<v Speaker 2>seen in recent in recent months where one small thing
<v Speaker 2>can kind of blow up into a much bigger thing
<v Speaker 2>and you know, really make your life difficult to try
<v Speaker 2>to bring a game to market, even if it's a
<v Speaker 2>great game. You're already up against the messaging, you're up
<v Speaker 2>against the social media aspect of it. And yeah, it's
<v Speaker 2>it's very, very tough. And and you know, there is
<v Speaker 2>a lot of potential reward for making those kind of games,
<v Speaker 2>but they come with a lot of risk as well,
<v Speaker 2>and that's kind of the balance you're you're trying to
<v Speaker 2>do right, all right.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, Let's uh, let's move on from e a plenty
<v Speaker 1>of other things to talk about. Let's get into Celestev's
<v Speaker 1>cancel next game after falling out and difficult development. This
<v Speaker 1>comes from Ethan Gotchak Kotaku. Earth Blade was going to
<v Speaker 1>be the next game from the creators behind two D
<v Speaker 1>pixel art action hits TowerFall and Celeste, but on Wednesday,
<v Speaker 1>designer Mattie Thorson announced the project was quietly canceled last
<v Speaker 1>month after a fallout between some of the team's members
<v Speaker 1>and the realization that the game's protracted development had become
<v Speaker 1>a real slog. The quote here from them is for
<v Speaker 1>us on the inside. We've had some time to process, grieve,
<v Speaker 1>and work toward accepting this. They made the decision in December,
<v Speaker 1>I believe, although this process is nonlinear and still ongoing.
<v Speaker 1>Thorson wrote, for those only reading this now who might
<v Speaker 1>be emotionally invested in this project, we're sorry to disappoint you.
<v Speaker 1>Earth Blade was announced by indie team Extremely Okay Games
<v Speaker 1>back in twenty twenty one, and revealed its first gameplay
<v Speaker 1>trailer at the Game Awards in twenty twenty two. Originally
<v Speaker 1>set to come out as early as twenty twenty three
<v Speaker 1>development didn't progress as quickly as the team had expected.
<v Speaker 1>A planned twenty twenty four launch was eventually delayed as well.
<v Speaker 1>In the cancelation announcement today, Thorson writes of a falling
<v Speaker 1>out with pixel artist Pedro Madarios, whose visual art style
<v Speaker 1>defined the aesthetic of the upcoming project, over a dispute
<v Speaker 1>related to IP rights for Celeste, the beloved twenty eighteen
<v Speaker 1>Game of the Year contender. We eventually reached a resolution,
<v Speaker 1>but both parties also agreed in the end that we
<v Speaker 1>should go our separate ways. Earth Blades director wrote, Pedro
<v Speaker 1>is now working on his game Never Way, which you
<v Speaker 1>should check out. We've played it and it's very promising.
<v Speaker 1>You know, this is human Drama is in every sort
<v Speaker 1>of you know, corporation and small team, big team, little team,
<v Speaker 1>across any sort of creative endeavor. That doesn't mean it's
<v Speaker 1>not a shame that this happened. I really really love Celeste, Matt.
<v Speaker 1>Not surprising though, when you know, something like a legal
<v Speaker 1>dispute breaks up a small team, Gonna be hard to
<v Speaker 1>see through that next game, right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, any video game getting made is a
<v Speaker 2>bit of a miracle's and you know, these type of
<v Speaker 2>things happen quite a bit, whether in small teams are
<v Speaker 2>big teams. Usually they don't they don't come out to
<v Speaker 2>the public quite like this, but these kind of conflicts
<v Speaker 2>are happening all the time. And yeah, it's a real
<v Speaker 2>shame and I feel bad for everyone involved, Like it's
<v Speaker 2>not a good scene when you have that kind of conflict,
<v Speaker 2>and it's a real shame that it's going to impact
<v Speaker 2>this game as well as the people involved.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think Maddie, a lot of the people involved
<v Speaker 1>have said they are reassessing and the plan now is
<v Speaker 1>to kind of work on smaller games. And I to me,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, yeah, if you are an indie developer, I
<v Speaker 1>think that is where your head should be at right now.
<v Speaker 1>I read in this message from Maddie that they were
<v Speaker 1>saying one of the problems with earth Blade is it
<v Speaker 1>got so ambitious and after the success of Celeste, they
<v Speaker 1>wanted to do something bigger and better. And my reaction
<v Speaker 1>to that is is, please don't feel that way. That
<v Speaker 1>is not actually what we want from you is to
<v Speaker 1>feel like you have to one up yourself every time
<v Speaker 1>as a small indie team. We kind of just are
<v Speaker 1>happy that you made that game, and if you want
<v Speaker 1>to make more of that game, go back and just
<v Speaker 1>keep making Stardew value you want to put haunted chuckleate
<v Speaker 1>here to the side over there over there at the
<v Speaker 1>what the ape? I can't remember the name of the developer,
<v Speaker 1>and it was like, yeah, okay, yeah, go back, keep
<v Speaker 1>working on Star to Star. Do if you want to
<v Speaker 1>spend ten years making a Stardew two that's a lot
<v Speaker 1>like Star New one, we will also probably be pretty
<v Speaker 1>happy with that. The idea that you have to like
<v Speaker 1>kind of get into this ever ever increasing growth on
<v Speaker 1>the indie side of things is probably causing a lot
<v Speaker 1>of undue stress for a lot of these teams. So,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you know, I don't know. Again, maybe the
<v Speaker 1>economics does make it so they do have to grow
<v Speaker 1>each time, but I don't know is that the case, mat.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it really depends on the state of their
<v Speaker 2>their financial backing, what the expectations are of any investors
<v Speaker 2>they might have. But this is a I mean, this
<v Speaker 2>is a problem. That's that it has impacted so many teams.
<v Speaker 2>You look at any franchise, you know, take a look
<v Speaker 2>at something like Arkham, right, Arkham Asylum comes out, it's
<v Speaker 2>a it's a kind of a metro Vania. It's a
<v Speaker 2>ten hour experience. City gets bigger, it's open world night,
<v Speaker 2>it's even bigger, and then all of a sudden, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the sales can't sustain the traditional cost the additional time.
<v Speaker 2>You know, looking at an indie studio like this, it's
<v Speaker 2>the same, but just in a in a smaller scale
<v Speaker 2>where you know the feeling that you kind of always
<v Speaker 2>have to be getting bigger, doing more. We made X
<v Speaker 2>on this small game. If we made a big game,
<v Speaker 2>we can make why how do we do that? And like,
<v Speaker 2>that's the trap, right, If you're really good at what
<v Speaker 2>you do, keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore.
