#385 | Old-Fashioned Superstitions I Find Too Hard to Break

56:49This is strange, not unheard of, but unusual and signals that something is happening with Ubisoft. Now, it's not a massive surprise. We already know about Tencent's involvement with them and spinning off Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy and all the rest. But Insider Gaming has this piece from Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguette, who says, quote, Hello, everyone. I wanted to let you know that we are taking extra time to finalize the closing of the semester. And as a result, we will publish our first half earnings results in the coming days instead of tonight. Due to legal regulations, we cannot share more information with you at this time.

57:21To limit unnecessary speculation and market volatility during this short delay, we have asked Euronext to suspend the trading of our stock until the results are announced. We know this is likely to raise questions and drive media coverage. I encourage you all to listen to the conference call, which will be available via the investor section of our site just after the results are released so that you have a more detailed view of our earnings. Thank you for understanding.

57:45interesting it's not even worth speculating on because by the time people hear this it might already be solved but uh just wanted to throw that out there do you guys have anything you want to say about this what i know you just said it's not worth speculating but i honestly have like no clue what what are the potential outcomes their earnings are if they need more time to study their earnings maybe something was seriously wrong in their numbers that they figured out there could be some sort of investment outside new outside investment um things could be really bad um i don't know i don't know but it sounds like the way they're writing internally and they must have known that this was going to leak so like the postponement announcement is public but the leak of the email the internal email they must have known that was going to happen but they make it seem like we just the delay what he's basically saying in so many words is like us delaying this is going to cause speculation.

58:37And I don't mean speculation as far as like us speculating. I mean, like the ability of people to kind of come onto the market and fuck with the stock, either drop it or or buy it and distort earnings or whatever. And so. But he's saying he's using the term in terms of like media speculation and then market volatility. So I could literally just be nothing like we just need more time, but it's unusual. Like your finance, people are working on these reports pretty much in perpetuity. It's not like something that just sneaks up on you. So I wonder, I wonder what's going to happen. It's nervous. If I worked at Ubisoft, especially not on Assassin's Creed, not on Far Cry, not on Rainbow Six.

59:16I'd be very nervous about what's happening. all right so i just wanted to throw that out there but the big news that i wanted to really begin with was that PlayStation 5 has turned five years old. And it's crazy, man. Like time has flown. It doesn't feel like it that it's been five years. It never does, I guess. I thought I wondered if we had any reflections on it, good or bad or indifferent and where we stand now. I thought I would share some interesting data. Matt Piscitella on Blue Sky from the Circona Group shared some information about the United States and PlayStation 5. He writes PS5 is the second fastest selling PlayStation device in US history, trailing only PS2 with 26.7 million units sold through October 14th.

1:00:05So October 4th. So that would be a third of cumulative units sold in the United States. And he also shared the top 10 bestselling PS5 games by money. So it's Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Spider-Man 2, Modern Warfare 2, College Football 25, modern warfare 3 hogwarts legacy god of war ragnarok miles morales nba 2k25 nba 2k24 interesting list not hugely surprising um playstation also released uh five years of play the evolution of playstation 5 a little thing they put up on um on playstation blog and they have some statistics here a lot of it is marketing stuff it's like you know share has been used 1.6 billion times for 900 million hours it's like oh yeah i hate this fucking data but they do share some interesting information otherwise there are more than 7 500 ps5 games from 4 000 developers 100 billion hours of gameplay 40 billion trophies earned on ps5 um the top let's see here by total play time the top three most played ps5 multiplayer games were fortnight gta 5 and call of duty modern warfare 2 the top three ps5 most played at single player games are assassins creed valhalla and number one god of war ragnarok and hogwarts legacy dustin reflections on playstation 5 as it turns 5 yeah it's funny i was looking of course the dude the comments on the playstation blog rule no one hates playstation more oh they hate them than playstation blog commenters do uh what's funny is that you have to you comment with your psn name so it's just so straight so anyway and it has whether or not they subscribe to playstation plus too which they all do yeah yeah um it's funny looking back i think there is a lot of sentiment that this generation has been not very good uh i disagree i understand the sentiment for the playstation first party super fans but i look back at this generation i'm like man a lot of things that i have always wanted are in this generation the focus on high performance 60 fps the fact that playstation 5 can also run some games beyond 60 fps if you have a tv that does it uh the moving away from a a hard drive to an nvme drive with way faster loading times and the i mean they've added a lot of awesome features too along the way the discord feature while it's not something i use it's very helpful for when i do have friends that play on playstation for something like battlefield that they can hop into our discord call and there's just been uh Many, many, many awesome games so far this generation.

1:03:03If you look, I mean, from both PlayStation first party, but also third party, just in general. I think, Colin, you said on Twitter about something the other day that this generation has just been overwhelming with the amount of games that we want to play. And I think that's I mean, obviously, it's a double edged sword. In some ways, we are not able to play everything. And there are things that are good that are going to fail because of that. But in general, it's never been in terms of the quality of the content. Overall, I think it's never been a better time. Not that there aren't negatives to like this is the true live service generation where I mean, it already started with PS4, but where it's like games like Fortnite are dominating and now starting to really affect.

1:03:51how games are made and decisions behind what games are made and the monetization behind them. It hasn't all been good, of course, but I've been pretty pleased with PS5 so far, and I think it's been an awesome generation in general. Controversial take, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think I speak from the heart. Chris, where are you a PlayStation five turning five? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I understand where people are coming from because I do kind of feel like it is cool to have the bells and whistles. It is cool to have like modern acceptable performance, like 60 frames minimum. Like I think that's great.

1:04:31And arguably something that makes this generation a lot better than a lot of previous ones. But I do think in general, I think we're coming at it from the perspective of people who have lived through periods of time where technology was inherently interesting and i feel like in the last 10 to 15 years technology in general not just video game consoles and whatever but like i feel like technology in general has become kind of stagnant and and boring and that kind of extends to how we feel about new machines and what they do like it used to be that a new machine would do shit that like you would you would think of as inconceivable before or it would be like oh man going from the the snes to the ps1 is crazy or you know the the the the ps2 to the 360 the 360 with like all the shit that like oh social media features built into the machine wireless controllers all this downloadable ecosystems like xy's live and psn were social medias were social media sites in some in some sense it was like oh friends lists and messages and all this shit is crazy and so i think the similarity between generations since then has just led to a feeling of of stagnancy where it might not be actually true on a deeper level where we're like we do see ssds and and the the elimination of loading screens and all this like really wild stuff that is really huge but it feels less significant because the machines themselves aren't really as interesting as they used to be like i was talking about this with a friend of mine like i i wonder if i would be as interested in technology period if i was born like in like 2015 just because like when i was a kid like there was always like some weird bespoke gadget for every little thing that was like weird and it had its own like weird quirk it had its own weird design you know they were just like complete like i remember when phones looked like there was not a phone that looked similar to one another you know what i mean there was like flip phones it was like ones that opened to the side and like oh here's a keyboard and one that flips open just a lot of weird interesting shit to kind of sink your teeth into where it's now it's like it's all a rectangle you know and i feel like that's somewhat true of like machines it's like the ps5 is a ps4 with an ssd it is like it's really not that much different about it and even the ps4 to the ps3 it's like it yeah i mean things look better but it's doing the same things and so i think that kind of mentality the feeling of that um the overall kind of sameness of technology and these machines lead to the generation feeling less memorable than it than it probably is if you were to look at the actual software.

1:07:08Because I feel like actually the last couple of years has been pretty amazing when it comes to like software that is released on these machines. I understand that there's like a whole thing about like, oh, well, you can get a lot of these games on the previous generation running worse. That leads to things feeling a little bit less unique as well. but i overall like i'm i'm happy with the games that we've gotten this generation i think there's been just a lot of groundbreaking shit a lot of really cool innovative things even outside of the you know outside of just the the triple a there's like a lot of indie stuff that's really cool but i i get where people are coming from if they're not like diving too deeply into it because it does feel kind of sammy i um i also agree with you guys that optically things don't look as good as i think they are in reality um because of the lack of exclusives and what people i think are increasingly defined trying to define playstation as and i understand these definitions and i also understand that we love and appreciate a lot of the exclusives from previous generations but i think and I've said before that this generation feels more like PS1 or PS2 in the way it's handling games in that both of those locations were or both of those consoles were kind of the default location for a lot of games that would not necessarily bring you de facto exclusives which was more common in the PS1 and PS2 era because people were still you know especially PS1 it was like you know you really had to choose where you wanted to be you couldn't and 64 games and PS1 games were radically different from each other.

1:08:47Yeah. And you really had to choose your lane. And there were a lot, you know, crossover, but not really. I mean, there were a lot of games for one or the other, but they weren't driven by the first parties, really. And I think that's where people are kind of conflating things where it's true that Gran Turismo was incredibly important for PS1, but really what drove PS1 were just everyone else's games. And I would say that that's actually even more true with PS2. PS2 had more exclusives, but actually a lot of the exclusives weren't incredibly relevant. We talk about that over and over again, London, Cambridge, and all these teams kind of released things over and over again.

1:09:24And people couldn't even, a lot of people didn't play Killzone. Certainly a lot of people didn't play Ghost Hunter or whatever, or Fantavision or whatever the kind of games were coming out of first party. So for every eco or Shadow of the Colossus you'd get, you'd get a Grand Theft Auto 3 or like a truly defining game for the for this for the console so i just feel like i just feel like ps3 began to change the vision of playstation first party because they started investing so much more in it and there were really seminal games in that generation and then ps4 obviously continued that trend and i understand people have this reason to want that and but i think that like that isn't the only thing that was important on those machines and to pretend that that was true is really limiting your view of the reality on the ground when those generations were going on.

1:10:12So I guess what I'm saying in a long-winded way is what I've said in the past many times, which is I don't really care if a game is exclusive or not. I care if a game is good. And I would just argue that, again, it was really off of PlayStation until the PS3 generation where exclusivity seemed more important, whether it was on Xbox and especially on GameCube and 64 like those were the exclusives machines ps2 was supposed to be like and ps1 and so on were like the democratized locations that games would end up and ps5 that hasn't changed even if a game is still available on pc or xbox whatever i just so i get people's anger and disappointment that there's not more available and i think sony has dropped the ball and i think that they are lucky that things are going so well.

1:10:57And I've said ad nauseum, imagine how good it could be if they were actually firing on all cylinders. They canceled a lot of games, they made a lot of bad investments, and they really hamstrung themselves this generation. But I feel like everything's still pretty great just because I have a wider view of gaming than simply PlayStation published games. And those are some of the best games, but there's so many games and And I and it's what you said, Dustin, I noted on Twitter. It's like. I am overwhelmed. Like, I just accept. Every week, basically, it's like I'm never getting to this game. This game looks cool.

1:11:37Never going to play it. This it's a thing that didn't really happen. Even when I was circulating between consoles when I was younger, like I didn't have that problem. In fact, like you only kind of felt satiated if you had a GameCube and a PS2 and an Xbox because you kind of needed one or the other or the other. over and over again. This would come out on this console. This would come out on this console. This would come out on this console. It's like, dude, 7500 games on PS5. I'm not even saying half of them are worth your time. They're not. But there are more games worth your time on PS5 than there were cumulative games on a lot of consoles.

1:12:12And if and I will just challenge people and it's not meant as an insult, but just more of a reality check, in my opinion, if if there's nothing for you to play, if you can't find numerous games at any given time that you would love to spend your time with. I'm not sure you love the craft as much as you think you do. And that's okay. But I stand by the idea that this is a golden era. And it's a perpetual one. It's not like, oh, the PlayStation 5 is the golden era. That's the golden space. No, it's just all of it. From PC to Nintendo to Xbox to PlayStation. It's like, dude, this is some serious cycling of games to the point of my whole thesis that not even great games have any space to have oxygen anymore.

1:12:55No one talks about Silksong anymore. Yeah. Can you believe that? Like there's no, cause there's no room. It's selling millions of copies. People love it, but, but onto the next and onto the next and onto the next. Like, I don't know, man. I don't know what anyone wants. If anything, there's too many games, too much stuff coming out, too much choice, not from a capitalistic point of view, but just from a reality point of view of like, well, I don't know what you want me to do with all this. so I think PS5 just benefits from being in that space have they themselves driven things forward some of the hardware things they've done has been odd the SSD is amazing load times are non-existent fast travel has been revolutionized you know all that kind of shit's awesome but it's really just everyone putting their games on PlayStation and that's perfectly fine with me I mean the sad reality is Sony can never release another game ever.

1:13:46And I would have more than enough to play. They could just be like, we're not making games anymore. And that would be a bummer because they own some of the great studios in the world. But at the same time, it's like, I mean, I guess that's fine. In fact, that's kind of a relief. We don't have to account for your shit anymore. Now, you know, maybe I actually will play Yakuza.

1:14:08Calvin Kirstein wrote in, said, hey, fellas, been a long time since i've written in but i've not stopped listening with the news that the ps5 has sold over 84 million units i'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on what the final sales numbers would be with system sellers like grand theft auto 6 intergalactic and wolverine on the way it's not a stretch to say that the ps5 could outsell the ps4 when all said and done i believe the ps4 sat at around 86 million units in its fifth year so the ps5 is tracking fairly closely pretty impressive for a console that was hampered by material shortages at launch thanks and keep the great work and was way more expensive.

1:14:38Right now you could buy, um, you could buy PS, you could buy a PS4 for like nothing compared to like what you can get a PS5 for. That's the craziest thing is just the legacy pricing of consoles. Um, certainly PS5 will get over a hundred million units sold. We'll talk about the sales numbers in a little while, but could it get to like the 120 ish million with the PS4 sits at? Maybe. I mean, it's not, I don't want to say it's only, but it's only 35 million more units. And when you consider it's like no Grand Theft Auto yet. I don't want to be crazy, but that Grand Theft Auto itself might account for five to eight million units.

1:15:15And I'm not saying game, I'm saying hardware. Yeah. College football was itself a huge hardware seller. Can you imagine? And it's not a huge surprise. College football is the fifth best selling game in PlayStation 5's history. Very interesting. All right, we'll get into the numbers a little later, but I think it's safe to assume. And by the way, if you're keeping track, it is PS5 is going to surpass PS3 next next quarter. It's still the worst selling piece of PlayStation console hardware, which is funny. IGN wrote this like flame bait article I saw on Twitter that people were circulating. That's like PlayStation 5 is outsold to every Xbox hardware.

1:15:53Yeah. Ouch. Colin, I have a tiny bit of breaking news. Do you want to put it in here? uh yeah sure please yeah um just because i know people bring it up they are um from rockstar officially they are uh that red dead redemption ps4 port from a little while back they are porting it to playstation 5 on december 2nd along with mobile as well but it is going to have enhanced image quality HDR support resolutions up to 4K but most importantly for the audience is that it's going to become part of the PlayStation Plus game catalog on December 2nd as well nice so fuck your GTA 4 port you know your PS4 port that already ran at 60 FPS of Red Dead Redemption will now be a little bit nicer on PlayStation 5 and if you have I mean the game catalog that a nice little addition cool this is cool yeah red dead red i i will i ever go back and play the original red dead i don't know i just don't really know um i would like to i would i never played undead nightmare i never played that me neither so maybe i heard it was really good though yeah i heard it was good too i think i jane gave it a 10 when i was there i think that was christine steimer that did that um not a huge surprise yeah red dead one was fun i wrote the guide for it actually it was very late in my my guide writing career um okay interesting news red dead welcome game catalog it seems like uh rockstar and sony are cozy enough for me to imagine maybe some sort of i mean if they have a gta 6 bundle for ps5 it's gonna be yeah crazy yeah and it's worth noting maybe i said this earlier i don't remember uh if you own the ps4 version you will get this update for free so you can run a little bit nicer uh i mean imagine playing red dead redemption on your phone no i won't no yeah i won't imagine that thank you even if you have a backbone like a proper controller support don't play it on your phone i don't care a game deserves better than a four inch well i guess it's a little a five inch screen whatever play this on a proper television set play it on a television set boy um so i have red dead that's exciting that's interesting that 30 frames was a little strange i think they updated it because so many people complained that you could then play it at 60 fps on the ps4 well on the ps5 with the ps4 version so i'm curious what you're actually getting out of this ps5 version i'm sure it will be a little bit better but yeah what is this sorry i'm just clicking around oh all right let's see here all right a couple of interesting pieces of news to get here get to here uh number one is the horizon mmo has been revealed nc soft's horizon mmo is called steel frontiers a quote new mmorpg set in the horizon universe and they write, this is from the press release, by the way, renowned Korean developer and publisher NCSoft unveiled today its new global MMORPG Horizon Steel Frontiers at Korea's premier gaming conference G-Star 2025.

1:19:23Developed in collaboration with Guerrilla, Horizon and Killzone, a studio under Sony Interactive Entertainment, Horizon Steel Frontiers is an MMORPG based on the acclaimed Horizon universe. Set in the lands of the machine hunters known as the Deadlands, which as I understand is the southwest of the United States, the game builds on horizon signature hunting action gameplay while introducing advanced mmorpg systems featuring deeply customizable combat and extensive player freedom the title aims to deliver a distinct horizon experience to players around the world and csoft has launched the official horizon steel frontiers brand website featuring the debut trailer which we'll talk about in a moment and developer interviews the trailer highlights the world of horizon steel frontiers mechanical creatures and large-scale battles unique to the game um let's see here oh that's just other stuff about other games that they're announcing so that there is a horizon website it's i don't know if did you guys go to it it's really fucking old school and that it just has like so much animation and you have to like wait for things to load and there's like loading bar what is this man let me click on shit um but there is an extensive website for horizon steel frontier so you guys can just go ahead and look that up and it's interesting you know the line in between horizon and the subtitle and for zero dawn and for forbidden west there was like a dash and then there was two dashes, which seemed like it was like one and then two.

1:20:38That dash or that line in the logo for this says MMORPG. So I think that's kind of interesting. It looks really good, I think. The thing that I'm a little confused about is that it's on mobile. OK, and PC. No PlayStation 5 version of it. And in fact, it's not even going to be on Steam, I don't think. I think NC soft purple platform is like, I think you download, I believe I could be wrong on it, like its own launcher. So, um, I don't really know what to make of all of this. I'm curious what you guys think. Chris, talk to me about horizon steel frontiers. There is a 10 minute video, by the way, on their official YouTube channel.

1:21:26If people want to check it out. Yeah, it's interesting. It looks better than you would expect. I guess like a lot of people, well me certainly me even though i know better like my my immediate default of like what i think of a mobile game is something like you know candy crush or something it's just like i i understand that games are capable i understand that like resident evil 4 remake runs on iphone or whatever but like that's still the default thing to me so seeing this is interesting because it does look like a real game but that makes it all the more baffling that it's not on ps5 i wonder if like maybe there maybe this is such a leap i mean it looks good it looks like there's a lot of production value put behind it but i wonder if it's such a leap that there may be like they're launching it on pc on a bespoke launcher and on mobile specifically because they're separated markets and they can be used to maybe like gauge like okay let's let's get this out into the wild and see how people respond to it and if it's positive maybe they'll move forward with like a ps5 port i could see that potentially um but i don't know it's it's it's weird like there are parts of this that look like really like horizon and like you scroll a little bit later and it's like oh man that's such a it's so clearly a korean game the character creator in particular is just like bro like these are like they're all supermodels yeah there is a character creator which is cool uh yeah you won't play as aloy uh i think it's funny man because Like I wouldn't play this game.

