You are listening to Video Games to the Max.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Video Games to the Max. I am your host Sean Germer. Here with me today is Randy isbel.
I'm here so that guess what we're going to talk about.
Yes, we're going to talk about a lot of bad news, apparently so as Randy always gets the crappy deal of layoffs, layoffs and big layoffs, this time with Bungeee laying off people possibly restructuring more under something than they were for losing their autonomy, possibly as well losing a game they were making. Game Informer also close, which is bad news on the other side of things, close to the mass
side of things. And Sue, he's just in a different department, and we do have games, but we both played Supermarket Simulator and we're both hooked on it, so at least we have a game to talk about that. It's not that more Eer Cars twenty five stuff about Xbox consoles. What's new with that? Or I guess what's old with that because it's the same same thing every time. But
we'll get into all that stuff and more. You are listening to Video Games to the Max, all right, Well, let's go ahead and get this stuff out of the way here and do the housekeeping. If this is your first time listening, one hundred time listening, we do appreciate you just letting you know. Mark is not here because he had to go a last minute go help his
mom with stuff, and she lives kind of away. So Randy is nice enough to you know, cover and fill in here and you, of course, you can always check him out and sometimes me and a few of our other friends over at Bad Brackets. So go watch Randy on YouTube, Go subscribe over there. It's a really fun show. If you like March Madness. You don't have to like sports. We've done a lot of video game ones over there or anything. Really, they've done all kinds of things.
Yeah, we try to mix it up with whether it's food or TV or sports or video games. We debate at all and in the end it's just everyone gets mad at me at first, and then they get mad at each other throughout the show and they forget I exist.
Yes, Yeah, it's fun just seeing folks just get mad at each other and then get mad at Randy because he picked the thing that and everybody man so.
Number Olympics was the one that just came out today. Yeah, I have another version of that episode if the way of the world loosens back up and people don't get so upset about edgy jokes because Robert Taylor had some singers that I had to cut. Let's just say that episode is about twice as long because we got into some hilarious conversations that are not okay.
To but oh whoa, there you go, definitely gotta go. Maybe check it out for the juicy stuff.
Right.
So, Also, if you subscribe to the on our side of things, the day to network, you will not only get what we do here with the video games, which definitely you know you should watch for the video game stuff, but if you prefer your anime, we got you covered there with it taking cafe pretty much anything involving the new anime stuff or news with anime or whatever, they will cover it and you'll get your fill there with that.
And also on the movies Entertainment TV side, rather than you're broadcasting your great over there, they got their Deadpool Overene review, which I did see that last week and it's great. Not going to go much further into that, and then they've got other reviews as well for things pretty much anytime there's a new movie that comes out, that's a fair note, they have the review out the next week, so definitely want to go check them out for that kind of thing. But all right, that's enough
with the promoting. Let's go into Oh you also listen on podcasts. Shout also mentioned that as well. If you don't like watching on video and there's still so many all dinosaurs that are stuck on don't want to get on YouTube and watch the thing, you can listen on podcasts, which, you know what, I bought premium because I got tired of the ads and also it's a better music service than Spotify for like the same price. You can get
everything Spotify has plus YouTube Premium. It's like a steal basically, So yeah, I got that. So I it's it's a podcast thing for me too, not just a video thing now, but I get you know, thirteen dollars is not cheap everybody at this point. So moving on here, let's start with some like good stuff first. Let's like get into the like, you know, sad stuff in a little bit, because there's funny of that in this episode, and I know some of y'all watch them, probably want to hear
us talk about the bunch of stuff. But let's get into the cool, the nice stuff here just really quick before we get into our games. We're talking about if you want some free games or if you have PESGM plus, I guess you keep being subscribed. Starting tomorrow or August sixth, whenever you're listening to this, you can go pick up Lego, Star Wars, sky Wars, Skywalker Saga, five Nights of Freddy's Security Breach was isn't that? I think that was like last year, not sure the year before and also the
year before a couple of years ago. A game I don't know if you played yet, Rainy, but it's up your alleye. It's a metro Vina ander Lily's Quietest of the Nights. You can check that out as well. It's a pretty good indie Metrovania. And they're making a second one also, so it must have done decently enough to warnt a second game. So those are available as of August sixth, and of course get your the ones from last month. Have you haven't gotten them yet before that ends?
So let's talk about games we've been playing here, both of us so this game came out, it's in on the access. To be fair, it's only on Steam. It was on the phones originally, and I think once they put it on all the access on Steam, they removed it from the phone in order to get he put it by it on Steam. I'm assuming thirteen dollars Swain not that bad. Honestly, go get you know, like I said, a subscription for one of those treatment services for a month.
You get a Supermarket Simulator, probably much more fun. So you're the one that got me hooked on this. I'm saying anything else, you know, And I know we don't see, but that's what happened to work with my laptop and worked decently. So I'll like, okay, let's let's stick with this year. So what made you want to play the game? And then like, what's your experience with it so far?
Honestly, I don't watch like Marketplayer or those kind of streamers as much anymore. I mean, obviously I try to support them here and there and and kind of watch videos from time to time, and sometimes I'll just play a series that catches my eye. And Supermarket Simulator I started playing a week or maybe a couple more weeks than that. I watched it last week and just kind of got hooked on all the craziness. I like all of the weird management stuff that you have to do,
and those kind of games for whatever reason. Every so often I'll get hooked on, like Powerwash Simulator absolutely got me hooked last year, and obviously that game has been out for a while. And there's just games that hooked me for whatever reason. And I watched him do it, and then I watched somebody who is way more advanced do it and saw the potential of how wild this game could get, and I went, all right, I have to to try it out. I will say real quick. Yes,
it is only on Steam. There are copycats on PlayStation. Luckily the reviews were so bad that I didn't get tricked into buying them.
Yeah, I saw that too. Be careful there on the phones. There's also copycats to be careful to get the wrong one.
Like you said, it's an early access game and it definitely has its bugs, especially if you have stalkers. They seem to get stuck all the time. Best way I've learned to fix that is just save and quit and come back. Usually the next day they will will kind of fix themselves or whatever. But there's a lot of times where your stalker guy just gives up and just hangs out in the warehouse because there's other ways to fix it. But that's just the best way I've learned
how to do it. But no, it's just so much fun. I mean, I've gotten to the point where I don't even have to do the cashier stuff. I still will from time to time. It's kind of fun to do. But it has so much more then you really think, and they're just going to continue to add stuff to it.
It's a wonderful time waster game. If you would love to listen to this show, or watch the show on YouTube or any other podcast stuff, or watch a movie, this is the perfect game just to kind of semi focus on and just waste hours, which I don't have that time to waste, but boy, have I found time. I've given up sleep.
Yeah, I've heard that it's not so it gets strenuous when you get to like the later part where fully expanded and all that stuff. Because I actually think I saw some people that you can't you can't ever fully automate it, right like, you can't you have to be
looking at it, you have to be doing something. So I think that's what I saw some Ney book complaining about the Like, I really do want it to be like a game that I can kind of just press a button and just watch it if I want to, and watch a movie or whatever when it gets in
those later levels. But there's a lot of stuff going on, But you're right about at the beginning, when you have a small set of things to do, it is something you can kind of like have something on in the background and kind of like this, Okay, I'm going to
manage it. I'm going to do this. And uh, I don't know if it's going to get more realistic as they keep adding things onto it, because like right now, you can just hit the E button to close the rightister and basically they're just sit there and they don't ever seem to like leave. It doesn't matter what time it is, right and you can go do other stuff while you do that. You can also hit escape and just hit and like just have it go on pause completely.
But the one thing I found interesting is that I think right now, at least, I'm not sure if that's something they're going to change later, but it doesn't seem like even if you have like frozen stuff or freezer stuff, you know, the stuff that goes on the fridge, like it doesn't go bad if it sits there outside.
Thank God.
