GrubbSnax 25: The Game Awards Results, Secret Recipies, and How To Stop The Blockchain

Yeah, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this. I'm Jeff
Grub all right for GamesBeat dot com. I didn't have the preview window muted.
I do this show Grubs next here on Giant Bomb. Uh, I'm
lost. But it's that time of year where it's okay because no one's really
paying attention anymore, no one's really doing work. I took my kid to
school today. She was wearing pajamas because that's what they were doing today,
And I'm like, they that's they have the right idea. They they're not
just it's not just casual. They're already ready to go to sleep. That's
how casual they are. So you know, more more respect to them than
you know, any anyone else. Any What are we doing. We're pretending
like we're working. They're not even pretending. I am very ready to hang
out with you all and do this show. We got a not a lot
to talk about today. There's not a lot. There's basically we're gonna do.
It's gonna be a little bit of a victory lap because we got a
lot of the stuff that I've been saying is gonna happen. Showed up at
the game Awards and that was nice and I'm very vain, so so yeah,
we're gonna do that, but we'll talk a little about some of the
stuff that wasn't there where it might show up, mostly guessing again things have
wound down for the year. It's not like I'm gonna again. I'm not
gonna bother people this time. You're like, hey, tell me what's going
on. It's like, just so I can feed my show, you know.
But we still have plenty to talk about in terms of like, oh,
well, why are companies making certain decisions that they're making, And we
can give an update on the coalition things like that, because there's been some
questions around what that studio is doing. And Nintendo had an Indie World yesterday
and there's questions around that. So I'll hop into a little bit of that
stuff. But of course, this is an interactive program here. This is
where you send in your questions and I get to them. The best way
to do that is to hit that ask a question button there at the top
of the page. I say best way, really, the only way hit
that ask a question button at the top of the page here on giant bomb
dot com slash chat. I'll answer that as best I can. I'll try
to get too as many as I can usually, especially if people are hanging
out live. About halfway through the show, ask for another like round of
questions. If you're still here, so stick with me, I'll try.
I'll try my best to get to you. Okay, So any other like
housekeeping. I think I said last week that we should have shows. I
don't know. I don't know. We might have a show next week.
I'll have to talk to Beckler about that. I'm not sure what they're what
their schedule is like, if someone if someone else is going to come in
and work on that Thursday. I'm not gonna make them do that if they
don't want to. So I'll figure that out. I haven't looked into it
too much. We've been just worried about this show. So yeah, but
for now we're live. Let's do this. If you got those questions,
send them in. Let's get to what I have here on my little list,
my cute little list. All right, So I wanted to talk a
little bit about, you know, wrapping up the Game Awards, uh,
something that I heard wasn't going to be there from you know, trusted sources.
And then other people said would be there and they're trusted to Star Wars
Jedi Fallen Order, and I tried to land on the side of landed on
the side of it wasn't going to be there. It wasn't there. We
did get Star Wars Eclipse, which completely just left my brain, and we
talked about that on this show, just like a month ago or something like
that, about Star Wars Eclipse set in the High Republic from Quantic Dream,
and we touched on all that and turns out that turns out that was exactly
the case, and we you know, the reason we were talking about it
back then is, oh, there is something we're gonna see from that game
pretty soon, either at the Game Awards or maybe as part as part of
that Star Wars holiday countdown thing, which I think might have already happened.
I actually don't know when that is, and I still don't think that was
if Eclipse, since Eclipse was at the Game Awards. I don't think that
thing that's gonna be on Star Wars dot Com is gonna be all that big
of a deal. But yeah, a clip showed up. It was it
was nice to see that where's Jedi Fallen Order? Though, like I've been
saying for a while, that's not gonna show up until probably early next year.
We're gonna have to wait for a little bit to actually see that.
So yeah, they they have plans to try to get that game out relatively,
you know, relatively quickly over you know, the next year or year
and a half, and we'll start hearing about it early next year, you
know, I say early next year. That's it's a big window. Things
could easily slip into E three. Again, there was there was never really
any chance that this game was going to show up at the Game a War.
It's it's not like, oh, they had something and they were going
to put it in there and things just didn't work out. There was never
even really a conversation for that to happen. So we'll we'll have to keep
waiting on that. One. Things that did show up Star Wars Eclipse,
Alan Wake two, we talked on We talked about that a lot. But
I actually I started talking about that before I was even doing this show,
when I was just doing a show on Twitch kind of similar to this.
I was talking about but talking about it there, and I remember kind of
making the rounds and it was nice to see that one come to fruition.
We did mention that four Spoken last week. I mentioned before Spoken could be
there and then hell Blake two, something I've been saying all year could be
there. You want to watch what? Okay, fantastic? All right?
Holiday food shows are good. I'm gonna hit the play button for you.
There you go. This one does not have school all right. Oh.
Overall, I thought the Game Awards were pretty okay. I think at the
end of the night, after working covering it, I was pretty like,
oh, this was not a lot of fun. But when you look back,
they had some pretty good trailers, some pretty interesting stuff things that I
thought was I mean, I thought Our Raiders looked really surprisingly good stuff like
that. So it was it was a good show. Jeff Keeley's he does
what he does and it's you know, our choice to engage with it or
not. And in terms of putting a show that has a lot of new
stuff in it, I think it was pretty decent. It's hard to live
up to that hype every year, and I think he does a decent job
of trying to do that. All right. So splinter Cell remake got announced,
and this was something a lot of rumors going around about this one,
and it was hard to keep track of. The only one I ever confirmed
myself we talked about this on the show, is that in the summer around
e three time, Ubisoft was testing out some splinter Cell style gameplay, and
that meant gameplay that looked like traditional splinter Cell. And then since then we've
heard rumors from other people saying, you know that they are doing it.
It got greenlet and it could be open world. And to me, when
I heard that, I'm like, that makes a lot of sense. This
is Ubisoft, and so I speculated on that and be like, oh,
open world makes sense. They should make it like Metal Gear Solid five.
I think that'd be a great fit for Sam Fisher. It turns out that's
not what they're doing. That speculation was incorrect. Instead, they are just
straight up remaking I guess the first splinter Cell. There's an interview on Ubisofts
like blog page like with with the you know, the key creatives and producers
on this project, and they they are kind of talking about it in terms
of it's a remake because it's a little bit more than what a remaster would
be. And then they say, but they're going to use the snow Drop
Engine, which is the Division Engine. It's what they're using for that new
Star Wars game and a few other things. But it's like, you know,
it's a it's a modern, high tech engine, and you know,
the line between remaster and remake is always kind of blurry. But I think
when you say remake nowadays, people look to Final Fantasy seven remake and Resident
Evil two and three remakes as sort of what we expect when you use that
word, and I would imagine that's probably pretty close to what we're going to
get from the splinter Cell game. That that sounds pretty That sounds right.
I wonder if it's going to be similar to what's happening with dead Space,
where you know, EA is going back to dead Space because they you know,
they've seen that single player games can succeed, and they're going to remake
the first dead Space, but like bring in some more stuff from two and
three and basically reboot the universe and start that franchise anew with this new foundation
being the dead Space remake. Splinter Cell could be a similar thing where like,
oh, maybe we'll restart the splinter Cell universe and we're going to start
it with this first thing that's foundational, and then we'll kind of branch off
from there into new stuff and retell maybe some old stories continuously, but maybe
we'll introduce new mechanics, new gameplay, new modern stuff. For me,
I think that the first game is a really cool game still, and I
think the lighting, the lighting mechanics and the shadow mechanics, the very dynamic
it works really well. It works well back then, it could work even
better today with ray tracing and stuff like that. And I think there's a
potential to really take advantage of new technology to get the most out of that
and really enable use modern graphics tech to unlock new mechanics and new gameplay tech.
And that's very exciting to me. I would I would love to see
that all right at the Game Awards. I'm trying to think Epic Games and
the Coalition work together on a matrix sort of Unreal five tech demo, and
they released it and it's available to play on consoles. I think they hinted
it was coming to PC. If it hasn't already, I haven't been paying
attention, but either way, it's a really neat look at Unreal Engine five.
