GrubbSnax Ep. 11: Gamestop Pre-Orders, Backwards Compatibility, and Jeff's Love of Salt

Yeah, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this. I'm Jeff Grubb, I write over on GamesBeat dot com. This is Grub's next Thank you for tuning in. We got we got a lot to go over today. Mostly though, I think all eyes are on the PlayStation Showcase, which will be happening later this afternoon this evening, depending on where you're at PlayStation Sony. They tend to do these at a time that it's a little bit later than everyone else. I wonder if they just like that for the West Coast time. Maybe it's good for both, you know, North America and in Europe, which is their focus right now, so it's probably why they choose that time. All that matters is is we're gonna be doing this before that, so we don't know what's going to happen. We'll talk a little bit about stuff that I'm that I'm hearing definitely cannot confirm, so mostly it'll be my me guessing. So if you're into that, well maybe we could do it together. If you guys have guests, I would love to hear it. Ask those questions. Speaking of questions, we'll definitely get to those here very soon. If you have them. If you're watching live on giant bomb dot com slash chat, you can go in there. You go, there's an ask a question button at the top of the page. You hit that, you can ask me a question. We'll get to it live, we'll interact. I'll try to get to as many of those as possible. Okay, I think that we should probably just hop right in. I do have a few things here on my list of stuff I want to get to, but we probably let's start with the PlayStation showcase. Let's just do it. That's it is the thing I'm thinking about the most. I'm looking forward to that. I will start here and say that they announced this last week, so we talked about it a little bit, and so they've had a full week to build a build up hype, and that means they've also had a full week to sort of undercut that hype if they wished to do so. They haven't. And I think, based on what I've heard, which is no specific games, I haven't heard anything specific, but i'd have heard that, and this is coming out of Sony that they are very confident in this forty minute showcase and they do expect it to be It's like they think they have a lot of heaters in this one, a lot of fastballs, a lot of like really good trailers and stuff to show people really good announcements. So I mean, that's the stuff I'm getting I'm hearing out of Sony. I'm kind of having a hard time keeping my expectations in check. I think a lot of people are as well. But we do know that Sony is pretty decent at keeping at sort of meeting those expectations and occasionally exceeding them. So forty minutes is not the longest time in the world, like you think like that. The most recent Xbox showcase at E three was like two hours, and it felt like they had like a lot of stuff in there and they kind of just kind of you know, over those that course of the two hours and having some surprising stuff and doing a really good execution, they were able to sort of meet and slightly exceed their expectations. I think with forty minutes, like we're talking about a really solid direct length, like Nintendo Direct length. But if they sort of walk the line between a really good Nintendo Direct and a really good, like full Sony E three showcase, it could be pretty good. So let's talk about what I think won't be there first, which is and I saw someone ask here I met mister names. Sorry if you remember, if you want to ask a question, that ask a question button. But uh, Final Fantasy is it going to be there? I don't think Final Fantasy sixteen is going to be there. To me, that means if it's not here, which you know, again this is based on what I'm hearing and unable to fully verify in any way, but based on what I've heard from you know, a couple of places, is that Final Fantasy sixteen it probably won't be here. And again that to me, that means probably Tokyo game shows where we start to see that, maybe the Game Awards. I guess, you know, there's a there's a bunch of options for something like that. Uh, you know, they could always save it for the next big Sony showcase as well. Sony very close with Square Nix right now, So I think that just means that they are they're holding back and and really if forty minutes, they clearly they picked and they choose what we'll go in there, what they really want to focus on, what they think they need right now. And part of that is going to be covering what's coming out this holiday, but I and early next year and things we know about. But I don't think they're going to hold back in terms of Sometimes we get a sony that is very conservative and they're like, hey, we announced a couple of games they took like ten years to finish or something like that, and that sucked and we don't like doing that, and then creates all these weird expectations and then we have to like we have to you know, see those through, and we don't like doing that. Sometimes you get the sony though, that is gonna say, hey, we're starting off a generation, we're early in the generation. Let's make some big promises for this generation. And they've already done that to a certain extent. I mean, they've announced a lot of games that we haven't seen still, so Final Fantasy sixteen for spoken, you know, Horizon and God of War specifically, but those are all coming fairerly soon. I think. So they could probably start talking about stuff that is two to three years out, and so so we've talked about well we won't what won't be there, and I think when we say two to three years out, that kind of leads right into the stuff that I think is on the borderline, and that is whatever Bluepoint is doing next. I think everyone is assuming it's metal Gear Solid. I think that's probably for pretty good reason. I think there's a good chance it is metal Gear Solid. I don't know for sure. And the reason I think that one might be on the borderline to get announced here when when we say, hey, just ten months ago, you know, at the beginning of this generation, this company released Demon Souls a remake, so they were pretty busy, and would they really have the bandwidth to have something like a metal Gear Solid ready already. No, it's probably not ready yet, but there is a chance they might want to sort of announce it to undercut any potential announcement of an Xbox and Cogima deal. Right if Xbox and Cogima come out and say they're working together, I think there's gonna be a certain audience that is going to say, well, we already know we're getting the metal Gear Solid remake that we really really want. So, you know, Cojima proved to me that I should care about whatever you're doing next. In the meantime, I know I've got something Cojima like coming. I think I might be the thinking here. So if we do see that, I think we'll see something along those lines of like promising this game, showing something of it. Probably you know, you could just show the solid snake smoking or something, you know, smoking a cigarettes, so he could be just be jeweling. So yeah, that's my big that's the grub lock of the show is solid snake jeweling in a trailer and a teaser for a metal gear salary. Make that's not my lock, and not really other other things that are on the border. And these are things that I feel are more real than we've previously heard. Side Went Hill and Twisted Metal, I think Twisted Metals in the works, but it might be it might still be a little bit of ways off. So I think we're early and and and that that speaks to like a larger strategy shift from Sony, not even really a shift, it's like a broadening of their strategy. And we'll get to that in a second. But you know, if they have Twisted Metal ready to show, they might know if it. But either way, it's it does seem like it's in the works, does seem like it's coming, does seem like it does not involve David Jaffey, which he said made him sad, But they're not gonna work with David Jaffey right now. And then Silent Hill is probably from Blueber Team. We've heard. We've had a lot of reporting on that, specifically from Andy Robinson over at Video Games Chronicle Video Game Chronicle can't remember if it's plural, and that and a Nate Nate the Hate over on his podcast is talked about it a little bit too. Again, this one's on the border because while it probably does exist and probably is coming, does it show up here, like is it ready here? No one knows. We don't know for sure, at least one of the things. One of the things that's like it's in their decad cards. Do they pull it now? Do they play it now? Who knows, But it's it's on it's on the border line. If it shows up at this show, I wouldn't be surprised, And if it doesn't, I wouldn't be surprised as well. You know. Then there's like all of the games from those new studios, Firewalk and which I think Firewalk is a game I think that Herman Holst has said he has played seems like something that he might have touched on because he is like trying to figure out when to announce it, when to show it off. So maybe we get something like that now that Fire Sprite the new studio. Probably too early to show that stuff, but maybe. But there's a bunch of new studios that they could, you know, new studios that they either own or they have announced deals with first party publishing deals with these external studios. There's just there's a lot of stuff Sony could choose from. Let's see, we talked about Blue Point and Twisted Metal and Silent Hill. I think the next rung up that seems likely is uh a suite of multi player games. So probably that last of us multiplayer factions thing. It's probably time we hear about that, but it's probably It's also probably not the only Naughty Dog thing we we'll hear about. We'll talk about that in a second. And then Gorilla Gorilla Games is also probably working on a multiplayer thing. Excuse me. I've heard various kind like various rumors about what that could be. Some people think it is a Horizon multiplayer game, which seems weird but cool. It's it would be different, and I think that they have an appetite for different kinds of multiplayer stuff right now. The other thing I've heard is that maybe Gorilla is working on a socom game, we so com multiplayer game, and it also could involve VR somehow. Again, these are just rumors, things I can't confirm, so but we'll see and then yes, so the and then the other thing from Naughty Dog will probably be that Last of Us remake. The timing seems right for that based on what we've heard from that, from like the timeline of them shifting people from working on the Last of Us Part two