You are listening to Video Games to the Max. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Video Games to the Maxes Episode four hundred and fifteen. I'm your host, Sean Garmer here with me as you was so, mister Mark Morrison, And well, if you didn't know, I'm sure I'm sure everybody knows by now. The PS five Pro is actually a thing, and it's reel. They revealed it along with its incredible price of seven hundred dollars and even more increase in price in other regions. We'll talk about that.
Is it worth it? Is it worth what they got in the box. We've also both finished Astrobot Matt Marcus Platten the game, so got plenty to say now that we're both done with it, or well, I've still got some things to pick up. I'm pretty much done with it now. Mark has already done a review. Actually I still got to write mine. So there's that. We got some some other things, some surprising things like and Apurna Interactive's whole gaming division just decide to re just quit
all of a sudden off over some issues. We'll get into that. We got some issue with Xbox laying off more people, and also some now we know what game pass standard actually is. We'll get into that and much more. All right, so really quick here, just to get it out of the way. Housekeeping for the show. Hopefully you are subscribed to the YouTube channel, but if you're not,
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Hey, we both saw that.
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that helps us out. So enough with the the housekeeping here, I guess let's let's go and we talked about astrobout last week. Let's start with the big news here. PS five Pro was basically revealed the next day after we did the podcast last week, so it was kind of
like we did the predictions. I think I said it would wind up being what everybody predicted, which is the six ninety nine, and it was what do you think about the nine minute presentation that they had Mark Sony Show, which he started off by saying basically what the PS five is. Then he kind of went into what the big three he called it that they added with the PS five Pro which is bigger GP you, which makes it to where it can render games forty five percent faster.
Obviously that would mean that loading is faster all of that. Uh, there's the the pss pss R that we heard so much about several times. That's basically PlayStations proprietary AI upscaling very much like the Nvidia version of that or and d FSR version of that, but possibly even better. And you also have the the game boost that's being at it with that, which it's not exactly like the Xbox thing, but it's similar.
I guess it's like the old it's like the old PS four pro thing.
Yeah, okay, so more for the so where it can add stabilized frame rate or improve the frame rate if it's unlocked, I think though, but they have to unlock it, so like I guess Bloodburne winds stop being thirty fps.
Yeah, because the rates tied to the physics.
Yeah, the frame rates tied to the actual game. So like they can it unless you know, from Soft goes in there and and changes it or unlocks it or was they probably won't, but uh, you know that's uh, that's part of it. They and he also thought about advanced ray racing as well, which is going to make it to where it doubles or triples the speed of the ray tracing in the console. Uh. They also showed
off a bunch of games, which included and Rebirth. Last of Us Part two kept being showing the remake Ratchet and Clank, but used a lot for that. Spider Man.
Got used when finally ugly Rebirth game. Huh.
Yeah. That and they also had I think c net was the only one that had somebody go out and actually be able to test it. They have like a six minute video on their channel where the guy talks about it and he does mention that and Rebirth is actually like the one game. It's kind of like night and day difference, mainly because Perman's mom was so bad with that game that like having a stable frame right now at sixty fps body makes that game tremendously better
if you played it on performance move. But of course at the end, they kind of just show a bunch of stuff. They're really quick showing all the games. I think there's like twenty games or something like that that's going to be like pre launched, and they have a list we'll go through it of what's going to be
getting the all the PSI pro treatment. And then they showed the price right, which is kind of like they did, almost like in a silence because they know everybody felt like they know that everybody's going to be shocked about this seven hundred dollars US and in the UK eight hundred for euros and then twelve thousand and two h for Japan in the end obviously.
The end, yeah, is bad.
So I think Australia also has about that price as well. So and then they revealed later off camera that you have to pay eighty bucks extra for the disk drive if you want a disc drive in your PS five Pro because this doesn't come with it disc and if you want go ahead, sorry.
No you go.
And if I don't know if this means they don't have a stand at all, because they did have this little plastic stand which is what I used to my PS five right now because mine's behind my TV. I cannot have it laying down. If you have to buy a vertical sand it costs thirty dollars extra. So what do you think about all the stuff the whole reveal, And then now that we've had a whole week to sit on it, everybody right about being mad about the price, So you think it's.
Just now the price is bad. My it's I don't care about the price because I wasn't gonna go on anyway.
My point, my feeling is like games, most games aren't even utilizing the PS five power anyway, so them throwing more horse power at it, You're like, it's not going to like make games better or you know, it'll just make like the super obnoxious like Digital Foundry, no offense to them nerds you know care about you know, oh this one texture is bad, or you know it's it's slightly more alias here than or anti alias and the pro than on the PS five you know baseline model.
Like, so you think it's more of a like a when you do an upgrade with your PC, where you're just trying to throw something new at it to see if it makes your game look better.
I mean with a PC that are more tangible benefits to it at least, like and it also not I mean if you already have a gaming you know GPU, like a you know, a thirty even like at twenty seventy or something like that still is plenty powerful, like
and you can still run most games. You know, it may not be four K or whatever, but hey, it'll run ten eighty just fine, Like I think gaming nerds, or PC nerds in particular, are So I'm not like obsessed with like, oh I'm running at four K with you know deal ss on and ray tracing and this, you know four hundred hurts you know screen and all the those stupid craft that's say, okay, but how is this actually making the game better you know, or like
more you know, more innovative or that's my problem really is like they they equate power as like a graphical fidelity as like an innovation, and it's like, yo, dog, it's not like you can make the most beautiful looking game ever. But if it's not fun to play, who cares? I mean, if that's the If that's the case, why don't just start selling three D H three D mark you know, benchmark tests and going like, here's a game. You can't make me play it, but hey it'll look nice.
