Nintendo Wants You to Use the Gamechat Button More

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, Welcome to game As Mornings with Me Jeff Grub,
<v Speaker 1>your host from GiantBomb dot com.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for tuning in.
<v Speaker 1>In this episode, we're going to be talking about next
<v Speaker 1>gen hardware from Valve, maybe actually coming out one day
<v Speaker 1>and more. It's gonna be a good one because we
<v Speaker 1>have Jason Vanelli on the show.
<v Speaker 2>Jason, how are you doing?
<v Speaker 3>I think I can finally say I am fully recovered
<v Speaker 3>from a wild weekend in Boston. I was reflecting on
<v Speaker 3>the Pax East Shenanigans and I realized that Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
<v Speaker 3>the earliest I went to bed was two fifteen am,
<v Speaker 3>and that's just how it should be. I haven't had
<v Speaker 3>one of those in a long time. It took a
<v Speaker 3>little while. I was a little tired when I get back,
<v Speaker 3>But I think today Friday, I'm ready, I'm rar and
<v Speaker 3>let's do this thing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think an exact same arc where you know,
<v Speaker 1>I was talking to Sean last night, Mike. It was
<v Speaker 1>out of capacity, you out of commision and from being sick,
<v Speaker 1>and Sean helped out with a game mess Decides last night,
<v Speaker 1>and he was telling me how it's like he hadn't
<v Speaker 1>really done one of these with us before, where we
<v Speaker 1>go from working all week, then working all weekend, then
<v Speaker 1>working all week and it's like, yeah, at certain point,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, oh yeah, I guess we did work all weekend.
<v Speaker 1>It's fun, it's cool. I wouldn't change anything about it,
<v Speaker 1>but it was, oh yeah, we were working, and then
<v Speaker 1>we went right into and then we were partying at
<v Speaker 1>night and hanging out and having fun. So burning the
<v Speaker 1>candle at both ends. I definitely was like I came
<v Speaker 1>home like that wasn't too bad. And then by like Wednesday,
<v Speaker 1>I was like dying in the middle of the day
<v Speaker 1>and needed to like lie down, And I did the
<v Speaker 1>same thing yesterday and now today I woke up early.
<v Speaker 1>Steph even commented on She's like, why'd you get up early?
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, I don't know. I just wanted to go
<v Speaker 1>to Duncan or something. I miss Boston. I want to
<v Speaker 1>go back to Duncan. So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good now,
<v Speaker 1>ready to I'm gonna see the Mario movie tonight. We
<v Speaker 1>got a lot of stuff who happened at a giant
<v Speaker 1>bomb today I'm looking forward to doing all of that.
<v Speaker 1>So in a good mood, feeling good and happy, to
<v Speaker 1>be doing a finelly Friday.
<v Speaker 3>That's what I like Friday.
<v Speaker 2>Forget about it. Yeah, yagabba gules.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's explain ourselves. We're Giant Bomb. We're a
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<v Speaker 1>gonna wint to miss at The chemistry between Mary and
<v Speaker 1>Mike is just off the charts, so very good stuff.
<v Speaker 1>It's also gonna get you. Dan did reveal the name,
<v Speaker 1>but it was just on the show yesterday, so I'll
<v Speaker 1>let that. Let the real reveal happen in the Travelog.
<v Speaker 1>That's happening, Dan, it's got a new idea for Mike's show.
<v Speaker 1>Go watch the Travelog when that launches, and you can
<v Speaker 1>lodge your complaints about the name of that show as
<v Speaker 1>Dan has come up with it. As far as this
<v Speaker 1>show goes, most weekdays, I Jeff Grubb, will help piece
<v Speaker 1>your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and
<v Speaker 1>maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all
<v Speaker 1>these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide
<v Speaker 1>expert who will make me look smart.
<v Speaker 2>If you were.
<v Speaker 1>Watching live on twitch welcome. You can always listen to
<v Speaker 1>the show later on podcast feeds by searching for game
<v Speaker 1>Mes Mornings, or find the RSS feed.
<v Speaker 2>On giant bomb dot com.
<v Speaker 1>You can also catch the show later with chapters and
<v Speaker 1>timestamps on YouTube.
<v Speaker 2>Hello YouTube. All right, we have a lot to.
<v Speaker 1>Get into, so let's start the morning mess with It
<v Speaker 1>might not be too late to buy a PS five.
<v Speaker 2>For just four hundred dollars. Interesting. This is from Ethan
<v Speaker 2>Gotsch at Kotaku.
<v Speaker 1>Sony officially raised the price of the PS five on
<v Speaker 1>April second. The cheapest model now has an MSRP starting
<v Speaker 1>at six hundred dollars, but it's actually not too late
<v Speaker 1>to get the console at the old discounted price of
<v Speaker 1>four hundred dollars. That happens to be the original launch price,
<v Speaker 1>which we have to count as a win.
<v Speaker 2>In twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 1>Six, PlayStation Direct is still listing the Fortnite Flowering Chaos
<v Speaker 1>PS five Bundle at the old sale price and includes
<v Speaker 1>the version of the console without a disk drive, so
<v Speaker 1>the digital version, and a bunch of PlayStation exclusive cosmetics
<v Speaker 1>for epics free to play Battle Royale. Sony even mentions
<v Speaker 1>that the bundle offers savings of two hundred dollars, so
<v Speaker 1>this isn't a weird glitch or something. I also noticed, Jason,
<v Speaker 1>I went on Target dot com. That's the only one
<v Speaker 1>I checked as of this morning. You know, it's April third,
<v Speaker 1>so the prices were supposed to go up yesterday. As
<v Speaker 1>of April third, let's see, the PlayStation five console slim
<v Speaker 1>is five point fifty still and the digital is five
<v Speaker 1>hundred still, so those are the price aren't the launch prices,
<v Speaker 1>but those were the most recent prices before this alleged
<v Speaker 1>price increase, So there's some like latency, some lag here where,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I guess, I wonder what's going on.
<v Speaker 2>Why not raise the prices right away?
<v Speaker 1>And then because they're not even like on Target, they're
<v Speaker 1>not even marketing this as like a discount, like it's
<v Speaker 1>six hundred, but you could still get it for five hundred.
<v Speaker 1>It just seems like no one's rushing to follow through
<v Speaker 1>on these price increases. Is that just retail being like,
<v Speaker 1>we will get around to it, not really paying a
<v Speaker 1>ton of attention, or is there some weirdness about maybe
<v Speaker 1>we want to be a little bit careful with enacting
<v Speaker 1>these price increases.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder if it's just retailers finally realizing the definition
<v Speaker 3>of the S in MSRP and that these are suggested
<v Speaker 3>retail prices, and maybe they're willing at least for a
<v Speaker 3>little while, or at least until they sell out of
<v Speaker 3>current stock to kind of probably what it is, right,
<v Speaker 3>take a hit for lack of a better term, because
<v Speaker 3>they've already paid the distribution price to get the stock
<v Speaker 3>in stores so they can ripe it for a little
<v Speaker 3>while until they start paying the new distribute price, and
<v Speaker 3>then the price increase has to go up. I don't
<v Speaker 3>hate it. I like that that this is here. I
<v Speaker 3>hate the fact that we have to say that four
<v Speaker 3>hundred dollars is a win in twenty twenty six the
<v Speaker 3>launch price of the diskless PlayStation five. And I hope
<v Speaker 3>this lasts, but I honestly think it's only going to
<v Speaker 3>last as long as stock is there. If you have
<v Speaker 3>been on the fence, I have a PlayStation five before,
<v Speaker 3>now is the time this. Even if you don't play Fortnite,
<v Speaker 3>you can just give the codes to your to a
<v Speaker 3>friend who does, or help sell them online. I'm sure
<v Speaker 3>eBay would have something to say about that, since they're
<v Speaker 3>probably only found in the console bundles and Fortnite people
<v Speaker 3>who are still playing and not completely dissuaded at the moment,
<v Speaker 3>which might be interested in something like that. Joyant while
<v Speaker 3>it lasts, right honestly, and another half another part of
<v Speaker 3>me is like, hey, Ethan at Kataku, love you man,
<v Speaker 3>love working with you. Have you ever heard of shut
<v Speaker 3>the fuck Up Friday? Yeah? I don't tell people about it.
<v Speaker 3>I get why they're reporting on it. Go ahead.
<v Speaker 1>Sorry, yeah, no, no, no problem, Yeah, I'm with you.
<v Speaker 1>It's definitely one of those ones. Hey, how long are
<v Speaker 1>we going to get away with this? I think you
<v Speaker 1>probably nailed it earlier where it's that stock they already
<v Speaker 1>had in the store, like these like when they entered
<v Speaker 1>into the system, when they got them in store, they
<v Speaker 1>just did it the way they were doing it, And
<v Speaker 1>when they get the next shipment, they will look at
<v Speaker 1>the new MSRP at that point and that's when.
<v Speaker 2>They'll they'll raise the prices.
<v Speaker 1>Sony still selling the Fortnite bundle for four hundred dollars.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, yeah, I mean, maybe a little bit weird,
<v Speaker 1>but kind of pretty similar. Like they're just kind of
<v Speaker 1>following through on a deal that they already had, and
<v Speaker 1>once that has come to its natural conclusion and it's
<v Speaker 1>time for the person who's in charge of the setting
<v Speaker 1>the prices on the store to go through it, they
<v Speaker 1>will work backward from the new suggestive retail price themselves.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, a little bit of latency, a little bit
<v Speaker 2>of lag.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 1>Once again, it doesn't seem like these prices are going
<v Speaker 1>to come back down anytime soon in our lifetimes.
<v Speaker 2>It just is forever who knows.
<v Speaker 1>If you want to play Grand Theft Auto six, if
<v Speaker 1>you want to play any game coming out in the
<v Speaker 1>near future and you haven't upgraded, you know, it is
<v Speaker 1>better attack now than later, or it's better to find
<v Speaker 1>a new hobby.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, like that's what a lot of people
<v Speaker 2>might be doing as well.
<v Speaker 1>But if you are dedicated to sticking with video games
<v Speaker 1>and you really like having that console, maybe the time.
<v Speaker 2>Is to move.
<v Speaker 1>Although you know, seeing this does make me think, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>they didn't rush to raise the price. Maybe we are
<v Speaker 1>going to be in a situation where we get into
<v Speaker 1>the holidays and there's extreme discounts on these things during
<v Speaker 1>Black Fridays, and the new price is really just there
<v Speaker 1>to make that anchoring seem even better. It's like, oh
<v Speaker 1>my god, the thing is fifty percent off and it's
<v Speaker 1>really one hundred dollars off of its launch price or
<v Speaker 1>something like that, but it feels like a much better
<v Speaker 1>deal because they've raised the price so much. I'm hoping
<v Speaker 1>that discounts will be more frequent and have a bigger
<v Speaker 1>impact than they have been once we get on the
<v Speaker 1>other side of these price increases.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think that's possible?
<v Speaker 3>It is we tend to think of holiday or Black
<v Speaker 3>Friday or holiday discounts as not being all that substantial.
