Helldivers 2 is Getting a Halo Crossover on Xbox?! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 08.12.25

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2:12Nick Scarpino:Today's stories include Helldivers 2 teases a crossover with Halo, Remedy says they're unsatisfied with FBC Firebreak, and Resident Evil Requiem is getting a new trailer at Gamescom. We'll have all this and more because this is Kind of Funny Games Daily.

2:33Nick Scarpino:What's up and welcome to Kind of Funny Games Daily for Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Geddes. I am joined by the poppy of all trades, Blessing Adioia Jr. Good day, Tim. Good day to you. How are you doing on this beautiful Tuesday morning? I'm doing well. What's up with your clock on your phone? It's all stretched. It's the new iOS update where it tries to look good with each picture. So it'll just like every time you tap it's a different picture. It moves to Toretto and it like reframes it. Is that AI shit? I'm sure it is. Yeah. It's cool. I don't know. Not that AI is cool but that usage of it is cool.

3:09Nick Scarpino:It's just stretching a fucking clock. I think it's okay here. Listen I fuck with stretching the clock. That's cool. That's hilarious. What phone are you rocking these days? I literally just upgraded my phone a couple weeks ago. I have the Galaxy S25 Ultra. I was rocking the S24 before. The Ultra, bigger, so big that I still have my old phone. But now if I pick up that phone, it feels really tiny. I'm like, what was I doing for years? It's wild. I'm a big boy. I like them as big as humanly possible. Listen, I love that about you. I also like, I love Android. I love Galaxy. I've been using Galaxy phones for probably over a decade at this point.

3:47they don't do anything like as far as as far as like upgrading year to year right what's where we're at what do you want i don't know man make it grow stretchy clocks bless make it grow legs and like walk around and do my chores for me i don't know it doesn't do like it's the same exact phone i had but bigger and i'm sure if i got the regular s25 it would just be the same phone yeah maybe the processing power is faster but i can't tell because i never we got to a point where that

4:11Nick Scarpino:wasn't a thing that i was thinking about anymore every time that i think there's not some upgrade that actually matters, something will catch me off guard. It'll be like years will go by where I'm just like, we are so good. And then something will happen and I'm like, that just seems like a marketing gimmick. And then I use it and I'm like, oh shit. I will say this is cool. For me, the pro display. So the 120 hertz. Oh yeah, there we go. Yeah, I got a pen that pops out of my phone now. It's a game changer and it sucks because I have an iPad mini that's only 60 hertz. And it's the jiggle. When you try to like swipe left and right and you look at the apps move and even just like reading a comic book, swiping the pages just the the animation you see all the frames on it and i'm like oh this is driving me crazy and i never would have thought that would have been i would 120 frames on a phone why why i get it now what what is your thought on these touch phones that fold like the z fold seven so i the flip ones yeah i truly it's it's a market that is not me right like that is i understand it if you are really into using your phone as a mirror or like selfies for some reason or like vlogging to some extent and you don't want to actually have a vlog setup like a proper one yeah i fuck with the i fuck with the z fold seven because that is like it's it starts as a regular phone and then folds out into a square which is like bigger i fuck with that but yeah the ones that you're talking about that are the flips i forget which one it's not samsung i think samsung has one but there was another one flip in the fold the flip in the fold well there's like another company that i saw their ad for like their version of the the flip um and i swear to god they're just making up scenarios that's how i feel yeah it's i watch it i truly feel i'm like okay like all of your bullet points i'm like this is why you'd want this i'm like i don't want yeah it's like somebody at coachella and they put it down on a thing so all like them and their friends can take selfies in front of it and stuff i'm like i i don't know about all that is it oh is this the one this might be the one i saw the motorola razor yeah but like i get it it must be for somebody or else the market will speak and it won't be for anybody yeah um but i'm with you where i'm actually very interested in the the fold technology of like being able to just fold the phone out and have it be more ipad mini like yes um i'm firmly in the apple ecosystem so i'm waiting for apple to to do it and then we'll see how prohibitively expensive that is oh yeah it's two thousand dollars yep um but yeah the i've played with the galaxy fold six i haven't touched the seven yet and i've been very impressed the crease still drives me a little crazy that we're not quite where i want it to be but we're shockingly closer than i expected i i got to hold a z fold seven i we sound like i were sponsored i'm not sponsored but i got to hold a z fold seven uh for the first time a couple weeks ago i need it i i fuck with it so awesome i fuck with it so what's your use case for the square because that's the thing i'm a use case guy always when it comes to specifically like my everyday tech like i i really want to make sure that i'm not just buying something that's new and fancy just because it's new and fancy i want the new and fancy shit to like speak to me for some reason for my life and i feel like oftentimes they'll add features that get in the way of my life and uh when it comes to this phone it kind of gives me all the real estate i need and apps are kind of made for this shape yes so i'm a little concerned about the app compatibility like being perfect um on a different like aspect ratio especially like such a wildly different one that is way more square and way more ipad or tablet like yeah um but my use case is reading comics like because i don't like an ipad's a little too big the ipad mini it's that per especially like the more recent ipad mini that is full screen all yeah it's perfectly comic size i mean that's the reason why i haven't shelled out money for it is that i don't have a an important enough use case for it for me it really is the thing of just holding it and looking at how big the screen is it is like having a like a tablet and then like i was scrolling through tiktok or whatever turns out there's a lot of tiktok videos that are formatted for that exact aspect ratio and i wouldn't even have thought about it like half the edits that i watch on tiktok would have taken over my tiktok are you on the in the edit side of things like the i don't i want to say the answer is yes but I don't know what you're asking.