<v Speaker 2>It's lower risk. Sure the potential upside might not be
<v Speaker 2>as high, but you're more likely to reach it. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's a it's different in every case, but it's a
<v Speaker 2>trap that we see so many developers and publishers fall into.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think I remember there was a period there
<v Speaker 1>are on the Sci Fi Channel in the early two thousands,
<v Speaker 1>they were just doing a Planet of the Apes marathons
<v Speaker 1>all the time, and they started having like little documentaries
<v Speaker 1>on there and that there was talk about how the
<v Speaker 1>producers were just like looking at the line or like
<v Speaker 1>this move this. The last one made this much and
<v Speaker 1>it costs this much, and the second one made less,
<v Speaker 1>but it costs less, and we're just gonna keep doing that.
<v Speaker 1>And they ended up making five of those things over
<v Speaker 1>the course of a decade or so. And that's a
<v Speaker 1>decade where a lot of people were employed to make
<v Speaker 1>some pretty fun movies for a very like just a
<v Speaker 1>very long time and it's like, yeah, more of that,
<v Speaker 1>Let's do more of that. And again I get that
<v Speaker 1>public traded companies and they feel like they just do
<v Speaker 1>not have that as an option. But you're an indie studio,
<v Speaker 1>you should hear us when we say we want you
<v Speaker 1>to keep doing the thing you're very good at and
<v Speaker 1>don't feel like you got to come back with I mean,
<v Speaker 1>the earth Blake looked fantastic, Matt, It really did. You know.
<v Speaker 1>The promises there were were enticing, but they were promises
<v Speaker 1>that were causing problems at the studio because they felt
<v Speaker 1>like we weren't. This was a slog to work on
<v Speaker 1>in their words, So yeah, I feel like, try to
<v Speaker 1>avoid this trap where possible.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Yeah, yeah, it's important. I think the one
<v Speaker 2>other piece on that is that you know, when you
<v Speaker 2>make a great game as a developer, or you publish
<v Speaker 2>a great game as a publisher, you always think like, well,
<v Speaker 2>if we had more time or more dollars, we could
<v Speaker 2>have made it even better, right, And so you're always
<v Speaker 2>having this thought about how can we do bigger and better?
<v Speaker 2>And oh, I wanted this is the game I always
<v Speaker 2>wanted to make, And it turns out that it didn't
<v Speaker 2>doesn't really resonate with an audience as much as the
<v Speaker 2>first game did. Yeah, it's, of course, it's like any
<v Speaker 2>video game getting made as a miracle.
<v Speaker 1>Yep. Absolutely every time. Yep. Yeah, And there's it's kind
<v Speaker 1>of no avoiding some of these traps no matter which
<v Speaker 1>direction you go. All right, let's see here. Wolverine Dev
<v Speaker 1>refuses to comment on twenty twenty five release date, acknowledges
<v Speaker 1>pent up demand. This comes to any MCOO at game Spot.
<v Speaker 1>This is of course a follow up we talked yesterday.
<v Speaker 1>It happened live during the show that that Ted Price,
<v Speaker 1>longtime CEO head of Insomniac Games, is retiring too handsome
<v Speaker 1>to working games anymore. Always felt that way for him.
<v Speaker 1>He is going to be stepping down fully in March,
<v Speaker 1>they have some other people stepping into his position, and
<v Speaker 1>some of them have begun talking. One of the new
<v Speaker 1>Insomniac bosses, Chad Desern, told Variety that the studio would
<v Speaker 1>love to talk more about Wolverine, but it can't yet.
<v Speaker 1>We have to be like a logan today and remain
<v Speaker 1>very stoic until it's time to pop the claws down
<v Speaker 1>the road. He said. As much as we have pent
<v Speaker 1>up excitement, we got to hold we have to hold
<v Speaker 1>on to that. So that's about as much as we
<v Speaker 1>could say about our upcoming projects today. Zeren also refused
<v Speaker 1>to confirm or deny if the new Wolverine game will
<v Speaker 1>release in twenty twenty five. You know, this seems to
<v Speaker 1>go back a little bit to the message of like
<v Speaker 1>they have to be so careful with everything they say
<v Speaker 1>right the video game to moment's not linear, and then
<v Speaker 1>any one wrong thing can cause major problems for everybody involved,
<v Speaker 1>or major headaches that they feel that they are in
<v Speaker 1>fire so that they feel that they have to put out.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I mean, Insomniac has been on a breakneck
<v Speaker 1>pace with delivering these games, uh, and it feels like
<v Speaker 1>Wolverine could be something that does pop up this year. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>you feel like that's possible.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it could, it's it's if it didn't, I
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't be surprised. I have no idea either way. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, what a hell of a run for him
<v Speaker 2>and that team. Yeah, but they've been able to accomplish
<v Speaker 2>the consistency of the studio with him there has been
<v Speaker 2>remarkable what they've been able to accomplish. So, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>if if you have faith in any studio, that's a
<v Speaker 2>studio to have faith in, even with a leadership transition.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, it's you know, in this market at this time,
<v Speaker 2>with the scale of development we're talking about, like you know,
<v Speaker 2>when a game comes out, it's when it comes with
<v Speaker 2>when it's able to come out, or you know, it
<v Speaker 2>comes out when the budget runs out, either way. But
<v Speaker 2>fortunately they seemed to have no problem making sure that
<v Speaker 2>they have the budget they need, so hopefully it all
<v Speaker 2>comes out great.
<v Speaker 1>One thing I have noticed over the last several years,
<v Speaker 1>A lot of people in chat and the audience have
<v Speaker 1>noticed this as well, is the shrinking time that marketing
<v Speaker 1>gets takes from like okay, well the game gets announced
<v Speaker 1>maybe a long time ago, but when we're really going
<v Speaker 1>to start pushing this game in a marketing way against two, three,
<v Speaker 1>four months maybe before a game is actually coming out.
<v Speaker 1>What led to that?
<v Speaker 2>So you have a number of factors. Now you're talking
<v Speaker 2>about an attention span that's gotten a little bit narrower.
<v Speaker 2>With the shift towards more of a digital first strategy.