<v Speaker 3>But I had not considered putting the price increase on
<v Speaker 3>there and then going back down to what they would
<v Speaker 3>have been to anyway if they just maintained typical market
<v Speaker 3>trends as they have in previous console years. I also
<v Speaker 3>I did see a couple of articles start to surface
<v Speaker 3>about people whose stockpiled RAM who are now worried that
<v Speaker 3>the price is hurting and the price is dipping a
<v Speaker 3>little bit, and maybe maybe something's going on with that,
<v Speaker 3>But I don't I don't know if we all want
<v Speaker 3>to trust that yet. That could shoot that up. Whatever,
<v Speaker 3>what next big idea is, Yeah, whatever, it'll go back
<v Speaker 3>up again and we'll be back in the same thing.
<v Speaker 3>I think. I think, now that you mentioned it, I
<v Speaker 3>like that Black Black Friday strategy a little more. Seems
<v Speaker 3>a little more realistic to make it seem like fifty
<v Speaker 3>percent off the retail price, come and get it, especially
<v Speaker 3>right after Grand Theft Auto launches, assuming it launches in November,
<v Speaker 3>that seems like a perfect storm.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it could be you know, it could be
<v Speaker 1>a micrib situation, right the McRib happens when pork belly
<v Speaker 1>prices drop below a certain point, and they're like, the
<v Speaker 1>MCREB is back, and it's because they, you know, their
<v Speaker 1>margins make sense, and so they can have this high price.
<v Speaker 1>And if we go into Black Friday and oil prices
<v Speaker 1>returned to it like a decent state, and they're like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>now we can ship these things around the world in
<v Speaker 1>a way that's a little bit more cost effective. We
<v Speaker 1>can afford to put out big discounts. Then they can
<v Speaker 1>do it. And if the world is still a mess,
<v Speaker 1>which it very likely could be, they don't have to
<v Speaker 1>do it. So it gives them a little bit more
<v Speaker 1>wiggle room on their side, and it means that, you know,
<v Speaker 1>if you are trying to buy this thing on an impulse,
<v Speaker 1>you can't you can't really do that. You're gonna have
<v Speaker 1>to like kind of wait for your deal and find
<v Speaker 1>your moment. Right now, he is one of those moments. Unfortunately,
<v Speaker 1>as we know, the price is going to still go
<v Speaker 1>up here any minute now at a lot of these retailers.
<v Speaker 2>But Black Friday could be another one.
<v Speaker 1>If things return to some sense of stabilization, whatever that
<v Speaker 1>looks like. In twenty twenty six, it looks very unstable
<v Speaker 1>still who knows ye, who.
<v Speaker 2>Knows all right?
<v Speaker 1>Steam Deck two ditches semi custom APU for off the
<v Speaker 1>shelf AMD Silicon of Silicone and eyes a twenty twenty
<v Speaker 1>eight launch. This is from Alexander k at Tech power Up.
<v Speaker 1>Valve's next generation steam Deck two handheld consoles reportedly planned
<v Speaker 1>for release in twenty twenty eight, with significant manufacturing changes
<v Speaker 1>expected for this sequel to the highly successful handheld gaming device.
<v Speaker 1>According to a well known industry leaker, Kepler, l two
<v Speaker 1>has been in the news a lot, talking a lot
<v Speaker 1>about these things, posting in the NeoGAF community. Valve is
<v Speaker 1>targeting a twenty twenty eight refresh for the second generation
<v Speaker 1>steam Deck. However, the ongoing supply chain shortages of DRAM
<v Speaker 1>and nand Flash could cause disruption to these plans, potentially
<v Speaker 1>leading to delays. Interestingly, this period is when the shortages
<v Speaker 1>are expected to start easing, so the steam Deck two
<v Speaker 1>could still be released on time, depending on Valve's sourcing capabilities,
<v Speaker 1>which we just know is not as good as like
<v Speaker 1>an Apple or a Microsoft or one of these bigger companies,
<v Speaker 1>but it is something they're getting better at, so hopefully
<v Speaker 1>they can figure it out in that time. One of
<v Speaker 1>the most significant procurrent procurement shifts for the steam Deck
<v Speaker 1>two is Valve's choice of computing base that will power
<v Speaker 1>the handheld. Instead of using a semi custom AMDAPU, which
<v Speaker 1>is what the steam Deck uses, Valve is expected to
<v Speaker 1>use an off the shelf AMDAPU that won't require any
<v Speaker 1>custom tuning from AMD to meet Valve's needs. This is
<v Speaker 1>welcome news, as the latest Steam machines show that valves
<v Speaker 1>reliance on a semi custom APU solution made the hardware
<v Speaker 1>obsolete quickly while the rest of the industry advanced with
<v Speaker 1>any semi custom solution. Stockpiling silicon and waiting for dram
<v Speaker 1>nand modules to arrive puts pressure on Valve to ship
<v Speaker 1>a project product that is significantly underpowered and to it
<v Speaker 1>or too expensive. However, with an off the shelf solution,
<v Speaker 1>Valve could use the best available option at the time
<v Speaker 1>of shipping and optimize steam OUs around it. So break
<v Speaker 1>that down, translate that for everybody real quick. Most people
<v Speaker 1>probably keeping up with it. But just to give an example,
<v Speaker 1>like the switch and the switch to used custom Nvidia
<v Speaker 1>hardware and what you will hear about like especially the
<v Speaker 1>Switch one, but it was true of the Switch too
<v Speaker 1>as wells Like, by the time that thing launched, it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't old chip, but it was because you know, Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>and Nvidia, especially Nintendo wanted to use something that was
<v Speaker 1>affordable and that they could kind of control. But that
<v Speaker 1>meant you're gonna have to use a semi custom one
<v Speaker 1>that is, you know, stagnant for a very long time.
<v Speaker 1>So you could prepare everything to ship it if you
<v Speaker 1>just go to AMD at the time, if your valve
<v Speaker 1>and be like, all right, we are ready to start
<v Speaker 1>manufacturing these things, what do you have? Obviously there there's
<v Speaker 1>still still some time to plan ahead. Obviously you're gonna
<v Speaker 1>be able to use something that is much more recent
<v Speaker 1>if you're using off the shelf parts, and that is
<v Speaker 1>what a lot of valves competitors do as well. So
<v Speaker 1>that's why some of those things came out very quickly
<v Speaker 1>after the Steam Deck and were more powerful than the
<v Speaker 1>Steam Deck really quickly and not that much more expensive.
<v Speaker 1>So this seems like a smart move, especially because let
<v Speaker 1>AMD do the work. AMD has like realized that this
<v Speaker 1>is a segment that is growing and is going to
<v Speaker 1>keep growing in terms of handheld gaming.
<v Speaker 2>PCs.
<v Speaker 1>They are going to sort of make their hardware makes
<v Speaker 1>sense for that space. You don't need Valve leading the
<v Speaker 1>way anymore started charging headlong, taking all the bumps and bruises.
<v Speaker 1>AMD has already done that, So just go take advantage
<v Speaker 1>of that, and I hope that leads to a Steam
<v Speaker 1>Deck two that does come out on time, is still
<v Speaker 1>mostly affordable, and does have hardware that is actually very impressive.
<v Speaker 2>And I think all that's lining up. How does that
<v Speaker 2>sound to you?
<v Speaker 3>I agree that it's a good choice in terms of
<v Speaker 3>keeping it up to date. I like that they're kind
<v Speaker 3>of It also shows a bit of a restraint, I guess,
<v Speaker 3>because Valve always seems like they want to be at
<v Speaker 3>the forefront, so realizing that they don't have to be
<v Speaker 3>in this case is almost the good thing in a sense. Well,
<v Speaker 3>there's two key things here. Don't we have this machine
<v Speaker 3>to be talking about with Steam with the hell.
<v Speaker 2>Steam frame the Steam machine? Yep?
<v Speaker 3>And secondly, if today's Lenovo news is any indication, affordability
<v Speaker 3>may be already out the window. I don't know if
<v Speaker 3>you saw this. I didn't see this, but the the
<v Speaker 3>Novo Legovo Lenovo Legion go to increased price to fifteen
<v Speaker 3>hundred and two thousand dollars. That's that's a lot of dollars.
<v Speaker 3>It's a lot of money for a handheld gaming console.
<v Speaker 3>To getting to the point now, something that I'm now
<v Speaker 3>afraid the handheld PC gaming in general, which was growing
<v Speaker 3>and showing a lot of potential in this space, may
<v Speaker 3>now become may now slow down. I mean essentially, because well,
<v Speaker 3>sure it's all gaming, but PC gaming seems to be
<v Speaker 3>at the top end of that. It's two thousand dollars
<v Speaker 3>for a gaming PC is nuts. That's insane. I don't
<v Speaker 3>A thousand dollars is nuts and we're already doubling that.
<v Speaker 3>What the hell is going on here?
<v Speaker 1>So there were handheld gaming PCs before the Steam Deck,
<v Speaker 1>and they were like fifteen hundred dollars, So they were
<v Speaker 1>very very niche products that I always considered and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>this is just a bit too expensive for what I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna get. Then the Steam Deck came with a subsidized price.
<v Speaker 1>I member gave Noel saying, hey, this price is kind
<v Speaker 1>of painful for us, but we're going to go for it.
<v Speaker 2>And they could afford it.
<v Speaker 1>Because they sell video games. That is the subsidy, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and they were able to do that also because affordable
<v Speaker 1>computing was at its peak when the steam Deck launched,
<v Speaker 1>and affordable computing isn't just like oh slipping away. The
<v Speaker 1>door is getting slammed shut, and it's like that era
<v Speaker 1>of affordable computing has just vanished overnight and it's kind
<v Speaker 1>of done.
<v Speaker 2>It's done, though, and that is going to affect everything.
<v Speaker 1>But I think you're right to mark that these handhelds
<v Speaker 1>are a canary in the cold coal mine, and all
<v Speaker 1>these other companies that aren't Valve and don't have their
<v Speaker 1>own stores are just screaming, yeah, look, this is the
<v Speaker 1>price these things have to be for them to make
<v Speaker 1>any sense for us. And then you have I and
<v Speaker 1>EO being like, we're just straight up canceling some of
<v Speaker 1>these things because we know we're not gonna be able
<v Speaker 1>to sell it at a price that makes sense for
<v Speaker 1>anyone and especially us. So, yes, twenty twenty eight is
<v Speaker 1>a time where we hope we get on the other
<v Speaker 1>side of this and things are I don't think they're
<v Speaker 1>going to be more affordable necessarily, they could be a
<v Speaker 1>little bit more affordable, but at least they will be
<v Speaker 1>stable and predictable in a best case scenario, and then
<v Speaker 1>they could sort of plan for a world where the
<v Speaker 1>price it stabilizes enough that you know, the incomes go
<v Speaker 1>up and people can afford more. That's the best case scenario,
<v Speaker 1>and we won't be there until at least twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 3>Eight, no, I agree, and perhaps even into twenty twenty nine,
<v Speaker 3>once hopefully change happens, and maybe in twenty twenty eight
<v Speaker 3>the buying power of the consumer might be a little
<v Speaker 3>bit better than it is now. But again, that's going
<v Speaker 3>to require a lot of big time changes that I
<v Speaker 3>just do not see coming at the moment. So now
<v Speaker 3>I almost want them to wait until early twenty nine,
<v Speaker 3>maybe because I would hate for this to launch at
<v Speaker 3>a price that is already out of reach for the
<v Speaker 3>people who want it. You know what I'm saying that
<v Speaker 3>I think that could be disastrous, and I don't really
<v Speaker 3>have a solution for that other than patients. But how
<v Speaker 3>much patients can they afford to have if they're developing
<v Speaker 3>this new device. It is a catch twenty two that
<v Speaker 3>I have I do not envy in the least. And
<v Speaker 3>then today with the legiant Go news, I don't see
<v Speaker 3>that problem going away. As you said, anytime soon.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, as you mentioned that, we have we have this
<v Speaker 1>other Valve hardware, the steam machine, the steam frame, the
<v Speaker 1>steam controller. A lot of questions around those still. We
<v Speaker 1>are not really hearing much from the Valve about that.