It shows what's possible if you are one of the richest companies in video
gaming and you want to sell a product and you want to make that product
look very good, or you want to get people using product, you want
to make it look very good. Yeah, you could make it. You
can make something that's pretty incredible Unreal Engine five. I think that for me
personally, looking at that at that Matrix Tech demo, I still think that
the big barrier is going to be how many people you can get on a
project, how much money you have. That's going to be the real barrier
to making something that looks like that. But there is some key tech in
Unreal Engine five to make some of that stuff simpler. There's the city building
thing where it could sort of automate building a city for you an exterior,
like a city exterior. That's really cool. They can you know, you
give them a bunch of basically you say, hey, go work within these
confines and it'll make buildings that like are randomized within those confines. And that's
really smart. That's really cool. That could save people a lot of time.
Now you say, well, you know, before you have to put
a bunch of artists on that to do that stuff. So now that frees
them up and maybe they'll have better work life balance. Ha you full No,
they won't. They'll just be put on working on interiors instead or a
million other things they could have been doing that they decided not to do because
they had to be working on exteriors. Trust me, we will fill up
that space with work. That's just how we are as people. So it's
the other tech is Nanite. I think it's really awesome. It is.
This is the thing where when you go into a game. I remember pub
G. Remember when PUBG launched and you would drop and before like everything was
like ready to stream in, and the houses would just be blobs because you
know, pub she was on her unreal engine and the houses would just be
blobs that you couldn't even really interact with because the level of detail model was
still on the low version because you were far away and they didn't realize you
got you. They didn't expect you to get so quick, get up close
so quickly, and so it took a second for the high level of detail
model to stream in. Nannite really eliminates a lot of those things where no
matter how far away you are, no matter how close you get it is
really quickly able to give you the high quality, detailed model, and it's
it streams that stuff in almost instantly, and that's then it's also really cool
text. So when we talk about popping, a lot of people talk about
popping and they mean there isn't a physical object popping in to your view,
and that is that's potentially still something that might exist. But people also mean
pop in. For like, a tree goes from looking like a two D
plane to you know, a two D sprite to look into something like an
actual tree, and that that looks like popping as well. That kind of
popping should go away with something like an unreal five, whether you have a
ton of money or not. So that's that's pretty cool tech. Now.
The reason we're really talking about this is the coalition worked on it. Coalition
is a Microsoft studio. Coalition is basically Microsoft's unreal studio. They are they're
unreal experts. And I mentioned before that you know we're gonna be waiting for
Gears of War six for quite I guess what Gears six because they called the
stopped calling a Gears of War. So we'll be waiting for Gears six for
quite some time because they are going to be working on a smaller project to
familiar familiarize themselves with Unreal Engine five before they like fully embrace working on Gears.
And so people looked at this matrix thing and like, oh, is
this what you were talking about? This is not a they are making an
actual game product that is that's scheduled to come out in twenty twenty three,
and is very much about you know, learning Unreal five still, and this
is not a these are separate things. This was just them lending a hand
to something and you know, as part of learning Unreal Unged five. It's
still part of that process. But this is not the smaller game project that
I was talking about. This is something completely separate from that. So you
can expect a coalition to still, i think, probably release a new IP
or at least something that seems relatively newish compared to another Gears game in twenty
twenty three, based on you know, based on their time with Unreal Engin
five, and then to quickly transition many of their workers into a full on
development for Gear six and probably like in parallel that stuff will happen. Okay,
let's keep going. So the last thing I wanted to talk about is
the Nintendo Indie World Showcase. Indie games are a weird thing where whenever one
of these things pop up, like what what do we know? Like,
what do we know that that is coming? That's an indie game we haven't
heard of before? Not much? Right, So what we're actually all hoping
for is the sequel to the last indie game we fell in love with.
So Silk Song is the obvious one there that people are always talking about showing
up here. And at this point, it is like indie gaming's elden Ring
right where it feels almost like did it even ever exist in the first place?
And I just wouldn't like speak to like a little bit too, like
why it feels like these games take so long? Because this is not the
only game where this is happening. Sports Story, Cuphead, the DLC for
Cuphead, a lot of other games that are like in a similar situation where
you know they are going on development cycles of three, four or five years.
So what happens there? Well, I think the first thing we need
to realize is most indie games, even for like the first one, take
this long, if not longer, for small teams to build. I think
a lot of times you hear the story of a game that succeeded and you
hear like, oh, a couple of people worked on it for seven years
and then it came out. That's this is just like what they're used to.
On top of that, they they have now have a successful game that
continues to sell. These games usually have pretty good legs as people like look
around like, hey, I'm just looking for something. I'm in the e
shop or whatever. I want to I want a new game. What's there?
People are picking up you know, they're picking up Golf Story or whatever
for you know, especially when there's a sale or something like that, or
as they get ported to new platforms here that like here and there. As
those things happen, like with Hollow Night, Hollow Nights showed up in a
bunch of places over time, and as those ports that you know happen,
these these studios get an influx of cash that they can live on very comfortably,
and that gives them time and space to really make sure that the sequel
is very good. Yeah, so this is basically I'm just saying, this
is all really really really normal for an indie game. It is not like
that doesn't mean there's any problems. I don't think many people are even assuming
that there's problems at this point. People are just very excited still to hear
more about Silk Song, Sports Story whatever, and the teams are relatively communicative.
I know, it feels like they're not like feels like we don't hear
about hear about them a lot, but usually they're telling us what's happening.
They're like, we're just trying to make the game as good as possible,
and until they're at that point, there's not much else to say. I
mean, that's what the sports story team is keep saying, like, Hey,
we got ideas in our head that this could be even more than what
we ever imagined. We started working on the tennis game, and it's it's
basically got a full tennis RPG in it now, and so we just didn't
want to like let up on any of that stuff and go half ass.
And I mean, when you have a first game that continues to stone keeps
making you money, you want to sort of like make sure that the next
game doesn't fall flat so that they can keep doing the same thing into the
future and delivers on all the expectations. That your fans have that you really
internalized, especially as a small team. Okay, it's that does it for
me, though not much else to say. It is the end of the
year. You start asking around and people are like, ah, things are
winding down. No one's really talking about much. I think that, you
know, I could say that Dragon Age is still moving ahead. We talked
about it a little bit a few weeks ago, how the creative director want
a key director left. It's hard to keep everyone straight. So many key
people from from games are leaving, and this happens all the time. It's
normal at this point, but that happened, and it's like, oh,
it's the game in trouble or whatever. I'm trying to find out more.
But I'll just say really quickly on that one doesn't seem like it's in trouble
because the expectations are still like, oh, it's still gonna come out in
the same timeline that they're playing before. But maybe that's just yay optimism because
they don't want to push the game out of any certain you know, fiscal
year that it's expected end. So we'll see, I'll look in I'll find
more. Right now, it's just like like I said, things are winding
down. It's kind of not not the right time to go bother people for
specific details. So yeah, let people finish up their year and enjoy their
holiday. Let's let's get to the questions. Though. I think I hit
this button right here, right there we go, Hello, Hello, chat,
how are you all doing. Let's let's start off right here at the
bottom here with Nylock. Besides elden ring, what games are you looking forward
to in twenty twenty two? Now? I have I have a list because
we were going to go through the big games of twenty twenty two games Beat
Decided Podcast Rundown, so we didn't. I got yelled at last week week
for trying to do it because we had a lot to talk about, and
Mike's like, we don't have time for this, and so let me go
through. I have a terrible memory, so I have to like look at
a list. I will say, like, probably the first big game that
I'm super interested in is a Horizon Forbidden West. I think that it's I
liked it. I played a Horizon what was it zero done whatever? I
gotta can't remember the name. I liked what it played of it, I
didn't play a ton of it. It was okay, it was really hard
to play. After Zelda, I think I'm gonna be more open to Forbidden
West than I was open to the first game. And I also think this
game looks better. It looks like they're doing more interesting stuff. I just
think that there really it's this feels like it could be sort of an uncharted
two moment for this franchise, Redfall. I'll I want to see more of
no idea. If I'm actually looking forward to a Starfield absolutely probably probably my
number one. If Zelda is not not expecting next year, we'll see.
But Starfield is, Yeah, I we don't know a ton about it.
I still feel like I know what to expect from a bes the RPG in
space. I'm just interested to see how they shift up the mechanics. But
whatever, I'm like, I think this is going to be a big game,
and I'm okay with getting my hopes up because the way they talk about
it sounds like the stuff I want. It's very It could turn into a
No More or you know, uh, no Man's Land what is that space
game called? It could turn in one of those situations where it gets over
hyped and doesn't deliver. Oh well, what does that do to me?