8:19The edits, like the FMVs, or not FMVs, like the AMVs, the anime shit that people do. Yes, yes, yes. They are now doing it for everything on TikTok. Okay, yeah. They're doing edits for fucking wrestling. They're doing edits for Hamilton. Is that about fan camps? But like fan camps are more cooler.

8:35Nick Scarpino:Well, not cooler. I'm not trying to yuck your yum, but. Yeah, I mean. Dope edits. Dope edits of things we like. Yes, I am firmly in that album. They're always in like that squarish aspect ratio. And when I saw, when I watched one on the fucking scene. You might just be getting got here. You know what I mean? Samsung got your number, bro. They're fucking, they're like, bless is this close. We just got it. Let's pump all the square videos to him. Here's the thing. I'm not sponsored by Z Fold. The person that let me like use theirs and look through it is sponsored by Z Fold. And so maybe they were trying to get me.

9:05Nick Scarpino:Yeah. Maybe they were. And let me tell you, they got me. People on the inside. Tim, how is this color not doing things for you? Oh, no, it is. Sorry, Kevin. I wasn't giving a look. I love beautiful that is. I fucking love it. Also, the Z Fold 7 is super, super thin. It is very thin, yes. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, enough about phone talk for now, everybody, because this is kind of Funny Games Daily. Each and every weekday, we run you through the video game news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind Up Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, and now Spotify and Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free and a daily exclusive show that is from me today, Gregway.

9:45Nick Scarpino:Yeah. I'm just realizing now that I don't know what I'm going to talk about. Oh, another use case for the Z Fold is like you can kind of use it as almost like a text situation where you like fold it up a little bit. And then like you have like one half as the keyboard and then you're typing on the top half. Just saying. Just saying. Make a Greg away about that. Yeah. Make a Greg away about like your thoughts on the Z Fold versus the Z Flip versus your regular whack-ass iPhone. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll just do a little Tim phone talk. But yeah, if you have better ideas, please tweet at me. Let me know what you want me to talk about today.