to saying, okay, you're there's nothing really you could do on that, and there's nothing you could do on our next big projects. So here's something to work on in between. It seems like the timing would be right for them to sort of begin finishing up that process, announce it for twenty twenty two, and then of course line it up with the show coming out on HBO next year. It's uptime in twenty twenty two, and that speaks through actually, so we have two different strategies here that I think we need to talk about. With Sony what they're doing, it does seem like they are potentially green lighting games to coincide with their attempts to release movies and television shows based on these properties. So the obvious one is the Last of Us remake Twisted Metal, though also has that rumored show that is coming I'm saying I say rumored. I don't know if they've confirmed it or not, but it's definitely something that it seems like they are going to try to line these things up with games at the same time. And the thinking there is I think one. I think they looked at MCU and they want to have MCU like success. I think they think that it also it'll get them. I think there's a thought inside of Sony like, hey, we do make movies. Why why aren't we capitalizing on that, you know? And I think there's a prestige attached to Hollywood and prestige television that I think Sony is a little bit craving. But also it's just good business. If you look at what happened with the Witcher and Netflix, the Witcher three had its best its second best year after its launch year, and honestly it might have been even its best year ever. I can't remember exactly, but it was a very good year when the show debuted on Netflix, it was very well received. And then people went from the show to go play the game. They went looking for the game wherever they could find it. And we've talked about that before with why Netflix is interested in games. Well, that's why companies like Sony are interested in movies and television. They want that synergy. The executives are all about synergy. Any anytime they can get synergy, they crave it. Uh it's uh, it's very desirable. It's the only thing they live for. They're basically monsters for synergy. And then the other strategy is that it does seem like Sony is legitimately interested in producing more multiplayer games. And you know, whether we see multiple multiplayer games announced today or not, I don't know, but it does seem like they have several in the works. And this this has shifted my thinking a little bit about what Sony's doing here. I was always saying Sony should just keep doing what it does with its with its you know, Accolade awarded single player narrative driven games, because no one else is really doing that stuff. It's really expensive. No one else is really going to swoop into that space at all and they're sort of Lost Leaders. Even if they do turn a profit, in general, they're not the most profitable games because they are also the most expensive games to make, so typically they're often the most expensive games to make, so you know, they can treat them a little bit like Lost Leaders. People show up for a PlayStation to get these games and then they end up playing Fortnite and spend a lot of money on there with their friends. And while that is continuing continuing to happen, I think Sony has recognized that the cost of producing single player, narrative driven, cinematic PlayStation style games is only going to go up. This is something Sean Laden has talked about recently where he said the budgets during his reign during the PS four were getting into gett into like one hundred million dollar range, and he expects during the Police Station five generation for that to balloon to like, you know, basically double and go into the two hundred million dollar range really quickly. So they're not going to abandon that those games, even if they are that expensive. They'll find new ways to monetize. They'll try to get as much money from those games as possible. They'll try to raise the price, they'll have more reasons for you to get the more the eighty dollars ninety dollar version or whatever. They'll do everything they can to make as much money from those games as possible. That's that's not that's not that. That stuff's on the table. It's going to be one of their main focuses, but I think they want to diversify their portfolio in terms of so, yes, we're going to continue making the last of US style games, and it's going to be two hundred and fifty million dollars to make that game whatever, we'll do that. But in between that, with all these other studios that we're bringing in, we don't want them to also want to make a two hundred and fifty million dollar sort of big budget game that sells between six and fifteen million copies. We already have that. We have some of the studios, they're the best, that are the best at that, And if you want to like do that in addition to this other thing, that's fine. But the other thing would be not necessarily smaller games. I think they'll still be PlayStation style in terms of like their presentation, but they are going to be the kinds of games that are slimmer and budget multiplayer and basically just a way to diversify the portfolio. Like I said, so they would they be games that could exist for a long time, have really long legs in terms of monitors, where they have high lifetime value for each player because they monetize well with micro transactions or whatever, and probably also cost less to produce in the first place. And they're going to sprinkle these in and hope, hope for like a hit here and there, so that these games can sort of help justify some of the other projects they're doing and give them a better chance to you know, to go from making so much money now to making even more money. Like they're not like shifting resources from one thing to the other. They are broadening their approach to include more in different kinds of games. They're already really good at one type of game. They're going to try to spend the next couple of years getting good at making multiplayer games again, something they've done in the past to some success, but they haven't really approached recently. Yeah, see someone doing that that quote. I want shorter games with worst graphics that are made by people who are paid more to work less and yeah, that's I tend to agree. It's my actually, my taste are that. But Sony knows that it's business is kind of reliant on bigger games, bigger budgets, working more. It's and they know it's unsustainable. It's the thing, but they're gonna try to sustain it for as long as possible. They will look for new tricks, new technologies to make this stuff easier. Machine learning is probably gonna be something that every company embraces in the next couple of years to take a lot of like a lot of the work away from humans and put it on machines, like creating art assets, things like that. They are looking for ways to make to make making the same games more affordable and more palatable to their budgets. But they're gonna keep They're gonna keep going down that road. It's worked for them, and it's going to keep working for them. All right, Let's let's see if I missed anything from the PlayStation showcase. I don't. I don't think so. I think we touched on everything that I think is worth talking about. I'm sure there's probably gonna be some surprises as well. Things I didn't touch on it at all. But you know, I'm looking forward to this is what I'm looking forward to it. I want to see what's gonna have in just as much as anybody else. Let's talk a little bit though about that fire Sprite acquisition. So fire Sprite, I think that's the name. I feel like everything I say it, I feel like that can't be correct. But fire Sprite is basically it's former former a lot of former Sony employees, people that worked at Liverpool Studio and like Psygnosis and stuff like that. And uh, they people who were responsible for the racing game now I want to call it Wave Race, but that's not right. Wipe Out the w The W threw me off, responsible for the wipe Out games. Uh, and they left. They started their own studio. This is a two hundred and fifty person team, very similar in size to something like Insomniac. This is a big studio and they're they're at their their credits right now. We include stuff like the Presence and Playroom and Playroom VR, and they are not going to make games like that. Probably the two games that they excuse me, the two games that they are looking for help for right now in terms of their when you look at their job listings. Is a game changing first person shooter multiplayer game, and that's how they described it, and the other one is a dark, powerful narrative adventure or something like that. And again I think this, this, you know, speaks to this broadening strategy from Sony where they are, Yeah, they're bringing in new studios and they want to have studios that understand the way Sony makes games. But they're not going to just bring them in and say do what Naughty Dog does or do what Insomniac does. They're gonna say, hey, look at the way Naughty Dog in Insomniac approach the stuff they're good at. Think about what you're good at, and let's apply the Sony coat of paint. You know that sheen to whatever you're doing. But we're gonna want it to be different. And I think the big focus is going to be on this this multiplayer game. And again that goes back to what we were just talking about. But this is the third acquisition from Sony over the summer. They previously got house Mark and Nixies and these are all companies from Europe, and to me, I think this indicates that Sony does recognize that it has to play the acquisition game, but it's it's Sony playing the acquisition game in a way that is beneficial to the company and placed to its strengths. So, you know, we've spoken before about how Sony went from a Japanese company to maybe a more American company, and now it's definitely feeling like more of a European led company with Jim Ryan in charge of the you know, the entire unit, and Herman Holst in charge of PlayStation studios. And that's I think what's happening now is Jim Ryan and Herman Holst are looking around saying, we cannot compete with Microsoft and ten Cent and whoever else with Amazon in terms of acquiring major publishers or major studios. They are just too expensive and if we get into a bidding Moore, we're just gonna lose. We shouldn't even really waste time on that stuff, and so instead, let's look to where we have relationships where no one else does. Now, it's this is not uncommon to