You are listening to Video Games to the max. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Video Games to the Max is episode one hundred and twenty two, and I'm your host Sean Garmer, who with me as usual mister Mark Morrison. How do and well, we have plenty to talk about here today. As Mark has finished Metaphor Refantasio, I've played a little bit of The Horizons zero Oddan remastered and that Pokemon tcg app. I have to pull
myself aways and don't get addicted. There also some really it feels like it's inevitable news that was going to happen, but still sad nonetheless, as Sony has officially pulled the plug completely, this time on Concord and subsequently closed Firewalks studios. So we'll talk about that. Some good news with Xbox and Call of Duty and Nintendo also making up their own music app. You know there's Spotify, this other ass Nintendo of course, they got to walk their own kind
of deal and we'll double a gaming. Could that save the industry. We'll get into all that and more, all right, So just to go ahead and get this out of the way here, whether this is your first time watching and listening or you've watched us so many times, we do appreciate you. You can watch the show live, although right now it's a little bit on a weird schedule because I have to go based on my well, I can
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that's enough for the housekeeping. I guess let's go ahead and well, you went to that convention this week?
Right? Yep?
How was that pretty good?
I paid their extra like early access, so that that was better because like the longer it went, the more filled up it got.
Did you get to meet anyone or have them sign any.
They had three guys or they had four guys. There a Mortal Kombat artist I think he did like the logo. They had two dudes who were in Mortal Kombat, you know, like scorpions, like I forget the guy the Pasina brothers. I think they're brothers. I don't know. And the guy I met was a guy named Tim kitts Row. He was like the voice of NBA jam in NFL Blitz and I guess at did a lot of pinball stuff too, which I don't really know, but I can't definitely recognize some of them.
Yeah, his voice is definitely for I could see that.
Yeah, he does look very good like hearing normally speak. He's fine, but he does look a very good like. I don't think he's arrogant or anything, but he's a very good like Zach Brannigan or you know that type of like kind of pompous like newscaster type of voice when he wants to. It's pretty good. He was a nice guy, you know. He signed something for me or signed a few things I had. I brought like to an NBA jam Manuel from to sign, so I gotta
buy those games, I guess now. But he was cool, uh, And I had I actually wrote like a pretty long list of crap I was trying to find. Some of it was like easy, uh, Like I was trying to find a copy of like Kirby's Dreamland too for like the game Boy or on your list there, and it was an I was gonna easy one. Actually that was about the only easy one maybe or you know, but I found four things I was looking for I found
Kirby Streamland two. I finally had a copy of Bay Based Kids for the Superintendo, which was objectively one of the worst games ever made. Uh, there's like no way you can argue against it. I had it as a kid, That's why I kind of wanted to play. I mean, and I hated it when I was a kid.
So the game you hated as a kid, you also would have as a Yeah.
It's like I think it's like unfinishable because it just gets like so fucked hard, like by the third stage, it's impossible. Like, but it's been like it's not an expensive game. I got like thirty bucks, but I said, but it's one of the really hard to find games, you know. I just like I've been looking for it for years, and this is the first time I saw it, like and I only saw it like at the like the last booth or you know, you know, the last
like table. This guy had it, and I was like, wow, Okay, well, yeah, I'm gonna buy this one because this is the first time I've seen it, you know, right. Well, the other two things, the other two things I found in my list were, Uh, I finally found a copy of Strider too with both discs, which is cool, and it's a
pretty nice copy. It was a little more expensive than I wanted to spend, but it's kind of a rare game, Like, that's an expensive and rare game, especially since, like most times I see it, it's missing like a disc, which is kind of a problem. Yeah, and that game is funny. It's infamously funny because it has a disc for Strider one and Trier two. When they sent it to manufacture, they fucked up the labeling, so the Strider two disc is actually Stritter one and Strider one is actually Stritter two.
Oh nice.
Every game is like that, or every disc is like that. It's a you idiots, Like.
If you don't know that, you might get the wrong.
Not because the boat discs coming coming the same thing, but most most games, or most copies of reason, I'm like missing a disc and it's like, yo, this this came into two disc case, like and then MA says two discs, so they have. The big thing I got on my list was a copy of Castlevania Something of the Night for the Sega Saturn. Obviously the best way
to play that game. Yeah, a like mediocre port, but it is interesting because it has uh Maria as a third character, and she's playable in another version of the game, but she's different in that one. Uh So that's you know, that's why I got kind of got this. It was like two hundred dollars. I think I talked to a guy on like one to eighty. I think. Ah. The other things I didn't this was the were one of
my lists. The other things I picked up were I picked up the Cassylvania sympthing that strategy guide.
Okay, that's cool to have.
Yeah, it's exceptly my bucks. I mean it's old, but you know, the prices on eBay and my Car were a lot more so, right, And I picked up something in that soundtrack. Yeah, so I picked up three something that.
Well, that's a pretty awesome soundtrack.
So yeah, I'd say, like one of the ten best soundtracks to a game ever. So all right, And the other two things that picked up a kind of smaller thing. I picked up a hidden otic game for like two bucks called Angelica Weaver Catch me when you can have it on Steam. But it was like a physical copy and I had like some fond memories of it, so
I'm liken' why not. I had like the loose change to pick it up, so I'm like, who cares h And I picked up a big box copy of Moto Racer two, an old, uh you know, motorcycle racing game from like nineteen eighty eight. I think that was like five bucks.
Uh.
You know, I saw some friends there. The funny thing is is in this convention center, like the City Convention Center, and like in a different part of the building was a big early voting set up. Yeah, so that worked out well when people were like in line for the gaming thing and they're like, oh, no, voting's over here, you know.
Yeah, people going to the wrong one.
Yeah. Uh. So the thing said it had pinball, but I think it was in a different room because it wasn't in the main room, and I was kind of tacked because I was like, where the fuck is it? And then I was there for like four hours, and by four by like the you know, three and a half hour mark, I was, you know, I'm exhausted, so I just left. But apparently they did have pinball, but it is in some separate room that I didn't know about, Yeah, which is kind of a shame because I would have
liked to have played. Uh yeah, people had some good stuff. There was some stuff I kind of wanted, but you know, I didn't want or I might have had the money, but I didn't want to spend all of it there, you know, right, and the big stuff I was looking for, you know, like a game Boy Light or uh, you know the limited edition of Shenmu one. You know, no one had. I didn't see any copies of Vagrant Story. That was kind of a rare game. I guess it's getting to be a rare game.
Wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, it's not like I don't think that's available digitally. Yeah, so yeah, definitely right now.
The one game I saw there, which is actually extremely expensive and rare, it was a Genesis game called Musha. I have a friend who wants to sell his copy, you know, probably to me, hopefully hopefully shoat price if you're listening to Frank. But I saw like three copies there, and I was like shocked, just like ex yeah, well one copy was eight hundred dollars. One copy was like seven fifty, and I think like one copy is like four fifty, and I'm like, damn, like that's a low.
I mean the four fifty copy was sold in a good condition too. I'm like, that's all right, but uh yeah, I had fun. I had like I was operating on
like no slate because I was really excited than before. Yeah, So I got to I got there like two hours of sleep, so by the time I was done, I was like exhausted, and I went to it like another game store in the area, looked around for like ten minutes, and then went back to my car and crashed out for two hours, and then drove back home because I was like, if I fighted right back home now, I'm going to die.
Yeah, probably a good idea that you slept for a while before.
I was looking for a copy of Speaking in five. Two people had. One copy was like one twenty, which isn't that bad, I guess, But one copy was like one to eighty and it was one D because it came with like this weird art of Sweaking in five, like extra disc set that had like a little booklet and like soundtrack. That's why I was more. I was like, that's cool, but like this thing is like thirty bucks by itself, Like it's not sixty. So I wonder if you sold.
That one, you know, yeah, well probably not right.
