Giant Bombcast 05-31-2011

Hey, everyone, it's May thirty first, twenty eleven, and you are listening to the Giant BombCast. I didn't even say it was Tuesday, did I take it from the top? All right? Hey everyone, it's Tuesday, May the thirty first, twenty eleven, and you were listening to the Giant Bodcast. Doctor host Ryan Davis joining me in the studio. I'm staring at him and his beautiful shorn Heights. Mister Vinnie Caravella, that's right.

You look like you should walking around knocking doors in your neighborhood and telling everyone that you just moved there. I have to tell you this. It's by law. Hey, I just want to let you know, just by law all the way through. I have to tell everybody. Jeff Gersman's in the house looking as much like a serial offender as he normally does. Great, yeah, no better, no worse? Okay, good? I ordered an electric shaver. Uh huh, I call that given up. But that's uh,

that's where we're at on that. And Brad shoemakes hell. Waiting for Vinny to show is his guitar string tattoos. They're on my prison his prison tats E three do man? Just no fuss. No, no, no, it's it's it's because you know all the to do before. There's a lot of must. There was a lot of fuss. Yeah, but now for you, she really should call it must and fuss. Should see my comb? It's real small own one. No, you're anybody earned I have a comb? Do you have a comb? I have a a comb,

comb, comb, comb. I wish I have a comb. It was hard for me. It was hard for me to buy just one comb. It was called like, here's five combs and different sizes. I'm like, what do you what do you like? I barely need a homb let alone, an assortment of combs, brad combs, brushes, nothing, nothing at all. Uh. Probably eight eight years ago I advised the hairstyle that required

maintenance whatsoever? I kind of basically I like that you you talk about this as though you would invent it. No, no, I just have fun something that works for me. I've discovered something amazing. The goal. The goal was to get out of shower and towel the hair and then never touch it. Not gonna go into the science of it, and I'm gonna boil you with the details. Years of research and development. Check this out allions

of dollars Lockheed Martin. Long story short, I could fly with this hair combt haircut, but still you you are due for an E three years it is, so let's start playing with it. In the back. Is when I know that it has to go. It's getting brad shaggy. I wouldn't say it's getting like relatively relatively. I'm trying to decide if I need to go get one more haircut before you three. I think I'm gonna go get a haircut before you three, just that I can make Matt Kessler also go

get a hair cut before you three. I want to drag him to the hair cutter and make him get a hair Yeah. I guess I can't really say no, no, no, he can't. Patrick can. Though. I came in here and saw any of this morning and declared we were all shaving our heads for E three and Patrick was just like, which would be the best hair cut? I'd take some of that hair? You take some Patrick's yeah, yeah, sure, it's it's good hair. Yeah, it looks good. But he wouldn't. He would not look good with a shaved

head. You never know until you try. He would not look good with the head. That's the thing I don't there's some folks that you just you know. I don't think I would look very good with the shaved head. I don't think I work I feeling it would be pointy your head. Yeah you don't. I guess you don't really know what the shape of your own. I shaved my head a lot in that in high school, so I have a fairly good idea of what what my head looks like underneath all this.

I don't know, Jeff, I think he could pull it off. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think you'd be better like bald ding than bald. I think if we if we gave you, like the the accountant kind of kind of reach around thing, the little little horseshoe Lise, Yeah, exactly, a little false. If it gets to that point, I will shave the rest of it all a false comb over. I don't think it'll get to that point. Do the Gallagher just long? Like?

Well? I both is what I mean. I want. I want both the dance make this watermelon smashing motion yep, with long but also no hair. I started with ware kind of trimming the hair, and then it was trimming my facial hair on with a different buzzer than went up too high? Is that is that how this started started? And then it's up Maybe I can fade it. Nope, And then I'm walked out of the bathroom

say does this look all right? Just no? I was. So I was in the shower yesterday and looking at my razor and I was just like, yeah, I'm tired of this, tired of this ship I don't like Basically, I'm at a point where my facial air grows slow enough that I probably only have to like really do anything to it every four days. And I have this crappy beard trimmer I've been using just kind of like stem it back. So I'm just kind of constantly crappy stubbly. It doesn't look too

neck beardy. I think I can. I can usually get it down low enough that it doesn't look too sloppy. But I just said, you know what, I just need to give up on this whole real razor thing, and just to see if electric shaver technology has advanced since the last time I tried it. I think it's acceptable, you know, acceptable, you know, I I think that like the quality is good. It just always seems

like using electric razor takes forever. It always seems like like you're going over the same spot multiple time to get it to the point that you want it. If you're gonna actually bother with a full shave, that the electric razer seems like you always got to just cycle and cycle and cycle. I get a lot of irritation from that too, Like it's you're just like grinding this thing in your skin. It sounds sounds terrible over and over what you get.

I don't know. I spent like two hundred and fifty bucks on some Norrelco thing. That's the other thing. They're so crazy expensive and hold mine. It was, you know, I was like looking on Amazon. They have this like line of different models. I got the second highest one because it looked like it has some kind of auto cleaning cycle, and I said, that looks like fun. But the other one was like it was like three hundred bucks. I'm like, what what's going on? Isn't it isn't

there like a crazy huge jump. Isn't it like you can get him? Yeah? Exactly three hundred and And you know, I wanted to get the I wanted to get something good. I figured, if I'm gonna like judge, like, has shaver technology got a new point where I can feel good about using electric shaver instead of feeling like a total failure. Uh, then I should probably get like a good one. So I don't know, I

bought a good one, I guess, or an expensive one. I understand it's being advertised on television by baseball players, so it must be good, Like that's the gold standard for this was after the fact, this was this person. But I'm saying, like, like, as far as face shaving technology goes for your spokesperson baseball players, they have some amazing Yeah, except for that one guy. He doesn't shave at all. No, and his beard's gotten crazy. I didn't realize that he wasn't trimming it, and I

saw how crazy that beard he's got. I think he should have be forced to shave his beard until he starts pitching better. If I didn't have such a fear of them, I just got a big straight razor, like a nice old straight But yeah, there's a there's a there's a shop near here where a designer Alexis gets his hair cut. That's all like forty's zoot suited out and the dude, I think we'll teach you how to use a straight

razor. I'd loved I just I just every time I look at them, I just think of people getting their next mistake of just yeah, cutting your own throat. Yep, most to be the Italian and me. That's not a that's not a personal hygiene device. That's a weapon. Yeah, you might as well shave with a kitchen knife. Probably teach out of shade with a kitchen knife too. Do you think about a bayonet when you're in the trench. I think the last thing i'd work like about like a tin can

lid. Yep, busy guy outside, it'll teach how to do that shave with a stapler with the Staples, Sure, why not? I don't know. Wait before a three? Are you taking a Staples suitable? I'll be right next to the Staples center. Shave with the Staples Center. That's good, you know, I'll give that like a three out of five. Thank you that that was Yeah, it was quick. Hey I'm not good. I'm just you didn't quite stick the landing, but like nice provisation, got

hurt. That's right, your knees didn't bend back the other way. No point in my saying like Hey, these is all this stuff. I'm just saying, like I can be quick with it. Yeah, because you want something quick and serviceable. Absolutely, I'm here. It's the job done. Moving on, say that on your business cars, quick and serviceable. You need someone to say something from Beverly Hill's cop or figure out some kind of shitty segue. Man, I'm okay, you could do worse. Dah.

Yeah, we just got off of a hot three. We're actually recording this on a Tuesday. Yeah, to actual tues, actual test breaking, extra current. It is. It is realer than real because three day weekend here in the States, Memorial Day weekend. Did you do anything for your Memorial Day weekend? I did. My mother in law was in town with a yeah, so we did like San Francisco tour, went to went to the THEATA. The wait the t R E Theater. What's the cut off?

When's the r E Theater coming to? They're live people on a stage or no, okay, JR. Did you go see the Blue Man Group? Nope, so I might still be t R E. Do you think Blue Man Group? Yeah, I mean like low end. Oh yeah, that's still are absolutely so. I just saw that they were in town. That's yeah, I don't think it was a Blue Man group. How many Blue Men are there? Three? The public appearances that there's three of them, right, but I mean there's like a million of They could be anybody,

right, Yeah, they do like regular tryouts. That's not just a made up things. I don't even know what they do. They're the Globetrotters, but with instead of basketball, it's all like it's all found sound PVC pipes that make noise, like we made these percussion instruments out of weird stuff and then we bang on it and act bizarre blue. We should go see the Blue Man Group sometimes I've seen them, No, you've seen them? Yeah,

I want to go see it. I was a Capcom truck. Sounds like, yeah, it sounds like we're in Vegas and hey guys, after dinner, we're going to see the Blue Man Group. But okay, that very specifically sounds like a a female pr rep really wanted to go see the Blue Man Group, and so the trip became, let's go see the that's how I saw. Oh yeah, that's that sounds about the right speed as well. Anyway, back to the holiday, what did you see was something?

Okay, Yeah, it was pretty good. That's that's what you see here. Yeah, you bring people from out of tens either that or beach playing a battle. They actually bought the tickets and my wife and I just showed up. No, no, no, that's exactly. That's the thing that you don't know exists, but you're out of town. It's like, you know, going climbing the quit Tower, going out to Alcatraz or whatever. It's a good show if anybody's looking to go to the thoth Ra,

you know which which theath Ray was. It was a downtown one field. It was near it was near the Union Square, so it was kind of that's kind of the great districts. Uh. Then we ate and then the next day we ate again, and then we would did like the car tour stuff Mere Woods and Twin Peaks and kind of the city stuff, and we went to Oakland. The oh went to Oakland and found some good Mexican food in Oakland in the Mexican parts of Oakland, which are fun, which was

fun. So you ain't grilling, no, no. Then Monday, I just totally video gamed it up. Okay, that was the Saturday. That was Saturday, and Sunday and then it was done finished. The case Smile was the book, although they today just released the two. Uh, it's Naked City and those were pre order cases. Okay, I already played through Naked Naked City, so my pre order case I sell them been able to get or PlayStation three exclusive case. Yeah, you can't get that until the

stores back. Oh you you've got the PSD version, but if you can't get any of its great No, no, no, I mean I played. I mean it sucks because of the cases. I played both versions, and PS three version is better. It's a it's a great game. Also, now now that you know, when once you get to that point where you're through the game, you want to go back and play previous cases, I thought i'd go back and claim up even the side mission stuff. But I think I'm kind of done. Yeah, I think. But what was

your reaction to the ending? Yeah, uh, it wasn't as I really liked the game a lot, and at the ending I liked less. So yeah, the ending is off the strongest part of that game. Yeah, so I really liked it. Yeah, it's not bad. It could be handled a little more deftly, yeah than they do, but it's actually pretty a lot of stuff to kind of it's it's kind of like but for the genre, there's a very genre appropriate for irony. To the way it ends,

it's more kind of perfect. It's more of the way the ending is presented. It kind of happens a little. It's all a little faster. I thought. The last scene it feels kind of rushed, Like the last ten twenty minutes of that game feel a little rushed. It was more of the last scene. I just wanted a little more closure those I wanted those like title cards to come up and be like he went on to go be judge of you know, yeah, yeah whatever kind of Thematically, it makes

sense. It's just not presented as as cleanly, and it probably speaks of the character development throughout the game. I just want to know what happened to the rest of those guys and what they thought about the ending. I want to know what the characters thought about everything. You know, Noir is kind of all about it was dark, yeah, and then keeps that and discomfort

yeah, kind of like a dissatisfaction by the way things turned out. But but I really I don't know, I really like when when that's when that game shifts. I became far more excited about it and far more invested. There was definitely a whole lot of like what what the hell, that's what's going on up Like I just knew at that point, I'm like, Okay, yeah, this is they're really getting into. Like there there's kind of

this. There's a lot of kind of facile noir trappings throughout that game, but like the deeper story once once that switch happens about two thirds through, uh is uh is really really exciting. I should say that the post credit scene was actually redeemed a lot of the ending for me. I like the scene after the credits, but that actually tied up that filled. Yeah,

a lot of a lot of story. But uh yeah, I had a lot of fun going through it. Long than I thought, way longer, I don't remember, but it felt it felt like I was never running out of like oh, this must be the end and then nope, that's longer stuff going. Yeah it's long. Are you gonna do you have interest in going back and playing playing cases? Maybe? I don't know. It depends what the what they're like, how they're sold to me, like what the

description is. If it's just more climbing up drain pipes and chasing down dudes. Probably not. How long is the Naked City. It's it's it's length. Yeah, yeah, so that one. So since I already had that that one cashed in beforehand, that one did just integrate into my into my playthrough. Well, some of those cases are longer than others, It's true. Some can be real. It's pretty the Yeah, Naked City is a pretty significant one. It's it's substantial. That rock Star Pass is a surprisingly

good deal. I mean, it's it's four cases. It's like, you know, I mean, the guns and costumes are kind of whatever. But even at four full extra cases for ten bucks, that's a pretty good deal. I never got the other I never got the achievement or the trophy for using all the weapons, which I thought was weird because I didn't seem yeah, I just everything, huh uh. And I just never got fist fist weapons. I definitely didn't fisted a couple of guys. I didn't get that

one either. I don't know the weapons one. Yeah, so I don't know if it's a maybe it's tied into some of the DLC. I'd like to talk to some of the definitely people have it. There's there's a full list of like what the yeah, the weapons are the weapons didn't seem like there are that many. Seems like there are like four weapons. There's a couple that are very similar. I think there's like two versions of Tommy going first. Yeah, there's I think I got both of those with the round

clip in that in that straight clip. Yeah, no, you're I think you're thinking of the bar. Maybe I don't know. I tried to make sure I got everything. I was just running through. I think there's a Tommy going with a magazine and then the Tommy going with the drum clip. I'm not I'm not sure drum magazine. I'm not sure though, I don't know. Aside from all that, Yeah, I had a lot of fun with it. Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm all the way in for all that delC. I feel like it's a kind of stop check out this

game in terms of the where video games are check it out. This is an important piece of video game timeline right here. And you know, I guess we'll see in the future how much of that's that plays forward. But genre bending, that game is going to age horribly, you think, I think so I think I think the technology and technology, I think the technology

in that game looks amazing right now. But I think being like kind of first run, I have a feeling that it's just it's just like two years from now you look back on and go, geez all these It's like it's like you think everyone that has any kind of faces in it will eventually go that route. So it'll just be everywhere and that'll be the first example of it, and it'll look I don't know if it's going to be that pervasive

now. I mean, it's owned by this company that made the game right right for one thing, So like if I rock Star buys that developer and owns that technology, like it probably be somebody somebody will iterate on it or that game. We can do that like oh, just like we put thirty three camera fifteen cameras on their body too. So it's the only moments when that stuff broke down for me is when the few cases where there were two

people that you were interacting with at once. Uh, there are a couple of like interrogations where interviews where there was someone else sitting there next to the person they were titled to and they were just like they were sitting there and they're sitting right next to each other, but they were in completely different worlds just just like that, Like it couldn't do just like the someone was saying something that would that would be shocking, and then the person would appropriately because

they all acted about individually, right, Like, it kind of betrays the process they went through to to you know, capture these performances of everyone is super isolated, which isn't a problem when you're doing one on ones or even when it's just sort of conversational, but when someone I think it's super hard

in that in that sort of a setting to background act. Sure, if you know what I mean, yea, when it's just like okay, you're gonna sit in the middle of this room now casual, right, you know, like at least you need stand in so there giving your prompts and stuff. Sure, but I think even more than a technology, uh, just the format like is as in it, which is pretty much an adventure game. It's you know, it's kind of the twenty eleven point and click adventure

game. I mean, this is like one possible route for that job or two to go along. So I think we'll probably see some more of that, like like instead of just you know, Salmon Max next season, super realistic rabbit faces. Well, that's the thing, rabbit, that's the thing. Like those guys are over there doing the point and click thing still right,

like that that's kind of the old way to make an adventure. And it's weird because you did see some of that in the Salmon Max stuff where there was one episode where you were shaking down people and you had to see if they were lying or telling the truth. So that's not that novel. But I felt like it was executed really well, and I thought nothing ever seemed completely contrived with the notebook and all that stuff. I thought the whole thing was just very well done. But but it I mean, it does

have like five tricks like that game. Yeah, it boils down to a handful of idea conversation scenes collecting evidence yea, like you know, the first person shooting and chases and stuff like it's a yeah, it's a small actually a car chase, the car following, the foot chase, the fist fighting, like actually thought those parts were part of the weakest the actually bits.

I think it's presented so well that I'm exciting to watch. Even though it's not mechanically converse, it's it's it's whenever someone says, like does the how can you prove that I was there? That's that's when the like FMV game part of surface video pauses for a second and well, what do you think?