like, if you're gonna make an acquisition and you're gonna spend a lot of money on something, you're gonna typically gonna do that on something that you understand you're gonna spend seven point five billion dollars if you're Microsoft on Bethesda because you understand Bethesta. But the thing is is that everyone in the industry had a relationship with Bethesta. Bethesta's this big organization that would have been would have fit just as well within PlayStations as it would in Microsoft, maybe a little bit better in Microsoft, because you know they have worked so closely before. But it's not like. The point is is that Sony has had these relationships with these companies that Microsoft intention and whoever are acquiring. What's happening in Europe is Sony has a distinct advantage and that Herman Holst and Jim Ryan know these companies very well, and these other companies do not, and so PlayStation has has an advantage when they go to start these conversations, start negotiations, and then when it comes down to actually probably probably paying the price, they're probably getting decent a decent price for many of these companies. Now, again we've spoken about how the industry is, it's mad for acquisitions. Right now, content is worth a lot, So therefore the companies that produce content are worth more than they've ever been worth and so the Sony's probably still playing paying a slight premium, but compared to buying a Bethesda and really comparing compared to maybe buying a studio in the United States, like maybe even like Insomniac, they might be getting a pretty good deal. And then the hope is is that it pays off in the same way that the Insomniac deal is paid off, which seems like, Okay, that's paying the sky because Insomnia was such a good deal, like you, but you purchased them, and then they've gone on this this run of hit after hit after hit, and that's going to be kind of hard to match that. But that's the hope. That's like the drain. Okay, I got my list here of other things I want to talk about. That Sony's section took a little bit longer than I was expecting, so maybe we'll cut some of this stuff. Let's take a look here. Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna talk about why so people were complaining about the spoilers and Metroid dread trailers, and I just want to like, it probably wasn't many of you. Most of you probably understand this. I'll make this quick. I still want to talk about it, clearly. But Metroid Dread was when we saw it at E three or whatever, when they announced it, it was the first conversation we had was that doesn't look like it's sixty dollars. And now they've kept showing us trailers and no one's really saying that anymore. No one said, like maybe a few people, but the conversation is no longer, Hey, that doesn't look like it's sixty hours. Now it's like, oh my god, stop showing me all this stuff. It was gonna buy it anyhow, And that's that was the entire point. That's what marketing is, is the conversation is one thing, and you want to get it to a point where people are just going to assume they're going to buy this thing and they are planning to spend money on it. So when people say you're spoiling and spoiling like the spoiling's thing that I was going to play anyhow to Nintendo, that's like, Okay, our marketing worked and we're going to keep doing this in the future. Like that. That's what they want to hear. They want you to be upset about spoilers because it meant that it means that you are thinking about buying the game, you have already mentally prepared yourself to do that. So that's just marketing one oh one, and it's working. And if you are, it's the company just doesn't really care. If you're getting spoiled. That's not money out of their pocket. It's money out of their pocket. If you begin trying to convince people that the game's not worth sixty dollars, that's that's something that they can hear and be like worried about and try to undo. And the clear I think clearly they were successful at undoing that. Okay, that was quick, That wasn't too bad. Okay. I want to talk about Game Stop and Activision and pre orders and Call of Duty Vanguard. So pre orders used to be a much bigger thing. They have definitely most people. Most people do not pre order anymore. This is something that has really shifted and changed. Companies are less concerned with getting pre orders. But this year Activision does seemed like, hey, we want at least we want the conversation when you walk into a game Stop to be focused on trying to get someone to pre order this game rather than anything else. Now I've gone backwards, and I've gone back and forth in my head about well, let's talk about what this is first before we get to them. So Activision is offering store leaders at game Stop one thousand dollars cash for the store in each region that's that gets the most pre orders for Call of Duty Vanguard. I think the second store gets five hundred dollars for its store leader, and then there's like swag bags for like store three and four or whatever. That's a little bit different than what's what it's been in the past, where you might get a swag bag, but you don't get a thousand dollars cash, and that seems a little bit more aggressive than what it's been. So uh, and that's relative to the last few years in terms of that is more aggressive. I think in the past, Activision has been very like, you know, putting its best foot for when trying to have relationships with stores like game Stop and specifically with store leaders, store store managers and stuff like that, where they would throw big parties and like years and years ago they would have like, okay, all the best you know managers in a certain region would get to come to a private party with Activision in Las Vegas and hang out with celebrities and see private concerts and stuff like that. That stuff doesn't really happen anymore. And now but now it's like it's shifted to just being like, hey, we have cash in hand that we're just gonna give you if you get us as many pre orders as possible. Now, I don't expect this to move the needle too much. The culture has just shifted. Where games in the past would have had hundreds of pre orders, now we're talking about single digit pre orders for many of these games. Call of Duty is probably still going to be a slight exception, but I think a good example is Mad and Mad in NFL, where in the past Madden would have had hundreds of pre orders. Now those people are just buying digitally for the most part, and the people who want to get physical are either are still pre ordering, but that's like again single digits per store now, or they are just waiting for a sale because they know that the physical version is going to go on sale. So activisions saying hey, we want to try to move this needle a little bit, and so we are just gonna give you money. And so what I was thinking about earlier about like going back and forth, and my head was going back and forth between like, is this Activisions worried about people walking into a store beginning a conversation about call of duty and then thinking like maybe someone might bring up a conversation about like activisions leadership and the lawsuit in California, And does the thousand dollars sort of incentivize anyone in the store to say, let's not talk about that, let's talk about pre ordering instead. I don't know if that's what is happening here. I guess it's I can draw the path in my brain, but I don't necessarily think that the pattern fits. I think it's mostly just someone in charge of the relationship with GameStop has a budget, it's spending it on this instead and hoping that that it will lead to an increase pre orders compared to last year's call of duty. It's probably what that is. Okay, let's see hear anything else. I talked about the metroid dread thing. I got a few questions from people who reached out to me who usually can't watch the show. So I'll hit these real quick, and then I'll get to your guys's questions. We'll get going. So let's see here this one's I did not include the names on these, so I'm just gonna read them. I just wondered if you had any views slash insight on the Stellar back Compact work Ubisoft is doing that is on the whole going under the radar, especially on the series. As they are pushing sixty frames per second with Xbox one X resolution for something like ac Odyssey, are they bringing it up to speed to make a future launch of Ubisoft Plus on consoles. I mean, I'm sure that's something that they have in their brain in their heads. So what this question is speaking to is Ubisoft is doing a lot of work to ensure it's entire library of games runs really well on Xbox Series X and X and everything. And is that work part of thinking like, hey, we want to make sure that when we want you play Plus or Ubisoft Plus or whatever it's called on console, that those games aren't an issue and everything is just like really pristine. I think that's part of it. I think part of it is that Ubisoft back of pat their catalog games tend to sell well longer than ever before. People are going back to these games and saying, hey, I played the most recent assassins Creed, I really liked it. Maybe I should go back to some of these other ones and catalog sales. I have been very important for you to be soft for the last several quarters. It's like that's a big part of it as well. But yes, I think Ubisoft Plus probably is eventually going to come to consoles one way or the other, and ensuring that that work is done already is a big part of that. And also just in sure that, like they know the processes for getting these games running in the best possible way for future games, so they don't have to go back and do this work in the future. It's just ready to go. And you know, they also think that this work is going to pay dividends for years and years and years, because they don't expect us to get off of the current architecture. In terms of X eighty six, I think it's an architecture I can't remember the difference, but for quite some time. So if they do this work now, these games can live on on PlayStation six or the next Xbox or whatever and on PC for a very long time and it will just continue to make them money over time. So it's really it's an investment in their catalog, and however they end up using that catalog, it'll be it'll pay, it'll make the money, all right. Here's another one. It was said in June on Xbox Wire that we would hear more about a Vowed soon, and with games come now passed us, it leaves people wondering how soon is soon and when does Microsoft plan to show more. So I think of the