Outer Worlds 2 Disappoints, Obsidian Discusses Future - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.03.26

15:44Blessing Adeoye Jr.:but i thought it was too big like this is the ironic thing reading through this uh reading through this article and everything that urquhart and the other people who are running the store and running the studio are saying they're saying the games are too big they take too long i would agree if avowed had been 20 hours long it would have been probably one of my games the last year

15:58Andy Cortez:but it just really started to drag after a while you know and this is something i go into all the time when we start talking about obsidian slash start talking about these kind of rpgs is that we really need to get rid of this idea that the rpg has to be this huge go anywhere world and i want the rpg that is hey it's going to be 10 12 hours and you are going to make choices in it that then make it radically different than what then you replay it again and you find something else that way and these conversations and you you do show up and you kill everybody you're thrown in jail the credits roll like that should you that that should be an option for what we're doing rather than feeling like it's got to be all these different planets or all these different environments and biomes and you know avowed i thought for me and i always saw andy and i talk about it too it was the fact that for some reason just none of the companions clicked for us and so when you don't have that pulling you through then it's like okay well combat was great the world was beautiful but i didn't have a connection to what i was doing yeah and it had a really awesome art

16:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:style as well right like that annihilation vibe that it had that was very cool i would like to see something i would just like to see smaller games in general though greg this is something Like I say all the time, I don't have 300 hours anymore, man.

17:04Andy Cortez:A hundred percent. And when you look at Obsidian, right, you think, I think of Pentamut too, right? Which was such a, hey, here's this thing we've been working on in Tinker and you drop and everybody loved it. And it was on game of the year list and it was all these different things. And it was that, hey, here's a smaller scope. Let's take what works about RPGs and play with it and tinker with it and give you something that's digestible and ready to run through. I think they're such a talented studio and I'm fascinated to see what they do next. I'm just always worried about any studio getting to do something next in this world right now because it's kind of bleak as if you haven't noticed.

17:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah, the beat is not so happy at the moment. It's kind of hardcore. Every week there's another studio closing or another. I always worry about that 30 % profit margin that Microsoft has been pushing on its studios. 30 % is a high profit margin for anything, let alone for a creative thing like a game.

17:53Andy Cortez:100 % yeah so you have to really worry about where that goes but I hope obsidian's good I like more in the avowed universe and pillars that's fine I still think it is batshit fucking crazy that they haven't turned and said listen Todd we love you keep making elder scrolls you can make the next fallout with a number at the end of it but we're taking the fall we're we're giving obsidian in this fallout chicago just go do that you know what i mean like the make new vegas 2 and i know it's not the same people but it is the same vibe and dna and desire of like let's go have fun with

18:30Blessing Adeoye Jr.:that yeah that would be great and also if they knocked that out in six or seven years that would

18:35Andy Cortez:be fast by bethesda standards i know right yeah yeah yeah yeah in the super chats uh gondor's condor super chats it says schreier noted they want three-year dev cycles now i do believe we talked a little bit about that getting it down to three or four was mentioned even in the vgc article here which would be great which again i think would speak to smaller experiences but i want smaller powerful experiences rather than these larger games that have that bloat that have too many samey things in it that just don't work because again as somebody who liked the outer worlds too a lot what sticks with me was my character story in terms of the choices i made to make a stealth build or make a really weak sickly build or to take on the flaw it's not the overarching i was an earth director and agent and here's where i was going what i was doing but i digress because what are you playing these days you say you don't have much time i know you're a parent you're on a book tour you're out there doing all what is when you have a free

19:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:moment what are you playing i live for anything that i can play on my steam deck or my switch to like it really it just completely changes the game but i the most recent thing i played was Cairn, which is a timing game. Did it resonate with you the way it was everybody else?

19:44Andy Cortez:Yeah, okay.

19:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I loved it. It was really good. I mean, a game about the nature of Obsession that I can finish in 12 hours? Yes, perfect. I mean, I just spent... I also really stubbornly spent most of the second half of last year playing Silksong. Just really stubbornly. And it was really hard to get through, obviously, especially if you have to play it in, like, 20-minute chunks or hour-long chunks. Like, I generally have to play games at the moment. But I got there in the end. I'm on that last boss i'll definitely get it before next august i've decided okay great i'm glad that's all

20:11Andy Cortez:that's the hope that's where you're you're going for is to meet it before then what do you how do you you know i think of you of course as kezza the video game journalist all right you're doing all the stuff you're writing the books obviously you've worked everywhere we haven't really taught you know you're at the guardian like you're doing all this different stuff you formerly ign you've been all over the map for you on what i think of as the real journalist side of it doing the interviews writing the features you're not the reviewer so like how do you choose what to play do you do you try to play a little bit of everything or do you just say i'm committed to silk song and i can interview people about it i can pay attention to the things that are happening in the industry for story ideas or are you still hopping around greg i lost you for a second what was the quick version of that question the quick version is with you being a real writer and a real journalist and not having to chase the review beat what are you playing like how do you decide what to play do you feel like you need to play everything or do you pick something you just play

21:10Blessing Adeoye Jr.:that you know what's really good is that at the guardian i basically get to decide what i do for myself which is awesome it's really good so i pick things that yeah i pick things that i find personally interesting for whatever reason whether it's just something i want to play or whether it's because i've met the developer and i think they've got a cool story or whatever else i mean the things that i look for from games are sort of different now and i also don't have because i'm not working for Kotaku, which was my most recent job, or IGN or any of the big games websites anymore, I don't necessarily have to be on top of, for instance, like High Guard coming out.

