Game Mess Mornings 01/03/24

You know he's never got me bit. It's the It's the Internet. You're
busy. I was gonna say, it's the morning already off to a good
start. It's the Internet, you're busy. Let's do this for January third,
twenty twenty four. For the next hour or so, let me help
you soar through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with Me Jeff
Grubb. Today, Ubisoft gets slightly more specific about the release date for Star
Wars Outlaws, and Square Enix leaves the Blockchain Talk at twenty twenty three in
favor of AI Talk at twenty twenty four. But first, please join me
and welcomeing today's co host the Game Mess Mornings. It's Jeff Bakolar. Everybody.
Jeff, how are you doing. I'm doing well. Yes, Contrary
to popular belief, I am awake before noon. I just assumed you would
just like tucked into bed every day, just letting the day happen, and
then you're like, okay, I can roll out of bed here like twelve
twelve thirty is what I assumed. Sometimes, if I'm feeling sauce, it's
not till one pm. If we're being completely honest, when is the last
time that you woke up around noon. Oh dude, I don't think it's
ever happened. I mean maybe college. Like, if you're sleeping in noon,
it's because you've traveled internationally, right, It's because maybe when I went
to Europe. The last time I was in Europe, I like slept till
one o'clock just because of that reason. Never in the same time zone.
Come on, I'm a damn adult. I occasionally will have the uh oh
I stayed up till like six am doing something stupid, hanging out with friends,
and then I'll sleep till like eleven thirty twelve. That'll happen every once
in a while, but not very even these days, even when I'm staying
up real late, which that would be like one thirty two am, I'm
still getting up like eight am. Not even just because the kids. A
lot of times I'm still up before the kids. So it's just at this
point it's ingrained in me get up early and get the day going. It's
just that natural like cadence. Right, Yeah, that's what it is at
a certain point. Yeah, it's just's yeah, it's built into the brain.
It just happens. How's your twenty twenty four going so far, Jeff,
I think it's fine. I'm already over it. Yeah, I just
want to move on to twenty five. If we could, that'd be great.
And yeah, twenty five feels like a much more round number, so
I'd rather aim for that. Also, noticing our video, we have the
thing up there. I don't control this. I could probably get in there
and fixed it, but it says twenty three still, so don't blame me.
That's fine. We're living in the past. Whatever it is new.
All right, before we get into the special, let's explain ourselves. Most
weekdays, I, Jeff Greb, will help piece your gaming life back together.
That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting.
For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who
will make me look smart. If you're watching live on twitch Welcome. You
can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game mess
Warnings, or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can also
catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. All
right, we have a lot to get into, so let's start the Morning
Mess with Ubisoft swiftly correct Star Wars Outlaws late twenty twenty four release date.
This comes from Levi Winslow at Kotaku. Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's upcoming action
of venture game that follows Scoundrel Kves between the Empire strikes back in Return of
the Jedi previously had Yes right, They're all scoundrels. It's all scoundrels and
jedis that's all they know how to do. Kves Yes, previously had no
release date beyond a very broad twenty twenty four window. Today, however,
a Disney Parks blog post post quietly announced that it would launch in late twenty
twenty four. This didn't last long, as Ubisoft promptly swooped in to correct
the record and reassert the general twenty twenty four timeframe. Over on the Disney
Parks website, director of Editorial Content Thomas Smith detailed twenty four company related experiences
coming over the course of the next twelve months. You've got a new traction
based on the two thousand and nine film The Princess and the Frog, a
theatrical theatrical production inspired by the iconic The Little Mermaid movie, and entire days
centered around Marvel and Pixar, among other new activities. Buried in the blog
post is a blurb on Ubisoft Massive Entertainment's upcoming Star Wars Adventure, announcing that
the game would come out toward the end of twenty twenty four. Star Wars
Outlaws, the open Star Wars game, is set to release lately late this
year. The blurb previously read, The game lets you explore distinct planets across
the galaxy, both iconic and new. You could risk it all as Kves
as a merging scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life along
with her new companion Nix. If you're willing to take the risk, the
galaxy is full of opportunity. This is the kind of thing where I assumed
this was probably coming out later in the year. I guess I don't know
why you Besoft is correcting it, unless maybe they want to keep some flexibility
there. They've said twenty twenty four. They're not like saying no, it's
not coming out later twenty twenty four. It's actually coming out in twenty twenty
five. They just know going back to twenty twenty four. But it's also
a game I suppose that it would come out in the summer or something like
that. But but either way, I don't necessarily assume that the person writing
the blog post for Disney Parks would necessarily have full insight into what is happening
with this game. And maybe they made the same assumption that I did.
What do you think Backlar, Yeah, I mean, well I'm sure they're
fired also, and you know they're they're they were shoven. They're going to
work on the tea, yeah, exactly, and they're lucky, yes,
if they're lucky. Yes, No, this doesn't matter, This doesn't matter.
The only thing I can see being a practical kind of reason that you
would want to finesse the language a little bit there is maybe you buy some
credibility by saying late twenty four that allows you to squeeze into twenty five.
But again, you yourself is coming in here saying no, no, no,
it's very much the entire year of twenty twenty four. It's it's semantics
at best. I think, like no, So, like you said,
no, one, no reasonable person was thinking this game was coming out before
the summer. I mean, come on, this, I don't This feels
very much like a November ass game at best. Yeah, I think there's
a chance for it to be like, oh, that early Fall game,
even before Fall, like early September something like that, maybe, but I
think I'm mostly with you. November seems right, that's probably when this comes
out. Ubisoff did like reach out to Kataku when Kataku asked for a clarification,
and they said that a spokes versus said the timing was incorrect and has
since been amended. Now, if you go back to that Disney Parks blog,
any mention of late twenty twenty four or late this year in the Star
Wars Outlaws blurb has been scrubbed away and replaced with a generic twenty twenty four.
