PlayStation's Making Big Changes Because of Concord Failure - Kinda Funny Games Daily 08.26.25

0:00Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay No! Or not We are outgunned and we are outmanned But we have each other FX's The Bear, the final season All episodes now streaming on Disney Plus Today's stories include PlayStation gets more rigorous with testing its games Skate's early access release date has been confirmed And Nintendo's telling some developers to release on Switch 1 instead We'll have all this and more because this is kind of funny games daily.

1:07Welcome to kind of funny games daily for Tuesday, August 26th, 2025. I am Andy Cortez and I'm joined by snow bike. Mike. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, my best friend. How are you? I'm doing. I'm doing okay. Yeah. My coworker. Good first week back. After your vacation, you've settled in. Now we're on week two. You know, I'm not jealous at all that you're going to PAX West without me. You know, you and I could tear up Seattle for a weekend, but it's all right. It's okay. Well, just the last second trip, you know, didn't get the text message, I guess. Yeah. I mean, you know, I just, Hey Mike, pack your bags.

1:47Let's go to Seattle. Would have been on that. Get in the car, the car, taking you to the airport. You can't take this decision back. How are you doing, Mike? Andy, I'm doing well. How about yourself? I'm doing great. Doing great. I feel like last night I dealt with some, you know, paralysis by analysis. Okay. Of just sitting there going, I'm kind of drowning in games right now. Too many games, Andy. It's review season. Yeah, you're killing it. You and the team are killing it. The flowers are in the bloom. I'm not killing it. Why? Because I'm just playing Pokemon. I have noticed that. There's a couple meetings where, like, hey, let's do this for Dak.

2:25let's do this Mike what are you doing I'm like ah yeah I'm fine with that I won't play it like really okay yeah don't think I haven't noticed that don't think I haven't noticed that but yeah just you know was kind of just overwhelmed last night with you know different games installing here and there and then I just I just sort of sat down was like what if I just play the king is watching all night I saw the Instagram story and I want you to know because of you talking about it so much uh you and roger have put me on and so i have now given a nice little hour of my time i'm looking forward to playing more but you put up the you put up the story you inspired some best friends out there to play it then you shared your story 55 hours already played on that yeah probably about 60 with last night with yesterday just kept on going just you on the steam deck are you on your pc last night was a pc night but usually it's steam deck does it work because it's not fully certified on this so i was a little intimidated at first it does um it does okay but you do got to do some little finagling with the hot keys yeah with the the key binds or whatever delete probably and uh yeah right yeah so to i guess to rotate the little like watching watch zone it's called the king's gaze but it just sounds like i'm talking about the king's like homosexuals oh the king's gaze like g a g a z e you got to rotate so i i do left trigger okay and then i do either left bumper or l back paddle or whatever for like i'm gonna grab and move this sucker and then i just use my right index finger just move everything now this is you going into the settings on the seam deck and doing that yeah just set that all up it's not instant hey this what's going on let's do you need me to help you though yes i will bring it over okay let's rewind for a second if people haven't been keeping up with your latest addiction in the gaming world which is the king who's watching what is it it's an auto battler like tower defense yeah but it's got that sort of just you set shit up and then things rock similar to uh similar to loop hero similar to what i enjoyed about you know even though vampire survivors is you moving the dude around it's like you know your character just kind of auto doing stuff or whatever so you know it's just i don't know it's so it's so deep and it's so satisfying yeah it's got the resource management that i like right of like building out your small little town on these little square plot here and trying to figure out what resources i need when do i need them when do i move that gaze to be like hey let's start working on this the auto battler slash tower defense of hey i just sent out seven skeleton warriors along with just the regular civilians let's see what happens as they fight off little goblins really i'm really excited to do a peasant run peasants are the weakest dudes yeah that's right well that's what i've been they're super like low health right or whatever but if you level them up a whole lot because throughout the run you will find troop uh upgrading so you can make them like hella strong but then when you get you can essentially get guts from goddamn berserk on your squad it's called the the black swordsman okay so you can make one of those dudes and then when whenever he's on the field fighting all of the peasants get like double health oh and shit like yeah so it's like there's a lot of cool little passive things like that and you see this has been your sponsored segment for king of watch yeah 55 hours and you're still seeing new things oh yeah oh yeah it's so good i can't stop playing yeah i I noticed you're not spending a lot of time with me, so I'm glad that you're putting it towards something good.