But actually, evidence do you have make my music video? I actually did appreciate though when you hit lie, they would set up exactly what evidence you need to uh, do you have evidence that I was the one who made this bill to go to the thing too? Because a lot of times, I know you proved that I was there. A lot of times I'd hit lie, thinking I have a piece of evidence, and then they'd stayed exactly the two sides of like, oh no, I don't have that at

all. I don't have something. Yeah, I'm not like you have the pair of my torn panties that I stuffed it right, So like i'd have a piece of evidence that was like, had I have this guy's testimony that says you were totally there? And then they you'd hit lie and the guy would be like, well, do you have a ticket that says that I was at the theater? I don't think it gives that it doesn't get but it at least name the item. No. But but they always at least

direct, Yeah, what we're trying? Yeah, what what the two sides are? And I boned it up a lot of times on how many times did you turn off your system? About four? Especially towards the end I actually powered I hate quit. I was pause it and go to quit and then resume. That's what I did, and it pops you straight back into exactly where you were. Well, sometimes you have to sit there all. You can't skip all at the beginning of that conversation, but it checkpoints every

time you get to a new way. I usually I usually did it once I started and up repeatedly, like two wrong in a row. And then I was like when I when I got to three, when I was just like, I'm killing I'm just doing awful here. This is the worst. And and it's you know, there are you just feel like because they're the there are the interviews where it's like, all right, I'm just gonna ask this guy like two questions. He's kind of an incidental witness or information source.

But it's when you get to like the proper suspects where there's like six questions you're gonna ask this dude sucked up. Like half of them are like, oh, I don't care if I with like you know, I get zero out of two on you know, the bartender or whatever. I'm like, all right, I'll make up the difference later. It's no big deal. But when then you get those music cues, it's just oh, barn

Burnand but you're right, you're right. I definitely became super tuned. We're talking about this last week, the little two notes, a little harmony that comes up, we get it right, and like, oh thank god, Yeah, no, that stuff is good. I burned through all my intuition points as well. And you should kind of save those up a bit, I think, yeah, because you can't grind them there if there's a set

number and you can get in the whole game. Yeah, And I was down to just one and then zero of the entire time at the end there, and they get burned through them too quickly. But when you go back to cases, you'll have full five when you when you when you replay when you which you know, when you get to earlier cases, you couldn't have even had five intuition points at that point. And so I'm super excited for more deals for that game. I'll play as many cases as they put out.

I you know, say what you will about kind of the overarching narrative, although again I think that they capture like the namesake of La Noir. That game is entirely totally and and some pretty and they pay homage to some of the greats and some really specific but still very inventive ways with with kind

of the overarching plot. It's it's just terrific. Somebody's saying that. I won't say which case even though it's not it's not critical to the main storyline, but the there's a case where the name of the case is also the name of a fairly well known movie of that genre, and they're both about the exact same thing. I feel like there are a couple of yeah, there's I mean, you know, the Big Sleep is on half the marquees of the theaters in town, like they they are winking and nodding at you

about that stuff constantly. I feel like the longer I wait to play the game, the better experience I'm going to have, because they keep releasing all this stuff that integrates into the stories. Yeah, that's the part that. Yeah, if you wait till like all four of those cases around and then play the game, I mean, that's gonna make it that much longer. I don't know how you feel about that, but if it's not good,

that's fine. I think more than any of the Yeah, I mean I wish I could have those the yeah, other three integrated because having just Naked City in there are like, oh bonus, I know that my you know, play through here is going to be just a little bit. And that case is great. That case is a lot of fun. It. It pulls in you see a lot of like kind of returning characters from from past

cases. Uh. So, it's it's got some continuity to it. It's just so I hope if, like, if that's the standard for the DALC cases, I'm excited to see what the other ones are. Like the last case it's called Reefer Madness. I know, I can't wait. I'll see what that is. Uh it's a vice case. Uh. The I think the main story throughout the whole thing, that the larger narrative. Yeah,

I thought it was really powerful. I thought it was a very mature, very kind of well and convoluted, Like there's a lot there's a lot of moving parts to that, but every single part ties into it. There's nothing that you were shown in that game. Uh you know the individual cases, a lot of them are just like that's that's an isolated case. But like all the character development, all that, you know, all the weird flashbacks stuff, like all the kind of side stuff that they show you like it

all happens for a reason, and it all tied. Like going back and replaying older cases and seeing some of that stuff, I was shocked to realize how much is time in Yeah. I just thought it was like an adult piece of content done well. Yeah, and not not with like blood and boobs, like like this is there's blood and boobs. There's plenty of blood and there are plenty of boobs. There blood bloody boots. There are plenty of bloody boots. It's the only time there are boobs. Awesome, they're

bloody. But but I think it's done. It's done tastefully, and it's all it's all given like the appropriate gravity. Yeah. And and that story is pretty heavy. It's a it's a pretty it's good stuff. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. Uh And so then I switched Scars and went back to the Witcher One. And how's that treating? How how are the novels? I haven't started it yet? What? Yeah, we got to read the books before you play the game. It's not gonna make any sense.

He's in the original Polish. I mean the first the first I need to go through and brush up on my posis Polish. Yet, well, I'm working on. None of this is going to make any sense to you. First, I need to go to pol I mean those books were not written as promotional material for this game. No, it's books first. Yeah, they existed, and so somebody, I don't think you got these are exempts for mockery. I think because of that, So somebody, somebody I'm

mocking Ye, I'm mocking Vinny for his need to player. There are two things that put the books on a bit of a hole. I also want to want to clear the air here. I'm not making fun of the Witcher One either. I understand it's a very great game and and very liked. It's just this is Vinnie's habit of going down these crazy rabbit holes. Which which of completionism? Which are which I like? Which are is good? How much time do you spend with The Witch. I spend it's probably another

five or six hours this weekend with it. That cames cool. It's it's a it's I'm playing it for the story, not really so much for the gameplay, because I do think there are better versions of that gameplay. It's dense. It is gameplay is dense in that game. But I'm enjoying it. Uh, And I'll get to the books at some point. Apparently only like two out of five have been translated, so I kind of, Yeah,

I kind of took a little wind out of my sales. Plus when somebody told me that the books are in the same universe, same character and stuff, but it's not like a retelling. The game isn't isn't a version of the books made me feel like it would give me a little more time to be like, well, I can always go back and read these I'm not if I play the game, I'm not gonna spoil the book, or if we read the book, I'm not gonna spoil the game. A lot

of flights and car trips coming up. I know you mean they're not retellings, yeah, or the book or the games and retelling I want to understand. Yeah, So yeah, it seems like that universe is fleshed out really well, and I can't wait to really dive into it. But I know as soon as we come back from E three, there's so many other games

that that's the only thing that worries me. Spending time playing the Witch er one and then looking forward to playing the Witch or two when just this barrage of games are going to come out, Well, then he don't worry because after that barrage is a two month wasteland. Just true. Yeah of no releases. Yeah, July and August looking pretty pretty slim like old school. Yeah, like school. July and August. When when does Madden come out?

That ass? Yeah, that's usually that's when everyone goes back to school. That's when people start selling games again. They announced their Hall of Fame edition for Madden today. Does it come with a football? No? Does it come with because of football phone? I would totally football phone. It comes with some autographed card and foil cover. Who's the cover, who's the cover artist the cover football iss ball artist? I don't, I don't remember.

I think it might even be a different guy on the Hall of Fame edition. So who gets injured Finn if there's two. Well, I think that everyone is no longer playing everyone Marshall Fall or something anyway you could they're doing. They're doing some very interesting stuff. It's one of the things I saw during my week out was was Madden and you know, it's like a lot of it, chunks of it were lost on but it seems like they really are going for it this year, even though there might not be any

real football. It seems like they're kind of using that as an excuse to do a lot of stuff to that game that they might not do on an annual basis. Landlines or Mutants. Yeah, so now they're they're so they're they're redoing like camera stuff in that game pretty intensely. They actually showed that they were motion capturing a guy on like a fifty yard field and this guy's like an NFL Films dude with like a camera rig that's got a monitor showing

the game on it. So he's like filming guys running out of the entrance tunnels and stuff, and he's like they're and they're just dropping his camera data directly into the game. Weird. I thought that was pretty cool. That's interesting. She just trying to get it to look more like NFL film stuff. So he's got he's got a problem with that that should always look he's got like gyrosculpture track so it's always where in the world it is and all

that stuff. So they're capping that, which I thought was really neat. That's interesting. So it's like, you know, they said there was some case of like him, like getting out of the way of players running at it and stuff. That's interesting. That's exactly what you want him to do. Yeah, it sounds like they're doing a lot of cool stuff without game this year. No clip through, Uh do you so? So yeah, obviously has to have separate deals then with the NFL and the Players Association.

Yeah, I think that's still separate. Those are separate deals, I think. Well, I mean, LA imagine they have to be, because I mean, that's where the beef is coming from, right is between owners player you know, the deals are the deals. I don't know, I know, I'm just wondering how, you know, how the potent, how the the lockout is going to well, I think you know, it would probably

affect stuff like roster updates if there are no rosters to update. Sure, you know, they would have to kind of launch with Well, I was thinking more just like like kind of broader big picture, like you know what, how this would affect their ability to change things or tweak things about the the game on a larger scale. Well, yeah, I mean I think

yeah, it definitely. You know, they would have no real league to react to, so if they wanted to go, like, Okay, this player is suddenly having a breakout season, we need to make it better. Like they don't have to worry about that. Like, it's probably almost better in some weird way, more liberties for them, right because they just get to like make it right once and then don't have to sit there and sweat that stuff. I don't know, but you know, did to hear them

describe it. It's like, you know, they're kind of like planning for the worst case scenario, Like if there's no football, this game is still gonna be awesome. If there's no football. Fans, there's no football, they charge ninety dollars a copy, Well that's from the Hall of Fame, additions, basic edition of that game. Want football this year? Just what

Madden? That's what Arena football? Or they just do XFL's coming back one season only they should do an alternate universe Madden like for this year if there's no football, like imagine if robots and mutants. Yeah, they should just do that anyway, you know it imagining. Okay, keep going one robot, he's got tak trips. Save it for NFL blitz. Is that coming back? Yeah? Does that? Did that have played? You mean blitz? No? I think I mean NFL Blitz. Yeah, yeah, we'll

see MLB blitz. Yes, we couldn't get the players. You couldn't get NFL players, so check it out. That would be that would be the group the bestz just all hockey players that in MLB. Yeah, just all right, we bought we put baseball players. What if baseball players had to play football? Well, we've got all these other stats. I guess we'll

figure out how to translate those into these stats. Great FACEALC Sabathia would play something like this, just guys like like self pitching the football and receivers. I'd play that game. Yeah, I'll play that game. Quiet are usually asking we should give football players based ball bats, because because I am in no, give the baseball players baseball bats and put them in a football and put them on the field. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't

care the guys who know how to use them. I don't care where their players are coming from. Let's get let's get inmates and put them on a football field and give them baseball bats. All right, now, you're onto sometimes I'm talking about the next great American sport. Is what I'm talking about. God damn it. Whatever team win gets parole. That's right. Oh, thrash ball. Thrash ball right now, this is how it happens.

This is how it happens. NFL strike, NFL strike, And it's just like you know, Sunday in the park pick up league games of thrash ball twenty eleven due to the NFL strike. What if we put spikes on these paths at halftime? Cars would enter the field. We need something more extreme? Can we make this game take place in twenty xx? We might take place in twenty xx and it happens on a mountain of burning amplifiers. I love this game. This is what you saw. This is what they wanted

the show. No, this is T shirt guns that killed. I cannot talk about some of the other things I saw, Jeff, what can you talk about? Oh God, it's so what do you want to talk about. Yeah, it's well, you know, today was the day for the Call of Duty Elite reveal, yes, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle. Yeah, I think we can call it a kerfuffle. Sure, I think it's it's reached kerfuffle status. Do you think Do you think it at any point got to Donnie Brooke. No, it hasn't quite reached Falan Donnie

Brooke yet. Waggle. Oh, it's well, yeah, I think i'd say it's it's it's yeah, it's past boondoggle, past boondoggle. I feel like Boondoggle is way past kurfuffle man. You think, yeah, I think you probably. I think it probably because that boon Dooggle is only a couple of steps away from food Bar. Yea, that's the It's not it's not Foo Bar, because at the end of it, it's it's people kind of freaking out about half the story or or kind of being willfully ignorant about what

Call of Duty Elite. Actually, I don't even know which part you're talking about being freaked over, because there was the whole like Wall Street Journal and Bargo breaking Well wasn't that wasn't even Embargo's being broken Journal had the exclusive yesterday and and that story you know by people being written by the Wall Street Journal sure was more focused on the business aspects of this being a subscription based service, so it didn't necessarily put, you know, it put in the spotlight

that this actually doesn't change anything about the way you play Call of Duty today. And that's the thing, you know, if you just want to play that game on the internet and shoot people and then buy mat packs or not buy map packs like that, Modern warphare three still functions exactly like that, And then they're building this additional service around it, some of which will be

free, uh, some of which will be not. So it's like they're building basically I mean, you know how Bungee handles stats for Halo, I think so like they have they have a whole site full of heat maps and game viewer and all this crazy stuff that's totally free, and it's awesome, you know if you're in Halo, like it's it's killer, Like you go look at it, you're like, oh man, it's all kind of comparable. To take it back to the Battlenet stuff like as far as stat tracking

and replays and things of that nature, Yeah sort of. Yeah, I mean, you know, neither neither service really offers like full on replay capability from the site or anything like that. But so this, this subscription service doesn't necessarily affect any of the gameplay. It's more of a meta layer on top of right, It's a layer on top that you know, like, like I said, they haven't necessarily been too clear about where they're gonna draw

the line as to what's free and what's not. What's probably compounding some of this, you know, they don't they don't really have their shit together for this announcement. Yeah, talking to you about it some this morning, it sounds like they're figuring out where that line is. Yeah, so it's like they're there. All they're saying is that it will be priced lower than comparable services. And I look at like, well, what are what are comparable

services? And you look at like this. Okay, So this basically takes the stat tracking stuff from what Bungee's done, which is free. It takes kind of the group functionality from something like Steam, which is free. And then if you are a subscriber, you will also get access to all the map packs which are not free with your subscription. Yeah, it sounds like it'll be at release. I think they should probably just give them to subscriber

as a week early or something like that. Like the people willing to pay that fee, like, you know, it doesn't split the player base for very long. You know, those people would probably be the people that would you know, be most likely to care about that sort of stuff and go from there. But that's a good bonus for people who are way into call

of duty. Yeah, I think that that at that point, I think it makes this the service even it makes the service attractive because right now, for me, if they don't, if they charge any more than what those map packs cost on their own, they're charging too much. You figure, they do three map packs over the life of Modern Warfare, three so that's

forty five bucks right there. But you know, anytime I say to anyone they shouldn't charge more than that, they look at me like I'm crazy, And they're going to charge five bucks a month, don't be stupid, which I don't. You know, they haven't announced it, but that that seems like a likely scenario. I guess I'm not even sure that that a monthly makes the most sense, right Like, like idet all the money up front.