So yeah, I think they're probably just like, hey, we actually
had a marketing plan when we were going to announce like the actual release timing
window, and this scuffs that a little bit. That makes that a little
bit muddy, where it's like, well, yeah, you already said it
was late twenty twenty for in the Disney Parks blog, but well now they
haven't. They've corrected it, and they probably will come out eventually in a
few months and say exactly the same thing that this game is coming out later
this year, probably in the fall. How are you feeling about these big
IP games. This one seems promising and it's from Massive that has had like
that Avatar game is pretty okay for all the jokes about oh yeah, this
is gonna be my game of the year or whatever. I played it and
I'm having an okay time with it, and I'm like mostly impressed that Massive
figure out a way to take this IP that could be very generic in a
lot of ways, and take a skeleton of a game in farcry that can
be very generic, and somehow make a game that mostly feels like it works
and is cohesive. And now they're gonna be applying not necessarily the same formula
to Star Wars, but they are going to be taking a lot of their
skill set over to Star Wars. I think that's pretty interesting. But at
the same time, it's like, man, these big studios that had previously
been working on their own thing now working on these big ips. Part of
me is a little disappointed. How do you feel about it? I think
I'm only disappointed from the point of view of like, yeah, are we
getting just basically like a s a Star Wars skinned version of one of these
really kind of generic gameplay experiences, which you know, I think for better
or worse. You know, these games, like you said, are competent
in a way that we were like, they work and they're fine, But
I don't know if it's going to scratch the itch for me that I'm looking
for in this type of game, or at least the way it's being advertised
and marketed. Right, So, you know, from what I saw early
on of this game, I think my interest remains a lukewarm at best,
but I would love to be surprised for sure. Yeah, and I'm also
playing through Star Wars Jedi Survivor and enjoying that. It's like, Okay,
that's a that's a really good game in my opinion, So this game will
have to live up to that. But it looks like they're also matching that
formulas. You got a a character that's sort of on their own trying to
survive, and they got a little companion. In this case, it's a
little alien instead of a little droid. But it's like a lot of familiar
things. But maybe there's still a chance for it to be surprising in some
ways. But what do you like, I guess that's a you know,
that's what's in my mind too, Right Like, these games are kind of
releasing in what feels like a relatively narrow window in terms of game releases,
right Like, especially these days, I think there is a certain polish on
you know, EA's game, where like is it is it going to be
a similar kind of vibe, right like or you ex is the is the
sort of like threshold has that been raised right for like acceptable sort of like
production value. I don't know. I feel like they're gonna feel like different
games too. Yeah, I think they're gonna feel very different. I think
that the the raw like gameplay polish of of uh Survivor will be maybe not
met by this other game by Outlaws, but I think Outlaws can feel more
polished in terms of fewer bugs, fewer technical problems. A Survivor had a
lot of issues running on everything still kind of has problems running on a PC
to some extent. So I think, you know, this UBI Soft Massive
game they'll have a better chance of, like because they're working in their own
engine that they're very familiar with, So I think that they'll have a better
chance of putting out a product that you know, first Blush feels more polished,
but it's probably I don't think it's going to be in anyone's Game of
the Year list. I would love to be surprised, though, We'll see.
Sure, Sure, Hogwarts Legacy is probably the best, the best example
there where it's like a lot of people like Hogwarts Legacy, but at the
end of the at the end of the year, it wasn't in that many
people's Game of the Year list. I think that's probably. You know,
it's sold very well, and I think most companies we completely find with that
where it's like some people like it, it sold very well. That's what
we're going for, and I think Outlaws has a chance to do that.
I think a lot of these big IP games, that's the like the butter
zone for them. That's where they want to be. Absolutely, that's where
they want to exist. Yeah, all right up next, Square Enix will
be aggressive with using AI for development, the CEO says. This is also
from Levi Winslow at Kataku. Shout out to Levi. It's just two days
into twenty twenty four and a major video game company is already talking about its
big AI plans. If you thought we were leaving AI discourse behind in twenty
twenty three, I'm sorry to tell you that we were very, very wrong.
A New Year's letter from the current Square Innex president details the final Fantasy
seven Rebirth publisher's future outlook, which includes in quote, aggressive push to implement
AI in game development and further financial focus on blockchain, entertainment and the cloud.
And always said they were leaving blockchain behind. They probably are, but
very slowly. Square NX president Takashi Kiru released a lengthy letter of on New
Year's Day, discussing the past year, the rise of extended reality that is
augmented in virtual reality and that's a dumb name, and the company's direction going
forward. Kuru's also mentioned AI, saying that why while the generative technology carrying
negative connotations, the introduction of chatbot GPT a chat GPT, alongside other software
like deep learning, text image generators Dolly and stable diffusion, demonstrated the potential
not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the process
by which we create, including programming. You could probably guess where this is
going. Kiu wants the company to use more AI in its games, expressing
as much a little deeper in the letter duh at a certain point right back.
But we know that these big companies are going to want to save money
by doing things that are basically shortcuts to get to their end goals. I
just am always surprised when a big CEO comes out and says we're doing this,
because it's not just negative connotations, it's negative results. Right, We've
seen what AI is actually capable of right now, and I know it's going
to get better. It's going to get better, and it's going to improve,
and sure that like you want to get on that path right now.
But when I hear this, I hear these games are going to look cheap.
And that's the takeaway here. And I don't get why these CEOs don't
understand that that is, that's the connotation that people have from this. I
don't know, how do you feel about it? Yeah, Like there's an
obvious level of like tone deafness here where I don't I don't understand the barrier
that exists between like CEO literacy and like the mark, like the perception of
the audience. I don't understand how that could be those two things are so
far removed from each other, where you know, you have people parading this
sort of stuff around, given such a negative connotation with all this stuff,
How could these people not know? How do their teams not know? How
do their teams not tell them they have all these like resources at their disposal
to be like, hey, this is the most toxic shit we can absolutely
talk about. Let us not shove people's noses in it. And that's what
they do time and time again in the square being the guiltiest of all these
you know, people who parade this stuff around. I don't get it.
