GTA 6 Delayed

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, welcome to Game Mess Mornings presented by Dekou
<v Speaker 1>Deals with Me.
<v Speaker 2>Jeff Grub, your host from giant bomb dot com. Thank
<v Speaker 2>you for tuning in.
<v Speaker 1>In this episode, we're going to be talking about that
<v Speaker 1>grand theft, Auto six, delay and more. It's gonna be
<v Speaker 1>a good one because we have Jason Finelli on the show. Jason,
<v Speaker 1>how are you doing?
<v Speaker 3>Great day in the morning, good citizens of Giant Bomb.
<v Speaker 3>Jason Finelli speaking here from Philadelphia, Doing okay, doing okay,
<v Speaker 3>you know, just doing the gaming thing as a as
<v Speaker 3>a gamer, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm playing some cool stuff.
<v Speaker 3>I reviewed a bunch of stuff recently. We'll talk about
<v Speaker 3>that towards the end of the show. I but as
<v Speaker 3>a Philadelphian, my heart's a little heavy. That intro I
<v Speaker 3>gave this morning was the famous intro of Pierre Robert,
<v Speaker 3>a rock DJ here for over forty years, that we
<v Speaker 3>tragically lost last Wednesday at seventy years old. I was
<v Speaker 3>supposed to report to AH, he didn't. They went to
<v Speaker 3>check on him. Unfortunately, he unfortunately had left us. And
<v Speaker 3>if you need a role model for your life, this
<v Speaker 3>man was it and the only proof I need to
<v Speaker 3>give you go back a week or so in social
<v Speaker 3>media to the likes of not just the radio station
<v Speaker 3>he worked on here ninety three to three WMMR, but
<v Speaker 3>bon Jovi, the Hooters, the Offspring, all these bands who
<v Speaker 3>were touched by this man in some way.
<v Speaker 2>Paying tribute.
<v Speaker 3>Last Sunday in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, the masses gathered
<v Speaker 3>or petitioning to put a statue of him in there
<v Speaker 3>was his favorite place to be in the city. I
<v Speaker 3>interned for Preston and Steve, the popular morning show here
<v Speaker 3>in Philly in two thousand and eight from January to August.
<v Speaker 3>I had the opportunity to speak to him twice a
<v Speaker 3>week when I was there, because he would be the
<v Speaker 3>one they would push off to. And every time you
<v Speaker 3>talk to him, he was like he had known you
<v Speaker 3>for your whole life. He was just a genuinely, a
<v Speaker 3>genuinely good man. And my heart is still heavy eight
<v Speaker 3>days later, just for those brief interactions. I'm not going
<v Speaker 3>to sit here and pretend I had the most extensive
<v Speaker 3>history with him, but that doesn't it. It sucks right
<v Speaker 3>fact that we're not going to hear him on our
<v Speaker 3>radio anymore.
<v Speaker 1>But yep, it's the guys like that to make a
<v Speaker 1>cities cool, right, they give the it's character and it's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you feel like you have a like a friend,
<v Speaker 1>someone that knows you because they know the same city
<v Speaker 1>as you.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's that goes.
<v Speaker 3>A local local sports blogger put it along, put it
<v Speaker 3>a great way right after it happened. Whether you were
<v Speaker 3>the guy slaving away on a roof, blue collar guy
<v Speaker 3>in the hot of summer, or the white collar guy
<v Speaker 3>slaving away at a desk job that you hated. Pierre
<v Speaker 3>Robert was speaking to you through your radio if you
<v Speaker 3>had ninety three to three on, and it's I should
<v Speaker 3>be so lucky to make half the impact on the
<v Speaker 3>people in my life that that man made in full.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, that's a.
<v Speaker 1>Rest in peace king. All right, you know what, let's uh,
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<v Speaker 1>All right, we have a lot to get into, so
<v Speaker 1>let's start the morning mess with Grand Theft Auto six
<v Speaker 1>delayed again by six months. This is from Michael mcwerder
<v Speaker 1>at Polygon. Rockstar Games has delayed Grand Theft Auto six
<v Speaker 1>for the second time. Previously scheduled for a May twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty six release, the studio's highly anticipated open world crime
<v Speaker 1>epic is now scheduled to arrive on November nineteenth of
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty six, Rockstar Games has announced. Rockstar announced the
<v Speaker 1>latest GTA six delay on Thursday, just ahead of it
<v Speaker 1>of publisher Take two Interactive's earnings, noting that in additional
<v Speaker 1>six months of all, the time will allow us to
<v Speaker 1>finish the game with the level of polish you have
<v Speaker 1>come to expect and deserve. Here's the studio statement. GTA
<v Speaker 1>six will now release on Thursday, November nineteenth, twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 1>We are sorry for adding additional time to what we
<v Speaker 1>realize has been a long wait, but these extra months
<v Speaker 1>will allow us to finish the game with the level
<v Speaker 1>of polish you have come to expect and deserve.
<v Speaker 2>We want to thank you again for your patients and support.
<v Speaker 1>While the weight a little longer, we are incredibly excited
<v Speaker 1>for players to experience the sprawling state of Leonida and
<v Speaker 1>a return to modern day vice city Leonita, Leonida. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, Jason, Yeah, there's there's more to this, and
<v Speaker 1>of course there's the other side. We'll get into the
<v Speaker 1>union busting here in a moment. We've kind of been
<v Speaker 1>covering that this week. It continues to develop. As far
<v Speaker 1>as the delay goes. Very few people, I feel like,
<v Speaker 1>are walking around going like I can't believe they delayed
<v Speaker 1>it a second time once the first delay happened, and
<v Speaker 1>then everyne's like, okay, here we go. Also like this
<v Speaker 1>one's like barely even a real delay in my head
<v Speaker 1>because they're delaying it to the same fiscal year.
<v Speaker 2>They are delaying it to the holidays.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, yeah, if there was like one measly reason
<v Speaker 1>to push this game back, everything else was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>maybe it just makes sense to put this out in November.
<v Speaker 1>Why don't we just do that. It's kind of obvious
<v Speaker 1>that we were going to end up here eventually, but well, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they want to get this game perfect. They talk about
<v Speaker 1>that as well. They have high expectations. I think Strauss Zelnick,
<v Speaker 1>the CEO Take two, the parent company of Rockstar Games,
<v Speaker 1>was out there talking about the ninety five metacritics scores
<v Speaker 1>that these games have previously received and wanted to make
<v Speaker 1>sure that they hit that, so they do kind of
<v Speaker 1>have to make sure that this thing has an immaculate launch, right,
<v Speaker 1>so they kind of can't come out of the gate fizzling.
<v Speaker 3>Once upon a console gaming players around the world were
<v Speaker 3>aiming for the twenty sixth of May to bring them
<v Speaker 3>Rockstar's latest Lore Last did and earning calls deliver news
<v Speaker 3>that caused them all to shiver. Both straus Zelnick six months.
<v Speaker 2>More, ah bars, let's go.
<v Speaker 3>And the people who are not in the know, the players,
<v Speaker 3>the people who want the game are pissed, and the
<v Speaker 3>people who follow the industry and who kind of have
<v Speaker 3>their thumb on the scale or their their thumb on
<v Speaker 3>the pulse or finger on the pulse, were like, it
<v Speaker 3>was never coming out in May. Anyway, this was not happening.
<v Speaker 3>I am not surprised by this in the least, and
<v Speaker 3>to be completely frank, I don't know that I'm confident
<v Speaker 3>in November either. I wouldn't be surprised. If this goes
<v Speaker 3>into the beginning of that would still be the seven
<v Speaker 3>yeah out a fiscal year, then I'm like, oh shit,
<v Speaker 3>something's wrong. But if it's if it's any time before
<v Speaker 3>March thirty first, it would be fine with me.
<v Speaker 2>Now.
<v Speaker 3>I believe Grand Theft Auto five's PS four place Xbox
<v Speaker 3>one iteration was November of whatever year that was. The
<v Speaker 3>game itself was September of twenty thirteen, so they have
<v Speaker 3>launched in this window before they are familiar with it.
<v Speaker 3>But Grand Theft Auto four was in March or April,
<v Speaker 3>I think as well. I don't think it'll go that
<v Speaker 3>far in if it does get delayed again, i'd put
<v Speaker 3>it in January of twenty twenty seven, perhaps maybe February.
<v Speaker 3>But I am not surprised by this. I think it
<v Speaker 3>makes a lot more sense in the holiday season. I
<v Speaker 3>think get first, Sony would have been miffed, right, Sony
<v Speaker 3>thinking well, this is where we're kind of counting on
<v Speaker 3>this to be our late cycle console seller, and you
<v Speaker 3>keep delaying this thing. What the hell is going on here?
<v Speaker 3>But then if they after they sat back and thought
<v Speaker 3>about it, they're like, oh, this is a holiday push,
<v Speaker 3>the potentially the last holiday of the PlayStation five. All
<v Speaker 3>rumors considered, they want the new console out in twenty
<v Speaker 3>twenty seven, perhaps twenty twenty eight, so we may have
<v Speaker 3>ourselves another Grand Theft Auto five situation where it comes
<v Speaker 3>out for the current console, and then they publish it
<v Speaker 3>again for a dozen years on the consoles that it
<v Speaker 3>comes out on. It'll be the new you can play
<v Speaker 3>Grand Theft Auto six on your fridge like it'll be
<v Speaker 3>the new done joke. And that's just what they're going
<v Speaker 3>to do with Grand Theft Auto. They're going to release
<v Speaker 3>a new story, the Grand Theft Auto Online that comes
<v Speaker 3>with it is going to keep them fat and that's it.
<v Speaker 3>That's what they're going to do, and that's their strategy.
