Game Mess Mornings 01/10/24

He'll be go me bit, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do
this for January tenth, twenty twenty four. For the next hour or so,
let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings
Live with Me Jeff Grubb Today, Indiana Jones might get another crack at relevancy
in twenty twenty four, and Suicide Squad sounds pretty rough. But first please
join me and welcoming today's co host to Game Mess Mornings. It's Mike Manati.
Everybody, Mike, how are you doing. I'm always pretty rough.
That's that's what we say about. Mike is the roughest guy we know.
DMX when he was talking about the Rough Riders talking about you, is that
DMX? Everybody? I can I remember, Oh, that's Teddy Roosevelt.
That's Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. That's right. Teddy Roosevelt wrote with Master P
and all those guys. It was very very good riding. Then he shot
a man in the back of his running up a hill and was proud of
himself. It was proud and then that's what most rap songs are about.
Actually, uh, I believe you? Yeah, of course, yeah,
how would you know any any other way? How are you doing pretty good?
Yeah? You know, I get a little bit of post holiday depression.
I have to admit, there's so much going on the holidays and it's
fun and everything's like pretty and alive, and then it's kind of done.
And how you gotta open up some nutella for that kid? You do it?
Okay, all right, go don't make a mess. Kids love nutella.
I'm never with a now tell a person to be honest, you tell
us like really good, but it's so rich that it's like too much.
After like a couple of bites. Uh, kids, don't, kids,
I don't don't have that thing that makes you say, oh, this is
too much. Right back to my depression. No, no, not depression,
but just like yeah, it's like after the holidays, it's like a
bit of a coundown period and I'm always like bad, I'm playing my deck
creations away because I'm lazy. But then it just becomes a reminder of how
like the holidays are ethereal ferial and not here anymore. So but that's okay.
Yeah, I gots have to get through the cold, bitter winter and
maybe you'll feel better again. Yeah, I'm not like exactly that same point,
but I am at a point where it's like, Okay, the Christmas
tree is so big and there's so much and I haven't had time, and
that is a reminder. And then it's it's been rainy, so it's not
even like snowing, which I think would actually help me. But then it's
so it's rainy, so I can't even like go walk outside in the morning
like I like to usually it's too like the path would be too muddy.
So it's like, okay, well, even like how I would get some
sunshine in my life is not happening. So yeah, definitely you can even
feel the sunshine. That's right, can brighten up here? Shunshine? That's
right? Sonic Hedgehog Watch have listen to that song instead. Yeah, at
the very least, you're gonna get a ray of sunshine and seeing me tomorrow.
Maybe we're gonna hang out a little bit tomorrow. Yeah, do some
fun and in person podcasts, do the game mess Game of the Year.
They can't never do enough Game of the Years. And I do have at
least a few more gifts to hand out tomorrow, so I have a little
bit holiday cheer at least exactly. Yes, same here reminds me I should
go wrap that present we got for you. So oh I got a frenzy.
Yeah, you got a pressy coming your way. Watch out. Material
objects will always cure my depress exactly. That's what this is all really about.
That's what we need. All right, let's ease for mikey. Yeah,
let's explain what we do here most weekdays. I, Jeff Grub will
help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe even
some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the
input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you
were watching live on Twitch, welcome. You can always listen to the show
later on podcast feeds by searching for Game mess Mornings, or find the RSS
on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show later with chapters
and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. All right, we have a lot
to get into, so let's start the Morning Mess with there's a report that
Indiana Jones is launching this year the video game for machine games. This is
from Jonas Maki at Game Reactor. It's been quite a while since we saw
a new game from the Swedish studio Machine Games five years to be more specific,
as Wolfenstein young Blood launched in twenty nineteen. I guess I didn't even
realized five years since that Wolfenstein. Yeah, it's like the standalone Yeah.
Since then, they have been working on Indiana Jones, a game that was
announced at the time when Microsoft bought Bethesta Game Studios in twenty twenty one.
Since then, we haven't heard a whole lot about it, but leaked documents
from the FTC versus Activision Blizzard Trials revealed that it was supposed to be released
in twenty twenty two, something that was made impossible as a result of the
pandemic, and that it will be a PC and Xbox exclusive title. As
it has been so very quiet about the game, most people assumed we would
get to see it at twenty twenty five at the very earliest. But fortunately
enough, it doesn't seem like we'll have to wait that much longer. According
to a new report from Tom Henderson over at Insider Gaming, Indiana Jones is
in fact launching this year, something sources close to the game have confirmed,
and Deerson is known as very trustworthy source on topics like this, Hey,
that would be cool. You know, when this year was getting started,
as we were coming out of like the Game of the Year stuff, when
we were doing you know, several shows were like, hey, what do
you think's happening next year? Indiana Jones is never one that I thought was
a realistic game to launch this year. And I don't necessarily know why,
Like when you look at it five years since Young Blood, why wouldn't it
be ready? I guess it's just because we never heard much except for that
one teaser that was really teaser y right, not much there was just you
know, Indian Jones grabbing his hat or whip or something off a table,
you know, I get. I guess these days were always more cautious than
anything else. I didn't consider it until you know, they talked about that
Xbox Direct or whatever they call it, and like they you know, it's
send in that picture any of Jones, Like, Oh you're gonna talk about
Indy yep, this early in the year. Is I coming out this year?
Oh? That'd be cool? Yep? So January eighteenth is when that
that's next week is when that Developer Direct is happening from Xbox and Bethesda and
one of the confirmed games to be at that event Indiana Jones. And they
tend to they tend to talk about games there when they have stuff to talk
about. You know, Help Blake two is also going to be in that
that could easily get a release date. Do you think coming out of that
developer direct we really do get a pot like a release window, let's say
for Indiana Jones. I think we do. I think I think that's probably
the goal here, right, is to fill out the schedule for the rest
of the year at least a good bit. And you know, if you
get Indiana Jones about and Help late too this year in these days, that's
a pretty good lineup for a Sony or an Xbox, right, and you
know, maybe some other surprises pepperd in here. There there's some other game
they're talking about. I forget about it. I don't know as much about
it, but I'd be pretty good with that, especially Indiana Jones. That's
something I would look forward to. I still like the Indiana Jones character.
