GrubbSnax Ep. 09: Halo Infinite, Opening Night Live, and Winter

Yeah, yummy, yummy, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do
this. I'm Jeff grub All right over on GamesBeat dot com and I do
Grubsnext here on giant bomb dot com. Grubs Next is a show where we
talk about video games with you, said Internet. There's it's a weird week
this week because basically, we just had the big drop of news. Opening
NightLive at games Com just happened. All of the sort of things that we've
been talking about for the last few weeks. Not all of them, Many
of the things we've been talking about for the last few weeks came to a
combination last night with stuff like Marvel x com and the Horizon delay, things
that we've mentioned before. Those things, you know, okay, we can
check those off and say all right now those are off the list and confirmed
and we can move on. But that means there's not a lot of other
rumbling news happening right now. Most people were either preparing for games Com or
getting out of the way of games Com and looking to the next thing,
whenever that might be for them. So what do we have to talk about
this week? Well, I want to talk about Halo Infinant. I want
to talk about its release date. Uh, how that stuff happens when it
gets pushed into something like December. Is that we'll get We'll get into it.
Let's we'll start hearing a second, but first we'll just say thank you
everybody for joining. I really appreciate it. If you end up watching this
later in some form on you, if you listen to the podcast, or
if you are watching on YouTube. We do this live. We do it
live on Thursdays. You can come hang out with us. If you are
a Giant Bomb Premium member. You can ask questions, get involved, interact.
We've got a great audience here that always ask a ton of great questions
and and some bs I've seen so far and here, so we'll get to
that too. All right, let's let's do let's talk about this Halo thing.
So, Halo Infinitt is coming December eighth, at least that's what I
wrote down. I think pretty sure that's right. And that's after the Black
Friday holiday here in the United States, which was traditionally the time where you
would think a video game has got to be out by then, because that's
just how it's always worked. And I think the traditional thinking there was that
video games are not just the kind of thing that people go out and buy.
Sometimes it is a gift, or sometimes it's something you buy when you're
out shopping for gifts for other people, or you need to convince your mom
and your mom's going to be shopping on Black Friday or something like that.
That I mean, I think that's what the what it was, you know,
ten fifteen years ago, And obviously that's a lot of that's changed.
The audience has changed. But we'll talk about like how much that has changed
here in a second. I will just say as far as like Halo Infinite
and its development and the time it needs, it needs as much time as
it can get. I mean, we could sort of gauge that and get
those vibes just by looking at how they're talking about things, how they're presenting
things, and the fact that they are delaying features like the campaign co op
and Forge Forge mode. But like I think the campaign campaign co ops coming
three months from now or three months from the launch, I'm sorry, and
then the Forge is coming six months from launch. Uh and for me not
not the biggest deal in the world. But I get why people who are
like I've always played this this campaign co op or forge mode is how I
engage with the stuff. I get it. I don't blame you. And
obviously this is the result of this game needs as much time as possible just
to get the features it is going to ship without the door. That's why
we're getting at December eighth release date, you know, or at least that's
why they're willing to embrace this December time frame. And and so, Yeah,
games have started to launch in December more frequently. I think the the
pessimistic example is Cyberpunk, and I get that. I would point as just
as well to the optimistic example, which is something like Smash Brother Brothers.
Although both those games sold have sold pretty well. Cyberpunk's definitely fallen off a
cliff, but both have sold pretty well relatively speaking. And the idea there
is just people who go out and buying games now are buying games for themselves.
They know when stuff's coming out. They don't care if it's December or
January or Black Friday or whatever. The audience is growing up has disposed to
income and it's spending on games. When those games arrive, it won't make
much of a difference. Uh. This is why Uh, it's not why.
But you know, also in addition to pre orders, are you know,
more less important than they've ever been. Uh? That was the key
metric for a very long time. Games tend to have a longer tail.
Now that is something you see with something like Super Smash Brothers that you know,
ultimate that just keeps selling and selling. Uh. And so you could
take advantage of, especially for something like Halo, which is going to have
that free to play multiplayer component and then it's also going to be in game
Pass. You can use this as part of the ongoing conversation of why you
should either get into that free to play game or get game pass. For
a very long time, it always be are there on the service and it
will always have that potential to convince someone to you know, to engage with
the service or whatever it is. Uh. But you know, game Pass
specifically does invert the thinking of how you how you actually start selling a game
or how you ship a game. I mean, if you want to even
consider it selling. So, yeah, we had that situation where it was
Black Friday and you know, a parent is going out and shopping and they
remember, oh, we got to pick up that game and that game happens
to be here. The way things work with something like game Pass or you
know, even especially with a free to play game like the Halo Multiplayer is
people get hardware on Christmas Day or a gift giving holiday around that time,
and then they start they set up the system, they get on the TV,
and they start downloading stuff. And a lot of times they're downloading anything
that's free to play. For sure, they might sign up for a service
like game Pass, but they'll definitely do the free trial, and so they
are downloading a lot of stuff on that day. And this is something we've
seen with mobile games where the biggest day from mobile game downloads by far is
December twenty fifth. It is Christmas Day where people get new iPhones, they
get new androids, they get tablets. They open them up and then they
sit on the couch and they watch movies and then they send on the couch
with their device and they just set it up and they can just go through
the store and add a bunch of stuff, anything that's free. They they're
pretty much adding. Occasionally they're also purchasing games. But you know, the
point is is they are very very active in using the device that day and
so as long as this game, this game's out by Christmas, that's really
the key date now, you know, especially because free to play multiplayer,
but also because the game pass and free trials and all that other stuff.
So when people are opening up their xboxes on Christmas Day, Halo is gonna
be there. That's what's important. Let's see. I'm gonna try to think
there's anything else about this that I wanted to touch on. Uh. Yeah,
basically, I'm like, I got a bunch of my notes here that
I wrote down about this stuff. But yeah, I fully expect Halo to
follow that similar objectory to how mobile games have worked recently in terms of Christmas
Day engagement. And you know it's so it's this December eighth release date not
gonna hurt it. I don't think anyone is expecting it's going to hurt.
I think what's mostly happening here is people are reading into it and saying,
oh, this game does need as much time in development as possible, and
we haven't seen much from the campaign, and we've only seen the multiplayer,
and that's fine, but we've all you know, we also features are getting
delayed. So I'm worried because I'm not sure the game's gonna be good,
and that's totally fair. That's I mean. At this point, the scenario
I just laid out is in all things being equal sort of scenario where if
the game is good or solid or acceptable, this is how it plays out.
If it comes out and it's a trash fire, you can throw all
that stuff out the window, it doesn't matter, and the conversation will be
around how they should have delayed it again or yeah, but we could just
play it and find out for ourselves whether or not that's the case. And
that's kind of how I feel about it right now. And when we're talking
about possible scenarios, I think it's more fair to say this is the thinking,
This is how it could work, this how it should work in an
ideal scenario. But you know, again, if it's bad, it's bad.
Okay. I got a few other things. Opening Night Live, I
got my notes here. It's Opening Night Live. How does it work?
So? Opening Night Live is one of the Jeff Keeley joints, and Jeff
Keeley has basically set up this thing where he does multiple events per year.
