GrubbSnax 32: Doom Masters, Funky Cortana, and the Ubisoft Mothership

Yeah, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this. I'm Jeff
grob I right for GamesBeat dot com. I do grub snacks here on giant
Bomb. And today we're gonna talk about video games. We've decided that that's
how we are going to approach this show today. Sometimes we talk about,
you know, knitting. Sometimes we talk about technology, the latest in self
driving cars. Today we're going with video games. And I've got a list
of stuff to talk about, some interesting things, some tidbits that are in
my not in my area of expertise. So we're gonna firmly like to say
that a lot of these are just in the firmly and the rumor category,
the quarterman category. But I still I think it's okay to bring them to
you and and we'll we'll talk about them here in a second. After that,
though, I'm gonna answer your questions. And if you want me to
answer your questions, all you have to do is hit to ask a question
button, the button here at the top of the page. It'll pop up
with a little thing that enables you to just say, hey, send this
the staff. I'll get the question. I'll be able to answer it and
we'll take on as many of those as we can in the second half of
the show. Okay, let's see here, I am going to get to
my list. Yes, there it is, let's get into it. So
for grub Snacks thirty two, I talked about last week how the Masters of
Doom series might be dead. We hadn't heard anything about it for a long
time. Was able to look into this a little bit after getting sammfo from
someone and but it's like, hey, as it might still be in production
actually, and it might actually be in full production. One of the ways
you could tell that is if you go to the IMDb page for it.
One of the recent additions is they are hiring the kind of people that you
only hire or you know they're and they're giving credit to people you'll only give
credit to if it's gone into production. And that happened recently. So it
seems like Bore making Masters of Doom right now. That's that's what's happening right
now. So we can expect to see that series. I don't know when.
See this is not my erie expertise, but I mean this sounds this
sounds right to me, and it's cool. I'm glad that they're actually gonna
get through, get through with it and actually complete it hopefully, and then
you know, I guess it seems like with Hollywood and TV, even at
this point things can go wrong, But once you're shooting it, I would
imagine, and just based on like, you know, keeping an ear open
to movies that I like. Once that's in the production, that's like past
the development health stage, right usually you know, again this is I don't
know this stuff fully, but if anyone has any insight in that, I
would love to hear it. Just let me know. Get me on you
know, dm me on Twitter. That's a great way to do it.
Speaking of television shows and video games, that Halo series is coming out,
right, have you seen that that Halo series is looking like it's uh,
well, it's looking like a Halo show. I don't know. I'm split
on it. I think some parts look really good. I think Cortana looks
funky, and I think everyone sort of fixating on Cortana, which looks really
bad. But I don't know. I thought some of the alien model designs
were looking really good. Overall, looks it just looks like a very It
looks like they are spending a lot of money on it. But one thing
they're definitely spending a lot of money on is the marketing campaign for this,
for this show, And one of the reasons they're doing this is because Paramount
Plus thinks it's going to be a big deal. Now, let's be clear
that does not necessarily think that they think it's going to be a very good
show. That's not what this means. They are. And this is where
we're at with I think with movies. I've talked about this with Netflix before
a little bit and again not my area of expertise, but this much I
understand there's there's a big push of getting people over the hump to subscribe,
like that is the hard thing to do, and after that, like keeping
people subscribed, making good shows for people who are going to be loyal scribers
for a long time. That's you emphasize that a little bit less because the
hard part is getting people to put in their credit card the first time.
Paramount believes that this Halo show has the power to do that, at least
with a demographic that is, it has fallen way behind with the average numbers
for Paramount Plus. And I think you could probably guess this. I mean
it's not exactly Spring Chickens. It's not exactly young UN's run around talking about
their Paramount plus subscription and in CIS or whatever they're watching on there, it
is much more for it. The audience that has begun to subscribe to it
is older, and Paramount is looking for ways to bring in that younger demo
and that they think Halo is key to that, or at least they believe
Halo can be key to that, And so they're spending a lot of money
on the marketing campaign and they get the very least. It means we probably
get two seasons, two seasons of the show kind of regardless of how good
it is. But I mean, I suppose of it completely those out and
no one watches it, then maybe not so movement out of you be soft.
So they We're gonna talk a little bit about Ubisoft's overall strategy here in
a second, something that we could sort of put some terminology too, to
the way that they've been, you know, making games recently, as opposed
to the way the ways they were making games at the beginning of the last
decade or whatever. We'll get into that in a second. First, though,
Uh, some upcoming games. Someone asked about Roller Champions I believe a
few weeks ago. That might have been on one of my other shows.
I can't remember, but someone asked about Roller Champions out of Ubisoft, that
is their their Roller Derby game. Uh, well, that's coming soon.
It feels like I asked around. It could come out. They might have
announced this honestly by now, and I might have just missed it. And
if they have, that's fine. What really we're talking about how Ubisoft is
thinking about making stuff. But if if they haven't, I believe it could
come out as soon as this month. So if if you if you're a
big Roller Derby fan, if you're super into that stuff, you like watching
people do the whip and stuff, and yeah, that you're gonna get a
chance to play that game here very soon. Okay, so Roller Champions is
coming out soon. I think maybe by the end of this month. It
could slip around. These are the kinds of things where they are looking at
ways to have smaller satellite games. They're looking at ways to have they wouldn't
have big mothership games here. Okay, let's talk about the strategy four.
Most of the last like fifteen years, you besoft has done a strategy of
big blueprint games and these are games that falled that fell under certain brands,
and they would they would all use the same blueprint, so you would get
Sassin's Creed every year, you would get a far Cry almost every year.
You get a few other things almost every year. The big, the big
change happened in around twenty eighteen, and they're they're using a strategy basically what
they call a mothership and satellite strategy. So instead of going with a blueprint
thing where they have annualized major games coming out, you know, really frequently,
they want to have bigger, longer lasting service games and these are big
live service games, and then underneath those big live service games would be satellite
projects that are smaller that can fit into that brand, and they would come
out more frequently but be smaller. So like I believe that there's going to
be another Siege game here coming out, like another game under the Siege brand
that's going to get teased and tested here pretty soon. Whether or not that
turns in anything major, I don't know, but that that's not exactly how
they're like, that doesn't matter so much. They are just they want to
keep throwing stuff at the wall, these smaller satellite games under this siege umbrella,
and see is gonna just keep being siege for years and years and years.
That is what they're trying to do now with Assassin's Creed and with with
with Far Cry. But yeah, like the next one we hear like Assassin's
Creed is going to be more live servicey, right, this is what they're
going for. They want to have Assassin's Creed be this live service mother ship
and then maybe underneath that there can be satellites that come off of Assassin's Creed
and not necessarily all just be in this live service game. There could be
other ways to engage with Assassin's Creed beyond this mothership live service project. I'm
like, what does that mean for like how the games are gonna play?
I mean, I think you know, overall, this probably just means that
they're going to try to build these games in a way that you could play
them forever. I mean, you get it. Most of you understand like
what it means to switch to a live service model, and you know whether
or not that could work with Assassin's Creed, it sort of doesn't matter.
They're going to try it because this is the strategy that they've chosen, and
they want to apply it across the board's. To me, it seems a
little odd because wouldn't you want to just kind of do what's best for each
individual game instead of saying, hey, we have one strategy and no matter
what we're making, we're applying it. Applying that strategy to these games,
I would think that, you know, having sort of a more granular decision
making process would be better. But overall, they seem to think that this
is the way they should go about things. Say, hey, we want
to have one model that works for everything, and if it's working for one
game, it could work for other stuff. So I think they're going to
stick with this for quite some time. They've been doing this since about twenty
eighteen is when that change happened from the blueprint model over to the mother ship
and satellite model. Okay, let's see here. So in the fallout of
the acquisition of the Microsoft Activision Blizzard acquisition, I mentioned that studios and publishers
were freaking out, and that's still true, and I can't get the details
on it, And that gives me the hunch that the kind of freakouts that
are happening right now do involve more mergers and acquisitions, because that's the kind
of thing that is very hard to suss out. So this is speculation,
but normally I feel like if it was, oh, we're going to double
down, or we're gonna change our strategy, like if Ubisoft, we're gonna
chang our strategy, or if we're EA, we're gonna we're gonna go out
and we're gonna focus on a bunch of other games or something like, I
would hear that kind of stuff. That's the kind of stuff that it's pretty
easy to like suss out. When it's mergers and acquisitions. It's a lot
more serious that people that know it's a smaller group, and if that stuff
leaks out, it would be very easy, I think, to track it
down. So I haven't heard, so it hasn't leaked out, basically,
it's what I'm saying. But that makes me think, like circumstantially people are
considering this stuff across the board. I know that there's meetings happening many of
these publishers still, and I know many of them think that they need to
do something, like they need to be thinking ten years down the line and
how they're going to be competing in a changing industry. And so that's when
like when I think what Jeff Keeley comes out and says, hey, I've
heard there's other deals in the works. I think he's generally right. I
don't know if he knows the details. I have no idea, but he's
almost certainly right. Stuff is gonna keep happening, Stuff's gonna keep changing.
We could talk about that. I think I saw some questions about this about
what is going to happen with so sort of the temperament of the industry and
the temperament of the mergers and acquisitions market and what it means for the future.
Let's see. And then another thing we talked about recently Mike moving around
from Like if let's say, if you're at Activision Blizzard and you get the
the acquisition goes through, and now you're there and you want to go work
at Bethesda, is that now like just transferring departments? And it's not.
It's not exactly that way. So I got a little bit info on this.
If you were to say go to Bethesda right now and you worked at
Microsoft, you would lose some key stuff, Like you would probably lose like
unvested stock. If you had tenure at Microsoft, you would probably lose that
because they have their own pay structures, their own hiring process, and that
stuff is separate. Right now, that's probably gonna it's gonna remain even more
true probably for Activision Blizzard. As Activision Blizzard is this like bigger behemoth thing,
these things will the edges on these processes will will get sanded off over
time, and there will probably be like you know, connected connective tissue built
between these companies to make it easier to do this stuff in the future.