I can I'll live. Uh, Kirby Forgotten Land, I am super down
with that. Uh, you know, I'll cut it off there. Maybe
this is something we could do if we do do another show this year,
Maybe I can go through some of these games and we can kind of talk
about our hopes and dreams for all of them, but Kurby Forgotten Land.
I am ready for a three D Kurby game. It is time for a
three D Kurby thing. I'm gonna call. Let me just check, make
sure it's not an emergency. Good. Thank you for your patience. I
appreciate it. Yeah, I want a three D Kurby game real bad.
I think that that will be Uh, it's we're we're overdue for that.
I hope it's not boring, which a lot of Nintendo platform at games that
aren't Mario have a tendency to be where they're like, hey, this is
just gonna be sort of stroll game where you're just gonna stroll through it.
It's meant for kids. I just hope they find like a balance of like,
oh, we can make it for kids, but if you want to
like make it like a real three D you feel like a real three D
platformer with a lot of challenge. Yeah, there's that. There's that in
there too, that'd be great. Oh seafoo. I'm also looking forward to
see food after playing it. I just played it yesterday on stream and it's
super good. It's really good. I think that game is going to deliver.
All right, let's see here from Kane high Winds zero nine, between
Atlas and Nintendo, who makes the more blinking white guy decisions. I will
say that's uh god, at Let's just Atlets just feels like it is like
hands and like facing palm's decisions. Nintendo is like, wait what, I
think Nintendo does more of the blinking like oh huh, I think that's more
Nintendo for sure. Where it's just like you don't even you can't even wrap
your head around Nintendo. A lot of times. At Let's just feels incompetent.
It's a little bit different. All right, let's keep going from Jordan
Midler, what up, dude? Any word on where EA is? EA
is at with skate still early twenty twenty three, Love to love to you
and the fam. Thank you so much, Jordan. That's a good one
I could check in on. I don't know where it's at. It's like,
you know, we heard it was coming. I teased it a little
bit, they announced it exac I didn't want it, Like it was like
the one big thing at that show that year, and so I'm like,
you know, let's not spoil that one, not not a bit, no
reason to do it. It's super early. They're gonna come out and kind
of talk like where it's at and stuff. So we can't have conversations about
that game afterward. But since then, you know, they haven't said too
much. I guess they've done a few updates about like, oh, you
know, we are moving ahead, things are progressing, we have a team
in place. But it's been long enough now that I think we could probably
check in on it. It's not gonna be ready anytime soon. I don't
think. I think a twenty twenty two release does seem unlikely. Like you
mentioned twenty twenty three, Jordan, that seems about right. But let's look
into it. I'll come back and we'll talk about it. We kind of
kind of give an update on you know, where those kinds of games are
at. You're welcome. Gooo, dude, you're all right. Sorry,
I'm sorry to call you a dude. I didn't mean it. All right,
let's keep going from sev word, he's Final Fantasy fourteen now the best
and worst game of all time, considering it's been taken down from sale for
both those reasons. Yes, I think I think you could probably say it's
like it's like how Microsoft both delayed Halo and released it early, like they
did both and something somehow they figure out the one way to do both,
and now Final Fantasy fourteen it is definitely in that same situation, Like that's
similar situation where yeah, I got taken down for being the worst game,
and now it's it's taken down because it was too popular, it's too good,
people can't handle it. I think you're right. From Mighty war Canow,
was there anything at the Game Awards that you knew was planned to be
announced but was pulled before the actual show. I heard that there was something.
I didn't hear what it was, though. There's there was like talks
in circles. It was the same circles that were saying that that Jedi fallone
Order two would be there, but they got a lot of other stuff right
as well, including like for Spoken might have kind of came from those circles.
I guess that's not too surprising that were Spoken was there. But whatever,
No, I think these people do know a lot of stuff. And
I heard that there was something that was supposed to be there that was pulled.
Maybe it was Bully Bully to Kevin's back Jack? Is that the Is
that the subtitle that game Spot went with that one time? Yeah, I
don't know if it was that game, but I heard that there was something.
I don't know what it was. The stuff that I all, the
stuff that I knew was going to be there was there. So yeah,
feature Creep, it's Kickstarter dead. Now I feel like it is time.
I feel like Kickstarter it will turn into the I'm struggling to think of an
example, but you know how like in certain market segments there is the thing
that was you know, MySpace, Kickstarter is gonna turn into my space,
right. There will be something to come along and replace it, and people
be like, oh, remember Kickstarter, Remember we used to use that before
this better platform came along. I don't know if that's going to be something
like fig but it definitely seems like it could be something that uses the FIG
model, right, fig being the thing that Tim Shaefer and a bunch of
those other guys started as a as a way to own more of the investment
from the audience, but also to enable the audience to own investments that they
were making. They actually treat like the money they were spending as investments,
and you could get see return on those investments of a game did well.
From Dude, long couch, What up, grub Man, what's going on
with Gotham Knights. We haven't heard anything for a while. Is it still
on track or is it back in development? Hell? I mean most development
is hell? Uh? You know, I'm sure there's like parts of them
that are like, oh man, a lot of this game is on fire.
But Suicide Squad is coming first, right? Or was Gotham Knights supposed
to come first? I can't At this point, it feels like Suicide Squad
is coming first, right, So I think what's happening here is they are
just focused on one game and letting the other one simmer in the background until
it's it's closer to ready. I guess I originally thought Gotham Knights was coming
first, though, so maybe, but I wasn't paying too close attention honestly,
and maybe I just got that mixed up in my head. But now
I think they're probably just waiting to show it until they're they're ready, and
they're they're happy to focus on Suicide Squad in the meantime, Ultimate Trainer esques.
Have you heard anything about Atlas releasing a new Persona three enhanced port that
combines the FEZ and portable enhanced ports. I haven't heard those details I heard.
I've heard rumblings about Persona three report coming back and ended up in more
places, more new places, But I don't know if that's uh, if
it's exactly how you describe, that's that's possible. That sounds about right.
But again, we just talked about how Atlas and Sega seem like they are
basically gamings mister Magoo. Maybe they'll mister Magoo their way into releasing something like
that, but I don't know. I'm like, you know, I continue
to be skeptical whenever like one of those events happens, like you know,
a Nintendo director something at this point, or or an Xbox showcase. I
don't even really believe Persona is going to be there, anymore, even though
we've heard for a long time that it should start showing up in other places.
I guess we got persona like I mean the corp Porsona of course,
is what I mean from ET. How do you think the story team at
Codemasters feels after they realized they can never write an F one story mode as
crazy as the I r L twenty twenty one season was, Uh, you're
asking the wrong guy. Danny O'Dwyer is often on the bomb Cast. You
can ask him there. I will say that what I've heard does sound pretty
wild. Uh, But you know, I guess it's probably pretty freeing,
right if you're like a writer for that stuff, where you can just feel
like, you know, no matter what we can what we do now we
could just point to twenty twenty one and say, well, but it's not
as crazy as that, right, So maybe it's yeah, maybe they feel
liberated from me con Hi Jeff enjoying the show, So I appreciate I appreciate
that. Mikon, thank you. Do you have a secret recipe? You
don't have to reveal precisely those details, but what the snacks might be.
So I think I've probably talked about this before on the show, but the
only thing that I've ever come up with myself. And it's real silly,
it's not impressive at all, but it's like instant, an instant caramel apple
by just eating an apple and a Snicker's bar, and it tastes fantastic.
It's a really good combination together. And when I'm when it's like the fall
season and I'm you know, we got a bunch of like little mini Snickers
bars laying aroun the house from trick or treating or whatever. I buy a
bunch of apples and we have those as a treat as a family and stuff
and everyone. You know, my wife likes them. I like them,
my kids like them. She's over there coffin. I wonder. I hope
she's not getting sick. She just got over being sick. But school,
you know, all right, try it, try the Snickers in an apple,
get back to me. Tweet me at tweet me if you do that.
I want to hear if you enjoyed it or not. Everyone everyone know
I've told you try it and has tried it has enjoyed it. So yeah,
please from future creeple, Nintendo release any more Genesis games. We were
just talking about this earlier this week on I think on Nintendogs or something.