<v Speaker 1>There is people are beginning to say, hey, okay, we
<v Speaker 1>get it with the steam machine and the steam frame.
<v Speaker 1>The pricing on that is so variable that you don't
<v Speaker 1>know when you're going to be able to launch it.
<v Speaker 1>Can we at least get the controller that's going to
<v Speaker 1>be a lot less affected by nand and RAM prices,
<v Speaker 1>you know, could be affected by the goddamn helium shortage,
<v Speaker 1>which is an insane thing that we're dealing with, but
<v Speaker 1>again not as much so can we get that and
<v Speaker 1>there's no word on that yet. Valve originally said not originally,
<v Speaker 1>but in the follow up, as they were beginning to
<v Speaker 1>explain that, hey, we're not gonna be able to tell
<v Speaker 1>you more about this right now, but we want to
<v Speaker 1>launch all the three things together still and we're going
<v Speaker 1>to do that soon. It feels like that's got to
<v Speaker 1>be changing, or else we would have heard about it
<v Speaker 1>by now. I don't know, real quick, do you think
<v Speaker 1>we get these things like before the end of summer.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, what do you think the controller?
<v Speaker 3>I think they want them to launch together, obviously, but
<v Speaker 3>I think if they have to press an emergency button,
<v Speaker 3>they'll release the controller first, let people get used to it,
<v Speaker 3>and then they could even by doing that, get away
<v Speaker 3>with launching a machine that comes with one in a
<v Speaker 3>machine that doesn't. So like you pay a little bit
<v Speaker 3>upfront and then you can get the machine later for
<v Speaker 3>a slightly reduced price because you already have the controller,
<v Speaker 3>where as somebody who might be waiting just get them
<v Speaker 3>both and maybe there's a discount there for the bundling, right.
<v Speaker 3>I would like to think they'd be out by the
<v Speaker 3>end of summer, but hope so at this rate. I
<v Speaker 3>mean is not to go back to the common question,
<v Speaker 3>but is GA GTA six launching on PC?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 3>Not this year, because that might be something to consider
<v Speaker 3>as well. If everyone's so focused on the big console launch,
<v Speaker 3>will they have time if they wait until November to
<v Speaker 3>release the Steam machine. I'm saying so, I think they
<v Speaker 3>would have to get it out before summer if they're
<v Speaker 3>going to get it out this year. All yep, we're
<v Speaker 3>end of summer.
<v Speaker 2>All right, let's keep going here.
<v Speaker 1>Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires cin Immersive Labs. At Sony Interactive Entertainment,
<v Speaker 1>This is a blog from the company, the company behind
<v Speaker 1>the PlayStation brand. We are continually exploring new ways to
<v Speaker 1>push the boundaries of visual computing and deliver richer, more
<v Speaker 1>immersive gameplay experiences. Today, we are pleased to announce that
<v Speaker 1>SIE has entered into an agreement to acquire Cinemmersive Labs,
<v Speaker 1>a UK based machine learning and computer vision company founded
<v Speaker 1>in twenty twenty two. Cinema of Labs brings together a
<v Speaker 1>specialized team with deep expertise in computer vision and machine learning.
<v Speaker 1>Following the acquisition, the Cinemas of Labs team will join
<v Speaker 1>sie's a Visual Computing.
<v Speaker 2>Group VGC, Yeah vs CG excuse.
<v Speaker 1>Me and contribute to our broader efforts in advancing state
<v Speaker 1>of the art visual computing within games. This includes applying
<v Speaker 1>machine learning to enhance gameplay visuals, improve rendering techniques, and
<v Speaker 1>unlock new.
<v Speaker 2>Levels of visual fidelity for players.
<v Speaker 1>We look forward to welcoming Cinemas of Labs team to
<v Speaker 1>SIE and continuing to make PlayStation the best place to play.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>There's been two responses to this from everybody, and it
<v Speaker 1>is like, one, Okay, great the DLSS five, yesification is
<v Speaker 1>coming to PlayStation.
<v Speaker 2>And two how long did these people get laid off?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Sony does they acquire and then shut these teams down?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>These you know these teams. This is not a team
<v Speaker 1>that needs to get a project green lighted at Sony
<v Speaker 1>to stay around. They will be just working on technology,
<v Speaker 1>and that is that's going to keep them safe at
<v Speaker 1>least through the early parts of the PS six launch,
<v Speaker 1>because this is directly targeted at creating technology to improve
<v Speaker 1>the way PS six games are going to run. We've
<v Speaker 1>heard that's some of the reporting so far is Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the PS six is going to be really powerful.
<v Speaker 2>It's going to have a ton of memory.
<v Speaker 1>It's going to have cutting edge AMD CPU and GPU
<v Speaker 1>for sure, but then it's going to have this AMD
<v Speaker 1>and PlayStation Pisser three point zero tech that is going
<v Speaker 1>to be incredible at image upscaling equivalent to what DLSS
<v Speaker 1>four point five is doing and better. And part of
<v Speaker 1>that is like, Okay, yeah, that stuff's going to keep
<v Speaker 1>advancing really fast. You need to be actively investing in it.
<v Speaker 1>And this sounds like them going, yeah, we want to
<v Speaker 1>be able to do that, and I don't. There's no
<v Speaker 1>reason to assume what they're talking about here with the
<v Speaker 1>machine learning is going to be similar to the DLSS
<v Speaker 1>five stuff that was in the news. But I don't
<v Speaker 1>blame anyone for jumping there. This is going mostly This
<v Speaker 1>company is known for doing stuff very similar to what
<v Speaker 1>people really like from DLSS, which is, do you take
<v Speaker 1>an image running at a lower resolution, you make it
<v Speaker 1>look like it's native four K or better and it
<v Speaker 1>has a great frame rate, and then maybe there's some
<v Speaker 1>frame gen stuff in there that could be improved over time.
<v Speaker 1>This is Sony just like, Hey, we're a tech company,
<v Speaker 1>and I wouldn't be surprised if, like Mark Serny was
<v Speaker 1>directly involved in targeting these people and saying, hey, we
<v Speaker 1>need them to make the PS six really sing.
<v Speaker 2>So it's probably going to be a good thing.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, acquisitions in this space have been so harrowing
<v Speaker 1>that people's responses make a lot of sense to me.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think, Jason?
<v Speaker 3>I definitely fall in the how long do Semiversive matt
<v Speaker 3>Cin Immersive Labs have as a company, And that's just
<v Speaker 3>you know, a trauma response at this point for lack
<v Speaker 3>of a better term because of all the things that
<v Speaker 3>they have done with the studios that they've bought so far.
<v Speaker 3>I kind of agree with you that they may have
<v Speaker 3>a little bit longer longevity because they're dealing with visual enhancements,
<v Speaker 3>but also to how long until the machine learning buzzword
<v Speaker 3>sticks around? Right, that's very adjacent to AI, which people
<v Speaker 3>are very against, as evidenced by the DLSS five yasification fiasco. Fiassco,
<v Speaker 3>I'm so sorry, I don't I'm I don't know that
<v Speaker 3>anyone's gonna notice the upgrades that they would bring unless
<v Speaker 3>it's a you know, someone who really follows it, like
<v Speaker 3>you or I or the chat I. This is something
<v Speaker 3>that may just fly under the radar and we forget
<v Speaker 3>about it, and they're they're safe forever because they're improving
<v Speaker 3>the visuals for each first party game that comes along. Now,
<v Speaker 3>Sony's first party games, if nothing else, look fantastic already.
<v Speaker 3>So if they can improve there and continue that, great,
<v Speaker 3>But again, how close to the uncanny valley do they
<v Speaker 3>want to get before it turns into going too far
<v Speaker 3>and we see what happened with Nvidia remains to be seen.
<v Speaker 3>I am hopeful they can keep their positions for as
<v Speaker 3>long as possible, but based on track record, I just
<v Speaker 3>don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>The machine learning side of image quality improvement has been
<v Speaker 1>a really exciting space for a long time. And then
<v Speaker 1>and video like Overnight Poison the Well with the DLSS
<v Speaker 1>five stuff. Everyone you know, DLSS started off kind of shaky.
<v Speaker 1>People were like, guy, is this really working? Is it
<v Speaker 1>worth it? Is this kind of a crutch for developers
<v Speaker 1>to rely on, And then it mostly just was like,
<v Speaker 1>oh no, it really is a magic tech and there's
<v Speaker 1>no reason not to use it, and if you have
<v Speaker 1>an n videographics card, it take advantage of it because
<v Speaker 1>it's just a net positive. A lot of times, it'll
<v Speaker 1>take a game that you have running at like seven
<v Speaker 1>to twenty P and it'll upscale the four K and
<v Speaker 1>it'll look better than native four K, like because it
<v Speaker 1>just knows better than the game itself what it's supposed
<v Speaker 1>to look like.
<v Speaker 2>And that was really cool. The as soon as they
<v Speaker 2>like switched.
<v Speaker 1>Over from like machine learning, which is this targeted like
<v Speaker 1>scientific approach to like experts knowing what they want to
<v Speaker 1>accomplish by using algorithms to ai of this more general
<v Speaker 1>like we have this thing that we just ask it, hey,
<v Speaker 1>can you make the game look better? And it makes
<v Speaker 1>everything have too much makeup and chad jawlines and it's like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>you instantly just lost the thread. And now it seems
<v Speaker 1>very clear that you don't have expertise behind this, and
<v Speaker 1>this is just sort of letting this thing figure stuff
<v Speaker 1>out for you, and that's not what we wanted here.
<v Speaker 1>If the machine learning pipeline is always going to lead
<v Speaker 1>to that, people are going to be skeptical of the
<v Speaker 1>whole thing. I think you're right now again, Mark Serni,
<v Speaker 1>I think is just in there like being like, no,
<v Speaker 1>I fully understand this. I'm trying to make the best
<v Speaker 1>PlayStation possible and these people are going to help with that,
<v Speaker 1>and it's going to benefit all developers because all developers
<v Speaker 1>are going to be able to take advantage of this
<v Speaker 1>technology gy that's just going to be built in to
<v Speaker 1>the PlayStation six development kit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I hope that's the case, because I want the idea
<v Speaker 1>to make high FIDELI high fidelity games cheaper and more
<v Speaker 1>accessible to more developers. That would be great. Hopefully that
<v Speaker 1>this just leads to that, but we'll wait and see.
