Donkey Kong Bananza Reviews Say It's The Blockbuster Exclusive Switch 2 Fans Are Waiting For

<v Speaker 1>You know me been. Hey everybody, welcome to Games Mornings
<v Speaker 1>with Me Jeff Grub, your host from giant bomb dot com.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>be talking about reviews dropping for a new Game of
<v Speaker 1>the Year contender and how four hundred thousand dollars doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get you what it used to. It's gonna be a
<v Speaker 1>good one because we have Lex Luddie on the show. LEXI,
<v Speaker 1>how are you doing.
<v Speaker 2>Four thousand dollars? Four hundred thousand dollars doesn't get you
<v Speaker 2>what used to? But what about four hundred thousand, yo, glub.
<v Speaker 1>That's gonna get you. Well, it's gonna get you well
<v Speaker 1>kind of what.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, about three minutes?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah, man with him, come on, let's do it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna look at those sneakers up close. Uh, LEXI,
<v Speaker 1>how have you been?
<v Speaker 2>I'm not too bad. I have been very busy the
<v Speaker 2>last few weeks. I haven't been like posting about much
<v Speaker 2>bud for the last like six months. I've been in
<v Speaker 2>the process of getting a new passport under the name
<v Speaker 2>lex Luodi. Very good finger technique, very good, thank you,
<v Speaker 2>and boy that costs a lot of money and has
<v Speaker 2>a lot of steps and involves you going to a
<v Speaker 2>lot of police stations, courts to see the lawyers to
<v Speaker 2>get them to sign stuff. Yeah, I've spent like over
<v Speaker 2>two hundred and fifty or at this point to get
<v Speaker 2>like just requesting different birth CERTs and documents to be
<v Speaker 2>able to prove to my own government that I am
<v Speaker 2>who the government say I am already.
<v Speaker 1>I mean you already had a previous passport, right, Like.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, so I had a previous passport. I'm trying to
<v Speaker 2>update my name to lex Luodi and I'm also trying
<v Speaker 2>to get a passport in that name, and that's that's
<v Speaker 2>a process that is built to be long and painful.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was good, but because I could see you
<v Speaker 1>havn't do all that if you had lost your passport
<v Speaker 1>or something. But you're just trying to update, You're trying
<v Speaker 1>to get the information correct on there. That seems like
<v Speaker 1>it should be a lot easier than what you're dealing with.
<v Speaker 1>So because I, like, my license expired and you're not
<v Speaker 1>supposed to let that happen. So when that happened here
<v Speaker 1>and I had moved states, it was like this huge,
<v Speaker 1>arduous process, But it was all my fault because I
<v Speaker 1>waited too long. This one just sounds like deliberately obtuse
<v Speaker 1>just to be a pain in your ass, So sorry
<v Speaker 1>about that.
<v Speaker 2>That's fun. Yeah, that's fun.
<v Speaker 1>Anyway.
<v Speaker 2>I'm in a pretty good mood. I'm playing some stuff
<v Speaker 2>at the moment. Hopefully be playing Donkey Kong by like
<v Speaker 2>the end of the week.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, Thursday night, I'm gonna try to stay up
<v Speaker 1>and play it. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.
<v Speaker 1>We got the reviews. We'll get into that very soon.
<v Speaker 1>But boy, it sounds enticing. Sounds like a very good
<v Speaker 1>way to spend your video game time. In fact, you
<v Speaker 1>know what, let's start getting into the show so we
<v Speaker 1>could talk about it. Let's explain ourselves. We're Giant Bob.
<v Speaker 1>Go to GiantBomb dot com slash join to support us.
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<v Speaker 1>gimetbomb dot com slash join. As far as this show
<v Speaker 1>goes most weekdays, I Jeff Grub will help piece your
<v Speaker 1>gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe
<v Speaker 1>even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics,
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<v Speaker 1>will make me look smart. If you were watching live
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<v Speaker 1>or find the RSS feed on gimebomb dot com. You
<v Speaker 1>can also catch the show with chapters and timestamps so
<v Speaker 1>later on YouTube. Hello YouTube. Shout out to Sean for
<v Speaker 1>getting that back on there, and now we can say
<v Speaker 1>that again. Thank you Sean. All Right, we have a
<v Speaker 1>lot of a lot to get into, so let's start
<v Speaker 1>the morning mess with Donkey Kong Bonanza. Reviews say it's
<v Speaker 1>the Blockbuster exclusive switch to fans have been waiting for.
<v Speaker 1>This is from Ethan Gotch at Kotaku. Shout out to
<v Speaker 1>Ethan for collecting all these is. Donkey Kong Bonanza, the
<v Speaker 1>Super Mario Odyssey sized adventure, The Switch to needs. That's
<v Speaker 1>the question players have been asking ever since the three
<v Speaker 1>D sandbox Smasher was first revealed earlier this year. Based
<v Speaker 1>on early reviews, it just might be. There's a collection
<v Speaker 1>of them here IGN's logan plant and I believe they
<v Speaker 1>gave it a ten said Bonanza never stops pulling fresh
<v Speaker 1>ideas off the vine over its twenty plus hours without
<v Speaker 1>spoiling anything. I was stunned at the ingenuity on display
<v Speaker 1>as I dove to some of its deeper late game layers.
<v Speaker 1>There are tons of different material types that make up
<v Speaker 1>the world, and there are set rules to how they
<v Speaker 1>will all interact with each other. A simple example is
<v Speaker 1>how throwing ice onto lava creates a hardened rock a
<v Speaker 1>hardened rock platform. But the chemistry and interplay between different
<v Speaker 1>elements gets more complex as you progress, and learning these
<v Speaker 1>relationships and using your knowledge of them to solve increasingly
<v Speaker 1>smart puzzles is supremely gratifying. Let's see here game spots
<v Speaker 1>Steve Watts. I think they gave it a nine out
<v Speaker 1>of ten said Donkey Kong. Bonanza offers a new start
<v Speaker 1>for Donkey Kong that is distinct from the Donkey Kong
<v Speaker 1>Country games. The focus on destructibility, captures what makes DK
<v Speaker 1>different from other platforming characters, his titanic strength, and giving
<v Speaker 1>him a cute sidekick grants the game unexpected emotional depth,
<v Speaker 1>not something I was expecting to hear from a Donkey
<v Speaker 1>Kong review Alexi. As part of the launch lineup for
<v Speaker 1>Switch To This nicely fills the gap for one of
<v Speaker 1>Nintendo's signature, substantial single player adventures. But more importantly, it's
<v Speaker 1>an excellent game in its own right and deserves to
<v Speaker 1>be mentioned alongside games like Mario Odyssey as among Nintendo's
<v Speaker 1>best recent works. Okay, Lexi, those are just two reviews.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of other ones. It's around a ninety
<v Speaker 1>one on Metacritic and Open critic. I believe at the moment,
<v Speaker 1>very very good reviews. Getting the comparison to Mario Odyssey
<v Speaker 1>and sort of passing that like check. A lot of
<v Speaker 1>people are like, yeah, this is a worthy successor to that.
<v Speaker 1>That's where I was like, Man, if anyone could say
<v Speaker 1>that sentence with the straight face, I will probably be
<v Speaker 1>very happy with this game. So I'm really looking forward
<v Speaker 1>to it. How to do these reviews find you?
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna be really honest. I've been trying to listen
<v Speaker 2>to what you've said, but I had the I had
<v Speaker 2>the official Nintendo store page open while I was looking
<v Speaker 2>at this, of course. Yeah, for whatever reason, they're like
<v Speaker 2>carousel of games that are out now and stuff like
<v Speaker 2>that are very slightly stretched vertically.
<v Speaker 1>What this is like? Oh wait, I oh no on
<v Speaker 1>the Nintendo page.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like if I just the like Nintendo main page
<v Speaker 2>of that website. I don't know if I'm the only
<v Speaker 2>person who notices this, but they are just slightly stretched
<v Speaker 2>upwards to make them a little bit taller, and it's
<v Speaker 2>wrigging me out.
<v Speaker 1>I would I mean this when I say it, I
<v Speaker 1>hope someone gets fired for this. I don't mean it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm joking. Oh no, they's way meater than anyway.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I was looking at reviews for this, and I
<v Speaker 2>think the one that really stuck out to me was
<v Speaker 2>John Lennerman over at Digital Foundry, who there was a
<v Speaker 2>lot of like gnawing and gnashing of teeth around, like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>what about the performance of this game? They even said
<v Speaker 2>in one of their developer interviews that they know it's
<v Speaker 2>not perfect, and he was like he did his usual analysis,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, there's some stuff in there where he's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like it's a double buffer v sink soul dropped down
<v Speaker 2>to thirty sometimes, which isn't great. But at the end
<v Speaker 2>he did his bit of but like personally what he
<v Speaker 2>thought of it, And if someone who is like that
<v Speaker 2>tuned into and notices technical hiccups is looking at it
<v Speaker 2>and still going, no, this is still great, like playing
<v Speaker 2>this is still great.