But it was good. Uh, you know, it got early on it was extremely nice to walk around, but you know, by the end of it, I could barely walked on the aisle because there's so many people there. Yeah, I got four things off my list, so that's two more than I thought I would.
That's always a plus. Now you can just wait till the next thing to see if you.
Can say that'll be in March, I think, or I think in March for April. Yeah, I had fun, and yeah, it's good to like get with a group of like other gaming nerds and to talk because I talked to a few few people, so that's cool.
Yeah, I mean that's always a plus when that could ever happen, because it feels like, you know, before you could even count go into a game stop or like retro game store, sometimes you can't even like count on that anymore.
Really, right, it's actually game stuff. I went to one, actually go to a game stuff like last weekend, just good as curious and I was like, give any retrospect.
He's like, no, the retro store.
No. But even the retro store by me is kind of terrible.
So yeah, and not good.
Yeah, the retro store by me wouldn't have like, uh, you know, Vagrant Story or The Tense or shim My Double Summoner Collector's Edition for sale. So yeah, you know, good luck with that, all right? Yep? I had fun. And if there's a retro convention by you, you should go to see it sometimes.
Yeah, definitely, I think anybody that has an interest in the retrogaming or definitely go to a convention and like see what they got there, see if you find one of those hidden gems, you know, looking right.
Yeah, definitely surprised that I found a copy of Tracula or something in the Night for the Saturn.
Well that's to come like really rare recently, or.
It's about unor bucks, you know. I mean, it's not like the rarest game, but even want it because you know, people like something to night and I had it up last night. I owned five copies of that goddamn game now for physical releases, and I'll and I'm missing like one like there's like an Xbox three sixty version to actually put on a disc like some you know collection. I don't know that one yet, but I will.
Yeah, all right, well how it goes the you you've officially finished metaphor Defensasio.
Now, yep, I beat it last week. Uh that's a long ass game. You thought it'd be shorter, but it's not really because you have to grind quite a bit.
Yeah, I told you, don't. Don't be thinking it's going to be short. How what was your your final taling.
Let's talk about eighty hours?
All right, yeah, that's that's around the the hour mark that five.
Yeah, so I didn't get all the bonds. I missed like one by like one step. I don't think I here correctly. It was Katerina or Katherina, I missed about like one. If had like one extra day, I probably would have could have done it. My god, damn it. Yeah, I missed all of the or most of the debate stuff. So I'm not playing it again, and on this time, I'm just following one hundred percent guide and it's making it a lot easier now because I have all the
social stats maxed out. So the guy says like, oh, go read the book to boost your wisdom, Like yo, dog, I don't need you anymore. Like yeah, I can just do whatever. Ill you know, go vacuum and get more HP. Right. The one thing that tripped me up pretty bad. Was about three fourths of the to the game, you unlock
like the Prince archetype. That's like the royal archetype for the main character, right, And I guess I missed it, but maybe the game said like, hey, your other characters have royal archetypes as well, and I just didn't see that.
So when I got like the last stage or like the last big dungeon, I was like, Okay, I don't really need like a blow by blow of the main boss like to find a boss, but what are the archetypes like GUIDs are suggesting, And it was like, okay, for the for the Lewis boss fight, have the main character with the Prince, have Hulckenberg be the Royal Knight.
Have heist may be like the Royal Thief. And I was like, what's this royal ship rh And I'm looking at I'm looking at like Hulkenberg's like archetype map, and I'm like where is this and where the prince architect is in the map that's like where the Royal night is for her, And I was like, god damn it, Like you know, I've been grinding for like five hours or four of this like and like filling up like archetypes on these, on these like other characters that like
they don't need your you know, you know, it's not like Hi's May needs like the faker archetype or bullshit like right, And for most of these, I could have just unlocked it from the get go. So like by like the last safe point, it's I had like enough XP experience architype stuff to like max out Hultenberg's like Royal Night one, and I think that I'm not tis
May's like Royal Thief one, but that was it. Like there's like a Royal Healer when I didn't hit it all and a lot of them require like oh, the Royal Thief you need to have like the tycoon job to like level ten and like you know, the to
like double twenty. And it's like, well, for like the Royal Healer, she had one like her advanced one was like you know, she needed the you know, wizard archetype to be like level ten, and I'm like she is like two jobs below that, like she's just barely hit the Mage one, so to I'm locked, May, you know, I have to unlock Mage then Wizard then like one more and hit
that had level ten, so that ain't gonna happen. I'm not doing all that I and I still hate that, like that MP stuff in that game is just so limited. Like at the last stage, it's just like if like the gun or a guy forget his a name, uh, the guy who runs your ship was like, oh, hey, this is the last dungeon. So if you come back to like the starting area, I can I can heal
your party and gave you full MP HP. That would have been awesome because I could have ground in that last dungeon for ten hours and I'm like, on that crap. But it's like no, ear screwed, Like you know, run to the left, you know, do these like last six boss fights, which are also like pretty hard to get all the cool weapons and then run to the boss and that's it. It's like, great, when I hit the boss, I have like one h MP thing left because I burned it all these other stupid bosses.
And there's no so it's like a total boss rush at the end.
It's not a no you can't exploit. You can either. You can ignore all the other bosses, but all the other bosses give you like the like the best tier weapons in the game.
Oh all right, that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, and there actually is a trophy where it's like, oh, if you just ignore all the bosses and run to the like the last guy, louis your trophy. But it's like, well, and I also make.
You make it harder for yourself. You get a trophy.
Okay, yeah, but I'll do it on this one because you know I have all the experience. Well, they reset your level, but not the archetype level. So once you unlock the archetypes, then they're already maxed out or whatever they were from the last fight.
That's good. That way, it feels like you have to do stuff again and not right like, oh, I'm just at max everything killing these like level three goblins that I have to go through.
Right, But because you do carry over your weapons, so I already have like the best weapons. So some of those fights are a lot more fun when you can like one shot a boss or like, yeah, instead of those boss taking ten rounds, it took three.
So that's a lot better.
All right, Cool, don't have to have.
Like an hour boss sight.
Yeah, but yeah, now just falling to guy and it's kind of more fun actually, because you know, I'm not as concerned about what I need to do or you know, having to make money or grind this stuff out, you know, but I enjoy the game. I I you know, I don't think it's their best work though.
It's what I'm going to ask you, was, where is this on your you know, we're getting we're getting to that time we've got only a couple of months left, or but basically like a month left, where is this on your game of the year?
It would probably be in my top ten, but it'll probably be like kind of maybe like mid around number five or so, or you know, in Geting number one, I can tell you that, or even like two or three.
So so, like the story didn't do much for you, I keep hearing as everybody's saying the story.
There are a pretty some pretty good story twists, like near the end, I think the I think the lack of romance is actually kind of a problem because it's harder to connect, I mean, for good or for bad. It's harder to connect with some of the characters. And like one kind of one character does kind of come off as a romantic interest, but it doesn't actually happen.
Right, makes sense?
So I think it's like Hayes Mean is like a really good character. He's like a little bat creature character. He's cool. But some of the other ones are a little more, especially like the later ones are a little more not written that well or you know, not as fleshed out.
It's kind of the same thing that happens with the later ones in Persona five.
Yeah, like yeah, grew barely got Yeah, same thing happens in this game. But because there's like a lot less game, a lot less you know, time in this game, that right, you know, it gets more more and more compressed.
Well you you weren't following the calendar for the first one, did you feel like you needed it?
Yeah? No, Like I'm still a little salty I missed like that one Bond day or whatever. But there's stuff in the game that like they could have exto better, or you know, they could like the whole debate system, like it would have been nice if they pointed this out a little better or had me do one at the start and then say, hey, there are more of these at specific dates, so look at the calendar, dumb ass, And yeah, they have a calendar, but it's pretty useless.
Right, because a lot of time, right to complete this stuff.