1:22:53I don't want to play a Horizon MMO, but it makes a lot of sense to me. And I feel like it could do pretty well. I'm just confused by the platform choices. And Dustin, I was wondering if you had more insight into this. I mean, it could have something to do with that purple platform, which is maybe also running like it's, I think the game is running seamlessly between the platforms, right? Between mobile and PC. And maybe there's just some sort of technical limitation. I also have a theory that and Jason Schreier confirmed this, but I mean, I just know this intuitively because we've talked about it for so long.

1:23:25This is not really news to our audience, but this is not the Horizon multiplayer game. This is a totally different thing. And Jason reported something which I didn't know, although I guess it makes sense when you think about it is like Gorilla's next game will be the Horizon multiplayer game, not Horizon 3. So maybe they want to differentiate and just saturate two separate markets. However, and we're going to make this argument with the next game we're going to talk about too after this i would just assume you'd want things default on playstation 5 because those are the people you're going to rely upon like you can rely upon playstation players to try this everything else is is added and i would say even put it on xbox so what are your thoughts on this i think that they're trying to appeal to that Korean, uh, Asian market in general, uh, where people are really into these much more in depth phone games.

1:24:23I mean, that's what they did with destiny rising where you have a full fledged destiny game that ironically, some people are hotter on that currently than the current state of destiny too. But it's so funny. I, when I was watching this game plan, I'm like, dude, this is exactly what we talked about, about the idea of a Horizon multiplayer game. And who knows, maybe it'll be like this game and like Gorilla's own. But I'm looking at parts of this gameplay, like around eight minutes and 35 seconds. This is a Monster Hunter game. And that's exactly what I was saying. I would hope that this would be a Monster Hunter style game set in the world of Horizon.

1:25:05and I don't they followed that very closely to a T so much so that Colin I'm sorry uh this looks more appealing to me than actual Horizon at this point I have to insult Horizon somehow right and dude it's so funny looking at the comments because dude the comments are mad yeah yeah they are uh quote do you guys not have phones ah shit here we go again this does feel like that someone wrote someone wrote do you not have ps5 dev kits over there which i think is funny yeah and dude what's so funny seeing the reaction to this sony is it feels so like obviously is their live service initiative has been infinitely stupid in multiple ways not the push itself but how they've done it right we've talked about that a million times and then you see this and i'm like this is it this game on consoles and i think they would make so much money and they will make a lot of money off this game on phones is there and yeah i'm sorry their pc launcher but i'm like man this is the type of game that people would want of a live a live service game from sony and then you you don't put it on the console.

1:26:26I don't know if it's just a thing where they know that they have their own multiplayer game coming to console and they don't want those to compete that directly. But it's like, well, why are you doing two of them there? Yeah, but that's exactly right. But also it's like a separate it's separate. You know, if you want to give horizon space, then just hold horizon three for a little while, which they are. I mean, it's not going to be ready to go. We're obviously inevitably going to get that. But I just, I wonder what I was going to ask is I wonder if they could, if they could make it go on PS5. If they see enough people, is it possible based on the way this game is being instanced, as it were, right?

1:27:02I mean, in other words, is it really all reliant on this NCSoft technology or is that kind of a put on? Could it be broken out of that? Or could it run on its own on PS5, even not connected to the PC version, like just a bespoke, unique PS5 version? I just think it's just weird, right? Like it's weird. it's way weirder that it's not on ps5 than it would be weird if it was on xbox for instance as well and this is the kind of game where i'm like you should just put you should put it on fucking switch too if you're putting it on a phone you know yeah um this should really go everywhere i'm a little befuddled and annoyed by it because you're right it looks good i again i don't want to play it but it looks good it's very high quality ncsoft is not a joke it's a big reliable bulwark of, you know, of gaming in South Korea for a long time.

1:27:54Their games are huge over there, but so licensing it to them and by the way, it also puts in the context why they're so upset about the 10 cent shit. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, that's like obvious now and now they're going to be able to file more openly about that probably too because they probably couldn't defend themselves in these documents that would inevitably leak in court filings, but now they can be a little more specific and make a better case but um chris what are you thinking here about horizon steel frontiers what do you think how do you think is it interesting to you what is something you want to play and what do you think about it not being on ps5 which i think is befuddling to a lot of people could sony take that back yeah i mean again i just i don't know what the it's really baffling to me that they're working on two separate multiplayer versions of horizon but like i think again like like you guys have said like this looks really high quality and this looks really good and this does like pique my interest because it does have that like monster it has what i it has the look of like what i like about monster hunter without presumably like the weird kind of jank that i've experienced every time i've tried to get into it so like i mean i i would play it but i'm not going to play it on mobile and i'm not going to download purple or whatever to play it so like why not i what the fuck is that i'm dude install Install the spyware right on my computer.

1:29:13If I can play this, go ahead. Yeah, no, it's a gaming platform provided by NC stuff to create an optimal environment with various features for users. Yeah, sure. I would, dude, I mean, I would I would have played it if it was on PS5 because it does look cool. I don't know if I would have stuck with it or anything, but I definitely would have given it a shot. But yeah, I just if it's not on Steam and it's not on PS5, like I just really it's dead in the water for me, really, like there's already so much for me to play as is. I'm going to download another platform from fucking Korea to play this multiplayer Rising game.

1:29:46I'm good. I'm alright. It's the path of most resistance, really. So, yeah, I mean, it's a bummer, too, because again, like we've said many times at this point, it looks really high quality, and I think it could hit. I think there would be a reasonable market for this if they just put it everywhere, but I don't know what the Dealers, really. I'm looking here. This is interesting. I mean, this wouldn't have crossed our desks because it is for the South Korean market only, but Sony started publishing their games on Purple in Korea last year. So the first game was, what was it here? Horizon Forbidden West was the first game.

1:30:34And then Spider-Man Remastered, Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and Ratchet and Clank. rift apart are all available on it um and nc soft purple so that's for the korean purple but purple is global as i understand i just i don't know man it's a it's a bummer because the game doesn't look bad it looks promising and it looks like it could appeal to people i agree with you guys that the two multiplayer game thing is weird i mean it is weird it is weird it's i wonder if the timing was not supposed to be like this with the games. Real quick, I think there's somebody in my door. Yeah, good, good. And I don't know, the Horizon stuff, I just.

1:31:19Are they in danger of overexposing? And if they put the MMO on PlayStation, are they under danger of removing from Gorilla's game? Is Gorilla's game simply more important? I mean, this could be. This could they could literally look at this and say, like, this is a licensing opportunity for us. we're not running this game by the way an important note i mean and this is an important note if you're a nerd about the industry is sony's not doing the pr for this game it's like other people so it could just be a thing where it's like it's its own thing we're we're like we licensed it out it's for primarily an asian market we are localizing it you will be able to play it and download it here but it's not even really for you and the gorilla game will be a more recognizable Western style multiplayer game that we want that will obviously be on PS5.

1:32:05And for that, I wonder if they would put, see, that's where you got to start wondering, like maybe you put it on Xbox. But then you start thinking, why? Because the next Xbox is going to be a PC and you can just put it on Steam. Why even give them any bread at all when you can just circumvent them completely? So now they're probably in that space, but I don't know. It is a little befuddling. I'm just as befuddled by the next one. But yeah, any closing comments on this one before we? Oh, good. Chris is back. Yeah. Chris, just take a quick peek. Here's if you download the purple launcher, it shows a list of their games.

1:32:38And this looks like everything that you would groan at during a game stream. It's like all anime free to play slop looking games. That game thrown in Liberty is supposed to be pretty big, right? I think I have heard of that. And their lineage games are big. There's a bunch of those. oh guild wars 2 is on here that's funny uh yeah oh my god this is like this is like a nightmare if i opened the playstation store and this was like all that there was i would i would shed a tear time takers that's a cool name i think it's too bad it's that game but it's a cool name time taker if you're still on that page scroll to the gate scroll down to the fifth column the bottom column love beat that looks like you're gonna get love beat oh dude i'm checking it out right now oh it's a rhythm game oh my god this looks like ai generated almost it is it has to be well that specific there's like a oh my god it's so shameless god help us what the fuck is going on god help us oh boy i might start going to church i've been thinking that recently myself god can't save you yeah i've been thinking that too this is too much man jesus christ that is the most clearly ai generated thing i've seen in a while you know because like the ai is kind of getting better with like soar and stuff so like to see that's like old school like early 2024 ai oh god it really really turned my mood completely around i was feeling pretty decent you're welcome thank you i was feeling i uh it's funny man like i think i've kind of i think i've i like my conclusion that this is a mere licensing opportunity sony doesn't look at it internally and they're not dealing with it internally with their pr or their own marketing um i'm not even sure the trailer published on playstation any any playstation um you know youtube channel or anything like that because it's on the horizon steel frontiers has its own youtube channel and it could be big in its own right but i just i wonder if they're going to internalize that feedback and say like can we launch some ps5 can we make it work does it make sense but it just might not be it might not be worth it you know i don't know we'll see horizon steel frontiers

1:35:10we're never gonna play it no i am oh you're gonna play it yeah oh yeah i'll absolutely check this out on that weird ai slop launcher now is it is it free to play they don't say on mobile right right right with it being a mobile game it'll be free yeah so i don't know i'll check it out i'll report back this might be my horizon game guys might be the one the pr company that's dealing with this is outrageous pr never heard of that all right horizon seal frontiers go check out the trailer you can go check out the press release and see what you think for yourself the nc so that's the nc soft game we've been talking about forever there it is i mean that's kind of a little bit of a like a relief valve steam coming out like we don't have to worry about that anymore because we've been talking about that game for years that was like a badly kept secret and i'm a little surprised people need to listen to sacred symbols more because we've been telling you that the multiplayer game and the MMO are different games.

1:36:06And this is like a new news cycle. I'm like, no, they're different. But I certainly didn't expect it. I thought they would both be on PS5. But then again, we were talking about Anaplex, which doesn't even publish its own games on PlayStation all the time, even though Sony owns it. So who knows what's going on with that? Yeah. Who has any goddamn idea? All right. Oh, we had a letter here, but I didn't read it. Too bad. Dennis Lofgren into the Phantom Zone. You go. Bash to the Shadow Realm. Another game was announced. A new Ratchet and Clank game called Ranger Rumble. It's a multiplayer shooter for Apple and Google or Android, I guess you should say.

1:36:53And I think it looks kind of neat. But again, why wouldn't you make a PlayStation version of it? you can rely upon your own people to play the game much more than you're going to be able to rely upon them to go to mobile. And I think the best way you succeed in that space, in my opinion, and I think what they were trying to do with Neon Koi back in the day, although it all blew up, was you start on console and you migrate to mobile and you stay on mobile and you play games on mobile. And then maybe you deal with more Sony games on mobile. Like you have to, it's a very competitive, very dog eat dog space you have to seed it in a very proper way so i think even more and this is what i was saying earlier when i was you know foreshadowing this announcement is even more than the horizon mmo not being on ps5 this is even worse i think not being on ps5 because it's so basic why wouldn't you just have a little free to play down like download you know download package for people to fuck around with it i don't know dustin what do you think yeah well i think because part of the conversation i saw around this online is like well nintendo releases games on mobile and no one's mad that they don't put those on their their platform i would also say that's stupid too though but it's here's the difference though is that nintendo's uh mobile games are very much designed as mobile games like mario run that was probably the most notable well-known Nintendo's making a mobile game was a first of all, it was vertical and it was designed completely around a one touch input for Mario.

1:38:29So, I mean, yeah, you could port it to Switch, but it probably wouldn't really be ideal being that's not designed in widescreen. First of all, you have to hold your Switch up and it would just be weird. And same with their Fire Emblem games. They are designed as mobile games. And so the big difference is with these two titles is that these look like console games that could run on a console. And they look like especially that they should be played with a controller. And I'm sure both of these games you'll be able to play with touch input. But God bless you if you're into that. But I know I certainly am not into playing a game like this with touch input.

1:39:07So that's the big difference. uh but yeah playstation this has been the case over and over with their mobile initiative where it's like they kind of care but also seemingly don't care and was the next write-in was about this so i don't want to step on on josh here um we'll get to that letter in a minute i want to get chris on the record first here what do you think about ratchet and clank ranger rumble i guess chris before i even let you answer i should to say we have there's no press release for the game and the only information we have is it says on the website ranger rumble.com you can go check it out and you can pre-register for the game it says quote the iconic characters from the ratchet and clank franchise are back in a stunning fast paced arena shooter packed with explosive weapons and larger than life action experience the humor action and energy of the iconic universe in a bold new real-time multiplayer format play as a legendary hero from the past now with unique abilities go solo or team up with other rangers online and thrilling multiplayer games built for every kind of player free to download soon that's it that's all we have all right so what are your thoughts looks like something i'd like to play on a ps5 yeah this one's this one's inexplicable in my opinion yeah i really i don't i i don't know i i really don't i i earnestly don't get it uh because like with mario with like mario run or whatever like those are games that like i can't imagine somebody wanting to play on a console you know what i mean but like so far with like this horizon game in this game like they look like games that were would be approachable to that audience like i don't see why um i just don't i just don't understand the choice it looks like the kind of thing you'd see on like xbox live arcade back in the day that would be like a really fun thing that kind of like monday night combat style like even even the way the the art design is it's like there's like a cell shadiness to it not quite was that batman multiplayer game oh gotham city imposters yeah yeah i forgot about that i remember that kind of it has a similar feeling where it's like oh the art style is weird or not different than the main arkham games and multiplayer i remember that game being pretty fun i remember liking it uh but like yeah i don't know man like it looks cool i think the idea of an arena shooter in ratchet and clank is very strange change uh i'm curious how that would work um and i would like to try it out oh well you know i don't know i'm not i'm not turning my phone into another place to play games my phone is already like a haunting device that i can't stand to be on you know so like it's gonna be another no from me you know even though it does look really good like i think it looks uh pretty polished it looks like definitely simplified in comparison like if you compare this to like um the horizon game like There's definitely like a different goal in mind as far as like visual fidelity and like, you know, art design, obviously.

1:42:01But like, this looks like something I would play. Yeah, it looks fun. It looks clean. Yeah. It's very readable. It's like, it looks good. It's in widescreen. Yeah, I guess I don't want to talk, speak out of school where I'm like, is it some trivial thing to get this on console and to make them even work with each other? I'm sure it's not. I'm sure it's not a trivial thing. but you gotta you gotta like lean into or i think you would think you would want to lean into like your your reliable fan base i keep saying it's like you gotta go to where your people are first and then you gotta migrate them and tantalize them with the possibility of saying like well continue the quest on the oh you gotta go to the train to go to work just keep playing on your phone that's what fucking balatra did or balatra however you're gonna however you however that's pronounced is it not balladro i've been saying that i've heard both now and i'm like now i'm insecure about how to say it oh i see i don't think the developer will ever comment on how it's actually said oh god like i think he's like it's he always puts in text it's it's called balladro but it's in text so you can't yeah right yeah the screen cuts out at the diner what does that mean it's up to you and i don't know what just just explain uh but i think i don't know like because they they started out they had their their game and then it blew up and then they were like hey we're making a mobile version you know i think that makes it even day and date is fine like i don't really see the problem with that either i would imagine you would want to bolster your your player count as much as possible with a multiplayer game just so you're not you can kind of feel a dead game happening you know you're like you go into a lobby or whatever and you finish a game and then like two matches later you see the same guy again and you're like oh man this is like yeah the pool is dire and that taints the experience you think you'd want to have like everybody on mobile everybody on PC everybody on PlayStation so that it feels more alive and I just yeah I don't I'm sure there's a good reason that is that we're not privy to I'm sure there's maybe like a technological limitation or maybe there's like some wisdom that we're not seeing that maybe they see looking at data but from the outside looking in it just kind of seems dumb to do this but yeah it's just it's also I think a little disappointing that PlayStation 5 turns 5 and then there are these these announcements of a Horizon MMO on PC and mobile and a Ratchet and Clank game on mobile it's like I just the timing is weird I don't like the timing I don't feel like it was well planned but yeah I'm watching the video of Ratchet and Clank and I'm like, it's very, it's just clean.

1:44:40It looks fun. Again, I don't think it's a game. I really like Ratchet and Clank a lot. Actually, I love the world. I think it's incredibly funny and cute and charming. Not really wanting to play multiplayer. It reminds me of some of the offbeat Ratchet games that we brought up recently that came out, you know, the tower defense game and all the weird shit and all for one when they were trying to experiment with it. But it's like, yeah, but you still understood that your Ratchet and Clank audience is on PlayStation. um the i was reading a little bit about the studio that made the game it's an external game so obviously neon koi was trying which was the sony owned mobile studio that went under and without ever releasing a game they were trying to do mobile stuff no one really knows what it was it was apparently a new ip so it wouldn't have been this but the studio that's making this game is called obb oh space bibi and it's a french mobile team that was founded in 2012 and they seem to be incredibly experienced um i don't presume to know anything about these games but they do have a game called frag pro shooter that they claim has 150 million installs so that's serious and interestingly it's on switch as well as mobile so they have a little bit of console quote-unquote or let's say off mobile experience their biggest success story is one that is off platform i just again i don't know what could even be done at this point with either the MMO for Horizon or this Ratchet game, Ranger Rumble.

1:46:03And obviously they have intent. Obviously there's so much we don't know and understand about the development of these games. But I wonder if they're seeing this feedback and saying like, we really, again, particularly with Ratchet, we really should get this on console. Why wouldn't we have this on our own console? If you want to make the, again, the marketing argument about Horizon that's different, cool. But I feel like that's a drop ball and I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they don't want to dilute. Ratchet on the console by releasing a shitty or non triple A, you know, it's not shitty, but it's like, you know, it's kind of bad.

1:46:38Yeah, that's but but hollow reasoning to me. Yeah, well, I also gonna say like, but they they release so many offbeat double A ratchet games. There's not just one or two of them. And they're they're even mobile. Aren't there mobile? Weren't there already mobile ratchet games? um at least one of them maybe i'm pretty sure a mobile ratchet game maybe maybe it's a different ip leaked recently that was never released but that was like this this like a prize of emulation for someone to find a build of it ratchet and clank going mobile right uh was that a flip phone game trying to find out oh this was 2005 yeah so jesus christ i feel like there was an iphone game though or no it could no they no that it was not that was not on psb so iphone ratchet flip a phone game back then that's i feel like i remember playing call of duty on samsung phones like in like the early 2000s and being like oh my wow yeah that's where i first played bioshock was bioshock mobile really no oh no i'm a big fan of bioshock i've played it on my nokia all right um now dustin you wanted to get into this question here yes josh bartlett wrote in and said good day sacred gents did y 'all happen to catch that a new ratchet and clank mobile game was quietly announced today november 12th it is apparently called ratchet and clank ranger rumble and there is a website detailing the game along with a trailer and link to sign up for a beta it is described as a fast-paced arena shooter packed with explosive weapons and larger than life action coming soon to ios and android with no launch date as of writing this inquiry playstation hasn't tweeted about this game and the PlayStation blog doesn't have a post about it either.