<v Speaker 1>And he doesn't like have like John doesn't have a
<v Speaker 1>lot of leeway slack for that sort of stuff. If
<v Speaker 1>it bothered him, he would say so like he would legitimate,
<v Speaker 1>like he would not like hold back. So yeah, that
<v Speaker 1>that that is encouraging as well. There was a lot
<v Speaker 1>of that in this past week. But just because I
<v Speaker 1>just think people want to talk about Donkey Kong and
<v Speaker 1>that was the thing that popped up, and that.
<v Speaker 2>Was yeah, that was the only information they put out
<v Speaker 2>was Hey, we don't think it's like the perfect performance, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>which is a weird thing to put out yep.
<v Speaker 1>And so yeah, people were fixated on that right now.
<v Speaker 1>I get it because yeah, if you are interested in
<v Speaker 1>this game and you just bought up an expensive console,
<v Speaker 1>you want to like want everything to be perfect. I
<v Speaker 1>get that. Uh, but this is what I expected that
<v Speaker 1>we would get on the other side of the reviews,
<v Speaker 1>and we immediately are not talking about that anymore in
<v Speaker 1>any real way because that's, you know, the focus of
<v Speaker 1>the game is the majority of the time is going
<v Speaker 1>to be running just fine, and it's going to be
<v Speaker 1>a lot of fun. Yeah. I think I was vaguely
<v Speaker 1>aware of this chemistry system, the physics slash chemistry system
<v Speaker 1>of different elements and surfaces in the world interacting with
<v Speaker 1>one another in different ways. I didn't realize, I don't
<v Speaker 1>think LEXI that that was going to be such a
<v Speaker 1>major component to the game. And I like that sort
<v Speaker 1>of stuff. That's very sandboxy to me, very playground, and
<v Speaker 1>the idea of just being able to take these things
<v Speaker 1>and smash them together and see what happens is another
<v Speaker 1>thing that I find to be to be very appealing.
<v Speaker 1>Is this game, like, now that we know quite a
<v Speaker 1>bit more about it, what you were expecting from a
<v Speaker 1>Donkey Kong follow up three D platformer.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's a really good direction for the series.
<v Speaker 2>As a known Donkey Kong country disliker, I like one.
<v Speaker 2>I think that redesign is incredible. I saw some people
<v Speaker 2>be like, oh, I don't like the new redesign and
<v Speaker 2>it made me legitimately angry. It was like, this is
<v Speaker 2>fucking this is Selda bullshit. This is when people were
<v Speaker 2>mad about the Link the Links Awakening remake, like tilt
<v Speaker 2>shift art style, Like you motherfuckers, this is why we
<v Speaker 2>can't have nice things when you give out about stuff
<v Speaker 2>like this. But I really like the look of new
<v Speaker 2>Donkey Kong. And yeah, I think that like as far
<v Speaker 2>as a three D platform that goes when you're playing
<v Speaker 2>as Donkey Kong, Like, yeah, what do you I think
<v Speaker 2>Mike said it on One a Year podcast, But like
<v Speaker 2>at some point they just made a Record Ralph video game,
<v Speaker 2>which is very funny to me that like it's turned
<v Speaker 2>into this aural Boro Snake, each in its own tale
<v Speaker 2>of like Record Ralph was just Donkey Kong, and now
<v Speaker 2>Donkey Kong has kind of become what Record Ralph becomes
<v Speaker 2>in those movies or is depicted as in those movies,
<v Speaker 2>which is quite fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean I think people downplay that a lot,
<v Speaker 1>that this idea that developers, especially in Japan, but developers anywhere,
<v Speaker 1>can be informed by the conversations they're having with other media.
<v Speaker 1>And I would not be surprised at all. There were
<v Speaker 1>a lot of fans of Wreck at Ralph on that
<v Speaker 1>team that were just like, yeah, that's like we're thinking
<v Speaker 1>about Donkey Kong, that this is familiar and that movie
<v Speaker 1>nailed it. They're right that that is the focus of
<v Speaker 1>Donkey Kong, the big guy, just that can smash stuff,
<v Speaker 1>and we should focus on that. So yeah, I think
<v Speaker 1>that it makes a lot of sense, and also it
<v Speaker 1>totally works for like what we're seeing from this game.
<v Speaker 1>It also makes sense for what that development team has
<v Speaker 1>been focused on for a while now, or at least
<v Speaker 1>one of the technological advancements they made with Super Mario Odyssey,
<v Speaker 1>where it's like, hey, we have this snow deformation tech
<v Speaker 1>and you can punch the cheese and you can punch
<v Speaker 1>your way through it and it breaks apart in a
<v Speaker 1>really satisfying way. We've done this and we want to
<v Speaker 1>do more with that, and now Donkey Kong is the
<v Speaker 1>perfect fit for that sort of technology. So yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 1>just really rare to go with this one. A lot
<v Speaker 1>of other really positive reviews. The Verge Ash Parrish Bonanza
<v Speaker 1>is a dad game, the same way The Last of
<v Speaker 1>Us is a dad game, same world treking adventure with
<v Speaker 1>a big strong.
<v Speaker 2>Oay, okay, okay, no, no.
<v Speaker 1>I'll think I know, right, Mike, I think I'm on
<v Speaker 1>board with this. Let's see here the same world trekking
<v Speaker 1>adventure with a big strong dude protecting a powerful little girl,
<v Speaker 1>but where the Last of Us makes you have a
<v Speaker 1>big sad feelings about all the people the game forces
<v Speaker 1>you to kill. Bonanza presents you with a slight alternative.
<v Speaker 1>What if you could use your powers to fuck shit
<v Speaker 1>up and not be a dick about it? Dk smiles.
<v Speaker 1>Often people are happy to see him, that friendly rock
<v Speaker 1>I mentioned earlier. When you punch him or any NPC,
<v Speaker 1>it turns into a high five. All that destruction is
<v Speaker 1>welcome because it's helping restore the world. Cool take. I Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I just need to see this for myself at this point.
<v Speaker 1>I'm glad. I'm glad it was not much of a
<v Speaker 1>weight from the switch to launching to getting this game
<v Speaker 1>that would have been pretty painful. A month was definitely
<v Speaker 1>something I could live with, And I'm really glad that
<v Speaker 1>we're here now. Any other thoughts about Donkey Kong before
<v Speaker 1>we move on? Lex?
<v Speaker 2>Not what you you brought this up on nintend Dogs yesterday,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, weird, weird launched. We had run up
<v Speaker 2>to this thing. Preview cycle, very locked down, review cycle,
<v Speaker 2>very locked down. I continue to play the dance that
<v Speaker 2>I always play of sending emails that I know won't
<v Speaker 2>get read, as I'm sure many other journalists are familiar
<v Speaker 2>with at this point. Yeah, but yeah, it's it's a
<v Speaker 2>it's a weird thing, and it's I hope that they
<v Speaker 2>loosen up. I really hope that they loosen up because
<v Speaker 2>this this isn't fun. This isn't a fun way to
<v Speaker 2>experience a game launch of trying to figure out of
<v Speaker 2>who actually might get review codes and being stressed about that.
<v Speaker 2>And I think like ultimately, you see, it helps them
<v Speaker 2>when they do get universal prais to have more voices
<v Speaker 2>in there, like different perspectives saying that they're like ash
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I think that they they would be well
<v Speaker 2>served to get out there and maybe you know, offer
<v Speaker 2>more opportunities to different sized places because like, yes, Nintendo's
<v Speaker 2>the biggest company in the world, but like, what if
<v Speaker 2>they were speaking to groups that they aren't currently speaking to.
<v Speaker 2>I think that they could always improve in that sense.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, I think that they have been especially weird at
<v Speaker 1>the start of this generation, and it's not hurting them,
<v Speaker 1>so I don't expect them to turn away from it
<v Speaker 1>too anytime too soon. At the same time, this is
<v Speaker 1>a company that probably should cool off with like how
<v Speaker 1>lockdown it's been, and I could see it not needing
<v Speaker 1>or feeling the need to sustain that as we get
<v Speaker 1>later into this year or whatever. But I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>It definitely feels like it's informed by their concerns about
<v Speaker 1>piracy and homebrew and them wanting to cut that off
<v Speaker 1>as much as possible, and it feels like they've succeeded
<v Speaker 1>at that, but who knows.