<v Speaker 3>I think that's so yeah, that's all right.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's exactly why November is sort of why
<v Speaker 1>they feel good about that because that is about the
<v Speaker 1>latest they can release it to nail everything that they
<v Speaker 1>want to nail that you that you laid out. So
<v Speaker 1>a November release holiday, that's you know, that's great. They
<v Speaker 1>could release this game at any point, but you know,
<v Speaker 1>releasing it right before the holidays making it the game, uh,
<v Speaker 1>that will that'll get a lot of attention.
<v Speaker 2>But what it really does is the thing that you mentioned.
<v Speaker 1>They can release it for these consoles this November, that
<v Speaker 1>being November twenty twenty six, and then the following year
<v Speaker 1>if those new consoles, if either of the new consoles.
<v Speaker 2>Are ready to go, they will release it for that.
<v Speaker 1>That's exactly what happened with Grand Theft Auto five, and
<v Speaker 1>then a year after that it went to PC. They
<v Speaker 1>did similar stuff with with red Dead Redemption too, where
<v Speaker 1>it's like one year it was on the consoles, the
<v Speaker 1>next year was on PC.
<v Speaker 2>Although we'll talk about why.
<v Speaker 1>You know, that's still weird that it's not necessarily been
<v Speaker 1>updated for the newer consoles either way, though, it's uh,
<v Speaker 1>I think they want they know this. Rockstar loves this strategy.
<v Speaker 1>Take two loves this strategy, so they are going to
<v Speaker 1>try to maneuver everything as best they can to do
<v Speaker 1>it to do this again. So yeah, I expect them
<v Speaker 1>to really try to make this November release. But if
<v Speaker 1>it comes down to it, getting the launch right's going
<v Speaker 1>to be more important, and they could always just release
<v Speaker 1>it in March or whatever and then just have the
<v Speaker 1>new console version ready to go later that year. That
<v Speaker 1>could also easily happen, and it would even have to
<v Speaker 1>be there at launch right. It could be something that
<v Speaker 1>it comes a year into the life of a new console,
<v Speaker 1>people would still show up for it. Let's talk about
<v Speaker 1>the other side of this, because let's kind of just
<v Speaker 1>bring everything together. An alleged Rockstar employee claims morale has
<v Speaker 1>cratered due to a parent union busting efforts. We're throwing
<v Speaker 1>out there that one of the top grand Theft auto
<v Speaker 1>forums GTA forums, the mods there try to verify the
<v Speaker 1>identity of this person and said, yeah, we believe that
<v Speaker 1>this is a person who actually works at Rockstar, but
<v Speaker 1>you know, pinch AsSalt allegations of union busting at Rockstar.
<v Speaker 1>A long time Rockstar employee anonymously claims the company fired
<v Speaker 1>over thirty four staff members thirty one in the UK,
<v Speaker 1>three in Canada for union related activities. Firings were abrupt.
<v Speaker 1>Employees were summoned by HR under friendly pretenses, then handed
<v Speaker 1>termination letters citing gross misconduct over discord posts. No evidence
<v Speaker 1>was provided and union representation was denied, which would allegedly violate.
<v Speaker 2>UK employment law.
<v Speaker 1>As always with posts like this, we're not usually hearing
<v Speaker 1>from lawyers. We're hearing from people who like, I'm pretty
<v Speaker 1>sure this is the way it works, and that's kind
<v Speaker 1>of what's getting repeated here. Some affected employees were on
<v Speaker 1>sick leave or paternity leave and the firings made jeopardize
<v Speaker 1>their visas, so they might come back to work, find
<v Speaker 1>out they don't have a job, don't.
<v Speaker 2>Have a visa, might have to leave.
<v Speaker 1>All fired employees were union members, many many on organizing committees.
<v Speaker 1>The union had just reached over two hundred members or
<v Speaker 1>about two hundred members, which crosses a threshold for formal
<v Speaker 1>recognition and collective bargaining. The discord group in question was
<v Speaker 1>private and focused on working conditions, not leaks. And so
<v Speaker 1>as we've been covering this week, Rockstar has been like,
<v Speaker 1>the grossmas conduct is they were leaking private developer information
<v Speaker 1>that is under NDA, and all these thirty or forty
<v Speaker 1>people are responsible for this, So we're firing them for that.
<v Speaker 1>And the fact that it's like, oh, actually they were
<v Speaker 1>sharing that information. Maybe they were sharing it, but they
<v Speaker 1>were doing it in a discord about unionizing, and it
<v Speaker 1>was all about workplace matters and not necessarily the game
<v Speaker 1>that they were working on. It's like, okay, this continues
<v Speaker 1>to sound like union busting. Apparently due to this, employees
<v Speaker 1>were like outside, you know, beginning to protest Rockstar. And
<v Speaker 1>this employee here, this legend employee, says morale at Rockstar
<v Speaker 1>is reportedly at rock bottom, with remaining staff fearful and demoralized,
<v Speaker 1>and the union is pursuing legal action and campaigning for
<v Speaker 1>campaigning for reinstatement, and in the meantime, it does feel
<v Speaker 1>like this is going to come to some sort of
<v Speaker 1>legal head, a legal battle, although I predict that Rockstar
<v Speaker 1>will almost certainly try to settle so that they don't
<v Speaker 1>have to explain themselves actually in a courtroom, because that's
<v Speaker 1>gonna look real rough.
<v Speaker 2>So we'll see.
<v Speaker 1>Now everyone's just saying, hey, is this why the game's
<v Speaker 1>getting delayed? No, I think the reason we found out
<v Speaker 1>about the delay is because of this. Yeah, that's the
<v Speaker 1>attempt you google Grand Theft Auto.
<v Speaker 2>What's going to come up now? Of course it's going
<v Speaker 2>to be the delay.
<v Speaker 1>If you before this you googled Grand Theft Auto yesterday,
<v Speaker 1>it would have been the union busting and uh this
<v Speaker 1>it feels like pr management in a really sick way. Hey,
<v Speaker 1>I I believe the workers here based on kind of
<v Speaker 1>the way that this has been presented, and Rockstar kind
<v Speaker 1>of being like, yeah, look, they were all union members,
<v Speaker 1>but that's not why we're firing them, and it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>to me, it seems like it definitely is the fact
<v Speaker 1>that you even have to quantify that kind of delies
<v Speaker 1>your lie. But let me just equivocally say, clearly in
<v Speaker 1>my trademark manner, this fuck it sucks. This absolutely sucks
<v Speaker 1>for everyone involved. But I hope that they get reinstated
<v Speaker 1>as soon as possible, if they even want to be
<v Speaker 1>at this point right. But furthermore, the thing I think
<v Speaker 1>about in this is how fucking stupid do they think
<v Speaker 1>we are? That we don't have the ability to put
<v Speaker 1>pieces together or research these things or figure out what
<v Speaker 1>it is they're actually doing. Do these like cor Po
<v Speaker 1>Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven inspired idiots really think that we
<v Speaker 1>just don't have the mental capacity to put this stuff together.
<v Speaker 2>Like I think it's worse than that.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's like they know that we can and
<v Speaker 1>they don't care because a line has consistently worked for
<v Speaker 1>everyone in the last forever. But like, especially these days,
<v Speaker 1>it's like you're lying. It's like, how dare you call
<v Speaker 1>me a liar?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 1>I mean that I fired these people for posting stuff
<v Speaker 1>in discord that's offensive to Like they could just be
<v Speaker 1>the most bad faith actors. And that's so the cynical
<v Speaker 1>side of me is like, oh yeah, that's what's happening.
<v Speaker 2>This is so much worse because of that.
<v Speaker 1>They could just they don't even try to do it
<v Speaker 1>well anymore.
<v Speaker 3>They get a righteous that feigned righteous ignation that they
<v Speaker 3>always put on. We know, we love our employees, we
<v Speaker 3>would never do something like that. They stepped out of
<v Speaker 3>their boundaries and we had to act accordingly. Fuck off,
<v Speaker 3>we know why you did this. They must have had
<v Speaker 3>some sort of case building for whether it's a next
<v Speaker 3>contract negotiation or or something that's spoo rocks the story, and.
<v Speaker 1>That they just recently passed the threshold that would have
<v Speaker 1>bound a rock star to a collective bargaining agreement or
<v Speaker 1>at least forced them to go have those conversations. And
<v Speaker 1>a collective bargaining agreement these days is going to be
<v Speaker 1>pretty aggressive, especially before the big game comes out. Like
<v Speaker 1>if they have had those conversations before Grand Theft Auto
<v Speaker 1>six comes out, it's like they can really establish, Hey,
<v Speaker 1>we you know this thing is going to be mass
<v Speaker 1>and we want to like get our long term residuals
<v Speaker 1>attached to this. It's like that is a conversation these
<v Speaker 1>companies don't even want to entertain. Clearly, they would rather
<v Speaker 1>potentially allegedly violate the law, then go in there and
<v Speaker 1>give these employees a long term recompensate, a compensation for
<v Speaker 1>the work that they've done.
<v Speaker 2>So also, okay, yeah, go ahead, no, you.
<v Speaker 3>Could take My question is so this discord that was
<v Speaker 3>had all these offensive things that they were leaking or
<v Speaker 3>what have you. Were these people the only members of
<v Speaker 3>that discord? And does that discord still exist? Because if
<v Speaker 3>either of those questions are no, and especially if both
<v Speaker 3>of them are no, then why were just these thirty
<v Speaker 3>four fired and not the rest of the people in
<v Speaker 3>that group? They were privy to potential leaks as well.
<v Speaker 3>So unless you shut this thing down, then you have
<v Speaker 3>even less of a leg to stand on. I hope
<v Speaker 3>that the union comes through and gets these people what
<v Speaker 3>they deserve, whether it be their jobs back if they
<v Speaker 3>want them, or some sort of severance package worthy of
<v Speaker 3>their standing or whatever that would be, because frankly, this sucks.
<v Speaker 2>It's just a shitty.
<v Speaker 3>Situation, one more feather in the cap of late stage capitalism,
<v Speaker 3>the thing that we love so dear, and it's yeah,
<v Speaker 3>nothing more.