1:48:26It isn't even on the official PlayStation YouTube channel. The only reason I happened to see this game was due to a random Jeff Keighley tweet with a link to the trailer. Can PlayStation either commit to these mobile games or not? Why the hell do they even greenlight these things if they're not going to make an attempt to make them feel like they care? The trailer even starts with the PlayStation Studio splash screen, for Christ's sakes. What is going on over there? I'll hang up and get back to getting lost in the sauce of Luminous Arise, which is getting great reviews, by the way. All right, sound off.

1:48:53yeah well i think josh lays it out so well is that this keeps happening what was it this had to have been like two years ago at this point the um the racing game wipe out but yeah that just came in when no i don't even know what that was all about they came in when that was very weird if i recall correctly colin maybe you remember better than me sony cared enough to make sure that we didn't talk to them right what do you mean we didn't we want to interview the oh right yeah we did yeah yeah we and they uh and i know people at that developer too um i was yeah sony cared enough that they didn't want to talk to us but they didn't care enough to promote it at all crazy um also wasn't it wasn't it not even a real wipeout game but like a pilot simulator like it was like something else like a coaching yeah right yeah it was like uh like resource management type thing right so it's like you didn't actually play wipeout it was like all right wipeout's one of the few things that would work on a phone actually with the controls anyway but this does have i mean josh brings up a good point that that that trailer starts with the playstation uh first party like startup screen that you see when you boot up you know ghost of yotei or whatever it has that so it's it's got a little bit of that in it right but and it's important to note the mmo doesn't have that so please correct correct but so yeah sony again it's like if you want to do mobile if you want to have mobile games do it just actually do it and promote these games because as josh point he found out from it about it from jeff keely on on twitter it's like playstation has one of the best just from sheer amount of people paying attention, the ability to market something like this is huge.

1:50:41And then we have to pay for it. They just get they just have to tell people it exists and they're not even doing that. Very, very weird. Yeah, they seem gun shy. And I think a lot and that's but that I think tells you everything, right? If you're gun shy, this gets into the whole point. If you're gun shy, then what's the point? I mean, promoting it with all your fucking vigor like any other game will add to its credence right like it will it will it will add to its gravitas and its ability to kind of find a place and people will take it more seriously but if you're like just it's it's what happened with the wipeout game multiplied by 25 where it's like if you're just going to shit this thing out and then pretend it doesn't exist it makes it look bad it's not a neutral move it's not a neutral move to say like oh yeah there's a ratchet and clank game we're not going to acknowledge that at all.

1:51:28That's actually a negative move. That makes no sense. It's like one of your most iconic IP. Ratchet and Clank is certainly in the top 10 IP, like PlayStation IP, in terms of popularity, in terms of recognizability. And probably somewhere in the 789 range, I would say. And yeah, I'm perplexed. Chris, do you have anything you want to add about the Ranger Rumble comparable to this inquiry from Josh Bartlett, I suppose he's right that if you're not going to have the whole machine going, then why even have a part of it going? Part of the machine is marketing. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think. I don't know.

1:52:10I mean, I feel like he laid it out pretty perfectly. I don't know if I would really have anything meaningful to add to it, but I think it's spot on. You know, like I personally, I just don't understand what they're. what the goal is really if they're going about it this way um it just seems a little bit it's not it's not the most scattered it's not the most scatterbrained thing i've seen out of the industry but it's kind of i don't know it does feel like half-hearted in some way i'm just like all right what's the point it's it's strange because i want to be clear and i've been very clear about this for many years now is I want them to be aggressive on these platforms.

1:52:48It's good, right? It's very good. It's very good to me. They thought enough to make neon koi or to buy Savage and then ultimately turn them into neon koi. It did obviously turn out, but they hired real talent from Apple and all these other places. They spent an enormous amount of money. It's like, yeah, like good, good. Why is it that all of these experimental things aren't working? It's not because they're bad ideas. It's because they're poorly executed. Whether you're talking about multiplayer games in that space and all the cancellations and the misallocation of resources. And what we'll talk about shortly, what's going on with Bungie and like just horrible decision-making.

1:53:23And then on the mobile side, it's like, well, what are you doing? Like, yes, be in that space, but where, where are the decision makers? Where's the talent that can like get this over the, over the hump? Where is it? It's that's, what's frustrating. So they're making their directionally right. That's what's so fucking annoying. It would be less annoying if they just ignored all this shit and like went down with the ship and like we're never expanding we're never putting our games that would be less annoying than i'm saying like yeah here's a mobile wipeout game we're never going to acknowledge it and by the way it's not a wipeout game have fun it's just strange doesn't make any sense how can this be so anyway anything else to say no ratchet and clank ranger rumble go check it out if you want and maybe they're listening i mean well certainly they're listening but maybe they care enough or there'll be enough of a push to say like yeah maybe the best the best possibility of success is to lean on our own people by the way our own people think that there's a dearth of games coming from us and even though this isn't what they're necessarily looking for it's something yeah all right um before all these announcements and everything This was going to be the news of the week, which was Sony released their Q2 fiscal year 25 financials.

1:54:41I read the reports carefully. I listened to actually I read a transcript of the earnings call. I have my notes here. I took extensive notes. So I'll go through what I think is important. We can kind of pick things out. We have a few listener inquiries as well that we want to get into Sony top line stuff. We won't get to we won't linger too much on Sony Corp, but Q2 fiscal year 25. five. So this runs from July through September of this past year, calendar year,$20.1 billion in revenue for the entire company and$2.7 billion in profit. That's up five. So$20.1 billion in revenue is up 5 % year over year,$2.7 billion in profits up 10 % year over year.

1:55:27Now getting into PlayStation, which is where we're really going to linger. If you look at just the last quarter, So that's quarter to Sony's revenue was seven point. I'm sorry. PlayStation's revenue was seven point one nine billion dollars up three point seven percent year over year. And they made seven hundred and eighty million dollars in profit. So less than a billion dollars in profit, which is down 13.2 percent year over year. We're going to talk about why that is because they are starting to incur costs now due to Bungie and it's hurting them. If you combine Q1 and Q2, so first half of the fiscal year, Sony may our PlayStation has made$13.6 billion up 5.2 % year over year with$1.7 billion in profit up 31.3 % year over year.

1:56:09So a very healthy company growing in most places. They attribute a lot of the growth to services like PlayStation Plus and third-party software. Not a huge surprise since they're not selling too much of their own. I pulled out a few other interesting things here that I thought were worth talking about. Sony CFO Lin Tao had noted that, quote, PS5 is only in the middle of its journey, end quote, in terms of its life cycle. This was during the financial call after the earnings were released. And she says about PS4, quote, we want to continue to monetize the install base, end quote. So they're looking at PS5 as at least a 10-year machine.

1:56:45And I would imagine even longer because we are now entering 20, 13, 14, 15, 16. Yeah. So 2026 will be the 13th calendar year of PS4. And it seems like there's still between 20 and 30 million users, which is significant amount of people. So we're going to be in a reality, as I've been saying, where PS4, PS5 and PS6 will all be supported at the same time, at least with network services and stuff, and certainly probably game releases, although eventually I think people are going to have to move off of PS4. And we've already seen that. As we mentioned earlier in the show, PS5 is now at 84 million, specifically 84.2 million units sold, 3.9 million for the quarter, and will likely pass PS3 next quarter.

1:57:28Monthly active users on PlayStation 5 plus PlayStation 4 equal 119 million, which is up 3 million year over year. And software sales are 80.3 million third party and 6.3 million first party. Dustin, I thought this number would make you happy and please you because it's a stubborn number. 72 % sold digitally, which is up for physical games in the quarter, counting for 28 % of copies sold. ghost of yote has sold 3.3 million copies in 30 in 32 counted days so a big success for sucker punch and sony i didn't know if these numbers were going to be in here because what's interesting about this is these numbers are not from this fiscal quarter so they just put these numbers into their data to report it maybe because they felt like they needed to because of all the the bullshit around it but these numbers won't be incorporated into their finances until the next quarter.

1:58:23So just something to worth note, worth knowing is a little bit of asynchronicity there. Oh, by the way, they say, quote, a major hit like its predecessor, end quote, in their earnings call about Ghost of Yote. You can interpret these words however you want, but it would technically be illegal for them to describe the game like that on an earnings call if it wasn't true from their perspective. So worth noting there as well. If people think people are lying about Yote, you should sue Sony, I guess. Here's an interesting thing. this isn't a this isn't a huge surprise because there have been no games released from first party really and again yote won't be incorporated into these numbers yet live service numbers live service accounted for 40 of all first party revenue and i put in my notes here that must be helldivers plus mlb equals 40 percent i mean it just goes to show you how important those games are again nothing really competing with them in that first party space but interesting numbers all right so here's what i promised about destiny and the the basic thing with bungie is that sony's starting to really hurt now and they've written down 200 million dollars which is why their profit is only 780 million.

1:59:40So they still made money even writing down$200 million, but they would have been close to a billion dollars in profit. Here's what Lin Tao said in the earnings call. Quote, regarding Destiny 2, partially due to changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectation we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie, end quote. As I remember, and I would have to go and study this more carefully, I'm pretty sure this is the first time they've taken a loss, like actually filed a loss on Bungie.

2:00:17So it's apparently in the range of$200 million. They note that Helldivers is, quote, doing extremely well, end quote, on Xbox, and that the release on Xbox has driven numbers on PS5 and PC, as well as engagement, which is cool. um and let's see here this is interesting too there's just a couple more things then we can get into whatever you guys want a Nikkei journalist so Nikkei the the newspaper in Japan asked the Sony execs why has add-on or just notes and this is they don't really speak about this but he notes this in the numbers um add-on content so DLC expansions and all that has dropped quarter over quarter for the first time in 13 quarters, which is just an interesting thing.

2:01:04It's like, what's that all about? And they say that they think it's just an anomaly and that there's really nothing to worry about there, but they make a lot of money on expansions. So that's an interesting number to worth watching. And then I thought this was interesting too about marathon. They confirmed 80 ,000 people were in the test for marathon and they say, quote, we are fully dedicated to launching marathon on schedule and quote. So it's coming. I mean, I guess that's not a huge surprise. and I we're going to talk about arc raiders for the seven millionth time later in the show but I think they

2:01:37Sony benefits I think from arc raiders going first and being out and we'll talk a little bit about that maybe later in the show I'm not saying marathon is going to succeed or even be good but I think it's actually good that there's this big game that's sold I think four million copies now that's kind of expanding the Tarkov model and this will only be good for the recognizability of what marathon is doing when the time comes so i think that that works in their favor but 80 000 players is a lot of testing and then um yeah i guess that's it dustin any threads to pull out for you i know i said a lot there any threads to pull out well the digital physical stuff is interesting i think that's something we've talked about before that people do like buying playstation first party on physical still when they can so that's cool um let's see this is totally unrelated uh but it is in this document i was just looking down because i know we were focused on the game stuff i was like oh there's a a reference to legend of zelda on this sony oh for the movie yeah for the movie so i was like that's kind of interesting and it's still weird that that's happening but and yeah ghost of yote say 3.3 million it's nice it's a higher attach rate than ghost of tsushima on ps4 um and really puts in the context like it's a lot i think people just have weird expectations for numbers generally but like uh kingdom come deliverance 2 just announced 4 million copies sold flop on all those platforms over all that time so it's like go go flop kingdom kingdom come woke woke deliverance didn't that game have a whole woke thing too yeah it did something about it was people didn't like i think it might have been like a gay storyline or something oh yeah you're right because the people didn't exist in that time right right they're uh i can understand people thinking like it's the same thing with the assassin's green shadows and this is why i get annoyed at the argument chris it's like if there was like a black person in the game and it was in like 1400s bohemian i'd be like okay that's weird right but a gay person come on dude i think uh i don't know man do yourself a favor and look up the history of like the romans and the greeks oh my god they were fucking tell me how to control tell me how recent a phenomenon gay is that's some of the gayest shit you've ever heard in your life it's outrageous it's it's orders of magnitude gayer than west hollywood is today the roman empire it's ridiculous but not yeah i don't know man seeing the ghost of yote numbers is very funny for a multitude of reasons let's see here i'm trying to see if there's anything else to pull at um oh i forgot to say this too i thought this was interesting they talk a lot about manufacturing in the united states um in the earnings call and they note that they say something along the lines of like we are not a company that is really equipped to do it ourselves but we are starting to work with partners that are manufactured in the US to try to circumvent tariffs.

2:04:44As we noted from the Serkana data, a third of all PlayStation 5s are sold in the United States. So it's very important for them to do business here profitably. And what they were saying was that they're not revising anything, but numbers are benefiting from a lower impact from tariffs than they expected. So I think that that's good news for them. They've figured out a way to manufacture elsewhere and hopefully avoid further price increases so that that was positive as well um and uh yeah anything else here oh there's one other item i read an interview with eric lempel who's an executive at sony long time executive and he spoke to the bbc and he had an interesting stat in there um in this long interview the average ps5 player plays 50 more games than the ps4 than uh than the average ps4 player so circulating through more games i think that sticks that that it uh speaks to the stickiness of the ps5 i thought that was just an interesting yeah statistic that doesn't make sense if you consider the fact that ps4s are mostly you would imagine by now they're like mostly this is purely speculation on my part but it's probably mostly people dedicated to like one specific or maybe two specific live service games or um you know netflix kind of hbo max type stuff um a streaming device i know a lot of people with ps4s that don't really play games on it whereas ps5 i i think inherently to even own one you have to be more engaged with the ecosystem it seems that seems like it would make sense um like i don't know what the fuck people are doing on ps3 you know what i mean but i would imagine it's significantly less than on ps4 and obvious all right a couple inquiries from the audience highly and andy wrote in and said, greetings CDC.

2:06:31With the exceptional rise of digital game sales, I am left wondering if the data is slightly skewed. What if we only look at games that are offered physically? Obviously, games that are digital only will count as 100 % digital purchases, but I wonder what ratio of physically offered games are purchased digitally instead. Would these numbers even matter? Is it something that any of you have wondered or looked into? I have definitely wondered this. They do matter and they are not publicly available, although sometimes they do make that data publicly available per game, depending on the publisher.

2:06:56but it obviously matters and i think if the number is only 72 percent for digital sales last quarter that indicates that a lot of box and this is why i wanted to report the numbers for you dustin was that like it indicates that boxed option games so triple a games typically that you can go buy in like walmart or target or game stop or whatever they sell a fair proportion of the of the cumulative number of games like for instance ghost of yote there might have been more physical copies of that game sold in digital actually i think maybe like 60 40 and i can believe that and that would have to right that would have to be true because most of the games are digital only and those do count towards the numbers so they don't break those numbers out i don't know why but yeah i because i think it would be interesting i i think they would want to break them out maybe they would feel like it would encourage more physical sales which they don't want by saying like actually this number is a lot bigger than you think you're not a dot you're not as dead as you think emboldening people yeah well that's like when i'm trying to remember at some point we talked there was like some stat that's like i'm pulling this out of my ass 80 of games are bought digitally it's like well yeah but how many of those games are digital only right you know it's an incredibly relevant point and i would imagine there are plenty of games that do very well physically right they're very and also the pc market i'm sorry the pc market is like basically like you don't have an option right you buy it digitally or not get it at all yeah yeah do they sell any like cd-rom games um i think they still do because i feel like i remember well i don't know about still as in like in the last like years i remember in the 2020s at some point i went to a like a best buy or a store and i saw like a game on the in the pc game section that was like surprisingly like recent but it was far enough back that i'm like i have no idea that's interesting it was but i but i remember being like oh weird so you would just play it as a as an exe on your computer without yes i don't know i i did i never i the last physical pc game I bought was probably or owned even was probably like 1999, 2000.

2:09:10You know, it's been a long ass time. In the late era of physical PC like I remember, I think I got Holly Skyrim on PC and there was even some later ones than that that I got but it had a disc that had the game on it but it's, you also had to put in a Steam code and so it would have the game files but it was still DRM'd to Steam. So it was so messy and stupid at that point that I get why we've moved on. Hungry Hungry Hansen wrote in, said Sacred Sack Boys. Colin often says PlayStation needs a killer games as a service. I 100 % agree, but why does their survival depend on it? As the top console manufacturer for young adults, PlayStation is more secure than people want to admit from the revenue generated from their hardware sales and not to mention their success as first-party game developers.

2:09:59A great game as a service matters after all the time and money spent, but is it truly essential? not sure PlayStation thinks so if they did Concord would have been better what do you think think sure there's a great content I'll itch my game and listen all right fair enough I wanted to bring this up because as we noted in in the in the notes I was going through 40 % of first-party revenue last quarter account was from what they would deem live service games which really must only be hell divers and MLB there's really nothing else that would even be available that would add to that number maybe even Gran Turismo would be in there but I don't I don't think so it's just, I'm going to keep banging the strum as long as people keep asking the question.

2:10:37It's like, you have to open your eyes. It's don't conflate it for what I want. Because what I would want is totally different with what they're doing. But I also think what I would want would not be the feasible thing for PlayStation to do. I understand that for PlayStation to survive, we have to kind of get everything we want. And I want people to think this because you didn't get too into this, but people often say like, well, they don't need anything because people play their games and they get these you know these these rips on everything they do and i'm like it's just delete don't you understand how vulnerable they are if that's true like they're incredibly vulnerable to to getting the screws turned on them what if look at what epic and apple were doing so like epic going at apple for all these things imagine epics like we're taking fortnight off at the store unless you give us five percent unless we give you five percent instead of 10 or 15 or 20 whatever that bespoke relationship they have like it's just it's not to say that the game developers can't and won't do that and then it doesn't happen behind the scenes it just says like it makes them vulnerable they have to control pieces of the content they keep saying this over and over again that it's all about ip and franchises to them they're gonna keep trying and they should keep trying but it was a total fail but like i said earlier in the show directionally they're right and i think people are just and again the first party game developers like no last quarter where is the where are the numbers oh yeah 80.3 million copies of third party games 6.3 million copies of first party just speaks for itself finally cody gardner wrote in and said hello cdc where were you guys happy to see sony cfo lintau say that the ps5 is halfway through its life cycle i'm assuming this means we won't see the ps6 until 2029 2030 i think this is great news as we really don't need a new console generation in the next couple of years do you think there's a chance they release their handheld earlier though to capitalize in the handheld zeitgeist or will waiting a few years have no effect more having no effect i'll finish laying my children to rest relax i'm putting them to bed and listen all right fair enough um that's not what she said the ps6 is coming in 2027 it seems like that's that that's definitely happening yeah she's saying the ps5 itself will still be alive and i think the thing we have to wrap our minds around and we've already been doing this and it's going to be a thing like more way more than it was when the ps4 turned in the ps5 is like everything is going to be on both consoles i would be truly surprised if there's a great number of ps6 level exclusives because i think you can't move on that fast anymore and they they learn that after the fact with Horizon and God of War, Horizon 2 and God of War 2, where I think those were designed at first maybe to be potentially something on PS5.