Well, it just basically tells you, like when the when the deadline is or whatever. Story Bet it's gonna happen. That's about it. It's not like, oh, these four characters you can you can interact with one of these four characters per day, right, there's like another menu that tells you that pretty explicitly. But that's not everything you can do in the game. But yeah, I'm having fun.
That's important part.
Yeah, I did try Prince of Persia, the Rogue Kingdom or Crown or Yeah, I don't think I like that game.
You don't. I'm surprised.
I think I don't like it because I don't like the combat, like it's kind of too tough or uh, maybe I'm just bad at it. But like the whole encountering thing, I'm like not creat.
It does take some getting used to. It's not I think I got I got killed by that first boss a couple of times and then I eventually like got it. Yeah, but it takes a bit to the countering and the it's a lot easier on the regular enemies, but then when you get to the boss, it's like they ramp.
It up and I faced one boss kind of and that was actually fairly easy. I thought it was just like big dude swinging around the column. It was like pretty telegraph. That's why I thought it was easy. But I'm like, I think it's kind of more challenging against like the regular enemies because you don't have a ton of health in the game, and you don't get a lot of health back. You get like the two potions, but that spot it. So I would say, all right, uh, if I lose three forces in my health on one
boss or one one enemy, that's not great. But I don't know if I'll go back to it. I mean, I could bump it down the easy. I guess it's kind of admitting that I'm a loser, so I don't want to quite do that yet. But yeah, yeah, I just don't like the combat or just not clicking with me personally.
But do you like like the rest of the game, like the game, I'm still.
Like the tutorial area okay where the demo, Yeah, I was, and I think the demo was better. I don't know, I mean, I mean, same thing, but I think the demo kind of accelerated the well.
The debt, like you start out a part that's before the demo, and then you get to the part where the demo is, and then when you like before you get to the like where the second world is, the demo ends.
So so yeah, the demo actually, uh I was I was in the area with the demo, but they gave you that bow already or that was pretty quick, and now I don't have that at all, ah, and I miss it. So I think that I think the demo is explicitly I said, like, hey, this is a little more accelerated than the main right, give you to show you more of the combat. Uh So that's not fun. I don't know. I may go back to it, but I may not.
Yeah, there's still some things coming out still, so I don't believe you if you don't anything else. No, yeah, well I did, since I got it for that ten dollars upgrade. I said, you know, why the hell not got that Horizons? It was down remastered.
I may grab that. I'm not quite sure.
I unlike you who you know you reviewed the first game, right or both of them are okay. I I've never I've played like that first tutorial area when you're still young, alois and I remember dropping it really fast. I don't remember exactly why, probably because of something else came out that I was a lot more interested in at the time, and then I just never went back to it. So I was like, you know, there's probably other things I need to be playing, but I'm gonna give it a
like fair shake. And then it kind of got me for I got all the way to the part where it's still early obviously, but it's I got to the part where she she does the proving ring and she's you finally get the like crux of the story part, and then it kind of sets you off on all right, you're out of the first area. Now you got to go do this. But yeah, man, it's I like, I like the just the kind of simple gameplay of just
all right, collect things. I love the way that the bow feels when you like pull it back and it slows down and shoot the machines and that feels fun. They did that really well, and asked her about by the Way too, because it feels pretty much like the same way. Yeah, and then yeah, just I like just doing the upgrades and finding different things. So so I went back. Man, I got lost for like I think an hour and a half. I went back to the ruins because I had seen where you could get like
one of those like artifact thing the power cells. Yeah, I went back looking for it. I find it, and then I get completely lost trying to figure out how to get back to where you can get out of it. And I eventually had to go like find a I had to go do a where it like make it do a quest so it does the tracker, and the tracker is still kind of confusing because the the numbers
keep going up and down, up and down. Until I found a part where like, oh there's light, let me just jump, and then she jumps out of the It's like, holy crap. I could have figured this out like in twenty minutes, and I'm here for an hour and a half wasted. I'm rolling around in this thing. Yeah, but no, it's it looks great. On the remaster part. You could definitely tell how much it looks better. You could tell it looks a bit different, more like the Forbidden West
alois and things just look brighter, look look awesome. That sounds better, So you can you can tell that the remaster work. They did a really good job on that, and it looks great on a on a four K TV. So if you have that ten dollars upgrade, and maybe you're like me, you haven't you got it for I got it for free. I got that complete edition for free when it was you know, they were giving it away during the pandemic.
I think I got That's how I got it too, because I did review that game, but I have the complete edition now for some reason.
So yeah, and that one gives you an extra tier on the upgrades that you can you can get as well for the Frozen Wiles or whatever expansion. So yeah, I'll probably add that to the list of things to just I guess keep plugging away at at some point, Well.
It's a good game that kind of you can just put on like it's not like that involved necessarily, So yeah.
Is that especially there's a lot of open world stuff where you're just that part is very story heavy, but I know you get to like side quests as you go on, So yeah, you can just like put on a podcast and kind of I listened.
I actually listened to Jeff Gersmon podcast from like a week or two ago when this thing came out, and he made the point that I kind of agree with that, Like he likes the first horizon that more than the second second one.
Interesting, Yeah, a lot of people liked Forbidden West.
And like he didn't even finish Forbidden West. I mean I finished it, but he didn't like call like the stupid clone bullshit. And uh, I don't like Forbidden West because like they reduced the game. Like it's the same problem I have with Amazing Spider Man too. It's like they reduced they reduced the combat option and it kind of made it like a more simple, simple game. And it's like, no, you should have made this more complex or I mean you went to act I like that.
Like when you fight the first boss, you can use the trip castor if you want, or you can just go around shooting there.
In the first game, you can set up you know, there's no limit on the trip cast or bolts or whatever. You can just set up twenty of them if you want to do who cares. Yeah, the second game can only set up like three, and if you set up a fourth one like the first one goes away.
And I'm oh, I guess because people were abusing it too much because they basically, you know, they like they even explain it to you like, oh, you can set it up like one after the other to where you could basically just constantly make him run into it and he yeah, enemy never touches you.
Here's the thing who cares right like, you know, like I want.
You know, part of it. You can do that if you want.
And the second game if they don't have that.
So I'm all right, but yeah, I definitely kind of get the whole The people that like it, I can kind of understand. I guess maybe Forbidding West they made the hand holds a lot more telegraph because yeah, one where I'm just kind of like where, yeah, where am I supposed to go? Here?
Right?
So, but yeah, that's the kind of the main game I've been playing. And then today during my break and then also at times here and there if it got slow, I tried out that Pokemon TCG pocket and it definitely has the micro transaction. It's it's not hiding that at all. It is definitely there to try to get you to buy more card packs. Uh. They definitely they give you a lot of card packs at the beginning to kind of get you to you know, be cool with that
and and want more. It's no, it's to me, like I just got into the part where because you have to like get to like level three where it starts doing the battle tutorial and then you can do battles if you want. And then they have like a whole AI not like a story, but like a whole challenge
thing that you can do if you want. You don't have to battle against other people if you don't want, but they do make get you know, it does have like a big collection aspect, so it does make you want to go do that, go collect the cards to different cards, and it kind of tells you every time you get a new money that puts you puts it in the slot for you, like a polkad Ex, And so I can kind of get why it's addicting for people. But honestly, and they give you a new card pack
every like twelve hours right now. They might extend that at some point or less than I don't know if they what they'll do with that. Uh So, honestly, I would tell people, don't waste money. Honestly, don't waste money if you're sitting there blowing money, which obviously didn't till I want you to do. This thing's already made like a ton, and this is them only being able to track iOS numbers. I can't imagine what it's doing on Android.
But according to mobile gamer dobiz, since the game released, it's made around three million dollars per day on its debut weekend and twelve point one million in this first four days, earning more revenue the Pokemon Go, which is a huge testament to that game. And obviously Japan accounts with like four percent of the total number of game downloads and about forty five percent of the game's earnings. You know, Japan loves their mobile games stuff like that.