It's been a long time since we really gave Indian Jones game a good shot.
And this is an incredible developer development. It makes a lot of sense
with it. You know, I'm a big uncharted guy. We don't really
get any of those these days. So this is it's not just the next
best thing, it's just another good thing. So I'm hopeful. I want
to see what this looks like. Yeah, I agree completely. That's where
I'm at, where I'm like, Okay, that's a pretty good shaped year
for Xbox, especially getting a lot of these details in January, because they
could always reload in the summertime with something else for the holidays. Indiana Jones
could easily get Hey, they could be like, hey, it's coming out
this fall that I still expect. But it's like, hey, I'm fine
with that. Tell me right now, if that's coming out this fall,
I'll that's something to look forward to this year for Xbox in a way that
like, well, I suppose everyone's looking forward to Starfield and then you know,
obviously a lot of people feel like they got rug pulled there. Well,
you know, I think people would be willing to be like, hey,
Indiana Jones from Machine Games, Wolfenstein, people like they know what they're
doing, they know how to kill Nazis, all this stuff I want to
do in Indiana Jones game, I would get I would be able to get
some excitement going for the Xbox to launch or release lineup going forward a little
bit, and it'll be you know, more than you know. Last year
it was kind of just all Starfield, right, Like we had the surprise
of HiFi Rush early, right because you know, but that was great,
but then after that it was basically just Starfield. We had Red Fall also
and that was a straight up disaster. So I think, you know,
maybe none of these games are going to have the hype that Starfield had going
into it, but they could be better. And it's a more even spread,
like you know, like I don't really care that much about Hillblay too,
but I'm very interested in about Andy Andiana Jones. So it's completely fine
and yeah, and exactly, and like for a lot of people that are
like picking two out of the three, some people are excited about all three,
but many people are excited about Hellblay two, and so it's like,
hey, yeah, and then and then they don't care about any Indiana Jones
because maybe it's something they didn't grow up with like we did, which is
a real thing with Indiana Jones. And you know, we talked a little
bit about this last night. This could be a chance for Indiana Jones to
break out in gaming in a way that like the movie couldn't do because the
movie had so much baggage coming with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and you know,
Spielberg moving on and them trying to figure out what the character would even
be like at that point, Right, the video game can sort of wash
its hand hands of a lot of that stuff and just be like, no,
this is Indiana Jones is cool. But here's why, right, No
exactly, And you know, there's a there's a very good sound alike right
now for Randiya Jones has been doing that work and he's basically Harrison's Sports sounded
like for a lot of things. So if they just get him, that'll
be great. You could just make him young, you can just set it
in the thirties, like Indiana Jones kind of should be. You know,
I think that last movie, I think a lot of people saw and I'm
like, Okay, that wasn't terrible. That was fine, but it finds
not good enough to stay relevant. It was not a box office success.
So maybe this can be the way for Indiana Jones to really become releved again
in the future. Like if this was somehow a Spider Man level success,
imagine what that could do for the character. Now, it has a lot
of things going against it for that, because Spider Man those games came out,
We're very good. And also, like everything else, Spider Man was
also popping off. The Spider Man could continues to be one of the most
popular characters in the world constantly. So yes, right, but I don't
know if this could do that, but it's gonna help. It could help,
It could sure, absolutely. Now what kind of game do you think
this is? Is I mean, this is machine games. They made Wolfenstein.
Is there any chance this is a first person game? It could be
a first person game. I think that could work. It could be a
little difficult, depending on how I want to say, like how platform they
get. But we you know, even stuff like do maternal can do the
first person platforming relatively well? You know that That's always the challenge of the
inan engines games is what is the balance between the combat, the exploration,
and these days the walking and talking. This right now they probably are going
to look to an uncharted I bet I bet I third person is more likely,
and I bet when we see this we are going to see a lot
of unchartedness in it. That's the right, cause, yeah, it makes
sense, Yes, it really is. Yes, And it's like there's a
gap in that market. Like you said, we're not getting a lot of
uncharted anymore a while since an Uncharted or a tumb Raider at this point,
right, And if we get not if we get one of those, well
you know, we're getting another Tomberator that's still years and years off this Indiana
Jones and like that is a space gaming that can support three of those,
even if all three were coming out relatively close to one another, I mean
beyond that, like it would probably be like, Okay, I have Uncharted,
I have tomb Raider, or I have Indiana Jones. I don't need
another one of those. But I think those three characters can all co exist,
let alone Indiana Jones having this little pocket to himself to do something and
make something happen. Have you play a lot of other Indiana Jones games?
Do you have any of those that you think fondly of? I I started
and got a little decently into Fate of Atlantis, which I really enjoyed when
I did play it, and then I always try to get Infernal Machine running.
It's one of those in sixty four games that is very tough to emulate.
And then it was a block it was a Blockbuster exclusive, so it's
not like it's easy to go track down either. Maybe this I never really
looked too much, but you can get it working. And when you when
I start playing, like kind of like this, so you know it's factor
five. You know they did a decent job on it, save to five
making a tomb raider, like right, yea, and exactly that's a good
name. The India goes in the Infernal Machine like it too. Yeah that's
better than Dial of Destiny, Like yeah, yeah, I kind of want
to go back and play that. I kind of go Plaympper's Tomb and Staff
of Kittens even with me too. But we basically have had one great Indiana
Jones game with Fate of Atlantis. I actually never played the Super Nintendo one.
That's basically just those Superstar Wars games, but with Indiana Jones, I
assume they're very hard. But favor Atlantis is the one I always think of,
So you could do something that like story wise is kind of in line
with that. In terms of feeling like an authentic Indiana Jones adventure and you
have gameplay that can kind of match up with that, you're gonna be in
good shit. Yep. And yeah, that's kind of a I'm asking for
here, and I'm just glad we're getting a new machine games game as well.