<v Speaker 2>You don't need the long lead ups that you used
<v Speaker 2>to need to have with physical retail doing physical pre orders.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, we don't have E three anymore where that
<v Speaker 2>used to be a big touch point for these kind
<v Speaker 2>of marketing events. We do have Summer Games Fest, but
<v Speaker 2>it's it's not the same when it comes to this
<v Speaker 2>kind of thing, and we have the you know, the
<v Speaker 2>the development budgets that have gotten so big continue to grow.
<v Speaker 2>I guess the console market that has not grown at
<v Speaker 2>the same rate. Right, So you're looking for areas to
<v Speaker 2>have some savings and you're trying to thread the needle
<v Speaker 2>make sure that your marketing is done at the right
<v Speaker 2>spend and the right places at the right time to
<v Speaker 2>generate the best impact. Now, no one has the formula
<v Speaker 2>to perfect a marketing plan, and what marketing plan might
<v Speaker 2>work for one game won't work for another, and Unfortunately,
<v Speaker 2>marketing is one of those areas that is first looked to.
<v Speaker 3>If some additional funds.
<v Speaker 2>Need to be recovered for something like additional production time
<v Speaker 2>or other factors. I don't know what the case is
<v Speaker 2>in this particular case or what might be happening with
<v Speaker 2>this game, but generally what you're finding is leaner, meaner,
<v Speaker 2>and trying to hit harder where the folks that might
<v Speaker 2>play your game are in a shorter timeframe. Is it
<v Speaker 2>working as well as it used to? I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Some cases it will, some cases it won't. But if
<v Speaker 2>you look at some of the biggest hits this year, right,
<v Speaker 2>Hell Divers two, Power World, no one knew they were
<v Speaker 2>coming out, and then they come out in the biggest
<v Speaker 2>games of the world for.
<v Speaker 3>A while, So who the hell knows?
<v Speaker 1>Right, That's probably a big part of it is like
<v Speaker 1>who the hell knows? And when we look at it,
<v Speaker 1>when we do try to have a shorter time frame
<v Speaker 1>that we spend on marketing, we kind of can't tell
<v Speaker 1>the difference. It seems like the game did justice fine,
<v Speaker 1>or maybe even better than it would have done. It's
<v Speaker 1>again hard to measure, so they are probably just like
<v Speaker 1>if we could save the money. Why not? Right?
<v Speaker 2>In some cases? Yeah, every game that comes out has
<v Speaker 2>different things hitting it, impacting it, of course before launch,
<v Speaker 2>and all kinds of decisions are made for all kinds
<v Speaker 2>of reasons.
<v Speaker 1>Fair enough. Oh right, let's see. Actually, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>let's take a quick break. We'll get right back into it.
<v Speaker 1>We have news about the Power World of developers becoming publishers,
<v Speaker 1>and maybe Nintendo share prices at an all time high. We'll
<v Speaker 1>talk about that right after this. All right, we are
<v Speaker 1>right back into it. As promised. Power World's developer is
<v Speaker 1>entering publishing and its first game is from Tales of
<v Speaker 1>a cancerra team Surgeon. This from Jordan Miller at VGC.
<v Speaker 1>Tales of Canzero developer Surgeon Studios is announced they will
<v Speaker 1>partner with Power World publisher Pocket Pair for its next project,
<v Speaker 1>which will be a short horror game. The project won't
<v Speaker 1>be set in the Tales of Canzera universe and won't
<v Speaker 1>be related to Project USO, the in development title that
<v Speaker 1>studio bus Abu Bakar Salim showed off to VGC last year.
<v Speaker 1>The new horror game is set to be released later
<v Speaker 1>this year. The game will be the first title published
<v Speaker 1>by Pocket Pair publishing a new label from the power World. Developers,
<v Speaker 1>both Surgeon and Pocket Pear are well versed in taking
<v Speaker 1>risks set out. Excuse me, I said Abu Bakar Salem,
<v Speaker 1>CEO of Search and Studios. We noticed a pattern in
<v Speaker 1>the entertainment industry, and Pocket Pair has given us the
<v Speaker 1>opportunity to make a horror game about it. It will
<v Speaker 1>be short and weird, and we think players will be
<v Speaker 1>interested in what we have to say. Let's talk about
<v Speaker 1>this first from Salem's point of view and the folks
<v Speaker 1>over there at Surgeon Studios. I played through Tales of
<v Speaker 1>Canzera Zal really liked it. I really thought it was
<v Speaker 1>a very solid Metroidvania game that actually gave me a
<v Speaker 1>little bit of a gut punch with its its storytelling
<v Speaker 1>and it's it's themes of loss and dealing with loss.
<v Speaker 1>Very well done. Uh. And then I, you know, I
<v Speaker 1>look up from enjoying a game and seeing a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of people again culture war stuff taking it because it
<v Speaker 1>was a game about black people, made by black people,
<v Speaker 1>and it was attacked by racists. I was worried this
<v Speaker 1>would scare off Abubakart Salim and he'd be like, why
<v Speaker 1>am I again, Why am I dealing with these people?
<v Speaker 1>Why am I trying to make things for them? But
<v Speaker 1>he's he's still here, and he's he's he's popping up
<v Speaker 1>having a conversations we had him on our countdown to
<v Speaker 1>the Game Awards and things like that. He's ready to
<v Speaker 1>continue making games and now he's got a partner in
<v Speaker 1>Pocket Pair to keep doing exactly that. I find that
<v Speaker 1>pretty inspiring. I'm happy to see that, how about you?
<v Speaker 3>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely, and seeing people continue their creative vision in this
<v Speaker 2>with this kind of challenge is super inspiring, and I
<v Speaker 2>hope all the best for them in the team. You
<v Speaker 2>hate seeing what I hate seeing what we're seeing through
<v Speaker 2>some parts of gaming community in recent months and in
<v Speaker 2>the country at large for that matter, And I sure
<v Speaker 2>hope this is a huge success for them.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, exactly same as far as Pocket Pair goes. This
<v Speaker 1>move has happened frequently we see a developer get into publishing.