Now, he has a summer game fest, he's got Opening Night Live and
the Game Awards and like these are actually like there might be another one,
honestly, I can't even remember now, but these are events where he you
know, broadcast and a bunch of games, new game announcements and attracts a
big audience and he is the gatekeeper there and basically a lot of it works
probably how you think, where there is a certain level of game, a
tier of game that Jeff Keilly very much wants to get into the show if
possible, and he has good relationships with these companies, and they want to
be a part of the show. They want to play ball. They know
that he's building a pretty decent audience and you know, and that mind shares
you don't want to ignore it, even if that means the thing that you
give him is a delay of your game. But you just you know,
if you're Sony, you shave that as here's the release date for Horizon.
That's exciting, and then when the Game Awards comes, if we need to
like get something in there, we've maintained that good relationship. Jeff Keilly is
going to be okay with working with us. This is all stuff that that
makes a lot of sense, right, But there isn't enough of those,
like really good games. I think last night's show was pretty pretty decent,
was pretty good overall. There were a lot of pretty good games. But
traditionally, normally there aren't that many games to go around, and so you
know, there's a lot of companies that then come to Killy and say,
hey, can we get into your show please? And these are smaller games.
This is a stuff that that would typically he wouldn't go out and seek,
but they are coming down and say, hey, can we get into
the show? And a lot of times Keiley is going to answer by saying,
we're booked, we're full, but here is our menu of sponsorship opportunities.
Again, stuff that you probably understand. You probably probably have a good
idea. I will say, though, like you might be wondering is that
worth it? Like how much does it cost? And is it worth it?
I'll say that the numbers, you know, they vary. A lot
of the stuff is negotiable. They have conversations. Jeff Kelly handles a lot
of the stuff himself. As far as I understand, I don't full insight
in how it works, but he handles a lot of the stuff and like
he's the point person. So when the people come to him, they're like,
well, hey, okay, I see that number. Can we talk
about some other possibility. He's amenable to that. But basically it's it's like
six figures. It's like low six figures to get into the show, and
you know, maybe into the pre show it'd be a little bit cheaper or
something like that. But the thing I've heard from people who do end up
paying these this appearance fee or whatever you want to call it, is that
it is worth it. It tends to be worth it. It's a very
good marketing bump. You have a lot of co streamers co stream in it.
That means there's that's not just people who are like co streaming and watching
at the moment. These are content creators who are watching in that moment and
registering these games as potential things to play down the line. They are more
aware of it. When the game comes out, they might be more likely
to play it, Their audience might be more likely likely to ask about it.
That stuff's important. You've got a lot of coverage sites, you know
games, we watched this whole thing. We don't watch everything. We watch
this thing. There's a chance we might write about the game and put a
news story up about it. That stuff's you know, I'm not saying that
we're invaluable, but it's hard to get that stuff. It's hard to like
get the attention of the press and content creators. Uh. And and while
I think that the you know, the fee might seem pretty high, it
tends to be pretty worth it as well, at least as far as what
I've heard. No one's like saying that they fully regret that or anything like
that. You know, you always want to take you always want to like
take that ball that Keiley's giving you by you know, say, putting your
game out there, and you want to take that ball and run with it
and capitalize on it. But uh, you know that's up to you.
And if you screw that part up a well, all right, I haven't
been looking at chat yet, so people are blinded by the white skin.
Sorry everybody, all right, let's see if there's any other things, any
other ideas from this opening late live thing I wanted to add ind to here.
No, yeah, it's worth it is the last bullet point I had
here. So yeah, uh, I think that for the most part,
Keiley is doing a good job of taking what worked with E three and shaping
into something new and something that's you know, a viable business. And you
know, he gets he gets sponsorships from Red Bull and that stuff definitely helps.
But there's always gonna be a lot of games that want attention, so
he's gonna be able to make that stuff work. And he's also really built
this agnostic platform where you can have Microsoft and Sony in the same showcase.
I bet by the time we get to the Game Awards, we'll get a
situation where two of the three of Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo will be in
the show at least maybe all three again. And that's you know, that's
rare that you don't there's not a lot of other examples where you see all
the big companies together announcing games at the same time. So him being able
to pull that off is going to make that very valuable. It's the kind
of thing where if E three does go away, everyone around everyone in the
industry is looking and saying, Okay, we have a very good alternative here.
So if the EESA completely ships the bed and is continues to be as
incompetent as it has been, no one's gonna freak out too much because while
the E three branding is very important, everyone understands that the audience that's paying
attention to this stuff is very savvy and would understand and say, hey,
we can't take the E three name because ESA won't play ball with us.
But we're just all going to shift over here to this other thing that has
already been established in the same time frame in summer game fest, and we'll
all be good. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm pretty I think a lot
of company, a lot of companies are feeling pretty confident about that. Okay,
so oh let's see. Oh yeah, I'm getting a little bit of
dropped frames. Let me see here real quick, everybody, let me uh
see if I can adjust anything. Man, it was going so good for
so long. I'm going to try to see if there's anything on my WiFi
that might be causing issues. You're on my network, I should say,
yeah, it looks like it might be coming back. We'll see. I
You know what the thing is, The good news is when we start doing
this a little bit earlier, the show tends to run a little or the
internet tends to run a little bit better. In the morning, I think
there's fewer people. You're actually using it in the morning, and that helps.
It's just Comcast, you know. Okay, I think we're all right.
I think it's all right. Okay, let's keep going. So I
have a couple of questions that were asking to me anonymously, and again,
if if you want to ask questions, you can always hit I'm breaking stuff
now. You can always hit the ask a question button at the top of
the page over here on giant bomb dot com slash chat. That's completely that's
what you can always do that. But you're you're you know, you're giant
Bomb. Use your name pops up there, and for some reason, you
want to keep your any of your names off of the Internet, off of
this show, you could reach out to me, send me a DM directly
on Twitter. My dms are open. I'll try to check them when I
can, and I got a couple this week and I'll ask them or oh
yeah, I start answering them right now, and then we will get to
the questions here that have been asked very quickly. Let's do it, okay,
So, again, this is a from anonymous. I'm curious to know
if you've heard from any developers about what it's like to work with ten Cent
or in other words, have you heard about developers working with ten Cent being
affected by China censorships in any way? And he says the extreme case is
of course Red Candle's Devotion. So I think Devotion like didn't work with ten
Cent directly. I think that's the big point here is that in most cases,
most developers are fine when they get the investment from ten Cent. They
just take the money and they continue to operate in the way that they always
have. That's not just like the way that ten Cent works, It's the
way a lot of Chinese investment firms work, where they don't like to be
very hands on. They like to be in the back background. They like
to just give money and get out of the way. They have a lot
of money and they just want to make a lot of investments, and they
spend most of their effort on finding new investments, new ideas that could you
know, play out really well in gaming and have a big effect that way.
They don't want to get into the nitty gritty of controlling companies themselves.
Now that's not to say if a company came out and made a game about
how you know, made a game about like Taiwan being in an independent country,
or if they made a joke about Jing jing Ping like I can't I
can't remember his name now, but looking like Winnie the Poo or whatever that
stuff. I'm sure that would maybe cause some issues, but that would cause
issues for any game, whether you have investments with ten Cent or not.