Of the big part of what they want to do with this on a business you know, I'm sure from a business perspective, is get all that map pack money out of you on day one while you are pumped about Call of Duty and yeah, and locking you into buying all three map packs because and then locking you into maybe not selling back your copy of the game used

because because you've paid for this year of stuff. Also, for every person who gets that stuff up front, that is one hundred and five dollars per sale instead of sixty or or or whatever car with night vision scrap to it, especially especially with a stick of dynamite tape to it, whatever it is, but especially it's that much extra money on the next earnings report, right, Yes, So have they said if this would just be for that game, like so they're going to roll this out, it'll be for Black Ops

and for Modern Warfare three. Okay, So they've actually been they've been tracking Black Up stats since launch and that stuff will be in there. So it's kind of like a Call of Duty subscription Okay. Yeahs it's not tied any particular game. This is their ongoing service, evolving service they've got an iPhone app like it's it's you know, this is this is a web page basically where you're going and looking at all the stats and you know, and and

joining groups and doing all that stuff. The other thing is they they'll have leagues and tournaments with real prizes, which I imagine that would be on the other side of the paywall. Also, you know, they didn't really say what the prizes would be, but in the placeholder stuff they had like a

jeep or a belt buckle, you know, stuff like that. It seems like as long as they're not sucking or taking stuff that, you know, gameplay functionality out of the core game, like like they're not charging just for multiplayer or something like that, if there are people who want that stuff,

uh, it's hard to have a problem. It sounds it sounds like a more robust Bungee Pro to me, right, nobody, nobody who plays Halo but doesn't sign up for Bungee Pro is suffering or thing out on and yeah, yeah, but at the same time, like Bungee Pro was really just extra file share space offers clearly a lot more than that, yeah, and probably will be priced accordingly. But it's also hard for me to tell because

I kind of have no interest in that at all. So like, yeah, if it were for something and I was like, that would be awesome, but I have to pay for it. I could see people kind of getting upset. But it sounds like a it sounds like the most of this stuff's gonna probably end up being free anyway, And it's really just the stuff that you know, you would have to pay money to access anyway, like Matt packs and stuff that would get you prizes, which you know, but

you know, they're just positioning in a really weird ways. They're talking about like, well, you know, one of the reasons that this has to be a premium service because we're building such a huge customer service organization to support it. I'm like, no one fucking cares about that, and really, what is your like, what are you servicing unless you're gonna like implement call of duty gameplay counselors that I can call up and go, dude, I

just can't shoot people, right, shoot shoot them back. Yeah, if there's someone on the like a binder that they flip through. Yeah, if Gary Wit is on the other end, it goes, well, have you tried getting him thanks all right. Uh, you know because because this notion of like, oh, well, you know, if we're gonna start the service, it's gonna be a lot of people calling up like, well, what do you have to deal with lost my password? Yeah? Like yeah,

it's like you'll have some of that stuff. But I'm not sure how if you're starting this paid service to support the organization that will have to support your paid service, then maybe you've gone about it wrong. Or maybe there's something that they're expensive to run. We need money. Maybe there's some other

thing that they just haven't announced that needs that customer support. I have no right, or you know, maybe they just know that, like the the kind of mainstream Call of Duty fan base is the type of people that will just call you up to curse at you over something, and they need people to deal with that. I don't I don't really don't know. It's just like therapists or like Jimmy Kimmel call them up doing that ad for this game,

right. Yeah, So you know, they haven't done a great job of really kind of positioning this stuff and saying what exactly it's going to be. Let's I mean, like they showed it Q and they showed it to the Wall Street Journal and yeah, and they showed it to you know, obviously not just you, but when I see you like a bunch of enthusiast

press. Yeah. Yeah, And and there seems to be no clear consensus of well, you know, the minute you say, hey, we're charging money for a thing related to call of duty, everyone immediately he goes worst case scenario and you know, just starts like, charge your money for to play the game. And I feel bad for like Robert Bowling in this case because he's, you know, that's still kind of the the community face for

inffinity word products. And if you look at his Twitter, it's just like one to one responses to people saying no, we're not charging to play the game, like in like five different ways, and it's like it's not even a form letter. He's taking time just go no, dude, which you know, God bless him, and that's he's he's good at doing that. That's what they have to pay for. That's what's good, right, Yeah, Yeah, to duplicate him twenty times, two thousand times to get and

has the technology to clone Robert Bowling. But I would pay for that. That's I would totally make money, but wasn't there There was a quote, if my money goes to making more Robert bowlings and making that watchwork. But in their quote that came out of Activision about it like a year or two ago, that was just something off the record kind of quote that was just like, yeah, if we could charge for the multiplayer, we were totally

doing it. Was it was on the record. I mean they have not been shy about I think that we want, we need to make money off of people playing our game all the time. Yeah, but you know, it's like standards being with you know, even even with the franchises, you should call it duty. They couldn't just do that. Yeah, you know, they would probably make more money for a little bit, but they would turn off so many players. Yeah, somebody else would the process exactly.

Yeah, it's like you know any year where people are you know, at least like people that are are very tapped into what's going on with upcoming games, Like this is going to be the year that they face their most kind of They're going to face their biggest challenge yet in Battlefield three, and it would be a bad move for them to go full on subscription only for that multiplayer considering no one else is really in a position to do that, and no one else has to do that, and no one else will do that.

It's uh, you know, it would leave them out of the cold, like they're just not going to do that. Like the basics of how the console business works would have to change change so dramatically for us to get to a point where people are paying to play sixteen player multiplayer games on a subscription on a subscription basis on top of what they are already paying to do

that on an Xbox. Right, well, pretty much everybody's doing the past thing then, right, that's like a cross that's Warner Brothers doing it, Activision does EA does it, right, they all have to included online pass HQ has done it, but they're just contributed through THHQ and you can buy that through after the fact, right, everybody else you can buy it after the fact. And you know, one of the startup messages in Black ops like they have the stats and stuff that'll go across the bottom. Like one

of them even seemed like a swipe at that. It was just like you know, multiplayer free in every box really like and you know it's it's that they've They've said it time and time again. Anytime anyone will ask them, or anytime anyone is listening, they will say, we have no intent to charge to play the basic multiplayer basic multiplayer, which is true right uptil the moment where they change it. But I don't think that the I don't think

the business will be there for them to make that change anytime soon. By the time that this business has changed so much that they can charge for individual games like that, Call of Duty will not be a factor anymore, you know, it'll kind of already gone off into the night or something. So did you see the game proper, like just just regular game that you can talk about. Yeah, I saw for three. They demoted two levels of

the single player. They didn't talk about multiplayer at all except for spec ops that will be back. Oh cool, Yeah, I like that part. The game look pretty good. Looks okay. He looked like a Call of Duty game, you know, like it's it's uh, you know, it's interesting. They didn't really focus on any real kind of story stuff other than to say it's conflict is all over the world, which is you know, their their teasers have kind of reflected that and it's a continuation of modern Wafford

two. Yeah, but they didn't show anything related to soap or Price. It was just like, here are some Delta Force soldiers, uh, you know, taking Wall Street back from the Russians, and here are some British sas guys chasing down a train. Well, if you've got a first person shooter where you've actually managed to create characters that people give a shit about, you save those like, I don't. I don't think you tropp those out

for the Yeah, maybe not. That's a you know, like the Price reveal in in two, right when you finally get to him, it's it's a it's such a great oh shit moment. But you know that let league script claim is that this game picks up like moments after the end of the second game. You know that it's not that they're and also that they're not necessarily huge characters in the game, which seems kind of crazy. You know, I don't I don't know where I don't know where this is going.

I mean I don't, I don't know like what the fate of modern Yeah, because like arguably after Black Ops, you know, Call of Duty is bigger than it has ever been but they're you know, I feel like we we are in the middle of a really hard backlash from you know, a lot of people on the enthusiast side. Yeah, I mean, that's that's

kind of the other thing. I have to imagine that Activision expects a lot of this reaction, you know, because anytime you say, hey, we're charging for anything that you know, we all know the Internet doesn't like that. Yeah, but how many of those people have actually been turned off to the point where they're not going to buy the game that they where they were going to buy the game and now won't. And how many of them will just or or are even aware of any of this off at all. Right,

That's that's the thing. I think so many people that play Call of Duty don't pay any attention to any news about video games other than when when? About when does that coming out? Did I did I learn about that from commercials during the NBA? Right? Did I hear or like, what were you saying? I thought I had got the impression somewhere that the game that is being made was sort of mapped out pre kind of like Calamity, And I don't know, I hadn't heard that because that happened like the following

spring after Modern War. Yeah, so they probably could have had like a rough outline at that point. Yeah, I asked. I asked because I mean, just like you see this final product coming out after there has been such a ce change in the development staff, Like I personally won't be able to look at this game without thinking like, is this roughly the game that would have been made if that hadn't happened? Like, how is this different?

Yeah? It is? How this game is oddly damaged? Is it's it's hard, It's it's hard to extract it, like knowing that there was this huge creative change behind the scenes, Like you're left wondering like was this game really made by like Infinity Ward as I know it. I mean the two people on stage giving or introducing this demo were Robert Bowling from Infinity Ward and Glenn's Scofield or of Sledge, who last made a Dead Space game.

Right, Yeah, so you know it's a PR guy and creative strategists community guy and head of another head of another studio. Yeah, you know, so they've divvied up the tasks accordingly and are kind of working on that game across studios and you know it's in their outsourcing a bunch of stuff to other people. And you know, even though it was not mentioned at all during this presentation, apparently Raven is still working on some portion of this game as

well. They were not represented on stage though I thought Raven died. I thought they killed Raymond. No, well, Modern Warfare two ended with everything going to hell and Soapen Price leaving to go do their own thing because everybody was out of there because everything everyone was after them. So maybe any award

was writing it into the game, predicting the future. Maybe that's why we haven't seen them in anything of the new stuff, because you seeing Modern Warfare three is a parable for the Melon, and maybe we'll see Modern Warfare three be like some pressure dead. They're dead. We're not going to mention them. They're doing it. One thing. It's okay, they retired. Here's some new characters. We don't care. Yeah, we don't care. Check these new guys out. Yeah, I don't know. It's it looked fine,

like the demo looked fine, but it looked very standard. You know. It looked like, Okay, I'm working my way up the street, I'm shooting these guys. Like none of it looked new. The tech didn't necessarily look like it had advanced, and it looked nice, you know, sixty frames a second like you expect. But basically it all looked as you

expect, which I guess. You know, maybe with all the turmoil that has come to the studios involved and you know, kind of how this game has come together, maybe that's like, maybe that's maybe that's all that they can you know, hope. Yeah, they're probably stoked using new like gameplay thing like we introduced, you know, well, they shocking shock. They showed what would that be? Locking shock? You lock onto a guy and

then everybody rushes in. It's like shocking off. There you go. So, is it like you're controlling like attack attack to point out a guy? You aim at him and then you hit a button and then everybody targets him and then you run to cover. Are you using it as like a distraction? You're using it? It's like punch a hole either man. Do you decide how to use That's the beauty of it. I like it. It's up to the player what governs lock and shock use. Can you just pump

it out as often as you will? You can only do it when you have like three to more guys. But I mean like when icon will come up, how do I how do I charge up my locking shock? No? No, just an icon will come up. It's like breaching the door. Its scripted. It's scripted. Yeah, some points in the game you'll be able to see here. It's not really it's not really up to me. It's just at this one point, I can hit the bus safe questions for the end. We're gonna roll a lock and shock demo right now.

This is a little bit later into the game. This is the same multiplayer. We're gonna skip ahead a little bit. How many players we'll save questions for the end, so as you can see now, we're gonna jump Yeah,

we're gonna jump ahead now a little bit. So kind of the one of the new thing they showed was that in the Manhattan sequence, the guy was holding a rifle that had a full on scope on it and he slapped it out of the way the scope, yeah, like down to the side of the gun, and there was a red dot site there behind it. So you can kind of go back and forth between if you wanted good magnification or just a red dot site on that weapon. That's interesting. Sure it's

a thing. Yeah, well that's a yeah. And and there were a lot of like rail shooting sequences, like You've got up to this rooftop and planted explosives on this tower, and then a helicopter came in and you were shooting out of the door of a helicopter. You launched missiles from a reaper drone, just like you've done in past games. There were the whole the whole train tunnel sequence was all on rails. It was just you're in the back of a pickup truck shooting in a train. Like it. I don't

think we're gonna fight. They've done some pretty cool on rails sequences in the past, or even just like vehicle stuff like the snowmobile thing was was neat. But I mean so there is there is a modern warfare expectation of having something like that. Yeah, but to have you know that percentage of your demo taken up by that, well, I mean the trailer, like half the things that you see, I'm like, Okay, that's gotta be on rail's vehicles sequence. That's gotta be an on rail's vehicle sequence. Yeah,

And some of the stuff is it. Yeah, some of most of the stuff I saw is in the trailer in some form or at least in bits and pieces. Yeah, But like like we were talking about, with Mass Effect three, by the time you get to the third one, you're not reinventing anything. You know you are. You have an established audience. They kind of know what they like. That's fine, But at the same time, this whole thing is getting pretty tired. Yeah. Yeah, I don't.

I don't think it's the same because I don't expect a mass effect for it to be very similar. If they go for mass effect, for to even take place with the same characters or whatever. I suspect the that's the narrative, Dey'll get wrapped up this. I suspect call of duty. They would keep making the time. I think I believe this is supposed to be the conclusion of the Modern Warfare art. Okay, but I mean, I mean to say that modern Warfare differentiates or splits off from like Black Ops in

any gameplay meaningful way. In the gameplay, it's it's not that you're looking for it to split off, it's that you're looking for it to make advancements in a in a genre where those advancements are kind of expected and kind of continually being made. You know, it's it's the it's the change over from Call of Duty three to Call of Duty four. That's what we need right

now. Yeah. So and you know, it's like people are starting to look to Battlefield three thinking like, well, maybe this is going to get us on a different track and hopefully do something else. And I think battle Field three looks awesome. I'm just not sold on it yet, like that camp. You know, they've shown campaign stuff like that's not what I want to see out of a Battlefield game either, And arguably the majority of people that want to play Model war for three don't give a shit about it.

They don't even know this stuff. So it's kinda it's kind of where I I wound up with Call of Duty now, is that's kind of become a rental for me because I don't spend time in the multiplayer and then the campaign stuff usually winds up being four or five hours, So I wind up with a copy of Modern Warfare that I, you know, beaten one night and then kind of put down and never touch again. And some would say, you know, well that game is not for you. Whatever. But the

campaign stuff is usually all right. I usually I want to play it. I just I don't know if I want to say fombastic, you know, it's ridiculous. Yeah, I just wish that like more of this demo that they showed that they showed had some element of that, Like there really wasn't that there was a train derailing at the end of it looked okay, space train or yeah exactly. Yeah, there was nothing where you were like, oh fucking like, there was no moment like that and anything they showed.

So without that, you're kind of left sitting there going like, okay, you're making another one of those great like I right, we did the war in America thing last time, so that can't be the big like, oh, the thing is, you know, now it's war everywhere. Now it's war in America, it's war in London, it's it's war in Germany, France, like like everybody's town exactly. You know, it's like they're taking

the sense of scale to a whole new level. But I think the weird thing is everybody else has had war on their soil except for us, Right, so the weird novel thing is, wow, war in America that's crazy war It sucks. It's terrible, not romantic at all. We had to hide in McDonald's. That sucked. But regardless of the you know, whatever the quality of the game is, you will be able to play it online for free. Right, Yeah, that's that's the key takeaway is nothing's really

changing the whole the whole thing. So far, nothing's really changing. Uh though, Specop's mode will have like a wave based survival mode in it, like a HORRS mode kind of thing. Zombies, No, yeah, that they've said yet. I want to know when that gap gets crossed, Like when it's just like, all right, this whole like Infinity word versus tree Arch weird thing. When Modern Warfare gets infective, Okay, we we can't

have it. So every other year the fire tech is really good and there are zombies, like, let's just merge this, let's stop being stupid. That's where this game ends, is gets bit and then now there's zombies, modern zombies, call of zombies. I don't even cause I don't even want to talk about this. So anything else do you want to talk about? Oh, let's see. I saw a brief demo of Metro Last Light,

sequel to Metro twenty three. Yeah, very brief to the point where you know, it's it's it's really hard to get a sense for, you know, like what they're changing in that game, other than they said that they want to try to and this is this is not their words, but they want to try and take some of the jack out of it. Like, you know, that game was kind of messed up in some ways that made

it a little endearing, but we're maybe a little crazy. So it seems like they're facing faced with a pretty impossible task of they say they want to keep it quirky and keep the things that people liked about the previous game while

making it more accessible. And someone asks specifically about the economy system with like you know, bullets and and and how all that works, and they kind of would not commit to that being the same, which I think will serve the purpose of making it more accessible because that that ship was pretty crazy. Is that based off in existing fiction or before Boks The economy even came directly

from the Boo books. But it's one of those things that you know, for a game where they want you to and this is how they said it. It said, like, you know, we kind of want we create these guns, we want you to shoot them. Like if people are just like saving all this good Ammo to trade for dirt Ammo because they can get a lot more of it. Like clearly, you know as a game, as a design for a game, it's maybe not the best way to do it. So they're they're if that is on the table for things that they're

willing to change. Then as far as i've itncerned, every single thing about that game is on the table. And the demo they showed, you know, had had a little bit of stealth, had a little bit of action, but you know, it kind of looked like you know, some some more Metro looked nice, tech look good, but it was it was strung together, you know, it didn't really get a good sense for for what

was really going on. It just kind of looked like Metro. They're making another Metro, And I think the changes they make are well will end up being risky because a lot of the stuff that people liked about the game were the things that made it kind of impenetrable for let's say the average college player. You know what else it was too Eastern European for me, it was yeah, absolutely but some people really like that. Yeah, I think sometimes

it's for those things you get if you can get over that hump. Is that that that there's an unforgivingness to uh two games developed in Eastern Europe. I find that if that, if you can get get past that, that there's usually some really awesome shit too. Yeah. I feel like there's a there's a depth there that sometimes but you just have to dig deep enough. You know, it's d you know, maybe even we're guilty of it sometimes.