I don't understand. Yeah, I think like there's an absolutely better way to
talk about this technology. And maybe you're never going to one hundred percent sort
of like ease the concerns of like job replacement and stuff like that, but
you sure as shit can talk about it in a much better way than they
are currently doing. Yeah, and it's people in chatter pointing this. Obviously,
this is a letter more intended for investors, you know, that's yeah,
But like, if I'm an investor, I'm not excited about AI either,
because like, you know, you know what I mean, Like I
don't I don't buy that. I think some investors are not savvy I think
many many are. Many people are many investors are just regular people. Many
investors are keeping their finger on the and understanding that the perception of AI is
swiftly changed from wow, this works to okay, we can clearly see the
seams and the limitations, and a trained eye by and that means someone who's
looked at AI like four or five times can now spot like, oh,
that's AI. I know what AI looks like. That's what it looks like
in terms of images, that's what it looks like in terms of written text.
And again it's I think it's gonna make these games feel cheap if any
of that comes through in the end product. Now, there are ways around
that, and those ways are probably involved having actual humans sitting down and polishing
up whatever work AI does, maybe defeating the purpose to a certain extent.
But yeah, I just I don't get while you're out and proud about this
when it's like something that is gonna have to be kind of hidden and might
be a little shameful if your game's actually come out and feel like they were
made by AI. It's weird, right, because remember, like ten years
ago or maybe even longer, I remember this, especially around e three where
Microsoft was like going around really talking up this sort of like generative technology that
it's cloud stuff was going to be able to do with games, right,
Like I remember like Crackdown yeh, he was like one of those games,
and that was essentially the same thing that we're kind of skirting around now,
but look for better or was like obviously that stuff never really came to fruition,
but at least, at the very least the language around it didn't seem
as malignant as it does now, right, which I don't know how you
like sort of like you know, process that in twenty twenty four, but
it was not as bad when they first started doing that. Yeah, And
and as it went away, it's like now we're stuck with with like the
remnants of it, and now we have people like Kojima, a koach of
who's going to be like, hey, I'm making a cloud game with Xbox
and like, okay, yeah, you're the person who wants to go figure
out that craziness still, so you must have some actual ideas and if you
don't, you'll probably come up with something whatever like willing to give you a
chance. It's not like this whole class of people who control a ton of
the capital saying this is the thing that we're interested in because it'll get us
more investment and more capital, because it's the buzzword right now. It's very
like these trends, We've been through them so many times before that at this
point, as soon as we get like a couple weeks into one and we
see, oh, it's going to happen again, it's going to be like
blockchain, it's gonna be like metaverse. It's going to be like it got
VR to a certain extent, like how VR was early on was very much
primed as oh, that's going to be the future, and had all this
investment, and we kind of knew from for a while like it'll have someplace
in all this, but it's not going to take over everything the way that
these people are saying. And when we spots of like AI, it's like,
okay, yeah, we understand this is going to become a part of
how things are made. Let's let the people behind the scenes who are professionals
in making stuff already decide what that's going to look like and not necessarily have
the CEO declared this is the most exciting thing that's happening right now, the
same time. This is a new CEO. I'm pretty sure like they have
been the one that like from the last couple years that did these letters about
a metaverse and blockchain and so, like, I think some people were hopeful,
I think including myself, that their tune would change a little bit,
and this seems like the same old thing. I don't know why I got
my hopes up. I mean, look, the the the sort of argument
that we we talked about a few minutes ago about it being like investor adjacent
messaging, right, Like, that's obviously true, and that's the consequence of
what you get when most CEO responsibility is to just you know, secure that
kind of capital funding r and capital interest and investments. So when that drives
the actions of what the sort of agenda of the of the brand is,
like, you're gonna get these sort of unnatural sort of campaigns as a result.
You know, if the if this stuff is driven by the people who
actually make the games, you're just not going to have that, uh,
this this sort of jarring position on things like AI. You would have at
the very least a much more kind of like oh, potential collaborative sort of
things that you can do with this technology, and not so much of this
dystopian like we're gonna fucking make this, you know, replace every last person
with the beating heart, and you're just gonna be buying you know, robot
and made games like. No, there's no humanity in this kind of conversation
when the only goal of a CEO is really to raise capital. Yep.
Uh. Later on his letter, he did still talk about decentralized currencies linked
to the blockchain and the on demand, on demand server infrastructure tied to the
cloud. So all that stuff still on the table, uh, for for
these companies. That's I think the decentralized currencies, the NFT is basically and
and and then the bitcoins things like that. I'm so surprised that these companies
are still trying to make that work. After touching the frying pan and finding
out that it's hot several times over, yeah, and then coming back to
be like, no, there's a lot of money be made here. What's
like is there, it's completely crashed across the board. It's insane. It's
like, oh, that frying pan, let me maybe I could put it
in my pants. Uh, you know, it's it's maybe that's what's in
the work. Yeah, yeah, like it's it's insane, Like, uh
I did. I've talked to people through a little bit of like you know,
consulting work a couple of years ago with like crypto and gaming, and
like literally the only lesson everyone seemed to learn was just how toxic that vocabulary
was in and around the world of gaming. And to see it two years
later, still showing its disgusting face is just the most foreheads slapping inducing thing
I've ever seen. It's like, what's happening? Yeah, I go back
to like the original point I always thought about that. It's like, okay,
so the decentralized cocns, the cryptocurrencies, they are something that these companies
would not be able to control. So if someone has a customer service problem,
you can't fix it. How is that better than just steam Bucks or
like PlayStation network Bucks, where it's like, oh, hey, something happened
and I lost my stuff, my kids spend something accidentally. Can we fix
this cryptocurrency? No, we don't control this blockchain. It's decentralized. There
is no one to talk to. And here it's like the way it works
today. You call a company, and like, yeah, of course we
can fix that. We control all of this. That's what people want.
They don't want this other thing where it's like you can't call anybody and get
things fixed. Like that's just what it once people encounter that to be,
oh, this actually is way worse than what we already had, and what
we already have does everything else that these things claim to do. Digital money
that you can buy stuff with. We have that. It's called credit cards.
It works already. It's just crazy. It's crazy. I mean,
and you know there and and there's always been elements of it already, like
for decades of decades of like the spirit of what everyone like you could trade
on steam already exactly. So I don't know the I don't understand the horning
is to like continue to go back to that very poisoned well, I don't
get it. It's in the watersuplan and like they can't get it out.