<v Speaker 1>And then you're right, once we get on the other
<v Speaker 1>side of the buzzword and how and once they saw
<v Speaker 1>enough PS sixs and this technology is in place, can
<v Speaker 1>the studio move on to the next thing, this team
<v Speaker 1>move on to the next thing and keep themselves relevant
<v Speaker 1>to Sony or will they be shut down? I mean,
<v Speaker 1>we know the answer to that. They're gonna get shut
<v Speaker 1>down if they get on the other side of that.
<v Speaker 1>But I hope, you know these people, Hopefully they made their
<v Speaker 1>money and can just move on and start a new
<v Speaker 1>studio or something. Sure, all right, let's take a break.
<v Speaker 1>We got plenty more headlines to get into. If you
<v Speaker 1>want to skip out on these ad messages, there's a
<v Speaker 1>way to do that. Go to GiantBomb dot com slash
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<v Speaker 1>free versions of the audio and video programs. In the meantime, though,
<v Speaker 1>we will be right back. We are back. It's Game
<v Speaker 1>mess Mornings. That's Jason Finelli. I'm Jeff Grubb. Let's continue
<v Speaker 1>on with the headlines. Here a game Pass for indie games.
<v Speaker 1>Meet Indie Pass, a seven dollars a month subscription launching
<v Speaker 1>with seventy titles. This is from Alex Forbes Calvin at
<v Speaker 1>Games Industry dot biz. Independent game publisher indie dot Io
<v Speaker 1>is launching a new subscription service called indie Pass on
<v Speaker 1>April thirteenth for seven dollars a month. Service will offer
<v Speaker 1>a revolving curated catalog of distinctly indie games, launching with
<v Speaker 1>around seventy titles, including some from indie dot Io's own stable,
<v Speaker 1>like Echoes of the Plum Grove and the Dark Deity series.
<v Speaker 2>The pitch to.
<v Speaker 1>Developers, according to Director of Growth Jess Mitchell, is increased
<v Speaker 1>discovery and a way to drive revenue from their back
<v Speaker 1>catalog in a crowded model and a crowded market. Indie
<v Speaker 1>Pass will pay developers through an egalitarian revenue sharing model
<v Speaker 1>based on player engagement time spent playing their game. Mitchell
<v Speaker 1>is confident the service will not harm sales, but instead
<v Speaker 1>act as a rising tide lifts all boats situation for users.
<v Speaker 1>So it's a way to discover new or older indie
<v Speaker 1>titles through a curated collection that changes monthly, supported by
<v Speaker 1>a recommendation system that tracks player engagement and styles similar
<v Speaker 1>to House Steamworks. Mitchell states that the goal is not
<v Speaker 1>to have every game, but a specific collection for people
<v Speaker 1>who enjoy the distinct indie experience. They plan to grow
<v Speaker 1>the player based rapidly, leveraging their existing audience and marketing.
<v Speaker 1>Games will be added regularly with no exclusivity requirement. All right,
<v Speaker 1>I get the idea behind this. I wonder what the
<v Speaker 1>appetite for this is among the people who play indie games.
<v Speaker 1>That's always been sort of a niche within a niche.
<v Speaker 1>The community that show up for indie games is relatively small,
<v Speaker 1>all things consider. Now it's growing all the time. Indie
<v Speaker 1>games break containment. They do become the biggest games in
<v Speaker 1>the world. But where does a subscription service.
<v Speaker 2>Fit into that? Jason, what do you think?
<v Speaker 3>I think there are two words, two phrases here that
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, Oh, okay, that's interesting. The first one was
<v Speaker 3>back catalog. So if you're adding things to this pass,
<v Speaker 3>like you have a current release out, and then to
<v Speaker 3>this pass you add like your previous two games or
<v Speaker 3>the game before it or something like that, that could
<v Speaker 3>be neat. It could be like an instant backlog sort
<v Speaker 3>of thing. I kind of like that. I also like
<v Speaker 3>no exclusivity requirement, which I think is where game Pass
<v Speaker 3>sort of faltered, I think. But then invoking the name
<v Speaker 3>of game Pass. How much is this really going to
<v Speaker 3>help them? Right? We still don't know they We've received
<v Speaker 3>all sorts of mixed messages as to whether game Pass
<v Speaker 3>was ultimately a success for both Xbox and the studios
<v Speaker 3>that signed up for it. It's so clouded in mystery,
<v Speaker 3>we don't know. And a friend of mine on social
<v Speaker 3>media who has worked in the indie scene for a while,
<v Speaker 3>they put out a post yesterday when this came out
<v Speaker 3>that basically said, no, it's a similar revenue sharing model
<v Speaker 3>to Spotify, which is never a name you're gonna want
<v Speaker 3>to hear in this space, and you won't make as
<v Speaker 3>much promoting your full sales of your game, or get
<v Speaker 3>as much exposure as participating in things like Steam Next
<v Speaker 3>Fest or like a Steam sale.
<v Speaker 1>Right, you put your game for a dollar in a
<v Speaker 1>Steam sale, probably gonna work out a lot better than this.
<v Speaker 3>So they would need, I think, to prove that there
<v Speaker 3>are methods to their madness for lack of a better term,
<v Speaker 3>that make this just as good, if not better than
<v Speaker 3>those avenues. Otherwise, I don't, I don't know. I don't
<v Speaker 3>think that this is as fruitful as it first sounds
<v Speaker 3>like when you first hear it. You want to be
<v Speaker 3>like cool Indie Pass basically game Pass for indie games, just.
<v Speaker 2>One more option on the table.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, sure, sure, But the more you dig into it,
<v Speaker 3>the more it's like, Eh, I don't know if this
<v Speaker 3>is going to work out for them.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I think I think they kind of give
<v Speaker 1>the game up a little bit when they're like, this
<v Speaker 1>is for making more money from your from your.
<v Speaker 2>Back catalog, right.
<v Speaker 1>This is true because because you can't do this with
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you could do it with like a new game,
<v Speaker 1>but then you have to sort of design your game
<v Speaker 1>around this idea of making sure that people are playing
<v Speaker 1>it as long as possible. And that is a different
<v Speaker 1>thing than making someone feel really good about spending seven
<v Speaker 1>to twenty five dollars on your game. But that is
<v Speaker 1>those are two different concepts. You don't necessarily want to
<v Speaker 1>make it so like, oh, you like this is all
<v Speaker 1>you're playing NonStop. That's that can lead to some poor
<v Speaker 1>game design design decisions. I bet as opposed to just
<v Speaker 1>being like, we want people to feel like they got
<v Speaker 1>they are accomplished and had positive buzzing feelings coming out
<v Speaker 1>of a fifteen to thirty minute play session, and then
<v Speaker 1>maybe they come back to it next week and they
<v Speaker 1>have won more fifteen to thirty minute play sessions.
<v Speaker 2>How much money is that going to make you on
<v Speaker 2>this service?
<v Speaker 1>Probably basically, you know, the Spotify equivalent of nothing and
<v Speaker 1>it's okay.
<v Speaker 2>So you have to rethink how you're designing your games.
<v Speaker 1>I bet that is an effort that will just not
<v Speaker 1>be worth it with the numbers that they're probably talking
<v Speaker 1>about being able to accomplish with this subscription service. So
<v Speaker 1>you would almost only consider it for a game that
<v Speaker 1>is sitting there in your back catalog that no one
<v Speaker 1>is buying anymore. And then who is going to show
<v Speaker 1>up with seven dollars a month to get that when
<v Speaker 1>they could just drop seven dollars every couple of months
<v Speaker 1>on Humble Bundle and get thirty to forty games and
<v Speaker 1>those games A lot of these games could just show
<v Speaker 1>up in there. You know, I don't think we need
<v Speaker 1>to throw this out. I just don't know how many
<v Speaker 1>developers are going to actually bite at this bait.
<v Speaker 3>It's a niche and a niche, right, and eventually it
<v Speaker 3>gets to niche and nobody pays attention to it. Now,
<v Speaker 3>there may be some very dedicated intie people out there
<v Speaker 3>who give this a try and think, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>it is actually working better than we thought it would,
<v Speaker 3>and everything turns around. I just at this moment, ten
<v Speaker 3>days before it launches, I don't see it for that.
<v Speaker 3>I hope it works. I hope it works both for
<v Speaker 3>them and for the devs that sign up for it,
<v Speaker 3>But at this current moment, I'm just not quite seeing
<v Speaker 3>the whole picture.
<v Speaker 1>How do you feel about Game Pass in general? You know,
<v Speaker 1>there's words right now. The word is right now going
<v Speaker 1>around that Microsoft wants to introduce new tiers, wants to
<v Speaker 1>get the price back down under control. Obviously that would
<v Speaker 1>mean maybe an ad supported tier that is a lot
<v Speaker 1>less expensive, but maybe bringing the price down across the board,
<v Speaker 1>because it does seem like, you know, the it got
<v Speaker 1>too expensive for most people. Thirty dollars for the full
<v Speaker 1>fat game Pass Ultimate that has the game day one
<v Speaker 1>games and everything else included. I said, gay one games,
<v Speaker 1>but Day one games, that's that's so much money. Thirty
<v Speaker 1>dollars a month is just so far away from the
<v Speaker 1>ten dollars a month that they were using when we
<v Speaker 1>were saying this is the best deal in gaming. It's
<v Speaker 1>not that anymore. But if they can get the price
<v Speaker 1>under control. Is that something you're still interested in? Throwing
<v Speaker 1>out all the obviously there's all the considerations of Xbox
<v Speaker 1>and Microsoft and their relation to the war in Israel
<v Speaker 1>or the war in Gaza. But setting all that stuff aside,
<v Speaker 1>if it was a perfect company, I'm still not sure
<v Speaker 1>that they would be able to get this in under
<v Speaker 1>control away where I would be excited about it.
<v Speaker 3>No, I agree, and I think that the a big
<v Speaker 3>deciding factor for a lot of people that they're not
<v Speaker 3>considering or they don't care about, is time. How much
<v Speaker 3>time am I going to devote to games that I
<v Speaker 3>can only get as part of this pass subscription? Right,
<v Speaker 3>if there's a big release that doesn't release day one,
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to go play the big release, granted their
<v Speaker 3>first party games or day one on this. But where
<v Speaker 3>are they right? Like they that we've been finally, we're
<v Speaker 3>finally in fable territory. Maybe after hearing about that in
<v Speaker 3>twenty twenty, twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 2>One, fourses have come out.
<v Speaker 3>A couple other things have come out, smaller games like
<v Speaker 3>Pentiment Keeper which is which are good, good games, but
<v Speaker 3>not the first party heavy hitters that would sell this subscription, right,
<v Speaker 3>so maybe now if they start getting those back under
<v Speaker 3>into constant release and you can bring that price down
<v Speaker 3>maybe ten bucks, you might start to see people come in.