But I think what they're they're showing is like ten point five on it, the million is on iOS, and then one point six on Android. But still, I tell you right now, don't waste money on that. Try to do it by by waiting for the twelve hours or doing some of the quests that it has you do. And at first you're getting a lot of packs, and
I don't know if they changed the packs. Eventually there's only like three of them, three different packs that you get, and it does show you like a little preview of the cards that you can possibly get in those out of the three and then you know, I enjoy battling with that. It doesn't have like the most It's very simple like TCG battling thing as compared to like say Yu Gio or Magic or some of the other ones. So right, it's something easy for the kids to pick
up and play too. But you know, if you're a parent, this is one that definitely make sure you have your password protect on for the the purchases because you could see the kiddos wanting to go crazy about but I need the squirrel that's shiny, or I need the the charges are that looks cool, like you know, and they keep buying like five packs constantly. So but it's cool. Good to see that it's working for Nintendo and it was worth the investment for them to bring that out.
Taking a Pokemon have you seen any of the where you typically grocery shopping.
I go grocery shopping either at Walmart, but I go to like the green walmert. I try not to go to the big Walmart because.
Okay, yeah, Walmart doesn't have them. But at the Kroger's I occasionally go to they have the Pokemon vending card machine.
Oh really okay, yeah, like the first.
Time I went there wasn't working, Now now it was. I mean, it looks cool. I don't care about. But I'm like, I can see what I could see a kid being into this or you know, like bugging their parents for oh yeah, three bucks or you know whatever.
I see them there when I do go to Walmart. They're there in the aisle when you check out and stuff like that.
Yeah, what it was, I can actual like machine, right, that's cool because I guess I guess the reason they're doing this is like, yeah, stores were getting fed up with like, you know, having to care about this crap you know, well, I mean.
And also makes it a lot easier for the scalpers to come in and take the stuff, right, it's harder if you have to buy like random packs. Well, yeah, that's that's Uh, that's kind of it for me as far as what I've been playing. So I guess let's go on. Uh there's one game I can't talk about that literally the code just came in today, so in
a few weeks, I guess we'll get to it. But yes, let's get on with the news, which I guess let's really quick just to get this out of the way because it doesn't take them long to get through Paystation Plus stuff for this month, which by the time you're listening to this or watching it, if you're watching it past the fifth of November, you could pick up the games for November, which one of them is Hot Wheels on Least two Turbo Charged, which if I remember right,
people still liked one a little bit more than this, but hey, you can get it for free, so why not if you subscribe to Plus Ghost Bar Tokyo, which is obviously you know, used to be PUS exclusive. It's on game Pass now because the you know it's there. And then they have a new game they releasing Day one, Death Note Killer Within, which is like an online social deduction game where you're look it looks really kind of simple. It's very it was made for the multiplayer. This is
not I wouldn't you know. I think it's something cool to check out if you're a fan of Death Note, which I am, but I'm not going to check this out.
Uh.
You get to either be team l or Team Kira and do one of the other, either figure out who the killer is or figure out the person that needs to be killed or whatever. It's a pretty simple concept. We'll see if it does anything for bend on Namco as far as like social interaction and whatnot. But I could kind of see this is kind of hitting and then not going very far. But we'll see.
I mean, yeah, it'll be some I mean to make Yeah, definitely a billion copies.
But the big story here for Sony this week is we talked about this. I feel like it's not that long ago that they shut down Concord h and then there was an idea that they were possibly going to bring it back to be free to play. There was some like updates that were being kind of backloaded into the game while it was being well, it was still shut down, and then the announcement came that I think either you or I or both of us, I can't remember.
I meant to go back and listen to the episode and then I didn't get to you while I was working that I can't which one of us said it, but that they wouldn't bring it back at all, and it's not a prediction.
Yeah that's probably me. Yeah I'm a negative one, but I think.
I remember feeling the same thing that there was just there's there's a there's a situation this game was just too polluted, it was too like, it was so negative the vibe that there's no way you could bring this back. And I think Sony finally kind of looked at it, maybe pull the Warner Brothers discovery and said, you know what, maybe we might as well us take the loss on this, get a ride off, and get seventy five million back or something out of this, which is way way, way
less than what they paid for it. But still the point is Sonny wanted this to be gone from existence, and this is basically a way for them to completely finish this off. It's not coming back. The refunded everybody already when they were interesting refund people even who bought it physical. I think that was kind of the telltale sign that for sure, this thing is not not happening. What sucks is that they're also now closing down the studios. Well,
so Firewalks Studios is closed right now. They are going to try to put in as many of the developers as they possibly can into other studios at Sony or other PlayStation studios, but there's no oh like indicative number, so it could be there's I think. And also they shut down the Neon KOI one of their mobile studios, which they had bought not too not too long ago.
They were supposally be working on a shooter and then that somehow got canned when they let go of the the person that they hired to head their mobile studios, and then they were working on another game. But we'd add that Herman Hosts is an adventure game, but they don't name the game or anything like that, so it's just kind of nebulous as far as what that was concerned.
But they closed down both of those studios. I think in total, it's two hundred and ten employees, and we don't know how many of those two hundred and ten employees are going to still be working at Sony after they get done doing all of the stuff that they're going to do. Herman Hosts, you know, kind of made a stay saying that, oh, there was some things about Concord that worked, but a lot of it didn't hit, you know, with with the audience, and you know, they
didn't hit their targets for what they wanted. So and then I mean, obviously, when you invest two hundred million, uh, and then also you bought the studio, you're paying salaries of all these workers and all the extra investment they had to do to get the game where it was, which is where Colin Moriarty came out with that four hundred million number from the dev that he talked to.
So I think that kind of vindicates him a little bit because there was a lot of journalists that were upset at the fact that he kind of just threw if they were saying that he basically just like threw the number out there, and it's like he was talking to a source. And then you kind of look at it and it's like, I think Sony knew they also had to like get a lot of that back as well.
And then and I think if you look at a bigger picture, this kind of puts Bunge in a bad spot as well, because if Marathon doesn't hit, where where does that go for them?
Like at Marathon is not going to hit correctly because they I think you're touched on it today or a few days ago, that it's gonna be some extracting tutor, but like a you know, some action oriented you know extraction. Shoot, It's like that's not exactly what people want, you know.
I think it's also a very crowded market, which is that's the problem, yeah, itself. And then also it's like, Okay, you might get a little bit of help the fact that this is multi platform, but are you really going to get that much? And then it's like every time they talk about the game, it's not great news either, Right, it's a lot of negative. Oh, it's not ready to show we've made progress, but you know, and it's like it feels like everything that comes out of Bungee Is is not positive.
You know.
They they announce that they have the lower the amount of updates they're going to do for Destiny. They're going to do like smaller updates instead of the one big expansion or whatever now too long ago that we talked about too. And it kind of feels like this is that how much of this is the old regime, right of Jim Ryan, and how much of us are we going to put on the current regime that kind of
decided to keep this going, right they could. They decided to keep investing in Firewalk and bring it out the way it was, even though there was early beta tests and and other things that were telling you they didn't it was a good It was a good game in essence, But there's a lot of things that weren't driving even back then, and then when the game comes out, it's
just hits a lot of different points. Aside from the grifters, I'm not even talking about them, right, there's just regular people that had issues with the game that are not not trying to, you know, start a stupid story about d and all that crap. So what do you think this means for like Sony's whole live service stuff. Do you think that this really gets them to have to rethink that and go, what do we do with the rest of these games?
I think it's I think most of the live service stuff is not gonna it's not gonna come out. I think that Horizon thing might come out, and Marathon will come out, but I don't think it's gonna be like the traditional like live service game and Herman Hult saying like, oh, this live service game Concord didn't hit correctly. It's like that wasn't what Concord is supposed to be, Like it didn't have a battle pass, it didn't have it wasn't like it wasn't like free to play.
Or you know, like, yeah, they they heard it from the beginning with that forty dollars price point too.