21:39Andy Cortez:Sure.

21:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:High Guard came out. I was like, cool, I'll send someone else to play that. Not my thing. And I didn't have to feel like I had to have an opinion on it.

21:45Andy Cortez:Gotcha.

21:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Which was quite nice, actually. But like I've played, I mean, I think I played 55 games last year and most of them were, you know, five or 10 hour or even two hour games. And that's kind of how I'm, how I'm working at the moment. And then I'll have one or two really big things a year that I get properly stuck into like like Socksong or usually a monster hunter or it was Tears of the Kingdom. You know, something like that where it's like a big, big game that I can feel very engrossed in. But like my tastes really haven't changed all that much. What's changed is like the time, just the time and the structure of my time.

22:16Blessing Adeoye Jr.:But yeah, it is cool working for a newspaper because like, you know, there's always actual news going on, right? Yeah. Like no one's really paying that much attention to what's going on in video games. So I can just turn up and be like, hey, here's this cool thing I found. to show you guys and it's like being an ambassador from video game world it's i quite like it so then

22:33Andy Cortez:call your shot right now 2026 what is the one or two big things you think you're gonna get obsessed

22:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:with uh well i mean it's gonna have to be gta yeah okay like assuming we see it this year yeah assuming we see it this year but like i just i will always make room in my life for gta the whole world will make room in in their lives for gta whenever one comes out but i'm also just fascinated to see how that game is going to turn out, man, like, after all this time. And, like, reviewing GTA V at IGN was simultaneously one of the highlights and lowlights of my whole career. Like, it was so insane. I was locked in a room for a week, basically, just playing that game and doing nothing else. And, you know, it was such a huge deal, and it was just such a kind of massive moment in the culture.

23:15Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And it will be very interesting to do it again, but, you know, years and years down the line, and to see how it's evolved and to reflect on, you know, what games are now and how far they've come since that time. I think that will be a real moment when GTA 6 comes out.

23:29Andy Cortez:Do you see yourself locking yourself in a room again? Or are you going to have to enjoy this at your own pace?

23:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I'm going to have to lock myself in a room for that. You know, I'm going to have... How long are we going to get to review that? A week, maybe? Like, there's no way you can do that properly. I've had this conversation over and over again, right?

23:45Andy Cortez:Where it's like, okay, the rumor right now, right, is this thing of maybe it won't even come to retail because they don't want those to leak. And I think if Rockstar is in that mindset, I bet they don't do reviews. That's my prediction.

23:55Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Oh, man. I would be, so can you imagine? I would be gutted. I would be absolutely gutted not to have a go at GTA 6 when it was review time. I mean, I suppose it would be really cool discovering alongside everybody else. But, you know, Rockstar have gotten incredibly secretive.

24:09Andy Cortez:Oh, yeah.

24:10Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And also they're obviously embroiled in like a union dispute, a legal union dispute at the moment. So they're locking down even more. So that would be unprecedented, but I wouldn't put it past them.

24:21Andy Cortez:Yeah, I don't think they need it. I don't think they need to worry about the Metacritic from people buying it. So we shall see. Before we move on to story number two, two super chats. Zeke Speaks says, I love Obsidian and I really dig Josh Sawyer's content and ethos. Hope they keep afloat. Me too. And then Vroom Dex says, with prioritizing Game Pass, I hope that we don't see layoffs at Obsidian. Game Pass does impact hard sales of Xbox titles to some degree. I just hope this leads to positive change for the studio. and yeah of course the microsoft directives changing what xbox's vision is of course makes anybody out of city and i'm sure go ah geez what are we going to get where is this going to go

24:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:we'll see yeah i mean you have two choices right now you kind of struggle along uh trying to raise funds wherever you can or you have a corporate owner that may just shut you at any moment

25:07Andy Cortez:neither is a great choice really is it no they both suck it's not a great time uh but keep buying games and supporting the devs and follow them and when they start new things go support that too and because they keep writing about games spend money spend money on games there it is capitalism for god's sake not just fortnight number two on the roper report ubisoft union representatives call for the resignation of ceo yves guillemont uh this is chris kerr at game developer two ubisoft union representatives have warned that it will be impossible for company management to rebuild trust with employees while long-serving ceo yves guillemont remains in power uh speaking to game developer about the current climate at the French publisher, Mark Rutschel and Chakib Matawi, who both ply their trade at Ubisoft Paris and serve as union representatives for Soledad Informatique.

25:58Andy Cortez:Jen would kill me for that. That was a terrible pronunciation in French, but I tried. I indicated staff at the company panicked and I'm sorry, staff at the company panicked and angry after experiencing what they described as betrayal from the top management of the union reps shared their views just weeks after the french publisher announced a sweeping reset that kicked off with studio closures game cancellations the promise of more cost cutting and the announcement of a return to office mandate that will require staff to work on site five days a week screenshots of internal messages viewed by game developer uh suggest the initial response to the announcement was one of widespread shock disbelief and condemnation uh guimant himself was also called out in multiple messages posted on the company's internal communications platform with some employees questioning why he remains in charge after presiding over what will eventually be five years of downsizing when ubisoft concludes its 500 million euro cost reduction plan in 2028 in the wake of the announcement the union reps feel guimant must head for the exit if there is any hope of the company regaining the trust of its employees although uh rutschleck doesn't believe ubisoft struggles are solely the fault of guimant he explained that the ceo is ultimately responsible it's his company at the end of the day but everyone around him are just yes men and that also is the issue during the sexual harassment scandal in 2020 uh plus notes this is also required reading and links over uh to the article we were just talking about at game developer from chris kerr uh on top of that in other news uh zach over kataku says ubisoft Montreal lead David Michon Crump has been fired just days after he was previously after he previously published a few days after he was previously punished not published for publicly speaking out against the company's plans to force all employees to return to the office Keza Ubisoft what a shit show