But for right now, if you want to move from one of these other
independent structures underneath Microsoft, it's going to be there's going to be some headaches
involved with that. Now, this is not that's not how it works.
If you want to go from three four three to the Coalition or something like
that, if it's an internal Xbox studio, they're all under the same Microsoft
umbrella, and that that makes it very easy to move around. But it's
not the same for three four three to Bethestic Game Studios or Bethesta Game Studios
to Infinity Ward. That stuff's gonna have its own issues, all right.
I think I think that that it's probably going to do it for now for
what I've brought. But let's get to the questions. There's a lot to
talk about. I mean, honestly, it's just a it's a bit a
wild couple of weeks of news. But I'm sure we'll get a lot of
questions about everything that's happening. Let's get into that right now. All right,
I'm scrolling down to the beginning. Take a look at these questions here.
We'll start with sneeds, feed and seed. My theory is that NFTs
will eventually invest invest My theories is that NFTs will eventually invest live service games
as a way to trick people into lost it into finding value in the time
sync. They won't be called NFTs, but we'll be disguised with the phrase
like play to earn or play and earned. Is there any credence to this
theory? Yeah, I mean I think that that's kind of what happened with
loot boxes, right, loop boxes are I mean, they still exist in
some games, but they're called card packs, and it's like that slight different
branding kind of helps cover up what's happening there a little bit. I would
say that there's a chance that n NFTs are just no matter what, going
to find their way into some games. I think it's what's more likely is
the people who are like pitching NFTs because they believe in crypto or whatever,
and this is their way of getting rich, they'll probably bounce off and be
lost. Like we won't. We won't be dealing with them for very much
longer. In gaming, it feels like, but the idea of a secondary
market where people can buy and sell stuff and the people who run the market
always get a cut, I mean that idea is still appealing to everyone who
makes you know, all the publishers that publish games. You know. That's
why we saw the real market auction house or real money auction house in Gabblo
three. Like there's a lot of reasons why that. Because you could just
have this like what they call self sustaining thing. It wouldn't really be self
sustaining, but having a market that is operating on its own and you just
always get a cut up and like the people who are in your game or
sort of fueling that, there's a lot of chance to make a lot of
money from that stuff. But it's as we saw with the Oblo very hard
to pull that off, very hard to do that in a way that doesn't
sort of sully the game. So I think we'll see, we'll continue see
attempts at that, but you don't need NFTs to do it. So I
think that NFT relationship in gaming is I mean, hopefully dead on arrival.
It seems like it is. It seems like it would be very hard to
try to do that into any sort of game that we game, from any
sort of game company that we recognize the name of. It feels like the
kind of thing that, if it's going to happen, it's going to have
to come from the outside. And we look around in a couple of years
and we'll say, hey, whoa, this game was one of the biggest
games in the world, and no one ever talks about it in my circles.
What is this thing? Oh, it's some NFT company making billions of
dollars, you know, sort of ripping people off whatever. From Slane mcgawsome.
Do you think Pokemon adapt Do you think Pokemon adapt the gameplay from the
Legends games into their mainline games or will they just go back to the boring
normal gameplay. Yeah, I think they're gonna have to bring some of the
concepts from Legends into the main games. Also, I think there's a strong
chance that Legends Arcis gameplay just becomes the normal mainline games down the line.
It feels like we could be waiting for a swap there. And I mean,
and then maybe at that point, like like Let's Go takes over as
the like alternative, like they start remaking some of the games and the Let's
Go way, But I don't know. I think that they definitely need to
modernize, even like if they keep on with the mainline games whatever it is.
And I'm not a Pokemon expert. I like the games, but I'm
not like huge in the Pokemon so I'm speaking on my butt here a little
bit. But I like seeing the Pokemon on the field and being able to
go out and deciding whether or I want to engage with them to capture them.
That's something they need to keep I think from Legends Archaeus makes the game
feel a lot more modern and then kind of refocusing on what you're even doing
capturing them all being the main focus of Legends Archias also is a very good
choice. It's a very good way to engage with the Pokemon game. They
should bring that stuff over to the mainline games for sure. They're gonna keep
remaking the old ones, though, and how they how they decide to do
that, I'll be interested to see. I think, you know, the
Let's Go games have sold pretty well, but so you know, so is
Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. So we'll see favorite Simpsons and King of the
Hill episodes. Oh, I don't know, it's been a long time since
I've watched either of those shows. I like the I always think about the
one where Bobby is gonna is gonna smoke, and so Hank takes him up
back to like show them like, hey, we're gonna ke smoke this whole
pack, I think, or whatever. But the part I always remember is
Bobby. You know, Bobby's weird, So he's smoking, he's holding a
cigarette like this, and then Hank is always like, you're you're you're holding
a cigarette like a god damn Nazi, and it's I don't know, that
always gets me. I always think about that, but like, you're holding
me like a goddamn Nazi. And then a favorite Simpsons episode I don't know,
I like all the Treehouse of horror ones. I don't know. I'm
trying to think of like a specific one. Nothing's coming to mind right now.
I just think if it was Simpsons bits more than anything else, that's
kind of how I like, I wouldn't you know. The Simpsons episodes always
takes such fast right turns, like five minutes into the episode that it's often
I can't remember, like what happened, like what thing is in what episode
because it's, oh, those two things were in the same episode. Weird.
But I don't know right now. Most recently I was watching King of
the Hills, so it's my favorite anime of course. From mock Bucket sixty
two, Hey grub is sides Cruising Blast being snubbed on Giant Bombs Game of
the Year list top to bottom. How do you like their list? I
like it pretty good. I think it was a pretty good list. I
didn't play Chickory Colorful Tale, so I you know, there's my opinion on
that. I didn't play it. I thought Halo. Halo was our game
of the year over a games Beat, uh like our overall game year.
It was in on my it was at number one on my list, but
it was like number three or four, I would have been like just as
happy with Halo being number one. I think Halo is uh deservedly getting a
lot of accolades for its relationship between like the player and the physics and the
grappling hook and sort of unlocking that stuff in the campaign and and then unlocking
the obviously the sandbox and multiplayer, but also it's had some issues recently with
big team battles, so kind of feels weird to award it right at this
moment. So yeah, I don't know, And then uh, I thought
that I don't. I thought they gotta Like I'm glad that Jan did his
last stand to get Guardians of the Galaxy on the top ten. I've really
come around on that game. I was very and it was he his defense
was perfect. It was really well said. So I was very happy with
that from Slay Mac awesome. What do you think about season three of The
Mandalorians so far? I didn't watch last night's episode of Boba Fett, so
I did see. I was like it was on techtok, I think,
and I saw a scene that it was already up there, like I'm like,
oh wait, what is happening here? It was like yeah, it
was. It was one of those things it's like, oh my god,
I can't believe I'm actually I just seeing this, Like I don't remember this.
It's like, oh, this must have just happened in Boba Fett,
and it's wild that they're actually going there. So the last episode with Boba
Fett was very good. Our websitry with Mandalorian with Jin Jarin was very good.
It was kind of better than anything that actually did in Mandalorian. So
I don't know, I'm liking it just fine. From casual dear seen your
snacks? What do you think about the Odin pro handheld emulation device? Almost
bought one until I remembered I've got a steam Deck free ordered PS Vampire Survivors
kind of rules, like you're just like basically writing my life right now.
I I had to stop myself from ordering it, literally because I'm like,
I've got a steam Deck pre ordered. I'm Q one, you know,
who knows. I'm like still trying to like track down a review unit,
of course, because it's like, you know, that's the job, So
yeah, you know, I would love to get one early. But regardless
Q one, I'm ready to pay the money, whether I get a review
it or not, I'm paying the money to get one, So it's like,
what am I doing here? Like, I think as good as the
Odin Pro handheld, which for people don't know, it's it's an Android based
emulation device, just like a million of it. It's like one of these,
but even better. It's got a bigger screen of a really good processor.
It's like using the one of the latest snap Dragon CPUs, which is
impressive. And yeah, but it's like two two hundred and fifty dollars.
It's expensive. I've still was going to get it, and then I'm like,
wait, I think a steam Deck is gonna be like, it's gonna
be even more capable, even like with emulation stuff like power. The power
that is in the steam Deck actually is way more than is in any of
these other handhelds. So what am I doing? I really got to stop
doing these things to myself. From which thirty two long, well Sony Slash,
Microsoft released pro consoles before any of us have the base models. Excuse
me, I think that the likelihood of a pro model drops every single day
because of what is happening with the availability of these base models. They we
will continue to get revisions like they're gonna do their stealth revisions to try to
drop the cost, make it easier to source all the parts, make it
cheaper and faster to build these things. They're gonna keep doing that stuff,
especially on the PlayStation side. They've already done a lot of that. They
really over engineered the PS five in terms of not in a bad way.
I mean it was if you think it's ugly, then yes, in a
bad way. But I think it's I think it looks great. But they
overengineered it, and that's why they started like stripping stuff out. But they
are going to probably do a slim model and that'll be it. Because first
of all, these systems are very good. You know, we say it
every week, I feel like, but they are in a much much,
much better position relative to where the PS four and the Xbox One were at
this point in their life cycle, where we were already talking about resolution of
sacrifices and going down from not even like ten ADP some games are eight hundred
P or seven twenty P and thirty frames per second, and you know all
this like that, that was that's a that was a whole other mess.
This right now, we are in a much better situation with with this hardware.
And it's the kind of thing where like the Switch, the Switch was
probably supposed to get a pro model, but it has sold so well and
it and they could do other sorts of revisions to it to keep people buying
it that in the end, it's like it didn't make a ton of sense.