thing with a Vowed is is that I think it's one of those games that could show up at the Game Awards. The problem is is that my your stuff has a lot of stuff that could show up at the Game Awards, and if they choose to, like, they have an option of saying, hey, if it shows up the Game Awards, great, If it doesn't, then next three is gonna be just as fine. Because this is a game that is probably coming out in twenty twenty three, so they have to like, they could pick and choose when they're gonna announce it. But I think that Avowed is the one of those that's in hell Blade. I think it might show up at the Game Awards, So you're gonna have to continue to wait. That's December, I guess. I suppose they could have something between now and then, but I think the Game Awards is is a big Microsoft focus right now. I think they were there was plants or maybe an XO event at the end of one of these years, last year or this year. I'm not sure if they have any idea about getting those together, and maybe if they do something like that, it could show up there, but you know, if not, then the Game Awards. All right, let's see and then finally here's the one, and then we'll start getting to the questions from the chat here do we know for sure w WB Games is going to get sold off? And this question that there's a whole whole bunch more here, but basically Discovery Plus or whatever that owns a lot of the WB game w B Games Studios now has been producing and publishing games for a very long time based on its properties. So Deadly as Catch MythBusters, Straight Outlaws, Moonshiners, the Game of VR game for Shark Week, Gold Rushed, the game Naked and Fraid Survival Challenge, a whole bunch of these stuff, a bunch of these things based on Discovery properties. So the thinking would be, why not leverage WB Games to start making some better quality versions of those games, and then also just expand that business that they've already been doing. The problem is that, like, if you have a successful publishing division that is already doing something like at a certain scale, just jumping up several tiers, it doesn't necessarily do anything for you except for maybe introduced a bunch of problems. Now you go from having this relatively small but profitable division that make sense for like, you know, the people in charge of it, makes sense relatives of the size of the entire company. That's one thing if you keep all the WB game studios. Now Discovery shifted from being like video content producing company that does some game publishing to almost primarily a game publishing company that has some TV shows. And is that a strategy that the people who run Discovery want to oversee? It's very different from what they were doing before, and maybe it's not their core competency, and maybe it's a little bit scary, and and you have to try to warry, like like one of the big shifts there would be Okay, so we know how to make these TV shows profitable, we know how we know we want to get people subscribing to this stuff. That's you know, that's fine. We know how to make all that stuff profitable, profitable and work with these unions in TV and movie production, like we're good at all that stuff. Are we good at making a game company profitable? If they have issues, if they need are we gonna be able to solve them? I that's it's just such a different world. And it's it's what we see over and over again with like big companies trying to come into space and make it work. The few that have made it work have been by creating their own niche like uh Annapurna and like sticking to their scale and not trying to go above it too much and making that work. And it's worked for them. But it's not something that you could just easily replicate by just saying, Okay, now we own WB Games, let's go and be a game company. It's it's very different. So to circle back to your question, are we sure that WB Games is being sold off? No? I think there's but I think there's a lot of interest. I think there's I think there's a chance that at any moment one of those could get sold off, one of those studios, something like nether Realm, because it might. It just might be too difficult for discovery. Okay, let's go take some questions. I'm gonna start here from them, so I want I want to answer first before anything else. And as always, thank you everybody for tune and in. I know that we're all looking forward to the PlayStation Showcase. So let's hang out, let's answer some of these questions. We'll get out of here. I'll go pick up my kid from preschool, comeback, and we'll watch the PlayStation Showcase. It'll be a good day. I have to say it out last, so I don't forget it. Adhd al right from our line's up is the Forgotten City Game of the year right now, I think it's my game of the year. Forgotten City is very, very good. It is. It is part of a lineage of time loop games that aren't that aren't Rogue Lights, so it's not a rogue Light, but it is a time loop game. I think deaf Ooop is actually kind of in that same lineage, but it reminds me of Oberdn and even Hitman and Outer Wilds, but mixed a little bit with Skyrim, and it's like one of the best, like Skyrim Camp, like you know missions if you ended up in this forgotten city and had to do this stuff. And I know it's started as mod for Skyrim, but it does really well. Is it gives you this kind of this condensed city that when you first enter it you can almost see everything. There's a few nooks and crannies, and there's a promise of like a lot of hidden treats and if you explore the world, you're gonna get to know it really intimately. And by playing it over and over in the same space, you begin to learn like, oh, they had to really hone the city to make sure that if you did want to explore, there is something for you to find, and when you find that thing, it's going to play back into the main plot, the main mystery, and it's just so rewarding. It's so well made and like honestly, and then the ending, which I'm not going to spoil other than say it was really life affirming, which is a surprise, like you don't usually get that sort of thing from but it was a surprise for me. Maybe, I mean, there's other games where people get that sort of stuff, but for me, it was like, Wow, I was not expecting this, and it was really well done. So yeah, game of the year so far up there with Hitman three and Ratchett and Clank for me. And I'm still playing Psycho Nuts too, which I think is probably gonna be in my top five as well. All right. From Slaine Mac awesome cheating and single player video games good or bad. It's good. It's good because the single player video games is an experience you own and if you if you cheat, if you're cheating in a single player video game, you are taking more ownership over that experience to say, I get the tick tape, how I'm going to have fun in here? And I think in the end that makes it more memorable. You get to tell stories about how you like, broke the game or whatever, and I think in the end you have this thing that was more important to you, more singular to your experience, and that is more priceless, I think in the end. From ra vay Art, Good morning, Jeff. Do you think the diamond iconography for the PlayStation and showcase could hint towards a new membership tier or service for PlayStation. That's a good that's a good line of thinking. I've been trying to, like consider what the diamond. Theming is I guess for people who haven't been paying too close attention. If you look at the PlayStation showcase teaser trailer, the PlayStation logo and like the sacred symbols or whatever are all in the their diamond encrusted. And then when you have I think when they do like the interstitials the animation that they're probably gonna use for the show itself, they're like zooming in and out and it's like a lot of diamond shapes. Maybe you know what it is. It could be a new button, a new button for the PlayStation controller. You know you got square, triangle circle. I guess diamond has four sides, so that actually doesn't work because if you look at the PlayStation control. I think I learned this from the bomb cast. I can't remember the circles one side, the x is to two sides because it's two lines, the triangle's three sides, and the squares four sides, the one, two, three, and four button. So I guess what would a five be. It'll be a pentagon button, and then six would be the stop sign. All right, I'm gonna stop, okay from dostuende to stande, mister Snacks. What are the chances of More Fire Emblem remakes Slash rereleases, particularly Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn the GameCube and we entries, respectively. Legit copy copies are relatively hard to get ahold of today. Yeah, so those games are hard to find. I mean, they're working on More Fire Emblem and I think it's probably the next One's probably going to be a major remake, but I don't know. We'll have to see if it's going to be of a Path or Radiance or Radian Dawn. I guess those ones make a lot of sense. They probably would require slightly less work, and a lot of people didn't play those games, and they would probably feel still pretty modern. So yeah, I think I think there's a good chance that it's one of those, and if not, probably maybe the game Boy Advanced one. Which have they've done that one before? They've remade that one before? I can't remember, but yeah, More Fireblm is coming. It's probably a remake, could be one of those two games. That's like how it goes from casual. Hello, Senior Snacks. First off, thank you for introducing me to the gym that is Donkey Kong ninety four. Absolutely, you're welcome. One of the best games ever made. I want to do. I think I'm gonna do a video on about that game here pretty soon, because I did a pull on YouTube and I said, what's the best Gameboy game? And I listened some options and that finished in last place. So we can't have that. We got to have more people recognizing that Donkey Kong is probably the best game Boy game except for Links Awakening. Okay, my question is do you think that the rumored Castlevania game Boy Advanced Collection releases this year? I do. I think it. You know, it got rated, got rated already. I think it's the kind of thing that we get from a from a Nintendo direct. I think it's the kind of thing maybe even a shadow dropped during a Nintendo direct that'd be really I think I would be a really hype moment where people get very excited and they tell all their friends, Hey, if you never played these, you have to play these, you have to go get them right now. I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm you know, a lot of