<v Speaker 1>What's usually the thinking there is it just we have
<v Speaker 1>We've built up these tools and these resources and these
<v Speaker 1>teams inside of our company to help us publish our game,
<v Speaker 1>and it kind of makes it make We can kind
<v Speaker 1>only make that make sense if we start publishing other
<v Speaker 1>people's games, or is it like we can make a
<v Speaker 1>lot more money if we start publishing other people's games.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, when it comes to smaller teams like this,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know particularly about the motivations of the power
<v Speaker 2>world of folks here, but you know, when these kind
<v Speaker 2>of things happens, usually it's say, hey, we want to
<v Speaker 2>help We want to help fellow developers out and really
<v Speaker 2>help get game out and use the knowledge that we've
<v Speaker 2>acquired to not only help them but also you know,
<v Speaker 2>find some return on that. Generally, these come from a
<v Speaker 2>very good place. When smaller groups start publishing, it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>always work out, And I hope that's the case here
<v Speaker 2>at sure it seems like I could be which would
<v Speaker 2>be great, but I don't know for sure. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>take the expertise you achieved and putting out a hit
<v Speaker 2>game and you know, build on that and that's great.
<v Speaker 1>Yep. Absolutely, And it's like it seems like it makes
<v Speaker 1>a lot of sense. Seems like it. It has worked
<v Speaker 1>pretty frequently. I mean, going back to Team seventeen, who
<v Speaker 1>we're not gonna that story is not one of the
<v Speaker 1>headlines Team seventeen. The group changed their name to like
<v Speaker 1>ever play group or something like that. But Team seventeen
<v Speaker 1>Publishing is staying Team seventeen Publishing. They made Worms forever
<v Speaker 1>go and then they're like, let's get into publishing, and
<v Speaker 1>they've been doing that ever since, while still making like
<v Speaker 1>worms games here or there and make a few games
<v Speaker 1>themselves here there, And yeah, it really I mean even
<v Speaker 1>like like to a certain extent, valve being like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>we're a developer, and then we built these tools to
<v Speaker 1>help other developers, and that kind of just takes over
<v Speaker 1>becomes Steam takes over the world. Is a certain point,
<v Speaker 1>it feels kind of like a natural evolution of someone
<v Speaker 1>learning this business and being like, we have to share
<v Speaker 1>what we've learned and make it easier for other people
<v Speaker 1>to do the same thing. That does kind of feel
<v Speaker 1>like what this always is. People will point out Pocket
<v Speaker 1>Pair that there's some concerns there. The CEO or one
<v Speaker 1>of the heads there very into AI and generative AI. Yeah, sure,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure that's the case, and I'm sure that's something
<v Speaker 1>that probably is coming up in conversations, or at least
<v Speaker 1>I would imagine it is, But that they're not alone
<v Speaker 1>in that right, That's got to be across the industry.
<v Speaker 1>Right now, a bunch of publishers are having those same conversations, right.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, everyone's gonna try to look for an edge,
<v Speaker 2>try to look for a way to cut costs. Whether
<v Speaker 2>it works or not, it's very much open to debate.
<v Speaker 2>What we've seen so far is certainly not super convincing
<v Speaker 2>audience will react positively to that kind of content. We'll
<v Speaker 2>have to see how things develop. But of course people
<v Speaker 2>are going to look into every possible way of gaining
<v Speaker 2>an edge when you're putting games out, so it's not
<v Speaker 2>a surprise and we'll have to see how it goes.
<v Speaker 1>Excellent's all right, let's talk about Nintendo. Nintendo's share prices
<v Speaker 1>have reached an all time high one week after Switch
<v Speaker 1>to reveal. This is from Jim Norman at Nintendo Life.
<v Speaker 1>It was all doom and gloom last week, as Nintendo'
<v Speaker 1>share price took a slight tumble immediately after the long
<v Speaker 1>awaited switch to reveal. But ever one's everyone's to every
<v Speaker 1>once in a while, these things all hit a rebound.
<v Speaker 1>Big In has bounced back in style, temporarily hitting the
<v Speaker 1>company's highest recorded share price since listings began. And then
<v Speaker 1>Jim writes here, Mama Mia as flagged by Automaton. Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>stock temporarily rose to a tasty and seventy five Japanese
<v Speaker 1>yen on January twenty third, setting a new all time
<v Speaker 1>high for the company and reportedly beating the previous record
<v Speaker 1>word by three hundred and seventy one yen. Now, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>these things that they happen because at the whims of
<v Speaker 1>investors they see something new and shiny. They're like, all right,
<v Speaker 1>this is the We'll build in the expectations now. And
<v Speaker 1>then I think in my head it's like, well, this means,
<v Speaker 1>you know, as they build in the expectations, any sort
<v Speaker 1>of stumble here from here on out, it's really going
<v Speaker 1>to ding this this share price. What does Nintendo need
<v Speaker 1>to do or what can they do to sort of
<v Speaker 1>ensure that they can maintain this and keep investors happy
<v Speaker 1>and then still see some growth going forward.
<v Speaker 2>Well, one of the things I'm very glad to do
<v Speaker 2>is not look at stock stuff too much, because what
<v Speaker 2>you're seeing in those markets and what's actually happening in
<v Speaker 2>the real world in terms of consumer don't always align.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, the stock market is the imagination of investors a
<v Speaker 1>lot of times, right, and that's a weird, dirty place
<v Speaker 1>you don't want to be.
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to be there particularly. But what Nintendo
<v Speaker 2>has to do is what they've always done, which is
<v Speaker 2>focus on Nintendo. They kind of operate in their own
<v Speaker 2>vert Sure, there is some competition between what they're doing
<v Speaker 2>and something like a PlayStation or a PC, like you're
<v Speaker 2>always competing for time, but in terms of what they do,
<v Speaker 2>they kind of do what they do and no one
<v Speaker 2>else does quite what they do, and they move with
<v Speaker 2>their own pace, and they come with their own decisions,
<v Speaker 2>and they come with their own innovations. So they just
<v Speaker 2>have to keep doing what they've been doing. They've been
<v Speaker 2>very successful for a very long time. Anticipate them to
<v Speaker 2>continue to be that way, even if I can't always
<v Speaker 2>predict what the hell they're going to do, because no
<v Speaker 2>analysts ever got rich correctly predicting what Nintendo will do,
<v Speaker 2>and I ain't going to be the first. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>as long as they keep focusing on what they do,
<v Speaker 2>they'll be fine.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it does. You know. I've gotten the sense that
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo is one of the few companies that can sort
<v Speaker 1>of dictate to its investors what they should be expecting
<v Speaker 1>from Nintendo, where a lot of other companies in at
<v Speaker 1>least in the gaming space, the places I pay attention
<v Speaker 1>to seem a little bit like they they are afraid
<v Speaker 1>of their investors and and and shy or like shy
<v Speaker 1>away from their building their own identity because they have
<v Speaker 1>to have these meet these expectations with people that control
<v Speaker 1>the stocks. Is that one of the strengths of Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>is that they kind of can ignore the concerns and
<v Speaker 1>anxieties of the people invested in them.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they certainly don't ignore them, but they they react
<v Speaker 2>to them in in a in their own type of way, right, okay,
<v Speaker 2>And they've built that credibility over decades.
