The Witcher 3 is Getting a New Expansion?

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, welcome back to Game Best Mornings with Me
<v Speaker 1>Jeff Grubb, your host from giant bomb dot com.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're gonna.
<v Speaker 1>Be talking more about getting more of the Witcher three
<v Speaker 1>and twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 2>And no, it's not a typo. I didn't mean Witcher four.
<v Speaker 3>It's gonna be this. Graphics cards are at the perfect
<v Speaker 3>place to be playing the Witcher three.
<v Speaker 1>You want to go back, let's just keep going backwards.
<v Speaker 1>Everything's going that way. We have lex Lettie on this show.
<v Speaker 1>That's how you know it's gonna be a gooding Lexi,
<v Speaker 1>how are you doing.
<v Speaker 3>I'm doing okay, I'm very tired. Turns out me too.
<v Speaker 3>Turns out when you fuckers take the website independent, a
<v Speaker 3>lot of people want to contribute to your guest Game
<v Speaker 3>of the Year listen, more.
<v Speaker 2>So than other years. Yeah, I got to ask.
<v Speaker 1>Like ten people and that we meant to ask, and
<v Speaker 1>it's like even then it would have been oh boy,
<v Speaker 1>that would have been quite fit.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And so me and Marino edited a lot of
<v Speaker 3>stuff and a little behind the scenes look at things.
<v Speaker 3>The image library hasn't hasn't come over from the old website.
<v Speaker 3>So when we were cmssing all that, we had to
<v Speaker 3>find new images.
<v Speaker 1>And that was a good thing overall that that image
<v Speaker 1>library didn't come over.
<v Speaker 2>There was a lot of.
<v Speaker 1>Fun stuff in there that, yeah's not necessarily a Serve
<v Speaker 1>Giant bomb in any way.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yes, I was also thinking about that was that
<v Speaker 3>was probably a shed pool, and so yeah, me and
<v Speaker 3>Marino were also spent a lot of time building up
<v Speaker 3>the backbone of an image library with images for pretty
<v Speaker 3>much like every game that came out in twenty twenty
<v Speaker 3>six or twenty twenty five, because honestly, I'm like, those
<v Speaker 3>are wild spreading games, and we wound up you know,
<v Speaker 3>almost it felt like almost every game that came out
<v Speaker 3>this year. Goanna mentioned in one of the lists. If
<v Speaker 3>you haven't led the lists, go wead the lists. I
<v Speaker 3>mentioned Drive Club in mind because I'm sick.
<v Speaker 2>Drive clubs have is it having a moment? It feels
<v Speaker 2>like I keep hearing about.
<v Speaker 3>Drive Club is drive Club was taken offline and it
<v Speaker 3>is like in a semi function. I stay, it's the
<v Speaker 3>PS four one, right.
<v Speaker 1>I think what happened is people like have been getting
<v Speaker 1>it running really well in the emulators, and so that's
<v Speaker 1>where it's having its moment, is I'm trying to rescue
<v Speaker 1>it over there.
<v Speaker 3>I know, me and John Linneman are like the two
<v Speaker 3>Drive Club Defend Defenders and that game has really cool
<v Speaker 3>like day night cycle stuff where it's baked lighting but
<v Speaker 3>it's done to like change as you drive through the level,
<v Speaker 3>and it's really dramatic. It's like shockingly good for what
<v Speaker 3>it is.
<v Speaker 1>I think Greg Sewart, who who submitted a list for us,
<v Speaker 1>he's also a drive Club sicco, although these days I
<v Speaker 1>think he's fully in on back on Grand Turismo. So look,
<v Speaker 1>you'll have your games you play him, Like, were you
<v Speaker 1>in like a Drive Club League?
<v Speaker 2>Like I know they had.
<v Speaker 3>Those, No, because all that stuff is gone now. They
<v Speaker 3>like like chucked all that out. And they also they
<v Speaker 3>sell of all the menus for like by the DLC.
<v Speaker 3>The DLC isn't for sale anymore, so you know, And
<v Speaker 3>speaking of that, do you want to know what The
<v Speaker 3>first game I played in twenty twenty six was please Anthem?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? Are you okay?
<v Speaker 3>No? Obviously, and that game's going offline forever in two
<v Speaker 3>weeks and.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't even know that the guy maybe I reported
<v Speaker 1>here and forgot yeah, two weeks.
<v Speaker 3>And it's no longer for sale. They took it off
<v Speaker 3>for sale in August, and now it's going offline sometime
<v Speaker 3>late next week or early the week after.
<v Speaker 2>And but basically I think we're going to play that.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>Here's the thing. I need some people to play that with,
<v Speaker 3>because I'm not sure if you remember Anthem, but a
<v Speaker 3>large part of the structure of that game is once
<v Speaker 3>you get done the first couple of missions, they're like,
<v Speaker 3>go complete the trials that Didley fuck or whatever, and
<v Speaker 3>the trials that diddly fuck are just like your dailies.
<v Speaker 3>It's like, go do some dailies. But one of the
<v Speaker 3>daily dailies, right, yeah, one of the dailies that you
<v Speaker 3>have to do is revive three other javelins. And I
<v Speaker 3>can't find anyone else to revive, so I can't progress
<v Speaker 3>the story. I'm stuck. And so unless I squat up
<v Speaker 3>with people, I can't finish Anthem before it goes off live.
<v Speaker 1>I am a I'm good personal friends with the greatest
<v Speaker 1>of all Anthem defenders, A J.
<v Speaker 2>Manati, So maybe.
<v Speaker 1>I'll give him a ring and see if he wants
<v Speaker 1>to show us around one last time.
<v Speaker 2>An Anthem, you know, game promise.
<v Speaker 3>You yeah, say what you will about that game flying around.
<v Speaker 3>It's oh, yes, some good flying around they nail.
<v Speaker 1>And that's like that was the focus of that demo.
<v Speaker 1>I like was like, Okay, I'm fully on board with this.
<v Speaker 1>This is going to be massive, and it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>once you play it and you see all the other
<v Speaker 1>issue you know, specifically for BioWare in that moment, it
<v Speaker 1>was animation.
<v Speaker 3>Not what anyone wanted.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, and they just couldn't They couldn't like make
<v Speaker 1>their games feel alive. That was the problem with Andromeda
<v Speaker 1>because the frost Bite was the problem with this game.
<v Speaker 1>They just didn't have anybody at their studio that could
<v Speaker 1>get animations looking good, so they had to kind of
<v Speaker 1>make everything static. And like there was the cool dance
<v Speaker 1>club scenes for Mass Effect, and those are just nowhere
<v Speaker 1>to be seen in a game like this, and it.
<v Speaker 3>Just it is kind of wild that even after Andromeda
<v Speaker 3>and Anthem, they still were forced to use or chose
<v Speaker 3>to use frost Bite for Veil God. Like I like
<v Speaker 3>Veil God. I actually think it's a pretty remarkable game
<v Speaker 3>given the context it was made in. But like the
<v Speaker 3>fact that they were still using frost Bite when everything
<v Speaker 3>about those games is so clearly underpinned on Hey, the
<v Speaker 3>tech doesn't support the way we are trying to make
<v Speaker 3>games is wild. And I have a question for you though,
<v Speaker 3>before we get into stuff. How was Games Done Quick?
<v Speaker 2>It was a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so, AJ, Mike, and me went to awesome Games
<v Speaker 1>Done Quick on day one yesterday. We got there right
<v Speaker 1>as like the Mario Sunshine run was ending.
<v Speaker 3>Oh you thank god you dodged the bullet.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>We kept ourselves safe and secure from that scourge. I look,
<v Speaker 1>I like Sunshine. I like when people run it. Especially
<v Speaker 1>that's where that game actually literally shines is as a
<v Speaker 1>speed run game. I yeah, it's great. It's nice to
<v Speaker 1>be able to just drive over to Pittsburgh, kind of
<v Speaker 1>a quick jaunt from Mike's house. I just drive over there.
<v Speaker 1>We all drive together. It's We're there in no time.
<v Speaker 1>Spent most of the day there, saw a bunch of
<v Speaker 1>cool runs, saw some cool people. Mike did actually finally
<v Speaker 1>beat me in Street Fighter third Strike.
<v Speaker 2>He told me at dinner. No videos, no, AJ might
<v Speaker 2>have it.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't sure if he was recording, but I think
<v Speaker 1>it still doesn't qualify because Mike told me at dinner
<v Speaker 1>that he was looking up tips and he's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>just play us for you and use the charge Hadoogan
<v Speaker 1>because it can use this people. And I gotta tell you,
<v Speaker 1>I was confused, all right.