Yeah. I think I'm in a little bit of a different.
Both id I did see kind of partially, I don't know, Well, you were talking about like either getting this thing or a new or like a new gaming laptop or gaming pcing right, and it's a well, first of all, like you know, they lied about eight K gaming on the original PS five, like they had to take that little sticker off because no game actually ever does it well.
And then also if they do AK gaming, the quality of the images go down a ton because look, I think I saw Alan Wake two runs of like eight sixty four p or something to be able to do the sixty frames and something.
Of all, who actually has an AK TV The cheaper the cheapest one I found on like eBay or I mean best Buy, I was like two thousand dollars, and it's like these things aren't going to be three hundred dollars by next year, you know.
Yeah, uh no? And I mean, honestly, the AK thing is you don't need that. Maybe not even not even when we get to the PS six, which we have a little bit of news on that, will that be a thing? I think, I mean, ultimately a K might be something, But honestly, the thing that's gonna move the needle is if you don't ever have TV get anything close to a K, nobody's gonna buy an AK TV.
So if most people people are not gonna buy AK TV just to watch movies in AK, they're not unless you're unless you're gonna put yeah, go ahead.
They aren't even AK movies out, I mean four K. You know there might feel like Netflix might have like one or two eight K streams or something, but they're not like a K discs and there's no eight K player.
I don't, no, that's true. But what I'm saying is like, if you're not gonna be able to watch most of the things that you would watch on TV and a K, people are not gonna buy a four K TV or it's hard to get you. It's it's now it's easier to justify people getting a four K TV because they're just so much so cheaper. Now there's so much cheaper, Like you can get that like even the upscale four K.
Right for two hundred dollars.
If not Yeah, but AK AK that's ridiculous, Like there's nothing that really want that even and even in four years there probably still won't be, yeah, because you have to be able to get streaming to work in AK and no. God, yeah, let's see that works.
You know.
I think for me, my my thing was the reason why I said that is because of the price, right of like if I really wanted to, I could go trade in my PS five right and right now, Well, actually this was this weekend. I don't even know. Let me while we're sitting here talking. This weekend, game Stop was basically getting anybody that they possibly could. If you wanted to go trade in your PlayStation five, you could get four hundred and ten dollars for And that's for
the disc one. I think if you got if it's a digital one, it's three hundred, which okay, smart by game Stop, right, But I don't. I think when we get to closer to when the game actually the system, sorry, when the system actually releases, they're not going to be giving you that much money for it.
Yeah.
Now they know you're going to be desperate to give it away.
Yeah. Now it's three hundred and twenty five in store credit.
Yeah who knows that means probably like two seventy five
in cash, but oh wow. Yeah. So if you if you pre ordered it somewhere else and you're just going to game Stop to get money for it, you're gonna be two hundred bucks, which I mean two hundred bucks off of seven hundred our console is still something, but still again, this is why, like I think, when you look at what's in this system and when the scene guy was saying that I don't don't I'm gonna say personally, for me, I'm overdue to go to the the optometrist
and get new glasses. I've had these lasts for four years, so probably for me, when I put the new glasses on, I'm gonna see a lot of things that I didn't see before, a lot more clearly. And he said that basically putting on a playing something between a PS five and a PS five pro is like putting on a new pair of losses. You're gonna see things a lot clearer, but it's really not making a huge difference to what
you're playing. And sure, if you like performance mode, which Mark Zoney did point out that three out of four people will do performance mode over quality, which fine, okay, cool, But also because a lot of people don't have four KTVs, so a lot of it's ten ADP sixty or fourteen forty sixty. So if you don't have four KTV that that sixty helps lost the performance mode. People care a lot about that, having the faster frames and all that stuff,
and that's that's great. I'm glad that they're but this I don't think unless you really really need it, you need to be concerning yourself with going and buying the PS five pro. I just don't think you.
Do, Avin Yanzo's I mean he was talking because I mean, here has the money to buy it obviously, right, And I mentioned like, oh, you know that you have to the discrive is eighty bucks, and he like, you didn't really know what it meant. But then like last night he was ranking about it a little. He's like, wait, it's like buy it separately, and I was like, yeah, you know, get a bolted on the bottom, and I think it's the same disk drive as like the slim model.
Yes it is, so I mean I guess that's something. But the fact that the scand is like, you know, a thirty dollars but now.
It's sold out, so like go try to buy it and you gotta pay like four hundred dollars extra for more.
For that, right, But yeah, the you know, even the scan being like thirty bucks extra, which you know, hey, my PS five came came with a decent scand already.
So yeah, see that's my thing is if they if they come out with with this one also has that little cheap stand that makes it for my PS five ro would it fall down. I don't need that stand. But if you're gonna tell me that y'all made it to where you have to use that vertical stand, that's a bunch of bull. To charge people thirty dollars for that. You could have easily ate the cost of that.
It's not gotten news for you. You know, like that's exactly what they're gonna do.