<v Speaker 2>I can really sorry.
<v Speaker 1>About it, and it's it's never going to be enough
<v Speaker 1>for the for this, for these corporations, this company, they grow,
<v Speaker 1>and then that becomes the new baseline expectation that they
<v Speaker 1>are judged against. So they have to keep growing and
<v Speaker 1>and that's a very frightful thing to have to deal with.
<v Speaker 1>So the people that like find themselves in charge of
<v Speaker 1>some of these companies being like, look all this compensation
<v Speaker 1>I'm getting, I'm rich, but all this constant pressure to grow,
<v Speaker 1>I have to become ruthless to continue to protect my position.
<v Speaker 1>It turns people into monsters. And well, we know it'll
<v Speaker 1>never be enough because we're like the next story here.
<v Speaker 1>Red Dead Redemption two is now the fourth best selling
<v Speaker 1>game of all time. You know other games on that list,
<v Speaker 1>Grand Theft Auto five. They are responsible for making the
<v Speaker 1>most money in video games, and it's not enough for
<v Speaker 1>them to go, okay, well, now, how can we share
<v Speaker 1>this with the people who made it possible. It's like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, there they might want to share this.
<v Speaker 1>The people who made this possible might want to share this.
<v Speaker 1>Get in there and wreck their ability to collectively bargain
<v Speaker 1>for that state, and it's it's a bad look. So
<v Speaker 1>Red Dead Redemption two was released in twenty eighteen. They
<v Speaker 1>still have not put out a PS five or Xbox
<v Speaker 1>Series S NX native version or a switch to version,
<v Speaker 1>but those seem like they might be coming. But in
<v Speaker 1>the meantime, it's selling like crazy still. It's sold something
<v Speaker 1>like two million and more copies in the last quarter,
<v Speaker 1>and it surpassed the combined sales of Mario Kart eight
<v Speaker 1>and Mario Kart eight Deluxe on between the WIU and
<v Speaker 1>Switch versions, which is at seventy eight point zero two
<v Speaker 1>million copies sold. Yeah, so this one, I think is
<v Speaker 1>at it looks like it's going to pass We Sports,
<v Speaker 1>which is a number three soon that's at eighty two
<v Speaker 1>point nine million copies sold. Okay, Yeah, so I think
<v Speaker 1>that bring the total right now for Red Dead Redemption
<v Speaker 1>two is seventy nine million.
<v Speaker 2>These games, they make games that just continue to sell forever.
<v Speaker 1>And if you're someone who did that work and did
<v Speaker 1>make that possible, and you're looking at like, like, who's
<v Speaker 1>that money going to, it's like, oh, a couple of
<v Speaker 1>people at the top, the investors, and they had nothing
<v Speaker 1>to do, yes, and they had nothing to do with this.
<v Speaker 1>Why wouldn't you get residuals? You know, I know that's
<v Speaker 1>going to be a frightening word to a lot of
<v Speaker 1>these people that run these companies. It's it's either going
<v Speaker 1>to happen eventually or I think these companies eventually come
<v Speaker 1>crumbling down because they will be replaced by employee owned
<v Speaker 1>developers or developers that come up from the bottom. And
<v Speaker 1>obviously Rock Stars under no threat of that in the meantime.
<v Speaker 1>But but you know, one slip up and a company
<v Speaker 1>like even a company like that could be facing a
<v Speaker 1>situation where it's like, can we make this work anymore?
<v Speaker 2>And we don't know.
<v Speaker 1>There's no guaranteed Grand Theft Auto six is going to
<v Speaker 1>come out and be the game it needs to be.
<v Speaker 2>It could miss.
<v Speaker 1>They are missing a lot of key figures who made
<v Speaker 1>the previous games possible. So it's a pregarious position and
<v Speaker 1>sort of the only way you can ensure your future
<v Speaker 1>is to ensure that the people who made it possible continue.
<v Speaker 1>You don't want to work there, and instead you are
<v Speaker 1>firing them for trying to exercise their power as the
<v Speaker 1>labor that makes the games possible.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's a mind blowing concept that this company still
<v Speaker 3>is going to have two of the three best selling
<v Speaker 3>games of all time by the summer, and they feel
<v Speaker 3>that they have to take these initiatives to punish the
<v Speaker 3>people who made the games that put them there in
<v Speaker 3>the first place. It I hate it, honestly as a
<v Speaker 3>as someone who has been dealing. We've we've been reading
<v Speaker 3>a lot of these stories, a lot of these layoffs
<v Speaker 3>and union busting and firings and stuff like that, and eventually, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's going to come to a head. It's either going
<v Speaker 3>to be that these companies just crumble because you're you're
<v Speaker 3>leaving so much money at the top, nobody's gonna want
<v Speaker 3>to work for you at the bottom, and you need
<v Speaker 3>the people at the bottom to keep these games afloat.
<v Speaker 3>Like if the whole GTA Online team just shut the
<v Speaker 3>servers off and walked out, that loss in sales for
<v Speaker 3>that one day or those couple of hours, whatever it
<v Speaker 3>would be, would be enough I think to make them go,
<v Speaker 3>oh shit, right, And I don't know that. I don't
<v Speaker 3>know if that Again, this goes back to how stupid
<v Speaker 3>do they think we are or how much do they
<v Speaker 3>actually care, which is none.
<v Speaker 2>They're walking to tightrope.
<v Speaker 3>They're walking a tightrope, and eventually people are just going
<v Speaker 3>to be fed up. I don't know how long that's
<v Speaker 3>going to take. I don't know how long into the
<v Speaker 3>future we're gonna need, but eventually that bubble's gonna burst
<v Speaker 3>and people are gonna walk out. People are gonna find
<v Speaker 3>other places. The employee owned developer. I think that's great too.
<v Speaker 3>You would know a thing or two about going independent,
<v Speaker 3>so you could probably speak to that, and I want
<v Speaker 3>to work. I look, yeah, I look forward to that
<v Speaker 3>future that whatever it looks like. Either these people come
<v Speaker 3>around and these franchises can continue to thrive while also
<v Speaker 3>rewarding the people that make them, or we have new
<v Speaker 3>studios that rise from their ashes employee owned, employee backed,
<v Speaker 3>and we get good games from those idea makers as well.
<v Speaker 3>Either way, this corporate shit sucks. It just sucks.
<v Speaker 2>Take two had some other tidbits.
<v Speaker 1>Here's one that we'll just put out there because I
<v Speaker 1>know people are always asking about this one. BioShock four
<v Speaker 1>isn't dead and is still coming, Take two promises. That's
<v Speaker 1>from Darren bonth Use at game Spot. The next BioShock
<v Speaker 1>game has been in development for the better part of
<v Speaker 1>a decade. That's right, man, It was like twenty twelve
<v Speaker 1>for Infinite but two K Games parent company Take two
<v Speaker 1>Interactive has confirmed that there are no plans currently to
<v Speaker 1>cancel it. That's yea weird way to be, like, what, yes,
<v Speaker 1>we don't have plans to cancel it yet. In a
<v Speaker 1>new interview, CEO Strauss tell Nick address the lengthy, lengthy
<v Speaker 1>development cycle, promising that BioShock will eventually be released. It's
<v Speaker 1>going to come out that, I could say, hand on
<v Speaker 1>heart without question, Zelnick said to IGN. The CEO added
<v Speaker 1>that with longer development cycles for Triple A games, it
<v Speaker 1>had become more challenging to build a game that can
<v Speaker 1>can stand out from the pack. As part of its
<v Speaker 1>quality over quantity mindset, he continued, the strategy of this
<v Speaker 1>company has always been to make the best entertainment, not
<v Speaker 1>necessarily the most entertainment. Of course, sometimes we've fallen short,
<v Speaker 1>but frankly precious a few times, Zelnic boasted, adding that
<v Speaker 1>take to is aiming to release exceptional games. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>mean listen, trying to make your games as good as
<v Speaker 1>possible before releasing them seems completely valid to me. And
<v Speaker 1>at the same time, I still am curious about the
<v Speaker 1>reasons BioShock four was delayed in the first place. They
<v Speaker 1>said it was, or we got reporting that like some
<v Speaker 1>story didn't meet the narrative didn't meet a quality check.
<v Speaker 1>It's again, is that it or is the gameplay bad?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, but yeah, BioShock four. Is the world
<v Speaker 1>still like going to be receptive to this game? Or
<v Speaker 1>is this one that could just kind of come and
<v Speaker 1>go and be like a Mirror's Edge catalyst sort of thing,
<v Speaker 1>Like we've been asking for it and this one can't
<v Speaker 1>quite live up to its expectations and gets forgotten immediately.
<v Speaker 3>I think the smartest thing they can do with this
<v Speaker 3>is not call it BioShock for you change the name
<v Speaker 3>to something unrelated. You don't even mention, like, we'll know
<v Speaker 3>that it's the BioShock successor because it's Cloud Chamber. We'll
<v Speaker 3>be able to figure that out, But don't call it that.
<v Speaker 3>See if you can find a way to separate it
<v Speaker 3>from that lore and make it something brand new, you
<v Speaker 3>know what I mean? Because I don't.
<v Speaker 2>I think.
<v Speaker 3>I think public opinion on BioShock Infinite has soured because
<v Speaker 3>of the overtones of the story let's call them, in
<v Speaker 3>some regards. So I don't know that, especially if it's
<v Speaker 3>going to be linked to that story, I don't know
<v Speaker 3>that you really want to be associated with it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I'm wondering if the narrative check fail was the main
<v Speaker 3>the maintenance of those overtones, and someone realized, oh shit,
<v Speaker 3>we got to get rid of these right. Interestingly, I don't.
<v Speaker 3>I hate to say this, because you know, BioShock is
<v Speaker 3>was a monumental franchise in the Xbox three sixty era.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know that this is necessary anymore.
<v Speaker 2>I don't. I don't know. I don't mean I think
<v Speaker 2>it's the thinking way to go to prove itself. I
<v Speaker 2>think it's taken too long. It's taken too long.