27:56Blessing Adeoye Jr.:yo it's been a shit show for so long

27:58Andy Cortez:so long like for so many

27:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:so long like that I remember the you know the sexual harassment scandal in 2020 i was like whoa but even before that you know when i think i saw i saw a very interesting graph of ubisoft stock price that showed 2018 as the last time that it

28:12Andy Cortez:had like you know a good you know we don't bring we don't bring up the ubisoft stock here a lot all right you know we don't bring up you know maybe you know we thought that it could only it would seem so low that it seemed like a good time to buy it because then it would eventually go back up and that didn't happen it didn't do the game stop thing that i predicted well you know So we don't need to talk about the stock. The stock was a bad move, Keza. But Ubisoft in general, they're the real problem. They're the real problem. Not the people saying buy stock. That's not on them.

28:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I do think Ubisoft used to be this publisher that had Rayman, right? It had Rayman and it had even pre-Assassin's Creed. It had a lot of different games. Ubi Arts. Ubi Arts.

28:54Andy Cortez:Remember when they did Ubi Arts? Valiant Hearts. Rayman stuff. Child of Light. Child of Eden. Child of Light. Who's right? I'm wrong.

29:02Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i said i mean was that ubisoft as well they're both games

29:10Andy Cortez:doesn't that suck you know what i mean i hate that

29:14Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i greg when i was researching my book i quite frequently would google a game read two paragraphs about it and go i did i write that yeah oh my god the amount of times i'm like i've never heard of

29:22Andy Cortez:that game and i reviewed it igm they are both games and they are both ubisoft games believe believe it or not. But we were both thinking of Child of Light, the artistic one, not this PlayStation Move game, Child of Eden. That's not what we're talking about.

29:34Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Child of Eden. That was made by the Rez guy, by Mizuguchi. It's like a PlayStation. Yeah. Anyway, but Ubisoft used to do all sorts of cool stuff, right? And I remember playing just loads of different, interesting little Ubisoft games. And then it did the thing that every publisher did and consolidated everything into Assassin's Creed, essentially. And I don't think they were probably expecting Avatar to play. i thought they were probably expecting that's too much better than it did which was stupid that was

30:00Andy Cortez:stupid if they would have talked to anybody who is not in company apparently would have been like

30:05Blessing Adeoye Jr.:no nobody cares that's not gonna happen no nobody cares about avatar they just don't like it despite the fact that it's been this like presence in the cinema forever nobody actually do you know anyone who passionately loves avatar just him just him tim yettys likes him he's the only guy i've ever

30:20Andy Cortez:heard talk positively about avatar to that thing but yeah he yeah ubisoft you bring all that up i remember we i mean i know you do too but remember when they were fighting off the hostile takeover right from vivendi and it was like geese came out and he's like we're we we need to turn this around and it was such a success story that they did it and they were going to still be family owned and be ubisoft like yay and then yeah just the everything's an open world checklist game and everything has this you know we're trying to figure out how to go on let's go oh my god what are we doing into the cancel prince of persia yeah now it's prince of persia it's coming out

30:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:that should have been a slam dunk a remake of prince of persia like it was nearly done it just wasn't apparently just wasn't that good um but yeah like i think like the consolidation of every single thing into two mega franchises or one mega franchise per publisher is this is another example of it just backfiring like you need stuff bubbling under you need stuff that you can build upon in the future if you're just constantly hammering all of your all of your resources into the same few games also shouldn't just dance be propping them up like you'd think so they just raised the prices right yeah i like i feel like just dance was it was one of the under like under uh undersung hits i mean everyone knew how well it sold right but it really did sell squillions of copies all the way through the 2010s uh so yeah i do wonder whether guillermo perhaps is perhaps he maybe needs someone who's more in touch now and it would be a shame for ubisoft yeah i'd be ashamed for ubisoft not to be a family company not to be the ubisoft we knew anymore but since when has it been though greg like when when did it stop being that ubisoft at least five or ten years ago 100 right

31:53Andy Cortez:yeah yeah yeah uh by the way i did hit up matt piscatella from circana group when we were talking about just dance and the price hike a while back and he uh when we were off air did follow up and was talking about it uh he says well certainly past the peak of just dance which is the case for the entire dance music genre really but there's still quite a few folks keeping a wee around for just dance and it still does okay on switch doesn't have a ton of i don't have a ton of precise information on the franchise these days uh we have to rely more on survey blah blah who could have seen a comeback if it who who knows could it see a comeback if it made its way to the nex playground or if we start seeing a retro nostalgia boom for modern gaming weirder things have happened so yves gomont reads that he's like we can hang on we can hang on to the nex playground that's how we'll get them that's how we'll do it yeah yeah we're pinning we're pinning

32:43Blessing Adeoye Jr.:everything to just dance on the nex playground never underestimate just dance that's that's