10:19Nick Scarpino:For a chance to be part of this show, though, please YouTube Super Chat your opinions as we go. If you have questions for us, ask them and we'll answer. A little housekeeping for you. We're an 11-person business, all about live talk shows. Today, after Games Daily, you're going to get Gamescast, which is a shit list episode. We're doing something a little bit different today. Shit list for something that's not video games. We're doing a shit list for the top 25 superhero movies of all time. Yes. And you suggested we do this. And I'm like, I'm excited. Obviously, I haven't seen the list. Yeah, I haven't seen it either.

10:48Nick Scarpino:So I want to know what they have to say. I believe it's from Esquire. And yeah, I was just going through Reddit. Because Reddit, every week at Reddit has a post that is, oh, this should be a shit list. This should be a shit list. And so when we do a shit list, at least for this last time, yesterday, I just typed in kind of funny Reddit shit list. Yeah. And legitimately, just a list of posts came up. And I saw that one. I was like, okay, well, that's recent enough. And also, that's a really fun conversation. I'm excited because the thing about best superhero movies of all time list is no one's going to be happy.

11:16Nick Scarpino:The chat's going to hate it. We're probably not going to get along. That's the beauty of this. I bet you we can probably find an amicable. We both agree on this list. I mean, you can put together. We'll see. Well, I don't know about Esquire, but me and you, I think. Okay, we'll see. You'll have to tune in after this. After Gamescast is going to be Mafia, the old country with Nick seemed to go really well yesterday. so uh kev do you do you have anything to say about yesterday's stream uh the game is like really chill and relaxing and it was just fun to talk to nick about how great italy is he said he was going to bring some dried meat so i'm really bummed that i'm not running that show yeah nick's going full italian on this one so if you want to see nick in his own check that out later thank you to our patreon producers uh carl jacobs omega buster and delaney the psalm twining today we're brought to you by shady rays and aura frames but we'll tell you all about that later for now let's begin with what is and forever will be the roper report it's time for some news we have seven stories today oh baker's does it story number one hell divers 2 teases halo odst crossover ahead of Xbox release.

12:32Nick Scarpino:This comes from Wesley Inpool at IGN. Helldivers 2 looks set for an unlikely Halo crossover after a new trailer teased the arrival of the ODST. Arrowhead's hugely successful PC and PlayStation 5 third-person shooter launches on Xbox on August 26th as the first Sony-published game on Microsoft's console. The trailer ends with what looks like the arrival of an ODST on a rain-drenched battlefield alongside the iconic music from the game. It's all very ODST. yes does this do anything for you i mean no it's funny because i am probably at this point in my life slightly more of a halo person actually probably like i'm more i'm more of a halo person than a held average person that is to say that i'm just not a held average person gotcha i like the last halo game a lot um so it doesn't do much for me i think it's a really neat thing um that i i want to see more i think if you're going to do the thing where you're publishing your game on another console you got to lean fully into it don't just half-ass it don't just just throw the game on the console be like all right here here you you know you idiots playing on the other console go have fun with our toy or whatever it's like no you got to serve that audience and meet them where they're at and so this one makes a lot of sense for the kind of games that halo is and the kind of game that hell divers is uh and then also it's a thing that i've seen hype about on the internet right i think when people are asking to um for hell divers 2 on the platform they wanted to see these kind of crossovers they wanted they there are the comparisons of like oh man fucking hell divers too is in space and has aliens and shit fucking halo has that shit why not it's the drops specifically it's being dropped onto the planet or the battlefield right like this is one of those crossovers that's just so smart like you see it and you're like this absolutely just makes sense it has to happen because uh it's not master cheap this is odst Like this feels like the people doing this, there is love and care, but behind it, it's not just like, oh, slap the most popular thing on it.

14:30Nick Scarpino:Chief might be a part of this. And I wouldn't be surprised if like the outfits of the different Spartans are there too. But going back to ODST, it just warms my heart because ODST is kind of a fan favorite of the Halo games. Smaller title, spinoff title. You're not a Spartan. You're just one of the ODST soldiers. It had a different vibe that at a time that I feel Halo really needed that. Xbox really needed that. And just gaming at large, this felt like Uncharted Lost Legacy. Of like, oh, wow, we love this franchise. Now we're getting more of it, slightly smaller, but it's different enough because of the protagonist and just the kind of things that they learn from Uncharted 4 to apply to this.