<v Speaker 3>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>Even when they stumble, they come out of it the
<v Speaker 2>other side with with something amazing, right, or something that
<v Speaker 2>that performs exceptionally well. Until they stop doing that, they'll
<v Speaker 2>they'll have the rain and the license to continue to
<v Speaker 2>being what they what they are, and what they do,
<v Speaker 2>and hopefully that stays the case for a.
<v Speaker 3>Very long time.
<v Speaker 1>Uh. When we were dealing with seeing like the the
<v Speaker 1>sort of dip in video game sales and a lot
<v Speaker 1>of layoffs through twenty twenty four, one of the things
<v Speaker 1>that people are saying is like let's wait for switch To,
<v Speaker 1>Let's wait for GTA six. See what happens then coming
<v Speaker 1>out of the switch To revealed. Do you feel like
<v Speaker 1>that is going to be a fertile ground for enabling
<v Speaker 1>a lot of developers and publishers to find some newfound success.
<v Speaker 2>Sure, hope. So, I mean, Nintendo hardware is made primarily
<v Speaker 2>to play Nintendo content, but you know, there could be
<v Speaker 2>a significant opportunity for third parties on a Nintendo platform.
<v Speaker 2>We'll have to see exactly who's there on day one,
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, twenty five is all about switch To, It's
<v Speaker 2>all about Grand Theft, Auto six. If both of them
<v Speaker 2>show up next year, if both of them are what
<v Speaker 2>people expect them to be, we're looking at, you know,
<v Speaker 2>low to mid single digit growth for an industry that's
<v Speaker 2>really been struggling to get past those twenty twenty one
<v Speaker 2>highs that were, of course fueled by all those stay
<v Speaker 2>at home activities associated with a pandemic. So, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we had a market that's been that had been growing
<v Speaker 2>for decades all of a sudden reach a peak in
<v Speaker 2>twenty one, and while you know, the market's basically been
<v Speaker 2>stable since then. A stable video game market isn't what
<v Speaker 2>investors expect are accustomed to. So if we can start
<v Speaker 2>getting back to some growth, it would be a very
<v Speaker 2>good thing. And you know, for better or worse, all
<v Speaker 2>of the eggs are in those two baskets when it
<v Speaker 2>comes to switch to and grand theft Auto six.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, how did twenty twenty four end up? Like, I
<v Speaker 1>think you were expecting a little bit of a decline
<v Speaker 1>Instead it was stable, But that is still not good enough,
<v Speaker 1>Like the industry is not built to not grow.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So what we saw we just published results this morning.
<v Speaker 2>Total spending for the US for the year was down
<v Speaker 2>about one point one percent, which, on its face, you're like,
<v Speaker 2>that's not that bad. Why the heck is so much
<v Speaker 2>chaos happening with the decline of only one point one percent.
<v Speaker 3>Well, you know.
<v Speaker 2>That that drop was really helped by the mobile side
<v Speaker 2>of things, which you know, mobile from our friends over
<v Speaker 2>at Censor Tower, who we partner with to track the
<v Speaker 2>mobile space really outperformed expectations, really helped by Monopoly Go.
<v Speaker 2>On the console side, it was a really tough year.
<v Speaker 2>Console hardware sales in terms of spending was down twenty
<v Speaker 2>five percent. Of course, that was a little bit expected
<v Speaker 2>swhich is you know, getting up their age. Yeah, PlayStation
<v Speaker 2>five and Xbox series are both over their cyclical sales peaks.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we're on the downside of their curves. So
<v Speaker 2>hardware was expected. Console content was also down double digits
<v Speaker 2>in terms of percentage, and you know, we had a
<v Speaker 2>lighter slate. We have the you know, the aging devices,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, so when you look at the total market,
<v Speaker 2>you're like down one. That's fine. Well, it's because we
<v Speaker 2>saw some shifting or round of dollars towards the mobile side,
<v Speaker 2>more towards PC. We had a little growth and non
<v Speaker 2>mobile subscription spending, helped by a call of duty on
<v Speaker 2>game Pass, but in general, console content had a really
<v Speaker 2>tough year. So if we get grant that f Auto
<v Speaker 2>six and we get it switched to you know, all
<v Speaker 2>of a sudden, that starts turning around next year. This year,
<v Speaker 2>hopefully that becomes more appealing to investment, we start getting
<v Speaker 2>more studios funded, and we start kind of reversing these
<v Speaker 2>really negative trends we've seen over the last couple of years.
<v Speaker 2>And that'll be a really big deal if it can
<v Speaker 2>happen this year.
<v Speaker 1>You mentioned the console sales peak. Is this normally when
<v Speaker 1>the console's peak in terms of the trend, or did
<v Speaker 1>it happen maybe a little bit sooner because so many
<v Speaker 1>people rush to get consoles during the pandemic. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>I was trying to like map that out in my head,
<v Speaker 1>like it was it sooner than normal? Or is it like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, about four fourish years in we get on
<v Speaker 1>the other side of that bell curve.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's pretty normal in terms of now. What's not
<v Speaker 2>normal is the size of the decline this year compared
<v Speaker 2>to last year for PlayStation five n Xbox series, where
<v Speaker 2>we're a little bit heavier and I thought we should be.
<v Speaker 2>But you have to take into account the chaos of
<v Speaker 2>the first couple of years of this generation not having
<v Speaker 2>any units for a couple of years, then all of
<v Speaker 2>a sudden we had all the units. You know, big increases,
<v Speaker 2>big drops based on supply because of how crazy that was.
<v Speaker 2>But generally now we're kind of selling it into where
<v Speaker 2>we should be, and the question is how do these
<v Speaker 2>two boxes kind of ride out the rest of this
<v Speaker 2>gen u into PS six And if there's another Xbox,
<v Speaker 2>who the hell knows or what they decide to do
<v Speaker 2>with that product.
<v Speaker 3>You know, it's.
<v Speaker 2>It's what happens with the next couple years now, Grand
<v Speaker 2>Theft Auto six could significantly impact that right in a
<v Speaker 2>number of ways, right, And that's what everyone's kind of
<v Speaker 2>sitting on. And you know, you never want to put
<v Speaker 2>all the eggs in one basket, but we are.