32:46Andy Cortez:a lesson from this because the thing i know that you see on the news side of it that we talk about on this show so much is i feel like since we started games daily and started talking about this weekly or daily it's this idea that it's always like we're always waiting for the other shoe to drop with ubisoft whether it be hey we're closing selling we're fixing it what it just i can't believe that we're in 2026 still talking about ubisoft being lost in the woods on who they are and what's going to happen next yeah i mean the thing is i remember that when i was uh when

33:16Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i was newer in this business people said the same thing about nintendo all the time oh yeah it was always doomed though yeah there was years and years of nintendo's doomed for one reason or another it started with the gamecube and then it just kept going and then when the wii was announced the ds was necessary oh this is this is this is stupid this nintendo's doomed it's it's pivoted to people who don't really care about games then of course it became more successful than it had ever been but then the wii u obviously was a genuine flop and there was always this undercurrent of like they're doomed they're doomed they're doomed and it's never happened but then nintendo has billions and billions in the bank and nintendo has a very strong like yeah like there's no i mean it's difficult nintendo's become now too big to fail surely ubisoft is not is not too big to fail like it has it has assassin's creed and it has far cry but like it's kind of let everything else lose cachet culturally like rayman no one knows who that is anymore obviously they've clearly not invested in that series like i think they've just not they've not invested enough in the kind of like long tail like value like cultural value of their stuff you know 100 that's what happens

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38:53Andy Cortez:And we're back. Neither of us ran back on camera at a 10-second countdown. Don't worry about it. We're fine. Got more water. Nah. It's great. Let's talk about something incredibly stupid. Number three, Sony patents, AI generated podcast voiced by characters from its games. This is Chris Scullion, VGC. Sony has acquired a new patent for the creation of bespoke AI generated podcast starring video game characters. The patent, which was applied for in July 2024 and granted in late January, 2026, is titled LLM based generative podcasts for gamers. Quote, video game platforms currently lack the ability to provide unique and targeted content to gamers to update the gamers about things that are happening on the platform, the patent claims.

39:43Andy Cortez:There are currently no adequate solutions to the foregoing computer-related technological problem. The solution proposed by the patent is to generate a podcast of news related to the data, with the podcast presenting the news in a voice of a video game character of a video game played by the video game player, end quote. Kevin, if you can scroll down, you'll see the patent images. Its description depicts a scenario where the player starts up their console and are shown a message on the home screen informing them, quote, your personalized podcast is available today. Rather than a pre-recorded podcast made available to all users, the podcasts in this example are all individual to each user based on what they've played and may even star characters from the games they've been playing.

40:33Andy Cortez:It could even lead to potential crossover situations With the patent describing a character from one game Potentially having dialogue with a character from a different game As the patent describes it The console would pull data from various elements Including recent gameplay, friends lists, and other console-level events And inform the player about them in this podcast In one example, the player is watching two AI hosts presenting the podcast One host says, quote Jack Brown just won trophy 532 in space explorers. You should try your hand at that game to which the other host replies. Ha, if you think you have the skills.

41:12Andy Cortez:In another, the first host says, quote, in other news, there's a software update for Gen X. So update now their co-hosts add also try a spin move on the boss next time. the patent also suggests that players would be able to customize the podcast to include or leave out certain information including news about games they own recommendations for games they don't own yet their friends achievements moves they can try in games and firmware or software updates quote in certain instances the audio may include a joke at the video game players expense it adds fuck me Keza

41:49Blessing Adeoye Jr.:do you want to be roasted by Parappa the rapper does anyone like do you want to turn on your playstation and have kratos just dress you down for not using a spin move on a boss is that what anyone in this world wants like it's just

42:01Andy Cortez:like does anyone want to be berated all the shit you turn on your ps5 and xbox whatever but you turn on your ps5 in this example that fucking welcome screen where how charged your controller is and how what you know fucking sean's playing and you just skip past every time to just get to the fucking game do you want all that drivel driven into your fucking ears by two ai hosts

42:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:talking nonsense what are we doing have you ever have you ever used like the spotify auto dj with the auto dj voice hey greg it's me x i got some new things i've been seeing you playing

42:35Andy Cortez:sabrina carpenter so i'm gonna fix that but eventually not and i'm like yo ai shut the fuck up and tell me this is my problem with all of it not all of it but like in spotify tell me new music i don't need to know what i've been listening to when it's like i got a country mix for you and it's yeah these are all songs i've listened to that i've what is like this that would be new why is ai the stupidest fucking shit of all time oh this guy got a trophy fuck off

43:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:all all it can do is reflect what you've already told it like that's that's how the technology works it cannot tell you anything new it let it capped that's not how it works so all this is is going to reflect it's going to reflect whatever data it's given right and that's why fundamentally I'm not too worried about AI taking our jobs because they simply can't, like, language models cannot tell you anything new. They can't. And, you know, the idea surely is that you want to hear something new. I also think the idea of having, like, one of, you know, Um Jammer Lammy or something, like, Toro, one of those, Kuro and Toro, one of those really deep cut PlayStation characters just turn up and roast you and say your friends are doing better than you at all your games.

43:36Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Like, there's just something very dystopian about that.