I am a big fan of that studio and Wolfenstein III. I mean,
it doesn't seem like that's happening anytime soon. So you think they're going
like super wheelhouse here, like straight up Nazis and maybe even like Christianity symbolism
again, I think so, yeah, that's safe. I mean definitely Nazis
like Nazis, like that is one happening now In terms of like is the
mcguffin coming from Christian law, I think that's like eighty percent. They could
go some other direction and have fun with that, but you know, Christian
law is the safe one that always hits a little bit harder, even when
it's a little bit like the weaker one like the Cup of Christ. I
still I'm a huge I'm a huge mark for that stuff. So yeah,
weaker like the Cup of Christ. Wow, someone's kind of finally put that
ass in his place. And I'm here to do it, but a better
cup loser. It's a cup of a carpenter. Yeah, exactly like my
mug collection, which is the cups of a really cool dude. All right,
sorry Jesus, my bad. I guarantee there will be certainly some kind
of plot point or reference to the idea of Idiota Jones. H collect think
artifacts maybe isn't a good thing. I think they're going to totally get meta
with that. Now, it would I would be totally down if the plot
is the inverted Indiana Jones way of like we're going to actually steal something from
a museum and put it back to where it goes. That would be a
really good idea. He jo meet some guys like, hey, actually this
was important to buy culture and you don't have a right to it, and
he like asks the alerts in his ways and like, yeah, it's like
a reverse Indy in Jones. That'd be cool. Yeah, exactly, Like,
Hey, the thing you did, like is causing our culture to have
an apocalypse and then you know it's a hidden culture, So can you please
just go put that rock back? It'll be yeah, it'll so it's tepl
with doom with the stones, but the stones are taken by the British Museum
exactly. So yeah, let's make it happen, all right, and that
that's a studio that knows how to write that stuff based on Wolfenstein The New
Colossus, which is just some of the best writing in the history of games,
all right. Suicide Squad previews paint a pretty mad pitcher. This is
from Zaxwise in a Kotaku the first hands on preview of WB and rock Steady's
upcoming Suicide Squad Killed the Justice League are alive now across multiple outlets. While
some folks are enjoyed to playing the co op shooter more than others, the
general vibe I got after reading all these previews is not great. The consistus
is that rock Steady Suicide Squad is a hodgepodge of generic open world missions and
clunky traversal mechanics that combined to create an underwhelming experience. He picked out some
choice quotes here from some of the previews. Here's one from GameSpot. Though
each mission had different objectives, they all had the same basic gist of battling
waves of enemies while swinging back and forth between rooftops. I'm like getting more
disappointed as I read this. But but open world missions where characters bar get
you over the radio about how enemies are attacking Point A or Point B over
and over don't seem to be the break. Don't seem to be breaking the
mold, especially when plenty of live open world games now exist with a lot
of the same kinds of content. Game informer says, I started to feel
a sense of sameness for many of the missions. Sure, each of them
has a distinct dressing, and the narrative reasons are varied, but many of
the ones I played in chapter one and chapter three boiled going to an area
and defeating all the atomies or defending a location against hordes and aliens. I
really hope that as the campaign goes on, there are more of these kinds
of or more of these kinds of fights, and less of the defeat all
enemies. I guess you must have been representing some other kind of fight here,
and more of the go down to point A and defend point B variety
of missions. Yeah, me too. I hope that there's not a whole
game of that that sounds bad to me, that doesn't sound like what I
want from a rock Steady video game. I don't know, Mike, how
are you feeling after these previews? Not good? You know, previews usually
give a lot of benefit of doubt, right, because you know, people
know that they're playing a slice of the game. They kind of look for
the bright side again. Uh, when the Red Fall previews happened last year,
those were often positive, right, And people have been burned so many
times, like when they said, oh, hey, two Humans seems pretty
bad, and how wrong were they? Proven Dennis Dyak won in the end
there. Yeah, anytime, any way you could somehow clumsily make this about
how Dennis Diak sucks. I'm all for it, don't worry, thank you.
I appreciate that. Yeah, and it's disheartening. Uh, this game
never seemed like a good idea, and maybe that's all it just was.
Maybe it just was a bad idea. And then well someone has this bad
idea, but it got boughts. So now we got to make this game
for seven years and like and then here we are and gosh, you know
we wanted this last time when they delayed the game, but it has just
been better to just get it out and move on. I don't know,
maybe we're maybe we're still jumping the gun here. This game isn't out yet,
but it's disheartening to see. It's not just that the reactions are negative
yet, it's just reading what they're saying. The game that they're describing just
does not sound like anything I want right now. Zach goes on to say
repetitive missions can still be fun to grind if the combat is a joy to
play. I've sunk far too many hours in Destiny To over the years,
not because it has incredible open world missions and public events. Let's be real
here, they are basically all the same, but instead it's the satisfying and
rewarding combat that keeps me around. Sadly, a number of suicide previews Suicide
Squad previews found the combat in Torosal clunky and complained that the characters don't feel
satisfyingly distinct from one another. There were also concerns about how chaotic and hard
to parse the world and action is during big fights, and outside of combat.
It sounds like the open world of Metropolis isn't all that interesting. This
is from Eurogamer. Metropolis is a sprawling vertical pollute in maze of buildings without
clear routes or easily discernible landmarks. It's a backdrop to battle. It's hard
to navigate unaided by some simplistic radar mini map for finding enemies and friends alike,
with violent explosions, special effects, damage numbers, quest markers and more
on screen at once. It all feels a little too difficult to parse.
Mike. There's screenshots going around of the of the UI, and then I
mean that the complaint here from eurogamers it goes beyond the UI. The world
itself is designed poorly in such a way that it makes it difficult to navigate.
So that sounds like like poison for me, where someone like I,
you know, you guys watch me play games. I it's an attention thing.
It's hard for me to like bring stuff in. If I'm like going
to experience a game like this, Oh, I'm out, like no way,
Like I need my time respected. This sounds like a real mess,
Mike. How do you feel about that screenshot that you saw? I mean
it doesn't look good. I mean honestly, it's you know, UI.