There's there's not enough people able to read the tea leaves and just be like,
this is a thing we absolutely have to permanently pivot away from the last
thing here. I said that it crashed across the board. That's true of
NFTs cryptocurrencies are kind of still bouncing up and down. Bitcoin is up a
little bit these days, I guess. But but whatever we see, like
anything attached to a JPEG or a video or any of these things, all
that stuff is in the gutter. All right, We're gonna take a quick
break. When we get back, we've got a lot more news. We'll
try to talk a little bit more about switch To all that stuff. We'll
get to that right after this. And we're back. We're back, and
we're getting back at the news. Just like I promised, I would never
lie to you. All right, here we go. Switch To is likely
to be an iteration rather than a revolution, predicts analysts. This is from
Andy Robinson at VGC, and analysts don't necessarily know much more than anyone else,
but I figured this would be a worthwhile topic. Anyhow, let's get
into it. Nintato Switch successor will launch this year and will likely be an
iteration of the current hardware designed rather than a revolution. That's according to doctor
Serkin Toto, CEO of Tokyo based games industry consultancy Canton Gang Games, who
contributed his forecast for twenty twenty four in Games Industry Dot Business annual Analyst Prediction
feature, although the company has yet to comment publicly. Nintendo's next generation console
is widely expected to launch this year after VGC reported that development kits are in
the hands of developers as the platform holder prepares its plans. According to Canton
Games Toto, the console could launch at four hundred dollars, one dollars higher
than the Switch launched app, and there's a chance that it's games could adopt
the seventy dollars pricing of PS five and Xbox Series X. I think that
chance is very high. The time is finally here for a Switch successor,
even though I could say a pro model actually did exist and certain developers were
already working with dev kids, Toto wrote, I believe the next hardware will
drop in twenty twenty four for four hundred dollars, and there's a high chance
the games will cost that seventy dollars price tag. He also goes on to
say expects this to be an iteration on the Switch, not not some new
fangle thing that'll be completely different, And to me that sounds exactly right,
beyond even beyond Beckler the the well, you just carry that momentum of the
switch forward at a certain point. It also falls into the basically the tradition
of Nintendo at this point, where you know, they have the NES and
then they make the Super NES, and then you know they have the Wii,
they make the WIU, they have the Game Boy, they make the
Game Boy Advance, they have the DS, they make the three DS.
They're gonna they have the switch. They're gonna make the new switch. That
is what's going to happen here. They are They've done that a million times
before. Sometimes it works Super Nintendo three DS, things like that, and
sometimes it doesn't. We you, uh, but I think that they think
that this is the right probably the right call here, and that that is
the right call, right. Does anyone want anything else? Back? Lar,
No, It's this is like, uh, it's way it's way more
of that moment than it was. I think for a second, we right,
like absolutely, Uh, we were kind of dumb at me, right,
We like, yeah, And I guess it's it's easy to say that
in hindsight, but I but I also do think like the momentum that the
switch still continues to carry makes it primed for just a better, beefier,
more powerful and also I'm you know, I'm sure there will be half a
dozen improvements to the just the general quality of life things that maybe people aren't
really thinking about with the original switch, but that I just think like,
this thing is going to come out and feel probably a similar way to like
what the O led Steam deck felt to the Steam Deck, and you know,
just performance wise being the biggest sort of improvement I think is is that'd
be the question? The biggest point. Yes, I think, yeah,
that's the thing. This thing really has to you know, eclipse the original
switch by like five times, right, I mean it really needs to improve
in that department, and everything else will be fine, you know, make
a joy concept, don't drift, make those better, make some of the
hardware feel a little bit more premium, and that's what we're going to get
with another switch. Yeah, it's I think the small murmurings that we're getting
out of these developers. We talked about this on the BombCast yesterday, where
a bunch of developers talked to a Japanese publication called four Gamer about what they
expected twenty twenty four and the like. The tone that they struck was everyone's
pretty excited about the next hardware and some people said, then it's Nintendo hardware
for twenty twenty four, And I think there's a part of me that's like,
man, is this thing going to come out and be disappointing in terms
of its power performance? And I think the way that maybe these developers are
just like God, it's so nice to work on something that's just more powerful
than the switch, no matter how much more powerful it is. But I
get the idea that this is probably going to be powerful enough for most people.
It's going to be powerful enough for most teams that are working on games,
and they will make it make sense. I think again in Nvidia in
Nintendo, when they first struck up their deal, they said, hey,
we're going to be working together for twenty years. I think it's very much
an Nvidia's interest to make sure that Nintendo is as well positioned as possible,
so they will do the extra work to make sure that a lot of things
just work. It's going to be powerful, it's going to have the backward
compatibility, and however that needs to happen, which probably wasn't very simple to
make happen. But I think Nvidia Nintendo probably worked together and made it happen
and we'll get a lot of these answers eventually, but I think all of
that does lead to something that's going to keep developers pretty excited as we get
more information about it. How do you feel about the four hundred dollars price
tag? That also sounds right to me. What do you think? Yeah,
I think that I think that makes sense, especially the context of this
being an iterative sort of improvement. I don't think it's something you're you're maybe
going to need to go out and buy right away. I think I am.
I'm imagining like maybe some games will sort of have a cutoff where like
they're just not going to work on the original switch, but on the new
Yeah, on the new switch. But yeah, four hundred does seem about
right, especially knowing that like that's going to be the price for half a
decade probably, you know, without that changing at all. So yeah,
I mean if anything like we saw with the switch O led, you know,
it went up by fifty dollars, so the price might go up over
time. Yeah. I think that Nintendo has realized, and they realized it
by never really reducing the price of the hardware, that they could have sold
the switch for more money than they did, and they probably could have got
away with that and it would not have put a dent in their sales in
any real functional way. So that'll manifest as a at least four hundred dollars
switch to or super switch when that thing comes out. And then seventy dollars
games. I think that is also inevitable for this system, not inevitable,
probably it'll be there on day one, I think. Again, I think
Nintendo knows that its games would sell at a seventy dollars price tag because they
sell so much better than everyone else's at sixty dollars already. They're like,
well, yeah, we could charge ten dollars more and people are not going
to skip out on it for the most part. It might put you know,
a five percent dent in there, but we'll make that up in the
end exactly. And Nintendo doesn't lower the prices, so it's like at seventy
dollars or you know, they could lower from seventy to sixty, and then
again that makes them still a lot more money than what they were making already.