I still think it probably would have made some sense, like especially getting
the foundries ready for the next gen and sort of getting in line and getting
a smaller process ready and then shifting those foundries to the newer architecture and a
smaller process in terms of the chip set. But you know, clearly there's
a lot of other factors there, and so Nintendo's like, we're just not
going to do a pro model. And I think at this point they're definitely
just not going to do a pro model. So so then you know,
I think the same thing is going to happen with PS five and Xbox Series
X, where they will they'll shrink the systems, so they will do will
put out revisions, they will put out models with more more storage, definitely,
but they don't. I do not think we're actually going to get pro
models this time. Around. Just based on the trajectory of how these things
are selling, you could probably just revise it and then get a similar boost
of sales. Especially, it's like demand is going to remain high for years,
and as more and more games come out, it's gonna like replenish that
demand because people are gonna be like, Okay, now I'm gonna get in
because there's all these awesome games. There's all these used games on the market
of stuff that I miss. Godivor Ragnarok is like out there used for you
know, thirty bucks. If I get in now, all this awesome library
of stuff, and so people come in on the second half, and yeah,
the demand's gonna stay high throughout this generation, just like it has for
the Switch. So I think that it's unlikely we will get a pro model
at least the way things look today. All right, let's see here from
Dixie Dean a eighty two Time for a Boba fet check and what a weird
show, right. I really liked the last two epps, but they were
not Boba. Yeah, I have not seen this most recent one, but
I do understand that it's not Boba because of the scene I saw, And
yeah, that's it's it's wild that they're just by. Here's what I thought
it was gonna happen, and we'll do it like this quick for people.
I know this is not a TV show show, but I thought they were
gonna have Mando sort of go do his thing to meet up with with Grogu
with with baby Yoda off screen, and that would have been the first episode
of Mandalorian season three and we would have like seen a flashback of him doing
that and now like where he's at with everything. Yeah, it would have
been I would have been interested in that. But apparently they're just doing it
now, which is cool too. I guess that's cool. From Showroo,
what's your opinion on the original chicken sandwich from Burger King? I don't know,
but I did get their spicy chicken sandwich the other day. Burger King
is the closest fast food restaurant to me. Also, it's one of the
first jobs I ever had. I worked at Kroger for a little bit when
I got suspended from school. Remember that story I told that I got told
that so I got suspended. Well, I got a job at Kroger to
kill the time. I was like fourteen, and they only let me work
a couple of hours a day. I was at fourteen, I was sixteen.
I don't know, I can't remember. It was a long time ago.
I don't remember the details. But then one day my friend got a
job of Burger King. As it was just opening up, It's like,
you want to come work. I'm like, yeah, sure. So I
just like quit Kroger and went over there. And so I have like a
I have a soft spot in my heart for Burger King in a weird way.
I've worked at some other restaurant like Jimmy John's. Don't have a soft
spot in my Heartford Jimmy John's. But Burger King it was whatever. And
so yeah, I tried the spicy chicken sandwich and it was pretty good.
It was it was pretty good, like the sauce on it, like it's
definitely it's definitely Burger King where it's sort of try hard. Does that make
sense? Like Burger King tries to hit you with a lot of flavors,
I think to distract you from the fact that you're eating Burger King. And
they do that with all their stuff. They're like, listen, the whopper,
we are just gonna put fucking everything on this thing, and here's some
mayonnaise and also some ketchup and mustard, and like they just like want to
distract you from the fact that you're eating I think, from the fact that
you're eating Burger King. The sandwich. The chicken sandwich has the same thing,
where like the sauce and the spices and the chicken and the chicken breading
are very very like strong, but it's also pretty good. It's good.
The incidents, Yes, listen, I forgot it was in there. I
know. I feel like I didn't say that before. I think I said
that on the podcast. I didn't. I was playing with it the day
before, the airsoft gun at a friend's house because it's a toy. It's
a toy, and so we were just playing with it and I was walking
home from his house after school. So I just put in my backpack because
it also looks real. I didn't want to be like walking down my neighborhood
holding a glock. I didn't want that to happen either. It was the
suburbs, but I still feel like I probably would have got shot. And
so yeah, I put in my backpack and then I have I don't have
object permanence. That's when I was out of sight. Out of mind is
the thing that rules my life, and so when in there I forgot it
existed, realizing now like another moment of my life just completely defined by adh
Y y Uh from Axel one five nine. Hey, mister snacks Man,
mister snacks Man, any chance Code Masters will get the Need for Speed franchise
just started messing messing around with dirt five and it's super fun. There is
a chance that could happen, but you know, they do have their need
for Speed teams. I think I think what's likely to happen is maybe Code
Masters UH brings in the team that was working on Need for Speed and gives
them guidance in the same way that Sony says that uh Bungee is going to
provide live services guidance to all of its teams, so UH sharing. You
know, code Masters under EA, now EA is very much in that in
a similar mindset of we are going to look at the studios that are best
at doing things, and we are not just going to put them in charge,
but we're going to sort of let them define how we approach making those
kinds of games across the board at all of our studios that they've done that
with Respond in terms of just their overall structure of how to make games,
like we want everyone to be like respond. I think, you know,
making racing games and like and that stuff. I think they will definitely try
to pass on some of that knowledge from Codemasters. That'll definitely happen from Hey,
it's Dale, excuse me god, sorry? Will there ever be another
MegaMan game? Uh? We talked about this a little bit before. Uh.
Mike Manati is a big MegaMan fan, and he was at a an
E three party. I think he's told this story now so I could be
like more open about it. And I think he saw this like Dean Takahashi,
who's like, you know, he knows all these people. He's been
working a long time, so they like know him, they want to talk
to him. They come to his events, our games beat events, and
he was talking to the CEO of Capcom and uh, or if the president
of Capcom. I wasn't there. I don't know someone someone important or Capcom
and uh he was like there were yeah, yeah, congratulations on your good
year or whatever like and then Mike's like, oh man, I'm the biggest
Mega Man fan. He is. He's a huge MegaMan fan. He like,
you freaked out when Mega Man got announced for Smash Like, he's that
guy. And this was right after Mega Man eleven came out, and so
he was like and like, I hope MegaMan eleven did great, so we'll
get more something along those lines. I'm paraphrasing again. And the CEO was
like, oh, good luck with that, because I can't say but didn't
exactly do that, like and again in so many words, but he was
basically like, no, it didn't solve very well, and we're not very
interested in doing more of those kinds of Mega Man games. I think that,
uh. I think MegaMan eleven was okay. I think if they were
to try to like keep keep going at the Mega Man sort of idea,
they would find something that would work. I just don't know how interested they
are in doing that because they found so much success with Resident Evil and Monster
Hunter and they want their resources focused on these big franchises that are already succeeding.
So that that's kind of We will get another Mega Man game. We
absolutely will. What kind of Mega Man game, I don't know, but
it will get another one. From Slane MCAUSM. What's Jeff Bacilar's freaking deal?
I don't know. It's those It's those East Coast vibes, right,
was East Coast guys there? Yeah, I know there's something about them.
They you know, they got their uh, they got their fancy beers and
their pinball machines, all of them. This is exactly what all of them
are, like, my friend, Yes, I see you all right.
From It's just Kevin V. Hey, mister snacks, is there any update
on any upcoming fighters? Street Fighter six, MK twelve, et cetera.
Also, thanks for doing this on the weekly. Absolutely thanks for tuning in
weekly. I appreciate it. I you know, there was that tease,
that joke about m MK twelve out of that twin account. Do we talk
about this last week? We might have talked about this last week. I
don't know. But you know, obviously there's some games coming. I mean,
whether or not they're coming in anytime soon. I mean I think Mortal
Kombat twelve is imminent. That's still my position on that. Where they're I
think they're making Mortal Combat twelve instead of Infamous, But who knows. Like
again, I could be wrong, I would love to be wrong. Inmpamous
games are fun and I know a lot of people love them and they want
to see a third one. I'm saying Injustice, God, oh, Injustice.
I do that every time with those games. Uh. And then Streetwriter
six is in another it's I have no idea, but they'll make it eventually,
but I don't know. It feels like to say that's coming soon,
which is maybe, but I doubt it. It seems like the kind of
thing where they're gonna take their time and come back to it. Capcom does
not need to rush out Streetwriter six, just like from a financial standpoint,
but from like the infrastructure of its Capcom Pro Tour and all this other off
It's like it's fighting game scene and keeping those people satisfied and engaged that is
Uh, that is going to take a little bit of time or I'm sorry,
that's gonna be They're gonna want to like do stump do something to keep
those players happy, so they have to like balance this thing of like,
listen, we don't have to rush out and make Street Fighters six. We're
making enough money focused on these other things. But we have spent, we
have like sunk a lot of cost into building up the infrastructure around the street
Fighter games. Street Fighter fives at the end of its life, obviously,
we need to sort of find a replacement for it, and I figure out
what that looks like sooner rather than later, So they're gonna have to balance
this stuff out. I would imagine we're probably going to get one in the
next two years, but that's just a guess. Feature creep. Microsoft has
been building it's good guy image for a while, but buying studios and making
things exclusive seems antithetical to that. Is Sony handle of Bungee, keeping stuff
multiplat, paying to retain talent, just them trying to become the good guy.
I always I always kind of feel like people should diminish this this a
good guy narrative all like across the board our relationships to these companies or shouldn't
be good good guy, bad guy and all this stuff. We should remember
at all times they're just companies who want our money and do they do?
Have they earned their money by producing something that I want that's me And I'm
like always looking at it from that perspective. So always feels weird to me
when people are select to really emphasize and that's not what you're doing here,
Future Creep. But when people like make a big deal of them Microsoft being
the good guy, now they have done that. They have tried to portray
themselves as this benevolent actor in the space that is growing to make the right
decision and sort of not be evil in the way that old Google was.
The same way as this this alternative to some of the other tech companies now
now look at them. I think that buying studios and making things exclusive is
not antithetical to being the good guy. Taking on the risk of buying a
big company and being the one willing to give them the money to make as
good as games as possible and to make games that they weren't able to make
on their own. That stuff could still be viewed as good guy actions,
I think. But you're you're right that Sony is taking a different and even
more friendlier tactic. But you're saying, Bungee's gonna be multi platform. We're
giving these people a lot of money to stay around. That's not why they're
doing those things, though. They're doing those things because, first of all,
Bungee, I'm pretty sure demanded those things in exchange for being acquired like
that was like conditional on the agreement of saying, hey, you you know
we especially the remaining remaining multi platform and having independence and stuff like that.
That stuff was like Bungee wanted that stuff. So they got paid and they
got their demands met. The paying money to keep people around thing that is
very much in Sony's best interest, because the whole point of this is Sony
is you know, we say, one of the things what's Sony good at.