I'm a little numb too. I play mm sure a certain point. You
know, Hey, your game has a lot of info that it has to
get out there. Now, my question is why does this game have this
much info that it needs to get out there? More concerning is the game
the way it looks in some of these screenshots. Again, things kind of
look see me and drab and just I don't know. There's just a lot
here that seems concerning. You know the fact that these four characters, even
though one's a shark and one is Harley Quinn, you know, they're all
using the same weapons. The difference is the traversal. But ultimately the traversal
is just about sipping around so that you can kind of run and gun a
good amount. I don't know, I don't have a good feeling about this.
Yeah, it's uh, I'm gonna bring up there's the image here of
the UI and how busy it is. I mean, the numbers popping off
in motion like that. Stuff's gonna be coming and going and can be useful.
But boy, there's so many icons floating right around. There's so many
icons. I mean, actually it's a little bit cut off. Let me
see if I can bring in here so you guys can actually get like the
bottom corner here and stuff. It's even worse. And then someone compared it
to the elder Ring meme of like what if elder Ring was like other modern
games, and it's like, no, Suicide Squad legitimately worse than the joke,
like the joke, it's legitimately worse. That is really buck wild.
Yeah, no, that's rough when you scroll between those two. Yep.
So yeah, like this right, I'm like, look at this elder Ring
joker bike Listen. If I had to choose between the two, it's like,
definitely this elder Ring fucking shit, Like somehow it's okay. They are
probably taking one of the least comprehensible images from gameplay from suicide So Suicide Squad
here where like there's something some explosion happening, and so it's like even hard
to focus on the thing in the center of the screen, so you have
no visual anchor. That's giving full benefit of the doubt. I still think
looking at this, even in the best case, it's a scenario Man meter
on the right. What's the Batman meter? What the fuck was that?
What was it? That? Like? Yeah, is that like it's influence
in the area because this is the Batman sector and there's the Batman like right,
like affiliated enemies. You can get plus five protection five protection against Batman.
Right, yeah, whatever, Yeah, that's exactly what it has to
be. It all have to be related, Jesus, Is that way for
him? Is that radio chatter? Was that what that is? We get
Batman radio chatter? This everything's mocking you doing this. Maybe this is a
maybe this is like a gameplay element, like Batman overwhelms you with you I
and that's how we win this because he's just so smart. I hate this.
Uh. I am very interested to see what the final product, how
people feel about it, what they're actually playing it. If this stuff is
that is this distracting as it seems here? Right? And I mean you
know, I think I've seen at least one of you point this out.
Like in the game, you're doing things like killing Flash and other people are
dying, and like aliens are invading the world. It's hard to imagine that
there's not just gonna be some like fingersnap reset at the end of this.
Anyways. Yeah, and that's not about like, oh, hey, the
villains are being bad guys and we can't handle that because we're just a weak
little story people. No, it's it's like we just don't believe this game
the stakes that they're setting out, and then that's also a tough place for
these this game to start from dunking on Suicide Squad is fun to a certain
extent because like just going back, like you're making a suicide squad game.
Yeah, it is moved into sad and worriosometom for me like this, I
mean, I don't even enjoy this really that much anymore. At a certain
point it's like, hey, this seems like a bad idea, and in
some sense it's like because I'm stupid, and I'm like, I guess I
was proven right, Okay, cool, Now I'm worried that this great studio
rock Steady and all these people, it's like, okay, what's going to
happen if this game comes out it isn't great? Are they going to have
support, like say, you know, the Redfall developers have like okay,
yeah that didn't work out, but it's okay, we're still going to like
you know, funde you through to the next game. You'll be all right.
Or it was Warner Brenda is going to take the first opportunity they can
get here and just say oh that's it for Rock steady, I guess,
and again I feel like maybe I'm really putting the card in front of the
horse here. With that this game could still come out and be good or
be a success despite not being good. Who knows, but it is worrisome.
Many of the previous did have some positive things to say about the cut
scenes and the writing, and they said there were some genuinely funny jokes,
and their narrative seems to be a strong point, with good characterization and banter
between excuse me and during the fights. So uh yeah, if you're a
DC fan and you love Harley Quinn, you are probably gonna be eating here.
I suppose. All right, we'll find out soon that game's coming up,
you know, brought in you know, a few weeks, a few
months, we'll be playing that game and no for ourselves. Okay, all
right, final one before we take a break. Taiwan's Insider reports on switch
success, improved specs, and four hundred dollars prices from go Nintendell. Everyone
told your horses, we'll get to this. Basically that there is a website
in Taiwan that like has like details. They often like share about stuff.
It's not always accurate in fact, it's very rarely accurate. It seems like
many most of the time they are speculating. This seems like one of those
cases. They are saying that the switch will have a Nvidia T twenty two
excuse me, two thirty nine processor, eight gigabytes of RAM, sixty four
gigabytes of storage, greatly improved battery life, one one hundred and twenty hurts
refresh refresh rate screen, and a price of four hundred dollars. Mike,
I believe four hundred dollars. I that in Nvidia two thirty nine processor that
seems like one that they might be using. Seems likely. Uh, A
gigabytes of RAM with sixty four gigabytes of storage seem a bit low to me.
That that and honestly, that's the stuff that really makes me think this
is probably not accurate. And then one hundred and twenty hurts refresh rates screen.
That's possible only because in Nvidia all of it's like DLSS technology works even
better at high refresh rates. So them being like, hey, maybe we
shous just go for one hundred and twenty hurt screen. It's possible, especially
because this thing is going to dock into many TVs that already have one hundred
and twenty hurts screens, so all these things are possible. I just don't
think that this Taiwan Taiwanese story actually has any real accurate information. So this
has been going around. How do you feel about that? The one hundred
and twenty hurt screen as a possibilities that seem even reasonable to you? I
mean, I'll tell you explained the thing about Invidia that seemed like absolute bananas
to me. I don't know why you need anything more than sixty frames per
second on a switch to especially, I mean hopefully in the switch sho we
have a lot more sixty fps games. That's all right, that's where right
from its most. Yeah, never even thought about one hundred and twenty frames.
