Embrace Group Sells Off Saber Interactive

Be bab it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this from March fourteenth,
twenty to twenty four I think that date's right for the next hour or
so. Let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess
Mornings Live with me Jeff Grubb. Today we got the official dates for Summer
Game Fest and just how important is GTA six to the video game industry.
But first, please join me and welcoming today's co host of Game Mess Mornings.
It's Jana Choa. Everybody, Jan, how are you doing. I'm
doing great. I've put this on my notion calendar. I'm blocked out.
Bricked up baby, that's what that means, right, I think that's what
bricked up needs. That's what how It's always the way I've used it,
and I've been thrown out of many places for using it that way. I
don't get it. Jan. When you yeah, you have the templates,
could you share me the one you think is the most useful. If that's
the thing, it's great to do. I'm still drowning in them. But
I'll do that. Yeah, I'll do that. I don't I'll do that,
and then well we'll be vaguely organized together, vaguely organized. See,
I never am able to maintain the momentum with any of these efforts. They
always just kind of follow the wayside. So it's like having a daily show
is like about as much organization as I can handle. Like, just doing
this, we can be accountability buddies. Okay, I mean, if you
want to go down that road, we can. I okay, Greb.
I was showing my partner my my Notion calendar, And for folks that don't
know, Notion is like a planning journaling website app that goes through your phone
and your computer whatever. H She looked at my calendar and then she looked
at me, and then she looked at the calendar again, and she looked
at me, and she was like, are you sure you did this?
Something else to do this? Oh? Okay, all right, well that's
something like jerk. I did put putting the dishes on my calendar. I
ripped it off. I did do the thing last night where it's like we're
trying to get the kids to bed and stuff's like dishes. I'm like okay,
and I'm like, no, I'm not gonna just do the dishes.
I've been like I didn't clean the house last weekend, and I've felt like
shit since then. So I just stayed up to like one am cleaning the
house downstairs. So the whole whole first floor is now good to go.
And I'm feeling I'm feeling I got a little bit of skip of my step
now because of it. So that was something. And I don't know,
I think if I tried to put that in the calendar of like, hey,
this is the cleaning block. That sounds nice, That sounds good.
All right. I will develop a template and I will share it with you,
and I'll share with the Giant Bomb audience, and I'll just have like
a to do list on one side, all right, and we wait out
the tasks to equate to points, okay, and then we tally up the
points either at the end of the day or the end of the week,
and see who has the most points. Okay, I'm down. And then
whoever wins the most weeks in a month, someone will buy them a pizza.
Yeah, they get to play as Mace Windu in Star Wars Battlefront two.
They get first stph I want to do that. Yeah, that sounds
pretty fun to me. Let's explain what we do here most weekdays, I,
Jeff Greb, will help peace 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 were watching live on twitch welcome, You can always
listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for game mess Warnings,
or find therss 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 US
games spending could be down ten percent this year. This is from Andy Robinson
at VGC. US consumer spending on games could decline by ten percent this year,
according to market research firm Circana Sircana. Sircana analyst Matpisktella told Games Industry
DOZ that this figure was in the pessimistic range of what could play out in
the US market in twenty twenty four, but predicted a tough nine months ahead.
Even if spend is on the more positive end of the spectrum right now,
my most optimistic outlook is down two percent piscatell has said, if you
start looking a little bit on the more pessimistic side, you're looking at down
about ten percent. If things really go sideways, you're looking a little bit
more than that. There's so much uncertainty when you look at the sales data
or look to project this year. There's uncertainty around the hardware. There's uncertainty
about the content. Who the hell's making the games, says Matt Piscatel.
Over there, he does also mention GTA six, which is now not coming
out till twenty twenty five. You know, there was always the chance that
could come out this year. He also mentioned switch to moving internally from this
year to next year. There are mitigating circumstances that cause people be like,
Eh, you know the things that we're gonna be, these big pillars we're
gonna hold up the industry, they're not happening. So then that's where that
uncertainty comes in. And we're like, but overall, jam like, we
we know that this uncertainty, uncertainty is like much bigger than just a couple
of things not coming out this year. It really is like, what is
the state of making these big games? And I'm starting I'm leaning more and
more towards this is this is just a big shift. This is gonna be
a major shift, and I I'm not gonna be like pessimistic like I was
with mobile gaming and like the twenty twelve, like twenty sixteen, where it's
like it's just these games and only these games can succeed. I think that's
how I feel some of the time right now, where it's just Fortnite's Minecraft,
it's a handful of other things, and you know, Matt calls some
black hole games. Everything gets sucked into the black hole of these games,
and I think there is definitely like we have to recognize, yes, that
is taking up all this time. But one thing with the like hardcore gaming,
is it always changes. It's never the same for that long and there
will be something new and shiny that will attract people in a couple of years.
As long as these companies keep making games, or someone keeps making games.
I suppose it does have to be any of these companies. The twenty
twenty four is going to be rough, right, Yeah, you know we
say the twenty twenty four is going to be rough. Yet the beginning of
like these first three months into twenty twenty four, I feel like has been
absolutely back to back to back bangers left and right, right and uh,
greb, sorry I didn't read the story yet, But so this is down
ten percent from last year, which is still kind of recovering off of whatever
inflated numbers we got because of like peak pandemic COVID years. Right, yeah,
yeah, So this would be Circana, which would be the NPD.
So it's the United States for one, and it would be I'm trying to
remember. I think spending in twenty twenty three was up about one to one
and a half percent in the United States from the previous year. Now,
of course, if you went once you factor in inflation, that's a little
bit, that's down a little bit, But overall that's like, yeah,
you know, it's maintaining a lot of the growth that came out of twenty
twenty two, which I think was still up over twenty twenty one, which
was up way over twenty twenty, which was up way over twenty nineteen.