<v Speaker 3>I wish yould get from the number one mythology speed
<v Speaker 3>on it.
<v Speaker 2>I know, yes, God, that was also fun.
<v Speaker 3>I that was very funny. I was sure that happened.
<v Speaker 1>And it was like they like must have gone back
<v Speaker 1>and saw it or something, because they'd have been a
<v Speaker 1>minute since we sent it in.
<v Speaker 2>And and then they added a little juice. They're like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>we got people from Giant Bomb here, and it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>thank you. That's that's real nice. All right.
<v Speaker 1>We should explain ourselves. This is Giant Bomb, a small
<v Speaker 1>team of video game dup. This is who do rely
<v Speaker 1>on your support because we are independent games media out
<v Speaker 1>here on our own doing this thing. We're going to
<v Speaker 1>be doing it in twenty twenty six. We're back. We're
<v Speaker 1>ready to get back to work. But the work happens
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<v Speaker 1>bomb dot com, slash Joint and becoming a premium member.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you to everyone who has done that. Twenty twenty
<v Speaker 1>five was kind of a it was a roller coaster,
<v Speaker 1>it was you know. Honestly, it'll be remembered for me
<v Speaker 1>of the year where we got to save Giant Bomb
<v Speaker 1>and that only happens because of you. So again, thank
<v Speaker 1>you to everyone who has supported us. Thank you to
<v Speaker 1>everyone who will choose to support us in twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 1>And if you're just here to watch, tell a friend
<v Speaker 1>we love you just the same. All right, As far
<v Speaker 1>as this show goes, most weekdays, I Jeff Grubb, will help.
<v Speaker 2>Piece your gaming life back together.
<v Speaker 1>That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our
<v Speaker 1>own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the
<v Speaker 1>input of a bona fide expert who will make me
<v Speaker 1>look smart. If you are watching live on Twitch, welcome,
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<v Speaker 2>Hello YouTube.
<v Speaker 1>All right, we have a lot to get into, so
<v Speaker 1>let's start the Morning Mess with the aforementioned the Witcher three,
<v Speaker 1>which is reportedly getting a surprise new expansion this year.
<v Speaker 2>This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. Let's get into it.
<v Speaker 1>Polish noble securities analyst Mathouse Scharanowski. Listen, I'm sure I'm
<v Speaker 1>butchering that I did my best said last month that
<v Speaker 1>he was expecting the next paid add on DLC for
<v Speaker 1>the Witcher three to be released in May twenty twenty six,
<v Speaker 1>according to.
<v Speaker 2>A Polish website.
<v Speaker 1>The report follows similar claims from a Polish games insider
<v Speaker 1>Boris Nispilaksmilak is, I'm gonna say that one who said
<v Speaker 1>last year that the new content was secretly in development
<v Speaker 1>at fool's theory, the same studio currently remaking the Witcher
<v Speaker 1>one for CD project, and I like, you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>the basics here, there's some other stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe.
<v Speaker 1>Eurogamer has since followed up who with Nispilak who told
<v Speaker 1>it was? This information was verified by several independent sources. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I gotta say when you lay it out like that,
<v Speaker 1>the studio that's redoing the Witcher one kind of also
<v Speaker 1>maybe getting used to working in the Witcher three creating content,
<v Speaker 1>and maybe that's all kind of serving the overall goal
<v Speaker 1>of making the Witcher like constantly relevant and having new stuff.
<v Speaker 1>All of that sounds plausible to me, how about.
<v Speaker 3>You, Yeah, I suppose this stuff isn't unheard of. I
<v Speaker 3>think a lot of people are like, I've never heard
<v Speaker 3>of this. Borderlands two got a DLC right before Borderlands
<v Speaker 3>three released, which I'm not sure many people remember, and
<v Speaker 3>it's pretty okay. It's like going back to Borderlands two.
<v Speaker 3>It slots that in with that stuff, and you know,
<v Speaker 3>this isn't unheard of as a way to create like
<v Speaker 3>a bit of interest. In the case of Borderlands two,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not sure it worked because that game was so
<v Speaker 3>old feeling in a lot of ways, like it was
<v Speaker 3>a generation old. People had moved on to the PS
<v Speaker 3>four and were well into the PS four at that point.
<v Speaker 3>With the Witcher, I think like that game has kind
<v Speaker 3>of become evergreen on people's hard drives in a way
<v Speaker 3>where like they've done that next gen update, it still
<v Speaker 3>feels pretty new. Like my brother is in this house
<v Speaker 3>right now for Christmas playing The Witcher three for the
<v Speaker 3>first time, and he's like, yeah, this game is fucking awesome.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, like that game, yeahs is very is like
<v Speaker 3>eminently playable right now, so I can totally sere getting
<v Speaker 3>DLC as to how it would tie into the Witcher For.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like super curious and at some point I should
<v Speaker 3>really reach out to uh Kean mar who's over there,
<v Speaker 3>who used to be a games journalist, who is now
<v Speaker 3>the head of Law and that sounds like a fun
<v Speaker 3>job just being in charge of the Witcher Law.
<v Speaker 1>You gotta have always the name the like low Keeper,
<v Speaker 1>right you're gonna have Yeah, yeah, cool, that's your job.
<v Speaker 3>And so yeah, I'm curious how they like actually work
<v Speaker 3>this into the Witcher For and like if it's how
<v Speaker 3>far out the Witcher for is based on that. I
<v Speaker 3>know they were talking some big tark elation in the
<v Speaker 3>year of like this thing's gonna come out in six years,
<v Speaker 3>all three of these games, the new trilogy.
<v Speaker 2>And it's like that never we know that never works.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, CD CD Project Red have had enough delays for
<v Speaker 3>all of their games that like, I don't buy that
<v Speaker 3>for a second. I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think I think the reason that this is
<v Speaker 1>something that is happening is because you laid it out
<v Speaker 1>like the game are more like timeless than they've ever been,
<v Speaker 1>and the Witcher three is certainly and that that like,
<v Speaker 1>first it's on the other side of the line of delineation,
<v Speaker 1>where any game released after this point just feels like
<v Speaker 1>any game released after it as well. You know, Doom
<v Speaker 1>twenty sixteen and on is kind of the one the
<v Speaker 1>game game I always use, but Witcher three is certainly
<v Speaker 1>right there as well as a game that could just
<v Speaker 1>sell forever. We've seen it do that, and even like
<v Speaker 1>games that don't have the profile of Witcher three are
<v Speaker 1>doing similar things. I mean it's similar, like not exactly
<v Speaker 1>the same, but we'll talk about it in a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>Avatar got that new DLC and that's a year later.
<v Speaker 1>I guess that's a normal timeline, but it just for
<v Speaker 1>that feels like a game that is trying to capitalize
<v Speaker 1>on something else external and using DLC to do it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think anyone was necessarily believing that that was
<v Speaker 1>going to make some huge difference, but it did because
<v Speaker 1>of the external circumstances. Beyond Good and Evil, Beyond Good
<v Speaker 1>and Evil two is supposedly still coming. So when they
<v Speaker 1>redid Beyond Good and Evil one hooks and to Beyond
<v Speaker 1>Good and Evil one, like this idea that, like Beyond
<v Speaker 1>Gonna Eople two is really going to come out one
<v Speaker 1>day so we'll have just some suggestions towards that second game. Again,
<v Speaker 1>not exactly the same, but it does feel like they're
<v Speaker 1>trying to, like when they have an opportunity, hook these
<v Speaker 1>games into one another in a more real way, and.
<v Speaker 3>Even one felt a bit more like manifesting than anything else.
<v Speaker 1>Definitely, But it's all kind of part of the same
<v Speaker 1>idea of like, we can use these things that we
<v Speaker 1>have at our disposal to kind of make people care
<v Speaker 1>more if we if we actually if we care more ourselves.
<v Speaker 1>And so I think that we'll probably see this kind
<v Speaker 1>of thing more frequently, And the Witcher series definitely feels
<v Speaker 1>like the one that could take a huge advantage of
<v Speaker 1>this sort of thing.
<v Speaker 2>So we'll see May twenty six.
<v Speaker 1>You know, that was going to be the time where
<v Speaker 1>we were getting a grand theft Auto six, so it's
<v Speaker 1>like that's not happening anymore. So yeah, I could see
<v Speaker 1>something like this popping up in that time frame pretty easily,
<v Speaker 1>all right, Metro Prime four devs say rebooting the game
<v Speaker 1>again was out of the question despite changing tastes. This
<v Speaker 1>is like more information as we get more details about
<v Speaker 1>what happened with this game.
<v Speaker 2>From Andy Robinson at VGC. Nintendo has said that.