<v Speaker 1>We have. Yeah, that's like, well we just really beat
<v Speaker 1>that one basket super bad right now. Okay, so everyone
<v Speaker 1>who's waiting for that, you know, a couple more stories,
<v Speaker 1>we'll get to them here in a second. But just
<v Speaker 1>the last question on this, uh GTA six does come out,
<v Speaker 1>and it's everything everyone hopes it will be. It does
<v Speaker 1>bump up the console sales. Is is there really an
<v Speaker 1>expected sort of reverberation for everyone else to get a
<v Speaker 1>sales bump or is this another one of those games
<v Speaker 1>that takes all the oxygen out of the room.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, sure, not going to help the live service
<v Speaker 2>issue or the challenge that the games are facing, But
<v Speaker 2>what it could do is bring investors back in to
<v Speaker 2>start funding other games. If we have more interest on
<v Speaker 2>the console side, we have more people playing for a
<v Speaker 2>lot more hours, and all of a sudden there's you know,
<v Speaker 2>a reversal of some of the declines we've seen in
<v Speaker 2>the console side for the last year or two. You know,
<v Speaker 2>switch to would help that as well. Then all of
<v Speaker 2>a sudden, you know, investors are looking to fun studios
<v Speaker 2>fund development, and that would be a positive snowball effect
<v Speaker 2>that could help things. And you know, the more games,
<v Speaker 2>the kind of games that will you know, appeal to
<v Speaker 2>a mass audience, could significantly help. And that's kind of
<v Speaker 2>what the hope is.
<v Speaker 1>Excellent, all right, let's get on back on track here.
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo bags GLAD nomination for Paper Mario's trans representation. This
<v Speaker 1>comes from Ali Reynolds at Nintendo Life. Nintendo has received
<v Speaker 1>a nomination for the upcoming thirty sixth annual Glad Media
<v Speaker 1>Awards for its trans representation in twenty twenty four's Paper
<v Speaker 1>Mario The Thousand Year Door the Switch remake. Then, this
<v Speaker 1>comes via Eurogamer. The game, launched on the twenty third
<v Speaker 1>of May twenty twenty four, feature the inclusion of dialogue
<v Speaker 1>from the two thousand and four game Cuba version version
<v Speaker 1>that had originally been altered for its release in the West,
<v Speaker 1>focused on Mario's ghost companion Vivian. The change effectively restored
<v Speaker 1>the characters trans identity. The Thousand Year Door joins nine
<v Speaker 1>other nominees in the Outstanding Video Game category, alongside Bloomhouse
<v Speaker 1>Games wonderful horror title Fear of the Spotlight, which explored
<v Speaker 1>the relationship between the titles two protagonists, Amy and Vivian
<v Speaker 1>as well. Uh, this was one of those things where
<v Speaker 1>it's like people were very happy to see this. The
<v Speaker 1>character is beloved and as actually probably the best character
<v Speaker 1>in the game, regardless of any other feelings about this,
<v Speaker 1>but had to have the trans storyline restored, something really
<v Speaker 1>nice to see, especially from Nintendo. I remember Tomadaccia Life
<v Speaker 1>coming out to three DS in the United States and
<v Speaker 1>and you know globally. Actually it had the same problem
<v Speaker 1>where it's like, it's a character it's a game about
<v Speaker 1>character relationships, and you make all your mees and set
<v Speaker 1>you set their genders, and you set their age, and
<v Speaker 1>if they are two adult men, they can't be in
<v Speaker 1>a relationship with one another, not that kind of relationship.
<v Speaker 1>It is. The game just does not enable that, does
<v Speaker 1>not empower that, and it's like it empowers so much stuff.
<v Speaker 1>The fact that it didn't do that was noticeable, and
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo didn't have really great answers at the time, said
<v Speaker 1>I guess we'll con try to do better and for
<v Speaker 1>them to just like kind of move through time and
<v Speaker 1>the game pops back up from the you know, a
<v Speaker 1>GameCube game that had to been altered originally and they
<v Speaker 1>fixed this. It's just nice to see, refreshing to see
<v Speaker 1>and it wasn't some lightning rod because it was just
<v Speaker 1>well done, a good character and no one cared. It
<v Speaker 1>was very nice to see. How do you feel about it?
<v Speaker 2>I think it's great. I think any opportunity that you
<v Speaker 2>have to expand the scope of your potential audience is
<v Speaker 2>also great for the business. Allowing people to be to
<v Speaker 2>see themselves reflected and the media they're interacting with is
<v Speaker 2>always a good thing, and it's great to see this
<v Speaker 2>kind of positive recognition for something like that on top
<v Speaker 2>of the positive business aspects of it. So yeah, it's great.
<v Speaker 2>And the more representation the better, and the bigger the
<v Speaker 2>funnel in terms of allowing people to engage in ways
<v Speaker 2>that they find positive and empowering is great.
<v Speaker 1>Can I ask you, since you did work in publishing
<v Speaker 1>for so long, how aware are people inside of these
<v Speaker 1>companies of awards like this of you know, and then
<v Speaker 1>like the big awards as well, like are they going
<v Speaker 1>for these things or is it just like kind of okay,
<v Speaker 1>nice to put it on the shelf. We gotta get
<v Speaker 1>back to making money.
<v Speaker 2>They're not going for them, you know, they're so busy
<v Speaker 2>trying to make a game that they don't think about that.
<v Speaker 2>But when this happens, it's a huge deal. Like people
<v Speaker 2>take a tremendous amount of pride and delivering a product
<v Speaker 2>that brings joy or that people really resonate with. Like
<v Speaker 2>you know, there's this feeling or this sentiment out there
<v Speaker 2>that you know, everyone in publishing are these suits that
<v Speaker 2>sit behind desks and they're just doing these hardcore math
<v Speaker 2>things to screw over people. And it couldn't be anything
<v Speaker 2>farther from the truth. Like they're just people that generally
<v Speaker 2>love games too, And if a game is a hit, fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>If a game gets this kind of recognition, that's that's amazing, Like,
<v Speaker 2>and everyone takes a great deal of pride in it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, these things are generally you know, put right
<v Speaker 2>up in the front of the office as soon as
<v Speaker 2>you walk in. Yeah, it's it's a big point of
<v Speaker 2>pride for folks.
<v Speaker 3>And so it's a big deal.
<v Speaker 1>Excellent all right, time to get onto the Adam Boys news.