It doesn't seem like it. The talk was that the reason that the Expansion
Pack, the fifty dollars a year thing that Nintendo added on top of Nintendo
Switch Online Premium whatever it's called, the reason that that price tag was so
exorbitant is cause Sega wanted to get theirs. They wanted their money. So
to me, if Nintendo was paying all of this money to Sega, they
were probably getting all the games up front and not having to wait, right,
So to me, it's I feel it feels like the games we got
are the games we're gonna get, maybe at least until a year later,
at least six months later, but at least like probably actually closer to a
year later. So for now, I'm not expecting any more Genesis games.
It's a weird choice. It does not seem worth it, right. I
Dreamcast would have been worth it. Sega Saturn maybe even worth it, especially
if you got some some of those real choice uh you know, bangers that
haven't shown up in many other places. I know emulation is tough. With
the Saturn figure it out, They're spending a lot of money on it,
apparently, figure it out. It's not like saturn emulation is completely broken right
now. It's much better than it used to be, so just figure it
out. But yeah, I don't know, and I think they do have
a Sega Saturn emulator on the switch already that was working to a certain degree,
So just do that instead of what you've done here. I don't know,
it's it's frustrating. I guess that maybe this is one of Nintino's face
and palm moments from bar seventy eight. Is this the last snack of the
year? I actually I was talking about that. I don't know. I'll
find out for you'all. We'll figure it out. I'll know, we'll know
for sure, all right. From Jay Skavik. Any specifics about Mortal Kombat
twelve, Multiple rumors splitting around that it has a huge roster trilogy version of
nine, ten, and eleven. I'm trying to like figure out, like
what I could like, what I could say that stuff that sounds reasonable.
I don't know for sure if that's the case, but it does feel like
it does feel like they're going to continue amping up everything they were doing,
including like with the story mode where it sounds like they might be traveling beyond
their normal realms and out into the stars. We'll see, we'll see if
those those stories rumors like pan out, we'll see for sure. But that's
what it sounds like they're doing. They're they're gonna, like, you know,
they're already at a ten right for like the storytelling like sound levels or
whatever, where it's like just blaring in your ears with all kinds of weird
story stuff. They're gonna keep going, trying to go in eleven twelve thirteen
from Colonel Sanders twenty one Epics doing the free game of Day thing again.
Any big games I might want to avoid buying this next week, I don't
know. I honestly don't pay much attention to those promotions. It's not they're
just not for me, So good luck. No, I'm not sure.
I guess you know, if you're worried about like missing some sales when they
happen, I understand, but probably just wait, just wait and see if
anything pops up on the on the Epic Game Store instead. From Keene Hyde
Wins zero nine, it's Funnel Fantasy fourteen, the first game that's actually been
taking down from the storefronts because it's so popular, right, Okay, we
we got we we talked about this one. I'm like trying to think if
there's any other examples of that, and I don't there's probably something that we're
forgetting. I don't know, maybe maybe something had when but Pokemon where like
kids were fighting or something and so they took it down from Walmart back in
the late nineties or something. I mean that happened with the Pokemon trading card
game right at Target and stuff, just like this past year. You can
ask jan Ochoa about that, all right from Delta Prime. Are there any
studios w w B is could not considering selling? I think that I would
take the indication that Monolith is making a Wonder Woman game. Monolith a very
popular topic here on the show that we've never had an answer to now we
know. I would take that as a sign that Monoliths Monolith is probably sticking
around. You know, they worked on patenting the the you know, the
tech got came remember the name of the tech now and just my brain has
holes in it today, But they the Nemesis system. They would worked on
pattenting the Nemesis system. And I don't know, it feels like they're like,
oh, we'll commit to this. We'll take one of our biggest properties,
hand it off to this studio, have them focus on that. We'll
keep them around and when when they're done with Wonder Woman, they can work
on any number of other major properties that we have, because they've shown they
could do that before and they'll do it again. So I think that's probably
likely. Also for similar reasons, probably rock Steady and you know all you
know, WB Montreal and stuff like that, they'll probably stick around. You
know. The obvious one still is Nether Realm. That's why it's so uncertain
and why they probably are making a Mortal Combat instead of a Injustice right now,
because Mortal Combat would go with them as a as a property and the
property would transfer with the studio. That would make the most sense. So
but yeah, there's still there is still a lot of uncertainty at many of
these studios. So nothing is so like s right now for like, oh,
you are going to be a WB studio in five years, No one
thinks that. No one knows that for sure. From zmail a any idea,
what's going on with Sony enabling VRR on the PlayStation five. No,
I don't really know. My guess is it's just going to take them time.
This is stuff that they will get to. They are they listen to
this stuff, they get to it eventually. They don't want people to feel
like they're they're five hundred dollars PlayStation five is coming up short of any promises.
These companies, they hear that stuff, they respond to it, They'll
get to it eventually. It just sometimes takes them, their engineers some time
for whatever reason. Likely they have other priorities that are maybe causing like costing
them more money, just you know, failure rates and stuff like that.
Both sides have you know, normal, normally high failure rates for this point
of introducing a new product where you know, you get like three four percent
return rate or something like that, and they're like, well, can we
fix this stuff first? Is there something in software we could do to make
sure these things are are running better? They're probably focused on that stuff first,
and then they'll get the vrr from Still Night two thousand. How do
indie devs make money off of game Pass? Is it one big payment to
get a game on the service or is it based on downloads? The answer
is different for every single game. Every contract is different, and it's one
of the reasons that you know, it seems like, oh, you know
MLB the show, I felt like we got an announcement about that coming to
game Pass, like at the very last minute, like right before it came
out and got released. That's true, because that's how it works. They
have these conversations up until, you know, a few weeks before release,
and things don't really get signed and hashed out until that like last week before
a game is about to get launched. And it's because people like every game
is different and they want the details of how it game makes money off game
Pass to be different. A lot of the times, I think most of
the time it does involve one big payment and then for certain other games it
does seem like, hey, if there's a certain level of engagement after that,
it'll earn so much money after that as well. So but for a
game that like doesn't cater to that sort of engagement, they tend to ask
Probably this is me speculating, they probably tend to ask for more money up
front, and you know, I want to make sure they get their pay
and and and it's worth their time and so far it has been worth their
time. Microsoft has earmarked We've said this before, billions of dollars for these
sorts of deals. So people are getting paid and most people feel good about
it. Whether or not that stays, whether or that keeps up for years
in the future, that's still to be determined. But for right now,
people are getting paid pretty well through game Pass. I will say that,
you know, fortun Rising five a not just a game Pass game, a
Marquee game Pass game like one of the game Pass games. Right that game
comes out and it's the fastest selling Forts game ever of any Forts and Motorsport
or Forts a Horizon as the fastest first month sales ever at retail in the
United States, at least according to the MPD. You know, the idea
that game Pass helps games and helps to like get hype up for them seems
only more legitimate by the day. So I think there's also a side to
it, like where Mike Microsoft will continue be able to point to examples like
that, examples of like the was It Outriders and then back back for Blood.
Recently, these games that sold a quivocally between the PlayStation and the Xbox,
even though those games launched on game Pass, so you know, like
they were like number three, the number three best selling Xbox game and the
number three best selling PlayStation game in the US for each month or something like
that. So yeah, Microsoft, Microsoft's gonna be able to point to say,
hey, your game will still sell pretty well, and also it'll have
more benefits on the back end where people are are very excited about it,
and so they're getting their friends in and whether they're going to game Pass or
whether they're buying the game, it's going to benefit your game in the end,
and that will help structure deals going forward. I think that's a big
part of it right now. Is the reason that the deals are so different
between every game is not just that every game is different. I think Microsoft
wants to be open to every kind of structure of deal because they want to
see what works best and they want to be able to tell the story to
other publishers and other developers of hey, we've structured the deal like this for
this game, and it was beneficial to everyone. They made a lot of
money, We made a lot of money, We got a lot of subscribers
to game Pass. The gamers loved it, and so they in order to
tell those stories. They have to try everything and see what it works so
to actually like succeed in the first place. So this is all sort of
they're an experimental territory with these with these things, and so they are experimenting,
and I think that's when we try to figure out, like what does
the game pass deal look like? It is not something that's being dictated by
Sati and Adela, where it's it's got to be this. It is on
the ground in charge of like actually discussing, like being the the the person
in between game pass and the developer figuring out what looks right for everyone and
having the autonomy to figure that stuff out. So I think it's it's an
interesting time. We'll see like how it shakes out over time. From Esteban
eighty six twelve. Hey, Jeff well Ridge Racer ever come back? What
about Tenshu? Are these franchises dead forever? Nothing's dead forever? You know.