Well, no, I know what you're saying. I mean, they're not gonna promote that and put vertical stands sote belie. If they're including a stand, it's pretty much them saying, if you want your PS five to stand up, which a lot of people, including myself, your setup is, you have to make it stand right. Then you know, you're you're basically telling people, oh, you got to pay a premium for this if you want the same setup you
did have. And then, you know, I think most people at that point you're you're gonna trade in your PS five because unless you have a kid or certifican other or somebody else to give it to, why are you gonna sit there and have a PS five or if you have what's supposed to be the better version of it, right,
so you'll save a little bit of money there. But I just don't think that in the long run, this thing really is worth you going out of your way to make sure you get it on day one because they're not going to have anything amazing that you need to go play with it. It's games that have already been out.
Yeah, it's the same problem as you know the PS four Pro and also like them go. I'm like, hey, you can play Ratchet and Clank better. It's like great, that's a three year old game.
The things that they showed also that, for one, the presentation was terrible because it's like, well, how am I going to see the things that you want me to see? Not only do you have the problem with the YouTube compression that mean bad. Most people are watching on their phone. I watched it again on my my four k lgol it. It looks better than on my phone obviously, but I'm still having to sit there and watch these things on a small little picture and picture that you're showing me, right,
because I don't know. I get it that you want to show the side by side, but it's not really telling me what am I really getting with it? Oh look at the crowd distance. Now I see more crowd when I play rights and crank. Now I see more draw a distance with Spider Man that the trees don't look as bad. It's like, and you're gonna tell me that that's one hundred dollars more.
Well, it's like, if you're that obsessed with that crap, buy a PC and then you know, I spend three thousand, okay eight video cards and you know, go out.
That's where I do agree with people. You're not going to You're not going to find a PC for seven hundred dollars that's going to do what the pside pro did, especially because apparently has already an A four and all this stuff in it. But if you care about that stuff and you're a Sony only gamer, then okay, you make that decision. But this is also so many telling you. Look, you went and bought all the other stuff that everybody
said was useless, right, Oh the portal. Everybody was talking shit about that thing, and that thing sold like crazy right when it came out.
Oh yeah, this thing will sell, it'll sell out.
But I'm just saying people that are complaining about the price, that's also they do that because you bought all those things that you said you weren't gonna buy, So they're just looking at you and going, oh, yeah, whatever, you're telling me you're not gonna buy this, And then here you are pre ordering a day one. So you know that's partially partial part of its inflation, right. Part of it is could they have made an extra scut without
a two terribied drive? Sure, that's something I thought about, like why did you have to put a two terribied drive in here?
Like games like Call of Duty take up gigabytes.
I know, but I'm just saying, like, you know, that's gonna cost you one hundred dollars because even if you buy one off not off the PlayStation store, that one costs like one hundred and thirty dollars. But even if you buy one that's like mid range or whatever, it's so eighty bucks, right, So the price that they're charging for the two terabyte drive is not really out of the realm to charge one hundred dollars for that, But
then you're charging another one hundred. This is this is the digital PS five by the way, not the disc one, because then you're you're paying eighty bucks more for the disk drive thing, but just including the digit let's say you had a digital PS five right now, that three hundred dollars. That's how they're justifying it, is like anywhere from fifty to one hundred dollars for inflation. The rest of it is the tech, and then at least one hundred dollars of that is the dry the two terabytes.
So it's like they could have found ways to shave money off of this, But because they know that they're sequel that are going to complain and then turn around and buy the thing, they were just out here going, well, you know what, this is not necessary. It's a premium product. You want to go buy it. You want to have the best thing we possibly put out, then go ahead buy it.
You know, well the best way we have to put out for three more years and three to four more years the PS six comes out.
It's yeah, that's true too till the PS six comes up. But I mean, and they already mentioned they made a deal with AMD today about that. Apparently AMD is going to be the one making the the GPU and all that for the PlayStation six, which apparently is a big deal because of backwards probability, they wanted to make sure that that was going to be no issues between you know, PS four, PS five and now PS six being able to work with that, which is good on Sonya or whatever.
But obviously pr hit is positive, so that's good. But we're still years off for the PlayStation six. But I don't know. It was something I was considering because I had the TV that would actually support like letting me see what all this awesomeness is. If I hadn't have played Rebirth before, maybe would have pushed me a little bit more because you know, oh, now I get the best version of Reworth, but I already played that game.
I don't know that I want to go back. I mean, maybe I will go back at some point and experience it, but not right now, you know, or re experience it or whatever. But it's like, one game that's already been out is not going to make me want to go and spend seven hundred dollars on this thing. Even if I'm doing the Firm or the Clarina thing where I'm making myself pay less for it up front, I'm still
paying seven hundred dollars ultimately for that. And you know, okay, even if I trade it in my PS five, Look, it's already at what do we talk. What do we say right now to twenty cash three hundred something.
That's yeah, credit, So it's still a lot.
It's still a lot to put towards that if you want to. But also, the first two weeks the pre orders is going to be on PS direct only, so you're you're having to get good luck with pre ordering over there, and then you're not going to be able to do store credit. You're gonna have to do cash to get any kind of money back to put towards whatever, to pay yourself back for the purpose, you have to make up front on the PS Direct. So and then if you buy I mean, I'm sure they'll put it
on Amazon or whatever, which one of those. Okay, sure you get the time. But yeah, I think honestly, the people that live outside of the United States, I think they have a much bigger bone to pick here. You're talking about nine hundred dollars or nine hundred euros the UK government. It's like a two to one, so you're really not paying eight hundred pounds for that, you're paying more Canada. All these people, all the people in other regions, really do have a bone to pick with the price,
and however priced it is, and everything else. But I think for the US it's technically not overpriced for what it is for the what's in the box and what they put in it. I think the disk drive thing just kind of tells you that's probably how they're going to sell you the PS six too. The drive will be detached. You go buy your own dish shot if you want it, because in four years, if you have whatever the percentage is, I think it's like over eighty
percent of people that are buying discless. Now, imagine what that's going to be in four years, right, It's going to be more so, uh yeah, imagine that. Do you worry about what this means? For for sure? Next gen is going to be seven hundred dollars base now, regardless of how this sells.