6:01You're on your 17th Pokemon run. I'm deep in it, Andy, and I fell again. I'm just so... I stumbled again. Wait, yesterday? Yeah, I lost somebody really important. I'm so confused by, all right, I'm going by real Nuzlocke rules now. Real Nuzlocke rules. Because, like, as if you weren't struggling already. Well, yeah, it was like, here's the deal, Andy. I was struggling. I've died six times. How do I make this harder? And people said that. but it was like I had to prove the doubters wrong. I had to make sure that my haters couldn't step up and say, well, he didn't do a true nuzlock. So I had to push it all to the side and say, I'm doing the true rules.

6:37Cause when I beat it this time, this is it. I'm going to be able to say, I've been to the top. I, I, it's just confounding to me. The amount of time, like what you decide to listen to people, to people's feedback on it. What you don't know. No one's ever said that. You're Michael Jordan creating your own narrative. That's what MJ did. He was the latest. He really was. So I have to do it, Andy. That's a great point. So here I am on attempt number seven, but really attempt number one, my true first Nuzlocke. And I've lost some people along the way. I stumbled. I had to grind in a seven by eight patch of grass to really get my Pokemon up before the next battle.

7:18That was a really boring two and a half hours. And then there I was feeling myself. I was putting it all on Purple Skiddy. I don't know if you know, they have gambling in these Pokemon games, and that really gets me going. They got a roulette wheel in this game, and I am smashing Purple Skinny for three, and it pays out 36, and I go crazy when that happens. I love that. At least that's the last thing you need. There I am feeling myself, right? And I get out of it, and now I'm preparing for gym number four. It's a fire battle. I got one water Pokemon, the Tentacool, okay? I got to protect this thing, but I got to love this thing.

7:53I got to level up. What happens, Andy? I get in the cycle. Okay, I get in the cycle. I'm fighting this one. I'm fighting the Weezing. And what does the Weezing do? He's self-destructed on me, Andy. Oh, World Ender. That's a World Ender right there. I lost the most important Pokemon in my group. Had to restart. That's another two and a half hours of grinding the same bush. It's been a long journey. That's tough. How about Dark Souls 2 before we go? I've been waiting for you to hit the fridge. Before we end the show. I've been waiting for you to hit the frigid outskirts. Did you hit it or not? I don't know what that is.

8:30I'm in a snow zone. You know what it is. It's a giant mile and a half long death run. You're going to stand at a window. You're going to jump out the window. Actually, I think you're in a coffin and he slides down there. And then you will arrive at this insane death run that's full of snow, mist, and fog. You won't be able to see 10 feet in front of you. And you'll start running. And then out of the background, you'll hear. It's a gallop. That was a good horse I didn't know Mike did a good horse The lightning horse will try to gore you Oh wow Has that happened yet? No But you just spoiled everything for me I'll be watching You just spoiled everything for me right there That was a good ass horse I'm really really impressed by that Everybody this is the kind of funny games daily We do this each and every weekday On podcast service around the globe And if you love what we do support us With the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube and our Spotify and Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free.

9:25Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be part of the show. Submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube Super Chats. We'll be getting to those all throughout the show. So make sure you let us know how you're feeling, how you're doing. Housekeeping today after Kind of Funny Games Daily. You'll get the Gamescast, which is Sonic Racing Cross Worlds preview. I don't know who's on. I think Roger played it. What's your hype level for that? Negative 12. I don't know. Okay. I mean, when was the last time I picked up Mario Kart World? What a great week that was. Week?