that's just wishful thinking. No one part, although I am. I'm playing those games right now. So so what if they're not, if they don't come, because I'm just already playing them on a handheld myself, but I hope everyone else gets a chance to play them, So I'm really hopeful. From Dan Whalen nineteen eighty six, Hey, Jeff, is there any news or information about Ridge Racer? Is the franchise totally dead? I've been meaning to look into Ridge Racer, a series that I've been getting back into recently, partially because of Michael Manatio Over, a game speat who's just won't shut up about Type four, which is like one of his favorite games right now. He keeps playing it. So I've gone back to play that game and some of the other ones recently, and I was going, you know, there is one thing happening with it, the rumored Arcade one up stand up racing machine Cabinet. I don't think they've confirmed that yet, but it showed up on wayfair dot com. It's like seven hundred and fifty dollars or something like that, maybe eight hundred dollars, so it's expensive, but it looks good, it looks cool. I love Ridge Racer in the arcade. I love it on PlayStation, and I'm thinking about getting that machine, honestly, because they just looks so good. But I wish it was a sit down machine like the outrun. One ask for it, like what is happening with the series overall, it feels like one of those they could always maybe bring back, but it's it's not like this surefire hit, And I think they'd have to set expectations accordingly, and then they'd they'd have to be happy with those expectations to the point where it's worth their time and lining up though all of those incentives is difficult for these companies these days, as we see which many of them don't bring back these franchises that do have an audience that are beloved but probably wouldn't be like the biggest games in the world anymore. But you know, we'll see. I haven't heard anything though from Ksey Lynch mob Hey, Jeff, good morning with Alan Wake remastered announced. Is it a precursor to a sure Thing sequel or are they feeling it out? Uh? Yeah, they're they're planning an Allen Wake sequel. This is this is something that we've talked about before. I don't know if I've talked about it on this show, but they are working with Epic Games on producing an Alan Wake two. Uh, you know, at least it's in the planning stages. So does that turn into anything concrete and real. I'm hope. I'm hopeful, I think so. I don't imagine it'll get derailed, but uh, Remedy is really busy, right, that is Remedy, right, Alana. Yeah, they're super super busy. So uh, I we'll have to wait and see if that turns into anything soon or not. But yeah, Alan Wake remastered. It's part of them taking back Alan Wake and saying, hey, this is our stuff, this is one of our key franchises. We want people to remember it, and you know, we want to also make some money to help fund all these projects we're working on. And then one of those six projects is almost certainly Alan Wake two. Nightlocket Chat says one up arcade machines are lame, and I don't disagree, but i love kinds of silly stuff like that, So I've got one over here somewhere, and I enjoy it very much. They are they're definitely kind of weak, but whatever, I don't care. From a foo fe inu fe man names, what is Grasshopper working on now? That no More Heroes three is done. I'm not sure. I you know, they just got done with No More Heroes three. I don't know if they have something else lined up, something I'll look into. From Inert Coctopus back to bother you this week to see if you've uncovered anything about the THHQ Nordic stream. No, I still haven't. I've been focused on the PlayStation stuff, so I haven't looked at THHQ Nordic. That is happening next week, right, So I'll probably look into it, and I'm if I have anything, and maybe it'll come up on Twitter or on game Speak decides. But they have so many properties it could be anything. I know it's like just the THHQ Nordic brand of racer, but even still, like, they just have so many things that could be h that I don't even have really a real good guess from Emila. Hey, Jeff, just curious if you know of any rumblings around the mobile world with Pokemon Unite drawing some fresh interest. Is there anyone else looking to jump into the market other than Valvin Riot would love to see more controller based mobile options. You know, there's always gonna be people coming up from the bottom. Right, people, you know, indies and some like mobile games stuff like that, are that are going to try to find room in that space. But all of the major companies have abandoned their hopes of creating their own competing MOBI for the most part. I mean that that was years ago. EA canceled one of their mobile games and that was God that was it feels like forever ago now I can't even remember the name of it. But but you know, the gold rush has ended there and that market is solidified, and if there's gonna be an up and comer, it will really be an up and comer from someone that we cannot predict right now, probably from China, where there's a lot of interest still in that space and a lot of money. But you know, with China's new rules, maybe and you know, I guess maybe the China's new rules means like you have to cater more to older gamers, and maybe they do care about more mobis more. But who could say. I think there's a chance that will come up from the bottom. But like right now, like you know, you look around and you say, hey, Pokemon Unite, how is it doing? Is it really like going to be a long run success. There's probably a lot of people looking at Pokemon Unit trying to figure out, Hey, if Pokemon can do this, can does that mean we could do it? Or does it just mean Pokemon could do this? So it might that Pokemon Unit might actually scare off more more studios than it actually encourages if it just becomes sort of a middling success over time from Big Denim. Is there any chance we'll get a new Socom game? I feel like there were rumblings of a new one for PS five sometime last year, but those may have been nothing more than baseless rumors. I think that there's a decent chance that we hear about a Socom game today. Now, I know I talked about that rumor that Gorilla was making it. I don't know necessarily know if I believe that we'll see, but if it's not, maybe wires could be getting crossed here in these rumors and Socom is actually being made by one of those new studios, like you know, not Firewalk, but I can't remember. Like one of those studios is working on and said they were going to work in a multiplayer game. Maybe that's what they're working on. It feels like that makes a lot of sense. It fits. You know, if you want one of these companies to succeed, one of the ways you can do that is give them a recognizable brand that has a lot of love. I think there's a good chance we hear about a socom game from Rows, if the Sonic Moving three chasing Amy Rose yea or nay. It's just it's like just the right level of garbage that yea that makes me want to say yea. Where it's Sonic and Kevin Smith together at last? Yeah, sure, why not? That's that is the garbage that I'm all for. It's the tech dick what as long as it has Sueco on the soundtrack, I'm gonna be fine. Which also, like they've talked about Suaco so much on the BombCast these past couple of weeks, and I love it because I also absolutely went down a Suaco hole. Whence the Sonic movie came out because I am convinced that he got that job because he had a popular song called Fast. I know that Gersman keeps saying that's because he's got a good like a good representation, like you know, at at a label or whatever, and they're like, hey, can we get our boy on this thing, and I'm sure that was part of it. But I think when they said, hey, he has the most popular song on TikTok for these couple of days and it's called Fast, someone involved with the Sonic movie was just like, that's all we need to hear, that's all we need. That's yes, come here. We don't care what the song sounds like. We don't care what he sounds like. Just yeah, fast Sonics Fast. It fits. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just love that so much. Sueca's new song is kind of good. Actually, So whatever from ze Tectic, What are the odds we ever see anything from the Skies of Arcadia franchise again? Or Sega needs to get their stuff together, right, that's a Sega game. You know. They could barely release good Sonic games. They don't even release Persona on other consoles, So I we got I feel like every time every week on the show, I rip on Sega, But Skys of Arcadia I feel like it should come back. I feel like it should be a no brainer. That's the kind of thing where like if you were to give it a new, proper modern sequel while maintaining the theme and the feel of the original it would have it, and you put it on on Switch and you made it like an even like a Switch exclusive and made it like kind of worked with Nintendo on that stuff. It could be the kind of game that breaks out and sells three to five million units, but that just requires so much effort from Saga that I just have no faith in them to do so, I don't know from more reg more rig, Hey, Jeff, I'm going to a wedding and Crested Butte, Colorado next month and need to help to plan a bachelor party there. Are you familiar with the area. What are the good places there. I've been out the Crestedbute to ski at one time, I think, and it was cool, but it was with a friend. We just drove the mountain and then drove home. But during that drive I do remember seeing some signs for Native American casinos, which are some of the coolest places on earth that you could have a real, real good time at. And I would recommend looking into that some of that stuff. That'll probably be a good place to start, because you know, there's there's some cool things. You know, tends of what time of years, So you're about to go there if you go, like, if you look around, there is a possibility that some of the skier sorts could have early snow. Maybe they're starting to open, because you know they're the high altitude. I know they've got a blizzard a few weeks ago. I don't know how much of that snow is left. But there's a chance you could go do something like that. But I wouldn't count on that, depending on the timing because if you're doing the next couple of weeks, they're probably not gonna be open, but the casinos will be open, So go do that. Good luck and yeah, Crestedbute also is just beautiful in general. So if you have like outdoorsy friends, which may if you're going to Crest Debut, maybe there's a good chance that they're