So yeah, thank god for that, because there's times where I'm like, you know, like this is this will not fit in here. I don't have another way to get it to work. But it is. It's like a really fun game. Like I'm not a big simulator person at all. I don't play those kind of games, but this game probably often because I have a lot of experience with working in grocery store kind of thing too, so I kind of like piqued my interest. But yeah, I just
found it fun. And it's something like I'm gradually like I'm getting it even somebody doesn't play PC games. I was really slow at first, and I'm like, okay, I'm getting how quickly you can. And you have to do exact change sometimes and do all this stuff with a credit card and all that, so it's like no.
Mini games and yeah, it's it's just mindless fun. You can really get in depth with it, which I love. And again they're going to continue to add stuff to it. Again, it's twelve thirteen dollars, so it's it doesn't break the bank to give it a try. If this is kind of up your alley. There's just those moments in this game that I absolutely love where it's like I go crazy on the stocking, like you upgrade the storage area
or whatever. You go crazy. You've got some money to blow, and you're just like, all right, I'm gonna buy like two boxes of everything. And then you go out to the front and there's just boxes everywhere and the cars are just driving through them, and it's completely silly at that point. That's always fun. I've gotten to the point now where I have like toilet paper, and I joked with a buddy of mine who's also hooked on this game.
Now that I swear this, I figured out where this game chronologically lands, as far as if we're trying to place it on a timeline, and this is March twenty twenty, it's right before COVID and everyone's freaking out about toilet paper. I cannot keep toilet paper stocked. It takes up a lot of room, and it seems like every time I feel like all right, I have a ton in storage, I look over and everything's empty. Like just toilet paper gets bought. But it's fun. It's just a silly game.
It will not end up on a lot of game of the Year lists, but it's going to end up probably is one of my top played gamer hour wie.
I mean it is. It does seem to be like the one that's kind of getting traction as the like the streamer game. Yeah right now, like you said, so, I mean that's probably I would say helping it at this point. And I mean that's that's cool too, if
you can get any kind of traction that way. Another thing too, is like I have to I feel like I had to go in and research like how much convenience stores usually overpriced things so I can start making money because I was like, I'm gonna try to be like price constants to be nice to the people, and like, yo, every day is like a struggle to just order something. And I'm like, you know what, forget, this is not a real game. Start, you know with jacking up stuff.
And so you know, it's a fun like just being able to to kind of figure out how you want to play and you know, do it on your own time for that so sure, well I know you also played a game that you know, I've talked about a few time on here Awa the last couple of weeks called so well it's twenty five. You had a few things you didn't think it was, You didn't rate it as highly as idea, you had more problems with it. So why do you think it's not as a it's not a great gasee that it is a good game.
It's a good game. It's but it feels great because we haven't had it in eleven years. And I think that that's the deal. And I will not say, ea, cut corners. But there's a lot more Madden in this than I think a lot of people want to admit to. The gameplay is very Madenesque in ways. I think it helps that everything's spread out. Obviously in college football the hash marks are spread out, more so the players are spread out. I do love always store that people are like,
oh my god, the offensive line is switch cheese. Well it's supposed to be. These are college kids. It's not going to be fantastic. That's not a gameplay issue. A skill level difference between college and pros. To me, that's fine. But I just feel like this is a good start. If they can continue to build and focus on the things that matter and not the stupid ultimate team stuff which they half asked. Thank god. It was like they throw it in because you have to throw it into
a sports game these days. But it didn't seem like they put a lot of effort into it. But as long as they focus on road to Road to Glory and the franchise modes and continue to tweak recruiting a little bit and continue to get some get the FCS teams in there would be fantastic. As somebody that covers an FCS team for my actual job, it would be nice to be able to have those teams back in like they used to. But you can't ask for everything on the first go around. So that's where I'm at.
I'm having a lot of fun. I'm still playing the game. I don't play it online because I don't want to get murdered. I'm not that good, But I just feel like this was a good start and if everybody just goes crazy about it and goes, oh my god, this is amazing, then this is the level of gameplay you're going to get the rest of time. EA is going to go all right, this is it cool? Let's now prioritize Ultimate Team and make all of the money. And
there are definitely tweaks gameplay wise franchise wise. I would like to see some more iteration into the Road to Glory stuff with the non field stuff, to make that a little bit more interesting outside of the training and stuff. Just I remember the old games where we actually had to take silly quizzes to work on the GPA instead of hit stuff. So there's different goofy things that they can do. This is nowhere near a bad game. I just me personally played it and went so glad it's back.
I can't wait for three years when it's really really good hopefully.
Yeah, that's the thing is you're buying. You're buying this out a nostalagia of not having to have this game in a while. I mean, it is still cool that they got all one hundred and thirty four FBS schools in here. You know, I thought there was going to
be schools missing. I thought they were going to do something like what you see with the Eya Sports FC, where some of the stools won't won't those sign deals for something else, so they're gonna be called something else that they're even in the game at all, so you know the fact that they got them all in there, they got the nil stuff in there, they got the
naming stuff in there. I think it also hurts that Team Builder is not what it used to be, right, where you can't completely just make a team and change whatever you want on it and all that stuff. But there's a lot of people complaining about that that you can't you can't add in the rosters, you can't export them to Madden, so that that.
Hurts a lot of that. I know you've talked about it on the show over the last couple of weeks as well. A lot of that is Nio based. Yeah, there are concessions you have to make, right with the way that everything works now to even have this kind of game. Yeah, so yes, you cannot import rosters because the whole point was is players would get upset because they were in this game but not getting paid. So there are players out there that said, no, I don't want my six hundred dollars, do not put me in
your game. And then people will go in there and put the name in and go look, ea, put them in the game, and then you have so that kind of stuff doesn't bother me. It would be cool to be able to import to Madden, but then do you have to pay them twice because they could possibly be both in the NCAA game and the Madden game, so financially that could be an issue as well. So there are things that we just have to go. You know what, this is not going to be how it was in
twenty fourteen. And everything's fine as far as Team Builder, it's a lot like the Franchise mode and Road to Glory. It's fine for now. Everyone that's that's super upset needs to calm down because at least to have it and now they can build off of it for the next couple of years. But it is not one hundred percent perfect,
and hopefully EA does not just go all right. It's there, so the same thing I think the biggest issue I've had, and again it's just talking out of both sides of my mouth, because it's something they now have the base forward now they can grow commentary's garbage. Commentary is so bad because all they've been able to do is record the basic stuff.
Now that they have a lot of the Ree Davis team is way better than the Street team or whatever.
But but the main thing is they've only been I mean, the amount of lines you have to record just to have the basic lines down is insane. So in a couple of years they won't have to go back and record most of them. Right there, they're now set, and now you can start getting into the the little one liners that they put in there about my thing is the same thing. I play m WIB the show all the time, and once you've played it for a couple of games, you're like, all right, the commentary can go
on mute because it's basically the same stuff. But it's like it's literally one line for every school, Like it starts show, Oh look at the Patrick's ree, look at this school. It's great. The very next game is exact same.
So oh yeah, there's not a lot of change in any of that stuff either.
So hopefully over the next couple of years they can build off this commentary stuff and have more dynamic differences in those But again, it's it's a great start, but it's just a good football game. But I'm I'm with you, I'm so glad it's back. Hopefully they take a couple of steps forward next year and.
We go from there and it is fun most to play. I never have a you know, not fun time with that game that they nailed the gameplay and that was the most important party.
As long as you don't take that seriously. There are some weird ass things that happened in that game. I've had some weird tips that go crazy. Your players do some weird stuff. As long as you just go at a video game. I'm not doing this for a job. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, pursuit angles definitely need to get who like, I don't know, I mean, yeah, I get it. It's college. They really should feel like we're gonna have a big play all the time. But sometimes I'm just like, dude, really you couldn't catch up to them. You're right there.
The amount of bo Jackson clips I've seen online. Yeah, run from end zone to end zone because everyone the pursuit angles are broken. But again, as long as you're having fun, I don't.
Care exactly, that's the point anything else you've you play anything else.