10:00Shit. Week that was. The stream afterwards is Greg hanging out with Erica Ishii, which is awesome. We're going to be talking to Ghost of Yotei. Yeah, really cool. If you're a kind of funny member, Greg is going to do it Gregway. We don't know what it is or what it's about. Maybe he already did it. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, Delaney, The Psalm Twining. We appreciate you all. very very much today we're brought to you by xreal but we'll tell you all about that later for now let's begin with what is and forever will be the roper report

10:45story number one playstation boss says company now does quote much more rigorous and more frequent testing after concord's failure this comes from rebecca valentine at ign after a high profile failure in concord it's been a year by the way mike been like 367 days or something wow crazy bring it back after a high profile failure in concord and a high profile success in astrobot last year playstation is looking to adjust its strategy to incorporate fewer live service games more big franchises and stricter oversight of its own studios In an interview with Financial Times, PlayStation CEO Herman Hulse says the company is hoping to mitigate future big expensive risks with future games.

11:30Quote, I don't want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us when we fail to fail early and cheaply. End quote. Concord was not a cheap failure. Analysts estimate Sony spent around$250 million on the game, only for it to sell so poorly that Sony shut it down two weeks after launch and shuttered its developer, Firewalk Studios, not long after. By contrast, Astro Bot also launched last year to universal acclaim, winning multiple awards and selling 2.3 million copies as of March 2025, one of the best-selling games on PlayStation 5. The differences between the two games are myriad, certainly, and their development stories are quite different as well.

12:12But what Hulse has taken away from this is that there needs to be more supervision of Sony's own studios to ensure the games veering in the direction of Concord are spotted before they become expensive failures so they can be canceled or corrected in time. Quote, We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways, Hulse said. The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that oversight is. Financial Times. You highlighting something, Mike? Yeah, I am. Oh, okay. A little circle back. Is it the word? No. Oh, shit, I forgot.

12:48And you already read it. I already read it? Chad, if you don't know, before the story started, before we got on the show, I said I wanted to set up a little hidden camera and record Mike's reaction to me walking up on the set and being like, all right, Mike, sit in the host seat you're going to read today just to see what his reaction would be. And then he said, oh, I would have been I would have gotten so angry about I would have been so uptight. But also there's a word in there that I've never seen in my life. And I don't know what the word is, but apparently I already read it. Let's continue on with the article.

13:22Financial Times spoke to Sony to multiple Sony studio heads who said that this overnight means this oversight means more focus on group testing, more communication between internal Sony studios and closer relationships between the studio's top executives. but another strategy Hulse also wants to pursue. He wants more massive Sony IP. Astro Bot success has come and has come about over the course of multiple games with the little robot icon growing in popularity each time. According to financial times, Hulse wants studios to be thinking about how their IP can be turned into bigger and bigger franchises over time.

13:56Following the footsteps of the last of us and uncharted quote, we took a very intentional approach to IP creation, understanding how a new concept can turn into an iconic franchise for playstation that can that can then again become a franchise for people beyond gaming end quote mike what's the word yeah a lot there to break down you and i andy of course oversight is a big one here kind of playing into the known ips or creating a franchise that could be a larger entity than just a one-off right and so there's a lot to break down on the sony side of things i I guess let's start with oversight, right?

14:33The big one taking away is what do you mean no one was overseeing this? Nobody had hands on with this. Nobody saw Concord and said, hey, maybe there's a good game here, but I don't see a marketplace for this. I don't see a spot where this slides in and is actually going to make it here. Did nobody have that conversation? And, of course, we learned a lot of conversation, or we learned a lot in this kind of conversation with Phil Spencer when me and the X-Cast crew sat down after Red Falls disaster has launched, right? And that moment of, hey, we got to find a better way to make sure that we're here before this happens so we can catch these kind of things.

15:07And you kind of question like, well, the business and the, you know, the video game industry has been around for so long. How are you not already on top of this? But as you know, a lot of these larger high CEOs have a lot more going on than just being day to day employees within the studio to see the ever evolving changing game that they're kind of putting out there. But yeah, you'd like to make sure everyone probably has a say on this before it begins. What do you think the tone was in these studios every time one of these live services was shut down? It could not have been a very positive place to see another big live service game come out.

