Surprise game hits Switch 2 | GMM 06.27.2025

<v Speaker 2>He'll be.
<v Speaker 1>M Hey, everybody, welcome to Game Last Mornings with Me
<v Speaker 1>Jeff Grab your host from giant bomb dot com. Thank
<v Speaker 1>you for tuning in. In this episode, we're gonna be
<v Speaker 1>talking about a new old game launching on switch to
<v Speaker 1>and what if Resident Evil Raccoon was actually an online game.
<v Speaker 1>It's gonna be a good one because we have Jesse
<v Speaker 1>Norris on the show. Jesse, how are you doing.
<v Speaker 2>I'm doing good. I've I've finally gotten over all the
<v Speaker 2>mean comments from the last time I was on.
<v Speaker 1>Yep. So now we got you back. We got your
<v Speaker 1>crawling back. That's how it goes. Let me stig it
<v Speaker 1>from my camera on for you my break.
<v Speaker 2>So handsome there it is perfection, all right.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, man, I'm looking forward to going on my
<v Speaker 1>break here. I'm gonna take Thesa, gonna drive, gonna do
<v Speaker 1>a little family road trip up to Michigan.
<v Speaker 2>Then do nothing else. That's kind of the plan. Maybe
<v Speaker 2>go to the beach. It's good plan. Go to the
<v Speaker 2>beach a couple of times, hang out. Yeah, it'll be excellent.
<v Speaker 1>So uh on that trip, I do think my plan
<v Speaker 1>is to mostly play Survival Kids from Konami on the
<v Speaker 1>Switch to which I've been joined. Yeah, I'm wondering, like
<v Speaker 1>how much like how.
<v Speaker 2>Like what are its legs?
<v Speaker 1>Because it's like, I like the initial introduction of like
<v Speaker 1>the kind of the concept, which is this very streamlined
<v Speaker 1>survival game of yeah, you're gonna have.
<v Speaker 2>To collect wood and materials, but.
<v Speaker 1>You're not you don't don't worry about deciding like what
<v Speaker 1>you need to be building. We're gonna set up some
<v Speaker 1>boxes that you need to just fill with the stuff
<v Speaker 1>to complete some.
<v Speaker 2>Tasks that we set out for you.
<v Speaker 1>And then it does the like the star system, like
<v Speaker 1>did you do that pretty quickly and find all the
<v Speaker 1>secret stuff? Well, then you get three stars on that level.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go to the next level. And it's like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I'm enjoying that so far, but does that concept like
<v Speaker 1>have enough going on that excuse me that they have
<v Speaker 1>enough to like get me through our eight I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>we'll see, but no one else is playing in this game,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm kind of having fun and enjoying myself in
<v Speaker 1>a game that no one seemed to care about.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I remember that one. Obviously we didn't get to
<v Speaker 2>cover because it was switch only, but I know people
<v Speaker 2>who did it reviewed pretty bad. Yes, I was surprised
<v Speaker 2>but happy to hear you like it.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it's got some I think it might be too
<v Speaker 1>simple for quite a few people, but it's.
<v Speaker 2>Just we're so simple boys. Yes, we're okay with exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And it's also, like I've said somewhere else, it's snappy,
<v Speaker 1>Like I just like the way it feels to run around,
<v Speaker 1>grab stuff, do things.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I'm into it. I think it's it has
<v Speaker 2>some juice forbod the good type of thing to have
<v Speaker 2>on a on a handheld when you're not at home.
<v Speaker 2>You don't want anything super complicated. It just becomes kind
<v Speaker 2>of a pain in the butt, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's uh good bite sized experiences is actually a
<v Speaker 1>pretty slick thing to have.
<v Speaker 2>You're right, how about you? You're playing anything that you're
<v Speaker 2>super excited about you can talk about. I know you're
<v Speaker 2>always reviewing a million things. Yeah, I'm actually in but
<v Speaker 2>it's weird. I know I've got a cat standing on
<v Speaker 2>my go xlr, so I'll pull him back. But main
<v Speaker 2>thing I've been playing that I've really been enjoying is
<v Speaker 2>called Soulstone Survivors, which came out about a week ago.
<v Speaker 2>It had been in early access for a long time.
<v Speaker 2>It's essentially a twin stick shooter Vampire Survivors, so you're
<v Speaker 2>you have more emphasis on aiming and dodging. But other
<v Speaker 2>than that, it's Vampire Survivors as a genre. Really good.
<v Speaker 2>A little too busy sometimes graphically, but super deep, super dense.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe a little too easy early on, but boy does
<v Speaker 2>it get difficult. We reviewed it on the site and
<v Speaker 2>our Vampire Survivors Sicko gave it a nine point two,
<v Speaker 2>like he absolutely adored it. So he's got like hundreds
<v Speaker 2>of hours in it over the last couple of years
<v Speaker 2>while it was in early excess. So yeah, I mostly
<v Speaker 2>been in that one.
<v Speaker 1>I enjoyed that. There's been a few of these twin
<v Speaker 1>stick Vampire our Survivors. I've enjoyed a couple of them.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe this is one I should check out as well.
<v Speaker 1>It's like I'm looking for that kind of game for
<v Speaker 1>my break, so that might be a good fit. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>all right, let's do this. Let's explain ourselves most well,
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<v Speaker 2>We appreciate it.
<v Speaker 1>As far as this show goes, most weekdays, I Jeff
<v Speaker 1>Grub will help piece your gaming life back together. That
<v Speaker 1>includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own
<v Speaker 1>original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input
<v Speaker 1>of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.
<v Speaker 1>If you are watching live on Twitch Welcome. You can
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<v Speaker 1>show later on YouTube.
<v Speaker 2>Hello YouTube.
<v Speaker 1>All right, we have a lot to get into, so
<v Speaker 1>let's start the morning mess with the Switch two's first
<v Speaker 1>new GameCube game is a Mario Strikers. That's actually good.
<v Speaker 1>That's from Ethan Gootch at Kotaku, who I disagree with,
<v Speaker 1>But that's fine. Just under a month since it launched,
<v Speaker 1>the Switch to is getting its first new GameCube game
<v Speaker 1>as part of its Switch Online plus expansion Pac Library.
<v Speaker 1>Is it Luigi Luigi's Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine Fire amblem
<v Speaker 1>Path of Radiance. No, it's Super Mario Strikers, the inaugural
<v Speaker 1>entry in Nintendo's soccer franchise, arriving July first. I enjoy
<v Speaker 1>Super Mario Strikers quite a bit. Jason or Chess. Sorry,
<v Speaker 1>all the j names mixed together. You guys know this,
<v Speaker 1>you've done. You did this on purpose. All every name
<v Speaker 1>starts with Jay in this industry, including mine.
<v Speaker 2>We're off.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's right, it's all It almost just together. Strikers
<v Speaker 1>is a game I'm a huge fan of. I really
<v Speaker 1>enjoy playing. I think it just feels great. I thought
<v Speaker 1>that Strikers on the Switch to was fantastic as well.
<v Speaker 1>Where it was it played really awesome, like the actual
<v Speaker 1>head to head competition, the paper rock scissors of the
<v Speaker 1>slide tackle versus the special moves versus everything else you
<v Speaker 1>could do, even like the equipment you could you could
<v Speaker 1>use to like speck out your characters in certain ways.
<v Speaker 1>It's like there was kind of an obvious path to
<v Speaker 1>go down with Like some of them, it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you should put all the speed gear on Toad, who's fast,
<v Speaker 1>so he's even faster. It was kind of obvious, but
<v Speaker 1>also like, okay, well I spect out the character in
<v Speaker 1>that way. Now I have it even faster character. But
<v Speaker 1>there's something pure about this GameCube one, and I'm really
<v Speaker 1>looking forward to spending some time with it. It's we
<v Speaker 1>probably shouldn't expect this cadence to continue from Nintendo, right,
<v Speaker 1>Like we're in the first month and there's already another
<v Speaker 1>GameCube game, Like should I get my hopes up that
<v Speaker 1>this can continue?
<v Speaker 2>Like this, never get your hopes up, and you'll never
<v Speaker 2>be disappointed. That's probably the move. Huh. Yeah, I got
<v Speaker 2>a little secret for you please. Out of every video
<v Speaker 2>game console that's come out since I was born, the
<v Speaker 2>only one I have never used and never seen in
<v Speaker 2>person or know anyone that used in my regular life
<v Speaker 2>is a GameCube. I've played many GameCube games via emulation.