outdoorsy. You can just do stuff like that. Just go on a hike, a hike with strippers. Good luck, Photomac. Do you think Blue Point will be allowed to make their own ips or original games and existing franchises in the future or just Sony see them exclusively as a high quality ground up remake studio. The thing is is, if you take Blue Point off of these ground off of these high quality, ground up remake studios or games. I'm sorry, you're still gonna want a studio doing that stuff because it's just so valuable. Demon Souls, while not like the biggest seller in the world, it's the kind of thing where they it was probably a relatively quick project to produce, even though it was a round up remake. You save a lot of money on like trying to figure out like the mechanics of a game and the creative side, and you could just focus on art and making sure that the game feels modern. And that's that's just it saves so much money and time that in this market where we've talked about on previous shows, where game development is going to take sort of a minimum of five years going forward for one of these big games, if you have a studio that is regularly delivering very very exciting projects on a and every nine month to two and a half year schedule, you don't want to give that up just because for the chance that they might make another original thing or you know, even like a sequel to one of these games. I suppose if they got to a point where they're looking around, they're like, hey, we already did Metal Gear Solid, We already remade all this other stuff. Uh do what like, you know, what are we going to try to do? Uh? Like, there's nothing that's on this level anymore. I think that's gonna take all take them a long time to get to that point. But if they do get to that point, you know, they could say, hey, a sequel to one of these games made by us in that same style could be, could be, you know, a huge success. I think they might do that, but not at anytime soon. There's just too many other projects they could be working on remaking that are going to be worth it at the opportunity costs. It's too good to pass up. Like we talked about opportunity costs all the time in terms of being afraid to take on a project because if they do this, they can't do that. This is working in favor of keeping a blue point on these remakes, because you don't want to pass up these opportunities. They're just too lucrative and and too affordable. All right, let's keep going. We've been Uh we're coming close to a to an hour, which I always want to go about an hour fifteen minutes. So we're gonna get to a bunch of these questions. Still, let's keep at it from g Valo, piggybacking off the game Boy game Boy Color discussion from last week. If Nintendo were to do a game Boy Classic, do you think it would be just game Boy and game Boy Color or would they include game Boy Advance as well. I think they would do just game Boy and game Boy Color. It's similar. It's similar to what happened with you know, Super Nintendo in the n sixty four, where they still think they can make a lot of money selling many of those Gameboy Advance and into Nintendo sixty four games ala carte or as part of smaller bundles like the three D the three D Mario All Stars bundle. And and also, like you have to think about the hardware itself, the game Boy and the game Boy Color. While you know it does have color, and I remember the poll last week made a big deal about that, but it's the it was the same exact hardware. Uh, it's you know, you basically run along the same exact emulators. And also the screen is the exact same resolution and sign in scale, so whereas with the game Boy Advance it's a wider screen. Things would look a little bit funky on there, the pixel resolution would be a little bit different. So do you make it the game Boy Advanced resolution or do you make it the game Boy Color and game game Boy resolution, And then you if they're gonna have to interpretate or do pixel perfect from one to the other, and it's just got it's not going to be as good for one of those systems. So this is why I have. When I go and buy these Chinese handhelds, which are all great for the most part, the ones I end up getting, I have a Retroid Pocket two that is four by three and very close in scale to like a Supernintendo because I want to play Super you know, you know four by three television. So anytime I want to go play one of those systems, I have like the right aspect ratio for that and pretty good resolution for them. But if I want to play Gameboy Advanced games, I have a whole separate handheld for that that it has a very similar resolution to what the Game Boy Advance has and had the same ex has the same exact aspect ratio, so those games fit perfectly in there. And also, you know, they could sell it twice Gameboy game Boy Color on the same thing and then eventually one day maybe a game Boy advanced micro down the line. It just that that's how they would do it. Let's see from leaves, Hello, mister Snacks, thank you once again for putting on such a fun show. Yeah. Absolutely, thank you all for showing up again with these questions. It really does make the show. Having you all want to show up and ask questions and get involved just makes this makes it my week. It also makes it very easy to put on one these shows where it's like, Okay, sometimes I can bring some cool some some school scoops, some cool snacks. We could talk about those. But the very least I know the audience is gonna want to talk about a lot of things that I'm interested in and I know they're interested in. And again, it just makes it very easy to put on a show that flies by every week. So thank you to you. Let's say, do we know what Scalm Bones is anymore? Is it live service game? I'll out Destiny single player campaign, I'll Assassin's Creed. I feel like I've heard rumors saying all of the above and more. I think the problem is that that Ubisoft doesn't know what the game is at least it hasn't for many years now. Maybe it's starting to hone in all that stuff, but from what I've heard is they don't know what they want Skull and Bones to be, you know what. You know, the risk there is it ends up in a sort of avenger situation where they try to do both. They don't really satisfy anyone. Maybe it has a pretty good campaign, but it's remembered poorly because then once you go from the campaign to the live service game, it falls apart and it can't maintain the level excitement that people had for the campaign. So like it's it's a really tough thing to pull off, and so they're probably gonna want to focus on one or the other. But it's just it doesn't seem like they have any vision for that game anymore. And which is funny because I remember when that game got announced, people are sure it was going to come out and just destroy Sea of Thieves and be like, well, goodbye to Sea of Thieves and see if the US says like have this vision from the beginning and has just been getting closer and closer to the ideal version of that and has really found its footing. And it's like among the like a handful of games that is just always played by a certain audience, one of those games in the background that's just quietly doing very well, and skull Bones just can't even get out the door from fire Hair twelve thousand. Do you think Microsoft will keep the PC Bethesta launcher around for much longer? This is something I've thought about. Like, we know that the Windows ten store is just crap, right, It's balls. Everyone hates it. It's really bad if you're trying to use it with games. The Xbox app isn't much better. I've been okay with the Xbox app for the most part. It's not great, though, and they have expressed a desire to improve the store experience on Windows, and I thought there was a chance because the timing of that was like right as the Bethesta deal was closing. I'm like, hey, maybe they take the Bethesta launcher, or at least take that team and say, hey, help us make this stuff better. Things. I don't know, is the Bethesta launcher any good. I have no idea. I think I've used it like three times. But you know, maybe the Pathesta launcher is good enough to the point where like it's good at distributing mods and things like that, right at least can handle that. So maybe they like say, hey, let's just slap Windows on that. Make this the Windows Game Store, make this our not maybe not a Steam competitor, but our epic games Launcher competitor, and just make this the easiest way to get Xbox game Pass stuff and all of our games. And at least they could probably deliver the right packages to ensure like it's a good experience or and things are on the same level as they are on Steam, where the Steam version of games have been so much better than the Windows version of games and the like, even with game Pass games, the Ascent, and there's a couple other examples. Maybe Bethesta Game Launcher could help with that. I have no idea if that's what they're gonna do. I know they intend to make the Windows Store better, so that's probably the direction they're gonna go. And if they do that, then the Bethesta Launcher probably isn't long for this world, But I guess we'll see. I've asked about this as soon as this happened, as soon as the deal went through, I asked, like, what's what's gonna happen with the launcher, and I think they got back to me and said, hey, no plans for that right now, We'll let you know in the future. So you know, there's your there's your unsatisfying answer from last lent thar. With yesterday's acquisition of a lot of former Team Liverpool Signosis talent in the fire Sprite team by Sony, how do you like the chances of a new wipeout for PS five PSVR two. I don't actually don't love the chances for a new wipeout. If Sony wanted to wipe out, they would have made a wipeout, like I mean, I know they're bringing back talent that could that like was good at making it, but like wipe out, I just don't think. I don't think it could come back and do it like the same with the same in the same place as Ridge Racer. And while you know there are there is an open gap I guess in the market for a futuristic sci fi racing game, I don't think that space is the kind of thing where it makes a lot of sense to put a lot of effort into that. And if you have this team that is already two hundred fifty people working on a shooter and a narrative based adventure, And those are the kinds of things that you could just see in your head at Sony saying, hey, we know one of those things. We know how to make one of those things very well, and we know how to like and we know the other thing could potentially make us a lot of money if it takes off. Like where does wipe out fit? In that equation, it gets left out? I think so if it does happen, I think it's the kind of thing that happens from as like a side project of the team after it has had a lot of success with other things and has proven itself. And if it's like something that they're passionate about, maybe they get to do it in like five years or something like that. