#391 | Our Favorite PlayStation Moments of 2025

36:20Colin Moriarty:And so while it might not affect us too much here, it has been interesting to see now the Switch, which historically has been too underpowered to really handle a lot of these third-party games, to now kind of getting these and PlayStation losing some of that luster over to the Switch 2. Yeah, I'm looking up the sales numbers now, and it did jump. PS5 was selling like 5 ,000 to 6 ,000 units a week in Japan, for instance, before the price drop and this new kind of localized unit, and now it sold 23 ,000 the first day, but now it's falling back. So I'm not even sure it worked. I mean, at least it makes the erosion less likely and it more palatable when something like Ghost of Yotei comes out or something and people want to play it.

37:10Grand Theft Auto is going to be a big one for the console in Japan. So at least they're there and they're steady. Anything you want to add, Chris, before we ask you for your next one? Well, he mentioned

37:20Colin Moriarty:the older Resident Evil games, but like, dude, even Requiem's coming to Switch 2, which is crazy. Like I didn't, that was something that I was kind of shocked by. I was like, oh. And Pragmata too. Yeah, and Pragmata. So like, yeah, they're somehow they're more competitive. So like, yeah, that's a good pick. I had that on my list too. I wonder, it reminds me a little bit of the Wii era. where we would always get these, like we would get like a special version of Call of Duty for a while, or it would get sometimes the PS2 version of games. Like a lot of weird shit came to Wii because it was on PS2.

37:53Remember when Manhunt was one of those Manhunt 2? Because they were kind of comparable. And we've seen, I think, publishers see through their, especially big publishers through their legacy content, like that there's a huge group of people still on PS4. Someone wrote in recently saying like, are you upset Colin that Mega Man 12 is coming to PS4 which it is so it'll come to PS4 13 years no 14 years after the console launched and I'm like that's just so I don't know like but then you see EA be like we're gonna release Star Wars Jedi Survivor on PS4 WB say like we're releasing Hogwarts Legacy on PS4 like they're making these yeah game back versions of them to go backwards And then I wonder if it makes it easier to jump to this lesser hardware.

38:42But at the same time, I also wonder if this is kind of a finite thing. Like certainly when the new consoles come out, this is over, I would assume, as far as like interplay between them. But then again, there might not be no next gen exclusives, which is another one of my theories where I'm like, there might not be any PS6 only games at this point. It might be a more modular sort of thing. You were going to say something, Chris?

39:02Colin Moriarty:No, I was going to just agree. Like, I feel like that's kind of where we're headed. it is wild to think about i mean assuming megaman 12 does come out in 27 which i assume it will and it comes to ps4 which it is and ps6 comes out in 27 then you really are getting these three concurrent generations i don't know what this looks like i haven't it's kind of awesome actually but i don't know how it i don't like i'm not i'm not that bummed about it and i'm certainly not bummed about the idea of there being no PS6 exclusive games just because I think it's going to be so risky. I think games that were maybe supposed to sort of kind of be exclusive to the console ended up not being for PS5 because they realized we can't move on.

39:47And you can tell that by the way that some of these games were announced and then shown later to come to these other things. So very interesting selection, Dustin. Chris, let's go to you for your second choice. This is number five overall. Alright, let's see.

40:01Colin Moriarty:um hmm I don't have any of these in any particular order but I'm gonna use I'm gonna pull this this uh this light of motor M oh yeah situation sure is uh I don't know this this so this this developer I believe Polaris Quest is a 10 cent studio just put this game out is shamelessly ripping Horizon off they got called on it they changed all their art and i assume things are going on behind the scenes but like yeah this this thing kind of showing up out of nowhere with obvious like obvious undertones of like yeah we ripped this thing off and then to find out like that they had pitched sony directly and like all this stuff this entire story really the light of motor m saga as it continues by the way because i think it's still going yeah um in some capacity this whole thing this whole thing has been quite amusing to me and uh yeah man i i just i'm curious how like what what's gonna happen with this like i assume there's probably gonna i i would assume there's probably like some kind of there'll be some settlement or something like maybe i really don't know what like how you how you go about seeking damages for this or like what like I don't know what the recourse is but I'm gonna be keeping an eye on it for the next year or for however long it takes yeah I am just to wrap up I think uh well when I did the episode with Hoag about it we went deep into the lawsuit and whatever and he was saying that he could he could envision to your point a solution where Sony just licensed her license literally licenses Horizon to them and I wonder if that would have been an option if there weren't already some a licensed Horizon game in development and a couple other things like in other words maybe that would have been a more tempting thing especially for the Chinese market should we have not already flooded the zone with Horizon games internally I do wonder what what's going to happen because as I understand the latest filings basically is Tencent saying like we're not backing down like we didn't do anything and i'm just like this is so preposterous at this point like this is so you could make a case it's very similar to what i always say about hunger games where i'm like people always say like she copied battle royale and it's like maybe she did maybe she didn't but you could imagine a reality where she just didn't know and i actually think that's a fantastic or i'm fantastic i think that's a a likely reality because it's a somewhat obscure japanese story i mean why would this like middle-aged white american woman with no connection to japan even necessarily know about battle royale she comes up with this hunger games idea that's very similar to it but for me i i'm like well you can't really use that excuse that you weren't aware of horizon or you weren't because you pitched them right um we know what's So like that, that to me is the death knell of their of any sort of defense.

43:04Otherwise, I think you probably if that wasn't true, if like they didn't pitch Horizon or that didn't come out, then I think they might have gotten away with it. But I just don't think that I don't know how you could. Right. Get away with it at this point, unless you change all the assets or many of these, which I think they're already doing.

43:20Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I think that's kind of I think it's like even just with the key art changing from that Aloy looking character to the to now it's like a robot penguin and like a pig or something. And it's like they're clearly trying to trying to change it after the fact. And I wonder how much they're adding to the game to maybe argue where it's just like, look, this isn't in Horizon. You know, I'm fascinated by this whole thing. Yeah, me too. It is an interesting. It's very, very well, it's also just unusual for what you're allowed to get away with in the industry. And like, it's all about like what the publishers and the asset holders or the IP holders really care about.

43:54We know Nintendo is like very aggressive, for instance, with Pal World. But you can imagine another company being like that. And like you can tell that Nintendo knew that they couldn't get, you know, pocket pair on the Pokemon ripoff shit, which is. I just want to be honest, clear as day, in my opinion. But nonetheless, like I know that there's all sorts of gray area and whatever. And so they just started trying to go after them for anything they could, which I think is interesting. And you could tell that they're like really upset about it. On the other hand, you have games that are like facsimiles of other games and no one really cares.

44:22look at you know konami with uh vampire survivors as an example where they really could have gotten a lot more upset about that instead they embrace them and so you have these two you know it's like which way western man all right i love those memes i feel like it's gonna be

44:42Colin Moriarty:every time people quote like do that kind of thing it's like and i do it too all the time but like i imagine us in like a like an assisted living facility when we're like 80 just like quoting obscure memes to each other or just like just in bed saying fucking six seven while your heart palpitates i know i know i i the um you've said it before chris and it's a great reflection is the uh the living facilities are going to be fucking crazy yeah i read just irony poison geriatrics or it's an interesting breed of geriatric i don't know i don't know if there's ever been that many of them. We're going to find out soon.

45:21Yeah, it's going to start maybe younger Gen X, but millennials. It's like that's when it's going to really hit the fan. All right.

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46:04Colin Moriarty:You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. I have a few good ones, but I'm going to go with this one because I think it is incredibly relevant. Grand Theft Auto 6, as I understand, delayed twice this year. So I think it was a originally supposed to come out may right and then september was that what it was i think it was either september or november and then they then they moved it again yeah um um but it was delayed twice you're right right because it was supposed to come out may and i want to be clear may 26 and then and then that then they moved it to september no i don't think it was november 26 yeah and i just think that that's relevant i wonder what that's all about grand theft auto six is obviously going to be not only the biggest video game release of all time um it might not get to the cumulative numbers that others have gotten that's going to take time to figure out but in terms of launch that's going to be a mega release and sony is going to benefit so much from grand like so i want to throw this out there as a prediction and we're not really making predictions right now but they're so long there's the consoles ps4 and ps5 are so uh timeline aligned i think only two million off right now ps5 is from ps4 that like there's a really good i mean i think it's almost like unless something catastrophic happens like ps5 is going to outsell ps4 or at least it's going to bump way above ps4 uh by the because ps4 didn't benefit from a grand theft auto release and that in and of itself is a going back to the ps2 a massive deal and in the ps3 era 360 was the console that really benefited from grand theft auto i mean obviously people played it on ps3 by the millions and bought it there or whatever but it was the dlc and everything like 360 really and i think there was even a bundle if i recall yeah so and they had the ad the commercial rights we don't really know how that's all panning out yet although there's it's impossible the only two possibilities are either rockstar is going to go an agnostic route or playstation has their rights because there's no way they're going to go with microsoft so and if I were them I would just as I said a million times I wouldn't do anything with anyone but at the same time you're deferring like hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising costs and getting your game in front of people so you really have nothing to lose either way but it seemed like the game was somewhat imminent and it probably I mean it's not a problem but I'm sure the game is it would be so exciting to be there like I'm sure the game is done like and can be played front to back.

49:03And it's probably been true for quite a while. I want to know why they felt like they needed to delay it. Was it a timing thing? Did you feel better going at a different time? What's wrong with it? Or is the pressure and the heat on so deeply that you're like, this needs to be polished to the finest sheen before it comes out? Because I think the pressure, I mean, how many times have I said this now? Ad nauseum, your expectations for this game should be astronomical. And I'm not saying that because I think it's going to be great. I don't know. I assume it's going to be great, but because of all the time and money spent, I mean, it's like, well, you have no, I mean, absolutely no excuse to deliver anything other than the finest thing.

49:47They've spent more money on this game than many established studios will ever spend in their entire existence. Like they've literally probably, and I'm not even kidding, like they've probably spent more money on this game than a studio like BioWare has spent on everything they've made. Like that's pretty extraordinary when you think about it. We're talking about maybe$2 billion when you incorporate marketing. That's a preposterous amount of money. And you only spend that much money if you know that you're going to make it all back easily. And they are. But the heat is on with this one. And I believe that if they delay it again, it is going to get to a shit or get off the pot situation where it's like, what is going on with it?