Yeah, I don't think even if the game was like you know, free to play necessarily, it might not have hit correctly, but more people probably would have played it. But I I think, like I actually you think, like you know, the art style and a lot of a message in that game did hurt it. So that is kind of on them, you know.
Yeah, I definitely think obviously, look, this live service push was started by Jim Ryan, right, so it again leads to that whole thought of did he leave or did Sony kind of tell him?
Yo?
Man, I think that's kind of we're getting to the end, you're starting to you're starting to spend a lot, we're not seeing a lot of return. And then they kind of look at the big spend and they look at where those games are at and they go, oh, this might be a mistake. And when they're starting to find the person that they're gonna blame, they go, oh, man, you know what, Jim Ryan, We're not going to renew
your contract, and you know all that stuff. It's just like it feels very eerie that he left all of a sudden, and then all these things start kind of going in a domino down you know, Factions is canceled, you get the stuff with Concord, Destiny is not doing well. Did you spend did you buy Destiny? Did you buy Bungee and then not realize the mess that they're in. You know, it feels like a lot of bad decisions, right, Yeah, as Dragon Hero zero zero put it, you know, they
never should have tried to make that game. Yeah. I don't know who looked at that and said that this was going to be the next Star Wars or the next big thing. They were completely wrong about that, obviously.
I think that. No, I think I think they're completely right. It's just it's it's the next current Star Wars thing as opposed to the good Star Wars. Look what a big success Acolyte is. Yep, it's the next Star Wars thing.
I feel like Accolade had more fans than this game did. Though. It's like, I'm so surprised by those people that went out there and got the platinum and did all that stuff. Again, again, they made a good game, but it's just like there's a lot of stuff around. It just didn't work right unfortunately for the people that are working there, which this is the bigger point. It sucks for all these all the devs that may lose their jobs, may have to
go find work outside of Sony. Now, whenever this, I'm sure we'll get the news on how many people are being retained and all that stuff that sucks. I hate to see that for them. The Neon Koi thing is weird also because it's like we never even got to know what they were working on. And then was this also started by Jim Ryan as well, this let's get into mobile, and then it seems like they're a bit
more less gunshot about that. Hermit Holst says that they know that they have to get into mobile, but it needs to live up to the quality of PlayStation, right, which, okay, that's nice of you to say, but can you actually do that? And it's like, maybe you had the right idea with Bungee, Right, get somebody that's used to doing live service to do the live service game that obody exists, and they make you a live service game that's starting fresh with you in Marathon, even though Marathon used to
exist previously on PC and whatever. But they didn't do the same with mobile, And I feel like that's where obviously Microsoft got the biggest fish in the pond with King. I mean, you can't really go any bigger than that. But even Sega went and got Robio, and it's like, obviously, now you can't go just buy a company because you've
made all these other mistakes. But it's like, it's weird that somebody didn't go and try to buy a more known mobile game developer that obody had something that they could kind of count on for revenue and say, okay, well, now work on this for us, like a Horizon mobile game, or I don't know, put Lastamus factions on mobile, or do you think that they have a franchise that's that would be good for that arena, or because like a
lot of their stuff's like narrative based, so tear away. Yeah, I mean, like, could you have done something with like that Ghost of Sushima multiplayer and kind of transferred that over to mobile as well? Possibly people like that thing. I just I feel like you got to start with
something that I guess you could say. It's kind of like what they're doing with the Destiny mobile game is that's being developed by Netty's and it's kind of different than it's not really going into Destiny too per se, but like start somewhere there something that's being made with mobile in mind, and it's also going to be on console to get them to play together instead of saying, Okay, here's this mobile game that we're making. Hope you play it,
because right now it's I don't know that. None of that feels good. Maybe Destiny will work because Nettes knows what they're doing with mobile, but I don't know the rest of the stuff is just like even when Nintendo was making it right, they have games that are that work with mobile, right, like Mario Kart.
I think like, it can't make like a wipeout iOS game. They're kind of cool to me.
Or you know, they did do that right, but it didn't. It didn't do that well because it's not it's like.
We did if it made a good wipe out, you know. I think the problem is a lot of Sonny stuff is more as console sized and focused, right, so they can't just you know, make make a Spider Man iOS game. It's like, Okay, it's gonna be so dumb down tonight, like resemble Amazing Spider Man. So what's your point a Spider Man endless, endless Runner or endless Swinger? You know it's kind of funny, but.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know that Disney would go for that either, because it's like they want to return on the investment, all right, But it's like, how do you turn the Last of Us or Horizon or insert s Go Sushima whatever into a mobile game? Yeah, like a spin off that's only mobile and then you know, get them to play that.
That was the problem Sony had when they had the Vita. Remember that Uncharted a game that no one liked, Like, oh you know, it's like the console experience experience of you know, Uncharted and in your hand. It's like, well no, because this is bad, and mobile gamer want different stuff out of They don't want just you know, the hand the console experience it in your hand, and they also.
Don't want to pay twenty thirty dollars to have that experience either.
That's what that iOS Resident Evil stuff is bearing out quite nicely, like no one's.
Because it's literally gotcha free to play something that costs very little to get into and then you keep playing after that. It's like even Nintendo had to realize that themselves when they did it. They wanted to charge you a decent amount for the game, and then gamers were like, you know, mobile games were like I don't want that, and they had to make it free to play, you know, and now they're making I think, what the was it pocket camp?
We camp with without without any of the crap in it? Yeah, it's good. I man, if I was gonna play that, I'd rather play that one.
Right for me? This is just it's kind of like the that culmination of where the industry is of going for that live service game. It not hitting doing it in a very crowded space, and we still have marbile Bibles that hasn't fully come out yet. That's going to be very interesting to see if that hits the zeitgeist or that thing dies as well, because just because you have the Marble I P which is not in a great place right now, doesn't mean that it's gonna hit.
And if that failed, that's another one that's like, are we getting to the point where it's like, there's just no way you can the what happened with hell Divers too was very special and the chance of accomplishing that that is the exception, not the not the norm exactly. It's it's we hadn't had a game that's very much like Hell Divers too is in a long time, so it hit a certain area of live service sort of multiplayer push, whereas the other ones are kind of going
into genres that are already full. You're gonna do another distraction shooter. I can't imagine, even with the pedigree of Bungee Marathon is gonna do that well? Right. Uh, let's say Marvel Rivals kind of doesn't hit what they wanted to do. Uh, that's another again, another section of gaming in live service that's full. Like you're you're trying to get people that albody play these live service games off of that game to play your new game, and most
of them still don't want to do that, right. It's it's crazy to think about that. People are still playing Fortnite and pubg and all that all these years later, but they're doing it right. So, especially if you're gonna pull a forty dollars price stag, your game better be awesome because they're used to not paying anything. That's that's not easy to get somebody to go I want to pay forty blucks. I think Hell Divers hit because it hit with a PlayStation audience. Yes, it was big on PC,
no doubt on that. It hit a huge audience for PC. But I think it's the kind of game that gels with PC very well. Whereas you know, it's just not a thing for Concord and all that didn't work.
I mean, here's the thing, Hell Divers too. Like it's it's not a unique package necessarily, but it's fun and it does have some creative stuff going on with it. I gues it's not wholly unique. It's just a third person shooter, but like all the call and command stuff and like the frenetic nature of the multiplayer that's what makes it. It's like a creative part.
Yeah.
And you know then go, you know, open to that Marvel thing going, it's help We're watched with Marvel crap. It's like, yeah, okay, sure, I guess yeah.
And so the the CWA, which is a union, also had an issue on the you know, the employee side of things, right that we talked about that due to them not having you know, collective bargaining or anything like that, they had no say in how the workers you know,
jobs are going to be impacted. And they put out a pretty like kind of nasty statement saying that Sony decision to dissolve studios outside their wall guarden a PlayStation expeosive content rather than making games that have to compete in the highly diverse and competitive mobile game market, should be a cautionary warning sign of Sony interest in furthering their monopoly position in the video game industry. Uh that, basically Sony is an anti competitive and you know, they
hope that the regulators look at this or whatever. I don't. I don't think they will, but.