Tenshu was definitely in discussion around the time of Seco, but they went
with Secco instead of making it Tenschu. So there's that. Uh. I
think there's a chance to where it's like, Okay, now we'll go back
to Tenshu. Now or something like that, Let's see and then a Ridge
Racer. I hope. I would expect Bridge Racer to come back. Yes,
it's one of those games where eventually they'll get they'll find a reason to
revisit it. And even if it's just like a small, little even if
it's like a crew was in Blast level game at this point, I think
they could get away with doing something like that. I really like Ridge Racer
quite a lot, so I hope they get back to it. Huh,
Nilock, thank you so much. I actually forgot to put this on my
list. Okay, here's the question. Let's talk about this. Thank you
so much. Nilock. You alluded to Guardians of the Galaxy not selling well
question Mark. So yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy did not sell very well.
The numbers that I've heard, which I'm pretty sure are the like the
full picture through like the Black Friday holidays, the Black Friday sales, So
before this game, before we got like any hard numbers, before we saw
the MPDA report or anything. I was asked a question about this, and
I wasn't sure if it was on this show or one of the other shows,
but basically asked question like what would it take to get a Guardians of
the Galaxy too, Because Square Knicks Marvel deal is done after this game,
so if they were going to make another one, well the money would have
to talk at that point, and everyone involved with it to be like,
well, it's an obvious obviously we want to make a Garden into the Galaxy
too. We worked so hard in the first game. It sold really well.
People were excited about it. It was an awarded game. It's got
a lot of those things going for it except for selling well. The number
that I was kind of hoping it would hit as someone who enjoyed the game,
who really liked the game, did not love it, but as someone
who liked it. And I think there's people of the many people who like
it way more than even I do. The number I was looking for was
at least three million copies, probably closer to four or five million copies through
the Black Friday holidays. It doesn't seem like we're anywhere near that. It's
somewhere between one and one point five million copies is the numbers I've heard so
and that includes the super duper reduced sales price, and so we're talking copies
sold and not necessarily like oh, you know, revenue made. Now,
it did have a little bit of legs in terms of the MPD report where
it was number seven. It's first month, and I think it was number
seven the month after, and that's you know, that's good. If it
does that a third month in a row, then maybe there's maybe maybe we're
in business there where. Okay, so it's sold, uh you know,
one one point five million copies. If it stays at reduced price and still
stays at number seven, it's gonna that means it sold like another wet a
million copies in December or something like that. Maybe that helps. But once
you see that price reduction happen so early and it's like a severe pipe like
it was like twenty five dollars at a few places, matched up with it
not having like a three million selling you know, first week or whatever,
which you know some games do. Do you know The Avengers was at like
three million copies sold I think, and it's first quarter or something like that.
It would be surprising this game reaches that level that that doesn't seem like
it's going to do that well. So I'm not hopeful for at equal I
would I would expect it not to come through. The reason that might not
be the case. The reason it might still get a see is because word
of mouth is so strong, the fan base seems in love with the characters,
and it won a game award. And so if Square Knicks can sort
of u square that circle and be like, Okay, we have this product
that you know, people didn't believe in because of our fumbling of the Avengers
and so you know, this game got punished for that game. But now
if we were to sort of take what we've done with this game, do
it again, make it bigger, really get behind the promotion, make sure
we make it clear this is the award winning sequel, or this is a
sequel to the award winning First Guardians the Guts game that continues that story with
the characters you love, and we're back and we heard you, We heard
that you want a sequel. Maybe it could still happen. It's Square Knicks,
though, so I'm skeptical. I'm pretty skeptical, even though even though
I know financially, like I could see like the gears turn in your head,
well, wouldn't it make more sense than to do a sequel now that
you have all these assets to get more return on that investment. I would
think so. Personally, I agree. I think that makes a lot of
sense. I just at a certain point you see squaring in it Square Nix
being very afraid of throwing good money after bad, even though I think we
have a lot of us have a hunch that a sequel to this game would
perform much better than this first game did. It turns out a lot of
games work out that way. I would expect this one to work out that
way. Whether or not Square Nix has that faith is up to them.
I have no idea. So yeah, thank you for reminding me of that
nightlock. I appreciate that. I would have been kicking myself had I forgotten,
or you know, kicking myself had I not mentioned it. I did
forget, all right, from Dixie Dan eighty two. If Microsoft does not
release game pass numbers in the next couple of weeks, do you think that
would be a sign that Halo and Forts of combined or the Halo and Forts
of Combo did not boost subs and the numbers and the numbers they were expecting.
I don't know, They're probably that's a good question. I don't know
if it necessarily means that. I mean, obviously, if they don't,
it means that they're not so excited that they can't help themselves. Like if
they get the twenty five million, they'll share. I think once they get
the twenty five million, that's a big hefty number that as like a you
know, you people think about twenty five twenty five year anniversaries and you know,
it's it's it's a you know, it's one of those numbers that's filled
with meaning. And I think they could they wouldn't be able to help themselves
with sugaring and that especially it happened soon. I would say, if they
don't show it, it probably means in general that you're right and that they're
at like twenty three twenty four million, it said it's twenty five. But
if we if we get the next quarter and they share those numbers and those
numbers are like around that that range, I still I think they'll probably still
be pretty happy with it. Halo and Fortsa are selling well. It seems
like they're making a lot of money for them, and it's like, okay,
if we're getting people playing in the in the in the ecosystem in the
first places, the whole idea, and if some people insist on continuing to
buy Fortza because that's how they want to play, well, Microsoft has no
intention of taking that option away from people. It really the game passed.
We talk about game pass itself like being additive, where if you add multiple
games to game Pass and people try to you know, they're worried about their
money going from one game to the other and be like, well, I'm
not gonna buy that game because I have to buy this game. Game pass
doesn't work that way. Game Beast is actually pretty additive in terms of like
the overall ecosystem, where you know, it doesn't really take away from people
who want to buy games. And Microsoft it really is serious about like offering
options where if that's how people want to engage with this stuff, they're gonna
leave that option open. They've they've even expanded that option to include stuff like
Steam. So I don't think they're gonna be too hurt if people are giving
them sixty dollars instead of for one game, instead of ten dollars a month
or fifteen dollars a month for the service, They'll they will expect the ability,
they will expect and trust in their ability to market and say, hey,
for you that are doing that, if you ever get in a situation
where you want to subscribe, we are here waiting for you. You're already
in the ecosystem. It's not going to be that hard to flip that switch
to start that subscription. And once you start, once you turn that civil,
and it's gonna be pretty hard to turn it off. So they're they're
fine probably overall, as long as those games are succeeding in the way they
have been, and so I think they're very happy with the overall success of
Halo in Fortza from Adam three times, any word on when another realm is
uh neother realms is going to announce their next game. I know a ton
of people expected during the Game Awards. Yeah, I definitely got the sensation,
the sense that that that audience was feeling pretty antsy. I got a
few dms from people are saying, hey, the reddit is freaking out,
like they expected to hear now it's not here. They don't know what's going
on because you know, if it's Injustice right, like you would have sticked
Injustice to be ready by now, and if it was like damn, like
sort of like shifting gears halfway through, but oh no, we're definitely doing
Mortal Kombat instead. It would take a little bit longer. And I but
in terms of like they answer to your question, when will they announce their
next thing? I don't know at this point. It feels like E three
at this point. I would expect it at E three, But that's a
guess. So sorry, I don't have more definitive answer there for you.
All right, let's keep going from future Creep. How do we stop the
blockchain? Personally, I think we're doing a pretty good job of it.
There's not gonna be much to do to like, oh, stop it completely.
They will find audiences that are investors first and gamers second, and they'll
just cater to them. In the meantime, while they try to commence us
that we are investors and not people who just want to be entertained through through
gaming, people are are standing up and shouting them down and getting in comments
sections and making these videos super disliked and getting in their mentions on social and
media and just and really shouting these companies down and saying we don't want this.