15:44Maybe there's a lot of hype around it. And then six months later, 12 months later, hey, we know we're ramping down servers, ramping down service on it. yeah like i it just felt like such an obvious thing for us to see but maybe there's just maybe there was just a lot of confidence in sony going hey we always put out bangers why wouldn't this be a banger i think there's two sides to that right there's one where you are so entrenched in the day-to-day that you probably believe in what you're doing i'm sure you of course you believe in what you're all these studios do yeah hard to have the bigger picture from the outside of like is this the right thing is this going to land with people because you believe in it right you love what you're doing you believe in the characters the world that you create you probably have a really good time playing the game inside the studio right i got to go hands-on early with concord and i came back with the preview and the first thing i said to greg was hey this was fun to play but i don't see this making it right and like i'm sure everyone in the office was like hey this is fun to play we're happy to see people smiling and they thought this was gonna hit right And on the outside, us gamers, the people who are playing all this, we're kind of like, Ed, I don't think this is the way, right?

16:56And for Sony, on the bigger picture side, if you're working in these studios and you see Herman Holst and the team laying off a number of staff members at different development teams around your organization, you're probably, like you've said before, Andy, really disheartened and going, ah, we could be next. This isn't going to be good unless our project is going to hit. and there's a lot of projects that aren't hitting marathon right now with bungie of course we've seen fair games we've seen a number of games where it's like oh this is probably next on the chopping block yeah and when it comes to larger ip obviously you hear holst talk about we would love to kind of develop these ips into becoming things that become mainstays for us right with obviously we'd seen astrobot a couple times and then it becomes its own video game after time i think a lot of that is wishful thinking i think the astrobot playbook is really hard to replicate unless you try to do another that's such a specific scenario where we are giving you them a demo for this video game for the console to kind of test things out and you kind of get a test of and a feel of what this character is and how how the vibe and tone of all of it is that's you can't really replicate that you can't just say on the next console we'll have a new ip because that's just like those things don't happen all of the time but no duh that they would want you know to replicate the last of us and to have another uncharted yeah of course he's gonna look at you every time whatever game you pitch is gonna be looking at you like want a sequel want that trilogy let's make sure we nail it and of course astrobot is a different beast right it's hitting a marketplace that sony didn't really have in the portfolio at the time.

18:42And it was the perfect storm of a one-two moving into the best Astro Bot game last year of like how much fun that console 3D platforming mascot game can be, right? And hitting all of the Sony notes and just a perfect mix to really land. But I mean, looking at other teams and their games and going, well, you better make this a big franchise, right? A number of our audience doesn't like when I come on here and go, well, if I could wave a magic wand, we'd be on destiny three right now and bungie would just keep turning that right they want to see new and fun inventive ideas but it's tough when sony's boss is going well we should probably stick to the good stuff right and like this project if you're not going to make this a mega franchise within three then like we're going to cut this you know that's really hard to hear i i was really you know it made me happy to see that astro bot is considered a really nice success for them for a while there there was a bit of worry i would say as we're kind of getting close to uh either whether we were getting close to game awards or you know whether we had heard that it sold like a million units and we were like oh man that's you want a game like that with such you know high regard and a game that everybody looks at and goes what um what an incredible critical success what a great video game this is to play and then you hear that it was only at the 1 million mark that you know i i don't know exactly how long that was after it released but it was i didn't feel super encouraged by that and seeing 2.3 million now it's like oh great awesome this thing is starting to it actually did start to sell a lot more numbers and people are a lot more happy uh you know the larger gaming audience did end up picking up astrobot which makes me pretty happy mike yeah astrobot was a big win and that will go in the portfolio of already great franchises that they have, right?