<v Speaker 3>And that's again, if they were a perfect company. There
<v Speaker 3>is much to consider outside of this realm that people
<v Speaker 3>just on a moral ground won't do it, and fair
<v Speaker 3>play to them. But as far as in the perfect
<v Speaker 3>world situation, I think there's still work to do to
<v Speaker 3>make it what they want it to be, and that
<v Speaker 3>starts with at least a ten hour drop and then
<v Speaker 3>more regular leases of their first party titles, because that
<v Speaker 3>is what you were selling the game pass on.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm definitely in the camp of like when I
<v Speaker 1>think about getting Xbox Live or Xbox Game Pass or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>I can't get past the you know, contributions to the
<v Speaker 1>to the slaughter and at the Clintston and gos and
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that. But it's like, you know, there are
<v Speaker 1>people who do do not have, do not share my
<v Speaker 1>morals or try to ignore that stuff. And I think
<v Speaker 1>even they ignoring all of the atrocities is like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>can we This is just too much money? That's what
<v Speaker 1>I care about, And you know, I'm fair enough. I
<v Speaker 1>don't think Microsoft can get over that hill. Let alone
<v Speaker 1>convince everyone to feel warm and fuzzy about game Pass again.
<v Speaker 1>That's I think it's out out the window.
<v Speaker 2>All right. Let's see here.
<v Speaker 1>Next story, Nintendo really wants you to press Switch to
<v Speaker 1>his game chat button.
<v Speaker 2>This is from Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life.
<v Speaker 1>We're not joking about this, but just days after Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>ended its game Chat Welcome Offer promo, it's now running
<v Speaker 1>a new Missions and Wards event encouraging Switch to users
<v Speaker 1>to make use of the system's voice, chat and video features.
<v Speaker 1>This limited time offer allows you to unlock a game
<v Speaker 1>chat themed user icons when you open game Chat and
<v Speaker 1>complete the setup process. To get started, you need to
<v Speaker 1>press the C button on your right Joycon two controller.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, you'll now need to pay to access this feature.
<v Speaker 1>Here's the official description.
<v Speaker 2>Along with a look but it's just basically, it's.
<v Speaker 1>Like they're offered your reward to press this button, because
<v Speaker 1>now when you press the button, if you don't have
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo Switch online, it takes you to a screen that
<v Speaker 1>says subscribe to use this thing. So it's like they
<v Speaker 1>are they do seem concerned about getting people in the
<v Speaker 1>door through that route, and I'm just okay, man. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you put the whole button on the controller to thinking
<v Speaker 1>people are going to be pressing it all the time,
<v Speaker 1>and you gave it away for free for a while,
<v Speaker 1>and now maybe they're used to it. They're pressing it
<v Speaker 1>trying to talk to their friends, and they can't do
<v Speaker 1>it anymore unless they pay.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just I don't I don't know about all that, Jason.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, maybe just make games that people really want
<v Speaker 1>to use the feature with, and that's the solution thereat that.
<v Speaker 3>But also too, I'm looking at my switch to here
<v Speaker 3>and I'm just I'm looking at it the top. Is
<v Speaker 3>there a Is there a native camera in this thing?
<v Speaker 2>There is not yet?
<v Speaker 3>There's not, right? Is there a camera on the televisions
<v Speaker 3>that we're playing this week?
<v Speaker 2>Going on music?
<v Speaker 3>Now?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? So what the fuck am I.
<v Speaker 3>Going to press that button for if I don't have
<v Speaker 3>a camera to use it with. Yeah, if you want
<v Speaker 3>to use that camera, you got to get me a camera.
<v Speaker 3>If you want me to use that feature, you got
<v Speaker 3>to get me a camera that is a affordable or
<v Speaker 3>b it make it more compatible with other cameras, Like
<v Speaker 3>what are we meaning here?
<v Speaker 1>It's pretty compatible with a lot of the USB cameras
<v Speaker 1>out there, not all of them. I had a couple
<v Speaker 1>that that did not working up on that very frustrating.
<v Speaker 1>The early word is it's going to work with any
<v Speaker 1>USB camera, and that was not true, but it was.
<v Speaker 1>It is is quite a few, like most of the
<v Speaker 1>ones that people are going to have, and a drawer
<v Speaker 1>will work. But even like even that, like getting people
<v Speaker 1>to go search their house for an old camera and
<v Speaker 1>plugging it in, most people just don't want to do that,
<v Speaker 1>and they're they they're not looking at this feature of
<v Speaker 1>something that they must be using. So Nintendo trying to
<v Speaker 1>encourage people to pull them along through these little rewards,
<v Speaker 1>which again are just like icon photos that they give
<v Speaker 1>away in a million different ways. It's it just seems
<v Speaker 1>like a little bit desperate, and I a lot of
<v Speaker 1>times these features like get announced at launch and then
<v Speaker 1>they just fade away and no one thinks about them.
<v Speaker 1>The idea that Nintendo's sort of sticking to their guns
<v Speaker 1>with this a little bit is a bit surprising to me,
<v Speaker 1>because it's like, we get what this is. It's one
<v Speaker 1>of those features you use at the beginning of a
<v Speaker 1>launch to put on the box to make it one
<v Speaker 1>more reason why someone has to have this or there's
<v Speaker 1>the fear of missing out and that's faded and you
<v Speaker 1>can't recreate that.
<v Speaker 2>Fomo. Now everyone knows what this thing is. Most people
<v Speaker 2>aren't using it.
<v Speaker 3>How about this, If I'm going to pay the ten
<v Speaker 3>dollars to play Welcome Tour, if I complete Welcome Tour,
<v Speaker 3>you send me a camera.
<v Speaker 2>You just send a camera.
<v Speaker 3>But I did because don't you need a camera to
<v Speaker 3>play the game chat features in Welcome Tour? Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Probably, yes, you probably do. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
<v Speaker 3>Oh shit, what am I gonna do? Also, I need
<v Speaker 3>to go back to something you just said this, This
<v Speaker 3>threat has to be pulled. Do you have a drawer
<v Speaker 3>of USB cameras just laying around?
<v Speaker 1>I have a drawer of so much shit, Jason, Absolutely
<v Speaker 1>I do. Okay, it's not it's it's a it's a tub.
<v Speaker 1>It's like one of those, Yeah, the sealable tubs in
<v Speaker 1>the boss. There's like USB microphones in there. There's cameras byboards.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I can't. I've tested some of these things. Cameras. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I tested a few cameras and they're in there.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. But like also to the USB camera ex peaked
<v Speaker 3>and has not reached the Xbox three sixty camera that
<v Speaker 3>little guy perfect Square. They've been the same ever since. That.
<v Speaker 3>I will not hear otherwise.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 3>In fact, I wonder if that one would work in
<v Speaker 3>game chat. That would be fun. I'll have to see
<v Speaker 3>if I can find mine.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, that would be fun. I bet someone has to
<v Speaker 2>do to that.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, uh yeah, that's uh. Anyway, I have to say,
<v Speaker 3>we talked more about this than I thought there would.
<v Speaker 3>So maybe Nintendo is on the something simply for the memes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean it's it is just a weird Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>thing that where it's just like we're gonna put that
<v Speaker 1>button there and then we're really gonna push it. That's
<v Speaker 1>the way to get people excited about this service. And
<v Speaker 1>I think they're gonna get data real fast. That says
<v Speaker 1>this this effort went nowhere, and almost no one is
<v Speaker 1>subscribing to Nintendo Switch online to use game Chat. They're
<v Speaker 1>doing it so they can play star Fox after seeing
<v Speaker 1>star Fox in the movie. That's your That's the way
<v Speaker 1>to get people to subscribe to in it. So so yeah,
<v Speaker 1>good luck Nintendo.
<v Speaker 2>That's it. I still like game Chat.
<v Speaker 1>I hope that the faces pop up in more games.
<v Speaker 1>I hope that we see it in Like if Peak
<v Speaker 1>comes to this is what Jam was saying yesterday. Peak
<v Speaker 1>comes to switch to use the game chat thing in there,
<v Speaker 1>let the cameras pop up. Yeah, the people's faces pop
<v Speaker 1>up over their characters or maybe on their faces instead.
<v Speaker 1>I would love that. That's a really fun gimmick. But
<v Speaker 1>it's just not what people care about, right.
<v Speaker 3>I still like the idea of when the switch to
<v Speaker 3>edition of Smash Brothers Ultimate Ever hits, it like takes
<v Speaker 3>a still of your normal face. It takes still of you,
<v Speaker 3>like taking damage, and then every time you get hit,
<v Speaker 3>it just switches between the two. That would be a
<v Speaker 3>I would buy a camera for something like that, But
<v Speaker 3>then again, I have no self control when it comes
<v Speaker 3>to Smash Brothers. Every smash of mebow behind me, So
<v Speaker 3>maybe I'm the mark.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>No, p ANDNG fighters would be a really fantastic tech.
<v Speaker 3>I would love that, all.
<v Speaker 2>Right, let's keep going here.
<v Speaker 1>Fanta News everybody, it's your sona pop News Hours you
<v Speaker 1>want to. Halo campaign evolved to Shadow Drop Slash launch
<v Speaker 1>soon after Xbox Game Showcase question Mark. This is all
<v Speaker 1>based on Fanta facts. This is from a reddit speculation thread.
<v Speaker 1>This person wrote never posted on here before, but surprise,
<v Speaker 1>no one is really talking about this. Xbox has recently
<v Speaker 1>announced partnership with Fanta, could be a sign that Halo
<v Speaker 1>Campaign Evolved is releasing earlier than expected. In the Scannable
<v Speaker 1>rewards lineup, there is a Master Chiefs Fantastic Spartan armor
<v Speaker 1>skin that is redeemed for the remake, and the Xbox
<v Speaker 1>Wire post. This is explained by the fact that it'll
<v Speaker 1>be redeemable beginning at launch. However, all of Xbox's recent
<v Speaker 1>partnerships with Pepsi there was two or three and Coca
<v Speaker 1>Cola have lasted two to three months. I believe this
<v Speaker 1>is as close to a confirmation as possible that Halo
<v Speaker 1>Campaign Evolved will either shadow drop during the Xbox Game
<v Speaker 1>Showcase or not long after during the early summer to
<v Speaker 1>Warren of the Verge has also claimed a Summer twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty six release. I love this kind of stuff of
<v Speaker 1>people like who are clearly in the weeds paying too
<v Speaker 1>much attention to all these things. Every time they've done
<v Speaker 1>a Soda Pop deal before, it lasted three months. So
<v Speaker 1>if this thing is launching then and all these codes
<v Speaker 1>are redeemable in the game. It only makes sense that
<v Speaker 1>that Windows windows overlap. Therefore, and thusly we can expect
<v Speaker 1>Halo campaign evolved to launch by the end of summer.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, yeah, you got you one. Yes, I'm on board.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do this.
<v Speaker 1>And of course it helps that Tom Warren's saying the same,
<v Speaker 1>just explicitly. But what do you think about these the
<v Speaker 1>fanta news.
<v Speaker 2>On the streets.
<v Speaker 3>I think this is intrepid detective work by whoever put
<v Speaker 3>this up there. It's a it's a thread that I suld.