2:13:27And then they started seeing like people were selling well, but there's so many people over here. They probably got a lot of data from Miles Morales, which was cross generation when it launched. And if we saw that with a game like Miles, you're definitely going to see that with the next generation. So Cody, I guess what I'm saying is don't conflate Lin Tao saying PS5 is halfway through its life cycle with it meaning anything for PlayStation six because it doesn't. I think what they're saying is the PS5 is going to be alive long after the PS6 comes out and they're right. Hmm. I wonder if it's there's like a little bit of a chicken or the egg situation where.

2:14:01They kept PS4 around longer because partially because the PS5 was so supply constrained. and I wonder if like I don't know let's say best case scenario in 2027 when ps6 comes out the economy is booming and people are like hell yeah I'll spend money to get something and if it's available I wonder if we'd see the tale of ps5 be shorter because people are just ready to move over at the beginning when do you this brings up another question doesn't yeah when When are they going to turn the PS3 off?

2:14:44You would assume that has to happen. Obviously, PS3 doesn't get new games. It hasn't gotten new games for a long time, but it's on. People still play it. There are people even playing a multiplayer games on it still that are still alive. Mystics video. He does a video, I think, every year where he goes and investigates these games and tries to talk to people that are still on. So there's like I don't know what the numbers are. I think last year they reported two or three million people on PS3 still. They tried to turn it off. Like it's a couple of years ago now, right? And then they backed off.

2:15:15At some point, they're going to have to approach that again because it would be really, I mean, it would be fucking super cool if the PS3 and Vita were still alive, at least functional with network services while the PS4, PS5, and PS6 are all out. I mean, I think that would be badass, but it might be easier for them to start figuring out how they're going to integrate PS3 in the PS. And by the way, like, can we figure this out already with the PS3 shit? Come on, man. I refuse to believe it's that hard. On a game by game basis, I know it's a very, you have to, you can't just emulate widely. We got to figure this thing out and then that will make that that problem less important.

2:15:53I mean, the dream solution would be having that storefront just available on PS4 and then you can just shut the PS3 functionality off. I mean, that would be cool, but that's a fucking dream scenario that's never going to come to fruition. All right. Dustin so we'll get into a couple things that were talked about at the state of play like we noted we watched the state of play together on sacred streaming you can go check out the pre-show the entire show and then our thoughts afterwards on VOD on our YouTube channel that's free for everyone it's not locked behind a paywall on Patreon so go check that out it would be redundant to talk about it here any more extensively and I think that none of us really cared too deeply about the show anyway I think we all agreed it was like a C C minus and not really for us as Western gamers, but I was glad to watch it.

2:16:39It was cool. It was a cool presentation. But there were a couple of things worth noting, and I know one thing you were interested in, Dustin, was PlayStation's new gaming monitor. This isn't the first time they've made PlayStation branded monitors. I guess the other one was a TV, technically, though, the 3D TV from the PS3. But this is a 27-inch gaming monitor that they kind of ambiguously talked about. They write here on PlayStation Blog built for desktop gaming with a PS5. The upcoming monitor combines bold visuals and performance and includes a charging hook for the DualSense wireless controller, which again, as I said on the stream, I just absolutely love.

2:17:13They write, since the launch of the PlayStation 5 console, we've seen that players enjoy having the flexibility to choose where they play PS5 games, whether it's in their living room, on their big screen TV, in other areas of the home, or outside of the home entirely with PlayStation Portal's remote player. In keeping up with these trends, we are pleased to introduce another option for players with our 27-inch gaming monitor with DualSense charging hook coming to the US and Japan, and hence its discussion on the Japanese state of play. The new PlayStation gaming monitor pairs nicely with our recently announced Pulse Elevate wireless speakers, which features lifelike desktop audio and seamless voice chat.

2:17:44Both products were designed with the PS5 desktop gaming experience in mind, offering a high-quality visual and audio desktop experience for those who want the option of playing in personal spaces. Developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the new 27-inch gaming monitor delivers stunning visuals from the latest PS5 games to your desktop, featuring a quad high definition IPS display of up to 2560 by 400 1440 resolution. So players can play at a comfortable viewing distance from their desk, high dynamic range support with auto HDR tone mapping that automatically adjusts HDR settings during setup on PS5 and PS5 pro consoles.

2:18:16That's pretty cool. Ensuring rich and vivid picture quality VR support and refresh rates up to 120 hertz for a smooth and seamless gameplay on PS5 and PS5 pro consoles and 240 hertz on compatible PC and Mac devices. A built-in charging hook for a DualSense or DualSense Edge wireless controller sold separately. That makes it easy for players to get right into gaming. The PlayStation gaming monitor supports is it VESA mounting? It also has a full suite of audio and connectivity and options including USB ports for your PlayStation link adapter. Dustin, now that we didn't know, I couldn't find a press release during the stream so we really couldn't talk about it too deeply.

2:18:54Now we can. What do you think of this? Yeah, it makes sense. Sony, I've said for a while with these accessories, if you make it, people right now are buying. They're interested. And clearly they're seeing more people that are playing PlayStation 5 at a desk. I find that weird just because when I'm playing a console, I'd rather play at a couch. But clearly there is a market for this. and this monitor sounds pretty pretty good i think you can be we can be confident that sony uh knows a thing or two about making displays and so this will probably be pretty nice and i'm i don't know if i want to call it affordable but it's not going to be probably like insane high-end being that it is uh 1440p an ips display this isn't like an oled monitor or anything like that.

2:19:50But I think it's cool. I love the charging hook is pretty neat on there. And yeah, I think it'll be a nice addition for some people. I personally am not interested just because I have I'm fully in on OLED completely. And I already have a really nice 4K OLED PC monitor. But for people that are looking to get something a little nicer, this could be good. And I also like that it has 240 hertz for for PC. as well to go beyond just what a playstation would be capable of what do you think chris yeah i mean it's it's cool they're dipping their toes into this stuff i mean they've always been a hardware you know manufacturer so like it's not super it's not out of character for them or anything it's it's interesting it's cool i think it's a solid looking monitor i like the i like the dock i think it's like a cool little i like that flourish i think it's cool um i i would imagine being a little clunky though like it looks like it could be like a little awkward to work with but like i mean it looks really nice i'm just not in the market for a monitor at all like i'm i'm pretty happy with the ones that i have like i don't need i don't need another one i don't even really play playstation uh games on a monitor it's always on a massive tv so it's even the synergistic benefits of that just like they'd be completely lost on me anyway yeah i remember well I was looking at it because I didn't realize this until you know Dustin you had brought it up too is like when I was preparing my notes I'm like it's not even 4k but I thought that was kind of like the standard but is it because it's such a small monitor that it doesn't really matter or something you know like they say like on a screen like who cares if like something on your phone is 4k it's like it's an you can't even discern it yeah the pixels I'm not saying it's that small but is that is that is that the reason or well I think it a lot of in order to fully power like 4k gaming which i guess i mean the ps5 does to some degree but um it is expensive and a lot of pc players are opting for 1440p over 4k in order to get higher frame rates uh since it doesn't require as much of the gpu to do that um it it's interesting i have so the monitor that i have here is 1440p the monitor here is 4k and even though they are you know similar in size i can always tell the 4k one i feel like it looks way better but uh 1440p is still great so that's what i think that like i said it's not like a super high-end monitor it's also to to make a 4k monitor is actually more difficult if i if my understanding is correct it's more difficult call it because the pixel density is so much higher than a tv so the i don't know if the yields are harder or something so it makes even though my 32 inch monitor uh is a smaller screen than my 4k tv it costs just as much as my 4k tv so yeah i the other thing that i'm i'm interested in that i would also defer to you on is just this the marketing of it are people really looking to sit at a desk to play playstation is that a thing that a lot of people are doing that seems that's like totally anathema to console gaming to me that's pc gaming if you're gonna sit at the desk play a pc i'm doing i used to have a i mean i used to have a my my tv desk like when i had like a small like bedroom tv like i it's so funny looking back at the tvs i used to play video games on because they're like their size of my hand opened yeah oh totally it's like it's ridiculous but like when i i remember having a desk where i kind of sat at and played a lot of 360 on before i got like a bigger tv that would that would be ridiculous like it would be ridiculous to have a bigger tv and sit put it at a desk and sit in front of it um and so i don't know i mean i'm sure there are a lot of people doing it i wouldn't imagine that it's most people yeah well certainly not but yeah i just was surprised by that marketing use case it's like wow i didn't because i understand people that are playing games like when i was in media and a critic like i had a desk i had a desk at work and i had a tv on my desk and i played games at it but that was because i was i hated it actually i was like this i hated playing games in my desk um and yeah so i was just surprised i'm sure there is some sort of use case but i was surprised that that was the use case they were leaning into as opposed to pc gaming yeah like i know they don't want to they don't want to cannibalize their own stuff but i just felt like this was the more obvious use case was saying like yeah if you're maybe you even wait to try to this rumored PC launcher or something.

2:24:35You try to put it all together in some cogent marketing plan. So I was just surprised by that because I just didn't. I know like streamers play at their desk and all that, but I just didn't know that people like came home. It's like, I'm going to sit at my desk and play. It's like, don't you want to sit on a couch like or. On the floor, and I remember even writing facts when I was a kid and I would play at my desk, but I hated it again. I hate it. I would often take a notebook into bed with me and like lay in bed and take notes and then write them down by hand and then try to transcribe them later.

2:25:02so um my question is playstation now has a pc monitor pc like speakers and you've been asking for this colin uh keyboard and mouse i would love the keyboard and mouse i thought you were going to say are they going to bring the vio back and get fucking crazy with it oh yeah and bio and yeah obviously you can hook up any mat well maybe not any but you know most modern pc a mouse or a wireless keyboard to your PlayStation, but it's like get in on it. Also, make the PlayStation more compatible with keyboard and mouse. I think that'd be sick. Me too. I want I've been. Yeah, I've been saying that for a long time now, and I would buy that a minute if they released a mouse and keyboard.

2:25:44That would be fun. Fun. All right. We got a little bit of this as well, and we couldn't find a press release for this either, but I thought I would just add this to the record because it is very interesting and we were kind of prognosticating about why they would do this, and I think it's fairly obvious when you think it through. but they announced this long rumored bespoke Japanese market only PlayStation 5 digital version that will help bring prices down in Japan for people that are not aware the Japanese economy I mean is in a decades long malaise but the yen is really weak against the US dollar right now things are really expensive there I was lamenting on I don't know if you guys saw the Sega gave everyone 10 % raises in Japan bringing new grad salaries up to$2 ,100 a month.

2:26:35It's like, what in the fuck, dude? And I understand people are like, it's cheaper to live there and all these kinds of things. I'm like, it is and it isn't. And that's literally what a developer in the United States makes in a week. Like the average, totally like run of the mill developer. So they are getting outworked by Nintendo because of the economic situation. And of course, the way people play games over there as well and i think they're trying to figure out how they can saturate the field without being taken advantage so this is why the monetary situation is important without foreigners scalping these things off of their market and bringing them to the united states or europe because they're going to be mega cheap ps5s comparable to what we have to pay for them so they showed this during the state of play and there is a playstation.com help so i put it in the notes here it says what is the ps5 digital edition console japanese language only so this gives us a little bit of information about how locked down this thing is it's more locked down than i think we thought doesn't it says the ps5 digital edition console japanese language only is a version of the ps5 digital edition console designed exclusively for sale in japan ps5 digital edition console japanese language only supports only the japanese console language and is compatible with japanese playstation accounts accounts with country region set as japan accounts from other countries and regions are not supported.

2:27:53The PS5 Digital Edition console, Japanese language only, can access the Japanese PlayStation Store, play digital PS5 games purchased from the Japanese PlayStation Store, play supported digital PS4 games purchased from the Japanese PlayStation Store. It launches November 21st in Japan. And according to our friends at Video Games Chronicle, the console will cost 55 ,000 yen, which is about$355. So that's obviously far cheaper than the PS5 in Western markets. And again, this will help saturate things because, and this is the fucked up part, dude. The digital edition PS5, the original one, launched in Japan at 39 ,980 yen.

2:28:35$260. And its price was increased to$390 and then the$475 because of the depreciating value of the yen. This has strangled PlayStation in that market. and they're working around it. And we discussed on the show to what end and why are they making it so locked down? And Dustin, you know this as well. Switch, Nintendo did this with Switch. Right. For a very similar reason. Sony's copying them and I'm sure other electronics manufacturers are doing it as well. Again, they're locking it down so much because people will gladly save 100 or$150 buying this thing and just importing it. And Playstations are typically not region locked.

2:29:19beginning with PS3 specifically, I guess it would have been. So listen, I took advantage when I was there, not on hardware, but I bought Silent Hill 2. I bought Metaphor Re-Fantasio there. I bought the new Mario Party games. So you have several rated games that play in English? And they work. They work totally fine. They work. I made sure I looked up online and I was like, yep, they work and they cost 40 bucks each on like launch day, launch week. That's amazing. So I think they were like 40 or 50, depending on the title. That's so funny, dude. It's like, I'm here. I might as well buy him here.

2:29:53Totally. And it's kind of cool. Yeah, I think it's kind of cool. I have some of these. It's like it's a memory attached to those games. Definitely. Definitely. So, yeah, I think that people some people are questioning, like, what's like with the region locking and the craziness about the Japanese PSN? It's like they just don't want you guys dicking around. It's not for you. Yeah, it's like at their home market, more of these consoles. So I just want I don't think we have much more to say about that, but I wanted to throw out there that that's happening. and um i guess we do have a small japanese audience but they're usually westerners so enjoy all right another thing that came out of the uh state of play the japanese state of play was marvel took on fighting souls second closed beta will begin on december 5th this is of course the arc system works game that will be on ps5 and pc that was announced some months ago it says uh In this closed beta test, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider will be joining the roster, bringing the total number of playable characters to eight.

2:30:47You can freely mix and match heroes and villains to create your own four character team. Of course, this is 4v4. Additionally, two new stages, Savage Land and the X-Mansion will be added to this beta. It was really funny with the X-Men mansion. People were disappointed. I think they were calling it like the unannouncement because there are characters in the background. That makes it clear that like, oh, Nightcrawler or whatever, like won't be in the game or whoever it was. And I thought that was pretty funny. Are you guys going to check this out? Any interesting? it runs from December 5th. That's a Friday at midnight Pacific, and it will run continuously, apparently, until December 7th at midnight for 72 total hours.

2:31:22Certainly not for me, but another way for them to test this game is it begins to prepare itself for launch next year. Chris, any interest in Marvel token fighting souls? Yeah, a little bit like, I mean, this is the kind of thing that I'm sure one of my friends will get into it, and then I'll just probably go over to their place and play it. I'm not going to try my luck in getting in purely because there's already so much to play i don't need really something i don't need to put myself in for something else to distract me uh so i'm good on it also it's it's in the it's going to be in the environment that i would play it anyway which is at a friend's house so i would actually in some ways be able to test it more more accurately for my use case uh doing that i know i have a ton of friends who are like really really into the fighting game community and like really really all over this so i'm sure i will play it somehow but i'm good i'll save that i'll save that open spot for somebody who who really who really really wants it you know i like that angle you know i'm doing you guys a favor i'm doing you guys a favor i'm actually being very magnanimous about it yeah yeah if it was an open beta i would download it uh probably play for about 20 minutes and remember that i i just i'm so terrible and don't understand fighting games.

2:32:39I appreciate it for what it is, but I'm good. It's important to note this. You have to sign up for this beta. However, if you they write here, quote, if you previously registered your interest, but did not participate in the first beta, please look for an invitation email. If you're joining the closed beta test for the first time, please sign up now and you'll need to log in your PlayStation account and so on and so forth. There's a direct link. It's not worth reading. It's an alphanumeric link, but you can find it on PlayStation blog. So go check that out. If you're interested in checking all of that out, Marvel token fighters, people are very, very excited about it.

2:33:15People are very upset that I think it should be PlayStation All-Stars part two. And do I mean it? Kind of, but not totally. But not totally. Another Japanese piece of information or information coming out of this Japanese state of play, I should say, although it is a Japanese piece of information, Elden Ring Night Reign, Forsaken Hollow's expansion launches the same actually the day before that the Tokan Fighting Souls beta is going on December 4th. The press releases new DLC for the multiplayer co-op survival action game features two new player classes, new bosses, and a new shifting Earth environment.

2:33:50Dustin, I was talking to you and Brad about this when we were streaming. You guys played this pretty heavily when it came out, but I think you guys have both fallen off of it. It's of course on PS4 and PS5, and it's one of the best selling games of the year, so I'm sure this is going to draw people back. Is this what's going to be required to get you to play Elden Ring Night Reign once more? Yeah. Yeah. And there was nothing wrong with the game. It's just we had completed all the content and there's things to move on to. So this DLC has two additional night fairs. That means two additional playable characters to two day, two day, three bosses.