50:31Like, then I think you have to start asking questions about what's going on here. Because why do you need more time again? You've been making this game for 10 years. And I also don't want to underestimate, like, I don't want to throw around numbers willy-nilly, but like, how much does a delay cost every quarter? Or every month? It's probably costing them like 50, 60, 70 million dollars a month or something. So, like, just keeping all those people employed. right you divide the number that it took to make the game by all of this time you know it's like it's not a it's not a small amount of money so they got to go uh dustin where are you on grand

51:11Colin Moriarty:theft auto 6 yeah well with these delays uh to me it just feels like first time huh like oh this is your first time going through this you know because i remember talking about grand theft auto getting delayed at the 12th grade lunch table and it not coming out to the following year and also I remember Red Dead Redemption 2 getting delayed it's just kind of like what I expect out of Rockstar at this point the other thing just as a note because Colin you were saying it's probably done last night when I was browsing YouTube I ended up watching a video I don't remember who the YouTuber is but it was like 20 minutes of random info about Red Dead Redemption 2 and I was learning like everyone's always like oh the horse's balls shrink when it's cold look at this detail you hear those details but there's other stuff that i totally had no idea about like depending on what food arthur morgan eats if you make him throw up it will change the color of his vomit like oh like stuff like that or like there's a mission where you have to deliver a letter and a gift and you can go and sell that gift and it will change the cut scene where arthur will lie to the woman about the gift because she's like oh he usually sends a gift and he's like oh nope not this time you know but he sold it so it's like they're spending this year because these games are maybe literally the most detailed games ever created so i'm not worried about it and i think it's i mean just even from the trailer like you can see the amount like there were people pointing out like the physics of the beer in the bottles and stuff like that and it's like it's crazy based on the track record like this is the tip of the iceberg for gta 6 so i'm willing to wait it's disappointing of course but um i'm not surprised that it got delayed twice in the same year what do you think chris yeah i mean i'm i'm a little surprised but not super super like ultimately where i'm at is like you know oh man i'm bummed out i would have loved this to have been a lot more imminent than it is but um i'll give them all the time they need basically because i don't think not it's not to say that i've loved every single rockstar game but certainly for the last several in a row i feel like they've done a pretty good job of just meeting the bar or exceeding it especially with just a red dead 2 like red dead 2 to me is the real signifier of what rockstar can do when they just have like a hit like gta 5 making all this insane money and like giving them so much ground and basically like putting unleashing them to make something so like pivotal and amazing i i have no doubt gta 5 gta 6 is going to be just an impressive technical feat and i'm excited to see it so like take all the time you need there is a point where it's just like all right let's let's let's hurry this up if it was going to take this long to come out you shouldn't have said anything when you did i guess it's kind of my frustration it's less that it's it's less that it's being delayed so much and more that like ah you could have just waited to tell us that this was even happening and you wouldn't have lost much of anything because everybody everybody's excited everybody knows you're making this um i also wonder too like how much of it has to do with the leaks i know like i know certain because a shit ton of gta 6 leaked early right right and was like playable during like it was a lot of covet stuff right when people were working from home they were like yeah so back and forth like i wonder um it reminds me a little bit of like uh like like this is a weird parallel but eminem had like a but like back in like the early 2000s like one of his album leaks and he was like fuck it i'm gonna make a new one because everybody's heard this already and like i want i wonder how prevalent that attitude is in games like i wonder how much that kind of plays a part in like even you know other games that have been leaked and how it plays to them it's like oh we got to change this this and this because this this and this leaked i don't think that's how they would operate i think they understand that like a fraction of people have even seen that i i don't know what the fuck is happening in gta 6 i haven't looked but i wonder if that's part of it but i think a lot of it is probably optimization.

55:34Colin Moriarty:I would imagine that this game is probably going to be a nightmare to optimize and probably is on PS5. I can't imagine that it's going to run higher than 30 frames a second. I think it's a fair prediction that that's going to be a locked 30, just like Red Dead 2 was on PS4 when it launched. So I just imagine they're just trying to polish the shit out of it to justify the time and make sure when it lands that it really hits. Although I don't think there's much danger of it not hitting i would be i would be genuinely fucking bewildered sales are not going to be affected by the reviews unless the reviews are like really bad true like they would have to be like mine's eye level and even then i feel like people would just be so curious to see you know like what i'm i'm also incredibly curious to see uh what the what the review plan is for it we're obviously not going to review the game but um it is interesting to to think that they maybe won't do a review cycle.

56:39But I just think that that's, I don't know what they benefit from it. I mean, that's my honest answer. I don't know what you bet, unless you are so positive, like you're mock reviewing this game and it's like, this is a 10. This is flawless. Then maybe you put it out there. But otherwise, I'm not even sure you gain anything from even having reviews. In fact, I think a lot of people like when it, what, what, it's a much smaller game, but it still sold, what, 7 million copies was Team Cherry's Hollow Knight Silksong. They did the same thing. They didn't give access to anyone. Yeah. And it didn't matter.

57:08So I think you can learn a lot from that. We'll be keeping a close eye on GTA 6. It comes out in November. All right. This brings us back to you, Dustin. This is your third pick overall, number seven. Third pick for you, seven overall.

57:24Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Of all the ones to choose from, this is the one I'm feeling. I'm feeling it. Last of Us season two kind of sucked. Let's be real. It's funny because we were watching this. You can go back and watch our spoiler cast. We were kind of up and down on different episodes and the way that they decided to adapt the story. and i think with time um like you know thinking about it and um looking back on it it has gotten significantly worse in my mind um the changes were weird um and some of the decisions made with some of the different characters particularly ellie uh were not very good and it's just a big disappointment particularly because the first season was so incredibly good um to see this kind of go like to to go from a shiny example of an amazing video game adaptation uh which we don't get many of those anymore you know we don't get many of those we're kind of in a new era of good ones to see it fall down to what season two ended up being pretty deep pretty big disappointment so we'll have to see how part two of part two comes out uh with abby and is that even what it's not even in 2026 is it no i think it's 27 27 so we'll have to see what ends up happening but it seems like the you know i'm not alone it's the kind of the common consensus that was like what what happened here was it everyone wants to point the finger at someone of course people in the gamer space want to blame neil for everything um some people want to point at craig mazen that's kind of where i lean but who knows yeah it's uh it's interesting well chris what do you think about this the last of us hbo season two yeah i uh yeah i i'm in i'm in agreement i think like i think i didn't why i think i saw the first two episodes and I was like I think I'm I don't know something's missing there's like a sauce that's kind of missing like me and my friends had watch parties for the first season of The Last of Us which I like I remember like we would we have a day set aside I think it was Sundays right that it would come out and um right we would all get together I would watch it beforehand and pretend like I hadn't seen it because I I can't I can't do it people are gonna be talking people are gonna be getting up it's like I can't do a watch party like that but not a single hint of that happening for season two like i don't think anybody even floated the idea so that's kind of interesting like just anecdotal but the the consensus does seem to be that like yeah they kind of missed the mark on certain things i think the casting really the issues that people had with the casting in season one kind of came to affect this season where i i think uh a lot of people were like yeah i mean um bella ramsey plays a good uh ellie for for the first game but like can she do a good ellie for the second game where she's supposed to be imposing and kind of somewhat somewhat sinister and not sinister necessarily but like imposing and a little scary and and the answer is kind of no like it kind of doesn't work um among other things some some weird character changes like the i'm gonna be a dad line it's kind of a weird i don't know why you would i don't know how you would change that my opinion on i gotta say this real quick put this on the record i don't think i really said this is i really feel like people are really over or uh misinterpreting that that that line maybe it wasn't delivered right but i think people are taking it in a way that it was oh yeah it was supposed to be stupid i think sure sure yeah no i understand i just think like uh it's delivered in a clunky way and it also is just not what's said in the original game like i think i think the original the original game has a version of that conversation that i think is a little bit more grounded and a little bit more dude i remember yeah she's like angry yeah because they're like way far away from home and so yeah they're way far away and it's it's like a justifiable i mean people didn't like ellie in that scene either but like you're kind of not supposed to you're kind of supposed to be like a little bit frustrated but this one was like i i don't know like i really little things like that that they would change and i'd be like why'd you why and so i don't know i didn't really end up getting into it for that reason, I think.

1:02:07Colin Moriarty:Look who's here. Oh, we've been visited. What are you doing? Oh, hey there. Well, Treble's at the doc. She had to go to the, she had to see her physician today. I've been saying that. Oh, she drugged up? Well, she, yeah, she has allergies, so we sent her to the, like, this pet allergist to do, you know, to do their experiments or whatever to see, like, what she's allergic to. So we had to pick her up later, so he's probably just lonely downstairs by himself. Hey, Rushy boy. How you doing, bud? it's good to see you um i for the last of us on hbo i again i think we all agree and dustin i think you already said like the first season is fucking really good and it's uh it's surprising that the second season kind of missed the mark so badly i think i like it a little more than most people because i think it does some really fun stuff and i think from a visual point of view from like a production point of view it's actually really nice it's and i think a lot of the characters are great but i i think the thing that wore on me especially in hindsight and recollection is just the just ellie is miscast and it didn't it comes off more now that that where ellie is in and it's it's she comes off like a dickhead yeah she comes off like a brat in season two.