<v Speaker 1>Rebooting Metroid Prime four development for a second time was
<v Speaker 1>considered out of the question, despite committing to an open
<v Speaker 1>world hub formula that faced changed player trends by the
<v Speaker 1>time it was completed. Metro Prime four Beyond was finally
<v Speaker 1>released for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switched to last month,
<v Speaker 1>after nearly a decade of development and a change of developer.
<v Speaker 1>The game received generally favorable reviews, but attracted some criticism
<v Speaker 1>for its support characters in desert Hub world, which some
<v Speaker 1>perceived as dated, and a new interview with Famitsu translated
<v Speaker 1>by Nintendo Everything, Metro Prime Force development team has discussed
<v Speaker 1>its lengthy production for the first time. According to the
<v Speaker 1>uncredited in interviewee Yond's formula came from an initial desire
<v Speaker 1>to implement open world features into the series. However, the
<v Speaker 1>interview suggests that by the time the game approach completion,
<v Speaker 1>the development team may have had some doubts about the
<v Speaker 1>direction it had set, but it considered further delays unrealistic
<v Speaker 1>given that Prime for was announced way back in twenty seventeen.
<v Speaker 1>Here's a quote, and then we'll start discussing it at
<v Speaker 1>the start of the project. Perhaps due to the influence
<v Speaker 1>of the legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, we
<v Speaker 1>saw a lot of comments on the internet saying we
<v Speaker 1>want to play an open world Metroid. The development team
<v Speaker 1>told Famitsu however, Metroid's core element of increasing the amount
<v Speaker 1>of explorable areas by unlocking powers is not very compatible
<v Speaker 1>with the freedom to go anywhere from the beginning of
<v Speaker 1>open worlds, and so they reconsidered and they kind of
<v Speaker 1>tried to edit it there. But yeah, this is I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if you play the game, if this
<v Speaker 1>feels like what happened here. I think I've said as
<v Speaker 1>much when I was talking about on the BombCast when
<v Speaker 1>we were first discussing it after it launched, And this.
<v Speaker 2>Feels like, yeah, I get it.
<v Speaker 1>What does this mean though, when like, you know what
<v Speaker 1>game you have, you put it out anyway understanding that
<v Speaker 1>the development team solve the problems with it, and are
<v Speaker 1>you going to give them another chance? I hope So
<v Speaker 1>it sounds like they might. But yeah, are you surprised
<v Speaker 1>by any of this?
<v Speaker 3>Where were they looking that they saw people saying we
<v Speaker 3>want to and will to make.
<v Speaker 1>This is a This is a fair point, Lexie. I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure those things were out there, I might have said,
<v Speaker 1>at some point I could see a developer being like
<v Speaker 1>Breath of the Wild moment for Metroid. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if that means open world necessarily. Yeah, yeah, that's that's right.
<v Speaker 3>I suppose it would be very unfair of me to
<v Speaker 3>say I think Veilguard is like an incredible achievement considering
<v Speaker 3>how troubled its development was, and then go really hard
<v Speaker 3>on Metroid Prime for considering how hard its development was.
<v Speaker 3>But I watched that ending. Yeah, boy, even out of context,
<v Speaker 3>even as someone who isn't really a Metroid fanho okay,
<v Speaker 3>it's real bad. It's it's a real bad ending for
<v Speaker 3>a video game, even without all the other stuff taken
<v Speaker 3>into context. And I'm one of those people who would
<v Speaker 3>traditionally say, like, I actually am not a huge fan
<v Speaker 3>of Metroid vaneers and getting lost in games, Like I
<v Speaker 3>just don't like the feeling of being lost. So it's
<v Speaker 3>just generally not a genre that clicks for me. And
<v Speaker 3>this seems like a version of that game that tries
<v Speaker 3>to cater towards those tastes exactly a little bit, But
<v Speaker 3>in the process of doing so, it does seem like
<v Speaker 3>they have lost they they've lost the trail on what
<v Speaker 3>they're they're actually like what people want from these games
<v Speaker 3>and what these games are about and the feelings that
<v Speaker 3>they are listed ish, So it just seems like Metroid
<v Speaker 3>Prime for goes much longer distances between feeling, you know,
<v Speaker 3>recreating the feeling of those first three games, and so, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, it's a shame. I hope they get
<v Speaker 3>another chance. Retro is obviously like an incredibly talented studio,
<v Speaker 3>and it would be nice for them to be able
<v Speaker 3>to go back to developing some original stuff. Like when
<v Speaker 3>you think about it, they really haven't put out a
<v Speaker 3>lot of games in the last fifteen years.
<v Speaker 1>And if you know, Gaming has had like constant interviews
<v Speaker 1>with former Retro people over the last couple of years
<v Speaker 1>that like documents ten to fifteen Retro projects that were
<v Speaker 1>pitched or pitched and improved and like got further further
<v Speaker 1>along and like they all got canceled. It's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's and I'm sure that's normal for a studio working
<v Speaker 1>in this industry, but it's like for Retro it's notable
<v Speaker 1>because they did not have a lot of alternative releases.
<v Speaker 3>I suppose the big question now is like if this
<v Speaker 3>Metroid doesn't hit a Nintendo kind of goes, okay, well,
<v Speaker 3>we're not going to do Metroid for a bit. Are
<v Speaker 3>they going to give them back Donkey Kong? Because Donkey
<v Speaker 3>Kong seems to be Nintendo's new like thing of like,
<v Speaker 3>this is what we're putting forward front and center, and
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, they've moved away from the retro sensibilities
<v Speaker 3>in some ways with Donkey Kong. So does Retro go
<v Speaker 3>and make a new ip or work on something else?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they probably get back to pitching a bunch of
<v Speaker 1>stuff and hoping Nintendo kind of gets it, which is
<v Speaker 1>gonna be a rough spot because it seems like there's
<v Speaker 1>a lot of not not necessarily misalignment, because again it's
<v Speaker 1>probably a normal amount of of you know, misstarts for projects,
<v Speaker 1>but it's a tough process regardless, and they're gonna have
<v Speaker 1>to get back to that, and that's gonna be frustrated.
<v Speaker 1>I think the reality here, though, is Metro Prime four
<v Speaker 1>will sell kind of within parameters, and then Nintendo will
<v Speaker 1>kind of be in the situation where they're like, we
<v Speaker 1>let retro build the infrastructure to build a game like this,
<v Speaker 1>Why don't we let them do it one more time
<v Speaker 1>now that they have sort of everything in place, they
<v Speaker 1>have the relationships with the multiple external studios they use
<v Speaker 1>to build assets, they have, they done that day to
<v Speaker 1>day for years. Now, let's just use that one more
<v Speaker 1>time and see if we kind of can't get some
<v Speaker 1>of our like more money back by making a sequel,
<v Speaker 1>maybe clean up that ending that sort of thing.
<v Speaker 3>I know, it's worth noting that, like plenty of or
<v Speaker 3>first party hardware manufacturers do have studios where they're like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>these are the guys who make really good looking games
<v Speaker 3>for us, and they push the check forward. You know,
<v Speaker 3>Sony has that with the Horizon folks, Xbox has that
<v Speaker 3>with like half of their stable, and you know, Nintendo
<v Speaker 3>could definitely look at the like Metro Prime four is
<v Speaker 3>just one of the best looking video games that last year.
<v Speaker 3>It doesn't matter if you were talking about life high
<v Speaker 3>end PCs or consoles or anything like all of it,
<v Speaker 3>and it is one of the best looking games of
<v Speaker 3>the year. And I think that they will definitely be like,
<v Speaker 3>we should lean into that technology base that they've built
<v Speaker 3>up because they have proven that, like even if the
<v Speaker 3>switch to isn't the most powerful bit of hardware. We
<v Speaker 3>can squeeze so much.
<v Speaker 2>Out of it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it turns out that, you know, they don't just
<v Speaker 1>hire from local, but there's turns out there's a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people who live in Texas, a lot of artists,
<v Speaker 1>and there's a handful of places they can really go
<v Speaker 1>to work if they want to like stretch their legs
<v Speaker 1>in a sci fi setting.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of people who are good at making games on.
<v Speaker 1>Well, yes, right, yeah, there's and there's a ton of
<v Speaker 1>that in Texas as well. Like there's a huge industry
<v Speaker 1>there of people who are very technically minded Texas Instruments,
<v Speaker 1>is there. Yeah, And so of course there's people that
<v Speaker 1>kind of flock to these areas and retro hires them
<v Speaker 1>all up, and hopefully they can apply that to a
<v Speaker 1>game that isn't as maligned as this one was.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's take a quick break and let's come
<v Speaker 1>back and let's talk about the good news. You have
<v Speaker 1>too much money. Let's get rid of some more of
<v Speaker 1>it by raising the prices on everything. So that sound
<v Speaker 1>good to everyone. We'll talk about that right after this.