So I think that's also going to happen, and I think Nintendo will
probably I have a good idea about how to position all this with like Okay,
yeah, like here's why you need to have it, and it probably
will come in the form of some very big and impressive games, likely a
three D Mario. But is there anything else that comes to mind that you
would get you excited for a new switch? No? I mean, you
know, I think, like, uh, I hate to bring up this
game in your presence, but I think a Metroid Prime for sure is like
really the one that'll be an overwhelming amount of like a hype and and sort
of excitement for me. But yeah, like I hate saying this out loud,
but yeah, Nintendo doesn't have to do much aside from like the status
quo. Yeah, and it's gonna be fine. Yep, absolutely yeah.
You know. Speaking of which, that takes us to our next story.
Mia Moto has no plans to retire, but is thinking about it in case
something does happen. He says, this is This comes from Eddie mcoo at
GameSpot Shigar Roomeo Moto, the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, and other
characters and games over his forty plus years at Nintendo, is seventy one years
old and has no plans to retire. Speaking to the Guardian, Miomoto said
he is thinking about a succession plan, but he plans to work for some
time more more so than retiring. I'm thinking about the day I fall over,
he said with a smile. In this day and age, you have
to think about things in a five year time span, so I do think
about who I can pass things on to in case something does happen. Mimoto
went on to comment on his legacy, saying he is thankful there is so
much energy around the things he has created. They've been cultivated by others.
Other people have been raising them, helping them grow, so in that sense,
I don't feel too much ownership over them anymore, Miomoto said. Miomoto
may one day retire, but he believes his work will be remembered. There
is a scene in Ironman where the president goes to his home company and the
guard man doesn't let him in, and he points at the portrait and says,
that's me. He said, but I really hope that the teams I
work with at least remember me as the creators of these things. So that's
like said, and cute and adorable, sad and cute, adorable Miyamoto and
twenty eleven, Miamoto told Wired that he was planning a soft retirement and that
he would step down and from his current duties and shift to a different role
within Nintendo. That sparked a lot of buzz and discussion and triggered some level
of panic about Nintendo's share price in some circles. But in turn but this
in turn prompted Nintendo to issue a statement denying that Miyamoto was retiring in their
traditional sense. In twenty thirteen, Miamoto told game Spot that he would that
it would be strange to not think about retirement given his age. Back then,
Miamoto and Nintendo management were internally planning for the day when Miamoto no longer
works at the company. What I'm doing is pretending like I'm not working on
half the projects that I would normally be working on to try to get younger
staff to be more involved, he said at the time. Over the past
decade, Miamoto has spent more time working on non gaming projects at Nintendo,
including the Super Mario Brothers movie and Super Nintendo World theme parks. That seems
like what's happening instead, right, instead of him retiring, He's just transitioning
to taking what he's already built in games and finding a way to express that
in these other places while other people are coming up and actually taking over control
of the games and have been for many years. And that sounds like a
pretty decent idea of like, okay, that that forces the Nintendo to figure
out what to do without Miamoto in terms of making games. Well, Miamoto
could take his creative energy and actually build something new that someone will have to
take over. That's a pretty good idea, I think, how do you
feel about it? Yeah? I think there's nothing sounds better to me for
Miyamoto than just like hanging out on movie sets and well, you know,
I guess you No one hangs out on a animated movie set, but just
living in that world, which is I mean, animated films are not,
as I guess, easy to kind of pull off as live action movies.
A live action movies, so he might be pretty soon. Yeah, Like
the to me, that movie production is without a doubt, and an easier
ride than game development. So just let me to enjoy his golden years here
and in that capacity, And I think that's what's going to be best for
his quality of life, right, Yeah, I think so. And I
think that original time when he talked about retiring back at twenty eleven, and
I do remember now, yeah, that's right. There was a drop in
the stock price because people freaked out, like no Miamoto. But Nintendo has
clearly understood for a very long time Miamota is not always going to be there.
And I think they're like, Mimoto is already like, hey, for
many of these things, I'm not here right now. Zelda has been a
Gia Numas thing for decades now, and Miamoto is always there in the background.
But I don't think he's even in the background in the way that like
George Lucas was in the background of like Return of the Jedi, right where
it's like standing behind people and being like, okay, yeah, when we
have a question, we're actually going to go ask George. We're not going
to ask I can't remember who Mark Kwan, whoever directed Return of the Jedi.
No Agia Numa and Fujibayashi. These guys are in charge of Zelda and
have been for a very long time. And I think that there's even like
a new generation coming up underneath that the people beneath me a Moto that are
now taking things over. And we saw that with Mario, right, yeah,
Wunder Yeah with Wonder, yes exactly. There was like like four people
who worked on the original Mario still worked on Wonder. But the whole story
about the domain is we let everybody come up with ideas from all across Nintendo
and come work on this Mario game, and that is then figuring out how
to ensure their future, right totally, And it obviously worked. It worked
better than I think anyone could have imagined. And that's how it's it's nice
to see it happening, where like there is this generational you know, handoff
if you will. Yeah, And like even Pickman four, Like Pickman was
like one of the last franchises that Mimoto was like, this is my baby,
you know. That was an outsourced to aiding, which is a work
for higher studio. And yeah, they all these work for higher students that
were working with Nintendo, worked with Nintendo producers and things like that. But
that producer was not Miamoto. I'm sure he was involved a little bit,
but that things had already been set up so that they could pass baton and
I think Nintendo is in the position where they are going to be able to
attract like the most talented people, especially in Japan, but throughout the world.
It's going to be very similar to how Disney has worked for a very
long time, where it's like, hey, yeah, why is why did
Disney parks are? Why are they so much better than all these other parks?
So well, they attract the best engineers because they want to go work
on the coolest projects because they grew up admiring what Disney was doing already.
And I think Nintendo's going to have the exact same arc going forward, where
people are going to want to work in Nintendo because of what Miamoto did,
even long after Miomoto's gone, and they're going to want to replicate the kind
of creativity he did so they don't have to worry too much about that stuff.