I just think that, you know, a lot of players don't want depth in that way, like that style of like that's not the part they're looking to push back against them is the like this interface is kind of weird, necessarily bad. It's just so different and crazy that you know, it's gonna take me a long time to get up to speed on it. Like it's but I do appreciate something different than the first person shooter. That's just

not like, you know, yeah, well we'll add something here. The more they try to make it more like Call of Dud, I think the less interested I become. Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily doing that, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. But but yeah, I don't know. It's that'll be an interesting one to see kind of how it how

it comes out. And that's announced for consoles NPC. Yeah, yeah, gosh, there'll be some stuff later this week that I'll be writing about that'll be uh, you know, interesting new games for a new platform and that sort of stuff, you know. And I saw him Aspect three, but can't talk about that. What else. Yeah, we'll check back in with you. We'll have saw Batman. We'll have so much more to talk about

us closer closer. The hassles that I actually wasn't intending to spend this entire long weekend writing up all that stuff that I saw, but was sick the entire time instead. So now I'm like three days behind on getting that ship done. So it's just like getting sick on your Memorial Day weekend. Sex too, it does, but it I had that moment of just like, well, it's a good thing I'm sick now, because I want a time to be sick any other time, but right now. Yeah, I was

free. I was freaking out last week thinking I was getting sick, and then I just realized it was just a fever. Yeah, I feel like you should have just called up everybody. I'll go to your house and like cut it up next to you. Everybody gets sick, now get inoculated to it. Yeah, keep an eye on your lymph nodes. That's the telltale side. Yeah, well that's swallowing up. Then you got an issue. If I go into E three clean, then what it takes like twenty four

hours forty hours at least for an incubation. So probably Thursday or Friday when we're getting ready to leave. And that's fine. Our Thursday schedule not real busy, bro, I just gotta make it too. I've still got some stuff to tuck in there. But yeah, crabby parties have a plane ride on Sunday, so that's plane rides are always terrible for getting sick. If you pick it up on Sunday, I think you'll pretty much be clear of the three to Wednesday. Thursday, it really kicks. I'll be a good

case zeros the vector vector of that ship right into this office. I'm just gonna be drinking antier between now and Yeah, that was that any different from any other week? Good alcohol continent. I'm doing it for science. Bread shoemaker. Hello, I'm pretty good you fucking went to Blizzard, lad did, and I had a super long winded segue set up from Call of Duty to this and then you you had to go and mention Metro and now it's just you still want to use it. I don't even remember all of it.

No, it was something of the effect of speaking of activision related games with a clear split between the audience for campaign and multiplayer. Wow, that goes on that end. Games uh uh, Games that had events at which they showed two story related missions and refused to talk about multiplayer. Go on. I saw the new StarCraft expansion, So is that the that the way

to address is it an expansion or straight up calling it an expansion? Okay, So does this require the vis game in territories where there is a like boxed ownership model, right, like, because there are parts of Asia, not Korea. I guess I think Korea had a box but also there was some kind of like monthly OK. Yeah, think you could. I don't know, people that are listening to this podcast, I've got it you need to have that. Well, it's just I mean, you know, it's

it's a testament to how big Blizzard is in those territories. That the answer that question was not simply yes, right, people say do I need the first one? They don't just go yep. So did they say anything? And I'm gonna expect the big no about how they'll package this? Will they package this in with Wings of Liberty for like a full retail bundle to be a mini battle chest? I don't think they can do a battle chest till

they're done with Do you think they'll they'll sell these s two? I mean the real question to me is if this is expansion an expansion, how much does this cost? Forty bucks? Like, they haven't said anything, but I guarantee I would put money on this costing forty dollars? Would you put forty bucks on this costs? And forty bucks possibly more than that? Wait till they have not given you a number? No, okay, so this is Brad Brad. I mean, they've had three Wilds forty brad Bucks,

Brad. You don't want to know what the exchange rate is. It's terrible. They've had three World Warcraft expansions at forty bucks, right, Like that model is well established. They are using the term expansion all right, and how have they handled that? I haven't kept tracking, but how have they handled that in terms of packaging in the originals and they keep them all separate the right you could digitally buy the expansions, but you don't get a deal

or something. Yeah, I mean traditionally going back like ten twelve years, like the Blizzard battle Chest, you know, like you see it a best buy in the world. But uh, it's it's always like once they reached like the clear end of that development cycle, like there's nothing else coming out, then we're gonna put this in the games like ten years old. Yeah. Well it's actually it's more like, you know, once it's like a year past everything coming out, right, Oh, I's been the original game

by the time they get to the you know, final Diablo expansion. Yeah, it's like five years old. Yeah, the original is still coming. Diablo two expansion still working on it. They still patch that game frequently. Yeah. May was just playing it this weekend. Yeah, so they're I know exactly, I know exactly where my Diablo two disc is discs So do I actually did you? Did you bind it to your battlenet? Did? Yeah? That thing is awesome, So tell me more about what's the name

of that heart it's all heart of the Swarm. It's the Zerk Box. In keeping with the expansion like pricing and format. It is roughly two thirds of the length of the Tearing Game, which was twenty nine missions, and this is gonna be twenty ish. That's about was pretty long. It was a long game. It was certainly not short, but it will not be as long. How is the I mean, the missions I assume are the missions. They're gonna be missions pretty much, I mean with their own slant

on it. I mean obviously too I play. Yeah, definitely, just just like the Tearing Game, It's like each each mission has really specific, unique stuff going on, even if it's all just down to like weird map triggers that they scripted and stuff like that. What's what's the arcade game hidden at the Zerk Layer? Where can I go play? That's a good question. What would have to be Centipede, right, Yeah, I guess it

would have to be pretty much. So what's the how do you tell how you keep telling this story, which is, you know, after the first chapter, you know it's being told from the Terran perspective and is so focused on the Terran characters. But let's be honest, the Terran characters are kind

of the characters, but enough of those characters. I mean, by the end of the human campaign of StarCraft two, like the transition over to Zurich seems to make a whole lot of subsolutely especially they have they have definitely like that's big ten us story with the thing that happens. But I mean, my question is the Zerg being Zerg? How do you tell that story? Yeah, there are a lot of zer I mean, like a person who stands up stands up as well, let me tell you what's going on,

even Karragan for that. That's why they like, yeah, you are Karragan in this, Like she is absolutely the focal point. I mean, even going back to like brood Warl, what did you have? And like random cerebrates would talk, they had their lives. It was all terror and produce like named characters doing. But theoretically, by this point it wouldn't necessarily be

totally out of character. And I guess maybe we're talking pretty specifically about the events of StarCraft two at this point, but like a Jim Rainer could be around for this and it wouldn't it wouldn't be too weird, So it's weird. They showed they showed a teaser trailer that's got Rainer in it quite a bit Nova the Ghost it was supposed to be in StarCraft Ghost. She's in

this. And there was all sorts of even like Brad said, back and the brood War, there was all like zergon Zerg campaign stuff that you just were like, you know, these are the good Zerg, these are the bad Zerg. These are the bad bad zergs. I guess I just meant more of like, you know, who do you prop up to actually tell the story? What you're asking is what is the binding agent between the missions? Like and yes, that that's that's partially. What I'm asking is where's

the ship? What's what's the ship? And and yeah, like what's the dialogue? I guess I guess I don't know where this came from in the fiction, but I guess Zerg use these things called Leviathans to get between planets, which are basically just giant living space ships. So you'll be on one of them. I would be on a greasy ship. Is that it's like pulsating ship, and they'll be a jukebox there playing this kind of weird Hillbilly. So I mean yeah, and you know, rap, everyone knows that

that would be awesome. Like honestly, functionally, that stuff not really that different in this. I mean I can't wait the first game that first. I mean, there's there's video of it up on the site. I want to see, like the breeding chambers in the ship, it's all in there. I mean, just the way upgrades work. Yeah, so that's where the vampaign. That's where the differences are. I mean, first game, you were on the ship, you had a research lab, you had a

garage. You know, like it was pretty obvious how the R and D stuff went down, right, and this one like you still got the interface where like Harrigan's in the middle, Like here's like your kind of advisor thing coming out of the ceiling, like attached to a giant tentacle or whatever. Of course, uh here is like the the evolution Master over here is like this giant beetle looking thing. But they talk, they have names, like you click on them and dialogue happens. I'm Robbie totally. You want to

make the Zurglings tougher a give fifteen more hips. You want to be able to build them, not creep to me, all voiced by Nolan North. So, so actually, a bunch of the dialogue in this was like temp dialogue from Diablo recording sessions. Like they had been doing a bunch of Diablo dialogue and these guys had like some lines written. They're like, we're gonna get this demo together, could you just like lay these down for us, Like stay, awhile, listen. Well, I mean you know they're in

character. It's not like yeah, I mean yeah, but yeah. The upgrades are so every every unit evolves individually. Now it's not like so like like in the Terran when you had a linear upgrade path where like every every iteration like you had to pick one of two choices, but it was kind of random effects. What yeah, you get this new unit or you change this other arbitrary unit. But it was there was no more really connected. There was no logical progression Like in this, each unit evolves by itself,

like totally independent of what you do with all the other units. Are you talking like on a mission to mission basis, that's still like you out collecting stuff. Yeah, you're like doing doing secondary objectives and missions and stuff earns you. Like Mutagen is what they call it is just I mean, it's it's not just like I mean like specifically a unit or you're talking like a unit type. Uh, what do you mean. Yeah, it's not like

you're evolving. Hero units actually actually split, so you're evolving. They only showed the Zurgling, the Baneling, and the Roach, which are like the most basic Zerg units been in the game since the beginning. Like I didn't see any new units, which is bummer because people really want to know if the Lurker is going to be back in there and all this stuff. But that's getting pretty esoteric. But Karagan is a full on like Heroes style unit

that you're gonna use in basically every mission. She's super powerful. It's not like she can't die. Like, it's not like she dies and the missions over she just sort of like burrows into the ground and comes back. Can we just talk about like it's been almost a year. Yeah, yeah, she's basically human again right now. And so she's in her full on ghost outfit. You know, it's like out the blue like energy lines going up

and down it and stuff. She still got the tentacle hair right, So it's not really clear like she's mostly human, but she's still commanding the Zerg and everybody still hates her. It's hard best way over the board out, but it's weird, like all the Zerg advisors she's talking to like kind of don't recognize her. They're like, oh, your genetic sequence is different, like we don't. You don't smell the same anymore, that kind of thing.

So she's supposed to be so she covers. No, she's like trying to regain control of everything, like Dessert factions are all like sort of feral and fighting with each other. She still hates the Terns like they're they're still on the on the the Zerg like homeworld from the end of the first game. They're still there, just like slaughtering every Zerg they can find. Who

knows where Rainer's at, like he's he's in that teaser trailer. But but Demo was just this vertical slice of like two missions, like five missions into the game, So no indication of what's going on with like the power dynamics or anything. Did they mention any who did it with the mix now the kind of cross like hybrid cross Zerg thing, No mentioned of any of that. That's where I feel like this is all headed. Yeah, it seems

like it's totally faction. Yeah, it's totally going toward a like you know, all the all the existing factions half of uniting. Right, some comment if you're going to play as all these things seems like kind of a boiler plate sort of conclusion to the head toward. But so, how do you feel about a full game focused on Zerg ship. I'm way into it because

I don't play Zerg online. Uh, and this is hopefully will be a good excuse to like finally, I mean, I understand the mechanics, but a lot of it is just getting the high keys down and stuff like that. I don't want to learn ZERK. I want to burn zer and you h you said that they spoke nothing of multiplayer, but it seems like not

specific. Common assumption is that this is going to make some significant changes to the way the multiplayer is gonna handle the crazy stuff is I mean, so like brud War came out, Frozen Throne came out, like they have a long history in their rts is of putting in new units, which you know, balancing this game as it is already like a high wire act, you know, super preca areas to begin with, so putting even more units in

there makes it that much harder. But the crazy thing that they would kind of cop to was that they are not opposed to like taking stuff out of the game. They would remove they've said publicly they are units in there that they don't like that much anymore, Like they kind of change some values and they're not working like they used to, and it's just they can't think of a good role within the race that they belong to for them to be there,

so stuff could disappear. Do you think this would be crazy? That's like totally insane that there are units in a shipping game that's being played for hundreds of thousands of dollars that could change that dramatically. Do you believe that they'll have two separate launchers or games from like they're batt on that thing. Do you want to play bunch of Liberty? What will become like they've always I think they've always just had you launched an executable and then you kind of

pick which one you want to go into see. But you think that'll be they'll be matches that are wings of Liberty and matches that will be hard of the Swarm. Yeah, I think because they'll be there will be people that don't buy the Swarm. They don't have to be able to play. I'm just wondering if they would go back and patch out of Liberty multiplayer to match you know, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard. I think they they add content. That's a I would say a tough I would say no,

because they need to sell. They need that, like that's the biggest reason. Oh you're talking about people to buy a copy. Yeah, yeah, you know you won't get any of that stuff buying this expansion absolutely not interesting. What do you think, like side question, what do you think the tournament stuff will do? They always just go to latest build or they stick with Wings of Liberty, Especially with so much Blizzard money behind all the

big tournaments and stuff, they'll just move up there. I mean they have an esports department, they have vested interest and keeping the stuff up to date. Yeah, I bet everybody will. Do you think they'll they'll be giving those guys like early access to start kind of making to say it was weird. They had three days of press demos and Asia was the day before Hours and they were like actual pros that I'm well aware of and have like watched

a bunch of matches of that. We're at Blizzard when we dropped the names came for like Sin was there, Selah who's the coach of Slayers, was Fruit Dealer there? For Dealers? For Dealer is kind of old news, like he has been Man's been underperforming for months, Nobody fair Weather, Fruit Dealer, fans Man all those jerseys and sucking hop on board when everything's going great. The guy, the guy Nest that I interviewed when I was over there, he is still a baller. He is kicking ass on the pro

scene. But yeah, I mean, nothing super surprising about the stuff that I played. You know, if you played through the first one, it's pretty consistent with that stuff. But you know, probably not a huge surprise. You zer looking U I I didn't actually look at anything and stuff totally, you know, just just look star Craft looking buttons. But but I mean, yeah, like the environments that you're moving carrying around in between the

missions and stuff like it looks like you're inside a stomach or something. What were you fighting? Uh? It was Protest and one mission and Zurg and another. Okay, so I think you'll do they always make that stuff up really well, you think you'll find weird things that let you play as protests. Protests they said no plans for you mean, like the little protest Crystal, they said, no plans for it's just er. I mean with a reduced mission count. It kind of makes sense that they would focus on that.

But so that the Karagan thing, I was gonna mention, like she is, you know, she's a hero unit. She has like kind of disciplines in a way, there's like they only show two like that she's got a spec Ops discipline and then like a corruption one and the spec Ops is like a ghost thing, right, and that and obviously corruption like desert focused stuff. But it totally determines like what set of abilities she has in the mission, and you totally just pick before before you. Okay, So very

very different styles of play for her. She's super powerful obviously, but a lot of a lot of control and how you want her to play and what kind of stuff she can do. Okay, I put my saved game. I don't want know, I mean I made a decision. Yeah, that stuff, that stuff is in fact, you know what, In fact I think I saw them saying somewhere that they had like picked what the decisions were that are canon for that stuff, because some of some of that stuff will

that's too bad. It doesn't carry decisions in Yeah, I guess that might have been. I mean, it would have been better if they had just kind of written around those decisions necessarily. Yeah, well I don't I'm trying to remember if any of those decisions actually made that make a difference. There was one in particular where somebody would be dead if you picked a certain thing or not, but I don't know. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

They didn't seem to carry that much weight where not really it was all kind of minor characters and stuff. But also announced during this nine dollars a match to play StarCraft two. Shut up, wait, shut up, No, not really, I would be so broke. Everybody's one. But if you win, you get four of those dollars backs. It's not subscription based. It's just your credit card, your PayPal account every time you want to play a match. Nine dollars. It was. It was really a shame.

Yeah, so that's basically like it's us, that's us, and he's on the dollar. There. It's a shame they had the demo they had there was locked to normal difficulty. It's not It's not normal. It's pretty fucking easy, just like that. I don't know what you guys played the first one on, but I thought normal even in the first This one was just like, yeah, I doesn't definitely cruised through a lot of it. Normal, not challenging, not necessarily kept. I think you need higher sculty

on that thing to to make it worthwhile. Yeah for me anyway, But so yeah, I mean it was a lot of fun. The mission's really unique, and some of the upgrades on the different units are totally insane, Like Zurgling. You can you can combine enough upgrades on the Zurgling to the point that it trains instantly out of like as soon as you build it,

it pops out. Yea. When they die, they will burst into little broodlings, which are extra like attacking units, and that they can jump like the last ten feet to close a distance on their targets, like all those upgrades on that unit at the same time. Obviously, Yeah, yeah, this would totally like fuck the balance multiplayer, but like they change in really

dramatic ways. It's it's gonna be a lot of fun to play with that stuff, and out out said probably not this year out at Blizzard to their words, like the words of the director specifically, probably not this year. But I guess they're not rulling it out. I don't know. It's a really weird things they probably I don't know. I'm sure they have an internal target. But you know, I'm sure Activision would love it if they could ship the second part of this game this year. Would probably be out this

year. They'll be fun. Activision will get its money eventually one way or the other. That yeah, but that doesn't mean that Activision wouldn't still be saying it would be really awesome if you guys would get this out for Holiday eleven, we would really enjoy that. The next one out for next and then and then if you could have the next one out for Holiday twelve,

that would be also awesome. Fourth one, right, if the fourth part of the trilogy twenty thirteen really is imminent, maybe not a bad idea to playing that stuff out, Yeah, a little bit. I don't know. Such different, you know, obviously, I'll coming from Blifferent. I mean I'm coming from from Blizzard, and Andy I realized that there is kind of there's a fan base like like with a valve or something for just this this

developer. Like, I don't know, they're pretty different games. They're pretty different, but at the same time, you know, it's it's like huge ass PC game ards genre, Like, sure, you don't want to clutter put those two closer. Yeah, a lot of people will just buy every Blizzard game side unseen. But yeah, Diablo also has a lot more PvP focused stuff in it that I could see them pushing as some sort of esport as well. I have no awareness of that game, but I want to

play it. But I it being announced after StarCraft two, I just assumed, like, Okay, that's that's the fucking far flung future. Yeah, flying cars, and I think it's probably closer than you think. Yeah. Yeah. The notion that it would even be out this year is beta? Beta is launching? And was it September? I have no idea. I think they s Yeah, I think it's like late September for the beta. I bet it's out of health and manna, will there be potions? Dude,

there would be so many potions. What's the potion? Key one? P is it potion that was f that F was for potion. No, I think it just hop on the hoar, right, So yeah, one, one or five, whichever was whatever your fingers, depending on how you know your keyboard breaks. So I'm gonna get I haven't seen anything like you said. I'm in the dark too, but I'm gonna guess one would activate some kind of power in the new Diapbo game. Wasn't wasn't one always potion?