<v Speaker 2>It is kind of funny that, you know, all of
<v Speaker 2>this was, you know, it was so locked down, and
<v Speaker 2>the lead up to this, you know, and the switch
<v Speaker 2>To as well, but like switch To still got out
<v Speaker 2>there early. They were just bricks yep. And also this
<v Speaker 2>game got out there early. It just fell off the
<v Speaker 2>back of a truck, like it's never pressed that are
<v Speaker 2>leaking this stuff except for Mike MINARTI yeah, right, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>who does it habitually? He is constantly leaking stuff. I'm
<v Speaker 2>not sure if you know this about Mike constantly breaking
<v Speaker 2>embargo loves it. But do you think that, like they
<v Speaker 2>have just gone to the point where they're like, for
<v Speaker 2>every single cat Shine that Mike spoiled is in that game,
<v Speaker 2>we're gonna not issue a review code.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah. And that's like the number of catch transfer
<v Speaker 1>in the game. That's the number of years that they're
<v Speaker 1>going to be punishing us all for for his his
<v Speaker 1>gross air. Yeah. I think Nintendo will continue to be weird.
<v Speaker 1>I know that's a bold statement, but I think they
<v Speaker 1>will continue to do that. It will just be in
<v Speaker 1>new and surprising ways every day, all right. The Legend
<v Speaker 1>of Zelda live action film cast has been announced. This
<v Speaker 1>is from sal Ramano at Kamatsu. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will
<v Speaker 1>play Link and Bo Braggison will play Zelda in the
<v Speaker 1>upcoming live action film adaptation of the Legend of Zelda
<v Speaker 1>that the Nintendo announced they were making with Sony Pictures.
<v Speaker 1>The movie is due out May seventh, of twenty twenty seven.
<v Speaker 1>Does this make it feel more real to you? Like
<v Speaker 1>more likely that it will actually happen.
<v Speaker 2>Before we get it? What a fucking Nintendo move to
<v Speaker 2>nineteen minutes before the biggest game in Bargo of the
<v Speaker 2>year that they have for one of their releases, they
<v Speaker 2>release probably the biggest news story of the year. It's weird, like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>why would they do this the same day? Why would
<v Speaker 2>they do this at the same time. They're just yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's bizarre that they did this so close to level
<v Speaker 2>review of Bargo. But yeah, I think that like now
<v Speaker 2>that they're casting, it does seem like they have a
<v Speaker 2>bit more momentum behind it. I think that Wesball has
<v Speaker 2>gotten out there enough and been actively like, no, this
<v Speaker 2>isn't in development. Hell, like I'm with is my active
<v Speaker 2>project to at least have some bit of faith in it.
<v Speaker 2>There's a lot of directors who sign on to these
<v Speaker 2>adaptations and they're like, I'm working on it at some
<v Speaker 2>point once i finished these other movies that I'm actually
<v Speaker 2>doing right now. So this does seem like his his
<v Speaker 2>next movie. So if it, you know, if it has
<v Speaker 2>someone who is like, well, I need this to be
<v Speaker 2>my next movie because otherwise I don't have a next movie.
<v Speaker 2>And that's a fucking problem. That definitely like gives it
<v Speaker 2>some impetus. Do they hit the release date of what
<v Speaker 2>is it? Twenty twenty six? They're saying no, twenty twenty seven,
<v Speaker 2>twenty twenty seven. I don't know. Twenty seven seem like
<v Speaker 2>maybe it's just because game development has broken my brain
<v Speaker 2>so much that like twenty twenty seven seems ambitious for
<v Speaker 2>something that hasn't signed.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I agree, but I think they could. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>if they have stars, that they have a script, which
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if we know if they even have that,
<v Speaker 1>then there's no real reason they shouldn't be able to
<v Speaker 1>do it. It would just everything would have to go right.
<v Speaker 1>A movie can definitely come out in that timeframe. But
<v Speaker 1>you're right, like when I hear twenty twenty seven and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, have you started making it yet? I do
<v Speaker 1>feel that like video game side of things of being like,
<v Speaker 1>that's not enough time to do anything. What are you
<v Speaker 1>talking about.
<v Speaker 2>I really hope that if that director is on, at
<v Speaker 2>the end of the month, we get mi Emoso telling
<v Speaker 2>us the rest of the cast list, and at the
<v Speaker 2>end he's like and or good friend Tingle is being
<v Speaker 2>played by Chris San.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they need to bring both Chris San and Jack
<v Speaker 1>Black into the movie in some form, and maybe they
<v Speaker 1>can be like Tingle brothers. They can a new not
<v Speaker 1>there's the opposite of a composite character. Where it's like
<v Speaker 1>they need multiple actors to take on this one character,
<v Speaker 1>and that would be perfect.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think this movie has like dungeons and stuff
<v Speaker 2>or what do you think that the I will way?
<v Speaker 1>I think that there. I think it'll be a quest, right,
<v Speaker 1>it'll be you know, it'll be just be the Hero's
<v Speaker 1>journey where Link is presented with an adventure and he's
<v Speaker 1>like to too scared to go on it or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>he denies it, and then the events change and he's
<v Speaker 1>forced to take it on, and uh, yeah, it'll be.
<v Speaker 1>And when things have to get go from bad to worse,
<v Speaker 1>as it happens in a hero's journey, I think that's
<v Speaker 1>when it'll be like I can go get this thing
<v Speaker 1>I found it. Oh no, it's actually deep in this
<v Speaker 1>dungeon or something like that. You can make. You can
<v Speaker 1>fit all those pieces onto what is certainly going to
<v Speaker 1>be a hero's journey. So yeah, I think they do
<v Speaker 1>it that way.
<v Speaker 2>They should base off a skyward sword and every time
<v Speaker 2>he picks up something, the game stops for three seconds
<v Speaker 2>to tell him that he pays up something.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's that's true art right there, That's what they
<v Speaker 1>that's what they need to do. So I'm trying to
<v Speaker 1>get a picture of this for everybody so they can
<v Speaker 1>see it. Okay, what do you think they look like?
<v Speaker 2>Young y eighteens. That's what they look like.
<v Speaker 1>They look young adult fiction actors, is really what they
<v Speaker 1>look like. Absolutely. I mean that's the director, right is
<v Speaker 1>he did The Maze Runner, and these look like people
<v Speaker 1>that could be in the Maze Runner. Now I'm not
<v Speaker 1>saying they work.
<v Speaker 2>I liked that that Apes, the most recent Apes movie.
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't the best one of those, but like it
<v Speaker 2>was pretty solid and well put together, and the villain
<v Speaker 2>was pretty fun. And I think getting that guy, he
<v Speaker 2>would the guy who played Proximus or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's good.
<v Speaker 2>It would be a really good Gannon. And he's in
<v Speaker 2>He's an Annabelle as well. He's really good. And that
<v Speaker 2>guy's will laugh on.
<v Speaker 1>His name now, yeah, he's he's one of the he's
<v Speaker 1>in a Real Steel one of the like favorite movie,
<v Speaker 1>one of my favorite movies. That's right. Uh, he's great
<v Speaker 1>in that. He would be a pretty good Gannon. That's
<v Speaker 1>not bad. Okay, we'll see. I think as far as
<v Speaker 1>these actors go, though, you know, I'll bring them his
<v Speaker 1>name Okay, yes, that's right. As far as these actors go, though,
<v Speaker 1>I think they they work. You know, they're gonna be
<v Speaker 1>in makeup and effects, and once they're in the clothing,
<v Speaker 1>I bet that like really makes it really work. I
<v Speaker 1>think Zelda here though, looks pretty good. I mean that
<v Speaker 1>that is a person that looks like she could be
<v Speaker 1>an elf for sure.
<v Speaker 2>And once they give that kid is pink hair, it's
<v Speaker 2>gonna make a lot more sense.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, pink hair and his short green skirt. Yeah, that'll
<v Speaker 1>be perfect. All right. Uh, let's see here, you know,
<v Speaker 1>let's take our break. Now, we're gonna take a quick break.
<v Speaker 1>We'll come back, We'll come down. We'll come back with
<v Speaker 1>plenty of more headlines. If you're listening to the podcast version,
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<v Speaker 1>Sign up there and you can skip out on these
<v Speaker 1>for now. Though. Let's go to the break. All right,
<v Speaker 1>we are back, Let's get into it. Nintendo's other switch
<v Speaker 1>to exclusive gets a limited time demo. This is from
<v Speaker 1>John Walker at Kataku during April's big Switch to Direct,
<v Speaker 1>where the console was revealed in all its glory. For
<v Speaker 1>the very first time, Nintendo showed off in in house
<v Speaker 1>game that supported the new console's joycon as mice feature
<v Speaker 1>Drag and Drive, which I was calling it Drag x
<v Speaker 1>drive because that's what it says, but Showan pointed out
<v Speaker 1>it's supposed to be like drag and drop because you're
<v Speaker 1>using both the mice mouses pieces, and so it's like
<v Speaker 1>drag and dropping something. But Drag and Drive weird, a
<v Speaker 1>wheelchair based basketball game. That was a complete surprise, and
<v Speaker 1>things have been pretty quiet since then. But it's now
<v Speaker 1>been announced that this game, which is coming out in August,
<v Speaker 1>we'll get a limited time demo for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers,
<v Speaker 1>just like Arms, Just like Arms, just like they've done
<v Speaker 1>this with a lot of games. But just like Arms.