And honestly, nothing other than I'm gonna be the show, which we don't need to talk about. Because I continue to play that. It's really been a dry period, not because I mean obviously that the list of games are not way up there of the must play games, but even the ones that are kind of must play, I
just I'm kind of in a transition personally. We just bought a house, just got married, just got a new job, so a lot of the free time has been working outside and in our backyard, and it's just it's one of those things, not to say I don't want to play some of these games that have come out, but it's just that you get into the those time periods or whatever or stages in your life, or you sit down and you go, all right, I don't want to play a game, and you just go to the comfort food,
which right now for me is and will be the show. It's it's college football, now it's Supermarket Simulator. It's like I'm still playing as many like putting in the same amount of time in video games. But it's not I don't want to dive into a story. I don't want to get into something like there's been so many games I've downloaded, like all right, I'm gonna get into this and then I sit down and go or I could just play a game.
So yeah, it's like either well, sometimes you only got that like one hour and you're like, oh, I don't want to really start this thing. And then when I if I get hooked, I can't keep playing, and U like, you know, every time I hear a review of it's I mentioned because it's on game Best Knittsugami Path of the God. That's a game that I think a lot of people didn't think much of. They thought it was just like the thing that Cap gone through a bone
to that. Oh it's it's uh, you know, the indie type of thing that Cacom did, and they put it on game Pass knowing it wasn't going to do well, and it's like it's the thing that's been talked about constantly as the like, oh, this is the game you need to play. It's on game Pass right now. You know, over over flint Lock and the Dungeons of Hinderberg they probably had a lot more press. So it's and I'm sitting there going, Okay, I played the ny I liked it.
I want to start it, and I'm like, let me go find something else because I don't want to get into that and I know I'm going to be like hours an hour. So but yeah, that's I think that's going to do it for us, talking about the actual games you played before we get into the the sour stuff. One more h you know, I know you're a big you're a big Star Wars fan, Randy. I mean, there's a there's a game coming out at the end of this month. It's it's been kind of highly you know,
big time hype. Star Wars Outlaws. They've now revealed the DLC roadmap, and of course we already knew about the the the one that it has the job of the Hut DLC that you have you can only get if you get the season pass or the premium version. Yeah. I made everybody upset, which is understandable. You know, you don't want things locked away in higher price tiers, but they got to give you, I guess, a reason to to go buy that. They've also, you know, just revealed
that there's gonna be other stuff in here. So it looks like three pieces of DLC is what they've announced so far, So like it's gonna be part of that
season pass. UH wild Card is the first one. They're gonna get involved in some kind of tournament with Sabakh when you cross paths with him and UH you know you're gonna figure out what's going on with that Hunter's legacy in the cars all of ronin you get a bunch of cosmetic bundles along with This is the first story expansion, so you know there's gonna be a story expansion with with K and Crew and then the second
story expansion called Pirate's Fortune. So does that entice you more that you know that you're gonna get more content along with the base game or no kind of for me?
For me personally, no, I'm sure I've talked about it on the show before, but me and DOOC don't get along. So I have nothing against DC. It's good to have to get the more longevity for your game, But the amount of times where Adoc comes out and I go, I'm gonna get back into this and I just don't. It's just so many times Adoc just goes off to the wayside for me and I don't play it. So it's great that they have a roadmap and they want to continue to add to this, but for single player games,
it doesn't bother me either way. I just hope this game is good. I know that more and more people are getting more hands on time with it, which to me always kind of shifts to a way of saying that, you know, the developers really believe in their product and they want to get it out there, and they're not hiding it behind closed doors hoping that the review scores
don't come out before their game comes out. But this is definitely on that edge of maybe this is the game that gets me back out of my comfort game zone and gets back into the story based games. There's a couple others that are coming out here soon that might also do that. But I have hopes for this game, and hopefully the DLC will will will help build its sales and stuff. But for me personally, I just I know myself and I'll forget about these deals.
Yeah I've already because it's an eb Soft game, and because hey, you know what, they have this thing, they want us to use it. They're not shy about telling us that we should subscribe to it. I'm just gonna get it on the one month of it on the eub Soft Plus thing, just see how it goes if I like it. Because you know, open world games with me are kind of like hit and miss. Some of them. I really like a lot of them. I don't, so we'll see how it goes with this. Just because it's
Star Wars, I want to try it out. But yeah, I'm hoping it's a good one too, because it's a different Star Wars game. Right, it's not Jedi related, it's not Battlefront or whatever. It's its own thing. And I like the fact that they allowed them to have their
own kind of Star Wars game in that universe. But all right, enough kind of avoiding the inevitable, I guess here, let's start with the one that kind of probably affects us more as gamers and also folks that do the journalism side or have done it or do it, and you know you do it with sports now A game Informer, Yeah, after thirty three years, closes down a lot of folks first kind of not ours. I think both of us are in the generation where there's other ones like Nintendo
Power and EGM and that kind of thing. But beyond us, a lot of people's first introduction to gaming magazines. What it's like to have that like inspiration for gaming journalism. I remember going to Game Stop and the first time that was ever a thing of I snatched up that pro card really fast because I wanted that gaming form magazine.
I wanted to be able to know us and to get those twelve issues and read that stuff and know whether it was any Macnamuare or further along all the great writers and journalists that have come out of that publication. And then, of course, obviously when websites are a bigger thing, and they went on to do more about the website than about the magazine. But it's amazing that all these years they've kept the magazine around. They didn't just kill
it and make it all about the website. But I was worried when they decided to unhook it from It's not that it was unhooked from it, but they started trying to promote their own thing of like, oh, you don't have to be part of game Stop in order to even though GameStop owns them, you don't have to be part of the game Stop Pro card thing. You can get it by itself. Which is funny because now they're basically giving away that I went and bought a I bought the Steam gift card with my because I
have a GameStop credit card. If you use the game stock credit card to buy anything on online, they will give away a pro subscription team. It used to be that that was the real reason you were getting the proscription was not only because of the discounts and all that kind of stuff, It was Gaming Former, right, That's
that was the main draw. Then they unhooked it from that, they made it its own thing, because you know, there's a lot of people that didn't want to give game Stop money, understandably, especially now that Ryan Cohen is being he's the CEO, is being sued by bed Bath and Beyond for inside of training so or well it be by the government for for that whatever. But the whole point is it's a terrible thing to see games Gamingformer
go down. Game stops still around, but like one of the few nice things or good things you when you associate the in game Stop was this and now it's gone. Do you have any memories of having a game form magazine at all.
Or not the physical magazine, Like I obviously I go to the website and stuff, and that's where I know gam Informer, But I obviously watching kind of Funny and all these other podcasts talk about them getting shut down. I went kind of through my whatever memory banks still work in my old brain of getting game Informer, and I honestly don't remember ever getting a physical copy of
that magazine. I was a Game Pro kid growing up, and I'm sure I bought some Game Informers throughout the years, just buying different things, just trying out different magazines, but Game Pro when we were younger, and you know, physical magazines were the thing that was more of my jam. But the fact that it was still going around as a physical release in some form for Game Stop was fantastic, and it was just kind of holding on to our
childhood and having those physical magazines. And it was crazy to hear when they were shutting down how small that crew was that was putting all of that together on top of all the internet stuff. So the fact that you got to imagine how many hours a day put in just to put in the best product that they can, and you feel bad for them and hopefully they can
get back on their feet and stuff. But the thing that surprises me more than anything is that they shut everything down, Like I am not surprised that they shut down the physical magazine portion, because yes, they were trying everything they could with it being tied to Game Stop and then not tied the Game Stop to try to get it out to more people. Listen, physical media just
doesn't work anymore. I work in the newspaper business, all right, There is a newspaper in our area that just shut down last week, Right, it happens one of our sister papers that we put together for another area just moved to just two days a week of physical copies and everything else is on like things are waning down on all aspects of physical media. So that part doesn't surprise me.