<v Speaker 2>Oh sure, yes, I've played all of these things now
<v Speaker 2>as an adult. But it was weird. That was the
<v Speaker 2>one that I just I completely missed on the GameCube,
<v Speaker 2>and I mostly missed on the Wii until I moved
<v Speaker 2>down with my missus who had a Wii and we
<v Speaker 2>had like tons of stuff for it. But I quite
<v Speaker 2>like this Mario Strikers. I liked the other one. The
<v Speaker 2>newer one was really fun, but ran into the issue
<v Speaker 2>they keep having where they get super fun gameplay loops
<v Speaker 2>and then just not the best amount of content or
<v Speaker 2>long term support. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and that's so it's like, you know, this older game.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's kind of similar in terms of the amount
<v Speaker 1>of content. It's not gonna but and the gameplay loop is.
<v Speaker 2>We were purer back then, though. The gameplay was all
<v Speaker 2>we needed and it all costs an arm and a leg. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and we weren't used to like, oh it's free, and
<v Speaker 2>then I just slowly I throw five books at a time,
<v Speaker 2>and then I don't realize that in a year I've
<v Speaker 2>spent two hundred and.
<v Speaker 1>Fifty games still got danged back then if they weren't long,
<v Speaker 1>unless they were a sports game. I think maybe the
<v Speaker 1>like the Math, it was a little bit different then,
<v Speaker 1>so it's like, yeah, this is just a fun thing
<v Speaker 1>you play with friends, the party game. You're right, And
<v Speaker 1>it's like I also I think Sunshine Sunshine Super, Mario Strikers,
<v Speaker 1>whatever the new one's called. I can't even remember Battle Kingdom.
<v Speaker 1>That's the Mario Rabbids game. That one like made the
<v Speaker 1>promise of like there would be more stuff in like
<v Speaker 1>the actual core game or like stuff to do as
<v Speaker 1>a single player, and it just didn't really follow through
<v Speaker 1>with that. And I think people kind of take those
<v Speaker 1>promises pretty seriously.
<v Speaker 2>Or the Strikers Battle League football.
<v Speaker 1>Battle League, Yeah, and they called Battleague Football probably in
<v Speaker 1>every other territory.
<v Speaker 2>It was in the europe euro version.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's see here, I'm yeah, third game or
<v Speaker 1>this is the fourth game on the GameCube thing for
<v Speaker 1>n s O.
<v Speaker 2>I hope they keep it up. I don't think as well.
<v Speaker 2>I never expected from them, but when they surprise you,
<v Speaker 2>it's really nice. Yes, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And this is one where they when they were testing
<v Speaker 1>the switch to with people coming into like New York
<v Speaker 1>to see the system early, people were like loading up
<v Speaker 1>the NSO menu and they were seeing a bunch of like,
<v Speaker 1>not a bunch of g they were seeing the three
<v Speaker 1>games that did the thing they'd launched with, and then
<v Speaker 1>there was one other and that was Strikers. So this
<v Speaker 1>one seemed ready to go, and so like, that's why
<v Speaker 1>I'm not too surprised to have it here already. And
<v Speaker 1>then I'm like, Okay, when does the next one drop?
<v Speaker 1>I wouldn't be surprised if it's a three month three
<v Speaker 1>month wait for the next one or something like that.
<v Speaker 1>I hope it isn't. I hope they do one a
<v Speaker 1>month for the rest of this year. That'd be great.
<v Speaker 1>But it's, like you said, no real reason to get
<v Speaker 1>my hopes up with Nintendo. Yeah, yesterday Capcom did a
<v Speaker 1>Capcom Spotlight showcase the thing I'm a Bob, And as always,
<v Speaker 1>it is what it is with Capcom and these spotlights,
<v Speaker 1>they show a lot of stuff they've shown before. They
<v Speaker 1>maybe go a tiny bit deeper or maybe like with
<v Speaker 1>Monster Hunter a while, they spent quite a bit of
<v Speaker 1>time with that kind of talking about the new stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But it's all kind of new stuff that we understood
<v Speaker 1>would be coming one way or another.
<v Speaker 2>It's new old, Yes, it's returning. Yeah, but cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but we get what it is. Like, I had
<v Speaker 1>no complaints because I understand it.
<v Speaker 2>Can't It can't fix the broken loop of Monster Hunter
<v Speaker 2>Wilds for me. Yeah, I mean hunting and gear building
<v Speaker 2>to fight certain things just doesn't matter. Like I got
<v Speaker 2>through every fight using whatever I wanted, having it just
<v Speaker 2>carry me to the monster every time. It was it
<v Speaker 2>was not my favorite. Yeah, but now that a lot
<v Speaker 2>for giving us seven point five. But now I think
<v Speaker 2>the people on Steam all agree with me.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think you actually got that one quite quite
<v Speaker 1>a spot on.
<v Speaker 2>Uh. That's like that's the reaction on Steam right now.
<v Speaker 2>For sure. It's so close to being amazing, Like it
<v Speaker 2>just needed to actually keep the Monster hunting bart. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>give me the reason to grind outside of.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's fun to play. I think people think
<v Speaker 1>the game is really fun to play. They just are like,
<v Speaker 1>can you get us into your treadmill? And that that
<v Speaker 1>part is not working for the vast majority of people.
<v Speaker 1>You know, this content that they introduced here at the
<v Speaker 1>very least is more, and that's one of the complaints
<v Speaker 1>that people have, is they just want more stuff. So
<v Speaker 1>that'll that'll kind of help a little bit to alleviate
<v Speaker 1>maybe some of these complaints. But I think you're right
<v Speaker 1>that the core is still a little bit rotten there.
<v Speaker 2>But hey, now it's going to mean the expansion.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it's gonna need arch tempered outh douna which you're
<v Speaker 1>gonna give us. Finally, go watch our our spotlight thing.
<v Speaker 1>Even though they didn't have a lot to announced, we
<v Speaker 1>had a good time.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was weird they didn't have any Musha in
<v Speaker 2>there when that was the thing we got to see
<v Speaker 2>the lacket Summer Games Fest. It was I was surprised
<v Speaker 2>I was showed any of what we saw for Resident Evil. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and they barely showed Pragmata, which we got to play
<v Speaker 2>twenty minutes of. Like there was a whole long section. Like,
<v Speaker 2>it's weird when they had so much content there, and
<v Speaker 2>then they very quickly went over those games like there
<v Speaker 2>was an Evil one and the only Musha one were
<v Speaker 2>both had like a half hour demonstration.
<v Speaker 1>It's just your gameplay, and it's I think that's maybe
<v Speaker 1>where it was like a little bit like for this
<v Speaker 1>Capcom spot, Like maybe I was thinking, there's a chance
<v Speaker 1>there's gonna be a little bit more here because we
<v Speaker 1>did just come from Summer Game Fest where Capcom did
<v Speaker 1>have a big presence, and like you said, they had
<v Speaker 1>all these things to show quite a bit more of Pragmata.
<v Speaker 2>It was all behind doors. So that's why I figured
<v Speaker 2>they'll now show it here exactly.
<v Speaker 1>This is the Yeah, so they showed snippets of the
<v Speaker 1>Resident Evil nine stuff that we got to see, but
<v Speaker 1>you know, the video gameplay demonstration that we sat in
<v Speaker 1>a room to watch.
<v Speaker 2>He's still not online.
<v Speaker 1>Like I thought we could get to the other side
<v Speaker 1>of this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, like the Shryers and then and like they
<v Speaker 2>actually got to play that in themselves because they're special exactly.
<v Speaker 1>I And then Pragmata. I think people are starting to
<v Speaker 1>like be like this, this game looks pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it hit and Run. Yeah, I know, I know.
<v Speaker 1>I think she's coming up and tell me she can't
<v Speaker 1>play Switch too, but she needs to go clean before
<v Speaker 1>we go on our trips.
<v Speaker 2>No more switch to today.
<v Speaker 1>All right, so let's see here. So uh. As far
<v Speaker 1>as that event went, there was also updates to like
<v Speaker 1>the Capcom portal for Resident Evil Requiem. They hosted some
<v Speaker 1>more developer interviews where they kind of explained some of
<v Speaker 1>their ideas some of their thinking, including Capcom revealing Resident
<v Speaker 1>Evil Requiem started as an online game, but then they said,
<v Speaker 1>we realized fans didn't want it. Yay. This is from
<v Speaker 1>Andy Robinson at VGC. Capcom has revealed that it tested
<v Speaker 1>open world and online concepts for Resident Evil Requiem before
<v Speaker 1>settling on a traditional single player game. Speaking in an
<v Speaker 1>extended developer diary video available to members of Capcom's website,
<v Speaker 1>Requiem director Koshi Nakanisha shared a brief look at the
<v Speaker 1>early online version of Resident Evil nine and said it
<v Speaker 1>was ultimately abandoned because he realized it wasn't what fans wanted.