You know, I don't see how they're like a monopoly either, or you know, it's not like.
They're they're not a monopoly because Nintendo's basically right there. It doesn't matter whether you want to include Nintendo in the conversation or not. If you're going to compare them only to Xbox, then yes, right right, But PC is part of gaming, and so is and that's why they're trying to get into PC, and Nintendo is part of gaming. And Nintendo is technically like number one by itself over there just selling switches like nobody's business and still selling them.
So you know, I think that that's staying by the CWA is kind of like, okay, cool, I'm glad you're defending the employees or whatever, which obviously they need to be defended. It's not their fault, right to other people just working on the game, they're not They're not Herman Holst, they're not Jim Ryan, they're not the other heads that Sony making the decisions. They're just out there doing their job. Uh. And then people that make the creative decisions that decide, Okay,
these are the characters who won this game. This is the kind of narrative we're gon We're gonna make it
a narrative focus kind of thing and whatever. You know, all those decisions that ultimately impacted why the game failed doesn't really have to do with the dev So I understand that while the CV is defending them and all that stuff, but you know, this is a bigger issue industry wide, and I think just to kind of bring this in as well, Sean Laden once again, it feels like he's we've had, We've talked about him bringing a piece of information, uh that kind of brings out about
the industry itself. Also should note I forgot to note that Wolverine might possibly in trouble as well, just to kind of add to this thing with something there the game designer Brian Horton who used to who actually worked on worked with Insomniac previously when he worked with them on the Xbox side to do Oh, why can't I think of that game right now? Some sit over drive yep.
And then he went over with when ins when they were bought, when Sonac was bought by so many, he went over he did Miles Morales.
Uh.
And then you know, after working previously on tomb Raider and Rise of the tomb Raider. Yeah, and then he's the one that's kind of the creative lead on Wolverine, and then kind of randomly, thanks to game File, it's been reported that he left. But then he went over to Xbox a perfect dark which is weird because it's like Insomniac's doing it. That's the only that's one of the few studios and somebody has it. Every time they make a game. It's it's automatic, like you know it's
going to be great. And then to go over to like a studio where you have no idea what's going on there, you.
Know, that's kind of sam NaKaT has had one or two.
Misses, Yeah, but for the most part, they don't right, you.
Know, what's funny is I'm friends of that dude on Facebook.
Oh you are.
I don't talk to him anything. I mean, I guess added them or you know. But yeah, I believe I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna just message him and go, hey, what's going on? You know?
No, No, I don't think he's gonna tell you either.
Yeah, either get me an instant block and an instant uh. You know.
I think I'm just adding this on to the right just because it is another kind of negative.
I thought it was interesting, Yeah, just because it was. It kind of came out of nowhere, just.
Like exactly, and then you know, you get the ratchet and clank leads kind of now they're the ones in charge of it.
Just it is.
It is true. We really haven't heard much on it. And then of course they had the negative with the with the terrible leak and everything and people were playing unauthorized like early version of the game and stuff like that, to which probably set them back a ton because they might have had to like delete all those assets and start all over again and everything else, which again that absolutely sucks. Like let's be let's be fair about that.
That shouldn't have happened. But yeah, it's just it's kind of a little bit of a situation like just of that's a lot of where those their next kind of push was going, and you still got fair games out there. What's that gonna happen? What's gonna happen with Haven? With that? You know, are they gonna how how long of aleis is Sony gonna give them when that game comes out?
Right?
If it ever does, I wonder if that's causing Sony to have to kind of look at things and go, you know, I don't know, are we gonna are we willing to bet? Put a big bet out there on this? Yeah, I feel like the only one that might be safe right now is the Horizon one because you know, her and Hosts and Gorilla have that connection where I don't know that he's gonna put one of his babies down, And even then I think they wouldn't. They would have announced if they were going to cancel that or whatever.
So that thing's still kind of going. But back to my original thing there with Sean Laydon talking about this time, he's bringing up the whole you know, game budgets can't possibly remain in the triple digit millions that they are right now with He brings up that, let's say they get it down with the current level of game development, he says, it's gotten higher than it was ten years ago, which he says used to It's used to be around
like twenty million, fifty million in the Blizzard book. I think when they announced the cancellation of Titan, that was like eighty million. And then we're sitting here talking about Concord today somewhere between two hundred to four hundred million. Crazy, crazy number to think about where we were years ago. Right.
Here's the thing though, is people years ago weren't demanding four kid visuals.
That and also just you can't make just good games anymore. You have to make great game now, Like a decent game doesn't do anything for the bottom line, right, It's it has to like hit it out of the park. It has to be the game people are playing. What did we talk about with Prince of Persia last week? Right, metro Vania like that, getting a million sales should be awesome for that game.
Right, and they spend what owever god knows how much on it.
But Ubisoft is in such a turmoil themselves that apparently that's nothing for them and they needed to disband the studio. So can you imagine if Sony's spending the amount that they're spending, how much your game has to be a hit?
Right? Like?
That was the thing that we found out with the Spider Man two the leak was that how much they spent on that game and how much it had to sell for them to just make a profit on it, which was crazy also, right, I.
Know, I talked about like last week that Sony said a few weeks ago, Sony that Spider Man two isn't gonna have any DLC. Yeah, And I said, okay, what about spinoff games?
Like I got it, they got to be making three, right, like, they got to bet that.
But I'm at like Venom, like have a standalone Venom game, because that was also in like the debug leak of Spider Man two is yo, you can play Venom in this like all the way through and even had like his own move set, like it was different from the move set Venom has in the game, you know, the limited moves that you already have.
So I wonder if they were hoping the movie would do well and then that could maybe see if that gets a push for a Venom game. But I just can't imagine right now that they're doing a Venom game.
I get that, Yeah, they can reuse you know, say, percent of those assets at least, and it'll be like Miles Morales, you know.
Yeah. So yeah, and it brings up a good point because that's that's kind of what Sean Laden was pointing at, is that we need to get back to the world where double A exists again. Yeah, because right now we're in that divide where it's like triple A. Then you got like the Triple A indie games, and then you got indie games, and you don't have a lot of double A. Actually, technically metaphor a lot of aalys's output. You could consider double A like metaphor Unicorn Overlord all that.
You could consider all of that double A. But that's very like I don't know where you consider like Yakuza or whatever.
But that's another good example, like you know, Kuza games will use a ton of shit from games.
Oh yeah, how do you think, uh, Pirate, Yakuza, Hawaii whatever exists because they use reuse half that.
So yeah, let's proves it up and we'll have like some new environments, but hey, you'll hit up Hawaii and it'll it might be like a little change from like a dragon, but not much so.
But what do you think about I thought this Steven was actually very clear to Part of the problem too, is that he says, we're trying to get more people into playing games. Clearly people are not playing games, and they're not playing games because they're not interested in what we're giving them. Well, we're giving them a sequel to the things they weren't interested in the first place. I don't think that's going to get them through the door. Makes sense to me.
But also like that Sony is not exactly pumping out new game IP after new game IP, or you know, a new game after new.
Game, like unfortunately the new IP is aimed at the multiplayer live service stuff that they don't want. So people don't want so you know, uh, that's the thing when it you know, he also brings up the whole the number can't keep going up, right, the number?
Yeah, that's the same thing I keep making fun about Phil Spencer when he says, like I want there to be a billion gamers. It's like that's only going to happen. We have thirty billion people on the planet, Like, you know, that'll never happen realistically.