20:34When you think of Sony and PlayStation, you already have The Last of Us, you have Horizon, you have your Uncharted. You're now getting Ghost, which is getting a nice sequel here coming up. I guess the conversation now switched to when you look at Astro Bot and the big win that they just had. Does Herman Hulse look at them and go, that's the playbook, repeat? Or does he give them the freedom to be like, take Astro Bot and do something wacky with them, right? That's what we want to see. We want that team to be able to come to you and be like, hey, we got this new idea for Astro Bot. We want to kind of deviate here to the right and see if this will land.

21:09Or does the team look at him and go, you've already found success. You stay with that. That's a good question because I am of the opinion that there are so many game studios and game directors and game executives out there that are in no place to want to experiment with anything. if you have something that is successful then you double and triple down on it right because the numbers go up and we like that and when numbers don't go up we don't like that and any any chance to experiment could lead to massive failure you're not experimenting on a game during a game jam that took six people to make over a 48 hour period you are experimenting on something that could possibly take three years of development with dozens and dozens or possibly upwards of hundreds of employees and that's a lot of money to sink into it where i'm at with this is you know we hear these stories every day about live service games you know maybe not doing as well as they would hope and of course the big juggernauts are always succeeding up there i I keep thinking about project frog or whatever the frog game, the frog type game that bungee was working on that then became like, you know, they, they sectioned off that bungee team to then work on the frog type game.

22:37That's a multiplayer type video game. And everybody in the studio has nothing but incredible things to say about it. That's one where I'm like, where is that shit? Where's that? Where's that game at? because that sounds like an experiment that may be the last of its kind, that we'll never see an experiment like that again. Where's the frog type game chat? Yeah, it just feels like with Astro Bot, right? Me as a gamer, I want Astro Bot 2. Replicate the playbook, continue that. I think everyone really wants that at Astro Bot at this time. It was so good, right? But when we get to Astro Bot 3 or 4, right, does the change start to happen?

23:14And do we start to see the numbers lower and lower where they do need to make a change? Or it just isn't the franchise it was. But for right now, Astro Bot's a mega hit. It is now the new franchise on the Sony block. You're going to see that continue on, right? That's a win. I had mentioned this to, I think, maybe Blessing at the time. I'd always meant to tell Tim about it. But when I went to Osaka last year and I went to their version of Best Buy, I forget what it's called. It's like a dude's name. okay like dave's wait maybe wait hold up yeah that might be it hold up chat hold up japan best buy is it dave's no i don't know what it's called um but walked by the video game section and there was a little adorable like baby girl playing astrobot and just like smiling and laughing and i was like god damn and i wanted to take a photo i was like no that looks weird don't take a photo of a little girl playing a video game.

24:15But it just made me smile. I'm like, man, you want this little fucking robot guy to be in every household possible. And I agree with Tim. Not the coolest looking villains, but we can work on that. After playing Bonanza, I'm like, God, these villains look awesome. Did you beat Bonanza? No. I haven't gotten back to it. Can we talk about demo kiosks for just a quick moment? Remember back in the 90s and early 2000s, The controller would be at your chest level, but then the TV would be so cranked up that your neck would have to look up to the sky. So high up there. What a great video. What a time. And it was like a 10-inch screen.

24:53Yeah. We played NFL Fever. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was definitely Blitz. Blitz was definitely up there. No, it wasn't Don Quixote, Chad. It was a, I don't know why I think it was Dave's. That doesn't make sense, though. How do you get better supervision? how do you get better oversight on these games it's also a big question there that's a great conversation of like who is the one the Matt booties of the world right their role is to facilitate all this and kind of be the middleman between Phil and the studios for help but also kind of be the guy on the ground saying I'm looking at x y and z I'm liking how this is tracking hey Andy I don't like how this team is tracking right here we need to do something right like how do you better that oversight i think it has less to do with and here's me speaking from a completely uneducated standpoint where when i did the tiny time of game development i did i was just like all right make this art asset so like for i think it comes down to not letting it even get to that point of being greenlit like that's where we're at so to have a better conversation of hey here's the pitch and me being able to have the fortitude to say that pitch isn't what we're looking for right now or this isn't going to hit i'm sorry go back to the drawing board or are you able to do what you want to do multiplayer wise with a 15 person budget right like because it all comes down to green lighting these things that require a shitload of money if you want to green light an experiment like like uh herman holst mentioned we want to fail early and fail cheaply right like you don't you need to like you need to catch it before it hits stage four you know what i mean you want like you you need to identify this shit before you blink and suddenly it's five years into development and you have 200 plus million dollars into it and you go oh fuck we really should have gotten a hold of this before the team tripled last year and before our budgets even got this high.