<v Speaker 1>Adam Boys launches Vivrado is how I'm gonna say it,
<v Speaker 1>like a vibrato Vivrado consultancy to help manage big game problems.
<v Speaker 1>This comes from Dean Takahashi at Game Speed, who did
<v Speaker 1>a very long, in depth interview with Adam about the
<v Speaker 1>future and his companies got here, but I did a
<v Speaker 1>shortened version here. Adam Boys, a gaming industry veteran, has
<v Speaker 1>launched Vivrado, an advisory company aimed at fostering a more collaborative, sustainable,
<v Speaker 1>and thriving gaming future. Boys's vision for Vivrado stemmed from
<v Speaker 1>conversations with a bunch of executives where he identified a
<v Speaker 1>need for a consultancy firm that addresses the industry's foundational
<v Speaker 1>changes and helps companies navigate these challenges. Yeah, hey, a
<v Speaker 1>consultancy consultancy firm is something that you know a lot
<v Speaker 1>of companies work with. Is my understanding, Matt? Kind of like,
<v Speaker 1>what is the company usually looking for when they do
<v Speaker 1>go to a consultant?
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean great for Adam. By the way, I
<v Speaker 2>never really got the chance to meet him. I saw
<v Speaker 2>him at a PlayStation event back in the day. I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if you remember those that in Scottsdale they
<v Speaker 2>had all the retailers come in. I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>you ever heard about.
<v Speaker 3>It was a good time.
<v Speaker 1>They still do that, right, they do something like that,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not maybe it's not exactly that, not for retailers.
<v Speaker 2>Nowhere near the scale. It was a good time. But
<v Speaker 2>that's another story, but great form. Yeah, when this happens,
<v Speaker 2>you're generally looking for some guidance on how to react
<v Speaker 2>to situations that, say, you're publishing leadership team might not
<v Speaker 2>have experience with, and someone like Adam has tremendous experience with.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, you're you're bringing in.
<v Speaker 3>Folks to help.
<v Speaker 2>I have suggestions to think about. No consultant of any
<v Speaker 2>kind is rolling into a publisher, I mean, of any
<v Speaker 2>kind is rolling into a publisher and saying you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>do this. Of course, that does not happen. They come in,
<v Speaker 2>they say, hey, here's some things that think about, and
<v Speaker 2>you think about them, and then do you make whatever
<v Speaker 2>decision you think is best. Like some of the stuff
<v Speaker 2>you read about what people think of consultancy firms is
<v Speaker 2>just absolutely wild anyways, But yeah, you're bringing someone in
<v Speaker 2>to give you some perspective that you don't have in
<v Speaker 2>the organization. But you know, you take it or leave it,
<v Speaker 2>and and that's fine. You know, you're just looking for
<v Speaker 2>ways you're trying to improve, You're trying to provide the
<v Speaker 2>best product you can and so you're open to all
<v Speaker 2>ideas that can help do that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it's uh yeah, the dunning Krueger of people
<v Speaker 1>who think they understand how this stuff works is always
<v Speaker 1>impressive to see how can you how can you even
<v Speaker 1>have this sort of imagination in your head that is
<v Speaker 1>so incorrect? Ata Boys for people that might be wondering
<v Speaker 1>at a Boys is the guy from that video where
<v Speaker 1>he's like, hey, how do you share games on the
<v Speaker 1>PS four and enhance at the shoe? Hey, Yoshida, and
<v Speaker 1>then the video ends and then he's been at Iron
<v Speaker 1>Galaxy for a long time. He was a co CEO
<v Speaker 1>at Iron Galaxy for for years and years, left them
<v Speaker 1>recently and now he's doing this. He's also a former
<v Speaker 1>patient at the Midway Asylum, which was at Midway's EA
<v Speaker 1>big and I'll never stop bringing up the Midway Asylum.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, you worked on a bunch of like Midway
<v Speaker 1>Sports games and stuff like that. That.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he's I'll drink of water.
<v Speaker 1>All drink of water. Indeed, exactly. Yes, he's got great
<v Speaker 1>stories from the time working at Midway when I think
<v Speaker 1>they were working on Blitz the League or something like that,
<v Speaker 1>and they had f the NFL written all over their
<v Speaker 1>office and then someone from the NFL was coming in
<v Speaker 1>so they had to like run around and tear all
<v Speaker 1>these things down. I'm like, oh, that's that's a good time.
<v Speaker 2>Midway back in the day is one of those places
<v Speaker 2>I sure would have loved to have been able to visit.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, same, I would love to get like some fly
<v Speaker 1>on the wall footage of what it was like at
<v Speaker 1>that place, for sure. Chicago Game Developers Man. All right,
<v Speaker 1>last thing here, reminder, Xbox Developer Director is happening today
<v Speaker 1>at ten am Pacific time one pm Eastern about and
<v Speaker 1>out sixty five minutes from now. If you were watching live,
<v Speaker 1>if you're watching later, and if you're watching live, we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna do a talkover. We're gonna, We're gonna, we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>talk over. This event should be some pretty good announcements.
<v Speaker 1>Seems like it's gonna be pretty cool looking forward to
<v Speaker 1>it myself, so that'll be up on the website, up
<v Speaker 1>on streaming service and stuff like that. So definitely check
<v Speaker 1>out that and come hang out with us. This was
<v Speaker 1>so we got the switch to reveal they're gonna they're
<v Speaker 1>promising more. In April. Xbox has their Developer Direct happening.
<v Speaker 1>It's gonna set up kind of what's happening this year.
<v Speaker 1>PlayStation probably has something pretty soon. Uh, these companies gone,
<v Speaker 1>they still have to like make these announcements, even though
<v Speaker 1>it does still seem like a lot of times people
<v Speaker 1>are waiting for GT six to do what GT six
<v Speaker 1>needs to do, right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean we we'd used some surprises this year
<v Speaker 2>when it comes to the market. There's always a few
<v Speaker 2>that pop up out of nowhere. We're seemingly nowhere. I
<v Speaker 2>can't believe they announced one versus one hundreds coming back
<v Speaker 2>at Xbox. I don't know if that's true, but I'm
<v Speaker 2>just gonna put that out there in the universe and
<v Speaker 2>hope it manifests. But yeah, like we're gonna have some
<v Speaker 2>surprise hits, We're gonna have some surprise failures. Like this
<v Speaker 2>is just kind of what happens, and this is all
<v Speaker 2>just part of the wonderful River of gaming. So yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I look it forward to it.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, it rushes ahead without us, whether we wanted to
<v Speaker 1>or not. Yeah, I had one, Versus wondered I. At
<v Speaker 1>one point I heard it was in development, but it
<v Speaker 1>was at a team that has since been sort of disbanded,
<v Speaker 1>so I don't know. I yeah, oh no, Oh, he's
<v Speaker 1>thrown his desk out the window. Everybody stand back, all right,
<v Speaker 1>Paul questioned, From yesterday, we got it right here. Let
<v Speaker 1>me get this set up there we go, news s
<v Speaker 1>sets move that over there. Okay. Do you have you
<v Speaker 1>ever spent more than ten dollars to buy a game
<v Speaker 1>on your mobile device?