That's that's what I thought you could. I thought you could just drag. I don't think you can assign them, but I think you fault like one two, Yeah, like warrior scream is on one and two is no no she bash locking shock yehs on four. Berserkers rage is a good one. Yeut. That'll be in there for yeah, for someone, some kind of rage. Let's see Preserker's rage. Yeah yeah, power of the Elven. I think that'll be power of the elders for the wizard or something.

Yeah. I wish I knew more here with these. Of the wolf, yes whatever it is, of the wolf, and then of the eagle, and then of the snake, and then yeah, I was gonna say, and then of the bear, the bear barely it was always the best loot. Jesus isn't. I didn't know there was a hierarchy. No, it was like specific stats, especially I remember correctly. Yeah, when when you do it, when you do it by animal type like that, that's always Bear gets the top. Well no, no, no, it's just bear

has a specific Eagle is reception. This whale gives you health and sings like fish do Omega three? Fatty ass like the band? Yeah, h Bradley, anything else that you want to talk about other than Ellen Warren. Uh. I almost finished that Red Fashion what's it called fashion? We can't buy a matter of hours, we still can't really up at midnight tonight, just finished that game. I have almost finished. I was I'm not even reviewing that game. I have languidly. It's I I was sick over the weekend

and I was so bored that I played through Red Faction Armageddon. Did that? I don't even know if I can ask this. Stay tuned on the site. Yeah, I'm not writing the review, but I think that you should wait for the review on that game and maybe read some reviews before making

a purchasing decision. Actually, Red Faction Army. I actually played a ton of Red Faction this weekend because I almost also finished Gorilla, which I was kind of playing for research and also just because I always meant to play it. Red Faction Gorilla that's a cool So yeah, like it was weird I was playing. I was like literally going back and forth playing Gorilla and Armageddon, like I had pretty much concurrently. Uh, I had a lot of

fun playing Red Faction Gorilla. Yeah, it's a good game, and that's I guess all I can say. It's fun, fantastic. Let's take it to news news that Yeah, No, you don't have No, you don't have to That's where I say my world famous news catch. Everyone knows how it's your favorite part of the show. No, we don't do my favorite part of the show anymore. You don't do the favorite part of your show anymore. This is all your fault. Nope. Valet Parking nineteen eighty nine

is out this week. What Valet Parking nineteen eighty nine is out this week on DSi were really, Yes, that's the that's really the fucking game. Well of a thing. It's a product that they're selling like it was a game. Sure, well, it's it's an electronic interactive product theoretically. I don't you know, it's an electronic product. It's a digital digitally digitally distributed. You could trade money for points, and trade points for valet parking nineteen

eighty nine Spec Ops the line remember that. I feel like we were just talking about how we hadn't heard anything about Spec three, Like, why aren't they booking appointments? The line were last year. Yeah, it's like ocause that game is dead. It's got to be dead, right, No, no, it's not dead. It's not dead, but pushing it back till some time after March thirty one, twenty twelve. Okay, so so at this point it will have been enough time to make an entirely different game.

Yeah, since we saw it last time. There's no sand. Uh we took out of the sand and replaced it with buildings you can break apart with a hammer. They also said that, you know, BioShock Infinite will ship this year, this fiscal year. Really, I'm sorry, no, no, because uh no, no, it's definitely not this year. It is calendar year twelve. Oh I'm sorry, that's what I mean. Calendar year twelve. Any time next year, yeah, anytime next year, and that

colm will come out before March thirty one. Twenty twelve. So that is your early twelve game, this coms. I would love to know what x coms needs. Yeah, yeah, wait, so there were three games, So which one? BioShock is the calendar year? Bioshocks coming out calendar twelve. Okay it spec Ops got pushed pretty much. Ops is coming out after March thirty first twelve. X Com is before March thirty one, twenty twelve. Okay, So x Com could be out this holiday, or could be

out early next year, right, could be out tomorrow. I bet it's out third fourth week of March next year. That sounds about right, that's my guess. Yeah, whether whether it's done or not, what's the last Tuesday? Last Tuesday in March. It's really odd, that's what like. Spec Ops is a game that I thought looked pretty much like they were wrapping up when I last time I saw it was like that bit of it looked, yeah, you guys are pretty much on the road home here, let's

get going. X Com didn't even seem like it was a game. Yeah, and they're like, what how's this look? X Com looked like cool ideas, Yeah, but it was like they seem to even like I don't know. What do you think of this stuff? Like we can make a game out of this and to have that game be like this's coming to this home base. Seemed to research stuff. Uh fifties monster. Yeah there's black

Goo monsters some March twenty seven. March twenty seven, Yeah, that's the that's the date for x Com. No, No, that's that's that's our anticipated date, not anything. It's nothing officially announced. Many how many brad Bucks are you willing to lay down on this x Com? I'm gonna put all the marbles out for this one? Marbles? How many marbles? Coffee can full and nickels on this one? And do you think specops will ever come out? God? I don't know. M No change in development right,

still gager and they're not showing it. No appointments not at D three? Can we I mean, I guess can we talk about some of that stuff? Can we talk about I guess there's kind of anplicit embargo on some stuff of like if they just dripped, don't tell us like you're gonna come have an appointment at E three and you don't get to know what that appointment is for it. You just have to take it on faith that it will be something you care about and then you get there. There are probably four

or five meetings on our schedule for unannounced game right secret game. But we are totally we totally having an appointment to go see x Com. I mean, I'm sure, and we have some appointments on our schedule for unannounced games,

but we know what the games are. Yeah, well we can't talk about right, Yeah, Yeah, that's I mean, I think it's probably fine to mention because if that game is not coming out till next year, it's you know, they've said that publicly and it's probably safe to assume they're not ready to show it. Yep. So just crazy because I totally played that game. Yeah, would you want to be talking about crazy? Yeah?

Because they had voice working and everything. Yeah, like if they have to to go re record stuff at all, man, I mean, you know the waiting the Nolan North waiting list, it's like six months a long. No, maybe that's what happened. They've had one line they needed to get him to do. Yeah, we're not gonna make our windows scrab it. It's probably you know, they lost their publisher, side producer and the whole thing went no, housh. No, that can't look interesting. It'd

be the same if it never sees the light of day. Uh. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take two, said that yep, yep, the one. The one only basically popped in to say, yeah, we're still making Max Pain three. Also, we're still making that game agent that Sony put up during their E three press conference in two thousand nine. Good to know. I would have pegged that game for dead Yeah. Really, but you know what, I would have done the exact same thing to El Noir.

Going back. I went back. I look at our forums for Ellen Noir, and there are posts going back to the inception of the entire website, going is this game still coming right? Like? What's happening? What I

mean? Rockstar just has a very specific and very weird like kind of promotional cycle of there is that initial announcement which I feel like they get cajoled into by whoever they're making a deal with, like, all right, we will help fund your thing if you make it exclusive for our platform for X amount of time or whatever. We have to announce that because we need to get people excited right now. Yeah, we need to talk about it now. I don't care if you can only give us a logo, a right or

a piece of like painted art. Yeah, we need something, and I wonder if we'll see more Agent at the sony keynote. Which one's Agent. It's the one with the logo. Yeah, okay, got a gun in the logo. There's like a silhouette of a gun inside you are the Agents. It's the new rock Star PlayStation three exclusives Agents Agents. They lost exclusive Agent Agent all right, that's not the one that definitely got canceled. That's not the agency. Okay, that is dead. That's dead, which I

can understand. With that dying, you would assume that the game called Agent would own kind I have no idea. Maybe that was just maybe rock Star skunk Works. We can't have this fucking game called the Agency come out when we're working on Agent. So half of our development because would I play a

game about an agent when I could play as a whole agency. So half of our development cost for this game is gonna be getting getting skullduggers, motherfuckers into the Agency organization and ruining that game's development until they shut it down. Is the only one left? Yeah, bring down from the inside that's like an agency thing. That's agent. That's the game. They were also secretly

behind me. They're also secretly behind crack Down too, being kind of crappy, says agents, so much like we can't have that if they make crack and three, this whole deals off were as crappy as as Crackdown two. Was I reading Agent. That's all I can think of as agent. Oh, it's been weird me out playing Gorilla because the leader of the resistance and Gorillas is the agent if from Crackdown. Yeah, I can't not hear it. I played some other game. I don't remember what it was. I

played some other game with that dude. He's got a real awesome authoritative radio guy voice. Infamous does he do any viomember I remember hearing somewhere else too. Anyway, Anyway, Hotheads doing some stuff. They've got the Hitchhiker's Guy to the Galaxy license, which if you look at the title to that page, it's called the New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, like the page title, which makes me wonder if they're making some kind of like continuation, antinuation

or some new things on like the Hothead site. No, like the Yeah, their official site for it, that's got the little oh the flash animation crap on it. Like the page title for that, I'm pretty sure it says the New Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which the end of those books was about a new addition of Hikers'd be way more into that than I'm trying to like retail and like mind the old series for jokes and stuff like that,

Like that would be the kind of the word. But can they, I mean, can anybody come along and recreate well, like the last I think the last you have a better chance at that. The last half of the Last Hitchhiker's Book is not even dug at Douglas Adams written like that. I don't I don't even I thought it would. I thought the whole thing wasn't even him. The sixth book. I thought like the core idea was his, But maybe he didn't actually write that's right, any of it,

or something that's right. And that was only because the one before that ended so bliquely. Uh, but I did. Yeah, they definitely have a never siook better shot at just doing something newer than trying to like recreate you know, it's every other than the infocom text adventure. Right, every single thing that's related to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that is not the book the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

is garbage. Oh that's not true at all. You're saying every other book in the series. I'm not even not even the books. But like the BBC uh miniseries is hard to watch, but so is a lot of stuff from that era of BBC sci fi. The modern the modern movie that they made with most Death is hard to watch. The radio play is great, well, the radio play predates the books the Radio Players where it actually started

that that that was originally a radio play. Yeah, well I've got the like the complete thing, and like the foreword on that talks about the genesis of the whole thing. Yeah, so that stuffs great. Sure, I'm just saying, like people trying to mind the Douglas Adams stuff just they can't. I've never seen anyone successfully do it, like truly, like like you see like little shadows of like, oh, here's the things that he said that we're funny, and we've managed to get those on the screen or on

the page or in the game somehow, But it's never as good. It's always just like I thought, even the text adventure really like it got away from the books in some weird ways. Yeah, like and and now I mix the two up in my mind a lot, because you know the puzzles in the game. I'm just like, Okay, put the satchel over the grate and then put the buttons like the town's gonna go here. I really do think that they should if it's a smart move to do. It's just

a new one, new characters, just new writers. Don't try and like Arthur Dad's daughter, like that's that's how they kind of wrap up some extent as long as it's in that direction, Yeah, I guess it. I just I don't have I don't know who you who? You have? Righte? That material that does I can do that style. Yeah, I can do that southing? Can do you know? The original material Justice Like,

it's that stuff is so good, so well written. It's it's like, go back and read those first few Hitchhiker's books even still it's nuts how good they are. Can I do that now? Because I never read it? Absolutely fucking blew your mind. No, no, no, not at all. Pretty good as far as like he's doing a better job of selling it than New York. Maybe maybe it just they got me at the right age. Well, when I re read them fairly recently and they're still pretty funny,

it's because we're reading it for the second time. Yeah, but I think I don't know, they're goofy as hell. They're goofy, But there's the asides, the just the absurdity of it. They're absurd as hell as well, so good and and and descriptions of like the descriptions of the absurd things go to such absurd detail in that very kind of dry red way.

It's uh, I think, yeah, I think when I read him the first time, as I just never read anything like it, and it was like some whacked out like this my school school is making me read all this trash, welly can we're not reading this? And then going back it's entertaining and propulsive and bizarre, and anyone you told you were reading that looked at you like you were not to be talked too. And then all those kids

are just carrying around towels. I don't want to be that kid. Oh, you know what, Brad, I will lend you my thick ass Hitchhiker's guide Book. Do you have like the complete Yeah, wow, I'll take you. Will you will chew through the first book because it's really short though, Yeah, but you also just it's a it's an easy it's a page turner. It's a single reader. You sit down and you will just burn through it. All right. I can't remember the names of them. There's

restaurant, there's so long things for all the fish? Yeah, when does it? When's the what's the bad one? The sixth one? I thought the fourth one was where it kind of I think the third is when I stopped. I feel like if I read all this stuff, I'm instantly gonna get about thirty thousand jokes from the last like ten or fifteen other things.

That is, I mean, you're not not being familiar with Hitchhiker's Guy is tantamount to never seeing my python, like Hitchhiker's joke with the well comment before, so you're already make good jokes about it. I mean even hearing you guys talk about like just the titles of the books and stuff like, it's it's also like blended into sort of the cultural fabric of the last Like how

old are these books? Twenty years thirty, he's like thirty years. There's a lot of stuff like even reference, yeah, even not having read them, unfamiliar with a lot of the stuff, but like, you know, forty two and a lot of stuff. But he does a great job and there's no way you can even explain what goes on, but he does a great job of making the spectacular mundane, Like every rights, the whole of the series is about like they're these fantastical places, but it's all still run

by the same shit. You know, even if they're aliens, they're still they still have the bad characteristics that you expect from people. It's a and there's just there's just like just at this drying this way of just rolling with it. Everybody just rolls with everything. There's there's very little conflict because everybody's okay, I guess that's what happens, okay, and then the world blew ups. Most things end with indifference, yeah, shrugging up shoulders, like

here we are now. I guess I thought that movie was all right. I mean it's it's it by necessity. It had to be a very different thing. I guess just the departures that they that they made. It's hard to do two heads. They hated the way they didn't have, but like I thought, the ship looked good, like there was a lot of fantastic looking stuff there. I guess for me, it was just like the stuff that they added. I'm like, why did you add this? Like why

did you why? Why was it? Were certain parts cut? And then why did you add this? They needed some because because I mean that book and like the early parts of that series, like nothing really happens. There's no good natural stopping point for a movie. But I mean the best parts of that movie are when they go into the The Hitchhiker's Guide itself, like

that's yeah, that's that's really when that movie shines the most. They do they do that stuff well, yeah, like narrator, when they do when they do the or like when they do the whale scene, like like that's you know, one of the better parts of that movie. And all those books they cover a lot of ground like in that movie, they yeah that that's that's a really shitty task to be saddled with. Oh yeah, I'm

not saying it's I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. But but and I think that's to me that like that speaks to why I'm I'm hesitant about this hothead deal is because that stuff is so hard to adapt to anything

you don't wants guide. I don't mind, you know what what the thing, the thing that pissed me off in that movie was the scene on the planet where there are those the underground like whatever, the like the spatulate paddle like creatures that would come up from the sand and whack them right like just the slapsixth scene out of nowhere. I like, I'm just like, why is this, Why is this happening? Why is this here? Like?

How is this worthwhile? Connective tissue for whatever the two scenes were that it was between like it to me, it kind of spoke to what was wrong with that. It was priorities, for sure, But it's yeah, and and you know that's that's the danger, and that's the risk when you try and tack something that is so beloved like that is expectations are freaking high.