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<v Speaker 4>A Hi dog, it's time to start the show.
<v Speaker 2>Are you ready to go? H yeah, dude, I'm ready.
<v Speaker 4>No, Grim, you look like you are in a den
<v Speaker 4>of iniquity right now.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what that means, and I don't know
<v Speaker 1>what you want. It's not like I have a home studio, Jan, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>you do.
<v Speaker 4>The computers that main Gear built for us have Nvidia
<v Speaker 4>g Force RTX chippoos in them, and with the Nvidia
<v Speaker 4>Studio drivers and in video broadcast, you can turn even
<v Speaker 4>your man cave into a professional studio. Using broadcasts, you
<v Speaker 4>can upgrade your webcams, microphones, and speakers, using the power
<v Speaker 4>of machine learning to take our shows, voice chats, and
<v Speaker 4>video conferences to the next level. You can use audio
<v Speaker 4>effects like noise removal.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, I guess I have a fan on. Well,
<v Speaker 2>it's hot, I'm not gonna turn that off. Let me
<v Speaker 2>just hit this right here. Is that any better? Jan?
<v Speaker 4>Much better? We can clean up your shot with auto
<v Speaker 4>frame and video noise removal and grub. You can even
<v Speaker 4>make it look like you were paying attention using the
<v Speaker 4>eye contact tool.
<v Speaker 2>So I could still watch my stories.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, yes you can. Nvidia Broadcasts is a universal plugin
<v Speaker 4>that works with most live streaming, voice chat, and video
<v Speaker 4>conferencing apps. It's supported on any n Video, g Force ARTXGPU,
<v Speaker 4>and since I'm using the Nvidia Studio drivers, I'll get stable,
<v Speaker 4>optimized performance in Adobe Photoshop, Da Vinci resolved in all
<v Speaker 4>the other apps that I need to use to fix
<v Speaker 4>our mistakes in post you know what.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you to ban Gear and in Vidia for supplying
<v Speaker 1>our Invidia Studio PCs in Video broadcast, your AI powered
<v Speaker 1>home studio and video studio. The software advantage for all creators. Jan,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not even looking at the camera at all right.
<v Speaker 4>Now, Grub stop stop looking at me.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't looked at you forever. We are back. It's
<v Speaker 2>game Bess Mornings, Jeff Grub LEXI Luddy.
<v Speaker 1>Let's get back into the headlines here with a SEUs
<v Speaker 1>officially announces price hikes from January fifth, right before CS
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty six. This is from Video Cards. They did
<v Speaker 1>get a correction. This was not an officially announced thing.
<v Speaker 1>This is an internal letter that got leaked. But the
<v Speaker 1>letter says everything's going to be more expensive, so we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna have to raise prices. They don't get into any
<v Speaker 1>specific models, but they do say that because of a
<v Speaker 1>combination of factors, mostly d Ram, but it's not just
<v Speaker 1>d Ram itself.
<v Speaker 3>All looking for the guy who did this, yep, and.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, they're just hey, we're going to raise prices, so
<v Speaker 1>expect the laptops, everything to get more expensive from a
<v Speaker 1>SUS and of course not just a SEUs.
<v Speaker 2>It's getting like apocalyptic.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I think that we were talking during the break,
<v Speaker 1>you said, it feels like something's over now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they're the salad days of affordable.
<v Speaker 1>Computing are done for now, Like we're on a break
<v Speaker 1>with that idea. And to that end, there's rumors that Nvidia,
<v Speaker 1>who announced recently that they're going to have a thirty
<v Speaker 1>percent reduction in the number of new GPUs that they're making,
<v Speaker 1>apparently reportedly bringing back the in Vidia thirty sixty, the
<v Speaker 1>RTX thirty sixty, which was the you know, the entry level.
<v Speaker 1>As if that's the entry level price, we kind of
<v Speaker 1>just accepted that, but the entry level from a couple
<v Speaker 1>generations ago, generations ago.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yes, so.
<v Speaker 1>You just built a PC, A lot of people are
<v Speaker 1>planning to do so, and hearing this news, of course
<v Speaker 1>everyone now has to panic by which drives up prices
<v Speaker 1>even more. We see that Micron who close Crucial, which
<v Speaker 1>is their consumer facing memory and storage brand. They closed
<v Speaker 1>that recently. Micron's stock price has only shot up since
<v Speaker 1>then was going to anyhow, but shot up even more
<v Speaker 1>specifically because they did that. It feels like the whole
<v Speaker 1>system has broken when it comes to this, and what
<v Speaker 1>do we say, like you have to do this? I
<v Speaker 1>kind of feel like we should be saying that, like
<v Speaker 1>we should be saying to these companies, no, this is
<v Speaker 1>a utility.
<v Speaker 2>At this point public like owning your own computer.
<v Speaker 1>But beyond that, what choice do we have because we
<v Speaker 1>can't like say, hey, make it because we're gonna spend
<v Speaker 1>money on it, because clearly the only other option is
<v Speaker 1>for them to raise prices to the point where we
<v Speaker 1>can't afford it anymore. So what's gonna happen here?
<v Speaker 3>Over the holiday break? I've been off and on finally
<v Speaker 3>catching up on the outer worlds too. Do you know
<v Speaker 3>the setup for how the outer worlds gets to the
<v Speaker 3>point that it gets to it like it's ultra capitualism
<v Speaker 3>their version of so in their alternate universe, the president
<v Speaker 3>before Teddy Roosevelt isn't assassinated McKinley. McKinley isn't assassinated, all right,
<v Speaker 3>so Roosevelt never comes in and breaks up the monopolies.
<v Speaker 2>Oh okay, yeah that sounds bad.
<v Speaker 3>Yea right, And now I'm gonna just looking at the
<v Speaker 3>world and like, man, we're just like six years behind them.
<v Speaker 1>God, yeah, exactly, we just someone the right person. It
<v Speaker 1>didn't happen and we got Reagan. Yeah, or it did
<v Speaker 1>happen and we got Reagan.
<v Speaker 2>Shit.
<v Speaker 1>Uh and uh it's so it's still basically exactly what happened.
<v Speaker 2>You're right, just fifty years.
<v Speaker 3>We're just running a little bit late for the album
<v Speaker 3>wholes Is Timeline and I have pulled up Steams Hardware
<v Speaker 3>survey that they do at the end of every year
<v Speaker 3>in December. Do you want to hazard a guess? And
<v Speaker 3>some of these stats have actually changed since I looked
<v Speaker 3>at them earlier in December, And do you want to
<v Speaker 3>guess what the most popular video card is currently?
<v Speaker 2>Is it? I'm going to say it's probably the thirty sixty.
<v Speaker 3>With two point two percent of all of users using it.
<v Speaker 3>It is the thirty sixty. The second most popular is
<v Speaker 3>the forty sixty Laptop Edition with one point four percent. Then, like,
<v Speaker 3>you don't see a forty series. You don't see a
<v Speaker 3>forty series until you're out of the top ten.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I.
<v Speaker 3>Was looking for a fifty series. You don't see a
<v Speaker 3>fifty series until you are out of the top fifteen,
<v Speaker 3>and that's bad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so like they really struggle to like make the
<v Speaker 1>forty series compelling. It's kind of what I remember feeling.
<v Speaker 1>And then so you know, that's all part of the
<v Speaker 1>storyline here of we're like, hey, we want to care
<v Speaker 1>about these things, but the stuff you're putting your efforts
<v Speaker 1>into are not that exciting to us consumers. And they're like, well,
<v Speaker 1>it's exciting the aibros.
<v Speaker 2>Why aren't you excited like they are. We'll just go
<v Speaker 2>sell it to them.
<v Speaker 1>And now we're here having to deal with the like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they're selling into a fad, they're selling into
<v Speaker 1>a boom and a gold you know, a sort of
<v Speaker 1>a gold chase here, and again that's always going to
<v Speaker 1>be impossible for the normal consumer who has a normal
<v Speaker 1>relationship with computing to compete with and the real problem
<v Speaker 1>here is the monopolies, because we should not be having
<v Speaker 1>to compete with billionaire corporations for the same resources. We
<v Speaker 1>should have a cordoned off part of the market that
<v Speaker 1>is meant to serve us, and then that that coordin
<v Speaker 1>should be put in place by regulation.
<v Speaker 3>Bob, have you just considered not being part of this
<v Speaker 3>society that you seem to dislike so much.
<v Speaker 1>I did just get a new computer for my job
<v Speaker 1>for free, and so I should not be able to
<v Speaker 1>criticize any of this.