But the website had to still been doing okay, or the website could have done even better if you focused all of that energy on the website, and instead they shut it down on some stupid static screen and not even allow you to see the pass And that pisss
me off more than anything. And the funny thing is, when we were talking about the games that we were playing, I instinctively, every time I'm on this show look up the video game release calendar just to kind of see what else is coming out for the stuff that we can have a conversation with. I go to Game Informer for that every single time, and instinctively went to that website, which obviously just goes to the static screen, and it just kind of put a hole in your heart because
again I visit that website. The fact that they had to shut that down to absolutely sucks. I mean, listen, this is a even smaller group that does the stuff for W two M and you know, trying to get your feet on the ground. I used to be part of this and now I'm just kind of here to help when needed. But it's extremely difficult out there, and now that the big guys continue to kind of fall off, it's a scary world for this kind of business.
Yeah, man, it's and that's that's so frustrated me the most, right because as somebody that that when you write for a website, even if you don't write there anymore, you want to be able to go back and find your stuff right that you wrote. You want to be able to say, look, hey, so and so, Hey, you know both of us have children. Hey, look here's this thing I wrote way back before you were born or whatever.
You know, like it shows you off. It's something you always tell people, but it's like more and more the thing back up your stuff, and it's it's insane that this is a company, this is GameStop, game Stop is still existing. It's not going anywhere, like, at least not for now. It may go somewhere in a few years,
we don't know. They continue to not be able to accommodate to the current situation where most people are buying games digitally and you have to like pray and hope that there's a new console or pro edition of a console to come out so you people will go to
your tour at least for gaming stuff, you know. So like literally the last time I went to a game Stop was to buy any a hoodie that she wanted that that, you know, for her birthday that had Sonic on it, you know, it had it has something to do with games, but it's not I'm not buying an actual game. So most of my stuff that I do with game Stop is to buy stuff online, don't even go into the store. So and that's the most a lot of people's thing with game Stop is if you
go into game Stop, you're not buying games there. You're you're buying like funk O pops and other stuff that has nothing to do with them, and it's it's sold a lot of it's solless, and it feels like that. And then this this thing that they put up that as Ben Hansen rightly pointed out, former a big time person, a gaming former you know now does Ben Max with
a bunch of former gaming former folks as well? You know, he said, this is probably written by AI, and I wouldn't be surprised the fact that you couldn't even have somebody from the staff write this and and like put out something more heartfelt and felt like you cared about these people. Like it just it's game stops wholemo. We don't care. We just want to sell you this thing
and make money. And it sucks because it's like these are real people that were working on skeleton crew, working seventy hour work weeks at a paper with such a you know, a magazine that was seventy percent done the last issue. They didn't even get to put that out. And and then a website and video because the YouTube channel still up there. But who knows that they're going to take that down? Oh well, so yeah, especially the
YouTube channel. Go get go, get videos out of there, or do what you gotta do, because they make great video content as well. That's something they were doing a great job of too. They were branching out to video, they were doing a podcast, they were they had a lot of things going on. Alex ben Aigen was probably like the spearhead with that too, and Brian Shay he also didn't endo podcasts for them, Like it's it sucks because I don't know any of those people personally, like
personally like none of them are my friends. But I see them, I you know, we I have you know, in journalist groups, and when you see them talking, and all of a sudden to see everyone that has been a part of Gamingformer did anything for Gaming Form freelance wise or still work the game Informer, all of a sudden, the collective like screw you to game stop, to just kind of kill that magazine like that and the website and everything, and not to let them even give them
like you couldn't give them a couple of days notice, a week notice to like get all their stuff off of there, or at.
Least say, hey, you know the last magazine and still the next magazine is the very last one. Yeah, the moment that comes out, then we're shutting everything down and then you know, say you're goodbyes and stuff. But no, that's not how corporate thing work these days. It's they finally come up with a decision and then turn off the lights right now, get out kind.
Of exactly, it's such a such a terrible thing, and hard goes out to all those folks that are now looking for work. It's like as if we don't have enough gaming journalists in like as Mandy mentioned, journalists in general looking for work, and then you know, now they have to either go freelance or have to go find something else, and it's it kind of kicks us this wave of well we've been talking about again, it's not
just print and online stuff. As you know, IGN bought a bunch of of noteworthy gaming sites and then kind of also laid off people, and then IGN also just they just killed Humble bundles games last week as well, So like we're seeing this everywhere, and then this kind of goes into the major, next, major kind of story of Bungie, what's going on with them here with with not even involving really Destiny, because Destiny too is doing great after the final shape and it's sad to hear that.
October twenty twenty three, so we're about two months away from when we would have had the one year anniversary of the last layoffs they did at Bungee and now here we go out of nowhere more layoffs at Bungee. They're at least one hundred and fifty five of their roles are going to be integrated into Sony Active Entertainment, which, if you don't remember, Sony bought them for a three point six billion and then use them as a consultancy
firm basically for all their other live service projects. One of them did wonderful with hell Divers two. The rest of them seem to not be doing so hot, and Concord is the latest one that is not doing great. But they're going to lay off a big number of folks, around two hundred or so. And this also includes leadership as well, not fil leader that I think a lot of people want remove the Ceop Parsons. We'll get into
that a little bit. But he Pete Parsons did go and write this, at least it wasn't an AI bot that wrote some of this. But he says that they've tried tirelessly to enify roles for as many people as possible and saving a great deal of talent that whatetherwise have been affected by the reduction enforced, and they are going to kind of push them into other roles in Sony.
And also they're going to make a new studio out of their one of their incubation projects, an action game and a brand new science fantasy universe that's going to be formed within PlayStation studios, So they're going to have
we'll have another studio. And this probably also means that I'm assuming Destiny was not Destiny, but Bungeie is going to be losing a lot more of their autonomy if they haven't lost all of it and become more of a Oh, we're just another studio inside Sony now, And that kind of feels weird because the whole point of this was that they were supposed to be autonomous. They were going to be multi platform. Marathon was going to appear on multiple systems, not just PlayStation. Right now, what
does that mean for that PlayStation studio game. Does that mean that that's now only a Sony venture the time being or whatever. Lots of weird things. And also, I got to bring it up, but I don't think this really makes a big difference, because honestly, what one person does with their money, regardless of whether what we feel about it or not, it's their decision. But p Parts is coming under fire a lot for having a classic car collection that he's spending a lot of money on.
Instead of using that money, I guess to give back to you know, to give back to their workers or invest more in will it never happened? Yeah, exactly, We're not going to take their money. Whether you feel like they should make that much or not, that's that's your own personal thing, and I understand that as well. We can have that conversation if you want. But this is the capitalist structure of the United States, and unfortunately CEOs always are going to make way more money than us workers.
It's going to happen in every single job. So, but what do you think about all this? And do you think that somebody should like be wishing they didn't buy a bunch.
Of I'm trying to think of the best way to answer the last part of that to Tony feel like they regretted buying that, No, because because in the end it's going to profit them. And now obviously things did not work out well for them as far as the online games went, and we talked about this many times, that the strategy was to have all these different live service games and then the last of us is going to have a life service game, and this is going to have a life service game, and then it has
all fallen apart. How Divers worked out really well and has been fantastic, she said. Concorde has not had the best beta time, and we'll see how sales go when they go full launch. What is it later this month? I think? But no, it's like they have Bungee now and they're going to find a way to make it profitable. What's best for Sony Now, if it means cutting a bunch of little men out, it is not going to
affect the top guys at all. They're going to come out with their statements and it's all going to be yes and yes it might actually, you know, I don't want to be that would say that the people on top have no hearts. I'm sure some of these decisions are difficult, but like you said, like if the decision is one less car that I can buy, or fifty people need to be cut from their jobs, They're going to cut the people dot the car. It's just how
it works. They want to make sure that the business is profitable and they are getting as much money, if not more money, year after year. And unfortunately it means cutting. People talked about it with the game and Former thing, and we talk about it basically in any forms of life when when companies go out and buy other companies, it can go one of two ways, Like it could be a loving relationship that that really works out for both or the top company is going to consume the other.