They're really good at making hardware. They're very good at making big triple
A narrative action adventure games. Right. The thing they're actually best at is
is sharing technology and sharing talent and sharing information among its studios. And this
is something like when when God of War came out, it was like so
obvious that it had learned so much from all the other games that had come
out recently. And one of the big things is like, Okay, players
can get lost easily. We want we spend a lot of money on these
games. We want as many people to be to be able to play them
as possible. We want them to be able to come in and feel comfortable
and not like they're lost with them, to feel competent. So what do
you do. Well, you should have an AI character in your games.
And if you look at how many Mike, I'm sorry, how many Sony
games where like you're playing this big badass but you have someone playing alongside you
who is ostensibly sowing that you're taking care of But if you look at it,
really they're taking care of you. They are going and finding stuff.
They're running ahead of you and showing you which way to go down the path.
If you're in a big open space and there's like one little exit,
well, they're going to stand over by the exit for you. If they
it's definitely like they are just taking you on a protection a mission or whatever
where it's like, you know, there are going to make sure that you
stay safe and make sure you don't get lost in all this other stuff.
If you are standing around too long, like hey, look at that ledge
over there, isn't that interesting? Or if you miss a treasure, they
might mention it or something like that. And that's something that like if you
look across like the last five, six, seven years of PlayStation games,
you could see like that stuff starting in Uncharted games and a few others and
really getting refined and really the presentation of it getting refined with God of War,
where you are the father and this is the son, and you are
like, you are taking care of this kid, but really it never It
almost always is the kid taking care of the player. And that's actually the
relationship there. And so the way that that Sony is very good at like
holding these pow wows internally and saying, hey, we've found that this works
and this is the best practice, and we want to share this among all
our studios, and we're going to sort of like make it not just a
guideline but a rule of when you're making games, they should have these features
in there to get the best experience for the player. And so when you
acquire Bungee and you're saying, hey, we are making ten live service games
by twenty twenty six, what like you know, Okay, yeah, we
know we're gonna be We're Sony, we are very good at making games.
We're gonna be able to figure this stuff out. But Bungee's right there.
And if we get pay them, you know, to acquire them, but
then pay them to stick around and be part of this internal learning organization,
that is going to be really worth it to us. That's actually where the
value comes from. And so it's not necessarily about being a good guy.
It's about making the best games possible that can make the most money possible and
make it a lot of money. But that's what Microsoft is doing as well.
No one here is really trying to be a good guy. They're just
trying to put a position themselves in a market that very much values that good
guy image. Gamers are very much want to be like on the side of
the of the company, that is, like in the on the right side
of history or something like that. We're we're paying a lot of attention.
It's not like Sereal, where I don't know the difference between Kellogg's and Posts
or whatever. Like I just go and I look at the box, and
the box says some like attractive pictures on it. The marketing has worked,
and that's all it took. Gaming is a lot more challenging, where we're
very tuning in the way these companies behave and so we want we do want
to perceive them as good. But that is again it's just as much it's
still just part of the marketing. Christian Christian Argentina says tell us about curling
listen. I don't need to tell you about curling. Curlin is gonna be
on TV, I think start very soon, if not already. Curling is
a It's a beautiful game because it's like if the dupas Is at your local
bowling league were world class athletes but also still just looked like bowlers from your
like local bowling league or whatever. And also like that's I love it when
they're from Canada or from like Minnesota, because they like have that very much.
They're very much stereotypical of those areas where they're just like very polite,
but then the you know, then they'll shout. They'll shouting their accent and
their accents very thick, like I can't do their accent, but I don't
know. Just throwing a giant stone down some ice and trying to get it
to land on the target and knocking other things out. It's like it's the
world's slowest paced sport and also yet somehow still so thrilling. I love it
all right. Sorry, I'm seeing this question about cruising Blast ketting stub again.
Just listen. It is a fun game. I don't know if cruiser
blast is a good game. I'll tell you what. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if it's a good game, it's fun. You put that
game in front of like I said, like on Christmas Day, you put
that that game in front of anyone, that'll be the game that people have
the most fun with just coming to the switch, sitting down, more than
Mario Party, more than Mario Kart, Like, because that game is just
gonna be a roller coaster ride and people are gonna have a good time with
it. And uh, and then you get to play as a frigging dinosaur
or ufo and it's it's it's silly fun. It's good. We're not good,
but it's fun. From the Easter Bunny. When Bungee broke off from
Activision, they said they wanted to be independent slash self published. Was this
just a end of relationship talking point? Has something changed between now and then?
Or was the price just right at the right time? You know,
making games is hard, Uh, working with Activision probably even harder. I
think there's a lot of factors that they did want to be independent and they
did want to self publish. But you know, those are there's the caveats
to both those points, like the asterisk that you could add to each of
those is they want to be independent from Activision. They want to self publish,
so the Activision isn't publishing their games. They did not want to work
like Activision just didn't believe in destiny anymore, and and bunch of you thought
they know what's right for the game and they wanted to be the ones in
charge of that of its destiny. I'm sorry, but I think they also
like probably believed believe those points overall. At the same time, you get
to a point where you are running this this big organization, working on this
big game, and you're trying to look and see what the future is going
to be, and it's like it's a slow slog to grow it into something
bigger and bigger and bigger. It would be nice if someone with a lot
of money could just come and pay you for the work you've done and acknowledge
it it's worth a lot of money. Let's say two billion dollars. And
that was kind of that was that sounded like they're asking price for a very
long time. That's around the price that I heard I heard some other think.
Nate from Nate the Hate was putting that number out there as well.
That that numbers saying like they were like, hey, two billion dollars and
we want to remain independent. And I think that a lot of discussions happened
around that, involving Xbox a few others. I mean people, people are
willing to have a lot of conversations because conversations are cheap. You could have
as much as many conversations as you want. Doesn't mean it was ever going
to turn into anything, but I think as the market started heat up and
Bungee realized they could probably get even more money, Sony was right there,
ready to go, and it was like that was the right price at the
right time. And if they were to look forward, if like once we
get past this this heated up market, who knows if Bungie ever would have
been worth this much money again, And who knows if it would have been
ever been able to have been in a situation where a company would have paid
them an extra like what was it? Was it like one point two billion
dollars UH for employee retention to keep the talent around because the talent is so
valuable, it's worth one point two billion dollars on its own, Like right,
right price, right time is absolutely the biggest factor here. That is,
that's true across the board for all of these acquisitions. Honestly, Black
Card Vinyl, it's twenty twenty two. Are we getting an Animorphs game?
There was an animals game for There had to be one for like game Boy
Color, right, Animmorphous game Boy. I'm just gonna put into that Animals
for game Boy Color from Cebropedia. Which could I read the Animorphous books right
now and get anything out of them. As a thirty eight almost thirty nine
year old man, I never read them as a kid. I thought they
looked hokey. I thought they looked cheesy, and so I was not not
into them, and I would have so instead I read Star Wars books.
Yeah, go play the game Boy Color one, all right, it's twenty
twenty two. You could have been playing the game Boy Color one this entire
time. Uh. Whether whether or not we get a new one not,
I don't know. But you can just get go get an analog pocket and
play the Animals game on there. It'll be like it's new. From sev
word. I always use too much olive oil when I cook, like a
teaspoon. Never seems like it's enough. But the amount I pour and is
always too much. Am I alone here? No? This is this has
got to be universal because yeah, like the you'll get a recipe and so
I put in a teaspoon in the pan and that'll cover the entire bottom.
I'm like, fuck, no, it's not what are you talking about.
I'm right here, I'm looking at the pan. It is not covering the
entire bottom. Now, maybe effort heats up and like it moves around,
maybe it would have covered it. But I'm inpatient. So yeah, I
put in more. I probably I probably put it in like an at least
a tablespoon. I put in a lot, and then it is also too
much. I agree, But whatever, it's olive oil. It's not gonna
like, it's not gonna hurt anything. Europeans just like chug that stuff.
That's why they're also skinny. That's that's science. That's that's how it works.
P J twenty four. How long do you think Harmonics are going to
support rock band with new DLC now that they've been bought by Epic. I
feel like I'm one of very few people that still plays the game. I
don't know. It feels like there should be no reason why they couldn't keep
going as they have been. I wonder if to Epic it might be worth
it to maintain those relationships. They have this this crew at Harmonics that has
been making these deals, like just keep them in place, like let them
build that stuff up and then find a use for like find other uses for
those songs and then see if you can negotiate that on the on the back
end. If I were Epic, I would like with the money amount of
money I have coming in trying to think about long term value and plays that
could could grow the metaverse that I'm building or whatever. Having a strong relationship
with the music industry seems like something that Epic would would value and want to
keep around. That's relation, but I think it's sound. Another one from
feature creep, How did the Switch manage to sell more than the PS two?
It hasn't sold more than the PS two yet it's it is Nintendo's best
selling home console so far, and so because that means it just outsold the
Wii. Now, of course it's a hybrid, but hybrids I mean both.
It's both a home console and a handheld. But it has outsold the
Wii, which was at like one hundred and one or one hundred and three
million, and the switches at one hundred and four million. What I don't
know if the numbers are, but PPS two is that like one hundred and
fifty million ish around there, so it's pretty far away from that. PS
four was at one hundred and eighteen hundred and twenty million or something like that.
So it'll get the PS four pretty soon within the next year and a
half. It seems like, you know, you know, whether or not
they're as long as they're able to keep up with demand for the system.
But in when talking to investors yesterday, fur Akawa, who was the president
of Nintendo, I that's right. He said that the switch is in the
middle of its life cycle stell and so it's not like they're not talking end
of life yet there. That means we're probably getting at least another two years.
It seems like sou it seems very likely that it's going to catch up
to the PS four. I mean, it seems inevitable. It's it's like
outpacing the PS four and then if if you know, if we don't get
a switch too, if we don't get a switch successor until let's see or
late twenty twenty three, early twenty twenty four. Uh, yeah, that's
gonna be. Yeah, that'd be like almost two years from now then.