And the reason is, and I think the thing with Devotion is there's a
lot of people in China who when they see that, they just are trying
to stay good with the party there. And I think with Devotion, they
like downvoted that game, they gave it poor reviews on Steam, and so
it's just sort of this thing that's kind of happy naturally whether or not you
have any investments from ten cents. So and you know a lot of companies
do have investments from ten Cent, and I will come up with examples of
companies giving in to pressure even when they don't have money from directly from China.
Problem is like you think, like, oh, you know, Blizzard
gives in, gave into China about you know, Hong Kong and that issue
with blitz Chung, but they have an investment from Activision. It's like six
percent owned by ten cent or something like that. So not a good example,
but I think whether or not they had that investment, I believe that
thing would have gone the exact same way. Where really, this is just
the nature of investment. When someone gives you their money and they invest in
you, and they buy you know, five ten percent of you, they
still don't have much of a say over anything, and and really, like
your concern like with with them, has nothing to do with like, Okay,
they gave us that money, now we have to do what they say.
No, they gave you that money, now you need to go make
more money. And that's the actual focus of what should happen here, And
that's the agreement that most companies and most sides of this equation agree upon.
And the effects of Chinese censorship will be felt in the industry, whether that
investments there or not, because China is such a huge market and some people
will will ignore it, and some people will find ways around it, and
some people will not care. And I applaud that, But in many situations,
especially when you're dealing with giant corporations, they are not gonna want to
give up any relationships they have with China, and they're much more worried about
the person on the end buying the game being upset or the regulators being upset
and not allowing the game into China than about worrying about who gave them money.
Already they already got that money. But the short answer there to kind
of wrap that up is I wouldn't worry about that too much. The ten
cents is not coming in and enacting the censorship themselves. Take the money if
you if if like you're in a situation that's saying that you would be.
But like if a developer was in a situation where they're like, hey,
you know, are we gonna decide to take this money or not? Will
we be? Will we feel reprisals if if if you know, if we
mess up or screw up with some way in terms of Chinese censorship, you're
gonna feel that anyway. Just take that money and figure it out, like
get paid. Okay. This other one's from anonymous Psychoonauts two is a game
that had that was crowdfunded and slash invested on fig with people at a certain
level hoping to receive a return on their investment. Let me explain that real
quick. So if you are unaware Psychoonaut two was a game before Microsoft bought
Double Find the developer. It was crowdfunded, but it wasn't crowdfunded on Kickstarter.
It was crowdfooted on a platform called FIG, and FIG used a not
a loophole, but a new law that enabled anyone to sort of invest in
anything. Instead of like having to go through like a brokerage firm or prove
like improve your or to prove your income to the government, you could just
invest and get a return on something. And it just opened up access to
that concept of investing and getting in return to many more people. And figs
like, well, we're gonna set it up so people who do invest in
these games can that that it's it's not just like you're back in it.
It's not like you're just donating your money. You are buying an actual investment
that you expect to see a return on in this game. So if the
game is profitable, you will get your money back plus some It's a it's
a cool idea, it's worked out. FIG is kind of like it's still
I think it's still going. And there's been there's definitely been success success cases
where games have made money and developers had paid out, you know, paid
out to UH, to the to the investors on fig and people have made
a return. I don't think there's any been anything where it was massive.
But in a world with you know, point two percent interest rates or whatever
you're savings account, like you'd barely make any money from that or whatever.
Anywhere where you could put some money and see a significant return of like three
to fifteen percent, that's pretty good. So this question basically is Microsoft acquired
Double Fine and psychoedouts two and then they released the game on game Pass?
Does this mean that the people at the investor level are now going to lose
out on potential sales that will be going to people who just played the game
free on game Pass? And then the next question is do the investor level
people get a percentage of however Microsoft pays out developers four game passed downloads.
So Microsoft bypassed all of these issues. They just when they purchased Double Fine,
they just paid out the investors then. So I don't know how big
the return was, but I'm pretty sure they made a profit. I'm pretty
sure. I think so On linked to me to the story and I'm meant
to read it, and I didn't actually read the details, but Microsoft did
bypass this. They just paid out the investors already and said, hey,
now we are, this deal is complete, you've seen your return, and
now we're gonna go do our thing. And so they just avoided the problem
problem entirely. Okay, let's get to the other questions here, let's do.
Let me hit this button. All right, let's go for it.
I'm gonna scroll down a lot of questions, folks, but we'll get into
it right down here. Slam mc awesome. Starting off pretty pretty salty,
pretty uh snippy with when does winter start? So if you missed it this
morning, I had a little bit of a meltdown getting mad at people because,
uh, basically the argument was Microsoft said Halo was gonna launch in the
fall, which I don't know if they've ever actually said that, I've heard
I've only ever heard holiday. But that's beside the point. Basically, they're
saying Microsoft said they're gonna release in the fall, but it's coming December eighth,
and that's not the fall. And then people are like, oh,
well, what people are being pedantic saying fall starts December or winter starts December
twenty one, So it's still fall in December eight, and then people are
trying to say that that's silly. No matter what you, no matter what
reality is, winter starts on December first, And then that's when I lost
my mind. It's like, well, look, okay, just go read
my Twitter threat about this, ran about this if you want to get like
the fun take. But I'm not too upset. If in your personal life
you want to start treating December first as winner, I'm fine. I don't
care. I'm watching Halloween videos almost non stop right now, and it's still
months from Halloween here here, everywhere, because I have kids and they love
Halloween, so we watch Halloween videos all year round. I don't I don't
care. But if someone says they're going to do something in the fall and
it's still literally fall, and you go, well, it's not fall to
me, you're just a crazy person. You're just weird. You're just a
weird guy on the internet, at that point, stop it from Nylock.
Is there any truth to the rumor that WWE and two K are not happy
with each other? Yeah, I don't have there was a good story about
this. I don't have as good at insight as that story. But yes,
uh, Vince McMahon likes money and he doesn't. It doesn't care what
like what people feel about the product. If the game coming out at a
certain time made money in the past and it hasn't really slipped up too much
with that, they just kind of want to keep seeing that happen over and
over. The spreadsheet looks good one way, they want to keep the spreadsheet
looking that way, and so two k wanting to to take the opportunity to
delay the game. Yes, it's causing in friction. Oh my god,
this is funny. I went I was googling Swatch internet time, and of
course the bomb cast the first thing to come up. All right, I
fixed it, I fixed it. We're back. Let me bring up the
all right, we're good. I think I lost a bunch of the US
though, everybody, so ask them again. I think, all right,
from Mike Acid, is Blue Point doing a metal Gear Solid remake? What's
Blue Point up to? Uh? I don't know, I don't know.
I wish I knew. I hope it's a metal Gear Solid remake. I
think I think that's what I hope for I mean for me, Meddle Gear
Solid still holds up. The first one's still great. It's still game I
want to play all the time. It doesn't necessarily need a remake, but
I'll take one, and I think they could do a good job with it.
I think that'd be I think that would be a good use of Blue
Points talent from Dark Star Pug. The three cycle development rotation of Call of
Duty felt like a proper decision for an annual franchise. With that being derailed,
what is your opinion on the quality and sanity of development going forward?