I mean, we talked about IGN buying up all these different brands and then spitting them out, like the parent companies of so many different video game publishers continue to do the same thing. We saw that a lot with a bunch of YouTube brands that like grocer Teeth bought a bunch of people, and then this company bought rooster Teeth and then they made them cut out all the small people there. It's like the same thing with video games. It's it's the more and more that.
You have with the activism Blizzard, they laid off people.
The more and more a company is owned by a company, which is owned by a company, which is owned by a company, the more down here is easy just to get laid off.
But I think the bigger thing with this is that Bungie has been basically mismanaging itself for quite a while, and Sony basically saved their assets from being worse than they are now. Like if if Sony didn't buy them, they might be closing the entire Bungee Studio period. You know.
But that's usually a reason why these happen. It's they go, we're great, we're great, we're great. Oh something went wrong and we don't know how to handle it. Please help us. Yeah, And then is a lot of times you get helped for a little bit, and then in the end maybe the brand stays, but a lot of those people that were there are going to be no longer there.
It's right, yeah, I mean another reason why that pe Parsons has been brought up, not just not just because of his spending habits, which you know that gets brought up when when you're a CEO that gets to stay there and a lot of the decisions come down to decisions you make, right, Destiny two has kind of been here and there, you know, a final shape apparently has been amazing as far as critical reception, and then like basically that a great end to they could technically go
on and make a Destiny three. Now Destiny two's like story has kind of hit that final part, and it's a lot of people that have either formerly worked there or currently worked there. A lot of them are former employees that are basically saying, you know, you had Leonna ruper, talk about he's a liar, a thief, and so many things you can discuss publicly, you know, step down and without the giant Sony payout. This is not on Sony. This is squarely of failure of leadership, plain and simple.
Former Destiny community manager Pete is a joke C suite taking accountability for any of this or still just withholding bonuses and then it'll be settled in the house. I mean, poor leadership has crushed one of the greatest Melopers of all time. Retire Pete. Damn. That isn't a damning thing from a former employee. I don't know what is. But seriously, I mean, Destiny has not been doing well. They mismanaged.
They tried to make three games at once, so you know, they knew they were working on Marathon, but they were apparently working on another game called Payback, which is like a spinoff of Destiny that you could use the same character, but you're doing something else. It's not technically Destiny to and it's like, you know, you can blame the stuff when they were owned by Activision as okay, Activision is doing Activision things right where they have to make They
couldn't just keep iterating on Destiny one. They had to make destiny too. They had to make physical expansions all the time. They couldn't just included into the thing. So they spun off and became their own thing that didn't do well enough for them. You heard about whenever they were acquired by Sony. At first they said they weren't going to be layoffs, and they were. Sony apparently had allocated a bunch of money so that they didn't have
as many layoffs as they possibly could. And then here we are a second time, and it sucks to see
that like all these supers in their jobs. And yeah, some of the leadership went down with the payback team that is apparently no longer being worked on and some other ones in these layoffs, but the people that probably should be falling on the sword for this are not and they're not going to as Look, this would be like saying Bobby Kotex should have been should have you know, resigned after the stuff that happened at the vision Budge, but he was not going to do that. In fact,
he would let you know. He was so ingrained in that company that the border directors had to make sure that he he went on in with the Microsoft that division Blizzard merger, or they wouldn't sign off on it. So like this is to tell you that a lot of a lot of y'all that get mad. Look, I'm upset to I think all of us are upset. We want to see the person that is the reason why this has failed majorly, you know, take some credible for this.
And yes, he wrote this statement, and yes he kind of said more things than normally you would say when you're talking about this happening, but he's still not taking as much of accountability as you would imagine. And again, it's like this whole thing about you know, listen, it is what it is. Guys like this guy is not gonna get taken out unless Hermann Holst, who's now running the studio apparently tells them, YO, get out of here.
And even then he's probably got protections that prevent him from me for a certain amount of time.
And yeah, listen, I don't work in the corporate world, and if I did, I'd be at the bottom rung of whatever ladder that is. But you have to assume that cutting off the bottom rung of a ladder of a company is a lot easier than replacing the broken run on a ladder that's in the middle. And that's just what companies are going to do. And maybe if this doesn't fix the financial issues for Bungie, maybe then they start making changes too, said management. But it's so
much easier to go all right. And this is the big issue with with working and gaming. From what I have seen and from what I've heard, is the most dangerous time for you is once you're done with the project. Once you're done with the project, you're you're you're replaceable. It's like, all right, you're done with this because.
You wind down automatically because you don't need that many people to just be kind of maintaining the game. And then not only that, but again, like you're trying to work on three projects with this number of people. You don't have enough people to be able to work on it. Why are you spinning off three projects? Oh, just because you think all of them are gonna make amazing amount
of money. You abody have problems with Destiny Too, you're making Marathon, which okay, whatever, it's the game you used to make and you're gonna make it again to try to make a big deal. But the problem is the stratched shooters are like a dime a dozen right now, and you don't need another one.
So listen. They try to learn from Telltale. You get popular for one thing, doesn't mean you need to have fifteenth things.
But I mean, I get it. You also can't just make Destiny Too forever unless it's like Fortnite levels where like you can. But look at that. Look how many things they have to keep adding to Fortnite to make
it continue to be relevant. And that's the thing Destiny two. Yeah, you're great, you add all this story content or whatever, but it's like it's still not a behemoth like uh, Final Fantasy fourteen or even Wow is where It's like I feel like, yes, Destiny two has its players, Destiny two has its people that are die hard Destiny two or whatever, and but I feel like if Destiny two went away, would it I mean, I'm not talking about the people that are working on Destiny Too, yeah, I'm
talking about the players for Destiny two. They would just find another game to play, or another shooter to play or whatever. It's like, there are so many other ones out there. The eventually, when enough people play the Final Shape and they get through that, what's gonna happen. They're gonna probably stop playing that game. And it's like online service games as a whole or a cancer right now
to the industry. And I think the uh one of the Power the Power community guy, which has has not been he's been very vocal about you need to be careful about playing the same game over and over because he's everybody keeps asking about, oh, was Powell to failure because they went from two million to six hundred thousand players, right, and he brings up, like, yo, listen, the problem that we have right now is that too many people are
playing the same game over and over every day. And so he keeps telling people like Sony like Jim Ryan that we need to have twelve different live service games and we need to you know, be trying to have him call come out by like twenty twenty six or whatever and rush these things out because we need to like you know, the market with more of them, and
then guess what happens. You're gonna keep telling all these publishers that live service is the way, and so indies and single player games and all that stuff keep dying, and all we're left with is the same game that
you play over and over. So he brings up a good point, and I think this once again shows like where gaming is right now, where we're trying so hard to find the next fort nine that it's like the rest of the creativity and the great things that are about gaming are like getting kind of they're still there. Obviously they're still there, but they're getting lost in the whole. Damn. Gaming is just not making enough and we got to keep playing off of laying off, of laying off, and
it's like where does that end? Where does that end?
You said something that's really interesting to me talking about how people are only playing the one game, and we have to get them to play more games. So you need to come out with more and more life service games.
But what's the goal of a life service game to be that one game that people play and continually come back to because you're continually bringing content to Now, if a company came out with a game plan like Sony was attempting to do, where you kind of were able to within your company have five or six life service games, because life service games do a thing if they catch on and you're not Fortnite or Apex legends like where you go completely wild for years. But Pow World people
are saying, well, it's not a success anymore. Yes, it was. It was the top of the town for two months of a game that had zero interest going into it. But a life service games has this crazy peak and then it settles into the normal people that they and then you come out with your next content for your life service game and it'll bring people back for a
little bit and then they'll die out. So if you're a Sony and I think what their main game plan was was have six to ten of these games that one would hit the wave and as it started to die down, their other game would catch the wave, and then those six games would then kind of have a revolving door of content and then all six games would kind of go in and out. But unfortunately you have this idea, but then the dip happens and you're like, oh,
it's dead and you just shut the door. It's like no, it's like you have to catch the wave of it. Your contact comes out and you have like a month of just fantastic game plan, everyone's playing your game. Then they all move on, like there's so many I don't play with my groups of friends anymore. I've gotten old. I just played my single player stuff. But the people that I know that still really focus in on online gaming and play with their group of friends, they go
through waves like it's Rocket League for two months. Still to this day, they'll play Rocket League for a little bit and then they'll move on to this game, and then they'll move on to this game. But unfortunately, there are some companies out there that win. It's their turn. It's oh my god, this is great. Now we're going to expand. Now we're going to create three more games like Bungee's talking about. It's fantastic, And then that wave of gamers move on to the next thing and they
go shut it down. We're screwed. Instead of all right, now you have to build to your next turn, and you have to budget wisely that you can survive the lower parts of those waves. What are games going to do next year when Grand Theft Auto six comes out and everyone's wave crashes down for at least three months because granted six takes all of the time.