<v Speaker 1>Let's see here it says come August ninth and tenth,
<v Speaker 1>will definitely have a much better idea of what's on offer. Well,
<v Speaker 1>if we have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, we will
<v Speaker 1>the multiplayer game is going to have a global Jam
<v Speaker 1>demo event, which will offer a sneak peak of what
<v Speaker 1>will be on offer. It will there's gonna be like
<v Speaker 1>timeframes where the servers will be up and people will
<v Speaker 1>be able to get online. They do this with Splatoon
<v Speaker 1>and Arms and other things. I will probably check this
<v Speaker 1>out at this point if I have the time, because
<v Speaker 1>I am just curious to see what the game feels like,
<v Speaker 1>because can the is this an idea that can support
<v Speaker 1>an entire game on itself? Now it's a twenty dollars game.
<v Speaker 1>They are not asking full price for this at all,
<v Speaker 1>but still feels.
<v Speaker 2>Like something more than they ask for Welcome to Her,
<v Speaker 2>So bet on mine?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, twice the price of Welcome to Her. To me,
<v Speaker 1>this feels like the kind of thing that should have
<v Speaker 1>been in a more robust Welcome to Her package of Like,
<v Speaker 1>here's a game where you play with both the mice
<v Speaker 1>at one time. Isn't that a cool gimmick? And and
<v Speaker 1>then this becomes the surprise hit of that and instead
<v Speaker 1>having it stand on its own feels like it just
<v Speaker 1>doesn't stand much of a chance at all. But we'll see.
<v Speaker 1>I just used to stand about a game about people
<v Speaker 1>in wheelchairs, didn't I like, see, what are you doing?
<v Speaker 1>I bring you here to save me from myself? And
<v Speaker 1>I just can't count on you can't count on anybody
<v Speaker 1>anymore to stop, I'm going to console you. I'm out there.
<v Speaker 1>We go fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>The club is entering his problematic And it would be
<v Speaker 2>really funny if this wound up being like the biggest
<v Speaker 2>thing since Rocket League, if this became like a new
<v Speaker 2>Rocket League. It would be really funny if if that happened,
<v Speaker 2>mainly because it would be very funny to see like
<v Speaker 2>the east Forts optimizations that people would have to do
<v Speaker 2>for the back and forth motions with the hands. That
<v Speaker 2>would be a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 1>And I also want to see it get ported to
<v Speaker 1>PC because if it just becomes that big and Nintendo's like, well,
<v Speaker 1>we want to put it on PC, and so people
<v Speaker 1>using two regular mice on a computer or whatever to
<v Speaker 1>try to emulate that. Yeah, I want it to go
<v Speaker 1>all the way. I don't know. Do you have any
<v Speaker 1>interest in this game Dragon Drive.
<v Speaker 2>Academically?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? That's you know, Yeah, yeah, same.
<v Speaker 2>I look at it and I'm like, huh, that's an
<v Speaker 2>interesting thing that you made there, and it's real interesting
<v Speaker 2>that you're selling it for money. I'll take a look
<v Speaker 2>at this, yeah and see what it's all about.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what is in here that made you think let's
<v Speaker 1>sell this for twenty dollars, and I bet it's fun,
<v Speaker 1>but I just I doubt it is a rocket league
<v Speaker 1>in terms of going to have the staining power and
<v Speaker 1>the quality. All right, but we'll see soon. Other headlines here.
<v Speaker 1>Analog three D delayed to late August due to tariffs.
<v Speaker 1>This is from Darren Bancusic game spot. We talked about
<v Speaker 1>this a little bit on BombCast yesterday, but here's like
<v Speaker 1>the full news story. The Analog three D has been
<v Speaker 1>delayed once again, and it will now be shipping out
<v Speaker 1>in late August. This is the one time where a
<v Speaker 1>delay doesn't feel at all like a delay to me, Lexi,
<v Speaker 1>because it's like, I never thought this thing was actually
<v Speaker 1>coming out in July. They talked about it a little
<v Speaker 1>bit at some point, but I never really thought that
<v Speaker 1>because they had been so quiet and weird, and the
<v Speaker 1>tariffs were a real problem and there was a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of other problems with logistics, and so hearing that it's
<v Speaker 1>coming in August is almost like, oh my god, that's
<v Speaker 1>so soon. I never thought that would happen. But yes,
<v Speaker 1>So this is the three D from Analog. It is
<v Speaker 1>the FPGA N sixty four. All that really means is
<v Speaker 1>they are emulating the hardware on a chip. I guess
<v Speaker 1>that doesn't even matter to most people. It's an N
<v Speaker 1>sixty four what plays your cartridges, and it does so
<v Speaker 1>in a way that looks like four K on your
<v Speaker 1>screen and plays really nicely with modern HDTVs and has
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of other features because they really tend to
<v Speaker 1>put a lot of extra work into this stuff, as
<v Speaker 1>compared to something like a mister, which does have a
<v Speaker 1>lot of community effor put into it, but you have
<v Speaker 1>to track that stuff down yourself and make it work
<v Speaker 1>on your own.
<v Speaker 2>Have they mentioned if this will have the same side
<v Speaker 2>loading capabilities that the Pocket does. I'm mos it just
<v Speaker 2>kind of expected.
<v Speaker 1>So it's not like gonna be blatantly said that it will.
<v Speaker 1>Because the Pocket has open FPGA, which is their you know,
<v Speaker 1>and that's like, I think it's a trademark thing open FPGA.
<v Speaker 1>It's their own way of saying we are opening this
<v Speaker 1>up to letting you put whatever cores you want on
<v Speaker 1>here so you can emulate other systems. The three D
<v Speaker 1>is not going to have open FPGA, I don't think.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, two hundred and fifty dollars, it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>pretty expensive, but it also compares pretty favorably to even
<v Speaker 1>the pocket so I think they're like, ah, that's a
<v Speaker 1>separate product. We'll do this differently. I don't know. The
<v Speaker 1>terriff situation is not settled still is. It kind of
<v Speaker 1>is back and forth with this guy. He has brought
<v Speaker 1>him up again recently, even though after that ninety day
<v Speaker 1>delay everyone thought they would go away. But they're saying, hey,
<v Speaker 1>we have an open window here where we think we
<v Speaker 1>can get these things into the country, and there are
<v Speaker 1>some tariff considerations that are causing our costs to go up.
<v Speaker 1>But they are not charging anyone anything more than they
<v Speaker 1>already have spent on it. I I pre ordered one
<v Speaker 1>of these for two hundred and fifty dollars LEXI. They're
<v Speaker 1>not charging me anymore. They're sending me mind. So some
<v Speaker 1>good news here, it feels like for people who are
<v Speaker 1>into this scene.
<v Speaker 2>And yes, sadly it will probably be affected by later tariffs,
<v Speaker 2>because let's face it, there's gonna be more scandals that
<v Speaker 2>he's gonna need to distract from. And Taaroff's so great distraction.
<v Speaker 1>He just he just loves those things. He just don't
<v Speaker 1>he just loves them. He thinks they're good. It's crazy,
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, it's I think you're right. The price will
<v Speaker 1>go up later. Uh and so yeah, if you you
<v Speaker 1>had your pre order good either. I don't think there's
<v Speaker 1>any up for sale at the moment. They will probably
<v Speaker 1>have another wave at some point, and I bet at
<v Speaker 1>that point you'll you will see a higher price.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, ultimately it's it's it's a machine that
<v Speaker 2>lets you play N sixty four games. So why would
<v Speaker 2>you want to buy it anyway?
<v Speaker 1>Exactly? They should be paying you to take it, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I think that's right. Lexi King reportedly replacing two hundred
<v Speaker 1>developers with a HI. This is from Marcus Person at
<v Speaker 1>Game Reactor. According to insider sources at Mobile Gamer, around
<v Speaker 1>two hundred employees, mainly from the level design team, are
<v Speaker 1>allegedly being affected by Microsoft's the latest wave of staff reductions.