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe it happens, maybe it's the first thing they do, but I would be I would be surprised from X put name here, X, any idea what we might see Fall Guy or any idea when when we might see Fall Guys on other platforms? When did it hit PlayStation Plus. I would imagine it'd be like a year after that. But we've got to be getting close to that, right, if not already passed it. So I mean probably soon soon Fall Guys was announced for Xbox, right, I thought that happened. I might be getting mixed up with among Us. At a certain point, a lot of those games started mixing together in my head with like, oh, cute blob guys doing stuff in a multiplayer environment. But yeah, either way, it should be soon. You would imagine like it would they would want to get it on Switch, But I guess we'll see. Okay, let's keep going from Slane mcawsom. Do we really need a new Matrix movie? Yes? I mean what do we need anything besides food and water and shelter and companionship? I think you know, pretty soon, like like on that list, not too far after those main things, a new Matrix movie is probably like right there. I honestly, I'm at a point where I could take care leaving the Matrix franchise. Personally. That first movie is still really solid. I haven't watched the sequels since they first came out. I just got to a point where it's like I already have my bullshit. I'm gonna be a weird Star Wars guy, and I'm gonna think way too much about Star Wars, and I'm gonna like forgive the Matrix sequels for slightly disappointing me, and I'll just occasionally watch the first movie again again every once in a while, and that'll be fine. If the new If the new movie comes out and is great and rectifies those sequels and makes them better in hindsight, that that would be cool. That would be awesome. I'm glad it's getting made. I like everyone involved, the Wachowski's can I just want them to keep getting paid to make movies. I think you know, Lana Wachowski's credited for the first time as a solo director here. That's awesome. I'll go back and watch Speed Racer in there and in this movie's honor. But I guess do we need it? We don't need it. But I'm glad it's happening. From Hibbety Bibbard's a hell of a name Stadia question Mark. A friend bought it up. I brought it up today and I had forgotten all about it. What is the current state of Stadia? Uh, Stadia is going white label? I think so you're gonna see You're I guess are you gonna see Google's trying to get other companies to sort of use its tech and brand it under their own umbrella or whatever. So you might see like Ubisoft games showing up in the cloud in more places than you expect, probably running on Stadia. I'm beyond that. I mean, they're still adding some new games to Stadia. I think they just got a I got an email about it. They're they're adding something. What was it, was it Tony Hawk? Something got added? It was maybe it was Tetris Effect. Tetris Effect got added to Stadia in the last couple of weeks. So stuff like that still happening. Still like seeing through deals that maybe we're put in place before they decided to pull back on the gas pedal. But overall, Stadius just not a real going concern for anyone at Google or anything like that, not really. From azure Gale, what is your opinion on Warner Brothers animation making Ultra Instinct Shaggy Cannon. I love it, and I fully understand what you're asking me, So I'm just all for it, or unless it's unless it's problematic, in which case I'm against it, and I'm glad. I'm glad we could get that opinion out there from us, any idea of the feelings internally at Microsoft and and double fine for Seco nuts too, Not exactly other than I'll say that they are they really want a game of the year. At least at the very top, Phil Spencer wants to make a game of the year. I think that they're I think I have some concern that the people below below Phil Spencer are more worried about the platform than about the games themselves are maybe less whatever. We don't have to get into that. But at the very top, they look around and they like they say stuff like, hey, everyone, like, you know, we're put on a three show where we might still be showing some on my Google's yelling at me. We're put on an E three show where maybe we have too much CG again, and Sony's gonna keep coming out with a game of the year games, I mean, what the hell? And they're frustrated by that. So to have a game like psychoonuts to come along, a game that they helped to make better and the end they gave it more money and time and probably some mentorship to ensure that it was like as shiny as it could be. Uh, and have have it be in the talks for Game of the Year among many people, and whether or not you know gets Game of the Year at whatever website or whatever that I bet it we'll probably get a couple. Uh, they're going to be ecstatic about that. They really do you care about that? At least? Again at the very top from One Winged Zero, did Sega do what nintend don't? Well, they released it a CD add on and Nintendo didn't, so yes, and they got out of the heart. Yeah, I listen. I was an Nintendo kid, so I don't know. You won't really want me to go down this road. Sega often does what Nintendo don't, and it has been to their detriment in most cases. Although Sega, you know, and Sega did what nintendot in terms of publishing games on PC and Sega as a PC publisher pretty solid. That's a pretty solid company. H Sega as a traditional console space publisher just a hot fire. So yes, they did what Nintendo don't. From DIGGI didgi grub and snacks related, what's your favorite type of chips? I like tortilla chips, really salty tortilla chips. Sorry, my kids being really nice. I told her she had that she could be over here with me during the show because it's the first time she's here by herself when I'm doing work because the other kids at pre school for the first time ever and her mom's at work. But she's being really good. So thumbs up kid. Uh oh. Yeah. I like tritilla chips, and I like the Chipotle chips, the ones that are kind of fresh baked or you know, you know any editing Mexican restaurant where the fresh baked chips, of course, but especially when you get that really salty one, the one that like was like right under the salt shaker when they put it on there, it's always like, ah, well, my mind is on fire from too much salt and I need to go drink an entire lake. But you know, it's salt, and my brain is like, yeah, gave me some more of that chemical. Yeah. I eat a lot of chips, though, So I also like occasionally like pringles ruffles with like the as longside of the dipping like a ranch dip or whatever, or like a French onion or whatever it is, stuff like that. If people have if people have other recommendations for chips, I would love to hear him. She's just over here dancing. She's being so good and she's doing it quietly. She said, she promised you would be quiet. Just impressed from Gallen Blade. So what the hell is going on at trip Wire? Any scoops? I would have looked into this more if it didn't feel like it sort of resolved itself really quickly over a holiday weekend. But just kind of watching it from the sideline, I mean, I guess, yeah, what did the guy expect? John Gibson? And I mean you you like, people are like exry, Oh, this is why you know, people can't speak their mind freely. And I'm just like, there are a lot of people who are pro life in a lot of positions of power within the game and industry. They just don't openly support a law that most people know is completely evil and turns citizens against one another. And yeah, I mean I when I you know, the Texas law that he came out in support of, the the the honestly, the best comparison point for it is to the Stasi, the East German secret police, where neighbor was spying on neighbor to try to make sure that they were in good favor with the government. It is absurd for anyone to come out and support of this. It is un American and undemocratic, and it's the furthest thing from freedom or whatever these people want to claim there for. So what did he expect that people would want to work with him for coming out and support of this what is just terrible law? And you know, and people said, no, we don't want to work with him or for him, And of course he had to step down. I guess he's still on the board of directors. I think he still owns his shares, so they're gonna have to untangle that web still and maybe they don't. But it all happened so fast in terms of like where where like where are we going to stand with this? Like where like what has happened since he announced it he was stepping down? I don't know. We'll keep looking into it. From ET's a new Matrix Matrix game by rock Steady. That's not a bad fit. You know, it's Warner Brothers. I think rock Study, you know, while has been very good in the superhero space, I guess Matrix still qualifies the superhero kind of stuff. That's a pretty good fit. I would like that I don't know if that's what's happening. I mean, Rock Study is clearly busy with the Suicide Squad game, right, so I don't know. By the time they get done with the Suicide Suicide Squad game, the matrix could have come and gone, so they probably want to wait and see. Although it does feel a little bit like the Suicide Squad is coming gone as well, so I mean maybe that's why they wouldn't want to put themselves in that situation. Again, We'll see, all right, how are we doing. We're doing pretty gun on time. I don't have to go get the kid for another hour, so we're not gonna go for that entire time. But let's do a few more questions. I'm like looking at the scroll bar of like it's on the staff questions thing here, and uh, you know, it's kind of let me move this over a little bit so you can kind of get a little I'm not gonna show it, but it's like not even halfway through, so I haven't gotten through half year questions. But I want to answer a few more and then we'll get out of here. Let's see from I think this is Rylan or Arlan. Today is the anniversary of Crash Bandicoot's release. Can we expect anything from for the Sony conference. Probably not. I guess there's always a chance. But Crash Bandicoot, for while well, it reviewed