15:13Nick Scarpino:They're like, I just feel like ODST kind of came at the right time, did what it needed to do. like this was in an era where you know halo 2 and 3 were really innovating what multiplayer shooters could be on console right obviously uh halo 2 was like the one of the first games to have a map pack on console and you had to buy a disc with the map pack on it like you couldn't just download it and then you get to halo 3 and then we were starting to get into a little bit more of a robust online ecosystem with uh xbox 360 and yeah by the time odst was coming out it It was kind of just like one of the first Halo projects where they were like, all right, we got all the kinks worked out from the past previous titles.

15:55Nick Scarpino:Like, let's do something cool and different here. And it really hit. And so for it to be, what, 20 years later, it feels like coming back and being referenced directly with its music and having its systems in place. Like, that's it's awesome, man. Like I said, it warms my heart. And I think it makes this release even more of an event, right? hey if you're if you're a halo fan this thing that you loved from years and years decades ago right decades goddamn well 2000 when was odst yeah when was that at least over a decade i'm gonna guess as you're looking it up i'm gonna say 2010 2009 oh that's close yeah that's close um so yeah something that's that from back in the day right having that comeback and having a comeback in this separate release that playstation is trying hype up for the xbox fans right trying to give you reasons to want to hop in as opposed to just it being a port hey now you got something to look forward to within that that that i think is going to drive even more people to want to show up to it i think that's very smart and i think yeah this is super exciting yeah it's just cool and like you were saying it's cool that as we're starting to see more kind of cross-platform from the the big dog exclusives that we're still in this era of this feels like crossing a forbidden bridge yeah you know this yeah this feels this still feels special and unique yeah do you think what do you think is the next playstation published game on xbox but it's funny too that like this game on x this this article mentions that this is the first playstation published game i didn't even realize that i thought it would have been mlb the show until i looked it up and realized that that game is published by mlb which is hilarious uh and i forgot about that yeah that's interesting i mean the chat's saying marvel token for any dude i'm still not convinced i think it's the right call i think they should i'm just still not convinced i think it'll be pc and ps5 but i think it'll come later maybe i don't know i can see it coming later i don't see i don't see it at launch because they haven't announced it for launch i think if it was gonna be there then they would have said i don't know man i i'm still anything can't happen anything go for it oh marathon what was it marathon all right that's just confirmed right yeah yeah but i guess technically that is technically yeah yeah but no but that is the answer removing it from that which i do think it will yeah um but we're not sure you know yeah yeah i'm i'm still not of the belief that spider-man and god of war and last of us are going to end up on xbox all i need is for one of those to happen and then i'm like okay they're all coming yeah but like right now i still just believe that the that playstation's going to hold out on those titles and i keep saying this but it's like this is only going to matter for so long because once we get to the next generation of xbox it's just a pc yeah so we're not going to need to worry about it these games will be on xbox inherently because everything we've heard is that steam is on xbox so yeah it's a silly argument fair enough there is still the switch to side right because there is still this other console that will be existing and what will playstation end up doing with that if anything you know like obviously we saw lego uh horizon adventures last year that very much felt like a testing the waters to an extent it's not a full-on test because like there's too many variables at play like it is not a core horizon title it is a completely different game yeah you know but uh looking at a different audience but audience younger switch younger so um yeah i don't know what what about what would be your dream collaboration like if you could see let's say playstation puts out a game it comes to xbox or even vice versa right for like the future of xbox games coming to playstation what kind of collaboration similar to this halo odsd cross hold everything that would you want to see if there if that if there isn't even a case of that here's where this gets a little hard i love crossovers i feel like no matter what happens in life i'll always love crossovers we're clearly in a place of crossover fatigue across all mediums and we've been here for a long time right um That's why this excites me because it's smart and well thought out and it's not just putting Master Chief in it.