Now, because you look at look at the PS three, the PS four. You know that the launch model PS three was you know, six hundred, you know, a good one, right, and then when the PS four came out, I think was wasn't it four hundred?
Yeah? So yeah, because xbos came out five hundred and they slashed it and said out it was for him.
Yeah yeah, So I imagine the PS I it would actually be kind of cool. If the PS six comes out, they're like at six hundred dollars and then they can have like the P like the money sign and then six hundred.
Yeah. No, I definitely think that six hundred would probably be where they're at with that because you don't have to put a two terrabyted drive in the console.
I think you do, it'll be cheaper.
Yeah, but I don't know if they'll come standard with it. I think they'll come out with a one terribid drive so they can have the two skews. Maybe they'll do the two terabyte with a disk drive or whatever and say, Okay, if you want everything the total premium package, here's this for like eight hundred or something, or here's the seven fifty one whatever, you know, because look, they did this.
They did it this time with the four hundred dollars digital only and then the five hundred RPS five that had everything. So I think we're probably gonna see something like that for next gen as well. I will say, on the Xbox side of things, I think we kind of know why they chose not to do the mid gen refresh for that because if you look at what they probably would have had to sell the Xbox at the same price. Maybe you don't do the tear with
twear broad drive at that point. But I think if you're selling a regular series xperis you tear bride drive for six hundred, then you would have had to do the same for any kind of mid gen refresh that you do on the Xbox side of things. But I mean, people at the right people are buying their consoles. Now, can you imagine the craft that would have happened if they do a mid geen refresh and nobody buys that
even less? So yeah, yeah, I think overall they said there was an analyst saying, I think Matt Pescatella and others said that PS four pro kind of for like fifteen percent PS five of the PS four overall sales. This is probably where that's going to land to. So it's not going to be everybody's not going to go out and rush and buy this thing. Do you think that this maybe prohibits people that still haven't bought a PS five from jumping in.
Like because the current PS five will be cheaper, so they'll.
Be will it'll be cheaper, it'll be cheaper than that, But it's not gone down in price. It will you think, so how long? Because we're already talking about.
Well, I mean think about think about your your earlier case. Like you know you can only get two twenty from game stop, but if you threw the thing upon your like the current PS five, but if you threw the thing up on Facebook marketplace and say, hey PS five two hundred bucks, it'll sell within a day. Yeah, and you know used US stores are still sell on the PS five. Do you talk your like the box for yours?
No?
I don't, Okay, I still do.
So I saw a U store sell PS five today for four to four or they put it up on sale for four forty.
Yeah. I mean Sony themselves are selling refurbished yes fives. So yeah, they want you to basically go buy it from them. Don't go buy it from GameStop or whatever. You get a one year warranty and everything you buy from US. I think the what was it, the PS five was four hundred and then the digital was thirty fifty, So hey, you want to buy refurbished. I don't think that's a bad idea from Sony. Again, Sony is trying to be They want to be the prestige console. They
want to be the apple of gaming. They want you to come to them for all their don't go to these stores, go to go to us directly, you know, so I don't blame them. What a way to get people to spend more money with you. It's smart on their end. But yeah, and really quick, just for people that there's only one game that has not released yet, which is Assassin's Creed Shadows that will have PS five
pro enhancements when it releases. Everything else is a game from either last year further away than that, or this year.
So Alan Wake two, Demon Soul's Dragon, Dragon's I'm A Two Final Fantasies Have and Rebirth grandtsed his most seven hard Wart's Legacy, which that one was funny to me because like, why are you showing a game that's winning at thirty a f PS horizon for in West, Marvel's Part Man two, Rastering, clangw Apart, the Crew, Motorfest, and the First Descendant and Last was Part two and Part one they confirmed also, so yeah, I guess that's cool
that all of your big first party is Sony. Most of your big first party Sony games will be available with PS four PRES five pro at launch. I'm sure this will sell out, whether it's scalpers, whether it's people that actually want it, whether it's a mixture of both. Uh, probably less scalpers this time, because that's a big price point to try to oversell that thing at already. Right, But we'll see, we'll see if a lot of the people that went I'm not buying this thing wind up
actually buying it or not. My thing with what you mentioned at the beginning, where I the whole thing about all it is because this laptop is really old. I do need a new laptop.
Yeah, it always seems like you have a problem with that laptop too.
Yeah, and so like I don't really do a lot of gaming on the PCs is not only for that. It's more of like, Okay, if I wanted to get a decent laptop, even where I know it'll be good for a while, it'll still cost at least with the PSI procoules, and it's like I can't. And then also the Twitch two is not too far away also, so it's like you got to start thinking about that, so you know, make your decision wherever you want to make it.