<v Speaker 2>This is a good point.
<v Speaker 3>And do you want to know what the most common
<v Speaker 3>RAM allotment is? At thirty three percent Steam users have
<v Speaker 3>this amount of RAM?
<v Speaker 2>Is it okay? This amount of RAM? Is it eight gigabyte?
<v Speaker 3>Do they suppoify like it is a gigabyte? Yeah, they
<v Speaker 3>don't specify the type, but it's a gigabyte. And I've
<v Speaker 3>been because I've now built a PC, I've been browsing
<v Speaker 3>a lot of the Steam Store more recently, and I
<v Speaker 3>was looking at a lot of twenty twenty six games
<v Speaker 3>and the number of games with twenty twenty six ruten
<v Speaker 3>on them that in their minimum specs say that they
<v Speaker 3>support eight gigabytes of RAM. Is near zero unless you're
<v Speaker 3>in like the indie game scene, like pretty much no
<v Speaker 3>Triple A games are supporting that.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of culls its snuck up on people like
<v Speaker 1>that because there was, like the common wisdom five years
<v Speaker 1>ago was you don't need more than eight gigabytes, look sixteen,
<v Speaker 1>you should get sixteen gigabytes, but you don't need eight gigabytes.
<v Speaker 1>And if you're going to spend your money, the place
<v Speaker 1>to spend your money is get the best video card
<v Speaker 1>you could possibly get.
<v Speaker 2>That was the common wisdom.
<v Speaker 1>So a lot of people kind of like took that
<v Speaker 1>a little bit too much and like, well, we'll save
<v Speaker 1>money on RAM and we'll get the best video card
<v Speaker 1>we can get. And then like overnight one day we
<v Speaker 1>woke up and it was like eight gigabytes is insane.
<v Speaker 1>You cannot have a system on that you need at
<v Speaker 1>least sixteen And really we're getting to a point where
<v Speaker 1>thirty two is kind of recommended at this point, and
<v Speaker 1>that will I kind of like catching up the people
<v Speaker 1>who have not upgraded their system in the last five years.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we should say this all seems very in the weeds.
<v Speaker 3>If you are if you're you know, if you're normal
<v Speaker 3>if you're watching yeah, if you're watching this, but PC
<v Speaker 3>gaming is at this point about like as big as
<v Speaker 3>console gaming, and thirty three percent of the market not
<v Speaker 3>being able to run new games isn't great for the
<v Speaker 3>traditional type of Triple A games that a lot of
<v Speaker 3>people watching the show care about. And it isn't great
<v Speaker 3>for those companies if a third of your biggest pillars
<v Speaker 3>can't play those games. And so, yeah, this is going
<v Speaker 3>to become a very real problem in some very real ways.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's what does it mean for the consoles
<v Speaker 1>right because we're talking about going back to the thirty
<v Speaker 1>sixty on the PC side of things, because making new
<v Speaker 1>GPUs is a non starter.
<v Speaker 2>PS six is not that far away, and there's a
<v Speaker 2>couple of.
<v Speaker 1>Things there, and I think I'm going to make a
<v Speaker 1>video about this at some point.
<v Speaker 2>I intend to.
<v Speaker 1>But like Mike said on the show the other day,
<v Speaker 1>to me, no one wants to hear about the PS
<v Speaker 1>six right now, but.
<v Speaker 2>They're gonna have.
<v Speaker 1>They're gonna get to a point where like just they
<v Speaker 1>need the PS six for a variety of reasons, one
<v Speaker 1>of them being like piracy is starting to kind of
<v Speaker 1>creep up on the PS five a little bit, they're
<v Speaker 1>going to want to reset the clock on that, just
<v Speaker 1>like all these companies want to.
<v Speaker 2>And how do you.
<v Speaker 1>Market a PS six? Like, first of all, it's going
<v Speaker 1>to be very similar to the PS five. The one
<v Speaker 1>glaring difference, LEXI might be it might cost fifty percent
<v Speaker 1>more one hundred percent more. Like it's going to be
<v Speaker 1>significantly more expensive to play a lot of stuff that
<v Speaker 1>looks very similar to what you're already playing on your
<v Speaker 1>PS five.
<v Speaker 2>So how does Sony position that?
<v Speaker 1>Like it's going to be a difficult thing to pull off,
<v Speaker 1>And really the answer might be we're going to be
<v Speaker 1>waiting a lot longer, which might be I might be
<v Speaker 1>fine with Like, again, I don't even know if I
<v Speaker 1>want to hear about a PS six in any way
<v Speaker 1>right now?
<v Speaker 2>How about you? So?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So that's like the internal or the skullll bush
<v Speaker 3>in and around the PC industry is it seems like
<v Speaker 3>this is a hard reset for what the expectations of
<v Speaker 3>the length of a generation is. Generations became like a
<v Speaker 3>year max for video cards, and so now people are like, no,
<v Speaker 3>you're going to see people use these video cards for
<v Speaker 3>way longer, and you're gonna see people spend a lot
<v Speaker 3>less time. I think a lot of developers just started
<v Speaker 3>throwing power at optimization and just assuming that people would
<v Speaker 3>have more powerful PCs, because for a large part people
<v Speaker 3>kind of were the growing market was in people upgrading
<v Speaker 3>their PCs, And so I think you're going to see
<v Speaker 3>a lot of like developers now have to casher two
<v Speaker 3>things like optimization in a very real sense, and you
<v Speaker 3>know whether that winds up being a kind of good
<v Speaker 3>thing in some ways where you know, the best looking
<v Speaker 3>games always come out at the end of a generation
<v Speaker 3>of a console, if we start to see that in
<v Speaker 3>the PC space, but moreover, like you're the first thing
<v Speaker 3>you're going to see in this is a huge swath
<v Speaker 3>of people who would be interested in this hobby being
<v Speaker 3>priced out of it forever and never being able to
<v Speaker 3>get into it, never being able to try it, never
<v Speaker 3>even being able to like check out fucking Fortnite. Like
<v Speaker 3>that's where we're at, is the barrier to entry to
<v Speaker 3>Fortnite is going to become too expensive because owning a
<v Speaker 3>phone that can run it will become too expensive, and
<v Speaker 3>like it's shit, is really really shit, and it isn't
<v Speaker 3>good for the industry, and like obviously things need to
<v Speaker 3>change I don't know what else to tell you, but
<v Speaker 3>like things need to change in a rather radical way.
<v Speaker 1>And the reality is, it's like this is the set
<v Speaker 1>of circumstances. Feels like it's going to solidify things even
<v Speaker 1>more because what is going to run on everything? What
<v Speaker 1>is going to be able to work on the PS
<v Speaker 1>four you still have, and it's going to be these
<v Speaker 1>live service games and the single player narrative.
<v Speaker 2>Any sort of game.
<v Speaker 1>That's not one of these live service games that has
<v Speaker 1>relied on big, flashy visuals to sort of stand out
<v Speaker 1>from the crowd. I mean, that's gonna stagnate immediately because
<v Speaker 1>they already are in a situation where everyone's always on
<v Speaker 1>one up in each other. And then the only real
<v Speaker 1>way to get more is to spend more money, and
<v Speaker 1>that means your product's gonna have a smaller profit margin,
<v Speaker 1>and you're gonna have a lot more risk, and there's
<v Speaker 1>gonna be a lot of people who are already price averse,
<v Speaker 1>who have been priced out of this market in the
<v Speaker 1>first place, so you just can have a smaller audience.
<v Speaker 1>It's so you don't even make those games anymore. You
<v Speaker 1>go and you also try to make a live service
<v Speaker 1>game that can run on anything, So it's yeah, it
<v Speaker 1>feels really grim. And I think a lot of conversations
<v Speaker 1>we've been having over the last year or two have
<v Speaker 1>kind of ended with us saying it feels pretty grim,
<v Speaker 1>but this is this feels like something has to break
<v Speaker 1>so we can get on the other side of it.
<v Speaker 3>Just to put into context what I was saying about,
<v Speaker 3>like Triple A Games Resident eval Requiem currently as a
<v Speaker 3>Steam page, its minimum system requirements is sixteen gigs arom. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so thirty three percent to Steam players won't be able
<v Speaker 3>to run Residieval Requiem.
<v Speaker 2>What is it say for GPU and does it have
<v Speaker 2>like v RAM.