<v Speaker 1>A leaked internal message message suggests King is doubling down
<v Speaker 1>on AI tools that can automate key parts of the
<v Speaker 1>game development process, from menu creation to environment design. This
<v Speaker 1>is a reportedly part of Microsoft's broader strategy to cut costs,
<v Speaker 1>become more agile, and shift more human resources toward marketing
<v Speaker 1>rather than development. The AI tools are designed to speed
<v Speaker 1>up production timelines.
<v Speaker 2>Not one bit is sole grim. Not bid is so
<v Speaker 2>fucking grim. I hated the humans not to make the games,
<v Speaker 2>but to market them. That's what we need the humans for.
<v Speaker 1>We need everyone to be a salesman. We need you know,
<v Speaker 1>we're we're already turning everybody throughout the open market into
<v Speaker 1>salespeople so that when they become influencers, that's their whole
<v Speaker 1>job is to sell stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>And now we just want really that's worked great for us.
<v Speaker 1>We want to bring that inside internally and we'll have
<v Speaker 1>machines make the games and then you could tell people why,
<v Speaker 1>why that's awesome?
<v Speaker 2>Holy shit, that Sucksrino mentioned it in chat and I
<v Speaker 2>talked about this on Blue Sky a little while ago.
<v Speaker 2>Corporations fucking love agility. They love fast rolling. They're huge
<v Speaker 2>fans of fast rolling. They go for dexed bills there.
<v Speaker 2>You know all about Samana and Agilosy. That's that's all
<v Speaker 2>they got about.
<v Speaker 1>Just standing out there nude so they can roll fast. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>without a doubt. You know, I think I would have
<v Speaker 1>would have expected to hear two hundred people replaced that
<v Speaker 1>in like those marketing jobs we're gonna have them write
<v Speaker 1>press releases. Already a grim idea, but instead the people
<v Speaker 1>designing the levels, the thing that makes the games fun,
<v Speaker 1>you're replacing that. I mean, I guess the idea here
<v Speaker 1>is we have one designer and instead of like dictating
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of decisions to people, there's tools where when
<v Speaker 1>they make a decision, it just happens automatically. And I
<v Speaker 1>get the appeal of that, but let me tell you,
<v Speaker 1>that's a recipe for I think boring games, because you
<v Speaker 1>want the person who's working on the job to implement
<v Speaker 1>the idea, to be like, wait, I have an idea
<v Speaker 1>of my own and I want to try this, and
<v Speaker 1>then that happens all the time. Of course, that happens
<v Speaker 1>of just a spontaneity and serendipity, serendipity of just discovering
<v Speaker 1>ways that the game could be better because you're in
<v Speaker 1>the shit. Having machines in the shit is just not
<v Speaker 1>going to lead to that sort of thing.
<v Speaker 2>And I think they've probably realized that, like, out of
<v Speaker 2>all of their games and their portfolio, Candy Crush is
<v Speaker 2>the one when nobody playing wants that, though like nobody
<v Speaker 2>wants a new game mechanic and candy Crush, and they're
<v Speaker 2>never going to get a new game mechanic again because
<v Speaker 2>a large language model is just going to rehash old
<v Speaker 2>mechanics and old systems and combine those in ways that
<v Speaker 2>are not particularly interesting. Like yeah, that's that's the grim
<v Speaker 2>reality here why they've made these cuts. It's I like,
<v Speaker 2>I did some reporting on this on the Rewinder podcast
<v Speaker 2>that went up last week. These layoffs are like way
<v Speaker 2>bigger than people have been talking about it. I think
<v Speaker 2>you mentioned it, you mentioned it a little bit, but
<v Speaker 2>I asked around in like the Europe region, and Microsoft
<v Speaker 2>Europe was like heavily heavily hitch and it was the
<v Speaker 2>kind of power the company that would go out and
<v Speaker 2>make deals with third parties and support studios. And it's
<v Speaker 2>worth noting that like right now, Microsoft's two biggest games
<v Speaker 2>Tony Hawk three plus four which was developed at Iron
<v Speaker 2>Galaxy wou support from Virtuos and Elder Score for Oblivion Remastered,
<v Speaker 2>which was also Virtuos studios. So those are the kind
<v Speaker 2>of studios that are being hissh Those are the studios
<v Speaker 2>that are having their contracts disappear in front of them,
<v Speaker 2>and as part of that, they are having layoffs. I've
<v Speaker 2>talked to people who would know about like the situation
<v Speaker 2>at different developers in different countries, and the way it
<v Speaker 2>was described to me was like, oh, yeah, contract studios
<v Speaker 2>are at panic stations because they had games that they
<v Speaker 2>were meant to be working on right now that they
<v Speaker 2>are no longer working on, and it's really hard to
<v Speaker 2>fill that gap. It's easy to fill a gap that's
<v Speaker 2>like months away because people like to plan out their work,
<v Speaker 2>but it's very hard to get someone working on something
<v Speaker 2>right now. So they are having to lay people off
<v Speaker 2>because there's just nothing for them to do. And those
<v Speaker 2>numbers are going unreported, and it's across it's across the globe,
<v Speaker 2>but like I heard it coming out of Europe and
<v Speaker 2>it fucking sucks this whole. Like again, it's something that
<v Speaker 2>has come up a bunch of like what does Microsoft
<v Speaker 2>provide to the industry. At one point it would have
<v Speaker 2>been stability through money, but now it's instability through money,
<v Speaker 2>and it couldn't stand money.
<v Speaker 1>And like you said, those decisions reverberate so much further
<v Speaker 1>than just Microsoft. It's yeah, it goes like and those
<v Speaker 1>numbers they report, it's like those numbers could be fifty
<v Speaker 1>percent higher because of all the contract workers that are
<v Speaker 1>likely going to lose their jobs. It's it's I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>it's a problem, like it is a problem, and really
<v Speaker 1>what is the answer because regulators tried to step in
<v Speaker 1>and like stop the deal. But I mean, I don't
<v Speaker 1>think any of these companies standing on their own would
<v Speaker 1>have been much like long for this world. It's just like,
<v Speaker 1>should one decision be able to have this much of
<v Speaker 1>a Hey, we're going to shake the stick and see
<v Speaker 1>how many people we can shake off that we have
<v Speaker 1>to support, and it's oh, it turns out it was
<v Speaker 1>ten thousand people over the last couple of years. What
<v Speaker 1>do you replace that with? There's no there's nothing there
<v Speaker 1>like slot in and be like, okay, Microsoft's not working.
<v Speaker 1>What's the next company up to take its place? There
<v Speaker 1>isn't anything. So it just feels like the industry is
<v Speaker 1>kind of hollow in a lot of ways, and people
<v Speaker 1>are gonna it's gonna cave in, and that's what we're watching.
<v Speaker 2>Happy jfan in chat just dropped a story or a
<v Speaker 2>blue sky thread from gun for Andreas, who is a
<v Speaker 2>journalist and I don't want to his background. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>three hundred people at Virtuous Studio. Seven percent of the
<v Speaker 2>workforce is apparently at risk of being let go across Asia,
<v Speaker 2>Europe and the USA.
<v Speaker 1>So and this is a team that you know, you
<v Speaker 1>pointed out helped to Tony Hawk. They were the primary
<v Speaker 1>developers and Oblivion Remastered. They are also doing Metal Gear
<v Speaker 1>Solid Delta. They've been working like they've been putting stuff
<v Speaker 1>like big stuff out with like probably big paychecks, but
<v Speaker 1>they're probably looking down the line at what's coming and
<v Speaker 1>that money has dried up.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it's not even down the line. It is
<v Speaker 2>it is projects that over nice just disappeared. It was
<v Speaker 2>stuff that was being worked on and is now like,
<v Speaker 2>well we have twenty people, we have fifty people, we
<v Speaker 2>have one hundred people who are working on this one game,
<v Speaker 2>and this game no longer exists, and what do we
<v Speaker 2>put them on?
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, all right, yeah, that continues to be the
<v Speaker 1>state of that side of the industry. Meanwhile, when people
<v Speaker 1>try to get people to play new games that actually
<v Speaker 1>get made. Split Gate two, for example, shelled at four
<v Speaker 1>hundred thousand dollars for streamers, and it's it hasn't really
<v Speaker 1>worked a long term. So this is from Alex co
<v Speaker 1>at Dual Shockers split Gate two said to have spent
<v Speaker 1>over four four hundred thousand dollars on influencers to promote
<v Speaker 1>the shooter on LinkedIn. SteamForge co founder Nick Lombardy published
<v Speaker 1>a report claiming ten forty seven games spent a staggering
<v Speaker 1>four hundred and nine thousand dollars on influencers to promote
<v Speaker 1>the game. The figures are are estimates based on publicly
<v Speaker 1>available data and market rates from Steamforge's algorithm. Per Lombardi's report,
<v Speaker 1>it mentions that ten forty seven games spent an estimated
<v Speaker 1>you know, blah blah blah the number again, but the
<v Speaker 1>game's lost most of its players. And you know this
<v Speaker 1>is from publicly available data steam stuff we've seen. It's
<v Speaker 1>like it dropped from kind of a high of whatever
<v Speaker 1>it was, and it's down like almost ninety percent in
<v Speaker 1>terms of people playing it day to day. You know,
<v Speaker 1>they kind of had no choice, right at a certain point,
<v Speaker 1>a game like this does have to just like pay
<v Speaker 1>influencers to put to play their game. Even Fortnite still
<v Speaker 1>does that. So it's like, if you want to play
<v Speaker 1>in that space, that's kind of what you're competing against.