But I think hating on people that want to buy the thing is also not helping anyone, and it just makes you look like a total asshole. So you know, do what you do, folks. But moving on from Sony and will they won't they with the PSCIB pro and what they're gonna do. I already mentioned that they made that deal with AMD, gave you the game apparently going to enhance PSBR two games for anybody that still cares
about that. Really quick here to Microsoft, unfortunately, and very sucks, absolutely stucks to hear this and have to talk about this again. But once again Microsoft is cutting six hundred and fifty jobs from Xbox. Most of it I think is from Activision Blizzard in corporate roles and support roles, not like gaming direct roles. But still sucks that again we had this merger you talked about not laying people off. Understandably, this is just kind of the way that the industry
is working. I think I saw something where I saw this week that they were looking at like in this jobs in tech journalism and like other kind of fields that are adjacent are really bad, but gaming was so far the worst of all of them. That like this is significant. Is what is happening? Like people there is really a big purse going on because of the heights of the pandemic and then everybody cutting back and things not selling as much as you think they would have
and all that stuff. But again, this means twenty five hundred jobs now lost from Microsoft after the merger with Activision Blizzard to buy out. They are all that whatever term you want to use, absolutely terrible, just downright awful as far for all these people that were damn affected. Shouldn't have gone down like that either way. The thing is that sucks. And the only other thing that kind of sucks for everybody that got dropped into that game
Pass standard tier is the whole they removed. So not only did they just okay, tell you, okay, you got to go back down. You don't get any day one game, they removed forty one games that you had access to previously. Yeah, including you know, anything that came out this year to force you to go over, right, that's kind of shitty. Uh, not gonna lie, that's that's pretty shitty.
That that's Microsoft's that's a new Xbox slogan.
But no, it's it's absolutely freaking sucks because you know, like it's one of these things where okay, you tell everybody from this point forward, nothing that comes out is going to be on there. But then it's like, oh, you even tell somebody that you made it retroactive as well, right, and it's like, I think you could have put those details in right now. It's almost like, we know, we don't have anything to force you to want to move the rest of this year really except for until we
get the Indiana Jones. So we're gonna remove all those like Diablo Fords about to have the the expansion, so we're going to remove that, you know, We're gonna remove anything that already came out, and then all the other like third party stuff as well, and it's just like damn, that's just wow. You know, they told you, but they
they kind of missed out on some information. So right now too sucky shitty things from Xbox for this week that they they've done to consumers and to their workers unfortunately. But they did tell you that it was going to happen. They did tell you that you would have to move up a tear. They just kind of made it rather
abrupt and blunt right on that end. So also something like didn't expect at all and really sucks because and Aprono makes their gaming team, well they do the publishing, but they also do some they have they have one in house game that they made, but they do publishing, and there are great publishing arms. They have indies that get made on this with this team that are tremendous.
And just out of nowhere came the news that apparently Ana Purna Pictures was trying to spin off the gaming thing into its own independent production company or whatever, and that didn't come to fruition. At the eleventh hour, they couldn't come to an agreement, and then everybody just walked out. They quit, and right now Ana Purna has no gaming
division at all. They are saying that they're going to honor existing contacts to replace everyone, but I imagine that's not going to be something you're doing from one day to the next, right, Like this is a big deal, like to have an indie publisher like this, that is we're talking about like up there with the vulgar as far as like putting out premium products for indies just vanishing overnight like that.
What do you think when you well, I'm not I've actually I don't think i've ever played one of their games. Uh, at least off the top of my head. But my thought is it's a vote of confidence for the CEO or you know, the leadership that the whole team walked.
Yeah, supposedly the Alan Way can control thing that's with anapron the pictures, So that doesn't have anything to do with what happened here. But I thought, you've played Stray. Nope, you have not played Stray. Okay, well that was was on the Cocoon is also another great one that they made out of Wild's tremendous as well, But go ahead.
No, Yeah, looking at a quick list listed, I played Kentucky Red Zero.
That was kind of one of the earlier games. So yeah, and yeah, that's about it.
Never played at what remains to me the Finch either. Well, there you go. I got a list of games, but like they just go ahead.
Sorry, I played Gone Home, but I wasn't then obviously. Yeah.
I mean they just revealed that Morsel's game, like you know, at at the opening night Lives. So it's like, damn, they were just now you know, working on a game that was gonna come out la next year. They had other games that are supposed to be doing come out soon and then it's like that's just gone. So, man, sucks for all these people that I mean, I guess hopefully they find something better if they all walked out on this job. We don't really know obviously, the details
of what them going independent would have meant. I'm not sure if that meant that they're gonna not have any permits backing after all these contracts are over specifically, but man, that's that just sucks that that happened. And and also again what this means Forandon Pernam then just saying oh, we're going to replace everyone, Like, well, that's going to take a while to goo seepule accustomed to what that
game was and everything else. So I'm sure that's going to delay all of this stuff for these games.
Yeah.
Uh. And a bit of good news industra good news. Unity has canceled its run time fee, the one that we we talked about. Yeah, last year they were gonna start using it, as they did start using it as a January first and they're basically they were charging that royalty feed based on the number of times the game
was installed. H Then they walked it back and they said that it was going to be over a much much bigger amount and basically then CEO Matt Bromberg, which just randomly this week decided that we're just not even gonna charge this thing because there.
Was Yeah, because like their business you know, bombed out after they announce that stud be crap.
Yeah exactly. I mean, and they also they gave themselves a bad name where thown people like just said, okay, we're not even using unity anymore. Uh, We're going to purposely remove our game from being on Unity and it was already out even right. It's just it was a really bad look for them.
Yep.
And I guess this is kind of like their last ditch effort of like, please come back if you love because now we're not even going to charge you this feed that we were going to charge, so like the big.