19:54Nick Scarpino:It is thinking about the gameplay of Helldivers and what cool partnership can we do across the games here? Like, this is very different, but Top Gun and Flight Simulator, the way they did their crossover, that just made sense. And they went the extra mile to, like, actually make it feel worthwhile. The Pirates of the Caribbean and Sea of Thieves, right? That to me, or Monkey Island in Sea of Thieves, inspired choices. It's not just crossover for crossover's sake. It's not just Fortnite where Beavis is shooting the Power Ranger. And I'm not talking shit about that because I think that that's cool too.

20:28Nick Scarpino:But I think all of it leads to this kind of ready player one into the Spider-verse. You can say Fortnite. Literally Fortnite. All of it. Yeah. All of it. Just like we're kind of jaded. Space Jam, New Legacy. like people go into this wanting to just be like fucking even astrobot to an extent of just like it is going to be a point of criticism you know what i mean um i'm not there personally but um it's only if it's good like if the story's good if the characters are good and it just crossovers create complications and it makes stories you care about mean less if they don't take it seriously and make sure that they're showing respect to both sides if everything if everything is crossing over with everything then these crossovers start stop hitting they stop mattering it starts to be a thing of like well i don't give a fuck because this character was just in this other thing anyway right i think the all the ones you're listening are are i think apt comparisons i even think though with like an astrobot or smash brothers right there's enough care even though they are everybody's here there is an intention with it that i think still makes that stuff stick but yeah when you when i think of a fortnight obviously that is fortnight's bread bread and butter and this is just what fortnight does and so i'm not mad at it by any means but yeah there is a level of all right i'm playing as goku and i'm running alongside superman and peter griffin and like these other random characters um and so if you're gonna do a crossover you want it with intention you want it in a way that makes sense and is gonna feed the audience in a way that's actually exciting the one that comes to mind and i don't know how you do it but i would say uncharted and indiana jones obviously because there's lineage of uncharted It is based off of what Indiana Jones.

22:07Throw Lara in there too. Throw Lara in there too, right? But if I'm talking about the PlayStation Xbox aspect of it, I think that could be a fun thing, even if it is just a costume or you find a treasure in Indiana Jones that is a specific one from Uncharted or something like that, right? I think that could be a fun crossover. But even that, I'd want it to be done in a way that's smart.

22:30Nick Scarpino:Yeah. This kind of goes back to what I was saying about having to show respect to both sides. Like I, there's certain franchises I care a lot about and like Spider-Man is one of them. And Spider-Man is one of my favorite examples of multiverse stuff, like dating back to the Spider-Verse comics in like 2013 or so when they were coming out, I was obsessed with them because every issue, you never knew what character they were going to reference, whether it's like the movie Spider-Man or the cartoon Spider-Man from the sixties or Spider-Man toys that they had that were like, there was like a toy universe.

23:01Nick Scarpino:And I thought that was so novel and cool at the time. Other crossovers have happened in the past. But what I loved about it is they really cared about each of the spider worlds as if the stories in those worlds all happened. But then afterwards, the problem is when these characters go back to their normal comic stories, they very rarely reference the fact that they met a bunch of other versions of themselves. Yeah. And I know that not every story can reference every single thing, nor should it, because then it creates too much homework, and then it's that MCU problem of people being like, so you're telling me I need to watch 42 shows to understand what's going on?