How I mean, I didn't you know. It was like they each got
at least one orbit, maybe two orbits, and then it kind of fell
apart. So, uh, it was good. It was a good idea,
but if anything, like if anything goes wrong, one of the other
studios is going to have to be ready to step up. So you're in
a situation where, no matter what you like, you think you have three
years, but there's a possibility that you're gonna you're only gonna have two years
and you're gonna have to just go. Uh that's got to be pretty stressful,
I would imagine. Uh. I mean, we'll see, we'll see
how this game does and see if they keep doing the three three team strategy
going forward. I wonder if if Activision just is that that's a big thing.
What's happening in Activision right now is they are just like trying to build
the Ubisoft model of of three main studios and then just a ton of support
studios who are always working on these three games at the same time and just
chugging stuff out, and and until they've really iron out how that that business
flow works, they're going to continue looking like a hot mess. But my
hunch is that the sanity and quality are both probably taking a dive, and
that's a shame from Chile ninety two. Do you think we'll see more of
Nintendo handing their ips to any dev's like cadence of High Rule. Yeah,
we will. I mean, if you really look at the way Nintendo works,
Nintendo has a few internal studios, but then it works with a ton
of external teams on everything, and it's a little bit different even than just
the traditional support studio where where it's like actually a Nintendo. Yeah. Uh,
Sakarai is in charge of Smash Brothers, But I pretty I think was
it Namco band died that was handling the development on that one or was it
a I think that's right, but like, yeah, they have like another
team, external team doing most of the work on the game, and that's
true for many of theirs. I mean even with Zelda Breath of the Wild,
they had the Zeno Blade team doing a ton of work on that.
So it's the kind of thing where they are already looking for ways to use
these franchises and make sure that their franchises keep coming back. I mean,
we got Advanced Wars coming from way forward, so it's another example right there.
Now, it's not exactly what you mean, I think where you're like
Caden's High Roul was this cool spin of an existing indie game using one of
those biggest franchises, and will we see more of that? I think the
path that they're on of working with more external studios and working with more indie
devs and having really good relationships with indie devs right now will lead to that.
I think it's a kind of inevitable, but I would have expected also,
Like I think I was saying the same thing when Cadence the high Ul
came out, and we haven't seen a ton yet, so maybe they're just
getting a slow start. Or maybe they don't agree with us all right from
viral reign any word on the aw game release date, details, etc.
Nothing right now, But I think we should be hearing more stuff soon.
I They're like, they were being pretty quiet about that stuff for a little
bit, but I think they're gonna be ready to talk about it soon based
on what I'm hearing from our rules. Hi, Jeff, since I'm an
ex com fanboy, can you reveal more about Marvel for Axis now that the
trailer has dropped? So? Yeah, I think not too much more.
I think I will say that it's when I was trying to parse the information
that we were getting, it was definitely got conflated with like saying, oh,
the game wouldn't have any Marvel superheroes. And we came back to the
week after all those stories happened, when it was based on what I said
on grub Snacks, and we clarified and said, no, it almost certainly
is going to have Marvel superheroes. But the point is that the team that
you're controlling isn't going to be a team of Marvel heroes. You're gonna customize
that stuff and it's gonna be who whatever you want. Now I think that
I got conflated there. What it sounds like is you are creating one custom
character that isn't an existing Marvel superhero, and maybe in a fire emblem style,
you are controlettes like your character that's like you in the universe, and
then you will have other Marvel heroes that you work alongside of and probably control
on battle almost certainly. And and then the way that they described it as
an RPG and stuff, I wonder if there are like relationship mechanics. You're
probably not going to be able to bone Wolverine, but you know, you
might be able to like build a bond with him or whatever, and that
be something cool. But yeah, I think this is this is what I
heard before. You know, it's Midnight Suns, which is I'm not I
wasn't familiar with Midnight Sun spelled son. This one's Suns, but I wasn't
familiar with with either before this. But so when I mentioned that this was
going to be a supernatural take and have vampires, people like Mike Williams over
at PC mag was like, oh Midnight Sun, I'm like okay, sure,
yeah, And that turns out that's exactly what it is. So Yeah,
very much focused on supernatural stuff. Vampires. Blade is obviously a big
part of it, and and I think that there's a chance that it could
yea end up feeling a lot like Fire, Fire and Blom with obviously still
a lot of x COM All right, from Hammond of Texas, What was
the deal with the Best Game Awards going to unreleased games? During the opening
night live? What were these? What were those for? Who voted for
those? Jeff G, Jeff B and Jan were very confused. Uh yeah,
I'm I was pretty confused too. I'm actually trying to find out exactly
how those work, but basically they work in the same way that like a
three Awards work. Where I mean, I do know that the games that
were nominated submitted ten minutes of video gameplay to games Com as part of this
thing, and then I asked for who was the panel that reviewed them?
No idea, but yes, so people were looking at ten minutes of video
of stuff like elden Ring, which we didn't see, but people some people
have seen it and they voted on it, and that's why it won PlayStation
Game of the Year or something like that, which unreleased games. It's a
weird phrasing. But it's very much just set up in the same way that
you would see an E three award on a booth or whatever. So and
why this stuff happens. I imagine that maybe at least the people putting into
this thing together imagine that it's a little bit easier to get some companies to
participate if you tell them you're giving them an award. But in terms of
like watching it, it was so incongruous with everything else. It was so
non sequitor and odd, and it felt like it was coming from another universe,
like when that lady would break in and start reading off awards. It
was weird for sure. From Demi god Raven, Hello, mister sack Snacks,
what sort of social media campaign do we have to go on in order
to get a new SSX or burnout out of EA? Now that it seems
like they're tentively acknowledging old IP again, I mean it. I'm one who
always says, like, if you're loud about stuff, that makes way more
of a difference than you than even like, you know, voting with your
wallet. These days, it's hard to get people organized to vote with their
wallet. But if you're loud enough on social media you can make Skate four
happen. I think that they're if think if yeah, if you get a
social media campaign, if you get a bunch of people to like always tweet
about SSX or burnout, something might happen there. I would imagine SSX has
a slightly better chance than burnout right now, just based on eas pretty set
with how they're doing their car stuff, like they think me for speeds more
available than burnout, and then they have code masters doing all their stuff,
and all their stuff is licensed and like with like certain you know, F
one or whatever, So they're probably not gonna find room for burnout. But
SSX maybe has a chance. From mister Reese, I've asked this before,
but is Evil Within Evil Within debt as a series. I know two didn't
do well, but with the continued success of Resident Evil, it seems worth
another try. I mean, it's something that we're just gonna have to revisit
after Tokyo Ghost Wire and see, like where that studio is. I think
I think even Within three might make a lot of sense after that. I
think that Even Within could have a resurgence revitalization if it gets a third game
and people go back and say, hey, this first one's kind of cool
and the second one's actually really good. I think I think there's a chance
for that. But let's see how Tokyo Ghost Wire does. Because if Tokyo
Ghostwire comes out and is a hit, I think they might go in that
direction instead. From Doctor m Too, the j is Death Stranding not coming
to Xbox Dad Phil Spencer's shelf fool me again, I don't think it's coming.
I mean, at least not in anytime soon. I think it would
have to take quite I mean, they're doing the Game of the Year or
whatever it's called the director's cut on PS five right now. They're gonna do
that, and if anything's gonna happen with that game coming to Xbox, it'll
be quite some quite some lay down the line. But Sony published that game,
and uh and so yeah, I don't think it's too indicative. I
think that I think Phil Spincer's shelf, while he does have a lot of
stuff on there that that you can read into, has as having meaning.