And in the meantime, like, yeah, he gets to work on
these movies, he says. He goes on to say in this story here
that he's reading a lot of scripts because he's trying to understand like how to
take a Nintendo magic and apply it to movies. So you can just imagine,
like, I don't know, if he's reading like a bunch of pitches
for Zelda. Maybe he's just reading Shane Black scripts or something like, oh
man, all right, leath the weapon, Okay, this is this?
Howther that of the last voy Scout? Now I get it. Now I
know how to make a Zelda movie. But I do like the idea of
him. But I'm like, yeah, I want to just to take these
skills and apply it to one or two more areas and you know, Super
Nintendo World it works. The Mario movie it worked. I think the Mari
movie could have been better, but they're gonna have chances it was definitely better
than it could have way better than it could have been. Right, it
could have been so much worse in so many ways. Sure, So I
think they have a lot of good things going, a lot of their ideas
are working. Em meim Mooto. Retiring at this point feels like it would
not They wouldn't miss a beat anymore, right, No, No, it
would be fine. Uh and yeah, I guess. At the same time,
I was thinking, while you're describing like all the other things that Nintendo
is getting its hands into, it is still mind blowing to me that it
really took this long for there to be this kind of blockbuster Mario movie for
better or worse. Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Obviously they
were scared off by the first one. I think then they also got distracted
by the huge success of the Wii and the DS, and that enabled them
to be like, no, we meet games from that. That is our
bread and butter. Where it's going to keep focusing on that. And then
with the WU they looked around being like, okay, how come we are
not extracting value from these properties in other ways? And that was like one
of you Wata's last things he did before he died. It was like,
Hey, we are going to expand into all of these other areas. We're
going to take our ip as orip's, we're going to license them, but
we're going to work very closely with partners in Hollywood and it's parks like Universal
and that's going to be how we're going to make more money. And that
has worked so far. So yeah. Yeah, but it's surprising it took
as long as it did. All Right, Next up, Prince of Persia
The Lost Crown is estimated to be a twenty five hour game. Oh wow.
This is from Liam Dulan at Nintendo Life While January isn't always the biggest
month on the video game calendar the year, this year there are already several
games to look forward to. One of these is Prince of Persia The Lost
Crown, a new Metroid Venus style take on the classic platform and series.
If you're wondering just how much bang for your buck you'll be able to get
from this one. According to Game and Former, this new adventure is estimated
to be roughly twenty five hours. It's not entirely clear if this is just
a main game or a completionist run. However, the length of each playthrough
depends on player's skill and the amount of exploration. As a reminder, there's
a demo of The Lost Crown arriving next week on the eleventh of January.
The full launch of the game will then follow on the eighteenth of January,
so we're just a couple of weeks away from that right now. Twenty five
hours even for a completionist run back Laar for a Metroid Vanua is a lot.
That's a big, big game. I'm like, a like, yeah,
people playing a Hollow Night is like forty hours, sure, But I'm
like, I think of like all the Castlelvania and the Metroid games, and
you can complete those like in like ten to fifteen hours. Really, I
guess your first play through would probably be closer to eight or nine hours,
and then cleaning things up. Yeah, you'll probably get you in a fifteen
hours. Twenty five hours seems really big. But at the same time,
this is you'd be soft. I think they're used to making big games.
I think at a certain point they're like, it needs to be b to
justify what we're doing here. I get how this happens, but how does
it make you feel? Backlar, I wish you didn't know it. I
wish you didn't know that. I want to unknow that it's kind of the
same. Yes, I when you talk about our you know, game time
in that twenty thirty hour sort of like category, I get intimidated. Sure,
especially for the style of game that the new Prince Persia is. I'm
hoping maybe that is just like the hardcore, like you said, one hundred
percent playtime sort of thing. Where's this also coming from? Yeah, you
know, look, we'll see I mean, maybe you know. I'll be
happy to eat my words and find out that, like, oh my god,
this really is this amazing thing that you want to spend this much time
with. Sure would love to have that happen, But on its face,
twenty five hours seems like a surprising amount of playtime. Yeah, I am
Jesse, and Chat points out that they overestimate the amount of time it takes
to beat these things a lot of times when we were taught to pr and
that wouldn't surprise what we find out. That's the case twenty five hours.
So it's still like, even if that that's what they're saying, and oh,
it really takes like twenty hours to fully complete, that's still big for
a Metroidvania. But I played the game. It is very very good,
and it seems like it has a lot of cool stuff going on. And
the way that they like the setup is, hey, you're on this team
with these like six or seven other people who are badasses, and you guys
are all go out and do badass stuff together, and then of course things
happen, and now those are the bosses you have to go search the world
and take on And I could see it's like, okay, if each one
of those has like a two hour level, yeah I could you could probably
get to fourteen to fifteen hours pretty easily. So yeah, we'll see.
We'll have that game in our hands here and like I said, it's coming
out to eighteenth, so two weeks we'll have that and we'll know for ourselves.
Mickey Mouse game is changing its name after anti Semitic accusations. This comes
from Kenneth Shepper at Kotaku. If you haven't heard, the Steamboat Willie version
of Mickey Mouse is officially in the public domain and Nightmare Forge Games wasted no
time announcing a horror game starring the version of Disney's mascot called Infestation eighty eight.
However, upon announcement, the team was met with immediate pushback regarding the
game's title and premise, with folks specifically accusing of of being an anti Semitic
dog whistle. For those that don't know, eighty eight is code for HH
or Hail Hitler within the Nazi movement, as H is the eighth letter of
the alphabet. The game focuses on killing a monster version of Mickey and dealing
with a rat infestation by using gas, and the Nazi movement has used rats
as a stand in for Jewish people in its propaganda. All this threw up
too many red flags, and Infestation eighty eight was immediately met with suspicion that
what looked like a horror game was capitalizing on Mickey's public domain status was actually
hiding something much more insidious. This did not occur to me when I first
looked at this, but we start like, hey, yeah, people,
eighty eight is definitely something that's like, oh, yeah, they're right.
That's that thing where where people are trying to hide their weird stuff about Hitler
in there. They are changing the name and they're saying they didn't know.