So there is still a lot of like built in a growth that happened during
the pandemic. The big trouble for a lot of these companies, this was
something we'll go back to over and over again. Is they factored in continued
growth at that rate, set their businesses up on that assumption, and now
things are leveling off, not necessarily dropping down. They might drop down this
year, that does seem like that's really in the cards. But even before
this, but when it wasn't dropping down, they were like, uh,
we expected huge growth and we're getting three percent growth. That's not enough to
fund everything that we're putting bets on. Right. Yeah, I don't want
to also have a pessimistic outlook, but you know, I looking at those
back to back to back bangers, those audiences aren't like the wider general gaming
audience is. For as much as like Infinite Wealth sold really well, Corn
Overlord is selling really well as well. I don't think you're regular gamer visiting
Target Walmart for physical releases is going to see that and be inclined to go
pick it up, especially when the carton of eggs that they're also at Target
or Walmart for is now suddenly ten dollars. Yes, that's of course the
other thing here, and Matt has talked about this on Twitter this week,
where it's like people are spending way more on just daily necessities and that is
that is going to take away from game spending in a very noticeable way.
A lot of that's going to be money taken away from like, hey,
I do get on every week with my buddies and play Fortnite, and you
know, one of them is you know, they're still doing that every night,
and another one like, well, she's over here, like she's like
she's not playing as much, and so I'm like, maybe I won't get
on as frequently, and by just you know the way number work, that
is going to lower the opportunity for the people to want to spend money in
these games. And we're going to see that sort of filtered down. And
we're talking about like big games that have already made a ton of money,
not necessarily new games coming out and selling, and that's the tail that wags
the dog now or these handful of big games, and if spinning drops on
those, the whole industry sort of drops overall. You mentioned a lot of
new games are doing very well. I mean, Hell Divers too clearly is
a huge, massive blowout success. So it's like that can happen, but
it's not going to fill in the comparison to previous years where we've had,
you know, elden Ring two years ago and several big games last year,
Cleveland, Zelda and stuff. I interesting to bring up Hell Divers too,
and I think Matt also brings it up in the story glancing at it.
But like Hell Divers two in Power World kind of set the world on fire,
even though you know, kind of flashing the pan for Power World,
but Hell Divers two has had some staying growth. Those are cheaper titles as
well, like coming out at forty bucks a pop. So I think if
I was that gamer in that position of playing your weekly cod games with your
friends or Fortnite with your friends, and this is a cheaper title that you
can play with your friends, and like the buy in is just at forty
dollars, I think I'd be more willing to shell out forty dollars rather than
seventy dollars to play something like Suicide Squad or however much Skull and Bones is,
even though Skull and Bones they were trying to give that away for free
for a while. Yeah, I think that one's awesome. Isn't that one
also seventy It's at least sixty, right, I mean, it's a quadruple
A game. Quadruple Ay. That's what the quadruple A thing was all about,
was him defending the price of it. So, yeah, you're absolutely
right, Like the Matt says, hell Divers two Impowe World have done a
lot of heavy lifting earlier in the year, but were up against comparisons last
year with Hogwarts Legacy, which was a massive hit, and he didn't even
mention what you said, like Hogwarts Legacy, I think was it was at
least sixty was probably seventy. Again, I can't keep track of all these,
but the very least sixty. And then we have these two games that
are doing a lot of the heavy lifting but at forty dollars and you know,
not even necessarily across every console the way Hogwarts Legacy did. So that's
part of it, Like it's about comparisons. Last year had several big games.
Hogwarts Legacy, Legend of Zelda, Tiers of the Kingdom sold twenty million
copies in a handful of months. There was games just all throughout the year
that we're hitting very hard, and this year it's like, even if they
do hit just about as hard, it doesn't feel like we are We're going
to have both a Hogwarts Legacy and a Zelda like anything comparable to that this
year. So you know, is that really like, oh, is that
the industry drooping overall? Well? No, actually, yes, in a
few places it is. But it's not like again, a rushing out of
funds from the industry. It's not like people are losing interest overall and spending
money on games. They are just being a little bit more selective with where
they're putting their dollars. And the problem that goes back to once again,
these companies having astronomical projections and that gap being so huge that it's that it
has to be sort of painful for now for everyone else because they miss misallocated
their predictions. You have to think, Greb that like the frequency of these
games dropping, also has to play a factor into like reduce spending, because
with all of these games coming out in such close proximity, I'd have to
imagine I'd be pinching my pennies as well, because all right, well,
I know that this game is going to take me at least forty to sixty
hours to complete a main story, not even including any of the side content.
So that's going to last me if I'm just like casually playing a game
a couple times per week or whatever, or even trying to platinum a game
that's going to take me a decent chunk of time that I can save that
sixty to seventy dollars on another game in a month and a half or two
months down the line. And then it's the same pattern, especially with like
these big JRPG style games coming out. Yes, and I think people are
very happy to just like pick their games once they have them. Like if
you got everybody, if you've got everybody in on Hell Divers two, you're
not sitting around looking for the next game to come out. You are like,
hey, no, let's go back. We already spent money on this.
We're having a good time. Why mess with a good thing. I
think there's a time in gaming where everyone's like, hey, no, we're
jumping from game to game. That's what our crew does. And I think
this year feels like a year where no, we're very cool just playing Hell
Divers two and we're not doing that when everyone's busy. We're playing Bolotro and
we're playing a ton of that, and these games are selling. But I
think like the behavior of jumping from game to game and going from seventy dollars
game to seventy dollars game. I think we've already seen people not jump on
polm Stars, people not jump onto Cfteves too season two of Foam Stars Suicide
Squad, like it's already happened. I think if we get through this year,
we're gonna we're gonna look back and see that that was a trend that
continued where people were just very happy to stick with what works for them,
a trend that I hope continues. And you and Lex highlighted this yesterday on
game mess But I really enjoyed despite me not participating it in as much.
But I love watching the periphery of how Hell Divers two is rolling out new
content. It just feels so fresh, it's in cool. It feels like
you have to be playing or like you're watching along in like it feels like
world news popping off in the world of Hell Divers too in such a way
where like, you know, new updates roll out all the time in Fortnite,
PUBG Call of Duty, and then you know, I'll occasionally check out
Fortnite, but I don't quite care. I think I've been conditioned by like
the season's model to like all right, if I'm not buying in this season,
I'll wait, I'll check out next season. So far with Hell Divers
Too, I'm like itching like every single meeting we have of like what if
we're just playholdt like these five other things we have to do? Yep,
And I mean it really does come down to just they're they're combining all the
best elements of what a live service game can be and then live storytelling the
current thing where everyone's working together to establish these bug like spray things on all
these planets. Uh. And it's like at least four planets in the Bug
system. Uh. It is like that's such a cool idea. I mean
they did that same thing with the Mets, where it's likef you liberate this
one planet, everyone works on this one planet. We could unlock the Mets,
and they everyone unlocked it early because everyone was so excited to play it.