It's not like one to one Death Stranding on the shelf that means Death Strand's
coming to Xbox. It doesn't work that way. It's like, no,
Phil Spencer visited Kojima and got the Ludin statue and got Death Stranding a copy
of Death Stranding as a gift, and he put it up on a shelf.
I mean a lot of that stuff on the shelf really are gifts from
those companies. I mean that's not I still think that you know that you
could. I think maybe he doesn't intentionally mean it to do that stuff.
Maybe it's just like he doesn't. He's like, this is my gift shelf,
this is where I put stuff. But a lot of times he's getting
those gifts because he's visiting Kojima because they're having negotiations. So it's still indicative
from Comrade Corpulin. What is Netflix's plan with gaming stuff? Do you think
that this will extend past a couple of mobile games? I thought it was
going to be streaming games and just confused what their goal actually is. It's
you know, they're gonna start small and they'll find a way in more and
more stuff if it continues to make sense. But their goal is very data
driven. This is what we talked about when we first talked about this topic.
Is Netflix six was its success? Wasn't just about uh, you know,
right place, right time. It very much worked backwards from the data
and said this is what's working, and this is how we're going to make
the most money, and so let's go forward. Or this is how we're
going to get the most subscribers, and so they're gonna get right now.
I think they're looking at the data and saying, we have a lot of
people on the platform who are interested in games, and they spend a lot
more time on Netflix when they when we have gaming related content, why wouldn't
we just bring in gaming itself? And I think that that's the long term
plan there is to appeal to those people and appeal to audiences that are like
maybe thinking about like, oh, you know, game Passes maybe too hardcore
for me, where I would love the idea of having like a gaming service
that's similar to Netflix, but I go on game Pass and I got to
use two sticks for a lot of these games. That's too much for me.
Not I'm not talking down anybody to anybody, but there's that audience out
there. It's like sort of gaming curious but also wants to be able to
play games with like a remote on their TV or something like that. And
maybe that's probably what Netflix is going to do for quite some time, So
we'll see. And yeah, right now it's going to be mobile stuff from
Cosmic Cats the way. With the success question mark of Pokemon Unite and Ginchen
Impact, do you think we'll see more marketing of Chinese games in the West.
Yeah, yes, absolutely. I think that these games have some issues
in terms of their structure. We talked about this with Pokemon Unite, where
you know, Chinese audiences are more okay with pay to wins, so you
bring that stuff here and it creates a little bit of a stir. But
is it ultimately is that causing any problems to the game or is the fact
that it's just another MOBI is that the real problem? But the point is
is that we are more open to international concepts and influence than ever, and
if China wants to release some games here, we'll be open to it.
So I think that we're probably not going to get the fifteen Journey to the
West games. You know that they release every year over there, probably not
all of them, but like the big ones we might get and uh,
and I think there will just be like, hey, I think there's an
audience here that would be that knows what Journey to the West is and would
love to have those those things. So yeah, this is going to be
more and more of a thing going forward. Uh talking Beduf, which one
of one of my favorite names. Uh, door Nath couldn't make it,
but they wanted us to ask if there's any news collections literally anything about Mega
Man Battle Network franchise, the twentieth anniversary coming up. I don't think so.
And if anything, I mean, they just put out that mobile game,
right at least I'm getting answer for that mobile game. So that's my
take on it. But and then I don't think that's the Mega Man or
Rockman match game that was in the hack. That's still schedule for twenty twenty
two. So if Rockman matches, subtake on that maybe, but I don't
think so. We'll see. And yes, Journey to the West is basically
Dragon Ball. It's like basically a lot of stories that you see from from
from the East. Basically in the same way that every single game from the
West is a sad Dad game, every single game from the East is a
Journey to the West. Okay, from Domcats, any word on Death Stranding's
d DC. Uh, maybe DLC coming to PC. I want new fun
in various new features, or whatever the hell it's said. I don't know.
I'm sure it will eventually. It's going to be the same sort of
schedule where you know, a year later was it, or like a few
months later it comes to PC. It'll come to PC like six months later
or something from the Blue Bomb with the news of only fans reversing course on
their porn band after like two days. What was the shortest time you've seen
between a decision by a game company and a reversal of that decision. This
one's easy. We saw it just you know, a little bit ago.
It was Xbox Live Goals is gonna be doubled in price twelve hours later.
Oops, nope, wait no, we didn't mean that. Oh my god,
Please please don't get this mad at us. It's not that important to
us. It is not worth all this. It's not worth you thinking that
we're going to do the same thing with game Pass. Please please, We're
we're gonna go back to the normal pricing. And also we're gonna make the
free to play stuff actually free so you can just access that stuff. So
it's just like we were always going through, but we're gonna move it up
and do it faster, and our engineers are kind of mad at us.
But oh well, and yes, Xbox Live Goal still eventually going to be
free. I'll keep saying it because it's true. From g Valo according to
hobby labby winter. According to hobby latter winter was mid August. That's when
Christmas decorations came out. Yeah, listen again, I don't that's I don't
care about that that much. I do think it's fine. I am definitely
considering going and getting a pumpkin spice latte because I'm basic, okay, But
I'm not gonna go like if someone's like, oh man, it's this is
a hot summer, I'm not gonna be like, well, I'm sipping a
pumpkin spice latte. So actually it's fall. That would be lunacy, would
that's my only point. That would just be madness. The point is is
that the words existed because of the Earth's relation to the ship of the Sun.
So the Earth tilts, and as it moves around the Sun, that
tilt gets a certain amount of sun in a certain area is and the energies
and at a certain point the day is the shortest it's going to be all
year, and that's the day winter starts. And then eventually we got the
Hallmark Channel and peppermint drinks and Christmas lights and Christmas movies, and people are
like, well, I want that stuff to start around November time, and
so at least by December, and so that's winter. It's like, okay,
well I don't care, but that no, it's the word means whatever.
Can't take it. From Canadian Toast Zombie, a co worker of mine
is convinced there is a new Banjo Kazooi game in development. I want to
believe, but the consequences of being wrong are too painful. Please help.
I don't. I don't think a new Banjo Kazooi's in development. And this
is like one of those those themes that we hit every single week, and
last week I felt we hit it over and over and over. Who would
make it? Who out there could make this game? They are rares not
gonna make it. Double Fine doesn't want to make it. And while I
think Double Fine has proven with Psychoonauts too they could do something very good with
that franchise, they don't want to make it. They want to do their
own things, and that's why you've got double Fine in the first place.
And it's one of the things that's like agreed upon at Microsoft is you're gonna
be able to do your own things a lot of in a lot of cases.
So excuse me, but you have to bring in a third party external
development team, and all of them are busy too. Who would make this
game? It's just it's it's not it's not as easy as that. How
do you feel about the concept of Dog Years? I think it's fine and
fun and silly. Uh my cat is is actually ten years old, and
I don't need to do the math to realize that that's old for a cat.
But if you want to do that, that's fine. I have a
zero problem with that and probably will do it myself again someday, like I'll
buy Oh, He's yeah, it's not that big a deal from Devil Strip.