1:03:31Colin Moriarty:It's like they didn't change the writing to scale with her age like the games did. Right. Like she's a more more mature operator by the time they last. So I don't know, man. We did a review discussion for every episode. People can go listen to that on Sacred Symbols Plus. But yeah, it's it's and it was, I guess, surprising, but also not surprising to see it win the game award considering, I guess, it's just like twisted things like Twisted Metal weren't even nominated because I think people didn't really watch it mostly in the industry but did it really deserve to win over did it win over fallout or something like that i mean that seems a little well fallout wasn't eligible for this year because fallout fallout fallout i think won last year right uh and this year i think it's literally coming out today on the day that we're recording this like oh interesting it would be eligible next year then so which i'm actually looking forward to dude i think fallout's great um but a lot of advertising for it during football i'll tell you that it was up for uh it was up a against like splinter cell and like devil may cry minecraft minecraft movie yeah minecraft maybe would have been the winner people really like that movie right uh it's a big movie yeah sure sure you know it had you know jack black with his little uh chicken jockey moment it's a big big moment no doubt chicken rocky uh little bradley badger ass deliver but like i think yeah i think ultimately it just wasn't really this this year for adaptations was like uh like 2014 game of the year kind of thing you know we're like dragon age inquisition because yeah you know yeah yeah that's that's a tough side of the times kind of a light year all right so that brings us to you chris let's stick with you this is your third selection and eight overall okay so i'm gonna go with you know i'm gonna go with uh wolverine re-emerges that's exactly what my notes say it's so funny that you say a wolverine re-emerges oh really yeah it's so funny i wrote it exactly that wolverine re-emerges after uh devastating insomniac leak and uh you know a lot of people dude chunks of that game were full-on fucking playable definitely lots of story leaked about it i read all of it i couldn't tell you what the hell happens i don't remember at all it helps that i don't know a damn thing about the x-men or wolverine outside of something i learned recently which is that cyclops doesn't shoot lasers but instead shoots i don't know kinetic beams from the punch dimension which is something that i didn't really want to know kind of ruined cyclops for me what notwithstanding is that yeah what the fuck is that the uh look i i i read some of that and i remember being like okay whatever and then it's completely out of my mind but i did remember seeing some of the gameplay and even understanding uh even understanding that like okay this is like early you know footage or whatever like who's who's uh who's to say this is going to be good i remember there's like a smell mechanic that kind of looked a little goofy um but i just remember being like i don't know man like i was kind of skeptical about wolverine because i just wasn't sure insomniac is such a their prime focuses in my experience as i understand them seem to be weapon diversity or locomotion like like really like kind of like sunset overdrive or spider-man where like just the act of moving through the play space is fun or it's just like a variety of different weapons at your disposal and they're moving to a character that has not the most exciting locomotion because he's just a guy he pounces i guess but like he's a guy and he's got one weapon so like i remember looking at that marriage and being like i don't know about this like we have had one good wolverine game in uh x-men origins wolverine which is unreasonably good considering the movie that it's based on shout out shout out to raven for that immaculate game but you know that's one wolverine game in a sea of you know granted not that many Wolverine games but it's weird that it only happened once you know so there's there was this feeling going into Wolverine or at least that I had where I'm like I don't know this might I mean I know it'll do well I know it'll have the good production value or whatever but like I don't know if I don't know if I'm convinced that this is necessarily a worthy endeavor and there was also the worry about Insomniac from a tonal perspective where like I kind of felt that Spider-Man 2 spider-on 2 is a good game i enjoy it from a from a play standpoint but like there's some weenie hut junior ass character work in that game i don't know what the hell i i don't believe that harry mj miles and all these people are like new new yorker friends who've known each other for a while i remember the scene at coney island where they're like it comes across as like i don't even no it's like no you cut in line like it just feels insane it feels insanely nice like it's unbelievable um and so i was like oh i don't know like them doing wolverine i don't know like doesn't wolverine have to be like bloody and like real and you know what props to them because they they they shut me the hell up then frame that trailer yeah frame one dude like it's it's bloody it's visceral it looks like they got him moving well it looks like the tone's pretty good uh and it looks like it's kind of it looks like it's coming together in a way that's that's shaping up to be really really exciting and it went from a game that i was going to play out of sheer obligation because it's uh you know we are we're on a playstation show and it would be it would make sense to obviously keep up with it uh to now being a game that i was like you know what yeah i'm genuinely looking forward to whatever that is so shout out on them for you know flipping in the narrative a little bit and finally reemerging after quite a long silence.

1:09:29Colin Moriarty:Like it was an unusually long silence for them. So, yeah, that's that's my that's my third. Yeah, I'm checking that off my list. My Wolverine reemerges on my list. Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under three hundred dollars, like the next grill four burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go-to spot the patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot.

1:10:07Colin Moriarty:Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions apply to HomeDepot.com slash price match for details. Dustin, what do you have to say about Wolverine's reemergence? Yeah, it was exciting to see it. it definitely bumped it up a few notches for me particularly the the goriness was so blood just it's vile in the right way seeing you know there's like a shot in particular in my mind of the trailer where like his claws go up into a guy's neck and through his head and i'm like yeah okay all right pretty cool action yeah i'm not um i wouldn't say like i'm i'm terribly excited for it but it's one of those games that when it gets here i'm gonna play it and i'm probably gonna think it's awesome yeah so yeah i'm glad that you know as chris was saying they were able to change the narrative on the game just because it seemed like people were kind of down on it and not sure what they were gonna get was it was the insomniac leak one year ago yeah it was it was no two years ago it was two years ago i just remember but it was this time i remember being in the car and getting a text from you, Colin.

1:11:15Colin Moriarty:It's like, should we should we hop on Mike? Yeah, Mike is the one who really is like, you can't be doing this. I was like, it did feel negligent, but I was driving, but I was because it's like maybe one of the biggest stories of the entire generation actually, but at the same time, like we're off. We're off. We're off. Yeah, I think you had decided to not do it by the time I finished driving because I had not even responded by the time, but but yeah, so Wolverine excited to see it i like insomniac so i'm willing to be dude short kings rise up with wolverine yeah definitely i think they're still a bit too afraid they're still a bit too afraid of making him like proper comic accurate wolverine so like i'm a little bummed about that or it's just like you don't have five two or whatever any hunch is over yeah any he's well i think he hunches over so he is five two but like he's a short guy he's like still probably like five six max you know but like he's he's always like Hugh Jackman is like six foot or whatever like it's it is kind of I get it but like it could be cool yeah no certainly you know for our shorter friends out there Wolverine's a cool I've always I've always dug Wolverine I've always thought he was a pretty cool character the all the X-Men not all of them but I like a lot of those guys they're they're fun characters so and I thought Sabretooth was pretty cool too so back in the day and isn't Omega Red and like a bunch of there's a bunch of random characters in this which is going to be pretty cool um yeah I agree with you guys I think that it was a big deal I was extremely worried about this game I became less so I mean there's there's all the signs that you should be worried about it yeah they lost the director a couple yeah they lost the director which is hard I mean there are games that come out like Final Fantasy 12 as an example or whatever where it's like it worked out but directors don't leave during a project like that's just not a think that happens uh that's why you should be worried about fair games you know like there's like everyone to get the fuck out of here it's if you've gone that long and spent that much money and haven't delivered and i'll also remind everyone wolverine was announced at the same time as spider-man 2 there's no way on god's green earth it was supposed to take this long we're probably talking about a game that's no less than by the time it comes out two and a half or three years late so it's clearly things didn't go right but if you know a little about the mechanics of Insomniac.

1:13:35You saw a name like Marcus Smith take over. Marcus Smith is an incredibly important person at Sony and has been for a long time. Long time director, directed Resistance, directed Sunset Overdrive, directed Ratchet and Clank, the newest Ratchet and Clank. And he did the Spider-Man DLC. So very, very talented person. And Insomniac seems like they've, it was probably always, I never really did personally, but it was always unfair to judge the game based on the leaks because this is shit they were sending back and forth of them playing in gray box fucking environments and figuring out mechanics and none of the stuff was supposed to be seen.

1:14:12And every game looks like that and plays like that when it's really early. We saw that with a project or Conus from deviation. It's like this game is this is like the first run that building the game out. And so it was probably always a little unfair to judge them based on that. But I was more judging them just based on the fact that I know timelines. I know why you announce games and when you do and there's something seriously wrong with the game. and then when you lose the director, you realize something is seriously wrong with the game. And I think we're going to be okay. So, and it looks great.

1:14:41I mean, it doesn't look passable. It looks fucking great. So that's what I was kind of expecting. I was like, maybe they just shit this thing out. It's a 75 and it sells millions of copies and they're like, we're moving on. And this kind of segues us into our X-Men franchise from their perspective or whatever. But I think it's going to be much more than that. if the first look of it is that maybe it's a really shallow bullshit game. I don't know, but I somehow doubt it. And I do like that they had a lean into the violence. I mean, they had a lean into it. I do not understand how they would have done the game.

1:15:15And dispelling any theory that it could be anything else other than that, as we've said many times in the first shot of the trailers, dope. And I think that that was very intentional and telegraphed and wise. So we'll see. what happens with Wolverine next fall. It's going to be pretty close to Grand Theft Auto. I don't know that it will really matter, to be honest. I think Wolverine will sell very well, and I think Wolverine is probably a long tail game too. All right. My third one, and this is nine overall, is Herman Hulse's demotion. This happened early in the year. This actually happened in late January.

1:15:54And I went and looked up the press release for this just to see what they said. so you'll remember that in and this is how quickly it happened why i'm like damn dude i would love to know what happened here it was june 1st 2024 they made him co-ceo of playstation with uh hideyaki nishino and so seven months later they demote him and make it so that he keeps his title CEO of Studio Business Group and will report to Nishino now. I don't know that there's much to really say about this other than that I've long, and this could be, listen, this could be radically unfair. I want to say that this is just a theory of the case, but I'm like the guy, the black detective in Dexter, like looking at Herman Hulse through the windshield, you know, or I'm like, are you the weak link and did they identify this that part of me is just curious about it all the chemistry of it all behind the scenes it's like how did you not know this already considering all the shit that happened but then it's like think about the timeline right june 1st 2024 what happens a few months after that doesn't concord right and i don't know if you could in good faith by the way june 1st 2024 i think is before anyone even played concord so i don't think anyone really even knew right like it was before like the the beta and i think they looked at this and said like um well the buck stops with you i guess herman this is the biggest catastrophe in first party history by a mile in fact we bought the team so god i just it's so crazy to me that people don't see it for what it is like they really didn't know and they were confident in that game so confident again you don't have to have any back you don't have to talk to anyone about about the game like i have like just look at the way it went down you don't buy the team

1:18:11period period if the milk is spoiled why do you buy the cow they thought it was like the most pristine milk they were afraid the cow was going to go and work for some other farmer probably once that which is exactly what arrowhead is doing working for themselves but i think this demotion means something and i really do believe herman so again this is a belief this is not fact I don't know anything necessarily about this. Like, so just take it for what it is. But I believe he is at the nexus of all this bullshit. And I wonder if they were just like, we can't really fire you, you know, but at the same time, like.

1:18:49Look what they did, the shoe hay. Like, we know now that basically we gave him an ultimatum, like either you take this significant emotion or you just go and they're under contract. So I want people to be clear, like there's no such thing as at will employment at the executive level at Sony. You sign like a three or five or whatever your deal, you're getting paid. Unless they get rid of you for cause and for cause is not necessarily based on your performance for causes like a sexual impropriety or like stealing from the company or whatever, and then they can nullify your contract. But otherwise, they just promoted.