<v Speaker 1>You might have heard some of the rumors, things like
<v Speaker 1>an online Resident Evil or an open world Resident Evil,
<v Speaker 1>which we spent some time experimenting with, he said, but
<v Speaker 1>in the end, although we had some interesting concepts, we
<v Speaker 1>realized that it wasn't what fans wanted to see or play,
<v Speaker 1>so we went back to the drawing board and created
<v Speaker 1>what led to the Resident Evil Requiem game that they
<v Speaker 1>have now kind of I think a relief for a
<v Speaker 1>lot of people.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously, the online mode.
<v Speaker 1>No, people don't want that. And if you're gonna do
<v Speaker 1>online Resident Evil, that's fine. That's got to be a
<v Speaker 1>separate game, a bonus game, something that you add into
<v Speaker 1>the package, something along those lines. The open world rumors
<v Speaker 1>for something like, yeah, we all heard a bunch and
<v Speaker 1>every time I would bring it up on this show,
<v Speaker 1>everyone would sort of like in chat be like, man,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, That's not what I'm asking for, and
<v Speaker 1>it sounds like Capcom listened. So yeah, this is not
<v Speaker 1>going to be the big open world Resident Evil and
<v Speaker 1>kind of like, yeah, it doesn't need to be, right.
<v Speaker 1>The hub and spoke model of Village worked so well
<v Speaker 1>m hm.
<v Speaker 2>And we've seen how open World runs on the RI
<v Speaker 2>engine and I don't want that. Yes, I mean, I'm
<v Speaker 2>kind of over it. Seeing how good onny Musha looks
<v Speaker 2>and it's this you know, more contained thing like large
<v Speaker 2>sections cool their version of open World and how that
<v Speaker 2>ends up performing. Between Dragon's Dogma though, that was pretty
<v Speaker 2>CPU bound because every NPC was constantly thinking about everything
<v Speaker 2>going on in the world at the same time, so
<v Speaker 2>they got that fixed up a bit like Monster Hunter Worlds.
<v Speaker 2>Just the Wilds still runs like ass pretty much everywhere,
<v Speaker 2>and the base concept of a horror game open world
<v Speaker 2>when you can get away and you can go all
<v Speaker 2>these different spots, like you have to end up just
<v Speaker 2>funneling people into it. They'd have to like oak spooky
<v Speaker 2>areas anyways.
<v Speaker 1>They're they'd have to completely rethink like the threat model,
<v Speaker 1>like of like how the monsters work. Can they work
<v Speaker 1>together to corner to you or something like that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean I could see that being a fun design
<v Speaker 1>challenge for a team, being like how do we maintain
<v Speaker 1>the tension in a world where someone could potentially run
<v Speaker 1>anywhere or hide anywhere. I like the idea of a
<v Speaker 1>of a studio kind of solving those problems, But that
<v Speaker 1>does feel like the kind of thing that maybe happens
<v Speaker 1>in something like a PT level game where it's like
<v Speaker 1>this is a test, it's a trial. Yeah, this is
<v Speaker 1>a hey can we even make this work? Maybe that
<v Speaker 1>happens on Steam or something like that eventually, and you're right,
<v Speaker 1>is it worth trying to solve those problems while also
<v Speaker 1>trying to solve the problems of Capcom's Ari engine, like
<v Speaker 1>struggling with the open world.
<v Speaker 2>Probably not, no, I think you know.
<v Speaker 1>My guess was going to be to deal with that,
<v Speaker 1>they would make kind of open zones, much bigger areas
<v Speaker 1>than even the hub and spoke a village. But sounds
<v Speaker 1>like they're not even really going to try that too much,
<v Speaker 1>which again.
<v Speaker 2>No, because what we saw was just inside the that
<v Speaker 2>one facility or in Raccoon City Dusk Gulam's had a
<v Speaker 2>bajillion leak set up pretty much all turned out to
<v Speaker 2>be correct. This by people always shitting on him. He
<v Speaker 2>has continually maintained that there's the main protagonist is Leon,
<v Speaker 2>who they said is not a protagonist in this game. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but I'm really curious if it's going to be the
<v Speaker 2>horror sections of this game or Grace I think her
<v Speaker 2>name is, and then the more action, third person focused
<v Speaker 2>stuff ends up being beyond Yeah, they've been. It feels
<v Speaker 2>like they really want to have a marriage of seven
<v Speaker 2>and for remake, which is an admirable goal. Amazing. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that's right, I would really be into that. Exactly what
<v Speaker 2>we make is one of the best games I've ever played.
<v Speaker 1>And it's like, yeah, mix those things up. That would
<v Speaker 1>be a that sounds like a great game to go
<v Speaker 1>back and forth between that to really keep the loop feeling,
<v Speaker 1>the pace feeling really fresh. Yeah, like you mentioned it,
<v Speaker 1>they're like really talking up Leon s. Kennedy not being
<v Speaker 1>in this game because hey, it doesn't make sense for
<v Speaker 1>some of these like really scary games, and we're trying
<v Speaker 1>to make something really scary here because no one wants
<v Speaker 1>to see him react in a scary way like that.
<v Speaker 1>They want him to be big, tough guy and he doesn't.
<v Speaker 1>They don't want him cowering, and so it's like we
<v Speaker 1>can we're kind of limited in what we can make
<v Speaker 1>the player feel. It's like, okay, well it would be
<v Speaker 1>really funny though if you made Leon Kennedy go back
<v Speaker 1>to Raccoon City at this point though, So let's just
<v Speaker 1>actually have him.
<v Speaker 2>Do the do the shuttering like you were in that
<v Speaker 2>theater demonstration for it. Mr heard stomping footsteps in first
<v Speaker 2>person mode were really funny, Yes, and the I want
<v Speaker 2>to hear Leon do that. Yeah, he was like shuddering
<v Speaker 2>breath every second, to the point where myself and my
<v Speaker 2>coworkers kind of started having the stifle laps because they're
<v Speaker 2>just way too often. So I want to hear that
<v Speaker 2>from Leon.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you weren't the only ones before I went in
<v Speaker 1>there to talk about. Like the breathing was a lot
<v Speaker 1>like she was breathing audibly in every second of that actress.
<v Speaker 2>Was doing her damnness to sound absolutely terrified and out
<v Speaker 2>of breath.
<v Speaker 1>All right, we'll stick with Capcom for now. Pragmata is
<v Speaker 1>a secret Mega Man game, claims fans dying for a
<v Speaker 1>new Mega Man game. This is from Matt Patches at Polygon. Pragmada,
<v Speaker 1>Capcom's a long, long, long delayed sci fi action game,
<v Speaker 1>blew us Away at this year's Summer Game Fest with
<v Speaker 1>Matt and I enjoyed it a clever mix of quick
<v Speaker 1>turn puzzles and shooter action. The PlayStation five, Windows, PC,
<v Speaker 1>and Xbox Series X game is poised to be one
<v Speaker 1>of the big releases of twenty twenty six if Capcom
<v Speaker 1>can actually get it wrapped up in time after all
<v Speaker 1>these years. But since the first look footage and gameplay
<v Speaker 1>reports out of SGF, a few creative thinkers have wandered
<v Speaker 1>it or have wondered if there's more under the surface
<v Speaker 1>of the game than Capcom is letting on mainly that
<v Speaker 1>maybe it's a secret Mega Man game. Unfortunately, during a
<v Speaker 1>spotlight showcase on Thursday, Capcom did little to confirm or
<v Speaker 1>deny the theories. If Pragmat is young robo protagonist Diana
<v Speaker 1>is secretly connected to Doctor Light, Doctor Wiley, and all
<v Speaker 1>the nonsense first introduced in the nes Mega Man from
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty seven. The studio is stayin, mum, let's let's
<v Speaker 1>start here. How do you feel like you liked pragmat
<v Speaker 1>as well? You played it?