43:38Andy Cortez:I love this one, right? In another, the first host says, in other news there's a software update for gen x so update now motherfucker you're the computer update update you you know the update you update it turn on and up there it pings you you updated why are you telling me to update what the fuck i'm not the computer jesus man we just keep it's they know they know so many of us are against ai they know we don't want it and we don't like it and yet and they still come up with the dumbest fucking examples trying to make you care about it like why would anyone want this what the fuck is this going to do this is it's like god damn man remember playstation remember when you got your shit kicked in and rocked on the playstation 3 and so the playstation 4 you came out you said you know what sorry this is all about the games games games here's game and everybody loved that stop putting more fat on the fucking goddamn meat just you talk about games just make games i'm really half expecting playstation home

44:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:to make a comeback except this time it's full of ai mpcs you can talk to yeah just what i want thank you so much just isn't that isn't that what we're all here for isn't that what we want billions of dollars to be invested in rather than you know yeah making anything they keep taking

44:55Andy Cortez:the money away from the video games and i want them to fund creatives who are making cool games no no no it needs to be a proven ip that we can monetize and annualize and if it's not that then we'll go and put ai into it because that's what you fucking want oh dude every time i see a new

45:09Blessing Adeoye Jr.:like oh this ai company has just met a funding round of 100 million 300 million dollars or whatever i'm like how many games could that have funded exactly how many like really good indie games could that be instead of this like moonshot like funding company with a completely unproven technology that so far does almost nothing useful at least not the useful things that they're trying to tell us that it does uh yeah it drives me nuts in super chats d davis says i can see the voice

45:31Andy Cortez:actors for these characters having a problem with this shaking my head come on sony yeah of course when you know even sony flirted with showing aloyd using gen ai stuff it wasn't ashley birch's voice but she came out against it and talked about it and then you're going to get into what the sag rules are right now for sag after and all that jazz blah blah even beyond what's really fucking horrible and sad to say is that i'm sure by the time this would go the vo's they would have already signed i'm sure even in the contract now there's somewhere where they've signed away their rights and whatever there's some buried thing they could some lawyer could figure out a way to use this for i get into the more of like what's it going to be yeah when and i know i'm we're talking in a very general sense about a patent that prop patent shit gets patented all the time and never happens but to sit here and be like what about when this is a bad example because clearly it would be fine but what about when master chief is sitting there talking to kratos and like or and i again that's a bad example since microsoft doesn't care that much but what about when it is like a square character is sitting there talking to a Capcom character and they didn't approve that interaction.

46:34Andy Cortez:Again, they would have signed away their rights, I'm sure, to get their game onto the platform, but the whole thing sucks.

46:40Blessing Adeoye Jr.:It just sucks. The game characters are not just their image, right? The people who perform these characters. Obviously, it's an art. It's an incredible feat of performance. And to have that just completely decoupled from the character, we're going to just ignore the actor, the voice, the person who performed that is no longer actually relevant to this character. I think that's really very insulting to us and to the people who play, who are game actors.

47:06Andy Cortez:100%. Kebab Super Chat says, can't wait to turn on my PlayStation 5 for Gen AI Crash and Sackboy to talk about the cultural backlash around The Last of Us 2's big twist instead of playing a video game. Science Dog Official, y 'all hear about the AI social media platform that GPT's made to complain about humans on. We need to pull the plug yesterday. day again they're just gonna you know ah jesus you know yeah i mean i've forgotten what that's

47:33Blessing Adeoye Jr.:called but they're basically the the ai agents have all made a forum where they talk to each other and you know i've read a science fiction novel or two doesn't end well for my life it never ever is like oh they've made a religion the ais have made a religion great well this well this is good this is great i feel very comfortable with with this uh even though i know they're stupid and can't do anything yet i feel like making a religion at that point you should be

47:54Andy Cortez:pull in the plug all this shit's happening in fucking nintendo won't even let me share a fucking screenshot of tomodachi life all right like come on where are the rules

48:06Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i find it really endearing how backwards they've been on everything online like for like forever it took them like literally 10 years like when they unveiled game chat for the switch too is like my god have you guys ever heard of discord no you probably haven't like i genuinely believe you haven't it's only been 10 years it was very cute in a way uh we jumped to story number four

48:24Andy Cortez:a serious one as the some of the most serious stuff happening in the news gets to video game land uh ex-gta veteran leslie benzes refutes epstein files allegation this is ethan gatch over at kataku long time grand theft auto producer and former rock store north president leslie benzes was one of the people whose name appeared in the most recent trove of epstein files released by the justice department it included an allegation by an alleged jeffrey epstein victim who accused Benzies of sexual assault. He denied the allegation via a spokesperson in a statement shared with Kotaku. Quote, these allegations are false.

49:01Andy Cortez:I had a three months conceptual relationship with this person and I have never met Jeffrey Epstein nor have I ever visited his island, his properties or traveled on his plane. Any suggestion otherwise is misleading, the statement reads. The mention of Benzies appears in a 62 page file released by the Justice Department that included allegations from Sarah Ransom who previously used Epstein and his longtime associate, ooh, Maxwell, how do I pronounce her name? Maxwell. Is it just land? Maxwell for alleged sex trafficking. Ransom was also, I'm sorry, Ransom also released a book in 2021 titled Silence No More, Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back.

49:44Andy Cortez:The released file was an allegation witness list Ransom appeared to be compiling. In it, she accused Benzies of sexually assaulting her at one point. She also mentions Sam Hauser, the current president of Rockstar Games, but not in connection with any allegation. There is no evidence that any of the claims in Ransom's documents were vetted by federal investigators. Ransom could not immediately be reached for comment. Rockstar didn't respond to a request for comment. Jelaine, thank you. Anyways, back to this. This has been an interesting one, Kazza, because these documents come out and there's so much heinous fucking shit in it.