1:19:22So imagine the CEO of PlayStation, what that person makes. I don't want to throw out crazy numbers. you assume it's five plus million dollars a year and then you're herman holst and you sign a five year contract or whatever and so they're on the hook for 25 billion dollars the money's kind of irrelevant for from your point of view with holst it's like from sony's perspective from holst's perspective it's like well i'm not going anywhere and you can fire me it's gonna make you look stupid. But I just wanted to throw out there that I think. I don't know if we'll ever know the full stories behind all the shit that went wrong.

1:19:59I feel like it's I feel like it's got to be him. And I'm not saying it's just him, but the culture of games starts with him. He is the head of all of these prestigious teams. So, yeah, I wanted to throw out Herman Holst's demotion. Chris, you have any thoughts on this?

1:20:17Colin Moriarty:I mean I feel like you said the I have I can't imagine because I remember like you mentioned that like Herman was a key voice in getting you know the firewalk situation underway and so like that's not that can't be nothing you know like that's that's the biggest blunder that they've ever had really like or that they've had in recent memory I still remember like I have this vague memory like I can't remember the specifics of it but like being at a bar and hearing like insomniac people talk about how fucked concord was before i knew that it was concord i think they were using the code name that that you actually um reported right yeah i can't remember it anymore yeah but you it's so funny you had said that at the time every once in a while you come up with you say things privately and you're and i'm like damn it's and then i know i know it's dangerous to report things if you don't know for sure right I was trying to be a little careful but like I mean I I had this on my list too but it's the buck's got to stop at some point right I just wonder I mean I'm so hard on Matt Booty who's like his was his Xbox counterpart I mean he's been Herman's been promoted out of that and is now kind of the head of these teams in an executive form form but like the the culture creation has to start with someone and he's a producer he was one of the producers of guerrillas great games and he knows something about games so you have to assume like if it's not him then who is it who is the tastemaker it's got to be him or at least like a culture under him of other people that are also similar minded tastemakers the the proof's in the pudding frankly i mean i there's like no argument about this because i even know dustin will go to you like some people are like he wasn't really demoted I'm like no he was yeah like I don't know how else you how else you read this and I don't know how you don't understand that it was because of Concord and that like no serious organization is going to give someone that that helped shepherd that into prime into prime time co-executive role CEO of you're going to be the chief you know officer executive officer of this organization.

1:22:30This is completely unserious. So I think he's and that's what I was saying, like twenty five million dollars. I'm just throwing that number out there. But whatever Herman Hulse contract is worth is like an irrelevant amount of money to Sony. But I don't think they can optically fire him.

1:22:43Colin Moriarty:Right. Yeah, it's I think what's important to know, too, is that it's it may not just be Concord either. I mean, there's all the other shit that was. Yeah, I mean, a lot of that was canceled. he was the head of you know he was really the head of these teams so the books on him what was the the game that we just saw the leak of last week oh Draconis yeah and there's the last of us online didn't end up panning out the Bungie acquisition Marathons Troubles the cancelled God of War game the cancelled Ben game the cancelled Twisted Metal game I mean yep it's unclear I don't want to blame him for all of that who knows who's responsible for second-party stuff but when it's the Sony IP I would assume it's really all the same yeah so Herman I he's I've met him he's a very nice person it's not personal although it's deeply personal in a way I mean it's when people say that it's always like the most deeply personal thing but but i uh i just feel like if we're so hard on xbox's executives and almost make fun of them it's like well there was a there was a blunderous fellow it seems like uh on the sony side as well and this is what i've said a million times right ad nauseum it's going real well for playstation right now imagine how good it could be if they had all these you know these cannons actually firing properly as opposed to jamming and blowing up on the deck

1:24:14all right Dustin we go back to you for this is your fourth pick and this is 10 overall

1:24:20Colin Moriarty:yeah last one was pretty negative so let's go to a positive story that's I mean a game on PlayStation but the game that dominated the year in terms of conversation whether you love it you like it or you hate it it was claire obscure expedition 33 uh which we are hot off the heels of it winning game of the year and practically every other award at the game awards and so maybe it's a little bit of a tired conversation at this point but who knows maybe you're listening to this in the year 2030 remembering back to this year probably not but uh yeah this game wait it's one of it's one of our nurses at the home yeah right trying to understand more about why these people are so broken trying to understand she's uh she's testifying i like to think that no one's listening it because the the world's gone uh by 20 right no one's alive god willing at that point um willing god willing yeah the the thing i've brought up numerous times so i'm sorry if you heard me say it but it's so funny thinking back i remember i think it was specifically chris and i when this game was revealed and leading up to it we were like this game looks so cool but there's got to be something wrong with it like it doesn't add up in that it is the core team is small unknown and i'm not saying like oh it's 33 people that worked on we all know it was more than 33 people you get what i'm saying though small core team of developers unknown and then they come out and they release this game that gets an insane open critic metacritic score um is loved by so many people and it kind of dominates the year in terms of a lot of conversations for better or for worse.

1:26:19Colin Moriarty:Some people, you know, take the idea of like, look at what a passionate team is able to do with so much less and also more negative conversations where about the fan base being annoying. Of course, anytime there's a big game or anything that gets big, there's going to be an annoying fan base. So of course, like, it's not necessarily a revolutionary RPG by any means, but it's about the whole presentation, which I think was incredibly well done. And it's a regardless about how you feel about the game, whether you loved it or not, or if you just liked it, I think it's an incredible story. It's a really feel good story about this team of some ex-developers and people that came together and found each other on SoundCloud or on Reddit and came together with a lot of passion and determination made this game that impacted so many people.

1:27:21Colin Moriarty:You get a lot of great game of the years over the years, but there's something a little bit different about Claire Obscura and the story behind it. And at least for me, from the game itself, it's a very special game of the year. Chris, thoughts? Yeah, no, I mean, I agree wholeheartedly, dude. I remember seeing it for the first time and being like, that looks interesting. I don't normally care about these types of games, but for whatever reason, it stuck out to me. I don't know if it was the Persona style kind of menu, or I don't know if it was the way that it looked. It had like an Unreal Engine realism, but also stylized in a really subtle way that kind of grabbed my attention.

1:28:06Colin Moriarty:I was like oh that doesn't looks real but it doesn't like what's going on there like something about it caught my eye and I figured it would be special and it's cool that it ended up really meeting and exceeding a lot of people's expectations including mine but yeah it was the dominant as far as like single player games go like it was clearly like the dominant cultural like zeitgeist of the industry for like for months and months and I totally get why yeah yeah i think oh i'm sorry go ahead just to add please uh one thing chris you made me think of is um i mentioned before on the show many times my friend jason who i consider like my half normie friend that he has ps5 he plays games but he would never play an rpg and it's not that he hates rpgs it's just not his thing right and he fell in love with this game he might he probably loves it more than me talks about all the time he was he was watching the game awards because he wanted to see it win and uh it's it's a really interesting scenario where i think that this game being more having more of a western look was able to bring people into rpgs that never played them before i think that's really special too um but colin please yeah no i was gonna say like i i we said so much about this game i think that one one thing i'll say is that i just think anything that in a positive way affects gaming discourse in such a crowded moment and manages to carve out such a substantial piece of geography for itself in people's minds in a in a year so busy and a time so busy and i've reflected many times that no game seems to have any geography at all anymore like even big games as i said earlier team cherry announced that they sold seven million copies of Silksong, which is plus whatever they had on Game Pass, which is a huge success, especially for an indie studio.

1:30:02And yet that game doesn't really have the zeitgeist. Not because people aren't playing it by the millions. They are. But because there's just so much dilution of the conversation. Everyone's being split in all these different directions. I was bringing up how a game like Kronos, the new dawn, which I loved, sold a half a million copies and no one talks about it. like you don't see anyone talking about it and so that expedition 33 could sell as appreciably as it did also a game pass game so even more people than that then then it just its sales numbers reflect played it and can can remain relevant talked about supported loved sweep the game awards no recency bias for that game i mean that that game didn't if anything suffered from a lack of recency bias because it came out so early and a lot of games in that window are often ignored I think that alone is worth a kind of a round of applause and because there's there's no doubt some people are critical of the game I'm critical of it really mostly in terms of its story but I think it's a pretty extraordinary game otherwise and I really really loved it and you know me I love turn-based role-playing games I've never stopped playing turn-based role-playing games I've been coming to I've been going to bat for turn-based role-playing games forever I'm not one of those people that's going to lose my mind when things change.

1:31:24Final Fantasy 16 is a good example. We'll always have Dragon Quest. We'll always have these other things that are more traditional. And this game is in a more traditional mold with a highly, a highly, I don't want to even say modern, like a very unique and different way of approaching combat within the confines of something not only familiar, but incredibly old. I mean, turn-based, turn-based games are as old as role-playing games. And much older, chess is a turn-based game. Backgammon's a turn-based game. Right? Football is a turn-based game. So I love that they caught lightning in a bottle with something so weird.

1:32:05And the weird thing is not that it's unheard of. The weird thing is that people care about this again. And I will say, as far as turn-based role-playing games are concerned, this game has opened people's eyes and their minds to what that means. Because I think people be like, it's menu simulator. I remember that stuff back in the day. I'm sick of playing in menus.

1:32:26Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And I'm like, well, they you play in menus a little bit, but really it's actually active. You take a turn, but then it's based on your dexterity and your memory. And you can't brute force your way through the game. I mean, this is what I've said over and over again, which I love about it is it's so weird. Like you you can make it easier for you to withstand damage and do more damage and all that by leveling. but it's really about being getting good but yet it's a turn-based game which is the most approachable kind of role-playing game action rpgs were always the the ones that turned not turn people off but made people nervous because it's you don't have time to think and you can't just grind and and make it easier for yourself so i think there's a lot to say about exposition 33 you've said a lot already we've talked about this game a ton already so i don't want to be too redundant but that's where my mind is is that like i think the game deserves a round of applause and a lot of respect for doing what it did just based on by virtue of what it is when it is all right uh chris that brings us to you this is your fourth selection number 11 overall yeah man so i guess following in sort of the same sort of vein is uh the only other game that i can think of this year that kind of like came out of nowhere and really dominated the culture arc Raiders kind of popping off out of nowhere doing this weird special thing introducing a shit ton of people to extraction shooters and basically taking over every single like all my feed like my entire feed is this burnt guy.