<v Speaker 2>It was surprisingly fun. Yes, I'm not always sold on
<v Speaker 2>their English vio and storytelling. It's probably still something I'd
<v Speaker 2>end up playing in Japanese because Capcom English vio is
<v Speaker 2>kind of a meme at this point, right. But like
<v Speaker 2>the base gameplay, the movement was cool, being in the
<v Speaker 2>lower gravity environment of the Moon, having your little jumpers
<v Speaker 2>and thrusters getting around, but having the little android girl
<v Speaker 2>on your back doing the hacking mini Gamegine, you're figuring
<v Speaker 2>out I'm going after there. I'm going to use my
<v Speaker 2>base buttons to get all these nodes so I stun
<v Speaker 2>them longer and type of stuff was really fun, like
<v Speaker 2>I'm quite looking forward to it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so when Chat's pointing out rightfully, pretty w is
<v Speaker 1>saying that, Well, when Capcom talked about this game in
<v Speaker 1>the Capcom Spotlight yesterday, the way they introduced it was
<v Speaker 1>a new ip. Hey, the latest new ip from Capcom. Now,
<v Speaker 1>you know, companies could do red herrings. They can. They
<v Speaker 1>don't have to tell us the truth and this stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But I don't know, I don't think this is a
<v Speaker 1>Mega Man game.
<v Speaker 2>No, there's nothing I've seen in it that would indicate that,
<v Speaker 2>Like Mega Man's always been pretty cartoony, unless this was
<v Speaker 2>like way in the past, I don't know how would fit.
<v Speaker 2>It's not like there were the robots are slow and
<v Speaker 2>you know, they're like shitty Boston Dynamics ones. They're not
<v Speaker 2>you know, Mega Man level cartoon float around anime.
<v Speaker 1>But then the girl is like an android, right, so
<v Speaker 1>they clearly have the are this world does have technology
<v Speaker 1>that goes way beyond whatever.
<v Speaker 2>The special though.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah for sure. But like because because she
<v Speaker 1>was made by Doctor Light, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Oh shit, now she was made by Wiley, you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>find that out of the Yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 1>That's actually the more likely scenario because this clearly is
<v Speaker 1>a Mega Man game. No, I think this is fun.
<v Speaker 1>I wish I don't like fully understand like the theories.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'll read this year. Theories that pragmatt was
<v Speaker 1>Capcom's triple a attempt at a Mega Man revival took
<v Speaker 1>off in the forums and conspiracy tensed YouTube videos shortly
<v Speaker 1>after SGF. The evidence at the time was tenuous. Diana's
<v Speaker 1>design was the big tell, as well as uh the
<v Speaker 1>Mega Man connection to the moon and sentient robot viruses.
<v Speaker 1>The early mission of PRAGMATI finds Diana and Hugh out
<v Speaker 1>running of rogue bots and a lunar base. Maybe a
<v Speaker 1>Sigma connection. Others wonder if pragmatis obligatory evil sci fi
<v Speaker 1>conglomerate that ruined everything. The Delphi Corporation was a tip off.
<v Speaker 1>Delphi was the home of the Oracle and was dedicated
<v Speaker 1>to Apollo, the god of, among other things, medicine. And
<v Speaker 1>Light reads one mildly shit post. He read its speculation thread,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like doctor Light.
<v Speaker 2>I uh, these are the conspiracy theories I can get
<v Speaker 2>by this.
<v Speaker 1>Rules this is the ship right here. I love this.
<v Speaker 1>Mike is is all in on doing this bit, and
<v Speaker 1>I like it's a bit. But also if this game
<v Speaker 1>actually turned out to be a Mega Man game, he
<v Speaker 1>would be so I think ecstatic and.
<v Speaker 2>Him and a bunch of people over forty would be
<v Speaker 2>very exciting.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, the ones that are still you know, left alive
<v Speaker 1>from that generation. Yeah, all right, well either way at
<v Speaker 1>the Capcom spotlight, what was what it was? I'm still
<v Speaker 1>very excited about all Capcom's offerings, including Ragmata. Uh so,
<v Speaker 1>hey for terns of what's that?
<v Speaker 2>They said PS five, Xbox Series X and Windows PC.
<v Speaker 2>I wonder if that just means Steam or the Microsoft Store.
<v Speaker 2>Probably probably Steam.
<v Speaker 1>All right, uh, let's take a quick break for our ad.
<v Speaker 1>Although if you don't want to hear that or see that,
<v Speaker 1>you can get the ad free version of the show
<v Speaker 1>by going to giant bomb dot com slash join.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it's a good deal.
<v Speaker 1>I've done that, yep, and everyone else should as well
<v Speaker 1>to avoid us going to this break right now, all right,
<v Speaker 1>we're back. We're not starting the show. Everybody a show over.
<v Speaker 1>We're not gonna do that from the beginning. I know,
<v Speaker 1>I said that's the rule. That was just a joke.
<v Speaker 1>All right, it's my first podcast, money Yolk, Welcome, back
<v Speaker 1>to games Morning's Jeff Grebb.
<v Speaker 2>Just play Obs, Jesse Norris, Oh it's Obs's fault. Yeah, yea.
<v Speaker 1>The problem is the problem is I'm actually having real
<v Speaker 1>issues with OBS.
<v Speaker 2>I know you're sne we were gonna start.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, and it was I was trying to put your
<v Speaker 1>layer above the mortis, the you know, the overlay, so
<v Speaker 1>I could adjust it. And I did that, and then
<v Speaker 1>you your layer was still visibly behind the overlay. So
<v Speaker 1>it's like it just broke. It just simply did not
<v Speaker 1>function the way it's supposed to.
<v Speaker 2>I to OBS is amazing for being free, and it's still.
<v Speaker 1>Infurio, yes, And it's just in one of those gullies, right.
<v Speaker 1>It's ups and downs where it's like, oh man, it's
<v Speaker 1>been working great for months and now it's just like
<v Speaker 1>they're clearly working on some other stuff and maybe some
<v Speaker 1>of the basics are kind of falling to the wayside
<v Speaker 1>a little bit, but whatever, thank you.
<v Speaker 2>Like a random driver update can just blow it up
<v Speaker 2>if you use a celeration.
<v Speaker 1>That's Honestly, I think I'm skeptical of even blaming OBS.
<v Speaker 1>I want to blame the Nvidia of five thousand graphics
<v Speaker 1>ap drivers. Those things just they seem kind of hot.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's amazing. I've got a seventy nine hundred
<v Speaker 2>XDX from AMD. I've had zero issues with it, and
<v Speaker 2>that's perfect.
<v Speaker 1>That's so weird because like the AMD drivers used to
<v Speaker 1>be used to the worst and now yeah, all right, well, hey,
<v Speaker 1>thanks change, let's keep going here. Oh, fantastic news. Everybody
<v Speaker 1>EA workers pay continues to dwindle as CEO picks up
<v Speaker 1>five million dollar bonus, thus creating an amusingly tall financial graph.
<v Speaker 1>This is from PJ O'Riley at Nintendo Life. EA's CEO,
<v Speaker 1>Andrew Wilson, has somehow managed to find himself five million
<v Speaker 1>dollars richer than usual this year, according to the latest
<v Speaker 1>proxy filing by the company, supported by Steven Tatilo over
<v Speaker 1>at game File. The extra cash on top of an
<v Speaker 1>already nice annual income flies directly in the face of
<v Speaker 1>how the general population of workers for the company are
<v Speaker 1>being remunerated.
<v Speaker 2>Remunerated, Hey, I got that right.
<v Speaker 1>This is all bad. However, it has made for a
<v Speaker 1>rather amusingly shaped graph. So silver linings and all that,
<v Speaker 1>and the graph for people that are listening to this podcast,
<v Speaker 1>because that's how you listen to podcasts. It's very tall.
<v Speaker 1>You have to scroll for quite some time to go
<v Speaker 1>from what it's showing is on the Y access access
<v Speaker 1>is at the top of this of this very long
<v Speaker 1>scroll is the pay and the compensation that Andrew Wilson
<v Speaker 1>is getting. Then you scroll down and you keep scrolling
<v Speaker 1>until you get to the very bottom. Several seconds later,
<v Speaker 1>several like mouse scroll wheel rolls later, you'll get to
<v Speaker 1>the bottom and you'll see, very near the bottom of
<v Speaker 1>the Y access access I keep saying it that way,
<v Speaker 1>you'll see the pay for EA employees. And it's just
<v Speaker 1>this tiny minuscule fraction of Andrew Wilson's.
<v Speaker 2>Pay, and it's also going.
<v Speaker 1>Down, and it's going down. That is the other side
<v Speaker 1>of this is that not only is he getting a
<v Speaker 1>big bonus, the amount of average compensation for EA employees
<v Speaker 1>has gone down compared to previous years. And that is
<v Speaker 1>like yeah, and it's like that's hard to explain because
<v Speaker 1>this is not like the total number of like labor costs.