2:34:24Such a weird sentence. but they're adding a lot to the game and it's a good price 15 bucks so yeah i'll be headed back to this game for sure and i'm very excited about it it feels like it's taking a little longer than i would want to for them to add new stuff to this game but i'm glad it's here it's unfortunate the same day as metroid prime i believe so we're gonna be once again too many games at the same time anything Chris did you play night rain I don't I don't recall no I oh man I like Elden Ring I do but like I'm just I'm kind of I'm good you know I don't need there's so much guys like I'm so overwhelmed with video games dude I know we said that earlier it's just like it's like there's really a glut right now um I'm trying to make time like I've got Kronos just sitting there staring you know uh so i'm i mean i'm good i put like nearly 200 hours in elden ring i'm i'm satiated on elden ring for like probably a couple years yeah sure before before i'm hungry enough to to want more from software unless they do like if they do a sakuro 2 or something like that i'm that's a different story i'll be all over that i love sakuro but yeah i wonder that would be that would be microsoft i guess doing that right uh because i just mean like more like that type of game no no i know what you mean but i was thinking like who where would that come from i wonder is that rich well i think they published it but i think there's a thing where from software owns the ip okay oh cool the hell of a deal um but yeah all right a couple more pieces of news to get through really quick um there's a really interesting interview on GQ with Todd Howard of course the long time leader of Bethesda Game Studios the article if you want to look it up is called Todd Howard on 10 years of Fallout 4 and the Elder Scrolls 6 and there's some interesting news in here but the one thing I wanted to focus on is that he still he says here that excuse me Elder Scrolls 6 is quote-unquote still a long way off which is hysterical because the game was announced what wasn't the game announced like 20 2019 2019 yeah something like that so totally insane earlier early um but he does confirm that they're working on it he calls it like their everyday game that's like what they're pouring all their time into that's not a huge surprise and he does tease this idea that he wants to do a a uh like a surprise release like a shadow a shadow drop of the game and that they did that with oblivion remastered and it was really exciting even though it leaked obviously and he says quote you might say that was a test run it worked out well end quote that would be pretty cool there are rumors and by the way i would i think that the rumor like what's going around about elder scroll 6 is real um they're like deep story and plot details going on about the game like how the game starts all that kind of shit i would suggest i don't give a shit about elder scrolls really so i read some of it but um and i don't know if it's true or not it just seems like it's true um and so i would avoid that stuff if i were you if you if i if you care about that sort of thing but in that leak they say that the game is a 2028 game so it is a it is far off still and that means that they would have announced it nine years before it came out which isn't unprecedented but it's pretty close 2018 by the way 2018 so 10 years 2018 totally insane i was there no idea i don't know why they did that it's because i remember the reason or like the the cultural wisdom at the time was like fallout 76 was not being received well and they wanted to quell fears right right right you're right that uh they weren't pivoting to multiplayer they're just like no don't worry there's another elder scroll is gonna happen and it's not this but i mean you would know something about announcing something too early right colin um yeah i don't what what the the role-playing game i i misunderstood you i think because i don't know why you got burned oh no i was just i was just making a little crack oh okay i see a little jab a little jab the role play game wait what did you think I said it totally went over my head I understand the joke now

2:38:34alright sorry I have the document here yeah here it is so on this I recommend people read this because he talks a little bit about Fallout and the future of Fallout and remastering it and all that kind of stuff as well I just don't really I don't really care like I just I do want Fallout 3 remastered I think we'll get that but I don't know. I just feel like Bethesda Game Studios has kind of run its course for me in some way. And I'm actually very intrigued in playing, you know, maybe not playing, but considering, as we've said many times, considering Starfield when it comes out. But I just, I don't know.

2:39:12I don't get the excitement anymore. So anyway, I'm sorry I missed your burn if I ruined a joke. I don't like ruining jokes. No, you're good. I think it's funnier, honestly, for me. I think it helped. because you just you have this really blank stare that almost look like i really hurt you

2:39:32sorry i'm distracted by a bunch of things here trying to keep the show going all right um i have so many fucking windows open there's so many stories all right here's the next one bioware n7 day 2025 they write on here i wrote in our document bad news ea and bioware confirm that the new Mass Effect game is still a development. So just confirming, they say that everyone at BioWare is working on the new Mass Effect game. I don't care, but I felt like it just should be mentioned and noted in case you're looking forward to it. There is that new Mass Effect TV show, right? Or is it a movie? No, it's a TV show.

2:40:06I think Amazon is doing it. So they're going to keep that going as well. And then the final piece of news I wanted to get into is just new PS Plus game catalog editions. Obviously, we had noted earlier, and that was the breaking news that Dustin shared with us that red dead redemption will be coming to the catalog do they update the art or is that always coming yeah are they updated okay cool because yeah this was not the way it was when i saw it yeah so they've snuck that in there yeah it says update red dead oh yeah there it is i could have i could have just read the document i guess so the game catalog of course is available to playstation plus users at the extra and premium tiers and um gives you access to a bunch of games game pass style but not usually sometimes but not usually new releases so a little bit unlike game pass probably less value red dead redemption as we said earlier is the big addition and by the way these additions begin on december 2nd if you're curious so uh a ways away they're warning everyone again didn't we bring this up a little while ago that people like they're doing this on purpose now because people got so mad about buying shit so they're giving you literally three weeks notice which i think is actually a little excessive and quite pro-consumer also grand theft auto 5 will be joining so a lot of rockstar stuff here which is cool pacific drive is joining as well i wanted i played i bought and played it a little bit i just wasn't into it i don't i don't know if my mind wasn't right i it just was weird but it's a cool idea 30 30 fps too oh yeah that's stinky kind of grody still wakes the deep um is from the chinese room i platinum that earlier in the year the walking simulator it's good it's not as interesting in my opinion as um everybody's gone to the rapture insurgency sandstorm is joining as well thank goodness you're here is joining the talos principle 2 monster jam showdown moto gb25 and then for playstation plus premium specifically in the so that's the highest tier of ps plus in the classics catalog tomb raider anniversary edition the ps2 game is joining the collection and that's it so anything in here for you guys of any interest is a pretty nice collection of or compilation of games but you know i don't have ps plus extra so i don't care i bought this game thank goodness you're here months back and i like british humor like i like monty python i don't understand this game and at all these awards so maybe maybe i don't know some of you you british people with your your beans and whatever we'll be happy about that also sorry broken record time but the anniversary the classics they're slipping yeah a lot of people have been saying that yeah they're slipping bad one only one game and it's not even I mean this is a port that was already existing you're saying that's cool but step it up PlayStation with that premium support sucks currently.

2:43:08Yeah, I don't know what's holding it up. I don't know what the deal is with that. Is it not important? Is it just simply not profitable or making much money? Is it not worth the pursuit of these kinds of games? Tomb Raider would be in the hands of a bracer group. It seems like they're willing to license things. Are they waiting for people to come to them? I don't know. I don't know what's going on with that. Let's see. I'm going to skip this inquiry because we've already kind of run our course here with this. That's all we have for the news. All right, let's get into what we're playing now that the news is over.

2:43:39I'll go really quick and just say I'm playing the same things I've been playing for weeks and I have nothing new to say about them. I platinum Ghost of Yote. So that's platinum number 193. That's out now. And then Power Wash Simulator 2. I'm going to platinum in the next couple of days and plants versus zombies replant that I'm still playing typically on my portal. Power Wash Simulator 2. I will say this. I've been having technical issues with it on the bigger maps, like when you get deeper into the game. the game starts like stuttering and like i don't know just being really inoperative and i found that just turning auto save off fixes it so if you're experiencing those problems as well and a lot of people are because i've been reading about them online that will be a good solution for you as it as we wait for a patch they have not patched the game since it's october launch so that's what i've been playing nothing new to report here though but you you guys are both playing arc raiders as well as you are uh chris you're playing dispatch and dustin you're playing luminesse arise so uh that's why let's go to you first and um you can describe what you're playing we'll go to chris and we'll go from there sure well i'll start with luminesse arise so we can kind of transition with arc raiders uh so yeah this game is finally out now i talked about it a few weeks ago when i was doing a preview for it but it is fully out and if anyone doesn't know or doesn't remember or didn't listen to that episode this is the new game from enhance and they made Tetris effect and this is their the luminous version of Tetris effect and it absolutely rules if you like Tetris effect you absolutely need to check this out I'm not very good at it uh like I feel like I've never been that good at luminous but I still am enjoying it thoroughly it's really cool the way their different stages work along with the music and now what I wasn't able to preview before is that there is VR support.

2:45:28So I dusted off my PlayStation VR 2 and it's just an incredible, awesome experience playing this game in VR just because you can chill out and it's super immersive and the music is really great. So I highly, highly recommend this game for, I mean, pretty much anybody. I guess if you like puzzle games, then check this one out. And then, yes, I'm playing more Ark Raiders. I'm at the point where I'm pretty deeply invested in this game. We're playing pretty much every night. They've made some recent changes to the game, which are very good. They just introduced a new map last night, like overnight.

2:46:15So I haven't got the chance to play that. But they have done some changes to the matchmaking where it used to be before that if you went in with two people, you would get paired like other teams in the map would be three people so there was no like duos matchmaking which could be really annoying because what I've noticed in this game if you go in solo people are generally much nicer you are more likely to find people that are maybe not just willing to not shoot you but also willing to help you I've had multiple instances where I'm like, oh, I'm working on this quest. The guy's like, oh, you got to go over there.

2:46:55Very friendly interaction. It's nice. As soon as you get multiple people, people get bloodthirsty, myself included. There's something about a safety of having your team that if you get down, there's a chance you're going to be able to come back. And man, some of the interactions in this game that the reason I really, really like this game is the social elements. It just goes to show how stupid Bungie was where they were putting proximity chat on the back burner because half of the fun of Arc Raiders is like interacting with people and like the Wild West standoffs that you are like, because like usually when we play, we're on a discord call.

2:47:34and in order to talk in game you have to like we'll hold a button right so we'll interact with people and be like hey all good we're just doing a quest here and it's like uh don't trust these guys like these guys are probably going to try to kill us the moment we turn around and often that does happen but this game is awesome and i think you brought up a good point earlier about how I think on initial thought, when Ark Raiders came out, I'm like, man, this is not going to be good for Marathon because this game is so good that now you have to convince people to move over to something else. But in a way, Ark Raiders has done probably a great service to Marathon in that it is the first big mainstream hit of this kind of game, of an extraction shooter.

2:48:25Of course, Call of Duty has done it on Delta Force was a big one. Those were all good, but they weren't they weren't anywhere near as big as Ark Raiders in terms of its popularity. So I think it's getting people used to the idea of an extraction shooter. I know for me, when I started this game, when you die, it's like devastating. It's it pisses you off. You're like, man, I lost all this stuff. I don't have I wasted the last 20 minutes. And then as you start playing more, you get more comfortable with this idea and understand that it's like, dude, none of anything you have on you as at a given time, consider it a rental.

2:49:01Like you are never going to keep anything permanently in this game. So you might as well just use it. And so I think that conditioning could help Marathon that when it comes out, people have it. They're not necessarily introducing as many people to this newer type of genre. So I'm really impressed with the game. I'm having a great time with it. Sometimes the quests can be a little annoying in groups, but that's kind of the only thing that I'm like about everything else, though. The play, the PVP interaction is where it's at. And I'm sure Chris, you have had some, I mean, if you've played this game at all and been on Mike, like I said this in a video I did the other day, I'm like, if you're not playing arc Raiders with a mic, why?

2:49:47Like, why not? that's half of the fun i it's not like a call of duty lobby you'll never catch me on the mic on a call of duty lobby ever but in this game always yeah yeah no it's it's uh it's cool man it's it's it does a lot of things right particularly ai i think ai is is the star of the show like i think um because they're really hard like they're not they're not to be trifled with really at all um and some of the uh what do you even call i don't even know what to call production value of just like the way these things fly at you there's a particular enemy that like literally like leaps across the map and it's ridiculous yeah it's literally called the leaper but it's like looking at it feels surreal because you're like there's no way in most games that in most games you would see that kind of thing and it would have no chance of seeing you because it'd be you'd be like oh we're way far away and then it somehow does this insane it's horrifying it's it's a little bit like uh i was i was watching a little bit of your elden ring stream con and i remember you like jumped off a cliff or something you were running away from some guy on a horse and he's just like he just like appeared behind you yeah he was like it's very much like that kind of thing where you're like he followed me down here that's crazy but it's cool like I dig it there's I still have the same kind of sticking points that I had last time I talked about it I do think it's like a little there's a handful too many things that it's juggling I think it could stand for like some streamlining if it's really gonna get me really in and I do kind of have that feeling of just like oh I'm never really I'm never quite bummed out if i die with anything important because i just kind of i just kind of understand that that's you know i'm just like ah whatever i i was expecting to lose that anyway um but i like it it's it's good and i think it does have a chance to um help marathon in some way because ultimately like these they're definitely going to be compared like these games are undoubtedly going to be compared they're going to be um you know weighed against each other but I do think based on my experience with both of them I have a similar amount of experience playing both of them at this point uh cumulatively with like the alphas and the stress tests and the server slams and now the full game release of arc raiders where I'm like these satisfy very very different feelings for me even though they're in the same genre like they feel they don't feel the same which is interesting I'm curious to see like what will be like how that'll I wonder how arc Raiders people will react to playing marathon if they will and like whether or not it'll click with them because it is very different um but Arc Raiders is doing a great job I think it's it's it's hitting me with my fix you know and I've come around on some of the crafting stuff I still kind of don't like it but like I'm I'm more okay with it and I'm just like all right fine I guess I'll I'll craft a thing the only real sticking point for me is like the menu navigation is kind of awkward like and i can't help but like i'm noticing it every time like i'll go into i'll go into start a lobby or whatever and i'll you'll you'll hit play and then you'll look at your inventory and then you'll be like oh i need my i need to craft this thing i need to craft a shield and then you got to back out and then scroll over to the workshop click the thing craft it go back to your inventory like it's it is kind of all over the place um but i don't think it's anything like nearly i've seen some pretty bad ui design in the last in the last 15 years make no mistake and it's it's nowhere near that but it's something that i did notice uh but it's damn good and yeah you gotta have a mic i think you're missing out a lot on this game like i particularly like going in solo actually like i i like the loneliness of it and like the the weird kind of almost journey esque feeling that you get or just like oh another person was here hmm interesting and the little conversations that you have it's very funny how afraid everybody is this game friendly yeah dude when i played this game when i started this game i was super friendly i was always calling out to people like hey just so you know i'm here don't need to worry uh but let me tell like just last night ben and i were playing and we had both dude one of the like a rocketeer just completely fucked us up we were so close to the xfield though so i was like crawling i was just crawling and then as soon as i got to the button there was a guy there so i was like oh hello and he was like hey how's it going like uh i'm just dying trying to get out of here and he's like oh okay and he let me press the button before he murdered me yeah i saw i've seen some videos of that where I was like, come on, man.

2:54:42I've seen, I saw a video of these two people, like, I guess, presumably in a solo lobby. And they were like, I guess they were fighting some AI and they killed it. And then they were, he was hiding in like a, like a little shack. And he walked in there. He's like, how are you doing? You got on health? And he was like, nah, man, I got no shield at all. I was like, oh, that's crazy. And then he guns him down. Yeah. Oh, dude. I said it will change you. Just recently, we watched this team fight like one of the bigger AI enemies for probably about four or five minutes and once they killed it we're like oh it's prime picking now so we went and killed them yeah and stole all of their loot and stole the loot from the giant enemy they killed i've absolutely i've absolutely done that i've absolutely done that i've been i've been investing really heavily in this like there's like a particular i think it's pharaoh the gun it's like a single shot heavy round kind of thing that just like it does so much fucking damage it's insane and i'm just i died that exact in the buried city map i think we were fighting and i was just like i'll just wait this out i would be i was addicted because i like shot i remember this guy was like crawling like he was like really in dire straits and i saw like a rocketeer flying away and i just shot it to alert it because i knew that it would come in my direction and cross over him and just completely fuck him up yeah you can throw lure grenades on people and that's fun that's effective it's the sandbox of manipulating the ai against other players is particularly fun like that is something that i don't think that's a particular mechanic that i don't remember being in marathon and if it was i didn't experience it granted i you know i only experienced a part of what marathon is but like that was a cool like realizing you could lure enemies from across the map over other players and like kind of force aggro was really cool like that's like a really cool mechanic a lot of times i just go in there i i just go on these in these maps to just wreak havoc i'm really kind of not even looking at the quests i do every now and again if and if i if i think one's easy enough i'll do it but like i really am just having a lot of fun just like existing in the maps and that's been pretty cool the map design i'm realizing the more i play it that some of these designs within the maps are so good there's a certain key that you can get to unlock this room at the top of a tower right but once you get in there there's a lot of great loot but to my understanding there is the only way out is back the way you came right so both times we've gone to this tower we've been the first ones there to loot it and as we're looting we hear people coming up and it's like oh they're going to a place with a bunch of sweet loot and they find you there so we've had like 10 minute standoffs with people in this one tiny room that uh are just insanely intense and also really really funny because you're like you're like what are we doing at this point like you tell you like we're just we're just at this point we've burned all of our ammo we've burned all of our health like why don't you guys just leave uh but yeah we died they still killed us so it's cool it's a solid game i i do like it um i don't know if i have much else to say about i i don't think i will have more to say about it after this i really think i've said really all i can about arc raiders and uh i don't imagine that any good feeling i have would would be radically changed all that much by any i do think the changes that they made are good the the the particular duos playlist is a massive that was a very particular pain point that i'm glad they address um because i specifically like have like one person who's like reliably kind of always on and we always use we usually go in together and it's just like ah man uh we're just gonna get stomped basically but yeah so that's that's arc raiders for me um finished dispatch the finale of dispatches is out and done and uh it's good they they landed the plane pretty well i'm i like i like these characters at this point i'm into it i'm curious to see where it goes from i do have to say the polish on this is like really exceptional like there's like it it just the production value and the way that it feels to to participate in is very high and i appreciate that quite a bit uh because i feel like a lot of these games with the exception of like detroit become human really like a lot of games like this kind of feel stilted and you can kind of see um the limitations whereas like this one you really only see it if you really really squint really hard with it um but i think they landed the plane pretty well they get a surprising amount of choice in the last episode that made me really consider like oh maybe i will like i talked kind of loosely about going back and playing it again but like now i think i will because like there's some pretty drastic choices in this that i can't i can't imagine would have turned up had i made other choices prior and so i'm like that's that's a curious point for me but i think they did a good job um but again i don't really have much to say about it it is like it's a it's a pretty standard like it's a telltale kind of game and so if you're not into those games it's not really going to be for you but i do think of the telltale games i've experienced this is or the telltale style games i've experienced this is probably this is pretty up there i don't know if i would rank it higher than like i don't know the walking dead season one just because that was unique at the time and it was just a very eye-opening experience for me that i that i could even like a game like that but it's definitely like belongs in the conversation where i'm like this is really well acted really well put together decent amount of choices really difficult to pick between like romance options and which i think is like a sign that you've written the game well um i still have all the same kind of nitpicks where like yeah some lines are not delivered super well or some some of the writing is hit or miss but ultimately the characters work and that's really what you need to work for something like this and i think it nails that so uh if you're in the market for uh anything invincible coded if you're in the market for a telltale kind of game you could do far worse than dispatch and i would i would recommend it now that especially now that it's all out and you can just binge it i was i kind of came in around episode four and i've just been playing it diegetically as the release schedule went on but it's good stuff especially i saw some comments i believe you can choose a romantic partner in this game that people were wondering who you chose is that a spoiler oh people were wondering

3:01:17uh yeah i don't know if i want to say oh uh in retrospect i think honestly i think if you if if you look at me you probably know I think you could probably you could hazard a guess and be pretty fucking accurate but yeah I don't know if it's a spoiler or not because I do kind of feel like it might be waifu wars yeah I don't know play it or watch it you could watch it and get a lot of value out of it too and they're selling it's selling pretty well as far as I know do whatever you want I watched a couple of, I watched one other playthrough where a lot of other shit happened where I was like, I'm surprised that that happened because I did not get, I didn't get it.