<v Speaker 3>I feel like I should have connected at this point,
<v Speaker 3>and all I was I was too busy being very
<v Speaker 3>enthralled by Orange Master Chief Armor. God damn it, this
<v Speaker 3>is fantastic news that doesn't work. I tried.
<v Speaker 2>I like that.
<v Speaker 3>No, I like this. I like this idea. I had
<v Speaker 3>a feeling that it might be a shadow drop right.
<v Speaker 3>It does sound it does seem like the kind of
<v Speaker 3>thing you announced it, you know last year you shadow
<v Speaker 3>drop it at the showcase or like the week after SGF,
<v Speaker 3>since the showcase happens at during in lockstep with SGF.
<v Speaker 3>I don't hate the theory, but I think also too,
<v Speaker 3>you could probably get away with like two weeks after
<v Speaker 3>the showcase or or something very close after the showcase
<v Speaker 3>to stay within this two to three month timeframe to
<v Speaker 3>keep the codes live. I think there's some smoke to
<v Speaker 3>this fire. I think this is a very interesting Reddit
<v Speaker 3>conspiracy Tidfoil had conspiracy theory that may actually come true
<v Speaker 3>for once. How about that? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I think so.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, we could start looking at a lot
<v Speaker 1>of other circumstantial aspects of this of we know Grand
<v Speaker 1>Theft Auto six is coming out later this year, and
<v Speaker 1>we know that that is that has caused these companies
<v Speaker 1>to think about how they're releasing their games. And I'll say,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I heard in the last day or so
<v Speaker 1>that that internally they're moving Fable later into the year. Now,
<v Speaker 1>it's not being moved out of this year. It's still
<v Speaker 1>coming this year apparently, but they are moving it later
<v Speaker 1>and to get out of the way of Grand Theft
<v Speaker 1>Auto is how it was told to me. So that
<v Speaker 1>means that's coming in like December or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>That means if they're worried about the blast radius of
<v Speaker 1>Grand Theft Auto and they have Fortsays coming this year
<v Speaker 1>as well, right, is that?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>So Forts are Horizon six that's probably coming maybe a
<v Speaker 1>little bit before Grand Theft Auto. You probably want to
<v Speaker 1>get this Halo game out as early as you can.
<v Speaker 1>And to me, that says summer, so I wouldn't be
<v Speaker 1>too surprised by that.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I agree with Horizon Horizons or sorry, Horizon six has.
<v Speaker 2>A date May nineteen, Okay, all right, wow man, that's
<v Speaker 2>very soon.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, well then all right, then that's coming then, okay,
<v Speaker 1>so maybe later summer for Halo then yeah, I could
<v Speaker 1>see that, But they then they want to have maybe
<v Speaker 1>that gap where Grand Theft Auto just takes up all
<v Speaker 1>the oxygen and then Fable comes back not long after that.
<v Speaker 3>So I could see that.
<v Speaker 1>There's also Gears for E Day. That's right, that's this
<v Speaker 1>year as well, Thank you, Chack. That's the one I
<v Speaker 1>would Oh, that's right, to do the whole direct after
<v Speaker 1>the direct, the direct direct.
<v Speaker 3>Oh man, I well, well that's not necessarily this year.
<v Speaker 3>They say, they can say twenty six all they want,
<v Speaker 3>but if that means fiscal year, it could blend into
<v Speaker 3>January February mo.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then you know, even if they're not saying
<v Speaker 1>fiscal year could easily get pushed.
<v Speaker 2>But I mean with the.
<v Speaker 1>Fact that they're making that their big focus at this
<v Speaker 1>uh at this year's Summer game Fest thing or the equivalent.
<v Speaker 2>Oh you got a little bit of a critical there in
<v Speaker 2>it's better now?
<v Speaker 3>Was it was it the mic? Or was it me?
<v Speaker 2>I think I think it was the mic? I was,
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it was. It's still crackling a little bit. I
<v Speaker 2>don't know what it is.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, I wonder I might have I might have hit the.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, give that a second.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, all right, now you're now you're muted, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>give it a second. Maybe uh, just selected again. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>I'll vamp here. Oh I think you're back, You're back?
<v Speaker 3>All right?
<v Speaker 2>Cool?
<v Speaker 3>Hello, hello, anyway now I'm just kidding. But no, that
<v Speaker 3>Gears of War could fall into well no, maybe it couldn't.
<v Speaker 3>I would say Gears of War could fall into the
<v Speaker 3>call of Duty slot. But they're probably going to come
<v Speaker 3>out with a Call of Duty this year or two. Right,
<v Speaker 3>That's what happens when you buy all these fucking companies.
<v Speaker 3>I I oh god, uh yeah, yeah, God, Grant Thought
<v Speaker 3>is really fucking people up, isn't it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It's like and the more we talk about it, it's like, man,
<v Speaker 1>they have all those games, and like I said, I've
<v Speaker 1>heard fables getting pushed internal. They haven't set like a
<v Speaker 1>date for that, so that wouldn't count as a delay,
<v Speaker 1>but I think internally they're trying to move it later
<v Speaker 1>than they were originally thinking. And yet they're still saying
<v Speaker 1>this year that that's starting to see like, are you
<v Speaker 1>sure it's coming out this year? Because is there really
<v Speaker 1>enough time after Grand Theft Auto launches in November to
<v Speaker 1>get another game out after you have Halo Forts and
<v Speaker 1>Gears and called Duty As you pointed out, Yeah, I.
<v Speaker 3>Have noticed that companies are starting to be more willing
<v Speaker 3>to launch in December, first couple weeks of December before
<v Speaker 3>the holiday rush.
<v Speaker 1>Even we've definitely that's definitely been established now it's been
<v Speaker 1>really hurt it Games Games.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder if maybe Gears could fall in there as
<v Speaker 3>like the last hurrah before the end of the year.
<v Speaker 3>Once people have gotten Grand Theft Auto, or once I
<v Speaker 3>should say most people have gotten Grand Theft Auto out
<v Speaker 3>of their system, a lot of those people will play
<v Speaker 3>online for a very long time, but once once the
<v Speaker 3>people get through the main star, however long that takes,
<v Speaker 3>or they quit on the main story and come back
<v Speaker 3>to it six months later, as is my way with Rockstore,
<v Speaker 3>I think there may be something to releasing in the
<v Speaker 3>first or second week of December, being the first one
<v Speaker 3>post GTA and seeing how that plays out.
<v Speaker 1>Fair enough, All right, let's hit these last few stories.
<v Speaker 1>Fortnite's brain Rock characters have started a fan revolt. This
<v Speaker 1>is from Patricia and Hernandez at Polygon Shouts out to Patricia.
<v Speaker 1>Italian brain Rock characters Tung Tung, Tung Sahar and Ballerina
<v Speaker 1>Cappuccina may have taken over social media in twenty twenty five,
<v Speaker 1>but Fortnite players aren't taking kindly to their presence. To
<v Speaker 1>the presence of the AI generated skins in the Battle
<v Speaker 1>Royale game. Within a day, fans of the community site
<v Speaker 1>fortnite dot gg voted the new skins the worst cosmetics
<v Speaker 1>in the entire game. Players who use these skins also
<v Speaker 1>may want to proceed with caution, as some Fortnite fans
<v Speaker 1>say they will be targeting any and all brain Rots
<v Speaker 1>they encounter in game on site from the moment Epic Games.
<v Speaker 2>Today eight on site for these motherfuckers. From the moment.
<v Speaker 1>Epic Games hit a teaser for the two brain Rot
<v Speaker 1>skins in last month's chapter seven season two trailer, It
<v Speaker 1>was obvious that the inclusion of these characters would be divisive.
<v Speaker 1>At the time, some players dramatically announced that the brain
<v Speaker 1>Rock characters were proof that Fortnite was done for. Since then,
<v Speaker 1>Epic Games brain Rock character.
<v Speaker 2>Oh.
<v Speaker 1>Since then, Epic Games has lost a staggering amount of goodwill.
<v Speaker 2>Although maybe not because of part A here, but.
<v Speaker 1>It's lost the staggering amount of goodwill from some of
<v Speaker 1>its hardcore fan base. People were already angry at Epic
<v Speaker 1>Games for increasing the price of v Bucks, then the
<v Speaker 1>company laid off over one thousand employees, including the person
<v Speaker 1>who designed Fortnite's most recognizable character, Jonesy sentiment then curdled
<v Speaker 1>even further as fans learned that one of the employees
<v Speaker 1>was terminally ill and lost his life insurance as a
<v Speaker 1>result of the layoffs. Fans, and he's not able to
<v Speaker 1>get new life insurance because he's terminally ill.
<v Speaker 2>Fans were also in sense.
<v Speaker 1>That Epic Games was reportedly paying millions of dollars for
<v Speaker 1>bottom of the barrel creator maps like Steal a brain
<v Speaker 1>Rot while using to retain its employees. Branded collaborations which
<v Speaker 1>would normally excite players, were framed by fans as a
<v Speaker 1>costly and unwanted expenditure. Okay, look, the brain rot stuff is.
<v Speaker 1>I get it, because people just have an adverse reaction
<v Speaker 1>to those things. They are just AI designed, although I
<v Speaker 1>would argue that the children who got into them have
<v Speaker 1>sort of adopted them and made them their own and
<v Speaker 1>it's like the AI origins of them matter less because
<v Speaker 1>kids have sort of just done their own thing with them.
<v Speaker 1>But whatever, I don't blame anyone for again having that
<v Speaker 1>adverse reaction. I think this is indicative of Fortnite's deeper problems.
<v Speaker 1>Jason of They did get so focused on the happy
<v Speaker 1>mealification of Fortnite that they haven't really like rejuvenated the
<v Speaker 1>central pillars of what made that game appealing in the
<v Speaker 1>first place, which was like the real gravitational pull of Fortnite,
<v Speaker 1>the real reason people kept coming back because they were
<v Speaker 1>having a good time with their friends. And now Fortnite's
<v Speaker 1>become so oh reliant on these partnerships and collaborations that
<v Speaker 1>it's like they got to find the next one.
<v Speaker 2>They gotta find the next one.
<v Speaker 1>They got to find the next one, and eventually you
<v Speaker 1>find the next one, and it's the AI Italian brain
<v Speaker 1>rock characters that are so out, so out of vogue,
<v Speaker 1>so out of fashion, Mama Mia, I would even say, Jason,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what do you think about all this?
<v Speaker 3>This is just all of that good Italian karma for
<v Speaker 3>Mario coming home to roost. That's all this. This is
<v Speaker 3>the adverse reaction to the hin and the youang No.
<v Speaker 3>I agree, I agree, and yeah, and before anybody asks,
<v Speaker 3>there already was a six to seven emote and somebody
<v Speaker 3>already did this tongue tungue tung to her. Where the
<v Speaker 3>hell's name is doing the six seven emote in Fortnite?
<v Speaker 3>Trust me, it's their brains fully rotted. Anyway, I agree
<v Speaker 3>that this is just the tip of the iceberg in
<v Speaker 3>a growing uh tsunami of player issues, and it has
<v Speaker 3>more to do with This is just the latest symptom
<v Speaker 3>of everything else that they've been hearing about and dealing with.