<v Speaker 1>This is about like, you know, the people you're actually
<v Speaker 1>paying to do the job. And if you're like firing
<v Speaker 1>people or laying people off, even you would assume a
<v Speaker 1>lot of those people would have lower pay than the
<v Speaker 1>people you're keeping, but maybe not.
<v Speaker 2>This somewhere the constant cycle, and we're going to probably
<v Speaker 2>hear more about it next week. With Microsoft, according to
<v Speaker 2>everyone is we see the big firing numbers, like you
<v Speaker 2>just did what six hundred Microsoft just did a couple
<v Speaker 2>grand But Microsoft has like two hundred and twenty eight
<v Speaker 2>thousand employees or something, which is still more than they
<v Speaker 2>have because these guys keep hiring more and more cheaper
<v Speaker 2>people to replace, so they're actually going up in headcount
<v Speaker 2>despite all these massive firings. But you don't see a
<v Speaker 2>press release that says we've hired eight thousand people this year.
<v Speaker 2>You just see that we fired seven thousand people. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's this really stupid cycle of NonStop firing long time
<v Speaker 2>people who make a lot of money, hiring juniors who
<v Speaker 2>make hiring juniors will make a lot less. And I
<v Speaker 2>wonder why games are worse than they used to be.
<v Speaker 1>It's uh, I just like senior developers are hard to
<v Speaker 1>keep in general. But it does feel like Jesse that
<v Speaker 1>they that this UH industry has gotten on the other
<v Speaker 1>side of caring about that. There used to be like, man,
<v Speaker 1>we got to just find these senior debs and hold
<v Speaker 1>on to them. And now they're like, we got a
<v Speaker 1>handful that we are going to keep, and then we'll
<v Speaker 1>just hire the cheap labor and kind of figure it out.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, the games kind of make themselves at
<v Speaker 1>this point, right.
<v Speaker 2>So creative industries are really weird, Like video games are
<v Speaker 2>the only one where people stick around decently long after
<v Speaker 2>a project's done. Like if you're in a movie, if
<v Speaker 2>you're on a TV show, anything like that. Not a
<v Speaker 2>gig business necessarily, yeah, you leave, you go do the
<v Speaker 2>next thing. You're jumping job to job, and video games
<v Speaker 2>are a similar form of entertainment, but they do end
<v Speaker 2>up being more long term for some people. You'll see
<v Speaker 2>plenty that have like seven big games on there, you know,
<v Speaker 2>CV and stuff, because they've jumped from thing to thing.
<v Speaker 2>But more and more, I think people were getting used
<v Speaker 2>to seeing people like a Josh Sawyer and others are
<v Speaker 2>just at Obsidian forever and Todd never leaves but as
<v Speaker 2>the game studios. But everyone below them is constantly jumping
<v Speaker 2>around all the time until they find that for themselves,
<v Speaker 2>or they get big enough to start their own thing,
<v Speaker 2>like the people from Playground did. It's always been this way,
<v Speaker 2>it's never been this way to this number, and it
<v Speaker 2>really it's one of the main things that's still like
<v Speaker 2>correcting from COVID is just how many people keep getting fired.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it's we're still in that wobble for sure, without
<v Speaker 1>a doubt. And it's yeah, I think that there was
<v Speaker 1>a time when you really could have the goal of
<v Speaker 1>finding one of these stable companies that would keep you
<v Speaker 1>on for a long time, because those companies had it
<v Speaker 1>in their head that they could find that equilibrium. And
<v Speaker 1>I think after the kind of crash and burn of
<v Speaker 1>the idea of live service games being the savior for
<v Speaker 1>all these developed is where you know the positive there
<v Speaker 1>so you can kind of predict month to month with
<v Speaker 1>the money you were gonna bring in, and it was
<v Speaker 1>gonna be very steady, and instead of having one day
<v Speaker 1>in five years when you launch a game where you
<v Speaker 1>make all your money back on that one day when
<v Speaker 1>all the pre orders kick in and everyone shows up
<v Speaker 1>for the midnight launch, it was, Oh, no, we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>have these We're gonna have these live service games that
<v Speaker 1>just stay their stable and they make quite a bit
<v Speaker 1>of money and they do it for years and years,
<v Speaker 1>and we can kind of keep everyone employed that way,
<v Speaker 1>and now they don't believe in that anymore either, and rightfully,
<v Speaker 1>so it's not working. So I think they're just looking
<v Speaker 1>around and being like, we got to shed the weight.
<v Speaker 1>And there was a period there in like the early
<v Speaker 1>to twenty tens where that this was really bad, where
<v Speaker 1>a big game would come out, everyone get laid off,
<v Speaker 1>and it just sounds like we're going back there. But
<v Speaker 1>now the industry is so much bigger that it hurts
<v Speaker 1>a lot more. So yep, just and then and then meanwhile,
<v Speaker 1>EA's CEO is getting a five million dollar bonus and
<v Speaker 1>I just don't know why, Like, like I would love
<v Speaker 1>to say.
<v Speaker 2>They haven't been performing well, like they all of their
<v Speaker 2>things were down.
<v Speaker 1>So it's really weird, right and and like let's you know,
<v Speaker 1>let's be as grown about as possible.
<v Speaker 2>EA disappears tomorrow.
<v Speaker 1>What's all that different in this industry now? The sports games?
<v Speaker 1>Clearly that's a massive audience. So yes, I'll give you that,
<v Speaker 1>that sure, but but that's a very known quantity. Someone
<v Speaker 1>else would step in and do that, do that job.
<v Speaker 1>But I do recognize that's one that's like would have
<v Speaker 1>to be done maybe by a massive publisher all the
<v Speaker 1>other kinds of games that EA may make. I'm just
<v Speaker 1>not looking to EA for those kinds of games anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Now. They took a bunch of shots. They put out
<v Speaker 2>some really good originals, and like none of them did well.
<v Speaker 2>So they're now of the mindset of okay, like everyone
<v Speaker 2>is shifting to focus on known pillars and then in
<v Speaker 2>a few years it'll be shifting back to will God,
<v Speaker 2>the Nome pillers didn't do that much focus on new
<v Speaker 2>ip or you know, just it's this constant cycle of
<v Speaker 2>trying to get ahead of stuff, but games takes so
<v Speaker 2>long to make now that you never catch up. You're
<v Speaker 2>always trying to get and then a random thing like
<v Speaker 2>Peekle Drop and sell two million copies in our own's like,
<v Speaker 2>oh shit, we need fun little co op games because
<v Speaker 2>those always sell well. But then there's already like seven
<v Speaker 2>hundred thousand of them on Steam, so it's really impossible
<v Speaker 2>to know what is ever going to break through.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, EA couldn't go get into the prox chat business
<v Speaker 1>and like really compete with all those smaller studios that
<v Speaker 1>are very nimble, and you know, the Peak Studios started
<v Speaker 1>making that game in February, all that stuff, like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's a completely different thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So it's like I've been wondering for a while, now
<v Speaker 1>what do we actually get out of these big publishers?
<v Speaker 1>And then, like the even more pointed question here is
<v Speaker 1>what do we get from Andrew Wilson being in this business?
<v Speaker 2>Why?
<v Speaker 1>Like, why is it so crucial we keep him in
<v Speaker 1>this business with all this massive compensation? And I guess
<v Speaker 1>that's not necessarily the incentives here, but as far as
<v Speaker 1>I'm concerned, that's that's how I feel, because I don't
<v Speaker 1>I don't care about EA's bottom line.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's your your stuff. Whatever, What do I get
<v Speaker 2>out of it?
<v Speaker 1>And it's like I just get headaches because this is
<v Speaker 1>just like silly a company that is constantly lost, constantly
<v Speaker 1>looking for its next trend to chase and then fail
<v Speaker 1>on and abandon and wobble back in the other direction.
<v Speaker 1>We just don't need these companies anymore. They're dinosaurs. And
<v Speaker 1>yet Andrew Wilson's going to get a five million dollar
<v Speaker 1>bonus on top of it is like, you know, forty
<v Speaker 1>million dollar pay or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>And if you ever left, it would be an enormous
<v Speaker 2>golden parachuting. Oh, without a doubt Yeah wire to be
<v Speaker 2>able to pay work.
<v Speaker 1>Remedy says there's still a lot of work ahead. As
<v Speaker 1>FBC Firebreak hits one million players from Chris Sculling at VGC,
<v Speaker 1>Remedy says it still has a lot of work to do.
<v Speaker 1>Is it announced that FBC Firebreak past one million players.
<v Speaker 1>The game was released on June seventeenth on PS five, IVE,
<v Speaker 1>Xbox Series X, and SNPC and was available on Xbox
<v Speaker 1>Game Pass, Ultimate, PC Game Pass and PlayStation Plus on
<v Speaker 1>or Yeah, PC Game Pass and PlayStation Plus.