<v Speaker 1>But it's also just not a magic bullet. What do
<v Speaker 1>you think happened here with split Gate two?
<v Speaker 2>And I think it's like lived by the sword, Die
<v Speaker 2>by the sord. I think that a lot of people
<v Speaker 2>are realizing that marketing isn't the silver bullet that it
<v Speaker 2>used to be on that the new way to like
<v Speaker 2>do marketing that can actually get a game to take
<v Speaker 2>off is through influencer and is through those kind of activations.
<v Speaker 2>But then when you live by that sort of we're
<v Speaker 2>gonna be trendy on social media and we're gonna have
<v Speaker 2>a presence and we're gonna have people talk about us
<v Speaker 2>that can very easily be tainted by one wrong move.
<v Speaker 2>And boy did this game have a one wrong move?
<v Speaker 2>And it had a face to put that one wrong
<v Speaker 2>move to, and it had had a hat, It had
<v Speaker 2>a fucking dreadful aura and shitty reputation to put along
<v Speaker 2>with it, and rancid vibes. And I think people were
<v Speaker 2>just like, actually, I'm okay. Like even people who are
<v Speaker 2>on that side of the fucking spectrum, right, ultimately, they're
<v Speaker 2>just they will be like, actually, I'd rather a stable
<v Speaker 2>product than one that is constantly fighting.
<v Speaker 1>And like not even like those people that like are
<v Speaker 1>kind of like what we're referencing their bad faith people,
<v Speaker 1>like they like going in games where they can fight
<v Speaker 1>against the people they hate as well, like that all
<v Speaker 1>their stuff is based on like working backward from I
<v Speaker 1>want to get into those spaces because those are the
<v Speaker 1>real spaces, and I want to like bring my toxicity there.
<v Speaker 1>So it's like just saying like, oh, this would be
<v Speaker 1>a game for those people. They don't want that.
<v Speaker 2>Then they apologize, and then they apologize as if like
<v Speaker 2>shut the fuck up. Friday wasn't like a thing head
<v Speaker 2>to toe, Like ultimately, like the people working at that studio,
<v Speaker 2>who I am sure worked extremely hard that game. You
<v Speaker 2>look at the community and the way that the community
<v Speaker 2>talks about it, they were never happy that it was
<v Speaker 2>a sequel that was being made and it wasn't updates.
<v Speaker 2>They felt that that first game was abandoned when it
<v Speaker 2>could have been something pretty good because a sequel could
<v Speaker 2>have hit bigger. They are not happy with the changes
<v Speaker 2>that were made for the sequel and the focus on
<v Speaker 2>stuff like Battle Royale, which now like looking at numbers,
<v Speaker 2>I don't even know if you'd get enough players to
<v Speaker 2>fill a battle oil most of the time, and on
<v Speaker 2>top of that, like, yeah, the CEO is an asshole.
<v Speaker 2>So it's very hard for me to like get too
<v Speaker 2>like down about this because like, ultimately, dude, like live
<v Speaker 2>by the sword, die by the sword. Like I said,
<v Speaker 2>like you asked for this, you played with fire and
<v Speaker 2>you got burned. So it's very hard to like it's ultimately,
<v Speaker 2>there's only so much you can learn from this use
<v Speaker 2>case other than, hey, maybe don't do dumb shush and
<v Speaker 2>if you're spending a lot of money, spend it safely
<v Speaker 2>and don't do really dumb shish in a public setting.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, I don't love how secretive and silent
<v Speaker 1>and buttoned up the video game industry is. There's a
<v Speaker 1>reason that it is. It's because it usually backfires or
<v Speaker 1>it's hard to control at best, and this guy had
<v Speaker 1>no chance of controlling it. He barely knew what he
<v Speaker 1>was doing. You could tell you. It was just like
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna go make a splat, and it was a
<v Speaker 1>dumb ass move and it poisoned the whole thing. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>just just shut the fuck up. Friday applies every day
<v Speaker 1>in video games to a certain extent. If you are
<v Speaker 1>in charge of a product that you need to make appealing.
<v Speaker 1>Just let the game talk. Don't go out there with
<v Speaker 1>a dumb hat, but the problems obviously go deeper. Spligate
<v Speaker 1>two just not something that is winning many people over
<v Speaker 1>on its own merits, because there's gonna be a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people who never knew about that hat or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>You look at that suburd and I did kind of
<v Speaker 2>after that game launched out of curiosity, and people who
<v Speaker 2>would die hard fans of that first game were like, Man,
<v Speaker 2>this is a fucking bummer. This is not what I
<v Speaker 2>wanted it to be. So, yeah, it seems like a
<v Speaker 2>real fumbled bag in a lot of ways. You know,
<v Speaker 2>between this and Mind's Eye, there's been a lot of
<v Speaker 2>games releasing this year that feel like people at the top,
<v Speaker 2>with big personalities Will Collish have made decisions that might
<v Speaker 2>not be in the best interests of a good quality product.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Splitgate, was there been chatter saying wasn't that a
<v Speaker 1>relatively recent release? Yeah. I came out in twenty nineteen,
<v Speaker 1>and then it had I think it had a resurgence
<v Speaker 1>a little bit more recent over the pandemic, right exactly. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and so that's what makes it feel even more recent
<v Speaker 1>is that it really came to most people's mind during
<v Speaker 1>that resurgence. Don't worry everybody. The kid is just a
<v Speaker 1>little asshole. That's why she's me owen. She's fine. She
<v Speaker 1>just likes to cry constantly because well, she wants to
<v Speaker 1>go upstairs and beat up the twenty five pound cat.
<v Speaker 1>And he's just like, leave me alone because he's a big,
<v Speaker 1>grumpy old bastard, and she just chases him and hunts
<v Speaker 1>him around the house and she wants to go do that.
<v Speaker 1>She's obsessed with him. So that's how it's going over here.
<v Speaker 1>And she's just like whatever. She's like, yeah, we're fighting,
<v Speaker 1>this is great. What were you going to say?
<v Speaker 2>This sounds reminiscent to like your children's relationship with you.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, oh yeah. They just run up to me
<v Speaker 1>and beat me and then I'm just say, yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>what he does too. Maybe maybe you're onto something, all right.
<v Speaker 1>Last couple of stories here a report appearing at Gamescolm
<v Speaker 1>opening night Live has gotten over twenty percent more expensive
<v Speaker 1>since last year. This is from Lexi Luti at Rewinder.
<v Speaker 1>Lex you want to kind of recap this story here
<v Speaker 1>for us or do you want me to read it?
<v Speaker 2>You can read it as I pull it up just
<v Speaker 2>because I forgot what games.
<v Speaker 1>Calm Opening Night Live has quietly become one of the
<v Speaker 1>biggest live stream events on the gaming calendar after the
<v Speaker 1>demise of E three almost a half decade ago. While Xbox, Nintendo,
<v Speaker 1>and PlayStations still hold their own showcases with plenty of
<v Speaker 1>third party games in them, many publishers have given up
<v Speaker 1>holding their own events a lot you'd be Soft Connect
<v Speaker 1>or EA play Live, as it has become clear it's
<v Speaker 1>hard to get eyes on a live stream, even if
<v Speaker 1>you are one of the biggest publishers out there. What's more,
<v Speaker 1>many smaller debs and publishers have struggled to get attention
<v Speaker 1>at storefronts like Steam and the e Shop as they
<v Speaker 1>have become more cluttered. This, paired with the fact that
<v Speaker 1>there are just a lot of video games being made
<v Speaker 1>and release nowadays, means that shows where you can get
<v Speaker 1>your game in front of a lot of eyeballs have
<v Speaker 1>never been more important. For a few years there, gamescom
<v Speaker 1>had become something of a bashion for mid sized publishers
<v Speaker 1>and games that might not get picked up for co
<v Speaker 1>marketing with a console manufacturer, as it was known to
<v Speaker 1>be easier to get into and cheaper than The Game
<v Speaker 1>Awards or Summer Game Fest owing to its generally lower viewership. However,
<v Speaker 1>getting into the show has steadily become more difficult to
<v Speaker 1>get It has become more difficult to get into, as
<v Speaker 1>the price of getting stage time on the yearly live
<v Speaker 1>stream has jumped by over twenty percent since last year.