That would be beyond accesses to me. But if you if that helps
the DSS or whatever, then fine, sure. And then eight gigabytes of
RAM, god, that would be rough. It was that low. I
mean, like you these days you get one of these like mini computers from
a Chinese manufacturer and it's got like thirty two gigabytes RAM and the whole thing
costs two hundred and fifty dollars. So it's Nintendo. They could still do
this, but boy, I bet developers have been very loud about wanting more
RAM. That's definitely the thing they've wanted the most, more of the most
on switch. Yeah, that's concerning. So hopefully, hopefully it's just not
true. Yes, and this is very likely not true. But we are
going to be in this zone for a few weeks now where every other day
you're gonna get inundated with specs and lists of a list of details about the
new Nintendo hardware. We'll do our best to, like, you know,
try to filter. It's most of that noise. That's actually the big,
biggest reason I brought the story in is to say, hey, this is
going to be happening, keep an eye out for it, but probably don't
believe anything for quite some time. We'll know when we know, and until
then we'll just keep trying to guess. I mean, so, I mean
someone chat said metaquest three as a gigabytes are RAM? Is that right?
Yeah? And I just would still be twice as much as the normal The
switch right now is four gigabytes. I guess it's like, hey, it's
choice as much. I suppose that's it's a gigabytes is definitely not impossible.
It's not impossible, but god, I'm like the Xbox series S is that
like, what ten gigabytes and around nine of that is usable and developers aren't
super wrong or happy about that. Let'sten. I just think you didn't get
to like twelve, sixteen gigabytes. That would be much much better. It's
Nintendo, though a gigabytes could certainly happen. All right, We're gonna take
a quick break. When we get back. We got a lot more news.
We'll get to all that right after this, so please stick with us.
We're back. We're back, and we are going to talk about how
many first party Nintendo games are seemingly going out of print. This is her
mid Nintendo news. A number of high profile first party in the Nintendo games
are seemingly going out of print, at least in North America. The news
was spotted by nintend Deal, with some retailers removing the listed games below from
their inventory. It is not clear why this is happening, but there's the
prospect that they could be introduced as Nintendo Select titles, seen as the Nintendo
Switches successors, presumably on the horizon. The list of games that have seemingly
been not delisted but gone out of print and in some way removed from these
inventories is Paper Mario, The Argami, King, Donkey, Kong Country,
Tropical Freeze, The Legend of Zelda, Links, Awakening, Awakening, Pickman
three, Deluxe, Metroid Dread, Kirby Star Allies, Zeno Blake, Chronicles
Two, New Super Mario Brothers, U Deluxe Firearm, Limps Three Houses and
Engage Yoshi's Crafted World Warriorwear Get It Together, Nintendo Switched Sports, Super Mario
Odyssey, Splittoon two, Super Mario Maker two, and Mario Striker's Battle League.
Like I could see a Nintendo Selects thing happening. We speculated last night
that maybe this is they get new boxes to indicate, hey, this is
a game that works on Switch too, maybe a bit early for that.
It's also possible that this is nothing right, that this is actually just a
momentary lapse while they shift production to some new facility or something like that.
And honestly, at a certain point, that's almost the most likely scenario here
is that this isn't anything, and we are just spotting some small gully in
inventory, and that stuff will all bounce right back. I don't know,
what do you think? Yeah, it's like when you look at this list,
you could maybe see how it would make for a like, you know,
Player's Choice collection. Yeah, and there's some like you know, Fireballman
Gauges almost a year old somewhere around there. It's not been around that long.
So it's strange in the timing with the switch to coming out. Like
you said, who knows what's going on. Maybe these games will even get
if backwards compatibility is really going to be the thing that switch to. Maybe
these games get repackaged in a way that emphasizes that on them. With a
bunch of Xbox games and the Xbox Series X and S games, uh that
ran on Xbox One, they got like new packaging to be like, hey,
Xbox Series X and S are listed first and foremost, so you could
see that it makes some sense. It's just going to depend on backward how
backward compatibility works. Still, though, we just need more information here.
This seems like we don't really know what's happening, and people are jumping to
conclusions in a lot of cases, I think. But people are talking about
this and this was like a going around yesterday, so I figured we could
talk about it, try to figure it out. I don't know, what
do you think is the most likely if you had to place a bet,
what do you think is happening here? I mean, gots that production thing
you say. It could just be that. I want to besides, if
like there is new box art or something that again just says playable and switch
to at some point. Although so it's maybe a little early for that.
I mean, it couldn't even just be like, hey, we don't need
to make as many physical games for store shows these days. Anyways, people
are buying a lot of these digitally, although Nintendo games they still do sell
on store shoves and places like walmarts. I don't know why you would you
want to just stop doing that. I don't know, maybe just your it's
just a production line hiccup or change. It's either that or the player select
slash new box art kind of thing, some kind of slight change. It's
not like, again, there's too many big games in here, in recent
games for this to be like, yeah, these are just games that we
decided to stop selling on storm shows forever. I mean, maybe all like
the resupply of all these games was on like a ship that got commandeered by
pirates, which is like a new thing or not anything. I think it's
happening again around like the Horn of Africa. These ships are being pirated again.
That's like that went away for a while and now like everyone's like this
is going to cause a lot of problems. I'm like, oh, okay,
well maybe pirates are pirates are back, that's the thing. Yeah,
all right. More Nintendo news Nintendo finding more partners to work on games based
on Nintendo ips. This is from my Nintendo News. Nintendo related rumors have
been flying all over the place for the last few days, and not just
because of the next Nintendo console. However, let's seeah, for a console
to be successful, there's obviously needs to be games. That said, part
of why Nintendo has been able to release so many first party games is because
the company has been collaborating with multiple studios to do so. There is a
new rumor that has appeared today suggesting that Nintendo's looking into finding even more studios
to collaborate with games. Industry Dot biz's head Christopher Dring shout out to drink
Set in an article published yesterday that I also know that Nintendo is actively meeting
with independent developers to find new partners. Some of that is around publishing indie
games, which Nintendo does from time to time, but it's also seeking studios
that could work on some of its ips. Nintendo regularly works with third party
teams including Bandai, Namco, Team Ninja, Platinum Games, Mercury, Steam,
Way Forward, and Grezo, but the company is looking to add to
that roster. And I know of three studios that are deep in conversation around
making games based on Nintendo brands. This is a strategy Nintendo has explicitly stated
that they are going after when it comes to like, hey, we want
to find more partners to work with. But the understanding there at the time,
at least in most people's estimation, was that Nintendo was talking about like
band Dynamco level of big third party partners. This suggests that it could go
all the way up and down the stack down to indie studios, which is
what we've been asking for for forever. Mike, this is this sounds great
to me. I don't know, how do you feel? Yeah, you
know, I think we were all kind of a disappointed when we've got cannons
of high role and it was fantastic, and we're like, oh wow,
Nintendo's going to give its IP to indie studios now, then nothing else really
happened there, and that seemed strange. It seems like a bummer. But
now that seems back on the table, and you know, I hope it's
not just oh yeah, sure you can get Zelda and Mario. I hope
this is a way that they can keep some of their older, maybe more
obscure franchises alive or relevant by getting indie partners. That makes sense that probably
already have a good amount of passion for specific franchises to work on those games.