<v Speaker 3>Now, the first trailer could come out at some event
<v Speaker 3>and we're all like, all right, maybe I'll give it
<v Speaker 3>a chance, or I'll get really excited about it again.
<v Speaker 3>As someone points out in chat, BioShock is old enough
<v Speaker 3>to vote, which is which is interesting?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. And what do you do now?
<v Speaker 3>Do you target twenty twenty seven, the twentieth anniversary of
<v Speaker 3>the first BioShock and take even longer? Like is that
<v Speaker 3>your target now? And then if it is twenty twenty seven,
<v Speaker 3>how far from Grand Theft Auto, assuming that comes out
<v Speaker 3>in November? Are you going to release it to not
<v Speaker 3>have Grand Theft Auto cannibalize that, so you have that
<v Speaker 3>obstacle there, there are too many hurdles you're gonna trip.
<v Speaker 2>I don't I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>I don't see this as necess Also too, it could
<v Speaker 3>fall into a mafia the Old Country situation where it's
<v Speaker 3>got the name on it. It's different, it comes out,
<v Speaker 3>and that's beginning to develop a bit of a cult,
<v Speaker 3>not a cult following. But like you, I think that's fair.
<v Speaker 3>There's a groundswell of it. It's not gonna, you know,
<v Speaker 3>take all the game awards, all the Game of the
<v Speaker 3>Year awards, but people seem to really enjoy it. The
<v Speaker 3>ones that have stuck to it. Most of them are
<v Speaker 3>Italian Matt Piscatella and Giavali col Antonio specifically. Maybe it
<v Speaker 3>has to do it. I haven't played it yet, you
<v Speaker 3>would think, But I haven't played it yet, so yeah,
<v Speaker 3>maybe it falls into that situation where the people who
<v Speaker 3>give it a shot are.
<v Speaker 2>Really really into it, and the rest of us are
<v Speaker 2>just kind of like me. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I think that for BioShock, a lot of it will
<v Speaker 1>come down to navigating what you said about, like the
<v Speaker 1>legacy of infinite and a lot of the you know
<v Speaker 1>that legacy at this point is the criticism. I think
<v Speaker 1>that's louder than anything from the story. And so my
<v Speaker 1>expectation was gonna be like they would overcome state for
<v Speaker 1>that and like really go hard on no, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>you're right, Actually it's the fascist government and not the
<v Speaker 1>underclass fighting for equality that are the bad guys here.
<v Speaker 1>And then maybe they would go hard on that to
<v Speaker 1>the point where it's like, oh, this looks like an
<v Speaker 1>explicit criticism of Donald Trump and the fascist policies of
<v Speaker 1>the United States currently, and a a big corporation might
<v Speaker 1>want to pussy foot around that a little bit and
<v Speaker 1>be like, I'm not sure if we want to dive
<v Speaker 1>into that, So maybe let's change up the story so
<v Speaker 1>I don't get yelled at when I go to a
<v Speaker 1>swinkie dinner in DC. My name is strauss Selnik.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe that's why they delayed Grand Theft Auto. Would be
<v Speaker 3>two weeks after the mid terms. By then it could
<v Speaker 3>be okay to talk shit.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's not bad, not a bad point.
<v Speaker 2>You're right.
<v Speaker 1>At that point that game might really come in and
<v Speaker 1>be like, ah see, everyone agrees with us.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see. I don't know the writing of Grand Theft Auto.
<v Speaker 1>Its ability to like be incisive in a moment feels
<v Speaker 1>like it's going to be a tough hurdle for a declimb.
<v Speaker 1>It's always very broad. Okay, enough take two stuff, Let's
<v Speaker 1>take a break. We'll come back. We got plenty more
<v Speaker 1>of these headlines to get through. We'll do that after this.
<v Speaker 1>If you want to skip out on these ads, premium
<v Speaker 1>version of the video show, a premium version of the
<v Speaker 1>audio show. You can find these by going to giant
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<v Speaker 1>All right, Game Mess Mornings, Jeff Grub, Jason Finelli. We
<v Speaker 1>are going to get back into it while we were
<v Speaker 1>doing the show though, so it's not on the rundown.
<v Speaker 1>Let's just hit it real quick. It is in seven day,
<v Speaker 1>November seventh. That means it's time to get out your
<v Speaker 1>mass Effect trees and your and your Shepherd cardboard cutouts
<v Speaker 1>and hug them dearly and pat them on the head.
<v Speaker 1>There we go, and then they have a blog post
<v Speaker 1>because that's how you celebrate in seven day where they
<v Speaker 1>write like you we've heard the rumors lately, You've made
<v Speaker 1>it clear you care deeply about what's next. So let's
<v Speaker 1>start by setting the record straight. The next Mass Effect
<v Speaker 1>game is in development, and EA and BioWare remain committed
<v Speaker 1>to telling more stories in this universe. The truth is
<v Speaker 1>the last two years have been incredibly busy, in incredibly
<v Speaker 1>busy time at BioWare, but currently the team is heads
<v Speaker 1>down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect. We have a
<v Speaker 1>lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build,
<v Speaker 1>and lots of romances to figure out. We're excited by
<v Speaker 1>what's what we're building, and we promise you when we're ready,
<v Speaker 1>it'll be a lot, a lot of fun to show.
<v Speaker 1>Until then, Thank you for your patients, because you all
<v Speaker 1>are thirsty for news, and I see you looking for
<v Speaker 1>secret meaning in my tweets. Okay, sometimes they do have
<v Speaker 1>secret meaning. Can't do that, but now now they're going
<v Speaker 1>to go crazy for everything you tweet.
<v Speaker 2>Here come the arg people, yep uatory. I'm one of
<v Speaker 2>those people. Oh yeah, of course.
<v Speaker 1>Deep beside us, we all have arg people beyond the
<v Speaker 1>next game, which is that is beyond written with a
<v Speaker 1>weird oh or something here. Maybe there are already's something
<v Speaker 1>beyond the next the massive mass effect for beyond.
<v Speaker 3>Wait, bit, you're right, a bunch of these letters are
<v Speaker 3>out uh italicized.
<v Speaker 2>Get on the.
<v Speaker 1>Couple, all right, everyone, get to work beyond the next game.
<v Speaker 1>There's more to get excited. Yeah, the g's italicized as well,
<v Speaker 1>to get excited about. I haven't talked about it much,
<v Speaker 1>but you might have heard a little something about a
<v Speaker 1>TV series. We've been partnering closely with Amazon on it,
<v Speaker 1>and we're really excited with what the talented team over
<v Speaker 1>there is coming up with.
<v Speaker 2>Hey that that Fallout show is good.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I can imagine Amazon knowing how to do right
<v Speaker 1>by mass Effect.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, it's like different production teams and all that stuff,
<v Speaker 2>but whatever, Okay, yeah, mass effect in the works.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I think that that game was in a
<v Speaker 1>position where it's like we even though dragon Age didn't hit,
<v Speaker 1>we still.
<v Speaker 2>Believe in mass effect.
<v Speaker 1>But this is absolutely BioWare's last chance, right, Jason, Yes.
<v Speaker 2>It has to be.
<v Speaker 3>I mean the dragon Age not performing to expectations. Now,
<v Speaker 3>you know, you can write a whole article about whether
<v Speaker 3>those expectations were you know, smart or logical, but yes,
<v Speaker 3>this has to be the one. If this doesn't hit,
<v Speaker 3>then they are rude. I think they become a support
<v Speaker 3>studio for Dice and Battlefield or whatever or something else. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I mean if if they don't if this man and
<v Speaker 3>it probably whether they're being so quiet about it and
<v Speaker 3>they're taking their time with it because they know they
<v Speaker 3>have to know that if this one doesn't go, that
<v Speaker 3>it's over for them, which would be tragic for many,
<v Speaker 3>many reasons. But yeah, this is this has to be
<v Speaker 3>their swan song. Quick aside to the people in the
<v Speaker 3>chat who are saying things like the message says drink
<v Speaker 3>more ovaltine or Christian is definitely an arg person. That's
<v Speaker 3>a great joke. That one's great. But yeah, so, I
<v Speaker 3>I am a huge fan of the original Mass spect trilogy.
<v Speaker 3>It was one of the best, like one of my
<v Speaker 3>premiere titles from that era. I have the legendary connection.
<v Speaker 3>Never played Andromeda still that is a blip on my backlog.
<v Speaker 3>That's just at the time I didn't have time and
<v Speaker 3>I haven't been able to get back to it. But
<v Speaker 3>I need this game to be good, like I need
<v Speaker 3>that franchise to be back it was. I still go
<v Speaker 3>back once in a while and dip into it, and
<v Speaker 3>the soundtrack to those games is still on regular play
<v Speaker 3>since the day I played it. Vigil, the main menu
<v Speaker 3>song from the first game Vigil, is some of the
<v Speaker 3>best meditation music you could ever use if you just
<v Speaker 3>need to sit and chill. If it's only a minute
<v Speaker 3>and a half long on Spotify, you just sit and
<v Speaker 3>chill out to it, and then you're refreshed and you
<v Speaker 3>can go about your day. I need all of that back.
<v Speaker 3>I need that mood back, I need the universe back.
<v Speaker 3>I need it back. Take your time. I'll be frustrated
<v Speaker 3>by it, I'll be upset about it, but take your time.
<v Speaker 3>I need buyerwear to exist, A for mass effect, and
<v Speaker 3>B to keep my faint hopes for a Jade Empire
<v Speaker 3>file follow up alive at some point, but mostly at
<v Speaker 3>this point.
<v Speaker 1>I so someone in chat said that the secret letters,
<v Speaker 1>when you put them together, spells you are l Krogan.