Or it may not because they Granted five Online was so huge they didn't even make the DLC for it. So imagine what Granted Thought was six one. It's like, yeah, well, I mean, you're gonna have people that are just gonna play the game. That's gonna cause a shutdown. It's also gonna bring more people into gaming, which that's what they want. Right between the Switch two and Granted Thought was six,
that's what they're hoping is gonna save gaming. And yes, it sucks if the Swiss SEO did not come out this year because they were hoping that that was gonna come out this year and kind of be the big boon that. I don't know what's going on with the PS five pro. People were hoping that's gonna be the thing, and that still hasn't even been. I guess that's either gonna be Games Calm or Tokyo Game Show. We'll see,
but which games commons in a couple of weeks. But you know, look, I don't want to keep beating a dead horse. I think we all know how almost anybody that I I don't know, I don't know too many people I know they are out there. I see them talking. I could probably get somebody on the show that is a huge like online gamer and loves this stuff. Well, most of the people that you know are on here with me. We're kind of feel that same kind of vibe of you know what, it's still single player games
for us. You have your multiplayer games that you play like you know, then he plays and will be the show that's a multiplayer game that's still going on. You know. Yay college football. I'm sure it is gonna do great. Madden does amazing numbers online as well boards FC.
So yeah, listen, I'm forty. I know you're getting your forty. We've aged out for the most part, our generation has aged out of the online gaming circles. There's obviously still some that that that go around. I don't want to paint a broad brush on our generation, but then you look at my son's generation. He's sixteen years old. All he doesn't play a single player game, but all he plays is Minecraft and Roadblocks and those style of games, and he's not getting into all of these games that
are trying to take over those realms. So obviously there's a twenty plus year gap of other generations that you're trying to catch on to and other styles of gamers. But it's a different, a difficult world to get a life service game to come in and stick and stay long term because there's only so many of those games that can stay on those pedestals, and most of them have been taken up.
And then nobody anyway. That's this is why Microsoft's trying to get into the which you know, I'm going ahead and go into the next thing. That's why Microsoft's trying so hard to get into mobile gaming because what's still around that they own now Candy quis So and all the other king owned things that they now own. So like, that's that's why they're trying so hard to get into that set because those are automatic, automatic moneymakers that they get.
This is why they're trying so hard with Call of Duty automatic moneymaker, right like, So that's what this is. This is why we're going into that direction, which you know, we all don't like us old school gamers are not big fans of it, but you can see why it's turning that way, and it is working for some folks. It's not working for everybody. And that's the thing. You're gonna have a lot more misses than hits, and forevery like my daughter likes to play among us in roadblocks,
you know, those are her things. And those are two concurrent multiplayer games you gotta play all the time with your friends or whatever. You can get off of it and play something else or do something else. It's not this like uh, they're also not games that you got to feel like, oh man, I lost it. If. That's the problem with Destiny too as well, right is it's a it's sort of an MMO that they don't call an mmo. Is if you stop playing for a while, guess what happens, You're out of it. You can you
no longer can play online or whatnot. So it's like that's an issue too. People don't have all that time to keep playing this game that goes on forever, and you lose it if you don't keep playing. So I think that by itself loses people as well. Whereas I think like something like Whole divers two works so well because it is a game that you can pop in with friends play and then you go on about your merry way, and then you can come in the next
weekend and play again, you know whatever. But and and those games don't go away, like Fortnite, Call of Duty, all that they keep going black. Op six is about to come out in a couple months and that thing's gonna blow everyone out of the water again. So like that's the thing is, there's only so much pie to go around as uh as as you know, our friend the Rock would say, it's uh, it's It's something that Microsoft is also trying to get into with with game
pass right. They're they're going into the subscription model. And never has there been more apparent than what's happening with their their Xbox console sales, which took a fort dip again for like the cause. I mean, they they rose up during like the holiday quarter, but after that a flatline basically, And all they're talking about is how much they went up in revenue for services and all that, which went up like sixty one percent, and then their
gaming revenue went up. But you got to take off like forty four percent of that for or it's like forty eight percent, So they'd only be they'd be like down four percent if it wasn't for Activisi Blizard. But guess what they own them now, So whether you want to take them out of the numbers or not. That's your yes', your prerogative, but they are owned by Microsoft now, so they have a right to put them into the
numbers that they want to. The whole point of this is that Amy Hood went out during a Q and A session of it. She was asked, like, where do xbos console sales factor into this? And she says that basically what they care more about is rising up in services and having games to basically further those services and keep growing those services. She doesn't really talk about that.
They want to continue to grow in the console space, which is they've introduced the firestick, and they have cloud and they've they've made these other Xbox game pass tiers, because it's all about making game pass grow, right, whereas Sony and Nintendo are proving the opposite, right, Whereas they're more still about the console and the consoles are maybe PlayStations is not selling necessarily as much as they were at the beginning. They're eventually going to hit a plateau.
The Swisses obviously hit a plateau, but that is a much older system at this point. You know, we're older, so we come from that old school of okay, you service the console. This is what this is for, you know, game Pass is kind of like we're going more towards the movie and TV part of it, of like, hey,
subscribe your thing, play your games, do whatever. Do you think that if you're a console person at this point, if your Xbox only console owner, like, do you worry now about are we just gonna get the point when there's an Xbox all because this just keeps going down, or.
Maybe eventually if they can get the technology to work and internet works better all over the world, where you know, you can actually stream these games. I've said it many times because we have this conversation that seems like every time I'm on because they continue to bring out more and more news about it. But they want it to be able where you can stream the games off of a different console onto your TV and then play it that way. I live in an area that's absolutely impossible
to do. I mean, PlayStation doesn't, Xbox does it. And that's kind of what they want to do with the firestick is like, hey plug this in. All you need is a controller, sign up to our subscription service, and then move on. And a lot of people bag on
Microsoft board. I'm not a Microsoft guy, but I don't because they're trying to go in a different direction than Nintendo and Sony, and I think when right now you're in third place in this battle, that's what you need to do is shift and then find a different avenue.
They still have the consoles for those of us that want them, but they're trying to find different ways to reach people that don't want to buy this console to be able to still get into their game Pass subscription service and then forget they had it and then just bring in monthly revenue every cent year. Like subscription services have just gone way off the charts as far as ridiculousness, I don't know. Again, I'm in the sports media side
of things again. I don't know if you've seen the new Combination Sports thing that's like forty three dollars a.
Month, right you knew or whatever?
Yet, Yeah, we are surpassed. Like we all cut cable because it got too expensive. Now all the streaming services are getting too expensive and they've spread out so much that by the time you get the things that you want to cover the interest you have, it it's because like we've ruined things like let's go back to basic cable where it was just simple. Now it we've complicated things.
Yeah, it is getting to the point where you could literally probably like lower your Internet a little bit. I mean, I have a gig internet here, but I could probably like lower it to like five hundred. I need the gig internet for like what we do here with the
streaming all that. But like if I lowered it enough, I could get a package where I got all of the cable channels that I need and still pay less than if I went and got YouTube TV and all this other stuff and and like, because that's the problem with like the ve new one, right, You're still missing NBC and CBS to get all your because then then you have to subscribe to they're they're streaming services as well.