Yeah, and those studios would have almost certainly grown up playing Nintendo games.
So many studios are just happy, like to put games out on the
switch that gets them really excited. The idea of then getting a chance to
work on some of these Nintendo ips would probably be very exciting to them.
And this is a strategy that like I think Atari did for a while where
they're like, hey, we're gonna let people pitch us and like say,
hey, we want to make a game based on this. We got a
lot of like weirder games that weren't quite pac Man Championship Edition DX level,
but they were trying to go in that direction. I think that's how we
got that recent Yars Revenge game that was actually pretty decent. So it's like,
hey, I love this idea. I hope it works. And with
Nintendo's producers sort of being like, we've got to grow in ways that are
sustainable, this seems like a good way of doing that. And I think
what this is probably gonna result in us getting like, you know, so
significantly more Nintendo games per year, not like double, but like two or
three more Nintendo games per year, and even if they're all like indie scale,
I'm more than happy with that. I think that'd be great if we
got like several cadence of high role type games per year. That would only
make the switch and switch to better. Right, I mean a time where
games are taking long and long to make, and we're seeing lots of slow
years from the lakes of PlayStation and Xbox, it's good that Nintendo kind of
has plans to make sure that they can continue releasing several games a year.
There's this They've been expanding their offices and their own internal studios in Japan also,
Right, So, even though switched to. If you know, games
will probably be harder to make for that because they're just going to have to
have more detail. That's always going to make things a bit more challenging.
Hopefully this will offset some of that. Yes, there will probably be right,
there's gotta be a little bit of growing pains for Nintendo studios going from
ten eighty assets to four K. It will probably be not nearly as bad
as it was for a lot of publishers and a lot of studios ten to
fifteen years ago. Because that the rest, they're going to have it real
hard time. Still, Game Freak's gonna it's on its own timeline. Yes,
it's it's gonna have to figure everything out the hard way. But Nintendo
will be able to look to resources in a way that a lot of studios
could not in the past. All right. Next story, Twitch is reportedly
laying off thirty five percent of its staff. This comes from Sophie McAvoy at
Games Industry dop Biz. Twitch is laying off five hundred employees this month,
according to a Bloomberg report. This is according to sources familiar with the plans,
which the outlet said may be officially announced today. Bloomberg suggested that the
cuts are a result are a result of concerns over losses and the departure of
a number of executives. Games industry dop IS has reached out to Twitch for
further clarification. This is just the bad hits keep coming this year already,
and obviously they were happening all throughout last year in terms of people losing their
jobs in the games industry and the surrounding industries. It's not slowed down so
far this year. If anything, it's picked up. With eighteen hundred people
being cut from Unity and that was twenty five percent of their workforce. I
believe now Twitch cutting thirty five percent and five hundred people. It's it's terrible.
And you know, the tough thing here is like Twitch has never really
been a success in terms of making money. It's never actually done that that
well, it's just it's at some point it's like, ah, Amazon,
you could probably continue to figure that out, and now they just seem to
have lost interest and that means a bunch of people have to leave. It
sucks. How do you feel about this, Mic, I mean that seems
to be the root of the problem, right, is like somebody has to
figure out how to get Twitch to make money. But man, I don't
understand you can have a company lose that many people three or five percent,
and like what like what's the next day look like when they're all suddenly gone?
Do you get everything working still? You probably don't. It's probably probably
don't, maybe get a little rough, probably gonna get a bit uneven over
at Twitch. It just it just absolutely sucks. And it's again, yeah,
it is worrisome because it's a big problem. We have this thing that
seems integral to the way we think about games these days, with live streaming
and streamers in that element of it, and there's basically one website that dominates
that and it can't make money. So what the heck do we do?
And I'm seeing now this was just reported as happening, like it's been confirmed.
Yeah, so uh that is that's horrible, And I hope something again,
It's like, I don't know what. I hope something happens here where
Twitch can kind of figure things out. Yeah. I mean for me,
it's like this is the one of the another indicator of the continuing like decomposition
of the useful Internet. Uh, you know, like Twitter is has just
becomes So Twitter got pretty good there in the years before Elon Musk. It
got pretty decent at the things that people were complaining about, like hey,
you spread information disinformation and uh and you're got too many Nazis. And it's
like one day I woke up and it's like I don't see that many Nazis
anymore. And the first thing I see about disinformation each day on Twitter is
a tweet from Twitter saying here, this thing's fake, just so you know.