3:02:04There are places where like I didn't get a choice where they did and vice and a lot of little, littler things like that. But it's good. It's a solid debut game for ad hoc. I think it's the first game. Pretty sure. I know it's a bunch of ex-TellTale people, but it's a good, it's a good debut game in that genre, I think. all right um it looks pretty cool i don't know what i'm like it's again yeah your mileage may vary really it is really one of those things where it's just like you kind of know if you're gonna like it if you see it i'm glad it's doing well yeah okay all right let's get into six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience to wrap things up as we always do you can submit your inquiries to our show on patreon patreon.com slash last night media use the thread in the news feed each week that goes live for the different shows you submit that way i go through them threads are deleted and republished threads for sacred symbols go live on wednesday afternoons eastern time and i delete them on thursday afternoons so you have about 24 hours a little less to get your inquiries in for each week and we start here a lot of people wrote in about the what these next two questions we'll deal with I mean a lot of people yeah out of maybe 150 inquiries 25 of them at least were about this so I just chose one that I thought would get us into the get us into the question here and send us away it comes from snark tank playing Super Bowl 69 writes in and says good day gents how are we feeling about the new steam machine and the ecosystem from valve it all looks to be a great entry point at the PC related gaming though I want to know if you think the general mass audience will take to it steam deck is well enough known within the sphere but I wonder if you if you believe anyone outside cares.

3:03:45This could be a bigger nail in the coffin in the console coffin if they do with how it all works seamlessly together. That's all for me. Have a great day. And thank you for your donation. Thank you for your donation. Dustin, I'm very curious. I'm curious to see what both of you think about this. This was big news yesterday. Top trend on X. It's a new steam machine and a controller and all sorts of things going on. It's first party. It's previous Steam machines were 10 years ago or more than that now. And it seems like people are really excited about it. I'm very eager to see what you think about it from any perspective you think.

3:04:21Take it away. Yeah, it's pretty exciting, pretty neat to see. Some of you may remember that Valve has tried to make Steam machines before, not very successfully, but things are very, very different. The problem with the original Steam machine was it ran Linux and developers needed to make Linux versions of their games in order for it to play on it. And most developers weren't willing to do that, especially because the install base was so small of Linux gamers. But now, since the Steam Deck, Valve has their lovely Proton, which translates any Windows, well, maybe not any, but it translates Windows games in order to run on Linux.

3:05:08Thus, you have the Steam Deck. And they've been working on this for years at this point. And in a lot of ways, the Steam Deck was kind of the proving ground for this new era of Linux gaming. And now we have a more, we'll say, console-like approach. There's people that are getting very bitchy about calling it a console or not. Because it really is a PC where it'll have... I mean, when you boot it up, it'll go straight to the Steam big picture. but you'll be able to boot it into a desktop mode as well. But clearly it is console focused. It is designed to be used with a TV with their new Steam controller, which I think looks awesome.

3:05:51And I think this is a pretty neat device. I have some concerns about the specs. I was watching Digital Foundry talk about it. They're way more knowing about this stuff than me. And they theorized that it would probably be between Series S performance and PS5, but leaning more towards PS5. We kind of have to wait and see because Valve obviously is going to optimize this hardware specifically for it. The major problem is that the VRAM is a little bit low. And what's odd is that they're advertising it right on the site as a 4K 60 device with upscaling. and a lot of people are questioning if that's going to be true more likely your game is going to be running at 1080p uh and upscaled but it's uh it's really neat my biggest question about it is with the steam deck valve has only sold it at least here in uh the western hemisphere i believe they have only sold it directly from valve there's no retail presence you can't buy one on amazon or or whatever but uh so that's kind of i think limited the visibility of the product to the mainstream obviously in our bubble everyone's talking about steam deck all the time but in terms of the actual mass market it is actually quite niche overall and i would imagine this thing is going to at the very beginning at least be still very niche but if they maybe start selling these if it ends up being pretty successful and they start selling these in retailers, I think that could be pretty interesting.

3:07:39It makes a lot more sense to me now. I was talking to Jimmy Champagne of Deck Ready about this, and he was saying that it makes sense that they were limited with the Steam Deck because they were trying something totally new. They weren't the first people in the PC handheld space, but they were the first ones to really do it right and make it an appealing product. So it makes sense that they were kind of limiting it to their more hardcore users, the people that are in the know about it. And now that they have a lot of those kinks ironed out and they were able to develop and make SteamOS so much better.

3:08:16Now it might be time to make it a little more mass market. And it comes in a very interesting point, too, where now we have this PC console device from Valve and Microsoft is going to be doing something along the same lines, as far as we know, for their next generation. So very interesting time. But overall, I think it's pretty dang cool. I probably don't need one. Chris, where are you on this? Everyone wants to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think it's awesome. I like the I like the look of it. I like the mission statement. I could see myself using something like this, I think, because I like the idea of a living room PC, but I just, I feel like generally speaking, the rigging and the feasibility of trying to figure out like where to put, like these things don't, a good PC doesn't fit very neatly into a, into a, you know, a home theater kind of setup.

3:09:18It's, it requires a lot of there's a lot of finagling in my experience in comparison to a console i should say like i know that there's like oh you could download this or get this extension or get this piece of kit or just like yeah i'm sure i'm sure there's a lot of things you could do i just you know the plug and play aspect of consoles is what's appealing to me so like we have such disdain for pc players it's so funny i'm just like i just i hate it's so annoying whenever i say like i've tried the i've tried the living room pc setup and i hate it it's like just just get these five dongles and download this weird driver and then just like okay yeah and then it's like you start playing a game like i have mine all set up you start playing a game and then a keyboard prompt comes up and it's like oh now i gotta grab my stupid logitech wireless keyboard thing and pull that out in order it's cumbersome it's annoying and so like an on-screen keyboard it's like then i have to set that up too it's a whole thing and so like but i do want like i mean I see the appeal of it.

3:10:15I just, I'm not willing to deal with like the, just the, the cumbersome nature of it because that's, that's like 50 % of the reason why I engage with the shit in my living room in the first place is because it's like, it's literally as it's one button push and it works. And so like, if they can build something that is bespoke and, you know, belongs in a home theater setup and, and gives me access to my entire theme library in my living room. And it's, it's not even remotely as much of a hassle. Um, I could see that being very, very appealing to me um obviously depending on the price it's it's worth noting they haven't i mean i'm sure you could probably maybe do the math because a lot of the specs are out so you could probably figure it out maybe mathematically you could figure out maybe what the price range would be i haven't done the math on that myself i don't know i don't know what it would be but at the right price this is kind of a huge deal i have a lot of games on steam that i would be very very eager to get into the living room in a convenient way and uh this is kind of a i don't know this is an appealing it's an appealing prospect i especially really like the uh i love the removable faceplate yeah that is something i i will like the the the second i saw somebody put like a wood kind of vinyl thing on it i don't remember what it was but it was like this like 70s wood and i was like i saw that in the trailer i think that looks nice nice i i feel like i feel like i specifically want that in my living room looks damn nice it's got that series x kind of design philosophy to where it's just like it blends in and i like that i like it a lot uh but yeah it remains to be seen like how this thing works like i know that there's some testing that shows like like cyberpunk runs really well on it but like um um with some tweaking um and so like i wonder how strong it will ultimately be in like most people's use cases like i wonder how modern you can really get with it especially considering this thing's going to be in living rooms so they'll be on tvs which are significantly like i mean that's if you can get away with lower fidelity and lower resolutions on monitors because the pixel density and the smaller screen but like i wonder is it's the same thing with the steam deck trying to play the steam deck on tv like i've done it and it works but it's not it's not fantastic like you you'd probably be better off just kind of playing it on the couch in your lap than you would be trying to use the steam deck dock or whatever and so i wonder if there's going to be any losses there i wonder how up to code it is but like i mean it's an appealing proposition and i'm just i'm really just waiting on the price before i decide whether or not this is for me but i wish listed it so i'll get notified but it's it looks cool um i don't have much to add that would be useful from a technical standpoint obviously but i do have some things to say about this that i think are maybe a little more interesting from other perspectives the dustin you brought up the no retailers thing and i think that i i've been thinking a lot about this especially with steam deck um i feel like valve let me put it this way companies much smaller than valve have their electronics in stores around the world um you can buy the rog ally or whatever a target or something you know um they're much less they make much less money than valve does i believe that valve is intentionally avoiding retailers because they do not experience this is my theory my working theory is they do not benefit from a massive economy of scale for their hardware and they can't afford to give anyone a cut because otherwise it's going to be like some sort of loss leader for them and that's not a good situation for them to be in because they don't really need to do this right like there's no real impetus for them to do anything like this maybe you want to be a little more aggressive and spread the field and try to get into people's living rooms they thought about this over a decade ago with the oem steam machines and i so i feel like the no retailer things a strategy because they're more than big enough they're more than money enough they make more than enough hardware to get their stuff into stores and so they must be avoiding that by virtue of trying to retain all the money to make it worth their while because otherwise in other words they don't have it's not like playstation network where it's like we really need you to have a playstation it's like you can just go use your fucking pc what do we care You know, we're not going to sell our hardware and for a loss because we're not really driving.

3:14:47This is for people that exist on Steam already, in my opinion. I don't think this is something that's like going to be interesting to people that like consoles. I'll be interested to see what the price is of it because again, they don't have economy of scale. As I understand, and this has been discussed, is it's about as powerful as a PS5, I guess, give or take. And so I think the price will be pretty important. um the controller is an abomination and dude i think it's awesome i think it's i think it's cool i i look i just looks cheap and shitty to me i mean that's just my opinion and and in stark contrast to the steam machine which i agree with you chris looks like an xbox and that's good because i think the xbox has a really aesthetic a really pleasant aesthetic a design philosophy behind it that is much better than the PS5s.

3:15:37So that's my opinion on that. But here's what I'll say. Here are two other things that I wanted to say is that this and you both touched on this is it's for a small market. I think people are vastly overestimating this machine. And regardless of what it's priced at, I think that maybe if they had, like you said, Dustin, if they had it in retailers, they would be able to spread the field more. But maybe not. I mean, I don't, and maybe they're looking at it like that too. I think people assume Valve is immune to bad choices or at least, and I don't want to say this is a bad choice, not a bad choice, but choices that are not like totally optimized.

3:16:14They think they're like the most perfect company that ever was a lot of people. And it's like, they're obviously an amazing company in many ways, but they can make weird decisions too. and I don't know that this seems like an Xbox kind of move in a way wherein you're getting in the hardware but maybe you really don't need to I mean what are you really gaining from this other than maybe the erosion of other markets and the convenience of accessing valve in a way that's not on your computer but if you're not on your computer then why wouldn't you're probably a console person i guess i'm just i don't think this thing makes total sense i think it's gonna sell well but i i you know comparable to like steam deck has sold what 5 million copies or 5 million units something like that people think they never really announced numbers the rog ally i saw a number like leaked numbers i don't know if they're true or not that saying that it sold fewer than 100 ,000.

3:17:17So I just don't know if this machine for Valve is necessary. I think for a different company, this would be more necessary. And this is what I wanted to say finally is this is bad for Xbox. Yeah. This is what Xbox is doing. I'm pretty sure I didn't, I don't see it on their website, but I thought I read you could wipe it and put windows on this thing. No. Yeah. so you can put any windows on a deck so right so they can just have they could just let you download windows and then have the xbox storefront on the steam machine like the xbox pc yeah so they're gonna get there first and they're gonna get there cheaper i always thought that that was a niche idea and again i said that i described it as xbox's off ramp to like let people go like let people migrate the windows and pc and try to retain those people but they're going to get there first so that takes away and it's going to be cheaper because it's probably going to be way less powerful so i think the major and that's why we were laughing in our staff discord is like that phil spent phil spencer's tweet where it's like come on man like this is come on come on that's like they're like right they're entering you now microsoft's a behemoth compared to to steam and to valve but not in terms of game selling and it just seems like these are the two machines that are really going to compete with each other actually and i think they're going to compete with each other for some sort of niche part of the market maybe it grows into something that i don't see but i just there's a tension between thinking you can break open the steam experience for a mass market when the steam experience for the biggest consumers seems to be people that want to play on you know and i'm not saying the full breadth of monthly active users i'm saying the people that are really on steam they play on computers nice ones right like they they're engaged on a hardware front they like fidelity like they're the ones spending the money they might not they might not make up the most of the monthly active users but they're the spenders they're the engagers they have to be and so i don't know i don't know how that all works out that doesn't seem to make any sense to me so i'm not saying it's a bad move i know people are excited about it's going to sell great and do well but i just i don't think this is a mass market thing personally i could be totally wrong but i think chris is kind of like the ideal person for a steam machine where it's like yeah pc gamers do like their crazy rigs and like fidelity but a lot of them maybe don't want to buy a second high fidelity crazy rig for when they want to play some games casually on their couch and so here's an option where it's like oh well this will still run it can run games like cyberpunk right so it's an engagement machine then yeah yeah i think that's kind of like the portal right yeah i mean they're not the same but it's the same thing it's like so you already have them they're already on steam this is this is the tension about selling a console like you're trying to retain someone or bring them over to the next generation or whatever but you already kind of have them to supplement to steam i don't know maybe i'm misinterpreting it in some way i hear what you're saying i think what you're saying makes sense but i just it's not i think to be said there's something to be said about locking them down into your platform further because using chris as an example chris if you have a steam machine will it affect where you purchase to decide to purchase certain games oh 100 yeah absolutely like i i i'm a rare case to be fair well not maybe not rare but like very very i wouldn't say that i'm like the example of like your average consumer because i've i have bought games i bought the same i've bought in this i've bought the same game on every machine before i've done that 100 um and i've done that specifically because i'm like oh man i'm fortunate enough to be able to do that but also like you know like i do like the bespoke you know i do i do like being able to play it on stream or whatever like on my pc very conveniently for that but i would most likely more cases than not would rather be playing anything on my um in my living room and so like arc raiders for example is like one of those things like man it would be nice to play this in the living room but i kind of can't do that right now because this is kind of like a stream like pc centric kind of game so i've just decided like this is where i'm gonna buy it knowing that i can just kind of have it in the living room too it's just like well that's gonna be a huge what reason what reason would i have to engage with other storefronts really if not only not only because not only do i get it on my pc i get it on in my living room and i get it on the steam deck that i have that's kind of that's a massive deal um at least for me but again i don't know how common my case like my i gotta be like in the lowest possible percentage of like their overall of overall steam users i would imagine um and i actually don't know like i know a lot of pc players in my life and i haven't really talked to them because this is pretty new news is like what like yesterday this all came out uh so i actually haven't seen what they have to say about it i haven't checked any of the group chats yet but i'm curious as to how they receive it they're more hardcore pc people but they they play a lot of fighting games on console and so like in some ways that might be an interesting uh you know subset of people to kind of talk to about it but i mean this is very appealing to me i have to say like uh the scratch is like a red obviously it depends on how strong it is and like whether or not it would be a hindrance but like i do think like the overwhelming majority of my library like i feel like it would i would imagine would run acceptably on this thing but there remains to be scene it's a cool move i'm amped people are excited about it yeah i'll be interested i i think there's i don't think this really affects playstation much at all but i i do think that this and nintendo i don't think is affected by it either i think this is really affecting um microsoft's play mike gabara had an interesting tweet about that today actually too about uh what did he say just like the this suggests that they should not go down like microsoft shouldn't go this path like just make games like you're gonna get stomped out like you're it's not gonna work and i think that's fairly obvious but i do think he's missing the whole point that this is so this is microsoft's rather exit ramp like i say like you got to do something for the players you have you have you can't just abandon them it's not it's not the analog era anymore like the dreamcast like sega just went away it's like gone right like it's a hardware manufacturer it's not really like that anymore because not the dreamcast you own still operated and worked exactly the same except for except for you I couldn't access Sega net after a while but like everything worked it's not the same anymore so you have to you have to give people access to those games I do wonder if there the pain points will be addressed because I don't know about um I don't know about you Dustin but like I've gone back to certain games like on Steam Deck specifically and Steam Deck runs on Steam OS right yeah yeah so like there's there's games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City that kind of just don't work like you kind of have to like go and download a weird thing or like it's some weird finagling that you have to do which is very very pc that which is the kind of thing i exactly don't want in my living room and so like there are games from a long time ago that i wonder it's like i wonder if this is this actually is like i wonder if this will actually work in the way that i would want it to where like it is a seamless kind of like your entire library works and that's not to say like your entire library runs well i'm sure like there's like some you know exceedingly demanding games that might not work on it and there's some poorly optimized games like monster hunter or whatever that like probably have no shot at running on this thing but i do wonder about that yeah because like that's that's a problem i've run into increasingly now where i'm just like this isn't as seamless as i would like it to be and i wonder if it would be like limited to the games that run well on deck you know how they have that like see like oh well on deck or whatever the hell the yeah verified yeah which is like not a ton they're games that aren't on that list that you can play and they work fine just by sheer happenstance but I wonder if it'll be like that where like a shockingly few number of these things will will actually be you know preferable yeah I'd be curious if you went and tried some of those games that didn't work now to see if they, you know, with updates to Proton, if they've improved it.

3:26:10Valve is like shockingly attentive to games, like big games that don't work. I remember when Persona 3 Reload came out, it did not work on deck at launch. And they went and made an update for the firmware of the deck that made the game work, like without any developer intervention. So, and they're improving these things all the time. Obviously, it's not completely seamless. And this dude, the SteamOS has a major Achilles heel right now, and that is kernel level anti-cheat. Like Call of Duty will not run on SteamOS. Battlefield will not run on SteamOS. Destiny doesn't run on it either. Yeah, Destiny does not run.

3:26:48You could install Windows on it and get it to run that way. And then you have to deal with fucking Windows in the living room, which is annoying. I can't even. So that sounds like a fucking nightmare. I don't even have. the uh the the negative i don't really hate windows really that much like i get it like it's it's annoying but like i'm not really like nearly there's a vocal anger for windows on online that i don't necessarily resonate with but oh my god if i had to deal with them on my on my tv in the living room you'd get a you'd get a warrior out of me i tell you that you get a convert pretty quick i hate windows i feel like it's gone so downhill in the last few years it's bad i was thinking the same thing yesterday when I was using my laptop.

3:27:34It's like, this shit sucks. It's they've they've I don't I know it's naive to say because it's like, oh, they want your data and they want to send you towards things. But it's like, why is it so much? Go back and look at Windows 95 or even XP. It's like, this is perfect. What are you doing? Just leave it alone. A start menu, a search bar, a desktop, like fuck off. Like every time it's trying to do all this shit it's bloated as hell it is bloated it sucks and we have all these things all the time where it's like oh the computer updated now the audio settings are different oh the computer updated now adobe doesn't work oh the computer it's like this shit sucks dude like i don't yeah microsoft has such a stranglehold on things in the computing world it's like it's like but this company kind of sucks you know like there's got to be a better version of all this shit and i know there's linux and all this but there really is no mass market option for people other than i wonder i I wonder why they don't.