But this is a tough one where at the very least they have to kind
of go out and like prove that that this is not what they were trying
to do, right Yeah, And I mean, I don't know, I
haven't really dug too deep into this story. I think at the speed at
which they were like whoa, like, this is not what we wanted to
do, I think is maybe you're giving them the benefit of doubt. But
maybe that is a sign of like, okay, maybe that is an honest
mistake. I don't know. Also, you're keeping this game a secret,
right because you know of the you don't want to get a season. Well
it could still happen. Yeah, right, So again, I don't know.
Maybe I'm just finding excuses for these possible nazis. I don't know,
but yeah, like on its face, if I'm just looking at at the
details that have come out, that's uh, you know, apology pulled the
walk back right away, Like okay, maybe that's maybe it's yeah, you
know, it's possible that they're line stepping though, right where it's like,
we're gonna step up that line and we're gonna look like we're gonna be a
baddie, We're gonna we're gonna be naughty, and it's like as soon as
they get slept on the rest, like we weren't really doing that. Oh
Jesus, I haven't thought about that. Okay. It's like, and you
know that the kinds of people that would use eighty eight in that way are
definitely the kind of people who are line steppers, and they're like, we're
poking at you, we're prodding at you. We don't know they have changed
it, but at the very least, I'm like, hey, this this
criticism is the kind of thing where people need to be considered of it and
think about it. And think about how the game is being presented. And
I actually I don't get their explanation about it being set in the eighties other
than maybe that's kind of what Fineff maybe looks like sometimes, where it's like,
oh yeah, big animatronic animals chasing you down in the of a like
a party zone or whatever. So it's going to be set in nineteen eighty
eight, It's like, oh, okay, but this is Steamboat Willie from
like nineteen twenties. What does that have to do with the eighties? Why
are those the sixty years apart? What does that even mean? Like,
why would that be a thing? Yeah, I so, yeah, I'm
with everyone who's suspicious, and sure I'm ready to give an ounce of a
benefit of a doubt, but I'm also like willing to, like, hey,
let's have people look a little bit more into what's the steamer all about?
And you know, it does suck that like this thing that would normally
be not that interesting is now getting a bit more of that kind of attention
in a way that just we're not sure how to feel about it. So
exactly, Yeah, I will read their statement here. They said, our
game investation eighty eight is set in the nineteen eighties, with the year nineteen
eighty eight chosen simply due to its symmetrical design in the game's artwork logo.
Unfortunately, we were unaware of the of any additional meetings the number eighty eight
has. However, after learning about this, we're changing the game's name to
Infestation Origins. We apologize for our ignorance on this and appreciate that this was
brought to our attention so we could address it asap. Yeah, it's tough,
but at the same time, this is a cheap cash and it's not
that big a deal. It's not important, right, It's like gonna be
a thing that we're gonna forget about in a year. So definitely not registering
on the important scale, that's for sure, all right, So let's move
here. Jack Black is becoming too powerful and will star as Steve in the
Minecraft movie. This comes from Michael mcwater at Polygon. Actor musician Jack Black
continues to be Hollywood's go to guy for video game roles. He'll play Steve
in the upcoming Minecraft movie. According to reports from Deadline and Variety. Black
joins actors Jason Momoa, Daniel Brooks, and Emma Myers in the live action
adaptation of Mo Yang's massive sandbox game. Black, of course starting last year's
billion dollar blockbuster adaptation of the Super Mario Brothers franchise as the vote voice of
Bowser and the crooner of Peaches, just one aspect of what made him the
best thing about the Super Mario Brothers movie. Black also stars in the upcoming
adaptation of Borderlands as Claptrap and but that's never coming out. Yeah, that
would come. But he was also to Jumanji flicks, which you know,
a video games. He did to Jumanji movies. That first one, that
first, the first reboot, is really really good. The second one,
i've heard that. I didn't know they made another one. Yeah, it
was really really successful too, so it was like inevitable. They did a
second one, which I don't remember liking as much. I kind of forgot
most about it. Okay, maybe maybe it's good. But yeah, they
made two of those ones, two of them, and Jack Black was in
both of them. And then of course Jack Black has a history of being
in games. He's got He's close with Tim Schaeffer. He was in Broken
Age, Psychoonauts, Tonyaks, pro Skater one and two, I didn't know
about that. He did. What I know to Michael mcgord, he was
in Tonyaks pro Skater one and two. Maybe maybe he has like a character
voice in the new one or something like that. Oh, you know,
obviously he was also what's that other Tim Shaffer game, the Metal Game.
Oh, Brutal Legend. Yeah, Brutal Legend. Oh, he was Officer
Dick in the remake. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that's cool,
that's very cool. So yeah, hey this is aweso neat. But
also, do you think of Minecraft movie also ever comes out? I'm like,
we've heard about this one before, and I think the last time I
heard about it was years ago where it was going to be directed by Rod
Rob mcalenny from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sonny. Yeah, and then
that fell through, and hey they're gonna work on they have another project going,
another Minecraft project. Now they got a bunch of actors attached. I
still am like, I'm forty five percent sure this this is gonna come out?
Ever? Yeah yeah, I mean it sounds like, oh so Jared
hess Right is attached to it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yes,
I'm that's I don't know, I don't know. I really love Jared
hess either, So yeah, I mean I'm kind of lukewarm. I think,
like, get, I don't know. Once I feel like once a
name like Jack Black is attached to a thing along with the director he's worked
with before, maybe there's a little bit more stock to put into this sort
of thing. I mean, I don't know. I think, Uh,
it's just also such a no brainer that this should be a movie. Oh
yeah, maybe it's just too big to kind of fail. Yeah, I
supposed to. It has to happen eventually, right, and it probably will.
Service Kan also points out Jack Black was in an Atari twenty six hundred
Pitfall commercial as a kid, and that is true. Yes, I've sort
so it's his destiny is basically yes. Uh, all right, I'm trying
to think that there's anything else I want to cover on this. I get
that that Borderlands movie, we have not heard much about that for a while.
That thing seems to just be like buffering or something. I don't know,
they're still rendering it out. I have no idea. Do you think
like k Blanchet's like, man, I kind of hope it never comes out.