Yeah, And and I guess it's just you know, between the later books, at least the one thing, like I said, I didn't read the sixth one, but you know it's like the later books being kind of bad or you know, I definitely didn't like them very much outside of the original three. Uh, you know, like I don't have I really like it, but there's not a reverence or super attachment to it, like I'm willing to go along with people that want to try to do something new with that

stuff. So I think that, you know, I was more accepting of the movie. Yeah, it was. I guess the thing for me is that I'm less interested in that universe and more interested in like Douglas Adams writing. Yeah, like it's it's not like, oh, I love Zafod People of Rock, He's my favorite in you know, Marvin the Paranoid Android is so great. It's like, no, the way Douglas Adams wrote those characters or wrote about those characters on my head is exploding just weearing phrases like paranoid

Android come out. He's a great character that should have just read all this stuff, all everything else in the world would have made sense. I can't wait till like E three comes in. Brad's mind is just completely blows. Not even going to the show. I'm just gonna sit in the house, layers just melting away in all those books. It's like he can now see through the universe now, just kind of like, oh my god, it all clicked in his mind. It's my god, it's full of stars.

Wait from no, that is not that is that's a two thousand and one. I'm exhausted already. Sorry about that. Hot here thinking about this stuff. To give you just some some context though. Along the same time that they announced that Hothead announced that they're making a Hitchhiker's Guy game, they also announced that they're making another Death Say It. So that is maybe part of where my concerns about this game come from. Hmm, yeah, that that

in parallel with Hitchhiker's Guide comes the Hothead name comes. Yeah. Well you know there's already one death Spank too many. Yeah, yeah, they didn't need another one. This one's not even called death Spank, right, and it's it's called the Bacon Ing. It's really Bacon's really funny. Bacon goes with everything. Guys. Imagine if these guys hilarious got a hold of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, well, Wron Gilbert still attached to it.

Ron Gilbert has been attached to Hothead stuff. Yeah he's yeah, he's not. He's not in there, so uh well sure like that Peny Arcade game. I like both of those pay Arcade chapters very much. Fucking still, I'm still bitter about not finishing that series. Get those guys and talk to Steve Reski is like one of the hot head guys, right, he's the guy that did the Infocom game, right, is he? I don't know

what the hothead makeup is like things. I think that's I think that's the thing that makes you kind of go like, oh, my vibe was that the Penny Arcade guys were pretty much happy to take a break from all that stuff. Yeah, that's like, you know what we're done. Expose are real cool. I just wish they would have finished. I just somewhere there's a script pages of the story, like continuing story. Really did like a comic or maybe even a motion comic that kept that stuff going. Yeah,

comic seems all right. I like the game. I also like Uncharted do Yeah, yes, that's pretty good. I also like that David O. Russell is no longer attached to make the Uncharted movie. I'm not familiar with his work. Yes, you are Three Kings, Okay, I like Three Kings. It's a good movie. Yeah, what else has he done? Didn't he do? Hi? I heard he did. I heeart hockey piece. He's fairly director. I like him. I don't like what he was

saying about what he was going to make Uncharted into. The whole thing was like it's a family story. Yeah, yeah, and family of treasure hunters or something like a family of treasure hunters Mark Wahlberg and Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci, Like, oh my god, that's not no. That sounds like, well, you know what, that would probably be an okay movie, act like that movie whatever that movie that was that was right around,

and his brain probably would have been fine. Uncharted. I mean it sounds like they're jettisoning, jettisoning like even every like character arch type it was. Mark Wahlberg is no longer attached to this either. Yeah, like that's great confirmed, So yes, yeah, well, I mean Mark Wahlberg only came in because of David David O Russell because and the same with with de Niro

is that they're all buddies. So that like this whole thing was just a project with David or Russell pulling all the people that he likes to make this movie. But he's out, so now everyone else is out. Cool, sobody getting Old North into a gym, get some abs on that guy and get him into this movie or whatever. Those bio digital jazz his face, make it, make it look like Drake or Nathan Phillion. I don't even

care Nathan Phillian. Have him do it as a flashback. I don't you know, I don't even care if it's David Phillian, Like I like him, He's whatever. He's cheesy, but kind of deliberately so is fucking watch it. I mean, I would just see Nathan Phillion because he would just be playing himself. That's fine, He'll be playing every character he's ever played, which is the point. I just I just want not Mark Wahberg. I'm absolutely there. If there are time, there is a time for Mark

Wahlberg. That time is now what the picture isn't dude, you can't. You can't have the same guy playing Max Payne and Nathan Drake. Like I think this just opens up, you know, the possibilities for the big hit too, which I'm really looking forward to get Pokey wood Bob on the phone. Come on, do you think this movie's next China Chow? Yeah,

Devinoke No, no, no, next to Devin Aoki. At this point, it would have to be you should you should go online and look for some of the apocryphal tales of David oh Russell's douchebaggery on set, because it is unbelievable. I think I did us some of that Three Kings George Clooney hit him in the face. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. It was maybe George. It's it's weird because because that stuff happens, and then after the fact, everyone pretty much says like he's a he's a genius.

I will never work with him again. Yeah, I mean the movies are uniformly pretty good. Yeah, he's not a bad filmmaker. He just sounds like a bad people person. Suffer ye whole Hogan's have made event for Xbox Connect Jeff, I'm thrown over to you in the wrestling corner. That's right, brother, because Connect Majestico your friends in mine. The makers of SpongeBob SquarePants video cards for game Blay Advance and advent Rising those cards still paying the

bills right there. Connect this holiday season, dude, So, d well, you know something, Majestico Brothers. Do you think there will be a Yappa pie when on the dotted line to sign the contract for this brother? I don't know. Yes, the yep Pie and strap match will be strongly featured, so you'll have to get your body into the proper position for the strap Asian. Dude, they said so like painfully little about what this game even is. Well, well they've said enough in saying that Panic Button,

makers of Attack of the Movies three D is developing this. Yeah, there you go, so only bangers. That sounds like a pretty good combination. So that's yeah. So it's a rail shooter for Connect. I wish you gotta spin your hand around and hold it up to your ears. Alien Hulk Hogan not w w E, not even t NA no, which is where he is now. Hulk Hogan is not even Suburban Commander Zeus will not be

in this game. That don't make these claims before you know all the facts, because that that's something that if they said and Zeus is, yeah, he is, then they could get they could get Tiny Lister. At this point, trying to decide how I feel about that. I mean, yeah, what is this game? Who does that's the question? Who does he wrestle? Maybe doesn't wrestlers, you know, I know it doesn't say it's a wrestling game. It kind of doesn't. Yeah, I mean, it's

just Hulk Hogan like shooting guys. Is he is he act wrestling in TNA or he's like an on camera like like like leader, like he's he's the he's the man. He's oppressing wrestlers. Uh So he just comes out and takes up way too much airtime saying, well, you know something, brother, you're not gonna get this match because I run the things around here. Dude. He's kind of a too physically messed up to wrestle at this point.

Yeah, it doesn't he have like like just incredible back problems. Sounds like, yeah, I bet if he wanted to get like one more match, and you know, I made a whole lot of sense he could. You know, he could do some stuff, but you know, he was never like the most nimble, amazing wrestler in the world. Anyways. He's also like in real heart up financial situation. Right. I guess his ex wife's just like totally clean him out. Does that like that happened and all

the stuff with Oh that's right. I mean Rick Flair is still like in TNA, they don't even call it TENNA anymore. They change their name. It's just Impact Wrestling because they're like so reactionary. They caught wind of some internal memo apparently, or that Vince McMahon didn't want people to use wrestling and conject function with the products because they're trying to seem like mainstream entertainment, so

let's just call it entertainment. And they said, well, so now they're the TNA slogan is down wrestling matters, like, so it's reactionary to a memo that me and like nine other people get the reference of and care about, but everyone else is like, you're stupid, this is stupid. What is this thing? What am I watching? Now? So? I actually started watching TNA a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to prove to myself that I can only watch the worst television possible. So Farm Report, Farm

Report, Big Joe Polka Show. Yeah, heehaw, heehaw. Well he was good. Yeah, it was classic. Yeah, And and now like the worst wrestling imaginable. It's just like, let me, let me pay for as much shit as I have talked about how bad like the WWW is, Like man they put on are there is production quality, like things make at least some things make wrestling sense, you know, at least wrestling logic

is a tenuous logic already. Yeah, whereas the things going on, it's just like is it just is it just everyone walking out and getting hit by unmarked Lincoln Town cars. That would be way better. T would be way better than anything going on. Every match, whoever the winner is watch and then run down who drove that car? Maybe we'll find out next week. And then they never mentioned it. It's it. They just always come back.

That's that's the Kenny Dying of wrestling. Yeah, Whereas like in TNA, they're calling back to like bad w c W shit where they have the guy who used to be mister Kennedy in the WWE, who used to be kind of good. Yeah, like he's coming out dressed up like old Sting to get in new like current Sting's head and like yeah yeah, okay, like ultimate Worrier face paint looking stingy. You know bleach, Oh does you even like have the bleached high It's kind of funny, but it's just like

done so shodily. It's just like, what the fuck is even going on? And it's like this, I don't yeah, I don't know women entrances, I don't know. It's like this, she's she's been taken over by the evil, evil other woman. That's why she's got dark circles under her eyes now, and she snapped and wrestled this other girl. It's just like dumb. I'm saying, the wrestling is dumber than ever. It's twenty eleven,

y'all. Oh, it's it is astounding to me that it still exists there, that they're still able to build some kind of business off of these dumb ideas. Never go broke play into the cheap seats, I guess, I guess, and I'm not. I'm certainly not above it for those, but those spare moments, Jesus, It just they never fail to make me

feel like the biggest idiot possible. Whenever I just watched that. And if there's ever any moment where you might you we were you even accidentally get invested in something related to wrestling, it's going to fucking go as wrong as it possibly going. You'll be like, why did I Why did I care about this? God, I'm an idiot. Why did I think this was gonna end up awesome? Yeah, it's not awesome. This is your kids. It's not kids kids wrestling. Wrestling is not awesome. Don't let it.

Don't let them tell you otherwise. I was looking at screenshots of w W E twelve this morning and going like, it looks like, no, actually, all right, in some smart changes, this is the year. This is the year. Like wait, no, fucking god, damn it. Shame on you, Jeff. Moving on to more E three business, Uh, we got you know, we We've had announcements from Valve saying we are not going to E three and Bungee saying we are not showing anything at E

three. Add Hideo Kajima to the lists. Dude says, you know what, I'm not going to E three. That's crazy because E three is like Christmas for that guy. Also, like, you know, metal gear, solid stuff for me. Yeah, I don't expect to see too much of

that, so I don't expect. He was on Twitter talking about how something that he had been working on isn't dead or something like that, yeah, or some undusion to a project not happening or or something like that, or you know, it just could just be like he was shopping for a new

leather jacket and that fell through. I mean, who knows. But so this, I mean, don't count out metal gear solid stuff during the Konami press conference, which is happening before E three, right, But it sounds like Kajima himself will not be But it sounds like that they have recorded some message from Kojima ahead of time. Yeah, with eight fours Mark McDonald, it does sound like that. I don't know what the contents of that are,

but it's kind of weird. I can't remember any year past where people have felt compelled to announce that we are not going, we will not be here. How many brad Bucks do we want to lay down on the notion that metal here, Solid Rising is never going to come out? Oh, I mean, I could see that rapidly turning into a StarCraft Ghost kind of situation. They showed it though. They made such a big deal people that people had played StarCraft Ghost. They have to be brought to our office.

But this is a Japanese company. I think they have to finish what they started. I think, you know, I think they would lose too much face by canceling this game. They announce it for the move was that was that was the craziest rumor that I have seen about. Do you guys see this on Twitter over the weekend that Platinum Games is supposedly taking over development of that game? Huh that's one way too, I guess, yeah, total here say, I just saw some people branded people who might know yeah,

yeah, saying that they had heard such things. That'd be one way to finish it, I guess. But it's it's just weird that that game. I mean, it's it's been at E three and kind of like nowhere else, right, they didn't really Yeah, they showed it last year at the Microsoft conference. Yeah, and then they show it the year before there. They just announced it the year before. They announced the year before that, like the cutting of Watermelons, which was a game. Was there a site

with like lightning and yeah, big teaser and all that stuff. But nothing they've showed has necessarily looked like a game. And you know, it's like the thing last year basics, right, you haven't really been hearing tons of people talking about, Oh I hear Rising is gonna be this and Rising is gonna be that, Like it's I just feel like the further we get away from for the less relevant that game Metal Gear slid for the less relevant the

whole franchise. Well, even that character becomes like he was like Ninja riding, right, It's like all cyber Ninja right now, It's like who why was he? I can't even remember what happened? You got crushed by a rocker or now? I mean, you know, the most likely Metal Year thing we're going to hear is related to the three DS games. Yeah, they're showing that. Yeah, that's like that's on a three DS release list, right, but that's just three with with some extra stuff exactly. That's

that's an existing game. Basically, they're just setting the stage for Acid three D. I know, you know, I enjoyed Miliar Solid for as much as the next guy, But I yeah, I wonder about just overall relevance.

Yeah, totally with you. I'd be curious to I mean, I don't I don't really know what the sales were for that game, but I wonder like if they look back on that project and how much it costs to develop and what they got out of it, like like how that project is viewed, if it is viewed as a a total success or is it not? Fine questions? I like to know that as well. So I really like that that game. I would be into playing another game that has that

sense of scope and that sense of crazy to it. Could you do without Solid Snake ye completely just nowhere you're seeing all right? Or you know if it maybe he's the voice over the codec or something ordering riding around or something like that, you know, it's I don't think you have to play a Snake and I think that, or or you know, you reboot Snake because he's a clone, and you can do that. He's a clone. You can do that. You could have young Snake running around without that many leaps

of logic, considering how many leaps of logic that game takes. You can do the first twenty minutes. But should you You know what you should do is Big Boss's dad go back even for a boss that's right, but you're a clone of him, so you don't know any of your young Big Boss's dad in the dear future, the far flung future, which one is that the woman star no Big bosses who Solid Snake is cloned from okay, big Boss. Big Boss is the star of mil your solid three. Right.

What's the woman's name? Just Boss, She's the boss. Okay, yeah, some really great naming conventions in there. And where's Bruce Springsteen fit in? He is also the Boss. Okay, that's in a different time, different confer he is the Boss North American chapter. Yeah. Yeah, So when when he goes out of the but he's going on a motorcycle. When he goes out of the country, he has to say the Boss US. But he's in the US, he can just say the Boss and then hugo

Boss. Final item PlayStation Vita Vita via Vita. I wasn't really paying too much atention to this over the weekend, but basically the name for what we were calling the MGP Sony's new handheld. Uh, there's a decent amount of evidence and circumstantial evidence that they are going to be calling it the PlayStation Vita Vida v v v I t A as something of that effect. What now that'd be vita d Oh, you're right, I guess Vita with a T

like like vitamins, like vitamins, like life in Latin. So they're just trying to say this is a healthy product. This should invest in this. They're trying to say from the people that brought you the bloggy all right, the PlayStation Vita for the people that brought you lots of other badly named things. So I guess Patrick did from some research into this, and seems like the Vita name was used early on as a code name, so there is

some history there with it. And if you go to like their dev site, but put vita dot on it, it goes somewhere, right like, so they have mapped that domain to go somewhere, which all that really says is yes, they have used that name at some point. Doesn't necessarily say

that this is the final name. But I'm gonna put some brad Bucks down that that's the final name Vita. I you know, I'm I'm now more curious for the Sony press conference at E three to see because there has to be some sort of spiel associated with why they're calling it the Vita And it's definitely not I feel like I feel like when they I'm gonna say it's like vitality. No, it's like vita, like the same root word but not pronounced like vitamin M Vita, which sounds, you know, sleek, light

airy. It sounds like a Italian sports car or a Samsung phone. Mhm, I like Vito, like a big fat Italian guys. Yeah, okay, yeah, the PlayStation Vito. That's actually the bigger version of it. The stains on his wife beater, that's right. The back is all just

kind of oily. That's when they do the PlayStation. The when they do the Vita go called the Veto for short, uh, carried around memory sticks forget about it, just download it with the Veto, they'll definitely be a lot I feel like I hear you Ryan, They'll be like slideshows of people running. Oh yeah, I'm they've already They've already had that though. For the m g P roll out there was like video of people running and sitting

on busses. And I'm already kind of light already. I'm already picturing like like baby chicks hashing from eggs and time lapse photography of flowers blooming. I'm thinking of like like Central Park runners maybe see but all I could think of is I love Lucy and vitaminta vegamin. That's that's that's that's that's the first reference that I think of when you tell me the name of this thing, that's it then, But you know, who fucking cares what it's actually called?