<v Speaker 3>But I have two things that bother me personally about this.
<v Speaker 3>One Ballerina Cappuccina is, if I have to be serious,
<v Speaker 3>admittedly very creative, I do like that name. It rolls
<v Speaker 3>off the tongue.
<v Speaker 1>I think that I think the Italian ring rock characters
<v Speaker 1>are just modern cabbage Patch Kids.
<v Speaker 2>I like, I don't see much of a difference personally.
<v Speaker 3>It's that they were ai generated that people have such
<v Speaker 3>a person like that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, by the time my kids got around to finding them,
<v Speaker 1>there was a million YouTubers doing stuff themselves with it,
<v Speaker 1>and it's just completely divorced from that.
<v Speaker 3>But whatever, Yeah, right, right, And also too, I have
<v Speaker 3>been asked multiple times to buy the Ballerina Cappuccina skin
<v Speaker 3>and I am losing ground, So pray for me. I
<v Speaker 3>may be one of the ones that's being targeted.
<v Speaker 1>I haven't brought them up in a while, but they
<v Speaker 1>were obsessed with these things for a while, so like,
<v Speaker 1>as soon as they find out I might have might
<v Speaker 1>be in the same boat.
<v Speaker 3>Good point in chat, Garbage pale kids, not cabbage fat kid.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, Garbage pail, that's what I mean. Garbage bel yes,
<v Speaker 2>I always use those.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, Cabbage patch is the is the good one. Garbage
<v Speaker 3>pil kids, garbage kid, That's what I fucking knows. But yeah, again,
<v Speaker 3>this is just more I think of a symptom. It's
<v Speaker 3>just the latest headline in a growing list of bad
<v Speaker 3>headlines for Epic after christ almost a decade of goodwill,
<v Speaker 3>They'll be at at twenty seventeen is uh ten years
<v Speaker 3>of Battle Royal for them, right, So it sucks that
<v Speaker 3>they're kind of tripping at the finish line before they
<v Speaker 3>hit that decade. And I've read a headline somewhere that
<v Speaker 3>what's going on with this just proves that there's no
<v Speaker 3>such thing as a forever game. It's just your forever,
<v Speaker 3>your your length of time lasts longer than most games,
<v Speaker 3>but doesn't mean you can be around forever, and you
<v Speaker 3>can fuck that up. And that's what Fortnite's been doing
<v Speaker 3>in twenty twenty six, leaps and bounds more than any
<v Speaker 3>other game company. I would say Xbox was there for
<v Speaker 3>a while, but now I think the mood with them
<v Speaker 3>is sort of flatlined while we wait to see what
<v Speaker 3>Asha Sharma's first move is and then we'll go from there.
<v Speaker 3>Epic is just and then I don't.
<v Speaker 1>Know, Yeah, you know, when we do look at the
<v Speaker 1>like what games really have been forever in terms of
<v Speaker 1>a decade or two, and Fortnite is coming up on
<v Speaker 1>it's decade right in twenty seventeen, that'll be like a
<v Speaker 1>decade of Fortnite, maybe twenty eighteen for the real Fortnite,
<v Speaker 1>But it's coming up on that. There is roeblocks, which
<v Speaker 1>has been around since two thousand and six, and it's like,
<v Speaker 1>what's the secret there, and it is they don't make
<v Speaker 1>the game. The kids make the games, and then there's
<v Speaker 1>all the exploitation involved in that. But like, the kids
<v Speaker 1>make the games and it becomes this community where people
<v Speaker 1>are just responding to like, oh, this is popular, so
<v Speaker 1>I will make my variation on that, and then someon
<v Speaker 1>will have a new idea and it's a self like
<v Speaker 1>you know, self propulsion engine that just keeps going and going,
<v Speaker 1>and Fortnite is trying to do that, but it doesn't.
<v Speaker 1>It has not been able to get over the hump there. Instead,
<v Speaker 1>they do have like the steel Brain Rot which is
<v Speaker 1>a user created map and stuff like that, but they
<v Speaker 1>don't have the next big thing popping up that steel
<v Speaker 1>a brain rop map is just straight uplifted from Roadblocks.
<v Speaker 2>That's where it original did.
<v Speaker 1>So it's yeah, yes, exactly, and it's like, so your
<v Speaker 1>goal here is to be more like Roadblocks, and that's not.
<v Speaker 2>Really the community that you've built up.
<v Speaker 1>You built up a community of people who are like
<v Speaker 1>super into games, and Roadblocks is very like it's just
<v Speaker 1>a hangout for children, and so it could be a
<v Speaker 1>little bit more messy because kids love trash. Kids love
<v Speaker 1>trash and roadblocks happily being trash sort of delivers on that,
<v Speaker 1>and Fortnite's kind of separated from then They're not gonna
<v Speaker 1>be able to bridge that gap. But that was the
<v Speaker 1>solution for all these companies. That's one of the solutions
<v Speaker 1>that Rock Stars using for Grand Theft Auto six. We
<v Speaker 1>know that they've acquired a bunch of user generated content companies,
<v Speaker 1>they acquired the role playing stuff, and they're going to
<v Speaker 1>try to integrate all that into the game itself. And
<v Speaker 1>I'll be I'm gonna be curious to be like, once
<v Speaker 1>that online stuff really gets going, are they able to
<v Speaker 1>sort of like offer up what people liked about Grand
<v Speaker 1>Theft Auto five and four and Grand Theft Auto Online,
<v Speaker 1>or is it going to be distracted by all this
<v Speaker 1>stuff they're trying to put in there to make the
<v Speaker 1>game built to go forever from day one. That is
<v Speaker 1>a very different proposition than what they did with Grand
<v Speaker 1>Theft Autoline, which is an online mode for Grand Theft
<v Speaker 1>Auto that turned into a forever game. So can these
<v Speaker 1>big companies figure that out? I don't know, and obviously
<v Speaker 1>Epic has not done that, and that's why it seems
<v Speaker 1>like they're just like setting themselves up to be acquired
<v Speaker 1>by Disney and let them figure it out. We made
<v Speaker 1>as much money as we can make from Fortnite, Are
<v Speaker 1>we going to be able to figure out the next
<v Speaker 1>growth potential?
<v Speaker 2>Maybe not, so just sell it to Disney.
<v Speaker 3>I think that these big companies will never figure it
<v Speaker 3>out because any creative impetus they may have will immediately
<v Speaker 3>be stifled as soon as line go down. And sometimes
<v Speaker 3>you just have to let the creative process play out,
<v Speaker 3>and if line goes down for a little bit, it
<v Speaker 3>will go back up eventually, is the hope. But I
<v Speaker 3>think they will cut way too fast and cut these
<v Speaker 3>people down to the knees before they would ever let
<v Speaker 3>line go down. So I don't I'm not confident in
<v Speaker 3>that at all.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, yeah, there are solution will have to just be
<v Speaker 1>like make the game worse so it makes more money
<v Speaker 1>from the people who are still playing.
<v Speaker 2>So oh okay, that is that's the death spiral.
<v Speaker 3>And just to say we were talking about being so
<v Speaker 3>reliant on partnerships, this whole thing was the beginning of
<v Speaker 3>the week. Their next partnership is already. I think tonight
<v Speaker 3>in Pheneas and ferv the Platypus and Dufige works right,
<v Speaker 3>are hitting tonight so that that train just keeps on rolling.
<v Speaker 1>Epic don't care, yep Epic don't care all right, Last
<v Speaker 1>story I have here. GameStop thought buying games online was
<v Speaker 1>a passing phase, it says Farmer, Business developer. This was
<v Speaker 1>a GDC talk Larry Cooperman, who was a hell of
<v Speaker 1>a guy, kind of talked about like working with GameStop
<v Speaker 1>and how they really just thought it was going to
<v Speaker 1>be a passing fad and that they never really prepared
<v Speaker 1>themselves for a shifting marketplace of people purchasing games at
<v Speaker 1>brick and mortar to purchasing games online. And while that
<v Speaker 1>was happening, game Stop continued to invest and go all
<v Speaker 1>in on brick and mortar. And now they're a Funko
<v Speaker 1>pop company. They just sell Funko pops and it's, man,
<v Speaker 1>how could a company be so wrong? I'll tell you
<v Speaker 1>every time, Like it's not just in games, kind of
<v Speaker 1>across the board. The amount of delusion that you would
<v Speaker 1>find in the average boardroom and and C suite at
<v Speaker 1>any company, any kind of astonish you, it would you
<v Speaker 1>would like you.
<v Speaker 2>Already think these people are stupid.
<v Speaker 1>I promise all of you listening you don't think they're
<v Speaker 1>stupid enough. You are not properly like your underestimation could
<v Speaker 1>be so much lower and still be overestimating what these
<v Speaker 1>people are capable of. It's and GameStop is a poster
<v Speaker 1>child for that.
<v Speaker 3>Right, they really are. I went I happened to get
<v Speaker 3>an email from them today? Is that I had that
<v Speaker 3>I mistakenly clicked on. I don't know why I did that.
<v Speaker 3>If you go to GameStop dot com right now, the
<v Speaker 3>first thing on their bar of things that they sell
<v Speaker 3>is trading cards. Yep, that's what their big focus is
<v Speaker 3>on now, trading cards. They're slowly trying to morph into
<v Speaker 3>a video game Slash, TCG Company, Pokemon, Magic, what have you.
<v Speaker 3>And that was after the fun copop thing stopped, and
<v Speaker 3>after the T shirts and everything else. I did five
<v Speaker 3>years in those retail trenches back in the day, from
<v Speaker 3>two thousand and seven to twenty twelve. I did mid
<v Speaker 3>Night Release.
<v Speaker 2>He sold Carl jeramsrom Halo. Apparently he was saying.
<v Speaker 3>In chat he loves telling this story. The first step
<v Speaker 3>Halo Reach. He bought that copy for his copy of
<v Speaker 3>Halo Riach he got from me, and then a little
<v Speaker 3>while later he worked with me and that's where that started.
<v Speaker 3>So yeah, it's uh, that was a wild time, but
<v Speaker 3>it's completely different now and for the worst. If I
<v Speaker 3>have to be honest, people wonder what's going on in
<v Speaker 3>the game industry that makes people care less about traditional
<v Speaker 3>video game The biggest retailer about traditional video games stopped
<v Speaker 3>caring too, So what is the common consumer supposed to do?
<v Speaker 1>Yep, exactly a couple of stories that I did miss.