Yeah, I would imagine that it could get pretty close to the PS two,
but probably not gonna beat it. I mean, you gotta keep in
mind, like it was just a whole different world back then. Uh PS
two's PS two got one hundred and fifty million because it's sold for like ten
years and it had like a windowed sort of life where it was very expensive,
but it was a DVD player and so it was and that like when
people looked at it that way as a DVD player, it was very affordable.
It was like way cheaper than everything else on the market. So people
would get the PS two and then all of a sudden, you know,
they'd get into games, and that was like a big gateway thing. But
that was like how people in North America and Japan and parts of Europe justified
it early on, and then as the thing went on, like okay,
so now it's getting it's get the prices coming down and now it's in the
you know, one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars range, and that allows
a lot more people in those big markets to get on board, families begin
to buy the system, and that's how that's how it still works now for
the most part, especially like something like the Switch, that's how it works
now, Like okay, but people buy it up front because they're like,
they're really into gaming, and then families get on in the second half,
and then there's a bunch of games and they can afford because they're used or
whatever, and that stuff is still works exactly the same. What's different now
is back then you would then have have emerging markets that you could go to
and you could have you could have like people with lower incomes, and you
could sell the system for one hundred dollars and you would still make a lot
of money because the games would still sell, and you would you would sell
the new FIFA and Madden every year, and people like the people who are
buying for one hundred dollars were very much into those games, and so like
there was this huge market that was just like, yeah, we want we
love gaming, but we also love our money and we want to hold on
to it because we don't have a lot of it, so we're gonna wait
until the very end. And then we'll jump on them. That doesn't really
happen anymore. That audience has they spend that budget on their smartphones and they
play free to play games and they're pretty much satisfied with that stuff. If
you are, if you don't have a lot of money but you have a
family, you're probably not actually still you're probably still not looking at a switch.
You're probably just looking at like, Okay, I have an old phone
line around, I'm gonna let my kid play with that. And that's like
financially, that's much that makes a lot more sense. And so that like
the phones who are play a lot of like that. That that the chieap
side of the council market, that long tail that the PS two used to
have. There's just that market's just gone because they've gone elsewhere. From ze
Kretz, hey, mister grubbed by the ghoulis, if you got transported to
a difficult time, would you prefer the past, the future, or an
alternate reality or an alternate president where Dan Reicher is president? Does Dan reicher
know me still? Because it like I feel like if Dan Reichert was president,
I don't I feel like he would be Weirdly ethical, he'd be very
much like, no, I'm not gonna give benefits just because you know you
you've played Mario Party with me before, although he should like, honestly,
that's like he I sacrificed a lot playing Mario Party with Dan Reicherd. Yeah,
I'll go with I'll go with an alternate president where Dan Reichert is president
because I want to see that. I mean, it's could it be worse?
It could be, but could it be worse? The pizza baring Thank
you for this great show. I always look forward to it. Thank you
the pizza Barren appreciate that. What are some companies you think share the same
DNA as Nintendo that they could acquire? Yeah, like I don't necessarily know
that that that's how they would look at it, the way that Nintendo is
gonna look at it. Is was what happened with one of their most recent
acquisitions, Next Level Games, the studio that made Luigi's Mansion three I wrote
about. I wrote a story this week that was explaining, like how we
got to this point with so many acquisitions and companies willing to spend so much
money on these studios and kind of pushing up the price for Bungee and paying
sixty nine billion dollars to get Activision blowser, Like, there's a fever pitch
that this market is in when it comes to acquisitions and how did we get
here? Well, there's a lot of factors, but really comes down to
a few key things. Are making companies more void, like making studios that
make games more valuable than they've ever been. And so the people that started
them are saying, hey, we could probably sell now and probably get near
or at the highest we're ever gonna get for our studio, so we want
to sell. And then on the other side, there is a hunger for
content, there's a hunger for long term growth that and these companies also have
a lot of money because they've been very successful over the last few years,
and you know, in Sony's case, they've been successful the entire generation.
And they have these these services that are just filling their coffers with a lot
of money, and so they have a lot of money to spend as well.
And so and they're not the only ones. Everyone else has a lot
of money to spend. So there's people looking at like, hey, okay,
we need to spend some of this money, and that pushes up the
prices of these studios even higher, making them want to sell even more,
and we're just in this perfect market. I talked to this the first time
I was on the BombCast. I think I explained the same thing. It's
more true now than it was even then, especially because then you bring in
inflation. And this is something I mentioned at the time that this could be
an issue. People are worried about inflation like going up, well, inflation
went up. It was like, we have super high inflation, not like
uh, you know, not like whatever. We have high inflation relative to
what we've had our entire lives. If you're probably one of the people watching
these show, this show, we've never had inflation like this before. Seven
percent is massive compared to the under two percent we've had pretty normally over the
last twenty thirty years. And so with inflation, the money that these companies
made and having the bank is worth less and less every minute, and so
they are like dying to get this money off their books, and so now
they're willing to spend even more. They're just like, let's just spend get
this money. It's it's gonna be worth less next year. So spend it
now, let them let them deal with the fact that this money that we're
giving them is going to be worth less by the time the deal closes.
So just a bunch of factors making these companies want to make moves and making
studios want to sell. So you know, it brings this to Next Level.
These factors were already in play back then. When Next Levels like,
hey, we're going to sell, it helped that. They also just put
out Luigi's Mansion three, which is a ten million selling game at that time,
probably an eight or nine million units selling game, but a very a
big success and critically acclaimed. And now the studio is like, hey,
we want to get ours. Like we started the studio, we've proven that
we're good, We're gonna sell, and we're gonna listen to anybody who's open
to making a bid. And Nintendo's like, okay, we get what you're
doing here. What do you want? We will pay what you want,
We will will come in. We need you like you're a partner. You
know how to make games with us. You've already been through the Ringer,
You've made several projects that we're very happy with. This latest one. We
are the most happy with that one. You're clearly on an upward trajectory.
You are worth it to us to acquire so that you don't get picked up
by Amazon or Microsoft or someone else will do it. That's that's the process
that led to the next level. That's probably the kind of thing that will
happen with the next studio Nintendo acquires. Where Nintendo's like, okay, Mercury
Steam, which I don't know if they're an acquire Mercury Steam. There are
other issues like the the crunch that was happening at Mercury Steam and the other
stuff, like they might want to be president about this. But just as
an example of Mercury Steam put out a game that was pretty successful with Metroid
Dread. It was it's it's a beloved game now at this point Metroid Dread
and that studio might say, hey, like people are buying, and why
aren't we selling? Maybe we should sell, And Nintendo would have to probably
stop and say should we be the ones that just go in there and scoop
them up so other people don't They know how to work with us. They've
made some games that people love, they made some memes that we're very happy
with. We want them to keep doing that stuff. It'll be worth it
to us in the end to not lose this talent. If we do lose
them, we're just gonna have to start over from scratch with someone else making
two D Metroid games. So yeah, I think that that's the most that
is. Actually those are the factors that define how how Nintendo would go about
deciding who to acquire and not necessarily like the people that fit with their with
their DNA, although that I mean, that's still a huge part of it.
If you have worked with the Nintendo and Nintendo's a good relationship with you,
that is when they're probably gonna move and say, hey, we don't
want to lose you, obviously, but it's not gonna be like, Okay,
you fit our DNA, so we just want you in here. It's
like you fit our DNA and we don't want to lose you. That's actually
the way they're thinking about it. From Kane hydewin zero nine favorite event in
the Winter Olympics. We were talking about curling earlier. I really like curling,
I like I do like hockey, Like I was really hoping the pros
could play. I was I was like I had high hopes for Team USA
this year, Dylan Larkin, especially playing as good as he is. But
it is what it is. I'll still watch it. I like. I
like all the snowboarding stuff. I think the half pipe is still really good.
Uh, slope style. I like snowboard cross though, is actually probably
my favorite. And that is you know, it's like all cross events where
everyone you're racing, but you're racing. It's not against the clock. There
are other people side by side with you, and you need to be in
the top two when you finish to move ahead. And there's just something so
video gaming and intense about head to head competition, like racing down a slope
that fast. It's it's cool, it's awesome. I love that sport.
So I am the kind of person who could just watch any sport. I
could just watch any sort of competition. Poker, chess, Sumo wrestling came
on n HK the other night, and now, like a couple of months
ago n HK uh, you know, the Japanese over the air television channel
that is in a lot of American cities. I can get at my house
and live. Sumo came on at like two three AM, and I just
I watched the whole thing Badminton. I could. I could watch anything,
and so I like the Olympics a lot because of that where it's like I'll
just yeah, I'll see what are the rules of this thing. So I've
been illusing before. I've been on a log sled in Michigan when I was
in boy Scouts, and so I like to watch that too. I would
tell you I was pretty young when I did it. I was probably like
ten or eleven, and carrying that massive ass luge sled up the hill after
each run was the worst part of it. That thing waits was so heavy.
I'd like drag it up and I just you know, I was a
little kid at that time, so it's tough, but going down that hill
was very, very exhilarating. So I like that too. So I'll watch
that in bob sled and all that stuff. I'll watch whatever they put in
front of me. I'll watch figure skating absolutely. From j Peter from j
JP Turps Fan. We found this one out last time. JP Turps Fan
Sony acquiring bungee feels to me like a solid defensive move. What other similar
moves do you think they might make? I would say like I viewed it
defensively at first, but clearly they this is their strategy. They I think
it's about their long term growth. They had. They have a strong foundation
of making Triple A narrative games, and they have a strong services thing in
terms of providing services for other games, providing the infrastructure for Fortnite to make
a lot of money, and then Sony takes thirty percent of that. But
Sony wants into that game of running its own live service, and they just
want one or two, but they're gonna try ten because you never know which
one's gonna stick. But they've seen how much money these games can make,
and now you know, activis your Blizzard. That's like that. The deal
was obviously in the works before the Activision Blizzard deal, of course, but
we say it all the time. Deals are kind of always happening. It
doesn't mean they are gonna go through. I definitely think they pulled the trigger,
and they felt good about pulling the trigger once the Activision Bizzard thing happened.