<v Speaker 1>Unlike other shows that Jeff Keeley presents, like the Game
<v Speaker 1>Awards and Summer Game Fest, the cost of getting into
<v Speaker 1>Opening Night Live is much easier to find out, as
<v Speaker 1>it's advertised publicly by Gamescom itself and a sales deck
<v Speaker 1>slideshow available on Gamescom's exhibitor section of its website. It
<v Speaker 1>can be seen that featuring on the onl's main show
<v Speaker 1>can cost from one hundred forty thousand Euro for a
<v Speaker 1>thirty second spot all the way up to four hundred
<v Speaker 1>and sixty five thousand Euro for a one hundred and
<v Speaker 1>eighty second or three minute spot on the live stream.
<v Speaker 1>Notably this Notably this is a large jump from last
<v Speaker 1>year's numbers, which I shared last year on Twitter. If
<v Speaker 1>you break it down, a thirty second tiase has gone
<v Speaker 1>up by twenty one point seven percent twenty four point
<v Speaker 1>two percent for a increase for sixty seconds, and the
<v Speaker 1>ninety second slot went up twenty five percent, and a
<v Speaker 1>two minute slot has gone up over twenty six percent.
<v Speaker 1>All right, this is the kind of thing where, let's see,
<v Speaker 1>it sounds like mostly people who pay this money find
<v Speaker 1>it to be worth it. It's that can't be universal,
<v Speaker 1>but that's got also just got to be. The main
<v Speaker 1>reason a price like this goes up is there's a
<v Speaker 1>lot of demand. That's the only way that they can
<v Speaker 1>really justify this, right, and there probably is a lot
<v Speaker 1>of demand to get into these advertised slots on onl.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's interesting. It's worth looking at that whole sales
<v Speaker 2>deck because they do outline that those two types of
<v Speaker 2>games in these shows. There's games that are deemed editorial
<v Speaker 2>and games that is deemed sponsorships. And this is something
<v Speaker 2>that like we've kind of known for a long time
<v Speaker 2>of there are games that you know, Killy and his
<v Speaker 2>team go out there and this money, right yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Cojum is never going to pay this money. And maybe
<v Speaker 2>there'll be one or two indie games a year that
<v Speaker 2>Killy plays and he's like, I really like this, I
<v Speaker 2>want this on the show. But then there is a
<v Speaker 2>lot of other games that pay for their time or
<v Speaker 2>pay for being up on the stage, and it's interesting.
<v Speaker 2>It's very hard to compare the value of these because
<v Speaker 2>if you look at Opening Night Lives viewership, last year's
<v Speaker 2>show was put up as one big long thing, so
<v Speaker 2>you can look at the entire show. So we do
<v Speaker 2>have like viewership numbers on that which is about like
<v Speaker 2>two point seven million all the previous years. The live
<v Speaker 2>stream on the official The Game Awards website or YouTube
<v Speaker 2>channels where they put them, they're all into separate sections,
<v Speaker 2>so each trailer is a separate section. You can look
<v Speaker 2>at like IGN's copy of the full VARD and Game
<v Speaker 2>Spots copy of the full VARD, but like that's not
<v Speaker 2>giving you a super accurate picture. But roughly, like The
<v Speaker 2>Game Awards is doing about fourteen million views last year
<v Speaker 2>and Opening NightLive did two point seven so it is
<v Speaker 2>like a lot less in terms of viewership, but it
<v Speaker 2>still must be enough to make an impact and to
<v Speaker 2>start like the word of mouth spreading. So it's just
<v Speaker 2>it's interesting less from the point of view of like
<v Speaker 2>is it worth it, and more so like, oh, there's
<v Speaker 2>definitely a lot of devs and publishers who are priced
<v Speaker 2>out of this now, and it's going to become more
<v Speaker 2>and more acute. Yeah, I think you'll see less variety
<v Speaker 2>in the types of games and you know where they're
<v Speaker 2>coming from. You're not going to see stuff from like
<v Speaker 2>mid size publishers for that much longer, because it's really
<v Speaker 2>hard to sell a thirty second trailer for a game,
<v Speaker 2>like a thirty second spot. It is really hard to
<v Speaker 2>sell any game in thirty seconds.
<v Speaker 1>Yep. I think that, you know where what's the recourse
<v Speaker 1>here for those developers that have been priced out? I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. I mean there are a lot of smaller
<v Speaker 1>shows now, ones that like you know, showcases for indie
<v Speaker 1>games or whatever. The you know, the future does their
<v Speaker 1>own with the two game shows, the co Wholesome Games, Wholesome.
<v Speaker 2>Games, Day of the Devs, all those different things.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and some of those, like Day of the Devs
<v Speaker 1>often gets attached to Summer Game Fest or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>So some of these make some sense, but there are enough,
<v Speaker 1>and I think there's a little bit of fatigue where
<v Speaker 1>people just aren't like tune into all tuning into all
<v Speaker 1>of these with expectations that it's going to be like
<v Speaker 1>the E three of old. So yeah, there's not a
<v Speaker 1>lot of great places to go and take your game
<v Speaker 1>and be like, well, we can't afford to be a
<v Speaker 1>Killy's thing, but maybe we can find somewhere else to go. Slots,
<v Speaker 1>despite there being a lot, they're still limited, so it's
<v Speaker 1>hard to get into those as well.
<v Speaker 2>And the problem is like sometimes the shine also comes off.
<v Speaker 2>I remember tuning in live for the Green Game showcase
<v Speaker 2>that was on the Official Game Awards channel as part
<v Speaker 2>of like Summer games Fest, and it was just AI
<v Speaker 2>trash everywhere. If you haven't watched that show, I've watched
<v Speaker 2>that whole thing. It's like a Gym and Derek skit
<v Speaker 2>is it. It feels like you are losing your mind.
<v Speaker 2>It feels like between two ferns. At some point it
<v Speaker 2>is batshish. It is worth watching that whole thing. The
<v Speaker 2>final game that they showed was season one of The
<v Speaker 2>Walking Dead.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that was that.
<v Speaker 2>One more thing.
<v Speaker 1>I still say it's still on sale. I need to
<v Speaker 1>see that because that's just such an insane thing to do.
<v Speaker 1>In twenty twenty five, people didn't get your Gym and
<v Speaker 1>Derek reference to and Derek is like when Tim and
<v Speaker 1>Eric would do like MTV Summer shows or whatever, like, uh,
<v Speaker 1>obviously just burned out weird like men that look like
<v Speaker 1>there are that are dressed like teenagers. That's the vibe
<v Speaker 1>that they went for at the Green Games thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's weird. It's weird that I get those references
<v Speaker 2>on Shot, doesn't I'm not. I never grew up with
<v Speaker 2>any of that shit. Goddam it. Shot.
<v Speaker 1>It's weird to say grew up with it, but it
<v Speaker 1>was a long time ago now, God damn it. All right,
<v Speaker 1>let's move on. Last story here. Steam payment changes is
<v Speaker 1>causing a purge of adult games from the store. This
<v Speaker 1>is from Statbird at Dual Shockers. I know I'm panicking.
<v Speaker 1>Recent games to Recent changes to Steam have led to
<v Speaker 1>a mass removal of adult games as titles in the
<v Speaker 1>store must now comply with standards set by banks and
<v Speaker 1>payment processors. This is the real reason I want to
<v Speaker 1>I'm bringing up the story. Banks and payment processors have
<v Speaker 1>been putting themselves between you and your purchases when it
<v Speaker 1>comes to any sort of adult material for quite some time.
<v Speaker 1>This is this has affected people that work in sex
<v Speaker 1>work for a long time now where it's like it's legal,
<v Speaker 1>the video sites have complied and they're they're they're cool
<v Speaker 1>with it. The content rules, the privacy policy policies have
<v Speaker 1>all lined up. We should be able to make this
<v Speaker 1>work and then the banks will go, well, I don't consent,
<v Speaker 1>so we were not going to take the money from
<v Speaker 1>the person that is trying to give you money for
<v Speaker 1>the work that you're doing. And now that's happening on
<v Speaker 1>Steam as well. Where and if this sounds like, well,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the banks have every right to do that,
<v Speaker 1>you should know that the banks are being constantly lobbied
<v Speaker 1>by you know, puritan groups to to punish people for
<v Speaker 1>their sexual proclivities. And that's what this is. This is
<v Speaker 1>now a part of that. So Steam getting caught in
<v Speaker 1>the crosshair of the culture war a little bit. And
<v Speaker 1>I just don't need banks and the people that go
<v Speaker 1>to talk to banks making decisions for me. I think
<v Speaker 1>if people don't like this stuff on Steam, they have
<v Speaker 1>tools for blocking it and hiding it. Don't buy it
<v Speaker 1>and live your life, but don't cause a situation where
<v Speaker 1>people can't sell it because the banks say so. I
<v Speaker 1>find this very frustrating.