Was Bug's Next a success for young horses? You think we see more
of it as DLC or as a sequel. I think Bucks Next was a
success. You know, it kind of helps when you are associated with the
launch of a new console. That definitely makes you. It gives you,
It raises your profile and helps a lot. I think it did pretty well
on Epic. It still has a launch on Steam coming right. I think
we're gonna go see a Steam launch this holiday, which I think is an
okay word to use for whether you mean November or December. So yeah,
I think it was successful. I don't know if it's I think it's probably
a little bit different, Like it's a little bit more expensive than Octo Dad
ever was, so it probably doesn't need to sell quite as well. Octodad
was definitely like sort of like a meme driven game or where like adopted by
a lot of content creators to make funny videos, and that always helps.
But bucks next, you know, it's it's got a high profile. A
lot of people know about it, so it did well. From pussive.
Have you have you played Death Loup yet? How do you like it?
I haven't. I guess a lot of people have been playing it. I've
been busy. I was on vacation. I think that's when a lot of
people were playing it. It's like they or at least they were setting up
their times to play at them. But I'm excited. I'm hearing more and
more good things about it. So it sounds like my jam. I'm a
huge Hitman fan, and I like arcade arcane games, although I haven't ever
like given myself over to one or anything. But if you combine arcane stuff
with a Hitman style structure and it's more like an open world where like you
are going through and or like Hitman and Mature's mask, that sort of thing
like that sounds cool to me. I definitely want to see if that works.
Now, we'll have to see if the style holds up. I had
some like grimaces at the humor and a couple of the trailers, but I
find that when I feel that way about a game and a trailer it has,
it usually has almost nothing to do with how I feel when I'm playing
the game. Context really matters with that stuff, and I need to be
in the context to fully appreciate those things. So I always try to hold
my reservations until that point, at least on that sort of thing. Slane
mcawsome with another question, what Switch Games should have won the Games Comm Award?
What game did win the Games Comm Award? I don't I was like
half paid attention because I was writing during it, so I don't know.
But U Metroid dread was that nominated. I have no idea from timoneous,
how long do you expect this console generation to last this time around? We
already have the precedent of half step consoles, and this genus stumbled out the
gate with people who can't get consoles and game delays? Is this the fabled
ten year cycle? So it's definitely not five years? But what generation has
been five years in the last, you know, multiple generations? Now we
haven't one of the things that like I always get weird out, not weird
at, but like frustrated with with gamers and the way they look at things.
It's one of the things I don't like about if man, I'm want
to like a thing with semantics today. But the Generation nine and Generation eight,
like all that wording, all that stuff. It's just like gaming and
console releases are way messier than people want to admit. They want to put
stuff in these neat little boxes of a console comes out five years later,
we're replace it with something new. But the the PS three and Xbox three
sixty generation was like, what eight years and this last generation was seven years?
Right, So I would it's at least this one is at least going
to go seven years. I think it's probably gonna go eight years more than
likely, whether or not there was a pandemic and delays or whatever whatever else.
And I guess I could see it going nine years before a new console.
I could. There's a couple of things happening there. Yes, the
pandemic isn't is a part of that. But three oalities is like, this
thing's a kind of like a rubber band where Okay, yeah, we're stretching
things out from because we need to take more time to make these games and
and we're gonna delay stuff that even like it might be ready because we're just
not sure or whatever, and uh and developments causing development's difficult. But that
stuff stretches out and at a certain point it just snaps back into place because
the market demands. With the market demands, and if we need to be
putting on games at a certain pace and we need the people like feel a
certain way about these consoles down the line and we need to replace them.
Well, and that's just how people feel. And it's not like, you
know, the research and development teams at these companies, well yeah, they
might be like, Okay, let's assess the world, and there is this
chip shortage. Okay, we know about that stuff, but we're gonna keep
doing our jobs and keep looking forward. So we're gonna get the next generation
ready no matter what happens in the world, and we'll figure it out as
we have to. But the thing that I think is actually more the bigger
reason why this generation is gonna last longer is this hardware is good. This
hardware is good. Last generation hardware was bad the Xbox One in the PlayStation
four. And I'm sure I've said this on this show before, but I
have a YouTube video up about it in a game speat story. The hardware
last generation was garbage. It was terrible, laptop hard drives, slow,
netbook basically CPUs, and and then like amdgpus from a time when AMD was
not making very good GPUs, and so the general like we felt like,
I think we got into a rut where're like, this is just what gaming
is now, and we're just gonna keep getting stuff that looks slightly slightly prettier
and maybe next game we'll get sixty frames per second and we're gonna get sixty
We already got sixty frames per second in the same kinds of games that we've
had, we aren't going to get games as this generation goes on that really
expands what gaming can be using simulation and AI in ways that they never could
before, because now we have really solid eight course CPUs that can handle this
stuff and actually compute things for once. And so we're gonna get to a
situation where we're like like, oh, this feels like a whole new thing
in gaming on these consoles, and that's going to be able to expand the
generation as people riff on those ideas and release sequels that can easily run on
this hardware for many years to come. Sou And that's like throwing out the
idea of a possible mid midgen revamp revamp, which I still don't know.
I think there's a chance that we get one, but almost certainly we'll get
the old Xbox three sixty style revamps, which were bigger hard drives, So
we'll get bigger s SDS, slim versions, stuff like that, so they'll
keep this generation going for quite some time. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
go to this. Okay, this is the next question from Bison Hero is
the Carl jobs to Wada slash Heritage reporting responsible reporting. The associations seem improper,
but jokes to sources are ultimately some sec filings and YouTube game collecting hobbyists.
The accusations seem like speculation with no hard evidence. Yet I watched that
video, so people aren't aware. Carl Jobs is a YouTuber, a popular
YouTuber who put up an investigation of what's going on in the tro game market.
And you know, the games are selling for one million dollars, two
million dollars. They're not worth that. And and I watched it, and
I generally agree with at least some of the uh kind like the things that
he agreed upon, which were, like, there are some slime balls at
these companies trying to promote the idea that games are worth a lot more money
than what a lot of people previously agreed upon. And uh And you know,
speculators create in bubble and and and when you look at these people and
look into it into their past, they have definitely their sleeves balls who have
definitely tried to do this in the past, and too into some instances,
they've done it in ways that went against FTC regulations. So there are reasons
to be skeptical, and there are reasons to you know, to you know,
say, hey, someone should look into this, someone should be investigating
this stuff. And you know, I've started doing it a little bit,
but I think that what really needs to happen is the FTC probably should look
in. But I'll stay watching that video. I was throughout it saying I
couldn't I couldn't write in a story. I couldn't print many of the claims
that Jokes was making, and I can't think of any exact examples right now,
but it's you know, he was using like hearsay from someone's son,
a secondhand story to say to to you know, put in a real what
would be a potentially libelious claim about uh if you know, if the person
wants to try to sue them about like oh he sells his own stuff in
the heritage auction now is to boost up the price of the things he owns.
And maybe the guy does that, But what the evidence for it was
a story that a son heard from a dad, and that's in the video,
and that's I mean, that's shaky grounds. I would never be able
to print something like that, and I think that's actually that's pretty but that's
how I would characterize a lot of the video, which is there is a
lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of like hmm, that makes your chin
scratch that that's weird. Not a lot of direct accusations of specific criminal acts.