23:35Nick Scarpino:You don't want that, so I get it. But as a fan that gives a shit and wants to keep up with the stories, I'm always a little disappointed that one of the craziest things of all time doesn't seem to be something that they care about. I'm going off on a tangent here. No, I respect it. My point stands. I understand it. um okay we got a couple super chats here uh we got street shadow saying marathons being published by playstation studios uh and the street shadow says token has already announced as ps5 and pc only i only see it coming to xbox or switch after years sony's basically made itself the home of fighting games anime and most marvel games yeah i think the reason why i say i can see it is because i i do see the um enough of enough similarities with held iris 2 right it is a we're bringing in a third-party studio to make something that playstation is publishing it's a game that's already launching on playstation and pc um it is multiplayer right it is i i think there's enough of those things where it's no this makes sense i i think for playstation there's probably still the resistance no pun intended um no pun intended pun intended 2025 we're intending our puns uh there's the resistance for a god of war for a horizon for these single-player games because you still have the business strategy of these games are selling the console which is why you don't you don't see them coming to pc day one which could change eventually right everything could change eventually could see these games come to xbox eventually in fact we probably will if this pc thing stands um but i think marvel token along with helldivers 2 can have this layered strategy of all right let's see what the streets are saying let's see what the vibe is all right is there a demand there we'll meet that demand on xbox when we get the bandwidth to be able to make that port happen or you know when we feel satisfied with how it's been doing on other platforms to then carry it over um but it being playstation how long has it been since helldivers 2 released it's been like a year and a half because it was january right last year it was like yeah like january february last year so i would expect maybe that same cadence of a year and a half which sucks i wish it could be shorter but i i my pizza bet we do pizza bets is that it eventually comes to xbox within two years yeah and i scared you like coming out i was like what's happening uh yeah i mean i'll take that like i'm sorry sorry i mean i'm with you i'm with you okay i just i don't see it coming day one and i think it should i really think it should and i just don't think they're gonna do that i agree with you but yeah like within two years i don't know like i'm not i'm still 50 50 on it though mainly because i just don't know what xbox is gonna look like in two years and like we'll see how well helldiver sells i think that's going to be a a key metric and then you also will look at what gear sells on playstation it's a sheer numbers game right like there's no chance that gears sells less than helldivers right um for a multitude of reasons i mean that's a i mean yeah that's a tough question because they're both such different scenarios different scenarios i guess gears is a remaster so technically that's more fresh right but held ever see was a new game yeah newer game is more fresh more talked about the player number like the active player numbers are higher most players i mean gears yeah that's a weird one i can tell you yes there is old game is old and tender voice says i don't know about that gears is on game pass though yeah but i'm i'm sorry i'm simply talking about on play sales on playstation of gears versus sales on xbox of helldivers the tough thing it is interesting because there's a lot of factors that push and pull each one in different because i think for me the biggest factor is that the play playstation is outsold xbox astronomically and so i think by sheer numbers of player base that's it yeah it could be gears because there's just more people to buy gears but i think if things were equal in that regard no it's gonna be if things were equal in that regard held iris is the fucking bullet and i still think even though that number is like way imbalanced i still i still do think held iris could sell more held iris is not coming to game pass right i don't think it's no game pass no i think i'm saying held iris all right i'm saying okay is this a pizza bet i think this is the pizza all right roll the thing again there we go i'm saying held iris 2 sells more than gears reloaded here's what we'll do playstation if i am wrong i will buy you that expensive sushi roll you like delivered here okay first of all it's the opposite of expensive which is why i order it all the time sorry but also yes i'll take it though okay yes that'll be the thing and then yeah like you just buy me coffee i'll buy you coffee a lot of coffee okay you know this isn't a pizza bet if we're not buying pizza sushi bet sushi bet get on the graphic all right there we go We're shaking on it.

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32:57Nick Scarpino:should have been a bigger conversation that we had earlier um i i expect that it is if it's not it's upsetting to me because i feel like we are at a point i've been saying this now for way too goddamn long for as long as i've been talking about the dominoes i feel like after that i've been talking about ripping the band-aid off like there's so many calls that just make the call and And let's go down the path. And we're now so far down that path that if something silly like this wasn't on PlayStation, my question would be why? Okay. Yeah. So you're saying it should be everywhere. 100%. I agree.

33:30But also, I feel like it's better for my bet if it's Xbox exclusive because that's what's going to drive people. But you're right. It doesn't make sense for it to be exclusive. No. All right. Fair enough.