50:21Andy Cortez:but it's not getting reported on everywhere. And it was one of those, like, wait, why is this happening? And then it was the idea that so much in this is unvetted information down to like, this is like just the tip line for Epstein to some degree of things being reported that nobody's touching, like the most salacious shit that's in there about Trump, about Benzies, the list goes on and anybody connected or whatever. So it's interesting to see Leslie Benzies actually get out and talk about it. Cause we've had the conversation off air of over the weekend. Oh, this broke. and then not seeing people have actual write-ups on it.

50:53Andy Cortez:We're like, why not? And I think it is that people are worried of like, well, what's a real thing? And what's somebody just shouting something out and like trying to separate that wheat from the chaff. But I think we can both go on the record. I've been looking at the wrong camera. Kevin, you're throwing me off by the tally, like not working on what, anyways. We both go on the record of like, Jeffrey Epstein, very bad. Very, very bad. You know what I mean? And all the people who would fucking do this kind of shit are the most heinous motherfuckers on earth and all deserve the worst punishment possible.

51:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:You know, there's often a question of like, oh, why isn't the mainstream media reporting this? You know, whether it's, there's been a lot of it in the Epstein files and then elsewhere. But like, I think what people don't necessarily appreciate is the immense amount of legal restriction that is around, like, especially in the UK, but in the US to a lesser extent, but in the UK, there's a lot of restriction. There's a lot of things you simply can't say in like a printed newspaper or online without opening yourself up to being sued for a libel, right? And so if anyone's wondering why, you know, there aren't write-ups of every single thing in the Epstein files, it's because in order to confidently publish that, you'd have to independently verify it yourself.

52:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:So you'd have to speak with people involved. You'd have to get, like, direct comment. And like Kotaku has here, you have to get direct comment from somebody involved. You can't go about just putting, you know, just repeating stuff that you read in this database or anywhere else. A lot of news organizations may seem like they're being reticent or may seem like they're not reporting things but they're probably doing the work hopefully that's probably what's happening yeah yeah the good ones they're doing the work behind the scenes to see what can be stood up and what can but yeah i mean i mean seeing kotick in these files as well man like it's just there's almost no kind of like rich person powerful person in the world of culture media anything that there isn't at least mentioned somewhere in this database it is staggering crazy we move on to story number five let's go back to

52:41Andy Cortez:video game land all right quote the launcher sucks let's call it what it is end quote epic game store boss says promising a big year of improvements for speed uh to speed new forum type social features and more uh this is chris tap sell at euro gamer epic has released its usual stream of annual stats for the epic game store including a big increase in third-party spending and a confirmation of a notable drop in fortnite playtime but alongside that the publisher developer engine maker and storefront owner is also promising some major improvements to the oft maligned store itself the headline improvements come in the form of much better speed more features noticeably noticeably social ones from player to player and a cross-platform library between your pc and your mobile phone phone phone quote we have a lot of things we need to fix admitted epic game store vice president and general manager steve allison said during interview with euro gamer quote we have needed to fix them for years we've been really focused on developer tooling and all the things we do there but last year we finally started to point more of our resources toward player experience stuff all the things that our players have needed wanted and all critics rightfully take us to task on we got a lot of stuff out the door last year and this year is going to be probably the best year for that stuff on the big rocks okay and the big rocks are the launcher sucks let's call it what it is it's really slow he continued it makes calls to our back end services to refresh every time you click around and depending on your connection you'll have to wait a couple of seconds and that doesn't really feel good especially when people are complaining i'm sorry comparing contrasting and dual using one that doesn't do that end quote work on the architecture started in november 2025 he says and is making quote-unquote great progress we're basically pulling the guts out putting new guts in those speed improvements should appear for players around may or june according to allison uh the epics of and apple epics official press release states quote unquote this summer quote it should start to feel good be faster and people and people be like holy shit it doesn't suck so much and that will be a win for us end quote

54:47Blessing Adeoye Jr.:that will be firstly is is the big rocks a phrase is that i've never heard that i've

54:54Andy Cortez:i've never heard the big rocks you know but there's sometimes you say stuff around here Keza this is gonna I'm out on a ledge here I'm out on a ledge and I'm reaching out you're but I know we're across the pond so maybe it doesn't work you ever heard the phrase boning up I'm gonna I gotta bone up on that before the yeah thank you very much yes educate yourself bless Andy and making like I'm making up words over here okay thank you very much I appreciate you guys

55:20Blessing Adeoye Jr.:so do you use the epic game store for anything fuck no like I use the epic game store when

55:24Andy Cortez:there's a free thing to download that I never use you know what I mean I have I have the razor are out there so like when i needed to play fortnite for simpsons season i installed it there completely mystified when i was on steam i'm like where the fuck's for oh right okay go over there it's the forgotten little one but i you know as much as i've come around on pc gaming i'm still not a pc gamer so no i'm not in the weeds on epic game store any stretch of imagination you

55:48Blessing Adeoye Jr.:no also no i have used it exactly twice um for fortnite and then for a game i needed to review ones that for some reason was only available through epic and i wonder like to what extent like there's a lot of people who um presumably play fortnite on pc through the epic launcher but outside of that i do wonder if they've managed to make much headway in terms of like eating into

56:06Andy Cortez:steam's market share not a chance i don't think i know i don't think i know a single person who

56:10Blessing Adeoye Jr.:doesn't use steam which is bad like just to be clear that's bad there shouldn't be a monopoly yeah and of all people you'd hope epic would have been able to make it make a go of it yeah you

56:19Andy Cortez:would have thought they would have when they announced it you're like okay here's somebody who could actually rival it and they just showed no we can't into the for the pack like here we are years and years later, like, yeah, all right, so it sucks. You and I don't even know that it's slow as shit because we ain't using it, but it's like, goddamn, really? Is that bad?

56:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah, like, maybe it would help if they didn't make something. They're admitting themselves that it sucks, you know? If they're admitting themselves that it sucks, then surely there's work to do. I would personally welcome something that wasn't Steam because, you know, it's not good for one company to have the entirety of a platform. Like, it's bad in general. So it would be good if it didn't suck. At least they seem to agree

56:55Andy Cortez:on that front 100 and when they fix that speed kezza it's gonna be big news but if i wanted something smaller say the tiniest news i need to know about where would i go you would go to your last story the we news channel where you cover all the small news items you need to know about that's right everybody welcome to story number six the we news uh nintendo switch to software sales have been revealed to celebrate the launch of kevin kezza's new nintendo book super nintendo Mario Kart World has 14.03 million sold. Donkey Kong Bonanza, 4.25 million sold. Pokemon Legends ZA, Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, 3.89 million units sold.

57:38Andy Cortez:Kirby Air Riders, 1.76 million sold. All right, didn't see that come. Nintendo Switch 2 has sold 17.37 million units. Nintendo Switch has now sold 155.37 million lifetime. time and then from GameSpot Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has still somehow sold another 2.3 million copies in the past nine months Keza what's your read as my Nintendo expert on all these numbers Nintendo

58:03Blessing Adeoye Jr.:good switch good that makes the switch that makes me the switch has overtaken the DS is Nintendo's biggest console of all time finally it's finally happened it's it's finally dethroned it

58:16Andy Cortez:good job good job switch keeps going keep deserve it i think deserve it also is there anyone in the world who doesn't own mario kart 8 deluxe now apparently i mean they're like undiscovered tribes 2.3 we're airdropping them into new places what's what's crazy about it is like you know my son ben four years old plays video games with me loves them he keeps asking for deluxe overworld which I think is such a damning condemnation of fucking world where I'm like, you're four years old and you want that over, what's the difference to you? What do you know that, what are you talking about? We'll see.

58:51Andy Cortez:You don't know that this

58:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:is the new one?

58:53Andy Cortez:He doesn't care?

58:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:If you make the best game in history, like 8 Deluxe is the single best game it's the single best game, they can't outdo it, I mean they've really just made noose for their own neck there

59:05Andy Cortez:Xbox Game Pass games for February have been revealed, on the 3rd you get Like a Dragon and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. On the 5th, Madden NFL 26 and Paw Patrol Rescue Wheels Championship. Ben will be stoked. On the 10th, Relooted and Blaze Blue Entropy Effect X. On the 12th, Roadside Research and Starsand Island. On the 13th, High on Life 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance. On the 17th, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. There it is, Ubisoft. We're making waves. Wildlight has announced that High Guard's 5v5 raid mode is here to stay. That's exciting for a lot of people. Good for them. Netflix will no longer be available on PS3 after March 2nd, if you can believe that.

59:48Andy Cortez:And then...

59:49Blessing Adeoye Jr.:End of an era.

59:50Andy Cortez:End of an era, I know, right? Everybody's still kicking their... Somebody was... For me, when they took away folding at home, that's when PlayStation 3 really started to tank. That's when you knew it was over, when I couldn't help cure cancer anymore. And then your final piece of Wii news comes from GTA 6 Countdown. Video game show host and industry journalist Greg Miller says they're in talks with Rockstar Games to preview GTA 6. Quote, Andy's going to be previewing GTA 6. I got some emails from Rockstar about that, but we'll leave that for another time, end quote. Okay, so they're linking to Kinda Feudy yesterday, the show where I gave away pickles on a fake game show.

1:00:32Andy Cortez:Okay, so no, there are no, no. The implication of the joke I made on the fucking show was that Rockstar emailed me angry that I gave away a GTA 6 preview that doesn't exist. So no, Rockstar has not emailed me, not even angrily emailed me, let alone emailed me to be like, alright, now we're booking Andy. It was a show where I gave away pickles, guys. The channel's called Kinda Funny. Like, you have to understand when it's not being a journalist part of it, right? Like we have to understand to some degree when we're not fucking being journalists, right? Which for us is pretty much all the time. But if I said it, like if I was here, different, but we gave away pickles.

1:01:13Andy Cortez:I gave away pickles on that episode. No, Rockstar hasn't. I'm sorry to break kayfabe on it, but no, Rockstar hasn't emailed me angrily or saying let's book Andy. Now that he won this on the, he won it on the show before the pickles. No, no.

1:01:31Blessing Adeoye Jr.:don't worry but thanks for watching a pickle you shouldn't trust anything he says exactly if

1:01:35Andy Cortez:pickles are the prize of a show you can't trust it and that's it for the we news we move to see the super chats that have come in throughout the show that maybe weren't on topic about anything uh game riot wanted me to confirm the rockstar emails it's confirmed for you there you go uh alvaran says call gary there are tanks coming to hell divers revealed in a new trailer i will do no such thing uh joey says manifesting a capital wasteland tease for the fallout finale tonight and then uses the prayer emoji. Yes. Kez, have you been keeping up with the Fallout TV show?