Not a lot. There's some, not a lot, but and then
or even like unethical acts stars definitely more unethical x than criminal, but still
there's not a lot there, and a lot of it's just like working backward
from knowing the audience doesn't like what's happening here, and the audience is a
lot of gamers who do care about games and consider themselves true gamers, and
then here comes this video saying these aren't real gamers. These are fake gamer
guys coming in and speculating to make money on you the hobby that you love
and bloy that works really well. That's very for an audience that wants to
hear that. They're like, god, damn it, someone needs to do
something about this. And again I appreciate that, and for the most part,
I agree. I just think that specific video is maybe more manipulative than
a lot of people are realizing at first glance. But people should look into
this. I'll continue looking into it. I have started. I think people
should be loud and say, hey, FTC, you've looked into this before.
Heritage Auctions is well known for being pretty slimy, so why not look
into this too. And I think if you can get the FTC's attention to
do that, I think that would be a great thing. They would be
able to have the power of subpoena and stuff like that. So we'll see.
I'm wanna I watched that video last night wanting to talk about it on
here more. But when I got through it, I'm like, Okay,
I need to actually kind of look into a lot of this myself. So
that's where I'm at with them from Bane fire Lord, Hey, Jeff,
any idea if there's a chance death Loop comes to PC Game Pass before the
PC PS five exclusivity window closes, or is the deal more of a no
Microsoft period arrangement. It's going it's probably not going to come to get PC
Game Pass before the PS five exclusivity window. And I think we know that
because when we look we saw we saw a contract not too long ago,
I think with Capcom or something like that, one of those things we're like,
hey, we're gonna get you onto PS plus or something like that.
I don't know what exactly was, but it was in exclusivity agree and and
there it's like, hey, you can't go on any subscription service. This
is just basic stuff in our contract. If we're paying you money, here's
our stipulations. And that means no subscription service anywhere else period. I would
imagine that the same thing applied here. So yeah, uh yeah and bisn
hero, thank you for your question about what I I'm glad I had a
chance to at least bring it up to go back to that real quick.
Don't don't get hung up on the idea of like what a thing is worth,
because when you when something sells are two million dollars and you're like,
it's not worth that. It's not worth a thousand dollars. Guys, it's
just plastic. I have the room for free on my PC I got.
I could say if you want to know where to get it, I can
tell you where to get it. That's how much it's worth. I mean,
they're not selling these games and stores anymore. You can go experience it
yourself, right net, Like it's just a piece of plastic. And and
if you want to say, okay, someone's minute related in this market.
All markets are manipulated, and I think that's one of the other issues I
had with that video. It's like it's classifying what is marketing as propaganda and
market manipulation. You're allowed to say if you think something is worth something like
it's very hard to prove market manipulation because exactly because this, if you get
invited onto CNBC and they ask you, what do you think video games are
worth? Even if you have like interest in this stuff, you're allowed to
say you think they're worth more if that's your honest opinion, and it's very
hard to prove that you don't believe that, and really you're just doing that
to make more money. On the other side, for one thing, there's
good evidence that you do think it's worth more because you're investing in it with
the purpose of making money. That would suggest you do believe it's going to
be worth more. So it's very hard to prove market manipulation that it's not
worth getting hug up on that stuff. The self dealing though, that side
of things, I would think that's that's the key here. But as far
as like trying to go down a road of like sand, there is a
specif there should be an honest market where these things, I mean, there's
no such thing. It's no such thing. All this stuff is just like
the age old scam of capitalism just coming to our hobby. And that sucks.
It feels terrible, but that's what it is. It's just speculators are
invading our space. We've kept them out for a long time for the most
part, and now they're here and they're ruining everything and just like they've ruined
everything else, and it sucks. But that's just that's the reality. That's
the environment that we exist in. I don't know what else to do about
it. Not right, Sorry, I'm like, I've like a lot of
feelings about that. From Game Zombie. Are there any updates on io interactives
James Bond game Project seven? No, it's too early. It's still real
early early for that stuff. They're working hard on it. It'll take several
years before we see it though, So Yeah. From Fire Air twelve thousand,
Gotham Knights Taken an RPG direction design is very reminiscent of how The Avengers
game is. Do you think W. B. Montrell is slightly concerned about
the thud of a reaction that game had at launch probably a little bit like
Avengers is not the worst game, but it's just like this very vanilla game.
And but it's the vanilla game with like worldwide characters with worldwide appeal that
have been proven to do very well in a certain medium after being adapted.
So you would think that if you take a solid idea like an action RPG
and you spruce it up with good three D visuals or whatever, when I
mean that's you know, they and the Eye of the Beholder or whatever.
But if you spruce it up and then you throw the Avengers in there,
you would expect it to do well, and you would expect the same thing
to be able to work with Batman and Gotham Knights or whatever. And the
fact that it didn't work suggests it's like, oh, this audience is harder
to please than we might have first imagined, and therefore we're gonna spend more
money. And I yes, I bet that is concerning, But I think
they'll just they'll I mean, they spend a lot of time on this game,
I wouldn't expect it to perform in the same way as of Interested exactly.
And also, you know, maybe it's a slightly different audiences. Maybe
Marvel fans are more casual at this point because it is this wider audience coming
like or the expectations were a more wider, casual Marvel audience that goes to
see the movies would come in here, it's we need to win over them,
whereas maybe the DC audience is like those hardcore DC fans. As long
as we keep them coming here, this game will be fine. And those
are the expectations. I think there's a chance that that's kind of how they're
thinking about it, and so therefore it might have a better chance of succeeding
in their eyes. Uh, let's see from forsty is Daybreak still working on
a Marvel mmo. I'm not sure. I'll have to look into that,
but I don't know. Devil strip be vague if you gotta. But are
there any exciting slash weird surprises on the horizon in mobile games? Uh?
Trying to think. Usually if something like that happens or I hear about that,
it goes in one ear and out the other because audience usually doesn't care
about that stuff, So I don't keep that stuff in the head. Very
easy to grab, but I'm not sure. I'll kind of keep an ear
open. There's some exciting stuff happening, maybe not mobile games though. Let's
see we're at We're at an hour into this. We're gonna go a few
more minutes. I do have to drop off my daughter again at she's gotta
be at school at forty five minutes, so we have some time, so
we'll do a few more questions. We'll get out of here about about ten
minutes from Manguel Miguel Manelo, ted Lasso third person Action came win. Also,
what do you think of ted Lasso? So yeah, okay, I'll
get to that question first. I think at ted Lasso sort of mode and
FIFA would be cool or something like that where it's like maybe like a small
little RPG thing where you are building up a team from the bottom and you
know, they bring in the characters and not even the voice actors. I
don't know, just just kind of do it as a small little story.
I think that could work. But or like a dating SAM or something like
that or something has dating dating sam vibes, where it's about like not dating
your soccer players, but like building your relationship with them so that they play
their best soccer that could work. I really liked ted Lasso season one.
I have not watched any of ted Lasso season two, but it is.
I it's the kind of thing where it is so the opposite of what we've
had on TV for so long. I don't watch a lot of TV anymore.