And it's like, okay, wow, you guys seem to have a
pretty good handle on these things. And then Elon Musk comes in fires a
bunch of people, and now the site is barely useful. It barely functions
a lot of times, like I try to like load a video and it's
like a roll of the dice whether that's gonna work or crash the app or
anything, and it's just it's it's bad. And it's like, is that
Twitch's fate here? Like you you're saying like you go in, You're like
a You're gonna fix things. It's like, man, are you even gonna
be able to maintain what is there? Or is entropy now going to come
from for Twitch, and we're going to kind of just be like coasting on
fumes while they try to make some profit from it, from this thing and
like let it just kind of skid into a disrepair. I hope not,
but that feels like where we're headed right now. And I don't know if
you are like looking at like, hey, I want to be playing games
on the internet. I want to like treat that as a hobby and potential
potential job. It's hard to recommend going to Twitch these days. Uh,
you know, YouTube's done not great either, but like you can go,
like discoverability on YouTube is eclipsing Twitch in a real way, Like you can
actually find an audience on YouTube, and Twitch's like, no, good luck,
man. They just don't seem to have figured that out, and it
doesn't seem like they ever will. Uh So, yeah, there's some hopes
for for Twitch, but it's the kind of hopes of like hey, maybe
we go to av one and that will save us money on how much it
costs to actually distribute this content. It's like, oh, if you're hoping
for some technological change to make make make it so you're profitable, Uh,
to me, that just sounds like you aren't. You aren't investing in new
ideas, you aren't being creative, You're not going to be thinking laterally and
kind of coming up with the next big thing that's gonna make Twitch better.
Those days are done, and that's that's pretty disappointing and sad. But you
know, there are such a lot of people who do rely on Twitch.
That is how they make their livelihood. So it's not just Twitch employees,
and obviously they are taking a front of bed right now and absolutely sucks.
But there's just so many people who do depend on Twitch, or even just
people who do like Twitch. You know, spidery thing. I like that
platform. I like streaming on there. I like watching my friends stream on
there. I want them to figure things out. I want that to become
profitable and healthy and successful. Agreed, all right. Sony gives update on
God of War and Horizon TV shows. This comes from Eddie McCoo at GameSpot.
Sony's pushing ahead with more gaming content for TV, including God of War
and Horizon shows, but what's the status of these projects. During Sony's Consumer
Electronic Show event this week, Sony Pictures entered television president Catherine Pope confirmed that
writing is now underway on both. We're delighted to have writing underway on two
new IP based projects, Pope said. Additionally, Pope said that the team
at Sony Pitchers TV is excited to work on season two of the Twisted Metal
series. For Peacock, we don't know much about these series and these shows.
I'll say that during deep the what was it called when the writer the
strike, the writer strike. During the writers strike, there was a lot
of talk about these Horizon scripts that were sitting around, and they were like,
man, these things need to be rewritten because they're way too expensive.
We should probably just dump the show. And it seemed like the strike ended
at just the right time to save that from happening. And so the show's
coming back and the writers are working on it. So yeah, writing does
seem to be the process that they're in right now. I have not watched
Twisted Metal, Mike. I don't think there's so much of a chance of
me ever watching Twisted Metal. I don't care about the Last of Us show.
God of War is like the one like maybe that could be cool.
I wouldn't mind watching some cool battles where dude kills gods that could be neat,
but even that it seems unlikely for me. I know you're not much
of a TV guy either, are any of these things moving you? TV's
and movies are mad? But I do like Gravity Rush. Uh so I
guess I'm happy Gravity Rush is living on as a movie, although it's really
weird to me that that's live action with Gravity rushes with one of the most
Hey we made a we made like a stylistic anime, look like a video
game thing. Ever, so okay, you're gonna go. You know it's
gonna be real everything green screen, the live action kind of thing, we'll
see. But I guess again, Gravity Rush lives on in some way.
It's it's it's maybe being destined for for failure. The dams and chest Sank
is Disney, not TV and movies. Uh watch. Yeah, I'm really
a Parks guy first the foremost. And yeah, I like watching the animated
film still, but even that has not been great all odd times lately it's
been rough. Yes, Ghost of Sushim is another project they have happening,
and sure, yeah that that video game is based you could just hey,
what if we made a curse ow with film into a game, so it's
going the other way. That's my thing. With a lot of he'es,
it's like, hey, isn't that already basically a TV show or movie?
But when they actually make them TV shows, like with the Last of Us,
a lot of people seem to care. I mean, my timeline was
nothing but people having opinions about some casting for the Last of Us second season,
So apparently this is this big, big deal stuffed Jeff, fair enough,
We'll say, uh. With these shows, it's always like, ah,
I think maybe I'll watch them, and then I never actually end up
doing so. But give it think that far I know, not watching that,
that's not happening. I'll go play Twisted Metal again. That'd be fun.
There was never any risk of me watching Twisted Medal. I'll say that
one for even what. Yeah, I'm glad that it Apparently it was better
than people were fearing. That's but yeah, it has I'll do with the
quality. It's just like that is not how I'm spending my time these days.
There's like shows I do like and I don't have time for them anymore.
Dan, did you know that the people who made the original Twisted Medals
made like an underwater vehicle combat game that no one ever talks about for PlayStation.
I want to play that. For get what it's called. I just
saw a video on that that blew my mind because they go somebody else make
twist Mel three and four and then those guys critical depth. It's not good.
Well that's not gonna stop me. Yeah, when does that ever stop
us? Yeah? Yeah? He also asked me. During the top part
where we're talking about people losing their jobs, Dan just burst in like,
however, well you're playing Ride Retribution. Let's give your second separate story.
He just came in with immediate Dan Energy, finish your squirts the water in
your face. But yeah, yeah, it's good to play. Just go
to beat right to hell today for sure. Yeah we know, we know
you weren't listening, of course, we know, all right. Last story
here in videos Sink Paulsar is an anti blurmot monitor tech aimed squarely at your
eyeballs. All starts a kind of star Jeff, that's not the video.
Did this all right? I didn't have anything to do with this. Kevin
Purty ours Technica. Basically the short version of this is uh CRTs were really
good at making like images look good even when you were like turning and moving,
and LCDs have been shitty at it since the beginning of time. Uh
So you get like you lose a lot of detail when you move, and
guess what you do in video games, Yeah, fucking move a lot.
So and video is like finally, like we're gonna come up with a super
advanced technology to address this very basic thing that has always sucked with LCDs.
Hey, whatever, let's let's go for it. We're not like going back
to CRTs anytime soon. Uh So this having this as an option to improve
image quality in movement will be great. Uh There's gonna be some early monitors
from like a sus that are going to use it. It's like the new
generation of g sinc. She sink was like a big deal early on,
and then everyone had their way of doing g sink and now it doesn't really
matter that much anymore. This is like, hey, what if we came
up with something new to make things even better? And I'm excited about this,
but it's very inside baseball for graphics and stuff like that. Yes,
sure, I'm all for it. Yeah, Like a certain point, it's
probably gonna come out if it's good. People would just like, this is
the monitor to get and that's all anyone will really need to know about it.