<v Speaker 2>On day one.
<v Speaker 1>It is a game that just seemed like it was
<v Speaker 1>struggling because it had almost no players on Steam. It
<v Speaker 1>is down to like one hundred concurrent players on Steam.
<v Speaker 1>And we were talking about this on the BombCast, Jesse
<v Speaker 1>being like, you know, maybe it's doing all right on console,
<v Speaker 1>but it's hard to like, no for sure, because it
<v Speaker 1>is on those you know, it's on Game Pass, it's
<v Speaker 1>on PlayStation Plus. But a game like Rematch is available
<v Speaker 1>on some of those services and it's got you know,
<v Speaker 1>one hundred thousand concurrens on Steam. That's something that could
<v Speaker 1>frequently happen, and it felt like FBC should be one
<v Speaker 1>of those games that does do well on PC. Does
<v Speaker 1>this speak to the is that the story here is
<v Speaker 1>it doing really well on console and we just couldn't
<v Speaker 1>see that because we don't get those numbers. And now
<v Speaker 1>that we have these numbers, it's like, oh, yeah, this
<v Speaker 1>is doing great. Or do you think a lot of
<v Speaker 1>people are trying the game and bouncing off of it?
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't know what's your insight here.
<v Speaker 2>It's like views on YouTube, where people sticking around and
<v Speaker 2>watching them because that's what actually matters, and the thing
<v Speaker 2>they'll care about is hours played, and you rarely ever
<v Speaker 2>get that metric, and nor would we really know what
<v Speaker 2>they were hoping for, like those only ever come in leaks.
<v Speaker 2>So it seems to be doing all right. I don't
<v Speaker 2>think a decent player number at launch was out of
<v Speaker 2>you know, expectations with this launching into two subscription services
<v Speaker 2>on you know, over one hundred million consoles. Essentially, the
<v Speaker 2>long term sticking with it is the hardest part of
<v Speaker 2>all these. Yep. It's hard to get a player base
<v Speaker 2>and it's harder to keep them, and I don't think
<v Speaker 2>it has much incentive to play it more than a
<v Speaker 2>couple of nights. You can see almost everything in it,
<v Speaker 2>and unless you really care about bumping up the difficulty
<v Speaker 2>and seeing some different versions of the exact same level
<v Speaker 2>layouts over and over again, where you just have weird
<v Speaker 2>purple things chasing you that you have to eventually kill.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think it has the juice. I don't think
<v Speaker 2>it has the loop. It doesn't have the thing that
<v Speaker 2>because one of the main things this would have needed
<v Speaker 2>to pick up, especially in the streamer community, which is
<v Speaker 2>then a big way to get more player count, is
<v Speaker 2>proximity chat. And I remember them talking about it in
<v Speaker 2>the discord during the review period and they were like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>most of these games don't have it, and I wanted
<v Speaker 2>to reply, but I didn't. The good ones do because
<v Speaker 2>they understand that the immersion of feeling like you're in
<v Speaker 2>this world and when someone runs away, you hear them
<v Speaker 2>getting quieter as they go, like all that type of
<v Speaker 2>stuff is huge for streaming, which in these online cooperative
<v Speaker 2>games is one of the best ways. Yeah, you can
<v Speaker 2>keep people going because the streamers are all having a
<v Speaker 2>fun time and it doesn't just sound like you're in
<v Speaker 2>a party chat together. It sounds like you're in the game.
<v Speaker 1>Will Smith not that Will Smith on Blue Sky does
<v Speaker 1>have a thread about this. He said, launching with matchmaking
<v Speaker 1>enabled is a terrible idea for most co op PvE games.
<v Speaker 1>Big competitive games have trained players that queues should pop
<v Speaker 1>in about thirty seconds, which is unreasonable because of the
<v Speaker 1>length of the sessions and the size of.
<v Speaker 2>The parties you talk about for the co op PvE games.
<v Speaker 1>In order to get Q times that that low on
<v Speaker 1>games with forty five minute sessions, you need tens of
<v Speaker 1>thousands of concurrent players spread around the world twenty four
<v Speaker 1>hours a day, seven days a week. You'll hit that
<v Speaker 1>on your initial launch bump, but it trails off almost immediately,
<v Speaker 1>even on successful titles. And Will's worked on a game
<v Speaker 1>like this before everybody, so he does have insight into this.
<v Speaker 1>But we're on game pass with cross play. We'll get
<v Speaker 1>players from that. Yes, you'll get lately invested players who
<v Speaker 1>will stream your game for ten minutes, decide they don't
<v Speaker 1>like it, abandon the session, and screw up the first
<v Speaker 1>play experience for two or three other people who probably
<v Speaker 1>paid money for your game, and your steam dB numbers
<v Speaker 1>will be terrible because they won't reflect the game pass players.
<v Speaker 1>Then you'll get this lovely interaction in your Steam forums
<v Speaker 1>where people who want to spend money on your game
<v Speaker 1>actually go to decide like the go or to decide
<v Speaker 1>if they want to spend money, and they'll see game
<v Speaker 1>is dead, post it over and over and over again.
<v Speaker 1>If you look at concurrent players charts for successful long
<v Speaker 1>lasting co op games, they grow over time. They rarely
<v Speaker 1>pop on day one. Instead, they're slow burns over months
<v Speaker 1>or years. Deep Rocket is a classic slow burn, but
<v Speaker 1>it's a much more accessible game than GTFO or something
<v Speaker 1>like that. When you launch your When you launch any game,
<v Speaker 1>you learn more in first hours post launch about how
<v Speaker 1>people react to it than any amount of pre release
<v Speaker 1>testing can show better launch slower and turn on game
<v Speaker 1>pass spigot later when you've had the time to adjust
<v Speaker 1>and iterate based on what you learn.
<v Speaker 2>To me, that sounds like probably an accurate.
<v Speaker 1>Assessment of what is happening with FBC, where it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you probably are getting a lot of people who are
<v Speaker 1>excited to see a new multiplayer game on their service.
<v Speaker 1>They're going to go hop in, and then what you
<v Speaker 1>described of kind of meeting something that is a little
<v Speaker 1>strange doesn't quite have juice in certain areas. Maybe if
<v Speaker 1>you're playing with friends, it clicks. But otherwise M and
<v Speaker 1>I bet that for hey, a million players, there's nothing
<v Speaker 1>to sniff at, Like there is going to be a
<v Speaker 1>percentage of those who are into this game and do
<v Speaker 1>want to keep playing it. And that's in that, you know,
<v Speaker 1>a percentage of a million is a lot kind of
<v Speaker 1>no matter what. No matter what that percentage is, it's
<v Speaker 1>probably going to be something. Even if it's a single
<v Speaker 1>digit number, like that's still going to be pretty decent.
<v Speaker 1>But I just don't it doesn't. I don't think that's
<v Speaker 1>the story here. I think the story here probably is
<v Speaker 1>that this is a game that is going to have
<v Speaker 1>this game pass, you know, bump right now, and it
<v Speaker 1>will probably fade pretty quickly. And I don't think anyone's
<v Speaker 1>going to be too surprised by that. A game that
<v Speaker 1>I had a good time with because I was playing
<v Speaker 1>with friends.
<v Speaker 2>So it's a it's a fun couple of nights. If
<v Speaker 2>you've got a group to play with, it'll have more legs.
<v Speaker 2>Being on both pis blessing game pass. But in the
<v Speaker 2>long run, everyone's been conditioned. And I think the main
<v Speaker 2>thing that hurts all these games is everyone is conditioned
<v Speaker 2>to get unreasonable amounts of content. Either they're jumping into Minecraft,
<v Speaker 2>which just has a fifteen years or so of content
<v Speaker 2>in it. They've got Roadblocks, which is a sweatshop for
<v Speaker 2>kids to make stuff and has sixteen million ccus in
<v Speaker 2>a single goddamn freaking one little part of it. Or
<v Speaker 2>they've got Fortnite, which took the entirety of an enormous
<v Speaker 2>engine making publisher to constantly feed it content. That's just
<v Speaker 2>what people expect now. It remedies how many people and
<v Speaker 2>this is probably a very small team, like they can't,
<v Speaker 2>no one can do it. Like you see it with
<v Speaker 2>Repo and Drug the freaking drug simulator one on PC.