So like the things I'm thinking about as being like the epitome of television
right now is House or something like that, where it's an asshole genius doctor
who is allowed to be an asshole genius to anybody he wants because he's so
smart and always right that he gets away with everything. And it kind of
felt like that was going to be like this is this is just like what
the the a pinnacle of American greatness is and ted Lasso is what if you
sent like a Southern American man and to another environment and he was just nice
and that was actually his greatness and and people had to like deal with that,
like what if, like what if America was actually a good person in
an outside of environment outside of America? Uh? And to me, like
I'm like, oh, I'm I'm very much into this concept. Because they're
pulling it off, they're also dealing with the idea of the sacrid nature of
him and and showing the blowback of that like that. It's it's a good
it's a well made show that I think it has considered a lot of the
angles and it's very clever and should get a lot of credit. And uh
yeah, okay, let's see uh him and of Texas? What was the
deal? Yeah? Okay, this that same question. Let these questions get
repeated occasionally. Maybe I did. Maybe I asked you send them in again,
and you guys just send them in again. That's what actually happened there.
Okay. From Dom Katz, we'll death straight. Nope, I already
got that one. Let's keep going. From Intoma. Hey, Jeff love
the show. Have you heard anything about Persona six? Just the general rumblings?
I think everyone else has heard where we should hear about it soon.
You know, they announced that they're going to have those Persona announcements coming regularly
for the next year or something like that, or next six months or was
it like eighteen months? Like they're like, we have a ton of Persona
stuff happening, and I would imagine at the end of that or like,
you know, at the culmination of that, we will know about Persona six
hi old Deals asks Jay Man, what is up with Compulsion Games? They
came out with We Happy Few in twenty eighteen, shortly after being acquired with
by Microsoft, but if since they stayed quiet, what gives Their new game
is currently expected to launch in twenty twenty three, so we should hear about
it next year. It could get delayed, though, so we'll see.
Bartle eight says, what's going on with Crossfire X? It was originally supposed
to come out last year, really excited for that remedy campaign. Uh So
this is when we've we've talked about like each of the last few weeks,
and the answer has been, from what I heard, at least for a
certain period of time it was in development. Hell, things kept getting pushed
back and push back and push back, and that's why we haven't seen anything
of it really. But maybe there's still a chance it comes out this year
and they just cut their losses or something and try to just get it done
and get out of the door. But I'm not sure. Uh oh my
god, my kids are dropping something upstairs. I'm sure they're breaking everything up
there. I'll get to that soon. Feature creep Twitch is starting Subtember.
On September two, September one is the day off Twitch thing discuss Yeah,
I don't. I don't like the optics of that. So for people who
are unaware, day off Twitch is UH a community organized UH sort of response
to Twitch because Twitch is not taking a heavy enough hand against hate rating from
racist against people of color channels on Twitch. And you know, to me,
I get like I'm getting don't. I don't know for sure, but
I get vibes. You know, I've I've talked to the CEO of Twitch
a couple of times. I've talked to people who are high up at that
company, and you know that, like those conversations combined with this gives me
vibes that this is a company that is like a tech sort of thing where
they think everybody should be treated equally, to the point that we don't give
UH special treatment to minorities and just give them instead, we'll just give them
the same tools we give everyone else and they can use those to stop these
things themselves. And to me, that's not good enough. That's not dealing
with the reality of how it actually works. And Twitch should take responsibility for
the community that exists on its platform and find ways to to help solve the
problem, of course, and so to then have the day off Twitch,
which is people getting off of Twitch, and again that's September first, which
weren't the day that we're not going to go on Twitch, and and then
to have that followed up by September where you try to maybe undo the damage,
the financial damage that might have been done by the day before, does
feel a little bit like not just ignoring the problem but trying to pave over
it. So and that's just optics. I don't know if that's the case.
That's how it feels, so I don't love it. Thank you for
that question, though, uh Windbills. Who else should go in the monkey
ball? I think Rory. Rory should probably go in the monkey ball.
That'd be good, right, I would. I would love to see that
just Rory and a puppy, and Rory's just got to try to keep the
puppy safe as they're rolling around the entire time. He doesn't care about his
own safety at all. It's just all about keeping that puppy safe. I
think that would work. That's good. Also, I really liked Jeff Keeley's
tweets about the monkey Ball. He's like, who's gonna be in the monkey
Ball? And it was definitely like what's his name? From the running man
the announcer guy, or it's just like we're gonna put a criminal inside here,
and this is how the just Assistant works in the future. And I'm
Jeff Keeley and welcome to super monkey Ball. All right, this has been
a good show so far. Let's try to wrap it up with one last
question. Let me see here. Mobius fun says, how come Skyrim gets
rereleased every other year, but Morolin and Oblivion are left alone. Skyrim sold
more and also could still be sold to even more people. It's like more
popular, so that makes it more likely that it will be successful when they
re release it. And also it is a more modern game, so it's
easier to update and make it and present it like like it's something new,
and so moral Win and Oblivion would need more work. It's a combination of
those kinds of factors. It's the same reason, not the same reason.
It's similar reasoning to why Sony is remaking The Last of Us instead of like
an early uncharted game. It's easier to remake the Last of Us right now,
and then maybe go back and do the older ones later, as the
tech sort of makes it easier to do that sort of thing. And then,
don Katz, why does that mobile Marvel game that was revealed yesterday look
better than Square Enix's Marvel game. I don't know. I don't know.
I mean art a lot a long way, and I think what my guess
is the Square in Nex game just got caught in a weird in between place
where they wanted to look close to the movies but couldn't look too close,
and therefore they couldn't have too much of an artistic take on things that would
have made things look good. And also they probably needed to get stuff done
fast and cheap in a lot of situations, and so things end up looking
like weird hair instead of human hair. Okay, yeah, this was a
fun show. I had a good time. A lot of great questions I
missed a ton Like every week, why why is Dave Matthews band so or
why is Dave Matthews so bad? From Mike Acid? You know why.
I don't need to answer that, you know why, but we'll definitely if
you want to bring your questions next week, we'll get to them then.
Which is on Thursday, and we're moving the show a little bit earlier next
week, so tune in next week Thursday. It'll be at eight thirty hand
specific time. I'm nine thirty am Mountain time, and then that would be
eleven thirty am. I'm sorry Eastern now it's hard to do time sounds,
you know, get get the app beats on that for me. Somebody okay,
and then mecham asks whould just complain in chat saying overlooked again, I'm
sorry if I always feel about when there's like one person that always gets left
out, So I'll get this one, then we'll get out of here.
Any news on bull Frog games remix of other games such as Theme Hospital,
Populus, Magic Carpet, like War for the Overworld was for the original Dungeon
Keeper. I haven't heard anything about that. Sorry. I think that stuff
is. I mean, it's it's you know, always possible to people always
want to bring back old ips, but I think like they would probably start
with Populous. I think Theme Hospitals probably like uh served right now by two
point hospitals, so maybe they're like, let's see, maybe we could bring
about Populous, But even that I think would be pretty hard to update for
a modern audience. So I don't know, but we'll see what happens.
Okay, everybody, let's get out of here. I'm gonna go get my
kid ready for pre school. I'll be back with you next week. Until
then, have a good one, take care of yourself, and yummy,
yummy, Central Time.