And I've said before, voting with your wallet is silly. Voting with
your social media voice is actually way more effective. People are doing that,
And at a certain point I have zero issue. Like when it's someone like
making a game and it's and they're like making choices for their game and you
you aren't happy with those choices. Shouting that studio down seems like like overkill
and sort of aggressive to a point of immaturity. But it still you're allowed
to criticize games whatever. When it comes to the blockchain, these these are
companies and with nfcs, these are companies that are specifically trying to manipulate you
into a situation where they can exploit you for financial gain, and that is
like there's no two ways about it, you know. With with like the
Halo free to play stuff, Yeah, they're trying to make money from their
game, absolutely, but they're also giving you a free game and entertaining you
and all this stuff, and it's like they messed up the balance. Sure,
they lean too far on one side of trying to make money for this
thing that probably cost a lot of money to make sure, and we could
criticize that absolutely. The NFT stuff, I sort of have no qualms with
people just really destroying anyone who's trying to bring that into the space, And
it's almost it's like, you know, you know, white blood cells.
It is a system trying to protect itself from exploitation by sending in angry people
to sort of attack this foreign age agent that is trying to you know,
come in install a virus into us. And so the system is working the
way it should and hopefully, hopefully we're able to stop it. The problem
is it just might be it make people, certain people so much money that
the contagions going to catch on no matter what, and it's just going to
be unavoidable in certain sectors. And in a few years, we're gonna glance
over at in the same way that we glanced over at roadblocks. Now our
glance over at mobile gaming or free to play games in a lot of countries,
you know, on PC or whatever. We're going to glance over to
a space that it like that was taken over by n FTS and be like,
man, fuck that that looks like a nightmare that that will happen.
That is going to be on I mean, it's already happened. There are
places in the world right now that are that we're with n FT games that
are making a billion dollars a year. That's already happened. It's gonna happen,
just we might be able to keep it mostly out of the space from
mister platitude. My four year old discovered my old games on my PC and
was really wanting to play them, but Mega man X is a little beyond
him. Any recommendations on good first platformers for a kid, retro or modern,
The first thing that comes to my mind is it's those Yoshi and Kirby
to the platformer games I was mentioned earlier that are sort of like stroll games.
They are like taking the stroll and I think, you know, Kirby
can get a little bit complicated depending on which game it is. So maybe
the Yoshi games, like Yoshi Story on N sixty four pretty good. I'm
trying to think if there's a you know, and you got a PC,
so you could play it that way if you want. But there's a couple
other ones, like the recent Yoshi Wants too as well, the Yarn Yoshi
Wants on the Yoshi's Wooly World. Those ones are really sort of they aren't
very challenging, they're low, they're slow paced. There isn't a timer or
anything like that. They're super cute. Your kid will probably like him.
Beyond that, I'm trying to think of like super good examples. Uh yeah,
I don't know. I would start with those Yoshi games though. See
where we're at. Time wise, we're at fifty five minutes and to the
recording, I'm gonna keep working my way up in the bottom for a few
more minutes, and then I'll ask you all to send in your questions again.
If I missed him, us, I scroll back to the top.
Mighty workin you. If you're looking at a fancy chicutery board, what are
you going for? First? My understanding of chacoutery board, it's like I've
never like been in a many I haven't been in many situations where someone's like,
here's the chak chacuterie board. Usually it's just like, here's some some
meat and she's slapped on a plate, a paper plate, and joy were
we We're you know, middle class people don't really understand these fancy words like
chacutery. So I'm gonna envision an adult lunchable, and I don't go for
one thing first. I grab like a meat and a cheese and try to
get a count a cracker and combo it up. If there's something fancier than
that, and a Chacuery board. Sure I might go for other stuff too,
but not like those are. What I'm envisioning is the meat and the
cheese and the crackers. So sorry, I'm gonna trade it like an adult
lunchable From Timonious. Can you talk about the reporting on the tiers of new
PlayStation subscription stuff? What are you expecting as far as pricing an upgrade paths
and possible perks that may be included. Would love bat compete on my library
of PS three games. PS three is gonna be the weird one where you
know, even if you have the PS three game, if you put it
in there, if it's probably still to run off the cloud. They just
haven't invested in PS three emulation to that degree where it seems like it would
be ready. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe that's what they've been spending their time
on. Overall, I expected to work very similar to how everyone expects it
to work, where the top tier will just include everything, and that'll be
you know, that'll be you know, you'll be able to stream games from
the cloud, stream old games from the cloud, and you'll get a library
of PlayStation you know, hits nothing, that's day one, of course,
but you'll get a huge library stuff that includes God of War and Horizon and
everything else. And then also you'll probably get the anime like streaming services and
Sony movies and stuff like that, and Sony TV shows. The Sony make
Seinfeld we'll get, you'll get Seinfeld. I don't know Sony made Seinfeld now
that I'm thinking about it, but yeah, it's gonna be. It's gonna
be everything in the kitchen sink for that top tier, like you might get
like the Sony had like a clouds like a cloud storage service or something like
that. Might get that they have an insurance, right, maybe you'll get
an insurance like life insurance as well. They'll throw a lot of stuff in
there. Having like a high tier, it's sort of worth throwing just about
anything in there. It's what is what We've seen a lot of companies going
that in that direction. Let's keep going. Leo Nader, does choosing not
to download a game from game Pass have a vote with your wallet effect?
Or do they not care because they got MS money. I don't want to
support Stalker two's NFTs. Stalker two is going to get money up. It's
already got money for because it's exclusive to Game Pass and on console into Xbox
for a certain number of months, like three months or something like that.
Stalker two already got their check. Yeah, it's a it's a bummer,
isn't it? And that's NFTs. I just whatever. I get that.
The like that dark side is so tempting if you're someone who's made something and
you want to like like because again, the way NFT's work is you could
sell the first one for five dollars, but if it sells again for ten
thousand dollars, you get ten percent of that, and then if it sells
for one hundred thousand dollars, you get ten percent of that. And so
you just get it out there and you let the audience do the work of
marketing and building up the speculation. And it's a Pyramids game. Again,
I'll keep repeating it because it's true. It's like the money goes back to
the top, even though the person doing all the marketing is the people on
the levels down and they are the ones working to sell these things. But
if you don't download it, I would imagine stalk or two probably does have
some sort of engagement metric in its in its contract. I don't know exactly
what that would be. And so if you don't download it, if you
don't play it, if you don't you know, clouds dream it, you'll
probably be not contributing to their success. But I would, I would,
I would encourage you not to think this way. In the first place,
it's not your it's actually not your responsibility to vote with your wallet because it's
you're not going to make it much of a difference there. These companies are
finding ways to make money with or without you. Your sixty dollars, your
download is worth very little to them. Your voicing your criticism loud on social
media. That bothers them. That's what if you, if you like make
it clear every chance you get that you hate what they're doing with NFTs,
that'll bother them way more than you not playing their game. I promise you,
so don't. Don't. Don't think you can actually vote with your wallet.
Capitalism is not a democracy. It does not work that way. It's
and we should not think that way because we should be able to control this
stuff without having to like force these people, these force all us little people
to feel like we have to like band together to get something done, when
you know, really we can do that without worrying about like where our money
is going in the first place. Now, if you don't want to play
it because you don't want support the NFTs or it bums you out, like
it bums me out and playing stalk or two. Now, the idea of
doing that because of the NFTs bums me out. I probably will be skipping
it. Definitely do at, But I really the idea of voting with your
wallet is an overblown thing. It doesn't really work, so uh, you
know, definitely, you know, spend your money with your conscience is how
I would put that. And if it bothers, if it bothers your conscious
to spend money on a certain thing, don't do it. But don't think
that you get a vote because you spent money. You don't. That's a
that's a faulty notion. It's a lie. It's a lie that we've been
told that you have the power to change things with your with your money.
You don't. Lars seventy eight. Why do I get my What do I
get my aunt for Christmas? Get her a game? And watch Zelda fifty
dollars. It's cute. She doesn't like Zelda. I don't care. I
like it, so get it for her. Ogi kawangi Uh Silk song is
just a figment of our imaginations, isn't it. That's where I'm at.
Mike manadi Over on on Game Speed podcast with Me keep saying he played it
in twenty nineteen. He was drunk through all of twenty nineteen. He doesn't
know what he's talking about. I don't trust that guy at all. Ever.