33:40Nick Scarpino:story number two remedy was unsatisfied with fbc firebreak's launch sales but says it has a solid game to build on this comes from chris scullion at vgc remedy entertainment says it was unsatisfied by poor launch sales of fbc firebreak but believes it has a solid game to build on and can win players over the co-op pve first person shooter set in the control universe was released on june 17th on ps5 xbox and pc and is not only remedy's first full multiplayer game but also its first fully self-published game. In its half-year financial report published today, the publisher says that while the launch was a technical success because it reached over a million players in its first 10 days, this didn't necessarily result in a financial success since the majority of the players were Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 users.

34:26Nick Scarpino:The game was released on both Xbox and PlayStation Plus, meaning it's unlikely many players bought the game full price on those systems. Instead, Remedy received an initial accrual from subscription service agreements with Sony and Microsoft, a payment for putting its games on their service. Remedy would have been hoping sales of the PC version would have covered for low console sales. Instead noted, on Steam, which was planned as the primary consumer sales channel on PC, the launch underperformed. The publisher says the initial feedback on the game was negative, but also says that over time, it's worked hard to turn this around, and it claims its players who have stuck with it are happier with it now.

35:02Nick Scarpino:What's your take on FPC Firebreak? My take on Remedy is like, wow the most unique devs in the space yeah the transparency is off the charts the way that they talk about games that are where they're at in the progress of their games no one else does that yeah no one yeah and you know even if there's indie developers that do i feel like there's something about the scale that remedies out of the multiple projects they're working on and them being able to talk about success and failures in a way that i read this and i i i start to be like but where's the catch what are you not telling us and it's like oh no they're telling us all of it they're telling none of this sounds good except for the fact that they're sticking with it because they believe that their fan base is there yeah some more bullet points i want to shout out uh shout out to noble for breaking some of these down right um they say there's a major update planned for late september for firebreak uh they said control has surpassed five million sales control two is on track meeting its next milestones and max pain one and two remake remains in full production uh and that's to like the transparency that you're talking about right like they're so open with how they talk about their games and how they perform and um where they're at in the development process fbc firebreak is one that i like i i was having a conversation with roger about this uh before the show mainly about like all right you played fpc firebreak i didn't play fpc firebreak like what the what is the deal with this game he was like yeah i know it's kind of rough like he roger uh didn't love it and it sounds like i mean based off of this article right initial feedback on the game was negative i wonder if i wonder a few things but right one can you get fpc firebreak to a place where we're considering it a success can you get it sounds like they're optimistic about it right but like is that is that realistic with it fbc firebreak was one that for me i think in that initial reveal my interest was a little peaked because it took place in the control universe but then once i saw more of that gameplay i was like okay no this isn't really what i want out of this universe and i kind of have the thing of did this game make sense to make like the way that it's made the way that like it being a game that takes place in the control universe does that do a lot for the game or for the audience of control wanting to check out this game when it's something so completely different from what that game is yeah i think for me that's my biggest question my other question actually i'm gonna ask you your thoughts on that before i get to my other thing which is more of a hot take yeah i mean look that's the thing is like clearly this this is one of those examples of why was this game made there's so much about it that feels weird for remedy to make this game fbc firebreak a multiplayer game after the success of Alan Wake 2 and Control and just like this role that they've been on recently.