But yeah, g sinc can have some cool new technology. Once again,
v C was always just like like a universal v SNC kind of thing,
right it was in Vidia g It was a not like it's the next
generation of v SINC. What it does is v SINC is like we're gonna
lock you to sixty frames or we're gonna lock you to like one whole frame,
and we're just gonna wait for the frame and g SNC. The the
easiest way of explaining it is the computer could talk to the monitor and say,
here, the frame is ready, so just show it right now,
and so the monitor could adjust its frame rate basically to be like show the
whole frame when it was ready. So there was no screen tearing ever or
anything like that, and the frame got to the screen as soon as possible.
So it's the best of both worlds. Is it like that cinema mode
on the evs that your grandma keeps on? No, No, that's actually
frame generation and that's not cinema mode. That cinem mode fixes that, but
like the smooth mode that's frame generation and the video has that as well,
and it's actually pretty decent. It adds a little bit of lag, but
nothing like if you use your TV's motion smoothing, which just make mixed games
completely unplayable. All right, that does it for the news. I have
a poll question. We'll get to that here in a second. In the
meantime, Mike, why do you tell people what you have going on?
I come on, your only guess who ever ends early? It's not early,
We're like eleven fifty three. This is always when I'm like looking in
the show sends with you at like eleven fifty eight. Now you are You're
You're concise. This is not a problem with you, Mike. These are
good things. I was like, I went on the show today thinking I'm
glad Mike's there because we won't just go on and on and on. I
was happy about that. On Yeah, yeah, take the fuck out of
here, take a hit. Yeah. Do you ask me? Where can
people find you on the internet? Internet? Uh? Yeah, you know,
Tokoto on Twitch and Twitter and everything. I'm going to have a review
for Prince of Persia Lost Crown go up tomorrow on GamesBeat dot com. Check
that out. Yeah, and then Jeff and I tomorrow night we're doing an
in person show for our game Mes Deicides podcast where we'll be doing Gave Me
the Year and some other she agains. We'll talk about Prince of Persia.
We'll talk about Prince of Persia also here on Giant Bomb Friday on a BombCast
Revengeance. So I'm gonna have a lot to say about that, So that'll
be fun. Yep, looking forward to that. Yeah, Imman Goldie actually
got this from ford Field when I went to the game on Sunday, So
it's a Lions NFC Championship hoodie. The PlayStation plus premium games dropped and the
only thing you need to know is that it includes the Star Wars Episode one,
the Phantom Menace game for PlayStation one. I really like that game.
There's something about the way it looks that I really like. Yeah, well,
it's very playstationing, and yes, that's an ambitious game because it's like
a it's like a third person shooter in action game with like the wonky controls
you'd expect from that, and then one chapter it just turns into grim fan
Dango. It runs on that same engine. I think I'm like okay,
yeah, sure, absolutely, so I'd like to play that again. All
right. You see what Sean said to Dan? Is that what you're laughing
about? Yeah? I think about Dan and Chet saying I beat it this
moment. Yeah, we don't need to death. All right? Did you
buy a PS four pro? That was the poll question from Monday. Thirty
eight percent said yes, sixty two percent said no. So it's like that.
That's both like okay, way more than the fifteen percent of the general
audience that we saw though from the weaked in pool so low. That's surprising.
Oh God, shut up, Dan with his broken finger. I know
how much you've been playing prinzip ersion. You shut the home up. I
don't want to hear it anymore. Uh yeah, I mean but that,
you know, fifteen percent we saw that. That's how much it sold,
like fifteen million PS four pros. But in the very like you know,
hardcore audience that we have listening to this show, thirty eight percent about it.
So it's like double It's like, Okay, these are the people that
spend a lot of money on gaming. We are essentially I caught myself among
you being taken advantage of by these companies that were like, hey, we
could sell more hardware to the same assholes all over again. There was a
play station five Pride, what one? Immediately I would get one. I
feel like right today, I'm like, I don't want one, But if
there was one, I would, I would need one and I would get
it. I actually want one. I don't know. I have a hard
time knowing if, like my performance problems with Jedi Survivor even from Fancy sixteen,
and that's because, oh, if only the hardware was better, or
if those games just weren't optimized enough. I don't know what the problem.
Actually, it's a little column, a little column. Bee all right,
got a new poll question, does Indiana Jones matter to you? Yes or
no? We will get the results of that on Game mess Mornings on Thursday
tomorrow morning here on Giant Bomb, speaking to Giant Bomb later today, playing
Blake Club. Before that, we're gonna be playing Pacific Drive here in a
little bit, I'm gonna get all that set up. We'll be playing that,
go through a couple of runs there. I'm looking forward to that.
I haven't played much of that. It's a preview build. But we'll we'll
get we'll take a look at that and see how that actually goes. Tomorrow
we'll have voicemail, dumb Truck, We're gonna be there's some other stuff.
What are we doing? I think, O, yeah, we're playing Prince
of Persia things like that, so you can look out for that. And
then I'm we doing the Fantasy Critic draft too. That'll be on Thursday.
On Thursday, we'll be doing the Fantasy Critic draft for Giant Bomb and doing
our Prince of Persia review on Bomb. I'm gonna keep seeing the beast Casts
because I think BCR bomb cast revengeance, So look out for all that.
Everybody that's a good name, beast Cast. I get it because that's the
word East in it. He caught up everybody there. It is all right,
Mike, thank you so much for spinting today talking with me about video
games. You're welcome, and we're closer to the top of the hour,
so I feel see this is yeah, this is how it is. I
like fifty fifty three, I start wrapping up and then we go through all
this bullshit. Oh god, I'm so sorry. I forgot to ask.
So what have you been hearing about Ridge Racer Ladies? Son? Of a
bitch. Thank you all for let's say you're the best audience in gaming.
Until next time, have a good one, take care of yourself and new
Ridge racer on switch h