very well, it did review very well. I don't think it's sold quite as well as the trilogy, and they might not be as happy with with that. And that's not even Sony, that's Activision, and this at our Activision. Sony like gonna you know, put the put all the you know, got all the eyes and cross all the teas to make something happen with Crash Bandoo Bandicoot again. I don't know. I feel like if anything's gonna happen Crash Bandicoot, it's gonna be that he is revealed as the next and final Smash Brothers character. That's just a guess, but I think that's gonna like that. That would be what would happen more than likely than a Sony thing all right, from Winter Rise or Winter Reece. What does development of Halo Infinite look like right now? Are the Xbox game studios all hands on it currently? Absolutely? As many as many studios that can work on it right now that aren't busy with their own things. Yeah, everyone's lending hands, lending a hand, trying to get this thing done, trying to make sure it's as good as it possibly can be. It is like feature complete, it is like, you know, the game is what it is going to be right now, and they're just trying to polish it up and make sure that it looks and feels and plays as good as it can. And whether or not they like, you know, who knows if they get to that. We're not going to know if they succeed at this until they succeed at it, and that means it could launch and could be a buggy mess. It could be on fire, it could be disappointing, could be all kinds of things, but they're gonna try and everyone, Yeah, it's just right now, it is all hands on deck to get this thing finished. And and then also there's probably a small team that is working on finally revealing what that single player stuff is going to be, which could happen by the end of this month, but definitely by October. All right from walker bow is Square. Celebration of Twombrators twenty fifth anniversary going to lead to anything of note? Or is it a big bag of nothing. I think my understanding was a big bag of nothing, but I haven't looked into that in a few months. But I would lean towards a big bag of nothing from e Dune. By the way, where is the square Enix Tokyo game show thing? I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure. I haven't heard anything about that one way or the other. From votax. Do you know what happened to the podcast version of the show? Last week's grub was snacks doesn't seem to be on any RSS feed? Good question. I do believe that in the last week that all of the new shows have been separated out into their own RSS feeds. Trying to think of a good place to go. I know on the giant bomb reddit. Someone put put a post up on you know a reddit dot com slash r slash giant bomb. They put a post up they had all the new shows with their with their specific RSS feeds listed right there. So that might be the best place to go off the top of my head. But maybe we can ask if Jan's listening. I'm not sure if he's still he could be busy doing something else. If Jan is still listening, I believe he's the one that produced these RSS feeds. Maybe he can go ahead and drop it here in the chat for y'all, and then you can just copy that. If you don't, I guess you know. I'm saying RSS feed as if people still use Google Reader or something, then you just copy that and open up your podcast catcher of choice. And a lot of times still recognize that you have one and just say, hey, do you want to add this? But if not, just go add new podcast and then paste that. When then there's an RSS option or there's a little like quarter blooming radio signal thing that's that's the RSS feed signal emblem. Click on that and just paste it in there. I think it's going to ask you for your premium subscription stuff, so make sure you have that handy and you just pop that in and you'll get right in. So Jan is always here, So talk to Jan. You can add him now, bother him. See Crimson thirteen. I feel like the dream folks are waiting for is the Metal Gear Solid remake. I feel like it could go either way, but if it isn't here, folks will will keep wanting it at the next show. Also a bummer about sixteen for spoken is probably there, though I think for Spoken, couldn't it gets If it's not sixteen, it's gonna be for Spoken, Right, So I heard sixteen won't be there. We'll see, but if it's not, yeah, I think I'm also expecting for Spoken. That's a good point. And then yeah, Metal Gear Solid does feel like it's going to be in that they if it's not gonna happen, they need to just tell us that it won't happen, so at least a good chunk of that audience could stop waiting. There will always be people who say, maybe it'll happen, maybe they're gonna surprise us, maybe they're lying, But I'm hopeful it would be awesome if we saw that today. I am ready to go play a remake of that game. You should I finish up, kiddo. You do you need? You need some food or something? Oh? Your show stopped? Okay, you know what. It's time to wrap up anyhow. So I'm gonna do a few more questions and we'll get out of here, all right. So I'm gonna scroll at the top. If you have a question that I missed or that you want to ask. You got like you got like two minutes, ask right now, and then we're gonna wrap this stuff up again. I'm gonna say thank you everybody for listening. We got almost five hundred people here live. Thank you all so much. Uh yeah, and then uh yeah, it's always so much fun. This shows a really good time. I think the audience that shows up for these shows knows what to expect and is down for it, and uh yeah, I really appreciate it. And this is I think it's episode eleven, so it's like the original run was gonna be like twelve episodes. I think we're gonna keep going for now everybody. So that's exciting, at least as far as far as I'm aware. Jeff Backler could come and just say we don't, I don't want you or whatever. We'll see, but as far as I understand, we're gonna keep going with this. So I'm looking forward to it. It's been It's one of the highlights of my week. On Wednesday nights. I love kind of getting ready for it, reaching out to sources and stuff, seeing what I could put together, making a list of of what I know and what I could talk about, and even if it's just like talking about a few topics that like, I'm passionate about at the moment. That's that's been worth it, that's been fun, all right. So let's see here. What's good spicy food? Almost anything? I like Tabasco sauce. I say it wrong, Tabasco sauce. Tabasco sauce. Tabasco sauce is one of my favorite foods literally. But anything spicy, like you know, any spicy curry, spicy Greek food is really good. Greeks do really good spite, like hot spice. And if you like, got a good Greek restaurant around you or something, go get a euro with the with their spicy sauce. Oh it's fantastic. I might do that for lunch today. That sounds really good. Actually that's happening. What's It's Software's next move, more Doom or Quake. I think it's going to be Quake, but I don't know for sure. They could do a lot, and even they could absolutely do more Doom, but I think one of the reasons that they like, hey, let's go get MVG to help, you know, to make quake good again, make it feel more modern and kind of update it and then have machine software do an expansion for it is we want people think about Quake. We don't want them to forget about it because we are going to do more Quake. I think that's happening. I guess there's a chance that another developer could do Quake, and then, in which case, what does it do? I'm not sure. I guess it would be maybe more doom Psychonauts to being received. Well, do you think we could see a Brutal Legend two? That's from Adam three times? I think burrual Legend two is actually on the table. Yes, I think it's something they will consider. Kane high Wind zero nine. Hypothetically, if if Revolution X was a success in the nineties, which band musicians would you want? A scquel? Okay, let me think I played that game so much in the in the roller rank that I went to as a kid. I don't I don't even like Aerosmith. I don't know the Pixies, I don't know. I guess it would have been like Corn. It would have been Corn. I don't know if that's what I want, but like right after that would have been like when Corn was getting big, and you know, I guess I could say a limp Biscuit. You know, Limp Biscuit actually might fit that game a little bit better even than Corn. So a Limp Biscuit sequel to Revolution X. Someone go ahead and make that mod. Please. Let's let's see what happen. Yeah, Trent Resner in it. There you go. Let's see what else I missed? What is going on with the Amiko that's I'm from Canton. It's I don't know exactly what's going on. I'll say my opinion of it is that it's a bad fit for its idea. Recently, Arcade one up set me a review of the reunit of their Infinity game table, which I'm remembering now I got to pack up and get out of here. But that it's like it's a game table where they they include a bunch of like Hasbro games and likes the Chess and like four Men's Morris. It's like Club Hustle games, but built into a touch screen table, a twenty four inch or thirty two touch screen table. And it's this there's like centerpiece for your family room with you, You and your family can just say hey, let's all go sit at this table and start playing a game, and everyone it's a touch screen. Everyone knows how to use it. It's just like board games and even come sit here, you're okay, hang on, let me just finish up this question. I'm bringing it out here. And then it's just works so well with families that it's like, Okay, if you were trying to make something that was to appeal to that we audience where you wanted a super simple, super super accessible, what you would do is create a big touch screen table that has like forty games that comes with it, and then you could buy more complex games like Carcassone or whatever it is and stuff like that, or Ticket to Ride, And that's exactly how that table works. Okay, all right, we're wrapping up. Let's get out of here, everybody, uh me and you are gonna get out here. We're gonn get some We're gonna get some schwarm on. How do you feel about that? Okay, thanks for watching, everybody. I'm gonna wait, can you say hey? Can you say yummy? Yummy? Oh okay, she's gonna start cursing. I gotta get out of here. Thanks, everybody, you know do you think it's funny? All right, everybody, thanks, I'm gonna hit the button until next week, have a good one. Take care of yourself. Goodbye. Let's go watch that PlayStation showcase. Oh my god. All right, I'm not tickling her, she's tickling herself by everybody.