1:34:04Colin Moriarty:By the way Chris I wrote my notes Arc Raiders brings extraction shooters mainstream yeah copying your homework. Wait I wrote Arc Raiders becomes the first mainstream extraction shooter right great minds I just love that. I'm just copying Chris's homework. Anyway, Chris, go ahead. No, I mean, this was a game that kind of, I mean, not a lot of people, this was not a game that people were like anticipating in any great way. It was very much a Helldivers 2 kind of situation. Like people were curious about it. Maybe some hardcore fans were like looking forward to it. It had been through a number of, you know, design shifts.

1:34:39Colin Moriarty:I think it was originally supposed to be just like a co-op oriented looter shooter. And then they pivoted real hard and made something completely different. They shifted towards extraction. And normally that kind of thing is, it's interesting because normally that kind of thing is like a death sentence for games. Like I think about Avowed, which was originally supposed to be like a co-op kind of, or like a multiplayer, like live service game. And then it kind of got retooled into a single player RPG. and you can kind of feel the ways in which especially with the outer worlds too if you compare them it's just like you can tell the ways in which like you know starting from one thing and having to brute force it into something else affects the end product in a way that it doesn't when it just starts as the thing that it was always supposed to be and so for something to make a huge design shift like that and you know uh still hit um that's a big deal and it's what's interesting especially now because we're kind of off the heels of a of a marathon vidoc is it seems like now there are so many more people who get it like there's a lot more people who know what this genre is now because of our creators to the point where like i'm looking at the at the marathon vidoc and i'm looking at the comments and it's like oh it looks great and it's like awesome yeah but but that it's interesting because i remember i was in that situation i remember like i was looking forward to marathon because you know i'm a bungee guy i like the way their games feel but i remember being curious i don't know if i'll like this and i kind of didn't for like the first like couple hours and then i got into it and then the alpha ended and that's what got me even remotely curious about arc raiders in the first place and to give it a shot and to play it for as long as i did and so to see this game exploding and kind of priming a lot of people for this genre and like getting into it and and like i said just taking over social media like blowing that burnt peanut guy up uh in a way that like i haven't seen a content creator in a while it's so visually funny man like it's a good it's a good he's a funny like i'm i'm not disappointed whenever he shows up i'll put it that way like they're good they're good clips but yeah just this unusual genre this um kind of i think a lot of people would say tarkov is kind of like the pub g uh it's looking like arc raiders is the fortnight and it's looking like uh marathon's kind of stepping in to be the apex almost in direct you can almost directly compare those yeah yeah yeah grafted on even even just the third person angle of you know fortnight and arc raiders like they kind of fit into this it's interesting to see and and so that game kind of came out of nowhere swept uh swept everybody's attention in a year and in a year by the way that had a call of duty come out that by in fairness wasn't great it wasn't great nobody likes it but in a year with a strong battlefield game you know like it's it's a pretty the multiplayer space is kind of it's difficult to hit in that space and you know embark uh they made a great game with the finals uh years ago that like i talked about a while a while back and that that game's got a healthy population but nowhere near the explosion that arc raiders has and i'm just happy for the team i think they've they've made a really cool really cool thing and introduced a lot of people to a very interesting genre that even just a year ago i wouldn't have considered myself to be even remotely a fan of and yeah so props to them props to embark for managing to stick out in much in an expedition 33 away in a really crowded year that demands a lot of your attention um you know there are 100 hour games out there they're multiplayer games forever games that are constantly kind of trying to draw you in and uh they struck they struck gold you know and it's that's cool anything to add dustin yeah arc raiders i mean it's been a surprise for everyone but it was a huge surprise for me i was interested from being a fan of the finals and i think what what chris is saying about um you know it is the first mainstream extraction shooter it showed people what showed normies what extraction shooters are and that includes me yeah i remember playing the first or not the first the the last like server slam and being like uh i don't know like i don't know if I'm into this high stakes situation.

1:39:07Colin Moriarty:Like I think I'm going to be annoyed. And even when I first started playing Arc Raiders, I wasn't fully into it until I like started to understand it. And the like Arc Raiders has like an emergent gameplay feel, not like we talk about emergent gameplay in a game like, you know, Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom or something like that. But just like you know, two matches the same in our graders. And that's because of the different elements of, you know, the proximity voice chat, the ability to have soft reliances with other alliances with other players. It's really, really cool. And I think Embark is I'm rooting for them as a team just because I think what they did with the finals was was really good.

1:39:57Colin Moriarty:and the fact that they already went for arc raiders and like they realized that they're like oh maybe the shop is a little too expensive we're gonna lower the price in the shop and if you bought something we're going to refund you the difference it's like it's stuff like that that i think earns a lot of goodwill with the players and the updates so far have already been awesome i haven't played the is it called is a cold snap right now in uh oh yeah i haven't touched in weeks but yeah I haven't been on in the past week just because we've been getting stuff done for the content but um shout out to arc raiders and as Chris was saying it has made me more open to marathon yeah that's uh that was a big point for me too was uh just because I wrote in my notes about arc raiders I also had to think about marathon maybe we'll get into it but um it's just again i think very this is a little bit less resonant with me because i don't play these kinds of games as unlike expedition 33 which i played and beat so much more familiar with it but you gotta you it's almost like a different thing it's like a different side of the same coin if if expedition 33 managed to carve out itself itself a place very impressively in such a crowded single player space then you have to even look at what arc raiders did in the multiplayer space is actually much more impressive because there's just so much more action over there and i'm not even talking about necessarily competition there are probably actually fewer games but it's just people just populations of people that really have are really loyal to a certain product or certain products transience is probably high for free to play games but not so much a game like arc raiders um where you have to pay for it and you have to kind of earn your way and that's gonna it's what i keep saying over and over again where it's not that like money is going to disappear out of the game space it's going to continue to flood into the game space it's that the losers are going to multiply.

1:41:46And so whoever wins is going to win big. And these guys won. Big. Yeah. And I agree. I think it's good for marathon. I think this going in another direction or marathon, maybe the only other, like the third choice for marathon would have been launching into an environment where our Raiders just never existed.

1:42:05Colin Moriarty:But I think that would have been bad too. Yeah. I think that probably would have. Yeah. I think so too. So I don't know. Anyway. yeah shout out to our graders and i'll be very interested to see to your point chris how that affects the finals because i think that gives fine the finals like more runway to be a more niche game dustin i know you played it for a while right the finals oh yeah so there's still i think tens of thousands of people playing it at any given time that's nothing to sneeze at and this gives them probably more runway to try to probably first of all is like a relief valve like like a steam valve being fucking unleashed because it's like we man we don't have the pressure on us anymore about keeping the finals going we have something that's bigger than the finals ever was and hopefully we can have both all right this brings it to 13 so this brings it to chris right no i just i just went oh is it 13 for oh it's me okay right um i'll go with this one um just corporate buyouts and consolidation obviously the big one this calendar year is the most recent one and that's netflix and warner brothers and that'll affect warner brothers games and their products it remains unknown how that will happen and as we said on sacred symbols i think people are vastly overstating and in fact even misrepresenting intentionally or otherwise what was actually said about warner brothers games assets by netflix um people are saying like they look at them as worthless and it's like that's not what they said i mean they're they literally are just saying we it's not we don't care it's not saying that it's worthless it's saying like, well, this is not part of our calculus and we'll figure it out when the deal happens.

1:43:42But there's that. But I actually think there's two other bigger ones, smaller by money, but bigger in terms of residents in the game space. The first is Ubisoft and Tencent. What I was really interested in, and I have to look more about this, this will, we will have already reported on this on the previous episode of the show, but Ubisoft just bought a studio. And I don't know if you guys saw that overnight like a french canadian studio of some size from amazon that's making some sort of it's like a moba or something that they're making and some sort of multiplayer game and i'm like wow they maybe are on a little more steady ground than i thought at least internally because it says that and i have to read into this more maybe this is wrong but it said ubisoft bought it in other words not the new entity that's like the the spun off entity with tencent but that first deal with Tencent and Ubisoft kind of spinning off Ubisoft's most valuable assets into this new company that they're going to invest in is a huge deal and it's going to have a major effect on thousands and thousands of employees ultimately at Ubisoft.

1:44:48And I assume that many people are going to lose their jobs ultimately when this thing goes through, which is sad, but true as they kind of hone in on their best studios and their most prominent IP. And I like Ubisoft. I mean, I think a lot of people don't like them. I'm like, I like Far Cry. I've liked some, you know, I love Far Cry. And I've liked some, you know, the division. I want them to do well. I just don't know what this new environment, how it bodes for them. And then of course, after that we had this deal with Electronic Arts and the Saudi Investment Fund, which is still in progress and is just a shitty deal in which the Saudi government will own 93%.

1:45:26I think of EA when it goes through. I don't know who benefits from that when that happens other than the Saudis. I don't know why we're insisting. So it's different with Ubisoft. Well, it's different with Netflix and Warner Brothers. They're both American. I'm not crazy about that deal. But Ubisoft and Tencent, these are two foreign companies. They can do whatever they want. I don't give a shit. EA and Saudi Arabia, though, this is in my craw a little bit. And I think things just happen at such kinetic speeds now in life, politics, whatever, that this can't even be fully absorbed by Congress or anyone that can stop it.

1:46:03because there's just too, it's just so crazy. And I don't like the idea of us exporting the value of the things we worked hard to create. And EA is not nothing. I know a lot of people are mad at EA and upset. It's certainly not Trip Hawkins Electronic Arts anymore. I mean, I understand that, but this is a great American company and they're not going to be anymore. And I think it's, fucking heinous personally. Not the sale, but the idea that you can't find domestic buyers or even buyers in friendlier countries. What else can I say about this that hasn't already been said? Dustin, you have anything you want to add about this?

1:46:46Colin Moriarty:I hate it. That's about it. Sucks. Yeah, the corporate the corporate consolidation generally or the that deal in particular. All of it. Yeah, I mean, I think EA is the one that feels the most nasty and gross right now um and yeah i just saw while we were recording uh it seems like it is going to be netflix warner bros discovery is to plan to reject paramount skydance hostile takeover bid so um yeah i mean it sucks for i mean the ea thing sucks from a more political american standpoint and just the merging where Netflix and Warner Brothers Warner Brothers I think probably will have a greater impact on movies but it's like man is there going to be like 15 companies you know 20-30 years down the line because they've all just merged and we're just the consumers are all just consistently milked for everything they're worth because there's no other options for places for people to go to it's just um it's it's we're it's feeling more dystopian all the time yeah it sucks it sucks i think capitalism needs to be restrained from its worst excesses or it stops serving the people like capitalism is a completely righteous useful you know good economic system that allows people to extract value to win or lose to make a lot of money.