Yeah, yeah, what it names brands. I feel like this is the one that finally broke me on giving a fuck about what platforms are called, because you know, you feel that I just talk like the time we spent I got past that over the years of of of bitching about names, and I sat down and thought like, well, obviously they can't just call

it PSP two. Yeah, And there's no good name for anything ever, Like all the all the names are bad if you sit there, and if you sit down and look at them, like what PlayStation was kind of the last good one. Yeah, even that the first time you heard it just like sounds a little bit like a Fisher Price children's toy. It's pretty good. Any PlayStation is pretty good. It's all right. PlayStation became great because of what it symbolizes, you know, but I mean Xbox also, you

know, it's a it's a great brand name now. And that's also another case of a code name becoming a real name. The Commodore best name for a platform, Commodore, Nintendo, you know, it's the Commodore sixty four was the greatest game platform show some goddamn respect. I'm saying that is a

great one. Commodore one twenty eight also pretty good because it had sixty four modes, right, the Commodore. Yeah, I just I feel I don't, I don't know, I don't know what on me got soft, But I can't I cannot rile up any sort of rage about via this name.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I'm kind of with you, like it's I imagine that just you know, and and it's why I bring up like the Samsung stuff, So I just imagine them trying to position this alongside smartphones and alongside other handheld devices, which all have really dumb ass names. Well they have, they all have super disposable names. Yeah, because you're not you know, Samsung focused, HTC, Thunderbolt, like those those are

like fucking they might as well be chip setting names. They all live on, they go away for years, they all live on six month products cycles. They're always about to be replaced, and you're really I mean, that's just the container for what you really care about, which is like, oh, you have an Android phone, Like that's right. The thing around. It isn't as relevant as like, okay, you have the latest version of it. And maybe it's not a perfect analogy because I mean, hopefully this

platform will last longer than the average smartphone. But mhm, I'm just thumbs because it doesn't acronym into anything like what it sounds like. It sounds like preev. It sounds like a sexually transmitted disease, a really bad case of PSC PlayStation VD. Yeah, so you think it would be a PlayStation Vita, not a Sony Vita will be PlayStation Vita. The mock ups which created

could be photoshops straight up said like PS Vita Vita. Oh I like PS Vita, I like when the last I like that better than psv We'll all be used to it in a week after they announced it and we'll never think about it again. Yeah, you know, after saying enough times and then it's the wei yeah yeah wi. Yeah. The ultimate example is yeah, it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It's Dreamcast was fucking phenomenally

dumb. That was the one that was the one where it was like, all right, I'm gonna drive myself crazy or I'm gonna stop carrying and I went with stop caring myself crazy and that dumb swirl Dreamcast DreamCatcher controller smells like and that's one. Honestly, in retrospect, I've come to really love the name Dreamcast. Like at the time, I was like, this is the saying of you hidiots, this is the dumbest, hokiest shit. But after the time, Dreamcast is kind of cool. I like that. And we

burned through all the good names early Commodore sixty four. I wish you were just kind of out of names for everything. And you're right, like, you can't in television, intelligent television, You're fucking perfect. You can't put the PlayStation name on it in some capacity, right, it has to be PlayStation blank. You know what bugs me is, Yeah, like the pervasiveness

of certain but like the branding hierarchy that goes on now. Yeah, it's like, well, video Card has been really bad about it, Like they've made about fifty G Force models in the last ten years. Well it's it's like G Force is meaningless to me now because I like, I'm like, I've got a g X five forty. Oh that's ship. You need to

have the but FX six twenty good one the current numbering. If you're at least in the current like basic recent generation, then it's like okay, seven series, nine series, like like it's it's almost like cars, but but it's they go weird stuff where it's like, well this is the hundreds. Now we're in the thousands, but the thousands are not as good as the hundreds. Like there's but like they made that change a while ago, and

then now it's they're done. Yeah, yeah, they switched that. That was one thing that happened, and when like if you just drill that into your head that that thing happened, and everything since they made that change makes a lot more se To be fair, I just don't care about it's either it's it's just it's it's not as convoluted as its initially seems. Like I now that I've gotten through two video cards in the current numbering scheme, like

I'd feel a lot more comfortable with without all works. Nintendo's pretty good about letting go of their old brands, but yeah, you get like endless iterations of PlayStation products, Like it's like brands and then sub brands. Well, it's because Nintendo is the top company. It's it's it's because it's because there's a PlayStation division of Sony that you know. I mean, those people identify

themselves as I work for play Stoffle, which is a crazy thing. I was thinking, like, like the DS, you know, they've readily dropped the game Boy name and came up with this whole name, which is crazy because the game Boy name was still extremely strong at that point, but probably not as strong as the Nintendo name. You know, It's like, you didn't necessarily confuse people by dropping the game Boy name as long as it's said Nintendo somewhere. You're right, You're right, you can still have that.

I'm just thinking more generally of you know, at that point when they were introducing the DS, like you're talking post GameCube, which was not great for them pre we so, you know, game Boy was the strongest brand aside from you know, hierarchically Nintendo. Uh, you know, to get to the DS and go yeah, no more, yeah, you know, game Boy micro and we'll put some lip service to we're gonna keep using the game

Boy name. I think at some point you just get to a point where you have released so many products that say game Boy on them that it's hard to tell people why this one is more expensive than the other one. Yeah, you know, because they didn't roll out a numbering scheme with it, game Boy to game Boy Advance, you know, discount of game Boy color and the stuff, then to switch to the dscam much more dramatic, right of, like, no, this is no longer a game Boy, this

is something else. Yeah, which they could have called it the game boy Ds or the game Boy Duel, or you know, there's all kinds of afforable roads they could have gone down to assume. That's what Sony's doing, right, It's trying to distance itself a bit from the PSP and this whole new product. That's why they can't call it the PSP. They already that was a good name. That was a fun my name for afect name for

what that product was. But outside of Japan, there are a lot of people that are gonna shrug if you say, hey, we got a new piz damaged at this point. But I don't know if those people are gonna be then enticed by the PlayStation Vita. It sounds sexy, I don't think it does. I don't think it does at all. Sounds like a bad car. It does it sounds like a released in Europe by four car cars have pretty bad names, these things vauxell Nova, so it's like a Ford

Salsa. Who is it that's making the leafiss on the leaf? I think that's actually what's an all electric car. I know it is, but you could just I feel like though you could just you could smell the product testing and focus group stuff coming off of that stuff. If it's with like some

of the Japanese only car names that don't make it over here. I guess it's just like I just think, like Vita water and stuff like that, like that prefix just maybe seems done already, which is why I don't think you're ever going to anyone call it We're in Vita, except except for at the target when I try and buy one and say give me that PlayStation Vita. Yeah, and the ladies like, okay, I know what you're talking about, the Vita. What the fuck is that? Like, no one

mispronounces we anymore? Like there was there was some confusion about that upfront? Was it why there was strong messaging from them like the day of the announce Yeah, this is how you how you pronounce it? Yeah, this is do not call it the we call it the Nintendo, we call it the Yeah, like all kinds of how to use this how to use this word in a sentence? Contact your pr rep if you have this question. So that's the last of our pre E three news. Next next stop E three?

Yeah, that's right. What the next one? The next one of these that we record will be in the city and County of Los Angeles. Do this California and the Breach. That's true, USA. It's gonna be fun, man. There's some stuff that you guys need to see. Yeah, there's some stuff that I really want to see, and I'm super excited about some of the stuff we're lining up for for podcasts and live shows during the three yeah, which we will be doing nightly stuff you're all gonna want

to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone you I want to see it, like big shows Monday on Monday for Thursday, but you know, we might do something that's the big show anyway. Yeah, big shows coming on coming on? Is gonna tell us why wrestling is so fucked up? In an exclusive heart to heart, will you see, Originally they tried to say they tried to say I was Andre the Giant's son, and it all started from there. A car is gonna crash run over that's right, it

unmarked black Lincoln Town car will clip him. And then fortunately we got the unmarked Lincoln Town clock car on for Wednesday. Yeah, which should be interviewing inclusive. But it's gonna be hit by a tank. Who's that big rig o? God, Cliff, I can't feel the tires again. Uh. New releases this week week before E three. Uh, somehow less releases than the week of E three. Yeah, we have Hunted Demons for Sorge. I'm gonna give my first impressions of this game, and I want you to

know. I'm gonna say this up front. This comes from like the first five minutes. Okay, like literally literally five minutes. We got it today. I put it in, I started playing through it. I'm not out of it. It's paused back at my desk, not blowing me away. So first five minutes of Hunted, oh yeah, some cut scenes and it kind of looks like an Xbox One game in spots like it's well that that's a little harsh, but the lighting and textures and do you know a lot

Fargo worked on it. His name is up first in the credits Okay, I can confirm that. That's all I need to that came. M h. I have my suspicions about the quality of that game. You have reservations about maybe it will get immediately awesome after that. I cannot say for sure it does have loot, all right, Okay, if it has loot, then maybe that'll be better. Because right now, walking around one shotting everyone with his bow I've got has not been satisfying in the least. We'll look

at a little more of that. Yeah, we'll see. I intend to play it, probably to completion on Xbox Live Ricade this week. Yeah. Crazy Machines Colin Elements, which I guess is you see that right? That was the box shot that was on Xbox for like until about three days after lan War came out or Elen War. Oh no, miss that I thought it was. I thought it was a pre release gaff because I had a copy of a couple days before the game came out. It it hits shelves

and that did not get fixed. And there were like eight people on my friends thing playing Crazy Machines Elements at one point. Oh you mean it was actually even listing no, no, no, nothing next and the achievement. It's all fit to lnir. But just if you look at that Friends channel or just like some sort of like incredible machine style game, puzzle league game. Yeah, I think so. So I think they did this on phone first. It sounds like it all they're doing a summer of Arcade on one

of his Phone seven. They are hydro Thunder is part of it. Yeah, so last year's some of ourcade is this year's mob undergo some of ourcade. Uh. That's that's all I know about for coming out this way.

There was a crazy interlude on the Tested podcast a couple of weeks ago about how Will Smith kind of thinks that one of his Phone seven might be the successor to the mobile Crown when I don't know, like it was all it was all in the It was all in the wake of this Mango announcement five and changes to the thing, and like if they think if they can come

out with a sweeping batch of devices that that sell it to people. Yeah, Well there's the whole thing about them Microsoft acquiring Nokia's mobile division and like putting serious muscle behind it. Wait, if you acquire Nokia's mobile division, what else is there left of Nokia. I don't know. I don't understand that Nokia or Nokia Nokia. I always say Nokia, but everybody else says Nokia. So I started thinking, ok, man, I must be wrong

because I think it is supposed to be Nokia. Yeah, really, that's what I've always ass but I would rather land on it. I would rather call it a Sus Nokia and visus. Assus is way harder for me to deal with than Nokia. Yeah, Assus. Anyway, what if one this one's oven becomes popular if it's a good phone, it's not really it's got a solid base, like it's not it's not a terrible phone. It's just

not as good as an iPhone. Yeah, I don't like I don't like a lot of their interface stuff, like it's slick and clever, but I don't think. I definitely don't prefer it to iPhone. I feel like they just they need to They still need to, like find there. You gotta start with a niche. You got to you gotta figure out what it is that separates you from both Android and iPhone, because those are both things to

to consider in that market. They are Yeah, I mean I guess, I guess iPhone specifically has seen flat or maybe even negative growth in the recent past. Android it has exploded. But I guess I mean I would say that, you know, I mean, I haven't had a ton of experience with Android phones, but from what I've used to those, I would take a Windows phone seven devices the Android. That's the question they were putting forth was all these people who are getting Android phones now, are they going to

be willing to buy another Android phone after this? Right? And if not? Like Windows phones up and kind of seems like a natural place for them to land. Maybe we'll see it does have points. It's kind of what I'm getting at all. Right, Let's let's take it to emails bomb cat at giant bomb dot com Anthony from Bloomington in Illinois. Why does it always fall upon Jeff to buy a new technology for the ability to professionally comment upon it? The PSP GO and three D TV are examples that come to mind.

Did he draw the short straw at the very beginning? Does he value his journalistic integrity more than the rest of you? Or does he just hate money and buy all this stuff by a choice? I say it's a it's a heavy milange of all three question. This question gives you hate fever. I mean, bradn't even buy a Wii, so I've been surrounded by Weis since they came out. Haven't needed to buy a wash and Wei? We If not me? Who? If not? Now? When? Good answer?

Good answer? Good? Yeah, terrific answer. Uh. Next email comes in from Adam in Des Moines, Iowa. Over the weekend, my seven year old stepson was playing New Supermyre Brothers and at one point he asked me, what are these little numbers that come up when I stop on the enemies. I told him that those are points. He then asked me what they are for, and I had to take a moment to try and explain

the concept of scoring points on a video game. I told them that they were used so you could tell how good you were at a game, and when you play games with friends you can compare your score. He understood, but still didn't see the point of it. My question is this, Do points matter anymore? Have they simply become another box to be checked on the

list of requirements featured in a ritro style game? But we simply remember scores and games to be the precursor to achievements and trophies or is there still the possibility for points to matter. It sounds like you gotta teach a kid about goals, about getting points, yeah, about score people, about putting everybody

else shame. I think in certain games they're still totally relevant. I just don't happen to play those games, like, you know, I mean game games that are purely based on an exhibition of skill, you know, like javerty Wars, like that's the only way to track your progress is how high

are your points? Because there are no like story milestones or anything. I mean, they could have set it up to be just time, a wave based or like bullet Hell Shooters and all those games that it's just well, you know, but I mean those games like that game specifically, we all revolves around multipliers, and that's hard to represent with something like time. It's like it's it's the easiest way. Like numbers are are pretty clearly hierarchical.

I'm less interested in the actual question here than I am in sort of this notion of of you know, the the video game high score being so far removed from from games from you know, modern games anymore that you know that that we have shifted that progression into these other kind of metrics. I guess. So, yeah, you know, it's the rise of the story based

game. You know, scoring doesn't really matter. You're not going to go back through you know, even even some of like Gears of War, you're gonna play the entire story over again to get a score, which is why they break that stuff out into like Horde mode and some of these other like points based modes that they can kind of build for that stuff for that purpose. But I think it also it also kind of represents the shift in how games are made, is whereas it's it is about the experience and not it's

not about skill in most cases. Think of the thing about high scores just being ranked now for multiplayer games where you're just like that dude drank eighteen that's pretty good. Yeah he's ranked eighteen million points. Yeah, but even that, you know, it's not necessarily an indicator skill. It's indicator time cases, so you know, even that's not perfect. I that's that's that was

one of the appeals of the achievement points system to begin with. It was that it brought score in two games that didn't lend themselves to that and gave you that kind of base point to compare to other people. Brought that bragging

rights, that that sense of bragging back to games. And that's that's probably the coolest part about it, as you know, is going to you know, cool as a relative term, I suppose, but being able to go to people and saying like, hey, I got all these points in this game because I played the shit out of it and did these things that you didn't do. You know, It's an easy way to kind of plant your flag and lay down challenges other people and stuff. You also don't get free

lives anymore when you get a certain score. Yeah, also don't really get live you Also you barely even have health bars. Also, you don't really get your wars anymore. Yeah. I hear him in Lubbock, Texas. Dear Bob Crew. Uh, Michael Packtor, who was on last week. I'm sorry you guys missed that, but we had Michael Packtor in the house and I saw Michael Packtor. He said he was sorry for missing my birthday, generating headlines him. That's what he does. At least four on topic.

He walked into this room and said, off of crazy shite, is that all it takes? Just say some crazy shit. If you're Michael Packtor, you gotta look good doing it. You gotta say it with a certain amount of authority to get yourself two suits, get them pressed. Yeah. Uh once. I would actually like to once again thank Michael Patrick for coming through last week. That was a delight for me personally. You know, I don't I don't think he's he's always right. I think he's often extremely

wrong, and I think he often knows that. But I still think he's an interesting character with a unique perspective on this industry that that I think is worth considering. Yea, at the at the very least perspective. Yeah, absolutely, he's you know, he is looking at it from an angle from kind of a blended angle of both, you know, the kind of hard economics as well as a feel for the culture side of it that I don't

think anyone else is doing it quite the same way. Uh. And he was the guy kind of saying they will find a way to monetize Call of Duty multiplayer sooner or later. Just you watch, and he was right. You're saying I have to pay for multiplayer yep, nine dollars a game? Yeah, nine dollars game. Uh, and then fifty cents bullet So just like uh metro, you know micro transactions on the iPhone. Yeah, paid

two bucks for this rocket launcher. Anyway, Michael Packer raised the question I was wondering what your thoughts were on which I was wondering what your thoughts were. Can of video game console come out that's just video games and still survive or does it have to be a multimedia entertainment box all of the three sixty? What was the number that Microsoft put out today that forty percent of Xbox three sixty usage is non gaming? Is that what they were saying? Yeah?

Crazy, I think that's what will will sign some press released to put out. Well, they're also saying like twenty percent of all peak Internet usage is because of Netflix streaming, right, which a lot of that has to be coming through the three sixty because that's kind of one of the broadest.

What's one of the broadest platforms that you can do that through? Yeah, other than you know, doing it on your computer, So that means a lot of people have to be doing I feel like any time I turn on my Xbox, I could look at my friends list, at least one person is watching something on Netflix. Yeah, I wonder, you know, I think it's safe to assume that the next Nintendo console will play DVDs. Put some money down. Don't know that the we did not I know exactly.