Right, but no one's still going to come back to it. Yeah, you know, it's just a name of tarnish.
So yeah, probably not. I mean, it's good that they walked it back, but they should have walked that back a lot sooner.
Yeah.
Way, yeah, like the same thing, the same way you walk back some of the other stuff you should have walked us back to. Who knows that that's gonna affect them ultimately or not. What do you make of this Tony Hawk saying he's talking to Activision again?
You know, it'th anniversary. So you know, if they announced Tony Hawk three and four, it'd be cool, or a DLC for that game, or even a separate game that'd be fine. But probably just make some retrospective video or that's about it.
You would think that. I mean, Microsoft, you're sitting on it, man, You're sitting on guaranteed money.
Yeah, but I guaranteed big enough money, not.
Big enough money. It's still money, man.
And the problem is, I think, actually think the problem is is if they didn't want to make that game, like you know, DLC or like you know, three and four or something, you would have to put it on PS five.
Probably, yeah, for sure, because the other the other ones are on PS five, right, which that's not a problem for them. I think. Also it's like, okay, are you gonna pull people off of pull people that were in that Vicarious Visions team and like make a new team for this, Like who are you who would you have you know, actually bring in to make this game? So you know, because parts of that team are all kind of spread out there. Most of them are over there
helping that blizzard. So are you going to bring them back into the fold to work on this or are you just making a whole new team to do Tony Hawk. That's another thing. So, yeah, I wonder on that one. I guess let's go into unless you have something else you really wanted to talk about in the news, not really, okay, so let's go ahead and talk about Astroboll. So you reviewed it for full and one. Yeah, you gave it an ten.
Yeah, it kind of off the cuff for the hell of it. A few hours to.
Go, right, Like why not? And then I'm I talked to Keith about it. I'm gonna see if I'm gonna wind up reviewing it for Outer Haven. That was the plan. Nobody else will signed up for it, so I was like, why not. I want to get back to doing stuff for them, so I might do that. I finished it on Saturday.
Yeah, it's funny.
I finished game completely in two and a half days, like I got it from Yend's like early, like late one night, and then the next few days I justs marathon through it completely and I'm you know, I'm it's helpful that I'm just looking up, guys where crap is.
So that was good.
Ah see, I'm trying not to do that.
There's a problem so far.
I did use a little bird a couple of times.
Just yeah, after you that's for a level you can like, yeah, there's a god thing, but like you don't want to use that too much because like there's a trophy.
That you need to get a lot of money. You need a lot of money for to one lock.
Oh okay, so you need yeah, you need to buy.
One hundred and fifty items from that machine.
So oh I already have I think like one thirty or thirty five, so I'm close. But yes, I do see, like I did start seeing what you meant, like I used it. I think like two in a row. At one point I was like, oh man, this really kills
your coin. It was like, so yeah, now I can see why you're not mostly well, are probably just going on YouTube and not doing it this way or even doing the the community health thing inside the PlayStation Vive the PSN thing they have it where you can do like community uploads, and sure you had to do yeah, but I still love it, oh yeah even more. I mean just getting to that ending. What amazing. That ending was just like a trip down memory lane for that
if you love PlayStation at all. And what do you think about like the all the special levels I guess the ones I mean without spoiling.
Like did you I mean, they're okay, they're pretty good. I mean, what do you mean, like the five main ones or.
Like the five ones at the end of each the ones at the end of each world.
Right, yeah, uh.
My problem with well, I don't know to talk about just in review that much or at all really, but like the problem with that game kind of two funny things. One is they completely ignore sack Boy, which is a strange emission.
I act kind of understand. Yeah, the houster competition a little bit.
You know, it's because like it's still a plantation, you know, yeah brand or you know, like mascot, Like if they're allowed to put in Crash Bandicoot inspired who they didn't you know the other competitor owns them for god say, yeah, like come on.
Well, but that's that's different, I feel like because that's probably just Xbox playing ball and it's just them being like we get to we get to pull another one over on you that like Lexbox is working with us, that's how desperate they.
Yeah, you know, I think the game is kind of almost a bummer in a way because like the one spoiler is like that, okay, that first cameo level is you're playing basically like an Apscape level. Yeah, And it's like this is cool, and then you think about it for a minute and go, hey, whatever happened to eight Escape? And then it's like, yeah, when was the last time ap Escape came out? And you know, you realize that it was twenty years ago?
Yeah, maybe twenty.
I mean you can't play them on the as part of the PS plus.
So yeah, but you know what I would rather have or rather them do is a new inch Escape game.
Yeah, man, I totally get you. I thought about that too, right, like.
Oh they got like yeah, they got like a bunch of WHITEX shit in the game with the ships and crap, And I said, hey, whatever happened to Whiteout? It's like, yeah, the last Whitebuck game was the O Mega Collection, which was just a collection of old white Buck game.
Well, and now that studio got ended.
Right exactly, So yeah, you started thinking about like all these like Garrelic studios and Sony's Path that you know, that's what Xbox is doing right now.
So yeah, I mean there's another one that I was totally surprised, like, wow, okay, we went we picked this game. Is when like, okay, the other three make total sense, all right. The other three that are are are absolute the franchise right now. Yeah, Sony, when you think about okay, the one that I did not think wouldever be one of those, I'm just like, wow, I also have great memories of this game. And then it's like, yep, that thing.
Where is the jumping flash game like level you know.
But but but it is like an absolute, like really cool moment of damn. Really, this is all of Sony's history, right, like all these games shut up on these consoles and all the bots, like every time you meet one, it's like, oh damn that yeah that's from that game.