1:48:24That's all great. But at some point, man, it's what it's how I feel with the healthcare companies right now. I'm like, what do you, what do you think you're doing? Like, it's almost like what, like, what do you like? Why are you disrupting the system like this through, through avarice and fucking greed? And these, it's just fucking crazy. I know it's hard to say, like, wouldn't you sell out? wouldn't you sell it? What if you owned 10 ,000 shares of EA, you know? And I'm like, but I just think at some point doing the right thing, like I say this all the time about myself, like I'm not this mega rich person, but it's like I've made good money and I'm feeling good and I don't need to extract.

1:49:07I don't what am I? Am I a fucking robber baron? Like. I just don't know why everyone know why people aren't more restrained and i know that's like a silly and naive thing to say in some some sense but it's just like what the fuck dude people just sell us out left right and center and ruin the system for everyone so chris you have anything you want to add i didn't say anything

1:49:36Colin Moriarty:no well i would say all that uh in the same way probably but like slightly louder yeah you know like i just the bastardization of capitalism is like one of the most unfortunate things because capitalism changed the world and brought people out of poverty and our standard of living across the board is just so much higher because of it and they and it's like you couldn't just leave good enough alone you can't make millions or hundreds of millions tens of millions it's got to be billions and tens of billions and hundreds of billions and it's going to be trillions soon you got to tend the guard you got to tend the garden man you can't you can't just let can't just leave a garden unattended the weeds are going to choke out everything it's bad it's like it trends that way and it trends that way if it's just left on a couch that's how it's just the nature of it of course so you got to go in every so often and like reset the meta you know You got to be get it's like, I don't know.

1:50:42Nothing's easier than making money with money. Yeah. So there's risk about that. Some people lose. But like when I see things like, you know, and you guys know the audience. I was like, I think Elon Musk is great when I hear things that and I think he's crazy, but I think he's great. And when I hear things like he's going to be worth a trillion dollars soon, I'm like, that's unacceptable.

1:51:05Do you have any idea how much money that is? and I listen I'm not one of these people that I that's like he could solve world hunger if he just liquidate it's like I understand it's not cash I get it it's net worth it's value but like no one should command that much money no individual and I truly believe that just gives you too much power like no one should want it even if you're like one of the greatest inventors one of the great like a Steve Jobs like character or like, you know, who would like be rich today? People like Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock and those guys. But like, like John Hancock was crazy rich.

1:51:42He had one four hundredth of the entire value of the 13 colonies during the revolution. Can you believe that? That's like crazy levels of like mercantile rich. But but to me, it's just like, I don't know, a trillion dollars is getting there. It's actually there. Yeah.

1:51:58Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah, I mean, a billion dollars is like people don't. I think people are just conditioned because we We don't understand. We can't actually conceptualize that much of anything. A billion is fucking crazy by itself. Like one. Yeah, it's a hundred. It's a thousand million. It's a thousand million. I always like to use the time thing where it's like a million seconds. I think it's like a like a like about two weeks. And I think a billion seconds is like 30 years. It's fucking like that's insane. Like in a million is a lot. But even by a standard of that, it's like it's a that's a completely reasonable.

1:52:33Colin Moriarty:like people could make a million dollars ethically. I don't know if you can make a billion dollars ethically. Yeah, I don't know. Personally, but that's getting into a whole nother fucking. But I also think people are like, well, what do you want to do about it? And my honest answer is like, I don't know. Like we didn't do enough to stop it. Like or to be like this can't like you let it, you let it happen. And now I don't know what you do. I don't know how you put that genie back in the bottle. How you put that toothpaste back in the tube. I have no fucking idea. I know how you stop people from accumulating that much money, but it's kind of unfair to stop it now.

1:53:02You know, it's kind of like what we say about or I've said about like developing countries where it's like we cut our CO2 emissions, then India and China just jack up their CO2 emissions. And it's like, well, it's kind of unfair that we got to industrialize and they did. Right. All things being even, it's like, well, anyway. I'm not and I want to be I think people know I'm not an eat the rich person by any stretch of the imagination. I just think that there are like there's gratuitous amounts of wealth, like kingly amount of wealth. and I don't like it. Period. I like having money. I like all that.

1:53:38That's great. I want more. But also, I don't think I have. Let's be honest. I make like 50 or 100 million dollars. I'm done. I like I don't know how you convince me to do anything ever again. I don't have that kind of drive in me. Bro, I'm there at like I'm there at two. Oh, yeah. Well, exactly. Two million. I'm out.

1:53:59Colin Moriarty:Are you kidding? I could live the rest of my life comfortably on two minutes like if you know how to like if you know how to make your dollar work it's like you're fine dude like you're so you're set beyond like what you would even reasonably need that's what that's why I've been like I'm so I was just talking about my dad about this with like uh you know finance and uh investment and stuff and I'm like I'm so conservative with my finances and like how I invest my money or whatever because I think I can make very like I don't need much I'm trying to like just accumulate as much as I can but like I think I can make these smaller sums work because I'm normal.

1:54:36I'm not trying to buy an island and then build a temple on the island.

1:54:41Colin Moriarty:You don't want to go to an island vacation and be photographed with Richard Branson? You don't want that? I just want to live comfortably. That's the thing is that that's just what that means for different people. For me, it means not really worrying. right but for a lot of people it means radically different things anyway all right so we're on to number 13 which is the fifth choice for dustin this is your final choice make it count final choice make it count uh this is the one i find the most interesting and i think it's one of the stories of the year and we'll kind of combine this we've got the rise of a player and the fall of a player i'm talking about call of duty and battlefield and the call of duty one is a little bit more i don't know the writing's on the wall right now for call of duty we don't know the official sales numbers yet of black ops 7 but as we talked about on sacred symbols just a few weeks ago we got this weird statement from them about how they understand it didn't meet people's expectations, talking about how they're not going to do numbered titles back to back ever again.

1:56:02Colin Moriarty:And along with, there was an article Maddie posted in our staff chat earlier today. It was just like Matt Booty responding to something. But in this IGN article, it says Black Ops 7 also is down more than 50 % versus Black Ops 6. I believe that's in the European launch. We're already seeing like tweets about sales like i think it was like on sale for like 30 bucks already or something so something has changed in the world of call of duty and yeah it's microsoft like yeah it's microsoft microsoft's part of it yeah um but i mentioned at the top of this this isn't completely negative because we also have arc raiders which we talked about earlier but in this specific example the rise of Battlefield 6.

1:56:48Colin Moriarty:And I guess rise is kind of lightly used because Battlefield's been a big franchise for many, many years at this point, but had fallen off in the last five-ish years between Battlefield 5, Battlefield 20, 48. 42, I think. I think. Some far future number. Not that far future. Yeah, neither one of those. Oh, God. we'll still be doing this show in 2042 dust and gird your loins yeah yeah uh neither one of those really uh met any met expectations of both fans uh and and sales and for the company so to see them really lock in and make a game that uh was very popular for not only its fan base but bringing in new fans as well.

1:57:40Colin Moriarty:I've talked in the past before about how there's been times where like Call of Duty, like before Infinite Warfare came out, which was probably over a decade at this point. I remember thinking at the time, like, man, this is the year for Battlefield to really kill it. And maybe there can be a bit of a shakeup. They've never been able to really do it. They've never been able to strike when iron's hot. And this year, the stars aligned. And I'm sure they have Ark Raiders to thank as well for kind of chipping doing that chip damage but uh call of duty i think ultimately really also just has to blame themselves because this game not only is it that they have the stiffest competition ever but it's the poor i think it's like one of the poorest reviewed call of duty games in a very long time and people were just simply not impressed with it both from the gameplay or not gameplay.

1:58:32Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah, the gameplay, but the story mode, the multiplayer across the board, not a good year. So what this means for Call of Duty going forward, I think is going to be probably the most interesting part. Maybe we'll know by next year, but it seems like it's time for some kind of reset. Will they take a year off? Hard to say. There's so much money involved, but I don't think they I really don't know if they financially can structure that like they would have to really like cut teams and stuff if they did that i think right so r.i.p bozo call of duty uh maybe not quite maybe it's not it's a premature r.i.p bozo premature premature i hate that me too i don't like that con me too i like saying it once in a while but just to be as annoying as possible chris um what are your thoughts here on the on the decline of quality again this is another one i had in my notes uh battlefield six potentially dethrones Call of Duty I wrote.

1:59:28Very, very important story.

1:59:31Colin Moriarty:No, it's a huge, the first time that I feel like it's happened in an objective way. I think personally it's happened, like as far as like, like they've just made a better game. I thought it happened with Battlefield 1 and whatever that Call of Duty was, but I always think that's true. I always think Call of Duty kind of pales. But like this year, it just seemed like everybody was on the same page where it's just like, yeah, dude, this ain't it, whatever it is. And to be fair, I have heard people say like the multiplayer is actually fine it's like it's it's serviceably good but you know everything else that surrounds it the ai we the weird ai cards that they put in there with the studio ghibli piss filter on it's just like oh man dude you really you were really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one and so i mean it's they they hit the right time you know they put they pulled a bit of a mahomes toward their acl now they're out of they're out of the game this year They'll be back probably next year.

2:00:27Colin Moriarty:Yeah, right. Wow, look at you. Very impressive. Look at me with the sports analogy. I know, I can't believe that. I'm doing things. But no, I totally, this was on my list too. But yeah, it's what a good, it's a feel good moment for me because as a resident hater and a lover of Battlefield, it's nice. I was hoping that this would be the outcome, but I was also kind of be like, ah, be realistic, Chris. It's not going to happen. They're going to come out and they're going to hit it and Battlefield 6 is going to be, it's going to disappoint in some way and it kind of didn't like there's obviously every game has like some nitpicks or whatever but like largely this was the year Battlefield really stole the show and I'm really happy about it one thing I'll add to this is that I think because it depends on what the story is is it is it Battlefield and Call of Duty or is it like the decline of Call of Duty because if it's the decline of Call of Duty then I think Battlefield is a bolt through the plate armor of Call of Duty like there's no doubt about that but I actually think it's more complicated than that like I actually just think that a lot of things are and we've said this before but like just have combined to dethrone this game and Battlefield is a major player but I think there's a lot of chip damage happening from overexposure under delivering probably pretty tired and overworked studios that make a lot those guys make a lot of money they get a lot of money and bonuses I'm not saying that we should feel bad for them but like after a while you're probably ground into a fucking small round pebble from all the erosion and pressure around you and then there's just a shit ton of games on the market so yeah and then also the fact that it's an immediate numbered sequel a year after the previous one which is typically like it's it's atypical of that series that just makes people even feel even more tired than they otherwise would be my siri just activated.