<v Speaker 1>So I went to Krogan dot com and it's just
<v Speaker 1>it is a website and there's Krogan dot com slash Lander,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not loading anything for me.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe maybe it's by Aware dot com slash Crogan. I'll
<v Speaker 1>let I'll let chat investigate, y'all get back to me
<v Speaker 1>and let me know.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it's a I'm looking at it. Yeah, you're right.
<v Speaker 2>It says you're mister gay. You're right, sir. That's man. Huh.
<v Speaker 2>I wonder what that means.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder who that uh buyerware dot Com slash crogan
<v Speaker 3>is currently spinning for me.
<v Speaker 2>So I wonder. Okay, uh, if that loads off while
<v Speaker 2>we're here, I will let you know. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, well we'll see, uh what's going on there.
<v Speaker 1>But I still have like faith in the in the
<v Speaker 1>people at by Aware. I had it for Dragon Age,
<v Speaker 1>and it sounds like I, personally, as someone who's not
<v Speaker 1>a huge Dragon Age guy, would have graded that game
<v Speaker 1>on a curve just knowing its history of how it
<v Speaker 1>was falling apart falling apart, and then they were able
<v Speaker 1>to kind of bring something together that is respectable to
<v Speaker 1>the point where it's like, no one's like.
<v Speaker 2>This game is.
<v Speaker 1>It's not Andromeda. It just doesn't hit quite as hard.
<v Speaker 1>We don't we're not quite into the writing. And it's
<v Speaker 1>like the fact that you're talking about that those issues
<v Speaker 1>and then maybe seeing some seams here or there should
<v Speaker 1>should actually be praised because they were able to really
<v Speaker 1>bring that thing together.
<v Speaker 2>Now.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, no one wants to hear that when they're
<v Speaker 1>spending their money, and so don't go by that game.
<v Speaker 2>Don't go play it. If you're not into it, that's fine.
<v Speaker 1>But my hope would be that they were going into
<v Speaker 1>this mass effect game mass Effect five, really.
<v Speaker 2>With a clear vision.
<v Speaker 1>And from years ago we know that they were considering
<v Speaker 1>some live action stuff or not live you know, live
<v Speaker 1>service stuff, and now they are going to this mass
<v Speaker 1>effect game with an idea of like, no, this is
<v Speaker 1>going to be like a traditional mass effect game, and
<v Speaker 1>it's going to be unreal engine, and I hope that
<v Speaker 1>just sort of unshackles them and they're able to really
<v Speaker 1>make it all work. So we'll see and if they can,
<v Speaker 1>like I said, I have faith that the people at
<v Speaker 1>the studio now can make a really, really respectable game.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you, all right.
<v Speaker 1>So we moved off of Take two news. We got
<v Speaker 1>the N seven day stuff out of the way, so
<v Speaker 1>let's go here. Marvel nineteen forty three Rise of Hydra
<v Speaker 1>follows GTA six with delay announcement. This is from Tay
<v Speaker 1>Garcia at Dual shockers. It seems that the delay saga
<v Speaker 1>this week isn't over yet, since here comes another major
<v Speaker 1>title taking a step back after GTA six is. This
<v Speaker 1>time it is the highly anticipated Marvel nineteen forty three
<v Speaker 1>Rise of Hydra. Is it highly anticipated? I just still
<v Speaker 1>don't know if anyone knows what this game is. Sky
<v Speaker 1>danser at them, huh who called it that? Marl Skydance themselves?
<v Speaker 1>Maybe if they probably did. According to an official statement
<v Speaker 1>shared on sky Dance games as social media, the developers
<v Speaker 1>explained that their goal is to deliver an unforgettable premium
<v Speaker 1>game that honors its characters and world and a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of other blah blah blah. Yeah, if you this is
<v Speaker 1>a game they probably knew was going to be delayed.
<v Speaker 1>They saw GTA six announced that, like, go, let's go
<v Speaker 1>get in the wake of that, because people just pay
<v Speaker 1>paying attention to GTA six and be less annoying about
<v Speaker 1>our game, sky Dance. You know, that's a Larry Ellison outfit,
<v Speaker 1>Oracle one of his son who started that. They're buying
<v Speaker 1>up Paramount and everything else. It's they haven't done a
<v Speaker 1>lot of like big games, so again it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 1>you have Amy hennig over there issue just making uncharted,
<v Speaker 1>but with World War Two, Captain America and Black Panther,
<v Speaker 1>it's hard to envision for me, and they have not
<v Speaker 1>really shown off much other than at that Epic. I
<v Speaker 1>think Epic had like a state of unreal and there
<v Speaker 1>was a teaser for the game in there and there.
<v Speaker 1>It did look impressive, but I still don't think we
<v Speaker 1>knew how it's gonna play.
<v Speaker 2>So hard you feeling about this delay? What are your
<v Speaker 2>expectation for Marvel nineteen forty three Rise.
<v Speaker 3>Of Hydra My live reaction to the news that this
<v Speaker 3>game was delayed. Oh, yeah, that game exists.
<v Speaker 2>That was it.
<v Speaker 3>I completely forgot about it. And sky Dance their most
<v Speaker 3>of their background so far in video games is VR related.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they did some Microwalking Dead VR stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they did Walking Dead. They did Behemoth last year,
<v Speaker 3>right the tail end of last year was a very
<v Speaker 3>highly touted VR game that did not perform well. And
<v Speaker 3>then the first one they ever made was Archangel, which
<v Speaker 3>I vaguely remember from E three twenty seventeen, but it
<v Speaker 3>don't I don't know. I mean the fact that they
<v Speaker 3>thought that they could just push this out with the
<v Speaker 3>GTA stuff and be like, no, don't pay attention to us,
<v Speaker 3>don't pay tention us. That kind of is the whole
<v Speaker 3>game away. I don't know how confident they are either,
<v Speaker 3>but they think maybe the longer that people like me
<v Speaker 3>forget this exists, the more time they think they have
<v Speaker 3>to develop it. Maybe they're trying to shoot for a
<v Speaker 3>twenty four forty three release to Cohen's one hundred years
<v Speaker 3>after the date in their title. I don't know, but
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. I don't I haven't seen enough about
<v Speaker 3>this to comment or more cynically care. At the moment.
<v Speaker 3>There's just too much going on to focus on this.
<v Speaker 3>And if you're going to keep laying it indefinitely, you're
<v Speaker 3>not giving me any reason to want to research it,
<v Speaker 3>to want.
<v Speaker 2>To get excited about it.
<v Speaker 3>So give me something concrete, give me something a little more,
<v Speaker 3>a little more to sink my teeth into, and then
<v Speaker 3>maybe I'll start to worry about if it gets delayed
<v Speaker 3>too much, or be excited about its launch, or wonder
<v Speaker 3>what the game is about.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, we don't have a new release date.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's maybe one of the more notable things
<v Speaker 1>about this is it had some sort of window of
<v Speaker 1>early twenty twenty six. Hearing like this notice that they
<v Speaker 1>posted on social media. They say, we've made the decision
<v Speaker 1>to shift our release window beyond early twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 1>They do not provide a new release window. So this
<v Speaker 1>is an indefinite delay as and it's not been defined.
<v Speaker 2>Now.
<v Speaker 1>To me, this one feels maybe a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>indeffinite than I think it was Minad the Hollower, right,
<v Speaker 1>that one got an independent delay. It's like, we're not
<v Speaker 1>going to define the new release date. We'll tell you
<v Speaker 1>when we're a little bit closer, when we pass certain
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that. That one's like, oh okay, they're just
<v Speaker 1>gonna tell us two weeks out, like a lot of
<v Speaker 1>other indie games have. This game's not in that situation.
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's a chance we never hear from this
<v Speaker 1>game again, right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there's always a chance you never hear. I mean
<v Speaker 3>we didn't even know, we weren't hearing about it until
<v Speaker 3>this delay happened. Yeah, right, at least I didn't so
<v Speaker 3>in early twenty twenty six. That could mean, well, I
<v Speaker 3>hope they weren't going for Holiday twenty twenty six, because
<v Speaker 3>that just got pretty fucked up. Right, If they were
<v Speaker 3>shooting for September October of twenty twenty six. Not anymore,
<v Speaker 3>at least I hope not, unless they are they think
<v Speaker 3>they can get far enough ahead of it, maybe late summer.
<v Speaker 3>This is the kind of game that maybe shows up
<v Speaker 3>at a summer game fest, right, Yeah, maybe a game's
<v Speaker 3>come for a twenty twenty seven launch down the pipeline.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think they're in any rush to launch it,
<v Speaker 3>and I don't think we're in any rush to receive it.
<v Speaker 3>So it's just going to kind of exist in the
<v Speaker 3>ether until it doesn't.
<v Speaker 1>And I wonder if it's like they saw Wolverine and
<v Speaker 1>they were like, oh, yeah, our game is gonna look
<v Speaker 1>bad compared to that, so let's give it a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more love. And it's like, it's not like they
<v Speaker 1>don't have the money. It's Larry Ellison's kids. Larry Ellison.
<v Speaker 1>I guess now back to being the second richest person
<v Speaker 1>in the world after the trillion dollar pay package for
<v Speaker 1>fuck nuts over there.
<v Speaker 2>But yes, hey, what can you say? All right? Square
<v Speaker 2>Enix announced it got just bad news.
<v Speaker 1>Square Innox announces more layoffs as part of US and
<v Speaker 1>Europe restructuring.
<v Speaker 2>This is from Andy Robinson at VGC.
<v Speaker 1>Square Inox announced the layoffs across nearly all areas of
<v Speaker 1>its western businesses in an all hands meeting on Thursday.
<v Speaker 1>VGC understands. In a video call to staff outside of
<v Speaker 1>its home country of Japan and including those based in
<v Speaker 1>Europe and America, square Enix president Takashi Kiu said that
<v Speaker 1>the company was implementing overseas structural reform to create a
<v Speaker 1>more lean and agile business abroad. Score Inex will be
<v Speaker 1>implementing a fundamental restructuring of that. This is a quote
<v Speaker 1>again of the overseas publishing organization kre You said. Details
<v Speaker 1>of the restructure will be shared at a later date.