That's really neat. That's really neat. Yeah, And like you know,
uh we we we mentioned Hell Divers Too as like a game that you
would pick up to play with friends. But I think the way so far
in my experience in like randomly lobbying up with Randos and mostly everyone else's experience,
it's been positive, yep, surprisingly enough of like a bunch of chill
people wanting to play a un chill game and just like cooperate together, the
like the like the worst things that happened to be in that game when I
when I started up with Randos, is uh the guy that is level twenty
seven and you know I'm playing with seventeen and twelve, and I'm like,
I was like level seven when we died. He just went for like a
solid three minutes of just doing not his own thing. He was doing the
mission, but he like, let us just stay dead until like you say,
okay, well I've got everything you know, set the way I wanted
to. Now I'll bring you back and say, oh, I'd like to
play the video game I'm trying to play. But it's like that's you know,
the most extreme and and I am like at a certain point I get
it, Like I'm level seven, he's level twenty seven. Uh, I
get it to a certain extent. Uh. Up next still part of this
story. GTA six is most important game release in industry's history. According to
analysts from Hayley Williams, a game spot the games in this isn't in the
best shape at the moment, with cost cutting measures leading to layoffs, studio
closures, and game cancelations, and there are few major titles on the way
to shore up sales. In an interview with Games Industry dop is, industry
analyst Matt Piscatella has said that GTA six might end up being an incredibly important
release for the industry at large. Piscatella, who works for tracking from Sircana,
says twenty twenty four isn't looking great for the games industry, with overall
spend expected to be down that aforementioned two to ten percent spending. How optimistic
you are, there's so much uncertainty when you look at the sales data or
look to project this year. Piscatella said, there's uncertainty around hardware, as
he said previously, he does go on to talk about GTA six being the
thing that everyone was looking forward to holding up this year and now moving beyond
out of the fiscal year, so like after out of March of next year,
so sometime later in twenty twenty five. So it's like man that is
already begun to slip that makes it feel like even further away, and people
that were like, hey, survive twenty four, survive until twenty five.
That was like the mantra. It's like, well, as the switch to
gets pushed out, and as GTA six gets pushed out, and the excitement
around games could wane if there isn't like that big game pulling people's interest back
in, A lot of people are like, man, what is going to
happen here? How important do you think GTA six is? Though? Because
I have some thoughts here, but what's like your gut reaction? I realize
that I live in a bubble and I am a dirty hipster in the year
of twenty twenty four. I'm gonna pull a Jeff Backler and say, like,
I don't care, it's not important to me. Yeah. But when
that initial GTA six teaser trailer dropped a couple months ago, I was seeing
friends out of the woodwork that I didn't know played video games yep, reposting
that trailer saying oh, y'all don't know how much GTA means to me?
Right? And then I was thinking, like, that is an insane sentiment,
But maybe I'm the insane one. Greb. We were talking about this
on the BombCast. I believe of like a sequel not quite living up to
its predecessor, and I don't think that GTA six will fall fall under that
banner. And I'm more curious about how they will handle the transition of gt
online because I feel like GTA online has ananely huge audience that how do you
handle that pivot from five to six? Like I I'm curious is to know
what that on ramp process looks like for Rockstar. Yeah, I mean,
I think that's That's one of the things that makes it the most important,
right is that there is this juggernaut money printing factory in GTA online and they
need to figure out that transition of what it looks like if there is a
transition or if it's like no, here's a big update to gt online and
you can access that through GTA six. But for me, I look at
the I look at this as Yeah, GTA six is a harbinger of what
is going to happen with the biggest games, and it'll tell us a lot
about how much like what is the ceiling here? How big and expensive can
a game be? Before it even doesn't make sense for GTA six, and
I think we're probably gonna find GTA six is gonna be fine. Rock Star
is going to make their money here. But that game's gonna come out,
and I think a lot of other publishers and developers are going to look at
it and be like, there's no world in which we can do that.
I think that's already happened with like Red Dead Redemption two, where a lot
of developers publishers look at that and be like, so much work went into
the details of that game that it is beyond it's incomprehensible how much money would
take for us to do something like that. We already like we don't have
necessarily the skill or the desire to do those things. If we had to
keep up with the Joneses and the Joneses being rock Star, that would be
like a non starter. But it's like, I think GT six is the
most important for this old guard of making games in a certain way, and
I think it is going to kind of like be like, hey, this
is yeah, this is what it can do. But in the meantime,
I think there will be this whole other torrent of things off to the side
happen in Steam, Early Access and frankly Mobile and a bunch of other places
where it's like, yeah, GTA six is important, but the industry has
grown and changed and shifted so much that it's only so important to a certain
segment. Now. Yeah, it feels weird kind of putting it or putting
it that way, because now I'm thinking the industry is in such a disarray
that I don't think any other studio, maybe Sony, could try and pull
off something to the the caliber that GTA six is going to be even red
dead redemption too, that is there even a possibility grub that like a GTA
seven is in the like in the future at all, because like this is
an expensive game that is taken forever ground, and even we know rock Stary
is going to make their money back, They're going to continue to make their
money back with even GTA five still helping fund GTA six. But like Grand
Theft Auto seven just seems like an imaginary thing. It doesn't feel like a
real thing that will ever exist, because like this may be the last of
like you said, those old Guard games. This is like a Scorsese flick.
Yeah, yeah, and I agree, I think that GTA six will
come out, and I legit believe it'll be closer to twenty years before we
get GTA seven. Like, oh, I really believe that, unless you
know, they completely change the way that that model works, where it's like,
oh no, here's GTA seven and it's something you go by, but
it feeds into this larger connected GTA universe that it mostly lives online. They
could do something like that, but their efforts have been have been better spent
getting more people into GTA online because that makes them more consistent money over time.