2:02:17Oh, interesting. And I was saying it earlier and I am being mostly flippant, but I do think that Microsoft is a relevant factor. I because I think this decline was going to happen. And based on when they were interested in buying Activision, when they did, a lot of this shit was already happening. You can't really you can blame them probably for everything moving forward. But this they incorporated a lot of these pipelines into what they were doing when they purchased the publisher. And so I don't want to blame them for it completely. but I will say this, that they are not the company to be in charge of Activision Blizzard at this moment, because this is a time when you need really strong leadership and vision.

2:02:57And if Xbox lacks one thing, it's a strong leadership and vision. So you could pull. Here's the thing. Call of Duty is so big and it's been going on for so long across, again, not console generations, but generations of people that it's going to have this baked in almost Star Wars like resonance with people forever. And you're going to be able to conceivably get them in the future, but you have to do the work. And I really believe that Call of Duty's ultimate salvation will be through. And I hate to say this, like calling those teams down to a couple, maybe or a few, you want to have two or three teams working on stuff and make a call and make a Call of Duty platform and make like this new Call of Duty game.

2:03:44Ultimately, they're going to be shoved into that position, into that fucking box one way or the other. Because if they have another year like this, I don't know what that means. Like, I don't, again, it's hard to, you don't want to be dramatic because it's like, these are huge games still that are going to be amongst the bestselling games of the year, but they're not normal games. They're not made under normal circumstances. They're not made for normal amounts of money. They're not marketed for normal amounts of money and the expectations on them are not normal. So that shit starts to fall apart and starts to go down a hill and starts to tumble.

2:04:20It's bad news. And they know this. They knew this because of the mobile product. They knew this because of like Warzone and this Call of Duty kind of nesting thing they're starting to do with like the franchise. Like they get it. I don't think they know how to get out of it. What they really need is a massive hit. And that's kind of the pressure situation they're under, which is fascinating. It's like we could throw all in on the next one or whatever one we think is going to be the big one and really try to make this thing fly. And then the money and the revenue will buy us time to adjust. And I think that's going to be a brute force kind of thing.

2:05:06We'll see what happens. I also think Call of Duty is just not. It's it's not. The quality that it was known for. That it was renowned for during like the infinity. Remember when people used to make fun of Treyarch because they wouldn't get up to Infinity Ward standard. And. It's like times have changed. So. Yeah. So we'll see. All right. Chris, that brings us to you. This is your. Final selection, your fifth selection. This is 14 overall.

2:05:41Colin Moriarty:Yeah, man. So I've been trying to avoid this on my list, but it's calling out to me. I got to do it, dude. This entire mind's eye fiasco. Yeah, sure. That wasn't on my list, but that's a good one. It's just Leslie Benzie's going out and talking about how it's like, you know, it's the saboteurs. You know, people are paid. To not like it. They're paid to shit on it. And then we got it. And lo and behold, it's a Stephen pile of trash. It really is. I mean. Truly. What do we. And also this like plan to relaunch it somehow that I just. I don't know. I'm of the mind. You leave well enough alone. That's that.

2:06:28Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. That ain't happening. And to the degree that it will happen, it won't have any real effect. I just thought people people are not into mind's eye. people don't want to it's it wasn't even like because their games are come out and people are like ah that could be better not really this one this seemed kind of nobody cared didn't seem to catch anybody's attention didn't catch fire at all so well it caught fire but uh just this whole situation was i've never seen in my memory and i could be wrong but like in my memory i can't remember like like an individual of such high esteem saying this kind of thing in the games industry and like kind of like almost offloading like the closest thing I can imagine or the closest thing that I can bring myself to like compare it to is like maybe like some of the unhinged shit that like Randy Pitchford has gone off and said but at the very least like they they make games that people people generally like play and buy and you know genuinely enjoy I mean quarterlands four i think a lot of people really really liked it um i liked it too until it stopped running well but oh yeah the memory league i forgot about that that must be fixed at this point it's that's a bummer dude because i really i enjoyed that game but i just couldn't i couldn't do it but but yeah like this whole like seeing leslie benzie's like a storied feller to say the least go off on this weird kind of tangent that kind of felt more becoming of like a i don't know it felt like a like a youtube like it almost felt like a keemstar kind of like a boogie 2988 kind of thing where it's just like it's this they're sabotaging like right it feels crazy it feels insane and it also just it feels like it was completely unnecessary like why say anything um in some sense so yeah i don't know that the whole mind's eye fiasco i guess i just have it as mind's eye fiasco on my list but that was uh something to watch for sure and it's it's unusual that we get a game quite like that um i don't want to say unusual but it's they're rare i find like it's rare to get a truly sub five out of ten video game you know like i think a lot of games i think we're spoiled generally in this in this generation or like even in just the last several arguably the last decade where the worst games that we got were just kind of serviceable like you know sixes maybe sevens you know the worst games or like i i think about some of the games i used to play on ps1 or ps2 and i'm like oh man yeah that was some garbage truly but uh yeah so mine's eye you had to commit to like getting your game printed and like getting it getting it out you just it was it was over at some point and you had right it's like there was nothing some games came out and they were broken and they just couldn't fix it because it's just like all right it's out there sorry last level is not in the game uh so yeah i just think uh it's interesting to see something like a like a like a oh my god what's that motorcycle game from like years ago i think about it all the time ride to hell retribution oh yeah um you know it's it's rare to get something like that and it's even rarer to get something like that from somebody like leslie benzie's so like i think that whole thing is just fascinating and uh i'm curious where build a rocket boy goes but that's my uh that's my final or my number five going into the grave is i think where it's going to be uh ultimately sucks for them because they're probably some really talented people there yeah all right uh dustin do you have anything you want to say about mind's eye you didn't play it i didn't play it no walls i did watch you and gene play it and uh it was shocking uh i platinum that bad boy i thought about i thought about playing and then i watched your guys's stream or your video and i was like i don't think i'm gonna yeah bad it's no bueno i think i'm gonna go um yeah i i it is it true it's one of those games i wanted to see for myself i was like when i when it was first shown at that state of play i was like this looks cool and i believed that i was like this looks great yeah and it over time you realize it wasn't great and then it came out and everyone hated it and i'm like well i gotta once i think i read gene's review or whatever it was i was like i gotta play this game because it's like you said they don't really in the triple a ish space they don't really go like this anymore it's just there's too much money and there's your game might not sell it might not be very remarkable or great but it's not i always think about remember me as one of those games where it's like yeah this is fine yeah like this is right or like wet or like or um you know john woo's stranglehold or like or i think you know what i think actually concord's a great example concord played pretty fucking competently like concord probably play from a gameplay perspective probably plays better than like the overwhelming majority of like ps2 shit you know that we loved but nobody gave a shit and so like a game like this is rare man mine's eye for that reason alone like a physical copy of mine's eye like whoo cream of the crop right there it's it's a strange yeah getting the 1.0 version is yeah that's a prize oh my god um so yeah mine's i platinumed it for some reason and so i did see the game intimately it's it is one of the it is as bad as they say there's a potential there's cool shit i mean every game has cool shit in it it's almost it's almost like yeah all right there's a cool idea here the settings neat uh right i don't know why like why what is the excuse for this being so bad why is this so bad and there's a lot of questions to be asked about that if i was an investor in that studio i'd be asking a lot of questions i'd also probably be broke all right um the last one for me i have eight of them left i'll go with this one we already brought this game up but i do think it's very relevant to playstation is just marathon um the reveal of marathon and kind of the ups and downs and ups of marathon this is something you guys can both speak to a lot more authoritatively than i can from a gameplay perspective but i will say this they really need this one not from a sony playstation survival perspective but from a bungie perspective they have to dig themselves out of this hole and I think you said it earlier both of you were kind of speaking to it I believe is things seem a little more positive about marathon now after things have settled the art shit kind of they settled that obviously we talked about that but also like it's kind of just waned in everyone's memory and kind of see the game more for what it is and people are going hands-on with it and these in these closed tests and now we know it's coming out in March I am a little weirded out by the no date.

2:13:17Yeah, it's weird. I just think that it's like, what? Why? What are you doing? And it says that they don't know, which to me is just like, I'm like, OK, we'll see how it all. I don't know what you're going to do with two weeks, but you can do a lot, I guess, with it. It's up to you. But the no date thing does have me skeptical, but it does seem like people are a lot more positive about it. And maybe we've said this before is greasing the skids with arc raiders. maybe this game has a chance to do well and i think i honestly think and maybe it's a little dramatic because you don't know where destiny 3 is and what other you know they did spin off gummy bears them spinning that gummy bears game off to me says that they want to protect it and inoculate it from what might happen with bungie and i will say that if this game bombs i don't know like I honestly don't know if you just say like fuck it it's over and move on or if you like really call the team down to a 300 person team that makes that supports destiny 2 and makes destiny 3 quietly as opposed to this 1 ,900 person team that you have now whatever it is

2:14:29Colin Moriarty:are they still that big or it might even be down to like yes seven or eight hundred now but I think it's i don't know if it's any lower than that let me see if we can find numbers but um i think that this is i mean it's not it's not a secret this is not it this is yeah 850 as of last year so who knows where it is um this this has major implications so and again i think so the sunk cost of bungie it's not it's like sony absorbed that cost they're starting to we've seen it they're starting to write it down so the damage is done now it's about like what you can get out of it can you scrape some of that money back and can you make this team viable and relevant and important to make a destiny 3 or whatever you're going to have them do next and everything rides on it we'll know and i think we'll know within four months like i don't think marathon is going to come out do okay and then find itself later it's got to pull people in do you guys have anything you want to add about that uh i'll go last because i think i have a lot to say um i don't have a a lot to say other than um i mean the art fiasco was just crazy and it was funny too just because i think that for a lot of people it was surprising but for bungee fans and maybe Chris can speak to this a lot more a lot of them were like oh yeah I'm not surprised a Bungie game is dealing with some chicanery in terms of potentially stealing something because I think something like that happened with um Destiny art at one point or another so yeah yeah uh I you know after this recent video they put out I'm much more interested in it and what we talked about earlier I think a lot a lot of people are much more open to it I'm wondering too if that's just a big part of like the reception to this news in that video is that people get extraction shooters and they're like oh cool it's like arc raiders but different i'm interested so chris i'll let you take it away because i know you're you're the guy for this no yeah well i mean i i think it's on a quick i think when when marathon first showcased itself the only people who really knew what was going on with that were people who had been playing tarkov or whatever And there's really that many, many of them.