She's in that movie fucking border Yeah, and and so is who Oh,
well, was Eli Roth? Right he directed it? Right? Uh?
You did? Yeah? That he was definitely involved, right, mean
god who? I just feel like looking it up. All right, let's
see Border Lance movie. Well, and Jamie Lee Curtis is also in it,
and I feel like she's recently won an oscar and now is she like,
hey, Eli Roth directed it? Maybe you don't release this movie.
I know I'm joking around. I don't I don't know. I don't know
why it's stuck in this sort of like post production. Hell right, no
one is not happy with it, right, so that they were filming it.
We got a look at the set during that Digital E three in twenty
twenty one, So it's twenty twenty four now, it seems like quite some
time. But we'll we'll see. I bet, I bet it does re
emerge in some way this year. Of course, it's too much of an
asset to just be written off. I think at this point I will say
this like just anecdotally. I know, I know of like a lot of
things that have sort of been shelved pre and post writers and actor strike.
So there's like weirdness there too. I'm not saying they are directly related,
but I do know of stuff that, like, you know, assets moved
around a lot before and during the strike as well, and who knows the
the machinations of why something like this could be held up. I think it's
a reasonable assumption to wonder about the quality of this thing and who maybe people
are, you know, not happy with its current position. I don't know.
Yeah, let's see saying Craig Mason worked on it and had his name
taken off, Craig Mason being the guy that worked on Chernobyl. I think
I heard about this. Yeah, yeah, that's never a great sign.
But it's not Yeah, there's not I'll say this. There's not a lot
of positive detail else that would lead anyone to have any sort of like enthusiastic
take on this. Right, that's for sure. Yeah, we'll see all
right. Finally, here just a PSA recording explicit Balder'sgate three romance scenes may
get your Xbox account banned. This comes from json Finelli at game Spot.
Building up a romantic relationship with a companion of choice in Balder's Gate three will
earn players an intimate scene with the chosen party member and if you're on Xbox,
be warned recording the scene could get you banned from Xbox Live, as
one member of the game's reddit community has reported. Reddit user Daddy Vegas shared
his play on the BG three form as they said they recorded three separate videos,
in particular tryst in the player's character camp. How many videos do you
need? Buddy? As is routinem The videos were uploaded xboxes servers after capture
for sharing purposes, but when the uploads were completed, each video was reportedly
marked as an infraction, and in companying image on the reddit post shows each
of the active suspensions earned by the three separate incidences incidents and then the first
video earned a four day suspension, with a second adding a twenty two day
suspension, and the third adding a three hundred and sixty six day suspension,
and appeal has been sent to Xbox. According to the post, as the
author remarks they are hoping the appeals process fixes this. This seems like an
oversight, Uh, but it's like you think it's like bloob and penis recognition
technology. I don't know. I don't know either, and I feel like
if the game is spitting it out like you should be allowed to. Yeah,
I mean that's how it works on Twitch, even right where Twitch is
like, hey, you cannot show your buttthole on here, don't ever show
your buttthole. But if it's part of the game, it's part of the
game. Yeah, Like what are we doing? You know, Like I
I'm like flag it as like adults only or something. But like, of
course, and also I love the name Daddy Vegas. I do Vegas.
I am down for Daddy Vegas as Daddy Vegas just resonates with me in a
way that I'm not really prepared to see. You know, that guy could
show you a good time, Like you we go to Vegas, be like,
I don't know if I can have a good time here. Daddy Vegas
would make sure you had a good time. Yeah. It takes care of
his own totally. So I'm very excited about, uh, Daddy Vegas in
the future of Daddy Vegas. No, but like, yeah, this seems
silly. If the game spits it out, let me record it. What
are we doing? Let's be come on, let's be re here. They
should fix this. Xbox better fix this. This is stupid. Otherwise you
could play it on your Xbox. Uh, you just can't record it using
the tools built in for the game that you're you're selling and making money off
of. Don't come on an ass about it. If it's a problem,
fick. Just just fix it. Just just fix it, make it go
away. Uh okay, let's see here. Yeah, I guess it just
points out you could record, you can't upload to their servers. Yeah,
the server upload happens automatically. You have to turn that off. Like,
just come on at an adult. Just make it market it like put it
behind an age gate. We know, we know it uploads automatically, we
know it's a certain Just fix it. Just just just just fix it,
all right? Uh? Does it for the news? I did? I
don't think I did a pull question. People can remind. I mean,
we can talk about it tomorrow if I did. But I don't think I
said. We're gonna be on such a long break it doesn't make sense.
So no pole question go over now. But I do have a new poll
question that we will get to in a moment. In the meantime, Beckler,
what do we have going on on the website this week? Oh,
there's all kinds of things happening on the website. We're gonna actually do a
today later, right, I believe you're playing at the new Avatar game.
That's right, we'll go to GP plays for Avatar, closing in on the
final episodes of Blight Club as well. We're doing Voicemail Dump Truck tomorrow,
We've got I think we have a TNT scheduled as well, and then Friday,
of course we'll do our revengeance, a UPF and much much more.
Yep, well, we'll get all that to you guys this week with GMMs
for the rest of the week. For Avatar, I think we're starting at
twelve thirty. Is that when we said I have the calendar here, Yes,
twelve thirty, maybe closer to one. We'll see how it goes.
And then light Club will be at two thirty pm Eastern time, so we'll
go right into that from Avatar, so we'll see you all pretty soon for
that. In the meantime, that poll question it'll be up on YouTube dot
com slash giant Bomb and just go to that community tab there you can find
do you want Nintendo's next console to be an iteration on switch or something completely
new? Good? Vote vote for that. We'll talk about it on Gameless
Mornings on Giant Bomb tomorrow. Beckler, thank you so much for spending today
talking with me about video games. I really appreciate it. Thank you Jeff
Grub for having me on my very first appearance. Actually welke up in time,
so I figured out, I we'll actually get on here, New Year,
New Games Mornings. That's right, I'm loving it. I'm loving it
too. Thanks everybody for watching. You're the best audience in gaming. Until
next time, have a good one, take care of yourself. Goodbye.