3:28:30Yeah, Mac is the move. Join us, Colin. I was there for a while. I don't want to go back to Mac. I think you are doing the call. You're just saying no, but you need to open your mind up. Well, I was forced to use. I used a MacBook for years at IGN. I was forced, you know, like that we had. So we had. So it's like. It's so much better than now than it was then with their dude. Apple. I sound like a fanboy right now, and that's OK. The Apple since they switched to Apple Silicon. my macbook is it is the best computer i've ever owned in my entire life hands down i do like dude matt they are murdering the laptop market right now because there's just like nothing that's even comparable compared to the and they're getting cheap now too not cheap but a macbook air there is a model that's like 700 bucks yeah and i mean i was not i was looking at that that was it the the small cube pc oh the mac studio i was looking at well know it's like mini mac or mac mini or something oh mac mini that thing that thing's like 500 or something like that i'm like that's kind of nuts um it's insane what it's for what's in there um i've thought about it honestly setting up like a second station but join us i'm not totally opposed to it it's just uh i just find them frustrated i just find them frustrating too but they are like i like how it locked down they are and i i remember my macbook at uh and when i was a journalist i uh I really love the form factor and the battery life was like crazy even back then.

3:30:00So it's like I and I grew up on like Max in school and at like we used Apple twos and yeah and Max and shit like that. So I like them, but now I'm open to it. I'm going to have to consider getting because they have this whole thing with Windows now where it's like, oh, you got to update. And then they gave you like a year reprieve. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not. Again, I don't even know why I can't update the Windows on this new PC. It makes no sense. it's like no your pc is not not eligible it's like what are you kidding if this pc is not eligible then what is and i'm not saying like you have to have like an enthusiast pc that that would be better than this is like probably still better than a lot of bullshit you buy that's like the planned obsolescence to be fair that does happen with apple as well like i had a macbook that like i knew for a very i knew very well could run a newer version of chrome and they were just like no sorry the cutoff and i'm like you you can't be serious like this is there's like you you're with me i don't know that's i'm a big fan of apple stuff like i love iphone i've been on iphone forever i like the watch so it'd be cool micah has a macbook and she has a watch and a phone too and i do like how it all is like on it like you can text on it and do all that kind of stuff it's cool but yeah we'll see we'll see what happens but um anyway steam deck no no i'm sorry steam machine steam machine they say it's six times more powerful right than the steam deck that's pretty interesting deck yeah yeah all right now this is a way to integrate how this might affect playstation now here's a guy wrote in i love the reference says what's up you gangly group of guys with the announcement of the steam machine do you think sony would ever reevaluate their shift to porting first party games to pc you've talked a lot about how porting first party to steam does not impact playstation's core business much but does this console change that ultimately this will probably be another niche device but what if this becomes the next the natural next step for xbox users will sony walk back their pc push thanks love the show i just i don't see why sony cares about this and i'm not i know what you're saying that it's a little different now because now they're going to be in the console space and stuff but sony wants to just sell games on on steam they're not if you're going to buy a steam machine you're probably and you'll buy it and you don't own a playstation 5 already you're probably never going to buy a playstation 5 i mean yeah Yeah.

3:32:12If anything, I feel like you could argue in a marketing meeting. If you're a fly on the wall, you'd probably see them arguing like the exact opposite, which is like we actually benefit a great deal from doing this at this point. And I just think that the PC push for Sony is going to get more aggressive. It should. I've said this for years. People have been yelling at me for years that I felt this way, but it's just it's just obvious. I think it's obvious now that these are two different markets. Is there going to be some sort of Venn diagram crossover between them? Yes, of course, but I don't think it's as extreme as people think.

3:32:41I really don't. Like. There's no there's really no evidence that that's like, that's the thing is like there's no evidence that that PlayStation slowing down. You know, we were talking about sales differentials between PS5 and PS4 time adjusted, and it's about two million more PS4 is like when Grand Theft Auto comes out, that number is over like PS5 will have sold time adjusted more than PS4 at a more expensive price point. And Sony is minting money on PlayStation at this point. If you just have to look at the graphs they release, like they're just making enormous amounts of money. It's I'm not saying there's no room for growth.

3:33:16I'm not saying there's nothing to be worried about. I just think that we have to accept that these are kind of different macro markets, really, in their own. In their own way, there's completely different ecosystems. And Sony is still making more in revenue, like even after Microsoft bought Bethesda and Activision and has Call of Duty. they're still making less money in revenue than playstation like it's it's really crazy when you think about it so from that perspective i just don't know that sony gives a fuck it's like yeah the game's on pc like it's like what everyone was saying when it's like oh they're gonna shut it off so the xbox players can't have it on their next console it's like why did you ever don't do you not understand that that's like a capitulation a complete victory for like an unmitigated victory for sony they're gonna be like you're telling us that the next xbox will play playstation games and Microsoft gets no money.

3:34:09Okay. Like, okay. It changes nothing. It's literally the same deal as we have on Steam already. So what the fuck do we care? I think people are too in the weeds on this particular issue. Dustin, do you agree? I 100 % agree. It does not really matter. And I think that as we were saying, is it possible C machine eventually opens up to be a less niche device depending on how it does? certainly but it all it currently is going to be pretty niche and so yeah it's not going to change any of their thinking for sony in fact they'll be happy that uh there will be more potential people to sell these games to uh on a steam machine so yeah it it doesn't change anything chris all right where are your thoughts on on the playstation pc stuff are people just kind of freaking out where there's nothing to freak out about yeah i mean i'm in agreement at the risk of sounding redundant like i just this is kind of a win-win really for them in fact it's kind of like a it helps it helps them extra because it kind of forces it puts more pressure on xbox actually um if you wanted to even look at it through that lens like if if there's anybody who's going to face pressure from this it would be it would be microsoft with their next xbox if if what is um the plan remains the plan.

3:35:29So, yeah, I don't think they care. I just think I've said this before many times, and I think the theory is 100 % accurate, is that this was an open question a few years ago. How does this affect PlayStation? How does making the games available affect PlayStation? And what you realize was the diminishing returns on the games, as I've said, like a line slanted largely downward from the launch of Days Gone and all the earlier games just shows you it was a novelty. it's not to say that there's no one over there that's gonna that's gonna you know be like i would have bought a playstation but now i'm not going to of course of course that person exists but i don't there's no evidence that this is true and in fact i'm always surprised wasn't it last it was like last fiscal year i want to say where they said they made 200 or 250 million dollars cumulative revenue revenue on pc games that's like they made more money on ghost of yote on ps5 already than that.

3:36:22So I think it's both like a bite-sized part of the business right now that they want to expand into a much bigger chomp, which I think they're going to and I know they want that with mobile as well, but I think the games being on Steam Machine benefits PlayStation. They're not really PlayStation consumers. If they were, they would have a PlayStation by now or they would have bought a PlayStation other than the Steam Machine. We'll see. We'll see how it all plays out. wheat then little wheat then wrote it in it says i like putting little in front of some people's names it's funny little wheat then uh greeting cdc he says a long time first time i think we are overdue for a conversation regarding one title from the japan state of play gran turismo 7 with this dlc we are getting an updated version of the sophie ai project this project has been a multi-year collaboration with sony ai ai to make the cpu racers more human-like in single-player modes and has been very well received in the gt community from what i've read this is one of the only true machine learning features available in big budget games today sony ai has published research papers and conducted interviews for those curious about technical details i'm interested in the gang's thoughts and if you think other games and genres can benefit from similar treatment dustin have you tried the sophie ai colin would you play an offline mode of hell divers 2 where your crew consisted of human-like ai teammates i'll hang up and listen um i wanted to talk about this specifically because i think this is cool you bring up hell divers which is a cooperative game but you're predicating your question on grand turismo which is a competitive game and you guys can because i'm totally off base on match on on um matchmaking what is it called uh skill based matchmaking right where i'm like isn't that what you want and then everyone's like like wouldn't you want that and everyone's like no and I'm like okay I don't understand and this is another thing where I'm like you want human like AI which is cool and they're going to get there and that's these are going to be the new revolutions in game design about making these more human more dynamic NPCs that talk to you endlessly and do all those kinds of things but from a skill perspective in Gran Turismo it's like do you want the AI to be better because more human like would indicate better right and so I'm wondering if what else could it mean really if like worse are you so you are you're saying that the ii is just more capable at beating you at the game well yes and i would assume so or at least more sophisticated in the ways that it can beat you at the game but it seems when you when you deploy things like that in the wild and and this is what i wanted to bring this up see what you guys think is like so when this idea is deployed in the competitive space like with skill-based matchmaking everyone hates it and knows that's literally humans at your level like real humans and so i'm just confused like what i don't know if this makes any sense to people but i'm kind of confused what people really want because again comparing hell divers to gran turismo is not really a great comparison would i want that in hell divers i guess that would be cool i liked playing with other people it was i had no problem playing with other people but that's not what we're really talking about when we talk about sophie ai and gran turismo we're talking about competitors and right i i wonder how i wonder if people are going to be driven mad ultimately i guess is what i'm saying by actually playing competent ai for the first time ever because yeah go ahead well i think the idea isn't necessarily that they're more competent it's just that they're more convincing and so like uh it might actually even imply sometimes that they're worse like they'll make a mistake that a person might make or they'll like they'll fuck up like an ai uh competitor might fuck up in a way that only a person can fuck up like you see like dry like getting caught like sideways and like reversing so like it feels like you're playing with other people when you're not really like it could result in in more competent players as well or or less or i think the idea is that like it would make it feel it's almost like a turing test it's not where it's not like oh that's so good it must be a person it's it's that i don't really know how good that that guy is is that a guy you know i think that's kind of the idea i could be i don't know i haven't looked super deep into sophie ai or anything but like that's that's the vibe that i get out of the the wording yeah that's that's what i was going to say um right along the lines of chris is that it's like you so there are ai or whatever a computer can beat every human at chess there's there they've gotten so good but could you create an ai that plays chess that feels like you're playing against a human uh those are two totally separate things um because i think of like certain battle royale games like i think fortnite when you are boot up fresh on fortnite and like a new account you will play against bots uh because they're trying to ease you into the experience and it is so obvious that you're playing against a bot they'll just like run out in the open turn look shoot you know what i mean so they're not very convincing in terms of their actions on how they play so this is pretty interesting i haven't checked it out myself and the other thing too is that i am like not well i've played gran turismo but not i'm nowhere near an advanced player that it's like i could tell that i'm playing against a real human versus a an ai uh so i wouldn't be the one to really know but this is what we were talking about at some point recently it's like get ready because more of these ai features are going to be implemented into games and i think we just gotta lower the temperature a little bit we can still not like generative ai but we can think that these ai machine learning features coming to games that are different from generative ai yeah can be cool yeah generative ai is really the one that with a lot of the stink on it because it is just a plagiarism machine right right like fundamentally but like i think everybody like i mean every other element of ai that i've seen and even generative AI to in some specific use cases where I'm like this is something that could not be like in the example of like the the classic or modern classic example of like oh an RPG where every NPC reacts to everything that you say no matter what the context is it's like that okay because like you can't do that like there's no amount of money there's no amount of time there's no amount of recording sessions with a real voice artist that will allow you to do that really like this is something that would that needs a machine to do and so like from that perspective I was like yeah okay fine if you're doing something that is like really like interesting and weird and you know that's that's dope but like i don't think yeah i don't think having um ai that just trying to be more convincing is like a bad thing i think uh i think it's cool um i mean anybody who's played call of duty knows that like veteran difficulty is like if you play if you play call of duty on veteran versus like playing a multiplayer match like veterans easily harder because like the the ai doesn't need to see you it just understands where you are and so like it would be interesting to play a game with bots where like they might notice you but then they might doubt if they saw anything and they just keep going or something it's just like the the adding of of faults onto perfect ai so that the image of a of a of another player is is painted more convincingly it's really cool like i'm that sounds really fascinating to me and i'm totally down for that yeah i i should be clear to that because i agree with what you guys are saying like there's i think a major difference between generative ai and ai statistical kind of tricks and numbers and all these and all this you know crunching that makes things more believable as opposed to kind of in other words like studying heat maps and knowing it's what we say about um i guess it's not quite the same but like in medicine like the idea that like a doctor can create like a treatment specifically for you by running like a million simulations based on like your body type and your dna and all these kinds of things like there's a difference between like these really intrinsic things that are that are like individual and then these wider things that are stealing from others and this is not what he's bringing up here that's not what this ai is so but i again i i'm just i still i to this day and we've talked about it it's like i still don't really understand the argument against skill-based matchmaking other than that people don't want to play against players that are as good as them that is literally the only explanation that and as someone who plays like we brought up chess i play chess yeah i playing i you know if you play chess.com or whatever it's like it matches you with people that are like at your skill level like if you play as if i play someone 400 points lower than me in my rating i'm gonna fucking kill them and if i play someone at 400 points higher than me on my rating they're gonna kill me it's not fun you want like so i i still don't really understand the whole and that's one of the things where i'm like i think this is gonna be tricky when it comes down to the way this is all tuned because i think it's clear not that i want the hardest difficulty when i play the games all the time that i play but i'm surprised by how people want to kind of gimp their experiences and that's the only way i can possibly interpret the skill-based matchmaking world unless i'm totally missing something which is having the option to to take it as seriously as you want to take it like that's that's really all it is like there's you can you can adjust how seriously you're taking a game you know and like whether or not your your heart's really in there's just like ah you know this is a casual kind of it's a it's a friday night i've had a long day like relax let me not do the the gamers alert lean forward the lurch yeah the lurch where it's like that's the universal sign it's like i'm all right i'm all right now i'm gonna crouch in the middle of shooting now and things like that where it's like i don't want to deal with that all the fucking time i want the option and there's a ranked playlist for that fair enough the drunken merchant wrote in said hey cdc simple question in a game's options menu where should the subtitles subtitles be audio graphics general i've seen it all goodbye dustin yeah i have noticed this before because some games just default with subtitles on now and i hate that uh oh you don't i love subtitles yeah because you're using your tv sound you can't hear what it says

3:46:49always hating um let's see where should it go though i am thinking general yeah it's a general because it's not you're not dealing with sound technically you're dealing with a visual on screen so it shouldn't go in sound graphics on a tier list of acceptability graphics is the lowest yeah definitely i would say general than audio general audio graphics in that exact order but like yeah i've played games where they're graphics like yo it is funny i this is such a funny question because i i've i i identified with this immediately but i've never once said it out loud like it's never been a thought that i vocalized like why is why is the subtitles never in the same place i've thought that before for sure it's funny to see it written out i'm um i agree with you chris general audio than graphics general is where it should be and i actually think that developers and there might be examples of this i don't really get too deep into the weeds with these like hud options but you have like all the different options you would scroll through with like r2 and a menu or whatever and it'll be like you know like like we're saying general graphics audio all this sort of stuff i feel like there should be a tab and maybe that is the general tab where it's like here are all here are the 10 things that are like most important uh frame rate inversion uh etc etc etc like the things that people select the most subtitles right and then those could actually be redundant options in other menus that are also there in other words like give me give you the once like at a glance thing and then it doesn't really matter where you kind of nestle them elsewhere but i've said this before to you guys i feel like there should be more standardization across games and like but like button prompts and shit like just general consensus things x's jump like that should be l3 should run and obviously you can play around with those kinds of things it should be the same thing with this where it's like there should be a like a consensus like an agreement like the subtitles go here um but anyway good question appreciate that now the next two questions are about arc raiders we could have used them earlier but they're not really about the game itself yeah but more about other things so i think this will make more sense here put your dick in her wrote in goodness said hey gents never seen that one before it's not because it's not convincing poochah yeah not really dick in her come on we're getting like we're really scratching the bottom of the barrel here at this point says hey gents am i often thinking that the success of arc raiders is actually working to the benefit of bungie and marathon i brought this up a little earlier with over four million in sales arc raiders has clearly become the first extraction shooter for the mainstream speaking from personal experience i had no interest in the genre before playing, but now I am hooked and looking to see what else is out there.

3:49:38If Bungie can make sure Marathon has tight gunplay yet also be casual like Ark Raiders, I think they can really build off this momentum for their own benefit. I think, and I'll be curious to see what you guys think of this, I think Marathon is a very, it's on a razor's edge with Ark Raiders. Marathon and Ark, like Marathon comparable to Ark Raiders. On one hand, you can think, and this is what the letter's asking, what I kind of said earlier was, this kind of breaks the ice for marathon tarkov was too hardcore um it's only on pc right and uh maybe it's on console now i don't know i don't think so and then um and people didn't really notice and and whatever and so arc raiders like you know runs through the breach and makes it safe now you have a beachhead and so marathon benefits from that but the beachhead's pretty impressive it's clean the bodies have been buried the barbed wire is around the encampment and then marathon shows up and if it's not good or it's not as good or if it's not it's going to be it's going to be magnified because there's going to be this example that's already on the market that's better than it so this is kind of the perfect situation all things considered for marathon but it's risky it's better to go last if you have or second if you have the better product it's absolutely better to go second but the big question is going to be is it the better product and uh i don't know i feel like arc raiders i feel like there's and i will say this and i'll be especially interested to know what you think of this chris is i feel like there's i've been very hard on bungee right but there's something cool about it for a lot of people i think now like it's a trendy thing to do in other words to be hard on bungee right and i think that that might hurt marathon more than anything ultimately is that people people kind of like these titans when they fall you know and they hurt yeah they like it i don't know why i mean i don't know what any bungee did to anyone really but but it's true that like people seem to be reveling in it and uh so that's anyway what do you think about all this yeah i don't know there there is a case to be made that like the a lot of ire that you see on the internet doesn't necessarily manifest in the real world when when push comes to shove and there's an argument to say that it does like a concord is a good example i don't think i don't think marathon's even remotely going to suffer even even a slightly close fate to concord no marathon will exist for years i want to say that i think marathon's going to come out and exist yeah yeah but like yeah it is it is interesting i don't know um i think i think that i think it potentially is a good thing that this is how things are shaping up because it is kind of like an icebreaker and presuming that the the game's still on schedule which i would imagine no later than march because that's when i think the fiscal year ends right yeah fiscal year will be in yeah march so or march yeah march you can imagine by then people might yeah they're into arc raiders but maybe they're looking for they're looking for a different flavor they like the genre but maybe they've you You know, they've played endless amounts of arc raiders.

3:52:47And maybe they're kind of in the market for something different. And Marathon is very different. Like, I really can't stress that enough. Like, it is an extraction shooter. But, like, there's, like, I don't even know how to describe it. It's very, very weird and very different. And I think very cool. And the put your dick in her ass is, like, they can build. If Marathon has tight gunplay. Oh, yeah. I've played 40 hours of it. It's quite. Yeah, it's good. It's just a matter of like whether or not it'll it'll hit at the right time or whether or not Ark Raiders will like have some kind of major DLC or something, you know, that might.