<v Speaker 1>Staff were told however, it confirmed roles would be cut,
<v Speaker 1>employees would be left, or employees left would be required
<v Speaker 1>to spend more time working in the office.
<v Speaker 2>So essentially, it's like about.
<v Speaker 1>One hundred and forty people across Europe and the United
<v Speaker 1>States or North America, and it's people in it marketing, publishing, sales, QA.
<v Speaker 2>Business planning and more.
<v Speaker 1>And before we kind of get in se okay, they're
<v Speaker 1>consolidating their business side of things over and back in Japan.
<v Speaker 1>They probably used to do stuff, mostly in Japan, and
<v Speaker 1>then they grew globally and now they're saying like that's
<v Speaker 1>not worth it.
<v Speaker 2>We want to save money.
<v Speaker 1>I think they said something like this is going to
<v Speaker 1>save them about three billion yen. Yes, that's about nineteen
<v Speaker 1>point six billion or million dollars, I should say, not
<v Speaker 1>billion dollars. But this also came in conjunction with like
<v Speaker 1>people like reading the headlines right on VGC and they
<v Speaker 1>read this story and then a couple of stories later
<v Speaker 1>or maybe earlier. It was squerrey inx first. Yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so earlier in the day, just like minutes before. Really,
<v Speaker 1>in a lot of ways, squarey Inox is once to
<v Speaker 1>have their most of their KA. I think it's something
<v Speaker 1>like seventy percent of their QA done by generative AI
<v Speaker 1>with debugging. Yeah, debugging by twenty twenty seven. Now it's
<v Speaker 1>easy to let be like these are part of the
<v Speaker 1>same idea like save money, save money, cut jobs, give
<v Speaker 1>more jobs to AI, and the end goal there to
<v Speaker 1>save money for Square Innox. But apparently it's like this
<v Speaker 1>AI push for debugging is in the research phase and
<v Speaker 1>they have not implemented it yet. They plan to do
<v Speaker 1>it though pretty soon, and that this is one, Jason,
<v Speaker 1>I fully expect AI to be deeply integrated into the
<v Speaker 1>QA teams going.
<v Speaker 3>Forward, and they'll get what they pay for. Like I'm
<v Speaker 3>looking forward to Final Fantasy seven part remake, Part three,
<v Speaker 3>Cepharrof coming down to me and saying he's gonna brong
<v Speaker 3>me dos Pier. That could because they don't they don't
<v Speaker 3>have any you know, editors or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>This is why this is, specifically though, why I expected
<v Speaker 1>to be in QA, because they already get what they
<v Speaker 1>pay for.
<v Speaker 2>They already have tried to cut costs in QA.
<v Speaker 1>They try to do the bare minimum minimum, like just
<v Speaker 1>give us the known shippables and if some of our
<v Speaker 1>games come out as buggy messes.
<v Speaker 2>And this is not just squarreing, this is this is
<v Speaker 2>across the industry.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is like the first place they try to
<v Speaker 1>skip on and and makes and make some money back
<v Speaker 1>by cutting jobs in QA. So it's like they're already
<v Speaker 1>doing a shitty job. They're already not investing in it.
<v Speaker 1>What's doing a shitty job with AI?
<v Speaker 2>Now? Like, what's the difference. At a certain point, they
<v Speaker 2>won't see.
<v Speaker 3>One, Yeah, they won't see one. But when the games
<v Speaker 3>start to come out buggy as hell, and people are like,
<v Speaker 3>why can't games come out and just work? They're gonna
<v Speaker 3>have to go back to human QA testers this. Not
<v Speaker 3>to get too much on them the side, but this
<v Speaker 3>aibubb is gonna pop right Like I think the guy
<v Speaker 3>who shorted the housing crist the housing market in two
<v Speaker 3>thousand and eight put a billion dollar on the AI
<v Speaker 3>bubble popping soon. That has to be a little worrisome,
<v Speaker 3>don't you think?
<v Speaker 2>I mean worse than that Open AI fucking what's his name? Sam?
<v Speaker 1>Is out yes, out there being like, hey, government, can
<v Speaker 1>you guarantee the investments into open AI?
<v Speaker 2>Like what the fuck are you talking about? Man?
<v Speaker 3>No, No, but not if you don't do what you're
<v Speaker 3>you say you're going to do.
<v Speaker 2>What are you talking about? Tom Host?
<v Speaker 3>But anyway, uh yeah, this sucks. Uh to get both
<v Speaker 3>of these on a one one two punch of stories
<v Speaker 3>from Square Inx like this really really sucks. I there
<v Speaker 3>are people that I worked with worked with at Square
<v Speaker 3>Innox in their like PR department, marketing department that I
<v Speaker 3>still don't know if they still have a job. The
<v Speaker 3>fellow that I met with at a recent convention for
<v Speaker 3>something I'm still under embargo for I don't know if
<v Speaker 3>he still has a job.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I've got I've got some friends, the friends that.
<v Speaker 1>Like the longtime listeners and Pep. I become very cordial
<v Speaker 1>with a Square Inx and it's like, oh, man, that
<v Speaker 1>you had some cool people working there. I hope they're
<v Speaker 1>all still employed. Knowing it very well, many of them
<v Speaker 1>probably aren't at this point, which is such a bummer. Right,
<v Speaker 1>And these are people that you would see at the conventions,
<v Speaker 1>at Summer Games Fest, what have you, and you'd reacquaint yourself,
<v Speaker 1>talk about what they got going on, and now you
<v Speaker 1>don't know if you're ever going to see them. They're
<v Speaker 1>definitely not.
<v Speaker 3>In that capacity, in any capacity at all, because these
<v Speaker 3>people that were laying off, these people that were getting
<v Speaker 3>rid of statistically are not coming back. They're not finding
<v Speaker 3>jobs in this industry. They are going elsewhere. So it's
<v Speaker 3>just it's it's sad, it's obnoxious. It's a very depressing Friday.
<v Speaker 3>I'm seeing either contracts.
<v Speaker 1>Day or we get the worst fucking news of the year.
<v Speaker 1>It's those are options.
<v Speaker 3>Normal Friday, be normal. But yeah, my heart goes out
<v Speaker 3>to everyone involved in layoffs. I hope that square Enix
<v Speaker 3>decides that the ai QA isn't QAI, let's call it
<v Speaker 3>to be to be fun is worth it? And then
<v Speaker 3>they get the human QA testers in there. I'd rather
<v Speaker 3>I would much rather be arguing discussing stories about QA testers,
<v Speaker 3>you know, not being paid enough. But they're humans, then
<v Speaker 3>AI QA because at least humans have work.
<v Speaker 2>Yep.
<v Speaker 3>You can fight for their ages, you can fight for
<v Speaker 3>the get them unionized and stuff like that. You can't
<v Speaker 3>do that with QA. I mean, so you can't do
<v Speaker 3>that with AI.
<v Speaker 2>That just hits my cynicism so hard.
<v Speaker 1>It's like they are already undervalued, so them being like, well,
<v Speaker 1>compared to AI, we don't value one and we know
<v Speaker 1>the other one is not worth a lot because we
<v Speaker 1>don't have to pay a.
<v Speaker 2>Lot for AI, So we'll just do that.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's good end up trying it, and I agree
<v Speaker 1>that we'll notice. I don't think these companies will acknowledge
<v Speaker 1>that that is a problem because it saves them too
<v Speaker 1>much money're.
<v Speaker 2>Like, well, what do you expect us to do? Hire people?
<v Speaker 1>And it's like you yes, two that they will just
<v Speaker 1>whistle their way back to the bank and it's going
<v Speaker 1>to be very frustrating. Nintendo claims it won't hike Switch
<v Speaker 1>two's prices, but you know, there is of course a
<v Speaker 1>caveat there. This is from Chris Littlechild at Duel Shockers.
<v Speaker 1>Let's see, while we are aware that the cost of
<v Speaker 1>various materials are rising, we also anticipate some areas where
<v Speaker 1>cost reduction may be achieved for Nintendo switched to through
<v Speaker 1>ongoing mass production efforts. That's according to Shintaro for a Kawa.
<v Speaker 1>He is basically saying, yes, some of the things that
<v Speaker 1>we need to put into the switch to are seeing
<v Speaker 1>price increases and are hitting us. However, we are also
<v Speaker 1>seeing price reductions on other things, so we're hoping to
<v Speaker 1>maintain that equilibrium and we won't have to raise the price,
<v Speaker 1>and we have no plans to raise the price now.
<v Speaker 2>He then goes on.
<v Speaker 1>To say, though that if tariffs were to change, if
<v Speaker 1>the global economic situation were to shift in some massive way,
<v Speaker 1>they would reconsider this.
<v Speaker 2>So it's you know, it's not even it's not a promise.
<v Speaker 1>It's just a statement of we're not going to raise
<v Speaker 1>it now, but we still might later and you'll know
<v Speaker 1>why when it happens, which at certain point it's like
<v Speaker 1>fair like if it really is going to follow that
<v Speaker 1>like if a tariffs and be like, well, they're gonna
<v Speaker 1>they're gonna raise the price because of that, and then
<v Speaker 1>they do.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 1>It has felt a little arbitrary or arbitrary over the
<v Speaker 1>last generation, though, Jason like, Oh, these prices just keep
<v Speaker 1>going up no matter what, Like prices were going up
<v Speaker 1>before we got to the tariff stuff. So it's I'm
<v Speaker 1>still a little frightened. I get a lot of people
<v Speaker 1>are making moves to get the systems now because they
<v Speaker 1>also believe everyone sort of has a built in belief
<v Speaker 1>now that prices will continue to go up.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I do too.