37:53Nick Scarpino:To me, it's like twofold. It's clearly there's passion to make this type of game there from some type of team. And clearly there's an opportunity for them to be like, yo, there's another source of revenue here that can help fund these other projects that we're putting our all into. So I feel like this game existing makes sense for where Remedy's at. They are taking a swing. Was it the right call? is it the right call to keep supporting it i am not so sure about all of that yeah but mainly i say that because all right they're unsatisfied by poor launch sales but 10 million uh or a million users in 10 days like mainly from the the services on game pass ps plus it's like you know we we go in circles all the time about the money and the conversation around uh what game pass and ps plus and similar services are doing to the sales of games and are they taking that all into consideration when it when tom out of sales well mike here's a perfect example of the main success of this game was those platforms and that didn't allow it enough money whether or not the sales were satisfying overall the game wasn't satisfying enough from a revenue perspective for them um for it to be a hit but they are like all right we're close enough that we can get there they believe but my question is are they because i can you guess how many people do you think are playing fbc firebreak right now on steam i don't know this is the type of thing where i because you i we normally talk about the big numbers so it's like 150 000 people are playing whatever the hell game yeah the big ones say any higher than that i don't know let's see play that on steam right now 4 000 there's 20 20 people 20 people okay playing right now on steam all right all right this is something that roger put me on to when we were talking about a little bit of like oh damn these like their peak their all-time peak was two months ago and that was almost 2 000 players on steam but majority of players on xbox and playstation and they have ways to play for quote-unquote free subscription services whereas steam is is not so yeah i wonder what those numbers are but i i don't think in the way the way they're talking about it right it sounds like even for the ps plus and xbox uh game pass aspect of it like i think there's the expectation that that's going to bring in a certain amount of players but we want that to be a synergistic thing of the more people that we bring in through those methods the more people are then going to buy the game at the same time because you're able to kind of like expand expound out of that like popularity right it's like the same way we talk about rocket league launching on ps plus just gave it so much more fuel as far as people knowing about the game and the audience increasing and then those sales those actually like those actual sales actually working out for it i think the fact that steam being the platform that you can't like doesn't have the uh game pass aspect to it or the ps plus aspect to it right the place where you have to buy it being so low i mean like for me that's like a if you want to bring this back you got it i think you got to make big sweeping changes and then also like is this a thing that's worth putting your time into and that's only they can answer that question like that answer is going to come a year from now years from now when we see the updates of what this game looks like uh later on yeah my actual hot take is that this game came out actually let me double check because i believe it came out june 17th yes that's what it says june 17th thank you you know game came out june 16th on steam no peak my hot take and i'm gonna start with the hot take and then get a little bit more realistic right yeah peak had such a ginormous fucking groundswell of that coming out the devs being like hey we're just putting this out as like a side thing for us and then immediate immediate virality it was everywhere it was on tiktok it was on youtube was on twitch it was being streamed and it i don't i can check the steam db numbers right now but i'm gonna tell you they're probably at least five figures of the amount of people playing let's look up the peak numbers but again a lot of different factors there peak five exclusive correct yes and yeah way cheaper yeah and this is me talking specifically about the steam steam shit um the 24 hour peak is 135 000 right now well actually we're at the peak right now or no this is from 15 hours right now sorry right now it's 102 ,057 players divide that by 20 and then you get the amount of times players more that you have there um but i think there's a for multiplayer games for these live service things i think a big factor really is just the amount of attention right it is the like the amount of attention you can get from the internet as a whole obviously we're talking about specifically steam there's other platforms it's a different kind of game all that shit but i think at the end of the day both fbc and peak are multiplayer games that you want to play with friends and games that i think want that mind share when you're talking about streaming when you're talking about content creation when you're talking about the ability to go viral and have those clips being shared and stuff i think that's a core aspect of getting these games out there and i think peak kind of dominated that that space and then beyond peak it's just june 2025 as a whole was fucking crazy yeah you're talking about switch too you're talking about Death Stranding, you're talking about hella games coming out.

43:13Nick Scarpino:There's also just an important thing that's just the quality of the game itself. Yes. Because I didn't play it. Not my thing at all. This office, I feel like, is a barometer of taste. It's definitely not the barometer, but the fact that Roger, the Remedy guy, seemed kind of eh on it, and that Mike and Andy and Nick, the PVE, multiplayer Jabroni boys, they're all kind of eh on it. It's like, alright, well then if this is... in theory, for those two groups of people as a Venn diagram, and it ends up not being for any of them? Yeah. Who's it for? It's a very good question. Very good question. I know it's for me.