27:02We should have really looked at how can we execute this idea in the, unfortunately, in the cheapest way possible, the most budget-friendly way possible. What are some of the ways that people can do that, right? Is it getting outside gamers to come in and test it? Is it having people like Janet Garcia do mock reviews? Or is it just simply saying, because it's so tough, right? These games are five years in the making, seven years in the making to see if they're going to land or not. How do you make that call so early and say, oh, I like this, but this is not it. I think the biggest problem with it is that so many of these games are fun as it is.

27:41Yes. I think it's rare for a lot of these multiplayer games to come out and be a complete dud on the experience side. We've played so many of these games that have come and gone that in any other era, in any other year, 10 years ago, if they came out, they'd be massive hits. there's just there's not a whole lot of ways that you can predict what is going to penetrate the market right now and so many of these games are fun and good when you're playing them and I'm sure the testers are having a lot of fun and when the game comes out, when Wildgate comes out and we play, we're like, wow, what a fun and cool idea haven't gone back to that in a while I don't know if that game's still succeeding or not or doing decent numbers, but that's kind of a perfect example of oh a fresh idea that's actually fun and awesome not that the the last couple of games that came out weren't super fresh but they were still fun and awesome yeah just not enough to kind of keep us there for the long haul and that's a lot of these games a lot of these games just require the player base and they require the influx of cash every couple of quarters or whatever with new dlcs and things like that and you know it's really really hard to to notice because if If we were to go back in time eight years ago and I showed you all of these canceled games and said, which ones are going to fail?

29:04And then at the end of it, you played them all. You're like, wow, these were all fun. Which one? And you go, hey, just kidding. This is a prank. All of them failed, actually. Like, whoa, holy shit. So many of these were fun and awesome. And it's a weird market right now. We're in a weird place in time where people's time is so divided. You're even seeing reports of the NBA and the NFL and Major League Baseball trying to compete with TikTok and and movie studios and TV shows trying to compete with people scrolling on their phones. People's time is so, so divided into multiple ways now that it's really, really hard to get them all in one place and out of their devices scrolling.

29:43Because sometimes you'd rather just scroll in bed horizontally than hop on that multiplayer game with your friend. Story number two. Sony finally makes the PlayStation refund process easier. This comes from Connor McCarr at Eurogamer. Sony has pushed an update live to the PlayStation Store that makes refunds considerably easier. The new process, which can only be done on the PlayStation website or app, goes as follows. Navigate to the PlayStation Store and select the three dots in the top right corner to access your transaction history. Those damn three dots, man. Anytime you try to look for a demo, you got to hit the three dots.

30:20PS4 or PS5 version? Can I just get the right version, please? The damn three dots. All right. Sorry for interrupting the process because y 'all were probably taking step-by-step notes. You hit the three dots on the top right corner to access your transaction history. From there, you should be able to select your past purchases and request refunds. Previously, PlayStation users would have to use an online assistant, basically a chatbot, to negotiate a refund. The requirements for a refund remain the same. Only a product bought within the last 14 days is valid, and you can't have begun the process of downloading or playing it.

30:53That is unless what you bought is faulty, in which case these requirements may be circumvented. It's a nice little update that should make those 2 a.m. reflex purchases of Detroit Become Human feel a little less rancid the next day. Ooh. Detroit Become Human taking a stray right there from Connor McCarr. Big stray right there. I was watching a TikTok of Pokimane doing a giveaway of all these consoles. Okay, yeah, I saw her doing a fun one. She wanted to do a giveaway. She's going through the past of, like, you know, Game Boy, you had my back when I was a kid, and going through, like, her history of gaming, and she was like, PlayStation 4, you mean the world to me.