<v Speaker 1>We'll just shit these the headlines real quick. Last of
<v Speaker 1>his multiplayer game was roughly eighty percent complete when it
<v Speaker 1>was canceled, claims former director, kind of in line with
<v Speaker 1>what we've heard about that game. It's a shame, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they found out the day before it had got announced
<v Speaker 1>because they didn't want it leaking. It's like, yeah, that
<v Speaker 1>also sounds pretty pretty familiar, pretty right. And then next
<v Speaker 1>on just out there giving up the game calls Arc
<v Speaker 1>Raiders a quote trojan horse for proving controversial AI tools
<v Speaker 1>can build triple A hits with smaller teams. Yeah, well, look,
<v Speaker 1>I know that stuff is coming. You I was watching
<v Speaker 1>the highlights of the game last night because I was
<v Speaker 1>doing the podcast when the Red Wings finally one a
<v Speaker 1>hockey game again, And the next video that gave me
<v Speaker 1>was was this person's like, I'm going to use all
<v Speaker 1>of the big AI tools, so like you know, chat,
<v Speaker 1>GPT and co Pilot and Claude and Jim and I
<v Speaker 1>and I'm gonna take this idea like, hey, make Mario Kart,
<v Speaker 1>make me a Mario Kart. And he just went from
<v Speaker 1>one to the other, asking it to do to write
<v Speaker 1>all these lines of code, and it would spit it
<v Speaker 1>out and be like this is pretty okay. And now
<v Speaker 1>I've just did four prompts with this one. I'm gonna
<v Speaker 1>do four prompts with the next one. Hey can you
<v Speaker 1>improve this? Can you make the world look better? And
<v Speaker 1>it just he just kept going through this process, and
<v Speaker 1>by the end he had something that looks like something
<v Speaker 1>you could find on like new Grounds or whatever. It's
<v Speaker 1>pretty close to a working video game. This stuff is coming.
<v Speaker 1>And I think that next on just being like hey, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we're going to prove it can work and get one
<v Speaker 1>over on people.
<v Speaker 2>I think they are mistaken that that is the.
<v Speaker 1>Right strategy because I think what people want here is
<v Speaker 1>to be included. And by people I mean the people
<v Speaker 1>who play the games and the people who make the games,
<v Speaker 1>and all that these companies ever.
<v Speaker 2>Say is we don't need you anymore.
<v Speaker 1>And it's like, well, if we don't, if you don't
<v Speaker 1>need us and we can see what these tools are
<v Speaker 1>capable of, isn't just the logical conclusion here we don't
<v Speaker 1>need you?
<v Speaker 3>Like?
<v Speaker 2>How does this? Does this not end with we don't
<v Speaker 2>need Nexon anymore? What do you think the plan? How?
<v Speaker 2>Why do you think you're necessary? And all the developers
<v Speaker 2>aren't necessary?
<v Speaker 1>And all the people who hate AI are kind of
<v Speaker 1>unnecessary or you can get one over on them, and
<v Speaker 1>then you're going to be standing as the king of
<v Speaker 1>the mountain when this is all done, Like they cannot
<v Speaker 1>help but sell the rope that they that would be
<v Speaker 1>used to hang them with. It's just over and over again,
<v Speaker 1>that is what we see here. I don't know you
<v Speaker 1>have any thoughts on this before we move on.
<v Speaker 3>All they see is line go up, as I mentioned earlier,
<v Speaker 3>and that line is eventually going to wrap around their
<v Speaker 3>next and be the ones that toss them out.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, absolutely all right, we are going to move on
<v Speaker 1>from the headlines. Thanks everybody for a good week. We
<v Speaker 1>have a poll question from yesterday that we should get to.
<v Speaker 1>Let's do that real quick. I'm going to get the
<v Speaker 1>most recent updated results here. I don't have we don't
<v Speaker 1>have a poll from yesterday, and we never did get
<v Speaker 1>out here all y'all. Instead, what we do have is
<v Speaker 1>the bomb twelve. We'll get to that here in a second.
<v Speaker 1>Let's wrap everything else up though. Jason Fanelli, why don't
<v Speaker 1>you tell people where they can find you on the
<v Speaker 1>internet what you have going on?
<v Speaker 2>All that good stuff?
<v Speaker 3>Jaysonfinelle dot com on Blue Sky big Man Finale on
<v Speaker 3>Instagram is where I'm the most active with my nonsense.
<v Speaker 3>Just posted a cool interview yesterday from Boston, pacse East
<v Speaker 3>with Megan Everett, communications director at Digital Extremes for Warframe.
<v Speaker 3>Fantastic conversation with us. Talked about talked about the switch
<v Speaker 3>to version, talked about the latest update, and talked about
<v Speaker 3>her flat out there will be no jennitor of AI
<v Speaker 3>and Warframe.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, all that headline direct quote.
<v Speaker 3>I love being able to write that. It's a very
<v Speaker 3>cool thing. Go read that and her words there. Also
<v Speaker 3>want to shout another article that went up on GameSpot
<v Speaker 3>yesterday that I did not write, but I think is brilliant,
<v Speaker 3>and that is Jessica Cogswell. We are a friend of
<v Speaker 3>the show. Good On one of my editors posted a
<v Speaker 3>review of the Super Mario Galaxy movie as written by
<v Speaker 3>her four year old. She asked the four year old
<v Speaker 3>questions and he answered there is an Easter egg spoiler
<v Speaker 3>in one of his question answers. So if you don't
<v Speaker 3>want to be spoiled at all of any of the
<v Speaker 3>Easter eggs, may slip maybe maybe skip it until you
<v Speaker 3>see the movie. But uh, it is a fan it's
<v Speaker 3>it's it's hysterical. I loved reading it. I envisioned myself
<v Speaker 3>with when my kids were younger, doing the exact same thing. Uh,
<v Speaker 3>it's it's just a really really cool piece to read there.
<v Speaker 3>But also recently reviewed MLB the show for Kataku that
<v Speaker 3>my reviews over there. You can read that. Trying to
<v Speaker 3>think what else I have going on here that I
<v Speaker 3>can actually speak on?
<v Speaker 2>Uh, get a travelogue on giant bomb dot com.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yes, and I'm apparently more becoming adam orphic into
<v Speaker 3>an eagle or something like that. Basically, Yes, fantastic when's
<v Speaker 3>that going live today?
<v Speaker 2>I think it's a right jam. We're gonna put.
<v Speaker 3>Much time viewing for your East Coasters West coasters breakfast
<v Speaker 3>time viewing either way, Get a meal, watch the Travelog.
<v Speaker 3>It's gonna be a good time.
<v Speaker 2>Excellent, Thank you so much.
<v Speaker 1>Giant Bomb like chance said that Travelog will be going
<v Speaker 1>up here in a little bit. There's gonna be an
<v Speaker 1>ad pre version of that. You can get on the
<v Speaker 1>website if you're a premium subscribers, So go ahead and
<v Speaker 1>watch that there. I am gonna be a prompt Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Upf will be happening later today at we do that
<v Speaker 1>three pm right jan three pm Eastern noon Pacific. SMITHA
<v Speaker 1>Coleman's gonna come hang out with us. She's bringing her
<v Speaker 1>new game, so check that out. Before we play her
<v Speaker 1>new game, we'll probably play some Super Mario Brothers Wonder
<v Speaker 1>meet up at Bella Bell Park. I might if we
<v Speaker 1>have time, I might drop in some Jezi Christ. I
<v Speaker 1>am Jesus Christ. I got that downloaded. We'll hang out
<v Speaker 1>with Jzi Crazy, see what he's up to, although I
<v Speaker 1>don't know how much we're gonna be able to get
<v Speaker 1>into his whole thing. In thirty minutes or whatever.
<v Speaker 3>Game to play at three pm on the good Friday's mostly,
<v Speaker 3>you know, with the significance of that time.
<v Speaker 1>The fantastic Well, we'll see everybody come hang out with us, though,
<v Speaker 1>we'll wrap up the week in a real fun way
<v Speaker 1>during that show. All right, I think with all that
<v Speaker 1>out of the way, it is time everybody once again
<v Speaker 1>for the Bomb twelve.
<v Speaker 2>Here we are.
<v Speaker 1>These are the twelve games that really matter to people
<v Speaker 1>who are really playing video games. Went ahead and asked, y'all,
<v Speaker 1>you came through with your suggestions to add to the
<v Speaker 1>Bomb twelve. I tell you it it all up, and
<v Speaker 1>here we are with number twelve absolute back on the list.
<v Speaker 2>I wonder what happened there.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, maybe it just continues to get word of
<v Speaker 1>mouth or and I'm not sure if maybe it launched
<v Speaker 1>on other platforms. But that is a game worth going
<v Speaker 1>back to number eleven many shoot adventures. Number ten as
<v Speaker 1>rack Coin, which I spelled incorrectly here it just says raccoon.
<v Speaker 2>That's just dude. You know I'm gonna fix it right now.
<v Speaker 2>I'm fix it right now. Here we go. Let's see
<v Speaker 2>uh rack uh rack coin. There we go.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic, Okay, the number nine is Death Stranding to on
<v Speaker 1>the Beach. Number eight is Hades two, number seven and
<v Speaker 1>a super Mario Brothers Wonder. Number six is Resident Evil Requiem.
<v Speaker 1>Number five is World of Warcraft Midnight. Number four is
<v Speaker 1>Slay the Spire Too. Then in the top three for
<v Speaker 1>I think the first time, Crimson Desert continues to sort
<v Speaker 1>of callow up the chart uber four.
<v Speaker 2>Last week.
<v Speaker 1>Number two is Marathon as it continues to swap places
<v Speaker 1>back and forth with number one Pokemon Pacopia. Last week,
<v Speaker 1>Marathon was number one. The week before that, Pocopia was
<v Speaker 1>number one. Those are the games of the moment right now.
<v Speaker 1>When I talk to friends, what are you playing? It's
<v Speaker 1>Marathon or Procopia for the most part, and then a
<v Speaker 1>smattering of other games, and I continue to want to
<v Speaker 1>play more of both, although more Pocopia at the moments.
<v Speaker 3>I haven't finished that yet, so I'm sure I haven't
<v Speaker 3>started it yet, so I get it. But listen, it's
<v Speaker 3>worth folks, real quick. Before we leave. You see this
<v Speaker 3>bomb twelve next week. I don't care what slot it's in.
<v Speaker 3>I don't care. I want to see the words I
<v Speaker 3>am Jesus Christ.
<v Speaker 2>Well we'll see if that happens.
<v Speaker 1>If you want to help contribute to make that happen,
<v Speaker 1>go to GiantBomb dot com. You scroll down, you can
<v Speaker 1>find the Bomb twelve for the week. On the left
<v Speaker 1>hand side. There's a little vote here tab. You click
<v Speaker 1>on that, it'll take you to the Google form you
<v Speaker 1>could submit the game that you're playing. We'll get that
<v Speaker 1>all talied up for next week's Bomb twelve to close
<v Speaker 1>out next week. Looking forward to that as always. With
<v Speaker 1>all that out of the way, though, I think it's
<v Speaker 1>time to say, Jason Finelli, thank you so much for
<v Speaker 1>hanging out with me today and talking about video games. Man,
<v Speaker 1>I really appreciate it.
<v Speaker 3>You're not just saying that at gunpoint, are you.
<v Speaker 2>No, I am saying it at gunpoint, but it's a
<v Speaker 2>good gunpoint.
<v Speaker 3>I appreciate it always being here man.
<v Speaker 1>That until next time, Thank you everybody for watching and listening.
<v Speaker 1>You are the best audience in gaming. Until next time,
<v Speaker 1>have a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.