Yeah, costs have to come down, people have to get more realists. I under it's understandable. Right as Sony's about to start in three days, the PlayStation five Pro is about to become available for everybody to buy. Where you got it on pre order or not. It's you can already watch on boxing videos on YouTube. The actual specs are out there, sixteen point seven terror filops, all that
stuff that's supposed to make graphics even better. That's another skew that developers have to build for and everything, which I'm sure costs. And then that's the problem. Technology keeps getting better. I don't know if we're ever going to go far into eight K or not, but even to do like you said, four K is no joke. That's
a lot of money that you have to spend. And there's a baseline that gamers expect now with frame you know, have to do sixty frames and have to do all this stuff and ray tracing and all of this, and it's like, can you go backwards and spend less? And would gamers be okay with that? Right? Like, where are our gamers willing to accept that a lot of your games are going to go backwards in order for them
to continue. Right, You're still going to have Call of Duty looking amazing, and you're still going to have the games that can still sell out all the time, are
still going to keep pushing the graphics. But there's going to be if you want that series that is kind of teetering on the brink of maybe no longer existing, you might have to be okay with them, like you said, for using assets all of those things to keep or making spinoffs, and do have the spinoff do well so you can get the next mainline entry or whatever.
You know.
What I also meant by the number can't keep going up is the number of how much you pay for a game can't keep going up either to offset this, Like you really think people are going to start paying one hundred dollars for a game when other costs of things are going to get expensive or are still expensive. No, maybe maybe grand Theft Autal six, maybe maybe Call of Duty, maybe things like that that are one time buys and
they play the whole time. But people are going to get even more conservative the more you raise the price. So I think he brings up a good point, when will the industry get there? Will they ever get there? I don't know. I feel like, unfortunately, we're gonna get a lot more bad still before we get this getting back to a little bit more normalcy. I guess we're not having layoffs every week.
Yeah, we'll see.
But all right, enough of the bad news for a little bit here, let's talk about I guess some I guess good news for Xbox for once, or positive Xbox first this year, it's not for I feel like we have a little bit. But for the most part, You're right,
it feels like we're mostly talking about negative stuff. But first of all, game Pass they just revealed their games that are coming out for this first part of November, so starting tomorrow on the fifth for PC game Pass and game Pass Ultimate, which lets you have PC game Pass as well, you get StarCraft Remastered in StarCraft two campaign collection. That's a pretty good get on the for
the activity bringing out Division games over Blizzard games. So that's if you never played those, or you've been wanting to play them and didn't want to buy them or something. Definitely those are some great campaigns there. Yeah, to go to check out a game I've been winning on. Metal Slug Tactics comes out also tomorrow on Everything Cloud console PC, so I'm going to be checking that out this week. I've heard that's actually pretty hard. We'll see how that goes.
The Goat Simulator are remastered, also comes day and date on game Pass on the seventh, and then you get Microsoft Flight Simulator on November nineteenth, coming out to Everything as well. And then they have a bunch of stuff that's now going to be on Standard that used to be on Ultimate only Go Meca Ball, Harold Hallibut, the Rewinder and turn up Board Robs. The banquet is actually pretty actually yeah, Harold Halibut was Actually it's actually really good.
It's just said, you know, it's literally a walking simulator that looks really cool because stop motion and all that. So if you like those kind of games, I would check it. But yeah, I'm excited to play Metalsol Tactics.
Uh, I'd be excited to fight Similiator, but I don't have game Pass.
Yeah, you knows. Buy on PC, I guess.
I just bought four as the Horizon four and I find it's funny. I played it like a few days ago. Yeah, and I was like this, look, this seems familiar. And it wasn't until like an hour and I was like, already had this game, it's just not on Steam and it didn't pull in my save.
Oh dang.
It was like, oh you you know, I drove. I drove on Run Row one road. It's like you and Lock five hundred and twenty five discovered five hundred and twenty four roads out of six hundred, and I was like, what, okay, okay.
Now I found out. I guess said. Also, a lot of Sega Atlas stuff is leaving game pass on the fifteenth percent of five Tactica like a Dragon, the man who raced his name like a Dragon, Eishan all leaving the service, So you know, play those if you still want to, especially kind of like I haven't played Infinite Wealthy at Men Who Restless Name is kind of like a prequel for that game for the curious side of things,
So I guess worth checking out there for sure. The big I guess news for Xbox is that Call of Duty Black Ops six is breaking records and also kind of emphasizes why Microsoft will not change the way they make Call of Duty. So when I was talking about how it'd be kind of cool if they could siphon off some of these studios that were only working on Call of Duty to start making other things for that are in the activision back catalog or whatever. It's probably
not going to happen. With Black Ops six doing well, they're going to keep all those fifteen studios working on Call of Duty because they do alternate between the three main studios Trey, Arc, Raven, Infinity, Ward All That and sledge Hammer and Sledgehammery. So number that Call of Duty came out on October twenty fifth. According to Sati Nadella, we got a big pay raise, by the way, which was kind of a man.
He needs to make that money to justify closing down a lot of studios over this past year, right.
But he did say the Black Op six is the biggest Call of Duty release ever, setting a record for day one players as well as game pass subscriber ads on launch day, and unit sales on PlayStation and Steam were also up sixty percent year over year, which he says speaks to the strategy of meeting gamers where they are. So do you think this is because Call of Duty Black Ops six is actually really good? Do you think it's because game passed? Do you think it's both? Like where what?
Do you partially both? I've heard the campaign is actually pretty pretty decent for it is or you know, the campaigns have sucked for the past few years, so anything's better than nothing, you know, than I guess.
This is a this is a like return to form, uh, you know, to the press campaigns that people liked a lot, which I've enjoyed the this a lot of what I've played still kind of trucking through it. I haven't heard one person say a bad thing about it so far.
I've heard people some people really like to open world level yeah, which is good. Uh, you know multiple I mean multiplayer is basically free or you know added, and of course people are gonna play it. You're not you'll play like a mission or like one round and go all right, I'm good.
Yeah, I'm good. But sure, I yes, yeah, definitely it does help and bringing in the multiplayer part of it too. Right, you can have your friends, like you can buy a copy of it, and your friends don't have to also buy a copy. They can just have game past play for that and then decide. Now that's the thing, right, is will this keep people subscribe to game Pass, because that's the whole point. Now, obviously they get money whether you subscribe one time or you keep subscribing, but they
obviously want them to continue to subscribe afterwards. So that's going to be the telling sign when we get to November twenty fifth, my birthday, when are people still going to be subscribed? Right that subscribed on day one for Call of Duty? That will be the interesting part the next time they're doing numbers and stuff like that, how much retain was there from call of Duty being on? And it does help that they have, you know not. I mean, the thing is, the fall from call of
Duty to flight Simulator is pretty high. Like most people that like call of Duty don't also like flight simulator. Flight Sublator is pretty niche. But they're obviously hoping for Indiana Jones to be a driver when that comes out in December. They're they're hoping that, you know, maybe they'll stick around for when a valve comes out in February, who knows. But the interesting thing is that at least
it's doing well. There is a little bit I think of a sales cutback that I think they were expecting within the margins because of people going in game Pass. But obviously we're gonna I think it'll be more interesting to see what happens with like that monthly sales data that we always talk about, like is there gonna be a game that knocks Call of Duty off and Call of Duty doesn't come back because people just played it already on Game Pass they needn't buy it. We'll see.
But good good for Xbox to finally get some good news with that, and something that I was super excited about and talk about. Two things for Nintendo came out of nowhere this week. One of them was that they they came out with a music app, because you know, Nintendo, they can't just come out and put their music on Spotify or know, YouTube music or nothing. They have to just be like, we're Nintendo, dude. Ain't nobody making a
profit out of us except for Nintendo. So here's some of our music on an app that you have to be a Nintendo Online subscriber to be able to enjoy, which, to be fair, it only costs like four dollars a month to do the monthly subscription to like the base version of it to be able to use the app. Let's say somebody gave you a free month of subscribing to Nintendo Switch online, Mark, would you be interested in this app?
Do you know that's something called YouTube, right, But they're.