<v Speaker 3>You know?
<v Speaker 1>I think I bought one of those like Final Fantasies
<v Speaker 1>or or Chrono Trigger at one point. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if I ever played it, So I will say yes,
<v Speaker 1>and thirty two percent of people said yes, sixty eight
<v Speaker 1>percent said no. This is the kind of thing where
<v Speaker 1>it's like yes, some people might have it might be
<v Speaker 1>like me, where it's like years and years ago, I
<v Speaker 1>bought one game for that price and then Super Mario
<v Speaker 1>Brothers Run and I'm ma Maria fan and I didn't
<v Speaker 1>even buy that. So we've just got brought up Matt
<v Speaker 1>because of the reporting that when they look at the numbers,
<v Speaker 1>seems like resideval too, and all those residuaval games that
<v Speaker 1>got reported to iPhone didn't sell much more than ten
<v Speaker 1>thousand copies. And it's like, yeah, it just seems like
<v Speaker 1>that audience not interested in those games, Like what that
<v Speaker 1>That's just it's that simple, right, At a certain point,
<v Speaker 1>it's like they're just they're happy with the games they
<v Speaker 1>have on their phone for free, right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Mobile players want to play games designed for mobile devices.
<v Speaker 2>Console players want to play games designed for console devices.
<v Speaker 2>Like it's not hard. That means two things just don't mix.
<v Speaker 2>The way people play on mobile, how they play on mobile,
<v Speaker 2>what they want when they play on mobiles entirely different
<v Speaker 2>than what you would want to do to play like
<v Speaker 2>a really intense survival horror game, like come on, what
<v Speaker 2>are we doing here?
<v Speaker 1>Yep? It's uh. I just remember conversations and quotes from
<v Speaker 1>the past where people like it. So, you know, people
<v Speaker 1>the device that's as powerful as a console in their
<v Speaker 1>in their pockets. So we got to make sure that
<v Speaker 1>these games will be on those devices if we want
<v Speaker 1>to keep getting games like this and it'say, oh, that's
<v Speaker 1>that's not going to work. That's they just want games
<v Speaker 1>made for those devices. All right, let's see here new
<v Speaker 1>poll question. We'll get to that here in a second.
<v Speaker 1>Before we do that, though, Matt Piscatella, why don't you
<v Speaker 1>tell people where they can find you on the internet
<v Speaker 1>if you want them to find you on the internet
<v Speaker 1>and what you have going on and all that other
<v Speaker 1>good stuff.
<v Speaker 2>I am on the Blue Sky Matt Piscatella with one
<v Speaker 2>T because it was the seventies and my mom was
<v Speaker 2>drugged up and she forgot how to spell Matthew. So yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I'm Matt Piscatella and Blue the Sky. Don't yell at
<v Speaker 2>me about video game sales. I'm just trying to help
<v Speaker 2>you out. It's all good. But come hang out there,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, look for us every month we're talking
<v Speaker 2>about the market and trying to give context and help
<v Speaker 2>people understand this wacky world. So yeah, I really really
<v Speaker 2>love everyone who follows me over there, have great interactions,
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, come.
<v Speaker 3>On out and hang out.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, Matt's a great follow just good vibes and good information,
<v Speaker 1>So definitely go hang out. Say nice thanks to them,
<v Speaker 1>all right, Pull question for tomorrow's show. Do you think
<v Speaker 1>Insomniac's Wolverine releases in twenty twenty five? I this one.
<v Speaker 1>I honestly don't know, so I could really go either way.
<v Speaker 1>I think I would hope, be hopeful and vote. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>we'll see what everyone comes up with. But you can
<v Speaker 1>vote now if you go to YouTube dot com slash
<v Speaker 1>at giant Bomb, go to that community tab right there,
<v Speaker 1>you know, vote get the results on tomorrow's show here
<v Speaker 1>on Giant Bomb. Speaking to Giant Bomb, as I mentioned
<v Speaker 1>the Xbox Developer direct happening in about an hour. We'll
<v Speaker 1>talk over that later today. Voicemail, dump truck, plenty of
<v Speaker 1>fun calls. I don't know, Jan, if you haven't gathered
<v Speaker 1>up the calls yet, you might get a bunch about
<v Speaker 1>how many syllables are in the word oil and fire.
<v Speaker 1>And we're gonna have to We're gonna have to deal
<v Speaker 1>with this. It's gonna be a problem. And Matt, how
<v Speaker 1>many syllables is in the word oil.
<v Speaker 3>That'd be one syllable.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there we go. So it's gonna be a fun
<v Speaker 1>one and let's see, Oh tomorrow we will I don't know, God,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I do we have stuff planned for tomorrow.
<v Speaker 1>People are mad, Matt, I say it with two. Although
<v Speaker 1>I recognize the technicality of it being one oil ol,
<v Speaker 1>it's how I say it, and so I just feel
<v Speaker 1>like that's too.
<v Speaker 2>If you're a dream brother, don't let people tell you
<v Speaker 2>how to say oil.
<v Speaker 1>That's the right way, that's right. Actually, never mind, we
<v Speaker 1>don't have to do any of these calls, Mad, I
<v Speaker 1>already answered it. Yeah, an anything else met before we
<v Speaker 1>get out of here.
<v Speaker 2>Now, this is really a fun, lifelong dream to hang
<v Speaker 2>out with you on this like, really really cool.
<v Speaker 3>Appreciate it.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for
<v Speaker 1>hanging out with me talking about video games. I really
<v Speaker 1>really appreciate it. Thank you to everybody who is watching
<v Speaker 1>and listening. You are the best audience in gaming. Until
<v Speaker 1>next time, have a good one, Take care of yourself
<v Speaker 1>and oil