So I think that they are setting this game up to last for a
very long time. GTA five already was ten years, right, I mean
we're longer than that eleven years now in that range, I think eleven years,
So yeah, at least fifteen years. I'm really I really think that's
very likely for between GGA six and GTA seven moving on here around anymore.
I know that I'm like I was, like I was thinking in those terms,
like maybe I see GTA seven, but the idea of a GTAA is
impossible. There's no way. Summer Game Fest is set to start June seventh.
This is for Ben Lyons at Game Reactor. Jeff Keeley has officially announced
the date and time for when Summer Game Fest will be airing its live showcase
this year. The major conference will be held at YouTube Theater once again in
Los Angeles and will be set for June seventh, twenty twenty four at I
think this is like two pm Pacific time. I think is what this is
around there they have this story says twenty two hundred BST and twenty three hundred
ceest. Heally has stated that the event will be approximately two hours long,
have a live audience, and of course be streamed around the world on a
variety of platforms. Yeah, it always felt like this is around when it
would happen. It's confirmed. How are you feeling about the summer video game
announcement season? Jan Yeah, let's go do it. I'm tired already.
Yep, gonna happen. So listen, we know Microsoft said that they will
we would have something in that timeframe. They've already confirmed that. When they
were clolling all the concerns about a couple of games going to PlayStation and Switch,
They're like, yeah, we will have our event in June. I
think is how they phrase that. So I think around this same time.
We could expect that, but I'm you know, I'm not going to be
shocked if EA and Take two and all these companies have something around this time.
Sony could have something, Nintendo could have a direct. It could feel
like a pretty robust announcement season because all these companies still have like laying people
off, like it's signified that, like, hey, they aren't gonna make
a lot of games because it's true, and they're going to pay for that
in a couple of years. But I think they're thinking so short term.
The way that they look at it is we have so many games about to
come out because so much stuff got delayed, and our slates are so full,
which is something if you watch that Danny O Dwyer video about trying to
get published something he heard a lot from publishers when he was trying to get
his little game some funding, and it was like, you know, our
slate ist full, Our slate ist full. And I think that these companies
are like, well, no, we have so many games coming out,
and so I think they will have stuff to announce, even though it'll be
I think it's going to feel a little strange coming off all these layoffs and
now it's like, now here, look at buy all our fucking games.
It's going to feel a little weird. But I expect most of these companies
to have big events over the summer. Yeah, I for whatever reason.
I mean it's it's justified that I'm expecting the there to be a slight uncomfortable
vibe in the room of it's great that we're all here to go, it's
great that games are coming out. It's bad everything else. Yeah, because
I mean, you know what is Summer Games Fest? It is a in
what was E three? Before that it like well E three was like a
show where people could connect and new business. Summer Game Festival is just raw
commercialism. It is just raw. We are here to sell these corporations video
games to the consumer. That is the reason the whole thing exists. And
so it's a show not really even for the people who make the games.
You know, he has the Game Awards for that ostensibly. Yeah, that
also turns into this is about selling games to the consumer. So that's like
some of the that's why where people have some criticism there. But whatever,
this show just is upfront and honest about No, this is for the CEOs
trying to find a place to market their games, and so the end I
think that's going to make the vibes be a little bit weird as well.
But you know, at the same time, I like to get excited about
new new video games people have they want to sell video games to me,
I'll pay attention to a certain extent, But twenty twenty four is going to
continue to be a situation where it is going to be frustrating to have them
listen to these companies market to us when they are not taking care of the
people who actually made these studio games. I do think you're right, though,
that this will be a It feels like this is going to be a
bigger SGF, not only because of like all these companies have several games in
their back pocket that they've been waiting to release trailers for release. Hype four
just get them out the door, get them off of their release slate.
With summer game fests in general has also been growing year by year. Last
year it was already double the size it was from the initial year, And
I can only imagine like Keely is looking at a blueprint or maps of downtown
LA and thinking, like, all right, let's take over that building too,
and I believe and the whole thing is just going to continue to get
bigger despite the industry hurting. Those marketing dollars got to go somewhere grub right,
Yeah, I think that these companies will still have a pretty significant marketing
budget. That's you know, that is a huge cost for them, But
I think they I think they find that the summer game Fest and the Kili
stuff is pretty cost effective. It does cost a lot of money to get
a showcase in there in one of his shows, like a lot of money.
But when I talk to like pr people who whose business is hey,
get get attention to this game, They're like, it's worth it. It's
like it gets it gets enough eyeballs on it. There are you know,
often millions of people watching live, millions of people watch it later. It
does drive the news. So yeah, I think that you're right though,
marketing dollars, dollars will still go into it, and it's got to go
somewhere. So because it ain't coming to me, that's for sure. What
what like do you think that a like Microsoft expect to be like a full
E three thing. I think that they set those expectations, so I their
showcase and they've done this the last several years should be a big one.
What do you think the scale of the Nintendo and Sony shows are likely to
be. I don't know. Yah, can we take a quick break.
I gotta get a kid off the bus. We'll be right back, everybody.
I would be scatting, all right, jan I was asking you how
what scale you expect from Nintendo and Sony for their press conferences at the summer
Game Fest season. You know, if they even happen. There is no
guarantee that they do happen. I think it's probably likely just based on although
I feel like I said this last year with Sony, Sony doesn't have a
ton of stuff, and now it so they you know, they probably should
and they probably will. And then Nintendo feels like they should set stuff up
for the second half of this year, even if they're not ready to talk
about the switch to quite yet. What do you think I feel like Nintendo
has to be ready or move themselves into a position to start laying the groundwork
for you switch to get those consumers ready to spend their dollars there. Don't
I don't think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot by announcing it and still
planning on releasing big ish titles, medium ish titles later in the fall,
in winter months. And you know, we've said this multiple times. I
feel like, just treat the rest of this year as a victory lab for
Nintendo. Just fill out the rest of your just release the rest of those
games, but make sure you leave clear enough of a runway for whatever the
switch to is going to look like. I'm so ready for that thing to
be announced in a name to be announced, so we stop calling it the
switch to or super Bowl, the switch to. Well, you know,
all right, let's do that. We could. We said it here first.