But like with with that happening, like now, if Call of Duty
does stay on Sony on PlayStation entirely, every time that game makes ten dollars
Sony's gonna have to give Microsoft seven dollars. And it's even if they are
like helping Call of Duty succeed on PlayStation and making money off Call of Duty,
it's just going to give more and more money to Microsoft each time,
and I put them in a better position to compete going forward. They don't.
They don't. They're they're happy to do that. Sony's happy to do
that. But they spend a lot of money making their massive triple A blockbuster
games. They're quad A games. Those games cost anywhere from one hundred million
to two hundred million dollars. The budgets aren't going to go down and go
down anytime soon, and so there's a lot of risk involved with this stuff,
and they've been very good at managing and avoiding that risk by making sure
and this is this is key, the games are good. They make sure
that the games are good, and that helps of them deal with some of
the risks associated with spending two hundred million dollars on a game. But still
that makes it very hard to make a proform from those games. And so
what you're really doing is a little bit of a loss leading thing where you
put the games out and then you make you get people on the platform,
and then you hope they show up to play live service games on your platform.
Now, this is this is where maybe it's a little bit defensive,
because if you are trying to think about, like where should I be playing
service games, well, Xbox is a pretty good place because you can just
go get their service. You can go get game pass, try a lot
of different stuff with a lot of your friends. And they're putting a lot
of live service games on there, or they're putting a lot of like all
my multiplayer games, cooperative games that are fun to play with your friends.
And then there's free to play, the free to play option now. And
so there's a chance, like down the line that maybe the PlayStation does turn
into the exclusives console. The thing that people always say, like, I
play the PlayStation for my exclusives. It's something we've said repeatedly on the show.
You're if you are someone who just plays exclusives on PlayStation, you're kind
of not worth much to Sony at all. You're just not who they want
on There's like they're happy to take your money, but but your money is
just just not worth very much to them compared to someone who is showing up
to get PlayStation Plus and to and to spend money on micro transactions, and
you are creating a network effect by playing with your friends every night on the
PlayStation. If you are buying exclusives and then doing all that other stuff,
you are exactly who they want on other system. But if you are playing
your live service games on PC and then showing up PlayStation five just for got
a war. They don't care. It's not going to move things around,
so they want to avoid that. This is where maybe it is a little
bit defensive, where spend the money to get bungee so that you can defend
yourself against a future where where you're falling behind in the services space. Because
the services money have been so important to PlayStation. We talked about Microsoft turning
into a services company, But once PlayStation began focusing on live service games as
a service revenue, that is when they broke the chain. They broke the
cycle of losing money when they launched a new console. PlayStation one, PlayStation
two, PlayStation three, and PlayStation four launches were all they either lost money
or they were very close to losing money. For the PlayStation division, that
is not the case with this PlayStation five because of because of a PlayStation Plus
and even PlayStation now and all of the money going into Fortnite and Apex legends
that Sony gets a cut of, and so they want a future where they
can guarantee they have live service games, and then they want to make more
money from them. The way you do that is by making them yourselves.
And if you could do that, if you have like games that don't cost
two hundred million dollars to make, games that are in the ten to fifty
million dollars range to make, and then and those games could have the potential
of turning into billion dollars games or billion a billion dollars per year games,
which is not out of the run of possibility for a Sony based or Sony
made live service game. Well, then that like just relieves so much pressure
because you know, you still got to keep making the big triple A blockbuster
games because that's what PlayStations known for. It that's what's going to keep the
fans happy. But and that's what's got to keep people saying, Oh,
I want to buy a five hundred dollars police Station five to play that.
But then once they get done with that game. You know a lot of
these games, you could finish it a weekend and then you're looking around and
it's like, okay, what's next. Well, if Sony has something ready
to go right there now, now they have something that can make them a
ton of money. They can pay for those big projects, even if those
big projects aren't immediately going to PC and making back a lot of their budget.
So it's it's it's a smart move. It's what they've basically, they've
said out loud that they want to make more money from live services. Uh.
They've said this repeatedly in terms of like shifting around their their leadership,
like yeah, they want they wanted Jim Ryan in charge because Jim Ryan did
so well in Europe, But the people that they've like shifted around and put
in Church or like PlayStation Network are people who are very much looking at this
future of providing more live service games. And that's what a lot of their
moves have been about recently. We've said it on the show a bunch of
times like that that they want that game to they want their own Fortnite absolutely.
Uh. Let's see from mister mccrinkldink, and we'll start wrapping up here
pretty soon. From mister mccrinkldink Jeff. When is Titan Fall three coming out?
I don't know. Tomorrow you already if here you heard it here first?
Everybody shadow dropped tomorrow. Titan Fall three from mute medic. What's your
favorite color? Gray? Gray is my favorite color. I like the way
it looks with my eyes. It makes my eyes pop? Is this gray?
Nothing makes my eyes pop anymore? Because I'm dead inside. I think
I used to say green, but I don't know. I just like I
like the subduedeness of gray. A Ridium eight eight four. I have to
have an opinion on colors down because I have two little girls, so one
of their favorite things to talk about is favorite colors. A Ridium eight eight
four star. Citisen just updated its roadmap. Less than five percent chance that
ever gets done. Yeah, I saw that. I gues saw the email
in my inbox from what's his name Roberts, Chris Roberts that his name.
He was like, all right, updates on what a squadron forty two or
whatever? And I went and looked at it, and I'm like, okay,
Yeah, this just doesn't look like they're talking about like still working on
the AI for stuff, and of course, of course they are, they're
making the game, but I am just less more than ever, I believe
that game is never gonna get done, so I'm right there with you the
unseen shadow. Why in the world did Sony pay as much as they did
for Bungee? And can you have more of an awful take than the Sun
had today with their headline? I didn't see the Sun headline, so if
you want to put that in chat, go for it. He's gray of
color. I don't know if it's color, but it's my favorite one Popeltree.
I don't know. Is it the absence of color? That's possible,
but I still like looking at it. Let's see, why do they pay
as much as they did for Sony or for Bungee? They needed to?
They Okay, Bungee is worth more now than it has been in the past
because everything's sort of pushing up the price of everything else. I do believe
that there was other other suitors out there talking to Bungee that pushed up the
price. But but but Sony saw a strategic value that meets their specific stated
strategic goals. They want to make live service games, and they are very
good at sharing information and learning and lessons internally, and they think that they
can bring Bungee into that fold. Well, Bungee could keep being Bungee will
happily make money off that live service stuff. Destiny is like our now,
the kind of thing where every dollar Destiny makes like we get all of that
now, so that all that stuff makes sense. But Bungee having that expertise
and sharing it with other studios, this is all We did an emergency emergency
podcast on gamespe Decides the other day when this happened, and this is the
first thing we said. There's like, there are boring reasons why this deal
makes a lot of sense for Sony, and it's because of this stuff because
they want this live service stuff. But she could teach their other studios,
and Sony's very good at sharing this information among its other studios, so it
meets their stated strategic goals of a live services future and h and so yeah,
it made them. It made that studio extra worth the money now.
And then the employee retention of one point two billion dollars is like, okay,
that made it very clear they want this talent and that talent is a
big, big reason why this deal made sense for them from Hey, it's
dale. When do you think someone will take a chance on a big budget
RTS again? I think probably pretty soon. You know what? That reminds
me, and it completely set in my mind. I didn't put in the
top. Someone asked about Command and Conquer, uh, like, when it's
a new Command of conqueror happening or something like that. I can't remember the
exact details, but the answer was was, No, nothing's happening in Command
of Conquer right now. I feel like I'm saying I'm saying conquer instead of
conquer. What. Okay, now I'm losing. I'm losing. I've talked
too much clearly, So I don't think anything's happening on that front. But
I think Microsoft might be going right back and doing another big budget RTS with
especially now that they have StarCraft under their roof. I think the next big
StarCraft thing will be a big StarCraft sequel that's just StarCraft. I think they're
I think they'll want to like let that series live on and be what it
was always supposed to be instead of trying to figure out, like, oh,
how do we live in this MOBA future? Just be StarCraft from Valentine.
With the Nintendo constantly striking OST channels on YouTube, is there any chance
they find a means of officially releasing music from their catalog on a global level.
Does the reason Diamond and Pearl ost websites show a potential route for this?
I would hope so. But yeah, I mean you know this,
of course, but like, let's remind everyone Diamond and Pearl Pokemon game.
The Pokemon Company runs that, like, is operating that stuff and making those
decisions separate from Nintendo or you know, like pretty separate from Nintendo. I
I would think, you know, Nintendo probably does own something that music.
I don't know exactly how it works, but I think the Pokemon Company probably
does make the decisions when it comes to Pokemon music. I would guess I
might be wrong there actually, now that I'm thinking about it, But either
way, Nintendo is gonna just be slow to picking up any sort of method
of making sure it's music is widely available. It's just not something that it's
prioritizing. I hope it does. It's thinks. One of the reasons I
had got YouTube music, it was like, oh, people upload music and
then I could just listen to that on YouTube music. But a lot of
times those songs just won't even work on YouTube music. So it's very frustrating.
And now of course they're taking them down with copyright strikes. It's annoying
from it's on me. Did you hear back about Horizon PS five to PSI
or PS four to PS five upgrade last week? I emailed them, I
don't think, so let's check Hoizon m is that. Let's see here Verizon
upgrade. No. I never got an email back. I'm gonna link those
any on this. So yeah, they're not They're not communicating about this very
much. So it makes me feel like there's like internal guidance to sort of
say, yeah, we're gonna do it, but we have let's let's just
keep it on the down low. I mean, the PS five version is
seventy dollars, right, is that? What is the PS four version Hoizon
Forbidden West pre order? I guess. I mean when it pops up here,
it's okay, Yeah, it's seventy dollars. I think they they want
to sell as many copies as they can for seventy dollars, and they don't
want people to go the upgrade route, and so they're being quiet about it.
I think, yeah, so I haven't heard back. They're not communicating
about this, all right, I went to the top. If you want
to ask any other questions real quick, do so. But I'm gonna wrap
up here pretty soon a bit going for an hour and fifteen. I will
do a few more. I was like, trying to think about other stuff
I have to do. I have other work I need to do. But
the kids are both on off school today, so we could we could do
a few more until my throat gives out final das. So what will the
summer game mess be acquiring a burrito a bean bag in afternoon nap? We've
we are very We have an embarrassment of bean bags at summer game mess.