<v Speaker 2>I can't remember the schedule schedule one, Yeah, you see
<v Speaker 2>it with They're even like, oh, this is what the heck,
<v Speaker 2>there's not enough to do? Is like it just launched
<v Speaker 2>into early access from a small handful of people. Like
<v Speaker 2>the the expectations on the amount of content every one
<v Speaker 2>of these games should have has just been set in
<v Speaker 2>a way that cannot be matched by pretty much anyone
<v Speaker 2>that isn't call of duty with all of activision behind
<v Speaker 2>a type of employee counts.
<v Speaker 1>That's right, all right, let's hit these last couple of
<v Speaker 1>stories here Tarrok Trilogy Bundle physical edition announced for PS
<v Speaker 1>five and Switch. This is her Marcus person at Game Reactor.
<v Speaker 1>Microsoft is facing.
<v Speaker 2>Yet Wait, this is a weird.
<v Speaker 1>This is weird. The story got mixed in here.
<v Speaker 2>My bad. Uh.
<v Speaker 1>The tar Rock Trilogy Bundle basically is going to be
<v Speaker 1>coming from a Night Dive and they are uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>putting all three games they've worked on for a very
<v Speaker 1>long like a long period of time. They like hit
<v Speaker 1>those games over the long course of a long period
<v Speaker 1>of time, and they're excellent. All of them are really
<v Speaker 1>well done, like most Night Dive remasters. They're putting it
<v Speaker 1>on physical you can go get it for Nintendo Switch
<v Speaker 1>and other stuff. This other one here is about the
<v Speaker 1>Microsoft layoffs.
<v Speaker 2>I was going to talk.
<v Speaker 1>About that story, but we kind of talked about it
<v Speaker 1>up top a little bit. But for It's a Turn
<v Speaker 1>ten Jesse, Yeah, it was a.
<v Speaker 2>Game now, so yeah. The main issue with it was
<v Speaker 2>it was like seven years in dev and then launched
<v Speaker 2>pretty barren and compared to its iterations, way better physics,
<v Speaker 2>way better driving and stuff like that, but missing most
<v Speaker 2>of what people had really come to the.
<v Speaker 1>Idea is that they were going to spend extra time
<v Speaker 1>get it set up for the new generation of consoles,
<v Speaker 1>then get back on the probably their regular cadence of
<v Speaker 1>delivering one every other year every three years came Remember
<v Speaker 1>what they used to be on, but whatever, And in
<v Speaker 1>the process of doing that, they ended up with a
<v Speaker 1>game that had less stuff because it's like they were
<v Speaker 1>reworking everything else. And it's just like people, people, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the ones that noticed the difference. I'm sure we're ecstatic
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, man, this is an improvement. But they
<v Speaker 1>were going to be there no matter what. There was
<v Speaker 1>a growing audience of forts and motorsport fans who were like,
<v Speaker 1>I like these games too. I'm surprised. I like them,
<v Speaker 1>and I'll keep showing up for them. And I think
<v Speaker 1>they just forgot about the game because it took a
<v Speaker 1>little bit longer, and then when they did try it out,
<v Speaker 1>it was like, oh this, you know, it's that game again,
<v Speaker 1>and maybe even has a bit less than what I
<v Speaker 1>was expecting. That's a rough position to put.
<v Speaker 2>It's in a great spot now, yep, which is why
<v Speaker 2>I would imagine they're then looking to cut they spent
<v Speaker 2>to get it into a good spot after year and
<v Speaker 2>a half agoing on two years. At that point, it's
<v Speaker 2>been it's in that spot. Are you gonna gut the
<v Speaker 2>studio and then rehire up cheaper people and start working
<v Speaker 2>on the next thing?
<v Speaker 1>Try to find a way to get right to work
<v Speaker 1>on with all these people working on on the next
<v Speaker 1>fortsa like, you're probably going to take some time before
<v Speaker 1>you do that, because you're probably not going to go
<v Speaker 1>back to that cadence.
<v Speaker 2>Because and I know other parts of the story is
<v Speaker 2>there's like rumors about how many people it would be
<v Speaker 2>and potential studio closures because they do have a ton
<v Speaker 2>of studios that haven't They've got a fair number that
<v Speaker 2>haven't really put anything out themselves in a while, especially
<v Speaker 2>on the Activision side. And Activision did pretty much double
<v Speaker 2>their headcount while being acquired, and I think we've been
<v Speaker 2>kind of lucky that they didn't go in and immediately
<v Speaker 2>gut it all, as corporations are wont to do. The
<v Speaker 2>big part of all of these rumors is reorganization, because
<v Speaker 2>right now they have three bespoke publishers, Yes IF Xbox
<v Speaker 2>Game Studios, Activision, Blizzard. Activision and Blizzard are separated within there,
<v Speaker 2>and King and Bethesda and so they have three sets
<v Speaker 2>of PR, they have three sets of middle management, they
<v Speaker 2>have three sets of marketing, three sets of distribution, and.
<v Speaker 1>Three sets of like internal structure of like how employee
<v Speaker 1>employment works and how seniority works.
<v Speaker 2>That doesn't match with one another.
<v Speaker 1>So if you haven't seen seniority at like Microsoft Game
<v Speaker 1>Studios and you want to go work on call of duty,
<v Speaker 1>well that's a Microsoft. Now it's like, well, your seniority
<v Speaker 1>might not actually transfer in the way you want.
<v Speaker 2>It to, and say, oh, okay, well that's annoying.
<v Speaker 1>And there's reasons for that, Like they wanted the autonomy,
<v Speaker 1>they wanted to kind of let these things operate in
<v Speaker 1>a certain way, and then there was public reasons for that.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of makes the whole thing of game pass
<v Speaker 1>feel more valuable if like, oh, the man, I get
<v Speaker 1>this company, that company and that company the way that
<v Speaker 1>this need plus does the oh you get nat GEO
<v Speaker 1>and Marvel and Star Wars and all this other stuff
<v Speaker 1>and ESPN and it's like, oh wow, I get all
<v Speaker 1>these brands on there this one one cost, but it's
<v Speaker 1>clearly causing it's unwieldy. It's this massive thing, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure it's costly, and so it's like it always felt
<v Speaker 1>that sort like that, that like that sort of damacles
<v Speaker 1>was hanging over this whole way of doing things, and
<v Speaker 1>it just continues to chop away at it over time.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if there's a lot of firings, I think the
<v Speaker 2>majority wouldn't be created. I would hope the majority wouldn't
<v Speaker 2>be creative, but I would fear that the majority would
<v Speaker 2>be everything else around it to you know, more centralize everything.
<v Speaker 2>Because we've seen the benefits of their Xbox game studios
<v Speaker 2>all working together with their version of Real and just
<v Speaker 2>how good they are with Unreal engine. Now right, let's
<v Speaker 2>apply that to all their business strategies here. Yeah, maybe,
<v Speaker 2>which sounds cool for us, but then that means thousands
<v Speaker 2>of people get cut, which really sucks.
<v Speaker 1>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>It's like, oh, I understand the business sense of this,
<v Speaker 2>but I'm not a businessman, so I hate it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this doesn't help me really.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, in terms of like cutting people for improving pr.
<v Speaker 2>Flow ever and yeah, improving your workflows and cutting your costs,
<v Speaker 2>it's like, I don't give a shit about that. You've
<v Speaker 2>got one hundred billion in the bank.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Last story here, Street Fighter Live Action movie
<v Speaker 1>casting looks unbelievable.
<v Speaker 2>This is from Alex co at Duel Shockers.
<v Speaker 1>In case you didn't know, Capcom is taking another run
<v Speaker 1>at a Street Fighter live action movie that's targeting a
<v Speaker 1>release next year. Well, we haven't gotten a trailer yet.
<v Speaker 1>The cast has been announced, and it's hard to believe
<v Speaker 1>some of them are real. We're not saying the casting
<v Speaker 1>choices are bad, but rather just a bit odd. Given
<v Speaker 1>the name, what's.
<v Speaker 2>That one of them is bad. I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>it's in this, but the guy playing Dan is known
<v Speaker 2>as an anti, anti woke comedian who had Trump on
<v Speaker 2>his show, and I'm like, oh cool.
<v Speaker 1>Fun, good times all right. According to the Hollywood Reporter Curtis,
<v Speaker 1>fifty cent Jackson is going to be playing bal Rog
<v Speaker 1>in the Street Fighter Live action movie, which I that's
<v Speaker 1>not actually all that bad. I like, fifty cent, that'll
<v Speaker 1>probably be fine. Roman Reigns is gonna be a Kuma,
<v Speaker 1>which is wild.
<v Speaker 2>That's weird.
<v Speaker 1>I guess he doesn't need to do much more than
<v Speaker 1>like stand there and look tough.