So it's like that's that's the problem. At least Xbox for the gaming side of it is a one stop shop for Microsoft stuff and thirty Party stuff and twenty bucks a month to me is still not in the bad section of it. To get all the stuff that they get or you get with it, it's still not bad. The problem is when you when you hear things like Soccer two delayed now avowed has been delayed to February twenty twenty four so far, the one game that has come out this entire year, Help A two kind of
underwhelming for a lot of people. You suppose you still have Indiana Jones. We don't know if that's what they're gonna come out this year or not. Soccer to supposed you going to come out in November. But that's also like they don't own that. In three months, it's gonna go somewhere else. I forgot that what white stimulator. That's not a that's a niche thing, that's not gonna uh age of mythology is also a niche thing. It's not
gonna do that. It's gonna do okay, but it's not gonna bring everybody here or a history un told same thing. So like the main driver you have right now is you better hope to God. Call of duty during brings people to like end mass a game pass, And the problem is that how many people are just gonna buy the game and not even subscribe a game pass. So it's like like then.
You're getting Chetny Bock. I mean, yeah, that's that's the beauty of game passes. Like, well, I don't want to have game pass all right, that spends seventy bucks. Right, Well, I don't want to spend seventy bucks. Seventy bucks is too much, all right, then subscribe to game passes twenty bucks.
Yeah, and you can you can stop subscribing the next month if you don't want to pay Call of Due anymore.
So it's absolutely I mean, so it's one of those things that obviously game Pass is doing fine enough for Microsoft that they can go in this different direction and not really push console sales and they're not pushing games out early that become buggy messes just to try to get something on game Pass. So obviously, right, as much as it's frustrating as a gamer, business wise, it sounds like it's doing just fine for them. The way things are going now.
That basicometer is going to be that it's gonna be called Duty. How many how many people can you get to subscribe with just Call of Duty? Because that's going to be your main game that you're going to push people to in a couple of months. Like all these all this little indie stuff is nice and whatever, but you know it's not going to draw people to subscribe.
But that the whole thing on top of that is to try to spread things out and hopefully have enough of them where it's not spread out like it used to be with microsoftware as one game every year, but where you can have a pretty heavy hitter once a month every two months that keeps you going. All right, I have to have game Pass because I want to try this game. I mean, that's past the point you live off of I have subscribed to the game Pass and I forgot right, that's how you live.
Well and and if you're an actual like that's my thing again about the whole like playing one game and that's all you do. Like Game Past is not for people to play one game and that's all you do, Like, it's for the people that are actually I want to play different games, right, and I want to get It's like Netflix, you have like your everything you know, and oh hey, I'm going to play this Kinitzugami game because it may not be my kind of game, but it's
I have this service. Why not? Right, that's what they're banking on as well, Right, we're paying all this money is for you to oh why not? And then you what if they put super supermarket simulator on there, people are gonna let go nuts in and play it on it I mean they it's actually been good about getting those SIM games on there a lot because they know
it'll attract people to go on there. But like, that's my thing is I worry about to what point do we get to where you might as well just say you're a third party publisher and stop with this nonsense of the we're still the console maker and all that
stuff and stop. I mean, I know Phil has said it, but the problem is that Xbox has so much Oh, somebody says this, and then Phil comes and says this, and then Satia says this, and then Amy Hood says this, and then what I'm pretty sure Phil is gonna come and contradict Amy Hood in like a month and say, oh, no, we still care about consoles and whatever. Look, they still
care about the console. This is coming because right now, like you said, everything, game pess doesn't work without the console because almost everybody's subscribed through game Pass has it because they have an Xbox console. Because PC game Pass they're they're freaking dashboard. Their store sucks. Okay, most people
can't stand having to use Xbox's PC game Pass. So that's the problem that you you already tried to get the console person to move over to Ultimate by basically telling them that, oh, now if you only have the console thing, you can still get your Day one games, but you won't get online. So like, let's force you to move over to Ultimate or drop game Pass whatever, Like let's let's basically say that we're just trying to improve game Pass and we don't necessarily care so much
if the console. So now they're Microsoft, they can afford the hit maybe, but eventually, like does somebody go, yo, can we keep affording this hit? Can we keep just saying that this is it's gonna pay off in the long run, Like maybe we never get that technology, but what about the next shin after that? Are they saying that basically PlayStation is not gonna have a PlayStation seven?
Is that what they're banking on? Then Nintendo's gonna be on their own little island, and then PlayStation is not gonna have a PlayStation seven, so we don't have to worry about it either, Like do you think that that's what? Are we going to get to that point where position sits? Then Xbox whatever is the last one.
But I don't think for Microsoft they care what Sony system or if they're going to kind of go in the same route. I honestly, I think Microsoft wants Sony to continue just throwing out PlayStation and having their games stuck on a box while they're trying to do other stuff. I think they're trying. They have not hit those numbers where they can just go screw consoles. We're done with them yet, but I think still long term that's where
they want to go. Phil Spencer has to continue to come out and say no, we care about consoles, because if they cut the consoles out and this is the last generation, the numbers are going to take a big dip because not enough people have conformed to the PC Realm or the fire Stick Realm. But that's obviously where they want things to go long term. Now do we see another generation of Microsoft consoles, Probably because we're not quite there yet, But in ten years fifteen, I think
Microsoft would love to go, we're done with consoles. They're too expensive, and it's too costly for us, and it's too costly for Because that's why I just look into the future, this is going to be Microsoft's steal. Consoles are too costly for you, right for you to have to spend six hundred dollars on a PlayStation seven or seven hundred dollars on a PlayStation seven or how wild is going to get by that. It's like, that's too
costly for you. So come to the Microsoft game Pass family and spend what sixty bucks on a firestick and you can play all our games. You don't have to spend seven hundred dollars to be able to then buy our games. You just buy this thing and then you can play our games with our subscriptions. That's where they want to get to. Unfortunately for them, technology hasn't quite gotten to that point. But to me, I buy all
these consoles. But if we get to that ecosystem where one of the three main players, and it's going to be Microsoft, says we're done with consoles, we're moving to this, then salute to them and hopefully it works out, and hopefully I have the internet the technology capabilities at that point to be able to play their games on whatever service they go into. And gaming changes all the time, right, we used to be on cards, now we're on CDs.
Now we're just digitally downloading. Most like, there's so many things where a small thing will change, and we have this immediate reaction every single time, this is the worst thing possible, And then about six months later we're like, how did we ever live without this? Yeah?
I mean people, look, I love I love having holding something in my hand as much as the next person. I'm like that with books still, I do not read a book off of a screen. But with games, it became a matter of convenience. It helped that we got you know, digital review codes stuff like that, so it made it easier for us to start getting used to the fact that, Okay, we're just gonna put this code in. It's going to But it's nice that I can just
press a button and here's all my games, right. I don't have to like go take the disc and put it in and take it out and make sure you're back.
Microsoft had that thing where you can have five games going all at once and you just hit about to resume your old games exactly.
Yeah, figure, yep, you know that will continue to be a thing for a long time. So we'll well, I'm sure next time we'll talk about it again, because I'm sure we'll go But uh uh. The last thing here is another kind of symptom that's been happening with with games. Is that I think we're getting to the point maybe we're just remastering too much stuff. We're just we're just going into the section of everything doesn't need a remaster. And maybe perhaps this has been shown off by the
fact that Braid Anniversary Edition that came out. Was it not too long ago on May fourteen? Uh, it's a remaster of a well loved indie game, But it was also at a time when indie games were like indie console games, we're starting to be This was XBOS Live arcade time. This was when it was really starting to be cool to kind of be indie. But it was It's not like now where you have an indie all the time, right, So the game, like now, it's kind of a dumb a dozen, But back then this was huge.
And so one of the new things is that there's a fifteen hour commentary track by Jonathan Blow, the creator of the game, and he is asked in various clips that I guess span different parts of time in this where he talks about basically he goes from I don't know anything about how much it sold, to it sold
horribly thirty four days later to it sold decently. If you compare it to Steam Jeff Mintor's game or the Atari fifty thing like old stuff, right, that's kind of like making it look new but not anything based off of what you need for it to keep the studio going.