<v Speaker 3>I do appreciate how diplomatic he's being here right like,
<v Speaker 3>you kind of have to toe the line with we're
<v Speaker 3>keeping it where it is. We have no plans. Of course,
<v Speaker 3>you have no plans. The market right now is allowing
<v Speaker 3>you to not have those plans. But you're going to
<v Speaker 3>have to adjust. And if the Supreme Court doesn't come
<v Speaker 3>through and the tariffs don't get struck down, then we're
<v Speaker 3>going to see a price increase. If people come to
<v Speaker 3>their senses and the tariffs go away, would we see
<v Speaker 3>a price decrease? I don't know about that. I don't
<v Speaker 3>know that that's something that would be in the cards
<v Speaker 3>at least not ee rear one likely yep. Right, So
<v Speaker 3>I and they still sit in a place where they
<v Speaker 3>are the cheapest option, right, they don't have to go anywhere,
<v Speaker 3>and they even have some wiggle room, I believe, So
<v Speaker 3>I don't. I don't think that that. I think being
<v Speaker 3>diplomatic was the right course of action here. But I
<v Speaker 3>also would would get if they did need to bump
<v Speaker 3>up fifty bucks or something like that, like if they
<v Speaker 3>go to a thousand dollars, like what are you doing?
<v Speaker 1>But chat is like pointing out the reason why we
<v Speaker 1>might still see a price increase.
<v Speaker 2>RAM prices have gone through the roof.
<v Speaker 1>We talked about this on a story that might have
<v Speaker 1>been Monday, I can't remember when it was. But like
<v Speaker 1>Micron and s K Heinez are all these companies are like, Hey,
<v Speaker 1>there's a ton of demand and it's mostly coming from
<v Speaker 1>AI for high bandwidth memory, which is not the same
<v Speaker 1>stuff that you put into your home computer.
<v Speaker 2>But that's where we're putting our.
<v Speaker 1>Focus because AI is just outbidding the comic con consumer
<v Speaker 1>by an order of magnitude. So we're not putting in
<v Speaker 1>the effort to making more DDR memory at double data
<v Speaker 1>rate memory, because we are like, you know, that's making
<v Speaker 1>us some money, but it's not making us all the money.
<v Speaker 1>And while there's demand going up there, it's not commiserate
<v Speaker 1>with what we're seeing from AI. So the expectation is
<v Speaker 1>it's going up in price DDR memory. It's going to
<v Speaker 1>be even worse than twenty twenty six. And that's gonna
<v Speaker 1>just hit everybody. People in chatter saying they were specking
<v Speaker 1>out thirty two gigabytes of memory a month or so
<v Speaker 1>ago and it was about one hundred bucks and now
<v Speaker 1>it's two hundred and fifty dollars for that same module.
<v Speaker 1>That's it's going to be sick here real soon, all right.
<v Speaker 1>Last story, kill Bill's pussy wagh wait, kill Bill's Wagon
<v Speaker 1>coming to Fortnite. New teaser reveals this is from Michael
<v Speaker 1>mcwerder at Polygon.
<v Speaker 2>Here's what we turn it around. Fortnite's Yeah, exactly, end strong.
<v Speaker 1>Fortnite's mysterious upcoming collaboration that involves director Quentin Tarantino will include,
<v Speaker 1>at the very least, the addition of kill Bill's.
<v Speaker 2>Wagon to the Battle Royale game.
<v Speaker 1>A teaser for that unusual crossover was included as part
<v Speaker 1>of a trailer for kill Bill The Whole Bloody Affair,
<v Speaker 1>the upcoming re release of Tarantino's two part martial arts epic,
<v Speaker 1>A Revenge Epic.
<v Speaker 2>It combines it into one movie I Guess.
<v Speaker 1>Epic and Tarantinos teaser for the kill Bill Fortnite crossover
<v Speaker 1>last just a single frame in the kill Bill the
<v Speaker 1>Whole Bloody a fair trailer, but it clearly hints at
<v Speaker 1>the iconic vehicles arrival in the game. They will make
<v Speaker 1>it kid friendly instead of same wagon. There's just gonna
<v Speaker 1>be a picture of a cat's face, the cat from Fortnite,
<v Speaker 1>and the wagon Yes miou souls, thank you.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>In fact, that's the license plate. Instead of saying wagon
<v Speaker 1>says meow wagon. So there you go.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, I don't know something about this one.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, if I'll tell you what, if they didn't
<v Speaker 1>just have K Pop Demon Hunter, I would be sitting
<v Speaker 1>here going I think Fortnite's a little cooked. They are
<v Speaker 1>just specifically going after a very small subset of older
<v Speaker 1>gamers who still have money, and it's like, well, no,
<v Speaker 1>of course they can do anything. They did Kpop Demon
<v Speaker 1>Hunters in a matter of months and they captured that
<v Speaker 1>excitement just about better than anyone has. So it's like
<v Speaker 1>they're so far away from being cooked. But something about
<v Speaker 1>like getting more and more narrow with their appeal with
<v Speaker 1>some of these partnerships makes it feel like they know.
<v Speaker 1>They're looking at the data, they're knowing who spends money,
<v Speaker 1>and then they're looking at a chart of like and
<v Speaker 1>here's the kinds of things, here's the overlap of things
<v Speaker 1>that they like, I don't know, get Kill Bill because
<v Speaker 1>Quentin Tarantino's doing a new version of that movie. It's
<v Speaker 1>weird to me. It is a little weird. For a
<v Speaker 1>while there, I was feeling specifically targeted, like they knew
<v Speaker 1>I had fallen off a Fortnite, so they brought in
<v Speaker 1>Power Rangers, the Gorillas, Daft Punk, and the Simpsons just
<v Speaker 1>to bring me back.
<v Speaker 2>And it's what I'm saying, but this one.
<v Speaker 3>So the Simpsons season's only thirty days, right, So it's
<v Speaker 3>supposed to end November twenty ninth, which means this would
<v Speaker 3>be part of the brand new not only season, but
<v Speaker 3>chapter like Chapter seven brand new. They go a year
<v Speaker 3>long every chapter what however, it works.
<v Speaker 2>But.
<v Speaker 3>It's good that they're teasing this because they're there's another
<v Speaker 3>thing being rumored for the next chapter of this game
<v Speaker 3>that people are much less happy about. I noticed they
<v Speaker 3>haven't said anything or done anything official with that yet
<v Speaker 3>because he's a turf and they don't really want to
<v Speaker 3>because she sucks and by proxy that's.
<v Speaker 1>Greats it'll create a sort of bad vibes. Well, well,
<v Speaker 1>they have these other partnerships.
<v Speaker 3>Going on and they don't want to right now. There
<v Speaker 3>was they did find stuff in the code that K
<v Speaker 3>Pop Demon Owners might not be done. If you notice
<v Speaker 3>when you buy those skins, there are specifically it's called yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's not no way, it's done done done there you
<v Speaker 3>go has that, but it says their name and Hunterricks,
<v Speaker 3>so it's specifically their costume in the beginning of the movie,
<v Speaker 3>which means golden is going to happen to apparently having
<v Speaker 3>to do with the music portion of Fortnite, so you
<v Speaker 3>can play the song and be and and get your
<v Speaker 3>golden moment in Fortnite Festival. So that's a room as well.
<v Speaker 3>But you know, congratulations to Mike Minati to getting his
<v Speaker 3>car in the game. I'm sure that Yeah, he's probably
<v Speaker 3>probably having a great day.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he puts so much work into maintaining his
<v Speaker 1>his his wagon whip, and I just want him to
<v Speaker 1>be able to see that reflected in a video game
<v Speaker 1>with the same amount of love and care that he gives.
<v Speaker 3>His Yeah, yeah, it's oh. Speaking of someone mentioned we
<v Speaker 3>haven't sealed the han moon yet. Somebody just this is
<v Speaker 3>an aside to get us off on a good joke.
<v Speaker 3>Somebody was telling me that they saw a theory, like
<v Speaker 3>a conspiracy tinfoil hat theory that the world was supposed
<v Speaker 3>to end in twenty twelve. Right what song took over
<v Speaker 3>at the al end of twenty twelve.
<v Speaker 1>With that too, I don't know, with its own little
<v Speaker 1>dance Oh god, okay, gognum style, all right style.
<v Speaker 3>The conspiracy theory is that's that by being the first
<v Speaker 3>billion dollars billion viewer video on YouTube and taking the
<v Speaker 3>entire world by storm, SI sealed the hand moon and
<v Speaker 3>the world didn't end in twenty twelve because of same size.
<v Speaker 3>Take for that what you will.
<v Speaker 1>I take it as a gospel. And SI is my savior.
<v Speaker 1>I've always said this, my siver. Oh boy, I thought
<v Speaker 1>we should end the show real quick. Last starting Nintendo.
<v Speaker 1>What's to be even more actively involved in movie making.
<v Speaker 1>We've talked about this a bunch, but it's just like
<v Speaker 1>they are basically just flat out saying it, like, Hey,
<v Speaker 1>we are doing all of this work with all these
<v Speaker 1>other companies, so we can do even more of it.
<v Speaker 1>They're not just licensers for their movies. They do help
<v Speaker 1>finance the films. They are onboard as the production one
<v Speaker 1>of the production companies making everything, so they're more involved
<v Speaker 1>than your typical IP holder and they expect that.
<v Speaker 2>To sort of expand internally at Nintendo.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm curious to see how that grows, especially with
<v Speaker 1>the Nintendo picture stuff. After them doing something sort of
<v Speaker 1>experimental with Pickman, what do they do next? How do
<v Speaker 1>they try to monetize that or is that even the point?
<v Speaker 2>Maybe not? Maybe they do like little series or stuff
<v Speaker 2>like that based on their jud.
<v Speaker 1>I bet they do shorts before the illumination movies for
<v Speaker 1>the next like ten years and.
<v Speaker 2>Did you bide then they have something.
<v Speaker 3>Did you see first trailer for Mario Galaxy movie is
<v Speaker 3>supposed to be in front of Wicked into.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to to seeing that trailer.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, I should try to go out and see
<v Speaker 2>that Wicked movie.