Rocks cheese Whiz, yes or no. I eat cheese sometimes, but
I am I have a slight allergy to cheese where it causes post nasal drip
for me, and so I try to avoid it when I can, and
I try to avoid cheese products like cheese whiz specifically for that reason. Where
it's like I don't have a craving a craving for cheese whiz because it was
never a thing for me as a kid, so why start now. Well,
I definitely have had it a few times when I was a kid,
but it was never like the thing that was in our house. It was
always like I'm at a friend's house, they have cheese whiz, let's try
it. Oh, this is nice on crackers. Whatever, I'm not against
it, it's not for me from snake, Hey, mister snacks. Why
is Final Fantasy seven so expensive on PC despite subsidies from Sony and Epic,
I mean because because they can. It's Square Enix. They charge like seventeen
to like twenty five dollars for their classic games, like on on Steam and
on mobile, right, so that they I think they just want they want
their stuff to feel premium priced. And also I think they want to make
sure they get as much for this game as possible. Even with Sony helping
out with it, it was expensive to make and it didn't sell like extraordinarily.
Well it's sold, okay. You know, it was a five million
seller before Integrade on PlayStation, whereas like something like you know, Spider Man,
it's like a fifteen million seller. So it's not in that Nick stratosphere.
And so they want to make sure they get as much return on investment
as they possibly can get, and that means boosting up the price on PC
now, which seems really out of sorts because PC has always had a slightly
lower price and now it feels like it's even more expensive to get this game
on PC than anywhere else. Sorry, my nose is itchy and it's really
bothering me, all right, Octo, Hey Jeff, I also think awards
shows are kind of iffy, but in all the Game of the year cra
craze feed into that. Absolutely. Also, would it not be a good
thing for devs to be heard more often, like maybe in order to get
solidarity to other devs that are are having a tough time. Yeah, yes,
I think that it would be nice if if devs had a way to
speak up and speak for each other more often. I just I don't know
the best way to accomplish that, I guess. I'm I'm not sure exactly
what the context is you're speaking of, either, but in general I agree
with that notion. And yeah, I think that all the Game of the
year craze does feed into that. But the game is, like most of
the game of the year stuff that's happening out there is just people enjoying a
hobby and having conversations with one another, And then there's always weirdos on the
periphery taking things too seriously. And are those weirdos really my responsibility? Are
they anyone's responsibility. I don't think so. All right, let's uh,
let's jump up to the top and then I'll work my way down. If
I skip over your question, feel free to say it in again. You
know what, thought, real quick, I'm gonna get this woman for feature
creep. Beyond Good and Evil two is just dead right, I think so.
It's I don't think it was ever alive, like, I don't think
it was ever a real thing. I think it was always sort of just
positioned as this vaporware that was meant to make you'd be soft, to look
like a bigger like I had a bigger sort of upcoming game schedule than it
really did. And we're probably not gonna get an actual Beyond Good and Evil
two if we do. I don't think it's gonna look anything like the thing
they talked about. It's that just seems really unreasonable. Okay, working our
way down now from Christian, tell me about the gunk. So yeah,
I did. I didn't let me check, you know what, Let me
check my email and see if we got a code for this now. I
was playing it this morning on game Pass. It's on game Pass. Did
you play it yourself? Well, there it is December tenth. I've been
busy, so okay, So a week ago they sent me a code and
I just missed it. Yeah, fair and fair enough. Okay, So
I just missed it. The review review and Bargo is this morning, so
I could I could have been playing this game. I was reviewing the Analog
Pocket though that kept me busy. I wouldn't have had real time for this
anyhow, And then I did that seafood thing. I played it this morning,
though I think I like it a lot. I think it seems pretty
good. I am try. I'm not sure about the overall structure of it,
like is it a metroid vania or something? Is it just sort of
a three D action platformer. It seems like it might be sort of a
metroidvania e maybe, But again, I'm pretty early. I played. You
could turn on a timer and in game timer tell you. That tells you
how long even plays it playing Every game should have that. That timer's only
at twenty five minutes for me after this morning, so I am very early.
I will say that I love the way sucking up the gunk feels with
your glove. I think the character moves pretty okay, It's not like Super
Action E but it's it's like deliberate and cool. And I like the way
the game looks, and I think I like the dynamic dynamic between the characters
as well. I think we'll see how I'll see if that gets sort of
old fast or whatever. But they have like a good rapport with one another,
and I like that. But twenty five minutes, I'm I'm just at
the beginning. So I'll play it more and talk about it more soon.
Uh, and you know what, let's see, let's see where can we.
I guess if you don't have game Pass you want to try it?
There you go. I think you're gonna get that on Xbox or the Xbox
app on PC. So I don't know that's for you. Maybe you don't
have game Pass where you're at you can use that instead, So that's for
the gunk. Go for it. Oh okay, I love sucking gunk.
Okay, let's do this thing. Let's keep going. From Eeriebuster, Shimagami
Tense five has been on sale for thirty five dollars for the past few weeks.
Did the game bomb at sales? Also for metro people? How are
the dread sales? So I think Dread is probably doing okay. I still
think it's gonna hit three million in the first year, but it's probably gonna
be pretty close. Yeah, it's probably gonna be pretty close. For Shimmagami
Tense five, it's the fastest selling Shimagami tensa game in the United States.
So I think it's doing fine. I think that there's just a lot of
competition, and I think that they're happy with the sales and they're like,
oh, well, if we maybe we can get a huge boost through the
holidays by going on sale or something like that. But yeah, I think
there's a possibility that maybe, like some retailers ordered based on expectations of Persona
and maybe it's not living up to a Persona level of success. But for
Shane mgamay ten say, it's doing very well. All right, keep going
from Mika and Heyjeff, do you have room for a VR setup? Technically,
yes, I do. Right over here on the other side of this
desk is an open area. There's my my treadmill desk over there, the
TV over there. I got my shelving with all of my review gear up
in that corner, and then in the middle of the room, I should
have plenty of space. But I also have two kids who if there's empty
space, they just fill it up with stuff. They find stuff to fill
in that space with. So now there's a bunch of my old Star Wars
toys, my micromachine Star Wars toys which shout out to Star Wars Micromachine toys.
There's my Arby's hat that they've claimed as their own, and yeah,
it's that's that's filled up with stuff. But if I were to clear that
out, I would have a good like eight foot by six foot space.
And really, I can make it more if I were to move some of
these some of this other junk out of the way. That's mine. I
do my hardware review, like when I'm reviewing GPUs, I do that on
this computer right over here, And that is if we were to move that
stuff out of the way, I'd have a little bit more room. But
it's it's enough room for like walking around and stuff. It's it's it's cool.
I still like it. I still like doing that stuff, even if
i'm you know, cooling off on the idea of VR as a successful sort
of business. Although you know, Quest two more successful than I was ever
expecting. It would be, so I guess maybe I'm coming back around.
Who knows Feature creep. Any news about the System Shock remake? Uh,
nothing really to share other than I think it's still going forward. I think
it's still happening. So we'll wait until they talk about it again. Lud
Jennings. Why can the Halo series never stick the landing with its endings?
They are they have this idea of telling, of being like a storytelling universe
that's ongoing, and they and so, yeah, they want to just keep
people coming back, and that means sometimes they want to do they're more focused
on cliffhanger than on tying up the exact story. I think that this one
was fine, Like it wasn't It's not great. They don't nail it,
but it was fine enough. And I'm also hopeful that we're going I guess
that is the thing for this one. I was sort of in the back
of my mind hopeful that we're going to get more of this story soon rather
than in some sequel three or four years from now. And by soon,
I mean like within the next year. That's who knows if that's going to
happen. But I think I do think they have that possibility in their heads,
and that's one of the reasons they think at endings because they don't have
any any intention of ending much. I don't even know how much of an
excuse that is. I think that's what's happening. But like stuff like the
MCU doesn't have an ending, right and yet most of those stories, the
individual movie stories, have pretty satisfying conclusions, and so they could be looking
they should try to be emulating that instead of what they're ending up doing from
our rules. Hi, DF, I've just got to switch and it's my
first Nintendo console. What are your favorite favorites from the online expansion library that
I should check out? I mean, if you haven't played like the Zelda
games or Super Metroid, you should definitely get on those. Trying to think
there's any like, like standout ones that I like that are in like a
little slight deep cuts. I've been laying return to Silliest. I think it
is on the NES one a lot recently. That's good. I think that
if you, I mean, if you haven't played Super Mario sixty four,
you should definitely play that. And that's on the n sixty four one.
I don't let me look here, Nintendo Switch Online in sixty four games,
let's start there. Yeah, I oh, you know what played Paper Mario?