2:16:54Colin Moriarty:And the people who are playing Tarkov are not going to leave Tarkov really. Like they're kind of, they're, they're in an abusive relationship. You know, they got like 5 ,000 hours in this game that they hate. Not unlike Destiny really. Like, so, so I think it is kind of like, yeah, people just didn't know. Like I saw it and I kind of didn't really get it either until I really got hands on with it. And like, like Dustin was talking about too, with his experience with our creators, like I don't know if I really liked it in the first couple hours. I was trying to figure it out. I didn't really understand it and then things start clicking and then you kind of start getting into it and you kind of understand where to go and what is important and and it becomes very satisfying over time and I think you know uh that kind of understanding of like what the genre is does a lot for and I think there's I even earnestly think if even if this exact video came out the viaduct that they just put out the 22 minute viaduct that they just put out in in december for marathon i think if that came out first a lot of people were being like oh well if this is what they showed then they wouldn't have had a problem it's like i actually don't know i'm not so sure because i don't think enough people really got it i don't know enough people really understood like they would look at it as like what's so special this is a first person shooter you're running around you're collecting things who cares but now people are like in that loop they know they know why that's kind of fun and why it clicks and why it's interesting and the side effect also is that you know i really do think in some ways this is the best case scenario where they they get this art scandal they get delayed you know arc raiders comes out primes everybody for it they have time to respond to the feedback they have time to add in prox chat They have time to, you know, focus on the the environments and the weather and make the world feel more threatening, which was like the main feedback from the from the alphas.

2:18:50Colin Moriarty:They have the time to address even just that cool. And we'll talk about it more. We've already talked about it on the sacred symbols episode that will be that will be doing. Or will we are we going to be doing this Thursday, right? Yeah, yeah. That'll be the last year for this year. Yep. OK, just making sure. Yeah. So we'll we'll have talked about it in depth. but yeah last episode last some genuinely some genuinely interesting twists on the genre are showcased in this video and i'm just like that's an interesting idea that can't really happen in arc raiders or can't really happen in uh tarkov by by the nature of like what the sci-fi in it like it's really cool shit so i think i don't know man i think i think marathon's gonna be a

2:19:38Colin Moriarty:or I played 40 hours of it, which is almost as much as I've played Ark Raiders at this point, months and months back. And even in its neutered state, I really got into it. And so with a lot more there, I do think it's going to be good. Whether or not it'll hit, I don't know, but it looks like things are kind of trending upward. I think if they put the real marketing weight behind it, I think they could have something really special here, but you know, that depends on whether or not there's an appetite or whether or not there's time or whether or not Ark Raiders has like another boom. And you know, then there'll be going head to head or like, we'll see.

2:20:07Colin Moriarty:but uh i'm kind of bullish about marathon i think it's going to be really good i think it's going to be great but we'll see we're going to know very soon very soon we'll know very soon i hope it is great i really do they need a redemption arc and that could be it the route to redemption is gonna be very difficult in a very crowded field though um yeah that's true do you guys have any other ones like honorable mentions anything that didn't come up i i hear it's i just thought i'd show this because I thought it was funny. You probably won't be able to read it, obviously, but you can see the check marks.

2:20:38These are all the ones that came up and then I selected, which means like the ones on the bottom. In other words, we organically got through my top 15, which I think is fairly interesting, which I appreciate. So congratulations. I have any anything we didn't do.

2:20:54Colin Moriarty:I have four extra. I can lightning round, which I'm glad because I feel like they're they're not as good for the list. But it's Silksong finally comes out. the PS5 Pro has a rough first full year with multiple games being not so great on the platform. The fate of fair games is unknown after Jade Raymond is removed from the studio. That actually was probably a pretty big one. And then last was the PS5 price increase earlier this year. Yeah, that's fair games. I didn't even put in mind because I thought about that, too, because the director of the game is also removed. and and we also reported on someone's experience playing the game in a closed beta or closed alpha so so yeah we had a lot of fair games reporting the reason that i didn't put it on my list ultimately though maybe i should have just as a as an honorable mention but the reality is no one seems to give a shit so like there's nothing riding on it you know like if anything like if that game's anywhere near good i think that's a major win even if it even if it dies on the vine it's like at least it was good but it might not matter um chris any honorable mentions you want to get out of the way before we go uh i only had i think we got through the overwhelming majority of mine i did have jade raymond's uh the fair game situation on mine i had marathon in mine and you got to it um this one like i guess the only ones i have left are like really awkward or like really weird or that don't have to do with play i had the steam machine announcement on there just because i just thought it's kind of a big deal it's not playstation oriented so i left it but that's kind of a weird thing to come out of nowhere just like steam coming out and making this thing curious what it's what the price is going to be on that but and uh the weird banjo kazooie sequel that's like just like in dreams yeah that is an interesting one very odd um and especially it's made by like somebody like an x rare person or a current rare person i believe it's from someone from moon studios oh moon moon okay yeah yeah i knew it was like somebody who's like working um but yeah that's that was pretty much it like everything else that we we pretty much got to um looking at the 15 i had all of them but three in my own list so the uh switch to multi-plat stuff i didn't have in my list expedition 33 didn't have on my list and Mind's Eye.

2:23:18So that leaves me with eight that I didn't use. So and some of them, we a couple of them we had already mentioned, but Bend and Bluepoint canceling their multiplayer games was one of them. Oh, right. And what that means for those studios moving forward. Dustin, I think you said this one Hollow Knight kind of emerging and coming out. That was on your list, right? That was an honorable mention. Yeah, honorable mention. That's what I mean. Ted Price's retirement. I thought was interesting from Insomniac. That's a big one. And actually, Brian Fleming was just announced today. We'll have we'll talk about this on the last episode, but he's one of the founders of Sucker Punch and he's leaving.

2:23:50The portal turning into a cloud streaming device, I think is cool. Like the operability, the quiet operability and the ability to make the portal into more than we thought it was is a pretty neat story. And Seasoft Horizon, just a full-fledged licensing operation, which I think is interesting. And you could even talk about the Freedom Wars, Patapon, Everybody's Golf Run, but we knew about two of those games last year. So it's not really news this year, even though they came out this year. The fan revival of Concord and how Sony quickly shut that down. And again, I wonder to what end? Is it like we can't be fucking with this anymore?

2:24:28It brings us into some sort of tax issue because we wrote the whole game down. Or is it just you don't want people messing around with your IP? I don't know, but that's pretty big. The firing of that woman from Sucker Punch, I thought was an interesting story. That became a pretty big fear, but certainly not part of our list. and then finally the shadow drop of oblivion and Bethesda is saying that they want to do more of that I think shadow dropping is great I think shadow droppings especially if you're a big studio these days I think that's the way you just carve

2:24:57Colin Moriarty:out boom just appear you know that was that was another game by the way where the memory leak just killed it for me it is such a it's a real bummer that two games this year I was like really into and I just can't I can't finish him because I can't do 15 frames a second every 10 seconds. It's insane. Yeah, that sucks. Unreal. Literally.

2:25:22All right. Let's get out of here, my boys. Thank you for doing this interstitial episode with me. It's appreciated. Let's go around the horn and say goodbye. Chris, goodbye to you. Be well. Enjoy the rest of your day.

2:25:33Colin Moriarty:Goodbye to you, man. It's 2.30. I'm probably going to go get some food. dude i'm trying everything i can to avoid this uh sandwich shop that just opened up is it right next to me what is it is it i mean yeah yeah i don't want to be too specific about it okay well you could bleep you could bleep it bleep it out yeah yeah yeah because it's like it would kind of give away a lot yeah sure it's uh yeah i don't know man it's uh it's tempting me every day oh you might want to me every day and uh it's a problem i'm gonna try i'm gonna try and make something today but i will probably get a sandwich um so it's over it's over i lost i'm sorry godspeed to you okay i'm gonna be obese by the end of the by the by the end of the year that's that's the first step first episode of the first new episode of the year for sacred that where that we come back i'm gonna be i'm aiming for about 40 more pounds hell yeah we're gonna sing a little song about you when you come back roll you around yeah play a tuba like violet ball guard dustin goodbye to you my friend be well goodbye uh what's on my docket tonight i think i'm gonna chill out actually because uh as i was mentioning at the top of the show i'm a little ahead so i'm gonna chill out holly's not home yet i don't know what i'm gonna eat you know uh i don't know if we're gonna go out or eat something stupid at home but order in order in that's that's tempting i don't know what what to get though pizza yeah it's almost time my mom and i have a tradition about the time you guys hear this uh it'll be i've already happened but every year once once a year we get a pizza hut uh pan pizza and it's kind of shitty but we do it once a year and it's just a tradition around christmas that my mom and i do that interesting so we have a tradition here where we do the seven fishes thing at my mom's christmas eve the italian kind of tradition and i don't eat that shit so we go to mcdonald's and i get a huge helping of mcdonald's on the way home and christmas yeah merry christmas all right my friends we'll see you next time uh thank you all out there for your love kindness and support happy holidays Merry Christmas.

2:27:56Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year. Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media for more for early ad free access and such. Last Stand Media dot store for merch. 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 was 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.

2:28:34As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you. Patrick Leslie, MadMockMedia, Kyle Martin, Mark, Brad Cooley, Daniel D 'Amour, John Cordero, Don Lee, Shane Rayoum, Joshua Smallwood, Enrique Perez, Chad Lewis, Paul Joyce, Austin Riley, Justin Wagaman, Justin Payne, Alex Monez, Omar Rosa, Joey Gondaliger, Gio Corsi, Cam Wallace, Benjamin Michalko, Donald Difford, Alex Gates, Michael Gates, Josh McKinney, Adam Nix, Throw7, Phil Crone, Mr.

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2:32:31Colin Moriarty:This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip-off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com. Your beer, fit for all times.