<v Speaker 3>It's GPU is a minimum is a sixteen sixty and
<v Speaker 3>it's recommended as a twenty sixty.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, you know, I think like even beyond system ram,
<v Speaker 1>v RAM, which I'm certain like that's only eight gigabytes
<v Speaker 1>is the most common entry for that. That is like
<v Speaker 1>getting to a point where ten gigabytes is kind of
<v Speaker 1>the minimum. Really twelve gigabytes and most cards that come
<v Speaker 1>out in any sort of affordable at any sort of
<v Speaker 1>affordable price, it's all eight gigabytes right now still, and
<v Speaker 1>it's like that's going to get even worse in this
<v Speaker 1>next year, because anything above eight gigabyte is going to
<v Speaker 1>drive the prices way up, and they're going to put
<v Speaker 1>all those into the much higher end GPUs and sell
<v Speaker 1>those at a huge profit margin. I look, again, it
<v Speaker 1>has to break so we get on the other side
<v Speaker 1>of it.
<v Speaker 2>But I really don't know what it looks like.
<v Speaker 1>And it feels like maybe the answer is everybody scales back,
<v Speaker 1>everybody sort of takes a breath and uses this as
<v Speaker 1>a crisis moment to rethink, like what a new video
<v Speaker 1>game even needs to be. But that's going to I
<v Speaker 1>think the answer to that question might disinterest a lot
<v Speaker 1>of these big corporations that make these kinds of games,
<v Speaker 1>so they just walk away at a certain point.
<v Speaker 2>And again, maybe we're better off without them. I don't know. Uh, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's keep going here.
<v Speaker 1>Avatar Frontiers of Pandora got a major player count boost
<v Speaker 1>after Fire and Ash. This is from Chris Compendio at GameSpot.
<v Speaker 1>Over two years after its release, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
<v Speaker 1>is enjoying an all time peak on Steam, likely in
<v Speaker 1>large part due to the game's new DLC that ties
<v Speaker 1>in directly to the film franchise's latest installment. Data from
<v Speaker 1>steambe showed that the Ubisoft published open world game hit
<v Speaker 1>a record peak of fifteen thousand players this week, again
<v Speaker 1>from its previous week of twelve thousand players last month.
<v Speaker 1>When Avatar, Fire and Ash hit cinemas on December nineteenth.
<v Speaker 1>With the release of the movie, came a DLC expansion
<v Speaker 1>two Frontiers of Pandora on the same day, titled From
<v Speaker 1>the Ashes. The story expansion adds a bunch. Yeah, this worked.
<v Speaker 1>I think had I had a hunch, it probably would
<v Speaker 1>be okay. But it seems like it did really well
<v Speaker 1>for them. It didn't like change the fake like they
<v Speaker 1>didn't have eighty thousand concurrent players right like some brand
<v Speaker 1>new games do. But I think this is a strategy
<v Speaker 1>that can work for these movies or these games that
<v Speaker 1>have these external events that happen that can tie themselves
<v Speaker 1>into or have any sort of cultural cachet, which I
<v Speaker 1>know there's an argument Avatar doesn't have that, but it
<v Speaker 1>has enough for a corporation to cash in on it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm mostly okay with this. Avatar Frontiers of Pandora as
<v Speaker 1>a game that I thought was pretty good, and I
<v Speaker 1>like the idea of instead of trying to force a
<v Speaker 1>sequel out or rush another game, or just abandon what
<v Speaker 1>you have, make a little.
<v Speaker 2>DLC that sort of ties into it. It seems like
<v Speaker 2>a smart idea to me. What do you think?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean, I've heard really good things about the
<v Speaker 3>story in that Avatar game that you know. I know
<v Speaker 3>a lot of people, especially with Avatar three, and have
<v Speaker 3>been pointing to like, Okay, the White Savior stuff is
<v Speaker 3>getting a bit much.
<v Speaker 2>Again, kind of long in the two and.
<v Speaker 3>The games very much. So go out of their way
<v Speaker 3>to like push back on a lot of that stuff
<v Speaker 3>and make the Navvy the protagonist, which I think is
<v Speaker 3>a pretty cool way to go about things. And yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that game it looks really nice. I've heard it plays
<v Speaker 3>pretty good. And so yeah, like this seems like it's
<v Speaker 3>working for them.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, let's go right along here to the next story. Here.
<v Speaker 1>Xbox just set a terrible new record. Talk about eye
<v Speaker 1>catching headlines. This is from Ethan gottch Xbox There it
<v Speaker 1>is the game business is. Chris Dring reports that twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty five was quote comfortably the worst year on record
<v Speaker 1>for Xbox console sales in the UK. They were down
<v Speaker 1>nearly forty percent from the year prior, which was already
<v Speaker 1>far from stellar. I'm not sure how to square Microsoft's
<v Speaker 1>seemingly complete abdication of hardware sales less than five years
<v Speaker 1>into the current generation with its promise to continue making
<v Speaker 1>consoles in the future. Yeah, I dring post that and
<v Speaker 1>asks like, is there a chance things can improve.
<v Speaker 2>In twenty twenty six?
<v Speaker 1>So, LEXI, do things improve for Xbox in twenty twenty six?
<v Speaker 2>Is there any reason to think that they could? No? Right,
<v Speaker 2>even if like Grand Theft.
<v Speaker 1>Auto six comes out at this point, right, like everyone
<v Speaker 1>around any person that's like considering I need new hardware
<v Speaker 1>to play Grand Theft Auto six, everyone knows, Like I'm
<v Speaker 1>not talking about just our our audience. The people that
<v Speaker 1>listen to this show and have these conversations, I think
<v Speaker 1>they ask anyone, Hey, what should I get? Everyone's well, well, Mike,
<v Speaker 1>Xbox seems kind of dead. Just get a PlayStation. I
<v Speaker 1>think that is a common wisdom at this point. And
<v Speaker 1>so it's not even Grand Theft Auto six doesn't feel
<v Speaker 1>like it'll make a dent.
<v Speaker 3>I genuinely like Xbox feels more like a peripheral company
<v Speaker 3>now of like people buying. So when I was in Japan.
<v Speaker 3>There was an Xbox section in one of the stores
<v Speaker 3>that we went to, and they're always tiny compared to
<v Speaker 3>everyone else, and all of them, bar none, didn't stock
<v Speaker 3>any physical games. All they stocked was keyboards and Xbox
<v Speaker 3>controllers that were PC and Xbox supported. That's all they had.
<v Speaker 3>And like that whole section was basically just like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>you should check out PC game Pass, like just ads
<v Speaker 3>for like you should check out PC Game Pass ultimateh
<v Speaker 3>And Yeah, I think that that's being reflected back in
<v Speaker 3>the sentiment towards Xbox. I don't know what do you
<v Speaker 3>What do you think twenty twenty six could possibly hold
<v Speaker 3>for Xbox, Like, I.
<v Speaker 1>Mean, I think that there's a chance they have some
<v Speaker 1>good video games like they did last year.
<v Speaker 3>They had some good game they had some Yeah, they're
<v Speaker 3>some good games last year. Yeah, and nobody played them
<v Speaker 3>because they didn't put any money into marketing them. Like
<v Speaker 3>there was no marketing around Keeper. There was no marketing
<v Speaker 3>around the outer worlds too. There was a little bit
<v Speaker 3>around South of Midnight and avowed pretty much. The only
<v Speaker 3>Xbox thing that got marketing last year was Call of
<v Speaker 3>Judy Black Ops seven, and it sold worse than ever before.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, listen, the next Call of Duty product
<v Speaker 1>does a little bit better. That makes them happy over there,
<v Speaker 1>I guess. But like as far as we're concerned, as
<v Speaker 1>far as we care.
<v Speaker 3>Look, I'm excited for Boots on the Ground Action of course.
<v Speaker 2>Uh you know that Forts of Games that's supposed to
<v Speaker 2>come out this year.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, they have a showcase on in like a week,
<v Speaker 3>that's right, They have a January showcase, so like we
<v Speaker 3>will know more about what Xbox is getting up to
<v Speaker 3>this year, and I'm sure Fords Haison will do quite
<v Speaker 3>well for them. But outside of that, you know it,
<v Speaker 3>do you think that they at Fort Huison his day
<v Speaker 3>and date PS five?
<v Speaker 1>I think it's like a month later, I know, like
<v Speaker 1>three months later at the most, Like if they release
<v Speaker 1>Sports the Horizon six, so where.
<v Speaker 2>We're at five seven?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and six six, they released that in the summer,
<v Speaker 1>and then they can put it on the PlayStation five
<v Speaker 1>for the holiday that doesn't sound too wrong and like
<v Speaker 1>and put it out in the summer data summer on
<v Speaker 1>Xbox because what does it fucking matter. You're gonna sell
<v Speaker 1>that thing on game Pass for the most part of
<v Speaker 1>people are gonna get it on game Pass and then
<v Speaker 1>you sell it for real you know, on PC at
<v Speaker 1>the same time, but then and it does really well there,
<v Speaker 1>then you know, you sell it again into.