That one that just dropped Paper Mario is is pretty solid. I'm not
playing it because, like I've played it a bunch of times, I don't
need to play it a but still I still really enjoy it. In Star
Fox sixty four is to this day, that's still a great game to play
right now. Oh yeah, Yo Yoshi stories on in sixty four expansion packs.
So whoever asked that earlier about a good game to start with their kids?
There you go, there's something. Yeah, there you go. Oh
oh, Sin in Punishment is that out? Is that on there? Right
now? You can buy Sin in Punishment? You'll enjoy that from game Zombae.
I paid ninety one regularly price Canadian for GTA Definitive Edition, and Battlefield
twenty forty two was one hundred and twenty five over here in Canada. That's
fucked up. I'm sorry, that's messed up. Just picked up Final Fantasy
seven for one hundred and five dollars. If we are comparing quality of product,
Final Fantasy seven is priced as a deal. Sadly, do you think
these price jumps will affect overall sales. I mean, yeah, that's just
basic economics. At a certain point where the price goes up, you're gonna
sell viewer, but maybe you make more money for me each to sell and
it sort of makes up for the difference. But every dollar you increase the
price of something, no matter what it is, milk, gasoline, you're
gonna sell less of it. You know, even as something that people need
like food, you're gonna sell less of it if you raise it by one
dollar. That these that those prices and I know, you know, the
exchange rate there makes those not like it's not ninety one U S dollars,
but it's the exchange rate doesn't make up the difference there that you're still paying
significantly more for those games than what I'm paying the United States. And so
yeah, I think it's what I think. It's making it prime. It's
priming the the market for something like game Pass. It is laying the groundwork
for this thing that's going to be the replacement for companies trying to sell their
games. And I get it, like a certain point where they they're gonna
say themselves, Okay, well we still need to make money on our investments
here, and this is the fair price we think for these products. So
it's like, okay, well that's fine, But then the fair thing for
me to do is to find a way to more efficiently spend my money to
be able to play games that I want to play. And that might mean
as even as someone who might like physical games, I might end up doing
a lot more stuff on game Pass or a similar service and replacing this because
it makes more sense. It stretches my dollar further, it's the right decision
for me. So yeah, it's definitely gonna affect sales. Now, is
it gonna affect them to the point where these companies are going are going to
lower the price again? No, I don't think so. I think they're
they're hoping that people get used to it, and I think we've found repeatedly
that people do tend to get used to these prices, and that's going to
be the expectation here as well. From kan High Wins zero nine, John
Wick and Agent forty seven are sent to kill each other. Who wins?
I mean, for me, Agent forty seven. I'm not a big fan
of the John Wick movies. I've seen one and a half of them.
I've seen the first when a couple of times. I don't love it like
other people. The world building is like so in name to me, and
it focuses on that stuff so much, and I'm like, well, time
whatever, I don't need to talk about my complaints, and really that's not
what you're asking. I think Age of forty seven is so clever that he
will outwit John wick Is and he's like so like dry and like it never
never panics and is always in control of the situation. Yeah, I think
Age of forty seven is gonna win. I don't care what anyone else says.
And you might disagree. All right, let's let's just get's keep going.
I got a few more questions. We go in an hour and seventeen.
We did a hefty show today. Let's I want to keep answering questions
though for a little bit. Kane high wins zero nine with the question I've
definitely answered before. But if he's that they're asking, that means they don't
know a team cat or or team dog. I'm a cat person. I
went to a hockey game the other day. The Red Wings got their butt
kicked by the Avalanche, and during the game they the big tell, the
big prompter up on the screen or you know, the big JumboTron, And
there was a segment where they were doing like, oh, if you're this
person, cheer really loud. It's time to get loud. And it's like,
oh, if you're a parent, cheered, I'm like, yay.
You like if you if you're married, cheer, I'm like yeah. And
I'm like they're single cheer and I'm like silent, and they're like, if
you're a dog person, cheer, and like or like if you like,
if you love dogs, cheer, and I was like, if you love
cats cheered, I'm like yeay. And then the next thing was if you
just cheered for cats, think about your life in silence for seven seconds.
And then all my friends around here are like, ah, that got you.
I'm like, yeah, they got me. I get it. I
get it. But yeah, I am a cat person. I just like
they're they're little assholes and they find for themselves and they are responsible for themselves
usually, and if they want to spend time with you, it means that
you're someone worth spending time on, not that they cannot physically help themselves from
being so scared of being alone, that they need to be around you like
a dog. Not that not that I dislike dogs. Dogs are fine.
I just I prefer cats. And it definitely is a respect thing at a
certain point where I'm like that this dog seems so miserable if if he used
by himself that it's just like sort of pathetic, I'm I'm sorry. And
if you hate me, because this definitely definitely do I get it. I
get it. I'd really do this old console. Is Sony concerned this old
console with the oo d E? I G it's like a PBS reference.
I've never seen that show, this old house, but I get the reference.
Is Sony concerned with fan projects like PS one that bring all my multiplayer
back to PS three games? They're not concerned with it in the way that
Nintendo is concerned with it. Nintendo is, like, especially Nintendo of America,
is a company run by lawyers. Like I've said this before, like
Howard Lincoln was Nintendo's head legal counsel and then he got made president because he
was so good at it. Like it is first and foremost not even a
marketing division. It is a legal entity. It is a law firm for
Nintendo, and so when so, like when a hammer exists and it sees
a nail, it's gonna hit it right. It's gonna treat it sees everything
is a nail because it's a hammer. And so Nintendo America sees every thing
it encounters as a potential legal problem and they treat it as such. Sony
is not built that same way, and you don't have to be built that
way, like that is a Nintendo choice. Sony is built in a different
way where they're like, for the most part, they're gonna give a little
bit more leeway. That doesn't mean that it's going to be excuse me,
I just got a little thing in my throat. That doesn't mean that they
are going to let you do whatever. And if you start selling anything called
PS one, they'll definitely be on your ass. And if they feel like
they need to protect their trademark, they'll do so. But they these sorts
of things can and do happen. And like there are Star Wars fan films
embraced by Lucasfilm and no one thinks that Disney does not own Star Wars.
Everyone fully respects and understands that it's not a real not a real problem,
and so It just depends on like, does the PS one thing where it
brings all my multiwe back for PS three? Does that screw it up against
a commercial sort of enterprise. Once it starts getting in that realm, they'll
come down hard on it. But for for now, it seems like they'll
probably just let it keep going. There's a something similar with Xbox Live happening.
There's a fan group trying to bring back the original Xbox Live. So
we'll see. All right, I'm gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna go.
I'm gonna go get some lunch. If anyone has any like recommendations for
what I should eat today, I'm willing to hear it. If anyone's gotten
any cool holiday plans, hit me up on Twitter let me know. If
you have any other questions that I answer, and you feel like, hey,
I can just ask Jeff about this on social media, feel free to
do so. I don't mind. We can. We can hang out outside
these walls. We don't have to just wait until like time dictates that we
have to get together once again. Though, I want to thank everybody for
watching. I love doing these shows. It has been the highlight of my
year doing Grub snacks from like the first show when we got like right before
that, I got the art from Dan Hour and seeing this stuff be like,
man, that is incredible. It looks so good. I love the
pink. It looks fantastic. And then just and then seeing you know,
three hundred to four hundred you showing up every week to talk about this stuff,
to send in questions and they're always great questions. They're so insightful.
It's so much fun to talk about this stuff in the absolute highlight of my
year. So a lot of tak us, don't are. I actually had
a donor kebab last night from a German restaurant that just opened up near me,
and it was it was choice. It was so good, and bananas
from Christian Eat a chicken casadilla, what about and cheese whiz? All right,
yeah, I'm definitely gonna try I'll try something. Yeah, there's a
lot of They have a lot of good fuh in Denver, they really do.
There's a huge community producing fu all over town and there's a couple of
restaurants right near me. All right, let's wrap this up. Thank you
everybody for watching. Nachos sounds like a good option. I might go with
nachos. I've been in nachos in a while. I'll be back soon.
I'll let you know soon. I just i'd be willing to do one next
week, but I don't want. I definitely don't want to drag in anybody
else if they're planning to take the week off, and I think that might
be the case. So if I don't see until next year, be good.
You know, I have a good holiday. Treat each other well.
I'll see then. Until then, have a good one and take care of
yourself. Goodbye. Gotta hit this button. Yum me, yummy, everybody