That was That was actually criticism I did level at the game is like they should have been like some encyclopedia for that crap.
Yeah, I'm really surprised they don't have something inside the game for that. I agree, because there's something it's just like.
Yeah, most of those, I mean, it detends on how in depth you are in PlayStation history, like I'm sure you and I sussed out of that stuff. Yeah, exactly, Like okay, I guess. Or it's like you know this
dreamer or something. Yeah, sure, why not, you know, but uh, my big problem kind of with the game, well we talked about it, like the the like that game needs an actual story mm hmm, or it's not a story, like it does need to be some deeply indulved thing, but like the story even you know, some asshole alien which to partner spaceship for like no good reason, and that's it. Like you know, they they don't even call it, like I only found out that guy's name right at the end of the game.
He could be he could be there their Bowser, right, he doesn't have all those years of.
Yeah except for like even in the Maria Brothers manual they literally call him Bowser or you know, like that's you know, yeah, what they should have done, which I thought it would have been funny, is if they call him xpot.
They can't.
But yeah, actually, like an actual story or like I would say, Astrobot like as a character is charming, but it has like no personality. I mean, you can say the same thing about sack Boy. Also really right.
I think he has more personality sack boy, because.
He it's all just kind of like responses.
He has like no agency in the game kind of And you know, Jens brought this up and he's like, well, I wouldn't want the character to be like why is cracking every thirty five seconds or something?
And it's like, I don't need that.
Even though if they did that, you know, you can get Jack Black in another role like hey, why not or Christmas?
But would you do you level the same issue at at Link with Legend of Zelda.
Also, yeah, partially, But I think the difference with Link is that is a very long lineage of him not talking you know, or you know.
But it's it's a robot, like it's he's really supposed to be like a child robot. So I can kind of understand why he doesn't talk like it's you know, he acts like a freaking child, almost like a baby in some ways, and you're kind of just pushing him along and he does.
That's the case.
It raises a whole bunch of questions for me, like who built this thing? Who put the PlayStation five spaceship? Is it like the Serni God somewhere or you know, like.
Well, yeah, I mean he has help from It wasn't Astro that built it, right, It's like these machines that are helping you build a bout togethers on Astro like working on them as you Right, you're the one that's supposedly helping him put it out together.
So I want to play this the pretty cool game where you find out the you know, humanity or the Creator raised and slave these robots and they took over and killed them all. But and the one one level or the one well, first of all, you're not gonna have fun at that last level.
I can guarant at you that I imagine that.
But the only power up I really didn't like was the monkey Hands one.
Yeah, that was the it awkward with the where you have to move the controller with the most controls. Yeah, that one's.
Yeah, and especially that boss fight you have to do.
Yeah, it's kind of clunky in there.
I do that ten times, maybe even fifteen, because you know, I just kept think it's like they want you to be quick, but it's like this thing does not make you go quickly.
So it's like, yeah, you have the problem.
Here, and you have to also make sure you don't get hit while you're up there.
Yeah, I would say the life it would have been nice if there's kind of there's actually kind of an upgrade system for the character, like hey you can boost longer, or hey you have more health you know.
Yeah.
So side from like the boss levels, like it's like one hit and you're done.
The only thing that I had an issue with kind of is the if you found the secret work zone you have to get.
Yeah.
So it's like, I get it that you want us to replay these levels, and they're kind of short for the most part, so it's not that big a deal. It's just more of like why to elect everything at once without having to redo it?
Yeah, you should have been able to just unlock it, be like okay, I found it, and move on exactly once you be at the.
Game, because then even if you go to the wrong one, like let's say you go to the one that actually ends the level by accident, you can't go back and try to find anything because once you're there, you're stuck. That's it. You have to end the level.
So I think that the best part of the game though, and it's a really minor detail kind of the grand scheme of things is that everything actually has physicality, Like they don't make shit up at all, or it's not decoration like the construction you play the construction zone or like level right right, like the fact that you can climb climb up on all the cranes and all the cranes have like coins on top, so it's like, Okay, they realize that people would want to do this, so
they put something up there. It's like, oh, it's a it's a neat little thing. Or one of the levels has one of the ghost levels, and they don't really reuse settings too much except for like the ghost level.
They reuse that like three or four times. But like one of the ghost levels has like a big spurt like tornado of cutlery or like digs.
Yeah, where you have to do the stop time thing.
Yeah, you have to jump between them.
And I actually I intentionally failed that like five or six times, just because I was jumping in every object I could see, and I was like, wait, there's like fifty or sixty objects in this think and they all like they're all actually there. You know, it's not they don't fake it, you know.
Yeah, they make it fun for you to interact with everything, explore, find things, find the items.
The only this isn't a criticism per se, but it is kind of an observation is they actually do have some levels, like some one off levels with power ups, like the sponge Man or the shrinking stuff.
Yeah, they only use it for.
One level, the water one.
Yeah, I thought that was actually really bad personally.
Yeah, the water one's.
But like the spungy one, they could have made two or three other levels and that have been fine, or like you know, the drinking one, or have one where it's like Godzilla or something like that.