Tony is the bigger outlier though for me, Grub, I don't know
what they're going to do because I feel like they've canceled so many projects and
everything that they've announced over the last couple of years is like we're working on
like twelve games, does a life service games, We're working on like so
many things. Yet we've heard several projects get canceled, that Spider Man one,
most recently just getting canned at the uncharted multiplayer stuff, several a lot
of people getting laid off of laid off from PlayStation so I don't know what
they have, like Marathon, Yeah, Marathon's ways off. Yeah that's a
ways off. So yeah, that's that's a weird one because it's like they
have to get Destiny back into a decent place before they can even really I
think focus all in on Marathon. They probably will have some announcements, but
like they their partnership games like Rise of ronin which a first party game,
but like also then like Final Fantasy, that stuff is out, they will
probably have a couple more of those in their pocket. I just how many
other big games is a company like Square Inix a frequent partner actually working on,
especially after like twenty twenty two where they had a ton of games that
didn't quite hit and so they were like pulling back from that strategy a little
bit. I and you know, and Sony has told us flat out this
fiscal year up through March of twenty twenty five, no sequels to establish Triple
A franchises, So we know, like the one that was most likely would
speculate his Ghost of Sushima be like, oh, if they had, that
would definitely justify a showcase. So I think when we're talking about the scale
of these shows, if Sony has something. I think it's probably a state
of Play, and then we do get something like that Astro game announced in
there. Now they do also have allegedly and you know, and based on
good reporting, a PlayStation five Pro that should launch this year. How do
you launch that without having a bunch of games to go along with it.
I don't necessarily know, but you know, the audience that wants a PS
five Pro will just show up and buy a PS five Pro, especially in
this first holiday, so they that's probably not going to stop them. And
that's the kind of thing that could show up in a showcase. It could
maybe justify a showcase if they have a couple of games ready to go with
it. But I don't. I don't know, man, You're right,
it's really hard to guess what it could be. I mean, we were
pleasantly surprised with Valhalla dropping out of nowhere, and I'm trying to think,
like, all right, what other PlayStation games have not already made its way
out onto the PC. Where can they cover their bases there? What else
can you add a rogue like mode too? Because they already did that as
well with the Last of Us Part two. They did there was something else
too, didn't they like the Samett of War. Yeah, I don't know
how that. You know, we're not the biggest fans of Horizon here at
GB, but I guess you could hamphist a rogue like mode into that somehow.
I don't know. Maybe you could even do that with Ratchet and clank
and that'd be fun. That could be cool. That'd be cool. That
would be cool because there's so many fun weapons in there. That'd be great.
Sony had a like, like the Sony account did like this tournament of
most popular PlayStation franchise and the reason didn't do very well. I was like,
I'm like, am I being gaslighted by this industry? I feel like
a little bit. I think so, like I don't know what it is
like I want to see what people see in Horizon. Yeah what I can't
yet. There's a big audience, but not a big audience. I don't.
I don't know. And it's not like him Ryan just buying a bunch
of copies. Yeah, him and Herman Holtz were just going from target to
target road tripping. That sounds like a good time. Here's what we need
to get and hang to go to get PlayStation to go back and get into
the butter zone with with everyone. Hell yeah, kill Zone. Yeah,
that was a joke. Bring kill Zone back. I'm like, would they
I wonder if they would ever bring back kill Zone or the one that everyone
I guess really wants is Resistance, so calm, so resist, so calm.
Yes, that's the one everyone really wants. It's the first thing that
got mentioned in chat was so calm. So yeah. I they probably do
consider bringing back one of these shooters, but I I guess now that they
own Bungee, maybe they maybe that aren't thinking that way. I don't know,
all right. Embracer Group sells a Saber interactive for a cool two hundred
and forty seven million dollars. This is from Sophie McAvoy at Games Industry Dot.
Is this is a follow up to like a like reporting and then evidence
of like, hey, Saber removed a bunch of stuff on their website,
and the reporting was like, hey they sold. They bought themselves out for
five hundred million dollars. No, two hundred and forty seven million dollars.
As announced by the firm and a statement published today, it has agreed to
divest selected assets from Saber to Beacon Interactive, a new company founded by Sabers
co founder Matthew Kark Arch Kark. Saber will retain a number of studios as
part of the sale, including Nimble Giant, three D Realms, Sandbox Strategies,
New World Interactive, Slipgate, mad Head Games, Fractured Bite, and
Digit As For Embracer, the firm will keep the following studios, Zen Studios,
four A Games, although I think for both of those when for A
Games is the Metro Studios in studios is the that Pinball studio the video game
Pinball. Saber seems to have an option to eventually buy those two studios later
if they want. Embrace will also keep Tripwire, Beam Dog, who does
a lot of did a lot of those old computer RPG remasters, Tuxedo Labs,
demi Urge, Shiver, Aspire which just did that Star Wars does a
lot of the Star Wars remasters, Snapshot in thirty four Big Things. It
will also retain ipst I think be an Embracer and future publishing rights for a
variety of titles, including various announced Triple A and Double A projects. In
addition to Killing four three and Tear down. One of those projects that Embracer
will have a hand in it will co own with Saber, is an a
previously announced triple A game based on a franchise and everyone speculating and that's the
Knights of the Old Republic. So that is going with Saber, but they
are still going to work with Embracer on it to some extent. And I'll
say what I've been saying from what I've heard for weeks now, Sony's not
interested in seeing that thing through, or at least at least not as it
stands today. That could change, but that when when I said that thing
was done, it was it was done with Sony. They continued to try
to make it happen though, Hey, they extracted themselves from from uh Embracer.
Embracer is keeping about half the studios here, so that probably explains why
the price tag is two hundred and forty seven million dollars to buy themselves out.
But yeah, I'm glad of many of these studios were able to get
out from Embracer, and I hope that Embracer is keeping many of these studios
because they want them and want them to make games, and isn't just going
to lay them off later. That would stink all It smells stinky already.