<v Speaker 2>LEXI, Yeah, this sucks. If you want like some really
<v Speaker 2>good lud shit, just go look on Itch there's some
<v Speaker 2>great there's some great queer art out there that's real lude.
<v Speaker 2>You should you should check that out. And yeah, Evian
<v Speaker 2>Chap mentions that it's also like an avenue to censor
<v Speaker 2>LGBT content, and that's been something that has been seen
<v Speaker 2>in cinema for the longest time of oh this is
<v Speaker 2>lude and this is inappropriate and no, it's just queer
<v Speaker 2>and you don't like it. So yeah, this fucking sucks,
<v Speaker 2>And like Steam probably won't stand up to it because
<v Speaker 2>last thing they want to do, like Steam is a
<v Speaker 2>very principled egalitarian company, or will let anything on until
<v Speaker 2>there's money involved, and then they're like, actually we prefer money. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so if if they if the idea of not having
<v Speaker 2>banks process their payments is getting in the way of
<v Speaker 2>their models, I can't see Steam fighting back on this,
<v Speaker 2>which sucks because they really should.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, the the the LGBT things getting caught in the
<v Speaker 1>crosshairs isn't just like happenstance either. That is the deliberate
<v Speaker 1>purpose of a lot of those Christian groups lobbying banks
<v Speaker 1>is this is a way to police that stuff. We
<v Speaker 1>can cut off their money and that that will happen
<v Speaker 1>here on Steam as well. Now because of this frustrating,
<v Speaker 1>I guess it doesn't even begin to describe it. I
<v Speaker 1>hate this sort of thing. I just don't think companies
<v Speaker 1>should have a say and what we're able to do.
<v Speaker 1>And by uh, you know, we're supposed to be free, right.
<v Speaker 1>The whole idea is like, we're free to do stuff,
<v Speaker 1>but well, why do they Why are these corporations always
<v Speaker 1>seem like they're in charge. That's because we're not all right?
<v Speaker 1>That does it for the headlines. Let's get to the
<v Speaker 1>poll question from yesterday. Let me pull it up here.
<v Speaker 1>Are you getting Donkey Kong? But I believe is the
<v Speaker 1>last one that we did yes, and now the reviews
<v Speaker 1>are now you can still vote on this thing. This
<v Speaker 1>was from Monday. Sixty percent said yes, forty percent said no.
<v Speaker 1>You got to keep in mind that forty percent no
<v Speaker 1>number probably includes people who don't even have a switch
<v Speaker 1>to yet, so I won't I would get but I'm
<v Speaker 1>not getting an or maybe people are like imagining one
<v Speaker 1>day they will get one and we'll get this game
<v Speaker 1>and voted yes. But that's a pretty good split for
<v Speaker 1>a new game, right there. Sixty percent of the audience
<v Speaker 1>just straight up saying, yes, I'm getting that the reviews
<v Speaker 1>are probably only going to help, right lex.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, definitely sorry. Someone in chat just dropped a Mike
<v Speaker 2>Manati post in there, and you know, I gotta say,
<v Speaker 2>you guys got to stop worrying about appealing too old,
<v Speaker 2>because Mike Manati's out there appealing to the eighteen to
<v Speaker 2>twenty five demo real hard with his Don Bluth appreciation
<v Speaker 2>night stream on the official gime Bomb channel. This is
<v Speaker 2>what the kids want. I go, I hang out with
<v Speaker 2>with my with my god son, and my god's son
<v Speaker 2>won't stop begging for Don Bluth content. I love space Ace.
<v Speaker 1>You can't walk five steps outside without overhearing a group
<v Speaker 1>of children excitedly talking about Don Bluth. That's and so,
<v Speaker 1>and we have Mike Manati to cater to those people.
<v Speaker 1>So there we go, everybody. That's that's gonna be on
<v Speaker 1>Wega man tonight Wednesday evening, gaming at Mike's at night
<v Speaker 1>because his butt was herded on Monday and he couldn't
<v Speaker 1>do it.
<v Speaker 2>CEO is a wonderful thing, isn't it magical?
<v Speaker 1>It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and we are masters of
<v Speaker 1>it here at this website. All right, We'll get to
<v Speaker 1>a new poll question here in a second. Before we
<v Speaker 1>do that, though, Lex, why don't you tell people where
<v Speaker 1>they can find you on the internet what you have
<v Speaker 1>going on and all that good stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky at Lexloody
<v Speaker 2>dot x y Z and Leisure. Today I am going
<v Speaker 2>in about an hour, I'm going recording a podcast with
<v Speaker 2>the next Land of folks, So I'll be my first
<v Speaker 2>time doing a podcast with them, which will be very fun.
<v Speaker 2>I've only have a met Brad in person, but I've
<v Speaker 2>talked with Vinie a fair bit over the years on
<v Speaker 2>and off, and yeah, those those folks are awesome. So
<v Speaker 2>I'm delighted to finally do that. And you can check
<v Speaker 2>out my own work on rewinder dot co dot uk.
<v Speaker 2>We have a patron. We're putting up loads of cool
<v Speaker 2>and good stuff. You can check out more of the
<v Speaker 2>work that I kind of oversee over on Startmanu dot
<v Speaker 2>co dot uk. That is a website for helping people
<v Speaker 2>break into the games media business. Things have been a
<v Speaker 2>little quiet recently just because there's been like a small
<v Speaker 2>lull in indie game releases, and so we are hopefully
<v Speaker 2>going to get some more stuff up on there, but
<v Speaker 2>we have a biweekly podcast which I think is really good,
<v Speaker 2>and this week we will have Squidge Rugby on, who
<v Speaker 2>is a friend of mine and is a great rugby
<v Speaker 2>analyst and YouTuber and also a big Nintendo fan. So
<v Speaker 2>if you have never checked him out, do check him out.
<v Speaker 2>He's a He's a lovely guy, and yeah, everyone should
<v Speaker 2>stop watching rugby.
<v Speaker 1>Chad has been spending the last minute or two trying
<v Speaker 1>to get your name to fit in the next slander.
<v Speaker 1>They have settled on Lexlander, so there you go. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the takeover. The takeover is on.
<v Speaker 2>Game Lex Mornings and Lexlander.
<v Speaker 1>It's good Man two time in us New Paul. Do
<v Speaker 1>you like the casting for the Zelda movie? Both are great?
<v Speaker 1>Link is great, Zelda is great? Or I don't like either?
<v Speaker 1>Those are your options. I guess be nice. They look
<v Speaker 1>like they're just kids, but you're allowed to have your
<v Speaker 1>opinion at the same time, So go ahead and vote
<v Speaker 1>on that. We'll get the results and we will discuss
<v Speaker 1>it on Game Mess Mornings here on Giant Bomb tomorrow.
<v Speaker 1>Speaking of Giant Bomb, let's take a look at the calendar.
<v Speaker 1>We are going to do a Mico Punk stream here
<v Speaker 1>very soon. This is a looks like a Borderlands, but
<v Speaker 1>I've heard good things about it, so I'm gonna check
<v Speaker 1>that out with the crew here. We'll get streaming that
<v Speaker 1>here very soon, and then Blake Club returns at two
<v Speaker 1>pm Eastern, that would be eleven am Pacific time, So
<v Speaker 1>tune in to see Pimp my reker. Dan is gonna
<v Speaker 1>get dressed up and we're gonna get back into the
<v Speaker 1>action there and we'll see I have the feeling it's
<v Speaker 1>time to come a grind like.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Dan should have to dress like that for all
<v Speaker 2>the time that he plays Donkey Kong two because it
<v Speaker 2>just it gives off the same vibe.
<v Speaker 1>It does the same general like feeling of a lot
<v Speaker 1>of swagger, which Dan pulls off excellently, excellently. All right,
<v Speaker 1>my ride, LEXI I think that I think that's gonna
<v Speaker 1>do it for us. I'm gonna say thank you for
<v Speaker 1>joining me in here and talking about video games.
<v Speaker 2>I really appreciate it always that I always fun.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you all for watching as well. If you are
<v Speaker 1>watching live, stick around. We'll be back with Mica Punk
<v Speaker 1>very soon. Otherwise we'll catch you all later. You're the
<v Speaker 1>best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one,
<v Speaker 1>take care of yourself and goodbye.