We have a big one upstairs and a big one downstairs. They both get
a lot of use because my kids love them. All they were they were
for me, They were for me. My my wife got me the big
one upstairs for Christmas. The kids have totally claimed ownership of it. But
yes, so we are. We're rich. When it comes to bean bags.
We will not be acquiring any more. But really, I think internally
we plan on targeting burritos here pretty soon, and I think I have a
sandwich in the fridge, but I'm kind of leaning towards something warmer since it's
so cold outside. And I did just see the outside the snowplow went by,
so I might be okay ordering delivery burrito and I think that's what we're
gonna have to be made here. At Summer Game Mess we promised to compete
by acquiring more burritos and then maybe an afternoon nap. Very good question from
dog Face Pig ignoring the cost, would it makes sense for Sony to acquire
Capcom? They have attempted yet terrible with Resident Evil and Monster Hunter movies,
but matches what Sony seems to be doing with Uncharted the Last of Us moving
towards the movie TV Sleeer series. Yeah, Capcom has ip that would make
a lot of sense with PlayStation because of what you're saying there, that synergy
between games and film. Uh. Yeah, Sony could definitely like capitalize on
that stuff. I think that you know the cost obviously you said ignore it,
but it's definitely a concern there. But I don't know, I think
that PlayStation could make that work and Monster Hunter is the kind of thing where
it's like, Okay, we could build a huge ongoing live service around that,
and that that could be one of our future projects. But I feel
like they probably feel like they've filled that hole with with Bungee and also now
they have ten other games or you know, nine or ten or nine or
ten other games that aren't Bungee games in the works that are live service,
and they'll be like happy with that stuff. I don't know. I think
if Capcom was interested in selling, I think PlayStation would be in the talks
to do to do something about that, but it might just be out of
their price range. I agree though it's it's a smart fit slain make awesome.
What's your opinion on how Todd Howard presenting the Dice Lifetime Achievement Award to
his boss Phil Spencer. I don't know. I mean, Lifetime of Sham
awards are always kind of hokey to me. I like, yeah, I
don't know. It always feels like a participation award like this is like definitely
my my upbringing, my millennial upbringing of being like getting all kinds of like
ribbons for participation and realize and feeling like it's always like being able to see
through it and be like, I know I didn't win, why are you
giving me this? Like you're just making me feel worse. Obviously it's not
that, it's not that's not what it is. But I know, I
like I associate a lot of awards with that sort of thinking, where it's
like you like I could see through, like you're just sort of you just
want to get me on stage here or something like that. I think this
is fine, this is fine town already could go say his boss is a
good guy. That seems right. They're they're friends, and I'll watch it.
I'll be interested. I like the Dice Awards, They're always pretty fun.
From Wei's Man fifty four, which is cooler space travel or time travel?
I wonder if you could really have one without the other. It's like
because of Einstein's a special or special theory of relativity, theory of special wealth,
special theory revel Yeah, but you kind of have one. They both
go hand in hand. You kind of can't travel through space very much without
traveling through time. But if if I were to stop being such a pedantic
shit head and answer your question as presented, I would say probably space tra
I don't know. Time time travel is definitely coolest in terms of like the
possibilities, and you could really play around with it within a lot of fun
ways, especially in fiction. And so if I were to like sit down
and write a story and I had to choose between space travel and time travel,
the one that I think it would be the easiest to make a cooler
story out of would probably be time travel. Do you know what Halo Infinite
game modes certain affinities working on? Is it just a battle roy out?
And that's from gray Scale. I don't think it's just a battle roy I
think I think they are probably still determining exactly what it's going to be.
But I think they're messing around with a battle Royale style game and probably still
adjusting the rules on a macro level, not just like, oh, we're
not just doing balancing. We're trying to make sure this is like fun.
But to me, you have the map. You just kind of take the
Halo Infinite map or a chunk of that Halo Infinite map, you throw a
bunch of master Chiefs on there on it, and you call it a day.
And if it's even if it's not the biggest Battle Royale to me,
it's like you at least try it because it's just all right there. Like
that map would be a really fun as a Battle royale. You give everyone
the grappling hook and you just go to town. I want it, I
want it. That would be a lot of fun. From Sira Bray,
I'm a weirdo who's acquisition optimistic but anti exclusive. I get it. Any
chance added, any chance, added security of platform holder Mina's plus need to
prevent new market entrants make it possible in first party console exclusivity at the very
least for multiplayer and service games with micro transaction. I for those games,
I think we are moving in that direction. We're moving in the direction of
service. Like all service games feel like they make most sense as completely playable
everywhere, even Sony service games. One of the reason it's like, you
know, when you buy Bungee and they want to remain independent, it's played
pretty easy to make that choice because it's like, yeah, they're making live
service games, we should just let them put them out everywhere, and we
might even end up doing the same, you know. It's one of the
things with like Halo Halos everywhere except for PlayStation and switch right, but you
know, it's everywhere in terms of you know, PC and maybe you could
play it on your phone or whatever. And so they're like, Okay,
we're everywhere, and that's a good start. But down the line, you
know, in a world where you know, you're still competed with Fortnite and
Apex Legends and they are on PlayStation, that's like it's still kind of a
debilitating lack of a feature of being available on PlayStation. I think that other
than that, like big exclusives like Starfield and God of War probably are going
to remain exclusive for years and years and years. I still think I personally,
I am of the I'm of opinion that we are moving away from the
overall walled gardens long term, very long term, and a million things could
happen between now and then, but I think that the erosion of the walled
garden will happen slowly and one day someone's gonna wake up and just be like,
we are a services company. This hardware platform that we are we've chained
ourselves too, is actually detrimental to our success, and we are going to
continue to supporting it because a lot of people show up through this platform,
but this is not going to be the only way to play our games going
forward, and this is at least ten years off, I think. But
we'll get there eventually. From mister Platitude, I don't know if we'll get
there eventually. I think we might get there eventually, mister Platitude will fallen
order sequel be on new consoles only. I don't know. I feel like
I had the answer to this, I think so. I think so by
the time it comes out, it would make sense. I'll ask, I'll
look around and see what I can find out from joy use. How drunk
is Doc coc oh still tipsy? Just don stop tipsy? Listen this man?
Can we get a tipsy check before the end? There we go,
Kane, I win as well asking about it. There it is there.
It is still tipsy. You can see it in his face too. Yeah.
Should uh? I should like I should have to make us without his
cheeks like blush and and move him up to like ripped or something or not
that's not not edited, but like accurately portray what he is because this is
a scientific thing here for people listening. We checked in on the back of
our drunk ometer dudelung couch. Hello there, sir, gru Up. Some
places are reporting that the Rocks new video game movie is Call of Duty.
Do you think that is right? Or could still be something else? Personally,
I was hoping for Gears of War. Call of Duty is just dull
enough to be to be accurate. That sounds It's like that probably is right
because it would be the probably one of the most dull options. So you
could like, what what is called? Is it just like a Tom Clancy
movie at that point or a Tom Clancy book, because they're not gonna just
like, Okay, here's World War two, but it's under the Call of
Duty brand. That would be weird. Uh. I don't know. I'll
watch it, I guess, but with the Rock like a big action movie,
I guess. I guess, all right, whatever, I don't know.
I think that's probably right from a future creed. Why you keep it
forks in the oven? What? What like? Is? What is the
thing you put in the oven that you keep hot brands? Is? But
that's not That's not the same even is it? Is? It? Is
this even an idiom that I'm even close too right now? Children cause brain
damage is what I want to say today, and I I was, yeah,
I was saying like, oh, you gotta keep your forks in the
oven to be ready for stuff. And that doesn't make a lot of sense
because then when you reach for the forks, it's gonna burn your hand,
like that guy in Indiana Jones. You don't want that? Do we not
live in a world where and where a Microsoft game like See If Thieves could
appear on PlayStation from Clint Eastman, I think so. I'm like, I'm
just not. I'm not. I think that possibilities is totally on the table
within the next five years for something like a CF Thieves. It's it's just
it makes sense for the game, it makes sense for the other platform holders
when that stuff matches up, Like, Okay, what's what's holding it back
at that point? And really the thing that's holding back is like stubbornness and
old ways of doing things and things that will probably things that could easily one
day just no longer be there if Jim Ryan were to leave, if if
Phil Spitzer would leave, and like a new guy comes in and Jim Ryan's
like, okay, let's let's start up conversations again. Because for some reason,
I'm like it was like holding a grudge against not that that's how it
works or whatever, but like who knows what exactly what it would take to
get people over, sort of the hump of saying, yeah, let's let's
let this stuff happen. Uh. From Timotheus seven O four. When will
we hear about Fantasy sixteen? I think by the end of this year.
I think by the end of the summer, I think we'll probably hear about
it, But I don't know. After after they delayed it, like clearly
it was like I thought we would hear more about it, more than what
we did here, which was, hey, it's gonna take another six months
at least to finish this game, which probably pushes it out of twenty twenty
two. But I still think by by E three, the E three time
frame, we probably hear about it. From zekrits shrimp cocktail or fried shrimp,
which is better. I would never eat shrimp. The one thing that
the five year old now is uh, she she likes having this secret because
the three year olds the one that would get very upset. She's the one
that has the lobster toys that she sleeps with and Crabby's and all this other
stuff. She comes up and she whispers like, why did you eat that
shrimp? And I'm like, because they're tasty, and she's like, you're
not supposed to eat the babies. Okay, I'm sorry, but she's like
playing around mostly and she's like doing it next to the three year old,
and the three year old's oblivious so far, so I've skated by. But
when she finds out, I'm done for Mighty manche Levin heard any feedback yet
on the Uncharted movie. It's getting dunked on pretty hard already. If it
flops, that scare people away from making more live action video game adaptations.