And then he keeps going saying they've been utterly terrible sixty eight days later, and that sounds horrid, Like, you know, you come out with this remaster, spent a lot of time in this remaster, and then it doesn't sell anything close to what you wanted to sell, and then you're
almost like regretting you've been bothering making it. And it feels like it's another symptom of some people feel like what's the point of even doing games journalism or being in games because I'm eventually just gonna get laid off or I'm eventually gonna be sitting there looking for work. I'm eventually gonna be sitting there without a studio because my game didn't sell at all, because there's these forever games that keep existing and nobody buys as many games
anymore or whatever. They only buy the big game. Like, what do you think may have been the issue with Braves remaster not selling well enough and doesn't have a point about like maybe I shouldn't have done this.
Well, I didn't even know this was a thing till last week when you know, the new stuff came out that it did not so well because I didn't know it was a thing. I didn't know it came out like, you got to promote the thing that you make. And that's something I always struggle with with with any of my projects, is promoting myself for promoting bad brackets. Go check out bad Bracket. But you got to be able
to promote this stuff. And yes, times have changed where we don't need these kind of anniversary additions as much. It is a cash grab for companies. Hey throw it out there, try to get some money from it. It's not a lot of work, and this will help pay
for this other game we're doing. But it sounds the exact opposite for Braid, where they put in a lot of work and they did a commentary track, and they did all this stuff, and they basically had to rebuild the game because I guess the assets didn't weren't able to shift over to the new gen stuff, so they basically just rebuild Braids. So they put a ton of work into it, but nobody knew it was a thing, and those that did didn't care enough to pay for it,
and that had to It's one of those weird things. Again, I'm far away from the actual business side of gaming, but I would like to know how much you get for putting your game on a game Pass or a PlayStation Plus, because I think a great anniversary edition would have been fantastic to throw on one, if not both of those services and just get the payday from Sony and Microsoft and get the name out there for your companies so you can promote the next game that you have.
As you talked about at the beginning of this podcast, like this is a PlayStation Plus basically uses their three games a month service to kind of reinvigorate a game or get you hyped because of this game for something else that they're doing or for that company. And it's just kind of how things go. It's not a day and date thing like Microsoft. So a, hey, you know, the creator of Braid has this game that they're trying
to make. Do you remember Braid, Well, they did this really wonderful thing with all this new commentary stuff, and you throw it on there, and yes, you don't get as many sales, but hopefully you get a decent kick.
But it does cover some of the sales that you weren't going to get, and maybe eventually he does make a deal, especially with Microsoft, where you know he did kind of start out there with the three sixties. So yeah, maybe that works out for him, I hope. So I hate hearing these stories about games, but honestly, look, I do the monthly Here's what's coming out this month thing for Last Word on Gaming every month, and I can't tell you how many times I'm going through and going, oh,
this is a remaster. Oh, I have no idea this game it existed, okay, or a definitive edition, or like, okay, we kind of know about this because the Limited Run has their showcase that they do, and Mark loves a crap out of this game a tamba.
Right, Yeah, I have not got it.
I bet people that might buy that might sell more than Blow or not Blow, I might sell more than Braid. It's John. I'm getting the developer and the game computer. But there's also Star Wars Bounty Hunter remasters coming out the same freaking day. Uh. That's another one of those Aspire games. So take what you will, or it's already out by the way. I'm just I'm just bringing this up. Then you get more curious. Just a definitive edition, like
I'm telling you guys, like a defenditive edition. A remaster or whatever comes out like constantly. Now it's not the special thing that it used to be. Fate State Night remaster comes out this week, yo, Like literally a remaster comes out every single week.
So a remaster coming out.
Yes, they've been doing that console, They've been remastering all those Semi Max now, you know. So it's like that's the thing is, you know. Unfortunately, unless you're a big deal, which you know again, Braid is kind of a big deal for back then, for you know, our generation of gamers, but not for the generation past us, right, they don't they don't care about that stuff. And I just don't
think that there's nostalgia selves. But I just don't think there's enough nostalgia to warrant the amount of remasters that come out constantly. And just I feel like you never hear them talk about at all. And it's like, okay, yes, especially when you get like Nintendo coming out with remasters all the time, or you get Sony doing a second body of the Apple on PC with with their big
games or whatever. It's like people only have enough money to go around, and I think, especially now when we're in a very constrained time period, these remasters perhaps are not like the best thing to go about unless you know for sure it is something that people have been clamoring for right and then thus they will buy it. But you know, I hate hearing that. I hate their Braid remaster did not do well, But I think we also shouldn't be that surprised.
No, I'm not surprised at all. I'm with you. I'm a little disappointed. And I starting these masters that come out, and yes, this added the commentary stuff, but whereas just the one game, and it's like, okay, that's fine. I mean they did a lot of extra work to this. But I want to just sort something out there. Microsoft, if you're somehow listening to this and you're not tired of us, you know where Replay I thought did really
well on the Xbox One. Can we get an Xbox Arcade replay to help out all these little indie developers.
Yeah, ready to get going.
So you get Super meat Boy, and you can get Braid and Limbo and all these games that really made Xbox ArKade that fantastic years ago, just one giant collection and then each of these little indie guys can and get a little bit of a kickback for it. Now that's something else. Fine because then you get a ton of games like you did replayed and you put the history of the games in it. I think that would be fantastic. But yeah, disappointing that this is just.
I think it's also that even though the three Sea stores just shut down, Braid is available to be bought right the original brain so or you know, on some service probably, so it's like do I it's it's not one of these remasters where it's like okay, I can't buy it unless I buy this version, or it's not a significant upgrade to what already exists, so unless you just want to play it on switch for example, or
you know something that it's not on. But I think that's a very small number, and unfortunately, it just it sucks to see that that happened. But since I was already talking about the games that are coming out this week, I guess really quick, so we can get out here, both of us have to go to work. What else is coming out this week. As I mentioned, the Face
Day Night remaster is coming out. The Creatures of Ava, which is coming to game Pass, PC and Xbox, is that game that they showed off at that at the showcase that's like about can control of different animals or whatever and carrying them through this adventure game or whatnot. It looks really interesting. I might try it on game Pass, so you know, if that kind of struck your fancy, go for it. Cat Quest three, which honestly cat Quest two is really good, so I need to.
Get back into cat Quest two. They put one in two both on the PlayStation, yes, and I platinumed cat Quest one and got into quack Quest two, which is harder for a little bit difficulty progress and I kind of got burnt out from the second one. But both both of those games are fantastic, So I'm excited to get into cat Quest three at some.
Yeah, this one's a full on RPG with like ship combat, so this one maybe even up more up our alleys than the usual. You also get death Bound as well, which is like a multiplayer like co op action adventure game, so that might interest in people. There's also a demo available too for people. Steamwold Heists two, which another game that I would like, SteamWorld Heist, So I might look into this here. It looks like it's getting really good reviews as well, So if you like that first game,
definitely go check this out for sure. And that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue that it's getting on the It's gonna be on switch Online, so if you have the GBA Switch Online, you can go pick that up too. And you know it's coming out to that Mandy we talked about earlier, Madden. Yeah, it's coming out, So thank you, you know. Yeah in the same here you no, thank you. Uh, they keep trying to push you with that, Oh we made a big deal about franchise Mode this year or whatever.
It's like, yeah, no, you didn't. You didn't do much there. Keep telling me about Roger Goodell in the draft. That's that's the only not gonna sell me on that. But you know, thank you Randy for being on this week. I appreciate you. Mark should be back next week.
One of these times I get on and not have to talk about.
Yeah, hopefully not. Hopefully one of these times, uh, Rannie will be on on an episode that's not like a special one. And we'll get to talk about that. It's not about layoffs. And until next week, everybody, you hope you if you enjoy what you heard or watched, go like subscribe, follow all that stuff, go lack of subscribe, bad brackets on YouTube as well. Help out Randy there, and I'll see you next week later