Grub smells pretty sticky over there in Embracer Land. Yes, maybe we'd maybe,
you know, there should be a higher ranking official group of folks that
are like, nah, we won't We're not gonna let you buy the people,
And hey, look at this. From this morning, Jason Treer mentioned
that Saber CEO Matthew Karch confirms that they've already decided to take four A and
Zen studios, despite the messenger from Embraser suggesting that it may retain those two
studios. So that's already happened. So I think what's weird here though,
is I think Metro is going to stay with Embracer. I would have to
like sort this out and know exactly, but there's going to be some like
figuring out what this all means for the studios and the ips that they're most
frequently associated with. But I hope that's not the case because four A would
would definitely want to see that stuff through, and you know, at the
very least, if Embracer does keep it or A would likely have a deal
in place to just continue to work on it. Yeah, it's it's smell
stinky over an Embracer. It is a publisher that is looking to continually cut
costs, and I think if I were in a situation here where it's like
if I had to go with Saber or stay with Embracer, I would easily
choose let's go let's go it on our own. Let's see if we can
go figure it out. I know there's no funding out there, but we
were able to get investments to buy ourselves out from from Embracer. Let's just
see if we can make some money selling some video games and a lot of
these studios that are still at at Saber. You know, it's it's a
pretty massive organization, you know that all those like you know, three D
realms and stuff. So yeah, I think that they can probably make yes,
thirty four big things. Well, we'll see how this continues to fall
out. Though. It is confusing over an Embracer, mostly because it just
makes no sense from the ground up what they did over there. It's like,
how are they making money? Are they making money? Do they know
what they're doing? Do they know they're in the games industry. I don't
think they do. No, they were in the organic growth of acquiring businesses
industry, and now that's dried up on them. Do they want to organ
acquire me for a couple months and then I just leave right and then you
buy yourself back for half the price. Yeah, that sounds like a good
plan. I'll do that. Prince of Persia the Lost Crown reveals post launch
roadmap. This is from Nintendo Everything, and this is interesting. This game's
getting quite a bit of DLC. More content is in store for Prince of
Persia the Lost Crown, with a few free updates and and an even bigger
piece of DLC. The first update, Warriors Path, is planned for this
month and include a speed run mode, perma death mode, and new Sargon
outfits. The second update, Boss Attack, is slated for this spring.
It'll include a boss rush mode and another round of Sargon outfits. The Divine
Trials update will close things out in the summer. This will be comprised of
new combat, platform and puzzle challenges, which that's music to my years because
I really enjoyed those things in the game. There all also be new amulets,
Sargon outfits, and more for the DLC. You besot just keeping things
close to the vest. We know it'll include story, but nothing else is
known at this point, so it's full on story DLC, which I'm surprised
they're doing. Happy they're doing it though. Glad this game is getting support.
I hope fans show back up for it, but I will. I'm
definitely gonna be there for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I'll check
out that speed run moment of the mode a little bit, but those challenges
sound great to me. And then story a continuation of the story. You
know, the story was okay, but at the very like, at the
very least, it's like giving me new places to explore. Is that what
we're doing here? That would be great too. This is definitely on the
top of my list to like circle back around and revisit once things kind of
slow down after what Dragon's Dogma two. Perhaps I just remember I just lost
steam so hard, like maybe halfway through this game. But I hope with
the new DLC plans being revealed and when that comes out, it also breathes
new life into it with more people flocking to it for the first time.
Agreed. Yeah, And I think that's one of these One of the things
that happens here is you add in all this content and then you could put
out a definitive mode later. Again, that gives you another chains to reintroduce
the game to people, make it feel like an even better deal. You
can cut the price then and it's like, well, this is good,
this has all the DLC and it's only you know, thirty dollars instead of
forty dollars. There's a good chance to get a bunch of people to hop
on board at that point. Which, hey, I hope they pull that
trigger. Uh greb. A couple of folks are mentioning this in the chat,
but no plans at all to release this on Steam. Huh Yeah,
they're not foreseeable future. They aren't. They did not mention that, right,
So this continues to be on you be soft Play I think you Is
it called you playstell Yes, yeah they are. You'd be self connected,
I think the new name. Yeah, that's where you have to play it
on PC. So, and which is weird because you'd be Stuff goes back
and forth with releases on Steam, like from game to game, So this
game seems like it would greatly benefit from being on Steam. But maybe that's
what happens with that definitive version. Maybe they release all this stuff and at
that point you put it out on Steam a year later, not about it?
Okay, I put this story in here, Jan, mostly as a
question. Monopoly Go has hit two billion dollars in revenue in just ten months
after launch. This is from Dean Takashi, a games beat Scopeley announced that
what Monopoly Go has generated two billion dollars in revenue just ten months after launch,
three months after hitting one billion dollars, The reimagined take on Hasbro's an
iconic board game has garnered a massive player base, solidifying its place as a
beloved, highly engaging title in the free to play market. It's a big
score not only for scop Lee, but it's new owner, Savvy Games Group,
which is Saudi Arabia. Jan. Have you ever heard of Monopoly Go?
Yes? Because Okay wondering when I am scrolling on TikTok These are the
worst UGC user generated content ads I have ever seen. Okay, getting the
bottom of the barrel. Oh, those tier z Tiktoker's influencers whatever to make
the worst edited content to promote this game, and I've only ever heard about
this game in those poorly edited ads. Stay. Perhaps you visit different websites,
right, we'll all infer what I mean by different websites. Uh huh,
exactly. We're used. We're used to in condition for those different websites
to have those different types of ads with them. Those ads also have Monopoly
go ads. What the hell? Really? Yes, So I feel like
they're getting gen Z, They're getting the freaks and pers visiting those different websites.
I never actually played this game. No, yeah, I've never knew.