<v Speaker 2>Holiday for PlayStation. Yeah, I could see that happening.
<v Speaker 1>Uh so, yeah, like I think that they are going
<v Speaker 1>to be in a situation where they need to sort
<v Speaker 1>of just recognize the home runs when they have them,
<v Speaker 1>if they if they get any in terms of games
<v Speaker 1>doing well, and what that means for the console, who
<v Speaker 1>at this point doesn't feel like it means anything. It's
<v Speaker 1>completely separate from that. And so yeah, we get some
<v Speaker 1>good games, that'll be great.
<v Speaker 3>Oh I love that gob When you were trying to
<v Speaker 3>figure out what thought so they were on chat very
<v Speaker 3>helpfully wanted you to know that they're on six seven.
<v Speaker 2>Six seven.
<v Speaker 1>I my daughter made a holiday card for me, and
<v Speaker 1>it's dressed. It's addressed to not dad, to six seven.
<v Speaker 1>So that's that's where we're at in my life.
<v Speaker 2>All right, let's keep going.
<v Speaker 1>No, that's upsetting, that's just hey, I'm six seven now,
<v Speaker 1>all right, I've accepted it.
<v Speaker 2>Everyone else should as well.
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo switched to dev kits Dedicate availability has largely been resolved.
<v Speaker 1>This is from my Nintendo News but Nathan Hate is
<v Speaker 1>out there saying this. That's definitely the sense I've gotten
<v Speaker 1>as well. There was like some delays in like Call
<v Speaker 1>of Duty, like the Call of Duty studios getting their
<v Speaker 1>Switch development kits, But it wasn't.
<v Speaker 2>Like like super delayed.
<v Speaker 1>It was just delayed enough to cause some problems with
<v Speaker 1>the like the most recent release or something like that,
<v Speaker 1>according to Nathan Hate, And uh, yeah, I.
<v Speaker 2>Think what happened there is they were holding them back.
<v Speaker 1>They were probably holding them back just a tiny bit
<v Speaker 1>longer for any Xbox related company and studio because I
<v Speaker 1>think they're like, that's weird to give our unreleased hardware
<v Speaker 1>to a company that makes hardware because they're Nintendo and
<v Speaker 1>they're traditional. But that obviously doesn't matter once the system
<v Speaker 1>is out, and so yeah, this sounds like, okay, all
<v Speaker 1>these studios should have this now, and we're on the
<v Speaker 1>other side of that. Nintendo's a little bit weird, but
<v Speaker 1>they're not so weird that they would continue that on
<v Speaker 1>for no good reason. Well into the release of the
<v Speaker 1>Switch to Switch to support has been mostly I think respectable,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not like equal to the other consoles yet.
<v Speaker 1>And in this world now where the Xbox is less
<v Speaker 1>relevant and PlayStation is what it is. It's continuing to
<v Speaker 1>be exactly what it's been. I bet a lot of
<v Speaker 1>studios and publishers are like, maybe we should be paying
<v Speaker 1>more attention and can air stuff on switch To, and
<v Speaker 1>it's capable enough that we could justify doing that for
<v Speaker 1>our new releases. Even so, I expect support from third
<v Speaker 1>parties for switch to to even improve, even if we
<v Speaker 1>don't get like every sports game for example, what do
<v Speaker 1>you think.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah it. I think the problem that they're going to
<v Speaker 3>face is the quality of ports, because that seems very
<v Speaker 3>inconsistent right now. I know that like Star Wars Outlaws
<v Speaker 3>and Assassin's Creed Shadows are kind of the high water
<v Speaker 3>mark of ports. To switch to are people being like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>these are really fucking good ports, But then you have
<v Speaker 3>stuff like that too, mader re release of the definitive
<v Speaker 3>edition of the twenty thirteen game, and they're like, in
<v Speaker 3>some ways this is like worse than the PS three
<v Speaker 3>version in places, and you know, that just seems like
<v Speaker 3>it shouldn't be happening. So yeah, I do wonder if
<v Speaker 3>that is simply companies trying to get to grips with
<v Speaker 3>the new hardware and if it's going to take them
<v Speaker 3>a while to get it up and running and stuff
<v Speaker 3>like that. But we do know that like the switch
<v Speaker 3>can output some really good looking games like Cyberpunk runs
<v Speaker 3>really well on it, and like I said, the Assassin's
<v Speaker 3>Creed game runs super well on it, so like it
<v Speaker 3>is capable of running these games quite well.
<v Speaker 2>M All right, let's see here.
<v Speaker 1>Microsoft CEO Satia Nadella really wants you to stop calling
<v Speaker 1>AI slop in twenty twenty six, and he's asking very.
<v Speaker 2>Nice, honey, ah babe, it's just embarrassing.
<v Speaker 1>I wouldn't and grab the story from Luke Plunkett Aftermathew,
<v Speaker 1>I think does a pretty decent job of like breaking
<v Speaker 1>this down.
<v Speaker 2>In a late December blog.
<v Speaker 1>Post titled looking Ahead to twenty twenty six, Microsoft CEO
<v Speaker 1>Satia Nadella wrote down some thoughts on how he and his.
<v Speaker 2>Company should approach the year ahead spoilers.
<v Speaker 1>It's almost entirely about AI, and it has some of
<v Speaker 1>the most unhinged stuff I've ever seen someone with a
<v Speaker 1>supposedly reputable job ever post on the internet. He begins
<v Speaker 1>with an opening that sounds like a man who knows
<v Speaker 1>the game is up, but who is in too deep
<v Speaker 1>to back out now. As I reflect on the past
<v Speaker 1>year and look toward the one ahead, there's no question
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty six will be a pivotal year for AI. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>another one, but this moment feels different in a few
<v Speaker 1>notable ways. The passage that has attracted the most attention
<v Speaker 1>over the past week, though, is the one below where
<v Speaker 1>he says everyone needs to move on and move past
<v Speaker 1>the idea of AI being slop, a sentiment gathering so
<v Speaker 1>much momentum among normal human beings that it was crowned
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty five's.
<v Speaker 2>Word of the Year by was it Merriam Webster.
<v Speaker 1>Here's the next piece of the letter, a new concept
<v Speaker 1>that evolves bicycles for the mind, such that we always
<v Speaker 1>think of AI as a scaffolding for human potential versus
<v Speaker 1>a substitute.
<v Speaker 2>What matters is not the.
<v Speaker 1>Power of any given model, but how people choose to
<v Speaker 1>apply it to achieve their goals. We need to get
<v Speaker 1>beyond the arguments of slop versus sophistication and develop a
<v Speaker 1>new equilibrium in terms of our theory of the mind
<v Speaker 1>that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive
<v Speaker 1>amplifier tools. As we relate to each other. This is
<v Speaker 1>the product design question we need to debate and answer.
<v Speaker 1>And look, I think what I would say to Saddie is, baby,
<v Speaker 1>you don't see oil executives talking this way. They just
<v Speaker 1>go by the President and have them invade Venezuela for them.
<v Speaker 1>They just do all the shit behind closed doors. They
<v Speaker 1>don't have to convince anyone in the public of anything.
<v Speaker 1>They just do all their business the way they've always
<v Speaker 1>done it, and they go home with their riches and
<v Speaker 1>they win every time. Why are you embarrassing yourself by
<v Speaker 1>going out here and telling everyone to love AI when
<v Speaker 1>clearly many many people do not.
<v Speaker 2>Sure, a lot of.
<v Speaker 1>People don't care. A lot of people it doesn't affect
<v Speaker 1>them one way or the other. But a lot of
<v Speaker 1>people seem to just hate it. It's ruining things that
<v Speaker 1>they love and they've noticed. And you telling us to
<v Speaker 1>just love it, or to get past any criticisms, or
<v Speaker 1>get past a obvious criticism that is striking a chord
<v Speaker 1>is just embarrassing.
<v Speaker 2>This does feel like the game is up and he
<v Speaker 2>knows it. What's your response to to this?
<v Speaker 3>My response.
<v Speaker 2>Probably think discord ate some of that, but there's no yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but yeah, man, this is your Old Gill and
<v Speaker 3>the Simpsons, and he's like the wolf's at Old Gill's door.
<v Speaker 3>This is like that, but like you're not rooting for
<v Speaker 3>Old Gill. You hope the wolf fucking eats Old Gill
<v Speaker 3>and like destroys him and everything that he stands for
<v Speaker 3>and everything that he's built, because he's ruined everything. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>my sympathies for Sai and Nodella feeling like people aren't
<v Speaker 3>respecting his plagiarism machines enough doesn't go super far. And
<v Speaker 3>you know, I think that this is Robert a lot
<v Speaker 3>of the time. You say, like, don't voting with your
<v Speaker 3>waalash is a misnomer because it doesn't work, and in
<v Speaker 3>staid you should get loud. This is what that looks like.