<v Speaker 1>I should finish the first wicket. I was enjoying it
<v Speaker 1>and then never finished.
<v Speaker 3>I have Day one tickets already because I'm that kind
<v Speaker 3>of person.
<v Speaker 2>Hell yeah, already, Well enjoy yourself. That sounds like a party.
<v Speaker 1>I have the results of yesterday's Paul over here.
<v Speaker 2>Let's grab that real quick.
<v Speaker 1>We asked would you check out World of Warcraft if
<v Speaker 1>it ever came to console? And thirty four percent said yes,
<v Speaker 1>sixty six percent said no.
<v Speaker 2>I think that's a lot.
<v Speaker 1>Of people, and yet probably also not like the kind
<v Speaker 1>there may be past the days where they would have
<v Speaker 1>the numbers where it's like everyone would have checked this
<v Speaker 1>out and it would be this massive shift in how
<v Speaker 1>and the fate of World of Warcraft.
<v Speaker 2>It's like, No, this thing's chugging along just fine with
<v Speaker 2>the very very large, very very.
<v Speaker 1>Dedicated audience that it has locked down for the last
<v Speaker 1>twenty years.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>I was one of the yeses, just out of curiosity.
<v Speaker 3>But I'm not, you know, trying to play it anytime soon.
<v Speaker 3>I got other stuff to do.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, all right, so that's the poll question. We do
<v Speaker 1>have the Bomb twelve to wrap up the week. We'll
<v Speaker 1>get to that here at the end of the show.
<v Speaker 1>So let's get all this other stuff out of the way.
<v Speaker 1>Jason Finelli, why don't you tell peop where the can
<v Speaker 1>find you on the internet what you have going on
<v Speaker 1>and all of that good stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks at Finella dot com, on Blue Sky, Big Man, Finelle,
<v Speaker 3>everywhere else did review as I mentioned a couple of
<v Speaker 3>games recently, MMRPG, Dragon Quest one and two HD two
<v Speaker 3>D Rolling Stone. I reviewed the Outer Worlds two. That's
<v Speaker 3>very fun GameSpot. I reviewed the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection.
<v Speaker 3>That is very very cool. Documentary stuff is awesome. Didn't
<v Speaker 3>expect them to get into their how they were inspired
<v Speaker 3>by the Nordic Church song? Did you did you see that?
<v Speaker 2>Bart?
<v Speaker 3>I didn't see that little bit another the finish him.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, I see how it is. I see
<v Speaker 2>what we're doing. We have jokes.
<v Speaker 3>Oh shit, yeah yeah, but no, that game, the document
<v Speaker 3>is very good. The game is very good. The input
<v Speaker 3>delay thing, I'm still getting my my hands are it's
<v Speaker 3>not great. But yeah, that was fun, and I've completely
<v Speaker 3>derailed anything I was going to talk about, so.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was worth it. It was totally worth it. I
<v Speaker 2>like to say collection, it's fantastic. I'm enjoying it. I
<v Speaker 2>get the problems that people haven't. I'm watching the documentary
<v Speaker 2>and it hits hard. God man, it really makes.
<v Speaker 1>Me want to go to Chicago real bad. I think
<v Speaker 1>Chicago's my favorite city.
<v Speaker 2>I think it every time i'm there. I love it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I just that's so filled with awesome people. It's
<v Speaker 1>so international. Every block's got some amazing cuisine you weren't expecting.
<v Speaker 2>It's just it's the best.
<v Speaker 1>And to see a studio that just is Chicago through
<v Speaker 1>and through and being like, man, it's awesome that one
<v Speaker 1>of the biggest franchises in the video gaming world came
<v Speaker 1>from the Midwest. It's a little bit of a regional
<v Speaker 1>pride for me. All right, So we did that. Let's
<v Speaker 1>talk about what's happening on Giant Bomb today. For sure,
<v Speaker 1>next thing is likely UPF. I might throw a stream
<v Speaker 1>in there between. We'll see, though, got lots of stuff
<v Speaker 1>to take care of. The UPF is going to likely
<v Speaker 1>be age of imprisonment, but we're kind of working through
<v Speaker 1>some things, so we'll see exactly how it's all going
<v Speaker 1>to break out. In the meantime, though, I think that
<v Speaker 1>does it. So let's do this. Let's get to the
<v Speaker 1>Bomb twelve everybody, that's right, the twelve games that really
<v Speaker 1>matter to people who are really playing video games.
<v Speaker 2>We had one last week. I didn't talk about it
<v Speaker 2>because we didn't have.
<v Speaker 1>A show last week, but I do have those results,
<v Speaker 1>and i'll have that. That isn't a blog post if
<v Speaker 1>people want to go see that, but this is for
<v Speaker 1>the past week, and so let's get and see here.
<v Speaker 1>Number twelve High Role Warriors, Age of Imprisonment does make
<v Speaker 1>it in its first week. Howash Simulator two is at
<v Speaker 1>number eleven. The Seance of Blake Manner at number ten.
<v Speaker 1>This game did really well in reviews, and I think
<v Speaker 1>it looks interesting. I'm not exactly sure what it is.
<v Speaker 1>Have you heard anything about the sample Blake manor it's
<v Speaker 1>scratching that Blue Prince. It looks first and investigative. Now,
<v Speaker 1>also Oberdeen, if you played the Oberdeen a couple of
<v Speaker 1>years ago, kind of in that vein as well, that's
<v Speaker 1>the Fall of the Oberdeen.
<v Speaker 2>That's the full title.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I think no, it's You're so close, but now
<v Speaker 1>you've broken my brain.
<v Speaker 2>It's the Return of the ober Den. Obritain return Oberden?
<v Speaker 2>Is it Oberden? Yes? Anyway? It might be. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>do that. I do that all the time.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, in that matter of investigation, solving mysteries, thing
<v Speaker 3>like that, very very cool. Apparently I'm very much looking
<v Speaker 3>forward to that.
<v Speaker 2>Let's see here. Number nine is Hollow Nights, Silk Song.
<v Speaker 1>Number eight is Dragon Quest one plus two, HD number seven,
<v Speaker 1>Battlefield six, number six Pokemon Legends z A.
<v Speaker 2>Number five is Hades two.
<v Speaker 1>Number four goes to Yota, and that means our number
<v Speaker 1>three is Dispatch. That's really popping off. I think that game.
<v Speaker 1>I've been streaming it in the mornings. Yeah, every time
<v Speaker 1>I get done, it's like, you know, it's kind of
<v Speaker 1>quiet because like Chat's just watching it along with me,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm not really reading Chat all that much because
<v Speaker 1>I'm engaged in the story. And then when it gets done,
<v Speaker 1>everyone just pops off. Like I think I'm getting this game.
<v Speaker 2>I wasn't.
<v Speaker 1>I was just gonna watch, but now I'm one over.
<v Speaker 1>I want to experience these choices myself. I am someone
<v Speaker 1>who is a pretty big fan of the Telltale games.
<v Speaker 1>I've always said I really like any game that puts
<v Speaker 1>the gameplay in your head. The mechanics exist by you
<v Speaker 1>being sort of having to make a decision against your
<v Speaker 1>various impulses and being like, you know what, how do
<v Speaker 1>I feel about this? And I think this game really
<v Speaker 1>gets to that pretty quickly, although I think it is
<v Speaker 1>building up to some.
<v Speaker 2>Even bigger choices here pretty soon. All right.
<v Speaker 1>The number two is the Outer Worlds too. It was
<v Speaker 1>really close between this and our graders. Actually, I will
<v Speaker 1>say people, I can spot it when you try to
<v Speaker 1>push a game by voting for it a bunch of times.
<v Speaker 2>All right, I have my ways.
<v Speaker 1>So Outer World's got a little bit of of a
<v Speaker 1>fake bump, but not much. It was mostly authentic, and
<v Speaker 1>it puts it put at number two, and that means
<v Speaker 1>number one is Arc Raiders. Our Raiders really popped off
<v Speaker 1>this week, so congratulations to that. It's not surprised everyone
<v Speaker 1>seems to be playing it. I'm enjoying it myself, all right.
<v Speaker 1>I have yet to play Arc Raiders. I really got
<v Speaker 1>to do that.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's worth it.
<v Speaker 1>I think you'll get the idea really quickly, even if
<v Speaker 1>it's like not you're necessarily your kind of game. You're like,
<v Speaker 1>oh now it makes sense and I can at least
<v Speaker 1>maybe spend some time.
<v Speaker 2>With it real quick.
<v Speaker 1>A some super chats Antonio Morales said, Grub you still
<v Speaker 1>need to try hibarrito. Okay, yeah, absolutely, I would love that.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what it is, but I'll try it.
<v Speaker 1>Hey you, Peeka Blue says, what is your influence regarding
<v Speaker 1>the shake to wake for eight bit DOE controllers on switch?
<v Speaker 2>What is my influence?
<v Speaker 1>I just believe in magic. I don't know if that
<v Speaker 1>still works on switch too. I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
<v Speaker 1>And that's one of the big failings of the switch too,
<v Speaker 1>is I can no longer shake a controller to wake
<v Speaker 1>up the switch from sleep. Antonio Morales had another one
<v Speaker 1>drinks on me when you all swing by Chicago. Oh absolutely,
<v Speaker 1>we'll make that happen Antonio for sure, all right? If
<v Speaker 1>there were any other super chats, sorry I'm missing him.
<v Speaker 1>I think we should get out of here though. Jason Fonelli,
<v Speaker 1>thank you so much, man. It's always great to talk
<v Speaker 1>about video games with you here in the morning.
<v Speaker 2>Always great to be here anytime you need me. Peal
<v Speaker 2>make it.
<v Speaker 1>Happen again, probably very soon. Thank you all for watching
<v Speaker 1>and listening. You are the best audience in gaming. Until
<v Speaker 1>next time, have a good one, take care of yourself. Goodbye.