1:02:05Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I'm about two episodes behind. I love it, though. Isn't it good? Isn't it nice that video game TV is good now?

1:02:10Andy Cortez:100%. My other question for you is, are you keeping an eye on this countdown thing? The countdown that's supposed to end. On the Fallout TV page, map, whatever, there's a section that's counting down. And so many people are hoping that it's a game, a remaster, or whatever. And my long shot, it won't happen. But if I'm dreaming is that this season ends tonight with them saying we're going to the Capital Wastelands or we go to the Capital Wastelands for something. And then they drop a remaster of Fallout 3 tonight. But that won't happen.

1:02:43Blessing Adeoye Jr.:That would be cool.

1:02:44Andy Cortez:That will not happen.

1:02:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Or they're making a new one and Obsidian's doing it and they're making a new one. That's even better than mine. Don't do that.

1:02:51Andy Cortez:Don't do that.

1:02:55Andy Cortez:Here we go. The Co-op Bros, a great YouTube channel we support here. says sock has a here live and had to give a shout out read the book early and loved it gave it a shout out on our january co-op monthly congrats on the release of course they're talking about super nintendo available right now north america uh europe next week you can get the audiobook as well uh go pick it up pre-order it if you have to whatever you need to do to get this book from keza oh yelsing says the difference between ubisoft and nintendo is that nintendo experiments doing new and interesting things. Ubisoft loves old and stale.

1:03:32Blessing Adeoye Jr.:They did once love new and interesting things. They are French. Like, there was a Frenchness. The Frenchness has died. That was what precipitated the death of Ubisoft, was the general Frenchness quotient just kind of declined over time.

1:03:43Andy Cortez:You know, once they survived the takeover, then they were like, now we're just going to make money. Now we have to make as much money as possible, and that has led to no art, no soul. Your final Super Chat of the day, comes from Stephen Pro Snick who says, Happy Tuesday, everyone. Make sure to play Valve's Deadlock this week. Okay. I don't understand why, but we will do that. Everybody go play Deadlock. Okay. There must be something happening in Deadlock. I don't know what's happening in Deadlock. That's a Mike question. Mike pays attention to Deadlock. What I pay attention to is great literature like Super Nintendo.

1:04:17Andy Cortez:Keza's new book. Go get it right now. Keza, thank you so much for hanging out today. Where can people keep up with you?

1:04:23Blessing Adeoye Jr.:You can find me on Blue Sky. I'm keza mcdonald on blue sky you can also subscribe to the guardians video games newsletter which is called pushing buttons and which i've been doing for a while which i really enjoy and of course you can buy super nintendo pretty much anywhere i think and if you really do love listening to me uh in in my scottish accent you can download the audiobook because i got to sit in a room for five

1:04:43Andy Cortez:days and read it to myself what was that whole thing what was that like i struggle to read every day on this show so i can only imagine if i was like i'm sorry that ruined the take do it again

1:04:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:do it again yeah i know you can you could talk to a rock for three hours greg but like if you're just by yourself in a studio it's really very hard you start to drive yourself and then you you're reading your own writing and thinking man why did i make that sentence so long

1:05:08Andy Cortez:you know when you wrote it you never thought through like you'd have to read it out loud

1:05:12Blessing Adeoye Jr.:exactly yeah 100 exactly i kept laughing over a line about mario's nipples i just couldn't say it

1:05:17Andy Cortez:i had to take about 18 takes i love that uh the book's great kazzy congratulations i love you i'm

1:05:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:so happy to see you thriving out there thank you pal it's amazing to be part of the show when they

1:05:28Andy Cortez:stop abducting immigrants off the street come visit us come hang out you know i mean be a part i will thank you that's the prerequisite that's it well i just want you to be safe uh of course everybody kind of funny is a live talk show network all about video games you can catch us with games daily starting today each and every weekday maybe you're listening later at which point i would tell you guess what you gotta go check out today's games cast it's up next and it's blessing sitting down with Suda51 to talk about that amazing career, the new games, the old games. Then we're doing a Gamescast plays where we're jumping in there, where we're playing Romeo as a dead man.

1:05:58Andy Cortez:There's a lot of great stuff happening all around that. First question is, though, do we say Suda51 or Suda51? That's the question he's been instructed to ask. Okay? Because there's been a lot of turmoil about this. Did you know about this, Kez?

1:06:11Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah, 51 for me.

1:06:13Andy Cortez:Okay, cool.

1:06:13Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I refuse. Even if he says otherwise, I'm just sticking with it. You know what?

1:06:16Andy Cortez:We're going to get to the bottom of it today. we're gonna figure it out it's just it says is it live it is live if you're live on twitch don't go anywhere if you're on youtube of course there's a new link like subscribe share if you love us doing amazing stuff like having all our friends come through to talk about cool things of course pick up a membership patreon.com slash kind of funny youtube.com slash kind of funny games apple spotify get everything ad free get your daily dose of me of course get good karma after we do the games cast with suit of 51 after we do the games cast plays the suit of 51 we are still doing the kind of funny podcast and it's going to be a banger.

1:06:47So until next time,

1:06:49Andy Cortez:it's been our pleasure to serve you.

1:06:54Thank you.

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