I don't know, I don't know. I mean people like, let's just
like talk about Sony. Sony's probably gonna stick to the strategy for a little
bit, I think. I mean it makes sense with like they are making
games based on IP that they own, or making movies based on IP that
they own, that there's benefits to that, and if one of these movies
takes off, they've they've seen what happened with the Witcher and Netflix, where
it just led to huge sales for for the Witcher game after the game did
very well, or the movie did. The show did very well on Netflix,
so they're like, Okay, it didn't work this time, but that
doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. We've seen it work, so we just
need to find the right combination of factors to capitalize on that as well.
Now, maybe it was a fluke, a one time thing with the Witcher
and the Witcher game and Netflix and and CD Project Read and the books or
whatever. But I think what's more likely is that this is probably something that
you can replicate if you do it right and you have the right game waiting
for people to go buy after they see a movie or watch a show.
So I think Sony won't be too scared off from Slay mcgawsom. Has your
kid forgave you yet? For the shrimp incident? The older one is holding
it over my head like a sort of Damocles, uh situation. So no,
Christian Argentina, did you finish Dying Light? Not yet? I'm getting
there. I'm I'm I don't even know if I'm getting there, Like I'm
not even at the city center yet, so I think I'm pretty far away.
It's I think it might be bloated. I think it's bloated in terms
of like doling out your powers and stuff. I mean, it's fun to
run around early in that game, but then I see people doing stuff with
like the you know, having their parachute that could fly around, and having
like a rope that you could throw and stuff roping around like rope Man,
And so I'm like, why am I? Why am I? Just like
I've been playing this game for at least ten hours, Why am I so
far away from that stuff? Still? But maybe I'm about to get it?
If it does feel like I'm about to get it. I I've finally
met Rosario Dawson and I've had a few interactions with her, So I don't
know I'm getting there from casual. What song is only stuck in your head?
Uh? Spider Man nineteen sixty seven cartoon theme song Spider Man. Spider
Man does whatever a spider can. Addie loves it. She loves all things
Spidy right now. She watches her Spidy and his Amazon friends show constantly.
But then we sing that song and she likes. You know, she dressed
up as Spider Man to go to school the other day, Like she has
Spider Man pants and I got her Spider man hoodie and she wore that,
so we sing that all the time, and it's very funny to just hear
her walk around singing that song because she's three, so it's like she's getting
most of the words right and she's like emphasizing the melody really well, but
it's still's like it's still like a clumsy version of it. It's very cute
from Bori, which is Rory's evil twin. How much did the desire to
spread Bungee properties into TV and film, into the TV and film realm factor
into the acquisition cost? It was definitely part of it. Like it's something
that's like Sony has a lot of options here for how to exploit this purchase
and build value off of it, and TV and film is something like making
a Destiny TV show seems inevitable and it seems like something that could very much
benefit that game in the same way we were just talking about with the Witcher
from a future group. Why is this Archaeus tutorial taking so long? I
don't know. I guess the game is for kids, but I feel like
like kids learn better by just doing things. The game is very much trying
to be breath of the wild. This person saw me playing dime Light two
the other day. I'm sorry, I'm going on tangent spurs saw me,
saw me post a dime Light two video before the game was out, and
now they've been inviting me to a party fifty times a day on Xbox my
PC and it just pops up all the time. I need to go turn
off my invites or whatever. But it's like I just like hope they'll give
up. Yeah, I don't know. The totorial does take long, but
once you get past it, it's a really fun and sticky game ice.
Where's the best place to live? I'm currently in Columbus Burbs. I liked.
I liked to live in Columbus for the most part. I lived in
Westerville, and then I moved closer to the city and lived in Italian Village.
It's really nice because the Italian Festival would happened right across the street from
us. That was nice. I lived in a few other places too in
Columbus closer to Ohio state. But the best place to live I have no
idea. We're we're literally trying to figure that out ourselves. If anyone we
want to go to place that is affordable. Uh, Colorado has really become
not affordable. I would love to stay here. I would really love to
stay here, but uh, the houses are just out of our price range.
It feels like we're still renting. We can, we can probably afford
one, but it would be a real stretch and it would be a strain
and be very stressful, and we don't want that. So we're like we're
looking around. We're looking like Minnesota, Buffalo. Uh, I don't know.
We're getting a bunch of places as as possible places to go. I
would like to be near kind of near a city because of Emmy's eyes,
she's got to be close to a children a children's hospital. But beyond that,
like we're kind of open anything. And it's hard to figure out where
to go because so there used to be like, oh, like maybe one
day I'll need to move to the West coast or my job or something like
that, and that's kind of not really a thing anymore. So I kind
of look at every possibility. If anyone's in in the Minneapolis area or the
Buffalo area or like Chicago suburbs area, let me know, let me know
what you think. From pm D double O six I'm making my grocery pickup
order for next week. What should I make for dinner next Wednesday? Uh?
Yeah, go just get to make some rice and go get the Uh
what is was? That? Was the was that Indian seasoning? That?
Uh? And I can't now, I can't remember it. I don't know.
Just go go and go, like you know the grocery store they have
the ethnic aisle. Just go in there, pick a jar or something that
looks really tasty and pour it on some rice with some chicken and eat that
and you'll be fine. Lazy adventurous is what I would call that. From
Mint to Live two one eight. Has anyone heard anything from Stadia recently?
I'm gonna say no, there's not much. Yeah, probably not. There's
not much to hear from them. They probably were, they're doing the white
label stuff. Probably they're probably providing them back in services for some games.
But there it's just not really a going concern as it once was. From
Blatant Saves, gumb will Armored Cord get a huge budget. If elden Ring
sells really well, I would say probably yes. I would say probably going
to get a full modern from software budget that it needs from Afro Stevens,
Jeff, I have to poop, but I have fomo real bad help.
Well, I'm bucked in the show. So if you want to that's what
you're worried about missing out on. I mean, you could listen to me
when you poop, I'd give you permission. I don't do it if I
know. If I listen to a podcast and I know the person on the
podcast talking in any way, and I listen, I listen, listen until
the point where it's coming out, and then I have to pause it because
I need to be respectful. Actually, it's probably more about me than them,
because they can't they don't know what's happening from m pause a lot.
Which first party Sony games do you think are the closest to come out on
Steam. I don't know. It feels like we should probably get that Spider
Man game on their here pretty soon, right I think I wonder if some
of those early PS five games that aren't uh, that aren't a Demon Souls
and aren't Miles Morales are gonna come so, like maybe Sack Boys, Big
Adventure and Returnal like that would be a pretty quick turnaround for the games because
they've kind of been waiting three years in other games. But I just wonder
if like they're gonna do a shorter timeframe with some of these smaller games while
while the while they're still sort of hot, like especially like Returnal feels like
you put it on PC now it could really benefit from being like in the
game of the year. Talk a little bit. Let's see from Christian Art,
what the fuck happened to the Meta stocks? So, yeah, Meta
once known as Facebook. Their stocks dropped twenty three Yeah it was it twenty
three percent last night. Let's go to finance here Google Finance, and then
I'm gonna see how they're doing today. Let's see FB. They still have
the FB signifier taking a second to load. Oh it's down twenty six percent
right now? Okay, so, uh yeah it is. It's collapsing because
it is. Uh, there's multiple factors. Big reason is they didn't grow.
They like lost users, like overall monthly active users for the first time
ever that is unheard of for Facebook. Is how people were putting it,
and it's just it's they're they're they're kind of screwed. If this is like,
if this is where they're at now, They're they've matured as a platform
where they're not adding new users, they're getting to lose users. Well,
now they have to completely sort of rely on what they have, and then
there's problems there too where apples rules have changed to make it very hard for
Facebook to sort of track data and then use that data to serve up ads
to people on iPhone. And the predictions this is like that's going to cost
Meta like ten billion dollars or something like that in revenue. It's going to
be. Yeah, it's going to be really tough for Facebook to sort of
figure out what its future is. And that I think Facebook knew this was
coming, which is why they're like, oh, the future is metaverse.
We do have a plan for the future. Yeah. Well, I mean
we'll see how that turns out. But they were definitely doing that in response
knowing this was coming from Hey, it's Dale Bunjie just hired the League of
Leges director behind their shorts and TV series Arcane. Well, I mean,
there you go. That's and that sounds like that's smart because like I mean,
I don't know it, especially if if you are going to be under
Sony. I mean, you have the guy right there like ready to go
to make a Destiny show. That seems fantastic. That seems like a really
smart move for Papaltry. You should try to reach out to the game and
forder mid Max crew. A lot of them are based out of Minnesota.
I will do that. I definitely will. I've heard nothing but good things
about Minneapolis, so I'll ask them about that and pause a lot. Do
you think Blugborn is going to get the Demon Souls rework? Since we haven't
heard anything about it. I don't think it's going to get the Demon Souls
rework, not from not not yet. It'll happen eventually. They could just
release a sixty frames per second upgraded up as the version of it and it
would do very well. You do that first, and then you're so now
you're released the Demon Souls version of the Blue Point version finally from Cosbot.
If you moved to Minnesota, are you going to try and join a curling
club? Absolutely? You figured out what it was all about all along.
Okay, Wait, is that why they spell men with two ends? Yes,
that is why they do that. Yes, it's very funny that people
are just realizing that. Oh god, that's good. Okay, I'm gonna
wrap this up. We've been going for a long time. That was way
longer than I intended to go. But it's a good show. It's a
good time. I love doing this. It's always great to come here and
talk video games with everybody. We'll try to stay on top of some of
these news stories. I expect more news stories to keep happening. Acquisition seasons
should continue whether or not Microsoft or Sony or involved. I have no idea,
but the conditions are still ripe, so maybe more of that stuff'll keep
happening. And really got excuse. We gotta see what the fallout's gonna be
from these companies figuring out what they're gonna do with their acquisitions now, so
we'll keep talking about that stuff. There's games coming out now. I'm playing
Dying Light, I'm playing Horizon, I'm playing Pokemon. There's a lot of
stuff. Steam Deck is gonna get here soon. I got my Q one
pre order ready to go, so yeah, a lot of stuff to talk
about. We're gonna stay on topic here on grub Snacks. Thank you for
watching though. Until next time, have a good one, take care of
yourself, and goodbye.