Going off and trying to take down more and more.
But that will never happen.
You know.
It's the same thing as like then taking emulation websites. Yeah, it's like Hydra for everyone you strike down two mor will rise.
Yeah.
And I'm also friends with the Ends and he can find anything, you know, he can find damn game soundtracker. I want it, Like I like Mario. I like the soundtracks, and I have a few of them, but like I don't have like a huge pressing need to, like I got to listen to Yoshi's Island soundtrack or you know, like Ice Climbers Stage four. Give me some of that, you know.
I'll listen to the Zelda stuff every now and then, and obviously Zeno Blade that Mario here and there as well.
So see, I like like the Mario I early Mark, Like I would say, like mars Usty fours contract, That's what I probably listen to. And while I don't have the CD currently, you know, YenS has it for me, so I'll listen to that and eventually get it.
I do think for the price, you can't even get unless you're a student. You can't even get Spotify for less than like twelve bucks or whatever now or maybe ten if you get one of those like where they give you two months free for ten dollars and then it goes up again. Like so, and YouTube costs fifteen I have YouTube Premium because you know, I don't have to deal with the ads when you watch stuff on YouTube and you get YouTube music free. Prime is fifteen
bucks as well. So like, if you're gonna talk about getting a music app and you like it into the music a lot, I think it's worth it to subscribe to the switch online for four bucks a month or whatever and get it that way. Like you said, there's other ways to get that music also, but if you want to, if you want to, you know, do it. I guess the legal way. Then you know, enjoy that app. I'm sure it will be better. It'll also be a
better bargain when they put more music on there. Right now, it's kind of in the early stage and doesn't have a whole lot right Uh. The other announcement, which was much bigger deal for me, uh Znowate Chronicles X is finally coming.
I thought you're gonna say that, Shatter runs finally on the Switch, Mature expansion app that.
Too again, tur Rok too is awesome. Yeah, you know, that's that's the thing everybody was waiting on. But Genivate Chronicles X Definitive Edition is it's happening. It's happening not.
That far away. Arch I sent you that link and you're like, what.
Yeah, I hadn't looked at the Gaming news yet and you You're the first thing I saw.
And I was like, no, I think, I think, yeah, I think I think you thought I was like fucking with you or something.
You're like, what exactly, because, like, you know, this is the one that everybody kept saying, No, they won't do this, they won't make it. There's too many too much we you game pad in that in that game, and in that game. How could they do this or do that. It's it's too open world for the Switch. Which it is a very different game. It's not like the other numbered games. Uh it. It has a lot of it's more about going on quest, doing side activities, kind of
exploring the world kind of thing. It's not about following this big old narrative that tries to take you on. That's something that somebody people should be if.
They if they ported the Winner for one on one to like PS four and switch, they can port anything from the weed to a console. You know.
But it's cool because it's it means that all these little play games will be in one place they will carry over to switch to. So if there is a little Bay Chronicles four or whatever they're gonna call it, you'll get to continue to get to play those games. It's another Now there's a very very small number of games that people really want that are still stuck on
the WIU. I think I don't think Nintendo Land would ever come over, but yeah, what's what you know, what star Fox zero I think is like one of the few other ones. Yoshi's Will the World, I think is the only other one that's like legit I saw that people still want. But the rest of the stuff is there is kind of like what Devil's Third you know, this is the major like RPG that people wanted to be off the WAYU and now on this on the
switch and I'm glad that it's finally here. I'm glad I'll finally get to experience this game, and I'm glad for all the others that Bay fans and maybe started with three and you can complete the whole collection here on switch. That's awesome.
Saw. You know what you need to do is I know that some of the Zeno play games come with like big dumb collectors. Editions are hunting all those.
This one doesn't though, not yet.
No, No, it will.
Maybe, but it's weird that they didn't announce it already. But maybe they're just like kind of trying to think of what to put in a collector and one last thing And it's not too bad news because it's not that long you have to wait. But I know there's a lot of people that are been waiting for uh,
Path of Exile two. You know, last epak wasn't the thing that that made people forget about Diablo for but a lot of people talk about Path of Exile two is going to wind up being that action RPG of the year or whatever, and they're just waiting for it to hit. And it was supposed to come out number fifteen. Now it is coming to consoles n PC on December sixth,
so it's been delayed a little bit. You know, they they wanted to be able to keep their promises apparently, uh, and they wanted to make sure the game is right when it comes out, And you know, got to give them credit. Good for them to do that, because they're missing a big window, right Like they they're missing the Thanksgiving Black Friday window where you could have had a lot of families be able to play and kind of
get people hyped and and all that. And now you're going past that, and and now there's another game that packs that first week of December that that that is going to be huge for for games. It's it's going to go out on a bang. Uh there. But yeah, I feel it sucks for the people that are waiting for Pathbexyl too. But ain't that much longer, like three weeks or so past the original.
Plus is going to be late an extremely large and complex game.
So no, it's not, it's it's falling off of one of the first game. But still like there's it has a lot of fans.
I mean that's what people want right Looking at like, you know, the skills skill menu of Path of EXL one is like looking into the abyss. Yeah, XL two is even gonna be more crazy.
So yeah, you're you're not kidd in there, but just to uh, I guess kind of show people what's what is uh all coming in that week all together basically is Path of Exile two, got Marble Rivals, the Fantasian Neo Dimension also coming, Indiana Jones, the Great Circle all in that one week, The Mighty morphrom Power Rangers game, the Good Game of the Bunch exactly, the legacy of
Kine Selver Remasters. Also absolutely like just let's all shove it into that one week in December, I guess forget it a also the Pocket camp Mobile that we talked about to So yeah, that's that's gonna be crazy. But looking at what's coming for this week, obviously not as uh not as hyped as that week in December right now, but still some some decent things coming for for this week ahead here Planet Coaster too. I'm surprised you're not.
I mean, I like kind of like the first one, but I'm just not creative when it comes to those games. Yeah, I like the first one. They had a pretty decent like actual admission mode or story mode. Okay, but like then just go on, like here's a sandbox, go create whatever you want. I'm just stared it and go like no.
Like yeah not sure? Yea on that also coming the uh what I mentioned Metal Slub Tactics already is hitting as well tomorrow. What is it that TM and T Spinner Fake game is coming to PC after already being on consoles. The Metro Awakening VR is coming, which I'm that'll be a pretty decent VR game. I'm pretty sure. Mother Mario Luigi Brothership is also coming this week, which has some mixed reviews. Yeah, apparently performance is not great.
First Switch on TV, which it really isn't When you try to play something, especially on a four K TV, it looks bad, but still, you know, hopefully that's something to switch to fixes. It really cemented my I think
I'm not going to buy another Switch game. If somebody gives me a code to something, I'll do it, but you know, like you know what happened with East ten and another game I'm playing, but still not something I want to go out of my way to buy a game for with With Switch to, who knows when it's going to come out?
Right?
River City saw got three Kingdoms, which is River City, but in the three Kingdoms like Universe, which is interesting. Maximum Football comes to PC. The Tyco not Test Hoosian Rhythm Festival comes out that same day on the seventh, as well. The Atari fifty, the first console war it's also coming, which I guess is like an expansion of the Yeah.
I think it has a much other games like clicko or in television games or something. Yeah.
And then Slitterhead, which is the next game from the it's like Solent Hill Creators or like a team those aboub a Silent Hill. That's also getting mixed reviews as well, like really mixed for readers. We got like really low numbers and then some people that like really rated it high. So very interesting that that's also so interesting week for games as far as new releases go. So yeah, anything
else we should mention before we get out of here. Nope, nope, Okay, Well, thank everybody for watching listening however you enjoy the show, let us know. Like it on YouTube on wherever you watch it at, follow us on social media, marks at Humanity Plague on Blue Sky and x I'm at w Timshawn on X and Blue Sky, follow will Network where you see that, subscribe to the channel and We'll see y'all next week later