I think now the licensing has got cheap enough, they can just you know, well, we'll see what they have internal storage to do, like streaming and download movies. Not enough. I mean, if if it's going to be comparable with the existing consoles, like they're saying, it'll have to use something ray right, I mean, I don't know. I shrug my shoulder

or something. You could use a proprietary similar this point, who knows, but it needs to be it needs to be sufficiently massive to accommodate those games. I'm sticking. I'm sticking to my Yeah, I'm sticking to carts. I think it'll just be fucking but you know what, what's a modern cart. It's you know, it's an SD card, it's a USB thumb stuff, really huge, big ass thing you gotta slam in there. You want

to look expensive and hard to lose. It would be kind of awesome if it's a fucking carts, giant carts, big sticks, a ram in there. I really We've got to the point where you know, the storage technology for that stuff is cheap and easy and fast. So the cheap stuff is too unreliable. Though the cheap best stuff like it would be it would be more expensive than cart or than than disks. Still, that's always wouldn't it

be cheaper though for them to ship on disks. But put an SSD in the box to get the speed of your and your SSD obsession, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen on the Nintendo platform for sure. Well you're talking about in the console. Yeah, yeah, it's too expensive, too many technical issues. I'm opening the new HD we or whatever they're gonna call it, the HD Vita. It's gonna be you open the box and it's an

HDMI cable and a power supply, and then you buy the game. You just plug that ship right into the cart and that game's got the controller. It's got no controller. You just watch a movie, watch somebody else places. That'll be the difference as Nintendo. We'll call it the Vita. It will be the PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo Vida. But it's one big vitality sensor for the movie to keep playing, you have to put your finger into the slot insufficient heart rate to continue to play back. Yeah, uh are

you dead? Yes? No, each card is a self contained system each to your point. Yeah, the Wii is the example of its self, like it's just the it. You know, it does games right, kind of if that's what you're looking for mini games. Oh, you know it does have the Netflix streaming and web browser and yeah even they got it's disc three. No, it's disc on the p S three now, but it's

still a disc on the way. Okay. I don't think there's any word to story and so what you want channel though, and you just watch them in SD that's it. Yeah, it only does up to forty Wow, what are you guys? Netflix on either Yeah, whatever on whatever system is on, whichever one you have turned pretty much for me, I don't really three sixties more responsive, but I kind of like the PS three better.

Yeah, kind of with you. I have not tried the PS three Netflix out since right around the time they launched it, and I thought it looked bad and did not perform WELLS three is nice if you don't want to fish your profile out of your bag. If you have another stick that that that'll be why I'll do that. If the like, I don't want to have

to the thing with the thing you have to get off this count. I can just hit I can just brush any button on this PlayStation remote and all of them and I'll hear the beep and I'm like, okay, good, the Netflix box is warming up. Time to watch some Twilight Zone. Oh my PS three is so loud though, and that you know it's yeah, mine is like into the friend's house yesterday who has an old bottle p S three and his is nice quiet. I don't know what the difference is,

but they body knows any tips for Quieteningdale and the wet towel. We're supposed to be slim PS three. I almost I almost tried to go get in on that crazy tart. He just get a quieter PS three because minds. So there's supposed to be something where like if you you know, cover the event end of the PS three, it'll like go into some jet mood like rambles down, yeah, like vertically upside down like some periods supposedly blows all

the dust out or something. I don't know why. When we first got a p S three, uh that that happened accidentally right out on the start, making this noise like, oh god, this doesn't sound like a good noise for this thing to be making. And then we realized that's because we're

covering the exhaust port with all this carpet. I feel like, I feel like this next generation coming out of consoles, everything will be so digital that, like you, just the distinction between being just the game machine and anything else that plays movies or something will just be gone. That line will just blur. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't think it's I tend

to agree. I think that we've reached the point where your can will have an interface this guess, guys, guess what the set top box dream finally came true and it's video games. You'll just download your apps or whatever to your front end. Yeah, well it's everything, I mean even yeah, it's TVs, rokus and like there's resilient options. Sure, but everybody's got one just going to be a boxy TV, Like the boxy box wasn't enough.

They're building boxy software directly into a model of television. When that seems like the next step is like, well, I want all that Netflix stuff, but I honestly, don't give a shit about video games. You know, build that shit into the TV. I know they're talking apps for TVs. Yeah, it's just hot thing at ce yes this year. Or let it like read a thumbstick and just load boot up apps for your TV on whatever operating system. Yeah, there are TV's out there that actually they've put

out dev kits and they let developers kind of cow their own apps. They've got li Fi on them. Yeah that sounds awesome. Linux. Yeah, you can put a bootoo on your TV. Can my TV run Doom? I guarantee you already somebody is running Doom on a TV, like the remote, the firmware and the remote. Okay, I think we have to end this podcast. We're at time. We're at a time at a time. You're saving up time for the E three podcast. You're banking it? What? No, this is? This was a long, goddamn podcast. Us

our last chance for E three predictions. This is our last chance for E three predictions. What was the big What was the prevailing theme of that podcast? I haven't listened till last week's special. Out of that anything mind blowing besides his headline making Nintendo prediction uh oh about Nintendo getting out of the hardware business. He predicted that. I didn't listen to that. He predict predicted. You see, he kind of floated it as like, you know,

this is a potential future for them going third party Sega style. I've said that for years, but well everybody said that after the game. So oh really yeah, great minds think of my life. I left my notes on his chair. I don't remember what else got said during that thing. Press conferences will happen, Ubisoft will be ridiculous. Should we just do our E

three press conference predictions? That seems to be just the biggest thing, right, Yeah, do you think what do you think Microsoft is gonna have anything big to counter the hardware announcements at the other press conferences, because I think it's pure software from Microsoft this year. This is Yeah, it's really you back up the Connect. You've got gears at least one big major Connect title. I think you have to have a like a fucking quarter of that press

conference at least dedicated to Connect stuff they sold. They sold a bunch of those. They haven't had any good software support for it post launch. Maybe you sold them already. Move on. They need to they well, if they want no, they want to sell more, they need to keep they need to prove it at some point, and this is I think where they

can do that. And other than that, it's you know, you trot out your dudes that you've you've already got on the hook, you've got you know, Dan Greenawall will come out and say some crazy shit about FORTSA and Cliff will say something about gears, and Peter Molaneus say something about his balls and they talk about the Window seven phone at all. They tie that into their that's on the screen at one point for the well, they might they might want to appeal to the gaming side of it. I don't think much

time you get spent on that at all. I think I think literally that's Eco system better than ever. More importantly, it's a different business unit within Microsoft. It's like those are not the people running this press conference, so they don't care about pushing that thing. Is there a pie chart during the press conference? Hell yeah yeah, microsart bar graphic. They have to they have to announce something software wise. I mean, like everybody already knows about

gears and forts. Yeah. I think there'll be a slate of connected announcements, both from them and from third parties. And I think the Connect ties into a new yeah totally something hil a new dashboardy thing. Yeah, that'll tie into the Connect and four type stuff. I think if the thousand friend things going to happen, this will be the place where they announce it.

That be crazy and like, so I bet there's gonna be didn't they show this like part Connect party room or whatever where you're like sitting has that is a launch date? That's how was that coming that soon? Issh? I think yeah, they have to they have to say something about what three or four three's been up to, right, Yeah? Yeah, agree hopefully Yeah yeah. Do they update the Xbox three sixty hardware at all? Year? New HDMI port it just makes three D easier this year's model going straight up

car model on that stuff. I don't think it's too soon. Yeah, you know, there could be a refresh, but I don't think that's something that you really like try and double underlined during the press conference. What do they even do to it? Like? What else do they fixed it? Like it works now and it doesn't die every six months? Bigger hard drive? Yeah, but you know, I mean Sony pushes out of new scus

with drives like every six months yearnet. I'm not saying you make a big deal about it, say maybe meaningful changes, though, I don't think there's much else to do. A Connect bundle for two ninety nine, I think that already exists. They totally have had that hod retailers specifically. No, that's just well, that's that's I think. I think console target right now is I thought I saw some ad that had the two fifty at two ninety

nine with keys. That's crazy. It's crazy is that they're still selling Xbox three sixties for three hundred bucks a pop and some like kind of a lot of them. That's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. I don't buy into those sales figures because so many people are replacing old Xboxes. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that that turns into like software sales every single time, but still there's still selling. It's impressive number on its face.

Yeah, it's kind of impressive that if your Xbox breaks you go back and buy another thing Xbox. You don't just say all right, fuck this cloud support on three sixty profile cloud support where it's like you don't need your profile on a stick. That's your that's your next generational The infrastructure is to set in stone. I think for a lot of those changes to be meeting things.

I think we'll be lucky if we see that thousand friend bump new dash dash Oh, I definitely expect some some new well like more connect enabled dash because right now the connect stuff on the dashboard is terrible. You know what, everything about the dashboard is terrible. Everything about that dashboard right now is the fact that I have to navigate just to start a game, the fact that I start on a row of ads. Yes, there they have been

debata testing some kind of new dash for a while. Anything new at aside from the little chat room stuff that'll be you know what that'll be where your your bar graph shows up is and they show this is fucking how much money we make off this crazy avatar stuff and believe this? Can you fucking believe

this? And we continue to We're opening a new Avatar mall. I just can't help but think, like, what if they got suckered in and by the whole three D thing and want to update the consoles, specifically just to update the HDMI to make it automatically switched to three D. I it's not I'm not saying like it's a change that's gonna revolution, Like no one's gonna go out and buy an Xbox. But you know, if that stuff's gotten cheap enough, and if they're going to be dedicated to this platform for a

few more years, like why not throw in a couple of things like that to try and maintain the perception of value and keep their prices up and and that sort of. I don't know, because it seems like, you know, do a five hundred gig drive. Other Microsoft hasn't done much with three D now anyway, they don't really have they don't have that Sony impetus,

right, it's a huge it's a huge focus for their direct couplure. I think if they were to do it, it would be something where they would have gotten suckered in by Sony's involvement in that stuff and be like we got to be there and are just now getting to do something like that. Maybe, right, how much? I don't think I'm not saying that they should do that either, Like you, if they took that turn, yeah, I'm wondering. I'm wondering if they fell for that at some point and when

like, we gotta, we gotta get out ahead of this. I mean, I think it's not out of this, we gotta get out of something. I think even if they had been doing it based on the way, like the three D backlash that's been happening this summer in film, they would not mention that at D three they like they would be like, Okay, this is under internal review for whether this project continues or maybe they make the

change and never even say anything about it. Yeah, seeing that stuff about the lenses than the you know, having dim two D movies because no one takes the lens off at theaters and stuff like that's fucking crazy. Well. Also, just like the past three weekends or something that better. Yeah, the two D movies despite having less screens are outperforming the three D. Pirates

and Pirates and Kung Fu Panda two both uh right out performing. Yeah, the two d's out out performing the three D despite more three DS fewer screens. Wow. Yeah, and price, that's that's how much people are like fuck you to three D right now, and so the financials are all reacting to that right now. It's a complete I saw Real d's stock started a

complete cluster five. So so even if they had been devoting resources to that, Microsoft opens up the Wall Street Journal to Dan and says, okay, the twenty minutes, Alan, wake whatever, I don't know, let's take this off. Let's take this off the slate, uh, PlayStation. Obviously, the Vita is a big focus for them. That one is, yeah, I mean that one is like what ten to twenty minutes of maya kulpa about PSN and then ten and twenty minutes five two minutes, two minutes,

maybe a gag, yeah, no gags five minutes. No, no, I'll conceeed the shorter time, but no fucking way, or they're gonna come out and make light of that situation at all. I will put money on. I will reiterate my prediction from earlier. Jack Trenton will murder the actor who plays Kevin Butler. Yeah, I will actually murder him. That's not a gag, man, I think, yeah, Kevin Butler to murder him by strangling him. Okay, I think you push that off onto a fictional

character. It's the way that you know they're still responding to Senate. They can't look, they can't look like they're like, ah, you know whatever, it's a good time. Yeah, he's sony. No, they got they still of that at least, so it's like single spot, like Jack Tren rolls up the sleeves and sit down. Everybody pulls a chair. I don't think, you know what. I think there's acknowledgement. I don't think there's apology. We're coming back better than ever. Yeah, just look through

the future. I think there's a great Yeah. Yeah, you don't ignore it outright, but they at some point they will say thank you for your patience to everyone in attendance. I think that's totally right. Yep. But yeah, obviously a lot of V to V to V to via vita. It seems like PS three software would take a back seat because there's all like that stuffs all knowed for this year. This will be launching like the next

day, and Charted coming later in the years. It would be a good time for them to like roll out more of star Hawk or something like that. But I mean, all these games have been announced and right on the schedule, like maybe some new move stuff. I think I think they'll probably do new XMB stuff, and I just mean like new like better integration with some stuff. And I think they'll roll from the PlayStation network being down to the coming back better than ever, and like, here are the new features

you can expect coming up in next year. Here's the core stuff. Here's like better friends stuff, better trophy stuff, better you know whatever, Twitter, ESPN, whatever they're gonna put in there to be like here's Fatus it was down. Look how awesome it's gonna be in the future. Uh, integration with the Vita, I don't know. And then you know, Nintendo will be you know, new console and a lot of proof concept software and

some actual three DS games. You think they abandoned the weed or they just they hit the you know, they'll Sward Sword coming to the new Nintendo console. Levels you can't Twilight apprentis that game? You can't mirrored level I can't. Oh no, Nintendo can't. I don't think they will. Yeah, I don't think they will. I mean that's that's that's that's assuming that the new console will even be equipped to play that game. Like, do you

think they will? It's I think they've said as much as that they will replicate all of those controls. It'll be some way to do that. So you think they lead new console stuff, and it's like that doesn't mean we're not supporting the wee. We've got a great lineup coming up about the sky resword and three DA come before the They waited until the last like twenty minutes

of that press conference for three DS last year. Yeah, and I imagine it'll be close to that, if not maybe a little more in depth as far as what you actually see of that system compared to the three DS. It's like it's it's gonna be the it'll be the wall of logos, it'll

be yeah, quick trailer role, maybe harmonics be on that wall. So I mean, if it's if the system is a year or two year and a half out, then it's a whole like hundred and twenty eight Marios scenario of like it'll be it'll be tech demoi stuff that's like ears, familiar things that ye captain Ortega one hundred and twenty eight taco shells on screen. Yeah, that's any other any any other predictions predictions about Ubisoft. I don't think

they can go really heavy on Nintendo tech demo stuff for that thing. If it's going to be out this year, it's not out, it's out like early next year though they said in twenty twelve. That's all they've said. You think it'll be out before another E three? It could go all the way to Holiday twenty twelve. I thought it was like fiscal No, okay, pretty sure, it's calendar all right. I think they spend a lot of time on it. But I bet they'll show at least three real games

for it. If they demo one game, maybe, but footage from at least I mean, if if that thing is eighteen months out, then those real games barely exist at this point. But I feel like they have to show something. They're so we feel their software all the time. I think like, yeah, I don't know, you know, proof concept like Mario Kart type thing like not not a name like you know, Mario Kart WE two or whatever they call it, you know, work in progress. Right,

here's what we could do on it. I think that they'll probably like it won't be something like Mario Kart. It'll be some other stranchise that hasn't been around for a while, not even Star five zero. Really, it's a good frame rate, that's good time for us, Like sixty four was all about how many like carts? Whatever you're gonna follow them, but they could how many ships they get on the screen at once? Yeah, you know, yeah, bring back af Tero people, people would get excited about.

Yeah people, I'll dust off my coffee of dukey and listen to a bunch of duky and play a bunch of f zero. I think this year will be fewer uh celebrity guests and fewer social network tie in's uh calm the console but Day, I think no more Felicia Day, Steven Spielberg, Spielberg, James Cameron, the Beatles, I think we'll go. I think this year will be more about the just the games, and hopefully fewer, fewer

social network hooks. I mean last Stogan's gonna be there last year. Last year, like last year, you think about those press conferences, it was just like you're you know, you're trotting out Ted Price and the Harmonic Sky. But also last year was yeah, it was just like motion motion motion. There was a big focus on that. I yeah, I get some lip service to move. Yeah. I don't have to do something right.

They can't. They can't just completely abandon it yet. Sports too, whatever with the motion sports, you know what it's gonna be like you know, and move support in all of these popular franchises, Like I don't even know that they will like have move specific We had plenty of move games, it's just not in games that you want to use the move with. They will just they will tout the fact that a lot of games you could do. Come on, all, right, now, we really have to end this

podcast. Uh yeah, we're we're in LA next week for E three. Maybe you've heard of it. Look first. Then content kicks off next week. Yeah maybe Sunday, look for us. Look for us Sunday. But Monday is when the press conferences begin in Earnest and we will be there in force. So uh, look for that then. And that's gonna do it for this week's edition of The Giant Bodcast. Next week E three Like Parking Nice and it's stores now.