You know, I would, honestly, I would love if they have did. I don't know if they would if they're considering, because apparently they are going to scale up the studio and give them more money. So I don't know if they're just going to just pack this thing with DLC constantly or what they're going to do with it, or they're going to put out little expansions. They already did say they're going to make more levels and more vip
bots and stuff like that coming on the road. So, like, I think some of the people, some of the ones that like I like, Twisted Metal was kind of surprised not in here because they have that show. And but like like most there's a lot of people that you know, from our our era, we would have known if you put sweet Tooth in the game, like all immediately, okay,
that we know what that's from. But like, to me, it's just kind of interesting that they could really with what they've done with this, they could really do like DLC packs of those cameo levels and do one for like a lot of the big games.
You know, like you said last time, like the omission of Square is extremely weird. And there's at least one or two other companies that like they aren't in there either.
I'm wondering if they're waiting for Sony to come with the truck and go, oh, we want to make an astrobot themes FOM fantasy, uh DEALC pack. What do you guys say? Yeah, you know, but I think that's what it is. I think they want Sony to come with an individualized Oh this is there, here's a screen, expect, here's a file fantasya, here's a I don't know, capcom pack or whatever, and and then you can put him
in there. Right. I think some of them are just like, Yo, we don't, we don't need to be in your game.
Right.
Then there's people like John Garbin that are just complaining that their guy is in the game, and it's like you should be excited that.
Instead of yeah, someone remember Days Gone for somewhat positive reason, not for the punk that it really is.
Yeah exactly. So it's like, what are you doing here? I mean, I get it. He's bitter towards Sony because of what happened. Though. We found out that apparently They's Gone too was an internal ending. It wasn't Sony the end of it. They apparently killed it internally. I don't know if that's because they were going to change a lot of what the game was gonna be or something. But yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a good game. You know. I would say, turn off bugs, controls and have a good time.
I had. I had fun with all that. I had fun with the most controls, all that stuff. The game is amazing. For me. I think it's right up there my second game for Game of the Year behind me.
It's a lot less gimmicky than the first game, which is good. The gimmicks are a lot more of an internal thing.
Yeah exactly, all right, we got like five minutes or anything you want to say about outlaws.
Or no, still bad. Uh, let's talk about people just for a minute.
Okay, sure, what do you think I enjoyed it?
I I kind of enjoyed it, Like I have more positive feelings and negative.
Uh.
The only two things that kind of didn't like. I didn't like Justin Throw's.
Character at all. I don't think I like him as an actress. That's kind of a problem.
But Yeah, But the thing I really didn't like what the movie actually is like the way they kind of punked out Dolores. Okay, likes seen this huge threat in the movie and she's completely dismissed at the end.
Yeah, Like I didn't get that. Like I thought we have like a much bigger confrontation they It.
Would have made a lot more sense, Like screw the sandworm ending crap would made a lot more sense. It's like she goes to suck up beal juice of soul and then like Lydia or the daughter saves saves them, and then he like rips up the contract himself. Like that's called scream writing one on one, not just like weird gay sex mocking the ending. Oh, the sand Sandworm trot up again just the first movie.
Yeah, I don't know, it's just well, that's it. They kind of like went towards the nostalgia a lot with it. They wanted to make sure they got all of the the stuff that you'd remember from the first movie.
I mean, having the having the one sandworm seeing alone would have been fine.
You know.
Ah, I have the soul train. That was crudely racist.
It was, it was it was, but it was it was funny in its own ways.
Well yeah, yeah, and it didn't. I mean, this is the spoiler, I guess, but like, okay, what's your name? What's her daughter's name? Not Lydia, not Delia as.
Uh.
So she meets the boy in the in the treehouse. They never explained why she can see the boy or.
Because apparently she has the same powers as her mom, but they wanted to be.
So they imply in the first movie they implied that the powers are from her reading the book. I don't know that that's why Otha could see him, you know, in the first one, and then she can also like see see his parents.
Yeah, I mean that's that's why it has to be from she got him from from Hereditary because like she can see everybody, it's not just right.
Yeah, but then when don't you be able to see ghost?
You know that might be a clue, like, hey, your mom's not making this up, you know.
Well, I mean, like I remember the one she really wants to she can't see her dad or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, but you gotta go.
So but I really I really enjoyed the movie. I think it's I'm glad that it made a bunch of money and the way they set it up. You know, let's see if there there's another one to come.
Make a third and hopefully need more of those two together.
Yeah, but when on a Ryder and I go, keep more amazing in the movie, so you know, love that. No, yeah, he's just quick, he's there and you know, right, but all right, Uh, thank you so much everybody for watching or listening. If you listen later on podcasts you watched later, Uh, just really quick here right now, this minute, probably when you're listening to it, not if you watch like today, but it's starting tomorrow. Plucky squire if you have PS plus,
go play that damn game. I'm hoping it's going to be amazing. I'm ready I'm excited to to play that as soon as I get done working. Also, the Prince of Persia DLC Mask of Darkness comes out same day tomorrow. Dead Rising the Luxury Master also coming out the day after, So if you've been excited for that Dead Rising remaster, you can definitely go check that out. If you need to play Jedi Star Wars or Star Wars Jedi Survivor on Last Gen, you can play it on that that
not Tria Last Song also comes out this week. That's the the Lighter Dark Souls game or not Dark Souls. That game that isn't gonna be on Xbox a little bit because of that whole kerf fluffle that they had got where Ryno Rock comes to PC, their early access to E Sports twenty five Sports, Frost Punk two also, which I remember you didn't like Cross Back one.
Right right?
Yeah? So all right, some good stuff, lots of very different stuff coming out this week, So hopefully you find something to enjoy. If not, keep playing Astrobot or whatever else and we'll see everybody later latter