<v Speaker 2>But I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I guess I haven't seen Roman Rains really act, I
<v Speaker 1>haven't seen whatever marine movie he was in from WWE Studios.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Jason Momoa is probably gonna be Blanca, which
<v Speaker 1>is an incredibly weird fit for me. You get like
<v Speaker 1>this incredibly handsome dude that everyone's like this, Oh, he's
<v Speaker 1>this idol or whatever, and you're gonna make him be
<v Speaker 1>a green electric guy.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. That doesn't seem like a great fit
<v Speaker 2>to me.
<v Speaker 1>Noah Centineo, who I don't know, is ken Kalina leang
<v Speaker 1>Is Chun Lee and gay country singer Orville Peck has
<v Speaker 1>been cast to play Vega.
<v Speaker 2>That sounds fun. I didn't know that was his whole title.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's I mean, that's I think it's his government name.
<v Speaker 1>Good good for him. The movie's main protagonist role has
<v Speaker 1>been given to martial artists turned actor Andrew Kogi will
<v Speaker 1>play re You Okay, I don't know. The vibe of
<v Speaker 1>this to me has been very similar to the vibe
<v Speaker 1>of the casting for the original Street Fighter movie, and
<v Speaker 1>I just don't think there's any way that this can
<v Speaker 1>replicate the charm of that. So I'm like, I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>am I worried? I don't care the Street Fighter movie
<v Speaker 1>is bad? I guess I don't care.
<v Speaker 2>What if they brought back Jean Claude Van Damn as Kyle.
<v Speaker 1>That'd be great, but he should play m Bison. He
<v Speaker 1>should be the bad guy. Like, yeah, although I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if you make a great m Bison, but I like,
<v Speaker 1>I like.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it doesn't make it great anything. He just
<v Speaker 2>makes a great John Claudevan dam which is you know
<v Speaker 2>what you're getting?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, exactly, I you know here in chat mechanized that
<v Speaker 1>says it at this point with this cast, the way
<v Speaker 1>I'm reading it, I do hope it's a train wreck.
<v Speaker 1>I hope this is just a fun almost you've able level,
<v Speaker 1>you know, unraveling of a film.
<v Speaker 2>But we'll see. I want I want this to be
<v Speaker 2>Tommy weisso or like just just truly something terribly directed.
<v Speaker 2>But with all these big names, right, I would like
<v Speaker 2>with a budget, yeah, Neil Breen h budget, that'd be fun.
<v Speaker 1>All right, let's see here.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna get to the poll question in a second.
<v Speaker 1>Before I do that, though, Jesse, why don't you tell
<v Speaker 1>people where they could find you on the internet what
<v Speaker 1>you have going on?
<v Speaker 2>All that good stuff. You can find us at xboxera
<v Speaker 2>dot com. We are obviously, we have a freaking platform
<v Speaker 2>name in there. But as you know, are one of
<v Speaker 2>our co founders and his uh boyfriend Nick all about
<v Speaker 2>Nintendo anyways, we like everything contemplating a name change just
<v Speaker 2>to get the corporate title out of our name right
<v Speaker 2>because it might not be. It just takes one executive
<v Speaker 2>jumping in and saying why do they use our name
<v Speaker 2>in there? And then they lose their shit. But xboxera
<v Speaker 2>dot com or Patreon dot com forward slash xboxerah, trying
<v Speaker 2>to grow the Patreon. We're doing these things. We quickly
<v Speaker 2>quickly look at a video game in a series called
<v Speaker 2>the Patreon Peeps. Oh, always exclusive for patrons. That's fine,
<v Speaker 2>you can, we can peep.
<v Speaker 1>You gotta always gotta be peeping. That's a big That's
<v Speaker 1>what the people want. That's what the patrons want, all right.
<v Speaker 1>Didn't have the wherewithal and the bandwidth to post yesterday's post,
<v Speaker 1>so we'll post that now. Super Mario Maker three. Do
<v Speaker 1>you think Nintendo will make that for switch to?
<v Speaker 2>Uh?
<v Speaker 1>Well, we'll get that up and posted here so you
<v Speaker 1>guys can vote on that. I am out next week,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm not gonna be around to do Monday's show.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think like there's a chance I might like
<v Speaker 1>hop in and do something. But again, like I said,
<v Speaker 1>whenever I suggest something like that, I get yelled at
<v Speaker 1>and they're like, just go.
<v Speaker 2>Enjoy your break.
<v Speaker 1>But Mike's gonna do the show on Wednesday and Thursday,
<v Speaker 1>at least that's the plan. So when he does it,
<v Speaker 1>give him, give him any go easy on him. He'll
<v Speaker 1>probably do a.
<v Speaker 2>Shorter version of the show we were talking about.
<v Speaker 1>So probably just kind of run through the news with
<v Speaker 1>the guests whatever and not feel like he's gotta keep
<v Speaker 1>a conversation and what I don't care. Whatever he wants
<v Speaker 1>to do is fine. So we'll probably get the results
<v Speaker 1>of the poll on Wednesday when he does that show.
<v Speaker 1>But who knows what's going to happen, But yeah, we'll
<v Speaker 1>just do that poll. Super Mario Maker three. I am
<v Speaker 1>curious if people actually think that is going to happen,
<v Speaker 1>you know, from the outside looking in. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if you were ever someone who cared about Super Mario Maker.
<v Speaker 1>Both those games. Yes, I love those games. I spent
<v Speaker 1>a ton of time playing levels others others would make
<v Speaker 1>for me. I enjoyed making levels.
<v Speaker 2>As a great I have an online presence and I
<v Speaker 2>can go with the community game. It's like perfect for
<v Speaker 2>exactly like us.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if that has the you know, the
<v Speaker 1>Jews for Nintendo that they want to go squeeze a
<v Speaker 1>third one there.
<v Speaker 2>I'm skeptical. What do you think, well, especially with how
<v Speaker 2>they supported him or lack thereof. Yes, I don't know
<v Speaker 2>that people would. People would really hope this is the time,
<v Speaker 2>but then it would be like that every Animal crossing
<v Speaker 2>and it just never gets any support and people are
<v Speaker 2>sad again.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you know, people being sad about the Animal cross
<v Speaker 1>things silly like that game is what it is. You
<v Speaker 1>don't need the yaka who cares about support for that game,
<v Speaker 1>and it's just go buy a game, play it.
<v Speaker 2>By the next game, there is no lack. It never stops.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, exactly plenty out there, all right. So that's the
<v Speaker 1>plan for the pole question. We got what Jesse has
<v Speaker 1>been working on where you can find him. So at
<v Speaker 1>this point, I think I'm going to tell you guys
<v Speaker 1>what's happening at Giant Bomb. Later today, we are going
<v Speaker 1>to be getting together with men Max to play some
<v Speaker 1>rematch a three on three battle. I think they you know,
<v Speaker 1>Leo Vader and his team I was talking to him
<v Speaker 1>about setting that up. What we're gonna do is they're
<v Speaker 1>gonna stream their side, We're gonna stream our side, and
<v Speaker 1>then we'll probably hop into like a discord where we
<v Speaker 1>can talk shit with each other between matches and stuff
<v Speaker 1>like that.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see who can get that going.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, looking forward to that. That will happen around
<v Speaker 1>Let me check this at the calendar right now. Yep.
<v Speaker 1>The plan for that is at three pm Eastern time,
<v Speaker 1>so that's noon Pacific. Tune in for that here on
<v Speaker 1>Giant bomb. Other than that, we'll have some other stuff
<v Speaker 1>gonna be putting in the hopper. They're gonna we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>try to do that demo Derby, Gotta something happened that Baby.
<v Speaker 2>Steps demo, things like that. Maybe could catch those things
<v Speaker 2>next week.
<v Speaker 1>And then as a reminder, we're doing the best Games
<v Speaker 1>of the Century. If you want to go vote on that,
<v Speaker 1>there is a page up on giantbomd dot com where
<v Speaker 1>you can vote on your favorite games of the last
<v Speaker 1>twenty five years. We will get the results of that
<v Speaker 1>on July fourth. I think we're gonna post it up
<v Speaker 1>on the website that day, So look out everybody, all right,
<v Speaker 1>With that all out of the way, Jesse, thank you
<v Speaker 1>so much for hanging out with me today and talk
<v Speaker 1>about video games. Man, I really appreciate it.
<v Speaker 2>Always a pleasure, Jeff anytime.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you all for watching and listening. You're the best
<v Speaker 1>audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one,
<v Speaker 1>take care of yourself and goodbye.