<v Speaker 3>This is him getting visibly wiled up and obsession in
<v Speaker 3>his end of year leisure, being like people are being
<v Speaker 3>mean to me on the interneth and like, this is
<v Speaker 3>the reaction that you want to get from these people
<v Speaker 3>is you want them to know that what they're doing
<v Speaker 3>is fucking hated, because even though they don't feel shame,
<v Speaker 3>they certainly feel pressure. And if you apply enough pressure
<v Speaker 3>then eventually things will break. So, yeah, if you have
<v Speaker 3>been loud about AI and about not liking it. Keep
<v Speaker 3>doing that, keep being loud, keep telling people how much
<v Speaker 3>it fucking sucks. And the Clear Obscure team have like
<v Speaker 3>gone out there and said, like, yeah, we used it
<v Speaker 3>when we were like workshopping stuff and some of it
<v Speaker 3>made it into the game, and we're never using it
<v Speaker 3>again because we don't like the reception that it gosh,
<v Speaker 3>because people were so hard on us for it, and
<v Speaker 3>like the tide on this stuff does turn if you
<v Speaker 3>continue to push hard on it. It just takes a while.
<v Speaker 3>I think a lot of people who use the Internet
<v Speaker 3>a lot kind of forget how slowly some things have
<v Speaker 3>to move because so much of the Internet is like
<v Speaker 3>instant reactionary. But a lot of these campaigns take long,
<v Speaker 3>long term pressure in a way that you don't usually
<v Speaker 3>see with the Internet, and usually it's short term pressure.
<v Speaker 3>Campaigns change things quickly. With the Internet. Stuff that is
<v Speaker 3>like big and societal and has these big companies throwing
<v Speaker 3>around billions of dollars and really does require months and
<v Speaker 3>months and months of fish and of like fucking bullying,
<v Speaker 3>Like keep bullying them, because it's working.
<v Speaker 2>It's you know, I would like even if it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>like fully work.
<v Speaker 1>Like I'm not going to tell people to fall into
<v Speaker 1>incrementalism or anything like that, but like you could still
<v Speaker 1>like damn the river, you could damn the banks a
<v Speaker 1>little bit. And I think we should just be happy
<v Speaker 1>with a couple of wins here and there, the Clear
<v Speaker 1>Obscure team saying that is a small win, and it's
<v Speaker 1>like that only works because of the public response. So
<v Speaker 1>take that and put it in your pocket and be
<v Speaker 1>happy and try to get another win.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know we can defeat this machine.
<v Speaker 1>I think the machine has to be broken and dismantled
<v Speaker 1>and removed, and like we're not going to actually be
<v Speaker 1>able to do that by just getting loud.
<v Speaker 2>A lot more will have to happen there.
<v Speaker 1>But that doesn't mean we shouldn't get loud, and it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't mean we should resort to playing their game of
<v Speaker 1>capitalism in voting with our wallet, because the votes aren't
<v Speaker 1>real if you do that, and there's a bigger voter
<v Speaker 1>over there with billions of dollars voting on AI constantly
<v Speaker 1>right now, and you are not even find all your
<v Speaker 1>PC parts. And when when you get loud about that
<v Speaker 1>over there, sure if they pull up their chair and
<v Speaker 1>they go home. But that doesn't mean they were going
<v Speaker 1>to do that no matter why, whether you got loud
<v Speaker 1>or not.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I hope that the.
<v Speaker 1>People continue to take these wins because they are the
<v Speaker 1>small ones are just as important because that's what we're
<v Speaker 1>going to get for now. So we'll see and when
<v Speaker 1>this thing does break, and uh, and it will in
<v Speaker 1>one way or another, whether I don't know if it
<v Speaker 1>will break permanently, but when it does break, there will
<v Speaker 1>be a moment where there will be an opportunity where
<v Speaker 1>people can put in safeguards and put in rails. And
<v Speaker 1>that's only going to happen if there is a movement there.
<v Speaker 1>There's still political energy, and that'll happen if people are
<v Speaker 1>still getting out there and yelling about it. All right,
<v Speaker 1>let's do a last headline here, which is just a
<v Speaker 1>RESTful trails to David Rosen, who was a Segas co
<v Speaker 1>founder and a pioneer of arcade gaming in Japan. He
<v Speaker 1>was an airman who was like looking for a career
<v Speaker 1>after the military and started like buying and selling coin
<v Speaker 1>out machines in Japan and eventually sort of like realized
<v Speaker 1>arcades were a good opportunity to expand that business, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure like glazing over a lot of the parts
<v Speaker 1>of that story that really matter.
<v Speaker 2>But that's, you know, always been the story I've heard.
<v Speaker 1>About David Rosen and he was ninety five long life
<v Speaker 1>in kind of a lot of huge history there, and
<v Speaker 1>it's always like a fun little trivia.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, did you know Sega was co.
<v Speaker 1>Founded by an American kind of a weird thing, and
<v Speaker 1>David Rosen was that American.
<v Speaker 3>All right, And before we wrap up, we should also say,
<v Speaker 3>because there was no game, mess over the breaks and
<v Speaker 3>peace to vincem Pella, answers to his family and you
<v Speaker 3>know everyone at that studio.
<v Speaker 2>Yep.
<v Speaker 1>Just a tragic event. Yeah, so real, Yeah, it was tragic.
<v Speaker 2>All right.
<v Speaker 1>Let's see here we have no poll question from last time,
<v Speaker 1>because we knew we were going to be off for
<v Speaker 1>a long time. There will be I'll update the Bomb
<v Speaker 1>twelve everybody from last Friday.
<v Speaker 2>We did one over Christmas, We have one from the
<v Speaker 2>new year.
<v Speaker 1>But that means the voting will begin for this week's
<v Speaker 1>Bomb twelve today, so check out giant bomb dot com
<v Speaker 1>sometime today for that. So in the meantime, what we'll
<v Speaker 1>do here is, let's see let's do the new pole question.
<v Speaker 1>Have you played Avatar Frontiers at Pandora?
<v Speaker 2>Yes or no? Kind of just curious in like the raw.
<v Speaker 1>Numbers of people listening to this who have played that game,
<v Speaker 1>because it's you know, I'm sure a lot of people
<v Speaker 1>are just picking it up now, but I want to see,
<v Speaker 1>like how many people have actually played it overall and
<v Speaker 1>maybe comparing contrast to some other stuff. We'll we'll get
<v Speaker 1>the results of that poll and talk about it on
<v Speaker 1>Game mess Mornings here on Giant Bomb on Wednesday tomorrow,
<v Speaker 1>we'll have the BombCast.
<v Speaker 2>We're going to get back ato everything this week.
<v Speaker 1>We're also going to start delivering some stuff here from
<v Speaker 1>the bomba don because it's twenty twenty six now, so
<v Speaker 1>a lot of stuff happening over here.
<v Speaker 2>Again, thank you everybody for joining us for the year.
<v Speaker 1>Let's make it a good one, all right, Lexi, Where
<v Speaker 1>can people find you on the internet? What do you
<v Speaker 1>have going on and all that good stuff?
<v Speaker 3>Yes, you can find me on blue Sky at lex
<v Speaker 3>dot lexload dot xyz. A bunch of really cool stuff
<v Speaker 3>has gone up on something menu dot co dot UK.
<v Speaker 3>We had our annual website wide Game of the Year
<v Speaker 3>Awards where we handed out a lot of different awards
<v Speaker 3>and we for the first year ever voted on a
<v Speaker 3>on a website wide award and you'll never guess what one.
<v Speaker 3>And yeah, you should also check out all of the
<v Speaker 3>lists on giant Bomb because they're all great. As someone
<v Speaker 3>who edited every single one of them, they are all fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>And if you see a typo in them, know you didn't.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, you just look the other way.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's see what else we have going on
<v Speaker 1>a Giant Bomb. I don't know if we're missed in today.
<v Speaker 1>You know, we just came back. I gotta let go
<v Speaker 1>talk to everybody in a meeting and see what we're
<v Speaker 1>all thinking. But we'll let you know and we'll see
<v Speaker 1>what's gonna happen here today, tomorrow, for the rest.
<v Speaker 2>Of the week, for the rest of the year.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you again, everybody once again for hanging out with us,
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for watching and listening. Thanks you Lexi for
<v Speaker 1>hanging out with me and talk about video games. Until
<v Speaker 1>next time, everybody, have a good one, take care of yourself,
<v Speaker 1>and goodbye.