I didn't even look at it until I saw the story and saw two
billion dollars. I did install it, though, I'm try it out for
myself. Uh, those gen Z ads, the bad ones on TikTok where
someone's like, oh, a comet said this is fake, Well, I'm
gonna go check it out myself. It prove to you it's not, even
though it totally is fake those day I think they work. They seem to
really work. They just capture some sort of audience, And I wonder if
it's like I mean, it's about TikTok, so how old how much old
of an audience can to be? I think it's the tricking other gen Z
s. So yeah, it's a it's a wild one that that is so
effective, like the type of game that it looks like Monopoly Go is based
off of looking at screenshots and play footage. I guess I've seen from those
ads it seems like the perfect game catered to the boomer audience. Yeah,
right, that's what I figure too. Yeah, and I bet, I
bet there are the biggest audience on there, likely, but you don't get
the two billion in revenue without having a wide, huge swap of the of
people playing. I did google Monopoly Go and the auto fill is Monopoly Go
free dice, So I'm assuming free dice is like your currency, you know,
V bucks or whatever, or maybe the thing you need to just play
the game in the first place. It also shows like a Monopoly board with
different people on there, so there is like some live multiplayer element. I
don't know, but two billion dollars in ten months is a buck wild.
That is Nutso that is it's hard to Like most huge new mobile games come
out and they're aiming to do about a billion dollars in the first year,
which is huge on its own, two billion dollars in less time than that
is crazy. I'm curious, grub, where do you fall on Monopoly The
board game. Do you like it? Do you hate it? I don't
know if I've ever played like the Shoot rules, so I kind of feel
like I'm not I would be like, oh, yeah, it's not great.
But I wonder if I've just played weird house rules that actually ruin the
game. So I don't know. I was thinking about I would like to
play Risk again. Risk is one I played a lot as a as a
kid and enjoyed with my older brothers. So I'm like, I want to
check back in on Risk, and maybe it's time to do Monopoly as well.
Are are those games in tabletop simulator or are they too basic? I
just no, I feel like everything is in tabletop simulator. All right,
Well, we need to have a board game night or something. Board game,
board game, Yeah, yeah, we should do We should do that.
That'd be actually pretty neat, like we do that trivial pursuit perhaps,
yeah, poker drinking, shoots and ladders, all right, yeah, but
board game sounds like fun. We also, you know, should eventually play
Wingspan as a crew because we we shoved about so much. Also, Tam
has like twelve hundred board games that he continues to buy. We need him
to take some of them. I didn't know he was like a secret sick
Oh he's never he's never even talks about that. That's how you know it's
a real sick oness Tam, that guy's a cicco. Why did you know
he was a sick on that way? So he was sick on multiple multifaceted
ways. I just didn't know his board games as well. Ham only functions
in sicco mode. That's right, that's it's his only gear. Uh.
Embracers suggests Star Wars Codor remake isn't coming out for over a year. This
is from Tom Ivan at VGC. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic remake
is reportedly still in development at Saber Interactive, but it doesn't sound like it
will be released in the next twelve months in it now. On Thursday,
Embracer Group announced plans to sell off a large part of Saber the group,
which is home to multiple studios and projects, and a deal that could be
worth up to five hundred million dollars, while Embracer will retain Aspire Media,
the studio originally enlisted to Listen to make the Knights of the Old Republic remake.
The game the game is going with Saber, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreyer,
who previously reported that the company had taken over development. Never Nevertheless,
when the deal closes and Embracers Sabers Star part ways, Kotor is expected to
be jointly held asset between the two companies. In today's announcement of the deal,
Embracer said it's retained assets, including two joint projects with the buyer,
including a previously announced Triple A game based on a major license. And a
conference call discussing the deal, Embracer CEO Lars Wingerfer's Brain Genius was quizzed about
the jointly held Triple A projects on a couple of occasions. One analyst asked
if it was expected to come out in the next twelve months or whether it
was a more distant release, and he said, no, I think that
kind of game needs more deep love and respect. So without giving full color,
I think it's some time left until that is released. Color is always
something that these guys say to analysts, and analysts say in their questions,
Can I get some more color on that? Yeah, deep love and respect
is what that game needs. Yeah, I think I wouldn't expect that game
before like twenty twenty seven, if it ever really happens. Yeah, I've
I've resigned that if I am going to pick up in play Ko Tour,
it's just going to be whatever version exists right now on the internet, versus
waiting for a remaster. Totally fun. It's it's you know, it's an
older game, but it holds up, checks out. There's oh Tor show.
Well we're still work shopping the name. Oh but yeah, but yeah,
man, if you want to play that game, I will sit there
and watch you play it, and I will will stfu Friday while you do
that so that we could see see your reactions, because I think that'd be
a lot of fun. Uh. Finally, Yeah, this is this is
a finally Overwatch two fans think one or I think the Cowboy skins are excuse
me, Cowboy Bebop skins are goofy as hell in the game, but especially
one of them from Ken Shephard at Kotaku. Overwatch two's the latest collaboration is
with the beloved space Western anime Cowboy Bebop. The event, which kicked off
on March twelve, let's five heroes from Blizzard's team based Shooter cosplay has different
characters from the classic nineties show. The event follows in the footsteps of other
crossover events, like like October Over twenty three to one that featured K pop
group Le Seraphim. For this latest crossover, five heroes Cassidy, Sambra,
Ashmauga, and reky Ball each get a skin and a few other cosmetics.
Each come packaged in a twenty five dollar bundle. But some of the new
skin well, some of those new skins are great. I played a few
rounds with Damage hero Sombard dressed up as Bebop's fellow hacker ed last night and
had a bonding moment with a Masaga player wearing the jet black skin. But
some overwauch fans aren't too fond of the new Cassidy skin, which stresses him
up as bebop main character Spike Spiegel. Have you seen this, jan I'm
looking at screenshots now and it looks okay unless I'm not seeing like the one
that folks are complaining about the most. So what people are mostly, I
think they're mostly frustrated with the hair. I think, yeah, in generally
just kind of looks a bit goofy. But I think people are like annoyed
that he kind of has what looks like the wrong hair. Uh, And
yeah, it's kind of like too spiky on the top and doesn't have like
the swoop that Spike Spiegel's hair has. I'll say, in general, I
do think these kind of look a little bit, eh. I think they're
not maybe in motion they look a lot better. It looks like it looks
like they're just doing poor cosplay. Yes, it looks like poor cosplay.