3:53:26That's the interesting thing. It's like how Ark Raiders is going to play it really going forward, because they could theoretically have some big expansion around the time that, you know, Marathon comes out and that might be, you know, that might be stiff competition. They might not. they might rest on the the laurels of you know incremental kind of drops and that may or may not dissuade people but there's no question that arc raiders is huge and i do think it is kind of like a it has a 50 50 chance of like this either hurts or helps it definitely isn't gonna do nothing so yeah i don't know man i uh it's really fucking fascinating to see the way this is shaken up but i don't know the ball's in their court they really gotta they gotta come out swinging and it does concern there look there are elements of marathon that concern me where it's weird to me it's weird it's weird as fuck no understatement to build an extraction shooter on purpose right and then so late in the game realize that proximity chat is such a big deal that is very weird it's it's inconceivable it's almost like the same thing as like uh what is it a naughty dog building this uh last of us online game and being like what do you mean we'll have to support it for years it's almost that level of like how what what what have you been playing yeah that that implies that this is not like a core part of the experience and to their credit it's in there but the fact that that was even that it was even a question um is weird this the the fact that it's a kind of a class-based kind of hero shooter kind of thing is is also strange because there's a stealth character in that game that goes invisible he has like he has a pretty good kit where you can imagine that like if you're playing solo lobbies of marathon i don't know why you wouldn't choose that character like it almost makes no sense to not pick the stealth character if you're going in solo and so like i can see that that being a huge issue where like are you serious like every single i could see i could see that being like a massive issue i don't know how i don't even know how they're gonna i don't even understand how you fix that really that's like a design from the ground of philosophy um issue so there are pain points with marathon that concern me but um i do think the gameplay is really fucking good it's really tight it's tense it's simpler than arc raiders in the ways that i think make it more approachable it's more competitive than arc raiders in the way that it pushes pvp a lot more so like i'm curious to see like how that'll affect it because it is in some ways it's more casual and in some ways it's more hardcore than arc raider so like i don't really know how i don't know i I don't know how it'll shake up, but I'm going to keep my eye on this whole fucking thing like a hawk, dude.

3:56:21I'm so fascinated. By this, by this rivalry. Yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting. Dustin, let's get you on the record. We said earlier, too. You know, Sony says they're going to stick with Marathon's release window. They're committed to releasing it next year. So this is where this is going to come to a head sooner rather than later. um what are your thoughts here on the benefits or lack thereof that arc raiders provides marathon yeah well i don't want to repeat um what chris said or what i said earlier in the show i think what is going to be interesting is there is a world of a possibility where maybe arc raiders doesn't have long-term success maybe people get bored with it maybe changes are made that people don't like and that could create a bigger window or maybe it's you know maintains some popularity but it just doesn't you know people eventually move on from games they just are satiated and they've had enough the thing is so far embark has already made some very key changes that the community really cared about in a very short amount of time so that's a very promising sign for the long-term support of this game and in addition to uh we saw their experience with the finals and how much that game improved drastically over the time so arc raider is now versus arc raiders by the time marathon comes out could be even more popular and more loved by its community based on how embark has treated it and on the opposite side if there's a company that's not i don't want to say they're bad at listening to feedback they listen to the feedback but slow to implement would you say that's fair chris that bungie is very slow to implement the 100 top tier demands of their biggest fans yeah no for sure i mean like they've their management structure is like a joke you know and so like i i mean something ultimately they need to be more nimble right and um i don't know i i really don't know man uh that's valid though 100 like arc raider seems to like the fact that they implemented those changes so quick is that's something it's so funny like seeing it in comparison to a lot of because dude i remember when halo infinite came out in 343 was like why is this game why does this game launch without team slayer and it's like oh we do it we'll get it in there eventually and it took like weeks yeah for team slayer to go in there and it's like how that's crazy dude like that should be like some that should be like oh fuck we forgot to turn on team slayer yo jim go to the studio real quick uh flip the switch that really should be like i'm not exaggerating that should be a 10 second solution i i don't understand how it isn't really so like the fact that embark is quick to these really specific pain points like no duos was a massive problem like genuinely and it's not a problem anymore and so you know what that needs to be rewarded and the finals is fantastic i mean they're a good studio they make good stuff and from a gameplay perspective like i mean like it's just good it's good video game shit you know um so i mean they're definitely and marathon uh bungie does not have a good reputation yeah so this is a side note about embark 2 so they made the duos changes but in addition uh i'm looking at their statement here it says we've heard your feedback we reviewed our prices talking about their their in-game cosmetics that you can buy.

4:00:12We reviewed our prices and made adjustments to lower our prices where applicable and revised prices will go live tomorrow. And they are compensating people that if you bought a cosmetic within launch and now they're lowering the price, they are refunding that back to you. Which is awesome. So clearly they are listening and they are acting fast in very positive ways. Yeah. This is neither here nor there, but Micah sent me this image. I don't know if it's going to come through. It's the guy from Nickelback. And it says, this time I'm mistaken for handing you a hog worth cranking. Oh.

4:00:55For handing you a hog worth cranking. Good lord. student loans has the final inquiry also about arc graders very controversial right now yeah This is, hey, guys, long time listener. First time writing in. This may be a long question, so apologies in advance. No, it's quite fine. I'm curious about your thoughts on Eurogamer giving arc raiders a two out of five due to the use of AI for voice acting in the game. Embark Studios state they hired voice actors and use their voices in a text to speech tool in order to produce the numerous lines required for every object in a location that can be pinged in the game.

4:01:27And this was one example of its use. While many are enraged by the score, it got me thinking, are we now entering a scenario in the future where games will be punished by review outlets if AI is used during production Arc Raider certainly won't be the last game to do this. Keep up the great work. The show is a godsend during those monotonous days at the job. This is interesting. People can go read the review if they want. I would say the I read it and I would say the last half of the review is about the AI voice acting. Yeah, actually, if you read it, literally six paragraphs, I think seven, maybe.

4:02:03um this is tough because i think there are some people making the argument which i think is is ridiculous that it's like well you got to judge the game based on its own merits and i'm like this is generally true but imagine the most extreme right like uh a great game comes out and it was made entirely by slaves right would you like what would you judge the game or like the the the story surrounding the game and how it was made and all the rest i think it would be kind of relevant if it was all made by slaves okay that's an extreme example but it shows you that the entire argument behind being like games must always be judged based on the merit of the game it's like not always i mean there are going to be weird things about games quirks about the development of them and really review should be approached however you want it should just be clear that you're talking about things from a certain a certain angle the more I thought about this, the more I softened on being mad about it.

4:02:56I was never really mad. I don't really give a fuck, but like being like, oh, this is bullshit. Why? Like they tank the score. It really matters. But then I was like, no, it's kind of a valid review. The problem is the scoring. This is why scores are so stupid. It's just another example of why scores are so fucking stupid. Cause I think if you just removed the review score from the review and then just read it. It's like you get what you get out of it. It's a positive game. It's fun. But here's all this fucked up shit that's kind of encouraging this AI slop and all the rest. Do I personally think that they're overstating the case about AI and its use in this game and how much it matters?

4:03:37Maybe. Maybe you would dock at a point or something. I don't know if you really have a problem with it. But I just think the argument that you got to just judge the game as the game and the game is the game is the game. It's like, no, the game is a game in the context of the game, actually. So devil's advocate. Yep. I'm trying to, I honestly don't remember what your take was specifically, but are we defending the Hogwarts Legacy review then from a few years ago? Was it like a one out of 10 or something? Oh, I don't even remember the review. I don't remember the specific reviews, so I can't speak to that.

4:04:09But I do defend people's ability to say like, well, I actually think, honestly, the more I think about that, as you say, it's the more I do think those are two different things people were mad there's like a lot there's like a degree of separation from avalanche and what people were mad about yeah people were mad that avalanche was making a hogwarts legacy game based on like the the harry potter connection to jk rowling that's almost like way beyond what we're even talking about here so in some in some way I'm like yeah if you have a problem with that I guess you can write about it but I think it's stupid like it's it's it's degrees of separation as opposed to this where it's like it's the studio making the game i guess what i'm saying also though dustin is these reviews whether whatever they say for whatever game from whatever perspective they're they're talked about are only important by the score they give in other words would not if you go read like old book reviews old movie reviews and stuff it's often like that are that are either scored or kind of truncated in newspapers and they have like you know a small word count there are things that are mitigating factors that make things relevant.

4:05:14And I don't want to discourage that. I just think this is, in other words, I don't think this is like necessarily a shitty thing as much as I think the score is the shitty thing. Because otherwise, this would have just been a review that got lost in the morass of getting mad at AI with no real impact. I said this on our stream when we were talking about it, and I don't mean to be mean about it, but it's like no one gives a fuck about Eurogamer anymore. Eurogamer was at 1.8 an incredibly powerful outlet with opinions that really mattered. No one cares anymore. So the score and the way it's melded into the baked cake.

4:05:47Right. Of ingredients that Metacritic or OpenCritic or whatever, that's what sucks. So I don't know if that makes sense, Dustin, but that's kind of where I stand on. You might you might disagree. I'm just I'm thinking about the I think you make some valid points about the how you're not necessarily a review is not just the merits of the game. Well, let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. It's contrary, please, if I might. Assassin's Creed Shadows. if you part of your review is like it's fucking weird that after all these years they went to japan and then they went out of their way to find a black character i think that's actually but that has nothing to do with the game the game is the black character but it's like how did they arrive at that decision i think that's relevant you know but maybe you're right in that it's a one you know by instance we have to kind of judge it yeah i'm thinking about this if you just to remind you there's this wired okay review of hogwarts legacy that was one out of ten and it's like from her perspective my monitor just turned off oh we're good okay from this writer's perspective like she might believe that jk rowling is as bad as hitler you know what i mean like in her mind her harmful impact so should we validate this kind of review as well no i i think i think I think you have a point.

4:07:07I think you have a point. But again, I would just argue that the weirdness around and this is why I was saying maybe it's got to be a case by case basis is that the weirdness around Hogwarts legacy has to do with someone who has nothing to do with the game. There's nothing to do with the studio, nothing to do with the publisher. It's a license. But it is her. I mean, it is her world. Like, it's like, like we're making a game based off Hitler's paintings. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I guess the problem here is that in the because I'm reading some of the review, it's like in their little summation of it.

4:07:44This is the bigger problem. It's like, quote, the story is rooted in anti-Semitic tropes. The gameplay feels dated. The graphics feel like there are a couple of generations behind. All the characters are one dimensional. It doesn't stay true to the established lore. Every character feels like an off brand version of the characters we know and love. There's no sense of place, no magic, no heart. That seems to be more controversial than that. A lot of that's categorically false. Right. That's that's almost the bigger problem than the subjectivity of getting mad at rolling or rally or whatever the fuck.

4:08:11Yeah. Well, listen. Yeah, good. The goblins are a little suspect. Yeah, they're a little weird. Yeah, I'll agree. I don't even really believe that. What was the Asian chick's name? I don't know. Cho Chang. Yeah. Which is a real name to be fair. What's the shackle bolt? but yeah the the black that's the one that's what is it kingsley shackle bolt or something it's look i don't know man i i do think ultimately realistically if you play the game and beat it your review is valid because there's going to be other people who probably have that same perspective all that matters is really that you're you're vocalizing that perspective in in a way that like is is earnestly like oh you've played this game and you've you've done the due diligence our creators is a game you can't beat so like it's a it's a little different with a multiplayer game and also you know it's the merits in which you judge these things are just inherently different but i don't know that look the the hogwarts legacy review is i find it crazy but it is a valid review like there are people who are going to look at hogwarts legacy and being like i don't really like this person and the entire experience is kind of tinged by that and i'm gonna feel it my entire way through playing the game and that might resonate with some people i think the same thing is true for ai in the realm of this where like dude i was thinking about it like actively like i've been enjoying my time with arc raiders but the more i thought about it i'm like why is there it's i felt the same thing i think i even said it way back in the day when i talked about the finals uh when that first came out where like this look this game uses ai voices but i can't for the fucking life of you tell me what i can't tell you what the game benet gains from it like there's nothing in it that is so dynamic and so interesting that i feel that i feel like it's it demands it you know because i think i saw i took because i talked about it a little bit on twitter and somebody was like well there's like unique positioning and unique call outs for every item and there's like you know there's 392 items that's like at minimum 300 like baldur's gate 3 has 250 000 lines of dialogue even if you multiplied that 300 something items by like orders of magnitude it still wouldn't even be that close and like so i'm like i'm looking at i'm like yeah this is weird and and the more you pay attention to it the more you do realize that like the the voice acting is stiff and weird and it doesn't benefit really from the hyper specified like yeah i noticed it's like oh he says on the shelf but also it's literally pinged on screen there's like a there's like a thing on screen telling me where it is why does he need to say on the shelf and also this is a game about like human voices that was the most interesting thing about it like i didn't actually read that article expecting to come out with any like agreement with it because i was just like oh what is this i like i have a problem with the ai stuff too but yet the core premise of the game kind of is connecting with other people and it is kind of crazy that that it is kind of baked into the workflow of a game like this where it's just like yeah we're gonna we're gonna automate a lot of that now i understand that they paid the actors to do it that's never that's not really the issue i feel like people are getting a little bit lost in the weeds here it's it's less about them paying the actors to do it i'm sure like there's you could pay anybody to do anything i just think the issue really is like why even bother when you're not going to do anything incredibly impressive with it again this isn't like some you know Baldur's Gate style RPG with this extra added bonus of like oh every NPC has its own voice and its own character and it'll react in real time to any possible thing you'll say if you want to use AI voices for that and pay voice actors to do it I would have no fucking problem with that because that is an interesting idea that cannot exist without AI but like if your whole thing is like oh well it's kind of hard to record a lot of lines and i'm like yeah it's hard to make a video game yeah right like i don't know i i just it comes across to me as like lazy and especially it's more egregious here than in the finals because like again like the finals is the finals does even less with with the ai voices but at least the finals isn't like predicated on communication like that and it is it does feel thematically kind of weird um does it deserve a two out of five for that like maybe not but in some way like maybe maybe the searing praise on metacritic does deserve kind of a hit like a notable hit if they are going to engage in these kinds of very odd almost purposeless unjustified ai use cases like i just the main problem really is that they're not doing anything with ai that's interesting it really is just to speed things up and to save money that's what it is because if they weren't trying to save money or time then they would have just recorded the lines right but they have to call that actor back every time they want to add new items to the game because i think about i'm thinking about like yes didn't bring up bungee again like they were having problems where they're like they had to recast peter dinklage because they're like we simply cannot he cannot record at the pace that we want to make this game sure but that's because they hired fucking peter dinklage it's crazy to me that they even it's crazy that they thought like oh yeah peter dinklage is gonna come here every couple months to do that like that was that's marketing but even that like even again like i even the recasting of peter dinklage into nolan north or whatever like that's a that's part of the story of destiny like that's part of like what makes it a thing made by people is that like it is kind of subject to these changes and like yeah i i don't know like i i the it kind of rings hollow to me where it's like yeah well they got to get people back in if they want to be uh if they want to be nimble and we were talking about that like we were talking about earlier how like they are really nimble to change um uh to react to feedback and that's that's great and that's cool but if if you're only nimble because you're automating game design and and like iterative you know i i don't i don't know how to feel about that really i don't know if that's really a great trade-off it's good for us the players i guess but like i just i don't know i again i question the necessity of even the specificity of like the call outs that they're using like it really does not add anything to the experience to me um in fact it only sounds flat and weird like i was i noticed it even before i knew that they were using ai i was like that the voice actor sucks whoever they got to do this and i don't normally notice that and then i saw the article i was like oh yeah this is the oh it's the finals guys i totally forgot that they do this so i don't know i feel weird about it i think it's a it's a bizarre mark on it but i think it it's reasonable to be harsh in the scoring in the same way that by the way if marathon came out and it still had stolen art in it if it's a good game cool and you can write about it you can write about how good the game that's what the arc raiders uh review is it's talking about like how all these things work really well here's the thing i can't get past and it's been in the back of my mind and if you're playing marathon you're like yeah the gunplay is really tight i dig the art design i kind of dig the lore that i'm getting but half of the shit is stolen i think i think that's a valid point to make i just it's funny how much people drag out of this and bring out of this.

4:15:55I really, I personally believe that this is only a big deal because of the scoring. Otherwise, it would have just been one, one man, one man's opinion. There's gotta be a fight back against there never will be. But cause even we cite them out of ease and we even, I even say like, Oh, I would give, you know, that's like a 10. I'm, I'm part of the problem too. Unfortunately, even though I would love for all these things to just disappear and people have to read the text and get the nuance out of it. And it's the idea of just reducing subjectivity to the most objective thing that's ever existed, which is a fucking number.

4:16:27Right. It's like it's outrageous. It's fucking so stupid when you think about it. And it comes really from people not wanting to read even the newspaper era. This movie gets two and a half stars. Yeah. So it's just I don't know, man. I just it's just such a shame. It's it's unfair to the creators. And as I've said before, and I wish I had time to really get into it, like I really feel like you could bust open a lot of this Metacritic stuff by just focusing on who the fucking randos are that are even responsible for these scores. And I'm not saying I'm not a rando. I'm just not trying to integrate my own opinions into like this fucking hive mind score that tells you how good our graders is or how it sucks.

4:17:02And that's why everyone cares. So I do think to me, though, like the score, like I understand we're talking about like, oh, I hit to the score or whatever. But like, I mean, our grade is going to sell millions regardless. Yeah, like it's not going to just because it's now an 88 instead of a 90, whatever. It's like I'm sure they don't give a shit. You know, they're selling. Fucking piles of these games, so. well arc raiders maybe we'll just keep talking about you forever i don't know that's all we have to discuss today let's get out of here it's time to go that was a chock full episode yeah information and details essential to all playstation fans let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone chris goodbye to you be well any plans for the rest of your day it's early still it'll only be 225 230 around you yeah i don't know today's probably like a i'm trying to keep it low key maybe do a little bit of cleaning but nothing crazy cool sounds good correct or i'm sorry dustin goodbye to you be well any plans for you for the rest of the day any plans i think it's white people taco bowl night oh hell yeah and i'm pumped hell yes i absolutely love it it's good shit uh and other than that i'm trying to think this weekend i don't know if i even have any plans so there's nothing exciting in my life which is good because i'll just play uh arc raiders this weekend maybe i'll play yote i've been trying to do one mission a night or are gators arc gators dude so one one one mission a day in yote to get it get it out of the way you're that you don't like it that much i'm just dude i'm so sick of the process of every mission being go somewhere walk and talk with somebody for three to five minutes climb up something fight something walk and talk a little more I see well you're entitled to your opinion of course I really I think it's a great game I'm just I've had enough I am bored with it now it's funny it took me longer to platinum Tsushima than Yote which I thought was strange by probably 10 hours but I will say with Yote the more you like I was surprised like there's just so much shit in the game and there's so much content in the game if you just explore yeah anyway all right let's get the hell out of here guys it was good to see you thank you for your time today thank you all out there for your love kindness and support of all things last day media and sacred symbols patreon.com slash last day media for early ad free access last day media.store for merch like or what do you do no wish list and download the demo of St.

4:19:39Slayer, Spear of Sacrilege on Steam right now. Lily Moe's newest game. We really appreciate your support over there as well. We'll see you next time. Until then, goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend Ramon Narvaez.

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