31:33I wouldn't have played my favorite story game ever, Detroit Become Human. And I was like, oh, Pokimane, there's a lot of good games out there. We got to expand your horizons. We've got to expand your horizons. Give her some. But, I mean, this is great news for people who may have had those issues, not necessarily having to, what Cotter says here, negotiate a refund with a chatbot. That sounds like a nightmare. I have to go to Roger for those. Roger does all my negotiations on DoorDash when I need a refund. Oh, God. Are you paying him? No, but, like, he's there to help. You know what I mean? Why does he do this for you?

32:09He loves me. Unlike someone. he has a higher tolerance for you you know like i love that you know like all right and he's tired of me already yeah i know to him i love him by living give him a week i'll be back let him recharge i mean yeah it's nice to have a good refund policy right you and i have played plenty of stinker games and wish that we could stop that right away or games that just came out and were super bad right someone came into my chat last night and was like i'm so mad at playstation for letting this game or pc ubisoft letting some assassin's creed game get ported and it was really poor and it's like hey homie hit that refund button get your money back come back when it gets patched and fixed you know so he's looking for a good one yeah that's great news right there that at least things are being made a little bit easier but again those damn three dots those three fucking dots when i'm out there looking for a demo come on and i search the game the demo should be the first damn thing i see the demo should be its own tile you should see that in the search i got i had to go into the game and then hit the go to the three dots and then the demo like why are you hiding this it makes zero sense story number three skate's early access date has been finally confirmed from chris scullion at vgc ea and developer full circle have finally announced the early access date for skate the fourth game in the skate series and the first new release in 15 years will enter early access on september 16th quote we are so hyped to announce that skate will release in early access September 16th, 2025, end quote.

33:54The game's official X account said. They also ended the tweet with, see you in San Vansterdam. Mike, does this do anything for you at all? Get, like, just lay it all out, because you've been waiting for this. Let's be real, Andy. This is the most anticipated release of the year because it has so much riding on it. Skate is a beloved franchise. It is one of my favorite games, one of my favorite titles to play. moment to moment gameplay and action is superb in this game but on the flip side why this is one of the most anticipated games of the year is also because the failure risk is through the roof right now with EA and this team full circle because skate now is a early access games as a service game when really I think just the player base wanted skate for we wanted the true full experience at launch ready to go.

34:47But of course, in 2025, the world is a lot different than it was 15 years ago when the last skate released, right? And so they've changed with the market, they've changed with the time, and they're trying to release a game that is ever-evolving, ever-present, and you and your friends can have new and fun things to do all the times, every day, every week, every month, right? That's the selling point of all this. Will that work? Will that land, Andy? we will find out on September 16th because this is a massive moment, right? This is one of those games where I'm going to hop in and I'm going to tell you how great it is and then I'm going to be like, Andy, there's not enough content.

35:24You come back later on and you're going to forget about this six months to a year from now and EA is going to be like, oh shit, we're at 1.0. We're dropping the biggest patch ever. We want you to come back and those player numbers will never be the same. There will be a big update in the future. This happens every time. And it just doesn't quite hit the way you would want it to. Yeah, man, this is not only, I think, obviously big for for full circle and for EA, but I think this is a big kind of not a make or break, but this is going to be a big moment for AAA sports games for AAA extreme sports games in this way.

36:05Yeah, like the skateboarding games, the snowboarding games, like this trying to be this live service model that does not sound like what the fans initially even wanted. It's a big swing, and it's a very risky swing. And I really hope this game comes out and kicks a lot of ass and the fans get everything that they want out of it. But, you know, it's really easy to be worried. It's easy to be worried. And you bring up like other extreme sports games. And it's wild, Andy, that you and I, who grew up with EA big titles, right? Those have come and gone like the Dodo. No one is making SSX tricky anymore.