Yes, but yeah there's this one here where it's like, please fix the
hair, and it's like, yeah, if you kind of actually just did
that, Although it looks like this also modified the face a little bit as
well, But if you just fix the hair, that would be a huge
win there in terms of making them look more like Spike Spiegel. Really,
no, jan twenty five dollars for these skin packs these days. That's that
is where we're at, like each yeah, twenty five dollars each. Well,
no, don't do that that. Supers at home, don't do with
that. Consumers at home save yourselves. Uh there, let me tell y'all
if you just just go watch the original anime grub. I've never seen it,
but uh, there's tons of pictures of what's her name, Fay out
there on the internet. I know that y'all just trying to look at Faye
on in Overwatch. Just just go through that somewhere else. Jane, you
gotta watch it, man. It's one season, Bud. It's worth it.
It's so worth it. Change that's fair. It's really good, Cowboy
man like that show a whole bunch. I still get to another story.
But CEEF stars to reach five million copies. But I think they added a
replayer cooperative mode where it's like you can like time the hits in the turn
based combat all together, and that sounds pretty neat. I don't know if
I'm going to play a whole turn based like j RPG with with you know,
a cooperative partners, but it's cool that it's in there. Cool mode,
I guess j RPG style. I should say grub. There was a
tweet linked out in the chat. It looks like the Apex Legends team had
had faced a bunch of layoffs today. I'm trying to find that. Oh
now, really, okay, let me well look for that. I'll look
as well. Man, that is that would be terrible, Okay, let's
see here. Yeah, the Apex team was hit with layoffs today. It
sucks seen some of the people I've worked with for almost three years now get
let go. Hopefully they land on their feet sooner rather than later. And
that is from fifteen hours ago. And that was a level designer at Respawn,
Aaron Stump who tweeted that, got another tweet here from Alex Ackerman,
who ran social media for Apex. After twenty seasons of Apex and five years
at Respawn, nearly to the day, my job has been made redundant.
I've been laid off, and then working on this game and supporting this community
has truly been the honor of my career and highlight of my life. Thank
you for everything, Legends heart and emoji jeez. Yeah. Connor Ford,
who was a security analyst on Apex Legends sat tired of these layoffs. Man,
losing friends at worked is soft up? Yeah, respond build engineer Tyler
Owans, that's who you mentioned, I think. Yeah. So this is
on top of the layoffs that happened a couple of weeks ago. And at
that time it was a EA's laying off five percent of people, and I
remember mentioning like I thought more would happen because I knew a lot of that
was in the consultation period in places like Europe where they have those sorts of
things like the UK has, you know, you can't just lay people off.
You got to go in this consultation and talk to the government and explain
what's going on. So it's like once they got through that period they probably
cut some most jobs that this doesn't seem to be that. This just seems
to be there are more people we need to lay off. Let some people
around here that we could have cut in the last round. I don't know.
Apex Legends again, is something that they are looking at as not being
able to reach the heights it was once at. They aren't looking at it
in terms of this is EA. They look at at Apex Legends and like
it's not going to necessarily grow. We're just trying to extract as much value
from it as possible. And in their opinion, I guess what that means
is have fewer people making stuff for the game, and so you have fewer
people you have to pay. And again that's just it's just nuts because Apex
Legends is something you could definitely keep going for much longer, and they just
talked about how they're going to it's gonna like the launcher is gonna have a
ton more stuff in there, It's going to grow beyond the confines of Battle
Royale. I'm not really buying it, which you know, we kind of
weren't buying it any anyhow, because we already knew that titan Fall Legends,
which was effectively titan Fall three, they were making that to be a part
of Apex Legends, similar to what they're talking about now. They canceled that,
which everyone was into what they we're making with that, they canceled that.
So it's like, Okay, they're already looking at looka, well,
this isn't worth it. The Apex Legends is going to make enough money back
for that. So when they talk about we're going to continue supporting Apex Legends
and growing it in different ways at feels like lip service at best. All
Right, I just don't know how. God, the job pool is so
vast and wide now, yep, and it's going to uh yeah, this
is gonna it's gonna be rough out there because there's a lot of talented people
going for the same jobs and it's you know, it's not like if you
don't have a name, if you don't have a big executive producer, director,
senior developer credit on shipping a major game. Like if you if you
got laid off from Riot and you worked on League Legends, you're gonna have
a little bit easier time. But these days, even those people are going
to struggle to get investments to start up their own studios. So yeah,
it's it's a lot of people are going to end up out of the video
game industry, is what it feels like. And that's just that just stinks,
all right. Whole question from yesterday is Mega Man important? I'm going
to refresh that real quick, because you get three thousand votes and I voted
yes, and so did sixty four percent of respondents. Mike breath there,
my tummy started hurting. I was I was hoping he wouldn't get too mad.
I think Mega Man is important. I don't know how important it is
that to like Capcom's game making strategy, but I think as an icon,
as a a mascot, it's very important and it can be important to games,
probably just not as important as Monster Hunter or Resident Evil these days.
Next Poole question, for tomorrow Friday, Dregs Day. Have you ever heard
of Monopoly Go? Have you heard of Monopoly Go? Yes or no?
Answer that question? Don't count it if you heard it on the show?
Was the first place you ever heard it? Say? Now, I appreciate
that. We will discuss the results of that though on Game mess Mornings here
on Giant Bomb tomorrow. Speaking to Giant Bomb, Jan, what do we
have going on on the website. We are going to attempt to throw it
down on a Thursday night. We'll see what happen afternoon with Star Wars Battlefront,
specifically the PC version. I understand that there's a very small amount of
servers available, which, hey, you know, I make a custom server
because I'm paying for one for Power World. Still grub stopped paying for the
custom server and power it was a three month thing, so it hasn't expired
yet. That's what it is. I mean, I shouldn't have paid I
shouldn't have bought three months in the first place. Jan, But hey,
no, no, no, no, no no, that was a mistake.
A voicemail dumb truck popping off Later today tomorrow, another episode of Games
Mornings, as well as an episode of UPF where we were doing a Bolatrouh
seeded run and then BC we are as well to cap off the week,
or we'll talk about wrestling games. Talk about them wrestling games, all right,
I think that's going to do it. Jane, thank you so interested
today talk with me about video games. I really appreciate it. It's the
only way to start a Thursday grub. And thank you all out there for
listening. You're the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a
good one, take care of yourself and goodbye.